Stuck in Rio de Janeiro

Finally I'm posting again. I was supposed to be in Hawai'i today, but due to unforeseen situations, I'm stil stuck in Rio de Janeiro. Not a bad place to be...

A Day Without Coffee - Hawai'i Earthquake

On October 15, 2006, a strong shake, tremor, whatever you call it, woke me up. I immediately jumped off my bed and ran to the living room, only to find my roomate there. At this point, the whole building was shaking. I realized we were in the middle of a strong earthquake. If the building collapsed - and it very much felt like a possibility - we would be goners.

We were both dumbfounded, scared, looking at each other. I didn't have a clue wheter to run or hide. So I did neither; just stood there. Ah, did I mention we were both wearing underwear? Thanks god I had boxers on, less of an embarrasment. (Hers was pink and kinda big, but it didn't look so bad, though.)

After the first aftershock the electricity went out and I could swear I was smelling smoke. So we decided to leave the building. I armed myself with my digital camera and my roomate grabbed her laptop. However, Miss Swiss Princess took an eternity grabbing her laptop and putting it into its own padded case (very important, I guess) to finally exit the building. I patiently waited for her while eyeing the window, in case it was necessary to jump out of it if the building collapsed or burned down.

Luckily it was over soon. But the worst was yet to come. No electricity for the whole day! And with no electricity, there's no hot coffee. And that, my fellow caffeine lovers, is certain death. So in desperation I rode my moped around town, looking in vain for hot coffee. I found a small store in Kapahulu that had room-temperature canned iced-coffee. I cannot call it coffee, but it kept me alive for the day, even though it was in a comatose state.

Sadly, but not worse than a day without coffee, the damages are estimated at $40 million, and insurance companies in Hawai'i usually don't offer earthquake coverage. But that's a whole other story...

I've got coffee now!

Finally settling in...

Finally it seems like things are sorting out good. I rented a place in Makiki and I have a roomate coming from Switzerland in two weeks. I only need to find a car, preferably a truck, a new surfboard and get my bikes back from my old house. I'll be set then.

The problem is that I'm not much into school this semester. I'm having a bit of culture-shock. I just spent three months in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I must confess I did not want to come back. Life was good there. But I also have to confess I wasn't working. But it's irrelevant. I actually would love to get a job there. I would love to move back for a while, see how things work out there.

I'll finish school in May and then I'll see what direction my life will take. For now, I need to get into tracks and motivate myself to learn. Basically concentrate in what's ahead of me. I think if I can manage to have regular doses of surfing admnistered in my life, I can cope with everything else. Is it bad? Not if I have a goal and surfing helps me keep my sanity. But if I don't have a goal, it's like I'm postponing my life, numbing it with surfing. For now, my goal is to finish my bachelors. It's just that now that I'm almost finishing it, it seems like a really small and meaningless goal. Finishing a bachelor should not be a main goal. Instead, my main goal should be to get a good job where I can develop my professional skills as soon as I graduate. But since it's too much to think now that I just came back from Brazil, I'll stick to my goal of finishing school and excelling in it. I think the rest will flow then.

In the end (end?), it's just a circle, our lives.

Not everyone is fortunate enough.

This Balinese bitch is one lucky dog. Her and her pup, which is behind her, don't have to spend any time shaving or waxing unwanted hair-they're hairless. The bitch also lives at the beach. This is the life I want. Too bad this bitch is in Bali...

Convergence

I'm not so sure of where we have to post, since I looked for other people's reactions and couldn't find anything. Am I the first one to post a reaction here? Me, the one who's always on Brazilian time? Hard to believe it. But here goes my short reaction to the short chapter.

We can look at convergence in a positive way. But we should not forget that it might also be negative. One good example is the Globo empire in Brazil. They own TV GLOBO, RADIO GLOBO, and O GLOBO (newspaper). The Globo empire started out as newspaper, back in 1925, I think. Later it expanded to Radio, and by 1965 it expanded to TV. It also publishes on the Web, and has another newspaper, tabloid style, designed to reach poorer citizens. Because Globo has so much reach, it affects public opinion in everyway it wants, from election results to fashion trends.

So while it's important that journalists should embrace convergence, they should be aware that ownership convergence should be looked at with caution.

But all in all, convergence should be good if it is used as an adding tool, bringing a broader view of newsgathering and news distribution for the professionals in the news industry.