Swedish Chef Dave

The Dinosaur crane graveyard

2011-07-31T20:54:00.000-07:00

I have almost finished my 11 week trip to Ulsan Korea, to the biggest shipyard in the world, it builds on average 150 large ships a year and they are huge tankers and bulk carriers mostly, to build these monster ships you need monster cranes of all types, Hyundai managed to buy the worlds largest gantry crane froma bankrupt shipyard in Sweden, it is 138 meters tall, and can lift 1600 tons, it is so huge as to be beyond scale of description

http://youtu.be/B99bxId08TE

here is the video of it being moved to Korea, they managed to pay only $1 for it at auction but they had to pay to move it of course.

they also have these enormous 800 ton crawler cranes and tower cranes all over

how many cranes, just too many

perhaps they have too many, the shipyards here have built so many ships the crisis is making it difficult for them to make money, all the contractors have been laid off and they have slowed down the building to keep the main employees in work, we will see if they have built too many ships

How To Check If Your a Redneck

2011-06-24T14:41:00.001-07:00

1. You let your 14-year-old daughter smoke at the dinner table in front of her kids.

2. The Blue Book value of your truck goes up and down depending on how much gas is in it.

3. You've been married three times and still have the same in-laws.

4. You think a woman who is out of your league bowls on a different night..

5. You wonder how service stations keep their rest-rooms so clean.

6. Someone in your family died right after saying 'Hey, guys, watch this'.

7. You think Dom Perignon is a Mafia leader.

8. Your wife's hairdo was once ruined by a ceiling fan.

9. Your junior prom offered day care.

10. You think the last words of the Star-Spangled Banner are 'Gentlemen, start your engines'.

11. You lit a match in the bathroom and your house exploded right off its wheels.

12. The Halloween pumpkin on your porch has more teeth than your spouse.

13. You have to go outside to get something from the fridge.

14. One of your kids was born on a pool table.

15. You need one more hole punched in your card to get a freebie at the House of Tattoos.

16. You can't get married to your sweetheart because there's a law against it.

17. You think loading the dishwasher means getting your wife drunk.

Week 3 In Ulsan

2011-06-06T04:56:00.000-07:00

I have been here for 3 weeks now and this is a large industrial city with one thing in common, it is Hyundai town, it is the largest shipbuilder in the world and it builds an awful lot of cars here also, but it is clean and well planned sort of and the Korean people are the most respectful nice people you could ever want to work for and visit, whenever we go out there is not a feeling of threat ever, some school kids don't leave until 10pm, yes I have actually seen them going home at 10pm at night, this would be unheard of in every country i have ever seen. The food is interesting, I do love the spicy noodles, the indoor barbecues are amazing, beer is OK, but the weather is letting this trip down badly, it has rained for almost 2 weeks, it turned a little bit nice over the weekend though, unfortunately it is an ugly boring town, meaning virtually no entertainment, if we want to do something in the city it is a 20 minute cab ride and then once you have walked about the city center then that is it, I have seen far too many ugly towns in my time and this is just another, Okpo where i working before Christmas was better as it was more rural and just more interesting.
The yard is amazing, just gigantic structures being moved about like it was a giant mechano set. The project i am on has some crazy designs and the control system of my turbines is just insane, with 3 separate controllers and all difficult to work on. Why do they want to make my life so difficult with these insane decisions.

I was planning on bringing my wife and little girl here for the summer but the job isnt going to last long enough so we are planning on 2 weeks in Tenerife, The Canaries.

Heading Back to Korea, Woohoooo

2011-04-26T07:57:00.000-07:00

I have had my prayers answered, I am not going to North Africa of the middle east this year I am going back to South Korea, the land of the respectful hard working intellectual safe haven for engineering. It is such a relief to know that I am going on a long installation job in a nice city by the sea, Ulsan, it is a tad too close to Japan at the moment but to think i will have super high speed internet and be able to go out and get a beer with some interesting food is wonderful.

I must have done something nice for someone,

just to catch up this last 5 months, i went to Costa Rica for my Christmas holidays and saw all the relatives, had some nice food, in fact my mother-in-law was in a frenzy to keep me fed to the point of bursting. The weather was actually a little cold, but we did get a few days at the beach

Then since Christmas I have been taking it easy, completing the garden project behind the house on the community land, We have tomatoes and some herbs, two almond trees and now steps and a tiled pathway.

I just cannot wait to get back to work though, having 5 months off is great if your able to get out and do things but winter in Spain is restricting as it rains here like all other European countries, I did spend 5 days in Portugal during a non typical dry spell, but it has rained alot since then.

The Last Week of My Korean Trip

2010-11-30T02:39:00.000-08:00

I have had a reasonable trip here, the food was interesting, not the local food but the available international food, they have a barbecue style of restaurant which is very enjoyable, you get raw meat that you cook on a grill on your table, almost a barbecue, you eat as much as you want, all with Chopsticks and it is great fun, we like this so much as a group we do it maybe 3 times a week, we have also found a great thai restaurant, also a great little bistro that does the biggest burger i have ever eaten, the final place we eat at is a Turkish place,

The yard we are working in is just immense and like something out of a science fiction movie, everything is on a giant scale, building super-tankers is for big boys only, this could only have happened with government help, think of how Ford would build a car, and these build ships the same, bring all the semi finished pieces to an assembly line and it is finished in a couple of hours, here i saw a ship built in 5 WEEKS, yes it is incredible.

there are 30 thousand employees and many thousands of expat technical staff to assist from all countries around the world.

just take a look at some of the giant things here, the crane can carry a full section of a ship, 4000 tons.

This is my vessel, it is not a ship as it has no engines

It is over 1000 feet long

it goes on forever

How did that sneak in there again

and ever

this is about as big an engine you will ever get

these are some of the finished ships that are waiting to be paid for

Once i get back home after this week, I am busy for a few days doing all the family type things and then i fly away to my Costa Rican paradise holiday, for a whole month, then who knows what will happen in the new year, I may retire

Something you will only see once in a blue moon

2010-10-14T07:59:00.001-07:00

Ahoy All

I have been trying to enjoy my time at home, but there is too much to do and too little time to do it in, the third floor is almost completely finished, decorated and furnished, bed installed with a nice fake leather bed head, I did a crazy thing, i even bought a 32" tv to put on the bedroom wall which has a built in digital TV tuner and hooked it up to the local spanish TV, so now it is fully functional for guest, i have even gone to my sisters house in the UK to see my old dad and everyone, i also grew a crazy moustache and goatee beard for fun, but as i am now leaving for work tomorrow for Korea then I have shaved it off already,

so here is the pic of the beard you will actually never see live

Facebook is Killing my Blog

2010-09-10T07:01:00.000-07:00

I have been working on this Blog for maybe 5 or 6 years now and to be honest I think Blogging is losing its relevance, It was developed for keeping in contact with friends and family but now with the advent of Facebook it has lost its need, Facebook is easy, you see the folks your trying to keep in touch with and you can chat like messenger, you see pictures, you share more with the folks there, but with blogging your hoping that your friends know your there and can they really be bothered with going to read the usual silly stuff i come out with.

Facebook is so easy to setup, just arrange your own account, they search via e-mail addresses for your friends and hey presto, you see everything these people put in, just maybe a 1 liner, or a birthday thing or many things, it is so much more personal, I am addicted and as you can see, i am blogging less and less, since i blogged I only ever got one unknown reader who asked me what Malabo Equatorial Guinea was like, other than that i think i have about 4 regular readers, and a few who come and see what is happening in my insane lifestyle.

just take a look at www.facebook.com and check for my email address swedish_chef_dave@yahoo.com, as this maybe one of my last ever posts in Blogger. times are moving on.

Working in The Middle East

2010-09-07T23:24:00.000-07:00

I have one thing to say about this part of the world, i will never ever come and work here again, not for all the tea in China or the gold in Fort Knox, my life is not long enough to tolerate the squalid conditions that I am forced to live in, it couldn't be worse in any third world country and probably would be far better as they would be grateful for my working for them, here I am just tolerated. I even have to obtain permission to leave the project, not acceptable, I dont think i need to add anymore.

Birds on the Desert ISland

2010-08-23T05:22:00.000-07:00

yesterday i saw a bird that I was amazed at, it was a hoopoe, such an amazing bird with its crazy crest, I am not sure how it got here, it must be a wild bird, there are many Doves here, mostly collared and maybe a bleeding heart dove, some Indian Mynahs and some red-vented Bulbuls, lovely to see but i am feeling sorry for these two escapee parrots, red and blue lorys, just amazingly coloured, scarlet red with blue wings, like a kids painting, but I hope they feed them as there is very little for them to eat here, just a few date palms and some bouganvillias, I think some of the birds have escaped from the mini zoo, they have african guinea fowl and some Arabian Gazelle, maybe 10 of them they look lovely but on a miserable island like this is not practical or necessary and should be removed, but the birds are a nice distraction from the horrible isolation we have here.

amazing crest

Maybe Escaping from Under the Vaulting Horse in 4 Days

2010-08-21T10:25:00.001-07:00

Well time is rushing by when your having fun, i have been here for 7 weeks now and it seems like 5 years, what a crappy existence, some of the old boys here have been working here for over 30 years and one has been here for 34, what crime did they do for that. My project is almost over and testing in 3-4 days will be over, but they cannot run my Gas Turbines as the pipeline isn't ready yet, it may take 2 more weeks before it is ready. So the plan on their part is to get rid of all expensive contractors, as you know they are such a poor Engineering conglomerate they will go bankrupt if they keep us here, what a bunch of cheapskates they are. I am now planning my return to normal life. I have promised to take my wife to a nice hotel just up the coast in Almeria, overlooking some large lakes at the coast. Not sure how i can compensate my little girl for being away all the summer holiday, I have bought her a fake IPod but it looks real, plus it does play video.

The only things i have planned is drinking a few beers, going to the UK for a trip to see my old dad (He's 90 Now) and siblings, plus picking up all my Amazon purchases, then my little trip to a hotel to live like a king unlike living like a slave here, I can promise everyone here that i will never come back here, it is just appalling and shocking, nobody deserves to be treated like this.

New Version of Crazy Eating

2010-07-23T02:40:00.000-07:00

Last night at dinner i saw a new variant of eating crazy, how about this one to try, try sticking out your tongue all the way and then placing the spoon, fork or any other implement onto the tongue before bringing them in together, it looked insane, i just couldn't stop looking at him. I was so rude with the stare but it was by far the most bizarre eating habit i have witnessed here so far, maybe i will see someone even worse. I will let you know

Eating Habits of Peasant Labourers

2010-07-21T03:40:00.001-07:00

I am here with 5000 of mostly Indians and i can say without hesitation they are all peasants, I eat with the supervisors and even the majority of those are peasants made good, the reason i say this is that their eating habits are just unbelievable. The mostly eat with their fingers and it is a horrible sight, they mix up their food round and round with their fingers making like a puree, and then make balls which they shove in, they also use flat breads to wrap large lumps of the food to shove in wrapped in the bread. I have seen some of them using spoons and forks at the same time as this is easy to shove lots of food in together. The use of a knife is not really adopted here but i did see one guy with a knife and fork but had the use the wrong way round, he was pushing food onto the knife and putting the knife in his mouth.

The other main reason you can tell is that when you give a peasant free rein in the restaurant they go insane and pile the food as high as the plate will allow. also taking excessive amounts of fruit afterwards. They become very fat guys after eating like this for the usual 6 months they are here at a time. The pulling back of the lips is also something i have commented on before, watching someone try and at a huge pile of food without it touching their lips is just incredible, just try it yourself very difficult. The food is pretty good and as you are aware it is mainly catering for the Indian palette and even though i like it if can become overwhelming so i have started having salad at least once a day. I will try not to stare too much but these guys are like doing it for show, trying to outdo each other with the strangest method. God Bless Curry.

Abu Dhabi, What a Joke

2010-07-15T07:40:00.000-07:00

What do you think of the United Arab Emirates, the UAE, you think of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, but it is really just an empty desert wasteland, with a city in each emirate, Abu Dhabi is all new, very little is old and if it is old it is a shitty mess, there are apartment blocks with the bricks falling off and trees growing out of walls, yes I saw a tree about 30 feet in the air growing out of the brickwork where the water from an A/C unit was feeding the tree. all the new building look the same and mostly are empty. the City has no soul at all, just ugly great buildings and millions of poor peasants from India and Pakistan and Bangladesh and from all over actually, all trying to make a living, but it has no soul, no life of its own, no community. Just folks trying to make some money. Now don't get me wrong that is a noble thing, keeping your family fed but if you don't have to live there, I would rather be somewhere with real people and real places, not a desert city, the locals all live out of the city anyway, in their huge palaces out by the airport, why would they want to mix with the plebs in town, I found it all totally boring and lifeless and not an ounce of redemption. The esplanade along the sea front is crap also, with some low lying island in front so no clear sea view. I was desperate to get away but now i am back. Nothing to shout about, some of the guys have been to Dubai, and say it is one giant building site and again everything is empty, just a speculators building site and hopefully they have all lost their shirts on it. I can say that when folks say they are going to Dubai for a holiday, they are insane, temperatures up to 50C and high humidity, no wildlife and no trees apart from the obligatory Date Palms, it is a fake place with lots of fake people. Don't be fooled by the shiny glass and expensive cars, it is a place to make some money and run away, I will run away and never return if i can avoid it, life is too short to suffer such a empty place.

I didn't mention that it is a peninsular in a mangrove swamp, good for the birds and mosquitos, just hope the global sea rise will make it a second Atlantis, i would put a photo of Abu Dhabi in here but the country blocks Flickr as though it was a communist threat, it also blocks Skype and any VOIP software as that would mean your not paying enough for your phone calls. It is like being back in the sultans palace and he has all the toys and you can have none and no food and have your balls cut off so you cannot play with the girls. This place does my head in really badly.

Modern Life in the Jetstream

2010-07-06T04:36:00.001-07:00

Well life surely gives you a kick in the guts now and again to remind you not to think your so special and privileged. I had to fly to Florence to my head office to pick up a laptop, it needed setting up and lots of security passwords and it is far easier for them to do this than send me the laptop and then let me try and get it done over the phone. So i had a crazy early morning, up at 4.30am and flew out via madrid and then i had to catch a train from Pisa to Florence, all very primitive i thought but it was the only way I could get there on time to pick it up. The train even dropped me off at the gates of the factory at Florence Rifredi station, perfect I thought. I was met at the gates but my old manager and I didn't recognise him as he seemed to have lost about 40 Kg, but it was my eyes that deceived me as he said he had gained weight. Well i told him i want to live in Australia again for the 20th time as I keep sending him mails letting him know. That evening i went out for a meal before going to bed early, outside my hotel was a food van which i had seen the previous time i was there 3 years before and i thought it must be good or it would have gone bust by now, I went over and was met by an English speaker who asked me what i wanted and I was offered the local specialty Lampredotto (Google It for description), i didn't know what it was but it sounded exotic, he pulled out a large break roll and then opened a pan with some spicey smelling sauce in it, and pulled out a huge lump of meaty stuff and chopped it all to pieces on a board, it was clear enough to me that it was cows stomach as i used to have it as a kid, i was worried but it tasted really nice actually it was just the texture that was pretty unappealing, it was like chewing a jelly fish that was full of dental floss that all stuck in your teeth. it was huge also, with about 1 pound of this meat in it, the beer i had with it cost more than the sandwich, total price 4.50 Euros. I felt over stuffed afterwards and i struggled to sleep right with such a full stomach.

I flew into Abu Dhabi with a copy of my work permit in my pocket and on getting into the terminal i was looking for the office that i saw last time, but i never found it, i just ended up at the immigration desk, last time the immigration officer saw on his screen that i had a work permit issued and pointed me to the office. This time he spent a long time just looking at his screen and then he stamped my passport and waived me through, when i got to the other side to be collected by the company rep, he asked if i had the visa, he was panicking as he was going to get his arde kicked for me not getting the visa, as we walked from one office to another, it was obvious that i had had my work permit canceled and a visitors visa issued by the idiot on the desk who didn't think to ask me first, it meant i had to leave the country to get my tourist visa canceled and issued with another. the next day I had to leave to Qatar and stay overnight to be able to have a new one re-issued. It all went find, i even managed to get time to visit the project manager in Qatar who is overseeing the job. But it was another 2 flights i didn't want and another night in a strange bed, but the internet was fantastically fast. I was able to download five of the movies that have just been released as i need some entertainment while on the offshore island. I was even downloading Jeeves and Worcester, some old comedy from the UK, i managed about 10 GB over 12 hours which i thought was excellent. pity the one in Abu Dhabi is about 20 X slower. I am now back from Qatar and everyone is smiling again and I have been to have my regular HIV & Hepatitis tests and X-rays for TB, so i cannot transmit anything to any of the 5000 Indian men who are all probably with tropical bugs that I don't want to catch. It is just a waiting game now until the company manage to get hold of my travel pass and get me a seat on the flight. I hope life is easier out there on the coral atoll now the job is almost complete.

The Third Floor Sun Terrace

2010-06-01T01:53:00.000-07:00

Hurrah, my sun terrace is almost finished after 7 months of work. I have been using my time usefully while my wife makes her recovery. The builders started last year in the worst winter rains in 70 years. it rained into my bedrooms and ruined the ceilings but now the building work has finished and I am ready to enjoy the sunshine, but it is really hot already, the decorator is leaving for the UK for his holidays and I am going to have to wait for the painting but I am going to be up in the sun pretty soon. we even bought a parasol and fancy chairs for the sun, we even considered a fridge for the beer and water but that was going over the top.

the views from the terrace are spectacular, when i went up the other night, the whole town was lit and looking fantastic with the cool evening air feeling wonderful. almost worth the crazy amount of time and money spent on it, the next door house but one, sold for 60,000 euros and so mine is worth about the same as i spent on the terrace. I also covered over the back as it is my laundry area and build a new sat dish pole. it is a crazy thing with spiral stairs and landings and all to be decorated now, more pics later

A View from the terrace

A view of the rear where the barbecue area will be

A view of the top floor from the terrace, not decorated yet

soon to be available for vistors

Summer Sun

2010-06-01T01:44:00.000-07:00

The summer has finally arrived, we have had only 1 small rain shower in the last 4 weeks and basically the dry season is now upon us.

Lovely

My Golf Shirt Heaven

2010-05-12T23:59:00.000-07:00

I was working in Colorado USA a long time ago, I spent almost a year working on 3 different projects, finally after a long and cold winter where the frost was an inch thick. I was sent onwards to another project in Arizona, about as different in climate as possible. As soon as i got out of the airport in Las Vegas, ( the closest to the site ) it was obvious I had all the wrong clothing for this place, the airport temperature was 97 F, which is very hot in centigrade. As soon as i got to my hotel, which was a nasty motel on route 66, yes that is route 66, some of it still exists. I went looking for some clothing shops, in this town there was nothing and all i really wanted was some working clothes, i decided to find the local charity shop to get some shirts of some sort, now i normally wore long sleeves being used to the UK weather, and wore nothing fashionable so when i started to go through the shirts on the racks it was obvious that i was going to have to wear what is normal in the USA, this means golfing shirts are pretty common. I went through maybe 2-300 golfing shirts and bought some of the darker checked colours and anything also that fit me, i also bought some Nike shorts and many other things, i bought myself a whole new wardrobe, it was insane, maybe 20 shirts in total, most of them had hardly been worn at all, looking new, probably they were, some of them were from special events so probably hadn´t been worn, I fell in love with the gold shirt, I still have about 6 left from that very buying spree and they are totally worn out and i feel so comfortable in them, I am thinking seriously about travelling back to the land of the golf shirt to do a replacement shopping spree at the good will shop, one shirt in particular was great, it was made from organic cotton and was a very nice gray and cream fleck colour and I wore the poor thing to death, i wore it to go out and it was on my back 50% of my waking time. it eventually fell out of shape being washed so many times and i had to let it go to the great gold shirt graveyard in the sky. My wife basicvally hates these 6 remaining shirts as i refuse to throw them away and get new ones, new ones are not the same, they dont make them the same over here, and wouldn't feel comfy in new shirts, old ones, pre worn ones make me feel relaxed so much more. Is it the cheap ass in me or do i get some Kama from them, please let me know.

My Wife Was Involved in a Major Car Wreck

2010-05-04T06:48:00.000-07:00

about 12 weeks ago my wife was a passenger in a car crash that nearly took her life, I was working away in Abu Dhabi and my neighbour mailed me and my company to get me to come home ASAP, there was mention of pelvis damage and liver damage and a big bang on the head, it was far worse than I was told. She had sustained a near fatal side impact while being a rear seat passenger. The impact smashed her pelvis and broke it away from her spine, she broke a rib and her coccyx( Very Painful) and ruptured her liver plus she had two minor brain bleeds, I was in shock and denial but never once did i think she would die, but she was as close to death as any crash victim could be. She was in the intensive care unit for a week before she had surgery for her broken pelvis, they implanted a bar to hold the front to the back, they actually never told us most of the details, it was probably for the best.

She was in the hospital for 3 weeks until her wounds had healed enough, I have been caring for her at home ever since, she is allowed to shuffle about with walking sticks but she has an external metal fixator to hold the parts rigid and aid the recovery, but the pins into her pelvis are painful and any movement is a problem, she hopefully has the frame removed in 10 days time and then we can look forward to getting her walking properly, but as you will see in the x-rays her left side of the pelvis is displaced upwards, making her left leg shorter in effect, this is going to make life a little harder, her memory is missing many thing due to the knock on the head and the brain bleeds and also some possible damage to her optic nerves which have left her with some loss of vision, but in the long term she will recover and lead a normal life but that may take 2 years. I am back to work at the end of June as i need the money and to keep my career on track, we will see how the next few weeks progress, thanks to all who sent their best wishes

Totally broken but alive

Thinking of Retiring to a Foreign Country??, Disaster Awaits You

2010-04-18T07:00:00.000-07:00

I am constantly amazed by the crazy ideas old farts have about retiring abroad to a country where they cannot speak the language and think it is like living back home. It is a running joke here in Spain about all the silly old farts who sell their houses back in the UK and retire to a lovely little place in Spain or France or any other crazy place that they think will be great to retire. It is a recipe for disaster, I am here with my Spanish speaking wife and life here is hard work. The weather is shite most of the year and the houses are designed for Spanish peasants so they are primitive and cold in winter and hot in summer. So when some of these old farts come on holiday year after year to the same country and they fall in love with the lovely warm sunny summer weather they think that living here is the same as coming on holiday, it makes me wonder if they think it is warm and sunny all year round. It isn´t, this year was the wettest for 60 years and some houses have been lost to giant landslides, where there was once a little creek there have been raging river bursting through gardens, and when the town hall find out about the house, it appears that it never had planning permission and then they fine you 50,000 Euros for having an illegal build.

The legal system here is totally alien to anything you can imagine, it was created by lawyers who were wanting to steal as much money as they could from anyone. They are all crooks and I have been a victim of this also. So if you buy a place it could be an illegal build, but the lawyers have hidden this from you, the fines are enormous and now the Spanish government are planning to demolish 10´s of thousands of these illegal builds. So you could be facing a total loss.

Te other thing is living here is not the same as holidaying here, shopping and living and dealing with normal everyday things medical things. As an example there is an old couple who sold there UK house and moved to spain after buying a house 10 years ago. The house is tiny and maybe 10 feet wide and is almost a 1 up and 1 down, their idea was to save money and just enjoy the outdoor life. This winter has made everyone stay inside for 6 months, so all the brits are going insane, the houses are cold and damp and tiny, these folks lived 70 Km from the coast and away from the town centre, again the isolation has been driving them insane. She has also had the need for medical attention and this is the biggest difference here, the system is geared about the family taking care of the patient. So being here alone is a disaster, these people have been here since last Autumn and are looking like they are destined to return within the year, but the running joke is that all the old farts return within a couple of years.

My recommendations for anyone thinking of moving abroad is don´t, if your thinking of doing it to save money, you will not. If you think that being on holiday for 12 months a year is good then you will get bored. Life is not a giant holiday and missing your friends and family will be far worse. I recommend that you just rent a place for 3 months at a time and still keep your house in the home country. maybe rent a place for the entire year to get a good rate and share it with other people, so when you get tired you just quit and stay in your house in the UK. The other thing right now may be a temporary thing is that the exchange rate has gone the wrong way by 30% and if your on a fixed income then that is a 30% cut in your income. so many brits right now are leaving spain and cutting their losses and just going back to the mother country. I can speak about this from experience from traveling and living all round the world and having a base to live from is critical it gives you a feeling of security but packing up and leaving for good shakes you to your roots.

What would it Be Like In Pandora

2010-04-12T06:35:00.000-07:00

I have watched the movie in spanish and English and several times at home, it is the best movie I have seen in a long time, it fills my heart with nice awe inspiring thoughts, like what would it be like to live with such frightening creatures running about and having luminous and mobile plants all over, trees taller than apartment blocks. Just makes me shiver all over. There were some reports that some people were leaving cinemas all depressed as planet earth is so crap and Pandora was so nice. Yes i was almost in that category, the planet earth is crap and full of morons who need to die but not quite depressed about it all. But i thought i would give you an idea of what i may look like when on the planet Pandora. No wonder the guy wanted to stay there having sex with a big blue pussy cat. Anyway life back on earth is more mundane, I have been checking out where I am going to be working next, it seems all the work is in Australia, sounds good to me apart it is on a small island in the Timor Sea, but it could be worse, i could going to Saudi.

This is one handsome looking Alien

10 Important Life Thoughts

2010-04-07T13:08:00.000-07:00

Number 10
Life is sexually transmitted.

Number 9
Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

Number 8
Men have two emotions: Hungry and Horny. If you see him without an erection, make him a sandwich.

Number 7
Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day, teach a person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks.

Number 6
Some people are like a Slinky ... Not really good for anything, but you still can't help but smile when you shove them down the stairs.

Number 5
Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.

Number 4
All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to Criticism.

Number 3
Why does a slight tax increase cost you £200.00 and a substantial tax cut saves you £30.00? Pounds or dollars - the currency doesn't matter ...

Number 2
In the 60's, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is Weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.

And The Number 1 Thought For 2010:
"Life is like a jar of Jalapeno peppers - what you do today, might Burn Your Ass Tomorrow"

Movie Review of the Month

2010-03-26T09:26:00.000-07:00

I have been forced to write about the movies i have seen this last month as I am somewhat in shock at what i am being forced to endure. How the studios can imagine what the masses want to watch I am not sure but they will all surely go bankrupt if the sort of material like this keeps being pumped out apart from the massive blockbusters that I love to see.

1) Avatar, 10/10, Quite frankly the best movie i have seen in many years, it fulfills the soul, the wonderful story about saving an exotic alien planet from the greedy humans, Just a fantastic piece of animation and will be the best movie this decade. Maybe the sequal will be as good.

2) Shutter Island 7/10, it began with a great plot but it soon fell down to being a rather sad and miserable end about an insane man and we were seeing his fantasies and not the real world around him. does this mean i missed the point or am i just spoiled with Avatar.

3) Book of Eli, 5/10, a dark moody miserable sad story of post apocalyptic USA, just miserable and a poor plot, poor acting and black and white filming almost, too dour.

4) Alice in Wonderland, 8/10, great acting and great production but the film was lost on a poor silly children´s story, the film failed to make the story gripping and just drifted along, great for the kids but that is all.

5) All About Steve 2/10, this film was given the Razzies for worst movie for 2009, and yes it was appalling, just Sandra bullock being dizzie was not fun to watch, we had to turn it off for being so poor.

6) Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, 5/10, just a really silly plot with little substance and a few names in it, just crappy and silly, maybe not even worth a 5. dont bother renting it,

if this is the best movies that the industry can come up with it is doomed apart from Avatar and Alice, I dont even bother with the typical crappy movies that just fill the cinemas up, so i dont think they have much of a future.

Garmin Robbers

2010-03-20T09:03:00.000-07:00

I bought a Garmin GPS about 1 year ago and it is a fantastic device and it is so easy to use. The only problem is that I got it in early 2009 which means the maps are at least early 2008 and it has this function to show you mobile speed camera positions which is very useful for not getting speeding tickets. Also the device kept telling me to go to Garmin.com and update the mobile camera positions, I hooked up my Garmin to the laptop for the first time this week and it sent me to Garmin.com to get the application that does the communication and then it was so easy to update, it checked the device and offered me some firmware update and then some other function updates and then asked if i was interested in map updates, hell yeah i said and pushed the button to take me to the map updates, Robbers, the map updates are almost as expensive as the device was to buy the first time, also the mobile speeding camera update is a yearly subscription which at 35€ is friggin silly money, the map updates were $130, i paid about $150 for the device, wither the device is a giveaway or the maps are stupidly overpriced, I think they are stupidly overpriced, how can they think that the maps are worth that much, if they were 10€ then i wouldn´t have even thought about it, 20€ would have been pushing it, but 100€ is just talking on crack sort of money. assholes.

A great invention but they are frigging crack heads

The Horn has Gone

2010-03-20T08:40:00.000-07:00

I had been searching without success for a clinic where i could have my horn removed( Pilar Cyst), it is a simple thing but as always doctors cannot be bothered with a simple thing, in fact they really only want to dish out pills not do anything that might take a while and involve blood. So as we went to the local big town shopping on thursday we saw a clinic and I stuck in my head and asked if they do cysts and the nurse owner said yes, it must have been a quiet day. She said come and in and we will do it right away. I was shocked stunned and very happy all at the same time. She didn´t shave my head, she just put a cloth with a hole in it on my head and they stuck a very sharp scalpel into the horn, I didn´t feel a thing, she made a little cut, she said it didn´t bleed at all, she then picked up some long thin tongues that she poked about inside the cyst and broke it all up into small pieces and pulled it out, she also squeezed it quite vigorously making it erupt some clear liquid that hit her in the face. it took a little over 20 minutes and she charged me 120€, I was happy as that is far cheaper than i expected, probably as it was a nurse and not a doctor. So now my head is sore and much smaller, no horn, i just hope the hair will grow on the area now.

The Hornless Head

Welcome to Spain, We are Going to Demolish Your House

2010-03-19T14:46:00.000-07:00

During the last 40 years of the mad housing boom along the spanish coasts, many many houses were built by corrupt builders who bribed the local mayors to look the other way or to approve illegal buildings. This was OK while nobody was really interested but suddenly after many corruption cases the regional government has done a survey and found 10's of thousands of illegal houses and other structures all over the place, so they have now issued demolition orders for hundreds of the houses, doesn't matter who is living in the house, most likely a foreigner mostly Brits and Germans, these owners bought these properties with all legal documents and no hint that something was wrong, but now that some local official deems the property to be illegal, how can they do that, it is a criminal attack on law abiding citizens who bought in good faith and the corrupt ones are long gone with the money and no sign of them getting legal action against them, I am not sure what is prompting them to do this right now, it is a very silly act as all it can do is make it less likely anyone will buy in spain if this could happen to anyone. They should legalise all these structure and try and track down all the corrupt builders and mayors to make them repay some of the huge amounts of money they all made, not the poor retireees who saved all there life to see there lovely villa demolished without compensation.

My Devils Horn So The Little Girl Says

2010-03-08T00:41:00.001-08:00

Today I am going to the local Doctors, hopefully to get this pilar cyst removed, it is only 3 months old and it is very sore and irritating, it is growing far too fast, it is now showing through my hair my little girl keeps laughing and saying i am the devil and my horns are growing through. maybe tomorrow I will show the same spot without the cyst,

The Horns of a Devil

Spain the land of sunshine and olives and grapes, bullshit, the land of snow and rain and miserable winters, what is happening to the global weather, it is the global cooling everyone is talking about, the wettest December for 60 years, just crap, I dont know why I bothered with the sun terrace, will it ever shine again, I am not sure.

UK MP talks like a Jihadist

2010-02-10T19:33:00.000-08:00

I was reading about an MP in the UK who agreed with a killing in a terrorist act. UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom was filmed at last year's climate change summit in Copenhagen in front of the current Rainbow Warrior.
He says: "Well done the French for sinking one of these things."

this man should be arrested and jailed for supporting terrorism, He is an idiot and a simple minded clown who hasn't a clue what he is talking about and not one idea of the result of his petty and small minded approach to world politics. It's a shame that morons like this populate politics so heavily, the world would better off without them.

He even looks like a moron

Eating without Lips

2010-02-06T19:14:00.000-08:00

Ever thought of trying to eat your food without it ever touching your lips, just try it , go and i dare you to attempt to eat without the food touching your lips. I can tell you it is very difficult and you will have to pull really silly faces to achieve it, but for some reason I see some of the Indian guys here doing it every day. Why oh why would anyone want to eat like this, it looks like they are in a crazy eating competition, I have never seen anything look so silly before, pulling back their lips and biting the food off the spoon, as most of the Indians are poor labourers and don't know how to use a knife and fork they scrape the food from the spoon with their teeth with the lips pulled back in a grimace of insane proportions. The only problem is is that i cannot stop staring at this performance. Whatever next will i discover on this desert island of Das

Life as Robinson Crusoe on my own desert Island of Das, Arabian Gulf

2010-02-06T07:17:00.000-08:00

Well this is my first week in this miserable desert island, jeez it is a long time since i have lived like a frikkin prisoner in a crappy 27 year old converted container. I am awoken at all hours by people walking along the metal walkways clanking there was to work or whatever they do in the middle of the night, it is full of crazy looking indians, who wear lots of warm head clothing when it is ok but have bare feet in sandals. There is no TV, no internet, no telephone, zero entertainment, 12 hours work a day is enough to put you to sleep. I had my laptop banned as it had a camera, so i had to get a PC for the office which i manage to hook up to the local internet here but, i hate spending anymore time in the office. So i had to buy my own tv from the one of 6 shops on the island, yes we have 6 indian owned shops, not even on the corners. They have everything in them, electronics and clothes of every kind, foods and drinks, apart from beer, and it is always full of poor people milling about just trying to kill the hours between sleeping and working, not much else to do apart from watching other folks spend money. There is a gym but i wish i had the energy to do something in the gymn after work, there is a mosque but I can stand the smell of all those stinky feet. The other problem is i am midway through the build of my third floor roof terrace and i cannot do much about what they are doing. I just get sent photos of what is completed and cannot have any input, oh that is so frustrating. I have seven more weeks of this irritation and long hours, but i have to pay for the third floor somehow.

It really is a dusty little shithole, apart from when it rains and turns it into a muddy little shithole

Apple Tablet Live blog Comment ( Very Funny )

2010-01-27T09:38:00.000-08:00

I heard that Jason Calacanis has an Apple tablet that is powered entirely by an encapsulated ego dynamo that orbits the black hole in his brain where most people have a sense of humor

Abu Dhabi, I Thought This was Part of the Modern World

2010-01-27T08:52:00.000-08:00

Well I have been here about 4 days now and I have found some disturbing realities of life here, Skype is banned Flickr photo storage site is banned, Chat and video chat is banned on messenger, They require so many medical checks to get a work permit that you have to be a monk to pass, You cannot have a camera of any sort with you in any work site, not even on a laptop, if you want to take a laptop then you are expected to allow the authorities to check all files contained within, so no beach shots of your wife as that may be declared as porn, I feel like I am in Communist Russia, I can get a beer if I wish but I cannot chat with my wife on messenger. Total bullshit.

Crsis, What Crisis but we are in Abu Dhabi

2010-01-25T01:25:00.000-08:00

I have been here for two days, having to undergo many medical tests just to obtain a travel pass out to Das Island, The main centre of oil and gas operations for the whole of Abu Dhabi. I have had two chest x-rays which are something I try to avoid as they are not good for you, blood taken at two different centers and urine and stools samples handed over, giving a stool sample is pretty revolting, far worse than changing nappies for babies, but at least with all these medical tests i can prove i am a pretty healthy specimen. When i arrived i wasn't sure what to expect of the city, not sure if the crisis has hammered this free spending Arab kingdom. I can say without contradiction that this city is far from suffering a crisis. It is still in the middle of a crazy building boom that will be going on for a few years yet. It is far smaller than i expected with basically just a small downtown area I didn't see many houses or villas, perhaps everyone lives in apartments, not something i am keen on at all. But I am not likely ever to get a job offer for this town. The traffic is just horrific and the 6 lane roads through the city are shockingly full and full of nice expensive cars, not what you would expect in a crisis.

The Corniche is OK with nice gardens and water features

The Main Avenue is nicely laid out but the traffic is horrific

Visa Photograph for United Arab Emirates

2010-01-21T01:48:00.000-08:00

I am off to work in the UAE and I had to submit some white background passport style photos for the Visa, it took about a week to get the visa which I thought for a rush job was far too long. When the visa was mailed to me to print I was shocked by the photo that has been used, I couldn't hardly recognise myself. The head has been transplanted onto the shoulders of someone with a jacket and tie, I haven't worn a tie in 10 year, the hair was the funniest, it seems they have painted it black, maybe it didn't show up very well for the scan, so I look like a poor migrant worker from India with a cheap suit and dyed black hair, I was hysterical when it arrived, I don't think they will let me into the country as it really only just resembles me. Anyway, I travel tomorrow to Abu Dhabi and some warmer temps finally. I hate winter i will have to relocate again to get permanent all year round warm weather, rain no problem just the fact my toes are cold pisses me off.

Does this really look like me

200 mph on a Sheet of Plastic

2010-01-18T12:56:00.000-08:00

This last saturday we had a family trip to the Sierra Nevada mountain range and it has well established ski resorts, we went to the biggest that has a kids park

The Ski resort of Sierra Nevada

The boy wanted to go skiing without any practice and was sad to hear he wasn't allowed to go 250 mph down the hill without training. The trip there was uneventful but everyone else within a 500Km range also thought it was a good idea to go as the weather has turned for the better with sunshine and warm winds, the queue of traffic was just incredible, we had to park about 2 Km away on a mountain road and walk down, it was actually a nice walk as you got to see parts of the town you normally wouldn't see. The kids park was empty and when we asked about the rides the slide on an inner-tube was out of action but no discount, cheap bastards!.

Emma on the scooter

Paulo on the lame scooter and very expensive

The kids went on a found it was pretty tame and not much fun as it was a straight line down the hill taking 25 seconds, but the ride up took 5 minutes on a belt that was slower than a slug. the kids were frustrated and cranky, we went for a roast chicken lunch, which was OK but huge and we all felt better for that, afterwards while we were trying to get the kids to relax while the food was digesting,

Kids pretending to relax

Me trying to relax

Emma just winding up and missing teeth still

we went for a small walk at the side of the restaurant and we found many folks just walking up the hillside past a sign indication danger. the hillside was part of the lower ski runs and basically empty, there were a few kids with plastic bags sliding down a lower part of the hill and a few teenagers going higher up and a few more 20 somethings sliding down on big sheets from the upper part of the slope and getting a good speed on, I thought the kids would enjoy this so I jumped into a skip and pulled out three large black plastic bags, and we all got into the slope, the first thing the little girl did was climb to the top of the big slope with the 20ish folks and went down as fast as she could and she was zooming along and screaming at the top of the voice in between the laughs, we all kept going up and down as fast as our legs would carry us until we were all exhausted.

Emma going crazy on the slopes

Emma and Me Going Crazy together

Then we had to think about how we were going to get even more thrills, the side of the hill in the shade was very steep, and really icy, there were a few crazy folks climbing up about 50 meters and then jumping off like some ski jumpers and sliding down on there ski pants, I thought this would give me more thrills than a Kg of Coke. I climbed higher then anyone and pulled on my black plastic diaper and jumped off like Batman, I hit 200 mph in 3 seconds. when i got to the bottom my boots hit the snow and i sprayed everyone within 50 meters with a giant plume of snow, i was soaked to the skin, but it was fun, it blew out the winter cobwebs,

Me on the Slope, very icy and dangerous

Me creating the snow Plume at 200 mph

I did one more and crashed at the bottom in a fireball of corkscrews and spun round on my head to the sound of laughter of all watching, that was me done for the day, it took another hour to walk back to the car and another 90 minutes for the drive home, the day after I was so stiff, like I had run a marathon, but it was fun.

Tapas Bar Assault

2010-01-14T02:42:00.000-08:00

We are taking the little girl to the swimming pool for some extra training, luckily the pool is heated to 30C and there are not many people in so for her it is nice. To while away the 1 hour she takes we went for a walk around the town and found a small bar, it is empty as it is 7PM and so we sat at the bar and asked for a healthy beer, he gave us a large bowl of olives as a Tapas, just as a starter, he then prepared a large plate of cheese, cured ham and tomatoes with a large basket of bread and bread sticks, which I thought was perfect as a meal with the healthy beer, he then brought out a soup in a small cup, after making sure we liked it he then went away and cooked a beefburger with ham and more cheese as a desert to go with the extra beer I had to buy to wash down all the food. This was an insane amount of food for just a snack, we only had an hour and i had to rush down my beer at the end for having so much food to eat. It was great but the man had too much time on his hands dealing with just me and Jenny, I will go again friday night as Emma will be swimming again.

Just having a meal with myself and a table full of food

Back in The Fast Lane

2010-01-11T08:26:00.000-08:00

Well after the 4th of January I became fully available for posting around the world, I was expecting a fast deployment as there are always far too many jobs and not many guys, I heard nothing for a week, I was getting worried so I mailed the office and even rang them asking what was about, they reassured me not to worry and that there was lots of work. So last week they finally asked me if i would take the service managers job in Equatorial guinea, this I accepted as it is a place i have worked and it is a not so long flight and warm , I like warm. so Monday today i was rang by the manager and told the visa for EG will take 4 weeks so would I mind going to the United Arab Emirates to Das Island to do a start up, so yeh I don't mind going to some new place in the warm, ( I have just googled and found it will be 20C, this is better than here, So within a few days I have gone from Africa to middle east, we will see if i end up somewhere else.

I was just thinking about the new body scanners that scan you with millimeter waves and reveal your body shapeand full contours through your clothes, I am happy as I have lost some weight over the last 3 months and have no fear but for the unfortunate fatties around who have been gorging on full fat cream and pies all christmas they will look pretty silly with their fat ass showing in the scan. All will be revealed

Back to normal then and a Happy New Year.

The Crazy Weather Here In Spain

2010-01-07T23:51:00.000-08:00

For the last couple of weeks the weather has been going crazy here in Spain, We have had to postpone many things until we had a break in the rain. It has been raining like the tropics for the last 3 weeks, apart from the odd day here and there. The rain has filled all the half empty reservoirs and washed all the trash out of the rivers and along with the crazy ploughing of the fields under the Olive trees it has washed a mountain of dirt onto the roads as the erosion of the fields fills all the ditches and drains at the side of the roads. Last night we even had snow after 24 hours of solid rain. The weather of the entire continent has gone bonkers, I was glad to be told I am going to be working in Equatorial Guinea again at the end of January and be able to feel the sun on my face once more, Global warming my ass, the cold isn't a product of global warming it is a product of global cooling, they are just trying to fool everyone to get us to spend more and more money on trying to boost flagging industries. When i finally get out of the house we may go and take some pictures and post them as my next entry

The Snow in Spain,

2009-12-30T11:10:00.000-08:00

We collected my step-son at madrid airport when he came over for the christmas holidays, it was monday 1 day later than scheduled as they has changed the time of tyhe flight on sunday and he missed the flight, they were a useless airline, pissing everyone off and they have since gone bankrupt, pissing me off as I now have to find a replacement flight and recover the money hopefully from VISA, anyway, travelling back home on Monday 1 day late and it had been a cold cold night so I did see a little bit of snow around but it had all melted by the time we left the hotel the next morning. But as we travelled along the highway back to Malaga the snow got deeper and deeper and I was seeing snow ploughs and the signposts said put on your snow chains, which i would think are not even available in shops here as this country is a desert. So i was a little worried, the traffic got slower and slower and it eventually stopped, after 30 minuted i decided to pull off and find a hotel for the night, after lunch, we pulled over and got into a service stations with a cafe and the snow was about 12 inches deep, the kids were playing solidly for an hour in it until they were soaking wet, they had to change when they got into the car, we ate at the cafe and maybe 2 hours later all the trucks suddenly left so I realised the roads had just cleared, we set off and arrived 5 hours later, total time was 9 hours 4 hours longer than normal.

Showing the snow and stopped traffic

Zac's Visit Part 2

2009-12-30T10:33:00.001-08:00

The most important part of Zac's visit was our trip to the Alhambra. This place is high on world heritage sites as it is the finest example of arab palaces to survive, I am not quite sure why it survived in spain as this country is full of falling down ruins but probably due to the quality of the building work, it is quite exquisite as it was abandoned for hundreds of years. The site is enormous as it contained an entire town, including mosque which is now a church, all converted when the arabs left. Even my last lawyer in Costa Rica was named Matamoros, literally killer of moors(the arabs from north africa who inhabited spain). So we entered into the walled palace area near the mosque and some buildings that had been converted into hotels, The King Carlos who was the ruling monarch attempted to build a palace that was the equal of the Arab palace but he ran out of money as he was running amok in Europe defending the Catholic cause, it was a roofless ruin until the EU provided regional development money to pay for it to be converted into a museum, it does have spectacular walls

The Mosque and hotel area

The Carlos V palace that was a roofless ruin

The circular courtyard, huge and impressive

The Theme for the palace was these guys knew how to build a palace that had running water all year round in this semi desert country. Every state room courtyard had a pool or fountain or pond with fountain, just everywhere there was water, it is just so impressive, almost awesome, but as you all know this word is saved for Alien Invasions only.

One of the long pools with fountains in the courtyard

Another courtyard with a fountain, no electric either

The poolside for sunbathing must have been fantastic

The gardens must have been impressive to support so many courtiers and guards, the area that I thought was the Hareem is also full of water features and gardens

Hareem water features

View from Hareem

Wonderful architecture and Views

We ate some fantastic food afterwards and took a slow drive home, it is only 80 Km away from my house, what a fantatic day and I dropped Zac off at the airport the next day, I was sad that he left early but glad he could get a flight home to see his ill mum.

The Return of Internet, Zac's Visit part 1

2009-12-29T06:51:00.000-08:00

I now have my internet returned to me, just in time for my return to work.

I have a huge amount to Blog, I have had a visit of my erstwhile work and blogging Colleague, Zac(Slyght), unfortunately his trip was cut short by his mothers heart attack but fortunately she is making a recovery. I have been supervising the third floor building work and I have travelled to Madrid and got stuck in the snow storm that swept across the country. We have been to the Alhambra, the greatest surviving ancient arab Palace in the world, quite spectacular.

To start off with Zac he arrived at Malaga airport on time and he looked no different to the last time I saw him in Turkmenistan 6 years previously.

He was staying in my bed while Jenny and Me slept in the bunks meant for kids, the weather was still pretty good and i had a few things for him to see and visit, first was the local 8 sided square in the local town of Archidona, it is unique in spain so i believe.

It was undergoing some restoration, paid for my the EU regional development funding

we then went to the Picasso Musuem in Malaga, the musuem is built in an old lords townhouse, really fantastic but the art of Picasso is just a joke, the best modern era con job with modern art.

Some Modern Art in Malaga near the port

The local Cathedral

We all joked at how awful and meaningless it all was. Zac was given a tasting of tyhe local Tapas, the small snacks that you get with the beer in the local bar/cafes, this food is quite typical in spain and as far as my experience not found anywhere else, some is fantastic and some is different. The next trip we did was to Ronda, a famous ancient fortress town that has the most amazing bridge,

The bridge leads you into a really nicely kept town, it seems it was pretty run down up to the entry into the EU but they then go billions of regional development money as they were poor cousins of Europe, so now everywhere is tarted up and looking really nice, apart from the millions of ugly apartments they built over the last 30 years also.

Lost my Internet, I am feeling like a Castaway

2009-12-07T09:04:00.000-08:00

My internet provider has gone away and i am stuck without anything, borrowing a few minutes at my neighbours, I have been around with an old buddy from the USA, we went to Ronda and The Alhambra and some other mountains and local towns, we ate interesting stuff and drank some beer, unfortunately his mother became unwell and he had to fly home early, I hope she gets better soon,

The weather has turned cooler and the roof terrace is coming along and I am being offered jobs in Qatar, we will see how it all comes along,

I hope the internet comes back soon, I am like a dog with his bone stolen

later Folks

Ancient Cordoba

2009-11-17T05:53:00.000-08:00

This Sunday we went for a little drive to Cordoba which takes about 1 hour or so, it has one of the more famous Cathedrals in this part of Spain as it is a converted Mosque, The drive to get there is amongst the Olive groves which are pretty boring, in fact the insane agricultural policies of the EU are evident here as they are destroying the whole natural environment to plant the rotten stinking olives everywhere, it is a monoculture no better than the grain prairies in the USA, at least in the mountains where I live they cannot plant on the mountain tops.

Anyway Cordoba was probably built on the site of the river crossing in Roman times, the bridge still stands to this day and is very impressive. The mosque is huge and the columns inside were mostly stolen from old roman buildings, which is a shame. It just goes to show how big a Roman city this was. The area around the mosque is nice but as in all cities there are ugly apartments all long the route into town. we had a nice meal in a tapas bar which my buddy Zac will really enjoy as you take them with a beer.

we wandered about and saw all the Japanese tourists that you get everywhere in the world, is it the same group eternally wandering around, They were all camp guards during WWII and were sentenced to eternal touristing. Anyway, when the Christians took over the south of spain they converted part of the mosque into a cathedral, a very intersting mix, well worth the visit along with the Alhambra in Grenada.

The Roman Bridge with the Cathemosque in the background

Bridge Gatehouse

The Cathemosque

The Arches inside the mosque part

Christian Belltower

Moorish Arab Doorways

The Roof is Coming off The House

2009-11-17T01:21:00.000-08:00

I am having a roof terrace put on the house, to be able to enjoy the sun more, but this means they have to remove the roof from the house to do the conversion, it is a scary moment in my life, not having any water protection on my house, but if you think about it, I live in the driest part of Europe, and it is unseasonally warm just now, perfect building weather. I have a schedule of 10 weeks to completion, meaning it will not be finished for Christmas, ah well I will at least get it for the next summer season, I will have some pot plants and a table and chairs and a canopy to sit under, just my visions for the next year, i will keep posting the pictures as it develops.

Partially knocked down

What is left of the fake chimney stack.

8 more weeks to completion

HD TV, WOW!!!!!!!

2009-11-08T08:04:00.000-08:00

When I came back from the UK, I brought with me a HDMI cable to connect my new laptop to the brand new 40" HD TV, I didn't know how good it really was until you sit at home with one, I have had to get all my favourite movies in Blue Ray format, I am overwhelmed with the wonderfulness of the images, but to prove I am such a miserable cheap guy, I actually waited until my trip to the UK to get the cable as from amazon it was only €4 and in Carrefour it was €32, so now I am watching all my movies in HD, I cannot be dragged away. Life is pretty simple eh!

The Last two weeks in Spain

2009-11-07T07:45:00.000-08:00

Here the weather has turned from roasting summer to cool blasting winds from the north, I have even had to put on long trousers. When I got back we have been preparing things for the building work on the third floor extension, talking to the builders and trying to decide how to do the stairs up to it, we have decided to make a spiral staircase as it takes up much less room and looks prettier, but is more expensive. We have been travelling about to enjoy what was left of the summer weather. We decided to walk up the old hermitage site in a local town called Archidona, the views are fantastic from up there and the weather was brilliant, you can probably see for about 50 Kms, and with the clear blue skies it is so nice, we even took a small Picnic to make an event of it with the little girl, they get so easily bored, also even at the end of October the butterflies were playing around on the top of this hill, I think the altitude is about 5-6,000 feet, so when the night draws in you can feel the night air coming in fresh, little did we know the weather was about to turn,

The surrounding Olive groves

More Olive Groves, there are a lot in spain

Looking along the mountains

Great Views from up Here

The King of the Castle

We had to wait until the next weekend to go out for another event, being away for so much of the time, I had forgotten how hard it is to do anything with the little girl at school, I am the proxy English teacher, she can talk perfect North Derbyshire English but she cannot read it very well, but surprisingly after three weeks of intensive work she is connecting the written word to what she already knows, she will be reading Harry Potter within a few weeks I hope.

So this last weekend we went out for a drive through the Sierra Nevadas Mountains along the southern coastal region: We live about 100 miles from Grenada which is ancient capitol of the Moorish Arab Empire than ruled this part of Spain for 800 years. So the area is dotted with old fortified towns, all the houses are clustered together, this mentality still continues today, even my little town all the houses are side by side, pretty but no gardens, not that you can grow much here in this semi desert.

The town we went to was called Alhama De Grenada, it had a lovely town square and a fortified walled house by the square, it was teetering on the top of a cliff overlooking a large river, the houses were mainly very ugly and there were even some falling down ones, which is unusual for these little towns, perhaps it was the fact they were overhanging the river gorge, I wouldn't have lived on that cliff, we walked down into the river valley and looked around all the derelict water mills in the river bottom, we walked along the river and across a bridge to the old fortifications where water was taken from the river via a hidden tunnel, we climbed the cliffs and up to the old part of town and found some old dungeons, I felt no spirits hiding in them,

sitting on the cliff wall overlooking the river

Me looking in the ruined water mills

The local horse watering hole

The old dungeons

The immense reservoir

The end of the day trip out, very successful

we then drove along some back roads to a large reservoir, it was impressive for this part fo the world having very little rain, it was old and pretty for such a structure, probably built by General Franco as a job creation exercise. The name of the place is Arenas Del Rey, the Kings Sands, a little bit pretentious isn't it, it was a nice place, would have been nice for camping but quite remote, sometimes that is a benefit.

Dont forget it was halloween here, the little girl had a great time walking about in the nice warm evening air with some local kids, that was here in the Green Face

Quick Trip to the Cold UK

2009-10-26T11:38:00.000-07:00

Well I had planned a trip to go and visit my family in the UK, I enjoy going to see everyone but I am getting more and more reluctant to go and suffer the miserable weather. I managed to get a really cheap deal for €50 return, but this actually is not good as it puts into perspective how much your paying for taxis and such to get to the airports and getting home, normally pay 40 Pounds return to get to the airport, so I cannot justify this anymore, so I decided to do it on the cheap, I caught the bus to Malaga and then the airport bus from the bus station. this was easy and very cheap, I managed to get it for about €5, the next problem with going cheap is the luggage allowance, I was wanting to bring back from the UK things i had bought on Amazon.co.uk and also some things I had left from my last trip when i was also weight limited. so I went with only a warm coat some underpants in my pocket and two pairs of socks plus a toothbrush. I made the mistake of also not taking any food for my 3 hour wait in the airport, I last about 2 hours before I went to the bar for a sandwich and an orange juice plus a chocolate bar, it cost me €13, daylight robbery, The flight was OK, they tried to sell me food and perfume and beer and finally lottery tickets to which I declined all. We left a little late and then we hit a headwind and this totally screwed up my itinerary, I missed my connecting bus to chesterfield from the East Midlands airport, I had already accepted that I may not make the bus so my backup plan was asking my brother to pick me up and stay the night, I had planned to see him anyway but this was rather cheeky but as he lives only 10 miles away. He arrived after only 20 minutes or so and we greeted each other and set off, he kept looking round and it was only later he said it was the first time he had ever picked anyone up without luggage, we went to his house and had a cup of tea and then off to bed, it was midnight by now. In the morning i was going to say hello to my sister-in-law, but she had gone to catch the bus very early so I missed her, my brother then offered to take me all the way home as he is now a retired country gentleman and has only kind things to do to fill his time, I really appreciated the lift as it saved me probably 3 hours travelling. I got to my sisters home at 10 and she was with my father getting him ready for the day, being 89 with alzheimer's disease, it is advanced but he can still function basically. So i decided to get item number 1 out of the way,

1, opening 9 months worth of mail, each year when I come back I try and ask all banks and pension companies to only mail me the critical items, not all junk. I managed this in 2 hours, shredding all the old statements.

I went down to see my dad and he looked well but I am sure he didn't recognise who I was, he also looked older which is pretty normal also. I had number 2 to deal with after dinner

2, Checking all my Amazon.com purchases had arrived and were correct, namely all the kids DVD`s were the ones i had ordered, all were present and correct, i was a happy bunny by now

In the afternoon I went to walk to my buddy's new factory which is across town, i took about 30 minutes and arrived to see him pull up in his brand new Ferrari 599, he had some good business transactions and even though he said he was done with buying his silly cars he just couldn`t refuse when the main dealer offered it to him, he is on first order listing for when new cars come into the country, he was a contractor like me until 15 years ago when he had a vision of making a go of being a dealer in instrumentation and he has been far more successful than anyone could ever imagine. He showed me around his new office and his new workshop, he had some new guys who are now building instrument panels for offshore installations.

we planned the night out and I got a lift to his house with his brother who also works in the office along with his son. we went out around 9 PM for a drinking night aorund some of the older seedier bars in Bakewell, a picturesque tourist town in the Derbyshire Dales, most of the locals are farmers and quarry workers and form a very interesting and diverse group with which to make observations of drunken behaviour, I was drinking Rum and Cokes all night as after a summer of being beerless mostly I have almost lost my taste for beer, but the run I was drinking was cheap and ugly tasting but I couldn't bare the idea of going onto beer, I should have drunk Gin & Tonics, when we got back to his house it was attacking the fridge in savage style like we always used to do and ate a lot of cheese if I remember right. I got his sons bedroom for the night as he has finally moved into his own place. In the morning I got the duty of taking some business partners to the airport in his daughters new Alfa Romeo Mio, nice but a tiny engine, I was then using the Satnav to find my buddy at his shooting event, it took some searching and after he sent out the gamekeeper with his land rover to locate me I was there, in amongst the fields and hedgerows standing behind him while he shot the crap out of semi tame birds, it was nice to be out in the fresh air and some sunshine, but I cannot see the point of this so called sport, it is much more interesting going to find rare birds than shoot hand reared and tame released birds. We all left about 6pm and I went home to find my sister and finally drink a couple of cheap beers with her at home, she seems very happy with life and enjoying a busy retirement, she is now an official pensioner but still working full time. We chatted all night long and ate and drank and I started my next important function

3, open 9 months worth of charity magazines, I am still a signed up member of 6 conservation and wildlife organisations and get all the regular mags and updates, this normally take a week to read through, this took 4 days this time, as I only had 6 days anyway.

Sunday was a lazy day, just chilling doing mail and reading my mags. Monday was a day of weighing all my items to take home on the plane as I had a cheap flight which had a hand luggage limit of 10 Kgs I was already at that limit, I was taking all the Amazon stuff plus my multimeter, I wanted to take back some clothes I had left from my previous trip but all I could do was wear them in multiple layers, OK in the UK as it was about 9-11 C only, but for Spain far too warm. In the afternoon I did my next item

4,Visit the Bank and arrange all my normal banking stuff, this can be tricky, trying to deal with your bank when travelling round the world.

Tuesday was a day of rest, but i had arranged for a meal with all the brothers and sister for the evening at a local bar restaurant, it was a nice large place on the highway out of town and as soon as you opened the door there was a large array of spit roasting chickens and I decided that was what i was going to have, it was a delicious meal and I saw my sister-in-law, she looked in the peak of health and had just returned from a holiday in Tunisia, I was very happy to have seen her as I don't get to see them very often and she has had health issues over the last few years, so I was delighted to see her looking so well.

Wednesday was travelling day, I was packing my little bag, and weighing it over and over as I didn't want to pay for excess baggage, I had booked a seat on the express bus to the airport, which left at 12.00am, my sister was going on holiday the following Sunday with my brother and so my dad was going to the local old Folks Home for 3 weeks to have someone to look after him, it was a very sad and moving thing for me as I had never seen that before, he looked lost like a little kid at his first day in school and this is something he has done many times before, the biggest problem with most old folks is they become incontinent and the smell of stale urine is always joked about but when it is your own relative it isn't funny just sad. It was full of decrepit old ladies and i felt very sad for them all, how terrible that the human body so strong to stay alive and brain is totally useless, this is evolution gone mad. I left feeling as though I would never see him again, I have even dreamed of this same thing since I got home, My sister dropped me at the bus station and we said a fond farewell until the next trip, I will be visiting more often now I am closer to the UK.

The flight was uneventful, but as I landed I turned on my phone and it rang immediately and it was My lovely China Latina, telling me we had screwed up with the car keys as she had planned to collect me, I had taken the only working car key with me, so she at the last minute had managed to find a almost non drunk Brit to drive her to the airport. So we at that moment planned to go and buy a second car key, which being chipped is very expensive. but at least it will not be with me when I leave the country again.,

A relatively manic and speedy cheap trip to the cold miserable grey old country.

Fuengirola Zoo, Best Little Zoo In Spain

2009-10-26T11:07:00.000-07:00

We used the Sat Nav to find the way into the Zoo, Fuengirola is a strange town as it is a bay below some large cliff ranges and the main road runs along the cliffs, we managed to get lost amongst some large road works and finally went round and round until we spiralled into the road next to the zoo, it is funny that it is actually build on land that surrounds the Bullring, quite ironic isn't it, probably the same folks who own the Bull fighting ring also own the zoo, anyway, not to get into my favourite topic of bulls killing bullfighters, we went to the Zoo as a way to spend a day with the little girl, we went in and found well laid out and wonderful gardens, large trees and lovely looking compounds for the animals, I have a problem with zoo generally as they can never really give enough space to anything larger than a squirrel, even here at what I call a good zoo the larger animals were looking miserable, the chimpanzees were quiet and looking miserable. Apart from that aspect, the bird aviary was very interesting and had a rare Mynah Bird from Bali, it also had fruit bats which freaked out most folks. I really enjoyed the way water was used around all the compounds and it was full of fish, they even had fish eating Alligators from Malaysia, which were huge, and from the glass walls you could see the fish and also the alligators, all very interesting for the kids, as a day out i really enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone, the best part was the daily display where they had birds being flown around a small arena, not just birds of prey, they used Toucans and vultures and Hornbills and a small brilliantly coloured jungle fowl, they had wild boar and Porcupines coming in and out of holes around the stage and it had the kids screaming for more and more, quite brilliant, the best part was after we were on the way out , it was a toss up between McDonalds or the restaurant in the zoo, I am not a fan of zoo food, it is usually expensive and not good, but we were all tired and we didn't know where Mcs was so we went to the zoo place, it was buffet day, we could have 3 courses for 10€, so we managed to get a ton of really well cooked and very tasty roasts and soups and deserts, I was in heaven, we went for a walk around the town afterwards and found a really nice little place, but suffering from the crisis, lots of empty shops and some unfinished developments, all along the highways along the coast there are tons of unfinished projects, probably never will get finished, plus all the illegal projects built without permission with corrupt officials turning a blind eye and Mayors taking bribes. They are now being pulled down it is all a sorry sight for all the brits and Germans who bought here with high prices and now cannot sell at all. But life is a bitch and then you die

Selwo Adventura Theme Park - Crappy Place

2009-10-20T11:23:00.001-07:00

We went to the Selwo Adventura theme park and it was out of town on the main coastal road and very easy to find, the road up to the park high on the coastal mountains was wide and I was surprised by this, i later found out why, the car park was too small and the road was the over spill car park. the entrance was a nightmare, massive queues and all moving very slow, I hate queues like the plague. we went in and the place seemed pretty nice a long walk down to the first cages and the large lake, but once you arrived at the cages it was a different thing, small cages with miserable looking animals, with untidy not nice looking surroundings for the animals, this was a typical zoo from the Victorian mentality. it was an exhibit, not a breeding centre. we wanted to go around the park so the method was by a large 4 wheel drive truck, just horrible, noisy and stinky, it was a fare ground ride, rushing down hill in a pretty scary way. the hills were incredibly steep and all the compounds in which the animals were staying were totally barren, all the grass had been eaten and the ground was eroding away under the weight of the animals hoofs, it looked desert like, a really sad pathetic place, we arrived at the main camp and went round all the events, the main one was the snake exhibit, it was so poor, no seats, nobody could see anything apart from the kids at the front, poor PA system and just a poor show of 3 snakes.

The next was the bird display as we both like birds, well we couldn't find the display area we walked up and down this pathway and round and round, but nowhere we could see it, at the allotted time we realised that there wasn't a display area, we had 500 people all stuffed into the pathway between the comnpounds, it was just crazy, the birds were being released to fly from above the pathway. The display was the best it could have been with the situation, amazing birds but in the worst possible layout, never could you imagine anything so badly organised, and this whole operation is from Warner brothers USA, to piss poor money making robbery, The elephant compound was OK but all the others were poor and Europes largest aviary was pathetic, the nets overhanging the valley were damaged and all the small birds had escaped leaving only the large birds, some painted storks and Ibis's, it was europes largest empty Aviary. I haven't been in such a poor rip-off for such a long time, I was robbed and got nothing in return to say was good, it is a joke and Warner brothers should be ashamed of it. The zoo in Fuengirola was so much better, tomorrows blog

Tale of Two Theme Parks

2009-10-20T10:58:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we went away for a couple of days to the coast, just to make a change and be by the coast as i live about 1 hour inland and up in the mountains, it is my preference but it is away from the beach, the beach is nice for touristy things and shopping. So as i had just come back from working away we decided to go to Gibraltar just to have a look around and then we found a nice little B&B right on the beach in Estapona. The drive down to Gib was uneventful enough apart from the fact we missed the turn off for the coast highway and managed to end up on the toll road, I hate paying for roads. We arrived at the entry road across the airport runway, the access to Gib is across the airport unbelievably. So just at that point i had a funny feeling that we had forgotten passports, yes we had, I had forgotten that you need them to gain entry as it is basically the UK. Also you cannot believe this one, as we drove down we had to have the A/C running in the car as the sun was so hot, it was blazing blue skies. When we arrived to the Gibraltar border, it was friggin' foggy, a giant wall of fog that blotted out the top of the rock, in fact the cloud base was about 10 foot so we saw almost nothing and the wind was also blowing pretty cold, we wanted to have a meal but we tried parking and the parking machine we put 3 Euros in refused to give us a ticket, by this time i was a raging lunatic, I was goose stepping up and down shouting abuse at the ticket machine, I don't think Jenny my wife was amused but after I calmed down we drove back to Estapona and found a small restaurant where we had fish and chips, only problem was it cost $50, far too much for spain but the fish was nice. So after eating far too much we carried on back to find this B&B. I was using my new GPS, just a miraculous piece of technolgy, we drove directly to this guys house, it was this fabulous little house , take a look,

http://www.spanish-vacations.com/

but he wasn't at home so we walked all around the local condominium. It was a wonderfully small scale development, as compared to the ugly giant apartment complexes that have been the norm for the last 30 years, it was only 100 yards from the sea, not really a beach, just a sea wall and lots of pebbles. the next two days we were going to visit the two theme parks i am now going to blog about next.

Life Back in Spain

2009-10-08T07:51:00.000-07:00

well I arrived back very tired but as I had been working night shift i wasn't that jet-lagged. Jenny had been telling me that the weather had been cold and rainy, I was very miserable at the thought of coming back to a cool autumnal weather but when I arrived it was roasting hot and got hotter since, in fact it has been so hot that one day when I was knocking a hole in the front wall at the side of the main door to put in a small window, I was feeling dehydrated at lunch time and was just so thirsty, we had been down to the coast to take Emma out to the local parks for the weekend and again it was just roasting hot, so far from being cold and autumnal it is frigging' blazing summer temperatures, even at night the bedrooms are hot and sweltering. I am travelling back to the UK to see my old buddies pick up my christmas Amazon shopping and of course see my sister and brothers. So life for the next weeks may involve working on certain problems with the house, I am looking at changing the metal doors in the house and maybe a few windows, this is to help with the winter cold we have here in spain.

we took out our nice neighbours this weekend for sunday lunch. this was to repay the nice things they have done for us, like giving us food when we had no pots and pans when we were first moving in. and for all the beers and wine they have given us when we have been invited to take an afternoon drink with them, such very nice people, that is Graham and Barbara.

Garlic Roast Chicken, Rabbit stew, Raost Oxtail, and a plate of wood oven roast Pork, really nice.

A nice day on the coast, just roasting again

This is the Pompano Park in central Benalmadina

Night Shift in Oz, making me Feel Really Old

2009-09-26T04:51:00.000-07:00

I was hoping to get a normal posting here in Oz and it turned into a trial of endurance, i had already worked 6 weeks on 12 hour shifts getting up at 5.30am, now they put me on night shift, I wasn't happy, the job is easy enough, with very little to do other than watch over the operators carry out loop checks and calibrate valves and stuff, but trying to enjoy the part of the day when I was awake and not at work was hard, we are in a very remote part of Australia and the town is tiny but at least it had a McDonalds, better than the bar food in the hotel, trying to eat a healthy meal is almost impossible, I am eating steak and salad everyday almost, and almost nothing on the night shift, like a bowl of soup as the rest of the food is appalling, so now I wished I hadn't volunteered for this job, it was a stupid and insane thing to do, it was just because it was Australia that I said yes, plus I am a greedy guy who wanted more money as I am planning this third floor extension, well the builder was offering to do the work over the winter, this is dangerous as taking off the roof is exposing your house to ingress of water during the rains, not a safe thing to do, so we have postponed it until the next summer, I have no internet in the hotel, the TV has four crappy channels, the hotel is empty and I have only 2 colleagues in the hotel who I am working with who don't do anything during the day, so all in all a pretty miserable experience for this trip to Oz, some you win and some you lose, this was a bad loser. I am looking at taking off a very long break maybe until next spring to recover my brain and health, I need to lose a few pounds and get some decent sleep, something i need more practice at. next stop Costa Del Sol, Andalusia, Spain. eating sleeping and getting healthy fit and slim not necessarily in that order but something like that.

Life Down Under, Australia

2009-09-20T10:23:00.000-07:00

Well I have been here 6 days now and to be honest my brain is worn out with the continuation of long hours and now I am working on night shift, this is totally my own fault for volunteering but I did get to see my old workmates here in Oz, I arrived in Perth at midnight and found the place very cold as it is spring time, in the morning i was flying up to Karratha the skies were grey and it again was cold and I didn't bring any warm clothing at all with me, apart from some denim jeans. I arrived in Karratha to see the blue sunny skies over the semi desert of the northern Pilbara region, it was warm in the day but at night it is windy and again almost fresh but not quite. During the night shift the work is slow as we are just supervising and helping when they have a problem. it is frustrating to find I am not really needed but I have created a lot of problems as home with Jenny my lovely latina wife, she was understandably upset when I postponed my return to go on working for an extra 2 weeks, I have this crazy work head of mine that impels me to work as much as possible as I may go poor, this is crazy but my mother made me like this.

So now i am trying to make amends with Jenny and also plan for taking off the next 3 months to sort out some work on the house and try and get healthy again as I am feeling totally worn out. I need some rest and recreation and some de-stressing.

There is a large old Kangaroo on site that sits around the restaurant and waits for people to feed it, he is so old his ears have no fur left but he seems happy to eat an apple or two. That is life in night shift Oz for now,

Observations of Malaysia

2009-09-16T03:51:00.000-07:00

This is my first trip to this particular country, and as it is a tropical part of the world I was expecting something akin to Costa Rica, tropical rainforest, beaches, a nice paradise to work in, I was sadly mistaken. It is a tropical country for sure but the government has deemed it necessary to completely deforest the entire country and turn it into a giant Palm oil plantation. The figure I saw on the internet was 14 million hectares and is growing by tens of thousands of hectares every year, this is a really sad picture to paint as the only beneficiaries are the top elite of this institutionally racist country. It is run by a small group of ultra rich malay muslims, the whole ethos of this country is to keep everything for the muslims and for them. The population is divided into Malays and non malays, that means Chinese and Indian and indigenous peoples, they actively keep jobs and university places for muslims even if they are useless, they are given extra help and money to achieve these aims, this is a shocking system to survive slavery. I was told by some non malays that they are desperate to emigrate to get away from this appalling state of affairs, plus the rotten corruption amongst the top elite is also far worse than I had expected. The island where I was working was Sarawak, it is run as a personal fiefdom of the Sarawak minister who has been in charge for about 25 years, he owns all the big companies here and has all the logging concessions and anything that makes money he has to take a cut of the proceeds, he is unofficially the richest man in Malaysia, he should be arrested and jailed for life for how he has exploited this island. It is being despoilt at an alarming rate, it is the centre of the forest destruction in the far east and when I arrived the whole region was under the smog of the burning forest and this is government approved. How can this be allowed to continue, the palm plantations are built on indigenous land, the people are just herded off and then it is cleared, they get no compensation and are left totally poverty stricken, this is a crime against humanity, but as it is part of the so called democratic world it is allowed to continue, shame on the rest of the world for allowing them to do this.

Observation of the people, the Malays are a pretty average sort of folks, short dark skinned and with a large head, but one thing I did see is an unimaginable amount of Acne, some of the worst cases I have ever seen. I have also seen some shocking cases of facial warts that a wicked witch of the west would be proud of, the police woman who was running the scanning machine at the airport had the biggest wart on the end of her nose I have ever seen, the size of a small birds egg, it really was directly on the end of her nose, most unfortunate for her as it made her already unattractive face quite hideous, this should be a case of enforced plastic surgery to save the public from such horrors.

The food which I though was good is actually just the Chinese food, the Malaysian style is pretty average and non-descript but the Chinese stuff is like Thai style and spicey and tasty and delicious, the Tom Yam Soup I had at a local bar was just unbelievable and exotic. I went back 5 times for the same soup and my last night there was only prevented by the job having a few problems. I love fried rice but after eating it every lunch for 40 days I am just about done for a year or two. Maybe the plain stuff in Australia will give me an appetite again, but the town of Karratha has a great Thai restaurant.

My First Identified Bird for Malaysia

2009-09-10T06:22:00.000-07:00

I have identified a new bird for me, it is a Oriental Magpie Robin, on the site which is huge with lots of cut grass areas, we have many of these birds hopping about picking off the flies and insects, a beautiful bird that sings really well, so nice to hear it while working such long hours.

Lovely active bird, beautiful whistle also

Getting Ready to Leave For Oz

2009-09-10T06:08:00.000-07:00

Well it is that time of project again, I am starting to look at packing and clearing all the shite that has accumulated on my table in the hotel, what can I see here, 7 bottles of water, a half eaten packet of potato chips, two half eaten bags of jellies and a pile of papers from my laptop bag that need sorting out someday, my clothes bag looks like a land mine was placed beneath it and detonated, things are hanging out in a very disorderly fashion, I was asked a good question by a young guy on site today, he asked if I liked my job, I told him I have a fantastic job, I get to travel the world see different places work on huge prestigious projects and work on modern high tech plants and equipment and as a contractor i don't have to answer to anyone apart from my wife. He seemed quite impressed about what i do and where I go and he said he was motivated to do something along the same lines, he is tied to a contract with his employer though for 10 years as The company paid for him to go through university, he did say that if he was prompted he would leave and pay back his debt, but he seems quite happy for now, oh the joys of being a young engineer, life is so easy for them, no responsibilties, no worries about wives and children, no house bills to pay nothing to stop them having a good time, for me well I lose sleep about many crazy things that rush around my head, but my wife seems to think I prefer to be away working rather than be at home, but nothing is more from the truth, but my work ethic is such that i cannot and couldnot sit about at home for long extended periods, i need to work for my mental health and Jenny refuses to accept this, maybe one day she will understand,

So it is off to Australia in winter even though it is 30 C where i am going to work but the humidity is pretty low compared to here and I have a reasonable supermarket behind my hotel where I can get beer and Yoghurt for breakfast, as there is no restaurant in the hotel, we will see when i manage to get away from Karratha this time, maybe for Christmas

How Fragile Life is

2009-09-04T07:07:00.000-07:00

I have been working very long hours here and I am only working and sleeping, nothing else, I do it for a few reasons, mainly for the money, the job is really interesting but i am worn out with the long hours but i enjoy what I do and the travel is also interesting. But you sometimes have events that make you think about what your doing, a woman who was working on site as grass cutter was found gasping for breath and going blue, it turned out to be an asthmatic and she only had an empty inhaler, the ambulance took more than 25 minutes and the guys who found her picked her up and took her in a car to the site clinic, but she died before she got there, she was thinking about the money she was making that morning on her way to work, maybe even what she was going to buy with the money, but she never made it home and I do think about the possibility of me having an accident, either travelling about, flying or driving in crazy countries, or dying in an explosion in a refinery or a poisonous gas cloud, life is like that, the mystery of not knowing. its like my idea that the more others die the better odds I get of living longer. Sad but a pretty obvious result of others misfortune. I am still travelling to Australia on the 13th of September, beer and barbies here we come.

Crazy Hotel Staff

2009-08-31T04:55:00.001-07:00

We are staying in the best hotel in town, that doesn't mean much as this is a small town and only a couple of other big places here, so we have to endure a 25 minute ride to and from work everyday, that is if the traffic is good, and we have to tolerate the staff who are bizarre at the best of times and just insane at others, like they cannot organise an early morning call regularly, twice in 3 weeks I have been let down, having to dash about like a drug crazed lunatic in a morning rushing to get the bus. The restaurant is the best place to observe the total craziness here, last night I went with the old scotsman Bill for dinner, he asked for a glass of water with his meal, the waiter brought a glass and when bill picked it up he dropped it down and swore under his breath, I was really puzzled but Bill then said the water was boiling hot, HOT, yes friggin hot, they had brought him a glass of boiling hot water, how could anyone want a glass f hot water with their meal. He called the waiter over and asked him why he had given him hot water, the expression on the bonehead waiter was blank, like he was asking him about particle physics, he was shocked that bill wanted cold water. I ask you is that normal behaviour. The hotel is really nice and clean and the food is not bad but trying to get a meal sorted in under an hour is almost impossible, I have started only having soup of the day as that is pre-prepared and can be pretty quick, This morning the girl was trying to locate the owner of an omelette that had been ordered, there was only 6 of us in the restaurant, how difficult can that be, but she was stood looking round as if she was on a desert island, Bill had to shout her over. Perhaps this part of the country hasn't been developed for so long and these are just the idiots who can speak a bit of English and cannot get a proper job elsewhere, but man it is hard work dealing with them after a long day.

The Long Hours and a Trip onto Australia

2009-08-30T06:12:00.000-07:00

well this last week has been a long one, we are working a 12.5 hour day and with an hour drive also means we have time to have a wash and eat and go directly to bed afterwards, The job is OK but I have trouble keeping my eyes open at many points during the day. But saturday night we had a bit of a blow out to celebrate the birthday of two of the young italian guys on the job, they had a pool party around the hotel pool, well it didn't start until 10pm, normally my bedtime, and they had bought in a mountain of beer and liquor and ordered about 20 large pizzas plus a few Kgs of chicken wings from the hotel restaurant. The music was too loud and it was a quiet affair for teh first hour and i was tired and really wanting to go to bed but i persevered and after a couple more beers the party was starting to feel a bit more entertaining, the young guys were swimming in the pool and throwing each other in, one guy was making cocktails all night long, we were eating and drinking and at midnight we were dancing like a bunch of silly boys, we had the latest dance music and some older stuff it was quite an eclectic mix, but the old scotsman who kept saying i will have just one more scotch before i go to bed, I ended up being the DJ and keeping the music going while the young'ens played in the pool with rubber rings and snorkels and the like, at 1pm and a real thirst going, i made a tactical decision to go to bed before i got really drunk and stayed with them in the pool, they eventually left at 4am, just in time to get 1 hours sleep and get ready for work which they all did, no-one missed work.

well I have been asked to go directly to Australia to carry out a small job in the large LNG plant in Karratha, a nice enough small town in the north of Western Australia, I decided to do it as it would mean i take a longer break afterwards, plus i get to go to Australia again of course, I love Oz, the sun the beer the wonderful hot and arid climate, we will see if it will all come off, but i will fly from here directly to Singapore and then onto Perth then karratha and with it I will retain my gold status on my Air France airmiles card, very important to keep that as it allows me to get in the business lounge for free beer and peanuts.

Niah Caves and Bird Nest Soup

2009-08-23T01:37:00.000-07:00

Today we had a surprise day off, which is nice as I was so friggin tired, I got up later than usual but I had booked a taxi to take me to Niah National Park. It is a small park of only 3400 hectes but the caves are some of the biggest in the world, the cave system covers 10.8 Hectares about 20 acres so these are huge caves, the biggest by far i have seen in my life, the cave system in in a limestone ridge that are completely hollow, the caves are maybe 500 feet tall and just so wide, biger than any cathedral. just immense and to make them even strange they are full of bats and Cave swifts, now these cave swifts are pretty special, these are the ones that make nests that humans eat, now this is really a disgusting part and only adults of a stern disposition should read on, the nest is basically congealed bird saliva, with a few feathers and bugs and shit probably. Why anyone in there right mind would eat congealed bird saliva just defeats me. So I am in this cave system and there are thousands or bats and birds inside this cave flying about, squeaking and clicking like cave flying animals do, and to no surprise there is a large amount of shit involved with living with birds and bats, just mountains of the stuff, maybe hundreds of feet deep and that is no exaggeration, well the smell was incredible just enough to make you vomit, so luckily I hadn't eaten yet, there were other creatures that feed of the shit, like cockroaches and giant crickets, it is a weird ecosystem, but to say it was impressive is an understatement, it was the most impressive natural wonder I have seen since I saw Jabber the hutt in the steak place the other day. The drive was longer than I expected, about 2 hours and the walk was about 4 hours, around 9 Km, whats that about 6.5 miles in the steamy jungle, I was wet through, it was good fun but not a single soul wanted to venture out with me, so I went on my todd and had a great time and maybe i will sleep like a baby tonight for the first time this trip.

The huts are full size and give you and idea of how big the caves are

H1N1 Flu, So What!!!!!!

2009-08-23T01:17:00.000-07:00

Now forgive me for being a little surprised but why is everyone going insane over a new flu. Is it the fact that we get several flu strains every year that kills many people and the old get jabs every flu season, so what is it about this flu that has everyone with their knickers in a not about it. I am in Sarawak Malaysia for Gawds sake and everyone you see has a friggin' surgeons mask on to protect them from what, someone sneezing on them, someone spitting on their face, I am at a loss to understand why they wear them, they dont even wear them properly, it usually gapes around the nose so any devious flu virus' would be able to sneak in undetected to do there worst. Now we are seing the discarded masks all over the place, as they get clogged with moisture it becomes hard to breathe and then it is a pain to wear them unless you have a never ending supply in your pocket just in case you encounter a horribly infectious person trying to kill you with a virus, that they don't know they have and you will catch anyway weather you have a mask on or not,

This Virus strain may be killing a few people now and then but I personally hope it preferentially selects the stupid morons who wear those masks as they piss me right off. Plus I hope it kill off all those slow drivers and the idiots who throw trash in the street, am I starting to sound a little stressed, well maybe but not really but there are people who need to die and should catch the killer virus today and die within a week, including the guy who stole my car in 1995, which was never recovered, and the asshole who threw a stone through my garage window, plus the plumber who was crap and when I told him so demanded lots of money and when I didn't pay he stole all the things I was going to install in the bathroom refit, so lets say I am still reeling over that from 6 years ago, please God kill those who I hate and need a dose of the killer flu today, thanks and can you make my my hair grow back on my forehead also, tar very much.

I Met a Movie Star In Malaysia

2009-08-19T06:49:00.000-07:00

I have met a movie star in Malaysia and I am staggered to meet such a prestigious star in such an out of the way destination, Bintulu Sarawak Malaysia, It was purely by chance that we went into a local place to eat and he was sat down just minding his own business but still larger than life and almost as big as I remember him in Star Wars, I was shocked and stunned speechless just seeing him in the flesh and what flesh he had, he was all of 500 pounds if not more(250Kgs), he spoke with that same husky gargling rasp that he had and was really a peasant just like in the movies, he did two if you can remember in the star Wars first two movies, he was the villain that had Han Solo imprisoned in some strange black stuff and ate frogs and things, Yes it is Jabba The Hut, I saw Jabba the hut in a steak bar, he was just as ugly if not more so, he had a windpipe tracheotomy so that he had to put his finger over the end to speak and make a gargling sort of voice, he was as fat as a fattened chinese pig and shuffled about in shorts and a giant ugly old T-shirt, probably a disguise. I never would have thought I would see him in this neck of the woods I feel so privileged, it made my week anyway.

Jabba looking all the part of the villain, he seemd to have grown some head hair since the movie.

Sarawak, The Information Highway

2009-08-15T08:09:00.001-07:00

In a normal country we live by the information highway, E-mail and Flickr photo sharing and Facebook, but here in Sarawak it is the information Donkey Track, in the office it is so slow that it willnot open Yahoo Mail even, and the hotel is barely better, I can chat to my wife on Messenger and do mail but only just, but as for living a nice life, this is a tropical paradise, apart from the fact they are cutting down all the forest, Malaysia is the 2nd biggest tropical wood exporter after Brazil. and the environment minister claimed that there is no destruction of the jungle to plant Palm Oil, but even here on the coast we drive passed newly cleared jungle to plant Palm Oil, he is of course a corrupt politician and will say anything they pay him to say. I have been told that the local Chinese people here run all the business and all the dodgy business, so it is best to leave them alone but how can you eat ut without going native and eating a great chinese Tom Yam spicey noodle soup, I ate across the road at a cafe and it cost $1 and i got a bowl of really nice spicey noodles that were just amazing. i love the food and the climate but they have to leave the jungle alone

Jetlag and Malaysian Food

2009-08-11T07:02:00.001-07:00

Well i am totally exhausted with the miserable jetlag i cannot shake off, I am falling asleep anywhere i sit down, any place at work during the day, luckily we dont have much to do right now so nobody is bothering me about it, it will be gone by the weekend, but the food here is just fantastic, it is all spicy and full of herbs like ginger and lemon grass, the soups are especially tasty, i even had some spicy noodles instead of a coffee at the stop we had in the docks, they wre just sensational, as sensational as noodles can get, but the food is like chinese but with a spicey boost to give it a kick, so I am going to ty and get some sleep, later peeps

Kuala Lumpur International Airport

2009-08-07T01:53:00.000-07:00

I am starting work in Malaysia on the Island of Sarawak but have to fly through KL to get to the island. The airport is a really perfect design and very spacious and far better than anything in the UK, how can these developing countries get such great airports and the Brits have to tolerate crap, it is about saving money, On this trip i had a bad trip, i had to fly from Malaga to Paris Charles De Gaul, the airport is as ugly as the old politician used to be, then fly to Amsterdam, which is a pretty good airport, one enormous terminal building. But arriving in KL was a delight, no crowds and an easy way to a busy immigration, pity it was so busy, i think 3 planes had all landed at the same time and I needed to pee so i missed getting to the front of the queue, I did get ripped off by the taxi touts, I was asked if i needed a hotel, i said yes and was offered the 5 star at the airport or a 3 star a bit further away, I said 3 star even though it isn't my money, I am a tightwad deep down. but the little bit further away was actually like 30 Km, and the hotel was tiny and cheap but to be honest it was acceptable and clean and the food was honest home style chinese food. it was great like any takeaway chinese food, I just hope that all the food in Malaysia is just as good. Only problem i can actually see is the air is full of smoke from the forest that is being burned completely to the ground, I passed a woodyard that was piled high with cut trees and being cut and chipped and basically removed and everything else in the forest is being burned and then turned into Palm oil plantations, these are the lungs of the planet but not for much longer, what will the planet become without all these wild places, my thought for the day.

KLIA

KLIA

KLIA

Museum Guards in Egypt

2009-08-06T04:02:00.000-07:00

I have never seem such a motley crew as the guards in Egypt, these jobs are given to the poor relatives of museum staff I believe, the reason is they do nothing, when we went to see the Tutenkamoun treasure the guard was solid asleep with 200 people making lots of moise and probably able to steal some treasure, not only was he sat down and solid asleep he had his head laid on a cabinet from the displey, oh how I laughed, then the worst was the guard on the Karnak temple in Luxor, he was sat down and had his boots off with his stinking naked feet laid out in front of all to see, but the worst part was that he had his finger shoved to the second knuckle up his nose, for all to see what he could find in there, just outrageous activity, these are really peasants. wish i had taken a photo.

Spanish Trains and The Madrid Museums

2009-08-04T05:00:00.000-07:00

To get to Madrid we travelled on the train to take the opportunity to spend a couple of days in Madrid as it is a city we haven't seen before, The trains were fantastic, even Malaga stations resembles an airport terminal, complete with baggage scanners and security and the trains themselves are probably as advanced as anywhere in the world again just like a train, we had a steward and in flight movie, it was travelling at just over 320 kph, which is around 180 mph. it was flying but smooth also, not rattling at all, just amazing, the British train system has been starved of finance for years and it is nothing like this. I was very impressed and our hotel in Madrid was near the airport and very nice and clean and nice food in the restaurant. It was chosen for two reasons, it was close to the subway station and close to the airport as we got a free shuttle to the airport. getting the tube into madrid centre was easy and very cheap, the subway is designed to move lots of people about without a car in a busy city, and it was fantastic, all new and clean and easy to get about and find were your going, just what we needed. The Museums I visited were the Thyssen Museum, very impressive to say he was alive until a few years ago, The Prado Museum, very old ugly pictures of the Catholic guilt, Christ and the Madonna, too much of an overdose for me, it was OK, the naked fat ladies of Rubens were OK, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, this was the Modern Art Museum, it was a joke, this art is a confidence trick, just pure bullshit of the highest order, even Picasso was represented in many pictures and it was shit, that man was a joker, he must have laughed all the way to the bank, even his Guernica was just rubbish, I hate modern art, The impressionists started all this but they were good, there were many in the Thyssen gallery and some in the Prado and a few in the modern art, even Darli didn't do much for me, only his elephants with big legs was interesting. They were all feeding off each other to just make money, at the expense of the stupid rich folks with more money than sense, that museum can close and no-one would miss it

Malaga Railway Station, Very Impressive

Just like a duty free store in an airport

The Underground was clean and new but still smelled like the london underground

The Prado Museum was big but full of Catholic guilt pictures, 500 of the Christ on the crucifix and Madonna and Child

The Arrival in Cairo and Trip To Aswan

2009-08-04T04:31:00.001-07:00

I have a buddy who has been in Cairo and Egypt in General for 18 months and he has written many things about the country but his descriptions of Cairo never really did it justice, it is the most horrifically busy overpopulated and nasty place i have been. It is full of trash and zero planning so there are quarries next to highways and houses next to highways with roaring traffic 24 hours a day, I couldn't live like that, I would be a suicide bomber within months. we arrived late after flying to Luxor first and to be honest if I had the option again I would miss out on the pyramids and the Cairo museum as it was good but the extra messing about wasn't worth it, so we got late to the hotel which was a nasty cheapo place right next to the roaring highway. I hardly slept for the constant noise and the AC was crap and the tv was missing but as it was 2am and I didn't care. The next morning we went down for our trip to the pyramids and the breakfast was OK but no Bacon of course, but always these beans fried beans either white or red, I never touched them once. I then found out that Jenny had booked a totally personal tour, we had our own vehicle and driver and guide for every day we were there, very luxurious but expensive all the same. We could see the pyramids from out hotel we were that close, I never realised they were in the suburbs of Cairo, what a pity. You arrive to them to find millions of hawkers selling shite like plastic sphinxes and plastic pyramids. expensive water and anything else you could imagine. The pyramids are huge and look in a bad state of decay, not bad for 4500 years old. The guides were OK but they only knew what they had read, he didn't know that all the outer limestone casing had been used by the recent builders to make there houses, like the last 2000 years, all the big blocks remained as they were too big to use. Again the tomb robbers had stolen everything, we took lots of pictures and then we were told we were going to the papyrus museum, it was a lie it was a shope to sell us expensive copy's of hieroglyphics. we bought a few and then we ended up in a perfume shop on the tour, the guide must have been getting commission as always on these type of tours. We bought some great selling oils, but must have been a total rip-off again, then a nice meal at a fancy restaurant which was miles out of our way for the train journey over night to the Aswan station probably another commission paid meal, we finally went to the cairo museum, it was just crowded solid and this was the low season, it was full of the remains of the tombs and temples as the good stuff is in London and Paris and Turin and New York, the guide did a resonable tour but was complaining about it being hot and how tired he was, he was full of shit. The museum would be nothing without the Tutenkarmoun Treasure, it takes centre place in the museum and it just magnificant, it is breathtaking with its comlexity and beauty, the gold head covering which weighs 11 Kgs is just amazing. If that was in the London Museum then this place wouldn't be worth visiting. There was another small tomb found, the wife of the great Pyramid builder, a few things were found, her bed and some jewellry, it was all very nice but was nothing compared to Tutenkarmoun, it makes you think about what treasures were stolen from all the tombs.

I was looking forward to the train ride, I like trains. The station was full of two types of people, desperately poor going home after a day of toil for low pay and rich folks who were catching the overnight sleeper which costs more than a months salary for normal egyptians. The poor folks looked dangerous, some crazy even and they were filthy and stinking, our train arrived and was nice and clean and the cabins were OK, the food again was not bad for airline type meals and train moved along OK, I was happy to go for a beer in the bar which the train had. we slept bad as you can imagine but we arrived on time and to the most incredible heatwave of 47 C, it was roasting me ears off out of the sun. the hottest I have ever experienced. off to our first hotel, a marvellous luxurious place on the hill overlooking the Nile, I felt like a king.

The Pyramids of Giza

The Sphinx and Pyramid

The Kids at the Cairo Museum

Us at the Cairo Museum

The Fancy Hotel overlooking the Nile

The Nile at Aswan, just up the road was the Upper dam, what a waste of a visit, nothing to see other than soldiers waving guns about.

I Bought a new Breitling

2009-08-04T03:44:00.000-07:00

In Hurgarda on the Red Sea, I was given the opportunity to buy another fake Breitling, the money was so cheap that I couldn't refuse as it looked even nicer than the black-faced one I bought in Tarragona. I got an even better deal as I bought a fake swatch for Jenny which was also a nice rip-off. I am not a watch collector but I do like these fake ones, I just wish I was wealthy enough to buy the originals and not think about the price, $15,000 which just seems an incredible price for a watch.

I like the sun and the moon dial the best

Puns for Educated Minds

2009-08-02T02:06:00.001-07:00

1. The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.

2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian .

3. She was only the whiskey maker's daughter, but he loved her still.

4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption.

5. The butcher backed into the meat grinder and got a little behind in his work.

6. No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery..

7. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.

8. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.

9. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.

10. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

11. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.

12. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

13. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other: 'You stay here; I'll go on a head.'

14. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.

15. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: 'Keep off the Grass.'

16. A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to a hospital. When his grandmother telephoned to ask how he was, a nurse said 'No change yet.'

17. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

18. The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.

19. The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran

20. A backward poet writes inverse.

21. In a democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count that votes.

22. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.

23. Don't join dangerous cults: Practice safe sects!

Cairo is The Re-incarnation of Hell

2009-07-30T02:26:00.000-07:00

I have been to some bad places in my working career but Cairo is by far the worse place I have ever been to, travelling dwon side roads full of piles of rotting refuse and goats and chickens and Donkeys full of old cars and millions of people, just a vision of hell that i would never want to witness again. I have seen some of the ancient wonders fo the world and they are fantastic but to imagine a civilisation that could create such wonders and now to think it has come to this, the whole city looks like one nightmare movie about over-population and bad city design. The whole place is a constuction site with quarries for the materials everywhere, just horrific to think people have to live and work in this nightmare. I will never visit this place again just because of it, I loved the ancient pyramids and the temples of the Pharoas but this country is going to hell as fast as possible. I will post all the pics over the next couple of weeks but i am still in Madrid and trying to feel like going back to work.

The Metro Station Names, Come on and get a life Spain

2009-07-20T02:21:00.000-07:00

We are using the metro to get about in Madrid and normally you expect the names to represent the streets that they emerge at, or something else suitable, but what about if they are all named after people, it doesn't really give you a clue to where you are, you need that route map and a wirelessly connected device to understand where your going. I was intrigued as to whom the stations are named after, Like Guzmen El Bueno, ( Translation, Guzmen the good) it appear that he was a commander of the king Phillip the 2nd, well he was put in chgarge of the Armada that attempted to conquere England, and spain now names a station after the largest naval failure in ancient history,

What about Gregorio Marañon, a doctor who wrote marital guides on sex.

Another great one is Duque De Pastrana, a portugese upstart who kiissed the ass of King Phillip for 30 years and married well, why name a station after him, just insane.

Garcia Noblejas another hopeless attempt at giving a station a name after an assinated nobody, why attempt to name stations after people who nobody will ever bother reading about or who just becasue they had connections with royal families had power and money but never di anything other than line their own pockets.

Spain get over the past get some real names and start living in the 21st Centuary

The Prado Musuem, Large Catholic Overdose

2009-07-20T01:07:00.000-07:00

Well I have seen some of the best art museums in the world and the Prado was not in that class, the problem is that most of the wealth of spain was created 500 years ago and was lost before the Brotoish empire took over the world, so all the art here is from the 300-500 years ago , now I know that the Catholic church is big here but how many pictures of jesus on the cross can you look at in one day, and how many times can i look at Madonna and child, it was boring, very boring, There were a few highlights, the rubens room was OK, large fat rotund ladies mostly naked, how they got passed the catholic censors I dont know, and the picture of Madonna squirting milk into the mouth of some saint from 3 mters away was spectacular in its porn image.

The other museums were the Thyssen museum, that was fantastic, great quality and many world famous pictures,

The other was The Queen Siphia modern art, it was shite beyond belief, I have to blog more about that one alone, modern art is just a moneymaking con job, Pcasso was a con man of the highest order, just shite, cubism is bullshit, drug induced painting. nuff said

Off to Sunny Egypt

2009-07-17T11:50:00.000-07:00

well the travel thing never ends, not that I am unhappy with going to Egypt, it is just the interminable constant tedious travel, last sunday I drove for 11 hours, this was really tedious driving through the miserable desert hinterland of central Spain. So Saturday we catch the bus to Malaga 1 hour travel, not really boring as it is through the mountains. The 4 hour wait in Malaga is tedious, the 4 hours to Madrid is OK as i like trains, far better than planes as you can walk about and entertain yourself more easily. Then we have two days of checking out Madrid, for me this is the first time as a tourist, I want to go to the Prado Art Museum, supposedly one of the best in the world supposedly. Well then after that we travel to Cairo Monday to do the typical tour of the Ancient sites thing. But have you all seen how big Egypt is, it is Gi-friggin-normous, we spend 112 hours one night on a train, this may actually be one of the highlights of the trip as I love trains, did I mention that. we are supposed to see the pyramids, the cairo musuem, Tutankahmun treasures and his burial place, Luxor and Karnak, aswan and elephant island, I will have to check out what is on Elephant island, then as a relaxer for 5 days we are going to the Red Sea to do some snorkelling and eating and drinking and no travelling. So this trip is a trial of endurance and to see who snaps first, me the kids or the wife, or all together at the same time, not to forget that when i get home I travel to Equatorial Guinea for work for a month. I will try and update when i am away but i cannot speak for the sort of connectivity I can expect in Egypt, my buddy Zac was complaining about speeds from the work site he is at but they have their own sat dish and a throttled link. So off from one hot and sweaty country to another even more hot and sweaty country.

The Leaving Party

2009-07-14T06:04:00.000-07:00

Saturday night we all went out for a meal at a posh eatery, we ate bits and pieces of things and the wine was nice and i had a guest from a suppliers company who also came, he paid my bill, that was good of him. We met up at a hotel where a couple fo the guys were staying and then onto this converted watermill i think it was. we spent all night eating laughing and joking, it was probably the best work party I have had in 6 years I have been working with this company. It is unusual to get so many nice guys working on the same project and I think I will be hard pushed to get another group of guys as good. Well until the next project we will see how they are.

Outside the posh Hotel

Oscar Doing his impression of a Red Indian

Hubert and Gregory, who's mother is English

Myself and Emilio and Stefano

The Lowe Family with the tinker trying to look sweet and innocent

San Fermin is a Joke and Bull running is both dangerous and Animal Torture

2009-07-14T02:56:00.000-07:00

I have seen almost the entire San Fermin Festival and it is clear this is nothing more than the spanish version of Oktoberfest, we went in on Sunday morning at 7am to see the streets awash with drunken people, mountains of trash and the stinking urine laden gutters, it was something i wasn't expecting, this has turned into a money making exercise and nothing else, this sort of activity was last spoken about in the Bible, Sodom and Gomorrah, people were sleeping on the grass verges of the roads in the centre of the city, the police are forced to accept this sort of behaviour just because the city survives on the money from it. We had been told that people start queueing up at the fence along the bull run at 4.30am so as to get the best spot, this is crazy, all for a 3 minute run of the bulls, we arrived at the fence about 7.20am and got to within 2 meters of the fence but could see nothing, as the time came closer we got to 1 meter but could still see nothing, as the bulls came and went we were not sure if they had actually gone as you can here nothing above the runners who were pounding down the street, we heard an Oooooohh, when someone got gored by a bull but it was nothing more than 20 seconds and a total anti-climax. This sort of spectacle of bulls being frightened half to death by 10,000 screaming idiots who think it is fun to run with a dangerous animal, then they are ritually killed in the bull ring by a man who thinks he is special after the bull has been brutalised to exhaustion. The people are primitive savages and this whole event is now a joke, This year there was one death o a runner and a runner who was gored and tossed about like some horror movie and the TV replayed it over and over again, I was sure he was going to die but he is alive I think, so my advice is if you want drinking go to a beach resort or the Oktoberfest, dont get ripped off in Pamplona, my hotel was tripling the room prices for the week of the event.

Dangerous Bulls, this guy was speared and then picked up and speared again on the ground, like a rag doll, he lived luckily

Us at the Fence, couldn't see anything

He sat there for at least an hour, just for 15 seconds of bulls running passed

Looking down the street where the bulls run, balconies are expensive to rent by the day

My New Unbelievably Expensive Watch

2009-07-14T00:50:00.000-07:00

I bought a watch while visiting a friends house in Tarragona, a nice little condo style residence close to the beach. I saw this watch a divers watch with Kinetic movement. I am a gadget freak just like my buddy Zac, and when i saw this huge watch i had to have it irrespective of the price, this watch costs what most folks earn in a year,

Only thing is, it is a fake, I bought it off a beach seller, I like fake watches for two reasons, not to make people believe it is real, but to get a great looking watch at a price of a normal watch, and if i get it stolen or it breaks then i just throw it away, but if i had paid the $15,000 for a real one, i would cry for a month, my best ever watch i had was a fake Rolex, it ran perfect for 3 years and when i changed the battery it never worked again, but it looked great.

Death While Running With The Bulls

2009-07-10T00:30:00.000-07:00

Today a runner with the bulls died and the race had only lasted 5 seconds, this crazy spectacle is insane, you have 9 or 10 bulls that can run very fast and a track with 5 or 10,000 crazy guys all wanting to prove how brave they are running with the bulls, the bulls can hardly see where they are running and at the beginning of the race one bulls got disorientated and ran into the fencing and crushed a spectator, maybe gored with a horn or more likely just crushed with the immense weight and momentum of the bull. Is this what all the people of Pamplona want, a dead runner to encourage more poeple to come next year, i am going to have a look myself sunday and hopefully not see a dead runner, I totally disagree with the event and detest the bullfighting afterwards and hope that all the bullfighters get gored to death but not the runners , this event is 200 years past when it should have been closed for being stupid and dangerous.

Far too Many People to see the bulls coming

San Fermin, Running of the Bulls, even more Beer

2009-07-08T04:04:00.000-07:00

This Monday was the start of the San Fermin Fiesta, which to most non Spanish is all about running with the bulls, this is the most insane and stupid even anyone in their right mind wouldn't consider, these bulls weigh up to 600-800 Kgs, and run far faster than a human, why do it?, to prove your manhood, or just stupidity, I think the latter is more the reason, these bulls that run are chosen so not to be aggressive but most injuries occur with folks just falling over each other and getting run over by the bulls, The worst aspect of all this is the huge amount of alcohol being drunk, just insane, it is called the "Chupinatzo", translated it means sucking alcohol until you fall over, these people just go crazy, drinking from 12 noon and then for 24 hours basically, the streets run with rivers of urine. Then all the clowns want to start fighting, my colleagues were out taking a leisurely drink as most Italians do and found themselves confronted by a stinking drunk Spanish clown, he just wanted to fight but was too drunk to be a danger, he had been fighting many times and had a beating but still wanted to fight everyone.

Fighter

Drunkeness

Running with the bulls is Dangerous

Oh My God, Nudists Everywhere

2009-06-29T06:13:00.000-07:00

Sunday we went to the beach, the little Tinker was sad that the hotel didn't have a pool so we had promised her a trip to the beach, so we went to this very big beach just in France called Hendaye, it was an hours drive, and the scenery amongst the outer Pyrenees was fantastic, huge Valleys and mountains, the beach was very busy it must have been 5 Kms long, and as typical for Europe it had many topless women, this was the first time the Little Tinker had seen a topless woman outside of the house, the first one she saw and she came running at full speed to tell us both, and after that she really didn't bother, after about an hour of roasting on the beach we thought a nice walk along the beach would be good for us all. So we strolled along with every shape imaginable for the human form, but as we neared the cliffs along the beach we were confronted by maybe 500 totally nekkid folks, walking about in and out of the water and sunbathing, usually it was older people, this is repulsive as they were fat and wrinkly, not a beautiful sight, we quickly got hold of the little tinker and told her that there would be some nekkid folks and that again this was normal for Europe and she again thought nothing of it, but she hadn't seen any of them by this point, so we carried on walking and she was confronted by one after another coming in and out of the water, they were in front of her face, there was no way she couldn't have missed them all, huge fat old women and old fat men and young women, just all of them, we went to the end and then came back and when we sat down, we asked her if she had seen them she refused to answer the question, totally refused to answer, not sure what this means, prehaps she was so embarrassed that she didn't want to mention it again or what, not sure i think it is good for her to know that this can be normal and that the human form can be beautiful, but not the fat old ones.

Wifey and The Little Devil have arrived in Time for the Running of the Bulls

2009-06-26T06:23:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday my wife and little girl arrived in time for the Fiesta of San Fermin, now this Saint must have been a miserable shit for wanting bulls tortured and killed in his name. Anyhow on arriving Jenny knew that life would be a little bit boring during the day while i am at work, so her daily routine is going to the Gymn and then taking a huge breakfast and trying to hold on until i get back at night, but my routine is at odds with this as i take a huge breakfast and huge lunch and then I am not really hungry at night other than taking a cocktail from the hotel bar at 9pm. we we are struggling with the eating arrangements already. We went out on the following sunday to the most amazing picturesque tourist route in Navarra, up along the Pyrenees over into France and looking at all the vultures and hawks and countless birds that were patrolling the skies. As we rounded a hillside we encoutered an eagle that was landing on a fencepost. it was so impressive to see it flapping its huge wings as we went passed, That was the best part of the day, the weather was so much colder than when i went up with Oscar, it went down to 10.5 C whereas it was 22.5 the week before. Jenny has been to downtown Pamplona a couple of times on the bus and wlaked around some Japanese gardens and been relaxing , as she doesn't need to do any washing or shopping or cooking, so life is easy for them but trying to get the eating arrangements sorted is difficult, I don't want to eat at night and she does, the little girl eats hardly anything anyway apart form French fries, which we are trying to wean her off. she doesnt eat anything that has colour, fruit or vegetables, totally out of the question, anyway, this coming weekend we are looking at going to the beach near the French border.

Climb Every Mountain, Ford Every Stream, with Vultures

2009-06-14T11:35:00.000-07:00

Sounds like a plot to a movie
well this sunday was a day of adventure, we drove out to just travel into the pyrenees, it is pretty easy as Pamplona sits at the base of the mountains, we actually drove along the same road we go to work everyday and then turned north directly into the upwardly spiralling roads, we went passed the Foz De Lumbier which is the Vulture nesting grounds close to our site and after 15 Km we found another Foz( Canyon), the Foz De Ardeyun, it was bigger and more spectacular and probably had more birds nesting in it, when you drive to it, you arrive at the top, unlike the other which is at the bottom, this is so big and so narrow your not able to walk in it, the signs say inaccessible which is probably not true but it keep out the peasants. It was very impressive and the Vultures really like it as the nesting points must be 300-500 feet up, just as they like it, we were close enough to see the birds gliding in and landing into the nests and these Griffon Vultures and Egyptian Vultures are huge birds, with 10 foot wingspans

The Foz De Ardeyun

We spent a while at this place

The Griffon Vulture

The Egyptian Vulture

Then we carried on driving into the unknown, the roads were surprisingly very good to say these are the backroads to nowhere, we stopped at a place maybe 25Km further down teh road for a drink and to stretch the legs, it was a small town on the Salazar River, it was very beautiful and full of really old buildings, and we found one building that had the date carved into the stone arch over the main door, 1758, so this town was around 250 to 300 years old and looked in good shape for the age, we had a tiny Pincho (snack) one potato croquette each, it was laughable, did they expect 2 grown men to use this as a meal,

Little Town of Oggiachioa, Basque town, the spelling was strange

so we left and carried on with our mission, we drove along and found the road that said "France". we carried on up and on for a while and found we had entered the Pyrenees for real, we could see the snow-capped mountains very close and the vegetation had gone to grass only, and the temperature had dropped from 32 C to 22 C, It was amazingly quiet apart from the constant clanging of the bells of the cows and sheep that were grazing all over the hills wild style, with shite littering the roads. we stopped and took many lungfuls of the clean air and smelled the flowers and heard the birds singing with basically no-one else there, it was amazing and almost awesome, but as everyone who knows me that is reserved for when the aliens arrive. We carried on looking for roads to lead us to a road that would take us back to Pamplona, we went on and on and finally found some brits doing some crazy mountain walking and asked them if they had a map we could check, it showed that we were so remote in the mountains that there were no other roads across the mountains at all, it was north for 100Km until we could take a road to the coast or go back the way we came, so no arguments there then, back the way we came. It was a spectacular drive with some amazing scenery and worth all the time it took, i will of course have to take my wife when she comes next week but that is what being a family man is all about.

The Pyrenees in cloud free glory

Latest Movie Review

2009-06-14T02:32:00.001-07:00

As you are all probably aware that the life of a travelling engineer revolves around, work , mostly lots of hours to make money, eating, essential for life, some beer or lots depending on the case involved, and movies. Not that i have much time to watch movies, by the time i get back from work and have a shower and eat, I can chat to my wife and then go to bed. But sometimes when i am sleepless I watch a movie, so this week I have reviewed a couple more for you to think about.

Land of The Lost, 8/10, now Will Ferrel is a funny actor and this movie is pretty typical of his style of movie, it was predictable to a degree but the material about time travel was new for him and it was very entertaining. The story line was very bizarre which added to the movie with lizard men and cavemen and a mini love story thrown in was all good stuff.

Transformers, Rise of the Fallen 9/10, some amazing special effects and a really good plot to say it was written after the original movie. Some wooden acting from the female actor with lips and some good acting from Leboef, he is a funny character, The fact the pyramids of egypt were hiding some giant sun killing machine that no-one had ever discovered and was being destroyed just as i am about to go on holiday to Egypt was a little stressful but all in all a very good movie.

Up by Paxar, 9/10, the start of the movie is a little strange but is building the storyline about a miserable old fart, but as the movie goes along the plot is fantastic for kids and the talking dogs and giant bird are just so funny. I liked the old guys fighting as it picks up on the old age thing really well. a very entertaining movie for kids and for me, funny how all pixar characters are starting to lookalike from different movies.

Clowns of Navarra

2009-06-12T04:12:00.000-07:00

I am working for a spanish gas company here in spain and to be honest they have picked two guys to carry out the customer acceptance tests who are the worst possible choices ever, one is an administrator who knows nothing about anything technical and the other is an arrogant engineer who thinks he is God almighty and he is important, this combination has made the task of running this job very frustrating. We have named the administrator the "Clown", he is so stupid that he tells other guys on site that he "knows nothing", and he has to ask for everything to be explained to him, we are at the leading edge of process control systems and he is asking about it all, this man is incapable of understanding anything so why does he ask, he is also terrified of making any errors and probably is desperate to not get fired. He also talks very strange and i can understand almost nothing of what he says. The other guy is an ass and thinks he is important, he makes demands and issues orders, but once again he knows nothing other than the manuals he is reading everything from. They made us carry test after test after test, almost 4 days of tests that prove nothing and as all controls guys know we could have cheated if we wanted to but this unit is working so perfectly that we didn't need to but they think that these units are easy to operate and they are not, They weill find out soon enough when they actually take over the units that they will struggle and will be calling the company asking for help, that will be pay back time.

Third and Final Quote of the Day

2009-06-07T01:29:00.000-07:00

"Be content to seem what you really are." - Marcus Aurelius

Second Quote of the Day

2009-06-07T01:27:00.000-07:00

"I am not one who was born in the possession of knowledge; I am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there."

Confucius

Quote of the day

2009-06-07T01:26:00.000-07:00

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter"

Winston Churchill

Travel Worries and Not Dying

2009-06-07T01:03:00.000-07:00

I used to fly constantly for work and now I am flying less but still a lot, and every time I see a crash on TV of some airliner I think, thank Buddha it was them, as that obviously increases my chances of not having a crash. This may seem a rather clinical way of looking at someone else's misfortune but it is what happens when you take not dying in a crash for granted. Flying they say is the safest method of travel, many times safer than driving, which I do not do much of these days, but when you have a crash your body is smashed like a soft tomato and you have no chance of escaping, even if you packed a parachute in your hand luggage. Where driving at least you have a chance of avoiding the other object, namely the other vehicle and not the ground looming up at 500 mph. There are on average about 6 major airliner crashes a year and most are in third world countries flying older planes, but to have an almost new plane just fall out of the sky with no apparent reason is very worrying and as I fly to central america quite often now being an official legal resident of Costa Rica I have a genuine reason to be worried. As soon as the star trek transporter is available I will be using it.

Great Article about Who are the Real Pirates

2009-06-07T00:55:00.000-07:00

I’m Really Getting Fed Up About This – And You?

As a consumer, I've bought music...on 45 and 33 rpm vinyl records, then on tape (yes, I missed the 8-Track phase as well as the Laser players), and onto CDs. Next stop: MP3 digital on the computer. How many times do I have to buy the same old songs? And, believe me, you "have to” buy it again because copying it from one format to another - well - there's just so much of that a song will stand. I repeat: How many times must I buy it?

The answer to that is: I have to repurchase whenever the entertainment industry decides to "rip off" America one more time by making obsolete the present formats and forcing something new on us. This is not considered illegal - but copying your older stuff from one format to another borders on "cheating" the artists out of their "much deserved revenues"! Oh, and don't dare make a copy of an old song for your friend that’s out of work and can't afford to "repurchase" their collection in the new format - that's pirating!

The entertainment industry can make whole collections obsolete by refusing to sell and or, support the equipment you need to play it with. Somehow, this dishonorable habit flies below the radar of ethics. The Powers That Be determined that re-inventing the industry every few years would help keep the American economy healthy while providing security for Americans jobs – wink…wink! This is how we justified being wasteful with our resources, and for making “sub-standard” equipment that would not last longer than the planned obsolescence of seven years.

But there’s a few flaws in this plan. Look around. The Japanese have taken over manufacturing these new “innovative” machines. And, the support or help-line jobs have been out-sourced to places like India. Many major companies are keeping their main offices “off-shore” to avoid paying their fair share of American taxes. Now, in the “aftermath” of this “wink…wink” understanding, how stable is our American economy? Aren’t we also suffering a severe unemployment rate? Makes one wonder just whose side these Powers That Be are on, huh?

Nevertheless, such is the reasoning that may soon make your CD and DVD collections obsolete! Almost humorously, in direct opposition, news headline bid us to feel sorry for these people of the Entertainment Industry who are complaining about losing billions of dollars in potential profits this past year due to piracy.

When an industry artificially manipulates the availability of equipment - they have no right to moan about loss! After all, when they stopped selling phonographs in favor of tape decks, and stopped selling tape decks in favor CDs, and cut into CD sales in favor of digital equipment – iPods, MP3 players, etc. they callously kicked entire collections to the curb that depended on those earlier formats. And why? So they could exploit their customer base and sell the same old stuff they've sold before - in the "more modern" formats!

Now, it's movies...remember Beta tapes? Remember VHS? Sure, DVDs are still popular, but how long before Blu-Ray or some other format push into obsolescence the very equipment you need to play your collection on now? That’s one of the goals of Blu-Ray – to have all new movies come out “only” in Blu-Ray! So, you will “have to” buy their format or lose out. We, the consumers, continue to sit silently, while the Entertainment Industry shouts about how badly "they" are being ripped off!

Shouldn't we demand that someone start reporting how these "would-be victims" have been victimizing the consumer - under the guise of "new and improved"? Here we are with all digital formats and we're being told that vinyl - the old 33s and 45s - have better sound! Best Buy is actually clearing space to start selling vinyl records again! New and improved - yeah - right?! They're the victims - only in the headlines! In truth, we’re the victims - you and me! It’s time to acknowledge that.

Originally, I had no opinion about “pirating”. But, I’m an American. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that Americans “share”. That’s our nature. We’re a generous people. And, it seems, the less we have, the more we are apt to share it. If someone who has cancer says they wish they could see a particular movie, do you really think someone else won’t rip off a copy of that movie and give it to them ease their suffering? Anyone telling them they aren’t “legally” allowed to do that, amounts to telling them that they can’t show “mercy”! The Entertainment Industry should figure it out – You don’t legislate morality or human kindness. Calling such a person a “pirate” only alienates their customer base and further erodes good will. Having people publicly arrested, fined and imprisoned for piracy, isn’t an effective deterrent to others? That’s creating martyrs! And, changing the minds of people like me who previously had no opinion on the subject.

In the aftermath, I find that I’m not really all that offended by people pirating DVDs and CDs. It means that something is finally being “Made in America” again!

The Golden Rule says that you are to do unto others as you would have them do unto you? Well, then, where is the real basis for complaint against “pirating”? The Entertainment Industry has employed a “wink…wink” strategy that has severely “harmed”, not helped, America. And, they intend to keep right on employing it! They don’t care if we suffer because of it. All that matters is their bottom line! Pirates are children of their own thinking – doing exactly the same thing to them that they are doing to us. So, where’s the problem?

Microsoft gave us Vista…a software that meant you had to replace older peripherals like your scanner, printer, etc. in order to use it. This was a way of “forcing” consumers to buy new equipment. America responded by simply “not” buying Vista! With that, even a company of the magnitude of Microsoft had to stop and listen to the consumer!

It may be wise to think twice about buying a new format. Ask yourself who, exactly, is it profiting? At what ultimate cost? We get fairer treatment and better products when we hold out for fairer treatment and better products. Who knows, someone might even have an epiphany and offer a “free” 5 year warrantee on their product? (Okay, I’m reaching!)

But do remember, whether they like it or not: Your dollars are “your vote”! Use them wisely.

Mary Cahill - age 63 - A Baby-boomer

Saving Baby Snake

2009-06-03T02:31:00.000-07:00

As we were driving off the site yesterday we saw a baby snake that was slithering its way on to the road, I was horrified at the thought of it getting squished running away from us, so I jumped out and ran towards it looking at the traffic on the road, the road was full of cars doing fast speeds, maybe 50-60mph, the snake was still running as fast as it could to the road, i stood back and looked away as the cars came close, the poor little thing was jumping backwards as the cars roared past. So I took the decision to be the snake police and stepped out and waved the oncoming cars away from me, they not knowing I was protecting a snake. The last car actually responded and moved around me and avoided me and the snake, so i jumped on the other side of the snake after the car had gone and then started waving my hands very close to it, it was clever and turned around and ran away as fast as its little coils could make it go, I was happy and the snake lived, a little tale of my endeavours in Northern spain, I should have been a vet you know.

about the size of a pencil

Words Not To Use on Your Job Applications

2009-06-01T04:11:00.000-07:00

Here are some words to avoid in your resume and cover letter

Awesome, amazing, phenomenal, cool, spectacular, etc. I would personally like to see the word amazing purged from the vernacular altogether; sometimes it seems like that’s the only adjective people know. All of these words, besides making you sound like a teenage girl, are subjective, meaning that they are your interpretation of a skill. Unless the interviewer can see that for himself or herself, it’s not really going to mean much to him or her anyway.

Liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican, monotheistic, polytheistic, atheist, agnostic, etc. I’m not telling you to deny your views or leanings, but the resume is not the place to state them. When people are vetting resumes, they’re not above throwing out those that represent people with beliefs that are different from theirs.

Healthy, chronically ill, diabetic, habitually pregnant, or any mention of a physical condition at all. This kind of information is illegal for prospective employers to ask about, so why volunteer it?

Use your Brain when applying for jobs, you know it makes sense

Latest Movie Review for May

2009-05-31T13:33:00.000-07:00

I have watched a few movies this last couple of weeks mostly through boredom really. There was only average run of the mill stuff but one movie did stand out by a long way and i will start with that one, Wolverine

1), X-Men Origins, Wolverine, 9/10, probably the best movie I have seen since the second Hell boy movie, It had a great intertwined plot with a love story and lots of funny stuff and mountains of Action as you would expect from this movie, The special effects were just spectacular. A thoroughly great movie and left me wanting more, now that is something that doesn't happen very often. Also a great ending that is obviously left open for a follow up. Like what did happen to the brother??

2) Night at the Museum 2, 5/10, a normal sequel type movie all very predictable and tame, took some doing to watch it all the way through. a very average movie and I cannot understand why it has taken so much money at the box office.

3)Angels and Demons, 4/10, a very silly plot as a follow up to the Da Vinci Code, the plot was so silly that I could not get into the film properly, I wanted to believe but it was just rubbish, the fact a history professor was showing the police how to hunt for some very dangerous anti-matter was just laughable. very poor and left me sad that a great movie led to this crap. Sequels don't always work.

4) Fast and Furous 4, 6/10, some very silly stunt work and a silly plot but somehow I was carried along by the story, I actually enjoyed this and expect a sequel out next year sometime.

5)State of Play, 7/10, some great acting and a sort of interesting plot that was thicker than a thick pea soup had me watching all the way through, but afterwards it was a less than thick and a bit thin, I enjoyed it but I was expecting more than the final fizzle out of the plot, but I did enjoy this movie

6) Next Day Air, 4/10, I had seen a trailer and had expected more from this movie, it was a silly sploitation movie with some very average acting by black actors, all stereotype silly stuff, like all blacks do drugs and have guns and have lots of sex, steal everything they see and touch, all mexicans sell drugs and have silly accents, all very predictable, I had to force myself to watch the end. Poor rubbish but if you have an afternoon to kill with nothing at all else to do or to watch, then Ok watch it.

7) Saw 1&2&3 4&5 to go, 0/10, all rubbish but since i have then i will watch them all, just to say I have seen them, really rubbish, all gory stuff, not even average acting, just crap. but better than the pink panther.

8) Punisher(2008), 1/10, I watched this as it came along and it was the goriest movie I have seen ever, really crap story but if was almost a comedy, a black comedy but just rubbish acting just real rubbish

9) Terminator Salvation, 4/10, Very dark and moody movie, when actors whisper to give the movie atmosphere you know they are dealing with weak material, I hate whispering actors, The plot was just too silly again, and the fact the resistance were able to break into the centre of the skynet manufacturing centre was beyond movie magic, just rubbish, nothing but dreary atmosphere and no humour, acting was pretty poor and it tried to focus on the special effects which were OK but didn't compensate for the poor directing and production, Arnold Schwarzeneggar please come back!

Marsh Harriers In Lake "Las Cañas"

2009-05-31T12:42:00.000-07:00

I travelled out today to do some bird watching as the weather has finally turned summery, I did a search and found a reservoir about 50 miles away near Logroño, that seemed good enough to go and have a walk around, It was easy to find and when I arrived it was completely deserted apart from some silly old farts who were walking the "Camino De Santiago", following in the footsteps of some saint who walked 800 km a long time ago and devout followers of the Catholic doctrine now think they will get to heaven if the put themselves through this purgatory, so I didn't drive over the old farts and parked up and was alone, the reservoir was down the hill in front of the national park building and seemed to have a circular footpath, it didn't actually have one it was my imagination, but there was a small path that led to the fencing around the lake, I found that all i could see from most of the walk was very large trees in front of me and in between was just reeds, I didn't mind this is typical bird watching, you see nothing all day and then you may just find a gem, but today started so differently. I saw 200 sheep that were being used to eat down the grasses around the waters edge, this is very environmentally friendly and also helps the birds, I saw something i never expected, there were Cattle Egrets riding on the sheep, just waiting for flies or other flying insects to come to them and the sheep didn't mind one bit, not just one or two birds but about 40, the egrets were running in front of them and behind them, flying up to get a "Birds eye" view of the area and then landing either on the sheep or in front, it was very amusing and really interesting, the shepherd didn't seem that excited but when you have been moving them around for the last 40 years, the novelty must wear off, I carried on around the lake and saw nothing at all, I then arrived at the concrete retaining wall confirming to me it was all fake, from there i could see some large birds of prey flying around the centre of the water and then landing in the reeds, this is not normal for birds of prey, I realised i had seen my first Marsh Harrier, but there were many of them, flying here and there around the lake, I was excited inside, not jumping for joy but still excited, A park warden arrived and was standing beside me with his big birding scope and I asked him how many of them were at the, in very poor spanish, he told me there were about 10-12 breeding pairs, this is probably more than the whole of england, this was my day made, i bade him adios and started my walk back, again without seeing anything at all, pretty miserable if you had kids to entertain but for me it was enough, but i have since found out from the internet that even closer is a lake of international importance for its Marsh Harrier population, Lake Pitillas and it is close to where I am working, so funny, so that is my trip planned for next weekend.

The Site in the Hills of Pamplona ( Sangüesa)

2009-05-30T02:02:00.000-07:00

This site here in spain is about the prettiest I have ever worked on, it is in the mountains and quite remote, there are pine trees all over the hills and some bare patches of what look like volcanic ash, these are full of wild flowers as the farmers leave them alone, there are also lots of butterflies here and we heard a cuckoo this morning, plus the Vultures that live only 5 Km away are always flying over and looking for dead bodies, if one particular guy doesn't stop irritating me with his jiberish he is going to become Vulture food, I dont mind working here, it is quiet and with lots of fresh air and not far from a nice truck stop restaurant with very typical Spanish food. At present we are working a long day and so i am not doing much and last weekend i only managed to walk into Pamplona itself for some exercise and not go anywhere. So hopefully this weekend someone may take me out or I may have to drag out the Limosine and drive out myself, not very entertaining on your own but better than just watching movies in your hotel room.

The Site

The Hills

The windmills, hundreds of them

The Pictures of San Sebastian

2009-05-23T09:27:00.000-07:00

That old sea port town of San Sebastien, I thought i should finally blog the pictures as it is almost a week, also tomorrow we are planning to go out to Zarragosa, not sure what that town has but all the guys are making the best of the time and good weather as this project is now coming to a close, unit 1 is finished and we have about 6 or 8 weeks left of installing all the replacement broken equipment when it arrives.
I recommend San sebastian as part of the tour of northern spain, it is very pretty and the old part is perfect for tourists, easy to get to and parking is free on sunday. I refused to eat seafood even though this part of spain seafood is the speciality, I have been so ill with food poisoning so many times on seafood that I am now totally paranoid about it, I immediately think of the vomiting when i look at seafood, I have eaten some smoked salmon and othe bits and pieces when it is the thing i think of first but i will rather go without than eat it,

One of the very nice large houses that lined all the streets of downtown

The old part of town, where we bumped into the Naked Frenchman, those guys, Huh

The Cathedral

Fancy old Bridge across the river that splits the town

Nude Frenchman in San Sebastian

2009-05-18T00:27:00.000-07:00

It was sunday day off so we went for a drive to San Sebastian which is about 70 Km away, it was a nice sunny day and the traffic was light and San Sebastian is a very nice pretty town with some nice boulevards and very attractive buildings, it must have been a very prosperous town at some point in the past. we walked around the coastal path and into the old fishing harbour and then into the old town, it has narrow streets and lots of little shops and bar, a very pretty place to walk, but in the middle we were confronted by a very tall naked man walking along doing his shopping, you could tell by the colour of his tan, which was total from head to toe that he was a regular nudist, he was smiling and very happy, I am not usually shocked but i was taken aback. We carried on with our tour, we had a beer a sleep in the park and a coffee before we drove home and a relaxing evening watching movies, I checked Google for the naked guy and sure enough he is a pretty famous guy for his naked activities including cycling as in a screenshot of this video. Good luck to him but the local spanish are all upset, i just laughed.

Long Live the Bull and Death to The Bullfighter

2009-05-13T10:34:00.000-07:00

I said i would do a post about bullfighters, yes i think they should all be gored to death by the bulls, the bulls have no chance, they are mutilated to make them weak and defenceless, this isnt a sport more like ritualistic torture, but every now and again the bull gets lucky and gores the Matador ( "killer" in translation ). I like it when this happens and for many years i had a picture of a bullfighter with a horn being rammed up his ass on my desktop, so here is a collection of my favourite shots of the bull winning for Once

This is my all time Favourite

This guy fighting even though he was injured in all his last fights, hurrah

Pamplona , City of Hemmingway and Running Bulls

2009-05-13T09:38:00.000-07:00

I had a slow walk round Pamplona Sunday and to be honest, most of it is just like any other big ugly city, but the older parts have been preserved to an extent. Plus the other very important aspect is they have made it totally car free, so all the main boulevards are pedestrain only. This made the walking nice and relaxed, the old part is pretty nice but this isn't Florence and it wasn't so pretty. I managed to get to Hemmingways drinking hole and it was just a miserable little bar where he would do some drinking and writing. There was the nice town hall, old and pretty and there was a church, I don't do much with churches really but other than that it was pretty disappointing. Perhaps watching young guys getting a 12 inch horn rammed up their ass would be more fun as i feel the running of the bulls should be banned along with Bull Fighting, I feel so strongly about bull fighting i may blog just about that and cheer all the dead bull-fighters and celebrate the bull that kills their tormentors. Possibly not worth the effort to travel to and probbaly too far away from other more worthwhile places to Visit like the gorge with nesting Vultures.

The Town Hall

The street where the bulls are run

Oscar my work Colleague and Very Good Friend

Statue of the Running Bulls Killing People, Wonderful

In Full Charge, Hussar

Castillo De Javier and Foz De Lumbier

2009-05-11T02:14:00.000-07:00

I went out for a drive on sunday and we were told that the coast would be wet and windy so we went inland to a castle we were told about, it is very close to the work site and it was a quick drive, wehn we arrived I was intrigued at the small size of the so called castle and when walking up to it it was apparent it wasn't a real castle and was tiny and probably a rich mans garden ornament. We decided not to go inside as they were charging money for it, we left feeling cheated but isn't this all the same with most attractions. We then headed for the large river gorge which is directly across from the site and we drove to the main car park and found we had to walk along a nice road to the actual gorge, it was very interesting to find that the route was originally a train track, the first actual electric train in spain and a could of tunnels had been blasted through the cliffs to allow the trains access. the cliffs are very impressive and maybe up to 300 meters tall, the cliffs were also full of nesting birds, many different species, typical cliff birds, Jackdaws and martins but this is a special site for the amount of nesting Vultures, there were at least 10 pairs of nesting Griffon Vultures but without my bins i couldn't identify is there were any lammergiers or other smaller species, it was spectacular and well worth the trip, we had to walk for about 3Km out and then 3 Km back wich took us about 1 1/2 hours, a really nice end of the day-

Crappy fake castle

Amazing vulture display on the cliffs

Fantastic Cliffs along the Gorge

Coto Doñana, The Most Amazing National Park in Spain

2009-05-07T13:31:00.000-07:00

On my last weekend before I was due to Fly to Equatorial Guinea, i decided to take Jenny and the little girl to the beach but also near a giant national Park called, Coto Doñana. it is a huge estuary and has many birds associated with Africa as it is so close, we had booked a large tourist hotel in the main town called Matalascañas basically translated as "Kill The Canes". Very odd for a place name. the weather was sunny but the wind was cold. We went for a walk to the beach and to find some food shops and bars and restaurants but soon found there are virtually none there, This is the most bizarre place i have been, the town was built around a golf course and as such all the homes are just for holidays, no people live there just holiday, so we had to go back to the hotel to book in for all inclusive, which was OK as i could drink myself silly for 3 days but after bird watching of course, The next morning we went out to drive to the visitor centre and found a fantastic set of walks around some small ponds and found the place was alive with Storks, nesting everywhere, on buildings and chimneys and every electric pylon the big pylons had 3 nests on them, fantastic, also many other birs which were all new to me. the walks were great and the place was full of flowers and was very peaceful and tranquil just perect for my rest before work. we then went drinking all afternoon and night not much happened in the hotel other than watching lots of other people get really drunk on the non stop pouring of drinks to people who didn't have to pay for each one.

The next morning we went to a local town where the Flamingoes were feeding, the lake was big but the town next to it was even bigger and full of old farts coming to look at the "birdies", i hate that mentality really, stupid people who dont know any better, why didn't they stay at home and stop making pollution just because they want to spend some money before they die. Die at home quietly and leave the "birdies" to us birders and stop getting in my way, They had a very interesting attitude in the town to the Swallows and House Martins, they actually did nothing to stop them form making their nests on the buildings, the nesting areas had nest 5 or 6 or 7 nests deep, amazing to see, it is probably what you need when you live in a swamp and need to keep the mosquitoes away and from biting you and giving you giant puss filled wounds like my buddy Slyght, how he managed to find every Dengue and plague infected mosquito i will never know.

So we were just driving away to the hotel and we saw a sign for more bird hides in the park, so we spun the car around and drove into a far better park than we saw the day before, it had Spoonbills and we saw even more storks and the hides and lakes we laid out just brilliantly, we had a great time and as we were driving away we saw another sign for a palace, so i had to just find out if it was a real one, it wasn't but on the 5 Kms to the place we saw maybe 20 of the most amazing Bee-eaters just sitting on bushes and catching bees probably and just looking like streaks of Rainbow flying about, the palace ws a 1960 attempt at a recreation of a rich persons house but the drive to see it was amazing,

The drive

From the Roof

It looked great but it was probably a ruined shell when the park took it over and it was far smaller than you think, maybe only space for 4-6 bedrooms upstairs honestly, Palacio Acebuche

The Gardens had gone wild but were interesting, Like the enchanted Garden

This is the Church near the Flamingo Lake and you can see all the Mud nests from the House Martins on it

Around the Flamingo Lake with the two Tinkers

This is the main Visitor centre and it was free and very good, plus it was free, did i mention that.

This is my hotel the one with a yellow line across the top, spoiling the view actually, somebody must have taken a huge bribe to allow a golf course and crappy toursit place to be built in a pristine national park, corruption gone mad.

Paris "Charles De Gaul" Airport, It just got Worse

2009-05-07T13:25:00.000-07:00

I hate Paris Airport and this last trip i flew through it just made a leap into far worse for me, I hate the way they have designed the airport to look nice but be totally hopeless for people to move around in it, and i had to catch a connection with only 25 minutes in between, I suspected i would miss it and I saw a terminal i had never seen before 2H, so i followed the miserable signs and it took me out to a bus stand, i got on a sat for around 15 minutes as the bus just left the airport and went for a run into the country, i was shocked and arrived at a large tin shed, like a Walmart but without anything worth looking at. this was Terminal 2H, maybe 5 Km away and still part of the airport and this is where the regional aircraft have to fly from, it was shite in the extreme and luckily for me the flight was late and i didn't miss my connection but what a piece of crap to call a terminal, no wonder they keep losing to Germany they have surrendered to anything called common sense.