- Saturday, July 14, 2001 -

I've been in Bora Bora for the past two weeks with Luke Wojewoda, my graphic designer friend. We were recruited to redesign and implement TOPdive's web site by a friend whom I had met earlier this year in Palau. TOPdive.com will be live in a week or two (the old site is still up as of today), after the remainder of the content is "magically" generated. If it doesn't look like the screenshot to the left, it's not live yet. :) It is fully internationalized, supporting German, English, and French, and was also designed so that it could be maintained by someone non-technical (the content is fully abstracted from the code that generates the site, and new content is pulled into it without the need for more code). Neat-o. That sort of stuff happens automatically when you come from an enterprise application design background, which can make it hard to compromise sometimes when trying to decide between a 100% generic solution (which takes longer to implement, but is cleaner) and a quick 'n dirty solution that solves only the one specific problem at hand (faster to implement, but harder to change/enhance later).

Bora Bora is amazing. Even after two weeks, I would look out into the lagoon in the mornings and sort of shake my head in disbelief. There is a strange calming effect -- something indescribable -- that is always present there. For me, it was almost tangible: a pleasant, settling um... energy that would sort of tug at my heart to slow its beat. Angel has tried to explain this feeling to me in the past, but it's something that must be felt to really be understood. Even during the last couple of days when we were pushing to finish the site (working 14-16 hour days), nothing could shake that wonderful calm.

I had planned on writing a detailed account of my trip, but I think I won't. Instead, I'll just link to the daily updates I posted from Bora Bora (use the menu to the left). My head is a little cloudy from my first Korean club experience, which came immediately after traveling for over twenty hours. I'm just not used to going out, I guess. :)