10 Tips on How to be an American and Survive In Spain

1. Expect chaos at arrival. Unless you arrive to Spain from another European Union country, immigration is complete chaos in Madrid. Your plane from the U.S. will arrive with another 16 other planes from boisterous, rowdy, South American immigrants.

2. No, surprising as it may seem, no one in Spain walks around in everyday life wearing funny hats and dressed as "toreadors".

3. Yes, Euros look like Monopoly money. Don't make fun of them, they are worth more than the U.S. dollar.

4. When you order coffee, you will get a tiny cup (even cups in Starbucks are smaller). Do not be fooled. That shot of espresso holds more bang than 2 or 3 large cups of American coffee.

5. Do not discuss politics unless you know that the person you talk to agrees with you. Be warned: regardless of your political views 50% of Spaniards will agree with you, and the other 50% will try to stone you. A discussion about politics can turn into a heated argument in seconds. If you are caught between 2 Spaniards arguing about politics, smile, nod and back away slowly.

6. Spaniards talk with their hands. You might have the urge to back away so as to not get your eye poked out during normal conversation. Do not fret, Spaniards have perfected hand flailing with years of practice. Unlike on the previous example, backing is a bad idea. The irritated Spaniard will corner you and flail harder.

7. People will try to speak to you in very fast Spanish, even if you do not speak the language. When you express to them that you are not able to understand what they are saying, they will nod, and agree as if understanding; then proceed to continue to speak in Spanish, only slower and much louder. After all English is just Spanish spoken slowly and very loud.

8. Be careful how you order food, and be sure you know what you order. My wife once thought she was ordering lamb ("oveja") when she had really ordered "oreja" (fried pig ears).

9. Criticize a Spaniard's soccer team at your own risk. Likewise do not criticize a Spaniard's city of origin (this is specially true with the rivalry between Madrid and Barcelona). You will get hurt. My brother-in-law almost got mauled by my 87 year old grandmother when he dared say that he preferred Barcelona to Madrid in front of her (and the rest of the family, myself included, would have looked the other way while she skinned him alive).

10. Finally, about the running of the bulls: The only reason why you hear about Americans getting killed every year during the running of the bulls in Spain is because the only people that run in front of the bulls are 1.) experts with years of experience who know what they are doing and 2.) drunk Americans. The rest of Spaniards just laugh at the drunk Americans.

The Front Fell Off??

If you like Monty Python, you need to watch this Australian video. I will not spoil the experience with comments...please view on!!

Boldly Go Where No Human Has Gone Before?

Shuttle Atlantis launched today in what will be one of the last missions of the U.S. STS program. It's crew will install another piece of the ISS puzzle, while picking up Sunita Williams and dropping off Clayton Anderson.

NASA plans to retire the space shuttle by 2010, wanting to lift off 13-14 more times in three and a half years. I cannot help feeling a bit of nostalgia as I realize that this amazing piece of technology, that I consider the end-all in space travel technology for many years, is going to be retired soon. And it's successor is not the long promised X33 space-plane, but the 1960's technology in the form of a revamped, jumbo Apollo. I know that Apollo design worked, it took man to the moon and all that, but it is a 40 year old design! You would think that since the first space -shuttle mission (shuttle Columbia) in 1981, NASA engineers would have come up with a better design. But I guess this is just a fruit of the times we are living in. The President promises a man on the Moon again, and then to Mars, and then goes on to cut NASA research funding.

Now, I know that we are just trying to be money and resource conscious, and trying to play it safe with true, tried and tested technology, but I still miss the time when NASA was young and bold, and would show off and one-up the Russians with technological breakthroughs regardless of cost. I caught the tail end of that space age, wounded by the Challenger catastrophe in 1986, and dead on Saturday, February 1, 2003, with the tragic death of the crew of the Columbia.

I just hope that the “wow” factor that NASA has lost, is picked up by privately enterprises such as Scaled Composites, or SpaceX, even if their ultimate goal is boring but profitable space tourism, and not the exciting science oriented NASA space program.

Are you going to get an iPhone?

So it has finally been confirmed, after much speculation, the iPhone is coming out on June 29. The iPhone is probably the most talked about gadget this year. It's a high tech smartphone and ipod all rolled into one sleek, cool looking gadget. If there's a gadget out there that can get you laid, this is it. However, if you want one, you are going to have to break that piggy bank. To get the 4 Gb iphone, you'll have to pony up around $500.00, and if you want the 8 Gb... that will be around $600.00. For that price you can buy a PS3, an XBox 360, or a couple of Wiis. I am sure, however, that it will be one of the fastest selling items this year.

...and who doesn't like apple?...

Well, I am not getting an iPhone. Why? First off, it is not the latest technology. Japanese cell phones can kick iPhone's ass anytime. Japanese (or European) cell phones are at least a generation ahead of American phones. I am not going to pony up $500 for a technology that is going to be out of date in six months. Second, OS X is amazing software (my wife has a mac, and I love it) but that's about the extent of my love for apple software. It's not that it's bad software, it's that there are usually better, cheaper alternatives to apple software. As a matter of fact, I flashed my ipod mini with RockBox fimware, and it rocks my world (cheap pun intended). Not only does it allow more customization, but it is plugin based, open source, and I swear I think the damn thing sounds better now.

iPods bring me to apple's historical weak spot: hardware. Apple's infamous for selling crappy hardware. I've heard stories of Macbooks falling apart at the seams, iPod nanos getting scratched, even the mighty mouse having issues. Honestly, I cannot complain personally about apple produced hardware. I own a 3 year old iPod mini, and it runs fine. I own 2 mighty mice, one Bluetooth and one corded, and they run like they are expected to run. My wife has a Macbook, and except for a gray screen of death the other day, she loves it, and after a few months it is still in (almost) mint condition. So even though I cannot argue against apple's hardware quality from personal experience, I really do not think that all of the stories I've heard are made up. Finally, the main reason why I am not getting an iPhone is because I have my eyes set on another beauty. I have to admit that I have become addicted to open source software. I cannot live any more without the freedom that open source has brought to my experience with technology.

So before spending my hard earned money on a slick, sexy apple phone, I will bet my money on the dark horse, the OpenMoko project. Not only does their phone look amazing, it will also be fully customizable to fit my needs. I can make it look like an iPhone if I want to. I can have whatever utilities I want, even write my own applications if I want to!! Oh, and one final reason why I won't buy one of those iPhones: I don't need the latest gadget to get laid... ask my wife.
**Update: After reading this article on Forbes I am further determined not no get an iPhone. Sexiness does not beat no 3G, no GPS, no battery life (and no ability to switch batteries), price, and AT&T.

HSAs

We've just switched insurance companies at work. The new insurance company we are going with (I am not going to name any names, because this is not pertinent to to the topic) has been shoving High Deductible Health Savings Accounts (HSA) down our throats for the past week. This is a relatively new form of insurance that the US government has been pushing to regulate inflation of healthcare costs.

With this type of insurance, you pay a lower premium to the insurance company, but the deductible is very high, in our case, individual deductible was $2,500 and $5,000 for a family (legally it has to be upwards of $1,100 or $2,200 for a family). Insurance does not kick in until you have covered your deductible, so essentially you have to pay everything out of pocket until you cover your deductible. Unlike standard insurance, everything that your insurance covers, including prescriptions, visits to the E.R.count towards your deductible, and after insurace kicks in, most healthcare costs are 100% covered by the insurance. To offset the out of pocket expense, you have a Health Savings [bank] Account (with debit card, checks) where you have the option to put pre-taxed money every pay period. Your employer will also put a dollar amount every pay period towards your Health Savings Account every pay period. There is however, a limit on how much money you can place in the HSA every year (around $2,800 in 2007) but the money you do not use during the previous year rolls over for use the next year.

There are several benefits to using this insurance. First off, you have more control over your money, since you are paying out of pocket until the deductible is met. Second, even though you are paying out of pocket, you are paying with pre-taxed money, so depending on your tax bracket, you can save a lot of money. Also, like any savings account, the money in your HSA compounds interest, and if you have several good years, it can amount to a big chunk of money. If you are healthy, single, and you know you are not going to need prescriptions or doctors' appointments, this is a good plan for you because the HSA becomes a good investment. Also, if you know you are going to have medical expenses well over the deductible, it might be a good choice, since once the insurance kicks in, it covers 100%, and the money that you pay out of pocket, if you pay using your HSA account, is tax free.


However, it seems to me that you are severely penalized if you have a family, or if you are in the middle of the road when it comes to medical expenses. Under this plan, a family is considered to be a single unit, with a single deductible. The family has to meet the deductible before the insurance kicks in (and can be covered by a single individual). The problem is that the deductible for the family is usually double that of an individual, and it can amount to a lot of money to pay out of pocket for medical expenses (in my case, I'd have to pay $5000 before my insurace covers anything). If your family is healthy, but maybe only need a couple hundred dollars in prescription (you pay full price) a month (say you need allergy medicine, or pharmaceuticals for which there are no generics), there is no way you can actually cover the amount of the deductible in a year, and you end up paying for all of your medical costs out of pocket, and no significan money in your HSA account.

Warning about Pidgin

So I just found out that my beloved "Pidgin" (formerly "Gaim") instant messenger client was saving my user names and passwords as plain text in an XML file!! I went to the developers' site to see if the team was doing anything to fix this issue, but their official response (click here to see) is that they are not going to fix it any time soon. Their reasoning behind this is that IM programs are by default unsafe, so why bother....
This team just lost a lot of points in my book.
If you use gaim/pidgin and you want to see this with your own eyes, just go to the .purple directory (if you use linux, it's in your /home/$USER directory, if you use windows, its in C:\Documents and Settings\Application Data folder), and look for accounts.XML... you will find your passwords there.
Now, since it seems that the team is not going to change this any time soon, and since I like my "false sense of security" (I'm quoting the "Pidgin" team) I went ahead and switched IM clients. I'd heard a lot of good things about Kopete, and even though I am not a big fan of KDE (you've probably realized by now that I am a GNU/Linux person) I am willing to give this application a shot. I just installed and it seems to run smoothly in GNOME. I just started using it yesterday, and I haven't really done much with it, but so far so good, even though it is very "KDEee".