Contando Cuentos on Radio 5

There's an excellently read 5 minute children's story on Radio 5 (99.0 FM in Barcelona) at every day at approximately 4:40pm.

It's the highlight of our drive home now.

You can catch up on the stories at rtve.es.

Getting from BCN airport to Sant Cugat

Many people don't know this, but Radio Taxi Sant Cugat will pick you or a hapless relative up from the airport and bring them safely to your home in Sant Cugat. You tell them your flight number and they will wait for you at arrivals with a little green sign. It’s cheaper, you don’t need to worry about the taxi queue and they won’t get lost in Sant Cugat.

We’ve done this at least twenty times now and have never had any problem. This also works well for coming in on the AVE, in which case they will wait for you in front of one of the hotels by the station.

Telefonica finally notices the global downturn

Last year my company went through a major downsizing exercise. Chaos reined as people spent most of their days speculating who would go in the next mass firing. The good old days of business class travel and expensive meals have definitely faded into the past.

Perhaps Telefonica thought they were immune to the global downturn, but losing a billion dollars overnight in Venezuela seems to have finally woken them up. It amazed me was that upon losing the said billion, the company immediately reiterated that their earnings guidance hadn’t changed.

Apparently Alierta went batshit crazy and took a chainsaw to budgets all over the company. But where do you get a billion in earnings on short notice? Most likely by firing contractors, shutting down all non-essential travel, and slashing marketing budgets (or raiding some rainy day slush fund hidden somewhere in South America). And of course their favorite, sticking random charges on people’s bills and hoping they don’t notice.

Parking in Les Planes

I was telling two Catalan friends about my trick of parking at the FGC in Les Planes when we go out to Barcelona at night. It's much faster than going via the Sant Cugat station, you save on the toll and don't need to park in Barcelona.

The addition of only paying for a 1 zone ticket especially appealed to them.

They responded with how they managed to negotiate a lower monthly fee for their teletac.

Competitive money saving is always a good topic here.

Pesticide use in Spain

Sometimes people have the impression that there is less pesticide use here than other places. Unfortunately the reality is that the Spanish have no respect for chemicals. The more the better. The deadlier the better (no such thing as too clean, right?). Just empty out that bottle of ammonia all over the apartment!

This is in contrast to other countries like Germany, where there’s a general paranoia of all things wireless, chemical, or genetically engineered.

Spain also tops the list in Europe for use of illegally imported Chinese pesticide use, and the widespread use of greenhouses tends to concentrate the chemicals even more.

Luckily Barcelona and the surrounding area have a very strong organic (ecológico) farming industry. Unfortunately the prices are very high (I nearly had a heart attack when I walked into Veritas the first time), but there are alternatives such as farmers markets. There’s an organic market with fruit, vegies, honey, cheese, bread, etc at Placa de Pep Ventura on the last Saturday morning of every month.


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What I miss from America

• Real breakfast. With french toast, lots of maple syrup and links.
  
• Weekend brunch. It was always a great no-stress way to catch up with friends.
  
• Reasonable movie times
  
• Reasonable dinner times. 11pm is not reasonable, sorry.
  
• Neighbors that will talk to you.
  
• TV programs that start (and stop) at their advertised times.
  
• Windows without bars
  
• Parking
  
• NPR. I'm starting to like En Dias Como Hoy though.
  
• "The customer is always right" (as opposed to "We have your money, why should we care?")
  
• 1-800 customer service numbers. Any customer service, for that matter. Did you know that 807 customer service numbers are technically illegal in Spain? Does anyone care? Doesn't seem like it.
  
• Internet shopping.
  
• Not paying sales tax on internet shopping.
  
• Not paying shipping on internet shopping.
  
• English language book stores with science fiction books other than by Jean Auel. (My trusty Kindle has mostly solved that problem)
  
• Spanish immersion public schools. Yes, we actually had a Spanish immersion public school in our neighborhood in the US. Here we have to pay lots of money so that they get some Spanish as opposed to everything in Catalan.
  
• Volunteers and community spirit. I find people here are too quick to say "it's the governments problem" rather than fixing the problem themselves.