el quijote

 
This is one of my favorite photographs by Leo Matiz, a Colombian photographer born April Fool's day 1917 in Aracataca, the "Macondo" of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. An artist and photographer, his illustrious career spanned the Americas as well as shows in Europe from 1933 - 1997. His portrayal of the people of South and Central America is both stark and fantastically human, capturing their lives on film in a way that brings us all into his world. In 1998 he was recognised by the Colombian Government as being the most significant photographer of the 20th century to come out of Colombia. He died in 1998. 

fresh look

In an attempt to not spend much money this weekend, I'm spending some time at home with my HTML. Browse the side bar, I've updated links, quotations, pics, etc, etc, etc. In particular, I've added quite a few photography links including some interesting nudes.

There's an entirely new section on Madrid to replace the one about the Maldives for those who would like to know more about where I'm living. There are also some fantastic links to galleries with beautiful pictures of Madrid.

Under "Photography"
Faces of Chemotherapy is a heart wrending photo diary of one man's fight with cancer. http://www.pbase.com/etlea/faces_of_mh If you know anyone that has had the same fight, it will bring you to tears. May he rest in peace.

Under "Movies"
I put a link to the page of one of my favorite directors as well as a couple of movies I've discovered of late. Sally Potter's page writes and directs things that are a little off beat including "Orlando," "The Tango Lesson," and her latest, "Yes," which was done entirely in prose...something I only realised a bit into the movie. It was very reminiscent of Shakespeare and (I thought) very well done. Her webpage like her movies is very personal and a little different.

Enjoy!

the new flat....

I met the flatmates today in the flat that I really liked and we got on well. Maria is Spanish, and Yunuen is from Mexico. The flat is a light and airy 200m2 with surprisingly light wooden floors. The furniture is rather eclectic, with white dusters thrown over the two sofas and there is a large table in the dining area (part of the large living room) as well as a breakfast table in the large kitchen. A balcony opens off of the living room and the flat has windows on both sides with which we can see our neighbors. There will be four of us in the flat, although I've only met the two girls because Juan is on holiday. There is a fifth bedroom which is used as a drying closet (a place to hang clothes to dry) and also as a spare bedroom for friends and family, as it has a double bed.

The neighborhood is full of museums, parks, cheap places to eat drink and be merry; and the stadium is only a ten minute walk. I love the neighborhood because it feels full of life and families. It's the sort of place that old people come out and sit to watch everyone.

Anyway...if you've been meaning to visit me for the longest time and was just waiting for me to move somewhere closer to the rest of the world...make your plans this year :-)

my adventures madrid so far...

I arrived in Madrid after not having slept in two days and a long (12ish hours) drinking session that ended only when I checked in.

I spent most of the day riding the metro and staring into space, pausing only to get off, walk around or sit staring into space.

Paloma, the woman who rented me a room for these days, spoke English; my flatmates did not. I have no idea who my flatmates are, but I did meet one from Andalucia...it turns out that I REALLY don't understand the accent, but he was very friendly and chatty none-the-less and I asked him questions about the parts of the conversation I actually understood and made enthusiastic noises the rest of the time.

There's NOTHING in the neighborhood where I'm staying except for a few tiny very overpriced markets. I've lived off of a can of tuna, a couple of bananas, a jar of garbanzo beans, a box of juice and a can of olives for days.

*Note for the guys* there are a great many beautiful women's asses in Madrid

Today I missed seeing one flat, saw two others and loved the second flat and was very attracted to the man (45 yrs old) in the first flat.

I really like the barrio of the 2nd flat. It's the first barrio (neighborhood) that I've liked so far. I've walked 10 hours today in high heels with 14 kgs of books on my (poor) back.

The second flatmate I met was Juan and looks just like the nicer of the two con men in Nueve Reinas (Nine Queens- brilliant film from Argentina). We laughed and joked until late last night and then I dyed my hair to get rid of the roots. It was horrible. I don't know why, but the roots turned brilliant orange, the rest of the hair went darker brown than before and the highlights turned yellow and orange!!

After work, instead of feeding my poor screaming stomach, I walked into the first hairdressers´I saw and asked them to fix it. They had to dye it twice to finally get rid of the orange. Now, it's fairly uh...well...black. I'll try to fix/change it to a more natural color in the next month or so as I've got money.

I had four (small) beers today in record time. (If you know me, you know that I can drink one beer for everyone else's two-three...so it was my record, not yours.)
My feet hurt.
I'm going home now.

another embarrassing admission...

Ok, this is the saddest one of all. After cooking nothing but the grandest of meals for the two weeks or so that I was just in London, I have been living off of nothing since I got to Madrid two days ago. You see, the first day I was shattered after not sleeping all night at the airport. When I got to Madrid I had 8 hours to pass before I could even meet up with the person I was renting a room in a flat from. The first two hours were passed just riding the metro from place to place, line to line trying to decide where to get off.

When I did get off...there was nothing much there although it's one of the major bus connections to the city and surrounding areas. I sat on a bench for another hour or more, ate an apple that was so green it made my teetch hurt, then got back on the metro. I jumped off in all of the neighborhoods I was looking at renting in with no luck...although I did find an area full of Chinese but no Chinese restaurants.

I did find a bar and got a surprisingly good calamari baguette...it had 5 calamari rings on a baguette...and a little salt. It wasn't exactly filling but I moved on. I never saw a single market or grocery store in all of my walking about, nor a place to buy a sim card which I thought especially strange because in Barcelona you can't spit at your own feet without hitting three competing mobile phone stores.

At my flat around 7pm, I took a shower and perhaps stared into space for awhile before deciding that I really needed food since I hadn't slept since Monday (and it was now Wednesday night). Unfortunately, my neighborhood is very far away from the world and only has a few odd (tiny) shops. I could get Colombian ice-creams, Brazilian chilis (mmmmm....brazilian chilis.....) pasta (can't eat more pasta now..I ate too much in England) and a few other odds and ends. What did I get? Bananas, a box of juice, a bottle of garbanzo beans, a can of tuna and a can of anchovy stuffed olives (drooling noises). I mixed these together with chili and ate them at room temperature. I remembered my Dad happily. He eats from cans and bottles too.

The worst of it is that today, that's pretty much what I got too since I didn't leave the office until 10pm and so I couldn't go looking in this great city for food. sigh...no olives tonight. The juice is good though.

Yes, Zorba, I know..."Juice is not food." but maybe it is if you are thinking about the fruit it came from?

slip of the tongue...

So...I had a meeting with my new boss tonight. I just took a job in Madrid and will be teaching rather respectable executives, officials and otherwise rich, famous and powerful people. As such, I have been careful to keep my neck covered (I have a rather large tattoo on my neck which I got while delirious with typhoid fever in Peru 3 years ago) Tonight I was wearing a lovely silk kerchief the color of my eyes tied round my neck in a way that I imagine to be fetching.

I was looking over the books that I would be using in my lessons next week and my boss said, "Is something wrong with your neck?" I froze, eyes went wide, voice quiet and said, "I have a tattoo." This received a blank stare. I continued while playing with the ends of the kerchief, "I usually wear something to cover it while I'm at work." I took a deep breath, she was still staring blankly then suddenly snapped back to attention with a confused look, "No, I mean you're..." and she demonstrated a rather pained looking stretch of the neck, "I noticed it when you were on the computer. You looked like you were in pain." I answered with a momentary blank stare then, "Oh! Um, yes, I have a bad back and neck. I was in a lot of car wrecks as a teenager. It's worse because I haven't been doing my yoga."
"You haven't been doing it lately? Why?!"
"I uh, well, it's a routine thing and it gets interrupted and I forget when I travel."

We went back to what we were doing and with her back turned, I bit my lips and closed my eyes against the laugh at my slip. No, mystery has never been my forte´.

a lovely side of london

This week I've seen a side of London which I've never seen before. I went food shopping at Tesco's on Old Kent Road early one morning and it was full of old people. The most amazing thing was that they didn't possess the same rules as the rest of London. They were older and had moved beyond those things. Not only did they make eye contact, but they were very chatty. They commented on my basket full of vegetables and chilis, made jokes about things I looked at and were generally full of laughter.

When I was at the cheese counter, no one offered to help. The staff just sort of stood around and a ways away from the counter. I observed for a few minutes and an old man next to me reached over the guard and helped himself to the (wrapped) cheeses. "If he did it, I'll do it," I thought, and reached around and did it. This was great for the first 4 cheeses (yes, after two nearly cheeseless years in the Maldives I was very excited to be able to have cheese again), but the last one was a parmesan and I only wanted half. I gave a yell and was being helped, although the contact was so minimal that no one would have known had they been watching...which two old women were. "Young man! Young man! Is this young lady being served?? Is she being served??!!" The young man was oblivious while cutting my cheese and didn't answer. Part of me heard them but most of me wasn't prepared for strangers in London taking interest in others for no apparent reason. "Young lady...Young lady! Are you being served??" My reaction was slightly delayed by the shock of being spoken to, but I managed, "Um, yes, I am. Thank you very much for asking." Satisfied, they moved on, but I was so stunned.

Finally, in the check out, there was this lovely, tiny, ancient old woman in front of me. She noticed my wine (Jacob's Creek Shiraz, Australia) and said, "Oh, that's a nice one!" I smiled and replied, "Yes, I had a glass last night and it was so lovely that I had to pick up a bottle." She then went on to tell me how she had visited the vineyard and to tell me all about a wine tasting tour of Australia she had had 20 years before. I was enchanted with this darling old woman that, caught up in her own story, nearly forgot to pay, then nearly forgot to leave with her chicken. (Both times, the cashier reminded her.)

On the way home, I was in agony carrying entirely too many groceries. Just at the moment when I didn't think I was going to be able to make it all the way, an older gentleman asked if he could help me. He had a very kind face, so I agreed. His name was Hassan, he was from Turkey and as it turns out, lives 2 doors down from the friends I'm staying with.

I entered the house elated with the feeling that I had experienced a completely different side of London than I had ever known before.

epilepsy...first aid

I recently shared a hotel room with someone that unbeknownst to me, suffers from epilepsy. I knew that he took medication because he would sometimes suddenly lose consciousness, but he had so distanced himself from the label of epilepsy that when it happened that he had a violent seizure I was totally unprepared and didn't know what to do. It was extremely frightening but would have been less so if I had at least been prepared for the possibility.

I have since done a lot of research on epilepsy and would like to share the First Aid tips so that if you ever find yourself in a similar situation, you know what to do. To learn more about epilepsy its many forms, famous people with epilepsy (Dicken, Shelly, Lord Byron, Danny Glover, Socrates...) and so much more, please visit http://www.epilepsy.com

Seizure First Aid
Here are a few things you can do to help someone who is having a seizure of any kind:

When encountering someone having a seizure many people feel ill-equipped in handling this circumstance. They forget that they already have within their possession one essential tool- common sense. The following tips below are simple, common-sense steps to take when responding to a person having a seizure. First-aid isn’t complicated, but it involves a sequence of actions and considerations which are beyond the scope of epilepsy.com. If you haven’t taken a course in first-aid and CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) you can check within your community for classes being offered.

Many seizure types-such as generalized absence seizures or complex partial seizures, which involve relatively brief episodes of unresponsiveness- don’t require any specific first-aid measures. (My own personal comment: Wearing a Medical Alert bracelet and/or telling your friends if you experience these so that they are aware and know what's going on can save undue stress on your friends' parts and expensive unecessary medical treatment on yours.)
-Stay calm

-Prevent injury
During the seizure, you can exercise your common sense by insuring there is nothing within reach that could harm the person if she struck it.

-Pay attention to the length of the seizure

-Make the person as comfortable as possible

-Keep onlookers away

-Do not hold the person down
If the person having a seizure thrashes around there is no need for you to restrain them. Remember to consider your safety as well
(Personal comment: my friend was actually choking and turning blue when he was thrashing around on his back. To clear his airway I kept him on his side but this was easier said than done. He kept thrashing and fighting to be on his back, as such I did actually hold him a bit, which was not easy but I feel/felt was necessary to keep his airway clear.)

-Do not put anything in the person's mouth
Contrary to popular belief, a person having a seizure is incapable of swallowing their tongue so you can breathe easy in the knowledge that you do not have to stick your fingers into the mouth of someone in this condition.
(Personal comment as per the Neurologist we consulted: It used to be thought tha putting a spoon in their mouth to prevent them from biting their tongue was helpful, but that has since been debunked. I did try the spoon in the mouth and it was hard to keep it in the mouth of someone thrashing about. It DID stop him from biting his tongue unnless it was a coincidence that the blood stopped coming, but given the Dr's advice and the great difficulty of keeping the spoon in his mouth, I wouldn't do it again.

-Do not give the person water, pills, or food until fully alert

-If the seizure continues for longer than five minutes, call 911

-Be sensitive and supportive, and ask others to do the same

After the seizure, the person should be placed on her left side. Keep in mind there is a small risk of post-seizure vomiting, before the person is fully alert. Therefore, the person’s head should be turned so that any vomit will drain out of the mouth without being inhaled. Stay with the person until she recovers (5 to 20 minutes).

Topic Editor:Steven C. Schachter, M.D.
Last Reviewed:7/19/04

Seizures in Airplanes

If a person is having a major seizure is in a crowded plane miles above the earth, the rules for first aid are different. Here are some tips:

-Clear space by folding up seat arms. Ask a flight attendant to find new seats for the other passengers in the row.

-Lie the person down across the seats with the head and body turned on one side. Make sure that the airway is clear and breathing is not obstructed.

-Arrange pillows or blankets to prevent the person's head from hitting unpadded areas.

-When the seizure stops, help the person into a resting position in a single reclining seat.

If the seizure continues for more than about 5 minutes or is immediately followed by another one, tell the flight attendant that the person may be experiencing a medical emergency and may need emergency care.

Seizures in Water

For many people, the scariest aspect of epilepsy is not knowing when or where a seizure will occur. In certain situations, a loss of consciousness is especially dangerous and emergency care must go beyond the routine procedures. A seizure in water is one of these life-threatening situations.

Here are steps to follow if someone is having a seizure in water:

-Support the person in the water with the head tilted so the face and head stay above the surface.

-Remove the person from the water as quickly as possible.

-Check to see whether the person is breathing. If not, begin CPR immediately.

-Call an ambulance. Even if the person appears to be fully recovered, he or she should have a full medical checkup. Inhaling water can cause lung or heart damage.

*Note: All advice concerning first aid for seizures was taken directly from http://www.epilepsy.com