About ten days ago I flew back to the UK. It was proving impossible to find a decent job in Spain given the political climate in the US that is impacting on the business sector I have worked in for the last five years. I have reluctantly left Laura with my friend Ken but she'll be flying here soon. I have had a few interviews and am waiting to hear if there are any positive results. I'm not really keen on anything I've found yet, but I've never really looked at work as something to enjoy, it's just what you've got to do to enable life.

I am very grateful to my friends who have really pulled for me recently, Ken, Dave and Amanda are all helping. It's hard not to feel a little dispondant, but I know something will turn up soon.

I'm looking forward to getting back on a motorcycle after a year out of the saddle and looking forward to seeing my wonderful soon-to-be-wife at the airport later in the week.

Laura was running a mop around the bathroom the other day. She moved the laundry bin and behind it was a little Gecko. He, a presumption as I am not able to determine Gecko genders, was so scared he dropped his little tail and scampered off to hide, leaving his now detached tail wiggling on the floor. A little while later, Laura caught him and released him in the living room. I could not get a rational explanation for his release in the living room rather than outside, but she has a thing about creatures, desiring to touch, hold and make friends with anything that isn't a spider. Personally I think that with the sole exception of cats, any creature inside the house should be hot, dead and covered in gravy.

Unless something somewhere warm turns up soon, I think that we may have to return to the UK, where I shall prostitute my brain for the filthy lucre in IT contracting. Which to be honest, money apart depresses me enormously.

So apologies for my prosaic hiatus. The company I worked for in Costa Rica that kept me in Canada shut down. So I packed up my apartment in Toronto and moved all my stuff into Laura's parents house, tripped down to San Jose, Costa Rica said goodbye to some friends and packed packed my chattels into four suitcases, flew back to Toronto and helped Laura pack up her apartment. The available ground floor space in Laura's parents house has been reduced by 50% and their lounge reduced to an assault course of our bags and boxes. We left three apartments in the space of three weeks and flew to the UK to say hello to the family and then on to Spain where my friend Ken has very kindly put us up while I look for my next job.



Ken is working on Laura's health issues and has her taking Vitamin C every eight hours, CoQ10, Evening Primrose Oil, ginseng and Silibinin. The current train of thought is that the root cause to Laura's vast array of medical issues is liver malfunction. Although what caused this is unknown. These supplements seem to improved Laura's thyroid function. When Laura and I first met she used to get heart palpitations and shake when she was tired, which I recognised as a calcium deficiency due to her diet. When we applied the SCD diet and and started her on increased Vitamin C and Calcium amongst a general vitamin and mineral regime. This sorted out her heart palpitations, shakes and showed some improvement in intestinal problems. Her thyroid seemed to improve a little and her Doctor suggested a decrease in her thyroid supplement from 180mg per day to 120mg. This left her tired and listless but she was OK on 150mg. After being on the Ken regime for two weeks Laura has been able to reduce her thyroid supplement to 60mg per day, with no ill effects so there are some definite improvements. We hold out hope for a complete cure.

Anyway, we are in sunny Spain and taking day trips out to various places of interest. We recently visited a Moroccan festival at a town in the hills near Monda. The street lights were all turned off and the town was lit by candles every few inches along the sides of the road and lining the balconies. The town squares were filled with stalls selling all sorts and there was a magical air about the who affair.

We have tripped out to see Seville, Ronda, Gibraltar, Castellar de la Frontera and other nearby sights. I had a couple of interviews last week, but no news yet and I am still being courted by a start-up in Canada that still don't have the money to run the project. So we'll hang out here a little longer. If nothing has turned up in Spain by the end of October, I'll renounce gaming and go back to IT contracting for financial services companies in London. The gaming world pays well enough to keep us in a warm country with a low cost of living. But if we go back to the UK then I'll go back to the far more lucrative world of banking.

A while ago I received this handy good wife guide. It was in the hands of an angry female colleague shocked at the subservient domestic home goddess approach displayed therein. I started reading it and became not a little impressed with the sound advice offered by the author. Then I noticed that it is dated 1955. I hope attitudes haven't changed since then. I must show it to Laura and pin it up on a wall in a prominent place or something, after all, we will be getting married and I hope she gets it tight. Click here or on the image to see the full version.

Something that Laura will definitely not be allowed to see is this. It is a sad and shocking indictment of Christian womanhood and perfectly explains the demise of religion in the West. Well it does if it's true.

I have left Costa Rica for the last time, for a long time. Someone new will soon be enjoying the views over Santa Ana from what was my terrace. It was sad to leave, somehow I feel cheated, I never had the time to get that motorcycle and explore the mountains as I had wanted. I left some things at the apartment, the landlady said goodbye to me and gave me a painting from the apartment that I had always liked.

I got to the airport and the problems started, a change in dates meant a charge had been added to the already enormous excess baggage fee and this needed to be paid in cash as my credit card doesn't seem to work at San Jose airport, even though it works everywhere else. This was sorted out by Pauline, the formidable yet diminutive New Yorker that arranges all my travel. She is phenomenally cool at fixing flights and someone that should you work in the industry, you should treat with the greatest respect. It took two hours to sort this out and in compensation they upgraded me to Business Class. The company I worked for always flew me cattle class, the Directors however were unable to lower themselves for this economy and most of them were unaware that there was anyone sat behind the curtains on the plane. Due to the recent terrorist scare in London, security had been tightened to the point that the queue stretched out of the airport. On arrival at Toronto Pearson airport at the centre and unconnected terminal, I positioned myself on the bus to terminal one so that I would be at the front of the queue at immigration control. I wasn't. I had landed just after two Jumbo jets full of visiting school children from China and Singapore. Everyone of whom was sent through to the interview room to have a chat with another one of the semi-evolved chimps of the Canada Border Services Agency as I was. Most of them were in front of me in the queue and I had to wait an hour to repeat the same thing to another one of these mentally subnormal cretins, that unable to get a real job, decided to work for the gorvernment. I couldn't phone Laura, who was waiting for me as they block cellphones in that room. The CBSA guy did, he asked if she knew me and what I did for a living and other questions that would safeguard the country of Canada from IT Project Managers and other people that know what they are doing. Eventually he stamped my passport for 6 months as they always do and I went through and answered the same question set with another group of these sphincter probers at customs. Two and a half hours after landing, I finally emerged from the arrivals doors to be greeted by Laura. She was looking phenomenal, elegant and refined in a black dress and some rather naughty shoes she had bought before I'd left for Costa Rica the previous week.

Between the two of us, we have moved out of three apartments in the last three weeks. Tomorrow, we leave for the UK and by the end of next week we'll be in Spain where we shall enjoy the last rays of summer while awaiting the next job. Which could be anywhere.

For those of you that found the timing of my last two posts confusing, I am actually in Costa Rica as we speak (or more correctly, as I write). I woke up this morning with agonizing pain in my right leg and serendipitously happened on a couple of intellectual blogs of note from opposite sides of the political spectrum while researching a new hobby of my father's; Tug Boat Potemkin which lead me to Catalaxy . Both the authors appear to be in Australia. While surfing the links therein I came across something unusual. People that work in IT (Information Technology for Mac users and other technologically challenged folk) have long had a bit of an image problem and to counter this the wiley Ozzies have released a hot babes in IT calendar. I fear that this will have done little to reform the nerdyboy geek image of the trade if this crew of snarling sheep farmers' daughters are the pinup ladies of the profession.

This got me thinking about other vocation specific calendars featuring the people that do the job. The hose fondling British Firefighters, beloved of a distant ex-girlfriend, UK housewives and gay men the world over. I mean it's not as if fireman are short of shags regardless of their gender preferences. But it is in a good cause I suppose. Obviously, the excellent Rylstone and District WI calendar which featured in the Calendar Girls film comes readily to mind. This has raised a substantial sum for leukemia research. I am in fact so inspired by the success of this charitable venture that I think I will make a calendar of my own this year in order to raise money for London Pride, which is a fabulous beer.

1) Any offense given to Mac users was purely intentional for an explanation of just a few of the reasons why Macs are crap go here.

2) Not all firemen are gay, not all Yorkshire women are willing to get their kit off for a camera, buy the calendars (except the butch Ozzie IT girls one of course).

As I write, my exceedingly beautiful ex-girlfriend is getting changed in the bedroom. Laura and I haven't split up or anything, it's just as she is now my fiancee having been promoted two weeks ago to her current position, she is no longer my girlfriend. But I digress...

Laura is currently on the fourth change of clothes in the last quarter of an hour. There is a crisis forming, you see we will have to go out of the house where people whom we don't know and we don't care about will see us. If we are not paragons of up to the minute yet timeless sartorial style, the shame will be immeasurable. Not only clothes, combinations of clothes, make up, lipstick and hair style issues. This attitude is of course not confined to Laura, it is nearly all girls, girly-boys and some men (not real men of course oh no!). Things are different if you are a bloke.

Let me explain......
Girl getting ready to go out: Into the shower, feel the relaxing warm water and worry about whether it will dry out your skin; wash body all over except for face with pH neutral body milk type soap and body scruffing glove, sponge or flowery thing; step out of shower and snatch boyfriend/husbands shaving cream and razor. Use whole can of shaving soap shaving legs, armpits and possibly trimming the lawn, but not too much as there is a Doctor's appointment later in the week, nothing too adventurous, can't have the doctor thinking that sort of thing oh no! Worry about cellulite and legs being too fat. Shampoo with correct combination shampoo suitable for dry/greasy/normal and blonde/brunette/redhead hair. Wash hair thoroughly, gently massaging the scalp and cleaning the hair from the root to the ends. Worry about split ends and whether the hairdresser will have a slot free on Thursday. Apply correct conditioner type for hair type light/normal/dark, blonde/brunette/redhead, normal/fine/damaged. Leave conditioner on as specified on bottle or last week's article in Cosmopolitan. Reach for clean fluffy towel and dry off being sure not to abraid skin before applying moisturising body milk to stop skin drying out. Remember that you want a wee, have a wee, get back into shower, showering from waist down only. Worry about too much tummy fat. Dry off, and reapply mosturising body milk to waist down. Inspect toenails and decide against varnish as you won't be wearing open toed shoes that night. Towel dry hair. Wash face with exfoliating scrub, wash face with pH neutral face soap. Worry about pimple and whether other people will notice it. Clean ears with cotton buds. Dry hair thoroughy with hairdrier. Worry about split ends. Style hair up, style hair down. Apply makeup, a process too complicated to be described by modern science. Leave bathroom for use of boyfriend/fiance/husband. Tell man to stop playing on the computer and hurry up or we'll be late. Select panties, select bra, select blouse, change bra because it doesn't match the blouse, change panties because they do not match the bra. Select shoes. Select skirt/trousers (pants if you speak North American). Tell male partner to stop playing on the computer or we'll be late. Worry about whether it will be cold out. Decide better safe than sorry and select jumper/shawl/jacket. Realise that warm article doesn't match shoes, change shoes, change trousers or skirt to match shoes. Change blouse to match skirt/trousers, change bra to match blouse, change panties to match bra. Put on lipstick.

Bloke getting ready to go out: Walk into bathroom when girlfriend/wife is in the shower. Wonder whether it is time for romance. Get told that it isn't or 'we'll be late'. Go back to computer. Ignore requests to get in the shower as it will be at least another hour before she's ready to go out. Go into bathroom while female is applying makeup naked and wonder whether it is time for romance. Get told that it isn't or 'we'll be late' and go back to computer. Involve oneself in matters of vital national importance on news sites, ebay etcetara. Notice lady of the house in state of semi nudity, wonder if it's time for romance, realise from the hard stare that it is not and go into bathroom. Shrug off clothes and step into shower and feel the relaxing hot water, look down admiringly. Realise you want a wee and wee, try to hit plughole no hands. Hope that noise of shower will mask indiscretion. Wash all over with first bottle that comes to hand. Wonder about why the soap doesn't seem to work and realise that you have been trying to wash yourself with light blonde normal hair conditioner. Reach for dark coloured bottle of manly showergel or any other detergent. Wash everything, well not that thing, at least not too thoroughly, there may be time for romance later! Wash hair with fluid from any bottle except the one with conditioner in it. Step out of shower and dry off with towel previously used by female. Rub hand through hair and consider it dry. Look in the mirror admiringly. Wet face with water from basin in preparation for shaving, look all over for shaving cream, find can in the shower, be confused about why you'd have left it there of all places. Attempt to squirt shaving cream onto palm of hand but there's none left, ask lady of the house if she has used shaving cream and razor and on hearing the answer decide to forego the shave. Notice spot on cheek and squeeze it until a satisfying pop noise and squirt of puss are achieved. Wander about the house/apartment aimlessly without clothes on for a bit. Walk into bedroom, put on underpants, socks, look at the jeans you were wearing yesterday, sniff them, put them on because the smell does not making you gag, stand up, notice curry stain on thigh, take them off. Select new pair of jeans from closet, put them on and grab shirt that will probably not look offensive with the jeans. Put on shoes and feel confused about why you are ready to go out when your better half is halfway through her third change of clothes. Wait for her to be ready to leave, walk to the door together, quick check (Wearing trousers? Yes! Keys? Yes! Wallet? Yes! Mobile phone? Yes!) and it's off to the supermarket.

As I have mentioned previously, the company I work for has had a couple of issues. After much legal mastication and machination the company has terminated its operation in Costa Rica. I got a call from my boss explaining the situation on Thursday. The company has said that it will try to fulfill its contractual obligations to employees. Which means in theory, I should get paid in lieu of notice and a sum for repatriation, when this will happen however, is another matter.

I'm heading back to Costa Rica on Wednesday to pack the things from my apartment in Santa Ana, submit my expenses for the last time and close off the utilities accounts. I don't think that I'll look for something else there. There was something reassuring about working for a publicly listed company, rather than a privately owned affair and the public companies in my industry will be shying off the US market after what has happened. Laura will fly out to meet me wherever I am in a couple of weeks. I'm not sure quite what happens next.

My friend Ken has offered use of an apartment he owns in Gibraltar for as long as it's necessary and that might be a fine option. It's above a marina and close enough to Spain for the shopping, beaches and restaurants. It would be nice to see my friends Kay, Ken, Anas amongst others and pay a visit to my family and friends in the UK perhaps.

There are opportunities to be had in a few countries, so we'll wait them out in the warm I guess.

Tomorrow I am packing up my chattels from the company apartment in Toronto and carting the boxes off to Laura's parent's place to await shipping to the UK, Spain or wherever. It feels like the last few years have been nothing but moving home and moving country. I'd like to settle down for a bit some place. I mentioned to Laura last night, that so soon I'll be homeless again and she reminded me that home was wherever she is. Which is handy really, as Laura is portable.

I took last Friday off work and Laura and I drove to Niagra on the Lake. Laura didn't know it but I was going to propose that day. It was her birthday. I have often said to Laura something to the effect of, "so shall we get married then", she always responds "yes" and asks if it is a proposal. I say "no, maybe, do I look like I'm on one knee?" But this time it was going to be for real. We had discussed it, but as my job is in a perilous position right now, we had decided that it would not be sensible to blow a large chunk of money on a ring and you can't get engaged without a ring. So we were going to wait until things were a little more stable financially and professionally. At least that's what she thought.


I had driven round to her parents house on the Wednesday. I left work a little early, went ring shopping; my wallet is still bleeding and drove over to ask her dad's permission. A little traditional, but a nice touch I thought. Laura's car was parked outside, I cruised past, parked and called her. "I'm just driving home, where are you?" "I'm at my mum and dad's, I'll be leaving in ten minutes." This was a Laura ten minutes, so I stopped by at a florist and picked up some flowers, read Popular Science for quarter of an hour and drove back. The car was still there, the ten minutes now being thirty minutes old I gave up, knocked on the door, handed Laura her flowers and made an excuse about getting lost after leaving the freeway to avoid a jam (which is believable for me). Her dad, Dave, offered me a beer and I suggested we have it in the garden. As I am a filthy smoker, this all seemed natural. While Laura and her mum Judy were in the house chatting about girly stuff, knitting, make-up, Brad Pitt, shampoo or some such I imagine, Dave and I went out for the beer. I asked permission, got the all clear and the plan was underway.


We parked at the little airfield and walked into the shed labeled 'Terminal' and jumped on a National Helicopters Bell 206 Jet Ranger. I have never been on a chopper before, but Laura likes it. (Ooh Matron!). The take off was smooth, it seemed to flutter into the air. Initially I was filled with trepidation, as my only experience of helicopters is from watching American Vietnam war movies. "Charlie don't surf, we're hit, going down, mayday mayday." I chilled a little and thought about the ring in my camera bag. If anything happened and it looked like we were going to die, I'd have to get it out quick, propose and get the ring on her finger before we hit the ground. The scenery was magnificent. We flew over Niagara Falls, the town of Niagara on the Lake and twenty minutes or so later landed safely back at the airfield. Heart still beating wildly from the adrenaline we got in the car and went to the Prince of Wales Hotel.

After lunch at a pleasant cafe' I suggested we take a meander about the town and down to the lake. It is a beautiful place, every house a little different and each a quaint expression of the traditional wooden North American home. Spoilt perhaps only by the cars driving up and down the main street.

Our stroll took us down to the lake shore and we sat on a boulder looking out at the blue horizon. I was a jangle of nerves. We were sat together, I stood up, got down on one knee and asked "Will you marry me?" She said "Yes" as she had so many times to my test drive not really proposing proposals; I took the ring from my pocket. Then the realisation grabbed her cheeks, a brilliant smile erupted; she saw me on one knee in front of her with the ring in my hand and knew that this meant it was really happening. She slipped the ring on, I sat back on the boulder and we kissed.

After our vacation Laura and I went back to my apartment in Costa Rica, which truth be told, for me, felt more like a vacation. I love my place in Santa Ana, it is peaceful, warm, the views are great and there is something reassuring about it. We had a couple of days off that I found truly relaxing. Which was good because I got back into the office on Monday caught a rotten cold and found out that the CEO had been arrested by the FBI who are also indicting the company. By Tuesday afternoon the company had voluntarily ceased trading pending legal moves and everyone was worried about whether the next pay cheque would be the last. It might be. This on top of an unwelcome appointment made by the boss two months ago that has put a lot of noses out of joint and caused many to consider their resignation.

Tuesday saw a few drinks at Jazz Cafe which temporarily relieved the symptoms of my cold. Laura got to meet a couple of my pals and we flew back to Toronto on Wednesday. Arriving late we dropped in to Laura's parents to pick up her car and drop off some the presents which we had bought at a roadside shop (well a little house on a country road that sold stuff) on the way back from Arenal. They had a sign up outside that offered free "agua de pipa fria" I stopped as I knew Laura would not have had any before, at least not the Latin American way.

Agua de pipa is the water from inside an immature coconut. You put the cocunut in it's husk into a fridge, then pull it out when cold. Holding the coconut in your left hand jam a bowie knife down into the husk penetrating the inner shell, twist the knife to open the knife hole a little, withdraw the knife and insert a straw into the hole. Then suck. (Proffesional Tip: Try not to stab your left hand through the coconut.)

We are very much in love. While cuddled up on the sofa watching a TV program about Americans I did have to mention that if she got big and fat we would have to split up. I mean love is one thing, dating fat birds is something else entirely. Laura countered with "Well what if I get super-fit and you get fat?" Well I gave it to her straight "You should love me for who I am, not the way I look!" This is the advantage of being superficial, different rules apply.

So Laura and I have spent the last week on vacation in Costa Rica. A volcanic black sand beach on the Pacific coast with a couple of days in Arenal.

There is a lot of restructuring going on at work and it has been difficult to take my mind off of it. It hasn't really felt like a vacation to me. It's the first time in Centro America for Laura and as we might have to move here full time, I have been worried about her enjoying the place too much to appreciate it myself. After a couple of days in the office and a weekend at home in Santa Ana we hit off out for the coast with no real aim in mind. We arrived in Puntarenas and realised it was a postindustrial dump that had fallen on it's knees since the railroad was torn up. Looking in the guide book we arrived in Playa Hermosa just south of Jaco. We stayed at an extortionate hotel for three nights and were bitten mercilessly by the fleas of an itinerant cat that begs food from the guests at the beachfront restaurant.

The place is mostly occupied by surfers escaping the commercialisation of Jaco. They speak a completely different language from normal humans... well dude it was toally gnarly and the super-mutant back wave ride ...... We didn't understand a word. There were a few trips away to coconut plantations, other beaches and some jungle trail off-roading in the rented 4x4.

After three nights we drove to Arenal and stayed in a spa. It was cloudy with a lot of rain, so we didn't get to see the lava red glow of the top of the volcano, which is normal for this time of year, but still dissappointing. Whilst driving we encountered some strange long nose cute creatures, some monkeys and some alligators under a bridge. It rained sticks most of the time in Arenal and we decided to head out for home for a couple of days rest before work.



We are flying back on Wednesday, unless something big has happened at work that I don't know about yet.

I wore a new pair of briefs yesterday, I got up last night to have a wee and there was a sticker on my thing that read "Large".

So.... Montreal was fantastic. Well Old Montreal was fantastic. It seems to be experiencing a renaissance with many of the old buildings being renovated, the last of the old street names and hotels have been converted from English to French by prefixing them with "Le" or "La" such as the excellent Hotel Le Saint James in a desperate attempt to eradicate the obviously Britannic roots of this marvelous city by Quebecois pomposity. Laura and I had a marvelous time and continued to fall ever more in love with each other, much as we do on a daily basis but with more eating out.
Montreal was the most populous city in North America in 1860 and the richest city in Canada until the Quebecois started demanding independence. The declaration of French as the only official language of Quebec together with the linguistic and cultural ethnic cleansing of English by the Quebecois stripped Montreal of its economic powerhouses as the both the successful companies and individuals left for Toronto (including the Bank of Montreal).
What was once a thriving and wealthy city has really been turned into a quaint has-been of a metropolis that makes money from tourists coming to visit Canada's second pretty French place. I am however willing to forgive the Quebecois a little bit as they cook better bread than anyone else in Canada.

Toronto is a city segmented by the nationality of it's immigrants; there is a Chinatown, a Little India, a little Greece, two Little Italys ( the original one around College Street and the newer more affluent one around Woodbridge); a huge Korean population around Yonge and Finch and a centre for just about everyone else except the French, English, Irish and Scottish who have dispersed into and formed the first white populations in the Toronto area. The land was purchased in 1787 from the local Missisaugas (Native American Indians) for 1700 pounds sterling and some goods by the British Commander Lord Dorchester in Montreal. John Graves Simcoe, the first Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada arrived in the Toronto area in 1793. There was no city or street plan at the time, it was just some land by a lake, the area called Toronto by local Iroquois is actually about 2 hours North by what is now lake Simcoe. Lieutenant Govenor Simcoe spent three years here and during this time had a ten block town layed out with modest buildings for parliament, court and religious services and called it York after the Duke of York. York changed it's name to Toronto in 1834.

The first phase of my project went live but a change in the financial certainty of the product I was replacing has undermined the budget for the subsequent phases and I lost three embers of my team so the last few weeks have been somewhat fraught at the office and I feel geographically uncertain about the next few months.

Laura and I more or less live together now and this has given me the opportunity to flex my cooking muscles; she can't eat disaccharides or polisaccharides. So I am cooking to rules laid down here which is quite a stretch, but fun as I love juggling pots and pans.

We are back to Costa Rica for two weeks on Wednesday with a week on vacation in the middle... can't wait!

So a quick update as I've been a little slack recently. I went back to Costa Rica about three weeks ago to launch the first phase of my new project. It was rough, but we got there and succeeded where a few attempts by our competitors have recently failed. I had planned on spending a month in Centro America and checking out Guatemala, but as the more observant among you will have detected from my previous post I have met someone very special, Laura. So I hightailed it back here to be with her on Monday.

Laura had picked up the keys to my new Toronto apartment while I was gone and met me in the arrivals lounge at the airport. She looked so very beautiful. On Tuesday I rented a GMC Envoy 4x4 from Budget to haul my stuff from the office to my new apartment. It is roughly the size of Brazil and had no problem swallowing the boxes and cases. I tried to swap it for my standard pimp-mobile 300C yesterday, but I think George has been letting someone else use it. The only thing they had was a Ford Crown Victoria and as I am neither an off duty cop nor over 60 years old, I am unable to be seen in one. So I'll drop the GMC off tomorrow and get something more sensible on Monday or Tuesday.

On Tuesday night I met Laura's parents for dinner. It was a fine night out and in a recent opinion poll among almost six friends are relatives of Laura, 97% thought I was the most likely candidate to carry her across the threshold (margin of error +/- 3%). After dinner we got a cab back to my part of town and Laura suggested we nip into a pub called the Jersey Giant. Outsider it was nothing special, inside it's all whitewash and black oak beams supporting a vaulted ceiling. But there in a corner of the bar was a vision of ecstasy. I rubbed my eyes, I was obviously hallucinating, maybe it was some sort of mirage. So I asked the barman... "Does that hand pump really have London Pride coming out of it?" About a nanosecond after he had finished pronouncing the word "does" I announced "This is an emergency! I need a pint of London Pride and don't spare the horses!" I ordered a port for Laura, who was at that moment was elevated in my estimation from her previous status, "most divine creature ever to have walked the earth" to her new status of Goddess. Paying for the drinks I walked out to the terrace with the best girl in the world in one hand and the best beer in the world in the other. Bliss! We spent an hour outside chatting and watching the constant stream of loonies that seem to oscillate from one end of King Street East to the other before going home.

Tomorrow we are off to Montreal for a long weekend.

I'll add some pictures when I get a mo...

Positives and Negatives
As many of you already know I am back in Costa Rica. This was going to be for a little over a month which under normal circumstances I would absolutely love. However, a short time ago I met someone that changed my perspective and now I am looking forward to getting back to Toronto. So much so, that I am willing to ride the undercarriage on the way back if there are no seats available. The Ticos I occasionally fly up there to work for me don't like the place due to suffering the cold there in the winter months. They don't believe me about the weather changing, so I have started referring to it as Hawaii Del Norte so they'll agree to more work in Canada.



So my project has had some setbacks which is annoying but other than that, life is good. My apartment is wonderful as ever and I have joined the gym under the office here so as not to let things go. I am going there every day and have decided to remove the dietary staple alcohol, from my regime for a week or so to help cut back the calories.

I left my credit card in an ATM machine one evening last week, which would normally have been a massively disturbing, given that the new one needs to be sent from the UK to Canada and I'm on the other side of the Americas. The following morning I went in to the bank with the ATM outside and told them about it and they returned me the card on seeing my Driving License. Disaster averted! Banks will not do this for you in the UK.

Yesterday I took a taxi home from the office, the taxis at the side of the building tend to be driven by sedate, somewhat confused old men, that drive you to random destinations they remember visiting as a child before the dementia set in. The taxis at the front seem to be driven by wannabe Ayrton Sennas. They cut the seatbelts out of the back of their cars, lower the suspension so that bumps larger than an ant dropping become impassable and mount disturbingly large fire extinguishers on the passenger side A pillar so as to guarantee facial disfiguration and death for the copilot when combined with the non-functioning inertia belt in the event of an accident.
I elected to use the clean and undented vehicle at the side. There were seatbelts in the back and the driver seemed quite a pleasant old chap. After a small nap, he took off in the direction of Santa Ana. He asked for directions which he ignored and took the wrong turn off of the autopista. After a detour through a small town in the countryside we ended up back on the right road. Apologising profusely, he stopped the meter at 5000 Colones and told me that I would not have to pay any more than that as he had made a mistake. If I hadn't been sat down, I would have fallen over. This is not the behavior of a regular taxi driver. He got me home and I paid him the 5000 he asked for and another 2000, because I didn't want him losing out for being decent. Besides there are far worse things than a taxi ride through Costa Rican countryside at night.

I discovered a flattened scorpion about 3 inches long just inside my front door the other day and wondered whether I had trodden on it on the way in the previous evening before banishing it from my thoughts and presumably into the dustpan of the maid a little later that day. Yesterday I decided to have a night in. While I was cooking this "Shadowy Thing" started darting about the kitchen. On closer inspection the thing revealed itself to be some amphetamine fueled grasshopper too fast to catch under a glass. A couple of squirts with the first household spray that came to hand, slowed and confused him enough to allow transportation out to the terrace. I had just resolved that Centro America has entirely too many creatures turned away from my cooking to watch a very un-flat scorpion trundling across my kitchen floor. This guy spent the night under an inverted glass before being carried to the terrace for his portrait and thence to the garden that he may continue to pursue whatever mischief he wants. If I found myself bitten by him, his next trip to the garden will be as a martyred warning to the rest of his phylum.

Contrasts

Three million people in Darfur depend on food aid from the UN. Due to lack of sufficient funding the UN announced last week that it will be halving food rations from May to 1050 calories per day. A normal person needs between 1300 and 1500 calories per day to survive. So this amounts to a diet plan for the starving and undernourished.

The International Federation of Competitive Eating has four events listed for May, people from all over the US will gather to gorge themselves on sickening volumes of tamales, bologna (current record 2.5 pounds in 5 minutes), Shoo-fly pie and hot dogs (current record 53&1/2 hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes).

Sometimes I feel a little confused.

The desk calendar of the receptionist at the office announced that Wednesday was 'Administrative Professionals Day'.

It was also the twentieth anniversary of the day Chernobyl self destructed. On April 26th 1986 at 6:30am Unit 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear power station exploded spraying 120 tons of Uranium and 900 tons of highly radioactive graphite into the atmosphere to rain down over Ukraine and the rest of Europe. Lieutenant Vladimir Pravik and his firemen climbed ladders to the broken roof of the reactor to train their hoses on the fire in an attempt to control it. Without protective equipment they were subject to a lethal radiation dose every 48 seconds. After an hour, dizzy and vomiting they were rushed to hospital, Pravik's eyes had turned from brown to blue. Suffering from such massive internal radiation burns that their hearts blistered, they died and their radioactive bodies were welded into lead coffins for burial.

Twenty years on, a thirty kilometer radius around Chernobyl is sealed off and will remain so for as close to forever as makes no odds.



There are no reliable figures on the number of people that have died and will die as a direct result of this disaster. If you are interested, you can read more here, here or here.

So the other day I take the morning off work to sort out a driving license.

I don't want a Canadian driving license at all really, I don't need one for the car, I get off the plane, take a taxi to my apartment and the next day I pick up my Chrysler 300 from Budget which is a brisk five minute stroll from where I live. Three of four weeks later I take it back, get a cab to the airport the following morning and spend a week at home in Costa Rica. I'm happy because I like my vanilla white pimp mobile, although I am worried they may be letting other people drive it when I'm not in Canada. George the manager of the little branch of Budget in North York is happy, because I have rented a car from him for three weeks per month for the last seven months, although he is a little worried that I might figure out I could just buy one for less money. My boss is happy because Budget give me a full size car for sub-compact rates, although he is a little worried that rent-a-wreck might be able to do me one cheaper.

In fact I actively do not want a Canadian car driving license. All it would give me is the opportunity to receive speeding tickets, which on the whole I'd prefer not to get.

All would be simply marvellous if summer wasn't approaching and I wasn't suffering from the trauma of motorcycle withdrawal symptoms. It is different this time, On previous occasions, I have wanted a motorcycle but not owned one. Now I own two and can't ride either of them as they are both at Dave's in England after their tortuous shipping nightmare from Spain.

My Harley is a 1996 XL1200S on which I have spent a much time and effort making it fast; unlike most Harleys, it is not a chromosexual hairdresser's idealized vision of a one percenter's ride. Cosmetic changes have been limited to having shiny bits powdercoated black and the practical, a fork brace, a rack and a flatter saddle than the standard bucket. Motorwise there are many changes: Buell Lightning heads with XR750 spring kit, Branch Flowmetrics manifold, performance carb, cams, mufflers, ignition module, air cleaner, Dynojet etc. Needless to say, it is fast and surprises a lot of sports bikes. To quicken up the steering the forks have been lowered in the yokes and it has received a fork brace. I also replaced all the brake lines with braided steel items to improve feel. It still handles and brakes like a Harley though, which is to say much like an oil tanker. I have had a love-hate relationship with it for ten years now.

My other bike is a 2000 Suzuki GSXR600 SRAD. Which is a beast. I picked it up for a song in Andalucia off of a broke English guy. It handles and brakes by the power of thought alone, which is to say, if you have thought it, the bike has already completed the maneauvre. It is fast enough too and gets to the very bad side of 200kph in no time, much after that my adrenal gland runs out of power and I have to ease off on the right wrist. I'm not the boy I used to be.

Anyway, I can't import either of them to Canada. The rule is that they have to be either: over 15 years old or originally made for the US or Canadian markets. I tried to explain that there are only two types of Harley, California bikes and the rest but they weren't interested.

Renting motorcycles is extraordinarily expensive compared to cars and I just can't see my boss paying out the extra $2000 per month to cover my transport mode preferences. I could air freight my Harley over and insure it for six months via a US motorcycle tour company, but financially this is the equivalent of being anally raped by Genghis Kahn and at least sixty of his closest Mongol horde.

I could buy one, but to get license plates in Canada you need to get insurance, to get insurance you need to have an Ontario driving license. This leads me on to part two of my missive, which will henceforth be referred to as the 'pissed off bit about licenses'.

You can swap a British License for a Canadian one, but they do not recognise a Gibraltar license as British, which it is. I am only prepared to part with my Gibraltar license. My proper issued in England one, I want to keep. After all, it's not like I live here! Worse still the only category that you can swap the is the bit that lets you drive cars. The Ontario Government Driving License department or 'bastards' as they are referred to colloquially will only accept US motorcycle licenses for swaps and Swiss ones. Most US states will give you a motorcycle license if you know which way around you are supposed to sit on a bike. "Well done Mr Johnson you made the front from the back, here have a motorcycle permit". I took my California motorcycle test about 18 years ago, obviously the license expired a long time ago. I may have to get them to try to look it up. The Swiss license is apparently very difficult to obtain, the Swiss government seeing motorcycles as far too rebelious and motorcyclists as people that should really be legislated out of existance. I now believe that the Ontario government is trying to do the same to bikes. It is illegal for a bike to filter between lanes of cars here! Wankers! What is the point of having a bike if you have to queue up with cars. Sorry, I have to say it again. Wankers! Well as soon as my bike in Canada dilemna is resolved I know someone who will certainly not be complying with this asinine nonsense.

I may have to take a motorcycle test again, which will not only involve learning Canadian road law, but I'll also have to ride within it for the duration of the test! Ontario has three levels of motorcycle license. M1 - no passengers, no freeways, no alcohol, daytime only; M2 - no alcohol; M - you can have a beer(Yay!). I think I will be able to go straight into the full M license once I have taken a test, rather than have to wait two and a half years due to having had a motorcycle license in the UK for so long, they give credit for the experience but not a license.

So, now I have bored you with this rubbish, I shall go shower and hit the gym! For my next post I may ponder as to why first generation immigrants to a country gravitate towards employment in the Immigration departments of the host country of their parents.

The Panama Canal
Panama earns a great deal of money through the canal which can save as much as twenty days on a journey from the west coast of the Americas to the east which equates to 18,000 miles from a journey between San Francisco and New York.



It is a phenominal work of engineering and a great tribute to American ingenuity of the last century. It was finally completed in 1914 and after ten years by 56,307 people led by the US Army Corp of Engineers, records from the French period of construction are uncertain.
From the time it was started on January 10th 1880 until the day the first traversed it on January 7th 1914 as many as 27,000 men died in it's making.



Over 18 years the French moved 30 million cubic yards of earth but their efforts finally succumbed to tropical disease and financial ruin. The US Army waged a war on malaria and yellow fever; removed another 238 million cubic yards of earth and finally completed a work first dreamt of in 1524 when King Carlos V of Spain ordered the first survey of the canal route.



It is a marvel to watch the train guided cargo ships being raised and lowered in the locks. If you ever have the opportunity, go to Miraflores locks and see it for yourself. If you are interested in the history, have a look here.

Firstly, apologies to you guys that have been looking for a new post from me and not seen one in a while. Secondly, here is the excuse:

As you may have read in my post before last I joined a gym. It is now one month since I joined. Since I started I have gone from seeing a personal trainer once per week to twice per week and other than my week back home in Costa Rica and Panama, I have been every night except two.

I have lost an inch from my capacious waste, 5lbs in weight and more importantly gone from 27.4% body fat to 20% fat. This equates to a lard change from 55lb to 40lb. After work I saw my nutritionist who gave me the second interesting piece of information in the space of two weeks; the first being that you should only eat carbs early in the day as the body cant do anything with them late in the day, as the day's work or workout has already been done and so all any fat you eat can be instantly laid down to expand the waistline while you burn the small number of carbs between the last meal and bedtime; the second is that for health reasons, one should eat about a gram of protein for every kilogram of bodyweight.

For every 30 grams of chicken, beef or fish you eat, you only get about 8 grams of protein, a cup of peanuts will give you 37 grams of protein. All this stuff is available online so I won't continue to bore you with it. If you have a heavy workout schedule, you need to up the protein by another 40%. So at the advice of my nutritionist, I have started using protein and calcium supplements.

After a month of getting me used to the right movements and technique, my trainer Simon switched me for the first time on to serious weights. This time last month I had difficulty managing three sets of 20 repetitions on a leg press machine with no weights on it. Today he loaded 6 weights the size of truck wheels on to it. I managed the same number of repetitions. It hurt though. He pulled the same trick on a bunch of other machines and started me on a punishing bench press regime.

After an hour of tortuous training with weights and resistance machines I died and was reincarnated on an exercise bicycle. Forty minutes later I was wondering how my whole body had been turned to jelly in one hundred precious minutes.

After hobbling back to the locker room I had a cleansing sweat in the steam room for 15 minutes, went home, ate a salad and then met Kevin and Nora down the pub to undo some of the good work.

I fear my fondness for six packs may prevent me from developing one.

I have much more to tell you about Panama and a recent visit to a dark, old German mansion house in downtown Toronto that is now a restaurant called Carman's where the waiters point a flashlight at your steak so that you can ensure it is cooked to your liking when you cut into it. But I will save all this for another time.

I would however like to take this opportunity to wish you a happy Easter. For those of you unfamiliar with the history of Easter, it is named after the Saxon mother goddess of spring and fertility Eostre. Easter is the time of the spring equinox, when the first flowers appear in Northern Europe and the time of the rebirth of the world after the darkness and cold of winter, which is why it is associated with eggs and that most procreative of creatures, the rabbit. I think the Christians reappropriated it for something, but I can't remember for what.

Blessed be!

Panama..
I love the buses in Panama and Nicaragua. They all have custom paint jobs, individual names and chrome exhaust pipes rising vertically from the rear bumpers.


Just to let you all know I'm still alive, I'll post more on this when I get back to Canada but here's it:
I'm staying in a small hostel in Casco Viejo, Panama City. The people are friendly a mixed crowd from Europe and North America.

The area is reminiscent of Havana vieja by which I mean a run-down slum that was once an area of envied affluence. Totally unlike Havana, some of the houses have been restored to a candied pastiche and if you move a block or two outside of Casco Viejo, which is crawling with various styles of police, it gets dangerous as it is a quaint old colonial slum surrounded by an unpleasant graffitied 20th century slum. Havana is also safe as Cubans caught giving tourists a nasty look can be jailed for an indefinite period, Panama isn't like that.

It's hot, humid, there is no sound of gunfire, all the bars shut early on Monday. It has a tropical down-at-heel decomposing feel about the place, which if you have never been to a poor place in Centro America is difficult to describe.

There will be more photos later in the week.

Casco Viejo is a place trapped between poverty and wealth, where western tourists and businessmen pass each other by on the same streets in different worlds.

I joined a new gym on Sunday March 13th and had an unfitness assessment. At the time I weighed 202 lb and was apparently 27.4% fat, which equates to 55 lbs of flesh not suitable for making pies.

Me: What does this all mean?
Trainer: You're a fat bastard!
Me: I want a second opinion!
Trainer: You're ugly too!

I have been to the gym every day since, I now have a personal trainer and a nutritionist.

On the scales a minute ago I registered 205 lb.

After the gym I have studiously undertaken further training at the pub. You don't get a body like mine without extreme maintenance!

The cigarettes are now under control and I intend to make my lungs a smoke free zone, they are just so good with beer though.

I have enjoyed several happy evenings boozing with my friends Kevin and Nora. Kevin has recently enlightened me with several hypotheses of his which I have found most interesting.

1) The violent, misogynistic behavior exhibited by rap singers and lauded in rap songs is very similar to the racist stereotype espoused by the Klu Klux Klan. I was in the pub during the academy awards when Three 6 Mafia won their Oscar for song "It's hard out here for a pimp". During their acceptance a Nigerian in the bar was vociferously complaining about the standard of their English.

2) The primitive, violent, theatrical slugfest which is the WWF is not entertainment. When I say WWF here I mean the WWE, the 'World Wrestling Federation' had to rename themselves as they tried to hijack the initials of the 'World Wildlife Fund' but the 'roid pumped sphincters failed and the World Wildlife Fund won their right to their own initials back in court. It is an abominable role model for the mistreatment of women, a proponent of might equals right pugnacious conflict resolution and gang fighting. For me it all this and additionally yet another example of the US using the word 'World' when it should more appropriately use the words 'United States'. Another notable example being the baseball World Series which translates into the US and Canada Series, in an attempt to rectify this there is now the World Baseball Classic which actually has teams from other continents. The finals of the first of these series were yesterday and Japan beat Cuba 10-6. It really screws up the results when you put the world into these world sporting events!

3) Mobile phone companies bend time. In an experiment with his wife Nora and their two cell phones, they discovered that a 3 second call on the receiving phone is a 16 second call on calling phone. I felt momentarily sad for Albert Einstein on hearing this, fortunately he is not alive to find this out for himself as it blows the theory relativity to bits.

4) I would lose more weight if I used the upstairs toilets in my local pub as they are further from the bar and require mastering the stepping action. I can't argue with that.

I recently purchased a Leatherman tool thing. It is one of those bloke must have type items and I have missed the Victorinox Swiss Army knife I have had since it fell through a gap between two sea lashed rocks whilst I was out fishing last year. So now I have had the both I shall give you a lightning comparison review:
Victorinox Swiss Champ: Fantastic Quality, 4079 functions including the great scissors, useless pliers and a corkscrew.
Leatherman Wave: Fantastic Quality, 17 functions including superb pliers, usable scissors, but no corkscrew.
The result: Buy the Leatherman Wave and a corkscrew!

I am flying back to Costa Rica tomorrow and have my tickets to Panama, where I'll be from Saturday until I get back to Toronto on the 29th. I am really looking forward to it. It will be great to get away for a bit.

Remarks that may have sounded anti-American are not intended to cause offence to any U.S. citizen, unless you voted for that chimp in the Whitehouse in which case, offence is fine. There are a lot of you people living in Jesusland Inc. that I quite like, Karyn, Stephanie, Monica, Tim etc

Now marginally cheerier than a while ago...
I arrived home about five minutes ago and decided to open a bottle of Amarone I bought in the LCBO earlier. Amarones are always a treat, rich, very strong and sweet, almost like a port. In the book Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal Lecter selected a rich Amarone to accompany a victim's liver and some flava beans. It was switched to Chianti in the screenplay so that the audience might recognise it as a wine. I can't speak for his main course but on the wine front, for me at least, Chianti is never such a treat. The screw in the corkscrew in my Toronto rental apartment died of metal fatigue with barely an eighth of an inch of cork out of the bottle. I was not in the mood for an emergency of this magnitude. Gripping the spike of metal protruding from the cork in a scissor action with my can opener and resting the nose of the can opener on the edge of a kitchen unit with the other end supported in my muscular(ish) fist, I was able to pull the bottle down and ease the cork out. Disaster averted! For a few worrying moments, I thought I might have to stay sober.



I wasn't at work today, I had planned on grafting from home, but failed abysmally. However, I have been working six days per week most weeks since November and I need some chill time. One day per week to relax is really not enough. I have started reading New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, checked out the internet for the details of the local gym and where in I can take up Krav Maga again. Perhaps there is a moment of epiphany coming on.

My Harley was supposedly delivered to Dave's last week after 6 months in transit! So in theory both of my motorcycles are safely tucked up at his now. I have to decide what to do with them.

Earlier this evening I encountered a craving for lobster, giving in immediately I jumped in the car and hit out for the only venue I could think of that would have some within reasonable distance, a chain restaurant called Red Lobster. On parking in the small Asian shopping mall I noticed a small place called Lobster Royale, there being a forty minute wait at the chain restaurant, I went in. It's a rather dingy hole decorated in the style of your grandmother's dream bathroom with maritime accents and plastic lobster crawling across the walls. The service was languid, the food however, was great. I went for the 1&1/2 lb lobster dinner menu. The clam chowder was fantastic, the garlic rolls were great, the French fries were crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside, their salad was nothing to write home about which is why I haven't mentioned it. The lobster was fresh out of a huge tank that dominates the inside of the dining room. It was cooked wonderfully and this is the first time since I've been here that I can say that I've eaten better than I did in Spain for less money. Not that it's cheap by Spanish standards, but fresh lobster in Spain is ridiculously expensive. I think I'll go back there next week and gorge myself on Alaska King Crab Legs.

Earlier in the week I had lunch at a Szechuan place with some colleagues. I opened my fortune cookie at the end and there was more than one fortune prediction.

For those of you wondering where the photos in my last morose post were from, I took them on a Sunday drive to Niagara Falls last month.