Richard Bexon Ramblings of a mad man in Costa Rica

Wow, I never seen an election anything like this.  The norm for me being from the UK is a bunch of old people with manifestos and people shaking each others hand in order to get votes.  If the current government does badly and is labour, then the conservatives will get it, if the current government is conservative and does badly then labour will get in.  UK politics is always a see saw from one party to the next.

However in Costa Rica the election is a joyous ocassion for one of the top democracies in the world and the happiest country in the world!!  You will find cars decorated with their parties flags as well as stickers all over the car and a highten use of the cars horn to communicate pleasure or recognition to another car of its decoration.   Kids and families line the streets swaying flags of their parties colours.  (continue reading…)

It is pretty clear now in my mind that Costa Rica will not qualify for the world cup.  I have been watching every game since the start and have seen that after the last 3 loses against El Salvador Away, Mexico at home and Honduras Away the team has given up and also 50% of the country has as well.  There are still a few Ticos that believe they will beat the US in Chicago, however this is a pipe dream.

The nail in the coffin however was firing their coach Rodrigo Kenton when Costa Rica are over half on the way to the world cup, it is well known you should not change the manager during your world cup qualification as this will not help.

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I remembering 2004 I booked a hotel with Expedia for a trip I was taking with my wife to Nice, France.  At the time I did not have tons of money, not that I have now either, however I was just out of student hood.  I booked a semi decent 3 star hotel in Nice, however on arrival they informed me they were full and I was to stay somewhere else.  To cut a long story short, the other hotel was terrible, Expedia did not care.

So I booked flights back to the UK with Expedia in March as they were super cheap, $750 with BA, however on checking my flights the other day Expedia everything seemed ‘hunky doory’.  But on entering the AA.com website reservation system it appears that I have now been switched on my return to American Airlines.
So I called Expedia, as always never an English speaking person, a guy called Michael in the Philippines, I knew where this was going straight off.  He did surprise me as his English was good and was very hopeful.  He told me that someone called ‘Joel’ had called and changed my reservation, did I know a Joel?  NO, I do not know  Joel and how can someone I do not know change my reservation.  Lesson – if you want to change someone’s flight just get the record locator, great work guys!!

Expedia nor AA knew who Joel was, neither did I.  I am quite a passive person and could see that the connecting flight had been changed and it would not work with the original BA flight, however a call would be nice!!  Later found out Joel is from Expedia, great guy from what I hear however has flight changing tourettes.  Will phone up randomly and change flights for you.  If you ever encounter Joel, be sure to give him your flight details.

All I wanted to do was fly BA transatlantic, now will never book with Expedia again and will go directly to the airline what ever the cost.

Transformers 1 in my mind was an OK movie, not a total waste of 2 hours of my life but not the most entertaining 2 hours of my life either.  I understand that it must be pretty hard to develop the transformers comic into a real life action movie and also make it feel real.  However in Transformers 2 what they did was waste 2 hours, the acting was not great and the story line was very weak, get ready for Transformers 3 as it is coming.

I did like the fact the leading girl in it is hotter than the previous one, and also the history of the ‘Primes’ was told very well.  However the story line as a whole was not too good and the acting by Shia LaBeouf was terrible, he is just not a leading acting and cannot hold the screen.

I did feel that there were transformers coming out left right and center and the movie special effects were good, however I was lost with all the transformers.

One major point was that I though Optimus Prime has taken a few fighting classes as he kicked arse in this one where as in Transformers one he got his arse kicked a lot more.  It was as if he had some stuff downloaded from the Matrix and said ‘I now know Kung Fu’.