A week that started with a BBQ in Benidorm, and also had a couple of get-togethers with people from the department where I worked until June 2024. And I bought a new lens which I tested in the way I usually test new lenses.
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The week started with a pool/BBQ party at our friends Hans and Mar in Benidorm. I am not into pool activities, so I focused my attention on the food preparation. Hans and Iñaki in conversation next to the BBQ. Hans has a device to “pre-burn” the charcoal before actually dumping it into the grill:
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In the meantime, people were setting out the appetisers and salads that we all brought:
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My wife’s popular lentil-and-apple salad in the lower left corner:
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Having been adjudged sufficiently hot, the charcoal is dumped into the grill:
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The first meat to hit the grill are the chicken kebabs, basically counting as an appetiser:
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Then it’s time to cook the serious stuff:
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Hans and his wife Mar are serious motorcycle travellers. They have toured all over North and South America, much of Asia (including Iran, Central Asia and China), Africa, and of course all over Europe. This is their main touring bike:
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The party kept going until 8 p.m., as is normal for Spanish Sunday lunches. There were a couple of kids too, including this cute little girl. After I took this picture, my Ricoh GRIII died, and all the spare batteries I had brought turned out to be discharged. So this is my last pic of the afternoon:
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Now back to the office. I left my previous department 2 years ago to become director of a newly created department of strategy and foresight. But I have remained friends with my former colleagues, and they continue to invite me to all kind of social events. This week they were saying goodbye to Filipa, a Seconded National Expert from Portugal who now has to go back to the Portuguese IP office. So a drink was held in the kitchen of the Observatory department:
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Filipa has many friends around the office, including Eros who is actually a consultant working for a company that organises our events:
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Filipa had procured many nice snacks including Portuguese cheese which I like very much:
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I turned my camera on other former colleagues, like Bérengère and René here:
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Stephanie always looks graceful, even when she is chewing:
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Maria, one of the secretaries in the Observatory department, gets ready to give the going away presents (to which we all contributed) to Filipa:
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And the obligatory huge card with our messages:
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Another feature of my relationship with my old department is the we who constituted the management team have stayed together as a group. We have a group in MS Teams called Authentically Yours, and we keep the conversation going, even though of the 6 people in the group, only two are still in that department. Once in a while we go out for dinner, and this week it was to a Peruvian restaurant which I had never visited before. This is Patricia, director of the Observatory department:
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Blanca, who now works in our Academy department:
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We shared the appetisers, including this delicious yuca frita:
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I forgot the name of this one, but it was delicious too:
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My main dish, of course a ceviche, washed down with some pisco sours:
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I have not bought much photo equipment in the past couple of years. I am pretty happy with what I have. But this week I did buy a new lens for my Fuji X system, an f2/50mm. I already have the 2.4/60mm macro but its focusing is too slow for anything but macro shots, so I wanted a portrait lens of similar focal length but with better AF. When the new lens arrived, I immediately wanted to test it on one of my favourite subjects, my collaborator Carolina. I concluded that the lens was good:
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During the next couple of days, I continued to use the new lens almost exclusively, for example during a walk on the beach:
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Flight:
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A non-moving subject:
