Postcards from the Bleeding Edge
Monday, June 04, 2007
I have been pretty quiet on what´s been happening in my personal life on the blog lately.
Last week (after 2 abortive tries) I finally sold my house in california. I´ve wedged my entire life into a single 5x8 storage unit. (My mom begged me to get a bigger unit, me, what I wanted was less stuff! I made it all fit.) Last year, two cars in a row died on me, and I was getting by on a borrowed vehicle for the last 10 months... because...
All I´ve wanted to do for years of competing with offshored resources was outsource myself to someplace warm and sunny with decent DSL, and I may have finally done it. A few minutes after the check cleared, I was off for Nicaragua!
Why Nicaragua?
1) When I was growing up, there was war here. It´s the closest war america has been to in a long time. Yet, Nicaragua has been at peace now for 20 years. It´s interesting to have lived in Ronald Reagan´s america, and to remember all the american propaganda (at least partially biased by ¨Big Sugar¨ - but remember, the cold war was still hot back then, too).
2) The reaction I get from people. About half LOVE the idea. The other half react with fear. A place like that, I knew I had to go.
3) A friend of Doc Searls wrote a book about living like a Nica. It made it seem plausible that I could maybe retire, or at least, slow down a bit, from the hustle and bustle of the Silicon Valley. I've found most of my interests migrating towards charitable and free software like Ardour, and the one laptop per child project, so living cheap would give me more time towards stuff like that.
4) I need to lose 40 lbs. A lot of walking, surfing, diving, and a little dysentery ought to fix me right up!
5) My gf swore she´d never go to a place like this. Then she decided she didn´t want to take a vacation herself until late july. So... I had nothing to do... so here I am, for at least a month, not feeling (very) guilty about being in a place she didn´t want to go to, and having a pretty good time.
6) Mi Espanol es muy Poco. I´d like to improve it.
7) The exchange rate to europe sucked.
8) The deciding factor? I´ve been trying to move back to Santa Cruz, Ca, for 10 years now, gradually getting closer and closer, until 5 years back, I bought a house in Felton - about 20 minutes from Santa Cruz - and I realized that college girls didn´t interest me anymore, that the music scene had passed me by, and although I loved surfing, I´d become a wuss and didn´t dig the cold anymore. I wasn´t going to be able to go back to the Santa Cruz of my youth... This (slow) realization reminded me of Mark Twain´s experience in becoming a riverboat-man. Once he´d done it, all the mystery and romance went out of it, and that´s how I feel about Santa Cruz.
So... still... I love swimming and surfing and diving... I was really missing sunshine and warm water... and I have some time to kill before my next gig starts (assuming I take another gig - hard to think ahead that far) - so I hopped a plane down to San Salvador... and
Hola Nicaragua!
Adios America!
Expect light blogging.
Last week (after 2 abortive tries) I finally sold my house in california. I´ve wedged my entire life into a single 5x8 storage unit. (My mom begged me to get a bigger unit, me, what I wanted was less stuff! I made it all fit.) Last year, two cars in a row died on me, and I was getting by on a borrowed vehicle for the last 10 months... because...
All I´ve wanted to do for years of competing with offshored resources was outsource myself to someplace warm and sunny with decent DSL, and I may have finally done it. A few minutes after the check cleared, I was off for Nicaragua!
Why Nicaragua?
1) When I was growing up, there was war here. It´s the closest war america has been to in a long time. Yet, Nicaragua has been at peace now for 20 years. It´s interesting to have lived in Ronald Reagan´s america, and to remember all the american propaganda (at least partially biased by ¨Big Sugar¨ - but remember, the cold war was still hot back then, too).
2) The reaction I get from people. About half LOVE the idea. The other half react with fear. A place like that, I knew I had to go.
3) A friend of Doc Searls wrote a book about living like a Nica. It made it seem plausible that I could maybe retire, or at least, slow down a bit, from the hustle and bustle of the Silicon Valley. I've found most of my interests migrating towards charitable and free software like Ardour, and the one laptop per child project, so living cheap would give me more time towards stuff like that.
4) I need to lose 40 lbs. A lot of walking, surfing, diving, and a little dysentery ought to fix me right up!
5) My gf swore she´d never go to a place like this. Then she decided she didn´t want to take a vacation herself until late july. So... I had nothing to do... so here I am, for at least a month, not feeling (very) guilty about being in a place she didn´t want to go to, and having a pretty good time.
6) Mi Espanol es muy Poco. I´d like to improve it.
7) The exchange rate to europe sucked.
8) The deciding factor? I´ve been trying to move back to Santa Cruz, Ca, for 10 years now, gradually getting closer and closer, until 5 years back, I bought a house in Felton - about 20 minutes from Santa Cruz - and I realized that college girls didn´t interest me anymore, that the music scene had passed me by, and although I loved surfing, I´d become a wuss and didn´t dig the cold anymore. I wasn´t going to be able to go back to the Santa Cruz of my youth... This (slow) realization reminded me of Mark Twain´s experience in becoming a riverboat-man. Once he´d done it, all the mystery and romance went out of it, and that´s how I feel about Santa Cruz.
So... still... I love swimming and surfing and diving... I was really missing sunshine and warm water... and I have some time to kill before my next gig starts (assuming I take another gig - hard to think ahead that far) - so I hopped a plane down to San Salvador... and
Hola Nicaragua!
Adios America!
Expect light blogging.
Labels: nicaragua
¶ 3:19 PM 0 comments
