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Children's day. Got a big strawberry-cream cake, which is our favorite. Oralia went to visit Salma, the daughter of a friend of hers, who was delighted to get colored pencils and other goodies.
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Got a little film development tank for two rolls. Will get the chemicals next, after I ask Mr. Internet about which developer to use for which film. We've been shooting plenty of Tri-X and people seem to like developing it in XTOL, although everyone has their favorite film/developer cocktail. It should be fun to experiment with this stuff.
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Watched Quiz Show on video, a really good movie. It would be interesting to see how the original scandal was like — if it is just supposed to be entertainment, who cares if it is rigged? And why is everybody afraid to touch the media? Because they can tell the world that you are an idiot?
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We watched Legally Blonde on video last night. Pretty amusing, stupid movie.
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Had lunch at Oralia's parent's place. Saw Rubén and Adriana while there, and had pretty good tinga and vegetable soup.
Went to visit my brother, mother, and grandmother afterwards.
We went to watch Iedereen beroemd! in the evening. Another amusing movie, and it also deals some heavy blows to the stupid prefab-music industry. Apparently media is equally bad everywhere, and the sad thing is that people trust it. They have no choice, really; most people don't have time to to question whether there are better sources of information or entertainment than the most visible ones.
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It is Oralia's birthday!
It is my brother's birthday, too!
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We found a stray, very small kitten yesterday afternoon. A policewoman there told us the kitten was under the hood of a car and they brought her out by hosing water inside. The kitten was covered in dirt and car grease. So we took her into the office and started giving her a warm bath. Maru came by and helped us with the task, which also involved picking a bunch of fleas off of her fur; Oralia and her did most of that work as my fingernails are too short these days.
We gave the kitten some cat food and milk, and arranged a little cozy box for her to sleep in, in the service room of the office house. Today she seems to be doing better, but still is not completely friendly if you try to carry her. She will only start purring if you cuddle her and try to get her to sleep.
We'll try to find a veterinarian or some friend that can take care of her for us. Unfortunately we are not allowed to keep pets in our apartment :(
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I used to trust the media
to tell me the truth, tell us the truth
but now I've seen the payoffs
everywhere I look
who do you trust when everyone's a crook?
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Saturday: We rented two movies for the weekend. Watched Bridget Jones's Diary. It was pretty entertaining and thankfully does not skimp on the use of black humor. Also, went for tacos al pastor in the afternoon for a late lunch. Mmmmmm.
We went to the Cultural Center of the University to pick up the spring/summer concert program. There is fantastic stuff in there; Shostakovich's and Dvorak's cello concertos, Villa-Lobos's harp concerto, and Bach's concerto for two violins. We went into the new bookstore, which replaced the old and really ugly cafeteria. The bookstore is very nice and cozy; we found photography books by Graciela Iturbide and Pablo Ortiz Monasterio that we should get soon.
We started chatting with a man that I always run into when I'm in campus. He is quite a character. He does figurative painting, studies Mathematics, and roams the city selling his paintings for essentially beggar's money. The conversation started when, in the bookstore, I made a remark about finishing Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy before getting another book on the history of philosophy. So this guy came by and wanted to know how I knew about Russell; I told him. Afterwards he disappeared into the cafeteria (now upstairs from the bookstore) and we caught up with him later. We shared some little cakes with him and talked for a bit. It seems that we'll be conversing with him more in the future; he seems like a very interesting person to learn from.
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Today: Watched Sunshine. Definitely one of the best historical movies I've ever seen.
In the afternoon, we went for lunch at my mother's. Listened to my brother practice an excellent guitar transcription of Bach's 6th suite for cello; totally amazing.
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Oralia was delighted to visit Spain.
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Seville cathedral as seen from the peaceful courtyard of
the Alcázar.
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Stayed until 5:00 AM in the office last night to finish some libgnomeui ATK work. It was nicely productive, but I am not looking forward to doing it again soon :)
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Got a new set of batteries for the F2, as the meter was dead. It is still dead, though. So the old batteries may not be drained yet. Perhaps the stupid DP-2 finder is being recalcitrant again. The exact same thing happened a year ago. Maybe it is taking its spring break again.
Anyways, these days I'm getting fairly good at judging exposure by eye and only resorting to the light meter for indoor photography.
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Stole what used to be Joakim's nice 19" monitor and plugged it to my laptop. Wow. Life is much better now. It is just a bit of a shame that the laptop's top resolution is 1024x768, though.
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Saturday: In the morning, I went to the 25th anniversary breakfast of my elementary school, the Jan Amos Komensky Institute. Found Francisco and Carina there, and had lots of pleasant talk. Mysteriously, none of our other classmates appeared. It was very good to see some of the teachers I liked the most and to recall anecdotes. Finally, talked a bit with Sandra and Elisa, two of my brother's old classmates. Took a little bunch of pictures, which I should be sending to the school soon.
<rant>Why was elementary school so nice and memorable, and junior hight/high school so thoroughly unnerving? Was it the people, the different school, or just the age?</rant>
In the afternoon we went to have lunch with my mother; she wanted to know all about our trip to Seville. She was pretty delighted with the nightgown/jacket that we brought for her, as was my grandmother with the little espresso cup/plate set. Also, we visited Oralia's father and gave him the oil painting set we got for him. In his own words, "that is the best thing you could have got me". He is a quiet grown man who enjoys painting; some of his little pictures hang nicely on our apartment's walls.
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Sunday: Lots of sleep. Maru and Hans Petter invited us for a barbecue in their new house, which was great. Someone had got really good beef from El Buen Bife and it was delicious. We had some trouble lighting up the grill; I think the charcoal may have had some humidity in it. We had a pretty good time with Maru, Hans Petter, Øyvind, Paola, and Leo.
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Today is the first time of the year where I get direct sunlight from my office window. Will have to move the desk around a bit, it seems.
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Fixing focus issues again leads to a lot of deja-vu. Unpleasant deja-vu. I need to get this nailed soon.
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So much to write. We are back from GUADEC in Seville, and it was a blast. I should write something up as I have time.