Assombrações

In order to practice a bit my Portuguese I have been watching this program about haunted houses they show late night (obvious time slot, isn't it?) on Discovery Channel and to tell the truth I have a few doubts about the spirits that I am going to share with you:

• How come all the paranormal activity always happens at night? What are the spirits doing during the day? Playing football, watching TV?!?!?


• Why are the spirits always trying to scare you off your house? How come you never find spirits that actually want you in there and that bake you cookies for when you arrive from work?


• And how come the spirits tend to mess the place up badly? Aren't they any spirits of cleaning ladies around?


• If you are a spirit powerful enough to throw things at people how come your aim is so bad? For God's sake, you have been around a few hundred years, you could have been practising a bit your aim already!


• Also, in a kitchen there are things far more deadly than dishes ... what about knives? If you can go through the trouble of opening a cabinet and throwing dishes why not slide a drawer and throw the knives and pointy forks?!? HELLLLO!


• Why didn't the native Americans leave a record of their burial places so people don't build house on top of them?


• If rather than a spirit you are a devil and they open one of this "doors" for you to come to the land of the living, how come then you stick around that place just to scare teenagers? Why not wander around taking back as many souls as possible? Why did you come on the first place? Didn't you have a plan? Were you bored or what?


• If you are an entity with no physical body that can cross walls and appear in any room of a house at will, how come you are only bothering one family in a row of terraced houses? Are you afraid that if you go to the neighbours' the police is going to arrest you for trespassing?!?

But, my biggest doubt of all is:

• If you are a male spirit, you can cross walls, change location at will and sneak around undetected, then how come that there are no reports of appearances in any ladies changing rooms?!?!?

Let's face it: you all know that they would be the most haunted places ever ...

What have I been doing this past months

The answer is short and simple: paperwork! :-(

Changing my Brazilian visa and having everything sorted out hasn't been easy at all ... and it hasn't been a 100% success unfortunately. When going through a paperwork process that involves different countries and different organization bodies you can find some (or all, if you are as lucky as me!) of the following problems:

• First of all lack of clarity on how things work. You talk to someone on the phone (if you are lucky enough to get hold of someone) and tells you one thing, the very next day you go in person and you get a completely different answer ... ok, fair enough: the process changes at random depending on the person and the day ... why not? It makes perfect sense.
  
  Another variation on the lack of clarity is when you call and they don't tell you everything you need to know unless you ask specifically. For example: "To get this paper you need to go in person to the ministry of whatever." Full stop. You start planning the trip and seeing it is really expensive and almost impossible to sort out you call again and ask: "But, cannot I do this by post, even if it takes longer? Is there any other method?" "Of course, you can post it or go to any of the regional delegations" ... Why on hearth didn't you say so on the first place then?!?
  
  Or even better when you go in person, ask what sort of paper you need to proof whatever needs proving. You get an answer. You get the paper. You go back again, speak to the very same person and he tells you that unfortunately that paper is not valid. WTF?!?!?


• Second problem you can get is plain incompetence. Imagine that there is one single person in charge of doing one of the steps. If that is your only job you should know everything from the inside out of how things work. Specially if there is a well known loophole everybody is taking advantage off. And even more when they have changed the legislation on the previous two months to close it! ... well you must be guessing already that the person didn't have a clue the loophole was closed giving advice that was completely wrong ... and a bit illegal at that time ...


• Third problem, and worst of all, is having one of the civil servants blatantly lying. Specially when that person works for the Policia Federal "helping" the foreigners sorting out their visa paperwork. I am not a psychologist but I guess that this white bearded person must have had some sort of trauma on his long gone youth and now enjoys abusing of his powers on helpless foreigners. The most despicable thing is that he does not act on the open, that would take way too much courage, but hidden behind a riddle of lies, making some of the important papers go missing mysteriously and secretly stamping your passport without telling you.
  
  And what did he gain with all that?!? Nothing! Did me and the others loose anything? No, just some time and we had to activate the "plan B".
  
  So, as a person he is an asshole ... and as a master criminal he sucks! :-D

And these are only some of the joys of living abroad ... keep tuned!

First game!

People! Yes, I know I have kept quiet for a while ... a couple of weeks I believe. As my last post was about the "party lag" most of you may think I haven't been updating the blog because I was going out day and night with friends ... you are wrong (... mostly ...): I was finishing the test of my first game!



This is a event based card game with the goal of staying single until you are thirty. The game starts when you are twenty being single. Every turn represents half a year of your life and you have to play and event card. Depending on the outcome of the card you get points on four different "attributes" and when one of them reaches 100% you "level up" to the next stage in your relationship. You go from being "single" to "best friends", then to "dating", then "engaged" and finally you get "married" ... the closer you are to the marriage the less points you get added to your total score! :-P

It is available on Facebook: Ditch'em all on Facebook
And also standalone outside: Ditch'em all standalone

Feel free to try it and tell me what do you think ... specially if its is good ... if it is bad I'll simply ignore your opinion! :-P

I have to thank Jenny, a chocolate fondue and a bottle (or maybe two) of champagne as source of inspiration for the game!

Of course, all the events are based on real life experiences ... say no more! :-D

Party lag

They say that when you travel by plane you can be affected by a sleeping disorder called "jet lag". Basically it takes some time for your body to adapt to the new time zone. The average is about 1 day if you travel eastwards and about 1.5 days if you do so westwards.

I think I have a bit of a problem ... I did travel eastwards 10 days ago and I still haven't managed to fall asleep before 5am a single day!
Should I see a doctor? Maybe ... maybe not ...
When he asks if I spend hours no end in bed waiting to fall asleep ... I'll have to say: Noooooooooo! I spend hours no end in bars and restaurants with different friends each night! BASTARDS! This is the real problem of living abroad and coming back home: there is always a friend that hasn't seen you with energy to go out ... or one that has seen you already ... So, if you are nice like me :-P, you can easily spend 10 days in a row "having to" go out ... Then when you can finally escape and go back to wherever you live looking like a zombie people will ask you: "Is it the jet lag?" ... "Jet lag, jet lag, ... Noooooooooo: PARTY LAG!" :-D

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Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Benjamin Franklin

Paella with onion rings

As I had some good feedback about my previous post about how to do some fried eggs I am going to write about cooking again ... this time though not about what to do but about "cultural differences" and some aberrations I have suffered myself with the paellas.

In case you didn't know/imagine each country has its own cooking traditions and taste. So, when opening a "foreign" restaurant you usually need to adapt a bit the recipes. This can either be because some of the ingredients are impossible to find, because in the new country they don't like a particular condiment, because some of the ingredients taste quite different, …
So you find yourself a few odd things like Indian curry in the UK being a lot milder than the original … rabbits in the UK are better known as pets but in Spain they are a food source ... Italian lasagna being hot as hell in India … Mexican people having to add the entire contents of a chilly oil bottle to their enchiladas … the list is endless!

So, I should know better and when I see a Spanish restaurant run away as if it was cursed. But is not that easy!
First error: You have this kind of nostalgia … or you are with friends that hate you … or friends that think you are going to be extremely happy by eating something that completely falls short of your expectations … anyway, one way or another you always end up going in!
Second error: Ordering your favorite dish!

In my case one of my favorite dishes is the "paella". In theory it is quite simple because it is no more than rice with things. It can be either meat or fish or a mix of the two. So there are a lot of different recipes and ways of cooking but the end result should fall within some pretty standard taste range. Now, I think it is in the human nature not to read the instructions before doing something … and I admit I have done that quite a few times … but if you are a professional cook you should at least take a quick look at the recipes and not just at the picture that goes with it! Because, judging by the range of strange things that is what they tend to do.
In case any cook follows this blog I'll add a quick list of what not to put on a paella:

• Yes, I know that on the picture you had some lemon wedges … they were just an ornament! Don't cook them with the rice!


• And yes, I know that is called "paella Valencia" and that oranges are typical from there … and that if you cook the rice with lemon wedges, why not oranges? Well, don't!


• Olives?!? Cooked?!? Where did you see that?


• Chorizo … with a fish paella … Mt Cook: you should go to the doctor to check those taste buds.


• Onion rings?!? Are you sure that they weren't fried squid rings?!? And still, that is definitely not part of any traditional (or any modern) recipe.


• But most important of all: the yellow color of the paella rice comes from saffron, not from freaking curry species! Mr Canteen's Cook: you don't know how close to death you were that day!

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We travel because, no matter how comfortable we are at home, there's a part of us that wants - that needs - to see new vistas, take new tours, obtain new traveller's checks, buy new souvenirs, order new entrées, introduce new bacteria into our intestinal tracts, learn new words for "transfusion," and have all the other travel adventures that make us want to French-kiss our doormats when we finally get home.
Dave Barry

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Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
Probably Winston Churchill

Cooking recipe: fried eggs!

The other day I had a friend around and I was cooking us dinner. All of a sudden she looked puzzled and asked: "why are you doing it like this?" I realized that, as with most things, I cook in a completely different way compared to the rest of the world! So let me share it with you and see what you think.

My cooking style is based in patience! Yes: patience. Basically it takes me about ten minutes to fry an egg!

The normal approach is to have the oil pretty hot, dump the egg in the pan ... and unleash hell with boiling oil splashing all around ... the egg white burnt on the outside but raw on the middle ... and you with third degree burns, stressed out and an anxiety crisis.

Me, on the other hand, I have the hob at the lowest possible mark. The oil is not that hot, you dump the egg ... nothing happens at first. You have all the time in the world to fetch the salt and add any extra seasoning or toppings. And just leave it in there ... patience ... no need to stir, no need to splash the top of the egg with boiling oil, no need to do anything. Just wait! You will see that the egg white starts cooking slowly from underneath until it is all perfectly and homogeneously cooked. The yolk is still going to be raw: the perfect fried egg (if you leave if for too long the worst that can happen is that the yolk is going to cook as well) And no hot oil splashing anywhere.
Voilà: done!

Note that I said you have time to add "extra toppings" apart from salt. From time to time I do what people call "pizza fried eggs". Basically you do like in a pizza and add bacon, cheese, oregano, peperoni, ... whatever you want to the egg white, just after putting the egg into the pan. The ingredients are going to cook slowly and get fused with the egg white. Yummy, yummy! :-)

So, when you have friends around: do you prefer to spend a couple of minutes worrying, burning yourself, making a mess of the kitchen? Or do you prefer spending ten minutes drinking beer and chatting with them? ... I always go for the beer option! :-D

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What happens if a big asteroid hits Earth? Judging from realistic simulations involving a sledge hammer and a common laboratory frog, we can assume it will be pretty bad.
Probably Dave Barry