Ooops, I forgot to post, and now it’s bedtime… tomorrow maybe…
Just one thing – I did count, and it is literally 6 branches although within literally 30 seconds walk…
And to Jo:

Right that’s another thing ticked off – got my bank account today, and how easy it was – waltzed in with my passport, told them my address, 10 minutes later I walk out with an account – try and do that in the UK. Of course it’s probably not the best account I could get, but that can wait. It’s interesting how your priorities change – if I was in the UK I’d be hunting around for a good interest rate, asking people what they think of their banks, worrying about which one is the least evil. Here I’m presented with about a million choices – there are literally branches for six different banks within two minutes walk of my flat (Yup, I hate the word literally too, and there may not be six, I’m just guessing) – and all I want is a simple account so I can get paid. So I asked my Spanish flatmate Nacho (I think) which one he thought was good, he told me his and I went there – my banking Spanish stretches to "I’d like to open a current account please" and thankfully that was all I needed.

Today also I bought some bedding and this is kind of the point where one feels one has arrived. It’s kind of an investment that stands as an acknowledgement that, ok, I’m definitely not humping this onto a plane and getting out of here anytime soon. Although actually I am, I’ll be back in the bay briefly for Christmas (without my bedding).

Having arrived I’d like to reel off a little mushy acceptance speech and thank everyone who got me here – particularly my family – mummy and daddy for being endlessly supportive, Hannah for telling me to get my butt back for Christmas, Ben for the awesome madrileño t-shirt, Sarah for not saying goodbye. Also all you kids who came to my adieu party and gave me such awesome presents, props most obviously to Marcus for being forever a dude and Jo for, amongst other things, driving a shedload of traffic to my site (not entirely sure why that works). Then, of course, there’s Elisa who provided me with plenty encouragement, long-distance Spanish lessons, and a place to stay for my first week here, also Alba y Laura for letting be plonk myself down there. High in the encouragement stakes too is Caro, always ready for an online chat and particularly helped out when I was despairing of ever finding somewhere to stay, and everyone else who stays in touch electronically, who comes to visit, all International Bangorians wherever they may be.

Right, I think the orchestra kicked in an hour ago and half of that was drowned out. Thanks a bunch guys!

Incidentally I’ve just started using Windows Live Writer to write my blog posts with and weirdly it’s a piece of Microsoft software that doesn’t suck – it does produce some kooky html but in general I’m pretty pleased.

One other thing… about those photos – I was working on a ginormous panorama of my room but Photoshop ate up all 8gb of free disk space I had trying to do it and died. I’m not sure why I only have 8gb of disk space but am working on it.

I am now thoroughly ensconced in my new place, only got here after dark though so photos will have to wait.

Yesterday, despite the unwanted teaching in the morning, was an awesome day. After I finished work I met up with Vicky and we spent most of the rest of the day wandering around Madrid, drinking in the city. We stopped for lunch and then later at an Irish bar (worryingly my fourth of this stay already). Alex and Andres, fellow former Bangorites, then showed up and I abandoned them to the football as I went of to move some of my stuff into my new place, rejoining them for a midnight dinner. We wandered between a few bars until the night took it’s toll and I said goodbye to the others. Unfortunately I forgot my camera but here’s a photo of us freezing our bottoms off (reminder to self: dress more sensibly):

The night didn’t end quite so well. One of the problems with living where I have been is that I haven’t had a key. As both I and my host were out separately last night we tried to arrange a meet-up, which did work, things went down hill from there. I won’t write about it in detail – but sufficed to say, quantities of illicit substances (not the soft kind) were involved, as was some fairly heavy racism and other prejudices and personal attacks, some driving under the influence and well, you get the picture. We parted on terms which could have been better.

Still, my excellent navigational skills came in useful and that’s all in the past now, I have a nice new room and looking forward to the coming week!

Here’s a thing:
Can you put these Modal Axillaries in order of strength of probability? I struggled.

can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, will, would

and, furthermore, which ones have I missed out?

But I won’t be staying there long… ‘cos I finally found a flat, and’ll move in this weekend = awesome. I’ll blog with some more and photos once I move in – but the important information = no cats but no pool either.

Cats are not in my good book right now – one of them just lept on my keyboard and broke the ‘t’ key… yup that’s right, no sooner do I get the ‘k’ fixed than another one gets done…. ggrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

In similarly annoying news – work, after telling me on wednesday that if I ever need to work a Saturday I’ll get 2 weeks notice, today told me I have to give a three hour private lesson tomorrow – particularly annoying as Vicky is coming to Madrid and we were going to meet up for the morning. Anyway, I hope this doesn’t portend of things to come.

For the formula one fans out there (not sure what the plural’s for) we had an interesting digression in yesterday’s lesson talking about the Alonso Hamilton thing… I’ve seen several large adverts in the metro with a McLaren car which have been graffitied with a little speech bubble coming from the cockpit saying “Puto Hamilton” and mentioned this to my class, who were amused and said – Spaniards don’t hate Hamilton, they hate his dad – because whenever Hamilton wins there he is on the screen grinning like an idiot, but when he doesn’t win he’s nowhere to be seen. Not entirely sure what that means but anyway.

On a somewhat connected sidenote the person I’m living with works for a company that sponsors McLaren and has a hat signed by both of the drivers.

Here is the view from where I’m staying at the moment:

And yes, I have recently discovered the “Load Files into Stack” and “Auto-Align Layers” commands in Photoshop.
Right, now I’m off to find somewhere to live.

(P.S. Yesterday’s class was good)

Got the old contract signed today – so I’m now welded to my company (at least until July).

And I had the difficult class again – it went better than last time but… the thing is two of the three of them are at a much lower level than the third and I think I’m doing them all a disservice – the two because the material is too hard for them, and the one because he’s obviously getting bored while I try and hammer things out with the other two. I’m not really sure what the solution it, I’ll discuss it again with my supervisors and try and balance things a bit more but still… no sé…

Also trying to work out if I can come home for Christmas… I kind of have the time and money but only kind of, and it’s logistically difficult… let’s see…

And finally – here’s a spy photo I took of the inside of the Canon offices, only really for the fun of taking it with an Olympus camera… hmmm, is this why people get fired for having blogs¿¿¿¿

Now it’s pretty obvious, and those of you who teach already know this I’m sure, but it’s amazing how much difference some enthusiastic students make. Yesterday, as I mentioned, did not go well. I had a bunch of uncooperative students that claimed a much higher level than they really were, didn’t like me and had been forced there by the company. Today’s were friendlier, self-motivated and realistic about their own level. And I might almost go as far as to say that we had fun.
The two hours extra training this morning also made a big difference.

In addition, to make me feel even more at home, it’s raining cats and dogs.

Here is what it looks like outside the canon offices where I’m working at the moment:

Things have been rather frought it must be said, these few days past. Hence – lack of posting.

I am still flat-less, and have been unceremoniously dismissed from where I was. Providence landed me a floor to kip on though, which at least allows me iron my shirts in the morning and not pay for a hostel.

Today was my first day at work (after only three hours sleep – don’t ask). I only managed the two hours training due to the whole company seeming to be a little bit bound to bedlam, but was handed the teaching manuals this morning and told to prepare. I’ve also managed two of the four steps to fully-paid-up Spanish salary-man. That is – I have a social security number and a Demanda de Empleo (I don’t really know what this is but you need one in order to have a contract), the steps remaining being an identity number (apparently very hard to get) and a bank account (mixed signals).

My first job was teaching level 3 English (which means they should have the simple tenses but not much else grammatically) to three executives at Canon (where I’m based all week, and will probably do the majority of my hours). It was… umm… not a complete disaster. Well, I’m going to speak to my supervisors tomorrow and then I might write about what it was like.

Now, I think I am going to quietly die.

Here I am preparing my lesson:

Haha, no seriously – that’s me.

hey kids and kiddos… it’s going to be a short and uninteresting one I’m afraid, as I’m dead beat – and likely to stay so for awhile.

So I have a job, teaching English to business people – and I start tomorrow… which should be interesting to jump straight into teaching without any training or anything eh?

The whole flat thing is a bit more problematic – someone (and I’ll mention no names Elisa) forgot to tell me that I actually have to move out of where I’m staying on Monday, not the beginning of December as previously thought – this makes things rather difficult… anyway, I’m trying.

I must confess to having had some fairly heavy ‘what on earth am I doing… I can’t do this’ moments… particularly when struggling through telephone conversations in Spanish or thinking about trying to correct some CEO’s grammar or something… Coming home on the Metro after an incredibly intense day today I felt properly homesick for the first time in my life – but I pulled myself together and went to look at another flat, finally coming home at about 10.30.

I don’t really know what I think about being here. It’s an incredibly challenging thing for me for a whole heap of reasons – and I know it’s going to work out for the best in the end – but still, many of the moments are proving pretty hardcore at the moment. I think Elisa said it best – “I guess you are a bit desoriented there.” Well yes, pretty flipping desoriented – reeling actually.

Anyway, promise I won’t get sentimental again for a while.

Besos.

I must confess to having been rather distracted these last few days from the task at hand, also, to having changed tack somewhat.

What I got distracted by, among other things, was my (very) long term project – Adventures in Cities. I’ve been making sketches for it for a while – you can see some at this Picasa Album – but being back in a big city sparked it off again and I turned the initial sketch at the top, into the fleshed out concept piece at the bottom.

Which I then did a test animation of which you can see at my Screencasts page. (Watch out there – it’s a pretty big file and the stupid player seems to load it along with the page)

It’s a proof-of-concept and a little rough around the edges, but I think we’re getting somewhere.

So… changing tack.
I browsed through a lot of flats but didn’t get as far as enquiring about any of them. One of the things that held me back (besides a little fear over having to use my Spanish in such an intense and competitive arena) was that lots of them required that you be employed… I was expecting this, but perhaps not expressed quite so explicitly, and was planning on blagging it – anyway, I didn’t see any jobs that require you have a flat, so thought I’d tackle that. I’ve done my first trawl, and applied to a dozen or so… I even went a little mad and applied for an acting job… and I’ve got my first interview this afternoon and another tomorrow. Here’s hoping… I’m not very good at selling myself.

Last night we went to a concert at La Casa Encendida. Here’s a video:

I wish I knew who the guy was… but no… anyway it was pretty cool. My excitement was dampened somewhat though by discovering afterwards that what I thought was a really elegant analogue system was in fact just Digital Performer running on a MacBook. Now computers are awesome and everything but the fact that they allow you to do anything kind of takes the fun out of doing weird things. Oh well. Here’s a photo of a guitar rigged up to be played by a spring connected to a loudspeaker. The guitar is mounted on springs too:

Partied rather hard last night… until about 5.30… and hence had a rather non-existent day today – getting used to the different timetable to life here is going to take some doing.

I thought now might be the appropriate time to show this short film that I made with my sister back at Easter. It’s been finished (sans titles) for quite a while but I was waiting for now. It’s called “Physical Objects”.

I followed my nose today and, like Paddington, it led me round pretty much in circles. But that’s alright – if circles are predestined then circles it is.
I started though by taking an obligatory photo for the start of my life as a madrileño:

… couple news items I forgot:

Not really useful to anyone, but I have a short film playing at the Bath Film Festival’s Make It Short Event this Sunday.

And, I got a distinction (subject to ratification) for my Masters.

Sometimes news is nice.

Blogs are pretty boring when they blather on about the mundanities of daily life and so I’ve always tried to not bother with that stuff, but seeing as how there are things some of you might be wondering I thought I’d do exactly that here.

If you think that’s pretty boring… skip to the end where I’ll put an interesting link.

So I’m in Madrid approximately here staying in a flat for a few days courtesy of Elisa (see left), a very great friend who’s currently living in Peru, with her sister Alba (see below, picture by Elisa). I can only stay here a little while while their other sister, Laura, is away.
So I got here yesterday, I’ve been before so found it pretty easily, met Alba, settled my stuff in, chatted in Spanish as much as possible, started to do some tasks I should have already – namely writing a CV and translating my references into Spanish – before taking a really early night.

My plan for the next few days is to put off looking for a job straight away and to look for a flat, preferable a flat share because otherwise I probably won’t be able to afford it for more than about five minutes (prices are pretty high here – nowhere near London but… did you know… the average Spaniard leaves home at the age of 32). Also I have plenty of other little tasks to distract me from the main ones.

Lots of people have asked me why I’ve come to Madrid, also they ask my mum, who tends to make answers up, so I thought I’d try and lay some reasons out here, for posterities sake, or whatever…

It wasn’t a sudden decision but something I’ve been planning for a couple of years – I guess sometimes my decisions seem sudden because I don’t really like to bang on about them before they’re definite.

To start with, as probably everyone knows, I don’t really like England.. my reasons are numerous but they’re mainly cultural, political and sociological… if ever I can be bothered to explain it’ll be the most boring treatise ever… nevertheless that suggested I might think about going somewhere else.

I’ve never had the inclination to travel, and still don’t, but my last year at Bangor University opened my eyes to the wonderfulness of diversity in peoples, cultures and languages, something that I wanted to experience and also have a part of. Languages in particular are very important to me, despite being pretty much monolingual, partly because of studying linguistics – which opened up some of their richness – partly because I like to try and express things with language and I love English, I want to tap into the opportunities afforded by other languages. Also, one day, I want to try and raise some polyglot children.
So then, we’ve established I want to move from England, live within a different culture, and learn other languages – why then Spain and Spanish.

Well, firstly, I have a number of Spanish friends – there were a large group of Spaniards at Bangor and I lived with one of them, as well as with a Mexican – this makes it a more accessible country, gives me more motivation to learn the language (this started after my first visit here when my appalling lack of ability to communicate left me frustrated and determined to start learning). Also living with two Spanish speakers exposed me to the language, living with speakers of different varieties of Spanish opened up more points of interest within it.

Secondly Spanish is a pretty important world language, arguably spoken more than English (depends on who you count). Some even argue that before long it will be the dominant language in the United States (I think even we can see its growing influence in the increasing number of Hispanic characters and indeed the increasing occurrence of spoken Spanish in TV and films (take, for example, Scrubs) and when that happens – maybe the world. Also speaking Spanish opens up other parts of the world that I’d like to experience.

Thirdly, Spain is a pretty easy country to get to, my ticket this time cost £28 and that included taxes and carbon offsetting, so I haven’t gone very far really.

There are other reasons too, many of them weird, some of them personal, but you get the gist, unless you’ve fallen asleep.

I promise not to write so long an entry for a very long time.

So… Besitos. Out.

Here’s the link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/08/nadvert108.xml

(Besitos means little kisses by the way).