Hors de prix

Torturing oneself by taking part in these package tours, offered by these lukewarm and often bankrupt-prone travel companies, is a luxury us Finns enjoy spending our hard-earned wealth on. And for what?

Accompanied by some VHS-powered light entertainment, you're flown southward in an airborne sardine can, where legroom is a joke and Gin Tonics are sold at 6e. What a hoax. Only to finally arrive at fucking Hotel Cacao Beach Resort, where you're immediately hassled by some local wormtongued merchant attempting to make a sale on tickets to his overpriced New Year's party.

The rest of the week you spend trying to find a piece of beach without a comically unreal sandstorm infestation. And if you do, your only clear view of the sun will be blocked by some pathetic salesguy making sure you're aware of his life as a loser. But it's once you see the local night time, that you do some serious soul-searching, and think long and hard about whatever possessed you to purchase the cursed tickets responsible of you being on this island of concentrated failure in the first place. I mean, the market promenade you have to take to get to any decent pub is filled with these loser sorts. And if you don't listen to them quack off their pitiful sales rep, they'll get hugely pissed off and shout derogatory remarks in their mother tongue, which has a curious resemblance to Spanish, but in reality is a lower form of communication, not uncommon to the species of economically inviable social reject.

Also, a friend of mine, let's call her Ms. Maples, gave a piece of her mind to this bar guy who apparently had pissed her off. As the aspiring diplomat, I came between them trying to calm the situation. Sure enough, Ms. Maples stormed off and I was left standing with this bar official guy. As any decent customer would do, I apologized to him for my friend's behaviour. And as an exemplary professional of customer service, he started shouting derogatory remarks of Ms. Maples and our crew. Being superhuman in patience, I apologized again, but he didn't quiet down. I then proceeded to inform him that some pathetic bar jerk won't be berating me or my friends in such a tone. I'm really quite verbal when it comes to telling off people. And guess what he said? He thought he might get the upper hand by telling me his monthly wage is 1000e bigger than mine, so he must be a bigger businessman than me. At this point I realized he was in a whole different league of pathetic, so I folded the conversation. Curiously enough, he brought a bottle of sparkling wine (which these people continued to call champagne) to our table later.

.. And not to be petty, but with the sums I make out of tournament poker these days, I can pretty much guarantee this guy isn't making more than me.

I watched an altogether splendid chick flick tonight and cried. Not like someone would after seeing a movie like that, but like hysterically. I guess a lifetime of getting barked at leaves its mark. I gotta get some help on that.