This is my second daily post, meaning that it is the second day in a row that I am posting after I have decided to make one post per day. So here goes: what happened to day is that I got up, showered, ate breakfast, talked to some hotel friends and staff, made a list of things to do for the day, and set off to do them. The first was to make a bike for Ana at the shop across town that told me I could work on one of their bikes and then pay for it after finishing. I got there and the guy told me that it was off since I did not show up at the time we talked about the last time I was there. But the time we agreed upon was the time the newspaper reporters were interviewing me, so I wasn't able to show up then. He told me he was only interested in money, he was business man, so how much money did I have? I told him that as I said before I was willing to give three hundred pesos ($30) for a bike that I put together. He told me to come back on Lunes (Monday) since the mechanics had gone home for the weekend. Okay. Then I set out to get some road maps of Central America to plan the next chunk of my trip. Everywhere I went did not have road maps of Central America. Finally someone suggested just use the web, and I eventually did, and found MapQuest to have the best road maps of the area I am looking for. After the map search in town (this is still Veracruz), I went to the post office to see if I could ask them what might have happened to the envelope with my check card in it, or what I should expect. It has been almost three weeks now since my dad sent it. But the post office was closed after four PM, so I decided to go back to the hotel. I started searching online for maps at that point, and that is when I happened upon MapQuest. Yahoo maps were alright, except that they show all the roads, large and small, with the same yellow line, so it is impossible to tell which one I might take (I will be sticking with the largest, most traveled and dependable roads from now on.) MapQuest pretty much just shows the largest roads, at least at a low resolution setting.
The office at the hotel was busy with employees coming in to get their paychecks. I considered working here at the hotel as a bell boy--which amounts to an elevator operator, and a luggage and key carrier. They told me the position pays about the equivalent of $7.50 for eight hours of work per day, plus tips. The staff is very nice. Most of the other bell-boys are studying some sort of engineering, and working on the side to pay for their education.
Anyway, I am also trying to catch up with folks I met along the route with emails, etc. And I am trying to put all my photos in chronological order. This is going to take a while! You can see the current set of albums at Picasa and Image Station.
Tonight I don't know what I am going to do yet, but guess what? I just heard about this huge concert happening on July 7, 07 including Red Hot Chili Pepper and over one hundred other big-name artists, with the theme of "Save Our Selves" from global warming, led by Al Gore, and Cameron Diaz: www.liveearth.org. Check it out--it is going to be huge!
2 comments:
Well, I wonder if maybe Al Gore needs to save us from himself before doing much else. Having $2500 monthly gas and electric bills for his residence doesn't strike me as particularly green.
Ya, his office says he buys green electric, but the whole bit of individuals buying credits to "offset" their waste strikes me as being a bit silly. First, of course, it makes not sense on a large scale, because there isn't that much green energy to buy. Second, it tends to ignore the much larger problems of the global scale of the problem. Is anyone expecting China and India to buy green credits as the number of autos increases?
I'm afraid I see the "Save Our Selves" concerts as more whistling in the dark as much as music.
I think the idea is that as people buy more credits, the green energy sector grows in response to the demand. Then, at a point, the supply reaches a point where it is producing just about as much as it can. The offsets become more expensive and it becomes cheaper to reduce consumption than to buy offsets. The cap on emissions becomes tighter every year, and we begin to live within the means of renewable energy. So with the caps on all countries, India and China will have to use less (or purchase increasingly expensive offsets.)
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