Woke up to another gorgeous day and since my ciggies were finished last night, I decided not to waste too much time inside and instead go out and enjoy.

After getting new ciggies I went to the park to sit on the terrace in the sun for a bit. I ordered a large strong coffee, “café Americano”, and a bocadillo with pork, cheese and red pepper, “bocadillo con lomo y queso”.

The bocadillo is one of the most popular type of breads in Spain. It’s not a sandwich, because that uses a soft bread and the bocadillo is made with half a French bread.

Translated from Wikipedia: Usually a bocadillo is made up of half white loaf of bread (French bread) cut crosswise roughly with a length of 24 cm and with the ingredients between the two halves of the bread. You can differentiate between ‘cold bocadillos’ and’ hot bocadillos’ depending on the temperature of the contents to use.

When I came back home I met my vecino (neighbor) Kevin in the elevator. Kevin has come to my place for a few times to learn some Chinese and he lend me a small TV over the weekend, so I can watch some TV if I want to. I downloaded some movies (Death Race with Jason Stratham and Bangkok Dangerous with Nicholas Cage) over the weekend and Kevin wanted to see them too so we burned them on CD’s.

Then I had another look at my sailing game and I am happy to announce that for the first time in my life I crossed the equator in a sailing yacht! OK, a virtual one at that, perhaps at a later stage in life I will be able to do it for real!

Last night I talked for a long time with my good old friend David who lives in Barcelona and he actually gave me an idea worthwhile considering: buy a yacht and live on that during the summer months. He will come down to Valencia before the end of the year to check out some sailing charters for his business Sailing Dreams and I am looking forward to do some catching up with him!

OK, getting ready for school now, start of the complex past tense…

Tags: Bangkok Dangerous, Barcelona, bocadillo, bocadillo con lomo y queso, café Americano, coffee, Death Race, Jason Stratham, movies, Nicholas Cage, sailing, Sailing Dreams, school, Spain, Valencia, yacht
Categories: education, food, games, life in Valencia, movies

Finally today the sun is shining again and the sky is gorgeous blue after more than a week of pitiful weather. The most important reason why I haven’t been writing my blog: grey and wet outside makes me dull and without energy.

Another reason to write today is because I have an hour extra. Wintertime, not used to anymore, but a nice enough concept to make the shorter days seem longer…

On Monday I heard from the moving company that my shipment is due to arrive on November 29. This means I have to get my papers in order a week orso before, that is if I don’t want to pay import tax. On Tuesday I went with my lawyer to the town hall where she arranged the first step in the long “papeleo” process (red tape): the permiso residencia y trabajo, something like a temporary residence permit that allows for working too.
Next week we will go to the police office for foreigners to arrange for my NIE (without this paper you can hardly do anything here), step two and after that more steps have to follow to come to full legal status.

In the meantime Mia has arranged all her paperwork at the Spanish Embassy in Beijing and school has even called them to make sure everything is in order; hopefully that helped to push her file onto the right pile!

On Wednesday it was “Happy Miercoles” again and we went with a bunch of people to the Irish Pub. The CEO of Babylon Idiomas was also there, a fellow Dutchman and it was very nice meeting and talking with him! Afterwards we went for dinner and a couple of bars and discos. Ideal to have classes in the afternoon!

Talking of which, we are booking great progress. Next week we will move on to the past tense which brings us to the end of the first book and on to level A2! Basically that means that by the end of my 12 week course I should be at the start of level B2, enabling me to speak pretty good Spanish on a light conversational level, great!

Yesterday I went to Sala Parpalló, a museum in my street where they have an exposition of a Chinese photographer He Chong Yue. He has taken pictures of the large tiled family planning propaganda signs you will find in the countryside of China. On each of the signs he has hung a mirror, so you can also see him taking the pictures. Nice enough to have a look around.

With the Volvo Ocean Race Game I was stuck in the Doldrums most of the week, but it seems that I finally have left them behind and I can make myself ready for the southern trade winds on my way to Cape Town. I managed to climb to a position around 8,500 but lost that again due to the lack of wind. Now on 12,539 of more than 41,000 competitors.

And today I had a nice stroll in the park enjoying the warmth of the sun.

I have been cooking a lot lately, all kinds of delicious stuff and tonight it will be ensalada de espinaca.

Tags: Babylon Idiomas, Beijing, Cape Town, China, Doldrums, Dutch, Embassy, Happy Miercoles, He Chong Yue, Irish pub, lawyer, moving, museum, NIE, permiso residencia y trabajo, Spanish, Volvo Ocean Race Game
Categories: education, food, games, life in Valencia, move to Valencia

Finally found a street with some Chinese shops today!

A co-student told me where to find them, in the station area.

So I walked there and found 2 shops, one with live fish and fresh veggies and meat and the other more “supermarket”-like with different kinds of chillies, dried, sauce, even sambal and finally real soy sauce!

Chicken with lots and lots of chillies tonight for dinner with noodles, yummie!

Tags: chillies, Chinese shops, fish, meat, noodles, sambal, soy sauce, veggies
Categories: food, life in Valencia

When I arrived at school yesterday they had made some changes as my co-student canceled an hour before. So instead of giving me 4hrs per day, they changed it now into two hours per day for the first week, but then guaranteed private lessons, plus on Monday 4 hours private class. Well, that’s ok with me, private class is quite a bit more intensive than with someone else, especially because you’re never sure of the level of the other person…

Yesterday’s 4 hours were very nice, I could actually wabble on quite a bit, especially in the first block with a really cute Valencian lady

For the second block my teacher was Pedro and he is gonna be my teacher for the rest of the week. Well he keeps the speed up! Blazing through the lessons, I guess he is pushing me a bit, but everything was going well. To his surprise I immediately udnerstood the difference between “hay” and “esta/estan” and today’s homework was that too.

Amparo, my landlord, had invited me for lunch this afternoon and we had a gorgeous lunch on a terrace/park next to the Turia with some tapas (clams, snails and small green peppers) and a large entrecote. At first I kindly declined el vino (I would have go to class afterwards), but when she ordered a 2005 Rioja, I of course had to take a few sips/glasses

Just in time for school, after repeating some of yesterday’s class, we moved on to things in the house (las cosas en la casa) and for tomorrow I have to describe our new home After that we also made a start with the possessive words, becomes quite complicated with singular/plural/feminin/masculin, pfffff…

Since Amparo moved most of her stuff out over the weekend I need to buy a bowl, a cutting board, a sharp kitchen knife and some cutlery. Now I wanted to buy stuff that came as cheap as possible, because I have all of it coming in the container in 6-8 weeks! So I had the shop attendant pick all the cheapy stuff for me, hahaha.

On my way back to home I made a detour of about an hour as after 20 mins of walking in what I thought was the right direction, I arrived back to where I started…O…K…

Near my home there is a shop run by 2 Chinese ladies who sell anything and everything. I wanted to look for a bag for my school books, so I asked one of them if they could speak Chinese. The lady said yes and we moved on to easier grounds. I had a nice chat with them and I will definitely ask them very soon where I can buy Chinese ingredients (especially lajiao) in Valencia!

Finally back home I tried to make tortilla, which tasted a lot better than it looked!

Now I’m gonna watch some downloaded CSI and then off to bed!

Hasta manana!

Tags: Chinese, CSI, lunch, Rioja, school, tapas, teacher, tortilla, vino
Categories: education, food, life in Valencia

Been busy with updating and connecting all my online social networking stuff, you can see it in the sidebar of my about page.

You probably also have noticed posts with links coming in every day at 4am. No, that is not me being still awake (although sometimes I am), it’s delicious posting a feed of my bookmarks of that day.

Soon you will also find a similar feed of Twitter, which I joined last night. So even though I have no news to really write about, still every time I bookmark sth interesting on the web and every time I place sth short on Twitter, you’ll find it back here. Hardly any of my friends is on Twitter it seems and if you can’t pull them in it, you’d better bring it to them

Had quite a nice day. When I woke up to my alarm clock today, the sky was a blue blanket! That helps to put a smile on my face! Went to check some language schools for Mia and myself today. First school was nice, run by a single guy it seems, His English was ok, though heavily accented. The second school was much more professional, in the historical center of Valencia, just east of “Placa de la Reina“.

Just finished a 40-page WordPress-CMS Tutorial (links to PDF) this weekend and still in the writing mood, I made an as objective as possible brief for Mia; she is the one that has to study the longest time after all.
Now the choice has been made, fortunately for the 2nd school, so the wheels are set in motion. I start on Monday with my 12 weeks intensive course and Mia’s target date is to start on November 17 with her super-intensive 20 weeks course followed by 3 weeks preparation of DELE Superior, which should enable her to study an MBA in Spanish for the next two years.

I have not been able to find any Chinese ingredients here, or resembling for that matter. And although I still don’t have a real craving for Chinese food, which is weird in itself, I wouldn’t mind scoring some real chillies and soy-sauce (jiangyou).
This evening I found a reasonably compromise. In another supermercado than the one next door I found “semi-picante” peppers and “soja sauce”, it’s sweet and has no resemblance whatsoever with the real stuff except the colour! It’s more than Dutch “ketjap” than anything else!
Anyways I cut a few peppers up and mixed them with chicken, threw a bit of salt over it and quite a lot of red pepper powder (it says picante, but it’s definitely not chilly). Fried an onion in the pan, added the chicken-mix, added some long beans and added a tomato and garlic as well as some salt and fresh-ground pepper.
And it actually tasted quite good! So for now, if I need my spicy-fix, I know what to do!

Tags: bookmark, Chinese food, Chinese ingredients, CMS, DELE, historical center, language schools, Links, online social networking, Place de la Reina, tutorial, Valencia, WordPress
Categories: WordPress, delicious links, education, food, life in Valencia, online networks, twitter

Can it be true? Are there really companies waking up and start to grasp the true meaning of the word service?!

Since it is a rainy day and I am not feeling like cooking up any food nor going out to get some and I already had a hotpot for lunch this afternoon, I decided to call for a pizza. Recently I discovered “Pizza Buona”, not too far from my place that delivers good quality, warm pizzas.

So I dialed the number and got a girl on the phone. After ordering my pizza I was ready to give her my address, but to my surprise and downright astonishment, she already read it out to me!

Now, of course, I do know that this is technically already possible for a number of years, but Chinese actually implementing it and using it (without breaking it), that is an entire different story!

And I must say, I am a HAPPY customer, I LIKE THIS
So, if you want to order pizza and enjoy it to be “recognized” the next time you make that call, Pizza Buona on 6551 3518 is the number to dial!

Categories: food, service