Divebomb notations
May. 31st, 2011 03:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaBack from Barcelona. The joke is Continental does pretty good service recovery, it was all recovery and no service. (Ironically I only flew Continental because I had a $1K certificate... which they gave me as service recovery.) Literally did not make a single connecting flight either way; was in Lisbon for three unplanned hours and Bangor, Maine for one. Luckily I am interested in shiz like aerial flyovers of unfamiliar geography. Lisbon was v. attractive and has been marked down for a proper future visit.
Also: in the continuing saga of my stolen purse, my old passport got flagged when someone tried to enter the US with it illegally, so it was all very Jason Bourne at customs for five minutes there. Mostly I feel sad for whomever it was: unlikely it was eg. a CIA-trained assassin, rather than someone just trying for a better life.
Also-also: I left a very few postcards with the hotel front desk. The last time I tried this, in Rio, they were never sent (or at least none arrived), but the staff was so stellar this round that I'm cautiously optimistic. Srsly, if you're in the 120EUR range for a double/queen in the centre of what my TimeOut app coyly called "Gayxample", I recommend - as opposed to the old city's picturesque, non-taxi-viable, mugging-friendly alleys that looked dodgy even in broad daylight. This is a real consideration when you know you're getting back to the hotel at 4-5AM for three days in a row. ANYWAY THE POINT OF THIS WAS, I meant to complete more cards on the plane and send them out from Montreal, since Canadian mail is more efficient than Spanish anyway, right? but I just learnt that Canada Post is going on strike starting June 2. = =+ So you may not be getting these any time soon, is what I'm saying. (No, there was no card signup post. I consider some of you ppl regular correspondents, is all.)
Other than that, Barcelona was deliciously awesome, Primavera was stellar, and I was on top of my inbox by noon, via sheer superhuman desperation. Some stuff which will probably show up in various formats here and on Tumblr:
* a Barcelona food resource post for bookmarking purposes
* music post - scored some Spanish indie CDs at the Miro Foundation of all places, there was a temp exhibit
* Primavera: the city filled up with Britishers XD not drunk enough for Of Montreal or PIL, too drunk for Flaming Lips (yes I know this seems like it would be hard to achieve; a sorry story there involving malfunctioning technology), Grinderman and Neubauten on different nights, barrier position at Belle and Sebastian and Pulp back-to-back, PJ Harvey (enjoyed this set immensely for an artist whose body of work I don't know at all), James Blake, Jamie XX, Lindstrom, Odd Future... LOL
* went to the beach in Sitges, the Dali Museum in Figueres, and the Cathedral in Girona which was built over a Roman temple
* read 2/3 of Origin of Species - good stuff, comfort reading in fact, clear thinking and proper science - want to talk about this and The Knife's opera (which got it right! so I felt I had the musical version first) and Picasso who also kept pigeons and painted them, and cathedral-building - it's not one fellow with a brainstorm upon viewing some finches, but the distillation of a 20-year, 30-year conversation: a roll call of hundreds of naturalists and geologists and livestock breeders and odd men who spent months putting bits of coloured wax in beehives - although I have a sinking suspicion that were I to ask what Gaudi (and wondrous naturalist he was) thought of the theory of evolution I would not like the answer
* watched on plane: The Hurt Locker and 1.5 Bourne movies
* my Dunnett notes are so extraneously ridic I think I'll post the NYT-style abstract instead
Also: in the continuing saga of my stolen purse, my old passport got flagged when someone tried to enter the US with it illegally, so it was all very Jason Bourne at customs for five minutes there. Mostly I feel sad for whomever it was: unlikely it was eg. a CIA-trained assassin, rather than someone just trying for a better life.
Also-also: I left a very few postcards with the hotel front desk. The last time I tried this, in Rio, they were never sent (or at least none arrived), but the staff was so stellar this round that I'm cautiously optimistic. Srsly, if you're in the 120EUR range for a double/queen in the centre of what my TimeOut app coyly called "Gayxample", I recommend - as opposed to the old city's picturesque, non-taxi-viable, mugging-friendly alleys that looked dodgy even in broad daylight. This is a real consideration when you know you're getting back to the hotel at 4-5AM for three days in a row. ANYWAY THE POINT OF THIS WAS, I meant to complete more cards on the plane and send them out from Montreal, since Canadian mail is more efficient than Spanish anyway, right? but I just learnt that Canada Post is going on strike starting June 2. = =+ So you may not be getting these any time soon, is what I'm saying. (No, there was no card signup post. I consider some of you ppl regular correspondents, is all.)
Other than that, Barcelona was deliciously awesome, Primavera was stellar, and I was on top of my inbox by noon, via sheer superhuman desperation. Some stuff which will probably show up in various formats here and on Tumblr:
* a Barcelona food resource post for bookmarking purposes
* music post - scored some Spanish indie CDs at the Miro Foundation of all places, there was a temp exhibit
* Primavera: the city filled up with Britishers XD not drunk enough for Of Montreal or PIL, too drunk for Flaming Lips (yes I know this seems like it would be hard to achieve; a sorry story there involving malfunctioning technology), Grinderman and Neubauten on different nights, barrier position at Belle and Sebastian and Pulp back-to-back, PJ Harvey (enjoyed this set immensely for an artist whose body of work I don't know at all), James Blake, Jamie XX, Lindstrom, Odd Future... LOL
* went to the beach in Sitges, the Dali Museum in Figueres, and the Cathedral in Girona which was built over a Roman temple
* read 2/3 of Origin of Species - good stuff, comfort reading in fact, clear thinking and proper science - want to talk about this and The Knife's opera (which got it right! so I felt I had the musical version first) and Picasso who also kept pigeons and painted them, and cathedral-building - it's not one fellow with a brainstorm upon viewing some finches, but the distillation of a 20-year, 30-year conversation: a roll call of hundreds of naturalists and geologists and livestock breeders and odd men who spent months putting bits of coloured wax in beehives - although I have a sinking suspicion that were I to ask what Gaudi (and wondrous naturalist he was) thought of the theory of evolution I would not like the answer
* watched on plane: The Hurt Locker and 1.5 Bourne movies
* my Dunnett notes are so extraneously ridic I think I'll post the NYT-style abstract instead
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no subject
Date: 2011-05-31 10:54 pm (UTC)(although I'm as yet undecided as to whether I should take Lymond #5 with me on my break. it's that, or a brick ton of Jane Austen. ???)
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Date: 2011-06-01 02:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-01 04:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-01 09:29 pm (UTC)I saw some Dunnett books at the bookstore, and thought of you! But I ended up going with Diana Wynne Jones instead >>
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Date: 2011-06-01 08:11 pm (UTC)and i wish i didn't hate large crowds...Did you catch any of the "BARCA WON THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE!!!" madness?XD
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Date: 2011-06-02 05:19 pm (UTC)I was in the food area and there was some celebratory singing among the food cart staff, who had their radios on, and then Mogwai said something about it onstage. XD And of course there were a lot of ppl wearing Barça shirts in the metro beforehand, including a whole bunch of Asian tourists - like, this team apparently has a lot of Asian fans? LOL I guess I don't always expect Livejournal to reflect real life. The day afterward it was quiet, which was kind of weird, because when Montreal wins an important hockey match ppl riot in the streets = = and if the Italian, Brazilian, Greek etc. communities win at national soccer they drive around with flags out the back windows honking. But in Barcelona everyone just wears soccer shirts (especially the little kids, every boy 12-and-under was in a soccer shirt) and looks happy.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-02 08:16 pm (UTC)I guess Barca has fans everywhere since they play pretty attractive soccer and have the (arguably) best player of the world in their team. Maybe people were busy <a href="http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/police-clash-with-protesters-in-barcelona/<i>with the protests</i>?
no subject
Date: 2011-06-02 09:25 pm (UTC)(Jokes aside it's awful that the police went in like that, I was there on the previous Sunday and it was completely peaceful. There were little kids playing ball for cripes' sake. There were students camping out in the square in Girona as well, and many other cities.)