The thing is that I’ve found myself somehow involved in a private conversation among some German Spaniards (that’s Spanish people living in Germany) where they are talking about buying a property (opposed to keep renting).

So far so good (I can’t talk here, I’m on my second owned house now, like a good “British” person )

The problem lies when everybody in this conversation agree with the principle that living in the city is a hundred times better than living in the countryside. Living in the countryside, apparently, is suicide. One of this German Spaniards has even come up with the term “mierdapueblo“, which in English means something like “shittyvillage” to refer to the place she lives in.

Now, I do understand that living in a city can give you more in some aspects, like choices of entertainment, better shops with better offers, everything seems to be “closer”, etc. However, understanding this does not make me want to have it for myself.

Hence my original question: I am not weird for preferring the country to the city, am I?

There are still people out there who go to live to the country out of personal choice, right?

Because the first thing I want to do when I win the lottery (it will happen one day, I’m sure) is to buy a house in the country, have land and hire a farmer who will work that land, have animals and look after them and breathe the gorgeous fresh air every morning.

Oh yes, that sounds like a plan.

One day…

My idea of heaven

So I got Jon to go into the back end of the blog (something called Helm, or something like that) and get to all this info that has been hidden from me.

Well, apparently, during the month of August, my website managed to get a few more than one hundred thousand hits. What – the – fuck ? How? Who are these people and why do they read my blog?

I find it amusing, to tell you the truth, because I never try to start controversy or any deep intelligent conversations with my entries. Mostly they are simple thoughts about my daily life and routine (and the odd funny story too), a way of collecting memories and thoughts (so I can read them again in a few years time and feel embarrassed about myself, in the same way that happened with my myspace blog). When I started writing I never expected anyone to read. I almost never publicise the blog (ok, I’ve put it in a couple of websites, but that’s about it). So it is really a mystery how this people come across this website.

Through “helm” I could find out which ones were the most popular Google searches that lead people to my website. The main one was something like “Tiffany BNTM voice”, which is quite funny, because I wrote about it in one of my recent posts about Britain’s next top model, that Ed made me feel so embarrassed about Well, the truth is that that Tiffany girl has the most horrible voice I’ve ever heard and it’s really funny…

Another very popular post was the one about the brunette beauties… Which makes me realise that most of the people who visit my blog are people who just happened to have a “very lucky” google search…

And about the countries, no surprises there, really. Jon was a bit surprised that I didn’t have more hits from Spain, but I believe the answer lies in the fact that I don’t write in Spanish…

After 5 months in Basingstoke, we still only know one set of neighbours. The couple at the end of the road have the same type of house as us, so we have talked a couple of times, about the house, the development, etc. Last week, the husband popped in to ask Jon about some plumbing stuff and decided then to meet up for tea on the following Sunday (aka, yesterday).

They are a lovely couple from North India (Delhi, I suppose, I didn’t ask exactly where), have been in the UK for 4 years and they have a very cute and funny 3-year-old son.

We got to their house at 4 o’clock as agreed, and I must admit that I wasn’t sure of what to expect. We looked online beforehand for what the polite thing would be regarding gifts. We wanted to take something as a thank you for the invite, but were unsure about their traditions and customs. We settled for some chocolate truffles and some cinnamon rolls (they almost rejected the gifts, arguing that it was far too formal, but we insisted and they took them in the end)

After the formal introductions*, we sat down in the sofa, had some tea and cake (our truffles and rolls were nowhere to be seen…) and started to chat.

We got on very well. Better than I thought. I must admit my ignorance about the Indian culture in general (this was the first time I met some proper Indians) and have to say that I was pleasantly surprised of how “western” they were both in behaviour and way of thinking. Apart from their Indian accent, I couldn’t tell any different from any other couple from anywhere else in the western world.

We chatted and chatted and we were all quite comfortable, even with the almost-hyper-active kid, who kept calling us “uncle” and “auntie” all the time. We talked about India, about Spain, about England, their food, our food, houses, children, education and many many more subjects. I was pleased to see that they were very open to talk about anything, even financial stuff.

We have set a date for a proper diner where we will have both traditional Spanish and Indian food (they think that the Indian food that you get here in restaurants has nothing to do with the real stuff – exactly the same as with Spanish restaurants!) and I must admit that I am really looking forward to it!

I believe this could be the beginning of a great friendship!

*We have a massive problem, and it’s that even after having repeated their names a couple of times, we still struggle to remember the wife’s name! We remember the husband’s and the kid’s, but not the wife… Doh! It’s definitely a two-syllable word, with a k and and a in it…

I must admit that I have never tried to read any Stephen Hawking’s books (I hear that A brief history of time and The universe in a nutshell are good reads, however I’ve never been bothered) and back at University I had a friend studying Quantum Physics who I used to bore with endless questions that got answered but not understood.

My main and most concerning problem with the Universe is that I simply don’t get the whole “the universe is infinite” thing. Reading this article in the BBC News website hasn’t helped my life-long frustration with the matter. The article states that the Universe will probably expand forever.

Expand? Forever?

Now, those are two terms that my simple mind can’t associate with the Universe. I find it extremely difficult to start to imagine an entity such as the Universe that has been expanding since its creation back in the Big Bang days. I can imagine a balloon expanding. You put too much air on it and it will go boom!. There is a limit to it. It is not infinite. The Universe, however, seems to be able to keep growing indefinitely in the “space” around it.

What is that space? What was there before? Where was it? Where did it come from?

The problem is that there isn’t an easy-out-of-the-box answer for these questions and I have got a feeling that I may never get to understand them, despite my wanting to understand.
(Oh, and please, the answer being “God” is not an option, because -apart of me not believing that there is a god- then where did that god come from? what was there before it? etc etc etc) The never-ending story..

Today’s new word is: Broody.

The first time I heard this word (or at least the first time that it entered my concious mind) was just yesterday. I had to look it up on the internet and it made me laugh – not because of the actual meaning of the word, but because it has entered my vocabulary in such a time in my life.

Broody, according to the Merriam Webster, means “being in a state of readiness to brood eggs that is characterized by cessation of laying and by marked changes in behavior and physiology“. That confused the hell out of me, so a second opinion is always welcome. The Macmillan Dictionary was more spot on: “wanting to have a baby“.

It is not really fresh news the fact that I have been wanting a baby for a little bit. The person who actually uttered the sentence to me was quite right, but I had to pretend otherwise (a workmate, whose wife just had a baby, emailed me a video of the kid, with the sentence below: Enjoy. I hope it doesn’t make you broody”, to which I replied -after finding out the meaning of the word- “Oh no! we’re quite happy with just the cat for now”)

And to some extent, Tom has somehow temporarily filled in that little gap. But of course it is not the same. He is preparing the path for us, making sure that we get used to a cute tiny creature crying for food all the time and waking us up at 4 in the morning everyday…

However, we’re not being blessed just yet. We have to keep trying (harder, I must admit) and keep wishing that a little creature (who can compete with the cat for our attention) will be with us at some point in the near future.