What a party!!!

So nice party, in a good place, with lovely people and amazing dishes as well! I am still dreaming about the ‘quiches’.
I know these words can sound as the typical warm things that you say to be polite, but in this case I am sure that all of us feel the same. Thanks teacher for being a different teacher, and thanks class’ people for being so nice.
Mr Iron I am waiting impatiently your “tiramisu’s” recipe. I am preparing my recipe of how can you make your own Japanese food.

See you in class people!

P.D. We miss you a lot Mr. Rip Van Winkle.

Saint George's Day

According to tradition, Saint George was a roman soldier who was born in Cappadocia (Turkey) in the third century. This saint served under the orders of the Emperor Diocleciano, but one day he refused to enforce an edict requiring persecuting Christians. And for this reason he was martyred and beheaded by their peers. Then the legend started and above all Europe different fairy tales repeated in England, Portugal, Greece, etc.

The most popular version in Catalonia tells that in Montblanc (Conca de Barberà) there was a dreadful dragon which attacked people and flocks. To preserve it calm, people used to offer a human sacrifice chosen by lot.
But one day the luck chosen the King’s daughter then the famous knight appears and saved the princess killing the dragon with a mortal wound and then from this injury appeared a rose. That’s the fairy tale.
In 1456 St. George was chosen patron of Catalonia by the Corts Catalanes in Barcelona and April 23 became a festivity.
Hard to understand for those who have never experienced it, because they are outsiders or foreigners, Saint George's Day is a popular cheerful day when book and rose are the main characters.
Floods of people cover the streets of all Catalan towns and villages. The think is very easy, consists of going for a walk and buying a rose, a book or both to give to loved ones, family members and friends. Although it is not a public holiday (because we are Catalans the only people who works our mainly days), we enjoy it anyway.

Here you have my present for you my dear readers, a rose.

Happy Sant Jordi

Discovering music

I have just discovered this sweet singer, Russian Red. Although she is Spanish she writes and sings in English. She is form Madrid and her real name is Lourdes Hernández.
Her dazzling voice makes you stop and listen to her music carefully. Her main song ‘cigarettes’ sounds fresh, original and with the simplicity of few instruments. I am very surprised.

Here you have, I hope you enjoy it!

Uncanny stories...?

One of the most unbelievable tales that I have never listened is about something related with a fire. This fire happened in a forest, in a natural and protected area in Spain.
To avoid this horrible and ecological disaster, a sort of emergency groups mobilized. Technical and human support, a large number of volunteers, professional firemen, 4 helicopters and a big hydroplane collaborated in the extinction tasks.

This labour of extinction needed one week to control the fire, and three more days to extinct it completely. Afterwards a technical team went to the affected area to evaluate the damage and find out the origin of that fire. Until now everything was normal, but the burned forest had prepared a big surprise.
All of a sudden, when they finally managed to arrive to one of the regions with a high difficult access they found a package similar to a lifeless body. One of the team components turn over the body and all of them realised that it suspect package was the body of a frogman, completely burned by flames, and fully equipped for the practising of scuba diving.














Anybody couldn’t believe their eyes. It was astonishing because the nearest beach was two hundred kilometres from there. What the hell he was doing there, and disguised in that way? The only answer to that unbelievable question was that the hydroplane.
When it flew to the sea to refuelling water for its huge water tank, and then empty it into the woods on fire, soak up the poor and innocent frogman who was practising scuba diving near to the sea’s surface.

I don’t know if it is an ‘uncanny story’ or an
‘urban legend’. In my opinion is more credible the second one, a tale that belongs to the nowadays folklore. What do you think about it?

See you my dear readers.

Moleskine ®, a notebook full of history or pure marketing

In my student days I was fascinated when I discovered the history that was hidden behind this simply notebook. A cleanly notebook yes, with a naked eye it seems a normal notebook with the only particularity that you can close it with an elastic rope. But behind this simplicity there was a good story to tell you.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)Notebook No. 53, June-September 1912,9 x 13.5 cmkept in the MuséeNational Picasso of Paris

All of this started when Bruce Chatwin made use of these kind of notebooks in all of his journeys, he always bought them in a stationery store in Paris, who was supplied by a stationer in Tours, France, until the stationer closed in 1986 due to the death of its owner who left bringing with him the secret of its manufacturing.
Artists such as Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh or Ernest Hemingway used one of these pocket notebooks to write draw, etc. But it is not tested that they used the same notebook, the moleskine, (this word comes from the French spelling of 'moleskin', the cloth covering of it).
Some years later, an Italian company Modo & Modo, registered the name, the brand, and started to fabricate the product thanks to the description on B. Chatwin’s books.
The legend of this notebook probably started when the fabulous marketing campaign of this company, take this legend and started to buy this product more expensive than the rest of the same typology.
I have to confess that I use one of these notebooks. I bring it wherever I go, and I don’t know if it is for the legend or for the marketing effect, probably the second one.

Here's the notebook at present, Moleskine.

The origin of the word spam

Here we are dear readers! We survived Christmas and I am happy to start a new year full of energy. One of the things that you have to do when you returned from a large stage of holidays is to open the mailbox and read your mail. Then you find an old friend, yes I am talking about spam, a large mailing list that you don’t know the author and can’t do anything to avoid it. The only thing you can do is be patient and erase one by one from your mailbox.
Do you know what the origin of the word ‘spam’ is? Well, we are going to find out this meaning or at least we’ll try it.


It seems that spam is a word which came from USA. Around 1930 Hormel Foods’ company launched a new product, a kind of meat with several ingredients. Hormel’s Spiced Ham became Spam. This product was a big revolution because it was the first canned meat without the need to keep it with a fridge. This fact was a revolution especially in the World Wars period. It developed into the main food of the English and Soviets soldiers. And for the rest of people, for many years, it was the only canned meat at a time of food shortages.
Later in 70’s Monty Python started to use this word in different humour sketches and in TV ads, they used to shout the word ‘spam’ very often like in this gag:

This habit was applied to define the ‘rubbish mailing’ or the ‘unwanted mailing’ in the Internet era. Sometimes the origin of words could be fascinating and unbelievable as well.

Good advertisement for a Good cause

I don’t know if this story is true or not, but if it’s not I want to believe in, why not.
Have you ever stop to thing about why things happen? Maybe things happen for any reason that we can’t explain or we can’t understand. Perhaps this is a romantic view, the destiny, our providence, our fortune, our luck... But my left brain don’t let me think in this way. Our destiny has not been written by any supernatural power, we can write it every day, every minute an every second by ourselves, by our will.

I would like to finish these thoughts with a good quote, which would be nice to remember:
You always get much more than you get.