It was my birthday yesterday. I always find them deeply depressing for some reason. And not for what you're thinking... I don't care about getting older. I mean, it's not as if you didn't KNOW age was going to happen, you were walking down the street minding your own business and BAM, 'age' smacks you round the chops and you're a pensioner. To me, the passage of time has always gone quite slowly and I always try to remind myself that I'm a year old than I actually am. Therefore it's quite a relief when i realise on my birthday that I've just turned the age I thought I already was.
Wow, what a load of nonsense THAT paragraph was. Anywho, yeah, there's just something a bit 'murr' about the whole birthday thing. I think it's because it's a natural time for reflection and therefore pining over things that are not the same or around at all. I found it harder this year as I hadn't told anyone in Palma and so I was sent a load of messages and emails from friends back home but no-one here even mentioned it... But I'm glad it's over now and I can concentrate on the TOTAL SLOG that is 'work' at the moment. I've just got in and it's 11PM... and I felt guilty for leaving 'early' whilst others stayed on (I was just hanging around really). I've got to go in for the whole weekend too. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence when a company gets itself in a position where everyone has to work massive amounts of overtime (it's completely self-inflicted)... but that's a topic for a different blog I think (where I moan about the nature of the games industry).
Anyway, I just thought I'd write something on here about a report that's been done saying that Palma is one of the safest cities in the whole of Europe. I always got a feeling that it was intensely safe, I'm not sure how you get to be INTENSELY safe... but there it is. Maybe you have to lay all the roads in felt and cover all the stop signs in bubble wrap to avoid people walking into them (the irony of walking into a stop sign hit extra hard to someone I know once... when we had to spend the rest of the night in a Barcelona Hospital and I hung out with a tramp for a long time).
What I thought was funny about this report was that the perception of people on the street is (allegedly) still really bad. Especially amoungst the older generation who are apparently statistically much less likely to be the victim of crime... funnily it's a total vice versa (not the crap eighties film) for the younger people. It just shows you how public opinion on things like crime is utter nonsense. I always got that feeling in Britain too. The problem I think stems from the fact that the newspapers sell newspapers via fear ("THE STREETS ARE FILLED WITH MURDERERS, READ HERE TO FIND OUT!") and the opposition politicians are trying to discredit the current government ("THE STREETS ARE FILLED WITH MURDERERS. IT'S ALL THE GOVERNMENTS FAULT!").
Jeepers (a word I'm using a lot at the moment for some reason unknown to me), this post seems to have turned into somewhat of a crabfest. But to be honest, I'm just trying to kill time while my washing machine goes through the motions. I've got to entertain myself until it's finished otherwise I run the risk of having to wear dirty clothes tomorrow... again. I don't think turning your socks inside out TWICE counts as clean. But in my defence, it's only because I'm getting home so late... As Simply Red once sung 'Money's too tight to mention'... but replace the word 'money' with 'time' and replace Simply Red with someone less crap.
I'm supposed to be going to a nice meal at an Argentinian girl's house near the town of Inca tomorrow... it's not going to happen, I can just feel it. Well... I say 'nice meal' when I infact know nothing about it. All i know about Argentinian food is that it consists of big slabs of meat, and not much else. I tend to prefer meat that doesn't look like it's actually come from an animal. If you can shape it to look like a mini sized dinsaur and dust it in bread crumbs then I'm a happy man... actually give me a slice of a cow's butt and I'll give you my confused eyebrow, and no-one wants that over the dinner table.
R
Friday, 30 November 2007
Sunday, 25 November 2007
The horror (now with video)
I'm sat here in my freezing cold flat trying to watch a badly dubbed version of 'Love Actually' to improve my Spanish skills. It's a pretty sad scene... but what makes it all the more sad is the APALLING family themed band busting out some classic shovelware musak trash outside my apartment. It's past eleven PM on a Sunday, the day I thought Spain was supposed to be asleep.
It appears though that these two middle aged irritants didn't get that memo and have set up shop, a very large and loud shop, in the small square opposite my building. There's about four children running around while their parents dance on the spot.
I really don't understand the whole thing, but most of all I don't understand the loudness. All my windows and doors are firmly shut, but it's still louder than the aforementioned cheese cluster of a film. Significantly louder. It's all ammunition to my understanding of the spanish lack of respect for personal auditory space.
Annoyingly, I am in the perfect sniper position but don't have the equipment to carry out the job. No-one would know it was me, there's buildings everywhere... and I have a clear shot.
ARGHHH, it's starting to get REALLY annoying now. The man keeps shouting "OLAY!". It's also sped up too, making it all the more intense.
I went to a nightclub on Friday night. It may have been a gay club. I only say that because the place wasn't exactly crawling with girls. I remember there was one who looked like a Russian prostitute who was stood on something, grabbing a speaker by the 'ears' and dancing to it's 'mouth' (the loud bit).
He just said 'OLAY!' again.
I also celebrated Thanks Giving for the first time, which was nice. Got invited to a meal in an American house and had some Guamain food, really nice. We all had to do a mini speech to say what we were 'thankful' for... now, i'm not terribly good at...
OOOOH, THEY'VE STOPPED!!!
anyway, yes, I'm not terribly good at outpourings of...
Urgh, no they haven't, they're off again...
...outpourings of honest emotion with no cynicism or sarcasm, so it was tough, but i AM thankful for a lot of things at the moment so it was pretty easy.
Work's still going good. I got some seriously needed time with a Nintendo DS dev kit and the whole mix of my game is really coming together well now... apart from the videos, which frankly sound like crap, but that's mostly down to us using a cheap and nasty video codec.
I ate some gammon the other day. It's been so long since I ate any, my taste in carcass must have changed over the years because I really liked it.
Spanish advertisements: there's a woman with massive breasts, wearing only a bra, underwear and a top hat... and a TIGER on her shoulders. She would be quite attractive if she didn't look so
rediculous.
Tomorrow I am going to another board game party... which despite the name is actually a lot of fun. That's immediately after my spanish lesson, which due to last weeks being a really good one will mean that it'll be a really slog. They seem to take it in turns.
Apologies for the dodgy formatting as usual. If you don't like it, complain to blogger. It's not my fault they suck.
Here's a video from my window of the horror. Bare in mind that the walls and windows of this building are about as useful as paper for keeping in sound (and heat)...
R
It appears though that these two middle aged irritants didn't get that memo and have set up shop, a very large and loud shop, in the small square opposite my building. There's about four children running around while their parents dance on the spot.
I really don't understand the whole thing, but most of all I don't understand the loudness. All my windows and doors are firmly shut, but it's still louder than the aforementioned cheese cluster of a film. Significantly louder. It's all ammunition to my understanding of the spanish lack of respect for personal auditory space.
Annoyingly, I am in the perfect sniper position but don't have the equipment to carry out the job. No-one would know it was me, there's buildings everywhere... and I have a clear shot.
ARGHHH, it's starting to get REALLY annoying now. The man keeps shouting "OLAY!". It's also sped up too, making it all the more intense.
I went to a nightclub on Friday night. It may have been a gay club. I only say that because the place wasn't exactly crawling with girls. I remember there was one who looked like a Russian prostitute who was stood on something, grabbing a speaker by the 'ears' and dancing to it's 'mouth' (the loud bit).
He just said 'OLAY!' again.
I also celebrated Thanks Giving for the first time, which was nice. Got invited to a meal in an American house and had some Guamain food, really nice. We all had to do a mini speech to say what we were 'thankful' for... now, i'm not terribly good at...
OOOOH, THEY'VE STOPPED!!!
anyway, yes, I'm not terribly good at outpourings of...
Urgh, no they haven't, they're off again...
...outpourings of honest emotion with no cynicism or sarcasm, so it was tough, but i AM thankful for a lot of things at the moment so it was pretty easy.
Work's still going good. I got some seriously needed time with a Nintendo DS dev kit and the whole mix of my game is really coming together well now... apart from the videos, which frankly sound like crap, but that's mostly down to us using a cheap and nasty video codec.
I ate some gammon the other day. It's been so long since I ate any, my taste in carcass must have changed over the years because I really liked it.
Spanish advertisements: there's a woman with massive breasts, wearing only a bra, underwear and a top hat... and a TIGER on her shoulders. She would be quite attractive if she didn't look so
rediculous.
Tomorrow I am going to another board game party... which despite the name is actually a lot of fun. That's immediately after my spanish lesson, which due to last weeks being a really good one will mean that it'll be a really slog. They seem to take it in turns.
Apologies for the dodgy formatting as usual. If you don't like it, complain to blogger. It's not my fault they suck.
Here's a video from my window of the horror. Bare in mind that the walls and windows of this building are about as useful as paper for keeping in sound (and heat)...
R
Thursday, 22 November 2007
Meat Wearing a Wig
So I was just cycling home through my district and it again struck me how I love living here. It's right in the middle of a downtown area that feels very cosmopolitan and 'real'.
Away from the tourism (not that there's much in Palma) and fancy buildings, it's just lots of tiny claustrophobic roads crammed full of cars bumped up on the pavement,
people picking through rubbish bins (a popular past-time of people here it would appear), kiosks selling Bella, old women waving their arms around with their beards flapping
in the breeze, rubbish bins being picked through by people (a popular past-time of bins here it would appear) and sophisticated looking couples trying to find the perfect
restaurant (there's many).
Annoyingly, from my cyclists perspective the pavement curbs are like unassailable cliffs of concrete that if not dismounted for can severely damage your primary mode of
transport. I've got a couple of 'thwunks' in my back wheel while from when I was learning this.
Oooh lightning!!! Gonna go record....
Okay, all set. Doubt I'll get anything.
So yes, there's something very nice about living in the middle of an exciting and alive part of the world... but to be honest, I've totally lost my train of thought now that the
lightning's kicking off outside... so I'll change the subject.
Work has been super busy recently. In fact I've been living like a hermit for a while, going to work in my isolated studio then coming home to work on various projects and
stuff. Since the jaw incident I don't really feel like going out much anymore although I'm sure I'll get bored of this... my ears are certainly very tired. Still, my currently salvage
job of a project is going really well and the quality has improved drastically in the last few weeks. Infact, to get technical briefly, I found a way to improve the resolution of the
audio by a factor of 256... I got all excited and ran round the office shouting "I've made the audio 256 times better, give me a raise!". I didn't get a raise, but my review went
very well and I got a nice write up from the big people. I never doubted that I would (god that sounds arrogant) but it's nice to hear it.
I tried to go out and get a mobile phone sorted on Saturday. I walked all the way out to the other side of town to 'El Corte Inglais' (the English court) which is Spain's biggest
department store oddly enough. I was bouncing down the road, all breezy and confident until I get to the crazy madness of the shop, you'd think I would expect it by now.
Shopping in Spain is like a cross between an eighties stock market during a bad day and a Russian bakery during the infamous bread shortages which may or may not have
actually happened. It's basically a large gathering of angry people in fashion's worst clothing, queuing up for the one shop assistant who doesn't have what you want. I also
realised as soon as I walked into the door that I had no idea what I was asking for as I didn't know if my phone was locked to a UK network. Given that I can't just 'wing it' like
i would back home, I walked in circles for a while, got scared at the prices and walked out trying to not look like a total failure. So i still don't have a Spain phone.
The weather's pretty cruddy here at the moment, but I've heard from friends back home that it's been below zero so maybe I shouldn't complain too much. There's something
about winter that no matter how better you know you have it than other people, it still sucks big time. I was promised it would only be 'winter' for two months but it's been
bloody freezing for ages now and i feel like winter hasn't even started yet. The worst thing at the moment is that the streets/pavements are all wet and when I'm trying to
stylishly burn off on my bike I have a tendency to do massive wheel spins causing my body to flump down, fall off the bike and land in a heap on the floor. I was trying to
impress some fat old ladies yesterday with this maneuver and it seriously backfired. They even lunged out to help me from bike based pain, but it was too late.
In other news, England are out of the European football cup. At least that means we can get rid of Steve Maclaren. I never trust a man that's face looks like a gammon steak
with a cheap wig placed on top. I hate gammon.
R
Away from the tourism (not that there's much in Palma) and fancy buildings, it's just lots of tiny claustrophobic roads crammed full of cars bumped up on the pavement,
people picking through rubbish bins (a popular past-time of people here it would appear), kiosks selling Bella, old women waving their arms around with their beards flapping
in the breeze, rubbish bins being picked through by people (a popular past-time of bins here it would appear) and sophisticated looking couples trying to find the perfect
restaurant (there's many).
Annoyingly, from my cyclists perspective the pavement curbs are like unassailable cliffs of concrete that if not dismounted for can severely damage your primary mode of
transport. I've got a couple of 'thwunks' in my back wheel while from when I was learning this.
Oooh lightning!!! Gonna go record....
Okay, all set. Doubt I'll get anything.
So yes, there's something very nice about living in the middle of an exciting and alive part of the world... but to be honest, I've totally lost my train of thought now that the
lightning's kicking off outside... so I'll change the subject.
Work has been super busy recently. In fact I've been living like a hermit for a while, going to work in my isolated studio then coming home to work on various projects and
stuff. Since the jaw incident I don't really feel like going out much anymore although I'm sure I'll get bored of this... my ears are certainly very tired. Still, my currently salvage
job of a project is going really well and the quality has improved drastically in the last few weeks. Infact, to get technical briefly, I found a way to improve the resolution of the
audio by a factor of 256... I got all excited and ran round the office shouting "I've made the audio 256 times better, give me a raise!". I didn't get a raise, but my review went
very well and I got a nice write up from the big people. I never doubted that I would (god that sounds arrogant) but it's nice to hear it.
I tried to go out and get a mobile phone sorted on Saturday. I walked all the way out to the other side of town to 'El Corte Inglais' (the English court) which is Spain's biggest
department store oddly enough. I was bouncing down the road, all breezy and confident until I get to the crazy madness of the shop, you'd think I would expect it by now.
Shopping in Spain is like a cross between an eighties stock market during a bad day and a Russian bakery during the infamous bread shortages which may or may not have
actually happened. It's basically a large gathering of angry people in fashion's worst clothing, queuing up for the one shop assistant who doesn't have what you want. I also
realised as soon as I walked into the door that I had no idea what I was asking for as I didn't know if my phone was locked to a UK network. Given that I can't just 'wing it' like
i would back home, I walked in circles for a while, got scared at the prices and walked out trying to not look like a total failure. So i still don't have a Spain phone.
The weather's pretty cruddy here at the moment, but I've heard from friends back home that it's been below zero so maybe I shouldn't complain too much. There's something
about winter that no matter how better you know you have it than other people, it still sucks big time. I was promised it would only be 'winter' for two months but it's been
bloody freezing for ages now and i feel like winter hasn't even started yet. The worst thing at the moment is that the streets/pavements are all wet and when I'm trying to
stylishly burn off on my bike I have a tendency to do massive wheel spins causing my body to flump down, fall off the bike and land in a heap on the floor. I was trying to
impress some fat old ladies yesterday with this maneuver and it seriously backfired. They even lunged out to help me from bike based pain, but it was too late.
In other news, England are out of the European football cup. At least that means we can get rid of Steve Maclaren. I never trust a man that's face looks like a gammon steak
with a cheap wig placed on top. I hate gammon.
R
Wednesday, 14 November 2007
Help me Ibuprofenobi, you're my only hope
I'm writing this drugged out of my eyeballs, like the guy downstairs who I found sleeping outside my door with a beer in his hand on Saturday.
I went out on Friday night, woke up on Saturday morning with my jaw feeling like it had been shattered and then sellotaped backtogether during the night. I'm not 100% sure what had happened, I'm guessing a severe case of teeth gritting has screwed up my jaw and gums and now I'm suffering the AGONISING result. Spent three and a half days lying around in pain before I plucked up the courage to go out to the 'farmacia' to pick up some painkillers... or 'analgesia' as they're called. Was slightly concerned that I'd got the translation wrong and was going to be confronted with double-time staring, not your every day Spanish staring. Luckily my analgesias are doing the trick though, well, doing the trick in that I feel like I'm floating all day, until they wear off and I have to wait around for two hours of agony until I'm allowed to take some more.
So that's been fun. And just as I'm almost fully recovered from my arm hack-job. The bruise is still there, a whopping two weeks after the incident.
I'm finally the proud owner of a spanish bank card. That was a palava, and one which I wont recount here as it's not a terribly exciting one.
For Halloween a load of us went out around Palma and ended up in a transvestite bar whose name escapes me. Bit of a bizarre evening, I remember one point where this man/woman was stood on this stage in the middle of the room with all this weird fabric being spread around the room like a web. I don't really know what it was all about, but when I switched on the tv the next night I saw it all replayed on local news... I thought I'd seen a camera crew running around.
Went on a lovely bike ride down along the coast to the German encampment of S'Arenal. I'd heard the bike ride was nice, which it was, but that the town/beach was horrible, which it was. The beach was this 4 kilometer stetch of boredom, but on the plus side it was pretty empty due to it now being 'off-season'.
Every morning I seem to cycle past a daytime tv crew filming, for some bizarre reason, on the cycle lane on my way to work. Guess it's because it's a nice view out to the Bay, infact it's the point where the video in a previous post was set, looks nice in the morning. Anyway, I'm starting to get annoyed at this disruption as I'm always late, so I've taken to gathering as much speed as possible and screaming past the presenters' faces going 'RRAAARRR!!!' like a formula one car. That'll teach them to give me dirty looks... and let that be a warning to the rest of Spain too.
There's been loads of things happening recently but I'm currently starting to feel the beginning of the pain to come back so I need to go and drug myself up again. But here's some photos of recent events, including the 'web' moment, some photos from my bike trip, a little cove called Portixol that I go to occasionally for a beer after work and even a rare photo of me from the weekend before I screwed the right side of my face up. Brilliant.
R
I went out on Friday night, woke up on Saturday morning with my jaw feeling like it had been shattered and then sellotaped backtogether during the night. I'm not 100% sure what had happened, I'm guessing a severe case of teeth gritting has screwed up my jaw and gums and now I'm suffering the AGONISING result. Spent three and a half days lying around in pain before I plucked up the courage to go out to the 'farmacia' to pick up some painkillers... or 'analgesia' as they're called. Was slightly concerned that I'd got the translation wrong and was going to be confronted with double-time staring, not your every day Spanish staring. Luckily my analgesias are doing the trick though, well, doing the trick in that I feel like I'm floating all day, until they wear off and I have to wait around for two hours of agony until I'm allowed to take some more.
So that's been fun. And just as I'm almost fully recovered from my arm hack-job. The bruise is still there, a whopping two weeks after the incident.
I'm finally the proud owner of a spanish bank card. That was a palava, and one which I wont recount here as it's not a terribly exciting one.
For Halloween a load of us went out around Palma and ended up in a transvestite bar whose name escapes me. Bit of a bizarre evening, I remember one point where this man/woman was stood on this stage in the middle of the room with all this weird fabric being spread around the room like a web. I don't really know what it was all about, but when I switched on the tv the next night I saw it all replayed on local news... I thought I'd seen a camera crew running around.
Went on a lovely bike ride down along the coast to the German encampment of S'Arenal. I'd heard the bike ride was nice, which it was, but that the town/beach was horrible, which it was. The beach was this 4 kilometer stetch of boredom, but on the plus side it was pretty empty due to it now being 'off-season'.
Every morning I seem to cycle past a daytime tv crew filming, for some bizarre reason, on the cycle lane on my way to work. Guess it's because it's a nice view out to the Bay, infact it's the point where the video in a previous post was set, looks nice in the morning. Anyway, I'm starting to get annoyed at this disruption as I'm always late, so I've taken to gathering as much speed as possible and screaming past the presenters' faces going 'RRAAARRR!!!' like a formula one car. That'll teach them to give me dirty looks... and let that be a warning to the rest of Spain too.
There's been loads of things happening recently but I'm currently starting to feel the beginning of the pain to come back so I need to go and drug myself up again. But here's some photos of recent events, including the 'web' moment, some photos from my bike trip, a little cove called Portixol that I go to occasionally for a beer after work and even a rare photo of me from the weekend before I screwed the right side of my face up. Brilliant.
R
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