ignacy’s blog

So, travelling is about disconnecting – to a degree. Despite my best-fought denials, I am still a gadget-head – though not like I used to be.

I decided long ago not to take a laptop. That would be stupid on so many levels.

But I will be taking photos.. hopefully lots of photos. I will also be checking email, doing online banking as necessary, updating this new-fangled blog, etc. etc.

As such, my shopping basket has included some nifty items as of late:

• Epson P-2000 photo thingie. 40GB of storage, huge, crisp screen, drool-worthy despite its slowness and black-box linuxness. $160 refurbished on EBay. nice!
• Verbatim 2GB thumbdrive. $30. high five!
  On it will live:
  • Portable version of Firefox – this way I can have all of my bookmarks with me and not worry about having to type in passwords in insecure places. Free.
  • Portable version of Thunderbird. I like the GMail goodness and all, but i don’t use it. So, this is the next best thing (though I expect it to load slowly.). Free.
  • Gaim Portable.. you know, just in case i need to chat with people a jillion time zones away, and Gimp Portable which i may one day learn to use.. it’s sloooooow, though.
• I’m thinking of picking up a Solio as well..
• The list goes on…

Since the weblog craze started to take off in the last few years I’ve held off on starting my own. I promised myself not to write if I had nothing to write about.

Well, it’s been stewing a bit.. but the main purpose of this blog will be to document my experiences as I leave this continent for a little while and disconnect for a bit.

Last year I applied to a graduate program in New York, looking to stir things up in my.. um.. path. I was accepted; but some sort of fear set in quickly, then panic. It would mean leaving SF (fine, ok), moving back to NYC (great), and taking on more financial debt (yikes) for a path that would likely leave me with no less uncertainty (though with more networks) coming out than going in. I won’t insert my grad-school diatribe right here, but suffice it to say that I didn’t want to be going to school for the sake of going to school, as many people of my generation do.

I may re-apply some time in the future, but not at this time. My initial fear turned into introspection (and consultation — I have the unfortunate habit of wearing Life’s Big Questions and Subsequent Musings on my sleeve), and I realized that I had given myself only one out. Tossing aside false choices, I decided to save up some cash for a vacation.

So, here I am, a month from take-off. This really is not a big deal, but it is. It is for me. It’s a realization that one is only stuck when one thinks he is stuck, and that beyond the familiar routine there is ample opportunity. I have known this intellectually for some time. To act upon this realization is new for me.

In any case, my Golden Ticket takes me first to Hawai’i, where CJC is to be wed. I’m really looking forward to what will essentially be a college reunion of sorts – funny how biennial college-friend weddings will do that, eh? 180 Bowen will represent in the mid-Pacific, where we’re renting a house for a week.

I will then head to Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam for a month each, before heading to Poland for a couple of weeks to visit family. In July I’ll be back in the States, and my wallet will dictate what to do next; but I am hoping to work for a month or so before heading to Brazil for an ABADA event (workshops and troca de corda for Sereia.) Then, right after that is Burning Man, and I really shouldn’t not go

Anyways. There it is. My first post, and already i’m getting long-winded, teehee.. well, deal with it.

Hello, world.