alza's VirtualTourist Home Page

My street after the snow storm, 8 March 2008. I'm used to snow and it doesn't bother me, even when it means cancelled flights, black outs, traffic jams, closed schools & stores, etc. It's life here and you just have to live with it.
Still, when it snows for days on end and the white stuff piles up so that roofs cave in, people tend to talk about it a lot... big bore!

Candide a raison :-)

Buenos Aires, sometime in 2006: I'm reading the precursor of picaresque novels, El Lazarillo de Tormes, by Anónimo. Quite a study of human behaviour, fatality, reality. I love that genre and I'm happy that I found Lazarillo just now, when I need him.

Pícaro: "sujeto ruin y de mala vida" (1545, origen incierto)

I can't translate this well, the subject's downfall and bad life is all too relative to the values of his time. There is a tie with Voltaire's Candide and that's what made me think of writing about it here.

Je cultive mon jardin :)

---- Aquì, finalmente cayò mi ventura para jamàs levantarse. (Don Quijote)

The trip is done. Two years ago already... I went by bus for seven months in Mexico, Central and South America, except between Panama and Columbia where I sailed. Came home and left again to live in Mexico for three months. Back in Montreal January 2007 for three months, enjoyed a familiar world, missed Latin America and dreamed of Lisbon.

Opportunity never knocks twice so I answered right away! April 2007, I'm spending some family time in Portland, Oregon and hoping to go south while here. I'd like to be in Venice Beach again. I'll visit San Francisco on my way down. Mexico won't be that far, would be great to discover El Norte del Sur while I'm nearby.

Clavo mi remo en el agua
Llevo tu remo en el mio
Creo que he visto una luz al otro lado del rio

El dia le ire pudiendo poco a poco al frio
Creo que he visto una luz al otro lado del rio

Sobre todo creo que no todo esta perdido
Tanta lagrima, tanta lagrima y yo, soy un vaso vacio

Oigo una voz que me llama casi un suspiro
Rema, rema, rema-a Rema, rema, rema-a

En esta orilla del mundo lo que no es presa es baldio
Creo que he visto una luz al otro lado del rio

Yo muy serio voy remando muy adentro sonrio
Creo que he visto una luz al otro lado del rio

Sobre todo creo que no todo esta perdido
Tanta lagrima, tanta lagrima y yo, soy un vaso vacio

Oigo una voz que me llama casi un suspiro
Rema, rema, rema-a Rema, rema, rema-a

Clavo mi remo en el agua
Llevo tu remo en el mio
Creo que he visto una luz al otro lado del rio

(Jorge Drexler, Uruguay) Viva!

The pic is of Gael Garcia Bernal, who played Ernesto Guevara in The Motorcycle Diaries, and of Alberto Granada, his friend in the voyage of discovery they made before Guevara became El Che. Alberto still lives in Cuba.