Environment: November 2007 Archives

About 7 weeks have passed here in Madrid with nothing but clear, sunny skies. This is great when out and about. I particularly love cool temperatures and those blue blue skies.

The oddity is that it USUALLY rains during this time of year. In fact, "the experts" are worried again about the possibility of a long-term drought as we had here JUST last year! The reservoirs were at 20-something-percent then and, well, if we don't start getting some serious rain we'll be returning to that. Reservoirs here now are at about 63%.


Sunday night I did two loads of laundry and got up early Monday to hang out the clothes. Cloudy. Grrrr!!! I take the clothes upstairs to the roof to hang and, of course, there's the neighbor's clothes hanging there, dry for (no doubt) 3 or 4 days. So the 3 "good" wires are taken. Fine. It's cloudy anyway.

20 minutes later I'm just finishing hanging the last clothes. And then it hits me - LITERALLY! SLEET (frozen rain) begins falling from the sky. First lightly - AND THEN SERIOUSLY. Wonderful. I debate for a moment if I should take all the laundry down, including two sets of sheets, before leaving for the gym. Hmmm... "Nah.. It'll probably blow over soon."

So I pack my mini-umbrella into my gym bag - just in case - and I'm off to the gym. The sleet continues to fall but lightly. Good. It seems I made the right decision. (uh-huh. Just wait)

So there I am at the gym having a good workout. I'm about halfway through and notice people standing at the windows which stretch the entire length of the second floor gym. "What's going on?" I wonder - but I don't wonder long because I look out the windows on my other side of the gym to see the rain falling in sheets, just falling and falling and falling. Everyone's happy, amazed, and no-doubt some of them are WISHING they'd brought their umbrellas. "I brought mine," I remembered.

By the time I was finishing up my workout, 20 minutes on the treadmill next to the windows, I watch one person after next running from the gym for their cars with their jackets over their heads, gym bags over their heads, or just running. I see all this and remember the damp laundry I just hung on the wires 3 hours before which is no doubt, by now, MUCH MORE than damp. Hmph!

The workout's over, I'm dressed, and leave the gym pulling out my mini-umbrella to shield me from the (now) light rain.

I like this umbrella because it's one of those mini-umbrellas, black, light, takes up no space, and it does its job. The thing I DON'T like about it is that on every alternating "web" it sports the word "BENIDORM".

The BENIDORM umbrella was bought in, you guessed it, BENIDORM when visiting there last March. I was only there a very short time but there was rain in the forecast so I stepped into one of "Los Chinos" stores near the hotel and bought one just-in-case. They had a number to choose from but I thought since I was there I'd buy the Benidorm-named one as a kind of souvenir. Fine.

But now, everytime I pull out this umbrella here in Madrid I feel kind of strange, almost embarrassed. Me, obviously a NON-Spaniard and with the face I have, I'm CERTAIN all the Spaniards look at me carrying this umbrella as, SURELY, a rich Englishman who's certainly vacationing every year in Benidorm or, who knows, OWNS a second house there along the beach. But if all that was true, WHY would I be living here IN THIS NEIGHBORHOOD?

Of course my worries are unfounded as I haven't polled anyone on the street. But IF I had stopped 10 Spaniards on the street while I'm carrying my Benidorm and ask them, "What do you think when you see me carrying this umbrella in Madrid?" the answer would've been, "Well, I imagine you're English and got your umbrella in Benidorm." A LOGICAL answer, of course, but would they have thought anything had I not asked them in the first place?? Probably not. My manias.

These are the kinds of things foreigners-in-a-foreign-land think when walking the streets. They think people are staring at them, talking about them, or even avoiding them. I think this is probably not the case most of the time but we, the foreigners, THINK this is the case because we feel like sharks swimming in a fishbowl full of goldfish - so obviously out of place.

The rain stops on my walk home so I happily put away my umbrella. When I get there I go up to the rooftop and take down the lighter clothes like the underwear, socks, and wash and dust rags. They're all more damp now than before. I leave the sheets, pants, and T-shirts. All the smaller items I have strewn about the house and now, 24 hours later, they're dry.

But I write you on Tuesday morning and it's been raining all night long. I should go upstairs to check that the now-water-heavy sheets aren't dragging on the rooftop floor. I should also bring down the T-Shirts and hang them around but the water will likely drip everywhere. What a pain in the A$$. I try to remember it's not USUALLY like this - but I'm STILL HAPPY it's raining.

ALSO READ the "2007 Madrid Drought Recovery" entry from August 2007 - and see how things have changed since then.

Today at the gym I was absolutely furious after finishing my workout.

I'd just returned to the locker room to use the restroom. While washing my hands there was a man who'd entered one of the stalls behind me. I heard him blow his nose and a toilet flushed shortly thereafter. What? He FLUSHED a tissue down the toilet? But wait. It gets worse. After the flush the man left the stall, took 3 steps away, then returned to the same stall and I heard him blow his nose again - and then ANOTHER FLUSH!

HOW MANY LITERS OF WATERS DID HE WASTE FOR TWO NOSE BLOWS?? I don't have any idea but likely at least 4 Liters of water per flush. That's EIGHT liters of wasted water for two nose blows. AND THERE WAS A TRASH CAN RIGHT OUTSIDE THE STALL!!

I was angry after the first flush. But after the second one I just wanted to shout at him and ask him how he could be so wasteful. I took a second and couldn't formulate the sentence in my mind in Spanish. I couldn't think of the word for FLUSH and I don't know the word for BLOW NOSE in Spanish so I was lost.

One of the many TV public service commercials they broadcast is on this very topic. In the scene you have two teens or young 20-something girls in the restroom. One blows her nose and goes to flush the tissue down the toilet. The other girl, obviously the conscientious one, stops the friend and suggests she throw it in the trash can instead. What an idea!

Other times at the gym I'll be using the restroom and I find guys shaving over the sink with the water spigot wide open to its maximum, never turning it off the entire time they're shaving. And if you even DARE to suggest someone to turn off the running water they become angry, defensive, and tell you to mind your own business. Isn't the environment EVERYONE'S business? Don't I have a moral right to make such a suggestion?

It's people like those I mention above whom are destroying our planet the fastest. They're obviously selfish, mindless people. You can't really fault the lack of available education and promotion that takes place because you can't avoid it these days. Here, every time there's a TV commercial break at least one of the ads is related to the environment. This to me is incredible. You'd never get this kind of percentage on USA television. That'd be depriving corporations of millions of dollars - many of the same corporations which are polluting our water, air, and land.

SAVING WATER seems to be SO EASY to do. So why don't more people care?

Links of interest: Canal de Isabel II, El Reto de Agua, Guía para el ahorro de agua, An Inconvenient Truth,