Ha! Last night I was watching an interview on BBC with a lady who opposes abortions. They were interviewing her because in the past it seems that she used to work in an abortion clinic and did some pro-choice stuff in court and now she thinks differently.

She was a bit fucked up cause some of the things she was saying wasn't making much sense.

At one point the interviewer asks her (not with these words exactly, but the idea is) "but how come in this book you're quoted as saying xxx when now you're telling us yyy?".

This lady couldn't believe those words had come from her own mouth, and just laughed at it and said "I must've been stoned when I said that!". Ha!

I need to apologize. Yesterday I wrote about the bitch in the reception desk at the place where I live.

But this morning I went again to the same desk, and talked to a different girl. I found out that they don't have weekly contracts! They only have daily and monthly.

But I'm sure last year I saw they had weekly!

Anyway, I unjustly called that girl a bitch. I didn't do it in her face, only in my "heart and mind" like the Americans like to say. I offer my apologies to the world for this misleading statement.

What a bitch.

The place where I live is like a hotel, although you can stay for long periods as if it were an apartment. I've been there for nearly a year, and finally am about to leave.

So this morning I went to talk to the girl at the counter to tell her that I want to extend my stay not until the end of April, but only for one or two more weeks. And what she does is give me the contract I always sign to extend for one more month. It already had my name and the dates (ending by the end of April). I repeated to her that I only wanted to stay until day X, not until the end of April.

She said that it's okay, if I sign that paper, I can leave on the 8th.

Oh yeah it's okay I can leave on the 8th if I sign that paper, but also if I sign that paper, which is a contract, I have the obligation to pay for one full month's rent rather than just two more weeks! How stupid! I've been a good customer to them for almost one year, and this is the way they want to milk me?

A couple of days ago I was watching a special BBC program about migration. In general, most of the guests were talking in favor. There was only one guy who was decidedly against. This was a Danish polititian.

This was a total jerk, and really made Danish people look bad. I have some Danish friends, and they're not at all like him. Shame on him!

He was saying some bullshit about muslims bringing different customs, and hordes of people from poor countries coming just to enjoy their government's generous social security.

I thought, dude, if you oppose receiving inmigrants, at least you should be decent enough not to send your own people as inmigrants to other countries all over the world. Danish people not only live in other continents (I personally know Danish people in Asia and America, aside from Europe), but they even take possesion of land and turn them into colonies!

This is decidedly a third world country. But I came here for love. Do I still have the right to complain?

Two days ago I went with my brother's secretary to a park to inquire about setting up a restaurant. The people in the manager's office were absolutely uninterested in us. But it is through businesses like the ones we were proposing that they make money. People were not very willing to answer questions. Even if they asked us to take a sit in front of a desk, whoever was in front of us first, wasn't very interested in talking to us. He wasn't paying all of his attention to us. Then for some reason, he left, and we had to be asking in a loud voice from our desk to the lady in another desk who wouldn't get close to us. Then we finally found another lady who did get close to us, but wouldn't sit down. She was answering to us just standing, like ready to leave. I had to get all of the information from her little by little. She wasn't volunteering any information to encourage us to rent space from them.

Then today I called reception in my hotel to fix something related to the TV. They first sent some guy who knocked on my door, didn't even say hello, he came into my room, I explained to him what was wrong with the TV, kind of smiled, went on to grab my telephone, and left. He didn't say anything to me. He didn't even close the door. Anything. I don't think he even tried to understand. He was in my room just because they'd told him I had something to fix. A really stupid guy. After a few minutes a different guy came, and he did a good job. If they have one idiot who cannot do shit, and one that does a nice job, why the hell did they send me first the one who is useless?

Huh, I went to watch "Monster" (with Charlize Theron), and I liked it very much. The monster was really good. Charlize truly looked as if she was kind of out of her mind, especially the look in her eyes. The Oscar she won is very well deserved.

But the story itself was very good too. Even in the middle of her craziness, Charlize's character was able to do things for love, or at least part of the motivation for the things she was doing was love. And even at the very end of the movie, she's still protecting her girlfriend, trying not to get her involved as a guilty party. That's love, isn't it?

Fucking idiots.

When these terrible bombings happened in the Spanish commuter trains, the Spanish prime minister said that foreign bomb victims and their families would be granted Spanish citizenship. I really don't understand what's the logic behind this. What does being a victim to a terror attack has to do with immigration/naturalization paperwork?

Anyway, aparently the way it's going to work is that illegal foreigners who were bomb victims are going to get permanent residence. And only the foreigners who were already legal residents will get Spanish citizenship. And this benefit includes spouse, parents and children of the victim. Okay, fair enough, that's very generous.

A few days ago I was reading a Peruvian newspaper. Three Peruvian citizens had died in the blasts, and it said that their relatives were disappointed at the way this citizenship thing was going to work. When they first heard about it, they thought that automatically everybody was going to be granted a Spanish passport and would be able to move to Spain. Ah-ah, not so fast. Those benefits are only for spouses, parents and children who were already living in Spain at the moment of the explosion.

I read about some cousins and aunties who were unhappy that they cannot go to live in Madrid! What the hell? What kind of logic is that? The cousin and the aunt who live in South America thought that in the name of love they were going to get Spanish citizenship? Ha!

These freaking locals are really a study case. In some things they're really nice, but in others they just suck.

Point in question: their annoying custom of boarding trains / elevators / busses / shopping centers, etc. following their golden rule "ME FIRST".

This morning I was about to leave my place of residence. To do this, I have to open by hand some glass door. I saw a local young guy at the opposite side of the door, but strangely enough, he wasn't trying to open it by himself. I thought maybe he's just waiting to meet some friend outside. But as soon as I opened the door, he tried to come inside EVEN BEFORE I'D GONE OUT, AND WHILE I WAS HOLDING THE DOOR (not holding the door by himself)! What a fucking idiot.

Then a couple of days ago, again in my place of residence, I was in the bottom floor of the building, and went to the elevator. I pressed the button to call it, and patiently waited in front of the button panel (not directly in front of the elevator door). While I was at it, some very impatient local guy came, and was walking in circles, at one point he was waiting for the elevator right in front of me, then more circles, etc. Then he finally settled to wait right in front of the elevator door (just a few inches from the door).

Then came from behind a friend of his... When the door finally opened, there was an old white guy inside. Like I said, we were in the bottom floor, so obviously, whoever appears behind those doors will want to get off. The two local guys instead of opening some space for the old guy to come out, they crammed inside before this poor old fellow could come out! He complained a bit like saying in English "Hey, what's your problem?".

The two idiots replied very thoughlessly "What do you mean our problem". "If you are polite, you should wait for people who are trying to come out". (That makes sense, and isn't asking for too much, isn't it?) "No, we are not polite, fuck you".

I'm not kidding you the local guys finished the conversation by yelling at the polite old guy "Fuck you". I couldn't believe all that was happening right in front of my eyes...

But that was not all... Guess what? The two mother fuckers had caused all of that just to go one floor up! And the stairs were just next to the elevator, and don't need to wait anything!

With people like that, it's no wonder this is a third world country.

Fuck, I got a terrible diarrhea again! Hey, I'm usually pretty diarrhea resistant, but this land really has some powerful bug that knocks me out good.

Why do I say that I'm very diarrhea resistant? Cause the times I've travelled abroad with friends, usually they'd be the only ones to get diarrhea.

Last night I went with my brother's secretary for dinner and had two (just two) fresh oysters, plus other things. This morning my stomach was okay, although I shit very little, almost nothing. Then I went to a friend's office, had lunch there (bought by their all-purpose helper), and then in the evening when I come back to my place, I have this freaking loose stool.

It's so bad I had to go to the loo five times in the same evening (usually I don't do it at night), and all of the times, it was completely liquid. That's bad.

I wonder where did they go to buy my food today?

Gee, I wanted to smoke a bit tonight, but under this conditions, I better abstain. I'm afraid that if I get high, I might have some embarrasing "accident" while in bed.

Premier-elect blasts Iraq war

Ahhh, finally these polititians get what they deserve from the voters. I'm so glad that Aznar is gone! How is it possible that the leader of a democratic country makes his countrymen go to a war that 90% of the population rejects? That doesn't ring like democracy to me, and finally, he got the boot!

I just wish this kind of thing happened more often (not the terror attacks, I mean the kicking out). We need that in Japan and the US very urgently.

Soldier who refused to return to Iraq to surrender in North Miami

This is a soldier we should all be proud of. I'm really impressed.

Just a while ago I was walking in the basement of this office building. Ha! I've been coming to this building for nearly 10 months now, and I didn't know until today that there were shops in the basement! Well, they're nothing great, but at least, there's something to look at! There's even a modest food court.

One of the businesses down there in the basement has some tables outside. Outside meaning in the basement, but with direct access to the street outside. The broad stairs from the outside lead directly to these tables underground. So I saw a bunch of people having lunch, and there was this stray dog laying next to one of the customers. He was patiently waiting as if the customer was his master. How cute!

He reminded me of my friend's dog, which I used to take care of for a couple of months. This was one very lovely dog, except that at dinner time, sometimes I'd go to eat seating on the sofa while watching TV. That dog instead of waiting laying on the floor like the dog I saw today, would climb on the sofa and try to steal food from my dish. I really loooooved that dog, but trying to steal food wasn't good. I guess it didn't help either that at the end I couldn't resist her begging eyes, and after finishing eating, I'd let her lick my dish!

Not so long ago I read something about the Russian pop group TATU. These girls were complaining that their former manager kind of exploited them. He was very much into creating scandals in order to increase their sales. Well, too bad for them cause this manager was the owner of the name "TATU", so since they no longer work together, they can't continue using that name either.

One of the girls was saying that that guy spent way too much time figuring out what outrageous thing to create for them. She didn't like that people would be distracted into those stupid stories, cause then they didn't pay too much attention to their "art". Ha ha ha! So it seems that now they're trying to be comedians too, huh?

Lionel Richie's estranged wife wants $300,000 a month

This is really disgusting. There're hundreds of millions of people in the world who have to survive on US$1.00 each day, which would make US$31.00 a month per person, US$93.00 for the wife and two kids... yet she wants US$300,000.00 EACH MONTH?

600 bucks each month just for massages? My friends do that to me for free! I also read in another place that she claims to spend $450 each month on her nails. How come? One nice nail clipper costs $5.00, and you don't need to buy a new one each time. She was also saying that it costs her $15,000 - $20,000 to go to visit their kid at his boarding school in Colorado, and she tries to do that at least once a month. How can that be so freaking expensive?

There is something very wrong here.

The newspapers here have a "letters to the editor" section that is rather strange. They don't limit the topics to things previously discussed in an article in the same newspaper. They can be just about anything.

So a couple of days ago I found a letter from a guy who was bitching that his cable TV company does not carry Fox News. At first I thought that his mentioning of Fox News was just an illustration of the channels he's missing. But no! He really wanted to have that channel in particular because he says that the only two news channels that his cable company provides him are very biased. He "only" gets CNN and BBC. Ha ha ha!

Wow, "Zatoichi" (座頭市) was very nice. There were some strange details though. For example, many of the characters would speak differently from one another, as if using a different dialect. I found the geisha to speak in very clear and nice Tokyo accent, rather than Kyoto dialect.

Even though the movie is Japanese, it was clearly influenced by India, as at the end all of the characters who were still alive were dancing for some unknown reason. And they were not dancing some traditional Japanese thing, they were dancing some modern rendition of tap dance. They were even wearing modified wooden sandals, so that they would make the clicking sound that is characteristic of tap.

If you have spare time to watch it, I recommend it.

Ummm, last night I finally got to watch "Mystic River". Very good film, a bit intriguing, with a rather unexpected ending. I wish I'd gone with somebody cause there were some details I didn't understand.

Why was it titled "Mystic River"? Perhaps that's the name of the river near the neighborhood?

And who's the woman who was calling Sean (Kevin Bacon's character)? Why was she usually mute on the phone?

Anyway, I'm rather happy as right now there're several movies I'm actually interested in watching. I still have "The Butterfly Effect", and "Zatoichi".

I'm just intrigued by Zatoichi. The advertisement shows a blind and, get this, blond Japanese samurai? First thing that comes to mind is that this must be cheesy, but the advertisement says that it has won several awards in movie festivals. I have to see it.

In the last few days I've met some nice guys through my brother.

The first occasion was though his workplace, trying to set me up to finally join his company. This guy he introduced me to is the assistant to some big shot in the company and had some questions in his mind on how to create something with the computers. He was asking me cause his field is not computers but economy. Very interesting guy, he just came from the States, where he'd recently gotten his Ph.D. I believe I was able to provide good answers to his questions, and left a good impression. What surprised me though is that even though he is in a position in which he doesn't need to kiss my ass at all, he was extremely nice to me. When we were chitchating about local gyms, he said I could give a try to his because he can bring a guest a couple of times each month free of charge. When we were talking about commuting, he said that he mostly doesn't use his car because traffic is so bad, so I can drive it if I feel like(?). Okay, that one was a bit exagerated from him. And then, he said that as a token of thankfulness, he wanted to take me to a Thai restaurant in a luxury hotel near my place(?). Very nice. I think I'll enjoy having him around if I'm finally able to join that company.

Then one night I was out dinning with some of my brother's friends. Many of them I'd never met before. Then at one point we were chitchatting about golf. One of the guys asked me if I play, and so on... and then he said that he'd take me to play... even though I told him I didn't bring my clubs, he said not a problem... he even said that it'd be on him, and so on. He repeated many many times to give him a call to get together and play golf. I don't think it was just some lie to sound nice during dinner and then forget about it, he really meant it. He even said to say hello to my brother and ask him if he wants to join us two for golf. Now the sad/funny thing is that the next time I met my brother and told him about this guy, he couldn't figure out who I was talking about. I showed him his name card, and still couldn't remember!

This is funny! My high school has a guestbook/anecdote page as part of its website. This guestbook is largely uncensored (the few times people write ugly things, only sometimes are they deleted), so one day of boredom I decided to excersise my literary creativity.

I wrote something like this: When we were in our senior year, I used to have Tarot sessions in which I'd guess which of they guys were circumcized. Then I'd pay a few cents to guy XX or guy YY so that they'd follow our specimens to the restroom, and check him while he urinates. It was very funny because the days I guessed correctly, these same guys would insist that I guess for them which of the girls are virgin.

Then I signed with a false girl's name, and added a class year that is not even mine!

Today I check this website again for the first time in many months, and there's another girl of that class who has added something like: That crazy Tarot girl, it must be you zzz! Hey, I thought you were in Russia! I missed you! Kisses!

Fucking officers... I just came back from the immingration office to report, as required by law. In this country, even if you have a one year visa, you have to report to the immigration office each 90 days. For me, 90 days since the last time I visited that office is actually tomorrow, so I thought I'd be all right.

But when I arrived there, they actually counted the days since I entered this country (180 days ago), not since my last visit to the immigration office (90 days ago!). I don't understand. If 90 days ago I was supposed to report as well, how come nobody in that office told me to do so while I was there?

I had a stamp in my passport dated 90 days ago proving that I'd really been to that office 90 days ago, so after muuuch muuuch time, and consultation with four or five different officers, common sense prevailed, and they let me finish the paperwork without paying the fine! Imagine, a fine! In my case, it would've been at least US$50, and could've been as high as US$125! Ridiculous.

No, I should apologize. They may fuck in private, I'm sure. But they're not "fucking officers" in the disdainful sense of the phrase. I don't think they had in mind milking me for some bribe nor anything. It's just that their way of counting the days is a bit "funny". That's all.

By the way... I remember my brother had told me that he'd bring me onboard his company, and once there I wouldn't even need to show up in person to complete these nor other paperworks. I'm gonna take care of you! Everything's gonna be wonderful!

Three months later I'm still kicking cans in the street and he's even talking about finding me work in yet another poorer country! Great move! That way you can forget about me once and for all!

If that's the case, instead of me quitting my high paying job in Japan to come and start up something with him here in this strange country...

Ha! I was watching on TV a documentary about the National Guard, specifically about a bunch of guys in Arkansas who had been called to serve in Iraq. Very interesting. And since it wasn't made by Fox TV, but by NHK, the Japanese broadcaster, it wasn't full of the "God bless America" kind of crap.

One of the guys they presented in the program was a church pastor. Yes, a church pastor going to kill people in Iraq! I thought in the Bible it says you're not supposed to kill! At least, that's what these guys say on daytime during their work. Who knows what they really have inside their hearts. (Like those Catholic priests who preach in public against fornication, and then in private are fucking little children. Why can't they just hire a hooker?)

Anyway, the interesting thing about his presentation is that they showed him in the middle of his church service. And although this priest was black, a good part of his congregation was white! Yes, white people in redneck Arkansas listening and singing at service led by a black priest! What's more, his wife was a loving 25 year old white lady!

When they finally had to separate, and the guy was saying good-bye to the whole family, the kids were totally white too! Not that I personally have something against black people, but we're talking here racist South! That was pretty amazing.