Pennsylvania Winter Wonderland

Well I am supposed to be having Christmas in Pennsylvania and it just so the Little Girl can play in the snow, I really dont like cold weather anymore and I only agreed under immense pressure. The weather cooperated perfectly, it snowed the day before we flew, so much so that the airport was closed for a while and a huge backlog of flights built up and delayed us the next day. we arrived to a crowded immigration in Newark New York and spent an hour getting through, luckily the folks new we were arriving late and waited patiently for us. The snow is really deep and snowed again that night, leaving a trail of thick ice on the roads and a trail of damaged cars.











We played in the snow for an hour yesterday morning and the friends little girl and mine we rolling and diving and throwing snow for the entire time, the little girl was delighted but suddenly she realised her hands had turned to ice and were aching, she was desperate to get into the warm and not be cold, i think the novelty has worn off already, we will see over the next few days how much time she spends in the snow, maybe next year we will be going to Barbados or Hawaii, or staying at home to watch the Hummingbirds

Wonder Wetlands Panama Border

Last week I went to see the relatives who live on the panama border region of Costa Rica, the weather was fantastic and very humid and we spent 3 days only as the house is in the middle of town and it is very noisy so little sleep was had. It was our christmas visit and we handed out presents and chatted with everyone and then on the only afternoon spare we took the father-in-law out for a drive through the old banana plantations which now are fully planted with oil palm. there are some wetlands near the river and it was alive with birds, mostly birds that eat fish but also full of ducks and some migratory birds that i find impossible to identify. they really do all look the same.

The amount of Birds in cluding the Roseate Spoonbill, its pink




The father-in-law feeds the birds in his garden, fantastic birds come all day for the Bananas




There are Crocs in the rivers, sometimes they eat the kids but mostly nobody notices them missing as they have large families




Southern Costa Rica is a paradise, but living amongst the poor people is a difficult thing as they just want to steal all your things. So if we ever want to live there we would need to have a live in or live next door groundsman/gardener and wife, it si the only way to keep all your things and even then he may steal it himself and say it was robbers. Life is such

Graduation is an Overused Term

Graduation is meant only for university students who achieve something special, to study for a long time and make the grade is being above the rest. but schools everywhere are now abusing this term and abusing it very badly by saying kids as young as 6 graduate from one year to the next or from kinder to preschool. This is an abuse of parents and children and should be outlawed. I have just attended my little girls "graduation", she was leaving pre-school to start attending school in the new year. We were invited to the ceremony and as good parents we had to attend, luckily I was back from my last assignment. I think it is a criminal act to pretend this is something other than a child growing up and moving to the next school year. The school of course charges for the parents to attend in some large venue and then the child has to have some new shoes and they they charge for the cap and gown to be rented and then they have the child in some pointless silly dance thing that you have to wait 4 hours to see while all the useless kids get to play 8 notes on a piano. This event was like having all my teeth pulled out slowly without anesthetic, we spent 5 hours and approximately $120 to see my little girl walk on stage and get a certificate that proved nothing other than we are dedicated parents. Talk about exploitation , but she did look very proud of herself and seeing her dance like a Romanian peasant girl was delightful but it was torture.

Mexico City Airport, what a nice surprise

Last week I flew through Mexico city airport and I was really surprised at how nice and airy and spacious it was, I arrived in Terminal 2 I think, not sure but it was huge enough for me to have to put on my driving glasses to look around the very large high and open architecture, plus I was lost and looking for my connection, normally it is easy enough to just look at the departure board and see your own flight on it, but I couldn't locate my flight, nothing to San Jose Costa Rica. So i was a little lost, I ended up at the information counter, and do you know i had forgotten the name of the connecting carrier. I arrived on AeroMexico, and Ok airline with newish planes, and all I had with me was my boarding pass stub and on it was an MX, this meant nothing to me, the girl put me right and told me it was for Mexicana and pointed me to the Mexicana ticket sales office, they told me that it was in Terminal 1, so i was in the wrong terminal. They pointed me to the train, yes train connection that you use to get to the other terminal, the station if you can call it was very impressive and clean and airy and spacious, some nice seats to wait as it is a 10 minute round trip , I boarded and found it was a cable pulled train, it has this long cable that connected along the rails and pulled the train along, i think so anyway, the other terminal was a long way away, you had to travel over roads and round the airfield and along some major roads and then into a massive car park and terminal connection building, I was effectively outside the gates and had to go to the Mexicana check in and start all over again, no fuss no funny looks, I almost hate flying through the USA just for the big deal they make of you flying through the country, but being the Biggest terrorist target in the world you just have to accept this problem.

Train Journey


So i had 6 hours to wait for my connection and I went to a giant food court where i had seen a nice Italian restaurant. I had some nice soup and a nice pasta but the only problem was is that after a month in Mexico the food was bland, I need spicy food to tingle my taste buds. I never realised that I enjoy spicy food so much, but at least back in Costa Rica it is summertime, warm and sunny and very relaxing, not crazed driving like the insane border with the USA.

Narco Wars Update

I dont think i am personally in any danger but the head count is pretty horrific, ) bodies found beheaded friday, a machine-gunning at a local restaurant killing many, and a shitload more over saturday and sunday totally 42 DEAD. What is this coming to, this is more dead than Iraq for Gawds sake. The rumour around here is that is is corrupt police that are in the pay of the Drug lords that are the contract killers, which makes it easy for them to do it and hide afterwards and cover everything up. It seems that the army has been trying to replace the police and make it harder for them to do all the corrupt things but quite obviously it isn't working, the locals say it is the drug lords that are winning, makes me wonder why the politicians don't legalise all drugs, make them safe and clean and cheap and take away all the money from the drug lords, but what would you do with an underclass that live off the drug money and have expensive lifestyles, is it easier to deal with the criminals this way or have them robbing old ladies in the street as the normal alternative. Either way we need to do soemthing, leaving this horrendous mess is trying to convince everyone that we are winning the ar when we are quite simply just messing about and making these guys rich and more powerful than the Government. By the way mexican food is really fantastic.

We Broke the Turbine and I got An Expert who was My trainee

Well this week has seen some strange things happen, I came to this project to clean up some outstanding points and not really do much else but i arrived just as the customer was going to start the unit up after a shutdown. So I demanded a Steam TA arrive to cover me if we had any problems, as typical some knashing of teeth and some whining and complaining nobody arrived, I then basically told them i wasn't going to do the start up or take any responsibility for anything going wrong with the unit, they finally said they were urgently sending a guy but he was arriving a day after the start up. So I had to get to the site early and we attempted to start the unit, things were going good then they asked me to do some step changes in speed, I asked for the procedures, I only got a blank stare, I had to get this thing doing stuff without as much as a piece of toilet paper, it was difficult, but 30 minutes into the test the unit suffered some strange vibrations and we had to slow it down then we thought we had it covered, we got back up to speed and almost immediately the vibrations went crazy and we got a hot bearing, very hot, and the unit tripped as it was basically jumping 2 feet in the air, I dont get excited about things like this anymore but i knew this was going to cost them a lot of money. I was hoping the steam Expert could assist with the startup and when i read who was arriving i nearly chocked on my beer, it was a guy who I had taught on site 3 years ago and got him his job as a contractor, so my old buddy who was my trainee now is back to teach the master. Oh Buddha isn't this a small world, he arrived at his hotel and he called me to have a night drinking with me, he picked me up and we went to his hotel on the local swanky gold course with a little internal village, and bars and shops and restaurants, we went to the bar and had sushi and cocktails all night long, we were so drunk i had to sleep in the spare bed in his room, man my head hurt the next day but as the sun was out we went to my hotel as it is on the beach we went to spend all day sun bathing talking shite and eating and drinking fruit juice. They have an amazing hot-tub by the pool as the pool is freezing by now and the hot-tub is steaming, but when we went to it it was almost boiling, we could hardly get into it. What a day we had, non-stop catching up on jobs and family and who has done what and where, it was like we had only seen each other the weekend before.