Thanksgiving at my boss'

Spending Thanksgving house-sitting my boss' place was an interesting experience, not just because being responsible for an apartment reaffirmed my intentions and aspirations of having my own place, but also for the discovery of a new marvelous drink! I was getting ready for shabbat, and I couldn't find any kosher wine for the kiddush, not even Manischewitz! Seeing that I didn't have enough time to cross the city to get a bottle of wine, I decided to buy another alcoholic beverage -anyway I needed to toast over the dinner, eh? and, looking for bottles of SKYY Cosmo, I came across bottles of a russian ready-to-drink vodka named Коктейль Молотова, of which I bought three bottles of tropical fruits cocktail, which proved to be EXCELLENT -I got sarataco in the snap of a finger! OMG! Excellent Водка!

Mom, I'm on TV!

Added: Wednesday, 22 November, 2006, 13:05 GMT 13:05 UK

Pierre Gemayel was part of a new generation of Lebanese politicians who wanted their country, the jewel of the Middle East to develop free from any foreign influence, in a country where only Lebanese had a say in the affairs of the country, like Rafik Hariri, George Hawi, Samir Kassir and Gibran Tueni. Those responsibles for this murder are only interested in keeping Lebanon unstable and on the verge of another civil war. On the last civil war, Syria benefited from Lebanon's divisions..

Carlos, Caracas

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This was a post I made as a comment on an article about the murder of the Lebanese Minister of Industry. member of the Kata'eb Party and a prominent Anti-Syrian Pierre Amine Gemayel (بيار أمين الجميل) and its direct inlfuence on the ongoing crisis in Lebanon. True, I am a support of the Kata'eb Party, but apart from that personal opinion, I consider that this is all related to a complot of the Syrian secret service to eliminate all the main anti-syrian politicians in Lebanon, a trend that started last year with ther assasination of Prime Minister Hariri (a muslim). Definitely this is not a religious issue, but a political one. Pierre was trying to have the United Nations investigate the killing of Mr. Hariri and punish the responsibles; in my own opinion, Bashar al-Assad and the guys at Hezbollah are involved, because they seem to be the ones who will benefit the most from the comeback of the Syrian control over Lebanon. Such a beautiful country has always tried to be controlled by foreigners, and its unique culture, a melting pot of religions that is as wonderful as delicate. Israel's role? its only wish is to have Hezbollah far from its boders and not shooting Katyushas to the villages in the North, wherever they may come from, so it's unlikely they did it... nah, they would haven't done it and moreover, the Kata'eb militias collaborated a lot with the Zahal during the brief Israeli invasion of Lebanon so there's no point in questioning Israel. Anyway, this murder will only increase the instability in Lebanon A LOT and hence on the region. S**t on Gemayel's killers, whoever did it!

After I posted my message, a guy named James Fletcher, from the BBC called me, to see if I could participate on a chat with some experts on the Middle East about the crisis, ask my questions and express my point of view. Man, I felt like I was at the House of Commons! There was an expert from a think-tank, a member of the European Parliament (yes, European and British, hehehe), a scholar from Oxford and a journalist that passed lots of his life in the Middle East, plus a guy from SIngapore, a lady from India, an Australian and a Belgian on the phone, like me. With all those british-like accents flowing into our conversation, I felt like the Duke of Pork, hehehe :-) It was quite an experience; even though I was NOT on TV, I was .. that was weird, airing my ideas on TV without actually being on camera. Too bad I couldn't watch it!

Violante! :-)

I hadn't seen her since the day of my graduation, which was a while ago -Paola was just a baby then and see, now she's a tall and beautiful girl (definitely she is a mix of her parents Angelo and Norka), and you haven't seen her singing on the karaoke yet!

My friendship with Norka started LONG time ago, when we were hired with 30 other college students from my hometown to work for an IBM parner responsible for providing tech support to all the journalists presents in the VII Iberoamerican Summit of Heads of State and Government, which was held in Margarita Island in November 1997. We were chosen then according to our tech skills, but even though I was not a lab assistant like the rest of them, I was chosen because one of the girls in the group, who happened to be our supervisor's girlfriend, studied with me and knew I spoke English; since it was an international event and despite most of the journalists spoke spanish or portuguese, they expected quite a few journalists from the US, Canada, Europe and Japan, which in fact happened. Anyway, our friendship has grown after that in such a way that I almost became Paola's godfather, hehehe. We studied at the same school but we chose slightly different careers but due to the fact that I moved to Caracas and Norka finding herself in her new role in life as a mom, a woman and a IT professional, we lost contact for sometime. The last time I went to Barquisimeto I was supposedly giving her a letter from Manena, who sent me a parcel from Puerto Rico in which a letter was for Norka. Still, I left the letter in Caracas, but then we decided to have breakfast together. Oh man, it was one of the BEST breakfasts I have ever had in my life; well, no wonder it took from 9 AM to almost 2 PM!

And Paola... oh my G"d! What a beautiful and smart girl! Norka is definitely raising her very well, making her an independent and mature girl, yet still a young and playful one. She is very talented, and she seems to be quite good at catching foreign languages (something that she must have inherited from me, because neither Angelo nor Norka speak another language fluently) because I realised that she knows quite a few Britney Spears' (I still don't understand how Norka lets her daughter listen to such an untalented bitch..) and songs, and also some others from Justin Timberlake, the BSB and the mexican group RBD. You gotta see her on the Karaoke!

Since there were so many thing to talk, we ran out of time and we didn't finish our update, so we decided to continue our meetings when I return to Barquisimeto for the Holidays and hopefully I'll give Norka the letter from Manena. I just hope she can get it before Manena sees her, because she's going to Barquisimeto for the holidays also, hehehe. Oh, Violante? That's an internal joke. When Manena and I started to work as research assistant (myself) and lab assistant (Manena), we used to talk openly about sex; we had never considered it a taboo and alas, we were in the lab all together, but Norka always refused to even make a comment, she always said we were dirty and obscene, like Violante Cabrales De Albuquerque used to criticize Xica Da Silva and when alone, almost masturbate while thinking of Xica's husband and the Enquirer, with the difference that Norka was having sex like a rabbit with Angelo (which eventually produced Paola Goretti) and we thought she was chaste as a virgin! Manena and I were so cheated!

Meteoro was my cab driver!

Spending the weekend with my family was really good, as usual, especially because I had the chance to go shopping with Uncle Tunco to buy stuff needed for the house, like painting for the fences and walls, varnish, wood stain and new paint brushes. For the first time I was paying everything, which made me quite happy because I felt that it was my responsibility :-D I told my uncle not to pay anything under the condition that he finds someone to do the painting job -he cannot do it himself either

Apart from that, I visited my dad but I actually spoke to him for less than an hour because he was leaving for a meeting since now he is the security manager of the regional campaign supporters of Manuel Rosales in my state, which made me even happier since dad is one repented chavista -when I found out he voted for Chávez in 1998, I almost killed him .. man, that was the quarrel of the decade! B"H my dad is back to sanity :-)

On Sunday, I spent the morning talking to my friend Norka at her place, but those moments deserve a special post. Afterwards I headed to the bus station to catch a carrito por puesto to Caracas, and to my luck and happy surprise, I found a former college senior classmate and his girlfriend, who for some reason hated me back then and now turned out to be the nicest of the girls! Anyway, we took one cab with a driver .. oh heavens, what a driver! Well, he didn't really look like Speed Racer (nor he was that young) but definitely I felt I was being driven from Barquisimeto to Caracas on the Mach Five, hahaha! He drove at about 140 Kph (88 mph) almost all the way, even on the segments where it was raining, and kinda competing with the other cars, and rejoicing when he passed another fast car on the highway. Then we we got closer to Caracas, he tried to avoid the queues for the tunnels that access Caracas (Caracas is surrounded by steep mountains that make the city be in a deep and narrow valley, which has determined its vertical growth) so we took a detour through La Cortada del Guayabo, a road FULL of sharp curves that passes through the mountains and next to a water reservoir and end up near the bus station of La Bandera in Caracas.

Well, let me tell you something -this guy was practically having an orgasm while driving at more than 60 mph in such a thin and dark mountain road. Gustavo's girlfriend was so f***in' scared that she got a headache and her muscles were tense as a fence, especially after I said that the area near the water resevoir of La Mariposa was used a lot for witchraft purposes, which we could even see from the road, candles, people and inciense smoke. She was terrified, and as soon as we got to Caracas, we stopped at the first metro station and got off the car, not before she told him "Sir, I would NEVER, EVER take a ride in your car again!". That was funny, especially taking into account that this guy had a Mitsubishi Signo (a Mitusbishi Lancer VII) and not the Mach Five!