Temptation

I haven't yet moved out of Puerto Rico - I am staying here till the end of this month - when an invitation to move here (photo of the village above) right away, practically yesterday, for at least three months if not a year, or longer, presented itself.

The village is pittoresque, located on one of the most beautiful lakes in the world, surrounded with majestic mountains - and volcanos, with a spring-like climate year round and inhabitated mostly by very friendly and humble people.

Unfortunately, due to endemic poverty, drugs and a history of violence in this country it is also very dangerous.

And, I wish I could, but can I ???

P.S. Do you know where this is? Hint: it is a tad south and more than a tad west of Puerto Rico.

Green day

It's St Patrick's day and the only green thing I had today was a green sallad for dinner: lettuce, sprouts, microgreens.

For lunch at work there was arroz con pollo - definitively not Irish, so I thought of cooking dinner for a change, but did not found in a PR grocery anything Irish. So green sallad it was. And a green tea. My Irish friends would laugh themselves silly.

But I was reminiscing Ireland today - I worked in Dublin two summers in a row some 15 years ago - on an all-European project. Our hosts seemed to love taking us on pub rounds around Dublin... and I had to hide the fact that I really do not like Guiness. :-((

Otherwise, I loved the green island, Dublin, following in the footsteps of Leopold Bloom, a character from James Joyce's Ulysses, who wanders through Dublin some 90 years earlier... Loved the pastoral countryside of east Ireland, too, all those brambles, leek soup, potatoes, cabbage, corn beef... :-)

Sunday afternoon

the weather's so so, yet the beach in front of my condo looks like that

and that
Does not seem like too big a crowd, but the noise they make is horrendous. Kids scream, adults shout - all at once, all the time, from Thursday afternoon till late Sunday night, there is no quiet minute!

And I still have two more weekends of that noise pollution to endure...

Dog sledding

When I lived in Colorado, 12-10 years ago, I took a ride on a dog led sled one weekend and have - since then - been daydreaming - off and on, when I was not dreaming of living in Palau ;-) - of having a dog team and becoming a musher.... even though already at that time I was already at least a tad too old for that... and waaay too unfit. :-(((

But dreams are dreams, so I followed Iditarod, cheering all female mushers, followed all the mushing stories trying to figure out how I could make the impossible possible... but all I was able to accomplish was to talk a musher - whenever I had a chance to take a dog sled run - to letting me "co-mush" ? for a spell.

My daughter, on the other hand, being infinitively more practical than I, just dreamt of having a husky!

Freedom

"That backpack's like your symbol of freedom," he comments.

" Guess so" I say

"Having an object that symbolizes freedom might make a person happier than actually getting the freedom it represents".

.....

"Perhaps most people in the world arent trying to be free, Kafka. They just think they are. It's all an illusion. If they really were set free, most people would be in real bind. You'd better remember that. People, actually, prefer not being free."

"Including you?"

"Yeah, I prefer being unfree, too. Up to a point. Jean-Jacques Rousseau defined civilization as when people build fences. A very perceptive observation. And it's true - all civilization is the product of a fenced-in lack of freedom."

Haruki Murakami: Kafka on the Shore.

Suspected

... biopsy tomorrow.... I wish it was me....

Finally!

You can't imagine just HOW RELIEVED I feel to finally having been able to figure out the way to leave this island soon and without jeopardizing the work I have been doing here - thus without any qualms of conscience !


Will I miss this silvery sea?

No, I am moving to another seafront location - in southwest Florida.
So I won't miss the sea, or the tropical ambience or... the discomforts of living in Puerto Rico! ;-)

I have a new place arranged preliminarly - and - surpise, surprise: due to the recession and overbuilding it is now less expensive to live in Florida's cultural mecca - with its miles and miles of stunning beaches, opera, theatre, ballet, tons of art galleries, abundance of organic veggies at every corner and all the other stuff I could only dream of here - that it is to live in Puerto Rico!

I just need to fly to Florida one of the nearests weekends to finalize things there, so my new place will be waiting for me.

And I also need to figure out how to take some 5-6 suitcases and boxes of my belongings (how on earth have I accumulated so much stuff here, so fast???), 75 punds of books, a flat screen TV and 4 cats off the island with a minimum of trips ( I am hoping for no more than two), and ... how to sell a car in Puerto Rico, while I need it practically to the very last moment....
All the furniture and household goods will go to charity, so that's easy. I'll have them picked up!

Boy, am I glad!