Month: March 2006

I was browsing through B3TA.com’s weekly newsletter and they had a picture of a l33t road sign painting. Not too amazing in itself, but it got me to thinking about another US/UK difference. Obviously there’s the left/right side driving thing (It’s easier to use your lance if you’re driving on the left, or deliver milk, or something…) but another thing is that you read US road signs (in California at least) up the page, so to speak and UK ones from top to bottom. Ie. in the UK it’s “Slow, All traffic turn left”. and in the States: “Turn left, traffic all, Slow”. I’m pretty sure about this one but keep an eye out in case…

UK signs

Artist’s impression of US signs (it’s too early to be photoshopping…)

I remember when me little sis was in Oakland for sita’n’me’s wedding and she saw XING painted on the street and assumed it was Chinese. Each language has its quirks. Pelican crossings, anyone?

Anyroad, last night’s meal was wonderful once again even though we had to wait half an hour for a table. I’m scared to order anything which isn’t caña de lomo though, which has to be the best cut of beef in the world. I was so tired afterwards though I managed to fall asleep half-way through one of the last two episodes of Lost. Which says more about how tired I was than the quality of the episode. I’ll watch it this evening while Sita’s at her last *sob* tequila class. Tomorrow we’re going to Tequila again to visit a friend’s agave ranch/farm/plantation. I’m really looking forward to taking photos there.

And our water’s working again. It ran browny/red for a minute or so then back to normal. I’m thinking twice about carrying on drinking the tap water now. Hopefully the tank will be full in 10 mins or so and I can have that shower I wanted at 7:30 today…

In brief: the water’s not coming into the house again. I’m trying the same tactics I used last time, hitting the mains tap with a big stick and hoping it’ll be fine later if I leave it. It’s probably just some massive system failure down the road…
Off to La Matera for steak again tonight, and I was feeling all wholesome for just having a smoothie today.
Couple more potential clients coming my way at work. Fingers crossed again, looks like business may be taking off. Touch e-wood.

Here’s how Microsoft’s homepage looked in 1994: A Brief History of Microsoft on the Web: Home Page 1 – “Star Map” via googleblogoscoped
It’s every bit as ugly today, if you ask me. I’d definitely choose the text menu whether my browser supported images or not…

I’m of to work, just saw this story about UK’s puritanical views on language:
The Australian: Ad too bloody blunt for Brits [March 10, 2006]

I get a fair few searches ending up at my defunct webcam page searching for all kinds of strange keywords. I searched for the same string of words and google gives you a list of direct links to webcams from around the world that people couldn’t be arsed to change the title for. If you’re really bored try this LINK

I just sent in a top 10 list to the superlative podcast, Top of the Pods. Wonder if they’ll read it out…

Top 10 US-UK Linguistic Misunderstandings

10. Beverages: For some reason no matter how I pronounce coke or water in American restaurants I have to repeat it several times. Water and ‘wodder’ I get, but the Coke one puzzles me no end. Lemonade’s another, firstly there’s the pronunciation, LEMonade instead of lemonADE then there’s the fact that it’s some kind of water and squeezed lemon concoction not the ‘Every bubble’s passed its fizzical’ proper stuff. And don’t get me started on Ribena/orange squash’

9. Hair styles: Bangs- ‘I like girls with bangs’, my mate told me. I let it pass thinking well, it takes all sorts to make the world go round. I later found that across the pond, ‘bangs’ means a fringe. Somehow’

8. Food: Zucchini / Courgette, Cilantro / coriander, eggplant / aubergine, ground round/ mincemeat, ‘ If you’re buying a recipe book in the states, make sure you have a native handy to translate. Zucchini, I ask you…

7. Adjectives: Mad- If you’re mad in the States, you’re extremely angry. In the UK, you’re insane. It’s a subtle, but important difference. ‘My mate got sectioned after his wife left him’, he must be mad. Discuss’ see also ‘mean’ (evil vs. stingy) and if you’re allowed to say it on the family-friendly interweb, pissed (drunk vs. in a bad mood)

6. Carcinogens: Fags / cigarettes/ smokes- Somewhat frosty reception to the phrase ‘It’s nigh on impossible to bum fags round here (in California)’.

5. Body parts: Fanny/arse: The first time I heard the theme tune to dire 90’s US sitcom, ‘The Nanny’ and it got to the line, ‘What was she to do, where was she to go, she was out on her fanny’ I was shocked to the very core. Of course, fanny means bottom in US English.

4. Car parts: windshield/windscreen, bonnet/hood, trunk/boot, gas/petrol, bumper/fender, lorries/trucks. It’s a mystery…

3. Verbs: Fancy, as in I fancy a pint/your mate is simply not said. My (American) wife thought she understood what it meant and asked me, after I met her parents for the first time, if I fancied her mum. I answered, erm no, and she got extremely upset. She thought I didn’t get on with her mum or something. It took a dictionary and a lot of tact to rectify the situation.

2. Gender of names. Gwyn is definitely a girl’s name in the States (I’m a bloke, it’s a Welsh name and the female version is Gwynne *edit* Gwen), but there’s plenty of other names you’d expect to be girls but aren’t. There are men happily living their lives called Tracy (http://tracylawrence.musiccitynetworks.com/) and women called Charlie.

1. Sweets/ Candy. As you’ll hear on Total Podcastrophe, it’s extremely hard to hold a conversation between an American and a Brit about favourite sweets/chocolate/candy/biscuits without a lot of explanation. Some exist in both countries: Cadburys’ Creme Eggs, some don’t: Dime bars, Crunchies, some have the same name but aren’t the same: Milky Ways. It’s a minefield. Stay well clear.

At work and pretty busy. Went out last night for coffee and wine to Las Palomas and Montjuic. Sita let slip a few of her grand business plans… more of which one day. Anyway, a mere 2 episodes of Lost last night. Aren’t we good?

On a whim, while surfing around looking for attractions on the Camino Real I stumbled across the Gwod Paleontological Museum which had a competition on its entry page. Name a Jaliscan predator from the pleiscean period. Easy, I thought, as I googled Jaliscan pleiscean predators and navegated my way around google’s “did you mean pleiscean, pleascian etc pages” and eventually hit on Sabre Toothed Tigers. Q2: What gets stuck in amber? Didn’t have to google that one. Anyroad, if I go to the museum I’ll get a free “promotional article”. Please be a T-shirt or some amber…

Then I saw another ad in the Publico with a compo for free tickets to the cinema for the first 3 people to email in with who the film Last Days was based on. I had the severe misfortune to watch that particular movie and knew it was Kurt Cobain. I never reviewed it though because (Ed and) me walked out of the cinema after 50 excrutiating minutes (and not before about a dozen other people jumped ship too). Anyroad, the good news: I’ve won ONE ticket to see any film in the cycle this week, the bad news, the films are all pants. Instead of going to get my ticket today I’ll probably just watch more episodes of Lost and see BareBrokeback Mountain tomorrow (Secretos en la Montaña) on 25 peso night in Centro Magno…

Some of my DVD purchases from the baratillo on Sunday turned out to be a bit off. One doesn’t work with XP. One web package’s FTP application is shagged. The other 2 are fine though. The quandary this week will be buying Lost Season II or having a rich and fulfilling life outside of the Cathode Ray Tube.

It’s just gone midnight and we’ve put another 6 episodes of Lost behind us. This cannot be good.

Due to popular demand, last night was spent very quietly watching the Oscars on TV. Sarah came round with wine (they’ve both gone off the tequila, strangely) and we got some snacks together. Oh how our faces fell though, when we realised it was going to be badly dubbed into Spanish throughout though… I’m not sure if Jon Stewart wasn’t his usual self or if the live translators’ timing was badly off but it was a pretty boring watch… Anyroad, we had our bingo cards with a 60 peso prize for the first line (Sita won with: First Joke about Gay Cowboys, Presenters Enter from Opposite Sides of the Stage, Honorary Oscar Given, Memoirs of a Geisha Wins Any Non-Acting Award, Jennifer Anniston Sighting) Hope she spends it wisely…
The big (150 peso) prize was for guessing the actual winners of course. Sita and I drew by getting 11 out of 24 right. And if I’d gone with my gut instinct to choose ‘It’s Hard Out There for a Pimp” rather than Dolly bloody Parton I’d’ve won. But no. So it came down to the length of the ceremony for the tie-breaker. And Sita was closest. Well done, guapa. I took the 4 peso bus money out of her winnings this morning and she made me promise to pay her back… I think the success has gone to her head…

Sita is back and she’s brought more than a few freebies. We’re probably going to be okay for tequila for a couple of months… the photos are being uploaded as I write, they will eventually be viewable here I’ve been green with jealousy the last few days and these photos seem to confirm my worst suspicions…

I’m off with me camera to the baratillo market. Might shove some photos up later. had a quick skype with my family this morning. Everyone’s looking well. Mum and Dad went to Llangynidir yesterday and Dad’s been putting his *edit* 360 270 or so degree photos up on his website. I’m going to have to look into making one of these: Brecon Waterfalls

Very satisfying read about a boy named Pi and a tiger named Richard Parker adrift on a raft in the Pacific Ocean. Actually that much you could probably deduce from looking at the cover but it bears repeating.

It’s a great piece of magic realism that forces you to wonder at what point the story diverts from reality. One reviewer said it was like Calvin and Hobbes with an overt religious theme and I think that captures the spirit of it nicely. Though even Calvin’s worst dinners don’t approach what Pi ends up eating. Whether it will make you believe in God, as the author promises, is debatable as He’s got a funny way of showing His love to his most dedicated fans…

To answer a few of the Oprah’s Book Club type questions at the end of it:

Which animal would you like to find yourself with on a lifeboat?
I reckon a chicken for a steady supply of eggs and eventually, if it started getting on my nerves, nuggets. It’s less likely to harbour homicidal thoughts than your average big cat too.

Pi defends zoos. Are you convinced? Is a zoo a good place for a wild animal?
I reckon so. Though the zoo’s he’s defending are pretty far removed from self-styled ‘modern’ zoos with their breeding programs, scientific studies and laboratories and suchlike. Animals are animals and I reckon he writes pretty well about their nature. As long as the creatures are well cared for and human knowledge advanced then why not? Bring it on. That said, despite myself, I can’t help but feel sorry for tropical animals stuck in British zoos. And poor old Copita de nieve in Barcelona zoo who positively radiated depression before kicking the bucket a few years back. Still why the hell not. Nope Zoos aren’t going into Room 101.

In the Author’s Note, Martel wonders whether fiction is ‘the selective transforming of reality, the twisting of it to bring out its essence’. If this is so, what is the essence of Pi and his story?
Over to you, Oprah…

I’ve worked out how to improve my scrabble rating with the same effort. Play after about 10pm Mexican time and you end up playing Australians and Kiwis who’ve just woken up… especially good for the short games (5mins either side). I got up to 1081 last night. It came crashing down again this morning to 1050 thanks to playing the British contingent who’ve had their tea and are rearing to go… The problem is I can’t limit my playing to just that time of night so it’s just a theory. You can tell you’re playing an Aussie cos the board soon fills up with words like ute, uni, avo, dag and abo. I would be out and doing useful things but I’m waiting for Sita to ring to be picked up from the last day of her tequilathon. She’s got my camera too and I’ve been dying to take a photo of this old geezer outside the house who’s trimming the tree into the (government mandated?) cube shape. He disappeared up the inside of the tree and every now and again pops out at odd angles with his secateurs. Maybe I’ll draw a picture…

Anyroad, a couple of milestones for this mexican jaunt were reached this week. It’s the second month of drinking water from the tap with no problems whatsoever. And today I even managed to turn the correct tap in the bathroom without thinking about it. They’re labeled C and F and your natural reaction is to go for C, for cold. But you’d be wrong, it’s caliente. Anyroad, that’s a good sign I’m rapidly going native. Maybe it was the torta ahogada and tacos late last night that did it…

Great day at work yesterday- got lots done, the cashola arrived and it was a decent amount thanks to the graphic design i’ve been doing. I hung around after work to watch them recording in the booth. There was a voiceover bloke who did all kinds of versions of the upcoming radio/tv ads. I heard ‘Vamos por el primero’ about 50 times. It was fascinating stuff though. Hopefully I can learn the basics soon and do some proper recording of Jose’s propagandas. and learn a bit about ProTools. I think I’m going to suggest a deal where I teach English to the bloke who does all the editing and stuff and he can teach me how to do all that reciprocally… We’re all about win-win solutions here at AgaveWeb…

First off, Manu Chao 101. He’s a French/Basque/Spanish bloke who used to be in (French band) Mano Negra. In ’98 or thereabouts he released his first album, Clandestino which is a fantastic mix of songs about his life as a world traveller sung in French, Spanish, English and nonsense, among other languages, (‘I’m the king of bongo baby, I’m the king of bongo bong”…). Laid back rhythms, sampled loops and irresistible grooves all feature prominently. Also there’s an effect which I’m fairly sure he nicked from an 80s electronic keychain that makes a whistling noise then arcade machine explosion which he’s well fond of. It was followed up in 2002 with Proxima Estación: Esperanza which was more of the same; and when your first album’s as good as his was this is no bad thing. In fact, Radiohead could learn from this stick-to-what-you-know approach to writing albums… but I digress. A live album came out relatively recently which I never got round to downloading, but since I’m not writing for Rolling Stone or Q, that’s allowed… All in all tuneful, politically-aware hippy music.

So what was he like on Sunday? Well we arrived at 7:30, doors were billed for 8 and we queued for quite a while building up a quite a thirst and admiring the t-shirts, listening to some kind of musical mayhem inside… we finally got in and found our seats right at the vertiginous top of the bull ring to the left of the stage and established base camp. I went to get a round of Estrella dobles in. The first bar had sold out so they sent me to the next which was also dry, I then made it to the last bar and managed to get to the front without too much elbowing only to be ignored for 15 minutes. Victor had come looking for me by this stage, and helped me get their attention but even then it took forever. I managed to get the last 5 beers in the whole stadium. Amazing if you ask me that an event like this was going to end up beer-free. This is Mexico, not Massachusetts… Victor has a conspiracy theory that they were holding back the booze to prevent trouble. But I don’t reckon so as the beer was warm and they obviously weren’t prepared… Anyroad… during the queueing about fifty people without tickets stormed the entrance gates chucking bottles and suchlike at the security staff and streaming into the building. There were a fair few flashes going off, but I haven’t managed to track down any pictures on the intarwebs. These things always happen when you’ve not got your camera. Maybe it’s time to upgrade my mobile phone… anyroad, it was a little hairy for a few minutes there, but all part of the colourful Mexican concert-going experience. And most of the broken glass missed me…

Back up the 6 flights of steps to the top of the bullring and the lights went down and Mr Chau and band took the stage setting the musical agenda for the evening. Live it is a very different beast. Studio albums rely on carefully crafted editing and samples whereas live it’s an all-out ska-fest. Even gentler numbers got the Dreadzone-at-Ashton-Court treatment, which is all well and good if you’re in the moshpit at the front, but less so for a sedate 31-year-old married bloke sitting comfortably far from the speakers. The energy from the mosh pit and crowd surfers soon worked its way around the crowd and despite the lack of booze I found myself risking my neck by jumping around on the precarious seating. The sound system left a fair bit to be desired and it was hard to hear what the between-songs patter was all about. Something about democracy. I’m guessing he thinks it’s a good thing, but we’ll never know… They played for more than two hours which is fantastic value and it was great to watch the crowd getting more anarchic and the security guards slowly edging away in growing terror. So despite major logistical problems as a spectacle it was great, far better than my last Mexican concert (Oasis in el D.F. in 1998) where everyone behaved far too normally.

Lessons learnt:

• Ticketmaster won’t accept foreign credit cards. The pendejos.
• If you go to a concert to jump around, you’ll be needing tickets at the front.
• It never hurts to bring a hip-flask of tequila and a camera phone.
• If you’re going just to hear albums recreated on stage, you’re better off going to the offy, and listening at home with the volume at 11.
• If you can’t get tickets, find 50 other fans in the same position and riot.
• If you’re after a socio-cultural spectacular with a superlative soundtrack, Manu Chao in a bullring fits the bill nicely.

Another expat’s reviewed the gig here . And even has a camera phone photo of the bullring… Tell him I sent you 🙂

and Geoff… Give us a skype when you get the chance, eh?

So my first night in Mexico alone passed without incident. I was back from work well late in the evening because I had to finish off the political campaign propaganda and we were waiting on the scanning company to provide us with the pictures from the photoshoot in 3m x 2m format (300dpi, about 500 meg each, 1 per CD…). They wanted to charge us US$300 per photo but when we told them we’d do it ourselves the price fell to 3 dollars. Makes you wonder… Anyroad, I tried loading it into my computer and it more or less glared narkily at me and then disappeared into a desert-like heat haze. Even the G5 mac was struggling with that filesize. Anyway it’s done. They’re happy and it’s my first successful foray into Mexican graphic design. Yay! If he gets the candidateship there’ll be a web site in the offing too…

On Tuesday we managed 4 episodes of Lost in a row. I was chomping at the bit to watch some more episodes last night, but since Sita wasn’t around and this is a voyage for the pair of us, I made do with the methadone equivalent of watching Episode 8 with the Commentary on, the English bloke from Driveshaft and one of the writers rambling away. Quite entertaining but I still need a real Lost hit… and I’ve seen all my Phoenix Nights series one episodes too. Might have to get UK Novaing and see how Flash is doing on Deal or No Deal.

Today it’s going to be Camino Real research, accessibilityfying my web design site and that’s about it. If Jose’s feeling better there’s a chance we’ll go off filming, though Sita’s got my (still) camera. She’ll get better usage out of it that I would. One of these days I want to spend a while in Tequila taking B&W shots of agave fields. I’ve a feeling it will come to pass…

I’ve just realised all my entries are looking very much the same as the ones exactly a year ago. This time last year I rang me nanny to wish her a happy St David’s Day. Can’t do that this year cos of the prohibitively expensive international calling rate. So mum, dad or bethan, could you pass on my nationalistic wishes, thanks. I spoke to nanny (and grandma) on Skype on Sunday though, so that’s a start. With the whole webcam/ video conferencing thing no less. The average age of a skype user definitely peaked that day…

The picture is me in me (old) manu chau t-shirt and goes in tandem with my cars that resemble where they’re parked Flickr set. Brits whose clothes resemble where they’re slouched…

Sita’s off to Tequila this avo and Arandas on Friday. I thought I’d be able to meet up somewhere with the tour but apparently not. She’s strangely apprehensive about the whole thing. Personally I’d love to do a 4 day tequila tasting but i suppose we’re just different in that regard… what else? erm…

Oh yeah, Pat’s become a new slave owner of a beautiful dog, Devlin. There’s some photos round K’s website. He looks like a character. Get him on Dogster and we’ll corral him with Atticus… or at least give him a bone. 🙂