Man-O-War Cay, 12 Apr 2009
So I retired (some would say for the 2nd time) from IBM in October, 2007.
I had hired in with them right out of college in 1977. I got to work on
some interesting stuff over the years - mainframes when they were hot, TCP/IP,
webservers, voice, life sciences. I was in IBM Research for several
years (just developing code) and had an office in the
801 Building
in Yorktown Heights and that was a blast. I had a really good manager
(Anne) for the final 7 years at IBM and really appreciate that. I took 3 years off in the mid-90's to go sailing on Breakaway. During that time I visited Mexico, Belize and Guatemala. I had heard Guatemala's Rio Dulce referred to as "The Gringo Eater" years before I went. It seemed that gringos would go up the river and [cue spooky music] never return [end spooky music]. That's because they liked it so much and simply didn't want to leave. Well, that's what happened to me. I went there planning to stay 3 months (the length of your initial "boat visa"). But when it came time to leave, I decided it suited me fine and I ended up staying a year. I wish I had never left. But the money was running out and I had to go back and work for a little while longer. My year there was the best time of my life. Here is an article that tends to capture the feeling of the Rio Dulce. And here is a website with current events. When I was there in '94-'95 there was almost no boat-crime. I live aboard Breakaway which is currently in the Bahamas. Mike Niemi ![]() |