I wish for the world to be in a better place next year. May every moment of our lives in 2009 help us better understand our world and our fellow humans, come closer to our environment and protect it, push us to become better human beings.

Be happy, love, and smile!

I’ve been playing with S-Expressions again. It’d have been sooooo great if the world had adopted them instead of XML. They are just so tidy.

1. You buy a new Cisco linksys wireless router (WRT160N) before Christmas since your old Linksys (WRT54G v5.0) is showing its age. Cost is $100 - $20 (promotional discount).

2. You realize that the new router is dropping the Internet connection so you decide to return it (but you can’t find the receipt).

3. The nice lady at the Customers Service desk tells you that without the receipt they can only give you store credit.

4. After not having found anything else to buy, you decide to get the next model up of the wireless router since it’s the best, according to the helpful employees (WRT310N). Cost is $130 - $20 (discount).

5. The nice lady at the Customer Service desk swipes barcode of the old router and credits you with $100 (since the system doesn’t consider the original $20 discount, which no longer applies). So you only pay the different of $10. You just made $20 but not in cash.

5. You go back to the car and you come across the original receipt.

6. You go back to store to return the new wireless router and get your $110 back, when in fact you’ve only spent $90.

 

Well, that’s what could have happened but I am wayyyy too honest to actually go through it without saying anything. When I realized the mistake at step 6, after having checked all the receipts, I actually told them. It was funny how both the nice lady and the store manager, who was called to help, didn’t know how to cope with the situation. At the end, they told me not to worry. They were so nice that I decided to give the new router a chance and not get my money back. So I did get out of OfficeMax with a new router.

I updated the firmware on my old WRT54G so it may do just do after all but given all the HDTV and music that moves around my network, I may just keep the new one depending on its behavior.

Great article by Werner Vogels.

Fascinating! Biotech revolution coming from people’s garages. :-) Excellent.

I’ve been looking at the OpenCyc Foundation’s Concept Browser page. I searched for the concept “product”. It took me to a helpful page that says:

Each instance of sales product is a thing that exists in time that is, or was at one time, offered for sale or performed as a commercial service, or was produced with the intent of being offered for sale. Positive examples of sales product include:

- a barrel of crude oil being shipped to a customer;
- a completely assembled automobile in a factory;

…

So far so good.

Then, under the section called “Examples of Sales product”, they have a number of “Ballistic missile” entries. They all point to different entities. Obviously no disambiguation has been done. The same with “Cruise Missile”, Iranian phantom fighter planes, etc. Has the arms sales market picked up so much? :-)

It seems that even “The Hubble Space Telescope”, “Sputnik”, etc. are listed under the same category.

Or, if you fancy an aircraft carrier, there are few examples under “product sales”: “USS Nimitz”, “USS Independence”, etc. I wonder whether Amazon sales them.

Seeing biological weapons scared me though. I didn’t even know that there was an “Y2 Stage 4 Anthrax Sprayer” in existence. Scary!

 

Obviously these are not manually entered entries but the result of some automated inferencing process going wrong or some information extraction algorithm not doing the right thing.

Many of you might have heard about the snowstorms that have hit the US over the last week or so. I live on a hill, not far from Seattle’s downtown, called Queen Anne. The roads in my neighborhood get really icy every year, making driving around a very difficult task. I wasn’t expecting that I’d see them converted to skiing/snowboarding slopes though :-) Here are few photos from 3 days ago.

  
  

As I was reading Sowa’s “Knowledge Representation – Logical, Philosophical, and Computational Foundations”, I noted few funny quotes. I don’t know whether Sowa heard them from others or they are his.

• Commenting on a bad but common practice: “Code first and think later”;
• Talking about the different views of the world by fourth generation languages, object-oriented programming systems, and computer-aided software engineering. “Any one of those tools by itself is a tremendous aid to productivity. But any two of them together will kill you.”
• Making the point about the difficulty of keeping definitions consistent from one version to the next: “How was Gold able to create the world in just six days? He had no installed user base.”

As I said in other posts, an excellent book! Highly recommended.

Continuing my previous experiment, I took few mins this morning to add support for “symmetric” relations to my little inferencing engine for Famulus. Here’s an example (starting with a clean Famulus store):

Working from home today, which is probably true for most around here. Nothing moves outside, at least in my neighborhood :-)

At the 2008 Microsoft eScience Workshop, Alex Wade and I presented a tutorial on Famulus. The video recording is not yet online but you can download the slides. The tutorial was mostly filled with demos so you should check out the recording when it becomes available.

Alex and I showed how Famulus could be used with the ecosystem of Microsoft technologies in order to easily create tools and services for repository-related solutions. Visual Studio, ASP.NET, Silverlight, WPF, ADO.NET Data Services... the tutorial had everything :-) We even showed how one could create a Web page with a data grid control in order to display resources in the repository (the main point was that we didn’t have to write a single line of code). Everything was built on top of the Beta 1 release of Famulus.

One demo in particular was built using Oslo’s MGrammar since I wanted to experiment with some of the Oslo suite of technologies. The rest of the post is about this sample, the “Famulus Console”.

The Famulus Console is a textual, interactive application over the Famulus store. It’s not going to be part of the final Famulus release. It’s just a toy application built on top of the Famulus platform API.

The idea is simple... issue statements interactively through the console and immediately see the results. Some of the statements get transformed to tuples which are stored in Famulus while others get translated into queries. The collection of tuples allow us to realize a data graph of entities in the repository, which it can then be queried/analyzed. MGrammar (only few lines long) was used to describe the domain-specific language used by the console. Here’s how part of the experience looks like.

 

The Famulus Scholarly Communications data model is loaded so that entities like Person, JournalArticle, etc. and their properties are recognized. The input is parsed using the Famulus Console MGrammar and gets converted into a data graph. The data graph is evaluated and converted into calls against the Famulus API.

In the example above you can see how I defined three Person and a Journal Article entities. I then associated them through the “author” predicate. If the console encounters a predicate that it doesn’t know about, it automatically adds it to the store. Finally, I query the repository for the entities that are related with the article through the “author” predicate.

Earlier today, I thought of extending this example to support queries that make use of transitive relationships.

Let’s say that we have few people in the store: savas, don, pinky, chris. We can now start issuing statements to create relationships between them and then issue queries. Initially, the evaluator returns only the entities that are directly related with the subject of the query. However, the behavior of the evaluator changes once we state that “knows” is a transitive predicate. Now, the evaluator traverses the directed graph in the Famulus store, following the “knows” predicate, in order to find more results (yes... the evaluator can handle cycles :-).

 

I know, I know… it’s simple inference stuff but it’s great to see that Famulus can easily be used for things like this.

As you can tell, I’m having lots of fun playing with Famulus and M.

James announced to the world (and it’s all over the tech news) that he’s moving to Amazon. This is a huge loss for Microsoft but I am super happy for James because, as he says in his blog post, change is good.

Through my interactions with him, I came to realize that he’s super super smart and passionate about the things that he does. He’s a great role model!

James has been super nice to me. We’ve interacted on some datacenter-related work and he’s even trusted me with one of his projects when he went on holidays, which made me feel very honored. He’s helped me tremendously the last few months with suggestions and advice about the next steps in my career and it was his finger that pointed me towards my current team in Live Search. I was looking forward to doing my stint in a product group so that I can then have the opportunity to work with him closely. You never know what the future will bring.

Amazon is doing an amazing job in Cloud Computing. With James, I am sure they are going to do even more amazing things.

All the best James!

If you are a RESTferian or REST-fanatic, please look away now. This is my regular rant about the term “REST” :-)

<rant>

I am seeing the term “REST” everywhere these days, as an annotation of things that obviously do not follow the architectural principles expressed in Fielding’s thesis. Also, when someone implements all the REST principles with CORBA or even SOAP (remember that WS-Web experiment?), how are we going to call the APIs then?

What’s wrong with “Web APIs”? It’s beautiful, it captures the fact that they are APIs for the Web and by the Web and doesn’t tie anyone to a particular architectural style. You take advantage of the Web Architecture’s features that make sense to your application and everyone’s happy :-)

</rant>

Will probably have to repeat in few months just so that I can take it off my chest :-) I know what Jim will probably say... “just move on” :-)

On Monday, Microsoft Research awarded my friend Prof. Carole Goble with the first ever “Jim Gray eScience Award”. I am very very very happy for Carole. She fully deserves it. She’s done and continues to do some amazing work in eScience. Congratulations Carole.

BTW... Amongst the great things she’s done is that she’s introduced me to the Glastonbury festival. We go there together every year :-)

(updated: changed the photo to the one from Dan’s blog).

Just one day after my return back to Seattle, I flew to Indianapolis for the 2008 Microsoft eScience Workshop. The transition from the sunny Mexico to the cold and full of snow Indianapolis is fun :-)

It’s great to be here and see this community before I start my new gig with Live Search tomorrow. Alex Wade and I did a tutorial on the Virtual Research Environment (Alex did that) and on Famulus (we did that together). I showed lots of demos built on top of Famulus so it was a lot of fun. I will have a separate entry about an Oslo-specific one with which I had particular fun. MGrammar is fantastic :-)

Kris Tolle has done a great job chairing the workshop. I introduced Prof. Paul Watson for his keynote today as my last “task” for External Research.

It’s been a wonderful experience. 17 days in the Yucatan peninsula and Belize, plus a daytrip to Guatemala. My love for road trips, for exploring, for being on the move all the time was reinforced by this trip. I feel lucky I had the opportunity to explore, for just a tiny bit, the Maya civilization throughout the Yucatan peninsula, to visit Belize and its natural beauties, to dive, to read, to write, to introspect, etc. etc. etc. I met wonderful people along the way, tasted great food, visited amazing places, even picked up few bedbugs on the way, gladly only for a few days :-)

I think that the following photograph from Day 6 best captures the essence of the trip for me... natural beauty, an amazing civilization, lost in my own thoughts, planning and looking at the future. I must have stayed at the top of that particular Maya pyramid for a couple of hours, with no other tourists around.

The trip in numbers

Distance travelled:	2,973 kms	Doh! If I knew I was so close to 3,000, I would have gone for an extra drive somewhere :-)
Different hotels/cabins/cabanas:	11
Number of Julio’s (the car) windows working	3	after day 5
Number of bedbugs as “passengers”	few	but manage to “lose” them on the way :-)
Number of dives	4	the last one was with bull sharks
Number of people I met	sooo many
Number of Maya sites visited	10	including a cave
Number of photographs taken	1,120
Number of photographs kept	545	I didn’t keep the many originals from which I made the panoramas
Total size of photographs	2.15GB
Larger panorama	32MB	15,916 x 4,852 pixels

The trip on maps

Here’s my route and a list of destinations. The red dots are places where I stayed overnight and my start/finish. I didn’t mark all the places I’ve actually visited.

Mexico and Belize

Mexico, Yucatan peninsula (first part of the trip)

Belize (second part of the trip)

 

Back to Mexico, third part of the trip

 

The geek in me

I was extremely surprised by the level of connectivity throughout my journey. I was not actively looking for WiFi but every hotel (with the exception of the one in Campeche) had free Internet access. The big hotels around the world charge for the use of their Internet connection and, here, all the cheap hotels provide it for free. This is one of the reasons I try to avoid paying for Internet access at expensive hotels. If I can, I’d use my 3G phone’s tethering capability (if I am not roaming, of course).

By having Internet connectivity I was able to post my travel blog entries almost every night, keep in touch with my co-authors about that Web book, and keep my ever-expanding mailbox under some control... What can I say? I am a geek and I cannot easily get disconnected :-)

The role of the Cloud

The Cloud played a huge role for the first part of the trip. I felt safe that one of my most valuable assets I was collecting along the way, the digital photographs, were actually kept safe. Using FolderShare (now called Live Sync), my laptop would automatically synchronize with my server at home. Therefore, I didn’t really worry about something happening to my laptop.

Well, at some point the server went offline. I didn’t know why. It was either because someone had broken into my place or because the server received an update and decided to reboot :-( Now that I am back, I know that it was the latter :-)

The experience made me think about the role of NetBooks in the future. I would have loved to have a much lighter, cheaper laptop with me. I didn’t do any development while on the road. I only needed it to do some writing, sync my photos with the Cloud, and perhaps some email. A cheap, $300-$400 NetBook would have been absolutely great for this.

Also, with SkyDrive offering now 25GB of free storage, with Live Mesh offering multi-machine synchronization, I could easily have a copy of my data on the Cloud as well. I am sure other companies offer similar technologies/services.

My road-trip days

When I left Seattle, this is how the weather looked like... (it hasn’t really changed much now that I am back but there is a hint of sunshine :-)

While in Mexico and Belize, I really enjoyed the sun, the blue sky, the orange sky, the sea, the stars, the green jungle...

 

I love road trips. I can’t have enough of them. Miles and miles of beautiful road. Even when I get lost, I love it!

Here’s a list of my daily travel blog entries: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17

The end

It was an absolutely amazing experience. Thank you Mexico! Thank you Belize!

I really enjoyed writing my travel blog for these last 17 days. For all of you who have been following my travel blog entries: thank you for being patient with me.

Now, back to work, to a new challenge with Live Search and MANY MANY new ideas :-)

The “swimming with the sharks” day :-)

So, I woke up early to get ready for the dive. The difference between this PADI dive shop and the one in Belize was extraordinary. We actually followed proper procedures... filling in forms, checking of certifications, checking of equipment, etc. etc. We even planned proper safety stops for when we were coming up from the bottom. None of that happened in Belize.

Yesterday I bought an underwater camera. Had never used one of them before so I didn’t know what to expect. The quality of the photos is not great, although bad film-development equipment may have also played a role. Finally, since I wasn’t used to taking photos while diving, I really didn’t know how to exactly point the camera to my subject :-)

We were three divers and Fernando (on the right), our dive master.

When we reached the location for our first dive, Chris (the big Canadian fellow on the left), had to stay on the boat because his eyes felt really bad as soon as he puts his mask on. I saw him later in the evening at a bar and he told me that the doctor suspected it might had been caused by gas (as in fuel). We did smell a lot of gas at the dive shop so he might accidentally put it somewhere he shouldn’t.

The first dive was a great experience for me. I had never done high-current dive before. It took me by surprise. You have to effectively let your self get carried by the current. Whenever we wanted to stop to see something, we had to try and swim against the current. All we could really achieve was to stand still. We saw huge sea turtles on the way and barracudas.

  
  

My regulator was really bad. I could tell from the beginning but I did the dive anyway. I had to suck the air out of it, which gave me a headache later. However, the 42min first dive was magnificent. I seriously enjoyed it.

Then, we get back on the boat. Chris felt really bad and his eyes were visibly in a bad state. We decided to abandon the planned second dive and take him to the coast. We were all more than happy to do that since health is above everything else.

It turned out to be a good decision for the second dive, though :-) After we made sure Chris was safe and ok, Fernando came back to the boat and offered us two alternative sites nearby. One had lots of sea life and the other one had sharks. They don’t usually get divers at that location but he felt comfortable taking the two of us. The other diver, who was Scottish (I don’t remember his name), was much more experienced than me but I had done pretty good on the first dive so the dive master felt comfortable. Of course both of us chose the shark site :-)

In the meantime, I took Chris’ regulator, which made a HUGE difference for my second dive.

Instructions from the dive master:

• We will do a 20 min dive (we had to do a shorter dive anyway since it was our second)
• We will go straight to the bottom and STAY there :-)
• We will have to be really close to each other (we were almost touching at the bottom)
• Please don’t move arms and legs too much... try to stay still as much as possible

Hmmm... the fellow diver and I decided that we still wanted to do it (hard to find another crazy guy :-)

And then, comes the news that we are going to swim amongst bull sharks (according to Wikipedia, they are the unpredictable, sometimes aggressive type). Oh well...

There were MANY of them. As soon as we reached the bottom, they started circling us. There must have been 8-10 of them and they were really close. You can probably see them in the photos, which didn’t come as clear as we could see them :-(

 

After 10 mins or so, I think the decided that we weren’t interesting enough and they left us. So opportunity for a relaxed dive, seeing fish that were coming in and out of the sand and some photos :-)

Here’s Fernando.

And this is me...

Some curious fish...

And some bubbles :-)

It was an amazing experience. Fernando came out saying that it was a fantastic dive and, indeed, it felt like that!

Back to the hotel for a shower and then for brunch. I found this great restaurant with an emphasis on natural food. Very cool.

  

A walk around the town, while trying to find a photo shop that would do film->digital.

And then a long siesta at the hotel.

In the evening, I went for a drink at this bar, which seems to be designed well for drunken people :-) I didn’t have any alcohol and it was still an effort to stay on the swings at the bar :-)

Finally, dinner at the same restaurant I had brunch.

  

Last night in Mexico. Tomorrow, it’s a short drive to Cancun. I will just return Julio, the car, and head to the airport for an afternoon flight to Seattle.

Unless something unexpected happens tomorrow, this concludes my travel blog series. There is going to be a summary entry and then back to Seattle rhythms.

It’s almost over. Today, tomorrow, and then I am flying back :-(

I woke up with a huge headache. Didn’t sleep much. The local “Christmas” beer from last night did its trick (well... it could have been the combination of how strong it was and the number of bottles I consumed :-)

A headache like this deserves a greasy breakfast (the waiter’s recommendation again). On the first half of the trip I was rapidly losing weight from all the walking I was doing. I think I regained all that weight back the last few days.

After the breakfast experience, I headed towards the Tulum Maya site. I had high expectations because of everything I had heard but I was disappointed. Not only it was extremely crowded, but it didn’t have the vibe some of the remote sites had. The fact that it was next to blue/green waters made it somehow different from the others though.

It’s such a popular destination for tourists, that it has the feeling of a theme park :-( For example, perhaps they’d like us to believe that the Maya people had ATM booths like this one...

 

Or they used “trains” like this for transportation around the site...

Anyway, back to the archeological visit, trying to get photos of the site without tourists in the frame, which was almost impossible...

  
  

And of course, the resident iguanas (lots and lots of them)

And here’s the reason, I think, this site seems to be so popular (in addition to being close to Cancun). People can combine the visit with a swim. I couldn’t believe it when I saw the steps from the Maya site down to the beach. But no, I am not going to judge :-) Just because I wouldn’t do it, it doesn’t mean it’s bad form.

Left the Tulum Maya site and headed to Akumal, a little seaside town south of Karmen del Maya. I drove around for a bit. Looked nice and quiet but it was full of hotels and villas, not my cup of tea (even though I don’t drink tea :-)

Went to Karmen del Maya Playa del Carmen. I thought that it’d only be for one night, before going to Cancun. The town is one of those popular tourist destinations, full of shops, with women going out all dressed up and wearing their make up and jewelry. Burger King, McDonalds, Starbucks... that kind of place.

I felt really tired even though it was only mid-afternoon (thanks to last night’s beers I guess). So I decided to park the car and look for a hotel. Well, I found one right in the heart of the town which I really liked. Yes, I now check every hotel to see how clean it is before I take the room :-)

 

I went for a siesta and then off exploring the town.

I decided that since I had another day left without any Maya ruins to visit, I should go for another dive. I found few scuba diving places around. I booked a trip for tomorrow and bought an underwater camera too. I hope that the visibility will be good for some underwater photography.

This means that I am staying another night here.

Got a recommendation for a restaurant that was serving local Maya cuisine. I talked to the hostess and she gave me specific recommendations from the menu. I decided to treat myself to a nice dinner and, indeed, it was worth it! (It was still less expensive than yesterday’s lunch :-) The appetizer was the “Pibxcatic” and the main dish was the “Cochinita Pibil”. Apparently, those were the original Maya names. Hmmm! :-) Anyway, they were both great but the appetizer was particularly good. I had a Pina Colada again (no rum) and felt really really full :-)

 

An early night tonight so I can be ready for the dive tomorrow morning.

Back in Mexico.

I woke up relatively early. The hotel didn’t serve breakfast so I made my way towards the Belize-Mexico borders, which were only 10mins away (last night I thought they were further away). At the border, I got bounced a bit but cleared customs and everything in less than an hour. The Mexican part of the border was pretty interesting... they didn’t even check my passport :-)

Headed towards Chutemal to get some breakfast and change my remaining Belize currency. As I was changing currency on the main street, a band and then people marched behind me. Before I knew it, I was on TV :-) If anyone watches Mexican TV in the Chutemal area (probably a local channel), look for me. Since I didn’t know what to say, I just waved, like any good tourist would have done :-) Since they also gave me condoms, I guess this was related to an HIV-awareness or “safe sex” day.

I love being on the road again. I think this is the part of my trip I really enjoy. Belize was great but I should have been more on the move rather than stationed.

After Chutemal (with all the excitement, I didn’t get breakfast), I headed north. Today’s destination was Tulum. I decided that I could afford a longish detour for lunch, so I left the main road and headed towards Majahual. It was 55kms each way from the main road. I thought... just go there, check it out, get lunch, and come back. Well, it turned out that I actually stayed there around 3 1/2 hours :-)

The road was very interesting. I had noticed that roads in Mexico are straight, really really straight. But this one in particular attracted my attention because I knew exactly how long it was (55kms) and I only encountered ONE turn :-) On the way back, I measured the long straight up to that turn... 35kms!!! And I mean it when I say “straight”!

Majahual was fantastic. A destination for cruise ships apparently, as I found out later, but it was very quiet when I arrived. I picked up another hitchhiker on the way, who upon our arrival introduced me to his friend, a waiter at a seaside restaurant. I promised I’d go back after exploring for a while. The place was beautiful.

  
  

As I promised, I returned to the restaurant. The waiter, Diego, was absolutely amazing. It was very very quiet so I was the only customer and I felt as if I had my own battler. I sat on the beach and Diego was very helpful, giving me suggestions about things I might want and bringing me stuff all the time. I didn’t want any alcohol since I was driving so he made me a huuuuge pina colada without the rum. Oh... I love coconut.

I went for a swim. It was a dream. Enjoyed the sun.

 

Life can be really difficult at times. This was not one of those times :-)

 

Then, Diego suggested a seafood salad with lobster. I am sorry Colette... I don’t know if I am allowed to eat lobster (for conservation purposes) but I had to try it :-)

I was very lucky with the timing. As soon as I decided that it was finally time to hit the road again, the clouds appeared. I said goodbye to Diego and set off for Tulum.

Picked up another hitchhiker on the way. We tried to exchange few words but after a while we both gave up since even the pantomime didn’t seem to work for either of us :-(

Early in the evening, I arrived in Tulum, the town. I decided to just find somewhere in Tulum to stay rather than looking for another small town nearby. I saw lots of tourist shops on the main street, which is the reason I hesitated. I guess lots of tourists use Tulum as a stop over before they go to the ruins and then continue south or go back up north, to Concun. Anyway... I found a cute little hotel, checked in, and freshened up.

During my walk around the town, I noticed this little restaurant with a lot of character, towards the end of the “strip”. So I decided to dine and drink there. Must have stayed at least 2 hours :-) The beer in the photo is a local one that is being produced only for the month of December every year! I had few of those :-) The waiter was again responsible for my dinner. Not the best this time.

  

The final visit to a Maya ruins site tomorrow. Exciting!

I think I am falling apart :-)

• Yesterday, while helping the dive master push the boat, I seriously cut my foot. I am now limping.
• My back is seriously sunburned.
• And my legs are full of itching spots. My guess is that it’s the aftermath of the bug situation. To be on the safe side, I am going to find a doctor tomorrow in Mexico in case I am just carrying the descendants of those bugs in me.

But my spirit is higher than ever :-)

I woke up and thought that it was time to leave beautiful Placencia and head north. While peaceful and relaxing, I think I like being on the road. So, I left the great cabana behind and started driving.

 

I picked up a nice guy, born in India but now leaving with his local family in Dangiga. We talked about curry cuisine and much more. I was more than happy to do a 20min detour after an hour’s drive to take him to his town. Then I picked another fellow who I think misunderstood kindness with stupidity. He was supposed to be heading south but wanted a lift until the next intersection and then he changed his mind and wanted to take me to see his farm, which was located at the “next village”. When we passed my turn and asked him how long till his farm, he pointed me towards the street, as if it was just around the next corner. When I asked for the distance, he said “28 miles” :-) I stopped, turned, and let him continue on foot. In my mirror, I saw that he was crossing the road, as if he was going to hitchhike back. Hmmm.

Anyway... the advice I got for going faster to the north was not the best one. It was indeed closer, in terms of distance, but it was a dirt road which went on FOR EVER :-( It was ok for Julio, the car, but it’s full of dust now.

The drive towards Mexico was uneventful, until I got close to the borders (about 20 mins or so). I missed my turn (again) but I knew that it was only a very short detour so I continued towards the town of Corozal.

 

As I was driving through Corozal, I noticed a banner advertising the town’s annual festival on 29-30 Nov. Well, opportunity for another change of plans. I check in myself in a hotel, relax for a bit, shower, talk with Jim on IM, and on my way to enjoy the festival. Well... the festival started on Sat morning, continued on Sat night, and ended at 5pm on Sunday evening :-( So no festival for Savas :-)

Instead, I found a gathering at the small central plaza. It was an event to celebrate the start of Belize’s 16 days of activities to raise awareness about equal opportunities for women. It was a nice event. The local priest was quite the character. The group marched around the town and, of course, I joined them. With the priest, we were only three men and I was the only non-local :-)

  
  
  

I am having an early night tonight since nothing seems to be happening around here. I love being on the road again :-)