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
