Posts Tagged ‘living’

You make do with what you have Originally uploaded by itsjustanalias.

My usual choice of haircutting establishment is a barbers, I used Katie’s Kutz in Stainland for a while until I tried the barber’s in Greetland. They were both okay but in my hair cutting history there have been two standouts, Vic’s in Liverpool, where I had my first decent flat top. He was an old feller who was the first to use a cutthroat razor on my neck (previously, as a callow yoot, my hair had been trimmed by family friends or the Formby unisex salon). Vic (the bic, although he never used a bic) was a rockabilly haven and it set the standard for the next fifteen years of hairstyle (I’d say hairstyles but lets be honest, I only had one). The second was the Jan’s Polish barbers in Leeds, Michael began cutting my hair there in 1988 and gave me my last cut some time around 1999. Consistency is desirable.

I’ve had some less than great experiences: Vic’s assistant once gave me an un-nameable horror when he was ill, Ged’s in Headingley where Ged used to rest his massive gut on your shoulders (although you did get sherry and cigars at christmas).

I was getting a bit scraggly so I’ve been keeping an eye out for a barbers as I’ve been wandering. A couple looked promising but were closed each time I passed by. Today I went to Los Prados (The local mall, multiplex and stuff… they have free wifi too) to do a little shopping, and I passed a hairdressers, not a barbers, but the sign in the window said Cut/Wash/Dry €9.99 and I had time so…

It was huge, well it looked huge but in fact every wall was floor to ceiling mirrors. The staff probably have bruises from the times they get confused and smack into the walls. So I had a cut, a wash (I think that was actually the first time in 20 years I had my hair washed by someone) and… fine, the cut’s fine, she used gel so my hair’s all stiff now, but it really felt a little unsatisfying, she was quite tentative with the clippers, like she hadn’t used them much and she was all but silent.

When we were in BA I ended up going to a barber just around the corner from one of the schools I taught in, we had a dialogue, he remembered me, he remembered what we chatted about (mostly I seem to remember him saying ‘aren’t Argentine girls wonderful’. This is an essential part of the deal. This is what I want in a barbers, faded posters and cardboard comb holders and old hands that use clippers like they were born with them. And mostly that means a male environment, someone who can turn out fifty OAP specials a day, someone who doesn’t care if the mound of hair under the chair is deep enough to lose children in. A place where, if there’s music, it’s the local radio station on a mono cassette recorder with a broken eject mechanism.

I’ll keep looking.

Working under a clear blue sky Originally uploaded by itsjustanalias.

I’ve been a little lazy the last day or so, and when the History of Western Philosophy becomes a bit tiresome, as it did in the tenth century, I’ve turned on the telly a few times. Now this is based solely on my limited viewing so it may not always be true but blimey, the adverts! The paper says a film will start at 10:15pm so I turn the telly on at 10:14 and at 10:22 I’m still watching adverts: most of which seem to be for creams or sprays to either remove wrinkles or magic away cellulite. The film finally gets going and then after 40 minutes or so we get a 15 minute chunk of more adverts. Well, at least it’s better than the US, but 15 minutes is akin to being bludgeoned by Madrid’s equivalent of Madison Avenue. Then as the film is just about at its conclusion, I mean the last 10 minutes is about to kick off, or has kicked off when bang! Another 15 minutes… by the time we’re back to the film I’ve forgotten the critical plot points and the last six minutes are something of an anticlimax.

Mind you, I find the ITV stuff in the UK annoying too, only this is more so. I wonder if the cable channels are any better (but not enough to actually get cable to find out).

The film by the way was the Missing, or the Forgotten, something like that with Julieanne Moore… it was a silly plot, and dubbed which meant that not only was it daft, it was daft and hard to follow.

Checking the diary Originally uploaded by itsjustanalias.

Liz arrived yesterday, which I’m pretty pleased about. We took a stroll after dinner, at around 11, the street was still fairly full of yoot being drunkenly youthful but they seem confined to just a few hangouts, I blame Burger King (for there is one on our road, and the yoot do seem to like it, they also like the Asturkebap shop just up the way too; kebabs and beer, who knew?).

We walked past a bar called Danny’s Jazz cafe, so we went in. Nice! Lots of thirties and forties amerikana on the walls, and, I noticed, a poster for the Sun Ra Arkestra, so it wasn’t all Cab Calloway. The sound system was playing a nice mix of forties jazz standards and a bit of bop, the three barstaff were chopping lemons, chatting idly and basically waiting for the evening proper to start. It filled up around midnight, I say filled up, but even a full bar here seems pretty quiet, the notion of four deep at the bar and threading your way carrying two pints through a tight packed crowd seems very foreign. All the bars have a notice of the capacity on the windows, Danny’s is 65, there’s a little corner bar by the market that has a capacity of 13. So the clientele came around midnight, I reckon the bar’s open until 5.

Liz and I have to go into training so stay out so late… Although we’ll probably go back to Danny’s as the bar staff, when asked for a whisky, served a quadruple plus without blinking, so one of those and then you’re on water for the rest of the night.

This was my reading material this morning, I was suckered by the El Mundo offer of a free book, Spanish history from Trafalgar to the court of Charles IV. It’s free and it’s good practice, all in the past tense so very useful. I was happy to find El Mundo quite an easy read too, although it was full of Spanish Cabinet politics. Zapatero has just been sworn in for his second term and the government posts have been announced, so there were pages of profiles of politicians I’ve never heard of. The papers seem obsessed by the Minister for Equality, who at 31, is the youngest member of the government in Spanish history (I can’t remember how old Pitt the younger was when he was PM but it was under 30 I’m sure). I like seeing the different focus in international papers, the only british story is the end of feudalism in Sark and there was a feature on Juande Ramos (apparently some football training bloke for Spurs) living in Chigwell. I think next week I’ll try a different paper, there’s a million of em.

Glassy square Originally uploaded by itsjustanalias.

it’s not the chief medical officer on the Enterprise, oh no, but a mere week after arriving I’ve taken my first classes here. The majority of institutes I wandered into were like kindergartens, crayoned pictures on the walls and bright colours, tiny chairs… I was beginning to be a little concerned (for purely practical reasons… I have no experience teaching the tots). But one of the schools seemed to be more focussed on adults and they were very keen to get me to work for them (maybe because they pay less than the others but there’s a complicated formula to work out when you consider taking an offer which is based on how much lesson planning you have to do… also no one else had asked). They said they do stuff in companies, and for that you get double (for the travelling time), they do some classes for business high-ups and they’re usually at 8am for which they pay double (either getting up pay or going to bed early pay). Both of those scenarios are fine with me, I was doing both in BA without any extra money, and when I think of those three hours a day on the bus…

So I’ve got two students already and a very short probationary period (I think it’s over: they like me). When I say yes I’ll be getting a contract then I have the joy of obtaining a Spanish social security number. I have a feeling that might make its way into a blog entry…

Why do banks have all the lights Originally uploaded by itsjustanalias.

So: you’re in a new place and you speak enough of the language to get around but not enough to actually, you know, engage in any sort of banter that would be beyond the average 5 year old. Back home you have this enormous store of knowledge, from personal experience, from TV, from friends, from everywhere. You know certain things without even knowing you know. Even if you last got a bus in 1978 you know that you pay the driver, you can say how much the fare is or where you’re going (except Londoners, you and your fancy conductors are special). Before you try something as simple as using the bus I wonder, do you ever think, what if it’s different? What if they use tokens? What if there’s a machine and you have to use the correct change? What if the driver doesn’t understand? WHAT IF PEOPLE STARE?

Or for instance, what if you go to the swimming baths and you have to have flip-flops or something similar? What if you have to wear a swimming cap? What if you inadvertantly start swimming in the wrong direction? What if you have to wear a pair of speedos four sizes too small (I’m thinking of you here France)? WHAT IF PEOPLE STARE?

And then, after the agonising five minutes of what if, you go ahead and use the bus, and go for a swim and find out that anywhere in the city is 85 centavos, and that you only need a cap, that the nice lifeguard will lend you, and you have an olympic sized lane to yourself, and that nobody bats an eye. Then you might feel a little foolish and people can tell that and they’ll know you’re different and THEY’LL STARE…

Or not. Because, well, it’s just not a big deal.

Nightwatch Originally uploaded by itsjustanalias.

(you may spot that the photos have nothing to do with the posts at the moment… well done, that´s deliberate, a deliberate result of laziness)

Pilar said, as she was showing me the cupboards in the kitchen, the last person in here left the pans in such a state she had to throw most of them out. This was as she showed me the two pans in the place. Both small. Although she did show me the sandwich toaster, one of those early models, pre electrical, basically two metal plates and a clasp that you can put on the hob and burn stuff with. It doesn’t matter, she said, if you need anything you can get it from the Chinese across the street.

And lo, there is a Chinese bazaar across the street. It looks like a clothes shop, in the front there’s just cheap clothes, the kind you find on market stalls Europe-wide. But if you head back a little, the shop narrows and you walk past electrical goods so shoddy they’re sub market quality (I bought a number 1 radio, it doesn’t even say where it’s made, and of the four bands only two work: not that I expected much more).

After the electrical narrows, it opens out into six big aisles of the worst that China can offer. I bought a coffee maker which it turns out, can’t make coffee (it’s one of those stove top espresso machines, but it boils the water in the bottom and doesn’t filter through to the top, I guess I got what I paid for). There’s a row of gnomes, segueing into ceramic alsations that have ‘welcome home’ signs hanging from their tacky necks. There’s stuff that you would be insulted to be given as third prize in a free raffle.

I bought some pans, a blunt knife, the uncoffee maker, the number one two of four band radio and some batteries. We’ll see how long they last.

Not just old buildings Originally uploaded by itsjustanalias.

The bells stopped after their midnight fun, and didn´t get going again until 8. I thought I’d found some wifi in a cafe that was pretty close, until I tried to use it that is. The waitress told me the password, and I checked I was spelling it right, but for some reason, even though the signal meter was saying 98% for the wifi signal I couldn’t get onto thweb. I’ll just have to go and have a wander until I get to a cafe where I can log on. There are a number of wifi signals in the flat but I reckon I’ll have to ask the neighbours. I tried the TV again. I noticed another arial socket but there was no real difference to the lack of picture, a bit more static, a bit more noise but nothing you could actually watch. I’m not sure I’ll bother about it though. It’s not like there’s a ton of stuff I feel I can’t miss.

I wandered for most of the afternoon, although I did have a plan. Thanks to the EBC, the people we did TEFL with in BA, I had a list of the English schools in Oviedo. Then it was just a case of finding them, so this morning was spent with a map and a pen, and this afternoon was about walking. I got to a dozen schools, there are a few more for tomorrow. The bad news so far, which I was pretty much expecting, was that the courses are coming to an end, rather than starting. Largely because the schools tend to cater for kids, and the kids’ courses tend to follow the school year. The good news, I left my CV with everyone, and one of the chaps, at Oxford school said he’d be able go get me work in July/August at summer schools, and next year. So we’ll see. I did get to orient myself with most of the city (the centre at least), even if it was pretty warm by the end of the afternoon.

At the moment I’m sitting in another cafe testing out the wifi, unfortunately I seem to be unable to connect anywhere it needs a password… which is a pain.

A couple have just sat down opposite, they, and more than one other table have got a set of four shot glasses and are bouncing coins off the table into the glasses. It´s just a tad annoying. They fill a couple of the glasses with coke and if they get the coin in the coke the other person drinks it (unless they do it on the second bounce, when they have to drink it). Fortunately I´ve just about finished my caña and I´m out of here.

The new view Originally uploaded by itsjustanalias.

I had an hour with Pilar going over the contract. It was fairly straightforward, the sort of stuff you’d find in any rental contract, but I guess it pays to take your time with that sort of stuff. After that we went through the inventory. Pilar had said soy meticulosa… and she wasn’t kidding, we spent a few minutes in each room where I learned that, among other things, that mueble mural is fitted cupboards, cabecero is a headboard, un somier is a bed base, on which the colchón rests. I learned that visillos are net curtains and un especiero-portarrollos is a kitchen paper dispenser.

But it´s worth it for the apartment. I can hear the clock striking nine now, Pilar said it would stop at night, but it´s still light and I guess, seeing as we´re in Spain, nine is still really early.

After Pilar left, I went for a walk. On my street, on my block, there´s a supermarket, five bars, a bathroom fittings shop, a tea specialist, a fruteria, a cheese shop and a half dozen office blocks. In my building I think there´s the institute for foot health. Up the hill, on the next block, there is a Lidl, a tatoo parlour, a few clothes shops, pharmacies and a few more bars, one of which has a guinness sign. I bought some spicy very smoked chorizo and some cheese called Taramundi, after basically saying to the cheese shop lady, I´m not from round these parts.

I have a list of things to buy but it´s not as long as I thought it might be, some pans, some razors, a bit of soap, food. The apartment has towels, bedding, a telly that doesn´t get a single station. So for tomorrow I´ve got the todo list. It looks like this:

Buy phone SIM card Get work

I like to keep things simple.