elcarmean

I’ve been trying to get lessons for about 5 years (believe it or now, kite surfing has been around that long!) and I finally went kitesurfing for four days in Hua Hin, Thailand (just like Alpenprinzessin below me! I also would call it “my new obsession” like she does). It was amazing and while I still can’t consistently get upwind, I can get up on the board and cruise almost every try, and get pretty far each time. It was so much fun that I’m going to buy my own gear this summer and spend about two months at the beach in New York to keep kite surfing.

Since January I’ve read:
(1)Love in the Time of Cholera, (2)Memories of my Melancholy Whores, and (3)Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez;
(4)Dr. Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party and (5)Orient Express by Graham Greene;
(6)A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens;
(7)Bad Dirt by Annie Proulx;
(8)Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie;
(9)The Zahir by Paolo Coelho;
(10)Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

and am currently reading:
Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond;
Sea Fever a book of selected poetry by John Masefield;
Triumph on Everest, A Tribute From the Sherpas of Nepal

I think 10 books so far this year is pretty decent since I’m working full time and living in a crazy and fun foreign country. Of course, I’d love to be reading as much as SpaceCakeGirl, who seems to have read a number of the same books as I have this year, along with many more. I’m jealous.

because they mean that I can actually go to grad school next year! So far I’ve been accepted to three schools, which I’m thrilled about because the schools I applied to are all ridiculously competitive. Now I just have to find out how horrible the debt I’ll be in afterwards will be, come on financial aid…

I’ve been living in Nepal for about three months now and because it’s totally a morning society, I’ve been going to bed much earlier. I’ve stayed up past midnight less than a dozen times in the past 3 months, which is incredibly because I don’t think I went to bed before midnight more than a dozen times in the past 2 years before Nepal (I was living in Spain, a very late night society).

I’m still going to bed too late, but too late here is any time after about 9:30. Almost the whole city is up before 6 AM! It’s crazy, I’m not a morning person at all.

A comment below said that the software isn’t Mac compatible, so I’ll expand a bit on what the software is compatible with:
Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP, and Vista
Mac OS X (in any of its versions)
Linux
Playstation 3

Also, it can be run as a screen saver or a program, along with the more complicated console version. The link to download is below, don’t forget to add team #36343 as that’s team 43Things.com

http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Download

who is folding with our team. Jaq has worked his way up to our number 4 contributor on the team! Morningbreeze is #5, Ficus_Major #7, Wimblejigs #9, eatdrinktravel #18, Oogyboogwa #19, MisButterflyKisses #25, and stevepayne #29. Sorry if I left anyone out, I tried to include everyone that is a current folder. If you think you are folding for our team and your name folding name isn’t on this list, check that your folding is working and that you added team #36343.

As you can all see the team is getting bigger, but the more people and the more computers that are folding the more difference we can make. So, even if you want to fold for another team please join.

Also, I’d like to note that there are 43Things people that fold for other teams, notably the_technocrat (who is one of the biggest contributers to folding in the world!) and DeadWriter.

I didn’t even notice that I hit 1000 a few days ago. It went to Knicke25 aka “funiculee gets real” for her goal “Play around with Sophie and consider creating a multimedia super-annotated version of Melville’s Moby Dick or perhaps another book” because I liked Moby Dick, and the other works by Melville that I’ve read, and also because she has awesome goals in general.

28. Prague (Czech Republic)
29. Budapest (Hungary)
30. Vatican City (Vatican)
31. Paris (France)
32. Amsterdam (Netherlands)

I can’t believe I had forgotten 30-32, they’re from before I wrote the last entry. I’m also leaving out places that I’ve only been through on layovers or transferring from trains to planes, etc.

will always be that I never saw Pavarotti sing. Granted, I’m young and he hasn’t been singing much recently, but he has such an amazingly powerful and moving voice. He will be greatly missed.

and worth doing over and over. I’ve been trekking in Nepal twice, for between a week and two weeks each time. The two times were completely different, the first was in the middle of nowhere near the Tibetan border where trekking was actually illegal and some of the villagers had never seen white people before (little kids were terrified of my dad who is quite tall), the second was in the Everest Region, a much more touristy area, although we were there in the end of December and were practically the only foreigners.

Hopefully I’ll get a chance to go trekking again soon since I’ll be living in Nepal starting in less than two weeks.

so it’s only sort of couchsurfing. After all I knew her before I went and stayed with her, but I only knew her because she had stayed with me through couchsurfing.

Either way, it was a great experience not only hosting her (and 4 other people so far) but also going to stay with her. I highly recommend couchsurfing.

I’m marking this done even though it’s something that will always need doing again because I’ve done it for the immediate time period that I was thinking about when I added it. I’ve graduated now and after taking the Spanish for foreigners exam in the end of August I’m doing some consulting work and going to Nepal for an internship. I’m not sure how long I’ll be there, but it will be at least 4 months. I’m also planning to take the GREs and apply to grad school for next fall while I’m there, so I guess I’ve got this figured out for the next few years assuming all goes as planned. That’s a scary thought…plans have been so last minute and changing in the last few years, and I love that.

Thanks to the wonders of NPR podcasts I can listen to NPR on my commute and trips be they by foot, bus, metro, or plane and even though I’m in different continents than NPR broadcasts.

I have some choices forced upon me as my plan seems to have fallen through because of some mistakes, unclearness, and annoyances by my university and the one I had been planning to go back to next year. Now I have to decide what I want to do, whether to continue school in the spring or next fall, what kind of schooling to continue with, and what to do after August. So many ideas, most of them unrealistic or unobtainable, most of those only because it’s so late to be applying for many of the things I want to do…arrgh…I had it all working as I wanted it, now it’s all up in the air.
Oh well, I’m sure whatever I end up doing I’ll enjoy and it’ll be for the best.

Stanford University has a program that you can download to your computer that takes a tiny bit of data on the way proteins fold and uses your computer’s spare time to study it. Stanford is doing this “distributed computing” project to study the causes and possible cures for Cancer, Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow Disease, Parkinson’s Disease, and many many others. You can run it as a screen saver, or as an application, it’s made for PC or Mac, and it could really make a difference. Their website is http://folding.stanford.edu/ to get more information about it, and the download link is on the left. If you need help setting it up, there are links on the site, or you can message me.
Join team number 36343 which is the team for 43Things.com

I have two little sisters, one 10 and one 13. I’ve always been closer to the younger one, partly because the older one is very difficult. I’ve been trying to find something that we can bond over, as I have a lot of things with the younger one and nothing with the older. The other day she asked me to put up our dart board, so combining this with my “Get better at darts” goal (where I also posted what follows). I spent a few hours figuring out how to hang our board outside, how to pad fence behind it and the wall below it so that the darts that miss (she more than occasionally misses the board) don’t get damaged, moving a giant umbrella to shade us from the Spanish sun while playing, etc. And I did it all with her and including her so that she was part of everything and felt like she was doing it too. It was fun, but better yet is that she seems happy and seems to be getting less stressed as we play, which is great because she can be a little (read is almost always enormously, incredibly, ridiculously) tough to deal with. We both aren’t very good, but we’re getting better and I think it helps us bond and helps her deal with things by distracting her from her difficulties.
Who would have thought darts could be so meaningful?

my little sister asked me to put up our dart board, so combining this with my “Be an awesome big brother” goal, I spent a few hours figuring out how to hang our board outside, how to pad fence behind it and the wall below it so that the darts that miss (she’s 13) don’t get damaged, moving a giant umbrella to shade us from the Spanish sun while playing, etc. And I did it all with her and including her so that she was part of everything and felt like she was doing it too. It was fun, but better yet is that she seems happy and seems to be getting less stressed as we play, which is great because she can be a little (read is almost always enormously, incredibly, ridiculously) tough to deal with. We both aren’t very good, but we’re getting better and I think it helps us bond and helps her deal with things by distracting her from her difficulties.
Who would have thought darts could be so meaningful?

As of Saturday May 19th I have a BA in Spanish. While I’m really a Political Science major I couldn’t see leaving Madrid and so I graduated from my university here with a Spanish major. Next year I’ll finish Political Science back in the states and apply to grad school.
It feels good to be done!

I ended up running about 66 miles, that I recorded, probably more like 70 total. Then I hurt my knee on a long run day and didn’t run for the last week or so of the month. At the pace I was going I would have made it, but I’ve been resting for the last two weeks because of the injury. After exams this week I’ll start running again, if my knee feels better.

I posted this on another Opera goal, but I figured it might help people here too, so here it is again.
For anyone who hasn’t been before, I suggest getting a CD of the Opera that you’e planning to go to and listening to it at least a few times before you go. Also, read the libretto so that you know what the plot is and what the people are saying. It really helps you to understand it better, but also to enjoy it a lot more.
Also, if you’re not a huge fan the first time, don’t give up, it takes time to appreciate Opera, like most things.