Monthly Archives: July 2009

garbage

11 Saturday Jul 2009

Posted by in photohunt, photos, rants, sevilla, spain, wtf?

≈ 26 Comments

garbage

Today’s Photohunter theme is “garbage”.

I ask you … have you ever seen anything so ugly? These are the garbage disposal receptacles that were installed a few years ago in the centre of Seville – the city with the largest preserved old centre in Europe. They are part of an underground “suck it up” disposal system that works okay most of the time, but could they not have designed a receptacle that didn’t look like R2D2 on a bad day? They are just so jarring to the eye in comparison to the beautiful architecture here. Ironically, newer receptacles that have been installed in other less pretty parts of town are much more pleasing to look at. Go figure.

photohunter

twitter lunch

10 Friday Jul 2009

Posted by in food & drink, friends, internet, restaurants, sevilla, tapas, twitter

≈ 4 Comments

anna & pedro

The other day I met the lovely Anna on Twitter via a mutual acquaintance and, after tweeting back and forth a bit, I asked if she would like to meet up for a cold beer one day. And yesterday was the day. The plan was to meet for a pre-lunch beer and so I suggested Zaragoza 64 because they serve excellent Galician beer there, far superior to the pale and tasteless Cruz Campo, which is the bog standard lager sold in bars here. I’m not much of a beer drinker but I really like the taste of Galicia Estrella.

At the last minute Anna also invited her very charming Twitter friend Pedro to join us and – you guessed it – we ended up having lunch. A wonderful time was had by all. Very pleasant company, lots of laughs, including the very satisfying discovery that we are all “strong and bossy” types, which led to a few good anecdotes about those who feel the need to label decisive people “bossy”. We are also all a bit gadget crazy (who me?) and I couldn’t help but smile when Pedro took out his iPhone to send a few tweets. And also all expats – from Italy, Venezuela & Canada.

So, it was my first ever twitter lunch – hopefully the first of many.

(food pics below…)

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addicted to twitter?

09 Thursday Jul 2009

Posted by in internet, media, quizzes, twitter

≈ 8 Comments

addicted to twitter

How addicted to Twitter are you?

It’s not as bad as I thought, especially as I now have two Twitter accounts to keep me busy. I first signed up in May 2007 but didn’t really start using Twitter until last August. Now it’s a serious daily habit and I’ve been making a lot of interesting contacts.  In fact, I’ll be meeting one of them for a cold beer later on today.

Twitter isn’t just a cute way for keeping in instant touch with friends on mobile phones anymore. It has ramped up quickly to be the search engine of choice for some with its human driven results.

Applications galore allow you to find friends all over the world with similar interests and keep up with them in real time.

Businesses can form instant direct relationships with their customer bases simply by signing up and using the service regularly, and according to the models Twitter is trying out, they will soon be able to advertise to the Twitter community as well.
– Twitter Tutorial

Back in February I did a Twitter mosaic of my followers on the azahar account. Below you can see the up-to-date version of the people I am following there. . .
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breathe!

07 Tuesday Jul 2009

Posted by in cancer, fitness, health & happiness, life stuff, philosophy, yoga

≈ 5 Comments

yoga_stretch
It’s a conspiracy I tell ya.

Ever since I made the decision to take time out to heal so many positive things have happened to me that I feel sure that I made the right decision. And the main recurrent theme has been remembering to breathe. First “Bob” sent me some good advice about yoga breathing and described a good one for me to practice that would help me focus on the present.  And of course we do various breathing exercises in yoga class. Then the other day I read this lovely quote…

Breathing in, I calm my body. Breathing out, I smile.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh

I’ve been doing that one a lot since then and it really feels good. And then today someone on Twitter linked to a blog called Zen Habits and this wonderful post called (you guessed it) Breathe. It’s as though all of a sudden the universe is intent on getting me to breathe properly. And also to work on personal growth stuff. I had a quick look at the archives on Zen Habits and think I will do quite a bit more reading there. I really like the simplicity of the posts.