- Going back home.

- New passport.

- Egypt, Liberia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Cameroon, Sudan, Libya, Ethiopia, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India,  Nepal, China, UK, Ireland,  Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Brazil.

- Kids/Piglets program sends 50 kids to school.

- Green Card.

- Pilot License + multi engines rating + instrument flight certification.

I just had a very nice dinner with Jimanda in a Ethiopian restaurant that set me back 30 bucks (if you know me, I hate meals costing more than 20; yeah I'm frugal, so shoot me; and really, if you can't make a good meal under 20, doubling or tripling the price won't help much); I told Jim that the older I get the more "offensive" I become. My joke has gotten darker, I have become more skeptic of views that lacks action, or more critical on leader that are afraid to tackle unpopular but fundamental issues.

On the other hand, I found myself to be more idealist than ever; not in a sense that everything has to be perfect, but more in the line of everything has to improve and use the benefit of time to solve intractable issues of our generation.

Here's case in point: I like the mission of the UN, but I don't respect Kofi.

I surprised even Alf one time earlier this year when I told him "fcuk Kofi" when we were talking about some world issue.

No, I have no doubt he is a charming, nice and a real gentleman. But he is lousy as a UN chief.

Under his command, the UN has gone even more ineffective than ever. Let me argue my point of view.

He is good on bad issues that would have received a lot of support anyway; case in point the Tsunami help; other issue includes Global health and poverty reduction.

Who is against ending poverty? Nobody; it's a hard problem with a lot of support.

On the other hands, he is bad on issues that requires some tough decision, ones that requires confrontation.

1. He let the Oil for Food program to be infested by major major corruption scandal.

2. He failed to be effective in Israel-Palestine issue. Can you believe it that the person that is probably the one achieving peace for this long conflict is the Butcher of Lebanon, Ariel Sharon; the grand architect of Great Israel and the Likud Party.

3. Rwanda and Somalia were burned and failed under his watch.

4. He failed to effectively garner support for ending Genocide of Darfur.

5. He failed to effectively intervene in Bosnia and Kosovo issue.

6. He did shit to end the civil war in Indonesia, Aceh. The Tsunami ended that civil war.

7. He did shit when Saddam kick the UN inspector out of Iraq in 98.

8. He fucked up the monitoring of North Korea nuclear program.

9. Poverty reduction and humanitarian effort by UN are fucking huge industry that grossly underachieve its goal.

10. Many IMF recipes are fucking disasters in a lot of countries.

and I can list some more.

If you examine these problems, none of them are the easy "save the whale" type of variety. These are tough issues that need real leadership; he is a diplomat that prefer harmony amongst diplomats instead of real world results that sometime require smacking someone on the head for being a fool.

Leading on issues that everyone agree on doesn't require much; there's an automatic template for them. Advocating unpopular issues and dragging people to actually answer real problems are the role of the UN chief; on this count, he failed utterly and miserably.

I can smell the burning woods, with flames dancing on their rugged shells, crackling noisily piercing the silent of early morning Christmas day. The ground is wet and the melting snow is soiled by the clay ground.  70% chance of snowing the night before lose to the 30% of nothing happened. Nothing happened, happened.

There is no white Christmas today.

I am in the town of Elizabeth, a wonderful name for a forgettable patch of land. This cabin is small but takes care of me and other nine guest quite comfortably. Our closest neighbours are people under the ground, thirty or so local graves four hundred feet to the West just over the hill. You can't really peer to their grey tombstones because a small empty barn blocks your view from their congregation.

It's 6 am right now and everybody is still asleep. The sun is yet to rise from his bed so I share this living room with twilight outside. The taste of last night feast still lingers in my mouth; if I lick my lips, I will taste the dry Chillean red one I had last. Those young memories are still vivid in my mind, the laughter, the incessant flow of Mexican and Argentinian Spanish, the blank stare from half of us, taking delights in our successful attempt in recognizing one or two words from the flood of sentences, the stupid songs we shared and our pathetic attempt to translate it. These people were my family last night; ones of really good friends, new friends and people I barely know.

To our dismay, the weather was perfect. It was warm and sunny and this good fortune ruins our ski plan. There is no snow on the tracks today; the powderful ski hill is now turned into  a slippery muck of dirty slush of ice. I did however manage to utilize the outdoor hot tub, complete with a LED thermostat, and garnered enough interest from the rest to join me. At the first sun down yesterday, we overflowed the water by having 7 people in the water. Mission accomplished; although the two sisters from Buenos Aries resisted the temptation and stayed put. My brain went as it tried to reconcile 100 degree on my surrounding body and 40 degree cold on my cranium.

There was not big enough table to hold ten of us, so we combine two tables and frankesteined seat arrangment from assorted jumble of chairs we can find. I sat the head of the table, sober. All meal served were home cooked with the steaked grilled in situ.  we had mashed potato, medium steaked, marinated drumsticks and sweet salad as a prima. Appetizer was not available but our dessert was overwhelming. I couldn't finish half of the mud cake even with the desperate help of unsugared bitter coffee.

I did get a Christmas present this time, a Cabernet Sauvignot from Australia. This bottle would not last five minutes unopened.

Right now is so quiet I am afraid my thoughts will wake up the others on the second floor. I had to climb down a ladder to be where I am right now, sitting next to a real fireplace complete with a full stock of dried wooks.

Chances are, this is my last Christmas in this land. I will be back to the cycle of warm Christmases, a tradition I left out after moving to Italy just before the end of last century.

This party costs 400 dollars (a.k.a bazillion of rupees) , in Chandigarh, India :)

I told one of our trainee to throw a Christmas party for everyone in his trainee house, costs be damned and charge it to the company. So he came up with a pretty lavish budget with imported cheese, champagne, wine, Christmast tree, etc.

Damn, I never spend that much throwing a house party in the US :)

But this email makes it all worth it

"It didn't feel like a proper Christmas until the party and we all appreciated having real imported cheese and champagne which no one has had in months. We have a tree to put presents under and a decorated house so it looks like we'll have a real Christmas in Chandigarh."

It's a money well spent.

Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year folks.

Imagine traversing the coasts of Africa on a small plane; we will go eastward, the Medditeranian on our left view and the rocky plain of Libyian coast on our right. The night is warm and the sky is quiet. We fly on 3,000 ft so we can still see the contour of the dry golden earth below. We will land on the tiny landing strips left behind from the North Africa campaign for refuelling and rest. Our Arabic and French would be enough to survive the continent. Money is not a problem and time is plentiful.

There is a patch of land and house that I own near the harbour Korcula, next to a quaint 16th century broken Church, on a narrow cliff overlooking the Adriatic where we can see the dim lights of Italian coast on a clear night. The winter is frosty but the peaches are exceptional. The old harbour bridge sways back and forth on a mild Summer wind and make funny sounds.

Work occupies 200 days a year, the rest are times for discovery, of places, people, art, music, smell, tastes, sounds, wild life, forests...

"Downer does not claim exclusive ownership of the JCLEC concept. It was a response to the first Bali bombing in 2002. It came out of various brainstorming sessions in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the AFP, and was discussed with the Indonesians at the first Bali ministerial meeting on counter-terrorism in 2003.

The Indonesians responded enthusiastically and Canberra committed $37 million to the project over five years. It began operations in April this year and already 600 law enforcement professionals, half from Indonesia and the rest from other Southeast Asian nations and Australia, have undertaken one of its courses. It is fast becoming a central tool in the regional fight against terror. "

Caveat Emptor: wounds from beautiful roses bleed more.

Our first interview session is scheduled to be held in Cairo next week. If you are selected for interview, you will be notified on Sunday about more details. Thank you, we are grateful to receive such a response from Egypt developers (we have received 450 high quality resumes so far)

My Dad is 60 this year. He's getting into the jungle again today to harvest the family shrimp farm for a week. It's hot and humid out there and there are plenty of mosquitos at night. There is no running water and you must crap outdoors. The food is barely OK thanks to those fresh shrimps and there is nothing but the sounds of wildlife. The work is long and dirty. 

That makes me feel like a wimp sitting here being 27 and comfortably sipping lattes in downtown Chicago; a city slicker with soft palms that just have to deal with computers and people all day.

He sold his shipping company five years ago and started  a shrimp farm  from scratch at the age of 55 because none of his children are interested in continuing running a small shipping operation (14 ships; 120 employees); I feel guilty sometimes for not going back home and continue the company that he has build since he was 16 (starting as a deckhand) while at the same time being a replacement father for all his younger siblings after my Grandad died. And I give him a lot of credit for not pushing me or my sisters to follow his line of work like a traditional Chinese family usually does. Each of us gets to chart our own direction.

It's funny how different our lives are and there's a feeling I can't never catch up to be half the man he is.