No news today. The green line of the metro went down today between 8:30 and 9 AM, thereby screwing up the system during morning rush hour. Meanwhile, a car wreck on the motorway leading into town from the suburbs in the Vallés at around 8:30 AM caused a seven-mile backup. Probably nearly 100,000 people got to work an hour late, costing us that much productivity. When one piece of the puzzle goes down, the entire infrastructure feels it.
Three-quarters of Spanish workers are suffering from workplace stress and feel burned out. Of these, three-quarters claim to be suffering health problems due to said stress. Causes: Not knowing what is expected of them, not being permitted to make decisions, and not feeling secure about their future.
I would add generally distant management that is not able to convince the worker that his and the company's interests are the same. I would also add that small businesses in Spain often try to exploit their workers big-time, I believe more so than in the United States. My wife Remei has only been satisfied with the way management has treated her at one of the small companies she's worked at; I can personally state that small language academies in Spain are generally very badly run.
More boat people: 34 black African illegal immigrants arrived near Almeria today, having crossed the Mediterranean from Morocco. The foreign press didn't notice.
44% of Spanish university students admit having used a cheat sheet on an exam, and 47% admit copying off another student's paper. Now they're trying electronic tricks, using MP3s and the like to store information. I can't claim to be Mr. Ethics and Morality, having fallen short of my own standards many times, but I never cheated on a test. One thing is that I was always good at school, so I never felt like I had to.
In America they take this really seriously. I knew a guy at KU who got expelled from the university for cheating on a chemistry final exam. Not much loss; he was a jerk anyway. Ted Kennedy got kicked out of Harvard for cheating on a Spanish final.
Latin gang fight in Madrid last night: two stabbed, one seriously, and three arrested. At least in Madrid the Latin Kings aren't a "cultural organization."
Heavy rains and flooding in the Basque Country, especially near Bilbao. They've evacuated parts of several towns, including Guecho and Santurce. Some of the highways are closed down, and the trains have been seriously delayed. Nobody's died yet or anything really bad like that. Here in Catalonia the reservoirs are all above 50% of capacity, and several are higher than that.
Barcelona sold Zambrotta to Milan for €9 million and Giovani dos Santos to Tottenham for €8 million. I think they gave up on Giovani too quickly, he's got tremendous talent, but the story is that he picked up a lot of bad habits in Rijkaard's free-and-easy clubhouse.
Showing posts with label living on the edge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label living on the edge. Show all posts
Monday, June 02, 2008
Monday, May 26, 2008
Typical Monday, not much of a news day, especially since it's Memorial Day in the States and everyone's down at the lake. Bit of weirdness: Some Spaniards, including Baltasar Porcel, get snippy at America's celebrating Halloween, a kids' dress-up holiday, at the same time Spain celebrates Todos los Santos, the day when dead people are remembered in Spain. Porcel has accused the Yanks of turning a solemn ritual into commercialized kitsch.
Of course, Todos los Santos (All Souls' Day) is a CATHOLIC holiday, and the people of the US are religiously mixed. We have our own secular day to remember the dead, Memorial Day. In fact, we have another similar holiday, Veterans' Day in November, when those who died for their country are remembered. You could argue that Americans are therefore even more respectful of their dead than the Spaniards.
Another piece of evidence: Most Spaniards know nothing about their family history. Remei, for example, doesn't know about any of her ancestors before about 1900. Many Americans, on the other hand, are interested in genealogy and in the lives of their ancestors. My family knows, for example, that some of us were Tennessee-Texas Scotch-Irish (including a couple of Confederate soldiers and Methodist circuit riders; at least one owned slaves), some of us were Kansas Germans from Bukovina in the old Austrian Empire, and that one branch, my mother's maternal grandfather's line, was Oklahoma Cherokee. They were all farmers or ranchers; we're from the landowning-peasant class, not the urban proletariat. An aunt and several of my cousins have married Mexican-Americans, meaning that I have Hispanic relatives as well, none of whom speak Spanish. Family surnames include Chappell, Colley, Whitney, Shannon, Stuart, Aust/Ast, Shoemake, and Walz. My favorite distant-relative surname is Schimmelpfennig.
Spaniards are surprised when they find out I know all this, but it's not unusual among Americans; we all know we're half-Irish, one-quarter Italian, and one-quarter Polish, or whatever the mix may be.
So the Jaume Bofill Foundation did a study and found that only 2% of immigrants in Spain who have been here at least ten years want to go home. Well, duh. If they wanted to go home they'd already have left. Wonder how much the Generalitat subsidized this one with.
Living on the infrastructure edge: This morning the main commuter-train line lost power in a tunnel near Plaza Catalunya and went down for forty minutes, thereby snarling up everything as usual. Another train broke down south of Sabadell and fouled up that line as well. I figure at the very least 50,000 people were an hour late to work, costing us 50,000 production hours that could have been used to increase our GDP.
It rained again this morning, and the five reservoirs in the Ter-Llobregat watershed that supply Barcelona are now at 40% of capacity. Worries about running out this summer are rapidly disappearing. Now they're talking about halting the shipments of water by tanker and calling off the Tarragona-Barcelona aqueduct plan. I don't know; I wouldn't start feeling too safe and secure yet.
Tragedy in Valencia: A scaffold collapsed this morning at the construction site of CF Valencia's new stadium, killing two and injuring four. Jeez. Somebody screwed up bad here, because scaffolds are supposed to be firmly attached to something so they don't fall down. There are entirely too many deaths on the job in Spain, and it's frequently due to half-assery, ignoring the most elemental safety precautions. There is also far too much drinking on the job.
Two squatter punks used climbing equipment to dangle themselves off the front of the Sabadell city hall this morning, in order to demand the release of Franki from jail. If I were the cops I'd give the punks five minutes to cease and desist and then cut their ropes. That would put a rapid end to this crap. I hope Franki is enjoying his stay in the Modelo.
The Spanish real estate developer Habitat is in massive trouble. They already laid off 350 workers at their Don Piso subsidiary, and now they're laying off half their staff, 160 more workers. The Spanish real estate Zeppelin has crashed and burned. Their own company forecast is, get this, to lose €650 million between now and 2010. They've made a deal with the 39 banks to which they owe €1.6 billion to reschedule payments, saving them from bankruptcy, at least for now. The contractor Ferrovial owns 20% of Habitat. I'm glad I don't own any Ferrovial stock.
14 million Spaniards saw the Chiki-Chiki guy perform on Eurovision, a 78% share. That's one-third of the population. I missed it. Damn.
The Japanese yakuza who murdered the mayor of Nagasaki has been sentenced to death. In Japan they hang the condemned in secret, without informing his family until he's dead. No one around here has yet criticized the primitive, barbaric, brutal Japanese for using capital punishment.
Barça update: Edmilson is going to Villarreal. Inter Milan wants to buy Deco. Negotiations for Ronaldinho and Zambrotta continue with AC Milan. Manchester City's offer for Ronaldinho is the best they've received. He's exactly the player a midtable club like that doesn't need. I'd spend that money on five competent young players with a future. Instead of buying one ex-superstar with mysterious injuries and bad habits, get five real, solid pros. Supposedly Barça is going to buy the 21-year-old Uruguayan defender Martin Caceres from Recreativo.
Of course, Todos los Santos (All Souls' Day) is a CATHOLIC holiday, and the people of the US are religiously mixed. We have our own secular day to remember the dead, Memorial Day. In fact, we have another similar holiday, Veterans' Day in November, when those who died for their country are remembered. You could argue that Americans are therefore even more respectful of their dead than the Spaniards.
Another piece of evidence: Most Spaniards know nothing about their family history. Remei, for example, doesn't know about any of her ancestors before about 1900. Many Americans, on the other hand, are interested in genealogy and in the lives of their ancestors. My family knows, for example, that some of us were Tennessee-Texas Scotch-Irish (including a couple of Confederate soldiers and Methodist circuit riders; at least one owned slaves), some of us were Kansas Germans from Bukovina in the old Austrian Empire, and that one branch, my mother's maternal grandfather's line, was Oklahoma Cherokee. They were all farmers or ranchers; we're from the landowning-peasant class, not the urban proletariat. An aunt and several of my cousins have married Mexican-Americans, meaning that I have Hispanic relatives as well, none of whom speak Spanish. Family surnames include Chappell, Colley, Whitney, Shannon, Stuart, Aust/Ast, Shoemake, and Walz. My favorite distant-relative surname is Schimmelpfennig.
Spaniards are surprised when they find out I know all this, but it's not unusual among Americans; we all know we're half-Irish, one-quarter Italian, and one-quarter Polish, or whatever the mix may be.
So the Jaume Bofill Foundation did a study and found that only 2% of immigrants in Spain who have been here at least ten years want to go home. Well, duh. If they wanted to go home they'd already have left. Wonder how much the Generalitat subsidized this one with.
Living on the infrastructure edge: This morning the main commuter-train line lost power in a tunnel near Plaza Catalunya and went down for forty minutes, thereby snarling up everything as usual. Another train broke down south of Sabadell and fouled up that line as well. I figure at the very least 50,000 people were an hour late to work, costing us 50,000 production hours that could have been used to increase our GDP.
It rained again this morning, and the five reservoirs in the Ter-Llobregat watershed that supply Barcelona are now at 40% of capacity. Worries about running out this summer are rapidly disappearing. Now they're talking about halting the shipments of water by tanker and calling off the Tarragona-Barcelona aqueduct plan. I don't know; I wouldn't start feeling too safe and secure yet.
Tragedy in Valencia: A scaffold collapsed this morning at the construction site of CF Valencia's new stadium, killing two and injuring four. Jeez. Somebody screwed up bad here, because scaffolds are supposed to be firmly attached to something so they don't fall down. There are entirely too many deaths on the job in Spain, and it's frequently due to half-assery, ignoring the most elemental safety precautions. There is also far too much drinking on the job.
Two squatter punks used climbing equipment to dangle themselves off the front of the Sabadell city hall this morning, in order to demand the release of Franki from jail. If I were the cops I'd give the punks five minutes to cease and desist and then cut their ropes. That would put a rapid end to this crap. I hope Franki is enjoying his stay in the Modelo.
The Spanish real estate developer Habitat is in massive trouble. They already laid off 350 workers at their Don Piso subsidiary, and now they're laying off half their staff, 160 more workers. The Spanish real estate Zeppelin has crashed and burned. Their own company forecast is, get this, to lose €650 million between now and 2010. They've made a deal with the 39 banks to which they owe €1.6 billion to reschedule payments, saving them from bankruptcy, at least for now. The contractor Ferrovial owns 20% of Habitat. I'm glad I don't own any Ferrovial stock.
14 million Spaniards saw the Chiki-Chiki guy perform on Eurovision, a 78% share. That's one-third of the population. I missed it. Damn.
The Japanese yakuza who murdered the mayor of Nagasaki has been sentenced to death. In Japan they hang the condemned in secret, without informing his family until he's dead. No one around here has yet criticized the primitive, barbaric, brutal Japanese for using capital punishment.
Barça update: Edmilson is going to Villarreal. Inter Milan wants to buy Deco. Negotiations for Ronaldinho and Zambrotta continue with AC Milan. Manchester City's offer for Ronaldinho is the best they've received. He's exactly the player a midtable club like that doesn't need. I'd spend that money on five competent young players with a future. Instead of buying one ex-superstar with mysterious injuries and bad habits, get five real, solid pros. Supposedly Barça is going to buy the 21-year-old Uruguayan defender Martin Caceres from Recreativo.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
From today's El Pais in an article titled "Cuba and a hope named Obama": 'A Cuban academic declared that, differently from other occasions, the American electoral process is being taken very seriously this time in official circles. "In previous elections it didn't matter who won. Now it is different. McCain represents immobility. It would be the same policies as always there, and the same response as always here. But an Obama victory would move the whole political scene,' said this analyst, a member of the Communist party."
Another near-disaster here in Barcelona: Yesterday they were loading a cargo of dimethylamine off a ship in the harbor, and the crane dropped it, so the nasty poisonous inflammable stuff got all over the place and they had to shut down the seafront part of the motorway loop around the city for nine hours. The traffic jam was amazing.
I think one of the problems with Barcelona's infrastructure is that we're living on the edge. The system works OK in normal conditions, but let one thing go wrong--a rainstorm that shorts out the traffic lights, a sinkhole that closes down a commuter rail line, a power cable that comes down atop an electricity substation, a bunch of squatters blocking off the Via Laietana with their latest attempted riot--and the whole thing collapses, making everybody's life impossible and costing innumerable hours of work time, thereby decreasing our productivity and hurting our economy.
So CiU wants €5 billion more in tax money for the Generalitat from the central government. That would be OK if they were going to spend it usefully, but you know what they want it for: to pass out to their own clients in their own political machine. More money for TV3! And the Department of Linguistic Normalization! And their pet newspapers (mostly in provincial towns like Lleida, Girona, Manresa, etc.)! And their own "consultants"! And all the 175,000 civil servants employed by the Generalitat!
The cops have been running an anti-drug operation in the Zona Franca, one of Barcelona's most degraded slums. They've arrested and jailed 48 persons for drug trafficking, and have pressed charges against 373 more for drug dealing and 33 for illegal possession of a weapon. The story only mentions the nationality / ethnicity of two of those jailed, both Spaniards.
So everybody's excited about the Eurovision festival tonight. God help us all. Check out the video of Spain's candidate. El Pais says this whole thing is paid for with taxpayers' money through the Cervantes Institute (whose job is to promote Spanish culture around the world) and TVE, the state-owned (and why we need one I don't know) television network.
Supposedly Barça has bought the French-Malian midfielder Keita from Sevilla for €14 million, and has repurchased the Catalan defender (and product of Barça's youth team) Pique from Manchester United for €5 million.
Another near-disaster here in Barcelona: Yesterday they were loading a cargo of dimethylamine off a ship in the harbor, and the crane dropped it, so the nasty poisonous inflammable stuff got all over the place and they had to shut down the seafront part of the motorway loop around the city for nine hours. The traffic jam was amazing.
I think one of the problems with Barcelona's infrastructure is that we're living on the edge. The system works OK in normal conditions, but let one thing go wrong--a rainstorm that shorts out the traffic lights, a sinkhole that closes down a commuter rail line, a power cable that comes down atop an electricity substation, a bunch of squatters blocking off the Via Laietana with their latest attempted riot--and the whole thing collapses, making everybody's life impossible and costing innumerable hours of work time, thereby decreasing our productivity and hurting our economy.
So CiU wants €5 billion more in tax money for the Generalitat from the central government. That would be OK if they were going to spend it usefully, but you know what they want it for: to pass out to their own clients in their own political machine. More money for TV3! And the Department of Linguistic Normalization! And their pet newspapers (mostly in provincial towns like Lleida, Girona, Manresa, etc.)! And their own "consultants"! And all the 175,000 civil servants employed by the Generalitat!
The cops have been running an anti-drug operation in the Zona Franca, one of Barcelona's most degraded slums. They've arrested and jailed 48 persons for drug trafficking, and have pressed charges against 373 more for drug dealing and 33 for illegal possession of a weapon. The story only mentions the nationality / ethnicity of two of those jailed, both Spaniards.
So everybody's excited about the Eurovision festival tonight. God help us all. Check out the video of Spain's candidate. El Pais says this whole thing is paid for with taxpayers' money through the Cervantes Institute (whose job is to promote Spanish culture around the world) and TVE, the state-owned (and why we need one I don't know) television network.
Supposedly Barça has bought the French-Malian midfielder Keita from Sevilla for €14 million, and has repurchased the Catalan defender (and product of Barça's youth team) Pique from Manchester United for €5 million.
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