Driving

So I was out with my cousin today. I can say that lots of things happened, which is good for the blog. I actually had a good time, making fun of everything that happened. So I'll stop this crappy introduction and just start, but there's one thing you should know: my cousin is learning how to drive.

We're on our way to my cousin's house--my mom and I on the back seat, the driver on the co-pilot's seat and my cousin driving--and my cousin, learning how to drive, kept making loads of mistakes, not to mention driving at 10 mph. I could've walked faster than that car. Anyway, she kept turning around to see if there were cars behind her. That's right, she TURNED AROUND instead of looking in the mirrors. So the driver tells her "hey, use the mirrors, that's what they're there for" and my cousin said "but it's that I can't see well through this one *points at near mirror* or that one *points at far mirror*... and well, this one neither *points at middle viewer*" so the driver immediately hit back "well, that's fine, don't use any mirrors. next time, just get out of the car, see if there's anyone behind you, get back in, and then turn." I can see her doing that next time.

So later on we're out again, this time my cousin, my aunt and myself. We're off to have an ice cream at the 4D and my cousin is telling us how she crashed in the US (doesn't exactly inspire confidence when the driver's telling you that she crashed in the US... if you crash in the US you will most certainly crash here in Venezuela), and she started heating up until the punchline "and then they were going to suicide me...!" That's right, they were going to suicide her. That's even worse than Ercole's "I'm going to suicide myself." It's so out there that I can't even come up with a funny thing for it, it's that illogical.

Later on during that same trip, the mirror situation came up again. This time she said that "she didn't like using them because the cars looked very close." My aunt cleared it up for her "well, that's because they are close!" Didn't think of that, did she?

Here's something I noticed. I've noticed this before, but today I actually wrote it down so I remembered to mention it. Have you noticed how sometimes cars keep moving forward bit by bit when the light is red? It's like they're waiting on a minute to just speed through. The thing is, that they move forward so much that by the time the light changes to green they're almost half way across the street. Beats the purpose of traffic lights, doesn't it? So Venezolano...

On a closing note, I'd like to tell you a story of when I was in the US some years back. I was about 10 years old, and I had had something not so good to eat, so my stomach was misbehaving. It was Christmas day, actually, and we had just gotten our presents. My cousin got this teddy bear specially made to sleep with. We were only kids, so we were sharing the bed, and then after opening presents and roaming around, we went to bed. So I go on this magnificent journey that is my dream and I'm suddenly woken up by screams. Why? Well, on my sleep I happened to puke on my cousin's brand new bear. Right on it. LOL. It was cleaned up and washed and everything, but she would never again hold that bear.

American "Soccer"

So I was watching this friendly game between DC United and Chelsea (yes, I was that bored). American commentary of football (or soccer) really pisses me off. There have been other occasions when I've tuned in for a while to watch the MLS because there's truly nothing to watch on the telly, but I usually tune out in minutes because of they way the American's express themselves. This guy scored a goal, and what does he do for his post-goal celebration? He swings an imaginary bat, imagining he hit a home run. Different sport, buddy!

Another time I saw ESPN put up these statistics, something like GPP's (Goals Passes Performed) instead of assists. Why would you use such a term as GPP's? RBI's. Bastard Americans can't tell the difference! Again, different sport!

So today I'm watching that game, and Chelsea lose the ball to the American team (yay!) and the guy comments "well, that's a turnover by DC..." and I'm like "WTF!? Now we're playing basketball!? How about Chelsea lost possesion or DC have taken possesion of the ball?" No, it's a turnover. That just pisses me off and it just goes to show that football (proper football, not "American Football") should not be played in the United States, it's an unsult to all other countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, and South America that do play the real thing. That's right, keep on playing "football" with your hands.

Oh, and what's up with "All Star Games"???

Thinking Disabled

So I was at Sambil yesterday. Don't you hate it when there's no space at all in the parking lot, yet there's that disabled space where nobody ever parks? I'll tell you why it's always empty. There aren't many crippled in Venezuela, and the ones that are don't drive. Venezuelan's are too lazy to be arsed to. So I was thinking, perhaps we can take advantage of that open space on those crowded days (that would be every day, there's no other place in Valencia to go to). Always keep a cane in your car, so that when you park there you get down on your cane and walk slowly, look a bit grumpy and there you go. You've taken advantage of that space. Once you're in the mall you can put your cane away and go about with your business. It's a brilliant idea! And the security don't care enough to do anything about it if they find out you really aren't crippled.

You can't underestimate the power of influences. Lately, Tiny and Rodrigo have been hanging out and Calabria and I have been hanging out. We got together yesterday at Carrillo's goodbye party. As it turns out, Rodrigo was boring and staying stupid things (influenced by Tiny) and Calabria was being extremely mean (influenced by me). Tiny suggested that we perhaps should change partners so we could all influence each other... on second thought, I'd rather not.

In that same party, we're talking about our upcoming trip to Florida, and Tiny asks "how are you going?" I answered "we're swimming, pajuo." What kind of a question is that? What, now we're Cuban?

Calabria and I were having something to eat at Papis, and we're talking about whatever, and all of a sudden we shut up for a couple of seconds. During that pause, this woman sitting behind us yells "eco, guevon!" Perhaps it was Tiny reincarnated in a female form?

Banking De-evolution

So I was at the bank today. It felt like a total waste of time. Why? Because I was in there for 2 bloody hours and in order to get something very simple accomplished. Doesn't that happen to you all the time? You go for the simplest thing and then you have to wait and wait and wait because the people in front of you seem to take hours with their thing. But, it's not always their faults, most of the times it's that the employees are utter useless. Oh, and the male ones are the worst. They won't cooperate with you, they'll be cold to you, they'd swear at you if they could get away with it. On the other hand, the female employees are very helpful, but if you've noticed they like to digress a lot. Oh, well, that's the price you have to pay. I seriously think that I'd be better off with my money under my matress.

Can you believe this woman gave me 45 minutes to sign seven papers? That's right, that was in case I wanted to recreate the EXACT signature without any mistakes. Perhaps recheck it, and if it didn't match up perfectly to come up with this new technology to flawlessly erase it and then try again. I swear, I bet I could've done that with all that time!

I was alone in this room doing that (so I guess I was being held hostage?), and the phone kept ringing... and ringing... and ringing! It was driving me insane! Nobody would pick up! And the person would keep on calling! And yet nobody would pick up! I wonder if the woman who buzzes also calls aggressively to drive me nuts... Anyway, I figured out the perfect way to torture people, and it's very economical. Lock them up in a room. In this room, there are three locked cabinets with phones inside. Then simply call and call and call. I guarantee it'll be more efficient than anything else you try.

The only good thing about the trip to the bank was this girl that was working there. She was good looking, and I was wondering if I should hit on her (after all, I had 44 minutes left over from the 45 given to sign the papers), but then it hit me. 18 is perhaps one of the worst ages to hit on women. This girl was probably 24-25, which means I would be too young. Women usually look for older man, so at 18 you would have the chance to date 18 and under, and the unders are a risky business. And you know that the prime for women (at least for me) is 23, and that's out of your reach (usually). So you can travel alone, drink, drive, but not hit on women on their prime. That sucks. The best age is 22, I believe. That way you can reach all the way down to 18 year old, and yet get away with 23's. Until then, you can amuse yourself by travelling out of the country, then hiring a car to drive around and stop somewhere for a drink.

Musicology

So not too much happening today. I woke up at 6am to call the university to arrange some things with the housing, and then went back to bed at around 7:30. Then I woke up at 4:30pm. Now you know why not too much happened. I'd tell you about my dreams, but then I'd scare you off (or you'd think I'm a complete nut, although you probably think that already).

Actually, Calabria came over to bring me my plane ticket (yeah, I'm going on vacations to Florida!) late tonight. We had arranged that he'd also bring Led Zeppelin BBC Sessions with him, as that's a CD I've been wanting for quite some time now and it turns out his brother had it. When he gets here he tells me that he forgot, so what do I do? Well, I get in the car and tell him I'm going to go to his apartment to pick it up and then come back. So he doesn't resist much and so we go... and midway I start to think about what I did. So I left the door to my apartment open, the TV in my room on, my computer running and all the lights on. Also, I'm wearing these old shorts with a wrinkled shirt and sandals. Oh, that was quite an idea... Everything ended up alright, though. His family didn't see me like that as I stayed outside while he went in and got the CDs. If they had seen me dressed like that they would've most likely given my ticket to somebody else (and I wouldn't have blamed them).

You know that a couple of weeks ago I went into a record store with a friend just to check a couple of things out. I started browsing through the CDs and recommeding records to my friend. As it turns out, I pretty much have about half of the albums in the record store on my hard drive. The good ones, anyway, none of that reggaeton shit.

Also, DIRECTV has these music channels, where they continually put music depending on the genre or style of the channel. After some time of observation, I have come up with theory. This theory states that a song on my hard drive will play on one of the 5 selected channels (Rock n' Vinyl, Classic Rock, 70's, 80's, 90's) with an interval of no more than 13 minutes. An artist that I have on my hard drive will be played on one of the 5 selected channels (same as before) with an interval of no more than 7 minutes. An artist will play on the Classic Rock channel with an interval of no more than 19 minutes. I am serious, I'll be any amount of money that you want that this will happen, come by to test it.

By the way, referring to the post about FTV, I haven't checked at midnights to see if anything happens, but I can confirm that porn is played on Cosmo (another female network) at 12am. I told you, it's a woman thing...

Licking Frogs

So today I went out with my friends for a drink. That was pretty alright, and after those couple of hours I took off with Calabria to go to his apartment to pick up some stuff. We call Rodrigo to let him know that we'll pick him up at his place, and he says that he's going to check if his mom was awake. There's a 99% chance that he won't come along with us. We call him later on, and guess what, he can't come. So he's dumped us again... oh well.

So Calabria and I just roam around the streets of Valencia looking for something interesting. What to do, what to do...? Nothing, really, there's nothing to do in Valencia. But then, while passing by Las Cuatro Avenidas Calabria claims to have seen a frog. I, of course, dismiss that claim as an illusion. So he starts circling around this island to prove me wrong... we go around once, twice, three times... and finally guess what, he was right! There was this huge frog! I'm not kidding, it was the biggest frog I've ever seen! And mind, I did get a lot of frogs in my other house, but this was by far the biggest one I've seen. Just to give you a mental picture, it was so big that it didn't need to hop from the road onto the sidewalk, it could just crawl up there... now that's big! So what do we do after we find it? We chase it (we're still in the car, by the way). That's right, we go slowly behind it and the creature just hops and hops and hops. Eventually it makes it's way onto the grass and that's when the chasing stopped. It was quite an experience, though. It's not every day that you see frogs the size of softballs. So we have seen dogs, cats, rats and frogs the same day... Valencia is turning into a zoo. What's next, a tiger (although we did see this dog that looked like a large cat... maybe that was a small tiger...)?

After that we decide to go to Farmatodo (as nothing else is open) and look around. As we're getting out of the car I tell Calabria that "we're not buying anything, we're just... erm..." I couldn't come up with the word (window shopping). So what do I do? "... leche vitrine." That's about as bad as it gets. Me needing to speak French to finish a conversation. So I ask him what that was called in English... the best he could come up with was "window licking." Yep, they better pay us for that work.

We didn't lick any windows, however, as Calabria ended up buying a Special Special Edition chocolate. That's right, a Special Special Edition. That is, once upon a time there was this regular chocolate, and someone decided to make a special edition of that regular chocolate. That wasn't enough, though, so they came up with a special edition of that special edition. That must've been the crappiest chocolate ever...

To Say the Least

So I had a very peculiar day. I really couldn't come up with a title for this entry because so many unrelated things happened. This will be a very long entry, so I've decided to highlight the main topic of each adventure so you can read what you want and skip what you don't want. Aren't I nice?

It's about 4pm and I'm just going about my own business (probably listening to music, can't recall) and I get a call from Ercole. What does he want? He was interviewing a model and he needed questions, and he was asking me for them. I seriously don't know what I would ask a model... I think I wouldn't be interested in asking her any questions at all. After all, models are for looking at, not asking, right? Anyway, what's the sense in asking an 18 year old guy to ask a model questions? You know better than that! The only questions an 18 year old can ask (or is interested in asking, anyway) are 1.) "so, are those real?" 2.) "do you have any hidden piercings?" 3.) "can I buy you a drink?" I don't think any of those would be acceptable questions for a magazine interview (unless, of course, she's a Playboy ""model""). Actually, I think those questions are not exclusively reserved for teenagers. I was chatting with Ercole's cousin at the time (who had just turned 20 that day) and he pretty much told me to tell him to ask him those same questions (or similar).

As I was chatting with Pedro (Ercole's cousin), his birthday party came up and I was invited. With nothing further to do, I accepted to go (although I forgot that I had already accepted an invitation from another friend to go to another party... but well, what can you do?). So we go (Ercole gave me the ride) and when we get there I notice he's getting friendly with this girl (who's not bad looking at all). So when he's done, I ask him who that girl was and he tells me it's his cousins girlfriend. So as it turns out he was hitting on his cousin's girlfriend... but like his uncle said, "if she's dating one in the family you can share" (note: does not necessarily represent the author's opinion).

While we were all having a friendly chat about technology in the living room, this guy with five names (the one I remember is Francesco) comes over and starts to speak Italian. Meanwhile, he's alternating between beer and gin. So he starts this debate with Ercole's uncle on whether he's gay or not (he said he wasn't, although many people including myself think otherwise) or something similar, I don't speak Italian I just understand a bit. So they have this heated debate which later ended with an expressive "vafanculo!" You could tell he wasn't well, and he would later go on to break a bottle, cutting his finger in the process. Not that that would stop him from further drinking and exhibitionism...

So Pedro disappears with two other girls, leaving his girlfriend behind. She gets understandably upset, although she was also over reacting (as you'd expect from a girl). So, right at that moment, all the girls unite, it was amazing. And what are they talking about? Ways to castrate the poor guy, even though they have no clue what's happened to him. He might be locked in the trunk of a car on the way to Caracas for all they know. I'm telling you, if you ever need to take over something, say a property (lets assume you're not Chavista (I hope I don't go to jail for saying that)) your best bet it to unite women and they most certainly will be successful. Ercole would later find out that if you don't do what they ask you will be in some serious shit (they staged a coup while in his car and took him for a drive... if you know what I mean). I'm not sure what went on in that car, but I knew they had assumed control when I received a call from Ercole and there was reggaeton in the background (he agrees with me on reggaeton). Right after I had noticed he uttered "the girls have staged a coup d'etat... I won't be back anytime soon." So it was...

When they finally made it back I approached Ercole who was still in his car, shouted "blasphemy!" for putting that crap on his car, and then asked him if he had gotten lucky (although to be honest, three of the four girls were ugly... so unless he had scored with Pedro's girlfriend it would've been more like "unlucky"). He never fully responded my question, but I did let him know that if he was planning a move for his cousin's girlfriend it was now or never because she was vulnerable. No, I'm not always such a bastard... oh, what the hell, who am I kidding... Anyway, he didn't make his move, so now he's stuck with the missus in France. But seriously, I'm not always such a bastard.

Then we all go out to eat (at 1 in the morning and fitting 7 people in a Clio) at the Mansion de la Arepa (or Drunkard's Paradise as it's open 24 hours). Nothing much happened there, for the exception of the girls making fun of me because I refused to speak in Spanish.

On our way back, though, this girl gets a call from her mom. Turns out there's some guy laying on the lawn in front of her house. So we go there to check it out. It turns out it was one of the guys that was at Pedro's party previously, he managed to walk all the way to the girls house, walk in through the open gate (that's right, OPEN) and just fall asleep there. He would claim that he was beat up by some bloke trying to take away his phone, but we all knew that he was just going through a proper "borrachera." Ercole then had to drive the drunkard home. Had I been him, I would've driven to the nearest bridge and then thrown him overboard... not that he would've noticed.

I finally made it home at 3am. Right when I was going to get out of the car, Ercole told me that he had gotten the model's number and that she was clubbing... maybe we could join her. We think about if for a moment, we might actually go clubbing with this model and then who knows? Weirder things have happened. Then we realize: Ercole's 13 year old brother is in the car. That was the end of that dream.