Dude, do you not realize you're all up in ma face??? Get back in line.

I've been thinking lately.

Neil's recent post plus all of the constant touching, bumping, and close-talking of the Spanish populace as a whole have me thinking about personal space issues in foreign contexts. And here are my thoughts:

Get. The. Fuck. Off. Of. Me.

There are some people that can get away with unreasonable proximity due to their obvious standards of beauty as defined by me and standards of hygiene as defined by 21st century Western culture (the vast majority anyway). In all honesty, there are certain people I don't mind rubbing against me on the bus, ok?

But, as a general rule, most humans fall into the category of People I'd Rather Not Have Skin-On-Skin Contact With At The Fucking Panaderia.

Maybe this isn't a cultural thing. Maybe it has to do with different types of urban cities. Maybe if I had spent my youth hopping in and out of subway cars in New York City, or avoiding accidents in the 'bicycle kingdom' in a bustling Chinese metropolis, maybe I'd feel differently. Maybe it's the fact that I grew up in a place where there is always a parking space available and if the Quiznos you just walked into is too crowded, there's another one just down the road to get your lunch from.

Whatever it is, I find myself screaming internally, "MOVE IT DUDE" on way too many occasions.

This feeling is intensified when waiting in line for anything when you realize that if lines were formed with seats all in a column, most people joining the line would just come sit on your lap.

Just for the record, I am a fervent supporter of the social norm of queue-forming with every ounce my being and believe it to be an essential component of harmonious social interaction and/or me not losin' my shit while I'm buying bread.

Unfortunately though, queue-forming is a fuzzy phenomenon in Spain, and, well, let's just say they cross the line in this regard. Constantly.

Disrespecting the queue-forming social norm + some idiot breathing down my neck and bumping shoulders with me when it is clearly not necessary = me wanting to give Spain the most gigantic kick in the cojones I've ever given it.

And this makes me realize that there are certain things I'll never get used to here. I'm not one of those foreigners that likes to point out to Spanish people how everything in my country is better, or wave my flag around, for obvious reasons.

But I feel like the older I get, the more stubborn I'm becoming with the line-cutting, close-talking violators of personal space and sometimes I just want to say:

We do it better over there. Now GET OFF ME and mind the queue.

-Bluestreak

Lice, Flamenquines....camp.

I have been a little distracted lately and have not been able to post. Ok, very distracted. VERY.

Somehow, someone thought it was a good idea to put me in charge of 53 pre-teens for a two week, lice-filled summer camp. So I have been a tad busy. By some miracle I escaped unscathed and lice-free, but much more addicted to cigarettes.

Camp has made me realize that I need to be around people more, even if they are dwarf-shaped and completely insane (i.e. children). It is good to be out of my cave.

Camp also made me realize that I have a limit to the number of flamenquines I can consume in one lifetime, despite my uncanny ability to eat almost anything that is put in front of me. If you do not know what flamenquines are, imagine a corn-dog without the stick. I know that does not sound good, but now, imagine you are eating the corn-dog and everyone around you is trying to convince you it is some kind of fucking delicacy. Believe me, I am all for fried phallic food, that is, if I am at the Idaho State Fair talking to some dude with a mullet and missing teeth. Flamenquines are stickless, glorified corn-dogs, whose only missing element is the fair ride that allows you to vomit the thing up afterwards with ease.

Yesterday was the last day of summer camp. Once all the kiddies were with their respective parents, we headed to in-law land to pay a visit. Requests to eat out at a restaurant that was mildly non-cateto were ignored as usual. I whispered to my husband upon entering the restaurant of choice, "If they serve us one of those fucking corn-dogs I´m outta here" (empty threats, of course).

Luckily, by the time the famous flamenquines had arrived I had downed the precise number of beers which allow me to surpass the bitch threshold and no longer cared what dish I was about to eat nor which health codes had been violated in its preparation.

I ate the flamenquin.

Then I sat silent while everyone talked about how fucking great flamenquines are and how in Cordoba they are the size of a kids arm and are sometimes filled with shellfish. I closed my eyes, controlled my vomit reflex out of politeness, while really wishing for a Tilt-A-Whirl, a Yo-Yo, or a Gravitron.


Yessssssss.

-Bluestreak

P.S. I´m quitting smoking today. Fer reals.

Photos from Flickr:

On On The The Yo Yo by base10

The-Claw-III by thephotoholic

This Blog Post Cancels itself Out.

Ok I only have two nouns in my head right now. One is “drag” and the other is the Spanish equivalent, “coñazo”, so I guess I will use arithmetic to get my point across:

Lack of Inspiration +Homesickness +thirty something crisis + identity crisis - living arrangements I am happy with - a job I like = a blog that is a drag to read.

So, nothing has come to me lately to blog about that does not sound like me whining and feeling sorry for myself, and while trying to think of a topic that would be fun to write about, I started thinking about the fact that I blog and it is making me feel anti-blog. It all just irks me somewhat, it just feels so narcissistic. I feel like it is on par with gathering a group of people in a room and orating a speech to them and then waiting for them to comment on my brilliance or at the very least not stone me to death. I would never do that (wait, what am I saying? I did that all through grad school and considered it to be the closest thing to torture I have ever felt).

So why do I blog? I guess it is more for my sake than others. Hey, maybe I like to hear myself talk and am interested in subjects that I would bring up. Come on, do I really think I have something valuable to say to you, the consumer of information about my fucking boring life? Some people blog as an escape from their normal lives. I suspect that such is the case of THIS GUY, probably THIS GUY, and most definitely THIS GUY. Other people I know blog to keep family and friends informed about their lives abroad, posting pictures and updates, which I think is great, but I feel like facebook and my picasa web albums get that job done for me. Besides, I do not need my family members having their suspicions confirmed about how disturbed I am, which is why I like to be at least somewhat anonymous here (ok, so my siblings are allowed here, but if they do not already know that I am somewhat disturbed they must not have been paying attention since, say, birth).

Weirdly enough in light of all of this, I think about ways I can get more traffic to my blog. Why on earth I would do such a thing? Once I had to give an hour and a half lecture on the Sociology of Religion to a SOC 101 class of about 150 college kids, the memories of which are mostly suppressed and the rest are filed away under “Most Terrifying Experience Ever”. So, why would I possibly want a lot of readers? Don´t know, I´m stumped.

Ok, so there it is, a blog post about blog posts. My e-world is going to implode in on itself any second now. I promise next time, dear avid readers, to post on something only slightly more interesting than a pile of rocks but probably slightly less interesting that picking your nose.



I just can´t blog about Spain right now, I can´t even complain about it. Because right now I just want to kick it in the cojones. Sorry.

Artwork from Flickr by scarlet_rose77

The Whole World

In Spanish the expression “Todo el Mundo” (literally, “The Whole World”) is what people here say when they mean “everyone”. A bit exaggerated? I think not.

You decide to spend the day at the beach. Not only is the Whole World on the highway heading there, but once you get there, the Whole World is already at the beach.

You decide to go shopping at the Corte Ingles. The Whole World is there. Get me out of here, you think. But you stay until around 2:00 and then the Whole World leaves to go home for lunch. The place empties out because the Whole World eats lunch at the same time.

You want to go to the Arabic Bathhouse on a Saturday? No, no spots left. The Whole World has been booked for two weeks already.

You want to go for a bike ride instead, taking advantage of that new public bike system you signed up for? No, no bikes left, anywhere in this city. The Whole World is going for a bike ride, apparently.

What is it with this place? It seems like whenever something new happens, it just gets overcrowded with people. I just do not buy claims that the birthrate here is dangerously low, requiring government incentives for having kids (apparently the Whole World decided to just have one kid, which isn’t enough to support the Whole World on social security). All I hear about are horror stories about there not being enough spots in the public or private schools, and two year waiting lists for child-care, and the like. Not to mention the crowded playgrounds with kids literally lined up by the dozens for their lone chance to go down the slide.

Do any other Americans living in Spain get the feeling that this place is freaking crowded in every aspect???????????

I guess it could be worse.



-Bluestreak

Crowded Bus from Flickr by Poggis

Spanish Paradox #12,072

Until I moved to Spain ten years ago, I did not know what a clean home was. I do not mean your run-of-the-mill, vacuumed-and-dishes-washed clean. I am talking your-underwear-are-even-ironed clean. The social institution of marriage for many decades here has meant that in traditional families, males have had a life outside of the home, whereas womens life has been inside the home and often times her only source of pride has been how skillfully her sheets are ironed and that her floor is more immaculate than the Virgin herself. Despite all of the relatively recent changes in the division of labor in Spain (this is the country, after all, whose defense minister is a pregnant woman), we still have a few generations of women who take pride in their impeccable homes and of men who take pride in the fact that their women take care of all that crap for them. I could go off on a HUGE tangent here, but I´ll focus….

My point is, Spanish women keep impeccably clean homes.

This fact stands in stark contrast to the situation one finds upon entering a Spanish public bathroom (to date I have only encountered ladies rooms for obvious reasons…I can only assume the worst of men´s rooms). You would think that when all of the immaculate women come together in a social setting where they must share sewage infrastructure, they would sort of team together to help keep the public bathroom at least tolerable. The main problem I find is summed up nicely here:

Now I admit, there are basic features that a public restroom needs in order to function normally which are usually absent here -- namely, toilet paper, soap, paper towels or working hand dryers, trash cans, and sometimes toilet seats.

But, good Lord. When I walk into a Spanish public restroom the first thing I think is:

“Come on ladies, it does not have to be this way”. For crying out loud, is it really going to come to THIS??

And then I fantasize about the days when I lived in a country where not only were you almost guaranteed to find toilet paper, soap, and a hand dryer, but you were not likely to find a toilet seat covered in piss, and you would likely also find toilet seat covers to keep things nice and sanitary. Are those things really a luxury?

Oh, the things I had taken for granted.

-Bluestreak

Here I go again: another uninvited harangue

Those of you who know me in real life know that there is one theme I love to complain about above all other things: access to housing in Spain.

A bit of background: my husband and I have spent the last two and a half years oscillating between looking for a home to buy and looking for an unfurnished, nicer-than-current-house rental. Basically, we started to look for something to buy - got completely fed up with the whole thing after seeing that we could not afford anything we wanted to live in, then decided to rent. Once we started searching for a rental, we realized that rental prices had skyrocketed so much that it almost seemed more worth it to buy, so we stopped the rental search and started the purchase search again. And so the cycle has gone over and over again and we are finally back on looking for a rental again. And I am exhausted.

I have no idea what it is like in the rest of the world (aside from the U.S. which I think we can all agree is in crisis), but let me just say one thing about Spain in this regard: THIS BITES. In Spain average HOUSEHOLD income in 2007 was 23,400€ according to this article in El Mundo, and the average 80 square meter flat costs 190,000 euros to buy and 880€ to rent (according to Tasamadrid.com average per meter housing prices are 2374.61€ for Seville and according to idealista.com rental prices are at 11€ per square meter per month in Seville). To give you some visual examples, here is what you can buy if you are really well-to-do for 296,000€:



Here is the link if you are interested in purchasing it, as you can see, it is only missing a few small finishing touches, such as walls, and is practically "para entrar".

If that is a little out of your price range, consider this bargain, which is much cozier anyway (listed here on idealista.com):

95.000 euros, 15.807.000 pta
estudio de 9 m² exterior
bajo
1 wc
10.556 euros/m²

For that low mortgage payment, hell, I could get used to living in 96 square feet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (9 square meters).

If buying is not your cup of tea and you would rather wait, like me, to see if prices get better, you could choose to rent. Imagine cooking in a spacious, state of the art kitchen like this one in this home for just 420€/month:



Imagine the convenience of being able to wash your pots and pans WHILE you are cooking in them over your camp stove.

Please can someone explain how this makes any sense?????? And can someone also please explain the logic of "prices are never going to go down" that I have been listening to ad-nauseam for the last three years???????????

I am sorry but I know I am a real Debbie-Downer to some when I say that this situation cannot sustain itself and housing prices ARE dropping and I think they have a long way to go still. I am very sorry for all of the people that invested in real estate or those who had their hearts set on retiring a millionaire just by selling the crappy flat they owned.

But, alas, maybe I am wrong. I present you with the alternative, albeit sarcastically, a bit of humor I found in an anecdote someone posted on burbuja.info (a real estate "conspiracy theorist" website I like to hang out):

(Sorry if you don´t speak Spanish):

"Pues no, la vivienda nunca bajará. Mirad lo que explica un viajero del futuro:


Me he decidido a coger mi máquina del tiempo y contaros como van las cosas por el futuro:

Afortunadamante no se han cumplido las previsiones de tantos agoreros burbujistas y la vivienda en España ha seguido subiendo un 17% anual durante los últimos 50 años, de este modo nos hemos convertido en el país mas rico del mundo, porque por ejemplo un ático en la castellana cuesta mas que el estado de California y el palacio imperial de Tokio juntos; claro que ya nadie vive en la Castellana ni en ningún otro sitio de Madrid, por que esas casas son para invertir y no para vivir.

Yo por ejemplo aunque trabajo en Madrid me he comprado un piso de 40 metros la mar de apañao en un pueblo del Norte de Burgos, que con la autovía queda a un paso; para pagar la hipoteca nos hemos juntado con otras tres familias: un notario casado con una catedrática de universidad, un subinspector de hacienda casado con una abogada del estado y un magistrado del supremo (subcontratado a traves de una ett) casado con una arquitecta. De este modo destinamos cinco sueldos a la hipoteca y uno para vivir; estamos contentisimos con la compra porque aunque al principio nos está costando un poco luego seguro que ni se nota, además desde que lo compramos hace un año ya ha subido un 17% y por si fuera poco la mujer del notario esta de buena que lo flipas.

Aunque profesionamente no me va mal (soy director general adjunto de una multinacional, aunque también subcontratado a traves de una ett) la verdad es que la inflación que sufrimos al ser el país mas rico del mundo hace que nos tengamos que apretar un poco el cinturón; de todos modos es cuestión de acostumbrarse, cuando tuvimos que empezar a comer chopped de lagartijas todos nos quejamos y ahora se le da vuelta y vuelta en la plancha y tan rico que queda. De cualquier forma, aprovechando que han bajado la edad laboral a los 10 años a ver si saco al churumbel del colegio y lo meto en la ett, que un sueldo mas seguro que ayuda para la hipoteca.

Mi sueldo es de 2.000 tochos netos, el tocho es la moneda que sustituyo al euro cuando nos echaron de la UE a patadas (que fea y que mala es la envidia) y se cotiza a un centimo de euro. En la caja fuerte del banco de españa ya no se guardan lingotes sino ladrillos, que en este país han demostrado ser un valor mucho mas seguro y rentable que el oro.

Tras las guerras atómicas provocadas por los propietarios de vpo de andalucía la población ha quedado reducida a 5 millones de españoles y 50 millones de ecuatorianos trabajando de paletas, se han seguido construyendo 800.000 viviendas anuales (la construcción supone ya el 98% del PIB) y ahora tocamos a unas 20 viviendas por habitante (casi todas vacías porque como dije son viviendas para invertir, no para vivir) . El 90% del suelo esta ya urbanizado y se plantea empezar a construir ciudades en el fondo del mar (no se puede vivir en el fondo del mar, así que serían ciudades solamente para invertir) . Esto es lo que en el mundo se conoce y admira como "el milagro español" y es objeto de numerosos estudios y tesis doctorales en el campo de la psiquiatría. Cada año nos visitan miles de estudiosos de la mente humana de todo el mundo. No me extrañaría que muchos de esos científicos se quedasen porque la verdad es que como en España no se vive en ningún sitio.

Y eso es todo lo que os puedo contar de lo que os espera; voy a ver si cazo unas lagartijas para cenar

Viajero del futuro"


I hope you laughed as much as I did, if not cried.

- Bluestreak

Cosmetological Entropy

Why is it that a trip to the hairdresser here means that I always have to end up with some crazy Euro-Mullet? Despite the fact that I ALWAYS bring a Picture with me in case the language barrier obstructs the lines of communication, inevitably the scissor-happy stylist asks, “¿Capas?”, which roughly translates to “May I take your lovely hair and form it into an ill-advised Euro-Mullet?”

Mullet aside, a trip to the hairdresser in Spain for an American is an entrance into the world of stylist anarchy. The mulleted result is the unintended consequence of salon chaos at its worst. In the States a trip to the stylist normally means you will have a stylist who will scrub your head, carefully comb your tangles out and then get on with whatever it is you asked him or her to do while chatting it up and working that tip and trying to make a loyal client out of you. This is the world of semi-controlled hair predictability. Enter Spanish hair-dresser chaos where you will tell the person wearing hospital scrubs that you assume is your stylist exactly what you want, she will nod and comment comprehensively, then she will walk away and you will never see her again. A different person will scrub your head, another one will yank your tangles out, then someone else will put dye all over it and leave you there for a really long time until your scalp feels like you have just been through chemical warfare. After that, another person will put you under a time-sensitive heat lamp and then pay no attention as to how long your left under there, and then once you are washed and dried by a person you have never seen before, finally the mullet-sculptor will make her entrance to see to it that you do not escape the salon mullet-free. This whole process will take approximately 4 -5 hours and no, you cannot make an appointment. Take a number.

There are certain things I had always taken for granted while living in the U.S.-- Escaping the salon in a timely manner un-mulletted was one of them.

Wish me luck on my next trip to the salon.

P.S. If you get bored, do a google search for mullets in spain and you will see what a widespread phenomenon this is.