Completed a 4 hour bus transfer to San Pedro la Laguna from Antigua on Sunday. Booked into our very basic, unexciting, accommodation, Casa San Pedro. Good decision not to drive – interesting ascents and descents thtough the mountains.
Monday started with a hike to the Indian Nose. Collected at hotel 4am; up top of Indian Nose c. 5.15am for sunrise. Worth every ounce of effort. Outstanding views.
Visited local Mayan museum later Monday. Great visit and insights. Worth it just for the video going back to 1941 in San Pedro.
Tuesday visited a coffee farm. Learned a lot. Coffee trees good for 45 years – pruned after 15 and 30. German influence. Families working on the plantation. Harvesting Nov. to March. Arabic coffee here ( and throughout Central America). 60% sun, 40% shade. Citrus flavour. 80% for export. Roast 15 mins medium, 20 mins strong. Medium has higher caffeine content.
Looking forward to painting class later.
Food has been good – eggs, fruit, coffee for breakfasts, lots of tacos etc for dinner.
Arrived in c. midnight on 8th and left c. 9.30am 11th.
Stayed here
Spent three nights in Antigua. Nice hotel, good food, good barber, good sports’ bar (saw Man City win final v. Milan), good book shop, great excitement for local 10k run last night. And excellent coffee everywhere.
Two short thunderstorms – par for the course this time of year. Temp varied between 17C and 27C.
Rafael Landivar SJ RIP
Back acted up so had to skip major hike – will do some hiking from Lake Atitlan.
Motorbikes everywhere
Obviously all relatively cheap visiting from European city. Feels like would be a good place to spend a week learning local Spanish at a future date.
Kerins O’Rahilly against Kilmacud Crokes – GAA Club All Ireland Football semifinal. A Kerry Dublin clash.
Nothing like having your parish involved in the closing stages of Club All Ireland – have to admit my Crokes connections. Amateur sport – all the players completely accessible in their clubs and parishes.
Great to have your Club playing here at HQ- Croke Park. Great surface for playing top level games mid winter. Though today is more like a spring day.
And The Glen v. Moycullen to follow.
First half exhibition of fielding from Kerry stalwart David Moran. But Crokes looking more threatening on the break. Two points in it at half tome – game in the balance.
Crokes finally got the goal that was eluding them. Thereafter they seemed to have something to spare. Right until the end when Kerins O’Reilly pulled them back to three points and threatened goal to no avail.
Competitive all the way
For Kilmacud Crokes a chance in two weeks’ time to go one better than 2022.
Will be interesting to see how Elon Musk and Tesla go forward – what changes, if any, getting strategy right. On the face of it looks tricky: slowing global economies, higher finance costs for consumers, significant additional capacity coming on line, competitors catching up, Tesla cars more expensive than previously.
Musk has attracted mixed coverage for his Twitter take over – at the same time as his car company is experiencing these challenges. How much does the Twitter acquisition impact sales of Tesla cars? Are current/ potential Tesla owners concerned that the founder may be distracted? Are Tesla shareholders concerned?
But Musk and Tesla have been and continue to be innovators – and competitors should not underestimate this commitment to getting the tech right, creating new experiences for drivers. Why would Tesla not continue to deliver new ideas, innovations, enhanced experiences?
In some ways reminds me of Ryanair and Michael O’Leary. O’Leary has been the people’s champion – low cost flights, enabling travels for the masses. He has not always been popular – and some of his PR stunts have not always been well received. But he has stayed focused, he seems to have used each recession as an opportunity to strengthen his business. He has created capacity heading into (or during) downturns – only to accelerate in the upswing. He has weathered economic downturns and COVID19.
Will be interesting to see how Tesla moves forward. Reminded me of Rumelt’s ‘Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The core of strategy work is always the same: discovering the critical factors in a situation and designing a way of coordinating and focusing actions to deal with those factors. A leader’s most important responsibility is identifying the biggest challenges to forward progress and devising a coherent approach to overcoming them.
Interesting to read this piece on BBC today: new tool to detect breast cancer.
Read the various inputs from different doctors – fully get it: not a replacement for the doctor and not a replacement for visiting the doctor. But when you read about the shortage of doctors, the pressures on hospitals, the numbers of late detected cancers – we have to look at tools which enable patients/ potential patients work in partnership with their doctors.
