Edinburgh log (3): Aberdeen

Whilst trying to find something different to do whilst in Edinburgh, I suggested that we take the train to Aberdeen. At least we would see some different scenery and travel over the Forth bridge. Whilst we enjoyed the journey there, we didn't actually find that much to do in Aberdeen which we couldn't have done in Edinburgh. True, one can admire the granite buildings, but that wears off after a few minutes.

I took my practice pipes apart, primarily to air them (they have a musty smell). I connected the blowpipe to the chanter in order to create a practice chanter but still could not get any sound out of them. I strongly suspect that the pipes are missing a reed. I am going to take the whole set to the bagpipe shop to be checked.

Edingburgh log (2): Round and about

On our first afternoon in Edinburgh, we discovered three things about the bus system

1. The number 11 bus stops right outside our guesthouse and travels to Leith (one way) and the city centre (the other way)
2. An all day ticket can be bought for 3.50 GBP, whereas a one-off ticket costs 1.50GBP.
3. As no change is given, one better pay the correct amount

So we carefully counted coins, aggregated 7 GBP and set out this morning for Leith, buying two all day tickets. According to Ian Rankin, Leith used to be a rather dodgy area but now it's been gentrified. We had a short walk on the seafront promenade by the lighthouse there. Although the sun was out (and quite warm when it was shining), the air was cool and there was a cold wind blowing.

From Leith, we took the number 11 bus back to the city centre. As always, there was a piper playing near where the double decker tourist buses park (there seem to be a few pipers who take it in turns to play). My wife waited for an idle moment then approached the piper to have her picture taken. A few words were exchanged between them, presumably about her country of origin, for a moment later I heard the piper playing 'Hava Nagila'. To be honest, I didn't think such a tune could be played on the pipes (it uses a slightly odd scale), but the piper managed.

After walking from Princes St to the Royal Mile, my wife and I parted company. I was headed to the Royal Oak pub in nearby Infirmary Street, there to partake in the Rebus Walking tour. This was a two hour walk around the area, with special reference to places mentioned in the books. The guide (Colin Brown) is a jovial, Falstaffian, character and made a fairly dull (and very cold!) tour interesting. The highlight of the tour was arriving at St Leonard's police station and seeing a few nearby cafes and pubs which are mentioned in the books. After the tour ended, I walked back to Princes St where I met my wife for lunch. After that, we rode the bus once more in order to return to our b'n'b and have a little rest. I leafed through the tourist guide to Edinburgh and noticed that there was a shop near the Haymarket train station selling bagpipes, with a simple model priced at 90GBP. I thought that it might be worth a visit later on.

On the corner of our road there is a Cash Converters shop - this is an unfortunate sign of the times. People buy items which they either no longer need or can't afford and so sell them to CC, which is like a modern pawnbroker. I had noticed the day before that they had guitars, a violin and a flute in their window (along with other wares), so I thought it worth a short visit. A similar shop in the city centre was selling a 12 string guitar for a cheap price, but it would have been very difficult to bring it home with us. I looked around the local shop but saw nothing which interested me.

When I was leaving the shop, I happened to notice that there was something which looked like a small set of pipes in the window priced at 13GBP. I asked one of the sales people for a closer look, and indeed it was a set of practice pipes. Although I can't play the bagpipes and indeed have little idea how to do so, this seemed an ideal chance to acquire a set. At worst, the bagpipes will join my collection of musical instruments - guitars, mandolins, violin, concertina, oud and Irish whistle.

Later I googled practice pipes and discovered the model which I had bought. As the site puts it, These pipes can be practiced anywhere because they aren't loud like standard pipes. They are especially useful for bagpipers who want to do more practice on their highland pipes, but who have problems finding a place to play without disturbing the people around them. These also work well as a first set of pipes, after you gain proficiency on the practice chanter. An important note for would-be pipers: you still have to start with and work hard on the practice chanter before you play these! The blowpipe and chanter come off and make a long practice chanter when they are put together. This means that you get both a practice chanter and a set of practice pipes out of them.

I will try and visit the bagpipe shop in Edinburgh, mainly to see whether they have any suitable books on how to play the pipes, but also to ask how to produce a sound from the practice pipes. Presumably it will take some time before I too am capable of playing Hava Nagila (I'd be more interested in playing Flowers of the Forest).

If choosing and buying clothes makes my wife's day, then buying a set of pipes (whatever their shortcomings) makes mine.

Sophie Hannah

A non-holiday blog entry.

About a week before we left for our holiday, I saw that there was a programme on the tv channel BBC Entertainment with a title something like 'A murder'. I thought that I would record the programme on spec; if it turned out to be no good (as some programmes do), then nothing would be lost. To my surprise and delight, the 1.5 hour programme, complete in itself, starred Olivia Williams and Darren Boyd.

The story itself was quite intriguing (although there was also a certain amount unexplained or there was a missing motive) and I noted that it was based on a story by Sophie Hannah. I downloaded a few books by this author and have been reading them over the past week or so.

I started off - I think accidentally - with the same story which I had seen televised, which in retrospect was not necessarily a good idea as I can see how much has been left out and how much chopped around. After a while, I decided to stop reading that novel and moved onto another which I found better but somewhat annoying.

I'm now in the middle of a fourth book and I'm wondering whether I want to continue reading at all. These stories are not police procedurals - there is very little procedure whatsoever. In fact, the police protagonists seem to go out of their way to ignore procedure. Most of the detection seems to be by divining as opposed to finding evidence. Maybe Hannah thinks this herself, for at one point in the book that I am reading at the moment ("The dead lie down") she writes "Perhaps it's different in the provinces, but in London police officers work on the cases they've been allocated, not on whatever takes their fancy".

It doesn't help that none of the recurring characters in the book are attractive. Normally, there is a certain amount of identification with such characters as DCI Banks and DI Cabot (Peter Robinson) or DI (ret) Rebus and DI Clarke (Ian Rankin), but I find Hannah's protagonists Sergeant Zailer (even when she was in CID, she was very rarely called DS Zailer) and DC Waterhouse unsympathetic and difficult to identify with. Their language frequently tends to the coarse, and their supporting DCs are even coarser.

The novels themselves all seem to be written with chapters alternating between a first person narrative by one of the non-police characters and a third person narrative of the action. Many of the revelations which normally would come via the police procedure appear as part of the first person narration. I don't like this very much.

I came across the following comment whilst looking on the Internet: I am getting a little bored of the neuroses of Charlie Zailer and Simon Waterhouse – who, if you haven’t read any of Hannah’s novels are part of an ongoing plotline. I just kind of want to yell – “sort it out!” I do however, like the fact that Hannah is giving other characters on the police more time. A small part of the reason why I think I enjoy Hannah’s books so much is because of their setting and the funny little observations of people’s ‘Englishness’. I do sometimes wonder if this would translate to readers from overseas, but I suppose that you could say the same about American novels or Scandinavian crime fiction.

I somewhat disagree with the above and don't see much of the funny little observations of people’s ‘Englishness’ alluded to. I think that Peter Robinson and Ian Rankin much better observe contemporary British life (and there are many more musical references!). 

I'll finish the book that I'm currently reading but I don't know whether I'll reread any of them.

Edinburgh log (1): Touring the city

We left London this morning and flew to Edinburgh, arriving at our guest house at around 1:30pm. After getting settled in, we walked to the nearest main road (Leith Walk) and had a late lunch in a Moroccan restaurant (!). We asked for a few felafel balls to see whether we should order them but decided against.

After lunch, we took a bus into the main part of Edinburgh (Waverley Station) then boarded one of those round-Edinburgh open top buses. The route seemed a bit strange but we saw everything that we wanted to see, albeit from a distance. Tomorrow, we'll probably do the same but will get off the bus here and there to explore further. 

We finished the ride just before 6pm, only to discover that all the shops close at this hour. So we backtracked a little, found a suitable bus stop then rode 'home'.

Once I got connected to the Internet, I discovered that I had been sent a letter from the local tour operator. We had booked a tour to the Lake District for Sunday, but unfortunately we were the only participants and so the tour has been cancelled. We were offered a trip to Loch Ness, Glen Coe and the Highlands: we actually took a similar tour when we were last in Scotland thirteen years ago.

London log (3): ERP

I have known for some time that there is a British company which implements Priority, our ERP system. I thought it a good idea to take the opportunity of being in Britain to meet with this company, so a few months ago I obtained a contact number and set up a meeting with the MD. One of the hypotheses which I want to check is whether the Israeli pragmatic personality causes more EUC (end user computing) than the stolid British personality.

During my two hour plus discussion I discovered that Israel in general is more technologically advanced than Britain: there are still plenty of companies in Britain that are managed by spreadsheets! So it might well be that there is more EUC in Britain than Israel: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. In other words, it doesn't matter too much where the company is situated - business is business everywhere. It seems that each company's position in the ERP life cycle will be more important that the country.

One interesting point (or dimension) that I had not considered is companies with multiple business units: my company has three different business units, and the amount of EUC differs from unit to unit. A one unit company is likely to be more streamlined and thus would have less EUC.

The meeting took place in a small town called Eastleigh, near Southampton. I had a few problems finding the correct train, and the journey there was delayed slightly - at one place, the train completely stopped, and over the loudspeaker came an announcement that we were waiting for a steam train to take on water before we could continue. This seemed like the excuse to end excuses - but later on, we did pass the steam train.

London log (2): The Eye and shopping

Yesterday evening, we walked along the South Bank and even rode the London Eye: we started our ride at about 8:30pm, making us among the last to ride the Eye that night (the ride takes just under half an hour and it closes at 9pm). 

This morning, we started off with shopping along Oxford Street: my wife found some good clothes in a shop and I bought a jacket and some other items in BHS. We returned to our b'n'b with our shopping so that we wouldn't have to carry it around all day, had lunch then traveled to Sloane Square in order to visit the Chelsea Antiques Market which is supposedly on the King's Road. Unfortunately, after walking along a fair amount of this road and even passing the street number of the market, we discovered that it no longer physically exists, although its website lives on. 

We took a taxi back to Sloane Square (barely more expensive than the equivalent bus ride) then traveled to Covent Garden in order to see the street theatre and buy knicknacks. During our time there, it began to rain - typical London mist rain at first which increased in intensity. I got quite wet in the five minutes it took to walk from the local tube station to the b'n'b.

Would you buy a used car from this man? Or take advice about your ERP installation? There were plenty of t-shirts for sale in the stalls with all manner of slogans. I was sorely tempted to buy a shirt with the following slogan, which I am also tempted to add to the description of this blog:

Sarcasm is only one of the services that I offer.

London log (1): Tottenham Court Road and The Beatles

We arrived in London yesterday afternoon. After a very talkative Kuwaiti taxi driver took us from City of London Airport to West Hampstead, I went to sort out mobile phones for our stay. I brought with me an old fashioned mobile which my father had bought several years ago - the phone has a valid SIM and I had charged it a few days before leaving home - along with the mobile phone that we had bought in Dubrovnik last year. To cut a long story short, eventually I ended up with two phones and two SIMs, but not necessarily exactly how I wanted them. If anyone is interested, I have a spare SIM with 10GBP credit going spare....

Our first port of call this morning was Tottenham Court Road: I knew from reading the Inspector Banks novel 'Strange Affair' that the electronics shops are situated on this street. We had a shopping list which unfortunately grew a bit longer that I had originally intended: a bigger battery for the new camcorder, a bag for the camcorder, a new digital camera for my wife (the one that we bought on the way back from Santorini several years ago has starting playing up), a memory card and a bag for that camera, and headphones. Fortunately, we should be able to claim the VAT back when we leave Britain. I also bought a good European to British adapter, which allows me to charge all my equipment.

From there, we traveled to Marylebone station, where we joined the 'In my life' Beatles walking tour. There are many walking tours held around London during the day and I thought that it would be interesting to take this one. Several gentlemen (and their wives) of 'a certain age' joined us for this privilege. Unfortunately, we were accompanied by that special variety of British rain: a very thin rain which doesn't really get one wet but gets in the eyes.

The tour starts in Marylebone station which is where the opening scenes for the "A hard day's night" film were shot. Of course, the station has changed more than a little in the 49 years since the film was made so one had to use one's imagination to picture what happened then. From the station we walked to the building where Paul married Linda in 1969 (and Ringo married Barbara Bach in 1982), thence to Montagu Square, where Ringo had a flat which he originally occupied, then Paul turned it into a demo studio, then John and Yoko lived there. Onwards, we went to the Asher's family home (Paul McCartney lived in the same house as Jane Asher for several years), to what was the Apple boutique on Baker Street and to the restaurant where a scene for 'Help' was filmed. Eventually we ended up at Abbey Road studios (we took the train from Baker Street to St John's Wood) and walked the most famous zebra crossing in the world.

The guide apparently is known as the 'Beatle Brain of Britain', having won a competition about Beatle trivia. He definitely knows his stuff, although I don't think that he mentioned anything that I didn't previously know. On the other hand, I had never visited any of the places.

I doubt that I would recommend this walking trip to any except the hard core Beatles fans. Walking the streets of London is not the most exciting thing in the world, and the buildings themselves have little intrinsic value. There is also a 'Magical Mystery Tour' trip which includes the Apple building in Savile Row, possibly Trident studios in Soho, the Indica bookshop in Fitzrovia and maybe a few other places. This trip might be better, but then again, apart from Apple, none of the original buildings exist.

In terms of musical history, we are staying close to a few other landmarks from the sixties. Next to West Hampstead underground station is where the Klooks Kleek club used to be (a hot venue of the time) and a bit further on is a road called  Broadhurst Gardens. This is where the Beatles had their unsuccessful demo session for Decca records in 1962 (and also where, amongst others, Giles, Giles and Fripp recorded their only record). I'll probably pop down there later although I doubt that there will be anything to see. There are no studios there now: presumably the building which was a studio now belongs to the English National Opera. Also around here is Fawley Road (Jude the Obscure?), which is where Peter Hammill lived for a while in 1969.

The establishment in which we are staying has a split personality: the main building is in one road, but we are staying in an annexe on a different road about 400 metres away. We go to the main building for breakfast. When I asked about wifi, I was told that there is only in the main building, so I thought that I would have to write these blog entries offline, then take the computer to the main building then upload them. But when I turned the computer on, I discovered that there is an unsecured wifi network with a decent bandwidth available, so I am typing this online (and exceedingly quickly, lest the connection fail suddenly).

Barcelona log (4): In search of Dali

The only organised trip which I had booked in Barcelona was a day trip in search of Dali. We were told to be at the pickup point in central Barcelona at 8:15 (we were there at 8am) but unfortunately did not leave until 9. Again, we took a taxi from the hotel to the pickup point, but it turns out that there was a metro stop about 200 metres from the point (we came back by metro and via a different station, which involved much less walking between platforms).

Once in the van, we drove for about two hours before reaching Figueres which is near the French border. This is where Salvadore Dali was born and there is a beautiful museum dedicated to him there, in what used to be a theatre. Our tour guide came into the museum with us for a few minutes, gave us a brief overview then left, leaving us to our own devices. Fortunately, our ears picked up a narration being given in Hebrew: there was an Israeli tour group who had arrived at the same time as us, and they had a very knowledgeable guide who was explaining things in great detail. So we hitched onto this group and learnt things that we would never have found out on our own. I don't know how the others in our group fared with this museum, but we had a wonderful time - especially my wife who had studied Dali when in school. We also spent a fair amount of money in the museum shop!

From the museum, we travelled further on towards France, to the village Cadaques, which is where the Dali family used to summer. The way there led through beautiful scenery, but as we were struggling to listen to the guide's commentary (she was also the driver), it was hard to concentrate both on deciphering her mangled English and enjoying the views. I decided to close my eyes so that I could better get the Dali family story.

Cadaques itself is like any other seaside town - which is not to disparage it! I was reminded of Ascona, near Locarno in Switzerland, where we spent a magical morning (although Ascona was better). We ate a lovely sole in a restaurant on the sea front, wandered around a little then rejoined the group in order to travel to the Dali summer house at Port Lligat, a few miles up the coast.

Port Lligat is a little fishing village situated on an inland bay and probably it is very pretty - the sky was very cloudy when we were there. Dali bought a summer home here, then as he became more and more famous, he bought more and more houses. The house is delightful - especially what might be termed 'the garden' (there is no grass). Inside, there is little to hint that this is the home of the most famous surrealistic painter - in fact, it was quite bourgeois - but outside, and especially at the swimming pool, there were definitely wild influences at play.

We probably would have stayed longer, but it started to rain when we were close to finishing the tour. The local guide produced a few plastic bags and gave them to us - the bags contained one time temporary raincoats, and we became - as I termed them in Locarno - plastic people. We continued to investigate outside, but our enthusiasm was somewhat dampened by the rain.

Of course, we were the last into the tourist bus; then we set off for Barcelona and arrived back at around 8pm.  Onto the metro, back into the hotel.

Thus ends the Barcelona leg of our holiday. I think that there must be a law called the conservation of serendipity: for everything that seems to go wrong, there is something that goes astonishingly right, something which we didn't expect. The two most striking examples here are Casa Batlló and meeting the Israeli tourist guide in the Dali museum. 

Tomorrow we head for London; I'm not sure whether there is wi-fi in the bed and breakfast place where we are staying in West Hampstead.

Barcelona log (3): Rain stopped play

We woke to grey skies; during breakfast, we could see that light rain was falling which later turned into a torrential thunderstorm with lightning. It seemed that our morning plans were going to be postponed, but fortunately the rain eased off later and we were able to exit the hotel. I was wearing my bought-in-Switzerland rain coat and bought-in-Switzerland shoes.

Our first, belated, port of call was the Els Encants Vells flea market. We took the metro to the Glories station and emerged to see what seemed to be a wilderness in the centre of Barcelona, next to a discarded circle (or placa). There were few people about, but we followed them and after two or three minutes arrived at the market which was already doing a roaring trade, despite the weather.

This is the sort of place which my wife loves and that I strongly dislike, or as I put it "if you're looking for something specific, you won't find anything, but if you're not looking for anything, you'll find plenty". There were basically two kinds of stalls: those situated around the edges were 'professional' stores, selling mainly hardware items or clothing, whereas those in the middle were the 'garage sale' type of stall, selling a tremendous variety of bric'n'brac.

After a few minutes in the market, the weather had improved greatly and I was able to remove my rain coat and dry off in the sunshine. Amongst the first items which I noticed were power supplies for old computers which were glistening with rain drops (and so probably useless) as well as mini DV cassettes for our 'old' camcorder. Needless to say, I didn't buy anything. We arranged a meeting place and I went off to read a book on the Kindle.

After about an hour, my wife turned up at the meeting place after having enjoyed herself but strangely after having bought only two small items. We then returned to the metro and travelled a few stops to the Placa Catalunya station, which seems to be a fairly central plaza with huge fountains in the middle. We stopped for lunch (fish and chips) in a restaurant which turned out to be the Hard Rock Cafe (we sat outside and to one side which is why we weren't aware of the restaurant's identity initially).

After lunch, we went into one of the huge department stores: I was specifically looking for a replacement battery for our new camcorder, as the one which comes with the camera doesn't last long enough. Not finding what I wanted, I then wandered onto La Rambla, which I knew contained a professional photography shop. Unfortunately, they didn't have a battery either but suggested a few more shops back at the plaza. For reasons that escape me, La Rambla is considered to be the main drag in Barcelona, but it doesn't do anything for me. The other shops too did not have the battery.

Trying to save some value for the day (possibly an unfortunate choice of words), we then boarded one of those 'explore Barcelona' buses. The idea is that one buys a ticket for 26 euro in the morning then spend the day riding the bus to a destination, disembarking, spending time at the destination, then waiting for the next bus, re-embarking, and so on. We were starting the trip at 5pm but had no intention of disembarking: the idea was more to see Barcelona from the street (as opposed to the metro). The round trip was fairly long (I believe nearly two hours) and we saw many places that we had already visited, including Casa Batlló and Casa Milà, the funicular at Montjuic, the port and even La Rambla, but also made acquaintance with new places such as the Olympic village and the zoo.

We then returned to the area of our hotel, had a light dinner, and rested for a few minutes before taking a taxi to the magic fountains at Espanya. The taxi was not because we did not know how to get there (we had been there the previous night but had not stayed) but because my wife was having difficulty in walking and there seemed to be too much walking involved. This is something which has to be seen in order to be believed - look at the photos at the linked website. It was also fairly crowded (as were most places in Barcelona), but because this was out in the open in a huge space, the crowd was not threatening - in fact, it was a very friendly crowd. We very much enjoyed this.

We took a taxi back to the hotel and fell into bed: it was already after 11pm and we had to be up early for the next day....

Barcelona log (2) - In search of Gaudi

My wife and I woke early - not surprising as we went to bed fairly early yesterday evening. After a full breakfast in the hotel, we walked a few blocks to where the souvenir stores were and bought a few bits and pieces in each, probably being their first customers of the day. The most important item as far as I was concerned was a hat - I had considered bringing my Switzerland hat to Spain, but that seemed a little strange. I certainly did not want anything to do with Barcelona FC - most of the hats and shirts seem to bear their emblem - but I found a nice hat in beige with a tasteful B logo which seems well made.

Our first port of call was the Sagrada Família cathedral, which is only a few blocks away from our hotel (not by coincidence: when booking the hotel, I thought that we might as well be close to this emblem of Barcelona). I had bought tickets for this via the Internet in order to circumvent the huge entrance queue, and indeed we didn't have to wait at all. Looking at the cathedral the previous evening and in the morning, I had felt that this huge edifice (which is only about 60% complete!) seemed to be overdone, with all the ornate decorations. Maybe it's because I'm used to synagogues, which tend to simplicity. But when viewing from inside and especially from viewing the explanations of the two museums within the cathedral - the latter having a twenty minute film about the cathedral and how it was designed - I began to appreciate the design of architect Antoni Gaudi.

My wife had given me the impression that he had been cut down in his prime, when he was killed by a tram, but it turns out that he was 73 years old when he died, and so 'had a good innings'. One of the activities described in my wife's guidebook was visiting destinations connected with Gaudi, so this is what we did today.

Our second port of call today was the Casa Milà, otherwise known as La Pedrera. We arrived there with little difficulty (we got to the correct metro station, and from there we asked random people for directions; the Spanish are very pleasant and like to help, but they tend to speak to everyone in Spanish even though they were addressed in English. This doesn't help very much) only to discover that there was a fairly large queue to get in. I think that we would have waited for maybe 20 minutes before entering, but before we actually did, a nice young lady walked down the queue and explained that the ticket office was having to close as the Casa Milà was at maximum capacity and that they could not accept any new visitors for the next half hour. The poor woman had to explain this at length to every single group in the queue, which must have taken her some time.

After discussing this for a few minutes, we decided to cut our losses and go elsewhere. I suggested that we eat first as it was already lunchtime. In doing so, we discovered the second of our two main problems with Barcelona: the first (as mentioned earlier) is the language problem (more of this to come) and the second is food. We had to try several restaurants and snack bars before we found something acceptable to our palates - unfortunately this was MacDonalds. For myself, I ordered a fish burger; my wife kindly asked for no cheese (which I countermanded) but the sales assistant wrote down both no cheese (I did want cheese) and no chips (probably just as well). My son - who is accompanying us - wanted chicken nuggets, but instead of the nine nuggets which come with the prepackaged chicken nuggets meal, he wanted the six nuggets version. In the end, we received two nine nuggets meal along with a packet of six nuggets. No matter: we ate the lot (although I do not like their chips which are far too salty for me).

Discussing what to do next, we decided to take the metro to Park Güell. Whilst hesitating by the metro station, I noticed that we were standing in front of an interesting building, which turned out to be Casa Batlló (pronounced Bayou), another of Gaudi's works. I suggested that we visit this house instead of Casa Milà: there was no queue. Inside was amazing: as the audio commentary points out, there are virtually no straight lines inside. Here, the geometrical ideas of Gaudi were constructed on a more human scale than in the cathedral and were much easier to understand and appreciate. I really loved this building (my wife thought that I was being cynical when I told her so) and enjoyed the serendipity. I imagine that this is what a house looks like during an acid trip.

Less serendipity on the way to Park Güell: our son took us to one metro station, but there a helpful lady suggested that we return to a station which would be closer. "No need", said the station manager, after the lady asked him to put us back onto the metro without having to pay: "it's just down here - take the second left and go up the automatic stairs". Well, his instructions were correct, but as as result, we came into the park via the back entrance which is extremely steep. No wonder there are several escalators on the way.

At first, we weren't convinced that we had arrived at the correct destination: true, we were in a park, but there seemed to be none of Gaudi's fingerprints visible. After wandering around a bit (the park needs to improve its directions by printing maps), we eventually stumbled onto the Gaudi part.

The picture below is the main entrance, which we, in our idiosyncratic method, used as the exit. The picture doesn't really do the buildings justice as they are more colourful than the picture suggests. As I heard several people mention, the picture seems to be like something out of 'Alice in Wonderland', although I would call it a gingerbread house.

=

We had to take a taxi from outside the park to the nearer metro station: by this time, my wife could hardly walk. This metro probably isn't much closer than the one that we arrived at - the distance is quoted as 1220 metres - but at least the way does not include climbing up a hill which would be at home in San Francisco.

Our next port of call had nothing to do with Gaudi - the Montjuïc Aerial Tramway or Teleferic de Monjuic. This is a cable car near the port of Barcelona which takes one to the castle which overlooks the port. The cable car ride was reminiscient of Switzerland, but the castle was something else. Built at a vary strategic site, the castle's cannons guard the sea entrance to Barcelona.

After a pleasant stroll around the extensive castle grounds, we rode the cable car back down to modern Barcelona. We then traveled to a famous fountain for an evening performance (I didn't catch its name) but as it was getting late and we were getting tired, cold and hungry, we didn't stay. We'll go there tomorrow night. Instead, we returned to the the Sangrada Familia, found a suitable restaurant, ate pizza, drunk tea, walked home and into bed.

Barcelona log (1): Have a nice day

After a fairly boring flight westwards over Santorini, Greece and Italy, we arrived in Barcelona at around 2pm. After sorting a few things out in the hotel, we had a late lunch then set off for the aquarium. We've been to quite a few aquariums over Europe but I think that this was the best. One thing which we weren't expecting was to see several penguins strolling around in their area.

Travelling on the Barcelona metro is almost the same as the London Underground, although of course one has to pay more attention to the signs in order to understand them.

Next to our hotel I spotted the sign on the left: Have a nice day - BCC. Now, that abbreviation can mean different things to different people. I imagine that most people are familiar with the term bcc in connection with email, although I also imagine that fewer know that it is an acronym for 'blind carbon copy' (who remembers what a carbon copy is, these days?). To fewer people, but especially myself, BCC is an acronym for Basal Cell Carcinoma, the kind of skin cancer from which I suffer.

Today I learnt a new meaning - Barcelona College of Chiropractic. Have a nice day.

Barcelona log (0)

Once again, holiday time has arrived. I'm sitting near the departure gate for our flight to Barcelona - we should be boarding soon. We spend four nights in Barcelona then fly to London, where we will stay for another four nights, and finally to Edinburgh, where we will be a week. Our visit culminates with the degree awarding ceremony in Edinburgh, the event for which I have been waiting a year and which determined our dates.

So far, this trip has been the worst in terms of preparation. First of all, there was the mixup regarding the date of my exam. Then on Saturday night, I idly looked at our Israeli passports, only to discover that mine had run out a few days previously whereas my wife's would run out in a few days. Fortunately, we were able to get new passports within a few days.

I needed to buy mini DV cassettes for our camcorder. No shop in the vicinity had such cassettes and it seems that no one in Israel sells them anymore. I could buy via eBay but it's a bit late for that now. So my wife bought a new camcorder yesterday afternoon with a built in memory card - Panasonic SDR S70. I intend to spend the flight learning how to use the new camera. Hopefully in London I will be able to buy an extra battery and charger for the camera.

Ok: boarding now. More news later tonight from Barcelona.

Vitamin D

Following my (obsessive) interest in my CPAP readings, I tried to find articles which related to central apnea as opposed to obstructive apnea. I didn't find very much, but one web site containing the writings of Dr Stasha Gominak make a very strong argument that apnea - as well as many other maladies or misfunctions - are due to a low level in vitamin D.

Whilst I was absorbing these articles, there was published in the Israeli newpapers an item stating that the Ministry of Health considers that at least 50% of Israeli adults suffer from vitamin D deficiency (don't quote me on this number) and so the Ministry is demanding mandatory addition of vitamin D to milk. 

This is somewhat surprising as Israel (unfortunately) has too much sun and fifteen minutes exposure per day is supposed to be sufficient to create the necessary amount of vitamin D. On the other hand, Dr Gominak points out that we all try to stay indoors, and when we do venture out, we slather ourselves with creams which prevent the ultraviolet light from reaching our skins (a very important point for me, as I have just had another BCC growth removed).

The proportion of dairy products, rich in vitamin D, in the Israeli diet is also comparatively high.

I discussed these points last week when I saw my doctor last week. It might be possible that my headaches - and indeed, sleep apnea - are caused by a lack of vitamin D, and I am not aware of ever having this level measured. He agreed to have my blood tested for this vitamin (really a hormone, as the body secretes it) along with the tests of kidney functions that he wants.

I took the blood tests a few days later and received the results the same day. Unfortunately, there was no result for vitamin D. I waited a few days, in the hope that maybe the missing result would be forthcoming, but no such luck. I suspect that the doctor forgot to add the test to the ones that he ordered via the computer (he also forgot to write one prescription for analgesics).

So unfortunately, I don't know whether my vitamin D level is satisfactory. There is argument as to what a satisfactory level actually is; according to my doctor, the Ministry of Health uses the level 75 ng/ml in blood, whereas Dr Gominak would be satisfied with the range 60-80 ng/ml blood. The high level which the Ministry requires may be one reason why it considers so many people to have a deficiency.

My blood pressure may not be as high as previously suspected

Since the beginning of the year, I have been following my blood pressure and taking medication to reduce it. In the morning, it is always comparatively low (ie normal) - around the 120/80 mark so beloved of doctors. But sometime during the day it takes off to high levels, and when I measure in the evening, I see values of 155/95 or even higher.

At times, I measure my blood pressure every morning and evening, religiously noting down the values (one doctor told me to report only the average of three readings and not all three) for a fortnight. I've been measuring the blood pressure with my personal sphygmomanometer (a word which I know how to copy and paste from Internet sites but don't know how to pronounce) although every time that I visit the kibbutz clinic, I have my bp measured with the devices there.

During one of my recent visits, the nurse suggested that I bring my machine it so that we could check its accuracy against the clinic's machine. So the other evening, when I had an appointment with my doctor, we also measured my bp with both machines.

Whilst the diastolic value (that's the lower number) was virtually the same with both machines, the systolic value varied widely - my machine reported a value like 155/93 whereas the clinic's machine reported 135/91. It makes one wonder when a diagnosis of hypertension is based on my machine's readings. Today we repeated the experiment: my machine reported 166/93 (I was very agitated at the time of the reading) whereas the clinic's machine showed 148/91.

Unfortunately there seems to be no way to calibrate a sphygmomanometer's readings (although I will look in the owner's manual) which means that my machine is worthless. I will replace the batteries to see if that makes a difference, although I know that I replaced them at the beginning of the year.

Regarding medication: I started off on a minimal dose of 5mg <something> at the beginning of the year. This was increased to 5mg in the morning and 5mg at night, but this doubling had no effect. For the last two months, I've been on 10mg twice a day, which also has had little effect, so now I am going to try 20mg in the morning (to try and prevent the increase during the day) and 10mg at night.

One possible effect of the increased blood pressure is headaches. About a month and a half ago, I went through a terrible phase of daily headaches. Taking an analgesic after a headache had started had virtually no effect. As an experiment, I started taking an analgesic pill at breakfast - this prevented any headache! When I reported this to my doctor, he started me on a daily dose of 100mg aspirin - this is only 20% of one normal aspirin pill which one takes for headaches or fevers. During the past month, I had only three headache days: one time I took no extra analgesia and suffered badly; one day I was quick enough to take a pill as soon as I felt the headache start - the pain disappeared after three hours; one day I took a pill slightly too late - I suffered all day but not excessively.

I asked the doctor what was causing these headaches: he answered that the current diagnosis is migraine,  meaning that he doesn't know what starts them. The diagnosis is based partially on the fact that I reacted favourably to the drug sumatripan (which is specific for migraines but not other types of headache). Unfortunately, taking this drug is normally out of the question as it knocks me out for several hours. The pain comes from the expansion of blood vessels in the brain which leads to them causing pressure on nerves. 

I don't know whether I mentioned it here but about six weeks ago I had my first migraine with aura: I could see flashing lights and zig-zagging lines in my right eye. This episode lasted about fifteen minutes, followed by about three hours of stomach pain. I had my eyes checked a week later but there was no organic damage which could explain the attack (hence the diagnosis of migraine).

Robert Fripp likes Joni Mitchell

Leafing through Fripp's online diary for 14 April 2013,  I was very surprised to come across the following passage

While driving, listening to favourite music from early professional years in London, including Joni Mitchell’s Blue. Hearing this at the time, I thought: I have nothing to say after this. If Blue helped me through the hard times of 1971, Judy Collins’ Wildflowers (recommended by Judy Dyble) helped me through the awfulness of 93a, Brondesbury Road and GG&F (1967-68); and Who Knows Where The Time Goes through the heartbreak and subsequent horrors of the KC breakup in December 1969. These, with other music-friends, at a time when Music was giving itself away for nothing much more than the price of an ear.

Let us not forget that 'Michael from mountains', one of the songs on Joni's earliest records, was a tune tried out (but discarded) by the nascent King Crimson. Judy Dyble, being an original Fairporter, would of course have been au fait with Joni - she sings "I don't know where I stand"  and "Chelsea Morning" on the first Fairport album, and recordings of the time include "Marcie" and "Both sides, now".

Yesterday I listened to the mind blowing duo of 'Hissing of summer lawns' and 'Hejira' for the first time in many months.

Doctorate on hold

For the past few months, I have thought that my second doctoral exam (aka IBR 2) would be held on Wednesday, 5 June. On the basis of this, we booked a flight on 6 June which would be the first stage in a two week holiday, which would culminate in the degree awarding ceremony in Edinburgh on 19 June.

Last night, I received an email from the university with an official invitation to the exam (these are sent two weeks before every exam). I was unable to open the PDF attachment at home because the document used some kind of extension which my alternate PDF reader (ie not Adobe Acrobat) could not read. So much for the P in PDF, which stands for 'portable'. So I sent the letter to my work email and read it this morning with Acrobat.

I have royally screwed up: it turns out that the exam will be held on 6 June at which time I will be in an airplane making its way to Barcelona! I quickly checked with our travel agent to see whether it would be possible to fly later on the same day or on the following day, but luck was not on my side. I also notified the university; I asked whether it would be possible to be examined personally whilst in Edinburgh, but again, no luck.

This means that I will only be able to take IBR 2 in December - at the same time (but hopefully not the same date) when I will be taking the IBR 3 exam. I hope that taking IBR 3 is not contingent upon passing IBR 2. So my doctoral studies are on hold for six months!

After performing part of the literature survey in April, I decided to put that activity on hold and turn my attention to passing the exam. Now that the opportunity to take the exam has been delayed, I may as well return my attention to preparing material for the doctorate itself. I think that I will spend the next few months preparing the research proposal: after all, I know how to write the proposal (IBR 1) and I have most of the necessary information. Using the downtime now will allow me to save time later on.

Delicate truth

I'm amazed at myself for mentioning John Le Carré whilst writing about Tom Clancy: there is a world of difference between them and Clancy is no match for Le Carré as a writer. The book which I was writing about, Clancy's "Red Rabbit", was a cold war story primarily about a Russian KGB agent who decided to defect (so far, so good). The story was told in simple language and it was fairly clear from the beginning what was going to happen. I only mentioned Le Carré because some criticism had been leveled at Clancy because there was "no action" in his book (presumably as opposed to other books of his); there is frequently "no action" in Le Carré's work either, but I know whose books I prefer to read. 

Le Carré writes beautiful prose and it was a joy simply to read the opening page of his latest book, "A delicate truth", which I read over the weekend.

Continuing the author's penchant for finding new locations for his work, this one is initially set in Gibraltar before moving to the more familiar locations of Cornwall and London. As frequently happens with Le Carré, I had very little idea of where the book was heading until it was almost finished, meaning that I'll have to read it again shortly in order to improve my understanding.

In common with some of his later work, I suppose that this book is as much about whistle blowing as it is about anything else (like the lack of government oversight).

I don't want to write very much about the book yet because I didn't really understand it (obviously I understood the words, but I'm not sure what the author's intentions were) and I don't want to give away any of the plot

More sleep analysis

I wrote yesterday at the moment, I've only written a query to display the average number of apnea/hour on a weekly basis - after the first week, the average is about 7 per hour (very good). I think I'll write another query which will show the average number of apnea/hour per weekday - I wonder if there is a difference between workdays and Friday.

It took me only a few minutes to add a query showing the average number of apnea per weekday; the results were surprising. It turns out that there are 50% more apnea on Friday

nights than on the rest of week. I am not totally surprised as we eat a meat meal on Friday evening and I probably go to bed at least an hour later on Fridays than on other days. I imagine that it's just by chance that Monday's have a low frequency of apnea.

To be honest, there haven't been that many data values to support any conclusion. That will have to wait for at least another month.

Analysing my sleep

The SD card reader which I ordered a few weeks ago finally arrived. I was not surprised when it didn't work with my home computer (probably because I haven't gotten around to installing SP3 on XP) but the reader did work with my mobile computer. I extracted the SD card from the CPAP machine then inserted it into the reader. There are three files stored on the card, of which only one interests me.

Although this file has the csv extension, internally it's not really a csv. A single line looks like this

;4  ;4    ;2013;498   ;0     ; 9,1  ; 0,2  ; 8,9  ; 7,0     ; 0,0

Yesterday I didn't know what to do with this file but this morning I realised that it was probably a 'continental' csv file - the commas should be replaced by dots and the semicolons replaced by commas. Thus 8,9 is probably the continental representation of 8.9. Once I had this straight in my mind, I could understand the structure. Fortunately the data in the file has fixed positions within reason (the dates are left justified as opposed to right justified which would be easier to read) making the parse not too difficult. The above structure would have problems with someone who has more than 99.9 apnea per hour (such a person would have extremely serious sleep apnea; I had 60 per hour before starting treatment).

The above line shows the data stored for 04/04/2013, which was the first night that I slept with this machine. I slept (or at least, had the machine turned on) for 498 minutes (8 hours, 18 minutes), 0 minutes with the humidifier (not surprising as there is no humidifier attached), 9.1 apnea per hour of which 0.2 were obstructive apnea and 8.9 central apnea. The pressure was 7 psi and there was no leakage (this occurs when the mask does not fit one's face properly).

I wrote a program in Delphi to store the data in an SQL database so that I can query it as much as I want and however I want. At the moment, I've only written a query to display the average number of apnea/hour on a weekly basis - after the first week, the average is about 7 per hour (very good). I think I'll write another query which will show the average number of apnea/hour per weekday - I wonder if there is a difference between workdays and Friday.

To give an example of what I look like when connected to the CPAP machine, I have downloaded and cropped a picture from the machine's vendor. Obviously it's not my wife and I in the picture (and anyway, she sleeps on my left).

One gets what one pays for

On Friday, I casually mentioned to the Occupational Psychologist that I had discovered a website that sells gadgets cheaply (she's a gadget freak). "Oh, you mean Deal Extreme? [DX]", she asked. "I buy lots of stuff from there, like phone covers and protectors. It takes a while for the orders to arrive but it's worth it. And the shipping is free".

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had ordered an SD memory card reader (I may not have mentioned that I ordered it from DX). Whilst the card reader has yet to arrive, another order which I made from DX did arrive on Thursday: a set of wireless headphones and a solar powered butterfly.

The wireless headphones were for my father: he is very deaf and can only hear his television with the aid of headphones plugged into the tv. He had a set of wireless headphones which stopped working so I gave him a spare pair of headphones which I had at home; these have a 2.5 metre cable. As a result, he watches television by placing a chair two metres from the set and plugging in: not an ideal setup. This new set of wireless headphones was intended to allow him to sit further away. The set comprises a broadcasting unit (very flimsy) which is plugged into the television's headphone socket and the headphones themselves (which contain an in-built tuner, thus supposedly adding value to the set).

Once plugged in, I managed to hear the television for about 30 seconds; then some automatic function within the headphones caused them to change channel, so instead of hearing the television, I then heard FM radio. I managed to convince the headphones to output the television signal again, but after a minute, I once again heard the radio.

I took the headphones home, plugged the broadcasting unit into our stereo and played a cd. This time, I was unable whatsoever to hear any music via the headphones, although again I was able to hear FM radio.

I get the feeling that the broadcasting unit doesn't work properly; as this was the whole point of buying the set, it means that the set does not do its job correctly. On the other hand, my wife may appropriate the headphones so that she can listen to the radio....

I consoled myself by the fact that the set cost only $15 (with no shipping costs) so I wasn't exactly out of pocket by very much.

I bought a few years ago a pair of solar lit birds - these are bird shaped lumps of plastic with a little bulb inside which is powered by solar radiation. The birds are 'perched' on a long stick of plastic which is planted in one of the flower boxes on the balcony (in fact, I think that one of them appeared in one picture which I placed here). During the day, the solar batteries charge, and at dusk the birds 'light up' - it looks very nice. So I bought a solar powered butterfly from DX thinking that it was the same thing - only much cheaper.

I connected the parts and placed the butterfly in a flower box. Yesterday was very hot with plenty of sun so I imagined that the battery would be fully charged. Come dusk, the birds light up but the butterfly stayed mute. We looked at the box in which the butterfly came and saw that it could be powered both by solar means and by a normal AAA battery, so we took the plastic stand apart and inserted the battery. When we turned it on, the butterfly did not light up as I had expected, but instead starting flying around its stand.

In other words, with respect to both products, one gets what one pays for.

I think that in the future I am going to order items from DX which do not require a battery, such as the SD card reader or nail scissors. There is little that can go wrong with a pair of scissors!