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In Costa Rica there are a lot of men with machismo,
also known as morally challenged cretins. I am hoping
that their god never allows them to reproduce.
Unfortunately I have run across a few too many of them
for my taste. The subtle ones are OK I guess, opening
doors, letting the woman go first (although that last
one doesn't work to well since usually I don't know
the place we are going to so end up wandering along
until someone calls out that I've gone too far, kind
of embarrassing :(). The worst are the car and bus
drivers that hang out the windows and yell and shout
at women walking along the street, or the ones who
slobber their tongues over their lips, roll their
eyes, and make lewd comments. Looking at my previous
comment it seems that the latter ones may have some
kind of mental or physical disease as they seem to be
irrational and have no control over themselves ... ah
so they are diseased, even more reason to avoid them.
Speaking of the road system (yes, again), every day I appreciate the enthusiastic taxi drivers more and more. As there doesn't seem to be a straight route through the city anywhere, even if it's a one way route, ensuring that a good drive train is installed on every car to make the numerous turns required to travel 7 or 8 blocks. It is a traffic engineers dream, the chance to re-organise Also, bravery of bus drivers here exceeds those back home, they have absolutely no fear of pedestrians or red lights. They also truly appreciate the site of an attractive woman, or any woman for that matter. In addition to the many armed guards on the streets and office buildings the bank & store guards carry additional weaponry. I have seen these guards with sawed off shotguns and in a couple cases machine guns (especially the armoured car guards). Don't worry your money will be safe, can't say much for the criminals though. Guns are quite prevalent here, even more so that in the US and there are a number of gun shops, in the main shopping districts too. I am told there is a registration that is required but it appears that the ability to carry a weapon (very few of them bother to conceal them) is popular. I must admit it sometimes scares the @#$?&*# out of me. Independence Day (September 15) in Costa Rica was a pretty low key affair. I didn't see any major parades, but did hear the bands playing in the park. Even though is is considered a holiday if it falls on a Saturday or Sunday that is the holiday day, no nice long weekend to celebrate. I was able to pick up a paper Costa Rican flag to complement my Canadian flag raised at my desk. The Tico flag is simple horizontal stripes: blue-white-red-white-blue. A couple weekends ago on the 2nd anniversary of Pierre Trudeau's death (Sat., Sept 28th for you Luddites) I went to a garage sale sponsored by the Canadian Club. I was hoping to pick up a microwave that was rumoured to be "brand new in the box". Unfortunately I slept in a bit and arrived at 9:45, missing the opportunity to pick up a cheap appliance. I did have fun "scrounging" around and picking up some cheap household stuff (I finally got chopsticks) and a shwack of books. Then after a quick grocery trip I stayed at home the rest of the weekend to suffer with a bout of the flu. I had been hoping to go to the Jade Museum but was too ill and discovered it's only open on weekdays. Despite being such a passionate culture (driving, dancing, slobbering over women ... okay, so I have a theme going today) which I expect reflected in spicy food I have found many flavours to be on the sweet side. Candy, pastries, I understand, but salsa? Since the demise of Yaohan I have been unable to find a decent, spicy, unsweetened chunky salsa. I may have to resort to learning to make it myself (perish the thought). This last weekend I did a very girly thing. I went clothes shopping. Now those of you that know me will have a rather shocked expression on their faces. I did it for 2 reasons, one was to pick up a few new clothes, the other was to amuse Lynnethe who seems to really enjoy such things. She came along to help me ask for a large size of everything, I swear all the women here are way too skinny for their own good. It was all quite entertaining as she had me trying on very tight fighting Tico style shirts that are partially see-through in the back and show off your navel and I was expressing shocked concern about wearing such things in public. We did go to a very good pizza place for lunch though. |
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