San Antón Market, Chueca

This is gonna be a rant about architecture and fake bricks. Sorry.

When we moved into Plaza de Chueca, Madrid a couple of years ago, there was a fenced-off hole in the ground directly opposite the entrance to the Plaza, on Calle Augusto Figueroa. A sign announced it to be the site of the new Mercado de San Antón (I have no idea if there had previously been a market on the site, and if there had been, what happened to it). While the Barceló market was only a few blocks away, we awaited developments with interest. The site appeared to be dormant for about eighteen months, when suddenly it sprang to life, in November 2008. The grotty graffiti- and fly-poster-covered fence was removed and replaced with a tall and shiny corrugated aluminium barrier (and a week later it too was bespattered by graffiti and fly-posters). Site huts were installed, followed a few days later by a tower crane that moved so much in the wind we were convinced it would not survive the construction process.

And a few days later, up went the sign with an 'artists impression' of what it would look like.

Oh. My. Giddy. Aunt.

What the fuck is that? It looks like the very worst of British municipal 'architecture' from the seventies - and I should know, I grew up in the town that invented it. I stared at the sign in disbelief, trying to analyse what this picture is telling me. Okay, Keefie, take a deep breath. Right. It looks like a two-storey monolithic podium. At the ground level, it's clad in black stuff: can't tell what it is. There don't seem to be any openings like doors or windows in it on the main street elevation. Above that, the first storey seems to be clad in pinky-red tiles or brick slips*, arranged vertically. Looks like the top floor splits into two chunks with a gap in the middle suggesting a light-well or atrium. And this level is clad in golden tile or brick.

I rush home to get my camera: I have to document this. It must be a mistake. The Municipality has held a design competition, and this was the losing entry but a junior clerk was given the job of ordering the sign and supplied the wrong image. Hohoho, how they will laugh when they realise the mistake.

After a lengthy delay while the contractors built two levels of underground parking, the concrete superstructure began to emerge. Oh. My. God. It wasn't a mistake, they were actually building the shite in the picture. At this point we felt obliged to move a long way away.

A few weeks ago, I was showing our visitors around central Madrid, and we went into Chueca. The building is very well advanced: only a few weeks from completion, I guess. It's far, far worse than the 'artists impression'.

Oh, man, this is just awful. My pictures probably don't do it justice, but you have vast expanses of one batch of brick slips, interspersed with a different batch that should be the same colour, but is different enough to make it look like the cock-up it is. And because the 'architect' has designed this abomination with no surface relief whatsoever, your eyes are drawn to the errors. The corners are awful: there's no pretence that this is real brickwork (because it very obviously isn't) - maybe the 'architect' thought he was making some kind of ironic post-modern joke, because if you were actually building this thing in brick it would fall down: the brick slips cladding the first floor are stuck onto the concrete as if they were tiles (which they are, of course): around the corner they are stuck on in a stretcher bond pattern. It's just too awful for words.

And look, look! Down that little street, how this blank, ugly facade says 'fuck you, hombre' to the delicately detailed buildings around it.

Well, you know, 'fuck you' can sometimes work extremely well in historic urban contexts. But the building doing the fucking had better be good enough (go to St Mary Axe in London and see how Number 30 just completely ignores its context, but you don't actually care because that is one helluva gorgeous building).

So, early next year this hideous affront to the fine-grained architecture of Chueca will open. Graffiti artists will abseil from the roof and decorate it. I might be one of them.

*Brick slips - just like normal bricks - same material, same texture - but only a centimetre thick: used when you want to convey the impression of bricks in an unsuitably bricky context.

Mejillones

Say what? Meh-hi-yo-nes. Mussels. I've fallen in love with them again. When we had our visitors a few weeks ago, I made a paella, and bought fresh mussels and langostinos from Mercadona (a supermarket near us: not quite near enough to visit every day, but well worth a trip for special things). I was amazed, nay, gob-smacked, at the prices of their seafood. And yes, I know I should have gone to the Mercado, but we were also after other stuff that the market doesn't have. Get this. One kilo of mussels for €1.80. Insane or what? Admittedly, they are not premium quality mussels: there'll be at least six stiffs in your bag, and the remainder will have beards like Rip Van Winkle and the shells will have more barnacles and fossilised pigeon shit than the Titanic. But inside they are fat, juicy, sea-flavoured lumps of yum (except for the wobbly shiny green bit, and I try not to think about what that actually is).

So, apart from sticking them in a paella, what can you do with mussels? I just lurve Moules Mariniere. Okay, it's French, but it's dead easy to make and packed with nutrition (no fat, no carbs, just a ton of protein).

You want the recipe? Okay, here goes:

All you need (for two people) is a kilo of fresh mussels, maybe half an onion, some chopped parsley and a couple of cloves of garlic. And some white wine. And some EVOO and/or butter.

To prepare the mussels (this is the slightly pain-in-the-arse, time-consuming bit): slap 'em in a bowl or sink full of cold water for at least half an hour. Throw away any that are open or that have cracked shells. Then de-beard them - grab hold of the beard and tug it towards the hinged end of the shell: don't do it the other way, 'cos that will rip the mussel to bits. Scrape off any crud from the shell with a sharp knife, and give them a good old rinse in clear cold water.

Chop your onion up finely and sautė in the butter/oil until a bit transparent. Throw in your minced / crushed / squashed flat and sliced garlic and stir around for a bit. Throw in some white wine - how much? I don't know: enough - maybe a glass or two - you want about a centimetre of liquid in your pan. Plop in the parsley. Turn up the heat, and when the wine is boiling, throw in the mussels. Turn down the heat so it simmers, cover the pan with a lid or sheet of metal foil, and leave it alone for about ten minutes. At this point you can sneak a look: if all the mussels have opened, they're done: if not, maybe give it a few more minutes. Any that refuse to open at all are stiffs: bin them.

When you think they're all cooked, remove the cover from the pan, take the mussels out with a slotted spoon and pop them into a bowl. Turn up the heat to max and let the liquor reduce to about 50% (there are those who advocate adding cream, in which case you'd want the liquor to cool down somewhat, otherwise the cream will curdle - and you'd have to put the cooked mussels into a warm oven, where they'll turn to rubber). When the liquor has reduced, throw the mussels back in, give 'em a stir round and serve.

This a real simple peasant dish: you can serve it with hunks of crunchy baguette, potatoes dauphinoise or chips and mayonnaise. Hell, you could even have a salad with it.

It's just the best thing.

An Early Christmas Present

I've been using this MacBook for a bit over a year now. I think it's probably the best thing I ever bought, but the one thing I missed after making the transition from frustrated PC user to almost-evangelical Mac-user was the Google Chrome browser. This had been released a few months before I moved to Mac, and I loved it. No worries, though, a Mac version was in the works, and would be released 'shortly'. I've never done any Mac-specific programming, so I don't know how hard or easy it is. I kept checking with the website to see how they were getting on, but it was mostly Geek to me. I signed up to get an email telling me if they ever managed to complete the task.

Yesterday, I got my email: Chrome for Mac has arrived! Like a maniac, I rushed to download it. Easy-peasy, no problem.

Ah.

But there is a problem on this machine. It's only ever been able to run Firefox: it has Opera and Safari installed, but they can never manage to connect to any websites. That never bothered me too much, but now I have Chrome, I really want to be able to use it. Intensive scouring of Teh Interwebz failed 2 giv me haz cheezburger. But I Percy-Vered (good ol' Percy, never lets you down), and came across a reference to having proxy servers set up. Oh my Gawdz: I know all about Poxy Servers as part of the amoral morality police in Dubai. Hmm.

So, I managed to track it down: yes indeed, this machine was set up to use the poxy server of its previous owner at his Uni. Goddam. So I deleted the poxy (the power!), and now all my browsers work, including Chrome. Yeehah!

Mobile Madness

I've been wanting a new phone for quite a while now: quite apart from the lust factor of a shiny new gizmo, my current phone is pretty knackered. Of course, being a geek, I don't just want any old phone, I want a top o' the range number that does all kinds of useless stuff. I want one that's as stylish and funky as the iPhone. In fact, I want an iPhone, but since Tellyfuckingfonica have exclusive rights to that gadget, I won't be getting one.

So, I've been researching the market, and what I want now (actually more than an iPhone), is a handset that runs Google Android, specifically with the HTC 'Touch UI' skin. So that restricts things somewhat. The HTC Magic is exclusive to Vodafone, and I'm with Orange: moving could involve a JazzTel-style debacle. But as I passed the local Orange dealer yesterday, I noticed an HTC Hero in the window: from only €9! I went in to enquire, carefully not building any expectation that I would actually walk out of the shop with a new phone.

The sales assistant said it was only €9 if you were a business or self-employed. My hope-rating increased to 2/10. I am self-employed (autonomo), and I can prove it! So we talked about packages and lock-ins - we're looking at €32/month, minimum 18 months. That's not bad at all. She gave me forms to fill in, and my hope-rating increased to about 5/10.

But the first question slayed me: did I want to keep the same number I had with my previous supplier, or get a new one. I asked where was the option to switch my existing contract with Orange to this one, and keep the same number? There wasn't one, because you can't do that. Hope-rating: 0/10.

But, she said, you can get the phone as an individual, but you'll have to pay something (I already knew from previous research, the 'something' starts at €209). She fiddled about with the computer. It turned out I have some Orange Points, so the 'something' is only €180. That's way too much right now, but maybe when a large outstanding bill gets settled, I'll do it. As an alternative, she offered the HTC Tattoo, which also runs Android, and is very cute. And 'only' €89 with my points. Hope-rating 1/10, I went away and checked out some reviews - they all admire the phone greatly, except for the crap touch-screen (resistive, rather than capacitive) that makes the thing virtually unusable. So I won't be bothering with that, even though I could get it from Vodafone for €29.

Y'know, phone companies really do get on my tits. Sometime soon, HTC or some other bugger will bring out a new phone running on Android. It might be offered exclusively thru Vodafone or someone else. As a new customer to them, I'll get the phone for almost nothing, and Orange will do nothing to stop me - they won't say 'oh, Keefie, don't leave; look, because we value your custom, you can have the HTC Hero for €9 after all'. I don't want to move to a new supplier: I've had no problems with Orange. But now they have the phone I want and won't let me have it for a sensible price.

I know these high-end phones are pricey: they are little computers, after all. In some ways, I think the UAE had it right. There was an open market in unlocked phones. You bought the one you wanted, stuck your SIM card in it, and off you went. The maze of offers, counter-offers, exclusives and value-adds here does my head in. And in this particular instance it hasn't increased my choice at all, in fact it's limited it to about zero.

Grrr.

UPDATE
So I thought, why don't I shut down my existing account with Orange, and then open a new one? I popped into the shop and suggested this, and the assistant said she couldn't see why not. So this evening I went yet again, armed with all the required documents. I'm buggered if I know what happened, but eventually she told me it would be €289 for the phone. WTF? What do you have to do to qualify for the advertised €9? She shrugged her shoulders - no idea. Feck. But it looks like there's tons of Android phones coming out in the next few months, so I'll just have to be patient and then take my business elsewhere.

What's This Dubai Lark All About, Then?

I could get very bitter and twisted in this post: if I do, please forgive me. I lived in Dubai for thirteen years before moving to Spain a couple of years ago. We knew, about eight years ago, that Dubai was committing financial suicide. Nary a month went by without some new and totally barmy mega-project being announced. The Emirate had opened itself up a bit so that foreigners could buy property there, but only in Government-approved developments - principally those being built by Nakheel (Government-owned), Emaar (semi-Govt) and Damac (private and quite probably bankrupt by now). Many of our friends bought houses on some of these developments: a few of them made shitloads of money by speculatively buying and selling. I dare say the rest of them are now sitting on a mountain of negative equity, and praying five times a day to the deity of their choice that they will still have a job in the morning.

There's no get-out, you see. The United Arab Emirates (of which Dubai is a constituent Emirate) doesn't have a proper bankruptcy procedure for individuals or companies. If you default on a loan, the only legal recourse for the lender is to have you thrown in jail until such time as you can pay what you owe. You think I'm joking, don't you? I wish I was - you can even be jailed for issuing a cheque that subsequently bounces (and the country is very much cheque-driven: if you rent a flat for a year, you either have to pay the whole year's rent upfront, or give them three or four post-dated cheques). I know many people whose only way out was to run.

The attitude of Dubai (and, let's be fair, the rest of the Arabian/Persian Gulf region) to non-fulfilment of financial obligations opens up the fascinating possibility of Dubai World being jailed in its entirety for planning to delay a massive bond repayment. Or, at least, you might think, its owners / top management / shareholders would be held responsible. These would mostly turn out to be members of Dubai's Ruling family, the Maktoums, with Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum at the pinnacle of that posse.

I was intrigued / fascinated / pissed off throughout my years in the Middle East by the attitude of my paymasters towards putting money in my pocket. The direct employers that I worked for usually had a policy of keeping foreign workers a few months behind with their salaries so they wouldn't run away (I don't know if it ever occurred to them that if they treated their employees decently, they wouldn't want to run away). Running my own business, I rarely had problems getting paid by Western or Asian clients, but Arabs could be hard work and Government agencies were fucking impossible. In the end, I declined any approaches from the Government because I just couldn't afford to finance them.

And now, with a breathtaking display of utterly crap timing (close of business the day before a 10-day Government holiday), Dubai World announces it has no chance of paying the next installment of its bond repayments, and suggests its investors should wait six months. Yeah, right. Meanwhile, Abu Dhabi will be picking off Dubai's prized assets for fire-sale prices, and there's still little possibility of Dubai being able to pay for any of the stupid stuff it has left.

Sheesh.

Kebab.

Madrid Tour Guide In English

Weird title, eh? But for the last four-ish days, that's what I've been (also fairly expert cook and bottle-washer). We've had visitors from England. The lady visitor (we'll call her V) was our very bestest buddy for our first two or three years in Do-Buy, but, as often happens, got screwed by her employer and had to leave in a bit of a hurry. She visited us a couple of years later in Dubai, but that was ten years ago. We haven't seen her since. But she turned up on FaceBook, and we invited her and her boyfriend (let's call him S) of eight years to come visit. So last Thursday they arrived. Damn fine timing, because it was MamaDuck's birthday on Saturday. We've had a wonderful, wonderful time. V & S got MamaDuck some luvverly prezzies, and as a bonus, V demolished the ironing mountain while the Duck was at work. Meanwhile I was busy making Death By Chocolate v2.0.



It looks much better than v1.0, but the flavour was a bit crap because I managed to burn the chocolate while trying to melt it in the microwave. I expect that, just like software and rock albums, version 3.0 will be pretty much perfect.

Today was their final day in Madrid, so we spent the morning in town, having first made the pilgrimage for S to Estadio Santiago Bernabéu. You can see V & S crossing the road in this picture.



When I'm cooking for guests, I'm always careful to ask if there's anything they don't like / just don't eat / are allergic to. No declarations were forthcoming, so it was a bit worrying when V didn't feel too well after eating the steak and mushroom pie that I made on their first evening. The next day we discovered she doesn't do very well with celery. Damn. I had used mirepoix (finely chopped onion, carrot and celery) as a base for the gravy. I made a paella on the second day: fortunately V & S went to the market with me, and V declared that she couldn't eat bell peppers. So that got cooked separately. The next day we were talking about offal, the eating thereof. I discovered that V was no fan of kidneys either, and explained what a stroke of luck it had been that I couldn't find any at the market, otherwise the steak and mushroom pie would have been a steak and kidney pie.

And tomorrow I've got to get back to work.

Senior Moment?

All I know is, I was building a paella. I hadn't managed to buy a red pepper, because the supermarket I went to (yes, I know, I shoulda gone to the market, but it was the middle of the afternoon, so they were siesta-ing) would only sell me a bag of five, and we can't eat that many before they rot. So I bought a jar of pickled peppers.

I was struggling to open this jar when my phone rang. It was the boss telling me her ETA. No problem. I returned to the kitchen. Couldn't find the jar of peppers anywhere. Looked in the bin, all the cupboards, the oven, the fridge. Gone. Abducted by space aliens, more than likely. So I started writing this and then remembered: I'd put it in the freezer, because that sometimes makes things easier to open.

So I've got it now. Still can't get the fucker open though.

How Green Is My Baggie?

My shopping bag is this green:



Okay, maybe you think it's orange, but the printing on it says 'this bag is green'.

Yes, this Guardian-reading, tree-hugging, eco-minded person now does not leave the house without this thing stuffed in his pocket. And when he gets to Dia, he smirks at their offer of advertising material at 3 centimos apiece. If he goes to Carrefour, they are welcome to keep their undersized, underpowered biodegradable bag-ettes at 5 centimos each.



But now we have a slight problem: we need plastic bags to stick in the kitchen waste bin. So now I occasionally go to Caprabo and stuff my pockets with their free, but ecologically-sound* bags.

*About six months ago they had notices around their shops explaining how they were no longer printing a white background on their bags: this was being done to save white ink and therefore made their bags environmentally friendly**.

**Now they give you credit on their loyalty card every time you don't use their bags***.

***Obviously the next step is to charge for the bloody bags, and then I'll have to buy waste-bin liners. Or just chuck the stuff out the window, like we used to in the olden days.

Ridiculosity

For fairly easily-guessable reasons, my mobile phone bill didn't get paid this month. It's not a big deal, and I've been trying for the last few days to find out how to pay the outstanding balance. I finally managed to speak to an English-speaking agent at Orange who gave me an account number and told me I could pay it at any Banco Santander branch.

So I went to my friendly (not) local Santander branch, and tried to pay the bill. The teller laughed at me, and pointed to a sign: the one that says utilities and phone bills will only be accepted between the 10th and 20th of the month, Mondays to Thursdays, 0830-1030.

I'm not joking. These people are fecking mental.

UPDATE: THE NEXT DAY
Spoke to several people at Orange this morning. You can apparently pay via the post office, but it can take up to 14 days for them to bother to give the money to Orange (are they using PayPal, I wonder?). The only other option is to pay by credit/debit card, or do a transfer from a Spanish bank account. So I slapped some cash into my bank. Then I called Orange: gave them my card details, but they barfed at the 3-digit security code bit. Feck, double-feck, treble-feck. It fecking works for Ryanair and EasyJet! I'm just wondering if they're storing my card details in their database, rather than doing a real-time look-up (the card was replaced about six months ago - same number, but different code on the back). In which case I'm fecked.

Once again, all I'm trying to do is give the bastards money. All they're trying to do is come up with reasons why I can't. Feck, feck, feckity-feck. The modern world will be great when it's finished.

UPDATE A BIT LATER
The buggers have my account details on file: why can't they just press a button and get the money? Buggered if I know. Sob.

FINAL UPDATE
I called them again this morning, planning to ask for their full bank details so I could do a TT. But before doing that, we had another go at doing it with my debit card, and this time it bally-well-worked. (I suspect yesterday's lady thought it was a credit card). So, the next challenge will be to get some money into my account in time for the next payment in about a week's time.

Death By Chocolate

One of the things MamaDuck got me for my millionth birthday a few days ago*, was a bar of Lindt & Sprungli 90% dark chocolate. I've been consuming dark chocolate with red wine for a few years, ever since my buddy DubaiBilly (now QatarBilly) introduced me to the concept a few years ago. But I've never had 90% chocolate before, and now I know why. The stuff is inedible. It's basically compressed cocoa. MamaDuck tried a bit and agreed with me.

'But all is not lost,' she said, 'you can make a chocolate fudge cake.'

Like hell I can. People who know me are kind enough to say they enjoy my cooking, but I almost never do a dessert, and I've certainly never baked a cake in my life. But I woke up this morning and thought 'how hard can it be?'

I trawled the interwebz a bit for recipes, and thought this one from Nigella Lawson sounded pretty good. One problem: you can't get cocoa powder in Madrid supermarkets - although you can get something called ColaCoa, basically a kiddies choc drink with built-in milk and sugar. But Madrid does have a shop called 'The Things You Miss' in Chamberí which sells nothing but Brit brands - stuff like PG Tips tea, Wall's (Some Of It's) Pork Sausages, Oxo cubes and John Smith's beer. So I went there and got me some proper cocoa powder.

When I got home I started making the cake. I'd kind of thought of just making a small one to begin with, and assumed the quantities Nigella was talking about would result in something like that. But as I mixed this huge pile of flour, sugar and cocoa, I realised this was a much more serious proposition. I checked the recipe again. 'Enough,' it said 'for 10 servings, or one if you have a broken heart.'

Bugger!

I ploughed on regardless and baked about two-thirds of the mixture in a ceramic dish. After the allotted time I was surprised to see it had risen like a volcano, and even more surprised when I tipped it onto a wire rack and the whole thing disintegrated. There was a soggy mass in the middle of it that was nowhere near cooked. So I piled it all back into the dish and gave it another twenty minutes.

When that was done, I put the other one-third in to bake. This half-filled a spring-sided tin, and when the cake was baked I was able to get it out of the tin without trashing it. It did disintegrate a bit when I tried to slice it in half, but here's the finished result:



And here's the one I made earlier:



* 'The Resistance' CD by Muse, 'Nation' by Terry Pratchett, and a jelly-bean dispenser, in case you're interested.

Reasons To Be Cheerful - Part Two

Well, it could be another reason to be grumpy, but it's my birthday tomorrow. I hear you asking: why grumpy, Keefie? I reply: 'cos 52 sounds like a helluva lot to me.

MamaDuck has been on several secret missions over the last few days, and this evening she made my mouse mat unusable by plonking this load of stuff on it:



Talk about temptation! I've never been good at waiting for Christmas and birthdays. She refuses to accept that these events start at 1 minute past midnight. I'm under orders to ignore it until 8am tomorrow. Meh!

Related topic - lots of my FaceBook friends have been wishing me happy birthday (in fact I was out with a client yesterday and mentioned it would be my birthday soon: 'I know', he says. 'Well how do you know?' I ask. 'It's on FaceBook, mate,' he replies). I don't recall this happening before, and, more sinisterlyly, I don't recall telling FB when my birthday is. Although I suppose I must have told them at some point, but forgot 'cos I'm so old and prolly got Altshweiner's.

Reasons To Be Grumpy

MamaDuck's cold, which has been incubating for a while, burst into its full glory this morning. So she hasn't gone to work, and needs to see a doctor. In our usual lackadaisical way, we haven't registered with the local Health Centre since we moved in April. And that's because we didn't get a new Empadronomiento* when we moved. We nearly did: we got as far as downloading the form and filling it in, but didn't actually give it to anybody. So, off we trot to the Ayuntamiento*, along with half the population of our district. When we found the building, there was a queue to get through the door (all bags and bodies were being x-rayed). Then there was a queue to get a ticket for the queue. And then there was the crowd of people waiting to be seen by about 15 officials. Our number came up after about 50 minutes, and we presented every scrap of documentation we had to the nice lady at the counter. She looked at it, tapped something into the computer, and handed us the sheet of paper she'd just printed. It was clearly not an empadronomiento. It was an appointment for tomorrow.

Ho hum. So MamaDuck got herself an appointment at our old Health Centre in Chueca, and has gone to cough and splutter all over a doctor.

*Empadronomiento =registration with the local council so they know how many binmen, schools and traffic wardens they need.

* Ayuntamiento - Town Hall.