Life

Cognates and Other Curiosities

Some random observations from Spanish Immersion School:

Cognates are words that are the same in two or more different languages.  The word ‘bar’ is the ultimate cognate.  Although the names of alcoholic beverages differ substantially,  ‘bar’  translates across all the major European languages,  thus assuring Europeans will always be able to find the staples of their existence.

One must be careful of cognates though.  Sometimes words that look the same have entirely different meanings.  For example,  as an aficionado of Diet Coke,  I have a bad habit of ordering Coca Light over here.   It sounds more Mediterranean, don’t  you know.  Unfortunately,  the correct way to order in Spain is either Coke Light or Coca-Cola light.  If you order Coca Light,  they think you are trying to order low-calorie nose candy and give you very strange looks.

Other than that,  cognates are the language students friend.  No need to memorize the new word,  just learn a new way to pronounce the old one.

The Spanish are a lot of fun.  Any people that include vino in the base of their food pyramid (officially put out by the Organización Mundial de la Salud)  as the recommendation for “una vida larga y sana”,  a long and healthy life.  I can go with that.

Some of the Spanish words seem like they should be cognates, but are not.  For example,  ‘Inmobiliaria’  for government agency is much like the English word ‘ immobilize’ which seems just about right.  [ Editor:  It turns out this is wrong.  The translation is "estate office" not "a state office".  This is the Brit term for a real estate office, which makes sense if you think about it.]

Oh, and for any of you who read my rant on being an Americano,  I happened to be looking in the Spanish-English dictionary provided by the school whose teachers have been berating my arrogance.   Guess what it gives as the translation of estadiounidense.  You guessed it,  and I quote, “American.”   I love it.

Barcelona - Montjuic

There's a new album up with some pix of my day-long trek up Montjuic in Barcelona.

There's Traveling and There's Traveling

In my book, there are two kinds of traveling. There’s traveling alone and traveling with the family. Although they are completely different forms of travel, they do share certain common principles. The first, made famous by the late great Douglas Adams, is “Don’t Panic.”

The second principle I read once long ago in a guidebook to Italy. It is simply “Trust in Serendipity.” That is, as you travel around the world, if you have the right attitude, wonderful things will happen to you. You’ll run into an unexpected parade or open air concert. You’ll find that idyllic secluded cove for an afternoon in the sun. I think of this as travel karma.

Some people have ridiculous amounts of travel karma. My wife, for instance, which is why I hate traveling without her. We’ve had airline desk agents chase her across airports to give her a free upgrade to first class. Hotel desk clerks regularly put her in the nicest rooms. Much of this can be attributed to her wonderful attitude and beautiful smile that will brighten anyone’s day.

But it’s more than that. How do you explain us going to St. Peter’s and running into a practically empty cathedral with the Pope giving an unannounced mass for the College of Cardinals. She is an extreme case, but I firmly believe we all have some travel karma. So remember, don’t panic and trust in serendipity.

When I travel with the family, I use the internet to schedule everything for the entire trip. Plane flights, apartments or hotel rooms, tours, museum tickets, the works, and it all tends to be first class with such amenities as air conditioning and washing machines. The fewer hassles the better when you have three kids around. But sharing the world with the kids is one of the greatest pleasures of our life.

When I observe some of our kid's peers, I believe their whole world is basically their bedroom and their parochial view of their town. They live in a culture that constantly bombards them through all forms of media with the message that they are smarter than the adults in their lives and they know everything that needs knowing. The result is that incredible bundle of drama and angst that is the average American teenager. The extreme cases of violence and suicide seem to result from an attitude of “If this is it, why bother?”

By traveling to different countries and different cultures, kids get to see the myriad possibilities in the world. The very fact that there is a great big different and fascinating world out there to explore adds interest, fascination, purpose, and hope to their lives. Some people consider my family’s wanderlust a curse, but I see it as a blessing.

Travel also gives children an idea of all there is left to do in the world. Too many kids have them old Ecclesiastes blues. That everything to be done has been done, that there are no new discoveries to be made, and that there is nothing new under the sun.

Just make two visits to the same museum or historical site separated by a year or two. You hear all the theories that have been disproved and new theories that have replaced them. The discoveries that sparked this upheaval and the people that made them. Once kids realize that, and realize that we are just getting started in fields such as computers, biomedicine, and nanotechnology, they realize they can do things to change the world, to make a difference, to have an important purpose for their lives.

My, that was a digression, wasn’t it. My sister says I overanalyze things. She would probably tell you I take the kids because we have a lot of fun traveling and having adventures together. She’s probably right.

Sometimes, like now, I travel without the children. Now that is a completely different kind of travel. When I travel alone, I am much more likely to plan my itinerary as opportunity presents. At present, I am living in a student flat with a couple roommates. My room has a basic cot, a care-bear air balloon ceiling light with a fifteen watt bulb, and a table light I scrounged that requires a toothpick jammed into the switch to keep it on. I love it.

Mind you, I am not near so adventurous as my nephew who has backpacked the world from Laos and North Vietnam to Tunisia and Europe. Or for that matter, my eldest son who has backpacked Europe on the youth hostel route. At least I have my own room, such as it is, and a key that sometimes works in the door.

One of my roommates, a Swede no less, was concerned that I hadn’t made plans for where I am going at the end of the week. I can’t believe such a young kid would have that attitude about travel. I know my children don't.

Of course, I miss the family when I travel alone. At least half the fun of traveling is having someone to share it with. But there are some advantages to being on your own.

For one, I get to eat fish, lots of fish. In fact, last night I had my first red meat in three weeks of Spain. It was ox and very good. Mind you, I can eat fish when I’m with my wife, just so long as I have another bedroom to sleep in.

I can also wear my tourist hat without fear of ridicule. My children don’t like my tourist hat ( a well-worn Tilley). They don’t think it looks cool. Hey, I’m fifty, not much makes me look cool. I’m at that age where comfort is king. Besides, the other day when I was on the open upper deck of a bus turistica stuck in a traffic jam, I thought I looked considerably cooler than all the people holding tourist maps over their heads, trying to block the sun.

That’s another thing. My theory of seeing a new city involves hitting the tourist bus for the morning tour the first morning I’m there. This gives a great orientation, helps me get my bearings, and helps me decide what I want to see. The commentary on these buses also often give invaluable advice on survival in that city. My wife doesn’t like the tourist bus. This could be because she has to share a seat with me, and I am a rather large person, or because she likes to relax when she first gets off a plane. All good reasons mind you, but I like being able to take the bus without dispute.

Which brings us to another sticky point. As you may have caught on from my pictures, I am a maniac about seeing things. I’ll march around for hours up and down whatever hills are in my way. Taking kids on my kind of walkabout quickly becomes an unpleasant forced march, which is why I always try to get centrally located apartments that we can quickly make it back to when tired. I, on the other hand, love to march around for hours exploring a new town.

This does present a problem with shoes. I have size 15 ½ feet, which translates to a European size 50. They have a number to describe it, but as near as I have been able to tell, nowhere in Europe, certainly not in Spain, makes shoes this size. My problem is if I take an extra pair of shoes, it takes half my luggage space. So I brought one new pair of shoes just broken in. They didn’t even survive the first week in Barcelona, since then I have been using copious amounts of superglue to hold them together.

So there is traveling and there is traveling. I miss the family as I explore Spain but am enjoying seeing it my way.

Granada on Columbus Day

Columbus Day has been largely forgotten in the U.S.  and the PC crowd like to trash the poor guy,  but in Spain, he´s still a national hero and Columbus Day is a major national holiday.

Columbus Day is particularly poignant in Granada,  where Isabel commissioned Columbus for the voyage.   It´s amazing she had time to do it,  she and Ferdinand had just driven the Moors out of Granada, their last stronghold in Spain and united the country under their Catholic Majesties.  1492 was a busy year.

We watched a very solemn procession and then hiked up the hill (mountain?) across from the Alhambra.  We sat at a bar on a terrace overlooking the valley and drank some very good Andulusian Sherry while watching the lights illuminate Alhambra.  It was a sublime experience and well worth the climb through narrow winding streets.

The pix are here.  My apologies for the quality.  Once again I am very sorry I didn´t bring my good camera.  Who knew Spain was so beautiful?

Hola from Madrid

Well, made it safely from Granada to Madrid yesterday.  Actually, a good trip.  I´ve now flown twice with Iberian Airlines and they seem to have their act together, although you can probably fly cheaper by connecting in Great Britain and don´t bother with Business Class.

Sad to say,  I wasted a Saturday night in Madrid.  After a week of keeping up with college kids in Granada,  I explored the Princio Pia mall  (an old converted train station) and hit the sack early.

Today,  I hit the Templo de Debod, an honest to goodness Egyptian temple transplanted, hieroglyphics and all, onto a hill in Madrid.  A reward for Spain´s efforts to save the antiquities from the Answan Dam.

Then I hit the Royal Palace.  Wow,  if you want to see gratuitous ornateness, this is the place for you.  Some Goyas and a lot of other interesting artwork and craftsmanship.  The guy who did a lot of the ceiling frescoes liked to bring parts of them down over the ornate moldings, giving an interesting effect.

The Royal Armory has everything for the SCA fanatic including children´s armor and some really scary Japanese armor from the first Japanese envoys to the Spanish king. And the Royal Pharmacy is a room Snape could love.

Endless Gardens all around,  which the Spanish love to promenade through after church on a Sunday afternoon.

More later,  including a couple hundred pictures from Granada that I´m still sorting through.

A(nother) Rainy Day in Madrid

Having spent most of the day exploring the Prado,  a truly incredible art museum,  I thought my feet were about as sore as they were going to get.   Then I went to a two hour flamenco show,  and now my feet are really sore.   

There is no question Flamenco speaks of passion,  but it also clearly speaks of shin splints.

I almost punted on the Flamenco show,  being well and truly worn out after three days of art museums and exploring Madrid.   My experience with night bus tours in European cities has been poor,  usually they culminate by dumping you at a really sleazy strip joint around midnight.   

But this one was a combination night bus tour and flamenco show.  I knew if they lit up any portion of the fountains, the monuments, and the many romanticist and art deco buildings, it would be worth the trip.  I wasn’t actually expecting much out of the Flamenco show.

The tour got off to an inauspicious start.   The tour company I had signed up with only had five people going,  so they loaded us all on a full sized bus and drove us across town to dump us on another tour company  that had a few more people going.

The second tour company seemed to have lost their bus.   After about half an hour it showed up and we loaded up,  filling about a third of the bus.   I sat in front, behind the tour guide, and the reason for the late bus soon became evident.  It must have been a new driver and he wasn’t quite up to rush hour traffic.   

Now for those who have never visited Madrid,  it has the curious feature of having a twenty-four hour rush hour,  despite a good mass transit system.   This is not an exaggeration,  you have bumper-to-bumper traffic at four in the morning.  So our poor bus driver,  who I truly felt for,  was having a rough time.  The tour guide was having even more fun,  making up the tour on the fly as the driver missed turn after turn.  Thus we saw parts of Madrid not normally on the tour,  including the truly ugly US Embassy.

After a curious tour,  which did manage to take us by many of the illuminated facades and fountains,  the bus dropped three of us off at a Flamenco show.   This was obviously supposed to be a mass production affair,  akin to the Lido on the Champs Elysee ,  and it would have been uncomfortable had it been packed.   But only a few tables in the center were taken and I was given a four-top to myself.   

I had ordered the Tapas dinner which was authentic in its temperature (luke-warm) and not really half bad.  I also had a full bottle of red wine and a full bottle of water.  Apparently, they were set up to provide one per table and had no smaller portions, which suited me fine.

Then the show started.   It started out with four women and two men dancing to recorded music, which I found disappointing.  The dancers were really quite good,  and I had to be impressed by the passion and sensuality conveyed by the dancers,  especially as none of the women were particularly attractive (by my standards).

Then about half an hour into the show,  a Flamenco guitar player and woman singer came out and started belting out some serious music.  The dancers returned and now the show really started cooking.  I was expecting the tourist version,  not to compare with the spontaneity of the real thing,  such as the little smoke-filled flamenco bar I found in the back alleys of Granada,  which specifically did not cater to tourists.  But what this show may have lacked in spontaneity, it made up in choreography and the skill and passion of the cast.

Sadly,  towards midnight, it came to an end.   Our bus returned to drive the three of us back to our hotels.  (It seemed like they could have saved money by just sending a cab.)

All in all,  another good day in Madrid.  The rain continues,  but the museums abound.

Granada - Alhambra Pix Up

The album is here. 

Las Vegas Show Reviews - Part II

There's a lot more to do in Vegas than drinking and gambling.  One of the big attractions is the shows.   This is a continuation of my earlier blog on Las Vegas Shows.  In that earlier blog, we covered the Sequin Spectaculars and Cirque du Soleil shows.  In this segment, we'll look at two additional categories, Musicals and Celebrity Headliners.

Musicals

Las Vegas often runs the latest and greatest Broadway musicals.  The casts are typically quite talented and the sets are more elaborate than those on Broadway.

A good example running now is the Phantom of the Opera at the Venetian.  I'm always amazed how Andrew Lloyd Weber made such a successful score all based on one musical passage,  but he did it.   This is an elaborate production well worth seeing.

There's also lighter fair, like Mama Mia! at Mandalay Bay.  That's if you're an Abba fan, which I'm not.  I personally found it to be awful,  but they made a movie out of it, so I guess there is an audience.  It's definitely a chic flic, or chic play in this case.  My impression is they chose the title Mama Mia! because My Big Fat Greek Wedding was already taken.

Celebrity Headliners

Another classic form of Las Vegas show is the celebrity headliner.  Celebrities don't retire or even fade away,  they go to Las Vegas.  Elvis, Frank, George Burns, Cher ... they all ended up in Vegas.  (And when they pass on, they go to Branson, Missouri.)

Almost by definition, these celebrities are past their prime.  Thus, these shows can be disappointing.  If you're a real fan,  you might be disappointed,  but I guess if you're a real fan, you won't care.  I remember seeing Frank Sinatra's show in his last years,  his voice was pretty much gone and he wasn't looking so great, but he still had that cool Sinatra class.

Sometimes these shows are quite spectacular,  with elaborate sets and a chorus line to cover up for the star's waning talents.  A good example of this is Bette Midler's show.  Caesar's Palace gave me a couple tickets to the show and, even so, I paid way too much. I could have been outside losing money.  This is easily one of the worst shows I've ever seen in Vegas, and the elaborate set and bevy of chorus line beauties couldn't help it.

I'm trying to think of something positive I can say about Midler's show,  but all I can come up with was she was far better and more talented than the act Caesar's had had a week earlier,  a fund raiser for Harry Reid starring Barack Obama.

In general, the celebrity headliners aren't worth the admission, especially if you're paying admission. In my mind, they are a lot like the sequin spectaculars,  just a part of the Vegas tradition.  But if you're a real fan,  you might want to go just for bragging rights.

Next: Concerts

Confessions of a Castle Junkie

As the regular reader may have picked up by now,   I am a serious castle junkie.  My family has always been tolerant of this little foible of mine, primarily I think because the children always loved to charge up and down the battlements and stone stairs,  which rarely have any kind of protective railing.

First, castles, by definition, have the best view.  So if you want a scenic view of the countryside, climb the local ramparts.  (And try not to be bothered by the idiot next to you taking landscape shots with his flash on.)  Note this is not necessarily true of Abbeys,  which learned that being highly visible was not a survival trait when there were Saxon raiders about.

Castles are strongboxes of history.   It is rare to find an authentic castle (as opposed to a folly http://www.heritage.co.uk/follies/ )  that does not have a fascinating history of sieges, battles, conquerors,  royalty, soon-to-be royalty, and soon-to-be ex-royalty,  captured princesses,  ghosts,  and all the stuff good fantasy is made of.

From an engineer’s view,  castle-building is one of the earliest forms of engineering.  Most of us forget that the reason we now have Civil Engineers is because before Civil Engineers,   engineering was a military profession.   (You didn’t think they were called that because of their civility, did you?  If so,  you probably never met one.)  Engineers traditionally worked in two fields,  building fortifications and building siege machines and guns to knock down the fortifications.

The ancient Greek philosophers looked down upon engineering as one of the arts driven by utilitarian objectives,  to the point where Plutarch carefully apologized for Archimedes and his machines of war, “regarding the work of an engineer and every art that ministers to the needs of life as ignoble and vulgar,  he devoted earnest efforts only to those studies the subtlety and charm of which are not affected by the claims of necessity.”   The Roman reaction to Archimedes was quite different.   After being repeatedly foiled by his infernal machines in the Siege of Syracuse,  the Roman general gave careful orders to take Archimedes alive,  an order that unfortunately didn’t quite make it down the chain of command.

For although the Greeks were natural philosophers par excellence, the Romans were engineers.   It is perhaps significant that with the exception of Syracuse,  the Romans went through the Greeks like a hot knife through butter.  The Romans valued engineers to the point that Hadrian was viewed more for his accomplishments as an engineer (more accurately an engineering manager) than as an emperor.    Hadrian’s Wall was an engineering solution to the Picts.   Hadrian’s tomb still forms the foundation of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome.   In fact,  Hadrian became so synonomous with engineering that the ancients seemed to have attributed any great engineering feat to him.

So the Romans were great engineers, valued engineering, and conquered the world.  Am I saying there is a lesson to be learned there?   No,  I was  just talking about military engineering and castles.  But I digress.

The engineering in castle building  is both monumental and subtle.   Monumental in great battlements and massive stoneworks.   I can’t look at an ancient castle without thinking, “How in the Sam Hill did they do that.”   Subtle in such aspects as making stairs of irregular height so that attackers must look down at them to avoid tripping,  making spiral staircases clockwise so the defender can use his stronger right hand to defend while the attacker must use the weaker left,   making doorways low so that the attacker must duck his head coming through a door.  The amount and quality of thought that went into the castles of yore is truly awe-inspiring.

In the end,  engineers were better off at making offensive than defensive weapons.  The coming of the rifled cannon spelled the end of the castle fortress.  By the end of the 18th century, it was the girl’s turn.  The Duchesses and Countesses moved in to remodel,  turning once great bastions into country manors.  It’s a sad story. 

Forts have become passé.    The underground bunkers and caves of third world dictators are perhaps some of the last pitiful remnants.   We followed the signs to this Secret Bunker in Scotland.    And just today,  news came out that Cheyenne Mountain,  http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_4103478 America’s great Cold War bastion of defense, was being mothballed.   It’s a shame to see such a proud structure taken for granite.

Finally,  castles tell an often-frightening story of humanity.   A typical feudal castle keep,  built by the back-breaking labor of his serfs,  held the lord’s family and a few retainers.   The rest of the population was on their own.  Castles almost always were built to oppress, pacify, or otherwise exploit the surrounding countryside.  Thus Norman castles in Britain, Norman and British castles in Ireland, and British castles in Scotland all share the same stained history.  Whenever I hear some Luddite anti-technologist waxing eloquent on how man was so much closer  to nature during the middle-ages,  I want to recommend the castle tour.  That our governments no longer need to exist behind fortified walls shows a great deal of progress.

Las Vegas Show Reviews - Part I

Las Vegas has a long-standing reputation for spectacular shows.   Some are quite wonderful and some are not.   There are a couple important things to note when booking shows:

First,  pay attention to the seating charts.  Some of the auditoriums are huge and you can get some real nosebleed seats.   This may be OK for some shows and really spoil others.

A good way to get nosebleed seats is to buy tickets at one of the booths that sell same-day half-price tickets.  These booths actually sell you a voucher to exchange for tickets at the theatre box office.   I have been told by a couple people who work in these box offices that their instructions are to exchange these vouchers for back row seats even when they have a half-empty theatre.  This may not be true for all the shows,  but I suspect it is for many.

Second,  and this is very important,  if you make reservations,  you will need a credit card.   The person who owns the credit card must show up with a driver’s license and that same credit card to pick up the tickets.  This makes it very hard to give tickets as a gift to someone on a Vegas trip.

Shows in Vegas come in several major categories: sequin spectaculars,  Cirque de Soleil, musicals,  celebrity headliners,  concerts,  magic shows,  celebrity impersonations,  comedy acts, and burlesque.

Sequin Spectaculars

The sequin spectaculars are the longest running shows in Vegas.  These are the classic Vegas shows featuring extensive chorus lines of Vegas showgirls interspersed with different talent acts.  They usually come in a family version (where the girls wear their tops) and an adult version (where the girls do not).

These shows are a dying breed,  I imagine because of the expense.  One of the oldest of these,  the Folies Bergere at the Tropicana,  recently closed after a forty-nine year run.  (I think some of the original girls were still in the chorus line.)  Another,  Splash at the Riviera also closed recently.  But Jubilee at Bally’s is still going full swing.

I really can’t recommend any of these shows,  but they are part of Las Vegas’ heritage.  You might want to catch one just for the fun of it.

Cirque du Soleil

One company is responsible for many of the best shows in Vegas and also for replacing many of the old sequin spectaculars.   That is the French-Canadian outfit Cirque du Soleil (which translates as Circus of the Sun, or as one wag put it,  Circus without animals.)  This company was started in Montreal in 1984 by a couple of street performers  and has grown into quite the phenomenon.

Cirque du Soleil has teamed up with MGM-Mirage (which owns half the casinos on the strip,  with Harrahs owning the other half) to put on a number of truly remarkable headline shows at the various MGM casinos.  All the Cirque du Soleil shows feature acrobats in a surreal setting doing things you find it hard to believe humans can do.  When combined with original live music soundtracks and the most elaborate stage settings in Vegas,  these shows are not to be missed.

Mystère  is their original Las Vegas show at Treasure Island.   An incredible show which I highly recommend.  (Treasure Island is a vestige of those few years in the early nineties when Vegas tried to be “family friendly”.  This trend was one of the clearest examples of marketing groupthink in business history,  and lasted for all of about four years,  until Vegas realized they weren’t family friendly.  But during this time,  Wynn built TI and decided Cirque de Soleil was a better choice for families than topless showgirls.  Treasure Island is also well-known for their free pyrotechnic pirate show,  which was originally a battle between pirates and the British,  but now has been changed into a truly tacky bump and grind routine.)

Love  at the Mirage is one of their newer shows.  A French circus tribute to the Beatles. What a concept.  This show has a great deal of energy,  but less extreme acrobatics than the other Cirque shows.  If you’re a fan of the Fab Four,  then by all means take it in.  It’s fun.  The best seats start about the fifth row back.  If you pay top dollar to be in the first few rows,  you will have a restricted view and a great deal of heavier-than-air theatrical smoke will dump on you in the opening acts.

O is at the Bellagio and is perhaps their most elaborate show.  A truly remarkable stage combines with incredible acrobatics to put on a water spectacular.  Be careful if your tickets say Splash Zone. I would have to rate O as the best,  but it’s a tough call.

Ka is at the MGM (For those familiar with the Strip,  I’m working my way from north to south.) and combines another remarkable stage with acrobatics.  For fans of fantasy fiction,  Ka tells a fantasy story without words.   Another great production.

Across the street,  New York New York hosts Cirque’s burlesque show,  Zumanity.  Although definitely not for the kiddies,  this show is not so much erotic as acrobatic.  Again, my reaction was “how do they do that.”  I wasn’t a big fan compared to the other Cirque shows.

CRISS ANGEL Believe is a new show at the Luxor combining a magic act with a Cirque show.  I haven’t seen it yet.

And one other show needs to be lumped in with the Cirque shows.   La Reve at the Wynn is another Cirque-style surreal dream.  It isn’t put on by the Cirque company (the buzz I heard was Steve Wynn hired away some ex-Cirque people),  but the show is easily one of the best.

Next:  Musicals