Category: notes

… go and see War of the Worlds at the cinema. It’s crap. Good first half hour, then crap – Independence Day was much better. You have been warned!

And here it is in American – Happy Independence Day!

And look at the temp. now, 31/89 degrees, at 11 p.m. – ouch!

It’s 3 a.m. and in 5.5 hours I have to provide an English class. To a nice guy, a super-boss. Hmmmm…

So the government has approved gay marriages and adoption by gay couples. Good! (Although I have to admit that I find the marriage thing much more clear than the adoption part – meaning that there may be more ‘issues’ involved there from the children’s point of view. It will take a while for the two mums or two dads concept to be accepted amongst the other kids…)

Time to sleep, I’m knackered….

Wow what a week…. 40,000 words of translation in the last 9 days…. in all this heat – result? Podcast no. 8 is running a couple of days late, but stay (i)tuned, it’s coming soon!

Well, it may be too hot too often here, but it could be worse. I could have spent 100 pounds on a brand new tent and who knows how much on a ticket for Glastonbury festival in South West England – and ended up under water. The world is going crazy. No flash floods here though. A pretty decent thunderstorm last night, and a load of rain, but nothing more than ‘4 gotas’, four drops, as the locals say.

Meanwhile the papers say that Andalusia, Murcia and Valencia may turn into deserts in the new future if drastic action isn’t taken…. Could it happen? Parts of Valencia and Andalusia are unbelievably green – but then Almeria is already part desert, and large parts of Murcia look like the face of the moon… I blame the golf courses…

Oh yes, not even July yet and the temperatures are rising nicely… a bit more global warming and this city will become uninhabitable.

…never fails to suprise me. Yesterday we were invited to dinner with some Spanish friends.We arrived at 10.30 p.m., pretty late for a Friday night meal I thought, even by Spanish standards… but we were the first to arrive! The last were the couple with the 5-month-old twins. We sat down to eat an enormous plate of pasta at about 11.30 p.m., and got home at 4.30 a.m. Thank God for that early evening siesta, the only break in a typical 21 hour Friday.

Meanwhile, two more websites. Blogspain.com is my attempt to create a blogosphere in Spain – people living here or just passing through and blogging all the way. And Podspain.com – a collaborative venture with Rafe Jaffrey, bringing you podcast interviews and travel from Spain. Check out the last interview, with Clark Boyd from the BBC.

A warning to anyone considering translation as a career. There will be sunny Saturday mornings when you are stuck inside translating sentences like this:

“Es un método en el que el avance de la excavación se ajusta con gran versatilidad a las condiciones del terreno y en el que se utiliza entibación cuajada con tablones de madera como sostenimiento provisional, dejando en las sucesivas fases de la excavación de la sección de avance una porción muy limitada de la misma, cuya amplitud se ajusta a las condiciones existentes, sin entibación hasta que se coloca ésta.”

Aaahhh! Help!!!

It’s another Notes from Spain podcast! First part of a series on living in Spain.

Where to Live and work in Spain – show notes:

• San Sebastian and the North Coast
• Madrid – a word of warning!
• Valencia – Las Fallas!
• Barcelona
• Costa Blanca, Costa del Sol, Malaga
• Cadiz and the Costa de la Luz
• Seville
• Cordoba
• Granada and the Alpujarras – the best of Spain?
• Where not to live in Spain…

Click here to listen (30 mins, 13 mb).