Here’s the promised photo of Sita, F and some day-glo pizza (issues with white-balance…) from Friday night.

Then last night at about 10.30 after the Oscars and just as we were about to watch LOST, I got a phone call from Fernando, a good friend of ours in Guadalajara. Which was great and I asked where he was and he said “Fuera de tu casa”. My first instinct was to think ah, Calle Garibaldi, Guadalajara. He says no… tu casa. So my next thought was he was outside his house in GDL, because often in Mexican Spanish you refer to your own house as “your house” as in “mi casa es tu casa”. Then he gives up explaining and says “Just go outside, pinche Gwyn” and sure enough, he’s there in the flesh outside our house in Alameda. I was stunned. Turns out he’s here for a week on Hewlett P related business in Mountain View down the road and had flown into Oakland airport (15 minutes down the 25mph road) and called by on the offchance. Bless him. We’ll meet up again sometime later in the week when everyone’s not knackered. But I still can’t believe he showed up last night. Fair play, Cala. Chido verte, gracias y nos estamos viendo!

¡Salud!

Am listening to Radio 2 while translating and chanced on this song by Gabriella Cilmi. Best thing I’ve heard in a while. I ‘spect everyone’s already well aware of her by now though, but things move slowly here in the Alamiddle. She’s from Oz apparently.

YouTube keeps deleting the videos, but this should work:

*EDIT* The album’s out at last (10th March 08) Here’s the link to Amazon.co.uk and .com and there’s an exclusive video there too:

*EDIT* Lyrics have also recently appeared online here:

Ohh watching me, hanging by a string this time.
Ohh easily, the climax of the perfect lie.
Ohh watching me, hanging by a string this time.
Ohh easily, smile worth a hundred lies.

If there’s lessons to be learned, I’d rather get my jamming words in first so, tell you something that I’ve found, that the worlds a better place when it’s upside down boy.

Which is nice cos I couldn’t work out what she was singing about for a bit…

because of cloud cover and lack of organisation. But this photo from Tapatian photographer, pleautaud makes up for it a bit: see it in large for amazing detail. I don´t think you have to be a Flickr member to see it…

…doesn’t affect me because I’m freelancing again.

So I went out yesterday to investigate the local area and was a little underwhelmed. Jack London Square is a fancy collection of shops by the docks and on Sunday there was a farmers market but nothing to really rival Guadalajara’s Sunday tianguises. I contented myself with some pictures of the railway (railroad) and substations. Here’re a couple:

Tettinus in potentia

Liquid windows

Meanwhile in Guadalajara, the Flickreros are going to free Lila Downs concerts, planning a nocturnal tour of the city and a day out on the Tequila Express. I keep telling myself it’ll all still be there when we get back there. I’m having one of my Jack from LOST post-island evenings…

Just before the RSI crippled me. It was an interesting time to be contracting there, what with layoffs, buy out offers, general meetings and the like, however the job was not the most challenging I’ve ever done. On a par with tomato picking, I’d say, back in the old country. Maybe I can get out and take the occasional photo again now, it’s been a while. I’ve a couple of other projects on in the meantime and another interview next Thursday.

I finished stage 1 of the landscaping yesterday. 8 little solar lights and plenty of shade loving cover plants and aromatic ‘erbs. Next stage will involve turfing or mossing but first the neighbour’s going to rebuild the fence and gate so it may take a while. Try and spot the 15 differences between the two photos below…

I’m off to see if I can find the latest issue of Q or Word because I’ve not heard any decent new music in a while. Any recommendations for albums, readers? Portishead’s new one’s coming out in April, but other than that I’ve no idea what the kids are listening to these days. Comes with getting older I s’pose. I even listen to Radio 2 online which can’t be a good sign.

Wish I’d thought of this. Non anglo readers may need this to explain it. We were on the French again last night trying to think of the word for donkey, in a mirror image of the Manuel/Basil burro/butter conversation. âne , according to the internets. And thanks, Martin, for your online French tuition. In Spanish.

Alright, more frequent posts from now on because I’ll have 3.5 hours extra a day where I won’t be commuting. Hasta pronto 😀

… So while Sally, Martin and Sita were taking longer than usual at mass I took the dog for spin and then got me guitar, tripod and camera out to violate the copyright of another Levellers classic. Despite public demand here it is:

Can any French speakers out there remind me if copine means girlfriend or friend who’s a girl. That’s been worrying me too… I was going for the latter, obviously, in my comment response in the last post. Back when I still spoke French I think the slang du jour was “julie”… Now there’s another good Levellers song…

…mais jolie, n’est-ce pas?

In the morning it’s easy enough, I get the 7:30am bus which leaves from about 10 minutes drive from the house and it’s straight down the car pool lane for an hour and dropped at the door of where I’m temping. Coming back though it’s a different story because the bus doesn’t go all the way… So first off it’s the bus to Fremont (an hour), the BART (Bay Area Tubey Thing) for half an hour then walk to where I parked the car in the morning then 15 minutes through the rush hour back home. And somehow it gets longer every day. I narrowly avoided making it a lot longer today because I was sound asleep when the bus got to the BART station, but the stellar driver woke me up ‘cos she recognised me before driving off to god knows where.

So there you go. My commute.

Today Hillary or Obama gets decided. 6 of one and half a dozen of the other I reckon.

The past weekend was also all American what with watching the Superbowl on the telly. Meg took pity on me halfway through and looked through my photos and made very encouraging comments so that were grand in the end. Talking of which, we went to the Alameda antiques fair which takes place on the first Sunday of each month, and since it was a mixture of brass monkeys and drizzle it was free to enter. Usually you have to pay; lots if you get there early, 5 bucks if you’re late and miss the bargains. Anyroad, it’s in an odd location that made for some nice juxtapositioning of antiquity/ modernity. I’m most pleased with this one:

Got to go, belgian endives are burning…

Well, what with having bought another car and signed a 12 month lease on our apartment, we’re here for the long haul. So I took advantage of the miserable weather we’re experiencing to yet again overhaul the business side of life at AgaveWeb.

I’m quite pleased with how it’s looking and having the design portfolio in the form of blog posts makes it easier to update and more intuitive to navigate. I hope. The Spanish side is still out of date, but that’s not a huge priority for the next week or two since I’m still working at Yahoo! all the hours god sends.

Anyroad, if you like looking at websites, have a peek and comment your thoughts. And if you didn’t know our new address, it’s there in the middle column. It’s vaguely Harry Potter-esque, 1010 ½… and might disappear soon depending on how paranoid I get.

I liked this short educational video about what happens to bad gummi bears… Here comes the science… Also, turns out there is a lot of Charlie Brooker on YouTube if you find yourself in a dull moment.

Anyroad, It’s been a quiet day today. Raining off and on, not really photo weather. I just managed to get out and walk the dog and take a couple of pix before the heavens opened again. Last night was grand though, T and J came round and we had a scrabble session and had veggie lasagna and T’s trademark dish, fruit sponge pudding or torte (sp?). We even dusted off some fancy plates from Tonala.

Also did a bit of E-shopping thanks to me sister giving me an Amazon.co.uk voucher. Life on Mars series 1 and 2 should be winging their way over the Atlantic as I write. Marvellous, thanks Beth. Also, Mario, I’ll pass them your way once I’ve seen them.

Obviously mere ingredients and cooking instructions can’t quite express how good Tanya’s torte is but here you go:

1/2 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
2 eggs
[generous bit of vanilla – say 1 TBSP]
plums [or apricots, or pears, frozen works if fresh is unavailable]

toppings sugar, lemon juice

preheat oven to 350 deg F
cream butter and sugar in a bowl. add flour, baking powder, salt and
eggs. Beat well
spoon batter into a spring form pan of 8, 9 or 10 inches
place plum halves, skin side up, on top of batter.
sprinkle lightly with sugar and lemon juice
bake 1 hour. remove and cool. refridgerate or freeze if desired.
serve plain or with whipped cream. (to serve a torte that was frozen:
defrost and reheat briefly at 300 Deg F

… but the free minibus made it much easier. Miserable weather we´re having at the moment. Cold. Rain. Cold. However for the first time in ages I live in a house with a bath. So I´m going to have a soak and make a start on Wintersmith which I suspect is a Terry Pratchett novel aimed at children.

I sent this link to a friend who´s expecting today. Pass it on to anyone you know in a similar position.

Also, have a picture of the view across to South San Francisco from our little island.

…long commute. Definitely taking the bus tomorrow.

Atticus made it through the day without problems (pending reports from neighbours), so to celebrate we´re off for a walk.

Meanwhile, does your computer screen need cleaning? *Edit* that link’s not working any more. Try this one for a variation on the theme.

So I walked to the sea, or rather ocean today, and followed the coast around a bit. We´re about 10 blocks from the South shore. It started off okay with various species of fowl hamming it up for the camera, then got gradually more and more overcast and the harbours and upscale housing turned into warehouses and pedestrians made themselves more and more scarce until I felt I was on the set of I Am Legend (4 stars) especially what with the massive gert war ships moored there. Then the rain started. Then the wind. Then when I´d all but given up on taking more photos there was a semi spectacular rainbow, by way of an apology from Tlaloc, Aztec god of rain.

I´ve still not cleaned the sensor on my camera so there are some spots in the sky that could do with a bit of photoshoppery but not for now. I´ve been occupied fixing wine glass racks and bottle holders to walls and there´s yet another trip to Target coming up for some more home DIY touches before I start my latest gig tomorrow down Santa Clara way.

…We bought a toaster second hand for 5 US dollars. And some more shelves. And a wifi router. And a multiregion DVD player. And some salt and pepper. er. Salted butter. Yep, it’s quality posts like this that keep you coming back to agaveweb.com/blog.

To try and salvage this entry, Mum gave me a book of collected Charlie Brooker articles this Xmas and I’ve finished dipping into it. I think I’ll extract bits to pep up boring posts:

As far as I can tell, fashion is nothing more than a handy visual system that gives people with no personality some palpable criteria to judge each other by.

And have a look at what pouring concrete down an ant hill for 3 days, then excavating it will get you. Skip to 2:50 for the good bit.

Thanks, ants. Thants.

I took a day off from moving yesterday (more or less) and played (and lost) a couple of rounds of (FR)isbee g(OLF) with Matt (pictured), (and happy birthday!). There’s the record for parentheses in a single sentence broken. “Sport” continued on the playstation in the evening and we investigated a couple of local pubs, but one was too full and too bright and the other was too loud so we adjourned back to the house and watched Futurama.

Sita’s back today after her Sonoma trip and it sounds like a good place for a photo expedition one of these days. Misty valleys of vineyards and I’m making a list of more stuff to buy… a multiregion DVD player and wireless router top the list.

…and 2 big telly’s worth of cable rubbidge. Furniture’s more or less in the right place. Sita’s got the Huey Dewey Decimal system going in her office. And the dog seems to get on with the neighbours. All is well.

Had a moment when we couldn’t get the shower working, mind. But it turns out you just have to pull the nozzle on the bottom tap down. Remember that if you come and stay, cos washing your hair’s a veritable bugger otherwise.

Thanks for all the birthday wishes again. I’ll reply individually once I get back from t’shops. And Starbucks (7 blocks away), there’ll probably be a nearer one soon enough. We had a luvverly curry last night with co-birthdayee Meg and other Oakland celebrities.

doesn’t mean I can’t post a link or four.

Courtesy of R@yPG : Reuter’s 2007 pix of the year

I’ve a suspicion, these are a viral attempt to sell more postits. “Office prank”

Shakira’s on Jay Leno’s pig of a show singing her little heart out on YouTube. It’s a new song from the latest adaption of Love in the time of Cholera, which I’ll go and see because it combines my two favourite Colombians, though I wasn’t blown away by the book. Not the best quality clip, but augers very well.

And finally, this one’s for you Sita and Cousin F (though you’ve prob’ly seen it already): Tom Cruise interview on his misguided beliefs