Ben Manting 2.5

Welcome to the all new Ben Manting 2.5! For those of you who didn't know I apparently took a brief trip to Africa a month ago, lost my passport, and was on the brink of starvation!!! Or... at least that is what a mass email said that went out from my email account.

You see, on the fateful night of January 21st, 2009 my Google account was hacked by someone in Ghana and an email was sent out to all of my contacts with the story of my alleged African crisis. Of course, it had a nice little Western Union account where you could wire some money to save me from starving to death on the streets of Accra (the capital of Ghana, remember that, it might be a Final Jeopardy question someday). Of course, I was sitting comfortably in my classroom when I not only was having trouble getting in to my email, but then a steady flow of teachers came in my room and the following conversation ensued:

- You sent me the weirdest email last night
- I did?
- Yeah, it said you were stranded in Africa helping out AIDS research or something
- Nope... still here in Tegus
- Well, apparently you are starving on the streets of Ghana....

(Repeat this conversation 5x with teachers of varying gender and grade level)

The real tragedy of it all was that, after my account was so rudely hacked, it was then deleted. Gmail.... gone. Google reader.... done. Blog.... lost forever. I have held out for the past month hoping that somebody... ANYBODY at Google would kindly give me my account back, but to no avail. Apparently I do not know enough information about myself to warrant a return of my account.

So, I have finally lost hope in resurrecting my past account and decided to launch the new Ben Manting 2.5. New email (ben.manting@gmail.com), new blog (http://myheartstillbeatsinside.blogspot.com) and hopefully some new insight into my recent membership in the Quarter Century Club (wait?!?!? I'm 25 already??? How did that happen?)

I've had at least eleventy-billion blog posts floating through my head over the past month, so I am launching this new blog with a ambitious goal: I am going to post 7 blogs in 7 days! I hope the upcoming posts will serve as a little update to my life (post-stranded-in-Africa) and a glimpse into the triumphs, hardships and dreams that characterize this stage of my life.