My Old Blog

My taxi comes in an hour and a half. It was a nice trip…much more like a regular vacation than I am used to, but nice nonetheless.

My Spanish is still fine. Our guide said she could get me a job if I wanted. They get paid to travel around Latin America (although they do have to tend a group as they do it). Of course, I declined. I

Its been hard to get to computer. I was in the jungle for three days. I killed a scorpion and tarantula in my room. David told me they weren’t deadly…only very painful. I ate well, and napped in the afternoon in a hammock with rain on the tin roof. His small lodge is literally in the middle of nowhere. You go to sleep early when there is no electricity.

Then we were rafting and camping for three days. I enjoyed that after the three days of hiking in the rain in the jungle….it gave my legs a rest and now my arms are sore.

It rains all the time in the rain forest. I never thought about it like that, but it is very true. My clothes smell like mildew and I’ve given up putting on dry ones. I just wear the same thing everyday.

The group I’m traveling with is interesting. Our guide once made 800 paper cranes in elementary school because she “liked it”. The guy from Canada has a degree in math and 10 IT consulting experience….then quit and now he is a cop. He talks about shooting things all the time. I asked him how many times he’s fired his gun in the line of duty: “Never…I did draw it one time though.” There is the guy from Norway who is a professional gambler. All he does is play poker on the Internet. He played for a while tonight and said he just paid for the vacation. The girl from California surfs all the time and just graduated in biopsychology. She uses words like “rad” and “gnarly”. I didn’t think anyone said that anymore.

I saw a friend of mine from B-school in San Jose. He is managing a hotel close to wear I was staying. I asked him for a job, because he said he was trying to buy another one.

Now I’m in Monte Verde. Its a big tourist destination….where you can see the cloud forests, and zip line through the canopy. There is no paved road to or from the city (which was oddly enough founded by the Quakers). I think that’s weird. All in all, Costa Rica is very developed and the prices are high…except its roads are crap.

I’m listening to the guy behind me who owns this internet cafe. He is from the US and hates George Bush. I think he’s implying that he left the US because of that. I’ll have to ask about that in a minute.

I’ve gotta go. I think I’m going to try to convince one of the laundry places to dry my clothes. Everything is soaked and its raining outside right now.

I spent most of the weekend at Barnes and Noble. I read most of a few books and drank alot of coffee. I bought a few books too. I always do.

They ask if I have/want a Barnes and Noble member card….I’d get a 10% discount if I did. I don’t know why I say no everytime. I know I spend enough money there. Something about those clubs….I never join. I’m of the Groucho Marx school: “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.”

I spent alot of time in self-reflection too. I feel it is important to self-examine, as long as it doesn’t become self-loathing or self-aggrandizement. I found some things I liked and some things I didn’t. I suppose that isn’t really news…since we’d all find that if we took the time to think.

I have a vacation coming up. I haven’t taken any days since last year really….so I have to use up two weeks before the end of the year. I like to take my vacation in chunks since I feel that allows me to “get away” better. Without getting away to take a look, you can never really be sure of what you’re doing. You can’t see the trees for the forest kind of thing.

Peter is in Nepal right now. I think that’s weird…since that was the trip we were supposed to take in 1998 before things went wrong in Taiwan. I think its a sort of tying up of loose ends with him….coming full circle. Its important to do things like that, symbolic stuff, to mark certain parts of your life.

On another note, the Annapurna Circuit is an amazing trek….one of the best in the world. In fact, I liked the idea of doing something physical so much that I decided to get exercise on my vacation too. I will be hiking, biking, rafting, etc in Costa Rica. I will also see a friend in San Jose that I went to business school with. He’s working at some hotel. I asked him if they needed a janitor that speaks passable Spanish and good English.

My tennis team won the division yesterday and we’re going to the playoffs. We have a great team this season and have a shot at winning the championship. I won’t be there and I’m sort of bummed.

The team told me I should cancel my vacation and get my priorities straight. In a way they have a point….I mean, I’ve lived in Atlanta for a few years and never had a good shot at winning the City. It is a chance that doesn’t come along very often. On the other hand, Costa Rica, as a spot on the planet, will surely continue to exist long after tennis is even still a sport.

This is a great article expressing concepts I sometimes talk about and wish I knew more about….where money comes from and how it gets its value.

CNN ran this story about the crazy gunman that killed the Amish school children. Half of the 75 people who attended his funeral were Amish. If someone killed your kids and then killed himself would YOU attend the funeral of the killer? Probably not.

Maybe I need to become Amish?? I’d be unemployed surely though, since my experience building large software platforms is probably pretty useless to the Amish.

I wonder how I would make out with the Amish? Without electricity I imagine they go to bed early. I like to sleep. Score one for the Amish.

Amish are farmers. I don’t like dirt, or manual labor all that much. I imagine horse and buggy would be cool…..if I were in Central Park on vacation. I don’t think I’d like it for my main source of transport. Maybe the Amish life isn’t for me?

The Amish are exempt from social security and medicare taxes. I don’t like taxes. Score another for the Amish. (They don’t draw Social Security or receive medicare either though.)

Ok…this one seals it. I’m in.

What are the Amish courting rituals?

For many of the Old Order Amish young people, pairing up begins at Sunday evening singings, The boy will take the girl home in his buggy. The couple is secretive about their friendship and courtship. Several days to two weeks before the wedding, the couple is published in church and their intentions to marry are made known. Weddings are held in November, or at the very latest in early December. That’s after the busy fall harvesting season is over. Weddings are on Tuesdays or Thursdays-the least busy days of the week on an Amish farm. The wedding is held at the home of the bride and the sermon and ceremony will last about four hours. Weddings usually begin at 8:30 a.m. There are no kisses, rings, photography, flowers or caterers. There are usually 200 or more guests. After the wedding there will be a delicious dinner of chicken, filling, mashed potatoes, gravy, ham, relishes, canned fruit, plus many kinds of cookies, cakes and pies.

That food sounds great. I can’t wait to become Amish. I’m hungry.

Since I can’t do tech work after I convert to Amishness, I think I’ve come up with a different profession that I would be well suited for. I will become the world’s first Amish Science Fiction Writer.

I will open a new and wonderful world for the Amish with my fantastical stories of “lightbulbs”, “radios”, and “vacuum cleaners”.

Can the Amish drink?

I’m a little busy and preoccupied, and haven’t felt much like writing lately. On a positive front, I have lost some weight apparently. Someone at work commented today. I thought that was strange, since the scale says I weigh pretty much the same thing.

I heard a funny story this weekend. It is sad as well, but we should be able to find some humor in sadness, otherwise its just sad, and not redeeming at all.

My grandparents are both pretty senile, and often don’t remember what they did 10 minutes ago. I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten until my mom told me this story. 10 minutes is giving them too much credit.

Both my grandparents are religious and always remember to say the blessing before a meal. So my mom serves them, and my grandfather says grace. After a few bites my grandmother looks up and asks my grandfather if they have said grace. Papa says no, bows his head, and says it again.

A few bites later they repeat the process. Mom said they say the blessing no fewer than three times each meal.

Moral of the story: Your food can never be too blessed.

I might go to this seminar in November. It’ll give me a chance to practice my Spanish and learn something interesting.

I think I will call them and see if it is any use for poor people. Asset protection and sophisticated offshore wealth strategies might not be much use for someone that lives above a garage…

http://www.offshoreadvantageacademy.com/

Several people have called since my last post, asking if I am ok. I’m still here certainly.

I do have a talent for hiding/ignoring pain. Is that really a talent though? Most men are pretty adept at that I am guessing. Just as everyone thinks they are above average; I’m sure many people think they have a talent when really most members of their subgroup have the same characteristic. I am more emotional than most men I am guessing…though I can’t say that the emotions I have are better or more noble…just that I have more of them.

I remember a study I read after 9/11 (can’t believe that I was able to dig that up) that said people who repressed their grief and maintained their normal routine recovered the fastest. Of course, that doesn’t prove anything since I am sure I could dig up a study that said the opposite if I took the time.

Just like therapy in general, or pills. I dug up this article (I’m on a roll), that expresses placebos often work as well as anti-depressants.

As for therapy, there was a study….which unfortunately I can’t find (luck’s run out), that said comparing differing types of counseling (from freudian psychotherapy to cognitive to behavioral therapies) for effectiveness produced strikingly similar results. It turns out that TIME, more than anything, helped people (though not all people). The other thing that helped was simply having someone there every week to talk to. It didn’t always seem to matter what you said.

I don’t really have a point….only that I am sad, and my peculiar makeup makes me good at being sad, but bad at sinking too far into it. I used to say that I am forever camped at the precipice…unable to fall over. I’ve talked about before that I attract those who are emotionally “talented”, inasmuch as they are capable of great highs, and great lows. I have always attracted that type….and I am attracted to them. Not sure if that is a good thing, or a bad thing.

Hopefully good.

Today has been a very said day for me.

“Fake it till you make it…”