Pig of the Month

One needs hobbies to keep busy during vacation, so with summer vacation looming i've decided to get back to work on my pig of the month collection. If you hav'nt had the pleasure of hearing about or seeing the collection, let me explain. A common craft in Costa Rica are ceramic piggy banks. They sell them all over the place, and for the most part, they're unpainted. So, back during the last vacation I bought a container of acrylic paint and decided to make a proverbial pig of the month club. Every pig would be painted differently, and hopefully all with puny names. What i'm looking for now are good pig inspirations. Please keep in mind, it would be better if the name was not only clever but conveyed an idea that was easy to paint. I've been holding off on painting "Pigzilla" for a while now because I think it would be a bit of a challenge, given i'd have to make something that is extremely pig shaped into a giant sea monster without it looking like a pig in a dyed alligator skin suit. Below are possible names, please add any you think of

Chancho Villa (Pancho Villa)

Chancho Panza

Pigcasso

Michelancerdo

Pigmalian

Hound of the Baconsville

Choricero (Traffic cop)

Comparitave Study of the Potential Annoyance Levels of Cows, Pigs and Goats

Cows:

On the plus side: Cow lowing is lower pitch. If mooing is long and low enough, its almost relaxing.

On the down side: Mooing is never long and low enough to be relaxing. Cows don't moo to talk about how content they are. Moos are almost always tinged in panic or anger, and at a decibel range that is impossible to block out.

Average time of annoyance: All day, but most commonly between 3-5 in the morning

Annoyance level: High

Pigs:

On the plus side: There is no plus side. They don't even taste good.

On the down side: The only thing worse than the noise pigs make is how they smell. The only thing worse than how pigs smell is the noise they make. They smell like garbage and port a potties and they sound like people trapped in Dantes Inferno.

Average time of annoyance: Smell=Constant. Noise= In the middle of your darkest nightmares.

Annoyance level: Unseemly

Goats:

On the plus side: They are few and far between

On the down side: Because they're not common, when one sneaks up behind you and starts bleating, you will jump a minimum of 6 inches

Average time of annoyance: Whenever you least expect it

Annoyance level: Hair raising

A steady, unrelenting rain:

On the plus side: Keeps the day cool and the dust out of the air. If theres nothing to do, gives you an excuse to stay reading in bed as long as you want

On the down side: Almost never rains on the days you have nothing to do. Almost always pours on the days you have lots of things in lots of different places to do (all of which require walking down muddy roads). Keeps the air too cold to be able to comfortably take a cold water shower, even in the middle of the afternoon. Makes you have to choose between getting wet and keeping sane by seeing other people. If rain is steady, means you'll hear the same noise all day for days on end. Impossible to block out, it quickly becomes a sound that triggers feelings of cabin fever.

Average time of annoyance: Unrelenting

Annoyance level: Oh thank god its raining for the first two weeks of rainy season. Oh my god its still raining??? From June-December

Diet Don'ts

In my life I have seen the birth and death of some pretty strange dieting fads. There was South Beach, Atkins, Master Cleanse, the Grapefruit Diet, i'm pretty sure there was even one in SkyMall that promoted loosing weight by only eating cookies. Now, these fads have been under attack recently with professionals calling them dangerous, unhealthy and ineffective. I'm here to say, give them a break. Whatever their respective problems, at least they're not as weird as this one.

I was first made aware of the following diet during the third week of my soon to be doomed community aerobics class. Suddenly, some of my most loyal members were missing the class. Tracking one down to ask what the problem was, they told me joyfully that they no longer had to worry about loosing weight. Then they showed me a piece of paper. On the paper was printed what can only be described as a chain letter diet. Now we've all seen some weird fads, but i'd like to nominate this for a special place on the mantel based on the fact that it includes all the must haves of any great diet:

-Don't change what you're eating! Thats too much work, just include this one new ingredient

-Whatever you do, don't exercise. Thats too much work, your body wont need it anymore

-Things have to be done at very specific times of day/days of the week or it wont work

-This diet is guaranteed to work in exactly the way its presented

-Huge amounts of weight will be lost in just a few short days

-Huge amounts of weight can be lost without diet or exercise

but….it also includes this special crazy bonus:

-The diet will only work for you if you make copies of it (the same amount of copies as pounds you want to loose) and pass them out to your friends

Keep in mind, the women following this diet are grown, educated women. Women who believed so wholly in this diet, they followed it to the letter including dropping all the exercise they had been coming to because it said so. Below i've translated the diet as it was presented to me (as a copy by a woman looking to loose 20lbs)

Rice Water Diet

Wednesday:

1. In the morning, take a half cup of water and add the same number of grains of rice as pounds you want to loose

2. Don't put more grains than necessary because you will never gain these pounds back

3. At night drink the water, leaving the grains in the cup so you can refill it the next day

Thursday:

1. In the morning, refill the cup and drink the water, leaving the grains again. Once you're done, fill the cup with water and leave it.

Friday:

1. In the morning, drink everything including the grains of rice

Important:

1. Keep the cup covered during the whole process

2. Make copies of this diet, the same number as pounds you want to loose

3. Start the Diet on a wednesday, but not before having passed out all the copies

4. You can pass the copies of the diet out to any person

5. Don't exercise during this process, the diet is infallible…

Even though the results seem incredible, this does work!

-Addendum: None of the women doing the diet ended up loosing any weight-

Aquel: The fastest way between two points

Ticos are really good at skirting an issue. Not intentionally of course, but getting direct answers becomes sort of a puzzle, and asking simple questions becomes something that you have to put enough time in your schedule to accommodate. Directions are a classic case of this. How do you get to the office? Answer: You go uphill till you get to where the hospital used to be then you go right. And that's about as good as you're going to get. Everyone living here realizes, directions to one place never get asked just once. First one goes uphill, then asks where the old hospital used to be (usually at least 2x to get in the general vicinity). Once there, position yourself facing right and ask directions again. Chances are you only have to repeat steps 1-4 at least twice more. Take a look at my mailing address (or adresses, I have three, depending on which direction you're coming from):

1) 300 meters south of the Bar

2) 150 meters north of the soccer field

3) 500 meters north of the school

Now..maybe this would be different if I lived in a town of 100, separated by hours on a bumpy bus from the nearest city. Maybe thats the environment mailing addresses here got their start in. The trick however,is that I live in a Barrio in a city with very nebulous boundaries. Just knowing your in my barrio and not the one on either side is an accomplishment. Then find the reference point. (note: there are two soccer fields in my town, over 10 within 5 square miles) Then walk about that far. Then start asking at every house in the general vicinity for me. I suppose the general idea is that people inhabit houses for generations, extended families all live in the same city and most people rarely leave their home town. All the people who send you mail (the electric company) should already know where you live based on the fact you've always lived there.

That playful uncertainty also comes across in every day conversation. Conversations and manner of speaking grew up around just that fact, that everyone has always lived just where they're living now meaning everyone knows where they are and they know all their neighboors from the day they're born. This means, especially to newcomers, its hard to pin down who someone's talking about because people rarely out and say it since everyone knows anyway. Yesterday I arrived home to some juicy gossip: my neighbor had been at her job in the center and had seen one of the girls from the barrio there skipping school and obviously waiting for some guy. The whole conversation happened without ever once mentioning who the girl was by name or physical attribute. Everyone just already knew based on the fact that that girl WOULD be the one doing that. At the end of the conversation after waiting for any kind of clue, I had to finally ask who they were talking about.

The best example of vagueness though, has to be summed up in a conversation I heard a few weeks ago. Below it's reprinted, as faithfully as possible, from memory.

Costa Rican Culture summed up in one conversation:

"Esta embarazada"/ "They're pregnant"

"Quien"/ "Who?"

"Ese"/ "That one"

"Cual?"/ "Which?"

"Ese aquella que vive por alla. Aquel quien se pasa con aquella (pause to file nails) esa de acá, la amiga de ella. Ud sabe (pause to watch truck pass) es el quien paso quien era así como la otra"/

"That one that lives over there. The one that goes out with her (pause to file nails) the one from over there, the friend of that girl. You know (pause to watch truck pass) the guy who passed who was like that other one"

(Pause to look at dog)

"El malo?"/ "The bad one?"

"Aquel es"/ "Yeah, that's him"

And of course because my barrio is so supremely unique, here's a snippet from my town.

Daniel Flores summed up in one conversation:

"Who does that guy (Gaviota) think he is charging 15 thousand colones for a concert after he's populated our town with illegitimate children???"