My new boyfriend

It is my habit to finish my blog with the best photograph that I took. I just LOVE this guy. You can't have him I saw him first!
Thanks for reading. A special thanks to those of you who let me know you were reading, I really keeps me bouyant.

The last dumpling

Ethnic Unrest
I got more news about the massive ethnic uprising in the province of Urumqi by reading a daily newspaper in Spanish newspapers than I did in China. Even the English language newspapers had very little more than the obvious line. Of course, no one wanted to talk to us about any such matters, and that is fair enough. Perhaps if we spoke Chinese, if we had been in the country longer, if we knew someone, then we could develop some sense of the matter, but alas, none of this is true.

Going native
Debbie was happy to embrace Chinese culture thus: sucking on chickens’ feet, ordering catfish (tasted like carp to me), enjoying pork and roe dumplings with slurpy wetness on the inside, partaking the pleasures of a squat toilet, bartering, sweating and shopping. I, however was willing to go the extra step, I threatened to wear my pyjamas out in public. Please do not be mistaken, I do not mean a Mao suit (we saw not one of these) but actual pyjamas - the striped poly cotton suit type that your grandfather might have worn. Debbie declared that she had enjoyed travelling with me well enough, but it would be the end of the friendship if I donned the pink striped PJs and headed out the revolving door of the 5 star hotel. The Chinese, like the Vietnamese do not discriminate between day wear and pyjamas. People happily stroll the streets wearing their cotton stripes and no one bats and eyelid. When you think about it, it makes sense ; it is a neat outfit, the top and the bottom match in a formal type of way, it is comfotable and washable. At Kingswood the senior students have no uniform and thus wear tracksuit ponts, hoodies and ugg boots to school. Essentially what I consider to be their pyjamas, so I guess it is all perspective.

It is quite funny when an ultramodern tall stick insect style girl in hot pants, high heel gladiator boots and a funky angular haircut crosses paths with a grandma in her cotton jammies. This intersection of cultures and ages can be seen all over Shanghai in every aspect of life; architecture, food, transport, building practices.

I did not see the maglev (360kph) even though Debbie tells me is went right past. I, apparently blinked (really literally: blink and you miss it.) I also did not see one Chinese person walking around with their name tattooed on their bicep in roman letters. So, somehow the fashion is not reciprocated. I really want to come back to China, but next time I would like to come with someone who can help me see a few more layers.

The last bite
The final leg home meant out 10th boarding pass was collected and we spent a few hours queuing at Sydney airport and a mind-warping black hole of time at Canberra airport. It seemed such a long way from where we had been, and ironically such a long way from home and hearth. Eventually the novelty Chinese gifts were distributed to the offspring the, new suit was tried on by the husband and my own bed welcomed me back.

Shanghai

Social networking sites are hard to access in China: so I email Tony and he uploads

Expo

Shanghai is hosting the Expo next year, which means that right now the whole of Shanghai is getting ready. Roadworks, building works, ripped up streets etc as she gets ready to put on her best dress. This means that the olafactory assault is massive. At most points in time, I can’t identify what we are intaking as animal, vegetable or mineral. Often, I think it is the mineral, industrial, possibly toxic stuff that turns my stomach. Shanghai ’s greatest attraction is The Bund it is a beautiful promonade, so the guide books tell us. We have tried and tried again, but it seems that it is inacessabile due to the remodelling.

A Persistence of Touts

Debbie and I have gone completely Chinese, we have converted. This means that we have given ourselves over to the desire for consumer goods. We went to the clothes market, the department stores, the street shopping strips and big famous garden. All of this, including the big famous gardern, it turns out, is one big point of sale paradise. We know that there is another Shanghai, not underneath this city, but on top of it. There are thousands of touts, all of whom seem to have one job, which is to get the customer to go up the narrow staircases to "Shanghai on the second floor". Tomorrow we may do this, there we expect to find hundreds of touts enticing us up the narrow staircases to the goods on offer on the third floor.

After adjusting ourselves to the reality of our novice status, we shopped like fools. Bags, nic nacs, really stupid toys, novelty items, wallets, pearls, pearls and more pearls. Right at the end of it, we willingly put ourselves into the hands of a tout who promised us that the quality of the bags we were looking at was absolutely inferior, copies of copies, rather than the infinately more desirable copies of the orginal. He led us to a secret bag shop with a 30cm thick door which was locked behind us. Debbie started muttering about the white slave trade, I started in on the leather goods.

First the Devil, now Debbie and Greta

We were later led down a back alley, past a litlle girl and her father washing cockles, and mussels alive, aliveo. This might have been their kitchen, then around a dog leg turn, and possibly an actual dog leg and into another secret shop. The same group of tourists who we had seen in the first secret shop were also there. By this time, we seemed to have collected a small group of touts. I don’t know if there is a collective noun for tout, but there should be. In the end, both groups of shoppers had whole entourages (or should that be entoutrages) in tow. This meant that there was not enough room to swing a cat, much less an orange Prada handbag with both long and shot straps, a neat outside pocket and a matching wallet.

Dinner

We discovered another secret: the English menu and the Chinese menu. I discovered this when a girl smiled at me as my eyes popped out of my head when her dish arrived. Quick as a gluttonous westerner, I was at her table asking her to point to the menu to indicate what she had ordered. Quick as a Chinese restauranteur, the boss had a whole posse of waiters accompany me back to my seat indicating that her food was not for me. Eventually, we were given the Chinese menu which came untranslated, but with big glossy pictures. We were allowed to order, but were not allowed the same beer as all the other patrons because ”they had run out”. In the end, we ate heaps and drank lots of beer to cope with the chilli.

Shanghai = Bladerunner.

There is limited blogging, Facebook, Twitter, and social networking in China . Therefore, Tony is (hopefully) posting this for me.

Much as I try not to describe the flight to the holiday, as if it were part of the holiday, as if I am a bogan character from The Castle; something remarkable did happen in the plane. It was not the films: Antwon (whatever his surname is); really ordinary, Men of Honour; less than ordinary and Sunshine Cleaning (cute but still not extraordinary); nor was it the lovely Finnish rye bread nor the towering mass of aryian humanity that each Finnish person represents.

The amazing part of the flight was the end part. We we told, ordered actually to stay in our seats for the mandatory individual temperature taking. Two teams of Chinese infection contol police aboarded. They were wearing surgical disposible boots, white disposable jumpsuits (hoods pulled up), a masks (of course), and armed with a forehead scanners and thermomoters. They took the temperature of each and every passenger by scanning our foreheads. It was very "Minority Report". Even I was too stunned to take a photograph.

Shanghai is too much to process. It’s modern and ancient. Or as Tony so succintly puts it: Shanghai = Bladerunner.

The one thing I do have to report is that we are a slumming it, (insert sarcasm here). The hotel is plush: bathrobes, slippers, swimming pools, massages, a Japanese bath house, steam, sauna, wood panelling and a whole tray of bathroom products.

Back to Barcelona

The Costa Brava pulled us to the east, Barcelona called us southward. In the end, Barcelona won. Our last day was wonderful. We found a lovely new hotel with beds for five, tried them all and made our selection. Then back in to the centre of the city for one last trek. Off to Casa Batllo, then the Palace of Catalan Music, down to the beach for dinner and back to Montjuic so see it lit up at night with a series of ever more impressive fountains shooting enough water into the air to make all the Stage 4 drought restriction sufferers spit (except we don’t want to waste the fluid).

Those of you who know me well will know that I have been restraining myself. I have tried to not write about the food I ate and saw in every single blog entry. But like a dessert (postre in Spanish), I will allow myself one last indulgence. Fittingly enough, it will be our last meal. If you find descriptions of how wonderful someone else’s life is just stomach turning then look away now.

First, we were sitting at a seaside café at Barceloneta, the beach front of Barcelona, it was light until at least 9 o’clock when the sky slowly turns a royal blue colour that we simply don’t have in Australia. We had a really good bottle of riesling, a slight breeze blew up and, for the first time in ages our first inclination was not to remind each other how very hot we were.

We ordered potatos brava which is usually stewed, but in this case big pieces of fried potato with sweet red pepper sauce and aoli, then fried little fishes, we thought they were most like sardines, but were twice told that the name of them is actually “little fishes”, marinated grilled cuttlefish, deep fried small red peppers and salad. It was just too good and we almost managed to finish it. We rode the train home in the rush hour (about 10.30pm it seems) in a cacophony of end-of-the-day conversation. Debbie and I kept our mouths shut because we had just consumed enough garlic to ward off even the most persistent vampire, much less an innocent commuter.

Get thee to a nunnery

Mont Blanc
In Mont Blanc, it is the low season (even though the hotels still charge high season rates) because Mont Blanc is inland and almost everyone heads to the beach. Almost everything seemed closed almost all of the time. On the recommendation of our hotelier, we headed to Poblat to see the monastery. Everyone filed up some stairs to put their hand on a cup held out by baby Jesus. Debbie said a prayer; I took a solemn vow. Debbie prayed for directions, (the map was starting to get confusing) and I vowed to stay an aetheist all my life. The place was beautiful and peaceful. A small handful of priests still live there, but the real money is in the merchandising.

Monserrat
After this, we headed to Monserrat monastery which sits on top of a mountain. Debbie drove, I kept my lunch down. It turns out to be a whole village of a monastery with its own tourist hotel, finicula, museum, choir boy school and more. Some cute little nuns swans around, and for all I know they might have been actors dressed as nuns, sort of like they have actors dressed as gold miners at Sovereign Hill in Ballarat.

Girona
Getting to Girona was not hard, getting into Girona’s old town was a real trial. A walled medieval city with a rabbit warren layout of tiny streets inside a modern industrial city is a navigator’s nightmare. We eventually disobeyed several traffic rules, found a hotel, a car park (not together of course) and declared ourselves heros. Dinner was a picnic of the food and beer we had accumulated.
The morning was wonderful. A huge outdoor market sprung up like Brigadoon, we found our way to the Arab Baths, the top of the wall for a big walk, the catheral, the cafes and eventually all the way back to the car. It seemed Debbie’s prayer had worked.

Our little car

Hi to Michele, Alex and Colette. I´m enjoying your blog. Keep it coming.

Today we got a car. It is a lovely orange colour. She is a ripper. The region on the map in red is Catalan, just in case you are wondering: Where in the world is Greta Caruso?

Debbie, who is really hopeless on foot, has a wonderful sense of direction when driving. She understands the color-coded road system, the wrong side of the road thing, the impossibly confusing left hand turn, the primary, secondary and tertiary roads, the ring roads, the manual transmission, the various routes to the destination, and even which roads have tolls and which don´t. Her phenomenal skill on the road makes no sense because every single time we walked out of the hotel room in Barcelona, she turned the wrong way. So, how does she do it in a car? Wonders never cease.

We are paying homage, and when I get back I am going to read George Orwell again. I did go to the Geroge Orwell memorial in Barcelona, but it is not much.

If you want to follow our travels with your finger on a map then the circuit so far is Barcelona, Sitges, Tarragona, Mont Blanc.

Still Dancing
Catalan dancing apparently helps keep the idea of Catalan independance alive. Folk dancing done in unison with the town´s people holding hands will have a bonding effect, I suppose. The dance is so complicated it keeps out the non-Catalonians but does not require a level or excertion that would exclude the elderly or unfit. We wandered around the seemingly dead town on Mont Blanc, til we found what seemed to be the whole town gathered for an afternoon of dancing. The band was up on a stage and they played clarinet style horns that I have never seen before.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ri5XY9f3alI
And here, in Mont Blanc we stop for the night.

Swimming in Euorpe. In Sitges, we went for a swim and people could barely tell us from the locals. The few give away signs were

• We were wearing wide brimmed hats that kept the sun OFF our faces.
  
• We tried NOT to get burnt. (The Spaniards it seems are completely resistent to skin cancer; not one mother chasing an escapee toddler trying to slap on sunscreen, not a rash vest, nor hat, nor sun glasses)



• We COVERED UP with sarongs pretty quickly after actually swimming rather than just standing in the knee high water and having a mini-conference with our friends.



• We actually IMMERSED ourselves in the water and got our hair WET.



• We did not wander about TOPLESS (even though many our age put all the rolls and wrinkles out for display with not a care, and good on them I say.)



• We are not GAY. (But we are pretty happy that we came here.)
  
  The perfect outfit for a hot day.
  

The flipside of holidays

Today, Barcelona put us to the test. Footsore, hot and tired we ventured forth on an expedition. The first thing on the agenda was not Gaudi, Picasso, George Orwell, a gallery or museum. It was a trek to the car hire office. I didn’t cry, but not because I didn’t feel like it: hot, uncomfortable, footsore and weary. Of course, our travels were in vain; they had run out of cars. These are the things that the flip side of holidays are made of.

It did give us the chance to see he really elegant business/banking sector of the town and it was pretty. I did get a packet of siliconia curitas for the ampollas on my pieds. Debbie was feeling left out, so she is now complaining about her feet as well. (Don’t listen to her, save all your symathy for me.)

We did make our way through the Gothic distirct. I even got to see the Catalan dancing outside the cathedral. It is really funny. Lots of people gather to do it. They are all very straight-faced and thoughly Catalonian. They gather in a circles of about 20-30 people and hold hands. They wear lovely little runners or ballet slippers that do up with criss cross ribbons. (yes even the men) It seems a democratic affair with young and very old all joining in. One person in each group makes the call as to what to do next. There is much gentle pointing of toes and it all seems quite restrained. As the band moves through the paces, the dance becomes more enthusiastic and the movements become bigger. At certain points, the arms were all raised to shoulder height, then up above the head. Tourists stand around and try to mimic the steps, but we have not been inducted into the process, thus our participation is limited to throwing coins into the tray of the grandma who goes around and collects the money. I am not sure if the dance has religious meaning, but I think it does.

The streets of Barcelona are cram packed with people doing their bit to help turn around the economy. It was the first day of the sale season and every shop has a discount. From our vantage point, Spain has the usual four seasons, plus an extra one. Sale season is apparently responsible for the fact the most of the hotels in central Barcelona are booked out. It is all shopping bags and girls on mobile phones and bored men waiting it out. There is colour aplenty and lots of fun designs.

Here is the maths for the day. A fan from a street vendor usually costs about 2.50 euro. Greta got a plastic/bamboo fan imported from China at a bargain price. Debbie got a wooden framed, silk lace, hand painted Spanish original. Any guesses?

Mad dogs and Englishman: Greta and Debbie

This is Debbie speaking.
Enough of Greta’s perspective for now. First of all, it’s very HOT. We can drink absolutely litres of water and not feel the effects at all.

Here’s what we think about the conference:
Which is the best conference you’ve ever been to? A Victorian Association of The Teaching of English (VATE) Conference.
Who looks after delegates and presenters best? VATE does.
What is the best conference food you’ve ever had? Steve and Mary at VATE Conferences.
This conference could learn a lot from VATE. They are really disorganised.

Today we went to a whole lot of sessions at the conference. During the break we went to Gaudi’s Parc Guell. Not wasting a minute. It was about 100 degrees. Mad Dogs and Englishmen were out in the midday sun. Also Greta and Debbie. Blisters, heat rash, sunburn, heat stroke – constant companions.

Back to the conference. Quite a lot of sessions from 5.30pm onwards (to 7.30pm) were cancelled – either presenters didn’t turn up or there was no audience. Thank heavens we were not on after 5pm. It must be very demoralising for those who have prepared.

Tonight we had dinner at the oldest restaurant in Barcelona. (to be exact it is 2 years older than Australia). It was the best dinner I’ve had so far. Between us we ate: suckling pig; goose; wild boar, prawn mousse. This restaurant is ony open for 2 hours in the evening and you can’t book – you have to line up outside. But it was worth it. It has been around for 233 years. Impressive.

Now this is Greta
In Spain, unemployment is apparently, offically higher than in the rest of Europe. We are in the centre of Barcelona mixing it with the tourists and conference goers, so our observations are entirely unreliable. I do remember though, that when I was in Hong Kong, the hotel desk guy, every shop keeper and the locals on the bus all talked incessently about the effects of the recession. The designer shops were empty and even as passing tourist, I could see what was going on. In Spain, so far, my powers of incite are limited by my actual observations and they are limited by location (for the moment.)

I have read a Spanish newspaper, and apart from a demonstration on the environment, there seemed little else. No strikes, or articles about people doing it tough, or unemployment. There were articles on the elections in Honduras and bits and pieces about swine flu. Perhaps I was looking at the wrong paper.

I did see something on the television about the currency. The Euro is now so devalued that the coins are worth more than their face value. If you melt them down and sell the metal, you will get more than the monetary value. Unfortunately, we do not have a forge. (I knew I forgot something.) Anyway it is too damn hot to be working at a smith.

New vocabulary

Because I have had more emails on the issue of my lower limbs than any other aspect of the blog, I will satisfy the demands for more information. But, because I do not really want to really want to tell the tale, I will leave that task to you. There have been a few other issues to deal with. Below are some words that I have had to learn. There is the English list and the Spanish list. Those who are bored can play a match up game. Those with an inkling for narrative can string the words together and deduce the story. I remember trying to write stories from lists of random words at primary school. If you remember that exercise then you will know how to play the game.

Truth be known, I am having a lovely time and nothing bad has really happened.

Spanish Words
aire condicionado
alergia
ampolla
antihistimina
caliente
calor
cucarachas
curita
debil
erupcion
pie
reaccion
suboroso

English list
air conditioning
allergy
antihistime
bandaid
blister
cockroaches
faint
foot
heat
swollen
hot
rash
reaction
sweaty

Not more germs

Sandy (from Oxford) has asked a good question. Because I am enjoying the role of talkback radio host (by podcast), I shall field all questions.

For the sake of those up the back, I will repeat the query.
She has heard that in Barcelona people are required to wear surgical gloves when they select fruit in shop. She wonders if this is true and what the possible reason may be.

Indeed, it is true and Debbie and I caused quite a kerfuffle by selecting fruit ungloved. I am sorry to repeat the reference, but the the world's most famous glove wearer (ABC, it's easy as one, two, three, as simple as doe rei me) seems to have had quite an effect all around the world. So, while the people of Spain are happy to eat an absolute bucket of bacteria in every bite in a bar, (snacks made from meat, fish and creamy dressings kept on sitting on unfrigerated and uncovered on the bench at the tapas bar) they harbour a mortal fear of the microbes that the previous fruit handler might have deposited on the apricots.

Unemcumbered

Just in case you have forgotten, (as I have tried to do for the last few days) the purpose of our visit to Spain was to deliver a conference paper. For those poor souls who have missed a discussion about my enthusiasm for the pedagogical value of podcasting , just let me know of your interest and I will email you all the slides, film footage, podcasts and complete bibliography - enjoy!
Debbie and I have given our presentation and at least some of the things on the list below are true. Again, I am going interactive. Each of you has to decide for yourself which of the following things actually happened. You can comment in the blog or email me with your guesses. The first correct entry wins a personal reiteration of our presentation.

1. A good crowd showed up to our presentation.
2. We were foisted above the masses in attendance and crowd surfed out the door in a blaze of glory.
3. A few people thought we delivered the best session they had ever been to.
4. The technology failed us.
5. People followed us, plying us with almost embarrassing congratulatory remarks.
6. We have both been offered jobs.
7. I got nervous, but I don’t think it showed.
8. The Spanish national anthem was sung (in Catalan).
9. We ran out of handouts.
10. We have been invited to make a series of podcasts for Barcelona University.

So you can decide for yourself.
The real news is that we are freed of our obligations and now feel positively unemcumbered. Free at last. Free to do what you ask. Well, it is Barcelona, and we are over 21.