I dig scooter chicks.

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The concentrated urban area of this city is about 2 million people within about 100Km (around 5 million overall). It seems half of those who are on wheels (the ones not using public transportation) are on scooters: Vespas, Piaggios, Ducatis, and the like. Easily half of those are female, a phenomenon which I find fascinating. Besides the total turn-on appeal, logically it makes sense. Fuel is something like the equivalent of 7 (US) dollars a gallon and parking a car can cost thousands of Euros a year. Hell, you can park a scooter on the sidewalk just about anywhere.

Women in the U.S. would likely never ride a motorcycle on a daily basis. When you do see one, they usually over-compensate for the ‘missing two wheels’ by adopting a leather-ey, shop calendar ‘motorcycle mama’ appearance. I’ve had motorcycles in the states and always noticed who was riding what. It was always guys. Rarely, they might have a girl on the back, but I only saw this scenario a handful of times in all the years I rode. What about motorcycle mama? Would she have a guy on the back? Not a guy with any self-respect should he be seen by any other of the species. She might have another woman on the back but then everyone automatically thinks they’re lesbians, even though they might not be (it could happen).

The ladies here in Scooterville are feminine, no doubt about it. They slam a helmet on their head and roll back the throttle, bounce off the curb and out into traffic- whipping between cars un-selfconsciously in their dresses and high-heels to get where they’re going- purse slung over their backs. What they ride has little to do with who they are. There’s no fashion competition to match colors or accessorize- the little motorbikes may have a fender missing, scraped up, be some horrible color, or blow oily smoke out the back. When these women arrive, they pull off their helmet and start walking- never checking the mirror. They carry guys on the back of their scooters all the time and it doesn’t look strange or unusual. And to be clear, there is no age limitation- scooters are not gender or age specific and non-discriminatory about income level.

It takes serious moxy to ride on two wheels in this town no matter who you are. The way people use cars as weapons, it’s a wonder I’ve never seen the scene of an accident (a serious one at least) in the city. This danger aspect lends even more appeal to the scooter chicks and I always give them the right of way, if for nothing else, so I can get a better look.

How do I say ‘gracias’ in Chinese?

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Here in Spainistan, just shopping for simple things like, say, tools or cookware can be a challenge. If I have a list of 12 things I need, the chances are very good that I’ll have to visit 14 or 15 shops to find anything close to what I’m looking for. There won’t be a selection, and if they have it at all there will be at least three shelves of the same item, all the same brand or same size.

tortugaThe other day, Mrs. Deluxe tried to start up La Tortuga* for the afternoon ‘Demolition Derby’ home. The battery had died, so my busy day got a lot busier trying to get a new one and replace it. Not a big deal normally, but we’re in an urban jungle where minor inconveniences like this automatically become a major clusterfuck. First, I have no tools. Back home in the U.S., I have enough high-quality tools to build anything from a car to a house- but they’re useless here as that part of my life ceased to exist the minute I got married and moved to a third-world country.

But I digress..

There are certain stores guaranteed to be on almost any street anywhere in town. For example, within any given block you will always find a Pharmacy, a Bakery, a fresh fruit and vegetable stand, and a Chinese junk shop variety store.

For comparison, I went to a Ferreteria to price ratchet and socket sets. Twenty Euros for the handle alone, nice German quality but no thanks. I’ll need it once on a piece of shit Korean car battery and never get to use it again. Down the street, the Chinese Bazaar (no small irony in that name) had a small set including sockets for about 5 Euros- I’ll take it, and gracias.

I don’t know why I bothered to look elsewhere. It’s there at the Chinese store (los Chinos my in-laws call them) where I always find whatever I need in some form or fashion- cheaply made and cheaply priced, wrapped in some hard plastic clamshell package with surreal labeling. The Chinese people who run them all probably get their shit in the same container shipments from the motherland- it’s frequently the same items with the same dust on them. The shops are always completely jammed with stuff so that you have to spend some serious time if you’re looking for anything in particular.

It’s among the random, mass-produced cheap shit that I find refuge in this town. I love going into one of these stores whenever I can. The best part is, they’re the nicest people in the entire country. By stark contrast to the typical Spanish shop owner, the Chinese shop owner will ask me if I need help finding anything.. help me carry it to the front counter if necessary, and smile when I complete the purchase. They don’t roll their eyes when I use my Spanish but try very hard to understand and be helpful (I haven’t met one yet that speaks English, but they speak Spanish and Catalan conversationally).

Sometimes I go into one of these places just to peace out. It’s so stress-free in there with all the junk stacked high to the ceiling and barely enough room for one person to walk down the aisle. It’s quiet, a little dark, and soft music plays in the background somewhere. My in-laws think my fascination with los Chinos is hilarious and give me grief about it- but they have no idea what I’m talking about anyway, so who cares.

Hey, I never said these blog posts were always going to make sense.

*La Tortuga (the turtle)… more about this awesome baby later.

There Will Be Blood

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The other night I cooked dinner. I like to cook, sometimes. I usually don’t screw things up too bad, even make a delicious meal once in awhile. However, about half the time I get distracted and end up almost cutting off one of my fingers with the big knife while chopping onions or potatoes in the process. This wouldn’t be so bad since it usually doesn’t really hurt (it’s always more of a surprise than anything else)- but, without fail, as soon as it happens I know what I’m in for and it pisses me off. Blood starts flowing and *will not stop* no matter what I do or how long I put pressure on it. If someone saw it, they would probably say I need stitches- but I’ve never had stitches before and I don’t plan on doing so now, unless there’s some kind of semi-amputation. So I put a Band-Aid® on it and try to keep going best I can.

Cooking here also takes a little mathematics and science- neither subject is my forte. I have to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius, pounds to kilos, cups to milliliters, etc. for all the recipes I know. The oven has hieroglyphs instead of clearly marked controls, so I have to research what they all mean to make sure I have it set on ‘bake’ instead of ‘clean oven’.

The dinner party Friday night was for the daughter of a good friend and her roommate who are here attending a local university for a semester, and I managed to present myself as the usual klutz I always do in front of 20-somethings- with my bandaged finger and the occasional misfired name dropped (“Who’s Keith Richards?”, etc.), and ‘I haven’t seen you since you were three or four years old’ and worse, probably. But we had a good time, and I enjoyed myself. We’ll hopefully do it again soon- and next time maybe I’ll leave the cooking to Mrs. Deluxe.

Ten Quick Things About Living in Spain

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When I posted #1 on my FB page the other day, it occurred to me that there are some habits-slash-quirks about the locals which either amaze me or amuse me, depending on the circumstances:

1. Spanish people don’t wear ball caps. If they wake up with bed-head or dry off on their scooters on the way to work, that’s just how they’re going to look all day.

2. There aren’t a lot of fat people in Spain. I think this is either because they eat a lot of fish, or they don’t like fish and therefore don’t eat.

3. Spanish people don’t stand in line, anywhere. Especially at fast food joints. They look for a hole at the counter, push into it, and glare around to see if anyone is going to challenge them.

4. The siesta thing is very real and annoyed me at first. On first impression, it seemed obvious why the economy is in the tank- shops everywhere close down mid-day, reopening around 5pm or so. Now I can’t imagine life without an afternoon nap. I think it’s still a good reason the economy is in the tank though.

5. Lunch is served in courses and can last up to three hours. What the fuck is up with that? Haven’t you people ever heard the phrase ‘lunch is for wimps- now get back to work!’.

6. Customer Service doesn’t exist here in its true form. It only exists to give you the impression that someone gives a shit.. don’t even think about speaking with a civil person.

7. I’ve seen pedestrians get struck by cars three times so far, only once did one actually yell at the offending driver. The others simply kept moving toward the other side of the street.. No shit.

8. Spanish people think meat should be served raw and vegetables overcooked into a soup. For some reason, there is a nasty habit of cooking an egg over-easy and putting it on top of just about anything before serving. This is apparently some sort of ‘finishing touch’.

9. Nearly everyone has a sense of self-entitlement that is hard-wired at birth. To them, life is not about making a success of yourself, in business or otherwise- it’s about what the government owes them every day to scrape by.

10. On a national level, Spain considers itself somehow separate from the rest of Europe and the world. They do not engage much in cross-border humanitarian efforts, much less NATO invasions. The excuse is, I think, that after a truly nasty civil war and forty rough years of a fascist dictatorship no one wants to get their hands bloody anymore. I can understand that, but the problem is that the world is getting smaller and this isolationist attitude will simply not work- at all- in the near future.

More casual observations later.

I’m failing Pre-K and I don’t really care

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As a fairly new (albeit geezer) parent, I’m still getting used to my role and responsibilities at ‘school’ on behalf of my three year-old. It’s a nice school. I like it and Mrs. Deluxe likes it. Even the Jr. Art Director likes it most of the time except for PE days.

I can’t, however, seem to keep up with all the shit that I’m supposed to do in the way of ‘homework’– such as what color shirt is required on any particular day so he can be programmed to be a joiner, and a certain folder which parents are given on Mondays and is to be returned to school on Tuesday. I always forget to bring it back, or forget to check his backpack for contraband toys which aren’t allowed in class. My lackadaisical behavior even at this level gets me a scolding from the ‘teacher’, who must be half my age.

I don’t have time for their Pre-Kindergarten agenda. When he starts with math problems, reading, and study skills wake me up- but for now just deal with it because that’s what we pay your outrageous fees for.

Remembering the Mighty Blizzard of Twenty-Ten

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When I first moved here, my in-laws drove us up into the hills east of town to a restaurant. I noticed some signs posting warnings of ice on the road even though it wasn’t winter at the time yet. So I asked my father-in-law if it snowed here a lot and got the predictable ‘no it doesn’t snow here you ignorant Guiri.. this is Spain’, or something very near it as he only speaks Catalan and we were communicating via a neutral family translator.

Last year sometime in early March, we found ourselves on the receiving end of a climate anomaly- it did snow. In fact, it was a big god-damned blizzard by anyone’s standards. This in a city where I saw people come out of their apartments and offices to look at the sky in stunned amazement at a freak hail storm that lasted about five minutes once.

On March 10, 2010, my father-in-law didn’t come out of his house. No one did who was inside when it started. And anyone outside went home immediately, including the so-called police. If you happened to be driving in afternoon rush hour, as I was, you were basically fucked. It snowed so hard and so fast that three inches were on the side and rear windows before you could pull over and clean them to see out. Traffic was either stopped or trying to stop, as no one had a clue how to drive in snow, much less how to stop in it. The SUVs were the worst- idiots to begin with, their drivers actually *went faster* thinking they had some kind of advantage when it was the exact opposite. At one point, a Land Rover whipped around me to cut me off (even though it was one lane at a walking pace and there wasn’t really a car-length to squeeze into) before a stop sign, and I applied the brakes to no avail ultimately smacking into his trailer hitch. No, of course we didn’t get out of our cars- this was in the middle of a holocaust and that would have only made it worse.

My car has all-wheel drive and the six hours it took to complete a 45 minute round-trip home, including ascending an unplowed mountain road in three feet of snow with no guard-rails, was unremarkable compared to the other poor bastards who simply freaked out and left their cars in the middle of whatever street they were on and walked home (because the bus drivers had done the same thing hours before). The subways stopped wherever they were, too- some for the night leaving people stranded far, far from home.

And now for an oblique comparison: This kind of bullshit denial that certain things don’t happen in Spain is precisely what will be its end. Watch with me now over the next several months as the banks crash while Spaniards continue to get pissed off at foreigners for predicting it in the LinkedIn forums and elsewhere.

‘Driving’ in Spain

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It’s taken me over three years, but I’m finally beginning to realize that this place feels like home. There were many (okay- many, many) things which I hated about living here at first- Spanish drivers being at the top of the list. I laugh (to myself, inwardly) when anyone asks me whether I have my Spanish Driver’s License since that phrase seems so fucking ridiculous given the performance of those who have fulfilled whatever legal requirements exist to get one.

This will be the first of many entries regarding this subject, and I will assign it its own category when I have calmed down enough to organize my thoughts into a format which accurately articulates this phenomenon rather than spontaneous, run-on sentences punctuated by blazing profanity guaranteed to make reader’s eyes bleed.

The excessive horn-honking no longer makes my blood boil (even my son says ‘it’s the National Bird of Spain, Papa!’, just as I taught him). People nearly side-swiping my car to get in front of me before an upcoming red light no longer makes me think about carrying an assault weapon behind the seat. Drivers flipping me off for unwittingly preventing their clearly illegal maneuvers no longer makes me say things which I’m later surprised to hear repeated by my three-year old. Sure, my near-perfect A4 which we stupidly shipped over here is almost totally trashed. Both sides show different colors of paint, scrapes and dents from other cars and delivery trucks carelessly squeezing down the narrow streets. I’d say about half of them were carelessly left by Mrs. Deluxe as well- a native Spanish driver herself. When I discover a new one and ask her about it, she’s all like ‘whut’?.

My precious Audi is about done. It’s got about 50,000mi on it and enough shit is broken on it that we are looking at trying to trade it in on something with better fuel mileage and smaller in size. I insist that it be previously owned so that I don’t have to suffer the process of watching its progressive destruction. Those who know me know I’m a car guy, and this hurts. A lot. I love cars, but there’s no way in hell I’ll ever own a nice one here. That bums me out quite a bit.

Two hundred bucks before breakfast

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Freelancing is a double-edged sword. Feast or famine, Eat what you kill, and several other clichés I’m too tired to think of right now. If only it was steady, but it never is. I just finished a quick little job before everyone else in the house is even awake yet.

Being in Spain, when one of my U.S. clients sends me a 9-1-1 email with some hot job that’s due tomorrow (thier time), chances are I can get it done before they go to bed that night because I’m seven hours ahead- which gives them plenty of time to make changes they want. It works out great and would be even greater if there was enough work to go around for all the other freelancers too and I could have my share on a fairly regular basis.

But that’s the trade-off, I suppose. I get to live in a gorgeous coastal paradise with moderate weather year-round, but the workflow is a short-circuit wire. If it would just even out, I’d be in high cotton. Rolling on chrome. Living large, etc.

Is it so wrong to want to kick another parent’s ass?

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Really badly, too.

In fact, I’d like to kick their ass until it’s a mud puddle, then walk it dry*. This couple are complete jerks. They are both Spanish, I might add. We’ve made friends with several other families- from Indian, to American, to British.. but Spanish people are a cold lot, emotionally**.

At first, I thought it was just us- we were dissed to the point of comedy some weeks back at an amusement park on a Saturday. Mrs. Deluxe wasn’t surprised because she’d received the ‘full ignore’ on previous occasion(s). I, however, was shocked- I stood and stared as they brushed past my son who saw them first and ran up to give their son (who’s in his class at school) a hug. I was at first taken aback at how their son visibly cringed at the sight of my son. Then, when the parents realized what was happening, they pushed a stroller containing another child so hard to get us behind them that they fucked up, hit something, and knocked their other kid out of it onto the ground in a full faceplant. That part was hilarious, I must admit.

Last Thursday was the first day of school and the Jr. Art Director and I walked up to class together. On the way, he sees Little Bastard and runs up to give him a hug again (sometimes a kid’s innocence is enough to make you cry). He got his arms around him and Little Bastard just stood there like a statue. I grabbed my son, pulled him off, and kept going to class.

Today, while I waited for my kid to pass out cookies he’d brought to his classmates before we left to come home, other kids were saying goodbye to one another and a cute little Japanese boy was trying to say goodbye to Little Bastard, who was ignoring him. Cute Kid yelled louder and louder as if Little Bastard didn’t hear him- then, as if to shut him up, LB gave Cute Kid an undeniably condescending glare. I mean four years-old. Come on.. what the fuck? At least it’s not just us, apparently.

*from the movie Big Love
**remember, you heard it here.