CURRENT MISSION

You know, when it really comes down to it, I think I am all about keeing hydrated. People truly underestimate the importance of a regular glass of water.

ABOUT ME

I was born in Upstate, NY, raised in So. CA.
I am on the long road to practicing medicine and doing research.
I am a student of life, people and the interactions we find ourselves in.
I find myself frustrated staying still for more than a few years.
Good food is good, great food makes my month.
I read because I love to and I write because I need to.
It is amazing how little--and then again how much--can be done in one day.

PHILOSOPHY

This is something easier to have a conversation about or to be observed in a person.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

My friends and I have housed people from this site before and we have been hosted by a bunch of interesting and worthwhile hosts, but I never got around to making one of these accounts for myself. I am looking to conveniently and cheaply stay places while I have my adventures, and then of course pay it forward another day.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Per above, I have participated in a handful of hosts with surfers in past years with many good times.

A recent 2013 U.S. bus trip with my fellow surfers and dear friends Vinny and Drew down to New Orleans was exceptionally strange and entertaining for all hosts, surfers and public witnesses involved.

Interests

I am interested in good food, laughing until there is no more air and having conversations that make me think.

• causes
• dining
• cooking
• coffee
• medicine

Music, Movies, and Books

I am not about to make a list of a million titles. I enjoy Wes Anderson movies. I am a self-proclaimed student of scriptwriting and appreciate a well written project. I like many documentaries. Books are the same way, too many to list. I read mostly non-fiction.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

When we touched down in Tegucigalpa, the capitol of Honduras, the air was burnt. “It is the fire season,” said Roberto, one of the in-country staff that met us there. It turns out that forest fires, like those I had witnessed when I was in California, are ubiquitous throughout the countryside in the months surrounding March. In the rural areas they are subject only to the wind and sparse fire control systems. This smell simultaneously reminded me of home whilst breaking through a deep unfamiliarity and intensity. We packed ourselves in a van parked outside the airport and took off two hours to rural Honduras for a spring break that would alter our paradigm as college students. Each of the thirteen members of our group raised funds to give a three-generation family a place to shower, a stove to safely cook food on, concrete floors for their adobe houses and a wash station with sustainable water. Sustainable is the word we used there for all our deeds, and we meant it. There were no expensive toys bought for the children, the local masons that orchestrated the work used not a single power tool and we followed suit. Our work took place in two houses in the confines of the mountain in El Jute—the name of the village, which became a home to our group as well for this week. The people are recognizably proud of their lives there, no matter how simple, not matter how sparse. We received freshly grown and harvested coffee and sweet bread from the families as a ritual multiple times a day. There we gathered near half-finished projects and sipped from their best mugs, a generosity that is a rarity in the states. The sun beat down on all our backs alike as we mixed concrete with shovels and exchanged tactical and personal information across a partly porous language barrier.

Our group, composed of University at Buffalo undergraduate students under Global Brigade’s Public Health sector, started from meeting each other for the first time a few months before and finished as a cohesive team dead set on accomplishing what needed to be done for the people there, what should have been done over a hundred years ago. At night we would all sit and reflect with each other after a day of work. There we would come to understand our significance to this village and the people of rural Honduras more and more, realizing that our goodbyes after this week would mark the life transformation of three generations of family. Santiago, Dona Blanca, Javier, Kenia, Mario, Melisa are names that once meant nothing but are now burned in all of our minds, are now apportioned in a place in our hearts. With that, we are now different people with new perspective and knowledge of this world we so often improperly define.

Teach, Learn, Share

People think that stress causes stomach ulcers. It is found that stress does not cause, but simply exacerbates an ulcer's symptoms. The cause can be many things.

A good friend informed me that the word "often" is pronounced "of-en", with a silent "t", not "off-ten"as many pronounce it today.

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