Yesterday night, while watching Buenafuente, the other genius from Reus, I heard that Tim Robbins was supposed to go to his program. At the end, he didn't show up since was not in Barcelona last night, but I could get to know he was doing a play in the city: Orwell's 1984.
I read that book during the last Iraq invasion, and was surprised by its adequacy to the present times, though he wrote it in the 40s to criticize the way the communists used to deal with reality. He had experienced such behavior while fighting in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), where he almost lost his life twice, once in the avant-garde in the front of Aragon, once in rear guard in Barcelona.
Moreover, I don't think it is a pure coincidence that Tim Robbins has selected the Poliorama theater to show the play, since it was there where Orwell stayed hidden while he was recovering from his wounded neck. This experience is accounted in detail in his book Homage to Catalonia.
While in Japan, I submitted a project to the Ministry of Science and Industry to develop an automatic system based on computer vision that would monitor automatically the behavior for pedestrian in crowded areas. It was my little Big Brother, and it was accepted and funded (!!??). I knew it, since Japan is crazily obsessed about being invaded by foreigners, viruses or aliens. Ironically enough, a CCTV system has recently been installed at the Orwell Sq. in Barcelona.
It is just a matter of time that a whole system of ubiquitous intelligence starts surrounding us beyond the satellites, Internet, wi-fi and mobile phones. It is claimed by experts that this is going to help us and our lives, as the rest of technical advances have already done. The difference, maybe, is the degree of intelligence and the amount of personal data that such systems will manage.
It depends on us, though, that this systems are used in a malevolent way by powerful people to enslave us, as depicted in 1984. So, following the clever advise of another egregious anarchist, Noam Chomsky, my suggestions is lying, since lies will make us free. As Buenafuente comically states it, lying is human. So, let's be humans!
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Nausicaa, Burner of Ships
Life has some funny coincidences sometimes. Every day, on my way to work, I pass across a street whose name, despite being familiar to me, I couldn't fix in my mind. Without Wiki, I deduced that it had something to do with the sea since it is close to my apartment, which is near to the sea, and because of the prefix nau-, related to ships and nav-igation. But I didn't care to check any further.
Then, the other day, my friend E., while talking about movies she liked, mentioned some Japanese anime movie named Nausikaa of the Valley of the Wind, by Hayao Miyazaki. "Wooow, I know that name!!!", I thought while she was explaining me the plot along our stroll near Sta. Maria del Mar in El Born. But, still, I didn't check it, not even in Google.
I'm not very interested in anime nor in manga, despite the time spent in Japan. Besides, Miyazaki is too foreseeable and puerile for me. I've seen some of his movies, and there is always the same recurrent themes, such as the destruction of nature, a very peculiar mixture of machines and animals, and always those flying scenes, with all sorts of artifacts, being amidst a blue sky or in the sea.
Oddly for me, Miyazaki's movies make direct usage of characters and places belonging to other literary works, such as Laputa flying isle from Swift's Gulliver's Travels, despite the context and posterior development in the movies differ from the original ones and follow the usual Miyazaki's leitmotifs.
What about Nausikaa? Nausikaa, who was she? I've checked it out and guess what: She turned out to be a character in Homer's Odyssey, another story of travels. Nausikaa was a young and pretty princess, her name meaning burner of ships. She saved the naked and stranded Ulysses from a sure death after a shipwreck and brought him in front of her father, the king, who helped Ulysses to go back home in Ithaca.
Now I remembered it! I read that part of the Odyssey, one of my companion books in Japan, though never finished it --verses were damn too difficult for me!--. Maybe I'm another Ulysses? A traveler, left stranded, and now back to a place near to the sea, not Ithaca though, but another Sta. Maria del Mar. And my Nausikaa? Where is she? I must watch that movie!
Then, the other day, my friend E., while talking about movies she liked, mentioned some Japanese anime movie named Nausikaa of the Valley of the Wind, by Hayao Miyazaki. "Wooow, I know that name!!!", I thought while she was explaining me the plot along our stroll near Sta. Maria del Mar in El Born. But, still, I didn't check it, not even in Google.I'm not very interested in anime nor in manga, despite the time spent in Japan. Besides, Miyazaki is too foreseeable and puerile for me. I've seen some of his movies, and there is always the same recurrent themes, such as the destruction of nature, a very peculiar mixture of machines and animals, and always those flying scenes, with all sorts of artifacts, being amidst a blue sky or in the sea.
Oddly for me, Miyazaki's movies make direct usage of characters and places belonging to other literary works, such as Laputa flying isle from Swift's Gulliver's Travels, despite the context and posterior development in the movies differ from the original ones and follow the usual Miyazaki's leitmotifs.
What about Nausikaa? Nausikaa, who was she? I've checked it out and guess what: She turned out to be a character in Homer's Odyssey, another story of travels. Nausikaa was a young and pretty princess, her name meaning burner of ships. She saved the naked and stranded Ulysses from a sure death after a shipwreck and brought him in front of her father, the king, who helped Ulysses to go back home in Ithaca.
Now I remembered it! I read that part of the Odyssey, one of my companion books in Japan, though never finished it --verses were damn too difficult for me!--. Maybe I'm another Ulysses? A traveler, left stranded, and now back to a place near to the sea, not Ithaca though, but another Sta. Maria del Mar. And my Nausikaa? Where is she? I must watch that movie!
Crash vs Crush
That's a crash, a real crash, occurred to my co-worker two weeks ago.
No injures, no personal damage. Not to be mixed up with a crush.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Mazinger Z or Why I Went to Japan
Some great stories start with a sentence like "I had a farm in Africa..." or "En un lugar de la Mancha...". Mine is "I went to Japan to work with robots..."; a bit of a stereotype, though true. What brought me to this? I don't really know, just I followed an unseen path, maybe.
Once i assisted to a lecture about new interesting developments in engineering, and a former algebra professor mentioned something called computer vision. I thought, "wooow, computers can actually see?!", and I decided to study such astonishing possibility. Now it is my job.
I grew up with Mazinger Z. I was so crazy about it that even had an actual fist that could fly. Then, one of the most unbelievable turn of destiny, somebody decided to build an actual replica of Mazinger right in front of my dad's village. Can anybody believe that? Yeah, and it is still there, standing in the middle of nothing more than pine trees and some old houses, 10 m high. Maybe that was my unseen path.
I went to Japan to work with robots. I worked in a research center similar to that in the cartoon, but there was no pool from where a glider would appear. No gigantic robot, either. No monsters, no Dr. Hell, no Baron Ashler, no Kabuto Koji, no Sayaka Yumi. No glory, no epic. So, I've abandoned robots and Japan. Or was it the other way round?
Enjoying Gaudi or the Gaudy Enjoyment
Barcelona is Gaudi. But who was really Gaudi? For the usual historical facts, check the wikipedia or any of the gazillion books about him. I can only tell you what my experiences are about Gaudi.
Despite the immense interest of tourists in his allegedly works, especially among Japanese ones, few people knows the basics about his life, such that he was not really born in Barcelona, but in a masia between Riudoms and Reus, a town south of Barcelona.
Due to some disease that prevented him from any physical effort, he spent part of his childhood alone, riding a tiny donkey to go from one place to another, while chasing dragonflies at the riera de Maspujols, a gravel rambla (ravine) that only carries running water when the llevantada (late summer powerful storms) hits the Tarragona maritime mountain range now and then.
I know the place. It is supposed to be there, where he discovered the marvels of natural shapes, those that some years later he translated into stone and concrete to build the most distinctive buildings of Barcelona. Static movement and self-repeated shapes, the very same patterns of plants, rooted to the ground and growing up to the skies, seeking for nutritional light. That was his interpretation of architecture. What was a building looking for in the skies? Well, since he was a pious guy, that must be god.
My elementary school was located on the place a nun convent used to exist. The only religious remains, though, were a chapel, dark and smelly, crammed with old devoted widows who substituted their long deceased earthly life with ghostly prayers in front of a weird altar. Years later, I discovered that such barbed wired altar had been the very first work of Gaudi while still a student. And it was located by my school? Amazing!
I have always thought that Gaudi's 3D cross on the top of the Casa Batllo looked like a huge garlic or fig. All Gaudi's buildings have crosses on the top, like churches. Some have a Christian motto, like the Pedrera, whose balcony ironwork also resembles a Japanese seaweed called wakame. Even in the Sagrada Familia there are some baskets with fruit. His buildings seems to be vegetable churches that connect earth and heaven.
When he was run over by a tramway, he was thought to be a homeless and send to a charity hospital where a gypsy called Pubill gave him his bed, the last soft one before the cold tombstone of his grave. Was he a genius or just a homeless (lit.)? Is he now a saint, as some people claim (lit.), or a money-making machine for Barcelona? I just think of him as a guy who longed for his childhood chasing grasshoppers and dragonflies near the riverside.
Despite the immense interest of tourists in his allegedly works, especially among Japanese ones, few people knows the basics about his life, such that he was not really born in Barcelona, but in a masia between Riudoms and Reus, a town south of Barcelona.
Due to some disease that prevented him from any physical effort, he spent part of his childhood alone, riding a tiny donkey to go from one place to another, while chasing dragonflies at the riera de Maspujols, a gravel rambla (ravine) that only carries running water when the llevantada (late summer powerful storms) hits the Tarragona maritime mountain range now and then.
I know the place. It is supposed to be there, where he discovered the marvels of natural shapes, those that some years later he translated into stone and concrete to build the most distinctive buildings of Barcelona. Static movement and self-repeated shapes, the very same patterns of plants, rooted to the ground and growing up to the skies, seeking for nutritional light. That was his interpretation of architecture. What was a building looking for in the skies? Well, since he was a pious guy, that must be god.
My elementary school was located on the place a nun convent used to exist. The only religious remains, though, were a chapel, dark and smelly, crammed with old devoted widows who substituted their long deceased earthly life with ghostly prayers in front of a weird altar. Years later, I discovered that such barbed wired altar had been the very first work of Gaudi while still a student. And it was located by my school? Amazing!
I have always thought that Gaudi's 3D cross on the top of the Casa Batllo looked like a huge garlic or fig. All Gaudi's buildings have crosses on the top, like churches. Some have a Christian motto, like the Pedrera, whose balcony ironwork also resembles a Japanese seaweed called wakame. Even in the Sagrada Familia there are some baskets with fruit. His buildings seems to be vegetable churches that connect earth and heaven.
When he was run over by a tramway, he was thought to be a homeless and send to a charity hospital where a gypsy called Pubill gave him his bed, the last soft one before the cold tombstone of his grave. Was he a genius or just a homeless (lit.)? Is he now a saint, as some people claim (lit.), or a money-making machine for Barcelona? I just think of him as a guy who longed for his childhood chasing grasshoppers and dragonflies near the riverside.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Rompimiento de Gloria or a Glorious Breaking
When the heavens break letting the sunlight go through them, something called a rompimiento de gloria appears, that is, a glorious breaking
When an angel breaks one's heart, that can also be named a glorious breaking!
However, no matter how great a storm has been or how cloudy a day is, the skies above our tiny lives are always shinny and blue, at least, in Barcelona.
When an angel breaks one's heart, that can also be named a glorious breaking!
However, no matter how great a storm has been or how cloudy a day is, the skies above our tiny lives are always shinny and blue, at least, in Barcelona.
Broken Magnet, Broken Heart
What if we had a magnet that could keep the pieces of our broken hearts together? My Frankfurt-am-Main magnet fell off the fridge door today. It was not a suicide, but a magnet-cide.
The magnet I bought last year in a sunny and hot summer afternoon rambling around Frankfurt, while spending time in a long stopover in a flight from Portugal to Japan, the very same day Germany lost the football Euro Cup against Spain, which had survive my moving back from Japan to Catalonia, broke. It was my fault, though. However, the circular magnetic piece at the back of the dish had kept the broken pieces together.
What if our hearts could be kept together with magnets? wouldn't our wrecks be less painful and short? Or we would keep being attached to the same cold fridge forever?
It is ironic to me that the Catalan word for magnet is imant, deriving from aïmant, an old word meaning lover.
Japanized Food in 10 min
Before Barcelona, I was living in Japan for some years. Japan changed me in many ways, but especially, in the way I eat or cook. Today, I had forgoten to have lunch, but suddenly my stomach revived as an alien and woke me up from a non-scheduled nap. I was hungry and wanted some vegetables immediately.
I went to the kitchen and grabbed a bag of my new finding. It is called "wok" and is mixture of frozen vegetables prepared in the adequate shape to be eaten by using chopsticks, as I usually do now. 10 min at most, I reckon. I place the vegetables still frozen on a pan, and warm them up until they unfreeze.
Mixture of tastes makes dishes more appealing. Since I've been somehow Japanized, I usually mix olive oil and しょうゆ (醤油), a powerful combination!
Now, it looks more edible, doesn't it?
The last step is left ad libitum, and this afternoon, I fancied cheese on the top of these vegetables, like if they were spaghetti.
Et viola! The miracle is worked: what not even 10min ago were just frozen vegetables that looked like a stone is now a delicious dish at the table, ready to be eaten.
Bon profit! いただきます!
I went to the kitchen and grabbed a bag of my new finding. It is called "wok" and is mixture of frozen vegetables prepared in the adequate shape to be eaten by using chopsticks, as I usually do now. 10 min at most, I reckon. I place the vegetables still frozen on a pan, and warm them up until they unfreeze.
Mixture of tastes makes dishes more appealing. Since I've been somehow Japanized, I usually mix olive oil and しょうゆ (醤油), a powerful combination!
Now, it looks more edible, doesn't it?
The last step is left ad libitum, and this afternoon, I fancied cheese on the top of these vegetables, like if they were spaghetti.
Et viola! The miracle is worked: what not even 10min ago were just frozen vegetables that looked like a stone is now a delicious dish at the table, ready to be eaten.
Bon profit! いただきます!
Saturday, September 26, 2009
A Summer Cat or the Swedish Myth
Still in Spain it is very alive the Swedish myth on the minds of many middle-aged men. In short, it is related to those summers in the late 60's and early 70's when our coasts started to be massively visited for the first time by European tourists. Most were either French or Germans, but people here thought they were Swedish.
In the middle of a dying dictatorship, these tourists brought fresh air to many youngsters that discovered, all of a sudden, a new fresh world, specially related to the personal relationships and sex, since Europe was, and is, a more advanced place, economically and socially. It was the time of free sex, a concept completely unknown in the priggish and claustrophobic Spanish society at that time.
This myth of freedom and sexual liberation was a sword with two blades, and also the so-called nordic princesses dreamt to come to Spain to taste a little the fire and passion of such Mediterranean guys. And it is still fresh and alive, and economically exploited at the present day Barcelona, whose authorities, since the 92 Olympics, have been engaged in a policy of total permissibility towards any activity devoted to the entertainment of European tourists, that flock to Barcelona and neighboring seaside towns to have the time of their lives. Nowadays, though, those princesses are not exclusively from Europe nor are only locals those guys who keep on feeding the myth.
Everybody knows what I'm talking about, don't we? Yeah, I can see that little grin in your eyes, dear! Sex without ties, cheap alcohol and lots of pot. And back home, in the boredom of your suffocating country, the myth reappears in dreams or by the only presence of a Spaniard around. "Should I try him? Will he make me remember those summer nights I had in Barcelona? Yeah, why not?".
That's why I like that song, used this year in a beer ad with a starry name. Funny that it is a transvestite Swedish guy who explains the myth perfectly. Summer Cat, a summer in Catalonia.
Barcelona got you, babe!
Rambling vs. Ramblejar
According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, the word rambling means the following:
Walking along this street has become one of the main attraction of the city. This blog is gonna be a little like rambling, no direction, no aim, no main topic, just the pleasure of chaotically walking around a life in Barcelona. Fem un tomb? Let's take for a walk?
1 a : to move aimlessly from place to place b : to explore idly
2 : to talk or write in a desultory or long-winded wandering fashion
3 : to grow or extend irregularly
Walking along this street has become one of the main attraction of the city. This blog is gonna be a little like rambling, no direction, no aim, no main topic, just the pleasure of chaotically walking around a life in Barcelona. Fem un tomb? Let's take for a walk?
Welcome to my New Blog!
This blog is going to be for sure an incredible challenge for me, since I have decided to write it in English, which is not my mother language. So, please, be patient with me and my poor skills, which, I hope, will increase as I keep on writing here.
Why another blog? Tough question in a world where anybody is already able to write down its experiences easily. The main reason is that I'd like to explain, maybe just to myself and to a bunch of friends, some of the stories that occur to me, or that I invent, in my daily life, while using Barcelona as a stage. I promise I won't torture the audience with any futile personal details or great philosophies.
I have already tried a similar experiment during the long period I have been living in Japan, given form to this blog which is about some aspects of Japanese culture that I felt they deserved some lines, despite not belonging to any of the usual mainstream Japanese topics.
The reason for the election of English as the blog's language is that my aim is to share it with the highest number of people who might be also interested in Barcelona and stories related with her. My former blog was written in Catalan, since I felt an unavoidable urge to use somehow my language while living in such a remote place as well as sharing my views to other people back home who were also interested in Japan. Now, the context is the opposite and it must be done in English.
I hope we all enjoy this experience!
Why another blog? Tough question in a world where anybody is already able to write down its experiences easily. The main reason is that I'd like to explain, maybe just to myself and to a bunch of friends, some of the stories that occur to me, or that I invent, in my daily life, while using Barcelona as a stage. I promise I won't torture the audience with any futile personal details or great philosophies.
I have already tried a similar experiment during the long period I have been living in Japan, given form to this blog which is about some aspects of Japanese culture that I felt they deserved some lines, despite not belonging to any of the usual mainstream Japanese topics.
The reason for the election of English as the blog's language is that my aim is to share it with the highest number of people who might be also interested in Barcelona and stories related with her. My former blog was written in Catalan, since I felt an unavoidable urge to use somehow my language while living in such a remote place as well as sharing my views to other people back home who were also interested in Japan. Now, the context is the opposite and it must be done in English.
I hope we all enjoy this experience!
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