Barcelona: www.danjamieson.com launches

The wonderful world of Dan Juan
February 8, 2002

Due to powers vested in my by the Nevada/Las Vegas gaming commissiiom, the esteemed Tehran-based panel of Pop Infidol and Elvis I am now launched onto the interweb with my very own Dan Juan website (copyright Carl and Jon) available now on

www.danjamieson.com

laugh at the bad jokes/pictures,
marvel at the likeness to Bryan Adams,
play the comedy games,
write to me with large financial offers to take the site off my hands.

For those that can´t be bothered reading on the summary is
Christmas, Old man, Poptarts, Spanglish, GOOOOOOOL, Transvestites

Christmas was a blur and very long time ago. I remember spending my months wages in under 8 hours on arrival in the UK and freezing my nuts off waiting for trains, planes and automobiles to finally turn up. Trips involved Bristol, London, Oxford, Whincop, Liverpool, London and then back to sunny Barcelona. Hello again to all who turned out to greet me, bugger off to all those who said "what back already, you only went a few months ago, don´t expect me to get excited or anything".

Having spoke to a number of you about this email thingy a lot of people are hoping to see me report back that things are miserable, I´m really missing everyone and my life has turned to shit just so it will cheer some people up. This type of short-term schadenfraude warm glow is not heathly, sort of like Poptarts, and I think you should instead be very happy for me as I have had a fantastic January. Even though I turned 29 this month this wasn´t too bad either as the concensus amongst my students was that I was 27 (ie 26 at the last lesson) and my Spanish teacher thought I was 22. Bless. I have now learnt the Spanish for "baby face", as well as, "no, no you must be kidding".

My birthday itself was one of the best I´ve had in all my 29 years. Thank you for all the cards and presents (grand total 0 - people just send late emails these days). I started the day at 9am with a new pupil who despite being a Law professor and partner in one of Barcelona´s top law firms turned out to be a lovely lady who just wanted to chat about living in London, talk about books she´d read and learn new phrases such as "up-put-down-able".

Next was my first of my new Spanish lessons. These are from 10 till 11.30 every Monday to Thursday and the main reason for doing them is to get me out of bed in the mornings. I am also learning some Spanish (New Year´s resolution 2001 - move to Spain and learn Spanish.
New Year´s resolution 2002 now you´re in Spain bloody get a move on and learn the language)

The afternoon involved going swimming and sitting in a jacuzzi followed by my first intercambio. The literal translation of this is "sitting around in bars, at a pre-arranged time, talking in lovely Spanish girls in appaling Spanish whilst they look at their watches and appear to have toothache, followed by me correcting their English and confusing the hell out of them. Repeat until they´re bored" This has improved my Spanish no end and I appear to be able to make myself understood. I can use tenses and everything but struggle on subjects other then myself, football and things I have done. My big day was rounded off with a trip to the only curry house in Barcelona I know of and games of pool and lager in the local.

Excellent.

I now have almost enough teaching hours to live out here in virtual penury. I have got more hours with my first school, I have a new more lucrative school giving me hours this week and I now have 6 hours of private classes. 4 of these are with Pepe "De Niro" (dinero in Spanish is money) I teach him twice a week which involves sitting on his terrace in the sun drinking beers and explaining Frank Sinatra lyrics to him (well what Frank is actually saying here is that the lady is a tramp - no, no not an actual tramp, just a high class goer). After that we play FIFA 2001 on the playstation for a bit and I get my money, and the Spanish tax authorities are none the wiser. (Bizarre marketing fact. Did you know there are Guardian and Observer advertising hoardings around the pitch of the Spanish version of FIFA 2001? Nice targeting there Goldie).

So far my teaching involves virtually no preparation, no effort, very little inconvenience (not much on Fridays. nothing on the weekend, nothing past 7.30 in the evening, no snotty kids) so everything is cushty, as they say in Scouse. Nearly all my lessons involve my favourite subjects ie me, football and things I have done ("go to my website and for homework read the emails and report back on them"). However, all the Spaniards want to talk about is Operacion Triumfo which is the latest Spanish reality TV show in which 12 contestants actual compete with each other to be (no, not avoid) being Spain´s entry to the Eurovision song contests. After the big show on Monday everyone rushes out and buys millions of records of the fist-eatingly awful sub-karaoke pap and votes for which cloying, gurning no-mark gets booted out of the house. Sort of Big Brother meets Stars in the Eye´s without the suspense of guessing who they´re going to be tonight, Matthew. I talk about which contestant I would most like to murder and they coo on about the fat one or the cute one with english such as "he has such big talent, no?" and "she was estupendous last night, think yes". And I don´t even have a TV! This would be of no interest to you other than the format is so brilliant (midweek classes, filmed meetings with their families, grand finale every monday, shed loads of sales of toss merchandise/sing-a-long-a-Spaniard CD´s) that it will be coming to Britain very soon. Be afraid be very afraid. still means I avoid doing any work each week for my conversation classes.

If you wish to advertise in this email (audience 53 and climbing) then send cheques made out in Euros to Señor Hamison, 2, 1, 88 Calle Verdi, Gracia, 08012, Barcelona on Sea, Sunny Spain.

I am completely skint of course and unless someone who I teach from Andersen´s can do something fictional with my balance sheet I am going to need some new income to keep the site going. Suggestions include *Dan Juan merchandise including signed football shirts, T-shirts with "I love Bryan Adams" on them and Dan Juan poppadum pizzas.

*Realistic life size cardboard cutout of the mythical "Stan Juan" who can be placed in the corner of any office and takes the blame for all marketing related fuck ups

*Selling Dan Juan package tours. Flight, basic accommodation (on my floor), a guide and guaranteed food and beverages in the Catalonian capital. All this for only 1000 Euros. I must be mad. Insane people who have signed up are Gemma and Mathew, Martin is hoping to get his ass in gear whilst Jon, Ian and Bob have gone for the more expensive Barcelona v Liverpool tour version in March.

Football has improved exponentially. We actually won a game. We were playing next to the beach in a beautiful coastal town called Sitges and despite being 3-0 down we were inspired, partly by me I must say, to storm back to win 5-4. The crowd of 7 went wild and we celebrated our third win of the season in style. I scored and did a lot of shouting in cod-Spanish. Despite this being the worst season ever for the team things are looking up as we only now have 14 teams above us in the table.

New for 2002: ring the Dan Juan premium rate phone line on 0034 651 519 141 for late night saucy chat. All proceeds go to ickle, sick people at your phone operators.

Finally, the lovely French girls whose "je ne sais quoi" has now left the city (sniff sniff) to return to France had one last night out. We went to a restaurant I know which is cheap and lovely. Strangely the prices had almost doubled and there was hardly any space in there. After we finished our meal we were just about to leave and they said "but aren´t you going to stay for the floor show?" We kinda thought this might be OK and ended up stuck at the back for about an hour as we were serenaded by two tranvestite drag queens with karaoke-style singing and wobbly thighs and apparently real chests. Not too sure about the last fact but it was one of those unforgetable experiences that even I couldn´t make up and will soon feature in future lessons on things that I have done.

Jon Davie will be writing the first of the Dan Juan Inc give-some-money-as-were-going-out-of-business emails next month. Watch out for future "Dan Juan the early years" as I recount hilarous tales from the earlier part of the trip once Carl has got round to posting them on the site. You just can´t get the staff these days.

Adios amigos, keep it Real

Love Dan Juan himself

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