Finally A Chance To Impress The New Family And I May Have Blown It

I have been living here in Utah for 9 weeks now. And in those 9 weeks my new Chilean family seem to have taken it upon themselves to fatten me up whenever they see me. I don't know what it is but apparently being flaco is a bad thing in Chile. Up until now in most instances, except for a few years when I palyed rugby against bigger guys, I was happy being skinny but my new Chilean family seem to think it is their mission to fatten me up. And I mean everybody in the family but somechileanwoman's 14 year old brother. Her other brother has had us round for pizza and some guitar hero. Her seester has had us round for hotdog's and brownies. Her Aunt has fed us on a couple of occasions when we were just popping round for a visit. Her mother has fed us, again when we just visiting. And even her Mami and Papi who have spent something like 2 months vsiting relatives in Australia still found time to do the same. What the F? And just about every one of them has the same thing in common, they talk to somechileanwoman in Spanish (I suspect because they know I don't understand) and at the same time look me up and down and shove some food in my direction. I don't need to know Spanish to ken that there is some conspiring going on. And I love it. I am not going to deny it. I love my food. When it comes to food I am a chancho and I will take it anywhere I can get it. And if I get introduced to new Chilean foods all the better.

However I have been feeling kind of guilty. I have been wanting to for a long time to do the same for all of them, and introduce them to some Scottish foods while I am at it. And finally this weekend being Mother's Day here in the States there was an opportunity to do just that. The Seester was hosting the celebration and making the main meal but somechileanwoman and I were to bring the dessert. When I thought this I thought we could make one Chilean dessert and one Scottish dessert but that was probably going to be too much food so we settled on the Scottish dessert. A perfect opportunity I thought to impress the new family because if there is one things Scottish cuisine does well it is satisfy a sweet tooth. Together we settled on making an Auld Alliance Tart - well in America anything with apples surely can't go wrong. At the time it seemed to go down well with everyone, except perhaps the cooking time - some were a little impatient but I am the same when waiting for dessert. When it was finally dished up it was tasty good so I think all was forgiven.

However since that day I have shheeeeting in the toilet for 3 days. In between times I have been scared to fart in case I shheeet some more. I don't want to be telling tales but somechileanwoman went through some similar issues for a day or two too. Now I cannot be sure it was anything to do with the dessert that we made that we have those ailments but it would just be my sort of luck if it was. I can only hope that the rest of the family that I was so eager to impress have not been going through similar distress. Main reason being that they have been very nice to us and don't deserve it, but also because I just know they will love reminding me often by saying something like your only job is to cook dessert. Do you not realise I have had diarrhea since Eeeastersss?

Are you a Twit?

Do you Twitter? If so tell me why, because I just don't get the fascination. For me its up there with $19.99 infomercial toothpaste squeezers in terms of level of necessity and usefulness.

Lord, Forgive Me, I know Not What I Say

Salt Lake City is a very religious city. It seems that just about anyone who I have a casual conversation with will ask me "are you LDS?" It even beats the other question "where are you from?" If I am honest 12 months ago I didn't even know what LDS was. Now, unfortunately, I'm not quite so ignorant and so I know that when someone asks me that question they are asking if I am with the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, in other words am I a Mormon. Regretfully I always have to say no. I regret it because it usually means a conversation about the virtues of visiting the LDS Museum at Temple Square in Downtown is sure to follow my answer. As happened yesterday when I helped an old man fix his car. I didn't mind ruining a t-shirt in the process but I could have done without the well meant preaching. 

Anyway back to why I started writing this post. Due in no small part to Salt Lake being a Mormon City you are bombarded with religious images everywhere. Which is fine. There is one in particular though that I pass a few times a week and for some reason every time I see this billboard I interpret it probably not as was originally intended. I see this and I think someone unintentionally made Jesus sound perverted. 

He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy

Ironically I don't think its situated outside an LDS Church but with thoughts like these I'm probably not cut out for the faith anyway. I also might have to keep my thoughts to myself, I don't want stoned for listening to that devil on my shoulder.

Listening to: REM - Losing My Religion. I didn't choose it, blame iTunes.

"It's Crazy How You Two Met.."

My significant other will often come home from work and talk about the work colleague that likes to repeat "It's crazy how you two met" when talking about our relationship, when all she really wants to do is turn the conversation back around to her relationship because she still can't believe how they met. I can. They met at work. Not particularly unbelievable. Happens a lot I would think. Our situation was though I have to admit a little bit crazy.

There was one day I was bored and looking online for a cheap lens for my camera. I didn't find any. So I was about to click the x of the browser when something inside told me it would be a laugh to look at the adverts in the personals. I don't always listen to the devil that likes to sit on my left shoulder and whisper nonsenical advice, but this time I did. And I did laugh. Some of those adverts are rather pathetic.

A relatively sane looking one was one titled, if I remember correctly (it was a while ago now - so you can excuse me if I got the details wrong on this), Latina Looking For A Guide. The advert itself was unremarkable (sorry) really except for the fact that within the advert the word English was placed in front of guide when the advert itself was posted in a Scottish City. For some reason I thought I would be funny by replying and rewriting the advert for her and suggesting that she might get a better response because after all we Scots can be kind of funny about being called English, knowing full well that I would probably come across as an ass.

She almost didn't reply back to my message, but then did so anyway. Then I almost didn't reply to her reply, but then proceeded to do so anyway. I probably did so when I realised that she had reposted her advert by taking my advice but with the addition of adding her own sassy spin to it. Somehow one email led to another, and another, and another. Not with any expectations whatsoever. Certainly not of that falling in love crap! That'd be crazy talk! I made fun of people who thought they could meet someone off the internet with those expectations. That sort of thing never works! Nutters. In fact even now we both make fun of the adverts on tv for match.com and the other dating site I currently can't remember the name of.

Instead I gave her ideas of things to do and must visit places, with websites to look at. After a couple of emails or so I seem to remember doing something crazy and offering to be her guide when she finally made the trip. And in the meantime, we talked. A lot. We talked, and talked and talked. BT and Comcast made a lot of money from our talking. Yeah we were kind of stupid and naive about it. We were slow about finding a way of making Skype work reliably. Had we done so sooner we might have saved not inconsiderable amounts of money. Dammit!

Anyway the end result was something that was totally unexpected. I fell hard. I was smitten. I was crazy about her. So crazy I moved to America. I never wanted to live in America, what the hell happened there? I had no real ambition of ever going to America. There were many places I wanted to travel to before I died. I had a whole list of them. Maybe some day a couple of US cities too but they were way down at the bottom of the list. Those cities were probably not even on the same list. They were probably on the list of well I've visited all the other places I really wanted to see, now its time to add to it list.

I had intended to go to Morocco later on in the year. Around September. It wasn't No. 1 on my list but it was pretty high up and best of all it was one of the cheap places. I could do cheap. And it was time I had a well deserved 2 week holiday. I had done the research and just about booked the ticket when we initially started talking. I was so close to booking that ticket I could smell the food of the markets in my nostrils, and picture the sights, the people and the clothes in my head. And then some how I ended up here in October instead. Probably would have been here sooner had we not talked so much on the phone.

Sometimes even now I wake up in the morning, roll over on my bed and see this beautiful woman lying next to me and wonder how I got here. Then I get up and see a nice house (not as nice as we both want but nice enough for now), and then go for a drive in a large car in a strange country and I find myself asking how Talking Heads stole my life for their song Once In A Lifetime when I hadn't even lived the moment yet. I feel done dammit! I shouldn't be getting some sort of commission for every time that song is played on the radio or lastfm.

Now what if that advert wasn't placed or if I hadn't listened to that mischevious devil on my shoulder...what would have happened then?

Probably we'd be none the wiser and doing what we do now, laughing at those silly people who think they can find love on the internet.

Listening to: Augie March - The Night Is A Blackbird....I like.

This Blog Needs Help!

It's been a while coming, probably about 12 months if I'm honest, but the time has come to admit that this blog has been pretty much just going through the motions. In that time I've made plenty of excuses for myself;

• I was working nights, I was either sleeping during the day or trying to enjoy what was left of it. Blogging could wait.
• 4 - 6 hours on the phone every day, 8 hours at work, 3 - 4 hours sleeping barely left enough time to shop, eat, and enjoy the outdoors for a bit nevermind blog.
• 6 months preparing to leave one country for another was a bigger deal and priority.
• A bad mixture of either having a blogging idea but no time to type it, or the time but no ideas.
• Maybe tomorrow.

But the truth is I just lost the habit. Many a time I knew I had become a bad blogger and would contemplate deleting it but then I would think of the times I typed crap in the past and got some sort of strange fucked up enjoyment from it. Those days were bound to return at some point. Every blogger suffers from writers block from time to time. Right? 

The solution I thought was to post sporadically and eventually I'd just get some of the old mojo back. But its been a while now its just not happening. 

So folks this is you chance to share what you do when you are running short of writing inspiration. What's your secret? Is there a blogger that inspires you or do you have a game that play? Share - dammit!

Utah May Be Beautiful But Some Of The Locals Might Be Weird

It's only been a few weeks I admit and it might be a little bit hasty to draw conclusions but I'm starting to think Utahans might be a little bit weird.

First of all there is the Mormon thing I just don't get the big deal. Now I confess that I am a heathen and I generally don't understand organised religion so I am probably not the best one to judge it all, especially as I have only recently set up home in the area where it seems all the world's Mormons like to congregate. However try as I might, and I am trying, but I really don't understand the Mormon thing.

We Scots have got a reputation for being stingy with money. If we go to church we give a few coppers into a bowl to help keep the tiles on the roof of the building. In comparison Mormons are crazy. Good Mormons give 10% of their income to the church. Doesn't matter how much the Mormon earns 10% is the figure for the tithings. If the Mormon isn't willing or able to pay this price off the good list they go. When I heard this fact I almost died of shock and somechileanwoman had to give me the kiss of life, or maybe I was just being greedy at the time. I can't quite remember which, its all a blur but I do know that I was a little confused as to why anybody would want to be a good Mormon. It wasn't very appealing to me that was for sure.

However each to their own. There are a lot of Mormons in Utah and many of them seem very happy with it and so they should be. But it still confuses me as to why any time I am downtown and passing the LDS Temple that I see quite so many young people getting married. Many of whom can't be much older than 19. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against marriage, I'm actually in the midst of planning to get married in around 18 months time. But I'm 31 years of age. I've lived enough of a life to know this is what I want. To me 19 (and younger) is just too young.

It could just be that Mormons are more romantic than me.

However not only am I an ignorant heathen, I'm also a cynical one so I half suspect the Elders of the LDS church are just very good at convincing the young Mormons that marriage is a wonderful thing - especially if their folks can't afford to send them off to another part of the world on a mission. It's a wonderful thing for the church if there is an opportunity to double up on its tithings, all the better if they breed and make new tithing paying Mormons. I told you I was cynical.

I really can't help but think these kids can't be making this decision solely by themselves when I then go to Liberty Park and see some of the local population dressed up in strange clothes and fighting one another in said clothes with wooden and plastic swords. I'm sorry Utah, it's just wrong.

Really this guy looks like a jester. And he is, its hilarious. Or maybe its just me.
And this guy looks like he stole his cloak from Gandolf, although the cap may once have belonged to a baseball player. Maybe it was an Ebay special - 'buy the cloak get a free cap!'Don't even ask me where this guy got his outfit from I have no idea but the guy in blue in front of him seems as confused as me.

Now contrary to the opinion of some, I do not always think that Scotland is better than Utah. In Scotland there may be no real problem with guns, hence the reason why the bike police in Scotland do not feel the need to cycle around with a gun on their hip, but Glasgow - Scotland does have a problem in certain areas with knife culture. In some parts, teenagers, mostly boys, do run around with real knifes, some of them the lengths of small swords and have real fights with each other. The upside, if there is an upside, is that the fighters usually consist of the very stupid so if there are any casualties in any of the battles it helps to reduce the likelihood that they will breed and have more stupid children therefore the rest of the population remains relatively safe from harm.

But really, these Mormons have big families I just don't think the world has enough strange costumes to cope with the influx wooden sword fighters.

Anyway, enough about Mormons and their weird hobbits, I mean habits. I sometimes worry on occasion that I act too much like a hippy. Especially when I creep myself out when I hear myself saying things like 'you know what state the Earth would be in if 5 billion of us bought plastic cups', but after spending some of Saturday in Liberty Park at the Earth Fest I just don't see myself going the whole hog and becoming a full time hippy.

At the Earth Fest there was just far too many hippy type people dressed up like this guy above. I may not be any sort of fashionista but I do know that I don't look good with a Technicolour Dreamcoat type of outfit. So I shall be limiting my hippy ways in future.
Some of the crowd may have been dressed a little strange but the music wasn't bad though. I do like a little bit of reggae. I am starting however to notice that Utah crowds aren't exactly the dancing type. I have to admit I'm not exactly a big dancer myself but come on! The music was free, it was cold, it was wet, it should have been a good enough excuse to huddle together and jump up and down or move from side to side a bit. Not in Utah.

Thats two Utah events in 3 weeks where music has been played and neither audience has really got it going, but they will dress up like extras from Lord Of The Rings and fight with wooden or plastic swords in a public park. I'd blame the Mormon religion but I can't think of a good enough reason at this time.You have to hand it to the crowd though, cold and wet as it may have been there were a few souls braving the elements. Some with Hawaiian shirts with nothing but a cup of coffee to keep warm.
Others with wet weather gear but equally trying to get into the spirit of the gathering with wacky flavoured snow drinks.