soledad penadés

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Nada, que me voy de la Gran Bretaña durante unos días a ver si vuelvo a tomar un poco de color y abandono este look gótico-camden que tan poquito me gusta, y que en realidad llevo luciendo como desde hace dos veranos, enganchando un proyecto fin de carrera con prácticas de universidad y con proyectos absurdos en el trabajo, produciendo todo ello que mi  bronceado pertenezca a la categoría moreno monitor, tan poco glamouroso y combinable con las gamas de colores que más me gustan.

No hay más que recordar aquello que dijo la madre de Sardu el año pasado por estas mismas fechas: Llévatela a la playa, a ver si coge un poco de color. Total, ¿por llevar una camiseta amarillo azafrán, y que la piel de los brazos estuviera un poco [bastante] más clarita que la camiseta?, jejeje ;)

Así que un año después, me llevo (bueno, me lleva el avión un trocito) yo misma, acompañada del excelso trace, al cual le hace falta un poco de color también después de estar tanto tiempo entre nieblas y chirimirís. Aprovechando que estamos por Barcelona, acudiremos al MMT (Montcada Mig Tempo), un festival de dos días (8 y 9 de julio) bastante interesante participado/organizado por roterfleck y en el cual trace hará visuales, como el año pasado. Imagino que también se pasarán por allí insignes sceners como shine, sml o acidbeat (y todo aquel que se quiera apuntar) así que no hay excusa para no acudir diciendo que no conoces a nadie. Y yo por primera vez desde hace N meses, no tengo que hacer NADA!! ¡Viva! (me llevaré un libro para no caer en demasía en el frenesí calmado de la vida contemplativa).

Ya volveré… espero no tener que quejarme de Spain… temedme… ñ_ñ

¡Creo que nunca volveré a ver con los mismos ojos Charing Cross Station! Acabo de ver Creep alias "your journey terminates here", en la que sale la señora Franka Potente (menudo nombre XD, aún me estoy riendo desde que la ví en Run Lola Run)… lo peor es que en esta peli también acaba corriendo, aunque no tanto como en la otra…

La verdad es que es una peli bastante mala, de las de usar y tirar; por lo único que mola es por todas las secuencias grabadas en subterráneos reales, incluyendo una estación de metro, Aldwych, que ya no está abierta al gran público (es decir, ya no se usa). Por supuesto, un fan del underground ha hecho un análisis de localizaciones de la película, dejándome el post que ya es pan comido.

Sólo he de añadir que esa estación se utiliza como campo de pruebas. Al parecer, lo mismo lo usan para probar sistemas de detección de trenes (y que no haga falta tener a nadie mirando para que empiece a sonar el Mind the Gap), que para alquilarlo y grabar videoclips. Para muestra un botón: Prodigy grabó ahí Firestarter :-D
Más detalles, en la página de la estación en la web de antes. Ese tío es un auténtico freak del Underground!

PD ¡Y yo empiezo a sospechar que algún antepasado mío era pionero del metro, o algo así! tanto hablar del metro…

Seems like it's time to start complaining about something of London, as sml asks for ;). I have been trying to find something to be my target, and finally I decided that what annoys me most is the Circle Line (from the Tube also known as the underground). First we must examine some facts about the Circle Line and why has a poor service: it shares the rails with lots of other lines at most of its lenght, and also the rails cross other rails at lots of stations… so it needs to be even slower to avoid any accident.
At certain stations (and specifically as I have suffered) as for example Edgware Road, the train even stops for at least 5 minutes, while there other trains using its tracks. So you are there stopped in the middle of your way home/work, unable to do anything.

But I think we [or I] could live with it if it wasn't by other problems:

• the trains are horribly slow (but still they manage to shake a lot - I don't know how they do that!)
• the trains are old and noisy!! you can finish putting almost the maximum volume in your ipod and still won't listen to the music :-S
• this line is crowded most of the time (because is quite convenient and connects lots of important stations all around the centre of London … they called it Circle Line for a certain reason, don't you think?).
• When the train is crowded, you painfully find that there's almost no place to hold yourself. There are some bars near the doors but they have a very small space between them and the door so usually the bar is covered by the person next to it. What can you do then? You then look desperately up, somehow praying to find something to allow you to not fall over the people around you when then you see there are bars in the roof! What a stupid idea is this one? I personally don't reach those bars, I am not very tall (I think am starting to assume it, I still had the hope to keep growing some years ago but that idea it's fading slowly in my mind…) so I keep looking around and find there is another bar just a bit lower than the roof ones. So I end holding that bar, with great pain in my completely extended arm, hanging like a fish (or a pork leg, in a Spanish manner), and keep praying for the travel to finish.

Do you think is it not enough? Wait…

For some strange reason, these trains do stink 90% of the time. I don't understand why, but first sensation you get when entering inside is: whoooo this is disgusting… booo!  Sio Sometimes is like is someone had cooked some food inside (and left the rests there), other times is like if they have done sport inside (maybe a train hijack? gosh! I never find anything like that to tell to my friends!) and all the sweat remained in the train, and finally other times it simply is an annoying smell.

To make it worse, this line is not purely underground. There are lots of areas in which the train goes open air. And that can only mean something in summer: HOT TRAINS! Because as London does not have too many very warm days a year, public transport has not air conditioned (at least on the old vehicles… which are the 95% of them). So you have to travel in a noisy smelly line which runs quite slowly, stops at random stations for a random period of time, hanging from a bar like if you were paying for something bad you did, and to make it more funny, people around you is sweating A LOT - and A LOT means they need to dry their sweat constantly with whatever they have, otherwise it slips and everything gets wet.

Luckily since I moved to this flat I don't use to travel in the Circle Line because I have a very good alternative: the Central Line, which is incredibly fast (specially if you compare it with the Circle Line), allowing me to travel to the other side of the town in around 20 minutes. (As an curiosity here is a little schema of the station where I start travel, Notting Hill Gate. It belongs to a page which features tube maps quite distinct to the official ones)

But sometimes, there are "Severe Delays" - which can mean that
a) someone has decided to suicide (I have fortunately never been in the same station where it occured)
or
b) a signal failed and therefore the train cannot go on.

So I have to take the horrible Circle Line… and fingers crossed!!

This is the first time that I find such a detailed leafleet about the plastic gloves I had just bought!!
There they are… all the potential allergenic materials, which range is more appropiate for which uses, … I still don't know how I could have used any pair of gloves before without reading a guide like this one!

Ok let's recognize it… London can be a quite cold city (refering to the weather). Now it's almost July and this morning I went to work with a jumper over the t-shirt, which is more or less what you could bring if you were in Spain … in April.
But to compensate this kind of climatology, there are lots of coffee houses. I have never hidden that I love coffee, so this fact made me somehow happy!
Leaving apart all the numerous Starbucks, Coffee Republic, Caffe Nero, etc, etc, you can also find small independent coffees where the waiters/waitress will try to make you feel comfortable. That's quite nice, specially if you are used to the typical I don't care spanish waiters' style.

One example:
past year, although I had ticket restaurants for having lunch in account of my employer, I sometimes decided to go have lunch somewhere else, mainly to avoid eating a whole menu (because after that I felt completely aslept =_=, having to do extra-hours for free because the project manager didn't know how to manage… @£$£@&*^*!!! uhm… this belongs to another thread XD) and also to have a little break from seeing my workmates all day long. (My workmates description would be enough for one or two posts, indeed).

So I used to go to little coffee houses where I could have a pastry (something similar could be the napolitana or empanadilla in spanish :D), a coke and possibly a coffee. The last depended most of the times on the speed of the service. If I had to wait a lot for getting my pastry & coke, I wasn't going to wait again for the coffee. And I didn't have too many coffees in fact! Most of the times the people were really unpleasant and rude. Like if they were helping you or saving your life just by giving you a pastry… I am not even talking about bringing you the food and drinks to the little side bars, but simply asking you (for example) if you would like to have the pastry warmed, or not putting you the worst face they could even think of if you demanded your food to be heaten.

Another example: this past last year's eve I had to work (not during the celebrations but during the day) and I tried to find some place to have something for lunch. As expected almost everything was closed. Starbucks , pret a manger, costa, nothing was opened. I walked a bit more far and found one of those little cafe's which seemed nice at first sight. So I decided to give it a try.

They were quite kind there. They even said me "Have a happy new year". But, ok, maybe it's because it's today. They must say it to everyone. Or not!

I came back some weeks ago (after almost six months! hehe). They even improved since last time. I asked for a ciabatta and they even put some salad with it. "Do you want a glass and ice with your drink?" - they ask. They even brought everything to the table, each time smiling, no rudeness at all when putting things in the table.

And today I came back again. And not only did they do the same (little nice details like the salad for free) but also asked me if I was happy with everything. Have you even been asked in Spain if you liked the service and the food in a non-threatening way? I mean, not something like: So are you [idiot] suggesting you haven't liked my wonderful food[, stupid]?

Does it mean they are hypocrites? Or are they only trying to make everything nicer? I think if I had to choose I would prefer some so-called hypocrisy instead of that spanish spontaneity. All of us have problems but you waiter do not need to transmit yours to the clients!