TIGblogs TIG | TIGblogs GROUP TIGBLOGS LOGIN SIGNUP
where ever you go, there you are
where ever you go, there you are


« previous 4


Going Carbon Free Today
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Recently scientists have announced that the world must go carbon zero by the mid-century to avoid the dangerous effects of global warming. After years and years of environmentalists fighting to get their voices heard the world is now finally conscious of this frightening phenomenon. But how does one go carbon free, let alone a nation? I remember in my Global Environmental Politics class one student pronouncing that if we want to go carbon free, we must revert back to village societies.


Yet this is not practical to the average world citizen. With increasing urbanization, people are flocking to the city, whereby their water is pumped, their food is imported,and the concrete landscape is expanding. We need to find ways to create sustainable living in our modern day environment. This means in some cases adapting traditional technologies, and in others using high tech development. In battling global warming, we must take examples of sustainable living from both rural and urban, the north and the south.

With the United Nations Climate Conference in Bali, we must air our laundry out, so to speak, finding different ways to look at our own practices and see where there is room for change. Communities and henceforth businesses are starting to respond to this demand. Organic and vegetarian food options, car and bike sharing, farmers markets, sustainable fabrics, recycled clothing, carbon offsetting, and solar power are all making waves by revolutionizing options for consumers. I think that by embracing village values, we can encourage local businesses, locally produced food, and find ways to reduce, reuse, recycle our way to a carbon zero future.

March 10, 2008 | 10:55 PM Comments  1 comments



Living within ones means... (aka learning to work without my Powerbook)
Related to country: Panama

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Over the last few months my computer has provided me with nothing but problems. I took it into the shop before I went to Costa Rica and had the screen and logic board replaced. Then weeks later it failed again, and I had to take it into Icon to get fixed in Costa Rica. As the part had to be sent even farther than before, I was forced to start work in Panama without my own computer, doomed to work on a PC. In Latin America there is a tendency to run ridiculously memory intensive software on machines that just can't handle the load. Most machines I've worked on are running Windows XP with less than 250mb of RAM. You get used to monitoring tasks so that you are using the least RAM possible.

Imagine designing a website, where your computer losses power once a day, and freezes constantly? You learn to live... in my attempt to live within my means, I've adopted a few strategies which I will share with my fellow web designers who are working in the third world. Bridging the digital divide does not mean just giving away free computers, it means that as a community we have to develop software which relates to the hardware that people are already using. Not everyone can run Windows XP and Adobe CS3! Even Adobe's software licensing program for NFP's excludes organizations who don't have the most up to date computers because of the hardware requirements!


So what do you do if you can't run the latest slickest graphic software? Well, you download GIMP, an open source super light graphic editing program which works across a variety of platforms including Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows. You also make sure to uninstall every Microsoft program you can on your computer, including IE7, and Windows Messenger! With just the simple tools of Firefox, Joomla, and GIMP; I have been working on CEAAL.org, and it has been going great. I have to admit that sometimes I cheat and sneak onto Josue's MacBook to do a bit of editing in Photoshop, but I feel like by the end of this time I should be good enough at GIMP to preform the exact same tasks.

So if you're running low on RAM, try it out! You might be surprised at all the cool things you can create.

March 5, 2008 | 11:38 AM Comments  1 comments



¡Sólo Se Vive una Vez!
Related to country: Panama

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Living by yourself in another country provides one with inumerable opportunities to challenge existing convictions and ways of living. Being in Panama has taken me a long time to get used to, not because it is so different than where I was living before, but because I am living by myself in an environment where it is up to me to create everything anew. Some things are already set in stone: I work five days a week at a not-for-profit in front of a computer screen, take lunch with my compañeros de trabajo and then come home to my wonderful boyfriend. The rest of the week it is up to me to create my schedule, find cool people to hang out with, and find interesting things to keep myself entertained, happy and centred. The process of reaching that equalibrium in a new environment, and the constent interaction with new variables, makes me reflect a lot on how I intersect with the world.

I just started reading the novel of the year; Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I refer to it as the novel of the year because I think every woman (in the English speaking world) between the ages of 23-55 will have probably read this novel or have heard of it from a friend before the year is out. I am sure that it will be translated into a number of languages as well, including Italian, and maybe even Sanskrit. "Eat, Pray, Love" is the true story of one woman's journey to find independence and happyness, by exploring all sides of herself and the world. I am currently reading about her experiences in an Ashram in India, and I find myself indentifying more and more with her goal for inner peace. The question is, what things do I have the power to change in my life? After two months of living here I've fallen into set patterns of living, but sometimes something can happen that breaks your routine and forces you to see things in a new light.

Recently I started checking the site CouchSurfing.com, and I have been getting a ton of requests from people all over the world to stay on my couch. This weekend I had the amazing experience of hosting two couch surfers. Tessa and Alisa are two beams of light that are traveling around the world. It was so great having them in my home over the weekend, as I saw Panama City through their eyes, thus transforming my former perseptions and habits. The weekend was full of activity, and for once I felt like a tourist in my own city. Slowly but surely I feel like I am giving myself up to this place, allowing it to become my home as opposed to a place where I am temporarily living. The thing that transformed me the most about their visit, was how they seemed to be able to make friends with anybody. I feel like I need to open up my heart to my surroundings. As we were leaving Casco Viejo on their last day, I read off the side of a Diablo Rojo; "Sólo se vive una vez"- You only live once! I feel like I need to use this as my Panama mantra, soaking in my surroundings and cherishing every second.