It's not all 'BOOM-tat-tat' you know.

I found out the other day that we get free food at work. At my last place we used to get free fruit twice a week and there'd be this mad panic when the fruit basket arrived. If you weren't quick off the mark you'd be left with the rotten fruit or worse, the 'name the bizarre fruit' fruit. We'd occasionally have competitions to discover what the hell this obtuse looking blobby thing was and how you approached consuming it. I think one time someone found some huge spider in the basket that had probably hitched a ride from Papau New Guinea or wherever else the mystery fruit basket had travelled from.

The mad fruit panic was only beaten by the sandwich feeding frenzy that would happen after fancy visitors hadn't finished off their free buffet and an email would go out. There would be these sly looks around the office from people to see who else had spotted the email, then people would sloooowly get out of their chairs, perhaps performing a stretching routine so as to make the fake toilet trip more believable... then they'd slooooowly walk out keeping a shifty eye on anyone else... then someone would scream out "FREE FOOD!", the cover would be blown and plan B would go into action where pushing, shoving and kicking your way to the 'booty' would be fair game. The funny thing would be that the food had been sat around for at least an hour and the bread would be all crusty and hard anyway... so it's not like it's really worth the effort.
Anyway, there's no feeding frenzies or fruit panics at my new place due to their being free food ALL the time. I missed breakfast the other day and so just went to the kitchen and knocked up a salmon and cheese sandwich accompanied by twin babybels and a handful of carrot 'fingers'.

There's something about spending 20 minutes making the ultimate sandwich during work hours with word food that just feels a bit 'wrong' to me... but it didn't stop me doing it the next day. I feel so lucky to be at a place that treats it's staff so incredibly well though. There's all kinds of crazy crap in there: cereal, pepsi, tea/coffee, biscuits, yada yada. Also, on Friday i went to my first monthly birthday thing where they go out and buy this massive wad of cakes and beer and stuff and everyone sits around chatting on the last friday afternoon of the month. There's the big speech before then which included a 'welcome' to the new guys and we all got a big round of applause one at a time... which was slightly unnerving... although for some reason I felt the need to bow like a comical matador as if I'd done something special during mine.

I've been playing even more table tennis recently too. Got beaten for the first time. I get the feeling me that my new table tennis arch nemesis have begun a war that will battle through the ages... or at least until I get bored of thwacking plastic balls at wooden tables. The problem I have with it at the moment is that I'm playing for three hours after work and then have to walk home for another two (or so) hours whilst I mutter my spanish learning tapes under my breath. So by the time I get home from work I'm totally shattered, covered in sweat and it's kicking on for ten or eleven. Which also reminds me of the fact that I keep getting stung by the ceerrrazzzy shop closing times. I actually did an "ARGHHHHH!" at the sky outside my local 'Eroski' the other day, Eroski being Mallorca's half-hearted answer to Tescos.

One day I walked home and went to check out what the police were doing (I mentioned the A-Team van hanging around previously). Turns out it's some sort of police show or something, I'm not really sure what the purpose of showing police techniques off to tourists is, but there you go. Anyway, I had to laugh at one of the stands that featured a manequinn dressed as a police man weilding a large bat... hardly gives out a 'to protect and serve' message to all the lazy-eyed tourists walking around.

Later on I walked through the nice park and caught the fancy light and water extravagansa they put on every night (I think). It's actually pretty effective and you can walk right into it if you want to risk catching unknown numbers of diseases from the water. This is the place that blasts out intense classical music morning noon and night on a far too short loop. At first it's nice... then you start to feel uncomfortable.

Still haven't got my flat sorted... although I do now have the required money for the transaction... oh, actually, thinking about it... no I don't. Maybe i'll go to a cashpoint later today and take out my allotted 300 euros again. Hopefully I can FINALLY sort it all out tomorrow. But getting some money was an adventure. I got 500 euros up front from work as a cheque that I had to take to the bank at lunch... a 40 hour walk in the midday sun along a highway, there and back. I'd been repeatedly warned at how arsey the bank would be, but luckily it all went out without a hitch. Strangely, every customer in the bank was English, all of which refused to speak ANY Spanish (how difficult is it to at least say 'Hola'), which I found intensely rude. So as a sort of protest I tut'ed at someone slightly too loudly... that'll teach him. I'm getting to the point where I can do 'things' now with very basic spanish... as long as people don't revert to English then I figure I'm making progress. As it is, people look at me with confusion but I always get success so at least I'm getting my point across... somehow.

Yesterday (Saturday) I went for a BIG walk around town. I got up too late again for my pipedream Valldemosa excursion. Came home and had a SIESTA for the first time. Then I headed out to this electronica music festival type thing. I didn't know anything about it, but it turns out to be right at the foot of the big cathedral where there's this square with a stage set up.

I was expecting the horrendous music I hear blasting from people's cars that I moaned about before... but it turned out to be a 'experimental' music shindig.. some of which was actually pretty cool. I was with a group of about 8 people, all Spanish, I only knew two of them but it turned out to be a nice evening. I was desperately trying my best with the language and also communicate via the use of comedy hand and body gestures. As far as I'm aware I didn't call anyone's mother a 'whore' or any other language barrier mishaps.

The festival type thing reminded me of how boring most electronica is to watch at a gig. There's something really unexciting about a bunch of nerds sat behind laptop screens staring away as if they're being force fed propaganda. I was keeping an eye out for anyone that just looked like they were playing Doom, jumping up and shouting "YES! LEVEL SEVEN!". In addition to the boring factor, it became more and more obvious that the majority of the music was just coming from the laptop guys and any 'performers' were just playing instruments badly over the top of it, which made you think "why didn't they just play a CD?".

We left the music before midnight cos people were getting bored of all the long droney noises and headed out to town where I encountered my very first tapas. I was repeatidly told that it was a crappy place, by all acounts the place we ended up in was the equivalent of a nasty post-club kebab. It wasn't too bad though, although if I'm honest I'm more of a Thai/Chinese/Indian food guy, but I'm sure I'll have some amazing stuff out here in the future.

We then headed out to a bar called soho which looked like any grandparents house circa 1950's, complete with old radiation emitting tv's and that horrible phsychodelic wallpaper that died out the same time as disco. We were all a bit dopey though so I grabbed a lift back after that which saved me the 2 hour drunk-walk. There's a photo of me sat in one of the horrible wicker chairs that broke on me when I touched the damn thing.

I've found myself complaining a couple of times about how bloody cold it is at night. Then I got told that it's like 11 degrees back home and super-heavy rain. This weekend it's been in the low thirties with mostly clear blue skies... and I'm moaning! It appears that you quickly get used to good weather. It's nice to not have the horrible "it's sunny, i must get sunburnt" philosophy driving everything though. I feel that if miss today's sun it's absolutely no big deal at all.

Anyway, things are feeling much more positive now. I think I was just exhausted from the weekend before and that always brings out the negativity in a situation. Hopefully I can have a great week.

R

Banks must die

So the last few days since my previous update have been very up and down. The weekend was chilled out but fun. Kind of sat on my butt for most of Saturday. I donno what is is about the weekends here but i seem to wake up at about 3pm feeling super dopey. Maybe my flatmate is drugging my tapas or something, I'll keep an eye out for olives stuffed with pills. So after my lengthy lie in I headed downtown to meet some friends at a random bar in the old town. Problem was I had no idea how to get there, or where the neighbourhood was... thanks very much Google Maps you massive piece of crap. Everytime I write an address it zips me half way around the world to Delaware to somewhere that isn't even remotely similar to what I searched for.

So after milling around for a while I realised I'd walked too far so headed back via some back streets. There was me thinking 'blimey, it's nice round here, people are hanging around the street corners and chatting, how lovely'. After a while I started noticing odd things... like the fact that the majority of these people 'hanging around' were women.. and rather scrunty women at that. Mostly with cigarettes drooping out of the side of their mouths and with cheap make up presumably applied with a garden trowel. And they were approaching random cars. Shit. I was in the fabled 'prostitute zone'. I got offered some action a couple of times... and followed by a pimp on a bike.

After some time I randomly bumped into my Swedish friend Andreas who was, coincidentally going to the same place as me. We found our way to, what I'd heard was an amazing little spanish place in the back of nowhere. Turns out we were the ONLY people in there and the bar staff were looking at us rather suspiciously. It was cool though, apparently an old bakery. And in keeping with the standard spanish decoration style, there was random crap stuck to the walls. Bikes, bits of meat, comical honking horns, what looked like old mechanical torture devices, you name it, it was stuck to a wall.

Post random banter we headed off to 'the african bar'... so named because it didn't actually have a name, but was another odd looking place with even more random crap stuck to the walls. Apparently it belonged to some fashion designer and he 'designed' it all, presumably whilst off his head cos the toilets weren't exactly practical for women (i'll save you the details) and the bar itself wasn't any better (think massive

*****OOOOOOHHHHHH!!!! I HAVE to int erupt myself there as I'm actually recording sounds out of my window right now. There's been a nasty storm for the last few hours (which I got caught in on my three hour walk home tonight) and I've been recording the thunder. Anyone who knows me well knows I'm on this search for the holy grail of the perfect thunder clap... and I *think* I have just recorded my best one ever. I may post it on here later if it's any good.

Getting back to it... yes, think massive tree in the middle of a tiny bar and that's about right. So the 8 or so of us stayed for a while, whilst the video of weird animals in cages played on repeat in the background reminding everyone of how futile mortality is.. or some pop-psychology nonsense like that.

We then moved to the world's smallest bar with the world's loudest, most broken speakers I've ever heard. They were so bad I had to leave after about five minutes. God, I felt like an OAP. I had to leave because it was too noisy. But in my defence, if speakers are being pushed beyond their range you can seriously damage your ears as distortion is worse than volume. I've just gone from being 'old' to being a 'nerd'...

So off we head to Bluesville again. I don't really like it in there. Infact, I haven't really found anywhere I've been massively keen on so far. Everyone here seems to like really small bars, which is cool, but you feel a bit isolated from the party that is Palma. I got talking to this Spanish guy and he ended up latching on to us for the rest of the evening. Which only consisted of us going to a lesbian bar. I was quite intrigued about until I realised I'd been there before. There was a large lesbian looking down on me from some stairs for quite a long time. She looked like Arnold Swartzeneggar when he dressed like a woman in Total Recall... "Twoo Weeeks".

Had to run home, for forty minutes, in the pouring rain. Except 'pouring rain' over here actually means 'DEATH RAIN'. It appears to only rain here when there's a storm... which happens quite a lot. So that was lovely, especially given that my limbs seem to go crazy when I'm drunk, with everything flying everywhere, and it causes me to pull my right calf muscle. It still hurts really bad now, three days later.

Sunday I watched some tv and msn'd my girlfriend. Write off.

Monday, yesterday, was very unpleasant. I can't really remember why. I think I was still tired and a build up of small unpleasantries got to me. After work I went out with the composer and met up with some of his friends. I wasn't in the mood and it is very difficult when you're surrounded by people talking another language to enjoy yourself. And it's completely my fault for not knowing the language. So I got annoyed at myself. I'd also had a Spanish lesson earlier and it hadn't gone as well as I'd hoped. I don't have the dominatrix anymore but a new lady called Victoria. She's incredibly pretty and very supportive, but that might not be what I need, as I think I learnt more with the dominatrix.

Anyway, I found myself leaving early on the evening, which brought me down more as I felt like I'd failed the evening. I found myself missing my friends and family again and last night was pretty difficult :( I'm only 'reporting' this as you can't expect the whole experience to be good, and yesterday and much of today I've been pretty down. Woke up today feeling pretty much the same, and was seriously starting to resent things I don't like about here. People's awful taste in music for one. Everyone seems to listen to this horrible 'boom, tah-tah, boom, tah-tah' rythm... and it ALL sounds exactly the same. The Spanish have a great pedigree in the arts, but modern music doesn't appear to be one of their strong points. I also get annoyed with the way that shops and services shut at, frankly, stupid and economically suicidal times. Banks shut at 2pm, supermarkets shut... well, I'm yet to get a handle on it but it's not cool whenever it is... and EVERYTHING shuts on Sundays... except random Sundays. This weekend was a random Sunday apparently. If I hear one more person try to argue WHY things should be shut on Sunday I think i'm going to... I donno... open a shop that ONLY opens on Sundays. Yes, I 'get' that it's nice to have a day when you don't do anything, but do you have to FORCE the whole nation to do nothing? If you want to go to the beach on Sundays, no-one's stopping you whether the shops are open or not. Grrrr. Sorry, I'm in a bad mood.

So enough moaning. I played table tennis tonight. I kicked some ass. Although had some stiff resistance in the form of a guy from Guam who played like a Chinese person, which instantly freaked me out. Like 'shit, he holds the bat like he's from China, he MUST be good'. And he was.

****... didn't finish writing that all last night so I'll carry on. It's now 10pm a day later, I'm exhausted. I had to get up early and walk for an hour to the center of town to go to the bank and get some money for my apartment deposit. The first bank say a flat "no". The second bank has a queue of one person... and it takes about 50 minutes to get served. They also say no. I then walk to the main Santander branch in Mallorca, this huge structure that literally scrapes the sky.

What I've noticed about all these banks is that they are huge buildings that tower over everything else in the area, you walk in obviously expecting a grand and impressive interior but are greeting with the equivalent of a scrunty little backstreet Norwich Union branch in Bradford complete with cigarette stained fluorescent lighting and computers from the 1970's. There'll only be one person dealing with the public, who will consist of one person... and yet whatever they do takes at least half an hour and requires thumbprints, multiple signatures and repeated walkoffs from the bank teller with whatever wad of paper they're dealing with.

But I'll stop moaning now. Actually, no I wont. The third and final bank wouldn't give me any money either. The most i can take out is 300 euros from the cashpoints and I need 800. So I rang up Lloyds, really so I could just moan at them about it too even though it totally isn't their fault. Had to get a taxi in to work (late) and by the time I'd arrived I was pretty pissed off... I was all ready to walk in all grouchy but was disappointed when I was reminded of how someone ripped the door handle off the entrance in superhuman style a few days ago... and that always makes me laugh. DAMNED LAUGHTER! It was funny though.

Apparently my work would help with money by paying some extra upfront to me... but it transpired that even doing that was a total pain in the ass thanks again to the antiquated and archaic banking system... but hopefully tomorrow I'll get 'some' sort of money at some point before I die.

Again, I must apologise for being down today. I've had a bit of a horrible week so far and I've been feeling a bit sorry for myself. I think it's just the culture shock finally kicking in and I'm starting to resent certain things and feel a little isolated and highly frustrated. I know it will pass and I made sure I did my background on culture shock before I arrived so was expecting it, but that doesn't make it any easier... in the same way that knowing you're going to die doesn't make it anymore pleasurable... if fact I'd suggest it makes it less pleasureable. Hopefully I'll wake up feeling more positive and things can move forward with my apartment.

Apologies for the lack of photos, to be honest, i just can't be bothered to upload any at the moment cos it takes so long to reformat everything... soz.

R

Huge toe nails: IN YOUR FACE!

I've been a bit busy this week, hence the lack of updates.



Hmm, lets see... On Sunday night I went back to Agua Bar (the place with the lack of women when I'd previously been there for 'ladies night') for an open mic night.

It had a very friendly and very 'ex-pat' feel about the place. I met up with a couple of guys from work, one of whom played the keyboard for most of the night. It felt a bit like Cheers in there... where everyone knows your name... except no-one knew my name, so it was as if a random English guy had stumbled on the set and started talking to Woody about blowing up tanks with rocket launchers.

On Monday I started my karate training. Yes, that's right kids, I'm going to be capable of hurting people with my bare hands in no time. Or at least, I would if I were learning one of the more vicious martial arts. Alas, Karate is one of those fighting styles that is ONLY useful if you are surrounded by foes that are directed where to stand, when to attack and what to do. It's as if synchronised swimming was converted into a deadly contact sport by people that don't like water... people with rabies, they don't like water, maybe they should take up karate. I imagine it would be difficult to get rabies sufferers to follow orders, the foamy mouthed zombies just don't have the patience for it.

So, yes, one of the guys at work is some sort of karate master (I'm hoping) and so offers training three nights a week down in the social area. I thought one night would be fine, but as I learnt last night, you get disappointed looks if you don't turn up to EVERY lesson. I'm not exactly sure what the trainer Ake (pronounced 'Okk-ay', getting punched in the photo) gets out of it, but it's good of him to do it... for free no less. It's quite funny having a karate lesson in Spanish and Japanese... I have literally no idea what is going on, but I'm using it as another excuse to learn the language... as long as it doesn't backfire and I end up in a bar asking for a vodka and coke in Japanese. Strangely though, I've commented before on how some Spanish words sound Japanese. The road I'm looking at out the window is called Teniete Oyaga for example.

Anyway, so I enjoyed the karate, I figure it'll be a good way to keep pseudo fit and mix with a different set of people. The sockless nature of karate reminded me that I hadn't cut my toe nails since my girlfriend's last visit... so a few Spanish people had my super long toe nails shoved in their faces as I attempted my Jackie Chan moves. For your information, I've just cut them in preparation for tomorrow's session.

Afterwards I got a lift back with Angel who offered to take me on a jaunt somewhere (possibly to the allegedly nice town of Valledamosa) if I want. Quite a number of people have offered to take me on a trip at weekends, which is super flattering. As a new person, especially as a foreigner, you feel that people are doing you a favour by spending time with you rather than their 'real' friends. So when people offer up their free time of their own accord it is both reassuring and a big confidence booster. I've been made to feel so welcome here and I seem to be getting on with everyone. It's not easy to just waltz into town not knowing anyone and latch onto established groups of friends, so I'm so happy the way things have turned out so far.

On Tuesday the producer's girlfriend came in for a recording session. She's half Norwegian half American, so we're lucky as that meant we could utilise both accents and cast her for two characters. It was a bit harder than the previous session, not least because I didn't know about it before the day and therefore we hadn't sat down and discussed what we wanted from the characters. But we ended up with some good material.

After work I went round the same producer's house and spent the evening with the two of them and a couple of other guys playing board games and drinking for... about 7 hours. It was a really fun night and we all got on really well whilst playing the most complicated games Germany and Italy have to offer. I won the Italian game. It went on for too long, much like fascism I imagine.

I was supposed to go to Hogan's again last night, the bar where the composer plays at, but got lazy and fell asleep. That was yesterday night. Party on. Tonight I could be going out to Salsa dancing (or is it Samba, I always get them mixed up) but given that it's 11pm, I don't think it's going to happen.

Tomorrow my first 'public' video is being displayed to the world, admittedly only via the internet, but it's like a new era when you do your first 'for the public' thing. It's no big deal, just a teaser trailer for our first game (there's 2 games in production), I've done plenty of these things before, but today I had to get it approved by the chain of command. All the 'important people' came into my studio and nodded their nodders after hearing my incessant sparkle noises. It's not my 'finest' work, but to be fair, I'm always horrendously critical of my work, I don't think I've ever been truly satisfied with anything... a character trait I'm quite thankful for as it means I'm constantly, and rather depressingly, striving for an impossible perfection. I may post up a link to it, although I'm not sure how I feel about my company name being intrinsically linked to this blog (although it may already be, I can't remember).

News on the flat. I get my keys next Monday. Hopefully by the end of next week I'll be all settled in my new place... although the logistics of getting all my tat up to the fifth floor remain somewhat of a headache that I'm trying to ignore.

Spanish is starting to go well... oh yes! I had my first Spanish lesson. It was a bit of a strange one, I got asked to speak to the woman who'd do a test with me to assess my current ability... a little daunting to START with a test, but there you go. Then I get told that she'll ONLY speak in Spanish to me, great. So in a walk and am confronted with the fabled Spanish dominatrix I'd heard so much about from my colleagues. An attractive lady with a sort of 'school master' look about her who goes straight into the routine with me. No test, no explanation, just full on lesson. She's there forcefully pointing her pen at Louis, Pepe, Ana and various other 80's style characters on a large laminated worksheet, over pronouncing her Spanish and gesturing me to respond to her (presumed) questioning. To be fair, I'd learnt most of it before, but it makes SUCH a difference when you've got those deep eyes staring you down, knowing full well that you'll get a disappointed head shake accompanied by a 'NO' if you get anything wrong. I learnt more in that hour than I have in... well... more hours than that. So I really enjoyed it. I also enjoyed the brief moment when I made her laugh and for the tiniest amount of time she dropped the ball on her strict teacher persona. I've walked past her since whilst she was teaching someone else and she winked at me... I'm not sure what it means or whether I should get scared yet.

On the way home there was a large police presence in the center of Palma for some reason. No big deal but I had to chortle at how the police have clearly modelled their vans on the one from the A-Team.









R

Put this post in a shopping bag

One of the things that has annoyed me is finding some form of decent snackage. Something cheap, plentiful, not too detrimental to the health and of course something that doesn't taste like dried dog crap. I have sat next to me an assortment of horrendous Spanish snack food, all of which I've dabbled with... all of which I've hated. Today's attempt was sun flower seeds. How anyone can bork up good ol' sunflower seeds is beyond me... but cook them to buggery and coat them in fat grains of salt, and there you have an classic example of why Spain is in the snack dark ages. Next to the salty, strandy, putrid seeds is my bag of biscuits. Mmm. Well, except that on eating the first one I honestly thought I'd bought dog biscuits by mistake. I guess the fact that they say they were cooked in olive oil should have been an indicator that they weren't going to be a custard cream replacement. They look delicious, they taste like they've been sat in the sun for a week and dusted in... dust. Which they probably have. Earlier I also threw out a bag of cashews too. You may be wondering how they managed to screw up a simple nut, and to be honest, so am I. But they did. The search continues.

I woke up this morning with a cockroach on my hand.
Looking on the bright side, at least I got out of bed quickly.

Yesterday was my first recording session. It was a lot more laid back than ones I'd done before. For starters I think the actor turned up two hours late, and I wasn't even informed. He was really good though, totally had fun with the characters and we got some amazing material. The most important thing is to direct the actor in the right way, get them to not give a toss and just to go a bit crazy with it. My favourite piece of direction from us was "Just imagine you're beating up James Brown".

Was supposed to be going out last night but came home and got so tired I fell asleep by midnight... which is when I was supposed to be meeting people. How very British of me.

Despite the fact that I had my first thunderstorm, it's still incredibly hot and I've been sweating all day without doing anything. It sucks. I'm fed up with sweating. I'm also fed up with stepping in the suspicious brown water that's leaking from one of the bathrooms... near the toilet. Luckily my sock has now dried to the same amount of dampness as the rest of my clothes, a kind of moist perspiriness (is that a word?)... so at least I'm not reminded of it now.

Anyway, I'm going to go back to eating my delicious seeds. If only because it reduces the amount of crap in the bins. They don't have bin bags in this place, we just fill up shopping bags and take them out one at a time... so I'm surrounded by crap that I'm too lazy to walk down the road.

Classy

R

I'm a one pan master

As is becoming standard, I seem to struggle with Tuesdays. Crappy night's sleep for some reason. Felt a bit 'murrr' all day. It's probably all the Albondigas (meatballs) I've been having for lunch and the frozen piella with olives thrown in as somewhat of an afterthought for dinner... every day. See the problem is, the sinks are all blocked up in my temporary flat (still) so I'm having to wash the pans in the bathroom. Well, I say the plural 'pans' whilst I am reminded that only one of the hobs work, so it's just one 'pan' that is utilised. Due to both of these factors cooking options are somewhat limited to aforementioned 'throw it all in a pan' style affairs. Still... at least it means I don't have to spend all day in the bathroom cleaning those blasted plural pans, I hate them.

ANYWAY, after a long day without enough water but with too much bad attitude (on my part) I played my first Spanish football match. I LOVED the old Monday night football nights at my old place, so was really looking forward to hacking people up with my meagre limbs flailing around. Alas I was somewhat unprepared for what was to come. It was hot. And not in your British, 'ooh, it's t-shirt weather, how quaint' way. It's hot enough to sweat without doing anything. I'm sweating right now and it's nearly midnight and all I'm doing is typing, in-doors, whilst lying down. We played on a very small five-a-side pitch and the game was SUPER fast. So much so that I had to take my top off (I don't think the audience of two girls were blown away) before I'd even kicked the ball. I nearly passed out about... actually, it wasn't really a set number of times, it was more a consistant feeling of impending heart attack. I also had to keep stealing my poor team mate's water before he'd had any... without asking. But in my defence, I really did think I was going to die.

It wouldn't have been so bad had I not played so bloody terribly.

Afterwards we sat in the bar next to the pitch (photo) and everyone sat around chatting whilst I did my best to pretend I wasn't on the verge of passing out again.

Think I'm gonna give it a break until the heat comes down a bit.

What happened yesterday? Got home, got confused as to what day it was. Realised it was the bloody England match and had to race downtown to see it. Alas, I got lost for the FIRST time. Ran around a bit longer and finally found somewhere playing the game down some back alley. It was at this point, standing in the doorway, surrounded by my fellow country-men, that I remembered why I don't like your traditional Englishman. I heard so much "FAAAKIN' ELL!" that night. Mostly from the men with the fat necks that looked like their faces were made of bright red gammon steaks adorned with thick gold-plated chains and accompanied by their spherical wives doused in flowing zebra-skin curtains. This awful, awful woman shrieking like a macaw every couple of minutes was like a fire alarm but with it's horrible sun-damaged boobs hanging out. I was reminded of how classy, refined and well looked after the Spaniards are. Well... some of them :)

It's really an unfair representation of the people of England though. Only a certain sort of person goes to watch an England match down a back alley in Palma. But I couldn't wait to get out of there. It was strange though because I found myself alien to both England and Spain at that moment. I guess that's all part of the transition period.

So today was another standard day. Had my first team meeting, blah blah blah. It's all going quite well I guess. In the unlikely event that there's any sound designers reading this... I captured an impulse response of the Nintendo DS speakers today... and my GOD was it difficult. I had no idea how much crazy aliasing the DS does to audio. I've captured a lot of bizarre impulses before but that was by FAR the hardest one to deconvolve. Maybe I should just stick with digital spikes rather than sine sweeps.

As usual, went to the cateen to grab some lunch with some guys from work. I quite enjoy it as they're all so incredibly helpful with my Spanish. I'm very lucky with the amount of support I've had from everyone. I feel I want to buy people something to say thanks, a bottle of wine or something, but I donno if that would appear a little brash.

Anyway, here's a photo of the post-lunch coffee we have in a little courtyard outside every day. The three of us had lunch late today so most people had gone back to work by this point. They try to stagger lunch breaks to avoid over crowding the canteen. For some reason it never seems to cause problems during work.

After work I went to do my first appartment visit. A three bedroom place near Santa Catalina, which is pretty close to the center of town and the Bay of Palma. It's on the fifth floor, has a terrace/balcony, washing machine, dish washer, blah blah. It was really nice, recently (and indeed in progress) decorated and I think I'm going to take it. The land lord is this girl, who was actually really attractive... and I had to do the whole 'double kiss' thing when I met her... except I hadn't done it before (here) and went the 'wrong' way and almost ended up snogging her. Turns out she's an English teacher... although she appeared to barely speak a word of English. Luckily Andres (on the left in the photo above) was kind enough to translate for me. Anyway, I'm having a think about it although I don't see myself not taking it as it's the only place I've even heard of that's not got something horrendously wrong with it. The damage is 800 euros, including some bills (I forget)... about £550 at the time of writing. Not bad, although there's no parking.

Speaking of flats. People are moving into my flat next week, so hopefully some profit from that will help pay for the place above. Which reminds me, I've got to send off those keys to the stupid estate agents. The man-voice even had the cheek to try to make out she'd said something different previously... which I know is rubbish.

Tomorrow is my first actor recording session, so I really want it to go well. I've been setting up all afternoon and actually have a good set up at the studio. I FINALLY have aircon and some new acoustic panels after the old aircon leaked all over some of the old stuff. My talk-back and monitoring system into the recording area is all set up and there's a fancy glass panel so I can see into the performance area. I'll put up photos when I have some. It actually looks like a PROPER studio...

Anyway, getting tired. Must sleep.

R

Saturday night at the movies, who cares what picture you see? I do.

***Started writing this yesterday***

I've been sat here in my cave drinking out of one of the obolisk-like water bottles that everyone has here. They hold 8 litres and as such are unweildly to carry, I'm often a bit freaked out when I see really old women carrying them down the street. Seriously though, it just seems like a highly inefficient way of dispensing drinking water to people. I've been here a week and I'm about to start my third bottle which, when you add it up for everyone in the country, must take a HUGE amount of plastic.

Sorry, I don't know why I've started this post with talk of water distribution. I'll move on.
So yesterday I ventured out to the small town of Soller on the super-old, super-touristy train after getting up far too late... something that caused me problems later. I'm still getting used how time is treated differently here, on the one hand everyone eats, sleeps and goes out much later... but on the other shops shut early and Sunday's and even Saturday afternoons have a 28 Days Later vibe.
Anyway, I had a little look around the recently open, and recently flooded, Palma metro system. I'm unsure exactly where it goes to but the metro/train station is great. Check out the cafe in the photo... jesus, you don't get that sort of thing in 'The Lemon Tree' or whatever it is Network Rail are calling the horrendous excuse for a cafe nowadays.
I bought my ticket (in Spanish) and pushed my way past the horders of horrible German and English tourists and got onto the old train. I felt like such a disappointment to be giving in to my tourist urges and quickly got frustrated by the confused looks on everyone's faces and inibility to understand simple signs written in every language known to Mallorca (Spanish, Catalan, English and German).
As you can see, it's an odd looking thing, the same one that meanders noisily past my bedroom window once an hour. Apparently it's one of the thinnest trains in the world, or something like that, I donno, it was a totally unimpressive factoid so I don't really remember the details.
It was a super noisy bugger though, so much so that I HAD to record it. I don't think there are many trains in the developed world that sound quite as delapidated and life threatening.

After it passed my house and through some estates it bursts out into olive groves with the moutains in the distance (pictured). Through a bunch of tunnels with have the double whammy of being completely pitch black for a good while as the train lights come on after a massive delay and EXTRA noisy as the sound of metal on metal bounces on the hard stone. There was some amazing looking villas and outposts on the way too... although I figure they'd feel somewhat 'The Shining' if you spent too long there.
As you can probably tell, albeit via the use of bad camera skills and Nokia's answer to an all-in-one bag of crap, the view is amazing. And after 40 minutes you get your first sighting of the town, that's totally surrounded by huge mountains. I couldn't believe it, totally beautiful. I don't know how this entry is going to pan out formatting wise with it's APPALLING control over this stuff, but you can see the photo I took looking down over the town on the way back.

*continued writing today*

Did my usual meandering in no particular direction, trying to avoid the majority of (mostly German) tourists until I realised I was miles away and walking in the wrong direction. I wanted to head to the port which was apparently 2 miles away but due to the previously mentioned lack of time I only had a couple of hours to make it there and back.

I navigated my way to town limits and found I only had an hour left and it was in fact another FOUR miles. So I admitted defeat and trapsed back. The problem being that the last train was at six and I really wanted to watch the England match... also at six.

Took the train back with a Russian girl staring at me the whole time. Apon re-arrival in Palma I legged it around town trying to find anywhere that looked remotely English and sports-bar-esque. Not much luck. I finally found this Irish bar which was filled with, surprisingly quiet, people in England shirts. Caught the last 20 minutes...

I was supposed to be meeting up with a Swedish guy (there's lots of Swedes in Palma) immediately after but had to take my shit back home so got a taxi to the Placa del Torros, the first time I'd seen it close up. It's actually a pretty impressive building and I can sometimes hear the sound of the announcer from my room as it echoes down the streets like a Muslim call to prayer.
Took ANOTHER taxi back into town, thanks to the rudest taxi driver in Spain, to a street called Plaza Gomila... which as it turns out is pretty dodgy and full to the brim with sex shops and drug dealers. Get to this Swedish bar called Nickes where I'm confronted with a sea of blonde hair that stretches across the room to the low quality projector screen displaying the Sweden match via Chinese satalitte. Drank a few beers whilst Andreas ate some form of meat ball, chatting away about random nonsense and gossip from my new work.
There's something strange about being an English guy in a Swedish bar on a Spainish island watching Chinese television... how very multicultural.

We then waltzed down to Santa Catalina, the place where my alleged new flat is located... although it looks as thought that's not going to happen anymore. In we go to the infamous Hogan's, an Irish bar I'd heard much about that the composer plays at twice a week. Rather disappointingly it's not as packed as the legends foretold. More drinking, more chatting.

The band start at midnight and are pretty impressive, it's all covers and some are slightly altered versions but the composer (who sings on a few songs) has a great voice and the guitarist is shockingly good. It's strange seeing the composer being swooned over by teenage girls... from my point of view he's just Andres (not to be confused with Andreas) from work, but to the people in Hogan's he's a local celebrity. Very funny.

They play until about 3:30am and we head off to a bar/club called the Culture Club. A name I'd like to contest as being somewhat inaccurate in that it's essentially a small dark room filled with people listening to late nineties rock. It was hardly a book club. The music was too loud, the people we were supposed to meet didn't turn up and there was far too many people so we only stayed for a few minutes before running down the road after what was to be my first bus experience. I don't think I'm going to count it though, as by this time I was too drunk to remember much.
We then head closer to town and find out something 'bad' happened to someone, I donno, it's all a bit of a blur and all I know is that we ended up playing pool (badly) in some bar. It's quite odd to walk into a place at 6 in the morning and for it to be filled with people and the bar being open.
I drunkenly ran home again, ringing up my girlfriend and talking utter nonsense for another hour or so. Jesus, I could barely talk and apparently interupted her with my attention deficit, chicken-in-a-basket style banter insessantly. God knows how I managed to install skype in that state.

Sunday was a write-off. I woke up at 3:30, hid in my cave and got depressed. Not much to it really. Just gave myself a backache by watching too much Lost. Standard post-drinking fare.
So today wasn't that much better due to the continuing hangover and the fact that I had to be up super early to go to the bank BEFORE work. This involved a walk down to Placa de Espanya (I think it's called) to meet a chap called Junior who would set up a bank account for me. I really wasn't in the mood to be attempting Spanish today (this is the problem with relocating, you can't have a day off) but luckily he was really good about it and I was shortly in a taxi going to work only 30 mins later than usual.

Today was pretty good from a work point of view. Finished some more movies and got good feedback. Annoyingly the estate agents are being a pain in the ass again and want me to send them another set of keys and keycard... despite telling me they only needed two. So I'll have to get up early and go to the post office, then get a taxi to work just because they're idiots. They also tried to screw me over for money by getting a pro-cleaner in... which i declined and also had a moan about... which they haven't responded to. I hate them. Also... I think the woman with the man voice is dyslexic which is why she didn't like emailing me. I would see that as some sort of vulgar victory if I wasn't slightly dyslexic myself.

Walked back from work again. Today's lessons: Restaurants, Shopping and General Time. I'm really starting to enjoy it now. I was reading yesterday how learning a language is the best way to exercise your brain and develop increased concentration, memory retention and mental dexterity... and I'm starting to believe it. I'm starting to feel a lot more switched on and focused. I know you really need a 'reason' to learn a language, but I cannot recommend it enough for so many reasons.

Anyway, current thoughts about everything... well, I'm starting to feel like I will never be accepted as a local here. I don't think the people here want to know foreigners, which I can understand as it's such a tourist hot spot. Other ex-pats have told me this so I know it's not just my lack of language skills.

Anyway, I should stop writing, this is far too long. It was a real pain in the ass setting up those photos too... so much so that I'm not going to spell check or re-read this as the formatting is bound to screw up again...

R

It's ladies' night and the feeling's... tired.

At el grande old age of 28 I have been predictably afflicted by the onset of appalling hangovers. Today has been a long day. I don't really remember much about work yesterday, I think I just worked away on some movies and got various nods of approvals from people. Movies are always easy as they're very much 'what you see is what you get'. When adding sounds to the actual in-game stuff you're at the mercy of a million bottlenecks and programming Pandora's boxes that can unleash a form of sonic scabies onto your carefully crafted sounds... so it's been nice working with simple and defined short movies. So that was easy.

I'd been visited throughout the day by various people and I enjoy a good chat so have been making friends throughout the company reasonably well. At the end of the day I got invited out to a cafe/bar (there seems to be little distinction here, I'm going to invent a name for them) in a part of town called Portal Nois (donno about spelling), a small and quiet harbor with a beach lined with said bafe's (there's your made up name). Obviously I felt a little pressure to put on my 'I'm worth knowing' hat, but it was totally cool and relaxed, as far as I can tell we all got on great. I was with two English guys, a Swede, an American (para wife y dos nino's, can't remember the word for wife) and an.... Austrian I think. Sat around for hours chatting and laughing, it was really nice and laid back, I repeatedly had 'moments' of "I can't believe I'm here"... which was really nice, although it was probably just the intoxication talking.











One thing I've noticed is that ex-pats are usually pretty interesting. I guess it's because you have to be reasonably independant to make the decision to move somewhere with a different language, so all the ex-pats I've met have usually had strong opinions... which makes conversations fun and interesting... and I'm yet to meet a single one that has anything bad to say about Mallorca aside from the obvious tat about the administration/official stuff.

Anyway, when it got dark we jumped in a taxi and headed to Palma to a place called Agua Bar. A small-ish place strangely owned by two americans (you don't seem many americans here). Apparentl it was ladies' night... there weren't many women in there from my hazy memory. The music was rock-y and it turns out there aren't that many rock clubs in Palma, if any. I met a few people in typical 'Rob talks bullshit to random strangers' way. After we'd been joined by a girl, can't remember whether she was Spanish or not, we headed to a bar called (i think) Bluesville. they had some sort of reggae band and a lot of people smoking dubious substances while a boating type who I'd met (and got bored of) in the previous bar had gotten too drunk and was stumbling around the place like he was still on his boat... during a storm. No-one here likes the boating people, apparently they're posh rich kids with real arrogant attitudes and throw money around in a rather crass way that isn't very Spanish.

Anyway, the night went really well and I spent much of it professing my love for Mallorca, Palma and the company. The guys I went out with were really nice too. I decided in a rather drunken state that I'd walk from palma back to the flat, a good hour's walk... at 3 in the morning when I had to be up at 8... baring in mind I'm still on probation at work (for the 1st month). After a while of running and walking like a flapping crab I flagged a cab down. Felt pretty awful this morning.

I think you can gauge your hangover by the amount of breathing routines you do in the morning, of the: breath in, hold and "urrrrrrrr" variety. I think I did seven this morning. Got up, let the dogs out... well, that's how it feels, unfortunately I'm talking about the cockroaches, which run TOWARDS you when you open the bathroom door. Bare in mind they're about 6 inches long and running like kids towards their father as he walks in after a hard days work... except it's me doing the post-drinking breathing routine. I'm kind of indifferent to the shiny arsed bastards really.

Got to work and it appeared I was possibly the best turned out given the previous night's activities. It was sunglasses all round. One guy 'disappeared' for a while in the morning.

At lunch a load of us drove, for what felt like forever, to go to a really nice traditional and authentic Spanish restaurant called Burger King. How very odd, why on earth we went so far just to eat (an admittedly fantastic) burger is beyond me.

Finished a load of videos. I had to kind of get them 'approved' by various people and I do worry that they'll be a lot of this in the future. It can sometimes be a pain if you're dealing with someone that doesn't fully understand audio or what you're trying to do, the sort of people that only understand "turning it up to eleven". Luckily the few suggestions made were fair points and did improve things... but that's not really the point. Anyway, everyone seems happy with my work so far, even if I'm only 'meh' about it.

Apparently it's a Friday thing to go to the social room and hang out so I went down and played table football for a while. I lost. I hate losing at table football... it used to be MY game. Like some sort of consolation prize for me sucking at actual football. Looks like I'll need a new replacement prize. Started feeling a bit pukey so walked home again as my flatmate had left again. Sat on the beach for half an hour dozing off as the sun set. It's beautiful and I can feel it calming my soul every time I go down there.



























It started getting a bit cold after the sun goes behind the mountains with the sea breeze coming in so off I walked accompanied by the joggers and roller bladers. Everyone here is so super fit, especially the girls. Apparently it's because they spend so much time down the beach and they want their body's looking good, so I'm always getting overtaken by girls in skimpy outfits jogging down the promenade covered in sweat.

Please note, there aren't any of those girls in the above photo.

I think i may do this walk more often as I just whack my Spanish learning MP3 on and listen to a lesson on repeat for the three or four hours it takes me to walk home. It's a beautiful and varied walk and whilst the weather is so lovely I can't think of a better way to spend my time. And I say this with a hangover so it must be good. I get to walk along beaches, literally against the sea wall, through beautiful tree lined avenues, historic buildings and tiny alley ways, an amazing park which blasts out classical music whilst the kids play in the adventure playarea, etc, etc. Today's Spanish lesson via MP3: directions. I've forgotten it all... so maybe it's not terribly effective as a learning aid, but it feels nice never the less.

Had chats with my parents and girlfriend too which was nice as I haven't spoken to many 'outsiders' since I've been here.

Tomorrow I plan on getting a train to Soller (pronounced Soy-er) which goes over the mountains and sounds amazing. Then in the evening I may be going out with the Swedish guy from the other night to Hogan's, an Irish bar where the composer will be playing with his band. I hear it's totally and scarily packed in there, but I want to see the composer play and it's also in the area where I may be living soon too.

Anyway, I'm tired so that'll do for now...

R

The Honeymoon is over

Yesterday wasn't very nice. I slept badly, it's as if I had a cheap toilet hand dryer blowing hot air on me all night. To make matters worse I was still excited from my first day, I think it was the first time I'd really accepted my new location. So I woke up feeling on edge and the day didn't go terrible well... although I can't remember why now. I think I just hadn't got access to things, everything kept breaking (mostly the soundcard) and I was too stupid to bring in the power adapter for my hard drive with all my sounds on.

After a long and tiring day I had to walk home (very far) because my flatmate went to play football. I wasn't really in the mood and didn't even know how to get home so just headed for the beach and winged it from there. Unfortunately I had to walk through 'the prostitute zone' where all the gypsies and illegal immigrants live (if what I'm told is to be believed), it wasn't too bad really, nowhere near as bad as dodgy places in England.

Once I'd navigated through the derelict industrial areas and creepy, abandoned estates I found myself to the beach... which is like looking at God when you've been walking on rat urine for the last three miles. Had a fantastic walk along the promenade and empty beach on my way back with the sun setting over the mountains in the distant (photos at the bottom). Then back through the cathedral and my now traditional jaunt through the center.

It appears that I may have an apartment already. I might have mentioned already a flat that the composer knows that's going, it's in an area called Santa-Catalina, right in the city center in a really 'trendy' and cool part of town where all the action is. Everyone I've asked about it has said "oooh, that's a great area" and the rent is pretty good, plus it's 2 bedroom so room for my studio :) It also means I'll be able to cycle along the seafront and beach from the photos on my way to work every day... it really doesn't get much better than that.

So after another late night, I was totally shattered, came home and got a bit moody and depressed about everything. I miss my friends, family and girlfriend and was starting to find the whole experience mentally exhausting. I felt like people at work couldn't be bothered with me because I can't speak Spanish, it's difficult enough just to join established groups of friends but multiply that by ten when you can't understand each other. It's also slightly humiliating and frustrating to sit there smiling at everyone, just so everyone knows you're a nice guy, when all you can hear is "a-pth-lea-cry-thesl-achay-mekahandos-crandrea-bythendo". After smiling for about five minutes your face starts to hurt and you realise that you're really not enjoying feeling ignored and hearing incomprehensible noise come out of people's mouths while you smile like a monkey with a new banana. So you stop smiling and that's when the :( feelings kick in.

So that was bad.

But you have to understand that when I'm tired I basically am incapable of thinking properly and I look negatively on everything. Something my girlfriend can certainly testify to. Luckily I woke up today after a good nights sleep and had the best day so far. Got into work, got all my access sorted, I can now go to the toilet without having to bang on the door like a man-sized woodpecker for someone to open the door with an annoyed look on their face. It's all done with fingerprint scanners, very cool.

Went on (yet another) jaunt around town with the admin girl doing more official paperwork. Had a really nice time looking around the Old Town (we got lost, even though she's mallorcan), something I hadn't actually done. It's incredibly beautiful and understandably filled with tourists. Anyway, I've now got my official ID number and therefore are now a fully recognised citizen of Spain... or something like that. I'm not really sure how it works TBH. Luckily me an Angel get on really well so the whole thing was actually really enjoyable, I feel sorry for her having to deal with any really quiet people because there's a LOT of sitting around involved. As an example, we took a ticket for a queue, and in the time it took for our number to come up we went to the bank, visited a cathedral, looked around the square, had a coffee for half an hour in a outdoor cafe and sat around in the queue for 20 minutes moaning about fat people and immigration (a BIG deal to Mallorcans from what it seems... funny because I was applying for my citizenship at the time).

Anyway, we were super late back so went for lunch together and had octopus (pori pori I think it's called here) and fish with loads of bones in... which i was unaware of until I crammed it in my mouth and spent the next five minutes picking bones out of my mouth.

Thankfully, everyone here is INCREDIBLY helpful with helping me understand the language. I'm constantly asking how to say words and asking what things mean. But the great thing is that I really feel it's going in well now. IN FACT, I almost forgot about this, I got a phone call from my favourite estate agents (despite repeatedly telling them not to phone me, you know the story by now) and I kept speaking Spanish to them, how hilarious. I'm just in the mindset now and it comes out without thinking sometimes.

Also, I'd sent out an email to the whole company the night before saying hello and asking about social things, I thought it would be a good move. So I got back from lunch with lots of emails. I've been invited to beach volleyball (hell, I'll give it a try), some sort of concert, a beach party (YES!), asked to join a band and I was going to go out tonight to see some live music but it didn't start until 12am so I thought it would be a bad move cos I live about an hours walk away. None of that would be headline news normally except that I didn't actually KNOW these people, so it's a good sign for the future.

After all that, I was getting a lot of visits, actually tried to do some work but kept getting called off for other things, which is great. I feel really in demand at the moment so that's making me feel a little more part of the team, despite being tucked away in my own air tight studio at the arse end of the building. Sometimes working in audio makes you feel like you're contaminated with something and are having to be quarantined. Started work on a small movie too, hopefully it wont sound like shit when I'm done

Got a lift some of the way back and did my daily shopping. I love the fact that I can understand the incredibly fast talking shop assistants when they serve me as there's no number registers. It's half ten and yet again I haven't done any bloody Spanish learning... how irritating. I keep meaning on doing an hour a night but I never find the time :(

So as you can see, it's a mixed bag at the moment. I just don't know what each day is going to bring... which I guess is what I'm doing all this for. I can't ever moan about being bored, and there's moments of absolute happiness, loneliness, hilarity, depression, conentment, optimism and a strange acceptance and connection with the locals where I find myself shaking my head as I see yet another train full of tourists with camera's at the ready fly past me with their 'please rob me, I'm an idiot stamped' stamped on their heads in badly applied suntan cream.

R

Primera Dias

First day at a new school is always an odd experience.

I'll be brief because i'm super tired at it's already nearly midnight and I have to get up for another one tomorrow. Drove to work with my flatmate, shit, I just realised I haven't actually paid for the room yet. Anyway, arrived in the studio and got shown my sound studio, very nice, all acoustically treated, air con... and with a sofa too. Problem is, the user account hasn't been set up cos the IT guys are on holiday, but they'll be in later. So i have a play of one of the games I'll be working on, really great fun and I could see how I can improve things (which is always a relief when that is what you've been asked to do). I then get asked to go back home to get my passport, I don't really understand what for, but off I go with the composer in his convertible eighties car into the beautiful sunshine... I love that car. Come back, do some paperwork and get whisked off by Angel, the office admin, around Palma to go stand in a few queues and have long chats. She's got that great 'no nonsense' attitude I've noticed a lot of Spanish speaking people have, very much the way I talk to people too.

Anyway, we get funked around a bit and have to drive to some other fancy looking building to wait in another queue for an hour or so, by this point i'm boiling and reaslised i haven't drunk all day. She has a chuckle at my 'very polite' use of Spanish to lady in a cafe 'beunos tardes quieseira un agua sin gas por favor'...

After more waiting around only for a lady to stamp some pieces of paper we come back to the studio, the IT guys have been called off for some emergency so I never get my computer login sorted. Have a playthrough of the bigger of the two projects with the composer. I'm really impressed, especially from the audio potential. It really is a great chance for some amazing sound and I feel lucky to have landed this position at this time in development. The teams are also incredibly receptive of my ideas and infact encourage my brain farts... I've even been offered extra audio RAM and programmer time without even asking for it... neither of which EVER happens.

Spend the rest of the day chatting with a producer from England who gives me his lowdown of the place, I've been getting that a lot, really interesting to hear different people's perspectives.

Anyway, first impressions are incredibly good. The atmosphere in the studio is fantastic, everyone is laughing and joking, there are no scooters (people at Blitz will understand that) and it just feels like a healthy environment. There's a whole floor given to the 40 of us for socialising, with table tennis, table football, pool, massive TVs/consoles, sofas, free food, they even have karate lessons, language lessons, rock climbing, etc... it's like one of those fancy North American devs where they really value people that i didn't think existed. My audio set up is also nice, big Genelecs, Mackie control, recording booth, legit software... I'm feeling a bit spoiled really :)

After work (i left about 8) we head back and go shopping, my first supermarkardo (or however it's spelt)... i was unsure how the spanish shop, but it's all good, they even have horrible english stuff that I hate. I almost bought Mallorca's famed black pig blood sausage, but given i hadn't eaten all day (!!) i bottled it at the last minute.

So that was mostly it, i donno, loads else has happened but due to hunger and oversaturation it's all turned into a bit of a blur and i can't really remember much...

It feels like a great adventure so far though and I'm loving every second of it :)

R

(Angel filling in yet another form for me at some administeral building)

It's MEGA!

Yesterday was the most stressful day of my life so far. It was pretty horrible really, but I'm jumping ahead of myself...

So my last full day was supposed to be spent sorting my stuff and the flat out ready for the move... annoyingly i spent a lot of it in queues and talking to people with confused looks on their faces. I'll skip much of it or I'll be here all day, but blah blah blah and I then went to get some euros from the post office, the queue was insane for both packages (which i also had to deliver) and handily the currency bit, I opted for the currency. After trying to kill the old man asking stupid questions to the cashier with my 'death stare' for a while I was finally told that the bank will screw you for money transfers so it's better to get cash, so off I go to the bank, another crazy queue. When I finally get there I'm clock watching my ass off whilst my request for 400 quid seems to cause some sort of commotion behind the bullet proof glass. At one point there were five peacock-like women working on my request because none of them could figure out what was wrong, the fraud office had to be contacted and I got taken off into a little room... after much waiting I was finally handed my money and had somehow signed up to a credit card in the process... I hate credit cards with a passion. Got my euros though...

I don't really remember what happened after that, but I was doing a LOT of work. You forget how much crap there is in your life until you have to get rid of it. I've promised to not own anything that I don't like or don't intend to use... although I've already broken that oath, not going too well.

Anyway, I didn't get it all done despite working for a good eight hours. Got up at about five or six on the day of my flight with much to do... and I had to leave at half twelve. The more I did the more I realised I wasn't going to make it at all... time kicked on and I double checked my transport details and realised I'd gotten the whole thing screwed up and had misread a 24 hour clock, something I'd repeatedly mocked my girlfriend for. Luckily this gave me an extra couple of hours, so off I plod again... the time ticked down and I realise I'm STILL not going to make it... thankfully Al offered give me a lift to the airport thereby saving me about an hour... I'll be eternally grateful for that because it's the only way I managed to get all my stuff done, in fact I didn't actually get it all done but it turns out it didn't matter anyway for various reasons.

So we jump in the car and now it's the cannonball run journey to the estate agents to drop off the keys, man-voice started quoting bits of paper at me so I shouted "DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS!" at her and skipped off... then a leisurely trip to the airport where everything went as hoped... again, all thanks to Amy and Al. I realised afterwards how horrible the whole process would have been if I'd had to lug all my stuff from replacement bus service to replacement bus service due to Network Rail's so called engineering works. My stuff was way over the weight limit but the girl at the check in couldn't find the form so couldn't be bothered to charge me... thank god for laziness.

Sat down and also ate for the first time all day at about 5. Flight was delayed. Had to listen to the stereotypical English holiday maker tell the same loud non-joke about the smoking ban over and over with his Argos gold plated aluminium jewelry flapping around every time he belly laughed at himself. I knew I was going to start hating the sight of these people soon, they'll be my only physical link to England soon... and I want them to die, so not great then.

Landed late, rang up the guy I'm staying with to tell him I'll be late. He didn't sound too excited to hear from me... but then it's not like this is a big deal to anyone else. Wrote down on the back of my hand what I was to say to the taxi driver. Now, I've been learning Spanish for about four weeks now so you'd think I wouldn't need to, but after my shocking experience in Hong Kong where one (of many) attempt at speaking Cantonese backfired so badly I was stared at by a large bunch of passers-by, I wasn't going to risk getting it wrong. Funnily enough, my first attempt went so well he actually thought I was Spanish! I couldn't believe it. We're driving around, he gets a bit confused due to the road being huge. Finally get to my number, get out and have to lug my aforementioned monolithic luggage across an open railway line, very odd. Get into the flat and meet my (very nice) temporary flatmate. Ended up chatting for about an hour on all sorts of topics, from bullfighting to politics.

Apparently they've turned the basement of my new work into some form of social floor with sofas, TVs, pool and table tennis... something I haven't properly played since I was a kid and played around Europe, despite being pretty rubbish and refusing to wear shorts (something I'm going to have to conquer now). Apparently there's a great social scene with parties all the time, there was a beach party the night before I arrived. There was various other really great things I'd heard about the social and business side that gave me a really good feeling about things and I went to bed exhausted but happy. Oh... and VERY hot. The sort of hot you can't escape from. It was as hot outside (at midnight) as inside.

Woke up today at 7 due to a torch being shone in my face. It felt like a torch, it was actually just poor quality curtains with... on looking at them now appear to be blue teddy bears with nappies (diapers) on.

On going into the bathroom I was confronted by two rather large cockroaches. I've never actually seen a cockroach before and always wondered how I'd react. I was a little disappointed by my reaction to be honest, I thought I'd freak out, they're not bad at all, maybe it's because they're closer to being the size of pets than insects.

Hadn't eaten anything since arrival and no-one seemed to be around in the morning (oh, there's two guys that live here) so I went for a wander to find a shop. On walking around I was struck by the distant dramatic landscape, the quietness and the fact that EVERYTHING was closed. As I learnt later, Spaniards and Sundays do not get on. Walked in large circles for a while and finally stumbled upon a shop, bought some water, orange juice, MEGA (some sort of energy cereal) and some UHT milk... hey, it's the closest thing I could find. Came back, ate, and toddled off for a 'big' walk. Speaking of Todd, in the unlikely event you're reading this, I downloaded and watched (today) a couple of Cooking in the Dangerzone episodes, really enjoyed it a lot, gotta get more.

So I set off on my walk, randomly heading for the sea and any action. Ended up following the railway line heading towards the town center. I'm living really close to the bull fighting ring so it's acting as a great landmark, I've already asked one typical Spanish old guy "donde esta la placa del torres por favor".. which is probably wrong but he gave me the right directions.

Went into a Subway with a pocket full of those bloody vouchers that i never spent in the UK. There was no way I was going to risk throwing the voucher factor into communication this early. After a quick rambling of Spanish the guy spotted I was English and it turns out he's from Wolverhampton. Nice guy actually and we got chatting for a while.

Headed off again and soon stumbled on a little pedestrianised avenue I'd walked down whilst on my interview, a great feeling to recognise something. I knew this area pretty well but hadn't seen it in daylight so had another look round. I really love this city. I actually sad it out loud with no cynicism on about four occasions. It just feels right to me when I'm walking around here with this massive grin on my face. I've been to a lot of cities abroad that I've really liked, but I've never felt it this much before. I feel very lucky to be saying this in a city I'm now living in.

Anyway, various other things happened, such as an old woman in a bar shoo'ing me off because I wanted to pay at the till (I hate table service), seeing massive amounts of water in various parks (despite constantly hearing how short of water Mallorca is), getting annoyed at all the cool shops being shut, sitting on my first (and very over-crowed) beach and wearing sunglasses for the first time in public... in my life.

Was going to go out for a meal but was too late so ate some more MEGA, it really tastes like crap... and the UHT effect isn't helping. Think flakes of floppy card board mixed with flakes of floppy sugar. Got internet connection! YES! Did some work in anticipation for my first day... tomorrow.

I don't really know what to expect tomorrow. It's like the first day at a new school... but there's a lot of pressure on you, especially as I'll be doing most of the companies sound design I imagine, plus the language barrier will no doubt be an issue. There's also a tight schedule on their first game so I really need to come up with 'the goods' quickly... I think I have a month to redo all the existing sounds.

I'm tired, need to sleep.

Here's some photos... actually, it appears I can't add photos, donno why. Just use your imagination.

R