Home, sweet home

The circle is closed. One year abroad has come to an end. It sort of seemed sudden, although I remember it passing by at a snail's phase when I was living it.




Speaking of snails, I've had them. They were sort of slimy, and their tentacles were rather terrifying. But down they went. And I've got witnesses to prove I actually did swallow them.

Coming home, all the colours greens have breath-taken me. I knew my country was beautiful, but I don't think I've ever really noticed how wonderfully green it is. Looking forward to spend a nearly endless summer vaccation here. Books, walks in the forests, lazying and meeting up with good friends....

This is the beginning of a really great time of year.

A dog-life

The dog is lying on the sofa - depressed. The only part of him being seemingly alive, are the sad eyes looking up at you when you enter the room. Lifeless, depressed, abandoned. The dog howls his most heartbreaking howl, expressing himself the only way he can. The dog's owner has left the building. The dog is being bossed around by the other dog. She won't leave him alone! She gets him nervous. The dog needs to go out. The dog isn't taken out. He takes a piss on the kitchen door. He takes a new piss on the leg of the living room table. The owner returns hours later and screams at the top of her lungs: "Bastard, what have you done? I'll give you, I'll give you...." The dog runs away, hiding himself under the innermost corner of the bed in the innermost room of the hall. The other dog is grinning, thinking "I'm such a good dog, I bet I'll get petted and baby-talked around now." The owner picks the other dog up and starts to baby-talk it and kiss it. "I-love-you-I-love-you-I-love-you." The dog feels bad. The dog starts barking. The dog is punished. Again. New dog-pee on the floor. And the whole process starts over again.

The dog is taken out (for a change). The dog is frenetic, trying to be everywhere at the same time. The dog knows he's only got 5 minutes to pee and mark the territory. That's how much his owner allows him. The dog seems confused. The dog has been outside for 15 minutes. The dog sees that the people having taken him out do not include his owner. The dog starts smelling a new place - a park! The dog is going crazy with all the new smells. The dog is running back and forth. The dog has been outside for one-and-a-half hours. The dog starts to relax. The dog feels good. The dog feels dog.

A weird state of mind

I'm not sure how I feel today. Happy? Sad? Both? Is it possible to be both happy and sad without being either happily sad or sadly happy? Normally one is either sad or happy, and has no problem distinguishing the two. Have I been caught in the limbo?

Send me some kind of stimuli that will send me either which way, please.

¡Viva Cuba!

Two girls alone at the cinema. Two bottles of coke and a bag of plantain chips. And a Cuban movie that leaves both of them with tears in their eyes in the end. This is a film I really would recommend to most everyone.




"Malú (Malú Tarrau) and Jorgito (Jorgito Miló) are friends who fight every now and then. It's part of the territory when you're ten and trying to make your mark on the world. Only their families don't see it that way. Her mother is a devout Catholic with strict ideas of who she should associate with. His family are die-hard Castrofans, card-carrying communists with a deep sense of party loyalty. Both families are too absorbed in their own travails to take much notice of the children. Her mother is trying to leave Cuba to join her partner and when Malú finds out that her mother is about to take her away, she escapes with Jorgito armed with the savings from her piggy bank. Their search for Malú's father involves an extensive (and enterprising) tour across the Cuban landscape with plenty of adventures along the way. Soon enough, however, the two realise that life on the run is not all they thought it would be and a kind of homesickness begins to set in. Rooted in two charming central performances, Viva Cuba is a quirky coming-of-age road movie that will appeal to both children and adults alike."

~A review written by Maria Delgado

Directed by	Juan Carlos Cremata
Written by	Juan Carlos Cremata, Manuel Rodriguez
With	Malú Tarrau, Jorgito Miló
Country	Cuba-France
Year of Production	2005
Running Time	80 minutes

Philosophy on a Thursday

I have a luxury problem, I believe. And that is that I have too much time until my next exam. It would be impossible to fill all of it by studying the same texts over and over again, so I have started reading a new book.

It's an introductory book about philosophy (who would have thought?) called
The Questions of Life : An Invitation to Philosophy. It's written by the Spanish philosopher Fernando Savater. To be honest, it's the first philosophy-book I've ever opened and actually intended to read. The reason I have it in my custody is that I bought it for Tito. Being the wonderful man he is, he has allowed me to read it first, so this is what I have started on.

Chapter one is about death. Depressing? Well, not really. For instance it refers to Montaigne who said that we don't die because we are sick, we die because we are alive. The author has given me some new ideas and perspectives, even though I've only completed the first chapter. I like the way he writes, so I'll without a doubt finish it. My first book ever about philosophy. And not a day too early.