Something about English

I know I could be a bit boring sometimes (there is an Spanish expression that is better to use here instead of boring, but it had no translation into English, it's "pesado"). But in a week it'll be my last complete day in Spain.

My fellow blogger and friend Colin received a visit from England. So I had another opportunity to check some of my feelings about Englishman. So as I expected they were really nice. I really like them so I'm very glad. But I had a chance to probe something that was in my mind but I couldn't check before.

Let's be a bit critic about Englishman for the first time. As this blog is over all dedicated to English people, that's why I write in English, I have to be cautious being critic, but I don't really want. I just expect my English friends continue being my friends after this.

The point I want to talk about is clothing. I realized what kind of clothes Englishman wear. I'm sure it's perfectly normal in England, but here... English "old" man dress exactly the same kind of clothes, and they're far away from Spanish standards. As I saw Colin dressing really well sometimes, others it wasn't really of my own taste. But I couldn't say a word about that subject without a bigger population to compare (that's statistics).

English wear really strange shirts and trousers. From a Spanish point of view I could say they're horrible, I'm sure for them they aren't. And all Spaniards could see from a really long distance the coming of an English couple. As Spaniards link English clothes with nice tweed jackets and coats when they see those bright brown trousers shorter than Spanish's, I mean you can see the socks, grey socks, they get horrified. And sometimes they even wear square decorated trousers with the same grey socks. So for a Spaniard it's not fashionable to be able to see the socks, and specially when they're white or grey.

Of course it's not only a question of clothes. I don't know any Spaniard with white hair. There's some with grey hair but not white, specially in women. So if we put togheter clothes and hair, and red-white skin, English look completely different than Spaniards.

My question is, as I have seen some more English, but younger, I they didn't wear that kind of clothes, what would happen to them in the future?, would they change their jeans for square decorated trousers, their black executive socks for grey cotton socks, their t-shirts for coloured, pictured, shirts?, would they become red and white?

I hope I hadn't hurt anybody, and if I did just please smile, because it's my first attempt to critizise English people and I'm not really sure about their sense of humour, but I guess it'll be funny to them.

Manoel

Some Corrections

Well, I have really good news, specially for myself. As a consequence of those good news I should make some corrections or, at least, say something good about my university.

Yesterday I received the mark of my last exam and I passed it!!! So now I have a degree!!

As you guess if you've read my last post the corrections I have to make are related to what I said. It's not that UNED is not bad but it's just to say that the departament of maths in UNED do work properly. The teacher was very, very nice with me, and they corrected the exams in just one day. So they aren't really lazy clerks. Apart from that they had corrected my exam and making me pass it, so I'm happy about them. I still say UNED is full of lazy bastards but not those from maths.

Anyway, is just one week and some days for the DAY. I'm excited and nervous. Everything is almost prepared except my suitcase that is waiting for me (and my mum) to fill it with clothes and some other stuff. Of course it'll be full of warm clothes as I've been said England is quite cold and wet. Galicia is almost the same but only in winter. I'll also bring some computer stuff (my portable HD) and music CDs (MP3 mostly). I'm a bit afraid of what is waiting for me there in the City. I'm sure I'll love it, at least for some time but I can still move again in the future to a less big place (I was told Dublin is really good for IT employment).

From recent conversations with Spaniards, they all said they don't really like English people, I guess they have a wrong idea of them. But if you ask them about any other nacionalities they'll always answer the same thing, they don't like them. So as everybody who is not a Spaniard is dirty, without any taste for food, strange, grumpy and without any taste for almost anything. So I believe Spain should be considered as the best country to live in. As I know some English, Americans, Kiwis, Irish, Scotish, French, etc.. I should say I don't agree with my fellow Spaniards. I like them (except for some exceptions) and I just think the world is full of bad, dirty and grumpy people and with nice, clean and good humoured as well, it doesn't depend on the country you're from the fact that you're a good or bad person. It's true that we are all different but only in habits and as I've known really nice English I believe I'll like them, but of course I'm prepared to meet some bastards, as I did here. I don't like to generalize except when I'm joking.

My fellow blogger Colin and some other people who read this brief story of myself are impatient to read what I'll said about England. They're afraid I'll be softer with them but of course they are wrong. I promise I'll be as cinic, bad, critic as ever. That's one side of my brain that I really enjoy, to be critic. And of course I'll find some things to be bad comenting them. The only thing I'm afraid of is not to write as much as here, and it's because I don't really know the availability of internet connection I'll have. So just be pacient.

Well, thanks for your interest in this first posts of my blog about Spain. I hope the second part will be as interesting and funny as the first. I'll write another post the day before unless I lose my internet connection. Just to say goodbye, you know.

Have a wonderful day, week, or year.

Manoel, or better to say Graduated Manoel, or even better Technical Engineer in IT Manoel.

Lazyness

I'm lazy, I recognize it. The fact that I'm a spaniard won't help me to be forgiven by you. But I'm a Spaniard and I believe thats something inherited because my mother and my father were spaniards, so that's not my fault.

Anyway, I was asked to continue posting. So I had to do it and also because it's only two weeks left for me in Spain.

I told you I'll speak about my exam, so I find it really interesting to tell you how it was. But as all in this country even exams are weird and speciall.

My exam was about mathematics, complex mathematics, partial differentials, third grade integrals, differential equations, and horrible stuff like that. It's something I really don't like and something I found useless, but i had to study it. I just want you to see that it isn't something easy. So I studied a lot, I was really well prepared and also I found 13 exams from other years and I made them. I hoped I'll be like them but I was wrong. After making the exam I realized in my university they make September exams more difficult than february and June's exams I guess the idea is to punish those lazy bastards who didn't pass the first, but that wasn't my case I just made it in September because I'm an organized person who believes in that mathematical sentence that says "divide and win".

The exam was the same type as wich I did at home to prepare but much more difficult. It wouldn't be that bad if the type of exam we have in this subject wasn't so stupid and horrible and unfair. We have 8 exercises, the first 7 exercises have a value of 1 poin each, and the last is 3 points so you can get a maximum of 10 and a minimun of 0, to pass the exam you need 5 points. The problem here is they only look at the solution, in fact, they can't see the whole proccess of finding it what's the real important. They only give us a paper with the questions and 8 small places to put the solution of each exercise. I believed in maths the really important thing is to learn how to solve an exercise us the sollution could be wrong because of a very, very small mistake as changing a sign on an equation. But here that's not important. So in the worst case you can be a real genius with maths and know everything about the subject and still fail the exam if you're not too meticulous to check every small detail on the proccess to get the solution. On other hand you could have no idea of neither maths nor the subject and pass the exam because you were lucky enough to solve or copy 5 problems with no mistakes.

The second thing here is realeted only to my university. My university is called UNED and I'll translate it into "National University of Distance Education" what means that I don't have any neither class or teacher to learn, so you have to learn everything by yourself. Well, we really have teachers, but on the phone. It wouldn't be a problem if they were there when you need help, but they only have one afternoon a week to be available and they're normally not there when you call. So I could say we don't have any help. They're payed the same as any other university teacher but they don't teach anybody. So I coud say they're the worst class of clerks, even for spanish standards.

Sometimes I did talk to them but with no result, it was helpless, how can you ask something about maths, or physics, or programming with them not being here to show the equations, programs, or anything. We can use email, but I believe it's even worst.

So the recipe of UNED could be:

Pick the most lazy clerks from universities, the most stupid clerks from administration, build a website, take a lot of money from the government and the pupils and mix all togheter in a building in Madrid with a telephone line that doesn't work built by the worst telephone company in Spain, but not the cheapest (Telefonica), and you have a perfect excuse to earn money and not to work.

The idea could be great, it could be perfect for those guys who don't like to go to classrooms or who don't have the time to go because they have a job. But the problem is this is Spain and nothing works here. As everybody's idea of a perfect job is to be a clerk is understandable.

Another interesting fact, we have some test type exams in wich you have an optical page, that means you have squares to tick and they'll put the exam on a machine that will correct automaticaly the exam and give the right mark. So you can think it's very easy to correct all those exams (sometimes they can be thousands) and fast. You think it won't take more than days and only with the effort of being there to feed more paper to the machine. Bullshit, that's too much work for them, and they can't be there to feed the machine because they have more important things to do, as having a coffe or being drunk in the morning. So an exam that could be corrected in a week takes two months and a half.

Now I'm waiting for my exam's correction. I need it to be fast 'cause as you know I'm leaving. I tried to call the teachers (I have two for the same subject) but, of course, they weren't there. I send them a useless email on the hope they'll see it next monday, and I can only wait, but I have no time really.

Hope everything will be ok. But I can't avoid to be angry with my hhkjgsyfg university, it's 4 years since I started studying in UNED and it's long enough.

The last month

Sorry for being late. But I have an exam next Monday and it might be the LAST one. I'm studying a lot and I don't really have time to even relax.

Yesterday was the 2nd oc September, and for those who don't know what that means I'll tell you that I leave on the 2nd of October. So that means yesterday started my last month in Spain.

As I was walking on the street, in one of my little walks with wich I award myself for a long studying day, and I was wondering and dreaming about my last month here. I found it really interesting to say goodbye to the "marulos". So I started to see things with a different point of views, more like if I was a tourist. I walked on the same streets I've been walking for 27 years but, this time, with a different sight. I found it really nice and I enjoyed a lot those little walks. I saw all the tourist, this town is really crowded with tourists, walking on the main street, shouting if they were Spaniards or just wondering if they were foreigners.

I tell you it's easy to differenciate what kind of tourists they are, and not only because of the clothes they're wearing. If they are Spaniards they look at everything like if they weren't from the same country, but of course it's really easy to see they're. They came from a different town not really far away from here, but as they see we speak with a different accent and our shops are slightly different they believe we are just yokels and they're sofisticated city fashion people. So they have this kind of sight of "look at those poor little rustics". They look at all the old buildings and talk, and talk, and talk. There's always a guide telling them about the buildings, but don't trust them to listen really. They just walk in big groups not letting anybody to pass throug them. If you find them better to walk to the next street and never try to pass through.

I'll speak about something interesting my friend Faye noticed. When you walk on the street and somebody comes opposite in front on you, he'll never move a finger to let you pass, so you have to move not to crash on him. After she told me that, and after she made some experiments like not moving when she finds herself on that kind of situation, she realized (as she told me) that they'll preffer to crash than to be moved from their way and, of course, there's no "sorry" from them (neither from Faye). So I had to check myself this and I did. It's absolutely true. As I said before, don't expect big groups of Spanish tourist to move.

Anyway. It's less than a month (a day) and I'm really excited and happy to leave this country. I love it, I won't say I don't, but I'm really bored of the same thing day after day. My critic eye is impaciently waiting to be trained in new cultures. So after critizising Spaniards I can't wait to do the same with you English. Don't expect me to be really good, unless you're so, so good I can't do it (I don't believe that could happen, anyway).

I'll write later telling you how it was my exam. In fact I might tell you about Spanish universities.

Have a really nice time.