Monthly Archive

I’ve been to a number of Asian restaurants while I’ve been in Europe, I can’t help it, I crave rice accompanied by saucy meat and vegetable combinations and tasty noodle soups. I think something inside me lets out a long, drawn-out sigh and settles down into a cosy nook when I tuck into a good Asian meal.

Right after I ordered my meal in the restaurant in Granada the family who owned it all sat down to lunch together, around a round table with plates heaped with rice set at each place. Watching them triggered off a big round of nostalgia.

• The casual and deft hand motion when using chopsticks, the quick jab forward and swoop back and the food was already in their mouths.

• How they talked with their mouths full “Ah choof chug choo guou wao si” (note: this is not an uneducated transcription of chinese. this is a transcription of the sound of cantonese spoken with one’s mouth full). And no, it’s not delicate nor charming, but it is accurate, so it still counts as one component of a nostalgic scene.

• The large bowls with soups, with or without noodles, dishes with meat and vegetables, fish stretching across the length of the plate. Reaching around each other, or what’s even more Chinese is to get the food for someone else and always give them a large portion, because it’s important that they eat enough.

• Forearms crossing, people watching as you select your morsel from a main plate - so that they can make a joke, ask you if you need help or more of it, or just so that they tell when they are allowed to make their move for the same plate.

• The sound of plastic chopstick tips and metal spoons scraping against the porcelain plates as they try to get at the remains of the sauce and the tiniest piece of their favourite dish.

• The sound of satisfaction - the sound of inhalation slurps, which are different to the Japanese lip smacking “I’m cleaning the noodle as I vaccuum-suck it into my mouth” slurps.

Now for the specifics on eating Asian in Europe. Here of course you generally get bread with your meals. So what happens in an Asian restaurant? You get keropok on a side dish! I find this hilarious, but am not complaining one bit. They’re generally yummy keropok, not excessively flavoured which in my opinion kills a keropok. Read the rest of this entry »

You can never quite tell what’s going on today because it’s all relative. When someone has a low opinion of another, this other usually has a low opinion of that someone back. What do you base your accuracy on then in deciding who’s right or who is the baddie in the situation, except on which of them it is you like more?

You can only get a “truth” if you choose a side. Or maybe what this is saying is that you can only get truths if you have already experienced them yourself. Because how do you choose a side if not based on your pre-existing values? And in this case, aren’t you merely reinforcing what you already think? You treat it as if you’re intelligently appraising a situation when in actual fact you are finding the quickest route to reminding yourself how right you are… Read the rest of this entry »

Unfortunately this time I have no pictures. Please don’t shun me and read on anyway, if you have the answer your recompense is my happiness…

Question: Why will we more readily give a homeless person a cigarette than some spare change?

Hypotheses of my own:

1. Perhaps it is because they can only do one thing with it, you know how it will be used. Hmm… this suggests some kind of paternalistic control need being filled…

2. Perhaps it is because there is some sort of kinship felt between smokers. A kinship based on shared knowledge of the physical feeling you get from having a smoke and from needing a smoke when one is not readily available.

3. Perhaps it is because money seems more valuable than a cigarette. Though this is what prompted me to ask this question in the first place, because with how much a pack costs these days, the literal cost of each cigarette must be similar to spare change you might give anyway. Ah, but then again of course money is always going to be more valuable because you can do anything with it, unlike a cigarette…

Ideas ideas, but I’d be curious to hear especially from people who do smoke and have engaged in this smoker’s generosity. It doesn’t necessarily have to be towards a homeless person either… It’s just seemed to me that many smokers are quite relaxed about sharing their cigarettes, even though these are precious items to them. Or maybe… smokers’ reliance on cigarettes makes them more aware of karma, that they’ll only get when they’re in need if they give to others. I’ve definitely noticed though that there is less reluctance to give up a cigarette than a couple of coins.

Hello!

An update for I know I have been AWOL. I am now back in France, on the southwest coast. I’ve got some fixed accommodation and a trial for work. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned that because I have visions I’m trying to push out of my mind of saying “Pardon?” a billion times and infuriating my French customers with my duncey manner of taking their order. Hopefully smiling a lot will be my saving grace in case of a language emergency.

I have great hopes of making good friends with the sea, and having time to do the things I love such as writing, learning music stuff, being with nature and accosting animals on the street for a session of “Aww, aren’t you a cutie! And so soft! Look at you!”. Not to mention the “Yeahh, I know brother, I know” when they start miaowing or woofing. Or making some other animal noise… (J’en reve….)

Ahhh, the waves. It’s starting to become time to shed the wetsuit too. Truth be told it’s about one day of swell for six of flat, but mmmm, waves.  

I was thiiis } close to coming back to NZ early though. Who knows, I still might. But I would have never suspected it. I’m a traveller, aren’t I?

The actual real information I can give you in this next part is going to be pretty sparse. I was thinking about doing some research to fill it up more, but I resisted the temptation since the whole point of this is laying out what I was able to personally learn through experience and conversation. My Spanish being only at a beginner’s level, most of what I learnt was communicated in English. Therefore I think it’s highly likely I missed certain points and didn’t always fully capture the intended meaning of points I thought I did understand. Now that the advisory is over, let us roll on…

The Basque - Spain clash 

1. Today street names, public signs and advertising are printed in Basque as well as Spanish and are a completely normal feature of Donostia, as well as other towns in the Basque Country. Under Franco’s regime following the second world war however its use was suppressed, spawning the creation of ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna - Basque homeland and freedom). Apparently ETA used to be more widely appreciated throughout Spain for the part it played in fighting Franco’s rule, but these days people choose not to consider the relevance of its genesis. Instead the group is branded simply as terrorists, bloodthirsty as all terrorists are. Ah… but another interesting facet of all this is that while Euskera (Basque language) is present all throughout the streets and in a number of television programmes, it is so far not a part of the mainstream printed press. No newspapers articles in Euskera. Which is interesting to reflect on considering one would think that television and the internet had more of an influence on people’s lives and minds today than print media. I wonder if the retardant is money or simple old-fashionedness. Or is the printed word somehow symbolically more important still?  Read the rest of this entry »

I’d like to say first off that despite my month-long stay in San Sebastian, I feel that I’ve only gotten the tiniest scrape at understanding something more about the Basque cause. To be sure I definitely had intentions of finding out more. Although my primary reasons for choosing San Sebastian as my base for language learning were the easy access to surf, good reputation of the school and apparent loveliness of the city, there was also a little voice in my head whispering “Ooooh, Basque country! Maybe you can find out what more there is past the term “Basque separatists”… Oooooooh.”

All I can do then is report what I have learnt. I’ve decided to break this up into subheadings in order to foster some clarity through the tangled mass of thoughts and questions that is how this subject is currently being stored in my head. I also did this because I didn’t think that the content could naturally direct itself into meaningful structure, seeing as what I discovered through my impressions and the words of others were really only tidbits that might be too small and random to put together to form a real story of the Basque call for independence.

What I experienced of it

As I’ve quite crudely tried to demonstrate through my photos, Basque activism is ubiquitous in San Sebastian. It is entirely normal to spy banners, posters, placards and flags - either the Basque country flag (looks like that of Great Britain except with the colour scheme of red, white and green) or the flag calling for independence (as shown above) - around town. They’re hung and posted up on the side of buildings, on a rotunda in a plaza, on the balcony of an apartment or non-residential building. Some of these are thus displays of pride and defiance, while others are informational - posters giving the dates for events celebrating days of significance to the Basque fight, or placards recounting the backgrounds and stories of kidnapped persons.

One afternoon some few days after arriving in Donostia, I was sitting in the living room when a soulful, melancholic melody filtered through into my airspace. I was pleased and excited to be privy to such nice music, and supposed that it was buskers set up camp in the plaza at the front of our neighbouring church. I got up to look out the window half an hour after it had started, and was surprised to see that there were no buskers. What there was was 15 or so people standing in a row against the facing building, holding a long banner across their bodies as well as placards with slogans and photos of people’s faces pasted onto them. Each person with a placard had their own photo of one person. The music, I was embarrassed to discover, came from a stereo placed on a fold-out chair next to them. They stood there resolutely, the expression on their faces showing that they were calm and had done this before, and would continue to as many times as they thought necessary. Other students have commented on how unbearably sad the music is, music that I think are Basque compositions. It was a striking experience. When I first heard the music I felt more of a connection to its beauty than to its sorrow. Further, although the quiet insistence of the demonstrators and the strangers’ faces on the placards did stop time for me as well as delay my heartbeat, the relaxation in their bodies as they demonstrated, the comfort they got from being together, and the long length of time they remained there left me with an overall feeling that could not reach sadness. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been the slightly odd day to top off an entirely blasé week. To summarise the going ons, I’ve been for the most part confined to my home base due to sickness. I’ve been mindlessly surfing the internet, mindlessly reading a Grisham novel, mindlessly listening to music on the radio but actually, listening with a mind to the BBC World Service. The first day I was sick it was some work though man. I felt so stupid. Ten minutes of listening to the BBC and my brain felt thoroughly wringed out, as if I’d been through a tough 3 hour exam.

Now for today. Walked to the train station instead of biking because I thought a relaxed stroll through the smell of rain would do me good. And it did, I felt lighter and happier.

How many of you knew that slugs were omnivores? I had always assumed that snails and slugs were herbivores… I try to make an effort in general to watch where I walk on the sidewalk after it has rained. I’m not a fan of squashing something living if I can avoid it, even if it is a much-hated slimy creature. This has actually extended to my taking an interest in the sidewalk strugglers however, and I sometimes watch if something interesting is going on. I also like to save earthworms because as I was well-taught as a kid, earthworms are our friends. And I just feel for them when I see them freshly started out in a direction involving long worm miles of squirming across concrete tread by bikes and shoes.

I first saw one slug apparently trying to roll over a smaller, deader slug. Hmmm… I wondered. I can’t see what it’s trying to achieve with this.. Hmmm… Read the rest of this entry »