Cinema · I still don't have a title

Cinema d'Estiu de Benimaclet 2011

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 23:24:00 +0000

Yeah! It’s this time of the year: Friday evenings after work with your friends having some cool beer on the streets, Saturdays around the nearby mountains for a good hike and swimming in a lake or river, and good beach Sunday in a Valencian beach. And for a great ending of a Summer weekend, a good indie movie in your neighbourhood, reclaiming the streets and going back to our roots, when people perceived the public spaces as theirs, and would bring foldable chairs out, would gather with their neighbours and had a good after-dinner chat a la fresca.

The always active Associació de Veïns i Veïnes de Benimaclet has organized, for the fifth year four cinema projections in Benimaclet’s square, which are open for anyone who wants to share good moments with us. The program this year includes Soul Kitchen (3rd of July), When the Wind Blows (10th), Concursante (17th) and Moon (24th).

Before every movie, we’ll enjoy live music by local bands, and projections of good short films. We’ll be happy to see you there, and remember you only need a chair and some dinner… but be sure to be there a bit before 22:00: last year this got so popular some people started having issues to find good spots for their chairs!

Cinema d'Estiu in Benimaclet 2010

Sun, 04 Jul 2010 01:31:00 +0000

Like other years, Benimaclet’s Neighbour Association has organized a new cycle of film projections for the neighbours, by the neighbours, with the intention to get people out of their homes and share a good time with many others. Like in the other two editions, the selected films try to deliver a message to the viewers, and this year the topics are centered about labour and migration social issues. A change in this year’s edition is that there will be one more projection, for a total of 5 films, every Sunday of July, at 22:00 in the Plaça de Benimaclet.

Last week, we saw El viaje de Teo, a Mexican film describing the migration dramas going on in the Sonora Desert. This Sunday, we’ll see Arcadia, which will be followed by Recursos humanos, Hijos de los hombres and La estrategia del caracol.

Before each film, some local artists will perform live for us. Make yourself a sandwich, bring a chair to Benimaclet and enjoy some good cinema with your neighbours every Sunday in July!

Iruña

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 20:37:00 +0000

This weekend I had the pleasure of visiting my friend Kike in Iruña, a city I really like but had not been able to visit in five years. I spent three days with him, after a really awful Bilman trip during Friday night.

The first thing that happened on Friday morning was quite unexpected. I went out, crossed a pair of streets to get to Carlos III, and going past the corner I found myself surrounded by all kinds of policemen: red, blue, green and yellow. There were press reporters all over the place, with TV and photo cameras ready to record something big. What the hell? I looked around, and there it was: a huge blue sign read Populares de Navarra, and Mariano Rajoy was seconds away from getting out of the new PP headquarters in Nafarroa. With a few dozen policemen looking at me in suspicion, and realising my current hair dress wasn’t the most appropriate for that scenario, I decided to disappear as quickly as possible.

Populares aside, the weekend was really productive. I had a great time trying to find the places I visited 9 and 5 years ago. It was sad to see the fantastic Iruñako Gaztetxea turned into an iron building surrounded by old, traditional houses in the centre of the city. With Kike, I had enough time to learn more about the origins of Iruña and the three cities from which it originated, and visit the Ciudadela.

On Saturday, Kike, Ana and I went to have some fun on a snowy day around Orreaga and had dinner in a small town around the area, maybe Lintzoain? I’m afraid I forgot due to the mix of basque names in my head. We had dinner in lo viejo, where I spotted a poster of Solidari@s con Itoiz for the “Itoitz hustu arte” campaign, a copy of which I unsuccessfully tried to get in several places in the city.

On Sunday, Kike and I took a bus to Donosti, and I travelled across the most beautiful highway I’ve seen. But of course, that was from my perspective seated in a bus. I can imagine the Leitzaran highway project must have been greatly contested by the people of the tiny towns nearby. The spoiled valleys and views must have been really impressive in the past and seem now irreversibly ruined by a scar and holes through the mountains.

This was my first visit to Donosti, which held its annual Marathon, and were lucky to meet our friend Rubén when he was around kilometre 25 of his race. He managed to finish under 2:50, which was a bit better than what he aimed for in his first Marathon. Well done! The weather was horrible, and our visit to La Concha, the old harbour and the Casco Viejo was short, we were freezing and getting our feet wet.

While I visited Donosti for the first time, Mikel Laboa, one of the most respected singers in the basque culture, was ebbing away. Laboa’s songs always give me goosebumps, even if I need to read a translation for the basque lyrics. Many will remember his music from Julio Medem’s documentary, La pelota vasca, featuring Txoria txori, which has become a symbol of basque culture over the years. Youtube has quite a few videos, and I’d recommend watching Txoria txori, Gure bazterrak, Lili bat or Baga biga higa performed by the Orfeón Donostiarra to name a few.

Mikel Laboa, goian bego.

Cinema de Barri in Benimaclet

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 21:34:00 +0000

Last summer we tried to organise a Cinema d’estiu movie projections in Benimaclet’s Church Square, in an attempt to promote social activities in the street done by the neighbours, for the neighbours. The response was very positive, and the first two projections attracted many people, who would bring a chair and their dinner to the old town’s square to watch a movie. Unfortunately, the authorities, who were completely out of the loop, weren’t happy and on the 3^rd week the Local police appeared and said that that kind of activities needed official permits, and disallowed the projection.

For this year’s summer, we decided we’d try to do the projections once again, and learned that only a legally-established organisation can do the paperwork to get an authorisation. In parallel, some neighbours of Benimaclet, who had liked last year’s idea, were working on their own to repeat the experience, and somehow Clara was contacted by them, and we ended up collaborating. As these people are members of the Associació de veïns of Benimaclet, there were legally able to do the paperwork, and soon we agreed on the four movies for this year, to be played every Sunday of July at 22:00h.

Our pick for Sunday 6^th was Giuseppe Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso, followed on the 13^th by Elling, a Norwegian comical drama by Petter Næss which I hadn’t seen and I can totally recommend. Last week we saw Poniente, a Spanish film by Chus Gutiérrez that focus on immigration issues in the South East of Spain, based on the racist happenings of El Ejido of 2000. Finally, next Sunday is the turn for some political action with V for Vendetta. A note for Benimaclet neighbours: if you don’t come to see the movie, be aware that we plan to pump up the volume a lot for this one. You’re definitely going to hear it from home. ;)

We’re very happy about the response of the neighbours this year. Not having done any effort to announce this around the city, except for a few posters around Benimaclet during the last week of June, people clearly remembered last year’s experience and the plaça de Beni was full of chairs for all three weekends. It really helps to turn around during a projection and see so many people behind you participating in something you’ve invested some of your own time and money. It’s probably too late now, but there’s some talk of extending this to the Sundays in August, so we’ll see. Also, we plan to do a picaeta for attendees as a small closing party for this year’s cycle.

See you on Sunday, and enjoy V!

Tunisia

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 02:30:00 +0000

Last month, Belén and I managed to secure our trip to Tunisia on the very last moment. So, planning trips on the very last moment isn’t nothing new around this place, but we made a big effort to take things to the limit.

I can’t remember why exactly, but on January 31 we were *so* close to fucking everything up before it started, when we packed our stuff just a pair of hours before having to leave to the train station. My luggage was prepared in a rush, so while I think I took everything I thought I’d need, I didn’t really select my clothes too much. The idea was to have our suitcases mostly empty to bring back stuff from the markets: smoking cachimbas, lamps, leather stuff, etc. At that time I didn’t know that would end up being a great strategy.

Anyway, like 9 minutes before the train’s departure we were stuck in Nuevo Centro without a taxi and at that point I really had lost hope about being on time. For some reason, there were no taxis in the area, when it’s normally a place where there’s tons of them. Suddenly one appeared, we rushed in and I asked the taxi driver to please fly to the station. Happily, we got an incredible green wave around the avenues, he drove us at like 80 Km/h and we even had to wait for a few minutes at the station.

In Barcelona, we prepared our small New Year’s Eve dinner with my cousin Laia and Marc, and while the plan was to go to sleep pretty early to be in good shape to go to the airport next morning, the bottles of wine and cava emptied quite fast, and around 4:30 we were quite drunk when we decided it was enough. When some annoying sound woke us up next morning, it was really late, so we again rushed out to the empty streets of Barcelona, sneaked into a regional train, without knowing it was the only way to get in time in El Prat airport, and after some initial confusion trying to find the travel’s agency desk in the wrong terminal, we managed to check into our flight, being the very last to do so. With all the rush, I couldn’t get some clothes from my suitcase transfered into my hand luggage, which I really wanted to do after my nice lost luggage experience during Debconf 5 in Helsinki. Anyway, chances are small that your luggage gets lost, right?

But of course, Murphy is always vigilant, and this was a great opportunity to fuck me up. After a short but horrible (due to our really bad hangover) to Tunis/Carthage airport, we were in the long security/passport check. When Belén picked up her bag and mine didn’t appear, I tried to tell myself “hey, it’ll appear, no worries!”. After 15 minutes, the stupid suitcase was nowhere to be found. Apparently, another two pieces of luggage had the same luck, which made us contact a group of four Uruguayans who were missing one of them.

Nothing too terrible; it’ll surely come on tomorrow’s flight. After reclaiming our lost luggage, we went out to the parking where a bus was waiting for us, and on the way there, the six of us nearly fell into the first Tunisian scam, involving a dude selling jasmine flowers at 2€ each. The bus took us down to Jasmine Hammamet, the most touristic place in Tunisia. Valencians might have an easy imagining the atrocity of the area by picturing what twice Marina d’Or plus Benidorm including Terra Mítica would look like. Kilometres and kilometres of a disgusting “Who can build the most horrible giant hotel right next to the beach” contest.

So it was pretty clear we had to spend as little time as possible in the area. We soon learned about how transport works in Tunisia. The cheapest is to use the public busses and the luagge collective taxis, we soon found out. Our first morning there, our guide Rejeb, working for Iberojet and Solplan touroperators, gave a talk where he advised us against travelling alone, specially around the South, while he offered organised trips around the country for every day of the week. Although we expected this “danger!” speech, we decided to book the two day trip to the South and Great South of the country, basically because it was the best way to see many places in a short time, even if it meant having limited time in each destination.

We wandered around Jasmine Hammamet and discovered Carthage Land, sort of a Disneyland set in the age of Anibal and Carthage’s empire, which was inside a newly built medina complex. This was a really bad place to practice the art of haggling, as the place was so desert, merchants really tried hard to get you buy something. Again, we were close to fucking up after our first negotiation, but we finally decided we weren’t so interested. Lucky, we later found out the price was outrageous.

Sadly, we spent way too much time in that tourist trap, and we found it was too late to go to the real Hammamet town to see a real medina and real stuff, so we had a long walk around the immense beach until sunset. On Wednesday, we did organise a bit with the Uruguayans and some others we had met: María and Santi “Kuchi Kuchy”, Cristina and Pedro and an Argentinian family, and managed to hire a van driver to drive us all over the North. For quite a good price, we were taken to a few ruin sites in Carthago, now mostly a residential area, and it was really impressive. While the condition of many of the remainings is not optimal, it was exciting to see things which had been built by Phoenicians and Romans 2,000 years ago. I really enjoyed the remainings of the Antonine thermal baths of the city. It had been a huge building right next to the sea; one of the standing columns helps figuring out how big it had been. Right next to this site, the Presidential Palace dominated the whole gulf. Military places are treated zealously in Tunisia, and it is against the law to take pictures of any bit of it, not even a barbwire of the fence. The Palace had a great Tunisian flag waving over it, and many signs advised you against taking pictures in that direction. I couldn’t resist.

The ruins of the Roman Antonine Baths

After Carthage, we went to Sidi Bou Said, a small touristic town, which had the peculiarity and beauty of having all windows and doors painted in a beautiful light blue colour. Our last stop for the day was in Tunis, where we visited the most amazing medina of the whole week. Unlike the new medina in Jasmine Hammamet, this one was literally packed with people going up and down the maze of very narrow streets. Every few metres you’d come across a new, attractive smell coming from the few salons de thé or spice, leather or perfume shops. Here we finally started developing our haggling skills, and managed to get a few items for reasonable amounts.

Streets of Sidi Bou Said

Back at our hotel, everyone tried to get a quick dinner and go early to bed, as next morning we were taking a bus for our trip around the South. There was time to call yet another time to the Airport, to find out that one of the luggage pieces had been found. While there was no news about my suitcase, we shared a taxi to the airport to pick the found suitcase, and see if mine was actually there by any chance. Unluckily, it wasn’t, so I wouldn’t have any clothes for the desert visit. Some people in the group were kind enough to lend me some t-shirts and pants. For my underwear, I actually resorted to using some of Belén’s (no kidding, it was way too sexy :P), while mine dried up after some manual washing.

The alarm clock went off at 5:15 or so, and soon after we were ready in the hall with our small bags. When the bus was ready to pick us up, the guide said we weren’t allowed in, as we weren’t on the list. WTF? We were nearly the first ones to book and pay for it! So he finally let us in, for a short while, until he realised there was no space for everyone, so he demanded that we got off. Of course, we didn’t, and a long and very disgusting argument started between the guide, us and a few people who had seen us pay for our trip, and were trying to support us. To make a long story short, we ended up stepping down when I noticed the bus driver calling the police, and after Rejeb, our guide, told us the other bus would be waiting for us at the travel agency if we quickly took a taxi there. We of course knew that was a fantasy to get the bus moving, but dealing with the police at 6:30AM wasn’t on my list of activities for the day, so we finally gave up to let the rest of the people get in time to their visits, as they were very tightly scheduled to make everything fit in two days.

Nobody was waiting for us at the travel agency, but we were promised our money back, which did happen in the evening; our plans for Thursday and Friday were a bit broken though, and the rest of the morning was spent looking for alternatives. When we had managed to book a new trip in a different agency for Saturday, we took the bus to Nabeul, the capital of the province, well known for their medina specialised in pottery.

In Nabeul, we lived a tourist trap which I found to be quite original. Not having walked 3 metres into the city walls, some young dude stops us and tells us that he knows us, as he works in the restaurant of “our hotel”. I totally didn’t remember his face at all, but why not? So he quickly tells us Nabeul has good carpet workshops, and her sister is working in one which is regulated by the Government, and you can only visit two days a week. Coincidentally, Thursday is one of them! So he literally grabs us by the arm and takes us to one of the streets perpendicular to the main market street, and we enter a carpet shop. To the right, his sister probably being like 45 years older, is knitting a nice carpet on the loom. And a few seconds after, we’re taken upstairs, where a “Teletienda” show starts before us. Without being asked if we want to buy a carpet, some other dude starts to unroll carpets and more carpets before us, talking in some very basic Spanish. While we’re offered jasmine tea, which is really nice, Ali “the brother” quickly excuses himself and vanishes, leaving us with the salesman, which continues unrolling more and more before us, now helped by someone else. When 10 minutes later we convince them that we won’t buy any carpet, he asks a donative for his young employee, who has unrolled and will now roll back a zillion carpets. Back in the hotel, we have dinner with a pair of Catalans from our flight, and when we tell us about the carpet place, they tell us they went over the same story like one hour before us!

On Friday, we got some advice on other places to visit, and decided to go up to Cape Bon and visit Kerkuan, the only important remainings of a Punic city which, when conquered by the Romans, was destroyed to the grounds, but not rebuilt on top (they were busy with Carthage). Romans did an excellent job when destroying cities, and the result is a site which still lets you see perfectly how a small town (around 1,500) looked like 2,000 years ago.

Ruins of a Kerkuan neighbourhood, with their red bathrooms nearly intact

To reach Kerkuan we had taken the bus up to Nabeul and then our first luagge to Kelibia, where we took a taxi (after no less than half an hour arguing in French with the taxi driver to settle on a rate for a ride to Kerkuan and then to the tip of the Cape in El Haouaria. Luagges are undoubtedly the best way to travel medium distances for very little money, while getting mixed with locals. During our ride up North, we chatted with a nursing student from Kelibia who was going back to her town for the weekend. She was really open, like most of the people we found in Tunisia, and we ended up exchanging our post addresses; we still need to send her a postcard from València soonish. This area wasn’t so touristic, so the roads, while totally acceptable, weren’t as good as the highway from Tunis to Sfax we were used to.

We had seen some bits of the local “driving skills”, but the luagge driver performed some of the most extreme overtakings I’ve ever seen. These happened every three of four minutes, so after a while I was actually amused about what was going on. We would overtake two lorries on one go when there was absolutely no visibility; if things went too far, people would just slow down to let the overtaker get back into his lane on time, and those coming ahead would just use their headlamps to make them know it was just a bit too close.

The taxi driver, annoyed at us, took us to Kerkuan but didn’t wait for us; he immediately left, leaving us without any transportation in the middle of nowhere. After a visit at the site, we walked around 2.5 kilometres back to the main road, where we decided it was too late and risky to continue the journey up to El Haouaria, so we waited on the road gutter for a taxi. The first one which stopped was, to our surprise, the same bastard who left us one hour before, who stopped, laughing at us a little. Luckily some other taxi came by in the correct direction, and soon forgot about that man.

After a taxi, luagge and bus ride, we were back in Hammamet, and the desert group had already got back from the two day trip. We were asked over and over what happened, what did we do, etc. People who hadn’t talked to us before would come over and see; we were really surprised about the warm welcome we had. After dinner, we improvised a customes party, and many people managed to dress up in Tunisian/arabic fashions using bed sheets and so on. We had to wake up at 5AM next morning, but didn’t go to bed until 2AM.

Nothing could go wrong this time. We had our tickets, we had confirmed we would be going on Sunday the night before, so at 6:15, our new guide came in, and came straight towards me. He said something in German, and after I told him I spoke absolutely no German, he said “huh, well you know the bus is full of Germans, and my indications will be in German?”. Pretty incredible, but again a fuckup by the agency. My ticket said, clearly: “Sahara safari. Bus + 4x4. (ALL)”. Turns out “ALL” meant Allemand, not “everything included”, although we had requested English pretty clearly. This was quite a minor problem though, after having no clothes for a whole week and having been left behind two days before.

I think we were really lucky getting that German group, though. We were only 16 people on the minibus, making the stops a lot faster than the normal ones, where 55 persons need to get out and in of the bus. We had our own Routard guide for Tunisia, so we could read about the places we were about to visit before getting ther. Also, I surprisingly knew much of what our guide was talking about, just missing the details —he talked about oil production in Tunisia compared to Spain’s, among other topics—. When the landscape was becoming drier and drier, Belén and I spotted something dark far away ahead in the completely straight road. As it became bigger, I started thinking it might be the #1 place to visit for me in Tunisia: El Djem’s impressive Roman amphitheatre.

When we got off the bus, I was totally excited. Before me, the walls of an incredibly well preserved, huge Roman building; in fact, the best Roman ruins in the whole continent. El Djem’s amphitheatre was the third biggest of the Roman empire with 35,000 seats, only surpased by Rome’s and Capua’s. It remained mostly intact until the 17th century, when some of its stones were used to build the city and some of the treasures taken to the Great Mosque of Kairouan, but when it took more damage was during two consequent wars, when the Turks didn’t have many problems to blow part of the wall away using cannons to end up a siege of the city.

The Roman amphitheatre of El Djem

The underground tunnels are intact, and it’s difficult to not have flashes of Gladiator while walking under the arena’s trapdoors. Sadly, there was little time to spend there, and we had to continue the journey after just 45 minutes. I would have spent half of the day there.

From here, the landscape truly started to get drier and more desertic. The south of Tunisia is a giant olive field, until you reach the Great South, where it’s dry enough that the only thing that grows in the land are rocks. Hours later we arrived in Matmâta, the very famous troglodyte village of small holes in the ground. Although I was curious about being there, watching how organised and massive tourism has destroyed these Berber’s ways of life dissapointed me greatly. Our guide stopped the bus in one of the pits, which was decorated with white and light blue. In the first room, an old woman was grinding something in a small, stone mill. The dwellers of the few pits still used by their original inhabitants now make a living by letting people into their homes and getting dinar as a payment for taking photographs. What the woman was doing was just a bit of theatre, part of the show. After this first room, we got into the middle of the pit, which had a series of other passages to some rooms, some of which were simply open so we could get in and have a look. I felt a little bit like violating someone’s privacy, and wondered how much the house had changed in the last years.

Inside a troglodyte underground house in Matmâta

After our visit, we continued up the mountains of Matmâta, and after going by a giant “WELCOME TO MATMATA” sign drawn in white in the middle of a mountain, Hollywood style (!), we stopped for a brief photo-stop (sic). Indeed, the view was quite impressive, and is universally famous as one of the filming spots of Tatoonie scenes in Star Wars: A New Hope. Speaking of famous places, a few minutes later we stopped at the top of one of the hills, were we’d have lunch in the Hotel Sidi Driss, a place of pilgrimage for Star Wars fans, as it was the troglodyte pit which served as the Skywalker’s home. The place is full of references to the film saga, and one of the open pits is full of set pieces stuck into the walls. We were served couscous, which wasn’t bad, but was cooked and served in the most genuine fast-food fashion. Everyone there gets couscous to eat, apparently, and it’s the same in many other touristic places in the area.

Matmâta’s lunar landscape

From here, our journey headed straight West, in the middle of the rocky desert, until after some time, you could start to see lines of palm tree branches planted here and there, a sign that rocks would soon disappear, being replaced by sand and dunes. As when we were approaching El Djem, at some point a huge, dark spot appeared on the horizon.

Douz, probably named after some 12th French batallion which stayed there, is a small town in the very limit of the Sahara desert, built right next to a huge oasis, exclusively dedicated to palm tree plantations, making dates production a big source of income, along with, of course tourism. The travel agencies use Douz as the starting point for several-day trips into the desert, camel rides and stuff like this. Our guide offered us getting a camel and carriage ride in Tozeus for 20 dinar, but Belén and I declined. He didn’t seem to be too happy about it, and had no problem commenting this in German and Arab with the driver (Spanisch and Spanien were clear to me). We learned that the agency (or the guide) makes around 3 Dinar for everyone who contracts the camel rides, after speaking to one native young kid who worked in the camel place. While our German trip mates got dressed in berber fashion, we opted to walk into the desert and play around in the sand on our own. I discovered a few desert insects which were unlike anything I’ve seen anywhere, and their diminute trails were all over the dunes. Looking West, the view was astonishing, with only thousands of kilometres of yellow dunes ahead us.

The evening sun over the dunes

After they came back, we were taken to our hotel, which was really impressive. After leaving our stuff in our room, we headed back to the desert, which was like 300 metres away, to see the sunset over the “Great Dune”. There’s a street which literally serves as the frontier between the rocky ground and the sand desert. From there, you could see many lines of palm tree branches, which are planted by locals in a futile attempt to stop the inexorable advance of the desert. Women in Douz and other towns in the desert limit spend their days sweeping the entrances to their homes, as sand gets in really fast. A small village next to Douz even had to be abandoned and rebuilt in some other place, with the old one being finally devoured by the dunes.

When it got dark, we still had some time to kill before dinner, and we discovered a hammam in our hotel. I got in, and saw there was a bored young man inside. He informed us about the prices, and after some short deliberation, we realised we’d spent half of the camel money in some Arab relaxation; while I got a really cool massage, Belén enjoyed a Turkish bath. I spoke to the guy for a while, and he said not that many people used that hammam. He actually handed the list of services since 2002, which easily fitted in one piece of paper. People don’t know what they are missing; he explained that most of the hotel’s clients just showed no interest in the baths. I wonder how Fins or Norwegians would react, given their sauna culture. The dinner and breakfast in that hotel was absolutely awesome, and I actually ate too much to have an easy sleep.

Next morning we had to be ready at 5:30. That’s pushing my limits. The bus started crossing the Chott Jerid when it was still quite dark. The chotts are dry, salt lakes in the middle of the desert, which during some seasons do get some water, sometimes from the underground. The Chott Jerid is the biggest of the three chotts in the area, and the views are fantastic. It’s like a giant, totally flat muddy sea which reflects light creating dangerous mirages of oasis-like dark patterns. Before the construction of the recent road that links Douz and Tozeur, crossing the chott was so risky that many people died in the attempt. We had the unique opportunity to see the sun rise over the salty horizon.

Sunrise at the Chott Jerid

Again, on our way to Tozeur, we were offered a carriage ride for ten dinar, and again we declined. The guide then asked us if we had no money or what. So in Tozeur we basically wanted to walk around the oasis fields, and ended up talking most of the time with some old man who sold drums and desert roses.

On a 4x4, we went up North to Chebika, a really cool town with a small oasis of thermal water, which I guess was around 40°C. The short walk to the wall where the oasis surfaced was packed with children who insistently begged for money or offered necklaces and other items. It was difficult to make them understand you didn’t want anything. We then went up the mountain behind Chebika through a road which had its own piece of history. It seems that during WWII, Rommel suffered an Allied siege in Chebika, with a range of mountains behind their backs. The Allies gave him one month to surrender, and he took his time to answer. During that time, he ordered his engineers to design and build a road which would let them escape Chebika through the steep mountains, and they managed. When the ultimatum expired, the Allies apparently found out Chebika had been abandoned by the Germans, including tanks and most of their equipment. So, on the way up, a few kilometres away from the Algerian border, there was another typical visit to the biggest oasis waterfall in Tunisia, which was several metres high.

The oasis at Chebika

Our Sahara trip would soon end, and after lunch we headed Northeast on our way to Hammamet. On our way back, we stopped in Kairouan, one of the key Islam pilgrimace spots, with the Great Mosque as the biggest attraction. Unluckily, as we arrived after lunch, we didn’t had a chance to see it. Apparently it is really impressive. We haggled a bit for a pair of babouches and a small leather couch in the medina.

We came back to our hotel around 7, and found most of the people around the hall. After the obligatory update on how it went, we went to bed as we were exhausted, and of course we had to get up really early to head to the airport. The airport was at that early time of the morning a total chaos, and while people stood in the checkin lines, I tried to find out what was going on with my still lost luggage.

I went back to the lost luggage window, which would be closed for 5 more minutes. When they finally opened, they told me once again they had no clue about what was going on with my luggage. I finally understood they had no clue: my tracking number wasn’t in their database. I asked them if I could have a look at the unreclaimed luggage storage room. They kindly opened a small door for me, and invited me to go inside and have a look. The view was gross: hundreds of lost bags all over the place. As I was in a bit of a hurry (I actually had to get back to Barcelona), I asked him where to find the bags of one week ago, and he nearly bursted into laugher. Okay, I had to look all over the place, scanning every piece of luggage in an attempt to spot mine. There were bags of absolutely every type in there. In one of the corridors, I sensed a disgusting smell, and figured out some poor guy may have food or something in one of their lost bags, which was rotting in that horrible room. So wrong: soon after I found myself nearly stepping on a puddle of shit, as if someone had literally dumped it right there. Oh my… luckily my search was nearly over and unsuccessful, and I got back to Barcelona with the hope of finding my bag in El Prat. After looking in their two storage rooms I realised I’d probably not see the luggage again, which is a real pain in the ass.

A few hours of train later we were back in València, with a feeling of having spent 3 or 4 weeks in Tunisia, not just 8 days. Really a great place to visit, not only for their cultural treasures, both current and ancient, but for the openness of their people. I hope I’ll be back at some point!

Charles de Gaulle, worse than the NYC Stock Exchange

Wed, 16 Nov 2005 10:21:00 +0000

Yesterday we did meet zufus and gravity for lunch, then mika joined us for bubbles tea. There also was a somewhat unexpected couple joining the group at that point: kiko and his sister. gravity and zufus had to go back to work though, so it was mika, micah, kiko, zuzi and I who went for some Freedom Trail discovery.

The weather wasn’t that good, and I didn’t have too much time either, but we did manage to see a few things around the centre, like the memorial grave yard and a park with tons of fearless squirrels.

We headed back to the Acetarium, I quickly took a shower and packed, and we left to the metro, a bit behind on my planned schedule. mika left me two stops before the one I needed to get down in, and instructions to get to the airport from there, using the shuttle.

It’s not amusing how slow something can appear to be when you’re in a hurry. The driver of the bus said it took 5 minutes, but I had to go to the very last stop at terminal E, and it was like an eternity. In the end, I arrived at the terminal at 18:40, when my idea was 18:00, and I ran and ran until I found Air France’s desk. There was no queue or anything, only me.

During the flight, I tried killing time with War of the Worlds, which was a timekiller but nothing more, and The Island, which I wouldn’t recommend unless you care too much about hot female characters.

After 6 hours of flight, I was in Paris, apparently on time. But the doors opened much later that when we landed, so my connection started to be endangered. Again, I ran and ran, from one terminal to the other, around the chaos that is CDG. In vain, as my checkin was closed after arriving only 20 minutes before the departure.

Much annoyed, I went to the transfer desk, to discover the next flight to València was cancelled, so the next one was the next morning. The quick alternative via Madrid was full, so I now have tickets for CDG-BCN-VLC, which is extending my travel plan in 7 very nice hours.

I have no idea of where my luggage is, but at this point I don’t care. I only wonder at what time I’ll get sleep. What I do know, is that these fucking idiots claim there is free wireless in this spot of Terminal 2F, but it’s not true at all.

The source of all evil

Sun, 13 Nov 2005 11:51:00 +0000

Yesterday was a very, very intense day, and I had lots of fun.

Clint, sladen and I headed to Chinatown walking, with a few detours to be able to checkout Manhattan’s skyline. The view from the other shore is awesome, even with the two towers missing. When I compare the current view with how it was four years ago, I understand how much the city has changed without them. They were so impressively big that I just can’t picture them too well in my mind.

The skyline of South Manhattan

We walked over the Brooklyn bridge, giving me other very cool views of Manhattan, while I hammered Clint with questions about this and that. I saw that since 9/11, you can’t go past the Town Hall. “Security reasons”, of course. I was very surprised to see police cars in every single street. It’s like a Police State, and if you ask me, it didn’t make me feel safer.

After some walk, we finally got in Chinatown, which is the craziest place ever. People sell stuff on the sidewalks, and many streets are packed with people. We had to meet with micah, biella, dilinger and his cat at some Chinese place for breakfast/lunch. The place, as Chinatown itself, was crazy. As soon as we sat down a few waitresses landed a few plates on the table, without asking or anything. A few minutes later I could see that the way they serve you is going around with carts with lost of food, and you either want it or not.

We left dilinger at the metro station, and moved on to the SoHo. I wanted to go to the SoHo Apple Store to see if they knew about replacement Spanish keyboards for my Powerbook. My powerbook was bought in the US last year, so it has a US keyboard. This is mostly ok, but only mostly as it’s missing a key.

After SoHo, we went back to Chinatown to pick up bubbles. It was nice to see her after Debconf, and she made the effort to come just for a few hours even if she was ill and had lots to do in Philly. We headed to South Street Port, where I had a long chat about Cuba with micah while we sat on a bench looking at Brooklyn bridge.

And then, we gathered all our braveness and headed to the heart of the beast, to the kernel of the system. We walked into the Financial District, and soon enough I was walking in Wall Street no less. If I breathed hard, I could smell the money. The road was paved in gold, and there were skyscrapers everywhere. I discovered the rulers of this world had opened a “public space” in JP Morgan’s building. To their despair, probably, it had been taken over by the poor. I wonder what Bloomberg will do about it.

As I walked up the street, a strange feeling in my heart grew and grew, until, behind a corner, I saw it. The source of all evil was ahead of me, guarded by George Washington himself.

The New York Stock exchange and its black evil aura of Capitalism

I was standing ahead of this building where so many people behave like bastards everyday, pushing millions to povery for a bit more profit margin. The doors were closed and surrounded by security officers, which despite being asked politely, didn’t let us in for “security reasons”.

Next to it was the Church of Capitalism, at the end of the street. It’s curious that such an old church still stands where it was build near the harbour probably a century ago, now surrounded by some of the most modern and tallest buildings in the planet. And then, we visited the bull, which I didn’t know is the “friendly” symbol of how Capitalism works.

I had Capitalism by the balls

We moved down to Battery Square, past the old US Customs building with the four statues representing the four continents. We saw the damaged sculpture which lived in the WTC, and sat down at the pier to watch a beautiful sunset over the Statue of Liberty.

The Statue of Liberty seen from South Manhattan

At that point, biella and micah had to meet some friends at one cinema to see the Wal-Mart documentary. We went to a funky place to have some tea, decided to go see Times Square and then walk to Central Park. At the time, mako was arriving to NYC on the Chinatown bus, so we agreed to meet in a restaurant to have lunch. Paul Sladen finally managed to get lost, after many tries during the day, and wasn’t seen until we got back home.

Mako and Mika waited for us at the door of an… ethiopian restaurant in the SoHo, despite Mako knows I can’t stand spicy food. But in the end it wasn’t so bad, I just needed a few more glasses of water than average. And I finally got to know mika, after lots of time of chatting over IRC. Greg, SPI’s lawyer, also appeared, and was a nice addition to the group.

Mako knew where to take us after that. The Belgian bar was packed, but there was a private party in one of the spaces and we took over some of that space. After a few rounds, we were ready to leave the pub and go for Falafel and some tea. I was terribly falling asleep though, so instead of tea we took a cap back to Brooklyn, where we found Paul waiting at the door.

After an hour of inflating a mattress, we were ready for sleep, at 4AM. It didn’t look like the morning after would be very productive…

Discovering Montréal

Wed, 09 Nov 2005 23:45:00 +0000

It’s been a week since I arrived in Montréal, and had not had a free minute to blog about it. There’s tons of things to write about, the activity and fun has been mostly non-stop.

The travelling wasn’t perfect, as always I could not sleep a single minute. Instead, I watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which I had wanted to see for some time and was nice, and Batman Begins, which was positively surprising, being a Batman movie.

When I arrived at Montréal’s airport, the fun started soon enough. Coming from Spain and having this scary looking face and beard didn’t help much to survive customs. When I got in the line and handed my arrival card, I was sent to the immigration office straight away. I was asked what I was coming to Canada for. “To a computer conference”, I said. Well, having no “invitation” or anything for this conference made me a quick suspect. After being freed, I walked on my way out, and on the next control, I had my bag searched. And again… “Do you have any document about this conference?”. And then, to the real baggage inspection room.

As the guy started opening my bag, I suddenly remembered about the fuet I was carrying for Vicente, while I had said, confidently, “No I don’t carry any food” in my card. Luckily he saw I was carrying a DragonLance book, liked it and let me go.

The next thing was, while waiting for the bus that should take me to Downtown Montréal, my first conversation with a non-airport staff Canadian. So this old woman in her seventies comes along… and the first thing she says… “I hate those fucking moslems”. I try to not look too much like “WTF!?” and without replying, listen to this totally moronic and racist monologue about how moslems in Canada come to the country to not work and live of the country’s welfare. “Why should they work? They stay at home, and watch TV and fuck. That’s all they do. The more kids they have, the more money they get. I don’t believe in welfare”. So I got on the bus quite shocked.

After a bus trip and lots of walking due to forgetting I had to get on another one, I got into the hotel, and started meeting all the people. My first dinner was with Gustavo, Salgado and Carlos, and I felt I wanted to die, I couldn’t keep my eyes open. The conference started next morning for me, and has been the usual dynamic as always, only that now it’s the first time that I really find myself somewhat useful during the sessions. :)

Meeting mdz and kiko happened that morning. That was when all kinds of stuff started to happen. Why do I have to get such bad influences?

Kiko and I managed to not fall over while taking all of these pics in Mont Royal

Independence Day

Tue, 05 Jul 2005 01:53:00 +0000

I could write about many things today, but I just saw the last 20 minutes of Independence Day. I had classified it as a “not worth the time” film when I first saw it a few years ago, but today I got reminded of a few details that made me laugh again at the stupidity of the whole thing.

It seems every spaceship out there lacks basic firewalling: we saw it in SW: A New Hope and SW: Revenge of the Sith. Independence Day goes way further when the good guys use a virus to destroy the powerful enemy.

There are other good moments, like when a young couple in the military base, under attack, say “we’ll die being virgins, but we’ll die together”, or when a few jewish people are praying and ask someone else to join them… He objects: “but I’m not jewish”, and the priest (or whatever) says “nobody’s perfect”. Excellent!

The French say "Non"!

Mon, 30 May 2005 02:00:00 +0000

Coming back with Rambonabo from the cinema, where I watched Episode III for the second time (this time I didn’t pay for the ticket), we learned from the radio the results for the French referendum.

I was pretty confident about “No” winning, and I’m happy to see it was by a quite acceptable margin, given how high participation was. I don’t know how the process continues now that a key member has rejected the current text. One would hope France would start pushing for changes in the Constitution with the goal of writing a new version that makes some people that today voted no happy, and that would be voted again. What doesn’t sound too “democratic” is what Giscard says needs to be done: to vote over and over and over again until the “Oui” option wins.

I’m still a bit perplexed at Spain’s results for the same vote. That did suck a bit. Not only for the final result, but for the overwhelming percentage of votes supporting “Sí” in our referendum. Were the 80% of the (not that many) people who voted informed about what’s in the Constitution? Do they know that if they find out a bit later, after it’s approved, that they don’t really like this or that bit, it’s virtually impossible to change it?

Jetlag 1 - 0 Jordi

Mon, 25 Apr 2005 03:50:00 +0000

I had this great plan to minimise the impact of jetlag for this trip to Australia. Anyone at UDU will read on my face that it didn’t work out that well…

I, partially on purpose, partially because the night got a bit more complicated than what I planned, slept just four hours or so on Friday. This was cool, as it would help sleeping during the long flight.

But of course, the flight from València to Heathrow was 3 hours late, and completely fucked up my plan to take a nap while I waited for the Sydney plane. No worries, I had plenty of hours to sleep on board. That’s not so easy. When I discovered the passenger sitting next to me also came from València, we started chatting and, after dinner, I tried to get some sleep, but was mostly unsuccessful.

After our stop in Singapore we faced our second night in just a few hours, and I wasn’t sleepy at all. At 2:30AM I found myself still reading my book Quina lenta agonía… and could get 1h of sleep before breakfast time and landing.

The silly guys at the airport’s customs service were kind enough to trigger a “passport alert” on me, scan my passport, search all my baggage and ask me questions about my possibly evil plans for my stay in .au. That made me waste one hour that I could have used having a short nap at the hotel, but no luck.

As soon as the conference started, Daniel Silverstone said I would be collapsing by 11. Well, it’s past 12 but I can’t say I’m being able to concentrate too much in the BOFs… running a BOF this evening with Carlos will be interesting in this condition… :)

Oh, to follow the trend on my movie choice of the night before, last night I saw Sandra Bullock’s Miss Congeniality, which was decidedly worse than Blade Trinity. I wonder how people actually go to the cinema to watch this kind of stuff.

Flying to Sydney

Sun, 24 Apr 2005 02:04:00 +0000

It’s past 2AM and I’m sitting in an airplane on my way to Sydney. The monitor in front of me, besides a zillion different movies and TV shows, has a channel with a map that gives you information about your journey.

Along with not so useful stuff like “tail wind” or “outside temperature” (it’s -40°C outside, so what?), there’s a countdown of the time it’ll take to arrive to Singapore, our first destination. Even if it already feels like I’ve been inside here for an eternity, I still have 9 hours to go, but I’m trying to stay up as much as possible in an attempt to fight jet lag a bit.

We’re currently flying over the Black Sea, and soon we’ll be over interesting places like Iraq. I wouldn’t put money into this, but I’m pretty sure the map stuff is made using xplanet, or xplanet’s maps, because the night shading is just exactly the same as what I used as my background years ago. The size of this airplane was quite a surprise. It appears to be quite big from the airport’s terminal, but when I got in and saw how wide (and tall) it is I couldn’t help a “woah” to myself.

As the goal is to kill time as fast as possible without wasting too much laptop battery (currently at 68%, 2h 14m remaining), I decided to watch the fist movie I could identify on the many channels. Soon enough I found a tatooed Wesley Snipes on channel 4, so I ended watching a total POS called “Blade Trinity” which got rid of 2 hours quite easily.

I still have battery to watch a full DVD, and I think that’s what I’m going to do until 4AM CEST. I have with me Chocolat and another one by Woody Allen.

Memoria del saqueo

Tue, 05 Apr 2005 20:19:00 +0000

Yesterday, Kiko, Belén and I went to the cinema to see Memoria del saqueo (Social Genocide, in the English translation), a documentary film about how Argentina, one of the richest countries in South America, managed to go into total bankruptcy, ending in the popular uprise and rioting of December 2001.

As the story develops, from the times of Videla’s dictatorship, and through the democratic presidencies of Alfonsín, Menem and De la Rua, you see how all the layers of the Argentinian society have systematically used their big or small powers for their own benefit, or to benefit corporations from other countries. From politicians to the labor-union leaders, and including judges, lawyers, businessmen or the Church, everyone did as much as they could to steal from the Argentinian people, during decades. Menem was specially incredible, as he didn’t even care to hide anything, as you see in the YPF privatization process.

This is a crude film, and a feeling of impotence invades you from the very beginning. The description of how the thousands of middle-class families suddenly found themselves in poverty and without a job, and the poorer classes suddenly suffered from desnutrition had me thinking “hijos de puta!” during the two hours, specially during the description of the situation in Tucumán, where many children died of famine, in a country with capacity to feed 300 million people.

If you still wonder how Argentina could get in that hole 2 years ago, this is probably the perfect explanation.

Oxford, day 5, 6 and 7

Mon, 16 Aug 2004 13:42:00 +0000

Argh, just two days left for me at the conference.

Friday 13th

Friday was a slow day, after the great stuff going on on Thursday. There were talks on the status of hardware support in Debian, laptop support and jamesh did a quick demo on PyGTK programing.

When work ended, people started doing fun stuff. Some went off to drink a bit getting prepared to swallow Antitrust. Others stayed at some rooms hacking and generally wasting time. Mako and I started to do plans for a great xmame game, but faced some problems (like a *huge* compile and total lack of roms) and postponed until some time later. Went to bed way too late, after not training at all.

Saturday 14th

On Saturday, breakfast ended at 10AM, which was a pain. I spent most of the morning in zombie mode, while Colin took a few dudes to Cambridge to spend the day. Those who stayed at Oxford had a quick lunch at the bar, consisting of hamburger (my first shit-food-like hamburger in about 5 years) with bacon, while I made arrangements with my friend Graham from Loughsborough to meet in Oxford. Around 15:30, Graham appeared and we went down to town, where we parked his car (I was horrified by the parking fares in England) and started walking around the city, after rejecting the idea of taking a tourist bus, as most of the interesting stuff is actually in the pedestrian-only areas of the city centre. We visited the University area, with the old library and church, which were very cool, and then went down to the Cathedral, which was interesting because it’s so different to a common Spanish cathedral. In Spain, they tend to be tall but not so large. Oxford’s isn’t tall, but it occupies a very large block. Furthermore, it’s located in one of the ends of the city, so just outside of it there’s just countryside, with large areas of grass where people can stay. Looks a lot more friendly to me than the evil church in Spain at least. We didn’t go inside the Cathedral because we had to pay, and most of the stuff seemed to be closed anyway. Back at the centre, we had a tea somewhere, and then decided to stay to have dinner, and managed to find The Turf Tavern, near the Bodleian Library, and just off the Venecian arch, very well hidden in a tiny alley.

The Turf Tavern is awesome. It’s a very old, historic pub located in a building dating the 14th century, and it really feels like a traditional English pub (I guess, anyway ;). Graham said I should try their cider, which was very cool. The pub’s backyard has a few ilustrations which talk about what famous people like Bill Clinton did there when they were young. Clinton assures he “didn’t inhale”, just filled his mouth with some, let’s say not legal substance. Let’s believe him… Those that are staying for the rest of the week in Oxford should not miss this place. Try the cider, too (but only if you don’t have to drive back)!

We finally had dinner at some Italian restaurant near the bus station, as Graham’s foot injury was starting to hurt again and we preferred not to walk too much more. The pizza was great, but I can’t remember the restaurant’s name. We briefly visited a pub in the same street, which was full of people quite older than us (30’s/40’s). I liked the music a lot more than the music you find in a normal pub in Spain, which kinda sucks. Graham objected though, as he said it’s always the same music from the 80’s. I guess it can get boring, yes. Not much later we were back at the hotel, where I showed him the conference centre a bit and where all the Canonical stuff is taking place, and finally Graham left at 23:00 or so, as he had a bit more than one hour of car to get home. I’m glad we managed to meet, I hadn’t seen him in the last 3 months since he left València and we had a great time at Oxford. Oh, I got a very nice British Triathlon T-Shirt too, with long-sleeves. Perfect for the air-conditioning freezing hell here at the hotel.

Sunday 15th

Slow day again, after getting little sleep. After going down at 10 for breakfast, I went up to the room again to see if I could catch some interesting Olympics stuff on the BBC, but after gymnastics finished, they started doing boxing, which I fucking don’t understand why it’s an olympic sport. Bleh. It sucks that I’m not following the Olympic games at all, I don’t even know when the nice swimming stuff is, or when athletics start. I just know the Olympic triathlon is next week, which should be perfect for me to watch on TV. Learned that not only Greece lost their two better athletes under doping suspect, but they also got beaten by *Mali* on football. Fun…

Went to the mini-pool just before lunch, when everyone else were stuck to the bar’s TV sets watching F1. Of course, Schumacher won again, what a surprise. I tried getting some swim, but it was quite hard, with just around 12 metres of swimming pool. I got quite tired as I only could do around 6 strokes before turning around and going back, losing much breath, so after a while I just ended having fun or doing some short technique exercises. When I went out I was quickly reminded that the changing rooms at the gym are the maximum example of air-con hell in this hotel. There is air-conditioning inside the changing rooms, with a quite cold setup, which just makes you freeze when you get out of the shower all wet. This is just crazy. Thom says the hotel is just trying to show off. Well, it shows off stupidity. :) After more hamburger for lunch, Mako and I finally started playing some X-Mame, as he finally found the needed roms. “Man, this game’s great” or “I’m… Batman!”, he kept saying. We started a Captain Commando game, which we didn’t finish, as we were called by Fabio to go down to the swimming pool again. We had a nice time there, doing races and stuff. Shortly after Enrico, Teo and seb128 joined.

We went to the Trout Inn after dinner (instead of looking at what we wanted to do with the i18n BOF on Monday morning), which is just at the opposite side of the Thames Path, just along the road to Wytham. The inn is huge, and we had a few beers and a nice time, until we were kicked out at a ridicolous time, bah! Lu, doko and I agreed to go running at another ridiculous time, 7:30AM, next morning, but that’s another story.

Fahrenheit 9/11

Mon, 02 Aug 2004 14:36:00 +0000

Last night I finally went to see Michael Moore’s new documentary. I really wanted to see this film, after enjoying Bowling for Columbine and Stupid White Men a lot. And it didn’t deceive me. Fahrenheit 9/11 is probably a better film than Bowling overall, and the first part, where he connects the Bushes with the Saudi elite, is very well conducted. The scene with Bush sitting in Florida during the 7 most terrible minutes in the US history, doing nothing and with an empty expression in his face was both very funny and scary. One could imagine this guy is a fool. But that was just too much.

What I didn’t enjoy so much was the part where he shows the US troops in Iraq having a bad time. Moore focuses a lot in the American casualties, and sometimes gave me the impression that the thousands of Iraqi civilians killed were second class deaths. There was also a bit too much of patriotism, but as I guess the ultimate goal of this film is (besides making Michael Moore very rich) enlightening a few millions of Americans before the November election, I guess I can ignore it a bit.

In short, there aren’t many facts in the film that I didn’t know or assumed, but they are presented in a very intelligent way (call it populism or whatever, yesterday I was open to swallowing some of that). I haven’t talked to American people on IRC about what they think, but I’d really like that F9/11 helps to kick Bush out of office. As murrayc said, these elections will have a massive impact in the lives of most of us around the world, so here’s hoping they come out as most of the rest of the world (I suspect) wants.

Hasta la vista, Arnold

Sun, 04 Jan 2004 03:29:00 +0000

My dad rented a Terminator 3 DVD tonight, and I decided to watch it with my brother. After 20 mins of playing, the DVD player started to do weird things and the display would click and bounce forward randomly. The player must be dirty or something, and everyone gave up, except my brother, who wasn’t too happy about what was going on. He proposed watching it on the DVD drive in his computer. First try: Windows Media Player won’t grok DVD’s. Fine, I see it’s WMP 8. Windows Update has version 9. Install, reboot, click on “I agree”… same result; “probably it needs some CSS module too, the MPAA is a pain even on Windows”, I conclude. I go to the Windows Media site. WTF!! They want me to _buy_ DVD support for their player. Booting to Linux. I install Totem, but it refuses to play the DVD. I find out about libdvdcss, and download Marillat’s .deb. OMG, Totem is playing the DVD, but it is *so slow*. Of course… nVidia card and using the “nv” X driver. Oh well. We move to my desktop. I quickly install libdvdcss2, and Totem starts playing, but I see no image, I just hear the music, or sometimes it just crashes. Xine crashes with some cryptic X error, and mplayer just complains about the video driver. Finally, some GNOMEr tells me I need X 4.3, even if I thought we had the patch that Totem needs backported.

Finally, after upgrading to xserver-xfree86 4.3, Totem starts playing the DVD very nicely, and we continue watching Terminator 3. The sad thing is this movie sucks so much, it made us laugh in a few moments. The best one is when the T101 deactivates itself crushing a car in front of him. After a while, it mysteriously restarts. At least on this one, the bad terminator is hot, and better, I’m now able to watch encrypted DVD’s.