The candidates for State Representative, which includes parts of Brockton and Easton, have been asked by the Easton Patch to blog. So here I am!

Though I tend to be a policy wonk, I'll try not to bore you with too much public policy talk and campaign platform speak. Unless you tell me that's what you want!

My profile photo is a shot of my standing in the middle of a volcanic crater in Cape Verde, Africa. I've visited there twice in the last two years trying to gin up business for Brockton-area companies.

The largest population of Cape Verdeans outside of Cape Verde is right here in eastern and southern Mass. The Chinese, Europeans, and other Africans are there taking advantage of Cape Verde's $2 billion economy; so I figured the Americans should be there too. You can read the summary of my first trip here.

In addition to Cape Verde, I've had the fortune to travel the world: Canada, Ghana, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and 33 states in the United States.

And just when you start to think the world is small—the ease of air travel and the speed of the Internet—all you got to do is stand in the middle of a volcanic crater (just once) to be reminded how big the world truly is.

When I was a kid, mom would tell my brothers and me that we'd go to college—that was a certainty. And that we wouldn't go to college in Texas, where I'm from. Not that the schools in Texas weren't good options, but she wanted us to get out and meet new people, new ways of life, new thinking—to essentially explore the world.

Funny how those early seeds always find a way to bloom later in life!