Let's Go Mets 2 Boston

Another chapter has changed in my life…I recently left my previous job to join an innovative team that is extremely forward thinking and supportive of career growth. If you haven’t notice, I just don’t have the time to update this blog, but I am making a commitment to all of you who read it that I will try my best to at least make a post once a month…I won’t go into details right now about my new job, but soon enough! My previous job taught me a lot about management, negotiations, unions and the automotive industry which is just a microcosm of the business world. I will never forget that experience and I am sure I will call upon the knowledge I gained in that position for many years to come.

But in the spirit of this blog and my new leaf, I will take this time to speak about two events that occurred in my life recently. In chronological order of course…I went to a Mets game in flushing queens! I know what you are saying to yourself, “Who cares?” For those of you who know me, baseball is not my forte but my brother scored some sweet tickets and I like to try things. I have always been a Mets fan, purely on the basis of where I grew up.

“Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles.”
- George Jean Nathan

Why can’t this also apply to sports teams in a sport you may not know very well? Love for a particular sports team has to have emerged from some catalytic event. Not to imply that this was one of those moments, but it has certainly fortified my enthusiasm for the team! About a week prior to this occurrence, I went to a Yankees game. The Yankees are a championship dynasty (26) and they deserve all the accolades they get. But the stadium (I sat in the bleachers) definitely needs a facelift. You cannot bring anything into the main stadium, only the bleachers. Everything is so expensive, given in miniature, water-downed fashion. Though they lost the game, I just did not see the excitement in the loyal fans which could have also been attributed to the blazing SUN! In contrast, I had a much better time at the Mets game. I was able to bring my laptop in the stadium, no problem. The stadium is so large (I remember going once before when I was younger and tickets only cost $2 for the UPPER UPPER DECK) with many more options of where to spend your money. Granted it is expensive here as well, but at least you can get a foot long dog for the same price you pay for a mini dog at the Yankees stadium. Only enhanced by the fact that the Mets won! The Mets are also building a new stadium, so being able to enjoy this stadium before they tear it down is also memorable. This must have been my sign because I will pay more attention to what the Mets do from now on…

The 2^nd event is my recent trip to Boston. I have been to Boston a few times, but I never stayed downtown. I usually visited a friend of mine at Stonehill College in Easton. This time I had the opportunity to visit a friend of mine @ HBS (Thanks Chris) as well as walk around a little. Boston is actually a nice place to visit. For those of you who enjoy history, culture and the small town feel in a bigger city, I can imagine this being a favorite place to frequently visit.

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As you notice from the pictures below, the weather was gorgeous. Winter time is probably not the best time to visit. Chris reminded me that since warm weather comes only for a short time, people here appreciate it that much more! I would certainly agree with that assessment. I plan on visiting again sometime soon, so be sure to be on the lookout for the updated gallery. I will probably not repost the slideshow, but mention the updated Boston Gallery on my page.

As a final mention, I took the Acela Express up to Boston, which is a fabulous ride. You can get there faster by plane, but with the security time and the inconsistency of the airline industry taking the train is a nice change of pace. Check it out!

Jawbone

Been a while my friends and I know that you have missed me…don’t fret! In my return, I am going to take a moment to recommend a piece of technology I have found to be extremely useful and live up to its hype. Lets paint the picture, you are walking down 5^th Ave in midtown…you have just finished a strenuous hour of shopping and you want to talk with your friend on the phone about all the great things you just purchased. You hop on your Bluetooth headset because you have a caramel frappuccino in one hand and your bags in the other. But as you begin to tell her about your new Hermès bag, she says “What was that, I cannot hear you…too much background noise, I’ll talk to you later!” And you begin to think to yourself, how rude! Here you are, trying to take time out of your busy day to share and she has the nerve to excuse herself based on ambient noise. Well, let me tell you…take away all excuses with the Aliph Jawbone.

My girlfriend recently purchased the Blackberry 8830 (best phone ever for Verizon…the new 8820 with wifi and out-of-the-box built in GPS will be the sicker one to own) for me, for my birthday, and it is such a good phone that it picks up “EVERYTHING” in the background. It loves ambient noise…great speaker phone, but the ambient noise is a problem. A friend of mine has spoken to me with it when he is on the train and I consistently hear the conversations of the people around him more than him. I needed to find a solution because I was not about to give up the best phone I have had in my life, just because of rudeness from friends. After research through reviews, the Jawbone is as advertised. Yes, I knew about it before the iPhone (great marketing, because wireless companies sell Bluetooth headsets in packages with the phone, but why not sell the best Bluetooth to confuse the buyer they are getting the best phone too).

I have had strangers in the street ask me about the headset and I always tell them, of all the Bluetooth headsets, it is the best one I have owned. Now, let me not mislead you into believing that this removes all the noise around you…we have not gotten there yet! But it does do noise cancellation (something I think no other headset company claimed their product could do and actually did). I have been in noisy cars, walking in the street and people still say they can hear me. I must say that they sound low, not as loud as I would like, but I think that is the 8830 not the headset. Either way if you are looking for a headset that lends no excuses to others hanging-up, other than pure disgust out of jealously…now you can add to their envy with your new noise cancelling Aliph Jawbone!

I purchased mine from here in silver: click! They come in black and red as well…any questions, you know where to reach me. Try my web bottom “Call Me” to the right and speak with me directly. They way of the future…I will speak on this web button in a later post but for now enjoy the video from Aliph below that explains exactly what happens!

*This video was not edited by me. The video above is to be treated as a link within my blog.

Cooking & Football

I enjoy great food! One of the things I love about travel is experiencing the local cuisine as well as culture. Through food we can learn so much of any given culture. I know for Trinidad & Tobago, our food is delicious. And if you speak with anyone from Trinidad, it is definitely one of our most heralded pastimes. One person who shares my view is Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations. This guy from NYC is someone we should all pay attention to. His show is about travel and food, what is wrong with that life!

The photos below are from cooking classes my girlfriend and I have taken at Williams-Sonoma. The first set of pictures (as they cycle through) were from our first class, where we learned about different meats, preparation procedures, knifes, pan materials and much more. Most people wonder if we are doing the cooking…NO! They hire an executive chef to come in and cook the meals. While he is cooking the meal, we ask questions (pertinent to the current dish or not), joke around, eat (sample sizes) and drink (non-alcoholic of course). It’s a relaxed atmosphere, to the point where in the most recent class we took, the chef kept saying “You guys are so quiet”, inciting more conversation. And after the class is over (usually the class is held in the store after store hours, so space is limited and I would suggest contacting your local William-Sonoma for details) you get a chance to get a 10% discount on any items purchased that evening. There is a cost associated with this lovely evening (nothing free in this world) and it differs by location.

The second set of photos are from the 4^th of July class, where we learned how to make friend chicken, corn on the cob (surprisingly different than typical methods), stuffed burgers (click for recipe) and strawberry shortcake. It was so good! The recipes are online at Williams-Sonoma website. I made the stuffed burgers for the gathering on 4^th of July (posted on July 9^th, 2007) and everyone enjoyed it. Take a look at the pictures for yourself.

Isn’t your mouth just watering…

The video below is in celebration of the USA vs. Brazil victory (2 – 1) U-20 World Cup match that helped USA advance out of the group, while knocking out Brazil. Brazil, my 2^nd home, I am sorry but USA definitely put on a great match. The future is looking bright for American Soccer. They have come such a long way since knocking Trinidad out of its first world cup hopes in Italy in the 90’s (I saw that match in Trinidad, in the stands and it was heartbreaking for my country). Enjoy the highlights…ADU did his thing, especially at mark 6:47!

*This video was not edited by me. The video above is to be treated as a link within my blog.

Videos (4th, Chill, Flash & IKEA)

This is going to be a short post, so that you have time to just enjoy the videos!!

This first video is from 4^th of July. My good friend (since 2^nd grade, long time ago), our girlfriends and I enjoyed the best fireworks show any of us have ever seen. The fireworks show lasted for about 30 minutes, but because of constraints of online posting, I had to post the best 10 minutes! Trust me it is worth a view at least once. If you have seen fireworks, THIS CLOSE, that are better, please let me know because I am hard pressed to believe any different.

These next set of videos comes from kipkay.com. It seems as though this guy does some really cool videos on hacks of things in our everyday life. Its best to click on the video and watch it from this blog. But if you are interested in seeing more of his videos, click the link above or click on the video itself to go to metacafé to check out his other videos.

*Neither video was edited by me. The 2 videos above are to be treated as links within my blog.

This last video is a commercial for IKEA if you can believe it. Just watch, definitely need to TIDY UP…enjoy!

*This video was not edited by me. The video above is to be treated as a link within my blog.

Uncensored & Alarm'd

I know I was not going to put up a post everyday, but it is my blog and I will do what I want!

Today I wanted to alert people to these two new websites I read off of the WebWare RSS (Again, read my last post about this great location for new web services). The first one can turn a couple heads. One issue we all run into when posting on the internet is copyright infringement. I know most might not consider it, but we all have to rethink our ideas on copyright…I’ll leave that conversation to the law makers! But, BAYIMG is taking the issue right out of the equation. Their angle is free uncensored image hosting (of any resolution). You read that correctly, free – uncensored - image – hosting! Can you believe this, a location on the web where you can put whatever you want up? The implications are far reaching…but don’t fear, there is a removal process. When you put the image up you need to remember the removal code, you set up at upload, because that is the only way the image is coming down.

“Bayimg.com is a place where you can host all your images. We do not censor them. We believe in freedom of speech, it's of utter importance to us…We will not remove any pictures that are just immoral or in any way legal to host under Swedish law.” ~ Bayimg.com

Right on… I may need to rethink my vacation plans and see what they are doing over there in Stockholm. I had friend when I was younger (Robin) from Sweden and I remember him telling me about how liberal they are over there. I wonder what he is up to these days…Robin if you read this blog, email me or comment below!

This image is hosted by BAYIMG, from my trip to Rio. I know the removal code now, but I will conveniently forget and see how long it stays up. Ah how beautiful this can be…A world where you express yourself freely, post images you can trust will be up FOREVER. You think china has blocked this website already?

The 2^nd one is for those who sleep with their computers on. How about making it into one giant alarm clock. Now you may already have a program that alarms for you…possibly wakes you to smooth sounds, a cd or some other noise of your choice. This website allows you to set an alarm (no installation required, just leave the page up) to sounds you prefer (I like the standard noise, will definitely wake me up), but now you can wake yourself up to a youtube video! Or Pandora (another great free music source) or last.fm! Basically, it gives you alternate option other than your standard clock. Then again with the invention of the computer you already had that figured out. Enjoy ALARMD!

Web 2.0

It had to come at one point…with my love of technology I have to highlight this interesting event. For those of you who have been living in a cave (or un-connected), the world is changing faster than you can get the information in. In this vein, Webware (by Cnet) is a website I frequent that tells me about all the cool apps on the internet that may not be that mainstream as yet. Recently they conducted a poll of over 450K votes for the top 100 Web 2.0 products (10 in each of the 10 categories) over a 20 day period. I remember when this was first begun, because they asked users to nominate websites then they held the poll on each category.

The categories range from Browsing (Firefox, Opera, Netvibes, etc.) and Communication (AIM, GTalk, GrandCentral, etc.) to Productive/Commerce (Blinksale, Paypal, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, etc.) and Reference (WebMD, Wikipedia, Geni, etc.). I could easily just list all these links on this page, but it is easier to list the host! If you notice, some of these sites now list this achievement on their front page. See how web 2.0 is changing our lives. Before someone might have had to hold a conference, take the poll, and then have an awards ceremony. Now, you go online, cast your vote and they publish the winner. Doesn’t take much away from the award because you still won! Just saves money on plane tickets I think…click the link below and learn a new product. Come out of the cave and join the population! As a side note, I picked at least one winner in every category…I’m so plugged in!

WebWare Best 100 Web 2.0

Now I do not want to leave anyone behind. Below you will find 2 embedded videos explaining Web 2.0. The first video is more informational. For those of you who are technical and like just knowing about things, you will probably enjoy both videos. Those of you who are just on the web to surf and not interested in all the delineation, just go to the 2^nd video. The 2^nd video runs more along the lines of a music video explaining web 2.0. Very cool, it has over 2.5 Million views…worth the 4:31!

*Neither video was edited by me. The 2 videos above are to be treated as links within my blog.

To Know True Beauty in Rio...

Not to kill you so softly, but I wanted to put these other videos I just compiled up! If you wondered why I am so enamored with Rio, this will help. The 2^nd to last night we were in Rio, I took video of the sunrise…absolutely gorgeous! Fortunately, while we were down there we were able to meet some really nice people. My friend’s apartment overlooked Copacabana beach, which allowed us to get such a marvelous view of the sun coming up over the mountains. The beginning of the video was taken before we went out for the night. Without knowing I was going to be up for the sunrise, I decided to take the same shot as the sun was rising. Great fortune I say! As we noticed the ridiculous view, we decided to go to the beach to get a closer look and enjoy the sunrise with the rest of Rio. There are some parts where the wind from the ocean causes the sounds to mess up, but the view, not me talking is what you are here to enjoy!

This video is from our trip to Christ Redeemer (Cristo Redentor). The beginning is the drive to the statue, through Ipanema and then up at the statue. There were these monkey’s that were hanging around our car because we had candy in it and I thought they smelled the food. I was not interested in finding out, monkey’s are no joke, neither is rabies. Anyway, when we were at the top it was extremely windy. May is winter time in Rio, so there aren’t many people visiting and as you can see most people are wearing winter jackets, while I was walking around in shorts. Trust me when I tell you, it was a hard lesson to learn but I will remember to bring at least sweat pants!

Rio De Janeiro...

The reason, if you haven’t figured it out as yet, why the posting just stopped short is because I just came back from a life changing trip to Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. Now, if you have any friends who have visited Rio, talk with them right now! I was warned by the person who we (Alejandro and I) rented an apartment from (best decision ever: Lounge Six) that this trip will change our lives. I didn’t believe him or better yet I couldn’t see how 1 trip would do so much. But I am here to proclaim that he was so right. Now I do not claim to be this extensive traveler of the world twice over, but I think I am ahead of the curve on most of those my age and Rio is the most beautiful place in the world for many reasons, my reasons!

I think I will just let the pictures speak for themselves, initially. Those who wish for me to go into greater detail, I will…but just try to catch a glimpse of what I saw through my lens. It doesn’t do it justice, but it will have to suffice for now or at least until you go!

In terms of the danger of Rio, it is true, but not as widespread as the media would have you believe. If you have traveled to a dangerous place before and take the same precautions you took while you were there, you will be fine. As an example, I took a lot of photos (700+, but you only see the ones I thought were the best), but I was sure to put the camera back into my pocket immediately so I wouldn’t be targeted. Nothing I wouldn’t do anywhere else I didn’t feel safe. If you are still worried, post a comment and I will see if I can refer you to a website on travel safety.

A couple tips for those who may be traveling in the near future:

1. Use Google Maps to know where you are going before you venture out. I did my due diligence and surfed the net for possible locations we may visit while down in Rio. I found their address online, saved them to my Google Maps and when we were going out I would draw a map of the cross streets if the location was a little out of the way. One time we were in a cab and told the driver to take us to Baronneti (a local night club), but he had no idea where it was. I showed him my drawing with the cross streets ( link ) and he took us to the cross street, not knowing if the club was there or not, but I trust Google Maps. Low and behold, the club was right there! Problem averted!

2. DO NOT TRAVEL WITH US CURRENCY! There are a couple of Citibank ATMs around that make taking money out so convenient and the rates are very good! There is also a branch location where you can deposit your left over Reais (Pronounced Hey-ice). One thing I wanted to do was get 100s, the ATMs would only give 50s. Another benefit to using Citibank ATMs was they gave the option of doing your transitions in ENGLISH! I went to this HSBC ATM before I knew about the Citibank ATMs and it did not give the option for English. Not good!

3. If there is nothing else you do, learn a little Portuguese. The more you know, the better your trip will be. Knowing Spanish definitely helps, whenever I didn’t know how to say something in Portuguese I would say the word in Spanish and most would get it. I definitely was doing a lot of hand motions, but I did 5 tracks from the Pimsleur Brazilian Portuguese CD ( Amazon Link ) and it made a difference. Its not extensive, but it helps. So learn something…

I could fill up this page with tips, but I want you to enjoy the experience. Trust me when I say a trip to Rio De Janeiro is never a bad decision. Just listen to my travel companion Alejandro on his thoughts about Rio. This video was taken on our 3^rd day, out of a 9 day trip!

Wedding Video

As you can see the happy couple is enjoying the traditional wedding day activities. Ranging from the wedding cake smear to the conga line shenanigans! I have also attached the best man toast given at the reception from Hamilton’s brother Alex. The video is not that good, but the audio picks up the humor, sentiment and love obviously observed in the newly formed family…

Ham's Wedding Day...

A good friend of mine from Northwestern University got married this past weekend. It was a lovely reception, unfortunately I was not able to make it to the actual ceremony since my flight was delayed over 3 hours...I must say USAIRWAYS is not on my favorites list, but I will leave that for another discussion. But I will say that when I landed I took 303taxi (you can hail a cab online), which was reminiscent of my days back in college and though the operator was a bit rude to me, when I got into the cab the best part was that he had GPS. We changed directions mid way (originally I was going to go straight to the church, but then when I heard that it was over I informed him I wanted to go to the hotel instead) and it was no hassle.

But back to the topic at hand, the reception was in Naperville, IL @ Meson Sabika. Not much to say but classy, elegant and fun all packed in one evening. I truly hope that Hamilton & Patricia have a long and healthy life together. For those interested in knowing my part in helping put these two together, comment below and I will add that post. For now just enjoy the pictures below and try to live through the eyes of the camera! You can order the prints direct...Enjoy!

The Beginning...

In the beginning, there had to be a beginning, but when that beginning began was it really a beginning to the beginning or a beginning to the end? The life cycle of "Random Lives" will tell the story and answer the question posed by me. I am new to blogging, but I have proven to be a quick learner in all my tasks. Check out the links I have posted on the side, topics I find interesting and clearly open for discussion. Hopefully we both will enjoy the experience of Random Lives!