Justin's Life

I'm not one to usually moan about the price of things but I also really don't enjoy getting ripped off.

However, now and then I do quite enjoy a can of Diet Coke, especially when it starts getting hot, as it is now.

When I was in Sabinillas the other day I bought a can of DC from the little kiosk in the square and he charged me €1 for the pleasure.

A couple of days ago I bought another can from a shop in the village in Manilva and they charged me €0.60.

Today, I went to the shop around the corner and they charged me €0.70.

Talk about consistency!

I think I know which shop I'm going to be visiting more often!  I do like to support local businesses as much as possible but not when they are clearly taking the p*ss.

Maybe I should just stop drinking Diet Coke??

I was having an interesting chat with a couple of Spanish friends this morning about the term "guiri" which the Spanish use to talk about a foreigner.

I know many people believe it's an insult to be called a guiri, but in actual fact it's not.  It's as harmless as calling someone a "Brit" or a "German".  There's nothing bad in it at all.

My friend Alberto thought the term originated in the 1970s when you used to get a lot of Swedish and Norwegian girls on holiday in Spain, and as they couldn't say "girls" properly it sort of morphed into guiri.

He was actually wrong.  The term goes back to the Franco days and it was used to describe the "wonderful" Guardia Civil.   Over the years the use of the word changed, particularly in the Catalan region of Spain and today just means foreigner.

So, if you do get called a guiri don't worry, no one is being horrible to you.  It's a perfectly harmelss word.

For those of you in the Manilva area, if you would like to watch the Spain vs Switzerland World Cup match you can do so at Lo de Andres in Sabinillas.

He is putting his widescreen TV on the wall outside his bar (which is shaded in the afternoon) for all to enjoy.

I am going to try and get down there myslef to watch it, it should be a good atmosphere.

I believe the kick-off time is 4pm Spain time.

Enjoy the match.

 Yesterday we heard that Terra Sana, the sort of "healthy place to eat" chain of restaurants was opening up a new one in Sotogrande and that there would be a big party with free food and drink, the idea being to sample Terra Sana food.

Well a few of us went along and to our total joy it was true.  All the drinks and food were free!

They even had some entertainment for the kids which kept them entertained for a while.

I suppose having had a night out courtesy of Terra Sana I should tell you a little bit about what I thought.

The food was very nice, very healthy looking.  The wraps in particular I felt were very good.

The staff were very friendly and the restaurant is in a very handy easy to find location.  It's in the Centrol Comercial Mar y Sol.

You can find more info about them on their website.

Well, we're going to find another party to go to next week.  Can we get a free night out every week for the rest of the year?  That's a great challenge.

There is a local monthly newspaper in our area called "Manilva al Dia".  They haven't produced it for a while but it seemed to make a reappearance a couple of weeks ago.

And they are up to their usual tricks!

The paper is produced by the local town hall and is full of just happy stories and happy pictures of the councillors doing great stuff in the area.

It is so NOT representative of the actual situation here.  I'm all for happy stories but where a local newspaper is used to solely promote the good of the party in power, that surely can't be a good thing, can it?

At least we have an unbiased paper called The Resident which it least tells it as it is.

Gary who runs The Resident also has a website called Manilva Life.  In the local Manivla al Dia they used to refer to Manilva Life as the place to go for local information in English.  But not any more.  I noticed they have removed all references to Manilva Life from the paper.

Perhaps they don't like what Gary says in his own newspaper!

The best thing I ever did was step down last year as the president of our community after three years in the role.

Being president is a thankless task and with a community like ours, with barely any money, it is very tough.

We have a very difficult community and during my second year as president we had our second administrator walk out on us.  I struggled to find a decent one to take over and finally settled on Ramon Escuin, based in Guadiario, who people then voted in as our new administrator.

In my honest opinion he worked very hard for the community and worked incredibly hard to keep us with at least our heads just above the water.

But now, our new president, for resons known only to him, decided he wanted to change administrator and last night unfortunately she made a good speach and now we are on administrator number 4.

This is an absolutely pointless and unnecessary change.  It takes a while for an administrator to understand a community and I bet that by this time next year we will have yet another new administrator.

The owners in our community seem to think that every administrator is rubbish and that getting rid of them will solve all of our problems.

WRONG.

It only moves us backwards and creates more problems than it solves.

I wish people would think before putting their hands up to vote in community meetings.  Change for change's sake rarely makes any sense.

Four administrators in four years.  Can anyone beat that??