is this on?

Dear friends, what it be?

Welcome to big update #2. This will not be a typical bigupdate because it will be much shorter than the 9k norm. Really! There are two important items to report:
1) new email address!
2) big update is going the way of the gaslamp!

Both of these items are exciting because they represent a definitive step forward for me, both technologically and psychologically!

First, I am finally using Gmail. I know I’m a few years behind the curve here, and I must admit I move forward a bit grudgingly. But hey, that’s kind of like the Spanish approach to things, and they’re doing pretty well for themselves, the Spanish.

Please update your addressbooks: ivanzcestero@gmail.com . Gmail is the best! (As many of you know. As for you others: what are you waiting for? My god! Stop kidding yourselves!)

The second exciting step forward is that I’m abandoning the archaic format of the big update in favor of the wave of the future: the Web Log, or “Blog”. Yes, it turns out that the blog format is perfect for me! Instead of worrying about long email lists of friends whose addresses keep changing, I’m just going to blogify the bigupdate. That way I release myself of all potential guilt for not ‘staying in touch’ or whatever. And all long-distance communication can be done through the blogeroo! That’s the best part. You know, all the ‘comments’ sections, right? That part.

And so I’ll have a “Barcelona” section, a kind of personal or ‘diary’ section (you know, where all the bloggers talk about what they did today, why it was so interesting, etc), a hot topics section (politics! Sports! Entertainment! Europe!), and other cool stuff. Like ‘philosophical musings of a part-time expatriot’, ‘fun Spanish insults and their word-for-word translations into English and other languages’, etc. Wow—I can’t wait, this is going to be rad!

Finally, to complete my technological great leap forward, I sucked it up and bought a digital camera. For a while I truly believed that I wouldn’t suffer the urge, so typical of our generation, to photographically record every outing, vista, funny moment. But the fact is: we need digital cameras, people. As a bit of a neo-luddite myself, sure, I was hoping to live a purer life, where pictures are special precisely because they can’t be relegated to commodity status, exchanged en masse like any other bit of information, snapped at random in hope of revealing one perfect shot. An honorable theory, but like, good luck with that in the digital age, dude!

So I’ll post pictures! No blog is complete without pix. And links—I need to link to things. The more you link to things, the better your blog looks—that’s another piece of tech savvy I’ve picked up. As soon as my camera arrives I promise to get snapping! I will bring my sunny, exotic corner of the world into your living room or cubicle. I’ll be sure to engage in some experimental photography too, which is totally crazy and an easy way for normal people like me to engage my creative side with the flick of a button.

In the spirit of all these upgrades-- and perhaps in subconscious anticipation of the blog?-- I am also trying to write like an ‘adult’, as my father would have it. This means giving up hieroglyphics and lazy abbreviation for fully correct punctuation. I think entirely correct and/or traditional grammar is a bit too much to strive for right now; however I have purchased a used copy of the Chicago Manual of Style to aid me in both endeavors. We’ll see what develops.

Well, that’s it! I told you it would be short! Packed with news, yeah?, but short enough to read within the average attention span of American twentysomethings. This is, after all, another advantage of blogs. Short and sweet. Except for the long ones—which, let’s face it, can be skipped until they are summarized elsewhere.