I’m on the wagon. No, I’m not an alcoholic and I don’t need to join AA. I have the unfortunate honour of nose herpes. Yep, practically every month I get a big herpes sore on my nose. It’s ugly, it scars my poor nose, it hurts, I’m afraid of giving it to my partner or daughter and it just generally SUCKS. Living in sunny Spain doesn’t help as exposure to sunlight can trigger herpes outbreaks. Let’s just say that the old SPF50 is in daily use, as is a sunhat. But, I have to acknowledge that drinking alcohol is another strong trigger for the virus to proliferate. Not to mention that vasodilation makes my poor nose ever redder (not a good look, let me tell you). So, I’m off the sauce. I miss it at suppertime, but otherwise it’s not a problem. In fact, I always lose weight when I stop drinking – like right away and enough to have people saying ‘hey you’ve lost weight’. So, it’s bye-bye booze. Let’s see how long I can hold out. Guess that means I won’t be joining the DPT (disturbing purple tan) brigade out on the terazas by the beach!
Nearly three weeks without a drink
April 11, 2008 at 7:42 pm (costa blanca, expats, humour, spain)
Tags: drink, herpes, wagon
Wawa
April 8, 2008 at 9:53 pm (costa blanca, expats, spain)
Tags: shower, water
Know what I miss about living in Canada? Taking looong showers and not worrying about water shortages and droughts. The Costa Blanca is dry, dry, dry.
And Uruguayans are the Kiwis of Spain
April 4, 2008 at 10:14 pm (Argentinians, australians, expats, humour, spain)
Tags: argentina, Aussies, Kiwis, spain, Uruguay
Following on from earlier, if Argentinians are the Aussies of Spain, then Uruguayans are the Kiwis: a small country dwarfed by it’s huge neighbour, friendly to one another but aware of their differences, almost the same accent with a few twangs. Only there isn’t a sea separating them…
Are Argentinians the Australians of Spain?
April 4, 2008 at 6:18 pm (Argentinians, australians, costa blanca, expats, humour, spain)
Tags: argentina, Australia, expats
When I lived in London, I ended up hanging out with way more Aussies than Brits. It’s just the way it is: you live there 5 years or more and suddenly the mix changes, you get to know a few Londoners. But at first it’s Antipodeans all-round.
Here in Altea, there is a closed mindedness on the part of the Alteanos that all but shuts out anybody from elsewhere. Nevermind that they resolutely speak Valenciano when even the most switched-on expat struggles with Castellano (I’ve never seen a Valenciano course on offer in a London college…let me know if you ever come across one). But I digress. More than anything, it’s the fact that nearly three years after moving here, I know exactly ONE Alteano who’s family is also from here. By know I mean, am almost friends with. Almost.
The vast majority of my friends are Argentinians: Jorge, Vicky, Maria-Delia, Nacho, David, Flor, Nelly, Daniel, Atilio, Fabiola, Sophia, Cristian….the list goes on. It got me thinking: are Argentinians the Australians of Spain?
15, 15, 15 minutes to Pego
April 4, 2008 at 8:44 am (costa blanca, expats, humour, spain)
Tags: costa blanca, humor, Pego, spain
…I wanna be sedated. I was cackling loudly last night at the latest edition of the terribly wonderful Female Focus magazine. Go on, have a look at the website. It gives you nice idea of just how incredibly ugly this magazine is. Following in the tradition of practically all the English press on the Costa Blanca, they have decided to make their publication practically unreadable by filling it with multicoloured ads, the liberal use of tiny italic fonts in their ‘articles’ and the discontinuous columns that have the reader jumping from corner to corner to page in an attempt to make sense of the story. Now, I understand that they generate their revenue from ads, but for heaven’s sake, get a DTP operator who knows anything about design!
So, among the stellar ads in the back of the FF (after having flipped through the 100 pages in about 2 minutes desperatly wondering where the articles were) I found this one: “Toaster, good condition, 5 euros, Els Poblets” WTF? You’re putting an ad in to sell your toaster for a fiver and the editor accepted it?? Continuing on, we come to: “Sandpit, plastic green frog sandpit, with lid, can be used with sand or water, 25 euros, Javea.” Maybe it was my extreme fatigue yesterday evening but I was ROTFL at that one. Can you imagine yourself ringing up? “Er, hello, yeah I wondered if the sandpit was still available?” People! Get with the charity shop or freecycle groove!
So, at last we come to the property ads, all those poor people who’ve invested their life savings in a place in the sun only to see the property market fall down go boom in the past year. Yes, I have sympathy, but with vacancy rates on new properties still running at 10% (and some buildings round here 90% vacant), you do wonder if the buyers had given any thought to their little investment. Going further and further inland, (ie away from what little entertainment and culture there is on the CB, namely the beach and the bars next to it), you struggle with what to write in your small ad. So, here we have “Benitaya, 129,000 Euros…just a 15-minute drive to Pego…” What? You’re trying to sell your property with the attractive tag that’s it’s only a 15-minute drive to Pego? Pego is a butt-ugly backend of a pueblo, super Franco-esque cement ‘architecture’, some lovely paint and agrochemical factories on the way into town, dusty, not in the mountains nor by the sea. Google it and you won’t even find an image of the center or town because there’s no reason to take a photo of this hole, let alone post in on the Interweb. My God! I’m going to ring right now! Only a 15-minute drive to Pego….made me think of the Ramones “15-15-15 minutes to Pego / I wanna be sedated / Nothing to do nowhere to go /I wanna be sedated…”
