A family man

Dear diary,

As you probably understood from my exile from this diary for a couple of weeks I have been working. For those who did not understand my last entry the equipment has finally arrived and with it came someone called O.Vertime. Pretty much at the same time Vannesa arrived.

Vannesa is my sambo. Juntivo in my Spanish. Live-together-wither in English. Something I don’t really like with writing in English on this diary is the lack of words there are in English. Only twice as many as in Swedish. Spanish has about three times as many but still lacks words like kullerbytta. Sometimes I feel the need to invent new words in Spanish that they just haven’t thought about yet. Or synonyms. La agua esta boilando is just far better than the Spanish word for boil that I can never remember anyway.

I have taught Vannesa some Swedish but it never really seems to stick. Except for the bad ones and the ones resembling Spanish (kom igen då (come on then!) = comiendo (eating)). Since she doesn’t speak any English and our conversations in Swedish would probably be quite offensive and boring we speak Spanish…and German. Vannesa is not only my Spanish teacher and live-together-wither, she is also my girlfriend since quite a long time back actually. Since before Galapagos actually…I even adopted Harry (the kitten) so we are quite a little family.

Harry doesn’t seem to have adopted me though. He is as two-sided as a flat milk carton. Once in a while he snucks up on my chest while I am watching X-men 2 on TV for the 23rd time and the day after he attacks me when I am at the weakest. He mostly comes in the mornings. Mostly. I am sending this fellow to a boarding school!

After I started working on the equipment and got a family everything turned into routine more or less. I wake up at the same time as Marta comes to work. Fall asleep again. Get up. Eat breakf….AAAARGGGHH!…damn cat!…eat breakfast. Go to work. Feel like Frogger crossing the streets. Actually I take the bus for one and a half minute in order to save time. You have to hop on and off while the bus is running. Arrive to work. I’m late. Have a look at the always-bothering-equipment for a while and decide this is not a day when I’m supposed to push my luck . Continue to write our report (50 pages already). We eat lunch for about 2$ and go back to work. Our co-worker Yolanda (I call her Tjolanta Gladfot) tries to explain something in rapid, unarticulate Spanish (kinda like my Swedish). I sound interested and explain that I haven’t realized that yet. At 20.00 I am home again. I look in the fridge only to find out that the eggs I bought the other day have NOT come alive, fed themselves fat, started a fight chopping themselves up in filets, falling into marinade just ready for me to fry. No, they have not! I go for the cornflakes again. After waiting for about a decade Vannesa comes home from school and my day starts.

The Sundays are better. It’s my only real day of liberty (we work most Saturdays). Then I wake up to religious processions just outside my window. MARIIIIIIIIAAA. MI FLOOOOOOR! MARRRRIIIIIIIA. MI AMOOOOOOORR. At 7 o clock. Then the guy comes to sell El COOOOOOOOMERCIO. The newspaper. Finally, when I decide not even to buy fruit from the guy who explains how good they are with his megaphone I can fall asleep again. That is if Harry hasn’t misunderstood my toe as a prey he needs to sneak up upon and attack. There just MUST be boarding schools for cats!

I went to football the other day. La Liga (from Ecuador) against River Plate. River Plate!! Liga won with 2-1. I have one of the goals on videoclip. I also have a picture when the other side of the arena caught fire because of the fireworks sent out by the fans. No one really seem to bother though.

Once in a while I break the routines. I went up to a park nearby my house one day and it’s just amazing! On top of a great hill with all of Quito just lying around and below you, framed by all the mountains. In the far north a volcano painted pink by the sunset.

The experience was so nice I decided to buy jogging shoes and spend the mornings there. A very intelligent decision indeed. 6.30 the next morning without breakfast, I run up the first uphill in the fresh ice-cold air. My lungs eager to work after 3 months of no usage at all. The oxygen at 2800 meters altitude fills my lungs. I realize my mistake very, very soon and return to the apartment at 6.38, sneak back into my bad, shaking, whispering: Nevermore, nevermore…