HIGH TECH ALARM failure

Just days after I had posted the HIGH TECH alarm, I had a break in. The HT Alarm was on the floor unbroken, whether it actually worked or not I shall never know, perhaps the guy detected the line and placed it on the floor, or maybe it fell, didn't break and the guy continued his vile crime. Anyway, I arrived home at 9.30 pm to find the bars twisted open and the window smashed. Missing: excellent JVC dvd, crappy radio cd and a couple of sweatshirts. Anger level high.
I may be obliged to move.

High Tech Alarm


My terrace has been invaded three times on occassions that I know about, missing items - a beach chair and barbecue spits - evidencing these incursions, and maybe other occassions that I don't know about. The last occured at 5am a few weeks ago, when I saw through the curtians of the French windows, the silhouette of a person trying to get through the bars which separate the terrace from the balcony, my furious shout of GET THE FUCK OUT!! surprised him enough to, indeed, get the fuck out. When I reported this to the owner of the aparment he just offered to reinforce the bars, but I don't want the bastards to get on to the terrace in the first place. Electric fencing the terrace will cost me R$620, a movement detection alarm, R$680. So I've rigged up a sophisticated high-tech alarm system myself. A large one litre beer bottle, I had to drink the beer first of course, twelve metres of fine nylon fishing line. I've placed the bottle attached to the line on a wall and secured the other end to the far wall, the line is about a metre from the ground and invisible at night. Two of these, one covering the terrace length and the other covering the width where a possible invasion may occur. A smashing beer bottle at night will wake me instantly, what I do then, I'm not exactly sure, hopefully the invader will be shocked enough just to bugger off there and then. What I would really like of course is to have the bottles filled with explosives and nasty pointy things.

Exactly now as I'm writing this, (21:45, June 20) I can hear the noise around the city, the roar of a zillion fireworks going off at the same time, the kick-off of the Grêmio v Boca Juniors match, the final for the Libertadores for the Tokyo Cup, in other words it will decide who's going to go to Tokyo for the World Clubs' Championship. Last year was won by the other PoA team, Internacional, Grêmio's city rival. The city's been gearing up for it for days (weeks in fact since the championship began). When I passed the stadium on Sunday morning there were crowds there already queueing for tickets, there were riots and mounted police were sent in when the tickets sold out.

Now all is silent, I think the match has started. I'll be alerted to a goal when I hear another roar. Trouble is I won't know who's scored, as the Internacional supporters will be supporting Boca Jnr. I guess the roar will be louder if Grêmio score. For the first match last week I really thought Grêmio had won because of the racket (three times), turned out it was Boca's win.

Grêmio need FOUR clear goals to win. Even if they win 3 - 0, they don't go to Tokyo.

Hate football meself, buggers up the traffic, keeps me awake with the blasted fireworks. Not beautiful colours and lights, just constant BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG all frinkin' night.


Being now a zillion or so miles away from Y Cap Goch and The Temple (see my last post), my local, which is not very local, is The Shamrock. Is it possible that every city in the world now has an Irish Pub? Here in PoA there are in fact now four: The Shamrock, Mulligan's, Dublin and The Cherry Blue (WOT?! An Irish pub called The Cherry Blue??). Mulligan's, Dublin and The Cherry Blue (WOT?! Etc, etc.) are in a poshe district of PoA where you have to have at least a BMW or Mercedes and dress in Armandi before people will talk to you. Mulligan's is a Hollywood replica of an Irish pub, too clean and plasticky, I went there once and asked if they have any Irish music, "We've got U2" replied the barman. Dublin just promotes live music (not Irish) and cheape(er) beer. The Cherry is a piano wine bar that, about 5 years ago, heard of the global phenomenon that was "Irish Pub" and decided to call themselves an Irish Pub, but... well, you can imagine, I mean... The Cherry Blue??
That leaves us with The Shamrock, which could be considered genuingly an Irish Pub as the owner, Simon, is Irish. It's not exactly the kind of place that you'd get a jam session with a bodhrán, fiddle, Uilleann pipes and tin whistle on a Friday night though, I don't think we can scrape together those musicians in PoA. I did try an experiment with Simon a couple of times, "Here Simon, put these cd's on" (The Chieftains, Planxty, Altan, etc.), he went for a few tracks then wouldn't have it, "scare's the customers away". Irish pub...?

Yes, I have thought about "Y Ddraig Goch Inn" here in PoA, but when I see the hours and work that Simon puts in, not to mention the Bunken Drums that he has to put up with most nights... nah, I prefer to be a customer (one of those Bunken Drums!). Oh, he does have draught Guinness, a crackin' St. Patrick's Day Party and the Joycian Society's Bloomsday meeting every 16th June.

People always ask me what I miss most about Britain. Without hesitation: PUBS and decent beer. Oh and summer festivals.
My local in Brynsadler, whenever I visited my folks, used to be The Ivor Arms, my old man would be down there without fail at 12 midday every Sunday, he was going there for nigh on 30 year, but now apparently it's "Y Draenog" posh pub /restaurant and the old man refuses to go in, don't know why, never been there meself.
My last abode in Wales was Abercwmboi, infamously known for it's Phernicite (bugger me if I can find that word in the diksh, phurni? ferni? pherni? furni?), which would spew out sulphur laden yellow smoke in the process of cleaning up our coal so that it wouldn't pollute, sweet eh? In Abercwmboi was Y Cap Goch which was decent enough, but just up the road in Cwmaman was / is the Temple Bar which looked like yer old Granny's front living room, infact I'm pretty sure it WAS yer old Granny's front living room 'cept with a bar and a few pumps of good real ale. The old dear there was about 80 something and served yer pint with a trembling hand that spilled half of it before you'd get your mits on, but no-one had the heart to protest. There were two waddling fat dogs that the old dear used to constantly feed chocolate to, hence waddling and fat.
Oh, must dash, something's just come up (OOOOEEERR!)

In the wet, it's just about as wet as it can get


I feel like I'm back home in the Land of My Fathers (and Mothers and Brothers and Sisters) again - it's been raining for over a week!

Now it's raining cats and dogs
and I can't stand croaking frogs
oh Brother it's wet!

(I got fungus growing on me dungarees,
got fungus on me dungas and there's water on me knees,
it's a mad crazy country in the wet!)

That's one of Rolf Harris's not mine as a matter of fact.

The house is also not mine. Not Rolf Harris's either. Someone's house in Oxford, England.

Welsh OR British, NOT English

A point I would like to make regarding National Identity and as a comment on THIS BLOG, or more specifically the sub-heading, top right, "Welsh not British".

As soon as I utter a syllable in Portuguese, my Gringo accent announces, "Yes, I'm not from here, go ahead, ask me all the usual questions, 'Where are you from?What are you doing here?Do you like Brazil?What football team do you support?'". I'm delighted when people respond with, "Wales is in Britain isn't it?" and Pissed Off if someone says "Wales is in England isn't it?". So I patiently explain and say, you can call me Welsh or British, BUT NOT ENGLISH!!

Okay, why British or Welsh? The name Britain is derived from the Romano-Greek "Pretanni", which Russel Crowe and Kirk Douglas (oh no sorry, he wasn't Greek, he was Spartan I believe) pronounced as "Britannia", denoting the peoples there at the time (erm...at the time of the Romans you know, and maybe a little before... i.e. The Greeks). Sooooo, who were the people there at the time? And who were the English? It's a long story but basically the Romans were refering to the inhabitants of the land BEFORE the Angles, Saxons (Saesneg) and Jutes came and and formed ENGLAND (= ANGLE LAND) . These inhabitants (though not the original natives of the land) went on to become the Welsh and Cornish (I think they all turned into Pixies). So you see you can call me Welsh or British.

Oh yeah, all this happened about a thousand six hundred years ago.