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.

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.