anythingarian bubbles and troubles from the land of the fretting nun
I’ll bet you’re grateful that I didn’t call this Chirac kisses … OK, just forget it. Mark Doyle did a little analysis of a recent presidential snog-in, concluding that Jacques had punished Mugabe severely by not kissing him even once; some of you might beg to differ. Chirac may have only given Laura one, [...]
The Observer (2003/9/28):
Si t’encanta la combinació barcelonina d’avingudes vorejades d’arbres, vells carrers laberíntics, una vida nocturna animada i platges properes, doncs, prova Lisboa. No té la Sagrada Família, però tampoc té els carteristas, ni els mims terribles, ni les multituds turístiques que inunden la ciutat catalana.
Bon dia, senyor Clos.
Aldi España kondigde gisteren de opening van 20 nieuwe supermarkten in Catalunya aan. Ook u kunt hiervan profiteren - als u tenminste over een oud fabrieksterrein beschikt. Ze hebben al een paar winkels in Catalunya en een goede discounter is hier echt welkom, maar wat wij nu ook nodig hebben is, zoals mijn oma zegt, [...]
Comments
Barcelona. Shop no 1 is closed at 11:30, well within its normal opening hours. The iron street blinds are down and there’s no message posted, so I walk across town to shop no 2. Yes, no problem, pay now and we’ll confirm the delivery date in a moment. The call comes a couple of hours later:
- That model isn’t available right now.
- When will it be?
- We may be able to tell you later this month, so to save trouble why don’t you just buy this more expensive model?
- No thanks. I’ll be over later to get my money.
- Oh, we’ll have to see about that.
I tend to try to buy through foreign suppliers and I pray for the day when the Chinese will be running everything. Call me a racist, but it keeps me out of the loony bin.
It now seems that Iceland has defaulted, apparently believing Russia will be foolish enough to attempt to protect what’s left of its cod against ETA trawlers from Bilbao. Spain is not going down that road, at least not yet, but one of the more-quoted papers on the subject (De Paoli, Hoggarth & Saporta, Cost of sovereign debt) informs us that it did so thirteen times between 1500 and 1900. I rather liked this Punch item on steps towards a more united Europe, dated September 1 1860:
LATEST CLUB NEWS
SPAIN, put up by France and Austria, as a candidate for admission to the United European, has been blackballed by England, who declines to associate with an Uncertificated Insolvent. Spain is so frantic that she is half inclined to pay her debts, but will probably think twice over so rash an act.
The Dutch haven’t got any genuine armed forces, so they’re sending in the bailiffs to repossess office furniture from the Dutch Icesave, which has also done a runner.
Classic nimbyism, enabled by Spain’s lack of effective central government: Castilla y León has lots of wolves, but other communities which, according to ecologists, should in historical and biological terms have some, don’t want to take the overproduction. So they’re being shot. I don’t suppose we could airlift them to the outskirts of Reykjavik.
open source and uses Linux,
Apache, MySQL,
WordPress, PHP · Sing along with Moo Way (MP3) · 47 in 0.760
