Relax while your estrogen-excess slowly fades away

In the early 2000's many of my female friends were crazy about Bridget Jones. They read the bestselling book and saw the movie several times. I like the movie because after it, Colin Firth became the recognition he deserved and filmed a single man.

Back to Bridget: In Germany, an idiot from an editorial house translated the “Bridget Jones's Diary” as “Schokolade zum frühstück”, which literally means “Chocolate for breakfast”. I wonder if that translator got another job after that felony...

Back to the book: A friend of mine detested the book because it was a compilation of clichés of women in their 30's. The fear of never marrying, the eternal quest for loosing weight...

Abut now, 12 years after the movie was premiered, Oscar Germes, 34 years old, tell you: These clichés are real, and the also apply to men.

It all started some days ago, on a late Saturday night. Matteo (my flat mate) was working in the living room and I was streaming bored to death when I went to the kitchen to get something. I had nothing specific on my mind, I just knew I wanted to eat something.

On my way to the kitchen I saw Matteo and asked him how he was doing, he answered “Sad, Oscar, I am sad”

...then, out of the blue it appeared to me. Clear as water. I knew exactly what I was looking for! Bridget Jones in German. I wanted chocolate.

I asked Matteo if he wanted some pudding. Within milliseconds he was standing in the kitchen with a smile on his face saying “Yes, chocolate pudding is exactly what I need”.

Here the recipe:

• 2 cups of milk (skimmed if you are facing problems like mine or like Bridget's)
• 3 full spoons of cocoa
• 3 spoons of maizena (or other brand of corn starch)
• 2 full spoons of sugar (or 1 ½ of agave sirup)
• a pinch of salt
• seeds of 1 cardamom piece (if you don't have cardamom, use 3 pinches of cinnamon and 1-2 pinch of chili)

Put all ingredients but the spices (Cardamom OR cinnamon and chili) on a saucepan, set at medium temperature, whisk until it cooks. It is hard, but it pays: don't stop whisking.

As soon as the mixture boils, it will turn into pudding. Take the saucepan immediately out of the cooking plate. Add the spices, stir and serve while hot. Top with thin banana slices, berry marmealde or tangerine pieces.

Sit on a couch, eat the pudding and enjoy while your estrogen-excess slowly fades away...

No matter how bad they play, never let a band think you are laughing at them (specially if you are in the front row)

Ten days ago, I visited a bar in Los Cabos. Immediately after crossing the bar's entry, we headed straight to the bar with one main purpose: try my brother's favourite drink: Absolut Peppar on freshly squeezed orange juice. We headed to the bar and asked for it. Barista's answer: No absolut peppar

if you don't know it, this is absolut peppar

Second attempt: Draft beer. Bar tender "Sorry, no draft beer today"

Then, the last  attemp:
Me - Flor de Caña? (my favourite rum)
Barista - Yes we have
M - One mojito please
B - We have almost no spearmint, let me check...yes we have some left
M – nice
B – here you go!

- 5 seconds later -

My brother - and? How is it?
Me - Not enough spearmint, only 4 ice cubes and not crushed, only one part of flor de caña instead of 2 and lots of soda water at room temperature: Summary – not good

We all saddly sat with our sad drinks to hear a band of three: Excellent bassist on his early 50's, jazz lover, wrong band and of course long hair. Singer on her mid-twenties, wearing a very short lycra-tiger dress and platform high-heels with lots of spikes (yes...lots of spikes). Guitar player also on his mid-twenties, excellent left hand (the hand performing tricks) and the worst right hand ever, he played touched the guitar strings the same way he scratches the back of his neck when it itches.

There were three tables with people. One with friends from the singer. The other with a second long-haired jazz-lover (friend of the bassist). The guitar player had no friends watching him play that night (I know why). We were the only real guests and we were on the first row.

After some songs, we left and even thanked the band.

15 minutes after having left the bar, I realised I left my bag with my mobile and my wallet on our first row table. We drove back to the bar, but found nothing. Even the band have left...most probably with my bag. I had 50 pesos on my wallet (approx 3 Euros), an almost new disposable camera and my good old mobile phone (3 and a half years old). I talked with the barista and the waitress, but they saw nothing. 

My cousin is sure it was the bassist.

Maybe it was not the band, but I can really picture them dancing around my burning bank cards, my sony-ericsson and my undeveloped photos. And they surely bought the gasoline to burn everything with my 50 pesos.

the number of the beast

My birthday is in November and people who are born in that month have two very clear, but different, destinies. They either rule at school because the are the eldest or they are the youngest (and the smallest and the weakest).

I belong to the second group...

I was in junior high from the age of 11 to 14 (instead of 12 to 15 years). I had masculinity problems back then. I was not only small and thin, but my body also developed slower than the rest of my colleagues. Imagine: My biggest dream when I was 14 was to have beard, mustache and hair on my armpits (axila in Spanish and Achsel in German). I have very clear memories of me dreaming of a magic lotion which could accelerate the hair growth. I think it is similar to what soon-to-be-bald-men experience when they start noticing their destiny.

Do you know the Italian football player del piero? I don’t like football, but I know that in the early 90's he was the one to be blamed for institutionalising a beard fashion. Maybe you remember men shaving their beard almost completely, but they left a thin line on the cheeks, around the mouth and finally joining a thin mustache-line. You may remember the name of this beard, it was the “del piero-style beard” also known as the “stupid beard”.

On Saturday, I was in the pharmacy and behind me at the cashier, there was a guy wearing the stupid beard. But the funny stuff was, the product he was buying.

Do you want to picture him? Austrian guy, late 30's, black hair, artificially tanned (fanta skin syndrome), body-builder-type and not so tall. He was buying a deodorant in spray.

The deodorant was called “beast”

Yes...the deodorant was called “beast”

The can had a number written on it “8x4”. I had to force myself to stop looking. But could not get this mathematic calculation out of my mind. It was obvious the result was 32...but 32 what?

I had to google “beast deo” and learned more about the product. Apparently “Beast” has lots of musk and other stuff in order to attract women.

After reading this, my question was still not answered: 32 what? Does the deodorant smells like 32 male elephants ready to mate? Does it smell like a donkey that hasn't taken a shower in 32 hours?


I am happy I don't need to spray the scent of 32 wild beasts over my body everyday in the morning...and I am happy that my masculinity issues were solved last year.

This is the moment when I come to a conclusion or simply re-write the blog's title

Some weeks ago, Kathrin wrote me an e-mail saying that in my last blog entries, she could felt I am worried because of my age and asked me to stay cool.

...Am I getting old too fast? 
...Have I failed in reaching socially-well seen goals like owning something big, like a house or a car? 
...Have I missed trends because I am over 30?

I think I am really caught in the middle. I am experiencing weird feelings. I know I am seen as an old-guy for the people in their 20s and people in their 30s see me as unmature (lately, Carol told me she saw the move "Submarine" and told me the main character was just like me. I streamed the movie just to realize that the move is about a sad teenager - but it was still a very nice movie).

Today I cried in the office because my friend Orlaith and her daughter are moving to Vienna this week. It was very hard to accept that I won't be seeing Inés Helena very often. Inés, if you can read now and manage to see my blog: “I miss you!”

...Was this my biological clock ticking like the beats of a bad eurotechno song?
...Is my estrogen telling me I should have a baby?
...maybe this explains the two problems I have on my chest.

Last Friday my mom called me and asked me if my mobile had “what's app”. I replied I had no idea what that was. She answered me “it is a little programme I have in my mobile and in my iPad and it would allow us all (she meant her, my sister, my brother and myself) to communicate very easy”. She also told me that the biggest present I could give her in christmas was to buy smart phone.

This is the end of the entry and the moment when I come to a conclusion or simply re-write the blog's title: I may not be prepared to have a child, but I am prepared for "what's app": Technology, here I come!

Eka, I am sorry...

This summer, when I was living in Georgia I went once to a swimming pool with Maka and Eka. They are twin sisters and they are two of the seven people I met in Tbilisi. Yes, i am not very social when I am abroad.

Maka and Eka are very sporty. They have been swimming for ages, they even knew the staff from the sport club by name.

After swimming for over 5 minutes that day, I had to take a break and went to the club's veranda and placed my pale body on a laying chair under the shadow. As usual, when I am on my bath trunks, I was a little bit ashamed of my body – mainly because all the people round had work-out bodies. And there were a lot of them; but I think this is usual in sport clubs.

When complaining about my couch-potato silhouette, Eka told me that I had potential to look better. She told me that if I worked out for some weeks, instead of a funny belly, I could be the proud owner of a six-pack. I was so motivated, that I promised her and myself to work out to transform my jelly-bean-belly into an iron monster. Deadline: November 14th, 2012. That way the date of my 34th birthday...

I do pilates every Tuesday and last week I was highly motivated to accomplish my goal. I worked out hard that day and truly hoped to reach my dream: Celebrating my birthday with a titanium abdomen. I really felt like I could make it.

I am 34 years old and two days. I just had two huge plates of magnificent gnocchi, I am drinking my 5th glass of wine and I have been sitting in front of th ecomputer for the last two hours. Eka, I am sorry...



P.S. I thought of adding a pic of my tummy, but after five seconds of reflection, I decided not to provoke you unwanted nightmares

The return of The Manster OR the pfirsich-melba situation

If you live in Innsbruck you surely know the „Pfirsich-Melba“ yoghurt from Tirol Milch. If not, let me tell you it is the only sweet yoghurt I like. As a child I always said I did not like yoghurt and I still remember the last time I tried it. It was a strawberry one from danone which I completely disliked. We were living with our grandparents back then, so I was maybe 8 years old or.

Last year in summer I tried the Pfirsich-Melba (Peach and Raspberry) and I was very sceptical about it, but she told me that this yoghurt was special; and indeed it is. This one lacks the sour taste of milk (I also don't like butter milk).

Some weeks ago, I was on my desk having a Pfirsich-Melba just before lunch and my mouth started to produce lots of saliva. I really felt like drinking pure lemon juice (when we Mexicans see lemon juice our mouth start to water), but it was quite strange: Salivating so by having yoghurt in my mouth. I thought to myself “This yoghurt is very good, but come on! Why am I salivating so much?”

My working colleagues came for lunch some minutes after that and while eating, I started to feel strange, my left cheek started to feel warm and I kept on salivating. Then, I got my little mirror from the desk drawer (I know it is very gay to keep a small mirror in your drawer...) and I did not see Oscar reflected I saw the Manster...

Are you know wondering what a manster is? Are you wondering how a manster looks like?

...The manster is a creature which is half man, half hamster. People turn into mansters when they have a salivary gland problem becasue of eating Pfirsich-melba when there is full-moon.

Here is the proof that on October the 10th 2012, I, Oscar Germes, a normal guy from Mexico...turned in to a Manster!!!

My 100th entry - OR - The coolness and the aftershave

I started to write my blog almost three years ago. When I started, I thought writing was only a way to deal with the sorrow and loneliness of my stay in Nicaragua. I never thought I could be ever writing my blog entry number 100...yes, this is entry number 100!

Here are some statistics:

• My blog has been visited 9,353 times. Out of those, at least 1,500 was me unsuccessfully looking for comments,
• There have been only 24 Comments in the entire blog's history (that includes my answers to the comments)
• The most read entries were:
  1. A fish soup, a Latin-music gig and the trip planned for tomorrow (547 times), maybe because people googled “Latin Music”
  2. My first blog entry (175 times)
  3. The final countdown (159 times). People were surely looking for the lyrics of the 80's song 
  4. When you think a situation cannot get any worse...it gets (121 times)

The least read entries was “The dance floor” (6 times) and I visited the page at least 4 times...

Right now, I can think of some highlight among the happy entries

• When you think a situation cannot get any worst...it gets 
• When two independent things, leading to the same object, occur at the sametime we have to pay extreme attention! 
• Iwish my name would have been Oscar Lowenstein

And an emotional one about friendship: a smiley in the title :-) OR Männer im Wasser  

Thank you for reading my sad, my funny, my nostalgic, my familiar, my prosecco, my friendship, my culinary entries...and the other ones.  Here is my entry number 100: 

The coolness and the aftershave 

My high school prom night was in early summer 1996. I drank Gin & Tonic that night. During that period, most of my friends drank whiskey on the rocks. Now, 17 years later, I sincerely don't understand why we did this.

I don't know at what point children (because we were children, we were 17) like to imitate their fathers. I think, we thought it was cool to do things older people did, maybe we felt we were cool because we were ahead of our time...

Years later, when I was around 20, I suddenly felt that people over 30 were uncool. I did anything to avoid looking like them. I stopped drinking Gin and I grew my hair long (very uncool now and also very uncool back then, but I thought it was cool). I thought drinking canned beer and cheap red wine and having long hair was very cool. This was for me an anti-30-year-old-attitude.

I am about to turn 34 and it was two years ago that my German flatmate told me she couldn’t understand why I still had no wife and no kids.

And now, after 17 years, I am slowly doing things that older people do:

• I love Gin & Tonic...again,
• I have a moustache (which makes me look disgusting and cool at the same time),
• and the coolest thing of all: I used Old Spice after shaving last week.

Do you know Old Spice? I know it from the time we were living with our father - that was before 1986 – and since then, I haven't lived in a household with a bottle of Old Spice.

Last weekend, I was visiting my cousin Larisa and I shaved while I was there. When I asked for some aftershave to cool down the irritated skin, she handed me more than an aftershave, it was a bottle full of memories. Since I was 4 or five years old, Old Spice stands for recently shaved men over 50. It was great using it...it smelled great (not “great” in the pure sense of great, but “great” in the pure sense of “cool-retro” great). 

I do not know if using Old Spice last week felt wonderful because for me, it is cool to do stuff older people do, or because maybe once, when I was younger, I had the desire of imitating my father...