Operación Bikini

“Sarah, ya es tiempo de Operación Bikini,” said my workmate who I always refer to as Mr. GQ as he could be a model for the magazine.

“Buenos días”, I respond. 

“Hmmm, it’s already time for Operación Bikini?  Has a year gone by that fast?” I think to myself as I remove my wool coat and hang it in the closet. 

Next week, Spain celebrates the Semana Santa, Easter holiday, where all of the Catholics and non-practicing Catholics celebrate their Catholicism and sins with beautiful tronos for everybody to enjoy.  The tronos, or Saints, that are on floats, are carried by the members of a church, los costaleros throughout the cities that have processions.  There are only a few tronos in Madrid.

Los costaleros carry big floats with statues of Christ or the Virgin Mary, covered with candles and flowers.  These floats can weigh up to 3 or 4 tons and are paraded throughout the streets by the members of the particular church.  One of the best processions I have ever seen was with my mom back in 1997 when I lived in Málaga.  I was showing her the city and we just happened to go into the church there when suddenly it got really quite and then we heard, “thump, thump, thump, thump” and in came the procession.  It was breathtaking.

Around the tronos carried by the costaleros, are other members of the cofradia, dressed in outfits that consist of a robe with a cone hat.  Some say that the Klu Klux clan stole the idea of their outfits from the Spanish processions.  There are also drummers and as they beat the drum, the cofrades take their pasos.  It is all quite intense and worth a visit to Spain to see.

Along with the processions during Easter week, comes a few days off from work which usually means, too much eating, relaxing and drinking.  It is right after the Easter holidays due to the extra pounds put on during the holiday, that leads up to the when the Spaniards and all of the news feeds start spreading the word about Operación Bikini. 

I typed Operación Bikini into www.google.es and thousands of articles came up on how to lose the “Michelin”, Spanish for “the spare tire”, for bathing suit season.  There is even one article that states that Operación Bikini will make it to the school cafeterias with healthier foods to help control obesity in children.  The articles I found write about what to eat, how often to eat, how to prepare your skin for the sun, what exercises are best and all say to drink lots of water.  It all seems like basic health stuff to me.  The Spaniards actually become quite obsessed with this "operacion bikini" concept.  These are the times when I walk in to office kitchen during an on-going session of Camera Café and opt to eat something when a co-worker snickers that it is going to ruin the operación bikini and they like to know how often one goes to the gym.  I have even caught them comparing their cholesterol.  

I am an avid gym freak even though I have had to tone it down a notch; I go every other day for about a half hour to an hour and a half, but this is the season when I actually don’t like going to the gym because it fills up with all of the “get-ready-for-bathing suit-season” temporary members.

It may seem odd that I have chosen to write about two subjects that really do not go hand-in-hand.  Well, they don’t at all.  Nobody is going to go to an Easter procession in a bikini or swim trunks but perhaps due to lent and giving up the foods one loves or due to the fact that there are so many holidays in Spain that this is the prime moment when the media goes on a frenzy about diets and skin scare.  Holidays in Spain could be defined as a time to eat too much, a time to take a really long siesta after eating and drinking too much, a time to do absolutely nothing, the list could go on.  But my theory is, is that if you can’t pinch an inch after a holiday, then perhaps you didn’t enjoy it.   

For the body conscious and body obsessed, now is their time to shine, after the Semana Santa that is, and for those of us who don’t really care or who maintain a healthy well-balanced lifestyle all year round, we feel stuffed at the gym by all of the extras.  Needless to say, I don’t think that people should really need the “operación bikini” as an excuse to take better care of themselves but if it is an initiative, I say go for it – just don’t hog the treadmill. 

*Note: The photo of the woman in the reindeer antlers is courtesy of Juan Ignacio Garcia who took the photo while on holiday in the Canary Islands. 

"Te pega un eBook"

"Te pega un eBook," said Dimix. 

"Hmmm'," I thought to myself.  I wasn’t sure how to respond to that statement as I am still not sure how to feel about the new era of electronic devices to read books and I certainly don’t think that it suits me.

"No creo," I reply. 

"No?" Te imagino con el eBook en tu bolso y sacarlo con mucha sofisticación," added Dimix.

"Hay ciertas cosas que no quiero que modernicen."  I reply.  Although it may look sophisticated to pull one out of your purse, call me old fashioned but I prefer a book with pages and a cover and an edition and a particular smell.

I had to go on to explain that a book for me is like a newspaper for some.  I left out the fact that I can not stand newspapers as I find them dirty and really do not like getting that black ink on my fingertips; they make me feel like I just changed the toner of the photocopy machine or the oil of my invisible car.  Many people just need something tangible. 

I love going to read with my book at the Café Cerveceria Santa Bárbara in the Glorieta de Alonso Martínez where they have a long bench covered by a velvet fabric in deep red where I occasionally lift my head to people watch as there are mirrors above the benches.  I admittedly spill on my books constantly, but it is back to the idea of possession, it is mine and I don't think that I would be able to savor the time I spend at Spanish cafés without the books I savor.

I lug books with me almost everywhere.  I love to dog-ear the pages, underline words that I will eventually look up in a dictionary, underline phrases that I like or find insightful.  I even have to admit that I have torn out the last page that has nothing on it to write down some notes.  I remember in the movie Finding Forrester, a personal fav, when William Forrestor (played by Sean Connery) comments that it is disrespectful to do all of what I do to a book - well, I paid my rights by buying the book and I do all the damage in pencil so it can be erased at some point or another.

In Spain, I have observed that the majority of the people cover their books with some sort of book cover.  Every time I hop on the metro, I count at least 5 women with a book cover that is either made of newspaper or white paper.  According to the Barómetro of the Editorial Federation of Spain (Informe de la Federación Gremios de Editores), 58.4% of the readers in Spain are women while an article states that Spanish men do the majority of their reading in the bathroom.  

The book cover reminds me of elementary and public school when you had to cover the public school books that they loaned you for the year with the brown paper bags my mom saved from the supermarket so that you didn’t accidentally destroy them.  I remember how some class mates got really fancy and covered their books with book-cover paper that reminded me of holiday wrapping paper.

I have various theories as to why Spaniards cover their books, i) it has been loaned to them, ii) it is something that has continued on from the time of Franco during a time in which there was huge censorship iii) they like to keep their books looking like it wasn't read iv) my preferred theory is that they are reading total trash and don't want anybody to know!

Per usual, I decided to do a survey around my office.

I asked the Canarian workmate how she feels about the eBook and she said:

"El otro día vi uno en el metro y no me hace gracia a mí."  Well stated, she said it wasn't for her, I couldn't agree more.

The Ibiza Boss said that he prefers paper as he glanced around his office looking at the number of books and old maps he had in frames and collects, the Brainy boss who happened to be there, said the same and added that it is all about tact.

Mr. GQ in my office said that he "lee poco y menos en el ebook" - he barely reads and would read even less if it were an eBook.

Now for the opinion of a true gadget lover, the Boss who is the ultimate Hacker, I enter his office to find him engrossed by the computer and I interrupt his intense concentration,

"Qué opinas del eBook?" I ask him with a smirk.  He finds my surveys quite strange but I had to remind him once again that I studied letras and not econmia.

"De hecho, voy a comprarme el iPad." As his eyes widen like a child with the simple idea that they are going to have a new toy and meanwhile he takes his iPhone out of his pocket and shows me how many books he has in there already and how you can change the view of how it is read by tilting it one way or another.

"Es mucho más cómodo leer en la cama con el iPhone y con el iPad va a ser genial.  Bueno, te digo, también me gustan los libros de papel pero por comodidad, los libros electrónicos son mejores."

Like I said before, there are certain things that I just don't think should modernize.  Paper books are a classic and they can ideally deal with the five senses (I have never seen anybody eat a book but surely there are people who have or do).  And how is the eBook going to serve for blind people?  What if they don't feel like being read to by some computerized voice but rather feel the brail?

So, for some, the eBook may look sophisticated, may be more comfortable to read in bed, may give you the option of reading about 100 books at the same time, but I just am not for it.  How would men stand up to their image of reading the paper in the bathroom? How would I feel about reading in the cafés with an electronic device?  What would happen to the device if I spilled my coffee or tea on it?  And, what if the battery dies in a tense moment of the book?  You are totally left hanging, can't turn the page.  Ultimately, I feel that there are certain things in modern-day culture where the old just does not mix with the new and a part of history would be lost without being able to turn the page.

So, no eBook for me, just call me traditional and unsophisticated.

Yoga Mental...especially for those of us who are quite mental...

I went to my first Yoga class ever yesterday evening.  I went to a center where my doctor, who I always refer to as “Fruitcake”, goes to Yoga class and highly recommends.  It is called Shadak and the center is pretty much across the street from my office, quite conveniently located. 

I have, admittedly, been on a self-destructive path since July of last year.  I got excellent tests results in June which left my totally dry-humored Rheumatologist with his mouth open and it was enough to convince me that I could party like a rock star and that my diagnosis of a chronic autoimmune disease had well past.  Well, apparently, my mind and body are quite fragile and need to always be taken care of, nurtured and be full of positive energy, I have never had a green thumb so taking care of my body and mind is quite the challenge. 

I got tests done for the Rheumatologist just a couple of weeks ago because I hadn’t been feeling that great and I also have my 6-8 month check-up.  I went to pick them up and from the first glance; I knew that they weren’t good.  In Spain, you have to go with a slip from your doctor to a place where they do blood analysis and then you pick them up yourself which for some like myself, is not a good thing because I start browsing the Internet to see what I can auto-diagnose myself with and basically give myself an self-induced heart-attack. 

Shortly alter emailing Fruitcake the past 2 blood analysis and confessing that I had been partying like I was somebody important, my cell phone rings.

“Querida Sarah, has empeorado y estás empeorando.  Después del correo que me has enviado, muchas cosas tienen que cambiar si quieres mejorar.”

“FUCK, FUCK, FUCK”, I think to myself.  Nobody ever likes to receive a call from a Doctor, slightly whacky, whose been making all his best efforts to help you, tell you that you are getting worse. 

He calls me into his office asap.  I got there and felt like I was at the Principals office, like the time after I did donuts with the car in the snow, but worse.  After a long talk and his psychoanalysis of yours truly, there are many things that need to be sorted in my life, psych wise, as I have not been very happy for a long time and according to Fruitcake, my well-being will start when I have found inner peace.  He said I must go to “Yoga Mental”.

Off I went.  I was quite nervous but noticed that everyone around me was mellow, so I relaxed and felt mellow.  It was strange but not as strange as the time I went to a session on how to line up the Chakras where no one in the room could cross their arms or legs and the monitors had to touch your feet and head to line up certain Chakras.  In that gig, the monitor kept asking us if we could feel the energy passing from one another, the only thing I felt was that the room was stuffy and the windows needed to be opened. 

But anyhow, at Yoga, we had to sit on the floor and meditate.  The Guru is named Ramiro Calle, an older man who is skinny as a stick and quite hairy.  He seemed to have a calm aura about him.  He told us the 3 phases of meditation and how to breathe.  I can’t remember the last time I took a minute for myself and actually could relax.  Later he allowed for questions and said some anecdotes.  It was great.

If and when I go to the Yoga física with the notorious Guru of Yoga, I will write about how inflexible and clumsy I am but at this moment, I am sticking to the meditation and start on the path to thinking with my positive side of the brain (can’t remember if it’s the right or the left side but it is working!)!!!