Hey! I just changed the look of the blog. It take me some time today to adapt a theme; and I think I still have to tweak it a little, but I think it’s way better than the old one.
What do you think? Vote 1 if you suggest I should revert to the old look, 5 if you prefer this one.

Nuevo aspecto / New look Antiguo aspecto / Old look

Yesterday, saturday, there was a BBQ (asado) at ‘Club Hostel’, where I’m staying. After my last asado in this hostel, and induced by my vegetarian intentions, I refused to take part in it. Anyway, I just bought some food and join the asado, where I talked mainly with Leo [cl] and Rafa [cl]. It was a strange days, one of a few, in which I just got to sleep soon. The reasons: tiredness, not very promising conversations, and there were no girls (it’s shallow, I know, but still counts as a factor).
Eduardo is a positively mild, retired mexican. When he was sleeping, he snored in a weird way. I woke up, late, at noon. Bautista and Julie is a french couple that has been travelling with their tandem bike for more than a year, in a notoriously long honeymoon. They were complaining about missing a bag with a camera. The girl that was in charge of the hostel at that time was worried. She said, immediately, that a similar thing happened in the contiguous room.
Through the subsequent minutes, additional information was being revealed. Kevin, an irish guy, naive and prone to smile, also had ‘lost’ his digital camera. Then I check everything, and my two valuables were still there: the reflex camera in the well-locked locker, and the other, relatively cheap camera, disguised in a Marlboro Lights box, in the lower bed, the middle bed of a 3-bed bunk. Jorge [cl], another camera and a mp4 player. He went to sleep soon, also. Some other items ‘disappeared’.
After a little bit more than an hour, we went to make an statement at the police station, me and Carlo [ar] acting as translators. We knew that the first suspect had become obviously guilty, considering the events that happened. A person that booked in as Juan Єυtriaη (clearly a fake name). He is fat, has moustache, with a porteño (from Buenos Aires) accent. I was talking to him and playing chess (he was such a lousy player…) on Friday, when he started talking shit, like he being a pilot -while he didn’t know how to convert feet to metres. I didn’t trust him, specially when I was acting as a translation bridge between him and Kevin. He seemed dodgy. But what was about to unfold wasn’t that predictable. He went to buy cigarettes at 6am and never returned.
That morning, Eduardo looked like a zombie. I thought… that it wasn’t just a hangover, that he had consumed -voluntarily- some strong drugs the night before.
After the Kevin’s statement, the police decided to go to the hostel, to end the reports and look for evidences. It seemed strange, but there was an easy explanation: Kevin said in the statement that he saw ‘Juan’ pouring some powder in the beer. He though it was toqra (a compound that is used while chewing coca leaves) or something like that. Big mistake. A lot of the people staying in both rooms where druged: Eduardo, Leo, Rafa, Kevin. They were all worn out, with hard headaches and balance losses. A policeman said that it was a criminal technique mostly used by girls.
They took pictures and fingerprints, and more information poured through, about how this criminal won the trust of the people around and drug them. He had been very silent in our room, because the french couple went to sleep before me (so they didn’t had any drug), and still he robbed the cameras of the mexican and the frenchs.
They’re still making the statement. “Qué rata hijo de puta”, I hear… and I agree, you just have to look the face of Eduardo, that should go to the doctor. It’s not about robbing, it’s about the filthy method used, revealing that the subject is nothing more than a snake. Apparently, his real name is Henry.
Whatever, he isn’t very clever, because a picture of him could be recovered. Let’s see if they push the investigation forward, or they just forget about this whole story. I you meet him, you know what to do. Is no joke… would karma act?

Alias ‘Juan Єυtriaη’ Investigaciones Inversas

I have now a splendid fourth cousin! Congratulations to the parents!

Julia y Nicolás (el nuevo) [Ext: Laura / Nico]

Uploading photos has a very high cost in time, in my case. The computers on the NetCafés tend to be slow, very slow at processing photographs (in almost every task). Not to mention the delay and failures of the blog server. I’ve been almost 2 hours for processing&uploading just 8 photos.
That’s why I’ll be uploading with calm, and updating the post retrospectively. A post updated (with added photos, most of the time) after 2 months of being published will be a typical thing in this blog.

I’ve been improving this blog, as I intend to use it on my round-the-globe travel. I guess that uploading photos will be harder than writing posts; so I’ll probably write first the post to upload the photos afterward.

New features
+ GeoMashup: Registers geographic data per post.
+ Ratings.
+ Highslide: Nice photo viewer.

La asquerosa bruja que me alquilaba el piso en Portugal por fin me ha devuelto la fianza… tardísimo, y algo menos de lo acordado, lo cual irrita, aunque no lo suficiente como para actuar. Encima intuyo curiosas relaciones de parentesco entre uno de la inmobiliaria y ella (nada evidentes, pero posibles y, en mi opinión, muy probables)… en fin, tema olvidado.
La foto es la visión de Praça de Espanha desde el piso, a 15/04/2006.

Praça de Espanha desde Luis de Noronha, 30, 7ºD. 2006.04.15

Otra vez más, se fue la luz y con ella, mucho. Todo está aquí, aunque la fecha está mal y no va a ser tan fácil como siempre ponerla bien… y el sistema de blog sólo muestra posts anteriores a la fecha del sistema. En fin, el cabrearse no ayuda, así que seguiré poniendo posts pero con hora y fecha distinta (a corregir en el futuro).

Cambio, mudanza, tango como icono de estanqueidad e inmovilismo. Pero pudo evaporarse, y con ella, parte del recuerdo portugués… espero que, exclusivamente, esa parte negativa. Pese a que la vuelta a Madrid tuvo múltiples connotaciones traumáticas, y las veleidades de los últimos tiempos dificulten la ansiada calma, me alegro de haber tomado esa decisión, nada drástica, al fin y al cabo.

Última Tango en Madrid

Hoy cogeré el coche, recogeré a un colega, e iremos de “road movie” hacia el norte… a saber en que paranoias desemboca esto. Primer golpe a la pretensión de la actualización diaria.