My footsteps. Around the world.

"Dreams big. Easily amused. Loves challenges."

[alinabalusescu]

The Great Manchester Run 2014, or my first 10k

After two weeks of very early morning runs, I'm happy to have crossed the finish line today!! I predicted over 1.30h and managed to pull it off in 01:12:11!!

Had a great time but really wished for a bit of the typical mancunian rains.. or at least clouds, I'm not that picky :) Instead, the #GreatManchesterRun runners got around 21°C and plenty of sun. Sunstroke anyone ?

Some lessons I learned today (and overall in the process of preparing for a distance run..):

prepare in advance, and keep to your routine!

I registered for this 10k challenge a while ago, but approached it rather timidly until two weeks ago (after living below the line), running only about 2- 2.5k twice a week as training..  

wear sunscreen or even a hat!

Usually the sun is a unique, celebrated event here in Manchester.. However, if you've got a 10k to run around lunchtime (yup.. last wave was from 12:30 - 14:00..) make sure you prepare yourself! Use sunscreen (and don't forget about face sunscreen) and even a hat - otherwise you might be the proud owner of some sunburns :)

water!! water!! and again, water!!

needless to strain the importance of this.. Drink plenty of water the week before the event, during and after!

when you feel you can't go any longer, think about why you're running.

I was running for all the people who offered me their constant invaluable support and reinforced their faith in me! Also, I am fundraising for the Mustard Tree, who fight poverty and support the helpless and marginalised! I truly hope in the future this charity will make the list for the official Bupa Run charities. 

I plan to stick to running as a routine and my goal would be at least a 5k every week. I believe it's a good habit to have :) Also, it will give me endurance for the next 10k 

Cheers all!

Alina

PS: If you want to support my efforts and help the Mustard Tree make a difference in Manchester, please visit my JustGiving page: http://www.justgiving.com/Alina-Balusescu Your support is greatly appreciated!

[alinabalusescu]

Well done everyone! #day5 #lastday #belowtheline

The challenge ends tonight and I want to give a big THANK YOU to everyone for your support and WELL DONE to everyone who took the challenge! 

These past 5 days I've learned to appreciate things differently and realise the things I take for granted every day: a tea with sugar and milk/ a brew any time of the day, the snacks between meals or even the salt ... It's been an eye-opening experience and a bit odd to constantly add meal costs in my head to figure out if I can afford an extra plain tea, but totally worth it!

This has also been a fundraising challenge to help the homeless and unprivileged people in Manchester, by donating to the Mustard Tree, a local Mancunian charity. Our team has met 60% of our collective target, but there is still time to contribute if you want. You can do it here to our collective JustGiving page: http://www.justgiving.com/teams/ThoughtWorksNorth-LiveBelowTheLine2014 or donating to my page directly here: http://www.justgiving.com/Alina-Balusescu-Live-Below-The-Line-2014

Thanks a lot for your support!

Cheers,

Alina

Day5 - total cost £0.99

Breakfast - bananas on toast - total cost £0.15

1 banana - £0.11

2 bread slices - £0.04

Tea - £0.01

Lunch - rice with vegetables - total cost £1.12 (yields 2 - £0.56)

300g rice - £0.12

175g mushrooms - £0.345

3 half peppers - £0.445

1 onion - £0.10

5ml soy sauce - £0.03

1 carrot - £0.05

1tbsp sunflower spread - £0.03

Dinner - sunny side up eggs with toast - total cost £0.27

2 eggs - £0.23

2 slices bread - £0.04

[alinabalusescu]

Never thought of salt a luxury.. #day4 #belowtheline

A strange thing happened to me this evening.. Here I was, writing down the cost breakdown for the meals of today and noticed one crazy thing.. I put salt on my eggs thinking that I could afford 1p more (giving that none of the previous days came too close to the £1 limit). Interestingly enough, adding up the meals I realise I am exactly 1p over, which is still ok, given the total budget of £5, but eye opening! Never thought about a pinch of salt as being a luxury.. 

The Live #BelowTheLine challenge ends tomorrow night, so there is still time for you to contribute to fighting the extreme poverty over 1.2 billion people over the world live in!

My efforts are in support of a local Mancunian charity, the Mustard Tree that fights poverty and defends the homeless and marginalised. If you’d like to support me, you can do so here: https://www.justgiving.com/account/your-pages/Alina-Balusescu-Live-Below-The-Line-2014

Thank you for your support!

Alina 

Day 4 - total cost £1.01

Breakfast - bananas on toast - total cost £0.16

1 banana - £0.11

2 bread slices - £0.04

1tsp sunflower spread - £0.01

Lunch - sunny side up eggs with toast - total cost £0.28

2 eggs - £0.23

2 slices bread - £0.04

salt - £0.01

Tea - £0.01

Dinner - rice with vegetables - total cost £1.12 (yields 2 - £0.56)

300g rice - £0.12

175g mushrooms - £0.345

3 half peppers - £0.445

1 onion - £0.10

5ml soy sauce - £0.03

1 carrot - £0.05

1tbsp sunflower spread - £0.03

[alinabalusescu]

Salseros #belowtheline #day3

My initial thought when starting the Live Below the Line challenge was to conserve my energy so I won't go hungry faster.. And so I did for the first two days, stopped taking the stairs, postponing most errands, and so on. And then I thought.. what if I'd actually have to spend all day walking the streets, searching for food.. I guess that would be pretty exhausting.  

So while my other friends taking this challenge are keeping their normal routines, I've decided to do the same and keep being as active as always. 

With this in mind, I'm having an early dinner and going straight to the dance floor for a salsa class. But not before sharing with you today's menu!

My efforts are in support of a local Mancunian charity, the Mustard Tree that fights poverty and defends the homeless and marginalised. If you'd like to support me, you can do so here: https://www.justgiving.com/account/your-pages/Alina-Balusescu-Live-Below-The-Line-2014

Thank you for your support!

Alina 

Day3, total cost £0.82

Breakfast - bananas on toast, with tea - total cost £0.17

1 tea bag - £0,01

1 banana - £0.11

2 bread slices - £0.04

1tsp sunflower spread - £0.01

Lunch - egg fried risotto - £0.25

1 egg - £0.11

100g rice - £0.04

1/2 onion - £0.05

1+1/2 tsp sunflower spread - £0.05

Tea - £0.01

Dinner - omelette-sandwich - total cost £0.27

2 eggs - £0.23

2 slices bread - £0.04

Evening snack - £0.12

1 banana - £0.11

1 tea - £0.01

Recipe for lunch:

Chop the onion and fry it in half a tablespoon of sunflower spread. When golden add the rice. Stir continuously a couple of minutes until rice changes colour. Add small quantities of water for the rice to absorb and continue to stir. Do not add more water until the rice absorbed the previous one. 

When rice is cooked (but still "al dente") add the other tablespoon of sunflower spread. Separately, fry the scrambled egg and add it to the mix.

Bon appétit!

[alinabalusescu]

#belowtheline #day2

Day2 of Living below the line. This morning one of my colleagues mentioned that my breakfast was looking "above the line" - quite a nice thing to say that made it taste even better, so I started the day great :)

I found myself browsing through my friends' #belowtheline meal photos to see how creative they got and how they're going on with the challenge. It looks like they all took different approaches: pasta, beans, noodles, etc. It's challenging, but worth it; knowing that this will help others and put a meal on their table is reason enough.

My efforts are in support of a local Mancunian charity, the Mustard Tree that fights poverty and defends the homeless and marginalised.

I’d love and appreciate very much all your support in this challenge, so if you want to contribute, please use my JustGiving page: https://www.justgiving.com/account/your-pages/Alina-Balusescu-Live-Below-The-Line-2014

Thank you for all your support!

Alina

Day2, total cost - £0.89

Breakfast - bananas on toast - total cost £0.17

1 tea bag - £0,01

1 banana - £0.11

2 bread slices - £0.04

1tsp sunflower spread - £0.01

Lunch - rice with vegetables - total cost £0.55 (very large portions, made last night for dinner)

400g rice - £0.16

175g mushrooms - £0.345

3 half peppers - £0.445

1/2 onion - £0.05

5ml soy sauce - £0.03

1 carrot - £0.05

1tbsp sunflower spread - £0.03

Tea - £0.01

Dinner - 1 egg on toast with spreadable sunflower + rice leftover from lunch - £0.16

1 egg - £0.11

2 slices bread - £0.04

1tsp sunflower spread - £0.01

[alinabalusescu]

My journey to understanding poverty #day1

I rarely blog, but I think this is something worth blogging about. A couple of weeks ago I decided to take on the Live Below The Line challenge and live on £1 per day for 5 days. Why? Well, because it resonates with my belief that in order to fight poverty we ought to better understand it.

So I've joined forces with a couple of my friends (any challenge feels lighter when you have your friends' support :-) ) and decided to fundraise for a local Mancunian charity, the Mustard Tree. My personal reason is because I value their faith and values and their commitment to fight poverty and defend the homeless and marginalised people. 

I'd love and appreciate very much all your support in this challenge, so please sponsor me on my JustGiving page: https://www.justgiving.com/account/your-pages/Alina-Balusescu-Live-Below-The-Line-2014

Will keep you updated on how the challenge is going, as well as the breakdown costs of the meals. 

A big THANK YOU for your support & for reading this!

Alina

Day 1 - total cost £0.985

Breakfast - total cost £0.11

1 tea bag - £0,01

1 banana - £0.10

Lunch - omelette-sandwich - total cost £0.31

2 eggs - £0.23

4 slices bread - £0.08

Tea - £0.01

Dinner - rice with vegetables - total cost £1.11, yields 2 (£0.55 per portion)

400g rice - £0.16

175g mushrooms - £0.345

3 half peppers - £0.445

1/2 onion - £0.05

5ml soy sauce - £0.03

1 carrot - £0.05

1tbs sunflower spread - £0.03

Recipe

Sauce: Chop the onion, peppers, carrots and mushrooms. In a big pan, melt the sunflower spread until oily then fry in it the chopped onion, until golden. Add the carrots and leave until carrots fry and get a bit soft. Then add the peppers and leave at medium fire about 5-7 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the mushrooms and leave it to stew for about 10 minutes, small-medium fire. Towards the end, add the soy sauce (and extra spices if you prefer)

Separately, boil the rice for the time specified on the box. After that mix with the sauce and stir for 1 more minute.  

Bon appétit!

[alinabalusescu]

[alinabalusescu]

Maher [TWU]

http://www.maherashram.org/

Related to I’m a TWU grad

Cheers,  Alina

[alinabalusescu]

Other adventures in TWU :

visiting outskirts of #Pune

visiting the #TajMahal

#Trekking in #Sinhagad on India's National Day

playing games at #lonavala resort

Related to I’m a TWU grad

Cheers,  Alina

[alinabalusescu]

Project simulation [TWU]

Related to I’m a TWU grad

On top of sessions, TWU gives the grads the chance to work on a simulated project, following the same agile principles as a real one:

we worked in iterations (each lasting 1 week)

had daily standup meetings

did pair programming (here is a nice article about some misconceptions of the topic)

had retrospectives at the end of each iteration, etc

Other moments we found particularly important, as a team, was showcasing our solution to our product owner, deploying to a production environment and practicing 360 feedback sessions for constant improvement and course correcting ourselves on both technical and soft skills. 

The picture shows my project team, trainers and grads together, on our graduation day. 

                                                                                                   TukTuks Forever ♡

Cheers, 

Alina

[alinabalusescu]

The sessions [TWU]

Related to I’m a TWU grad

Once TWU started, I noticed the alternative teaching styles and methods. Sessions were very interactive with role playing and energisers to pick up our mood (check here some examples). Also, games played an important role in our learning.

For instance, to illustrate agile principles such as iterations and estimation, we played the Lego game (pic 1,2 - left side) where we had to build a lego animal with specific requirements;

To show the importance of integration and communication on a project we played the Drawing game (pic 3-left side, and pic4 - right side).  For this exercise, we were separated into groups and asked to design bits of objects and then to integrate the parts. The result? .. well, I believe the picture speaks for itself :) 

If you find these games exciting and would like to participate in some, give me a shout and I'm sure we can arrange something ^_^

Until then, cheers, 

Alina

[alinabalusescu]

The people [TWU]

Related to I'm a TWU grad

Almost four weeks have gone by since we left Pune. We've all returned to our home offices, and we are now scattered all over the globe. However, strong bonds were tied in the 5 weeks we spend together on the TWU programme. Bonds that make us stay up to ungodly hours in the night or wake up crazy early in the morning to catch up with our friends on the other side of the globe :)

Chicago, San Francisco, Recife, Porto Alegre, Johannesburg, Uganda, London, Manchester, Bangalore, Pune, ChengDu, Xi'an, Beijing, Sydney and Melbourne are only the home offices of the grads and/or trainers of the 32nd batch of TWU. If you consider individuals, the distribution is even larger, thus, add Texas, Jamaica, France, Latvia, Romania, Poland and so on :)  

So, here are my friends; trainers and grads, all part of my brand new consultancy-network in #ThoughtWorks and all very much missed! Guys, if you read this, come visit! #Manchester is *the* place to be :)

Cheers, 

Alina

[alinabalusescu]

I'm a TWU grad

It was a bit over two months ago when I got on the plane that would get my out of Europe for the first time. The furthest away from home (Romanian born and bred and recently relocated to Manchester, UK) than I've ever been.. In Pune, India; to attend a 5week training/on-boarding programme designed by ThoughtWorks for recent graduates that join the team, TWU ( ThoughtWorks University ).

TWU was one of my most intense experiences and I'm sure the memories and friendships it created will stay with me for a very long time. Looking back, when I think about my experience at TWU some things stand out, like the people, the sessions, the project simulation, our visit to Maher or the amazing places we visited.

I'll talk about them separately, as I thing each of them is very important and deserves its own post.

Cheers, 

Alina

[alinabalusescu]

The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

Arthur C. Clarke