Alternative medicine or how to believe in something

I have a friend. She’s nice, quite intelligent, funny, but she believes in nothing at all. Even not in herself. Now, she’s a little bit worried because she has been suffering very bad backache since she worked as a camerawoman. Though she doesn’t believe in anything, she decided to find some remedies for her pain.
First of all, she went to a specialist doctor, he took some radiographies of her back and he realised everything was perfect with her spine. The doctor told her the problem was in the muscles, they were too contracted and this was the reason of so much pain. Then, she visited a professional masseur who course of her to make a special gymnastics, like stretching exercises. She did. She bought a kind of carpet and every morning she put it on the floor and she stretched until she was almost broken. First, she started with the muscles of the back, then the legs, then the arms… Luckily, she lives alone and nobody could see her. The positions were so strange and uncomfortable that someone looking at her would think she was mad. She did her best. But there were no results.
Her mother saw my friend so desperate that she started praying. My friend’s mother also decided to light some candles in the church in order to ask God for some help. But this help didn’t arrive.
Then, she decided to start with alternative remedies. One of my friend’s work colleagues had told her about reflex therapy, it’s a kind of massage but in the feet. There are a lot of nerves endings at feet and different parts of tehm are also connected with some of the organs in our body. For example, massaging the middle of the left feet can be positive for your liver disease. A massage on the top of the toes can be good for your headache, and so on. Indeed, a good massage on your feet can be the best thing in the world and you can get better.
So my friend decided to try this therapy. When she arrived at the feet-masseur's home, she realised the atmosphere was very peaceful. Though the house was in a very busy neighbourhood of Barcelona, she could not hear a noise inside this place. In the room, there was a very tenuous light and the smell was really nice: a little bar of incense was burning. The feet-masseur asked her to lie down on an examining couch. Then she put on her eyes a kind of little bag full of aromatic sand. The next thing my friend remembers is a bell sound. And she couldn't help starting laughing. Apparently, the feet-masseur was turning around her with a bell just to try to get my friend to relax. But my colleague could not. She couldn’t see the masseur because of the little bag on her eyes, but she could imagine her dressed up with strange clothes doing a kind of ritual around the couch. It was so funny…
When the masseur finished with the massage and the bell, she convinced my friend to try Bach flowers essences. An English doctor called Edward Bach created these natural remedies. After a seriously illness, he gave up the traditional medicine and started with flowers and plants. He thought that an illness is the physical manifestation of a discomfort, of a disorder due to a mental condition that alters the balance of the body. My friend, as I said before, doesn’t believe that some flowers can rid of the backache off, but obviously she tried. She was so fed up with the pain that she could have jumped from a plane without a parachute… This story will continue…

Sentiments en codi

Entre els 14 i els 17 anys vaig aprendre a escriure en codi. Es tracta d'un indesxifrable llenguatge prou enginyós com perquè ningú entengués res, però a la vegada gens complicat pels que el sabíem resoldre. Vaig arribar a dominar-lo de tal manera que podia llegir i escriure'l com el català o el castellà. No recordo qui me'l va ensenyar, però sé perfectament amb qui l'utilitzava. L'Eva Vilà, la Paula Escribano i el Jordi Salvadó, tots ells de La Salle de Reus, eren els tres principals destinataris dels meus missatges en codi. L'Eva i la Paula, perquè amb elles vaig compartir pupitre durant llargues temporades i ens havíem de comunicar d'alguna manera sense despertar les ires del professor. I amb el Jordi l'usava per declarar-m'hi. Per dir-li que n'estava d'ell. I ell l'utilitzava per dir-me que era la dona de la seva vida, tot i que en realitat no ho fos. Ell i jo ens amagàvem sota el codi secret per evitar que l'Enric Ollé, el company de classe amb qui jo festejava, se n'assabentés del meu enamorament sobtat per en Jordi.
Avui, 23 de novembre, dia en què fa un any que es va morir el tiet Josep Maria, necessito tornar a expressar-me en codi. La meva situació sentimental és tan complicada que no puc expressar-la de forma ordinària. Ningú l'entendria. Per tant, prefereixo expressar-la en codi. D'aquesta manera, a més de no entendre-la, ningú podrà jutjar-la.
Tl 8 d'aqntae mts vshg cputhxtr sl ryans' nu xhc q ts dhn dsmhan. Ts dt upvs csltdpuhs h ts oserp de bsrcp. Taes s Barcelona pq tl orpohtesrh dtl atu vsixtll shxh ip is dtchdhe mtuert pu csnvhtu d dtaehuschp. Ls uhe q tua vsm cputhxtr vsm susr s Luz de Gas h vsm scsbsr s csas mtvs. Dhllnua 12 vshg msrxsr cso s Montpellier h slls tm vshg rterpbsr smb tl mhciel. Epe vs susr, tua vsm taehmsr, vsm ftr l'smpr llhnrsmtue... otrp qnau vshg eprusr s Barcelona vshg erncsr hmmtdhseamtue tl dsmhsn. Dta dt dhjpna osaase tua itm vhae gshrtbt csds dhs. Svnh, otro, up m'is erncse q itm ls uhe jnues. Jp spc msaas prgnllpas h tsmopc lh it erncse. Otrp tu tl fpua up lh it dhe rta pq sqntaes uhe ih is aposr smb gtue dt ls TV, prgsuhezse ptl jprdh ghl, h cpm q ehuc otuase susr-ih up atuehrt apls s csas. Ah up, taehc atgnrs q lh isgnta erncse. S vtnrt q psaas dtma... Jp crtc q tll tsmbt ae u'sdpus q tua taetm vthtue msaas h q shxp up opres tnllpc. H mtuertaesue, tl mhcitl is osaase s 1 tutaahm ols. Tm aso grtn. Up st cpm tm atuehrt qnsu tm vhugnh s vtnrt.
En fi, qui m'entengui que em compri. Allò de "el cor té raons que la raó no comprén" no és del tot cert. El cor no té cap mena de raó ni lògica. Almenys, el meu no.

Till the 30th November…

No, it is not a joke. It’s the truth. The suburban train in Barcelona will not work till the 30th November. It means that users won’t be able to go by train to their work or to their house.
Work On the high velocity train (AVE), which is soon to arrive in Barcelona, is the main cause of this inconvenience. In Bellvitge, one of the main stops of the suburban train, the floor collapsed five weeks ago and three lines stopped working. From then till now, only half of one of these lines has been repaired, the C-2 south. I say “half” because in this stretch the rail works only in one way, so the frequency of the trains is much reduced than before.
People who normally use the train are now taking the bus. Renfe, the public Spanish Railway Company offers this alternative transport during the time that the train will be inactive.
But it is not a very good solution. One train can transport almost 300 people in each journey; the bus can only take 55. In Barcelona, there are not enough buses to cover Renfe’s need, so the company contracted the service of different companies around the country. Drivers from Zaragoza, Valencia, Sevilla, La Coruña… arrived in the Catalan city with their buses to follow the same route as the trains do. Obviously, the first week was chaotic. Drivers didn’t know the route, it was their first time in Barcelona and they got lost. As a result of this, buses arrived very late at their final destinations. And one of the serious consequences was the traffic jams on the roads around Barcelona. To the normal daily traffic, hundreds of buses substituting trains occupied the routes. It was amazing!
Why has nobody forseen all these catastrophic consequences? In my opinion, the solution to the mess of the suburban trains was not very good, but it was the best of a bad bunch. Nevertheless, the main persons in charge of the AVE works should have been more diligent. They were such in a hurry and they didn’t use their common sense. The Spanish Minister for Transport promised long time ago that AVE would reach Barcelona by 21st December. But works were on delay and they had to start working very quick.
The result of the pathetic management by the Minister is big holes on the floor, more than two hundred thousands people moving by bus and suffering traffic jams on the journeys, and one Minister for Transport, Magdalena Alvarez, asking to the Catalans to be patients. She seems to be laughing at us.
I think Catalans have been very patient, too much. We need to be better able to fight against Spanish manipulation. Catalans are subjected to decisions taken in Madrid. But Madrid doesn’t know our needs. I really believe in a Federal State where each region could make its own decision and also could manage its own money. Spain would work much better. So would suburban train.

Soutien à Marie-Agnès Peleran

Aujourd'hui je suis un peu touchée. Je viens d'appendre que l'amie d'Elena Atanassova, Marie-Agnès, c'est une des journalistes arrêtés au Tchad. J'ai rencontré Marie-Agnès en Bulgarie, fin avril 2006, quand on a fêté les 30 ans d'Elena.
Elle faisait partie du groupe des professionnels de l'informations qui sont allés au pays africain pour faire un reportage sur l'Arche de Zoé. Cette ONG voulait ramener en France 103 petits tchadiens qui apparemment étaient orphelins. Les membres de l'organizations, les journalistes et le pilot et les hôtesses de l'avion se sont fait arrêtés le 25 d'octobre. Tout le monde pensé que l'Arche de Zoé était une ONG honnête, mais finalement on a appris que les petits enfants ont père et mère.
Je suis convaincue que Marie-Agnès s'est fait avoir. Elle voulait adopter un enfant africain, mais elle est allée au Tchad pour faire un reportage sur les adoptions, pas pour réaliser quelque chose d'illégale.
La famille, les amis et les copains du boulot de Marie-Agnès ont commencé à écrire un blog où on peut lire tous les nouvelles sur la situations des arrêtés au Tchad. J'ai déjà signé pour demander la libération de la journaliste et ses copains et, bien évidemment, du pilot catalan et les hôtesses. Vous pouvez aussi signer à l'adresse:
http://www.soutienmapeleran.org/blog/index.php

La Castanyada versus Halloween

One of the most typical products in autumn is the chestnut. This is the fruit of the chestnut tree, which are between 20 and 40 metres in height and grow in warm countries, such as Spain. The chestnut can be toasted or cooked with sugar, like “marron glacé” in France.
Tonight, in Catalonia, we celebrate “la Castanyada”, which means the Day of the Chestnut. On All Saints eve, people used to go for a walk in their city or village and buy this product in small stalls in the street. A long time ago, “les castanyeres”, women who sell this fruit, used to wear very warm clothes and woollen hat and gloves because of the cold weather in this season. Nowadays, these women have almost disappeared and students, who want to earn some money for their student trip, have replaced them. They also wear different clothes, which are not so warm. They even wear short sleeves because the weather has also changed.
As well as the chestnuts, Catalans also eat “panellets”. It’s a kind of small, round cake made of flour, eggs, sugar, toasted almonds and some lemon. To these ingredients, you can add some other products to make different flavours depending on your preferences: you can put in chocolate, strawberries, pinions… These days, pastry shops’ windows are full of them. Sweet wine or “cava”, a kind of sparkly white wine, are the most recommended drinks to have with the “panellets” and the chestnuts.
But, since Halloween arrived in Spain, things have changed. Halloween is a celebration born in Ireland and exported to the States in the 19th century by Irish workers. This celebration has its origin in the Celtic tradition: on All Saints Eve, people decorated their houses with phantasmagorical objects because they were afraid of dead people. Now, people continue with this tradition and even children participate in this party. Little boys and girls disguise with scary clothes and go door to door to ask for some sweets.
In Catalonia, children don’t do exactly this, but they dress up for school. Then they make themselves the “panellets” and eat them with the chestnuts. So, in some schools they mix the two traditions, the Catalan one and the Anglo-Saxon one.
I don’t think it’s a good idea. In my opinion, school is more than a place to learn maths, chemistry or languages. School is an institution that has to preserve the identity of the people living in the country. In Catalonia, we have our own traditions and culture and school must show them to the newly-arrived people in the region. Catalans are open-minded, friendly and warm. This is why foreigners people feel good in our country, but our obligation is to show them our way of life and preserve traditions and culture. In a global economy, the only differentiating feature is identity.