Am I a chicken?

This is my third week of educational leave and I have only written one e-mail to my professor telling her about what I pretend to do in my thesis. She answered this morning saying she liked my idea. I did want that to be today´s only achievement, so I immediately headed to the library to start working on the first chapter.

By the way, I own no laptop, so I borrowed one to write my thesis.

The library where I am right now offers free wireless internet, but since I am not good with computers, I cannot connect this laptop to the World Wide Web (it is not my fault that this computer has windows vista…yikes!). And even though my recently Galaxy III works again (the damage caused in the toilette incident was repaired), I forgot the USB cable home, so I cannot download the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and send it to my laptop. I know…apple users may probably be laughing about this right now.

So, instead of working on my PhD thesis, I will tell you a scary story

My sister and I always make fun of my brother because he is afraid of birds. We would understand his fear if he would have seen Hitchcock´s “the birds” when he was a little boy, but this is not the case. The bird that Tomás fears the most is the chicken.

Some days ago, I went to a very good restaurant, but more than a restaurant, it is a farm where two people cook. These two guys grow the products they use in their restaurant. So, they produce meat, eggs, vegetables and fruits to make their own chutneys, main courses, bread, desserts and even liquors.

This restaurant serves food outside.

There were five guests that day (they only serve lunch twice a week) and this day only one of us had bad luck…

We were enjoying a fabulous cilantro-mayonnaise on freshly baked bread (outdoor wood-oven!) when I felt something painful on my right elbow. I screamed immediately and as I turned my head, I saw the beak of a horrible and giant flying hen. I don´t know where she came from, but she flew to furiously attack me. After thinking about it, I know that the only reason for this attack was violence. This was the most brutal chicken I ever saw.

Since that very moment, I share with my brother the fear of birds…the fear of chickens…

do you also see the evil in this bird?

P.S. I am not telling the name of that wonderful restaurant, because the owner bought my silence with a bottle of home-made limoncello.

I use this limoncello to forget that day

Black Sabbath - "Black" because of a tea and "Sabbath" because of a sabbatical

The reason I started to write this blog in 2009 was the social vacuum I had to experience when I moved to Nicaragua to do field research for my work and for my PhD thesis. Now, three years and over hundred blog entries later, I am ready to finalise my thesis…and I am doing this in Latin America.

Before leaving Innsbruck last Thursday, someone recommended me to order halal food in the transatlantic flight (halal is the way of preparing food according to Islamic law).

This year, Easter Monday (which is a public holiday in Austria) was also April Fools’ Day…and it all started that very Monday…I was cleaning my room and doing the laundry when the kitchen flooded. The water from the laundry machine was coming out of the sink. I called the plumber and after repairing the pipeline I heard him saying “shit”. That is the last the word you want to hear from a technician repairing your drainage. The plumber said that because he lost some tool in the pipeline and he had to again to get it out. 

Tuesday was supposed to be the first day of my “PhD-sabbatical” and I was looking forward to sleep until late, but the plumber rang at 7:50. It took him two hours to find the cable he lost…120 minutes of the most abstract and loud mechanical noises.

 

After the plumber left, I tried to sleep again…in vain, so I tried to do the flight check-in. I flew with Iberia, but my ticket was issued by American Airlines, so I couldn´t order my halal-meal.

 

I was very disappointed because I knew I was going to eat either chicken or pasta, instead of halal or kosher. But when I was in the waiting room in Madrid, I realised the transatlantic flight was a code-shared flight with  the airline “El Al”…and “El Al” is Israel Airlines.

So, there I was, two Jews sitting in front of me, one on the back, a whole family in the centre row and two rabbis 150 centimeters behind me. All of them eating from their sealed kosher-meal boxes (by the way, they do not meditate before eating). I was relieved to have a nice old French-speaking lady next to me.

When that old lady told me she was from Morocco, I understood I was lucky for ordering pasta instead of kosher or halal.

However, the bad luck continued when I arrived: none of my two bags arrived. When my baggage arrives late, I kind of like it, because I enjoy shopping for free with the voucher you get. However, this time was different; I was worried for something illegal I had in one of my bags: queso…yes, lots of queso.

My bags and the cheese stayed overnight in Miami, and the average temperature in April in Miami is 28ºC and that is not good for cheese.

After claiming my bags, I went to the city centre and tried to relax with a cup of black tea. I went to a wonderful old-fashioned café. The waiter got me all this on a silver tray: An empty cup with a tea bag in it, a small pitcher with hot water and an extra steel-glass with more hot water to refill the pitcher. Everything looked so nice! …until the moment I discovered the tag of an old teabag inside the small pitcher. I thought…ok, this can happen… but then, I found a second tag of an even older teabag (that means even more brown) inside the extra steel-glass.

But that was on Friday, today is Tuesday and nothing shitty has happened today. I think my Black Sabbath just turned into a normal sabbatical.

the plumber said shit right after I took this picture