I don´t like being called African-American

I just don´t. I am so far removed from Africa and it´s culture, languages, religion and heritage. It´s more and more evident as I meet and get to know more and more Africans. I remember someone tried to explain to me that African American respresents our past and our present. It was so much more descriptive than Black. Colored was a respresentation to our many shades but I think the Latinos got tired of being included in this misfortuned group by the Whites. Negro is more like it. That comes from the Latin word for black or dark but it carries a feeling of the transgressions in the past and way to close to that other N word.

So what do we call ourselves if i am shooting down any mane present or from the past...

I just want to be called an American.

trip to the doctor

Today, Wednesday, I had my first appointment with my doctor in Spain. His name is Xavier, a name which I like. When Carme called for me, she asked specifically for a doctor who spoke English. he speaks as much english as Jackie Chan but hey, I need to work on my Spanish anyhow.

Oh quick note, here in Spain, they do not refer to their language as Spanish. I guess it´s like going to China and asking for Chinese food. Here they call it Castellano (Castilian). It´s debated what is truly Castelellon but to me, it´s means Spain´s Spanish as opposed to the South American or Canarian Island Spanish. The difference is the pronunciation of the letter z or c before a vowel i and e. Like the word cita (meeting or date) is pronounced "thee tah" rather than "see tah". So it sounds like i have a lisp or something when I speak it.

Back to the story...

So I went to my doctor with my medical history about my high blood pressure and my prescription. To my suprise I found that I did not need a prescription for my medicines. In America, if it comes over the counter, you need a prescription. But the better note to that is that there are more varieties of medicine you can buy on the shelves of a drug store than you can shake a stick at. When you walk into a pharmacy here, most items are behind the counter in a larger store room. But, to me, it seems easier to get my meds for my blood pressure simply by walking up and asking for them by name. The only meds that are highly controlled are narcotics (for obvious reasons) and antibiotics (obvious reason to some).

The sheer immensity of this trip was the fact that I had to drive to Girona (45 minutes north) which is a much larger city than Tossa and a fourth the size of Barcelona. The old and narrow strrets of old blend seamlessly with the newer streets and cause for some confusing navigating. I have been in Girona a few million tomes but not on solo missions deep into the city. I drove confidently to the outskirt of the city, passing the usual 2 prostitute locations with the same Romanian girls on point. Sad fact but even the Spaniards are too proud to work outdoors when they decide to be call girls. Armed with a cell phone and folding chair, these weekday warriors are always available when I go flying by at 120 km/h.

I make my way into the city but like I stated before, the street signs are just unreadable at anything more than walking speed. So I cross my finger and turn down a one way street in hopes I run tino a underground parking deck. I do find one in no time with 45 minutes to spare. I pull out my makeshift map and follow my instincts to find this hidden medical office. The building all blend together as older offices are revamped into new clothing stores, restaurants and new offices. By the time i found the office, I had pretty much got turned around and walked a full 10 extra blocks. When I finished my appointment, I was so turned around from my initial hunt that I thought I would never find the car. As funny as it sounds, I took a chance and went right. I took another chance at the end of that street and went left. then I stopped. The parking deck was just across the street! 2 blocks instead of the original 10. I will master my way around Girona one day.

Easter in Spain...

Well it has been a pleasant 4 day weekend here in Spain. It all started with Good Friday and a planned trip to France. Our goal was to drive up the coastline on the winding and turning roads of Coasta Brava and take in the beautiful sunshine. Alex was in the backseat with his nose firmly planted in his Nintendo DS while Carme and I enjoyed the new album from Erykah Badu. 3/4 of the way there, alex started complaining of nausea but could not quite describe it to us but I knew that he inherited the worst part of travelling from his father: Motion sickness. We decided to stop off in Platja DÓro and get some air and see if we could not get him to shake some of his ill feelings. We quickly came across a small arcade complete with bumper cars. alex got a kick out of actually driving one of the cars as we were out for blood in our car, hunting Carme in her own car. Soon we were throwing euros in every machine that had bells and whistles.

Realizing the day was slipping away from us, we retreated back to Tossa to spend some family time at home and watch some movies.

Saturday we decided to head up to Girona to the Girona Cathedral. We walked thru the old part of town as Carme was taken back to her youth and remembering every stree tshe partied on. This usually meant she was intoxicated to some point, but obviously not drunk enough as she remembered detail after detail. I gues s put her thru the same silent torture when we lived in Richmond.

The sky threatened rain all day and it finally kept it´s promise as unbrellas began to opn around us. We made our way back to the underground parking deck just in time to avoid the worst of it. Small bits of hail came down ont he car as we exited the parking garage and made our way to El Corted Ingles, a shopping center reminiscent of Thalhimers or Miller & Rhoades from yesteryear. By the time we made our way to another underground parking deck (there is only one way to go if you add parking and that´s underground), we cought a nice glimpse of the increased hail as it poured down around us. Going outside for a quick look, the streets were completely covered in these pebble sized ice balls. It looked like a bean bag exploded over the whole city. Stil alex was too preoccupied with his Mario game to realize what was going on. Back in tossa, the ground was wet from a light rain but they had not experienced the hail we went thru.

Here are some shots of our journey...

On sunday, we headed to Camp Nou to see Barcelona take on Valladolid in a league match. I bought these tickets months ago and was excited to take in a rare and early afternoon game. Most games are played at 7pm and later up until 10pm. Remember the Spaniard party until late. so it is not an issue for a Sunday night game to last unitl almost midnight. but this rare occasion was a 5pm game.

Let´s explain the point system in soccer. Universallt, a win is 3 points, a tie is 1 point (or considered each team recieving a point is lost) and no points if you lose. Barça have not completely been playing up to thier level all season but still they are in a better position than most. Sadly, Barça were sitting in 2nd place before this game and their arch rivals, Real Madrid, were sitting pretty at the top of the league with only a few games to go in the season. Barça, 7 points behind the league leaders and are threatened by another tough team, Villareal who are 2 points behind Barcelona, were sitting pretty during their game against a weaker team and about to win. the pressure of this game was thick. Real Madrid had a later game but they were playing at home and they are near unbeatable there. Carme is one of their biggest critics and I knew i was about to hear it if they lost or tied against a team that was one of the poorest teams this year.

To not bore you with details, Barcelona did win and decisively. Still Carme was ticked off at the ability of the other team to almost score twice. Still I took some pretty good shots of my fovorite players. take a look...



Monday was spent tooling around Tossa...snapped a few photos, too

Mission Accomplished...

I finished my two projects this week. After 5 months of going back and forth with Alfonso, the owner of a local tour busing company, I finally completed his website. Let me add that I am torn by this. He wants me to put my mark on the website but I am torn. I do want to put my mark on the site; it would drum up more business. But I am not at all satisfied with the design and layout. You see from day one I made it clear that Alfonso needed to approve all designs before going forward. I came up with a suitable template and we were on our way. I did it with 3 colors...dk blue, dk grey and white. I knew his buses were more like a Confederate Grey but like I am about to explain: Alfonso was supposed to supply all photos and color scheming. Still it seems that he could not provide anything, let alone in a timely and orderly manner. To keep ahead of myself, I would post updates to a mock website, so Alfonso could, at any time, see how I was coming along and approve as I went along. Well a funny thing happened along the way...after 3 months of stalling and begging him for photos and information...he decided he wanted a redesign.

My first reaction was to charge him all over again but Carme calmed me and told me just to go forward with it. It was not too much work but I just was getting more and more frustrated with his delayed emails and changing of his mind. What started as 5 pages of just HTML blew up to 13 pages, 1 PHP form, 2 flash photo galleries, and a flash title bar...in 3 different languages...which meant a lot of translating...for free. So after 5 months, he finally bucked...and paid me in full to post his site in a week...unfinished. We still have no photos of his employees in one of those flash galleries. Sigh. Also he wanted the whole site in one color...his confederate grey. And each page seems to have a different font, which he requested. Still I am entitled to do the gallery. I have a sinking feeling he will ask me to replace it or remove it. Oh I am going to charge the heck out of him if he wants it removed.

The other site only took two weeks. That I am pretty proud of. I did not design it, but neither did the original web master. When I was tooling around the web for the site owner one day (her name is Andrea and she is from England) we found that he used an $89 template from a popular website and charged her €3000 (about 4600 dollars). She wanted some changes and I made it happen. Now I am her web master so I have some future money coming. Go check it out (auntyandreasstags.com).

I have a meeting this week with another group of people who are interested in having someone look after their site. They are currently using the local boys here, Info G, and they are not happy with their service and timing. Maybe I can win them over indeed. Wish me luck.