Town Mouse and City Mouse

Where do you live? I happen to live in a town. Well, according to the natives here, we live in a city. They’ll tell you proudly that it says so in their coat of arms: "…Very Heroic City… ". But what really makes a town a town and a city a city? According to Spanish people, a city is a place that holds more than 30,000 people. But to me, a city is a place where you can go for a walk without finding anybody you know and feel obliged to say hi or find out people have been talking behind your back. It’s a place where there are more than two buses, one yellow and the other red, which pretty much have the same route. And more importantly, it’s a place where there is more than one water pipe going into it. Last month the whole town had no water for three days, yes three. Imagine no flushing, or bathing or anything else. The supermarkets were making a fortune selling bottled water and those that weren’t, had none in their shelves. So shouldn’t having more than one water pipe be an important factor considered for a definition of a city? As far as I am concerned I still live in a town.

TV or not TV, that is the question…

Murphy’s Law states that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. All of a sudden, all my appliances have conspired to start acting weird or simply stop working. Last week, the washer decided to open its door right in the middle of the cycle pouring all the clothes out onto the floor. The TV followed by deciding not to turn on. So we have been without television for several days now.  It's been sitting there in a virtual coma, but there has been no sign of life. And the question is do we spend our money on fixing it or splurge to get a new one? I hate the new flat panel TV sets that might look great in your living room, but have a limited viewing angle. Of course finding an old TV set like mine that works is out of the question. You see, in Spain, second hand stores are non-existent or really hard to find. Somehow this country doesn’t believe in second hand recycling. This society believes in buying new stuff every time something breaks or not. And that says a lot about a country which is in a big time crisis and has almost five million people unemployed.

Turning Back Time

3 am - As I am lying awake listening to a radio show. I realize I have to set the clock back an hour. And then it hits me. Why? Why do we have to change the clocks twice a year?

We’ve all read the argument that it was created to save energy, but is it worth it? Something is worth it if its benefit

exceeds its cost. Is it? I fall asleep as I ponder this...

9 am or is it really 10 am? - I sip my first cup of coffee while reading the headlines. And what do you know? There it is. The headline reads something like this: Zero savings when changing the time. So then what is the purpose? Russia has decided after 30 years not to change the time. Spain continues to do so.



Ahorro cero por el cambio horario

Battling Windmills

So why this title for my blog? If you think it’s not very original, you are probably right, but it really has less to do with the song Windmills of your Mind than it does with Spain. I actually live in Spain, in a region plagued with windmills. The same region where Cervantes placed his epic hero battling windmills. So why not? I will lower my lance and tilt at the windmills since that seems to be a recurring theme in my life adventures lately.

Sting - Windmills of your Mind

Closing Cycles

This text is often attributed to Paulo Coelho, but he didn't write it, he just made some corrections. I find it so powerful and true, that this is how I want my blog story to begin...

One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through.
Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters – whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished.
Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents’ house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden? You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened.
You can tell yourself you won’t take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that. But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister.
Everyone is finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill.
Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away.
That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home.
Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts – and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place.
Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them.
Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood.
Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else.
Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the “ideal moment.”
Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back.
Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person – nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need.
This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important.
Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life.
Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust.
Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.