You can take your combo.....

In fact, just to be true to the true sense of this up-to-the-minute phenomenon, you can take your combo and you can try and stick it in two places at once. That way you will find out if it packs more of a punch, or saves you cash, or buys you time, or gets you further, or whether it simply means you took your combo and stuck it in two places at once, resulting some discomfort in two places instead of just one.

Now I don't suppose this is an observation of Brazillian culture, and as such you may well think I´m somewhat off topic. Truth be told I never really took much notice of this combo culture ´till we arrived here and it appears that there´s always a way of getting it with both barrels.

Net - (now don´t forget to pronounce the ´t´as a ´ch´ - go on try it!) is our cable tv/phone/broadband provider. Now remember the stuff about the cpf? So how do we enjoy the luxury of cable TV, Internet and Phone all in one package without the holy grail of ID numbers? -  Well, its like this. The employer benevolently puts his hand in his pocket and pays our bill for us. We duly reimburse him. At least we would if we could legitmately have any income. So the man just subtracts it from our cash bung and all is well with the world. How much he subtracts depends upon how well we have managed to deconstruct the ´Net´ G-nome and which bloody combo we have ended up with.

Now I kind of understand it on the website (in Portuguese) and my Collegue, I have to say did a fantastic job of translating and Explaining (in english). I got home and made a half decent job of explaining it to her (in english). She went on the internet and made of it what she did. The she phoned them up and explained what we wanted (in Portugues) Therafter followed a sizemic shift (in no particular language) in our multimedia houshold supply. Everything started working differently. The little man can watch it all in Spanish if he wants (let alone English or Portuguese) - BBC World disappeared down a black hole (probably a good thing really) and the Interweb thing is now a blistering 5MB. (absolutely all we can afford - can you believe 50MB is nearly 200 quid a month? Well believe it. Get over yourself.

All of this took most of a week to organise, and without the joy of the Combo our domestic economy would have probably gone the way of that of our green and pleasant land. So, do I still hate the beloved ´Combo´? Bloody right I do.

Now here you can stack up your purchases, combo style, you can even buy a t shirt in 8 installments if you want. You can buy a metro ticket that lets you on the bus! Look around you, they´re everywhere. Do send in your own annoying combos -´as if i´m not annoyed enough already.

Amoung my favourite people are purveyors of beer - Landlords and Ladies, Barmaids, Offie owners. If they sell it, I love em. In this weekend before Carnival, I´ve encountered more beer sellers than usual. Unfortunately some of them practice the dark art of devising confusing combos to the innocent drinker.

Its like this - three sizes of can and three prices. Sounds crazy no? Work out how many combos that could be. Combine that with ´sorry I havn´t got anything smaller´and how about 2 mediums for the price of 3 smalls etc etc and all of a sudden you´re in pissed up rip off heaven. Don´t get involved - buy em one at a time - they stay colder anyway. Bollocks to the combo.

You know I used to be so so keen of a certain essex boy chef. I bought her his books so that I could secretly learn how to be him. He could do no wrong. I didn´t mind when he started trying to do it for the kids.  I didn´t even mind when he tried to get the Americain dinner ladies to stop dee frying lettuce. But I got proper pissed off when he combined two ingredients and claimed discovery of the latest world changing scientific phenomenon. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you my most glorious combo ... Salt and Pepper. Knob.