But, they don’t.

Even in the most prosperous of nations, there still exists a large amount of sadness, mostly due to inequalities that people feel must be propagated to preserve the antiquated class system that should have never existed in the first place.

I had thought about starting a wiki site of rules for a society that treats everyone as equals and allows each individual to achieve their highest potential. Maybe I still will.

In the meantime, I thought to start writing to my blog again and who knows, it may be the beginnings of my “Plato’s Republic.”

If for nothing else, this may increase my own knowledge (in a self-reflection sort of way) since it is very unlikely that anyone else besides myself and perhaps a few friends who occasionally drop in to see what I am up to will read this.

Plus, if I don’t start writing, I will never finish the screenplay I started on a couple of years back.

I know it is  a little bit late but, I wanted  I wanted to write my first blog post for the year 2008 using my new laptop.  I did get the laptop back in January as part of the Give One Get One program but have not been using it much. The XO laptops are really meant for kids. To use them using adult hands is not the most comfortable thing.

Well, I have been lazy but recently I have started to do things that I have wanted to do for while. For example, my brother and I started a podcast for the community website we run for Indo-Fijians. I have also started playing raquetball, again, which is great but that also means having to discover which parts of my body are growing older faster than te other parts.

OK, this little bit of gem has taken me over 15 minutes to write on this cute laptop designed for kid fingers so I will have to stop writing now before I get too weary.

Greenbang asks, “Would you spend more money on eco-friendly electricity?” There were quite a few responses, here is a sample:

• A resounding Yes! Absolutely. I actually pay a bit more each month to my utilities provider, which they use to invest in renewable power technology.

• No way! Not a chance. The average person has enough problems paying their bills, mortages, feeding their kids, and finding disposal income to buy a shiny trinket to make it through the daily grind.

• The government should do it! I don’t think consumers should have to make this difficult choice. The government spends billions of dollars on government subsidies … If it shifted its priorities, it could subsidize renewable engery for us so that prices would stay the same or, eventually, drop.

My thoughts: I don’t like government subsidies but it is necessary to kickstart new technology.  The government should get rid of oil subsidies, move them to renewables and once the renewables technology matures then consumers should be responsible for paying for it.

Govt subsidies is what has kept us so dependent on oil and who knows, if a future technology that is better than the current renewables emerges, we would not want to be held hostage to the new “old” technology.

Overall impressions: People we encountered were very nice, friendly and helpful. We flew into Tucson and out of Phoenix.

Phoenix international airport claims to be the friendliest airport in the country. From all the airports I have been to, I think I would have to agree. People went out of their way to help us. We needed to transfer from one terminal to another and Aurore (my wife) tried hailing a shuttle she saw that had the correct terminal number. That shuttle does not stop where we were standing. A driver of another shuttle saw us and came over to help us go to the right spot even though he did not have to. I have yet to encounter such an incident elsewhere. They also have people (volunteers mostly, I think) to direct you where you need to be. It is a very large airport and fairly spread out so this is very helpful.

Like I mentioned, we landed in Tucson. Southern Arizona is like a western movie. Desert and cactus. It is very beautiful in its own way. Tucson is a large university town; it is where U of A is located. Once again, very nice and friendly people.

After Tucson we went to Tombstone, a town where a lot of old western movies were made. That place was scary at night, I mean for a brown city dweller like me. Most of the town seemed pretty empty at night except for this one bar where it seemed like the party never stops. We saw a lot of bikers over there as well, not sure if this was just a coincidence or if they visit Tombstone regularly. When we were checking out, we ask the receptionist about directions to Kartchner Caverns where we were going next. He was not sure about the exact route but pointed us in the right directions. As we were loading up our car, he came running out of the office to give us some more information as he had called the place to get more info for us after we had talked to him about it. We did not ask him to call the place and he did not have to but he did, which is another example of how friendly and helpful people we met were.

Kartchner Caverns was a nice place to visit. We encountered some dirt road getting there, which I had not experienced since Fiji.

After Kartchner Caverns we went to tour Biosphere 2, which is a marvel as well. I was really excited to have visited this place.

After Biosphere 2 we went to Sedona and visited the Red Rock State Park, which was also very cool. The mountains in Arizona are real mountains, very grand, very large and very beautiful. In Sedona we also went for a hot air balloon ride. It was a lot of fun. Aurore and I had been on a hot air balloon ride in Napa, CA but it was not exciting or lengthy as the one we experienced in Sedona. I also got to act as a crew when we landed, which was fun.

After Sedona we went to the Grand Canyon, which is also a grand marvelous sight.

Some things you have to visit to experience for yourself so I did not go into details about everything. Ask me if you have specific questions.

I enjoyed the trip to Arizona very much but I am happy to be back home. The weather when we went (late October) was very good. The temperature did get high on a couple of days but cool breeze was always blowing so being in the shade was very comfortable.

Animals who are bred for meat or other products (milk, fur, eggs) are treated much worse [e.g. check out meet your meat, caution explicit images on this site] than pets.  A cow bred for producing milk has to spend its entire life in a stall smaller than the length of its body so it can never face forward.  I wonder it feels sad or angry. I wonder what it thinks about.  I wonder if animals believe in god, or a god-like entity.

If you have not guessed already, I am a vegeterian.  I am working on becoming a vegan, but it is tough.  I am working towards it and I hope I achieve that goal soon.

I wonder if there is a word for being ashamed of being human.

“What would happen if every blog published posts discussing the same issue, on the same day? One issue. One day. Thousands of voices.”

That is blog action day in a nutshell.  Today’s theme happens to be about the environment. Why not? Environmental crisis, in my opinion, is the single biggest threat to human, indeed many species’ existence. It has been in our radar a long time and all that time should have been enough to avert this disaster. But the threat continues to grow and, according to many scientists, has brought us to the brink of no return. We need to act now. Don’t think what other people are doing, or not doing. What are you doing? How will you answer to your kids and grandkids when they ask what did you do to prevent the natural catastrophe?

Every little bit helps. Recycling a sheet of paper or a pint of oil means that your offspring will have that much more. It sounds silly but I dare you to track the things you waste thinking, “this won’t make a difference.”

There are many organizations that exist that make helping the environment a little more than what you can do just by reducing, reusing and recycling your waster. And best part is that it does not cost you anything more than a few minutes out of your daily life.

Care2.com has a click to donate program where you click on a image that shows you a few ads. Does not cost you anything and you are not obligated to buy anything but you have done a little extra to save the planet for your children. You can even track to see how big a difference you are making.

Join Care2.com’s Race to Stop Global Warming!

 Ecologyfund.com and TheRainForestSite have similar programs. None of these programs cost you anything more than a few seconds. You could do this while downloading your email, listening to messages or any number of things that allow you to do multiple things at the same time. Please check them out and help save the future of our children.

It may also be true because I don’t really have high expectations. Don’t get me wrong, I am a very ambitious and optimistic person. But who am I? I am nobody. I am insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but I am also connected to everything else in the universe.  That makes me very lucky. 

Plus my wife makes me lucky.  If I had a past life, I must have been a very good person to deserve someone like her.

Last Sunday when I was in the play yard with a dog, I noticed animals being brought out and loaded into a van. I thought nothing of it since it was common for the humane society to take animals to different events around the area and show them off in hopes of getting them adopted, and at the same time, bring attention to the organization and the good it is doing.

Some other people who were nearby got to talking to the people loading the van and I thought I heard them say they were taking the animals to be blessed. I was not sure so I asked and the answer, indeed, was that the animals were been taken to a “blessing of the animals.”

What good is that going to do? I thought out loud. The animals don’t need to be blessed, they need to be adopted. I don’t know why but this upset me a lot.

Oh, here is something. Have you ever met a not so smart person who says something that pisses the crap out of you and then you spend the rest of the day, night, perhaps week thinking about what you could have said back to at that moment to put them in their tiny place, only that you can’t cuz that moment has passed and there is nothing that can be done about it?  It happens to me more than I would like to admit, and it drives me crazy that stupid little things like that bother me so much.