The Wuss and the Hero

Today I had one of those moments that wouldn't be out of place on Oprah, yet again. It really quite irks me to be able to compare it to that, but there you go. It's my frame of reference, albeit grudgingly so on my part. I was fully prepared to spend the next few blogs talking about my time in the Cod, where I was this weekend for a wedding. Musing on the unfriendliness of the locals, moaning on my tiredness, talking about the beauty of the region and the "loss" of another friend to domesticity, forever, but the great joy in it.

So, I've mentioned those, but will not expound further just yet because, due to the listening to fivelive this morning, I found out that one of the few people I really, truly and wholeheartedly admire, for their pure courage and guts, died yesterday.

Jane Tomlinson was an extraordinarily brave woman. She was diagnosed with terminal cancer seven years ago, given six months to live, and since then somehow managed to complete ironman triathlons, marathons, cycled across the States, cycled across Europe... she was physically incredibly strong, and dedicated to showing people what you could still do despite being in intense pain and, theoretically, weakened by the horrible thing spreading through her body.

It's pathetic, but whenever I was struggling to finish my training for my first Race for Life about six years ago, which are the breast cancer 5km races that take place in the UK throughout the summer, I would think about her. My legs may be hurting, I may be unfit, but think about Jane. How could I be such a wuss when she is going through much worse? Since then I have tailed off with my running; I am suffering from severe knee knack, but the problem is, at least in part, my failure to do my knee stretches & exercises. I think that's even worse than just stopping due to pain; I could do something about this, and I'm not.

So here we go, resolution time: a 10k race this autumn, to raise money for Jane's charity, and just to seize upon how wonderful it is to have a strong body and fitness. And knee exercises. Every day. Oh yes. I think it's a fitting tribute to her memory.

Sin Rastro...

Having mused on the purpose of my blog - which I decided internally was just because I cannot stop talking - I think it's probably a culture clash narrative. What I love about being away from home is the chance to compare cultures, perspectives, beliefs, customs, rituals... all these things and more. To do it between the US and the UK is always interesting, given that we share the foundations of a language, despite the divergence subsequently. Living in a country where the language really truly is different makes it much harder to pick up nuances. It's easier to feel stranded or isolated because you're not sure of the formality of the situation or suchlike - all these things become magnified, exponentially, due to this uncertainty and lack of surety.

The aim is generally not to rate which is better, which is worse, but to be that horror of all horrors - the RELATIVIST, as I was last night when trying to explain that indigenous people not wearing clothes didn't make their lives "ugly". My point being that it's not for me to judge, unless it is something so far out of whack, so absolutely fundamentally wrong that it must be stopped.

I think I've found it.

If you want to send me a letter here, you can't. Well, you can, but you would have to direct it to the post office. Why? Because my road doesn't have a name. Or if it does, no one knows it. There are no numbers. There are no letterboxes (and I don't mean pillarboxes, I mean letterboxes on the doors). My home address is: 100m to the north and 100m to the west of Palí, Novacentro, Guadalupe, San José. Why am I not afraid to post that on the web? Because there's no way you'll find it. Because all my address means is that I live 100m northwest of a pet supermarket in a shopping centre in a certain area of San José.

No one knows where anything is here. Just where it is in relation to something else. Which you can get used to, although it's not easy. My problem is that I don't know which way's south, north, east, west. So that's bad enough, and because everything is so short here, there's nothing like the Wharf or Empire State Building to orientate yourself around.

However, the icing on the cake. I am going to visit a B&B for M and I to possibly stay at next week. I found it in the Rough Guide, and it sounds fairly nice - pretty garden, near university (which is where I work), cheap. The address is 50m south of the antiguo higuerón. Which means old fig tree. Except by old, they don't mean that it's been there a long time. They mean that it's not actually there anymore. So I have to find this place by looking for something that is no longer extant and the location of which I didn't know in the first place.

If the US is going to insist Costa Rica should sign the TLC (making, by the way, it a treaty for CR but only an "accord" for the USA - nice, nice), they should make the renovation of street names and numbers their utmost priority. However, one of my Oprah moments yet again - something comes along to remind you that for some, roads, regardless of names, are a luxury.