Maridos De Alquiler...
All over Costa Rica you see signs which read Maridos De Alquiler, this confused me initially as literally in translates to "Husbands For Rent". I wondered what these rental husbands were used for and whether it might provided an alternative and more interesting career....

Scene A, an obviously irate woman punches a number into the keypad on her phone:
Rental Husband: Hello Husbands for Rent, how can I help you today madam?
Woman: You're a waste of space, you really are, sitting around the house loafing all day watching television, you haven't mown the lawn, you were going to decorate the spare room before my mother came to stay, have you forgotten what day it is? Our anniversary, that's what and all you can think about is the football, when was the last time you took me out to dinner, but not too busy to spend all night down the pub drinking with your mates ogling that barmaid with the big chest, oh, no! I don't know why I married you, I really don't my mother said you weren't good enough for me and she was right, given you the best years of my life I have and you can't even put the toilet seat down.
Rental Husband: Thank you madam, that will be fifteen pounds, seventy five pence, will you be paying by credit card?

Scene B, mid thirties woman, in scarlet lipstick talking on phone:
Woman: Hello Husband-U-Like, I'd like you to send one round about 8:30pm, dinner will be served at 7pm and left cold for him, I'll be wearing a see-through negligee, if he could just sit down in front of the television with a can of lager, smelling of curry, fart, belch, ignore me and then announce that' he's off to the pub, that will be fine. I'm a professional and marriage wouldn't really fit in with my career.

Maridos de alquiler,I have subsequently found out, are all purpose handymen and carry out DIY functions for husbands that prefer to leaving, plumbing, electrics, shelf fitting etc to a professional, or semi professional. I imagine that when IKEA arrive in Costa Rica they will all be millionaires.

The home country
There are a few things I miss about England, the beer, which I have mentioned on numerous occasions, bacon and many more that I will not go into right now. Although there are numerous cultural differences between the English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish, bacon is one of those things we certainly have in common. The diaspora of the British Isles, will, when gathered together in foreign lands, occasionally give voice to the things from home that they long for and chief among them is the rasher.

British bacon is completely unlike American bacon, having more than 70% less fat, neither is it like Canadian bacon, nor is it anything at all like the 'English bacon' available in Canada. Loins of pork are cured in either brine, also known as Wiltshire cure or dry cured in salt. It may also then be smoked using a number of different woods, prior to the moment when it is grilled or fried and becomes breakfast ecstasy.

Most every country today has restrictions on the personal importation of food stuffs, so unless you are in a place that already caters for the British or Irish ex-pat, you are destined for a life of breakfast time disappointment. The US already has this angle covered and Spain is also not a problem due to Gibraltar and also it's proximity to the UK. Canada is not so similarly served.

A chat on this subject erupted with an Irish couple I know, Kevin and Nora a marvelous couple. They too suffer from bacon and sausage withdrawal and going cold turkey is not an option. They told me that the Irish in Canada have resorted to smuggling. Planes with suitcases stuffed with sausages, bacon and cheese and onion crisps ( a flavour combination that is legal yet unavailable in Canada) arrive every day from Ireland. Bulk packs of bacon are split up into individual packets and spread amongst the luggage so that even if the customs people do catch a pack, hopefully a few will get through. Apparently, as long as the bacon is for your personal use you can get away with it, but they can get quite heavy on anyone suspected of being a dealer. The customs guys apparently turn a blind eye to flights from Dublin as they know it goes on.

Nora also brings in sausages as she can't find any she likes here. I suggested she make them herself. I explained that if sausage skins aren't available, then perhaps Trojans natural, non-lubed of course, could suffice and then the world is her banger flavour-wise. But she didn't seem keen, maybe the idea of ribbed sausage with a teat at one end was offputting.

While we were talking about this I had visions of guys in black uniforms and dogs specially trained to sniff out bacon and sausages walking past lines of Irish people. An otherwise innocent looking man in a Guinness T-shirt with ginger hair sweating profusely, worried about what will happen if one of the sixteen condoms full of dry cured streaky and smoked back bacon he swallowed before getting on the plane should split. Breakfast would be ruined, that life of fear that is the lot of a bacon mule.

An empty, darkened warehouse near lake Ontario, the sunlight scatters through broken, dirty panes of glass and lands glimmering in the puddles on the floor. The 'Butcher', a heavy set Irishman in a black Hugo Boss suit and white polo neck jumper, with close cropped hair and two days stubble, looks coolly at the disheveled lad in the shamrock sweatshirt standing on the other side of the desk. Staring up at the younger man, he flicks his cigarette butt away and reaches for the briefcase that is resting closed on the desk. A bead of sweat runs down the temple of the youthful courier. The twin clicks from the locks of the black leather case echo off the walls of the silent disused dockside building. Opening the case, the Butcher, puts his Giorgio Armani sunglasses down, looks inside and snaps his fingers. A skinny man in his fifties wearing a white lab coat and bifocal glasses scurries over to the desk. "Check it!" the Butcher commands. The technician pulls a rasher from the case with some tweezers, brings it to eye level for closer examination and hurries off. The Butcher, looking up from the case and into the eyes of the courier says quite slowly, coldly and deliberately, "If you've cut the streaky with Oscar Mayer, you've had your last Full Irish..."

Valentines Day
I shall be spending Valentines day in a less than ideal way. My cunning plan to stage a modern rendition of Much Ado About Nothing with Kate Winslet cast as Beatrice and myself as Benedick on Valentines Night 2006, in my apartment in Toronto seems to have gone awry. Love is such a fickle mistress.

During a Roxy Music tour in 1977 Bryan Ferry called girlfriend Jerry Hall at the Camelturd Ritz in Morocco to ask how she was. What she didn't know was that Bryan was reading about the affair she had just commenced with Mick Jagger when she popped backstage after a Stones concert. What Mick didn't realise was that she really wanted to be with me. If only the ice cream wafer she had posted me anonymously with her Peckham phone number on it had not crumbled in the envelope, if only I had reached puberty by then, it could all have been so different.

The philosophers, poets and playwrights have had much to say about love...

Calvin: What's it like to fall in love?
Hobbes: Well... say the object of your affection walks by...
Calvin: Yeah?
Hobbes: First, your heart falls into your stomach and splashes your innards. All the moisture makes you sweat profusely. This condensation shorts the circuits to your brain and you get all woozy. When your brain burns out altogether, your mouth disengages and you babble like a cretin until she leaves.
Calvin: THAT'S LOVE?!?
Hobbes: Medically speaking.
Calvin: Heck, that happened to me once, but I figured it was cooties!!

or as Elizabeth Barret Browning said.....

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday's

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with a passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints, I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life! and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

Work, work, work...
Work seems to completely dominate my life at the moment. However I wasn't going to let that interfere with the rugby this Saturday. Rugby on TV is one of the few things I really miss about the UK, I'm not really an avid fan but I like to watch all the international matches. I have now subscribed to Setanta's internet sports service so I'll never have to miss a game again. The Italian's played valiantly on Saturday but with superior strength and an awful lot of luck, England prevailed (31-16) and are odds on to win the Six Nations.

Rod, my colleague from Costa Rica and I decided to head downtown on Sunday. I wanted to build a new PC and there's no better place to buy the bits than China Town. Prior to buying the components we caught some lunch at the Sky Dragon, it's a Dim Sum place, nothing fancy but it has a style all it's own. This may be normal in China but not having eaten there I don't know. A constant stream of waitresses walk the aisles between the tables with saucers and steamers of all manner of dim sum, you indicate which plates you are interested in and they are dropped on your table with a ramikin of the appropriate sauce. Within 5 minutes of sitting down we had half a dozen plates of asian delicacies spread before us. Rod, who is a black belt at eating, quickly got the hang of the new ordering technique, we ran out of room on a table for four and within half an hour were completely stuffed. Rod remarked that the Americans had a lot to learn about the fast in fast food. The table cloths are polythene and when it is time to clear a table, a waitress picks up the table cloth by the corners, encapsulating the plates, cups, glasses and bottles and carries them off; another waitress lays out crockery and a fresh pot of green tea on the fresh table that was under the previous one. The food is good, there is an amazing variety and it is cheap too. We both balked at the steamed chicken feet but everything else was great.

Walking outside we found ourselves in what seemed like the last vestige of the Chinese New Year celebrations, with people in dragon costumes dancing to the beat of drums.

I managed to get the PC parts from a store in the same area and it has all gone together without a hitch. It's nice not having to use a laptop at home.


For those of you that are interested, I have updated my gallery site with photos of New York, you can see them here.

Feet semi-firmly plated in Ontario...
A week back at work and in just the one country, has not quite given me enough time to relax and my project at work is pressing so the weekend will be a short one (again). Time in Costa Rica, whether a working day or a weekend is like being on vacation. Time back in Toronto feels like day after day of Mondays. Still, another two weeks and I'll be back home again.

Nothing eventful has occurred, all barring a series of angry phone calls to my mobile phone service provider, who are the most unimaginably inefficient and incompetent bunch of semi-numerate and proffesionally useless cretins I have ever had the misfortune to deal with. During one conversation with them, they put me on hold, their phone system plays music while you wait and the track that was playing was by Thievery Corporation. There has never been a more appropriate listen while your life ebbs away number ever.

It's not big and it's not clever! Do these people walk around thinking to themselves "Too many people are taking me seriously, my life would be so much better if the public at large regarded me as an idiot instead of just the people that know me personally."

Last Sunday
So I have finally seen The Statue of Liberty, she is beautiful, but then I have always loved French girls. The words of Emma Lazarus have struck a chord with me for many years and I have always used them as a yardstick by which to gauge the current morality of U.S. immigration and foreign policy.

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

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Many of the buildings on Ellis Island have been allowed to deteriorate and are currently under restoration. The museum celebrating the immigration of bygone centuries is filled with exhibits of the large scale self-indulgent backslapping variety and although it is possible to spend several hours there, best to get in take a quick look about then step outside and admire the views of Manhattan.

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The site of the World Trade Centre is now a pit several stories deep, the concrete sides studded with the cut and rusted I-bars that supported the lower floors. the base is now covered by air conditioning units for the subway station below. Without access to a nearby building it may only be viewed through layers of galvanised steel fencing. If it were not for the street vendors dotted about it, selling cheap souvenirs you would hardly know you were standing at the site of such tragedy. Somehow I expected it to be accorded more reverence.

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It needs to be said that there is probably no better day to go site seeing in the U.S. that Superbowl day, so nothing was really that busy. Back in Costa Rica, it was election day and the busiest day of the year at the office.

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It may have just been coincidence but 50% of the bars in New York seem to be Irish places.

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Mental Note "I must remember to stay in a classier hotel next time"

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Stay tuned for the next exciting episode "Back in Canada"

....there's more
NYC as I said before is a place of extremes and nothing is more extreme than the prices for car parking and kamikaze driving of the taxi drivers. Come to think of it, London is the only place I have been where I feel comfortable in a cab. Although I'd curse them when I lived there for not 'gahn sowrf of the warter' (crossing the Thames to South London) after midnight and other such transgressions, they are in fact Gods amongst taxistas. They don't take you to drive in robberies like they do in Colombia (don't take one alone Joe!), you can wear a seatbelt unlike Costa Rica where they remove them, they know where they're going unlike Costa Rica, they speak a recognized language, unlike Canada and they don't rip you off unlike Costa Rica, Spain, the Czech Republic and most of the rest of the world. Gibraltarian taxis are also good, but only having about 7 small roads to drive on, they have little excuse.

I managed to get to see the England (47) v. Wales (13) game of the 2006 Six Nations Rugby Tournament in a Irish pub called Baker Street which inexplicably has a Sherlock Holmes motif. A man known for his love of coke but not of craic and not Irish in the slightest. Still, they sell an Irish breakfast (the same as an English breakfast) and I needed to eat some real bacon after going into withdrawal about two months ago.

The Museum of Modern Art is a wondrous place and I was overjoyed to reaquaint myself with Magritte, Seurat, Gauguin, Klimt and Miro. As with many such places, it is really too big to walk around in one visit. If you are nearby, you really must go.

Depressingly, both the Flatiron Building and the Guggenheim were covered in scaffolding, I am passionate about architecture and would love to have seen them naked. I did however manage to catch the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building which are deservedly famous icons. An unexpected joy was Time Square at night, it reminded me very much of the movie Blade Runner, such over the top consumerist decadence, beautiful yet somehow sordid and distasteful.

New York, New York...
It's been a busy day, I only got back this morning, so I'll have to tell you all about it later, but for the moment I'll let you know that I have never been to New York before.

It has held a magic for me ever since watching Mouse in Manhattan as a small boy. An episode of the old Hanna Barbera Tom and Jerry cartoon produced in 1945. The Gershwinesque score by Scott Bradley, originally based on Louis Alter's 1928 Manhattan Serenade still haunts me today.

Having now trod a little sidewalk there, I have to say that many years on I think I now understand why Jerry was so excited to get there and also why he was glad to get back home.

It is a place of extremes and of which much hyperbole is fully justified.

I've been a little busy...
So a quick post to catch up..... Last Wednesday I flew home from Toronto to San Jose, Costa Rica. When I got home there was a dead scorpion in my lounge, luckily I haven't found a live one while putting on my trousers. I had a quiet night in Santa Ana and checked out a couple of bars I've been meaning to go to.

Thursday I went to the Teatro Torres, dropped off all The Body Shop products that the cast had requested and followed it up with drinks in a salsa bar in Heredia. People just seem to bring their own instruments and jam, it's too packed to dance really, which saves much embarassment.

Friday night saw drinks and great conversation in a bar near work, then on Saturday after three hours sleep, I got up, took a taxi to the airport and flew to Managua, Nicaragua via El Salvador and spent a fantastic weekend in Granada (the Nicaraguan one) and Managua. Granada is an unspoilt colonial wonder and I stayed in a hotel built in a restored mansion house and was only awoken once by the sound of gunfire and sirens. I found a new friend and the time spent there was sublime. Sunday lunch was taken in a restaurant on the shore of a lagoon that fills the crater of an inactive Volcano.

I was shocked by the brief glimpses of poverty in Nicaragua. I have resolved to visit a lot more of Central and South America. I'll take that trip to Panama in three weeks time, then see if I can work my way through the continent a weekend at a time. Companies with a North American ethos don't seem to understand the whole vacation concept. Work life balance indeed, how is five or six days work then one or occasionally two days off a balance?

This morning I flew back to San Jose in a twin turboprop ATR 42 and after a rough landing, took a taxi to work. Tonight, I had dinner with my friend Nicky which was long overdue and we chatted about everything and nothing. About an hour ago I jumped in a cab home.

I am looking forward to spending more time in this end of the continent.

Chinese horoscopes
A recent radio programme prompted me to check out my chinese horoscope. Apparently I am a fire horse, which unfortunately gives away my age. So now I'm going to have to update my lunar sign so that it is in tune with my date of birth which I switched to 1972 a little while ago. It is not a failure to own up to the years I've spent here, it is more a realignment of my chronological age with my youthful good looks!

So the stories go, fire horses are often killed at birth due to the shame and trouble that they will bring their families. I know that both my parents contemplated this on numerous occasions when I was a small boy, when they caught me painting their eiderdown to match their brass bed, when I was kicking the lower cans from the pyramids at the local supermarket (Newtonian Law needed verification) and any one of the many of my youthful crimes. I never really practiced arson and gave up the violin and wasn't a nerdy boy with dreams of world domination, which accounts for my failure to achieve the giddy heights of Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein and Bill Gates.

I don't believe in the whole horoscope thing as I don't see that 1/12 of the worlds population will have a similar day tomorrow nor that everyone born on March 19th will have a great Monday next week because the paranormal hack in the paper says it will be great for Pisces. Chinese horoscopes have a little higher granularity, it taking 60 years for one cycle of the combined element and animal signs, still tosh though I'm sure. I was so fed up with people telling me what virgos were like that I changed my star sign to Chevrolet. Apparently I am a typical virgo, you know intelligent, good looking, virile so I might change back. Anyway, for the purposes of the next paragraph I am going to suspend disbelief.

My predictions for 2006 are:

• My project will go live with much fanfare, anxiety and raised voices in March
• A minority Conservative government will be elected in Canada next week
• They'll realise it was a mistake in 2007
• I will meet a wonderful woman and fall in love
• Someone you know will listen to an ELO number
• General motors fresh new strategy will be to put a marginally larger engine in the same crappy cars.
• Eric Clapton and Joe Cocker will each release a new compilation album of hits they had years ago in much the same way as they do every year.
• The American public will realise that Laura Bush is actually more of an idiot than her husband, he was born simple and can't help it, she married into idiocy or was it money?
• I will fritter away a lot of cash on rubbish I don't need.

On another note I am leaving Toronto on Wednesday to go home to Costa Rica for a week. Then after I get back here I have some flights booked for a weekend in New York City (fortuitously during the Chinese New Year celebrations) and some time next month I really need to go to Panama.

This weekend has been far too short!