"Hit of State" OR "Honduras to Costa Rica: Take Our President--Please!"

It seems that the other day there was a coup in Honduras (at least I think it was a "coup"; the Spanish phrase that La Nación is using is “golpe de estado,” which literally means “hit of state”… I’m gonna go with “coup” on this one).

In any case, I’m not sure if they’re reporting this much in the U.S. and elsewhere, but here it pretty big news. Sure, Honduras is a country or two away, but the country between Honduras and Costa Rica is Nicaragua, not exactly a paragon of order and stability over the last couple of decades. So we have a relatively good-sized buffer zone between “us” and “them,” but there’s a lot of regional identification around here, and people in Costa Rica are quite interested in what’s going on up north currently. In fact, Costa Rica did get mixed up in the whole affair initially, and it was in a way that was so weird that while reading about it in the paper, it seemed like the sort of quirky military coup that might happen in a Wes Anderson movie.

Costa Rica’s involvement started when the president of Honduras, Manuel “Mel” Zelaya (in the picture to the left, from Wikimedia Commons), showed up at our airport in his pajamas on Sunday morning. Apparently the Honduran military decided to take over the country, and after they arrived to Zelaya’s residence, they took him by gunpoint to an airplane. That airplane landed at Costa Rica’s Juan Santamaria International Airport at 8:10 a.m., at which time the President was “left” at the airport, while the military apparently returned to Honduras. Zelaya said in La Nación: “I left with the clothes I was wearing; I’m not wearing socks, I’m not wearing underwear.”

Now, we’ve all been in awkward situations like this, especially after a long Saturday night, but this has got to set some sort of precedence for weirdness. My particular interest lies with the Honduran military soldiers who kidnapped Zelaya: what did they actually do after arriving at the airport? Did they get out, talk to the guy who guided the plane to the gate with those glow sticks, and say, “Hey, here’s our President, do you mind watching him while we do some errands up north?” How did they address the radio tower? "Heads up, President coming in!"? Did they have to take him through customs or immigration—good luck, Mel!—since he probably didn’t happen to have his passport in his pajama pocket? Or did they just land without permission, open the pressurized cabin door with a whoosh, toss Zelaya out onto the tarmac, and then take off again? The newspapers are suspiciously silent as to the answers to all of these questions.

The day of his arrival here, Zelaya had a joint press conference with Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, who looked somewhat confused in the newspaper picture (although to be fair, Arias often looks a bit confused in newspaper pictures). Arias condemned the coup and demanded that Honduras take back its mustachioed, V-neck T-shirt-wearing President.

As the days have progressed, Zelaya went to a meeting of Latin American Presidents in Nicaragua and apparently continued on to the U.S. to talk to U.N. General Assembly or something like that (I stopped paying close attention to the articles around this point). He eventually plans on returning to Honduras on Thursday (today). However, a new “President” has taken power in Honduras in the meantime, and this new guy with an Italian-sounding name has promised that Zelaya will be imprisoned if he returns to the country. The international community has rallied around Zelaya by demanding his reinstatement as President, and has proposing severing basically all ties with Honduras, up to an including an full embargo on shitty reggaeton record imports.

Anyhow, this situation is weird, and to paraphrase Brazilian President Lula* said, “We can’t permit right in the 21^st century, that we have a military coup in Latin America. It’s unacceptable.” And he’s right. Do they still even do military coups these days?

Maybe that’s what’s going on: Central America is suffering from 1980s nostalgia and trying to recapture some of the “romance” from that era.** Nicaragua’s current President is Daniel Ortega, the same Sandinista President from the 1980s that got involved in their country’s civil war. And our current President in Costa Rica is Oscar Arias, the guy who was also President in the 1980s, and who won a Nobel Prize for helping end the civil war in Nicaragua. Iran’s got some weird turmoil going on, possibly just to set up a new Iran-Contra Affair for this century. And finally, Honduras decides to throw a military coup.

And everywhere I look, all I see are Land Rovers from the late 70s and early 80s, and Michael Jackson’s music is on every station!

It’s Political 80s Night here in the isthmus! Put on your Member’s Only jacket and come on down!

* Brazilian Presidents, just like Brazilian soccer players, have only one name.

** I am obviously joking about this whole matter, and I hope I don’t offend anyone by taking it too lightly. My best wishes are with everyone in Honduras, and let’s all hope for a safe and speedy resolution to this debacle!

Many, Many Pictures: Dustin and Samantha's Visit!

Dustin and Sam on a bridge near Termales del Bosque. Dustin is opening the glowing box made famous by the movie Pulp Fiction.

For two weeks in June, our friends Dustin and Samantha visited us from Colorado. That's the main reason the blog has been pretty MIA of late, by the way. I've got some good stuff coming up, though... don't you worry. In any case, it was really great to have Deuce and Sam visit, and I wanted to put up a few pictures from their stay. Hope you enjoy them, and that you're tempted to visit, as well! (All but the first four are from Dustin's camera... I didn't ask permission, but hope that's cool I'm putting them up, Deuce)

Angela and I at the waterfall near La Fortuna.

Some cows in their natural habitat: the beach.

Dustin and Sam at Playa Manzanillo, on the Caribbean coast.

Who doesn't love cows? Not this guy!

A weird Costa Rican anomaly: there are a lot of Holsteins here, but for some reason or another, there are tons of Brahma cows.

I was still employed during the first week of their visit, so there was a fair amount of sitting around during the first part of their trip.

However, the probable monotony of Berlín was occasionally interrupted for them by something exciting, like a random doctor's visit!

I was at work at the time, but apparently this doctor just showed up on his motorcycle, took everyone's blood pressure, and rode off into the mid-day sun.
Doctor's visits? Chickens in trees? Angela chasing cows out of the yard? How come all the interesting stuff happened when I was gone??

Another thing that happened while I was gone working: we got another cat. We kept trying to discourage it, but after hanging around on the back porch for two weeks, it seems to be here for good. We still don't have a name for it, but we've been calling it "The Other Cat." Notice Cucho scowling at it in the background, from behind the plants.
This cat kinda sucks in comparison to our other cat Cucho, to be completely honest with you.

During their visit, Dustin and Sam were able to enjoy some of the unique charms of San Ramón. Here, we see a "watchyman" carefully attending the parked cars near the church. Needless to say, when we left I avoided giving him any coins for keeping an eye on our car.
Right after that, we saw another possibly homeless guy sleeping on a park bench. This would be not so extraordinary, except this second guy had taken out his false teeth and they were sitting on his arm as he slept. And the set of teeth was missing random teeth.
Man, Sam Ramón is pretty shitty.

More Tico charm: We were all dazzled by the ridiculous titties on the Costa Rican manequins. I've already decided that I need to address this issue in a separate, exclusive post.

Ah yes, and no visit to Costa Rica would be complete without the ubiquitous "Floating Crucified Sad Jesus Head" stickers on the cars, buses, and, especially, the trucks. Last November I wrote about these stickers, but since then they've taken on a whole new level of interest for our American visitors. What started as an occasional remark while Annie was visiting morphed into an obsessive decal-counting game during Dustin and Sam's visit. I believe that our "Sad Jesus Head" sticker count on the way back from the Caribbean worked its way into the mid-60s!

More weird Costa Rica: the "guava" in all its broken-phallus glory. We bought these from a guy on the side of the road near a tollbooth. The weird thing: this isn't even a guava. That's just what everyone calls it. What we would call a guava in English, people here call a "guyaba." But I have no idea why this seed thing is called a guava in Spanish.

Guavas are freaking weird. When you break open the giant-green-bean-looking thing, there are little fuzzy white clumps. You eat that fuzzy white crap, and inside there's a big, cockroach-looking seed. For some reason, when God invented guavas, He decided to make them so that they could split open and serve as earrings (as Sam is modeling).

Dustin bought a souvenir spoon, and the shopkeeper threw in this Imperial bandana for free. At least that's what he claims.

Sam posing (awesomely) with her food and a napkin/flower Angela made.

A hermit crab with a sunscreen cap for a shell. Just a second ago, I accidently typed "crap" instead of "crab," but not that I've corrected it, I think I may have been right the first time around.

During our stay in Cahuita, Sam finally got her wish of relaxing in a hammock.

And finally, on the last day, we saw some beautiful Costa Rican engineering as a car pulled a moped on the highway. Remember, folks in the U.S., this is the Interamericana Highway, the one that goes all the way from Argentina to Alaska, and these guys were headed north. They may have graced America with their inspiring presence.

Anyhow, that's it for the pictures for now. Hope you liked them, and maybe you learned something (certainly not).

Thanks again to Dustin and Sam for visiting, and we hope to have you come back very, very soon!

Why My Body Hurts These Days

Shocking Revelation From Sitzlandia: All this time, Ryan's "Smart Guy Glasses" were actually just plastic construction goggles with the sides broken off!

Recently I've been doing a lot of work on the house and the yard, in an attempt to make it beautiful or, failing that, at least remotely presentable.

Time clouds our memories, but I seem to recall a few years during high school when our family had an old, discarded water tank sitting in the middle of our garden, right next to an old bathtub. In the right setting, that could probably be considered artsy, but I don't think the right setting is "surrounded by weeds, and obviously waiting for a trash truck to come by one of these years."

Keeping that water heater and bathtub in mind, I've been trying to find some small projects to do around the house, as well as trying to gradually deal with the Crappy Casita. The main house was getting a few leaks, so I went up on the roof one day to try to cover the screws with some gummy pink crap that's still stuck to my arm hair days later. The hour-and-a-half repair job--of course--didn't actually work at all, but the view from our roof was INCREDIBLE! Now I feel like a royal dumbass since we only built a one-story house. I'm currently scheming to build a two-story "rancho," which would have a balcony as well as a small room on top, and the bottom level would be open with a barbeque. That's going to take a bit of scheming, especially when it comes to convincing Angela to allow any sort of builder or contractor back into our lives...

And the Crappy Casita is basically still a nightmare. Angela's sister Toni did us a huge favor and earned what we paid her many times over by signing up to clean the house one day, so at least it doesn't stink anymore. But there are still numerous problems, including the fact that much of the dirt we carted into the lot last year is now washing down the hill and trying to make its way into the crappy casita by one method or another. In the pictures here I'm trying to chisel out some concrete to eventually put in some sort of drainage ditch or ground gutter... something like that. In fact, I'm not entirely sure that the concrete object I have in mind for the job actually exists, but we'll see soon.

In any case, that's why I've not written much in the last month or so.

Chipping away at the concrete. It's a tedious task, but eventually I'll be able to sell the chunks as authentic pieces of the Berlin Wall... Hey, it's sort of true...

Finally: Pictures From Annie's Visit!

A week or two ago, our friend Annie visited us for a long weekend. Good times were had by all, and we gave her a whirlwind Coast Tasty experience. We spent a few days in the Limón province, which is on Costa Rica's Caribbean Coast.

Annie took quite a few pictures herself (you should be able to see them by following this link), but here are some pictures that I took to make you want to pay a visit of your own:

The lovely Angela jumping for joy that Annie is visiting us!

Angela with the "Gandhi look." I'd say, "It's a long story," but it's really not. We were basically just making fun of Gandhi.
Everyone does a few bad things here and there, right?

The sunset at Playa Negra, I believe. This beautiful beach just to the north of Cahuita is supposedly 13 km long. In an hour and a half there, we saw two other people.

Inside Cahuita National Park there are many beautiful beaches, as well.

Annie in the National Park.

Angela and I on the beach.

Annie drinking a pipa, which is basically a coconut with the top chopped off (with a machete, of course). Let the delicious--and supposedly contraceptive, although we all know that's just Costa Rican voodoo--coconut water flow!

Angela with her pipa.

Annie pilfering lemons from my brother-in-law's tree. We made a sort of "Poor Man's Mojito" by mixing chopped lemons, lemon juice, sugar, and cacique (the local cheap booze). It's a perfect accompaniment to a delicious "bread snack" and a DVD from season three of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia."

Annie, come back soon, and bring Matthew!

The "Be Careful What You Wish For" Edition

Waylon Smithers (From The Simpsons): "What's wrong with this country? Can't a man walk down the street without being offered a job?"

Recently I've identified with this quote. See, about a month ago I handed in my letter of resignation at my current job. It was just too far away, basically, and I was tired of spending around three hours a day in the car and never having any time to do anything outside of work.

So I'm currently nearing the end of my month-long "finishing work" period, as is required by law. I was casually looking for a job, but in the meantime I've been offered upwards of five jobs. They're admittedly part-time and smaller, but that's what I was looking for:
1. A former student of mine asked me to teach her German, since she's going to spend a year there starting in August. I took that job, and it's going really well. It's also nice to practice German again!
2. I bought a new car recently, and the lady who sold it to me asked if I could tutor her. That's still pending.
3. When a guy came to offer us internet in Berlín, he said if I was ever looking for a job, then I should call them since they were looking for good people.
4. The mother of the girl I teach German to asked me if I could teach English classes on Saturday mornings. That's probably a go, if I can get our scanner to work (to send copies of my diplomas, I guess).
5. I was offered a job today in Palmares teaching at an English language institute. It'd be only 3 or 4 days a week in the evenings. Sounds perfect!

So, all this excess of labor opportunities is good and all, but I was almost looking forward to unemployment: a good stretch of sitting on my ass, relaxing, reading, and periodically doing yardwork while ostensibly looking for a job. I guess all that may have to get put on hold for now.

But in the end, I may have time to write some more blog posts. Tomorrow our friends Dustin and Sam are arriving, though, and they'll be here for two weeks. We're really excited to have them, and I'll try to put up some pictures or stories at some point. In the meantime, hope you're all well!

(PS - The picture is of some beer bread I made. I couldn't find a good employment-related pic in my collection.)

A Bit More Rockin' To Tide You Over

Annie took this video on her camera when she visited us last week:



Needless to say, it's pretty impressive. More soon.

I've Been Very Busy, But Here's An Appetizer To Even Greater Things To Come!

This video freaks Angela out a bit:



Ha ha! Gotta love that girl.

A New Post

Upon popular demand from Deuce, here is another blog posting.
Not much new.
Our friend Annie is visiting us from Seattle, and we're currently in Puerto Viejo, on Costa Rica's Caribbean coast. I'm in an internet cafe and sweating profusely, for some reason. It's not a good motivator for blog writing. Other than that, though, her visit has been great and the Caribbean is a wonderful paradise, especially compared to Costa Rica's over-touristified Pacific Coast.
So things have been great, though, and even greater news is that --apparently-- we might be able to get INTERNET in Berlin! This is super-big news, and I'll keep you all posted.
In any case, my fifteen minutes of free internet time (and thus my fifteen minutes of fame) are almost up, so I'll check in with you all later.
Abrazos to everyone!

Sweet and Sour Pork Flu

Let's start with the bad news first:

The Sour:
--I got gradually sicker last week, and on Wednesday I couldn't talk. The doctor sent me home from work, and to stay home and rest on Thursday and Friday, also.
--I couldn't do any blog posts for quite some time.

The Sweet:
--I didn't have pig flu, as I originally imagined I might.
--I was able to rest up and recover, and by the time the weekend rolled around, I was feeling quite a bit better.
--I've mentioned my love-hate relationship with Costa Rican bureaucracy before, but the health system is pretty great, at least if your company has a private doctor. That's how I was able to get something equivalent to sick days.
--I read a lot.

In any case, I've not written too much lately, but I'll try to remedy that as soon as possible. We're having a get-together/housewarming party on Saturday, and then next Thursday our friend Annie is visiting us, so things will be busy. That means that I'll eventually have something interesting to write about, but it may take a while.

In the meantime, check out this video:

The weirdest thing about this video is that in my first internet visit in a week, I spent most of the time watching cooking videos in German. I absorbed them like a Brötchen sitting in a bowl of Weisswein. In any case, right after I wrote the title to this blog, I saw that the very same cooking video series actually had a recipe for preparing sweet and sour pork! Hopefully you like the video. Even if you don't speak German, it's strangely hypnotizing...

Funny Joke

The other day I somehow came across a sort of random blog called "Jewtah"... which is a great name, by the way. It really is about a Jewish woman in Utah.

In any case, there was a pretty funny joke in one of the posts, and I thought I'd pass it on for a bit of Friday fun:

Two guys are sitting in a bar, having a few drinks. One guy says to the other, “Ever since you left for college, I’ve been doing your mom four times a week.”

The other guy says, “Dad, are you drunk?”

More Fake Bands

After my post a few days ago about my fake band Iffeldorf, I got a few more fake bands and albums from some friends. So, I decided to share them with everyone.

Here's the original that got me started from the band, Osnat Elkabir, fronted by my friend --and bandmate from another side project, Faded Sky Gods-- Annie. The album is called "statesmen and philosophers and divines":

Next up on the list is my friend Bus Drivin' Krista, who probably doesn't even drive buses anymore (but to be totally accurate, I don't either). Her group is called Heronina, and their newest album is entitled "For he shall never be disappointed." You can see the album cover below (the name of the group and album is only written on the spine of the CD case, of course:

It's definitely a solid effort, and after the whole band's group stint in rehab, the lyrics are less Emo, surprisingly, yet still life-affirming.

Next, we've got a married couple, my friends Dustin and Samantha. They have worked together on albums in the past, but they've decided to pursue solo careers to expand their own personal musical horizons a bit more. Rumor has it that Dustin was wanting to take the group in a more ABBA-pop direction, but Sam wanted to stick closer to their original thrash-metal roots. So from Sam's venture Downsouth, we get her debut solo album:

Powerful stuff. Speaking of powerful, Dustin's album cover picture is powerful... powerfully depressing. I give you Clozapine's debut, "First Requisite to Great Undertakings":

He says it's supposedly "medicine rock," but to me it just sounds like Counting Crows, but with an extra keyboard.

In any case, thanks for the submissions, guys! Happy fake listening!

I Take Back All The Bad Things I Said About The MOPT

Well, at least I take back most of the bad things I said about the MOPT the other day. If you recall, that's the Costa Rican equivalent of a DMV. And I had to renew my license there last Thursday.

The amazing thing? I got in and out of the office in about 5 minutes. Yes, that's right, friends, it's no typo: five (5) minutes!

How in the world could this be, you may ask? I'll tell you: I knew the secret password. It goes a little something like this: "Buenas, soy el yerno de Honorio" ("Afternoon, I'm Honorio's son-in-law"). Once again, in Costa Rica, it's not about what you know, it's all about who you know, and in this case, my father-in-law happened to be friends with the guy who prints the licenses. So, quick hi, an introduction, presentation of some documents, quick flash, and I'm out the door.

Contrast that with the first time I got a license here, when I had to go all the way to San José, taking a whole day off work. I went to the dilapitated central building in a sketchy part of town and got in line. I was about the 130th person (I counted). I waited over two hours, standing in line and reading my newspaper, and when I was about the 25th person or so, they made the announcement that "the system was down." We could all get a piece of paper with a stamp on it, and we were welcome to come back the next day.
After inquiring and realizing that the stamp meant nothing, and not wanting to take another day off of work to stand in line again, I just stood there. I asked to talk to a manager and was directed to an enormous woman talking on a cell phone. I walked over to her with another guy who was also pissed off about the situation (turns out he was from Miami), and when the woman saw us coming towards her, she went into her office. We waited outside her office with our arms crossed, talking shit for about a half hour. It was about 3:45, I believe--close to closing time!--when a girl came up to us and told us she'd try to start up the system again.
She flicked some switch, and whatever was wrong before was now right. They took our documents and our picture, and our licenses came out about 3 minutes later. So easy!

In any case, you can hopefully understand how I was quite skeptical about my upcoming MOPT experience last week but, as I said, it went wonderfully quick, and I must admit that I was quite wrong. In fact, the shock on my face in the picture basically says, "Oh my God, is this seriously happening?!"

Good work, MOPT. Now I just need a password like that to use at the Ministerio de Migración.

PS - As you notice, in my picture I'm growing out a rather objectionable "protest beard." I'm doing this to protest against the junta de agua de Berlín, which is the entity that was shutting off our water every afternoon around 4 or 5, until the following morning, for four months or so. But that's another story. And for some reason, every time I think of the phrase "protest beard," I get Bob Marley's song Redemption Song in my head, but the chorus now goes like: "All I ever wear / protest beard / protest beard / beard of freedom."
The pig flu seems to have hit my mind first...

Watching The Time Blow By Your Face

My friend Brad sent me a link to this cool time lapse. Which makes me wonder how Brad has time to find so much cool stuff on the internet, what with his beautiful photographing and his eloquent lawyering and everything...
(And yes, the two beautiful people in the first picture on that second link are Angela and I... I'm the one who looks like he's wearing a skin yamika.)

Living My Life Faster - 8 years of JK's Daily Photo Project from c71123 on Vimeo.

Workers Of The World, Unwind!

Just so you know, I might not be able to post for a few days. Tomorrow I've got to go to the Costa Rican version of the DMV called the "MOPT" to renew my driver's license. I'm pretty sure that stands for Ministerio de Obras Publicas and Transportación. It's in a heated competition with the phone monopoly ICE, the insurance monopoly INS, the Ministry of Migración, and the Junta de Agua de Berlín for the award of "Most Bastardly Costa Rican Bureaucracy of 2009."

To understand the MOPT, imagine a typical DMV in the US, but take away all the efficiency, non-corruption, and human warmth, and you'll get a pretty close idea of what the MOPT is like. Oh! And add a bunch of so-called gavilanes ("hawks"), which are losers who form lines outside the MOPT branches starting the night before, in order to "sell" their place in line and offer other thoroughly corrupt and bullshit extortionist services to motorists wishing to renew their licenses.

BUT, if I make it out of there in a day or two, I'll probably be able to relax on May 1st, which we have off for Labor Day! I know that in the US Friday is only "May Day," so if you're in the US, then the traditional May Pole can represent "the shaft" that you are getting by having to work on International Worker's Day.

All this, plus people losing their minds about pig flu, means that I might not be able to get to an open internet café over the weekend. If that's the case, I hope everyone is well, and we'll see you next week!

PS - If you did your own music album (see yesterday's post) and would like to share it, email it to me and I'll put them all up in a few days. I've gotten some pretty great ones so far!

PPS - For some reason, after I wrote the word "weekend," I got Loverboy's song by that name in my head. So, I share this classic with you: