United Statesian

Dear Citizens of the World! The song from Inner Circle " Bad Boys " kept playing in my head as I took these pictures from my first floor window. Madrid does not have a big problem with crime, but it has it's moments - - like all major cities. Since it is exam time for the ankle-biters at my school I spend my evening correcting. You get into a zone, pounding away, not noticing what is going on around you while you are trying to give the marks as quick as possible. However, I stood up and saw the lights of six cop cars, no sirens. When I went to take the pictures there were four local cops and one was yelling, " ¿Eres tonto o qué? " ...In United Statesian English that would be: "Are you stupid or what?" I do not know what happened and I doubt that it was serious, but the cops were quite ... angry. I thought that the blue lights and the rain (it has not really stopped since mid-December) made for a good gritty picture. A bit of excitement before going ba...

Dear citizens of the world, In this time of trouble in Haiti, seeing so many buildings collapsed and few that are saved from under the rubble, it is with great satisfaction that I can report a miracle here in Madrid, just a few streets down from where I live. Last night, at 10:00 pm a woman noticed that large cracks were opening along her ceiling and down the wall. She called 112 (Spanish Emergency Number) and in five minutes the firemen were there to rush the 28 neighbors out of their houses. A few minutes later... the left side of the building came crumbling down. Zero casualties, zero injuries. If this had happened a couple hours later while people were already sleeping then we would be looking at a catastrophe and a search and rescue. Instead, everyone is alive and well and the fireman were taking dust covered cars out of the garage. The United Statesian

Dear citizens of the world, My second blog post continues along the same topic of signs in China. This sign which can be found at the entrance to Tian'anmen square in Beijing has no translation problems. The problem is cultural. The same as Chris's last post , this sign clearly prohibits exploding vehicles...but it also has many other regulations: When cycling towards the "Peaceful Heavenly Gate" square I decided to stop to read the sign and make sure I was not breaking any laws that would get me thrown into the Beijing slammer. The square is surrounded by hundreds or thousands of uniformed police, military, plain-clothed police, video cameras, communist lasers of death, etc... The sign prohibited buses, but there were many buses full of locals and tourists alike. The sign prohibited bikes pulling large amounts of cargo, but lots of them rode by as I was decifering the sign. In the end, I decided to push ahead, sure that I was not breaking any rules and that many othe...