The soil has been ploughed. Now it is a matter of weather and season.

I have dealt with almost all the steps of building a house from scratch. Painting has been very interesting. I have worked just as an assistant so, all I can say is? how difficult being a good painter is!

Casting is what I like the most and what I have more experience in.

I miss it. Wear the belt, hammer on one side, bag full of nails on the other. Hands holding the box filled with concrete, the shovel being dug and left. Another day comes, casting again !

Props, beams, pillars, walls. And every day, as usual, doing something new. Even if I do, once and once again, the same task.

I began some training just to get some technical knowledge on building standards. I have to thank all the companies where I have worked as I have always had the chance to improve. I think I am happy with what I do. It is not that I do not want responsabilities. It is just that even if it is true that there are some days I wish I were in another place, I like those Fridays when I take a look at the watch, sloooooowly pointing to the hour to leave, and see that structure there which on Monday was not.

Where I am going now:

I will try to keep active in casting and concrete. Probably I will take some technical qualification this year. Materials, techniques, design. I?ll try to focus in a particular casting technique. And, just let routine take its part.

It has been three days, 9 hours, devoted to diachronic linguistics? Iria is so appealing that I have made up my mind: all I have been doing for many years can be focused just on Iria? so it is not a common approach? it is an approach I was looking for, so long !!!

Some points to begin with.

1.- None of the explanations given so far to Iria as a toponomy are satisfactory to me.

2. Iria is the survival, and much more, of what is thought as the most pure, genuine, Galizan roots. Not only for the place of Iria in history , but the meaning itself. It is a pre-latin name. Or at least, it comes from the very beginning of Gallaecia. Until now, all I can say is: it is an icon of Galizaland? I just fall on my knee.


Where I am going now:

I have to learn German, some Swiss German as well (very important for the development of Galizan-Portuguese), I began some basic research on the avant-gardes of the XXth century, the translation of the first branch of the Mabinogi is a priority, I need to review some languages I have worked with? and linguistics is just a small, very small, part of my life. I will try to keep my interest and devote myself to Iria for the rest of the year.

The context is Celtic. I?ll try to explain Iria from its natural, most likely source.

This is my third week in a wall-painting company !!! I was not looking for a particular job (I deserved some holidays) when this one was offered to me. I am finding it quite interesting: it is a very good complement to my activity in the building field. My task is very basic: I am an assistant. I have to leave surfaces ready to be painted or carry on basic tasks to help the painters. Meanwhile I learn how different finishings are made, how different products are applied, and, most important, what makes a good finishing.

I have been asked to carry on a project on onomastic. An index of Galizan names with data on its origin and meaning. First, I need to build a model, a guide. The ideal entry. The one to follow. It is quite a common approach: first you build a pattern, then mass production follows. Iria is the one I have chosen.

Not and endless node forwarding to more links again, do not panic!!!

A couple of them, both lead to real content. It is just that even if not much, I have been active online these years. So, my blog must mention:

* A translation of the story of Pwyll in Annwfn (first branch of the Mabinogi) from Welsh into Galizan-Portuguese. The Spanish translation was read at the Conference ETNOARQUEOLOGÍA DE LOS CELTAS EN HISPANIA (Ortigueira, 2006). If you are interested in this version, please do send me an e-mail as I haven't published it yet.

* An article on interactive fiction, translations and a literary review can be found at the e-zine on fantasy and SF: novafantasia.com

From time to time growing and working with potatoes is my main activity. For the past two years I have been living abroad so I haven't been so involved in farming as I did on previous years.

I regard myself as a farmer as far as potatoes are concerned. Of course, my interest in potatoes goes further. From edaphology to food processing.

Potatoes are just amazing to me. Their possibilities. In a world were starving is still a main global concern, it happens to be one of the best (if not the best) sources of energy for a healthy diet.

The Solanum tuberosum adapts quite easy to different enviroment conditions and I expect it to play a leading role in the human exploration and colonization of our neighbour planets.

Its organoleptic proprieties and a relative lack of tradition in our gastronomy (it is just some centuries ago that it became part of the diet out from South America) make it a source of new discoveries for new dishes and food.

So, if you have a good recipe you want to share, I very much welcome it.

We are more than 6000 million people in this planet. In this section I will deal with some subjects that, probably, interest just 4 or 5 people (with no zeros at all after the digit) in the whole of humanity at present time. Sometimes these numbers are too optimistic :-)

Philology is my main activity in spare time. For the past years I have been working in the translation of the first branch of the Mabinogi, a collection of stories originally written in Welsh (Celtic language from Great Britain).

My main area of work and interest is diachronic linguistics. I have worked and did research in dialectology, and have developed some work in the field of media and language diversity. (I came to take part as a founder in Abertal as the result of my effort for applying Internet to language diversity).

In the past years I took some interest in literature. I wrote some articles in novafantasia.com and at present time I am working on the poetic function of language (I am more interested in its connections with music).

I keep quite constant in diachronic linguistics. Secondary subjects (such as the ones mentioned in the previous paragraph) are dealt with just for short periods of time: new ones come and take their place, or they just become too complex for me to deal with.

Too many interesting fields. A single life is not enough to deal with them all.

So, when you live in a farm, it is quite common to spend sometime of the year with building activities... let's say that even if not as a main task, it is something I am used to deal with.

However it all changes when you devote yourself to building as a full-time, permanent job. I began building a house with 2 other men in 2004. 6 months to finish the basic structure.

Later on I worked with several small companies as a brick-layer assistant, doing a little bit of everything. I am proud of having worked, in my very beginnings, with some of the best professionals I happened to meet until present.

My main field of activity is concrete. Until present I have dealt with country-houses, an up to 4 floor residential building, and some big structures for industrial uses.

I have worked in Galiza for 2 years.
Later on I moved to Zaragoza where I worked mainly with pipelines for 2 months. I highlight the fact of having dealt with a well equipped team where topography made our work not only easier but as accurate as I haven't seen again. We carried on our activity in a very large area: usually I am limited in a small, well-defined ground, hence topography, even if a must, is more basic.

I moved to Catalonia. Different places around the Costa Brava and the Selva building luxury resorts, and, finally, a residential area of 10 individual units.

I came to Switzerland in 2007 where I worked as an assistant mainly in the building of concrete-structures of industrial buildings.

So, here I am... it was in 1995 when I first built a website. I am back, thanks to my friends at Abertal Networks (a company we founded in 1997) which provides me with the blog technology to make it just a matter of writing and pasting.

Time goes by. And I happen to meet new, interesting people every year. Thus I need a way to keep in touch and just to say I am still here, what I do, where I am, where I want to go.

To begin with I will try to keep myself focused on three subjects:

philology: my passion since I was a child. I studied at university, worked full-time in related fields and it is still one of the most important activities in my life. Abertal even if an internet company is a product of this activity as far as my contribution is concerned.

For the past years I mainly devoted to diachronic linguistics and the translation of the Mabinogi.

potatoes: An activity I devoted myself to since I were a child as well. My mother owns a small farm which produces, mmm, yeah, potatoes. So I am more than familiar with the solanum tuberosum...

construction: there was a time I needed to do something different. Move away. Therefore I began to work at the construction sector. This is my fourth year dealing mainly with concrete and travelling from Galizaland to Aragon, Catalonia, and Switzerland.

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