I think everyone has seen a news clip of a foreign correspondent in the midst of a dangerous war zone or riot in some faraway foreign country. I consider these guys and gals as the rock stars of the journalistic community with exciting stories that could make fiction seem boring. I’m also a child of the 90’s, so geopolitical happenings in the Middle East have been a dominant theme in news coverage through almost my entire life – from the Gulf War, to the September 11 terrorist attacks and subsequent invasion of Iraq, to the current rise of ISIL and turmoil in Syria and Libya. Richard Engel’s “And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East” covers both of these bases as a personal account of being a foreign correspondent covering the Middle East through a tumultuous period.
The book starts with Mr. Engel as a young freelance journalist trying to make a name for himself in the midst of a failed democratic uprising in Egypt. He then moves on to cover the 2003 Iraq Invasion, the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine, the “war on terror” in Afghanistan, and the Arab Spring that eventually leads to the rise of the infamous ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). Along the way, Mr. Engel provides sometimes very personal insights into his thoughts and feelings, and I gain a new admiration for the danger and sacrifices that come with being the rock stars of the journalistic community.Over his two decades in the Middle East, Mr. Engel has suffered a kidnapping, a failed marriage, and the death of friends, yet continued his work to bring the world information that would otherwise go unreported. He also offers excellent insight into the complex history and dynamics of the region and Islam, supported by his first-hand experiences.
The Middle East is complex....
Given the complex relationships and changing dynamics of the Middle East, I have admittedly developed only a surface level understanding of the situation in the region. Although the book doesn’t cover any new ground that hasn’t already been covered in the numerous texts that are available on the region, Mr. Engel's explanations and history lessons are able to distill a complex subject into a manageable read.
I found Mr. Engel's book to be highly educational and informative, while also being very engaging and entertaining. The book isn’t a light or easy read, but I would highly recommend it to anyone with an interest to better understanding a region that has shaped geopolitics of the past 20 years.
+ADW and I saw and did everything we could in Sao Miguel: we climbed mountains, braved the ocean, walked into the mouth of a (sleeping) volcano... Actually, the entire island is a series of lush volcanic craters so that doesn't really say much other than we're crazy and the people who choose to live there are even nuttier than we are! We stayed at an unassuming modern zen style hotel recently constructed on the north-western coast that boasts quite the facilities; few of which we bothered to get acquainted with--if we wanted spa services, we wouldn't have travelled so far for them.
The Azores boasts a variety of active excursions as well as those for the less actively inclined. For those wanting to get out and about, activities range from water to land and everything in between; there is certainly something for everyone; some of it seasonally dependant such as surfing. For those who are less inclined to trek into the wilderness (so to speak), you'll find that the food and drink is pure and unadulterated--fresh in a sublime sense--it still brings envy (and a bit of drool) to realize that this is the standard; as well, many of the island's landmarks or 'museums*' are easily accessible by car--something I highly recommend for one travelling in the Azores.
*I use this term broadly since I can't quite find the best word to describe places of scientific and historic exhibition, discovery and research.
Instead of organizing my posts in the typical day-by-day adventures I've composed previously, I figured visitors might not be limited only to Sao Miguel; after all, there are nine islands. We start with my list of top 5 must do areas/features for a shorter length of travel on Sao Miguel.
1. Lagoa das Sete Cidades
This is probably one of the most popular image in a Google search of the Azores. These two visually distinctive lakes, located in the western third of the island, are situated in the crater of the civil parish of Sete Cidades and attract visitors and locals alike, to take in the stunning landscape. It's a view that simply can't be captured on camera and I'd say, one of the most breath-taking views I've witnessed in person and there are many look-outs. The views are so amazing that someone thought to cash in on it by building a hotel (Hotel Monte Palace) that overlooks the lagoas but didn't take into account the view is only viable when it isn't covered in fog--which is often--and today, the hotel stands abandoned.
For those looking to head out into the wilderness on foot, day hiking around the lagoas is an excellent way to see the natural landscape. An alternative would be to contact one of the equestrian companies of the island to see if they have any tours on horseback.
Not far from the two lagoas, there are natural thermal ocean pools that are a great trip for (what I consider) the brave: Ponta da Ferraria. The link is quite extensive so I won't go into detail, but stress that this feature is VERY MUCH dependant on weather and time of day. Go at the wrong time and you may be dragged out to sea or smashed against the rocky shores. There is no admissions for the natural pools but the (safe) man-made ones charge bathers.
2. Furnas
For me, this was my favourite area to visit. Not just because there is volcanic activity and a clowder of friendly felines:
Located in the eastern-centre of the island, Furnas features huge calderas, fumaroles, geysers and hot-springs throughout the civil parish. The region is also home to one of the top hotels in Portugal: Terra Nostra Hotel, styled in art deco fashion and built in the 1930s, to attract "monied" visitors. The hotel is also keeper to a stunning gardens ground that is a must to check out (charge admissions). On the other hand, if you don't end up staying in Furnas, you could spend a morning taking advantage of the mineral hot springs--something we didn't feel inclined to do (in this instance).
Instead, we wandered into the parks area of Lagoas das Furnas where we thought we were going to take a brief stroll around the park but discovered a research and monitoring facility of Furnas: Centro de Monitorizacao e Investigacao das Furnas. Much of the island has been heavily burdened by the increase in agriculture practices that put the indigenous flora, fauna and fresh water reserves at risk but the government is taking steps to right poor practices that threaten the unique environment. I highly recommend visiting, in addition to the gated garden (you can get combo admissions to both but just make sure you have enough time to do both and are dressed appropriately).
We also visit the parks where the locals utilize the unique geology to cook food, by volcanic activity: cozidos. At this point in our trip, I was missing my two fur-babies and it was as if fate just knew (as always), and the moment I stepped out of the car at the park, a tortoiseshell kitty happily trots towards me in hopes of getting a hand-out. It doesn't surprise me that stray cats decide to populate this area since it's likely they'll get a meal. There are several restaurants that feature this menu and we visited one of the most well-known: Tony's.
One place we didn't manage to fit into our schedule (and I REALLY wish we did) is the Microbial Observatory of the Azores because I am a proud microbiologist by education, indirectly through my various forays into home fermentation and by work (seeing as many diseases are caused by microbes).
3. Ponta Dalgada
Ponta Delgada is the largest, most populated municipality and administrative capital for the region. If you're looking for some souvenirs and have a little less than a day, you could check out Fort de Sao Bras:
and wander the main part of the city and pier area. If you're looking for a more adventurous excursion, make your way to the pier see if you could sign up for a whale watching outing. This is unfortunately, highly weather dependant and it's tricky to tell from land so if you want to do this, try to book it early and if you need to re-book, there's still time to reschedule. Unfortunately for us, ADW was quite the sad panda since we didn't have that chance to head out. #nexttime
4. Vila Franco do Campo
If you're a history buff, this one would interest you because while Ponta Delgada is the current "capital", it wasn't always the case. Vila Franco do Campo was the main settlement until October 1522 when a violent earthquake shook the region, causing landslides that killed more than 5,000 of the inhabitants--many who were buried alive. The area has since been re-settled but has never regained its prominence as being the primary "capital". That said, it's still worth seeing because from here, you can visit or view (depending on the time of year and your interests) a crater islet about 1km from the south shore with indigenous flora/fauna and a small crater lake where visitors can swim and snorkel.
Bottom of the chapel steps
As we discovered about the Portuguese, they are a religious bunch and one of the most incredible churches we visited is the Our Lady of Peace Chapel, where this chapel is situated high on the top of the hill, providing an amazing panoramic view for any who visit, along with the beauty of the chapel itself. Be prepared for a hike well worth it and don't look back/down until you get to the top so you can be wowed.
There is also a regional cookie/cake made here that is worth trying when you're wandering around and looking or a snack.
5. Nordeste
The eastern third of the island shows visitors a more raw and untamed section of the island--full of death-defying mountain side roads and what appears to be more of the indigenous flora and fauna. Driving out to explore this area is a driver's dream come true with narrow winding roads carved into the sides of the mountains or passing over deep forested gorges.
Farol Ponta do Arnel
A highly recommended stop over here is the lighthouse on the most eastern point: Farol Ponta do Arnel. It's a functional lighthouse that is occasionally open to the public (usually a Wednesday) and worth seeing. The hike down to the house is steep so be sure you're prepared with the right shoes, water, endurance and clothes (hiking sticks help too) because going down is one thing, but coming back up is entirely another. Pack a picnic and you can chill out near the parking lot before or after your visit.
One of my favourite things about the island is the various gardens and look-outs along the roads where you could stop to enjoy the view, the company and a snack. One of the prettiest ones we visited was Miradouro da Ponta da Madrugada.
+ADW and I are off again! We've elected to travel to the Azores, a set of 9 green volcanic islands in the North Atlantic Ocean. The Azores are one of two autonomous regions of Portugal (the other is Madeira).
The 3 main cities of the Azores are: Ponta Delgado, Angra do Heroísmo and Horto. All the islands are of volcanic origins but some have not had any recorded activity since being settled here. The first islands were discovered in the early 1400s during the Portuguese Age of Discovery (1415-1542) and helped settled by Gonçalo Velho Cabral. The islands' climate is mild and sub-tropical considering its northernly location but is affected by the Gulf Stream and location relative to continents. Temperature ranges are temperate ranging from 3-30C throughout the year with a distinct "rainy season". The main industry on the islands is agricultural in nature; São Miguel's current agricultural yields are dairy and beef, pineapple and passion fruit and Pico's wine is fantastic.
I'd say it's safe to assume most of us spend the better part of our spare time keeping up with social media updates and current events. My office has 3 televisions that play either CP24 or BNN and I had to make a resolution to cut back on my daily Facebook time that didn't include things like responding to messages. All this information is nice... but nothing is of any real substance. One of the reasons I travel is because I am interested in other cultures, their art and architecture, history... Usually I become intrigued about something and always want to learn more.
Information highway
The interesting thing is, there is so much to know and learn but we're all busy and doing research on everything is tough. In an effort to continue to culture my brain, I am taking an "online course" through "Go Highbrow". The slogan on their page is "Expand your knowledge universe... in just 5 minutes a day". If you wanted to see 'how highbrow' you are, check out this quiz.
How do you go about this? The program is created where an email is sent daily for a set number of days about a specific subject (course) of your choosing and you'd read the email, while drinking your coffee or having a "petit dejeuner". The duration lasts anywhere from a few days to a couple weeks. The first course will be "Smartest Animals on Earth". Then I'll move onto the "Most Powerful Empires in History".
We spend a lot of our time focusing on conditioning and improving our bodies (at least it's the same resolution I make every year) and now we can work on our brains too!
During my fourth year at UW, I participated in a senior honours project that focused on aspects of the Alberta Oil Sands. I wrote a paper and did my research project about microbial degradation of the reclamation ponds. With 2 semesters of work, little was actually accomplished. But, I'll never forget about the process of oil sands extraction and the implications about the process.
Several years later, I saw a coffee table book at Indigo of a massive oil field and was drawn to the sheer scale of the photograph. I flipped through the pages and saw things that most people probably don't even think about: the actual "mining" of our intermediate goods. The book was the work of Edward Burtynsky on Oil.
(at the time, he also had the same exhibit on, at the Royal Ontario Museum)
Mr. Burtynsky is a Canadian photographer who's chosen (or maybe drawn to) waste and contemporary landscape as his primary subjects. In an interview (which actually inspired me to look further into this photographer), he talks about a "critical balance" between humans and our planet Earth. He is not by any means an environmentalist, but through his art, he strives to bring the audience closer with the history and travels of our goods; from beginning to end.
He talks about a three-stage history that all things endure, in a human's grasp... the first being the unknown origin, the second where the item is useful/known to the human and finally, the stage where the item is deemed useless/disposable. His photography brings you into the first and third stages of this history and it is here, that one realizes the magnitude of our footprint on the Earth. I don't mean to tote the whole "environmental" record here but I think most people have no real concept of where our things come from. We know the items as it is now--how we see, want and use it. But, do we know how it was made? Where the parts came from?
I'm typing away on this laptop and I wonder, where did all the parts come from? and what happens when its reached the end of its useful days?
These are some of the questions that his artwork brings to the surface. It may not get everyone to immediately realize that their consumption has a consequence somewhere but it does get you to realize the reality of it all. We live in a society far removed from traditional manufacturing or intermediate good mining... Our technology advances have moved many of us to a place where most are far removed from the base source of where our consumable products come from; and where they go.
Do you personally know a miner? a farmer? a waste procurement
specialist? I don't and I think most of us are really caught up in our
fast paced North American lifestyles of the shiny lights. We seemingly live in a cycle of excess whereby we use something only to soon dispose of it.
Running enthusiasts are told in articles again and again, that running shoes have a life span of approximately 200-500mi and even when they don't look used, they're likely at the end of their "cushy" lifespan. But, what are you supposed to do with those gently used runners? Do you just chuck em into the garbage? I"ve looked. There are plenty of donation programs that ship the shoes to those "less fortunate" people in developing countries but at some point, even they'll use up the shoes. And I wonder, do these countries even have a program to recycle something like running shoes? We don't even have a particularly good program in North America. How could we assume that these non-developed nations to have something like that??? Sounds like we're just shifting our problem somewhere else. Anyone else see a problem here?
One of these days, we're going to have to leave our planet to live in a giant spaceship because we've turned our wonderful little planet into an exhausted wasteland.
(Next theme/topic: omega 3s and omega 6s in our diet)
You open up your gmail account or even your Facebook account... and you see a listing of suggestions: advertisements to something you were looking for, or maybe sent an email to your friend about this product/service and now you see a brief ad. Or better yet, you get a listing of people to add as friends on your Facebook account. But by golly, this seemingly inert website is... reading my mind??
Today, Facebook had their largely anticipated IPO. But, what exactly is Facebook selling? Like many people, I have an account and I sign-in regularly and check status updates about people I know, see what's new and then log out. Not once have I paid a penny, to use their services. So, what exactly is the big hype about Facebook?
Welcome to "big data". Big data is essentially gargantuan data sets that are difficult to work with by traditional database standards. We're talking in the order of magnitude of zettabytes. I can't even begin to fathom how big that is.
Going back to our topic of the Facebook IPO: how does this relate? Well, Facebook recently launched their "timeline" theme and I am pretty certain (I refuse to change over voluntarily--I'd rather go kicking and screaming) that the information goes as far back as the day you signed up your account. I was one of the early users back in 2005 or 2006; it's been 6 years and there are currently, over 901 million users. That's 13% of the world's entire population. To further put this into perspective, Canada's population is around 34 million, the US is around 312 million, China is at 1.33 billion and India is 1.17 billion. That is a lot of users on one website, who are probably checking in on a daily basis.
As it stands, Facebook's main source of revenue is through marketing. Why would that be surprising? It's not. Afterall, the amount of information they have on each member is vast and likely quite detailed. They'll know your sign-in habits, your social circles, your vacations, your feelings and moods, your likes, hobbies... they're even able to customize a lot of their marketing bits and suggest to you, new friends whom you're likely to accept because they probably got it right!
There is so much data that they have access to, that it's kind of scary how much they actually know about you, without you actively permitting this information to be shared. You think it's private and safe but Facebook does technically own anything that you put up there. And since they're out there looking at how to make more money (now that they have their IPO out), it's going to be time to hire some more data miners/architects who know how to manipulate this massive "big data" that Facebook is sitting on and in short, start taking over the world!
Well, maybe not taking over the world per se but imagine the amount of information they have access to. Many companies are currently already digging into their mines of data and getting involved with their customers on a more personal level without actually needing a person to actively review each account. There are probably a bunch of algorithms that are created and inserted into their program and ta-da: instant personalized advertisement.
I don't know if this is all bad, or if it's all good. Some conspiracy theorists might consider this a wolf in sheep's clothing while others may consider this a godsend tool to best exploit efficiencies. While most groups/companies are likely just trying to make money, who's to say that they won't start manipulating you needlessly to make a buck? Afterall, the road to hell is paved in good intentions. Do have the enough self control and common sense to know better and then make a conscious effort/decision? The argument's still out but I know I still like to have most of my personal life and habits to stay strictly mine...
I have never given a lot of thought to how our foods get to our tables. Take for example, the cheese I just had for dinner. Where did that come from? I know that a (faceless, because I don't know them personally) dairy farmer raised some cows (a milk producing sort???) and then milked them and somehow, the cow's milk ended up with a cheese maker and then to Scheffler's Deli in St. Lawrence Market.
Right, that's the kid version. In the last year or so, I have started to consider more about where all this comes from and how it is regulated, if at all, to our tables and tummies. There's a lot about our food, that the common person has absolutely no clue about. And some prefer that it remain this way. I don't. I want to understand and learn where my food has come from and see what has made it the way it is.
I wanted to find a farmer to deal directly with, to purchase eggs and lemme tell you, I can't find anyone online. And I definitely wouldn't know how to reach them by telephone and wouldn't be walking up to their door to order farm fresh eggs.
In the meantime, I started dabbling in the stock market earlier this year to help enhance my savings for the coming year when I'll need to generate a further payment on the condo which I have bought (pre-build). One company that caught my eye was Viterra (TSE:VT). I thought that what Viterra did was really interesting. It was helping to answer some of my questions!
Viterra (one of their many lines of business) is essentially to act as a grain broker/trader between the collective of farmers and the the vendors/purchasers and help them market their product as a collective. They also process the grain and act as the physical distributors/sellers. Just amazing. I didn't realize this was all happening while I'm happily munching away on my wheat crackers.
I think I've found something that finally interests me enough to want to actually learn about it and understand what it is. Looks like I'm getting right on track.
And I like the taste of power. In fact, I enjoy bathing in power when I'm feeling down. It helps revive the spirit and get me feeling like I can take on the world with anything it throws my way. It's refreshing like a cool mojito on a hot summer day.
As I mentioned yesterday, I would speak more about Joseph Kony. I received an email from my coworker regarding this horrible man. I do plead ignorance to what is happening around the world in many respects. I comprehend that there are people of all walks of life and all types of experiences and cultures. I even recognize that there are atrocities happening in this world, that may be far removed from our western society.
Most of us are very privilaged and we even live our lives through rose coloured glasses. We pretend (or maybe choose) to live ignorant to the bad things that are happening around us. We continually surround ourselves with things that don't "bring us down". That's human nature.
But, as human beings, we have a sort of responsiblity--I think--to be aware of what is going on as well as taking action where we can. I'm not suggesting that we get out there and do some of the crazy things that protestors do. To me, that's not effective anyways. Even donating money to the cause may not help. Getting into the trenches is really, or spreading the word on a cause or situation. Educating oneself fully about what is happening is key.
Joseph Kony is a horrible human being ("human" is used loosely) who has been doing unspeakable things to other human beings. Watch the video to better understand what's going on: http://vimeo.com/37119711. Kony makes the top of the Worst War Criminals.
I don't necessary suggest that everyone get their wallet out and donate a bunch of money to the non-for-profilt group, but merely to make yourself aware of what else is happening in this world. It's foolish to continue living in the bubble we currently live in and believe that it's ok not to be educated in what's happening. You might never get yourself out to Africa to do something about this, but maybe someone you tell will. Or maybe that letter you write to the Canadian government will get something initiated for stopping this.
