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.

Just a quick post and somewhat unusually, a personal one.

I'm back in Toronto. I went to a "Pimps and Hos" fancy dress party on Saturday with Kevin and Nora, as a pimp obviously (photos to follow). The rental car agency picked up a Chrysler 300 for me, which was nice so I have the car for the outfit I was wearing.

Work is crazy as ever and I'm attempting to juggle the requirements of my boss, the corporate deadlines, the management of the Toronto operation, the team in Costa Rica and some third-party suppliers .

I don't get much time off, work six days per week most weeks and late most days. The pressure from all sides is grinding me down and I need a vacation, not necessarily a go somewhere vacation, but some do nothing time. That and to sort out some personal stuff, the refinancing of my apartment and tax in Gibraltar, buying a place in either Canada, for investment or Costa Rica, to live in, sorting out the some new furniture for the place in Gibraltar, finding out where my motorcycles are. Just some time off where I will allow myself no excuses not to hit the gym every day for a couple of weeks. I have put on far too much weight working here. It feels like I am on this treadmill and will be on it for another six months and I cannot actually imagine what it will be like when I get off.

Must remember my mum's birthday and Mother's Day, which is on the 26th of March in the UK, in the US it's the 14th of May. I know because mum reminded me, so there will be more internet shopping to be done or will have to run the guilt gauntlet for a whole year.

The other night I had a vivid dream, my friend David and I were riding bright orange KTM off-road motorcycles through lush tropical woodland in Costa Rica, popping wheelies and laughing, we were young again without a care in the world. I was so happy in my dream, somehow after waking up, it made me so very sad.

I miss my family; friends Amanda and David in England and so many more; John in Italy; Kay in Gibraltar; Ken, Anas and his wife Lourdes in Spain. I spend moments missing Lucy in Australia, missing Karyn in the US, my cousin Mark in Wales and so many others whom I hold dear and the chances are, if you are reading this, you are one of them.