Another trip to Montserrat

Last weekend on Sunday and Monday we made another trip to Montserrat. This time we didn't have to worry about Bo's parents enjoying it or not and we decided to stay overnight in the Abat Cisneros hotel next to the Basilica. The bells were no problem and the view was fantastic especially first thing in the morning when the sun was coming up. We had a good time and I was struck by how photogenic the place was. We took 100 or so photos in 24 hours and we could have taken many more if the camera battery hadn't run flat.

The hotel room was good value for a 3 star hotel at 75 euros for a good-sized triple room including a buffet breakfast. I can recommend a trip to Montserrat for anyone who hasn't been and would suggest staying overnight as you get the place to yourself after everyone else has gone back to Barcelona. On Monday morning there was no queue to see the black madonna and child which you have to queue for ages to see in the afternoon at the weekend. Thomas had to miss a day of school but that didn't really matter as he's still only 5 and school is not yet compulsory and they don't do all that much at school here anyway. He still can't read and he's nearly 6. I'm a bit worried about Thomas's future in Barcelona as the education system is not up to much but I don't know if his prospects would be any better in England as the situation seems to be pretty bad there too.

Somebody's home

This is where the birthday party for the children from Thomas's class at school was held when it rained - in the bank lobby, which is somebody's home judging from the cardboard boxes propped against the wall. I seemed to be the only one who noticed this as homeless people seem to be invisible to most people here.

We should all try to understand what it must be like to be homeless and pray to God that it never happens to any of us.

Thomas watering the plants

We're trying to look after some plants on our balcony and Thomas helps with the watering. We haven't got many but we add to them from time to time. I'd like to grow some plants from seed if possible but I don't know if they'd survive the winter. At the moment the plants are doing well but we haven't hit the coldest time yet.

We'd also like to try growing some fruit or vegetables, possibly on the roof where the concierge has some plants. The other day I took Thomas up there to see them and there's a good view of Tibidabo from there.

Thomas´s English progress

Recently I revised Thomas´s English and he managed to read this. He then decorated the blackboard edge like this and I thought it looked rather nice so I took a snap of it for posterity.

The Joy of NOT working

I've borrowed a book from the library called "The Joy of NOT Working" by Ernie J. Zelinski. It makes interesting reading and many of the views expressed by the author concur with mine. His views on money, begging, the environment and the work ethic are all spot on.

Our society seems to value people only by their capacity for work and their assets rather than their character and intellect. This is in sharp contrast to the Greeks or Romans asserts the book who valued thinking and leisure activities above labour. This obsession with work, money and wealth is destroying the planet at an alarming rate. As more and more nations copy the American model of consumerism and selfishness so the damage being done to the planet is spiralling out of control.

I feel a crisis of natural resources is looming.

The answer is to adopt a new model based on knowledge and generosity.

We should all take a close look at the way we live and make the necessary changes. The first step is to cut expenditure and wastage to the minimum possible and start saving. Look at your activities and assess the damage they do to the environment and well-being of others. Open your mind to alternative ways of living which do not rely on the accumulation of goods and money to achieve personal success.

Learn a new language, help others, talk to your neighbours and make sure they are alright.

Once you have saved sufficient money to give you financial freedom resign from your job. Offer your services by advertising freely on the internet or by distributing leaflets. Offer a useful service that people need, not some scam designed only to separate them from their money. Offer your services free of charge or accept only donations or presents. Donations are better than presents as people often tend to give inappropriate gifts.

If you see somebody in trouble going through the rubbish approach them cautiously and strike up a conversation. Try to assess if their need is genuine or self-inflicted. If they seem to be the victims of bad luck offer them some food or money. If they refuse or react in a hostile manner walk away.

Keep calm at all times even when others around you get angry. Your alternative lifestyle will often provoke incomprehensible reactions from people whose minds have been trained to blindly accept the rules of society. Be prepared to be shunned by people who only value you for what you have not for what you are.

So, good luck in your new venture. The world needs more people like you. If you have read this far there is hope that you might be able to make the changes necessary to achieve true happiness whilst at the same time making a valuable contribution to the greater good. People will call you crazy, they might even drive you to a period of temporary insanity by the pressure they put on you to work harder and conform to the norms set by governments and big business which are only designed to further their own interests.

Look to the example of countries like Bhutan where collective happiness is put above economic targets. Talk to religious people like Buddhists or Christians about their beliefs and values and design your own set of principles adopting the best parts of each.

Most of all start to enjoy life - look on the bright side, be optimistic. If economic collapse is really on the horizon think of this as a good thing that will reduce the damage to the planet and allow more leisure time so long as it can be effectively managed and true misery avoided. Accept your situation, be satisfied with your standard of living. Ignore the rich and avoid making them richer. Do not buy their products unless you know that they live a modest lifestyle and make valuable contributions to eradicating poverty and inequality.

If we all start to change our value systems we can turn this situation around. Things like housing may become cheaper once again and people may start to value the truly important things in life.

Good luck and don't work too hard!

Trip to Hostalric

On Tuesday we went on an excursion to Hostalric. There was a 20 minute wait for a bus so we decided to take a taxi to the station in order not to miss the train. The train took about an hour to get to Hostalric. After we arrived we went to the small weekly market and bought some mandarins. Then we climbed up to the castle which has sadly been converted into a restaurant and is not open to the public. The restaurant was not open either so we had to go down to the village to find somewhere to get something to eat. We settled on a simple bar with a nice view and sat outside in the square. Bo and Thomas had platos combinados and I had an enormous fuet "bocadillo" which I couldn't finish so we kept it for later.

After lunch I played pool with Thomas and we went for a walk by the allotments and chatted to a man picking fruit. He said none of his children wanted to work on the allotments and preferred to work in the city, Girona I suppose. The man was whistling happily as he worked and was extremely friendly. We did see one young man doing some work on an allotment so there is some hope for the future. We then walked through the woods to the river, the Tordera, but it began to spit with rain so we sheltered under the trees. When it eased off we climbed back up to the village and saw the rest of the village and the town hall. We made our way to the square where the patisserie was, where we had bought some delicious local specialities and waited for the giants to come. At 5-30 they arrived with all the local inhabitants in tow. Thomas shook hands with a capgros (big head) and then the castanyada started. There were free chestnuts and sweet potatoes for everybody. We were the only foreign visitors there and it made me think that people only visit the main destinations nowadays and do not explore like they used to. There did not appear to be anywhere to stay in Hostalric which may be one reason, but I suspect most people just don't do their research properly anymore.

We had time to kill as the train didn't leave until 8-20. We went down to the station where the bar was open. I played table football with Thomas which was a first and then gave him an informal English lesson by pointing out things on the station and asking him questions. I then got chatting to a man about the night-time withdrawal of emergency health cover at the health centre in the village which was worrying. He went on a bit and we nearly missed our train which departed 5 minutes early for some reason. By the time we got to Barcelona it was about 25 minutes early so so much for the timetable. We were lucky with the bus and got home at a reasonable time.

We had had a thoroughly enjoyable and educational day out which contrasted strongly with our visit to the cinema the previous day which was not so successful. I felt it was good for Thomas to get out of Barcelona and see how people live in the countryside. Maybe in the future he may decide to live there. Who knows?

Tintin movie

You can read my review of the Tintin movie directed by Stephen Spielberg here

Jehovah's Witnesses etc.

Well, I had a chat with the Jehovah's Witnesses and they were a very pleasant and intelligent young couple with a 2 year old son. Both were bilingual and their English was fantastic. She is German but you could hardly tell. We chatted about all kinds of things and we seemed to see eye-to-eye on a lot of matters. We discussed how people worship money and how stupid and selfish that is and how some people would rather see their neighbour starve than give them food even though they have plenty themselves. Thay told me that Marks and Spencers now throws food away when it reaches its sell-by date even though it is still perfectly good to eat, whereas when I lived in England they used to give it to charity. Here they don't even cut the price when things reach their sell-by date - they just throw it in the bin. A few days ago I saw a young girl diving into the rubbish bins in our street in search of food. There seem to be more and more beggars on the streets now - some of them genuine and others not! I've given a euro or 2 to a couple of them and I?ve bought a copy of La Farola from a seller outside the supermarket. He was very polite and now says hello to me when I see him. However, another one I gave to had a story about having been robbed and his passport stolen which turned out to be a pack of lies as I've now noticed that he's there every day. I think from his accent he was probably French and he said he was sleeping on the beach but now I don't know what to believe. Now I tend to think it's probably better not to give money directly to these people but rather to organizatons that provide assistance. Is homelessness a problem in England now or has it got any better. I think the Cameron government´s policies aren't going to help by cutting benefits. I know they had to do something about government spending but targetting the poor is not a good idea. Here they're going to re-introduce a wealth tax for people with over 700000 euros in assets which is a step in the right direction but they've also been making cutbacks in healthcare and education whilst continuing with crazy projects like the AVE network (Spain's high-speed train). They're building the largest station in Europe in Barcelona (Sagrera) at the moment and it's a dreadful mess. There's also a plan to build a new station under Plaza Francesc Macia near us, but I hope that gets scrapped under the new cutbacks.

The way forward - message sent to Jordi Solé, a scientific expert in Barcelona

The importance of money needs to diminish and the culture of trying to live like the rich too. People will need to get satisfaction from other things than accumulating wealth and material goods. There are many things that are worthwhile which do not earn money - writing a blog, contributing to Wikipedia, writing a review of a place you have visited. These things are all worthwhile because they contribute to the body of human knowledge. If one person reads what you have written and learns something from it or empathises with it you have made a worthwhile contribution to the development of the human race. If everybody starts to make these kinds of contributions the impact can be huge - just look at Wikipedia, which was a fantastic idea that many people thought could never work, but just look at it now. I have already made my first contributions to it by correcting a badly translated article about the place where I live. As an expert in your field just think of the possible contributions you could make to the body of human knowledge. Why not make a contribution? The warm feeling you get from having made it is worth more than money. The great thing about it is that it is accessible to everyone, not just the scientific community and so anyone reading your articles can gain knowledge from it. This all contributes to the collective intelligence of the human race and hopefully will help to make the world a better place. Share your vision!

Jordi Solé

Yesterday our friend Jordi came to visit us to talk about starting a Tai Chi course and we ended up talking about Spain's and the world's problems. We agree on a lot of things - that the world is over-populated, that the AVE is a waste of money and that Spain is in for a situation like Greece and that the Euro will probably fall apart. Jordi's solution is to buy himself a piece of land in the countryside where he's going to build an ecological house to live in when things get tough. He foresees greater inequality with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. We agreed on a lot of things except his extreme Catalan nationalist views.

Jordi said that Spain had a crazy scheme to build a train tunnel at 2000 metres altitude through the Pyrenees but that it has been vetoed by Brussels, but the Sagrera scheme to build the largest station in Europe will go ahead. Madness - We saw the destruction for ourselves when we went to France.

One of the problems Jordi sees is that of the super-rich who set a bad example for people to follow. He thinks within the next few years money (the Euro) will lose its value and our savings will be worth a lot less than they are now.

Spanish people are so open

The great thing about living in Spain is how open the Spanish people are. You can strike up a conversation with just about anybody in the street and they don't treat you as weird, which is quite a difference from London. Barcelona may be a big city but people know their neighbours and it sometimes feels like a big village.

The Traffic Warden's Story

On the way back home with Thomas I got chatting with a traffic warden, Señora Wall who told me that her grandfather was an Englishman who came to fight in the Spanish Civil War and fell in love with a Spanish woman. She also told me that under Franco large families received priveleges so her grandmother had had 8 or 9 children. We talked about how that has now changed and people generally only have one or two children. However there are still some priveleges for "familias numerosas" (large families).

Vilanova i la Geltrú

Yesterday we went to Vilanova i la Geltrú to visit the train museum. Spanish people are not especially interested in trains so there were very few people there. We bought a special combined ticket for 9 euros at Sants station, but it was free for Thomas (both the train and the museum). The museum was great with quite a few old steam trains which reminded me of when I first came to Spain with my parents when I was a teenager.

There were old electric and diesel trains too, all a bit faded from being out in the sun all the time.

There were quite a few things for Thomas to do - first they gave him a free book "Victor - l'Ou que es mou" (Victor - the egg that moves). There was also a small model railway for him to watch but it only ran every half an hour for some reason. Outside there was a small play area for kids but there was no café so we had to go to the Rambla for lunch where we found a branch of El Fornet in an old Modernista building with a small garden behind complete with grotto and turtles.

In the afternoon we went for a walk along the beach which has lovely fine sand and Thomas collected some shells. Then we played Crazy golf which cost 5 euros per person which Thomas thoroughly enjoyed.

Teddy bear picture

 
Here is a picture of a teddy bear that Thomas coloured in a week or so ago. He's getting much better at colouring than he used to be.

My inlaws have gone back to China

They've gone, they've finally gone. After all the false alarms my inlaws have at last gone back home. They went by taxi to the airport on Wednesday and I went with Tingting, Bo's cousin by bus and train which is a lot cheaper, which is worth knowing. It only cost us one jouney on a T10 ticket whereas a taxi costs upwards of 20 euros and the airport bus must be quite expensive now too.

We bought water at Pans and Company and some chips for Thomas (not crisps) but we didn't buy mayonnaise as it was 20 cents extra.

Now we're having to organize things ourselves but yesterday went well. I took Thomas to school in the morning and Bo fetched him in the afternoon. Bo did some shopping on her way back from handing in documents to our tax consultant (asesor).

Today the man is coming to fit the safety grille on Thomas's window (300 euros or so) but I'm not sure what else Bo has planned.

Yesterday I dropped in to see a company called budgetplaces.com which is just round the corner and they asked me to send them my CV so we'll see if anything comes of that.

Pato de Pekin

Today we met some friends for lunch at the Pato Pekin restaurant in the Olympic Port. For ten people we paid about 200 euros including Peking duck and a wide variety of dishes. It really is good value for money and the food is great if you have a Chinese person with you to do the ordering. This was probably the last meal out we'll have with my inlaws before they go back to China. After lunch we took a stroll along beside the beach and Thomas climbed to the top of a climbing frame on the beach. We then caught the 64 bus home and Tingting took a Bicing bicycle which we must get round to joining. I wonder how much it costs per year.

Thomas's first picture

 
Thomas said this is a picture of himself in the park playing with the sand with the blue sky above.

Labyrinth Park

Yesterday afternoon I took Thomas to the labyrinth park in Horta. We had to take taxis there and back as we were pushed for time. Both the taxi drivers were friendly. The first one told us about where to ride horses in Barcelona and the second one told me about St. Christopher the patron saint of drivers. He had a rosary and a picture of St. Christopher in his cab so I showed him the copy of the New Testament I carry with me at the moment to protect me and he commented that it was full of wise words. It cost 12 euros each way for the cab.

The park is really beautiful and I met Anthony there who is a business English teacher with his son Henry and we had a nice chat. I gave him Bo's card and suggested we meet for a drink sometime.

In the park we spent 25 minutes in the maze which was enough to find all the exits. When we came out Thomas found a feather on the ground. We saw an American couple who had had a picnic there and she was cutting his hair.

I can thoroughly recommend that anyone visiting Barcelona visits this park as it's one of the nicest in Barcelona.

Ensalada Rusa

On Sunday we had tapas at the La Playa bar in Barceloneta by the beach as we watched the planes coming in to land at the airport and the boats sailing past. There were still a lot of people swimming and playing on the beach and there are a lot of tourists in Barcelona at this time of year when the weather is good.

Happy Birthday Google

Google is 13 today and my hasn't it come a long way. Now Google is into everything. Starting off as a humble search engine free to use it has grown into a massive highly - profitable business thanks to their advertising programmes. "Do no evil" I believe is their motto but I'm not so sure about that as if you're not careful you can spend a small fortune on their Adwords campaigns.

Chris

Television

My son watches too much television. He gets up in the morning and switches it on while he's having breakfast. I want to get rid of the TV like some of our friends. Now we've got the internet we don't need both.

Chris