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.