Merry Christmas one and all!
I was planning on a different post without Xmas on my mind. A dear friend of mine Ken, wrote to me and I thought I would share my reply to him with all of you.



Remember always there are people in the world that love you and people in the world that need your love too. Some of them you already know, some you have lost contact with but still think about and they think about you, some you have yet to meet. As someone that believes in these things I know that you will realize that friendship and love ignore distance and time and that those whom you think of are always with you.

Xmas is important because it is a period of hope. A million years ago our ancestors shivered in the cold and knew without knowing; that the days had started to get longer; that although the worst may be yet to come, that it was the beginning of the end for winter and spring would follow with all the bounty that it brings. Xmas by another name was celebrated before Christianity and it will be celebrated after Christianity is forgotten, because of the seasons and the reason why they exist, it is a connection we share with the planet we live on and the path it follows through space. So for all the commercialization and hollow felicitations, there is still in all of us, that little golden thread of hope connecting us to the earth and to the people that we share it with, so with that thought present I would like to wish you, my dear friend, a very Happy Christmas.

Here comes the sun.....
Tomorrow I am renouncing the heinous frozen wastelands of Canada to spend Xmas and the New Year in Costa Rica. Those of you whom are regular air travelers will know that the reduced cabin pressure in a plane leads to expansion of abdominal gases which may lead to some discomfort. This will be especially true for the people sharing my flight tomorrow, as I am just about to tuck into a giant pot of of extra spicy Vesuvius flavour noodles. It's these little pleasures that make it all worthwhile.

I have been driving around here in a vanilla and snow white Chrysler 300C which makes me feel like a pimp or a rap star, or perhaps a poorly dressed wedding chauffeur. It is an ocean liner of a car, I'm actually quite sad to have taken it back to the rental agency. My marvelous yet thrifty boss would prefer me to be driving around in a rent-a-wreck special that had previously been rejected by a junk yard for lowering the tone of the lot. I told him I needed a Bentley, so I think we have met half way on this one. Besides, when you are driving on snow as I have had to do in the last week it just feels a little more secure if you are in the automotive equivalent of the Queen Mary.

The ladies of my office in Toronto have been forewarned of my departure and they know that they only need mourn my absence until the New Year, when they may recommence humouring my mock ego.

I picked up some green cardamom pods for my friend Olga, so hopefully she'll make me some baklava, pastries are a weakness of mine. I can't make them, but like eating them. In theory I am cooking Xmas dinner for some amigos, as Marie will be spending it with her family and I didn't get an invite, even before the recent events that seem to have drawn us further apart. Still, the lucky buggers have an excellent meal in front of them. This is almost a routine started off by my friend Nicky, who for a while was collecting dinner guests that were happy to cook for all on arrival. I believe I still have the Guest Chef high score but there is no use resting on your laurels. It is worth noting that as a bloke I am allowed to do junk food every so often, but even so, if I am just on my own, I'll still cook something serious once per week.

I have decided I want to make babies. I have practiced making them so much that I should do an excellent job when the opportunity arises. This is not a recent revelation, I have just been getting broody recently.

Many of my colleagues in the office in Toronto are Rumanian and prior to working with them, I knew nothing of their homeland. Now, I know almost nothing. What I do know is that it is made up of three countries that joined together in 1600: Transylvania; Wallachia; Moldavia. It is very poor and Vlad the Impaler AKA Count Dracula was born there of a Wallachian family.
I believe that Transylvania needs to achieve independence from the rest of Rumania for the sake of economic regeneration and to reverse the tide of emigration that is denuding the country of the educated middle classes. The passport alone would make it worth moving to.

Transylvanian dentists would be sought the world over, cape and hair oil manufacturers would have to double production just to keep the souvenir shops in stock. That part of the region at least would be back on its way to some of the wealth enjoyed by some of the other post war countries of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire.

My plans to learn Italian by watching all four series of the Sopranos on DVD back to back seem to have faltered. I am falling slowly in lust with the simple, caring approach of the mature, experienced and beautiful Carmela. I am struck evermore with the innocent sophistication and stunning looks of Meadow. Yet I feel that the intelligence and the irresistible simmering sensuality of the gorgeous Dr. Jennifer Melfi will win my heart in the end. However, I know that even thinking about taking one of these babes for my next goomah is gonna get me clipped so I'm gonna go on the lamb.

I think I need to get out more.

Odds and Ends
I am reading an excellent book at the moment called "Tuesdays with Morrie". It is wonderfully life affirming and has affected me somewhat. It recounts the final conversations between an old dieing man and an ex-pupil. I think reading this book has changed me or at least brought to the fore some of those thoughts that have been hanging around for a while. The things that have hit me the most are; the lingering reminders that it has given me to really pay attention to those around me because my time and thoughts are the most precious things I have and not giving them is not caring; to actively show the people I love that I do because one day I'll be out of time; to care a lot more about even those I don't know, because really under the skin, we are all so very similar.

I have done all my Christmas shopping this year over the internet. Except the presents for Marie back in Costa Rica, who has lost her mobile phone and quite possibly her interest as she never calls and is never in to answer mine. The geographical and emotional distance make me feel quite alone up here and single yet somehow bound.

Two weeks back or so I was in Bar Volo on Yonge Street with three developers I have up here from Central America. The waitress was extremely surly, she stated that she could not bring me another glass of wine and a pint of beer at the same time (I was thirsty OK!) together with the rest of the round as it was against the law. Apparently because you can't serve someone two drinks simultaneously and also apparently rubbish from those I have spoken with. I asked her to come back and say it again wearing a police woman's uniform. She was not impressed and launched into a loud and lengthy monologue on her distress and umbrage in the packed restaurant. So I said, "That's fine but can you come back and say that again wearing a police woman's uniform?" The food was pleasant. When it was time for the desert she described the special, "it's made of sponge, it's a chocolate hollow filled with mousse and cream". I said "I'd like to eat your chocolate hollow". She launched into a loud fit of magnanimous trite hubris that seemed to designed to create embarrassment in a crowded restaurant. When she finished I said, "That's fine, but I'd still like to eat your chocolate hollow". She returned with the bill rather than the desert so I wrote ZERO in the tips section and booked my table for ten the following week somewhere else.

It has been snowing here quite a bit recently and the thirty minute drive back to the apartment took two hours yesterday. The snow blanket is very inconvenient but so very beautiful. I think I'm getting used to the cold. I left the office for a cigarette with a colleague on Wednesday, I didn't bother putting my coat on and remarked that it was a quite a nice day as the sun was out and it was only -10C. Roll on January, the winter and the cold weather.

Back in the frozen wastelands of the North...
About two and a half weeks ago I left Canada via the tortuous freeway system of Toronto in the rental car to get to the airport and thence to Costa Rica. The signage on the freeways in Toronto is designed to comfort the nuerotics that already know their route perfectly. For anyone that does not they are useless. The freeway splits and only after you are on the new route are you rewarded with a sign that tells you that you made the right or wrong decision. Signage for minor roads is designed so that you have to swerve across five lanes of heavily trafficked highway within a hundred meters, at 120kph or be forced to drive on safely, missing your exit, to the reach the following one and drive around aimlessly for an extra hour. Did Ontario employ Spanish road designers?



Prior to leaving I went downtown and happened upon the Toronto Santa Claus Parade, it takes about two hours to see the whole thing and takes place over a 6km route. This was the 101st year, which apparently makes it the oldest running Xmas parade in the world. Along the whole route there are children playing and families under blankets sitting on camp chairs and some of the floats are truly impressive.

I went to the Toronto Motorcycle Show today where I became convinced that life would not be complete unless I owned a new KTM 950 Adventure in Costa Rica. I'm not normally drawn to this type of bike, but as I live on unmade roads halfway up a mountain and work in a city paved like the Himalayas, they are just practical. I got depressed later in the day after finding out that Costa Rican Import Duty is 100%. Which turns a bike that in the US costs $13,900 into the price of a small farm three hours drive from San Jose. This I am sure means that the people that rent them out and organise motorcycle tours on them are bribing the customs officers.

The wages of sin....
Last week I was robbed. A very polite lady working at a cash register in a shop called LCBO beat the crap out of my debit card and all because I wanted a bottle of wine or so. LCBO, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario is the only place in Ontario that sells wine and spirits to take home. The shops are very impressive, often being in large old municipal buildings and in prime locations, and so they might be, the prices are extortionate. In Spain, where I lived for three and a half years, you could by a bodega for the price of a good bottle of plonk in Canada.
Officially my job is based in Costa Rica, but due to my project I am spending most of my time in Toronto and I'm thinking of asking my boss for a booze supplement to my wages. The only saving grace for Toronto booze-wise is that it is home of the Granite Brewery that make some very fine real ales. So it may be freezing cold (actually a lot below freezing) over the winter but at least I can get a warm beer! So the wages of sin might not be death but it costs a bloody lot to support ones vices.
On the subject of sinning, I was christened much against my wishes into the Church of England. I voiced my opinion loud and strong, but as I couldn't form words at that age, no-one paid much head to my objections. I don't remember rightly, but I feel sure that the young and very rebellious me may have tried to urinate in the font as an act of protest.
Growing up in the South of England where religion is something you do at births, deaths and marriages and only for the sake of tradition, unless you are a complete nutcase, I never really understood the whole my branch of Christianity is better than your branch of Christianity thing. I still don't and as an agnostic, I probably never will. For those that are unsure of what an agnostic is, it is probably best described as a sort of spineless, chicken shit, indecisive, sit-on-the-fence atheist. I may admit to a supreme being, but I'm not going to describe it's nature. However, I am thinking of becoming a Catholic, not because I have any new found religious inclination. I just like the idea of confession. Don't get me wrong, it's not a recently developed affectation for religions that have free weekly psychoanalysis sessions, I just like the idea of an attentive ear to listen the edited highlights of my colourful life......

Forgive me Father for I have sinned, it has been 39 years since my last confession, or it would have been if I'd had a priest present at my birth. (I exaggerate my age here for gravitas and although I was really born in 1966, I am still only twenty nine and a bit). For research purposes I have just cross referenced the seven deadly sins, with the ten commandments and any connection between them, is at best tenuous, in fact depending upon interpretation, the ten commandments are actually sinful!

For those of you that don't remember or wish to become experts, here they are:

The Seven Deadly:

1. Pride
2. Envy
3. Gluttony
4. Lust
5. Anger
6. Greed
7. Sloth

The Ten Commandments:

1. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." Exemplifying Greed (for adulation), Pride (in the position), Lust (for power) and all the others with the sole exception of Sloth, God seems to be a bit of a sinner here and not a right-on role model.
2. "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. And showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments." Pride, Envy and Anger for sure, the others following with Sloth taking up last place, much as you would expect I suppose.
3. "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain." Getting repetitive here isn't it? Pride in at number one, the others following. Sloth as yet hasn't smelled the coffee. But the case for the prosecution remains sound, God is guilty of a lot of this sinful stuff.
4. "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it." Finally, at last, Sloth wakes up and tells the others to give it a break, the others sins being too bone idle to wake up on Sunday (or err... is it Saturday if you are Jewish?). God condoning Sloth however is a bit of a worry. This however is a commandment I can get behind, If only this could have been a Friday through Monday long weekend type commandment.
5. "Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." Nice he's stopped talking about himself for a bit (or herself). Definitely a veiled threat here though, Anger is in there for sure. Greed in there as a distant second place as well in the hope of a bit of getting the farm. The demand for adulation though is a bit sickening.
6. "Thou shalt not kill." At last a moral commandment! However, this has been countered by justifications for capital punishment in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. As you can see, God love a bit of killin'. Have a bit of a look if you can be bothered, here and even more so, here. As you can see, there's nothing like a little homicide to keep the creator happy. Unfortunately hypocrisy isn't listed as a sin so he/she gets away on a technicality! This small stuff aside, check out God's opinion on the Midianites. Bastard!
7. "Thou shalt not commit adultery." I didn't even realise that was a sin until researching this article, I just thought some people got lucky! Anyway, in terms of sinfulness, this is a tricky one, if you aren't collecting notches on the bedpost which rules out Greed, the question is really dependent on whether Lust is involved. If it is a love thing with a woman that is not your wife then Lust is out, so this might be a pure act and technically not sinful.
8. "Thou shalt not steal." Well I'm cool with this, but check out the Old Testament. God is telling his chosen ones that there is no better way to spend the weekend, than bloodily rushing the the opposition. See the big Midianite land grab.
9. "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour." A commandment that is not a self (God) centred demand for worship can never be a completely bad thing, this one is probably the only one that the big 'G' can keep to, so not a bad one to remember. Because of it's importance I shall paraphrase it "Don't Lie!".
10. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's." Condemnation of jealousy for the common mortal here, a great thing, if only it wasn't one of those one rules for God one for everyone else type things...... see the earlier commandments. For the record I have never coveted nor covered my neighbour's ass, nor his manservant's. His maidservant's and wife's are another matter completely.

So , in short, after a little self analysis, I have discovered that I am right up there with God in terms of sin level although he(she) tends to go for the sins of the ego; anger, pride etc while I am more into coveting my neighbour's wife's ass.

It's a funny old thing this religious lark, you can bust most of the ten commandments without being a sinner and be a resolute follower of the ten commandments and a sinner of the worst sort.

But going back to this confession business ......

"Forgive me Father for I have sinned, it has been 39 years since my last confession, I have committed adultery am guilty of lust, constantly, I have had sex outside marriage with over xxxxxx women. Gluttony and Sloth I am an expert at! I am good at Pride and I envy anyone that has any of the following: a latina girlfriend/wife even though I have one already; nice kids; an Aston Martin; that is a better cook than me (this doesn't happen often); has a beer in front of them; has more beer in their glass than I do. I am also guilty of unnatural acts with any number of hot babes (isn't oral sex in contravention of some rule or other under Catholicism) err blasphemy and many other terrible things. And that was just last week..."

a little later......

"Forgive me Father for I have sinned, It has been 5 minutes since my last confession, but I just like talking about this stuff......"

Language
I have always been fascinated by languages, the way they travel across the world evolving, morphing and adapting to their new environments, merging with new languages, sometimes dieing. They leave audible tracks of the migrations of people, tell us where individuals are from, their education, upbringing and attitudes. They are living history. Some are relatively pure and untouched where the native speakers have been isolated, some like English are a mix of many others displaying many roots.

Traveling through Europe you start to notice that the languages we think of as national are really just the dominant languages imposed by the victors of earlier wars. The language that most people call Spanish is actually Castillian. There are five major languages in the geographical area known as Spain, the others are Catalan, Galician, Asturian and Basque, each of which has dialects. Italy has among others, Italian (Tuscan), Sardinian, Sicilian, Ligurian, Neapolitan, Lombard, Piedmontese, Emiliano-Romagnolo.
The Breton of France speak a language that is most closely related to Cornish and Welsh. Cornish although it has been revived, is to all intents and purposes extinct, with only about 400 people speaking it fluently. Breton shares about 80% of words with Cornish and about 70% with Welsh.

We have the soldiers of the Roman Empire to thank for the commonality of the European languages, speaking Vulgar Latin and changing forever the linguistic history of everywhere they conquered. Many of the similarities are still there today.

The Spanish word for address is dirección. I thought nothing of this when I started to learn the language. Then I arrived in Costa Rica, where outside the centre of major cities there are no street names, house numbers or post codes (zip numbers). Here are some examples of addresses in San Jose (in English): 700m South and 100m North of supermarket Saretto, Escazu; Apartment 3, 200M below Rancho Macho, Santa Ana.
Addresses really are directions which is why the Spanish word for address and the word for direction is the same. There are still addresses in San Jose given as directions from El Higueron, a famous fig tree which has long since gone. So as you can imagine newcomers to the area might find things a little confusing.
The last time I left Toronto for San Jose, my colleague from Costa Rica, Ricardo was mostinsistentt that I wrote down the address of the office here so he could find it on his own or get there by Taxi. I said "look Ricardo, it's easy, its number XXXX Jane Street." Ricardo told me that Canadian addresses were confusing for him because they didn't tell you where the trees were or the closest ranch or river or anything.
I think he was worried that without landmarks the taxi drivers would never find the place. Having experienced Toronto Taxi drivers I quite agree with him and can see the advantages of the Costa Rican address style.

Spanish is a very confusing language for the English speaking native, there are fourteen tenses, a different verb form for each person, masculine and feminine nouns, some of which change gender between singular and plural e.g. el agua, las aguas . In fact there aren't really many Spanish that fully understand Spanish grammar. It has has to be difficult really, Vulgar Latin mixed with Arabic, what a combination! The history of Moorish occupation is still betrayed by the language in pronunciation and some of the words. The Spanish exclamation Ojalá (Portuguese Oxalá) meaning 'I wish' or 'I hope' is derived from "law šá lláh" or as Muslims today say Insha'Allah meaning "If Allah wills it".

Much like the application of all rules and regulations in Latin countries, the language rules are also mostly guidelines and you can never really rely on any to be solid. Most nouns ending in an 'e' or an 'o' are masculine, most nouns ending in an 'a' are feminine. Sometimes the ending indicates the gender e.g. el chico - 'the boy', la chica - 'the girl', el gato - 'the tom cat', la gata - 'the she cat'. But this doesn't always hold true.

A friend of mine, Nuala rides horses, the Spanish word for horse is caballo. Nuala was at the stables and was going to take a mare out for a ride. She didn't say Voy a montar mi caballo, 'I am going to ride my horse' because it was a mare and thinking it might be better she applied the language rule swapped the 'o' for an 'a' and announced to peels of laughter from those present Voy a montar mi caballa which means 'I am going to ride my mackerel'.

Someone else I know went in to a butchers when they first arrived in Spain. It was full of happy Spanish women out doing their morning shopping. He wanted to buy a chicken. The Spanish word for chicken is pollo. So he waited for is turn and announced to the lady working behind the counter Quiero una polla grande! the women in the shop started laughing and the woman working behind the counter asked Que grande? or 'How large?' He hadn't realised that the slip of the tongue which is the difference between pollo and polla made the difference between asking for a large chicken and stating that he would like a big penis.

On another note, my cousin Mark lives on the Welsh island Anglesey home to the town with the longest Railway Station name and possibly URL in Britain: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch which is Welsh for 'St Mary's church in the hollow of the white hazel near a rapid whirlpool and the church of St Tysilio of the red cave'. This name is of course so long that it is surprising that the Germans have not reappropriated it for themselves.

The Germans are well known for the mercilessness of their almost limitless compound nouns, the longest official ones being: Rinderkennzeichnungs- und Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz which means Law on delegation of supervision duties for marking of cattle and labeling of beef and Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft which means the association for subordinate officials of the head office management of the Danube steamboat electrical services.

Bastards!

English is constantly evolving and unlike the French or the wannabe French Québécoise , the English seem happy with the adoption of new words such as punani (which is a fantastic word) from immigrant populations and the evolution of the meaning of existing words.


Booyakasha!

Punani is the name of a village in Sri Lanka (as well).

Radio 4
When Today Programme presenter Brian Redhead's death was announced on January 23rd 1994 it was, although unannounced as such, a day of national mourning for the British middle classes. The media were full of tributes and people I knew told me that his death hit them personally. Although I listened to Radio 4 at this time and had heard Today now and again, it wasn't really a part of my life. Brian's death prompted me to tune in, perhaps for no other reason than to catch the zeitgeist. I have now been listening more or less every day for the last eleven years. The Today Programme is my cerebral caffeine, without it I'm not sure I mentally wake up. Every couple of years I go on vacation and am without it for a fortnight. Much more than this and I feel that my connection with what is happening in the world will fade and I will dumb down. So the Today programme is now as much a part of my daily regime, as it is of my father's, Margaret Thatcher's and millions of other Britons.

The British nuclear deterrent (nucular for US Republicans), the Royal Navy's Trident equipped Vanguard submarines that quietly cruise the depths of the North Atlantic have a series tests to perform should they lose contact with their command structure that would indicate that the UK has suffered from a devastating nuclear attack and that it is time to open the sealed envelope. It has been reported on numerous occasions that one of these tests is the absence of the Today Programme for 3 consecutive days. So I guess I'm not the only one that feels a bit out of sorts if I haven't heard it for a while.

When I first moved to Gibraltar and then Andalucia, I listened to Today via the British Forces Broadcasting Service on BFBS2 transmitted from the Rock. Somewhat later I started listening via the internet as good reception was guaranteed. Then I discovered the absolutely marvelous Listen Again service, through which I can keep listening to some of the other Radio 4 institutions I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, Any Questions and so many others. Comedies, plays, short stories and programs that have kept me company since I first started listening to Radio 4 at 12 years old. Whoever championed the implementation of this fantastic feature on what is an already brilliant internet portal needs to be, knighted, canonised, awarded a Nobel prize and given a small island, Guernsey perhaps, in recognition of his services to mankind.

No-one who has ever heard one of his broadcasts could forget the quiet measured tones and comforting wisdom of Alistair Cooke and for me as I suspect for many others, he became the wise grandfather I always regret not spending enough time with.

So via the magic of the Listen Again feature and the Today programme, wherever I am in the world, I always wake up in Britain.

Never a truer word was spoken than in 2003 when Today Programme presenter John Humphrys received a lifetime achievement award together with a national radio station award for Radio 4 and said in his acceptance speech....

"Radio 4 is the civilising influence in this country - I think it is the most important institution that we have"

Moving Pictures.....
Films and Television are becoming the way we define ourselves. A common international point of reference. People will often describe colleagues as looking like a character from a movie or TV, she looks like Julia Roberts in Erin Brockavich, he looks like Gene Hackman in the French Connection. We describe items, posessions, people and experiences as being like those seen in a film.
Harmless datums and comparators mostly, simply serving as descriptors we all understand. But it is going too far. People on the street view themselves in comparison with the unattainable standards set by airbrushed stars, believing that if only they could harness the same trappings of wealth or the same digitally corrected beauty that they would be happy. The narcissists in the gym that believe that inner happiness and contentment can be achieved by re-sculpting their torsos so they might emulate the youthful Schwarzenegger; the girls that believe they are fat grotesques because they do not share the Gwyneth Paltrow wispy figure; the black guys that find self definition in their pimped rap star Mercedes and the lonely Joe on the street that thinks that if he had the Ferrari and the Hollywood bank account, he would find love and contentment. Television and movies gear us to relate to superficialities and material wealth, encouraging us to compare ourselves with the bland characters of the big and small screen and the actors that play them. Shallow is now an aspirational character asset with men anxious to be judgmental and tough instead of compassionate and fair. The ideal woman has been reduced to a wisecracking sex kitten right into her sixties, rather than your mum or your grandmother. Anyone failing to meet these standards is seen as too fat, too skinny, too pale, too poor or without that movie quality.

Enough is enough. The fiction is OK, but that is all it is. Let us not compare each other with anyone, just try to be a little more understanding and a little more caring, of the people we don't know as much as of the people we do.

For the record I have the roguish charm of Han Solo, the time tempered intellect of Obi Wan Kenobi and am hung like a wookie. *

*All Star Wars characters referenced here are from the superb first three movies produced rather than the last three crap ones.

Apologies to the readership for the dearth of articles in the last week, I have been traveling and quite ill.

Home at last.....
Having lived in and out of suitcases for the last seven weeks I have been looking forward to settling down for a little while. The desperate feelings of expensed vagrancy have grown, I am now actually homeless, a man of no fixed abode, which is not actually the same as not having a roof over my head, but is discomfiting. By late last week I resolved to find a new home. Marie has been a great help, searching out places as have a couple of others. Yesterday I had resolved to rent a modern three bedroom apartment near the office, it doesn't feel hugely latin American but it has the advantage of being walking distance to work. Not necessarily walking distance from work, as the gun toting robbers are normally working the five to midnight shift in the more affluent areas. I'm going to try and move in before leaving for Canada on Wednesday where Mary Kiss has found me an apartment in Toronto should it be authorised by the boss. So I will have gone from a man without a home to a man with two in the space of a week.

From the time I arrived in Costa Rica until about Friday last week, I had been amazed at just how awful the coffee in Costa Rica was, bitter and largely flavour free. Which is surprising given the awesome reputation. I had of course been buying my coffees from the ubiquitous mall coffee bars that use Britt Expresso. I bought a 10 dollar coffee machine from the cheap stuff shop in the mall that specialises in all the highest quality merchandise available from Asian sweatshop distributors. Leaving it a little late I then went out for the coffee. The pulperia (general store) had closed. I went to my regular coffee bar in the mall, where my temporary apartment is also located and asked for some coffee. The owner happily ground a cup of beans for me and I left with blissful thoughts of caffeinated beverages to come. I made a coffee. Awful! I thought it may have been the flavour of the new machine, but no a second brew revealed the coffee to have all the subtlety and delicacy of flavour that one normally associates with old engine oil. Time for an upgrade. The next day I bought a random bag of ground coffee from the general store for the princely sum of 950 Colones which is about 2 US Dollars. Absolutely magnificent, subsequent random purchase of other coffees have revealed to me that it is almost impossible to get coffee that is anything less than sublime unless you go to a coffee bar. I am now convinced that Expresso is actually Latin American for "That shit we sweep up off the factory floor and sell to Gringos in shopping malls".


My coffee machine overfills the permanent plastic filter and disgorges half the reservoir contents over the floor of the apartment unless I watch it. This doesn't seem to have upset the maid, who takes care of everything washing included. Earlier in the week she placed a laundered pair of Marie's panties on my beside table with a condom on them. I checked and as I suspected, this was maid humour rather than matronly rebuke. Speaking of Marie's panties, they encase what is one of the most perfect bottoms in Christendom. She can't keep her arse off my hands though, which can be a little embarrassing in the supermarket. I tell her to stop it, but she is forever catching one of my paws down the back of her jeans. It must be the latin blood! She is very pretty and looked great in her birthday present, perfume. However, a relationship cannot be purely physical, based on animal lust and base thoughts of unnatural acts no matter how much she'd like it that way. We'll see how things go, there are cultural differences but we have a lot in common.

As is the case whenever I'm here in Costa Rica, the blog postings are further apart as they make way for my life. Of course this can't go on. I'm back in Toronto from Wednesday for 10 days or so.

Don't eat the Staff!
I finally arrived at the company apartment in Costa Rica some twenty seven and a half hours after getting in a cab to Gatwick airport in the UK. My sleep patterns are so wrecked that I have not slept more than four or five consecutive hours any day in the last two weeks. Yesterday at 9:30PM the Airbus A330 lowered it's undercarriage on approach to the runway at San Jose, the pilot thought better of it and I was drinking coffee in Panama airport until reboarding at midnight for another attempt at the rain soaked, fog smothered airport in Costa Rica. I finally went to bed at 3:30am, woke at 7:30am and was in the office after half an hour or so.


Due to jet lag induced sleep deprivation the day had a slightly padded feel to it. Shapes slightly less distinct, voices less clear, my thought processes had slowed. I decided to quit the office about 3pm and try to sleep. I moved the last of my six suitcases up to the apartment in the same building and unpacked. I feel distressed about being homeless. I have no fixed base, no address as such, I have a job, but no contract. Together with the absence of any fixed timezone, currency, country or altitude. In short everything in my life is a little unstable, me included. I haven't spent more than 5 consecutive nights in the same place for nearly two months and I always seem to be packing or unpacking, I am not happy about it. I went back to the office to fetch a network cable for my laptop and was met by a young lad from the facilities management team, who informed me that there had been a mistake in the apartment booking system, they had double booked and that I would have to move to a hotel on Monday. There was a loud click as my incisors snapped shut between his 6th and 7th vertebrae.

After the red mist lifted and I realised that this was probably a mistake. I regurgitated his head and tried to pat the red soggy bits of his torso and neck together. I met my boss later who asked me to refrain from bighting other members of staff although he understood that my mental state was somewhat fractured.

Last Wednesday
Manda had very nicely let me use apartment while I was in the UK. I woke had a coffee and got in the shower. The streaming hot water reaching into my skull started to massage my brain into acceptance of the new day. I thrust an arm out and grabbed the only non-girly shampoo within reach. I always get confused when buying shampoo, because I am a man. This means that I do not know whether I have dry, normal, greasy, thick, thin, delicate or any combination of these types of hair. I just know that if I take my head to a special type of shop every two or three weeks, a nice lady massages my scalp with hot water and then leans over me a lot with her boobs at eye level while doing stuff with clippers and scissors. This makes me even more handsome, if you can imagine such a thing. I read the label on the bottle it said "SHAMPOO FOR MEN, FOR BODY BUILDING AND THICKENING". I used it anyway, but I was careless about rinsing, spilled some on my belly and when I got out the shower I was fat.

I needed to get a copy of the criminal record I haven't got from the police to help me apply for residency in Costa Rica. The police told me that I couldn't get a copy unless I had a proof of address, such as a bank statement or phone bill and that it would take forty days to arrive. I learnt several things here. My passport and birth certificate are no longer useful for verifying my identity and I should resort to carrying bank statements; people that do not have utility bills do not commit crimes; it takes forty days to find out if you have a criminal record, so policemen locking people up for anything less than that are just doing it out of spite.

I tripped into London via bankside, visited Thomas James, had a pint with Dave and then got back on the train to Waterloo, where something strange happened. The carriage I was on filled up with drunk people all wearing the same ties. They were very amiable and all started singing this song about some fellow called Father Abraham and taking their clothes off. I twigged, this was obviously a rugby club. Within 5 minutes there were a dozen stark naked rugby players dancing and singing on the train. I thought about joining in but as I didn't know the words and didn't want them getting jealous of my tackle, I wisely kept quiet. By the time the train arrived at Waterloo they were fully dressed again and on enquiry I discovered that they were Guys Hospital RFC which is actually the oldest rugby club in existence.

I met up with Manda and her bloke Rodge in Richmond and we went for a pint. After a quart of London Pride I stood at the bar panicking over whether last orders had been called, franticly gesturing to the barmaid that I was in medical need of more beer when a face from the past appeared in front of me:

bloke: Jason?
me: Yes
bloke: Jason Ellis?
me: Yes
bloke: Jason Ellis, Mile Low Club?
me: Yes

The face belonged to a chap Chris James, whom last saw about 10 years ago when we worked for a planning tools division of a major UK IT consultancy. The Mile Low Club thing he referred to was an incident in which The Sun newspaper ran a front page story recognisng me and my girlfriend of the time as the first people to have had sex in the Channel Tunnel.

After finishing my beer Manda dropped me off home and I caught a few hours shuteye in readiness for the marathon journey back to Costa Rica.

Last week at the airport I saw a metallic burgundy 1990s 3 series BMW with a 8 inch high, 6 inch wide spoiler on the boot (trunk). I have never felt the urge to urinate on a car as much as I did at that moment.

Not another baby post!
Although I have always wanted children, I have not actually made any. Not that I haven't practiced making babies, which I like very much, I just haven't actually made babies.
Most non-parents find the constant wittering of new parents about about how clever, active, fun, good looking, blah blah blah their new cabbage patch baby is, to be as much fun as bathing in warm vomit. Having to look at the photos equally tedious. Most of these photos are snaps, in that they serve as an aide memoire to someone present when they were shot. They are not art! If you are a bit of a photographer, which I am, you either have to shut down your visual cortex and grunt approving noises or you actually have to look at them. If you look at them you will get bummed about how the table is in focus but the kid isn't; how half it's head is out of frame or has a plant growing out of it and any number of other issues. You can't mention the errors in photography in case the parents think you find photography more interesting than their baby. Basically, other peoples babies are not interesting unless you are feeling very broody, even if you are a girl, who have higher interest levels in such things. Sorry but for the rest of us, they all look the same and especially so if you are a guy.

However, this brings me to the point of this post.
Please let me introduce my new friend, Thomas James Maximus McSpirit whom I had the great pleasure to meet yesterday. He is the eleven week old son of my longest standing friend Dave, whom I have known since I was only one motorcycle old and his girlfriend Jenny. This makes him virtually my nephew and Dave introduced me to him as his uncle so that's cool. I now have uncle responsibilities. Which I think means that it will be my job to introduce Tom to vices and all the other stuff that Dave, is prohibited by Jenny from doing due to his dadness. We'll have a lot of important ground to cover, beer, girls, motorcycles, cigars etc. Maybe we can discuss the arts, cooking, philosophy and culture as well if we have time.

After his dinner, TJMax settled down for a nap in my arms. We had a bit of a chat as he drifted off to sleep and we already have a few things in common. We both like women. Tom is a boob man. Mostly he sees women as a source for food and comfort, so not much different from most men in that respect. When the time comes I'll teach him how to cook the fish he catches when us three men are out fishing. He was a bit tired after eating and a couple of burps finished him off. He slept happily for an hour or so, wriggling in his sleep every so often and then woke up ready for a bit more supper, so I handed him back to Jenny. It was nice spending an hour with the new little man.

Dave is very proud of having made Tom and hugely grateful to Jenny for all her help with the production. So much in fact that Dave says they are going to keep him and don't need to get a pet after all. Of course my moral support in the whole project is also worthy of note.


Dave and I went down the pub for a couple of beers to talk bloke stuff. We had a chat about the little fellow while I waited for my train. Anyway, I stand by what I said before, I saw this baby in a car the other day that could have been drawn by Gary Larson. They all look the same they all act the same, that's it. Except for Thomas my nephew, who is different, more interesting, better looking, smarter and all that other stuff that you lot not related to him would never understand!

Chance and Offialdom
Well, this was the day that every previous day in my life was leading up to. The same of course could be said on every day. This one was a little special though. I left Spain today. I came back to tidy things up and vacate my apartment and that is now done. My friend Manda flew over and helped me pack my things as she did when I left the UK in 2002. Today I woke from a troubled sleep around 8am. The only thing left to pack was my desktop PC, all my other chattels being boxed and awaiting the removal men.


After a coffee I cycled across the frontier and entered the Orwellian tax office in Gibraltar. Here I queued for 20 minutes to see an orangutan behind a door marked 'Information'. I told the tax simian that I had ceased to work in Gibraltar as of August. After retrieving a particularly stubborn termite from his chair and putting it in his mouth, he told me that I would need a form. I proffered a form and asked if it was the required item. He looked at me ponderously, swallowed the termite he had been chewing, defecated behind a waste basket and told me that I would have to queue again and go into one of the two doors marked 'Enquiries'.
In the waiting room ten people were decaying and ruminating over the sheer life sapping experience which is a visit to any government department anywhere in the world. Governments actually seem to seek out, not so much under achievers, but people that although they may have evolved physically along with everyone else, retain the cerebral capability of sea sponges. After another hour it was my turn and I entered a door marked 'Enquiries'. The chimp in attendance looked at the form I had shown the orangutan in the booth next door, asked me to sign it and I left for my next brush with officiousness.

I went to my bank, which is actually Norwich and Peterborough Building Society and saw a mortgage advisor about switching from an endowment policy to a repayment policy. All was very interesting and it well until I asked about redemption values for the endowments. At which point the mortgage advisor Janet told me that as I had only held these policies for about 3 years, there would probably be no redemption value as "they cost a lot to set up and are long term savings vehicles". At this point I felt I had slipped though a worm hole and Janet was confusing me with an innumerate labourer circa 1950, that didn't realise that it doesn't cost 20,000 pounds sterling to establish a savings vehicle and that thought that bankers were respectable people rather than liars, cheats and thieves conducting their fraud through legal channels. I left and will be speaking to one of their representatives in the near future.

I enjoyed a relaxing late breakfast at Da Paulos in Marina Bay with a copy of the Daily Telegraph. The UK Conservative party leadership elections are amusing in the extreme. I have always hoped that the Tories will ultimately bury themselves up their own collective arses, pulling up their pants on their way in and we will all be left wondering where all the spiteful, out-of-touch people have got to. It looks like I will get my wish as the only leadership contender recognised as human by the electorate at large is Ken Clarke and the rest of the Tory MPs are rejecting him for not having pointy enough teeth, not being able to prove his Transylvanian heritage etc.

I went home and had a nap. On waking around 5pm I did some important thinking lovely thoughts about Marie and packed away my PC. The removal guys turned up and emptied the flat, Kay came by to pick up keys and paperwork, Anas and Lourdes arrived to take me to the airport and Ken, who was already at the airport to send me off, called to inform me that the flight had been delayed and not to rush.

Ken waited with me until the delayed plane had arrived. He's been having a rough time of late what with his girlfriend dieing. He has been very morbid and speaking of giving up, which I don't like, as it's terrible to hear someone you care for chewing themselves up. I offered a couple of suggestions as to new direction, but with little success and then a mini-flash of inspiration. In my carry-on luggage I had a copy of the Messiah's Handbook. I handed it to Ken and asked him to open it and see what it said. He opened , the book, turned to it and read..

Here's a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished:

If you're alive, it isn't.

So that was cool I had providence on my side and that seemed to cheer Ken enormously.

After arriving at Heathrow I queued for a taxi to take me to Manda's. The black cab driver informed me that as I wanted to got to Ashford, which is approximately 5 minutes away and that it was outside the metropolitan area, it would cost 48 pound. Sorry but black cab drivers are mostly tossers. They won't take you south of the water (The Thames) after midnight and only apply taxi rules as they see fit. "Sorry mate I can't turn around, I'm in a rush, on my way to a dental appointment, I only stopped 'cos I thought you might also have, one or maybe need to get some flowers from the shop next door." I called Manda to come get me.

It was late, I updated the blog, called Marie and fell asleep.

I would like to apologise to all of the great apes for comparing them to people who work for government offices.

The Unjust Persecution of Smokers
I haven't had a cigarette since last Saturday. It was about time I quit again. I was off the smokes for two or three months earlier in the year but stress and apathy conspired to start me again. In the last two weeks the toll of constant change combined with the Marlboro Lights has given me a cough, which is proving hard to shake off.

Cigarettes in Canada are punitively taxed, much as they are in the UK so I'll be a little better off financially too. I really resent the tax on tobacco. I have probably already paid for about four heart bypass operations and with a bit of luck I shouldn't survive more than two or three. Ideally of course I'll bypass the whole bypass thing by quitting now. Obviously in the UK, Canada and other enlightened places the state pays for healthcare, but it seems a little harsh only punishing smokers for their cost to the system. So for today's arbitrary attack on the innocent I am going to pick on lovers of winter sports.

Skiers pay no serious tax on their hobby and they're injured so much that in the US they get their plaster casts on 3 for the price of 2 deals. Snowboarders have selected more or less the only pastime actually guaranteed to cause wrists and elbow trauma. Both of these groups are also prone to liver damage caused by drinking far too much mulled wine while bullshitting themselves about how cool they are on the black runs. Not to mention syphilis and other social diseases acquired during the apres ski sex. How much tax are they paying in to the system for all the treatment they get? Nothing over and above the sales tax on their equipment. Skiers and snowboarders cost the National Health Service considerably more than stamp collectors and anglers yet they pay no more in to the government pot!

It's getting more and more difficult to find a place to smoke now. In Ontario you pretty much have to go outside for a cigarette, much as you do in Ireland and a lot of other places. Why? Because the government says non-smokers should not be forced to inhale smoke passively due to their choice of jobs or their choice of whether to go into a bar or not. I think they should stop people from driving cars because non-drivers have to suffer from exhaust emissions and people that work in gas stations are inhaling all that benzene. You have to smoke a lot of cigarettes to beat a Cadillac on toxic emissions!

Smoking is a more or less environmentally neutral hobby, the tobacco plant absorbs CO2 from the air which we release again by smoking it. But every government now seems anti-smoker while leaving other more harmful pursuits alone. Take hot air ballooning. Now this is a seriously environmentally damaging hobby. The balloonist drives off to the countryside in a gas guzzling 4x4 towing an enormous trailer. He gets to where he's going and burns huge quantities of propane to blow up his balloon. It takes off in a random, wind blown direction followed by the ground crew in the Land Cruiser so it can be packed up again after landing. All this for a couple of hours flying in a desperate attempt to persuade the girl he's taken along that he is an at one with nature sky master and that she should shag him in the basket. There are more honest ways to get laid. Fact: Ballooning is more environmentally damaging than either prostitution or masturbation.

Smokers as a rule die younger and are therefore less of a burden on the state, pension and insurance companies. They are actually helping to reduce population density issues and by virtually ensuring that their bodies die before their brains do ensuring that they do not contract Alzheimers or any of those other unpleasant old age brain malfunctions.


In Canada about half the surface area of the cigarette packet is devoted to the health warning, each pack has a photo of something highly unpleasant on it, a heart after a heart attack, a lung operation, some vile looking teeth after mouth cancer. I wondered if the picture was related to the tar levels of the cigarettes; ever so slightly yellowed teeth for extra lights; a gangrenous amputated leg for the full tar smokes; a smiling lady-boy prostitute for menthols. Apparently the warning is random which is a wasted opportunity. Not knowing one Canadian cigarette from another, I only bought smokes that lungs on them regardless of brand. If someone else offered me a cigarette I always checked the packet first, as I wouldn't smoke anything from a packet with an erectile dysfunction warning in case there was something especially dangerous about them.

Anyway, I don't have to worry about cigarette issues now, the cough is starting to go and the new woman in my life wants to smooch with me a lot more.

Winter Sports can seriously damage your health!

Queuing at the bank...
You know you are back in Spain when you go into a bar and the barmaid hands you a cold beer out of the fridge and a hot glass straight out of the dishwasher to put it in. Franco replaced modernism and thinking for yourself with suspicion and inefficient bureaucracy. Thirty years after his death, his legacy lives on. I went to the bank today. The Spanish Olympic queuing team are practicing at my branch for Beijing 2008. I queued up in line to make a deposit and in only enough to to shave, read Martin Chuzzlewit, finish The Times crossword and shave again, I had arrived at the counter. I slammed a wad of notes down on to the counter loud enough to break the peaceful slumber of the bank clerk and while waiting for her computer to crash, reboot and crash I pondered the difference in attitudes to waiting.

In the UK and the US making you wait for a service that costs you money is considered equivalent to stealing life.

"Excuse me but the usable bit of my existence has been reduced by 30 minutes since I arrived at this bank, if you added up all the time I've wasted here since I opened my account I have probably lost 6 or 7 days of my life you vampirical bastards!"

Spanish people think of queuing with a nostalgic romance, viewing it as an opportunity to chat with the other people in line, make friends and perhaps get invited around to dinner. Which it possibly is in the rural branches. However there are old men queued up in Spanish banks that hadn't reached puberty when they walked in and I don't like it!

To pay a bill at a bank here you must go in on a Tuesday or a Thursday, between 8:30 and 9:30, between the 10th and 20th of the month. Although I am prone to exaggeration for comic effect, this is in fact unadorned truth. The adorned truth requires much sobbing, a decease in the family and a flashing neon Santa Maria statuette.

The deposit complete, I asked the clerk to change my address. The clerk told me I needed to go and join the line of people waiting in front of a desk on the other side of the building where a three toed sloth ponders Rene' Descartes and occasionally deals with customer issues.


Please may I take the opportunity to apologise to those offended by my gratuitous defamation of a religious icon, it was thoughtless and quite possibly blasphemous. But I rather like it.

Wish I was here (Part 2)

Well the Dutch couple introduce themselves, Steyne (incorrect spelling) is a surgeon and his beautiful girlfriend Sanne a product manager for a watch company. Sick of admiration, adoration and sympathy from Americans, Steyne now answers enquiries about what he does for a living by telling people he is a pet hair stylist. A conversation along these lines ensued and by the end of the night we were running a successful pet cosmetic surgery and holistic healthcare centre. Steyne was doing nose jobs on bulldogs that thought they were labradors born in the wrong body. I was offering counseling for cocker spaniels depressed about their weight and the weight of their owners, while my partner was offering lyposuction for fat dogs and boob jobs for cats. As you can imagine the alcohol flowed freely and all three of us had a riotous time. As the night drew to a close the sad realisation hit us that somewhere, they probably already have these things.

After a quick breakfast and a little shopping I drove to the volcano. Unfortunately it was still cloudy, so for the most part the top of the volcano was obscured. The trail meanders through seas of 3m tall pampas and tropical grasses that are split by dried river beds of volcanic ash; under the jungle canopy crammed with mangrove like trees growing from squelchy earth and filled with loud bird calls and the barking of monkeys; over great igneous rock flows borne down the fire mountain by rivers of magma in 1992.
Unlike the Barbary Apes of Gibraltar, the monkeys here make the ooh-ooh-ooh noises you hear in Tarzan movies as well as a variety of barks and grunts. They do not attempt to rob you of anything that sounds like a packet of crisps. But the noise in darkness of the jungle can be disconcerting (Scared, not me oh no!)

Unfortunately I didn't have the time to see everything as I wanted to get back before nightfall. Driving across mountains on foggy wet unlit roads at night concerns me somewhat. Before arriving in Costa Rica I had been playing a computer game, which I do about once every year or so. The game was called Boiling Point and is set in a Centro American country. One of the most frustrating things about the game is the car driving. The other drivers in the game seem to operate their vehicles randomly, completely oblivious to other cars and pedestrians, leading to constant repair bills and injuries. Frustrating and ridiculous! Or so I thought. Now I realise it is a faithful recreation of the Centro American driving experience. Only having had roads and cars a few short years, they seem to pilot motor vehicles as if they are donkey carts. The realisation that a vehicle to vehicle interface feels different with a combined speed of 50-150kmh,to what it does when your burro nudges the cart in front seems to have passed people by completely.

I was home shortly after sundown and went for dinner with Marie at Cerruti. Her company was, as ever, invigorating and fun, I hope that she misses me while I'm away.

Wish I was here! (Part 1)
You will note that my posts are less frequent during my time in Costa Rica. This is because I have more of a life here. Some good pals, some nice haunts and nowhere near enough days free to see all the stuff I want to.

As I have to be back in Spain next week and London the weekend after that, I thought I'd have to go and do something other than hang out in San Jose. All of my girly friends are doing other stuff. Emms and Nicki have been to the beach and have no doubt been boozing and man-ising something terrible after endless hours of exposing their semi-naked forms to the sun. The lovely Marie was off to a ranch with her sister and her mother, something like a Centro American Macbeth I guess. Oh and Mary Kiss, whom I mention here only because I said I'd say something about her in my next post, spent the weekend in Toronto where she lives. Weekdays she organises everything and everyone in the office, weekends she is a demon shoe shopper and culture vulture.

So I rented a a little 4x4 and hit out for Arenal, which is an active volcano about 140kms from here. The journey itself is quite magical. Outside of San Jose Costa Rica turns into a patchwork of green hills, forests and jungles. There is a slightly unreal feel to the roads, which are perfectly clean due to the daily rain scrubbing and bordered by lush vegetation in greener greens than I have ever seen. My digital photo-editing experience makes me think that someone has overdone the colour saturation in the real world Costa Rica. The houses that dot the countryside are all brightly painted and each has a unique character.

I arrived in a little village called Fortuna a little way from Arenal around 6pm, by which time it was dark. Unfortunately, it was raining and the top of the volcano was hidden by clouds. You can just about hear it from Fortuna, there is a small explosion every few seconds.

The problem is basically that during the dry season the place will be overrun by tourists, so the ideal way to explore Arenal is during the occasional dry spell during the rainy season. After booking myself into a cheap hotel that smelled vaguely damp I went out to avail myself of the local rustic cuisine. Initially the vaguely damp smell of the hotel is depressing, but thinking about it, everything around Fortuna is damp. The bioactivity of the soil there must be phenomenal. It rains for six or seven hours every afternoon for six months and the mornings are hot with some great sunshine until the clouds roll over. I imagine dropped litter decomposing while you watch.

At the first place I get some reasonably priced yet very boring fare and decide to move on to a better bar. I find myself in El Rufino, sat at the bar next to a Dutch couple watching the football on the TV behind the bar. Costa Rica are playing the USA and even though I am not normally interested in the game, I watched so I could feel culturally aligned with the Ticos. Costa Rica won 3-0. Shocking that the USA can't field a decent soccer team and noteworthy that the only games the USA is really world class at, are those that are really only played by Americans ; American football, baseball, basketball. The scenes of jubilation after the victory are shot from Mall San Pedro and played out over TVs across Costa Rica. I tell my new friends that right now, I live and work 6 floors above the cameras, when I'm not in Toronto that it.

(to be continued)

Toronto, still not completely crap for beer!
Yesterday, I met up again with Deidre and Bryan for another night of boozement. We hit C'est What at 67 Front Street. An intimate cellar bar with five ales on hand pumps, which are all rather pleasant indeed. Rather shockingly though, they still think it's acceptable to raise some of the beers they brew with pressurised CO2 or Nitrogen, lending an unnecessary fizz and destructive coarseness to their beers. I noticed the same sad issue at Amsterdam on King Street West, they have ruined what would otherwise be acceptable beers. Anyway after C'est What, we hit the House on Parliament pub in Cabbage Town. It's a great neighborhood place, quaint and very friendly. But they had no real beer, so somewhat depressingly, I switched to Guinness.

A return to Caffe Volo tonight allowed me to acquaint myself with Black Oak Hop Bomb. As you would expect it was very hoppy and quite dry, a little cloudy, which I don't mind, being as I am more interested in substance than looks. I like my beer like I like my women.... err tasty, err 6 per night.... err, strong, dry and ever so slightly sweet. Strike that simile! I like my beer like I like my beer. Anyway, the food there is very pleasant too and it was served up by the deliciously confident and competent Allison who had a refreshingly intimate knowledge of the menu. My visit tonight, very much confirmed my previous experience of the place, the only downer being that you can't rent a room there.

On a different note, out roaming the streets of Toronto today, I saw a street in the financial district turned into New York immediately post the collapse of the World Trade Centre. Dust, litter, NY taxis, cop cars, fire crews, the lot. There was a rather unconvincing jet engine lying around wisely just off set. Toronto is often used as an NYC body double, as it rents out cheaper.

Expect to see these guys on a TV near you sometime soon

Toronto, not crap for beer!
My non-British friends and associates do not understand my deep-seated and heartfelt love for real ale. I have found the last 3&1/2 years to be a barren and soulless experience beer-wise. Although I have flirted with lager it has never been truly satisfying. An emotional dessert, I find myself waking in the middle of the night from fevered dreams of London Pride, Youngs Special, Spitfire and Hopback Summer Lightning. I often mull wistfully at the thought of hoppy, living bitters while supping distastefully at a bottle of lager, for it is not in need of the reverence of glass, the yellow, sterilised, pastuerised, filtered carbonated swill masquerading as beer, purveyed by charlatans in the bars of Spain, Gibraltar, France, Canada and Costa Rica. But these are emotionless dalliances with blondes of little worth. The brunette nitrokeg shams that are the Caffrey's and the John Smith's may look good in a glass, but they are cheap harlots dressed as ladies. I am looking for love, not a succession of one night stands.

So, romantic beer prose aside, I was in a pub the other night and drinking a fizzy, cold IPA and lamenting that there was no flat, warm beer about and the barman said they sold a drop of cask ale in the place next door. I drank my pint on the outside on the terrace, quickly and with great expectations of drinks to come. I briefly made the acquaintance of a very nice couple who are also not a little partial to a real beer or two. I finished the IPA, the attentive barman asked if I'd like another, I replied in the negative and beat a hasty path to the place next door, Caffe Volo, which strangely enough was an Italian restaurant. I asked the stunningly beautiful blonde siren working behind the bar if this tale of ale was in fact true. She replied positively and asked if I wanted a thimble full as a taster. She brought the shot glass of Granite IPA to me, I put the glass to my lips and what must have been two nanoseconds later a rapturous obsession overtook me and I was demanding a full pint. Absolutely magnificent a dry hoppy beer, raised from the keg by hand pump and served just marginally below room temperature. Perfection in a glass!

About half a pint later, or four seconds as time is measured by Canadians, the nice couple from the previous bar came in and joined me. A friendlier, more intellectual, gregarious couple you could never wish to meet. Deidre is an American Civil Engineer and her husband Bryan, a Scottish Biochemist. They were excellent company and we passed the night together chatting on the patio of the bar consuming some of the nicest ale I have had in many a year.

Airport Security
I am writing this in the smoking bar at the airport. It's not just my cigarette that is fuming. Airport security really pisses me off. On getting to the check-in queue at San Jose’ a security guard asked to look at my passport and leaving tax papers. On walking a further two yards a second security guard asks to see the same. He examines my passport, first by hand, then with a jeweller’s loupe, then leafs through every page with an ultraviolet torch. Unsatisfied he rechecks every page, fingering the edges of the paper, presumably to check for pistols and WMDs embedded within the paper. The spine of the passport is subjected to internal examination, still unhappy, he asks if I have any other ID. I ask he wants to see a note from my mum, saying it’s OK for me to get on the aeroplane, but he is not amused. Finally he pisses off with my passport, my Spanish residencia card and my UK driving license to photocopy them. I obviously look like an Al Qaeda activist in disguise, you know, white skin, no turban, no AK47, an Anglo-Saxon name. Eventually El Dicko gives up trying to find something wrong and hands me back my papers.

I walk another two yards; a young and rather pretty security guard asks for my passport, and opens my suitcase either to search for contraband and smuggled Latinas or to fondle my underpants. She doesn’t spend nearly enough time checking my briefs, nor does she mention how great they’d look on her bedroom floor, so I guess she must be abnormal in some respects.
I walk another two yards and have finally made it to the check-in. I of course have to proffer my passport again. I am not in a jolly mood by this point and am not in the slightest mollified by the check-in girl’s explanation that they are only doing their job.

After obtaining my ticket I walk to the desk of the ‘Migration Police’, so that they can check my passport. Another 3 yards and we are at the only bit that makes any sense, the checking of the hand luggage and finally I am through. I shelve my plans for giving up cigarettes and head straight for the smoking lounge.

I hope not to receive a rectal examination on boarding the plane.

What's Happenin'
If you are not bored by this already or writing a letter to FHM recommending me to james.carter@emap.com for a position as a staff writer you will be by the time I am finished with the Toronto and living in Costa Rica full time!

I have been back in San Jose for a little over a week now, although it seems like mere seconds have passed, unfortunately I'm back on a plane to Canada tomorrow. Not that I have anything against Canadians, I'm just wholly unsure of this winter thing of theirs. The moment the Boston Tea Party was over, England should have given everything north of The Great Lakes to the people that would later name themselves Americans and kept the juicy bits from New England down to the Mexican border for the mother country.

Anyway, I'm back in CR and have stayed half my time at the Hotel Jade and the other half in the company apartments. The company has offices in the top floors of a shopping mall. So lunch is often spent in a stroll through the laberynthine mall walkways trying not to return the glances of the beautiful latinas, their bums seem to follow my eyes all over the place! The company apartments are quite nice, tastefully appointed, with showers big enough for a safari adventure. The maids come and clean the apartments every day and routinely remove any item of clothing on the floor for washing and pressing, returning it the next day. This is all fine, but recently I have noticed other people's pants appearing in my closet. That's underpants or briefs for my American readership! I could deal with this if they were little lacey numbers that had recently encompassed the firm tight buns and moist wonderousness of a hot latina babe. Even better still if the maid had forgot to wash them, but oh no, these are mens pants. Which is always horrific and a shock unless they are your own. Or you are gay, which I am not, but I do have very normal lesbian tendencies. I only ever sleep with women. More distressing still is the fact that my pants must end up travelling through another company apartment closet, discovered by the occupant and returned to the maid or like as not thrown from the 8th floor apartment windows.

I had a marvellous meal the other day with some new friends, quite possibly the best I've had in years.
There was a great amuse bouche of smoked salmon pate' made with soured cream, horseradish and cayenne pepper served on little discs of lightly toasted french bread with olive oil.
The starter was a salad of endives, walnuts (pecans), grapes, celery and feta cheese in a balsamic dressing which arrived with a garlic bread ciabatta topped with pesto and parmesan.
The main course was a Thai Green Prawns with boiled rice and an alternative main, which was king prawns in a pico de gallo on tortilla chips.
The desert was natural greek yoghurt, with pecans, almonds and honey alongside a little sliver of dried orange.

I will of course take this opportunity to thank Emma for assisting me with the cooking and Nicky for the loan of her kitchen and gorgeous little bewooded cottage. The six present had a wonderful time and as ever I massively over did it on the portions. Apparently Nicky finished the pate' and curry today. I think she wants me over to cook again when her freezer is empty and she can load it up with gormet ready meals prepared by yours truly.

Toronto Restaurants
Downtown Toronto has a lot to keep the urban office warrior happy after the day at work is over, well the downtown area does. The rest of it is a vast concrete wasteland scattered with generic shopping malls and people ricocheting between their places of work, their homes and shops in cars the size of Belgium on overcrowded freeways.

The financial district, reminiscent of New York has it's fair share of good eateries and the Queen Street East is an incredible multicultural melange with something reasonably priced to eat inspired from just about every corner of the globe.

Today's exciting restaurant mini-review will concentrate on the places you should probably take your significant other if you want to make up for a medium size atomic row. Or somewhere you should consider taking your next potential significant other if you want to have a medium size atomic row with the current one.

The Fisherman's Wharf on Richmond Street West has a cosy candle lit atmosphere, attentive staff and some excellent grub. I started off with the Boston Clam Chowder which, to be honest was tasty but not quite as pleasant in the mouth as say... Shakira.
Their signature dish though is worth the $60 even if you discount the bad bits. The bad bits are the deep fried breaded cheese stuffed shrimp, cheesey oysters, deep fried scallops and stewed mussels. All of which strike you as the sort of food that McDonalds would sell if they opened a fast crustacea cafe'. The good bits and they are very good indeed; are the longitudinally split Alaskan king crab legs which are simply perfect with a little lemon juice on them, the lobster tail and the tiger shrimp. These together are worth the asking price.
Soundbite: Forget the other half, go on your own and order king crab legs for two.

Ruth's Chris Steakhouse is buried under the Hilton also on Richmond Street West. It is as good for steak as Jesus is for Christianity. Marvelous! I started off with the Crabtini which is basically a large martini glass piled with thumb sized lumps of crab meat tossed in a vinaigrettee with a Creole sauce and attractive, pleasant tasting greenery around the side. I could eat this every day.
I am not a huge steak fan, by which I mean both that I do not like huge steaks and that I am not normally greatly impressed by steak at all. This place has changed all that despite having a ridiculous name. I ordered a medium cooked ribeye. It arrived on a plate hot enough to melt the tines on my fork. I asked about this, apparently they heat the plates to a waiter bullshitting 500F. I didn't have a thermometer with me but it was bloody hot and did the job, keeping the steak warm until the last perfectly cooked morsel had been reverently consumed. The steak itself, was I believe about as good as it is possible for a dead animal to taste. Good enough in fact to throw Darwinism into doubt. Nothing that tastes this good could have survived 2 million years of human existance without having been eaten into extinction several times over. It was tender, juicy and all that other hyperbole that steak is always supposed to be but never is. Well, almost never. Apparently the steaks are cooked in some special broiler at 1800F that fires at them from both sides. I can't vouch for the technology, but I only remember one steak this good before and that was at The Capital Club, a stone's throw from The Bank of England.
Soundbite: Flights to Toronto are available from all major international airports, get there somehow, anyhow.

Intelligent Design and Creationism are to common sense what Parmigiano-Reggiano is to watchmaking.