I just popped out to a favourite local bar, where my favourite barman, super-friendly, 50-ish, thick white hair and humour as dry as a brick, brings in his home-made tortilla every day.

‘Un pincho de tortilla’, I said, ‘but don’t heat it up, I’ll have it just as it is’.

I’m not fond of microwaved tortilla, so usually add this specific request.

‘Si si,’ he replied, followed by some incomprehensible mumbles, and two minutes later, I was presented with an enormous slab of steaming microwaved Tortilla.

Damn. At this point it dawns on me that the mumbles I’d missed in his earlier reply must have been something like ‘Si si,…but you can’t eat it cold, it’s much better heated up.’ Subtext: you don’t know what’s good for you, I’ll bring you your tortilla how you really want it, piping reheated-hot!

Now, if I was Spanish enough, I would a) have complained at this point and demanded what I’d asked for, namely cold tortilla, and I suppose b) understood what he’d mumbled in the first place! I like to convince myself that after 11 years I’m pretty much 99% bilingual in terms of understanding spoken Spanish, but this guy’s mumbles cause me no end of trouble!

The real issue here though, is the incredibly well-intentioned ‘you don’t know what’s good for you’ subtext that led to the hot tortilla (which was very nice in the end, of course). It happened earlier in the year when I was in the same bar with my father.

Dad wanted a ham and cheese bocata (roll). ‘Una bocata de jamon iberico con queso manchego’, I asked my white-haired mumbling barman friend.

‘Ha, yeah, right!’ he answered, with a look of wry disbelief on his face, ‘Jamon iberico and cheese in the same peice of bread? Are you mad? Jamon York and cheese yes, but certainly not Iberico! There are some things you just don’t do!’

‘Errr, a jamon iberico bocata and a seperate plate of manchego cheese then?’ I ventured nervously…

‘Asi es, now you’re talking,’ he smiled, and that, of course, is what we ended up with.

The universe could rest in peace, things had been restored to how they should be. Iberian ham and manchego cheese together, yet separate, como Dios manda.

If I was just a little bit more Spanish after all these years of concerted effort, I would have know that in the first place!

Oh well, maybe after another 11 years…

I was poking around on Twitter (me here) recently, and found a link to Stuck in Customs, which has some amazing HDR photos on… which rekindled my interest in photography. Wonderful how the web can do that. Above is a first new HDR experiment (bigger here). Great fun!

One thing I was protected from for all those years before I became a parent in Spain, was the world of the ‘Cantajuegos’.

The Cantajuegos are kids songs, performed by a very jolly group of people in blue dungarees (see if you can last til the 15 second mark, to see said people):

Now, every single 0 to 6 year old in Spain knows just about every one of the 50+ Cantajuego songs (and usually the moves that go with them), off by heart! Every parent of this age group possesses a copy of the Cantajuegos songs, though as far as I can tell, not many have paid for any of them!

The most common phrase overheard amongst the 30-something parents of this generation when talking about the Cantajuegos music is, “Ah si, yo lo baje del emule”, ‘Oh yes, I downloaded that via emule’, leaving the Blue-Dungaree crew to make money, I imagine, off their live tours for totts.

Many Spanish people don’t feel any moral remorse about downloading films, music etc, as the government taxes us on every single kind of recording and reproduction media, passing the money back to the SGAE (General Association of Authors and Publishers), to redistribute amongst poor, royalty-denied writers, muscians etc.

For example, every time we buy a blank CD, we pay an extra 17 centimos that goes straight to the SGAE, because obviously we are bound to use it to do something illegal with!

You can see a full list of just what gets taxed here, but I was amazed that I was even SGAE-taxed on a new internal hard drive for my Macbook recently! The logic goes with many Spanish media-consumers then, that if we are taxed as thieves before the act, we might as well steal, or in this case, download, guilt-free.

The tax, know here as the hated “Canon por copia privada”, has far-reaching consequences – apparently Catalan hairdressers are up in arms this week, refusing to pay another SGAE-tax to play radio in their salons, asking clients to bring in their own iPods instead!

Back to the Cantajuegos… as much as it drove me mad to begin with, after 7 million repetitions on our living room stereo, I’m now rather fond of the Blue-Dungaree crew’s tunes, I’ll leave you with my favourite:

One thing that strikes me though: imaginary conversation 20 years hence…

Son: Dad, what did you do in the evenings when I was a baby?

Dad: Well son, like millions of others around the 1st world, I found that pretty much nothing beat sitting in front of the computer watching second-hand coverage of a sales pitch from a guy in jeans for a brand new shiny object that wouldn’t even be available for another two months, and I really didn’t need. Now that was the way to spend an evening!

Son: Oh.

2. My yearly ‘blogging crisis’ set in this month, when I have no idea what to write about any more – or, more to the point, I have had nothing to say about Spain for a while…

So I start thinking about starting other blogs, then procrastinate for 2 weeks, then watch a great video on why it’s bad to have too much choice, and realise having multiple blogs is a nightmare, and decide to keep on writing about whatever I like (not just Spain) here again.

3. Why, shockingly, do I occasionally have nothing to say about Spain for a while?

After eleven years, Spain spends a lot of time being my background, not so much the foreground any more. What does that mean?

When you first move to a new country, every sight, smell, meal, encounter, taxi ride, confused shopping experience, language cock-up, weekend road trip, every time you step out onto the street in fact, is a wonderful, wild adventure.

The new country and culture is in the front of your mind every second of the day, it’s the chief stimulant, a constant cafe solo, perking you up, setting your eyes sparkling as you continue to discover new delights.

If 2010 is the year you are thinking of moving to, or spending a long time in, Spain, then don’t hesitate. I have a friend who moved here recently, and after 4 months he still glows with the excitement of a new life abroad.

But after eleven years my relationship with my ‘new country’ has changed somewhat. The constantly new has become the happily familiar. What jumped out at me as ‘different’ for years, is now, except for when I’m travelling, quite normal.

Does that mean that life in Spain is suddenly dull? Not at all! On the one had in makes it harder to communicate the joys of this country to you with the same regularity, and the same perspective of discovery as before.

On the other hand, it means that Spain can now become the background to new projects other than just ‘Spain’, which was my chief preoccupation for so long.

4. New projects, like what?

Still thinking about that a lot, but…

5. Cooking.

I’ve had a two bad habits for most of my life. One, letting other people do most of life’s domestic stuff for me, if I see they don’t seem to mind, and I can be lazy about it. Two, having an encyclopaedic (British?) knowledge of things that are bad for you, but not spending enough time learning about what is actually good for you.

Doing more cooking helps with both of these. Regarding point one, by doing as much of the family cooking as I can, I can take a lot of the weight off my wife, giving her more freedom, while also dealing with point two: I want to understand healthy food, and see how it makes us healthier as we eat it.

So I’ll be cooking mostly vegetarian food, trying my best to source organic, ‘eco’ ingredients… which still isn’t as easy here as it is in the UK.

I have always, yet reluctantly, loved cooking, usually picking one dish and cooking it repeatedly for six months, until we are both so fed up with it, that I never cook it again.

When we first lived together, I cooked so much chicken for 6 months, that Marina couldn’t touch it again for nearly 5 years! (This was mostly because I couldn’t understand the Spanish names for all the different cuts of other meats, so I only bought chicken!)

6. Writing and recording more – but not necessarily about Spain.

Self-explanatory. Watch this space I suppose. We continue to record Spanish-learning conversations at Notes in Spanish, but I hope to write more here again, about all these projects!

7. Cosmos

I have an increasing interest in understanding the nature of the cosmos – life, the universe(s), etc. Perhaps it’s because I was afflicted early on in life with a philosophy degree. I find that reading Discworld novels helps. Well, I read two, and to my surprise, they were rather good. Third one on the way, to continue my cosmic education.

7.b. Who knows this lovely beach?

8. Dickens.

Speaking of reading, I’ve just finished The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist, both incredible. Despite having a fairly sophisticated culture and system of law, the Victorians really treated poor people and debtors like total sh*t. Inhumanely in fact, and Dickens portrays the horrors vividly (he’d experienced them first hand in earlier life).

But it makes me wonder: In 150 years, what will make people raise their eyesbrows in amazement when they read about social conditions in our times – what is normal to us now, but will seems absolutely unthinkable to them in terms of treatment of our fellow humans?

The fact that people are left to sleep on the streets perhaps, or overcrowding in hospitals … who knows…

9. Thank you…

This post breaks all good blogging rules by being too long, and covering multiple subjects. If you got this far, you are great Comments are back on, they had to go off as the amount of email I was getting was detracting from my peace of mind! Please do comment if you like!

10. Here are some nice links:

Top Walks – Nice walking routes in Spain, with photos.

Secrets of Spain on a road less travelled – Guardian article on amazing Asturian route.

Delokos.org – Spanish site about vegetarian cooking. I met Eugenio over Christmas, a very lovely man with a total passion for vege food, that he passed on to me (see point 5 above!)

Spanish illness and doctor phrases and vocabulary – Fun bit of audio at notesinspanish.com

For those that wonder where I’ve gone, I’m still collecting my thoughts after 8 months of little to no sleep (parenting related!) Now we are sleeping more, energies are still settling. Back soonish or laterish. I hope everyone is well. Ben.

It’s time for the festive break, I hope you enjoy it enormously and want to wish a very very happy Christmas and New Year to all the readers of this blog.

(…and if your New Year’s resolution is to learn more Spanish, you know the best place to start: with all the great free stuff at our sister-site notesinspanish.com!)

What I found shocking, was the ferocity of the comments left on the Telegraph website, after the above-mentioned article (they were almost Daily Mail bad!) Most were along the lines of ’stop complaining – if you don’t like it, leave Madrid – it’s not your country, so deal with it’.

But here’s the point. If the expat who wrote the article complains about the smoking in Madrid, she is lambasted as a moaning foreigner with no right to do so… no matter how long she’s been here…

If Marina, a Spaniard, moans about exactly the same thing, no-one would doubt that it’s her right to do so.

So the question is, how long do you have to live somewhere, be it Madrid, Sydney, or Bangkok, before you really do form part of the framework of your new home country, before you really can call it your own, and thus have the right to make the exact same complaints as the locals?

Just thinking out loud, but it’s a tricky one…

OK, so that’s the same all over most of Europe, but I just wanted to point out again how fast and efficient the whole process was. Can’t say the same for the flu unfortunately. It was slow, and annoying.

Back to another of my favourite gripes (I think that might have been a bilingual pun!), Being pregnant is a fag in Spain is the title of an interesting article in today’s Telegraph, in which Michaela Rossi can’t believe the attitude to smoking and pregnancy/kids in Spain. It’s a good read, and seems totally accurate.

Fortunately for Michaela and other parents (like ourselves) who don’t like mixing kids and smoke, the health minister, Trinidad Jiménez, has been out this morning promising once more that there will absolutely be a full smoking ban in closed public spaces, including restaurants and bars, in 2010.

Let’s hope it’s early 2010! And in the mean time, Melissa, don’t forget downstairs in Casa Mingo.

1. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut

Total deconstruction of the American myth, very funny, insanely imaginative. If you have any interest in not just being entertained, but also in the ways of writing, and just what extraordinary lengths it is possible to go to within the medium of ficiton, then you will find this quite an inspiration.

2. Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

My favourite book on Spain. Orwell’s writing is quite a thing to behold, and nowhere more so than here, especially when he describes what it is like to be shot in the neck.

3. The Outsider by Albert Camus

Surely you’ve read this. Much here on the very meaning of life, the universe etc. Incredible book. Actually better to read when it’s really hot outside. Like in Madrid in summer. Probably just as good in winter when you need warming up!

4. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

One of those books that everyone feels they should read, but this one is actually worth it. Unlike Ulysses I imagine, which I haven’t bothered with, but did obviously make sure I had prominently displayed on my bookshelf throughout my late 20’s.

5. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini

This book explains exactly what marketers, waiters, salespeople, soldiers in communist POW camps, business owners etc do to get us to give then our money, opinion, or consent. It should be required reading at school, as it is likely to save you a lot of money, and hassle, throughout later life. I read this book on and off for a year (there is a lot to digest), but it is one of the most interesting books I’ve ever read. If you’ve ever wondered how you’ve occasionally been pursuaded to do people favours who don’t deserve them, buy toys for your kids that they don’t want, tip waiters too much, buy cars you aren’t sure about, even why two-year-olds are terrible (and hundreds of other fascinating examples), the answers lie within. What all non-fiction should aspire too.

6. Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh

Ages ago I read a post on a ‘productivity blog’ about mindfulness. Hmmm, I thought, being more mindful sounds good, so I got this book as recommended by a comment on that blog, and have been immensely grateful ever since. I may not be very mindful all the time, but I have developed a far more interesting relationship with many of the things I value in the world – actually that sounds ridiculous, I’ll stop trying to explain further, and just say that this book, by a gentle Vietnamese monk exiled in France, is non-denominational, nothing to do with ’self-help’, or peace activism, and the wisdom inside, on the right days, surely has improved my life no end. Great audio, The Art of Mindful Living, by TNH on iTunes too.

7. The 4-hour Work Week by Tim Ferris

I’m re-reading, well, skimming this right now, as I have a baby that doesn’t sleep much, and the flu all week. I have less time than ever, and still the same business to run. So I’ve gone back for a look here at ways to get more done, more efficiently, and am presently surprised again by what a fun book it is, and just how useful it is in saving time for the important things in life. Like going to the park with my family. Mindfully. Which I want to do more of. When I get over this damn flu.

8. Your choice! Please recommend good fiction for me in the comments! I’m sick of reading non-fiction, and need really really amazing fiction to help me relax at night! I don’t care if it’s modern or classic, but it must be the best you’ve ever read. Please, recommend something for me in the comments!

Thoughts: My friend Sam was saying the other night that he wasn’t sure he’d leave Madrid with a child (for smaller towns/cities in Spain), due to the wonderful education opportunites available here, that you just don’t find elsewhere.

Madrid has international, private, and bilingual schools of every grade and pursuasion. If we move to Asturias, will we have the same choices? Probably not, but for me it is still worthwhile taking my child out of a huge metropolis, and into the (or much much nearer to) the countryside, because of the very unique education that one gets by being ‘closer-to-nature’. It is not an academic education, but a kind of nurturing that I value very much, having grown up in a semi-rural area near Oxford.

Granted, I went to good private schools close to my village, an education I value very highly, but as this video points out, they certainly weren’t solely responsible for developing my creativity. Any creativity I have was fostered through my father teaching me about photography, and my mother’s love of the arts. Oh, and I think I had to get pretty good at creative-writing to get through my philosophy degree!

So my question is, in a world of “academic inflation” where “degrees aren’t worth anything” (I largely agree…), and with schools killing real creativity, does it matter if one no longer lives near a fine range of upmarket private education?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. My hope is that we are wise enough to spot our children’s creative instincts in time, and do everything we can to encourage them through any appropriate educational experience we can find – our own, institutional, or otherwise.

Links:

- More thoughts on this talk and issue from the speaker himself

- Interesting “What’s your favourite TED talk” thread that brought me back to this (a day too late! Ken Robinson spoke in Madrid last night, very close to my home, and I missed it, balls!)