Costa Rica trip

I just got back yesterday from a work trip to Costa Rica. I'd forgotten exactly where it was, thinking at one point it was an island... but fortunately i remembered (mainly after talking to Si, who did conservation work there a few years ago) that it's in Central America, just a bit further down from Honduras and Guatemala, which I visited a few years ago myself.

The work trip was a get-together for our international ecommerce people, who are spread across the globe in regional offices, and a chance for everyone to meet face-to-face and catch up on what we're up to. That mostly meant holing up in a snazzy Marriott for long presentations but fortunately there was still time to sample the local food and get out into the wild a couple of times. The hotel itself is a wonder of modern tourism - it's beautifully architected in the style of a traditional hacienda (and feels quite genuine), with a couple of restaurants and bars built around a courtyard and pool. There's a cafe, gift shop and travel agent, so you have everything on your doorstep if you don't want to emerge from the haven of the hotel. It seems that Costa Rica is very prepared for tourists and although dollars aren't the local currency it's hard to find a place where they're not accepted. Everyone will entertain a little amateur Spanish conversation but it's mostly unnecessary as their English is very good. I personally found the all-encompassing hotel a little stifling, but for the majority of people coming to Costa Rica I think it's a great option.

Costa Rica doesn't have really famous sights that you'd recognise, but the appeal is more in the flora and fauna, plus I think the beaches. There are a couple of volcanoes - I managed a visit to one and you can see my pics of the crater in my photo feed, and the country has a history of coffee growing that they're very proud of. We went on a tour of the Cafe Britt coffee plantation which was informative and enjoyable, and we heard about how Costa Rican coffee is the best because they don't cut corners or compromise the quality the way other countries do. I did bring some coffee home because it tasted great when we were there... let's see if it tastes as good out of my coffee machine!

Costa Rica is apparently very eco-friendly, with something like 90% of it's electricity generated from hydro and wind. It seems that the country has a general principal of living healthy and looking after nature, which they call Pura Vida, and you can probably figure out the translation. I didn't get to go on a cloud forest trip (maybe next time - I'm pretty sure Diana and I will be back for a proper vacation now that I've had a taster), but it seems that a major appeal is the options for exploring the tree tops and the interesting plants and creatures you find there. They have a great deal of colourful butterflies, birds and flowers. I saw quite a few just in the environs of the hotel, which makes me think what you'll see in the cloud forests must be pretty special.

I should mention the food was generally of a high standard too. Even the time I only had Burger King to choose from at the airport, they had rice and beans with sour cream and tortillas - yum! We also went out to a peruvian restaurant one evening, which had very tasty food. On the menu was a section called 'Chifa' which turned out to be Chinese food - even in Central America they like chow fun! Our people from Hong Kong were very tickled by it. I really enjoyed the local food though. I never got tired of plantains either.

Overall it's two thumbs up for Costa Rica. I hope I'll be back for more of a look around.

Big photo gallery update

I've done a revamp of the photo galleries and added a new feed (hopefully this one will work better than when I tried before) for recent photos that I've taken. Now that I've got an iPhone I'm snapping all the time!

The main albums are in the same place - link on the right of this page.

The feed of my recent photos is here: PHOTO FEED

PS Diana says I have write a blog about how wonderful she is - watch this space while I gain inspiration

New courtyard at Portrait Gallery

The recently re-opened Portrait/Modern Art Gallery was a big hit with me - a curious building with varied modern and original spaces, plus some really good exhibitions. There has been construction going on since it opened and I was delighted to discover the other day that the construction has finished - and the result is nothing less than a courtyard in the style of the British Museum's, done again by Norman Foster!

It was Martin Luther King day (a public holiday) on Monday, and I took the opportunity to visit it, dragging along Diana and Sami, Kati and Tori who were spending the day with us. The building is a rectangle, with the courtyard in the middle, also a rectangle, so it's not guite the same shape as the British Museum's. The roof is glass on an undulating frame, and not only makes for a very bright, airy ambience but also casts an attractive pattern on the walls. The walls were evidently exterior walls and have been kept as they were, and with the trees and bushes there is a sense of being outdoors. There are quite a few tables and a cafe, but most appealing for me (and Sami) were the smooth white marble walls that encompassed the trees and bushes. I'm not sure if theyd planned anything with the acoustics but the courtyard is generally peaceful and although there's a light hubbub of talking it seems calm and quiet. The only part that I felt didn't entirely work were some water features that were very thin patches of running water. Probably very clever pieces of construction, but mostly they looked like puddles as if the roof had leaked.

Anyway here's a few pics so you can see for yourself, plus a couple from our brunch at Busboys and Poets, our regular haunt.

Family photos from Christmas

Here they are:

Family photos - Christmas 2007

It was great catching up with everyone we saw this year and very nice to be home for a bit too. It's amazing how different it seems now, going back to the UK - I'm getting very used to the US now. This year the big highlight was of course meeting little Lara! Hopefully we'll be able to see 'SJL' in Sydney before long when we get round to our long-delayed trip.

thanksgiving pics

OK so we had Thanksgiving with Diana's mum this year and I took a few pics with my iPhone. Just a few, not too many. By the way, in honour of Adam's blog posts and Diana's emails I've started my blog post today with 'OK so'.

Here's the pics: Thanksgiving 2007 snaps

split second timing

I thought this was a neat little collection of just-at-the-right-second photos to share...

Photos taken at the right split second

Unamerican

Every day I drive home the National Observatory. I'm not quite sure what it is - some sort of government facility that is curtained with trees, fences and high security entrances. Every now and then traffic is blocked by police cars so that motorcades of black cars can come in and out - which presumably indicates senior government officials attending Terribly Important Meetings. Sounds very OTT, but when you've lived in DC for a while, it's 'oh look there's another motorcade'.

I'm not actually sure how related this is to the thing I'm really posting about. Right outside the National Observatory is a spot that is a prime location for activist groups holding banners with their slogans. I haven't decided yet whether they're there to catch the attention of Terribly Important People going to and from the Observatory, or whether it's just a great place to get noticed by all the people stuck in rush hour traffic.

I'm actually getting to the point of the blog now... Today there was a group of probably 40 people all holding banners featuring the word 'unamerican'. Typically when I hear 'unamerican' I groan, because it's a favourite word of ultra conservative, small minded people that want to brand whatever they have a prejudice against as 'unamerican'. Insert: immigrants, gays, gun control laws, legal abortion, etc. etc.

Well, today I thought it was interesting that this group's banners were actually protesting against torture as 'unamerican'. There was something satisfying about seeing this most abused of words being applied on an issue of true concern. How can you deny that torture is 'unamerican'. I have to admit that I think 'unamerican' is a word intended to press an emotional button more than to give a reasoned argument (what does it actually mean anyway?). However, there's nice sense of turning the tables that I like about this.

kings dominion rollercoasters

I am writing on my iPhone whilst everyone is on the scooby doo ride. I'm not a fan of the rollercoasters with a drop so sitting this one out. It's 100 degrees Fahrenheit which is actually a good thing because the park isn't too busy - short queues - and it's a great excuse to get soaked on the water rides. The coolest ride is the Volcano, which shoots you fast up in the air then curls you around and round and upside down on the way down. There's also a fun scooby doo ride where everyone has light guns and shoots targets as you drive around a haunted house. I've been typing slowly and now were going up a mini Eiffel tower. The girls have armfuls of cuddly toys which Adam won for them on little game stalls. Well the day is nearly over and it has been much fun. I took a few shots with my phone which I will try to remember to post.

Mum and Dad's visit

Mum and Dad have headed home after a very enjoyabe two weeks with us. They survived the drama of getting and activating my iPhone, we narrowly missed getting sunburn on 4th July while wandering the Mall, dodged torrential rain in the middle of Georgetown, and had a fun little trip to Harper's Ferry despite dreadful backseat driving. They got out just in the nick of time, since Diana and I are about to be swept away by Harry Potter fever, what with the film and the book coming out in quick succession.

I scraped together all the photos from our various cameras in a frenzy of digital upoading and downloading. There's well over a hundred, and it was quite fun to end their visit by playing them through and having a few giggles at the many episodes that we crammed into their short time here.

See the pics here: My pics of Mum and Dad's visit

It feels quiet and a little empty in the flat now that they've gone, but it's nice to be left looking forward to next time they come to visit. I'm sure Dad's blog will feature anecdotes from the trip very soon...

my first blog by iPhone

It will be interesting to see how often this happens ... But so far not too tricky.
I am typing on the little keyboard with my finger and so far so good. I'm sure you have seen the videos so I want bore you with details but just say it is pure joy to use this thing.

Of course the iPhone (it did the fancy caps on that itself) was a birthday gift. Mum and dad are here and we went with Adam and Karen to a cool fondue place called the Melting Pot. The highlight - even though I love cheese - was definitely the choc fondue at the end.

In fact I've had a whole birthday weekend, with a trip to see Ratatouille and then ice cream cake from Maggie Moos today :-)

There you go... Watch out for my next iPhone posting!

What a twit I am!

Someone at work fooled me into signing up for Twitter, and now I'm caught in the merciless grip of Twitter compulsions. I even put a little Twitter update bar on the side of my blog - look there it is under my Yahoo avatar. Don't let yourself get ensnared by the evil Twitterings....

Wales pics

I've uploaded my pics from Wales, check em out at the usual place:

My recent photo albums

Hi Gloria!

This is a special Hello! just for Gloria, since I now know who the dot over Amsterdam is on my reader map :-)

Chicago

No sooner am I back from Si's wedding, and I'm off to Chicago for a conference. It was a good event so I'm not complaining, and in fact Chicago really exceeded my expectations. The city is on the border of a great lake (in fact a Great Lake) with a very attractive waterfront. I was lucky enough to test drive a Trek Lime, which is a cool designer new type of bicycle, and used the opportunity to take a quick spin by the waterfront. The other highlight of Chicago is the Magnificent Mile, which is the main road running through the city. It feels more like a city in England as it's lined with shops, and they all get fully branded, styled storefronts. I was under the imnpression that this was not done in the states, but maybe it's just DC that homogenises their storefronts (item #7 on my pet peeves list). Back to Chicago... there's some grand buildings, both big and small. Among the less expected grand buildings are the waterworks buildings, which are like funny little miniaturised castles.

I managed to find a photo with Google:

Apple TV geek out

I picked up an Apple TV on the weekend, and can't resist a geeky post to fill you in on my setup!

I heard a lot of good things about it and had a play with one in an Apple store, which together were enough to convince me to go ahead and get one. As I was buying it I had a chat with the guy queuing for the till next to me and it turned out that he (and a lot of people) had come in to get another one for the bedroom because he loved his one in the lounge so much! Of course, bedroom TVs are de rigeur over here...

The way it works is that it loads content onto its own hard drive from one other computer that it's paired with. It can stream stuff off other computers too. I've got an old iMac in the spare room, so I've loaded all our music on to that (and soon it will have all our pics too) and made it the one to pair with. But because I prefer not to be hidden upstairs when Diana and I are at home, I've found a handy bit of freeware that allows me to connect to the iMac from my laptop and click around on stuff. I've seen tech support people do it at work before but never thought there would be free software to do it. The other cool part is that I've got it downloading video podcasts from the BBC, CNN, G4, Gametrailers.com and several other sources. Video podcasts have really started to take off and so far I've spent the most time watching those on my Apple TV.

So there you go, I couldn't resist sharing! So far it has been a pure pleasure.

Dublin

Hello folks, I just got back from a week in Dublin with work. There wasn't a lot of time for play but I can relate a few things I gleaned in spare moments:

Guiness does taste a lot better over there, and is much more drinkable. For better or worse you could just keep putting them away...

Dublin is an attractive little city with a few historic sites and some very nice cafes and restaurants, including the rather fine Shelbourne hotel where we stayed (just recently restored to it's former greatness through a bazillion Euro renovation).

No smoking in the bars! I was immensely, but very pleasantly, surprised that all the pubs and bars were free of yucky fumes. Not what you'd expect from the 'real Irish pubs' but far more enjoyable for it.

Very pleasant countryside is a mere 30 minutes drive away, complete with views of the sea.

Not many tourist souvenirs that say 'Feck!', unfortunately.

Big Dump

Somebody infuential must have read my blog. We had a nice big dump of snow today - real snow - and the town is covered in priddy white stuff. Funny thing is, usually snow fall is anticipated by a couple of days of 'storm warning' type news reports and much anticipation of a day off work... except this snow came as a complete surprise. We stayed at Adam's last night, having been there for Kati's birthday and an evening of Wii tennis tournaments. When we left today Adam was taking the girls to a good sledding spot. After all the cold weather, it feels like we deserved some real snow!

slush city

Hello, I hadn't blogged in a while and thought the weather would be a good topic. Very British of me I suppose!

It has been very cold here during the last couple of weeks, with temperatures well below zero most of the time. You'd think this would be a recipe for some nice pretty dumps of snow but instead it has been all sleet and ice. There has been a couple of times when we had an inch or so of sleet falling (and consequently everyone gleefully called a work from home day last Wednesday) which made for very slushy roads and pathways. Then because of the cold temperatures it has stuck around in very solid icy (and dirty) heaps. I also discovered that my car, which is terrific fun to drive in other road conditions, slides around like a slippery slidy thing in the slush. I think I also had my first experience of aquaplaning, which was no fun but fortunately didn't result in an accident. On the plus side, being indoors has felt more cozy and appealing than ever. The drive to work, although a little more treacherous and slow, has turned more attractive for the most part too. In equal measure to the dirty ice heaps there's untouched pillows of snow that make for a very beautiful wintery scene in the morning light. Actually it's more like sleet that's iced into a solid mass from a distance you can't much see the difference.

So not quite comparable to Mum and Dad's anniversary trip to the alps, but definitely one to add to the list of my new experiences in the US.

Say goodbye to the one good thing out of McDonalds...?

I've never been a huge fan of McDonalds - burgers that are bland and dishevelled, clientelle out of Chav City, fattening and unhealthy (well ok, except as a kid when I was enamoured with McDonalds). However, now that I've seen a fair few Happy Meals pass before me in the hands of my neices, I've been very pleasantly surprised by the toys that come with the meal. Often very simple plastic things, but quite ingenious and well designed/constructed. It's not just me who thinks they are good - there are collectors who specialise in them, and I've even heard that after time Happy Meal toys are considered more valuable than offical 'collectors edition' versions of the same thing.

Well, apparently (in the UK at least) there's regulation coming to cease the marketing of junk food to children and a couple of chains (KFC and Burger King I think) are cutting out the toys as a result. I'm all in favour of the rationale, but if McDonalds were to cut theirs too, I'd be rather sad to see them go.

'Necessity governs the world'

I found this quote on a website just now and thought it was an interesting point. Apparently it's something mentioned by Machiavelli, although don't let that put you off:

This is a thought that finds great expression in The Prince and is scattered throughout his work. At first glance it might seem rather obvious, but for Machiavelli it goes to the heart of everything. When you feel necessity biting at your heels, you are moved to respond in some way that is creative. It is either that or die. When you do not feel necessity, your actions lack purpose, your spirit wanders, you grow fat and dependent.


This pressure from the environment does not have to be material poverty. It can be something psychological. You feel unhappy with the world around you and compelled to change something about it or yourself. This dissatisfaction is constant and it focuses your energy.

So now consider these situations..


At work - you feel frustrated by politics and clueless colleagues, and start wishing you worked somewhere else. But what if your next job doesn't challenge you to do better and you get 'fat and dependent'.


The current war - the West is there to fight based on ideals, but for the people who live there it's life or death of their deep held beliefs.


Modern life - with people living in their cosy world of modern, affordable luxuries, there's no pressure to make things better or challenge the status quo.


I think you could apply it to understanding a lot of other things too.