Vacances été 2009

Les vacances sont presque passées et aucun article n’a été ajouté ; pourquoi ?

On croirait qu’en vacances on a plus de temps. Oui et non, en fait on n’a que 24 heures comme tous les jours de tous les jours, seulement qu’au lieu d’en passer un tiers au bureau et un autre tiers à dormir nous en faisons un autre usage.

Même si au quotidien je partage des bons moments avec ma famille, j’ai profité, pour ma part, pendant ces congés de leur présence. Nous avons ainsi fait de bonnes promenades et baignades, souvent déjà tôt le matin; avant huit heures. Suivies d’un bon petit déjeuner à la catalane : « pa amb tomaquet » et le reste.
Les soirs, pas nécessairement tous, nous sommes sortis aussi nous rafraîchir, flâner, goûter de l’ambiance locale de Palamós, que nous apprécions beaucoup pour son authenticité.

S’il est vrai qu’il y a quand même des touristes, comme nous, ce n’est pas le débordement classique des villes qqplage.
Lorsqu’on se promène dans les rues on entend parler autochtone : catalan, espagnol, andalou ; les gens se connaissent, se parlent, …

Qu’ai-je fait du reste du temps ? Un peu de plage, sous parasol, toujours.
J’ai profité pour mettre de l’ordre dans les données de l'ordinateur, les répertoires, les fichiers, renommer, reclasser, organiser ; mettre à jour des bases de données laissées un peu sur le côté.
N’ayant pas de connexion à l’appart et les wifi étant désormais toutes protégées je n’ai pu me connecter que via les cybercafés, pour rester à jour avec les messages surtout.


Du point de vue peinture, tout en ayant pris mon attirail, je n’ai fait qu’une aquarelle. L’envie y est mais l’état d’esprit n’est pas à la tâche.


J’ai lu pas mal, surtout à la plage ; comme je disais à l’ombre du parasol et une boisson fraîche dans le frigo : du Ken Follett « Alto riesgo », Harlan Coben « Les bois », « El hombre que cambió su casa pour un tulipán » de Fernando Trias de Bes, un essai traitant des bulles financières et de la crise mondiale, origines et conséquences.
J’ai commencé aussi « The Shadow of the Wind » de Carlos Ruiz Zafón. C’est comique que je lise ce roman en anglais quand la version originale est en espagnol alors qu’en général c’est des ouvrages anglais dont je lis la traduction. C’est le monde à l’envers.

2008 : Summer holidays

I always think that during the holidays I will have time enough for writing, studying and/or water-colouring, but apparently it is not the case. I do not blame the weather that is fantastically bright and hot.
But the days are passing and I haven’t yet written a single text.

We are spending our holidays in Palamós as usual. We have come here for more than twelve years, in fact I used to come here when I was a child because it was the easiest place to come from La Bisbal by public transport.

We have met a lot of friends and family. We had a special lunch on the first weekend of our holiday, where all my cousins were supposed to assist.
My youngest sister, Paqui, organised the meeting, in Sant Feliu de Boada.

She had already done the same seven years ago but unfortunately I was the only one missing. Finally, this time, some of my cousins, living in Barcelona, couldn’t come; but even so we succeeded to be sixty two : nineteen direct cousins and relative spouses and children.

Most of the children were round the twenties, some of them came with their boy/girl friend.

It was very nice because these last times we only had met for funerals and sad situations.

It was the first time I saw Some of the younger.

To see more pictures to this event go here.

In our daily holiday rythm, we have more or less established a kind of routine. I try to get up at half past seven and I go for a jogging alongside the beach for more or less three to four kilometres. Evelyne, as she can’t jog anymore because of her knee problems, comes walking. Often she leaves fifteen minutes before me so we get to our destination more or less at the same time.
There we have a fresh swim round a quarter past eight when most tourist are just waking up. After that we have a coffee with milk and toasts and then we go back home. Sometimes our son comes with us on his rollers.

My daughter and her schoolmate friend Amandine stay at home sleeping till late. Sometimes when we are back they have already had breakfast themselves.

Then Evelyne and me, we go to the daily market to buy fresh fish and fruits trying to decide, depending on what is to be sold, which meal we could prepare.

We decide then if we go to the beach till three or four and have lunch just after we come back or if we stay at the apartment or go for a walk and go later to the beach, after having had lunch, round three till seven in the evening.

In the evening we go again for a walk and have a drink somewhere outside on the promenade while seeing the other tourist strolling.

From time to time we go to visit some villages in the nearby like Monells, Cruilles, Pals, Begur, etc. We use too to go to Peralada to increase our cava stock.

Traditionally one morning we go on food to the Cap Gros at three kilometres to the North to see the sunrise and then from Cala Margarida we observe the departure of the fishing boats from the Palamós fishing-harbour.

While I am on the beach I mostly read or listen to the music I have uploaded in my Ipod.
At the apartment I reorganise all the data, in my computer, because I have never enough time to arrange during the year.
I have decided to assign to everyone of my external disk drives a specific kind of data : music, data and documents, pictures and videos, films, etc and the biggest one is used as back-up of the others.

Since the arrival of the wifi era things have changed quite a lot. At the beginning it was quite easy to get connected to the Internet squatting one of the many open networks. Today only a few of the many accessible networks are unprotected. As the apartment we rent has no Internet connexion I am not able to access the Net apart from, time to time when I am in the courtyard, because there is still someone who apparently doesn’t cares or doesn’t know how to protect his network. Then I only consult quickly the emails as it is not a reliable connexion.