"¿Tienes fuego?" said the caveman to the gentleman

As a regular contributor to the realm of internet literature I often come across other sites of interest and profound intellectual substance, many of which are written by close associates of mine. One such site readers may remember me referring to is www.hoogster.blogspot.com where one man's mission to completely reconstruct the English language according to his whim has gained a reasonable following. Recently though I've been introduced to a new site www.oldrob.blogspot.com written by "El Capitan Chef" (there you go Rob, now I'm even advertising for you!), the site which takes a pretty broad agenda is generally updated daily and thus far has attracted a phenomenal following, albeit a litany of comments concerned with arguing or counterarguing against other readers.

I was interested to read recently a piece amidst the aforementioned broad agenda over the issue of smoking and passive smoking, the talented author (and part time sharp-shooter) presented an impassioned and well thought through argument which struck a particularly resonant chord with me. I agree wholeheartedly with the authors position; "smoking is wack", however think that the situation in the ol' A-d-of-elaide is far better than where I find myself currently. Chile is certainly behind the times so far as smoking is concerned- in Adelaide smokers have a pretty hard time smoking anywhere other than at home and that only threatens to get harder for them in the future. However in Chile very little opposition exists to smoking and indeed I don't believe I would be too off the mark to state that I am one of very few non-smokers.

Smoking in Chile is like smoking used to be in Australia. One can freely destroy one's lungs and indeed those of their neighbors whilst having a meal in a restaurant (illegal in oz), walking through a shopping mall (illegal in oz, I don't think this was ever legal was it?) or whilst in a lecture (urr... I don't know if its illegal but it should be, cos dang that just stooopid). Of course like at home, there seems to be a few more girls that smoke than men, why is that? do they really think it makes them look sexy? are there men that like girls who stink like their dad's ashtray? Of course there may be some young-gun reader out there who would be quick to ask if I'm not being a little hypocritical- I have been known to puff the odd cigar from time to time (generally special occasions), especially in the company of Señor Hoogland. But my aim here is not to take the moral high ground and preach against all your vices- you're all damned vile sinners!... Rather I only wish to draw an interesting comparison between a country where sometime in the near future a man and his gal will be able to cruise the town and return home not smelling like a packet of Woodbines and a country where unfortunately your meal still comes with a side serving of smoke.

As a footnote, it's interesting to note that my typical daily experience with smokers isn't sharing their self induced condemnation (it probably is actually, but I just don't notice it), but rather I on average probably receive 2 or 3 requests a day for a light, in Spanish when one feels like a puff, one asks ¿tienes fuego? which literally translates as "do you have fire?". You can imagine my amusement the first time someone asked me this, but this brings me to my closing thought... no my 2 closing thoughts...
1. Isn't it funny how some languages translate into others?
2. Why do smokers never have a lighter and always have to ask someone? I mean if your going to by a packet of fags then logically you would think of it at the time- do I have a lighter? If not then buy one.... or better still do us all a favour and not buy the damn things in the first place.