In the ghetto....

An email from my mom this morning:

Another police report from [your street]. Someone on the 800 block heard someone outside, and demanded to know who was there. "the person outside then opened fire with a small caliber handgun."

I live on the 900 block.

Apparently this is what Canadians and Americans look like.

Another textbook image.

Where are the mythical makeup wearing men?

From the same text book that brought you pot plants,
I give you the makeup for men chapter.

"Mike likes to wear make-up. He is not trying to be a woman.
He just wants to look good"


Meanwhile, this article from the English language newspaper for kids,
the Junior Herald, is currently on display in the lobby of our school.

So seriously, where are these make-up wearing dudes? 'Cause I think that's rather hot, and I most certainly haven't seen any around these parts.

In other - completely unrelated - news, there's a middle-aged fellow who runs a fish-bread stand along my way to work. Fish bread sounds totally disgusting, I know, but I love this stuff. Trust me, there is NO FISH in it whatsoever. It's this yummy fried bread stuffed with a sweet black bean filling. So good. Anyway, the man who sells them is really nice, and always says hello to me on my way to work, and on my way home (on the days when he's still open that late). Anyway, today he gave me four of these yummy fishies for free. (You can't tell from the picture but they're pretty big.) This is why Korea is awesome.

Two songs I just can't get enough of right now.

I turned off the auto-start.
Just hit play if you want to listen.
Seriously. Hit play NOW.

McCain: Not Moderate Like You Were Led To Believe

(If you're having trouble viewing the video, click here.)

Additionally, check out Nick's post on Obama, Edwards, Hillary and McCain.

Happy New Year (redux)

Happy New Year everybody! No, I haven't slipped into some time warp; Happy LUNAR New Year. This holiday is called Seollal in Korean, and you can learn more about it here, if you're interested. Today marks the start of the Year of the Golden Pig. It's supposed to be a lucky year for marriage and procreation, if you're into that sort of thing. (More info here.) Anyhow, there's not much is going on here at all. Today has been warm(ish) and sunny, but I've done little more outdoors than take the dog for her walks. Pretty much everything is closed for the holiday, and nobody is around. Luckily I have the never ending antics of Mia and Songi to entertain me. I may do some hiking tomorrow if the decent weather holds.

Mia puts Songi in her place!

Test results and some pointless pet blogging

Results are in! Apparently there is NO ONE out there like me. Not that I needed a test in order to prove that or anything, but this has rather confirmed what I suspected. (What am I talking about? Scroll down and read the previous post!) Anyway, of the people who have taken the test so far, the highest scores belong to two people whom I don't actually know in real life: Amanda (website) who works where I worked last year and even sleeps in the same bed in Nina M's house where I slept in last year (and she didn't even get extra points for that!) and Catherine (website) who teaches English in Japan. Both Amanda and Catherine scored 82%. Of the people I know in real life, Misha and Caitlin have tied with the top score of 80%. My mom scored 79%. My best friends all scored in the 70s. Think you can score better? Go take the test!!

In other news, I have a three day weekend in honor of Seollal, the Lunar New Year. I'm not sure that I'm going to do much, as the weather is cold and wet - not exactly conducive to adventuring. I like my adventures dry, thank you. Or at least warm and wet. Gwen and Samson have gone up to Seoul to spend the holiday with Samson's mother and various small children who love to torment small dogs... and as such I'm pet-sitting Songi once again. (The idea being that torment by cat is preferable to torment by toddler.) Mia is definitely enjoying this:

(If you can't see the video, click here.)

How similar are we, really?

Don't laugh, please, but my most recent internet addiction is OkCupid. There are some absolutely insane people on there. As in people who make ME look normal. Anyway, one of the features of OkCupid is that you can make your own quizzes. I've made one to determine how similar others are to me. See, I'm not one of those opposite's attract types; whether for friendship or dating, I prefer people who are similar to me. So everybody, go take my test and let me know how similar you are to me. (I'm quite curious as to how my real life friends will score, actually.) Answer truthfully, based on what you think or feel, NOT by how you think I would answer. CLICK HERE (Don't forget to come back and tell me your score!) Don't take this too seriously - my best friends are all scoring in the 70s! :-)

This textbook was published in Korea.

One assumes they were going for potted plants.

Paradise Losing

In 1995, my best friend Melissa and I met up with her older sister Brenda for a month long jaunt around Costa Rica. (We were 15, 16 and 21, respectively.) It was an incredible trip, and it awakened in me an unquenchable lust for travel.

We visited the small port town of Quepos, from which we took a bus down a narrow, winding, dirt road to the nearby national park, Manuel Antonio. There was hardly a tourist in sight.

We visited the tiny village of La Fortuna, located at the base of the Arenal Volcano. We paid a local a small fee to guide us into the jungle where we could bask in the natural volcanic hot springs.

We rented a room in a family’s home in the even tinier village of Santa Elena. From Santa Elena, we walked up a long, deserted, dirt track to the Monte Verde Rainforest national park. Again, few tourists were to be seen.

In 2002, Melissa, Brenda and I returned to Costa Rica to find that things had changed drastically in seven years.

Quepos had become a booming tourist town, full of hostels and hotels, hip cafes, pricey restaurants and souvenir shops. The road connecting Quepos to Manuel Antonio had been paved, and its entire distance lined with resorts, hotels, condos and restaurants.

Likewise, La Fortuna had become a bustling tourist community. The volcanic hot springs of Arenal were no longer isolated swimming holes in the wilderness; instead, the naturally heated waters were pumped onto the grounds of impressively manicured hot spring resorts.

Santa Elena, too, was booming, full of a wide assortment of places to stay, eat, and entertain. The paved road leading up to the rainforest was lined with condos and resorts, going all the way up to the park’s gate.

While the interiors of the parks were indeed pristine reservoirs of nature (and while I must say that the hot spring resorts of Arenal were FABULOUS), I found the encroachment of the modern world distressing. Then, in one of the last legs of our trip, we journeyed south into the all-but-untouched Osa Peninsula. We arrived by bus at the nondescript village of Palmar Norte, from which we took a makeshift taxi (er, pickup driven by a local) to the tiny rural village of Sierpe. From there, we took a boat down th wild and undeveloped Rio Sierpe and out into the pristine Drake Bay.

Drake Bay was the ideal tropical paradise. Isolated. Untouched nature. Few locals and even fewer tourists. I only had my old 35mm Canon Powershot at the time, and as my originals are an ocean and a continent away, these small images I scanned in ages ago are all I have to share. But take a peek, and perhaps you’ll see why I consider Drake Bay to be one of my favorite places on the planet.

Drake Bay

Drake Bay as a storm approaches.
Shortly after taking this shot I was thoroughly drenched.


Left: Drake Bay at sunset
Center: Rio Sierpe
Right: Small waterfall and swimming hole in the wilderness

So why do I bring this up? Well, this morning I received a rather depressing email from Brenda and Melissa. A company called Arenas de Oro has purchased a huge chunk of the Drake Bay area wilderness (86 acres to be exact), and is carving it up into a planned beachfront community. Arenas de Oro is a branch of a real estate group called the Costa Rica Land Trust, which is supposedly “dedicated to environmentally conscious development of Costa Rica Real Estate that preserves wildlife and the scenic beauty of the landscape while helping people to enjoy their dream ocean view land investment.” It might be environmentally conscious development, but it’s still rampant development. Especially as CRLT seems to also own the greater portion of the land ranging from Dominical to Playa Uvita to the Sierpe basin to Drake.

Melissa, Brenda and I have been toying with the idea of a return to Drake Bay this fall. While I’m not entirely certain that spending a month in Costa Rica while unemployed is the best of plans, it now seems imperative that I go before it’s too late.