Tag: Guatemala

Leaving school and cats …..

The boys are leaving their little school here in Guatemala.  They have only been there half a year but have been very happy.  Academically they have both excelled which really helped their confidence, especially Nico who learnt to read and also discovered that he is pretty good at maths, better than his smarty pants sabe lo todo big brother who excels in all the communication departments.

It is their last half day tomorrow but today they had a party.  Unfortunately, the teachers in prepa, neglected to do a party for Nico so the pile of doughnuts we sent all got eaten by first grade and he was so upset that I had to give him 4 fairy cakes when he got home.  Paulo´s class had all made him cards and given him little presents.  A lot of them were quite religious giving him blessings and the virgin etc etc.

The most heart wrenching letter was from his little nobia Emilia who has been incredibly loyal these last few months!  She printed it on the computer and had even put a photo, her email address and telephone number and a little cuddly present.  This girl is not giving up on her man.  And this is what she wrote translated from Spanish.

Feliz Viaje Paulo

You were the best friend I have ever had and I will never forget you.  I am so happy that we got to spend this time together.  Your friend Maria Emilia

Sweet Emilia ........ bless her cotton socks

 

I don´t really believe in moving cats from home to home too much, but definitely not from country to country.  So although I am feeling guilty as hell, we are leaving our two cats behind, and so far I am not quite sure where!  Every time I look at them I feel a huge pang of guilt.  On top of all that, they seem to be making a huge play on the fact that they are happy and smug right now, like only cats can!

Chloe was from Aware, an animal rescue centre run by an eccentric Brit (you find these British animal lovers all over the world) and his Guatemalan wife in a place a few miles away from Antigua.  Our dog had died leaving our first male cat Smudge a bit lonely.  He had run away a couple of times looking for love but we always managed to find him.  I remember once noticing his weighing up as he thought freedom and insecurity versus food and tough love from toddler Nico.

We took him up to Aware for the snip and by chance a kitten had been left at the end of the road a few days before.  Anyway along came the noble and dignified Chloe, who was allowed one litter of kittens, one of which was such a beautiful Siamese generation throwback that we just had to keep her.  Smudge disappeared and then there were two.

Mother and daughter have not always got on and I am not that surprised.  Sophie is a naughty, cheeky, fish stealing youth who pushes in front of her mother at every opportunity.  The children love her though as she deals with them with the same cocky cheek she uses on her mother.  Chloe on the other hand has always been my cat.  She waits for the children to go to bed and sneaks inside for a bit of sofa time with me.

Suddenly starting to snuggle up close .....they know you know ..........

Bizarrely, lately they have been being really affectionate towards each other which makes me think even more that I want them to stay together.  I fear that everyone wants to adopt the pretty, cheeky Sophie and noble Chloe will be left to her fate like a poor Guatemalan campesina widow.  Oh the guilt ………. I am just hoping that perfect home will appear and my cats can maintain the safe and easy life they have had with us because I ain’t getting on a plane to Cuba with 3 kids and 2 cats.

My Nanny State

Here in Guatemala all my friends have nannies, niñeras, muchachas or whatever terminology you care to use.  It is par for the course, and a well known advantage of the third world lifestyle – a hangover from a colonial past, or a reality of the present apartheid labour system.  It is also a common pastime for mothers to get together and sit around complaining about their nannies´ incompetence.  Not me ……  no never.  In this one matter I am quite splendidly smug.

My nanny is the BEST.

In my native country, to have a nanny is a status symbol of the super rich or royalty.  It is also something which harks back to another time.  An England of AA Milne and Winne the Pooh and Edwardian nurseries.  Not one of my friends in the UK has one, or had one when they were children.  I didn’t grow up in a house with a nanny, neither did my parents.  And really, I did not expect to live over 6 years with a nanny coming into my house 5 and a half days a week.  But serendipity played me a huge hand when I was introduced to Judith Han, who will always remain one of the most wonderful and amazing people to have come into my life.  I don´t have a nanny, I have Juju.  She has been my support system, my social services, my home grown remedy advisor, comedian and all round superstar.  How will we all manage without her?

Smiling and laughing as usual .......

 

Juju, as she was christened by Paulo, has a Chinese grandfather and comes from a different part of Guatemala out towards the Pacific coast.  She has a strong, happy face that always is a mili-second away from a giggle and we have laughed so much with her that I am seriously worried if I can live without her laughter, never mind anything else.  Just listening to her good natured funny ramblings to my baby girl and my boys over the years is enough to put a smile on your face.  But on top of that huge attribute, she is a person who can grow anything, fix anything, cook anything superbly, clean the house, mend clothes, ……… the list is endless, and all this while playing and chatting with my children.

Right now as I am writing, the rain is pouring down and all I can hear is the sound of Nico laughing with her.  Yesterday she spent the afternoon playing football in the garden with Paulo whilst carrying a smiling Saskia.  A mother of 6, she takes multi-tasking to a whole new dimension.  She helps them with their Spanish homework, plays chess and Monopoly with them and hardly ever has raised her voice to them in 6 years.  I wish I could say the same for myself.

I always thought how weird to have a stranger in your house.  Not used to servants, it took me a while to get used to the concept, but if there was ever a person that I could hang out with peacefully it is Juju.  On Saturday mornings she sneaks into my house so not to wake us up.  Faultlessly thoughtful and incredibly kind, she regularly arrives with a little present from the packa for my children: some clothes, some books, toys, silly bands (the latest craze).  She always knows the name of a plumber or a painter or a mechanic.  She has plastered walls, macheted huge parts of the garden during the rainy season and is always available for more.  She drops Christmas tamales at our house every year around midnight.  She has come on trips with us to San Salvador and Atitlan.  If you have Juju with you, a family holiday almost feels like a holiday!  All my friends love Juju and she likes a lot of them too.  Especially my great friend Felix who makes her laugh even more than usual.

5 of her 6 children on my famous sofa

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some Guatemalans would warn me about being too close and relaxed with my nanny.  The apartheid rules are hard to shake.  But bollocks I thought.  I will eat lunch with my Juju trust her with my life and share my worries and my secrets. I went to her daughter´s wedding, her oldest son´s graduation ceremony, she received me home with baby Nico in my arms with Sopa de Gallina and so much love, and 4 years later Saskia too.  Her husband helped us move house, has rescued me from flat tyres several mornings, and often plays football with our boys.  All her children adore mine like siblings.  And my children love hanging out in her house and garden with all the animals and friends and family.  They even met the famous tacuazin in the jaula.  Juju caught it while walking the two blocks home one night.  She shared the hunting technique with me if anyone´s interested.  You see there is just no end to her talents.

Juju in days gone by with my boys and her youngest

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Husbands are husbands, and mine is a pretty good one most of the time, but over the last few years if you exclude time spent sleeping next to each other, I have easily spent more time with Juju than Rafa.

Juju has been there for me when no-one else has.  She has seen my tears, two panzas, my pain, my laughter.  My children are blessed to have known her and be loved by her.  She has been my rock.  To think that I will no longer have her strong light in my family is the thing that is breaking my heart these last few days.  Juju we love you and we will miss you.  What more can I say ……………..

Home is where the heart is.

Home is where the heart is, that´s what they say.  But what exactly does that mean?

For Sale. The Chair Rafa has rocked for the last 7 years ......

 

 

A few days before my present home will be torn apart and broken up I have this weird nesting feeling.  I want to enjoy these last few weeks in my little home before I have the task of making a home somewhere else.  When I look at the larger items I think, well yes I know that some big strong men are going to come and take them away or we will sell them ……. but it is the endless amount of little things that are stressing me out.

I do not see myself as any kind of domestic goddess or material girl obsessed with possessions but I do know how to put my stamp on a home and make it cosy and personal.  Now that I am looking around my present home and imagining that in a matter of days all this will be gone: sold, given away or heading on a truck to Puerto Barrios to cross the Caribbean and meet with the famous Cuban customs, it moved me to reflect on the many moves and homes of my life.

So here is the list of my many homes:

North Yorkshire England 11 Years, Co Durham England 7 years, Newcastle-upon-Tyne England 6 months, Dormagen West Germany 6 months, Nottingham England 3 years, South London 6 months, Rambouillet France 6 months, Paris France 2 years, Wissant France 1 year, West London 3 years, The Peak Hong Kong 1 year, East London 5 years, Antigua Guatemala 4 months, Buenos Aires 1 month (short but it felt like home!), San Lucas Guatemala 1 year, Antigua Guatemala 1 year, San Pedro El Alto Guatemala 5 years …………and now La Habana Cuba 4 years and then who knows ……. because we don´t.

So I have been in my present home 5 years, quite a chunk of my life and lasting early memories for my boys.  Two out of my three children learned to walk here.  All 3 of them learned to talk here.  One of our cats was born here.  I went to 5 Icaro film festivals whilst living here and twice to Guadalajara festival.  We had visitors from all over the world sleeping in our little guest room.  We had a few good parties in the garden, some planned some not!  I grew a lot of flowers and herbs.  We had too many piñatas!!  I painted walls and tables.  Threw together quite a few meals in my tiny kitchen.  Designed my own furniture and had some made.  We lit fires and sat by the fireplace many nights.  Paulo lost 3 of his teeth here.  Saskia was conceived here.  We all survived Agatha the storm and a whole load of other stuff ……..

A favourite corner of our garden

So what does it really mean to be a homemaker?  For a lot of us women it sounds like a nasty 50s concept of being a wife but to me it means something more.  For me it is how you make your home feel, as though it has a heart and soul.  A place people want to come round to see you.  Primarily, a place where your family can be safe and happy and together.

We had a message last week that Cuba will not let us move our things to Cuba.  I spent 24 hours horrified that I would have to sell all my precious and personal things and arrive in Cuba with a couple of suitcases and 3 kids.  Was I a material girl or a sentimental nomad clinging on to my possessions like an orphan?

If Cuba possessed Ikea, ToyRUs, Ebay and the packa it could be possible to tell the children wave goodbye to your bicycles, your strange items of artwork, your favourite toys but alas Cuba is not a place you go to buy stuff and whatever stuff you do find it does not come cheap.  Right now this family does not own a property anywhere in the world and soon, for a few weeks, we truly will be homeless all 5 of us.  but we don´t have much!  Which means that what we do have means a lot to us.

Was I being a material girl?  I felt like a princess insisting on moving my caravan of possessions!  What about the Lego, the wooden train set brought down from New York in the suitcase of a noble friend, all my pictures and photos?  The second hand books bought and trafficked back to Guate in my suitcase.  My sofa from San Juan that I designed with all my love, imagining the hours I would spend on it with my children.  The salvaged old cupboard in the living room that Rafa rescued.  Our old door coffee table that has seen many spillages and naughty boys climbing all over it.  Our incredibly comfortable bed that we love to come home to.  Saskia´s cot that has been in Rafa´s family for decades used by all my children.  The boys matching blue wooden beds given to them by their abuelos and Tia Maria Luisa, lovingly restored and painted ………….

Maybe I am a bit of material girl but my beautiful things are not worth a great deal of money to anyone else but us,  and they all have their stories.   As the song goes ……… these are a few of my favourite things.  I am not willing to lose or leave them in a warehouse to rot or be forgotten in a country where we do not live anymore.

Does this sofa and table look flashy??!

 

Rafa is not a man who enjoys consuming, he prides himself on his lack of possessions.  I was a little nervous that he would make me feel un-buddhist but now the father and the husband knows his family needs their things to feel at home.

So we have decided to take our stuff, the things we need or love and see what trials and tribulations we will have to go through to get them into Cuba.  One option we have been told is to file much of the children´s toys and clothes as future donations – fantastic I said.  This I am more than happy to do, its what I do anyway.  When we leave Cuba in 4 years the children will be older and we can shed quite happily all the stuff they have grown out of.

Anyway, we are still waiting to see if we will get permission to enter Cuba with our things if not we are stuck with the lottery of customs and keeping our fingers crossed that we get a nice one on a good day.  Otherwise we may end of very out of pocket.

But please Cuba, we are not flash or ostentatious capitalists just a very normal (??) family of 5.  And Cubans,  I would love to invite you round to sit on my beloved sofa and have a cup of my English tea in one of my English china mugs given to me by my Aunt.  I will even bake you a Victoria sponge with jam and cream in my cake tin bought in Guate.  I promise …..

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Hard times in Cuba? or Guatemala?

Everyone is telling me that I will be arriving in Cuba for a time of great change and not all of those changes for the good, depending on who you are talking to.  The Cubans apparently are going to go through some tough times as the paternal arm of communism untangles itself and they are left with …….. who knows?  Rations are going, enterprise is arriving, property can be bought and sold and a lot more tourists will be coming they say.  But in the meantime I think your average Cuban will have to suffer to move forward and that does not always seem fair.

Meanwhile in Guatemala the elections are approaching and I realise once more how rightwing this part of the world is.  It seems incredibly possible that they could elect rightwing candidates involved in the genocide of the 80s and there is lots of finger pointing from the right to people who were involved with the guerrilla, as if it is an automatic given that to be involved in the guerrilla makes you more dysfunctional than the people involved with the genocide.  Otto Perez Molina you know what you did in the name of God we have film footage!  When I talk about what I call the rightwing here, they are the kind of people that make Margaret Thatcher look like a pussy cat.  I do not think that even she would have wanted to kill a trade unionist.  Maybe bop them over the head with her handbag if she got the chance but I don´t think she would have been up for massacring a few mining villages up North where I am from, even though they gave her a big headache and did not go easily into a future of mass unemployment and social deprivation.  But I digress …….

When I mention that I am going to live in Cuba, a lot of Guatemalans (most of my friends excluded) have a reaction that I am beginning to find of sociological interest.  It is a kind of trigger response.  The very mention of Cuba seems to make them nervous.  It is as if they have to justify their country´s inability to move out of its poverty and narco violence and corruption by pointing out how great it is that they can buy what they want in the ever increasing shopping malls in Guatemala city or in the pretty tourist shops and delis of Antigua.  How they are free and can fly wherever they want.  (I do correct them on this one though as now any Cuban can leave Cuba for a holiday but like most Guatemalans they don´t have the money).  Anyway, these people don´t seem to have a clue how most of their country lives and that maternal mortality, malnutrition and domestic violence and murder rates are all on the up to name a few social problems.   But evidently as long as the richer people can buy what they want and even fly to Miami to do it, that makes all the other things ok, because they are free to consume.  But right now in Cuba nobody is starving, Guatemala however has a child malnutrition problem that is worse than a lot of African countries.

I begin to think about it a lot this week in the last balmy days before the rains arrive watching the fireflys play in the back garden.  Thinking am I one of those people?  Selfish and happy to live in a bubble.  I have to admit I do like shopping (but in the markets and boutiques of Europe looking for a steal or something entirely unique that I will treasure all my life …… rather than in Gap or Target or Dolce Gabana).  As long as I can buy my nice things for me and my family am I happy to live in a country blighted by violence and poverty?  Can I ignore the realities of Guatemalan society, as long as I surround myself with good people and beautiful things and fine wine?  Issues such as gendercide and chronic malnutrition.  A people who have grown stunted for generations due to the slavery and apartheid they find themselves born into.  It is their fault they should have less children.  It is their fault they don´t know how to eat properly.  It is their fault for getting involved with the rebels. I have heard it all!  I am still baffled as to how people can be starving in a country like this where everything grows.  But one thing I am sure about ……..it is not their fault.

But in the end what can I do?  I have 3 little ones to bring up and that overwhelms me most days.  But I can try to always be informed, know the truth, try to see other people´s arguments and make sure that my children know the truth about both their countries and their adopted ones.  Just keep learning I suppose.

I am not sure why, but certain people from the US think that they are the oracle of world opinion, as they quite clearly are not ………. just go and read some Chomsky, Democracy Now or Consortium news or any quality European paper and you can see that a lot of us have different opinions and we are not crazy foaming at the mouth commies or fundamentalist ragheads (a popular term for Arabs in the US).  A rich surburban gringo in Antigua told me with such authority that Cuba has been a disaster since they kicked the US out.  By that I suppose he meant the Mafia, Batista and the CIA.  And don´t get me started on the weird and shameful existence of Guantanamo.  I am just relieved that there are no longer British prisoners there but Obama´s promise to close it is still pending.  And Cuba has human rights issues!!!

I don´t profess to be an expert in geopolitics and certainly not in the unique and fascinating history of Cuba but I think there is one thing that I will never stop thinking. For better or for worse, Cuba is an ideological miracle and still is.  How the hell did the CIA never manage to poison Fidel?  Just that is a miracle.  I know the Miami Cubans and a large part of US population won´t agree with me but not sure I care!  In fact I have never met people so full of hate as the Miami Cubans.  That can´t be good for them or anybody.  And unfortunately their bad taste and bad humour does get transmitted back to Cuba along with an extra layer of white trash mentality born in the USA.

And yes I am packing carefully for our move to Cuba and I am slightly nervous about being in a no consumer zone but I hope I can survive happily without faceless shopping malls, guns on every street corner, apartheid, darkened car windows, suited bodyguards, awful cable TV with more advertisements than programmes, schools like prisons with gun toting armed guards at the gates …….and all the rest which goes with a narco capitalist state.

I can only promise the Cuban people that I will try to understand and not to judge them when I am living as a guest in their country as they are put through yet another sociological challenge.  Good Luck Cuba!  I will write about and record your hardships and your happiness and your apparently famous ability to resolver.

 

 

Saskia La Cubanita

If ever there was a girl born to go and live in Cuba it is my little Saskia.

All my children enjoy music and dancing like their parents but she has taken this love to an extreme.  She lives for music, even when nobody is paying her any attention.

I knew I was in trouble months ago when she used to gyrate to the liquidiser in the morning when I was making her breakfast.  A random passing motorbike could get her going, that´s how desperate she was to find a beat.  When she went to her first Piñata she was fascinated when everybody sang Happy Birthday.  She only likes watching TV when there is musical accompaniment.  Do you remember that Abba Sang Thank you for the Music?  (go on course you do!)  There is a line in it about describing how one of the Swedish popsters could dance before they could walk and sing before they could talk.  Well that´s my daughter, she really could dance before she could walk.  And now that she can walk she wants to walk right off and find out where the party is ……….

Apart from the fact that she is only 14 months old and can dance Reggaeton with the best of them, she has other things about her that remind me of Cuba.  She is always hot hot hot, in fact a little bit sweaty sometimes.  She wants to hang out in the calle as much as possible and often is found banging on the front gate of the house or standing next to the car waiting to be whisked off to hang out in the streets.  When I take her walking around Antigua in the mornings she shouts across streets to complete strangers waving at them like old friends.  She has a certain confidence and languidness that reminds of the Caribbean, saying hey boy I got all the time I want to hang out in the streets looking good and shaking my hips.

 

Hanging out in the Calle

 

 

So we will dance in Cuba Saskia and I.  We will find our groove or in my case get back my groove.  Although I find any excuse to get up and dance here in Antigua it is not something that has been in my life as much as in my London, Paris, Barcelona days.  In fact the last time I got up and danced here, I noticed out of the corner of my eye, a bunch of middle aged po-faced tourists staring at me as though I had just been let out of some hardcore rehab centre, which sometimes isn’t far from the truth.  I need dance rehab!!  Every year my husband runs the film festival here in Guatemala and always has great bands and DJs and I am sure I am beginning to get a reputation as his crazy wife who makes everyone dance.  I can take a while to get those Guatemalans on the dance floor but I am sure I won´t have this problem in Habana!

I wanna be in the calle

But back to Saskia my Cubanita.  She also loves to talk like many Cuban although right now it is some wonderful language of her own peppered with a lot of Mamas.  And she does enjoy food like a Cuban with the enthusiasm of someone who is not sure when they will next be able to get hold of a mango or an avocado or anything right now!

They say children open a lot of doors in Cuba.  I think my Saskia will be banging on doors looking for the party.  I am just glad that we are not in Cuba 10 years later because the way she dances I might have been leaving Habana an abuelita!  (note 1)

But one thing is sure.  Saskia will be the Cubanita of the family a walking, talking, dancing doll giving it back as good as she gets.  And maybe, just maybe her Mama too!

note 1 abuelita is a grandma.

 

Unexpected post about the Royal Wedding – Feeling homesick in Guatemala

I did not expect to be writing a post about my own country quite so soon especially not one about the Royal Family but when I got up this morning and put on the TV to catch up on the news, I had totally forgotten that Prince William was marrying the beautiful Kate the commoner (I love that expression, only used in relation to royalty, just like gentil only used in relation to Jews). I have to admit I felt rather tearful watching it all and I had to stop and try to think why.

I do not consider myself a royalist or a republican in fact INDIFFERENT in capital letters would be the category that I would put myself in.  I realised that the fascination for our Royal Family that was all over the world was good for our tourist coffers if not for our image as a modern democracy!

I think I just felt homesick and sad that my children and I were not there to enjoy and remember what is essentially a great big party with a truly British sense of irony whether you spend most of it slagging off the Royals and making fun of them or watching on adoringly …….. that is our prerogative.  Yes we are a modern democracy that still has a House of Lords and  a Monarchy and that is ridiculous, but I like the fact that we are ridiculous.

In this time of celebrity culture I think I would prefer to watch this wedding more than J-Lo´s or Tom Cruise´s.  A New York friend was surprised that I was watching it and said ¨ohh that is so tacky¨.  A British Royal Wedding can be many things to many people but tacky no, we leave that to the Hollywood stars they do it so well.

SO what would I be doing if I was home.  I noticed that there was the usual alternative Royal Wedding Party in Shoreditch my old stamping ground in the Bohemian multi-cultural Eastend but I have to say the party in Hyde Park looked pretty good!  Lots of great British picnics and lots of bottles of champagne being passed around.  And even though I am a socialist I am a champagne socialist!  The weather was good, London looked beautiful and so did Kate and her dress and for a moment I felt as though I was watching Shrek with my kids and the sadness of the real world melted away.

The Syrian Ambassador was disinvited.  Tony Blair didn´t receive an invitation (cool, slimy little toerag) but Margaret Thatcher did (very uncool).  Victoria Beckham managed to get in there hanging on the arm of her husband (very uncool as she is TACKY).

Nico asked me.  Is that what you did when you married Papa?  I didn´t like to tell him that we had never had the time or the inclination as I sat there staring at the screen wondering if I could wear that dress like a pathetic teenage girl!

I wonder how many people watched the Royal Wedding in Cuba?  Not many I suppose!  I wonder who watched it here in Guatemala?  My nanny Juju just arrived full of questions.  She liked the dress too!

 

Welcome to Serendipity or Madness – Leaving Guatemala heading to Cuba

I promised I would start posting after Semana Santa and here I am.  My site is not quite finished but not far off, so no more procrastinating.

Just to summarise how I got to this stage.  All the stuff you see in the archives here is everything I have written since I arrived in Guatemala nearly 8 years ago, apart from the endless emails of course.  So if you want to know more about me and my journey to where I am now, dip into the archives.  A lot of it was written to family and friends including great Aunts and 8 year old nieces etc.

Last year I started blogging with a group of people and it was a bit of a disaster for various reasons not worth going into here.  But in those early days of blogging I did not have a clue what I was doing, and still don´t really, but at least now I have been reading other people´s blogs and have spent a few months thinking about what I want to achieve by blogging.

So in my research into other blogs I had lots of fun but did not find many blogs about people like me, emigrant mothers who took a cross cultural walk on the wild side.  There are endless blogs about people skipping off to a new life on paradise islands and making dream holiday destinations their home a bit like all those endless TV shows in the UK.  They are usually doing this with a partner who is from their own culture so they can sit and moan together if things do go wrong.  Easy peasy lemon squeezy I say to those bloggers but good for you for working out how to have the easy life and pulling it off.  Maybe I will visit you one day in paradise.

Also the other kind of blog which seems to involve moaning about your adopted country.  A lot of these, white folks in the brown world being a little bit too superior for my liking.  I even found foreigners blogging in my own country, Americans lamenting about the lack of Tex Mex food, the lack of shopping malls and how tomato ketchup does not taste the same in the UK.  I´ll keep my comments to myself on this particular topic!

I even read an awful blog set up by a horrible American (who is now in prison) who just seemed to spend all his time slagging off Guatemala, the country which had actually given him and his family refuge from the FBI for a couple of years.  Some people are never grateful!

So I promise that I will not spend too much time moaning or criticising Guatemala or Cuba but will try to share my feelings with you as I discover things good and bad.  I am a qualified social psychologist so I try to approach things in an investigative manner.  There is always a reason why people behave as they do.  The interesting thing is to peel back the layers of the onion to find out why.  This way I am always learning and thinking about research topics for when I do return to work!

I am a mother of 3 children but I promise to veer away from the endless cutsey Hello magazine indulgent posts about my children.  But you shall be hearing about them, the good and the bad!  Paulo, Nico and Saskia, my gorgeous little hybrids.

I am not very whizzy with most things technical but I´ll try to get better at putting the odd link to something interesting.

I promise to try to see the world with the sense of humour that my culture is famous for but at the same time I may need to share the important stuff with you too.  Why? because I do care about the world and the mess we seem to have got it into!