travelling without moving

"no sos mi novia," dijo el cynical plasticman, "¡sos la abominable mujer de las nieves!. ¡andá a depilarte!"

2006-05-26T18:50:00.000Z

In the end, nothing really came of my concerns about a loss of classes. The boss's cousin is receiving a single, paltry class twice a week and the other new recruit, a taciturn, rotund Australian with a damaged face and hostile manner, is receiving a decent enough number for the moment. I've been sick with the flu and this week has been pretty tough. It's difficult to remain motivated when all you want to do is chuck in the whiteboard duster, then curl up & die...

I finally had the opportunity to check my bank account and, after months of trepidation, I'm pleased to say that I have exactly one point seven two pounds sterling in England. Which is better than having an overdraft, I can tell you. Due to the fact that - each month end for the last four - I've not really had the cash to feed myself, the thought of a possible mounting overdraft elsewhere had been giving my ulcers ulcers.

Talking about money always makes me feel a little morose, so it segues naturally & sadly into the next topic. One of A's friends died yesterday in a car accident. It's a fairly common occurrence in this country. She was very upset and had to go spend time at the velorio - fortunately, she didn't obligate me to go with her. Tears and dead bodies rank highly on my "I scream" flavour combinations list...

On the topic of road safety, I'll say it again: the driving here is absolutely effing appalling. Buses with plate-glass windows driving down the wrong side of the road, motobikers texting as they go, babies seated on the parents' laps as they drive. And something like 50% of the cars in this country were nicked from other countries. The government's trying legalise all the existing stolen cars, but, despite the possibility of having one's car seized by the police, no-one really seems to give a shit. Christ, my girlfriend's car is stolen - it was nicked from Brazil years ago...

A and I were drinking terere in the Plaza Uruguaya the other day when a drunk man approached and started talking to us. It turns out he used to be a policeman, but he lost his job because he discovered that a high-ranking officer was stealing cars and, when he refused to forget about the incident when asked to by the Comandante, he was fired.

It's not something that we hadn't heard before - anyone here will tell you that the Paraguayan police steal more cars than do the criminals - but when an ex-policeman tells you about it, it kinda makes you feel a little bit sad & dirty inside...

"callate!" grito el cynical plasticman, "o te doy el Dedo de Amor!"

2006-05-17T19:07:00.000Z

The weather's turned nippy and the pool at Olimpia's turned green. I'm still swimming there, despite the crippling pain caused by the frigid water and the unbearable itching afterwards from the slimy and somewhat smelly water. I don't have the huevitos to ask that the management have the pool cleaned because, firstly, it'll probably never happen and, secondly, if the pool is cleaned, it'll probably contain extremely high quantities of toxic and/or biological substances kindly provided by the underpaid and disgruntled grounds staff.

Things are fairly decent at the mo. I've been working like the only monkey at an organ-grinder's convention, but today I'm a bit worried about whether my boss is going to start messing around with my schedule all over again. I get paid per class and he's just hired two extra teachers (one of them being his cousin who hardly speaks English) and is looking for classes for them. This being Paraguay, there's an order of hierarchy in the distribution of the classes - first the boss gives himself some classes, then his best friend gets all of the well-paid off-site classes, then his second best friend gets all the classes he can handle. And then the remaining classes are dished out to the other teachers according to how much favor or disfavor they've curried with the boss of late. With the arrival of his cousin, I imagine getting classes is going to become even more difficult...

I was in his good books, recently, and working my arse off. But today's been a bit quiet and I'm a little put out. I'm sick of having money problems. I would sell my body, but I'm currently using it.

You can take your nepotism and stick it is your ear.

"tengo la abilidad de hablar gringo," dijo el cynical plasticman, "y este tipo dice que chupas Lo Grande, vos."

2006-04-29T16:39:00.000Z

This is going to be short and sweet, as the missus is waiting en casa and we just had a tiffito, so best I get back sharpish to make things good. Living with a latina is fantastic, but pretty emotionally draining - you gotta get used to every extreme of emotion each day, every day... She drives me crazy, makes me jealous and insanely insecure, and then she makes me unbelievably happy. It's a montaña rusa and it makes me feel a bit queasy occasionally, but ride's a blast.

Anyway, we went to Brazil the other day. Crossing the border was fucking traumatic, pardon my Frog, as I've overstayed my visa by about six months and I didn't really want to get denied re-entry on the return. But, fortunately, there's an open border between Paraguay and Brazil and, if you don't want to show your passport, you don't really have to... But I developed a whole new set of ulcers at the border when the Brazilian anti-narcotics police started pulling people off the bus to interrogate them.

Anyway, we travelled by bus and boat for 22 hours to a teeny little island off the coast of Brazil and we passed five days drinking batida do coco, eating feijão and having dirty sex in the pousada. The island was gorgeous - beaches, mountains, surf and millions and millions of kangrejos. Fantastic. The sense of happiness and relaxation that we both felt there was something that, for me at least, I haven't felt for almost a decade.

You wouldn't believe how depressed we were to get back to Asunción...

But we've been back a couple of weeks and we've re-accustomised ourselves to the gritty city-ness. We're completely broke, though, and I'm probably going to be walking the five km's to work by Wednesday. But I'll be paid on Thursday and then it'll be back to the luxuries of mandioca frita and public transport.

(Mandioca frita with mayonnaise is no subsitute for a white sand beach and palm trees, but it helps the depression a little...)

"i hear drums..." muttered the cynical plasticman, "either the natives are restless or my tinitus is having an identity crisis..."

2006-03-04T15:57:00.000Z

I met the girlfriend's dad the other day. Nice enough chap, looking a little stressed and tired as do most of the SME business owners that I've encountered in this economy. It's kinda hard to make ends meet in this country, which is why A & myself have been talking about emigrating, once married, to somewhere where we can afford to buy a new pair of shoes at the end of the month if we need to...

The options are a little limited. A wants to go to Ireland or England and I want to go to Spain or Australia. Frankly, the thought of returning to England makes me want to hurt myself (or, on days when I'm thinking a little more clearly, to hurt small animals, orphans and mimes). I did my time and I don't want to go back, except maybe to visit some of the inmates.

We're spending the weekend in a hotel in Ciudad del Este all over again, as A's producing a commercial that's being filmed at the Cataratas de Iguazu. She's been hired by a Uruguayan production company, so she's being paid bugger all for the priv, but at least it gets us out of Asunción for a bit. The humidity's absolutely killer at the mo. I spend my days feeling like one big, sweaty testicle in the environmental equivalent of an underwashed & overused jock strap.

Clearly, my sense of humor is running a little strange at the mo. Money's been a bit tight and the missus has been unduly cranky due to her work & a number of known known, known unknown and unknown unknown factors, to misquote Donald Rumsfeld. Fortunately, after the closure of the swimming pool near my house last week, I managed to locate a decent, Olympic-sized pool at the Olimpia football club grounds about three kms down the road. It's a medio-fastidio to get to, but it's cheap and outdoors. I'll freeze my nuts off during winter, but at least I'll be in a good mood when I'm speaking in falsetto.

I rocked up at the club yesterday, pouring with sweat in the blazing heat and found my way to the Secretaria. The pool's for members only, they said to me, and you need a certificado médico to join. A lesser man might have wilted against such intractable unsouciance, but I stood my ground. "There isn't any way," I asked them, doing my best Christopher Walken, "that I could use the pool today. I'm dying, you see. The heat is killing me. I've come a long way. They took... (and here I choked up a little, tears in my eyes)... they took my pool away from me. A beautiful pool, with no roof. Blue, like the sky. A beatiful pool."

Anyway, that was more or less what I said, though I think what really convinced them was the fact that I clearly wasn't going to leave until I had swum, so in the end they relented and let me use the pool on the condition that I then left them alone.

I swam and it felt good.

"holy shit, skippy," said the cynical bushranger, "they took yer leg..."

2006-02-02T16:38:00.000Z

The heat right now is getting kinda oppressive. I like it, but, at the same time, it saps your energy and makes it hard to think. Of course, what with the fact that I haven't had a good night's sleep since about... (hmm, let me think) ... 1996, it means that I'm even more retarded than ever.

But I had a moment of clarity, yesterday. I was thinking about how happy I am at the moment (even though I'm poorer & more sunburnt than I've ever been in my life), and it kinda struck me that I haven't been putting in sufficient effort to make sure that I remain happy. So, this morning, I sat down with a pen & paper and wrote myself a list of things that I need to get sorted to ensure that, down the road a ways, things don't get difficult. Mostly boring administrative stuff, like sorting out my student loan from university, but also slightly more profound themes, such as establishing my personal goals for the next couple of years.

The irony of the moment is that the idea of returning to England at some point no longer fills me with the desire to end my life under the wheels of the nearest colectivo. I want to see my friends. But I guess that, if I make to Barcelona in nine months' time, the possibility of seeing them all again will be that much closer. The thought of seeing them all again fills me with joy, as does the prospect of earning in a currency that will allow me to travel & eat chocolate without resorting to selling other people's body parts.

"dame lengua, nena," dijó el Cynical Plasticman, "y no me pongas el dedo ahí porque me duele un poco"

2006-01-21T18:04:00.000Z

It's been a long while since I last wrote in this here blog. I've been busy, but having a good time whilst I've been at it. I guess that I'm picking up writing again for lack of anything better to do. As I always say, the people who don't have blogs are the ones who are having the really interesting lives...

Still working illegally as an English teacher in the sweaty heat of Paraguay. My earnings, thanks to the festive period & holiday season, have dropped to about a quarter of what they were a few months ago and, I'm pleased to say, this month I shall earn roughly motherf**k all. Just about enough to pay the rent, but not enough to keep me in chocolate to the standard to which I've become accustomed.

I've said goodbye, thank God, praise the Lord & hale-fucking-lujah, to the adolescents whom I was teaching a while back. We had a heart-to-heart chat a few weeks before the end of term when they asked if I would be coming back this year.

"Possibly," I said, gazing at them with my usual expression of fear & loathing. (They really were a very difficult bunch of malcriados.) "Why do you ask?"

"Because every other teacher has hated us and left."

"Really?" I said, in a tone of genuine surprise. I had expected to hear: "Because every other teacher has been apprehended trying to bring high-powered automatic weapons into the class..."

At which point I suggested that they seriously consider whether they should continue studying English or whether they might be better off at a different school with a different style of teaching. Little bastards.

Life is pretty sweet, though. I'm getting cravings for material things, due to the fact that I can hardly afford to buy a new t-shirt at the mo with the cash I'm earning. To give an example, a copy of Dan Brown's El Codigo Da Vinci costs around G100.000 here. This month I'll earn enough to buy seven copies of his book... So let's just say that I'm kinda re-living the cash-strapped existence I had when I first moved to London. Of course, I'm greatly helped this time 'round by the fact that I have a great job, great girlfriend & I'm living in a place I like. In London, I had a series of jobs that I hated, a strong right arm & overwhelming depression caused by the general miserableness of the place.

Enough about that. Things are going well with the missus, I'm still going to the gym & attempting to maintain relatively firm breasts, & I'm swimming a great deal & turning an ever-more delightful shade of nut-brown under the baking Paraguayan sunshine. In the months since I last wrote in this blog, I've matured as a person, learned more about myself & the truths of human relations and had a lot of really dirty sex. I spent Christmas at home with my girlfriend, in the hammock on our balcony watching thousands of fireworks go off across the city. Incredible. I've never seen anything like it before and it certainly beats Guy Fawkes' Day on Primrose Hill hands down.

And New Year's Eve was passed in the Hotel del Paraguay, an overpriced but comfortable hotel just outside the centre of town. That was buena honda, I can tell you. We spent New Year's Eve eating ice cream, swimming & seeing exactly how dirty we could make the sheets on the bed. (Which was pretty dirty, I can tell you. We're probably going to go to hell.) The best New Year's I've ever had.

As for my plans for this year... I don't know. I ain't got money to do shit right now, but the missus has said that she'll pay for us to go spend a week on a beach somewhere. Which appeals very much. And we've tentatively decided to head off to Barcelona at the end of the year. It's a little bit earlier than I expected - my plan was to see more of South America before heading to Spain, but I figure that the money we'll be earning in Europe will afford us the luxury of returning to South America at some point... Anyway, we'll see. Life has a funny habit of changing one's plans, so talk to me in nine months' time and we'll see what's happening.

And we're talking tentatively about getting married. This is something potentially very frightening & traumatic for your average male, but fortunately sunshine, exercise & chocolate are keeping me on an even keel. Though the dairy does give me wicked mean farts, though...

Paul out.

"i'm terribly sorry, m'dear," drawled the cynical plasticman, "your car is a little, well, hecho puta."

2005-10-14T15:46:00.000Z

Things are going grand. Sleeping better, teaching hard, and living with the girlfriend's turning out to be quite good fun. Went to the Botanical Gardens the other day and, being a pasty rubio, I had to take my shirt off and keep it off until the smell of burnt bacon became all but overpowering... I'm still a little raw, but I'm glad to say that I'm finally getting some semblance of a suntan. Praise the Lord, as they say, and pass the Aloe Vera...

The weather's great - absolutely roasting. By 8am, the temperature's already hit 30 degrees and by lunchtime things are cooking nicely. Step outside and it's like being slapped in the face with a hot towel. I love it. Of course, the Paraguayans, who've had ample experience of this sort of weather during their lives, are less than enamoured with it. Perhaps my enthusiasm might wane as the temperature increases - after all, we've not had a day that's exceeded 37 degrees C yet, but it's going to be hitting about 44 in a couple of months' time.

For the moment, though, I am both pleased and without underwear.

"don't throw a monkey at me," the paraguayan said to the cynical plasticprof

2005-10-08T21:29:00.000Z

Things have been progressing in a more or less linear fashion for the last few weeks - work during the week, insomnia at night, then spend the weekend fighting with the missus. Fan-tastic. Things have improved a bit, though - I'm sleeping better, though things have taken a turn for the worse because the girlfriend's back in town for good now and she - how can I put this - breathes heavily when she's sleeping...

Earplugs have no effect. I've tried using a pillow to muffle the sound, but she stopped breathing for a bit so I had give that one up...

The teaching's going grand. Damn tiring, what, but good fun. I'm teaching a mixture of group and one-to-one sessions and, I have to say, I prefer the groups. Much more fun, especially when the students are doing role plays. Some of them come out with the most absurd bollocks, as evidenced by the title of this entry. The quote comes from the marketing manager of an international motorcycle retailer who's been learning English for three years. I asked him to make a sentence using the phrase "to jump out at" (as in, "the picture of the really fit blonde really jumped out at me from amidst the spread of utter swamp donkeys"), after having explained its meaning to him in a variety of ways on a number of occasions. After sitting there for a bit, nodding to himself, that's the sentence he came up with...

Don't throw a monkey at me.

Don't throw a monkey at me.

Don't. throw. a. monkey. at. me.

I laughed so hard that I cried. I couldn't even talk for about five minutes, which I guess isn't exactly what a good teacher is supposed to do. Fortunately, the student in question is blessed with absolutely rock-solid self-confidence that far outweighs his intellectual ability, so it was pretty much water off a duck's bunghole.

¡Que burro!

The teaching's also a great way to learn about Paraguay and the culture, though I'm getting sick of being asked, "Why Paraguay?" Your average Paraguayan will readily concede that Paraguay is indeed a beautiful country, with a friendly, laidback populace, but - at the same time - they can't really comprehend why anyone would want to come and stay here.

Life's settled into a bit of a groove for the mo, though - the partying's tapered off and I'm spending most of my time either in class, in a bus, in the gym or in bed. I got my first month's salary last Monday, enough to live reasonably comfortably for a month in Paraguay and enough to buy, roughly, a Zone 1 weekly travel card in London...

Which is a slight exaggeration, but hyperbole always spices things up now, doesn't it?

"if i told you once, i told you a thousand times," said the cynical plasticman wearily, "no mooning the bitches."

2005-09-21T16:03:00.000Z

Things my students have learned lately:

1. When something is bad, it "sucks ass".
2. When something is very bad, it "sucks major ass".
3. The phrase "f*** off" can be used by a teacher when the teacher is very tired & irritable and attempting to switch off a mobile phone that keeps on ringing.
4. The phrase "do they care?" is a rather effeminate way of saying "do they give a shit?".
5. The word "pot" is slang for marijuana.

Other things my students have learned lately:

1. The parallels between the Vietnam War and the second Gulf War and, leading on from that,
2. Why "Full Metal Jacket" and "Born on the Fourth of July" are good movies to watch.
3. The pros and cons of globalisation and, leading on from that,
4. Why selling out to The Man is a good thing if you want to crush The Little People.
5. What a Moebius strip is and, leading on from that,
6. Who M.C. Escher was and why mathematicians & people that smoke a lot of pot tend to like his pictures.

What I have learned from my students lately:

1. Treat 'em like they have a brain & they might just use it.

"i like my women," roared the cynical plasticman, "as butch as hell!"

2005-09-09T13:29:00.000Z

It's been a while since I last wrote anything in this here blog. It's been eventful since then, but more in a way that I'd rather soon forget. Despite having laryngitis & a cold the other day, I continued going to the gym and teaching all of my English classes. (I'm now at two different language schools, teaching a mixture of teenagers & adults, individuals & groups.) So I didn't really recover properly from being ill & so, when the weather turned nasty again last weekend, I got pretty ill. I've had pneumonia (or, as I used to call it when I was a kid, peunomia) for the last week & it's kinda kicked me in the nuts. And, because I'm kinda broke, I've had to teach sick. So if any of my dear readers feels like sending me a sympathetic email to cheer me up, I'd be happy to receive it.

Or better still, just send me a cheque. Postal address available on request...

One of my private students is a doctor who wants to go work in Newcastle (when he told me that, I laughed so hard I almost coughed up a lung. He's going to have a hell of a time trying understand the Geordie accent). So, after our class together, he gives me a check-up & writes out a prescription for me. I go get the pills. I take the pills. I start acting weird, like bug-eyed, talking reallyreallyfuckingfastand
Ican'tfuckingsleepand
jesuschristI'msofucking
wiredI.could.just.shit.
So, at our next class, I ask him about the side-effects & he's like, "Oh yeah, those pills are non-drowsy. They've got enough caffeine in them to neuter a well-endowed pomeranian at, say, twenty paces. I used to grind them up & put them in my coffee when I was studying at university."

Which is good to know.

So I'm clean now, though I'm still taking antibiotics. I could do with some sleep, though...

The classes aren't too bad. I've got a group of teenagers who're the hard nuts of the particular school they're at - they've been there for between four and ten years & they've not really progressed in that time. Some of them are smart, some of them are a bit thick and pretty much all of them don't want to be there. They're sweet enough kids, but hard going. It takes a lot to get them to participate, but I've found a teaching style that works - it's kind of drill instructor-meets-motivational speaker. Lots of shouting, but in a positive sort of way... My methods are unorthodox, but they seem to work. For example, yesterday, we spent a good half-hour discussing the topic "MTV is a cultural virus". And, after that - having read up to page 8 of Roald Dahl's "George's Marvellous Medicine" - discussing Paraguayan black magic & witch doctors. Apparently, there's a telephone hotline here that you can call if you need a curse putting on someone.

I say hex 'em 'til they glow. And then do it again 'til the fuckers turn blue & bits fall off...

the cynical plasticman winced slightly as his brain returned from its lunch break

2005-08-26T15:35:00.000Z

I reckon I've spit up about half a lung so far this week. The 'flu just doesn't seem to want to quit, but I reckon that I'm not helping things by continuing at full steam ahead instead of taking the chilly pilly. Yesterday, I was out & about getting my work documents sorted out in the morning, plus I went to the gym and then I taught in the afternoon. The class wasn't too bad, though I was a little nervous because the VD of the school sat in on my class. But she wasn't too hard on me at the end & that kinda cheered me up.

I reckon I accomplished something yesterday, at least - I taught the kids the expression "dig deep" and explained that I would probably deploy it at regular intervals during class. Don't want to come to class? Dig deep. Too much homework? Dig deep. Cat died? Dig deep & bury the damn thing before it starts smelling.

I gotta go.

"holy fucking shit, batman," shouted the cynical plasticman, "is nothing sacred?"

2005-08-24T01:26:00.000Z

It's been a turbulent few days, these last four or five. My better half, A, came back from Ciudad del Este on the weekend & so things were pretty intense. On Sunday, we went out to an abandoned hotel overlooking the Rio Paraguay & had a picnic on the disturbingly (but only mildly so) well-kempt grounds. The conversation got a little deep, talking about feelings & shit like that, & so I got a bit het-up. I've tried to cultivate in myself a quasi-spiritual degree of emotional repression over the last few years and, as a result, anything that involves thinking about how I'm feeling, or - even worse - how I'm making other people feel, is pretty much guaranteed to make me flip out a little.

We'd kinda worked things through by the evening, though I was still feeling like I'd been ass-raped by a well-endowed & highly sexed... well, ass-rapist. A, Ozzie Dave & I went to an performance art piece being put on by some of A's friends. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I guess that what I had in mind was some of the amateur dramatic society plays that I used to go see when I was growing up in Zimbabwe. Good fun, but not exactly slick & professional. In the event, the performance was absolutely grand - it was put on in a small, bare warehouse, with the audience sharing the floor with the artists. It was all about the emotional & sensory impact - a thumping soundtrack, flashing lights & strobes, players running to & fro around, among & over the crowd. The performers all had harnesses & a lot of the piece involved them being suspended from ropes over the crowd. Any description of the work couldn't fully do it justice, but it was damn good. The part that stands out best in my mind is the image of two actors suspended from ropes running towards each other on a whitewashed brick wall, perpendicular to the crowd.

Like I said, any description wouldn't really do it justice...

By the time yesterday evening rolled around, the exertions of the weekend & previous nights out had taken their toll, & I'd lost my voice. This didn't deter the Vice-Directoress of the language school that I'm teaching at - I went there to observe a class & ended up spending three hours talking about the class & students (the latter being described by the VD as "difficult") that I was to teach the next day. "Don't worry about your voice," she said to me, "Just take some anti-inflammatories & I'm sure you'll be fine..."

(They're pretty desperate for teachers is what you should be reading between the lines.)

So this morning, I can't even talk. I feel shit, I go out, buy some medicine, go back home, dose myself & pass out. I awake to the sound of loud hissing. "Wha'fuck?" I think to myself, "Where the hell's that coming from?" So I drag my sorry ass out of bed & stagger into the flooded hallway, peering into the bathroom to discover that the inflow pipe into the toilet cistern has decided to rupture & spray water - at high pressure - absolutely fucking everywhere.

I'll tell you what, I felt pretty miserable then. I staggered out onto steamy, post-storm Asunción streets to find a ferretería open during siesta time - that's what you'd call the quintessential tall order in this town. My head was addled & fried, my Spanish gone, but I managed to find a place & get all the necessary bits & bobs to fix the loo & dry out the flat. When I got back & surveyed the damage, I felt something crumple inside - "Why me?" a little voice cried, "I can't take this bollocks..."

To which the slightly more assertive part of me said, "Rubbish. You've got the sniffles, a sore throat & a damp hallway. Dig deep."

But I called the language school & told them, in a firm whisper, that I'd not be coming in today. And then I called A to ask her about plumbers, as it turned out that I didn't have the right tools to fix the damn toilet. So she kicked my ass & told me to stop being a woman & to go to the language school. And she gave me the name of the building supe &, after he came up, we fixed the loo together.

So I went to the school, swaying, stumbling & making little apathetic mewling noises to myself. The time of the class came & there was no substitute teacher there & so... I ended up teaching the class. Utterly ridiculous, frankly, given that I couldn't speak above a whisper & it was my first day with that class. But the VD figured that we could just give the kids a test & so I had an easy time of things, though I felt like curling into a foetal position at odd moments during the class. Things went well. The kids are okay - a bit bored, a bit sarky & a bit too intelligent for the level that they're at, but otherwise they're not the demons that the VD made them out to be. Saying that, it's early doors. We'll see.

I feel pretty good now. Emotionally, that is ("What? What?" I hear you cry, "Did he say 'emotionally'? Is the man... Oh. Wait. He actually is in fact ill, isn't he..."). I'm glad that A gave me a kick in the pants to get me, well, kick-started, because otherwise I'd have spent the day mooching 'round the flat feeling pathetic & effete. Not very good for my self-esteem or my credibility at the League of Highly Unpathetic & Totally Effective Hombres...

'Nuff said. Paul out.

"the purpose of history," said the cynical plasticman, "is to show us that we keep on making the same bloody mistakes."

2005-08-19T16:08:00.000Z

(Apologies to A for this one - it's cut & pasted from an email I sent her the other day. This is the story of my decision to go to Spain, which subsequently led me to come to South America to improve my Spanish...)

A few months before I left England, I caught the train north one day and walked a twenty kilometre section of Hadrian's Wall, the English equivalent of the Great Wall of China. Having said that it's the English equivalent of the Great Wall of China, though, I should hasten to add that it's equivalent in the same sort of way that a Mini is the English version of a Hummer... So you need to think of the Great Wall of China and then shrink it down. A lot.

I walked along this windswept wall, high on the cliffs overlooking the rolling, treeless Northumberland plains, thinking about my future and where I would be in several months' time. At that point, I hadn't yet decided that I would be going to South America. To be frank, the only thing that I was concerned with then was writing up my dissertation, which I'd been procrastinating about for months. Hence the reason why I was in the arse end of nowhere on a Thursday afternoon - given the choice between either sitting in front of a hot computer writing about why blind people find reading web pages difficult or going for a bracing walk amidst beautiful countryside, I choose the latter any day of the week...

So I walked. And walked. For hours. Thinking. Clambering up the steep slopes and down the near-vertical troughs. Sloshing through the mud at the bottom of each saddle and losing all sensation in my face as the wind hit me as I crested the brow of each hill. My head was full of uncertainty. And then it hit me. Epiphany. I would go to Spain. And if I liked it, I'd go and live there.

This thought, this realisation - this decision - made me feel very cheerful. I smiled to myself as I struggled against the biting, chill winds of England's North. I may - I dare say - even have whistled a little to myself, though the wind did its best to blow the tune back where it came from. A feeling of peacefulness, of certainty, descended on me and, for the first time in a long, long while, my brow cleared and I felt as if a great weight had been taken from my shoulders. I
felt like I had some kind of plan. A purpose, where previously there had only been swirling doubt...

I was so cheered by this newfound sense of calm that I tried calling my friend, Doddsy, from clifftops high above a rippled lake. Of course, being in the middle of nowhere with nary a mobile phone mast in sight meant that I could not reach my friend. So, by way of celebration, I sat on the cliff edge and ate some oranges, bunging the peel onto the heads of the unsuspecting ducks swimming peacefully hundreds of feet below. Then I stood up, stretched, and took a pee off the edge of the cliff.

And then I went home.

"is a bear catholic?" asked the cynical plasticman, "does the pope shit in the woods?"

2005-08-18T14:55:00.000Z

I spent the weekend in Ciudad del Este with the missus, camped out in a pretty darn swank hotel overlooking the Rio Paraná. She's going to be living in the hotel for the next three months or so and, maybe, I'll be joining her in a month or so. If I get the job (that I was interviewed for last Friday), we'll be living together at the hotel. Which'll be nice, but being stuck in a hotel in the middle of a heavily fortified country club ten kilometres outside of town without a car isn't necessarily a great thing. The grounds of the country club are absolutely massive and they include a suburb that looks and feels like an expensive & pretty gauche Florida retirement village. I guess it's where all the drug dealers live.

I met a Ukrainian-Lebanese Brazillian the other day, this gay guy that Australian Dave is renting a room from. We chatted about Ciudad del Este and it turned out that he lived there for a bit. "Yeah," he said, "It's really cosmopolitan, more so than Asunción. And it's got quite a big Arab community."

"Oh yeah?" I say.

"Yeah," he says, "I had a number of Muslim friends when I lived there. They were very conservative and didn't really mingle with non-Muslims, but they were always friendly to me."

"Oh okay," I say, not really interested.

"And when I left Ciudad del Este, they all got arrested because it turns out that they were all terrorists..."

I met a Mexican guy on the weekend who fed me a line that the Americans are increasing their troop presence in Paraguay because they're thinking about invading Brazil. I kinda took that one with a pinch of salt, but I subsequently had a chat with some people about political relations between Paraguay, its neighbours & the US. It seems that Paraguay has massive underground reservoirs of water that, in a few decades time, will be a pretty significant strategic resource in the region. So everyone wants to be nice to Paraguay, but its South American neighbours aren't happy with the fact that it's chummy with the US, and the US isn't happy with the fact that Paraguay's chummy with Venezuela and Cuba. So Paraguay kinda maintains some kind of power over the other countries by playing them off against each other.

It's all very devious and probably far less involved than all that. My blood sugar's fucked from eating too many bloody papayas. Paul out.

"any friend of batman," said the cynical plasticman to the nun, "is a friend of mine..."

2005-08-13T01:10:00.000Z

I had a job interview - the details of which shall be forthcoming in later entries - just over an hour ago. I made the mistake, though, of drinking about three litres of coffee beforehand because I've had a long day & my Spanish gets pretty shit when I'm tired. Right now, I'm so wired I could just about spontaneously combust where I stand. And that's after downing three beers in a row. Christ, I reckon I was freaking out the clientele in the Lido Bar (a diner that's been around forever & which is pretty much a landmark of Asunción). Whilst I was there, I wrote a poem and the only reason I'm publishing it here is because, although I'm totally fucking wired, I'm also kinda pissed...

Looking like a crazy person in the Lido Bar

Drumming fingers
Never blinking
Making the waitresses
nervous

It's okay

'Coz
I

tip

big

I doubt that I'm going to sleep tonight, which is a bit of a shame, coz it's going to be a long day tomorrow and I'd rather not look & feel like shit when I see my girl.

Oh well...

"never mind your f***ing legs," muttered the cynical plasticman to the wounded man, "i can't feel my head..."

2005-08-12T16:57:00.000Z

Mi novia, A, is in Ciudad del Este and I've been left mooching around her flat like a lost fart in a bottom factory. I've been keeping myself occupied by feeling stressed about my work documents, which are going to blow a hole in my budget roughly the size of, say, Brazil, and the work situation. The latter seems to have rectified itself - I should start teaching English at a language school next week and, regarding the former, I should have a basic work visa (of a kind) in a couple of weeks. Which is a good thing, because I'm getting bored of spending my days pissing around sorting out documents and going to the gym. Whilst my breasts are becoming quite firm and well-rounded, I'm not exactly achieving the full spectrum of Maslow's hierarchy of needs here...

I was at the Britannia the other night with Raphael, a Brazilian guy who's working for some branch of the UN here in Paraguay, and Australian Dave. Dave disappeared at some point in the evening & then a girl came up to me and asked if she could have his telephone number. I was like, "So you fancy David?" and she's like, "Oh no, it's not for me, it's for my friend, Ana, over there". So I'm like, "Cool" and because Dave doesn't have a mobile, she writes Ana's name and number on a piece of paper and I say that I'll give it to him. Then we chat for a bit & it's just inane chatter & finally I'm like, "Anyway, it's been nice talking to you. What's your name, by the way?" and she's like, "Ana..."

(Apologies to A for that one, as I just cut & pasted it out of an email I sent her yesterday.)

After the bar had closed, I met up with Dave and gave him the girl's telephone number. He was with a couple of other ladies. One of them asked me, "¿De donde sois?" (Where you from?)

So, I say, "Zimbabwe. El solo rubio del pais..." (Zimbabwe. The only white guy in the country...)

And they laugh and then the girl's like, "Zimbabwe... Zimbabwe... ¡O si! ¡Lo conozco! ¡Donde hacen el Discovery Channel!" (You can probably guess that one...)

Hmmm. Given how Americanised the culture is here, I guess that it was only inevitable that someone would come out with something like that sooner or later.

Anyway, I'm off to Ciudad del Este tomorrow to have quality time with the lady. Which is a good thing, coz I'm starting to get 'roid rage.

Paul out.

"boludo..." dice el cynical plasticstoner, "¿donde es mi carro?"

2005-08-09T00:07:00.000Z

So, I started my driving lessons today and the first thing that the driving instructor did was try to sell me a driving license. It was about as un-instructive a lesson as you could get - I think we spent most of the time talking about women. Every now and then, the instructor would tell me, in a more or less even tone of voice, to change gear or to remember to stay on the right hand-side of the road. Occasionally, he got a little excited, like when I hit that pedestrian, but otherwise he was a pretty chilled out kinda guy...

I'm going out into the avenidas tomorrow. Usually, having made such a statement, I'd attempt to illustrate it by means of some kind of analogy, probably one that humourously juxtaposes the image of some small, fragile, mildly retarded thing with that of other, large & insane things as the former attempts to negotiate the territory of the latter. However, I'm feeling a little slow upstairs today & I just ate a hotdog that's trying it's very best to get back out again, so that sort of malarkey's going to have to happen some other time.

It was my 26th birthday last Friday & I got well & truly sozzled in the company of fine friends. We ended up at the Yacht y Golf Club del Asunción, dancing to cheesy techno until about 3 or 4am. Australian Dave ended up going off in the wee hours with a couple of chochis. (That's Castillian for "slappers", for the unenlightened.) Poor bastard'll never get rid of 'em - when they looked at him, you could just see the words "Meal" and "Ticket" light up in Spanish behind their eyes...

When we went into the club, I started chatting to one of the bouncers about his tattoos & he went off and got me the card of the guy that inked his sleeves. When I told him that I wanted to get the words "Tu Nombre" tattooed on my butt, he failed to see the joke. Frankly, the thought of walking up to someone and saying "¡Mira, boludo, tengo 'Tu Nombre' en mi culo!" just totally fucking cracks me up. I mean, it's hilarious in English. I guess it just kinda loses something in the translation...

God, I'm so fuckin' immature.

"you know," said the cynical plasticman, "you speak english pretty good for an english person."

2005-08-03T00:43:00.000Z

They say that, in poker, if you don't know who the sucker is at the table, you're it. Fortunately, should you try to obtain work documents here in Paraguay, you'll be well aware from the start that you're being taken for a dance. I had a meeting with a lawyer today about getting my work documents here and she didn't paint a pretty picture. The government here wants everything in duplicate, translated, notarised, authorised, lost, found, sent to Somalia and buried in peat for thirty years before it'll even consider looking at your work application. It's a damn sight cheaper & easier to get a work visa for somewhere like Australia, that's for sure, and the pay's better there, too.

Anyway, enough with the bitching. I'm just cranky because I've been drinking too much coke and the acid & caffeine are making me cranky. The last week or so, I've been busy during the day sorting out work and also looking for cheaper places to stay, and in the evening I've been with A. There is a lot of talk of potential jobs in the pipeline for me - English teacher, private tutor and something else which I can't really talk about, but which involved writing a CV that drew inspiration less from my university Human Resource Development lectures and more from Mrs. Wilson's creative writing classes in Grade 5. If I get away with the whoppers I told in that one, I'll probably have used up the last of my nine lives... Anyway, we'll see what happens. At the mo, I'm kinda in limbo.

So, I was up last night until about 3 in the morning with A, translating my resumé into Spanish. At the end, I felt a surge of pride - I've never translated my CV before and it looked pretty good. Even if I do say so myself. I get the feeling that A's got a better command of Spanish than I do of English - I mean, she like reads books and shit, and like the really boring ones, too. She was patient enough to put up with my neurotic querying of her every suggestion and I managed to get through three hours of being told without getting into a huff and breaking something.

The problem I'm finding at the moment, though, is that I'm getting totally accustomed to life in this city, to the extent that it's difficult to maintain a really fresh European perspective on things. I catch the bus now and I'm absolutely fine with the fact that the bus is still moving when I hop on and hop off, that the bus drivers are amongst the most anti-social bastards on the planet and that a constant stream of vendors will be passing through the bus during the journey, flogging everything from chewing gum to religious devotional cards. The hazards of walking on pavements that were designed to weed out the slow, the weak and the stupid are something that I barely even register now - casually sidestepping enormous potholes, ducking to avoid being scalped by rusting street signs and veering around jagged spikes protruding from unfinished buildings are just some of the things that make my morning breakfast run just a bit more erratic than in England, but which I'm pretty much used to now.

My morning breakfast run is worth mentioning at this point. I get up at around 8 or 9 in the morning, either at the pensión or at A's place, have a cup of coffee and then head out in search of chipas, which I get from any one of countless vendors lining Estigarribia off the east end of Plaza de los Heroes. After that, I head down to Plaza de la Independencia, which overlooks the river, and sit in the sunshine munching on my chipas whilst I plan my day and read the paper. The plaza itself isn't much to look at, but the view of the river is gorgeous - a massive, twisting slick stretching out wide across the plains below the city, sparsely littered with the boats of both the poor and the rich. With the sun blazing down, glinting off the water, and the Chaco hazy in the distance... Fantastic.

In front of the plaza are some of the city's slums, which are probably going to get bulldozed at some point in the next couple of years. It's a collection of shanty houses that are made of any and all materials, with a strong smell of humanity - dirt, shit & smoke - drifting off it when the wind changes direction. Constantly circling above the slums are octagonal kites flown by the children, made out of sticks and plastic sheets, generally being flown until they join the ranks of other, dear departed kites that drifted too close to the telephone lines. The kids are all pretty undernourished, probably due to poverty and also probably due to deficiencies in the typical Paraguayan diet, which is kinda scanty on the vegetable side of things.

Regarding the papers and the news here, I have to say that I'm feeling pretty cut off from the developed world. International news doesn't really get too much exposure in the periodicals here and the local news is more concerned with domestic affairs & what those bastards in Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil have been up to. (There's not much love lost between Paraguay and its neighbours, as they all nicked land from it a hundred or so years ago in the War of the Triple Alliance, and they still have their beady eyes on its river.) There are a few of highbrow papers, which are politics-heavy, and the local equivalent of the tabloids are less smutty than in England, but with much more gore. Last week, the front page of one of the tabloids was a picture of a guy who had shot himself in the head with a shotgun and, inside the papers, it's pretty much the same stuff - people who got stabbed, people who got shot, people who got into fights. Got a picture? Bosh. Stick it in. The more blood, the better.

The TV news is sorta the same, but I'm generalising here because I've not watched enough of it to distinguish between the editorial styles of the various channels. One thing that can be said, though, is the criminal suspects are given bugger all privacy, regardless of age - kids that got caught nicking car stereos can and will enjoy the privilege of having the Paraguayan media descend on them in the police station as they try to hide their faces under their jackets. And the media coverage doesn't skimp on the gore, either - a family got slaughtered in their house in a suburb of Asunción the other day and the country, as it tucked into the Paraguayan equivalent of cornflakes in the morning, was treated to images of the pools of blood and sheet-covered corpses... No wonder they're all fucking paranoid - the family that runs the pensión where I'm staying hardly ever goes out and they're totally convinced that any time that they do step outside their fortified compound, every malvado in Asunción is going to descend on them.

Before moving off the topic of claret & rubble, I should just like to mention that Paraguay is one of the world's largest producers of marijuana (if not the largest), and so I do find it kinda amusing that the main newspaper here is called La Crónica...

And I seem to have reached the point where I'm sick of writing.

Paul out.

"this shower is great!" shouted the cynical plasticman, moments before the hot water ran out

2005-07-27T15:44:00.000Z

So I got myself a woman and I maybe got myself a job. I had a fantastic weekend, out partying and meeting people. The lady I'm presently seeing is a feisty little brunette, A, who's lived all over and, unfortunately, speaks excellent English. I woke up this morning in her flat overlooking the city, sunshine blazing over the ramshackle rooftops and green trees, and I felt really, really good. I still feel pretty darn good, but I'm kinda wondering whether the old lady that runs the pensión that I'm staying at is aware that I spent the night out at A's. The old lady's son is one of the world's leading theological academics and a real mover & shaker, if that expression can be used, at the Vatican. So I reckon that if the old lady gets the impression that I'm living in sin, I'll be turfed out on my ear pretty sharpish...

I've got so much stuff to write about that it's kinda difficult to know where to start. But I should say that, fingers crossed, I should maybe have a job in a couple of weeks, teaching business English at one of the local language schools. Mi nena, A, lined up a couple of interviews for me for yesterday and they went pretty well. Getting a job out here is all about knowing the right people and, fortunately for me, she knows pretty much everyone. That got my foot in the door and it turns out that my CV's pretty darn good, too, so - unless my landlady sics her god on me for being evil - I'll be set-up in a couple of weeks' time.

I fucking dig this city and I seriously dig A, so I reckon, if I get a job, I'm going to be here a while. A year, at least. I met a guy last night in the Brittania who came here for six months and never left. That was thirty-six years ago...

So apart from job-hunting, I'm also taking driving theory lessons at El Touring y Automovíl Club Paraguayo, which basically involve me sitting in a classroom with about forty other people, staring blankly at a kindly abuela as she rattles off bullet-fast Paraguayan Spanish about the rules of the road. It's not just a passive experience, though - the first day of lessons, everyone in class was called up to explain particular road signs and I was no exception. I gotta say, I was pretty pleased with my performance, though I'm sure that hand gestures and sound effects won't be any use to me when I get to the final exam...

I'm ditching the theory lesson today to go to sit in on a couple of classes at one of the language institutes that might be interested in hiring me. I gotta say, I'm not too keen on working there, but the experience will stand me in good stead for the job that I really want, which is working for the American Cultural Centre. It's a non-profit organisation that also happens to be one of the largest educational institutions in the country - some 8,000 students. That's pretty fucking big and, 'coz it's non-profit, I won't just be teaching pampered rich kids, thank god. It'll be a chance to meet real people.

On the topic of language, I'm pleased to say that I had my first dream in Spanish the other day, in which I explained the ingredients of English hamburgers to a gay guy, Osualdo, who I met on Saturday. I didn't realise that he was gay at first, but we started dancing to réeton - that Puerto Rican music that I talked about in my last entry - whilst at some bar and it became pretty apparent that he kinda swung the other way. Osualdo dropped me off at 6am on Sunday morning, gave me a big, sloppy kiss on the lips and asked if I wanted him to come back to my room. Hmmm. Anyway, I just said thanks, but no thanks and staggered off to mi habitación alone. I saw him again on Sunday evening and, by that time, I'd already hooked up with A - he looked a bit forlorn before wandering off to play darts at the other end of the bar. I kinda feel bad about that.

The last place I went to on Saturday night was an after-hours joint in the west of the city centre, where I met a bunch of friendly, slightly weird types, played pool with Osualdo and tried to learn to dance to réeton with a dance instructor who was a friend of Osualdo's. The dancing generally involves getting right up close to your partner and it's all in the hips. It gets you hornier 'n' hell, I tell you. But I was a chaste lad that evening, partly because I met A then and we'd organised to go out for coffee the following day and partly because the numerous other women that were interested in me were all a bit scary. Being a rubio who speaks Spanish here will get you laid every day of the year, but I suspect that a fair proportion of that number would be gold-diggers who figure a rubio is a ticket to a better life.

The guys I was with at the after-hours place (special mention going to Christian, a wide-eyed, intense type who knew everything about the geography of Africa and kept on telling me the capitals of all the different countries in earnest, broken English) invited me to go to a brothel afterwards & to pay for me - "putas muy lindas, muy limpias" - but I was dissuaded by the thought of AIDS and by the warnings of other people there. They said that brothels are pretty dangerous because the prostitutes will use any opportunity to rob you and the last thing you want to do is fall asleep after sex, as you'll find yourself naked, penniless and in the street when you wake up. Not exactly what I'd call great customer after-service...

Before I sign off, I feel that I should give mention to Andrew & Daire, two first-rate Irish chaps that I met on Saturday night who were just in South America for a couple of weeks. At the end of the weekend, they were well & truly converted to the joy of Paraguay - they're coming back, once they've learned Spanish and Daire has dyed his hair blonde, to get it on with the local girls. Spanish being spoken with an Irish accent is going to have the girls dropping their knickers fast enough to generate a sonic boom & potentially fatal friction burn...

To be sure.

Paul out.

"when in rome," said the cynical plasticman, "try to mate with as many romans as possible."

2005-07-23T14:41:00.000Z

So I went clubbing last night at one of the few good nightclubs in Asunción, la discoteca Coyote. It's now 9am the morning after and I've not yet slept, thanks to an espresso that I had last night before going out. (The old lady that runs the pensión that I'm staying at has got me drinking coffee in the mornings again, after an abstinence of something like four years.) Let's just say that I'm a tad sensitive to caffeine at the moment. So bear with me if this entry starts getting more and more incoherent as it progresses - if it tails off into a long string of letters, you'll know I've fallen asleep with my face on the keyboard.

The insomnia probably wasn't helped by the fact that I spent yesterday morning sharing a mate of tereré with two brothers that own a restaurant up the road from where I'm staying. Ruben and Mario are a couple of great guys who worked in restaurants in Buenos Aires for twelve years before coming to Asunción to set up their own shop. Their cooking rocks and I gotta say that they're good fun. The first time I went to the restaurant, I ended up chatting with the brothers for quite a few hours and I was introduced to their entire family, who had come up from the south of the country to visit the guys.

And when I got home, I discovered that I had a piece of spinach stuck just so to my front teeth...

Anyway, if you're ever in Asunción, check out Ruben & Mario's place - Dos Hermanos (Two Brothers) at Yegros 320 c/ Mariscal Estigarribia. The food's priced right and damn good, too.

(Tereré is iced yerba mate, the staple refreshment in this part of South America. Pretty much everyone drinks the stuff here. It's a mild stimulant, tastes a lot like Japanese green tea. People drink the stuff continuously throughout the day here, sipping it from a mate (being a mate cup) through a combination straw and strainer, topping up their mate with hot water from the thermos that all respectable yerba mate drinkers carry. The locals have an attachment to their mate and thermos that borders on surgical and, as a result, the majority of the population has learned to live life without the use of both hands.)

To get back to club Coyote, the place was recommended to me by a guy at the gym that I've joined to firm up my breasts. Coyote's not a bad club, though absolutely ram-packed. The entry fee was pretty high - the Paraguayan equivalent of forking out maybe 20 or 30 quid - but the upside of this is that there's as much (decent) free beer and scotch & coke as you care to drink once you're inside. The downside to clubbing in Asunción is that most bars and clubs are only licensed to 3am, so if you want to dance all night long, you need to go to a club on the outskirts of the city where the licensing laws are different.

The club itself was fairly unremarkable - slick presentation and pretty good music - but damn good fun. There are, I have to say, a lot of hot women in this town. I made friends with an New Yorker, Raphael, who's working for the Peace Corps. out here and he introduced me to all his Paraguayan buddies. Who then spent the evening pointing out all the girls who fancied me because I'm a rubio. I tried it on with a couple of them, but didn't get anywhere, so I did my best to represent the Zimbabwe massive by getting pissed and dancing like a - and you can kiss my culo blancissimo if this offends the PC contingent - fuckin' spaz on the podium overlooking the dance floor. I even did a little bump 'n' grind with una churra (hot chick) before the Puerto Rican dancehall music confounded me. I'll get used to it in a while, but, for the moment, I can't dance to it for shit...

I can't really put into words how packed that club was, but I had the unique experience of taking a pee in a urinal with a six-deep crowd of guys waiting their turn behind me. Whilst, I might add, I carried on a conversation with the guy directly behind me who wanted to practice his English. It was the sort of situation that I've avoided all my life and, in the event, it wasn't that bad.

I feel, somehow, more of a man for it.

So at 3, Raphael and I ended up being chauffeured around town for a while by a local guy, Tony, looking for food. We ended up eating a lomito each, being a bun with some kind of meat and an egg in it. Mmm good, but I guess that when you're as pissed as I was last night, anything with enough salt and cholesterol tastes great. Afterwards, on the way back into the centre of town, Tony and I started talking about me taking my driving license out here.

"Man, it's so fucking easy to pass your license here," says Tony (in Spanish).

"Oh yeah?" I say.

"Oh yeah, totally," says Tony, taking both hands off the wheel and turning around so that he could see me better...

But Raphael and I got back to our respective lodgings without incident, and I reckon Tony probably made it home okay, too. I'm supposed to go watch the semi-finals of the national basketball championships with Tony this evening and, after that, I'm supposed to meet Raphael at the Brittanica, a so-called British pub that bears about as much resemblance to an English local as a shaved pomeranian does to a... a...

Hmmm.

Guess I bit off more than I could chew there. I'm knackered and going home to sleep.

Paul out.

"my spider-sense is tingling," said the cynical arachnophobe, "there are spiders nearby..."

2005-07-20T23:47:00.000Z

Today I went to la Expo, the Paraguayan national trade fair. Damn good fun, just like the Harare trade fair back home, but possibly a bit slicker and maybe a bit smaller. Half the fair was commercial exhibition stands and halls, selling stuff like tractors, powertools, mobile phones and suchlike, and the other half was livestock. The livestock section was great - horses, cows & sheep, all casting an expert eye over the passing parade of humanflesh and (probably) thinking: "Bah".

I said hello to a bunch of horses - they ignored me of course, though I'm pretty sure one of them snickered quietly as I turned away - and I petted a sheep. I got bitten on the arm by a cheeky Arab stallion when I was scratching its neck, though it was just a friendly nip. The headbutt that followed wasn't so friendly, but I guess you have to teach those damn animals some way or other...

Just kidding there, before any tree-hugging bunny-lovers write to me complaining of animal cruelty. All I did was call Pedro a cheeky c**t and continued scratching his neck. But speaking of bunny lovers, though, the rabbit hall was where there were bunnies galore - big bunnies, small bunnies, fluffy bunnies, brown bunnies. (No Playboy bunnies, though. Pity.) Off to one side of the hall, you could buy bunny skins, stiff boards of fur complete with four splayed legs, looking for all the world like yesterday's roadkill. I laughed at those fools gullible enough to fork out hard cash for those skins - "Why, you can pick one of those up on any major highway for free," I said to myself, with a supercilious smirk, "so long as you´ve got a shovel and a strong constitution..."

Grim humour - time to move on.

I managed to talk my way into a Paraguayan cattle auction which I thought was brilliant. It was taking place in what looked like a clubhouse - in fact, I think it was a club house - with a small pen centred on the far side of the central hall. There were dining tables arranged around the pen and the farmers and their families, wearing their best stetsons, were sat eating that most sophisticated of hors d'oeuvres, manioc on a stick, and perusing the auction catalogue. There were two doors to the pen, one at each end, and each lot - Brahmn cows when I was there - was ushered into the pen by a vaquero, who would then proceed to chase the animal around the pen whilst the auction to take place, so as to give everyone a good view of the lot & an idea of its running ability. (I think. Not sure about that last.) The auctioneer, perched above the pen, spouted rapidfire Spanish as the millions rolled in. (I say millions, but you gotta bear in mind that the exchange rate of pound sterling to guaraní is about 1:11,000, so it's not too hard to spend several million guaraní on a cow.) Anyway, I found it quite entertaining, as waiters in tuxedos swished around the hall, feeding and watering the herd, the auctioneer´s amplified voice boomed from the speakers and the vaquero hassled the current lot in the pen, his horse champing at the bit and foaming at the mouth from the excitement of it all. After each lot was sold, the vaquero would hustle the cow out of the other door and the next lot would come hurtling in.

I'll say one thing, those vaqueros can ride. I guess that my next goal, now that I know roughly how to drive one of those horsemobiles, is to learn how to drive it real good.

There were a fair number of Paraguayan Germans at the fair - I guess that a good proportion of the country's farming population is made up of them, possibly in the same way that Afrikaaners make up/used to make up a good proportion of South Africa's farming population. They have their own dialect of German which is pretty distinctive, but apparently they learn High German in school, so they wouldn't have any problems having a chinwag with one of the original teutons. I did smile slightly, though, when I thought of the conversation their ancestors must have had before coming to settle in Paraguay. Picture the scene: a chilly night in a small village outside of Düsseldorf in the late 19th century. Frau Hilda is busy making sausages and sauerkraut at the fireplace, wondering where Herr Fritz is and whether he's okay. The door bangs open and Herr Fritz enters, his face glowing from the exertion of his walk up the snowbound track to the house. He stamps the snow from his boots and takes off his scarf.

HERR FRITZ: Hilda, Hilda! I have wonderful news!

FRAU HILDA: Ja?

HERR FRITZ: Oh ja. You know how we've always said that we would like to move further south, where it's warmer?

Frau Hilda's face lights up.

FRAU HILDA: Oh ja! Ja! Further south!

HERR FRITZ: Well, mein liebling, I've arranged things so that you never have to worry about the cold ever again!

FRAU HILDA: Oh ja?

HERR FRITZ: Ja, mein liebling. We're moving to...

He pauses.

FRAU HILDA: Ja?

HERR FRITZ: To...

FRAU HILDA: Ja? Ja?

HERR FRITZ: To Paraguay!

How the scene plays out subsequently is something that I'll leave up to your imagination.

But, I gotta say, I reckon that I could probably settle here. It's so much like home that it just feels right. Anyway, we'll see what happens with respect to the job front. The people I've spoken to have said that someone with languages and a foreign education shouldn't have any problems getting a good job in Paraguay, because English isn't taught particularly well in schools and because the tertiary education system is somewhat lacking. But they also said that getting a job was largely about knowing the right people and not necessarily about having the right qualifications, which, frankly, is pretty much the case in most places.

Given that my list of contacts in this country could be written on the finger of one hand, I'm a bit deficient in that latter category. I guess I need to hang out with that Australian guy, Dave, a lot more. He's a networker par excellence - he already knows half the population of Asunción, across the entire spectrum of society. The guy's amazing.

And another amazing thing about him is his appetite. He eats more than anyone I have ever come across and he's still pretty skinny. For breakfast, he packs away two full-size baguettes and for dinner last night he ate a pizza designed for consumption by eight people. If he runs out of money here, it's going to be because of his astronomical food bill. He was cursing me yesterday for getting him hooked on chipas, a kind of large cheese bagel made from manioc flour that the locals eat for breakfast here. He eats six at a time, which is like eating a couple of loaves of bread at one go.

Personally, I reckon he's lactose intolerant. But he doesn't seem to have any problems apart from eating enormous amounts of food and he's probably the most switched on guy I've ever encountered (even if he does talk kinda slow). He's the sort of guy that, five minutes after arriving in a city, knows where you can buy a gun, cocaine & a hooker and is busy beating off prospective mates/friends/acquaintances with a stick. He is, I guess, The Man...

Talking of hookers, there's some darn pretty ones here, but there are some really surprising-looking ones, too. Old, fat, grandmotherly types who, personally, I'd be deeply ashamed of ever having any kind of lewd thought about. During the day, they sit on chairs at the northern end of Plaza Uruguaya in the centre of town and at night they can be found in small huddles on odd street corners. And some of them are pretty young, too - I was out trying to find a chipa at 8am on Sunday morning when a young girl wearing flip flops asked me if I wanted to fuck her. She couldn't have been more than thirteen. Anyway, I'm sure that you'll be pleased to know that I pretended not to understand and kept on walking.

Breakfast first, sex later.

Kidding...

Before I move off the topic of sex sharpish, I should say that the girls here have a thing for blue eyes which, apparently, I have. Which is funny, 'coz I always thought my eyes were kinda green, but just because I own them doesn't necessarily mean I know, now does it? Anyway, I was walking through the municipal market today after catching the colectivo (the bus) back from the Expo, looking for a black hoodie to wear at night to reduce my muggability, when a nice-looking girl told me that she liked my eyes. Clearly, I lived in England too fucking long, coz all I did was say, "Muchas gracias" and keep on walking. Well, walking as best I could, coz I was kicking myself pretty fucking hard at the time.

Before I go, I should just like to give a special mention to Felipe Del Puerto, a guava farmer that I met at the Expo. I stopped at his stall because I was trying to figure out what the fuck kinda fruit he was selling, before doing a kind of "that´s not... Oh my god" when I realised that the honeydew melon-sized green things on the table were guavas. Absolutely sodding massive. Anyway, the next thing I knew, he'd sat me down and was talking to me about the profit-making potential of these guavas (which taste great, I gotta say) and about whether or not I could grow them in Zimbabwe. I felt mildly embarrassed by the fact that he clearly thought I was some kind of landed gentry, but he seemed fairly relaxed when I explained that I lived in the suburbs in Zimbabwe and that all my farming relatives had had their farms expropriated by the government. Anyway, I ended up promising him that I'd email my relatives about the guavas (feel free to visit his website - www.superguayaba.com) and he invited me to come & spend a week on his farm with him and his family. Which I might do. The guy was pretty interesting - he'd travelled through all the countries in South America when he was 22, walking, cycling, busing, doing all manner of jobs for a few years before finishing the loop and ending up back in Paraguay. I'd love to really talk to him about that.

Anyway, we'll see. Talking to him did make me think that maybe I should head out once I've gotten my driving license.

(I should add that I have undertaken all the necessary formalities to go about obtaining an international driving permit here in Paraguay. It will entail both a multiple choice exam and a practical test, but, fingers crossed, I should have my driving licence in about three weeks' time. God knows what it's going to be like taking instructions from the examiner for the practical, though...)

Paul out.

"shit, skippy," said the cynical plasticbruce, "they took your leg."

2005-07-16T15:37:00.000Z

So, there's an Australian named Dave staying at my hotel. I bumped into him on the landing this morning and I gotta say that it's a bit of a relief to have someone to talk to. My head's been such a mess from the goddamed dengue fever that my Spanish has gone to shit, ruling out all possibility of a decent conversation with one of the locals. Dave's here for a couple of months learning to box and doing a lot of cocaine whilst his sister learns to teach tango in Buenos Aires. He's a good guy, total stoner. I've asked him to take me to his boxing gym at some point next week - maybe it's something I could get into whilst I'm here.

The other thing I've been trying to get information on is getting a driving licence here. I'll be buggered if I can find any information - the Paraguayan government website doesn't work terribly well and the people I've asked don't know too much about that sort of thing. It's just one of those things, I guess. Another thing I've noticed is that any directions given by a passerby will generally be accurate to a 10-block margin of error. The best bet is to ask about three passersby for directions to wherever you want to get to and then triangulate its likely location from their responses...

There are three cinemas in this city - one in the centre of town that's closed for improvements and two others in the eastern suburbs. I went out to Villa Morra yesterday in the hope of catching a flick, Villa Morra being a nice middle-class neighbourhood where there are three malls and two cinemas. I've yet to muster the patience to sit down and pore through the lengthy bus routes to determine which buses to catch to get around the city - there are only written routes, no visual maps, which makes things a bit complicated if you don't know the roads. So, after asking a number of people about catching the bus there and standing around on street corners for a while, I eventually got bored and walked until I got sick of that and caught a cab.

The cab driver wasn't too interested in talking to me, but his response, when I asked him what sort of people lived in Villa Morra, was fairly interesting. "Lawyers, politicians, that sort of person, " he said, disinterestedly.

"Politicians?" I said, "So are they paid quite well?"

"No," was the brief response, "but they have a lot of contacts in the drugs and arms trades."

The cinema turned out to be a waste of time - films come out pretty late over here, either because Paraguay's a bit of a backwater or because it takes time for sub-titled and dubbed English language movies to be released in foreign countries. I couldn't stomach the prospect of watching "Star Wars: La Venganza de Los Sith" or "Batman Comienza", so I headed back into town. I caught the right bus, but in the wrong direction, and end up about twelve kilometres outside of the city. Like I've said before, this place is basically Zimbabwe, but with indios and mestizos instead of blacks and whites. On my way back into town, I ended up in one of the nicer neighbourhoods which looked a lot like the suburbs back home - big houses with immaculate gardens surrounded by twelve-foot high walls topped with razor wire with a bored-looking rent-a-thug mooching around outside. Asuncion is definitely a gated community - the sort of place where you need to know people in order to get to know people. The Argentinians and Uruguayans that I met during my brief spell in each country were significantly friendlier and more understandable than the people that I've met here.

The Paraguayan accent is strange. Sybillants in the middle and at the end of words are dropped, so a word like "despues" comes out like "dehpweh", and there's a Pakistani-like twang in their pronunciation of words, particularly on the d's and the r's. It's bloody difficult to understand, that's for sure. I'll get used to it in a few weeks, once I'm able to think straight again.

The Australian guy, Dave, painted a real horror story picture of Asuncion for me when we chatted this morning - an incredibly high murder rate, a totally corrupt society, knives and guns everywhere. I'm a bit sceptical. Sure, there are a lot of unsavoury-looking characters out and about, but I went to a couple of bars the other night on my own and didn't feel unduly concerned when I headed back to the hotel afterwards. At this point in time, I'd say that I've lived or stayed in far more dangerous places, Jo'burg in South Africa being number one. Admittedly, I've not yet been out on the weekend here, so we'll see. After I've been mugged and my vital organs perforated and/or extracted for later re-sale, my tune may change...

For the moment, though, I'm finding things quite idyllic. My hotel room is right at the top of the building and I've got a massive balcony and a rooftop terrace to myself, from which I have a great view of the city. The houses are packed in pretty tight here - I reckon if you're pretty athletic and undaunted by the prospect of quadraplegia, you could probably cross a fair part of the centre of the city by jumping from rooftop to rooftop. But the great thing about the view across the city is that all the houses are different, instead of the acres of identical terraced housing that you find in British towns and cities. I've been going up onto the roof of the hotel to watch the sun go down the last couple of days. It's pretty spectacular. There's a fifty-foot high avocado tree in the garden next door that's currently laden with fruit the size of softballs and the equally large tree next to it is home to a small comunity of bats. All the trees and ramshackle rooftops in the warm, orange dusk make me feel... I just dig it.

What I don't dig, though, is the pollution. Clearly, when an Asuncionite hears the Spanish equivalent of the word "roadworthy", he reaches for his dictionary and then rips the relevant page out. The buses and cars belch fumes that leave a sooty film at the edges of one's nostrils after walking through town for a couple of hours. When the sun's beating down, it can get pretty unpleasant. I'm thinking about getting my driver's license here, but it may be more a case of "I'm thinking of buying a driver's license here" because I'm not so sure that I'm particularly keen on learning to drive in this city.

One thing I have learned, though, is the system of beeps that the drivers use as a necessary part of safe driving in the city. There's a short bip when one is coming up to an intersection to warn any cars or pedestrians there that you're approaching or to alert another driver that the lane that they're currently trying to drive in happens to full of your car at that particular moment. Then there's the double bip or an inarticulate yell to attract the attention of any reasonably attractive woman that you then happen to be passing. And, finally, there's the indispensable long bee-ee-eep to let other drivers know that the lights have changed and that they should hurry the fuck up or that the fact that their parallel parking is causing you to miss your luncheon appointment with Howard Marks and Pablo Escobar.

(Now with apologies to my friend, Doddsy, I'm going to duplicate part of an email I wrote to him the other day, 'coz I couldn't be arsed to write it all out again.)

The one thing I'll say is that I should have bought South America on a Shoestring to bring with me. It's impossible to buy travel guides outside of the major cities, though I have managed to get a hold of a government-sponsored guide to Paraguay that reads like something from Soviet-era Russia. Apparently out that there are tons of German immigrants in the country - they speak their own dialect of German here - so the guide is in English, German and Spanish. The guidebook isn't too bad if you stick to the Spanish part, but the English translation is a little... baroque. I quote:

"Here, personal liberty is still written with capital letters. This starts with the selection of a profession and finishes with the norms for construction, that simply do not exist. Even so, there is no chaos in the garden of the universe - only a major responsibility of each citizen. Only a few wander off the course, because the person counts the most - in this country so plethoric in nature. Friendship here recovers its value!"

It's just fucking surreal. The guidebook was published six years ago,but the guy that sold it to me assured me that nothing's changed here in the interim. Somehow, I'm prepared to believe him.

A historical tidbit that I gleaned from the guide that's worth mentioning is that, when the Spanish settlers arrived in the early 1500s, the indigenous Guarani population was suffering from a surfeit of women in its population to the extent that fathers were virtually flinging their daughters at the arriving sailors. Each of the 2500 settlers had between - get this - thirty to fifty wives and three hundred years later the population had swelled to some 1.3 million inhabitants. Most of which then died in the War of the Triple Alliance in 1864 - of the original 1.3 million, only 6,000 men and 220,000 women and children survived.

Guess that those guys then did a whole lot of shagging.

Cynical P. out.

"oh please," laughed the cynical plasticman, "you might as well try selling coke to colombia."

2005-07-12T17:59:00.000Z

Feeling pretty lousy, suspect dengue fever. Temperature, pounding headache, aching joints, sore eyes. Am going to a clinic later today to organise a blood test. I reckon I got it in Puerto Iguazu, either when I went to las cataratas (the waterfalls) or, more likely, when I went horseriding in the jungle the following day, where I got eaten alive by what felt like a large proportion of the insect population of northern Argentina. But it has come on a bit fast, so I reckon that it's just some kind of bug that I've picked up from getting a little to friendly with scummy traveller types.

I should just like to mention that I have learned to ride a horse and, in doing so, have accomplished one of the four goals that I set for myself before starting this journey, the other three being:
- learn Spanish
- learn to drive a car
- try to make it to New York

Puerto Iguazu was great. It's sub-tropical jungle and the town's really cool, surrounded by dense jungle on all sides. And when I say dense, I mean dense - an impenetrable wall of greenery swarming with snakes and other nasties that you can only get through with a portable napalm dispenser and family-size can of Agent Orange. The Iguazu Falls are pretty stunning - an unbelievable amount of water cascading into an enormous gash hacked into the landscape by the water. The river feeding the falls is absolutely effing enormous, at least a mile across and it gets even bigger (and nastier) when there are heavy rains.

The park itself is well-packaged, if sterile, experience. It's beautiful, but carefully constructed cement paths and catwalks means that it feels more like a walk through an amusement park than a jungle. Christ, I saw women in high heels wandering around the park. Not really what I was expecting or looking for. And, I must add, it's pretty much the same as Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, right down to the sub-tropical landscape.

I got chatting with one of the guys that worked in the park - I reckon he was about 21 or 22. Coz of my accent, he thought I was American and pretty much the first thing he said to me was "George Bush es una puta" (George Bush is a cunt), to which I responded "Y Tony Blair es su perrito" (And Tony Blair is his little doggy). The chappie found that rather amusing.

Not that I'm particularly political, mind you, it was just that sort of conversation...

I met a bunch of cool people in Iguazu, none of whom I'm going to keep in touch with because I left without bothering to get their contact details. I think they're all in Asuncion in Paraguay at the moment, which means that I might bump into them because that's where I am, too...

This town is fucking great. It's like being back home, but a lot more downmarket. The majority of the buildings outside of the centre are falling to bits, there's about two traffic lights in the entire city and there are street vendors absolutely everywhere. I got ripped off three times within an hour of getting in to Paraguay (at Ciudad del Este, where I caught the bus to Asuncion) - twice when I changed money at rates which I later found out were about 30% of the going rate, with the other instance being when the driver short-changed me when I caught a bus to the terminal in Ciudad del Este. Ciudad del Este is basically Mbare, the dodgiest part of Harare, on steroids. Asuncion is a lot better, but the area around the central bus terminus is a bit dodgy.

I'm going to look into maybe getting a job here for a bit, if it's possible. I'm staying in the penthouse suite (with a sun-drenched balcony overlooking the Rio Paraguay) of a really nice hotel about five blocks from the centre of town that's costing me about 25p a night. (There aren't any hostels in the city, which is a good thing, as I'm more likely to speak English if I go to a hostel.) It's entirely feasible to live on less than 10 quid a week here.

There are a lot of really fit women here and they make it clear when they're interested in you. But it should be said that people aren't tremendously friendly, though. I guess that it's city syndrome, the same shit that you get wherever you go. But they're friendly enough when you talk to them.

I guess all the stuff they said about Paraguay being the place to come to for black market goods. There are pirate CDs, DVDs and fake goods being sold on most street corners, there are shitloads of moneychangers (read hustlers/money launderers) standing around clutching enormous wads of cash and there are guys at the central bus terminus selling the latest mobile phones for around 20p. They have shopping bags full of the things.

The one cool thing that I've discovered, from my single-serving friend Javier on the bus trip from Ciudad del Este to Asuncion, is that you don't need a license to ride a motorbike outside of the capital. So if hitchhiking turns out to be a non-starter, biking might be the way to go. But a problem that I have discovered is that, in the interior of the country, a mixture of Guarani and Castillian is spoken which might make things difficult. But I'm sure I'll get by. I managed alright with the Guarani taxi driver (speaking Spanish) who drove me to the town centre yesterday and he had an unbelievably strong accent. Most of the words are truncated and a lot of the sibilants are dropped.

There's a bunch of other shit I keep on thinking that I should put in my blog, but it always slips my mind. Will look into buying stolen camera to provide pics...

Oh yeah, one more thing, on the coach up from Concordia to Iguazu, the travel agent who organized the trip was a really nice guy called Pablo. He was the guy that gave me the guided tour of the town when I arrived (I think I mentioned this in my last entry. If not, tough). Anyway, he took the mike once the coach had gotten under way and worked the crowd a little - "Anyone here from Buenos Aires? Raise your hand if you're from Concordia?" - a few hesitant cheers from the back - "Anyone on their honeymoon?" And so on - you get the idea. Anyway, he introduced me to the entire bus and I gave everyone an embarrassed wave and an "hola" before slouching low in my seat. The journey itself was fairly uneventful, though I made friends with the family seated in front of me by showing them how to use toothpaste as an adhesive to stick paper over the air vents (it was fucking freezing in that coach). Well, to get to the point, I was wandering down the main drag in Puerto Iguazu a day after arriving when the coach I came in on drove past and everyone on the bus waved at me.

It gave me a warm feeling inside.

And, one last thing, when I was out horseriding, we passed through a part of the jungle that had a really peculiar, slightly chemical smell. I'd smelt the same smell when I was walking though the Iguazu Falls park the day before and I'd just thought that someone had been spraying some kind of insecticde or had been using chemicals in that area. But, as my trusty guide, Jorge, explained, it was actually spiders that were making the smell. Big fuckers, the size of your hand, that burrowed in the ground. As it was winter, though, they were all deep underground and we weren't going to see any. I was a bit bummed out about that. Jorge wasn't very keen on my idea to go looking for snakes, too, but he made it up to me by letting me use a tarzan swing that some of the local kids had set up in a clearing in the jungle. It was fucking cool - the swing arced right across the clearing and over the the surrounding vegetation. I did my best tarzan yell whilst I was doing it, whilst praying to god that the rope wouldn't break and fling me into snake-infested undergrowth.

'Nuff said.

"piss off," snapped the cynical plasticman, "i've only just figured out how to access the porn channels and i'm not bloody leaving."

2005-07-08T18:36:00.000Z

Fray Bentos was given a miss. Ended up in Salto, which is maybe a hundred miles further north. Really nice little town - battered-looking single storey houses, the smell of woodsmoke, teenagers buzzing around on mopeds and scooters. No-one wears a helmet here.

I'm now in Concordia, in Argentina, about a mile from Salto across the Rio Uruguay. I crossed over by means of a dilapidated ferry that sputtered asthmatically over the muddy expanse to the Argentinian side. It's really beautiful out here and I keep seeing stuff that, oddly enough, reminds me of Zimbabwe. I was walking to the port yesterday when I came across a seed pod in the road that's of a sort that grows back home, that the kids use as missiles in playground wars. A massive wave of homesickness hit me and I kinda realised that I really want to go home.

I've not been home in seven years and it's probably not viable for me to go back. But, if there's one thing I know, it's that I sure as hell don't want to go back to England. I might, though, because the economy's so strong that working there is easy money.

I heard about the terrorist attacks in London when I was watching the news yesterday. I have friends in London, but I reckon that they should have been out of harm's way. We'll see. I was kinda touched because a lady I met in Amsterdam absolutely fuckin' years ago emailed me to ask if I was okay. Obviously, we don't speak that often (we always seem to piss each other off when we do), but I was deeply touched by the fact that she thought of me...

Okay, enough emotional crap. Stop being a ninny, old boy.

Went to the hot springs at Salto Grande a couple of days ago. Now that was an exprience. I had to buy some swimming shorts, coz I packed fuckin' light when I left England. The only ones they had left were a tad cosy and not my colour (yes, I do have a strong streak of gay in me), so I managed to negotiate a 30% discount. In Spanish. Am sure my former Spanish teacher would be very proud of me. And I even managed to work the word "sangano" into the conversation - I'd been itching to try it out for days.

The hot springs were great - I sploshed about like the sangano gringo that I am and ended up chatting to the lifeguards for several hours, before catching the bus back into town with the hot spring park employees when the park closed in the evening. It was good fun. Hadn't been swimming in absolutely ages and getting to do so in what felt like the world's largest bath was a definite plus...

Moving away from hydrothermic hijinks, it must be said that Argentinians cook a mean beefsteak. But something that any pospective travellers to Uruguay or Argentina should know is that if you order "una cerveza" in a restaurant here, you get a litre of beer. You gotta ask for "una chiquitita" - a can of beer - and face the fact that you'll be regarded as a homosexual by whichever waiter or waitress happens to be serving you.

I went into a travel agent's in Salto to see if I could get some kind of intel on the best route to hitch into Brazil. I ended up sitting and chatting with the people in the travel agent's for several hours and we worked out a better route for me. I'm catching a coach up to Iguazu in a couple of hours and, I tell you what, I'm fuckin' glad of it. Not because I don't like what I've seen so far of both Uruguay and Argentina, but rather because it's fucking freezing. I'll be a thousand kilometes further north by this time tomorrow and, hopefully, I'll have regained sensation in my toes...

Now, once I get to Iguazu, I've got the dilemma of heading east into Brazil (Portguese - hmmm, no offence, but no thanks) or heading west into Paraguay, Bolivia and then Peru. Now all the locals I've spoken to so far have said avoid Bolivia and Paraguay like the plague - Bolivia because it's about as safe and stable as Colombia, and Paraguay because it's apparently South America's mercado negro - if'n it be drugs, guns or stolen goods you be wantin', boy, P'ragay's the place to go. But the UK Foreign Office says that neither country is as bad as all that, so it looks like I'm probably going to be heading west.

I reckon I'll probably pop into Brazil once I've reached Ecuador.

I was walking on the outskirts of Concordia this morning and ended up walking through slums on the edge of the town dump. There was an underfed-looking child picking through the refuse at the side of the road, picking up pages from magazines and reading them intently. Fuck knows if he could read or not. Either way, I felt guilty walking past a hungry child whilst wearing shoes that cost more than his family earns in several years. If he has a family, that is.

I'm probably going to become immune to the guilt. After a while, you can get used to anything. I had the unique pleasure, when I was in Montevideo the other day, of eating chicken and chips whilst, six feet away from me, other human beings delved through garbage with their bare hands, looking for recyclable materials. Things were never this bad in Zimbabwe when I was there - poverty here reaches a whole new level.

So what am I supposed to do? Go all Mother Teresa? Give 'em all my money? Haul 'em all in for a slap up meal?

Fuck that. This is a job for Bob Geldof.

Before I go, I'd just like to say that I'm glad that I forked out 70 quid for rabies shots (that made me feel fucking awful for days afterwards) because there are stray dogs everywhere around here. In Concordia, the public refuse bins on the street are on stilts at around shoulder height to stop the strays from raiding them.

Don't want the dogs to get to them before the humans, he said darkly.

I promise the next post will be a bit more cheerful. Am just a bit sloshed from losing an argument in a restaurant just now over the relative size of a chiquitita. After the waiter brought me the wrong size for the third time in the row, I just resigned myself to the fact that I'm going to have to learn Spanish faster and, in the meantime, avoid ordering potentially problematic foodstuffs. Or just learn to drink like a man.

"what do you mean," the cynical plasticman demanded, "'you're not in kansas any more, tonto'?"

2005-07-05T13:06:00.000Z

Uruguay. Accents are a hell of a lot easier to understand than those of Buenos Aires and there seems to be a lot more pretty girls. Always a plus.

Currently in Montevideo bus station, trying to figure out where in the hell I want to go. That is, I know where I want to go, but it means hanging around for three fuckin' hours waiting for the bus, so I'm trying to figure if there's somewhere else in the country that I can head to first. Am planning on going to Fray Bentos and then hitching up the eastern side of the country to San Pablo and then Rio di Janeiro.

Am wearing my lucky anti-rape underwear.

It's absolutely effing freezing. I came to Montevideo because I arrived in Colonia and figured that Montevideo sounded sorta northern and slightly warmer, so I hopped on the bus here. Little did I realise that it's actually slightly further south than Colonia.

My Spanish is improving. Had an hour's conversation this morning at breakfast with the manager of the youth hostel that I stayed in last night. The manager was brilliant, first rate guy, but jesus was that the shittest hostel I've ever stayed in or what. Unpainted, crumbling walls; freezing rooms; noisy, leaky plumbing; toilets that didn't work; wiring that literally smoked; no hot water; no cutlery - they didn't even have a frickin' tin opener, for crying out loud, I had to use my Leatherman (I've got a funny story about that particular item and the Uruguayan border police, but that's for another time); cockroaches. The list goes on. I was the only person in the entire hostel and, to tell you the truth, I had a great time - the hostel staff were good guys and we played pool and watched TV in the evening, talking typical guy shit, but in Spanish. And I taught some English to the manager's kid - "hello", "goodbye" and "show us yer tits, luv".

Just kidding about that last one.

Anyway, I reckon that I had a good time because I didn't spend it talking to other travellers - I got to talk to the locals, and that's what I'm here to do. How else am I going to get a handle on the culture and the language?

Anyway, it's 10.20 and I've got to see if I can get on the road sooner rather than later. Mostrame sus tetas, chica.

Adios.

"y´know," murmured the cynical plasticman, half to himself, "i think you´re pretty, but it´s probably just the thorazine talking."

2005-06-30T20:44:00.000Z

So, I´m here and effing knackered. Some 30-odd hours of travelling and I´m now esconced in a decent hotel in the mind-buggeringly large city of Buenos Aires. To give you an idea of the city´s size and location, an analogy would be that London could be equated to a small walnut located in the centre of Wembley Stadium, whilst Buenos Aires would probably be be equivalent to two large walnuts trying to make a third walnut together, located about two-thirds of the way down South America on the right-hand side.

I met a few single-serving companions along the way - Anton, the South African dentist, and Mark & (the amusingly Teutonically-named) Falka (my query as to whether his full name happened to be Gaylord M. Falka was just met with a bemused stare). The former gentleman helped me while away the five hours spent waiting at the bland dullness that is Frankfurt International Airport, and the latter two gentlemen provided me with decent conversation well into the flight, until sleep deprivation and airline food caused our higher cognitive functions to shut down. Poor bastards lost their luggage, whilst everything in my rucksack is soaked through, for some reason. Probably won´t catch Lufthansa again - I´d make smart-ass comments about how standards of German Volkstransportation don´t appear to have progressed much since WWII, but that would be politically incorrect now, wouldn´t it...

Buenos Aires is pretty unprepossessing at first glance. It´s winter here - it´s overcast, around 10 degrees C and it gets dark at around 5pm at the mo. The city really is enormous - 14 million people spread out over a pretty goddammed wide area. The people look a bit miserable & all the buildings need a coat of paint. I´m just unwinding by spending the night in a decent hotel, watching Latin American cable TV, before moving on to a youth hostel and beginning to make some kind of plan as to the rest of my journey. I reckon I´m probably going to head northwards pretty sharpish, unless I discover in the next 48 hours that the city has an unlimited supply of cocaine, sunbeds & nymphomaniacs.

Paul out.

"dth... ing iz," slurred the cynical plasticman, "mmmrarthr noncompschhh mentish at prezhnt."

2005-06-15T17:08:00.000Z

Seven years' worth of stress erased in one fell swoop, along with a large part of my temporal lobe...

"funny," muttered the cynical plasticman to himself, "i don't feel particularly educated."

2005-06-10T12:55:00.000Z

All done. Time to get royally pissed.

"i am the lizard king," snapped the cynical plasticman, "i am the iguana don."

2005-05-31T19:42:00.000Z

Dissertation done. One exam & twenty-nine days until I'm like so out of here.

the cynical plasticman tapped the mike hesitantly & nervously cleared his throat. "Erm..."

2005-05-21T17:58:00.000Z

Welcome to the cynical plasticman, Mark II. This is the blog I'm setting up because I'm too fuckin' lazy to write to people individually. Infrequent & possibly semi-coherent posts will be made when I start my travels through South America at the end of June. The coherency of the posts will depend on how much cocaine I've got stuffed up my nose & my ass at that time.

Photos may also be posted after I've mugged a tourist for their camera.

For the interim, I shall be working on completing my dissertation & thinking of excuses not to see my family when they come to visit in June.