Vacation

I'm on vacation in Oceanside, California. Yesterday I spent the day in Mexico; it was my first time. I drove down the Baha coast just south of Rosarito to a small town called Puorto Nuevo. It's well-known for its lobster. Although lobster season only runs from October to March, lobster is available year-round through a miracle of modern freezing technologies.

Today, Puerto Nuevo is quite tourist-oriented, but I got the impression it hasn't been like this for long. The bartender at the LA Union station bar told me that in the 90's he would drive down with buddies and they'd gorge on tequila and cheap lobster. Today, the cost in dollars isn't much cheaper than anywhere else. Still good, though! And it was very nice to see something a little out of the way. Beautiful view of the ocean, too.

The last few days I've been unwinding, exploring Oceanside, reading. I finally finished "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson. It was absolutely a trip. I wish I had known of this book about a decade and a half ago, when I was first introduced to the ideas of Nanotechnology through the old kurzweilai.net website.

Published in 1995, The Diamond Age presents a future in which Nanotechnology has been achieved by way of a "feed" system, and society has been restructured in a post-scarcity world. The story involves a very special book falling into the hands of a young street urchin and the subsequent decade in which a looming conspiracy is navigated. Without getting into the specifics, I'll instead just say that I'd consider this a must-read for any fan of cyberpunk or futurism, although in some aspects the writing (or perhaps editing?) seemed a little less consistent than what I'm used to from Neal Stephenson.

Tomorrow my sister and I will go to the rose bowl in Pasadena to check out the giant flea market. I wish I could be more excited about it; currently my thoughts are terribly occupied with the knowledge that a close friend has gone missing in Montreal. I'm checking Facebook much too often for updates. I can only hope for the best, which definitely doesn't seem like enough.