He alone is an acute observer.....

.......who can observe minutely without being observed (Johann Kaspar Lavater 1741-1801)

Greetings from Toronto where I sit sad and alone in my hotel room, again left wondering if the proprietors of such establishments actually house the rooms they use to market their services online. The palatial room and view of Union Station that attracted me has been replaced by a near bedsit with one working plug and a coffee machine that makes a bizarre gurgling noise despite being plugged out and free of water. I'm actually afraid to go near it for fear I'll be digging bits of shrapnel out of my forehead for the foreseeable future. It's somewhat exciting, The Dalai Lama is doing a gig in The Rogers Centre this week, he's staying in the hotel over the road meaning the world's media is camped in mine. It means trying to make educated conversation in the bar in the evenings with aul fellas who've spent their career working for Fox or CBS while all the time hoping they won't discover that I'm only in town to interview an Irish footballer.

Aside from buying over the counter medicines for a member of this parish I'm over here purely for work. From past experience sitting for hours on end with nothing to do or wandering the streets to kill the boredom become part and parcel of a gig like this. I was in Chicago for 3 days last week and spending 7 in Canada so it gives plenty of time to watch our cousins from this side of the pond and reflect on what we're missing out on at home. Things like the complete domination of Starbucks, I know we're bad at home but the mall over the road from me has 8 Starbucks out of 42 retail outlets. The Bank Of Montreal branches even have ones and will deliver to you further up the queue.

Halloween is also much bigger over here but leaves you in the position of wondering what's fancy dress and what's just regular freakest behaviour......

• Kermit The Frog - Halloween
• Middle-Aged School Girl - Hooker looking for business.
• Elvis - Debatable.
• Voldemort - Mod with unfortunate face deformity.

The big debate in the US last week was over the whole OJ Simpson book telling how he would have killed his wife, if he'd killed his wife, which of course he didn't. On one hand people publically are going nuts, praising Rupert Murdoch for banning HarperCollins from publishing it. Criticising OJ for cashing in on blood money, now the Goldman family are having the same thing thrown at them after they went to court, won the rights to the book, and published it themselves. At the same time the book is doing major business but people are buying it in the way that Irish people did The Sunday World 20years ago, get it, wrap it up in proper papers and smuggle it home. You'd have to wonder will Catherine Nevin's do the same business when it comes out.