Announcements

Click here to read about my upcoming book.

Mar. 26, 2024

During my journeys through South America I have visited 36 towns/cities in Ecuador. In Perú, I visited 48; in Chile, only five; and in Argentina, I visited 16. In Uruguay, I visited five, and in Brazil, three. And in Paraguay I have visited 26. In Colombia I've visited 85. That's 224 towns/cities in South America.

I'm in Barranca, Perú.



A mixed bag of thoughts and musings.

July 17, 2016

A nispero tree and the fruit up close.

To start with a short story. One typically beautiful day when I was walking to a students home for their lesson... I am walking along and up ahead of me, maybe half a block, are two women also walking, in the same direction. I didn't really notice anything special or particular about them as I could only see them from behind and a half-block back. But I see one of them stop under a tree alongside the road, between the sidewalk and the road. I thought maybe they were just stopping to rest in the shade, it was a hot day as is normal here. But then one of the women starts jumping, so right away I knew she wasn't resting, and it was too hot to start exercising, even in the shade.

Politics, coffee, and an update from David

June 18, 2016

Some packages of Colombian coffees.

Here are my thoughts about the current state of affairs in the US and an update from David (at the end of the blog).

What on earth is happening up there in the US?

Trump is a man out of his mind. Clueless about anything that has to do with politics and running a country, has no idea what foreign policy is, and has many unrealistic ideas of what he will do as the President, none of which are actually possible. Just look at his "policies" on his web site (I have), they're ridiculous.

New web server

May 08, 2016

A view of Barranquilla in the distance from the Bocas de Ceniza.

I have moved my web site to a different web server. The server I have been using the last couple years, called FastWebHost.com, has proven to be less than stellar in reliability. The last couple months I have seen many "500 server" errors. This type of error is not a result of the web site, but is the result of a configuration problem on the server itself. The techs at FastWebHost raised certain settings, the problem continued. They raised them again, the problem continued. They raised other settings, the problem continued. They have maximized certain settins on the servers and the problem continues.

Castillo Salgar, update from David

Apr 22, 2016

Me and my landlady, Yanet, at Castillo Salgar.

I discovered a great coffee a couple weeks ago. I was walking through a store I don't normally shop in, it's too expensive for most items, and I was looking at the coffee section, thinking "There are a lot of Colombian coffees here, I should try one of these". So I picked one called Al Amir. It's a 100% Colombian coffee with Cardomom. And it is fantastic! The name is Arabic because of the Cardomom, apparently adding Cardomom makes it an Arabic blend. I don't know, I'm no connoisseur, I just like the taste. It's a mild coffee with the slightly minty flavor of the Cardomom. A perfect late afternoon coffee, as is vanilla coffee, also a very good coffee for later in the day. In the mornings I prefer a cinnamon coffee. So far I have found a vanilla coffee and a cinnamon coffee made by Sello Rojo. The cinnamon coffee is harder to find so sometimes I buy the regular unflavored black coffee and buy some cinnamon sticks and crush them into the coffee grounds. If you haven't tried it, you should. As for finding these coffees in North America or other countries, Sello Rojo should be available, but Al Amir is probably not in North America (according to their web site they are only exporting to China). There are quite a few other coffees I haven't yet tried, but will as time goes on.

WriteMonkey and I have more new students

Mar 13, 2016

A view of the landscape of the department Santander, from the bus to Bogotá

I found this new text editor for writing my blogs. Instead of using MS Word I am now using WriteMonkey (writemonkey.com). After all, why use a huge memory pig, word processor if only writing a simple text document? WriteMonkey is a very stripped down writing application, with a minimal interface that doesn't get in your way or distract your from your actual work - writing. It does everything you would expect from a writing application, even to the point of having a few different sounds for your typing, so it can sound like you are working on a typewriter. There are many plug-ins available for people who donate to the developers. Otherwise, use it as is and it is free.