I am trying something a bit different today on this blog. I have decided to write something without having a single idea of what to write. It is also first thing in the morning. I'm up, showered, the apartment is clean, I've had my glass of orange juice and the coffee has just been made. It's decaf today. I only drink fully leaded three days a week: Friday, Sunday and Tuesday, and these days correspond with my work and church schedule when I am most likely to indulge. It works great. I don't get re-addicted to caffeine, I can enjoy the flavour, enjoy the buzz, and this French Colombian decaf I bought the day before yesterday at Bean Around the World tastes like the real you-know-what.
I try to get Fair Trade as much as possible. It doesn't always seem to work out this way and I have accepted that living on a low income that there are limits to what I can do. The news on the radio this morning is as usual horrific. Ebola has landed in Dallas and we're all gonna die! ISIS or ISIL (asshole?) is as horrifically brutal as ever and there is squabbling and quibbling in our federal government about what Canada's contribution should be to bombing them to a different dimension. I am a pacifist and I am horrified by what the Islamic fundamentalists are doing and I am going to reserve comment because really what could I say? And it's heating up in Hong Kong and likely only hours or a day or two before Beijing intervenes with tanks and guns.
It is a chilly October morning, just nine degrees outside but will likely warm up to eighteen this afternoon. Welcome to autumn. Summer is over and it was beautiful. Don't weep that it's over, smile because it happened. I think Gabriel Garcia Marquez said that, likely in one of his novels. I just looked it up and Uncle Google has set me right. Doctor Suess said it. Then I looked further and it turns out that Marquez also said it. Was Marquez a secret reader of Doctor Suess? Or maybe vice-versa? I would have imagined this quote somewhere near the end of the novel "Love in the Time of Cholera", which I read most of in its original Spanish and then someone stole it. I think I know who. I was seated in a café in South Vancouver, Fraser and Forty-Ninth, not the Starbucks, if you must know. I noticed a youngish Latino fellow speaking Spanish, either to someone else or on his phone. I left the book open and face down on my table when I went to the washroom. When I came back it was gone and so was the Spanish-speaking pendejo (Spanish for wanker)
Speaking of Spanish I am listening right now to a Spanish program on Co-op Radio, a community left leaning (in some cases real far left-leaning) radio station here in Vancouver. I managed throughout my formative years of learning Spanish to listen to some kind of Spanish language programming every day. I was even able to tweak my work schedule (the joys of contract work!) to be able to come home to hear another Spanish program midday. For this and many other reasons I have been able to become fluent in Spanish at very little cost. When you acquire the passion very often the doors will open.
Speaking of things Colombian and Spanish I will be visiting Colombia this March for the first time in my life. I am going to spend the entire month in Bogota. I have also acquired the good fortune of coming in contact with a young lady from Bogota who is helping me with my Spanish while I help her with her English. I met her through the Conversation Exchange website. She contacted me just after I'd reserved a bed and breakfast in Colombia. We get along great and she is teaching me a lot about Bogota. How's that for timing?
I just got an email from my friend in Spain. She lives in San Sebastian on the Atlantic coast in Basque country. I also met her on the Conversation Exchange page. I am also noticing that the morning is marching on and I have three quarters of an hour before marching off to work. Have a great day everyone.
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