Saturday, October 3, 2009

Being Amaia

Everytime I take my newly acquired car, I feel like John Cusack in the 1999 movie ‘Being John Malkovich’.  John found a door behind a file cabinet in an office which led him to the mind of John Malkovich. As he stepped through the door, he assumed John’s persona. I feel very much the same when I step into Amaia’s former car (or what’s left of it). The feel of the steering wheel, the smell of the car, its sound all remind me of Amaia. I can picture her giving me a lift to work, pulling crazily away on the wheel to make it turn (yes it’s that old… the car), I can nearly hear her pull up and park in front of our house.

Of course, thankfully, the car isn’t the only thing that reminds me of Amaia. In fact, if anything, the car is probably something I’d want to forget. It’s probably decreased my life expectancy by a good few years through induced stress and fearful situations. And it’s shedding parts, displaying its great autotomy ability.

Great Expectactions

- or how Ruben is not your typical Jamie Oliver -

When we moved in together, I hardly knew what to expect. Yes, she seemed a nice person in all respects. On a scale from 1 to candy machine, she scored well beyond Galaxy and Mars. But it’s one thing to get along with someone, and a whole different can of worms to live with that given person. And that didn’t only apply to Amaia. It was true of Amaia, Ruben and Juanlu.

March 2008 - A few weeks before the move, Amaia, Ruben, JuanLu came over to my place for a bit of dinner. Pizza was on the menu: after all if Spaniards and Frenchmen meet, they might as well have a bite of Italian. Ruben, wanting to be the handyman, took the pizzas out of their packaging and popped them into the oven. Unfortunately, much to our dismay, we realized a full ten minutes later that the pizza was piping hot and just rightly cooked but that the styrofoam Ruben had absent-mindedly forgotten to remove had blackened to a color that would have made the plague look a bit pale. This single act of kitchen vandalism struck Ruben off the list of ‘best cook housemate award of year’. With two candidates left, the competition seemed as healthy as deep-fried Fish ‘n Chips with extra scrappings.

Swedish Matches

April popped round the corner, the move was a dismal experience (and righfully deserves its own dedicated post later on). Eventually on a sunny Sunday afternoon drowned in football fans’ clamors from Portman Rd as Norwich City clashed with Ipswich Town, I swept one final time the wooden floor of my fourth-floor apartment. Amaia and Ruben came up for the last time, we checked all rooms were empty and we went out for a late lunch of burgers and salad (when some of us live of amour et eau fraîche, Ruben lives on salad).

Slowly, we started settling in, moving furniture, arranging our rooms, making ourselves cosy. I already a lot of furniture so my task was mainly to sift and throw rather than acquire new items. On the other hand, my Iberian fellow friends needed a few items: beds, shelves, curtains…  Amaia being neat and meticulous, wanted to decorate her room to a standard she would be content with. And so started a long saga of furniture shopping. Not quite a saga. It was more like a love story, a passion, a yearning that called Amaia away from Ipswich for 4 or 5 weekends. It was so intense, so true, that she even took her parents one day to meeting the object of her desires, what caused her heart to flutter and to enter a mellow turmoil at first sight. Blond, big, Swedish. Who could resist? Yes, Amaia had fallen in love with IKEA, Sweden’s #1 furniture department store established worldwide and also in Essex selling prime quality furniture.

Ruben, JuanLu and I lost track of the many trips Amaia took down the A12 to go shop at IKEA. When someone asked where Amaia was, we’d shrug and answer, «probably at IKEA»…

to be continued… On the recognition of languages in national constitutions

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Wednesday, September 9, 2009

The day I lost faith or how the hand of God sucked out all my energy

Once upon a time in the tranquil village of Ipswich, Suffolk, there was a group of friends who decided to go to the movies to spend a nice evening out, watch the latest blockbuster and chit chat about the actors’ performance on the silver screen.

Jesus, our cinema mastermind, astutely chose (500) days of Summer, a promising rom-com by Mark Webb.  And so, come eight PM, I drove from my place in my new rickety VW Golf Boston 1992 (yes a car from last century - if it were anywhere close to fast, I’d call it a blast from the past) down Foxhall Rd to pick Jesus and a fellow friend Xabi who - for once - decided to watch a movie at the theater rather than download one (ahem). I’ve had my driver’s license for as long as I can remember but never actually owned a car so these last few weeks have been sheer moments of glorious pride and elated joy in spite of the ruckus caused by my wobbly exhaust pipe. I could now give lifts to people, take them place, and boast about my rusty red roamer. However I still cannot focus on the driving of the vehicle and on the in-door entertainment or airing system at the same time. And so, steam having built up and slightly dimmed the visibility, I kindly asked Jesus to look at the dashboard and figure out which of these darn knobs would clear up this condensation. Being a clever man, he soon found the right combination, and the windshield was quickly crystal-clear.

A mere few minutes later, we were driving round and round the cinema’s parking lot in a desperate attempt to find a spot for my four-wheeler.  This reminded me of a buzzard in a Texan desert circling round a prey, a cactus in the background gloomily dropping its shadow on the hot sand. We eventually managed to tuck our car in a small spot by the local McDonalds, turned the headlights off, locked the doors, opened the doors again for Jesus to wind up his window tight and dashed off to the cinema. We were greeted by a long queue of patient customers piling out through the cinema doors and outside in front of the building.

And once we made our way up to the cash register, we were greeted with a slightly sarcastic “sorry, it’s full” message. What Jesus had failed to mention - his Dad bless him - was that this was no ordinary screening. Oh no, Lord Almighty! It wasn’t even the Premiere. Better yet, it was the nationwide pre-premiere, in plain old English, the day before the Premiere. Yes they do that in the cinema industry. I wish I’d been to the day before the premiere of  The Day after Tomorrow for the sole sake and pleasure of telling the story.

The day before the Premiere is traditionally a fairly busy day for the movie in question and (500) days of Summer being a fairly well rated movie with great expectations, it seemed all of Ipswich had piled in to get a piece of the action. No rom-com tonight, Jesus, shame… We eventually fell back on a slightly less romantic, slightly more active movie called The Hurt Locker where the good guys (American soldiers) go about disarming bombs in a war-riddled Iraq. And in lieu of love sparks, we had a hollywood-load of explosions of cars, buildings, and people. Near-misses and not so near misses… To be honest, as far as American Hollywood Iraq war movies go, this one was fair, even potentially good and didn’t fall into any complacent message or improbable acts of super-heroism drenched in a patriotic music meant to wrench out feelings of pride from the spectator.

As the credits rolled out on the screen, our ears still buzzing with the sounds of ack ack and blasts, we piled out of the cinema and headed to the car. Jia-Yan who’d joined us wisely chose to make her way home while Gogo, Xabi, Jesus, and I went back to my car. In we went, noted the ventilation was still on - but you know it’s just air and a small fan right - buckled our seatbelts, inserted the key in the ignition and turned the engine on…

And turned the key again. And again. Another try? Yes, the battery was dead flat. All this because we’d left (or should I blatantly accuse Jesus and say he rather than than we) the ventilation on, this wheezy little flow of air that sounds more like an asthmatic patient on his deathbed than a decent car ventilator made in Germany. I snapped the ventilation off, bringing the car’s purring to a stop, and try to start the engine again. A sputter, a faint roar (more like a cat meowing) but no more. The bells of midnight were now tolling inciting us to make our way home. But how? A quick call to my fellow house dwellers confirmed none of them had jumper cables (yes apparently that’s the technical name. I suppose they can double as a skip rope at the weekend for the kids to enjoy). Luckily we remembered Sergio, our savior-to-be and fellow friend from Brazil, was well equipped (car-wise). A quick call got him out of his house and on the road to the cinema to pull us out of this prickly situation. We then struggled to get my car hood (bonnet I reckon in UK English) open and read the cable instructions twice over for fear we should wrongly connect the ends. The last thing I wanted was to suck out Sergio’s battery too. At this point, Xabi took over the manoeuvres. It seems that apart from being a programming geek and virtuose, he’s also at ease behind the steering wheel, under the car, and beneath the hood. After several tentatives groping about in the dark (remember it’s midnight and I can’t use the car lights, we really shouldn’t tease the battery anymore than it has been) under the steering wheel, Xabi finally found the lever to pop open the hood. Aha, open Sesame.

Connecting the battery was yet another challenge. We started by looking at the battery-engine cables and trying to decide which was black which was red. But at such an early hour of the morning, in a soot-laden engine, it was hard to reach any conclusion. Luckily, one of the knobs came with a plus sign - which was a plus in our battery-charging mission.

Once all cables were duly connected, we waited for a few minutes and started my poor Golf’s engine. No result. Another tentative? Still flat. Billions of blue blistering barnacles! Xabi craftily fiddled with the cables, checked the connections, and gave the go-ahead thumbs up. A few minutes’ wait to let my battery soak up some electrons. Another try was finally answered with a triumphant roar from my car. The once silent exhaust pipe rattled once again not unlike Arizona snakes, we bade Sergio farewell expressing our deepest gratitude to tonight’s hero. I lost my faith in the process for I realized Jesus was not our savior at all. If anything, Sergio helped us out.

We all drove home, relieved we had pulled out of this electrifying situation. The car hoisted its way up Back Hamlet, I dropped battery scavenger Jesus, and cable wonderboy Xabi, and soon arrived home.

Home Sweet Home. My comfortable bed. My soft bedsheets (ugly ones Maria would interject) for which I had been yearning. And the Sandman soon dropping by to work his magic on our household.

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Thursday, August 20, 2009

Amaia

A newcomer

Amaia landed in Ipswich late 2006, possibly early 2007. She brought in her bags the essence of a sun-drenched Spain, the mellow flavors of the Mediterranean, and  the singing accents of the Sierra Nevada. Or so would the poet at the height of the XIXth century’s Romanticism have rambled. This was the time when Byron roamed about a neo-classical Greece while Garibaldi fought for his revolutionary ideals in nearby Italy.
The truth is, however, not so grand. Amaia is in fact from Northern Spain. Her home province is probably quite the climatic opposite of Suffolk: where Wolsey’s homeland is known for its dry weather in the UK (relative dry weather, we are after all in a very humid - to put it mildly - island), Navarra is on the contrary possibly of the more humid provinces of a bone-dry peninsula. Located at the easternmost tip of what is considered as Green Spain, the northern counties bow to the Atlantic as it brings in lashes of relentless rain. So much for Amaia’s sun-drenched, mediterranean-flavored Spain. As for the accents, in lieu of a melodious singing voice, people from Navarra are said to talk grossly, in a very recognizable way. I wouldn’t judge local accents though. I struggle enough as it is with English and French ones. I will return to Caesar what belongs to him and leave the accent debate to Native Spaniards.

Romance in the air

In this great confusion of Spanish stereotypes, Amaia had nonetheless arrived in the capital of Suffolk somewhere between 2006 and 2007. Her pretty face, ebony dark curly hair, and deep eyes soon had the better of most single chaps in our group of friends. Surely, soon enough a long list of suitors formed about her - much like Japanese tourists huddle around the Mona Lisa in Paris. Phone numbers were exchanged, compliments were hushed down the table at lunchtime, and invitations were sent.
I must admit I myself was not indifferent to Amaia’s charms. Then again, I have a weak spot for anything ‘made in Spain’. But at the time, I was happily engaged in a deep and meaningful relationship (ahem) with my then beloved Laurine (God bless her cotton stockings).
The first true contact I had with the newcomer was - I believe - on a gloriously sunny Saturday afternoon. To be quite frank, I can’t remember the weather, but it suits the storyboard. I then lived with 2 fellow Germans, Mirko and Michael. None of us really cooked then except when either Mirko’s girlfriend or mine came round. Shopping was therefore limited to the strict minimum and usually the bright orange bags we brought home from Sainsbury’s only contained breakfast items, bread, flour (for the bread-producing Germans), jams, and cheese. With this in mind, imagine Mirko’s surprise as well as mine when we suddenly saw Michael walking into the house plowing under the weight of several shopping bags full to the brim of fresh produce, meat, sauce, and even a bottle of red wine. What was he brewing? What surprise was he cooking us? Literally… Well almost, for if indeed he was about to toss together a five-star meal, neither Mirko nor I were invited to the table. Shyly, Michael came into the living room and told us he had company for lunch and asked us whether we minded sticking to the living room and not intruding into the kitchen, converted into his den for the time of the meal.
Mirko and I glanced at each other, shrugged our shoulders, and resumed whatever important task we were doing, keep well clear of the kitchem and its cacophony of plates banging, pots clashing, and pans simmering on the cooker. Then silence. A long pause. The meal must be ready. The doorbell - well a knock (the doorbell is broken). A rush of air - Michael running down the corridor - the door opens. Voices are heard. And in comes none other than Amaia. Yes, sir. Our very own Michael, slightly baldish (God bless his remaining hair), uncanny grin, and a good heart, had invited Amaia, the ravishing Pamplonese, to a tête-à-tête dinner. On the scale from zero to Hyacinth Bouquet’s candlelight supper, Michael scored quite high that day. If only he’d had hand-painted perrywinkle china…
Mirko and I refrained from intruding into the couple’s romantic lunch in the kitchen and we tried to muffle as much as we could our laughter. When I mention the event nowadays to Amaia, she dismisses it as being a simple lunch with no hidden agenda. Yes, we believe you, it’s Michael’s intentions that we question.

The candy machine

Michael was not alone in his efforts as Ruben, my other housemate, and Amaia’s galant knight and defender, later explained. And I now recall the many moments spent at the candy machine during coffee breaks. Back in the old day, I used to work in a team of 4 - all friends - developers. A hairy Italian chap called Mauri, a military-obsessed Dane, Lenni, and our lyrical day-dreaming Austrian Andreas. The building we were located in had no candy or coffee machine much to our dismay and we therefore had to walk to the building next door to refill on unhealthy sugary sweets in the likes of Kit Kat, Twix, and Mars. Amaia so happened to work in that building almost nearly directly above the candy machine. Our Great Dane would always try to meet up with Amaia there and share a bit of chinwag. Chocolate certainly maintained the love feel in the air. All we now needed was Robbie Williams and his hit song ‘all I want to feel’.

Feria de Pamplona

I didn’t see much of Amaia in the following months. I had little if no social life then and never met with the Spanish gang. I merely noticed she seemed to get excited everytime the number of the day matched the number of the month, i.e. the 2nd of Feb, 3rd of March, and so on. Was it witchcraft? No, wisely replied Lenni coming back from a reconnaissance mission. It’s all about bulls, running, and Hemingway? Ah and it involves drinking and partying until the wee hours of the morning. The Feria of Pamplona of course - 7th of July.

Moving homes

A year went by, months flew until days wound down to April 2008. Forced to move out of their house because of landlord issues, Amaia & Ruben were looking for a new roof. At the same time, JuanLu was also searching for a place where to settle down. And I was reluctantly giving up my apartment where I’d shared so many precious moments. Three Spaniards, one Frenchman looking for roof big enough for 4 with possibly room for a guest (code name Tikka). The answer to this hypothetic ad came from the offices of Martin & Co, a letting agency and its charming blonde agent who toured us round a house in Bull Rd - quite a fitting name for a mainly Spanish household. It’s a dire shame none of our last names is Osborne. Contracts were signed, money changed hands, keys replicated. Soon, furniture was flying around the house. At this precise moment, a new chapter started.

…to be continued…

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Tuesday, February 10, 2009

The break-up - Part II

And so the ominous day comes along. Friday October 17th 2008. 3PM. Business as usual. The sun is shining out there or is it simply the knowledge that tomorrow I will be jetting off to Naples for the first time in a month? A meeting here and there swipe the morning hours away.

Natural Elements

And then suddenly the weatherman turned evil-wizard unleashes terrific thunderbolts, the entire building trembles, heavy showers lash the windows of my ground-floor office as I read the very simple French words Laurine has written me on MSN (of all places).
Now of course, it is still sunny outside - need I mention it? The weather only ever matches the main character’s mood in movies. Not real life. If only…

Drifting apart

A rupture is never good. A crack is no good sign, a fault more than a tectonic phenomenon. There is no perfect break-up, only perfect make ups, when they do happen. But an MSN separation is the Grand Canyon of all rifts small and mighty. It could be worse I guess. Much like a man asked his girlfriend to marry him on Google StreetView, Laurine could have posed with a sign in Naples to letter out her desire to carry on her life without me. Thank God, Naples isn’t quite digitized yet.

No, it didn’t really happen, did it?

From then on starts the period of denial, verbal jousts, pseudo-logical reasonings, knots in the brain, sordid calculations, phone harassments, and all for the benefit of mobile operators who reap in the cents of the rupture with their long cruel greedy clutches. Yes! Blame the Phone Operator! Go on, it feels good.
So there we are Friday Seventeenth of October 2008. It is between 5 PM and much later. I am quite under shock and am not really aware of what I’m doing. We have another meeting to close off the day’s work. But work is all in a daze. When I ask Laurine whether I should come, she merely replies ‘do as you like’. Reminds me of Mother when I wanted to do something she disapproved of.
I go out for dinner with friends - we wait for Sergio who never turns up and to top that points us to a shut restaurant. We then head out to the Galley in St Nicholas Street. A bit sordid really as I have only ever been there with Laurine. I remember Josh, Ji, Fadi. God knows who else was there. Ah yes the Bar XIX gang.

Math Myth

I eventually decide to not go to Stansted. Why? The simple answer is it’s easier to stay in bed than to get up at 2AM to grab a 2:30AM Stansted-bound bus. The more complicated answer is in the form of a question: am I that lazy that an early bird bus puts me off from seeing the gal of my dreams? I wish I knew how to draw. I’d pencil the equation of laziness vs. flying to Italy - surely less challenging that of Ostrogradsky.


It’s all Greek to me.
And so, over the following weeks, I ponder, wonder, chew over the previous years. I balance events, equate emotions, measure word impact, sketch out choices, calculate derivatives before integrating it all back together in a poorly knit bundle of feelings. I dream that Archimedes rings my doorbell and brings in a big papier-mâché sign spelling out Eurêka. But of course I don’t read Greek, not to mention he was slain by the Romans: oh dear it all boils back down to them and Italy.

Storia Consumendam Est

The hesitations & totters of my wee little brain do not end with whimsical equations that make no sense. But what happens next is for a later chapter where I get the unexpected visit from a charming young singer at my bedside. For now, here shall conclude the ramblings of a deflating heart.

Posted by The Blog Hiker at 10:56:45 | Permalink | Comments (1) »

Sunday, February 8, 2009

The break-up - Part I

Not many things I do have an ending. As a matter of fact, if one was to stick one big scarlet-lettered sign on myself to designate my most flagrant flaw, it would be this lack of perseverance, this ability to start one too many things and never wrap them up.
One such thing was my relationship - can’t complain really - an ongoing relationship is like a gift from above. It doesn’t happen everyday. It’s simple true bliss. Warm and cozy, comfortable and reassuring. It’s all we hope for after all, to be wholly and unconditionally loved by someone we ourselves love in return. The given relationship sprung from an incidental meeting between two individuals of - oddly enough - the same nationality - yet living in sleepy Suffolk, a strange and most foreign land to both individuals. It couldn’t have started on the worst terms - at a beer festival - none of the German organization and grandeur - none of the palate-teasing brews of Belgium. In lieu of such merriments, we contented ourselves with the local entertaining batch of tractor boys meddling about several dozen casks coming as far awide as Norfolk (a mere 50 miles north) and perhaps the daring potion from Boston (still no more than 200 mi) or Newcastle. Do pitch in the rare perl from Scotland and mainland Europe to be quite fair. Nonetheless, one can hardly argue a beer festival is quite the place for two young souls to meet. Surely CoEs and popes alike cannot condone such behavior.
Getting back to our flock of sheep, as indeed this story is not about hops and malt, I met Laurine in September of 2005, my mind astray after 11 months in Portugal hacking away at the last year of my Master’s degree in ‘Informatics’. The hacking involved hard work at times, with long endless nights of project report writing in the cold empty lurid (though this may be stretching the discourse) university hallways. One cannot deny it also involved parties, moments of self-discovery, long winding walks through the narrow Porto cobbled passages. Friendships were cemented over long sips of ruby-hued glasses of Port; love was found and lost at a pace Eros himself would find hard to keep up with. The candle of life was joyously burning at both with no end in sight. The wick was mighty and stong indeed. New languages were discovered; others invented; apartments filled with echoes of laughter. This balance of work and play would have seemed enviously appealing to Jack; the scorn for the next dawn, the mere lack of respect for Chronos and its grinding spirals, the youth’s ignorance of tomorrow’s decay cast on Porto an unforgettable phosphorescence of true felicity. Glimmers of true love accentuated this ethereal feeling. Returning to Ipswich, starting a new job, stepping into responsible life with bills, salaries, credit cards, income tax, social security, pension funds, and whatnot doused the wick and the polaroid tones of blithe. The grey tones of this English town, the biased view of a Frenchman, the dark red brick of the seemingly derelict train station led to an incurable sense of saudade. One may assume the change from the life of a student to that of a full-grown person may lend to many a philosophical question on the meaning of life. And no Monty Python pun is a match for doubts of that nature.
And so, in this odd unbalanced climate of hesitation, growth spurt, and sudden respectability undermined with responsibility, there came Laurine, radiant, young, innocent, truthful, aspiring, glowing. A redhead - a mysterious smile à la Julia Roberts - a mastery of the English language that would leave more than one puzzled - a capacity to listen and understand that outpassed many a talkative mouth of the locals. From the first kiss under the statue of Liberty’s green bedsheet to the last one on Naples’s train platforms, a blizzard of fond memories, passionate love, quirky moments, and darker shades have come and gone, consumed by the very same Chronos once defied, now bowed to. There is nothing left of these three years but a basket of mixed feelings that manage to seep through the loosely woven wicker to embitter the present day.
Much later, months and years have passed. Today, Sunday February the eight, after a week surrounded by friends, I realize all this has been pointless. The breakup she triggered may have been salvatory. Or are we all merely mascarading ourselves into a false sense of security and comfort?
Today, Sunday February the eight, I have learned news that belittle this story, irremediable facts of life that suddenly wake you in the bitterest of ways. And I love all the more those people close to me.
Today, Sunday February the eight, I read these words and wonder why I have never seriously studied the classics, philosophy, and litterature in general. It is so easy to write gibberish and kill the essence of a message in a surplus of meaningless phrases. There is no contempt or hubris in doing so, merely the awkwardness of a fairly illiterate young man of the XXIst century.
Today, Sunday February the eight, I have started reading Goethe’s Werther.
Posted by The Blog Hiker at 23:58:11 | Permalink | Comments (1) »

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Feeling stressed? Move to Ipswich!

The whole story can be read here: Feeling Stressed…

THe First Post is an online newspaper I’ve started reading over the past year and it hasn’t disappointed me. It’s a good place to read on London happenings (whether in arts, films, or just ‘people’).

They also have hilarious columns on the ups and downs of life in general (Newish man, Single Life, and… Servant life). The latter is a riot to read: it relates young foreigners’ experiences as au pairs, maids, or assistants in British families.

This story (see link) in particular compares Pimlico and Ipswich. If I had a choice, I’d rather go to Pimlico but in the meantime it’s soothing to know Ipswich has some bright sides too.

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Saturday, August 9, 2008

[IP4 2LA] A pint down the Dove & Chinese Olympics

I’d planned to spend most of my morning queuing in August rain in front of the French Consulate in order to apply for a new passport, my current one having been severely battered in soiled soapy washing machine water making it unacceptable for the stringent US Customs. However, sleep deprivation had the better of me and I had to text a colleague of mine - the chauffeur of the day, Afnan - that I would give London, South Ken and Cromwell Rd a miss altogether.
In lieu of capital excitement and underground thrills & chills, I stayed nice and snug at home while rain overtook the already soaked streets of Ipswich. What a dire August! I’m sure one a many oldies were already brewing round the idea they hadn’t seen such a poor summer since QE II’s coronation (and you do need oldies to remember that).
And speaking of brewing, we had no alternative but to hit a pub at night to avoid homeitis, a severe condition related to one’s buttocks remaining in the same sofa position for too long. Now Ipswich may not have the glamour of Mayfair nor the spicyness of Soho but it does boast quite a few decent pubs among which the Dove (nothing to do with soap, need I add?) where we shared a few pints with the local Spaniards, the odd German, Hong Kongese, Jordanian and myself.
And then, well, we simply called it a night.
Posted by The Blog Hiker at 03:24:18 | Permalink | Comments (1) »

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

[IP1 2BN] A Room with a View - Churchmans House

It’s already been two months since we moved into our new apartment at the Churchmans House Apartments in central Ipswich (some might say in its red light district) and apart from a few glitches with the agency, we’re loving every last minute of our new den.

It’s located on the fourth floor of a five-storey building and the view on Ipswich is grand - as in big and wide and well… you get to see the Ipswich rooftops. If you want to be posh, one can just about make the tip of a few yachts’ masts moored in the nearby marina. But trying to spot them feels very much like going to the optometrist’s.

Can you see them?

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Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Spiced up household

With Kai’s departure to London at the end of last month, Mario’s arrival couldn’t have been timelier. Mario? Who’s Mario? Well let’s jump back in time some nine years to summer of 1998. At the time, I went over to sunny Mexico for a month and stayed in a family - Mario’s family to be precise.

And now, nearly a decade later, it’s my turn to welcome Mario into my «family», i.e. my fellow German roommates. Goodbye kartofen, hello hello pimiento! Guten tag y comó estás?

Mario landed on Saturday in London after a tiresome ten-hour flight from Mexico DF (Federal District) and had to struggle his way through Immigration as her Majesty’s subjects were not so keen on letting a pulque-drinking, tortilla devouring man on British soil. To be fair with the Immigration officers, Mario had forgotten my details back home and couldn’t provide. A fifteen-minute interview between a charming lady and myself soon resolved the issue and moments later, a few minutes shy of 3PM, Mario came strolling through the opaque automatic glass doors into the airport arrivals hall.

From there on, we kick-started a wild tourism chase through London, its parks and monuments scorning the rain, taxis and wild bus drivers.We eventually ended up a few yards away from Nelson Square, in a British pub, where Mario enjoyed his first pie (chicken ‘n bacon) along a pintful of cold refreshing French beer. French beer? Well yes, French beer. Ale will have to wait for its own turn. And a pint of Nelson’s Revenge might have been quite a shocker after a nearly sleepless night.

To be continued…

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Wednesday, November 8, 2006

What if had a really big shovel and a lot of time to waste?

Well what if I did? I could dig a hole in the garden and finally plant those tulip bulbs I bought a while ago at Wilkinson’s. Or I could help my dog with his never-ending search for a bone… that is if I had a pooch.

But because I’ve no four-legged friend and since I’m not much of a green thumb either, I’d have to dig for the sake of digging, for the fun of it.

Now of course, I could embark on a vernian journey to the center of the Earth but you know, been there done that. It’s déja vu. Otto Lidenbrock (cf. A Journey to the Center of the Earth ) already set foot in the cavernous insides of Mother Earth.

So the last option is fairly straightforward, really: keep on going straight on! And see where that takes you. This is just the idea Luis Felipe of Brasil had. Armed with a virtual shovel, a sharp sense of maths, and one of those nifty new web apps - Google Maps - he wrote a small program to find out what’s on the other side of the tunnel. All you have to do is pick your starting point.

Here goes. I live in England’s Sleepy Suffolk (not the one in the New World). To be more concise I live in Ipswich, Suffok or more pragmatically yet, I live in IP4 5RS. Going into any further details would be a breech of my private space. After having zoomed on Luis’s customized Google Maps application, I click on my street and then start digging. And, well, what do you know? I end up in a puddle. Not just any puddle. Oh no sireee! The stormy Pacific Ocean with its myriad of minute islands, its passion for rugby, and well mostly vast masses of water.

Ipswich’s other side of the world. Try it out here

So, if I dug deep down, would I actually create a geyser so mighty it would belittle Yellowstone’s steamer? Would Australia and New Zealand be one? Would French Polynesia become bigger than the French Metropolis? Well I haven’t got a clue, but when I do get some holidays, I’ll start digging.

NB: remember that prior to any digging you should always advise thee gas / electric / phone company. You wouldn’t want to throw half of Europe into pitch dark? 

Posted by The Blog Hiker at 00:02:43 | Permalink | No Comments »