Stuff

She’s hilarious… I have nothing to add.

SFTLOP (Sorry For The Lack Of Posts) this week, I’ve been busy and then some. Several translations, proof readings, Santa Cruz’s latest drive to get people fit, other site updates and wooing potential clients have been keeping me out of mischief. That and the CRUSHING heat… Only 6-8 weeks or so to the rainy season and it can’t come soon enough…

I’ve watched a few more films this week, Pixar’s Cars, The Curse of the Yellow Flower, and last night, once again, Herbie- Fully Loaded. Reviews coming when I get a chance.

Further to Annelise’s comment a while back asking about the quality of Mexican desertsdesserts *edit* I blame my English teachers in Taunton School…* . They’re great. The most common type is a creme brulee type affair called flan, and a local variation on the theme called a jericalla. Delicious. Especially when made by Hugo’s wife, Patricia…

But there’s also quite a range of other cakes and stuff prepared by local pastelerias. In the interests of investigative journalism, we grabbed some on the way home from Pasteleria OK 4 blocks from our house after an Indian meal in Goa.

There’s a chance I’m doing a site for a local pasteleria too. I’ll take my payment in strawberry tarts.

Tonight we’re going to see Keane in concert. It’ll be a change and I know a fair few of their songs. I know they’re not everyone’s cup of tea but there’s a fair few of us going and it’ll be a laugh. I’m prepared for it to not be as good as mi Shakira all those months ago, but I’m ready to be surprised.

Two days to the Tapatian Photo Tour, 1pm Saturday starting in La Cava, Pino Suarez and Herrera y Cairo, details here…

I’ve added another bell/whistle to the blog. If you’re commenting for the first time (go on, you know you want to), you receive an email thanking you and inviting you back. I’m not sure if it’s working, so if you’re new to these pages or have been lurking for years without commenting, try it out and let me know if it’s operational. Thanks 🙂 I found out about the comment-relish plugin via the good people at the WordPress podcast .

Dad’s posted some great Grandma pix over at Flickr. I keep thinking of happy times with my grandparents and might just write another post on those one of these days.

And that’s all for now. I’m signing off and moving my computer to a cooler room, it’s 9:45 am and the sun’s starting to leak into my office. Even Atticus has sloped off into better ventilated rooms…

It’s very tricky to photograph jet black dogs in very sunny conditions, especially when they never look at the camera… Sita and Monica photograph well though. And they pampered Mr. Cus to bits yesterday afternoon with special Barbie-Princess-themed “Champú para perros”. He enjoyed it more than the photos appear to show…

After all that fun, Jose came round and made his trademark dish: Bocado de Cielo. It’s billed as a lasagne with tortillas instead of pasta and jumbo prawns instead of meat. But actually, every lasagne ingredient goes out the window and is replaced with chilis or manchego cheese and other stuff, and what you end up with really has nothing to do with lasagne. But is delicious. Jana and Victor came round too and showed us some of their photos from Ecuador. A good night…

…if their recording studio only had a $9.95 microphone, a cheap guitar with rusty strings and a singer they pulled off the street…
Link to mp3 here… (the embedded version slowed down the whole page, so so much for that…)

…The rattling noise is the microphone tumbling around inside the guitar on 3 tracks… And the singing, well, that’s as good as it gets I’m afraid. Here’s the original on YouTube in case you need reminding that it is actually quite a good song.

Here’s the equipment:

And while I’m posting, here’s our friendly neighbourhood bucket-o-fruit-and-chile-powder delivery bloke:

Grandma was a huge part of my life, some 32+ years. Some of my earliest memories involve going with the family to visit her and Grandad in Cambridge where they lived till I was about 12. Their house was (seemed?) enormous and was filled with adventures, kindness and love. We were always well catered for with Grandma’s trademark recipes. It’s weird the things that stand out though, I remember having grapefruit with a thick layer of sugar on top, real name-brand Ribena in a blue (for boys) plastic glass, hiding in the pantry which had a strange corrugated plastic door and trying on Granddad’s hats. Grandma also had a toy called Panda who was rug-shaped so you could put your arms and legs through the elastic ties and crawl around pretending to be a panda bear. Grandma made this herself and all her four grandchildren played in it at some time. Panda also had an accompanying book which she wrote and illustrated herself about how she and Great Auntie Mabel had gone to buy the materials and stitched panda together ready for the birth of my cousin, Richard. There’d be lots of other games too, the smallest in a set of 5 painted wooden elephants, named Nelly, would be hidden whenever we got back from Cherry Hinton park, or Fitzbillies Chelsea Bun shop, or wherever and we had to find it. Grandma had me believing for many years that she had nothing to do with Nelly’s wanderings and shows the sense of fun she had that never dwindled.

Grandma and Granddad sold up in Cambridge and moved to a bungalow in Monkton Heathfield about 8 miles from Kingston where we lived. The proximity meant we saw a lot more of them and Grandma was a great source for stories about my Dad when he was little, many of which he still firmly denies to this day. One involved when workmen were resurfacing the road outside their house and Dad went out any made tar balls and hid them under his pillow and another how he used to cry when Grandma read him , fellow lake districter, Beatrix Potter’s (frankly quite cruel) stories about Tom Kitten and his comeuppance. When Granddad passed away not that long after moving, Grandma kept his memory alive with stories of his mathematical exploits and fascinating life. It was a huge change for grandma to live on her own again but she kept independent and full of life to the end. She kept on her sewing, making her own clothes and cooking healthy meals for herself. She drove her succession of Ford Fiesta cars up until fairly recently. Her garden put most people’s to shame with something almost always in bloom and neatly tended. She delighted in giving visitors tours of the grounds and telling stories about the resident wildlife, visiting cats, owls, the frog who lived in the flower tray…

Mum and Dad would take her on trips to the Somerset country side with Nanny and they’d chat politely. We’d joke that she kept Nanny in check as she was always on her best behaviour around Grandma. The conversation could get quite surreal at times as their combined hearing issues produced some good-natured but bizarre interchanges. One summer the Antiques Roadshow came to Somerset and Sarita, Mum and I went with Grandma to find out about some of the family heirlooms. One was a porcelain blue toad that, contrary to previous belief, turned out to be a mass produced item worth about 5 quid and would probably be good for putting a plant in or something, according to the experts… We had a grand day though and we laughed about it many times and now that particular item has a real story to go with it.

Grandma would drive up to Kingston for Sunday dinner and bring a bag of gourmet chocolate from the food section of Marks and
Sparks and a dessert she’d baked to perfection, a crumble, lemon meringue or if the season demanded, Christmas Pudding containing foil-wrapped pound coins and invariably delicious. She’d also bring the parts of the Sunday paper she’d already read and done the crossword in and occasionally join in for a highly competitive post-prandial game of scrabble. Despite being highly independent occasionally she showed signs of being a little sheltered in her home. She’d read in the papers about some new technology such as the ‘one-Pod” which we’d have a go at explaining to her, and my favourite was when she discovered a new restaurant in Taunton where they were helpful, friendly, have great disabled access and extremely tasty sandwiches. She couldn’t remember the name, but after further enquiries mum and dad worked she’d been to McDonalds. She had this capacity for wonder at the most unlikely of things. If sheltered somewhat from the 21st century, she was fully in touch with the latest events in the family, relishing looking at and sharing photos and letters sent from her grandkids (in the UK and California and Mexico) of her great-grandson, weddings, travels and other news. Her living room was increasingly filled with photos of the family including one of me with the 12-string guitar I bought with the money granddad left me, and lots of everyone at various stages of their lives. It was a room filled with smiles. She’d often dig the Atlas out to wonder at where we were all living. Grandma also had an extensive slide collection and every year would dig them out, set up her projector and watch them by herself thinking of happy times and mentally revisiting her favourite places.

One of my last visits to see Grandma in person was last December when we accompanied her to Taunton’s Saturday morning market where she knew everyone, stopping to ask where the fishmonger had gone, comparing notes with the plant stall vendor, haggling over vegetables and cheese and generally enjoying life to the fullest. I was proud to be with her and just generally impressed at how she carried on so happily and also at how much fruit and veg one person could get through in a week.

When you get to Grandma’s age, life isn’t without its struggles and she had a series of increasingly less minor health issues that made for a tough time towards the end, though she would never complain. She’d mention the latest problem when pushed and then change the subject and probably offer you another chocolate biscuit. Instead of ‘burdening” (as she put it) people with her problems, she’d manage on her own and would take some persuading that we really did want to take her out to the country or talk to her on the phone and so on, being as polite as possible in the process. She certainly would not have wanted to relinquish her admirable independence and have long stays in hospitals convalescing only to return to a life which she felt would occasionally ’cause a fuss” to others. After lots of reflection, I think if Grandma could have chosen the manner of her passing, she’d have opted for this exit. Suddenly, peacefully, in her sleep after a fully-conscious smile filled visit with the family and looking forward to seeing more relatives and contemplating future travels.

A toast then, to Grandma, with her ever-ready smiles, surprisingly strong hugs, generosity of spirit and incredible kindness over all those 89 years.

Cheers!

I’m putting finishing touches to this here site for a friend of mine in Santa Cruz. I’m quite happy with how the theme looks and the minor modifications. It didn’t take long at all, I’m getting quite handy with WordPress installs. Next up is making a flyer for the event they’re advertising.

Yesterday I went to the Casa de Orozco museum by Los Arcos de Guadalajara. It’s a very small little place but had some nice folk-style artwork, nothing cutting-edge. Which is a good thing. Then in the evening Monica made one of the best homemade dishes I’ve had in a while, some kind of beef stroganof (not sure of the spelling there, Firefox is suggesting “estrogen”) which was delicious.

15 people have voted on the photo tour. It’s looking increasingly likely that it’ll start in the Panteon de Belen (where I took the Day of the Dead photos last year), which is grand. The photos won’t be as colourful as during D of the D mind. But it should be a healthy turn out.

Don’t know if you noticed that links to Monica and Daniel’s blog have stopped working. M pressed some button or other and the next thing she knew ChiliCatinLA ceased to exist. She’s been haranguing google’s blogger service, but so far to no avail. Fingers and all that crossed. Backup, backup, backup…

Here’s a butterfly trying to escape the traffic yesterday by Los Arcos de Guadalajara…

http://livingwithoutborders.com/2007/04/18/photo-tour-of-guadalajara/

So it seemed to be about time to organise another Guadalajara Photo Tour. I’ve alerted various forums and my flickr contacts, and here’s hoping it all goes well. Instead of setting a time and date, I’ve put up a poll to choose, if you’re in the area feel free to vote on a combination that suits you here. If you’re not in the area then please don’t vote, so those who can make it get a say in when they can come. It was good fun last time and no mistake, a cantina usually features in it somewhere and the rest is wandering around in the sun and chatting about apertures and suchlike with likeminded peeps…

Last time we got photos published in various blogs, which was nice and it was grand to meet up with a few of the other Flickeros.

**Cack-handed tech alert**: Any readers know how to embed database driven data into Drupal pages? I’m having an in-at-the-deep-end go at getting a listings site up and running and it’s all new to me. Still trying to find some PHP classes… have an eyeful here of my noodlings… login: test, pword: password none too impressive for the minute, I’ll grant you…

I liked this: http://bertc.com/uselessCat.htm

It’s been a rum old week of waiting on projects, actually doing them and then not much else save canine-related activities. Actually, Monica’s done a nice job of summing it up over at chilicatinla- mellow weekend. Hopefully this week will be a bit more productive. The heat doesn’t help of course, if you haven’t got anything done by 1pm, you can almost guarantee it won’t get done until the sun disappears around 7pm and things start to cool off. Added to that my trusty laptop started having issues with overheating and took to shutting itself down every 45 minutes or so, so I had to take it to the laptop dry cleaners. It’s now running as well as ever and fair sparkles as the Tapatian sun glints of its keys.

Our coffee maker’s not in such good shape mind, I took it to the fix-everything shop, “Amigo del hogar” in Santa Tere, on Monday they said it’d be ready the next day. I called by and it wasn’t, “but it should be ready for the weekend once we get such and such a part”, then “Don’t call us, we’ll call you”. I pointed out their phone didn’t work anyway. They said they knew that, hence the instructions… Still waiting…

I’ve misplaced my PDA charger so I’m also hardly listening to podcasts at the minute, which is a mixed blessing as I’ve started reading again, Jasper Fford’s The Fourth Bear and Aberystwyth, Mon Amour. Still it shouldn’t be too hard to find a 5V adapter. I’ll wait till I’m halfway through the books I reckon. In other Podcast news, Paul and Judy from Total PodCastrophe got an article on them in their local newspaper which is a great read to learn about the ins and outs of podcasts.

We went to a new restaurant and bar on Friday night, Chez Pierre (Calle Espaa and Mariano Otero or thereabouts, (33) 36152212 ). A very similar menu to Pierrot but with a Las Vegas style decor depicting Paris and itinerant musicians playing sax, piano, accordian and flute (which in German is a Queer Flute, because you play it at a queer angle apparently, thanks Daniel…). Excellent food at an mid-upper end price range. Steaks all round of course. Cheeses are also recommended once again. Then on to a newish club where there was a cover band playing on Ave.Mexico and Americas and lots of 19-year-old CEPE students dressed to the nines and 20 peso beers. Not a bad night all in all.

Victor and Jana are back from Ecuador and have a load of photos with the occasional commentary, looks like they had lots of exercise and easter-related fun. It’ll be nice to catch up with them soon.

Yesterday took us to the Baratillo where I snapped a few photos but otherwise couldn’t find anything worth buying, although we were tempted to go halves on an LCD projector (300 bucks). Monica bought The Prestige which I’ll review some time soonish (dominguera (Sundayish)). Not sure what this shop sells, but judging by the name and logo it’s probably not pleasant:

and here are some others of the type of rubbish you can buy:

There’re a few websites in the offing, not sure whether they’ll come to fruition though. In the meantime, there’s a few new features in this blog: subscribe by email, Spanish word of the day and a box that displays the headlines from my other spanish language web design blog all either down on the right or for IE6 users, left at the bottom of the blog.

Over the last week Daniel and I managed to get through the entire Christopher Eccleston series of Doctor Who and it’s “arsum” was gripped throughout now I just have to find the latest series. I also got hold of the Decembrists and new Modest Mouse albums, but I’ve not had a chance to listen just yet thanks to the aforementioned PDA situation. (I could listen to them on my lappy, but I can’t listen to stuff with words in while I’m working…).

Me murdering Jaraba de Palo’s La Flaca has reached 2000+ views on YouTube. Weren’t they going to start sharing the ad revenue with uploaders at some point?

Annelise, thanks for your question about Mexican desserts. I’m on it. I have to do a bit of research first then I’ll post all about it. There is definitely a chile infused dark chocolate, but I’ve not seen it round here. They’re available in Trader Joes in the States though, but I don’t know if TJs has made it to Oklahoma yet.

And that’s your bumper lot for now. It’s been an odd week like I say what with trying to come to terms with recent losses and a sporadic project schedule so hopefully posting will return to relative normality this week. Apologies for the disjointed nature of this post (and pretty much all others) however I don’t think I used the word “anyroad” this time and for that we must be grateful.

obviously he’s missing his other family in L.A., but just to show how he’s adapting to life south of the tropic of Cancer, here he is refreshing himself with chilled mineral water on Sunday’s Via Recreativa:

and here’s the famous “Daily Doggy Dinner Dance” along with feeding instructions:

He’s a great one for cheering us up.

I just heard on Saturday evening that my other grandmother, Grandma, my Dad’s mum, Lillian passed away peacefully and altogether unexpectedly in her sleep. She was 89 and to say she had a good innings would be an understatement. Nonetheless we are all pretty shocked and still coming to terms with our loss of a much-loved, fantastic, kind, generous person in our lives. I’ll attempt some kind of eulogy in these pages soon, but in the meantime, I just wanted to share what was going on.

Here’s Grandma last December haggling over gourmet cheeses in Taunton’s Saturday morning market:

here

Just a suggestion for next year’s Judea, have the 200 or so “elements of the security forces” dress up as Romans to add a more authentic touch to the procedings. As you’ll see from the photos, all you need is red and gold fabric and the brush from your kitchen broom… and it’ll make the arrests of public drunks even more watchable. (See the Informador’s version of events here.)

So it was quite an experience. First off, travel directions from Guadalajara: from Lazaro Cardenas, take the Carretera a Chapala, go about 3 km, to just after the bottom of the first hill, and turn off to the right at the San Martin de las Flores exit, cross the overpass, the railway and then go about 2 km and you’re there. Park, entrust your car to local 7-year-old entrepreneurs and wander through the impromptu market that’ll be bustling with people selling empanadas, chairs, relics, hats and refreshments until you get to the hill and wander up it. Bring walking shoes, sun tan lotion, and water. And a camara. And while you’re at it with your camera, make sure you’ve cleaned the lense or you’ll get home and realise every pinche photo has a smudge on it. Arse.

Anyroad, I got to the top of the hill at around 3ish, where the well-graffitied cross is and there’s a nice view but no shade, luckily they were selling sliced fruit up there so I sat down and watched the masses assemble while listening to Wait, Wait don’t tell me, the NPR news quiz on me iPaq.

By around 6pm the hill was packed, 100,000 people apparently, all jostling to see Jesus carrying his cross up the hill escorted by the aforementioned Romans and local TV camera crews. I had to stop several times on the way to the top to catch my breath, but fair play to Jesus, he managed it in one, very fast, climb. I’m not sure what happened when he got to the top. I thought there was going to be a full-on crucifixion, but I think that only happens in Venezuela or somewhere. I also left before Judas got hanged. I was more interested in taking photos of the crowds from the bottom of the hill. So all in all, I’m well glad I made it there. I think I was the only gringo there, I’m glad I didn’t wear shorts to make it even more obvious.

All my other photos of the Judea 2007 are here on Flickr if you’re interested.

Plans for today: Watch Howl’s Moving Castle, defluff my laptop (it’s starting to shut down due to overheating. NOT good, especially for next week’s workload), walk the perrito, check there’s no more black widow spiders in my office (*shudder*), and in the evening go on a tour of the expiatorio area of Gwod with José and Fernando, where there’s special events this evening at around 8 onwards. Let the good times roll.

just testing an embedded audio thingy…

didn’t work… have a link to YouTube instead

It’s every bit as quiet as last year. I took Atticus to buy the paper this morning and he didn’t even have any traffic to chase.

Anyroad, I’m going through my photos to enter them in Amour Fou’s “Cortosia de Amour Fou” competition. Rules here in Spanish. For the photography prize the theme is “anything to do with cinema”, and the prize is 2 weeks’ free rentals. So far there are no entries… Anyroad, I’ve been meaning for a while to take some shots around Gwod for a Hitchcock series, illustrating some of his most famous (and easiest to depict photographically) films; I’m looking for:

The Birds – Los Pájaros
Psycho – Psicosis
North by Northwest- Con la muerte en los talones
Vertigo – Vértigo
Strangers on a Train – ¿? Extraos en un tren
Rope – Soga, La
The 39 Steps – 39 escalones, Los
Number Seventeen – Número 17
The Lodger – El inquilino
Rear Window – Ventana indiscreta, La

Some of the Spanish titles don’t quite coincide: North by Northwest = With Death at the Heels… fr’instance.
And I so I’ll probably have a wander tomorrow completing the set. Also, if all goes well this avo I’ll join the throngs for the catholic goings on in San Martin de los Flores.

Watched Adios a Lenin, last night. Sita was initially sceptical as with my accent she thought it was going to be about the Beatles. Turned out to be a very good German film. Meanwhile, Amour Fou is projecting La Vida de Brian tonight, since it’s Easter… A fine choice of film if you ask me.

Also I learnt today it would take 38 odd cups of my favourite caffeine drink, Starbucks Grande Coffee, to kill me thanks to this helpful death-by-caffeine site (thanks StumbleUpon). Mathematicians may care to work out my weight from this. Please do not publish your findings in the comments section.

Seems like everyone’s gone or is going to the beach. Anyroad, not complaining, I’ve had my fair share of holidays of late. Still waiting for various projects to materialise. Next week should be busy if the people who’ve said they’ve stuff for me to do give me stuff…

So today I played a lot of Scrabble, getting back in the 1000s again. There’s a shake-up of the SOWPODS (UK/international -USA version) allowed words in a month or so so that’s going to throw me off for a bit if they mess with my 2-letter words. I’d like to put in a request for “Zot”, Sita assures me it’s the sound anteaters make and it must have been an oversight when they wrote the dictionary.

Also got inspired by a comment on this flowery photo saying that they look like Trollz so I did meself a photoshopped hybrid monstery thing:

And also I started buggering around with the e-commerce plugin for wordpress. Seems alright, i’m having some issues with permalinks and .htaccess, but nothing insurmountable. They hard part is thinking of products. Vaguely considering some framed photography with frames from Tonala. Very, very much in progress here don’t be surprised to see an illegible mess…
And if things stay quiet this week, then I’ll be rejigging this blog page yet again, cos I can’t get it to display right in (accursed, plagues be upon it) IE 6.

Also planned this week, making a bit more of an effort to find Jesus in San Martin de los Flores on Friday. This time I’ll have a map…

Other stuff… Spanish phrase of the week, courtesy of the taxi driver from the airport: Una lluvia mojapendejos. A type of rain that only idiots* would get wet in. Ie. short and sweet.

* insert regional slang of choice here. Twunt for example…