Brazil: Alpha male food ordering, food, family, and life.

It is common practice in Brazil, no, not common practice, it is near enough a law that when men take ladies out for dinner or drinks they pay. For everything. This is applicable to if you're seeing each other, dating, having an affair, married, first date, last date, blind date, family, or just friends.

Now I consider myself to be a very chivalrous gentleman, and I am happy to put my hand in my pocket when I take a lady to dinner, but in these modern times, when couples go for dinner, as a foursome, more than once, there should be a fairer more equal footing when it comes to the bill. Not here though

the most interesting thing to come from this is the way Brazilian men then act at the dinner table, this acceptance of the unsaid law that you'll have to pay brings out the very worst and basic alpha male traits of needing to dominate, show control, to show the ladies present that they're in charge, and ultimatley to show authority over the other alpha males present, i.e me.

It starts before we've even sat down, the other guy had already ordered for me and my guest, I hadn't even looked at the menu and was told what I'd be eating.

The next time I've managed to look at the menu but this time we're sharing pizza so he chooses 2 other pizza and we eat those together. Then he starts picking the wine for us to drink, orders 3 bottles over the course of the meal, 2 of which myself and my friend weren't bothered about drinking, then the bill comes and it's over to me for the 50% of it!

At times it felt like the other guy was going leap onto the table, smash his fists against it in a drumming motion, make loud, threatening noises, then bite me into submission before he started rutting my friend in front of his date.

Another day I am taken to a traditional Brazilian barbecue or churrasco, these incredible places where you sit and people just keep bringing you freshly seared meat to your plate from several different animals, not to mention about 16 different cuts of beef. It is heaven if you like meat.

All the meat and beer produces a strange counter struggle within your bowels, you need to wee all the time but the other procedure is a little, err, shall we say, haltering? I leave the table and decide to treat myself to a upgrade for this movement so I turn left into the disabled toilets: more space, cleaner, and hardly ever used.

Everyone knows the joy of a overdue wee, and as I sat down on the loo (in case I'd have something else coming through, you never can tell with all the meat!) I'm not ashamed to admit that I closed my eyes to savour the moment, and after a short while but quite a long wee I looked down and realized that the front of the toilet had been cut out, leaving a gap of about 6" by 3" across the front of it. I have no idea why disabled people need this gap, but a gap it was. A gap that I had happily pissed through. For about 40 seconds. Now I don't know exactly how much piss you can piss in 40 seconds but this time I had just created a lake of piss on the floor of the disableds.

I was sitting in a way that if I tried to move my shorts up onto me then they would swim in the piss, so I kicked them across the room to the corner, leaving me in just a pair of trainers and a ill fitting tee shirt (all the meat and beer has 'filled' me out a little) straddling a lake of piss.

I stood up over the lake and took stock of the situation, there's no mop or bigger hand towels, so I'm going to have to use the toilet paper.

Now in Brazil the napkins and toilet tissue are a bit like small bits of plastic sheeting, and they absorb liquid in a very similar way, or they don't absorb at all. So I am now standing in a disabled toilet with no shorts on, pushing a lake of piss around the room.

About 10 minutes later I have emptied the toilet tissue dispenser, and managed to get the lake down to a small puddle, maybe about the size of a 7" record. I have nothing else to mop with so I am left with a difficult decision, leave the piss on the floor, or tell someone?

I walk back to my table knowing that at some point later that day a disabled person is going to get the blame for emptying the toilet of paper, and pissing on the floor.

As I chew my steak I am not a proud man. The meat tasted good though.

We are driving back from a day on the beach with my friends and her whole family, it has been a beautiful day walking the beaches, eating food, and enjoying the simple pleasure of being close to nature and the sea.

On the way home the smallest one in our group, a lovely little 6 year old, has fallen asleep across our laps in the back seat. I am a little jealous and wish that I could still sleep like a child: anywhere and straight away.

As she sleeps I watch the traffic speed passed and consider the previous 2 weeks, and I think about life and how unpredictable it can be. 3 weeks ago my friend in Cardiff seemingly had his life mapped out for the next 15 years: a new wife, a new home, business plans, and all sorts were all in place. And now? Gone. All change. Finshed. And why? because of a silly mistake, one quick moment in time and a life changed completely.

And I thought about being in this car and another driver could make a mistake, have a accident, or just a lapse of concentration for a slpit second that leads them into our path, and our lives would change forever. And this precious little life, that has so much ahead of it, asleep in front of me, would never be the same again.

These tiny moments, that we would then rename tragedies, happen around us constantly, and that's why we have to live our lives, to fight for everything we want, as long as it doesn't harm or hurt another human being, every single day, to make ourselves and everyone around us happy, to experience LIFE! because one day, the tiniest thing might mean that you don't have that life anymore.