TV Canarias

Walk toward me and look into the camera

The other day I was chosen to participate in an upcoming series of programs produced by the local station, TV Canarias, which will be presenting  sketches of foreigners who have taken up residence in the Canary Islands.  The program will be titled something like "Canarias Mi Mundo"....(Canaries My World) and it will show a series of interviews and commentaries from people from many countries of the world who have decided to make Canary Islands their  home.

I understand that I was chosen on the basis of my Tenerife and photography tutorial blogs in which they were interested, as well as my being the first Canadian they had found so far.

Once I was hooked up to the microphone and transmitter gear we began the day filming at the local German bakery where I go to buy bread. After that, a walk along the seawall overlooking the Martianez Beach, showing where I take some of my daily weather reporting photos for a local forum.  

 The Bakery

 The Sea Wall

 Unfortunately sunglasses were not allowed and it was a day of brilliant sunshine.  So instead of looking mildly mysterious behind my black shades, I will look like a blind chicken, squinting heavily at the camera, eyes watering and red.  

Oh dear! Did I really want to do this?

Then we moved on to my Pilates class where Javier, the cameraman, zoomed with the camera up and down my prostate form as I was sweating and straining on the recliner, pushing with my feet and sometimes with legs in the air!  I had forgotten my socks and so had bare feet, but hadn't expected closeups.  Darn!  I really needed a pedicure but now my bony toes will be exposed to the world!

The following photo is not of me!  It's my instructor Maria who is a first class teacher of Pilates:

Maria on the reformer

After an hour of filming Pilates we went up to the cafeteria at the tennis club where I had invited some of my classmates to a cool drink and a chat while we rested.  Cameraman Javier kept filming as we found our table and ordered our drinks.

The Tennis Club Restaurant/Bar/Cafeteria

In the conversation Maria mentioned that the photos I had taken at the club's recent Sunday champagne brunch had been made up into a large poster, advertising this new weekly event.  I hadn't yet seen the poster so was surprised and pleased to see it done.  The cameraman caught it all as Maria went into the office and brought out the poster for us to see.  

After that we went to my home where there was a lot more to be seen and filmed but I'll continue with the story in the next entry.

In the late afternoon we visited La Casa de Los Balcones, a historic Canary House,  so here is a preview of what we saw, with Mari who is giving us a demonstration us how to make the drawn linen needlework, typical of Tenerife. I'll show a lot more in the post that's coming.

I hope you've enjoyed your visit.  Thanks for dropping by and hope to see you soon again.

¡Hasta la Vista!

48 ~ Pilates

Click photos to enlarge

I've been doing machine Pilates in a twice-weekly class now for over a year. Pilates is a physical fitness system developed by Joseph Pilates in Germany in the early part of the 20th century. It's a pleasant way to exercise and I feel that I'm using muscles that otherwise might have lain dormant ...well not exactly dormant ....but perhaps better to say....not used in that way very often! We use reformers, which is a euphemistic word for a rather comfortable lie-down-on moving bed type of apparatus which has springs and pulleys which can be attached to hands and feet with adjustable force, by which we should come out 'reformed'.

Although they may appear to be instruments of medieval torture....(they really do look a bit frightening)... once one has learned how to lie down on them and push feet against the bar, or suspend hands or feet in the air in slings, one finds them to be a cleverly designed apparatus enabling one to work specific sets of muscles while resting body weight on the bed.



I honestly cannot say that I have been transformed into a lean and athletic body shape yet. As a matter of fact I'm still rather roundy in many parts, and probably will remain so forever but I do feel that I'm getting a good maintenance routine that has served to move just about every body part, keeping the joints supple and 'oiled up' so they don't get stiff and creaky!

Chair exerciser

Maria and Remedios help a classmate

It helps immensely to have a well trained monitor and I'm lucky to have one in Maria, who keeps a practiced eye open for any signs of pain or fatigue in her charges. And I swear she has eyes in the back of her head, enabling her to spot the slightest difficulty in someone on the other side of the room.

Remedios demonstrates a pull

Remedios is another expert trainer who joins in to monitor our class when we have more than a handful of students. (Is that the right word.....are we students?....Perhaps better to say we're class members.)

I was surprised to see that our Pilates machines are made in Canada, and after looking it up I find Stott Pilates is Canadian based, so I'm keeping in touch with my home country in a certain way!

Our club mascot 'Gata' is resting after a hard workout!