Friday, February 29
Tuesday, February 19
Sunday, April 22
Friday, April 20
Porque hay cosas locas en este mundo.
Articulo (un poco recortado para no aburrirlos con detalles):
El Tiempo.com, Abril 19 de 2007 -
Niña recién nacida en Argentina tiene abuela, bisabuela, tatarabuela y cuadriabuela
La familia: la madre, Jorgelina García; de 19 años; la abuela, Silvia Alzugaray, de 38; la bisabuela, Teresa Martínez, de 54; la 'tata', Teresita Rodríguez, de 71, y su madre Laura Villega, de 90.
Desde que Ariana Jacqueline Premet llegó al mundo hace tan sólo una semana, es la niña más buscada de Argentina al convertir a su familia en la única que se conoce en el país integrada por mujeres vivas de seis generaciones.
Buscados por todos los medios de comunicación, la familia de Ariana lleva toda la semana atendiendo al teléfono preguntas por la recién nacida y por su "clan" de mujeres.
Los términos trastatarabuela o cuadriabuela fueron creados por los especialistas en genealogía y aún no han sido incorporados al diccionario español.
"Todas hemos sido amas de casa. Gracias a Dios tenemos buena salud", coincidieron las integrantes del clan después del nacimiento de Ariana, quien además tiene cinco tíos, uno de ellos de ocho meses.
Buenos AiresEfe
Saturday, April 7
No wonder my mom says I’m like Mr. Magoo.
Warning: Getting a cab at Place de Clichy at 4:50 on a Friday morning is impossible. If you, like me, have a bus to catch that leaves at 5:20 for the Beauvais Airport (I HAD to take the bus because taking a cab to that airport would probably be more expensive than buying a car) because you have a Ryan Air plane that leaves for Madrid, you should plan for at least an hour waiting to get a cab. Otherwise, you might miss the bus, or like me, you might catch it from its rear behind and scream frantically for it to let you on.
Well, I’m exaggerating, but the driver had already closed the doors and started the engine running. If he hadn’t been a nice guy, he wouldn’t have let me on, because he had to open the baggage door again and wait for me to run to the ticket office and get my ticket.
But the story ends happily because I am now writing this from Madrid.
Joder, ostia macho (you know, like Misun and Carlos say it), que dia.
ps. I didn't forget my passport this time.
Monday, March 26
Weekend roadtrip to Normandy
Here’s a picture of the weekend roadtrip, in two segments: Friday night, hour by hour, and the other days in my typical stream of conscience.
Carlos and I were sitting in Culture Biere on Thursday night and decided that this weekend could not be spent in Paris; it was raining, there wasn’t much going on, and all around it was the best weekend to leave Paris. But Friday morning I told myself we weren’t really going to follow through with the idea of going on a trip- it was too out of the blue and train tickets were expensive.
(Here's a picture a photographer took in Culture Biere, because of course we are very important people and they needed to have us on their website)
Now, here’s the hour-by-hour of the decision to leave:
5ish pm- After a little reading, a little work, and a lot of procrastination, I fell asleep.
7ish pm- I called Carlos and found him in a complete state of euphoria (like a little kid when they’re excited about a trip) and so I started looking for train tickets to not ruin the 2 year old’s dream.
9ish pm- After a very long time of looking for train tickets and only finding absurd prices, I called Avis and made a reservation to rent a car because it was only a fraction of the cost of two train tickets. There’s a catch: Avis only had stickshift and Carlos can’t drive because he’s a wittle, wittle, under-21, baby. That leaves me driving stickshit; I mean stickshift, in Europe, for the first time. I learned to drive in Colombia in a jeep from the Stone Age, and so I convince myself that I still remember how to drive stickshift, even though it has been six years.
A bit after 9pm- “Carlitos… yeaiiiiiiiiii! Pack and come over, we have a car and so we should probably figure out where we are going.”
9:50- After an extremely protracted, exhaustive 3-second discussion of where we wanted to go to, which consisted of me posing the question and Carlos responding very authoritatively, “Normandie,” I start packing and Carlos started looking online how to drive to Normandy from Paris. You might be wandering where in Normandy. Wherever the stickshift car and my ‘France on a Budget’ guide would take us.
Around 10:30pm- Leave my house.
10:57 (exact time- it says so on the contract)– We signed the Avis contract and got the keys from the car rental, which closes at 11pm. Some of you may be thinking that it was cutting it too close. I call that Snappelin’ Austrian-like efficiency.
After scaring Carlos to death about how I couldn’t drive stick shift, almost crashing into the garage door as I took the car out of the Parking place, cruising in our Fiat Panda and having dinner at a place where the Arab pizza man was sure all women were a mix between a goddess and the devil (because he explained this as he made our pizza) we finally left Paris at midnight.
3:20 am (Saturday): We arrive in Honfleur, our first stop. There are a couple of recommended hostels in my guide, but none of them are open.
We wondered around for a while (and had a cat follow us the entire time) and then decided to go back to the Ibis we had seen at the entrance of Honfleur. It was four in the morning by now and Carlos could drive for two minutes, right? We reached the Ibis and had a car behind us. All of a sudden, the seemingly regular car, metamorphosed into a bloodcurdling thing with blue lights on top. My nerves were racking. Three huge, intimidating policemen and a dog (I’m not kidding, they had a dog) got out of the car and asked Carlos why we had stopped, and he explained we were going to the hotel. They asked where we were from, at which point I obviously screamed ‘COLOMBIA!’ (No, I’m kidding- I kept it to myself and avoided getting deported) and upon hearing Carlos’ “Spain” response, said good night. They got back into their car, took the blue lights off, and almost as quickly as they had scared us to fatality, left. I felt the air going into my lungs again, but the trembling lasted about 30 more minutes.
At seven thirty in the morning (after only three hours of sleep) I got a call from Tony, Misuncita, Pablo, OT, and Manue, who were celebrating Misun’s birthday at 3912, to say hello. It was an amazing surprise, and I almost cried. But I was too asleep to cry.
(Honfleur)
On Saturday we walked around Honfleur and visited the beaches of Normandy, and ended up finding another Ibis in Caen, the capital of the Basse-Normandie region to spend the night. We went out to ‘El Che Guevara,’ and I promise it has been one of the most incredible places I have found in France. The ambience was great, with sand on the floor and some of the best mojitos I’ve had. The music was all classics, and the people we met at the door were great. So we danced and drank with them, exchanged e-mails and promises of future visits (including an invitation Carlos got to go to Algeria), and of course never heard from them again.
Eighty percent of Caen was destroyed in WWII, and so the city, rebuilt in the 50’s and 60’s, is not exactly an architectural cloud nine. But its college-town feel and the palace of William the Conqueror make up for it.
(Church in Caen)
On Sunday we drove to Rouen. You would think that from Caen to Rouen we would find at least one place to have lunch in, but no. Nothing, nada de nada. I’m serious. We stopped at a pizza place along the way that finally had an ‘OPEN’ sign. I wasn’t very happy with the thought of pizza, but my stomach was even unhappier with its growling and the gastric juices. We had had bread for breakfast, and I had had bread for dinner the night before. Which reminds me, I didn’t tell you about dinner. Carlos wanted oysters, and insisted they could be eaten without cooking. I ate three, and my decency ran out. I felt terrible after he had spent an hour opening every shell of the dozen and a half oysters we had bought, but when I saw the thing move when I poured the lemon juice on top, I couldn’t handle it. So much for being educated and eating everything, with the slithering salty oyster every ounce of politeness I had in me died. So I had bread, while I watched poor Carlos eat the rest of the 15 oysters that were left and apologized profusely.
So back to the pizza place- it was 5pm, and it was open. We walked in, and just to make sure, we asked if it was open. ‘Yes, we’re open’. Ok, so we ask for a pizza. But the pizza place, which only made pizzas and was allegedly open, would only make us a pizza after 7pm. So we left the OPEN pizza place and headed for Rouen, hoping we would find something else.
We got to Rouen at about 6pm, and nothing served anything salty to eat. All we found were sweet-crepe places, and ice creams. What is with these people? No one has lunch/dinner on Sundays? So we ended up eating at the very gourmet Quick. I have to confess, the salad wasn’t terrible. I mean- it could have been worse. It could have been open, but only serving two hours later.
Finally we left for Paris, and returned our Fiat Panda right on time, again in the Snappelin efficiency of 10 minutes before the Avis closed.
Carlos and I were sitting in Culture Biere on Thursday night and decided that this weekend could not be spent in Paris; it was raining, there wasn’t much going on, and all around it was the best weekend to leave Paris. But Friday morning I told myself we weren’t really going to follow through with the idea of going on a trip- it was too out of the blue and train tickets were expensive.
(Here's a picture a photographer took in Culture Biere, because of course we are very important people and they needed to have us on their website)
Now, here’s the hour-by-hour of the decision to leave:
5ish pm- After a little reading, a little work, and a lot of procrastination, I fell asleep.
7ish pm- I called Carlos and found him in a complete state of euphoria (like a little kid when they’re excited about a trip) and so I started looking for train tickets to not ruin the 2 year old’s dream.
9ish pm- After a very long time of looking for train tickets and only finding absurd prices, I called Avis and made a reservation to rent a car because it was only a fraction of the cost of two train tickets. There’s a catch: Avis only had stickshift and Carlos can’t drive because he’s a wittle, wittle, under-21, baby. That leaves me driving stickshit; I mean stickshift, in Europe, for the first time. I learned to drive in Colombia in a jeep from the Stone Age, and so I convince myself that I still remember how to drive stickshift, even though it has been six years.
A bit after 9pm- “Carlitos… yeaiiiiiiiiii! Pack and come over, we have a car and so we should probably figure out where we are going.”
9:50- After an extremely protracted, exhaustive 3-second discussion of where we wanted to go to, which consisted of me posing the question and Carlos responding very authoritatively, “Normandie,” I start packing and Carlos started looking online how to drive to Normandy from Paris. You might be wandering where in Normandy. Wherever the stickshift car and my ‘France on a Budget’ guide would take us.
Around 10:30pm- Leave my house.
10:57 (exact time- it says so on the contract)– We signed the Avis contract and got the keys from the car rental, which closes at 11pm. Some of you may be thinking that it was cutting it too close. I call that Snappelin’ Austrian-like efficiency.
After scaring Carlos to death about how I couldn’t drive stick shift, almost crashing into the garage door as I took the car out of the Parking place, cruising in our Fiat Panda and having dinner at a place where the Arab pizza man was sure all women were a mix between a goddess and the devil (because he explained this as he made our pizza) we finally left Paris at midnight.
3:20 am (Saturday): We arrive in Honfleur, our first stop. There are a couple of recommended hostels in my guide, but none of them are open.
We wondered around for a while (and had a cat follow us the entire time) and then decided to go back to the Ibis we had seen at the entrance of Honfleur. It was four in the morning by now and Carlos could drive for two minutes, right? We reached the Ibis and had a car behind us. All of a sudden, the seemingly regular car, metamorphosed into a bloodcurdling thing with blue lights on top. My nerves were racking. Three huge, intimidating policemen and a dog (I’m not kidding, they had a dog) got out of the car and asked Carlos why we had stopped, and he explained we were going to the hotel. They asked where we were from, at which point I obviously screamed ‘COLOMBIA!’ (No, I’m kidding- I kept it to myself and avoided getting deported) and upon hearing Carlos’ “Spain” response, said good night. They got back into their car, took the blue lights off, and almost as quickly as they had scared us to fatality, left. I felt the air going into my lungs again, but the trembling lasted about 30 more minutes.
At seven thirty in the morning (after only three hours of sleep) I got a call from Tony, Misuncita, Pablo, OT, and Manue, who were celebrating Misun’s birthday at 3912, to say hello. It was an amazing surprise, and I almost cried. But I was too asleep to cry.
(Honfleur)On Saturday we walked around Honfleur and visited the beaches of Normandy, and ended up finding another Ibis in Caen, the capital of the Basse-Normandie region to spend the night. We went out to ‘El Che Guevara,’ and I promise it has been one of the most incredible places I have found in France. The ambience was great, with sand on the floor and some of the best mojitos I’ve had. The music was all classics, and the people we met at the door were great. So we danced and drank with them, exchanged e-mails and promises of future visits (including an invitation Carlos got to go to Algeria), and of course never heard from them again.
Eighty percent of Caen was destroyed in WWII, and so the city, rebuilt in the 50’s and 60’s, is not exactly an architectural cloud nine. But its college-town feel and the palace of William the Conqueror make up for it.
(Church in Caen)On Sunday we drove to Rouen. You would think that from Caen to Rouen we would find at least one place to have lunch in, but no. Nothing, nada de nada. I’m serious. We stopped at a pizza place along the way that finally had an ‘OPEN’ sign. I wasn’t very happy with the thought of pizza, but my stomach was even unhappier with its growling and the gastric juices. We had had bread for breakfast, and I had had bread for dinner the night before. Which reminds me, I didn’t tell you about dinner. Carlos wanted oysters, and insisted they could be eaten without cooking. I ate three, and my decency ran out. I felt terrible after he had spent an hour opening every shell of the dozen and a half oysters we had bought, but when I saw the thing move when I poured the lemon juice on top, I couldn’t handle it. So much for being educated and eating everything, with the slithering salty oyster every ounce of politeness I had in me died. So I had bread, while I watched poor Carlos eat the rest of the 15 oysters that were left and apologized profusely.
So back to the pizza place- it was 5pm, and it was open. We walked in, and just to make sure, we asked if it was open. ‘Yes, we’re open’. Ok, so we ask for a pizza. But the pizza place, which only made pizzas and was allegedly open, would only make us a pizza after 7pm. So we left the OPEN pizza place and headed for Rouen, hoping we would find something else.
We got to Rouen at about 6pm, and nothing served anything salty to eat. All we found were sweet-crepe places, and ice creams. What is with these people? No one has lunch/dinner on Sundays? So we ended up eating at the very gourmet Quick. I have to confess, the salad wasn’t terrible. I mean- it could have been worse. It could have been open, but only serving two hours later.
Finally we left for Paris, and returned our Fiat Panda right on time, again in the Snappelin efficiency of 10 minutes before the Avis closed.
Tuesday, March 20
Passport-less, illegal and apt for deportation
I have the tendency of forgetting everything, but this time I really crossed the line. The international-line of forgetfulness. I was meeting my mom in Geneva for the weekend, and since I had a dissertation due on the Monday I got back, a friend had offered to look over it and correct my grammar/writing style atrocities.
Well, I end up going to sleep at three in the morning, right after packing and correcting the paper, and waking up at 4:30 for my 6 o clock train. I get to the station on time, get on the right train; everything seems to be just as a responsible person would have done it. So I close my eyes on voiture 18, place 53 and fall asleep for 3 hours of beautiful sleep. About fifteen minutes before getting to Geneva, I wake up and hear the voice of the girl next to me asking her mom what she was holding in her hands. The mom explains that “La Suize c’est pas chez nous” and so they need identity cards.
Shit, my passport.
Wait, wait, let me paint the picture for you. You know that sound that fingernails make when you scratch them against a blackboard added to the headache from not having a good night’s sleep in a long time? Well, I heard that, along with the voice inside my head telling me I was going to get deported back to… France? US? Colombia???
It was my first time in Switzerland, I hadn’t gotten off the train, and I was already there illegally. I start praying. Kinda like when I cooked for my birthday, but this time it was praying in addition to cold sweat on my forehead and a horrible headache.
So I get off of the train, and as I am passing passport-control, I explain to the officer I left it in Paris.
By now I was thinking- What are passports, seriously? What are these paper things that define “where” we are from and how hard it is for us to get in and out of certain places? What are nationalities and countries, and what in the world are PASSPORTS? How can a piece of paper, that doesn’t even have your criminal record on it, determine anything about your life? And yet it suffices to go through immigration with a Colombian passport in any developed country to realize that it matters a lot. To whom? I’m not sure, but it matters.
I vote we get rid of this bureaucratic idiosyncrasy and if necessary start carrying around our criminal records. That says a lot, not a piece of paper that determines where you were born or where you were naturalized. Ugggh.
Back to the story- the second officer I talked to asked me my nationality, where I lived, why, etc. etc, and told me I could either go back to Paris, and come back to Geneva, this time making sure not to forget the passport, or “take the risk of staying.” So of course, I inquired if by ‘risk’ he meant I would get arrested as soon as I crossed the sliding glass doors into apparent freedom. He explained it was a 200 Euro fine, but that I would not get fined immediately, only if on the day I returned to Paris I was asked for it again and didn’t have it.
So of course, I go the illegal way and take the risk. The train ticket would have cost half of the fine, plus the three hours of travelling that I could be spending with my mommy and the headache again.
My train on the way back was at 5:00 in the morning. Apparently bad people don’t travel that early because there was no passport control in Geneva or Paris. Fiuf.
Now to the fun part- I had an incredible weekend with my mom. Geneva is like camp for adults who want to make the world a better place. You have the building where you cure everyone, Medecins sans Frontiers, the building where you make sure everyone is getting sufficient medication, OMS, the building where you make sure no one fights, ONU, and the building where you make sure workers have fair pays and nice environments. Really, its like the city of the future, for the alleviation of humanity from its own nature. I loved it.
We saw the United Nations of babies in a park- one of them was having a birthday party (probably turning 2 years old), and you could see all of his little friends were all from different continents and their parents had to communicate via a translator, or their fifth language, English or French. Seeying those 2 year olds I understood why 53% of Geneva’s population holds a foreign passport.
Geneva was really amazing. Maybe it’s the fact that I grew up in Colombian hecticness, but I don’t think I could ever live in such a calm place, but it was a great trip.
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