Present Perfect

Moving here made me realize I am more adaptable to an environment than I thought I would be.

Spain presents interesting differences and you learn to take the good with the bad as you go, adjusting your expectations and behaviour slightly.

Last week I wanted to wash up right before leaving to work. Except there was no water. You learn to shrug, take some drinking water and do the minimum amount of cleaning, and you ask the concierge on the way out.

Today, I was waiting on the bus to work. Seven public transport buses passed our bus stop, all empty. You shrug and start walking to work. My best guess is the 3GSM conference has problems handling the load and just paid TMB enough money to send their regular line buses to help shuffle people around. Screw the regular users :)

Mike lost power in his place for a few days. He turned up for work with an unusual chin stubble. I regularly have power outages as well, and some of them end up damaging or destroying power supplies and hard drives. My computer wouldn't boot anymore before I left for Boston, and I already had switched a lot of components to eliminate the cause - power supply, CPU fan, hard drives, ... In the end I thought I'd make sure with a power supply from work, and that one did work. So apparently I have two broken power supplies, and I got a new one this weekend. Problem solved.

When I rode my bike into town going shopping for parts, I passed by Passeig De Gracia, one of the fanciest shopping streets in the city. There was an old guy (60ish, white hair) waiting for the traffic light to turn green, and he was only wearing swimming pants. Sure, that happens once in a while, in the middle of the city. Except, getting closer, I saw that his grey swimming pants weren't, in fact, swimming pants. Rather, it was a tattoo made to look like swimming pants. So his - incidentally pretty huge, even in non-action - penis was dangling in the buff, with a huge piercing through it. I was already past him by the time my synapses had registered the visual trickery, too late to turn around and take a picture without being noticed.

Monday we went for some excellent rabbit. On our way back from the restaurant we passed by preparations for the repainting of pedestrian crossings. This is how they mark the area to be painted.I hope that car got a complete paint job and not just the hood.

One of the best things about Spain this month though was coming back from -12C in Boston, and going to Ciudad Condal the next day for excellent tapas, and eat them out on the street. In February, heart of winter.

Moving here made me realize I am more adaptable to an environment than I thought I would be. Spain presents interesting differences and you learn to take the good with...