An Spaniard in UK

Tuesday 8am

2006-03-28T08:02:00.000+02:00

Good morning.

I´m a bit angry today. As I left the car parked where I work, I noticed a scratch on the rear of my car. It wasn´t a small one but a big one, and also the bumper was out of place (well, just a bit). That turned me mad for a short while. It seemed like somebody parked behind me on the street didn´t gave a damm bloody shit when he left the place. But I´m sure he noticed it, he moved my car and it must have been dificult for him to push my car and get out of the parking lot. But instead of leaving a note saying sorry, please this is my number call me if you have a problem, it´s better tu runaway.

I care a lot about my car, I don´t like scratching it, I like it brilliant and beautiful. But it seems I shouldn´t care that much, as more as I care as less as everybody else doesn´t.

Anyway, have a nice day.
Cheers.

Manoel.

A monday at 7pm

2006-03-27T08:39:00.000+02:00

Good morning fellows.

It´s hard enough to work on mondays. But today it´s not only monday but an hour earlier. The hour has changed at 2am Saturday to 3am. So we´ve lost an hour. It´s said we save 1€ a day on electricity but I´m not sure it worths the 6€ we´ll save till next time change. I feel like it´s 7am instead of 8am, I just want to be sleeping.

I have a doubt, what happens with that hour lost in time. And what happens if you have a date at 2:30am, will it be changed automatically at 3:30am, or you won´t have that date?.

I bought a new digital camera on Saturday at Carrefour, pretty nice one. I needed almost an hour to do it, it was quite crowded and there was just one guy to attend everybody at the photography department. That´s the way it works on carrefour, it seems like they don´t want us to buy anything. The poor guy was overwhelmed, but I believe it was not only because it was crowded, but also for his inneficiency and lack of brain. I had to wait half an hour to be attended by him, but also when he did he was attending another three people at the same time. I asked him to bring me th camera I wanted and he left. He came back and told me there were no cameras left, then I asked him if I could buy the one was showed (paying much less) and also I felt happy in a way, so it´ll be much cheaper. Just to do that took more than 15 minutes. While he was doing so he was trying to talk with another 3 customers. Then he told me he couldn´t find the box, and I said it didn´t matter. Finally he went again to the warehouse and when he came back he brought a brand new camera. He told me they had just came from the lorry, but I´m afraid the first time he didn´t know where they were.

I worked at carrefour once, and I know how it works, so I can´t feel angry at him for making me lose an hour of my life. So finally this weekend I´d lost two hours of my life doing nothing, well, at least I remember the later hour.

Cheers.

Theremon.

A bugs life

2006-03-07T12:09:00.000+01:00

Hello and good morning bloggers.

When I was on the bathroom getting ready to have a shower I noticed something moving beside my suit. I got near it to get a closer view and I noticed it was a cockroach upside down. It was trying to return to it´s walking position unsuccesful. I must admit I´m very brave with a lot of things but insects, at least I´m brave enough to admint I´m scared of most insects.

It must have been a trauma when I was a child, but I don´t remember it, so it seems to be just an unreasonable fear. I can touch flies and some others (a few), but I can´t even be near most. It´s even hard to touch them without using my hands (a piece of paper, gloves, etc.). So, when I saw that alien black big horrible thing from outer space I admit I was afraid. There were nobody to help me so I had to do it myself. It took me 10 minutes just to decide killing it before throwing it on the bathroom. I had to kill the cockroach because If you don´t it´ll come back again as water doesn´t kill them.

So I encourage myself and push a piece of paper on its head. I crashed it, but it was still moving. I press again and once more it didn´t die. With rage I took it with a piece of paper and throw it down the toilet. I flushed and it dissapeared.

I feel sorry for her. She hadn´t done anything bad to me except being alive. I know they carry deseases, and dust, and they´re unhealthy, but I can´t stop thinking about the little cockroachies waiting for her mum or dad to bring them food. But I only think about that for a short while, next time I will be cruel once more.

R.I.P. Cockroach

Manoel.

A long time

2006-02-28T10:53:00.000+01:00

Hi fellows.

I´m sorry, I now it´s a long time since my last post. And I also noticed a decrease in visits, it´s totally my fault, I´m lazy. I beg your pardon.

It´s been two weeks since my last post. IT has snowed twice since, and the second one was only but wonderful. The snow flakes were as big as my thumb, and even bigger. Unfortunatly it was 2AM on Saturday night, wich made it impossible to become an excuse not to go to work. When I woke up the street was completly snowed 20cm thick. Even the road was snowed making it hard for the cars to pass. It was beautiful.

I have bad news about me being a godfather. There´s no new born baby anynmore, at least this time, my best wishes to my sister, there´ll be another chance. It was a medical decission not to have it, so there was nothing to do but to trust them.

I feel a bit ashamed about my job. It´s the second week without anything to do, so I spend the day googleing, reading emails, and doing nothing (I know I had no excuse not to have written a new post). So I´m being payed just for waking up early in the morning, driving 20minutes and spending the day beside my desk letting time pass by. It´s not completely my fault, the reason was the company that hired mine estimated the completion time over 10 times the reality. I believe my partner and myself made it possible, but it resulted on not having anything to do at the moment. I know we´ll have some work in the future.

But there´s more than just one guilty. I´ll try to explain as best as I can. three companies (I´ll call them "1", "2" and "3")were offering different prizes for the Repsol´s project. "3" retired. So there were two companies offereing completly different prizes, "2" two times more the cheapest. So Repsol decided to give the project to "1" but then "2" made a new and much cheaper offer. At the last time they decided to talk to "1" and threaten them. They offered sharing the project and regret their offer and "1" accepted, except the money the different companies got at the end was like 30% for "1" and 70% for "2", I mean the worst was for "1"wich wich made the best offer at first and the threatening company "2" got 70%. So the project belongs to "1", even when they earn less money from it, and also they are the head of the project, if something goes wrong it´ll be their fault, strange isn´t it?. My own company is only a collaborator, we get payed by "1" and not from Repsol.

At the moment, "1" has finished 90% of their job (thanks to us) but "2" hasn´t done anything yet. There´s been some tension between them for the last two weeks and as a result I can´t continue working because I need some data from the lazier company. But as we say in spanish "A mar revuelta ganancia de pescadores" wich could be translated freely as "On a sea storm the fisherman wins", I mean when something goes wrong there´s always someone who´ll earn something from it. It could be my own company. If "1" get´s really bored and angry at "2" they could fire them (even losing money) just not to make Repsol mad at them (actually they are mad with "2" but as "1" is the head of the project and the one who receives all the money (later they´ll give the 70% to "2") they´re are annoyed with "1"). If "2" got expelled from the project there´ll be more work to be done, and we´ll do it (my company).

But at the moment I´m totally bored and I just want to go home. It´s only being bad for myself, as I get used to do nothing, and later it´ll be difficult to start working again. There´s also the other people at the office could believe I´m a lazy bastard and also I´m cheeky, but it´s not my fault. I hope I´ll have some work soon or I´ll get crazy. I told my boss and he told me it´ll be possible to move me from here, but it´ll be easier to move my partenr as I´m the responsable one of us (kind of a small boss, with 1 person at my charge, it should be nice).

Well, let´s see what happens. At least I learned yesterday my company trusts me, and I also learned they had given me more responsabilities than I thought. I hope they remember it next year when we talk about my salary ;-)

Hope everything´s fine with you. See you soon and please don´t forget I exist, even when I don´t write that often.

Farewells from Manoel.

A new duty

2006-01-31T09:41:00.000+01:00

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

2006-01-23T08:34:00.000+01:00

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

2006-01-13T01:33:00.000+01:00

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

2006-01-04T08:58:00.000+01:00

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.

Christmas´s coming

2005-12-20T11:08:00.000+01:00

Merry Xmas bloggers.

Yes, it´s only days before christmas. For most is a horrible season in wich we reeoncounter with old relatives and/or friends we didn´t really want to see. We eat and drink, and then we eat and drink, and on and on, ....

There´s some differences between spanish christmas and the anglosaxon. We spaniards are of fiesta type, so it´s easy to imagine we have a three weeks christmas. We both celebrate christmas eve and new years eve, but we also have "three orient kings" eve. For us those three weeks, from the 24th ´till the 6th of Jan. are christmas. If you don´t know about the three orient kings those are wich brought little Jesus presents following the christmas star to christ´s birthplace. So our children receive presents on the 6th directly from the three kings. We called them "Los tres reyes magos" and are Melchor, Gaspar and Baltasar. They´re supposed to come from far away reigns and if my memory doesn´t fail one of them is jew, the other indian and the last african. They travel using camels and brings gifts and presents. As well as Santa they come at night, but instead going down a chimney they just open a window, wich is far easier and cleaner. I´m just worried about how easy is to open my window from the outside, hopeful the kings doesn´t teach thieves.

On the past few years Spain became a bit anglosaxon in some matters. I mean we copied Americans mostly and their customs. We exchanged our "Belen" (a representation of christs birthplace using small figures) and replaced it with a christmas tree. And also we put Santa Claus in the three kings place. I believe it´s not fair, although is an opportunity to receive two christmas presents instead of one, as most people just celebrate both. There´s something I don´t like about Santa and it´s the fact he comes from Coca-Cola, the jolly red guy.

As I got tired and angry with public transportation I decided to buy a car, and so I did last friday. I talked to a cousin of mine who lives here and also works selling cars and he showed me a good and cheap one, so the very same day I said yes.

This week I´m going to pick it up, I just hope they won´t be too spaniards and let me enjoy my new car as soon as possible. I´ll post a picture of it if you want. That gives me an opportunity to start new stories, this time about traffic jams. I´m sure I´ll have some.

Merry xmas to all of you and happy new year, hope next will be as good as this one for me.

Manoel.

PS: Colin, I hope I won´t find you on the road with my car, ;-)

Trains and other stuff.

2005-12-05T11:44:00.000+01:00

Hello bloggers.

I know it´s a long time since last post. I must apologize, but there´s no excuse except lack of time and will to write.

It´s been a year since I came to Madrid. A lot of things happened this year and most good ones. My life changed completely, as I promised when I started the blog. I live in my own house (well, shared, but you know what I mean), I have a job and I earn enough money to enjoy living and also the little luxuries I love (Except for the car, but that´ll come soon).

I remind you of that because christmas is coming, and it makes me remind last. I came from Madrid by bus and everything was full of snow, white, glassy, shiny, beautiful snow. My family was glad to see me because they hadn´t saw me in a long while. This time is longer. I would love to see them more often, but I can´t and also in some ways I don´t want to (please notice what I mean). I miss them, but not much because my mom loves me to call her as much as I can. Really I´d preffer to call her once or twice a week, but finally I call her every two days. That´s the Spanish mom´s like. But somehow this xmas is going to be special, because it´s the first time I´m on my own.

As you noticed by the post´s title I´m going to talk about trains. Trains is one of the reasons I want, and going to, buy a car. It´s not only they´re bloody late, but also they´re crowded and unconfortable. But the worst is timings. I can´t rely on trains, and the chedule is awful. If I miss the 7:30 I´ll have to wait at least 15 minutes to catch next one, and that´s only if I´m lucky enough not to have a train´s driver strike, or an electrical problem, or a broken train on the track, or... (there´s always something). Last week they had electrical problems with one of the tracks, it was casual that it only affected people who wanted to go where I wanted, I´m trying to be optimistic, but it did. A man was telling customers on the station speakers who should try alternative transport to go to Chamartin to catch the train from there. That was funny and annyoing, because there is no alternative. The underground to Chamartin is closed due to the construction of a new station and also it´s almost impossible to catch a bus to Plaza Castilla wich would be another option, but they´re full all the time, and also I´ll lose 30 minutes just reaching there. So there were no alternatives except paying a taxi or walking, both options would mean alosing a lot of time.

So I called my boss and warned him I was going to be late, blame renfe (the spanish railroad company, yes we only have one and it´s gubernamental, more or less). I waited for another train that was going to Chamartin, although didn´t to the place I wanted to go, but at least I could try Chamartin. The I had to wait for another 30 minutes but finally I could catch the right train to go to my job. I was lucky at the end, but for a trip that should take 45 minutes I needed 2 hours. I forgot to mention that the train was bloody crowded and stinky.

That´s why I want a car. I know it doesn´t mean the trip would take less time (well, actually it could), because traffic jams. And also I know you can never rely on the traffic. I could also be late, but at least I´ll be on my own car, seated and listening to the radio. I also love driving (I have no experience on big traffic jams, just only on small ones, but I`m not afraid).

There´s something else related to trains, my colleague at work. He´s not a bad guy, but he´s not what I consider as a funny guy. We go back togheter on the train often. So as I´m seated beside him I can´t listen to music or read my book, I don´t want to be rude. That wouldn´t be bad if he had a good conversation. I try hard, I speak, I ask him things, but he only answers and shut. So I spend half the trip silent. For the people who knows me in person, they know I can´t be quiet for a long time and I love talking, so it´s kind of a punishment.

Farewell and if I can´t write again soon Merry Xmas.

Manoel

Just another post.

2005-11-14T12:18:00.000+01:00

Hello bloggers.

The reason why I hadn´t posted anything on the last week is because nothing really interesting or funny had happened. Well, some things happened, like one of my flat mates is leaving the house. I also bought a TDT receiver card, in fact I bought two. last saturday I went to mediamark, an electronics shop just to see. Or at least that was my intention. But sometimes I can´t control myself and so I bought a USB TDT receiver. The TV signal on my bedroom is far from good, that´s why If I bought a TDT card I could receive TV signals with the best quality with my dodgie antena. The problem was the card was broken on a few days, so I went back to the shop on friday to take it back buying another one (I mean I didn´t buy the same brand, I bought a different (and much better) one). When I gave the box with the card to the shop assistant she opened it and checked there was everything there. She said it was Ok and gave me back my money. When I came back home I noticed I´d forgotten the remote at home. If anybody needs a Pinnacle 60e Remote Control I have one and no use for it.

As you know I´m working at Repsol IT office at trescantos. It means 45 minutes from home, using tube for 5 min. and then the train. It doesn´t sound horrible, except for today I needed almost 2 hours to get to trescantos. It seems there´s an unofficial strike of train drivers. Although the official one they had two weeks ago was finished, they´re still moving on. So the morning train was missing and I had to wait 30 minutes on the station. Then it came, and of course it was crowded with all the people who couldn´t catch the missing one and the people who normally uses next. But it wasn´t all that happened, after 20 minutes the train stopped on a station and the lights got off, it seemed the engine was stopped, at least I couldn´t hear it. After a while it started again, and began to move. The driver announced the train will stop at trescantos and nothing more, lucky me. I feel sorry for the people who wanted to go to colmenar as they´d had a bigger delay than I did.

After that I read the free newspaper they give you at stations, we have some in Madrid. It´s like at London, except nobody leaves it on the trains, wich means if you can´t pick it on the station there´s no other chance. I´m not sure if it´s rude or not to leave newspapers on the trains, as it might be considered as trash, but I remember picking it from the seat and being happy for somebody to have been dirty.

Anyway, I read on it that train drivers are using tricks to be on strike. They aren´t supposed to be, but they get late to the trains or even say they can´t start moving the train because there´s first aid boxes missing, or they have mechanical problems. The joke is the company believes the boxes are dissapearing as soon as they put them on their places, so it seems drivers are stealing them to have an excuse not to start moving the trains. Funny, isn´t it?

Well, I´ll continue the story, and I´m sure I´ll have some new train tales to tell you soon.

Cheers and farewell.

Manoel.

PS: Have you notices I put a banner with the weather near my house? I´m not sure you´ll like it, but then I can see my local weather just checking my own blog.

And so on...

2005-11-05T15:29:00.000+01:00

Hi fellows.

It´s the 6th day and we still have the princess on our TVs. It seems the country is anxious about seeing her face. Unexpectedly it wasn´t allowed to show the baby born princess, and still we wait (well, I´m not really interested). Usually I read the newspapers on the internet, and ocasionally I watch the news on TV after the Simpsons during the weekends. I don´t know what are they waiting for, and I have my own guess about the reasons. Either she´s too ugly and she´s taking surgery, or they´re waiting for the country to enjoy a little about it before they get too bored and listen to the last real important news, at that moment they´ll show her so they can forget real issues.

While the country is rejoycing with the new royal birth, there´s some other things happening. The miner´s strike, the "estatut", unemployment, etc... So it looks like a strategy from any smart gobernment, it´s like football or religion quoting Marx.

This week has been a week of pain, I´ve been a bit ill. I had kind of a cold and also I had the brilliant idea of playing a football match on wednesday as ill as I was. As a result I can´t breath properly, I cough and I had the last two days horrible aches on all my body as a result of running after a year of not doing any excercise. In the past I made a lot of sport, I went to gyms, play indoor football, basketball and swin, but since I came to Madrid I didn´t have enough time, energy and also I didn´t feel like doing any. So that´s why I decided to play the match. I also have bad knees, and I shouldn´t play football, my mum would be ashamed. But the most strange thing and also annoying is a feeling I´ve got on my left hand. I have what we call in Spanish "hormigueo" (I could translate it like ant-feeling) and also my senses seems to be shorter, I mean, I can´t feel temperature, pain with my left hand as with the right one. After some research I discovered it can be a compressed nerve, and it also said to go to the doctor inmediatly. I´ll do it this afternoon as it´s an annoying feeling, or better to say not feeling. But don´t be too worried as it also said it´s not really important.

On other hand I´ll move to my new location on Monday. My confortable life working at 15 minutes from my house is at it´s end. Next place will be at an hour from here and also means taking trains and buses again. I hope at least it´ll be a confortable trip. In some ways I´d like it, as I miss reading books on the tube, and also I miss watching people.

About underground, the last news are about security. There was an increase on attacks to people and security officers. The new measure includes 20 trained dogs. So the new Madrid´s tube will have dogs included. I like german shepperds, so I hope I´ll see them. I would like to touch them, but I´m not sure they´ll allow me.

Well, see you soon. I´ll tell you about my hand.

Cheers, farewell and have a nice weekend.

Manoel.

PS: Gracias por leerme Josito, estoy en Madrid, ahora trabajaré en Repsol. Mándame un emilio, please, de paso la dirección de Alfonso.

It´s a Girl

2005-10-31T11:31:00.000+01:00

Hi fellow Bloggers.

When I woke up this morning I was surprised with the most recent news. The Prince Felipe´s daughter has born. I don´t really give a damm ... with that kind of news but, as she is a girl, that means she won´t be king unless our constitution is changed (I mean, if the royal couple brings a boy to live after her). The Salic law is written on our constitution giving priority to boys over girls. So everybody is talking about changing that article of the constitution, wich means a long proccess. First the disolution of the "Cortes", then elections, and last a Referendum asking Spaniards if they want to be changed.

Of course everybody started to show their oppinion this morning. I heard a lot of times "of course it has to be changed, is anacronic with the era we live in". I think there´s something contradictory on that, because the first anacronism is that we have kings. I´m not sure they´ll want to ask on referendum what people wants, and I´m sure they´ll just ask about the salic law. I´m afraid they fear we could vote for a Republic.

Yesterday I´ve been on the Madrid "rastro" wich is a street market like Camdem Town. When I was at England a friend of mine told me he went to Camdem Town and thought it wasn´t like Madrid´s, in fact he said Madrid´s was much better. Now I know both and I can say how proud we are of our own. The "Rastro" is just people selling crap on the street, and I really mean crap. Apart from those who sell clothes, like on any town in Spain and Portugal, the speciality is people who sell anything they found on their homes and don´t want to have anymore, that could sound nice, like the boot sells at England countryside. But the impression I´ve got is they went into an abandoned house to get all they could find, and also some of them seemed to have gone into a dump. So it wasn´t like you could fine nice furniture or music instruments very cheap.

On the other hand I always heard about a special side of the market where they sell electronics. Digital cameras, mobile phones, PC components, ... All of them from a doubtful origin. I´ve also been told you cold be stolen your mobile and minutes after seeing it on a stand to be sold. This time the market was full of police, and that branch wasn´t there, it isn´t very nice from the police to wait for me to go to the market, at least I wanted to see it. Damm them!.

But there were two guys selling blank CDs and DVDs. They were very cheap so I bought some. The first one was the cheapest, and also he had some more stuff to sell, like VHSs, Tapes, Batteries, and strangely Condoms. Well, I´m kind of an IT freak, and I know a lot of real IT freaks, and the last thing we need (I said need, not want) is condoms. An IT freak doesn´t couple that much. I can´t imagine an IT freak buing 100 blank DVDs and also a condom box, it´s like he´s going to have a nice night, but doing what? Downloading porn films to be burned on those DVDs, no use for the condoms. I believe it´s like on drug stores, when you buy an aspirine box and with a lower voice you ask for a condom box. This time the freak goes shouting "I want a box of condoms..." and then lower "... and give me those 100 DVDs, please."

On our way back we saw a X film cinema. I thought they had disapeard on those internet times, but it seems they haven´t. Well I never saw the use for a X film cinema. I know I´m being dirty today, but I don´t like the idea of watching a porn film surrounded by men watching a porn film. We all know what porn films are made for. I guess some men come to see the other men, ... On the other hand I saw a most disgusting thing, I saw a really old man entering the theater, I coulnd´t say more than "AGHHHHHH!!!" when I saw it.

Well, my greetings to the royal family, and also to those republicans who see on the little born princess an oportunity.

See you soon. Farewell.

Manoel.

The lazy bastard

2005-10-25T22:27:00.000+02:00

Hi fellow bloggers.

I´m not sure you´re still there. It´s a long time since the last post, and I´m afraid to say it was totally my fault. I hope you still come back some time to check if I had written and you didn´t lose the hope to read something. Sorry.

As you know I´ve been unemployed for the last two weeks. It was a time for relaxing and francly doing nothing but watching movies and eating sunflower seeds (I love them). I also went to Pontevedra to see my family and friends. I also had a chance to see how little changed is my old town. I went by plane, and this time it wasn´t a quiet flight, we had turbulences and also a problem when we reach Galicia. It was cloudy, and the pilot began descending, I´m used to it, I usually play a computer game called Flight Simultator so I`m familiar with the process. The problem was the altitude wasn´t as indicated on the panel (I know that because of the game) and sudenly a mountain appear on sight. I could hear the roar of the engines and felt we were going upwards faster than normal, but not enough for the rest of the passengers to notice. As I said I know how piloting works (at least a little) and I could notice something was going wrong, but not really wrong I mean, I´m sure it´s perfectly normal, it was just another event on my flying career.

I started my new job, and I´m quite happy as everything seems to go better. I´m not too hopeful to be prepared for the worst to happen. I know I sound a bit pesimistic, but unfortunatly life has kicked me a bit not long ago, so I´m just preparing my bottom just in case. I´m going to work for Repsol (well, my company does, and as a result so do I), wich is an oil company, I´m not hopeful to get petrol discounts, and also I don´t have a car, but it would be nice.

I don´t like talking about politics, specially because I don´t belive on it, it´s kind of a religion. And also my fellow blogger and friend Colin does write about the last Spanish politics affairs. So I don´t feel in the need to. But you might want to know my opinion about the latest Catalonian and "estatuto". Well, I have an oppinion, but Ì´m sure it has nothing to do with the Catalonians, PSOE or PP (Political Parties). Everything´s a mess, they play with words as the people doesn´t really understand the real meaning of all. They use the words "nation", "nation of nations", "autonomía", and some others as it they didn´t have a proper meaning. I thought we had a rich language, but it seems nobody knows it, I wander if they have a dictionary to check the definition of them all. The purpose is we believe what they want us to believe, if it´s the Catalonias who´s speaking they´ll try to convince us they have rights, they deserve more. If it´s the actual gobernment (PSOE), and specially if it´s our president who´s talking, they´ll try to make us believe nothing really is happening, and they´l try to convince both, the catalonians, and the rest of Spain, that nothing´s going to change except if it´s going to be better for everybody. If it´s the PP, the opposition party, they´ll talk about the fall and ruin of the constitution and the Spanish nation. One doesn´t know what to believe, so I just think everything is a big lie sweetened with honey words. Nothing is going to change, as it always does in terms of politics.

On other hand, we have the chicken flew, wich has been a big issue for the last two weeks. Day after day, another chicken, parrot, goose or whatever is found dead with simptoms of the flu. No man has died from direct contagion from another man, and yet just 2 guys died from it (I´m not sure about the real numbers, but I know it was just a few). And also there´s not evidence about a muted flu virus. There´s also the fact we don´t have a vacine for the virus, it´s perfectly logic, as there´s no virus at all yet. But European governments are expending a lot of money and time on the case, buying antivirals and convincing us to be afraid of nothing. I´m not sure it´s not another trick so we can forget about the European constitution catastrophe or the Catalonian "estatut". I´m quite a scientist, or at least I consider myself as one, and I play with evidence; by the time there´s none to be alarmed. If something really happens I won´t be surprised by the chaos.

I can´t promise to write every week, but I´ll try. blessings, farewells and my best wishes and thoughts for all you.

Manoel.

"Volver a empezar"

2005-10-09T14:35:00.000+02:00

Hi bloggers.

For those who can´t read Spanish or don´t know that was the title of a Spanish old film wich won an oscar I´ll translate it as "Begin the Beguine".

I choose the title as I´m starting again a new job. I could seem I can´t long on any job s I get tired and bored of doing the same thing again and again. You could also think as the England thing is finished I don´t see the point on staying with my old company. I´d be lying if I say it hasn´t has a bit of thruth, but the main reason is far from being my fault.

I´ve spend the last 4 days enjoying myself, and being sick (I have a cold). I´m unemployed at the moment, wich doesn´t mean I don´t have a job but I´ll start the new one on a week and a half. But at this time I´m making the unemployment list bigger (I feel sorry for Mr. Zapatero, our president, well I don´t feel really sorry). It´s not my own idea to leave my old job that soon, well, it was my decission to resign, and I did it on wednesday, but I didn´t want to leave the office so soon. Normally you have to tell you´re leaving 15 days before, sometimes it´s even more than 15 days, as they count as laboral days, so it´s three weeks. But they didn´t want me to stay in the office if I was leaving.

Let me tell you what have taken me to resign. Of course you´ll only get my point of view.

First of all let me describe how things went at England. I had a very good time and also a very bad time. As I talked with one of the only good bosses I had at my last company he told me he believes it was a mistake to send me to England without enough knowledge on both the job and the environment. I totally agree with him, except for the job knowledge. The office at the Abbey National bank it´s a viper´s nest. The banking offices are always full of bastards, because they had worked there for ages, and they see new people coming who would take their jobs as they have more IT knowledge and ambition. They are used not to work too hard, and when it seems the projects aren´t coming on time they normally accuse somebody else of their own faults. That happened to me, and also got as the main head to blame for any problem, I was the last one to come. What I did to solve that was just work as hard as I could and finish everything on time so I couldn´t be blamed. But it seemed not to be enough. But everything was told behind my back. I only knew somebody was talking badly about me from a second hand, taking the possibility of defending myself far away.

There´s also the problems we had at hotels. I don´t know who to blame for that, I believe it´s a mixture of both the hotel managers, my company and the travel agancy. On Mondays we came back to the hotel at night from work to check-in. We were tired and just wanted to go the room and rest. But on every hotel we´d had problems with the payment. They always wanted us to pay in advance as they hadn´t received a fax with credit card number and permission to be charged for our rooms. On some hotels they said it didn´t matter and everything would be solved on next days. On some others I had to argue for a long time before they allowed us to go rest. But I always felt ashamed, as I was a beggar who asked for a free room, or was trying to cheat them.

The last England problem was related to social security. I discovered last Monday, after the event who make me take the decission to leave, my company hadn´t talked to the social security about us going to work on another EU country. They should have asked for a TA-200 form, fill it and give it back to the S.S. (Social Security, not the german´s), then they´ll give them another three forms, the E-101, E-102, E-103, to be filled and taken to us to be signed, giving us a copy. Of course they didn´t. We didn´t have any medical problem or accident at England, but we could´ve had, and it could happened to us that the english hospitals could´ve denied service, or charge us for any treatment. They also should´ve given us the European Medical Card, and didn´t.

The last thing that happened was the worst. I would like you to tell me if I was wrong or not. Monday was my first office day after England. I came to the office as if it was my first day at the company. I´d rather knew my co-workers. I expected a good wellcoming, but I wouldn´t be surprised without any. What I didn´t expect was the welcome of one of the bosses and also the one who offered me the England trip.

I was talking with the secretary at reception about money and he came to me. He shaked my hand and I was expecting him saying "How are you?", "How things went in England?", etc. but instead he asked me "Who gave you permission to go to Galicia?". Well, I was a bit surprised about the question, but didn´t bother too much because it was them who gave me the permission. But them he told me off about it. He was talking to me in front of the secretary and also in front of anyone who walked in the reception coming back from having a fagg or drinking a coke. He told me I was cheeky and implied I was lying to them. I couldn´t explain myself at that time as he didn´t stop talking. The last thing he said was a threat, he told me "We´ll seek a way for you to pay for the trips you made, we might discount it from your salary". That left me on a shock.

Let me explain to you what happened on a friday, when I was called to be told about the trip I was going to do next thrusday (Monday was holidays). The explained quite a few things about the trip, they said they didn´t know enough about it as they were unexperienced about that kind of things. But they told me about the money I was about to receive and the things I was allowed to do with the flights. They told me I could chose between staying at England with the hotel payed or travel. I asked them about the weekend flight and also if I could travel to Galicia instead Madrid. There were two people there, and both with power inside the company. They said I could do it, but I´d had to ask our client at the bank.

When I was at England I asked him, and he told me I could and also asked the travel agency for the flights. I wanted a direct flight to Galicia, but they didn´t want because it was more expensive than going to Madrid and then to Vigo. I didn´t bother as it wasn´t my own decission. But I didn´t know it could mean a difference for my company.

After being told off by that guy, I talked to another one, one who was present when I asked if I could go to Galicia, and he told me he remembered them giving me permission. But he also told me the problem was I´d taken to flights instead a direct one. I tried to explain him it wasn´t my fault and also it was because it was cheaper.

Afterwards I decided to leave the company and started seeking for a new job. It only took a day to have a new and better payed one.

The problem is I was told off in public, in my own way it shouldn´t have been like that. If you want to tell something to an employee take him apart to talk privatly, specially if you have to tell him off. And also, you should give him a chance to explain himself, or at least ask somebody else about the subject without pressuming guilt. He told me with different words I was a cheater, a lyier and a bad guy, and he told me in front of anybody.

I think I was right on being angry and leaving the company. Please tell me if I was wrong.

Anyway, I have a new and nicer job. Let´s hope everything goes fine.

Farewell.

Manoel.

The way back.

2005-10-03T14:53:00.000+02:00

Hello fellows.

Unfortunatly for myself and I hope for you too I´m back to Madrid.

It happened that I´m not needed anymore at Milton Keynes because everything is almost finished, so just one guy is able to do it.

That means a loss of money, fun, and some stories for yourselves. It also means I´m back at the office, with the feeling I don´t belong here, like being the new kid in town. The problem is I´m not the new kid in town, but that´s how I feel. It also happened that my old place is not yet mine, and they have to look for another one. Meanwhile I´m not working, I´m losing time doing revising the same websites again and again and waiting for 6pm to come and go home. It also means I´m back at my old boring way of living, with no new events and new people to meet, just the tube in the evenings.

Hopefully I´ll get another job soon, I´m starting my search again, because I don´t really like being here. There´s some things I don´t like in this company that I´ll tell you in the future. Of course there´s some nice guys in here, but they aren´t the problem. And also as I´ve lost some incomes and got used to have a lot of money, my actual salary seems not to be enough now. I am greedy, I know.

Í´m the kind of guy who doesn´t like to do the same thing all the time. As I come back it seems to me like a new start but doing the same thing, so it´s a strange new start, better to say it´s not a new begin at all. I want a real one, with more excitenment, new people and places.

But the fact I´m back here doesn´t mean I´ll stop writing for you, in fact it seems I feel much more as a duty to do it as you got used to know about my life and seem to like it.

I´ll be here for all of you, and hope everything get´s better and better.

Cheers and farewells.

Manoel.

The way Back home.

2005-09-26T13:04:00.000+02:00

What-u bloggers.

Sorry for being late. I didn't have a busy last week, buy I couldn't spend my time writing for you, I feel really sorry. The fact is I was moved to another floor in wich spending time doing my own stuff it's not possible, I mean, it's close to my boss desk.

But he's not here at the moment, so I'll take a while to tell you the most recent news.

I'm back to Spain. I don't know exactly the date, but it looks like it's going to be my last week at Milton Keynes. I'm not going to say I don't like the idea of going back. I'm definetly tired of hotels and the fact for the last month and a half I didn't have a proper room, I mean my own, a place where I can leave my suitcase and even unpack it. I didn't even spend my last weekends on the same places. So I have a feeling of not belonging anywhere. I also need some rest and stay at the same place for a longer time.

But I'll miss being here, and also the money I'm earning. I'll miss England and the friends I made here; the food, the pubs, and the beer. The strange people I met everywhere and the taxi drivers (some of them are nice, some others are just f...g b...ds(one of them had just stolen 4,20£ from me)).

Anyway, next week I'll tell you more as soon as I get some rest. It's a long time since the last time I had a proper sleep, meaning till late in the morning.

Cheers and farewell friends.

Manoel.

Just thoughts

2005-09-18T19:28:00.000+02:00

Hello fellow readers.

I'm enjoying a bit of rest at my home at Madrid. It´s a strange feeling as for some moments I didn´t feel like at home. On the last month I´ve been travelling, and I didn´t spend a weekend on the same place since today. I mean, I´ve spent my last weekends at London, Bournemouth, Pontevedra and now Madrid. So it´s the first time I´m repeating a weekend. I´m enjoying it, as much as I can.

I had some problems, they´re related to my job and bosses. Buty that´s something I´ll leave for the future if you excuse me. I just don´t want to talk about it right now. I´ll tell you I found out how bad could be the people want they want to be succesful and you´re in the middle.

For the last few days I´ve been thinking about flights. In the past I didn´t have enough experience to talk about it, but now I do have. Let´s say the flight to London from Madrid is an hour and a half, but why on the earth do we need to spend another 2 hours just waiting? We have to go to the airport and hour before, so we can collect our tickets, then we´ll have to wait another 30 minutes or even an hour to really get into the plane. Then We´ll have to wait because some son of a ... is late. Then as they were late we´ll have to wait another 20 min. as we lost our taxi position. Finally we leave the airport.

But that´s not the end of the story. At the moment the plane touches the ground, we wait ´till it gets to the parking area. Then we wait for the doors to be opened and we leave it. We walk to the luggage area. Then we wait again. As the belt starts moving we get beside it and look for the coming of our suitcase. I might be unlucky, but mine is always the last one to appear.

The meaning of all of these is I spent more then 5 hours on a trip that really just took an hour and a half. I don´t see the point of that.

Why can´t we just get beside the luggage door of the plain to get our own suitcases? Why do we have to wait for some lazy bas... to get to the gate on time? I´ll understand if the plane leaves the airport without me if I´m late, it´ll be painful but I won´t complain. I didn´t have any bad experience about them losing my luggage, but I just wonder how bad could it get.

I also saw the luggage carriers treating suitcases. I was on the Madrid airport and I had to travel by bus around it. I saw them unloading the trucks and watched how carefully they treated the luggage (I´m being sarcastic, you know).

Well, I´ll leave you now, as I have to go bed. I know it´s early, but I have to be up at 4:45. My plane leaves ar 7 and I don´t want to be late.

Cheers.

Manoel.

On the Road

2005-09-13T12:34:00.000+02:00

Hi bloggers.

Sometimes my life is a bit like the Kerouak's book. I mean I travel to different places, meeting strange people. There's some differences, because mostly I travel by train or plane, but it doesn't matter. Those last weeks I had different experiences with different people.

I met a guy half indian half pakistani. He was my taxi driver from London Heathrow to Milton Keynes two weeks ago (The one who was late). He was really nice and friendly and we chatted all the time. He told me about the problems with Cachemira, and the way his parents acted, considering they were from pakistan and india. He also told me about his religion (muslim) and the way he liked to live it. He was a nice chap and he gave me a good trip. Thanks to him.

I also met those koreans I told you a few blogs ahead. They were really nice, friendly and funny.

I met the hooligan, although I'd rather preffer not to have met him "feel my arm".

I also met some other Indians, but those weren't that nice as the taxi driver.

There also is the Jamaican security officer, friendly, amazingly funny and always happy. It's good to start the day with a laugh.

Some Spaniards I also liked, although they aren't something new to me. But I made some friends like Inaki, Alberto and others. I spend a lot of time with them, and we have pints togheter.

Yesterday we went to the pub in front of our hotel (at London). Alberto and another spanish chap were waiting for Inaki and I. When we arrived we saw them siting with another guy who looked totally English. Well, I wasn't exactly right, but he was Irish. They told us in Spanish he came and sit beside them and started to talk. So we joined them. The Irish was quite drunk, and he was mental, altough he was well dressed and didn't look a bad guy at all, except for his drunkness and the fact he didn't stop talking any second. We had a good time with him, but I could guess from my friends faces they were laughing a bit at him, not on a really bad way, you know.

Well, I'm supposed to be working at the moment. Hope I'll write again soon, I'll be at Madrid this weekend, I need to care of my little fishes and my bedroom. I'll write from there.

Farewell.

Manoel.

Airports and other stuff

2005-09-07T10:06:00.000+02:00

Hello again bloggers.

I'd never flight before october of the last year. But after that date, when my new live at England (and later Madrid, and then England again) started, I catched a few of them. At october everything was new and exciting to me, but it's becoming usual to me to go to the airport and do all the small things you have to.

Then my airport adventures started. Apart from some little problems with the metal detectors I didn't have any other. But last week I had my first airport day, quite an experience. I arrived at Barajas Airport at 7:15AM, time enough to do everything and even have time to rest and have a cigarrete. When I reached the desk the clerk asked me to show my id, wich I did. Then she told me it was over the date, meaning it worth the same as WC paper. The problem is you can't flight without it. I didn't have my passport with me, I had left it at home. She spent some time checking with a policeman if I could use my driving license. Finally he said it wasn't possible. But I had spent 15 minutes with it. She told me to go to the police station at the airport to ask for an emergency passport and so I did.

I asked the policeman at the door how to obtain it, and he told me (he was quite rude, because he was chatting with another policeman and I interrupted him, needing a passport it's not that important, you know) the office opened at 8:15. I realized it was the same for me to go home to pick my passport. So I started running with all my luggage. I catched the tube and arrived home with enough time, I was being lucky. I picked my passport at home and went to the underground again. But this time the train was late and slow. I arrived at the airport just 15 minutes before the plane was leaving but they didn't allow me to get in.

They told me to change my ticket for the next one, wich was at 9:25, but I was left on "lista de espera", meaning I could only travel if somebody didn't show. I waited and waited and feeling lucky because there were 3 seats empty still and we were 3 guys waiting for them. But the .*&'~$£ appear at the last minute so I couldn't pick that one. Next one at 12:45 she told me. That meant an almost 3 hours wait on an airport. It's amazing how slow the time passes when you have nothing to do but waiting impatiently. At 12:25 I asked how the thing was going, and the clerk told me it was going fine but I had to go to another terminal wich was on the other side of the airport.

But finally I could get into the plane, lucky me. Thirteen passangers were missing and we take off late. I forgot to say I couldn't speak with anybody at my office, so they didn't know what was going on with me. But I could speak with the taxi driver who was going to wait for me at the airport telling him to wait for me to call him before going to heathrow.

There I was at last at Heathrow. I managed to call the taxi driver, my office and everything seemed to go fine. But time passed and the taxi didn't appear. I called him and he told me he was at a traffic jam on the N25. A lorry had crashed and exploded it's gas tank and the motorway was a mess. He was 2 hours late but finally arrived and we went to Shenley Wood at Milton Keynes.

Final trip time: 13 hours!!!!!

Well, that was quite an adventure I think, and my first airport experience. I had some small others but I have to work, so I'll left them for next ocasion.

By the way, I'm staying at a luxury hotel at London. My bed is as big as five times the one I have at Madrid. I can sleep on any position I would want, crossed, diagonal, ... and it will be space enough still for 3 more people. The room is enormous and nice. I'll take a photo and post it next time with some other stories.

Farewell.

Manoel.

The Beggining.

2005-08-27T20:52:00.000+02:00

Hi fellow readers.

Some friends of mine, and also blogger readers, asked me if I was feeling good. It seems I seemed not to be happy, and it might be that when I wrote my last short post I wasn't. But the reality is far more complex than just feeling well or bad. I'm feeling ok, I have my good and bad moments, and also I met good and evil people on those two last weeks.

As I said on my last post, I had the opporunity to see the bad side of England, but I would be unfair, because I also saw the good one. Let me speak a bit about Milton Keynes.

Milton Keynes is a strange city. If I hadn't known from the scratch that it was a city, I wouldn't have thought Milton Keynes as it. The "city" is just a very big comercial center surrounded by some buildings, hotels, companies and a church. You could walk the entire city from side to side in just 20 minutes or less. So the impresion I got was "where are those 250k people?". It seems they live in small cottages in the surrounding areas. But there's a lot of money on the city. I saw a lot of really expensive cars and also there's the fact they have the biggest comercial center in England, an indoor ski field and big cinema. It's full of discos, clothing shops, restaurants, modern pubs, and all that kind of leisure things to expend money and time. I went out on thursday and it's full of young people having fun and drinking. You can be very bored there, but you can have a lot of fun, the distinction is there's always the same things, there's nothing else and nowhere to go apart from the city centre. There's also a lot of companies central offices there, so that's why it seems to be a lot of money there.

I work on the Abbey National office at Milton Keynes, designing the intranet web portal, wich is the tool they'll use at bank offices to make any transaction. It's not a bad job, and the office is 50% 50% of english and spanish people, so I can speak both languages. We have a lot of security guys there and I have to wear an ID all the time. Some of the officers aren't that funny, but there's some of them who are really kind, specially a Jamaican who always stop you to chat a bit, he even speaks in Spanish, well, not really speaks, but says some phrases, he's really funny. There's nice people there, spaniards and english.

But this time I had a chance to feel offended three times, not as my last time at London. I was called prick from a car in the street, I was told by the restaurant attendant "this curry is far too hot for you" (but I believe she told me that just because I'm spanish), and also we (My colleague Iñaki and I) have a problem with an English kind of drunk hooligan. I also don't feel my stomach really well, and I'm not sure why, it might be the water, wich doesn't taste really good at Milton (London water is much better), or it might be the food at the Abbey restaurant, I'm not pretty sure.

Let me talk about the incident with the bald dog. We (Iñaki and I) where having two pints after dinner at Lloyds. We were talking peacefully and drinking and then this piece of a bastard came. He was totally drunk, and he have the look of a holligan, no hair, muscles and a bad lookign face. He asked Iñaki for a cigarrette, wich I believe is a bit rude here (because of the price) but that's not too bad. Then he stayed there, standing up and mumbling nonsenses. I catch all of them but I forgot most, he said something like "fu ma una" wich I believed was "fucking Manchester United". He constantly tried us to touch his strong arms saying "feel my arm", where it was more like "fi ma am". I didn't touch it.

I know for sure he was just looking for an excuse to have a fight with us, and it was perfect for him because we were foreigners and we could misunderstood something and give him a bad answer. Of course my English is good enough to treat drunkens with no brain at all. He continued saying "I don fa mai", wich showed us he might want to fuck with us, he could be homosexual also, we weren't sure. And also "ma waif doen fa me", and then I understood he was just badly fucked.

He asked me if I wanted him to fight the people from the other table. I wasn't sure what to say, apart from I didn't also liked the chavs on the other table, I wasn't sure if it was right and also if that's what he was looking. We didn't want to find out, and as he gave us an opportunity to leave we did. The problem is we saw him again trying to get into our hotel 20 minutes later, we ran into the lift and that's the last time we saw him.

But not everything was bad last two weeks. I had a chance to meet really nice people, including colleagues at work, like Paloma (spanish), Aban (indian), my boss Rafa (spanish) who's really kind and nice, Chema (sp), Julian (sp), Kenny (an scotish), Dani (half english, half spanish), and of course Iñaki. There's some others but I forgot their names, I'm really sorry.

There's also this lad I met at work. I knew him since my university time, that's eight years ago. I never thought I would really see him again, and there he was at the Abbey National office at Milton Keynes. When I saw him I couldn't believe it. What the hell he was doing at Milton Keynes????? I couldn't believe it, and so did he. But it was true. So I have some friends there. In spain we say "the world is like a tissue", wich means that you never know who are you going to see anywhere (It sounds like a Forrest Gump phrase, doesn't?).

I spent my weekend at Bournemouth, visiting a really special friend. She's living there, and she lives with three russian girls and a Korean. The Korean girl had her fioncee there. He was visiting her for some weeks. They're lovely people, I really like them, or even more than just like. They're called Sary and Richard (those aren't their real names but their English adopted names). I made them promise they'd visit us at Spain on their honeymoon and I hope they will, because I really enjoy being with them. He's really funny and that kind of people who makes you feel well, because he's always smiling and laughing, he's got a nice sense of humour. My very kind regards to both of them. Wish we'll meet in the future, and also thank's for the Korean lunch. I loved my time at Bournemouth because I could enjoy both the koreans and my beloved friend.

My new Korean friends and my her

Well, I'm sure I left something. I have some more short stories about taxis, trains, and the feel I had at the Heathrow airport (full of policeman with big rifles). But I think it's enough for now.

Farewell and cheers everybody, or as I said all the time to the taxi drivers:

Cheers Mate!!

Manoel.

At Milton Keynes

2005-08-22T15:58:00.000+02:00

Hello bloggers.

Just a short briefing before I write a big post.

I'm enjoying the new place. I'm still not used to it,and I'm not sure I'll be used to it in the future. I'm living in a Hotel, so my suitcase is still unpacked and it won't be unpacked. I'll come back for the weekend to Madrid (I stayed at Bournemouth this last weekend) and then I'll undo my suitcase, but only to make it again on monday. So it's not a nice feeling, not having a proper home.

But that's just temporary, I'll come back to Madrid on three months, wich I started to like. I love Britain, but I need some stability first. I'll try to enjoy as much as I can this three months.

But I also had visions of the bad side of England, wich I didn't when I was at London. That's something to talk about and you might have some fun. But I'm at work now and I can't really write that much. Wait for the weekend, if you don't mind.

Thanks and cheers. Farewell.

Manoel.

An Spaniard in UK

2005-08-15T23:51:00.000+02:00

What-u bloggers.

It's ten to twelve and I should be sleeping. Tomorrow morning I'll have to be up at ten to five, so that means I'm not going to sleep a lot. But it doesn't matter, because the reason for me being up that early is a good one.

I'm becoming "An Spaniard in UK" once more. I'll be in England.

Sometimes you're lucky, sometimes you aren't. This is my turn. Not only I'll be back but I'd be payed to do so. It couldn't be better.

And it's also even more special as I'll be in contanct with both cultures at the same time, spanish and english. I'll have to speak with two different kind of partners, the spaniards and the english. It'll give me a better view and perspective. And also I'll know at the end what's like working with english people.

So I believe I'll have some stories to tell you next time. I'm almost sure I'll have an internet connection at my job, but if not I'll write when I come back to spain during the weekends (I won't come all of them, but some).

Now it's time for me to go to bed (Faye will love my way of saying it, that's why I keep it). I'm not sure if I'll sleep but I'll try.

See you soon.

Manoel, The Spaniard in UK.

New job, new life.

2005-08-09T12:48:00.000+02:00

Hi bloggers.

First I want to apologize. It's a long time since my last post. But there's a reason for that. I was waiting to know something about my moving to England and also I had problems with my computer at home (I'm writing this at my job).

I still don't have a date for moving, but I do know for sure I'm going to England. I'll be at Milton Keynes, 50 miles north of London, so I won't be exactly at London but close enough to pay a visit to my friends on weekends. I'll have the pubs, and that's something I really miss, so I'll be very happy. It's said Milton Keynes it's a new built city, so everything is not that old fashioned as the other parts of England I've seen, it would be interesting to see that other face.

But I still don't know when I'll be there, it'll be probably on the first week of september, but it's not for sure, the only thing I'm sure about is I'll be there. and I'm willing to.

About my new job, there's some pros and some contras. The first are not only more on number but better on quality. So I can say I'm really happy. I have a computer since the very first day, I'm working hard and I spend my time doing something. I also have internet, email, and everything I might need to do my job. My colleages are nice, young and funny. So everything is getting better.

But there are some pros, related to transport. I sleep an hour and a half more than before, but I go back home later. I don't have problems when I go to work, as there are a lot of buses to take, but when I go back, there's only a few of them. Yesterday I had to wait for an hour to take one, so I was an hour late at home. But I'm so happy with my new job that those problems aren't that important.

Hope I'll tell you more things about my moving. Farewell and be good.

Manoel.

Epilogue, but continuation

2005-07-22T20:52:00.000+02:00

Hi Bloggers.

It's made, it's finished, my relation with my old company. I still belong to them 'till the end of the month, but I'm on holidays so I won't go to work for them anymore (or at least on the next months, you never know). I went to work on Monday with the idea of talking with the human resources guy of my new company. I talked to him and he assured me I'd signed a contract with them through email. I checked that and it was true. So I decided to take the next step and I called my team manager. I asked him to see him so I left the SCH city and went to the meeting.

He was surpised to see me and, believe me, I loved the face he got when I told him I was leaving. We went togheter to his office to have a chat, I didn't want to but in some ways it was a chance of loosing time and not going back to work (I'm not lazy, you know, but I didn't want to travel again, it's 1:30 hours to reach the SCH city).

Then he asked me so many things and we talked for long. He asked the name of my new company, wich is totally wrong, he shouldn't. I was unconfortable with the question and I made a mistake, I told him I didn't remember the name, wich was totally stupid, and a total lie he could easily guess, and so he did. He didn't understand why I didn't want to answer the question, it wasn't really kind of him. Then he told me it was a pity I was leaving because they were really happy with me. He told me everybody thinks I'm a very good proffesional (in his own words, wich I liked) and a serious guy. Then he told me I could have gone to England with them, but without a salary increment. So what's the point I thought on telling me that stuff without making a counter offer. It was like him wanting me to feel guilty, and he spoke a lot, and he was near to convince me I was doing wrong. My will step over all that and I signed my resinging.

The next thing to do was telling him about spending all my holidays instead of going to work. He agreed with that, but, I told him I was going to work next day because I didn't want to left anything unfinished. He asked me if I was willing to go to work all the week if it was needed and I said yes, of course. So he told me he was going to speak with my boss and he'll tell me next day.

So I left, happy and tired of travelling. With my sign posted on a paper saying I left that bloody company.

Next day I had to face my boss at SCH and tell him I was leaving (I have a boss on the city and a bigger one on the companies office). Of course he already knew it because he had spoken with my other boss. Unfortutnaly he told me I had to work the rest of the week if I was willing (It was stupid to say, I didn't want to work, but I had to).

You know I didn't have much work on the past, but this week I had as much as the last 4 months togheter, but I managed to finish everything. Then on wednesday I almost had everything finished and I asked if I could leave on thursday, they agreed, they didn't have enough courage to push me to work on friday.

So yesterday I went for the last time to the SCH city (it could be it wasn't the last time, who knows the future). I bought two chocolate boxes as it's kind of a tradition to invite your colleages on your last day. I was surprise about how much they apreciated me, I didn't know. They were really happy for myself (except my boss) and they wished me a very good future althoug they were sure I'll have it. Some of them even told me I deserved a better job and salary. Some of them were a bit jealous about the going to england (wich is just still a possibility). But all of them were inmensely happy about me, it made me feel good, but a bit sad, I'll miss some of them.

Now I'm on holidays, havign a good time and waiting to go back to Pontevedra for a week to see my family and friends. I'll go on a plane this time, lucky me. I'll go to the beach also and to see Ryan the dog and my cat. I'll see the sea wich I really miss and visit a lot of people, so I hope I won't have time to be bored.

Well, I leave now. My best wishes and farewell to my old colleages. Also my love for England, and specially London, they are having a bad time. I hope I'll be there, I'm not afraid about the terrorist, specially because that's what they want and I don't obbey orders if I don't like them.

Cheers and farewell.

Manoel.

Again An Spaniard in UK???

2005-07-16T23:24:00.000+02:00

Hi fellows.

You might have noticed I'm not of the kind who can be stucked on the same job, task, place or whatever for a long time. In fact, I don't really like to do the same thing again and again, I soon get bored and tired. And also I'm sure you noticed on the last posts I'm not really happy on my job.

When something goes good, it could always turn into better.

An Optimistic

But it could also turn into crap

His negative friend

I decided to send some CVs last weeks, just for trying to see what would happen. What happened was I was answered really soon by all of them (they were three companies) and had 2 interviews during the week and a phone call. As I wasn't very lucky at my town when I looked for a job, this time it was the opposite. I got good answers and, in fact, I have a new job, better payed and more exciting.

In fact, I have an opportunity (it's just a possibility between another 3) of having the best jobh I could have (except on terms of money, it's good, but it could be much better. I don't ask for much, anyway). But I'll explain how the interview went.

I've got the feeling of me being the one who chosed. I mean, they were like it was my deccision not theirs from the very first call. That's a nice feeling, to feel appreciated because of your knowledge. I was asked to wait for a phone call to tell me the deccision (wich they had already made) and I thought it would take some time. But next day I received it. They told me about the money and I could even ask for more. They said yes to the amount I asked for.

But the best thing about my new job it's that possibility I told you before. I could work at London!!! and also being payed for everything, even have an extra amount of money. I'd go on Monday by plane and return on thrusday or friday each week. Also, if I decide to stay at London for the weekend they'd pay me the hotel to stay. So it's just wonderful, unbelibeable, but it's just a possiliblity, it's not for sure, even when I feel like I deserved it and it's just going to happen, I want to be realistic and not too optimistic, in case it doesn't happen finally.

I think it's time for me to be lucky, and this time so lucky I'm afraid it won't happen, I'm sorry for being pesimistic, I hope you understand why.

On Monday I'll go to my now old company to tell them I quit. Then I'll go to my old working place to say goodbye to my partners. I'll feel sad for some of them, as I enjoyed their company, I won't play chess anymore, at least not with the same guy, sorry mate. I'll even miss the "fat bastard" as I got used to his jokes, he's a good guy apart for his sick and perverted mind (I type that in case he's reading the post, although I think he won't), I'll miss Josito and Eva, Oscar, Calde, Chema, and my old partners of the other department, there were plenty of Carmen there so I just type one, and also enrique alas "skizo", Carlos, both Pablo's and Conchi. But I feel happy I'll start a new job, being less worried about the money and also with the excitment of something new. I'l also have some holiday weeks to enjoy myself and get energy to start again. I'll see my family, my town, I'll go to the beach and visit my friends. I have a lot of things to tell them.

As always I'll mantain you well informed about everything that happens to me, but I hope on a few weeks this blog would be again about "An Spaniard in UK".

Cheers and farewell.

Manoel.

A dejà vù

2005-07-13T12:11:00.000+02:00

With all my love to London.

I want to continue writing as live goes on and we must forget the pain (but learn from it). All my friends at London are ok. They weren't close to the tubes and buses. I feel fortunate but I can't just forget the people that died. I would pray if I believed in god, but I don't, so I'll just send my thoughts and love to them.

I wish my live had changed on the last weeks, but unfortunatly it hadn't. In fact instead of improving I'm going back to the past situations. The project in wich I was working will finish on next monday. Some of my mates are going to be send to another place out of Boadilla, those with whom I always have breakfast and lunch. So I'll be left alone again. My boss came last week to tell them about their new destinations, but he didn't speak with me and I wandered why. So I asked him about it. He gave me the same answer he gave me two months ago: "We still don't know. You might stay here for three days or three months. I'll tell you as soon as I know about
it". What a nice answer. I just want some stability, you know.

So the fact is I'm still stucked here, not working at all. I feel like I'm wasting my time and not learning anything. I also can't sleep at night that much, mostly because of the heat. So I don't feel that fine, sorry for being negative. But I try to be positive, and I decided to send my CV to some other companies. I received some answers and I might have interviews on the next weeks. I'll mantain you well informed about it.

Talking about companies, I want to speak about mine (I won't tell the name, even when I'm not sure if I shouldn't say it in case the owner reads it and decides to change things). My company is a good one, I would never say the opposite, but that's reffering to the main company. Everyone at the USA says my company is honest, reliable, and some other nice compliments. But I might remind you I work at the spanish branch wich is directed by spaniards, and also by really bad and unefficient spaniards, the worst class in fact. So meanwhile all the employees at the rest of the
world love the company, I don't know even one employee at Spain who likes the company.

I might change to the USA or GB branch, I'll try I promise.

Well, there are some other things I want to write about, but I'll leave them for the next post. At this time I'm supposed to be working, but in fact there's nothing to do but spend my time looking at the screen, that's why I decided to write a bit.

Farewell, and again my Love to London.

Manoel.

So Sad

2005-07-07T16:43:00.000+02:00

Hi fellow bloggers.

There's no words I could use to show you my sorrow. You know I love britain and you also know I've been at London. I've been on those trains and also on those streets. I can see them now. I can also see the people on them just going to their jobs or to have fun in the city.

I received an email at 12:00 saying about the bombing at London. I couldn't wait to reach home to have some more news. I was really worried about my London friends, and also about the innocent people on the buses and trains.

We had that in Spain, and also the 11S, so even when I feel horrified I also feel like that's not something new at all, and that's what makes it even worst. I hope I'll never get used to such inhumanity.

My thoughts are with you English, and specially with the people who lives at London.

I love you London.

Manoel.

Straight vs Non Straight

2005-07-04T23:39:00.000+02:00

Hi fellows.

Living at Madrid could be fun. Apart from all the problems, disturbances and crowded streets and/or public transport, distance from your working place and the horrible, unbearable heat, you always have something to do, see. Just a few weeks after the samba event we had the gay proud day and another bomb by ETA, that's what's like living in the place where everything happens in Spain. And also we'll have the olympics city chosing on wednesday, I wonder what'll happen if finally Madrid gets elected (I will feel a bit sorry about Paris and London, but if I'm going to be here on 2012 I would preffer Madrid to be chosen).

This days I have somthing else to talk about. I preffer to tell you this first, as it's small and not that important but really annoying. I told you my bedroom is an interior one, I mean the window doesn't face the street but another windows of the same building. It acts as a sound ampliffier and I get all the conversations between the neighbourghood. I call it "radiopatio" wich I could translate into innercourtyardradio. I hear every argument neighbours have even if I don't want to. This days specially because I can't close the window because of the heat. But this week is being even worst as the bloody neighbours dog (it's more like a rat) is having the heat and it screams like a bloody cat, sometimes as a pig bing killed. Of course it's more intense at night, so I can't sleep properly. I should call the police anyway, but I feel sorry for the animal, altough not for the bloody owners.

Now it's time for a short briefing about being at "Chueca" (the gay quarter in Madrid) on the gay proud day. I'm not homofobic although I don't like men at all (you know what I mean, or you should). A friend of mine, actually she's more than a friend, came to visit me during the weekend. We had a really good time. I didn't know where to take her as I don't really know Madrid (I didn't bother to visit anything yet, so lazy I am). I decided to take her to chueca as I know there's a lot of clothes shops there and she likes shoping (not as much as my sister, I'll take her there too as soon as she cames). But I didn't realize it was a festival on saturday. I noticed something strange was happening when I saw all those guys on the tube kissing each other and I've been to that part of Madrid before without seeing them. The street was coloured, decorated with multicolor flags and it was full of people (I could tell they were not straight). A group was preparing a van, placing big pink laces on it and arranging the speakers. The music was loud and it looked like a big preparation for fiesta.

I don't like to generalize, or to use stereotypes, but this time it was so obvious. They dressed far from what I call normal for myself. They used tshirts without leeves and they also were rally musculed, with fancy haircuts, shorts and fashion trainers or sandals. They were really fashion and also the shops. She loved them, I mean the shops. I felt like I was going to miss a big party. I also felt pity for a friend of mine and another friend of my sister. They'll love to be there. My greetings for both.

Later I saw on TV how big and funny it was. It really was kind of a demonstration and even some politicians were there. I'm pretty sure not because they are homosexual but more as a political action to earn some votes from gay people. That's something I don't like as much as I don't like politicians. In fact it was the same politicians that were at the demonstrations for the 11March and the Prestige thing, they fight for votes, you know.

Anyway, I was glad to see the preparations, it was beautiful and a prelude for fun, that's always nice.

Cheers and farewell, I hope I'll write some more soon. Meanwhile, and I'm sorry for this, but let's Madrid be chosen for the olympics.

Manoel.

At my job

2005-06-30T18:37:00.000+02:00

As I said on the title I’m at my job. I’m typing this as a word document and as soon as I reach home I’ll publish it. First of all I’m dammed bloody bored, I have nothing to do but waiting for something to be finished, but I’ll to explain it a bit.

You know I’m a programmer and also I’m working as it at a bank. We don’t literally work on our computers (you know I got a shared one, it could be considered as mine, but it’s not, although nobody works on it except me), we do everything on a remote computer through a network (I just don’t want to be too technical). All our programming files are on that computer and we use a DOS like environment to type programs and to build them, what could be quite annoying sometimes if you know what I‘m talking about.

Anyway, the problem is that remote computer is not absolutely dedicated to development tasks but also to the real tasks of the bank. A bank has millions, or even more than millions, of tasks at any second. Some of them are fast and small, but some are huge and take a long time to be finished.

As that remote computer is dedicated to that tasks and also those of the real proccesings have more priority (it’s understandable, you need to know your account balance, and transfer money in less than seconds, and go to a cash point to have some money, etc…) means the development process are damm slow. Sometimes I have to wait hours for my jobs to be finished and if I have nothing else to do, or I need that to be finished before I can continue, I just sit here and look at the screen. Sometimes I draw, but that’s too risky in case my boss comes near me.

There are some days in wich working is almost impossible. Specially at the end of the month, when really huge accounting processes starts. They need to do balances, fix small (and sometimes big) problems with accounts, credits, etc… You can’t imagine how many data a bank manages everyday, nor to speak about the money, that’s just unthinkable.

So here I am, typing while I wait for a job of mine to be finished, and it’s the end of the month, so I guess it’ll take three or four hours to be finished. I’m going to be terribly bored today, lucky me? Or unlucky me?

And talking about something different. I went to J&Js yesterday to have some fun, I believe I deserve it sometimes. As always I met some new people, some of them Spanish, some of them English and/or Americans. I always have good times there, if you come to Madrid and you just want to have a chat, a pint or two or meet some interesting (and not that interesting) people, just go there on Wednesdays, Fridays or Saturdays.

It’s amazing to realize how many different accents and ways of speaking you English natives have. Some of them are nice, and some aren’t that nice. Yesterday I met another Liverpolian, but this time it was one with a very strong accent, hardly understandying for a poor Spaniard like me. If it wasn’t that he was saying “fucking” all the time and giving me time to think about what he said, I wouldn’t have catched a word of what he said. He was a nice guy, anyway. I also met a Spaniard who sings “Zarzuela” and he was also nice. No girls this time, they weren’t that friendly last two times I’ve been there, it might be the heat.

Well, nothing else. Farewell and have a good summer. (I wish I could enjoy the beach for a while, I never thought I could miss the beach, bloody hell)

Manoel.

The Samba dancing.

2005-06-24T19:41:00.000+02:00

Hi Bloggers.

First of all I apologize not to have written that much last week. The fact is I was ill, or at least ill enough not to have the energy and will to do it, althoug I went to work (I shouldn't, but I'm stupid).

My illness had a reason (well, I'm still a bit ill, coughing). I've been dancing Samba the whole Saturday afternoon, and also it was hot, and I was wet. My body is still not used to summer, and with all the sweating and water pured by fireman I had last saturday, and after receiving a bit of air, it's not strange I got a cold.

We had a lot of things to do last saturday. We could chose between two demonstrations and also a big Brassilian Carnival. The first demonstration was against the gay marriage, altough they wanted us to believe it was in favour of family, the fact was that it was mostly convoqued by catholic priests, catholic associations, and any kind of conservative association and/or individuals. If you have read a bit about our last goberment new laws, you should know about the permission they gave for homosexual couples to get married. That made the conservatives really angry. But I'm not going to speak about that, I have my own oppinion and as always it's on the middle of both, I'm not an extremist. I'll just tell you I believe this country is not yet prepared to such a change, we don't live at Switzerland or Holland.

The second one was convoqued by homosexual associations, so you can guess what it was about.

And the third option was a kind of a brassilian carnival. Carlinhos Brown, a good brassilian musician and also good person (he made a lot of good things for Brasil and his quarter at Bahia, the "barrio de candeal"), is at Spain, he's being payed by Telefonica Movistar (a mobile and phone company) for making kind of a Samba party at different cities in Spain. He comes with three lorries, full of musicians and dancers. So they ride on a long street (ramblas at Barcelona, Castellana at Madrid) playing Samba while the people dances, or at least they should dance.

So my choice was the third one. Though the second demonstration was cancelled at last, but they joined the lorries and us. So finally it was a full party with dancers of any kind and sexual option, wich it make it better, in fact.

The first hour was amzingly horrible. I believed Brassilians were at least better than Spaniards with timing, but they aren't. The party was scheduled for about 7pm. The Castilla square was crowded, so full of people it was almost impossible to move. We had to wait for the musicians to come to start partying, but they were late. And not only late, but horribly planed. They came in between the crowd, instead of coming with their cars and buses using less crowded streets they made the people move (and also smashing) to pass. Well, at that time we were exhausted, bored and tired (my flatmates came also). So we decided to go home, but it was then when it started and as soon as the lorries began to move and the street to get wider the crowd was less a crowd. So we could manage to dance and enjoy. And so we did.

I'm a bit angry with the world in general and with Spaniards in particular. There were some cheeky bastards who didn't care to push you to go to the head. They might believe we don't want to be as close as we can to the main lorry with Carlinhos Brown. But we do as they do. Some of them came wearing Brassilian T-shirts and flags, so it was like as they were brassilians they deserved to be in front. But not only they don't deserve it but also Brasilians my ass!! I bet they were just cheeky spaniards. People don't mind on pushing you, smashing you, stepping over you and kill you just to have a better look at a famous. I don't give a damm shit, but at least don't put your bloody feet over mine, please.

Anyway I had such a good afternoon, I'll remember it for a long time. I danced and danced 'till I couldn't dance anymore. But I had my punishment and I had a horrible week without any sleep at all, fever and an annoying cough. I feel better now.

Farewell and see you soon. I'm sure I'll have a lot of things to tell you.

Manoel.

PS: I told the "Fat Bastard" about the blog. I don't know if he'll read it. I might say I got used to him, and finally he's one of my best friends at my job. I'm not writing this in case he reads it, I promise, but at least he makes me laugh with his nonsenses and jokes, and also he seems to be a good guy after all.

A short Tube Story

2005-06-16T19:48:00.000+02:00

Hi Bloggers.

Before telling the story I'll introduce you on my coming back from work routine. I made a friend at the office and I always come back with him. We talk for a while and we play chess on my mobile phone. We start playing when we jump into the bus, but we always leave a short time to realize who's travelling with us (my favourite hobby, you know). Then we have a 20 minutes trip (sometimes 30) to the nearest tube station at "Colonia Jardin" (Wich I could translate into garden colony or garden perfume). Then we wait for the train to come and we continue playing 'till he leaves, he stops before I do. The statistics are with him, as he always wins, (he's quite good or at least better than I am) althoug I won some matches. After that I read a free newspaper called "Que!", I leave books and music for the mornings.

Now it's time for my story. At the same time my friend left the train two young blokes came into it. The were what I might call fashion boys with shorts and t-shirts without leeves, dyed short hair and sun glasses. I could tell from the distance they were not straight, and specially because I saw their hands tied. They seated beside two old women that looked totally straight and also conservative (I believe you can guess it). I wasn't lucky because I was standing up and I wasn't fast enough to have a seat, but it gave me a better view on what was going to happen. The boys were quiet for a while, but then they started to kiss, well, they were more than just kissing each other, it was more like shagging. As you might have guessed the women were horrified. They were good enough not to say anything, but fast enough to stand up and wait beside the door even when it was still some minutes to reach next station. They looked nervous, in fact one of them jump over me, by accident but because she was ona hurry.

I have my own oppinion about seeing two boys kissing each other. I don't give a goddam shit if they do. The women were too scared of them and they're not going to harm anyone. Although I believe is not fair for the rest of the people when a couple (men, women or whatever) is kissing that way in front of others. I hope you understand what I mean, but it might be also because I miss doing it (with a girl, I mean).

Farewell and have a nice weekend. I'll sleep so much....

Manoel.

So Hot!!

2005-06-11T19:34:00.000+02:00

Hi bloggers.

If you had read my previous post you might think I'm getting hotter, and you're right, but not in the way your perverted minds believe (ha ha).

The fact is it's so hot. At the time I'm writting this it's 28ºC in my bedroom, and that's with the fan on. This last week has been terribel for me and all those who live at Madrid. It's hot, and there's nothing you can do unless you spend a lot of money on an air conditioner, wich I can't use because I get terribly sick.

And also I have to wear a suit!!!!

I nearly slept a few hours a day for the last 5 days (today it's saturday, so I slept quite a lot). It was because I can't bare heat. I'm sure you know the feeling (except those who live at England, I know it was even cold last week there). You try to sleep, but your sweating, you're bathed in sweat. You move, you try one side, then the other. After a while you take out the cover, and even the sheets, and then, finally, after 2 hours you manage to sleep. But unfortunatly you're bare over your bed, and your body gets colder, so you wake up with cold. Then it starts again, except for me it was then, when I got slept again, when my bloody mobile phone started ringing telling me it was time to go to work. Thank's Nokia!!!

My personal nightmare for the last days started then. I had a shower, wich I really needed (apart from all the sweat and the stinking), my coffe, and finally I left home. It was still hot on the street but bareable. That's when I reached the tube station. They have air conditioners, but it seems the tunnels are so huge that the air get's lost and hot very soon. So it's even hotter inside the tube, and also the bus (I have to use both).When I got to my working place I realized the air conditioner wasn't on, so it was hot. But it was a matter of time. When you're feeling better because you get used to the heat, they turn it on, but with so much power I started to cough and being cold.

Spending the whole day with air conditioners is horrible. My throat gets completly dry and I can't breath properly (I might be allergic to it). But again, after a while (a long time for me) you get used. But that's when I had to leave again. With the nice feeling of going home, but with the sun over me laughing and making jokes about my suit, he can be a bit of a bastard some times.

As you see it's a bad time to come to Madrid at summer. You can't do anything except going to a swimming pool, but they're so crowded that it's not that nice. Unless you like watching bikini girls and almost naked men.

I wonder what it will be on the summer, when the sun comes nearer and it's still hotter.

Farewell and see you soon (unless I get melted down)

Manoel.

Spanish Girls. An answer to Colin.

2005-06-06T00:39:00.000+02:00

Hi bloggers.

If you read Colin's blog as well as mine you've had read about an english friend of him who was having problems with a spanish girl. So I decided to clarify things for him as much as I can, and also talk to you about my experience and knowledge about girls and spain.

In my little experience with Spanish girls (some might say I'm being too humild, but that would be too arogant ;-)), as I have some, I could say they really like playing, but thats being generalistic. Of course not every girl on the street wants to play with us. But as I met girls from other countries I might say that's common in women. I had friends in love with foreigners and I met girls outside spain. The problem is with us, not with them. As a matter of fact they always know what they want and what we want from them, but that's easy, as we always want the same thing. And also we are too macho to realize they just want to have a good time, well, it's better to say we have a different idea about what's having a good time with a girl.

I'm not trying to contradict my friend Colin, as he's much more experienced with woman than I am but I just want to show you my point of view.

Generalizing, men always want something from woman different as they want from us. When they show a little interest we misunderstood it believing we have a chance for...(I'm trying not to be rude). They need weeks of chating, knowing ourselves, we need a night (and sometimes even seconds, it depends on how much drinks we have had that night).

But as I lived at Pontevedra I know what night is. There are some places in wich spanish mates go for having a girl just for one night (I have a friend who is an expert on that). If the english boy went to one of them I can believe he thought she wanted something more than just a night. Boys from Pontevedra know it, and they go to that places because they know some girls there, are looking for that. Of course some of them go there because they want to have a good time (this time meaning a girls good time) and we need to know whether they want to shag or they want just to dance, and knowing that is the difference of a succesful boy or a non succesful one (I might say I'm part of the second group). That's what makes the difference, knowing what they want from us and it doesn't have to do with being handsome or a good speaker, it has to do with our minds.

The main difference between Spain and the other countries is boys and girls are more naif. It's just a short time since we became a democracy and shorter even when the "machismo" became past. So we have liberal girls, wich we didn't have in the past, and it's hard to a rude spaniard to understand some girls would just want to have a laugh or to shag. So the problem I talked before it's even bigger, specially when you are used to different ways of thinking. He might have seen the signs at england, but not here, that's what I mean.

And spaniards are also confused, I mean boys. I was always the naif kind, so my sight on those signs is even worst than on any other boy from outside spain and this time I can't really help. My friends would be better on that sense.

I could also talk about my flat mate, who's a girl, and who's of the non liberal kind, but I will left it for another time.

Cheers and farewell.

Manoel.

(PS: I'm looking forward to seeing somebody. Come soon.)

Back to the old Fashion

2005-06-04T23:41:00.000+02:00

Hi bloggers.

I noticed those last posts were of the same kind. I lost my funny touch and I regret it a bit. The fact is I was hiding some information in case somebody could read my blog and be offended. Today I realized if they read it and they get offended that means they don't have any sense of humour at all and that's not my fault. But today I have something to tell you and I'll leave humour for next one.

I've been to a demonstration today. If you read spanish newspapers you'll know wich one I'm talking about. But I'll talk about what it was about in case you don't.

Our new goberment decided to dialogue with ETA for them to put their weapons down. That showed useless in the past. For two times they tried (different gobernments) and for two times it was not only a failure but a chance for ETA to be reenforced and renewd. Last time it was the PP who dialogued with them and for a while it looked good, they weren't bombing anything for almost two years (I'm not sure about the time) but in the meantime ETA was just waiting and taking advance of the time without being disturbed to make some money and steal some explosives. So finally they started again with new strenght.

So it showed useless to speak with them and the PP decided to take some more rough tactics. They made a new law to expell the political arm of ETA from the legality (wich showed useful) and encourage police to take a lot of actions against them. For a time ETA was weaker than ever (that's for sure, and I'm not saying it's because of the PP but because of the tactics and help from other countries they used).

But then, the new gobernemnt needed to be different from the last one. As they didn't have experience on gobberning (almost all the older PSOE leaders have been left out) and they spent last 8 years on the opposition they acted (and act) as they still were the opposition party. So they made new laws and stopped some others against the PP. Our new president Zapatero, or ZP(whom is called sometimes "bamby", as the Disney character) loves dialoguing (what he calls, or it's called since he became the leader of PSOE "talante") and he is never offended for he preffers talking than being angry. So he talks with everybody, and even he tries, without any answer yet, to talk with G.W. Bush, whom he didn't ever liked.

Continuing, the political arm of ETA was a political party called HB. After being declared illegal they changed their name and that time it worked. That was 'till the new law of PP, they became illegal with any name. But this time a new p. party called PCTV (Comunist Party of the Vasque lands) came to take the place of HB. This time it was less easy to see the connection between PCTV and ETA but it was clear for some, even a judge. The old leader of HB said to HB votants to vote for that party, so it became clearer. But PSOE allowed them to be and then the mess started. Some weeks ago PSOE declared they wanted to talk with ETA and asked the parlament (I'm not sure if it was the parlament, sorry). The parlament it's constituted mostly by PSOE and his friends who are nationalists (vasque and Catalonian) so the petition it went on and was approbed with the negative vote of PP who broke the antiterrosit pact they had with PSOE.

But it seems the country doesn't want them to talk with ETA at all, and neither do I. The terrorism victims asociation is against talking and they convoqued a demonstration for today. There's some other things, but it'll take a long time and pages so I'll left them. I'll just tell you another one and then I'l talk about the demonstration. There's a guy (called Gregotio Peces Barba) who is the gobernemt responsible to manage all the affairs of the terrorism victims. He decided not to go to the demonstration as he should because it's against his party (he's elected by the gobernement). The T. victims association didn't like it at all and they didn't like either the fact he didn't resing after saying that. I understand about him not going to the demonstration but he should do something or, at least, resign of his charge. In fact I believe it's a stupid charge considering he'll never be with the victims if it's against his party. So that means he's not helping the people he's payed to help. It's clear to see some of the shoutings were against him.

The demonstration was a big one. There were something like 1 million people (according to TV) and the street was full and the crowd was like a snake. It covered a whole large street (Principe de Vergara) and ended at a roundabout near my house, so that's why I went, I'm too lazy to had gone if it was far away. At first my flat mate Vane and I came to the middle of the street. We were well positioned to see the people as we were beside the road, she wanted to see some famous politics. But after a while old people came and they subtly started to push us away to be first. They seemed to like it a lot, specially old women. Some of them came with their best clothes and some make up, the hair perfectly done. They laughed, they shouted, they pushed us without saying sorry, but they said good words to the policemen who were pushing them. There was something I found really funny, some cameramen were there with stairs. They walked a bit in front of the crowd and run up the stair to record the crowd. When they came close enough they went down and walked a bit further away and repeated the same thing. And then, the head of the demonstration came. They had a rope tied along the head, it was something like 20 meters long and made kind of a circle around them, I've never seen something like that before, but it was nice. After some organization people (the ones holding the rope and some others, including policemen) came victims of ETA, some recognisable faces because of TV, it was the only moment I got a bit sensitive and emotional as I thought about them being almost killed and some of their relatives getting killed by ETA bombings.

Then it was a big gap between them and the politicians filled with normal people. We waited being pushed to see them. After 20 minutes the politicians came holding a sign. The leader of the PP was in the center of it. I saw him being so, so, so happy!!!. He was smiling, giving kisses to everybody and enjoying the crowd bath he was having, he looked as he really liked it. I'm not going to say I like him but I'm not going to say the opposite, he's a human being after all, but I felt a bit proud of him as he was my neighbour when him and myself were living on the same street (I have a friend who lives on the same building as his parents and it's just a few buildings close to mine). I also felt happy because of his smile, he was so happy it was even contagious. And considering the demonstration was against a PSOE decission you can imagine everybody was encouraging him.

It was a big one, I might say but I don't know if it'll be useful or not. At least it'll tell the gobernment people some times have their own oppinions, and this time I agree with them. It's being a bad month for the goberment, as they have some other problems (related to european constitution) to deal with. I just hope it won't be bad for my country and any others.

I'll stop now, because it's taking a lot of space and time, and I don't want you to be too bored. I hope next one will be funnier, I'll do my best, I promise.

Farewell all you fellow readers.

Manoel.

A small change

2005-05-30T19:10:00.000+02:00

Hi Fellow readers, bloggers and friends in general.

I'm sorry not to have written you in a long while. The fact is I didn't have enough things to tell you as nothing has really changed since last time.

I told you I've been changed to another department but I still didn't have a computer of my own. The fact is everything is still the same but I'm working really hard. I managed to have a computer for the last week (with the help of my new boss) and I could work. Today I did have one also, but I'm not sure about tomorrow. The problem is I have some urgent work to do and my boss wants it to be made as quickly as possible, but as I said I'm not sure about having a comp for the next days, so how could it be done? The good thing is I haven't been that bored last week and times goes faster if you have something to do, so it wasn't a bad week. I also met some people and made a new friend at J&Js. So it was a really good week.

Unfortunatly I still don't feel happy about my job and my new life. I know I have to be patient, but it's hard for me. And also things happen slower when you want them to be faster, that's a fact.

I might say also that I have a feeling of life being a bit unfair with me. I hope you don't blame me for being too negative, but for the last months every time something good happened to me it turned into crap at the end. So I'm a bit suspicious at the moment about any good news. I had a good one last week, it has to do with the people I met, but then, even when is not turned into crap yet it has turned into a complicated thing with means to be crap at the end. I should say it could turn into something really good but I told you I'm suspicious at the moment.

I started to feel again the need of leaving my country. Last week I sent some CVs to the Argentinian branch of my company and this week I even considered to move further away (yes, it's possible). I still have the ache of travelling and living at different parts of the world, but I also know I need some more time and money (and also courage). I know my family won't be happy if I do it, because my new plans are about moving really far from Spain. I'm still not happy here, even when there's a lot of new things, people is still the same, and my company is still spanish even being American. But I need to do some CV adds before that, if I have a year of experience it will be easier for me to find a job outside Spain. I'll be patient or, at least, I'll try to be, the reward could be great.

Anyway, I want you to know I'll still be here, even if I don't write that often, telling you about my life's changes and everything that comes to my mind or I just want to tell you.

I must say my ex-work-mates were very nice with me and they still are. I told them about my blog today and about the fact that some people would like to read about somebody else thoughts and/or experiences. They were fascinated and it made me really happy that they were. I wish they read it today and they read this post, so they'll know why you read me. I'm also happy to have so many fellow readers (I feel a bit weird complimenting you) but that's the only reason I keep writing, it makes me feel better to tell my feelings anyway, so it's both sides.

Farewell and hope things get better to everybody.

Manoel.

Things going well

2005-05-23T22:13:00.000+02:00

Hi bloggers.

If you were worried about me, I might tell you things are getting better. At least I do know now I'm not getting fired, and also I'm going to work for the new department and not being moved to another place, wich means I won't lose money (I don't want to be mean, but life is rough enough). I still don't have a computer of my own, but I'm treated better. My "new" boss asked me to do things without asking me if I knew how to do them, and I did them, and did them well. So I believe he's happy with me. That's quite a step, don't you think?

But I'm also afraid of being too positive. I tend to be negative, but in the past, when things were getting better there was always something bad that happened, so I decided just to be cautious.

I'll mantain you well informed about anything that happens to me, specially because my "new" boss has some peculiarities I'd like you to know, unless I forgot about them. I'm sure I won't.

Farewell.

Manoe.

More of the same

2005-05-21T13:09:00.000+02:00

Hi and Good Morning.

I wish I could tell you I have a really good job. Unfortunatly it's not true yet. Yet I'm being payed, and also I'm being payed for doing nothing and I know some guys who would be really happy to have that kind of job. But, knowing me, that's the worst kind I could ever have. It's almost three months and I still don't have my own desk neither a computer. I was finally moved on thursday to the new department, but not because they have a place for me, but because they have some empty desks and seats, meaning I can at least seat my butt. The problem was my boss (and I believe she's ex-boss now, she was the sleepy one) arrived so I had to leave her desk, and as nobody was on holidays or ill that meant there were no desk at all for me. So either I move to the other department or I stand up the whole day or go for walking. I would rather preffer walking than anything else, at least I like doing it better than doing nothing, but of course they didn't want me to do that.

I called my boss (the big one) and he told me to move, but without giving me the feeling of it being permanently. He was supposed to come and see us this week, but he didn't. Some of us wanted to talk with him, about important matters, some of them quite important, specially mine (beacuse it's important for myself, I mean). He's our "Team Manager" meaning he's supposed to be our voice in front of the bigger bosses and clients and also he has to make a crew into a team wich should involve being there when he's needed. But of course he's real matters are those related with the ones that pay, the clients, and it seems they're much more important than us. He "works" at the main office and I put it into quotes because I never saw him working as he's not neither with the client or with us. My new boss told me yesterday that he'd came to talk to us, well he really told me he'll come to talk to me, that only means he has another ideas for me, but he didn't come.

I'm not afraid of being fired, as they don't pay me that much, compared with the money they give to others, and also compared with some others that are payed much more and works much less (yes, it's possible). And also because they do know it's not my fault but theirs. And also because they could have done it before without having to pay me anything (well, they still can, it's just another week and they'd have to pay me). I'm not afraid of losing my job, and as I tend to be negative that only means I really believe they're not going to fire me, so don't be worried, there's blog for a long time.

I'll mantain you informed about my working days.

Cheers and Farewell.

Manoel.

No new news

2005-05-15T18:24:00.000+02:00

Hi Bloggers.

This last few days have been quite boring. I have done nothing during the weekend and also I might say I didn't during the week, even at my job. It's being a terribly boring time, and doing nothing is something that tires me as much as doing too much. I still don't know where I'm going to work at, or if I'll have some work to do. I decided (with the help of my fellow Faye) to talk to my boss, not the sleepy one, she's at the "rocio" (look in google what the hell is that, I'm not going to explain it, in fact I'm not sure what's all about) but my the highest one. I'm going to tell him carefully how bored I am and the waste of my talent and time wich it's being at my office. I hope he'll understand but if not at least I'll feel better. Anyway, I'm almost sure it's going to be another boring week, unless something happens, but this is Spain and everything is slow here.

I spent the last days doing nothing, and the only things I did where repetitive tasks wich didn't involve using my brain at all. I'm afraid I'm getting stupid, or untrained. But the most stupid, apart from my brain, it's the fact they're paying me for that, and it's just a fools doing, it's a waste of money, time and resources. I'm sure they don't earn as much money as they could in spain, but I'm afraid it has to do with the clients and not only with my company. In fact, I believe it's not my companies fault, but the client's, wich is quite cheeky. But my boss could do something more.

Well, I hope I'll have some exciting news next time I speak to you, meanwhile I hope at least I'll meet some new weirdos then I'll have something to talk about.

Cheers and sorry for being late again.

Farewell

Manoel.

Weirdos from Madrid

2005-05-09T19:24:00.000+02:00

Hi blog readers.

As I don't want to bore you with more office stories (I'm afraid you might like them) but this time I want to talk about freaks.

Living on a big city means meeting a lot of people. I told you more than once how much I enjoy waatching people, everywhere. The tube is a good opportunity to practice this hobby, and also the bus. So I have a few freaks wich I would like to talk about.

I'l start with the one I call Gollum, or Smeagol. I decided to call him both. If you had seen the Lord of The Rings movies you will understand it better. Gollum has two different personalities, and so he speaks with himself, one of them is Gollum and the other Smeagol, the evil and the good. I met him at the bus, and I travel with him a lot, so I started to know him well. He's as skinny as the proper gollum, and except from not being bald his face asembles a bit of him. But he's not Gollum because he looks like him, he is Gollum because he's two guys at the same time, although I only hear one of them. If you don't know him you might think he's chatting on a hands free mobile, but he's not. He has proper conversations, he talks a lot and about multiple subjects. Today I was beside him, so I could hear the entire conversation, he argues quite a lot, but he's never angry with himself. I heard him saying "no, men, it's not like that" with feeling, and then "well... I'm not sure". And then he asks himself if he likes Salsa dancing, I believed he didn't, but he replied once more "no, I really like it, although I agree bossanova is better". It's funny in some ways, and a bit scary in some others. I believe he's squizofrenic (I'm sorry if I don't spell it right).

Then here we have this other old chap, he's fine. But he always smiles to everybody and sometimes he's rude with the bus driver. He talks to anybody if he has the chance. I was never beside him, so I didn't have to speak with him. I heard him talking about Galicians and he made some mistakes trying to speak like one of us, but it's sweet anyway. He's not really a freak, just a too friendly old chap.

Then, and again on the bus, we have a retard (I'm sorry if I'm not being politicaly right, but I don't know another word for this). He's really sweet with his baseball hat, and his perpetual smile. He gets up a lot loosing his seat, just because he wants to see something. But he spends most of the time sleeping. Sometimes he listens to music and sings. Sometimes he reads a newspaper, wich is really brave, I believe.

So as you see I hadn't a lot of them, I see the same 10 or 20 people everyday, as they go to work at similar time as I do. Some of them are strange, but unfortunatly I don't have so many freaks yet, I'll have some more in the future, I'm sure.

And now, changing subject, I want to tell you a really short story. It's just something that happened to me last saturday when I came back home from going out. It was on a bus, and it was just this really weighty chap that fall complete sleep on me. I really mean on me, or over me. I couldn't really bare him, he was quite heavy. But I didn't want to wake him up, except that I had to leave the bus and I was at the window, so I really had to. I did, but it didn't really matter to him he continued sleeping. But the girl in front of me had a really good time, smiling or laughing at me.

See you soon and farewell again.

Manoel.

How to ruin an American company

2005-05-04T23:25:00.000+02:00

Hi bloggers.

I'm just back from having a couple of pints at a nice bar, it's called J&Js and you can speak english there, with Spaniards and also foreigners. I'm glad that I went. I had some chatting and made some new friends. And I also really needed it.

I want to explain about the blog's title. It's just as simple as this "put spaniards in front of the American spanish branch of the company and it will turn inmediatly into unefficient crap". I couldn't have had a worst day. I spent the day doing nothing, I mean nothing valuable for the company, but it wasn't my fault. I spent the whole day looking at the screen and trying to hack the system to get internet, wich I almost did, I finally got some internet, but unfortunatly i couldn't get access to my blog, so don't expect me to write more than I do.

You know, or you should know if it's not the first time you read me, that I'm being moved to another department. The problem is, I still don't have my own computer at both departments, so I can't really move to the new one. I talked to my new "boss" and he told me not to expect to have one on the next 20 days, wich I belive it's going to be more than that. Then, I talked to my old boss, but still my boss, or at least that's what I think, although I'm not too sure about it, and she told me she preffer me to be working there. The problem is my "old" job mates don't want to give me new jobs, because I won't finish them if I leave. I believe I'll spend the whole month doing more hacking and writing (I also spend some time writing stuf for my own self, just silly crap I'm afraid).

But also, and this means going back in the past, I'm considered as the best of all the people that made the course with me, and those aren't my own words, that's according to the teacher, my mega boss, my boss and all my course mates, so it's nothing I just made off, I promise. But all of them, including my flat mate Marivi are working, and I mean really working. Just take it like this: you have a really good programmer and another 5, and you have to decide where should they work at; then you take the laziest of them and you give them something to do, wich they don't because they're lazy, you know; then you choose the best of them to be at the worst place, doing nothing; and if you're not happy enough with it, let's just say my company recieves money for all of them (I mean, we work with another companies who pay my own company three or more times the same money we receive) except for the best of them. I believe that's just unbelievable. The other companies pays for the lazy guys but the BSCH (the bank I work for) pays nothing for me? and that's because I don't have a computer, meaning I'm not working at all, well, I really do work, and I'm sure I did more than my other course mates, because I'm damm fast (I promise I'm not being arrogant), but they don't pay for my work.

There's also another problem wich I expect it won't affect me. My company is losing money at Spain, it's not hard to belive. And they're going to fire some people. They decided to fire the ones that earn more money, wich means more expenses for the company. And also, being at Spain I'm sure they are going to fire the ones whom the bosses don't like even if they're good at their jobs. But I'm afraid they might fire me. There's just one simple reason for them doing it, my company spends a lot of money on me but they don't earn anything at all. For instance, my flat mate Mariví earns 1000 euros a month, but they earn 3 or 4 times that quantity, meanwhile for myself they spend 1160 euros a month without any earnings (we don't really receive that much, we have to pay taxes, bloody taxes). That's what I'm afraid of, they might lose a good programmer just because a bad deccision (sorry for being arrogant once more, but it's just the truth).

I hope it won't be true, and I still be here, earning money, trying to make the company better (as none of my working mates wants to be a boss, I really want to, at least I believe I'll make things a bit better, I mean, less spanish). I might tell you sometjing else before I leave, I'm not sure I had told you before but, they had a meeting at Paris, the entire company. People came from all over the world, Norht and South America, England, East Europe, Russia, Japan, ... and they had a conference. It was on english, I should take it for granted. But the spaniards couldn't get a word of it, and also the translators on headphones seemed to be boring, so they decided to leave the conference, in wich the BIG BOSS was talking about the new company strategy (something I belive vital for the company's future), and they went to have some fun at the DisneyLand resort or just having a short walk at Paris. The company payed a lot just for hiring an entire hotel for the whole company bosses but the Spaniards thought better to have some fun. And they don't regret it, they didn't have any remorse about it.

That's just another example of us, Spaniards. Sometimes i'm ashamed of being one of them, I'm really sorry for it.

Well, I hope next time I'll tell you some good news, I'm sure I will.

Farewell (I'm falling in love with that word).

Manoel

For my fellow Bloggers (and also new ones)

2005-05-03T22:37:00.000+02:00

Hi all of you.

I recently got some telling off from some fellow bloggers. The problem was I wasn't writing as much as before, and they really love my blogs. That's something I'm really proud of but, at the same time, puts more pressure over me to write. Writing is something I do when I feel like it, I didn't pretend to make this blog as a diary of my entire life, and I believe some day it'll stop, meaning that some day I'll be happy enough not to write about it.Although I believe meanwhile I can make somebody's life happier and/or make them laugh a bit I think it really worths spending my time.

So here I am again, I'm back at Madrid. Although I know I'm not where I would really like to be i's kind of. I'm going to have terrible times being at my office, and I'm sure you'll enjoy them as soon as I write about it. My life isn't that easy I would like it to be, but I hope that's the same for everybody. Being here is being kind of a test to me. I'm testing my strenght to face things without any help, and I'm also learning a lot about Spaniards, more than I did before. I can tell you about working, living and having social life at Spain, but I'm also sure you'll not learn anything useful from myself, as my work is not what I expected, my living is almost the same as at my old town, and also I'm not having any social life at all.

Well, I hope I'll write soon. Farewell and be good.

Manoel.

A Short visit to my old City

2005-05-02T12:09:00.000+02:00

Hi folks.

I came back to Pontevedra for a short visit, just a few days. After a long trip on a Bus wich took 8 hours, and after my legs started aching, I arrived and I could notice no changes at all. Well, it was just one month since the last time, but I expected more. The fact is I really miss my old town, but not at all meanings. I miss the green colour and the smell of the sea. I'm just scared about being at Madrid on summer with my suit at the tube. I'm sure that's going to be horrible, but that's life.

I was talking with my friend and fellow blogger Colin about some things and he asked me if I noticed differences between Madrileños and Galicians. So I said the Madrileños are a bit more "chulos" (Arrogant) but I couldn't say anything else. The fact is I realized we are exactly the same thing, we expect the same things from life, wich is being a civil servant or "funcionario" in my own speak. We just want to have fun in the same way and we're all as closed to foreign cultures/food/... as them. Of course the possibility of finding somebody whom is open at Madrid is higher than here, and of course as we live on a very small town, we're less open minded. But after all we are Spaniards, and I believe that's all what makes us being what we are.

Anyway. I'll come back to my office life on Thursday, and I hope I'll learn some more about that subject, so you'll have some more funny stories. I still have to tell you more about the "fat bastard" and some other characters, and also about the money spent by the bank and the idiocy I see there. The BSCH city is not finished yet, so I see them still working on it, and I see how inefficient they are. But that's something I'll tell you another day. I'm still wlking on my town, smelling the sea and hearing the "gaviotas" wich is a bird I don't really like, but that now I see I miss a bit.

Farewell!

Manoel.

Working at Spain

2005-04-26T15:19:00.000+02:00

Hi again. Sorry for being a bit late.

I'm not going to write everyday, I must tell you, but I'll do it as soon as I can and wants. The fact is I work all day and when I arrive home sometimes I don't feel like writing, if you know what I mean, I hope you will. But today I feel like it, so I will.

As i told you before I have a lot of new experiences, people, habits to write about. I told you about this guy whom I called (and I still name him like that) "the fat bastard". He's still being a fat bastard, but he's getting better, or I believe I'm being less critical with him. The fact is he's being naughty, disgusting and sometimes even unbearable but I noticed everything's just because he wants to be my friend and that's why he's behaving like he does. He's married, but I don't know with whom, she might be a saint or worst than him, as he's always talking about nasty sex matters and his porn film collection wich seems to be really large. The most amazing is he shares it with his father in law, wich I believe is just unthinkable. I guess you know what kind of guy he is, but he's not a bad person, or at least not yet.

Let's talk about something different, let's talk about my company. It's a big amercian company, but the Spanish branch. So when the main company is efficient, and loyal with employees our mother house in Spain is another whore house (I'm sorry for being rude, but that's how we'll say it here). I mean, everybody hates everybody, there's no good bosses at all (except for one or two whom I never met) and none of the employees has good talks about them. My own, in fact, expends half the day sleeping, and I really mean sleeping, at her desk. She does it really well, so if you look at her you don't really notice, you have to get close to her, as she has her hand on the mouse, and her head up. But her eyes are closed and sometimes if something awakes her she jumps on her chair. My work mates also don't really like her, but it seems they don't like any boss at all, they are really bitchy if you know what I mean.

And also I still don't have a desk neither a computer and not even a chair. So I just wait somebody leaves her/his desk to use a PC for a while, unless somebody is on holidays, then I have a desk for some days. So it's being 2 months and I'm still like the first day. I might say they also call me "el becario" wich means I'm a student not being payed, wich is not true at all, I'm another employee and that really anoyies me, and also they don't give me enough work, wich I could be doing, and sometimes even better than them (I'm sorry for being arrogant, but it's damm true). So I have to expend 9 hours a day doing nothing, wich is horrible for the kind of guy I am, and also I could be bad for my future. I hoped it'll change but today I receive some news.

I'm being moved to another department, in the same place, but a different department. That means I have to meet new people, and also I have to forget everything I learned and the realtions I made. It's like starting again. I just hope at the new department they'll treat me better and give some work. The problem is my boss (the sleepy one) told me about that change but she likes me and she wants me to be back soon, but her boss wants me to be at the other one because there's more need for programmers there. I'm just impacient for the change, and for the next one because I'm sure they'll change me again.

I'll mantain you informed about this and all the new events in my recent life.

Farewell.

Manoel.

The eternal Problem

2005-04-06T22:54:00.000+02:00

Hi all of you.

I want to ask you about looking for friends. It might be just me, as I'm a bit shy sometimes (the people that knows me don't believe this, but it's totally true), or it might be the circunstances. But the fact is it's really hard to meet people. Specially when you don't have time during the week for any social life at all, and you don't know anybody here except for a few, and you don't know even where to go. I'm trying as hard as I can, I promise, but it seems to be hard nowadays.

in the past it was easier for me, I believe because I was younger and a bit more of an alcoholic. But know I'm getting old (not that old, I know) and everything is turning difficult. I can't have friends (to go out) at my working place because of the differencies: age, marital state, and also (why not telling you) because I don't think we'll link (I hope it's right to say it like that, but I'm sure you'l understand it).

It was easier at London, not because people was different but because I knew some and I could go out with them and new friends of theirs. The fact is that me and my flatmates aren't able to meet new and interesting people yet, and we're trying. I'll just wait, because I know there's some things I could do and some events I could go, and it might be just a matter of time. It's only three months that I'm here and I can't expect better.

But, as I said, some people that I met aren't suitable for myself, specially some of them (do you remember the "fat bastard"). I could be a bit elitistic but I don't think so, I just think they're not right for myself. And also there's some nice people I met, but they don't seem to want to go out with me, not because they don't like me but because they have their own social life and I might not be making enouhg effort to mix with them.

So I guess it's my own fault. I promise I'll try harder, so I'll have some more exciting stories to tell you. Meanwhile I'll tell you about my job and the people around me wich is quite interesting and funny.

Regards from a very Spanish place as Madrid.

Manoel.

PS: If ever somebody told you about the "Madrileños" being "chulos" (arrogant) I should tell you they were totally right about that.

Yes, I'm back.

2005-04-02T02:46:00.000+02:00

Hi again, once more.

Although I'm not where I would really wanted to be I'm glad to be here. This is not as fascinating as it might be London or any town at England, but it has it's own charming. There's also millions of stories I got and most of them could be hilarious if I have the inspiration to tell them.

I should tell you about working at an office, wich remainds me of a TV series I watched from BBC, it was called "the office". I found some similitudes between the serie and my own life. Althoug I don't have a "David Brent" boss I have plenty of them without being bosses, specially one of them whom I gave the name of "Fat Bastard", taken from the Austin Powers Films. If you had seen that film and the guy, you'll understand what I mean. It has nothing to do with him being fat (I was fat once) but with the fact that he is actually fat and also as horrible as that guy on the film, he also gives me the creep anytime I see him. But I'll talk about him in the future as I have a lot of things to tell you about him, and I'm pretty sure I'll have some more soon. I also see how blind are spaniards (or even anybody at an office?) with new ideas. The answer for the question "Why are we doing it like that?" it's always "We've been doing it like that for ages" wich is not valid for myself. So I guess i'll have a lot to fight, unless they fire me for being too efficient.

As you see and I constantly repeat again and again I have a lot of things to tell and not that much time considering I'll tell you about things that happened some time ago, I'll try to be as fast as possible so next time I'll tell you about things that happened yesterday instead of last month, but that's going to be hard. I also have problems with my bank, they are charging me 20€ just for having red numbers (I hope it's said like that, if not just ask me about it) for just 7 days when the average is they wait 10 days to charge you anything, it's like they are stealing me that money, but that's always a problem with banks at Spain, you might know it.

My flatmates are really nice, although I have some problems with them and also some arguings, I'm not going to tell you anything bad about them. Not because they might be reading this (I'm almost sure they're not going to) but because that's something completely normal and also they are really nice. I'm sure it's totally normal to have some differences with your flatmates. So I'll leave the flat matters alone.

But, as I told you, there are millions of facts, things, curiosities I can tell you about Spain, Madrid and my new working life, so I gues you'll not be bored.

Farewell.

Manoel.

PS: I'm just waiting for you to know about the "fat bastard" hee's kind of a character. I'm sure he'll make a really good and hilarious book. I might just tell you he also remainds me of a book character from "Confederacy of Dunses" called Ignatius J, Really, but even worst.

I'm back

2005-03-31T00:10:00.000+02:00

Hi all fellow bloggers (if you're still there).

Yes, I'm back. And I hope I'll still be here for a long time, but who knows. As I believe you know, unless it's the first time you read my blog, I'm living at Madrid.

Finally I've got a job, a good one (except for the paying, but it's my first as a programmer, so it's not that bad). I've got my own house (but shared) and a live by my own, far from my boring town, but still in my boring country. Madrid is a fascinating city, or it might be if I had enough time to see it. But as I ride the tube and bus up to 2 hours a day I have enough time to wath and spend my time with my favourite hobby. I'm not being sincere, I don't spend that much time watching, I mostly spend it reading, but if you have 2 hours you get enough time to, at least, see somebody. This is not my first time at Madrid, so I can compare what it is now with what it was, and that's good, for you.

For a little spaniard being here it's even more weird than being at London, as the number of inmigrants are even higher than at London. But also they're different. In London you get mostly Indians, Pakistanies, and colored (I'm sorry if I'm not being politicalt incorrect, I'm not racist, but how can I say "black people" without somebody being angry?) people from Africa and other countries. Here you get mostly south americans, Marroccians, Nigerians and east europeans (bulgary, romania, ...). I saw that most of them speak Spanish as well as the England inmigrants speak mostly english, but of course not all of them, but a big number (you know what I mean, I guess). So anyhow I feel like being at London because pf the tube, the inmigrants and the big cities facts, but I also see it's completly different in most ways, Spanish ways.

My plan was this post just being a brief short talk to tell you where I am, but you know when I start writing I can't really stop. But I'll leave it now. I have to be up at 6AM and that's really hard for me. As I told you I feel a bit like being in England but without the good things (well, I have some good things as well). I have millions of things to tell you, and I hope you'll find some of them hilarious, specially when I finally speak about work mates, and flat mates (they are adorable, my flat mates, I mean, but also weird in a good way, well, sometimes not that good). But I have this guy I gave the nickname of "fat bastard" because of the Austin Powers film, but that's also a long story that deserves a whole post.

Anyway, thanks for still being there and you'll hear from me.

See you soon.

Manoel

PS: working on an office is a really bitchy world, I know most of you know it, but you'll see.

An Spaniard in Spain

2005-01-29T14:53:00.000+01:00

Hi all fellow readers.

I'm sorry for being so late, but unfortunetly things have change a little. Now I'm not at England and I have many things to tell you. I'm going to get a job on a few weeks and I'll be paid finally for doing what I like, wich sounds wonderful. Meanwhile I'm afraid you won't have news from me 'till I bring my computer to Madrid and I get an Internet connection at home, well first of all I have to find a home. I have so many things to do, say but still not time to do them.

I just wanted you to know I'm still here and I'll be here in the future.

Hope I'll write again soon.

Your fellow blogger Manoel.

The day after

2004-11-16T20:46:00.000+01:00

What-u mates.

I must confess that that week was the drunkest week I ever had. In fact for the whole week I was drunk half the time. It's not that I have a problem with alcohol, it was just a question of being in the right place at the right moment (I know the sentence is not right, but I changed it for my own purpose). I found really nice going to a Pub to enjoy my book with a couple of pints, in fact I loved that moments. If you have the whole day free, if you don't have anything to do or go afer 5pm and you need to spend some time doing something nice, reading on a Pub with a pint of nice Ale (or lager) and beside the chimney (or however it has to be written) it's one of the most wonderful things in life. I really love and miss that moments. But after 3 hours being on the Pub, waiting to meet somebody or just going home meant to be drunk. You can't stay on a Pub for 3 hours without drinking 2 or 3 pints, I believe it would be cheeky to do the opposite. So I did.

The problem always was when I went home, or met the people whom I had to see, there was always a chance to get drunker. My flatmates brought more beer, or I had something to do with Alice that finally envolved drinking (like the raffle thing). Or there was just kind of a party at Alice's house with her parents, or just meet her father, brother, brother's fionce when arriving at home at the local pub. I don't want to blame Alice, but mostly it was her fault, except for the previous book beers.

So next day, the day after the raffle event, I spent the day at London. This time I promised Alice I'll help her with another fund rising event, tihs time a conference or something like that (that kind of events had a name, but as always I fogot) at the Marie Curie Hospital. I went before the event to help them (Alice and the girls at the raffle) to move chairs, furniture, machines and leave everything prepared for the event. I did help them, but I couldn't stay for the conference, I don't really know why. They had speakers, and I believe they talked about some organization or part of an organization that goes to high mountains on south america, I'll ask Alice and I'll explain it to you later. The bad thing is that the conferences seemed to be really interesting, with loads of exciting stories from the speakers, and I feel really jealous about Alice being there and not me.

Anyway, I had to meet them at the hospital later, 4 or 5 hours later. So I went for a walk on the area, wich was close to Camdem Town. They adviced me to go to Camdem Market, but you know I love to be lost and so I did. The fact is I couldn't find Camdem Market, but I had a nice walk. But I still had a lot of free time and nothing to do. Guess what I did; yes I went to the Pub to drink and read. So when the time came I was again partially drunk. I went back to the hospital and help them to put the stuff back on their original place. And after that, and talk for a bit with the girls, Alice, myself and Alice's boss (Andy?) left the place on a car. We went to Marie Curie Office at Vauxhall. The building is very posch and seems to be expensive. So I asked Andy? how it was that they had the office there, you know when you have a funding organization expending a lot on an office seems to be a nonsense. He told me the building was crap, badly made and even ill, so the owners had planned to pull it down and rebuild a new one. So the rent is very cheap, and a lot of fundings have their offices there. I wander what'll happen when they finally pull the building down.

After that Alice and I had to go to an Alice's house for a birthday party and so we did. We reach the house and met her friends. I talked with them while Alice was changing her clothes for going out, and drunk white wine. Then we left the house and went to a Pub to drink more. There's not a lot of interesting things that happened on the Pub. I was really really tired, so I was a bit silent, and that's really strange on me, you know. So I'll just tell you the interesting bits of the night.

Some French friends of Alice's birthday girl came to meet us on the Pub. I was telling Alice that everybody hates French guys, and also that I do hate Frenchs (actually it's not true, it's just part of the topic that everybody hate French people). So it happend again the same as the night before. I was told the girl speaked fluent Spanish. And after hearing that, just before telling Alice about the world and myself hating Frenchs, that I made my way to talk to the girl on my own language. I know it did surprise Alice again, how I can change my mind and even forget about pain when there's a nice lady that can speak spanish. I promise I was joking about the hating, I do not know enough French people to have an oppinion about them. So I talked with the girl, and in fact I talked a lot. It was a bit strange for me because she had a south spanish accent, I mean from Andalucia. So I was speaking with a French girl with an Andalucian accent, and I couldn't notice a strong French accent at all, it might had been I was drunk. She was really nice I say, but her boyfriend was beside her. She liked to speak with me because her English wasn't as good as her Spanish, her boyfriend translated almost everything in fact.

After a while, and as a result of me being tired I talked to Alice, who noticed my tireness, and I told her if there was any possibility to go to her friend's house and sleep. She told me she was also tired and so we went out the Pub to talk about that. But she was hungry, and I was also and we went to a fried chicken place next to the Pub and asked for some chicken. Then this big black guy came and asked for chicken. When he was going to pay some coins falled from his hand. I quickly move my hand to pick them from the floor and gave them to the guy. He was really surprised about that, like nobody ever had done something like that for him. He told me I was a gentleman and that Alice was lucky. It made me feel really well, but at the same time made me think about English people not doing what I did. The guy was really happy with what I did and he was smiling all the time. I was also happy and his smile and happy face were a very nice thing. So we left the place, eat our chicken and finally went home to sleep.

I slept on the sofa and she slept on the ground with a sleeping bag. It wasn't my choice, don't believe I'm a bloody nasty guy who doesn't care about other people sleeping on the ground. She insisted it was worst to sleep on the sofa. But it seemed the sofa wasn't the appropiate place to sleep. At 3am the other people, the house owners and some others came back home to sleep. We had to leave the lounge and went to sleep on a proper bed. That sounds really nice, but it wasn't really a whole bed. I could consider myself as lucky that night 'cause I slept with two Ladies. But I must say I sleep with Alice's feet beside my face and I didn't sleep in the middle of the bed, so I wasn't surrounded by women. Fortunatly Alice's feet didn't snorl or smell.

I hope I won't have any alcohol problems in the future.

Manoel.

PS: Thanks Alice for so many really nice moments.

The continuous story of the raffle night

2004-11-11T20:42:00.000+01:00

Hullo mate.

I was becoming an English, so I guess I should speak like one of them.

I must continue with the raffle night. I think I left it with a couple, well more than a couple, of champagne glasses. At that time I was partially drunk and, on my own believings, being quite funny. So finally we left the place. We had to walk, but not much, but on our state we decided, they decided, to catch a cub. So I could enjoy a London cab. the inside was big, really big, and comfortable, with loads of space on the back seats. In fact there was enough space for 5 people and the seats were distributed like 3 on the back and 2 on the front, like a table. The cab driver was good, he didn´t talk that much, compared with Spanish taxi drivers, I mean, and he seem to know were he was going, compared with Spanish taxi drivers, I mean again.

So we went on the cab to another raffle, but this time it wasn't our. It was kind of a country party, I mean country music party, on a disco. Those kind of parties have a name, Alice told me but I just forgot, I'm sorry. There was a band playing country music, and people dressed with american cowboy hats and jeans. We drunk more beer and danced. It was really funny, happy and interesting.

Problems started when the band decided to play Anarchy in the UK on a country style. That anoyyed me a bit, I'm really sorry, and I was also drunk. So I decided not to dance and show my dissapointing. I just considered it ridiculous. How can you be an anarchyst playing country music? I guess Sex Pistols would be angry on their graves if they were dead (that's something I'm not sure about, but I guess they are). But people seemed to enjoy it. I told my friends (my raffle mates) about I was a bit pistoff, and they told me not to worry that much (well, I wasn't really annoyed, I was smiling) and that it's like being an anarchyst playing that song on a country style, I still don't believe it.

They finished playing, and they asked if everybody liked it, I said NO on a loud voice with so such bad luck that when I said it everybody was silent, so I was completly heard. I was a bit ashamed, as I was only joking. But nobody was neither angry nor screaming at the Spanish bastard. In fact, I guess nobody realized about what I did, they were drunk also. So the party was over (and not because of me) and we left the place.

There we were walking for a while on the streets on our ways to the different transports we chose for our back trips. I was a bit tired and also walking behind them, they were walking quite fast and I spent the whole day walking, dancing and drinking. There was a traffic sign and I tried to avoid it with the misfortune that something else was on my way. It was kind of a metal and sharp thing in the middle of the street and my right leg found it, exactly on the corner of it. So the pain was considerable high, and I had to stop just to scratch my leg and try not to think about the pain. Alice knows I have problems with my knees, so after she saw me she thought I was having pain on them and I wasn't able to walk properly, and she told the other girls and they came to help me or at least to feel a bit of sorrow for me. Unfortunatly at the precise time they decided to do it I heard two girl voices speaking in Spanish. I was so happy and drunk that I forgot about my pain and jumped and ran to say hello to the girls. The other girls saw it and they forgot about my knees. They weren't dissapointed, they just laughed and thought that it was another joke I made, or at least that's what they said. But I could noticed they were pistoff, not much. I wasn't really lucky as I missed the Spanish girls and also made the others feel disspointed.

We went home, but at that time going home meant to catch a train from Waterloo to Tonbridge, 45 minutes more or less. So Alice and I did, the other girls catched different trains or just went home on a cab (they were only two girls). Alice talks as much as I do, what is really nice and you don't get bored. The problem is I really talk a lot, in fact I never stop talking, but it's always interesting, believe me. We went on the train and there were two seats available. One of them was just empty, but the other was occupied by a slept girl and Alice didn't dare to awake her to ask for the seat. She asked it for me. So I was sitting beside the sleepy and a bit angry girl. And we talked, and talked, and talked. My voice was quite low, but Alice's was a bit louder than me. After 20 minutes, more or less (don't expect me to remember my life completely) I said "I think I was quite funny today", and actually I really believe I was. The sleeping girl said "No, you're not" and I could guess on her tone that she was really angry. I said something but I don't remember what, I guess it was "fuck off, I wasn't speaking with you". After the next stop, the person in front of Alice left the train leaving a seat beside one big boy. So the girl went there, with the boy, and she also hug him. I guess he was her boyfriend, and we (Alice and I) also guessed she was angry with him, that's why she was in such a bad mood. She could have been seating in front of him if she wanted. When we reached the train there were two seats, and one of them was beside the girl. I just wander why she wasn't seated beside her lover, and we just could bet they had an argument.

She stopped at the same station as us. And I did what I always do, and it's being a gentleman letting her leave the train before me, she said "thanks".

The point is Alice was talking louder than me, and also even more than me. Why the girl made that horrible comentary about me being funny? was it because she hated men at that precise moment? or it was just because I was closer to her and I said the unappropiate thing?

The fact is that it was a really interesting night, I promise. Thanks Alice.

See you all soon, there's more things to tell you and so many few time...

Manoel.

Apologizing

2004-11-10T02:02:00.000+01:00

Hi there.

I'm really sorry but I couldn't write these days. The reason was I didn't have an opportunity to use a computer with an internet connection and also I even wasn't at London all the time.

Now I'm too tired to write a lot but I'll do it this week. There's so many things I want to say that I'm sure I'll write many posts.

But I just wanted to tell you fellow readers that soon I'll be here again. But unfortunatly I have bad news for you.

I'll just leave you with the doubt as sometimes I like a bit of mistery.

See you soon.

Manoel.

Some events

2004-11-03T15:57:00.000+01:00

Hi everybody.

The last week I attend some really interesting events. As a matter of fact I spent half the last week being drunk. I'm living for these week and part of the last one with a friend of Faye (and now also mine) in Shipbourn, Kent. I go to London almost everyday from there, what is a 45 minutes Train trip. Thanks to that I don't have to spend my days in the last corner of the world surrounded by birds, green grass and trees, and nothing else. And also I have nothing else, so I'm pleased being there (well if the things went wrong I could go again to Chesire, wich I'd really like in some ways, not for the cows, of course).

Anyway, the fact is that last week I had to wait for hours before I could meet the girl to go back to her house. That meant I had to spend some time reading my book at the first pub I could find. Normally it was 2 or 3 hours. It was a fantastic time, but for not feeling guilty I bought some pints. So I spent that time reading and drinking. When the time to meet her came I was quite drunk all those days, I mean not really drunk, just happy enough. The problem was on thursday and friday that later I had to go to some events.

The first one was a raffle. My friend Alice works for charity (but being paid). Her job is organizing events to get money. I would say she's a begger, but it's not exactly true, she's more polite and the money is not for herself. The event was in the reopening of a very posch bar/restaurant called Brown's. I was amazed because it was really posch and because I saw some nice girls there also. I was really happy, and mostly because of the beer. As I had nothing else to do I decided to go to the event with her and help. I didn't expect Champagne coming all the time as we sold the tickets for the raffle, but it did come. So the fact is that while I was selling the tickets with my friend I was falling slowly in a really good drunken state. We sold a lot, anyway, we were very succesful. They also gave us really nice food, so you can imagine how happy I was.

But as all you know I'm a very good observer. So the raffle in the posch place gave me an opportunity to look closely to posch people. The first thing I realized is they weren't that posch. I mean they were richer than us, but only small executive type. I could see those ugly guys with really pretty girls, that's the power of love.

Selling things to rich people, specially for charity, is a really good thing if you want to see how mean they are. The poorest the generous, the richest the mean. But that's not exactly true. If they were with their pretty tall blondies they gave more money (one of them gave 20£), but if they were alone they only give the minimun. They were very generous, all of them, even the meaniest. I wander if I had done the same thing in Spain we'd colect the same amount.

The prizes were really good, and also the price of the raffle, so we were really succesful, and drunk, and happy. Everybody was happy, specially the guy that won the 1st prize, a nice guy, he really deserved it.

Later that night more things happend, funny things, well, just two, but I'll leave them for the next post as my money runs out on the cyber.

Cheers. See you soon.

Manoel.

The weirdest City

2004-10-28T16:17:00.000+02:00

Hi there.

One of the first things I noticed about London is how weird is it constructed. The fact is you can find any kind of building style on any street or borough. I mean, you just walk on London Bridge and see this horrible factory-type building that belongs to Lloyds TSB, and in front of it a very wonderful and gorgeous classic house. And then if you walk a bit more you find that egg-shape new building. That's something you'll notice on every street, and as I said on other posts it's impossible not to find a gorgeous building to look at. That's why I really love walking on London, better than using the tube (of course I do both). But even when my feet are suffering from horrible pain I keep on walking because if I don't I'm sure I'll miss something really interesting.

And you also have those luxurious hotels, with the guys with the hat and the suit at the door to help you with the luggage. That's something we don't have in my town, where the most approximate to that is an old chap dressed with an old suit who can't really manage to carry your small suitcase and finally you carry everything 'cause you feel guilty. I'll fancy to stay one night on one of those hotels, but I'm sure they are prohibittly expensive (does that expression exists in English?).

There's something I found interesting. Those big white limos with dark windows. I always wonder who is inside them. It might be a famous and/or rich guy or chick, a gorgeous girl, a politician (I won't say anything good about them), or even a group of drunken chav chicks on a stag night (is it spelled like that?). But that's what makes limos with black windows exciting, as Forrest Gump said: "Limos are like a chocolates box, you never know what you are going to find.". I wish one of them stop in front of me, pull down the window and ask me to go in. The problem with that could be either chav chicks, or an old chap (or mis) that wants me, I don't really know what would be worst.

There's something else I find weird. As well with the buildings are people clothings. You can find a guy dressed with an armani suit sitting on the tube beside a punk style mate. Or that old woman with green hair, green skirt, green and red striped long socks, and trainers beside another one dressed entirely by DKNY. I feel I bit weirdo too, as I'm just normally dressed, I don't have a particular style, just normal, so I guess that in fact I'm the less normal here, and that makes me happy.

So if I had to find a short sentence to describe London it might be "the city of contrasts".

Anyway, I feel very humorous today as you can notice.

Have a great time.

Manoel.

The Capital of Tourism

2004-10-26T11:51:00.000+02:00

Hi again.

If there's a city, that I know, in the world with a lot of tourists that's London. I talked in the past about how annoying they can be, especially if they're a crowd of loudy Spaniards or screamy children. Here we have both and also Japanese, Chinese, Americans (even louder than Spaniards), French, and almost every nationality in the entire world. This time I'm not going to talk about Spaniards, in fact they aren't the loudest, this time are Americans (and some times Dutchs). But I'm not also going to talk about Americans, just about tourists.

There's some parts of London where you can find them. Those areas are exactly the ones I wanted to visit. But it's not only tourists what annoyies me, it's also school boys on a visit. If there's some places in wich silent is appreciated those are museums. I wanted to walk either on the British museum, or the Science and Natural History museums, or the National Gallery, anywhere, but sometimes I had to leave the rooms without seeing some of the finest pieces of art/history just because I couldn't stand so many noise. I thought British children were more educated, but they are as uneducated as Spanish children. It must be a question of age, not education, I'm just not sure. But I don't blame them, I blame the teachers who allowed them to run in the mummy hall on the Brit. Mus. Come on! let them rest in peace.

Those mummies where resting in perfectly peace for thousands of years but now they have to bare all those screamings, runnings, playings... I think that's not fair.

On the National Gallery they were quieter, but not as would like them to be. On the science and natural history museums they were even worst than on the British Museum. On those you have science games, so you can imagine them destructivly playing with those poor artifacts designed to entertain and educate but not to encourage violence.

And what about tourists? They weren't that horrible, in fact sometimes I looked like them with my camera. In fact I think I'm the worst of them because I take pictures of almost everything, even on the street, They must believe I'm a Japanese.

Tourists behave better on the museums than Spaniards on their owns, even if they are Spaniards (I mean Spaniards in London). They also have the guided bus sighteen tours in wich they see all London from a Bus (I really preffer walking, you have more time to see things, or not, because on a Bus you have to stop several times as the traffic is not really good here). And they also have a ship on the River Thames, and walking guided tours on the city. I must be a bad guy, but I don't give a shi... about all the info guides gives. I find no interest on knowing that a famous writer I never ever heard about lived in that small horrible house 50 years ago. What I like is walking alone so I can stop to see that building nobody notices but is so pretty, gorgeous. So there I am with my camera to take a picture of it. And also I don't find interesting joking about those poor soldiers at Buckghingham palace, I believe that's a punishment for they bad behaviour in the past, so they have to stand there without moving while a crowd of bloody bastards are telling him jokes in languages he doesn't know. I feel sorry for them, but I took a picture too.

Well. I found something to talk about, and everytime the subject of my posts is different, but it's a question of inspiration.

Kind regards.

Manoel.

3d Week

2004-10-24T14:37:00.000+02:00

Hi there.

I hope things are going well for all you. I'm having great times and not that great times as well. That's good news, I guess. I tried for the very first time Sushi and just that worths have came here.

As time passes I notice the differences between Spaniards and English. There are some, but I still believe I need more time to notice them all. One of them is coffe. In all the houses I've been it's not very common to have sugar, because they don't have tea with sugar as I do, and because they don't normally drink coffe that much. While in Spain coffe is really common, as common as tea in England. So, as I'm a coffe drinker I had to buy sugar twice. I could have coffe on Starbucks, or in any other shop/bar, but I really like to have my first coffe just after I wake up.

Another thing I want to talk is trash. I know it isn't something you'll like to talk about, but I'm amazed about something. There's only two days a week in wich the trash lorries comes to collect the trash bags, while in my town (and I guess in the whole Spain) it's everyday. That sounds a bit weird for me. I know they have dettached and semidettached houses here, so they can put the bags beside the front door, there's no need for them to leave the bags inside the house. I also know this is quite a cold country, so the bags don't really smell a lot. But I was also told they pay a lot to the council for those services, much more than in Spain. They don't also have a lot of time for cleaning the house, so now I know why Spaniards believe English are dirty. If they go to houses in wich they have trash bags outside the house, on the front door, and they leave them there for days, and also they don't clean the house so often (because of time problems) they'll find them dirty for sure. But I also look at the whys and know the answer of those whys, so I believe they aren't that dirty, it's just they can't be more clean, it's impossible.

There's some other things, small things that makes life in England different. The bed sheets are different and bed sizes as well, and also pillows. They eat those full english breakfasts that are horrible for me, because I can't eat in the morning, it's impossible I promise, I'll vomit just trying. And also the marmite (yeast extract) wich does smell great but taste not that great for me, it's too strong. But they love it. Muffins, a lot of different bread, tea, and something called fruit squash, food is different, especially on breakfast time. Evry shop in England has millions of different things I didn't even know they exist.

Species, prepared oriental (and not oriental) sauces, noodles, pre-cooked oriental meals... But there's something we don't normally have in Spain (except at Colin's house) and it's kettles. I find them useful. If you need to prepare coffe, tea, pasta, just need a few minutes to boil the water. Why on the bloody earth we don't have them in Spain? It's not that I want to preapare tea, but for pasta and coffe they're great.

So food is different, and also food habits and timing. I'm still not used to English timing, and I'm having my lunch at different times everyday so my body is not used to anything. But I still can't have Full English Breakfast.

Well, I'm stoping now, I hope I'll still finding differences so I can continue writing. The language differences aren't valid here, we all know we speak different languages. (But I could tell you about what's rude and what's not rude here, but I think I need more time for that).

Reagards.

Manoel.

From SPEC (Whatever it means)

2004-10-20T19:59:00.000+02:00

Hi there.

I'm here again. Just trying to talk about the things that happened to me this last few days. And there are some things I'll like to talk about and so little time.

This was the flat-share-looking-week, which means I spent the last three days looking for a place to stay in. Of course it was infructuous. It's not that I couldn't find anything, it's not it's impossible to find anything. But when you have little time and you don't want to spend too much money, and you can't promise to stay a long time, the search can become "mission impossible" but of course I'm sure with more time it's not impossible, in fact I could have stayed in some houses.

But why didn't I stay on those places? I'll explain to you. The first thing that happened is I went to an agency. I had to pay 59£ for them too call people and give me addresses. I thought at the time I was at the office it was well expended money. That changed when I went to see the first house.

It was a very old house, completely dirty, dark. The room was ridiculously small and the bed... The owner, or something like that, was a pregnant east-european who looked really tired. She was nice, but she told me she was living with another 8 guys from different places. This was 80£ a week. And it's not that I'm too meticulous, but knowing I could stay in better places if I wasn't so shy... Anyway, on the way to that place I saw a group of black people on a car taking a photo from a mobile of... me? That scared me a bit.

The second was the house of an old couple from jugoslavya. The miss wasn't at home neither their son. The guy who attended me was a 70 year old parkinson poor old jugoslavyan. He needed so many time to walk up the stairs that finally he decided to tell me walk in front of me. He was very sweet. But more of the same, a tiny, tiny room, dirty place and 80£ as well. Do the Jugoslavyans stay with their parents 'till they are 50 like in Spain?

The third more of the same, except this time the old woman was english. And also 80£.

So at the end of that day I had visited 3 horrible houses in very horrible neighborhuds. I had another meeting at 7pm for the house the guy from the agency said was the best, so I was still hopeful. Then I checked the internet and saw an advert really interested. Then I called the guy, a kiwi, and went to his house. This time I was amazed. It was 90£ pw and on a very posch place. The house was inmense, gorgeous in fact. I talked to the guy, he was either nice, and it wasn't that dirty, just a bit, considering that 9 people lived on that house I believe it's normal, and it's something I can dare with when I'm in such a hurry as I am.

So he told me to wait 'till next day (today) because another couple would come to see the house. He didn't told me but I suspected the couple would pay more, because of something he said. I was dammed right. He has just sent me an email to tell me the share has been taken, dammed couples. Just one question, Why the hell couldn't he tell me the same on the phone, or by sms, I think it could have been nicer.

I forgot to tell you that on Monday I went to see another share, just for 2 weeks and from www.gumtree.com as well and it happended exactly the same thing, he told me I was late. And that's exactly what happened today. I went to see another 2 houses from the agency but I couldn't even describe them, and another from gumtree but I was also late. It seems finding a cheap house in London takes some time. If you have a job it's easier, because you can get a bedsite or a studio, for the same price and clean, without sharing with dirty filthy strangers.

Anyway. I decided to go back to Mig's house, I called him and he told me to go. I'm waiting for him to call me to check again. I'll be there as much as I can while I can't find a job and then a studio.

The other thing that happended to me was at Monday night. Hannah (Faye's sister, Colin's daughter) told me if I wanted to join them for a kind of catholic meeting. Just to have a chat for a couple of hours with other people (catholics) and argue about things. I thought I could lie if I was asked, so I decided to make Hannah happier (she earned points for bringing me to the meeting, whatever points means here). It was interesting at the begining, free food, drinks (water, cofee, milk, tea, no beer) and the opportunity to relax and chat. There I was in the middle of catholics arguing about how much they pray, or someone asked how do they do not to fall asleep when they're praying at night, or if it's good to pester to god on prayers. I just wanted to shout, to scream, to yeel them what I think about praying. One girl said something about praying because she wanted a catholic boyfriend and I thouhgt, "go out, drink something and dance, be sexy and I'm sure you'll find somebody, perhaps not catholic, but religion it's not the most important thing in life". I had a good time, and I really needed to chat with somebody. They were good people, but you know, I can't bare straight catholics for a long time, talking about conversion, talking about the meaning of life and the rules of the catholic church.

I'm sorry if somebody is offended with these, I just ask them to be patient and tolerant because I don't believe in all that ......... (put your own words, please, so it won't be my fault)

Hope you like this new post.

Have a nicer time than I'm having at the moment. Well, that's not exactly true, I had an opportunity to walk a lot and to go to a lot of different places in London, including that gorgeous house on a posch street I'm not going to live in.

Cheers.

Manoel.

Writing from McDonalds

2004-10-18T18:43:00.000+02:00

Yes, I'm in a bloody McDonalds, writing with this annoying keyboard, but at least it's quite cheap. Anyway, that's something I would never expect.

It's time to talk a bit more about English behaviours, as it's quite difficult to write with this thing I don't know how much I'll write.

I've been on a British motorway, at night and during the day, with and without rain. So I learnt quite a lot about English drivers. The first thing I noticed was the amazing quality of English motorways. They have 3 lanes normally, and sometimes a few more. While in Spain the normal amount it's just to. The second thing I noticed is that they are straight roads, with no curves at all, just one or two in a certain distance so you don't fall asleep. I know the rate of deaths on English roads is with a long distance less than in Spain. I could say that it's because English drivers are better than Spanish, but I think it's only because they have really good roads.

I might say they don't drive really well. There's 3 or even 4 lanes and it's said and written on the sides of the motorway that inner lanes are only for overtaking. But that's just a lie. Everybody overtaes in any of the lanes. On the right, on the left, on the middle lane. There's no visible rule for that. You just drive on the lane you most like. I think that's not only unsafe but annoying, specially for a poor Spaniard used to overtake in only one lane.

The other thing I noticed, and wich most scares me is they don't respect the safety distance at all. It's said you should leave a gap between you and the car in front of you for if he suddenly brakes you'll have enough time to stop your vehicle without crashing with him. I saw they just get as close to the next vehicle as they can. That really scares me.

So I can't believe their statistics, it might be they are better drivers than us, or just they have better roads. But if I have to drive here I'll get crazy.

Changing the subject, I tell you I've been in Congleton, wich is a small town near Manchester. It's really beautiful or I should say gorgeous. It's full of cows, cow shit smell, rain, and farmers. It's peculiar, and I could see my first "boot sale" wich consists on selling all the crap you have at home and you don't want. You put all that stuff in the boot of your car, afterwards you put it on a desk and tell your children to sell it while you go to spend the money you're going to earn in the local Pub.

It was nice, and I'm sure you can find some good bargains in there. But it's also quite weird somebody would like to spend a Sunday morning selling the crap somebody gave you one day, or you bought on a boot sale.

The other thing I want to comment is I saw for the very firt time the real, the only one English typical Pub. Full of local people having beer. I had the opportunity to try local ale's. I'll say I missed the bubbles, but it does taste great. I'm sure I'll have more opportunities to drink ale beer. (I'll still miss the bubbles).

Anyway, I hope you're still enjoying my Blog. I just hope I can continue with it, wich will mean I'm still here. But I promise this is my last time on a McDonalds internet Blody machine.

One question. Would you still be reading my Blog if finally I have to go back to Spain? I promise it would still be funny. It's just a question, I hope I don't have to go back, it's just a question of me being a it lucky.

Cheers everybody.

Manoel.

From Cow-Town

2004-10-18T08:25:00.000+02:00

Hi again.

Now I'm in Congleton, where my friend Faye's mum lives. It's such a beutiful countryside place, full of cows. It smells of cow shit, wich reminds me of Galicia and makes me feel at home a bit. Wherever I look I see cows, green and rain, it's such a rainy place.

Well. I thought I could write more these days but finally, even when I had enough time to do it I didn't. It seems I feel better to write when I'm in a rush. I mean it, because now I'm waiting to go back to London and I'm in a hurry.

I hope I'll write soon a new post, this time I think I'll write about English Motorways and the countryside, it's easy. I didn't have too many new experinces but being in a proper English Pub, watching a "boot sale", wich is something I've never seen, and walking in the countryside.

Weel, see you soon.

Manoel.

Efficiency and Disabled

2004-10-14T21:51:00.000+02:00

Hi again.

I'm quite amazed about how efficient a country could be compared to Spain. It seems this is a really efficient country. There must be some clever guys thinking about ridiculous, but usefull, things all the time. How much are they payed?

So lets talk a bit about efficiency in the UK. I see some bizarre (bizarre for a spaniard, I mean) things on the streets and on the tube. For example:

On the mechanical stairs you have signs saying "Please stand on the right" or something like that, I certainly don't remember the exact phrase. That's really clever and efficient. So the fastest people can walk up the stairs while the slower ones can stay on the right.

Anywhere you have tube maps, and more specific ones that indicates almost perfectly how to reach your destination. You have also somebody speaking telling you wich trains is coming, and also where is that train going to, and also he reminds you to mind the gap, the gap between the train and the station. You have also signs saying "mind the gap" and more tube maps inside the trains. It's quite difficult ti get lost at the train if you're clever enough and don't mind on asking somebody.

On the streets there's this painting I told you saying from wich direction are the cars coming. So even if you're a blody foreigner you don't have to be worried when you cross the road. When you want to cross you just have to take a look at the ground and read, meanwhile you'll be pushed by some Spaniards that just want to cross the road without looking because they're really clever, well, they aren't that clever, is always better to look I think, but in fact I preffer them not to look, so they can be kill....., ups!, I'm sorry, I was just letting my murderous instincs to fly.

But there's always a bad side on that kind of efficiency. It seems those clever guys aren't disabled or don't know any disable people. They forgot completely that some people can't read, they can't ever see. As not all the traffic lights have acoustic signals for the blinds, and as not all the cross roads have even traffic lights for pedestrians, I wonder if they can really live in this city. Somehow I haven't seen any blind yet. And it's quite hard even for non blinds to cross the roads as not all of them have traffic lights for pedestrians, just only for cars.

And about the wheel chair guys, I believe they have to "walk" (sorry, I don't know a proper word fot that) the whole city if they want to go anywhere. The tube doesn't have a lot of lifts. And, what's most strange, some of them have lifts but then they have stairs to reach the platforms. Of course it's impossible to "walk" on a mechanical stairway with a wheelchair. And on the streets, not all the crossroads have any kind of help for them as well.

So I see this is a country of efficency, but really unpolite with poor disableds. Somebody has to speak with Mr. Blair, or with the major, or with those blody clever guys that decided to put a sign saying "LOOK LEFT" instead of an acoustic signal for blinds.

It's strange that Spain is better in that sense than England. I'm amazed to see we do something more efficiently than English. At least our traffic lights have acoustic signals and paths for wheelchairs even in my little small town Pontevedra.

I hope you like it this time and also that I could stay as long here as I can really tell you all the differences between you and me.

Cheers.

Manoel.

From outer space

2004-10-14T00:55:00.000+02:00

Hi again.

Living on a different country is not quite easy. Almost everything is different. Things are slower than in Spain if that's possible. Before coming here I had wonderful dreams about it being so different from Spain as it would be a wonderful place to live. I was wrong. As it's really different from Spain, the differences go exactly on the same direction, althoug with different manners.

In Spain is not rude to tell somebody "you are rejected", in fact that's what we expect from them (unless you are a relative of any kind of boss in the office). But here they really polite, so they don't doubt on telling you "the IT market has been stopped for a long time, there's no jobs on IT" either if it's true or not. I don't really know the answer of that question, but I really know I sent hundreds of CVs with no answer. After calling them to ask if they had recieved my CV the answer was always the same "NO, send it again". As my especiality is IT I know that's not true. It might have been they deleted accidentaly (or on purpose) my CV, or they just don't have enough time to look at all the CVs they receive everyday.

So the fact is that I haven't received any nice answer from them, just only bad news. That's not funny, I believe.

So now I'm here, with not only no job but with the idea of being impossible to find a job. And if that's not enough I still don't have a house. But that's something I could fix.

So I'm a bit annoyed about English behaviours. I'm sorry not to be funny this time, but it seems life is not as easy as we normally believe.

Anyway, I'll try to stay here 'till my bank account says "empty" or 'till my mind and/or my body says "STOP". There's some things I really like from being here. Especially the loooong walks I'm having.

Next weekend I'll be in Manchester. I hope people is different there, warmer and nicer. And I also hope I can find a job there, a house, or even a life (Could I say a girlfriend too???, joking, more or less).

Ok then, cheers from London.

Manoel.

PS: I hope next time I'll be funnier.

More than a Week

2004-10-12T02:47:00.000+02:00

Well, the time has passed. It seems I'll stay here as long as I can. But the money is running out and I still don't have found a job. Apart from that I really need to find somewhere to live, so things are getting worse in some ways but in some others they're getting better.

I'm getting used to the English standards and also I miss less my family. I really like to walk in the city and watch all those marvellous buildings and enjoying the Brits.

It's just you can find almost everything you need.

There's something I forgot to mention on my last post and is that I received my first English smile on a street on Sunday. But I may say it wasn't in London. Althoug today I recieved as well my first London smile. That was nice because I thought Londoniers didn't smile at all, but at least there's one who does smile.

Anyway, I'm just here siting on "my bedroom" thinking about all that. I really like this bloody place.

This week I'm using my sight to look at what the people do on the tube. Some read newspapers, some just stare at nothing, some talk with their fellows and some just sleep. How can you sleep on a washing machine?, I mean the tubes moves like a washing machine, you go up and down, and then left and up and right and it does never stop. Apart from all the noise and the movement, how can anyone could feel safe sleeping on the tube? I'm glad to say tube should be really safe, with no crime at all, if not I know some guys who just had lefted their wallets, suitcases and even clothes.

About newspapers I should say they spoke a lot about Beckham this week and the fact he is playing well again. I might say it was just ONE match but it doesn't really matter for the press so they have their hero back again. That's more or less what they do with Raul in Spain so I'm not really surprised.

I'm still scared of the roads. Althoug I got used to look first to the right instead to the left as it is in my country (I might be wrong, it could be right in England but it's dark and I'm too tired), but if I wasn't used it doesn't really matter because it's painted on the road. So if you don't know wich side to look first you just take a look of the ground to see wich one is it. That's brilliant.

Well, I'm going to sleep now. Cheers for everybody.

Manoel.

PS: Does anybody now how to get a job on IT in this blody city? And does anybody have a cheap spare room to share?

English nightclubs and some apologizes

2004-10-10T19:35:00.000+02:00

I received a comment on the last post from an English chav that sounded just a bit offended. I'm really sorry if I offend anybody. I know I can be quite rude an offensive sometimes but my idea is to laugh about ourselves. So what's the point on only telling the good things with really nice words and not telling the not so good things with an ironic tone.

So I'm really sorry if I offended somebody. I'm quite tolerant with everything (well, I have some exceptions of course) and every kind of people, colour, style, religion, ...

Anyway. I had my first English night, well, they were 2 nights in fact. What could I say? The first thing that impresses me is the time. Everybody goes back at home at 1,2 more or less (sometimes more, sometimes less) and they start partying at 19:00. So it's said as they don't have so many time they drink as fast as possible to get drunk. My English friends are really proud of that, they said English drink a lot, and it could be true, but I'm sure it's comparable with Spaniards. As I noticed the quantity of alcohol in the drinks is 3 times less than in Spain. They drinked over 6 or 7 drinks during the night. My friends in Spain drink 10 drinks a night and with three times more alcohol in them. So I bet English don't really drink that much. Of course it was my first weekend and I can't really bet at 100%.

In same ways I felt at home in the disco, except for the music that it seem to be a bit better than in Spain. Of course I need more experience to verify that. And basicaly they do exactly the same as in Spain, drink, dance, talk and pull girls (or boys, of course). That's why I felt at home.

Yesterday we went to Bristol to go out. It's quite a nice town, really beautiful. I could have had a wonderful night but finally it wasn't that good, but that's a story I can't tell, I'm sorry. Anyway, the disco's staff were annoying. They asked everybody for a photo ID but they said it wasn't for aging purposes. What for? that's what I'm asking, I can't really understand what other purposes they could have. Do they really want to check if I'm not Osama Ben Laden? Later I wanted to go and buy some cigarettes outside the pub (of course the machine inside it didn't work) but they didn't aloow me to get in again if I leaved the disco (sorry, it was a disco, not a pub), so if I wanted to get back again I'll have to pay another 4£ to get in. Finally I decided to go and buy them and stay out of the place, what caused me some problems.

Another thing happend at the pub. It was something like one out one in, that literaly means one person leaves the disco, one person enter the disco, but of course that person wasn't any of us althoug we were the very firsts at the queue, VIP I guess. So that made me feel at home as well.

Anyway, I'm stoping now, I think I told you quite a lot of things again. I hope I'll stay here a long time, I don't want to leave my readers without my experiences.

Cheers, and apologizes for the chav.

Manoel.

Such a wonderful place

2004-10-08T11:22:00.000+02:00

How can anybody describe what London is? Just a big city? The answer of last question is NO.

I don't think New York is like London. You just walk around the city and everything is amazing. The people, the buildings, the food, everything. For a poor little boy from Pontevedra it's such a big new world to discover. Of course I feel a bit overwhelmed sometimes, but I think it's just a question of time to feel better and to estabilish.

And what about the museums, I don't have enough words to describe them. But I'll just say English stole a lot of things from other cultures and countries in the past, so you can see all of them distributed in more than 4 big buildings. And I also could see a mummie!!

I said Londoniers are cold, and they really are cold in the tube and the streets, they just walk as fast as they can so they don't miss next train, and then they sit without smiling at all, looking to nowhere, reading a newspaper. It's said it's rude to look at people in the tube, and it might be, but I can't do it, you know I love to look at people.

I saw my first chavs this week and I can only say OHOHOOHGGGGG!!!. They're even worst than spanish chavs. And I also went shopping (the thing I most hate) and I could see more chavs and chavs clothes. Clothing, that's something I could talk a lot. I saw English clothes at shops, and I can only say they're chavier (I believe I have just invented a word) than anything in Spain. So the believe of English being not really stylish might be true. I'll check later.

I'm also having my first English night. I was amazed to hear we'll be back at home at 12 or 1 more or less. They say you have to drink as fast as you can so you can enjoy the rest of the night, so you start drinking at 7PM and you only have 5 hours to dance, talk and find girls. I hope it'll be enough for a poor Spaniard.

Ok, let's finish it. I'll talk more and more later because there's so many things to say I won't ever finish.

Hope you're having such a nice time as I'm.

Cheers to everybody.

Manoel.

Here I am

2004-10-06T11:14:00.000+02:00

Hi, I'm finally in London.

It's more or less what I expected but much more than less. Everything is so different...

I still find hard to deal with all those changes but I hope soon I'll feel better. I can't still forget my own country and there's so many things to miss... I try not to think about it.

Anyway. It's too early to speak about English but I can tell you how marvellous is the city, and so big. I came from a little town so you can imagine the shock when I found myself walking in the city for a whole day, I think I walked 40Km and my legs went down at night. There's so many coulours, so many different people, but so cold (I mean the people). I know that it's because I'm in the city and everybody is either a tourist or too in a hurry to smile, that everything seems so busy.

But just walking you can see so many different places to eat. Wich bloody Spaniard said that in England they eat really badly? How can they eat badly when there's so many choices.

Well. Hope I'll write something else soon, meanwhile I'll continue seeking a job. I'll tell you later.

Manoel.

Some Goodbyes and Some Hellos

2004-10-02T10:32:00.000+02:00

Well, in about 3 hours I'll be at the airport walking to the plane. It's time to say goodbye, but later I'll be time to say hello.

I had never flighted and today I'm going to do it twice. But that's not the only excitement I'll have today. At night I'll have my first impressions about England. Also I'll see the difference between spanish and English airports and it's something might be significative. So I guess as soon as I can use a computer with internet I'll write a post.

So this is my last post from Spain (in some time, I'll come back to visit my family).

I'm very busy so I'm going to stop writing.

Goodbye Spain, hello UK.

Manoel

Something about English

2004-09-24T14:11:00.000+02:00

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

2004-09-22T16:57:00.000+02:00

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

2004-09-18T10:51:00.000+02:00

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

2004-09-03T12:41:00.000+02:00

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.

Dangerous Statistics

2004-08-17T12:28:00.000+02:00

Statistics: branch of mathematics that deals with the collection and interpretation of numerical information

In the last ten years it has been an increasing interest in statistics in this country. So, as it's something new to Spaniards, it can be dangerous. Stats give a new chance to them to say again "There's no better place than Spain". The problem is Spaniards don't generally know the meaning of all those numbers and their meaning. It's really easy to see on a newspaper "Mediterranean diet is good for the hearth" so then they assume Mediterranean Diet is the best, I'll analize this particular case:

It can be true that the mediterranean diet is good for the hearth, I won't argue about that, but of course it's not the best and, of course there's some others in the world and not all of them are so bad. Anyway and just as an example I'll say to you that the places in wich it's general to have that kind of diet are those in South Spain. And it's true that the hearth diseases are fewer there. But, if we look at another stat, it's also true that South Spain is the place where most women are killed by their husbands. So interpollating both stats I could say that Mediterranean Diet causes your husband to kill you.

The meaning of that is Stats could be dangerous sometimes, they depend on the chosed popullation, the place, and all the backgrounds. And also it depends on the meaning the analizer gives to all those data. But most spaniards don't know anything about that. And the newspapers contribute to make a mess of all that.

Another example, but this time with another country, and a bit rude in fact. Those really interesting stats about penises sizes all the Condom manufacturers like to show sometimes. It's said in USA they have really big penises. The real fact is that the number of Afro-Americans there is much longer than in Spain and the fact that most statistics say they have really big ones makes the USA medium size quite long. So I'm sure most Americans believe their penises are big, but if they're white skin I bet they don't have a bigger one than me. (I'm sorry for the rudeness).

And continuing, about Spain, politics and stats I should say the polls made the day before elections are never rigth, amazingly wrong in fact.

Another point is, as we all know now Spaniards never tell the truth, it's easy to see stats aren't never rigth here. But when there's nothing else to do, to expend the public money in, just let's do some nonsense stats to make the people happier as they see Spain is the best country in the world in spite of the sizes of our penises , they aren't that big (we hope the arriving of moroccans would solve that).

There's one group of people that loves stats, and it's the middle aged bored males, clerks and retired. They not only love to read them but also makes their owns.

Have a nice time. Hope I'll write again.

Manoel.

PS: Now it's 1 moth and 2 weeks before I leave.

Chaspotting

2004-08-11T00:19:00.000+02:00

I am the eggman, they're the eggman, I am the walrus, goo, goo, goo job...

I am the Walrus - Beatles, Magical Mistery Tour 1967 John Lennon

In my last post I spoke a bit about "Marulos" (Chavs, in the future I'll refer them as "marulos"). That was just to explain in a few words what a chav is. But if we speak about Spain and more especificly about my town Pontevedra I'll have to describe them better 'cause they're different from the UK chavs.

The back of a marulo car

Everybody in certain stages of their lives had been a marulo. When we're teenagers we want to dress as famous music stars (and some TV of course) do. But that maked us look terrible as they looked terrible (specially if we look backwards to the eighties, it's awful). But now we're old, or at least older and when we see them dressing with that huge trainers or boots, small t-shirts that don't cover the bellies, tight trousers or loose trousers (actually it happens it could be both tight and loose at the same time), or showing us their tangas or underwear (boys do the same putting their trousers lower than normal so we can see their underwear), or whatever they dress, we think they look horrible and even that it can be dangerous to our minds. So I migth say, for those teenagers wearing those clothes, stay wearing them, I won't bother you. The problem is when we see a guy (or a bird) of our own age (or older) dressing like them, that's what we call chav (and some of the youth as well).

Anyway, here we have a special kind of them. The marulo dress like I said before but he's more than 20 years old. They want to make as much noise as possible. For that purpose they'll buy either a marulo car or a marulo motorbike (I guess the poorest have motorbikes). If you're a girl you don't need that, you only need to find a boyfriend with it, but you can still shout. It doesn't matter if the moto or the car is good or not, the really important thing is that it makes noise. So, if your motorbike is not really noisy you'll remove the exhaust so it can be noisier. Of course some stickers would help the motorbike to be faster, or at least that's what they believe. Speaking about cars it's almost the same thing but they have more add-ons. You can remove the exhaust as with motos, but you can add neon lights, more stickers (as there's more space on a car to put them), spoilers, and everything you want to make it look like a really bad copy of a 24Hrs Lemans car, of course all those would make the car faster, or at least that's what they believe. I forgot to mention an add-on you can put on a car to make it noisier and perhaps faster, who knows, in a car you can install huge good looking speakers, an amplifier and a stolen car-radio system to play Techno music at the highest volume.

For a marulo is really important to look and sound like the best marulo ever. I live on the first floor in a street where the marulos pass with their motorbikes and cars at nigth. My walls are crap and I don't have double glass windows. So you can imagine what a Sunday nigth is (they go out on sundays as I guess they don't really have a job). And as you would know if you read Colin's blogspot police doesn't really care about such noises, they only care about parking fines. I forgot to tell you that helmets aren't suitable for marulos, and of course the police don't stop them for not wearing one.

I can't wait to see British chavs, I'm so excited...

Manoel.

Chav and Fiesta

2004-08-09T13:04:00.000+02:00

The second Sunday of August local Fiesta starts in Pontevedra (more info about this in Colin's Website). If you're planning to come here it migth not be a good idea to come at that time. The city gets full of people, parking is almost impossible and driving as well. Walking in certain streets can be awful and sometimes painful (psychologically, I mean). But, if you're interested in human beings and like to be an anthropologist, it migth be wonderful. I started this year a new hobby I call "chavspotting" and it consists on having a coffee in a terrace on a crowdy street and oberve the people that cross the street. It's really funny, I enjoy it a lot. Of course it's better to be with somebody else that likes the same hobby so you can comment the different dresses, attitudes, etc...

I migth explain what a chav is for anybody that don't know what a chav is. In my town we call them "marulos" and the origins of that name escapes my knoledge, anyway I'll try to find out. I have stolen a definition from the Babylon Online Glossary, here it is:

chav:
So-called peasant underclass.

History, etymology, synonyms:
The press in Britain has recently been having fun mocking a group called "non-educated delinquents" and "the burgeoning peasant underclass". The subjects of these derogatory descriptions are said to be set apart by ignorance, fecklessness, mindless violence and bad taste. Thus, critics point to their style of dress: a love of flashy gold jewellery; the wearing of white trainers; clothes in fashionable brands with very prominent logos; and baseball caps, frequently in Burberry check, a favourite style. The women, the Daily Mail wrote, "pull their shoddily dyed hair back in that ultra-tight bun known as a 'council-house facelift', wear skirts too short for their mottled blue thighs, and expose too much of their distressingly flabby midriffs".

Much of the attention is due to the experience of a Web site http://www.chavscum.co.uk. There is the wide variety of local names given to the type. Scots call them "neds" (an acronym of "non-educated delinquents", as folk etymology suppose; but it is probably from a nickname for "Edward", linked to yobbish youths through a previous generation of young louts, the teddy boys, "teddy" being an abbreviated form of "Edwardian"). Liverpudlians prefer "scallies" (a term of long-standing for a boisterous, disruptive or irresponsible young man); "Kev" is common around London (presumably from Kevin, popularised through the portrayal on his television show by the comedian Harry Enfield of an idiotic teenager with that name). Other terms are "janners" (from Plymouth), "smicks", "spides", "moakes" and "steeks" (all from Belfast), plus "bazzas", "scuffheads", "stigs", "stangers", "yarcos", and "kappa slappers" (girls who wear Kappa brand tracksuits, "slapper" being British slang for a promiscuous or vulgar woman). The term that has become especially widely known is borrowed for the name of the Web site, "chav". Maybe, it derived from the name of the town of Chatham in Kent. But it seems that the word is from a much older underclass, the gypsies, many of whom have lived in that area for generations.

"Chav" is almost certainly from the Romany word for a child, "chavi", recorded from the middle of the nineteenth century. It was being used as a term of address to an adult man a little later in the century, but it hasn't often been recorded in print since and its derivative "chav" is quite new to most people. Other terms for the class also have Romany connections; another is "charver", Romany for prostitute. Yet another is the deeply insulting "pikey", presumably from the Kentish dialect term for gypsy that was borrowed from "turnpike", so a person who travels the roads. And so, a term that has been in active but low-level use for the last 150 years suddenly bursting out into wider popular use in a new sense through circumstances we don't fully understand.

Now, that you know what a chav is I'll tell you about the recent talks I had with my english friends. They're always saying that youth dresses really badly in England (marulo style) and I can't wait to practice my favourite hobby there, but I had a lot of practice here 'cause I guess we're having the same marulo stylished youth. My friend Faye was saying her sister told her about the increasing bad taste in Pontevedra's youth dressing, and as for me the change must be slow 'cause I didn't realize it yet. But now I see, it's true. They have those new fashionable jeans with short t-shirts allowing the rest of the mortals to see what we shouldn't see. All that fat, bellies, tatoos, tangas, ... Completed with the most horrible trainers. Colors that my mum never allowed me to wear (she's sensible).

All these makes me think about women liberation. All those feminists fought to allow our daughters to dress like whores (actually the whores don't dress like that). I know it sounds really hard, but it's true, just try and practice CHAVSPOTTING.

I promise I'll speak about London chavs.

Anyway, more info about chavs in http://www.chavscum.co.uk

A Foreigner in your own Country

2004-08-03T02:00:00.000+02:00

I'm an alien I'm a legal alien, I'm an Englishman in New York, I'm an alien I'm a legal alien, I'm an Englishman in New York...

Sting

One of the main reasons why I leave (I have so many...) it's the feeling of being an Alien in my own Planet. I spoke a bit (I'll say more about that in the future) about Spaniards. In fact I made my own definition about them, but I'm sure I miss some more verbs. I should and will say that we are unpunctual, not really reliable, incompetents (that's something I'll explain in the future), lazy, arrogant, and even dangerous to ourselves sometimes (you'll have to read Colin's Blog to know more about that), and I could continue If my knowledge of English verbs was enough. I don't want to say we're the most horrible people in the entire human kind, of course other countries are mostly the same but, at least, those are more concentrated in some social nucleos (precisely the most powerfull and richest), but I won't speak about social classes and the human beings, that belong to philosophy.

But we, Spaniards, have something special that makes us special compared to other countries. We truly believe our behaviour is the right one, we understand each others behaviours so we don't give a shit when somebody is lying or misbehaving upon us because we'll do the same. I believe that's our most remarkable characteristic. As I said in latest posts "We know the rules".

I have really good reasons to move to another country and, in fact, England is just one of the countries I thought about, but the easiest to be moved in. Some personal reasons, some professional, some psicological, and so on. But the last two years in Spanish history made my decision stronger. For those who read the news (and not only the local ones) you should know we had the "Prestige" catastrofe, the terrorist attack on 11-M, the Iraquian conflict, and our last elections. I was horrified to see how malleable is the human kind.

I guess every country is the same shit, but speaking about Spain I have to explain. In all those problems nobody gave a bloody shit about what was going on. Everybody said something different the day before the event happened but, the next day, after speaking with somebody, or just hearing the news (controlled by political parties) changed completely their minds about what was really happening. I will just give some examples about any of the events:

1.- The Prestige: The ship was broken. Sailing the sea going nowhere. What to do with it? It's full of petrol. I heard everybody saing "just take it away from here", they really said that I promise. So the government said "take it away from the coast" and everybody agreed. I promise I'm not inventing anything, the TV, the radio, the people on the street they all agreed it was the right thing to do. The ship collapsed and the oil slick was just started. Some days of suspense, some days of hard work. And, suddenly, as we heard the radio again, the opposite partie, the TV, the newspaper (all media controlled by the opposite partie) said the governemt taked the wrong deccision. Some lies from the governemt made it worst and then began the demonstrations (controlled by the opposite parties), and everybody changed their minds. I've been in the beaches and the islands affected by the fuel trying to do my best, but I couldn't stand hearing the same political shit again and again while we should be cleaning the fuel from them. There's something very interesting about this event. The citizens of the most affected towns voted the actual governemt on local elections, the answer of the question "Why?" is really simple, the government paid them good salaries while they couldn't work on the sea, fishing.

After some months everybody in this country forgot anything about what happened, now it was just another old news.

2.- Iraquian conflict, terrorist attack in Madrid and elections: The same shit. Everybody in this country was perfectly quiet about Irak, Sadam Hussein and Al-Quaeda before the 11 of March. They were going to vote the same government we had for last 8 years, the polls were clear (even after the Prestige event) giving a clear victory to the PP (the conservative party). But then 200 people died because of an Al-Quaeda attack in Madrid. It was a repetition of the Prestige thing. We were 3 days before general elections. And, as it happened before, some days after the horrifying attack everything started again. Demonstrations (controlled again by the opposition parties). That wasn't that bad, at least the reason was good. But just before the election, in the reflexion day (as we call here the day before elections in wich any kind of political show is strictly forbidden) new demonstrations, and not nice and quiet ones, started in any city and town of Spain (I guess, and I mean guess, they were controlled by the opposition parties). So, as it happened before, the Spaniards changed their minds and voted in a different direction. As a result of this Spain was divided and we had a new socialist governemt.

I won't say anything about politics, personally I don't agree with any of the parties we have here. Some are too conservative and the others too "trying to be modern". What I don't agree is the malleable attitude of the Spaniards. So, when they're in a group and the most of them thinks "yes" the rest would say "yes" even if they don't agree with that, but just because they don't want to "quedar mal" (I'll translate this into "lose face", but I'm not sure if it's the right expresion).

I didn't change my mind about what was happening. I just saw it was a horrible catastrophe. All those killings, all those beaches and sea destroyed, everything was just bad news. I was concerned about what was happening, I went to clean the beaches, I went to the demonstrations when they were just to show how angry we were (not controlled by anybody). And, if I would believed in god, I would prayed for all those lives. But I didn't change my mind. So I guess I'm a monster here, an Alien in a strange country were I was born and in wich I'm not sure to believe in.

I apologize to be so horrible this time, but I felt quite angry today, it migth say it's the horrible weather we're having this summer what makes me so angry (global warming???).

I hope next time I'd be more funny.

Manoel

Just some news

2004-07-31T03:08:00.000+02:00

I found out I could have a 1Gb email Account with 100Mb of Free Webspace and 250Mb of photos. So I decided that it could be a good idea if I just started a new photo Gallery for my Blog. I love to add contents to my websites so I belived it's going to be great. I'll include any photo related to my travel, so as it's still 2 months to my departure I guess I have no photo to put in.

So, if you like my blog and wants to know more about my adventure I tell you to look after 2 months (and some days) to see my new Photo Gallery Stuff. I planed to bring my digital camera with me, so I guess I'll take some photos from the airports (Vigo, Madrid in Spain, and Gattwick in London).

If you're a bit interested in that just look at the links section to see if I had added a "Photo Gallery" section in it (in the future I'll add a link to it in a different part of the Blog, more clear and easy to be seen). However I guess I'll publish some photos from Galicia and myself before I leave. Just look at the links section sometimes and you might see.

The future Londoner.

Cheating 2

2004-07-28T19:14:00.000+02:00

As a result of a comment I decided to explain the reason why I had included "cheating" in my own definition of a Spaniard. But I believe he's still not convinced. I'll give you some more examples of Spanish cheating, so I guess it'll be clearer.

My friend Colin (he's the unbeliever) had just reciently posted one good example but it seems he doesn't really believe lying is that serious. It was this "importers of German cars were found to have been turning the clocks back by many thousands of kilometres" you can read it better in his blog. So that's a good one.

But now I have some more for all of you. One of the most common cheats in Spain is when the time to pay taxes comes. A Spaniard will do the best they can to pay less. So they will say they have nothing, or they probably have put the name of their wives for expensive houses, cars, bussiness, so they can pay less. That's only for the richests, but the rest of us would just lie a bit. It's really common for the companies to put less money in the contract than the real salary and pay the rest of it in "black money" so they'll pay less taxes as well as the employee, the bad side of this is that it also means they would pay less money to the social security, this won't be bad if you work there forever, but if finally they fire you you will receive less money from the government.

Talking about subsidies, it's completely normal that some people would receive money from the government and work at the same time without a contract. As a result our desemplyment numbers are a complete fake. And even some of them won't accept a job just because it's more comfortable to receive money for watching TV and sleeping. In fact, in this subject I would say that I guess we are the only country in wich we have a large number of desemployees and a lack of employees for some kind of jobs (the same ones the third world inmigrants accepts).

Talking about jobs, I heard recently on TV that 80% of the youngs were lying in their CVs. They said they can speak a language (most of the cases English) when thay can't say more than "jelo" (that's how Spaniards spell it), or just write a really large list of software they can use when they never had touched a computer, they invented courses they've never been, and so on. The interviewed interviewer said "that's just normal, we all now that, so we wait for the interview to check it".

I can't speak about governemnt lies because I would never stop, and I guess that's inherited to all governments.

Repeating the same sentence with a different object "I can't speak about women lies,...".

And to finish this time. Something my friend Colin knows. Recently the number of parcially disableds had been increased noticeably. That's just because the Spaniards had just realized they'll pay much less taxes if they have more than a 35% of it. I had two examples at home. I won't say they don't really deserve to pay less taxes, but, on the other side, I believe this is just unfair. That money could be used to change the streets so they would be less dangerous to disableds.

Anyway, I hope I would find more examples about it.

The Meaning of Cheating, or Spaniards 1.2

2004-07-27T00:36:00.000+02:00

It's such a wonderful day that's sure somebody will come to make it horrible.

Anonymous. A normal day in Spain.

Preparing for lying

I had a question about my own definition of a Spaniard. I should tell you that I thought I was well explained, but I was wrong. I really meant cheating, but I wasn't speaking about love. So, I think the best is to explain it with some examples as well with words.

I realized that for non Spaniards lying is such an unpolite way of doing things. But that's not true for Spaniards. If you want to complain about anything they always have an excuse, even if it's true or not (it could be a half truth). In Spain how the people think we are is even more important than how we really are. I mean, if somebody fails, they'll try to show that it wasn't their fault, so their image won't be damaged. The most common is, when you are complaining about something, to say that "it's not my fault, my ... told me to do it like this" (you can say "boss", "company" or whatever you want) so they'll still be nice to the complainer. I saw that and even practise it when I worked in CARREFOUR hypermarket, but in my defence I would say it was true.

Guilties could be bosses, companies, wheather, another company, traffic, or in case of being late somebody's fault.

That's another subject in Spaniards, punctuality. Never trust a Spaniard. As you should know by now, Spaniards love chatting and, as I said, cheating, so, if a Spaniard is late (99% of the times) be sure they will say "I received a call from ... and I couldn't stop him talking", that could be true, but it's hardly to believe they couldn't stop him for more than half an hour. But chatting is really important to Spaniards. We'll speak more about that subject in the future, especially when I can compare Spain with other cultures.

Returning to our main Subject I would say that we are lyiers, more than that, experts in lying. I have to add another common prhase "mañana, mañana..." that means something like "tomorrow, tomorrow, ...". Literally it really means "tomorrow" but really it doesn't. The real meaning of that sentence is "I might do it some day", or "it migth happen some day" or "I'll finish some day". That's a really important thing to now if you want to be here for in a long term. Foreigners would tend to believe the real meaning of the sentence so, the next day, they would quietly come there to ask again, in the believe it would be finished, just to receive the same answer "mañana, mañana". This has to do both with cheating and punctuallity. They would really want to finish it before tomorrow, but I'm sure they will receive a calling from somebody or just find something more fun to do.

So we really cheat, but only to foreigners, because we know the rules. For us that's not lying, we know the code, we know the rules. If somebody tells me "sorry for being late, my mom called me..." I know they're lying but I don't really care, because I would do the same thing. And if somebody tells me "Mañana, mañana" I know they mean in a far future. And so on.

At this point I hope you got the core of Spanish cheating. We really don't want you to think we are as horrible as we appear to be.

I hope I made it clear for you. I'm living here since I was born, and that means 27 years and a half, so I guess I know ourselves enough to tell you how we are. And I'm not a real Spaniard so I can really say that being a bit objective. Perhaps I'm being too negative. But in our defence I would say again that "there's no better place in the whole world than Spain".

Spaniards

2004-07-23T00:23:00.000+02:00

spaniard: resident of Spain (country in southwestern Europe)

That's the definition from a dictionary. But, of course, that's uncomplete. If we follow the literal words my friend Colin could be a Spaniard, but of course he isn't (and I'm pretty sure he would never want to be one). A Spaniard it's a person who lives in Spain and like a Spaniard. So, before, I'll post my own definition:

spaniard: Human being who has a lot of important friends, who loves chatting, cheating, partying and Spain. And lives in Spain.

One of the most common sentences you will hear from a Spaniard it's "No se vive mejor en ningún sitio como en España" that I translate into "There's no place as comfortable as Spain". You can change the verb "vive" that literally means "live" and change it into "come" (eat) or any other expression like "lo pasa uno tan bien" (funny, to have fun) and it would be the second and third and so on favourite Spanish sentences. For a Spaniard there's no place better than home and they'll say horrible things about any other countries, specially when they speak about food and fun. But the problem is that 90% of the Spaniards had never gone out Spain. So, you will hear something like "The food in England is disgusting" and if you dare in asking if they had been there they will say "Of course not, but a friend of mine...". As Spaniards love chatting, and chatting, and chatting and so on to the infinite, they tend to speak about almost everthing even when they don't know a word on the subject. Well, sometimes I don't think I'm really a Spaniard, and about food I don't think our food is the best, I like it, but I love other non Spanish food. But I still like chatting.

The real wish of any Spaniard it's to be a "funcionario" (clerk). That gives them a chance to spend their lives chatting and having fun. Spanish burocracy is one of the worst in the whole world, and not because our government is really bad (well, actually it is, but not the worst), but because if you want something, all the clerks will be doing something better than working. It's not really difficult to find a clerk having coffe while you need a paper to be signed, or whatever. And, of course, the chance of coming close to a clerk's desk and finding him reading the news, or chatting with anybody on the phone, or just at home, it's something like perfectly possible. They get high salaries, and some discounts in education, and a good health insurance. So it's perfecly understanding that wish.

About government, well this year I had a perfect example on what a government shouldn't be. I'm sure you know we had our own 11S in the shape of 11M. If the terrorist had an idea of how to damage a country I'm sure they did, but not on purpose. Do I believe in Democracy? not in this country. You know we had it since 1976 (more or less) and that should give an idea of how trained are we in this. Well, the point I want to speak about is that we are having a kind of an investigation like in the US about what happen. What a lie. If you read Spanish newspapers you'll realise that the newspapers, radio, TV knows more than even the investigators about it. You'll realise that SECRET documents are being shown, confidents and almost everything. That's a shame, in my own opinion. What's the point on having a secret agency if you can know all just reading the news. What's the value of a confindent when the terrorist know their names?

Something else about government, specially about the new government. Today, as a special report in the news, they said that our last governemt had a contract with a "lobby" in the US. That contract was about promoting Spain in the US, something like developing relations in business, diplomatics, ... And also it had a mention about a medal the US parliament was giving to our old president Aznar. So, the new socialist Spanish governemt was really fast to speak about it, and not with nice words. They said that it's a peculation of public funds. But I'm thinking about something, if they are the new government, shoudln't they have access to all the bills? And if they have why they didn't found out about that contract and that monthly bill? It's something like If I'm the president of Spain I can make any contract, even in my own benefit, because the new government will never know. It's just an excuse to say again, and again, how bad was our last governemt.

Well, as I'm not already in England I think I can only speak about Spaniards. And I think that even When I'll be there I'll still speak about Spaniards. We are so wierd...

Visions from the Future

2004-07-18T03:14:00.000+02:00

Now it's just a 2 & 1/2 months for my leaving.

I wonder what I'll find, but there's something I'm sure of it, I'll met people, interesting people, not the same old spanish rubbish (I don't mean they are rubbish really). Am I excited? Yes, of course. Am I anxious? how can I tell you. Dreams came to me, really nice dreams, but reality is always better than fantasy.

Anyway. I got my Mobile Phone Card today (it's a "Pay as you Go" card), so I can be called from England now. Why did I ask for it? I thought it would be good if I can make some calls from there without looking for a Telephone cabinet and be called by my mom when I reach there (I love my mom, and my other relatives too). Apart from that I thought I could include my English Mobile Number on my CV so, as I'm going to send my CV before I leave, I can be called even from my first day in England from Job Agencies or whatever they're called. At first I was amazed that it's juice was only 1 pound and I even thought it was mean. But, after comparing to spanish standards, I realized that although in Spain they offer 6€(+/- 4 pounds) we have to pay more for the card, and it's not that easy to get one.I mean I paid 15 pounds for the card while in Spain I would have paid +/- 22. So finally I realized it's not that expensive, in fact, it's more expensive here although you get more juice.

Anyway. I'm really happy to have my card, but I have to put some money on it, I guess 1 pound it's not enough (even when my spanish mobile card has just 15p, but I don't normally call anybody with the mobile).

I want to add, just to finish this post, that I made it for my friends and actually for anybody that want's to read some nonsense in a strange language (even for the English Speakers), so my hope is that this stupid blog could be interesting to somebody and I wish I could put a smile on somebodies face).

P.S: Mr. Colin Davies told me that the title was incorrect and, of course it is, But that's just another joke so, as "an" Spaniard, my knowledge of the English language should be limited. I hope anybody else can get the joke ;-)

CV Writing

2004-07-14T00:49:00.000+02:00

Well. I'm writing my CV. If I'm honest I started to write it more than a month before. It wasn't the first time that I wrote one, but I was never that interested in selling myself. I mean that I never was such a perfectionist.

I've done more than one CV, but then I didn't have any advice, not of any kind, even the smallest advice. But now I got that advice. So, I couldn't imaginate how difficult it was to be sold. Everything is important, even the most stupid verb you use. It's not the same to say that you've done something than to say that you "Improved the ..." whatever. So the searching of the right words, the perfect way to say things that I normally would explain with just a few words like "I've done a Weblog" has to be said in the most pompous way possible.

I'll add a line to my CV. I'll never want to be a CV reader. They're so boring, such a mess of lies. But anyway, I have to do it.

And what about the first statement. What can I say about myself that could make a difference. If look through my own personality I could say such a lot of things. But you have to fix them into a sentence without saying too many. How can I condense a sort of feelings, wishes in just a paragraph, and worst, How can I say them without being arrogant. It's not right to say "I want to be a programmer" because we are more than 12 year old.

I guess if we're not going to far. We're not products, we're not things, we're human beings. But the world is not perfect, I already knew that. So, I guess I have to sell myself.

PSS: Who wants to buy me (I should say rent me, that's better)

Some thoughts

2004-07-07T16:03:00.000+02:00

Everyday is one step closer to my departure. Now I'm less than 3 months to leave, and, perhaps 'cause I'm bored, I start to think about English. Are we so different?

A year and a half before I met an English, and after that his daughter and then his dog. I enjoyed these people, I had really good times with them, and now I believe they're my friends. In fact I have a really special relation with them (and I love that Dog). So I started to met english people through them. So now I can say that I know at least a little of British personality.

Figthing with British Behaviours

The first thing I noticed is their different atitude towards spanish behaviours. They enjoy really to notice those small things that make us different (at least the English I met). They like to speak about our behaviours in almost everything. For instance, they noticed our time behaviours. We're always late, and they say it's because we love to speak, so if we have a date at 8 and we met somebody in the street we'll inevitable stop to speak to them although we'll be late. I could say that's wrong, but really it's true. But I'm not going to speak about us, that's the matter of another weblog, particuraly the blog of that friend of mine, called Colin

So, let's speak about them. I'll speak more about this question when I had lived some time in London, but let's say a bit now. Something I found particuraly interesting was anything related to food. First of all eating timetable. We do a breakfast (exactly when we wake up), lunch (between 1pm and 4pm) and dinner (after 8,9om), but meanwhile we normally eat in between. But all those meals are sacred. But English as well as on driving are different, where's the lunch???, How can you have a dinner before 8pm and not be just a starting before it??? I love eating, and I'm not sure if I'll survive without food in my stomach at midday.

Working, we don't really like it. For us a job it's the time when we're not at a party, or speaking, and, if you work as a clerk, it's the time for coffee and reading newspaper. But it seems that English really love to work, or at least, they take it seriously. I´m also afraid of that.

Going out. 2am in the morning it´s not a nice time to go home, the sky is still dark. It migth be a myth, but, as far as I know, it´s not. But meanwhile we begin the party after 10pm (sometimes later, even at 2am) they do it at 7pm. Then we finish at (who knows) and it seems that as I said before they normally end it at 2am, toooooo early for a spaniard. My friends are still having siesta at 7pm. Well, I´m not afraid of that, because as I´ll be working all day and I´ll have to wake up really early, I believe I´ll be really tired to go out as if I was in Spain. But there´s something I like, I love beer, and somebody told me that drinks are expensive in England except beer, so that´s something I´ll love.

I´m finishing now. This is just an introduction ´cause I think I´ll write more about British. Siya folks.

Theremon

The Start.

2004-07-03T12:14:00.000+02:00

I decided to leave my country last November.

Why?
Well. I was tired of my own country. I felt a bit bored and, as I said before, tired of the same things, people, behaviours, etc... Apart from those reasons and some personal ones, the opportunities for an ambitious guy as I am aren't really good, and, as I've finished my degree, I want a good job (is not only a question of money, I mean).

When?
I said I decided it on November 2003, but I had to wait 'til I finish my degree, so I couldn't leave at that time, and also I needed money. So the travel was postponed 'til I have everything fixed and finished. Now I have a date for my departure. It's on the second of October. That day I'll leave my house, my family, friends, and some very important people, my city, and over all country. I'll start that amazing day when I'll wake up early in the morning to pick a bus (it migth be possible that somebody will bring me to Madrid, but that's just possible by now), and will be continued when I enter, for the first time in my live, a plane.

Who?
I'm from Pontevedra, a small town in Galicia (Spain) close to 90 thousand humans. I was born in 1977 and, as an stupid information, I'm Aquarius. I was nearly born with a computer in my hands, I said nearly 'cause I had to wait 'til I was 10 to have one, but I practiced in a shop before with a Spectrum (9Kb of RAM) some BASIC. So, basicaly, I'm a programmer, IT, Informático, or whatever you use to name us. I love music, singing, dancing, cinema, sports, and a lot of other things, specially reading and all those special girls that I've met in my live. I could speak a lot about my own, but I wish you'll know me better later, as I'll be on a new environment I'll be changed.

Where?
After thinking on different places in my own country and outside it, I made a decision. London, UK. I know people there, it´s one of the places I always wished to visit, and I know the language. It's a large, huge city, with a lot of job opportunities (I hope that's true). I considered some other places, but after all London had all the things I wanted. Maybe later I'll move to a different side of the world (in fact I'm thinking on Tokyo in a not really far future), who knows.

What?
I expect to find a new world there. Different language, different people, different places, ... And above all, I believe that just the fact of everything being new to me is enough. There's a lot of places that I always desired to visit, I was a Beatlemaniac, so it's easy to imagine wich places I wan to visit, but also I love J.R.R. Tolkien, and computers, and art, and history, so London it's a wonderful place for me. I also love beer. And, as I said before, I expect to find a interesting job, something I found really hard to find here.

Well, that's my first Post for the log, and I wish I won't leave it unfinished. It's just a question of finding time to renew it with new posts, and to see that somebody is interested on it. Of course I'll put anything I find interesting, but not only as a personal log, but with info about London and the chances to make a live there, so I hope somebody will find it useful for their own movements.

Manoel, a future Londoner.