{"id":3792,"date":"2022-11-20T07:52:06","date_gmt":"2022-11-20T06:52:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/?page_id=3792"},"modified":"2022-11-20T07:52:06","modified_gmt":"2022-11-20T06:52:06","slug":"week-43-halloween","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/?page_id=3792","title":{"rendered":"Week 43: Halloween"},"content":{"rendered":"

The last week of October culminates in the silly Halloween “holiday”. I really disliked it when we lived in New Jersey (I associated it with annoying intrusions of kids looking for candy, plus a dose of vandalism), and it annoys me that in the past couple of decades it has become increasingly popular in continental Europe as well, although mercifully the trick-or-treat habit has not caught on here. The day after Halloween happens to be my birthday, but I have not celebrated it since my father died on this day in 2004. So no birthday party, but my wife (who loves both attending and hosting parties) put on a Halloween party for a small group of friends. I went along with it on the condition that there would be no mention of my upcoming birthday, no presents, no cake etc., and this was respected.<\/p>\n

43_1<\/strong>
\nBut before Halloween there was a normal week, including some glorious sunrises during my morning bike rides:
\n\"1020825\"<\/p>\n

43_2<\/strong>
\nThursday evening we had the monthly wine tasting at the office:
\n\"DSF2035\"<\/p>\n

43_3<\/strong>
\nAs usual, I turned my camera on some of my colleagues, here Charo:
\n\"DSF2033\"<\/p>\n

43_4<\/strong>
\nMar\u00c3\u00ada del Mar:
\n\"DSF2034\"<\/p>\n

43_5<\/strong>
\nThe following day was the last Friday of October, so of course we had our usual monthly drink at the office. This time it was additionally a leaving do for Francisco (second from the left) who was moving to another department. The guy to Francisco’s right is our new trainee Said, originally from Morocco but he came to us from the College of Europe in Belgium:
\n\"DSF2036\"<\/p>\n

43_6<\/strong>
\nWe have a new crop of trainees now (our traineeships run for 1 year, from October to September). One of them, Olga from Poland, here explains a traditional Polish drink to another trainee:
\n\"DSF2041\"<\/p>\n

43_7<\/strong>
\nThree lovely ladies with whom I have the joy of working–Claire, Stephanie and Carolina:
\n\"DSF2045\"<\/p>\n

43_8<\/strong>
\nOn the morning of Halloween, I went to the centre to buy some meat for that evening’s BBQ. While walking, I passed these distressing stickers–along with Halloween, US-style fascism has also made its way across the Atlantic, apparently, mixing with our homegrown sort:
\n\"DSF2027\"<\/p>\n

43_9<\/strong>
\n\"DSF2026\"<\/p>\n

43_10<\/strong>
\nAt the Mercado Central, there were some newly installed statues at the entrance, rather striking and amusing:
\n\"DSF2054\"<\/p>\n

43_11<\/strong>
\n\"DSF2056\"<\/p>\n

43_12<\/strong>
\nI bought some beef from these two young butchers, who upon seeing the camera around my neck wanted a picture. I took a couple of portraits, and e-mailed them to the guys afterwards:
\n\"DSF2050\"<\/p>\n

43_13<\/strong>
\nDuring my bike ride after the shopping, evidence of Halloween was visible even in Aig\u00c3\u00bces:
\n\"1020827\"<\/p>\n

43_14<\/strong>
\nThen it was time for the party. My wife had invested quite a bit of effort into decorating the house:
\n\"DSF2076\"<\/p>\n

43_15<\/strong>
\n\"DSF2070\"<\/p>\n

43_16<\/strong>
\nWe set up the table outside, on our terrace:
\n\"DSF2069\"<\/p>\n

43_17<\/strong>
\nMonica got into the act too:
\n\"DSF2066\"<\/p>\n

43_18<\/strong>
\nThis is NOT the normal way to serve Iberian ham:
\n\"DSF2079\"<\/p>\n

43_19<\/strong>
\nThen our guests arrived:
\n\"DSF2081\"<\/p>\n

43_20<\/strong>
\n\"DSF2082\"<\/p>\n

43_21<\/strong>
\nAs always, the Argentine expert was put in charge of the grill:
\n\"DSF2090\"<\/p>\n

And then we sat down to eating and drinking, so no more photos.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The last week of October culminates in the silly Halloween “holiday”. I really disliked it when we lived in New Jersey (I associated it with annoying intrusions of kids looking for candy, plus a dose of vandalism), and it annoys me that in the past couple of decades it has become increasingly popular in continental […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":3513,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3792"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3792"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3793,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3792\/revisions\/3793"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}