May 11, 2007

Welcome to my new, revised blog.

From now on, I will be making posts to this blog several times a week, and daily if necessary. I am going to have a new focus for this blog. It will contain news and views as before, but also personal life stories and chronicles.

I have lived here for 12 years, and it recently occurred to me that what I take for granted every day might be news to you. So I am going to try to have a more chatty, personal dialogue, as if I am writing each of you a personal letter, which in a way I am.

Well, the power outage crisis seems to be over for now. The lights have been on now for a full week without interruptions, and the government is at least putting a band aide on the problem. I certainly hope they will look at the best long range solution, which is to harness the abundant geothermal energy this country has, but so far I have heard nothing about that.

Instead, ICE still seems to be stuck on the idea of hydroelectric, which is better than burning fossil fuels, for sure, but it damages the environment by flooding vast tracts of land, and when it is extremely dry, especially at the end of the rainy season as happened this year, the reservoirs can be very low indeed.

Geothermal energy doesn't have these pitfalls, and with all the volcanoes around, it is a natural source of all the energy this country could need, if ICE and the government would only think ahead and move into the future instead of dwelling on the past.

Anyway, enough about that. Other than that, this week has brought with it the same helping of bad news you see everywhere else in the world. It's quite a shame, really, that news doesn't dwell more on the positive instead of on the negative, but "that's showbiz." They have to have those sensational headlines and film clips to get readers and listeners.

Like that story from earlier this week about that drunken couple who rammed two cars in an Escazu plaza, after getting totally plastered in a bar in the plaza. They were having such a good time that they even shared the juice with their dog, and got it drunk.

Then, they stumbled out of the bar and got in their car, where they promptly started to move towards having sex in the car in broad daylight.

When the security guard saw it, he stopped them. The couple decided to leave with the woman driving, and she promptly rammed 2 cars in her drunken attempt to get out of the parking space.

The security guard told her to stop and wait for police, but she didn't comply, so he had to shoot out her tires.

Finally, police arrived to assess the damage and issue tickets.

I guess that's the news story that sticks out most in my mind this week, that and the fact that the TSE has finally decided that it will hold the referendum on CAFTA on Sept. 23.

I guess that's about all the news that stands out in my mind this week. Next week I will be making more entries, so I suppose more will stick out.

By the way, we are at a good point in the revision of our online guidebook, "So Ya Wanna Move to Costa Rica" right now. All pages have content now, and there is a lot of useful stuff there, but you need to check back often, as there are lots of things that need updating. In fact, unlike a print guidebook, this one will never be finnished and will always be fresh.

We have LOTS of useful resources you won't want to miss, so go on over there if you haven't already.

The url is: http://www.soyawannamove.com

Well, I'm done for today. As Walter Cronkite used to say, "That's the way it is, Friday, May 11, 2007."

See ya next week.

John