un poco mas (a little more)

October 5, 2007
Ok some smarty decided to comment on using spell check. If you knew me then you know I am too lazy to do so. So let's put up with my deficiency in details...shall we?
So more on the tales of Raphael. If you read before, he is the sensei of concrete work here in Tossa. Picture a drunken old man, stout, with an ill fitted baseball cap, drunkenly slurry his words and carrying the dust of 50 yards of dry cement in his clothes. That's my teacher.
Everything in this god forsaken town is made of concrete. Not steal or wood. Concrete! Wood is used for shutters and framing but not the structures. So Wednesday's job was a phase 2 of the remodeling of a bathroom. The walls covered in ceramic clay tiles are now bare and exposing an ugly grey concrete. Today we chiseled away the floor with a jack hammer to expose the bare structure of concrete held together by rebar. My job: make all the concrete.
So I head outside to make one of three different types of concrete requested by my concrete slave master. This time I am going for Portland. This is really no different that the other types we make but something was in the air and I was feeling confident I was going to get it right this time. This time I used the machine. Of course the machine was what looks like a one man auger (hole digger) and built for a man half my height. So none the less I was hunched over to get my mix-on. Just then, Raphael came outside and disapproved of my recipe. He said to me, "un poco mas arena (sand/dirt base mix)". I looked over at a bag of arena and added what I always though "un poco mas" would be...a little bit more", right? Without knowing what was exactly said by him next, I had the feeling I did not add enough. So I added a bit more....I heard him grumble under his breath as he snatched the bag of arena from me and dumped the whole bag in. Ok now I am confused. Un poco mas means a little bit more not the whole damn bag. I swear if I could read his mind, he wanted to smack me right there out of frustration.
So an hour later, he wanted more. This time I would not fail my sensei and achieve my brown belt of concrete mixing. I know I dumped a whole bag of area this time and came up with the grainiest of mixtures feasible. Raphael cam to check on my progress and without missing a beat he says, "un poco mas agua". I guess the still evident clumps of dry powder were a telling sign. So I grab a water bucket full to the brim and start pouring, remembering that un poco mas is a lot more than a teaspoon. Well I poured so much water, I had to go pee. That will show him! Well looking him in his eyes, I felt a cold chill. This time he wanted to pimp smack me!
When will I ever learn?