Der Vaterland

Why live overseas?  In the midst of day to day life, It’s easy to forget just why I chose to leave all my safety, savings, cars, yard, personal space, friends and family behind and try out a new country.  This weekend I had a great reminder of one of the key benefits: experiencing new cultures.  My pal Juergen, who I wrote about way back at the beginning of the MBA, is from Germany, and was kind enough to take me on a brief tour of his home this past weekend.  Specifically, he is from Mömbris, a small town in the Aschaffenburg district in the Regierungsbezirk of Lower Franconia in Bavaria, Germany, or put more concretely, he is from the the place where oompah bands, big beers, sausage, lederhosen, and most other stuff that we foreigners think of as “German” come from.  This suits me quite well.

Autobahn

Juergen lives in London, but had been working in Freiburg all week, and I flew into Frankfurt, where we met.  We got a spiffy little BMW hatchback, and zipped off to Dusseldorf to visit Daniel, another MBA.  The Autobahn is pretty famous: everybody knows that this is the freeway with no speed limit.  People go either normal freeway speed on the right side, scary fast on the left side, or fighter jet speed so the scary fast people have pull over to the right and get out of the way.  The fighter jet thing was kind of hard to believe.  We would be doing a jaw grinding 90, and these fighter jet dudes would bear down on us and just blow past.  Just watching them made me feel sort of dizzy. 

 

Dusseldorf

We got the Daniel’s house in the mid evening.  His apartment is HUGE by London standards… room for a big screen TV, a big deck, dining room table, the works.  It’s in this old factory that now has been converted to housing, and so is kind of rustic in a hip sort of way.  The best thing about Daniel’s place is that there is a raised sleeping pallet which can be lifted up by an electric winch, revealing: oh yeah, you know it… a hot tub!  Total Austin Powers action, really funny.  I’m sure Daniel has put this to good use.  That night we all went out with Daniel’s buddy Marco, who is doing a PhD at the local university.  The night was spent in classic MBA style: drinking way too much at clubs with loud music, chatting to random people, and watching my buddies get shot down by girl after girl.  I was (once again) sorely underdressed.  I only brought running shoes and t-shirts, not the dress shirts and shoes that most euro clubs require.  This was dumb of me, I should have remembered, but the guys managed to squeak me in to the clubs one way or another anyway.  We came home at 5:30 AM.  That makes me tired again just writing it.  After breakfast we split for Erlangen, where Juergen’s fraternity is.

 

Juergen, Daniel, Marco

 

 

Germans wear nice shoes, Americans wear shitty ones…

 

Erlangen

This is the town where Juergen’s fraternity is located.  It’s where the Friedrich Alexander University is located, although for complex reasons, he actually studied at another University, but became a member of a fraternity at this one.  Fraternities in Germany are in some ways similar to those in the states (dudes in big old house, lots of beer, new members have to do all the shitty work, etc.) but in at least one way, they are TOTALLY different, and that way would be the sword fighting.  By sword fighting, I mean actual dudes with armor, fighting with actual swords, actually cutting the shit out of each other and getting big gnarly scars… and here is the important bit:  big gnarly scars on their unprotected faces and heads.  Does this sound more interesting than the phi delta gamma beta whatevah guys at your school?  I bet it does.  The basic run down on the sword fighting is this: the fraternities date back to the end of the 18th century, when people actually did wear swords, got into duels, etc.  To join a fraternity, you had to fight someone from another fraternity, and if you got a scar on your face, it was a sign of character, toughness, etc.  This tradition continues today, and is apparently unchanged from the 1850s.  The duelers wear chain mail shirts, heavy leather gloves, neck armor, and these armored goggles with a metal nose plate.  This keeps you from getting cut in the chest, neck, hands, eyes or nose.  Then, they stand across from one another with both feet facing forward and one had behind the back, and swing the swords at one another’s heads.  A round of fighting consists of four swings of each sword, with the swords held above the head.  Then, the duelers are stopped.  Then, there’s a break of a few seconds and they start again.  This goes for up to 30 rounds, or until someone is cut really badly and the match is stopped.  You can end up in a fight one of two ways: (1) you do one as part of a organized bout so as to be accepted into the fraternity, or (2) you get someone angry enough at you that they take their business card, rip it, and hand it to you, which means that you are challenged to a duel.  Apparently these frat boys never get into fist fights, but if they get really pissed off at someone, they will hold a duel.  If you are a crappy dueler and you get challenged, a senior guy in your house can do the fight for you.  In either case, people are going to get slashed up, and it’s a pretty serious deal.  I got to see the practice room with all the practice targets, helmets, swords and etc.  Juergen even dressed me up in the gear for shits and giggles.

 

 

no caption could really do this one justice

One of the chief pastimes of all students is drinking beer, and these guys are no exception.  I made sure to help as much as I could in this regard.

 

 

I think this stuff was called pils… sort of lagery

 

These guys predictably live in a big old 19th century house with tall ceilings, a bunch of formal rooms, and lots of dark wood.  There are little pictures of every member ever on the wall, but for the guys who were in before photography, there are these little silhouettes.  There’s some kind of a thing about wearing these little captains hats and tricolored sashes, but I forget exactly what that’s all about.  The dudes smoke constantly and from what I can tell pretty much drink constantly as well.  One of the rooms is a bar, and this is where I was first exposed to the singing traditions of the house.  They have these little leather bound books with metal studs on the covers that have all sorts of Germanic student drinking songs in them.  The senior guy in the room kept yelling “silencium” which I guess means silence, and then would tell everyone to open their books and sing.  I managed to catch one of these on video with my phone. 

 

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUm5RNkN630)

priceless

Nuremberg is Nürnberg

The next morning we got up and went to a beer garden, where I drank a big beer, and ate a huge pork knuckle with a giant potato dumpling.  In the interest of not torturing Juergen in the car on the way home, I skipped the sauerkraut.  After lunch, we went to Nürnberg, which people in the US tend to call Nuremburg, this is where the Reichsparteitagsgelände, or Nazi Party Rally Grounds was.  There’s a very famous war movie of a statue of a giant German eagle holding a swastika being blown up, and that was at the Reichsparteitagsgelände.  This is also where the big Nazi rallies were held, and where the big famous book burnings were, etc.  Today, most of the grounds have been turned into parks, so I doubt those old Nazis would even recognize it today.  This is also where the top Nazis were prosecuted by the victors after the war.  This is a grim museum, but I was glad to get a chance to see it, as it’s an important historical site.  Juergen gave me a lot of extra details on artifacts and photographs in the museum, so it was a very instructive visit.  After, we wandered around the old town center, which was pretty cool.

 

Mömbris

On the way back on Monday, we stopped for the second time at Juergen’s grandparents’ place, which is out in the hilly countryside of Bavaria.  This area is just gorgeous with lots of trees and little fields and farms, sheep, orchards and vineyards, it’s quite idyllic.  Grandpa actually fought in the war, just at the end.  Apparently he was a 14 year old anti aircraft gunner in the last days of the war.  After the allies overran his emplacement, he rode a bike with flat tires some 200 miles home.  Grandma and Grandpa were very kind to me, and fed me lots of tasty Bavarian lunch: sausages, cold cuts, terrine, home made cakes, etc.  All very good stuff, right up my alley.

 

Juergen and his grandparents

 

country lane outside their house

 

some things are the same everywhere you go

 

On Germany

I found Germany to be a pleasant, leafy place with nice little towns, great food, and an admirable dedication to beer drinking.  They also really dig the pork products, and I can’t argue with that at all.  I definitely need to go back!

the scorps

Juergen is taking me on a tour of the fatherland today.  I woke up at 6AM with Can’t Live Without You by The Scorpions running on a 6 second loop in my mind.  Now it’s 9:30 and Big City Nights is running on a 2 second loop.  I’m screwed.

 

Athenaeum Club

Shelby is back in town, and so we went to dinner at the club.  Originally this was supposed to be at the Oxford and Cambridge club, but when we got there, it was closed for the summer break.  On the door was a list of “reciprocal” clubs, which are basically clubs that let you use the facilities if you are a member of the Oxford and Cambridge club.  There is a long list of clubs around the world that are reciprocal to the O and C, but during the summer break, apparently there are a bunch of local London clubs that are temporarily reciprocal.  This is cool, because you don’t normally get to go to these, and many are pretty interesting and historically significant.  So, tonight we picked another Pall Mall area club from the list: the Athenaeum.  This turned out to be a good, if totally random call.  The building is really neat, done in Neoclassical and dates to 1824.  It’s right around the corner from the The Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, and actually pretty close to the O and C too.  It’s a bit nicer inside than our club, if also a bit smaller, with lots of classical statues everywhere.  Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, Franz Liszt, Winston Churchill, Arthur Conan Doyle, Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling, WB Yeats, and Richard Wagner were all members here.  Apparently the queen mother liked to have get togethers here back before she died.  This is totally NOT the sort of place they let recently emigrated Americans into, unlike the O and C which is pretty much for graduates with a pulse.  You’ve got to be a hot shot Londoner or a serious arts player to get in here, so it was cool to get the opportunity.  We got a look at their library, which is super cool, if quite a bit smaller than ours.  It has the two story ladder and catwalk deal that you see in movies, and so it has floor to ceiling books, a really cool effect.

 

library – someday I’ll have one of these!

 

The porter who showed us around the club picked out early on that we were from O and C, and kept making a big deal about how much more exclusive this club was than ours while he was proudly showing us around, which was super funny.  Having people condescend to you for being lower status than they are is the TOTAL English experience, and it’s even more authentic/hilarious coming from a waiter with a goofy accent.  Funny funny place, London.  The dining room was typical of London clubs: big room with polished wood tables, candles, waiters everywhere, big pictures of severe looking old dudes on the wall, etc.  Although, this place actually has an outdoor patio for summer dining, which is really good since these places all want you to wear a jacket and tie while you eat.  I had dover sole, and Shelby had calves liver, which I thought was pretty burly of her.  She told me all about her ill fated move to Dallas (lasted only two weeks) and some drama with a dude she’s been seeing.  I feel a bit bad that her big move didn’t work out, but I’m mostly glad that she’s back, it’s nice having the Shelbs around.   After dinner we went up to the lounge and had a few drinks.

 

lounge – we sat waaaay down at the far end

Shelby found a book all about London clubs and proceeded to read the stories out loud in a really crappy fake pretentious English accent.  I kept shushing her and laughing while scarfing down a tasty 1970’s vintage Calvados.  Afterward, we walked our middle classes asses back to the tube station and went our separate ways home.

grandma comes to town

My mother came to visit recently and got to see her grand-daughter for the first time.  We took several little trips over 2 weeks, and had a blast.  Grandmas like new babies, and this one seemed to still be pretty excited even though this is her 7th.

train to polperro

Mom got here on a Friday afternoon, so I took the train out to Heathrow to meet her.  I came directly from work, so I was still in my suit and tie.  She thought this looked pretty funny and told me that I looked like a real dad.  Great.  We went back to the apartment and she got to meet Isa, which of course was a lot of fun for everyone.  We stayed the night at the apartment and got up really early the next day to catch a train to Cornwall.  Actually, the train went to Plymouth which is is Cornwall, and also happens to be the place from which the Pilgrims departed England for North America.  These people were religious nuts who were being kicked out of England.  Of course they thrived in North America and their crazy ideas have since defined the moral tone of our country.  There’s something else for which we Americans can be resentful of our erstwhile English overlords: couldn’t the king just have just burned them at the stake or something?  Oh well, too late now.  Plymouth itself is a big run down, but does have a neat old town and harbor.  This was the baby’s first long train ride, 3.5 hours, and she did fine, sleeping most of the way.

early early early at Paddington station

luggage…

 

baby on a train!

 

From Plymouth we rented a car, and drove out to our rental house near Looe.  Looe is an old fishing village that has sort of become a crappy English holiday town: lots of dudes with shaved heads and tank tops with bad tattoos and bulldogs out walking with their rough looking wives who are smoking and pushing strollers while eating chips.  The place is supposed to be quaint, but it’s really just kind of shitty.  I was bummed out by Looe to be honest.  The area just outside of town is quite bucolic and nice however, and Reba had found us a really cool house in this area, way up on a cliff overlooking the ocean.  The view from the cliff was lovely and in some ways, reminded us of Santorini.  We had planned lots of little day trips, but as it turns out, vacations with babies are quite different from those without babies.  Getting going anywhere is a fairly big production, and needs to be timed carefully to avoid meltdowns.  So, we ended up staying in the house quite a bit, which was fine with me, because I could lay on the couch reading, looking out over the bay, drink an ice cold Stella and chill with the baby all at the same time, which is pretty much Ean heaven.

 

the good life!

 

I got a lot of reading in over the trip.  I banged through a few economists, a biography about Sonic Youth and an analysis of the letter writing relationship between James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, which was pretty great.  Jefferson was kind of a nut, and seemed to believe that people should rise up and violently overthrow their governments every few years.  That aside, there were a lot of great ideas moving between these two guys, with interesting ideological conversations played out against a backdrop of a pretty crazy period in history.  This is a nice companion to the Portable John Adams, another book I’ve recently read.  Good shit, Maynard.  I also got a chance to write some songs, and worked out a way to play guitar and rock Isa’s car seat at the same time with my foot.  It definitely put her to sleep a few times, which reminds me of a few Birdbath shows from back in the day. 

 

captive audience

Driving around the area, we came across a neat little town that our cabbie in Plymouth had recommended to us: Polperro.  This place was way more my speed than Looe, it had a medieval waterfront stuck down in a deep valley, beautiful sea views, a bar with microbrews, and a really great fish restaurant, Nelson’s.  In my experience, this is a rare thing in the UK, because to most people here, “fish” = deep fried cod with chips and mushy peas.  Not that I don’t like a bit of fish and chips now and again, but there really is a lot more to seafood than that.  So, finding a place that did Cornish fish stew, fresh scallops, Atlantic lobster, and had a premier cru Chablis really turned my crank!

 

lunch in Polperro

Polperro Harbor at low tide

 

check out the angles on that window

 

river tour with mom

The trip back to London was nice, and after a week of chilling with books, beer, baby and guitar, I was feeling pretty relaxed.  St John’s Wood is a bit on the crazy side recently, because Lord’s Cricket Ground is a few blocks away, and the English are playing the Australians for “the ashes”, which is a complicated rivalry thing that I don’t really understand but also don’t really care enough about to figure out.  Anyway, the neighborhood is loaded with guys wearing crimson and gold ties in support of their team (whichever it is) and the neighborhood pubs which are usually empty and peaceful are basically overflowing with loud drunk sports people (in ties). 

A few months back, Kaysa set up an outing for Alan, our friend from SBS who was going to get married soon.  Al is not the typical guy, so the typical stag party with strippers and shots and whatever didn’t really seem to suit him.  So, Kaysa came up with a swell day that included a boat tour of the Thames in London, a kite festival, a micro brewpub, and dinner at some kind of weird German restaurant with accordions and lederhosen all over the place.  I found out on this outing that not only are Germans as weird as I initially suspected, but also that a boat tour of the Thames with a stop in Greenwich is a really great day out.  So, I took my mom down to the pier at Westminster, and got us on a tour.  There’s a lot to see from the river down there… the tower of London, Parliament, the London eye, the golden hind, the tower bridge, the place where they used to chain pirates us to be drowned by the incoming tide, etc. etc.  My mom really enjoyed all of this, and snapped lots of pictures.  We made it down to Greenwich by late afternoon and stopped at the totally awesome Meantime Brewing brewpub, the Greenwich Union.  Micro-brewpubs are kind of rare here, so a visit to this place is a real treat for someone from the pacific northwest.  After a late lunch, we walked up to the royal observatory which is on the top of a hill in a huge park, and you can stand exactly on zero degree longitude.

 

mom at zero

 

(not) visiting the queen

My club arranged a special after hours guided tour of Buckingham Palace, and the event happened while mom was in town.  To be entirely honest, this is the exact same tour that any tourist can get as long as he buys a ticket and turns off his cell phone, but I think my mom enjoyed telling her friends that she might bump into the queen anyway.  The Palace is kind of what you’d expect: big, fancy, lots of art and gold stuff, has a throne room, etc.  It seemed pretty well maintained to me, but according to the economist, the place is falling apart.  It was fun anyway, and I think my mom got a big kick out of seeing the collection of royal dresses that are on display there, so it was worth it.  We finished the tour with a glass of champagne on the back patio and then it was off to the club for dinner.  Total London stuff… a bit silly, but lots of fun.  We didn’t see the queen though.

 

la Coruña

I really wanted to take my mom to Spain on this trip as well.  Our normal M.O. for trips over here is to go to 2 separate places NOT in London, for 1 week each.  This keeps things relaxed without too much running around but also gets me to somewhere a bit different from here.  This time, with the Palace tour, it was going to be hard to squeeze in a second place without it being London, and since I have all the London I could ever want and we only had a few days left of vacation, I tried to find somewhere that is close by to visit.  A friend of mine at work is from a town called La Coruña which is on the north coast of Spain in a region called Galicia.  It’s only a 1.5 hour flight from Heathrow, and is near a town that my mom really likes, Santiago De Compostela.  So, I booked some tickets to Coruña and some reservations at their nice hotel, the Finisterre.  Arriving was a bit weird, as there had just been an ETA terrorist bombing that day in a nearby town (Burgos), so the immigration guys had a field day with my passport.  The problem with my passport is that with all the travelling I’ve done in the past few years, and the greedy passport page habits of the UK visa people and the Chinese government, I’m all out of space, and it’s pretty difficult to tell where I’ve been because of all the stamps stamped on top of each other.  So, I had to fill out some explanations of where I was staying, how long I would be there for, etc. and have some conversations that stretched the limits of my high school Spanish.  Eventually we got through, but it took maybe 20 minutes to convince them that I really was a tourist.  Funny!  Once we got settled at the hotel, things were just fine… a quick walk put us at the Plaza of Maria Pita, which is the typical Spanish grand plaza with restaurants and people out for walks, etc.  We found a nice little seafood tapas place, and dug into some great Spanish dinner.  The Spanish pace of evening is something I really enjoy: strolling around, finding a place to eat, wine, tapas, more strolling, the dinner process takes hours and hours, but isn’t tedious, just relaxing.  Plus the food is AWESOME.  The local Orujo is a joy as well, the perfect after dinner drink.  There aren’t a lot of “sights” to see in Coruña, so we spent a lot of our time in this way, which is perfect for me, and seemed to go over well for mom too.

 

dinner Coruña style

 

We did take one day trip to Santiago de Compostela, which is an ancient pilgrimage town which has drawn people from all over Europe for centuries.  The big cathedral there is quite beautiful, and features a giant incense burner that is swung across the gathered pilgrims, apparently the original idea was to deodorize the stinky bastards after their long unwashed trip across the continent.  The cathedral also has a neat column where people repeated placing their hands over the centuries has worn a hand shaped indentation into the rock.  The first two times I was here, in 1987 and 1996, you could walk up to the column and put your hand into the grooves, which was pretty neat because of all the people before you who had also done this.  Unfortunately for us, but perhaps fortunately for the column, it is now roped off and you can only look at it.  This is probably for the best, I bet there are more tourists visiting that city in one 21st century summer than in 20 years of the 15th century, and this really neat relic could be at risk of falling apart if it’s not conserved properly.

handy…

 

We also visited the Santiago hotel where my mom and dad stayed when they first went to Spain in 1983, the Parador.  This is across the square from the cathedral.  I think that was cool for her.  It was certainly cool for me because I ate some killer Jamon Iberico.

 

mom standing on the cathedral steps with hotel Parador in the background

  

mom and the cathedral

looking out over the bay at breakfast

 

The last thing we did in Coruña was visit the old roman lighthouse at Finisterre (Latin Finis and Terre?), which has been standing since the year 2.  It’s had a LOT of changes since then, such as an entirely new roof structure and external walls added in the 18th century, but it’s still there, and makes a pretty good background for mom.  I walked up the stairs inside, and it was a a weird combination of claustrophobic because of the tight winding staircases, and agoraphobic because of the high tower with no railing.  Cool view though.

 

 

lighthouse!

 

All in all it was a pretty good trip.  Now, I’m back at work in my suit.

Spinal Tap!

We saw Spinal Tap tonight. If you haven't heard of them, just read this and then come back to the blog. They weren't exactly great, but considering they're only doing 2 shows on this tour, and the fact that they're a joke band anyway, it probably doesn't matter. They had Greg Bissonette on drums, which was cool since the last time I saw him play was in 1987 when he was drumming for the David Lee Roth Band.

On the positive side, it felt like I'd ticked another box on the list of things I need to do in life regardless of just how amazing the actual experience is... like climbing the Acropolis, seeing Bruce Springstein play "Born to Run", or doing Tequila shots at Cabo Wabo. I'm still working my way up to that last one. They were also funny, which is pretty much required from a band like Tap.

On the negative side, they're not really very good, their non-hits are seriously NON, and oddly, they're not loud! For the band that gave us the concept of an amp that "goes to 11", and stood on stage in front of 4 full Marshall stacks with two extra heads, they were pretty quiet. I saw Dinosaur Jr a few months back and with 3 Marshall stacks their guitarist nearly melted my eardrums.

I suppose it's hard to be super excited about a faux rock band when just last week I saw THE real rock band, ACDC, who still pretty much kick total ass after 36 years. We left a bit early, as they broke into some jam session with some local UK rock star sitting in on keyboards and we didn't know/care who he was. We wanted to beat the crowd to the tube anyway. All in all, a fun night, and I have new black t-shirt!

Movie Review: Anvil

Tonight I watched some Spinal Tap comedy clips that had been recorded for the release of Tap’s new album.  It was basically the Spinal Tap guys doing a bunch of improvised conversations as their Tap characters… stuff we’ve all seen before.  This was boring enough that I quit watching after a few minutes, and made dinner for Reba and I.  This was some cut up chicken breast I marinated with soy sauce, garlic, salt, sugar, and rice wine vinegar.  Typical Ean stuff… whatever is lying around.  This was pretty tasty over rice, and we had that while we watched a movie.  The movie choices tonight were The Wrestler or Anvil.  The Wrestler is some moving drama about a loser wrestler guy and apparently it somehow parallels Mickey Rourke’s life and is even more poignant for this reason.  Or whatever.  The other option was Anvil, which is a documentary about a seminal Canadian metal band which was famous for a few years in the early 80’s, never made any money, and instead of breaking up, just kept on going until the present day.  It was a toss up between drama or what I thought would be comedy ala Spinal Tap, and I chose what i thought would be comedy.  Ok, it was pretty funny, and pretty sad at times, but mostly, and surprisingly, it was touching and inspiring.

 

Anvil

Anvil basically follows the band as they do their super low end day jobs, practice, write songs, try to get a good producer, go on a low budget euro tour, etc., but the twist is that these guys are 50.  They’re actually looking pretty good for 50, for what that’s worth.  These guys have been best friends since 1973, and have stuck together in a band since 1981, but never run out of hope that they’re someday going to be rock stars.  Both are totally loveable morons who bring a sort of wide eyed glass half full middle aged spin to a type of speed metal retard persona I thought I’d seen the last of in rural 1987 Washington.  Anybody who’s ever been in a band on tour will recognize the missed trains, empty clubs, ripped off gig money, weird euro rock scene, boxes of self pressed CDs, supportive girlfriends, etc.,  and that much of this is fun for the recognition factor alone.  However, what really makes the movie are the two main band members, Robb (drums) and Lips (guitar/singer), particularly the latter.  At a euro metal concert that Anvil get added to, he freaks out over reuniting with B level rock stars he’d shared stages with 30 years prior, and it seems from his hyperactive gee-whiz response that in the meantime they have become idols as well as representatives of his own memories of rock stardom.  I’ll say it: this had me a bit teary.  Other points in the film were moving as well: the umpteenth fight/breakup/makeup between Rob and Lips during a studio session, as well as a final triumphaly packed show in Japan.  All the way through, these guys are so darn earnest and nice I just couldn’t help but root for them.  So what if they’re really not that good, so what if they’re 50 year old losers still trying to “make it” as metal stars in the 21st century, so what if their jobs consist of delivering school lunches in the snow, SO WHAT!?  I hope they get signed and sell a zillion albums.  These guys deserve it.

Now I want to play in a band again.

mBabyTracker back online

Phew!

I finished mBabyTracker, my mobile and online baby tracking tool, version 0.5 just in time to get back to work.  Of course, the day I went back to work the month changed from may to june and my lousy testing reared it’s ugly head: it totally blew up!  The chart bars were all over the place and totally sucking… click the picture below to see just how lame.

mbabytracker mbooboo

This was really bumming me out! I couldn’t show all my work buddies the stupid geeky thing I spent my pat leave doing.  :(  And of course, since I’m back to work now, I don’t have nearly as much time to play with computer programs at night.  mBabyTracker had to sit for several days showing the lame message:

“mBabyTracker is undergoing planned maintenance...   ;)”

Eureka!

So today I figured it out.  It was just a problem with the way I was setting up the xml for the time categories (1:00, 2:00, etc,) at the top of the page.  Now that I fixed it, the whole world can see how nicely my little darling poops and eats, assuming Reba remembers to track the data.  Speaking of the little darling…

 

mBabyTracker (mmm-bĕhbĕh-trakuh)

What is it?

There is a lot of downtime when you are on paternity leave. So, I took the opportunity to learn a bit about mobile software development. I started with wanting to write for the iphone, but quickly found out that I needed an iphone and a mac to do it correctly. So I settled for the blackberry, since Reba and I both have one.

What I came up with is: mBabyTracker. Predictably, this is a silly mobile and internet application that tracks things for our newborn baby Isabel. Specifically, it tracks her awake time, sleeping, pooping and eating.

Here's how it works:

1. baby does something, in this case: poop.

2. Reba opens mBabyTracker on her blackberry, clicks “baby poops” and then “submit”.

  

3. mBabyTracker sends the information up to my server at www.mBabyTracker.com where it is stored in a database.

4. At any time she wants, she can go to www.mBabyTracker.com and view a historical chart that shows when Isa was awake, asleep, eating or pooping.

5. Notice the new little brown star!

 

How did I build it?

For the blackberry development I used the RIM Blackberry JDE and handset simulators, and Java.  For the web server it’s good old Vbscript and T-SQL hosted by Gearhost, a nice cheap little hosting service I use.  The reports are displayed in a cool flash based charting tool called Fusion Widgets.  The whole thing was free, except for the hosting cost $20/month I was paying anyway, and the one time Blackberry cert registration, which was also $20.

 

Is this important?

NO!  There are lots of baby tracking websites out there: www.trixietracker.com is a good one for example.  I just thought it would be fun to learn how to write stuff for the blackberry and Reba was having a hard time remembering how the baby’s sleeping pattern has been.

isa in motion

Of course I’m now taking lots of stupid pictures and videos of baby.

 

stupid video #1 of 10,000,000,000,000

at the edge of something

Part 1 – 10:00 AM

Yesterday Reba had contractions all day long, lasting around a minute, of mild intensity and spaced anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes apart.  This morning she woke me up at 5:30 AM with contractions around a minute and 20 seconds, with a lot more intensity and spaced 2 to 4 minutes apart.  She’d been on the phone to the midwives at the UCL birthing center and they said if the spacing was 3 minutes for over 30 minutes, it would be on.  I spent about an hour timing her after that, we hit the numbers, and now…

it’s on like donkey kong.

We’ve been at the hospital for 3 hours now, and she’s gotten a shot of diamorphine which is a sedative and pain reliever that is common here.  This has taken the edge off of the contractions: she was literally writhing in pain and moaning an hour ago, now she’s doing all the breathing stuff and even dozing a little.  I’ve sent my coworkers the paternity leave note, I’ve texted our uk pals, I’ve called Reba’s mom and sis, and I’ve sent the facebook status as well.  The whole planet knows that we’ve snuck into our hidey hole and we’ll be emerging with a brand new baby Isa shortly.

It’s funny, I’m really not all that nervous.  It seems like Reba and the midwives know what they’re doing.  Even Isa has her head pointed in the right direction and is working to script.  On top of that, this process is very routine and Reba is a healthy girl… so, I’m relatively chill.  I think I’m going to go find some hospital food now.

 

Part 2 – 11:00 AM

Now the contractions are steady at 3 minutes, and she seems like she’s really in a lot of pain.  She’s showing her toughness, I’m pretty impressed (although the morphine shot helped).  I’m also impressed with the midwives here, these ladies are highly trained nurses that just do births.  They know what’s up and how to work with difficult pregnant ladies.  Ours is Angela and she brings a super chill vibe to the room.  Apparently the way she says “breath in through your nose and out through your mouth slowly” is different than when I say it, because Reba actually does it when she says to!  The English have a couple of labor pain options that I’d never heard of before I came here.  For example, they give something called “gas and air” which is what we think of as laughing gas or nitrous.  I should have just brought some whipping cream in a can.

 

Part 3 – 12:00 noon

We are very close now.  The pain is super intense, but she is within an hour or 2 at most of delivery.  She’s not very chatty and has her eyebrows so smashed together that they almost go vertical at times.  My job is the hand holder and breathing drill sergeant.  My hand is more like a stress ball than a husband’s gently grasped mitt… she is squeezing the blood out of it!

  this face looks silly, but she was in some SERIOUS pain and so was my hand

Part 4 – 1:00 PM

(ex post facto)

There was a lot of screaming, fluids, narrowly averted last minute changes of plan, and it was at this point that my breathing strategy was shown to crumble on the battlefield.  I saw things I shouldn’t have, and I won’t repeat them here.

 

Part 5 – 1:50 PM

We have a baby.  She is Isabel Josephine Hernandez and she has black hair with blue eyes.  She is loud and an energetic eater.  True to Hernandez form!  Reba is good.  The baby is good, and apparently weights 3.4 kg and measures 52 cm.  I don’t know what that means, but apparently she’s on the large end of things.  Now the only thing left is to figure out if she’s going to Oxford or Harvard.

Isabel(le) Josephine Hernandez in the flesh!

Finally we have a bass player who can’t quit

 

I took this with my phone, I think it’s my favorite

big city living

Lately, I’ve been trying to lose weight.  It seems like I gave myself a break from dieting and exercise to do my GMAT preparation, and then let it slide for my application papers, and then let it slide because I got into Oxford, and then let it slide because I was chilling at the end of my tenure at wamu (ok that was for 6 months, I know) and then of course because I was having my summer off before school and then during school and then when we were travelling the world and then when I was trying to get a job in London and then when I had just started a job in London, and now 1 year after that I’m 100% out of shape and thinking it’s time to get it back together again.  So, I’m eating light and not drinking during the week, and also even thinking about joining a gym.  So I had NO plans of having any wine tonight.

(Cut to Monday morning this week)

I was pissed off and yelling at people Monday morning on the 9:30 AM standup conference call because things aren’t moving along and my project is behind schedule.  I guess a 9:30 is better than Tom Bolger’s daily 8:30 back at wamu, but still, this current one is a daily bummer.  (a note on 8:30 meetings: while it is supremely useful to get your team together to talk through what issues are on the table each morning, assign new issues, close out old ones, remove blockers, humiliate people who didn’t get their work done, etc., the REAL reason for having an 8:30 is a demonstration of dominance.  Basically, it’s saying: “I can make you show up to an early morning grilling every day of the week and you have to come.  I have power over you, and I’m now punishing you for xyz.” )  In this way, the week has progressed in a uniform fashion: most of Monday was futile and hostile, while Tuesday was born, lived and died in much the same vein.  At 7pm tonight I was applying the last of my flagging will to resolving a did-it-work or didn’t-it-work question which you would think ought to be pretty straightforward but isn’t.  Despite my shitty attitude today, it really wouldn’t be fair to my employer or colleagues to go into any more detail than this.

I left the office demoralized and frankly a bit angry.  Thoughts of “I’ve had it with this”, “ENOUGH” and similar writhed in my mind, growing incrementally less poisonous with each meter I put between myself and Canary Wharf.

I got on the tube and broke out my copy of Foreign Policy magazine, which is a sort of less serious version of Foreign Affairs, but still cool.  A gaggle of Spaniards were sitting on the chairs, checking their tube maps repetitively, chatting, and assuming that no one else on the train knew what “de puta madre” meant.  I love listening to the Spanish language being spoken, it’s fun for me to test how much I can pick up when the Iberian is conversational and fast. 

10 minutes into the ride, a seat came open at the end of the car, so I went to the end of the seats and sat down.  I brushed against a sitting fellow passenger on my way.  This is typical since the trains are cramped and bounce around a  lot when they are moving.  As I sat down, the guy to the left of me turned and made a nasty comment about me sitting on his coat.  I apologized and turned back to the FP.  This is where the ensuing 20 minutes became fuzzy and I have a hard time remembering exact details. 

I BELIEVE the guy wouldn’t let it go, and began a barrage of verbal abuse ending in “I’ll mash up your glasses”.  I remember his face very well: brown, balding, and thin with the type of hearing aides that poke little plastic tubes out of your ears.  He was wearing little rectangular glasses that were rounded on the edges.  I think the thin metal frames were brownish too.  His left eye was closed, and didn’t stick out as far as a closed eye should.  It seemed sort of deflated and there was pus coming out from where the lids joined.  I think he was a bit disheveled in his dress as well, but that’s hard to picture now. 

He turned away from me and back to a very attractive 20s-ish woman who he was grossly hitting on despite the fact that he was obviously much older than she, and way not in her league.  He was holding 2 cell phones in one hand and gesturing to her while he told her something about how she should call him.  The woman was just smiling and shaking her head no.

Rejected, eyeguy turned back to me, even angrier.  He shouted that I was a “prat”, which is a stupid English term for “jerk” or “asshole” or whatever. 

I nearly never ever get into confrontations with anybody.  I just avoid trouble, it’s something I can usually sense and steer wide from.  I suppose that my angry day led me to ignore my surroundings, ultimately letting me sit next to a psycho without noticing it.  However, when these rare situations do crop up, my heart races and my mind goes cloudy.  Thus, I can hardly remember the details of what happened next.

Eyeguy continued on with his verbal abuse, but stepped things up by reaching for the handrail to the right of me and holding it so that his arm was in front of my face.  Then, as the train stopped he stood up and faced me.  I remember thinking that I wasn’t going to let this guy take a swing at me while I was sitting down, so I stood up and he stepped back a little.  At this point I was just staring at him intently.  He started shouting about something that was in his pocket and demanding that I touch his pocket. 

In a raised voice I said, “I’m not touching your fucking pocket”.  I was really starting to get worked up at this point.  He kept demanding I touch his pocket, and then took out this little wooden box.  Holding the box up and shaking it at me (kind of like those guys with the bibles downtown) he shouted that there was something very important in the box, I just stared.  He then put the box back in his pocket and started grabbing my jacket.  In retrospect I guess he was either working himself up to something or else testing how far he could push me.  I remember shouting something about not touching me (ignored), and then grabbing his hand off of my jacket and holding it away from me at the wrist.  At this point the door to the train was open, and for whatever reason I rushed him, slamming his body up against the wall.  This should have been easy as he was smaller than me, but it was oddly easier than I would have thought: he crumpled up against the wall with me pinning him.  I think this guy was even more frail than he looked.  I vaguely remember shouting at him to get off the train.

At this point, my head was so fuzzy and I was so agitated I don’t think I could have answered “what’s 2+3” correctly.

Immediately a woman standing near us put her body between mine and the eyeguy, asking me to “please sit down” and the guy to please get off the train.  I let him go, and went back to my seat as he let out another barrage of abuse, closing with “if I ever see you again, I’ll kill you”.  To really end his day on a low note, the tube doors then closed on his chest, pinning him once more.  These doors only look like they would crush you, what really happens is they close fast at first and then slow down, totally stopping if the encounter any resistance.  They don’t give much though, so he was trapped.  The doors then opened again, he stepped out, and the people around me on the train all started saying how there was clearly something wrong with him, it wasn’t my fault, I did the right thing, etc. 

Walking out of the tube station, one of the women who was sitting near me took a few minutes to talk to me about the incident and was really very warm and supportive as we walked along.  I think she could tell that I was really upset about the whole thing.  I asked her if I had hit him, because it was hard to remember details, but she said no I didn’t, and repeated that I had acted very well, etc.  It’s funny how I saw such a crappy awful side of Londoners and such a wonderful, kind side of Londoners all in the space of just a few minutes.

This whole scenario really upset me.  I don’t like conflict of any kind, and typically get a belly full during my work day.  Physical conflict with random strangers just turns me off completely, and I’d go through a lot to avoid it.  Then in the one case where I do decide I’ve had just about enough today and stand my ground, it turns out the guy is some physically and mentally sick loser, and I just ended up feeling like crap for possibly hurting him.  I guess you have to deal with this kind of thing living in a big city and riding the subway all the time.  In fairness, I have taken the tube at least twice a day for the last year, so if this only happens once in 500 or 600 rides, it’s probably not something I have to worry about running into again.

So, even though it was the middle of the week, I had a nice big glass of red wine when I got home.

 

catch up: flamenco festival in Jerez

This trip actually happened in March, but I haven’t taken the time to write about it yet.  Here goes…

Reba has always been interested in dance, and spent a lot of her youth studying ballet.  So, it wasn’t surprising when after a trip to Spain a few years back, she saw some people practicing flamenco in a park and became quite interested.  When we got back to Seattle, she joined a flamenco class and started giving performances with the class, listening to the music at home, seeing various flamenco groups when they came through Seattle etc.  Some of the girls in her class go to a yearly flamenco festival in Jerez, Spain, which is really the heart of flamenco country.  This Festival de Jerez last a couple of weeks, and consists of performances by top dancers and musicians at night and classes taught by these same performers during the day.  Conveniently, the old part of Jerez is cute with little windy streets and not too many people, and it’s the home of Sherry (Jerez is the Spanish word for Sherry) and this requires lots of sampling. 

For the past two years, Reba has of course been a lot closer to Jerez and going to the festival has been just a matter of quick 2 hour flight from London.  This year, she brought me, Kaysa, Ginny, and Brandon who was officially renamed el Brandito for the duration of the trip. 

 

Meat

The first night was great.  We got into town, settled into our respective joints, and met in town for dinner.  We went to Maison Asador, which is basically a meaty meat restaurant in the middle of a meaty meat town.  Seafood is much less common in Jerez restaurants than in other parts of Spain, and this place takes this MO very seriously.  The jamon iberico is the best thing ever, this is a dry cured ham like Prosciutto or Serrano, but it comes from pigs that live in Oak groves and only eat acorns.  It’s very expensive outside of Spain, but still: eat this if you can!

Reba and Ginny, me and el Brandito, on our first night out.

 

Market Day

The next day, we went down to the old market to get olives, cheese, iberico, etc.  Even though there are supermarkets in town, this place is really popular with the locals.  Folks are hanging around socializing, eating, shopping, arguing, haggling, etc.  It seems like a very inefficient way to shop, but still a great way to spend an afternoon.

 

 

there actually is SOME seafood in Jerez after all…

 

Churros 

After the market, we went to the central square and bought churros from the stand there.  These are basically like long skinny donuts, and are pretty much all any Spaniard consumes for breakfast aside from coffee and cigarettes.

is that David Lee Roth buying churros with my wife?

 

Lazy People Drinking in Cafes

A LOT of our time was spend sitting in squares drinking and eating.  This is really a marvelous way to pass the time, I can’t recommend it highly enough.  Unlike the Belgians, Germans, English and Americans, the Spanish have really failed to develop a beer culture which produces a wide variety of beers.  However, they have achieved one spectacular success in the art of serving beer that may well have catapulted them past the aforementioned competitors.  This success is called the caña.  A caña is a small chilled glass, maybe 1/2 a pint, of very very cold light lager.  This is delicious and refreshing to the utmost.  Unlike the less chilled lagers of the English, the caña doesn’t get lukeware 1/2 through your pint and thus suggests again the superiority of Spanish culture over all others.

 

 

cañas

Flamenco Girls

What makes a girl decide to dive headfirst into a tiny arts subculture based in a foreign country 1/2 way around the globe?  I don’t know.  Maybe it’s just that everybody finds something in life, and these girls found this.  Maybe there is some deep hereditary subconscious sociological connection with this music and certain long lost daughters of Spain.  Maybe flamenco is just the coolest thing going.  Maybe these girls are just arty.  Whatever the case may be, there is a certain type that saves up her money, takes time off work, and travels to a dusty little southwestern Spanish town for the privilege of paying to take dance lessons in a room with no air conditioning from severe people who don’t speak your language.  These are the flamenco girls, and this time they were Carmen, Rachel and Dani (and Reba).

 

Carmen, Rachel, Reba, Dani in their ay yi yi am going out tonight in Jerez suits!

 

Flamenco Performances

Ostensibly, the point of this trip is to see a bit of top flight flamenco.  We got to see Rocio Molina’s dance company perform the Teatro Villamarta, and the world famous guitarist Tomatito in the Tio Pepe Sherry bodega (storehose), which had a very cool vibe.  There were a lot more performances that Reba and the flamenco girls went to including Mercedes Ruiz, Belen Maya, Antonio Marquez, Pete Habichulea and etc., but I try to limit myself so I don’t get burned out and thus I skipped a bunch.  The guitarist in Rocio Molina’s company played a Cuban steel string guitar that has a double string in the middle.  I was really inspired by this guy, his style was just oozing passion.  I’ve seen a lot of guitarists, and a lot of flamenco guitarists and normally I don’t get too worked up.  This time was something special however.

 

after the show, do what the Spanish people do

 

The Bullring

Bullfighting is big in Spain, and Jerez, like many other Spanish towns, has a bullring.  Lots of people hate the fact that bullfighting is still going on, think it’s cruel, barbaric, and whatever.  If this is you, I DON’T CARE so don’t waste your time typing me a rant.  I and many people from around the world like corrida, and if you don’t, then DON’T GO.  With that out of the way, I figured it was worthwhile to check out the ring in Jerez, even though the season wasn’t started yet.  Having seen most of my bullfights in Madrid at the fancy Las Ventas, I was a bit suprised to find the Jerez Plaza de Toros to be so dilapidated.  To get there we had to walk a ways out of the old town, and the part of Jerez we walked through was pretty damn dilapidated as well.  In Madrid, the ring is surrounded by tapas bars and little streets and a night out after the fights can be quite an elegant affair.  Not so here!  Oh well.

 

 

plaza de toros, Jerez

 

on the side of the ring there are pictures of famous toros going back over a hundred years

 

  

I just love this one of Kaysa

 

 

and this one was too cute to pass up!