Food Find: I made some wicked chicken salad today. And we're talking the kind you put in a sandwich, not a salad that happens to have chicken on it. Someday when I open my restaurant/bakery/universal trend-setting-hub, I'll serve seven different chicken salads, one a day. Or maybe eight, that way people who only eat there on Mondays can try each flavor.
Weather: People keep saying it's about to get oppressively cold here. Well, I'm already spending all the time indoors, might just continue on with that.
Got home last night, and I've already run out of things today. Today I spent a lot of time with two websites--kiva.org and couchsurfing.com, both of which are really brilliant examples of the power of the internet, it breaking down physical barriers, getting people in contact with others, yadda yadda. Kiva is one of the coolest things I've seen; basically it has postings by entrepreneurs in third-world countries who need loans, then users on the site can give them 'micro-loans,' (starting at $25), which are interest free and are paid back usually within the year. In return, we, the lenders, get some assuaging of our hippie, liberal guilt, and periodic updates on how their businesses are doing with our money and so forth. I spent a while looking at the various people asking for money (which is hard, since the money is flowing in and, as a result, the people turn over all the time), and ended up giving to Dilorom Nurmatova, a bazaar owner in Tajikistan who needed a loan to buy more sweets (!!), and this baller Stephen Asare, a grocery store owner in Ghana trying to expand is inventory. To read more about Kiva, there was a pretty amusing editorial in Time a month or so ago by Joel Stein.
Also, I signed up for and starting perusing Couch Surfing. The basic premise is you volunteer your couch for wandering travelers, and at the same time are given access to a huge global network of people doing the same. Right now I'm trying to find somewhere to stay in Auckland, since I gave myself an intentional layover there of about three days. It's a pretty overwhelming process; there are hundreds of people in the city offering places to stay, ranging from 20 to 60+. Essentially, I'm trying to find someone who I think I would get along with and would be cool to be around for a few days from what is essentially a Facebook profile. I'm going to start corresponding with a few people in the upcoming days, and hopefully something will connect. And then superhopefully when I get back to LA, some cool, exotic travelers will come crash on my couch.
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