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.

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"