On Learning Spanish
I am coming up on two months here in Spain and already I feel like things have really opened up for me, that I see things more clearly, and that I’m actually starting to fit in (at least in my own illegal immigrant sort of way). I am not intimidated by language situations as I know I can muddle through just about anything that I encounter. I still have a lot to learn and I get frustrated with myself at times and think that I’ll never speak Spanish well.
I still haven’t even really started to learn the second person plural familiar pronoun, vosotros, and all of its verb declensions. This form is not used in Mexico and Peru where I learned Spanish initially. It’s not an important gap in my knowledge of the language but I need to start incorporating this into my speech.
My strategy in learning Spanish calls for lots of reading. I read every newspaper I can get my hands on. I look up damn near every word that I don’t know. I have pages and pages of vocabulary in my little notebook that I review whenever I get the chance, like when I’m walking down the street or riding the subway. Some words stick and some don’t. I really hate it when I have already looked a word up before and then I am stumped when I come upon it again.
If I am home I usually have the television turned on or I listen to the BBC in Spanish via the internet. I can follow the news rather well and talk shows aren’t too big of a problem. Movies are still a struggle to understand. I just have to force myself to pay close attention and understand as much as I can. The hardest things for me are the cartoon shows, Los Simpsons, Futurama, and Padre de la Familia (Family Guy). The animated voices are really difficult to hear. When I can watch and understand an entire episode of Los Simpsons I will really feel like I have achieved something. It’s important to set high goals for yourself.
Friday, January 05, 2007
Thursday, January 04, 2007
The Final Product
What’s better than drinking red wine, eating fantastic olives, and cooking great food? While I’m waiting for you to answer I’ll have another sip of wine and another of these wonderful cracked olives. I have cooked a lot of dishes with calamari and there is a simple rule: either cook it fast (like deep frying), or cook it slow (like simmering it for 30 minutes), otherwise it turns to rubber. I am doing the slow cooking method tonight with a saffron calamari risotto.
I got the idea for this from my fishmonger (Yeah, I have a fish monger!) at the Mercado de Algirós today when I bought my squid. It wasn’t too busy there today and the woman really took a lot of time to explain to me the various types of squid available to us lucky Valencianos. She talked me into buying the less expensive calamari since I was planning on using it in a sauce. She said that this squid goes great in a sauce with tomatoes and rice. The half kilo of squid came to 4 €; that’s a lot of calamari.
I was about to write down the recipe for this dish until I realized that being the iconoclastic chef that I am, this is probably not even risotto. I’m sure that I am offending Italian as well as Spanish culture with the dish I concocted tonight, but damn, it is good.
P.S. Next to my wine glass you can see the book I am reading, the poems of the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda. More on him later but I’ll leave you with a little bit of one of his works called, Flies Enter a Closed Mouth.
En qué medita el tortuga?
Dónde se retira la sombra?
Qué canto repite la lluvia?
Dónde van a morir los pájaros?
Y por qué son verdes las hojas?
...
Es tan poco lo que sabemos
Y tanto lo que presumimos
Y tan lentamente aprendemos,
que preguntamos, y morimos.
What does the tortoise think?
Where do shadows go?
What song does the rain have in its head?
Where do birds go to die?
And why are leaves green?
We know so little
And presume so much
And learn so slowly
And we ask, and we die.
(translated by me)
I got the idea for this from my fishmonger (Yeah, I have a fish monger!) at the Mercado de Algirós today when I bought my squid. It wasn’t too busy there today and the woman really took a lot of time to explain to me the various types of squid available to us lucky Valencianos. She talked me into buying the less expensive calamari since I was planning on using it in a sauce. She said that this squid goes great in a sauce with tomatoes and rice. The half kilo of squid came to 4 €; that’s a lot of calamari.
I was about to write down the recipe for this dish until I realized that being the iconoclastic chef that I am, this is probably not even risotto. I’m sure that I am offending Italian as well as Spanish culture with the dish I concocted tonight, but damn, it is good.
P.S. Next to my wine glass you can see the book I am reading, the poems of the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda. More on him later but I’ll leave you with a little bit of one of his works called, Flies Enter a Closed Mouth.
En qué medita el tortuga?
Dónde se retira la sombra?
Qué canto repite la lluvia?
Dónde van a morir los pájaros?
Y por qué son verdes las hojas?
...
Es tan poco lo que sabemos
Y tanto lo que presumimos
Y tan lentamente aprendemos,
que preguntamos, y morimos.
What does the tortoise think?
Where do shadows go?
What song does the rain have in its head?
Where do birds go to die?
And why are leaves green?
We know so little
And presume so much
And learn so slowly
And we ask, and we die.
(translated by me)
The Spanish Table
The Spanish Table
I have learned that whenever I use my oven I need to bake as many potatoes as can fit around whatever else I am cooking in there. I use the baked potatoes for my cheating version of a Spanish potato tortilla. This dish usually calls for you to sauté the thinly sliced potatoes in olive oil until they are completely cooked which takes about 40 minutes and requires about a cup of olive oil. Using my pre-baked potatoes I can slice them thinly and sauté them for just a few minutes before I add the eggs. I also use cheese in my tortillas which isn’t very Spanish. They make a tortilla francesa with cheese but that is something separate. I’m not too big on tradition and I prefer my tortilla de patata with cheese.
This dish is still tricky for me to cook although every tortilla I have made so far in Spain has been respectable. The trick is turning this rather unwieldy dish over so that the other side cooks. I cook it on one side with the pan tightly covered so the top of the tortilla solidifies. I think that using cheese makes it even more liquid on the top side. Flipping it before the bottom side burns is difficult because the top part can be very runny. You are also not supposed to brown the potatoes but I prefer them lightly browned so that’s how I make it. I eat the tortilla as a bocadito between two slices of fresh aldeano or peasant bread and lathered with a little of my Mediterranean oil.
I made a trip over to the Mercado de Algirós to buy olives. That’s all I was planning to buy but I couldn’t help picking up a few dried sardines. The guy at the stall told me how to prepare them and warned me that they are fairly salty, which means that they are loaded with salt. I also bought some calamari and the woman gave me a refresher course on how to clean them. I had done this before often enough when I lived in Greece but that was a long time ago. Since then, when I buy fresh squid I get it cleaned for me.
I bought a half kilo of partidas, or cracked olives (xafés in Valenciano). These are my favorite olives that I have found here in Valencia. I just found that my huge new olive container isn’t quite big enough for my entire assortment. I’ll have to eat them faster. Whatever the hell I decide to do with the squid, the olives will be a good accompaniment. That’s true with olives regarding almost all of the food here in the Mediterranean basin.
I like the idea of eating sardines almost as much as I like eating them. They remind me of when I lived on the Mediterranean before. I will probably just filet them and marinate them in olive oil. Just thinking about this food makes me want to go for a bike ride to clean out my arteries before I clog them up again.
I have learned that whenever I use my oven I need to bake as many potatoes as can fit around whatever else I am cooking in there. I use the baked potatoes for my cheating version of a Spanish potato tortilla. This dish usually calls for you to sauté the thinly sliced potatoes in olive oil until they are completely cooked which takes about 40 minutes and requires about a cup of olive oil. Using my pre-baked potatoes I can slice them thinly and sauté them for just a few minutes before I add the eggs. I also use cheese in my tortillas which isn’t very Spanish. They make a tortilla francesa with cheese but that is something separate. I’m not too big on tradition and I prefer my tortilla de patata with cheese.
This dish is still tricky for me to cook although every tortilla I have made so far in Spain has been respectable. The trick is turning this rather unwieldy dish over so that the other side cooks. I cook it on one side with the pan tightly covered so the top of the tortilla solidifies. I think that using cheese makes it even more liquid on the top side. Flipping it before the bottom side burns is difficult because the top part can be very runny. You are also not supposed to brown the potatoes but I prefer them lightly browned so that’s how I make it. I eat the tortilla as a bocadito between two slices of fresh aldeano or peasant bread and lathered with a little of my Mediterranean oil.
I made a trip over to the Mercado de Algirós to buy olives. That’s all I was planning to buy but I couldn’t help picking up a few dried sardines. The guy at the stall told me how to prepare them and warned me that they are fairly salty, which means that they are loaded with salt. I also bought some calamari and the woman gave me a refresher course on how to clean them. I had done this before often enough when I lived in Greece but that was a long time ago. Since then, when I buy fresh squid I get it cleaned for me.
I bought a half kilo of partidas, or cracked olives (xafés in Valenciano). These are my favorite olives that I have found here in Valencia. I just found that my huge new olive container isn’t quite big enough for my entire assortment. I’ll have to eat them faster. Whatever the hell I decide to do with the squid, the olives will be a good accompaniment. That’s true with olives regarding almost all of the food here in the Mediterranean basin.
I like the idea of eating sardines almost as much as I like eating them. They remind me of when I lived on the Mediterranean before. I will probably just filet them and marinate them in olive oil. Just thinking about this food makes me want to go for a bike ride to clean out my arteries before I clog them up again.
Entertainment Officials Report New Reserves Found Miles Below Lowest Common Denominator
Entertainment Officials Report New Reserves Found Miles Below Lowest Common Denominator
Officials in the entertainment industry revealed today that they have struck upon huge new reserves of television material lying miles beneath the lowest common denominator which now plagues the airwaves.
OK, I came up with that phony headline for a contest over at my favorite blog, www.onegoodmove.org. I think that we as citizens share most of the blame for the almost total lack of quality in what we choose to ingest from the culture around us. There is no shortage of intelligent choices we could be making in our entertainment consumption, yet reality TV, mediocre talent, and the lowest common denominator occupy our primary attention.
If you go to Youtube, the popular web site for videos, they feature the following videos:
-a farting baby
-strange faces and noises I can make
-New Year’s beavers cartoon
-Pigs are like men (animation)
The New York Times has a story on how libraries in Fairfax Country, Virginia are cutting back on classics to make more room for modern bestsellers.
I could cite more examples of the decline of Western civilization. I could look in the TV Guide and see what’s on prime time tonight, but I think we all get the idea. I am guilty of doing a lot of intellectual slumming myself. It’s not like I sit around playing classical music on the piano and then read a Shakespeare play before drinking a glass of port and going to bed. I don’t see anything wrong with watching an hour or two of shitty television, or reading a popular novel, or listening to the latest popular tune. I do think it’s a problem when as a society we feel that there is no need for anything beyond these ephemeral entertainments.
I may often be too lazy to actually do it but at least I know that it is better for me to read a Shakespeare play than to watch another episode of The Simpsons (and I don’t mean to pick on that show because it is one of the best examples of quality modern entertainment—God help us). As I write this my eyes are rolling back in my own head so far that I feel like I am going to fall over. I’m another voice telling us how stupid we all are, another hack complaining about the closing of the American mind. I should stop but I’ve already gone this far.
As I try to assimilate into a new culture I am made more aware of the things in American culture that separate us from Spanish culture and which things bridge these two worlds. America’s cultural hegemony is evident everywhere in Spain, anyone who has ever left the country is aware of this. If you look closer you will see that although Spain borrows a bit from the United States, it has its own popular culture which doesn’t intersect often with ours.
Popular culture is almost as different here as are our two languages. Within the United States the fragmented popular culture is like an ever-growing group of separate dialects only completely understood by those who have invested the time necessary to become fluent. If people are talking about Paris Hilton, or American Idol, or Survivor I am able to understand less than if they are speaking Catalan. The accelerated fragmentation of popular culture makes communication between factions more difficult. I wrote about how the English of rap music has changed more in twenty years than the English of Chaucer almost 600 years ago. I was talking with a group of people the other day and they introduced me to an acquaintance of theirs from London. His cockney accent was so pronounced that I switched languages and was better able to understand him in Spanish (although his accent in Spanish was very unusual). I immediately recognized that conversation as metaphorical.
As with anything else, there are elements of popular culture that are good and those which are completely vapid. For the most part, the more insipid aspects of pop culture are those that mutate the most quickly. America’s Funniest Home Videos are forgotten before you are three seconds into the commercial break while some of the new HBO series are breaking new ground, not only in television, but in how film can be used to tell stories.
I really don’t know what I am saying except that it seems to me that there is more momentum in popular culture towards the vulgar than the sublime. In an era with such heavy levels of popular culture consumption it is just easier to produce large amounts of trash than quality. With 24 hours news, sports, and entertainment programming, television will naturally gravitate towards what is the easiest and most profitable to produce. I don’t understand how these same forces drive literature and music. I’m no businessman but it seems like it would be just as easy to promote and sell quality music and books as it is to market Paris Hilton songs and Da Vinci Code quality pabulum.
I couldn’t even name a new author of fiction whose work we all should be reading and talking about. The voices we should be listening to are drowned out by the airport bestsellers. Who has time to ferret out the modern day classics when there are farting baby videos to watch?
Officials in the entertainment industry revealed today that they have struck upon huge new reserves of television material lying miles beneath the lowest common denominator which now plagues the airwaves.
OK, I came up with that phony headline for a contest over at my favorite blog, www.onegoodmove.org. I think that we as citizens share most of the blame for the almost total lack of quality in what we choose to ingest from the culture around us. There is no shortage of intelligent choices we could be making in our entertainment consumption, yet reality TV, mediocre talent, and the lowest common denominator occupy our primary attention.
If you go to Youtube, the popular web site for videos, they feature the following videos:
-a farting baby
-strange faces and noises I can make
-New Year’s beavers cartoon
-Pigs are like men (animation)
The New York Times has a story on how libraries in Fairfax Country, Virginia are cutting back on classics to make more room for modern bestsellers.
I could cite more examples of the decline of Western civilization. I could look in the TV Guide and see what’s on prime time tonight, but I think we all get the idea. I am guilty of doing a lot of intellectual slumming myself. It’s not like I sit around playing classical music on the piano and then read a Shakespeare play before drinking a glass of port and going to bed. I don’t see anything wrong with watching an hour or two of shitty television, or reading a popular novel, or listening to the latest popular tune. I do think it’s a problem when as a society we feel that there is no need for anything beyond these ephemeral entertainments.
I may often be too lazy to actually do it but at least I know that it is better for me to read a Shakespeare play than to watch another episode of The Simpsons (and I don’t mean to pick on that show because it is one of the best examples of quality modern entertainment—God help us). As I write this my eyes are rolling back in my own head so far that I feel like I am going to fall over. I’m another voice telling us how stupid we all are, another hack complaining about the closing of the American mind. I should stop but I’ve already gone this far.
As I try to assimilate into a new culture I am made more aware of the things in American culture that separate us from Spanish culture and which things bridge these two worlds. America’s cultural hegemony is evident everywhere in Spain, anyone who has ever left the country is aware of this. If you look closer you will see that although Spain borrows a bit from the United States, it has its own popular culture which doesn’t intersect often with ours.
Popular culture is almost as different here as are our two languages. Within the United States the fragmented popular culture is like an ever-growing group of separate dialects only completely understood by those who have invested the time necessary to become fluent. If people are talking about Paris Hilton, or American Idol, or Survivor I am able to understand less than if they are speaking Catalan. The accelerated fragmentation of popular culture makes communication between factions more difficult. I wrote about how the English of rap music has changed more in twenty years than the English of Chaucer almost 600 years ago. I was talking with a group of people the other day and they introduced me to an acquaintance of theirs from London. His cockney accent was so pronounced that I switched languages and was better able to understand him in Spanish (although his accent in Spanish was very unusual). I immediately recognized that conversation as metaphorical.
As with anything else, there are elements of popular culture that are good and those which are completely vapid. For the most part, the more insipid aspects of pop culture are those that mutate the most quickly. America’s Funniest Home Videos are forgotten before you are three seconds into the commercial break while some of the new HBO series are breaking new ground, not only in television, but in how film can be used to tell stories.
I really don’t know what I am saying except that it seems to me that there is more momentum in popular culture towards the vulgar than the sublime. In an era with such heavy levels of popular culture consumption it is just easier to produce large amounts of trash than quality. With 24 hours news, sports, and entertainment programming, television will naturally gravitate towards what is the easiest and most profitable to produce. I don’t understand how these same forces drive literature and music. I’m no businessman but it seems like it would be just as easy to promote and sell quality music and books as it is to market Paris Hilton songs and Da Vinci Code quality pabulum.
I couldn’t even name a new author of fiction whose work we all should be reading and talking about. The voices we should be listening to are drowned out by the airport bestsellers. Who has time to ferret out the modern day classics when there are farting baby videos to watch?
Monday, January 01, 2007
Bike Tour
Bike Tour
For me, life with a bike is a lot better than life without a bike. In fact, almost all of my stay here on the planet has been in the company of a bicycle, or bicycles in the best of times. They are my main source of exercise, transportation, and recreation all at the same time. My first month here in Spain was a living hell of endless walking. I wish that I could say that I am a better person for what I endured that month but every time a I ride around town and see just how far I was walking it gives me cold shivers just thinking about those sad, bike-less times.
Yesterday the temperature was inching close to 70 degrees (try writing that sentence using the metric system). New Year’s Eve is called Nochvieja in Spain and it is, of course, a holiday. Not that the Spanish need much of an excuse to take the day off, but this is a fairly big holiday for them. It was a great day to bike around town because there was very little automobile traffic.
I have mentioned that Valencia has a great network of dedicated bike paths—as do many European cities. These usually run along the sidewalk nearest to the street. Pedestrians often stray into the bike path, or Carril Bici in Spanish, but they know they don’t belong there and will move out of the way when they see you approaching. Automobiles have an equal amount of respect for cyclists here and will give you the right-of-way at all times. I have never had a car honk at me, even when I’m, doing something stupid, like riding the wrong way down a very narrow street. About the only vehicles with assholes for drivers are the mopeds which seem to have only two speeds: idling and full blast. I haven’t figured it out yet but mopeds really bring out the worst in people.
Either on foot or on bike I have traversed almost every street in the old section of Valencia. I am still being rewarded by new discoveries as I was yesterday when I happened upon the Plaza del Carmen. I was riding down the wrong way on a one way street when I came upon the shaded plaza and the cathedral; something I wouldn’t have tried on a normal day of traffic. I spent a good part of the afternoon meandering through the narrow streets and alleys of Ciutat Vella where the only hazards were avoiding pedestrians and dodging soccer balls. I lot of the time I was riding around the old section I couldn’t even hear an automobile. I was rewarded with the sound of church bells ringing, or the music of a violin coming from the balcony of an apartment.
I can cover a lot of ground in a three hour bike ride. I rode through the Real Gardens where I took this picture of families taking advantage of the sunshine at the park café. I crisscrossed most of the downtown and before I went home I rode down to the beach. On a bike it’s only five minutes from where I live, or 13 hours if you are walking.
From the look of things from my balcony it seems that everything will be shut down today as well. I need even less of an excuse to go for a bike ride than Spanish people need to take the day off.
For me, life with a bike is a lot better than life without a bike. In fact, almost all of my stay here on the planet has been in the company of a bicycle, or bicycles in the best of times. They are my main source of exercise, transportation, and recreation all at the same time. My first month here in Spain was a living hell of endless walking. I wish that I could say that I am a better person for what I endured that month but every time a I ride around town and see just how far I was walking it gives me cold shivers just thinking about those sad, bike-less times.
Yesterday the temperature was inching close to 70 degrees (try writing that sentence using the metric system). New Year’s Eve is called Nochvieja in Spain and it is, of course, a holiday. Not that the Spanish need much of an excuse to take the day off, but this is a fairly big holiday for them. It was a great day to bike around town because there was very little automobile traffic.
I have mentioned that Valencia has a great network of dedicated bike paths—as do many European cities. These usually run along the sidewalk nearest to the street. Pedestrians often stray into the bike path, or Carril Bici in Spanish, but they know they don’t belong there and will move out of the way when they see you approaching. Automobiles have an equal amount of respect for cyclists here and will give you the right-of-way at all times. I have never had a car honk at me, even when I’m, doing something stupid, like riding the wrong way down a very narrow street. About the only vehicles with assholes for drivers are the mopeds which seem to have only two speeds: idling and full blast. I haven’t figured it out yet but mopeds really bring out the worst in people.
Either on foot or on bike I have traversed almost every street in the old section of Valencia. I am still being rewarded by new discoveries as I was yesterday when I happened upon the Plaza del Carmen. I was riding down the wrong way on a one way street when I came upon the shaded plaza and the cathedral; something I wouldn’t have tried on a normal day of traffic. I spent a good part of the afternoon meandering through the narrow streets and alleys of Ciutat Vella where the only hazards were avoiding pedestrians and dodging soccer balls. I lot of the time I was riding around the old section I couldn’t even hear an automobile. I was rewarded with the sound of church bells ringing, or the music of a violin coming from the balcony of an apartment.
I can cover a lot of ground in a three hour bike ride. I rode through the Real Gardens where I took this picture of families taking advantage of the sunshine at the park café. I crisscrossed most of the downtown and before I went home I rode down to the beach. On a bike it’s only five minutes from where I live, or 13 hours if you are walking.
From the look of things from my balcony it seems that everything will be shut down today as well. I need even less of an excuse to go for a bike ride than Spanish people need to take the day off.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)