Now, the sparring: Alexis told us last week we would start sparring this week. Gave us some double teeth mouthguards (the ones that protect both upper and lower teeth, contrary to the single ones that usually only protect the up ones) for us to use. But.. I know from my rugby experience that the double ones make breathing quite hard. And it was no different with the ones they provided us. Hence I started digging around and found an MMA shop in Singapore, with cool stuff for martial enthusiasts. Went there and found exactly what I neede: a double mouthguard with proper holes in front to allow normal breathing. I can even talk with that on (although drinking is another story).

Jaco Guardian Dual Tray Mouthguard

Yesterday was the first sparring session. I've to admit I was quite excited about this. Being able to get a first hand experience on how things were going to work, how was the feeling of being alone in a ring with someone else, trying to kick your ass. The training was quite.. light, in the way that basically everyone would do a warm-up, then 4 persons would go in the ring, one in each corner. Each those persons would do 2 consecutive rounds of 2 minutes each, against 2 of the 3 others. Simple, yet so tiring! I kept skipping and skipping, waiting my turn to enter the ring, wondering who the trainers will match me with. Nearly the end of the training, finally my turn. Got inside the ring with 2 of the most experienced guys (one of them has already competed in a white collar boxing event, the other one has several months worth of training in the club and always seems very comfy. The last of my ring "colleagues" was another "ring virgin" like me I have to admit that I was happy to be with such competition: it was not going to be easy!

And it indeed was not easy: my first round was against Marlon, who has been doing boxing for quite a while. It's weird to be looking in the eyes of a man in the ring, knowing his only goal is land a punch in your face... Anyway, the round was quite fun, surprised him a number of times with speed jab cross, which was good. But I just couldn't handle properly my defense: did not know how to counterattack properly. Alexis confirmed me that afterwards: good attack, poor defense and tendency to lower my left arm. I'll have to work on those. Marlon managed to hit me pretty good two times (heard the "awww" from the crowd, and had a glimpse of the "knock out sensation", where you lose a bit control of your body and see the stars" but it was fun! no harm done and teaches me a lesson! Second round was ok, quite even.

At the end of my rounds, I was not over breathing or anything. it was good! Just still excited and with a bit of jaw pain, which left after a while. This Saturday will be physical and technical training again, sparring next week again.

Oh, I've also signed up for the gym for the two incoming weeks: I want to attend the training the other days we do not have the mandatory trainings (Tues, Thurs and Fri), and maybe take some PT sessions (personal trainer: one to one class) in order to boost my technique. I really want to offer a good fight: to my opponent (no ones likes to fight someone not good enough) but also to the spectators that will come to the event.

Also: I'm starting to see who wants to see my fight (9th April). I can only book tables of 10 persons (although apparently we can ask to squeeze 12!). Keep in mind that it can sound expensive, but that it's a gala kind of event, with dinner and cocktails included, plus you will find the opportunity to see 10 fights, one featuring me! So if you want to attend, just drop me an email!

This kind of motivates me because I can see there are many persons that today are in better shape and better prepared than I am, but I'll train hard and shape up, because I want to fight whoever is best in the squad. Yeah, call me stupid, but they always say to aim high. And I'll make no exception

Next training, Wednesday 12!

A lot of people keep asking me the reasons of signing up for such an event, where you endure so much during the 3 months and then you have to face another human being for 6 minutes, where the only thing that keeps you from getting hit hard is you and only you. Well, I listed some reasons last time, here they are roughly again: for the kids (at the end, it's all that matters, that those kids receive some help), for the commitment, effort and results that you receive from such a training (both mentally and physically), and for the thrill, the sense of danger, the adrenaline rush. I think we all need to have these kinds of things in our life to put some spice on it, to know more about ourselves. After all, we only grow by going out of our comfort zone.

Vanda has done a pilot documentary based on the last event held last October. It shows the journey of 4 participants through the 3 months. It's really worth the watch and might let you understand a bit more on the motivations we have.

White Collar Boxer from Ian Mullane on Vimeo.

Late December I received a call from the club and later on they released the names, age and nationality of who who would be my training mates for the next 3 months. I was already very excited! Out of the 137 applications, only 70 showed up to the first meeting, from which only 20 were selected. From the list (that can be found on their blog Here) I was surprised to see so many English people, and also relieved I was not the youngest participant.

So, the training: it starts next week (the 10th) and we will have 3 trainings a week (Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturday mornings). This might already be quite tough, but on top of this I'll also do some running prior to go to work and some strength training one or two days a week. Not much time for anything else anyway! We still need to rest at least one day a week.

I'm getting really excited about this and I'm looking forward meeting the other participants and train at the club. I'll keep you updated on the training sessions and how everything goes through the 3 months!

The answer is very easy: challenge. Nearly everything in my life is driven by challenges, from work, to sports etc. The thrill of challenges is what motivates me to wake up every morning and do my journeys. Of course this implies tough times, but I believe that every time you step out of your comfort zone you are expanding it. And it's good.

Work wise I've always picked up the most challenging tasks, always tried to excel in everything that is assigned to me. And I'm very thankful for the opportunities that are given to me.

Sports wise, I have to admit the challenges are escalating in intensity :p First year in Singapore my challenge was to actually get fit and I managed to do it with daily swims and runs. Last year my challenge was to do the Swiss Hotel Vertical Marathon in Singapore (climb up the 70ish stories the fastest possible) and managed to finish the race, although I got an asthma attack near the end. This year was the full marathon (42km!), that I managed to do although I didn't trained enough due to my work trips. The run was really harder than I expected, managed to run 2/3 out of it, walked the rest. But doing a full marathon without training was foolish and just showed how stubborn I can be sometimes. Because of the run I couldn't properly walk for 2 days, and I got blisters under 3 of my toe nails (I'm gonna lose them ). I've promised to myself not to do this again without proper training.

Marathon finishing line

So what's next for me next year? Well... I already have signed up and being picked up for my next year challenge: The White Collar Boxing event organized by Vanda promotions in Singapore.
Basically it's an event where a group of white collar people (engineer, bussiness man, etc) with no prior experience, will train very hard during 3 months, and then fight in an exhibition hall in the middle of a group of people enjoying a charity dinner (1200 persons last time). Every boxer does only one fight of 3 rounds of 2 minutes, and all the money collected during the dinner goes to an association that offers free surgery for kids in Thailand.
Some of you (my family I'm sure) will ask me why I want to do this, get into a boxing fight etc. Well, as the title says: It's all about challenges. And this event both challenges me but also has a goal, which is to raise money for the kids in needs. Also, I want to experience the thrill and adrenaline rush that you have when in the ring, in front of another person that want to hurt you bad Call me crazy.

I'll be covering my experiences on the training and the fight in the blog, as I think it's a really good experience.

White Collar Boxing event

First post since I came to Singapore, but so many things have happened it's actually the first "restful" weekend since I came back.

The return to Asia has been marked with house hunting, friends catch-up and team change @ work. Also my sister and Denis, came visit me one weekend!

Last Wednesday marked the most important day of the Mid-Autumn celebration, as it was the day of the year where the moon is the fullest and roundest. It's a very important date in Chinese culture, and traditionally families and friends will gather together to eat Mooncakes and pomelos while admiring the nice moon.

Every year I've been celebrating this festival (the first year it was during my exchange period, and Thomas and myself baked our own mooncake in a workshop organised by NTU), and this year was no exception.

We went to the botanic gardens to create our own lanterns, but also to celebrate two birthdays (Ryan's and Lynn's). Happy and fun times, it was actually the first time I was creating lanterns and such. We also enjoyed some mooncakes (still not used to the weird taste of some of them) and other traditional food!

I took my camera and Melissa and myself covered the event as much as we could: my mid-range lense is broken (the autofocus is dead following some accident while i was in the orphanage back in May), so we only used the 50mm. Still quite fun to get the hands on it! Enjoy the pictures

As the title clearly states, my Mexico adventure has finally arrived to an end. Well... finally might not be the most appropriate term to use, as the experience has been very interesting and I've learned a lot. It has also enlarged my visions of things and working directly with the final client directly make you realize some things you might not see when you are developing an application 10k km away from where it is actually being used.

As my trip back from Mexico city implied a stop over in LA and I had two very good friends in the same area at the same time (best coincidence ever), I decided to take some well deserved leaves and do some travelling! I asked my company to do a 1 week stop over in Los Angeles so that I would be free to do whatever I wanted in the meanwhile! *dream*

My first detour was aiming to visit my best mate Thomas Wolf (you can find the link to his blog on the right panel, although he has not updated it since he left Singapore, more than a year ago), in Vancouver, Canada.

He was finishing his 6 week summer program in the University of Victoria,  so I just dropped by the same day he was over (1st August). The plane from Mexico city left very early in the morning, had someone pick me up at the hotel at 5am. Flight spent mostly sleeping Problems started when I arrived to Los Angeles: my plane was late, and I already had a tight schedule: 2h to clear the customs, pick my luggages, change terminal, check-in, pass customs again, and enter the plane. Luckily for me, as I was travelling in business, I could sneak out of the plane fast enough to avoid the crowd, but only to hit another problem with the USA customs: when I first entered the country for my transit to Mexico city, they clipped a green immigration form in my passport, that they should have removed once I left the US. Problem is that they forgot to do it, so I lost a huge amount of time clearing this thing with the custom officer (I'll have to do a photocopy of some pages of my passport and sent them back with some form as soon as I reach Singapore). After the long queue for the custom, the problem on it, I had to queue for my bag, then run run run to the other terminal. They were making the last call for my flight to Vancouver, managed to do the check in on time (30min before the departure of the plane, which at the end was a good thing, didn't have to pay for the extra luggage I was carrying), only to find more queues to do the new security clearance, customs. But.. I made it on time! Yay! I really though I would never make it.

Sweaty but relieved, I slept the whole flight to Vancouver!

Once there, I cleared the customs again (I'm really getting tired of this haha), even though the officer was quite confused by my itinerary (ok, I guess a French guy, working in Singapore, coming from a 2 month business trip in Mexico and going to Vancouver followed by New York is not really the most common case of tourist arriving there :p ).

After that.. well, my friend Thomas was waiting for me, beer in hand at the airport! He was there with his classmates, as they were leaving that same day.

After leaving our stuff in the airport luggage center, we went uptown Vancouver to check out the Capilano suspension bridge, a bridge located North Vancouver, in the middle of the forest. The bridge is really huge, and persons with heights problems might have problems crossing it, as it really moves a lot. On the other side of the bridge, you can also do some tree walking, and also some hiking. Very peaceful place, but we got the picture of the place quite fast. After that, we headed downtown to have drinks and dinner. The initial plan was to sleep at a friend's place, but we had some trouble contacting her (phone and sobriety problems...). Problem was: no place to stay in town! It just happened to be the gay pride parade so all hostels were fully booked.

Hopefully for us, Thomas could contact his course supervisor, that managed to find us a place where to stay for the night... which just happened to be a Chinese family! The father of that family picked us up at the airport, with all our staff and we managed to get a bed where to sleep. After a good rest, the father dropped us in the nearest bus station, where we took a bus to the ferry terminal. Destination: Nanaimo.

We unfortunately missed the ferry we were aiming by few minutes, so we had to wait in the ferry terminal for 2h before getting into the actual ferry (2~2.5h ride). Once in Nanaimo, we found out that there were no buses from there to the town or our next destination... the Wild Play Element Park. Where we wanted to... bungy jump!

We had to take a cab down the park, as it was quite late already, and once there, well, we went straight to what we aimed at: the bungy jump! They basically weight you before jumping (aouch, I could feel the Mexico effect...), so that they can calculate the length of elastic rope they need to put. Then, you have to go up the bridge and wait for your turn!

The waiting time was quite long, but weather was good, we were on holidays, and sun was there. We only had to decide for two things before our turn would come: how to jump, and if we wanted to go underwater or not. Basically, there are two ways of jumping:

• First one, you jump by yourself, front facing the void. This is what both Thomas and myself did.
• Second one, you jump backwards: you will hold a rope, the instructor will hold the other side. Once he decides he will just drop the rope and you will fall.

The other thing we had to decide is whether we wanted to go underwater or not, and if yes, up to what level of the body. We both decided to take off our shirts (oh oh!) and go up to chest level down the water.

I've to admit that even if I was not tired, when the moment arrives that you have to jump.. well, it's not easy haha. Even though you know it's safe, you always have the "what if?" question coming back, and you need to take a leap of faith and just jump.

Thomas said it was actually better than sky diving, as you really feel the adrenaline rush when you fall, and you see the river coming and approaching your head (and yes, we both got soaped in Canadian river!)

Once the jump is done, they will pick you up downstairs, and we both happened to ask the girl that was picking us if she knew how to get out of there downtown. Very friendly, she proposed to drive us down to the hostel after she was done (and we didn't have to wait much as we were among the last ones to jump).

After the excitement and the drive to the hostel, we went for dinner and drinks in Nanaimo. Not the most happening place in the world actually, it's a veeeeery peaceful city, and nothing much to do by nights. We manage to find to Canadian guys in some random bar, that went with us seeking for some fun in the city. After several hop in different bars, the group went bigger and later on the night we settle down in "The Queens", a pub with a live band. But... well, Thomas managed to injure himself, he fell down against the stage while dancing with some girl. He injured pretty badly his face and his nose, I actually got quite scared, he was bleeding a lot (he might get a scar in the nose after this incident )

The day after, we woke up very late and took the bus down to Victoria, where I visited the uni he spent the past 6 weeks, and meet the coordinator team of the summer program. We managed to squeeze in with the new group, and joined them into a hiking of a mountain. It was very fun, and I could imagine myself like in Singapore: 90% of the group was Chinese!

After the hike, we went down town with Christina (the coordinator), with who we had dinner and drinks in the harbour. She then dropped us in the ferry station, where he headed back to Vancouver. We had booked a cheap hostel downtown so that we could easily get to the airport the next day.

My trip to Canada was coming to an end, but I will retain very good memories out of it. Of course the main purpose of this trip was to see my friend Thomas again: it was really good to see him again and catch up with all our stories and tales. But... well, I did enjoy the country itself: Canada is really an amazing country, I was really surprised by how cool the locals were. Very very friendly, always very polite, it really felt like a safe country. Also the sceneries: it's a green country, full of forest and amazing nature. A lot to do, both in summer than in winter.

After a short breakfast at the airport with Thomas, we said "see you later", as we know we will be seeing each other for New Year Eve, as usual now . He was heading to Germany, and me to my next destination: New York city!!A city I've always wanted to visit since I was very young. There, I was visiting my friend Sara Fikrat, a very good colleague from my uni times in Lyon.

The travelling journey was quite long, I went from Vancouver to Toronto, , where I found that my Toronto - New York was cancelled (probably due to a lack of passengers). I was reschedule to the next one, so had to wait extra time in Toronto. I touched down in New York city around 20ish, in La Guardia airport. I was  quite lost there, didn't know how to get a cab down there. I ended up in a shuttle cab van, where I only had to pay 15$ the ride downtown, but it took me ages (the concept of those cabs is that they fill a van with different people / destinations and once full they will drive down and drop everyone starting South NYC up North. I actually did enjoy the ride, as I entered the city by the Brooklyn bridge and got a glimpse of NYC. I've to admit I was like a little kid visiting Disneyland for the first time: New York city by night is just magic, with all the lights, people, etc.

Once arrived to the hotel (I was hosted by Sara in her hotel room, she managed to get an extra bed), it was weird to go up, knock at her door and got to see her after 2 years! Even more surreal to walk down Times Square, as if we had never been away, to enjoy a drink and some food (I was damn hungry haha). We also joined Sara's course friends, (which happened to come from everywhere in the world, even Singapore!).

The day after she had her course going on, so I woke up quite late (11am) and went for a walk in the city (always like to do that in new cities). I walked quite a long distance, went from the 44th where the hotel is down to the union square, up and down. I was just amazed by the skyscrapers surrounding me, and the shops, and the cars.. and... and.. well, everything! I visited the Empire State building as it was on the way down and after that long walk, I went back to the hotel, to join Sara as she had just finished her day. We went for dinner in the nearby area, and had drinks and Karaoke

The day after, I went down to the financial district, and experienced the metro to get there. I love NYC metro! It has it's own soul, and can be quite complex (many lines coming in the same station, some are express, other are not, signs are not that clear, but still!). Saw the Ground Zero and the stock exchange, but had to rush back to the hotel to meet Sara for lunch. Then from the hotel we walked west until we arrived to the sea, to see the aircraft carrier "The Intrepid". From there we walked all the way down to the financial district again, following the sea. I got a first glance of the Statue of Liberty and Soho and the other districts of NYC. It was also a good opportunity to catch up with Sara!

Next day, we went to the American Museum of Natural History, a very interesting museum where you can see incredible dinosaurs skeletons among other stuff. After spending the morning there, we had lunch (in a Mexican!) and we headed up to Central Park, where we spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the lakes and different parts of the park. Very nice place, quite surreal how they are surrounded by the skyscrapers. After that, we headed back to the hotel and we decided to go for a movie. It turned out to be another interesting adventure: we went to a theater near Time Square, they basically have whatever movie you like, every 30min. Price is quite expensive (~12$ per person), and the surprise came when we ordered the medium set of drinks and popcorn: the drinks where like triple the size of usual medium size drinks, and the popcorn was really huuuge. And it was very expensive!!! But it was free refill! As if we could ever finish those ones already . The movie was nice (Salt) and after the movie we went for an early (not so early actually) sleep.

For my final day in New York, we went down to the financial district in order to do another amazing thing NYC has to offer: tour of the city by helicopter! Quite expensive (more than 150$!), it's really worth it. Plus I got the change to seat near the pilot, so it was really an amazing experience. I got really nice pics and seeing the city from the air is completely different. The statue of liberty seemed sooo small!

After the thrilling experience, we went to take some photos with the financial bull (apparently you need to touch his balls to get wealthy... which I did, who knows!), and went up to visit the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art). That museum was really amazing and it would have been a shame to miss it. The shop was also very interesting, I'm lucky I don't live there or I would spend all my money in it! After that, what better way of finishing my trip and day than a Broadway show?

We had bough our discounted show tickets earlier in the morning for the "Billy Elliot" musical in the Imperial Theater.

First time for Sara, second for me, we both really loved the performance. There were a lot of very talented artist and among them very very young ones (the main character is only 12 years old!). Sara went out of the who with sparkling eyes, I think she really loved the experience. On the way back to the hotel, we crossed one of her colleagues and joined the Asian crew in a bar. After several drinks, we went back home, and I finished packing.

The way back started the day after, Monday 9th August at 4am! From NYC, I would take a plane to LA (horrible trip, I spent 6hours with a baby 1 seat away from me crying and crying, finished with a horrible headache), where I would wait more than 10h until I could catch my final plane to Singapore (18h of flight!). Longest trip I've ever done (the longest one was the Madrid-Paris, Paris-Singapore, Singapore-Sydney), with a record of 40h from hotel to "home", except that this time there was not really a "home" waiting for me, but a coach... Time to search for accommodation!

Today, as I was going through the tedious task of going through my last trip trip 850 photos... Not only I had to select the photos I wanted to keep, but I also had to convert them from RAW format to Jpg, edit the exif information and resize them for web usage.This task can seem like a lot of work but it''s actually quite easy using some open source tools available for Linux (not sure how easy it's to do so in Windows).

For converting my images from raw files to jpg, I used a combination of two tools:

• DCRAW that allows you to decode all your RAW files in Linux
• Cjpeg, that will take the decoded data outputted by Dcraw and compress it into a jpeg file

After installing the two applications you will only need to open a command prompt in the folder containing the raw files and execute the following batch command:

for i in *.CR2; do dcraw -c -a -w -v   $i | cjpeg -quality 100 > $i.jpg; done;

And voilà! After a couple of hours I got all my photos decoded from RAW file to Jpeg

I also take the opportunity of this post to introduce two other great photography programs that I find very useful:

• Hugin is definitely a program you want to check out if you like panoramas and don't have the chance (or don't want to use) a fish eye lense. The program will automatically generate a panorama with the images you will give them, pasting them all together. A must try,really! You will see the results in my next post, will upload some panoramas I took from the top of the Empire State.
• Phatch, a program for editing photos in batch (resize, rotate, apply shadows, perspective, rounded corners.. etc).

Although photo editing can seem not user-friendly or hard under Linux (after all, we don't have the support yet from big names as Adobe and their Lightroom suite in Windows or Mac, or Photoshop etc), the free and open source tools we have at our disposal are more than enough for average users and even amateurs users.

I hope this post will be useful for new Linux photography users that want to reduce their editing time with these cool automatic tools!

Google Test Automation Conference 2010

Oh, good news also! I've been invited to attend the 5th Anual Google Test Automation Conference. During this conference we will be discussing cutting edge challenges in test automation, and evaluate potential solutions. Testing in software development is very important, yet not executed properly in most companies. I'm very happy I get the chance to attend, as this conference has the particularity that you can't buy an entry ticket: you have to apply for the attendance and be selected among other people. The conference will take place in Hyderabad, India in the end of October. I'm very excited about this conference, as it's a unique opportunity to meet some of the brightest engineers in the area, and it's also a good opportunity to extend my professional network.

Will keep you updated about all this!

With the pirate hat!

The sunday was spent... resting from my outing the previous day and then I had lunch in front of the football match. Later on the day, Ming Hwee and myself went out to the "World Trade Center" of Mexico, where we had dinner at this revolving restaurant at the top of the tower. The food was average, and it was extra hot (the AC was down). And I got a bit sick with all these eternal rotation of the floor. Not so exciting weekend right? But it was still a good one, meeting with friends after a long time is the best thing ever

Now, this weekend was a bit better! After the hard week with long hours, I woke up quite late on Saturday (13:30! but I was awaken by a work phone call) and went to see the Spain-Paraguay match in front of some nice steak. I only saw the second time of the match, and was cheered by the whole waitress team haha (I'm quite a regular there, it's the only decent restaurant near my hotel). After the match, I decided to go visit the Chapultepec forest castle,  but I guess my walk to get there and discovering the gardens took me too long, as I reached too late to get in (the castle is actually in top of a hill, and is now converted in a museum, but it closes at 4pm...). So I just went to a nearby mall, saw a movie (can't remember the name of the movie actually, I jumped in the first movie that was showing and it was nothing exceptional), and had dinner around. Nothing much

Sunday was much better, as I had booked a day trip with the hotel to Taxco (see the link for a detailed description of the place), with a stop over in Cuernavaca. To make things short, if you don't want to read the whole wikipedia page, Taxco is located 170km south Mexico, in the middle of the mountains. It has been developed around the silver mine industry, and is well know around the world (well, not that known, as I didn't have idea of it before coming here) for the silver industry. Apparently celebrities go all the way to this lost country to have some custom made jewelery.

Apart from that, we saw some cathedrals, churches and castles. Quite nice places, I really enjoyed the atmosphere of Taxco. I'll leave you with the photos, they will speak better than me concerning the magnificence of the place

Nothing planned next weekend, will keep you posted!

Every time I arrive at a new big city I need to make a walk around, in order for me to get a glimpse of the life in the city, the people, the architecture: the spirit of the life. I didn't have the chance to so such thing yet in Mexico city, mostly because I didn't have the opportunity to do it: first weekend was spend with Varun and Ming Hwee in Santa Fe mall and the nascar race, second weekend was spent in Xochimilco and the Teotihuacan pyramids. As Varun left Mexico this morning to go back to Singapore, and Ming Hwee has left the city to enjoy some time in Cancun (he is getting a diving certification), I decided to do my walk today!

The "only" problem is that I had no clue at all where I should go and how to move around in the city (no map!, and no 3g access to get access to Google maps in my phone). I decided to start in the Zócalo, or Plaza de la Constitución, located in the middle of the Centro Histórico of Mexico city. It's one of the biggest squares of the world (for the sake of comparison, this square is 57600 m2, and Lyon's biggest square, Place Bellecour, is a bit bigger, 62400m2). Nowadays a huge screen is installed for Mexicans to see the world cup, so I just visited the Metropolitan Cathedral and walked around, as there were interesting people to observe (some person relieving stress with some herbs, some people dancing in the streets in antique costumes, and a lot of flee markets). Once I view everything in the square, I found a tourism office that gave a small map of the area, so I headed south as there seemed to be some point of interest. Then I headed back north to view the Bellas artes building and walk around the small park.

I stopped to eat something in an Italian restaurant, where I had some Parma ham with cheese and a salad with peach, chicken and nuts, with some sangria and red wine. The food was good, but the portions where way too big for me. Left half of both portions!

After the big lunch I continued walking along the "Paseo de la reforma", as this road is full of very nice architectures and statues and other cultural stuff to see. It even goes through the Chapultepec forest (that I'll pay a visit in the following weekends).

I actually knew roughly the way, remembering where the cab drove me in the morning. After exiting the forest, I saw the "Auditorio Nacional", and from there I was not really sure of the way, but I somehow found my way back to the hotel.

The complete itinerary I actually did today:

View Mexico City walking tour in a larger map

What to say about this walk? Well, it was longer than I expected (Google maps says that my itinerary was 10km worth), and it definitely was a good outing. Contrary to what everyone said to me I didn't feel in danger at any point (although I recognize I would not try to do the walk by night, especially the forest part), and it gave me a good overview of the city (even if it's a very small portion of it). Mexico is like a swarm: a LOT of people around, the streets are crowded (careful with your belongings!) and it's very noisy. But I kind of enjoyed the walk: the architecture is interesting, the flee markets are full of interesting stuff (I'll need to come back there for some shopping), and it's full of different colors, smells, people.

Photos done during the walk: