Newsletter 2009
27/02/2009

Pedro’s Newsletter for 2009, on second thought there is no news in this letter therefore it’s more of a fact sheet…. so here we go Pedro’s Fact Sheet for 2009.

WHO TURNED OFF THE LIGHTS

Dear Friends, Friends to be, Clients & Clients to be, all debtors and creditors, all of you out there must, at some stage, have had the same thought as me being “What the H#*? happened”. Well, let me tell you a story, no I am not going to give you my version on the past events, to tell the truth I have no idea what went wrong and in reality I do not care. But if I lend John 100 Euro and John lends Bob the same 100 Euro and Bob lends it to Paul and Paul in turn lends it to Chris we in total moved the money four times. You got that so far, good. Now I want my money back but Chris cannot pay it back so we all have a problem, but what started with 100 Euro now seems to be 400 Euro. We all scratch our heads and think what happened there. If we are lucky, and we are called bankers, the government jumps in and gives us 300 Euro and all is merry. But I still don't care what happened all I know is that the results of it all really annoy me.

Tell me what did you and I do wrong, where are we to blame. I wake up in the morning at 6.30; yes we still get up early and turn on the TV to watch some news, sky news normally. I even rebuilt our complete bathroom to add a TV, one of these little things that give me great pleasure in life, so we can watch it all whilst having a shower and a shave. Carina, still my wife, goes downstairs to make breakfast, yeah, even after 16 years of marriage she still does that. And I watch all the gloom and doom called news. What happened to happy news, it’s all gone, nonexistent, not allowed, happy is banned. But lately it’s even getting better, between all the financial crisis and the total destruction of all that’s good. After they made you realize that all the work you did for the last 20 years could well have been for nothing, after all that, but just before some more bad news they now show you “Live Suicide… Oh yes I kid you not, that’s all we need, now that makes us feel a lot better and ready for a new day. Before you might call me an insensitive A-hole with no feeling at all, I must tell you a little story, I have been there and done that. In March 2008 I felt some lumps in my neck and went to the Doctor, Thompson in this case or as we call him Doc Hollywood the doom thinker and yes doom thinking he did and rightly so it proved after several weeks of tests both in Portugal and England.

I had it, the dreaded C word which made me say the F word. Here we went for several months of chemotherapy and radiotherapy all done in Saint Bart’s in London. Customs even stopped asking for my passport that’s how much I crossed the borders in 6 Months of traveling up and down, Faro to London and back again. I am the King of speedy boarding, crowned by Easy jet. That is until I could not travel any more and I was forced to stay in England and believe me, you start to doubt your own sanity when you are half way up the stairs and you need to take a break before climbing the rest. So after many months of liquid food and losing a total of 20 kilos I think I know what it feels like to be helpless. And therefore my comments for the sake of sanity give us some happy news. Many people have asked me or remarked I must have a completely different outlook on life now, money is not the most important thing and everything must be relative. My answer to that would and will be, money is very important it’s my responsibility to make sure that my wife and children are taken care of; don’t leave for tomorrow what you can do today.

So on top of me spending the summer in an English Hospital, somebody turned of the financial lights that brighten up the world at the same time and I did not see either coming. I was not prepared; I am pissed off by it all and feel extremely sorry for myself.

But the reality of it all is that life goes on, it does not help that I feel sorry for myself we should be happy that the sun is shining if we can smile, there is always a reason to be happy. Our Grandparents and some of our parents fought a world war for god sakes. Imagine waking up day after day with that, and we want to feel sorry for ourselves.

I tell you what I am going to do, open a good bottle of wine pour myself a glass and raise it in salute to all of those that; laugh, fight, pray, live, admire all and everything in every day live and just get on with it.

And that is all I have to say about that.

Kind regards,

Pedro