Well, my version of Costa Rica has been family. All family all the time. My new Costa Rican family, and wow are they incredible people. Maya is 9 months old now, and we have bought her a few things but we didn’t need to because every relative or cousin and all of the neighbors within ten blocks have bought her presents. My friend Janelle who is half-Brazillian and has a nine year old son I have known since he was two, told me, “The people in L.A. hate children, you go into a restaurant and they look at you weird for your child, etc… etc… In Brazil, however, and Latin America, children are rock-stars. Everyone loves them so much and gives them so much attention.” Well, she is right, it is amazing for me to witness it. This must one of the reasons it’s such a happy place.

Abolishing the Army wasn’t a bad idea either.

See Nicholas D. Krostoff’s article below.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/opinion/07kristof.html

Beautiful Beach at Santa Theresa (Malpais), Costa Rica

It’s great to be on the road again. I haven’t been to a new place in a while, especially a beach, so it was refreshing to arrive here in Malpais and Santa Theresa from San Jose and before that Turrialba, Costa Rica two days ago. It is pretty far out there and removed from the rest of Costa Rica both physically and in vibrational level. From what I understand it is a recent phenomena in the sense of becoming popular and getting bigger, more tourists, etc.

This of course is no phenomena at all in the sense that newly discovered beach towns which expand have been going on for ages. I find this one to be a pretty refreshing one in the sense that it hasn’t been really built out too much yet. What seems most amazing is that there appears to be virtually no construction right on the beach so, no beach bars, no hotels, etc. right there. This is kind of great and kind of not so great in the sense that it’s pretty pristine, but it’s hard to have the creature comforts that I sometimes like to indulge in. There are two exceptions, however, to this: Day + Night and another restaurant way down in Santa Theresa that apparently has been there for ten years.

What I find interesting is how there’s nobody building there on the beach, just a couple of places. I have heard that the coastal commission (or Costa rica) s strong and prevents it. What I can’t help but notice when I compare it to scenes in Goa, India or Ko Phan Gang, Thailand or Tulum, Mexico is that there doesn’t really seem to be the locals there and the sort of homegrown little businesses and families making a living off of the beach who had been there always. What seems to have happened is that the land all over the world has been so massively commodified, restricted and legalized for the corporations and rich. The current crisis seems to have confirmed this. The results are higher prices for the tourists and the locals don’t make that much. Most the people making money here seem to be a lot of Americans, Israelis and Europeans. This scene will continue to blow up, but the complete privatization of the world seems to continue at the price of humanity and society causing distinctions and a separation from oneself to the other.

It’s a beautiful place to visit, come and help make it the next Playa del Carmen, there’s always the next beach up the way (unfortunately it’s most likely now owned by a bank, an investor, a rich person) so the barbed wire might be surrounding it. Nothing against the rich, but the institutions are getting to strong in domination of every aspect of our realities these days.

I like seeing the artwork of my fellow Americans check out what they are up to in Detroit.

Artist Doing Their Best in Hard Times

I am a healthy adult, vegetarian, etc, etc. I had health insurance for about four years. From that time about 2005 to 2009 my premiums went up from about $111 to $267. From what I was reading in the above article they would be most likely $390 by now. This is and was outrageous. When I found out my wife was pregnant (and she was visiting from another country), I realized that it was going to be virtually impossible to get health insurance or pay for the birth simply in a hospital.

We determined that it was going to be best to do it in Costa Rica instead, and from what I am reading I am so glad for that decision. In Costa Rica when you go to a private hospital to give birth, you get a detailed list of the prices and what they cover IN ADVANCE. I first experienced that in Thailand almost 20 years ago when I had to go to the hospital there. They gave you a list: One price for private room, another for shared with one person, and a cheaper for a group room. Pretty straight forward. Why can’t this be done in America?

Our cars when they are sick have more rights then their owners. The mechanic has to give you a signed quote in order to “operate” on them.

Most countries in the world you can ask in advance what the price is going to be, and then make an informed decision, this more than anything so that people can comparison shop instead of the hoping insurance might cover it, is what needs to happen for true insurance.

Price control must be done as well that is the only way that we are going to move forward on this (oops, did I say a dirty word?).

But then Music with a capital M came into my life. I tried soo hard to do it on a PC. No way was I going to pay twice the money for a Macbook that only had two USB ports and one Firewire port (they don’t even have the Firewire anymore, which is amazing since USB 2.0 was invented because of Apple’s expensive licensing costs for Firewire). I tried to make music with my HP Laptop, you know the shiny one circa 2007 first decent looking HP laptop that came out. Well, it looked good, at the time, but God do I hate that thing now.

So, I was at SAE Institute in Los Angeles (Sound and Audio Engineering) taking a course on becoming an Electronic Music Producer. There were 15 DJs there, all way more experienced in music/djing than me and all but one dude and the Russian (“in my country they call Macs toys”) were on there Macs. The teachers, both of whom were super hard core computer dudes, were on Macs. I was holding out, I realized all I was doing was technical trouble shooting, not making music. And believe me, synthesis, buses, reverb, dynamic plug ins, EQ, etc. is no walk in the park to learn without constant OS computer troubleshooting issues for just plugging in a USB cable that was powering a keyboard or hard drive or whatever. Which leads me to why I began this post.

Nag screens. Of all the things about Microsoft that I miss the least (and believe me I do miss some things, especially the finder and cut and paste in the OS), is nag screens. Macs for the most part basically don’t have them, or they are extremely rare. So, I am writing on my Mac and so why should I worry about nag screens. Well, I decided to go to Microsoft.com just for old times sake (my goodness, I actually worked there as a contractor in 1996/97 for 8 months (coincidentally through MacTemps). So, I arrive to there site through Safari (I’m kind of over the “browser wars” it was a big deal when I was at MS and it was Netscape 3.0 vs I.E. 3.0, but kind of over it now for the Firefox freaks) and what am I welcomed with:

A NAG SCREEN.

“We detect you have an older version of “Silverlight” (yes Netflix did get me to install it), if you want enhanced version… and you will be taken away from here.” Hello Microsoft. Well, I am typing in Safari, in a PHP post, on an Apache server. Give me a break, the pop up balloons every time I turn on my computer, every time, I plug something in, every time I don’t go online (I know, I don’t have internet at my house!). I even tried the registry for the Pop Up Balloons and it didn’t even work. Just leave us alone. Though I got my Mac, switching was painful. Fifteen years of CTL+X CTL+V is not condusive to Command where Alt should be, but it’s worth it to not be nagged. I even had a DUO boot to Windows XP and Parallels for a while, I just couldn’t give up my Outlook going back to 97 and my Synced Windows Mobile Device and my fonts and my Photoshop Plug-Ins, and I still have a few of you kicking around (meaning PC laptops). But when I accidentally dropped my Mac three feet and it miraculously stayed together except fried the hard drive. There’s a simple program called Carbon Copy Cloner on the Mac that’s pretty cheap or free and it actually works and it’s actually easy to do, so I got to upgrade from my 320 gig to 500 gig laptop drive and I had to decide, well, I can’t even find my XP Service Pack 2 (required for Bootcamp) disc that I actually bought and then had to register (it kept saying it was a new computer at the beginning when I would switch to Parallels and have 1.2 gig of RAM instead of 3 gigs of RAM when I was in Bootcamp mode. And I am like, you know what I am ready to be Windows free and nag free and backup free and easy. For a while I was carrying around two laptops instead of having two in one, but then I finally got my e-mail and outlook converted, and no looking back. It was great to work there, but once Bill Gates left with his billions to give away, strangely they came up with the Windows Genuine Advantage nag screen for the world. And they set up the gates even tighter even though he had become the richest man in the world, and they dominated the world.

People don’t want nag screens. They just want the computer to work.

While it is kind of a whole new way of doing the web then what I had been doing, I can really see the power of it.

The databases are taking over.

What I have been working on mostly is the website CostaRicanWeddingPhotos.com with my new partner Maria-Jose Sanchez.  Check it out and if you have a need of photography let us know. E-Mail Travis

Maija On Photo Website

Click here for new website.

My new photo website is alive, I am doing weddings and photography with a new partner, Maria-Jose Sanchez out of San Jose

Elisabetta Rogiani New York Fashion Show 2008 by NIO on Mixcloud

This is a mix I did that’s pretty minimal I did for Elisabeta Rogiani’s fashion show in New York in 2008.

Travis, Marcia & Maya in Cahuita National Park

One of the best things about living in Costa Rica is the wide variety of micro-climates which exist here. While I live technically in what is known as the Central Valley of Costa Rica, the reality is that Turrialba is just on the edge of the Atlantic Lowlands heading into Limon, Cahuita, Puerto Viejo on into Sixaola to continue to the frontier with Panama.

After three weeks in Europe with family, one amazing wedding in Sitio Mata, near Turrialba. I decided I needed to continue my openness to the world and needed to travel. So I set off with Marcia & Maya to the beach. We left pretty early and got there in about three hours stopping along the way. It was a rare nearly cloudless day and the Caribbean beach was an amazing site to see. Heading towards Guapiles on the “highway” from Turrialba the views of the Turrialba Volcano were astounding. I stopped along the way and found a lovely property for sale 45 acres for $180,000 with an incredible view of the volcano right on the main road and a small Caribbean wooden plantation home and 30 head of cattle. I spoke with the owner. I love the idea of it, but don’t have the income to support it now, would love to have someone I know buy it.

After traveling in Europe, we were much more relaxed with our seven month old on the road, she was such a trooper on the planes, not crying even once all 40 hours there and back, it was really quite astounding.