My favorite dish. With my mother and grandmother on the other side of the ocean, I resort to my own means.
Category Archives: Digressions
Autumn in Paris
Last weekend I took my twentieth flight to Paris this year. While the back and forth gets tiring — and hopefully will be resolved soon — the colors of autumn, so prevalent in Paris and so absent in Madrid, reminded me of just how much I miss this time of year back at home.
Unfortunately, I also started seeing the first hints of the impending Christmas shopping season, and knowing that this year I won’t be home for Christmas (something I will write about soon), opens a whole other box of worms.
Filed under Digressions
Putting the Pieces Back Together
After four weeks of rubble — during which I did an intensive three week parenting internship within the Sigliano family household — I am now starting to put the pieces back together. Beneath the dust filled air, I finally get to spend a night in my own bed.
Filed under Digressions
Give Sarko a Break
I spend a lot of time in France and love many things about the country. But I don’t know what is worse, the strikes or Sarko.
Filed under Digressions
Beneath the Debris
If you have been wondering about the relative quiet over here at Grave Error, well, there is an explanation.
We are beneath the debris.
Filed under Digressions
My Spanish Decade
On September 8, 2000, I left Washington, DC and arrived in Madrid, Spain on the following morning. For the next five years or so, I would negotiate with myself, “one more year, one more”, and then later Madrid or Paris, until the next thing I knew, I had already spent an entire decade – all of the 2000s (or however we’ll call this decade in retrospect) – in Spain.
Somehow when I look in the mirror, I keep thinking that I will resemble that same guy who left home a decade ago. And yet so much has happened both in my life and back home. For example, I missed the entire Bush presidency and the post-9/11 years. In Y2000, I didn’t have a cell phone, iTunes, WiFi or a blog even. And during this period, I lost two grandfathers, two great uncles, a great aunt, and a couple of friends. But I gained a nephew, a niece, three first cousins, a goddaughter, and countless friends. And just last year, I was thrice married: each time to the same woman.
Whenever people ask me why I moved to Spain a decade ago, I always give the same answer: I can’t even begin to remember.
Filed under Digressions, Friends / Family, Living la vida española
Moroccan TV Commercials
I have been trying to keep very quiet the past few days, as I have found myself increasingly disgusted by the extremism back home. It is as if we have turned ourselves into the exact mirror image of what we believe is so radical about “them”.
Ironically, during this same period, I have spent a few days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in Morocco with my in-laws. It is really incredible to go to a Muslim country and see just how radically different our imaginary portrait of a Muslim country and its people are from reality. Hopefully, I will write about my first Ramadan experience in Morocco soon.
In any event, a good barometer of how people think and feel is to watch how phone companies, banks, and car companies depict their audience’s aspirations. Here are a few good commercials from Moroccan television.
Filed under Digressions
MO: Metro, Plane and Train
I have a developed a system, a pattern of behavior, an M.O. for my habitual weekend trips to visit my wife in Paris. Delays notwithstanding, the voyage takes me roughly five hours from door to door. Here is my story: Continue reading
Filed under Digressions
Comfort Food
It may not be Jif Extra Crunchy, but Peter Pan Creamy will do the trick. The other day, out of sheer coincidence, I came across a nice stash of Peter Pan peanut butter in a local neighborhood shop that I almost never go into. I was so delighted that I gave the shop owner a gratuitous and boring monologue on why I was buying blueberry jelly to go along with the peanut butter. When I got home and ate toast after toast covered with the stuff, I realized that besides its power to transport me to my childhood, the PB&J combination has a quality very similar to the mixture of sweat and salty flavors in Moroccan cuisine. Maybe that is why I horde my mother-in-law’s homemade chebakia (fried cookie dough drenched in honey and covered with sesame seeds) as if they were Nutter Butters.
Filed under Digressions, Friends / Family
A Decade and a Half
Today Raul Gonzalez announced that he was leaving Real Madrid after sixteen years with the first team. I have never been a big Raul fan, mainly because during the last decade (since I have lived in Madrid), Raul’s performance was consistently discrete, having lost his unique spark of the 90s. Nevertheless, I fully recognize that his lack of protagonism on the field was made up for by his stellar leadership role. Without a doubt, Raul — as far back as I can remember — has been the local emblem of his team.
What struck me most today when I read the news was not that Raul was leaving (I have been waiting for that for a few years) but the date in which he first debuted with Real Madrid: October 29, 1994. At first glance, 1994 doesn’t seem so far in the past, but sixteen years is in fact a long time. Just looks at the second video to see how much Raul as changed since his debut. It is a good measuring stick of how much time has changed in the past decade and a half.
Filed under Digressions, Football/Soccer, Living la vida española
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