Mike is Back

I can only assume that this is the one year anniversary of Michael Jackson's death. I think in terms of honoring the man Greg, Pat & myself set the bar pretty high. However today I saw some people taking a shot at the title.

Right now its about 10:45 on Friday night and I am admittedly being lame and not going out. I was in Plaza Catalunya less that 20 minutes ago reading a book about the founding fathers (I'm a patriot) when i noticed a large gathering in the center of the plaza. Normally I just avoid these things because its either political demonstrations and I would probably not agree with whatever communist propaganda they are promoting or some tour group. Anyway, as I sat and read the group broke out into a rendition of "We are the world." They were not just singing but swaying and clapping as well. I ignored this at first then they started singing again so I got up and walked over.

In the middle of the plaza, probably 15x15 feet there were posters of Mike arranged on the ground with candles all over the place. This collage was being flanked on all sides by maybe 50-80 people, many of whom were dressed, in some way, like Mike. I saw lots of silver gloves, the hat he always more, etc. I watched on for a while while these people sang and got into in before finally leaving. I wish I had my camera, but no such luck.

Unique Barcelona laws

Ok here is a breakdown of some laws in Barcelona thanks to a tour guide from my bar.

*It is legal to carry up to 50 grams of weed on you as long as it is in a single bag (multiple makes you look like a dealer).
*You can carry 2 grams of speed or other forms of amphetamines.
*You can carry 2 pills of ecstasy.*It is legal to smoke weed on your way home or in the vicinity of your home. Obviously this one is pretty hard to enforce. People just smoke weed but do it discretely, i.e. not in front of cops or busy areas. Pretty much everybody smokes spliffs here.
*It is illegal to drink in public however this law is not enforced at all in the summer. Almost everybody is drinking on the street at night, even in front of cops, and they don't care at all. Also, Pakistanis sell it in the street for 1 euro/can. I can't emphasize how many times I get asked "cerveza/beer" when walking around, there are tons of them all over the city. If you go to the beach or Las Ramblas you will get asked dozens of times, but the beer is always cold.
*It is legal to be naked in Barcelona as long as you have shoes on haha. Strange but true, there is a naked beach as well. I have heard stories about a guy called the elephant man. Apparently he has elephant ears tattooed on both sides of his torso and obviously he is well hung, which is the trunk. Thankfully I haven't encountered him yet.
*The legal age of consent in all of Spain is 13. Surprisingly there aren't that many teen pregnancies. The tour guide told me the theory was since they're allowed to do it at a young age it isn't that big of a deal to them. Not sure about this but something about it is working.
*In reference to a previous post a thief can't be charged unless he steals over 500 euros. Often thieves will take just the money and leave your bag/purse/wallet and just keep the cash. This prevents them from taking ipods, cameras, etc that would push them over that limit. It also provides incentive to repeatedly steal because there is basically no punishment, which results in them getting even better with more practice. Also, the Spanish police do basically nothing so that helps.

(No relevant pics so here is a shot of Gaudi's Casa Batlló. It was designed as a house for a wealthy aristocrat and is now a museum.)

kms

Smartest Guys in the Room

Thats right, we're the smartest guys in the room. Last night we went to our first quiz night. It was supposed to start "between 21:30 & 22:00. Per usual it did not start till closer to 23:00. Anyway you could have as many as 8 people on your team, which most people did, we went with a solid foursome tho. 1 American (Me) 1 American/Brit hybrid (Kyle) & 2 Brits (Adam & Pete - bros we play futbol with).

While we were waiting for this game to get underway they MC walked around and passed out the paper you answer the questions on. Our piece of paper was some girls resume who had applied for a job at their bar. Naturally our team name was "Give Anais a Job". Apparently this was good karma for us because after the 4 round quiz we were in first place. But it was not over yet. Another team somehow managed to get on our level. At this point we went to sudden death. We had to nominate one member of our team to go up to the front of the bar and face off against someone from the other team. You always gotta play your hybrid out of the rough so we sent young sully in there.


Question: "At its deepest point, how deep is the Pacific Ocean in feet?" (closest answer wins)

Our boy Kyle wrote in his answer 33,000 feet. The other bro we think put something below 15,000 feet. Anyway the answer was thirty five thousand feet and change. As soon as the quiz master read the answer Kyles hands went up in the air like a champ, not even knowing what the other dude had written yet. Naturally our team went nuts and started screaming. Luckily for us it was not even close because that could have been embarrassing. Nevertheless we won a 125 eruo bar tab.

With this sudden windfall of cash (the only money we have made thus far) we started buying rounds. For some reason we were chugging them and drinking pints through straws. I cant really make sense of it now but it was happening. Anyway, we were on a huge high from winning our first tango with quiz night that we decided to keep the party going. We left the quiz bar and went to an absinthe bar in El Ravel (mentioned in an earlier post - sketchy as hell). Not the smartest move since it was now around 1:30. Anyway we got there alive and started drinking Absinthe. I had never had it before and we all ended up getting pretty fucked up. Kyle was asking the bartender if he knew what a flaming Dr. pepper was, he didn't so Kyle explained. Then the bartender called him a pussy and said you burn away all the alcohol that way....


Anyway we left the bar and went home at this point. Around 3:00. Of course at some time between 21:30 & 3:00 our landlord changed the locks on our door. GREAT! I cant even begin to understand that move. Anyway we pounded on our door until someone woke up to let us in. Not only did one of our flatmates wake up, but the crazy bitch across the hall did too. She is some senile old woman who literally just spends hours a day Screaming. I will record it sometime because its horrifying and it wakes me up at like 7:00 many a morning. Anyway Kyle and I started screaming at her while we were locked in the hall way to "SHUT THE FUCK UP". Finally we got let it and passed out. about 5 hours later the old bitch started up again. I was on minimal sleep and at that point had to get up for work. I decided to start today the same way I ended yesterday, by screaming out my window at this woman to shut up. All in all an excellent night.


*No pictures from last night, just some random ones*

Pray for me

Ok this story is just so weird I had to share it with all of you.

I was checking my email this morning while nursing the hangover detailed below. As I'm catching up on emails and chatting with some people I was asked an interesting question. Below is a transcript from a conversation I had with Jenna Shission this morning.


Jenna: also, is there some ailment you are experiencing that i should know about?
me: I had food poisoning
why do you ask?
Jenna: oh i heard from my sources that people were praying for you at church
me: wtf
Jenna: so i thought id get right to the source
lol
me: what people are praying for me?
i mean i guess thats cool but im pretty healthy
Jenna: lol maybe not...
me: who told you that
Jenna: maybe god knows before you..
lol my sources
me: ok...
not sure why this would be a secret
Jenna: haha
bridget
me: at what church
Jenna: not sure actually
me: hmm, well dont say anything to her. i like the idea of having the church on my side
Jenna: lool
scamming the church i see?
me: well im not scamming anyone, I did not start the rumor.
I'm just asking you to keep insider info to yourself.
Jenna: lol alrighttt

So don't worry team, I'm A-okay.

It's a Tuesday

This morning is bringing back memories of a certain Dinks waitress who had so much unmasked disdain for me that it hurt. Just to bring everyone up to speed; a few years ago - I believe it was - Chaney, Greg, Kyle & I got wasted on a mixture of Brandy, natty and probably something else. This was on a Monday night. Tuesday morning we went to Dinks for breakfast and when the waitress asked how we were doing i replied "A little hungover" to which she said "It's a Tuesday" and walked away.



Today marked another Tuesday morning hangover after a Monday night binge. It is now 3:42PM and I have essentially not gotten out of bed yet today. Last night the plan was to go to La Champagneria with two of our flat-mates for some dinner and drinks. La Champagneria is a hole-in-the-wall bar where they serve really cheap, but good, cava (champagne from Catalonia) and you have to buy tapas for every few glasses you get. The sandwiches and Cava are excellent. It's standing room only and you have to yell your order at the bartender. It's pretty cool but we didn't go there at the best time as it was way too crowded. That was supposed to be the plan for the night, go there and come home.



Well one glass lead to another and when the bar closed at 10:30PM (its more of a restaurant) we decided to go to Chupitos and rip shots. They have hundreds of shots you can choose from most of them involve fire, you being dressed in some costume etc.etc. etc. One of the shots we took involved drinking some kind of green alcohol that sat in a pool of more alcohol through a straw, then the bartender would shove a glass in your face and you would basically huff vaporized alcohol. It was an intense experience. After 3 shots, and a lot of fun, we decided to keep things going.

We went to a few random pubs for a beer or a shot and finally we were going to go to a club but kyle and I were not meeting the dress code. At this point we tried to walk home which should have been a simple enough task. Somehow we did a massive loop around the city and ended up literally right back where we started and hour and a half earlier.



At this point we met back up with our flat-mates and decided to bus it home. The metro had closed around midnight but there was a bus system than ran all night. Anyway, only one of us made it on the bus, surprisingly enough it was not kyle or I.. At this point we wondered around the city for a few more hours met some random dudes from the US and somehow got into some heavy discussions about politics, religion etc. All the while we are buying individual beers off dudes on the street. Now its about 4:30ish and we part ways.



Finally we are on our way home again. We walked by a metro station and realized that they open at 5:00AM, so we waited the 5 minutes. En Route back to our place Kyle and our other flat mate Sebastian decide they are going to go get some McDonalds. I was not up for it so they got off the metro to find some food (unsuccessfully) and I came home to pass out. Kyle and Sebastian made it back at some point after me and I guess called it a night. Oddly enough when kyle woke up this morning he had 42 missed calls from Sebastian. 42. I tried to take a picture of his phone but it did not come out. The night started innocently enough but things definitely got out of hand.

***Update*** Apparently last night Sebastian realized he had lost his keys after him and kyle went to get food. He went back to be beach at sometime between 5AM and 6AM to look for them. He did not find them and was locked out hence the 42 calls to kyle.

Boiler Room

Around 4:30 Kyle and I were heading out the door for a meeting, thanks to my buddy J.Sully (not Kyle's dad) regarding a potential job, when I got a phone call. Earlier in the week I had applied to a financial sales job. I'm not exactly sure what I would be selling but I need work so it seemed like a smart play.

The number comes into my phone as restricted. I answer and the bro starts talking to me telling me he had read my resume and wanted to talk for a minute. It sounded promising at first so I asked Kyle to hold up when we hit a relatively quit part of the street.

First he asks me if I have any sales experience, so I lied and told him I had done some insurance sales and some bull shit telemarketing. After that I told him about some other experience I have and he seemed to think that would suffice.

To this point essentially all I had done was lie and reiterate stuff that he already knew. Now generally speaking in terms of finances and investments I feel much of the responsibility falls in the hands of the investor not the manager / salesman. My fiscal conservatism and pro capitalism mindset can be a flaw in the rarest of occasions, this happened to be one. The first real question the guy asked me, that could not be answered by my resume, was:

"Would you have trouble selling something to a client that benefits you financially while hurting them financially?" I told him thats an ethical question and then responded by saying: "So your asking me if I would be okay selling an asset to a client that I know will adversely effect them financially while befitting me financially at the same time?" The dude tells me that I am correct and have the gist of things. I told him I'm not sure I would be cool with that and that it's not even legal in the US. He then replied "Well this probably isn't for you then." At which point we exchanged pleasantries and ended the call.

Maybe I'm getting soft but I do not want to be barred from the financial services industry for life as a result of financially crippling some Spaniards.

Pre-Gaming Like Bastards

As you all know, drinks in any city are way over priced. Factor in the exchange rate, and the additional club surcharge on drinks, and you get the idea. With that in mind Kyle and I have been pre-gaming like bastards.


The liquor selection is pretty standard, and on a typical Friday & Saturday we go down that road. So far it has been what you would expect; either J&B, Johnny Red, Jägermeister (we live with Germans and they love it), and occasionally some sort of vodka. Kyle & I have gotten blacked out a few too many times already. These blackouts include mixing liquor, beer, & wine/champagne (sometimes) and I have yet to wake up hungover.

I cant really make sense of this. From what I have been told, the wine and beer does not have preservatives in them, but I didn't think liquor had any in it anyway. Whatever the reason, it's nice not being hungover.

Champagne is called Cava here, since, as all you world travelers know, it's technically only Champagne when its from Champagne, France. Anyway, we have not had too much of that but apparently a lot of people party with just Cava...

Beer. The beer selection is rather strange. Spain is not known for its beer which is probably why the selection is lacking and sub-par. Everywhere has Estrella, which from what I can gather is like miller lite. Other than that its anyones guess. Each supermarket has their own beer, some are ok, most are mediocre. Also, beer comes in 10.5oz cans but the alcohol is always 5+%. We have only found 12oz Amstel's and they are the cheapest in the store. Oddly enough you see people drinking all day every day, mainly beer too...


That brings me to my next point. They dont understand buying in bulk here. They package beer, water, pop, everything much like you would see in the U.S. The only difference is you can tear open packages and buy individual cans. This very act got myself and a few others banned from Giant Eagle for life cerca 8th grade. The point is, you can buy the whole package, 12 beers and they charge you as if you are buying 12 individual beers. There is zero price break. I could buy all the beer in the store and not see 1 cent of price relief. Its unreal. This picture represents the closest thing to functional capitalism and commerce in this country (and their pricing system is still totally fucked)

I could rant for hours about the inefficiencies in the Spanish economy, infrastructure, work ethic, and their lack of desire to engage in commerce. It really is no wonder they are pegged to be the next Greece. Spend one week here and you will have no doubt. But I digress, back to the point. All stores and markets are open strange hours and technically you cannot buy alcohol after 10pm - period. This rule of course means nothing if you find the right shops. The right shops are generally convenient store type places owned and operated by Pakistani guys.

Once the alcohol is secured We are generally partying at our flat till sometime between 1 & 2 then going to a club, bar or the beach. The beach is awesome and if any of you come to visit we will have a beach party.

Just a couple of bro's happy to be there...