A new duty

Hello all you.

Last weekend was going to be a horrid one, but in the end sunday was going to be one of the nicest on a long time. It was cold, very cold, my computer was broken for the whole weekend and I was knackered. I went to have dinner with my flatmates. While we were dinnering I looked to the street and it was snowing!!! It wasn´t just small flakes, but big ones. I went out fast, as I came from a coast town snow is something really strange and new for me. I stand under the falling snow and enjoyed it. I did it because I thought it was going to stop soon. I went back to the restaurant and finish my meal. We went home and I was surprised not only to see it hadn´t stop snowing but also when it came to the ground it didn´t melt. So it was really snowing as I always see on pictures. So I enjoyed it, I went home to pick my camera, and walk the street taking pictures and making snow balls to throw at my flatmates. I walked to my car to see how it looked like and it was beautiful. I was feeling like a child and I liked it. I went bed feeling happy.

Next morning the snow was still there. I went into my car and wiped out the snow on the screen. The road was difficult and not only because it was slipy but also because all the cars were as slow as turtles. So it took longer than usual to get to my job. I believe we don´t receive enough driving education in Spain. People doesn´t know really how to drive with bad climates or situations. Yes, you should slow down, but you still have to be careful and care of others. Being as slow as a turtle doesn´t solve all your problems, in fact, there´s a possibility if everybody is too slow the ice doesn´t melt so it´s still there while if everybody were a bit faster it would have melted making it easier. I know it sounds strange.

Changing the subject. I´ve been commended with a new task. I´m going to be the godfather (I don´t mean Marlon Brando) of my possibly new niece (it depends on the gender wich is still unknown). And also I´ve been told to think about names. I have some on my mind, but it´s really hard to do it. You have to be very careful because it´s going to be with him all his life and it could also change it completely. I like names with a meaning, and also historical names. I suggested some like "Satan", "Belcebu", "Nosferatu", "Osam... Ben...." (I have to be carfeul if I don´t want my blog investigated by the CIA), but of course she didn´t like them (as a joke it was funny, or at least she laughed at it, I hope George W. B. has a good sense of humour). Seriously I thought about Linus but spelled on a Spanish way, wich sounds something like "Leenus", I also thought about Amadeo (but it has a religious meaning) and some others.

I would like you to suggest some names, as an interactive game. The only requisite is it has to sound nice in Spain, I mean, it´s chav to call a child "Jeniffer", "Kevin", "Samantha", "Josua", ... in Spain, so it shouldn´t be an English name, but there´s some of them I like. I´ll left it to you.

Thanks for your efforts (I´m anticipating you´re going to do some).

Cheers and farewell.

Manoel.

In the morning

Good morning fellows.

I know most of you are still in bed, I wish I could also be, but I´m not. I´m waiting for the server to become available as when I arrived this morning it was down. That means I can´t work. I should be happy as most Spaniards would be about having an excuse not to work. But the fact is I´m not because it means I don´t know what to do. If I has known it I would have stayed in bed today. At least it gives me a moment to write.

Well it´s my second giving up smoking week. I´m afraid I failed during the weekend, but I have kind of an excuse. I shouldn´t have any excuse to smoke, but to say the truth I had horrible pain on my teeth and because of it I ended smoking again. I´ll start the proccess again this week and I hope this time it´ll be better. I have what´s called "bruxismo" in Spanish and it´s I move my mouth and press it hard when I´m sleeping and also grits. It´s hardness depends on how stressed I feel, and how much tense I am. Last week seemed to be a stressful one, but it wasn´t related to my job, but to the fact I wasn´t smoking and my body reacted that way. So as I spent the night biting nothing but my own teeth I felt tired and painful. The first day I tought it was I had decay but next day I felt it on another tooth so I kneew it was the "bruxismo" thing. I´m having pills before I go to bed now, I bought some muscle relaxants. I hope they work.

Changing the subject I´ll start again talking about driving. There´s some bad things about the roads here, at Madrid. The major is working hard on renewing roads. It should be something marvellous, and I`m sure it will, but at the moment it only makes driving harder. It´s not only my GPS turns crazy when I want to go anywhere as roads changes every day their paths, but also the lane signs on the road aren´t clear. I mean today the lane is marked on white and it follows a path, next day you´ll have both the white and a new yellow one wich differs completely but not enough to know wich one to follow. The law says you should follow the yellow one, but when it´s dark, foggy and/or it´s raining it´s hard to guess wich one is yellow. But that´s when you only have two of them, sometimes there´s three, four or even more.

To drive in Madrid you have to be rude, and also aware of other drivers. You have always to expect them to be naughty, and it´s specially bad during traffic jams. It´s war time. If you insult somebody before they move their cars you won´t be wrong and they won´t be offended in fact I´m sure they had mented your mother before you opened your mouth. There´s a lot of motorways here, it´s a good thing, they surround all Madrid so you can go anywhere without entering the city. But in some ways they aren´t motorways. It´s speed limit is 20 Kmph less than normal motorways, and they are full of speed cameras, you should be aware of it and also it´s easy to notice as there are signs saying it as at England. So there´s no excuse for you if you´re catched speeding. I would understand if you come fron outside Madrid if your´re speeding, but if you´re from here I don´t. I realized some idiots speeding (and really fast) exactly at those points where there are cameras installed. Sometimes I even noticed the flash as they were photographing the idiots. I don´t feel sorry for them.

I hope this weel would be better for me, specially about smoking. And also I hope you too.

Farewell readers.

Manoel

Driving in Spain

As you should all know if your good enough to read my blog, I acquire a car recently. It´s almost a month since I bought it, and I spent two weeks driving at Madrid. I guess it´s time for me to tell you about driving at Spain.(I won´t talk about driving on the right side for you english people, as it´s a perfectly known matter).

I had driven at Galicia since I got my license, so my knowledge was restricted on how we Galicians drive. There´s much to tell you about that matter, but I´ll focus on the differences I percieved between Galicia and Madrid. But also there´s some differences between my old town "Pontevedra" and any others.

The first thing I noticed and also probed in the last two weeks it´s the lack of using "intermitentes" (the lights you use when you want to change your direction to tell other drivers your intention, sorry for not knowing the proper word for them). There´s a big difference between small towns and big ones. On small towns you use them (except on roundabouts, even when you should), but on big cities you don´t. The reason, or at least my believe, is on big cities you have a lot of different lanes where you should be if you want to go to different places while on small towns there´s normally just one. You change the lane in wich you´re in so much you finally stop using them. But it works for all the people that lives there as they´re aware of it. Beware of you poor country boy.

There´s also some more differences between small and big towns, but they´re mostly related to speed. At Pontevedra the fastest you could drive would be on the "ribiera"(as my father calls it) where there´s a 60 Kmph (35mph+-) wich allows you to be at 80 or 90 Kmph (in Spain we have something called the rule of the 20%, wich applies to speed measures and is a legal term that allows everybody to be at a 20% more than the speed limit because of the imperfection of the machines, wich is totally false as those can measure your speed with a 99,9% accuracy, but it´s legal, so you do it, and also as all the speedometers on cars lie about 15kmph allows you to be at 30% more of the limit). But on big cities as Madrid there´s a lot of motorways and your speed average gets over 90kmph (unless you´re on a traffic jam, wich happens all the time).

The bigger difference I got between Galicia and Madrid is about how drivers react to our actions. The people from Galicia is known for being bad drivers, but I don´t believe the topic. It´s hard to happen you´re beeped when you do something wrong at Galicia but at Madrid it happens even when you hadn´t. It seems people is aware of everybody doing the wrong thing, so they beep just in case it happens. I mean, the other day I was getting into a lane, I had to stop if there were cars coming, but instead of reducing my speed I did as I always do, I mantained my speed wich wasn´t too high to be able to see if they were cars coming and if they weren´t or if they were slower than I I would be able to enter the road without much disturbances for myself and other drivers would come behind me, I believe that´s the way it should be. But as soon as I saw two cars coming and was prepared to brake they beeped as their lives were in danger. There was much more than enough time for me to brake and for them to do the same, but they beep anyway. After that I realized it happened all the time, as they were used to people doing bad things on cars ( I hope you get what I mean). Since then I watch carefully for other drivers reactions and noticed they always expect you to be wrong. In some ways it´s better than not doing it, but for myself it´s quite annoying as it sounds they don´t trust me as a driver.

Driving at Madrid could be quite stressful for some people. They change the lanes everyday (the mayor is doing big changes, just look on google for "Madrid", "carreteras" (roads) and "Gallardon" (The mayor)). Even my GPS navigator get´s crazy some times, poor little thing. Most of the stress is related about the way roads are built, I believe with some minor changes it would be ok. But also because education seems to be lost when you speak about travelling (I´m not only speaking about driving this time). Drivers at Madrid are far more agressive than outside it. They´ll pull you out of the road to be 5 seconds earlier. They´ll block the way if an ambulance is coming not to be late. They´ll pull their cars on the lane to block your way and make you brake hard just because they want to use your lane.

I love driving, and I´m not worried about driving here. I consider myself as a polite driver wich makes me feel sometimes weird when other beep me when I let somebody to get into my lane. But I don´t care.

I´ll tell you more about the matter, but I should go to bed know. God (or whatever you believe in (not god for myself) bless you all.

Farewell.

Manoel.

PS: Be careful on the road, please.

After Chirstmas

Happy new year fellows.

I´m back at work. It´s very difficult to start working again after a 10 days holiday. I have to be up early once more, and go to Repsol to spend almost the entire day being a bit bored. Although I hadn´t rested during holidays. I should have stayed at Madrid.

When you live outside your own city and can´t see your relatives often it happens when you go back to your old town that you don´t have a free day to do nothing. It´s even worst when you also have a girlfriend and visit her and her family. You don´t have enough time to visit all your own relatives but also you have to visit hers. And in my case it´s even worst. My girlfriend´s mother has another 7 brothers and sisters, I was lucky not to have seen them all.

At the end although I was supposed to sleep and rest during holidays, I ended far more tired than before.

Anyway, I had a very good time visiting my old town, friends and relatives.

I´ll start soon with the new series of car stories. I had a few after two 7 hours trips from Pontevedra to Madrid. I needed 4 hours to drive 25 miles from Madrid to Guadarrama tunnel last 23th December. I had driven at night at a crowded road almost all the way. But there was nothing to mention, apart dangerous overtakings and some bas..ds close to my car´s bottom when I was overtaking at maximum permited speed. It´s like the road only belongs to them. That´s my most hated car behaviour, and specially at motorways. If you´re driving at 90 miles per hour, you see them coming on the mirror as arrows and instead of braking they mantain their speed. If you can´t finish overtaking (and also because you have the right to do it) they´ll finally brake, but only enough to make you feel nervous as they approach your rear, they´re as close as touching your car. I always have the temptation to brake or at least to touch the pedal enough to turn on the break lights to scare them, but after an incident on a road I stopped doing it, I don´t want to feel guilty if I provoque an accident, although they deserve it. What happened that time was a crapy car was doing the rear thing to me on a road, he couldn´t overtake because there were cars coming in front (it was a single lane road). The car was a Sear 127 tuned, but that only means it´s crap with some furnitures, and not a very safety car. So after a while I was pist off and decided to turn the brake lights on. I didn´t really brake, but the guy was so surprised that he moved the wheel and change the lane dangerously. I could hear the tyres being burned while he was trying to control the car. I really believe he deserved to feel in danger, but I could have provoked an accident with a poor guy coming from the opposite direction, and that´s being like them.

Well I hope you had a nice xmas and also that you´ll be happy and lucky this new year.

Greetings and farewell.

Manoel.