The quality of busking is a pain...

I used to really like Simon and Garfunkel. But my appreciation of their work has taken a bit of a dive since I moved to Madrid. It's not Paul and Art's fault. They weren't to know some of their most famous songs would be reproduced on panpipes to oompah backing tracks and inflicted daily on the Spanish Capital's Metro commuters.
Ordinarily, I really like music. I also happen to believe that deserving musicians should be rewarded for their efforts, and that includes decent buskers. But I do object to having music played at me whether I like it or not. At least with other buskers, you have the choice of walking past (with finger inserted in ear) or stopping to listen. When one descends on your carriage on Linea Circular with yet another muzak rendition of El Condor Pasa, Bridge Over Troubled Water or Sounds of Silence, you're stuck with it.
Most Spaniards have developed selective deafness and a thick skin when it comes to handing over money to musical hijackers. Which makes me wonder how many performances of S&G's Greatest Hits (panpipes interpretation) make it worth the hijacker's while.
Maybe I'm being intolerant. After all, riding the Metro isn't exactly the last word in fun and a bit of music is always welcome, isn't it?
No, it isn't. Those people who don't have a companion to talk to during the train journey seem quite happy to be left in peace to read, study or snooze. An over-loud, naff and unasked for soundtrack only serves to add to the other irritations of public transport, like over-crowding, delays and pick-pockets.
The other day, I think I had to suffer no less than four renditions of El Condor Pasa during my journey to work, each by a different busker, yet all sounding the same. Ye gods. If they must panpipe us to death on the Metro, is it too much to ask that they learn a different tune? Something by Pulp or the Sex Pistols or even The Spice Girls? If they could, if they only could...

Of Teaching And Beer

After five days of intensive training with a English teaching company based in Madrid, I sallied forth to the Spanish HQ of one of Europe's largest beer-sellers. My pupils are some of the company's top executives, which felt a tad daunting to begin with. Also, with precisely zero experience in teaching Business English and only a few hours of one-to-one teaching under my belt, I had to throw out the "discuss in pairs" and "compare answers" basis to my CELTA qualification and make some serious modifications. Oh, and there are no textbooks to act as a guide and conveniently provide me with off-the-peg lesson themes and exercises. I have to invent every lesson from scratch.

Given that it takes me around an hour to reach the office where I teach and most of the lessons are individually timetabled at an hour and a half, it's not proving very time-efficient so far. Luckily, the cost of the one-change metro-and-then-a-bus journey works out at 77 cents a time, so at least the travel is cheap. I'm getting lot of reading done on Madrid's public transport and sometimes I even attempt to improve my (slightly better than non-existent, but not much) Spanish. As an added bonus, I haven't yet had anything nicked by Madrid's legendary pick-pockets either - touch wood.

On top of the journey time, the lack of handy teaching materials means it's taking me around two hours to plan each lesson. Tot that up with the travel and it's costing me four hours of time for every hour and a half taught. Not what you'd call breath-takingly effective.

But these aren't complaints. Mainly because at the moment, I'm enjoying both the lessons themselves and the planning process. Fashioning a fully-functioning, interesting and bespoke English language lesson out of nothing actually feels rather creative. Also, I'm well aware that the more material I produce now, the more I can adapt and re-use in the future. As we're in the business world of teaching English, let's call it a time investment. Ah, that feels better already.

Then there are my pupils, who are all very likeable, very attentive, all do their homework and in one case, even give me a lift to the office on Friday mornings. Compared with the ten crazy nine-year-olds Theo does battle with, they're a breeze. And I'm learning all about beer, which just goes to show my students aren't the only ones getting a useful education.

things I miss about Clifton (no.435)

One thing Bristol, and particularly Clifton has over Madrid, and especially Mendez Alvaro, is decent florists. Round here the choice of fresh flowers is really very poor.

In a related note, Kate and I will have been married for 10 months tommorrow. Woooo!

Spanish bureaucracy

It's a Catch 22. I can't get a Resident's bank account without an NIE (Numero de Indentidad de Extranjero) and I can't get a non-Resident's bank account without proof of income; unfortunately my only proof of income is my contract at the language school which proves that I AM resident in Spain and therefore am ineligible for a non-Resident's bank account. I need a Resident's bank account which I can't get until.....

You get the picture.

So now you're asking "Is it hard to get an NIE?" Well, no. You just go along to a police station, fill in a form, hand over a photocopy of your passport, show the original, pay a 10 euro administration charge and you are issued with the number. The tricky part is getting an appointment at a police station; such are the numbers of foreign nationals in Madrid that the earliest my employers could secure me an appointment for was May. I guess I should be thankful that's May this year!

Happily though, Kate's employers - who pay their staff on a freelance basis and therefore need them to get their NIE's as soon as possible - have a handy little wheeze to get around this. As they have an office in the beautiful nearby provincial town of Segovia, they issue their teachers with a Segovia address and get them an appointment there. Hence Kate and I got up at 5.45am this morning to catch a bus to Segovia (where it was snowing) to get her NIE. We were back in Madrid by 11am and immediately went to the bank so Kate could open an account.

Of course I'm not allowed my own debit card (residents and non-residents can't share accounts) so I'm going to have to hand over my entire salary to Kate and live on cash handouts from her until May.

So no change there then!

if this is the future of commercial healthcare....

... then you can keep it!

Give me the friendly, mildly inefficient but personable NHS GP surgery over this morning's ruthlessly efficient, cold and impersonable conveyor belt Medical Insurance clinic any day!

As one of the 'perks' of my job I was offered a free medical check-up - part of the school's insurance policy, apparently. As it's been ages since a Doctor cast an eye over my anatomy I figured why not. Hence I got up at the ungodly hour of 6:30 in order to ride three different metro lines across town to the clinic clutching my little pot of urine, freshly produced this morning. I didn't know quite what to expect, apart from a blood test and eye exam, but I wasn't expecting such a ruthlessly efficient system. The hospital we'd attended in Luxembourg had been efficient, but without being inhuman. Here you were tagged at the front desk, then led off to change into identifcal blue shirts and blue plastic over-shoes before being called up one by one to be stabbed with a needle. Then we waited, herded together in a corridor while one by one we were called into a side room, before being returned, only to wait again for another summons. Whenever that rare event occurred - one of the 30 odd patients being permitted to change back into civvies and leave - the rest of us gazed at him (they were all men) with what I imagine is that same kind of envious looks inmates give freshly paroled prisoners. The whole experience - a good 2 hours - simply made me feel like so much meat waiting to be prcoessed. If this is what capitalism does to healthcare - strip it down to the bare essentials in order to process as many units as quickly as possible - then we would do well to keep healthcare public, however shambolic the NHS may be at times.

And, while they were all perfectly nice and very patient with my lack of Spanish, not one of the nurses cupped my balls and asked me to cough!!

flat fiesta

This weekend was decidedly more active than the last one; after a week of working hard with Kate at training for her new job from 9 til 7 and me supervising classes of manic children, we decided to play a bit harder too. (Though not as hard as our flatmates it has to be said!)


We started off with a flat-warming party on Saturday night, inviting along friends of ours from both Pueblo Ingles and Vaughan Town, plus our flatmates. Apparently it's not really the custom to invite friends round for food - the Spanish tend to just meet in a bar - while starting things at 8pm is definitely not the usual way of things in Madrid, but the food at least was reasonably Spanish. Indeed my first efforts at Spanish-style tortilla and aubergine fritters were gobbled up with pleasing enthusiasm! We'd set up an ice-breaking exercise ("find someone who?" bingo) for a bit of fun and nostalgia (it's something we had played at Pueblo Ingles) and to get people talking, not that we needed to encourage them - they're a sociable bunch! Pete our flatmate got on the DJ decks and spun a little set, which started to make us think it might be nice to go somewhere for a dance. Cesar obligingly phoned a friend and had 10 of us put on the guest list for a trendy club, which we headed out to at 1am - still early by Madrid standards. In fact when Kate and I left at 3am we had to queue to get our coats from the cloakroom - because there were loads of people waiting to hand theirs in!! It was a great night and lovely to see our friends again.

Sunday lunch and curries are two great English traditions, though it's rare that we combine them. Today however, after a lazy morning, we ventured out to the Guru restaurant in central Madrid to meet an old childhood friend of Kate's, Kirsty Frost, her husband Juanmi, parents and aunt and uncle (all friends of Kate's parents). Kirsty has been living in Spain for 10 years now and she and Kate really enjoyed seeing each other again - our social circle here is rapidly expanding. Despite our protestations, we were treated to lunch. Again. If we have to buy back all the meals we've been treated to we're going to be bankrupted rather swiftly. Just as well Kate starts work tomorrow!

Work

After nearly 9 months without a day job, the first week back as a wage-earner has been as good as a holiday - relaxing and traveling can really take it out of you!! In all seriousness, it has been mildly uncomfortable to have to answer the question (repeatedly asked over the last year) of "What do you?" with "Sod all - I scrounge off my wife's savings" so it feels nice to once again be contributing!

My working week is hardly arduous - 23 teaching hours plus 3 paid preparation hours is as full-time as most teaching jobs get here in Spain. I start work at 4pm in Pueblo Nuevo, a 35 minute Underground ride away, finishing at 10pm except on Friday when we all finish at 7.30pm before a mandatory staff meeting in the nearest tapas bar. I'm teaching all ages from 9 to 13 year olds, teenagers and adult classes of various abilities, seeing each class twice a week for 90 minutes at a time. As some classes share syllabusses this effectively means 9 classes a week, which, with the aid of thoughtfully provided text books, I seem to have got down to about 30 mins preparation time per class. Most of the other teachers have expressed amazement at this: "Plan? What's that?" has been their frequent comment. In time, I too aspire to their level of professionalism!

A weekend whirl

The weekend has passed in a blur of not doing much at all, really. Friday evening was spent in sociable fashion, first in a bar in Pueblo Neuvo with various colleagues of Theo, then in a barrio kebab house with the lovely Jero and Jose. Except this kebab house was a lot more civilised than those we knew - and tended to avoid - in Bristol. There were tables where you could sit down and eat your kebab (or falafels, in our case) and you could buy yourself a beer. I drank some sort of yoghurt, lemon and salt drink on Jero's suggestion and actually, it wasn't too bad.
On Saturday, we spent a few hours wandering around central Madrid and admiring the Royal Palace and Plaza Espana in the snow - before the cold sent us scuttling into a cafe in an effort to avoid our ears falling off.
We then had a typically Anglo-Saxon afternoon, joining our flatmate Pete and his cheery scouser friend, Paul in a bar to watch Northampton overcome Pete's team, Leicester in the rugby. Pete and Paul stuck to coffee and sparkling water, having both gone continental, if you ask me. Theo was the only one who indulged in a beer and that was only a cana. This sort of thing could do serious damage to the British drinking reputation abroad.
Despite having the whole of party-mad Madrid on our doorstep, we elected to go back to la casa after the match, get out of the cold and settle down to home-cooked dinner and a DVD. It actually felt rather luxurious.
Today, Sunday was another largely lazy day - apart from a stroll around the local park (which included the opportunity for a snowball fight - won by Theo, more for persistence than accuracy) we mainly relaxed in the flat, chatting with Pete and Alex in passing, writing our Christmas thank you letters, doing some lesson-planning (Theo) and playing a bit of guitar (me).
Tomorrow we're both off to work, in my case doing some training with a company who will then find me some paid employment, all being well. Yikes, an actual Monday.