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).