Buenos Dias

Hey! Just have a few minutes of downtime at the hostel, so here I am. Had great gallo pinto esta manana at Nica Buffet, which seems to be run by Americans. Now I'm waiting for Maria, the owner of the hostel, so that I can give her son's Christmas present to her.

This is actually a pretty cool story. Before I left, I was doing research on where to stay for the night in Granada. So I posted a message to the Lonely Planet internet site asking where would be a good place to stay, at least for the first night. Maria, the owner of the Oasis Hostel, sent me an email asking a favor. She asked me to buy her son's Xmas presents in NY and bring them to Granada. This in exchange for reserving my room for the first few nights. So, being not too familiar with the country, this seemed like a fair exchange for me. So, I went over to Paragon Sports the night before my trip and picked up a pair of Adidas Barricade IV sneakers and a tennis raquet bag. And here I am, waiting to give them to her. Turns out she's a very nice woman, and gave me some travel tips too.

OK, gotta run...things to do.

Granada, Nicaragua

These girls in my hostel are keeping a blog, so I ought to as well. Yesterday I arrived in Granada. I met 2 Dutch girls named Chantal and Jessica who were planning on going to Masaya on an organized tour the next day. I took the opportunity to jump on their tour with them. And so...

today I went to Masaya National Park where I saw an active volcano called Santiago. After that I went through the city of Masaya where they have a lot of commerce and a huge market where they sell local shtuff. I didn't buy a thing even though it was dirt cheap, because most of it either wouldn't have fit in my bag or would break in transit. They had a DHL there in the market, but I didn't want to go through the trouble. After we left the market, we went to Cristina, which is a cute little town with a nice vista where you can see Granada, Volcan Mombacho, Laguna de Apoyo, and Lago Nicaragua. We had lunch there overlooking Laguna de Apoyo. After that we went to San someone Oriental which has some nice ceramic and wood (uhuh) stuff for sale. But of course I didn't buy anything

An Inconvenient Truth

I highly recommend the documentary film "An Inconvenient Truth" which features Al Gore discussing Global Warming. It is chilling to watch, and made me realize just how much of a problem this could prove to be. What was especially surprising, was just how fast the Earth seems to be heating up. Before I watched the film, I thought that there was disagreement in the Scientific Community about Global Warming and whether it is being caused by CO2 buildup, or just by cyclical trends. But scientists pretty much all agree that CO2 is the problem, and that we MUST reduce emissions right away if we are going to slow it down.

If you read this, please visit www.climatecrisis.net. It is the website which was set up as a followup to the movie for people to read more about this global crisis.

OK - now, read a contrary opinion. I haven't scoured the internet to research both sides of this issueas of yet. I'd like to, but I don't really have the time. I know that the movie had an agenda. I'm not saying that Gore has a reason to lie, but I didn't see any contrary opinion like this one represented in the movie. Please comment if you see this (sure...like anyone but me reads this!).

Overconsumed by LOST

I have become consumed by the TV show LOST, or more specifically, "The Lost Experience". For the uninitiated, LOST is a television series about a group of people who are in a plane which crashes on an island in the middle of nowhere. It's a lot to explain, but suffice to say that it is one of the best tv shows I have seen in a very long time. So now, there is an online multimedia game which accompanies the series which provides possible clues as to what is going on in the series. OK more on this later...moron this.

Torah Reading

Mapach pashtah zakef katon...

I'm back to my Bar Mitzvah days. About a month ago, I agreed to read torah at my cousin Kenny's aufruf. His wedding to Lauren is coming up next Sunday, August 27th in Seattle. Although I used to read torah back when I was around Bar Mitzvah age, I had forgotten how much was actually involved with this. For the past 2 weeks, I've been practicing daily. There have been some advances in technology since those days that are helping me along. For example, all my studying is being done on the internet. I found a website that has recordings of the torah trup in case I can't remember the notes. There's a site where I can listen to someone do the readings, and read along with the trup and vowels. The bottom of the page has the words as they look in the Torah, without trup or vowels. My strategy is take a section, learn it well enough so I can record myself doing it, and then read from the Torah section, using the tape as a reference. Then I take the tape, along with a printout of what I've learned so far on the Subway with me in the morning and coming home in the afternoon. It's been working pretty well. I have about half of it learned. I'm finding that it gets harder as you go, because I have to learn more but remember all the parts I've already learned. I'm finding all of this a pretty interesting challenge, albeit very time consuming. The benefits of my wisdom and the advances in technology since the Bar Mitzvah days are pretty much cancelled out by my lessened ability to learn and memorize things. But, hey - my cousin only gets married once...or so we hope. :)

Uh...huhuh...log

This is a "log", or perhaps you might call it a "journal". For me, it conjures thoughts of the "diaries" of my youth. You know, those little girly numbers with the tiny lock that anyone with the ingenuity of an orangutan could open. My sister had one when we were young, and I used to read in on a regular basis (sorry Michelle) to keep tabs on who she thought was "cute" at the time.

There's no crappy little lock on this "diary". Everything I write here is available for public consumption, if anyone thinks it's worth their time. To quote Avenue Q, I'm still searching for my "PURPOSE". Or from "The Alchemist", my "Personal Legend". So, maybe you'll catch a glimpse into that search as you read through this. Or perhaps you'll just learn about my take on the world, and maybe the posts that will collect on this site will eventually point to a very obvious PURPOSE. Who knows? But I'll try not to bore you too much with my introspection. Just know that it's there. If my site had a little lock, I might behave differently. But it's actually a good thing that it doesn't, because I believe that you shouldn't overthink things. You have to live your life, keep your eyes peeled, and open yourself up to experiences. And sometimes when you know people are watching, you won't get caught up in your own internal thought bubbles. And life's too short to get caught up. So there! Read on kiddies...it'll be a fun ride!

Jeff's World Version 2.0

This is the first of what I hope will be my ongoing blog. Everyone's bloggin', so why shouldn't I? Onto the studio today to continue the looooooong process of recording The Exboyfriend's 3rd and greatest work, yet untitled. Today's project...to lay down the beginnings of "Life's Been Good". And it has...so far. Welcome to Jeff's World 2.0!