If you are visiting Puerto Rico, Old San Juan is something you must see. In 1493 Colombus arrived here on his second voyage. The colors of this old city are something you will never forget. Walking on these colorful and narrow streets is really relaxing and you can easily find good local food (try El Jibarito). Also, don’t forget to visit San Cristóbal castle and El Morro.

This December, right before Christmas, we spent 6 days in Puerto Rico, the Caribbean island famous for rum. Bacardi is probably known all over the world. As we had really great time, we wanted to share a few tips for those that are willing to spend some time on the island.  Our resort, Rio Mar, is located in the north east of the main island really close to Loquillo, fairly close to Fajardo and about 40 minutes away from the San Juan international airport. The resort offers several amenities such as a nice beach, swimming pools, hot tabs, golf course, tennis fields, restaurants and a casino.  If your idea of vacation fits with what the resort offers, with a $80 dollars cab right you can get there. Just keep in mind that in the resort you are going to find the same food you are probably able to eat in US and, in general, at the same price of a US restaurant. Eventually, the resort offers a wide range of day trips with a price that varies in between $50 and $200 – not cheap.

Car Rental

We decided to rent a car to reach, with a reasonable budget, the desired degree of freedom – we had several day trips in mind. If you are used to US driving, Puerto Rico will seem a bit crazy at first – direction lights are not part of the culture, not even during Christmas holiday. And some of the secondary streets are really narrow and bumpy. In any case I would suggest purchasing the insurance with the rental company – forget those proposed through Orbitz, Expedia and similar, in case of damage they include a deductible amount and usually require an additional amount of work for processing the claim. In our case our brand new car was scratched in the parking lot – of the resort - and the insurance purchased through Alamo, about $90 made us save 500 bucks - the deductible amount of the insurance proposed by Orbitz when reserving the car.

Loquillo/Fajardo area (north east)

The Loquillo/Fajardo area is a really interesting location, not that far from San Juan and really close to the rain forest (El Yunque) and the beautiful islands of Culebra and Vieques. From the airport, it can be reached easily by route 3. Actually, route 66 is a nice $1.50 shortcut, usually not jammed as route 3 and with a higher speed limit. Because of the close vicinity to the rain forest, there is constant moisture in the air – be ready for damp clothes and books - and a higher chance of clouds and showers.  In these days, the temperature ranged between 70F and 84F.

Dining in the area

If you are going to stay in the Rio Mar area there are many good dining options. I will list the ones you should not miss:

• Isamar Bakery - It offers breakfast and amazing pastries for a really good price. I am not going to lie, we were buying 10 pastries at a time. It is located at the intersection of route 3 and Rio Mar Boulevard.
• Lolita’s - Excellent Mexican food at a really good price. Try the wet super burrito, just amazing. It is located on route 3 going towards Fajardo after the Loquillo exit on the right
• La Parilla - Really good fresh seafood and local dishes. You can also buy their nice t-shirt for $12.50. On route 3 between the Rio Mar Boulevard intersection and Loquillo, going towards Loquillo on the left, it has a big sign, you cannot miss it.

The White Mountains (New Hampshire) are an awesome place to admire the colors of Fall in New Hampshire. Around the 12th of October, my birthday, reaching the top of a peak is priceless. If you jump to my album of pictures watch the pictures full size (right icon on the middle-top of each picture) the resizing messes up the colors. And now it is time to get ready for another cold Winter…

Tway defines trust as, “the state of readiness for unguarded interaction with someone or something.” He developed a model of trust that includes three components. He calls trust a construct because it is “constructed” of these three components: “the capacity for trusting, the perception of competence, and the perception of intentions.”

Thinking about trust as made up of the interaction and existence of these three components makes “trust” easier to understand. The capacity for trusting means that your total life experiences have developed your current capacity and willingness to risk trusting others.

The perception of competence is made up of your perception of your ability and the ability of others with whom you work to perform competently at whatever is needed in your current situation. The perception of intentions, as defined by Tway, is your perception that the actions, words, direction, mission, or decisions are motivated by mutually-serving rather than self-serving motives. (source: Trust Rules: The Most Important Secret About Trust, by Susan M. Heathfield, About.com)

And this was interesting, but one crucial point is missing: the truth: I do not know everything and may lean on your expertise. If you always tell me the truth then I know that I can rely on what you say and not have to do any further checking up.

Truth and reliability (If you always do what you say you are going to do, it makes your behavior very predictable, which means I can feel even safer around you) can be related to the whole notion of ‘integrity’.

Milan is city of fashion… (people collected from the background of my pictures)

Great city to visit, great city to live in. Always amazing to admire the famous “The Kiss” by Gustav Klimt.

Prague is always an amazing place to visit. We really enjoyed walking around, it does not take a long time to walk from the old town plaza up to the castle or to Wenceslas Square. We appreciated the outstanding conditions of this romantic city.

When I was 18 I had the chance of spending some time at the school for officers of the  Italian navy. The “tall ships” event brought some memories back.

Again, I am not an economist, but these days, due to the scary economical situation I am even more curious to understand what is happening. Here is an interesting 1 hour podcast explaining in a really simple way what it is happening to the banking system. One interesting detail is represented by the difference between the equity seen in financial statements end the stock valuation of the business. According to wikipedia: In the stock market, market price per share does not correspond to the equity per share calculated in the accounting statements. Stock valuations, often much higher, are based on other considerations related to the business’ operating cashflow, profits and future prospects; some factors are derived from the accounting statements. Right “stock valuations are often much higher”. Now search for the letter “c” in google. The first result is related to the Citigroup Inc. You can easily find on the top of the page that the Market Capital (Mkt Cap) is 5.64 billions. And almost at the bottom of the page, in the balance sheet, that the total equity for 2008 is 115 billions.

A similar example comes from the Commerzbank website:

This shows clearly a counter trend in 2008.The question is: what is the effect of this big gap?

It is always nice to spend some time at the Boston MFA (Museum of Fine Arts).

This morning I was having breakfast while watching this interesting documentary about wild life in the Chernobyl area. I still remember those days of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. The fear for clouds that could spread radioactivity across Europe. I remember, years later, the news about malformed children and animals and so on. The documentary has been played by Discovery HD Theater channel:

Chernobyl: Life In The Dead Zone: The site of the world’s worst nuclear accident was hastily abandoned by panic-stricken humans over 20 years ago. Only a number of house pets and indigenous wild animals remained. To the surprise of scientists, they not have not only survived, but thrived.

In the documentary they where showing how nature was getting back that area that cannot be populated by humans anymore. Surprisingly, it seems that the suspected genetic mutations have been really rare and many species are not only surviving but increasing in numbers. It seems that the complete food chain has been reestablished. Dears, wolfs, bears and all sort of wild animals of all dimensions are proliferating and taking control of the area, visiting the ruins of houses, schools and so on. I found interesting the story of a cat that was still living by the ruins of a house (where probably its ancestors where living). The cat is now acting as a wild animal, hunting for feeding the kittens. Fighting and strategizing for protecting the kittens from the wolfes. In summary, it seems that mother nature can reestablish life where humans have been able to take life away.

Talking about this with a friend he pointed me to this website by Elena Filatova. The website collects pictures of the Chernobyl area taken in the last years. Elena wrote: If I had to express what I do in Chernobyl in a few words, I’d say, from year to year I only observe how world of materials objects dissolve into nothingness.