I have just noticed that it has been now almost a year since the last time I wrote in this blog. Some things have happened… not a lot though.

As an improvement, I am back in Paris now, full time. Still working for the same company and on the same client but things have changed a lot. The environment is much better and healthier. I feel more challenged and alive. Event though I have been working in subjects I do not really appreciate I have learned a lot and I can see my way of seeing things has really changed in the last months. I can now write fluently in French :)

I had been so involved in work that I had forgotten about this place, and today, with a 5 minute break I took waiting for a late afternoon meeting to begin, I found it again. I am glad, one more blog for the statistics of revivals and one less for the statistics of dead and abandoned. I must confess that today I write much more in twitter and that I spend most of my free time in my hobby: photography. Between twitter and Flickr not much time is left for blogging, however I have made a promise to myself to try to come and write at least one piece of article once a week. Let’s see how I can handle it.

Frustration

Taken @ Brussels Metro by awk

Imagine you are thirsty for intellectual challenges and eager to learn new things. You arrive with your mind as open as it can be, with all (almost) your prejudices clean. You find a place full of competent engineers and technical problems that simply make you drool. You think you are in the right place and just in the right time. It seems exciting and you can almost feel the adrenaline rush. Your co-workers are nice and cool and your boss smart.

After a month you discover things do not move. The whole place is paralyzed because of holidays and lack of leadership. Nobody has the balls to make decisions and everything needs to be decided in consensus between four or more people. That’s the weird, really weird world where Belgians live (they haven’t even been able to agree on a government nor a language and their most important “attraction” is a statue that pisses).

I was expecting to do some engineering, to get some hands on the subject and instead I get to do slideware and prepare communication plans based on some knowledge exchange source that just requires copy paste (analyze?).

I’m not that good, really, but still I do wonder what a waste of talent. I am wasting my time, my mind, my capacity… In the end I am learning, perhaps a lot. But I am not learning what I want to learn. I am not motivated, and I just feel I am being shaped to fulfill a position nobody wants, nobody with brains has ever wanted.

I do not see a long future here if things don’t change soon. Yes, this is frustration.

How I miss Paris

It is definitely a city which you love or you hate. I and do not speak about touristic visits of a few days or weeks, I speak about really living in it. You take the good things and the bad things and eventually most of my friends are really good making those bad things pop out.

I personally do not care. I do not care if Parisians are arrogant and pretentious. The rest of French people (almost) are not . I do not care if the weather sucks. It is not worse than the one in Brussels at least.

I love the city, I love the ability to move freely and easily everwhere, I love buying the baguette in the nearest boulangerie when I feel like it or just walking to the nearest cafe. I love Sunday sushi nights and Chez Gladines. I miss the madeleines at breakfast and the wine at the parks. I miss the Palais de Tokyo and the Jardin de Luxembourg. Three days a week there are not enough. Two years are not enough.

Photo taken by awk the 6th August, 2008

New (extra) flat

Photo taken by awk @ the Crowne Plaza Hotel
in Brussels (July 2008)

So after a month and some days staying at the hotel in Brussels, they finally decided it was time to find me an appartment. Well, they got me a cool studio in the last floor of a building with a nice view over the Cinquantenaire Parc in the European district.

This reliefs me of taking and bringing with me my bag every week but it adds additional hurdles like having to do the laundry and ironing myself. Sucks but I can’t complaint. I don’t know for how long I will be staying here but I hope it is not much.

The Darjeeling Limited

Arenberg Cinema

I have recently found and fell in love with the Arenberg Cinema in Brussels. Last week I had the opportunity to watch Calle Santa Fe, an excellent Chilean documentary about the MIR (movimiento de izquiera revolucionario) and how it managed to survive the dictatorship of Pinochet after Allende just to be pronounced as dead and dissolved a few time afterwards.

This week it was Darjeeling’s Limited turn. This film continues the same line and style of the Royal Tenenbaums (they even share actors). The soundtrack of the film is excellent. I specially enjoyed the Hotel Chevalier short film in the beginning with the “Where do you go to” song which was continually repeated throught the Darjeeling film. The “Aux Champs Elysees” at the end of the film drew an enormous smile on my face, and I can assure you it is still there today. The story is simple and the scenery in India is presented with no prentetious purpose. The photography is excellent and thanks to its mix with music it delivers its message sharp and clear. The story line turns somewhat boring at the end but the movie is conveniently ended on time.

To recommend: the soundtrack, specially “Aux Champs Elysees” and “Where do you go to.”
The scene I remember: from Hotel Chevalier, the last scene of the view of Paris.
What I didn’t like: the story ending. It turns out too slow and lost my interest.

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Photo taken by awk @ the Arenberg Cinema in Brussels (July 2008)

Talent concentration

I work for a big consulting firm in Paris and I currently began an interesting project in Brussels. I have worked for less than a week with my colleagues and I find all of them competent and talented. However, it seems that finding people like them in Belgium is not as simple. The post for which I was chosen has been vacant for more than one month and the client has refused several candidates. Meanwhile, in Paris, lots of consultants are “on the bench” waiting for a project to be staffed in, and I can guarantee that all of them are really talented. I would dare to say that the company for which I currently work for, really insists in choosing the right people.

In the end, it turns out that the best talents are concentrated in big capitals such as Paris, sitting on the desks waiting for the proper project, while smaller capitals such as Brussels have hard time finding the adequate profiles.

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Apparently, they really appreciate the capability of speaking Spanish, dealing with hard providers and employees, and like Mr. Gerente would say: “bitching the hell out of each and every inefficient worker”.

Undetectable communication

The possibility of covert channels and information hiding (steganography) within other pieces of information seems to be endless. This time, these guys show us the possibility to hide information in SIP, RTP and RTSP packets within others. The amazing thing is that for most of the people these protocols don’t ring a bell, but in reality, applications such as video streaming and voice over IP rely on them. This means that covert channels could be created in apparently innocuous phone calls and in video transmissions over the net. The danger escalates even further when you start thinking of the endless possibilities of these type of cummunication. Indetectable botnets that communicate through multicast networks of triple play providers or simply dangerous information passing through a Skype call.

From personal experience working on designing certain mechanisms in triple play networks, tons of ideas for practical (legal and illegal) applications come to my mind. Just as an example, imagine your internet + TV + phone provider wanting to spy on you without you finding out. You get shipped with a state of the art set top box that has every nifty feature you’ve ever wanted. However, it might also include some small modifications in its protocols as to conceal information which your provider might consider “interesting”. The chances of you finding out this is done are almost zero. Even if you try really hard to analyze the network traffic, everything will seem to working as intended.

In the case of a botnet, the master won’t even need to communicate directly with its slaves. The slaves just send their messages to the net and the master listens. He is the only one that knows what to look for. A passive sniffer in the right place is all he needs and he cannot be traced back by means of his IP or used services being disclosed by noisy machines.

Heuristic or behavior based scanner may try to detect deviations in tipical protocols. The problem here is that the protocol itself is behaving as a tipical implementation would and there would be little or no deviation. Even if deviation is detected, other techniques such as delaying messages (also explained in the article) would suffice to overrun the detection.

Brief update

Finally got a decent flat near Gare de Lyon (very centric place with lots of transport choices) and started my consulting job two weeks ago. For now I am receiving training but I’m really happy because i managed to get into the security division instead of the network division that was proposed at the beginning.

I spent a great holiday camping at Ile de Ré (I strongly recommend the camping l’Ocean). The weather has improved a lot and most of the time its sunny with no rain.

Now the short term goals have been reached and its time to define new ones.

Bonne recherche!

I had heard so many times before that to search for an apartment is a nightmare in Paris but I really never believed the commentaries until I had to look for one. In order to be elegible for even being considered as a good tenant for a flat you need be a millionaire, a friend of someone in the most influencing circles and a high rank member of a masonic lodge. And that’s just to be in equal terms with the other candidates that post their dossiers along with you. Once the owner receives dozens of these, he studies them carefully (?) choosing the one that presents the smallest risk to his property (for example, a couple seems not to be as dangerous as a single man who might destroy the premises any night when he arrives late at home after partying with his comrades). Just for the record, a complete dossier requires at least the following:

1. Your three last receipts of payment: if you just started working you may provide your copy of the contract, however, if this is the case, it is possible that you are still in the trial period and your dossier has lost many points already. In addition, you must be able to demonstrate that you earn at least three times the value of the monthly fee of the apartment.
2.  A copy of your identity card: if your tenant has any prejudices against your origins (country for example) you’ve already lost more points.
3. A RIB (relevé d’identité bacaire): you better have a well known bank.
4. A bailsman (garant): not just anyone, it has to be someone that on its own earns three times what you will pay monthly for your flat and he needs to present the same documents as you plus his last receipt of taxes payed the last year. If your bailsman has not been living for more than a year as a salarié and he hasn’t payed taxes, you lose more points. You may be tempted to ask that well known bank mentioned before to be your garant, but be advised that you need to freeze a whole year of rent in the bank and pay 2% of the amount frozen every trimester (suppose a thousand euro rent, you would be freezing 12,000 euros and paying 240 euros every three months). You may be also tempted to use loca-pass: it is not well seen and not widely accepted, neither by agencies nor particulars.
5. A tad of luck so the stars are aligned at the proper angle and the universe conspires for:
   • You liking the piece of shit that Parisian apartments usually are.
   • The owner thinking you are elegible to take even though you meet all his constraints.
   • Nobody else who earns more than you presenting their dossier.
   • Being able to pay the ridiculous amounts of money asked for the space that in any other city or country would buy you a really nifty flat.

And yes, after all these, the people in the agencies say good-bye, after not offering you anything worth it, with a big fat “Bonne recherce!”.

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Photo taken by awk @ the Georges Pompidou Museum in Paris (March 2008)

Away from home

Today, 7th of December, I should be sitting down in the square of Villa de Leyva watching some nice fireworks, drinking wine, eating chorizo with arepa and visiting doña rosita. Instead, I’m sitting down in front of a screen doing nothing because my work is done, waiting for the time to pass, go home and the go out with some German guys I don’t know that well to get some beers. Nice prospect of a Friday.