Up, close and personal

Pelenor is my favorite part of RotK and I'm particularly fond of Theoden and Eowyn, so ...

Third part of my trip to New Zealand, this time on the West Coast of the South Island and moving up ...
Part 3

On the left corner, with a brand new weigth of 4.8 kg, wearing pink pajamas, the newcomer Lucia! And, on the right corner, somewhat slimer, but definitely taller, wearing white, the title holder Clara! It's cool to have two nieces :)

So here's the second part, in the south of the south island:
Part 2

Who said the Mediterranean was always warm? Brrrr ...
Diving in Nerja is not such a good idea in may, after all.
So do you see here an octopus? Cool, I thought it was just me ...

Amazingly, I can still waste more my time that you ever guessed. So here's the first part of my review of a trip to New Zealand some time ago. Spanish only, I'm afraid (C'mon, were you really interested in reading it, anyway? :D)
Part 1

So, finally, here is my new niece Lucia, a few hours after her birth! Isn't she a cutie?

My life is pretty boring lately, so there's not much to tell (or upload). Here's a fast watercolor skecth of Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider I did a while ago.


TRII was so much better than TRI ...!

I finally finished this book, that I kept putting aside now and then to read something else. Not that the book is boring or anything, simply that other readings caught my attention more. "Corazon de Ulises" is a book about a trip to Greece. I like everything I've read from Javier Reverte and this book is no exception, however I liked the Africa books better. I've been in Greece myself and the book seems too nostalgic and not as bright as Greece most times seemed to me, but that's the thing with travel books: if your experience in the country was different, the feelings do not fit. Anyway, I'd recommend the book, as well as any of Reverte, to anyone interested in travel.

Probably the most isolated place of the Earth ... except for those two fishes, that followed me everywhere, that is.

To get to Easter Island, I had to fly first to Santiago de Chile with Iberia (12 hours) and then take another plane (LanAir, 5 hours). But it was worth it!

So this is a new example of how sci-fi is doing good lately. Me, I like series than, rather than collecting more or less connected anecdotic adventures of the cast, go in a well defined direction, like Babylon 5, Whedon's short lived Firefly or the new version of Galactica. I'm afraid, I can't recall the old BG, but this one certainly is good. The story goes as follows.

Humans, living in 12 separate colonies, created intelligent robots -the cylons- to do the hard work. Obviously, these robots rebelled and fought their creators until a truce was set. Then, the cylons vanished for decades. Rather than fearing that they could be evolving -which, in fact, they were- humans lived carelessly for years. Eventually, the cylons return and unchain a simultaneous deadly attack on all 12 colonies. When humans try to counterattack, it turns out that cylons have broken their defenses and penetrated their computer networks -with the help of Number 6, a new human-looking cylon model who had not much trouble fooling Dr Gaius into letting her reprogram his defense code-. Some humans, though, escape devastation. Most of them are the crew of BG, which has no network because commander Adama hates security breaches. Realizing that they have not much to do against cylons, they decide to flee in search of a place where they can start anew. However, cylons -now believing to be God's hand to erase His previous error: humanity- still have an agenda and letting humans escape is not in it. Besides, there's limited water and food supply, political tension and at least 12 human-looking cylon models that are mixed with the surviving crew.

Good plot, nice characters and pretty spaceships :)

Battlestar Galactica site

Now that the arrival of another niece is nigh, a post about the one niece is called. Hey, Clara, cheers from auntie Cris! :)

So this is a quick watercolor sketch I did from Mexico, back when I travelled there last year. I definitely need to go back and see Merida asap!


A Mexico rough watercolor skectch

So I finally got to the Great Wall after all these years of playing TRII ...

El Ultimo Caton (M. Asensi) Not bad, but very, very predictable. It is clearly written as a movie script, but fairly well documented and easy to read.
It focuses on three very different persons charged by the Vatican with the task of finding a strange sect known as the staurofilax who are stealing all relics involving pieces of Jesus' cross. Their only clue is the dead body of a member of the sect who died in a plane crash and had several strange cross-like scars etched in the body. Soon, they will discover that the mystery is related to Dante's Divine Comedy and that they are bound to walk through the nine circles of the Purgatory before reaching their goal. My only regret is that I did not manage to sympathize
with the main characters. A 7.5/10 would do.

I've also re-read Terry Pratchett's Eric in the plane back from Tenerife, because of the circles of Hell, and all. I give it (again) a 9.5/10 as to most Pratchett's books. Some random quotes of the book:

"The trouble is that things never get better, they just stay the same, only more so."

"Rincewind had] looked Death in the face many times, or more precisely Death had looked him in the back of his rapidly-retreating head head many times..."

"The badge said: "My name is Urglefloggah, Spawn of the Pit and Loathly Guardian of the Dread Portal: How May I Help You?"

Plus, Prometheus' torture :)

Rincewind: "What's going on? What's happening to him?"
Azaremoth: "I don't know what he done, but when I first come here his punishment was to be chained to that rock and every day an eagle would come down and peck his liver out. Bit of an old favourite, that one."
Rincewind: "It doesn't look as though it's attacking him now."
Azaremoth: "Nah. That's all changed. Now it flies down every day and tells him about its hernia operation. Now it's effective, I'll grant you, but it's not what I'd call torture."

This is the last movie I've seen and I must say that I did not like it very much. Pretty booooring. Fights are okay, specially the first one with the drums, but we are so used to Matrix and Hong-Kong like combats that this is not enough for a film to be interesting anymore. The plot is a very simple and predictable love story with only a few surprises. I liked "Hero" more and found that one slow as well! I think I'll stick to "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" a little longer.

Safe bet! I think I figured out all major Oscars this year, so I had already prepared a little sketch of the best animation film for the occasion. Isn't The Incredibles the best superhero film ever!

Has been, of course, Puss in Boots, who looks just like my Angora cat. No award for Shrek, but he has the cutest look!

All the way up the Piramide de la Luna (Moon Pyramid), with a nice view of the Calzada de los muertos (Road of the dead)!

Sunset at Xochicalco, Morelos. You won't see that smile at the office, though!