I took out my Spanish workbook for its case yesterday. In itself a triumph. I opened it. Another triumph. I applied myself to my homework and painstakingly learned my new vocabulary.
Not a single word remains in my mind today.
Luckily the next lesson is tomorrow so I have another twenty-four hours to re-establish some sort of learning activity in my brain. As there are people in the class who are able to converse in Spanish with some facility I am going to have to exert myself just to sustain my level of mediocrity before I am left behind!
The fairly miserable weather we have had for the past two days seems to have brightened a tad today and the sun is shyly peeking out onto a damp world. The showers of yesterday have left Castelldefels fresher whereas in other parts of Spain the rain has resulted in rivers flowing down the streets. In one town the television actually showed someone in a wet suit swimming along the road!
I’m not sure that was a good plan as the water may have been caused by torrential downpours but the liquid in the streets will have been a syrup of the water from the heavens mixed with the rubbish on the street including dog mess and the contents of the sewers which will have filled up and spilled out through the covers to produce a toxic swimming pool for the fool hardly athlete.
Certain the rain storm outlet which spills on to the beach is not always the most fragrant of water sources, so I dread to think what bacteria were swimming with those people paddling in the floods!
This typing is, of course, displacement activity to avoid having to do the slog of learning that didn’t work yesterday. In effect I only have to learn a few words as most of the vocabulary list in Lesson One (as you might expect) consists of words that I know. The Spanish for shop window is new to me as is the extraordinary Spanish spelling of the English word chauffeur – chófer!
I have now prepared my little talk on Wales for the next Spanish lesson: perhaps I should make it a little more political and controversial; there is nothing worse than listening to a whole series of anodyne travelogues delivered in a stuttered, ungrammatical pastiche of a language. God knows I know: I’ve done it myself in a night class in Cardiff!
The most productive thing that I’ve done today is visit a neighbour diagonally upwards. Ian is a professional photographer and has recently bought the camera that I bought, the Canon power shot G9. He offered to talk me through the camera and some aspects of photography.
Sitting in front of his Apple and surrounded by the paraphernalia of his trade, from lenses and camera bodies to a massive digital printer, I was truly intimidated.
He talked through some of the photos that he had taken, both personal and professional and explained the circumstances and the tricks which he used to produce the images.
One which particularly took my fancy was of a breaking wave. It was taken just outside our block of apartments and was exactly the image that I have been trying with spectacular lack of success myself.
Ian pointed out that what I was looking at was actually the combination of five separate images including part of one photograph whose mirror image had been seamlessly joined to produce the perfect looking wave!
He then showed me how ‘easy’ it was to work with Photoshop (only some five or six hundred quid) and change images. He removed spots from a girl’s face; removed wrinkles; straightened her nose, widened her eyes; lightened her skin; brought the background into sharper focus – and that was only scratching at the surface at what he could do given time. The way that cars are shot commercially for catalogues and showroom displays was a revelation. Ian said that he images he took were based on the expectation that he would be manipulating them with Photoshop later. A series of photos that he took looked nothing when they were seen as a series, but when they were combined and selectively lightened and darkened the results were astonishing.
Even ‘ordinary’ looking shots turned out to be composites. The taking of the basic shot seems to be the start of the artistic process, not the end of it.
Rather disturbingly Ian has offered to take a series of shots that I think pass muster and then he will show me what he might do to them were they his.
A frightening prospect.
As well, the start of another learning process begins.
Not a single word remains in my mind today.
Luckily the next lesson is tomorrow so I have another twenty-four hours to re-establish some sort of learning activity in my brain. As there are people in the class who are able to converse in Spanish with some facility I am going to have to exert myself just to sustain my level of mediocrity before I am left behind!
The fairly miserable weather we have had for the past two days seems to have brightened a tad today and the sun is shyly peeking out onto a damp world. The showers of yesterday have left Castelldefels fresher whereas in other parts of Spain the rain has resulted in rivers flowing down the streets. In one town the television actually showed someone in a wet suit swimming along the road!
I’m not sure that was a good plan as the water may have been caused by torrential downpours but the liquid in the streets will have been a syrup of the water from the heavens mixed with the rubbish on the street including dog mess and the contents of the sewers which will have filled up and spilled out through the covers to produce a toxic swimming pool for the fool hardly athlete.
Certain the rain storm outlet which spills on to the beach is not always the most fragrant of water sources, so I dread to think what bacteria were swimming with those people paddling in the floods!
This typing is, of course, displacement activity to avoid having to do the slog of learning that didn’t work yesterday. In effect I only have to learn a few words as most of the vocabulary list in Lesson One (as you might expect) consists of words that I know. The Spanish for shop window is new to me as is the extraordinary Spanish spelling of the English word chauffeur – chófer!
I have now prepared my little talk on Wales for the next Spanish lesson: perhaps I should make it a little more political and controversial; there is nothing worse than listening to a whole series of anodyne travelogues delivered in a stuttered, ungrammatical pastiche of a language. God knows I know: I’ve done it myself in a night class in Cardiff!
The most productive thing that I’ve done today is visit a neighbour diagonally upwards. Ian is a professional photographer and has recently bought the camera that I bought, the Canon power shot G9. He offered to talk me through the camera and some aspects of photography.
Sitting in front of his Apple and surrounded by the paraphernalia of his trade, from lenses and camera bodies to a massive digital printer, I was truly intimidated.
He talked through some of the photos that he had taken, both personal and professional and explained the circumstances and the tricks which he used to produce the images.
One which particularly took my fancy was of a breaking wave. It was taken just outside our block of apartments and was exactly the image that I have been trying with spectacular lack of success myself.
Ian pointed out that what I was looking at was actually the combination of five separate images including part of one photograph whose mirror image had been seamlessly joined to produce the perfect looking wave!
He then showed me how ‘easy’ it was to work with Photoshop (only some five or six hundred quid) and change images. He removed spots from a girl’s face; removed wrinkles; straightened her nose, widened her eyes; lightened her skin; brought the background into sharper focus – and that was only scratching at the surface at what he could do given time. The way that cars are shot commercially for catalogues and showroom displays was a revelation. Ian said that he images he took were based on the expectation that he would be manipulating them with Photoshop later. A series of photos that he took looked nothing when they were seen as a series, but when they were combined and selectively lightened and darkened the results were astonishing.
Even ‘ordinary’ looking shots turned out to be composites. The taking of the basic shot seems to be the start of the artistic process, not the end of it.
Rather disturbingly Ian has offered to take a series of shots that I think pass muster and then he will show me what he might do to them were they his.
A frightening prospect.
As well, the start of another learning process begins.
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