bomad.com™

Holy Guacamole!

Four weeks into Croatia, we have little to complain about. The Adriatic is THE most beautiful water in the world. The peeps are almost suspiciously friendly. And the food is really delicious--if you want to eat a whole fresh fish every meal. Which I don't.

So it was with glee that MeiMei and I screamed "MEXICAN FOOD" as we passed a tiny roadside sign signaling a potential change in cuisine. And what a change it is. We are right now stuffing our faces on the best Mexican Food we've ever had outside North America.

/dalefox www.bomad.com

Bad Day

Don't worry, that's not us. But some poor soul who decided to go out on a "boating adventure" got exactly that: an adventure. Apparently, while tooling around the island, the engine on said boat burst into flames. Fortunately, the people were close to shore and simply dove overboard and swam to safety.

The real adventure was watching the response as this tiny island coped with a burning, floating, gasoline-fueled bomb drifting closer and closer to the boat-filled harbor. Imagine Soviet-era pump fire-trucks and firemen stripping off their clothes and diving into the water to manually tow the burning hulk to 'safety.' Calm yourselves, girls. Suffice it to say that these weren't hot firemen.

Fresh faces

Y'all may have noticed some new names appearing in the discussions lately. Turns out bomad is no longer just a cottage, but a budding village. Thanks to David Allan, "Italy is a third-world country" is now linked from the main page of Fodor's. That, of course, led to many more links in the past few days and...well...let's just say Metcalf's Law holds true.

Welcome newbies...

Airport Express

A big part of the bomad experience is the technology. And, contrary to popular opinion, it's not the accumulation of technology but instead the divestiture that counts. How can you get one device to do two things and lighten your load? For example, Treo as phone, Treo as alarm clock, Treo as MP3 player, Treo as...you get the picture.

That said, it is with glee that I announce a new technology acquisition (and no, it's not another Treo):

Dressing up for a Phone call

Here's a first. Dale and I rolled out of bed this morning a little earlier than usual in order to make our pre-scheduled iChat with my mom, Derek and Erica, who are all together in Hawaii. I soon found myself putting on make-up and picking out something nice to wear. For a phone call. Welcome to the new reality.

A half hour later, there we were at the internet cafe having a video conference call from an island in Croatia to an island halfway around the world in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. We could see my family laughing and waving. All that for the cost of about $1 US. And I just had one of those goosebump technology moments. Wow.

CIA Asks Bush to Discontinue Blog

"WASHINGTON, DC—In the interest of national security, President Bush has been asked to stop posting entries on his three-month-old personal web log, acting CIA director John E. McLaughlin said Monday."

Sometimes The Onion really hits it on the head.

Click here for the full article.

Of Apples and Bananas

If you hate what you hear, stick a banana in your ear.

Apparently, this is the philosophy of Real Networks, who weren't so happy about the feedback they were getting to their online petition targeting Apple.

Out of the frying pan

It's easy to spot Americans abroad. They're the ones that are...well...broad. And no wonder. We eat too much. We exercise too little. We are too rich for our own good. We are repeating the mistakes of the Spartans who fell two millennia before us--a people whose society thrived under struggle yet collapsed under the burden of leisure.

Welcome to Croatia

"...where the fish is fresh and the music is stale!" So says my wife, and rightly so.

Just click here to check out a video clip of the "Free live performance!" that we had the bad fortune honor to enjoy during our (otherwise) marvelous seaside fish dinner last night. Not sure which aspect of the show had the highest impact. Was it the oh-so-very shopping-mall-organ-music sound? The pony-tailed, middle-aged, lounge lizard in a neon Ozzie Osbourne t-shirt? The bored-out-of-her-mind, overly bleach blonde "vocalist" all gussied up in a tight black leather prom dress? Or was it the repertoire of music ranging from "When the Saints Come Marching In" to what we can only presume were just very, very bad renditions of old Croatian favorites.

Island Life

Moving on from Italy...

On Friday night, we arrived in Croatia and journeyed immediately to the island of Brac on the 10:30pm ferry from Split, after a long day of metro/train/plane with delay from Rome. We got in at nearly midnight. I asked Mario, a sweet guy who owns a local bar, to call the caretaker for us. Despite the late hour and an utter lack of ability to communicate with anything other than sign language, she got us to the house and checked us in.