Gijón... finally!!

Well, I'm going to write a bit about when I went to see Carmen and Nacho in Gijón the other week. I had a totally excellent time! I had so much fun!

Firstly, I went on a sleeper train which was a first for me. The cabin had a bed in it, along with a sink and a shower! How cool! Well, the shower was like a tardis and didn't work to well, but for a train it wasn't too bad at all. I managed to sleep quite well. I woke up at some points, especially when the train was going nineteen-to-the-dozen on some tracks, and as it was an old train, it was quite bumpy. Then some nob knocked on all the doors and woke everyone up. People were going mental at him. Quite rightly I think!!

Gijón is a beautiful city and has loads of streets that you can amble around. I was lucky, as I had Carmen and Nacho who showed me around the sights of the city and we had good weather too, so I was lucky in that aspect. We saw all the buildings and we saw an exhibition about Anglo-Asturian seafaring ties, which was interesting. Carmen and Nacho have had some exams, and as my visit was just before, they had to study for half a day so I went and looked around things again, and took some more pictures. We went to a place called Parque Principado and we bought some DVDs and I got some books in Gijón from Casa del Libro. I wish we had a park like Pricipado in Castellón, but I suppose we've got our swanky new Corte Ingés, so that'll have to do.

Gijón's Town Hall

Fibreglass Don Quixote
(there were loads of variations accross the city!)

We also visited Oviedo, which is the capital city of Asturias, eventhough it's smaller than Gijón. It has some good sights too, including a massive arse in the middle of the street! Nacho, Carmen and I laughed quite a bit, it's huge!

Culo en la Calle
(Arse in the Street)


Carmen and Nacho with Woody Allen!

Oviedo's Cathedral

We visited the cathedral and bought some great biscuits from a lovely shop near the cathedral and we looked at all the buildings in Oviedo, which I thought were pretty cool too. In the evening we went to an Italian restaurant in Gijón and it was soooooo delicious!! We had a brilliant salad to start off with and a lovely pizza with a tasty base, all this washed down with the best sangría I've ever tasted and an apple chupito (1½ shots of apple liquor - yummy!!). We were giddy after the jug of sangría and chupitos, so we were walking the streets of Gijón cackling and laughing about the lame ERASMUS students that were in Salford when Carmen was there. Carmen also laughed too much and did a massive cough, right at this man walking on the street. It was funny, she didn't realise he was there when she did it, and his face was a picture!!

But yeah, all in all, it was a fantastic weekend, and I've told Carmen this, I'd love to live up there in the North of Spain. I don't like it here in the Catalan/Valencian-speaking region and the geographies of the areas are totally different too. Asturias is very like England, and has some breathtaking mountains that were snow-capped when I went through on the train, not like the desert here in Castellón!! lol :-D Castellón's not so bad. In winter it's awful, but in summer it's actually quite nice. Sandy beaches, blue sea, blue skies and it's hip and happening in Benicàssim, we just got here too late!!

Asturias - A Greener and More Pleasant
Land than England?!

¿Costa del Desierto?

Nah, ain't so bad!
Our coast is called the Costa del Azahar (Coast of the Orange Blossom)
It's actually really nice in summer!!

I can honestly say it was money well spent and it was brilliant catching up with Carmen and meeting Nacho, who is as friendly and chatty as Carmen. There a intelligent couple too, and you can have an intelligent conversation with them, which I like! So anyway, thanks guys!! I know you're reading this!!

I'm gonna sign-off now, I'm getting sleepy!

Ben xxxx

Yes, I know... I'm crap...

Sorry for not updating blog recently - I'm a NAUGHTY boy! Well, I would
have done it yesterday, but I caught a nasty cold from Mark over out
weekend in Barcelona, and hence was dying in bed all yesterday. I shall
write one at work in draft and "copy-paste" as 31 Barrfield Road would
say...

Thought I saw Jackie Stallone on Sunday sat outside a café-bar on Las
Ramblas. But I don't think Jackie has a magenta-coloured beehive harido,
nor massive lips. Well, I think she has massive lips, but I think the hair
was a give away... I thought it was Jackie at first, but Mark was like
"Ben, Jackie Stallone wouldn't have a magenta beehive, don't be so daft".
That's me told...

Well, ta-ra for now!

Ben xxxx

Home T-9

Just realised, it's only 9 days till I go back to UK for Christmas!!! JOY!

Going to have to try and cadge a lift home now as Nieves is busy!

Bah!

Ben xxx

Dot Matrix Printers: A little piece of 80's history, direct to your office

Once again, the bain of my life (Ye Olde Dot Matrix Printer) has stopped
working. It's now decided that it'll load the paper so it starts printing
halfway down the page, in the wrong font, at the wrong size. Sergio spent
ages trying to fix it, but it's too old. We're not used to Dot Marix
printers in the 21st century. Mind you, this one looks pretty new (for a
dot matrix printer), so I suppose there must be some sort of demand for
them, for printing on duplex forms etc.

It's just being a total stroppy bastard with me. It'll start working again
in about 3 hours, for no apparent reason, and print off everything that I
tried to send to it this morning twice, snarl up the paper, rip the snarled
up paper with its printer head, overheat and switch itself off.

You may have noticed that I didn't do my "I'm back from Gijón" blog with
photos last night. This is because Danny rang Heather and they talked for
about an hour, so I couldn't be arsed doing it afterwards. I had a cold
shower, as the hot water ran out, and I had to peg a pair of underpants
onto the telephone cable going up the wall last night so I could have some
clean underwear for the morning, as the room the clothes are in to dry
takes about 3 days to dry stuff, and Heather says the fan heater makes the
clothes smell bad.

There we go,

Back to work!

Ben x

Faded Tan

We're onto the James Blunt hour of looped play. Much joy. Well, Ye Olde Dot
Matrix Printer's been pising me off again today. It printed out about 5
orders, but not the rest, and then I had to mix and match them. Fook!!

We¡ve recieved a new calendar from a company in Germany and I can now
actually see the date that Frost-Trol ends! 24tth February joy! Then it's
off to Lisbon! A barrel of laughs that will be! Well, I'm gonna live with
foreigners there, hopefully Portuguese people, and they'll hopefully also
be students and I can go and get wrecked and fall of the Ponte de 28 de
Abril and into the Río Tejo at 3am! Drunken joy!

I can't wait to get home and see all my mates. I've got Heather to talk to,
but it's nice having lots of friends to chat to and I miss that. Although
they'll not believe me that it was 35º here at the start, as my tan has
faded. Grr! I'll soon top it up in Lisbon! Tanning myself on a sunny beach
on the Atlantic Coast with loads of fresh air! Nice!!

Peter e-mailled me back today and told me about all the changes at the old
work (The Lowry). Count yourself lucky I wasn't bloggin that job! lol Nah,
I like it really, and I think I'm good at the bits of the job that matter
(i.e. efficientcy, selling tickets, etc. not all the restuaranty stuff,
eventhough I won the "most-sold in a week" prize once!).

Anyway, Joanne's giving me a lift home so I'm off!!

Ben x

Crazy Cleaners

Now they're dangling out of the windows cleaning the outside. It's letting
all the warm air out, and the cold air in! I pray to Jesus Above the Bed
that they don´t fall out onto the motorway below! Daredevil Cleaning
Ladies!!!

Ben x

Watch Out, Polish About!

That's furniture polish, not a Polish person from Poland! Crazy cleaners
are here again, doing their speciality "Cleaning rubbish and empty boxes"
routine, rather than the "Take the rubbish to one of the recyling skips
outside" routine... They'll stick the hoover on in a minute, it's a right
noisy little bugger I tell thee!

Ben x

At Work Blogging...

...not done it in a while, so I might start up again! Work was crapp-o-rama
yesterday. Was in a VERY nowty mood! Today remains to be seen! I had an
Eddie Monsoon from Ab Fab style paddy and started banging all the crap on
my desk, the new keyboard Sergio gave me took a big hit!

I came back from Gijón on Sunday! Had a brilliant time, but I'm gonna do a
proper blog about that tonight with photos and the works on it!

Ah well, first order form of the day!

Ben x

Back to the Future!!

The last post was meant for a few days ago, but I only posted it today, so it's got today's time stamp on it!

We've done loads of stuff this weekend, we bought all the ingredients for a Delia Smith Rich Fruit Cake (which my mum makes as a Christmas Cake) and some Christmassy things for the flat!! We've got some window things in the style of a snowman and a santa. We've got a poinsettia and a mini christmas tree (that we tried to put spray snow on, but it didn't work!)

Look:

We got some Christmas songs too, and they're well cool! We're listening to them now as I write this post! There's some strange versions of songs out there. At the moment it's Silent Night sung by Cristina "I'm deeeeeaaaad Diiiirrrrty" Aguilera.

We also made our Christmas cake today, which turned out ok. I messed up creaming the butter and brown sugar, as it was too hard and then I melted the butter totally and it went all weird. I managed to save it tough, and it's not too bad. We're yet to taste it, but I'm sure it'll be ok. It's a bit burnt round the edges as we couldn't fund any greaseproof paper, and we used tin foil instead! D'oh!
















Then we tidied up the flat to male it look proper nice and clean, and now it's nice again. We let it get into a bit of a sty! We walked up to the train station whilst the cake was baking, and we ambled the streets of Castellón, where they're beginning to put up the Christmas lights. We saw some the other night when we went to the cinema, and they looked ok!

Link (a pricey clothes shop) has done up one of the palm trees outside the shop and it looks really cool!






















AND... not that I was that bothered, but we randomly bumped into FC Barcelona coming out of Hotel Luz near the Station! Which was random! I tried to get some paparazzi style piccies, but the crowd was jostling, so the photos are really blurred... but I got a blurry piccy of Ronaldinho! The other one is Heather going faux-crazy in the coach Station after the event!

































So, yeah, it's been a good weekend. I'm sure this month is going to go really quickly. On Wednesday night I go on the longest train journey I've ever done (16 hours!) to visit Carmen in Gijón. I set off from Castellón at 7pm, and get to Gijón at 11am-ish the next day!

You might wonder why I've called this post "Back to the Future"... well, it's because Castellón is still in the late 80's/early 90's, and going back home will be like going "Back to the Future" like Doc and Marty McFly!! Nah, it's not that bad, but it feels like it is sometimes! Castellón's El Corte Inglés is nearly open (it's like a big Debenham's but better)...





So, anyway, that's all for now!!! Had a really good weekend!! I'm looking forward to my little holiday in Gijón, and whatelse can I say? I can't wait to get home for Christmas!!!

Ben xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Start of December!!

I love December, it's my favourite month!! It's a really hectic one for me as it's my Birthday, then Christmas and then New Year! I love it back home as it's so nice and cold and crisp and there's frsot and sometimes snow. Last year it snowed loads on Christmas Eve. I hope it does this year too, but not when we're due to land in Liverpool, that would be very bad news, and I think Heather and Tori would cry! I probably would too! Stood there in Barcelona Airport skryking!

Me and Heather said that we would go and sweep the aiport ourselves. God knws what we'd do if it did happen. Touch wood it won't!

Ben xxx

I well can't be arsed

I've said it before and I'll say it again!

WHY OH WHY DID I CHOOSE TO DO A DEGREE IN SPANISH?

I pity the fool who trys to speak Spanish!! Meh, I worked out that I've
only got 13 more days at FT until Christmas! Praise be! I can't wait to get
to get back to the UK for a while! Mmmmm English food!!

I'm looking forward to meeting up with some people when I'm back, missing
all my friends loads, and I'm missing having a good night out! I might try
this Friday to have a night out, you never know I might get talking to some
people!! You never know unless you try eh?!

Need to go and get my hair cut soon too!! As many of you know, when it gets
long it looks like a f**king mess, pardon my French, and I'm having some
serious wingage going on on the sides of my head. It looks like a massive
bodyform pad. #Ooo-o-o-oooo... Bodyform... Bodyform for yooooouuu!" whilst
she running madly around a beach (well, that's the early 90s version!). Why
do manufacturers of panty pads and tampons belittle women by showing those
adverts? It like saying "Hey, yeah, you're on your period but wear out
panty pads and you can go abseiling or handgliding or [insert random
high-thrill sport here]" do these women only do these things when they're
on they're using these panty pads?

God knows where <i>that</i> random thought came from...

Hey just discovered that out coffee vending machine at work uses real
beans!! I saw the man filling it up today and he spilt a few beans on the
floor! And it's only 30¢ (only 20p!) a go. At one point (and at these
prices) I was drinking about 10 cups a day. That's when I w'bored! I was
buzzing around the office like a kingfisher zipping from desk to desk like
a nob, and speaking gibberish Spanish! lol

If I'm honest, I'm just killing time with this blogpost. I've actually got
a nice big stack of orderforms to do and that 68 page translation is still
saying "Tradúceme a español... tienes que hacerme ahora... no escribes su
blog...." I'm obviously going into some sort of parallel universe of doom!

Parallel universe of doom in other languages:

Spanish: ¡Un universo paralelo condenado!
Portuguese: Um universo paralelo condenado!
Catalan/Valencian: Un univers paral·lel condemnat!

Well, I had to guess the Catalan one as I don't speak it, but I think it's
right. I just whack the Spanish through the Catalan spellchecker and it
usually works ok for tiny sentences...

Well, best go do some work!!!

Bye!
¡Adiós!
Adeu!
Adéus!
Ciao!
Sayonara!

Well, you get the picture! No more timewasting!

Ben xxxxxx