Friday, May 30, 2008

I completely forgot how to do them!!

I remembered how to start, and what to do at the end but forgot the middle part RRRR.

Got some cool videos in how to fold origami cranes from youtube yesterday, I’m still practicing.

The source of the paper is the issue that has me thinking. Wondering if I’ll be able to use soda can’s aluminum instead of paper.

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Get 5 people to sign my pledge

The United Nations have an online volunteer program called the United Nations Online Volunteering Programme

Nabuur is another site that has “villages”, those are actual communities around the world where a specific job needs to be done.

I currently dedicate 4 hours a week to volunteer tasks. I’ll give another hour a week if I can get at least 5 43thinglings to pledge to help doing volunteer work trough any of the mentioned sites!

It’s been a lot rewarding, and the comunnity of people helping there is very alike the 43things community.

The tasks go from the very basic to the specialized but because of the remoteness and sometimes lack of computer and information resources (internet) in those places is that our help is required: helping to create a marketing brochure, design a log, search google for farming techniques or water resources handling, looking for donors, putting up a website, translating from one language to another, tasks we all can do in our lunch break or idle time and that can hep to change lives around the world!

My pledge links:

AT Facebook

At Pledgebank.com

Hugs

Ken

:-(

Been unable to find a german edition in the local bookstores.
So been start reading it in english.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Matisse's

The Dinner Table

Tamara Lempicka's

Love her paintings…

Kickstart Hegemon...

Now that I’ve the tools I always find something that is missing and I’m using it as an excuse to not start. After investing almost 3K on this I cannot believe I’d allow so many months pass by without doing something about it.

Maybe taking a challenge that would require the tools I need would kickstart me again, instead of not accepting work because I think that “maybe” something would be amiss.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Poverty...

The other day I readed an article on a local newspaper. There’s a lot of panamenians living on less than two dollars a day.

Guess I’ll start to be more open to help homeless people when they ask for help.

1.46!! Wonder if I can last long enough living on that daily budget, I spent ten times that daily between transport, snacks and food.

Knowing how weak and the headaches I feel if I skip meals one day, no wonder the only energy left to them is to pursuit food by beggin or get drunk for the narcotic and caloric effect, besides is actually cheaper than bread right now, nobody can think of work in such a weakened state, I remember when I was studying at the university and had to use my short money to buy stuff had to decide between eating or buying supplies, those were hard times…

I’ll try to live for a week under that budget, whatever I save, I’ll use to buy supplies for a local charity.

Status update...

When everything seems to go as planned the auto-sabotage starts…I’m trying to keep myself positive and out of the blue, as cliche as it sounds, wish I could break whatever chains are keeping me on hold.

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Week 1 almost done...

It’s been hard. I stopped a couple of months ago most of my addictions intending to see if I’d lost anything to them, when I started the morning pages, it was painful, very emotionally intense, the things that would thwarted those negative emotions from my system weren’t there, and they down on me with the full strenght of a truck, so much that I felt tempted to go back to them.

But I understood the purpouse of the whole exercise, was not to focus on the evil but to be aware that those things were there…

I’m looking forward my next week!!

Found a nice exerpt about this topic...

“How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.”

By Barry Lopez.

Some personal thoughts:

I Face that every day, as the quote says, how to be compassionate, when it seems the whole world conspires to make you be otherwise.

My advice:
Live out. Don’t try to answer the question. Live on. If you find yourself failing, be bold, lean on the light, put distance between you and whatever tries to pull you back into the never-ending cycle of wrongdoing others…Live with a compassionate heart, surround yourself by likewise people!

Monday, May 12, 2008

I think it would be simpler if working with one piece...

First Set:

The Master & Margarita in Russian, Italian and French.

Things I'm doing wrong...

Still feeling guilty about all that wasted water when I forgot to close the laundry’s faucet and flooded my flat.

Still can’t find LED based bulbs in my city.

Working with 4 monitors.

My water and electricity consumption doubled in april and I cannot find a reason, from USD 9 for water and USD 18 for Power to USD 25 and USD 50.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Week 1

Week 1 starts today!! Looking forward the next 12 weeks.

Monday, May 05, 2008

Grateful to be able to feel ungrateful

I’d been dreaming with water all the weekend, everywhere within my dreams, running water, clear pristine water, oceans of water. My favourite environment seemed to be the motiff on whatever my mind has been trying to tell me all weekend. So I wake up this morning with a positive outlook to the small drizzle of rain, after all, I love rainy season.

Then I turned on the TV and the first glimpes of the Burma tragedy kicked in, there was the beautiful water that flowed so benign within my dream world wracking havoc half the world across.

I’m Grateful for my country being spared of such natural disasters.

I’m Grateful for water that gives life, and that may take it.

I’m Grateful for the wrath I felt, the rage against a absent landlord sometimes I wish would be looking our way more often.

I’m Grateful to be ungrateful.

I’m Grateful for water in the form of tears.

Sunday, May 04, 2008

My 43 random things

1.I go to sleep at 3:00am and wake up at 6:00am but won’t leave bed until 7:00am.
2.I love to be underwater.
3.Guiness is my favourite brand of beer.
4.I’d been heartbroken twice.
5.I’d been in love twice.
6.I love watching people being people.
7.My favourite place to read is not a cafe, is a bar.
8.My first dog was a German Shepherd called Barky
9.My second dog was a Pekinnesse called Benji.
10.When Benji died was the first time I saw mom crying, I was a kid, I had never seen her crying before.
11.The second time I saw my mom crying was when I asked who my father was. I never asked the question again.
12.I lost my faith in God the same night I got my first broken heart, unrelated reasons. I was 25.
13.I’d rather be alone. I’m sort of an empathic person, crowds can overwhelm me.
14. I love walking in the rain.
15. I have an espresso and a chocolate bar for breakfast.
16. I love pasta.
17. When I watch people I try to predict what they’ll do and what they’ll say, it’s a game I’d played since I was a kid.
18. Sometimes life feels scripted.
19. I feel home among trees.
20. I enjoy painting.
21. In average my desk stays uncluttered half and hour before I turn it into a mess.
22. Poetry.
23. I like old jazz.
24. I’ve a thing for mature women.
25. I like to cook for myself and improvise after 2:00am.
26. I read a lot.
27. I don’t like to use underwear.
28. I’m the guardian of a welsh corgi pembroke and a mut.
29. I Spent a lot of time just listening.
30. Someone up there must love me a lot.
31. I love the sea.
32. I almost got drown trying to save a man from drowning.
33. I often dream of being weightless in my own room.
34. I’m addicted to sex, reading and fried plantains.
35. I practiced my first surgery on myself when I was a kid reading a Dad’s notebook on the subject.
36. I love Cavafy’s poetry
37. It takes time for me to react emotionally, sometimes I do many years after the actual event.
38. One way I deal with my agoraphobia is to imagen people to be cattle, but then I felt it to be very offensive to cattle, now I just imagen people not to be there at all.
39. Rainy days, cloud skies. Love them.
40. I dislike sunny days.
41. I want to figure out the reason Buddha smiles. I bet it’s an inside joke.
42. I enjoy watching people being people.
43. I avoid negative people.

My 43 random things...

1.I go to sleep at 3:00am and wake up at 6:00am but won’t leave bed until 7:00am.
2.I love to be underwater.
3.Guiness is my favourite brand of beer.
4.I’d been heartbroken twice.
5.I’d been in love twice.
6.I love watching people being people.
7.My favourite place to read is not a cafe, is a bar.
8.My first dog was a German Shepherd called Barky
9.My second dog was a Pekinnesse called Benji.
10.When Benji died was the first time I saw mom crying, I was a kid, I had never seen her crying before.
11.The second time I saw my mom crying was when I asked who my father was. I never asked the question again.
12.I lost my faith in God the same night I got my first broken heart, unrelated reasons. I was 25.
13.I’d rather be alone. I’m sort of an empathic person, crowds can overwhelm me.
14. I love walking in the rain.
15. I have an espresso and a chocolate bar for breakfast.
16. I love pasta.
17. When I watch people I try to predict what they’ll do and what they’ll say, it’s a game I’d played since I was a kid.
18. Sometimes life feels scripted.
19. I feel home among trees.
20. I enjoy painting.
21. In average my desk stays uncluttered half and hour before I turn it into a mess.
22. Poetry.
23. I like old jazz.
24. I’ve a thing for mature women.
25. I like to cook for myself and improvise after 2:00am.
26. I read a lot.
27. I don’t like to use underwear.
28. I’m the guardian of a welsh corgi pembroke and a mut.
29. I Spent a lot of time just listening.
30. Someone up there must love me a lot.
31. I love the sea.
32. I almost got drown trying to save a man from drowning.
33. I often dream of being weightless in my own room.
34. I’m addicted to sex, reading and fried plantains.
35. I practiced my first surgery on myself when I was a kid reading a Dad’s notebook on the subject.
36. I love Cavafy’s poetry
37. It takes time for me to react emotionally, sometimes I do many years after the actual event.
38. One way I deal with my agoraphobia was to imagen people to be cattle, but then I found it to be very offensive to cattle, now I just imagen people not to be there at all.
39. Rainy days, cloud skies. Love them.
40. I dislike sunny days.
41. I want to figure out the reason Buddha smiles. I bet it’s an inside joke.
42. I enjoy watching people being people.
43. I avoid negative people.

Built a roadmap..

Of things I want to learn on every field I’m interested on, usually I consume every reading material at hand, at least with the roadmap I can see how every new reading contributes to the final goal.

Starting with...

1. Мастер и Маргарита (Russian)
2. L’écume des jours (French)
3. De bello gallico (Latin)
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Today...

1. Clouded skies. It seems rainy season finally decided to show up, two months behind schedule. Yesterday I woke up at the sound of rain on the parking lot’s tin roof, soothing music to my ears.

2. D’s impromptu visit. Traveling from Mexico to Panama just to say hello, guess I cannot beat that.

3. Losing my cellphone. Feeling the same peace I found when I got rid of my wristwatch decades ago. But now everyone is like crazy because they can get to me. I even was amonested by my boss because he couldn’t find me on saturday, which is plain ridiculous since is my personal cellphone and I don’t work on saturdays.

4. Doing it. Finally feeling my vegetative spell is going away, on friday I actually went to the gym, programmed a lot and finished two more books.

5. My go frugal goal. I need more space, my room feels crowded with all that computers and monitors, plus the dogs that now live “permanentley” inside my room since is the cooler one. I may get rid of the bed and install one of those sofas that you can make a bed so I can actually have an office to do work.