Listen Carefully

[Lately I've been very disperse and I have posted many things at a time. This has been for my own personal situation, of course, and because I've been quite away from here. Before I used to blog from work but this summer I've been off work and now, at my current job, I don't use a computer. Imagine, I miss blog-reading every morning first thing. So, since I don't come that often, I write all what has been bugging me in the same post. I am going to try to keep only one subject at a time, now. But this is going to be a short post.]

I am late, I know. This is about the Pope Benedict XVI. We all already know what he said, right? Briefly, he said that 'his' God isn't as violent as other's. I didn't hear the proper words, so maybe I am mistaking in what he exactly said, but what he meant is that Catholic religion is best.
I have always "hated" when people has made statements as they were facts. I do them, as well, as I am human. You can read back. Though, I really try not to do them.
I have already talked about how I don't like how people uses the word "important", "normal" or actually any statement that does not go with the "my point of view" or such, part. So, that's why I am not going to say HOW WRONG was the Pope. Yeah, I am saying he was wrong and this is an statement. But, c'mon guys, you are with me, right? Actually, he, the Pope, is with me.
Why I came today (today because I didn't have time the last few days) to talk about that is because he said, when he gathered with the heads or people representing other religions in Italy (or something like that), that they have to find a way to accept each other's religions and to get closer.
I really couldn't help it laughing.
Come on, only the fact that there is more than one religion would already make me think that somehow we are doing something wrong. Listen, I am not saying at all that God does not exist, because she may or may not exist, but it isn't my business to decide so. This is something we all feel. What I am saying is that religion has to be totally wrong. This is my opinion.
What is obvious and I have heard saying to many religious chiefs, is that there is one God, how it is called is something else. So, OK. Let's say I accept the existence of God (whether I do or not, is only my business as it is only your business if you do or don't), fine. Then, what then, even the religions that have the same God are different. Because, the Jews, the Catholics, the Protestants, the Anglicans, the Mormons... don't they actually have the same God? Because saying that Catholic God and Islam's God is the same is harder to believe, because the difference between "religions" (note the inverted commas, i.e. not Faith; note the capital letter) is something man-made. Absolutely. Faith is Faith and it is only in the within of each one of us. Religion is just like the skin.
So, OK, I was saying I accept that God exists. Fine. Then, what religion should I follow? This is where I realise that religion is something I don't need.
Right now, many Muslims around the world are celebrating Ramadan. I will have to wait a few more months until Lent. I don't eat much meat, but I should not eat meat on Fridays. This is quite common in the UK. Here in Spain, not at all, only Good Friday.
Why is that? Why does "my" God (I say my because I grew up in this society, it could have been any other) let me eat anything and "my neighbour's God" does not? Wasn't the same one?
I am not going to start speaking about the whys of the differences between religions, i.e. not eating pork, cow; fasting, Ramadan, Christmas, Hanukkah... Just check the Wikipedia or any other source.

Ufff... it is being very hard to explain myself.
I don't mean to insult anyone, of course, when I say that religions are wrong. My thoughts are clear: Faith is Faith and your Faith should never interfere with your social life or any other aspect of your life. What I am trying to say is that your Faith should stay in your house and don't ever let that create a fight between you and your friends or neighbours. This has happened. Even between members of a family.
And what is worse: I have a friend who died because his religion didn't let him have an operation. hmph... [no words].
What I also want to say is that, if in any case we should have a religion we should have ONE. (I won't discuss the Social Work they do –as opium–, not building things, that they do as well, but this isn't the most important.) What we should do is unify them. Yeah, right, I am against Globalization, almost for anything. But, hey, if this is supposed to be a truth de facto, a dogma, why is it regional? Why it isn't de jure? Idon't get it.

Well, I don't know if you have understood me. But I must go now.
I don't know if I have understood myself. But I am hungry.
T-time.

City life

Lily Allen : LDN
"Alright,Still", Regal Zonophone Records, 2006

Riding through the city on my bike all day
'Cause the filth took away my licence
It doesn't get me down and I feel ok
Cause the sights that I'm seeing are priceless

Everything seems to look as it should
But I wonder what goes on behind doors
A fella looking dapper, but he's sittin with a slapper
Then I see it's a pimp and his crack whore

You might laugh you might frown
Walkin' 'round London town

Chorus
Sun is in the sky oh why oh why
Would I wanna be anywhere else?
Sun is in the sky oh why oh why
Would I wanna be anywhere else?

When you look with your eyes
Everything seems nice
But if you look twice
you can see it's all lies

There was a little old lady, who was walkin' down the road
She was struggling with bags from Tesco
There were people from the city havin' lunch in the park
I believe that it's called al fresco
Then a kid came along to offer a hand

But before she had time to accept it
hits her over the head, doesn't care if she's dead
'Cause he's got all her jewellery and wallet

You might laugh you might frown
walkin' 'round London town

Repeat chorus

When you look with your eyes
Everything seems nice
But if you look twice
you can see it's all lies

Life, that's city life, yeah that's city life, that's city life
Life, that's city life, yeah that's city life, that's city life

Repeat chorus x 4

One

Today one year ago, I was bored at that horrible Real Estate office and I was, as usual, diving on the net. I was checking what was new and hot at Google and I discovered Blogger. I wasn't, then, a blog reader but I became. Also, on that day, I became a blog owner.

I opened my account at Blogger trying to escape from the boredom at work (the time it says is wrong, I guess I hadn't changed it to GMT+1 yet).

Now, still, I am not writing everything in here and spending most of my time with it, but I have another blog, I read other blogs almost every day and even have met so many very nice people through it –one of them even in flesh (:P).

So, today, Ten to the Dozen is one year old. Since November last year I have had about seventeen hundred visits. And this will only be post number ninety.
Thank you all of you, guys, who come around here, because you make my day with your comments.

[The cake was made by my sister-the-chef to celebrate my birthday, that was on the 14th but we partied last night. It was absolutely delicious –still have half of it, wanna some?]

Back to Life, back to reality!

Bueno, ya he vuelto a mi tierra. A mi pueblo. A mi piso. A mi tranquilidad.

¡Qué descanso!
Llegué aneteayer. Ayer fue mi cumpleaños. Veinticinco. Yo estoy contento. Es un número bonito. Tiene fuerza. Además, ya es una edad en la que tienes que empezar a ser adulto. A ver si me consideran adulto de una vez. ¿Tendrá algo que ver que yo no me comporte como tal?
Además, ayer empecé a trabajar. Esta vez vuelvo a ser camarero en un café con mucho encanto. Es un sitio genial, mi hermana es chef allí por las noches (pero no nos vemos ya que yo voy de mañanas). Trabajo con una amiga y nuestros jefes son muy majos –ya les conocía de antes. La verdad es que echaba de menos ser camarero. Me gusta. Pero no echaba de menos el dolor de pies y el levantarme pronto. Supongo que me acostumbraré, tan solo es el segundo día tras casi cuatro meses sabáticos.
De los exámenes aún no sé nada y hoy es mi noveno día sin fumar. Sí, sé que en enero dije que dejaba de fumar, pero fue imposible. Lo intenté varias veces durante el año, pero siempre surgía algo. Me he pasado el verano convenciéndome y al fin ha dado frutos. Mi hermano y yo quedamos que dejábamos de fumar juntos pero él, al día siguiente, ya estaba fumando. Al día siguiente de mi último examen, el día 7 de septiembre, fue mi primer día sin fumar. Dejé de fumar. O, mejor dicho, empecé a dejar de fumar. Pensé que sería difícil, especialmente viviendo con un fumador. Pero lo superé. Y superé estar con otros fumadores. ¿Cómo? A base de chocolate (Milka con leche y sin almendras ni nada).
Mi move a Londres... no sé cuando va a ser. Más temprano o más pronto. Ya veremos.

Y así están las cosas. No he recibido regalos de cumpleaños materiales. Sólo el placer de estar con parte de mi-gente querida y el mejor regalo de todos: la voz.

Listening to: "It's Good to Be in Love" - Frou Frou - "Details"

Beautiful Stranger

I said a few days ago that I was going to watch the movie "Gadjo Dilo" and I finally did yesterday.

I had asked my sister to get the movie from another library with the Inter-Library loan service. It happened to be in VHS, which I don't have, so I was waiting to go one day to her house to watch it, but then I moved here and I didn't have the opportunity. So, she watched the movie and told me it was very boring. Though, I watched it last night and I loved it, really.

The movie goes about this French guy whose father had a tape of a Romany singer called Nora Luca and goes to Romania to find her and record her. But what he finds in Romania is more than what he expected.
I think it is a great movie full of very nice images and wonderful music. Also, there is a scene that is so significant for me: he is walking away of a Gypsy village and everyone is calling him thief. He, the "giant" gadjo dilo (i.e. crazy stranger), the pale-faced, was being yelled at while he was leaving; they were shouting he'd steal their hens.
I really thought that scene was meaningful as, normally, what happens is the other way around.
Almost a year ago I talked about the Gypsies in Barcelona. It is real pity that we think that way. When I explained the try-to Gypsy robbery, I didn't make any prejudgement. Of course, they could be non-Gypsies on a disguise. But, as far as I know, they were.
Along this year I have been thinking about the Roma People a few times. At least in Spain, I have seen many times Gypsies in the trains begging. They say mostly the same, always. They say "io vengo de la Romanía" (the "io" is how they say "yo", i.e. I). I always thought that when they were saying Romanía they really meant Rumanía which is the Spanish for the Eastern European country's name. But, no. Romanía is the Spanish for Roma (people). Which made me think a lot on the difference we see between the Spanish Gypsies (which we call Gitanos) and the "proper" Gypsies, which are those nomad people who come from Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Of course, there is not really much relation between calés and payos. "Calé" are how Spanish Gypsies call themselves (i.e. Rom), and "payo" how they call us, whiteys (i.e. gadjo). I am not talking about the famous ones like Lola Flores and her family, Joaquín Cortés or Farruquito.
There are whole Calé boroughs in any major city of Spain. Even one here in Eivissa, called Sa Penya (i.e. The Crag, as it is in the lower part of the Old Town situated on the rock). Many people has told me over the summer that they would never go through those streets. Though, when my friend was here, we were wandering around and we got in. There was a whole family having dinner in the street and the patriarch made them to let us pass. Obviously, I said 'thank you' but, I had a prejudgement: when we were in the end of the street I thought "When are they gonna come to rob us?" They didn't. I was an arsehole (although it didn't get out of my brain).
There are many in Barcelona. I think their borough is called La Mina (The Mine), if I am not wrong. I have a friend who works there and he was invited to a wedding and he showed us the video. Their wedding consists, mostly, in the virginity check-out (which is painful to her and then the mother or someone goes around with the blood-spotted handkerchief showing that she was a virgin) and then they are brought out on shoulders and thrown sugared almonds (peladillas) for a while (like big big rice grains) and then, the already husband and wife, dance between all of them while the rest sing some song I can't remember ( gigi or something).
In the movie there is an scene of a marriage too but it goes different: more like the Ancient Roman marriage (where they pretended to kidnap the wife). The father shouts and cries saying that he won't let the groom get his daughter. Then, they share some Vodka and hug. Then they dance and sing. Easy, huh? (Much better than the boring sermons at Christian Churches.)
The virgin thing is surprising: they talk about the virginity of their daughters aloud and in public. "We" wouldn't do that. Not even our own.

A book I read not long ago ("¿Qué son las lenguas?" , which translates to "What are Languages?", by Enrique Bernárdez) talks about the word "gadjo". I wrote it down but I have lost the paper, and I don't have the book here. So, if I am not wrong, he says the word "gadjo" or "gadzo" is the masculine of "gadzi" which comes from the name of the Indian Goddess Kali. What surprises me of that (now that I am trying to recall what I read) is that Kali is the Black Madonna (Like the Virgin of Montserrat) in Catalunya or the one of Częstochowa in Poland). This is weird because they are normally darker than "us". But, anyway, I am not sure of that now. I'll have to check it again.
The funny thing of this is that Bart Simpson, in the Spanish dub, calls "gachí" to the "chicks". So, it must have something to be with the word "gadzi", I guess.

There is something that is very interesting. I am not an expert in music or in the Roma culture, but it seems to me that there is a big difference between the traditional Gypsies of Spain or those in the rest of Europe. In Spain they play Flamenco or Cante Jondo. In other countries such France they play traditional Romany music. There is an obvious distinction between different Roma communities because of dialect they speak or origin. Those in Spain, are one of the variants. But, as I see, there is more than language and situation; there is also the clothing, the culture, and so on.

We know nothing about the Roma People, really. We think they are just thieves. Of course, there are, truly. But we can't say that all Russia is a big Mafia family because what we see here in Spain. We can't generalize so much. There are nice, good, humble, honest Calé and Rom, surely. As there are good Catholics or whiteys, I guess.
We should never take things for granted. But, unfortunately, this is just "Human Behaviour".

Again, there is some stuff I wanted to say but I have missed the track.
Please, check the site of the Romani Project in Manchester.
"Gadjo Dilo" is part of a trilogy. Although, I think Tony Gatlif has more than three Gypsy realted movies.
I really like Romain Duris.

There is a song by Mecano that I really like which talks about a Gypsy woman. There is a French version that I like a lot as well. My favourite bit sings:

D'un gitan cannelle
Naquit l'enfant
Tout comme l'hermine,
Il était blanc,
Ses prunelles grises
Pas couleur olive
Fils albinos de lune
"Maudit sois tu, bâtard!
T'es la fils d'un gadjo
T'es le fils d'un blafard."
Dis-Moi Lune d'Argent – Mecano – Aidalai (France)

I couldn't find any video (a part of this one), but here there is the song:
[Lyrics]

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Listening to "Disparaitra" by Rona Hartner, Petre Badea, Valentin Rotary from the album "Gadjo Dilo (Un film de Tony Gatlif)", the OST of the movie (which I have before seeing the movie).

No lo entiendo

No lo entiendo. El artículo número dieciséis de la constitución española promete que se garantiza la libertad de ideología y el veinte la libertad de expresión. Sin embargo, Ruiz-Gallardón veta a Rubianes. No lo entiendo.

Hace muchos años, el actor gallego, vino a mi pueblo a hacer un espectáculo. Apenas me reí. No me gusta su humor ni su manera de hacerlo. Cuando salió en "El Club", el programa de TV3 en el que expresó su opinión acerca de la unidad de España, le vi en directo. No me gustaron sus palabras, porque eran feas. Estoy de acuerdo con él en lo que respecta a esta unidad de España de la que tanto les gusta hablar y tanto les gusta decir que se ha roto por culpa de los catalanes. Sin embargo, estoy de acuerdo que esa no era manera de decirlo. Pero tampoco creo que vetarlo hará que la situación mejore. Sí, esto hace apaciguar los que se quejan (que son la minoría, gracias a dios). Pero, ¿durante cuanto tiempo puedes hacer que un artista que le gusta a tanta gente y que ha trabajado tanto en este país, no trabaje? Y lo que es peor, como alcalde de una ciudad tan grande como Madrid, Sr. Ruiz-Gallardón, en la que residen gentes de todas las nacionalidades y partes de España y, por supuesto, de todas las ideologías, ¿con qué derecho elige una opción como la válida y no las demás? Es decir, ¿por qué no ha hecho callar a todos los que se quejan y envían amenazas en vez de darle un portazo a alguien que sólo ha expresado su opinión?
Es anticonstitucional vetar a Rubianes por expresar su opinión, está claro, ¿no?
Pero, ¿va contra la ley lo que hizo? No lo creo, sino ya le hubieran multado o lo que fuera. Además, hubieran multado también a TVC, y demás.
Sé que quemar una rojigualda es ilegal. Lo sé porqué en mi pueblo hay un tipo que fue a la cárcel por ello. Sin embargo, ¿qué pasa con las palabras de Rubianes? Si no son ilegales (¿alguien lo sabe?) y si están de acuerdo con la constitución (ya que es su ideología y su expresión), ¿por qué no denuncian a Ruiz-Gallardón al Tribunal Constitucional?

No lo entiendo y me parece muy fuerte toda esta situación. Por cosas como estas es cuando a mí, que no soy separatista, me entran ganas de separarme.

Imagen extraída de aquí.

Hoy

Gracias, Mecano.



Mecano – "El 7 de septiembre" – Aidalai