On the importance and beauty of blogging

January 25, 2019April 15, 2019 / antonioyrocinante / Leave a comment

The lonely work of blogging

Blogging has been a fantastic tool for me, an outlet, and a hobby. What started as an academic adventure blog about riding my motorcycle (RIP) to visit universities for my PhD, morphed into a bit of everything blog: Musings on academia, random essays/articles, personal anecdotes, still the odd travel piece, my favorite things (restaurants, bars, cigars!), and personal notes. In fact, my most read items are my essay on Existentialism in Don Quixote and my dad’s obituary.

My students always appear shocked when I tell them about my blog. Which is surprising because they are super connected. In fact everybody should blog. You see, Instagram (follow me at tonxob) is only visual, Tweeter is limited, and old Facebook, well, we all know the shortcomings of FB. Blogging on the other hands requires a bit more thinking, planning, writing, it forces you to write – at least try – coherent thought and how to express it.

I recently found an old blog post from a professor at the LSE about precisely this issue. So here it is, click here to read more. Here is a bit of a tease…

A good proportion of the people I have come across may be brilliant in their field, but when it comes to using the interwebs, tend to sound like the querulous 1960s judge asking ‘What is a Beatle?’ (‘I don’t twitter’). Much of life is spent within the hallowed paywalls of academic journals (when I pointed out that no-one outside academia reads them, the baffled response seemed to be along the lines of ‘and your point is?’).

Here is the address if you prefer to cut and paste:

An antidote to futility: Why academics (and students) should take blogging / social media seriously

There are a few blog platforms to use. I have used WORDPRESS from the beginning and I love it! you can have your blog for free. Come on and join the club!

Sevilla

January 16, 2019April 15, 2019 / antonioyrocinante / Leave a comment

It had been over fourteen years since I had been to Sevilla, but I recently managed a three-day getaway to that magic city by the Guadalquivir, and it never disappoints.

The reason for the trip was the various exhibits celebrating the 4th Centenary of native baroque artist Bartolome Murillo’s birth.

Back in 1992 Sevilla hosted the World Fair, called Expo ’92 coinciding with the 5th Centenary of Christopher Columbus departing on his little trip from that city along its navigable river. The Expo was a smashing hit. For it, Spain built its first high-speed train from Madrid, the AVE, which, reaching speeds of 300kph (186mph for those stubborn Imperialists) does Madrid – Seville in a nifty 2.5 hours! So obviously we took the train. Once there we stayed in a gorgeous loft overlooking the Archivo de Indias and the Cathedral with its amazing Arab Minaret turned bell tower, the Giralda.

Sevilla is a walking city, so that is what we did, walk around the park, by the river, along the old streets of the magical Santa Cruz neighbourhood, across the river into the Triana neighbourhood, peeking into the cute patios, checking out old palazzo Casa Pilatos, and the new “setas” designed to give shade to the main square on the hot summer days. Along the way we arrived at the Museo de Bellas Artes which is hosting the main Murillo exhibition. To say it is breathtaking is an understatement. The museum has gathered Murillos from around the world so you can really go deep into Murillo’s craft, style, personality, and nuances. It blew my mind.

But besides Murillo, Seville has amazing food. We stopped at old hangouts like Morales, Las Teresas and el Rinconcillo where I used to go with customers and suppliers, and enjoyed the arab influenced tapas, the bounty of the nearby Atlantic and Mediterranean, and local specialties like garbanzos with spinach or ox tail, all washed down with lovely local white wines and sherries.

Something else that is abundant in Seville is churches. There are churches and convents and monasteries on every block and each one is worth stopping in. It might seem glib to say but most of these temples are Baroque, it can be a bit overwhelming to see such a profusion of decoration: angels and leaves and thingys. It looks like there is no space left without a decoration, and that was precisely the goal, in fact it has a name: horror vacui in latin, meaning fear of emptiness. A main reason for the wealth of baroque art is that Sevilla was the landing port for all the ships coming in from America, so a lot of the silver and gold did not make it out-of-town, if you get what I mean.

If you have been to Sevilla you know one could write for hours about it. If you haven’t been, what are you waiting for?

Checking out Casa Pilatos

Yes you saw this in Star Wars

A cute little Murillo

Giralda, Minaret turned bell tower

A square in Santa Cruz

Churches, churches, churches

Torre del Oro tower

There are hundreds of churches, sanctuaries, chapels…

Murillo

Guadalquivir

Patio

Barrio Santa Cruz

The Cathedral

Bone dry sherry – Manzanilla

On the AVE high speed train

San Silvestre Vallecana

January 4, 2019April 15, 2019 / antonioyrocinante / 1 Comment

The San Silvestre Vellecana race has been going every New Year’s eve since 1964 – that’s one year before I was born! I ran it in 2015 with my cousin and again a few days ago. It is not the oldest race, longest or anything like that, but it might be the funnest.

My story with the San Silvestre started with my grandfather who every evening of December 31 always said he was going to the race when in fact he was just going to the corner taverna for a drink or two. My dad continued the joke but he didn’t even go to the bar, he just said he was going to the San Silvestre only to go sit on the couch and watch TV. So when he passed in 2015 I committed to running it, simply so I could say I was going to the San Silvestre and actually run the stupid thing!! And I did, and it was great fun. My cousin Alex is a talented athlete so running it with him was fun and competitive at the same time.

Then I forgot about it until I started training again after my motorcycle accident in 2017 – when I promised myself I would run the San Silvestre again.

The recovery from the shattered pelvis was very slow and painful, but I slowly added the miles, finally running 10 kms in training at the Retiro Park when I got back to Madrid in the fall. I am happy with the results which, while not impressive, are ok. I ran a 1:06 with a 6:39 pace which put me in the middle of the pack finishing in position 20.872. Keep in mind that there were 42.000 of us, so there was a lot of traffic slowing things down. In fact as the crowd thinned I was able to speed up!

According to Wikipedia, this 10K race is based upon the Saint Silvester Road Race, a Brazilian race (held since 1925) which spawned numerous other New Year’s Eve races. It starts at the Real Madrid Santiago Bernabeu Stadium and finishes at the Rayo Vallecano Stadium, across town. Along the way it passes right by my mom’s house, so every year -even when I’m not racing, we take a walk to check it out. The Pro race held after us amateurs is a thing of beauty as those folks blister the streets in 26 odd minutes. Maybe next year…