Monthly Archives: December 2024

December 31, 2024 · 3:43 am

Summary of (my) 2024

Time to look back and reflect on how the year which is about to end developed. Brief recap of my 2024. (*).

The main experience that we enjoyed together in this 2024 was the road trip we did to Namibia during the summer holidays. We spent over two weeks driving up and down the country along solitary and unpaved roads, through deserts, mountains, canyons, along the coast… We did a bit of camping and enjoyed great hotels and resorts. We did some boat excursions and various game watching safaris at different parks. An unforgettable trip.

Namibia

Family. Andrea is now 11 years old and David, 8. Andrea just started secondary and is proving to be a responsible and good student. She loves drawing, researching for her school homework and clothes. She now has her own smartphone and starting playing volleyball in the village team. She is in her 3rd year of Spanish lessons, which now she also studies in the school. This year she is volunteering to take part in the school play at the end of the year. David continues to enjoy building Lego sets, playing video games but most of all he loves football, which he is now playing with the village team. He is also a very good student in his grade 3, where he enjoys Math and French. He is very helpful at home and he is now in his second year of Spanish lessons. They’re both taking piano lessons and this 2024 they have spent several weeks alone with parents in Madrid during school holidays, which they loved.

Running: After an end of 2023 marked by injuries, I just wanted to get again into the running habit and completing another marathon, which I did! In all, I run just 1,250km in 2024, more than in 2023 but less than I would have liked. I still had some injuries now and then but I could cope with them and I ran the marathon of Malaga in December, my 24th marathon.

Following a mantra I try keep to the letter (when in good health), “the running shoes, always in the suitcase”, the year 2024 caught me running in: Torrelodones, Miranda de Ebro, Brunei, Doha, Galapagar, Athens, London, Namibia (Sossusvlei, Swakopmund, Damaraland, Ethosa), Helsinki, Madrid, Málaga, the Netherlands (Wijchen), San Sebastián, plus the tens of times I trained in my village, in Blagnac and Toulouse.

Running around

Skiing. In 2024 we went again with the family for a week to our favourite resort at Vars, in the Southern Alps. This year again we could enjoy much time skiing with the kids out of their skiing lessons. They are more daring and at ease especially skiing off tracks, and sometimes it’s difficult to keep pace with them. This year Andrea got her 2ème étoile medal and David his 1ère one (levels from the French ESF).

Skiing in Vars (Alps)

Flying. This year I did not manage to fly as much as I wanted. I kept up with the recency requirements doing some training flights and some others with the kids. This year I also flew for the first time with Rodrigo and Harriet-Eve. I am sure that in 2025 I will have the chance to fly with more colleagues.

In all, this year I have flown just 5 flight hours, 7 flights and 15 landings. This takes my total experience to 215 flight hours and 339 landings since I started taking lessons back in 2011. In 2025 I will need to renew the SEP (single-engine piston) qualification, that will certainly require more flying in the coming months, hopefully with some excursions abroad.

Flying with friends and family

Travelling. Apart from the unforgettable trip to Namibia, in this 2024 either alone or with the family we continued to visit some new and old places: Brunei, Aix-en-Provence, Vars, Avignon, Doha, Paris (including another visit to the Parc Asterix which the kids loved), Madrid, Vic-Fezensac, Helsinki, London (including a great trip with the family to visit Harry Potter’s studios), San Sebastian, Málaga, Wijchen, Rijswijk, The Hague, Waterloo, Reims, Saint-Quentin, Poitiers, Bordeaux…

Traveling

Reading. In this 2024 I didn’t read as much as I would have liked to, but I managed to read 10 books with a good mix between reading in English, French and Spanish. I’m also happy for having read other 4 books of the Great Books curriculum for the bachelor in arts of Saint John’s College, I list I have been using as a reference for years. For the detailed list of books, see the post I wrote about my 2024 reading list with a brief description of each one.

Other cultural activities:

Bullfighting. This year again, together with Luismi, we went to Vic-Fezensac to attend its corrida concurso (same wording in French) with very strong bulls from different breedings. This year it was especially tough for the bullfighters as it was raining all the morning. Despite that, we saw a good show, with Sánchez Vara (that we had seen in previous occasions) and the Colombian Juan de Castilla who was awarded an ear, and left quickly after the 5th bull as he would be fighting in another corrida in the afternoon at Las Ventas (Madrid). I also renewed my membership to the foundation Toro de Lidia just a few days ago to keep supporting the art.

Bullfighting at Vic-Fezensac

Theatre. We started the year with two musicals in Madrid: School of Rock (thanks to a wonderful invitation from my sister Beatriz!) and Fabiolo connection (which was hilarious). Luca and the kids then attended Aladdin by the Secret Pantomime Society in Pibrac. At the end of the school year we also attended the great show put up by the kids of the school with Shrek. I took the opportunity of a trip to London to attend Les Misérables (a great recommendation from by brother Jaime, and something I had been wanting to do since I read the book years ago).

Les Misérables in London

Cinema. After years of nearly not having gone to the cinema (small kids!) this year we have started to go more often, with or without the kids (5 or 6 times from memory?). My favorite movie this year was The Count of Monte-Cristo.

Museums. This year again we took benefit of every trip to visit as many museums and castles as we could, among them: Fondation (Victor) Vasarely (Aix-en-Provence), Palais des Papes and Pont d’Avignon, Kolmanskop ghost town (Namibia), Finish Aviation museum (Helsinki), Tower Bridge, British Museum, Tate Modern, Harry Potter Warner Bros studio London, Westminster Abbey, Casa natal Pablo Picasso, Museo Picasso, Roman theatre in Málaga, Alcazaba Palace and Castillo de Gibralfaro in Málaga, Centre Pompidou Málaga, Waterloo battlefield museum 1815, Kröller-Müller museum (NL), Escher in the Palace (The Hague).

Blogging. This is the 15th year since I started the blog in 2010. This year I wrote just 7 blog posts, in line with the past years since 2020. The blog received just over 20,700 visits, a bit more than in 2023 (in line with the past few years) and over 512,000 views since 2010.

Work. No changes in the scope of the work this year (A330neo product marketing since January 2023) but we have had quite a few changes higher up in the organization and more closely we bid our farewell to Anna and welcomed Andoni.

Since 2023 the markets have been very active. If in 2023 we at Airbus broke a new record of aircraft orders, this 2024 has also been very active and positive, with many sales and campaigns.

This year I had the opportunity to attend the Farnborough airshow, where I could showcase a Virgin Atlantic A330neo together with colleagues from Airbus and Rolls-Royce and the airline crews, at times showing the aircraft non-stop for hours to many different and varied groups of customers or institutional representatives.

Working in aviation means fun!

This year, on July 3rd I flew for the first time onboard an A330neo, with our flight test aircraft MSN 1795.

My first flight onboard the A330neo with Jose

In September came another highlight of the year with the organization of the Airbus Family Day, when we spent a whole day touring Airbus facilities in Toulouse with the kids.

2024 Family Day at Airbus in Toulouse

Not everything was positive in 2024: the father in law of one of my best friends passed away as did the father of my boss. The Russian invasion of Ukraine continues to create havoc in many families, in autumn we received a short visit from Lena and her family. Hopefully in 2025 that war comes to an end.

On the positive side, some family and friends had new babies and got married in this 2024!

Now it’s time to rest, celebrate with the family and hope for the best in 2025. For the moment we have just a few days in Madrid to enjoy with family and friends and a planned skiing week in Vars; hopefully that will be just the beginning of another memorable year.

I wish you the best for 2025, enjoy it!

(*) You can see here my 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 recaps.

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December 29, 2024 · 9:14 pm

My 2024 reading list

In this post I wanted to share the list of books I read along the year (1) with a small comment for each one. I have also included a small rating from one to three “+” depending on how much I do recommend its reading.

  1. “Notre-Dame de Paris” (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) by Victor Hugo (++): this is the second book of the author I have read after Les Misérables. The key theme and word of the book is the fatality, Quasimodo’s fate in his attraction for the street artist Esmeralda. The book is set in the Paris of the XV century with very detailed descriptions and maps of its streets, buildings, atmosphere and especially of the cathedral (which I guess can be delicious for the history of art lover, though sometimes it is quite dense). The plot narrates the interconnected lives of Quasimodo, his caretaker the priest Frollo, Esmeralda, Gringoire and the captain Phœbus de Châteaupers, the love some have for others and its impossibility. The plot also denounces the injustice suffered by those in the lower classes with some undue legal processes (a recurrent theme for Hugo). What I liked the most was the unbending commitment of Quasimodo in the last part of the book, to the very end of his life.
  2. “A time for mercy” by John Grisham (++): this is another legal thriller around the courtroom in Clanton, with the lawyer Jake Brigance defending a minor convicted of capital murder (of his mother’s partner after months of abuses and threats). As in some of his books of 20+ years ago, he takes time to guide the reader through the jury selection process and later laying up the strategy for the ambushes that will happen during the trial.
  3. “Liftoff” by Eric Berger (+++): I received the book as a gift from my friend Asier and quickly started reading it. The book tells the story of SpaceX in its early years. It takes time to dwell in the details of some of its first engineers, the technical challenges they faced and what they went through (administrative burdens, financing troubles, changes of location, first failures…) up to the first successful launch of the Falcon 1 in its 4th flight and some insights into SpaceX’s transition towards the Falcon 9 program. The book is energising, and exudes passion for engineering and the extreme dedication of those individuals. [Twitter thread]
  4. “Camino ghosts” by John Grisham (+): this is a legal thriller linked to Grisham’s character Bruce Cable (a bookshop owner and old books collector in South Florida) with an old lady author descendant of African slaves as the centre of the plot (Lovely Jackson) and an enchanted little island off the coast where her ancestors lived. At the time of the novel a real estate development company wants to work on the island to build some housing and a resort. Lovely wants to preserve the island off the hands of the developers and claims the property of the island which triggers the legal action. This is one of the books I have liked the least by the author (after having read over 25 of his) mixing beliefs in black magic, enchantments on the island, misticsm and the praise of the oppressed political agenda of the past decade.
  5. “El banquete” (Symposium) by Plato (+): this book is a short dialogue after a banquet in which several attendees to the meal are asked to give a speech praising love and Eros, the Greek god. These praises include the controversial relationship at that time between minor pupils and their adult instructors. One of the last passages of the book includes the praise by the young and ambitious Alcibiades of his instructor Socrates, as the latter didn’t attend to the approaches of the former as Socrates was focused on his search for truth.
  6. “Leviatán” (Leviathan) by Thomas Hobbes (++): published in 1651 (during the English civil war), the book portrays the republic as a mortal God (Leviathan) needed for the defence of the individual. The book discusses different types of government (with monarchy as the preferred one for the author) and the relationship between the civil power and the Church (to which christians have an allegiance and commandments to follow), for which the author discusses in depth different passages of the Bible.
  7. “Números complejos” by Bartolo Luque (++): this is a short book from a collection of Mathematics books I started reading some years ago. This particular one was written by an Applied Math teacher I had at the engineering school. It explains the appearance of complex numbers from Heron of Alexandria up to the the first labeling of imaginary by Descartes. The book explains some of their applications such as the Zhukovsky transformation (very much used in aerodynamics), the art of Escher and goes into the Riemann hypothesis. The book doesn’t spare mathematical expressions thus it is not recommended to the untrained reader. [Twitter thread]
  8. “Du contrat social” by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (+++): written in 1762, the book describes how the people in a community (the Sovereign) come to be organized (Social pact) in order to be defended and have their natural rights as individuals upheld. The book discusses different forms of government (monarchy, aristocracy and democracy), which of those forms suit best to different countries based on their size and wealth, who is the legislator, different types of laws. [Twitter thread]
  9. “Maximes” by La Rochefoucauld (++): La Rochefoucauld was a duke in XVII century France (also known as Prince de Marcillac). In 1665 he published the first edition of the reflections known today as his “Maximes”, out if which some originated from his acquaintances at the time. Once drafted he shared the volume with friends and continued to edit them with additions and removals. The present edition includes all those and some of the exchanges and critiques of the volume made at the time. The topics of the reflections are virtues and vices of humans, with the particularity that the author takes a rather sceptical view on human nature pointing at the weaknesses, the pride being at the centre of many of our actions… and even portraying sloth as our main virtue (!) as it subdues our passions preventing us from taking action and falling prey of our vices more often. [Twitter thread]
  10. “El Arte de insultar” by Schopenhauer (+): the book wasn’t really written as such by Schopenhauer but it is a compilation of rants he wrote throughout his different publications. In the book the insults and rants are classified per topic in alphabetical order. Which are the most recurrent subjects? Other philosophers (in particular Hegel), the French language, women (several times, placing women as a secondary sex), university professors / deans, journalists, writers… [Twitter thread]

This year I read a bit more than in 2023 but not as much as I would have liked, as I found myself not finding time sometimes during the year and other times I was stuck with a couple of books.

A resolution for 2025 will be to keep the habit and read a bit more, for which I will be following these two tips that I share every year:

– a blog post from Farnam Street blog “Just Twenty-Five Pages a Day“, which was published well after I had adopted such an approach to reading but captures it very well,
– the Wikipedia article about the Pomodoro Technique, which enables you to efficiently use the last hours of the day.

I wish you all very interesting reads in 2025!

(1) You can find here: my 2012 reading list, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 ones.

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December 19, 2024 · 1:53 am

Malaga marathon 2024

Last Sunday, December 15th, together with my friend Manuel we traveled to Malaga to take part in its marathon, with around 6000 runners registered in the distance.

We picked Malaga following our series of marathons abroad (to combine tourism with long distance running) that has taken some of us to run together in Paris, Berlin, Roma, Athens, Rotterdam, New York, Sevilla (x3), Madrid, Millau, Dublin (x2), Lisboa, Vienna, Krakow, Porto, Bucharest and now Malaga (in bold those run with Manuel).

To prepare for this marathon I followed the same 16-week training plan I had used in the past. Just before those 16 weeks of the plan, thanks to a running challenge we followed in the company, I cumulated +200km in 4 weeks between mid May and June. Then at the end of August I started with the plan. In the end I arrived to Malaga with 554km in the legs in those 16 weeks, a bit less than I would have liked. I trained quite well in September, doing most of the series sessions and all long runs, but in early October I had a calf contracture that slowed me for a couple of weeks. At the end of October I resumed the plan but discarded the series sessions while maintaining the long runs… until two weeks before the race when I had another injury in the other calf. I stopped for a few days and resumed with some short runs before the race day. In those 16 weeks I averaged 37km per week, completed 8 long runs (including 4 above 20km; 22km, 30km, 30km and 26km – with positive feelings especially in this last one) and 11 sessions of series, though not enough of them to get a bit faster. Provided that I didn’t get injured again, I was confident in being able to complete the marathon in a time between 4h05′ and 4h15′ even if the final mark was uncertain.

The profile in Malaga is rather flat. The organization prepared a circuit mainly composed of long avenues, mostly by the seaside, which allowed to run at constant pace. The race started and finished in the Paseo del Parque, in front of the iconic Banco de España building, and I stayed for an extended weekend at an apartment at walking distance from the place.

The temperature was a bit cold in the morning (~6°C), the sky was clear and it would be a bit warmer towards the end of the race, though the temperature did not exceed 16°C. My strategy was to start at a pace just below 6min per km, and then, if I felt well, accelerate the pace at mid-race so that I could target a time below 4h15′. There were pacers for times aiming at every 15-minute mark and in the end, I didn’t quite followed that strategy but ran just after the 4-hour pacers at a short distance until the km 23.

The race started at 8:30am and Manu departed from a different box, hence we wished luck to each other and ran separately. We ran with the participants in the half marathon, that made the first half of the race a bit more crowded.

I ran at a comfortable pace until the first half, but I started to feel the same pain in the calf that made me stop a couple of weeks before since km ~16. At km 23 or so the pain became stronger and I softened the pace, fearing that I would have to do some walking later on. Luckily I saw a volunteer with Reflex spray at km 25 and got a good dose of it. A few minutes later the pain mostly disappeared and I could continue running even if at a slower pace. At km 32 I got the calf sprayed again with Reflex and even if I had some difficulties in the last ~6km I could manage the timing to be below the target of 4h15′.

The last 2 km of the race were superb. The race goes through the city centre including Plaza de la Constitucion and calle Marques de Larios with the crowd surrounding and cheering the runners. I kept my pace in the last few hundred metres as by then I had muscle pain in both lower legs so I could not give it a last sprint.

In the end, I clocked a net time of 4h11’39”, a time about what I expected given the weight with which I arrived to the race (93kg) and the injuries I went through during the training weeks, but slower than the last two marathons I ran in 2022 (Sevilla and Bucharest). This has been my 24th marathon completed, easy to say today but not so on April 30th 2000 when I started in the distance in Madrid.

Pace during Malaga 2024 marathon (minutes per km)

With those 4h11’39”, I was again above the 4-hour mark and finished in the 4279th place out of 5733 finishers (25% percentile). That time makes it my 5th worst marathon, though with a positive feeling of having completed another marathon 2 years later and following a 2023 marked by injuries as well. I am now looking for the next one.

The organization of the race was great. The circuit showed a beautiful city. They included plenty of water supply (with bottles) posts, isotonic drinks and food (bananas and oranges), I just missed gels (though I carried myself enough of those). The finish line was great, the wardrobe service was close to the start and finish line (by the bullfighting arena). It was a great experience.

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