Breaking bad (3)

Probably, the only remarkable part of Breaking Bad, 5th season, is the end. As oppose to the endings in the previous two last seasons, there is no tension built in this end. It comes out of the blue and to me sounds implausible. But it is effective -Hank unravels the key figures of the Sudoku while sitting in the throne, poo-pooing. A scatological moment in the 5th up to the adrenaline levels released in the 3rd and 4th.

Interesting angle -a shade of grays scatters from it. For the sweet-toothy, the moment displays a whole array of savors to rub the palate. A million metaphorical interpretations. Leaves of Grass -or Drum Taps, maybe... the book looks too thin- is buried among weekly magazines (the eternal and the ephemeral) and constitute the reading material of a practical, down-to-earth man in the most unimportant and unnoticeable of moments: when he pulls down his pants and becomes equal to any other mortal. The ultimate fate of Walt Whitman (the smith who forged the modern American character, let's say), being relegate to a toilet reading for Hank, might also be extended as the shared destiny of the current America. Perhaps. W. W. and the beautiful The Learn'd Astronomer is the distinctive countersign of two outlaws, two men who want to stand out from an oppressive vulgarity, like the colorful houses jerking out of a sea of gray in some TV commercials. Walter and Gale follow the tradition of "what a man really has to do" against the common, the applause, the accepted and the award.

The night when, after a very successful batch, Walt and Gale make a toast and the latter recite Whitman was so real. And the most real part of all was the moment when Gale explains why he quit -it is implied- his PhD. "I was doing everything that it takes", this and that, but he stops. He abandoned the crowded auditorium, the deafening applause, walk outside and, in silence, contemplated the stars. However, somebody who is able to quit a PhD cannot be later on so submissive to Walter's oddity and abuse. W.W. would always be Walt Whitman for him and not Walter White. It is possible that Gale admired Walter so much, but not to the point to betrayed and disposed of Whitman in exchange: The Learn'd Astronomer was in him before meeting White.

I can see some loose ends and tight knots... But Whitman... Oh, Whitman!

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Breaking Bad (2)

When Gus Fring drove Walter White to the hidden meth lab in the laundry facility, he said to him: "This is your new lab (...). You will have excellent help, as I had". And it was true. Gale Boetticher came along, a methodical, brilliant organic chemist. This stroke me: the help was not a Chemical Engineer. The job of scaling a 2-kg-per-week production up to 90 is supposed to be the job of a Chemical Engineer.

**

Years ago, when I was a sophomore or a junior student of Bachelor's degree, someone asked me to give a presentation to A-level students about what Chemical Engineering was about. It is not that I knew much what I was talking about then, as I am not sure I know now, but I found an old manual with a first, whole chapter explaining the difference between Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. Since then, my ballad has been the repetition of the message in that chapter: the job of a Ch. Eng. is to bring a lab production to an industrial, profitable scale.

**

I want to believe that this is still the job of Chemical Engineers in industry or somewhere else beyond the rainbow, because it is certainly not what Ch. Eng. Departments do in universities. The Chemical Engineering has ceased to be an engineering discipline with large-scale concerns there and has bent the microscope down on the science underneath more or less applied industrial processes which, by the way, are becoming smaller and smaller every year (nano-stuff, you know).

It seems that the third generation of Chemical Engineers, the first one entire and solely academic (circa 1950s) are to hold responsible for initiating the transformation. From that moment on, practically all text books landed on the scientific aspects of industrial operations and stop reflecting the practice of the profession (D.C. Freshwater, 1988). Countless highways for research in these directions opened. Most of the books are very good though and for me the Bird, Steward and Lightfoot Transport Phenomena (1st edition in 1960, I think) is a super-classic, unsurpassed wonder.

In 1988 N. A. Peppas, from Purdue, edited in the form of book a collection of articles reviewing the history of Chemical Engineering in different universities (and from several points of view) along the previous 100 years. The book, One Hundred Years of Chemical Engineering, has fallen in my hands quite unexpectedly. Very recently I had the fortune to gather myself over a hundred of books given away as gratuitous stubble because of refurbishing works in the Departmental library at UCL (!). Of course, the library is no longer a library, but it will be my pleasure to do the honors privately.

Peppas book reflects the transition towards the Chemical Engineering Science in different places. Don C. Freshwater, from Louisiana State University did actually not like the change at all and he is quite blunt in his judgments (I have to say that I agree with him). Peppas himself is much more moderate, but also presents the Hollister Report (1952) as an abrupt change in the road: "the report was only thirty-six pages long. It was polite to the older tradition, but firm in its recommendations to the new generation".

As far as I am concerned, I see the study of the science underneath the Unit Operations and Chemical Reactors as a fundamental must in the education of the Chemical Engineer. But I mean it. In the days of the transition, important mathematicians contributed remarkably to the new developments, such as the great Rutherford Aris. It was a difficult, mathematical accomplishment. Its study, a titanic, individual struggle. Curricula nowadays, however, contain little if any Math; little, if any Chemistry. And team work and group project are praised way more than individual effort... (!?) What do you think: that industrial engineers did not work together in the 20s, 30s or 50s, as they do today? What does exactly this bullshit come from?

ODEs and PDEs are something of singular proportions for the common advisor (lest the student), residues of old, abandoned courses, only rescued with no fully-understanding if unavoidable for the purposes of specific, applied research; for the same, a change of coordinates, the use of the Jacobian or a triple integral are exotic operations. As for the Chemistry, I think I have mentioned it here before: Chemical Engineer graduates cannot locate Al in the periodic table (leave alone, Mn or V or Ni, fundamental stones of alloys). Smart phones will do that for them and that will be called "smart use of modern technology", clap, clap, clap: you can set your brains to change the world, now. If you ask the common advisor to write down the molecular formula of acetone, be prepared: "it's been ages since I studied this, hihi". If one of their students dumps acetone through the drain, just like that, they won't see it much as a very important matter. Etc. What kind of Chemical Engineering is that? What kind of Science? What kind of scientists?

Furthermore, I believe the place of the Chemical Engineer belongs to industry, to production. The old discipline was initiated by an industrial inspector in Manchester -G. E. Davis-, a man able to enjoy the very details of his job who felt himself impelled to share them. That is the inextinguishable flame of the true teacher and master. In spite of the fact that a great deal of scientific generality can be found and applied across very different processes, there is no substitution for experience. You need to see to believe, to understand, to grasp. The only wisdom comes from professional experience. But, alas! Wisdom, knowledge do not matter. The number of mentors in Ch. Eng Academia is meager nowadays, the intellectual production unimportant. The soil and harvest of universitary Chemical Engineering is a barren plain.

**

If Breaking Bad had been a success in the 50s, Gale Boetticher would have been a Chemical Engineer.

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Summer news

One of the two or three valuable contributions in Libertad Digital -the journal- these days is that of Amando de Miguel, 76. The writer, intellectual and sociologist keeps writing full time, non-stop in the way journalists of true vocation do: pian-piano, either in rain or in sunshine. Apart several other occupations, Amando has been continuing his series of articles on the Spanish language for years now, interacting with the readers, amidst traditionally-considered more substantial matter. His work, his fruitful and fertile columns every two or three days, deserves praise. He is an amazingly prolific writer in secret, enough prove of a genuinely dedicated man.

I read Amando's last column this morning, which begins (I translate): "A general belief links summer to calmness. However, it turns out that all sorts of conflict, violence and disaster swirl around summer. In spite of it, all mails I received are cheerful and kind. It must be, perhaps, the law of compensation".

Precisely, I have been pondering about that the last two days. Although it is said that summer news are a sort of stuffing material -practical training for a sprawl of assistants during the holiday months-, nasty things happen in summer. The world keeps a-rolling. The invasion of Kuwait, for example, took place on a 3rd-4th of August and 2013 is certainly not an exception to the general rule of no truce: the perturbed developments in Egypt, the bombings in Tripoli and the mass killings in Damascus using chemical weapons, all happened this month. How lovely. Syria threatens, Iran threatens -oh, the green, green grafting of the Arab spring- and Obama and Cameron talks on the phone, the latter already in dry, comfortable swimming trunks.

**

It seems that the umpteenth disagreements in Gibraltar could be a product of such summery indolence, but maybe not. The rock is no more than a nest of illicit activity, that's for sure, but there is also little doubt in my mind that peoples of all nationalities put on weight in there, Spanish and the sons of the British Empire, of course, included. Little doubt: everybody knows.

Photo: Sterling pounds coined in Gibraltar seem not to be acceptable in the Island. The 10-p coin above (Gibraltar, 2005) was rejected in a UCL stationary store this summer. The texture and weight of this coin compared to a usual coin from the Bank of England is slight but noticeably different. The coin in the photograph is rare in London, as 5-pound paper money issued by the Bank of Scotland are. Although the latter is quite different from a common note, it is acceptable in the Island.

**

In Spain, there have been new symptoms this summer of tremendous moral degradation in the country. Last week, the Governmental Delegate in Madrid, Cristina Cifuentes, suffered a motorcycle accident in central Madrid. The diagnosis was (is) serious and was translated to La Paz (public) hospital. Cifuentes is well-known for coping with the exorbitant number of demonstrations in Madrid during this year -2933 as far as the 31st of July, 67 % more than the previous year! Her huge accomplishment has been in enforcing that such demonstrations were celebrated in accordance to the -sparse- existing regulations. As a matter of fact, the number of celebrated demonstrations has been about 11 % less than those initially communicated in 2013, while last year the trend was inverse: more than 300 were celebrated without authorization. During her tenure, Cifuentes has had to deal with all kinds of ultra-left, anti-system disturbances, plus a series of large out-lawful strikes in the Metro.

In my view, Cifuentes has done an excellent job of public management and is a good example of successful leadership. But, most of all, she has just been doing her duty -the job she swore to do when she step in.

Last Thursday, about one hundred workers (sanitary personnel) concentrated outside the hospital at noon shouting detestable messages: "Cifuentes! Go to a private hospital", "we don't want to pay your debt". And showing their hands -a betrayed symbol for the victims of terrorism: "These are the hands that look after you". Oh, boy!!

Such appalling demonstration of hatred joins the chorus of monsters that in twitter and face-book pretty much left little regard for Cifuentes' life. The bitter and disheartening episode was recently denounced by Jimenez Losantos under the claim "Hippocrates or Marx, pick up your choice". However, despite the fact that Cifuentes belongs to PP -the party will privatize the management of a few hospitals in Madrid, La Paz among them-, the bottom line here is not left or right, Liberalism or Socialism. Milton Friedman considered the "Hippocratic Oath" as one of the earliest manifest of corporatism and I believe that the motion and emotion of individuals in herds, ebbing and flowing in massive tides is part of the problem. This is a very sad case. It is about lack of morality, about the loss of basic empathy towards our fellow people. It is the perversion of our natural ability to discern right from wrong. Today we confirm the failure of civilization -mighty conquest of fellowship- against the tyranny of savage, selfish, blind animal instinct. Disgusting.

The abyss is profounder than Economy. Dark as pitch.

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A nice guy

It is kind of ironic that London tubers -e.g. Londoners who use the underground daily- commuted home last Thursday with the news of the affair of a Tube boss and a prostitute. The feeling must be like being stab by your own butler who was not even born when you bought the house. As usual, pre-cooked dish served by the Evening Standard. The story is typical to boredom -an important, public man has an affair with a escort for a few months, the mouth get wet, promises escape and when he tries to call it a day, the whole thing goes public. Oh! Ah! Uh! "Married Sir Peter, whose taxpayer-funded salary and bonus paid last year totalled 660,000 GBP...", recites the Standard in from page, second paragraph. The word "allegedly" afterwards hurts twice after such a neutral introduction.

Sir Peter Gerard Hendy, current Commissioner of Transport for London, 60, has collected significant recognition in 38 years of public service. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (2006) for his work during the bombings of London the previous year and has been knighted this very year after success facing the Olympics transport challenges. What has caught my eye mostly, though, is his mythological conception. Sir Peter is the son, I read, of a Communist electrician and the daughter of the 6th Baron Wynford (!). As a matter of fact, we are becoming so used to these apparently impossible pairings that we should reformulate our class-struggle schemes.

Anyhow, the only statement I believe is true out of the declarations spoken by Ms Rachael Grundy -the whore- is that Hendy is a nice guy. I truly believe so: only nice guys get themselves strangled so stupidly. From the shores of this humble blog I just would like to send a message in a bottle to drifters and sailors out there: prostitutes do not fell in love. Pretty Woman is the fairy tale of adulthood. Escorts, call girls are doomed, way passed recovery; especially if they are 40, they are fatally damaged. Look at them straight in the eye, look at Ms Rachael Grundy in the eye: a thin layer of sadness lies beyond the rimmel, like abrasive lunar dust. There is no shine coming out from them; her eyes are like embers with no fire. Only nice guys believe that they can tie up those two dying stars and bring them back to life... Oh! Mistake only nice guys make.

Ms Rachel Grundy is just a wasted woman exerting utmost cruelty. She is a solitary wicked wretch and the only consolation for her people -wherever they are- comes from a zombies movie: that is not Rachel anymore. I am guessing the normal thing to happen is that Peter will pay a high price, professional and personally. I don't care about his job and titles and such a fancy fuss, but I think he deserves an opportunity from his wife and sons. He is indeed a nice guy. The viper Grundy just gave him the option to definitely escape his particular inferno. It is not too late, Peter, this is your moment. You are not alone. Other men can also hear deaf thuds and screeches coming up from the doors of hell, and feel the weight of the devil's claw squeezing their chest, blinding their reason in high-demanding situations. It only happens to nice guys, high self-considered men that expect the best from themselves. Nice guys are terrible self-judges. Nice guys don't care of themselves.

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Breaking Bad (1)

About a year ago, G. talked to me about a TV series starred by a high-school Chemistry teacher who turned himself into a methamphetamine cook. I did not pay too much attention in general, but G. told me about a scene where this guy needs to dispose of a corpse. He put it in a bath tube and dissolved it using hydrofluoric acid -everything was completely dissolved by the acid: flesh, tissue, bones, even the tub and all materials of the floor underneath. "Is that possible?", he asked me... Of course, I had no idea.

**

For Christmas, G. gifted me with the first season of Breaking Bad. I took the present with me back to London and kept it stored under the mini TV set until one Sunday afternoon three months later, when idle, I switched the TV on and started watching. I did not go to bed that day until I finished the entire first season.

Breaking Bad is not a product that can be watched twice. At least, I could not (other than some memorable scenes). But it grabs the first-timer by the collar and keeps dragging him episode after episode. The ramifications of the story are plenty and largely unpredictable. That is the reason, perhaps. The project sounds to me like those games that you play with kids, when you start off a story and the kids, sitting in a circle, one by one, continue the story exactly at the point where the last one left it. A series demands disciplined development and continuity and, given the fact that there are few different writers in Breaking Bad, the role of maintaining the dough in one piece is a job for the royal baker. Sitcoms have always been written and directed by different people, I believe, but the talent of the creator -Vince Gilligan- in maintaining the race horse bridled in this series seems to me an unique accomplishment. The original contribution of Gilligan to the annals of television is to bring Walter from "protagonist to antagonist", from hero to villain, from good to utterly evil. Characters change in movies all the time, but does it hold in TV series? The exercise of keeping the story within these grooves, in crescendo and unpredictable is a fabulous work of creativity.

In Breaking Bad, actors grow in time along with their characters. Like in Seinfeld, the scrip is at the service of the characters, not the opposite -what A says in form and content can only be said by A. Voices and accents, cadences, sentences are all fascinating. Hank, Saul, Skyler, Mike, even Gus -listen to their talk is a pleasure for the ears. The background noises, the creaks of the car doors, the rattling of the wind, great. I particularly like the motion of the camera when Walter runs to dismount the bomb from Gus car in the beginning of the last episode of season 4. Etc., etc.

There is deep stuff also. The scene of Jesse Pinkman and Jane Margolis in the car talking about the abstract painting exhibition they just watched is sensational. Also, the famous "what does a man do, Walter?", the reflection of Gus Fring; and the talk in the lab between Walter White and Gale Boetticher after their first successful batch of methamphetamine together. I will say something about this last scene later.

**

Can HF work like it is shown in Breaking Bad?... . Apparently, the Mythbusters denied and busted the story, which is not surprising. Chemistry is not only about chemicals, but mainly about conditions (temperature, pressure, design), quantities, concentration and time. Chemicals are constrained in the dimensions of the Universe and what they can do depends on time and space -just like what humans can do.

There are a number of comments in the web. Everybody seems to agree in:
1) that hydrochloric acid is a very nasty chemical;
2) that it is a weak acid that finds their way through wet membranes and tissues (like the skin) and has great affinity towards alkaline cations, like Ca(2+). The great danger after an accidental contact (in solution) is to the bones and the possibility that cations dissolved in the blood precipitate with the fluorine and lead to serious clinical complications. HF is used in the industry of semiconductors, for example, as an etching agent and the urgent treatment recommended in the dramatic case of contact is with calcium glyconate. Somebody shared a medical article where burns from exposure to HF were treated with intravenous Mg(2+) and Ca(2+) successfully;
3) that the fumes produce by the exothermic reaction between the HF and tissue or inorganic materials would be massive;
4) that it is difficult to believe that gallons of HF can be stored in a high-school lab.

People also discourse about alternatives to disposed of flesh. For example, it is claimed that lye (base) is cheaper and would go better, or that strong oxidants are needed. A mixture of concentrated sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide was tested by the Mythbusters with pig meat much more successfully (although the container of fiber glass and the ground underneath did not suffer). Somebody pointed out that the combination was already used in Little Nikita (1988). Somebody else even did experiments with a hot dog sausage in a solution of Clorox, cold and pre-heated in the microwave... .

**

Among the -I guess- dozens of interviews to the highly-acclaimed creator and actors, did anyone actually ask where the idea of HF came from? What were the references used to all Chemistry claims?

My airplane

The Canadian goose is all over the cities of the United States. You can find it forming massive groups that comb the green universitary and technological campus uptown, wandering gravel pits and parking lots of shopping malls, swinging its broad bill. It crowds ponds and parks downtown gazing and picking seeds and little, tiny grass leaves. Despite its short legs, the fowl can move quite fast. When attracted to the peanut butter sandwich of your daughter or the chocolate once that your son holds mildly between his thumb and forefinger, the bird and its friends behind look menacing. They then make horrible noises, hissing and honking, showing their tongue out and vibrating their necks. I suppose millions of American families are familiar with this description.

N. told me a joke about geese one day in a park in Huntsville, Al. We were sitting in a bench, surrounded by dozens of Canadian geese. All of them were dark-beaked. "There are two types of geese: one kind has a dark beak; the other, orange. Why?", N. said. "Don't know", said I. "It is just that, as they fly in flocks, one type can stop better than the other".

The Canadian goose is a big, surly fowl, weighting up to 18 pounds and showing off a wingspan of 2 meters.

**

On January 15, 2009, shortly before 3.30 pm, an US Airways Air Bus A-320 was leaving La Guardia airport towards Charlotte, SC. 90 seconds after take-off, the plain struck a flock of Canadian geese flying in a V formation. As a result, both engines of the plain were ruined and irretrivable. Suddenly, the aircraft lost total thrust and became a glider. Unearthly sounds and vibrations from the destroyed engines filled the cockpit, plus smell of burned birds. Only a few seconds later, it came the destructive sound of the unfamiliar and freezing cold silence at an altitude close to 2,500 feet. Very soon, the plain started to fall down back to Earth, faster than usual, a cacophony of synthetic voices and alarms in the cockpit, all in a background of deathly silence. The captain took control of the aircraft and, with the invaluable and professional help of the first officer and the air controller, were able to ditch safely the plain in the Hudson river only 3 minutes and a half after the strike. All passengers and crew members, 155 total, saved their lives. The story will be remembered and studied for decades as an example of a great job done by everyone involved in a fatal emergency.

The book of Sully Sullenberger, Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters, is one of the few that has moved me as far as the point of letting me cry. Not only once, but quite a good few times my vision got blurred. It happened on a lazy morning in bed, amidst the rattle of the underground and even at a pub with a beer in front of my nose on Friday night -wherever I was reading, the story of Captain Sullenberger touched me. Human comradeship shines dazzling all over the story, from the experiences and influences of a single man that led him to be what he is to the response and solidarity of a whole lot of people. It was indeed a true miracle. As Sully points out several times, it served as a powerful hope-retriever to a distraught and somewhat strained American society. More important for me is the fact that -let me use a hackneyed term here- all the humanity in the story that brings me to tears does actually bring a lot more of people to tears. We all feel the same -the thank-you letters, the confidences, the personal interactions. The chapter in the book is quite revealing. You can find interviews in the Internet with different people -especially people who were not passengers in the US Airways Flight 1549 and were not related to the event in any way- expressing all the good this event did to them. It is in the same wave we are all transmitting. There is no doubt in my mind that this is a core shared by all human beings, a special core of good feelings, of individual sacredness and community realization that define us as humans. The rest is the background noise of evil.

**

Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger became a hero in a matter of hours. He and his wife have claimed repeatedly that the term "hero" is improper, though. A hero throws himself into adversity for a higher goal -it is a self-less choice that leads him to a self-giving, sacrificing action. Sulenberger and the other 154 in the plain did not have any choice.

I agree. As a matter of fact, the point of Sullenberger throughout the book is clear: be prepared. Un-intently, his whole life has been a preparation for that unique apex. In an interview, he summarized it in a way that is not reproduced in the book: "it is like my whole life, through studies, training and practice, I have been making small deposits so, when that moment came, I was able to make a sudden, large withdrawal". It is a story of integrity: it all started with passion for flying as a kid. Logically, the retrospective review of his life allows him to ponder and emphasize upon the importance of passion, mentoring and serious work day after day. "Be vigilant and diligent, because you don't know when or how", it is said in the Gospels. Your daily work can help saving lives when the time ripens up. Significantly, one of the letters that most impressed on Sullenberger in the aftermath is that of a old Austrian Jew who saw the water landing from the window of his flat. The man was a survivor from the Nazis and is alive thanks to his father's sacrifice. For him, "saving one life might mean saving the world".

Sully Sullenberger states clearly that he is not a hero, but a man of integrity who prepared, studied and worked towards the right thing every single day of his life.

**

This makes me shiver in worry. I have lost a lot of time, then. I can't remember what my childhood dreams were, I can't remember myself having any passions. I sense my life fragmented. It feels like having a simple bag full of pieces of the past without connection. Sometime ago I used to be pretty confident in the formula all counts. No matter how bad the pieces of your collage are glued together, your life will always count. Your past, your learnings, your failures and pains, your joys and happy moments, all will count. A few weeks ago, however, I had a sort of nightmare. Did not wake up sweating and panting; my nightmares are less physical. I saw my bag of little pieces losing its value, sinking down a river of dark green waters or fading away... This vision came probably right before I woke up.

So, what about all that is wasted? What about all who are being wasted? It happened before - it will happen again.

(I am hinting... It is time to say: "my airplane").

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Beyond the world's end

I think "The World's End" is a wonderful... name... for many... things.

I've been bound for the last couple of weeks to do something around Golders Green early in the morning. The 102 bus leaves me at Golders Green station and, from there, I walk a good 15 minutes up Finchley Road. On my way back, I walk down and see this bus with a catchy destination up front: "The world's end". Off Finsbury Park there is a pub with the same name, I've been told and then, of course, you have The World's End, the new movie of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg.

The commercial plot is lay out very easily: a group of grown-ups get together to finish off the golden mile of drinking 12 pints in 12 pubs, the last being name "The World's End". The guys did not accomplish the task 20 years ago and now, pushed by one of them, are out for that in the little village where they did their High School, although not very confidently, let say. Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, the bourne Paddy Considine and a little bit of Pierce Brosnan. The comedy is served! My friend M. just passed me the first seasons of Spaced. Got to watch it once I finish Breaking Bad.

However, The World's End goes beyond that very sappy plot. I am becoming very sensitive these days against the tyranny and despotism of the network. If there is one city in the world wrapped in the bullshit of the network, that is the city of London. Paradoxically, if there is one place where being oneself is most difficult and that leg of the brain in charge of expressing critical and personal thinking violently stamped out, that is London. An insultingly young town, sacrificed to the homogeneity of the network. I grow hand hair and fangs to this very feeling.

Anyhow, The World's End lays its message against the network of homogeneous robots. Men and women, is said, have a right to be rogues, bums, utter failures, as long as they are themselves. This is the message. The spectator is offered over 60 minutes of a fight against the impending danger of becoming a robot. In the scene at The World's End pub the survivals, prey to a set-up, are lured towards the option of giving in by the promises of the bullshit. What else could it be more real! The end of the movie might result a little off for some, but it pounds the head of the nail: Gary, the brawler, against humans with a bunch of robots; Andrew is a sort of boy-scout and Oliver keeps selling real estate with half his head mended in half a soccer ball. It's crazy, but they are free and self-sufficient.

I am getting used to feel alone in London. Alone and against everything, everyone. The World's End helped me embrace myself. The dictatorship of the network is, maybe, just a form of modern and unsung alienation. As I write this, I am listening to a Spanish news radio show on the Internet and a recognizable tune came a few moments ago. It was one of the Chopin's nocturnes, the 9th or the 20th, for sure, not the 27th. Well... Not sure. It reminded me of those few early summer mornings in Madrid when I used to get up early before work to read. It lasted no more than a couple of weeks. Chopin, Debussy, Liszt in the background. Between my hands, Penelope Fitzgerald's The Bookshop - the titanic but quiet fight of a tiny old lady to open a small library against the tyranny of the village social network.

There is life out there. I guess I am not mad... Not yet.

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