Subways Around the World

Sep14

Well I was sitting around thinking about what sorts of things I like to read about in a blog. And I thought, well, in a blog, I like to read about places that people go to visit, things that they see there, who do they meet, what do they eat or drink. I like to read about restaurants that they go to and who they go with, what they talk about and what they eat.

I like blog posts about walks in the country, and what it was like to walk through the countryside. What the people saw and did there. Not great, dramatic, Indiana Jones type strolls through the world. Just little observations.

I was telling a friend that I like to read blog posts that say things like: well we went for a holiday in NYC and we found the subways really crowded. People in the subways in NYC are very strange because no one looks at anyone. The lights go off all the time but no one gets anxious, it’s normal over there. (I say this, of course, because I live in a place where it’s not normal for the lights to go off all the time on the subways, here if the lights go off, there’s an emergency!)

Or on the other hand, I might like to read: in Barcelona the subways are really neat, you can watch TV while you are waiting for the train so you don’t get bored, because there are televisions on the platform. There is also a sign that counts down the seconds till the next train is supposed to arrive.

So then I thought I’d make a blog post about subways around the world. Maybe it’s not the most transcendental, thought-provoking, wisdom-infused sort of topic that could occur to me. But, well, if someone else were to write a post about subways in places I had never been to, I know I would be interested in reading about it.

And it’s always nice to blog about things you would like to read about in other blogs. I think.

Well, so, let’s begin with NYC then. As I said, in NYC people never look at each other. In the subways I mean. And people tend to edge away from creepy looking fellows. The subways are very noisy – or at least they were when I was there, many years ago. There were also trains that drove straight through the station with a deafening zzzzzzzziiiiiiiiiiing!!! without stopping, if I recall. No wonder people found it easy to commit suicide there.

Once again I say that because it contrasted with the subways I was used to. So let’s talk about the subways I was used to.

Until I went to New York City I had only ever seen subways in Montreal. Subways (called metros) in Montreal are really neat. They “sing” when they take off. They are (or were) sky blue in colour, very distinctive from other trains that I’ve seen. And they looked very clean and new too.

Well, I’ve already mentioned subways in Barcelona. The ones in Madrid, on the other hand, are quite a nightmare. The reason is because of their ex-cru-ci-a-ting slooow-neeess! I used to live by a line where the train always seemed to sit about half an hour on the track without moving – and I didn’t live anywhere near the end of the line, either. It wasn’t near the centre of the city or on a very popular route, but then again, shouldn’t they make all the lines equally efficient?

If you have the time and can get over this little hassle, however, I do recommend that you drop by the Goya metro station. There you can see, all along the walls, engravings by Spain’s famous anti-war painter and artist, Francisco de Goya.

Well I guess by now you might be waiting to hear about more populous metropoles. Who cares about metros in Montreal or Barcelona anyways, right, you might be thinking. It’s not like lots of people go to Montreal or Barcelona anyways.

All right. So, how about Paris? Romantic ads in a romantic Romance language decorating all the walls. World-famous names like L’Arc de Triomphe or Champs-Élysées for every station. I remember being quite dazzled by the metro there, because it was the first time I had seen TV screens and flashing signs in a subway station. Since then I’ve discovered a few more, however (such as Barcelona for example), so they no longer dazzle me. How quickly we get accustomed to things, I do say!

The London tube is a real labyrinth. It takes forever to get anywhere on it, and you have to go up and down lots of stairs (fortunately they’re mechanical stairs) all the time in order to change lines. Many train lines also pass through the same set of tracks, so you have to be looking out all the time to make sure you read where each train is going before you board it, or you will not end up at your desired destination.

I remember encountering the first and only wooden mechanical stairs I have ever seen in London tube stations. I believe (but wouldn’t know because it has been ages since I last passed through this fascinating city) that they’ve since been changed for the more normal, conventional metallic escalators due to fire hazards.

In London the people are always rushing around. They are looking at the floor, or at their briefcases or their watches. It’s a different sort of apathy from what you could encounter in NYC, however. In New York City people were hostile, distrustful. Almost paranoid you could say. They deliberately hardened their hearts in order to ride a train in New York, and they watched their own backs.

In London, however, people weren’t hard, or hiding beneath a tough armour. They were just simply distracted, worried. They always looked like they were afraid they were going to arrive late for something.

Although I suppose if you have to depend on the subway, in any city, it’s almost inevitable that you will arrive late much of the time.

Now, Rome is another story altogether. It’s very difficult to get anywhere on the subway in Rome, because the system avoids much of the centre of the city. Too many valuable archaeological sites there. So it’s nice, because it’s always nice to be able to count on some sort of transportation that isn’t dependent on the fickleness of street-level traffic patterns. But it may take you a long time to get where you want to go if you have to by-pass the centre all the time. And chances are good that there may be no metro at all in the vicinity of where you want to go.

People on the metro in Rome are very nice, though. They don’t look all stressed-out like in London, nor do they look like they think you’re going to murder them all the time like they do in New York.

Mexico City, Mexico D.F., is one of the world’s greatest cities. It is so vast and extensive, even an airplane takes quite some time to cover over this territory. As you can imagine, its metro system is also humongous. However, in one of the stations (I don’t remember the name, sorry) they have a bewitching display of aboriginal Toltec art, vast and powerful stone heads. If you are in the area and can find out where it is exactly, I do recommend that you check it out. And if you go there, I’d love to hear about it, so leave me a comment, please! Which station is it in?

Oh, I guess I’ll finish with something a bit more original: Vancouver’s very own Skytrain. The Skytrain is really neat. It’s new, clean, silent and efficient. You never have to wait a long time for a train and these vehicles sure do move fast. I believe they cover a good number of Vancouver neighbourhoods and even go out to several suburban areas like Surrey. Unlike subways, this system moves around above the ground like an elevated train.

People in Vancouver are friendly, perhaps even a little bit naïve, compared to the tough dudes you’ll find in more established urban areas. So you might see that the people who ride with you on the Skytrain will probably act, in general, quite nice and polite.

Of course I can’t end without a little note about our very own Malaga subway. Well, it’s under construction! So not much to say about that. However we have high hopes for it – once it finally opens in about 50 years’ time.

The Barcelona That Tourists, Well, Some Tourists DO See: Barcelona II

Sep4

All right, so, as promised, here at long last comes Barcelona II.

We left off Part I with this intriguing photo:

What intriguing photo, you’re probably asking. That’s just a short, stubby palm tree sitting in some super dirty, icky, muddy water.

Yes, but…… Where?

In Barcelona, of course!

In this lovely park, the Ciutadella, where we went for a ride in a little rowboat.

Our expert oarsman, ie. my best friend’s almost teenage son, kept pushing our little boat into the palm bushes, which were sticking out of the water in the middle of the lake.

Here you can see a panoramic view of the lake with its myriad pretty little palm bushes all sticking up out of the murky waters.

Note how low these bushes hang out over the water. Now imagine spending the greater part of your visit to this park ducking around underneath these bushes, in your little rowboat that your friend’s almost teenage son persists in pushing out underneath these bushes.

I said in the previous post that Barcelona had more famous monument look-alikes to boast about. I don’t think it will be necessary to label what famous monument this is supposed to resemble:

To its credit, this catalan city has nationalized this version by dubbing it with a local, non-francophone name: L’Arc de Triomf.

It’s a great place for kids to play, and to ride your bike, rollerskates or skateboard around. A lot safer than its Gallic version, I do admit. A friendly, family-oriented open area in the heart of downtown.

Well, occasionally it is nice to get away from the typical tourist haunts and strike out to virgin lands. This is an example of what Barcelona can look like outside of Barcelona.

No, here it isn’t raining, even though it looks like the deluge I described in the previous post, Barcelona I but never succeeded in capturing in all its drama.

This is just a waterfall – from underneath.

Now moving on to more familiar, touristic haunts. Here is a vestige of The Mysterious Barcelona.

Everyone takes photos of this beautiful and mysterious covered bridge in the Barri Gòtic. Nonetheless there is nothing ancient about it, in spite of its appearance and architecture, since it was built at the beginning of the twentieth century (in 1929, actually, so I guess still sort of the beginning). It was named for a bishop, el Pont del Bisbe, as a tribute to him even though said bishop was only assassinated during the Spanish Civil War, after the bridge was already constructed.

People in Spain are always saying that Christopher Columbus POINTS, and of course he is always pointing towards America. This is why he points:

Although in reality he is actually pointing towards Italy and not out over the Atlantic.

I wonder if he is indicating the way to Genova, out of nostalgia perhaps.

Whenever I see these lovely waterfront homes by the port, I always wonder what it must be like to live in one of them. Must be luxurious to snuggle snoozily into your eiderdowns as you gaze out through your bedroom window at the famous marina, and at the envious tourists staring awe-struck up at you as they fantasize about your idyllic life.

Finally we mustn’t forget that immensely privileged chalet in the country where some of my friends now live.

It isn’t their own home, however. But what a marvel, to be able to actually rent such a quaint and tranquil little dig in the middle of the forest.

Sure beats living in a 50 m.² (500 sq.ft.) 1-bedroom-with-a-walk-in-closet in da inna big city!

Of course, no visit to Barcelona would be complete without an exhaustive up-and-down along its busiest pedestrian thoroughfare, the famous Ramblas.

Smile!

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Selwo

Aug27

Hello everyone! Well I thought I’d take a little break from Barcelona and report a bit about some neat places to visit and some fun things to do right here in good old Malaga.

But if anyone out there happens to be eager to learn more about Barcelona or see more sights from that city, don’t worry. I’ll be getting back to Barcelona and its mysterious bush (you can check out a pic of Barcelona’s mysterious palm bush in the following post, if you haven’t already done so) again in the near future!

Today I felt like talking about wildlife safari parks. There’s an on-going heated debate about how ethical zoos are. Well, I personally don’t feel that safari parks belong in the same category as zoos, because most animals are roaming (relatively) free in a safari park, as opposed to zoos where they are in cages.

Also, I find that safari parks tend to be quite dedicated to the task of taking care of endangered species and bringing up orphaned babies that would otherwise have died.

You can see an example of some cute little animals that Selwo safari park, right here in our own Estepona near Malaga, has rescued here in these photos:
In case the text is not too clear here, the sign says that these are the Barbary Macaques – small, tailless monkeys from North Africa that are famous for living wild on the Rock of Gibraltar – that were rescued from private individuals who had smuggled them into Spain from North Africa, where they live wild, and were keeping them as pets. They are an endangered species and as such should be taken special care of.

This is one of the Barbary macaques living at Selwo safari park.

At Selwo you can take a jeep, similar to the ones used in real safaris in Africa, that will carry you on a tour of the entire park. It’s not only strongly recommended that you take the jeep rides, the park is so large that it would cost you a great deal of effort to cover it all on foot, and take several hours.

Another reason for riding on the jeeps is because there are areas which can only be entered by jeep. The animals that inhabit these zones are living there quite peacefully and happily, and the continuous presence of a bunch of confused tourists gaping and meandering about would be most upsetting!

We go to the safari park every year. We like to ride on the jeeps all around the park to the furthest corner, and then walk back to the entrance.

If you don’t feel up to the hike, which takes around perhaps 3 hours, depending on how long you like to stop to admire the animals, you can always ride the jeeps back to the entrance too.

But walking back is a lot more fun!

Part of the path on the return trip involves crossing over 3 fairly extensive hanging bridges, similar to the ones you can see in Indiana Jones movies.

They might look a bit creaky, and I know they do freak some people out. A guy who went with us on the jeep, a strong, young, hip, macho type, nonetheless refused to get onto the bridge and turned around and hitched a ride back to the entrance on another jeep.

But if you do that you will miss out on so much.

My oldest son likes to ride on the camel every year. The irascible guy that trains the camels is always kicking on the poor dromedaries to get them to rise while they are deeply absorbed in a much-deserved rest.

I tell him he should be nice to the camels and caress them, but he just snorts at me. I feel sad for these camels. Personally, I think that the park should get rid of the camel rides, or at least get a nicer fellow to take care of them.

But I guess that wouldn’t make any money for the park.

We come to Selwo every summer for our annual safari pilgrimage. This was the newborn baby elephant last year.

This is the baby elephant this year. As you can see he’s bigger now, older, and he isn’t babied, coddled or cooed over as much by his elders anymore.

Baby elephants are very precious, because mother elephants can only have one baby at a time, and she lives her private communing with her baby during her pregnancy for 22 months.

Selwo safari park holds Europe’s largest wild aviary housing hundreds of birds of every species you can imagine. Here are a few of its inhabitants:

Although it might seem like a simple, easy task to photograph these plumed friends, especially considering how large some of them are, really, it isn’t. It depends on their mood and your luck. Mostly they prefer to hide way out in the trees or bush.

This big guy was literally drooling over my son’s food.

And this one actually succeeded in snatching part of his meal right out of his poor little hand.

Not the first time birds steal his food, however. He reports to me that sometimes while he is eating breakfast at school in the yard, the local seagulls will swoop down lovingly to accompany him, bearing away his sandwich in the process.

The Barcelona That Tourists Never See, Part I

Aug19

Well, it appears that I’ve been sort of absent for quite a bit of time now. But that is because we have been busy travelling around. You know, it’s summertime, everyone’s on vacation.

So I expect that at this time of the year, lots of blogspots pop out with all sorts of travel tidbits and enviable descriptions of the most exciting holidays you can imagine. Postcard-perfect photos of exotic beaches in the Caribbean (or in the Seychelles, or in the south Pacific), cultural tours around venerable European capitals.

So I’m just going to pile on yet another such post to the list of travel posts popping up lately on blogspots around the world. But well, I’ll try and give it a twist. So I won’t be putting up the same old photos of the same old tourist sites that you can dig up in about a thousand travel guides already or find dotted around all over the internet.

Instead, I’ll try and put up photos of places that tourists won’t see and will never go to.

So here is the first such post (more coming up later I hope teehee!):

“The Barcelona That Tourists Never See, Part I.”

Our trip to Barcelona was fairly long, over a week. I lived in Barcelona for 6 years, so running around the typical tourist mill wasn’t really on our agenda.

Instead, I took the kids to see the places where they spent their earliest childhood years and sent them back on a nostalgic stroll through memory lane. My son re-visited his old pre-school. He said it looked a lot smaller than he remembered it!

These stained glass windows are perched on a fairly normal family home on a fairly normal street. You don’t need to be the proud proprietor of an architectural wonder in order to display something so beautiful and offer your family the possibility of enjoying such a delightful sight every day.

I wanted to take the kids to the countryside where they used to collect snails (after my son got over a major snail-slug-ant-and-every-other-bug-with-more-than-2-legs phobia), but surprise of surprises, we got thugged on the head by a freak summer storm (aka hurricane, cyclone, monsoon maybe?) that lasted for several hours. We took refuge at the local suburban train station:

Well, you can’t really make out the rain too much here, but then again it also wasn’t pouring cats and dogs yet. We thought the worst was about to pass. Well we could think again, the worst hadn’t even arrived yet at the time of this photo. But since I had no intention of spending an entire, precious day cooped up in a tiny little rural train station (quaint as that might sound), in the end I plunked a plastic bag over my youngest son’s head and we set off. My son felt a little ridiculous though, as he sort of looked like a walking white shopping bag.

So, what my kids remember most about their childhood home now is the lowly but spectacular train station.

This storm turned out to be of such a magnitude that apparently many localities got flooded and it made big headlines on the national news. We even got friends and acquaintances calling us up to find out if we were okay, or if by some chance a tidal wave had swept us all out to sea.

So, what does this photo have to do with The Barcelona That Tourists Never See? Well not much, actually, it’s just a lamp that’s hanging on the ceiling of a friend’s favourite dug-out.

But I can assure you that tourists never see it.

So, so much for our journey down memory lane.

However, there is so much more to do and so much more to see in Barcelona, that we weren’t put off by a little bit of unexpected climatic conditions.

The Palau Nacional de Montjuïc or National Palace of Montjuic. Well I said I wasn’t going to stick anything touristy onto this post, but this is such a beautiful location, the Plaza de España in the centre of Barcelona. Besides which I’ve been surfing around a bit on the net and no one else has made quite exactly the same photo of this monument.

No, actually, other people have uploaded much more beautiful, professional, slick photos of this monument onto the internet.

This palace sports a gigantic and stunning water fountain (called Fonts Màgiques or Magic Fountains), which nonetheless doesn’t show up here on this blog, because when we were there the fountains were dry and barren.

However, when the fountains are running, they are the centre of a most exquisite and magnificent light-and-music show, where the enormous sprays of water are displayed in all their glory reflecting a choreography of coloured spotlights that dance around in harmony following the melody of a musical soundtrack.

If you ever get the chance to pass through Barcelona just when they happen to be putting on one of these shows, I thoroughly recommend that you check it out. It’s free, and the show lasts for quite some time.

The only problem you might have is if you go there with a baby (like I did), and your baby is the crying, plaintive type, and gets bored and restless real easy.

The columns of the Palau Nacional at sunrise.

Barcelona likes to flaunt imitations of famous international landmarks. So here is Barcelona’s version of Venice’s Piazza San Marco:

Next week, I shall regale you with yet another monument wanna-be.

Well, The Barcelona That Tourists Never See, Part II should be coming up. In the meantime I’ll end this post with a couple of intriguing pics, of places tourists never gape over:

And in the next post I’ll reveal, what in the world exactly is that anyways? And where is it? (Hint: it’s sticking out of water. It’s just that the water is so murky it doesn’t look like water.)

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The Meaning of a Friendship

Aug4

How important is friendship to you? What values would you, or wouldn’t you, compromise on in relation to your friends? What would a friend have to do to you for you to decide to break up with them, and what would you forgive them for or accept in them?

They say that when a person is about to die, because maybe they have a terrible, mortal illness, they start to realize what is really important in life. And then they become aware of what is truly important to them personally and what isn’t. That most things that people get so riled up about aren’t all that important, transcendental or life-altering.

Most of us, I think, if we stopped to think about it at all, would probably agree that the people that we care about, our friends and loved ones, are the most important things in the world and without them the world would be an insipid place devoid of any meaning.

If you were about to die, what would you prefer, a chance to hug your friends and loved ones one more time, or would that dollar, or even those 100 dollars, that your best friend or your brother owes you, make you so inflamed that you’d prefer to leave without seeing that friend or brother again, because when you catch a glimpse of them you remember that they still owe you $100?

$100 which you will never get the chance to use anyways. Because when you leave this world you won’t be able to take it with you.

I have a very prickly relationship with a friend who makes me question all these things. She makes me become aware of the fact that, in truth, most people don’t think too much about friendship or their friends, or value them overly much.

I know a lot of people, and I do mean a LOT, who don’t want friends. Who prefer to lock themselves away in their homes, even sometimes in homes that are as large and luxurious as castles, and turn their backs to the world. They’re afraid of bringing their friends into their homes because maybe their friends might break that antique Ming vase, get into their computer and steal money from their bank account or make too much noise.

So they hide themselves away in their mansions with the Ming vase, the bank account jam-packed with savings that could be stolen and their silence, unbroken by the merriment of happy children playing or loved ones pounding away at whatever their loved ones most enjoy pounding away at.

Well, I acknowledge that we’re all free to live our lives the way we want and fill our hours with whatever we prefer. And I respect that some people are happier living behind locked doors and walls surrounded by all the objects that attest to how successful and prosperous they are materially and financially.

But really, if you throw your friend or brother out because they owe you $100 and can’t pay it back to you, you’re telling them loud and clear that these people and their relationship to you are worth less than $100. That clearly you care more about your $100 than about your friend, or brother. That money is more important to you than a person, a person that you supposedly care about and feel at least some affection for.

Of course it doesn’t have to be $100. Maybe you threw your friend or brother out because they forgot to buy you something that you asked them to. Not because they didn’t care about you, maybe just because, like me, they have a memory full of holes like a sieve and can’t remember anything if they don’t write it down in 50 agendas.

Now, I do psychic readings (you can find out more about these readings if you’re interested here), I love doing them and enjoy them very much and would never ever miss a session with anyone for anything but you can be sure, even so, if I don’t write it down in about 50 places I would never ever remember when I have a session with whom. I’m not like this on purpose, I don’t forget things in order to mess up other people’s lives on purpose. I just simply have a memory with more holes than a sieve, naturally.

So, returning to the subject of my friend, she is a person who constantly gets angry about things that I consider trivial. (I won’t say what things specifically because then if she reads this post then she will know who she is, and I don’t want that. I’m not in the game of trying to “teach her a lesson” through this post or anything like that. I’m not her teacher, her mother or her mentor and I have no interest in teaching her anything.)

Obviously, these are things that she clearly doesn’t consider trivial. To her they are very important. And I respect that. I try to do what she wants me to do when I’m with her, because so many things offend her, but of course people are full of surprises and unless you live with a person for several years you can never completely guess what sorts of things will get to them. Especially when we’re talking about a person who gets offended by so many things.

So I don’t go out of my way to deliberately try and do things that I know would bother or offend her. But of course even though I do psychic readings that doesn’t make me a mind-reader, hence I don’t know and couldn’t possibly guess absolutely every little thing that could bother or offend her. So sometimes I do do things that bother her. Not on purpose, of course.

But as far as she is concerned, it doesn’t matter if I did it on purpose or not. She always assumes that I did it on purpose, and calls me a liar if I tell her otherwise.

So, we are still friends. Mostly because I value her friendship, because outside of these (admittedly irritable, I won’t deny) characteristics she is still a great and fantastic person.

And I suppose deep down she must also value our friendship, because I imagine otherwise I guess that she wouldn’t still want to continue being friends with someone like me who is always all the time going out of their way to “deliberately” do things that “I know” she hates.

But it does make me wonder, what is more important to her, really, and to people like her? Her friends? Or that her friends be perfect, never forget anything, always adapt themselves to her and to what she wants, etc.?

Okay so now I can hear maybe a couple of readers timidly (or maybe loudly) clamouring out: And what about boundaries?? What about boundaries? We can lend $100 to a friend or brother once, but what about that cousin who is always sneaking around snitching $100 from our pockets every time they lose at gambling? Or that friend who never stops doing things that we hate, on purpose?

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have boundaries. Boundaries are important. They’re an important aspect that help make us whole. (Well I’m not going to sermonize on about boundaries here, entire books have been written on that subject already.)

But if we lent money once to a friend and they haven’t paid it back to us yet, because they can’t, I don’t see that any boundaries have been violated. Our friend was in need, we helped them, now when they are able they will return the favour to us. If they can return the money to us, great. But maybe they are poor. Maybe instead of giving us money they could work for a week for us doing secretarial tasks, cleaning our house or taking care of our kids. Who says that trading and bartering no longer exist or are out of fashion?

Is that money worth more than your friendship? And what if it were your spouse, child or parent, someone you loved more than anyone? Would you still kick them out over $100? Do you love that $100 more than you love your friend or beloved one?

Remember, you can’t take it with you when you leave the earth.

But the memories of what you did when you lived will still be alive when you no longer are.

Do you want people who were close to you to remember that you were that friend who turned your back on them because they couldn’t return your money to you? Or because they did something silly – now I’m not saying something really “big” or important like cheating on you, I mean something really silly and trivial, like for example maybe they forgot to turn the light off in your home when they were there visiting and the two of you left the house together, thus resulting in an increase in $10 in your electricity bill for that month?

Henna

Jul25

With all the different subjects out there that I could muse about, in the end I decided to continue on a bit more with the theme of natural health-natural cosmetics-natural beauty. So today let’s talk about hair!

I’d always wished I’d been blessed with gorgeous, shiny locks of brilliant spun gold, not only is golden hair beautiful, it also rejuvenates and endows the features with light, youth and grace. But I wasn’t so lucky, in fact Mother Nature decided that not only would I not enjoy a crowning glory of royal gold waves, she actually went ahead and weighed me down underneath sheets of heavy black.

Well you could go on and praise the magnificence of raven black locks. It was the colour that Anne of Green Gables daydreamed of so insistently that she actually went out and dyed her own carrot-red waves, against her strict adoptive mother’s will, with the unreliable concoctions that existed 100 years ago, when the story was written. With the unfortunate result that her hair turned a glorious dishwater, slimy green.

I’ve got the opposite problem of Anne, however, but unlike her I am able to fulfil my dreams of flaunting a head full of fiery red. Well maybe not that fiery, but in my books it’s certainly an improvement over jet.

Last post I recounted my secret for beautiful skin. Now I’m going to talk about my tips for lovely hair. Well, for lovely black, brown or brunette hair at least. In a future post (if I ever get around to it) I will, nonetheless, hopefully, explain how you can enhance your drop-dead to-die-for golden locks without laying your hands on a single chemical, as I did for my baby:

But today black or dark hair is the order of the day. So let’s go, talking about henna!

Henna is a plant, a small tree, whose unassuming leaves produce a belligerent red dye when crushed and mixed with liquid, preferably a slightly acidic one. I suppose everyone has heard about body art and temporary tattoos made with henna. However today’s post only deals with henna for hair.

Henna has traditionally been used for millennia to enhance women’s hair in lands where the plant grows and where, coincidentally, women also generally sport black or dark hair naturally.

I imagine that all this theory, however, probably doesn’t contribute tremendously to what women (and maybe the occasional man too!) really want to know, and that is, how do we use henna?

Well the internet is chock full of websites about henna and how you can prepare it. I’ll just explain what I personally do. It’s easy and quite effective, for me at least.

About a day before I want to put henna into my hair I prepare a henna concoction. I use 300 g. of henna and I have long hair. If you have shoulder-length hair I would recommend about 100 g. and 200 if you have mid-length (a bit below the shoulders) hair.

I mix the powdered henna (I just buy it from a local natural food shop, very lucky to have found it heehee!) with a large mug of lemon juice. Okay I’m lazy I buy lemon juice in a bottle from the store and it works just great. But of course real natural freshly-squeezed lemons is better!

After that I cook up a strong infusion of chamomile, chamomile seems to lighten black hair slightly and make the henna show up more, in addition to bestowing a splendid glow and shine to hair. Once the infusion is cooled (don’t put boiling infusion into the henna because it will cook the plant and cooked leaves won’t yield any dye) I mix as much liquid into the henna concoction as needed to form a thick paste, with the consistency of very thick yogurt.

Imagine that you will be putting this onto your head, so you don’t want something that drips. But if it is too solid it won’t spread well. Finding the perfect balance is simply a matter of practice. Since you get the best results if you apply henna once every month, you can acquire plenty of practice!

Once your concoction is all mixed up, let it sit for about 12 hours in a warm place. This stimulates the henna leaves to release their dye, dye which will later go onto your head and into your hair.

And now, when you’re all ready, let’s get into the shower. Keep in mind that you should set aside about 4-6 hours of uninterrupted time for this process, so a good moment to do it is when you don’t have to go to work. If you’re so lucky as to have light coloured hair, like mousey brown or blonde, you can take less time. If, however, like me, you have the deepest most impenetrable locks, then you must think that it will take a long time for that coveted auburn stain to take hold.

Step into the shower or bathtub with your large pot of mud, which is what henna looks like. Now you can have the time of your life smearing muddy henna all over your head in any order. Or you can smear it on in an orderly fashion, one lock at a time starting with the crown and working your way down to the ends, like professional hairdressers do. Any way you do it, the end result is a mass of tangled mud, which you pile onto the top of your head. Wrap saran wrap around it and you’re ready to face your day!

For me facing the day usually means tiresome tasks like cooking and washing. Yep, when you have a family you don’t get breaks so you can relax with your henna. As you’re scrubbing the pots you can daydream about all those lovely Middle Eastern misses who could permit themselves the luxury of lounging indulgently in public hammam with their hair up in a hennaed bun while professional masseurs gave them the full spa treatment.

If you’re lucky, however, maybe you can get in a chapter of CSI or Castle during breaks from the kitchen.

I leave henna on for at least 4 hours, but if you’re one of those fortunate ladies with pale hair you can get away perfectly with maybe just 2. When you’ve left it on long enough, it’s time to wash it out.

Easier said than done. Henna leaves your hair like a bird’s nest. Like the nest of a bird that just had a knock-down-drag-out battle with an eagle.

I find that the easiest way to disentangle bird’s-nest recently hennaed hair is by slathering conditioner on generously. Don’t leave a strand uncovered with the conditioner. Once you’ve straightened your hair out a bit with this conditioner you can then shampoo and condition as usual.

Lastly, dry and style as always and enjoy your cascade of ravishing, flaming waves.

One last note for healthy hair naturally. I always like to give hair a deep oil treatment once a week. Just rub oil all over your hair from root to ends and leave it on for an hour or 2. You can put it up in braids or a bun if you prefer, so it won’t rub off on everything. I like coconut oil (as you can easily discover by reading on to the next post) or olive oil. After normal shampooing and conditioning, both will leave your hair strong, super soft and shiny, healthy and moisturized. Now you can throw all your expensive salon formulas out the window and never look back again.

Most unprofessional photo if I do say so myself, but that's what my humble little jar of coconut oil looks like.

Okay so this isn't coconut oil it's coconut milk, but my coconut oil is in an unmarked jar, and this pic has a photo of a coconut which sure looks yummy!

All Natural Skincare

Jul18

Well I’m thinking it’s about time I babbered on a bit about one of my favourite peeves: natural skincare and the people who don’t bother to take care of their skin.

I understand that there are lots and lots of reasons and excuses out there for people not to take care of their skin. The first one, one my sons always use: males don’t take care of their skin!

Well I’m not a male so I’ll pass on responding to that one. I can’t get into a man’s head (though maybe I can get into a little boy’s haha), so I really don’t know what a real-life man might have to say about that.

However for the other half of earth’s population, namely, women, well that’s another story. “I’m a man” is not a valid excuse for them to not take care of their skin.

One excuse I’ve heard is that vanity is a sin. Our lives shouldn’t revolve around our looks, people who judge us for our looks aren’t worth our bother anyways, they’re shallow and frivolous etc. etc.

Okay so maybe it’s a bit true, maybe we shouldn’t care that much about what other people think of us. I mean after all, you can take it from me who am pretty plain if I do say so myself. Aren’t the heroic princesses always flaunting their ravishing golden waves while the witch is burdened with heavy, raven black locks (just like black cats)? (That’s why I’ve always claimed I was a witch, but that’s for another post.) And I’ve got John Wayne’s strong, square jaw, which is okay if you’re John Wayne but……. I don’t think anyone has ever called me “John” yet.

But what about what we think about our own selves?

When you look in the mirror, wouldn’t you like to see something pleasant? Something that makes you feel good? Good looks aren’t just poreless skin, a salon hairdo and designer outfits. Good looks, more than anything else, reflect good health. And who doesn’t want to be (and feel and look) healthy? Even the plainest Jane can presume good health, and have it reflect on her face. You don’t need perfect bones to enjoy a radiant cutis. And you don’t have to have Cindy Crawford’s spectacular figure to impress people with the silkiness of your skin.

Which brings us (at last) to the subject of this post.

Many people say they don’t take care of their skin because creams are too expensive. Well, to them I can reply, I never buy expensive skincare creams myself. I never even buy cheap ones for that matter. I don’t buy creams at all.

All right I do make one exception. For daytime wear I do regularly use this brand called Olay that makes a very cheap little pink thing, it only costs me 6€ at my local drugstore and it lasts for many months. But that isn’t what this post is about.

What I felt like blogging about today is natural skincare. Skincare products and routines that don’t use any artificial chemicals, parabens, sodium laureth sulphate, formaldehyde (a common ingredient in many commercial products and also used for embalming, so if you’re putting that onto your skin then you’re literally embalming your skin too), alcohol, petroleum by-products or any other of these “nasties”.

Now, I personally do use makeup sometimes (yeah I know, so unnatural, the main reason I do so is precisely because I am vain and I don’t see myself as looking very nice au naturel, no skin problems but I’ve got the yuckiest bone structure you’ve ever seen…….). However, I don’t use chemicals to remove that very chemical and unnatural makeup afterwards.

I use oil.

And I recommend oil as a natural makeup remover to everyone.

The kind of oil, I’d say, is also fairly important. You don’t want to be smearing beef tallow or bacon fat all over your face, after all! I use natural plant oils, usually sweet almond oil or coconut oil, to remove makeup. It is so absolutely simple, effective and cheap. If you can’t come by these products which really don’t cost a lot you can always use the olive oil you cook with. I don’t use it even though I live in Spain so it’s everywhere, because it stings my eyes. However I know people that it doesn’t sting their eyes.

After that, I suppose you’ll be wanting to get all that grease off of your face, right? So you probably reach for that milky cleansing cream or that bi-phase gel.

Wait. Don’t do that.

There are more natural items out there that will clean your face just as fine as anything high-end and it will be much cheaper and much gentler and healthier on your skin. And unlike those chemicals it will actually be good for you and maybe in the process ward off some aging and maybe even prevent a bit of cancer.

I like to use all-natural, handmade soaps for cleaning. In the US it is so easy to find them. I’ve never tried any American-made natural soap but I’ve heard that Chagrin Valley makes a superb one. In fact they ship all around the world at very very reasonable prices, so one of my dreams, someday, when (as I wrote here in this post) I’m no longer living just hand to mouth, is to be able to order a bunch of soap from them.

If you don’t want to order soap online, however, or like me you can’t afford to, you can usually find some kind of natural soap in your local grocery store. I can find a few, and this is Spain that we’re talking about so it’s not like the stores are piled to the ceiling with 50 million national brands of anything. So if I can find them in my local supermarket here in Spain, you can find them too.

I have a few made of glycerine (and speaking of glycerine – oh were we speaking of glycerine? – well as I was saying, speaking of glycerine, a lot of glycerine soaps pretend to be all-natural just because they have glycerine in them well that is quite a silly idea, that would be like saying that plastic bottles are all-natural just because they have natural water inside them), some made of oatmeal and another one made of olive oil, all from my local supermarket. If you want to know if it’s true when they claim that their soap is “all-natural” you do have to read the ingredient list. All-natural soap shouldn’t have anything more than lye (sodium hydroxide), plant oils (usually coconut oil), water and maybe some essential oils. Artificial colorants are also okay for me in my book however. If they have things added to enhance them (like oatmeal, lemon peels, etc.), well obviously they should be things that are clearly natural, like oatmeal, lemon peels, etc.

Ayurveda recommends that you cleanse your skin with chickpea flour mixed with a little sweet almond oil, milk and turmeric. Rice meal is also fine. I used to do that but owing to the fact that here in Malaga they don’t sell chickpea flour, and also, why not admit it, to the bonanza that at the time I moved here there was this most awesome and heavenly store called “More Than Soap”, I gave up my chickpea flour and turned to a bevy of the most divine and exotic soaps from my favourite shop. Unfortunately they went out of business because, who can compete with dollar-store, chemical-laden, carcinogenic shower gels that only cost 60 cents (well 75 cents now, they upped the price of course)?

After you cleanse your skin, of course, it’s time to MOISTURIZE. That is so important. Cleaning your skin will undoubtedly keep it healthy, but if you want it to look good and defy the ravages of time, you must moisturize.

This is what happens if you don’t moisturize.

This is a person whom I know who proudly declares that she never moisturizes her skin. In that photo she’s younger than 40. (And to all the people who know me, please don’t ask me who this is, top secret! I will never reveal!)

Well I originally wrote a long spiel debunking the zillion excuses that she likes to resort to to explain why she prefers not to moisturize. But now I’ve changed my mind. I figure, it’s her skin, she can do what she wants with it. (As long as that doesn’t mean her complaining to me 5 years from now all perplexed as to where all those crows’ feet, sagging jowls and etched lines suddenly and mysteriously materialized from………)

Anyways, so I promised to tell you my secret to beautiful skin (or to beautiful, natural, healthy moisturizing at least), but I’ve already told it to you. It’s natural plant oils. Once again.

I alternate the oils I use every night, so I can receive their different benefits and also to prevent allergies (you can get allergies even to natural products). Here is a list of some of the oils that are out there, some of which I use (and some which I don’t because I don’t have that kind of skin):

sweet almond oil: good for all kinds of skin, a general, all-purpose moisturizing oil, I find it too heavy for the hot Mediterranean summers however (if you want to read just how hot we can get here you can do so at this post)
avocado oil: for drier skins, deeply nourishing, especially good because it purportedly encourages collagen production (don’t know if that’s true, I haven’t actually gone out and measured how much collagen I have), I like this oil very much and use it all year round, it gives very soft, beautiful, glowy skin
coconut oil: also another good, general, all-purpose oil, this is recommended for oily skins especially because it regulates oil production, if you have too much oil on your face coconut oil will actually dry it out a bit and keep the oil down, I like it for this reason in the summer as high temperatures make your skin go crazy pumping out oil day and night (skin probably thinks that you ought to be frying that egg on your face, and wants to make the task easier)
rosehip oil: excellent for mature skins, prevents wrinkles and deeply moisturizes and nourishes, also helps to attenuate light scars
vitamin E/wheat germ oil: another goody for mature or dry skins
extra virgin olive oil: a richer oil that nonetheless won’t make you oilier than usual, however because it is thick I’d recommend it only for night-time use, it makes all skins soft and supple and the vitamin E in it fights free radicals, which helps your skin stay youthful
hazelnut oil: an astringent oil, supposed to dry out oily skin big time but still leave you with a soft, smooth complexion, the only oil listed here which I’ve never tried

Well I’ve gotten tired of this topic so I suppose I will have to carry on another day. However all the oils that I personally use are on this list and they work stupendously for me.

This is all that I ever need for good, complete care of the complexion. Even sunscreen (as strongly recommended as it is and even more so here at these latitudes) is something I use sparingly. Some people allege that chemical sunscreens cause cancer. I won’t enter into that debate at this moment, but I do use sunscreen sparingly. I prefer to prevent sun damage the “natural” way: I stay out of the sun whenever my work permits it.

Business 101 by a Business Dummy Like Me

Jul14

I’m not a business person. Not at all. Not in the least bit. I’ve always HATED business and anything business-related with a PASSION! At university when everyone else was ploughing off into BA’s and Commerce and the like I just drifted around and ogled at stars in the clear, cold, semi-Arctic night sky. So I never imagined that I could ever learn so much about the business world or managing my own business. Or want to learn it, for that matter.

I’ve been running my own fairly successful free-lance business for a year now. I never meant to work free-lance, even though it was something I’d always hankered to do, because I detested having bosses over me or fixed hours (which generally got longer and longer instead of shorter and shorter, as bosses coerced me ever more often to put in increasing amounts of overtime – if I wanted to keep my job!). I wanted to be able to take off for a few moments to go and have a coffee with a friend if I felt like it. Or an hour to run off to a gym (everyone’s gotta stay fit ya know!). But low-level, menial office jobs somehow just don’t happen to include these kinds of privileges in their working conditions. Shucks!

Having children made it even harder to get in to work. I couldn’t just keep taking time off to care for my son, who was born with an illness that often kept him confined to the house. But I was a single mom and if I didn’t go to work, we wouldn’t have anything to live on. A real catch-22.

And then finally, the crisis crashed down like a pall over our little city which had never been exactly a model of prosperity to begin with, seeing as it’s located in Spain’s poorest region, the “deep south”, whooo. A city with virtually no industry to speak of, little commerce, one that depends almost entirely on tourism, mostly foreign tourism, to survive. And with the crisis people just weren’t going on holidays anymore. I mean, holidays are expendable, it’s more important to fill up the pantry first!

So unemployment shot way up to 36% (as opposed to the national average of only about 15%) and I couldn’t get a job. The only alternative I could find – other than adopting a rich granddad or seducing and then marrying a tycoon, that is – was to strike out on my own.

So I started out peddling everything I knew how to do. I pasted posters offering myself for everything from dog-walking and babysitting to Reiki massages (carried out in the comfort of the client’s own home, no less) and palm-readings, not neglecting, of course, every North American-in-Spain’s ace up the sleeve: teaching English.

Countless North American and English students taking a semester of Spanish classes in Spain, or doing their full degree here, have survived thanks to English classes. It’s practically a tradition here. So of course, I offered to do it too.

After about a month or so I already had several English students – and not a single dog to walk, baby to look after or backs to massage (even though Reiki massages more than just backs, but then again, that’s a different topic altogether…….). Since teaching English also happens to be more lucrative than walking dogs or watching over babies anyways, I ran out and pulled down all my ads except the English-related ones.

So I had already learned a basic, fundamental lesson about running a business, and this without ever having stepped into a Business 101 class. And that was, that advertising was super, super important.

After a few months teaching English, someone asked me if I also knew French, since I’m from Montreal. Their son was studying French at school in addition to English, and if I could teach him French too it would save them all the bother of searching for a good, qualified francophone tutor, and it would mean more income for me. I said yes and added French lessons to my repertoire.

As the next logical step I decided to add to my services, lessons in everything that I knew enough about to teach. And thus I also learned a new lesson, one which business gurus just can’t emphasize enough and charge people a fortune to teach it to them: diversify. Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket. If you offer more services, and different kinds of services, you are much better prepared for “lean cow years”. If demand for one of your offerings drops you aren’t left out in the cold.

And I guess I’ve got 2 more gems hidden away here and which I’m currently working on: always do the best, be the best you can. If people are happy with what you do they will refer you, and come back for more. I would say about half of my students today are from referrals.

And innovate, improve, find out what other people don’t offer and offer it. Develop something creative and original. Fill in the holes and gaps left out in the marketplace.

So now I bump into people out on the street all the time, acquaintances, strangers, beggars (you can read the story about my debate with one of these acquaintances in the very next post), and they all say the same thing to me, “It’s impossible to be doing well today in Malaga, there are no jobs, no one has money…….. You’re just LUCKY!!”

But I always want to tell them, nay yell it to them, shout it out so everyone can hear: “Luck has nothing to do with it!!”

I don’t believe that I’m doing well and have many clients because I’m just lucky. First of all, I worked hard for it. While some of my acquaintances were out drinking it up in a bar and the beggars were sitting around with a little dish in front of grocery stores, I was pasting posters to walls all over the city. I spent hours doing that. My acquaintances spent hours getting rid of their unemployment money or their welfare money or their parents’ money in pubs and taverns, the beggars spent their time begging, and I used those hours to do a lot of exercise running around the city (when you’re unemployed you don’t take the bus!) and gluing ads up on walls. So if the next morning I had a new client and my acquaintances and the beggars didn’t, that wasn’t an accident.

And then, I also set out to be a vibrational match for what I wanted. We probably all hear a lot about that lately in New Age/spiritual development circles. And it’s really hard to explain. It’s not something to sit around in an ashram and understand in theory, it’s something you DO. So for me, doing it meant, well, just “doing it”. (There must be some reason why Nike athletes are so successful after all, right? Haha.)

Just going out and doing things that could attract clients to me. Looking over the kinds of English lessons I could teach, so when people called me up and asked me what I did I wouldn’t just go, “Huh? Well I dunno……” I networked of course. I designed my own little business cards on the computer and made photocopies of them (when you’re broke you don’t go to a printer). Then I cut them up at home with scissors. And I also advertised on the internet. I’d say half of my clients today come from the internet, and the others from the original ads I had put up on walls and their referrals.

I never wanted to learn anything about business, I never meant to learn anything about business. And I didn’t start working free-lance because I wanted to know anything about business. I lugged up a free-lance career because I needed it to survive. But now after a year I can sure appreciate everything that that free-lance job has taught me.

So Maybe I Need a Shrink?

Jul13

The other day I had a debate with an acquaintance. This young man is really into protest marches to try and get the current government to resign. He blames them for the crisis and the high unemployment, and he thinks the government ought to give jobs to people. I told him, it’s not the government’s responsibility to give you a job, it’s YOUR responsibility to prepare yourself for a job and then go out and look for one!

He went on and on: but that wouldn’t make any difference, there wasn’t any point in people preparing themselves for a job if the government didn’t make jobs for them, people would never find jobs as long as there was still a crisis and it was the government’s responsibility to get rid of the crisis and etc. etc. I told him I was doing well and earning money, even though I didn’t have a job in the sense of working for someone else. I said if I had waited for the government to do something for me I’d still be sitting around twiddling my thumbs. He said, meh but you’re just lucky.

But that did get me thinking. For a while now I’d been pondering about things like, how come in spite of all the obvious and humungous improvements that I had experienced in my life thanks to receiving a healing session in the Soul Realignment modality (and which I’ll definitely be blogging about at a future date, I mean, clearly, I wouldn’t have gone to all the time and expense of studying something and offering sessions in it if I wasn’t absolutely convinced of its awesome effects, and its undeniable ability to move complete mountains in a person’s life! But more on that subject in another post…… someday……), there were areas where I still remained obstinately, immovably STUCK!

My professional/financial situation was undoubtedly what I had in mind as I carried out these ponderings. I refer to, how come, even though I now made a good income and earned enough for me and my kids to live well, nonetheless we were still suffering from scarcity and a lack of abundance? I was bringing in income from many sources now, I’d gone from Welfare Single Mum to Working Single Mum, we weren’t deprived anymore of things that we really needed but, I also wasn’t able to save anything. We don’t have a spendy lifestyle, I hardly ever buy unnecessary items like clothes or shoes unless I really have to, because for example everything we have is all worn and full of holes already! I don’t go out a lot, do the nightlife thing (but then again, after all, how many single mums do you know out there who do do the nightlife thing very much anyways?) or even go to the movies. And even so I’m not attracting so much that I can actually save, every cent that I’m earning has to go to something, if not food for the kids then bills, or rent.

So then I got to thinking about the people around me. People around you and their attitudes towards you and towards life can tell you a lot about your own because, as they say in popular wisdom as well as in Law of Attraction, well, like attracts like.

So I got to thinking about that young man that I quoted at the beginning of this article. And I also thought about one of my ex’s, who is always criticizing me for having too much stuff, like books and CD’s and things. (I asked him, but what’s so bad about books and music? They enrich your life, you … … (unquotable name that one might occasionally use to refer to ex’s there)!) But he thinks that books occupy too much space and don’t have any use. What’s the point in enriching your mind and your spirit, he wonders. You can’t eat off of a rich mind or a prosperous spirit, you need a fat bank account for that! And books won’t bring you a fat bank account, quoth he.

I also remembered that sensation of sheer panic whenever I observed my bank account beginning to grow. It’s a strange sensation, as if on the one hand I just knew that any moment now SOMETHING would happen to make it all disappear, someone would show up and take it all away from me. And on the other hand, it was like, who am I to have so much when other people are starving??

Well, that sensation is also known as guilt! So I realized that guilt was keeping money out of my life.

When people, like the young acquaintance I was talking about earlier, tell me that I didn’t do anything to bring in more money, that I was just lucky, what they really mean is that I simply don’t DESERVE the money that I’m getting. That they think that maybe I’m still not working hard enough, or I’m not a good enough person. Maybe, in their opinion, they ought to be earning more than me, even though they’re just sitting around on a sofa twiddling their thumbs (or more like standing around in a picket line twiddling a poster), just because supposedly they’re worth more than me, they’re better people than me, they’re superior, therefore they ought to be earning more money than me even though they’re not doing anything.

It’s illogical, I mean, that young man spends all his time griping and complaining to people about his unhappy lot in life, then goes out every night and drinks it up with his friends. He doesn’t work, just hangs around parliament buildings (or more like the Moncloa, here in Spain, as we don’t actually have a parliament building here). I mean, of course I’m earning more money than he is! I go out to work every day. When my clientele slacks down I go out and advertise more. I don’t do it because I’m greedy, I do it because my kids need to eat, and if I don’t pay the rent we won’t have a place to live (even if it’s just a tiny, cramped little 1-bedroom-with-a-walk-in-closet in da inna small city). But I still feel bad about that. I still feel greedy.

Must be something to do with my upbringing. Or maybe I need a shrink. Sigh!

Hot hot hot!

Jul10

Today was just one of those sizzling hot, you-can-fry-an-egg-on-the-pavement days. At midmorning the thermometers, here in southern Spain, were already registering a simmering 47º C., that’s a whopping 117º F. for those of you Statewise or up in Britain.

In spite of that I like summer, in fact I looove summer! This heat is why I moved to southern Spain. So I’m certainly not complaining.

We have this phenomenon here which is called “terrá”, with a big long emphasis on the final “a”! “Terral” (or terrá as people pronounce it here) is when searing winds blow out from somewhere (I don’t really know from where but they sure feel like they breeze straight out from the Sahara and sheer a nor’wester directly across the Strait of Gibraltar) and raze us all to the ground (coughing and spitting up sand particles haha! Well almost, actually the sand doesn’t quite reach us here. It does get into the Canary Islands though).

So what can we do to combat this barbecue? Well, unfortunately here in da inna big city (well okay, da inna small city, more like, in my case) we don’t have sprinklers, swimming pools (sure do envy all those smart people who moved out to the Costa del Sol, everyone’s got their own neat, cool blue pool over there!) or fresh, green gardens. So what’s up? Beeeaaach!

Yep, as you can see that’s an urban beach, the nearest one to my home, as can be deduced from all those cranes on the not so distant industrial loading dock. You won’t find a lot of tourists on this beach, it’s far from the posh, elegant areas in the eastern end of the city where local and foreign celebs like Penélope Cruz or Antonio Banderas are more wont to hang out.

Nope, this is just my lazy and humble neck of the woods. Families with little kids building sand castles, teenagers hanging out with a cold beer in their hands, the occasional loner reading a book whilst trying to coax on an even suntan (and they usually succeed, I mean people get really dark, coppertone baby dark, in the super powered sun around here!).

And the water’s just as cool and refreshing in these whereabouts as it could be in the trendier Malagueta or El Palo.

Although of course, there’s nothing to stop me from just hopping onto a bus and breezing it out to the El Palo or Malagueta neighbourhoods whenever I wanted to. Beaches are free for all!