On Sunday we went to check out the (in)famous Torre Agbar (official site here). Agbar is short for Aguas de Barcelona, the local water company. It’s to be one of those “love-it-or-hate-it” buildings…a lot of locals I’ve spoken to hate it, call it rude names and/or joke about its shape. I’ve heard it referred to as a suppository, phallus or even — goodness gracious, dare I say it? — a pepinillo (cucumber). But if you see it at night, and/or up close, it’s hard not to be impressed. I certainly was impressed after my close-up exploration last night (my only disappointment was eventually running out of battery juice with all those long exposures on my camera!).

We stopped in the very cool and trendy Hotel Diagonal, right next door to the tower. The hotel has a very funky and retro-looking bar, with good-looking servers and an impossible-to-focus-your-eyes-on-even-when-you-haven’t-been-drinking blue bar. In fact, yes, it reminded me a lot of some places in Montreal. The staff were very friendly and not at all snooty when we asked if we could go up to the roof and take some pictures. Smart on their part, because I would definitely recommend this hotel to folks coming to Barcelona! I imagine the rooms are as cool as the rest of the place.

On the roof of the hotel (if you can figure out its high-tech elevators ;-) is a pool that looks really great at night, lit up by purple and orange lights. From the rooftop you also have a perfect vantage point to look at the Torre Agbar, which is a few hundred metres away at most. From the 10th floor you are perhaps 1/3 of the way up the tower, so you get to look both up and down at it. Inside, you can see the glow of elevators zooming up and down inside — very Blade Runner.

On November weekends, they turn on the slowly shifting lights around 8pm and they stay on until 10 or 11pm (presumably in summer things are done a bit later). We were wondering how it would light up — all at once; a slow fade; flickering bits coming on at different times. It turns out it illuminates all at once with a very quick fade-up. It’s quite dramatic, if you happen to be watching at the exact moment (which we were, out the window of the lobby bar).

Vertical panorama of Torre Agbar, before and after “ignition”.

Here are a few high dynamic range (HDR) shots I took this weekend — click for bigger versions.

Sunset at the cemetery

Another view from Montjuïc

Sunset on a farm in Montseny

Yes, you’re right — the skies are beautiful in Barcelona! These are my first experiments with HDR photography…the slightly “surreal” quality is due to the fact that you can see both the “overexposed” sky and the “underexposed” foreground quite clearly.

360-degree panorama from a viewpoint partway up the steep cemetary on Montjuïc, not long before sunset.

By the way (and speaking of death…?), I just realized the blog had its first birthday about a week and a half ago (Nov. 9)…and no one even noticed, not even me! Well, a belated feliz cumpleaños to you, Enlaces Ligeros! Long may your garden grow!

Well, the Grey Cup is on in Winnipeg. The Montreal Alouettes — go team! — are playing rain-soaked British Columbia Lions. And so far it looks like B.C. will win (currently it’s 16-0 in the second quarter). But I don’t care much about that…here in Barcelona it’s 1am and time for bed…after all, I start my advanced Spanish class tomorrow!

Speaking of sleep, I recently heard a fascinating podcast, actually a web version of the great CBC radio show Ideas. This two-part series dealt with sleep and dreaming. Really, really fascinating stuff. You can find Part One of “While You Were Out” here, and Part Two (which deals more with dreaming) here. Over the years, I’ve heard and read a lot about (lucid) dreaming, but I found the Part One especially interesting, since it deals mainly with sleep itself. It’s interesting that so little research has been done on sleeping, at least compared to dreaming. Perhaps in January I’ll try the same month-long experiment they talk about on the show, where you basically go to bed when it naturally gets dark — around 4pm in Montreal in winter — and get up at dawn (around 6h30). You sleep for as long as your body wants to, naturally, which (once sleep debt is paid up) tends to average around 8.25 hours (often split into several sleep sessions). It’s the old-fashioned way, without that new-fangled electric lighting nonsense, just the way (some of) our ancestors used to do it.

At the very least, be sure not to turn on any lights if you get up to go to the bathroom at night!

Today was a beautiful day — in fact we had a beautiful weekend here in Bcn, with clear blue skies and warm sun. Hiking, yesterday, in Montseny park, and today off to the graveyard on Montjuïc to see the vertical walls of tombs (photos to follow at a later date).

Sleep well!

On Monday I left a bit late (13h07) to catch the metro six stops and then walk (jog, in my case) the remaining distance to school for my first lesson, at 13h30. I arrived at the building only a couple of minutes on the wrong side of late (not a big deal if I were Spanish). Although I didn’t want to be sweating for the first fifteen minutes of class, I even less wanted to show up late. All the more since I was joining a class already in progress…the new guy amongst a group who’ve been together already for quite a few weeks. (Quick summary: I am to catch the tail end of the “high intermediate” group, and next week — perhaps — the start of a new “advanced” group). So I didn’t wait for that tiny three-person elevator and instead sprinted up the stairs — sweat-speckled upper lip be damned!

The woman in the office had told me the week before, when I registered, which classroom would be mine (”Madrid”, for this week). I have to admit I was a bit frazzled when I got there — I had a mental map of which class was mine but didn’t actually check to be sure this was “Madrid”… No, it didn’t even cross my mind. [Yes, you know where this story is going…]

To make a long story slightly shorter, I found the class interesting, learned a few new things and felt rather pleased with my quite advanced level compared to the other “high intermediate” students! They had a hard time expressing themselves, pronouncing properly, a very limited vocabulary, and were groaning about concepts like the imperfect tense. Sure I may often miss the very obvious, but I really had no idea what to expect since I’d never been in a Spanish class before. It didn’t seem strange to me that there would be such a large “disconnect” from the other students; also I took a liking to them (they were from Belgium, South Africa, Germany and Switzerland). But I did get a bit suspicious when we started into the Intermediate book around page 25…not toward the end as I would have expected! Most of all, what kept me clued out was that when I introduced myself to the teacher, she didn’t seem surprised to see me. I told her my name, she nodded and made a note in her book, and during class she didn’t once question whether I was in the right place, or mention what level of class we were in (makes sense, since it was an ongoing class and they all knew what level they were in!).

As you’ve surely guessed I missed my first class. At the end of the class I attended, the teacher took me aside and asked very politely whether I’d perhaps like to be transferred into a higher-level course. It was at this point that I discovered this was a Low Intermediate class… ¡Qué tonto! Still, since I haven’t studied grammar so intensively, I did learn one or two things that day.

I quickly rushed over to the “real” Madrid classroom (no pun intended). There I caught up with the teacher of that class, got the homework for the day and a quick summary of what they’d covered.

So I had yet another day to wonder how I would measure up in this new context. Yes, I’m one of those annoying overachievers who always feels like a failure until they finally discover they’re actually doing extremely well at something. The teacher also informed me that, since I’m catching the tail end of (I think) four weeks of high-intermediate, there is a final test on Thursday (that’s tomorrow, now). The test will cover pretty much everything you’d need to know about Spanish grammar. In the advanced class you apparently don’t learn much new grammar (there’s not much more to learn); instead you do some review and mostly have discussions and give presentations to perfect your speech.

Anyhow, on Tuesday — after swearing I would make every effort to leave the house at 13h00 on the dot — I was almost late again and again sprinted up the stairs to the “first floor”, where the school is located. In fact, to reach the “first floor”, you have to work your way up from the ground level where the front door is, through three sets of stairs (up a half-flight to “entresuelo”, up a flight again to “principal”, up another to “primero”!).

In spite of my worries, I found I spoke a fair bit better than my other classmates — which came as a surprise because I often still find myself very frustrated trying to communicate. In some cases, these people have just worked their way right through from a beginner level in the past one or two intense months, so haven’t had two years — like me — to absorb and catch more of the flow of the language (even if rarely truly “correct”). I speak better than them but probably “officially” know fewer rules of grammar. The good news is that I am starting to get some intuition for what sounds right, without really knowing why. It’s probably better if you also know why, but that’s not the way I know English and French, either.

Yesterday we spent much of the class in “real discussions”, talking about complex topics like modern families, reproductive rights, birth control — and today about economics, statistics (I had to present a newspaper article, which led to a half-hour discussion about poverty in the world)… They’d spent the last part of last week learning the “indirect mode”, where you explain what someone is saying: “El Jardinero Zurdo said the class had spent the last part of the previous week learning the ‘indirect mode’”. It’s easier in English, believe me. But it’s not so bad in Spanish — I managed to learn it in a panic on Monday night, and I think I’ve mostly got it. The things I need to review are the more “basic” things that I may have missed, like subjuntivo (a huge topic, but I think I’ve mostly got it now). And specifically when to use each tense and mood. We’ll see how I do tomorrow… Depending on the results of the exam and the level of each student, we may be put into an advanced class, or may continue at the high intermediate level. Either way, I think I’ll learn something! (but of course my ego is still hoping for ADVANCED! ;-)

On Sunday I went to the boat show (that is, Barcelona’s Salón Náutico). Of course, sailing mania is peaking here, with the 2007 America’s Cup happening in Valencia (not so far away) — its first time “back in Europe” after 150 years, apparently. Anyhow, if you’ve been to boat shows in cities that don’t have water, let me tell you it’s a bit different than when you go to a boat show in a sunny Mediterranean port city. On display were all kinds of giant boats, some probably bigger than the ships in that powerful armada we call the Canadian navy! (joking, fellas!)

Who has money to buy these things (at 800k € and up)?

Some of the yachts were three stories high, all had huge plasma TVs, tons of leather upholstery, brushed metal fridges with ice-makers, giant blenders (for making cocktails for your 50 dearest friends), closed-circuit security cameras (also to help you navigate the darn thing into harbour, since from your top-deck cockpit you can’t really see the tiny jet-skier about to be crushed under your hull).

Here a floating performer is seen balancing a bird on his forehead…

Once you got tired of seeing giant, unaffordable boats in water, you could take a shuttle to the giant new convention centre south of Montjuïc to see more unaffordable boats out of water.

You have no idea how big even a “small” sailboat (e.g. 8m long) seems when you are underneath it…until you stand underneath it.

Of course, there was much sighing and lusting after the shiny new sailboats… It was interesting to see the wide range of quality. Some boats (e.g. the Bénéteaus) really seemed beautifully finished, whereas others seemed like they were scrimping on quality parts (plastic latches, squeaky floors) just to try to bring the price down from, say, 80,000 € to 75,000 €… I mean, if you’re paying that much anyhow, wouldn’t you want to go for quality? On top of that, most of the prices didn’t include VAT (which, for luxury items like these can well exceed the “regular” 16%!). Or sails, or extras… You know the drill — it’s just like buying a new car where, once you’re finally convinced to spend more than you have, they “remind” you that there are lots of other shiny bits you “need” in order to happily operate the vehicle.

They even set up a huge wall of fans in the convention centre, so people (kids, mostly — the most effective weapon in the salesman’s arsenal) could try out small sailboats.

Perhaps the coolest things I saw were the kayaks from Hobie that you could “pedal”, with cute penguin-like fins that flap back and forth through the water. They offered a chance to try them out in the kiddie pool, but it was late and time to go home for dinner. But there is a place near here where you can try them out…or buy one for “only” 2,000 €. Unfortunately, at this show for the rich, these were the cheapest vessels on offer.

Breaking records is just “doing your civic duty” as a Canadian.

And, meanwhile, Y2k(7) bugs are still a concern…for NASA, at least! What a great quote: “We’ve just never had the computers up and going when we’ve transitioned from one year to another[…] We’re not really sure how they’re going to operate.”

Random thoughts from sunny Barcelona:

• Everywhere I go (especially on the metro), people are doing Sudoku. It’s not a craze limited to this city, I know… but Barcelona is hosting a Sudoku Championship on Sunday, down at the Polideportivo Marítimo. So are all these people practising for that?
• I went to my second yoga class here, at DiR (a big and very popular fitness club). The first one was a bit confusing (why do I become incompetent at even basic things — like how to find and operate a locker — when I’m in a new and totally foreign environment?), but the second class yesterday (”hot yoga”, where they crank up the heat and you can imagine someone like me really sweats!) went much better. I feel like a regular already, though I find it hard not to compare (negatively) to my own wonderful yoga institute in Montreal! (see note far below about culture shock)
• As everyone knows by now, it seems the Democrats won the U.S. Congress. This is not a political blog, so I will make no comment. (woo hoo) I have to say it’s nice to be somewhere this is not “the only news” — I assume this story was top dog in North America for the last few days. Today the top news story here is about a new municipal regulation that allows the Guardia Urbana (traffic police) to revoke the licence of any car emitting “smoke or bothersome noises”. The Democrats winning the Senate was only the #2 news item…
• Since my Spanish classes with Universitat de Barcelona fell through (unsuitable schedule for me) I stopped by the offices of a private language school here, and will likely sign up today for classes with them, possibly starting next Monday. A girl at the school (I think she was a teacher) was particularly subtle, asking me (in Spanish, claro!) if she knew me, because I looked really familiar. When I confirmed she did not, she asked if I were someone famous… What does one say to that? “But of course, I’m the King of Spain!” (a Spanish friend once told me I looked like Juan Carlos I, which is not at all flattering since the monarch is 68 years old! Personally, I still don’t see any similarity, so it must be my regal manner rather than my appearance… ;-)
• As I wander the streets, shop and ride the metro, I try to imagine myself living here. One thing I realize is that it would be a huge change and very difficult. Even though I speak Spanish quite well, I am still thrown by all the Catalan I hear everywhere (would I have to learn yet another language? At least somewhat, I’m afraid the answer would be “yes”…) Also, although I can speak to someone one-on-one quite well (depending on the accent), and understand almost everything I read or hear (if I focus on it), I find I am still really in a “foreign world”. My automatic language scanning/processing does not work here. In Montreal, if someone on the street shouts something to a neighbour, or a policeman calls out something, or there is a crazy discussion in a noisy bar, I normally understand everything — in French or (obviously) in English. Not at all true for me in Spanish. I realize now that automatic processing is the “Holy Grail” of languge learning. To simply absorb it without thinking at all, without concentrating. In fact, to be unable to avoid understanding, even if you’re not paying attention. That’s the one pleasant side-effect of being “zoned out” — it’s very relaxing if you understand nothing, you never get distracted while reading because the conversations don’t intrude on your consciousness.
  I also find it frustrating when I look for something. For example, this week I went searching for a card. I asked where the print shops, stationery stores, etc, were. I went to a few places, and they only had a small selection of cards, and mostly quite cheesy. In Montreal it’s so easy to walk 2 minutes (from my place, at least) to a shop that has hundreds of artistic blank-inside cards — funny, beautiful, whatever. Sure we also have the Hallmark stuff but you can find some pretty neat stuff. Similar things must be available here but I didn’t find them (though in the end I did manage to find something appropriate from the limited selection). Same goes for a filter adapter for my camera (a non-standard item, but available “easily” in Montreal). I went to all the shops on “photo alley” (my nickname for Carrer de Pelai) and only one store even came close to having what I wanted, and only one (the same one) went out of their way to be helpful. I don’t even live here (yet?) but I find myself in that stage of “culture shock” where one is always comparing things to what you’re used to where you’re from — usually in a negative way. I lived six months in California and I think I drove everyone nuts with my “Canada this, Canada that” comments! (-;
• I am working on a Spanish quiz, which I’ll put up on the site soon. Fun practice for my PHP programming, and also hopefully fun and useful for people to try my “quiz a day” (you will be able to use it to learn Spanish vocabulary from English, or English from Spanish). See, those 3000 words haven’t gone to waste!
• I signed up for a Google Maps key, and am ready to start playing with that stuff. So watch out — at some point I will probably scrap gVisit and use my own counter/geocoding thing.

Well, I’m off to Spain again… Well, actually I’m already here, enjoying the 20 degree weather of Barcelona rather than the 0 degree weather of Montreal. I got here just in time for the Catalan elections on November 1 (ooh, an impressive 57% turnout! ;-).

On Monday, the day of my departure, I checked over the travel medical insurance policy I’d bought for this trip. I hadn’t really looked, until then, at the “pink form” stapled to the policy. It was a questionnaire asking about pre-existing conditions. Among other things, it asked if I had been to a doctor in the past 3 months (other than for a routine check-up), and whether I’d had any drugs prescribed in the past 3 months. All the question boxes were ticked “No”, but I wasn’t the one who’d answered them! I had obtained this policy over the phone (at the bottom, in the place of my signature was written “telephone submission”) and I was certain the agent had not asked me those questions when I bought it!

The worst part was the little message at the bottom, which said that failure to disclose would result in the entire contract being totally null and void… So, like the good uptight Canadian that I am, I phoned CAA to “fess up” to my doctor’s visit in early September, and the prescribed antibiotics for a sinus infection. Turns out it was good I did — the woman seemed very happy to hear a customer actually being honest — and she just updated my file with this info. She confirmed that indeed my policy would have been null, had there been a claim and they investigated my history… I was somewhat pissed off that they had not asked me these questions when I purchased the thing (I was told they will investigate why this did not happen). At least I noticed it before departure, even if “just”!

In other news: I was taken to a great show on Wednesday night at the Teatre Tivoli, by an Israeli percussion/dance group called Mayumana. They are something like a cross between Stomp and Blue Man Group. It’s a mix of “found” percussion, dance, singing, comedy and playfulness… It was exactly the kind of thing I should have been involved in. I also loved the way they “customized” the performance for the audience, with a fun rhythmic word-play number in Catalan. I don’t know if they’ve ever toured in North America, but certainly have in Europe and South America (especially Spain, where they’ve been all over for the past few years). [Well, turns out they even played in Toronto four years ago! In spite of what the reviewer says, I enjoyed them differently (more?) than Stomp because they are more diverse in what they do.]