The magical cup of tea

Once upon a time, there was this small but not at the very least ugly nor dumb lady who was trying to write a paper for a conference. The paper dealt with trying to unmess a mess that had a very awkward and messy structure inside her head filled with two kinds of little people: the neurones (leaded by this little lady called dorotea after that famous revolutionary icon) and the hormones (leaded by this little table dancer called jeannette who was actually a real and complete b*tch). These two kinds of little people were the ones responsible for the messy mess to unmess... and there were always cruel and sanguinary battles between Dorotea (the cool revolutionary) and jeannette (the b*tch) which ended in the destruction of some members of both armies. Anyway, one day, amongst one of this sanguinary battles which jeannette was winning with a great advantage, the fuel cells in charge of movilising Dorotea's army ran out of power.
"Oh my God" Dorotea said "what the hell are we supposed to do!!"
No one from her army had a clue of how to steal some fuel from the other army without compromising their position or where to find some more.
It was a very sanguinary battle (as I have said twice now), little people from the revolutionary army were exhausted and without motivation, it all seemed to be working against them, even the weather was awful... when derepente.... this little fellow who nobody noticed because he was little stood out from the croud of injured soldiers and shouted: "my dear lady the revolutionary Dorotea why don't we induce an uptake of a magical cup of tea?"
Everybody else's eyes turned immediatelly to the small hamster who was in charge of turning the wheel that was in charge of making the small people's habitat work... nobody had ever taken him seriously... after all, he was just a hamster...
Dorotea, however, in her wisdom, shared the vision of the small hamster... maybe that was exactly what they needed- she thought... Then instead of directing her army to attack the tabledancer's army... she sent them to induce the need for a cup of tea in order to concentrate their power and finally defeat the other army.
And then I went to the kitchen, prepared a cup of tea, drank it and I've just lost approximatelly 10 or 15 minutes of the time I was supposed to destine to the preparation of my paper which is due in 2 days time fantasising about how my brain works....

Salam!

Such great heights

I have to give a presentation tomorrow!!! and yeah, haven't finished... anyway, whilst overflying Manchester (coming back from celebrating bf's bthday at Prague) just because some nutter thought it was funny to say that there was a bomb (or at least that's what they told me), I thought about the song named after my blog entry (or the other way around... doesn't matter). It is a great song which I remembered from a tv add, I actually knew it before but didn't know that I liked it... anyway, I was overflying Mcr... and in such great heights I remembered I used to be really angry with many of my friends because they kind of disappointed me many times (many many many), but then I realised that I probably disappointed them also, and by letting myself be "in such great heights" of let's say... disappointment I didn't give myself the opportunity to live my life because I was really angry with them.

I don't know if this makes sense or not and I have actually forgotten most of my written (spoken, heard...)English language, but anyway, I'm not angry at my friends anymore or at least now I realise they didn't want to hurt me, they just didn't care about the stupid little details I care about... as much as I probably don't care about their really important small details. So there you go, I love them very much again and I am trying not to rely on their caring too much, I just accept them.

Oh, and I also realised how nice is to look at Mcr at night from such great heights... it's just like watching the plane approach to the immense lake of lights in Mexico city (by the way chilangolandia rules and f**ck them all who think the opposite and haven't visited it yet), but with much less lights.

I realise this entry would be better if discussed with my psychologist (which I don't have and don't plan to get one) but I guess it could be useful for you my only two faithful readers... and it might redeem me from my previous entry (for which i'm not at the very least sorry).

Anyway, enjoy a nice view of Prague

It takes a PhD to discover:

I really should be writing my abstract for a conference I want to go to but I thought of this during another conference... so actually it's not very useful for me to go to a conference anyway....

It takes a PhD to discover (and a naturally concentration impaired individual i.e. a woman like me):

• That you really don't know a thing about anything and that the people who brags about knowing too much are seriously damaged or end up killed.


• That your self-esteem won't get better even if you let yourself get educated too much


• That by the time you're doing a PhD your body will start growing huge just in the places where it shouldn't


• That no matter how much you try to put it off eventually you MUST GET A JOB! (and that if you put it off too long you'll end up in so much debt that you won't profit from your earnings from your job)


• That maybe your grandma was right and you should've married that handsome 40 yr old doctor and live your life satisfying his needs (... that you never actually knew your grandma that much to get that kind of advice and that the 40 yr old doctor never existed... and you're nuts)


• That everybody else is doing a crappy research just like you... they just convince themselves and others that they're not.


• That whoever is doing math modelling stands a better chance of actually getting the degree... by the time examiners get to the 3rd really confusing and completely useless equation they'll be so fed up that they won't even care to read the rest and they'll give you the degree anyway (si no puedes con el maestro, choréatelo)

And that was all, as you can see I really think the conference in Toulouse was very interesting and useful ;) and I had the opportunity to practise my anaemic French. Oh oh, and I got a nice surprise from bf who gave me flowers, baked brownies and lasagna and set the table with candles when I got back, I thought that behaviour was an urban legend!!! :)

Meanwhile please enjoy the nice picture of the beautiful medieval town of Carcassonne... really, if you are going to study a PhD do it in Toulouse, nice food, nice people, nice weather, nicely near to Spain (Barcelona) and nice school. Back to you abstract...

Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again :)

Ha! I just heard that one from my highschool friend who visited me this weekend... and I found it really appropriate for this blog, eventhough everybody else has used it for their blogs. Nevermind... well this weekend was cool, the sun shining, the people smiling, the highschool friend from denmark visiting (the best from denmark setting aside danish rols). She helped me discover that whenever there's sun, Manchester is not that unpleasant. I met Castlefield for the first time since I tried to visit it when i had just arrived and ended up really lost, I witnessed how to move from a lower to a higher channel by using something like a dam or something, I realised that Chelsea was playing a semifinal at the Old Trafford, I confirmed that the Manchester Cathedral is not Catholic, etc etc etc... it was nice and "nice is good". Well, I just wanted to share this webpage that I found when googling the blue phrase, hope you enjoy it.

My favourite movie

First of all, this entry should have been published (or written) a year ago, when I first figured out about my favourite movie. I don't know if the fact of being a woman has anything to do with it... (i guess any guy will say yes eventhough they don't know... ) but I have always struggled to find my favourite stuff, meaning what do I enjoy the most. And that is really a problem because eventhough I always thought that chemical engineering was my thing, i sometimes wonder what would have happened if i had picked the other thing i thought of doing: History... well we will never know because I'm now a chemical engineer and a big one (meaning I'm already on the PhD... to turn back and study history).
Anyway, continuing with my point, I don't even know if I have some kind of hidden hobby which i haven't realised i have and that really grinds my gears :D I mean, everybody's got something that they enjoy to do, whether it's flying a kite, sailing a yacht or playing gitar... EVERYBODY!!!! except me of course, I can do many things but they're not my favourite things.
Anyway (again) realising which was my favourite movie kind of put me off from depressing because everybody knows their favourite things except me. And, in order to make this entry a little shorter, i'm just going to say the name:

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

First of all the title, I mean who names a movie after some poet who maybe half of the world doesn't know, with the words of a poem which probably half of the movie groupies won't even care to read. (I actually don't understand the words... in the context)
Second. Who would have ever thought (before that movie) that Jim Carrey was actually a good dramatic actor
Third. If you want to have one of the best leading ladies, the choice is clear: Kate Winslet
Fourth. Why have a cheesy stupid love movie (comedy or drama) when you can have a complicated love story in which all the characters are a little wacko and play with the psyche of their co-actors?

Anyway, eternal sunshine rules!

And here comes the best part: why have just one favourite movie when you can have three? (except for the fact that you wanted to choose one?) Ok, having determined that choosing is not my thing, i decided to have a top 3 which are the movies that i consider the best of the best of the best (for me and my small moviewatcher experience). So, the other two are Dr Strangelove which I don't know why i thought it was hylarious (might have something to do with the fact that the Inspector from the pink panther appears on it) and The great dictator which somehow reminds me of my s.q.z (squeezy) brother.

So, again, i should be having one choice and sticking with it as my favourite movie, but then again, that wouldn't be very flexible would it?

New & interesting subjects of study... or not

See, this is what I am talking about when I say that usually in countries in which the vast majority of the population has its basic needs fulfiled (i.e. food, hygiene, health and roof), it is more common to see that kind of crap as a PhD theme. Not that I don't like it, is that I just completely miss the point of how that research will do the slightest benefit to people for example who are starving. Is not that I find my PhD completely useful to people who are starving... because they actually wouldn't benefit from it... directly, it's just that I really really don't see the point of studying (using MR imaging and complex stuff like that) how rich people react to monetary rewards of under 200 pounds. Do you see the point of it? please let me know!

Ok, that might have been my cruel and unfunny opinion but I still don't see the point!... so I'll keep doing that whenever I feel like it and there's nothing you can do about it ;) or maybe until some of you... trio of readers... if you still read this... come out with an answer about how does that kind of research matter... and why should we bother to keep trying to study something useful if in the end we will end up earning the same degree as the one they gave to that guy studying rich/poor people reactions to monetary rewards.

SoLeRo ICe

Today I saw an add in my yahoo.com.mx account in which they were promoting an ice lolly called Solero. I just wanted to say that the slogan "para esta temporada" (meaning, for this season) sounded to me as if they were mocking us here. For this season...!!?? for this season I still have my heater on, I still wear scarves to go out and I still have a cold!!! damn you English weather!!!!!

Ha!

PLEASE ADOPT US!!!!

After a whole month of inactivity mainly due to the fact that i've been wasting my time trying to speak with the $%&/%·! bureaucracy (¿?) of the prestigious University of Manchester, I'm writing again after my well deserved long weekend in Cornwall.

I must say, I wasn't actually expecting the weekend to go nice, I didn't have too much expectations from a retired couple who volunteered for a programme called Host. HOW WRONG I WAS!!!!!!!! It was funny that when we got out of the pseudoplane (are the ones with propellers called planes anyway??? should they still exist in an era where you can actually see the Earth from the stratosphwhateverosphere?... the link used to be there i guess they don't do it anymore)... anyway, after getting off the pseudoplane, the first person I saw waiting in the waiting lounge was an old grumpy lady. My first thought was to run away and get on the next plane going anywhere, but then I realised that she wasn't the host, and that the person waiting for us had a small resemblance with any of my friend's dads... not old, still active and actually fun.

The weekend consisted of trying to keep on with the hosts, a retired couple of about 60 something who actually were more active than us (J & I). We managed to see most of the great places to visit in Cornwall, we had wonderful food (really posh really good really countrylike homecooked handpicked). We went to a place where they still sold handcrafted goods from England!!! (never thought those kind of activities...i.e. handcrafting things... were possible in this turbodeveloped country).

Anyway, it was the greatest among the greatest experiences i have had in England so far, and the couple actually invited us to come along and visit again anytime (when they have time...) Great, now I know that British Hospitality exists and that I should go out once in a while trying to know more people from other places instead of being president of the Mexican society ;)

sEVerELy bLUe

Today's post is about other ways to turn blue, it's going to be short since i'm not quite in the mood. So there it goes:

1. You could be a yellow shirt owned by this girl who could swear on his dead bulldog's grave that blue jeans will not, never ever, do the nasty action of undyeing (¿?) themselves and leaving a huge blue spot in your (you are the yellow shirt remember?) belly. You could then (still being the yellow shirt) have this girl owner who'd try all to undye (¿?) you even using chlorine which is known (by anybody who has been washing his/her own clothes for a long period of time) to leave you without any colour. So after that, you'd still be yellow but with this very nice blue spot in your belly with a white halo (nimbus) surrounding it.

OR...

2. You could be the girl who doesn't know how to wash different colours separately... or who actually does know but didn't have the delicacy of opening the already operating washing machine which was full of light colours and instead put the yellow shirt (yeah, now you're not the yellow shirt) in the blue jeans washing machine... (returning to the first sentence) you could be that girl and write a paper for a coming conference which is actually a crappy conference (and the paper is due in 2 days)... then let your supervisor proof read it and realise he's not gonna do it because he's on vacation and then let somebody else (from whom the commentaries really really matter) read it and realise (by yourself) that the paper was not good at all in the first place. And then depress and eat chocolate which you actually don't have and can't go n buy at the store in front because it's already 10 pm and it's closed... and you're fat. Then you'd really turn blue.

Salam

how to turn extraordinarily blue

Well, I guess this is one of the crucial questions that i should be solving when my blog is called extra-terrestrially blue. I think I thought of that question yesterday when remembering my mom. Being so far away and so incredibly immature (as I've been recently described), when I get scared (...like when there's a monster below my bed...or when the f***ng switch of my flat makes that damn buzzing noise and I don't know why, or when the damn scallies are outside my flat being nasty) I hug my bear (yeah! I don't care the immigration officer's opinion when he asks "you do study a PhD right?" after getting a glance of my Fuzzy bear) and start thinking about my mom. When I was little, so little I was barely visible (as you can witness how little I still am) my mom used to tell me stories when trying to make me sleep without using chloroform, valium or any other non-admited way of sleeping children... One of those days when she was R-E-A-L-L-Y tired and I was particularly annoying, and she had already ran out of reused stories, she started talking about the story of why my (then favourite, now disappeared) blue carebear was blue. It went something like this:

Mom: "Once upon a time, there was this really nice, easy going, friendly bear who liked very much to sleep (thus the name sleepybear). Although he was very nice he also was quite stubborn and always wanted to do his will. He lived in a cabin in the middle of the forest with another friend. Both of them were very beautiful brown bears (such as bears should be) and were very good friends. Surrounding the cabin there was a bush of very nice blue berries which were nourished by the bigger bear (the one that wasn't sleepy bear)....... Then, you have to integrate x squared from zero to..."
Me: "Huh????!!!! Mooooooooooooooooom you're sleeping!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Mom: "Wha..? where? oh, sorry.... Ok, where was I? Oh, ok... the bigger bear loved his blueberries and was taking care of them for the annual marmalade fair in town, he was aware of how..... the circumpherence of a circle can be calculated as...."
Me: "Moooooooooooooooooom!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Mom: oh yeah... Ok, the bigger bear was aware of how much sleepy bear wanted to get a taste of the blueberries, and always reminded him that he would have to wait until they were ripe enough to eat.... because when the electric resistance is calculated by the sine of the.....
Me: "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!! what??????????"
Mom:" oh, sorry.... Then there was one day, when bigger bear went out to get some groceries. As usual he reminded sleepy bear not to eat the blueberries because they weren't ripe enough. Anyway, he went to the grocery store and left sleepy bear. Sleepy bear was really trying not to look at the blueberries which could be seen from his window, but he couldn't help it and he went out to get some and calm his apetite..... which by the way can be described as an hyperbolic trajectory...."
Me: "damn!"
Mom: "....was I sleeping? ok, well, as you know, blueberries when they have still not ripened have a very different colour which is kind of turquoisish or acqua, and that is because they haven't become completely blue. Well, after eating the unripened blueberries, sleepy bear started feeling a little ill, and then he realised that something funny was happening to him, he was turning blue!!!!! Of course, when he came back, bigger bear realised that sleepy bear had eaten a big amount of his precious blueberries. He was not mad, he was actually amused by the fact that sleepy bear was now blue, he cared for sleepy bear while he felt ill (which was about a week....."
Me: "zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz"

So I didn't get to hear what happened after that... and of course my mom didn't remember anything the next day because she was making all up. And that is one of the ways one can turn blue, and also that is the reason why I believe that acqua is a kind of blue, when everybody else thinks (wrongly) that it's actually a kind of green.

Additional comments about this post:

• Yes, I did have a carebear which is cheesy, and I don't care
• Yes, I do have a fuzzy bear with which I usually sleep and which I hug vehemently when scared.... I don't care
• Yes, I know I souldn't be telling this kind of stories because they're cheesy... I don't care
• Yes, I'm immature... I'm trying to deal with it.... I'm also trying to deal with global warming and can't do anything about it.
• Yes, I haven't finished my damn article which is due next week.... I do care... so I'll start right now.

EL UNGÜENTO VETERINARIO DE MI TÍA

hi dee hoo little precious creatures of creation (cr*p that's what happens when f***ng abc 1 in freeview doesn't show anything else than Home Improvement)... today we'll talk about an ointment old as life itself used by my parents to give their children (me and my siblings of course) a sense of safety and prompt healing, the miracle performing "ungüento veterinario de la tía" (veterinary ointment of the... aunt?... whose aunt anyway!!!???) created by the world famous "Ordoñez" laboratories in México city. First of all, I have to confess that, although the fact that the name said "veterinary ointment" seemed a little odd, i have never doubted of it's prestige, curative powers and world fame until I came back to Manchester and my really funny former housemates, who by the way had never heard of anything like it, started mocking me for having a veterinary ointment. It never ocurred to me that, the fact that you could only find it in veterinary shops was because it was meant to use it as a VETERINARY OINTMENT!!!!

Anyway, I am writing about it today because while rubbing this curative thing on a bruise that I made myself by skating and trying to stop using the technique of sliding on the floor (which by the way only works on ice) (long sentence now, difficult to follow... I don't care) I read on the label of its very vintage aluminium tin, that it is used as "auxiliary to swelling caused by bruising, in small wounds" and that it is used to avoid "bacterian contamination and to promote cicatrization" (does that word even exist? actually it does according to babylon).

So, all this time, a lot of time to be precise, I have been using an ointment to heal my bruises and other muscular pains which is actually intended to promote cicatrization!!!!

And that my friends, seemed funny enough to write it down in this blog which (now it is official) nobody cares to read but me!!!!

Still I must say that the "ungüento" is either the best placebo ever, or it really works on bruises, because you could never beat the soothing feeling it leaves after having rubbing it. I strongly recommend it!

WANNA GO HOME!!!!

Hum... it's just been 2 weeks since I arrived from beautiful Mexico, yet, I wanna go back! Maybe it's just the gloomy weather, or the fact that PhD is proving to be the best way to lose valuable work experience. I don't know. I just miss the fact of going out to Coyoacan (my-kind-of-town) and having some "papas de carro" (perhaps a filthy version of fried potatoes such as the much processed Walkers). I miss the fact of looking out of the window every now and again and knowing that even if the weather is gloomy, it's not going to stay that way THE WHOLE YEAR (except perhaps for 2 wonderful but not long lasting weeks in the middle of the summer). I miss the fact of eating green salsa whenever you are in the mood of going out and purchasing it from the "tortilla on the bicycle" guy. I miss being able to call my sister "naca" just because she's bugging me to change the channel to see "La fea más bella" (The Mexican version of the Colombian soap that the US guys remade in Ugly Betty).

But anyway, grass always seems greener on the other side of the fence, I would probably be complaining about not having a job if I was there ;) .... or not.... anyway. Hopefully this time it's not going to be a year before I see clearer skies and before I eat tortillas again, even if they are now really expensive because the f******ng gringos decided to use maiz as their new source of fuel and the f******ing government decided to help the f*******ing corporations so that they sell tortillas cheaper than the small "tienditas de la esquina".

MISS HOME!!!!!!

ode to the wonderfully great Marías cookies

Again trying to do my PhD, and of course, again not able to concentrate, as you can witness by this entry. I just wanted to exalt, praise and extol (those where the words I found in babylon for what i wanted to do) the really individual taste of the Marías cookies. People here in Manchester (who of course know the Marías cookies) have told me that the McVitties digestive cookies taste the same.... well, these guys are incredibly W-R-O-N-G!!!!! This evening I had this really uncomfortable hole in my stomach, the kind of hole that you cannot fill with a fruit ('cause of the boring taste) but that you shouldn't fill with a toast (flour products have proven that they make you swell). What could I do? And then it stroke me: I've brought Marias cookies!!!!!!!!! You can't imagine how different from the McVitties they taste!!!! It's just a shame that they don't sell them here... together with all the delicious things you can get in Mexico.


Darn! why do Anglo-saxon people have decided to live with that thing they call food for their whole life!!!!!!