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