I've Got Soul, I'm So Wasted

Today at work, while taking one of my many breaks from data entry as to not completely lose my mind, I found out some amazing news. I was on Wallpaper's MySpace page (one of my favorite bands) seeing if they had put up any new remix tracks, video blogs, or anything else of interest. It's usually a good bet there is some entertaining stuff up there, their frontman Eric releases a ton of retarded yet hilarious youtube video updates and I check 'em out every so often. But today was extra exciting, I found out that the release date for their debut full length album snuck up on me and is only 5 days away (update - that is only the release date for the first single... my bad! album out Sept 22). This also comes along with an album release show in late September, and I can't decide which event I am more excited for. All this totally made my day, and I cannot wait to hear the inevitable awesomeness of both the recorded tracks and the live show.

Wallpaper is a side project of Eric Frederick, the frontman for Facing New York (another great bay area band that is now on hiatus, hopefully they'll be back). In Wallpaper, he writes and composes the tracks (it's a lot of synths and electronic beats), but during shows he plays with a live drummer, Arjun Singh. Their live show is super entertaining, Eric performs in his alter ego of Ricky Reed, a flashy gangsta type dude that has amazing outfits, always. Last time I saw them in LA they played a 30 minute set, but he just kept shedding layers and ended up wearing 3 differnt getups that were all hilarious and totally ballin. He always has his signature hat, plastic neon green sunglasses, and an actual chain around his neck. In between songs, there is always hilarious commentary or stories that lead into the next song. There is heavy use of autotune throughout the entire performance, and it really works for this particular act, both because it adds to the humor of the band as well as sounding great with the composition of the tracks.

Wallpaper's lyrics are definitly satircal, the band seems to exist to poke fun at modern technology and culture trends and how people interact with each other. Just from reading the names of their songs, you can tell that they are having fun writing these things, and possibly more fun making the videos for them. The most recent one I saw was "Booty Tweet (Is the New Booty Call)", a song about people sending out desperate messages trying to hook up over Twitter. Or, there is another song called "Txt Me Yr Luv", a love song that is centered around text messaging. The songs are written as being totally serious, and Eric/Ricky definitely sells them in the live show as being legit songs. If they were ona top 40 list, the masses might not even question it, but they were no doubt written as jokes, or even a commentary on modern life. These ideas for songs may sound stupid to you, this may sound like nobody could write a quality song about such topics, but I would recommend checking out his tracks before you judge them. I might be biased, as I absolutely love anything this guy has written, but I do believe this band puts out great material and is definitely worth listening to.

Wallpaper is also involved in making a lot of remixes, the latest one I checked out was the remix of Jay-Z's "99 Problems" with "Death of Autotune", and they heavily autotuned it (another pretty funny thing to do -- and it worked out to create a sick track). I'd like to find out which app he uses for the remixes, it'd be fun to mess around with. Their remix of "Sleepyhead" by Passion Pit is also excellent, often on constant rotation. There is a neat article I read recently where they interviewed Eric about making remixes (specifically the Jay-Z remix), I thought it was pretty sweet. The quote I liked from it the most was:

"When you're writing albums you're trying to make a lasting stamp on time, but remixes are like news headlines. You're just trying to capture a moment, interrogate it and move on. I'm on to the next thing."

You can read more of that here if you're interested.

You can find most of these tracks at the band's MySpace:
www.myspace.com/wallpaper

There is also a youtube channel, I'm going to go waste some time there now...
http://www.youtube.com/user/wallpapervideos

Album drops Setpember 22nd!
Norcal album release show at Rickshaw Stop in SF on September 26th!

If you're not stoked, I'll just be extra stoked for you. It won't be that hard for me. To explain this entry title, the first single from the album is "I've Got Soul, I'm So Wasted." I've heard them play it live some months ago and can't wait to get it on CD and bumpin' in the van stereo down El Camino. Oh it's on.

San Jose, Charlotte, Los Angeles

We got to San Jose and found our hostel after a bit of searching, it was really well hidden. It was just a door in the side of a wall where you have to get buzzed in, but when you get inside it's a strange labyrinth of rooms and different levels. It was a nontraditional design for sure. It had a rooftop bar which was pretty cool, you could see the skyline of San Jose (it was noted that the tallest building was the Holiday Inn). Our room had a grate on the ceiling that was just open to the outside, that was also a bit weird. We walked around the city for a bit that night to find an ATM and get dinner, and had a semi terrifying encounter at the ATM with a guy walking down the street covered in blood. At first I thought he had a cut in his neck, but he wasn't acting like he was hurt or like he was someone that had lost so much blood (it really was everywhere on him, the whole right half of his body and clothes), so he probably murdered someone else and it was their blood all over him. I saw him coming and was pretty startled, and then he started talking to us asking for money and I was not sure what the hell to do, like if we didn't give him money would he murder us too?? Thankfully he went along down the street pretty quickly after stopping to talk to us, smoking his post-kill cigarette and looking generally insane. We decided to go back to the restaurante next to the hostel after that, as to avoid death/rape/stabbing that might occur on a longer walk home at a later hour in San Jose.

The next morning we got some souvenirs at the markets and ate breakfast and drove back to the car rental place. Thankfully all the damage was covered and the rental guy wasn't pissed off at all. We got to the airport and started our full day journey back to the US. I would say the highlight of that day of travel was playing wheelchair football at the Charlotte airport in North Carolina in the middle of the night, things were pretty slow. We got back to LA eventually the next morning. All in all, it was an awesome trip, great times with great friends (Four friends working together! Solving unexpected things Costa Rica throws at them! Sung to the tune of the MacGruber theme!). I for sure got to do a bunch of new things and had a great time exploring the country with my buddies, it was definitely a great post graduation excursion and I was really happy with every part of it. Can't wait for the next adventure.

Manuel Antonio National Park and Bribing Cops

The following day we took the bus up to the Manuel Antonio national park and got there right when it opened at 7am. We hiked to the beach and a deer walked with us most of the way, it was pretty weird, she even let us pet her and was just chill with walking on the trail with everyone. We spent a ton of time at the beach there, which was awesome. The water was really warm and we swam and snorkeled all around and I took a nap on some rocks and the guys made a hermit crab "sanctuary" where they put the numerous and gigantic hermit crabs through tests of physical strength and intellect, the whole setup was pretty elaborate by the end. It was a pit in the sand with tunnels and leaf barriers and sticks in the sides for climbing on. All the crabs made it out in the end, they were pretty hardcore. We went on a hike after the beach and saw a bunch of animals that could only be described as deer-rabbit-pigs, they were little mammals that went through the brush on the ground and looked really cool. We also saw another anteater and more of the raccoon creatures, and 2 sloths. They were pretty cool, even though they were far away. On the way out of the park, a huge group of monkeys came out of nowhere and we spent a good amount of time just watching them. They were only a few feet away and were playing around with each other, they're so fun to watch. We also heard a bunch of howler monkeys and saw a lot of squirrel monkeys further up on the path. It was way cool.

We got back to the hostel just in time, as it started raining a ton right as we got inside, and we hung out and read for awhile before going to dinner. We got back to the hostel and played cards and drank guaro and beer afterward. We were playing with Dave's kama sutra playing cards which were pretty hilarious, learned some new positions like the "splitting bamboo" or "the cow"... funny funny stuff. Another note about the hostel and most other hostels we stayed at, the heated water in the showers is powered by electricity, so there are electrical wires coming out of the shower head doing something crazy to heat the water. It seemed sorta dangerous to me, combining the electric current with water and all, but I guess it works, and we didn't get shocked, so that was good. Although the temperature and water pressure were definitely unreliable and you never knew what was coming up next. It was an intense showering experience full of suspense and surprises (when will the scalding water hit next??)!

Next day we hung around Manuel Antonio for awhile and checked out the markets and the public beach there before driving back to San Jose. We also stopped at Playa Hermosa, the town next to Jaco where we should have stayed, it was a really nice beach with good waves and water that was not contaminated! What a concept, Jaco should get on that wagon. We also stopped at this random bridge where there were a ton of crocodiles hanging out, they look pretty creepy down there just floating around waiting for people to feed them from the bridge. I imagine that is why they hang out there in such large numbers, there were probably about 15-20 crocodiles down there. Right after that stop, we had another rental car adventure when Michael got pulled over for speeding (pulled over = policia in neon vests waving us down from outside the car). The cop was going to give us a ticket, but then found out we were tourists in a rental car, and said we had the convenient option to pay him cash right then at a reduced price and he wouldn't have to file a ticket. Shady as this was, we definitely took him up on this offer that was essentially a bribe, as we didn't want to have to deal with paying a ticket in a foreign country. It was cheap, less than $50, so split between us was not a big deal. So add bribing foreign cops to the list of rental car insanity.

Vista Serena Hostel and Monkeys!

We drove to our next hostel in Manuel Antonio, and it was beautiful. It was called Vista Serena, and it did have an amazing view of the ocean and the hills, it was just a gorgeous place. We checked into our rooms and had made it just in time to go on the 2pm monkey tour, where we went out on a boat in the estuaries in search of monkeys and other wildlife. Christina had been disappointed that we hadn't seen any monkeys yet up in the highlands, but wow, this trip definitely made up for that. We pulled up to this one tree and there were suddenly about 15 Capuchin monkeys all over the boat, and our guide had bananas that he would hold out to them and they would climb over your head and jump across the boat to get them. It was such a cool experience, we thought Christina was going to stay with them, but we managed to keep her on the boat and also got to see some basilisk lizards, an anteater, and a bunch of cool birds. It was a really cool trip, and our guide Conrad was hella funny, he was this chilled out stoner guy that definitely said whatever came to his mind at any specific moment. He was in the middle of a talk about how one of the mangroves was different from another, and then just looks up and goes, "Oh shit, that bird just took a shit!" He was originally from Riverside, but moved back to CR to take care of his grandparents, and just works at the hostel and gives tours now, seems like a pretty sweet life.

We got back to the hostel in time to see one of the most amazing sunsets Ive ever witnessed, it was just epic. Such awesome colors and the clouds were all different from the ones you see in California, and it went on for about 2 hours. It was just mesmerizing to stare at and was nice to just relax on the porch at the hostel with such a beautiful thing in front of you.

Jaco: Craptown of Drug Dealers, Prostitutes, and Car Vandalists

Jaco was a trip to say the least. The hostel we were staying at, Las Camas, was a crazy place with all the walls painted wacky colors and signs like Pura Weeda painted all over the place. The room we were in had no windows and was a bit like a jail cell, and when we got there, there was nobody working there and the other girls staying there had to let us in and we waited until the owner came back. She was hilarious. She was a Hungarian chick that reeked of alcohol when she checked us in, and she gave us a tour of the place and we found out that she was responsible for all the color schemes and murals, as well as the shack made of Imperial beer cans on the roof and everything else crazy about the place. She was really nice, but we decided she was for sure permabaked and not sure what was going on most of the time. We hung out on the roof during a thunderstorm that night, and it was really cool just watching the lightning and chatting outside and listening to the music she put on, definitely a chill night. We went back to the room and noticed that our bags were being assaulted by these tiny bugs that were sortof like ants. It turns out they got into the candy we had made that morning, but something had taken a huge chunk out of the bag, and I'm not sure how these bugs could have done that. They were definitely all over it though, and were carrying pieces all over the floor. We got rid of it and brushed off as many bugs as we could, and prayed they were not also in the bed. We woke up allright, not dead or bleeding or anything, which was good. I went running which turned out to be a pretty painful experience, as it was insanely hot and humid out, but it was cool being on the beach and noticing all the signs saying that the water there was contaminated with fecal matter, and that you shouldn't swim in it. After wandering around the rest of the town that was just a tourist trap with a bunch of souvenir shops, we were definitely wondering what was good about this town anyway, and why we had ever decided to stay there (It was because Christina hyped it up to us with promises of drugs and hookers and binge drinking, but we were all too tired for that stuff after the drive over, so it was a failed mission. We definitely saw plenty of hookers and were offered weed and coke a few times, but sadly didn't partake in any of these traditional Jaco activities.).

The icing on the cake with Jaco was that our car got its back window smashed in sometime between breakfast and when we left at noon in broad daylight in front of our hostel. Our car was empty, and there was no reason to smash the window, especially in the middle of the day, so it was just a dick move by some jackass in Jaco. We taped it up with grocery bags and it lasted like that the rest of the trip, but it definitely cemented our opinions on Jaco being a shit place that should not be visited. It was funny leaving the hostel, as our host was shocked that such a thing would happen in Jaco (even though I bet it happens all the time), and she was also shocked to find out that the ocean was contaminated there (even though there were signs everywhere saying that is was inadvisable to swim). She was like, but I surf there every day! I was not aware of this! This woman was so so funny, she said she had considered herself an expert on the area, but I think she had some more things to learn about the city of Jaco that we decided was the Tijuana of Costa Rica. As we drove away and got out on the main road, Dave screamed, "Cianora crap town!" out the window, and people turned and stared. But it was true, we were definitely happy to be out of that godforsaken place.

The Journey to Jaco: Insane Rental Car Adventures

After the coffee tour, we had a very adventurous trip to Jaco, a coastal beach town. We were driving down the road from the hostel in Monteverde to the main road, and we realized our GPS was not working. It would not connect to any satellites or open any maps, and that was indeed a problem. We drove back to the hostel to use their phone to call the car rental place and arranged to meet a guy from their company in a town called Orotina on the way to Jaco. The drive back to the hostel was literally less than 200 meters away, and on that short drive back we drove over a sharp rock and heard a loud noise. We didn't think much of it, but after getting back into the car to head out for the second time we realized that the back right tire was completely flat and that we were driving just on the rim. It had started raining crazy amounts by this time, which was also good timing. We went back to the hostel to ask where to go to get the tire changed with our spare, because the rental people had taken the toolkit from the car for some reason and we had no way to lift up the car by ourselves. The guy came out and inflated our tire enough to drive to the garage, which was really luckily right down the road from them. The guys there had the tire changed in about 5 minutes and it only cost 2,000 colones, which is about $3.50! We were pretty impressed by that and got back on the road and started down the pass to the coast.

About 15 kilometers down the road, a guy driving behind us flagged us down and told us our wheel that had been replaced was wobbling a lot and that it looked dangerous. Sure enough, the spare tire we had was defective, and we had to stop at another garage where they patched the original popped tire and put that back on for another 3,000 colones. So cheap! We made it to Orotina only 2.5 hours late and got a new GPS and a new spare tire from the guy that looked really bored of waiting for us, but hey, if they hadn't of given us a messed up GPS in the first place, this all would have never happened. We ate a quick lunch at Killer Munchie in Orotina, home of the Killer Sandwich and Killernacho, and made it to Jaco at 7pm or so. It was for sure an experience, but we made it and it was all good in the end.

Zip Lines and the Organic Coffee Farm

The next day we went on a zip line canopy tour that was way fun. There were 12 lines that we got to go across, but the last one was by far the best. It was a kilometer long, and you had to go with 2 people to have enough weight to make it across. They said you got up to 75km per hour on that line. They also had a Tarzan swing, it was funny watching that one because people freaked out pretty often. After the zip lining, we went around the trails on in the park and saw a few cotamundis. They are like Costa Rican raccoons, one of them was in the trees, maybe looking for ants to eat? Another few were running around the forest and we caught glimpses of them. They're really cool looking, I've never seen an animal like that before and felt pretty lucky to run into a few of them. We ate at a really good pizza restaurant that night, Pizza de Johnny, and then went to the Ranaria, the frog house, where we saw a bunch of really cool frogs and toads, including many poisonous frogs that were really colorful and neat looking, and also these huge frogs that sometimes ate birds. I thought that was pretty crazy, they were about the size of a softball and apparently their tongues are really strong and they can just kill prey that you would think would be much too big for any frog to eat.

The next morning we got up and went on a tour of a coffee farm down the road. It was a really cool place. They not only grew coffee, but they also had banana, plantain, sugar cane, tobacco, papaya, naranjita(?), and a bunch of other plants. It was a really self sufficient place, and it was all owned by one family. The guy that was showing us around told us a bunch of cool stuff about how the coffee growing process works, how sugar is refined, and how bananas are harvested. They showed us every step that has to be taken to make coffee, beginning with picking the beans, peeling them, drying them, and roasting them, it is for sure a really long process that is a lot of work, especially for the coffee pickers. We also got to go on a ride in an ox cart that was hand painted in the traditional Costa Rican way and make our own dulces out of the sugar that was grown at the farm. The sugar was refined by crushing the sugar cane in a press and then boiling down the juice until it turned into a molasses like liquid. We got to take some of the liquid and mix it up on a flat surface to aerate it, and then added peanuts and coconut and let it cool off, it was pretty good stuff. Just pure sugar and those other 2 ingredients, so it was just really sweet. We also got to try juice from the narjanjita fruit (its like a cross between an orange and a lemon and was really good), and coffee fresh from the beans they grew there. It was definitely a cool tour of a farm that produced a lot of different products, and a very educational experience!

Monte Verde: The Cloudforest

The next morning we took off to Monte Verde, a mountain town that is known for the 'cloud forest', a big rain forest that has... well, a fatty cloud layer! We got into the town after a much easier drive than the previous trip just as it started storming, which was good, because it's definitely nice not driving in the crazy rain. We got lunch at the soda next door (sodas are small restaurants, it's pretty much someone's house where they cook for whoever comes by), which was really good food, as always. We had a discussion about what sort of rating this place would get if it was a restaurant in LA, and we decided that there was no way it would pass any sort of health inspection and would for sure have been condemned by now. There was a dog wandering around the kitchen, bugs everywhere, and a three or four year old daughter of the owner was hanging around that we spotted sucking on the tops of the ketchup bottles before putting them back on the table. Nevertheless, good food and nice people that ran the place, and we didn't get sick or anything so no worries.

We then went to the Serpenteria, where we got to see a ton of cool snakes, lizards, frogs, and turtles, and we even got to hold one of the non-venomous snakes. He was really cool, they just climb all over you and it feels really weird. He wanted to go in my armpit because it's really warm there I guess, but I wasn't really down for that. There was also a crazy puppy that was hanging out around the place that would come up and bite you unexpectedly while you were holding the snake, so that was a bit chaotic. He was really cute though. We also saw poison dart tree frogs, these cool camouflaged green snakes, and this crazy constrictor snake that somehow got up to the water sprinkler spigot that would mist their terrariums, and it didn't know how to get down. It was stuck there for about 30 minutes before it finally just fell down.

Fortuna Waterfall and Canyoning Trip

The best part of Arenal was unquestionably the canyoning trip. We were supposed to go early in the morning, but the logistics got screwed up, so we went on the 1pm trip. We instead spent the morning at the Fortuna Waterfall, which was really good because it was sunny in the morning and a good time to swim and check out that area. It was a huge waterfall that you walk down all these steps to and then climb over some rocks to the basin where you can try to swim up to the falls. It's hard to get very far, the power of the water is really strong and you can't get within about 20 feet of them. We explored down the river and found a log you could jump off, and swam around there for a few hours. I had another great experience with my flip flops when I stood on a rock that was a bit slippery. I ate it and cut my arm up a bit, not a big deal but I decided the sandals were going to be used very sparingly the rest of the trip. This decision was cemented when we came back to the hostel and I tripped a bit and the strap blew out of the sole, so those shoes are done. RIP Toohey's flip flops. We had a good run, but all good things come to an end sadly. We hung around the hostel in the hammocks for an hour or so and then got picked up to go canyoning.

As soon as we left the hostel, it started thunderstorming, and the golf ball sized rain drops were coming down really hard. We thought they might cancel the trip, but this is pretty normal weather (it's usually really nice in the morning, and then storms insanely for a few hours in the afternoon before clearing up again), so we were set for the trip. We got our helmets and harnesses and set off into the rain forest, which was quite rainy at this point, and getting rainier. The first repel we did was down a small waterfall, it took me a bit to get used to how repelling works, but once I figured it out it was no problem. After you go down the sites where they clip you in, they unclip you and you hike down the stream to the next point. It was such an awesome trip, it was storming the whole time but that was no problem once you kept moving. You have to figure out where to step when climbing down rocks, and there was even a place where the guides showed us how you could jump from a rock into the stream below and completely disappear because there was a hole there. It was funny watching people jump into the hole and go underwater, it was like the earth had swallowed them up. There were two repels we did from really high up where you just jump off the platform and let yourself down as fast as you want to the bottom. We repelled down a couple other waterfalls too, everything was just so cool. I had never done a trip like that before, and the combination of the trail and the weather made it pretty epic. When we got back to the base, it was about 3 or 4 hours later and everyone was really hungry. They gave us an awesome meal, more comidas tipicas, but this one had some sort of vegetable-pork stew as well that was really good. There was a cool dog that lived at the base that everyone was playing with. It would bite your hands in a joking way, and everyone would laugh at it until it started going after your ankles and pants legs, and then people were less patient with it. It was funny to watch. They drove us back to the hostel and we chilled out and had some beers. The canyoning trip definitely gets two thumbs up.

Areanal Swimming and Volcano National Park

Arenal was a cool town, it is definitely a tourist area, but there was lots to do and the hostel we were at was a sweet place. They had a pool that we took advantage of, as well as hammocks and air conditioning in the room. The AC actually turned out to be more of a problem, as it was freezing all night the first day we were there, and the only way to change the temperature was to go to the front desk that was closed. The front desk guy hated us for some reason and had probably cranked the AC to torment us in one of his numerous acts of passive aggressiveness. We fixed it the next night though and everything was good. When we first arrived, it was crazy hot outside, so we went to this swimming hole that the front desk guy had recommended. It was this waterfall-pool area down the road that a bunch of local guys were hanging out at and swimming in the gorge. There was a rope swing that was really fun and after some effort, I made it to the other side of this small waterfall where there was an alcove you could hang out in. It was really a beautiful place, it reminded me of a few places in Australia like Mossman Gorge where you could just go and hang out and swim in water that was a good temperature in a really scenic area. Dave and Michael noticed that there was some shady stuff going on with the local guys and this girl that was hanging around, apparently she was giving hand jobs under the bridge. So apparently this swimming area comes with a local small time prostitute.

We came back to the hostel and I jogged around this park-trail area for a bit that was really pretty, and then we met up for dinner at a restaurante in town. More casados of course, it´s pretty much the only thing we ate the whole trip. We came back to the hostel and went swimming and cooled off before going to check out the Arenal Volcano. Unfortunately, it was too cloudy to see any lava that night, but we went back the next night and got to see it. It was pretty far away, but you could definitely make out the red lava flows that would occasionally come down the mountain. It was definitely cool, and I´m glad we got to see it on the clear night. Photos of that were pretty much impossible, but we found out that if you took a photo and zoomed to the highest setting, you could indeed see a tiny red dot of lava!

Volcan Poas and Extreme Landslide Area Driving

The next day, we got up early again and started the drive to Arenal. We wanted to stop on the way to visit Volcan Poas, which is a national park where there is a huge volcano crater. We drove up the mountain and on the way there, a dog ran out on the street and started attacking our car. It was ridiculous, this dog just had some vendetta against the Tarios and was legitimately going after our car. We checked the car after we got to the top of the mountain, and this dog had actually put teeth marks in our front fender and ripped it partially off the car. We popped it back in and remarked for the first of many times that it was a great idea that we had gotten the full coverage insurance. We hoped it included dog attacks. There are stray dogs everywhere, but it was pretty weird to see an angry one, and weirder still that it felt such hatred for our car.

The volcano crater was cool, the clouds came in just as we were hiking up to the lookout point, but we stuck around a bit and they cleared up for awhile and we saw a huge crater that had steam coming out of it. It was really massive, and definitely an impressive thing to see. We took a hike around one of the loop trails there and got to see another lagoon and a bunch of plants. Didn't see many animals other than bugs, but it was a cool walk.

The drive from Poas to Arenal was definitely one of the more crazy roads I have been on in my life, it turns out that route 126(?) was recently hit by an earthquake that caused massive landslides, and the road is not fully repaired yet. There were lots of construction work being done to get it fixed up, but the majority of it was washed out and full of mud. Three of us had to get out of the car on quite a few occasions to make it lighter so that we could drive through the mud without getting stuck. We came across another SUV that was bogged in the mud, and that was a bit disconcerting, but we got across all the mud holes and small streams that came along and thankfully made it all the way to Arenal without having to dig ourselves out of anything. It was definitely skillful driving by Christina that delivered us to the other side without being stranded on a remote mountain road where all the previous inhabitants had been evacuated. That would have been a bad situation, but I never doubted that stick shift off road master Christina would get us across the longest 15 kilometers ever safe and sound.

Pacuare River Rafting

On our first full day in Costa Rica, we went whitewater rafting on the Pacuare River. We got picked up around 6am and drove to a ranch where we had an awesome desayuna tipica with eggs, gallo pinto (rice and beans), potatoes, and of course, mass amounts of salsa lizano. Good stuff. We then went to the river and took off with our guide Walter and two safety kayakers paddling down the river with us. It is a really beautiful place, you are going through the rain forest and we got to see a lot of birds, including some toucans. The rapids were a lot of fun, and we got to jump out and go swimming a few times which was really cool. Everything was about the same temperature (the river, the air, your body temperature), so it felt good and even though it started storming pretty hard at the end, nothing was ever that cold. At one point, it was raining on us really hard, and then it stopped abruptly, but if you looked 100 meters down the river, it was coming down insanely hard at that spot! It was really strange, like something out of Lost or a cartoon where it only rains on one guy but nowhere else. It was a great trip, they gave us lunch at the end and took us back to San Jose.

We explored more of San Jose and walked down Avenida Central. There were lots of shops and people selling bootleg DVDs or produce on the street, it was a cool area. A lot of the buildings are stone and look haunted at times, and there are a lot of parks around. San Jose is a pretty busy city, dirty and congested at times, there is definitely a lot going on there. It was Dave's birthday also, so we got back to the hostel in time for happy hour cucaracha shots and other drinks at the bar. The shots were tequila with coffee liqueur that you light on fire and then drink with a straw. I'm not the biggest fan of tequila, but these shots were pretty good. It was a fun night, and a good way to end the day of extreme rafting.

Post Graduation Trip to Costa Rica

A few days after graduating from college, I took off to Costa Rica for 10 days with 3 friends to celebrate the end of school and have a generally awesome time. We had a red eye flight out of LAX and got into San Jose the next day about 2pm. We got our rental car, a Daihatsu Terios, which turned out to be a pretty sweet small SUV that saved us in many off road/unpaved road situations. After checking into our hostel downtown, we walked around for awhile and saw cool graffiti and went on an adventure trying to park the car around the corner. San Jose has some crazy road system that makes absolutely no sense. Most of the streets are one way and people are jaywalking everywhere and it´s just general chaos. It took us about 30 minutes to figure out how to get back around to the right street where the hostel parking lot was. Our car is stick shift, so it was interesting driving around this hilly area with everyone driving crazily around you on streets that do not have signs. We made it back alive to the hostel though, and had dinner there at their restaurante. We all had 'casados', which are plates that include rice, beans, salad, plantains, and the meat of your choice (fish-steak-chicken-pork). They serve these everywhere, and are one of the 'comidas tipicas' in Costa Rica. It costs around 3,000 colones, which adds up to about $5 for an awesome meal, it´s a sweet deal.

On the way to dinner, I decided to check out the water temperature of the pool, and had a graceful moment when I slipped on the first step and fell in almost the whole way. It was pretty awesome, but thankfully no cell phones or other things that would be damaged by water are with me on this trip, so it was more just straight up shameful, and the first moment where I realized my worn down Aussie flip flops would probably not work out very well on this trip. The water was warm by the way... We had 2 rooms at this place, Mike and Christina´s somehow ended up having a bathroom and two functioning lights, but they were way jealous because the one Dave and I were in had a blown out lamp and there was sand in the bedsheets. It was kindof a mystery to me as to how the sand got in the sheets, as San Jose is nowhere near the beach, and I would hope that the place would change the sheets every so often, maybe after people checked out or something like that, but we just decided it was some sort of free spa treatment for skin exfoliation that had gotten thrown in as an added bonus. It was a really cool hostel though, the pool was nice and they had a cheap bar that made great mojitos and there was even a woman that would juggle bowling pins that were on fire in the courtyard.

InvisaGrillz

OK so this is a post (the one and only!) from the other page, and I didn't know what to do with it when I get rid of that site so it's here now.

I went down to LA the other week to find housing and hang out with USC friends, and I really noticed that there are many cultural differences between Australia (where I have been living the past year) and South Central. One difference is that nobody in Australia I saw the whole time had a grill, while there are quite a few around the USC neighborhood that invest in this particular accessory. If you are not familiar with the concept, a grill is a mouthpiece that covers one's teeth that is made of some precious metal with diamonds or other such bling, according to how expensive it is.

I think that the grill should be combined with the modern orthodontic technology of Invisalign to create affordable teeth straightening options for the health conscious gangsta. Invisalign should hopefully decrease in cost over the coming years (I mean come on, its just a plastic mouthpiece), and the combination of the straigtening device with a sweet grill is a match made in heaven. People would totally wear it to boost their street cred, while getting straighter teeth that are easier to take care of and just better looking. And when the wearer gets older and decides that their kids don't need to grow up with a dad with a mouth full of platinum, they will have a great set of teeth.

While looking for images online, I also found this website:
http://www.toothtattoo.com/
After you get your InvisaGrill off, you can tattoo your teeth for further body art excitement. This could also be useful if you have fluoride stains or yellow teeth or anything that would make your teeth look weird, just tattoo over them and its all good!

Merging Blogs

Hey all,

So I had another blog for a minute, but really didn't really go anywhere with it. I have some more things to post now, and I have decided that everything will be on this site. This is mostly because of the address. I pretty much have everything I do with an address on the internet under 'ampoda' now (email, facebook, this blog, and twitter as of today... what is my life coming to?). It's just easier.

So now, this blog is branching out and will be about life in general and not just Austraila. Posts will probably be random thoughts I have, interesting things going on in my life, music I think is cool and want to share with the world, and funny or stupid things I find on the web. I hope you enjoy it!

First recommendation: I really have been enjoying the Idealism album by Digitalism, it's a few years old but I just stumbled across it. I've had the songs "The Pulse", "I Want I Want", and "Apollo-Gize" on constant rotation, they sound pretty different, but the composition of all of them is just elaborately beautiful. I recently took a MIDI sound class and learned the basics of Logic (sound editing/composition application), and it has definitely given me a newfound appreciation for electronic music. These songs use a lot of the tools I have learned about in the app, and I'm hoping to create something similarly awesome in the future.

Here's the links to the songs on youtube, not the best quality but what can you do:

The Pulse - lots of arpegiators

I Want I Want - more of a verse/chorus/verse song feel, driving rhythm

Apollo-Gize - beautiful chilled out song that's put together really well