Ramblings from Seville

The devil makes work for idle hands, no idle hands here and all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Even the news is consumed in bits, not sought out, not selected and just consumed as I am confronted with it. The 'Daily Torygraph' gets delivered to the place where I am doing my course and it would appear that Prince Harry breaking up with his girlfriend is worthy of the front page in that particular rag and Munich's 'Süddeutsche Zeitung' reports that the ex-CEO at 'Deutsche Post', Klaus Zumwinkel, only gets two years probation for tax evasion.(1) That at least brings home the true nature of our "them and us" world and down Palestine way the Israelis do an indecent amount of moaning about a soldier who was captured two and a half years ago, while they kill Palestinian men, women and children at will. Gets even worse though and has anyone been counting the dead in Africa south of the equator? It is a strange, strange world!
Back in Seville, a routine of sorts has been established, the WIFI connection at the little cafe is used at about 8.30 am before the smokers arrive, the customery cup of coffee, that almost defines me, and a ham sandwich and then its down to 'La Marena' and another 'cafe con leche' in one of the city's very few non-smoking establishments, before making my way to the school. There is a cinema close by that shows films in English with subtitles, there is an almost "normal" life, light years away from that strange, strange world of torturing and rape, of massacring, maiming and murdering child soldiers in Africa and of so-called "terrorists" and zany Zionists that pulverise anything that moves and speaks Arabic down Palestine way. One sometimes ends up there though and I see that 'Haaretz' is reporting that Sarkozy has assured Gilad Shalit's father that the captured soldier is still alive.(2) Well, they could very well get him free in exchange for 1,500 or so Palestinians that they have been rounding up in the last few weeks in Gaza and the occupied territories and who knows Gilad might even end up on a Reality TV Show in the not too distant future hardly out of place in a world where Harry breaking up with his girlfriend and the shennanigans of Klaus Zumwinkel are front page news and a bad day is when somebody in seville blows smoke into your face.
1 'Süddeutsche Zeitung', 27/01/2009 front page
2 http://www.haaretz.com/
The picture shows the sign that you will see on the doors of the majority of bars and restaurants in Seville