Photos in this blog

I just wanted to mention, in case you’re not aware, that when you see a small photo in this blog, you can click on it to get a larger version. Thanks to the site I use for my photo albums, the larger photo is scaled up to take advantage of your screen.

Here’s an example.

Pest

For the first few months of this year, and the last of last year, I was having an infestation of pigeons in my terrace. It all began innocently enough, with pigeons roosting on the railing. Then more came, and stayed often, while the weather was getting colder. They liked to roost on the large window frame, as you can see in this photo taken in April:

I thought it was nice to host birds, and although they would make a lot of noise sometimes, I was fine with that. Up to five pigeons at a time would come. As the weather started warming, and I wanted to spend more time in the terrace, I noticed the whole place was filled with bird excrement. They had gone too far. My landlord came to the apartment one day, and suggested that I get bird spikes. These are spikes you put on birds’s roosting spots to make them uncomfortable.

It was a very good idea. The day I installed the spikes, I watched as the pigeons tried to land on the window frame, but could not comfortably. A couple were able to land, but flew away after a second. By the third day, most of the pigeons had gone elsewhere.

One day, I realized that a fat pigeon was sitting in one of the plant pots, unmovable. I tried to shoo it away, but it wouldn’t budge. I figured it was guarding eggs, and I left it alone.
Over a month passed since then, and the building’s board have hired a team to wash and paint the terraces. Last week it was my place’s turn, so I had to put the deck chairs and the table inside the apartment, and move all the plants to the center of the balcony, so that the windows could be accessed. I also took the chance to clean up, ahead of the painters pressure-washing. Now the terrace is very clean. While I was moving the pots, I found a dead pigeon in a corner, and I realized there were two pigeon chicks in one of the pots. I didn’t know what to do. Rick, the building manager, had found a nest earlier on, and had destroyed it and disposed of the eggs. In his view, the pigeons are a pest, like rats.
I couldn’t bring myself to killing the chicks. I’ve decided to let them grow up, but when they fly, I’m getting rid of the nest, and making sure they don’t find it comfortable to stay here.

Pigeons are indeed a pest. In the week since I moved the pot-nest out of the painters’s way, the birds and their mother have dirtied things:

Not happening again, my feathered friends.
All this pot moving and terrace cleaning has had some interesting effect. I generally don’t see much point to having plants on the terrace. They’re a hindrance more than anything. But now that they’re in the center, watching the view through them is nice. I think I’ll make some changes when all the painting is done.

Mount Si climb

A great thing about living in Seattle is how easy it is to leave the city behind and be surrounded by mountains or water. On Saturday, JP and I went over to Sahib’s house in North Bend. It is very near Mount Si, one of the best known hikes in the area. Mt Si is a continuous ascent for 4 miles, and the trail is wide (for a mountain trail) and in good state.
We were surrounded almost all the way by very impressive trees.

More Seattle skies from the balcony

Cartoons

In two days I’ll be going on a hard-earned ten day holiday to hike Bryce Canyon and see Guillermo get married in DC. I am in desperate need of the vacation, I’m almost there in my mind.

Nothing much worth writing about in the last week, but a friend sent me a link to a youtube video. It’s an electronic song that someone made almost fully out of sound fragments from the Disney movie Alice in Wonderland. I’m completely mesmerized by the music and the video, I’ve watched it several times. I almost want to rent the film now. I was thinking about animated films. In late years they have become much less interesting than they used to be. Alice’s expressions in the video are more natural than today’s overdone 3D faces that grin constantly. Another thing I can do without is the celebrity voices. And the pop-culture references. Cartoons are for children, Hollywood, children, and adults who enjoy children’s entertainment!

Sickness and DVD

Howdy, I’m back!

These last four months have been just hard and stressful. I made all my deadlines last week, and then got sick. This is typical for me: apparently, adrenaline protects me from sickness while I have work due. A shame. This Monday, after a whole week of headaches and mild fever, I went to the doctor, and now I’m on antibiotics, for a sinus infection (sinusitis).

The past week I was not up to leaving the house, so I’ve been watching lots of DVD – especially since I disconnected the TV signal in March. I was in the mood for a series, so I rented My So Called Life. I had never seen it nor heard of it (apart from being recommended by mom). Watching Claire Danes suffer through adolescence is very entertaining, and although sometimes the show got repetitive and clichée, and although I developed a dislike of Bess Armstrong, who played Claire Danes’s mother, overall I enjoyed myself. It’s funny about teenage: we never completely leave its struggles.

Another DVD I saw was Batman: The Dark Knight. I hadn’t thought that much of Batman Begins, but this one came very highly recommended. Some people I know with PhD’s had told me that the Joker (played by Heath Ledger) “got in your head and messed with it”. Well, it’s an entertaining film, with a great cinematography, clearly inspired by Michael Mann, but … completely unmemorable. It has as little sense of humor as Lord Of The Rings, and is as pretentious. Ah, yes, that supposed moral ambiguity: the Joker has a sentence that goes something like: “The beauty of Chaos is, it’s fair”. Was that it? Really? Hello? It is so easy to poke holes in that argument. I will leave it as an exercise to the reader.

Speaking of moral ambiguity: a second-hand DVD store near home was carrying Lust, Caution, so I decided to buy it. I had already seen it. I started playing different sections, to make sure the DVD was OK, but I got drawn in, and watched the whole thing from the beginning. There you have an example of moral ambiguity with characters that are real, and a story line that is clear and understandable. And thankfully, no discussions on heroes, role models, or “what the city needs”. It’s a good and rare thing to see a film for adults that delivers.

Finally, I decided to rent Slumdog Millionaire, which I did not see in the theater (I never go any more). I’m not a fan of the director, Danny Boyle, nor of word-of-mouth juggernauts, which have led me to see such horrors as Il Postino, Life is Beautiful, Torrente or Borat. Unexpectedly, I enjoyed Slumdog, which I found very entertaining, fast moving and optimistic. I also liked the soundtrack, an important parameter for me. It is nice to see a film that doesn’t take itself too seriously, doesn’t attempt depth, and is intended as just good old fashioned entertainment.

By now, I’m getting better, the headache is moving away, and I’ve had enough DVD for quite a while. Can’t wait to get out for some exercise. Tomorrow, probably.

Manners

When I travel home to Madrid, I always dread that first intense exposure to Spaniards, in the airport lounge. I feel ashamed, I wonder why they (we) are so loud, have such a flock mentality, find it so difficult to wait in line. Oh, those boring conversations about media personalities, those old jokes; everybody rehashing the same opinions, dispensing advice to people that didn’t ask for it.

Why can’t we be more reserved, more independent, more perceptive?

This travel season, though, my experience was different. Except for an annoying Spanish-American family, the Spaniards were fine.

In my flight from Newark to Seattle, I was sitting between American teenagers. They both came equipped with their iPhones. The girl, probably 16-17, on my left, was reading Twilight. The boy, on my right, was on his best efforts to appear cool. Everything was fine until we were ready for takeoff, and the attendants asked passengers to turn all electronic devices off. The teens could not let go. The boy turned off his iPhone, but started listening to his iPod. I reminded him that that, too, was forbidden, and he put on his American teen persona: “Oh, huh, really?, huh, oh, yeah”.
The girl just would not turn off her iPhone. When we had been over 5 minutes waiting for takeoff, she started calling and texting. First, a flight attendant asked her to turn the phone off. She did, but when the attendant left, she started playing with it, and before long, texting. I then told her that the phone was supposed to be off. She said: “Yeah, I know, but I’m not worried”. After a few seconds, she turned it off, seemingly for good.

Towards the end of the flight, due to problems in SeaTac, the plane needed to refuel, and we landed in Spokane. Information came little by little on the conditions in Seattle, and on how long we would be staying in Spokane. The teens both called and texted several people to inform them of the new circumstances.
Again, when we were about to take off, the girl had to be asked four times over ten minutes – thrice by a flight attendant, once by me – to turn her iPhone off. She reacted defiantly, complaining loudly that she was just texting her dad to let him know we were leaving.

I know teenage is not an easy age, but there you go: iPhone girl, you are the rudest and most annoying person I have encountered when flying. I’m glad you are not a Spaniard.

Snowstorm

Seattle was not prepared for the onslaught of snow this holiday season. There are not enough snow machines in the city, and the airport is similarly optimistic about the weather. This season gave us the worst weather in many years. Some say 17, some say over 30.

All of this happened during the days I was traveling home.
Now it is fun to remember the chaos: spending the night before my flight in a hotel by the airport, navigating a SeaTac brimming with people who needed re-ticketing, missing my connection in Newark and having to spend the night there. On my flight back, having to make a stop to refuel and defrost, waiting over an hour for baggage, waiting again over an hour to get a taxi. All throughout, dealing with the harried airport staff, who often displayed good intentions, but had been outwitted by the events.

People were elated to make it through the madness, though, and let their guard down. I had my most interesting flight neighbors to date – in the Seattle-Newark flight, an electrical engineer turned carpenter, in the Newark-Madrid, a lady from Michigan going to spend Christmas with her Spanish grandchildren, and a Spanish mechanical engineer working for Audi in Silicon Valley. Unlike most flights, our minds were set in the present moment, and the present location, and that made all the difference.

Working from home

Advantages of not being customer-facing. The snow got real this time.

My first Seattle snow