American in Spain

Several weeks ago, I got an email from my Uncle Neil recommending a movie to me. He had previously recommended Primer to me, which I loved and watched several times to catch all the intricacies of the time travel, so I had high expectations. Timecrimes is a low budget Spanish film shot here in Cantabria, my region of Spain. If you look at any of the movie posters or trailer (I recommend not watching the spoiler-laden trailer), you might get the idea that it’s a horror flick with a bloody-bandage-wearing scissor-wielding homicidal maniac, but it’s really not at all. It’s more about an average man trying to outsmart himself.
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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.
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As I’ve approached and entered my thirties, I’ve become increasingly interested in politics. Not that I would ever, ever participate beyond the ballot box or a donation, but as a spectator, I’m fascinated. Another of my interests in recent years is the psychology of decision making, belief, and logical fallacies. Of particular curiosity is the growing ideological gulf between the political left and right in the United States brought on by increased access to information.
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Today we saw the first episode of the second season of Pregnancy. It was Marga’s twelve-week ultrasound. There was an eerie sense of déjà vu in the same corner of the hospital with the same nurses and same 12-week-ultrasound doctor as the last time. Just like last time, I was blown away by two distinct facets of our visit.
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As an expat parent of a toddler in Spain, I have noticed a rather bizarre parenting behavior exhibited by Spaniards caring for small children. A typical scenario goes something like this:

A toddler is careening around and hits her head on a table. Tables and desks are right at forehead height for a two-year-old. The parent or caretaker rushes over and hugs the crying child. Immediately the caretaker turns to the table and shouts, “Bad table!” and smacks the table hard with his hand and encourages the child to hit and scold the table as well.

If you’re like me the first time I saw this parenting technique, you have a big “WTF?” thought bubble above your head.
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On Saturday, we flew from Bilbao to Munich to Charlotte. There are a few good anecdotes from the journey to share, so I thought I’d commit them to the Internet.

I was expecting extra tight security, as that’s what the US and European media are all atwitter about. In the Bilbao airport, it was early in the morning, and the Guardia Civil agents that run the airport security seemed pretty disinterested. I didn’t even have to take my laptop out of my bag. I had to put the bag that normally hangs from Nora’s stroller through the x-ray machine, but it contained a large bottle of water, a pocket knife, and various canisters of powder. I asked if the stroller should go through the machine too (it has before), but the agent said I could just walk through the gate with it, leave it on the other side, walk back through, and then walk through it myself to make sure I didn’t beep. He then casually glanced under the stroller where the plastic cover was, but didn’t remove it or look under it. There was plenty of space to hide a semi-automatic handgun under there. And off we went to our gate…
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On Sunday we were invited to a meal where the main course was pigeon. Yes, in Spain, people eat pigeons. As far as I know, most of the pigeons that are eaten are raised especially for that purpose, and aren’t just captured with a net or hunted with a BB gun in the local town hall square. There’s a reason pigeons are called “flying rats”.

What follows are some photos I took this weekend, not all related to the pigeon stew.
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Those of you that know me will not be surprised, once I explain what it means, to learn that “¡Tienes mucho morro!” and “¡Tienes un morro que te lo pisas!” were two of the first native Spanish expressions I learned from my later-to-be wife. The word morro literally means “snout”. So the two phrases above translate literally to “You have a lot of snout!” and “You have a snout [so big] that you step on it!” respectively, the latter being a hyperbolical form of the former. She was not actually suggesting that I needed a rhinoplasty. The closest expression in English that I can think to capture its meaning would be, “You’ve got a lot of nerve, buddy!” It’s something to say to someone that is acting like they are entitled to something that they aren’t, or are just being too prideful. It’s what you’d say to a jerk that drives all the way to the end of a lane that is ending and then cuts in front of your car. Anyone that has ever fed farm animals can clearly understand why the Spanish would use the word “a lot of snout” for such an expression.

So anyway, this morning at my local butcher…
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In general, for just about any academic topic you want to know more about, you can find information on the internet to satisfy your curiosity. Luddites complain that “We know less these days because we can forget things and look them back up with such ease!”, but I think that’s a load of bollocks. Having more knowledge at our fingertips means we can learn more, and, even more important, we can recheck our current knowledge more often to keep it accurate.

Several times a day I find myself in a situation in which my understanding of a subject is unclear, so I look it up on the internet to clarify my knowledge. Over the past week, however, I have had the same rare experience twice: that the all-knowing internet was unable to clarify my foggy understanding.
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An oversimplified description of my job as a computer programmer goes something like this.

1. I get some requirements for a program from my boss or a client.
2. I write the program as perfectly as I can.
3. I test the program with all the cases that I think it will need to handle.
4. The program is done and people start using it.
5. For whatever reason the requirements change (or a bug is found), and I have to go back and modify the code. Inevitably less testing is done on these changes than the original writing.
6. Go to #4.

It’s pretty rare for the original writing of a program to have a significant bug in it after testing, although I’m not perfect. Almost all bugs are introduced in step #5. When you first write the program, the entire program and its relationship with other programs is in your mind. But when you go back to look at old code, it’s just not fresh in your memory, and it’s very easy to make a change without taking into consideration all the consequences that change will have.
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