You want the realness? Well I gotcha

Bet you thought this was a travelling blog didnt you?

Since I am on hiatus from travelling I have no overwrought descriptive pieces for you, no railings against bus trips for you (except peak hour bus trips. Ay ay ay. Still better than peak hour subte trips. Japan has nothing on BA for ridiculous squashing on train carriages) no fear of woollen jumpers to share with you. Nada.

Instead I find myself sleeping competitively (every day, a new hour past 12 hours of solid sleep, soon I should crack the 18 hour barrier - exciting, no?) and wandering aimlessly around Palermo, a trendy suburb that is hard to get to and hard to get out of but has an inordinate number of bars and shops and, thankfully, when you look close enough, also a large number of kioskos selling super panchos.

My current habitation also has an incredible (to me) number of jocktastic americans (ok, one jocktastic american) and an alleged san fransican with a deeply corny accent who listens to rap and is quite the whitest person I've met here in some time. Also lurking out there somewhere is a lawyer from Washington, who prosecutes people who download movies and music illegally. Naturally he has not been invited to any parties nor has he been offered the use of the host's computer which is, of course, full of downloaded music and movies. There is also a tall black man from south africa who informed me sternly that I would get cancer from reheating things in the microwave without covering them properly and a wussy male pre-med student from minnesoater who keeps on getting drunk and being surprised that at 4 in the morning, your friend is not your friend if you are both trying to pick up the same girl in the bar.

Last night I found myself in an inpromptu United Nations Women Stylee gathering in some friend of a friend's apartment where only the two male hosts were from Argentina and the nine girls there were from all over the world. Claire (UK) and I (AUST) were most fascinated by the belgian Paris Hilton who, unlike the real paris hilton, could speak three languages and wear kickarse stockings. Amazing.

The night ended with a porteño and I writing swears in the dirt on the back of some car window while we waited for our friends. Some of you will remember that I have done similar things in frost back home so isn't it good to know that no matter how far you travel some things never change? It is annoying though that people only try to teach me bad words at the end of nights where I invariably forget them. Was it cajero? or hodjero? Damnit!