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1995 Gran Canaria: Where I Spend My Days
21 Oct 1995
I'm sorry that my trip reports aren't as frequent as they were in Eivissa, but I'm able to work on my second book quite a bit these days (and after the distractions and technical horrors of Eivissa I need to get some work done). Still, I've gotten my Apple QuickTake 100 running (it seems that one of the extentions it uses got corrupted and I was lucky enough to take the distribution floppies with me) and my loaner/rental PowerBook seems to be hanging together, so I'll continue to make trip report web pages.
As I did ten years ago, I've claimed the glass-enclosed porch as my home and office. It's small, but it has some great views, a good breeze, and all the amenities.
Hanging on the walls and from the ceiling are souvenirs of Oma's many decades of world travel. In the foreground hangs a wreath of dried acorns, pinecones, nuts, flowers, and some things I've never before seen. It hangs from a hand-woven band about 8 cm (3 in) wide; I'm sure the band has a story all its own. Hanging behind that is a transparent hand-blown glass souvenir of one of Oma's trips to Israel. It features a menorah (ritual candleabra) of bright orange and the word "Israel" in traditional blue.
On the cabinet are hand-fashioned bowls - one terra-cotta, the other woven pine needles - filled with shells and small rocks from around the world. There are also two paintings on wood. On the wall are photgraphs of family members and a thermometer, which now shows a very typical inside daytime temperature of 26 C (77 F). It's a very comfortable temperature to be writing a book and web pages.
I'm not sure if I mentioned this in my Eivissa pages, but in the closing days (and ensuing rush) some of my tee-shirts were left in a washing machine for several hours. That unusual kind of sustained dampness is heaven for certain molds, and those clothes smelled, well, pungent, despite several subsequent machine washings. Rather than give up some comfortable shirts for dead, I wrapped them in a trash bag and brought them to Gran Canaria.
After two enthusiastic washings they've not only lost their rather objectionable smell but they're perfumed with tropical porch air.
I have a view of the pool below and the apartment buildings to the south and east of me. Actually, I can see well over the one to the east, and I have a good view of the water. With a pair of binoculars I can clearly make out the private (big!) sailboats that come and go. (Sadly, sailing won't be on the agenda for this trip. Neither, sadly, will be SCUBA diving.)
Most of the condos in Atlantis Uno have little planted in the plant well that surrounds the porch, but Oma is cultivating the local succulents variant of ice plant and, in one corner, a rather large local cactus. Parts of the ice plant flower year-round. Scattered through the ice plant are several other local plants, all fragile and hardy and protective of the water they've captured.
There's no telephone on the desk; I keep it on the floor and use it only for chewing out my Spanish ISP ("what do you mean, you don't know why none of the modems are picking up?"). I've been able to stay in touch with almost everyone with whom I want very well via email. The only exception: the computer dealer from whom I usually purchase hardware.
That brings up two things I've learned on this trip (that I'll strive to remember once I get back to bit-rich California):
There are also two binoculars on the table. The low-power pair is being used as a wrist-rest when I type. (This bogus keyboard is wreaking havoc with my tendons.) The high-power pair is used to follow the boats and the parachutists (but that's yet another web page).
I rarely use the standing lamp, preferring instead a large orange votive candle that I purchased at the supermarket downstairs.
In this picture my pillow is on the right side of the bed, but that's its daytime airing-out position. My North Face sleeping bag gets tossed into the living room, away from the destructive rays of the sun.
The bottom shelf has extra computing equipment (mostly cables) and my light load of clothes, all folded into a small tower.
The musical offerings here are many, but I tire of hearing Norwegian folk songs and Spanish talk-radio. There are three radio stations that offer music I enjoy; the best one plays old Rythym and Blues, Motown, and Jazz until the wee hours o' the morning. Speaking of music, one of the big hits here - that's on the radio as I write this - is an American Indian chant that's repeated at least once every other hour. There's only one seriously annoying feature to radio here: they fire the station information right in the middle of each song. I'll be glad when I don't hear Les a compania, Radio Internacional de Maspalomas, eh-fey em-may ciento tres punto cinco spoken over the lyrics I'm trying to sing.
My Langenscheidt "Universal" Spanish dictionary is there, but it omits obvious words like "borrow". Part of the great tourish commercial conspiracy? Still, it's invaluable while I read the newspaper. I very rarely read anything other than the local materials when I travel, but there are English-language newspapers available here. Each of them has some deficiency:
There's a bowl on one of the chairs that holds my change. Spain has coins that tranlate (roughly) into US$1, US$2, and US$5 pieces. They're a pain in the ass - literally - to carry around. They're too bulky. The US Government is considering using coins to augment or replace paper bills (because the coins last longer); I hope officials of the Treasury will spend a month in Spain dealing with the pockets of their suits, pants, and bags being torn all out of shape by piles of coins of all denominations. (Spain still has a 1 and 5 peseta coin, but they're so worthless that many merchants round up when making change.)
Putting it all together, we get a living space that looks like:
Tomorrow: a typical day.
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At the far right of the image are a chair and cabinet that I don't use, save to temporarily put the flyers I've been handed (before I escort them to the papelera (trash can).Some of them are interesting, and if I had time and money (ever try to travel on an author's budget?) I might see the sights. (I'll describe some of the places advertised in the flyers in some later trip report.) My Teva sandals live under the chair when not being worn.
Next is the drying rack that I've brought in from the bathroom. Because of the weather here no home has a dryer. And since Oma's washer is one of those fragile portable ones I've elected to bash my clothes with a rock at the river. (Okay, okay, so I'm stomping on them in the small bathtub, but the rock thing sounded better.) Now the clothes are drying in the sun and breeze.
For this collage I've pulled up the blinds. (Usually I move the blinds up and down as dictated by the strong tropical sun.) I'm not sure whose smart idea it was to put horizontal blinds on windows that open vertically, but I have some words for Oma about it. (The state of building contracting here (and in Eivissa) is that the home-owner has to watch over what's going on and ask obvious questions to make sure the work is being done to an acceptable level of quality. Everyone is resigned to it, and frequent trips to the ferreteria (hardware store) in the middle of a job is par for the course.
Next is the breakfast table that's become my computer laboratory. Equipped with a 
I sleep in the single bed at the far end of the glass-enclosed porch. There's a king-sized bed in Oma's room, but I prefer to see the stars and moon and to sleep in the gentle breezes. I'm woken by the sun hitting the sleeping bag I'm using as a cover (although it's rather warm all the time, and I'm constantly kicking it off). I can either lower the blinds (which then are ruffled by the breeze and make an irritating noise) or I can prop a pillow between my face and the sun; I usually do the latter and go back to sleep. (I could close the window-glass to prevent the irritating noise, but I wouldn't think of doing without the breeze.) The fourth floor is high above everything else, so it feels as though I'm sleeping in a bird's nest.
Next to the "head" of the bed, next to the standing lamp, is a two-tiered rolling cart that I've converted into an end table. On the top shelf are the local magazines and newspapers that I'm using to keep up-to-date on what's going on as well as research the state of the net for my contributions to my San Francisco ISP's newsletter, 
Finishing up the tour of my home for six weeks, we come to a pair of chairs upon which I hang my button-front shirts (I picked three of them up at a second-hand store in Eivissa City). Button-front short-sleeve shirts are much better at ventilation than are tee-shirts in this weather. I also hang a small backpack (in which goes my 
