A Night at the Opera

Friday I was invited to the Liceu Opera: Richard Strauss' Cavaller de la Rosa. Richard? Yes, not Johann. It was interesting. With three acts with two 30 min intermissions, the opera didn't end till 9pm or so. And it started at 4:30pm. The story behind the opera was an older woman who realizes her affair with a 17 year old boy won't work and so she lets him go by setting up this mission for him to deliver a silver rose to a young lady as an engagement present on behalf of this other fellow. The idea is for the boy to fall in love with this girl, which he does, etc. It's somewhat complicated, one of those "you'd have to have been there" type explanations.

The interior of the opera house was very nice. I was told it is something of a "gift" from Madrid to the Catalans, and so the building's exterior and interior styles are not really indicative of Catalan taste. That's about the only way I can express it. After the opera we walked around town and my friends showed me the Catalan style of building exemplified by the Palau Musica, where they said I should go see a show there some evening. If I go I'll take pictures so you can get a comparison of the buildings. Here, at the Liceu, was my first operatic experience. What struck me about the stage was that it had HDTV-like dimesions: it seemed as though I was looking at a super high-res TV set, that had depth. Perhaps that's what TV is trying to emulate: the live stage? This "live TV" also had subtitles! Do all operas provide this service? I had no idea. The white bar above the stage is where they're displayed.

The subtitles are also available in a little electronic window in the back of the seat in front of your own. And the subtitles are the reason why I got tickets to the opera in the first place. The department that invited me here (Traduccio i Interpretacio) is the department of translation and interpretation, and subtitles is what they do (among other things—they also train interpreters, like the ones that work at the UN, e.g., as portrayed by Nicole Kidman in The Interpreter which I watched coincidentally just before coming here). The university has a kind of mini mock UN classroom that they use for training purposes. And subtitles is what I'm now doing as well—the code I'm writing is for eye tracking while watching video, where the video contains subtitles. I'll describe that in another post, once I get my code working...

23 Robadors

While at ETRA earlier this year I met a guy who was studying (or working?) in the UK but who was from Barcelona. When I told him I'd be here and that I'd like to play the drums somewhere, he suggested 23 Robadors. So I went. I found the place (23 Robadors is the address but I'm using it as the name of the place, which I think it may also be), it's in a dodgy sidestreet side of Las Ramblas, close to the Liceu metro stop (where the opera is, which I'll write about next). Robadors can also mean "thieves" and so the street is aptly named. 23 Robadors is right next to a gay bar and some sort of other establishment fronted by what appears to be a large "woman of the house" if you get my meaning. So when I asked the owner of the bar about playing there he seemed somewhat surprised that I'd found the place. Well, apparently jam night happens every Wednesday, except that some Wednesdays the jam is really a performance by what I think is the house jazz band. And of course the Wednesday I showed up was one of those nights. I brought my sticks but hid them the couple of hours I was there. There was no chance of jamming and the guys that played were actually very good and there was no way I was going to match the drummer playing that night. This guy was really quite imaginative in how he used the kit, various mallets, brushes, sticks, etc. He played the rims of the drums, he played with the metal ends of the brushes, he was all over the place, and made it look easy. I think he did the one-handed roll at one point, it was pretty impressive. However, the venue there is a little too "beatnik" for me, reminding me of that Happy Days episode when Richie almost runs away with this beret-wearing crowd. What happens in this bar is that you sit there watching the performance. You shouldn't move or make any noise while they play. I dunno, not really my scene; I rather like a bar where you can walk around, talk, maybe dance, etc. So I'm not sure if I'll come back here, I think I'll try the Harlem Jazz Club instead. That place, although it features jazz in its name, claims to have blues jam sessions on Tuesdays. We'll see...

Barceloneta

Last weekend was warm and sunny so I went to the beach: Barceloneta. Above is a shot of the street that leads there, a fairly long walk from the closest metro stop. Today isn't as hot so I may go to the park instead. The whole week was rather cold in fact, with early on in the week the cold accompanied by rain. Not nice. Today is a bit better but still on the cool side. Of course (as it seemed was often the case in Vancouver), weather underground reports a sunny day tomorrow (Monday). Well, hopefully that will hold out until next week, as I'd like to return to the beach.

When you get to the beach and look right, you see that large building—looks like a W hotel. At left you see Frank Gehry's gold fish sculpture that he created under commission for the Olympic Games in Barcelona in the 1990s. Reminds me of the dancing buildings we saw in Prague, also his design. The Czechs were somewhat divided on that piece as it doesn't quite fit in with the architecture. Is that the case with the fish? What do you think? Art or eye sore? Personally I guess I don't mind it. It's something to look at, it glitters, it gives the beach something distinctive, maybe in the sense of Sydney's opera house, Vancouver's sails (of the Pan Pacific hotel I mean), but perhaps not quite on that scale. I plunked my towel behind the thing you see below; I'm still not quite sure what it's supposed to be. I didn't go up to it so I don't know if you can enter the thing, are there stairs? Is it a public toilet? Changing rooms perhaps? I suppose it can serve as a landmark that people can use to meet at (I heard a group behind me use it that way, e.g., "we're behind the blocks"—they were speaking English). The beach was somewhat crowded so don't expect a lot of privacy here. In fact, one major annoyance are the masseuses and beer salesmen walking around pestering everyone. One is constantly asked "Massage?" or "Beer, cerveza?" Some of the pushier masseuses will stand there and bug you if you ignore them. Irritating...I wonder if they're all over the beach or just in the section I was at (I was close to restaurants and the pedestrian mall, so right in the touristy area).

After the beach, I grabbed an Italian-style gelatto and went to Port Vell, it's at the end of the wooden walk with the wavy iron bars you see in the pic. I've been there before, there are a couple of nice restaurants there and a shopping mall. I was looking for kitchen towels and other things for the apartment, but that mall mainly has clothes and not really worth going into.

Port Vell is right at the bottom of Las Ramblas, the main touristy boulevard I've written about before. (Btw, is it "La Rambla" or "Las Ramblas"? It's both: "La Rambla" refers to the actual street, e.g., similar to how one would use "the boulevard" for example. In this case, the whole length of the boulevard is a series of sections, each called differently, e.g., "La Rambla de Florets" which then changes to "La Ramble de something-else", and on down the street. So it's really a set of "Las Ramblas". I suppose technically it would therefore be incorrect to simply say "La Rambla" as then one could come back with "which one"?) At the top of Las Ramblas you have Plaza Catalunya, and the metro of the same name. I catch the metro there when I'm either going back to the apartment or to work, as Catalunya has both the TMB metro and the FGC surface trains I wrote about earlier.

Quick travel note

I took these shots while in transit to BCN, but I didn't have a chance to upload them until now. This is a reminder of how to get through security at Schiphol with a very short layover, e.g., like the one we'll have next month: only 50 minutes, assuming on-time arrival. What you see above is the security checkpoint heading through to the D gates (where the plane to BCN will likely be, probably D67 or something like that). The crowd of people is fairly large, even at 06:00, as above. The image at right is a few steps further in—notice the vertical monitor at left. This monitor has a list of flights with a short connection and is there so that if your flight is listed you can get in to the fast lane (at left). The 06:55 flight to Barcelona was listed and if I were on that flight I would have gone through the fast lane. As it was, I was on the noon flight, so I went through the "elite" line that was a little shorter than normal. The whole thing moves fairly quickly even though beyond the passport control one has to go through x-ray screening. I think I was through there in about 25-30 minutes, so I think I actually could have made the 06:55 flight even through the normal lanes. But later in June we'll go through the fast lane at left. Below are some shots of BCN's new international terminal.

The morning commute

The first leg of my commute to work starts at the Hostafrancs metro station. I get on the train heading to Fondo on line L1 and get off at Catalunya, possibly the largest station in the system (a large hub of several train lines). There are I think three train systems in Barcelona, the metro is one of them, then the Renfe trains are another, and there's a third, the FGC. I have to get on FGC train S2 or S55 to get up to the university.

To get to the FGC trains, I have to walk through a couple of connecting tunnels and the L3 line metro stop (it's strange to me why a metro stop platform should act as a thoroughfare as it tends to cause human traffic congestion, but that's how it seems to be organized). One could surface from the metro station instead and get to the FGC trains via the sidewalk, but may as well stay underground.

At one point in the series of tunnels I come to this central round connecting hub. You can then choose to surface (see the light at left?), head into one of the L1 or L3 metro lines (where I'm coming out of), or head into the Renfe train platforms, as you see at right. It's difficult to make out in the pic, but above the entrance to the tunnel you see the train numbers that are there—S2 and S55 should be there. Why the distinction in train services? I think it's because of differing management companies: Renfe is one, the TMB is the other (managing the metro), and the FGC, or Ferrocarrils Generalitat de Catalunya. For me, the distinction between the S lines and the L lines is patterned after the German organization I found in Munich: I think of the S lines as "surface trains", whereas the L lines are metro lines.

After turning into the FGC doorway, it's one more short tunnel and then through the ticket machines onto the train platforms. Here I just need to glance at the train departure times to figure which of the S2 or S55 trains is departing next and from which platform. In the pic at right I think it's the S2 that's coming in. Once I get on this train, it's a somewhat lengthy ride up to campus. There, once I get off the train, it's just a quick jaunt up a hill to the Traduccio i Interpretaccio building, and into the office my hosts have let me use.

Last week although I was busy settling in, doing reimbursement paperwork, skype'ing with a student back in Clemson, filling out my faculty activity system (FAS) info, I actually got some good coding done. I'm working with ffmpeg and am in the middle of ripping apart a one-file playback example, splitting it up into its logical components—the one file was 2600+ lines of code. The code is difficult enough to figure out without having to scroll back and forth up a 2600 line vi window. Video playback is complicated by the use of numerous codecs and synchronization between video, audio, and subtitle streams. However, these components make it fairly logical to break up the one large file into. After I've finished doing this, the idea is to marry this code with my eye tracking code so that I can capture eye movements over video, which is why I'm here in Barcelona in the first place. I'll write more on this stuff later, as the programming effort progresses.