grandma part 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VSxe78qw9A


as stated, i was chillin'/kickin' it nearabouts andalucia in the first half of 1996 when the strong urge to spend time in France hit me...... truth be told -- the eastern parts of spain are somewhat like unto France -- morese the northerner you go -- so that Barcelona, a long long time ago, was some kind of France........ Madrid has dick all to do with Barcelona or anything else and is a world unto itself......

my desire to kick it in France was something i wussed out on as a 19 year old and ended up spending almost a year studying mass media and volunteering part time on some local tv station tv show in madrid that had real journalists and theatre actors but probably no viewers...... certainly they never wanted to call us........ the culture was all too much for me to get my head around but at least i was getting the language..... my grandma probably realized i wouldn't slot into life in spain permanently the way most of her other grandkids (some 20 odd of them) would........ the non-australian grandkids, that is..... but she still tried to encourage me to get myself situated nicely in life and work hard -- however i was so young i never cared about those things and just wanted to kick it and chill a lot come what may........

in political matters, as mentioned, grandma loved Franco, Spain's dictator since the start of wwii when Spain was done with her civil war -- Franco died like a year before i was born and since then left wing socialists took over -- my grandma hated them and spat venom about how corrupt they were and insisted Felipe Gonzalez and friends should be locked up in prison....... she and others of her social economic standing were more inclined to vote for PP party which is more right wing..... incidentally, since taking spanish citizenship at age 19 i have been eligible to vote in national and local elections in spain.........

while i studied in madrid and kicked it at age 20 in 1996/97 -- i made it a sure habit to eat the day's main meal, eaten around 2pm, with grandma on fridays... i even mentioned it to my friends at the university and such like..... they laughed and thought it was funny a grandkid would enjoy seeing his grandma so much but i had already missed out on 20 years of it by then (almost) -- so no sense not taking advantage -- and we got along so well anyway -- perhaps subconsciously i remembered her visit when i was a little baby.....

on Fridays grandma and i would eat her sick food -- it was completely dope and phat -- which is to say, excellent -- what a great cook --- afterwards we'd play some spanish version of gin-rummy with a spanish deck for nickels or 5 cent pieces which in spain used to be called 'duros' or, a 'duro' (same word as 'hard') -- but this was before the Euro currency was introduced......

when the Euro was introduced i was resident in Paris and had effected my plan to live in France first formulated in 1996 at age 19....... it was obviously end of 2001 - start of 2002 when i found myself in Paris already a month and a half - give or take - when the Euro was introduced -- somehow we went from Franks one day to Euros the next -- by this time i had almost or already found an apartment in a very expensive part of Paris rented out by a Texan called Laura married to a French man with two attractive daughters, one moreso than the other..... Laura was also very sexy....... i have never seen such sexy looking women beyond age 30 or even 40 as in Paris, and this was when i was 25 and not much interested in women over 30 anyway.........

shortly after arriving in Paris i found work for a small language academy -- teaching at the biggest oil company in Europe, Total Fina Elf at their Paris headquarters which consisted of two large 'skyscraper' towers in a business district zone of Paris called 'La Defense'.... i also taught some other classes at Nestle's French Headquarters in the suburbs -- in fact, i was surprised after my high school history studies, in which i took great interest in the first two world wars, to see that i had to cross the Rhone or Rhine river to get to the Nestle cafeteria from the main building...... it was very narrow at this part of its trajectory.....
i also taught some english language classes at a real estate agent for a while and in the academy itself that mostly contracted me to a Le Monde film critic journalist and a film producer's PA and such like......

i have a great many recollections of my half year in Paris however i do not draw on them much -- i was able to learn a great deal by preparing myself before arriving and then trying hard while there to learn their language...... although it is still very difficult for me to understand spoken French -- i do very well at it with minorities and disadvantaged speakers and also speakers of French as a second language....... certainly i can speak more freely in French than can understand -- the same is true of Chinese which i later learnt to a very limited extent in China

at one point one of my students at the big oil company told me that if i lived at Porte Maillot (seen in the Harrison Ford movie, 'Frantic') that i must be rich (as it was a very rich area) - my rent was 500 euros a month in 2002 for a shoebox - but i certainly was not rich -- far from it as time i could have been spending driving a taxi and saving money in sydney before that i had spent watching tv making nothing........ i told this same student that i was not rich and that i thought australia was a backward country -- he told me that if i thought australia was backwards i should go to china

i took his advice -- i still think australia is backwards but now i can tell u exactly why

by this point, both in spain and later in france, i had not much interest in going to america where i would end up having to follow some american dildo's lead and look stupid just coz i didn't have a green card or u.s. citizenship........ even now it's common for americans to use aliens to make themselves look better....... in this respect i have no pity for america's current economic dilemma, eat shit arsehole, as they say..... by this point i had spent 3 months in america and at least i could say that virginians were quite decent people to say the very least

back in spain i hooked up with grandma again after the paris adventure........ this would be our last encounter as i would leave for australia and she would leave for the 'otro barrio' (the afterlife).......