Sauna thoughts

Last week Friday I was in Budapest. I had decided to spend the weekend in Barcelona, since Monday I had to go to Hamburg and I did not have time to go back home. I was tired. I checked the flight schedules and there was no direct flight to Barcelona, I had to go and change flights in either Vienna or Madrid. So I decided to take a flight to Amsterdam and try to relax during the weekend, while catching up with my work.
Destiny always goes against us, Catalans, and now that a group of Catalan businessmen and the Catalan government decided to buy an airline to bring business to Catalonia and the Barcelona hub, we ended up buying an airline with the name of Spanair. We are either "botiflers" or unlucky. Now, if we change the name for the much more attractive of BCNair, they will boycott it, if we keep it, it will be a permanent reminder of our submission and "cojonesless-ism". When the Cat Air group decided to name its new airline Clickair to avoid boycotts (following the long Catalan cojonesless tradition) , I already declared myself a Clicktalan.
Therefore, since from Budapest you can fly directly to Urumuqi, but not to Barcelona, plus I was very tired and I had to work over the weekend, I decided to go to this hotel on the beach, west of Amsterdam. It is a great hotel, quiet, with great facilities and a very attractive rate. I love sauna and this one has a great sauna and spa. I spent the weekend working on my laptop while looking from time to time to the North Sea, going to the sauna, cold and hot spa, working again and walking on the beach. It was rainy and a bit windy, but the temperature was acceptable, around 3 degrees Celsius.
I called home and I talked to my daughter. I told her that I was in that hotel on the Dutch coast and she asked me: the hotel where people go naked? I said yes. She knows that she needs to switch her cultural profile when he moves from continent to continent and that in puritan New England, she has to take a shower with swimming suit, but saunas in North Europe are mixed gender and swimming suits are not allowed.

When lying in the steam room, I could not help but thinking on the Catalan politics, since they were the reason why I ended up in that sauna, instead of having a good dinner with my university friends at the Tastavins. I was thinking about Convergencia i Unio, the party I feel closer ideologically, but totally useless due to the level of mediocrity and lack of integrity of many of its politicians, including those at the top. It is funny to see Duran i Lleida (now in the middle of a controversy about the alleged misappropriation of EU educational funds by members of his party closely related to him), criticizing Zapatero in his blog for going to bed with the Andalusian president, Manuel Chaves, and agreeing on the boundary conditions for the 2009 Catalan budget, while illustrating his comments with a picture of Zapatero hugging Chaves. A simple Google search demonstrates his level of hypocrisy.


















PS: Today I watched Pink Panther 2 with my kids and I had a good laugh. Even if it uses all the typical stereotypes to create comic situations, I felt it was on the acceptable side (clearly they had the advice of a good lawyer). I even found the bullfighter and flamenco scene acceptable (hard to believe, since John Cleese was in the cast), obviously, I assumed it had nothing to do with me. I only feel touchy, if they wear "barretina".

The big C

I am tired, really tired of hearing people qualify Catalan nationalism as Nazi. I do not have a big issue with people calling us misguided, provincial, old-fashioned, narrow minded, selfish and things like that. but Nazis, no way.
Three weeks ago I spent the Jewish weekend in Jerusalem, one of the rare times when, while traveling for business, I could do some sightseeing. I visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum. There I could witness the horrors of Nazism, I could see pictures and videos with piles of famine-stricken bodies (pure bone ans skin) bulldozed away by Nazi officers, people forced to remove their clothes and jewelry in front of a ditch and immediately shot in their heads in front of those waiting their turn and German doctors experimenting with a crying nude10 year old girl (I do not know exactly what they were doing, since I could not watch the video for more that 5 seconds).
Not long ago, I read the comment of an alleged Catalan woman, Anna Sevillé, equating the Catalan C levels requirement to the number that the concentration camp inmates had tattooed on their arms. I feel disgusted when those comments come from non Catalans, but when they come from Catalans, I feel deeply saddened.
Even if I do not agree with some of the rules established by the Catalan government and despite my critical views on the Catalan education system, I understand that the key objectives of the Catalan government are genuinely positive:

• Integrating everyone in Catalonia and not having a split society
• Preserving the Catalan culture and language

That is the diametral opposite of NaZism.

I despise all those who use the N word linked to Catalonia in any form. I think that all of you who link Catalonia and Nazism are "fills de puta".

The reality is that Catalan naCionalism, with a big C, C as in Catalonia, as in Caring, as in Civilized, as in Calm, as in Charming, as in Clean, as in Clear, as in Colorful, as in Conscious, as in Correct, as in Confident, is integrating and welcoming. If we had a solid border around us, we would be called patriotic, but the lack of borders turns us into a nuisance.

At the end, I think that the person who described better Catalan nationalism, was one of the ones who despised it the most, Sabino de Arana, the father of Basque nationalism.
While trying to belittle Catalan nationalism, this is the way he described it:
"En Cataluña todo elemento procedente del resto de España lo catalanizan, y les place a sus naturales que hasta los municipales aragoneses y castellanos de Barcelona hablen en catalán; aquí padecemos muy mucho cuando vemos la firma de un Pérez al pie de unos versos eusquéricos, u oímos hablar nuestra lengua a un cochero riojano, a un liencero pasiego o a un gitano".

[In Catalonia, they"catalanize" every person coming from the rest of Spain, and the locals love the fact that even those from Aragon or Castile in Barcelona speak Catalan. Here (in the Basque country) we suffer a lot when we see some Basque verses signed by someone call Pérez or we hear a carriage driver, a Catabrian fabric merchant or a gypsy speak our language (Basque)].

Notes:

1. I also read the book "The boy in the striped pyjamas" I liked it but I would have preferred a slight different end. I would have preferred that the kids swap.
2. Even though I admire the Jewish people and I think that catalans have a lot to learn from them, I do not agree with the way Palestinians are treated. I hope that Obama will settle the issue with a 2 state solution based, as much as possible, on the 1967 borders. It is also clear that not only Catalonia and Spain have stupid politicians, Israel and Palestine suffer from the same disease.
   
3. Yesterday I attended the Boston Catalans Xmas dinner for the first time. I had a real good time.

Obama, my president

I landed in Ohio two hours ago and I rushed to the hotel. I arrived in my room and tuned one of the networks. It was 10.50 and Obama was leading. At 11pm, 5 minutes ago, the networks have called for Obama winning the presidential race. I have tears in my eyes. This was my first presidential election as a US citizen. When this morning I was driving to my town high school to cast my vote, I could not stop thinking about the old "La trinca" song "For the first time" (Me la busco i valga'm Deu, no me la trobo).
I voted Obama, even though I am a Republican. I would have gladly voted for McCain, had George W Bush not existed and would have he not chosen Sarah Palin to appease the far right. I am financially conservative, I support small government, low taxes, policies which support growth and limit protectionism.
But I am socially quasi-liberal (very liberal in USA): I am pro-choice, I am pro-gay marriage (though I oppose gay adoptions for two reasons, if they choose same sex relationships they should live with the anatomic consequences of that, and I think that a child has the right to be raised by a standard family) and I am pro universal healthcare (privately managed and privately funded, except for low income people who should still have the same type of coverage, but subsidized by government).
Clearly McCain was a better fit for me, but I gladly voted for Obama and experimented a special pleasure when I introduced the ballot in the voting machine, much more pleasure than in the previous 20 over years voting for Convergencia i Unio.
I was voting for the first black president (mixed race for me), I was combating the Bradley effect, I was contributing to stopping the war in Iraq, I was sending a message to the world that we finally understood that having an IDIOT as president cannot be tolerated. I hope that the two other IDIOTS, Zapatero and Montilla, will follow soon Bush's trail.
I have tears in my eyes (I just listened to McCain conceding speech and Obama's victory speech. I am really happy for Obama, for USA and for the world. I love Michelle Obama, she is great, she is as talented as Barack or more. The Bradley effect has been defeated.

Unfortunately, the Roca-Junyent effect, a theory that proposes that some voters tend to tell pollsters that they are undecided or likely to vote for a Catalan candidate, and yet, on election day, vote for non-Catalan opponent, is still there.
I have seen a Black president in USA. I will never see a Catalan president in Spain.









La Trinca - Per primer cop (For the first time)
És avui quan ho faré,
per primer cop
perquè un dia és un dia
o ara o mai
que en tingui necessitats
és llei de vida i també el cos m'ho demana,
què carai!
quan arribo ja m'ho han dit,
hi ha gent fent cua,
acotat demano tanda
per entrar a la cua
n'hi veig molts que dissimulen
però hi ha alguns que ja la tenen a la mà
després d'esperar-megairebé mitja hora
em diuen que passi
a un apartament
i allà es troba ella
tota seductora
que sembla esperar-me temptadorament
me la busco...i valga'm déu!
no me la trobu...
ja la tinc! ja me le tret
quina emoció...
serà cosa de posar-la a l'orifici
i em preparo a efectuar la introducció
tota a dins li faig entrar!
no toco vores i així l'acte finalment
ja he consumat
dins de l'urna ja he ficat...la papereta
ja he votat per primer cop... ja he votat!!!
nananana..

Noiseless vibration

I am tired. Since I took up new responsibilities, my traveling has gone from 60% to about 90%. I love traveling, even for business, but being gone almost all the time is hard for the kids and for my wife. Sometimes I try to compensate my absence by buying to my kids all kind of useless stuff and later I regret it, they are somewhat spoiled. I had such a strict upbringing, no presents outside the standard festivities (birthday, day of my Saint and Epiphany).
Last week I landed at Schiphol in the evening. My flight home was in the morning and, even though my hotel was at the airport, I decided to go to downtown Amsterdam. I dropped my things at the hotel, I took a train and I went to Amsterdam Station. I was hungry and I was looking for a restaurant where I could eat "mosselen witte wijn met fritjes" (mussels cooked with white wine with fries) or Japanese food.
After wandering for 20 minutes, I ended up in a Japanese restaurant someone had mentioned to me. It is a sophisticated "all you can eat" restaurant, but quality is pretty good. You can order 5 rounds of anything you want (during happy hour there is no limit on how many dishes you can order every round). I ordered maguro, hamachi and sake sashimi, all kind of rolls and makis, miso soup, edamame, shrimp tempura, and several other dishes accompanied by a bottle of cold sake. My third round was just dessert, lychees. Service was a bit slow, but food was fresh and I would have paid double anywhere else. The name of the restaurant is Genroku.

I finished at about 10 pm and I decided to go for a stroll to the red district. I always find it a very interesting tourist attraction, though, amazingly, there's guys who actually go inside the rooms. How can anyone have sex behind a shopwindow?
I decided, however, to enter a sexshop and buy a present to my wife. Most probably I was feeling guilty about my prolonged absences and my lack of stamina. I had never ever bought a vibrator in my life. The shop attendant was extremely helpful and gave me all kind of explanations, a real lecture on comforting devices. I did not know, for instance, that women's main complaint is the noise they produce. Good to know. Finally a bought a neutrally shaped pink and silent device for €35.00.

However, the raw reality is that, at the end, a good pair of glasses is more important than a dildo if you want to have a satisfying sex life.



I forgot this was a political blog. OK, I am a republican, but I will vote Obama.

Barcelona: the movies

In the last couple of weeks, there has been a lot of talk about Woody Allen's new movie 'Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona'. Last Saturday I decided to go to the movies with my wife and watch it. I felt a little bit nervous, because I was not totally sure how my city and my country Catalonia would be portrayed. I was hoping that Woody Allen would, at least, reflect a little bit the Catalan culture and language.

The movie was OK, no masterpiece, but, in a way, entertaining. However the way Barcelona was portrayed was a total disappointment. Barcelona was only used as a postcard, as a beautiful setting and that was all. At the beginning of the film, there were a few references to Catalonia as a result of the one million Euro subsidy by the Barcelona mayor (by the way, and excellent investment, since I am sure that American tourists will pour into the city), but the plot was more suited for Madrid, Seville, Oviedo or Albacete. The non American protagonists, Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz had nothing that I would qualify as Catalan, not even the name, Bardem's character, the Catalan painter, was called Juan Antonio Gonzalo and was born in Oviedo. In addition to that, I found Penelope Cruz's character vulgar and uninspiring (and she even had a line with a very racist comment against Chinese that embarrassed me and my wife, not her fault but the Director's, but really unacceptable)
I think that "Vicky, Cristina, Oviedo" would have been a much better choice for title. It is funny that in the Catalan version of the movie the Americans speak Catalan and the "alleged" Catalans speak Spanish to each other (though the trailer tries to hide this fact). Not even the signage was in Catalan.
The only good news for Catalan Don Juans is that if the approach a pair of American girls having dinner in a Barcelona restaurant and they propose to them a one night stand, there is a 50/50 chance that they will not be rejected flat out, and the probability improves if they sport a 3-day beard.

The best thing of the night, however, was dinner. We went to Legal Seafood in Peabody (MA). We had Cape Cod oysters, pan seared tuna (almost raw) with soya sauce and wasabe, crab cakes and Sam Adams summer ale. After two minutes, my irritation was gone.

On the flip side, a few weeks ago, while trying to Netflix Woody Allen's movie to put it in my cue, I discovered a 1994 movie called Barcelona. Though that movie was no masterpiece either and actually had some remote similarities with Woody Allen's one, I found that it reflected Barcelona's character much better and avoided the stereotypes in many occasions. The main female characters are called Montserrat Raventos and Marta Ferrer, they have fair hair and there is clear evidence that the movie Director Whit Stillman understood the differences between the Catalan and the Spanish culture and was sensitive enough to have Catalan actors playing the secondary roles (Pep Munné and Núria Badia).
Despite all this, he succumbed to the pressures of the producer and had to add a flamenco scene (you know, the usual flamenco dance that Catalan girls rehearse after the daily nap*).



* Note for the "guiris": I am kidding

PIGS or CANDIES

In the last couple of posts, I have managed to draw criticism (to say it mildly) from all parts of the spectrum: Catalan nationalists, Spanish nationalists, the Anglo world, generally amused by the irrelevant fights between Catalans and Spaniards, taking sides as though this were a soccer match being watched sitting in the couch, drinking beer and eating popcorn, but jumping as grasshoppers when someone dares to criticize them a little bit.
So far, the only ones who did not call me names have been the Swedish, let’s see for how long.

I do not know whether you read an article in the Financial Times called PIGS in the muck. The pejorative acronym PIGS used by the Financial Times refers to the countries Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain. The article has some merit, but, once again shows the total lack of respect of the Anglo world for those countries and territories below the virtual Pyrenees (with the exception of Gibraltar).
Despite the cheap shots, I agree with the substance of the article, the fact that the economies of those 4 countries have grown out of speculation: “wages rose, debt levels ballooned, as did house prices and consumption”. The foundations of those economies are weak and a recession would hit those countries much harder, especially Spain, as the FT points out. Let’s not forget that unemployment in Spain will very soon reach the 11% mark.

When attacked, I normally side with Spain, but I would like to do it out of juxtaposition and friendship, not out of inclusion and submission. The truth is that I do not want my country, Catalonia, to be part of the PIGS. I want Catalonia to be one of the CANDIES (Catalonia, Austria, Netherlands, Denmark, Ireland, Euskadi and Sweden), small countries with strong economic fundamentals, with diversified economies, with real added value activities, with outstanding education systems and international focus.
Catalonia has all the ingredients to be one of the CANDIES, but the fact that Catalonia is part of Spain and has limited control of its policies and resources makes it impossible (together with the fact that the Catalan politicians are totally inept).

In one of my next posts, however, I plan to theorize about those grandiose countries which, for a variety of reasons, believe that they are the center of the universe, France, UK, China, Korea and USA, also known as, FUCK-U (as first described in the LT, the Llorens Times).

Anglo hypocrisy

Me: PingPing, come here, I want to show you a picture and tell me what you feel!
PP: I feel nothing. What’s the problem?
Me: Look well, this is the Spanish basketball team. The British and the American press say that the picture is racist.
PP: Racist? Is it because they are stepping on the dragon? I do not think they did it on purpose.
Me: No, it is not because of the dragon. Look at their eyes. They pretend they have slit eyes like Chinese
PP: They look cute.
Me: So, you do not find it offensive.
PP: No, it’s funny. Maybe, they should have stepped back a little bit in order not to step on the dragon.

This is the conversation I had yesterday with my wife, a mainland Chinese. I wanted to acid test whether Chinese felt offended with the picture or not. Clearly she did not feel offended at all. Her only remark was related to the Dragon, something that was not even noticed by the British and American press.

It is clear that Spaniards in general, and I have to include Catalans in the bucket too, lack cultural awareness. Someone in the advertising company should have realized that, in some countries, the picture would not be appreciated and it would be misinterpreted, but unfortunately, most Spaniards have a very simplistic and monocultural view of the world. But the level of racism in Spain is lower than in the anglo world. There is a lot of interest in Spain for China, its people and its culture. After USA, Spain the country with more adoptions in China. In Catalonia, I know many families with Chinese kids, the families adore them, they are great.

It is unfair for the British press to attack Spain for this ad. If the reaction had come from the Chinese, we should have apologized, but coming from the British, what the heck, aren't British notorious for their racism? Wherever they went, they either eliminated the local population (America) or segregated it (India, Africa). If by “accident” a mixed child was born, the child would no longer be Anglo, he/she will be the other race, even today, Obama is black, even if he is 50% Anglo-white.

Obviously, the objective of the Anglo press is to hurt Madrid candidacy for the Olympic games. If you want to know, I support Madrid’s candidacy full heartedly. I just hope that Catalonia will participate as an independent state.

The slit-eyed gesture is innocuous. How many times in China I have been called "gao bizi" (high nose – big nose), how many times people have hinted to me that the size of my nose most probably mimics the size of other appendices south of my belly button. I always smiled and I never sent a complaint to a British tabloid.