American in Spain » England

Royal Names in Spanish

erik — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 16:51:13 +0000

The Spanish news and gossip media has been aflutter lately with stories about the British royal family. It’s reminded me about a really bizarre phenomenon when it comes to names of members of the royal family. For some reason they are translated into their Spanish equivalent. For instance, the current monarch of England is called Reina Isabel. She and her husband, Principe Felipe have a son, Principe Carlos, who is next in line to the throne. Carlos has two sons, Principe Guillermo and Principe Enrique. That sounds so weird. In no other circumstance are names translated like this.

We anglophones do this, as well. Good luck asking a Spaniard about monarchs Phillip II, or the famous duo of Ferdinand and Isabella. Their real names were Felipe II, Fernando and Isabel.

No doubt this tradition has very deep roots in power marriages across European kingdoms, but it hits my ears wrong every time I hear the Spanish news media speak of Carlos y Camila and their new daughter-in-law, Catalina Middleton.

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Princess William and Prince Kate

erik — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 09:32:09 +0000

As much as I’ve been trying to avoid it, I’ve been unable to avoid seeing pictures of these two British faces around the news. There was something about this one photograph that struck me as being perfect for a Photoshop trick I’ve been wanting to try, called face switching. Sure, enough, their faces were angled just right such that it was really quite a trivial operation for someone with a rudimentary understanding of layer masks. If the royal wedding coverage gets too annoying, just imagine it’s this lovely couple instead.

I had to double check that I hadn’t pasted one jawbone over another because they look so identical, but I hadn’t. The shape of the jawbone on each belongs to the body.

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Oxford and Walsall, August 2001

erik — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 21:38:35 +0000

Before my current blog, I hosted static web pages with photos and comments to share my travels with my family and friends. What follows are adventures I had, photos I took, and comments I wrote in August 2001, when I went to visit my girlfriend, Marga, in her new apartment in Walsall, England. Four months later, I would end up moving there and living there for almost four years.

A few thoughts about what you’re about to see… Wow, we look young! I still retain a little of this photo-caption-photo-caption style in my present day blogging. At the time, I was really preoccupied with the whole “driving on the left” novelty; the original post had another video that was just us speeding down the motorway with the cars going the other direction on our right. Ten years later, we still have some of these clothes…how embarrassing. And finally, this is why I blog: so I can look back at photos and thoughts like these. Okay, without further ado…

This past week I went to visit Marga in England. When I arrived, I was given an hour or two to sleep and then Marga and I went down to Oxford to meet up with some of her friends that had driven there earlier. We got there in time to search for the Bed & Breakfast and then go out dancing.

Oxford

Waiting outside the dance club. The guy at the door was keeping count of how many people were inside. Even with this precaution, it was pretty packed, but not uncomfortable. From left to right: a girl’s head who Aitziber had asked to take their photo, some English bloke that had helped us find the club and enjoyed practicing his Spanish, Rocio (her name means “dew” in Spanish), Aitziber (Marga’s roommate), Carlos, and Maria.

We tried again with the blonde out of the way and everyone looking at my camera. The English fellow would rather look at Rocio.

Dancing and drinking. From left to right: Marga, Maria, Aitziber, and Rocio.

Marga, Maria, me, Rocio, and Carlos.

Me and Marga…okay, so I had had a little to drink…

The next morning in the B&B. Aitziber wanted to try my camera.
Marga and I decided to spend Sunday in Oxford because we had arrived so late on Saturday. The others drove over to Cambridge. I knew from past experience that the cities are pretty much the same with Oxford possibly being better. Too bad about the overcast weather.

This might be my favorite picture from the whole week. This is Marga shopping for postcards.

We rented a rowboat and meandered along the canal. It had been a long time since I had rowed and it took me about 15 minutes to get the hang of it again. This is Marga enjoying the ride in the back of the boat and occasionally shouting “Cuidado!” (“Look out!”) when I got to close to a tree. The canal was quite tough to maneuver because of all the trees jutting out from the sides.

Marga charging ahead at ramming speed at some English (and I think Canadian) women.

What a European!!

The guard only let one person at a time walk 30 feet forward from here and photograph the inside of this college. I took full advantage (see panorama below).

The Head of the River. I guess it’s a restaurant and pub but I didn’t get to enter. I’d love to, though.

Camera at arms length

Walsall

For the rest of the week, Marga had to work, leaving the house at 5:30 every morning. On various days, I took trips from the house (easily using a nearby bus stop) into “the city” (Birmingham – the second biggest city in England) or into downtown Walsall, the suburb of Birmingham that Marga lives in.

A hedge shaped like Wallace and Grommit that I saw. I think this is in Solihull, another suburb of Birmingham that I ventured into.

The main room of Marga’s apartment (the dining room and the living room).

A look from the other side of the room.

A look out the living room window at a nearby sports field.

A look directly our the living room window. The sports field was on the left of what is shown here.

Marga on the phone in the living room, photo taken from the bedroom window.

Okay, maybe this one is my favorite… (er…I mean…”favourite”)

Marga preparing breakfast. Looks like a finger got in there…oops.

Marga consuming breakfast at a little table in the corner of the kitchen.

Marga leaving for work in her Fiat (the car in the middle).
Marga came home and we went out to walk around the Walsall City Centre.

Marga is an excellent driver, even on the left side of the road. She let me drive back from Walsall one evening when the traffic was light. Very difficult! In the round-a-bouts, I was simply going where Marga pointed and stopping when she said to. I still don’t really understand them, especially the double round-a-bout (“figure 8″?) near her house.

The Fiat interior

A photographically clever shot.

Driving on the wrong side of the road.

Getting into downtown Walsall.

An attractive building in downtown Walsall

We decided this picture would be entitled, “El Autobus y Otras Cosas” (“The Bus and Other Things”).

Marga’s building from the parking lot as I was leaving.

Panoramas

My new digital camera has a feature that lets you line up multiple shots so they can be easily be merged together into a panorama by the software that came with it. I like what I’ve seen. You really must click on each image to get the full effect. If you download IE6, it will size the images down to fit inside your window.

A little blurry, but this is one of the colleges at Oxford.

An Oxford street. “High Street”, I believe.

The college at Oxford where we had to take turns walking forward to take pictures.

This is Marga’s bedroom. Too bad about the lighting…

180 degrees of Marga’s kitchen. This one is really like turning your head from side to side as you scroll.

Videos

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English Accents – Patética Fonética

erik — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 15:30:14 +0000

Last year I was interviewed by a local language teacher, Rodolfo, who is making a lovely series of videos for his English (as a second language, of course) students. My interview was not used in several interim videos, but I do appear in the one published yesterday discussing how we Americans view those bloody blokes with British accents. As usual, the entire video is quite interesting and very well edited. I continue to applaud Rodolfo and his projects at the Escuela Oficial de Idiomas de Laredo. I’d be happy to do another interview with him…but maybe with less sun in my eyes next time.

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German Cars Make People Speed

erik — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 15:28:17 +0000

In the countries I’ve lived and driven in, I’ve noticed some differences between how people drive on the motorway (that’s like the “interstate” for you yanks). In England, people tend to drive with an unparalleled politeness. They will happily move over to let you pass, make room for you to merge in, or brake so you can change lanes ahead of them. Spaniards, on the other hand, are just as selfish as the Brits are selfless. In Spain, everyone assumes that you will also behave selfishly, so when you try to be polite to other drivers, they get confused or don’t trust that you’re really letting them merge. The Americans are somewhere in between.

One difference I’ve noticed between driving on the motorway in Spain and the US is the speed at which the drivers in the fast lane pass me. It’s quite common in Spain for a car to pass by going more than 15 kph faster, whereas that isn’t very common at all in the US. I think this is partly due to the ubiquitousness of cruise control in American cars. Cruise control, like automatic transmission, is a fairly high end option on cars in Spain still, whereas they are the defaults in the States. When you’re driving on the motorway without cruise control, it’s very easy to let your mind wander and end up either 20 kph above or below the speed limit.

From my casual observations, which are probably riddled with confirmation bias, the cars that whiz past me in the fast lane are almost always, say nine times out of ten, either an Audi, a Mercedes, or a BMW. My theory on why this might be so goes something like this…

Car manufactured in Germany are designed with the speed limitless autobahn in mind and are thus more comfortable to drive at very high speeds than cars manufactured outside of Germany.

Not only is it that the ride is smoother at high speeds, but that the speedometer is designed to go higher. I recall my grandmother reporting some years back that after changing cars, she noticed that she drove faster on the motorway. Eventually she figured out that she had become used to keeping the speedometer needle exactly vertical, which was 100 kph in the old car and 120 kph in the new one. I think there’s definitely something to that.

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The only thing about me is the way that I walk

erik — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 14:00:44 +0000

Favorite shoes are a funny thing. I remember vivid details of the stores where I buy my favorite shoes. I’m not sure why this is. Perhaps because, once I realize how great the shoes are, I imagine myself going back to buy more, because good comfortable shoes are hard to find and worth stocking up on if you find a brand and model that agrees with you. Of course I have yet to actually follow the whole process of 1) discover after a week or two that these are really great shoes, 2) make it back to the store, and 3) find and buy more pairs for when current pairs wear out.

This week I threw out two of my favorite pairs of shoes of all time. I purchased the black pair from Next, in Walsall, England (next to the Blockbuster Video), and wore them more or less every day for the four years I lived in England. A couple months after moving to Spain, I was climbing the stairs to our rented apartment and Marga noticed something odd about the heels of my shoes. “Why do you walk on the outside of your heels like that?”, she asked. I said I had no idea what she was talking about and she made me take off my shoes to examine the evidence. Sure enough, the outside part of my heels were worn down, and the insides were not. Of course once I knew about the side-worn heels, I could feel my foot twisting with each step. So those shoes were set aside and have lived out their retirement in my closet with the other, younger, whippersnapper shoes. Until this week, that is.

Best black shoes ever.

Brown shoes bare their soles.

The yellowish-brown pair, I bought my last year in England from a shop in downtown Birmingham. They, too, have been worn just about every day since. They were so comfortable and easy to take on and off. Eventually, though, they were worn through one too many rainstorm and the suede became discolored and stiff. Not surprisingly, upon inspection, they also had the outside of their heels worn down.

So now I’m wondering if I have some orthopedic problem worth correcting. No doubt there are people in white lab coats willing to sell me things to put in or on my shoes to correct my problem. Personally I’m fine with my everyday shoes only lasting 1,500 days.

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Eurocoin

erik — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 10:20:20 +0000

In our preparenthood nesting activities lately, we found ourselves rummaging through a bag that hasn’t been opened in several years. Among the odds and ends was a strange coin. It’s exactly the same size and shape as a 1€ coin. It must be some kind of token for a specific use inside an establishment. I never went to a casino in England, and I don’t even recall going to a video arcade, but it must be from a video arcade or some place with lots of coin-operated machines. Marga suggested that we could use it for shopping carts. For those of you who have never been to the supermarket in Europe, typically to get a shopping cart, you have to insert a coin into the cart you want to take. The coin insertion releases a chain that was preventing you from taking the cart. To get your coin back, you have to chain it back up. It’s a pretty good system, and not losing a euro is just the right amount of motivation to make someone who would abandon their cart be a good citizen and return their cart to the proper location.

I thought I’d use the coin as a subject to practice my pseudo-macro photography skills.

You can even see the grain of my desk.

I love the starburst pattern on the back.

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Norwegian Shifting

erik — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 14:14:29 +0000

Another round of tilt-shifting has occurred. This time the photos come from my recent TUI Coventry post and some selections from an absolutely gorgeous set of photos that Hubbers took in Norway a couple weeks ago. You really should check out the entire set.

This is a fairly mediocre tilt-shift, I think. It was tough getting the framing walls to blur with such a straight edge. I had to crop out the people from the original photo.

This one is pretty cool. The tricky part here, besides the nearby walls like on the previous photo, was the man standing at the cash register. His body was in focus, but his head was blurred, so I had to pull his head into focus, too.

This is a ferry in a Norwegian fjord. The cut-out of the boat was a little sloppy, and the featureless surface reduces the miniature effect a little bit.

Miniature Bergen Harbor. This photo is particularly lovely to me because it’s the harbor where my great-great-grandfather, Rasmus Rasmussen, set sail from on his way to the United States.

This is probably my most ambitious tilt-shift yet. The close-up nature of the subject and the wonky nature of the depth of field line made it particularly hard. I’m fairly satisfied with it, though.

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TUI Coventry

erik — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 17:06:13 +0000

It’s strange how memory works. This photo, by Hubbers, reminded me of the place where he and I used to work in Coventry, England. Rather unbelievably, it’s been four whole years since I worked there, so I suppose it’s okay to share these photos.

As far as offices go, TUI was pretty nice. A huge open atrium housed a canteen that quickly taught us to bring our own lunches from home, as well as a Starbucks-certified machine and barista. As I recall, towards the end of my contract, we had worked out a system where Hubbers would just jingle some change together, causing me to Pavlovianly stand up and head towards the atrium. He followed shortly after. The coffee was overpriced, but the break from the monotonous work was priceless.

The main TUI building. I didn’t work in this building. We just had to go there for pointless corporate-wide meetings.

The front entrance to the building where I worked.

This was the entrance that we used to go into work every day. This is the little waterfall that Hubbers’ photo reminded me of. Notice the CCTV cameras in all of the first three photos. It was in the good old Orwellian UK, after all.

The landing in front of the elevators on the second floor, where I worked. On the other side of the railing is the atrium. See below.

The Starbucks machine was at the far end where the two customers are gathered. The bald guy is getting a drink from a refrigerator. None of it was free, in case you were wondering.

Looking back up from the Starbucks zone.

The common lounge area on the second floor. This is where people ate the lunches they brought from home.

And this is where the lunches got microwaved.

Looking down to the entrance and pond from the second floor lounge.

Looking back up from the bridge over the pond.

All these photos were taken on June 8, 2004. To give you some perspective on how long ago that was in internet time, I remember being so happy when one of my coworkers gave me an invitation to the beta version of a new email software that Google was releasing on an invitation-only basis. It’s hard to believe that it’s been four years since I left my last shirt-and-tie, drive-to-work, cubicle job. Even though the salary was they highest I’ve ever earned been paid, I’m so glad I quit.

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Diet Coke Magic

erik — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 09:44:19 +0000

As I sit at my desk typing this, I’m facing east. This is why I’m often distracted by the sunset sirens calling me to photograph them from the window behind me. When I was living in England, my desk faced south, and the sun would come in from a window in front of me. I miss that.

What follows are some photos from the archive bin taken on my desk in England, the first two in November of 2004, and the rest in March of 2005.
As an aspartame junkie and someone who is constantly playing absentmindedly with objects on his desk, it came to my attention that Diet Coke cans, at least those manufactured in the UK, have a bizarre property. They are really very easy to balance, and quite stable when balanced, on the ridge of their lower rim. It can’t be done with a full can or an empty can, but there is a fairly wide range of intermediate volumes that provide stable equilibrium when the can is placed on its edge like this. In retrospect, I’m surprised I didn’t get out a graduated cylinder and measure the exact thresholds of this nutrasweet spot.

Behold!

Clearly Diet Coke contains the secret ingredient needed to create antigravity.

Disturbing, isn’t it? Don’t be frightened. I won’t hurt you with my powers.

And now back to the theme of sunlight. I recall photographing these can reflections several times, but these are the only photos I can find of them.

You can almost read the word “COKE” there. It’s like a natural captcha.

Here I can just barely make out the toll-free number to call to complain about all the anti-graviton particles in my beverage.

Close-up of just the reflection.

DISCLAIMER: The author of this post takes no responsibility for any accidental spillage that occurs while trying to replicate the phenomena described.

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