I've been traveling since March 24, 2004. In that time I've excitedly covered a large portion of Europe, slowly meandered through out the east coast of Australia, and lost myself in the South Island of New Zealand. Currently I'm roaming around the USA with the goal of sleeping on a couch, be it in the home of a friend or a stranger turned new friend through the phenomenon of CouchSurfing - in all 50 states...all the while lugging around an inflatable Red Couch named Lucy. Look out! I'm just as likely to be found on a couch near you as anywhere else.
Want more than almost dead silence you get here? Check out my new photo blog: www.jiifii.com. My goal is to shoot new photos every single day and then post the best one of them on that site. I also write a little bit about how I shot it and maybe some other gibberish as the days go on. Today is day 3. Check it out if you if you're interested.
I saw this today on some random European website and "wow! how racist! But then I searched for "Mexican Flu" and found that it had been somehow "renamed" by a radical group wanting to "save California" from the infected Mexicans. Appropriately, their website is called "SaveCalifornia.com".
SaveCalifornia.com redirects immediately to SaveAmerica.com, where the claim to be "your pro-family organization dedicated to defending and representing the values of parents, grandparents, and concerned citizens who believe in family, faith, and freedom."
This is the kind of sentiment that a lot of countries make fun of the USA for, and with good reason. They somehow see some politicians, etc, supposedly standing up for ideas like this along with the agendas of big corporations and those with high-powered special interests at the same time when a significant number of American people often miss it or don't hear about it because of the agendas of the big corporations and those with high-powered special interests behind the news agencies that don't tell them about it.
Right or wrong is definitely not my point. I just think it's interesting that the non-American term for H1N1 flu is sometimes Mexican Flu. I wonder what other special interest groups were making that change happen?
Last week I thought that I was too broke to afford a plane ticket back to see family in Texas. This week I thought "eh, who cares" and decided to spend too much money on it anyway. But since then the ticket price has almost doubled. Boo.
I've already bought an incredibly expensive ticket to spend Christmas in Alaska with my girlfriend (who seems significantly less enthusiastic about me deciding to go than I was planned on) so it makes it especially hard to justify spending more than $1,000 that I don't really have on plane tickets in less than 30 days and I'm still pretty bummed about it.
There's way, way too much to do. Something is an emergency to someone absolutely all the time. There's not enough resources to make everything possible at the speed that would be preferable. Someone is always monumentally disappointed. Feedback rarely comes in any form other than grief - even after midnight on a Sunday. Oh, and there's no money. Idealism just isn't enough sometimes. I can't imagine I will ever help manage another non-profit ever, ever again.
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