Marking Time

My friend Margie launched her book, I displaced the air as I walk, last night. It’s a nice collection of short prose and poem-like pieces based on her life and travels.

I was priviliged to observe her creative process and see some of these pieces evolve over time. I’m happy that the finished product turned out so well.

Last week we hired a car for 5 days (special weekend deal ¤150) and did a little touring. We went to Avila, El Escorial, Segovia, and Cuenca, and drove up through the mountains to an altitude of almost 2000 metres. Each place was magical in its own way and well worth a visit.

The weather was all over the place: 30C heat followed by intense rain and hailstones the size of marbles. The weather still hasn’t settled in Madrid - April and May have been very wet.

They say in Madrid that you should never put away your winter clothes until ‘the 40th May’. It seems to be true this year anyway.

Like many others I’ve changed my blog from Movable Type to Wordpress. I didn’t care one way or another about MT’s new license agreements but all the publicity about it brought Wordpress to my attention. I would have used it sooner if I had known that it existed.

Things I like about it:

1. GPL license.
2. Written in php.
3. Straightforward stylesheets (It took me an eternity to set up MT the way I wanted).
4. Nice user interface.
5. It’s fast.
6. Open source means lots of plug ins and features.
7. Built in smilies .

Let’s see how it goes.

My month of indoctrination is over and I am now officially qualified to teach English as a foreign language to adults.

It was tougher than I thought it would be. Not so much the course content, assignments and practical work, but just the workload. It took over my life for a month. I was eating, sleeping, eating and drinking it. I still have not recovered. I’m deciphering every sentence I utter to see can I explain it in a simpler way to a non-native speaker.

I’d recommend the course to anyone but perhaps the less intense three month long part-time option would be more useful. For me I didn’t have the time.

Now I’m free to travel the world and support myself along the way. Feels good.

I’m reading from the same page as Tim Burke once again. He’s spot on as usual. I’ve felt this from day one.

Good intentions are not good enough. You need to follow them through with good actions.