Wednesday, November 30, 2005

First Entry - St. Francis of Assisi

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Well, I created a photoalbum in my Photoblog




The Photoalbum is called Humans I admire




I’m thinking now that would be easier to compile that using a blog.

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Why I want to meet Robbie Williams

He’s one of the few singers that had been able to actually force me to stop whatever I’m doing in order to fully listen his music.




When I listened “Angels” the first time, I thought “Who’s this guy?!” I was in a taxi, I had to call the radio station to ask the name of the song and the name of the singer.

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Books

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Found a lot of books:”http://www.welcomepanama.com/ebooks” on the internet. I’m going to read them to have an idea of what Tai Chi is.




I also found that every saturday there are free Tai Chi classess in the Omar Park near home.

Friday, November 18, 2005

Good!

Well the schema I used is very simple:




-kenptyYYYYMMDD For Exact dates (Like plant a garden or learn how to drive)
-kenptyAlways For things I want to work on without a deadline (Like being compasionate or meditating)




Then from my webcalendar I created a mini php application that generates a link to the 43things so I can see in the month view the goals I tagged in 43things.

Jerk Marinade

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Jerk Marinade
by Helen Willinsky




Some people find marinades more convenient to use than spice pastes. This Jamaican marinade is more liquid than a paste, but not as liquid as most marinades. The flavor of the jerk marinade may strike you as a little harsh when you first mix it, but I assure you, the flavors will all blend and mellow as the meat cooks. To increase the heat of this rather mild marinade, add hot pepper sauce. If you want less heat, remove the seeds and membranes containing the seeds from the peppers before grinding them.




Yield: About 1½ cups




Ingredients:




1 onion, finely chopped
½ cup finely chopped scallion
2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon ground Jamaican pimento (allspice)
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 hot pepper, finely ground
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon cooking oil
1 tablespoon cider or white vinegar
Method:
Mix together all the ingredients. A food processor fitted with a steel blade is ideal for chopping and combining. This will provide an excellent marinade for chicken, beef or pork.
Store leftover marinade in the refrigerator in a tightly closed jar for about 1 (one) month.

50 more to go

Well, have sent 50 now.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

:-( No much progress today...

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I was too tired to write yesterday night after I returned from the gym. Well, I’ll skip the gym today and instead “workout” my brain.

yesterday...

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-I used the Orbitrek 15 mins
-100lb on Chess press
-15lb on each shoulder
-30lb on triceps
-35lb on biceps
-3 sets of squats with 100lbs
-Cable pulling for the back
-5 min of swimming




No abs :-( Why doing crunches is so boring!!

More progress...

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Well, I had exchange emails with Darién, he/she has a cool site about rare bird sightings in Panama called Xenornis he/she pointed me to the Audubon society office in Panama city, and pinpoint me to a recent published book on Panama birds.




Next meeting of the Audubon society would be next wednesday and I’ll hope to be there.

Monday, November 14, 2005

First page Day 1 of 12

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I managed to sign-up at the nanowrimo site and submitted my first page




So far my first page was 145 words. The limit to win is 50,000. I can make it if I write 14 pages a day for 12 days.




The 12 motiff would be very important, I already can see the chapters and the relationship between each vignette.




I hope I can finish it. This novel has been for years trying to get out of my mind.

It's great what hidden jewels you can find in 43things!

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I didn’t ever know of the existence of a club like toastmasters!




I googled and found two in my country, one administered by Dell and another one auspicied by the university of Louisville.




I’ll get info about this last one since it seems is the oldest group.




Wish me luck.




For K’s reference:
Dell Toastmasters Panama Club – Club #: 824045, Dist #: U, Est: 08/11/2005 Meeting Time: 5:30 pm, Tuesday




Panama City Conference Room Dell Panama S de RL
Avenida Bryant Edificio 255 Antigua Base Howard, Panama, Panama
Club Status: Membership eligibility criteria required – Contact club
(507) 211 6974
alfredo_diaz@dell.com




Pan-American Club – Club #: 4214, Dist #: U, Est: 05/01/1980 Meeting Time: 5 – 7 pm, 2nd & 4th Tuesday




University of Louisville, Calle 45, Bella Vista, Panama City
(atras de Rey Kung), Panama, Panama, Panama
Club Status: Open to all
269 5847 or 6416
nabila@cwpanama.net
toastmasters.peoriadesignweb.com/panamerican/

Sunday, November 13, 2005

Making progress...

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It’s incorrect to assume that since I’ve changed the way I see people they also had changed. I must confess I was in the brink of ordering some fire and brimstone to fall from heaven on top of two persons today but then I stopped, relaxed, and put myself on their shoes. I found I was the one to blame hahaa, and so they were right on their claims. I remembered how in the past I would just jump to assumptions, looking for evil behind people actions out of my own fear and insecurities. I guess they both did the same, since I’m so parc when I speak lately “assuming” people won’t see any evil behind my actions. I should take “assuming” out of my vocabulary and also “hate”. I found one of these persons using it in the context of another human and I felt so revoltedl, it happened that I had been researching about the holocaust early this morning and I readed testimonials, stories, saw and heard the harm such an uneventful word in the wrong hands can produce.

It's very complicated.

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It’s near impossible to understand what can make another human happy unless you’ve been in their shoes. I found in the trivial stuff, in the stuff that make us smile and lingers for a while in our mind making us happy, this is an easy goal, in the long shot, the things that can make a human happy for a long time, this is a very hard goal.




I made three people happy of three tries. I’m sad.




Worth it? yes.

How do you know what makes another human happy?

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My first try to fullfill this goal was hard because how I’ll know what makes a human happy without asking them first?!




I tought of stopping a random person and asking what would make her/him happy but I balked at that idea.




So, so far. I gave two people from 43things a gmail invite they wanted to get, I hope that would make them happy at least in the “having a gmail account” context.




T has been polling me, T likes me. But right now I don’t want to start a relationship. So I thought it would make T happy if we share some time together. I took her to the movies and then to my home and we frolicked, kissed and just cuddled. She was happy, but that left me sad. I gave her a couple of hours of happiness that would become sadness if she gets too attached to me.




This goal is too complex and requires a lot of ethical debacle. I’ll mark it as complete, Worth it.

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

I know it's too early to mark this as complete but ...

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But I think that having this goal contributes to not forgetting you. And so far, I had done well without you.




So, I’ll marked this goal as finished.

Worth Doing...

Based on my expenditure behaviour of past three weeks I came with a balanced budget that would allow me to have the basic stuff I didn’t want to get rid off, pay my bills and save the rest.




It’s going to require however a lot of strenght not to spoil it wasting stupid amounts of cash in a not planned night out wich has been the case so far.

Just want to keep doing it

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To smell the coffe in the morning, to wonder watching the sun rise every day, to skinny dip at the pool late at night or under a heavy rainstorm, to play with my dog in bed without caring all the fur that gets over me, to learn every single day, to commit to the people that do love me and love them with twice the energy.




That’s what I long for and I thing I’m in my way to achieve it so I’m marked this goal as completed.

Birdsight

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As a prove of my scattered mind I added the goal of learning how to identify birds and in the subsequent research to learn how to do that I finished designing a whole web application to allow a group of people to track those sightings.




The design is mostly complete, I have the user interface mocked up in a prototype. I’ll need Ajax to be able to provide most of the functionality I foresaw.




Next is start to work in the data layer by building the ER diagram into mysql and creating the programming structures required.




I’m going to use PHP since it is what my site provider supports but I was interested in Rails too.




Let’s see.

Nice invest!

Mom and I really had a good time together. We didn’t even argued about anything (Besides myself letting the water bottle empty inside the fridge hehehe)

Now I got a in construction page..What about the content?!!

Well I got to build a construction page so far.
I’m thinking about the content thought, and the design.
My next action is to get a basic template for the content of panamaensis as an article/portrait since most of it is going to be “portraits” of people.

Birdsight Project

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Well, I designed all the user interfaces. Choosed AJAX as the most likeable technology to use. Now I need a content management system in PHP that supports AJAX or has an AJAX toolkit.




I also will need to convert the object diagram to an ER diagram so I can start building the data layer.




I’m very proud of this work! I’ll need, once the prototype is ready input from true birdwatchers, most have been done based in assumptions and recommendations I had found in the web.




I’ll maybe pay a visit to the Audubon society. I’m sure they would have a lot of extra info.

I'm 198lbs now and going down...

Well, at least my breakup have been worth this! hahahaha. I hope to lost more weight and keep it stable.




I downloaded a couple of abs routines from the internet and start tonight doing them.




Geez, I look great!

Two months more to go..

Well, I’ve been working hard on this one. And the add-on for Outlook is a blessing. However is hard for me to put in order my personal stuff, since most of it is so highly abstract instead of the specific tasks I can design for work.

Well, I don't have a car so I used the public transportation system...

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I took a bus without looking the destination on it. It took me all the way down Via España, where the city’s hotels and banks are down to Calidonia, I hadn’t take this road since being a student, it was full of people doing their errands, buhoneros (that’s people that sell stuff in the street), the low income department stores, then up to Avenida Central, El Chorrillo, an older part of the city, with beautiful old buildings ,more people, old men playing chess or dominoes in the parks under the shadows of big trees, kids playing in the streets, it’s funny that in contrast the part of the city I live seems so calm and quite and this part of the city burst with life and activity, the bus now turned to return back to the Justo Arosemena avenue that would take me back trought the part of the city I live. I got as far as San Miguelito, from there the route goes to some place I’ve never been but I know it’s quite a dangerous place so I descended there. I though it was enough for a day and I’ll do this again on a weekend with more time to spare to follow the bus route all the way out to the outskirts of the city. But I enjoyed the ride and the thrill not knowing my destination.

The Third million years...

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After my breakup ( can one breakup with the past?) that doesn’t qualify as a breakup but it sort of a breakup, I’m feeling quite better, I’ve survived, I felt very blue the first week but, whoever is watching over me always seems to know when to put the right people in my path. I’m starting to believe in the Buddhists’s synchronicity law.




Meeting M was a blast, a pleasant one, I hadn’t this sort of lust for humans since I had sex with one for the first time in some past life.




I think of myself as a very seasoned man but she makes me feel sometimes as a complete newbie and I enjoy that. I had lost that sense of discovering and wonders that sex used to conjure upon me and forced me to seek for more powerfull emotions in other venues of life. Now I’m re-discovering the joys of old good vanilla sex. Or how Cavafis wrote once “The front rooms, where they practice with some decorum the accepted manners of love”. I thing I’d been in the other rooms too long.




Alia is sleeping with me every night, I think she had realized a big change had occurred. As any dog would do she ask with her eyes and lick my face when she find me staring at the roof.




I’ll get trought this, I hadn’t been this far into the road to give up because the path I wanted to take is no longer viable. I had lost everything before and gained it again, it’s good to be on my own two feet again.




Well, that’s what’s going on with me so far…

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Second week...

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Well, I’m still alive.
I remember some lyrics from Destiny’s child Survivor song:




Thought I couldn’t breathe without you,
I’m inhalin’
You thought I couldn’t see without you,
Perfect vision,
You thought I couldn’t last without ya,
But I’m lastin’
You thought that I would die without ya,
But I’m livin’
Thought that I would fail without ya,
But I’m on top,
Though it would be over by now,
But it won’t stop,
You thought that I would self-destruct,
But I’m still here,
Even in my years to come,
I’m still gon’ be here.




I’m surrounding myself with good thoughts, meditating a lot and distracting myself making new friends.




Meeting M has been a great stabilizing force, and the sex is soo good :-P

Monday, November 07, 2005

It's a long time since I had learnt anything by heart

I repeated every single day as a mantra. It took me a week to learnt it by heart.

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Third day...

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Dad told me he saw her at the airport today. She asked about Alia, she didn’t mention my Dad the day before event. Dad asked me if something was wrong between us, I told him I found her with someone else when I went to pick up Alia. “It’s over” I said to him.

Today I’m going out with Asher, we are going to hear the Dianas at the old quarter. That would distract me.

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

This is what you shall do...

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Love the earth and sun and the animals, Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, Stand up for the stupid and crazy, Devote your income and labors to others, Hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, Have patience and indulgence toward the people, Take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, Or to any man or number of men, Go freely with powerful uneducated persons, And with the young and with the mothers of families, Read these leaves in the open air, Every season of every year of your life, Reexamine all you have been told, At school at church or in any book, Dismiss whatever insults your own soul, And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

-Walt Whitman




Well, you made your choice...

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It seems our relationship was a long series of repetive situations. I hope I can put myself some self-respect and keep myself away from you. You obviously made your choice, and it wasn’t me. You had done it long before I returned, but never told me so, You left for me to discover it. That wasn’t fair, you don’t do that to someone you say you love. Why you lied instead of telling me the truth, that’s your nature, your “No guilty trips” mantra.

Now I’ll have to deal with a lot of broken things.




I hope to get strong enough to take myself out of the mud, and walk with my head up high. I hope to get strong enough to no get dozed in the past and look for a future without you. I hope to get strong enough to put in order my mind, my body, my spirt. To clean all that extra baggage you leaved on my shoulders and be able to look myself straight again.




Maybe I’ll go solo for a while, since my “friends” are actually yours, maybe I’ll volunteer and help others and doing so, learn how to forgive you.




Because right now,I can’t.




Would be rainy season in my head for a long time.