W.i.p
 

I'm not sure if I had a great long tem plan or I was just gambling on the most viable option.

The answer I most regularly gave on my being in Spain was - to learn enough of the language to eventually return to my career, probably in Barcelona or Madrid, and later travel in South America… and now here I am in Madrid back on my old career path and travelling in South America is a mere casuality, I could go today for the weekend if the fancy took me.

But those are the types of questions I usually only think of the answers to because someone is asking me. When the words first slip out of my mouth they feel to me a little like a lie. I wonder why I'm pretending to this person that I have ambitions other than feeling nicely high (whether that be on weed, on sport, on attraction, or on wherever the good chems are coming from) and being fully captivated by some enjoyable activity I'm engaged in.

Nevertheless, here I am in Madrid back on my old career path.

And it has not been an easy transition. I arrived in Madrid with very little money, no business clothes, months without practicing Spanish, nearly a decade without working. After the interview, they left me floating around Spain for 2 weeks, which burned up some cash. Then my first wage was for half a month. I slept mostly in hostels for 6 weeks. As Feb became March prices went up, especially at weekends when I slept in a church pew to preserve funds. I didn't sleep well most nights and got progressively more tired to the point of crying through sheer exhaustion… plus frustration at the sharp contrasts of the dual life I was living.

Whilst my colleauges were going home at night to their comfy whatevers, I was coming 'home' to find a coat or hat has been stolen, getting into a fight over a tin of tuna or choking a guy robbing my laptop in the street or being cornered in the toilets of a homeless refuge by a guy who thinks his girlfriend wants to fuck me or, on the very best of nights, sleeping max. 4 hours in a room full of farts, snores and drunk kids noisly coming home.

When my 2nd pay check was late I had to go to my boss and say "if I don't get some money right now, I can't eat tonight or get on the train tomorrow". She didn't have any money on her and to save my further embarasment pretended that she needed to borrow some money and went around the office hitting people up for cash.

Meanwhile, I became instant friends with Hernán, a Venezuelan kid who runs this (https://www.lareperabar.com/) small bar in the center. He let me control the music, which… come on… I'm your brother and customer for life if you do that. He followed my plight from day of arrival pre-interview, through to near ruin and desperation.

A few days before begging cash off my boss, Hernán got the keys for a studio flat right by the bar and he gave them to me. I moved in a few days before him and lived there rent free for a month on the fold out sofabed. I'm looking to move into my own place any day now.

If that hadn't happened, I would have had to have slept 4 or 5 working days in a row in the homeless church and would still be living in hostels now. I definitely did not make all the right decision and gambled on short odds but it worked out and now I have a great friendship with a great guy and I met a few other cool people along the way, but that's another story.


Peace,

kowalski

What's Madrid like for birds? I hear they are hard as fuck to pull? Especially for a Gringo.

Ok, not easy, well, my advice is get a quechua tent and sleeping bag, now is warm, u can try casa de campo every night then back to center, also work some extra hours on hostels exchange of acomodation, many places around the world are going crazy with reanting, to pay, etc.

Thats why u can just travel wiht little amount of money. Try the pubcrawl company, they looking for people to promote parties and give some time bed on hostles at same time u can practice ur game.

If u need more deeper advice I can try do a videocall.

Lol. Watcha talking bout, Willis?


Peace,

kowalski

Willis? Not Idea, I am talking about you getting a better situation in Madrid, Casa de Campo is a big forest next to the city, crossing the river.
There you can camp just in the worst case scenario or join a hostel team and work for extra acomodation till u can create a posible situation to rent a flat.

About pub crawl companies, there is some, and some of them offer bed when you work with them.

Ahhh... OK. Thanks.

I thought you were answering Jaz question about getting laid in Madrid, was very confusing.

The Willis thing is a quote from a great TV show that became a meme before the internet even existed.

Yeah, I didn't explain that I'm working as the national campaign strategy manager for a business in the financial sector. I needed stuff like an iron and all that and had to be near a suitable metro station to get to work everyday. Plus, it's my first time tying to do my job in Spanish which was pretty taxing at first and I didn't have time or energy to work a second job.


Peace,

kowalski

OK, good luck with it!

Go on then. Answer the question you cunt. I may cruise by.

Mate, I did read this the other day. I just wasn't able to immediately respond.

I think you've done fucking incredible.

Sounds like you've came through a lot of shit that a normal motherfucker wouldn't survive.

Fair play man.

Please give me a shout on linkdin or whatever,

In fact fuck that, we have each others numbers.

I'll text you.

Maybe it's hard to fuck a madrileña but I'm not even sure I ever met one. The city is full of outsiders either here for money or holiday. Both types are an easy pull.


Peace,

kowalski

I have had a nice new flat for beards now but not one really suitable for a cat. So, I’ll probably move when the contract is up and get a cat.

Dislocated my pinkie while skating. Popped it back in it’s socket. Have to do physical therapy to stop it locking up.

There was a tonne of redundancies at work. I never really felt at risk because it wouldn’t have made good business sense to include me.

I started going to improv sessions in English and signed up for a stand up course in Spanish. The improv is just for fun but the stand up comes with a gig at the end, also in Spanish.


Peace,

kowalski

Work are sending me to London this Sunday. Now I gotta find weed there somehow. What a ballache.

So awesome living where it is essentially legal.


Peace,

kowalski

Surely it couldn't be too difficult to find, I'd imagine

I ended up in a lodge in a village, with one pub. So, I just decided not to bother. Therefore, these next few paragraphs are written by a not high me.

It was exciting to experience autumn. There’s no autumn in Córdoba. The way the air feels, the colours, crunchy leaves. I’ve experienced none of that in 7 years.

People are inside my brain in a very uncomfortable way. I can still switch Spanish off. I can choose to listen but not hear. If what people are saying isn’t interesting, I just tune out. In English i can’t. So every retarded conversation within earshot carves itself into my consciousness. I’m getting ear raped by cockneys who seem to be always “avin a larf” or “gettin de amp”. In response I just mutter abuse at them in Spanish.

Also, stop making people pay for every single drink one by one, you backwards twats, do table service everywhere and bring the card machine to me don’t make me walk over to the till every fucking time. I don’t work in this bar, that’s your job.

The work part has been productive, I have enjoyed the change and it turns out I really missed Peparami (who now do a beef stick!) and Roast Beef Monster Munch. Unfortunately I’ve so far been unable to locate a packet of Scampi & Lemon Nik Naks.

Tomorrow I can finally go somewhere I actually want to be, I happen to be going home but I’d be equally as happy in many other places but I’m not happy here, and it couldn’t come soon enough.


Peace,

kowalski

That's hilarious, I can only imagine what it would be like to live away for so long and then hear the kinda shit you're no longer used to hearing.

Madrid is on partial lockdown. The only businesses open to the public are supermarkets and pharmacies. I live right by the main plaza. It is so peaceful right now. There are maybe 5 people in any street, mostly clutching tripods. Unoriginal cunts. It’s great for skating. There’s a lot of hungry looking birds, they normally feast on endless restaurant crumbs. At 10pm many people went out onto their balconies and applauded, they should all die.

The current state of emergency is proposed to continue for 2 weeks, as this is the general duration from the moment of contraction through to recovery. Hopefully, and according to experts, the government are underestimating the problem and the period will need to be extended.

I’d prefer not to get ill for a week but it is really no big deal. A lot of good things will come from this.


Peace,

kowalski

What are the main good things that will come from this? Are you FWBs at least keeping you company?

It's difficult to predict exactly what the good things will be.

We can say with certainty that things will be learned. Those learnings will mean future decisions related to the things learned will be made from a position of increased understanding. This means better decisions. Unless it completely decimates the human population, the ongoing benefits of those learnings and subsequent learnings built upon them will inevitably outweigh the temporary bad stuff.

My picks for huge changes are higher education and office based businesses. That is dependent on this thing running on a lot longer, which it seems like it will... although we don't have enough stats to know yet how effective the nationwide quarantine is being. Aside from that, a bunch of people are gonna spend more time being creative over the next few weeks.

And, no... No girls. No humans. No pet. Not even a plant. I saw a bird out the window one time, that's my closest encounter with another lifeform since Saturday.


Peace,

kowalski

That bit made me laugh my tits off

Even though we're not on lockdown here in Northern Ireland, some businesses and schools and the likes have taken it upon themselves to do so. I'm quite happy to be on lockdown if needs be, I have literally more books that I could possibly read even in a year long lockdown, plus I have the online life coaching course I'm doing. I'd be far from bored.

I am however, about to go on a first date with a cute blonde I'll be meeting for the first time. She literally just sent me a photo as I was typing this of her dolled up looking hot, letting me know she's booking a taxi soon.

Fuck it, YOLO.

Stop chasing tail and go get a dog.

Anyone who isn’t currently under lockdown, you will be soon. So, if you don’t have a dog, get a dog. A dog is your key to the outside world. You can do anything and go anywhere under the guise of taking the little shit out for one. I’m gonna try get one delivered.


Peace,

kowalski

It was worth it, we got laaiiiid.

As much as I would love to get a dog, I can't. There's nothing technically stopping me obviously, but I'm not going to get one on the basis of a temporary accessory, and then afterwards when I go back to work he's stuck in an apartment all day long every day by himself. Dogs are awesome and it's a good idea, but not a feasible one for me at least.

You could take a dog and walk all the way out of the city no problem, or go visit your children who don’t live with you, or go get your hands on items that Glovo don’t deliver, etc.

We are talking about maybe a couple of months. We are one week into a proposed two week thing and the number of new cases daily is still rising dramatically whilst they continually tighten the rules. So this is definitely getting extended.

And if it bothers you that it is a dog get a pig, you eat them.


Peace,

kowalski .

The UK ain't on lock-down. Boris the bullshitter and his associates are digging their heels. Schools are officially out, but not a fully declared, official, nationwide lock-down like most of the rest of Europe.

Where I am, it seems a bit of a mess because three quarters of the entire island of Ireland is on lock-down, but not Northern Ireland. It just sounds so fucking silly when the north and south are on the same land mass.

I had an anxiety attack last night after watching a short but intense 4 minute video of some Welsh girl doing voice-over on various dramatised projected clips of where this is all going. There were maybe 10 to 12 "steps" being laid out by her, from soon-to-be food shortages and civil disobedience, progressively leading all the way up to full-on totalitarian control and enslavement. Once she gets to step 3 or 4 her voice starts breaking and pretty soon she's doing her voice-over through tears and utter terror in her voice.

I should know better than to allow something like this affect me too much, and I'm well aware that the way the video is presented coupled with the increasing dread in her voice, leads the viewer down that path of fear. This is exactly what happened to me, and I couldn't help it.

My personal perspective was being guided by the fact that I've spent 6 months keenly interested in and engrossed in totalitarianism and the associated atrocities of the 20th century, and this was the primary contributory factor in the intensity of the fear I felt last night. If I hadn't studied that stuff, there wouldn't have been so many terrifying thoughts and possibilities running through my mind.

I'm back to earth again today though and although there could still be a major cause for concern, and shit we aren't being told, I'm not going to allow fear to overcome me again. I'll just fucking roll with it, throwing punches, whatever happens.

One thing I'm doing though, for my peace, is minimising social media and similar outlets that are currently filled with nothing but poisonous mind-fuckery.

Can't argue with the learning part, thats kinda overall positive. Sorry to hear about your lack of plants, I love a good plant. Also sounds like you don't know anyone close to dying from it, thats good.

There's an insane amount of mis-informtion out there, so you're doing well by lowering social media, I saw a post saying france went to full on riots (bullshit) and started getting my bow and arrows more easily accessible.

I'm spending most of this downtime between studying an online course and reading. Loving it actually.

I have my own predictions on what can happen, and it includes riots etc. They're a very real possibility if supply chains get cut or something like that.

But in the meantime I'm trying only to access what information I need.

So... Any updates K (discounting your more recent threads) ?

During the whole thing I moved to Sevilla. I've been here about 18 months now. The first year was a bit messy. I had a debt to pay off, I moved 4 times in a year and I had to rinse a bunch of cash to do nothing in London for a few weeks to get a new passport, which left me a little shaken ... however returning to Andalucia felt amazing and really brought back to the surface how much better being here is for me.

There's a little space now between me and the whole section of my life in Cordoba and the process of leaving there and coming eventually to Sevilla, making it possible for me to look back at it and understand it in some vaguely mythical way.

The title of this thread was not chosen to refer to the idea that I had returned to my old career and was now working again in that sense but more to the idea that I felt I had a lot of work to do with myself. We always have work to do, but that was a specific thing I needed to do. To remove myself out of that place and then painstakingly repair the negative I had let that time do to me ... with the caveat that living in Cordoba was mostly awesome and I had a wildly fun time and now some fantastic memories. I think very fondly of that city, it's truly a special place. It's feels almost unreal living there, when you are there and you think about or talk to any other people living in any other places you genuinely feel bad for them.


And now? I find myself now in a very similar position to the one I was in when I left the UK specifically in terms of ambitions and my ability to realise them. It took a long time to learn the language and the culture and be comfortable and have a stable situation what with everything life throws up and how easy it is to get caught in the day to day. I know I could have already achieved certain things (or discovered that I can't do them) if I'd stayed in the UK with friends, family, connections, etc. That bothers me a little but just enough to make me want to be more productive and driven right now with so much possiblity ahead.


Peace,

kowalski

Good to hear what's happening with you.

I have to ask, what's the long game? Or is that even a thought in your mind at all?

What I mean is, are you happy to just roll with it and enjoy life, career, and experiences, and you'll work it all out as you go along?

For context as to why I'm asking, I barely understood how a mortgage worked until this year, and now I'm planning to get one sometime in 2024. The main reason is, it's very unlikely I'll be emigrating anywhere, and so there's no point dishing out serious wads of money each month for the rest of my life when that money could be invested in the gaff with the aim of paying it off over 15 years MAX. That way I'll own the joint by age 55 and then most income after that is all mine, and even if I found myself with no job, I'd still have a roof over me, from under which nobody could kick me out.

Whatever we do decide long-term tho, we'll be fine, because mushrooms 🍄🍄