Today’s scary thing is flying together with my friend Asier and his flight instructor, Jean-Louis, to Corsica. Prior to taking the decision of joining this “adventure” about 2 months ago, I had barely made 10 flights amounting to less than 8 flight hours… in the last week I was learning with my instructor, Thierry, the basics of flight navigation, the use of charts in flight, the use of VOR, etc., in order to profit the most from this experience. It definitely feels less scary now. And then, I’ll always have Jean-Louis by my side at the time of piloting the airplane. I’m happy to be stretching the comfort zone.

In the previous days I also learnt a lot with Asier on how to plan the route, noting headings, altitudes, radio frequencies, air spaces, aerodromes, etc.

Planning the flight to Corsica.

The head of the MBA I studied in Seville used to describe it as a “experiences accelerator”; in the context of flying this trip to Corsica (a group activity of the Airbus Aviation Society I belong to) really feels like such an experience accelerator.

If everything goes well, we’ll be in Propriano (LFKO) before 15:00. Then we could have one or two days of visiting the island, either by car… or by plane. Ajaccio, where Napoleon was born; Bonifacio; the dolmens close to Ajaccio… I’ll keep you updated when we’re back .

Readers’ origin map provided by WordPress.

In these three months the blog received slightly above 7,700 visits; over 2,000 came from the United States and above 1,300 came from Spain (my country of origin). The top ten countries of origin summed up 75% of the visits (USA, Spain, UK, France, Germany, Canada, NL, Australia, Ireland & India). Following the famous “80/20 rule” or a Pareto distribution, the top 20% of the countries of origin summed up 85% of the visits (out of 117 countries).

Pareto distribution of blog readers per country of origin.

Finally, I had the curiosity to analyze the origin by world region. For this purpose, I compared the proportion of readers to the proportion of world population, internet users and internet penetration per region (internet users/population).

Blog readers, world population, internet users and internet penetration.

Europe, mainly due to Spain (my family and most of friends’ origin), is overrepresented (higher % of readers in relation to internet users). The other two regions overrepresented among readership are North America and Oceania, this must be due to the fact that most of the blog’s articles are written in English. Those three regions are also the ones where internet penetration is the highest.

China. In the last 3 months my blog only received 8 visits from China, that is 0.1% of the visits. China with over 1.3 billion inhabitants represents almost 20% of the world population; it counts with over 500 million internet users, over 22% of  the total; and the internet penetration is above 38%. China is clearly underrepresented among the countries of origin of the readers of the blog (0.5%). Shall I start writing more about China or in chinese language?

Seychelles, Maldives, French Polynesia, Galapagos, Hawaii… feedback is welcome in order to target more efficiently future holiday destinations (always bearing in mind that Torrelodones is in another league).

Finally engaged.

The wedding is foreseen sometime in the Spring 2013. News will follow.

Waiting room of my dentist in Blagnac (close to Toulouse) #Airbus #avgeek #fb yfrog.com/mgvsnmxj—
Javier Irastorza (@javierirastorza) March 30, 2012

Waiting room seats.

What I missed in that first visit was the geek details of the cloth covers of the seats. Take a closer look in the pictures below…

"Briteeth" Airways.

"Lufthanzahn".

Definitely, my dentist must be another aerogeek.

After my flying class today, I took the opportunity to go to one of the “bureau de vote” installed at the city hall in Capitole square. As I did 7 years ago while living in Aachen (then with the election between Merkel and Schröder), I wanted to check first-hand how the voting works here in France.

Well, it is very simple and very much like in Spain, even simpler. There were just 10 small stacks of ballots, one stack per candidate. The ballots are much simpler than in Spain. Just white papers with the name of the candidate. No name of the party, no fancy logo of the party. The envelope: simpler as well, just a small blue envelope reading “République Française”, nothing mentioning like “Presidential election 2012″, first or second round…

French Presidential election 2012: Ballot papers.

It raised my attention that there were many isoloirs, these cabins with curtains where you decide which ballot you place in the envelope. There are those as well in Spain. I did this detour today with a colleague coming from the Spanish Basque Country, he mentioned that in his village people also uses those cabins. However, in the village where I come from in Madrid, people almost never uses them. While I agree that their presence is a must, the need to use them is sad.

Finally, the rest of the process is the same. The voter comes to the table, hands her ID to the president of the table, the name is checked in the list and the voter places her vote in the urne.

Running in Paris (@ km ~26)

Last Sunday, in Paris, I ran together with my friend Serna and my brother Jaime my 5th marathon. For this one I had a training plan to go through for 17 weeks. That training plan amounted to over 1,100 km running, and a series session per week. I started a bit late with it, then I had trouble in the adapation to the new soles, injures… in the end, during the last 4 months I ran almost 500 km, or about 45% of the plan and did only 5 days of series.

Even if I was under trained, I managed to recover from the injure about 2 months before the race. I run as much as I could during the weeks following the recovery: 330km in 7 weeks, including 4 consecutive Sundays with a run over 20km in each of them.

The result: I completed Paris marathon in 3h45’35″, just at my target time before starting. My first sub-4-hour marathon. You can’t imagine how happy I am for that.

Some curiosities related to the race. You may find the route we followed in the diploma below. Some of the views while running were superb (Eiffel Tower, Place de la Concorde, Les Champs-Élysées, Place de la Bastille…), even if when running a marathon you don’t get to enjoy much the views. In the diploma you will see as well two times and positions. This is due to the fact that it took me 11 minutes to reach the starting line. Positions are calculated taking into consideration net times (deducting time to starting line, “real”) and arrival order (“official”).

Paris 2012 diploma.

You can also see below a small graphic prepared from the info recorded by my Garmin. There you’ll see how until km. ~29, I managed to run below my target pace to achieve 3h45′ (that was 5’20″ per km). There are some kilometers before km. 29 in which it took longer, that is due to stops (“WC”) or slowing down to take drinks at every 5km. From km. 30 it was hard to maintain paces even below 5’30″. In the last 12km I burnt the 2-minute buffer I built in the first 25km.

In order to keep the rhythm in the last kilometres, it is extremely important not only the long runs (I got the one and only “muscle warning” at km. 39) and the series training, the famous Yasso’s to keep “speed” and endurance.

Pace (mm:ss) per km.

This time the helicopter was an Eurocopter EC 135 (Eurocopter is an EADS company, same as Airbus, where I work). As we took a picture before getting on it, we didn’t have the best seats to shoot a nice movie. There is another shortcoming: since the heliport in Monaco Western than Monaco Ville and in the ride from Nice you are coming from the West as well, you don’t get to see all the sea-line of Monaco in the helicopter ride (the main port, Monte Carlo and the beach).

EC-135 at Nice airport.

“You never really own a Patek Philippe, you merely take care of it for the next generation”, this all I knew about Patek Philippe, because of seeing its advertisements in The Economist magazine.

When I visited Geneva some weeks ago, a friend living there suggested that we could visit the Patek Philippe Museum (10 CHF) as one of the activities for the weekend, and so we did.

In the museum you almost get exhausted with the so many luxurious watches and pieces of jewellery that you see, but some of them make it definitely worth the visit.

The Caliber 89 is a commemorative watch built to celebrate the 150 years of existence of the company. The small shrine displaying the watch and its features is breathtaking. It is said to be the most complicated watch ever built. You may see below the data about the watch provided by the museum.

Patek Philippe Caliber 89

Total development time 9 years: 5 years for research and development, and 4 years in manufacture.

• Total diameter 89 mm.
• Total thickness 41 mm
• Total weight 1100 grams
• Case 18 ct. Gold

Number of components 1728, including:

• 184 wheels
• 61 bridges
• 332 screws
• 415 pins
• 68 springs
• 429 mechanical parts
• 126 jewels
• 2 main dials
• 24 hands
• 8 display dials

Functions:

• Hours, minutes and seconds of sidereal time
• Time in a second time zone
• Time of sunset and sunrise
• Equation of time
• Tourbillon regulator
• Perpetual calendar
• Century leap year correction
• Date of the month
• Century, decade and year
• Day of the week
• Months
• Four-year cycle
• Sun hand (season, equinox, solstice, zodiac)
• Stars chart
• Age and phases of the moon
• Date of Easter
• Chronograph
• Split-seconds
• 30 minute recorder
• 12 hour recorder
• Grande Sonnerie with carillon
• Petite Sonnerie with carillon
• Minute-repeater
• Alarm
• Going train up-and-down indication
• Striking train up-and-down indication
• Striking train stop work
• Twin barrel differential winding
• Four-way setting system
• Winding-crown position indication

You may see below two videos explaining the watch and the process of building watches by Patek Philippe.

Finally, you may find this interesting post (in Spanish) about the Caliber 89, there I found the videos.

The article mentions other studies in which it is explained why nevertheless Coke still outsells Pepsi. In the end it seems to be due to the powerful brand Coca Cola has created along history and its association with happiness and satisfaction. This is an extreme case of what Warren Buffett describes as moat:

Definition of ‘Economic Moat’

The competitive advantage that one company has over other companies in the same industry. This term was coined by renowned investor Warren Buffett.

Investopedia explains ‘Economic Moat’

The wider the moat, the larger and more sustainable the competitive advantage. By having a well-known brand name, pricing power and a large portion of market demand, a company with a wide moat possesses characteristics that act as barriers against other companies wanting to enter into the industry.

My preference for Coke

Luca and I did this kind of blind test about 4 years ago when we lived in Madrid. We had heard of these tests and I was sure I could distinguish one from the other.

Normally, I never buy Pepsi (except when you order a “cola” at some place where there is no Coke). For the test we purchased both Pepsi and Coke, and placed them in the fridge for a while. Then I got blinded. Luca took them out of the fridge and poured each in a different glass (same kind of glass) with ice cubes. Then she offered me one glass. I tasted it.

“Ok, I don’t even need to test the other one, this is Pepsi”, I said. Then, I thought “well let’s try the other to confirm my choice”. I tasted the other glass… then I tasted again the first one. I ended up completely lost. I couldn’t tell one from the other. I finally changed my initial decision.

I was wrong in the test. Since then, I have told some friends about the experiment. Most of these friends claim they would indeed distinguish one from the other. They would probably even state that they prefer Coke due to its flavour (of course, I have no friend who prefers Pepsi! Who does?)…

After having done the test, no doubt I continue to buy Coke, but now I am aware that it is partly due to some behavioural trick being played within my mind, the kind of trick explained in the article.

—

(1) Farnam Street being the street in Omaha where Berkshire Hathaway HQ are located.

NOTE: You may want to read this case by Charlie T. Munger, Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman, about the compounding effects that led to the tremendous success of this carbonated water drink. The essay was part of a lesson he gave at USC Business School in 1994 and appears in his book “Poor Charlie’s Almanack”.