So, you find yourself on your way to some outdoor wedding ceremony in Sant Cugat del Vallès outside Barcelona, sitting on a bus (or motor coach if you wanna be fancy pants about it) with other guests. You're killing some time in your mind, and wondering about the origins of the place, its name, and what was up with all that trying to get rid of some cat called St. Cucuphas way back in the daze of antiquity. The place ended up being named after him (initially, it was Castrum Octavianum) because of what happened next.

Well, it seems the Roman prefect at the time was going a tad creative with trying to get rid of our man. Judging by the following 3-step process, you'd think like maybe, somebody was going to consume our cat Cucu once he was deemed "ready."

1) Tenderize - Get a dozen soldiers to soften him up by whipping him, and then tear up his skin with nails and scorpions. Inspired
2) Marinate - cover him with vinegar and pepper. Creative kitchen
3) Cook - Roast him alive. Wuz it low 'n slo'? Dunno.


And that's the way it supposedly went down for our man Cucuphas back in AD 304 during the Diocletianic Persecution.

Now, as a take away point, you generally don't see girlfolk messing around with making things complicated for no good reason. Case in point was these two women deciding to take out a "player" back in March 1881. In this fine recounting, our man Francisco "Chico" Forster, 40, was sleeping around under the guise of marriage promises when he got his sorry ass caught out in L.A. Here's some more detail on all that.

Our slighted gal, 18 at the time (guess FCF was goin' younger), just popped him straight through the eye with a pistol shot. Ba-Blam! No messing around entertaining more sophisticated torture approaches a la Roman prefect earlier in history per above.


Then, as a huge bonus, and no doubt benefiting from a crack legal team, our girl Lastania Abarta gets off employing a defense of "female hysteria."

So what was that drink that took out Dr. LoveSexy the night before the wedding in Jordan, and gave him a big hangover the next day?

Arak is a well-known, anise-flavored spirit distilled from grapes that is consumed all over the Middle East. It is usually accompanied with food, just as it was with the fine open-air mezze dinner on the shores of the Dead Sea. The drink does a great job of clearing the palate, even better than wine.


A lot more on how it is made can be found here in this Wiki piece. This Economist article from 2003 goes on about the history of the drink, the Arab invention of distillation, and other drinks related to Levantine arak like pastis, ouzo, sambuca, raki, mastika, and absinthe, and others. Note the arak in the Middle East, should not be confused with the drink of similar name arrack (and sometimes even the same spelling) in South East Asia that is NOT related at all, has no anise in it, and is coconut, sugarcane, or grain derived.

The process by which this clear spirit turns cloudy white when it is mixed with water is called louching. Basically, the anise oil which is colorless in the alcohol, emulsifies when the water is added, and presto, the drink transforms to its milky color as this short video shows.


Arak is usually served in a shorter glass with some ice already in it, and mixed with water thereafter, in a 1:2 ratio.


Maybe it wasn't just the arak that knocked things out of the box for Dr. LoveSexy, but perhaps the combination of beer, sucking on the hookah / shisha pipe, and any other alcohol that, collectively in combination, may have been the culprit for his hangover the next day and putting him in need of some serious greasy food as a cure. In any event, right or wrong, as a scapegoat perhaps, Bob claimed that "Haddad haddid him in."

The brand being consumed by all that night was Haddad, a local Jordanian brand made by Eagle Distilleries Co. that was established in 1953, and one of the first companies in the country (number three actually) licensed to manufacture alcohol.


When you're some single guy hitting weddings all over the world, it pays to be open, flexible and chillaxed about the food and drink going down around you. It's all part of the fun and experience of different cultures and traditions.

In any event, no matter where you are, or what you are drinking, it's all about the "Cheers!" or fe sahetek / fi sahitak in Arabic [say Figh sa hee' tik], or literally "to your health." This handy table lists the greeting in 60 languages.

Wedding Chronicles is a novel about some single guy's global wedding travels and humorous misadventures, plus a whole lot more.

There are no pictures as a formal part of the tale for each event in the book, but there are Pinterest boards to paint the international wedding backdrops. They feature the specific places, surrounding areas, actual venues and other cultural elements like the food and booze that formed a part of the trip.

There are boards for all thirteen weddings in this first instalment of the eventual trilogy. They visually dive into the exotic locations in the book, from Tenerife, Cancun, Santiago, Mustique, and Hawaii, to Amman, Barcelona, Iceland, and Singapore among them. Additional photos are being added continuously in drip fashion to fill the boards out even more.

Visit Bob's Pinterest page to check it all out, by clicking on the following icon...

Note that these aren't Bob's photos. He has only slapped them all together up there in a scrapbook / album fashion. When one isn't into photography and rarely takes photos, reliance is placed on others' photography talent to convey what is desired. Good thing there's no shortage of that out there on zee "Interweb."

After all those weddings over the years, there have only been a handful where the weather didn't cooperate, and even fewer when one was outside at the time and Mother Nature was keen to show who's da Boss.


On that late afternoon back in May 2002 in the mountains of Sant Cugat del Vallès outside the city, the memory of the storm that descended on the outdoor wedding ceremony sticks out to this day. The weather changed for the worse really quickly, the skies darkened, and we were all a little in awe at how intense the rain, hail, thunder and lightning got, all perfectly timed of course for the ceremony, peaking with the couple's vows. We were surprised again at how fast it all went away and the sun came out thereafter. Throughout, the couple were really calm, and seemed completely unfazed by it all. There was a METAL roof over our heads (nice for attracting lightning strikes), but the sides were all open air, allowing for the wind to whip the rain and hail into the left side of the seating area.

This completely separate video shot here on an August 2008 evening shows what things can get like in Barcelona in terms of electrical storms. Keep in mind that the wedding that afternoon was in the hills where all the lightning happens here in this video, so we really felt like we were in the thick of things.


The storm's impression certainly made for a memorable experience overall on that day, but it was all quickly put behind us when the sun came out and bottles of cava were being cracked open in volume.

Overall, Barcelona's an awesome place, and Bob always felt blessed to have been able to live there for two years of school between 1991 - 1993 and get to experience a good deal of all that the city and its surrounding areas have to offer, incluidng some spectacualr electrical storms.

While the wedding on this day was just outside the city proper, I have been to four others there in or around the core that will be covered off in future chronicles in the trilogy.

If you have never been to BCN, maybe the aluure of these two highlight videos will tempt you to put it on your own bucket list.

Yo, whaddup with that Canuckistan label for 'The True North strong and free'? At least until some day when it becomes overrun militarily or economically 'integrated' by its steadfast friends and drinking amigos south of the 49th parallel (north).

In Bob's own twisted antihero way, 'infiltrated by all, inculcated by none,' he's really smitten by Soviet Canuckistan, and throws the term around liberally, much to the chagrin of some on the northern side of border. He so way prefers the handle with the 'Soviet' part exorcised--it's shorter and punchier, and most on either side of the boundary still totally get it unless severely geographically challenged.


Looks like we can thank Nat Bukannan for all that back on Halloween 2002 (Trick or Treat) amidst the discussions and build-up for the second foray in Iraq. Awesome job, buddy! Folks like him, Anne Coalturd, and Will O. Wiley are beacons of worldly analysis, insight and opinion, doing their utmost to keep our (m)asses au courant with global affairs. It's all right up there with Freedom fries.

But, in balanced fairness to both sides of any debate over a bottle or two (or more, depending on your cohort) of some unnamed refreshment, preferably of the red type, part of Nat's TV diatribe did have some valid points, as perhaps brought to light in this piece, which Bob doesn't completely agree with either from her spin on this matter. It's just that good old Nat muddled a bunch of stuff together.

However, the initial usage of Soviet Canuckistan can be attributed to almost a decade before, and digging one reference link deeper. Nat, because of his public profile, just took it to a whole other level is all (whether arrived at independently, or not), breaking it out into mainstream popular usage. We thank you profusely for that, Sir!

For anybody out there that has never been to Canuckistan, or knows little about the place, this piece is supremely (mis)informative, depending on your point of view and sense of humo(u)r. Useful information to have as you plan that virgin trip to The Great White North. Here's a classic specimen of local art from 1981 that speaks to trumpeting that cause, eh?


It's always good to bone up on stuff before taking a trip to a new spot, even if it is to some fun wedding adventure far away as some single guy.

No, "Peculier" ain't spelled wrong and it wasn't a typo slip-up by some prat pounding the keyboard. But Bob bets some readers will think so at first glance. In fact, he had to porpoisefully [sic] make sure the spell check function kept it that way too.

That is the correct spelling for the fabled brew out of Masham, North Yorkshire that Bobby Bo and Cory McCracken were knocking back that day just before the wedding ceremony in Shepperton. It ain't and never was peculiar either, at least not in the "odd" sense, if perhaps for a while on the bottle or cask, per further down below.


Peculier is actually even a real word all by its lonesome, although not in most folks' everyday usage, and is known as a parish outside the jurisdiction of a diocese and in many cases (but not always) under the British Monarchy. Go figure. Makes one wonder if any peculiers are peculiar? Now, that doesn't have nearly as much of an impact or meaning to Bob, like having a pint or two of that brew, which is really good stuff, in some cozy pub.

The problem with peculier, the geographical area, is that it is also spelled peculiar. D-oh! How about that for clarity? One imagines going back to medieval times, it kinda maybe went that way with certain words and the evolution of the language over time, and may have been changed. Bob doesn't know and hasn't drilled down deep enough to really come down hard one way or the other on it and he certainly has no credentials as an Engrisch etymologist. Hey, in Scotland old is auld, and bonnie (or maybe bonny) is pretty and may have come from the French word bon, for good. So anything is possible with peculier / peculiar one supposes. Or maybe it's like how some folks never get the difference between there, their and they're, let alone the interchangeable usage of its and it's you see all the time.

But, in all fairness to both sides of the spelling equation, and native English-speaking, spelling-challenged punters the world over, here is some evidence to show the ale was at some point also doubling down under the Peculiar moniker. Aha, them Theakston folks be caught out on schizophrenic labeling practices.

Maybe some historian cum brand police gatekeeper type at the brewery might clarify or expand upon that one day, and set the record straight for all. Bob's always open to getting the real lowdown on stuff, be it official, or not.

Anyway, if you are really into knowing more about this peculier geography thing cuz you got some time on your hands or are bored at work (and no one's peering over your cubicle wall, but the IT overseers might be tracking your Internet usage behind the scene), you can read a tad more about the peculier of Masham (after which the brew was named) and about Royal Peculiers (or Peculiars) in England, past and present.

Personally, Bob would rather drink the ale and call it a day on the matter. Keep it simple and focused.

The brewery, T&R Theakston Ltd., has a cool past going back to 1827, and is still independently family owned. One day, Bob will have to make sure to take the tour of the place, and do a little sampling of all their wares. Old Peculier is their most famous pour, and is called "The Legend". Even everyone's favorite non-comic book news and views mag, La Revista Economista as Bob calls it, labeled that sucker the "doyen of real ales" back in 1985, if that adds any more credibility to the mix, as opposed to something like Beer Advocate.

Bob says, just go drink it, and decide for yourself. Enjoy, just like this single guy did on his wedding adventures back in the day.

Slainte, as the "Oirish" and "Scootish" may say on occasion.

So yeah, since this puppy was set in the Middle East (or Middle Crease as I referred to it), you just know there is a lot of stuff going on in those parts that is not front and center in the media. It's not just some casual wedding backdrop for a single guy's comedic adventures, although it may seem that way on the surface.

It was pretty early on when this "CIA, Mossad, IIS Directorate 9, Mukhabarat, and MISIRI-cum-VEVAK" string got thrown out there. Okay, for many a folk, CIA and Mossad would set the general tone and lend a clue, but what about those other names in there? Let's take them briefly down in order, but we all know representatives of these entities, and many others unnamed here, be crawling around the region.

Okay, IIS was the Iraqi Intelligence Service generally, and also known as the Mukhabarat. There were different numbered Directorates or divisions, and number 9 was for Secret Operations, or what Bob euphemistically likes to call Super-Secret Squirrel Shit (or Stuff, if you are more prim and proper). But hey, in this world we live in, forget that naive, polite approach. Save that for your English teacher in grade school, kids. Directorate 9 supposedly specialized in sabotage and assassinations (perhaps a few operations were designed to look like accidents as needed, or even expiration by natural causes), but hey, they probably borrowed a page and traded notes with their good friends and drinking buddies in the Mossad. Who really knows what they were up to, especially these days, post Iraq War (or Invasion or Incursion or whatever you and your dog want to call it), since it was all supposedly dissolved.

MISIRI stands for the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is that country's primary intelligence entity, but also goes by the names VEVAK, VAJA, and sometimes even MOIS, and was initially SAVAMA, and not the same as SAVAK, the secret police from back in the day of the Shah. All we're missing here in the equation is a SHAZAM, and Bob ain't talking about that handy dandy song identification service of the same name, which in reality, probably does a whole lot more good in the world all by itself than all them others combined.

And while we're at it, and on topic, what's with that massive US Embassy compound in Amman? Just look at the size of this sucker. The first two two photos don't really do it justice in terms of how big it really is,, but this third aerial shot yields a little more perspective. There are colleges out there smaller than this compound.


For such a small country (estimated population of 6.5M as at July 2012), Jordan sure has a large American "diplomatic" presence in Amman. Yeah, right, let's spin some other story on that. Maybe it's all for "cultural research" or something like that. Righto, you go ahead and believe all that if you want to, just like with reality TV.

Even if you are just going to places like this for wedding fun, you can't help but notice other stuff going on in the background sometimes.

You just know when you have had a deep and meaningful, long-term impactful life experience after one brief encounter that comes back to haunt you some 11 years later. What Bob be squawking about here is that chipper looking Gusano de Oro character (or Golden Worm in English) from the mezcal brand of the same name. Just take a look at him here below.


See what be there? He sure looks all warm and fuzzy, but that sucker knows how to pack a punch. Don't let that warm, beckoning smile disarm you either. Talk about sneaky, if memorable, marketing ploys. Bob's virgin exposure to this bad boy was in Tijuana back in '85, and hanging out on a road trip with a couple of the lads from university when we bought a bottle for consumption. The bottle sure looked cool anyway., what with the worm sitting on the bottom. Then we started drinking it.

Mezcal is generally very smoky--and Bob means VERY. Right up there smoky like these 6 scotch whisky brands, but not nearly as smooth or refined. It has an edge, whether you are drinking it neat, or having orange slices sprinkled with some of that sal de gusano (or worm salt, if you will) on the side to help it slide down a little better.

There are various grades of mezcal, but I ain't no expert, not having tried enough other brands over the years except for that Gusano Rojo puppy as shown here.


Look at him (or maybe it is her). Now this second worm is playing a little more coy and seems much more shy, but you just gotta know that red is flashing "Danger, danger!"

Anyway, you can now better understand why that apparition in the form of Gusano de Oro, floating above the bed on that wedding night in Cancun (with a fuming Birgitta at Bob's side), and talking in English with Mitchell Randolph's voice was enough to freak anybody out. But at least he had a valuable warning. When encounters like that, imaginary or otherwise, happen, you have to take heed. Either that, or it was the evening's fine Tres Generaciones tequila talking, and just messing with Bob's head.

No matter what it was, Bob was listening, and became a single guy again shortly thereafter.

Orchard Towers really does exist, and it's probably not a place the government or the tourist board there wants to advertise much, and most certainly not about its night time activities. Bob tried to find out about it on the official Visit Singapore site, but alas, there seemed to be no mention of it after some cursory searching there. And like, one is supposed to be surprised by that?

However, the good news is that there is information about the place, if you look around. It's kinda like what is reported (or not, in many cases), with "The News" and what is supposedly going on around us (or not, sometimes as the case may be) in the world we live in. But that's all another matter.


Bob puts forth these two opinions / overviews on Orchard Towers, if you want to read and dig a little deeper on the matter. This first one, Orchard Towers - "The Pick-Up Mall in Singapore" is from an old Geocities site and an American guy called Warren who moved there in 1999. The second is a more recent 2013 post from a female Brit expat's blog for another perspective on the place, with Orchard Towers...aka Four Floors.

And for those that prefer video and voice over the written word on the page, here's a nifty little piece from a seemingly short-lived SIN-produced series called The Real TV about "Ladyboys at Orchard" [Towers]. I like the part with the Russian tourist from St. Petersburg playing coy and coming here for some beers and to uhm, ehrm, "relax". Nicely done, Buddy! You know the drill. THIS is reality TV, not like a lot of the other fluff masquerading as such.


Dr. LoveSexy, Edward Pickett, and Bobby Bo were just hangin' out that night for a good time is all. As you can read and see, there is a LOT of stuff going on at this place. Who says Singapore has to be boring and sterile? While some tourists like to hit museums, art galleries, houses of worship and other popular mainstream sites there like Sentosa Island, when you are hanging out with Edward Pickett, he invariably has other ideas.

No matter what your take on the place is overall, the food, above all is first rate. And that's a great thing.

There's no substitute for live travel and exploring different cultures in wonderful, faraway places, if you are fortunate enough to ever have the opportunity, and have the inclination to get out there and explore what is going on outside your neighborhood. As Mark Twain is often quoted, "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime." Alas, many just do not have the opportunity ever, so that needs to be factored in to things as well.

For a commprehensive list of great things to do while visiting SIN otherwise, beyond the fabled tower floors covered off in this post, pore through Jen Reviews -- 100 Best Things To Do In Singapore for all the other fine stuff up on offier, yet which may not be as risqué.

Bob's first novel. is all just really about some single stumblebum guy's fun and games going to weddings all around the world.

Here's the skinny on that classic Flintstones scene referenced at the bar in Montreal after dinner when Bobby Bo goes for a refill of his glass of red wine and is talking to the bartender.

The episode here was called "Love Letters on the Rocks" and comes from season 1, episode 21, and was first aired on Feb. 17, 1961.


Watch the scene unfold here as Fred goes to meet Perry Gunite, the P.I.


You just have to love those lines Perry had, "Rocks over rocks" and "Bartender ... put that in a dirty glass." This is real knowledge of the world stuff going down here, and they don't teach this wisdom in school, kids, so pay attention.

Perry's bowed-out-knees silky smooth stride to the bar is also killer stuff. Just gotta marvel at it, even if I can't quite make my own legs bend quite like that with such awesome curvature. No doubt, this kind of cool entrance to a crowded room is something to work on at home alone to make oneself a more complete and well-rounded human being.

This scene has scarred Bob since childhood.