Here’s a neat Spanish-Canadian connection: Margaret Atwood just won the 2008 Príncipe de Asturias prize for Literature, which is almost as good as winning a Nobel (there have been a few winners of both awards over the years, such as Doris Lessing).

That 50.000€ is worth around $80,000 Canadian! Maybe not as good as the 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.7M Cdn) you get for the Nobel, but still a good bit of cash for a writer… (-; I’m sure it’s a drop in the bucket, though, compared to her royalty earnings.

Good job, Margaret!

I’m not truly “home”, since home is now in Spain…but I am back in Montreal (with travel insurance to visit my own country, if you can imagine). My three month ticket return date came up, and since all my Spanish paperwork is now in order (and thus I should be able to legally re-enter the country), I decided to take a three-week jaunt across Canada by plane, train and automobile. First to Montreal, then out west to see my sister and her new daughter, then more family. (If “more family” sounds dismissive, please — it isn’t. I’ll be glad to see everyone; it’s just that having a two-month-old niece is particularly exciting.)

It’s a great time to be in Montreal, of course: the street fair, fireworks competition, Jazz Fest (starting later this week). The place probably hasn’t changed that much in the three months I’ve been away, yet it’s undergone the spring to summer transition (which is always dramatic, and not only in the amount of clothing people wear) and all the restaurants have new menus, prices bumped up by $0.25 (best case) to $2.00 or more. Guess this is the price of oil, food…or just opportunism, with a new tourist season heating up?

The other noticeable change is the proliferation of bicycles. Montreal has always been a big biking city with great bike paths (more developed and bike-friendly than Barcelona in almost every way except for Bicing). But there are so many new bike paths this year that bikes are especially viable, even for people who need to commute to and from downtown. Bikes are absolutely everywhere. There are new links that run down avenue du Parc, along de Maisonneuve…it’s impressive (and makes me a little jealous) to see all the new developments. Hopefully Montreal will learn some things from Barcelona’s “public biking” approach, but Barcelona could learn plenty from Montreal, too.

The exciting news from today is that I bought my annual supply of underwear and socks at the St. Laurent street sale (wonderfully named La Frénésie de la Main). But it had a nice Spanish(-language, at least) touch — I bought them from a latina shopkeeper (hablamos español). Meanwhile Spain was playing Italy (two emotional forces of La Main, especially now that Portugal is out) on the big screens in every bar and restaurant around. Spain eventually won the Euro 2008 match in a kickoff, so it’s into the semi-finals for them (I mean, for us).

I guess I must adjust to new situations quickly, because although it’s really good to be here, I’ll be glad to (when the time comes) go back to Barcelona. In Spain, probably I go on too much about how great Canada is for this or that. But here in Canada, I don’t find myself saying: “Phew, finally I’m back in a land where things makes sense,” but instead going on about how great it is…back home.

To keep my poor readers from bursting with suspense, I’d better mention that…I won the jackpot! That is to say: I passed my written driving test, with only two of the 30 questions wrong on the examen teórico. You may recall that I was allowed at most three wrong, and so I was officially declared: apto (though I’m not so sure about that, myself).

In the previous post, I forgot to mention one more step in this process… I had to have a physical exam before applying to write the theory test. This involved paying a large lump sum (50€) and going to a medical clinic approved for driving licences. I’m starting to wonder if this whole game isn’t just a front to keep Spain’s thousands of driving schools (and medical clinics) in business…

I’ve read some ex-pat driver’s-licence-seekers joking that as long as they were able to open the door and walk into the medical clinic, they were deemed fit enough to get the doctor’s seal of approval. In the same vein, I’ve been told by several people (including the driving school receptionist): “It’s a bit of a joke.” In my case, there was a basic vision test (just the ol’ wall chart — no depth or colour tests as we have in Quebec), a few health-related questions, and a co-ordination test. This last was videogame-like, in a 1970s kind of way. I had to two rotary (pong-like) controllers, and I had to dial them independently to keep two (pong-like) green blocks inside a pair of scrolling “tracks” on screen. It wasn’t as easy as it sounds, because it gradually got faster, and you had to be looking in two places at once, controlling two “unlinked” things. All those years spent pumping quarters into arcade machines in the 1980s paid off nicely.

Finally, the doctor (was he a doctor, or a technician?) had a few questions for me. To my surprise, these turned out to be questions about English language usage: what is the word for someone who gives interviews? “An interviewer.” Is an interviewer, then, the same as an emcee? “What? No,” I insisted. Then what was the difference? Perhaps he was confused about interviewee and emcee? I explained it all. Besides this strange obsession with interviewers, the doctor wanted a few corrections of his pronunciation. He was beaming. This apparently was not part of the licence validation, merely the unbridled excitement of a man finally having a native English-speaker at his beck and call.

I joined a great gym last week (DiR), and one of the requirements — for their insurance — was that today I had to go for yet another physical exam. (Yes, of course I asked, but they weren’t at all impressed that a doctor had just given me the once-over for a driver’s licence). Once again, there was a huge lump sum to pay (54€ this time); something mysteriously omitted in their glossy marketing.

This exam was much more professional and high-tech than the old-school driver’s physical. I felt like a pro athlete, having myself measured and analysed in all kinds of ways: at one point I had twelve electrodes stuck to my chest for a “VO2 max” test on the treadmill. (I wonder it really was a “max” test, because I didn’t feel exhausted — as if I’d been in anaerobic activity — at the end of it. They likely had to move on to the next patient…my heart rate was around 162 but I was going strong). My V02 max, according to the report, is in the Bueno-Medio cardiovascular fitness classification. “In order to reach the Bueno classification, you would need to improve your max VO2 by 1%.” Uh, okay, that should be doable.

The final report was printed in a funny mix of English and Spanish (like the buena phrase above). Other examples included: “Your blood pressure of 118/63mmHg si está en el tramo Normal.” At another point, I had to step on a pad that graphed the pressure of my feet on the floor(?). An arm strength test. They pinched and prodded, and I was informed that I have an very low (but apparently still healthy) body fat measurement: 6.4%. “Good job, tu porcentaje de grasa está en el tramo Excelente.”

So that’s it for now…no more tests, please! The next big thing, I guess, will be my driving sessions and practical test, but likely not until after I get back from an upcoming visit to Canada. It may even have to wait until September, since so many things (driving schools, traffic departments) shut down over the summer — or at least August — here.

Speaking of shutdowns, right now (you may have heard on the news) there is a massive truckers’ (technically, transportistas) strike. It’s amazing how quickly things disappear: many gas stations are shut (although yesterday police were escorting some tanker trucks), and yesterday at the supermarket I was shocked to see plastic curtains covering large sections of empty shelves. Let’s hope it doesn’t go on too long, or things will really get nasty. Already, someone was killed in Granada, when a picketing trucker was struck by an angry blocked driver (who, thankfully, was subsequently caught). Another trucker in Alicante was badly burned when his vehicle caught fire (looks to have been intentional). Most of the protests are due to the huge increase in diesel prices in the last few months.

…Oh yeah, really can’t wait to get that driver’s licence…

(The title is from a spam I received today, which poetically reminded me: “Long ago did fashionable wrist watches become an integral part of image!” Ah, long ago…)

Yesterday, I sat with dozens of nervous people in the waiting area outside the DGT (Dirección General de Tráfico, aka Dept. of Motor Vehicles) theory exam room. I hoped for “unexcelled precision” in my answers. After all, I did not want to repeat this experience.

After my intensive 16-hour course of two weekends ago, I spent the past week pretty much entirely focused on studying for my examen teórico. I realized that although the course carried me forward a long way, and I was (artificially) boosted in confidence by getting a perfect score on a couple of practice exams, there were still many things I didn’t know. A book of sample test questions came with my course manual, so I wrote a computer program that would randomly pick sets of 30 questions from the list (without any repeats), and started slogging through them. The goal was to cover every question, and also to make a table of ones I didn’t know or wasn’t sure of, to help me know where to focus my last-minute efforts. With 460 questions, that gave me 15 1/3 tests (I also did some of the tests on the DGT website). It usually took 15-20 minutes to do each one, plus around 15-45 minutes more to mark and go through the book to understand ones I got wrong or wasn’t 100% sure about. Plus, I kept reading or re-reading various sections of the book. I learned a lot, but also forgot plenty that I’d read (in one neuron, out the other). And the book was awful: very user-unfriendly. Even when I asked my “Dulcinea” for help understanding certain sections, she’d often have a hard time deconstructing the complex wording.

When I finally finished all 460 sample questions (Thursday night), I discovered that on average I got 12% wrong. This was not a good sign, because you are only allowed to miss 10% (3 out of 30) on your test. So it would be a bit like gambling in Vegas, where the house has a marginal edge over the long term. In my case the house edge was 2% (although the whole point of going through every question meant that I should learn from my mistakes — hopefully getting some of those right next time around — thus cutting their edge and swinging the balance in my favour). In reality, this meant that although for some tests I got zero, one or two wrong, for many of them I missed four (occasionally five, and once even six!). As in Vegas, it felt like it was going to be partly (or largely) down to luck of the draw — would they ask things I knew really well, or things I kept getting mixed up on (like whether a ciclomotor de tres ruedas was comparable — in road rules — to a quadriciclo ligero)? Would I continue missing the odd question that, although I knew the answer perfectly well, I was tricked by the Spanish wording? It turns out, too, that each person in the exam room gets a “unique” test, because we are all handed three question sheets (questions 1-10, 11-20, 21-30) which are all different. Of course, although there can be no copying, neither can there be comparing of answers once you get out of the room. (”Did you put ‘a’ or ‘c’ for that one about highways within city limits?” “I don’t remember seeing any question about travesías…”)

A few questions are almost laughably easy (especially if you already know how to drive). A few things (like signage) are fairly different from North America. And they can also be very tiquismiquis in the detail demanded. I mean, do I really need to know all the regulations and restrictions that apply to commercial trucks, if all I want to drive is a turismo? A few tricky examples include knowing the generic speed limit for a car towing a “non-light” trailer (i.e. more than 750kg maximum allowable gross weight) on a highway with 1.5m of paved shoulder (80km/h). Or how much a truck’s load can extend beyond the front and back projection of the vehicle (not at all if the load is “divisible”, otherwise up to 1/3 off the front and back if the truck is 5m long or less, otherwise no more than 2m front and 3m back, but in any case, never exceeding 12m total — whew, that’s a mouthful!).

Unlike in Canada (at least when I did my driving test nearly 20 years ago) or California (where I got a licence over ten years ago), we also had to know first aid, and basic vehicle maintenance (Q: “what might it mean if your car is emitting black smoke?” A: “that the air filter is blocked or dirty and needs replacing” — I actually understand why, now, and it has nothing to do with my intuitive guess that the dirt might be somehow getting into the engine).

Never mind the fact that all this studying and test-writing was done in Spanish, which multiplied my difficulty. Apparently you can do a translated (English) version of the test, but I wanted to learn this stuff in Spanish — also, I’d heard that sometimes the bad translations make it even more confusing! I’ve learned many, many new terms, but still sometimes got the occasional question wrong because of “language difficulties”. At times, even the verb usage threw me off — in yesterday’s test I lifted my hand twice to ask them to clarify things for me — it so happens that in one case I would have gotten the right answer regardless (I thought extravío might mean theft, while it actually means a loss/misplacing — either way it wouldn’t affect my answer to the question about driver’s licences). In the other case, though, I truly was unsure of whether they were asking whether I (3rd person singular; that is, usted in the question) or the cyclist (3rd person singular; that is, él) should yield the right-of-way. It’s an easy question, but it’s kind of important to know which of us they’re talking about! Luckily, one of the examiners confirmed what I suspected, that it was asking whether I should yield to the cyclist. For a non-native speaker, some such questions are quite trickily worded.

I have to admit, though, that although the process is a bit ridiculous (rote learning and all), it does probably give the traffic ministry the desired results. You really have to know the stuff inside out. With bad luck, you may fail when you “should” pass, but it’s quite unlikely you’d pass, purely based on good luck or guessing. The confusing wording is quite clear if you’ve seen it before and really know it. The problem (especially for this guy, who wanted to compress what should be a three month course into a couple of weeks!) is that it’s hard to remember it all.

I won’t have my results until Monday, but I think (fingers crossed) I passed. I know for sure I got at least one wrong, and there were a few others I wasn’t 100% sure on, so we’ll see. Sometimes I surprise myself (in a bad way) on the sample tests. So, you never know: I may be back…

Overall, I have to say I enjoyed the experience. Even though I (like most other guiris) moan about this trial by fire, I really do enjoy learning new things. I enjoy the challenge. It’s a double-edged sword: I hate being evaluated, but on the other hand I love being able to prove myself. Of course, I’d rather not have to do any of it, but, being obliged to do so, I find I enjoy learning more about this new country and its rules. You have no idea how much stress it relieves to be able to read all the signs on the road (and to discover they have a satisfying kind of logical consistency — in most cases). Not to mention learning more of the language…I mean, how would I otherwise have ever learned what a salpicadero was, catadióptricos or the luces gálibo? (good luck looking that one up in the dictionary)