New car!

Not really a new car of course. Hahaha, fooled you there, didn't I? But it feels that way a bit, because it now has a new Spanish white license plate. A white license plate feels a bit German to me still, but that is my problem.

A Spanish license plate is compulsory, you cannot drive a foreign car as a resident. Well, some British people can, but they can be heavily fined for that.

When you emigrate you can bring your car, and not pay import tax etc. But, in practise that does not work, as you need to matriculate your car within 30 days after arrival in Spain. But, you can only do that when you are a resident, which takes about two months. Perhaps I should write a letter of complaint? "Dear señors, with abhorrance..."

Insurance should be cheaper her than in The Netherlands. It isn't. And the insurance people are chaotic. Before you have your car in their computer with the proper type... In NL the premium was about €150, with 18 years no claim, and thus 75% reduction. Here its €355. Alright, gas is cheaper.

Though I now have to pay road tax again, about 100€ per year, to the local council. Here you can be exempted from road tax too for old cars, if your city council allows that. I'll tell you next year, this year I simply had to pay.

License plates are just stuck on to ones car with two-sided tape! No bolts and nuts with special anti-theft... Although my license plates are from 2000 (AD), and it wasn't easy to remove them, actually.

Gresites 5 - grmbl

It seems the gresites-mixer does not work well for low percentages. Look here, instead of the 1% luminescent tiles I used 1% red, but all we see: 0 red gresites.

Only when we select 2% we start to see red tiles, but far too few. The small grid is 12x12 = 144, so it would have to have ca. 2.4 red tiles. It is only one, always.

The big grid is 60x60 = 3600 gresites, so 1% of those is 36 red gresites, 2% is 72. Selecting 2% only shows exactly 25 red gresites instead of 72. Selecting 1% shows 0 red gresites instead of 36.

Must be an error, as it is repeatable and always wrong. As long as actual production yields correct counts we're fine, but if they use the same software as online it'll be wrong.

The luminescent gresites are greenish, therefore we haven't noticed that they are not visible in the examples.

Gresitus architectus 5

gresitus
noun | gre-si-tus | \grəh-'səe-tüs ahr-ki-tekt-us\

an acute, highly contagious condition concerning anxiety regarding the colours of your pool, aggravated by an architect irritation

The gresites have been ordered, but there is a slight problem holding up construction and digging: the license is not yet available. The architect says the council is slow, because the technical person is there only one day a week, but we think it's the architect himself who tries to pass on his responsibility to the council. Grmbll. A month time to arrange this must be sufficient, if you.. For us it's not so bad, we have time, but for the builder it's worse. He has to hire people, make a planning, etc. Only plus is that if Vidrepur is slow delivering the gresites, that is not a problem.

The architect now worries that if you just start work people will call the police because you are building illegally. This week it's Semana Santa, so many tourists and people having time off, so they might see this activity. Now they will start coming Monday, and cover the work with a blue plastic in the evening.

By the way, the gresites mix shown has been ordered: green, black, yellow and... luminescent!