Tie me up

Last year, off the missus, I got a pair of trainers. Very nice ones. After a few weeks or months of wearing them I perfected the perfect knot.

I'm the kind of guy that doesn't like to get tied up in all that shoe lace tying business.

I don't want to tie my laces everytime I pop out to the shop so if I can get my trainers on and off without undoing my laces I'm a happy man.
Infact when shoe shopping, if I can find a trainer that doesn't even have laces then that's even better.
*And by that I don't mean a pair of shoes that DO need laces but just got shipped without them.

So for the last few months I've had these one pair of trainers that I haven't had to tie the laces for, for as long as I can remember.
Then a few weeks back I was doing my first game of linesman-ing for a football game and had to un-tie and re-tie my laces very tight to stop all the tiny pieces of astroturf going in to my trainer.
Now when I try to tie my laces they never stay tied.

I hate it.

There have even been times when I've had to re-tie my laces on one walk around town 4 or more times. That's just not on.

And alot of the time it's the left trainer.

I just can't seem to get that perfect knot tied again.

No matter how much I try.

I need me some Back to the Future Nikes.


In other news,
This video has recently popped up on digg, it's possibly the most funniest innocent thing I've laughed hard at in a long time.

Needs sound

A walk in the rio

I heard a few weeks after moving to Spain about a walk where you follow a river, the Rio Chillar, upstream, as far as you want, and continually pass by beautiful waterfalls and pools. Places where crowds of people would stop in the middle of their walk and take a dip, cooling down in refreshing cold and clean water.
I didn't get chance to do that walk although it's top of my list come Spring 2009.

My weekends walk did take me to the Rio Chillar, although it was more of a glimpse at it then a walk down it.


*Although the distance shown comes in at a little under 8.5km this doesn't include the 5km walk I do to and from the bus stop.
Speaking of which, the best thing about all of these walks I am doing is they are a 5 minute bus ride away from my house.


Sun in the trees
It was another lovely day for walking at the weekend.
I was told on my last walk that there is apparently 20 days of rain per year in this area, meaning there is very little chance that you will have a walk and have bad weather.
(Although I understand some bad weather is currently being blown from north Spain and parts of Malaga are on a Rain Warning.


Green hills
Despite all the sun there is lots of green in the hills around here thanks to regular sea mists which help "water" the area daily.


The Group
Despite this walk being classed as a medium difficulty I thought a lot of the walk was a little past the group averages abilities. That always worries me, espeically when you are walking close to the edges of mountains.


Rio Chillar from above
As we walked down the side of the hill towards the Rio Chillar there was a lot of slipping. Due to the large amount loose stones under foot there was someone slipping almost everyone metre or two.

But we finally reached the river.

Start of the Rio Chillar
Although it was just a trickle where we crossed it.

But I did find an example of one of the pools

Small pool
And even on a warm Autumn (it is still autumn right?) day it looked refreshing. But I'm guessing it was freezing.


Wet doggy
Although there is one person who knows how cold the water is. But it doesn't look like he is letting it bother him.


More houses
And we didn't miss out on seeing houses on this walk either. Except this one is a little more upmarket then the caves from last time.


Hard work
After a bit of difficulty getting back up the hill (and scarey at times) from the river we finally started to make it home, alsnog some rather strangley cut roads in the side of the mountain.

And here are some much better panoramas (this time) thanks to Microsofts ICE, which I highly recommend, especially if you want to manually stitch your photos.






Bigger slide show here

I did get quite a bit more from this walk. I now know a few extra walks, I've seen a path near the rio that leads to Frigiliana, which isn't far from where we live (and somewhere where we almost deciding on living).
Plus I found out that people and families are still barbequeing up in the parks even this late in the year. If the weather stays like this I might try and persuade the missus family to go for a barbeque when they visit over Christmas. That'd be a first for everyone.
Plus next month is the walk I've been looking forward to. The one up the big proper mountain.

Tit and tat

and on that note

i went for another walk in the park yesterday which i want to blog about
ive been too lazy to upload the photos on to flickr
but today ive mostly been playing around/installing various user scripts for opera, working and anything else that meant i didnt have to get out of my seat

this is due to having a very late friday night (out until they started putting the furniture away, something i havent done in a long time) and then a walk totalling 5 hours yesterday ive need a bit of a rest

but despite being a vary lazy blogger of late i want to get any unwritten posts out of my system before i go back to england for 2 weeks
which im very looking forward to
not the weather though

and now the answer

if you missed the question come here first

and now the answer...

Cloudy day

i spotted some crazy clouds t'other day





what i like about the above photo is that someone has a palm tree planted on their roof terrace
nice!


and this last one, although not taken on the same day i still think its a good shot

Estoy aprendiendo espanol...not so much

A few weeks ago I started taking Spanish lessons.

Before I moved to Spain I was teaching myself and it was going really well. I had some podcasts that I listened to while commuting to and from work, which would take on average 40 minutes. That meant each day I could do almost an hour and a half a day of "lessons."

But here in Spain, of the two jobs I've had, the longest commuting I've had to do is a 10 minute walk. Almost the same time it to to walk to the bus stop back home. And now I work from home which means I get even less time to listen to lessons.

Obviously you'd think that working from home would give me more time. But I get up later, work more (in this job I can't spend hours online and still get paid for it) and tend to do a bit more around the house. Which means that 6oclock comes round quicker and then I'm in "relax" mode.
I guess I have bad time keeping.

But my Spanish lessons are a good idea. It makes me get out of the house. Forces me to take part in lessons. Not only that, I actually use the Spanish I learn (you tend to find there aren't many people wanting to speak Spanish at 630am on a packed train).
And it's nice being surrounded by a Spanish environment. Across the road from the class is an old persons home. They do a lot of painting and dancing. So some times when learning Spanish you'll have flamenco music coming through the windows and the occasional sound of dozens of feet stamping on the floor. It's nice.
And afterwards on the way home when walking through the main town there are always a lot of people eating out in bars and restaurants. It's certainly an alien feeling in November compared to what I was used to this time last year in England.

There is a slight problem though. It's not that the whole class is in Spanish. But what was suppose to start as a beginners class has turned quite difficult.
Whats happened is a Experienced Spanish Course has started on a Friday. One of the people from that class started taking the Tuesday/Thursday--free--beginners class. Probably to brush up. I think it's trickled through the class that there is this other class to brush up on.
So now more experienced Spanish speakers are taking the beginners class and the average level of the class has increased A LOT.
So I'm slowly starting to think I'm falling behind. Already some of the beginners have dropped out of class and I'm feeling a bit of the same.
I'm thinking that if I took the same time that I put aside for lessons now but went back to teaching myself I'd be able to work at my own pace and from text books I understand.

The problem with this is outside my Spanish lessons there aren't many Spanish people I speak with. So anything I learn I'll forget again unless I use it.

I'm going to keep going for now. I'll have to start putting a bit of an effort in to home studying. Combining the two sounds like the best option really. I just hope that in the mean time I don't get left too far behind in class.

Charades in Nerja

(posted here due to missus using the unhelpful wordpress platform)

this is how good i am at charades

not only am i good
im so good i can get a 5 or 6 year old to do a charade and get it guessed in one go

see


can you guess what the answer is?

actual answer will be posted later

Spanish TV confuses me

this isnt my first post about crazy spanish tv
(this is)
the one thing i hate most about not being fluent in spanish is i cant understand the tv
stuff like telenovelas and lalola (which is my newest favourite tv show)

but there is also times on the news and topical chat shows that i wish i knew what the eff was going on

like for instance the other day when i spotted this guy on the tv





what the eff is this presenter doing with a gunshot wound to the head?
as an example

Game I'm Playing:Back after the Break

It's been a while since I updated my game list, but that doesn't mean I've not been playing games.

There's been about half a dozen games I've been playing over the last few weeks but the most recent games have been;

On the Wii

Disaster: Not selling very well. Still a very fun game in my opinion. A little bit like Resident Evil gaemplay with added Time Crises/light gun action areas. Short first time you play but many "collectables" to go back and hunt.
De Blob: A fantastic game. Simple idea. You go a colour blob. You change your colour by rolling in paint. And your mission, to paint all the buildings. The way it works is to gain access to further parts of the stage you have to gain X amount of points by painting and completing missions. The missions will range from racing to a certain point to painting certain buildings a particular colour. And the controls are simle, move and jump. That's all you need.
Wario Land: A simple 2-d platformer. Something a bit old school. It has basic level design for everyone to complete with harder areas within each level for serious gamers to hunt out. Its a simple but effect game.

Also some Virtual Conolse and WiiWare games that I've downloaded

Super Mario RPG: I love the Mario RPG games. Paper Mario (Gamecube) was my first. Super Paper Mario (Wii) I got first day it came out and couldn't put it down. The game is now in the hands of my sister. Mario and Luigi (DS) alot of fun handheld elements
But Super Mario RPG is where it all started. The first one and designed by one of the major RPG creators. I couldn't say no.
Mega Man 9: I never played a proper Mega Man game until I downloaded Mega Man 2 on the Virtual Console not so long ago. I bought downloaded this game because of all the reviews online. I have to say, this is without a doubt the hardest game I've ever played. I've played it for about 2 hours or so and not met up with a single boss yet. Its ridiculous. But they said it would be.

What have you come as?

this doesnt feel like a friday post but ive got a whole bunch of posts that i need to get rid of

this is red

"oh hai"

red was bought when we first moved to spain
just to brighten up the flat

a few weeks ago we left Red out in the rain
a few days later s/he grew a new leaf
but we think Red might have some split personality issues and doesnt know whether to be Red or Green?

Red, the split-personality-plant

Warts and all

here are some of the photos from Halloween at maui bar, nerja
unfortunately there isnt many as i drank a bit too much too quick and had an earlier night then most
plus the missus turned up late so there isnt many of me


like mentioned earlier Quesadilla Killer won the vote
this was as imaginative as i could get though


making adjustments


the joker and bar owner dracula
i honestly thought the streets would be full of jokers but this was the only one


skeleton here i thought more looked like one of the guys that beat up the karate kid



unfortunately what you cant see is my whole outfit which included tights and underpants on top
ive been told that some more photos are to appear online so if any good ones come out of my whole outfit ill make sure to link them

two things about the next fancy dress
1) i have to drink more water when out if im thirsty
2) take more photos
3) find something which will top my last outfit which i got a few cheers for
anyone any good ideas for a 70s or 80s costume?