Just recording the arrival and landing from the airplane coming back to Barcelona from Leeds. The trip was such a laugh... I can't say it enough...



I've got to learn how to edit videos...


http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsQpmG8dq9o

As I passed the Apolo hotel on Paral·lel coming from the metro I saw from the back a guy and a girl wearing matching trench coats. Next to them was another person, I think female, who was dragging a shopping bag on wheels, I later found out its content. When these three people reached the door of the 4-star hotel there was a bus full of tourists arriving. They gave them flyers for this week's Time Out magazine, the cover story is "SEXE" (that's sex in Catalan). The surprising thing, is that the fellow and the girl in the trench coats weren't wearing ANYTHING underneath the coat. I was trying to see what they were flyering and noted that the guy was quite well endowed and the girl was a natural redhead. The tourists coming out of the bus were middle-aged to OAP and were surprised and giggling nervously... I went off quite quick, I didn't even try to get a flyer as the half-naked people said "Welcome to Barcelona".
I don't think all that flyering will be all that succesful. The main problem of the Barcelona Time Out is that it's in Catalan, and you can't really expect tourists from abroad to want to read in an unknown language. Being Time Out, I reckon that even if I didn't understand the European language in which it was written I could get to understand the events basic information like time, place and date if I were REALLY interested though...

El miércoles salió este artículo en La Crónica, que sale al final de la sección de Cataluña en El País. La verdad es que he pasado delante de los bares y discótecas que menciona el artículo, pero no pensaba en la relación de nombres de temática gringa... La discoteca New York parecía cutre, del bar El Paso me llegaban rumores de venta de drogas, igual del Kentucky, pero este último me atraía... Es interesante la historia que cuenta el artículo, de una Barcelona que nunca conocí. El miércoles también estuve en el Centre Cívic de mi barrio y me alegro de haber medio visto los últimos coletazos del Paral·lel de las vedettes mientras veía la giganta del barrio Rosa del Paral·lel. Cuando llegué en el Apolo, el Arnau y El Molino aún hacían ese tipo de espectáculos. Salvando distancias, también la relaciono con la Barcelona vieja, la de antes de los Juegos Olímpicos sobre la que escriben en este artículo...

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/cataluna/noche/americana/elpepiespcat/20080206elpcat_36/Tes

CRÓNICA: LA CRÓNICA
La noche americana
XAVIER THEROS 06/02/2008

Ocho años antes -el 9 de enero de 1951- de que Eisenhower perdonara sus pecaditos a Franco, la VI flota estadounidense llegaba por primera vez al puerto de Barcelona. Su desembarco salió en el No-Do, mientras el régimen entornaba los ojos con satisfacción. Y en la calle, las cosas no fueron muy distintas. A partir de ese día, los dueños de locales nocturnos comenzaron a soñar en dólares, las prostitutas volvieron a maquillarse como antes de la guerra y los niños siguieron a los marineros a todas partes. Como el padre de un amigo mío, que -junto a otros críos- se echó al mar y nadó hasta el costado de un buque, desde el que les lanzaban chocolatinas y paquetes de tabaco. Distraído con las golosinas, sintió un fuerte golpe en la pierna. Y al mirar qué había pasado, todo el pelo de la nuca se le erizó al ver aparecer, a pocos metros, la aleta de un escualo.

Tiburones y sustos aparte, la llegada de la flota de EE UU ponía la ciudad patas arriba. Por unos días, La Rambla se llenaba de hombres solteros mascando chicle, que acababan bebiendo en exceso y buscando pelea. En previsión de conflictos, la policía militar de la US Navy tenía unas dependencias permanentes en la calle de Hospital, para recoger a los marinos ebrios y devolverlos al barco. Aunque en los periódicos se les presentaba como unos buenazos, que invitaban a las ancianitas a bordo, y que -en 1970- se llevaban a un grupo de civiles de excursión hasta Palma de Mallorca.
( Read more... )

I haven't written here for ages... Since the last time I wrote something proper loads of stuff have happened. Main thing was that I was in hospital overnight for the first time since the days successive to my birth. I had an ulcer aggravated by chronic anemia, or viceversa.

And then Christmas and New Year and my Nonna and cousin Daniela from Rome being round. I actually went out this New Year and had fun. Now because of a group in Facebook I keep getting invited to club parties. It's good, even if I've only gone once :-S. I've got to find someone to go with.

I'll try to write, read and comment more often...

Get Your Monster Name

Get Your Monster Name

And then there were more... Sexy name and cyborg name. Unfortunately neither allowed my 11-letter name, they had a 10-letter limit.

Get Your Sexy Name

So Isabella by itself:

Get Your Sexy Name

Anaibb was "Amorous Nocturnal Angel Incomparably Bestowing Backrubs", boring...


Cyborg names "AnaIsabela" and "anaibb", and "Isabella" to see what they do with the two Ls in a row.

Get Your Cyborg Name

"Intelligent Synthetic Android Built for Exploration, Learning and Logical Assassination"

So, yes, I'm an assassin cyborg...

Get Your Cyborg Name

I've got about three or four posts about it, including Metaquotes. Not sure if it's changed now, couldn't be bothered refreshing...
I think pecholobo's reaction is good, it's not like it's such a big deal. And the Gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell  I find is a bit out of place... The books aren't about Dumbledore being in love with Grindelwald, they're about Harry having to defeat Voldemort...
"Dumbledore's gay.
OK. o_O Moving on..." 

BBC link (BBC is my homepage)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7053982.stm

I'm back in Barcelona and it's my birthday tomorrow. Make me happy and call me, e-mail me, comment on my LJ or Facebook or if you know where I live and can and want to come over to my place tomorrow at seven-eight in the evening tomorrow. I plan to go to the beach at night after that and the more the merrier. I don't want to be as bloody miserable as I was last year. Help me avoid that! Today is my last day being 21. I've only got one hour and twelve minutes left. I've never been to a casino, nor been disgustingly drunk, in spite of drinking. I don't really smoke. I haven't been in a relationship that has lasted more than a year. I don't think that will change soon...

Taken from

braen:

 

1. Go into the archives of your LJ.
2. Find your 42nd entry ever.
3. Link to that entry in a new entry. This is the meaning of your life.

01-09-2003 21:31:00

The meaning of my life

I prefer the previous entry. Interpretations are welcome. I don't have an Orlando Bloom obsession anymore at all...

Today I overslept and had more or less three dreams that didn't seem to be at all connected.
In the first one I was in uni and saw my Erasmus coordinator whom I haven't seen in ages and apologised about that. Her hair was longer than I remembered and she said that it was OK because she had been busy anyway. I woke up, went to the loo and then back to bed because it was too early to get up for the time I had gone to bed.
Then I dreamt I was in a vegetarian/vegan free buffet lunch organised by PETA with my friend Diana and Pamela Anderson was there wearing very skimpy clothes. I commented with her how she looked very plastic and rather ugly in person. I almost forgot this part of my dreaming because the next part was a lot more fun.
I was some sort of Elizabeth Swann-like character and it was partly set in what I've seen of Pirates of the Caribbean 3 in the trailers but there was lots of stuff that didn't go with it. I was in a ship of the East India Trading company with Norrington close to a ship of the main pirates in the film (Jack, Will, Elizabeth, Pintel, Raggeti, Gibbs, the one with the parrot that speaks for him, the midget...). Both ships were in the South Seas, how did I know? Because the background to the ship where I was with Norrington was like a Gauguin painting but without people because they would've made the proportions weird. Anyway, Norrington said something about staying with him and the others having to give up and me having to choose where my loyalties were. So I jumped off the ship with ropes like Tarzan and grabbed a rope from the pirates' ship, kicked off my posh slightly high-heeled satin shoes, ripped part of the very long skirt of my period dress with the help of my cuttlass and dived into the sea. Down there I had no problem breathing. We were on some sunken ship and I was looking for trasure. The pirates were also there for a while but most left quite soon. I stayed bellow with Elizabeth. We were discussing what to do next when some sort of wall next to us started to crack. We made the cracks bigger with our swords and then some sort of skeleton monster came up and I chopped it to bits with my sword. Underneath where the skeleton creature thing there was an open chest full of bars of gold that we took for ourselves. Then the other pirates came down and I woke up.

Films I want to watch, some are out, some aren't:

Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End, it has been out for a while I've spoiled myself quite a bit by checking Wikipedia and IMDB, but still haven't watched it. Not sure if I'll wait till I go back to Barcelona or watch it here. I'll do the latter if I find that on my last week I can spare some €uros that won't need to be used to pay excess luggage or the bus from Girona to Barcelona

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, I want to watch expecting the visuals to be cool but wanting to kill the three actors that play protagonists for being such crap actors at the end of it like with the other four films. We'll see about the important secondary roles, the little I've seen of Luna I like, and Imelda Staunton is a very good actress. They've had some really well chosen actors for the adult parts, shame these parts are so small in relation to those the crap actors have... Oh! It's the good thing about changing directors, we'll see if this one doesn't seem to bounce from one thing to abother without decent cohesion like the first two did. I don't remember much of the other two because I only ever watched them in the cinema. From a photo I saw on IMDB it seems like Marietta will be merged into Cho, a bit like what they seemed to do with Lavender and Padma. We'll see what they do about the disappeared Lavender in the 6th film or if she's even mentioned in the 5th...

The Golden Compass I read the book and the entire trilogy is amongst my favourite books, now I want to watch the film. I'm glad Nicole Kidman is playing Coulter because she's the actress Pullman always thought of for the part.

Stardust I read and loved the book and the trailer looks great...

Evening - I found out about this one just now in a bit of an odd html-link journey. I'm now reading The House of the Spirits for the third time. I went to the Wikipedia to check the entry about the book to see if it mentioned something about it's references to Chilean history. I also checked the film entry because I very vaguely remembered it after watching it many years ago... They merged the characters of Blanca and Alba and cut many other characters from the novel and therefore their stories. Anyway, back to the link-trip that led me to this film... I didn't remember that Vanessa Redgrave appeared in the film playing Nívea del Valle. I clicked on her name thinking of checking part of her family tree on the bio, I still regret missing the exhibition "The Redgraves: A Family on Stage" at the Theatre Museum close to Covent Garden two years ago. But before going to the bio I checked some photos of her looking gorgeous with her silver her, also when she was young and played Guinevere in the film Camelot and then I found a photo of her and Meryl Streep (who also appears in The House of the Spirits playing the clairvoyant Clara del Valle, Trueba after she marries) in bed belonging to this film. I checked the main page and saw that, like most films I'm looking forward to watch, it's due this autumn. It sounds interesting and I really like Vanessa Redgrave and Meryl Streep as actresses.

So, except for Pirates, all of the films I want to watch now are based on books... Talking of books, the last book I finished reading (read it from Tuesday to Friday) was El Señor Presidente by Miguel Ángel Asturias. I took it out of the library, remembering when I saw the play in Rajatabla back in 2002. Right now I'm in a very Hispano-American mood when it comes to my reading material... On Tuesday I also took out The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende that I've just mentioned and Cuentos de Guatemala by the same Asturias. The day before I had been talking with my Estonian-Russian friend Elena (or Jelena) about stories and folklore. She told me of Vasilissa the Beautiful, Elena the Fair (was it?), Baba Yaga and some skeleton creature also very present in folklore, often with Baba Yaga. I told her of the trasgos from Galicia and some elves with a hole on their hand both of which I read about on the children's section of the sunday newspaper that was about mythological creatures in Spain. I also told her of El Timbaler del Bruc for Catalonia, and María Lionza/Yara for Venezuela. She found the works of sincretism I tried to explain of mixing this nature goddess with the Virgin Mary rather strange. I also tried to remember the story of Cúchulainn for Ireland, and about Rhiannon who's rather linked to the Welsh, but she's still part of the Celtic tradition... I didn't remember her story though, just that she was a horse goddess and I had the image of a picture of her from my book on Celtic Myths and Legends in my head... So that talk with Elena put me on the mood to read about stories and mythology in Latin America. As I looked through Asturias' library files I saw the title Leyendas de Guatemala and wrote the reference to look for it beneath the one for El Señor Presidente, thinking that is they weren't too long I could read them all by friday 13th, my last day to give back the books because the Hispanic and Italian library will be closed until August after that and I'm going back to Barcelona on the 26th. From the speed I've been reading so far I think I may be able to finish reading all the books by Thursday, maybe even Wednesday...

I'm leaving Belgium on the 26th. Why so late? To stay for the Gentse Feesten of course! It finishes on the 23rd and I'm staying for a bit more because of the cheapest flight I could get, Ryanair. Now here's the problem, I've been told that Ryanair is VERY strict about excess luggage, and the maximum allowance per person is 15kg. So I'm looking for alternatives to send my luggage in different ways. My dad mentioned train, and I'll see about that today or tomorrow. I also wanted to check the bus, if it's possible at all. And then the post the most normal sounding thing, but then I'm afraid it may be close to the price I would pay Ryanair for my extra luggage... The other possibility is send little bits with people going to Barcelona but I can't really do that to Erasmus who are very likely to have the same problem as me... ARGH!!!!!

This one I nicked from Pecholobo.

I was emptying my Gmail account of spam and noticed that one of the spam mails mentioned Prospero and Ariel from Shakespeare's The Tempest. Here's what I could see while quickly scanning through the page and that caught my attention:

(sender) mexime (subject) dont understand, hope u can help - (first words of the e-mail) When Prospero left them, he called his spirit Ariel, who quicklylovejuice on her eyelids, saying

I then opened the e-mail wondering what else it may say and it just has a lot of babble changing subject continuosly and mentioning a number of Shakespeare plays, perhaps quoting from Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb. But then what the spammers wanted to get through was the picture, it wasn't about the text at all. The image was a table with text in various colours advertising "PREMIER PHARMACY - Lowest VIAGRA, CIALIS, LEVITRA Online Price!" I thought it was curious... Anyway, if you want you can read the whole text behind the cut and test yourself and see how many different plays by Shakespeare you think are made reference to there... Oh, and the drugs sold online included "SOMA" which I relate to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. I didn't know it existed...

( Read more... )

Editted to add: And I've got an older message from the same pharmacy spammer still mentioning Shakespeare. Ferdinand from The Tempest, Shylock from The Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, Helena from A Midsummer Night's Dream, Claudio, Hamlet, Romeo, Protheus, Othello... This is so weird... And again the whole message under the cut. And the drugs were the same: valium, viagra, soma, cialis...
( Read more... )

And there was another one that had all sorts of funny quotes but the true advert was something of downloading pirate films on the internet... The full message behind the cut, as usual.

( Read more... )

Went to Oostende yesterday. Aparently there are no more ferries going to England, a girl told me. But another girl told me that with Eurolines you can go to England for 22€ return if you buy the ticket 2 months in advance.
It was nice to see the sea and the great distance the tide went back since we arrived till we left at sunset. The sunset was gorgeous. I didn't think much of the city, it kind of reminded me to coast cities in Valencia I passed by train. And the walk left me too tired for the bar at night.

Party tonight! WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!! Description tomorrow or monday.

Poor Katherine Howard. She was a horny young teenager and Henry was a fat old man with a crusty sore on his leg when he fell in love with her and made her his Queen.
He called her his "Rose Without Thorns", but poor little Katherine fell in love with the sexy rogue Thomas Culpepper and so she was beheaded. So as not to make a mess of things, she had the chopping block brought up to her room so she could practice on it.

The last laugh was Katherine's: standing at the scaffold, she said "I die a Queen but I would rather die the wife of Culpepper." which probably pissed off Henry really good.






Which of Henry VIII's wives are you?
this quiz was made by Lori Fury

So, I'm now officially an Erasmus student...
Pardon my occasional typing ,istakes; keyboards are different here. Like this:
A Z E R T Y U I O P  ¨^[   *$] (the A should be a Q)
Q S D F G H J K L M  %ù´  £µ` (the Q should be an A)
W X C V B N  ?,  .;  /:  +=~

And the worse bit are numbers, you've got to press shift for them, in my keyboqrd they were the default.


OK. This is an internet café and I don't want to spend too much here. So a quick summary of today:
I was still washing clothes at midnight.
I finished packing round 1am and then went on the internet and then to sleep for two hours.
Woke up; showered put my last minute stuff in the hand luggage. My suitcase weighed 28Kg. I had to pay 48€ for the extra 8 kilos to the limit...
I fogot my mobile charger.
In the airport I cried like an idiot as I said goodbye to my parents. A big fat tear trickled down my nose as I passed security. We said good-bye a thousand ti,es and I kept turning back...

It was terrible fighting with my suitcase up and about. I know I'll somehow send back lots of winter clothes home before I leave in order to "travel light". The Brussels airport is really nice; it has lots of paintings and statues.

There were some nice guys in the train who were going to Brussels South. One of them helped me with my suitcase. Then Joris picked me up at the Ghent train station and drove me to my place and once there took my suitcase up the terribly steep stairs there are... He also helped translating from Dutch to English when the owner of the house, Antoine, had difficulties. We later went out to have some chips and then to the supermarket. I quite like where I live. One of these days I'll put a friends-locked video in YouTube showing it... Or on Photobucket. Talking of which; I picked on some of you to post picure requests for a meme and I haven't posted them... I'll look for some swings here for glassflower...

I've met two of my housemates and they're really nice. The first one I met was Li, Chinese. Funny enough, Joris met him first... Later today I met Michael, who's German. Joris had already left then, I was organising my room and I was about to make the bed for my nap when I heard Michael coming up. We tlked from our doors and then I had my nap. After my nap the three of us chatted quite a bit over some meat Li made and one of my cheeses. I didn't go to the meeting in the centre in the end because I got distracted talking with them. And now I'm in a communication centre where I've been talking to Joris and my parents and checking my e-mail. Oh! In the afternoon Joris' sister popped round because I had left ,y glasses case in the car. I was scared I may have left it in Barcelona...

Today I went to the optician. Turns out I now need glasses with 5 dioptres. But, as lenses with 5 dioptres are so thick, I need paste glasses. That's because if I used glasses like up till now the lense would be very thick and come out of the sides and look bad. Well, that is unless the lense was reduced in some fancy way and be very expensive indeed. Anyway, behind the cut you've got photos of me with my old glasses and with two models of glasses I liked in the shop. I look awful in the shop pictures because I was knackered, not comfortable enough to start posing proper and hadn't brushed my hair. I laughed quite a bit in the shop though. I'm so not used to seeing myself with paste glasses.



( Read more... )
So, comment and tell me which of the potential new ones you prefer... Ignore the white bit, that's where you could see the barcode, the price and the brand and model.

I'm copying this meme from vodka_lemonade. Ask three things you'd like me to post pictures of, that I can take and aren't naughty. I'll post 12 at least, depending on response.

Today's my 21st birthday.
Whatever...