The Reader or The Writer?

Last Sunday, when I went to the airport, I entered to the bookstore to buy something to read. I already had a book in my pocket, but I thought Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil was too a heavy read for a flight, so I bought another one. The Reader captured my attention. I remembered a former friend mentioned the movie to me some time ago, so I thought it would be soft read for a day's trip.

I've just finished this afternoon, while having a sandwich and two coffees at an indoor terrace facing a huge window in a mall in the center of the town. The sun was illuminating the place and I felt it would be a nice place to have a rest after a morning rambling around the old city. The book is pretty easy to read, with big letter case and 3 pages top chapters. I must say I read a very bad translation, with some typos and elementary school's grammar errors, like a wrong tendency in using preposition "en" instead of "a" in Catalan, not pretty advisable unless one is from Valencia. What can I get for just 7 euros?

I've enjoyed the story. It starts being an intimate small fable of an unbalanced love, but it develops into a wider range story with more serious implications. What first was something puerile, it turns out to be in the middle of the gravest and worst crimes in recent European history; and the trigger of it all? Just the most futile one. This small thing puts everything upside down and changes in a very disgraced way the lives of the two main characters, Berg and Hanna.

I've made myself some of the questions Berg asks to himself, shared some of the fears and felt some of the pains he describes. Probably, most people has, at some scale. I've used the same words he uses to describe his grief, "abandoned, cheated and used". I've felt also narcotized and unable to feel anything at the sight of the author of such pain. He makes the mistake of falling in love with a woman with an issue that put her apart from him, while he can't see farther from his nose. She is too proud and self-centered to admit her flaw and crime and accepts a bigger one, though false, like privately expiating for her sins.

He reads to her, and keeps reading to her more as a kind of revenge and to relieve his pain than for a true love towards her, which doesn't exist anymore. And she also takes revenge on him, or at least it seems so for what she does at the end. I started writing this blog for similar reasons, though now the goal has entirely changed. It is also sarcastic to me that he even mentions the Odyssey as his favorite book and at one point he talks about Nausikaa, asking to himself who his Nausikaa is, Sophie or Hanna.

Anyway, I'd like to say some more intelligent and funnier things, but tonight I can't since I drunk too much wine for dinner and my brain is shut down for maintenance. Read the book or watch the movie.

Belgian Sakura

I've just gotten an email that has brought this song to my head



It happened again. The girl who intoxicates rats with cocaine brought Orwell's 1984 to lunch, and she will be having a cinéma soirée at her apartment showing a Passolini's movie (Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom). She is definitely angry at the world.

Oh, my sweet Sakura, where are you now?

Lunch Talk or Conversations avec des Frites

Today is the last day in the lab, though I predict that either I'll be traveling here again in some months time, or they will go to Barcelona to keep on working closely together. With this "they" I'm referring to Wei and Thomas, the two guys whom I'm working with in Liège. Both of them have kindly welcome me, specially Thomas, who has friendly introduced me to his friends and sister, with whom we have had lunch most of the days.

Wei is a more reserved Chinese guy, from Manchu area. He's been here for five years and, currently, is living with his wife, also Chinese, who is pursuing her PhD in the same department. Yesterday afternoon we had a pretty long conversation about Asia, in general, and China, in particular. We talked about Japanese occupation of Manchu region and the way Japanese are still perceived there or in Korea. He has a pretty interesting theory about why Europe is not as united as China but just a bunch of similar independent nations, fighting each other most of times.

We need a powerful Emperor, in the Chinese way, that merciless and ruthless remove differences. According to him, China became a single nation due to the tyrannic rule of her emperors, who did not hesitate sacrificing enormous portions of the population on behalf of the construction of the country. He, though, agreed with me that in Europe, where the individual is more important than the group, this is pretty impossible. I told him that I had had such an impression in Japan, and he mentioned the Taoism and its influence also in Japan, since she had taken most of her culture from China.

Thomas, on the other hand, a tall blond blue-eyed handsome Belgian guy, still a bit ingenuous and shy due to his countrysideness, but terribly good-natured and friendly. He explained me how successful he was with girls in Spain. He was astonished when girls came straight to him in the club. "Of course! You are the blue prince stereotype guy for them!". Never happened to him in Belgium. Girls, always prefer the "foreigner" to the local, and I know what I'm talking about.

His sister is also a real beauty. A biologist, finishing her PhD in deep sea crustaceans, she was trying to explain me why these animals are that interesting so as to have had a radio interview from Australia about her work. Her skin is so pale, it turned red anytime she couldn't find the right word in English and asked help from his brother. Her friend was also an interesting type.

A heavy smoker, angry with the world girl, she tests the effects of cocaine and amphetamines on rats. I asked her if she had open access to such substances. "Yes", she had, though they have a protocol. As much "pure white and sticky cocaine" as she wanted, she kiddingly told me, "better than that in Las Ramblas". She should go and extend her tests there, plenty of drugs and rats!!

Boulets a la Liègeoise avec des Pommes Nature

I'm writing from Liège, in Belgium. I've been here since last Sunday and I'll be here until next Sunday. I came to work in the European project I'm involved in. Going to Liège is like going to the center of Europe. Bruxelles is an hour away by train, Maastricht is just some kilometers across the border and Aachen too. Aachen was once the capital of Charlemagne's Empire, which was so vast that reached Barcelona, that was reconquered from the Moors by his army. I can't just imagine how this empire huge could be governed by a blond Germanic barbarian from here during the Middle Ages.

But what astonishes me the most those days is how similar we are. To me, these European regions, despite the big distance across them, are amazingly similar. I don't wanna say that there is some kind of historical and social continuities that tie them up, it is just that nowadays Europe is converging into the same kind of society in a fast pace wherever one may go.

I'm laying on the bed at the hotel, watching TV. Same series. Same programs. Same comedies. Even the news opening music at BBC and F2 are almost the same. I walk in the street. Same chains. Same supermarkets. Same shops. Same cars. I enter in a shop, a supermarket. Same brands. Same cookies. Same drinks. I talk with guys at the lab. I make a joke and they laugh. Same background. All of them have been in Barcelona. Have gotten drunk in the same places. Have smoked shit and gone crazy at the same squares, streets, and visited the same monuments and museums. Gone to the same beaches.

Can't I tell the difference between them or other people in the streets, either be it in Barcelona, or in Liège? Is that true? Is it just my perception? Do I just filter people out in a way that the only set remaining contains people who just look the same? Maybe. However, I also think that there is a huge tendency into a European convergence that makes us more and more similar. The EU is making us more Europeans, in fact.

Only language makes us different, unless we can understand each other in some common way. I can make myself understood in French, which puzzle them about my origin until they see my credit card. Food is also a little different, but not that much. Frites, frites, frites, and boulets a la liègeoise. But no surprise about that. And what about social manners? Well, guys here kiss each other's cheeks when they meet. I was really surprised at first, but now it seems normal.

On the one hand, traveling abroad is becoming as easy as going from one city to another inside our own country, provided you understand the language. This is positive for many reasons, basically because it makes us more aware of each others and spreads our physical and mental boundaries. However, on the other hand, this makes traveling abroad a trivial thing, just as uninteresting as visiting an old aunt in a lost village in winter.

Traveling is pretty much like eating sushi: I really love it, but I don't share the puerile exotic feeling newbies experiment anymore. It is just another usual thing for me, like eating a piece of bread. The good thing is that I'm not a tourist anymore either, which I'd hate.

Sex and Drugs and Rock'n'Roll

That's a powerful starting sentence: "Choose life...I chose not to choose life".



I know time doesn't pass by in vain, and that some of the things pictured in this movie (and book) are now just recreational holidays for spoiled and bored middle class children, like the gorgeous disco bitch, Diane, in the movie.



I never chose drugs. Drugs are just for idiots, and I've seen enough of them to say this categorically. The correlation is far to high for not taking it into account, unless one is to high for not even noticing it. Anyway, the movie, worldwide known (I'm not discovering America here), worth watching one more time. I chose not to choose...drugs.

PS: I really think ad "creative" should be a little more creative and stop sniffing coke while co-opting music and movies to sell their shit. Look at this ad of a governmental program to create business; doesn't it sound familiar? Lame. "Have an idea?"...NO, YOU DON'T!!

Graf Lleida, En Pau Descanseu

This is not fiction. The video corresponds to the situation that the firefighet squad Graf Barcelona lived during the big fire in Horta de Sant Joan (Tarragona), July 21st 2009. 100m from them, Graf Lleida perished completely. Now, this case is on trial.



These are the last words of Graf Lleida:

15.57 horas: "Ahora vemos subir el fuego... Sube con muy mala leche"
16.04 horas: "Necesitamos una descarga, estamos mucha gente aquí"
16.06 horas: "¿Me copias... que me copias?".
16.09 horas: "Quemados, tíos quemados... Por favor. que venga alguien... Por favor, hostia. Subid".
16.12 horas: "Que nos suba a buscar alguien, por favor, estamos a punto de cascarla. Hostia. Graf Lleida, un acorralamiento".
16.13 horas: "¿Viene alguien a buscarnos, o no?".
16.15 horas: "Estoy solo y quemado. Hijos de puta, venidme a buscar".

A partir de las 16.20 horas llegan los primeros efectivos de Barcelona a la zona donde estaban sus compañeros de Lleida. Algunos bomberos aún respiraban y un par estaban muertos. Más tarde se hallaría a los otros dos –en uno de los casos se tardó una hora y tres cuartos en localizar el cuerpo–. Huyeron corriendo de la zona segura en un intento desesperado por huir de las llamas.

(Excerpt from "La Vanguardia")

Catching a Liar Is Easier Than Catching a Lame Person

I've been lied many times, mostly, by women. I don't have any mercy for liars though, at some point, it is funny to see how they try to make you believe their own delusions. It is pretty easy to detect such lies, provided I can see their faces, specially, their eyes. I wouldn't call myself a lie detector, not beyond the only expertise I've gained after years of listening those silly lies, but it's been a need for me to become one: the function causes, by selection, a character to appear, as known in Biology.

How to catch a liar? People make some uncontrolled micro-movements, specially saccades with their eyes. In that moment, the lie is being cooked. Others touch their hair, wink, purse their lips or look somewhere else. Voice differences are also palpable, like small changes in volume, intonation or speed. Some girls are specially good at lying, since they believe what they say. Then, they tend to focus only on their story, which in the best occasions have a good logic behind, and cut any attempt to make things more clear. In such cases, some external facts must be collected to proof any of the statements wrong, and make the whole logical structure collapse.

Pia fraus, for me, are the worst, since the liar supposes some kind of mental weakness in the person who receives the message, which will make him/her unable to resist the consequences of exposing the naked truth and, therefore, justifies the lie somehow. Pious lies are said to be chosen for not hurting other's feelings, ironically and falsely turning a compulsive liar into a benevolent savior. However, when the lie becomes evident, the destroying effects are devastating. This is the common lie employed when being dumped, of which I'm a real expert!

The two more recurrent pious lies I have had to face are "I really do care about my boyfriend" and "I like you, but just as a friend". Who the hell is still so dork to keep saying such bullshit? A bad liar treats the victim of his/her lies as stupid, whereas the good liar doesn't, and adapts the lie to the listener, in the same way a good communicator adapts his speech to the audience. In communication, truths and lies don't exist by themselves beyond the perception listeners have of them.

Two of the best I've ever been said were these. One girl after being somehow disappointed at the expectations she had upon me (perhaps being tall, blond and blue-eyed), told me that she wanted to become a flight attendant and, therefore, at that moment of her life, she wouldn't have time for seeing me. The lie was obvious from the fact she could never reach the standards of any air company and that she even offered herself to pay for the dinner, an evident consequence of her feeling of guilt. So, I had a free meal that night.

Another one told me she was a lesbian and not interested in men, in general. "Why then you accept meeting me?" I thought. I told her I didn't care and I groped her the whole night long while she kept on saying "you know, I don't mind, since I don't feel anything". What a silly girl, falling caught in her own lie! The hilarious part was observing her trying to keep the composure and pretending a sophisticated woman while I was holding her big tits under the shirt. And yes, she felt something, I could notice she had lied!

When the Shark Bites with His Teeth, Dear

Oh, the shark has pretty teeth, dear,
And he shows 'hem pearly white
Just a jack-knife has Macheath, dear
And he keeps it out of sight.

When the shark bites with his teeth, dear
Scarlet billows start to spread
Fancy gloves, though, wears macheath,
So there's not a trace of red



On the sidewalk, Sunday morning,
Lies a body oozin' life
Someone's sneakin' 'round the corner
Is that someone, Mack the Knife?

From a tugboat, by the river
A cement bag's, droppin' down
Yeah, the cement's just for the weight, dear
Bet you Mack, he's back in town

Looky here Louie Miller, disappeared dear
After drawing, out his cash
And Macheath spends, like a sailor
Did our boy do, somethin' rash?

Sukey Tawdry, Jenny Diver
Lotte Lenya, Sweet Lucy Brown
Oh, the line forms on the right, dears
Now that Macky's back in town



There are some who are in darkness
And the others are in light
And you see the ones in brightness
Those in darkness drop from sight

Have, Little One, a Dream of Us

Life; great word. I've visited my friends' baby at the hospital. I went two weeks ago too. He's been born on the 28th week and his weight was below one kilo, and yet, he is a complet person, a little big piece of throbbing life. Five fingers in each hand. Two eyes, two ears; the correct amount of limbs in his minute body. And yet, he needs help to breath; too small lungs.

He was born two weeks ago, but early, too early. So far, so good, though. No big problem. His brain works, his heart is a precission clock, ticking at an amazing rate, 170 beats per minute. His liver, fine. And yet, he forgets to breath from time to time, like if he was still tired of having been born so unanticipatedly and was skipping his too-early responsability to do it by his own. Don't forget breathing, my little baby!

Alive, he is hopefully alive. It seems trivial, since it is a natural proces: a baby is born, and it lives. But at that stage, where he should still be in his mother's womb, it appears to my eyes like a miracle. He is still covered with prenatal hair, but already makes some noises and move his hands by his own while sleeping on his mother's breast, like dreaming. What a baby is dreaming of?

We say to children going to sleep, "have a good night and dream of the angels", but this little angel, what is he dreaming of? He's never seen the sea nor the sky; the rain nor the sun; not yet. But by sticking to life, he's a big dream coming true, day after day. No need to be dreaming, since we are all dreaming of him.

Good Doesn't Beget Good, but Evil Always Brings More Evil

Life is a weird place. It's a plain and crazy contradiction, and we, little ants here, keep trying to make sens out of it. Maybe I feel too philosophical when I sleep too few; it happens due to some unbalanced levels of some neurotransmitter, I heard. But the fact is that it doesn't need too much to look around to figure it out, unless one is another lobotomized of the herd.

I've just read "La Contra", and there is this interview to a journalist who survived to the Israeli attack to Gaza in December 2008. As he says, 1000 hours of horror, 65h recorded, 2h shown. 380 people were killed in the very first 7min of the attack. He's made a documentary, To Shoot an Elephant, to show to the world the horrors of this military action on civil population. It is so real (what a meaningless word!), it has been qualified as gore: He shows how two children die in a hospital. The movie can be seen in YouTube.

His conclusions: "war is ugly and avoidable, and those who make it, are bad people. That simple". Unfortunately, I think he is wrong. War is part of Human nature, part of Nature itself, and thus, difficult to avoid. War is part of a mechanical cause to produce some gains. That's why is unavoidable. As long as it is easier for a government to obtain its desires by means of war, war will exist. And there is nothing easier than war, specially when the opponent is disarmed.

By chance, so far, I've never been involved in a war, so I speak from ignorance. But I've met people who has. My grandfather did the whole Spanish Civil War on the first line, and was injured in the Battle of the Ebro. His brother, too. His father, too, 4 years in Cuba. It seems that people get used to live surrounded by death as people get use to smoke and noise in big cities. He explained how people blew out by grenades or mines, fell down by machine guns (sewn, he said), or were just shoot in the head or executed at dawn. Atrocities were their every day bread.

In Japan, I met an ex-Marine who had been in the first war of Iraq; he told me people can't imagine what it is to be in a battle: people paralyze and crap their shit out of them, literally. My grandfather told me the same thing, and how they had to kick the younger ones to move somewhere safer most of times. The journalist also say he shit his pants several times. War is shit and blood.

Were them good or bad? They were just normal people. For me, there is no good or bad, standing alone like two single objects that can be labeled with a word. They are mixed and they depend on the context. Both are part of the same nature, and we all share it. Are these Israel soldiers bad? I don't know.

Recently, I happened to meet a very friendly Jewish old woman in London, Ela. She lives in the suburbs, near Cannon's Park, in a neighborhood with the highest level of Jewish population in the city. Her ex-sister-in-law is living with her at home. She is a 27 year-old girl from Israel, who just moved back to London because she wants to go to college. And, as all young Israeli, she did 3 years of compulsory military service, and we all know what it means.

Is she somehow guilty? Naively, one could think so, but I don't. If she had skipped the military service, she would lose everything, freedom, citizenship and rights. In Spain, I skipped mine; but my father did his military service, 18 months in Africa. For me, it was easy; for him, impossible without losing too much: deserters faced either martial court and prision, or exhile. Life seems to be a cost minimizing-benefit maximazing problem, sometimes.

Once I heard in a documentary a Russian prisoner saying that there would never be a stop for evil in the world, since "good not necessarily begets good, but evil always gives birth to more evil". Good/evil, love/hate, peace/war, truth/lie; doublethinking accepts them as the same. I think they are disctinct degrees of the same, which is something completely different. And people should accept reality more often. Now it rains.

Puris or Pooris?

This is the menu we found in a Punjabi restaurant near our hotel, close to Euston Station. I've got to say I couldn't understand most of it, so I asked the waiter for some suggestions. The guy told us to order Shankar Thali, on the upperside of the rightmost column. Since the place was called Ravi Shankar, like the sitar player, I guess thali means something like "meal" or "set".

The picture below corresponds to the Shankar Thali, with dal soup papadam (??), bhajias (??), ralta (??), and the most intriguing thing, puris or pooris, according to a varying orthography all around the menu. The dish by the chapatti is the one called Behl Pooris. There I discovered what puffed rice was: rice krispies. First time I eat krispies in a dinner starter.


Other specialities were khadi (??), paneer muttor (??), achaar (??), gulab jamun (??), shrikhand (??), paratha keer (??), malai kofta (??), sambhar (??), dahi vada (??), and more pooris and chutney. I really missed some pictures in the menu, to know at least what I was about to order. And not only us were totally lost, the couple by our table was also looking at the menu for 10min before having a little chat with the oldest waiter about what would be advisable to eat.

The food, after all, was delicious and so spicy and hot I felt like having a piece of flaming hell in my mouth, but I like it hot! However, what were the pooris? It turned out to be a crispy fried round piece of indian bread, on the dish near the lower rightmost corner of the picture. I must confess I completely ignore Punjabi cuisine since the only Punjabi I've ever met was called Anthony, had been born in Oxford, and the only thing he used to eat while in Japan, where I met him, was Sato's Gohan (サトウのご飯) with mayonnaise, fried chicken and chips, clearly a more English food.

Blitz Trip to London

What a lovely city, isn't it, Darling?