September 2005
16 L.A - DUBLIN ( the smell of Europe)
NEW SHOWS
Hello;
The room is in North London, in the back garden of Susan Gaulier. It is a room with lots of light and nice floors and a big mirror that covers one of the walls. There are curtains and sound system and toilets and small kitchen to do coffees and teas or what ever you fell like doing.
We met here to rehears but that day we were going to use the whole afternoon to talk about a new show. Kathy, Cal, Lucy, Toby, Petra, Peter and Angela and myself were there ready to share our ideas. Well that was the idea.
You must understand that we work together not just because the things we do once they are finish are incredible and everybody like them and now we are the owners of a big empire that has made us rich and so and so, no, we work together because we like each others very much and because we have fun. If we have problems between ourselves the thing is more complicated and until now it has not been possible to work while people where angry with each other's.
There was a conflict happening from days before the meting and that create a traffic jam in the whole creative fluids of the meeting.
I am not going to go now into the whole thing because there is going to be more opportunities to talk about that in the near future. This is just a guess.
We decided that our new show should be something epic, an epic story that will close the trilogy of “Stiff” and “Cooped”. We also said that the characters of Spymonkey would be the same ones and the creative team will be the same.
I suggested the possibility of bringing someone new to work with us; my idea was to bring a writer. Nobody saw that as a nice idea and finally it was the figure of a puppeteer the person that we are going to try to find for next time.
The meeting was shit. There was a horrible tension that was very painful. We said not to ideas that were there before like; “Bless” the show we were going to create before we went to Las Vegas, we said not to “Tale of two cities”, and a couple of things more that I do not remember.
We went home, knowing that when you are doing things so down and bad things can only get better.
Have fun.
BAD VIWE
Hello;
There are many problems that happen while you work with people. The classic one is when two people of the same group get involve sentimentally and then the problems in the couple come into the group.
Another kind of problem is incompatibilidad the characters. This is the more normal problem. When you meet someone and you start to work together you never think that when the everyday life arrives the problems are going to come. These problems usually get resolve with professionalism.
And then there are the problems that appear when you live together for a long time and like the old couples you grow apart. These ones are very difficult to resolve because they appear after many moments when someone has got hurt and it looks like there are not more chances for forgiveness. I am always really scare with these ones.
The way these last problems appear is with a bad vibe. When you work with people you always know when they have a problem with you or when you are sad or when you are going trough something. The situation is always very clear for everybody else even if you do not realise that every body knows what you are going through. We suffer from one of those; the first symptoms are that everybody is happy in a very fake way. People snatch for not reason the way the emotions go from happiness to extreme sadness is very radical.
Things get rushed and nobody is concentrated in what the do thou they look like it. Whenever there is a silence you can cut it with a knife and everybody look to everybody with twisted eyes.
The whole think always exploit at one point, always for the best if you are very professional because when you work in a group you do not stop leaving to do you job so everything get mixed up and you grow what ever may happen.
Have fun.
PETRA IS BACK
Hello people;
I am very happy to see my friends. Yesterday night I saw my friends Paul Hunter and Hailey Carmichael. Hailey was working with us in the show in Zumanity. She is a great actress and I like her very much.
I had been rehearsing the whole day and I had told her that probably I will be able to see her later on but I finished much earlier than I expected so I went there straight on from the house where I am staying when I am in London. Thank you very much Cal and Matt that generously cop with me while I am in the capital of Europe. But let me carry on with what I was trying to tell you… what was that? Oh, yes, I arrived to her flat and Paul, Bradley and her where about to have dinner. I joined them and thou I was a little bit embarrass the dinner was great and I eat very well and the whole plate. Bradley left immediately after because he was doing a movie and he had to shoot the next day.
Paul, Hailey and me have not seen each other for the last two years and there were many things to catch up. We went to the pub.
The three of us have probably spent three quarters of the time that we have spent together since we know each other's in the pub. The pubs have changed a lot since we met. Now you have many more choices, the wine is better and places are more sophisticated.
We drunk beer and we talked a lot.
I like Paul and Hailey. They have been very good friends for many years and thou the three of us work in the same profession we can talk about other things and this is a sign, specially with actors, that the friendship is for real.
Petra has finished her TV series and she is here to work in Cooped once again.
Have fun
COOPED
Hello;
The play appeared in front of us like by magic. No we did not employed no Harry fucking Potter it is a poetic way of talking about the way our old play is up. We put the set up, we unpacked all the costumes and we revisited the props that had been sleeping for the last three years in a farm in Niderweningen (Switzerland).
It is old, it looks old and thanks God we are going to make it new and we are going to make it young and tasty.
The set cricks and makes funny noises like and old man whose bones have already seen a lot. I like the look of it.
We start little by little to do a run trough. It is not going to gain pace because some of us do not have such a good memory and we do not know the lines. The show does not wake up and probably it is best like that because we are going to have to do some plastic surgery and make the whole thing look younger. We will definitely change the nose, the one we have is very pointy and we want one a little bit more delicate and Joan Fontaine look like. Then the thighs would get a big liposuction so they would be able to run fast and agile and the tits would have to get lift up as much as possible. They are really saggy at the moment and Lucy is a perfect nip and tuck person so there is not going to be any problems with that.
Cal would make sure that everything is needs to be retouch would get a good massage.
We have arrived to the middle of the show and we can continuo. There are many things that we do not have to be able to go trough the show properly so for now Cooped will go back to sleep and we will get him a live like a Frankenstein creature by the 27 th of September.
Have fun.
MEETING
Hi guys,
Spymonkey things, yes we have had a meeting with Lucy and Kathy. We talked first with Lucy because we did not have many things to talk with her so we went with her trough all the things and then she took her bicycle and went back home. She was in Brighton and we were in Las Vegas, High Tecnology.
Lucy is great, or better she is the greatest girl ever. She is our ser designer and she is been working with Spymonkey from the very beginning. Now after all this years I think we are learning to appreciate her. Before we knew she was very good but we all have learnt a lot over this years and now she is very strong and very good. I hope she reads this once so she will know how much I like her and if someone in the world need a costume designer or a ser designer you should contact Spymonkey and I am sure you could get to work with her. We call her “snide”. No coment.
There is a possible nice tour ahead of us. It seems sure that we will spend end of September, October and beginning of November in Calgary(Canada). We have been there before and we had a great time. We will be working in our show COOPED and we will be working with our friends from One Yellow Rabbit. Hopefully while we are there we will be getting lot's of gigs from presenters that will come from USA and that will make possible for us to see again our American friends.
Have fun.
LONDON
Hello;
And hello to London I said as I was getting into Waterloo Station in the Eurostar all the way from Paris. After almost two years without visiting the city nothing seemed to have change. It is not true too many things have happen and probably the most decisive one is the bombs of the 7 th of July. I had rid that bus so many times that I can't believe that could happen. That they we were in Laguna Beach, in five stars hotel by the Pacific Ocean enjoying a weekend with all the people from Zumanity.
London is big and it is scary but very playful. I have to get the tube here to go to Highgate. When I am in London I stay at Cal's place in Muswel Hill.
I walk around Waterloo Station and there is like big reel of film going really fast trough my mind. The material of that film is have of my life because now that I am 36 I have been living in London almost 15 years. I can see in the movie many important moments that I have spent in that station. There was a time, almost when I arrive to London that my whole life was going trough that station. I was living in New Malden (South of London) and I have to get the train from here to go there and also I had to arrive to Waterloo in order to be in London.
I met Miren here the first time she came to visit London. We met at the meeting point and we felt really small in the middle of this entire people from all over the world that they always seemed to know where they are going.
I got into the tube and I thought once again on the 7 th of July and all the people that died that day. In every single stop of the tube I can recall a moment of my life attached to it; Charing Cross, Embankment, Euston, King Cross, I worked in that station for so many years, Camden Town, etc.
I like London very much and I hate it too. If I will have to live in England there is not other place where I will like to live. To live in that great city make you fell alive everyday.
Have fun.
PARIS
Hello;
This is my first time in Paris, well; not really, I had been here before for Toby's wedding. Petra and me were coming back to London from the wedding in the south of France. We had had a brilliant time and we had some left over that we did not want to leave in France and we could not be catching with in the border with England. The police will not understand if you know what I mean. So we stop at the Garde du Nord and I run to the postal Box and I sent a letter to a friend. I do not remember if my friend received it but for me Paris was a very estrange place, a dark street with a postal box.
This time I was going to get Paris in a good way and it was going great. I came to visit Lewis and Valerie from Montreal that they were doing a job. I took the train from Biarritz and I arrived to the “city of light” five hours later. The journey in the train was great and Paris received with open arms and the sun was shining and I did not know where to go.
I ended up in a hotel run by Chinese people somewhere that I do not know. It was not going to be for a long time but probably that would do another story.
I love Paris. It is very pretty but like the status of the wax museum. It is very real and alive. When you walk around town everything is happening and the people are really exciting and everything is nice.
I was surprised by the amount of people that was riding bicycles. I was very impressed by the Louver and the river. I enjoyed a lot the Latin Quarter. But my favourite thing was the pau ouf chocolate and the croissant that you can have everyday in the morning in all the cafés.
I am going to go back to that “fat” city. I am going to go back very soon.
Have fun.
PHILLIPE
Hello;
I have come to Paris for many reasons and one of them and very important for me is to see Phillipe.
Phillipe is my teacher. He is our teacher. All of us have studied with him in different times of our lives. I believe Petra was the last one to do a workshop with him just before he left London to go back with the school to Paris.
He is a very funny an outrageous man that is very free but this is a very big statement to make about anything really. What does it mean to be free?
I saw Philippe in his element in Paris and he is even bigger. In the school in London the fact that he was from Paris made him exotic but now that he is here he is exactly the same very exotic in his uniqueness.
We went for a walk together after a couple of good matches playing table tennis. He is great playing any game. He has so much pleasure. Every time we meet we always end up playing table tennis wherever we are. We walk for a while and we have the typical conversation where you go through all the people that we both know before we start to talk about ourselves. By that time we had arrived to a bar and I drunk wine and Philippe drunk té with lemon and water with lemon. At that time he was not drinking, I like him when he drinks.
For me he is at his best in Paris, when he talks to the students and when he talks to the guy who owns the bistro. He is funny and he is charming.
I miss the time when I was studying with him. It was always a party and he was a very generous host. We drunk, we fuck, we laugh and we felt our mains and hearts with his knowledge with out even knowing what we were taking with us.
I would like to introduce him to everybody in the world but I there will not be enough time to do it. He is getting old in his body so hurry up and go and meet him.
Have fun.
TRAIN TO PARIS
Hello;
The window is close. It is one of these windows that belong to one of these super modern trains that go trough France for many years now. There is a table in front of my sit and I have not use it for eating anything but I have use it to read my book.
I have gone through two stations and I have never done this journey before and I am very happy discovering the beautiful landscape that is going to come with me all the way to Paris. I have never been in Paris before either.
The landscape is green and very bucolic. I can see through the window the sea from time to time. As we pass through Biarritz I see six surfers in the sea. The water is very blue and the sky is very blue too. I know it is very boring but I have to say that I choose the best day to travel to Paris by train for the first time. The surfers where doing their pirouettes in the sea and the train carried on going. For a little while I dream about moving there, a place by the sea in the south of France.
My book keeps me busy and I miss many things that disappear as the train gets speed. I see chateaus that I saw before in movies about the three musketeers or other movies about France.
A man with a small trolley selling things to drink does not come because there is a restaurant in the train. I had been waiting for quite a while and now I am hungry. I have not seen the sea for a very long time so we must be by now very close to Paris. I got the train at 12 o'clock and I am going to be arriving in Paris at 5 o'clock.
Everything that I see through the window is pretty. Perhaps it is not very pretty but when you are happy and excited everything seems to be nice. The trees, the rivers, the houses and the fields that I have seen all the way to here have been very nice and I can not stop thinking in coming back with some one that I love very much, my wife.
Well I am bore while I write this but I have arrived to Paris and the station is not as nice as the way that brought me here so I will have to go back and stop in other stations next time.
Have fun.
MY KITCHEN
Hello;
I am going to renovate my kitchen as soon as I arrive to my house in Bilbao. I want the kitchen to be like one of those kitchens that appear in the magazines. Well, not exactly like them but there are many things that I like in the pictures I see in the magazines.
There is this movie with Jack Nicholson and Diana Keaton, I think it is called “as good as it gets” but I am not sure. Well, he plays a guy dating a young girl. The girl takes him to his motherhouse in the beach and he realise that or better the mother realise that her daughter is dating someone that should be her date. Anyway is a Hollywood movie I do not need to tell you how the whole things end. So in that house by the beach they have my favourite kitchen of all time. The whole room is big and has big windows that allowed lots of light into the place. The furniture is all white, with white handles and whites everything. There is a little table island in the middle of the room where the cook is with all the cutlery hanging from above and on the sides of the air bell. It looks brilliant and also let me tell you about the cook. It is not white, it has the metal colour of the industrial cooks and it work with gas. They have an oven underneath and the whole set of knifes at the far corner. Everything looks really good and nice. That is how I hope my kitchen in Bilbao will look. The only thing is that in that kitchen they did not have a washing machine, and tumbled drier and we have to have all of that in our kitchen. As long as it is in white I do not care.
And then I forgot to tell you about the fridge. The whole thing in itself it was so big that you could almost go inside and close the door. With two doors and lots of space for anything that you wanted to have inn.
That is exactly the way I want my new kitchen to be I hope that Miren likes my ideas and do not have anything against it. I am sure she will not.
Have fun.
MY VILLAGE
Hello
When I talk with my friends from England about my village all of them who have visited Romo in the pass they all tell me that is not really a village. They said that is more a town or a small city but as far as I am concern for me it will always be my village, probably because my world in my village is as small as a real village.
What is the most important thing about my village? Well, apart form the fact that it is my village nothing. There was a time when I was young that become the place for everybody to go out. That fashion lasted for a couple of years and then every body went somewhere else and then I also went somewhere else.
Now when I think about it perhaps it wasn't as popular as I thought. Perhaps it was my teenager imagination that was forcing me to believe that everything that I was doing at that time it was the coolest thing to do.
After that there is nothing special about ROMO. ¿The name? Yes, the name is very much like ROMA but it is not, it is ROMO. It has always been the working class neighbour hood and it was divided by the rail track from the rich people neighbour hood. Now there is not even that thing to make us special and tough. Of course the “sissies” are still on the other side and of course they are still the rich ones.
Since I was young it has changed very much. It is an stupid statement, I know, but it is like when you grow up you change but you do not fell you change, you grow up, so perhaps ROMO has grown up like me and when I see how it has change I can see myself and all that I have changed.
Have fun.
MY HOUSE
Hello,
This is really a new experience. We have never had two houses before and for Miren and me to go back to our flat in Bilbao it sounded like a very nice thing to do. I was really looking forward to go back and do things in the house that would make us fell even more excited about our flat.
For the last two years we, and the rest of Spymonkey have been living in very big places and to go back here where there is not enough space it is not going to be easy. Toby and his family and we have a place to go back and Stephan and his family too but for Petra everything is nerve raking. Where am I going to live?
The first day we open the door of the staircase that take us to our flat it was very sad. We did not talk but the felling in the air was that we had created this amazing place in our mind and the cruel reality was being really tough. We went upstairs and we did not say anything until we actually went into the house. It smells like a place that has been closed for too long, that is what we said. Also, we have to paint the staircase and the entrance to the building; the kitchen is going to be nice once we renovate it.
We could not avoid the felling that the house had gone really old during the time that we had been away and now we were going to have to make big reparations so we could start to live there and be happy.
The room seemed really small and the queen of our flat the living room looked really crowed and full of ugly and unnecessary things.
We did not stay longer. We could not bear it. It was hard. It is an old house, we knew that, and Iratxe, our friend that has been living in the house while we were away took lots of care of it but still. We have been leaving in a kind of brand new house in the new world and going back to that it is not going to be easy.
Have fun.
MY FAMILIA
Hello,
I am looking at the screen of my computer and it looks like I am starting to write the new soap opera from TeleMundo o Televista. And with out thinking too much every time one of us talk about their family in the spanic world it is a little bit like that. We all talk a lot and we all talk about people, specially people that are not too far away from us and that we know enough so we can talk about them but not enough so we know for sure that what we said it true.
I have one brother and one sister. He lives in Barcelona and she lives in Madagascar. So that is the reason why we do not see each other very much. My parents live five blocks away from where I have my apartment. Miren's family live four blocks away from our apartment. Yes, it is our apartment. This blog is making me get a big fat ego. Every time I talk about things they are always mine or of things that are related to me so…anyhow not that I am married I have a in law family. I think they are very different to my family but not they are very similar to mine now that I got to know them.
When you are from Spain you are always very close to your family. You do lots of thing that make you be closer to them. I am sure it happens anywhere in the world but I have the felling that this is stronger in my country and probably the same thing happens in all the Mediterranean countries.
But let me tell you about my mother and my father. My mum is a housewife and she loves everything. She is curious and she always gets excited with things that are new for her. At the moment she is getting older but that is not stopping from preparing trips to the whole world.
My father has just retired. I believe he is very happy but I cannot really tell for sure because I have not been very close to them to see how the whole thing has been. He worked in a bank at least for the last twenty years of his life and while doing that he was very active doing many things. I like my father. I think he is an interesting and eccentric person.
I love my family and I miss them a lot. The reason why I stopped living in Las Vegas was so I could spend more time with them or closer to them.
Have fun.
BILBAO
Hello;
It was quite late at night when we arrived to Bilbao. We are home and it is real hard to believe that it is like that. The airport is a new building by Santiago Calatrava, thou now I doubt. It has the name of La Paloma. Miren and me go downstairs without even bother to look at the policemen that wants to search our passports but we have been travelling for three days and we have had enough. Our suitcases are the first ones to come out and we can see my family and Miren's looking at us. I have not seen my brother and my sister at least for more than a year. I am very excited.
It is already really dark and I think one of the most satisfying things of flying back to you village is the fact that the first contact is always from the air and you have a over all view. After the vision is more detail because you become one of this little cars that some time before you have seen from the plane. So in the car I try to look around to see if I can identified the felling of “probably someone is looking at the lights of this car from that place that is about to land” but I do not fell anything, it is probably just my imagination.
Bilbao fells small. Very small and in fact since we were here last time I am sure that the whole city has grown a lot.
The car fells small also but this is normal is very normal and now we all have grown up and the car has not. My father should buy another one. We drive slowly and we try to catch up but are not possible. When you see people that you have not seen for a very long time is always a little bit frustrating. You instinctly talk about things that you spoke before and then it happens that they are not into that anymore so the conversation died. The only one I think seems not to have any problem is my mum, and all the mums, because whenever there is a silence in the conversation she breaks it with “ I am so happy you are here” “I could not wait any more to see you” and things like that. These expressions do not create conversation but fill the empty silences. MUMS¡¡¡
Have fun.
LA – DUBLIN (smell of Europe)
Hello,
We have been travelling for the last nine hours and let me tell you I enjoy very much flying around but this is too much. We are about to make it to Europe and I am trying to find through the window sings that would reassure me that it really is Europe and not other place.
We are flying with air Lingus and it is being good so far. It was very cheap and I have managed to see a couple of movies. The movies were very shit but when you are in a plain there should not be reason to complain. But I cannot wait to be there and I would not like to go anywhere else just because the pilot took a bad decision.
Miren and me as we fly in the plain both have a certain sense that this is a kind of new beginning for the two of us. After being together for two years now we are going back to the kind of life that we had before and we are not going to see each other as much and that is going to be real sad. I am going to miss her very much. On the other had we could not have stayed much longer over there.
The plain is about to land. We can hear fasten seat belt and Miren gets closer to me and we see the hills that surround Dublin and the lovely Irish channel. Once we played here and we had a very nice time. I remember going to a forty men place where lots of people went everyday for a quick swim. They would go inside the water for a couple of minutes the most and then they would carry on with their own life. Of course we had to try and I went into the water forgetting that I am from Spain. I got in and then I thought I was not going to be able to come out of the water. Stephan went in the water everyday of the week that we played there.
Here we are the whole Europe. I can see that the sun is shinning so the transition from Las Vegas to the old grey Europe would not be very traumatic
LEAVING HAWAII
Hello;
This is starting to look like a big odyssey and that is what is going to be. It is the beginning of a three days journey. The whole thing is going to seem endless because we have to take three days to go to Romo.
Everyday we are going to be in a different place and almost in a different country. We are going to be leaving Maui via Honolulu and then LA. There we will have a car waiting for us that would take us the to the place that we are going to be spending the night. In the morning we are flying to Dublin (Ireland) and then late in the evening we are flying to Bilbao. I hope there are people waiting for us in the airport to take us home. I will hate to have to get a taxi.
Stephan and Elke and Thelonious will stay in Maui for a week more. They are taking us to the airport.
Petra is in Manchester shooting her TV series. She is going to be famous. Toby is already in Brighton and like Heike says it is like Maui. I must explain this a little bit longer. Once in Las Vegas Heike said that Maui really looked like Brighton. They have visited the island in December. Stephan and me looked at each other's and thought, well, that is a funny thought. I have been in Brighton many times and… yes, have lot of green like Maui, and yes the sea is very close, and yes there are surfing shops but to say that Brighton and Maui look like¡¡¡ is a little bit radical.
But anyhow, now we are about to take the plain to Honolulu and this is the end of a big and exciting period in our lives. This holydays have been the cherry of a big cake that had been this last two years in Las Vegas working for Cirque du Soleil.
All of us have changed and now the time ahead would tell us if we can carry on working together or if Spymonkey is a has been.
Have fun.
BIG WAVES
Hello;
Hilo Hatties and ABC are the stores for us tourists in Hawaii to buy things to take back home and remember the time we spent in the closest place on earth to paradise. The tourists come to this stores like they go to the road to Hana, or to the Old Lahaina Alua or to the Haleakala Volcano etc. They arrive in big busses stay for an hour and then lets go somewhere. We did go too and we stayed for quite a long time. We have had a big surfing session in the morning so we had to pay back to our ladies. “The same amount of time you use for the water you have to use it with me,” my lovely wife told me. And so I did, I sat in a small bench out side the hilo hatti store thinking about that morning. We went surfing and there were huge waves. The sea was full of surfers and everybody seemed to be having an amazing time. After almost ten days surfing we were felling pretty confident so we said that we wanted to try something a little bit bigger.
We went to the beginners beach and thou it looked quite big we thought we could do better so we drove east and we found an spot in the middle of the road with what we thought were medium waves.
We went in and Elke and Miren stayed in the car. This time they were not going to be doing their own shit they actually were going to be watching at us surfing. The first waves came and we managed to jump them and then the time to catch on arrived I paddle but when I was about to be pull I baked up because it was really high and I got a little bit scared. I saw Stephan very close the shore and he was being tumbled around like in a washing machine and then arrive to the sand and walk our of breath.
I tried to gain courage thinking that it is just water and it was working so I paddled with another wave I manage to stand up but I felt and I ended up in the break area. I looked into the sea and I saw a series of waves coming towards me. I was going to have to work hard to be fine. The first wave came and that was fine, the second wave came and I had not recovered from the first one yet and I had to get ready for the second one, and then a third one and with the forth I was under the water and decided to give up. I was getting really tired. I opened my mouth and water started to get in so I changed my mind and I found the surface and I breath and I wanted to get our there as soon as possible. The sea gave me a little break and I managed to reach the beach.
My whole body was shaken and it kept shaken the whole day.
I don't think I have been so scared in the water like that day. I went surfing two hours later and it was fine. I love surfing but I am not very fit and I am old so I have to be careful.
Have fun
THE ROAD TO HANA
Hello,
When you are in the road to Hana do not miss a little beach that is on the side of the road. If you are coming back to town it would be on you right and if you are going to Hana then it would be on your left. I know is always like that but some people I know they need this explanation so I do it.
The beach does not look much but it has amazing waves for beginners. The main problem is that there is a white shark living there and if you there to put yourself in a board in his waters he would come and eat you. Pedro, my friend from Maui, told us that a French guy last year decided to go in and the shark bite the surfboard and he had to go and visit my friend at his job. He works at ER department at Kahuluis hospital. They say that the reason why sharks attack surfers is because from under water the shape of surfer sitting on his surfboard looks like the bottom of the body of a turtle. There you go.
But lets go back to the road to Hana and his lots of curves. You have to drive very slowly because the whole thing is one bend after the other. It is also very dangerous because it is full a great waterfalls and the tourists stop our card on the side of the roads like we would do in any city but with no fines so the problem is that after a very narrow bend you do not see the car park on the side and you hit it with no remedy.
You drive for hours, not too many, two perhaps and there are always rainbows and rain and sun and waves and palm trees and exuberant vegetation and nice huts where you can get the nicest smoothes of the world.
We visited the beaches of Hana and Hana bay and Hana convenient store and we went back to Kahului. When we arrived the coast had change with a while swell and the water was full of surfers going at it in the most amazing conditions I have ever seen.
Have fun.
THE TREE HOUSE
Hello;
I am not getting any information from Petra and Toby in England or in France, or whatever they are. I believe that Petra is in Leeds doing the TV series that she suppose to do just before we went to work for Cirque and Toby may be soon in Brighton getting on with the organisation of the tour. Stephan and me are in holydays.
We have been going around the island for a week now and there are some close areas that we want to explore but they need a little bit more attention so we have decided that we are going to go to Hanna and we are going to spent one night there.
Hanna if I am not wrong is in the north east of the island. It is probably the most tropical part of the whole island and it rains and the sun shines all the time.
Stephan found a tree house. We all got very excited about the possibility of spending one night on top of a tree like a real Tarzan. I have to say my first thoughts went into the shape of the toilet. I was sure the toilet was in another tree and then the shower in another different. I am sure the water of the shower was going to be cold but Tarzan never complained so why should I?
We drove through the south east of the island and we surrounded the island until we arrived to Hanna. The most famous thing is Hanna is the seven pools. They are seven waterfalls of sweet water where people can swim and they are very pretty, specially the one at the top. This one is the highest one and it appears in front of you as soon as you come our of an incredible bamboo forest. There is a big sing saying do not get closer but no body pays any attention to that.
Well, we decided not to go up the first day because there were lots of tourists and we were anxious to get on to the house tree. I took us a little bit of time to find it. The direction where like the classic directions for a tree house, go to the banana way, walk for 200mt and turn left in from of the old water tank, the house is immediately after. Elke, Theo, Miren and me wait in the main road while Stephan took the courage to go up by him and when he came back there were not good news. The house was not a tree house it was made with trees but it was not in tree and it was full of hungry mosquitoes, the house was dirty and we decided not to stay there.
We found a little hotel by Hanna Bay and we surfed there and we had a brilliant dinner and a nice sleep. Thanks I am not Tarzan.
Have fun.
OLD LAHAINA ALUA
Hello
There is a Hawaiian experience per se and that is the beaches and the surfing and the nice people who inhabitants this islands. Our hosts in Maui, Nora and Pedro, absolutely fantastic, have very well treated us. Every single time that we have visited them. They are not from Hawaii but after being for a while in the Island they thought that it would be a nice idea to have a go in the quintessential Hawaiian experience “the Alua Show”. This kind of festival happens in all the island of the pacific and every island have their own way of doing the dance and expressing the own ancient culture.
Nora took as to Lahaina, to the old Lahaina alua. Funnily enough whit that name already you know that you are going to see something very authentic, it says old in the title.
We arrive there with the kids a little bit late but I am not going to say anything about that. The place was really nice a mixture between an old hotel and Hawaiian construction with a big garden facing the sea and the sunset that was about to happen.
As we got in we were instructed of how things were going to be the rest of the evening, first a little bit of wandering around and chance to make some pictures then some drinks of the bar and then we will go how the native will unburied the pig that was going to be serve for dinner.
After that we will eat our dinner buffet and every body would have the opportunity to approach to the buffet in an orderly manner, children were not allowed to go by themselves.
After desert we will see a show and then everybody would leave.
The evening was great, not because what we had there it was great but because we were with friends and everything else did not matter. We laughed a lot with the boys and girls serving dinner in a sexy outfit and we laughed with the dancing. We were amaze with the beauty of the sunset and we got a little bit drunk with shitty cocktails that the staffs were serving us the whole night.
Even the tackiness of some of the Hawaiian tourist industry has not made possible to dislike that part of the world. I love the island and I hope to be back.
Have fun.
WAILEA
Hello;
In the south east of Maui is one very small beach famous because lots of people go to do snorkelling and it is very family friendly. It is very small and you have a small island in front of the beach and also you have a big island in front of the beach. I do not really like it very much but when you go with kids on holydays …but I am not going to go on about it because I have already done all my comments about that subject.
Now Wailed when I have been there I always thought I was in the middle of Las Vegas because there are lots of very expensive shops, you know what I mean Channel, Versace, Gucci etc and they all are all together surrounding a hotel. It looks like you are in the Bellagio of Maui.
I do not like it but all the surroundings of this hotel are hotels that are trying to compete with each other's but as far as I am concern they have the most ugly beaches of the island.
We stay there the whole afternoon because we had been surfing in the morning and the rest of the people on holydays did not want to be surfing the whole time. While on the beach we swam, we read our books and we laid under the sun. Then we go bored so it was time to move on and we headed towards the most east part of the island. There is like petrified river of black lava that goes in the sea. Nature has gone trough the river and is full of trees in weird places and in very weird shapes. Then the road end, and you have to turn around and go back to where you come from. We stayed there enough time to get a couple pictures and to see the sunset. We were driving really fast and then an occasional glimpse into the sky showed us that the sun was coming down and we stop and took the picture. There was a small cloud touching the sea and the sky and the sun was going behind the cloud and lots of rays of light were trying to go through the cloud and they were ending up having to go round the cloud.
Have fun.
NEW ORLEANS
Hello;
A terrible catastrophe has happened. That was a big disaster that has changed the view of everybody about how nature is changing and moving really fast. It has made the whole world to be aware that if we do not take care of what we have we may not have many more time in this world, as we know it.
New Orleans, as far as I know, I have never been there before, was a really happening town with lots of lively restaurants and bars and with a big population that felt really lucky living by the famous Mississippi river. Since the beginning of the human history the man has established himself close to rivers because that would help to get food. It would mean that communications and travelling would be easier and also that there would be a kind of protection against the enemies.
Everything seem to be changing now because nature is changing and the way we settle in the world now is not like when the old human beings occupied the earth.
But also New Orleans with his big disaster has opened the eyes to the world and specially the eyes of the American people to see the kind of government that they voted to have. We all are responsible for him. He makes all off us ashamed for being the president of the country where we live and where we have worked. I should not have gone to work to a country that decides to have as a president someone like that.
Thanks New Orleans and sorry that you have to suffer so much.
Have fun.
BILL MALHER
Hello
Are you familiar with his program in HBO? It is on Saturdays and he is so great. Nora and Pedro tivo all the programs so every night we were having a political humour.
He is a comedian that basically does all his work based in the political things that happen in USA.
While we were in Maui something very important happen in USA, the flooding of New Orleans by the hurricane Katrina. The whole government reacted really slow and really bad and it was clear case of national emergency. New Orleans was completely destroyed and it looked all the time that they did not care at all until they realise that they were going to loose lots of votes and the public opinion was getting against them.
So for Bill Malher the whole incident thou really sad it was a fantastic opportunity to unveil all the corruption and wrong doing of the Bush administration.
I remember on thing. He showed a photograph on his program where tree white people with water to their chests had plastic bags with food and at the bottom of the page said, “ Some people managed to get some food”
Immediately after he showed another picture very similar to the previous one but with black people instead of white and with the legend underneath that said “ lots of looting was going on in the streets of New Orleans”. Very funny but it was real, I had see those pictures on the papers and all of us have accepted the news like that until he said that.
He is very clever and very funny and very necessary for the USA society.
Ah, also I saw him in Santa Monica pier going for a walk with his wife.
Have fun.
MAUI
Hello;
It is different Maui with Kids. What is it that you do not understand? Of course Maui always had kids but now they were living with us and staying with us all the time. Well, what I am trying to say that Nora and Pedro have children and Stephan has a children too.
They are really lovely but not all the time. That is the problems with kids if they are not yours you have to be really calm and have a lot patience.
Maui is the closer place to paradise that I have ever been and I am sure in paradise there are not kids. Well, I know it may be like not a very nice thing to say but that is the way I fell. I like kids but I very wise friend of mine said to me once that I hate all kids that are not mine. And it is true kids have to be yours in order to be able to live with them.
We went to the beach with kids and they have to go to eat every time they are hungry, they can not do like we all do to hold the hunger for a while until everybody is ready to eat. Well, Miren is a little bit like a child if you do not feed her when she is hunger is gets in a very bad mood.
When you are on the beach with kids they do not play in the beach, most of the time they can drown or they can put things in their mouths that is not good for them. Or they go too far away and then they do not know how to come back to their parents.
When you go with kids to the beach once they are wet you have to change their clothes and then they get wet again so you have to change their clothes again and then most likely they are going to get wet again.
I do not go on holydays with children unless they are mine.
Have fun.
A LITTLE HISTORY
Hola;
We are so lucky. We are the kind of lucky people that has a friend that lives in Maui. The friends that have a fantastic house in Maui and are generous enough to allow you to stay there for as long as you want. They are the kind of friends that everybody want to have.
They are Pedro and Nora.
We met them in Aspen. No, we do not go to Aspen and they are our friends from Aspen, no, we are not rich. Nora is an actress and us she likes to go to work where she can do other things that she likes like snowboarding. She is very good actress and she got invited to the HBO comedy festival the same year we went there. We were lodge at the same hotel and the day after our first show we got talking together. Well not me, Petra and Cal. We found out that Nora had a Spanish boyfriend and that he would love to meet me because I am from Spain too.
Later on we had a big argument, no, not with Nora and Pedro, it was in between ourselves. Petra and me we wanted to go snowboarding and our producer said no, you can easily break you legs or something and we will loose this great opportunity. Of course Petra and me did not break anything and we also without telling anyone we went to do what we like.
So we went up the mountains with Pedro and Nora. I meet Pedro that day and we had a great day snowboarding. At least I did have lots of fun and Aspen is great for many things but for snowboarding is great. We become friends and we kept in contact all this time. This is the second time that we are in Maui. I like this place very much because I can surf here. Miren is not so happy but I am delighted. Nora and Pedro are super generous and hopefully we will keep seeing each other's forever.
Have fun.
MINESSOTA & PINKY
Hi,
There are two goats in the house and they are completely mad. Yes, believe me they are nuts. Let me explain you. Pedro has built a big fence around a big piece of land. He has put them in there and do not want them to come out of there because goats have the thing of eating everything they see. So every time the goats are out of their piece of land they eat all the flowers of the garden, the nice trees, the swimming costumes drying outside, it is a real nightmare.
So when you see them out side you have to take them back to their place. It sounds like very straightforward thing to do. I know, my family comes from a farm so I thought this is going to be peanuts. How wrong I was, I approach the Minnesota and Pinkie and I did all the gestures that I have seen doing people who has animals. I did the gestures of the shepherds in the grass fields, the sounds of the farmers with the cattle, the sounds of feeding the chickens, even I treat them like dogs but they will be looking at me like I am a mad man doing silly things in front of them and I do not make any sense. After that display of gestuality you pick a sweaty cocky and they follow the food and they may go into the other side of the fence.
Minnesota is a brown goat. She looks a little older and wisher. When you make then to go into their house she is the most reluctant. She looks at you threaten and it is a little bit scary when you see her jump like trying to head you.
Pink is white or vanilla if you like a lot. She looks a little bit stupid because whenever you wave any food in front of her she falls for it immediately. It is very good that Minnesota is around because I am sure that Pinkie will get into trouble if she would be by herself.
The second time I try to put them in they had already learn that I have to be in front of them with something sweet before they would follow. They have also learnt that once you cross in front of them trough the fence they should stay on the other side so I cannot close the fence and leave them in. I suffer trying to find a way to disguise that. So the only way I could close the fence was by me staying inside. It did not work for obvious reasons and after half an hour I open the fence really fast and I managed to get out leaving them in.
But it was just for an hour or so, the fence had holes and they knew where they were so… when I closed the fence they looked at me like saying see you later alligator.
Have fun.
NORA & PEDRO
Hello.
How long have we known Nora and Pedro? We met them first time in Aspen. The first time we went snowboarding together and it was a really nice great day on the slops. After that, quite a long time after wards they came to visit Bilbao. It was really nice to be with them in our town. I did not have time to take them around a lot but we got to see the Guggenheim together. I think Fred was around already and perhaps Bruno too but he was very young.
Next time, we were in Las Vegas and Miren and me decided to go to Maui so we called them and we had a great time. Miren did not have such a good time but we were surfing a lot and Miren does not like it.
They live in a very nice little house in the hills of Haleakala, the big volcano of Maui. From the terrace of their house you can see the south bay of Maui and if you know how to look and Pedro knows you can find out from there if there is enough swell to go surfing.
We stayed there for 10 days and they were very generous with us. Nora was working in New York or LA. Nora is an actress and Pedro is a doctor at the ER at the hospital in Kahului the main city in Maui.
Now we are here for the second time and they are all here too the whole family; Nora, Pedro, Bruno and Fred. They received us with open arms and I am ready to have even a better time than the last time we were here. Every time I come to this island I wish I could never leave but it never happened. Lets see what happens this time.
Have fun.
MAUI-HAWAII
Hi;
There is this guy that works for Dollar, the rental car company who thinks that I look like a very famous French actor. So I do not understand why when Miren and me arrived to the LAX to get our plain to go to Maui finally, he open the door of the car for us and he started to speak with us in Spanish. It does not make any sense. In France most of the people speaks French and they do not want to speak Spanish even if they know how to do it. I know it is racist but when it comes to French people you have to be as they are. So it was so early in the morning that I did not have anytime or enough brain awake to arrive to the conclusion that probably it was a tactic to get a better tip. This is another piece of racism for my part.
A little mini-bus took as to the airport. The funny thing with Miren and me when we travel is that we never talk to anybody else apart from ourselves. Someone in the min-bus try to talk to us because they have heard that we were flying with Hawaiian Airlines and both of us stop the conversation with a mere YES or NO. We are a great example of the always-hospitable Spain.
LAX it is a huge place fill of people coming and going everywhere so it took us a little bit of time before we could sit in a table and grab something to breakfast. I went to get the coffees and the pastries and Miren waited for me at the table.
I finally got everything and as I was getting the first ship on my cafe Miren stood up really fast and dropped all her cafe over herself. All her clothes from below her breast to her feet were full of cafe. A French family having breakfast next to us started to laugh and I could not avoid having a small smile. But I know my wife and if I want to live with her I should not laugh.
The reason why she stood up very fast was because she had spotted a famous person while I was getting the coffees. It was the Chinese girl from “Sideways”. She was walking around whit a long coat with a hood and in the middle of the airport she was wearing the hood on. Weird.
Miren went and bought a horrible Hollywood miniskirt and she was lovely and pissed of to arrive to Maui.
Have fun.
PASADENA
Hello;
Pasadena is a small neighbourhood in the north east of Los Angeles; it is literary off the 210 and very accessible. It looks really nice and it has the famous Pasadena Rose Ball. Every second Sunday of the moth there is huge flea market there. We went there the first time I went to Los Angeles with Spymonkey. We were sent by Cirque to buy costumes for the number we were going to do. The numbers we originally we going to be doing at Zumanity were set at the fifties so we search in every single second hand in LA and one of the places was Pasadena.
The town is not incredible but for me has the felling of authenticity that many others new cities in the west do not have. It is a mixture between the old look like new mall and the real shopping street of the old town. There are great shops. I know that because we were staying at some friend's house and as soon as we wake up I went to make a coffee at the expression machine and I broke it. Yes, one of those nightmares that always happens to me and now I do not suffer any more. So Miren and me went out and bought a new one and that gave us the chance to check the local shops. All of them are very nice and posh.
Toby is in France, at his mum's house in the south east of France. I will love to say the name of the city but it is not possible. My knowledge of the French language is very limited.
I am sure he is having a great time. The house is great and the area very nice.
Petra is in London, looking for a place to buy and probably she is doing a TV series. And Stephan is in Maui already. We spoke with him this morning. He is going to the airport to pick us up so we had to call him to tell him the time that we will be there.
We have had a tea party with teachers form Spain in LA that teaches Spanish in this country. It is people that came to work here some time ago and now is not planning to go back. I like it very much because they have such a good time being together. My ear still hurts a lot so I am taking lots of pills for the pain and it is better.
Have fun.
ON THE ROAD
Hello;
My ear hurts and I am on the road again. It really sounds like the words of an old song, not very famous but like and old song. I have hired I car to go with my lovely wife to Los Angeles and in two nights we would be flying to Hawaii for holydays.
I am driving and I have a strong pain in my ear. I am not saying anything because I fell guilty for not doing anything before we left Las Vegas. I should have gone to see the doctor and I did not do it.
I have this vivid memory of Miren and me driving through Barstow and thinking I am going to have to stop because I have so much pain that I am not going to be able to carry on driving. We were in that big straight part of the road to LA just after you leave the outlets of Barstow. We had stopped for a coffee in Starbucks of course and I did not want to stop again. We told our friend in LA that we were going to be there quite early in the evening but there were so many things to do in Las Vegas before we left that we end up leaving the city very late.
It was really sad. We took the I-15 and we left Las Vegas with style driving to the west. We did not want to look back, it was too sad, but the last look to the city that surprisingly had been our home for two years was the fair thing to do. And as the mythical city that is she winked at us to say that you will be back.
The sun was setting and the pain in my ears we not getting lower. I could see LA and I was going to have to call the doctor and ask if I could take any painkillers with my medicine. Another terrible thought occurs to me. I am going to be flying in a day or two and if you have an ear infection you internal ear my blow with the pressure of the altitude like a big toad stuff with air until it blows and the little pieces get stuck to everything they touch. It is a big messy thing to happen when you are in a plain full of people ready to have nice holydays.
Have fun.
