For the 2nd year running I did the San Silvestre run through the streets of Madrid on New Years eve (10km fun run that starts at 6pm on NYE and goes from the Real Madrid football stadium through some of the major boulevards of Madrid to Vallecas which is roughly the Madrid equivalent of Penrith (for Sydney readers))
I did it in wearing Australian flag boardshorts (which I think are more socially acceptable outside of Australia, but I may find myself corrected shortly), a socceroos shirt and with the Australian flag as a cape. I was outdone by the 5 or 6 Scots (or at least dressed as such) in kilts, painted with wode and taking turns carrying the Scottish flag aloft like a battle standard.
I was greeted with a "Go Australia" near the start line, a "vaya Australia" near the finish line (which is roughy the same thing) and an Ozzie, ozzie, ozzie chant from 2 of my fellow competitors.
Licence Renewal in Oz and your obligations as a citizen
Had an amusing experience a few weeks back when I tried to renew my drivers licence (Australian one).
I sent in the application only to receive an email back telling me that I had a fine outstanding with the State Debt Recovery Office (SDRO) that I would have to pay before they would renew it.
Given the amount of time I have spent in Australia in that timeframe it puzzled me somewhat.
So I called the number they provided for the SDRO and discovered that the fine was for having voted at the 2007 State election.
From the point of receiving that email to getting a note from the RTA saying that they were mailing me my licence, took 48 hours, which I was quite impressed with especially as it involved 3 separate departments (State Electoral commision - a note to explain I was overseas at the time of the election, the SDRO to accept that the electoral commission had waived the fine and the RTA to renew the license)
The other parts of the story have been explaining to anyone from any other country the concept of compulsory voting. (I'm quite in favour, which doesn't seem to be the general response of people in other democracies where the govt is usually elected by about 30% of the population)... and assisting the hotel clerk in a backwoods german hotel with how to send a fax to Australia at 1 in the morning - typical vignette of my existence for the last month.
Next job is getting a Spanish licence - as I believe I shouldn't really be driving on my Australian one in Spain having lived here for the length of time I have...
A few weeks back when chatting with my parents I mentioned that I was scheduled to spend a week in Saudi Arabia, a week in Israel and then a week in Montreal. Naturally enough I did none of those things.
The trip to Saudi got cancelled, the trip to Israel got delayed a week and the trip to Montreal morphed into a trip to Paris. So here I am in Paris having spent the weekend wandering around the Louvre and the Palace of Versailles, this being my first time here for about 10 years (the last time being the weekend Australia won the Cricket world cup in 1999, which I watched from a Pakistani bar in Paris - not sure I would do that these days...).
A little hard to plan activities around all of that (including my activities for Paris this weekend given how busy I was during the week) but I have managed somehow and even managed to get a trip in to the Rioja to go winetasting last weekend which was thoroughly enjoyable.
Last weekend I did a course in Barcelona which seemed like it would be a bit of fun... and it was! One of my fellow students has written an article for a local Barcelona English language paper about the experience that describes it pretty well.. (at the risk of being a bit Alan Ramsey) Guiri pretty much means english speaking foreigner although it can be a pretty loose term used to describe anyone not from Spain, and I was one of the 9 if you were wondering.
Hello and thank you for calling The Mental Health Unit. Please select from the following options: If you are obsessive-compulsive, press 1 repeatedly. If you are co-dependent, please ask someone to press 2 for you. If you have multiple personalities, press 3, 4, 5 and 6...
With jokes like that arriving in my inbox thick and fast...thanks Mum...I decided it was time to improve the humour level in my life. But how? My Spanish is at the level of a 2 year old but my humour's moved beyond fart noises and roaring like a lion... enter Giggling Guiri. One of the venues offering English speaking comedy in Barcelona. Over the past couple of years I've seen some great Scottish, English, Irish and Australian stand-ups brave deepest, darkest Raval...and laughed my socks off. So when they offered a weekend comedy course with an experienced teacher I jumped at the chance.
Why? Hmmm...with my adrenal gland pumping wildly at the bar whilst waiting for my turn on stage last Sunday that thought did cross my mind! I'm the kind of person who likes challenges, likes a change, likes to keep living and this seemed a perfect opportunity to improve me. Usually I prompt the stories and my other half tells them, I laugh supportively, nod appropriately and then do the serious listening stuff. But I used to be a teacher waffling to my captive audience all day every day, and now I'm a computer programmer geekily staring at a screen, so my inner voice was crying to get out once more.
What happens on a comedy course? Can you teach someone to be funny? We played improv games, we wrote poems in 3 minutes, we were ministers of silly departments taking a press conference and having to instantly respond; lots of stuff to get us playing, bantering, thinking quickly, building our confidence to stand-up and be funny. We learnt that comedy comes from afterthoughts, from attitude, from getting to the point. We learnt to turn off the social editor sitting on our shoulder...not that I think some of the guys ever had one! More than anything we learnt to support each other and be brutal, only laughing when it really was funny and adding asides to help when it wasn't. From the original 11, 9 survived for the final challenge...a 5 minute slot at the comedy club on Sunday evening, using our own material written as homework. Compered by our professional stand-up teacher, with a second half act of an award winning professional comedienne we were sandwiched in a high standard, so the pressure was on to prove we deserved our few moments of fame.
So how did we do? Well I'm biased because I've learned to love my fellow group,...despite their appalling nasal hair. The huge audience laughter and applause (thanks Julia) and the fact that every person owned the stage and didn't dry up said it all. So are we the new Barcelona Guiri Comedy Stars of the future? Maybe. We're going to continue to meet and develop ideas, and just 4 days later we've already got a couple more shows lined up for December. So once you've got the incontinence under control, you can come and judge for yourself.
One of my co-students in my Spanish class (after 2 years I'm still studying about 3 hours a week) is going to a wedding this weekend so the subject came up as a discussion topic in class.
I'm not entirely sure I understood or believe what was then explained to me next, but I would not be surprised if it would be fairly popular with the Australian male.
That is that during the ceremony (and I did check a couple of times because I didn't really believe it), I'll say that again - during the ceremony, many if not all of the men will go to bars close to the church to drink so as to escape the ceremony itself.
Now my immediate reaction this was that it lacks a little respect, but it was explained to me that it was better that the men were in a bar next door talking than disrupting the service talking.
I think I will need to get invited to a ceremony locally to check this out, because I still don't believe it...
