Rushing about but getting nowhere fast

What about this, what a crazy world in which i live, I have just travelled to Genoa for a visa to go to work in Malabo Equatorial Guinea, I have been home a few hours and the phone rings and I get told I am now travelling to Pamplona for a month instead, this is pretty normal for the company I work for but this was almost the record, the record was being told in the morning I was going to Santiago Chile, then by the afternoon it was Anchorage Alaska, but by late afternoon it was all off and stay at home a little longer, will update my Genoa trip later as I have to take my little girl to the beach today as a going away present.

Movie Review f the Month, best movie in a long time

I have seen some amazing movies this last week. A couple of which I laughed so hard my wife was complaining, I also watched about 15 episodes of Dr House, these also make me laugh as the character is so caustic with his remarks that I find it hard to accept anyone,especially a Dr would ever make them but it is very funny also.

1) Monsters and Aliens, 9/10, with this kids cartoon they managed to pull every silly sci-fi movie theme together and make a very entertaining kids movie with a plot that you could follow, this what i like about kids movies, a good plot. They had the 50 foot girl, creature from the black lagoon and the blob as the main characters, then all sorts of other bits and pieces thrown in including the music from close encounters, overall a fantastic movie and well worth the watch.

2) Crank 2 high voltage, 9/10, this was the craziest movie i have seen in a long time, it basically is a 90 minute street fight about a man who has had his heart stolen and a mechanical pump installed in its place as he fights to get his own heart back, I laughed and laughed at the pointless violence and vulgarity and nudity, not much of a plot but if you accept it is just being silly and not really making a point then you can just relish its silliness, in fact it was so entertaining I tracked down the Crank 1 and downloaded it to watch the day afterwards

3) Crank, 8/10, this was a plot about a hitman who was injected with some poison to kill him slowly supposedly but he manages to survive but kill everyone in his path over the few hours he has alive, very funny and entertaining, how I Missed this film which came out in 2006 I don't know but it is a very funny movie.

4) Hotel for Dogs, 3/10, a pretty silly kids movie, totally unbelievable plot and just about watchable for my little girl, not much more to say than that.

5) Fast and furious 4, updated, 5/10, a mildly entertaining movie with some silly car stunts and some silly plot lines but watchable, just.

6) Knowing, 4/10, started off OK with an interesting intriguing plot but once the plot started to unravel it was poor and a silly ending, not to spoil the movie, having aliens telling humans they were about to experience the end of the world in code to children was stretching silliness to its limits, a very forgettable movie and barely worth watching.

El Torcal, Supposedly Unique to Europe

With a few hours to spare in between doing stuff and picking up the little girl from school we decided to go out to a local attraction as it was only 20 Km away. It is a limestone plateau that has these strange eroded strata on the top, this part of Spain is probably the most interesting for scenery as it is so mountainous. We drove up there and found the road pretty difficult to navigate, it took a lot longer than we thought, maybe an hour through narrow roads and villagers, we went through a small village called Conception, what a hideous catholic name for a village, anyway we drove all the way to the top, no walking required and there is a nice tourist centre and some well laid out walkways, we could only spend 45 minutes as we were running out of time, but we saw some Griffon Vultures using the thermals, they are pretty big birds, the government of Spain is looking at changing the law on disposing of dead farm animals as the lack of dead animals is impacting the population of Vultures so hopefully there will be more of these huge birds around in future.

Me walking about




Jenny taking the sun




The view over the cliffs




While walking round we saw a strange animal on a peak, with the binoculars you could see it was a wild goat called An Ibex. They have a huge set of curved horns and it was just laid down taking the sun, then after it while it stood up and was looking more statue than animal, very impressive as these are pretty timid creatures but this one looked confident as it was in the national park. The weather has turned warmer and this may be the start of the summer, all in all it was a nice trip out and one to take the relatives when they come over.

That crazy Ibex if you look hard in the middle, click on it and you will get the bigg picture

Magpies all of a Feather

This last week has been a constant paperchase, we have been twice to the Immigration offices in Malaga, both times the traffic is a nightmare and all the roads around Malaga have been transformed and are still being transformed so the maps in my GPS are all out of date. So the GPS will tell me turn right then keep left but it meant to say turn right( pause pause pause) keep left, hence i turn right then keep left and start heading the wrong direction down the coastal highway to Gibraltar, all very frustrating, but we are slowly making progress, we have had one builder take a look at the plans we are making for the roof terrace and we have had one cabinet maker come to measure up for the wardrobes, as we need two fitting as most of our clothes are still stood around on shelves and in cases, i have been wearing the same items over and over after the washing, so life is OK apart from the insufferable weather, always cold and it has been raining all week, i hope the summer comes next week, i can imagine it going from winter to summer in 20 minutes and then we get no respite for 6 months of blistering heat.

While we have been driving about we have been seeing these lovely birds alongside the olive groves, most interestingly are the Azure-winged Magpies, lovely large birds that flock in groups up to 20-30 birds and are very attractive. Also i have seen, many small seed eaters and one is a new bird for me, the Brambling

Azue-winged Magpie


Azue-winged Magpie


Brambling


Work is all turning interesting, I seem to be flavour of the month, with several agencies offering me work, once i have completed all my duties her ewith the house I will decide who to work for and take the one who pays the most and gives me the best extras like locations and maybe family status.

Its Semana Santa Again, Easter to you and Me

It is semana santa in spain and all catholic countries, my little town is having these marches where a large group of men carry these alter pieces through the streets, they are very heavy and it looks hard work, I find the practice a little bit silly, and last night they did the parade at 11pm until midnight, banging the drums and suffering in the horrible wintery weather again. It snowed in Madrid last night. Anyway i got the local english speaking paper this morning and it showed some of the scenes and in it is the La Paz Brotherhood, hood being the operative word. They wear some silly Klu Klux Klan hoods and do the marching about thing for the Easter parade and supposedly God will think your a better person for it. I personally will have a drink of wine and stay in the warmth of my house and watch a movie instead, probably with some random violence and cursing in it.

The La Paz Brotherhood, think of it what you may, but i think it is 500 years out of date

The Spring of Life, River from Mountains

Yesterday we went out to do some shopping and take a break from the tedious daily routine of putting up pictures and clearing boxes and sweeping up. It is never ending but we will finally get there in the end, we are completed upstairs and now we are 50% complete downstairs, we still have tons of things to sort out and we have a sofa and chairs on the patio which we cannot do anything with yet but we are working on it. It appears that the refrigerator is working almost, we have to find a thermometer to check the internal temperature and then we can declare a win on that one, it has been sat here for 8 years waiting to get a good run and now it is working it did take its time but i think it is getting down to the correct temperature, I am so cheap i am refusing to buy a new one just because this looks like it is working.

Anyway after going to the local town, Archidona, this is a very old town with an 8-sided plaza, and a monastry on the very tall hill that it is built around, we actually drove up it a couple of weeks ago with my neighbour.

This the very big hill




This is the Hermitage now church on top of the hill



This is 3 sides of the 8 sided plaza



So we went shopping, and then as the sun was blazing down we decided to go for a drive to the spring that feeds the local towns water supply, it is pretty famous and makes this town pretty independant for water and makes it cheap and pollution free. we arrived and found this amazing and huge river emerging from the base of the limestone mountains that surround our town. The water is forced along some small channels and then pours out of these tubes in a kind of fountain display, it was fantastic to see and people come from all over to fill up with the life giving mineral water, it does taste nice and there is even a supply of untreated water coming from some drinking water fountains in the town square.

The spring is quite spectacular as it is so big




This is the road along the bottom of the mountains where the underground river emerges to create the spring

Lago de Fuente De Piedre

What an unusual place, the lake where the Flamingos live, is in a large plane and is a salt lake, it was only a 45 minute drive and the weather has changed from wintery to Summer in a week, the car was showing 24.5 C, which was a nice summers day temperature. We arrived at the town on the shore, and drove to the visitors centre, it was small and the lake was two parts, the main salt lake and some smaller outer flood plains, these areas were alive with different birds, some Black-winged stilts and yellow Wagtails, very attractive and all very pretty, the Flamingos were a long way off feeding in the lake centre and with the binoculars you could make out some very large congregations in the centre of the lake. maybe 1Km a way, we drove around the lake to a different view point and saw a small group feeding quite close and they really are a funny birds with that huge neck and strange feeding sweep with the hooked bill. It was all too much for the little girl who proclaimed that they didn't interest her too much as they were too far off and the weather was too hot to keep walking about, we had to retreat and have some drinks and head to the closest shopping centre in Antequerra to do more shopping for food, we seem to be eating a large amount, the novelty w2ill soon wear off i think.










We have furniture and it is going to take 4 weeks to get it all sorted out, we have too much furniture and may have to give some away. but it looks like home and even though it cost a fortune to get it here it feels nice to be sat in my nice sofa again,

Latest Movie Review

This review is a little brief but covers two movies that I think are so very different and for two totally different reasons.

Wallace and Grommet- A Matter of Loaf or Death 9/10, this movie is only 30 minutes long, really it is only a TV show but I found it just wonderfully entertaining and funny. This is a continuation of a series of Wallace and Grommet movies that were getting support from Disney and were fantastic, but Disney pulled out for some reason, so now they only have time for a short movie, It was well structured and had a great little plot and I laughed a lot along with my little girl. well worth the watch

Watchmen, 5/10, a very strange and disturbing movie, I had weird dreams all night due to some of the graphic parts of the film. The plot was very intricate and perhaps a little unwieldy and was 2 1/2 hours long, it was hard to keep track of what was happening where and when to whom, some of the threads didn't really fit, why would one of the heroes be a psychopathic killer who killed criminals, just didn't fit, another was a blood thirsty killer rapist, and a scientist who was accidentally transformed into a superhuman who could do anything but couldn't remove weapons of mass destruction from the USA and Russia, and the heroes could only avoid nuclear war by destroying New York, a bizarre plot and very gruesome, but I watched it all the way through, so it couldn't have been really bad, but it isn't a movie i will retain to watch again.

Building Work Finished for Now

I have completed stage one of the re-modelling work on the house, I have created an arch way through two isolated rooms creating a space that is 3 times more usable, we have decorated in a nice warm creme and yellow even though the colours were called Ochre and cinammon. we spent days upon days clearing all the dust but the vast majority is gone and only a fine layer is sitting on all surfaces now, I think i am just pushing it around the house when i try and clean it up.

The finished archway,





We also removed the old sink and Bidet from the downstairs toilet, I don't know anyone who would strip off and wash their backside in the bidet of a downstairs toilet in anyones house including their own, so that went, the sink was second hand i think when the provious owner installed it, and he had put some horrible little marble tiles at the side to act as shelves and it was ugly and not very practical, we saw a very nice new design of vanity unit with this very unusual sink and it was on sale in the same shop where we were going to buy the glass shower door.

The lovely new vanity unit with a very unusual sink design, price 169 Euros




The last item we have changed or added actually was a glass shower door to the large corner bath, I had a shower fitted to the bath while i was here last month and the only way we have been able to use it is by sitting in the corner of the corner bath and letting the shower sprinkle you while sitting, it gets the job done but a little fiddly. So we had a look around and found this door for only 50 Euros, made in China of course, and it is the perfect size for the bath and th last section fold away to let you climb in and out.

The nice new shower door, it is held in place by 2 small screws, i think it would fall over if given a push by a falling child.




we are well on the way to living a normal life, once we get the furniture that is, it is shceduled to arrive Friday all the way from Cadiz, about a 3-4 hour drive, hopefully we are going out this weekend to relax at the only breeding place for The Greater Flamingo in Europe which is only 1 hours drive away. The last item is Jenny is going to get a 5 year work permit when we visit the immigration office on the 14th of April, after that I am back to work as i need to start paying some bills.

Global Warming My Ass

Since I arrives 19 days ago the weather has been warm during the day and fresh to cool at night but 2 days ago, it was bitter and biting in the wind, we were busy painting the walls so didn't really notice the cold winds, we went out for a drive in the afternoon to check out the local places and we noticed some whitish areas on the mountains across the valley from us, it was snow, it had snowed overnight on the tops, we had some light rain but it was cold enough for snow, and it stayed for 2 days, today is the 1st of April and i was expecting glorious sunshine and warm to hot weather by now, so Al Gore has some explaining to do if he thinks I am going to swallow his explanation of warming the planet, for me burn all the coal in China i want a heatwave in Spain. I dont care if the polar bears have to grow fins i want baking hot sunshine very day and the local trees to wither under the constant heat, I hate the cold and will move back to Costa Rica if i don't get it soon.