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Surfing...
Yesterday I had my first surf experiences. Thats amazing. We met at 6 am in the morning to catch the bus at 7 in town. Drove down to Jaco beach where we got at 9.30 am.
I ve rented a (very) long Board  and went with Ole straight to the water. It was alaready a bit busy down there but the first 30 minutes I was busy with white water surfing and fighting against the wave and my board).
After that I managed to get outto the other surfers and chilled out there for a while. It s a wonderfull panorama there. Sitting in the water, watching your fellow surfmates and once in a while you try to catch a wave.
With the longboard it wasn t really hard to stnd on it - keeping standing on it for a long while is sth. more difficult. The waves have been pretty big today and I learned a lot about the sea.
Looking forward to rock the beach again with Ole. !
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Interview with an exiled monk in Thailand.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,515409,00.html
Young Burmese monk Ashin Ven Kovida talks to SPIEGEL about how he became one of the leaders of the Yangon uprising, how the army cracked down on protests and why he had to flee across the border to Thailand.
Ohh yes and by the way a German issue:
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Why Media is evil
I m just comming back from a congres organized by the french embassy and the Universidad de Costa Rica about globalization and integration. It s kind of silly that the french embassy is involved in the organization of such an event if you remember the riots in France 2005. Anyway, the introducing words of the french ambassador prooved the negative impression I ve got from the current french government.
The reasaon I went to this conference was another french guest: Bernard Cassen I ve already listened to him in Paris with Pierre Charles when Le Monde Diplomatique organized a free movie with following disscusion about Venezuela.
Today he spoke about "The International Media System: ideological vector of the globalizacion and actor against social transformacion". He described the "Free Media" as a dictatorship of the Media Companies who don t care about information of citizens but about profit and their power. He quoted the CEO of the private french TV Channel TF1:
"There are many ways to speak about TV, but in a business perspective, let's be realistic: at the basis, TF1's job is helping Coca-Cola, for example, to sell its product. What we sell to Coca-Cola is available human brain time. Nothing is more difficult than obtaining this availability. This is where permanent change is located. We must always look out for popular programs, follow trends, surf on tendencies, in a context in which information is speeding up, getting manifold and trivialized."
So what he describes is a viciouse circle. With our consumption we pay the companies to influence our desires.
As an example of bad Media influence he describes what Hugo Chavez actually did when he closed RCTV in 2006. He actually cloes a TV Channel who was involved in an attempt to coup in 2002 and an oil strike in 2002-03. Additionally this channel had a record of 600 pages of violation of laws. Another big issues for the European Media was that Chavez wants to change the constitution so he can run for president again. Whats the deal? In Germany, France, etc. the president can candidate as often as he wants for presidentship. Almost all the Media in Venezuela is against Chavez because he really reforms a country and distribute wealth and power to the people. Organizations who has been powerfull all the time, like media companies, don t like that and fight against him. Thats not just like that in Venezuela. The same happens in Germany with the Axel Springer Verlag and his widely distributed paper BILD. (in German)
Later Cassen asks for a strong support of public media and a parallel liberation from these public media institutions from the governments to minimize their influence. Additionally he demands a strong enforcement of the alternative media like Indymedia (he doesn t name them especially) and free radio stations. He recommends everyone to swith off his TV sets and get information through exchange of information in the real life.
This reminded me immediatelly of the concept of Hospitality Exchange and encourages me even more to contribute to BeWelcome where there will be no censorship.
BTW: I ve uploaded some new pictures to my gallery.
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Mi Dad visits me.
Sunday 4 pm waiting in San Jose Airport. A whole bunch of people cheering around and waiting for the Costa Rican delegation who won quite some medalls atthe parolympics in China. Nice to be entertained by the drums and the singing but I m starting to worr where the heck the plane is I m waiting for.
My Dad is supposed to be here since an hour. I m walking up to the TACA Counter and ask them whats going on. Answer: "The Airport is closed because it foggy! The plane you are waiting for is still in Managua. More Information later."
Shit - no way to communicte with my dad. I m heading into town to check my E-mails (no there is no internet at the airport) but no notice. Back to the airport. There they tell me that the flight is canceled "Today your dad won t arrive"
Dam it, we have very little time anyway. Okay heading back home - dinner - wine, phonecall a taxi drivers asks for the direction. He has a German man with him searching his son. Hey ... cool he made it. 6 hours to late but he made it! Great.
The next day we spend walking around in San Jose, shopping Sightseeing, talking, .... very very nice. In the evening we ve seen a great movie and went to a concert.
Tuesday morning I showed him around university and at 2 pm he had to leave to catch his flight. Unfortunatelly they canceled the flight again and he finally flew out of San Jose on Wednesday morning.
Thanks for visiting me Daddy - it was a great time!
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I Stop Volunteering for Hospitality Club
Where to start? I had and still have lots of great moments in my life thanks to Hospitality Club. There are marvellouse people all over the community.
Unfortunatelly the working environment for Volunteers is far from optimal. I don t want to get into to much details about the problems because I don t want to hurt any privacy agreement.
In general it looks to me that the work is done by a handfull incredible active volunteers who don t get any support from leadership. There are no new tools for them, no improvement of working routines, not even slight changes in (Spam/Comment) policy which would allow the volunteers to actually do their job without delay.
The Volunteerforum, inicially highly frequented by Volunteers, is deserted. The new Wiki does not kick asses so far just few contributors (maybe because of restrictions?).
Performance problems have not been really solved. Some short time fixes and a new server. Next summer the site will probably have simmilar problems like this year.
Some Chor-Volunteers changed the priorities in their life and to me it seems like the founder has his own little projects running appart from Hospitality Club.
Discussion is still not allowed or lets say: "You can discuss as much as you want but we/I don t care."
A sound legal organisation is still not in sight. Don t even ask about democratic organisation structures.
I ve never ever seen any published information about financial situation of the Hospitality Club.
Yes, most of this things are known since a while. Until now I always had the feeling that in the future the problems might get solved and all the other volunteers motivated me to keep trac.
Since the Volunteermeeting in Frankfurt my opinion on this issues changed. I can t defend a policy against a critic member when I don t agree with this policy. The ignorance the Leadership exhibit regarding new ideas and cooperation with other Hospitality Exchange Networks shocked me.
Unfortunatelly I can t see any positive future of the Hospitality Club. I consider it dangerouse to have a inactive Volunteership and such an instalbe Organisation body. Danger for the Newtork itself but as well for every single member.
I m keeping on hosting people and answer questions in the Forum but I don t want to Volunteer anymore for an organization with all the deficits mentioned above.
Finally I ve found a new home to contribute in a convenient work environemnt with motivated volunteers and people willing to develop the idea of Hospitality Exchange together with everyone willing to cooperate. If you want to share this new home with us have a look at http://www.bewelcome.org «||» http://www.bevolunteer.org
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Cycling around the World
Last Sunday I headed with Sarah to Heredia to have lunch with Couchsurfing Members.
Afterwards they went hitchhiking from Heredia to the beach where they camped one night together. Monday Sarah went back to San Jose to change her flight to the U.S.
I headed further south and met Justin which whom I had contact before. He was contacting me because he is cycling around the world and passes by Costa Rica. We camped together two nights on different beaches and had lots of talks about cycling and life. Wish you all the best for your trip man - we are will meet in Europe again in late 2008.
Wednesday I hitchhiked back up to San Jose to go to clases on Thursday morning.
My flatmate Rafael and me are fasting now together since Thursday morning. I think I m going again for a week or maybe two. Lets see how I feel.
I ve bought an ABO for Le Monde Diplomatique in English (because there is no German digital Version) and I m reading quite a bit in the last days. If you want to have a look on it, drop me a line.
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[eine Seite weiter]
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