It turns out that tripe is not bad at all. Not quite the texture that you may be prepared for, but still a nice subtle flavor. Another interesting discovery: takeout Chinese food ordered for lunch in Barcelona includes a complementary bottle of red wine.
I just bought three-month’s use of a Gizmo call-in number. This means that anyone who wants to call me while I travel can just dial a somewhat-local number and reach me on my computer no matter where I am. If I am not on the computer, it allows you to leave a message which I will get when I am back online. I still carry my cell phone, but at $1/minute it gets pretty expensive overseas, so the Gizmo calls are a good alternative.
If you want to call, the number to dial is: 508-635-4410. Remember that I am 6 hours ahead of you while in Barcelona.
Today’s lunch entree consisted of fish once again, but ones that the waitress described as being “smaller” than those I had a day earlier. Expecting 6″ fish rather the foot-longs from the day before, I wasn’t prepared for what “smaller” actually meant. In this case it meant a plate heaped high with 1 – 2″ long minnow-like fish, fried in their entirety, and eaten like popcorn. Not bad actually.
Here in Barcelona, lunch is “taken” at about 2PM. I had a very typical cafe lunch today which consisted of a first plate (appetizer) of Ravioli with cream sauce and cheese, followed by a second, main plate of fried fish with some of the best French fries I have ever had. And by fried fish, I mean just that -Â two complete fried fish, gutted, but with head, tail and everything in between left intact. Also, a nice basket of fresh baguette, one’s choice of dessert (I had cheesecake), a large bottle of water, and a full bottle of the house red wine. With tax and service (no tipping here), the meal came to 7.50 Euros, or about $9 US. Try getting even the dessert for that much back home.
The next time you have occasion to visit the bathroom, try a little experiment. First, imagine that the toilet is mounted absurdly close to the wall in front of it, say about nine inches from the front edge of the bowl to the wall. Now picture another wall three inches from the right side of the bowl, effectively pushing the entire business into the corner. But let’s not stop there – next install a bidet a few inches to the left of the toilet with an equally tight squeeze between it and the front wall. Now, try getting your pants down and clambering onto or off of either appliance without falling over, falling in, or having your head, knees or something else get in the way. Fun, no? Well, that’s what you would go through if you had to use the bathroom in my hotel (see below).
Click photo for larger image
The room’s tiny size along with a door which swings inward also means you need to step into the room, straddle the bidet, and then close the door from the inside before you can get to the shower. Ahh, the old-world charm.
I arrived safely in Barcelona and just checked into my astonishingly small hotel room. More on that later, but for now I need a shower and a tiny nap before heading in to the office.
Tomorrow afternoon I head out for the first of what may be several business trips to Barcelona. My flight leaves out of JFK, and surprisingly there are no flights between Providence and there any more (there used to be) leaving me with little option but to drive down there. I had considered taking Amtrak to NYC and a car service from Penn Station to the airport but that would have been even more involved. I’ll have my digital camera and will try to post some photos from my adventures over there as soon as I have chance.
I am updating this via a wireless connection at a local coffee shop. Wifi is very cool stuff. Many McDonald’s now have free wireless access and it is only a matter of time before mercenary outfits like Starbucks are forced to offer access for free as well. Currently they charge for access, as they would for air if they could get away with it. But oh how charitable and socially responsible they are! In fact, each time you spend $1.80 for a bottle of water at Starbucks, they will donate a shiny new nickel to help bring water to some poor people in Africa. Aren’t they good?
Yesterday I took advantage of a Massachusetts sales-tax holiday and picked up a new laptop computer at CompUSA. It came with a bundle of “free” items, including a printer, router, and some anti-virus software. Free that is, once you receive the rebates which require some of the most complicated and convoluted steps you can imagine to qualify for them. I must have had 20 linear feet of rebate forms to deal with. Plus, I needed copies of this, originals of that, had to make macaroni-and-glitter drawings of the upc code, get a note from the Pope, …oy! To make matters worse, I discovered well into the process that one of the “free” items they gave me (a wireless router) was not the same model advertised as part of the free bundle, so not only was I charged $20 more for this one up front, it did not qualify for any of the advertised rebates. They did offer to take it back when I asked about it a day later, but now that it is all set up and configured bringing it back is more trouble than it is worth (I am sure they realize that). It’s clear that stores and manufacturers go out of their way to make the entire rebate process so onerous that it is not worth the aggravation to process. And, it involves so many different companies, procedures, and amounts that even a small oversight is bound to have you miss out on at least some of the rebate. Staples is an exception; their Easy Rebate program really is easy to deal with. The ones at CompUSA, on the other hand, are as involved as applying for a building permit in Soviet-era Bulgaria.
I am trying out the Gizmo Project internet phone. It allows you to talk from one user to another for free, as well as call between a computer and a “real” phone for very low cost (1.8 cents/min). I figured that this will be handy to use while I am Spain where calls on my US-based cell phone are $1/min even with the discounted rate plan. With an internet-based phone, it doesn’t matter where you call from – the rate is the same to all phones in the US. For incoming calls (real phone -> computer) you are assigned a phone number that is somewhere close to your home (for example, I would probably get one of the ones in the 508 or 617 area codes if I sign up for that feature) and anyone calling in would just dial that number, no matter where you and your computer actually are at the time. Call-in numbers cost $5/month.
The program is free and you can download it at the the Gizmo Project website. Look for me when you get it going, my user name is ChuckDoherty. You don’t even need to purchase any of the credits for computer to “real” phone calls in order to use it for computer-to-computer calling, and they even give you $0.25 in outgoing-call credits (about 10 minutes worth) so you can try that feature out and see if you like it.
p.s. – It’s hot here today!
Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi of Mayalsia addressed the recent smoke and haze problem in his country by directing the population to pray for rain to clear the sky. Channel News Asia reports him as saying:
“I have asked the mosques to conduct prayers for rain to disperse the haze. I hope the people of other faiths will hold such prayers as well. When such things happen, this is my approach, we have to pray to god for help,” he said.
Let me get this straight; fires and hurricanes are called Acts of God because god controls everything, right? So how can anyone have such hubris to think they can hold a referendum and get god to change his mind? Come on people, if god is all-powerful then he knows what he is doing, so be quiet and let him do his job. If god made a big fire, he must have had good reason for doing so.
And what’s this about the Prime Minister asking people of other faiths to pray for rain as well? Wouldn’t the infidel’s prayers just cancel out those of the true believers, making the entire effort much like voting for Ralph Nader?
Back in 1997, when fires then brought smoke to the area, Malaysia sent fire fighters to put them out. Prayer is apparently a more cost-effective approach. No word yet on what punishment will be meted out in case the population fails to pray hard enough and the smoke remains a problem.
But then again, we live in 21st century America, and not some superstitious land where the leaders attribute anything they can’t control or understand to the work of magical sky wizards. Oh, wait…
Well, I guess if schools are going to put forth alternate views on the origin of life, they should include them all, including the one that I feel most likely to be true. May you forever be touched by His Noodly Appendage.
