American in Spain

My friend Manolo invited me out to nine holes this morning at a course near the Bilbao airport called Artxanda. The long, hilly course was a completely different game than I played the other day in Santander. Artxanda is very difficult both to play and walk. I hit several shots while I was out of breath from a steep 15 meter climb up to my ball. I don’t know how they did it, but I swear that every approach shot was uphill. I had two pars, three bogeys, two double bogeys, and two triple bogeys, for a grand total of +13, 49. Oh, did I mention that the wind was blowing such that we could barely stand up? When you took your putter back along the line of the putt, it blew to the side. The conditions were crazy hard, so I felt pretty good about my score.
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Man, talk about winning a poetry contest! Some 52-year-old bloke, named Paulino Cubero, has won the competition to author the lyrics to the Spanish National Anthem. Coming from the super-duper patriotic, “pledge allegiance to the flag every morning in elementary school”, United States to a country where they don’t even have lyrics for the national anthem is a shock. National pride is something Spain could use a lot of, with all its separatist states. Anyway, the winning lyrics are:
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When some coincidence makes the world seems small, instead of saying, “It’s a small world!”, the Spanish say “El mundo es un pañuelo!“. I’ve heard the more cynical Spaniard tack on “…lleno de mocos!“. Anyway, last night, two things happened that made the world seem pretty small.
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This evening’s sunset was particularly spectacular. So I made a panorama to showcase its beauty. Just as I was about to upload the photo, I looked over my shoulder and saw an even more gorgeous range of colors, so I had to take more photos and make another panorama. Enjoy!
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Yesterday I played golf in a little town called Pedreña that is near Santander. Pedro, the guy that runs the Laredo Golf Club, called me up and asked if I wanted to play 18 holes in the morning. I jumped at the chance, since I have the 10th Annual Myrtle Beach Classic coming up in February, and every little bit of practice helps, and I hadn’t swung a club since the Beach Golf tournament last year.

As usual, I surprised myself at my ability to come back from hardly playing at all and shoot pretty well, considering the circumstances. I shot a 77…. (more…)

I would like to call your attention to the stars at the top of each of my blog posts. These stars allow you to rank how well you like each post, thus giving me feedback when you think I’m being a genius or a jerk. Not that this blog is remotely democratic in content, but your feedback does mean something.

Since installing the plugin that enables this rating system, WP-PostRatings, and having seen it almost never being used, I have almost disabled it a few times. I have a theory that, at least for internet content, a “thumbs up or thumbs down”, Digg-style, voting system is probably best. Due to the hyperlinked nature of the internet, once you’re done reading a page, it’s so easy to leave and go somewhere else that no one ever sticks around long enough to place a vote of any sort on what they’ve just experienced. So if someone is voting, that means that they so strongly approve or disapprove of the content that they’ve taken time to vote. I begun to formulate this theory when I was noticing that all my blog post votes were either 1-star or 5-star. And that makes perfect sense. If you’re indifferent about the content, you just don’t vote! It’s very rare to see a 3-star vote.

I’ve just read this very interesting interview with author William Poundstone about voting systems and how the one used by the United States elections, “plurality voting”, is the absolute worst voting system ever invented.
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I think the roscón de reyes is a Spanish tradition that I have yet to mention on this blog. Traditionally, the second most important day of the winter holidays (the first being Nochebuena) in Spain is January 6, the Día de los Reyes Magos, or the Epiphany, as it’s known in English. This is the day when children, traditionally (less and less so with the intrusion of American culture), receive their presents. Clearly the most logical way to tie present giving to the Christian theology would be to do it on the day that Jesus received his gifts from the three wise men.
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I’m about to share with you a family recipe that my mother-in-law makes. I have no idea how widespread this dish is throughout Spain, but neither my wife nor I have heard of it outside her family. In the family, this dish is called a moje, which is closest to the word meaning “wet”. It is a very light meal, good for right after those heavy family holiday meals. It works well either as an entire meal or a salad compliment to a main dish. It’s also a great answer to the question, “What am I going to do with all this cilantro?”, should such a question ever arise.

Let us begin… (more…)

I honestly cannot recall ever being so moved by a speech given by a politician as I was watching Barack Obama’s Iowa victory speech on YouTube. The speaking abilities of Barack Obama and George W. Bush are completely on opposite ends of the scale. Tell me honestly, can you imagine Hillary, or any other candidate for that matter, giving such an eloquent address?
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My email client, Apple’s Mail.app has been doing a truly excellent job of filtering spam lately. Several hundred emails a day get screened from my inbox. Today, I was looking for an email that I had just deleted and I ended up accidentally clicking on a spam message as I was digging through the e-garbage. What I saw amazed me!
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