Are you going to a South American destination that requires travel by local or regional boats? Then you’d better think twice or prepare really well. Along Colombia’s Pacific coast, as an example, for an ocean voyage of from several hours up to more than two days, you may well be obligated to take a boat on which there are not only no creature comforts but also NO:

• Life vests or life preservers

• Life boats

• Toilets

• Chairs or seats

• Potable water

• interior lighting at night

• meals or food

There is likely to be poor ventilation and frequently passengers get seasick with no recourse or sanitation facilities of any kind. There might not be any reliable protection from elements like the broiling sun, cold, wind-swept rain or splashing waves, either. You could also be subjected to noxious fumes from cargo such as combustibles, solvents and other chemicals. We won’t even go into animal “products” from livestock being transported. Yipes!

The cargo boat on which you’ll sail will likely have no night running lights, be poorly maintained, and have an uneducated, untrained crew who must work literally around the clock. The job of two or more crew members is to stand in nearly calf-deep water in the cargo hold of the vessel and manually bail water leaking in from the multitudinous cracks and loose seams in the wooden hull. As usual, the vessel will be dangerously overloaded. During vacation and holiday seasons, it’ll be overloaded with cargo and overcrowded.

For example, one ship, licensed to carry eight to ten passengers routinely crams more than 100 passengers aboard under conditions resembling those depicted during the transport of slaves during the slave trade. Many other passenger-carrying vessels aren’t licensed for passengers at all. Registering sea-going vessels as “cargo boats only” relieves boat owners of any responsibility for providing even the barest of humane conditions. Boats sail past armada inspection craft - without being inspected. Captains and crew just “hide” passengers inside and out of sight until they’re well away from the port (and the armada). Travelers are simply viewed as an “extra money” commodity with no consideration whatsoever as to comfort. Forget the idea of “pleasure” entirely. You can pretty much also forget English-speaking officials, captains or crew members.

So why, you might ask, do travelers continue to put up with such archaic, unsanitary and perilous-at-best conditions that would be considered inhumane by any standards in the world? Simple. It’s because there are no alternatives. Cargo boat owners and captains are given “Carte Blanche” to revel in greed treating paying customers like cattle - or worse.

Yes, there are government regulations that mandate PFDs, life boats, sanitary facilities, having a potable water supply, ship to shore UHF / VHF radios and a satellite transceiver. Other essential equipment for ocean-going vessels including boats that ply the coastal waters from Panama to Peru include such items as night running lights after sunset, which can be as early as 4:30 pm, a compass, GPS locator and regular maintenance certificates in addition to crew and trip logs.

In the 1300 kilometers from Colombia’s southern region coastal city of Tumaco to Jurado, the northernmost port along Colombia’s Pacific coast, the sinking of fishing, cargo and passenger vessels with the resulting loss of life are all too common. During the past several months, a wave of sea-going vessel disappearances has stunned and dismayed populations of coastal communities in Colombia. We all grieve for these senseless deaths resulting from ignorance, apathy and avarice.

So if you’re going to a South American destination along the Pacific coast that requires travel by local or regional boat, you’d better think twice or prepare really well. Steps you can take to help ensure your personal safety will be discussed in the following article of this series entitled: “How to Ensure a Safe, Comfortable Sea Voyage When Traveling in Latin America”.

Larry M. Lynch is a writer and photographer specializing in business, travel, food and education-related writing in South America. His work has appeared in Transitions Abroad, South American Explorer, Escape From America, Mexico News and Brazil magazines in print and online. He travels researching articles throughout Latin America and teaches at a university in Cali, Colombia. To read more, express a comment or get original, exclusive articles and content for your newsletter, blog or website, contact the author at: lynchlarrym@gmail.com

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Copyright 2006 - All Rights Reserved
Michael Bustamante, in association with Media Positive Communications, Inc. for SchoolsGalore.com

M. Bustamante is a staff writer for Media Positive Communications, Inc. in association with SchoolsGalore.com. Find Visual Communication Online at SchoolsGalore.com; meeting your needs as your educational resource to locate schools

So often we hear people ask the question, “Why does he/she/they treat me/us so badly?”. The honest answer, in most cases, is “Because you let him, her or they!”

If that seems too simple an answer, think of it this way. You make a date for lunch with someone new. They arrive twenty minutes late, citing traffic, office hold ups, the weather, their car or their kids. Of course, things do happen to detain even the best intentioned person. You accept the apology and have a lovely lunch. The next time you have lunch with this person, they are thirty minutes late. Aha, there may be a pattern developing. What do you do?

Unless you do not mind this behavior, you then have the opportunity to teach that person how to treat you. Good communication skills come into play. You can say something like, “One of the things I’ve found works for me is to be honest with people. I really enjoy your company and would like to continue meeting for lunch. I know things come up at the last minute and sometimes traffic can be horrendous. I’d like us to agree that either of us can leave if the other is more than fifteen minutes late? Would that be all right with you?” This clearly communicates what you need and want without ascribing blame. It builds relationship when you make clear agreements with people. Would it be all right with you if an employee came to work consistenly one-half hour late? No, there is an agreement about the starting time, isn’t there? The same is true of our own time.

One of my favorite quotes comes from John Powell. In his book, The Secret of Staying in Love, he wrote that “the genius of good communication is to be totally kind and totally honest at the same time.” I repeat this quote often to remind myself how to approach teaching people how to treat me. If I do not tell the truth about what works for me, I cannot expect another person to honor and respect it. Learning to teach people how to treat us takes practice.

You may still have folks who have been in your life for a long time who take advantage of you, treat you poorly, or are angry, abusive or violent. A habit has been established and they may like it a lot! Consider telling them the truth about how their behavior affects you and what changes would make the relationship feel more respectful and caring for you. Be both honest and kind. Be prepared to have to repeat this information consistently over time. It is sometimes “inconvenient” for these folks to remember that you have now stated your preferences. They may not want to change. Holding these boundaries also requires attention on your part. Once you have asked for the change, you must insist on it or consider giving up the relationship. Both of these tasks take positive self-esteem and self-confidence.

Relationships worth having are mutually respectful and responsive. Think about how you might like to apply these thoughts in your daily life.

(C) Rhoberta Shaler, PhD All rights reserved worldwide.

About The Author

International speaker, facilitator, coach & author Rhoberta Shaler, PhD, is an expert motivator helping businesses prosper & people flourish. She gives her audiences and clients the insights & strategies to shift their results from acceptable to EXCEPTIONAL in life and business. Invite her to lift your people to higher levels of motivation, productivity & collaboration. Free ezines. Free online community. www.OptimizeLifeNow.com

I started my coffee roasting career as a home roaster. Getting
started was easier than I thought. And as I did so, it occured
to me how a relatively simple concept, roasting coffee beans,
has been made to appear to be an arcane art, with a variety of
roast types held out as arcane knowledge. How many different
names have you run across for different types of coffee roasts?
Light, Medium, Dark? Espresso? Continental? Vienna, French,
Italian, Spanish? City? Full-City? C’mon, who’s thinking up
these things?

Well, the dark secret (pardon the pun) of the coffee industry is
that, well, there really isn’t full agreement on which roast is
which. So basically, we all pretty much get to hunt around, try
different coffees from different sources and pick the one(s) we
like. In this article, I’ll try to use the standard
nomenclature, and map it to a process of observing the color and
texture anyone can judge for himself.

The roasting adventure begins with green coffee beans. These are
stored at room temperatures, at 12-15% moisture content.
Roasting is done at temperatures of up to 450+ degrees F.
Duration and temperature determine the roast.

A coffee bean will take on heat until the internal temperature
of the bean reaches approximately 212-240 deg F. At this point,
the outer layer of the bean(s) will discolor, turning a nice
cinnamon color. Here, steam will start being released from the
bean.

As the bean heats up further (approx 250-300 degrees F, again
depending on the variety), the external membrane of the bean
will dry up and start separating from the bean itself. At
approximately 350 degrees F, the continuing heating of the bean
forces a ‘first crack.’ This cracking occurs as moisture within
is released through the existing seam in the bean. This
essentially blows this small crack open, forcing the separation
of the remaining bean ‘chaff’.

Coffee at this stage is a light brown color; entering the ‘light
City Roast’ stage. City Roast is usually achieved at a slightly
higher temperature (above 370 deg F), where the sugars within
the bean start melting or ‘carmelizing’. This gives the
distinctive ‘coffee brown’ color. City Roasts are usually
stopped around 400 deg. or so. At this point, the sugars are not
fully carmelized, and flavor of the beans at this stage are very
much determined by their origin; not by the degree of roast. The
‘Full City Roast’ stage occurs at higher temperatures, just as
the bean reaches the ’second crack’ stage. This stage happens at
different temperatures for different beans based on variety. The
second crack comes as the temperatures of the bean reach the
point where the cellular composition of the bean starts breaking
down. To obtain the Full City roast, roasting is stopped just at
the point where this second crack starts (approx 425-435 deg F.)
At this point the bean is darker brown, but ‘dry’ looking, as
the oils of the bean have not started to emerge through the
molecular breakdown of the bean.

Going into the second crack, we reach the Vienna, Continental,
French and/or Italian roast stages. These are sometimes also
referred to as “Espresso Roast”, although strictly speaking,
there’s no such thing. Italian espresso blends actually vary -
northern blends are typically roasted to the ‘Vienna’ stage,
well into the second crack, where the sugars within the bean are
almost fully carmelized and many beans within the roast will
appear dark brown with hints of fissures. Espresso blends in
southern Italy are usually roasted into the “French Roast”
stage, where almost all of the beans will be about one shade
removed from black and oils will start emerging from some beans.
Beyond this point, beans will start releasing oils and their
soluble compounds - mainly as a lot of smoke; but the beans will
be left quite dark with a very oily sheen. Assuming they have
not fully burnt yet, this can be specified as “Italian Roast”.
I’ve observed different temperatures (within the roaster) for
all of these stages depending on the bean variety - so as my
roasts reach the second crack, I tend to trust my eyes and ears
more than I trust my probe thermometer.

One interesting note of coffee roasting is that as beans reach
into the second crack, they tend to lose any distinctive
varietal flavors. Is this a bad thing? Well, for some,
perhaps… I for one will mutter a bit if my Ethiopian
Yirgacheffe goes past Full City and I lose the distinctive
flavor notes; and in my early roasting career I almost cried as
a batch of prized Puerto Rican select went unheeded into the
Italian Roast realm before I managed to get back to it. But…
some varieties do better at the distinctive French Roast stage.
De gustibus non disputandum est - it just doesn’t pay to dispute
the results in the cup!

And that is coffee roasting. I have seen a fair amount of
advertising of ’slow-roasted’ or ‘deep-roasted’ coffee, which
always gets me to wondering. I suppose if you roast a huge
amount of beans in a low-temperature environment… why, yes,
that would in fact be a slow process! Certainly for a roaster to
get beans to a certain roast point and no further, it does pay
to be precise and not rapidly incinerate his product. But I
can’t say I’d want to purposely take any longer than necessary
to do so.

As for ‘deep’ roasting? Hmm. Can’t say as I’ve ever heard of
’shallow’ roasting; but whatever it is, ‘deep roast’ must be the
opposite! Seriously, the only ‘trick of the trade’ that I can
think of runs counter to the notion of holding beans at any
given temperature… and that is, once a batch reaches the
desired point, get it out of the roaster and cool it down FAST!
As described above, the quality of a roast depends on those
sugars and soluble materials within the bean getting ‘cooked’
very specifically. Keeping the beans near additional heat (yes,
even other beans nearby, releasing their own heat energy) will
continue to cook them.

To some extent this is unavoidable, so the experienced roaster
will compensate for this by knowing his roasting environment;
and ideally provide a cooling location where beans can cool as
rapidly as possible by the flow of cool (i.e., room temperature)
air over the freshly-roasted beans. This allows them to ‘coast’
into their final characteristic color and taste.

© Andy White, Roastmaster for Coudy Coffee. For more coffee and
espresso information and resources, visit
http://www.coudycoffee.com

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