Before I begin the reviews, I’d like to mention something. Personally, I don’t know anyone who uses a naked iPhone (I call that “going commando”). The fact that everyone uses a case of some kind is pretty good evidence that the sleek nice-for-the-eyes backing of the iPhone is actually not very practical. It’s just too slippery. It will slide out of your pocket or hands very easily, which is not something you want your high-end mobile phone to do. There are soft cases, leather cases, and hard plastic cases. Shortly after purchasing my iPhone, I, without much thought on the matter, purchased a Griffin Clarifi case, which has a built in close-up lens. I have been very happy with this product, even though the lens is sometimes hard to clean.

So that’s where I’m coming from when I began to test out Proporta’s products.

Antimicrobial Silicone Case with SteriTouch for the iPhone 3G

The silicone case with its paper insert next to my naked iPhone.

For no good reason, I decided to replace the anti-scratch film on my iPhone’s screen that had come with my Clarifi with the identical one included in the Antimicrobial Silicone Case. The case does what it promises.

• It makes the iPhone less slippery
• It prevents scratches from casual drops or bumps.

After a couple days of use, however, I began to get annoyed by two main problems.

1. The silicone backing becomes a magnet for pocket lint, which is hard to brush off of the case.
2. The case doesn’t fit quite snugly enough around the phone. Particularly down at the bottom where there is only a fine strip between the hole for the USB connector and the main button. When you press the button, the silicone case moves a little bit and generally gives the sensation that it’s going to fall off.

I suspect that these complains are true of all silicone soft cases, and that it is not a particular problem with this case from Proporta.

Ted Baker Leather iPhone 3G Case

Personally I have no idea who Ted Baker is, but when my wife saw it, she said, “Oooh! A Ted Baker case!”, so I guess handbag-aware women might be impressed. The quality of the case is very impressive. The leather screams elegance. And there’s something very appealing about the wrist motion to flip up the cover to use the iPhone.

My only complaint about the Ted Baker case is that it makes touching controls on the edges of the screen rather difficult, which is pretty important for doing anything with the onscreen keyboard. Several times during the week I used it, I found myself removing the iPhone from the case (which is very easy, by the way) to type an email before placing it back inside for protection and reading of email.

After a week of normal use, the snaps that seemed so pleasingly crisp when I first began using the case began to get stubborn to unsnap. And eventually one of them broke off. Remember that this is after only one week. Proporta assures me that all their products come with a lifetime warranty and that, due to the handmade nature of this particular product, defects sometimes occur.

The broken snap on my Ted Baker iPhone 3G case.

If leather cases were my thing, I would definitely buy and use this product. But I just don’t like the extra unsnapping and flipping motion every time I want to use my phone. However if you like leather cases and you want to look like an elegant executive when you use your iPhone, I highly recommend the Ted Baker iPhone 3G case from Proporta.

Handy Travel Bundle

The third item I chose to review was the Handy Travel Bundle, which consists of an Airline Headphone Adapter, which lets you listen to movies on an airplane without paying the 5€ ridiculous fee the airline offers you, a leather Passport Holder, and a Leather Memory Wallet. I have not yet been on an airplane, so I have not been able to test the audio adapter, but it looks just like my old one. The passport holder is quite nice and will come in very handy in displaying the picture page of my passport in the future. The memory wallet…well… You see, the memory wallet never actually arrived…

Shipping Confusion

First they sent me the entire Handy Travel Bundle except for the Memory Wallet. I wrote back that the whole shipment had arrived except for the one item, and my contact apologized and said she’d send the Memory Wallet immediately.

A week later, I had a package in the mail from Proporta, but rather than the Memory Wallet, they had sent me another Passport Holder. I reported this to my contact and she asked if I’d send it back to them. I told her that I wasn’t willing to pay postage out of my own wallet (not a memory wallet) for Proporta’s mistake, but that if she’d like to send a courier, I’d give it to them. She said I could keep the Passport Holder and that they’d send the Memory Wallet.

Shortly after this interaction, out of professional curiosity, I began examining the product ids listed for the products I’d ordered on their website and the ones listed on the invoice. The Passport Holder had the same product id as the Memory Wallet! That would make it pretty easy to mistake one for the other in their shipping database. I informed my contact of my discoveries and she passed my information on to the web developer. Managing databases full of products and the website that displays them and takes and organizes orders is what I do, so I understand that sometimes mistakes like this can happen (although I’d never ever have two products with the same id – that’s an extremely amateur mistake).

Another week goes by and I get another package in the mail, and what do I find inside? A Leather Wallet – Limited Edition (St. Patrick’s Day). Well blimey!

I emailed Proporta and told them that with their third strike, they’re out. I don’t really want a Leather Memory Wallet. I just chose the Travel Bundle because I needed the audio adapter and as a bundle, it seemed like more free stuff. Within a half hour I received a call from my contact apologizing again. She said that the Memory Wallet was out of stock and she had, without contacting me, chosen a similar product based on the upcoming holiday. At the very least some sort of “We didn’t have X, so we sent you Y. We hope you don’t mind.” note should have been included on the invoice.

The St. Patrick’s Day wallet is actually very nice, and of high quality. If I hadn’t just bought a new wallet this week, I might use it for a while. At least now I have a backup.

Conclusion

Proporta’s products are very nice. The level of quality and detail is very high. While some mistakes may be made and flaws found, they are very professional about it and, most important of all, actually stand by the motto “The customer is always right.” Not all companies do so, and Proporta deserves some respect.

However, none of their products really interest me, so I don’t think I’ll be using any of them in the long term except perhaps the passport holder. Really, Proporta, it’s not you, it’s me.

Time to put my Griffin Clarifi back on my iPhone….

I was repeating, “Hola. Hola. Hola. Hola. Hola. Hola…”

Rather than repeat after me, she made a big movement, pushing her body out of the water and letting it fall back, sending waves up over the edge of the tub.

“Not that kind of ola,” I said.

For, you see, the word for a wave in water is “ola“, which sounds just like the greeting with the silent H, “hola“.

The historical information I can find on the internet about the Monte Real Castle claims that Julius Caesar’s legions first noticed its strategic position in 60 AD. Surely news of his death in 44 BC could travel from Rome to western Iberia in less than 104 years, so I’m thinking maybe they weren’t really his legions anymore. Whatever castle was there was destroyed by an Arab dude in the tenth century and quickly rebuilt by Alfonso V of León.

The views were unbelievable! Must be seen large.

The view down to the harbor.

Cannons.

King of the castle.

Queen of the castle.

The king moonlights as a part-time sweater model.

King and queen at arms length.

Surveying the perimeter.

Turret gull had the best view.

Looking west towards the ocean. View large. The cross was really symmetrical, but got distorted in the panorama stitching.

Looking back down at the town of Baiona. View large.

One last glance towards the New World before heading back to town to continue celebrating The Pinta’s return.

In the first market we came to, they were selling books by the kilogram, 3.33 €/kg. Marga found this book of The Happy Hollisters, the children’s series that lead to her fascination with Denmark, which lead to her choosing Denmark as a country to take her Erasmus grant, which lead to her meeting me. Thank you, Andrew E. Svenson!

We got their fairly early in the morning (that’s 12:00 noon in Spain) and we were able to wander around unimpeded, but soon the narrow medieval streets begin to swell with crowds. Tens of thousands of visitors swarmed to the town with a population of 11,000.

The smell emanating from this crispy spinning swine was amazing. This is the “before” picture…if you catch my drift.

The newspaper said there were 130 different stalls selling either food or homemade crafts.

Sometimes the same toys that entertained children a millennium ago are still fun.

We arrived at the town hall square just in time for a bagpipe concert.

I love seeing young people adopting these traditional instruments and crafts.

This glass blower was truly amazing. I think it must have been my first glass blowing demonstration, because I was…er…blown away.

These were all made entirely of glass.

I wouldn’t put my finger in there.

This potter was very impressive too. His wheel was entirely manual, no foot pedals or gears or anything.

A souvenir wine jug. From MCDXCIII to MMX!

I always get a little rush of testosterone when I see the sword and dagger booth.

Octopus for lunch! But not yet…

A crepe maker. Crepier?

Lots and lots of chorizo.

On the grill.

If only I could embed smell onto a web page…

Sausages and ribs. I warned you, didn’t I?

This was our octopus lunch, with bowls of wine.

Some amazingly talented stilt walkers traveled the crowd with a band of drummers.

This was the funniest thing to me. Because everything was medieval, and all the plates and cups were earthenware, some people had the idea to wrap Coke cans and bottles of water in brown paper to make them blend in better. Talk about brown bagging!

And no medieval festival would be complete without a balloon animal folding Mickey Mouse.

Some sand creatures, made entirely out of sand. They were very lightweight. According to the woman selling them, they are entirely the invention of her husband who worked in a quarry. It’s not regular beach sand, you see, it’s fine pure sand chipped from rocks at the quarry that, when mixed with the right quantity of H₂O forms a malleable substance that can be pressed into molds and baked hard. Fascinating.

There’s no such thing as a medieval festival in Spain without the local falconer and his hawks and owls.

The puppet displays always creep me out. How do you get a kid to put down his Nintendo DS and play with one of these things?

There were many, many people dressed in medieval garb. Personally, I like that style of clothing a lot.

There was a replica of The Pinta in the harbor.

We paid a euro to go aboard. For your benefit. Seriously, click on an ad or something.

The Pinta had these Native American people in the hold along with the foreign products they called maize.

These musicians were playing in one corner of town.

I had never seen anything like this instrument. Simon, in the comments, has informed me that it is a hurdy gurdy, also known as a wheel fiddle.

By the end of the day, the streets were packed!

Remember that entire pig from before? This is what was left of it a few hours later.

We visited a torture exhibit that gives more than enough meaning to Marcellus Wallace’s catchphrase. This was a spiked sarcophagus in which people were placed to slowly bleed to death, screaming over the course of four or five days. This was one of the kinder tools on display. Most of the crimes being punished had to do with not being a Catholic heterosexual male. I’m still trying to forget what I saw there. It was kind of a downer at the end of our day, kind of like it is at the end of this post.

If you view large, here you’ll see people lined up along the edge of the water to watch a jousting competition (they rooted for the white knight and booed the black knight) on the beach at the end of the harbor. And just beyond the beach you’ll see the Monte Real Castle, which we went up to visit.

Looking down at the neon “Hotel **” sign from our room.

This nice church was across the street from our hotel.

That evening, we went out for a few beers. Marga chose the first place, and, along with our beers, they gave us a big bowl of potato chips and a plate of little breads with meat and cheese toppings. All free, mind you.

All we ordered and paid for were the two beers.

At the next bar we visited, they gave us a bowl of lentil soup. And then, after we finished the soup and the waiter took our bowls away, another waitress came and gave us some more, thinking that we hadn’t had any yet. When we looked surprised, she realized her error and let us keep the extra bowls anyway. Legume score!

Beer and lentils!

Afterwards, we found an Italian pizzeria and took a seat. I needed a restroom, so I asked the waiter, “Los baños?” To which he responded, “I don’t know, I’ve never used one.” To my confused expression, he said, in English, “Up the stairs and to the left,” and then repeated it in Spanish in case he’d misguessed my identity. Throughout the meal, we watched him joke jovially with all his customers. His sense of humor was superb. Poking fun, but careful not to offend. When later he asked if I’d found the restroom okay, I told him, “No, so I just peed in a corner.” That sort of response was all he needed to open the humor valve with us. When he asked us a yes/no question, we responded, “Oui oui,” and he immediately switched to fluent French. We said “Danke!“, and he switched to fluent German. Turns out the guy is a polyglot with at least eight or nine fluent languages who claims to only know them from traveling. And somehow he’s a waiter (owner?) of a pizzeria in Vigo. Crazy!

Marga thought this “faceplant” sculpture could use some cheering up.

We stopped in this children’s book store to look for books for Nora, but many of them were in gallego, the Galician language. This one caught my eye. I didn’t learn the word antipodes until I was 25!

During our walk on Friday evening, we stopped by the tourism office, but it was closed. We did see, however, a poster advertising the 517th annual Festa da Arribada in the nearby town of Baiona. After consulting a friend from Vigo on Saturday morning, we decided to go see the 517th Festa da Arribada.

Exhausted from walking all day on Saturday, we found a nearby restaurant where we could have a mariscada, a platter of local shellfish. In general, I find shellfish annoying because it feels like you’re burning more calories to get at the dang meat than the meat is providing you. And one of the (dead and cooked) crab’s natural defenses actually drew blood from my thumb. I ate him anyway.

Our seafood platter.

On our way back east on Sunday we picked a random town at lunch time and decided to stop to eat. I did some iPhone magic to investigate restaurants, the town’s population, and info on history of the nearby castle while we were still 30 km away. We ended up in Podunkville, Galicia, in a town called Verín. They say you can see Portugal from the hilltop castle. The restaurant that Google lead me to was non-existent, but we asked a local pastry shop girl, and she directed us to an amazing little restaurant hidden in a dark corner of town. We took the opportunity to have one last pulpo a la gallega, the traditional Galician octopus dish, and some fantastic lamb chops.

Pulpo a la gallega is boiled octopus sprinkled with olive oil and paprika.

Tummies full, we headed the rest of the way back home, where our little Nora was waiting for us with her grandparents.

All of his videocasts are excellent! Several have illuminated me on common mispronunciations that are ridiculous. The one I most remember is how Spaniards have trouble properly pronouncing “I scream”, but have no trouble pronouncing “ice cream”. I highly recommend them all to anyone who speaks English to Spaniards, and especially to Spaniards trying to speak English.

I appear, with my astro story, exactly at 5:00. Of course, because I rarely see myself on video, I think I look totally goofy. If you listen carefully, you can hear Nora screaming in the background.

Rumor has it that part of my interview will be appearing in the next videocast. It’s going to be hard, but you’ll just have to be patient.

At night fall we got a call from Marga at home telling us to rush home because the wind was picking up and sometimes in storms like this shingles (big terracotta Spanish shingles!) can come loose and crash to the ground, easily crushing any skulls below. Just as I hung up with her, a huge gust came that almost blew Nora’s stroller over. We ran home immediately leaning into the wind.

The temperature, which had been between 15º and 19º C all day rose sharply at dusk to 23° C. Whatever it was, it was coming…

Once home, Marga and I were looking out the window at plastic bags flying about violently up at our level of the sixth floor. Then, all of a sudden, a big thud, and then a big piece of something slammed into the angled window that I was staring out, scaring me half to death, before tumbling over the edge of the building.

It fell right where Nora and I had been a few minutes earlier. It seems like it miraculously fell between two vehicles.

We raced upstairs (our apartment has two floors) to see where the piece broke off. And there we saw only one twirly vent thing where there used to be two.

Where the piece broke off.

Our building is particularly noisy in windy conditions, so we expect to spend the night huddled in bed hoping the rest of the building doesn’t break apart. A hurricane in February!

Pharmacist: “How may I help you?”

Me [handing over prescription slip]: “Here.”

Pharmacist: “One moment.”

Pharmacist [returning with bottle]: “Okay, that’ll be seventy-two…”

Me [thinking with my American brain]: “What?? 72€ is awfully expensive for cough medicine!”

Pharmacist: “…cents.”

Socialized medicine really is brutal.

Don’t fall out!

After the grown-ups ate a meal of delicious hamburgers (you were napping, sorry), you got to play hooky from daycare and lounge around the house with your aunt, grandmother, and great-grandfather before having a big plate of fruit puree and going for a walk to meet up with your mother.

The fact that you look fabulous in your aunt’s scarf surprised no one.

It took you about a half hour to reacquaint yourself with your great-grandfather, much to his chagrin.

Your aunt is very fond of you.

Eventually you all came home in time for your evening cookie.

Mmm! Cookie!

Then a bath, some papilla (a sloppy milk and cereal mix), and off to bed. We decided that it was long past time to start a rigid bedtime ritual, so your mother read you The Going To Bed Book before putting you down. You didn’t complain one bit…

…until thirty minutes later…and thirty minutes after that…and a half hour after that…and again…and again… The abnormality of your day must have made you restless.

And all of a sudden, here we are on the final stretch of your first solar lap. When we make it to the starting line again, that will be worth celebrating!

Reading a book.

A half-smile.

Wispy hair. Like her dad’s.

Standing tall. She can hold a standing (well, leaning) position for almost a minute before her knees buckle.

“Enough photos already! Let’s go for a walk!”

So we did.