Cucuhouse blog

Stories from cucurulla street in Barcelona district 01 and the continuation of the killed blog "Güten tag rhine"

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Ni chicha ni limoná

I have been thinking today that without my weekend photos this would be a really boring blog, more or less like my weekdays here in basel since the weather turned to be a kind of soft winter. I can't go to swim in the river after work, and don´t know why but I prefer to stay at home after having dinner (I am still waiting for the second pack of 24 series that I bought in amazon last week). Work...I promised myself I would not speak about work in the blog, but you can guess it is having some influence in my mood lately, and is making me think a lot about what or where I want to be next year once I have to come back to reality after the MBA. But this is another story, and as I have heard somewhere before, "forecasts are difficult to make - particularly those about the future".

Well, we will always have the weekends. Until now not bad. I haven´t got the marevlous experiences that other bloggers are having in airports during weekends but I still have some weekends to go, lets see. Maybe we go to Amsterdam on Friday and Paco is tempting me with a trip to Berlin on the following.

I think one of the things that has more influence in my "down" mood is the weather. In Spanish we say "ni chicha ni limoná"= useless or half way between nothing and nothing. This is a bit difficult to translate and it will take half of this post (if you are not interested in Spanish jargon you'd better skip this). Literally, "ni chicha ni limoná" means neither "meat" (or "fat"), nor lemon juice. Weird eh! If you search a bit you will find that "chicha", appart from the eatable thing or the excess of kg, it also refers to an alcoholic drink from mais (originally from southamerica). Wrap up: People used this saying to mean that there were no alcohololic nor refreshing drinks left = No drinks, bad mood..."useless"....more or less. Now the connection with the weather in Basel. Well, I guess I would be rather enjoying a bit of snow in the weekends and go everyday to the office with a proper jacket full up of feathers under -10ºC, than thinking we are in the middle of august and my wardrobe is full of (now) useless fancy summer t-shirts and shorts that I only see when I take one of my suits. By the way, another type of clothes that are not exactly appropriate for this weather: Suits.
I admit that myself and some other people from "dry" countries like spain are a bit weird with the clima, especially when we claim for more sun and always complain when it is raining, while in Spain there are around 200 fires all over the country because if there is something for which we should claim a bit, that is precisely rain. (ahh, but now I am not in Spain). At least in London you think it is always shit weather and that is fine. Here you buy your swimming bag to go to the river because is summer-time, and then what you find instead of summer-time is "ni chicha ni limoná". And I have to walk around 20 min to work everyday, 20 min full of uncertainty :)

This reminds me that I have started another routine here: Reading in my way to the office while I walk. Ali told me the other day she usually does that, and I thought I never do this. Now I know the reason. This is a clean country (with a strange weather, but clean), and reading while you walk is not dangerous because there is a very low probability of putting your foot right in the middle of a dog´s disposable income, sorry, disposable intake I mean.

Music: Victor Jara - ni chicha ni limona

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