Alpha Quiz
A - Age: 30.
B - Band listening to right now: I'm listening to early Elvis Costello songs lately.
C - Career future: Working on a biography.
D - Dad's name: JPD.
E - Easiest person to talk to: Pablo.
F - Favorite song: According to my Launch Cast list, favourite songs include 'Dear Prudence' (Beatles), 'Pictures of you' (Cure) and 'Jump in the river' (Sinead).
G - Gummy Bears or Gummy Worms: Gummy bears and jelly strawberries make my afternoons happy.
H - Hometown: Madrid.
I - Instruments: I'd love to play one. The piano, the guitar or even the harmonica.
J - Job: As of July 1st, writer-to-go.
K - Kids: Two nieces, also known as the M&m's.
L - Longest car ride ever: Thonon (France) to Florence (Italy). There are others as long or even longer, but i remember that trip fondly.
M - Mum's name: Johanna.
N - Number of people you've slept with: One at a time.
P - Phobia[s]: Most bugs. Impoliteness. People yelling over their cell phones.
Q - Quote: "I don't understand things. I just get used to them".
R - Reason to smile: The sun shyly coming out in Madrid. My newly found professional freedom. Pablo coming home. A jazz concert this summer. A party at a terrace on Saturday.
S - Song you sang last: Morcheeba's 'Rome wasn't built in a day'.
T - Time you wake up: Around 7.30 am.
U - Unknown fact about me: I am incredibly shy.
V - Vegetable you hate: Cabbage.
W - Worst habit: Chain smoking. Arrogance. Laziness.
X - X-rays you've had: Nope.
Y - Yummy food: Mum's, always.
Z - Zodiac sign: Capricorn, according to most magazines.

Word mercenary available
It takes courage and a soft spot for craziness. It takes time and a few bucks in your bank account. It takes a gift for organizing yourself and not becoming a couch potato. It takes all of this to say goodbye to stability and hello to freelance journalism.

As of today, although i'm still waiting on some bureaucracy to fall through, i am an Official Word Mercenary. I do everything, boys and girls, from cell phone comparatives to movie premieres, anti-Royal Wedding chronicles or fashion reviews. Anything with words, you can count me in.

After making this terrible self-publicity, i'll tell you about the process. All this decision making has been hard and scary. But the idea of returning to the same old shit at the newspaper website was too raw for me. After this 12 month hiatus i felt i needed to cook my own stuff. I don't really know my options yet, but i think i'll be all right. I need this time. And i certainly need this freedom.

Now, editors of the world, if you could please hire me...

SWP
Big day today, boys and girls. This morning, two of our best friends accompanied us to Court to begin the September Wedding Project, also known as the SWP (how geek does that sound?). Documents were handed out, signatures were signed, giggles were suffocated, questions were answered and coffees were drunk.

The official SWP date should be announced towards the end of June. I can't believe we're actually going to pull this off. Again, i had the same feeling when it was Dixie who decided to get married.

May twenty first, thirty first birthday
Big day today, also because it's May 21st. The wonder boy would have turned 31 today. He would have been with us at Court this morning, and wearing a kick ass shirt at the wedding. He would say he's happy and he would show it. He'd probably even dance around me to prove it.

We'd go out to dinner and laugh until the food started to jump in our bellies. Or he'd throw a party at his dad's studio, where he might pick up his black and shiny electric guitar again. He'd be 31 and i'd probably make a joke about his age. He'd be 31 years old.

Stars out of the water
So the Championship is over. The swimmers are back in their home countries by now and the new stage is about to get unveiled.

We offered the athletes a farewell party on their last day and some of my friends happily showed up to support, err, the organization. Don't think they were only there to get a glimpse of those bodies. My friends are not that type (hahahahaha).

It was a great night for a Sunday night, and the music was more than hectic. The swimmers were definitely easy to watch and the atmosphere was so much fun i forgot the entire 16 days of stress that had gone by. I thought i'd show you a pic of Trix and I giving the best of ourselves on the dancefloor.



In other news, my new Madrid album is still missing 4 photos (i accidentally erased one of the templates, silly girl), which i will upload as soon as possible. Mainly because they include a snap of all the Royal Wedding books published and i feel i must share all kinds of kitsch with you, my friends.

By the way, Ambivalence welcomes polls now [kindly see right column for details]. Feel free to suggest a question for next week.

Wedding and the city
Madrid welcomes the sun and a new decoration. I won't go into the stirr of opinions caused by the coloured lights that cover the historical buildings each night since last Monday, but i will tell you this city is going frantic as the Royal Wedding gets closer.

Homeless being kicked out from under the bridges, prostitutes gone hiding for a while, façades under construction go under Goya and Velázquez paintings, streetlamps lose their meaning and their shape...

Before Saturday arrives and you all get a glimpse on your tv sets, let me show you, oh Madrid foreigners, what this is looking like.

A better story
Last night i went to a dinner in a castle, but that's not today's story. I had to stand in front of a bunch of people (80) and entertain them, but that's not it either. This is my favourite story about last night:

A man in his fifties gave us a tour of this castle. He wasn't wearing a uniform, or even a tie, and i liked him instantly. After a few minutes of medieval anecdotes and Rubens tapestries, we arrived to the towers, and i asked him if he'd been a guide for a long time.

He told me he'd been there since 1977. He was the electrician who installed the lights in the exterior of the castle. He had a lot of work to do back then so he learned everything about the place. Then he graduated in night school and started to study the 15th Century, when the castle was built. He's been the guide of the place since then.

When he finished, i looked around in amazement. The view was magnificent and the balconies made one feel like a time traveller. I said that was a brilliant story. I told him he should tell that story to all the tourists who visited the castle, instead of the official one. He laughed and asked the group to follow him down to the cloister.

Room service
I'm living at a hotel in my own city. It's one of those 70s buildings, conveniently located close to my workplace, but far from the economic and touristic areas of Madrid. Guests are usually businessmen who spend as little time as possible at the hotel. This could be described as my case.

The feeling of living in a hotel room when your own apartment is 15 minutes away is very strange and reckless. Very Lost In Translation. I arrive there, i sit on the bed, i turn the tv on and i wonder how long it will take me to fall asleep this time. This is foreign land in my hometown. This is weird.

Morning comes and i let the lift take me to the breakfast room, where i eat fresh fruit and i drink revolting coffee, surrounded by equally sleepy coworkers who smile a lot and talk very little. At this point there are only three more silent breakfasts to go until i can go back home.

Today i am a 21st Century Dorothy, rubbing my red slippers together, whispering "there's no place like home, there's no place like home". May The Wicked Witch of the East stop blowing her winds and let us have a peaceful end of championships and we can all return home.

Uniformed Uma



Official Events Uniform. Just thought you may have been curious about it. It's blue, it bears a huge logo and i never combine it with the Official Shirt because it makes me look like a concierge girl in a Manhattan apartment building.

A day in the life

Real Royal
Still raining. This is the oddest spring ever. While i gaze out the window and think about the swimmers at the outdoor pool, i bet many Madrid citizens worry about how long this is going to last.

If the weather continues to be so stubborn, chances are our Incredibly Royal Prince Felipe and his soon-to-be-wife, TV news presenter Letizia 'With a Z' Ortiz, will look less glamourous on their wedding day (May 22nd).

The engagement was announced on a Saturday evening sometime last November and of course the news was a piece of cake for everyone from hard core journalists to bankers, housewives and taxi drivers.

Then the impact (after so many years waiting to find out if the Prince would actually marry at all) softened a little and now it's back. Since yesterday, we are officially on the final countdown. Am i the only one who feels as if i had to much food at the banquet?

Monday, May 10th, was the date selected by ALL channels, stations and newspapers to change programs and give us every single detail about the Wedding of the Century. Some inserted the information in the news as a 6 minute daily special, some gave us a full half hour at the local stations. Broadcasters decided this is what we want and this is certainly what we are getting.

I understand how this is something that interests a huge amount of people, either for the gossip or because it is, after all, a matter of State, but if i see yet another picture of the happy couple i might scream.

By the way... i'll be watching the wedding on telly with mum at her house. Wanna join us?

Never again
Six more days to go and almost everything will be over. Many times i say 'never again, never again' to myself these days, especially when i'm the middle of chaos, or trouble, or when i get a glimpse of my eyes in the mirror.

Working around the clock for this Championship is exhausting. Nerve-wrecking. Overwhelming. Never again. Never again. But it's also a thrill to be here. It's fun and exciting to see your team grab the precious gold. It's good to be surrounded by glittery bodies coming out of the training pool. It's good to know you're part of it all.

Concerning what will happen after this, the question mark is growing by the hour. I have some urgent decisions to make before i jump into total freedom (does that really exist?) and i don't have the time to think things over. Still, i know some patterns will be abandoned (never again, you know) and that once spring finally lands on the city, i will let the sun tell me what to do.

What time is it?

Working an average of 12 hours a day lately...



...makes me feel



ridiculously tired...



... but, boy, am i going to have a party when this is over!

Waiting for the sun...
Things you can do while you're waiting for the promised spring include:

Get yourself a stylish look under the rain.

Run around pretending you are Pacman. Yes, i'm serious.

Forget the weather and give your brain a round of gin&tonics to make you believe in warm climates. Try not to fall off the stool/car seat/office chair/moped while you're at it.

Stay in.

Supermarket hypnosis
Days are speeding by as if they were on racing lanes and this new week doesn't look any calmer. This said, you may understand why i felt such at ease yesterday, gently letting the Sunday slip through my fingers, away from the office, taking care of precious house-hold duties. As in doing the grocery shopping at a huge supermarket. Believe it or not, this was quite a relieving activity.

We somehow managed to remain calm despite the amount of people demonstrating their consumer rights in front of the frozen food, the twenty brands of cookies or the milk containers. We even managed to break a laugh or two during the several hours that took us to get to the cashier.

Pablo seemed hypnotized because he looked straight at a blond lady's pink and jean outfit, while i was suddenly paralyzed by a screaming mother who was firmly announcing her children she would not buy a cereal box depending on the toy included in the pack.

Every time someone approached the sugar pack column mountain, usually happy couples, one would automatically say to the other: Sugar?. I still wonder whether this was because the person didn't know if there was any left at home or if he/she wasn't really sure of what the packs contained.

It was a beautiful rainy and windy day at the shopping mall, living among trolleys and angry toddlers, but we survived. Unfortunately, our bank account cannot state the same.