You Turkey You

Well I must say Christmas eve with the family was a blast.  Cuzco is crazy about fireworks.  After our group lit some off ourselves, we went up to the roof around midnight when things really went nuts.  In a municipal display the explosions and lights are all localized.  With this, they were coming from all sides, sustained for an hour.  I believe that having incendiaries zip by your head at close range better simulates the homage to war that our founding fathers intended with such festivities.  I haven’t really had that kind of child like adrenalin rush for that long in a while.  There were some parts of the Monarch trail on the downhill but they were brief and a focused solo experience. 

Of course my heart goes out to the handful of kids that lost fingers this year.  And to the kids that lost fingers last year and prompted the new law outlawing fireworks which seems to be unenforced.  There was a Dutch-Belgian student, girl at the dinner as well.  The chaos caused her to reflect on just how many regulations on life existed in Belgium vs. Peru.  I don’t think she concluded that one extreme was significantly better than the other which I mark as progress for a young liberal.

We talked a bunch of politics in English, which probably wasn’t so polite to the majority non-English speaking Peruanas at the table.  Her ideal was for solidarity in the world between the haves and have not’s.  It frustrates her that small differences in Belgium cause such large problems.  I tried to explain the difference in ease of making a decision and executing it yourself, making a decision for say a room full of Navidad revelers as to which fireworks to light when and executing, getting a consensus or even majority in a city to decide on something like how much tax increase can we afford to get the freaking trash off our streets, vs. entire countries pulling together. 

This brings us up to where she started which was why can’t Europe and Asia get it together to help Africa as though they were three people in a bar where the rich and middle class guy should buy a drink for the poor guy.  Not to say there aren’t huge benefits possible from a more integrated international policy.  But there are also grave dangers in the creation of such a large brother to look after things.  But my arguments were long winded and she seemed to always jump back to “but there are people really suffering out there” before I could make too much headway.

I cooked the turkey, and decided to make my signature garlic mashed potatoes with one of the thousands of unnamable local pata varieties.  And if you are going to do that, you have to make gravy (salsa carne) as well.  What I didn’t know was that all of this food was to be transported to grandma’s house for all the aunts and uncles and cousins.  Fortunately I have a huge ego so when there were some grumblings that I used an apple to moisten the turkey instead of making stuffing I took refuge in that multiple people said the turkey was very moist compared to previous dry years. 

I guess turkey for Christmas is a new phenomenon in Peru and this time they had an actual American to lead the way.  Time for the “USA, USA, USA” chant.  Of course, they could just be polite people that can’t believe Valery would abdicate cooking the thanksgiving dinner to a gringo but couldn’t bring themselves to complain too much.  It is always hard to tell.  The carving process was entertaining.  They offered the big knife to me, but where I come from the stranger in the house doesn’t cut the turkey, even if he cooked it.  So I passed it back and the eldest uncle set in.  He went horizontal to the spine whereas I usually go parallel.  He used another knife as a sort of hammer to get through the bone.  It was quiet entertaining.  And I must admit more efficient than the process I use.  Normally I am left with a carcass with lots of bits of meat around.  He essentially took the whole top off like the ragtop on a mustang.  We could have sat little Barbie dolls inside around my apple and drove the bottom half of the turkey around the living room like a toy when he was done.

I would say I am a well trained gringo at this point.  I made my signature apple pie, a semi-successful chocolate cake from a recipe in Spanish with a 6 year old for help.  (We weren’t really able to whip enough air into the egg to make the sort of chocolate angel food cake I believe the Spanish language recipe was looking for).  I am also on the hook to make a peach cobbler tomorrow.  After each meal, they say “Buen Probacho”.  You might expect it is similar to the Bon Appetite the French use before the meal.  But I get the impression Buen Probacho is closer to “I hope you don’t get diarrhea”.  So far I haven’t heard the ominous chorus of flushes after anything I have prepared so I think I am doing well.  “Gringito” they call me.  I think that means they have me well trained. 

New years eve, before I head out for the big fireworks chaos in the main plaza sin the rug rats.  Should be fun if I can keep the vomitar off me zapatas and the fuegos artificial, that they throw, out of the back of my jacket. 

Pics

This is my most deluxe room yet, how do I know?  It has a painting ot 2Pac on the wall.

What do you give the man with everything for Xmas?  An Andean pimp hat of course!

Plaza de Armas is the place to be for tourists in Cusco.  I have a family to go home to so I don't spend much time there.  It is better that way.

If Americans are so smart why didn't we think of vast amounts of fireworks Christmas Eve?  I had that "I am in a war zone" sensation with the encendiaries zipping past my head.  I haven't had that feeling of excitement in a long time.  I try not to think about the dozen kids losing fingers around the city....

Isaac prepares a gringo Xmas dinner for not just the family but extended family.  Thank goodness for my trusty outsized ego as Grandma downs my personal potatoes and gravy recipie and asks where the stuffing is.... (I don't do stuffing)

Another Country, Another Family

So far I have continued to have excellent luck with host families.  I also haven’t made any friends with native English speaking students.  The school I attend is small and I appear to be the only afternoon student.  I also live somewhat away from the trendy gringo area around plaza de armas.  It is amazing how people just open up their home and their lives for strangers in this homestay language school paradigm.  It is a voyeuristic journey.  I just hang out in the living room a lot and talk to the kids, try to follow the adults talking and they make frequent attempt to engage me with my limited Spanish.  I go shopping with them and to office Christmas parties and play soccer with the father and his neighborhood buddies. 

I must say that while I snowboard at 11,000 feet, playing soccer at 11,000 feet is another story.  I had to slow down after 15 minutes and only lasted around 50 minutes.  Of course I play soccer (futbal) a few times a decade so I was limited in cardiovascular and footwork ability.  Team sports are great though, you try harder not to be “that guy” that lags everyone else in the game.  The same applies in bike riding, which is why I tend to ride with people at least 20 years older than myself.

But it is amazing how quickly you fell a part of the household.  I even felt a little guilty I didn’t make the 6 year old daughters Christmas paegent.  The afternoon class goes from 3-7PM.  Households are different here as well.  The kids just have a longer leash than American kids do.  It may have been my limited Spanish, but I found myself alone at the house one day when the 2 year old started crying.  I knew that mom had gone out, but so I had I for a couple quick errands.  But, with aunts and uncles in the same complex within shouting distance I suppose it isn’t as big a deal to leave a kid napping at the house for a while.  You also see moms rushing into the street after kids in the states, but there just seems to be more of it here in Peru.  Perhaps these kids will grow up with a better sense of self reliance than their American peers.  I could just imagine workers at an American Christmas party suing emotional damage because the company invited the kids to party, gave them presents, but didn’t provide child care to keep them out of the street.

I suppose since I have earned some street cred as a responsible adult as they have mentioned since that they will be out and could I listen for the kids upstairs, which turned out to require a small excursion when the power went out and the DVD she was watching, along with lights went off all around.  But this family is highly functional.  They laugh a lot and in general just seem to enjoy themselves most of the time.  I also saw dad checking out mom’s ass as she bent over to pick something up.  Good signs for this family abound.

English and Spanish Happily Coexist in Peru

A couple more oddities in print from the land of Peru- the first one might interpret as equipment for a gym for the homeless.  But looking at the logo, I expect they are using the British version of the word.  This is a bad omen for those in the homeland working toward the wider acceptance of the ‘Merckan language. At the house of the family I am staying with, they have a curious tea.  I looked and salt peter was not in the ingredients. 

Happily they do have apples- manzanas, sugar-azucar, flour-harina, butter- mantequilla, cinnamon-canela.  So I was able to make my personal apple pie recipe.  Somehow it came out with a latin feel.  The ingredients were each a bit different than you find in the states.

My brother

My girlfriend Murray suggested I remove this posting from my blog.  So I moved it.  Hopefully I will score some points for taking her advice.  I thought it was amusing and interesting all at the same time.  So below is a link.  I suspect my other 3 readers don't share her delicate sensibility.  Actually I have heard of sensibilities but am not sure exactly how they work.  At any rate, if you have some, do not click below.


http://thepartialsabbatical.blogspot.com/p/recognize-my-brother.html

The people you meet on the plane

Murray told me "You don't have to talk about my insecurities on your blog." But she also didn't say I couldn't. So let's begin with the women I have met on the plane rides starting this leg of the trip.

I often meet interesting people on planes. So, as we ambled around the tarmac getting ready to leave Denver, I considered an opening statement for the guy to my left with the unruly red hair and librarian style glasses as he read his graphic novel. The young woman on my right beat me to it. "I can't believe it is 31 degrees in Atlanta!" She complained, moving her hands over the bare olive arms that stuck out the bottom of her t shirt to illustrate her wardrobe insufficiency.  Later I would find that Gloria was quite proud of the pull ups she could do with those arms.  To be honest, in the hundreds of trips I have made to dozens of gyms, I have never seen a woman perform more than 2 unassisted pull ups.

She fidgeted with some overpriced air port lip balm.  Compulsive?  I asked.  She looked at me quizzically.  I noticed after you put the lid back on the lip balm you lined up the markings on the seal.  No, I’m cool she said and twisted the cap to a random angle.  She fidgeted for a while longer with the lip balm before shifting the lid back into alignment and admitting “I may be a little OCD.”  I suppose it takes one to know one.  I explained I was only compulsive but not obsessive.  “However my girlfriend is obsessive but not compulsive so we are an OCD couple.”  “Cute” she replied as she pulled some papers from the seatback; reading over her shoulder I could see she was being deployed in the marines.

We discussed at length the novelty of being a female marine.  She was the youngest girl in a family with five brothers.  She explained her attitude towards motherhood with “I don’t think motherhood is for me, when I hear a baby crying my first thoughts at a solution are a punch to the face.”  She wanted to be in the infantry but discovered she was a girl.  So the closest she could get was driving troop transport.  When I asked what drew her to the marines she said her deeper desire was to blow stuff up.

Despite the machismo she admitted to being a girl.  She said after her stint in the marines she thought she might like to be a cop as that was another way she could help people, while carrying a gun and bashing some heads.  We talked about gays in the military and the marines different attitude in recent polls.  She started with not wanting to be looked at by lesbians in the locker room.  Then she said she could understand the combat guys having more of a qualm than she really did.  She hit her point home with a splayed finger hand gesticulation saying she couldn’t really articulate her views on the matter.  This for me was one of her deeper expressions of femininity.  She was rather articulate and wasn’t short on pointed words at any other time during the conversation.

We also discussed our different experiences being in marching band.  She plans to take part in civilian band but didn’t want to play sax in the marine band as there was an insufficient amount of blowing things up on musical duty.  I explained my band experience which started off the wrong way.  I was a runt with a chip on my shoulder so I picked the biggest instrument I could carry, the baritone.  Eventually I got weirded out by how tightly knit the school band social fabric was.  She had dated in the band pool and lost her virginity much earlier than I had.  Perhaps I should have stuck with it.

I have my doubts about whether she will go the 10-15 years in the marines she anticipates.  She is well spoken and rather prejudiced against the under-educated which she freely admits is a problem she has with most of the marines she has been worked with.  She also has some growing to do, as we all do.  I can only hope her growth spurt doesn’t come during a horrific 90 seconds on the Pakistan border involving explosions.

On the next leg of my trip from Atlanta to Lima I sat next to Elna, another single woman.  I would have guessed her age to be around mine, but later I found she was 48.  Elna is the other side of the female coin from Gloria, but also quite interesting.  At first I wasn’t sure if she was a nurse or a doctor.  She works for a doctors without borders type of organization with a heavy presence in Haiti.  Although born in Peru, she has lived in the states for some time and is now dismayed when cab drivers in Peru complement her on her Spanish. 

Her story is almost the twin of my friend Jim.  She always thought she would meet Mr. Right and have kids, but it just never materialized.  Mr. Right didn’t want to have kids and subsequent partners just weren’t quite right.  For a moment I thought “wouldn’t it be great if Elna and Jim could meet”.  And then I thought, “Murray is rubbing off on me.”  Elna apparently has regular opportunities to adopt in Haiti as mothers she treat find out she has no kids and assume she couldn’t have them offering up their 3^rd or 4^th borns to a better life in the states.  I think I am relatively good at engendering trust, but that is a significant statement about how people assess this woman.  And I can see it. 

Elna strikes me as having an idealism that has been worn through the wringer of reality but come out largely in place but tired.  She has mentioned more than twice on disparate topics including men and relationships that she has “high standards” and following the story of her life she obviously has high standards elsewhere.  The world needs more single, experienced, people that can and are willing to head out to the third world again and again to try to contain the suffering.  It is a heck of a lot more than I am doing with my couple hours a week tutoring at the jail.

So I sit on planes, quietly judging people.  For the women I talk to, I also review how much fun it might be to rendezvous in the Lou at thirty thousand feet, were I not happily committed.  Elna claimed to be cynical, but I doubt it is more than the world wariness one ought to expect from her vocation.  The communications professor I met last week, specializing in social media, seemed like he ought to be jaded with all his time in Washington and academia. 

However, the professor seemed genuine when he said I had given him much to think about.  Gloria actually is jaded at her tender age.   I fear she and I have something in common that I am not so fond of.  I think we are both well rehearsed.  I sit next to these people, and we talk for an hour or three, and if I decide they are interesting and I like them, I expect that at subconscious level I would like for them to find me interesting and likeable.  So the well rehearsed stories, quips, and factoids jump out.  These are probably tailored, spun, and presented in a way that I feel will most disarm and allow me to engage with the person.  I shudder to think that I probably do have, in the back of my mind; a list of what I think makes me interesting to others: the Isaac-Murray story, running for office, playing in a rock band, running a business, being raised Mormon etc. etc. 

I went to a talk given by the author Jim Collins.  He had taken on a board of advisors for his personal life.  An advisor gave a bit of insight that resonates.  “Try less to be interesting, and more on being interested.”

Back to the grind

I am back at work now.  I really do like my job.  More than most people I am sure.  But, it is hard to compare to traipsing around Latin America and learning espanol.  I got my tickets for Peru last night.  I will be a full month in Cuzco near Machu Pichu up at 11000 ft.  My new criterion for picking places is that the temperature for my visit be below 75 deg.  This is possible in many places if you stick to the high altitudes. 

What your stomach says about you when you aren't looking

I discovered something interesting on the drive back from the ranch today.  It appears to be literally possible to feel what someone else is feeling.  I had a bit of a head ache and lay down in the bus with my head in Murray’s lap.  I could feel her stomach muscles against my head in what felt like a laugh.  I couldn’t hear over the road noise, it was a quiet laugh.  But I am pretty sure it was a laugh.  The driver’s phone rang with a bird call.  Earlier Murray had asked what kind of bird it was looking out the window trying to see it as we nature watched from the van. 

Later I felt, but didn’t hear, what seemed to be a yawn stomach muscle action.  I am pretty sure it was a yawn because after she drooped to one side a bit as we are want to do when we get tired.  I am not a sensitive person, but this is an interesting insight into how other people feel.  I don’t know if this would help me in a business setting.  I am sensitive enough to know that for most business meetings, sitting with your head in someone’s lap is not acceptable.

Happy Turkey Day-

Tender Nipples and a Leather Diaper

I must say surfing is great fun.  It was only after 3 more hours on my second day that my nipples got really sore.  So- no breastfeeding for me for at least a week.  The trick to making surfing work was getting to the right place at the right time, which required paddling.  And, even though I wore a long sleeve, synthetic, “rash guard” shirt, my nipples and the insides of my knees took a paddling.  I suppose board shorts are long for a reason. I will have to get some if I go again.

Today we went to a resort to do ziplining, horseback riding, a giant water slide, and the spa.  Apparently women’s bathing suites don’t quite work as well as men’s bathing shorts, so they provided the women with leather diapers to go down the ¼ mi long water slide.  I would have worn one as well since I usually wear a speedo, but Murray thwarted my speedo preference till we got to the mud bath at the spa.  I mean, we are covered in mud, how much more embarrassing can it get?

Guatemala Final Fiesta

Before leaving the family in Guatemala, I bought pizza for the kids adults and students in the house so the grandmother Rebeca wouldn’t have to cook.  The kids definably dig pizza.  Perhaps that is true of kids the world over. 

Then I headed from Antigua Guatemala to Tamarindo Costa Rica.  I met Murray at the airport.  Yeah!  I asked and she doesn’t have anything to say to the blogosphere.  I have noticed that in Latin America, they lag behind on a number of technologies.  Fortunately they have mastered one American technology that I greatly appreciate that of fried chicken.

I heard people in Antigua talk about how great the fried chicken was and never got a chance to try it.  I saw the same franchise in San Jose and Murray and I gave it a try.  It was great.  Of course, I like Kentucky Fried Chicken or Churches chicken so perhaps my standards are low.

It is interesting, when in places with lots of tourists, you get drivers used to tourists.  They seem to have a knack for using simple sentence structures, speaking slowly, and using many of the words that are similar between English and Spanish.  It is amazing how much you can get across when someone has some practice with low Spanish speakers and a willingness to work with you.  With all the complex stuff you have communicated you get to feeling pretty good about your progress.  Then you meet someone in the street that doesn’t have the skill or the patience as you try to buy a jugo de narange at a kiosk and you are immediately humbled by how much further you have to go.

A quick note

Today was my last day of class.  Murray thinks she hasn’t taught me anything since we met, but I did learn the importance of note writing from her.  The difference today was I could give my thank you note to my profesora as my free writing homework assignment.  I gave her a thousand quetzals ($125) which is only $40 a week tip for working with me 30 hours a week.  When you consider what you give the bellman for taking 5 minutes to schlep your bag it still wasn’t much.  But here a tip goes a long way for the locals. 

She said she used to get tips commonly when she was younger but not so much now that she is in her 40s with teenagers.  I suppose the same invisibility of middle aged women that Murray complains about exists in Guatemala.  At that age perhaps a person isn’t interested in using their special power to sneak into the locker room of the opposite gender.  In which case it isn’t much of a superpower.   

Notes are nice because you can pretty easily make someone’s day with a note, but a decent tip here can make someone’s month.  Of course Murray and her sister just finished a hundred or so notes after her mom’s funeral.  I am not in that league.  I think I wrote about having to track who brought what while the two of them were out with funeral errands.  I now understand the method to the madness was for better note writing ability.  I like to be kind, but I don’t want to get carried away.   Although it does seem that notes are becoming a thing of the past.  For me paper notes and emails are fairly equivalent.  Generally I use notes for people over 50. 

This time it's personal

It is interesting when you spend 30 hours a week with someone for a few weeks and their job is to make you talk and listen.  You wind up talking about the things interesting to you, your girlfriend, your life, your political views and in a few weeks, this person knows everything about you.  And, you wind up knowing lots about them and their kids and spouse and issues and trials.  She has a chipper daughter that is smart, but probably has ADD, a son who is struggling to become an Electrical Engineer, or electronics technician, while working a job.  If my Spanish were better I would offer to talk to the kid.  I have to say it is odd struggling to explain why you get emotionally drained by certain things and having to stop to correct your use of articles and prepositions.

My instructor is very involved in her church but is in touch with the idea that good and bad people come from all faiths.  She has struggled with life and faith and being married to someone with significant flaws.  But I suppose we all have.  I get the sense she has grown a lot in the last 20 years with the help of some people in the church.  I get the sense she emulates that counselor demeanor which strives to show concern but not judgment.  Or perhaps it is just the somber, pensive state a Guatemalan woman gets to when considering the problems of her family and country.

I haven’t spent such a concentrated time getting to know someone in a long time.  She doesn’t really speak English and I am not yet at the first grade level in Spanish, which makes it all that much more incredible.  Extended one on one instruction is certainly more personal, than the group classes I took in Buenos Aires.  But then again, it may just be the individuals.  Most of the other Spanish “Maestro’s” and “Estudientes” are much younger than she and I.

I was able to sneak a shot of one of the guys using his head to cary a load.  As I said, it doesn't look as good for the posture as the Fem-Mayan method in the previous picture.

Moobs on the cobblestones

Nov 12

After seeing just a bit of the countryside and pueblos on some of the trips and bus rides, Antigua relative to Guatemala reminds me of Boulder relative to Colorado.  Both have drum circles in the park, a pedestrian mall with shops, restaurants and tourists,  15 year olds pedaling weed, and mountain bikers zipping through the streets in spandex.  You also find more coffee shops in both cities relative to surrounding cities.   

There are certainly differences between Antigua and Boulder.  For instance, at home I have never seen broken bottles poured into the top of a concrete wall as a sort of “poor man’s razor wire” for keeping the riff raff out.  In Boulder we just put conservative bumper stickers on the cars out front for that function.  And the fat guy on the bicycle in the cheap, tight cotton shirt that I saw here with his moobs bouncing over the cobblestones in Boulder would be a fat guy in expensive, tight spandex shirt with his moobs bouncing over the skree stones on the trail. 

Something else I was surprised to see here  that I don’t see in Boulder is catholic school girl uniforms.  I always assumed those were something that existed far away and long ago and were only used for the box covers of adult videos in the modern era.  Go figure, the past lives on in Guatemala. 

About every third day that clouds at this height would part and you could see the top of the volcano from the house.

American Part II

Nov 10

The Spanish lessons are going well.  People cycle through this place as they do at all schools, but at a much faster clip, typically people are here for 3 weeks.  It does give you a different perspective on being American.  When I am at a party at home, it isn’t central in anyone’s mind that we are Americans.  We are all Americans all the time.  Someone from another country is a novel occurrence.  Here I am one of perhaps only a handful of significant interactions that some folks with have with an American and potentially play a disproportionate role in the shaping of their view of “Americans”.  I am not typically self conscious, but it does make you stop to think, and to tip well. 

The US Flag on the huge kite is for the Guatemantecas living in the states and working to send home remitances.  The kites are supposed to be a line to god that the Myan's got from the Chinese a hundred and some years ago. 

Asking yourself the wrong question

Nov 8

I was at the kite festival in Santiago on the day of the dead and found one other thing that reminded me of home- the graffiti in a bathroom.  It was in English.  “Black Metal” it said.  Not only do vandals here have a bent towards the English language, but a bent towards the musical genre of my youth.  Great.  I did get a positive surprise in Santiago.  I asked the people at the lunch place to hold the cebollas (onions) in a dish I couldn’t translate and decided to gamble on.  What I got back looked like it was filled with inseparable little red slices of onion.  I get unwanted onions about half the time in the states as well.  So I dug in, only to find that they weren’t bits of onion, they were bits of bacon.  It isn’t too often you get such positive food surprises.

On the bus ride back I talked to a German woman who was working with local kids in the 0-4 age range that had been taken from their homes by social services.  Many of them had been malnourished by 13-14 year old mothers who did not have sufficient means or maturity to care for a kid while persuing whatever it is teenage girls pursue here.  The woman expected many of them would never develop to a level of self sufficiency.  I actually found myself second guessing the wisdom of putting one’s volunteer effort there.  It will be that many more people to be taken care of by a state with incredibly limited resources.  I found myself thinking “With so many kids that need help here, wouldn’t the country be better off if she went through the orphanages for some kids with potential and worked to develop them so that the next generation of Guatemalans have that much more local, raw talent for business and politics?”  How can you second guess someone who works with malnourished children?  Leave it to me I suppose. 

This sign was on the mens room of a local club.  I suppose when you have lots of tourists who have given their last brain cell to one of your cervesas, you have an excuse for being over obvious with your labels.

Passion and Discipline

Nov 6

It has been a while since the last post.  I find there is a discipline to blogging and perhaps to writing in general.  You need to have something with you at all times to capture notes on interesting things that you observe, experience, or even pop into your mind.  This was confirmed reading Mary Roach’s “Bonk”.  She talked about trying to decipher some interesting and cryptic notes from some of her outings as she wrote the book. 

I think many great things from: parenting, to music, to sex, to writing, lie at the intersection of passion and discipline.  It feels like I used to have more capacity for passion and less for discipline.  As I sift through hazy memories of things I wanted to share on the blog and consider my inability to keep Spanish verb conjugations in my head, perhaps I have been slipping on the discipline front as well. 



Isaac at Cerro De La Cruz above Antigua



People are difficult

Oct 31

I think something has shifted for me.  One of the reasons I was drawn to engineering was that, relative to interactions with humans, engineering was deterministic.  With a significant time investment engineered systems are ultimately understandable.   People, and systems of people, just aren’t that way.  Even economics is shifting to deal with the messiness that is humanity with behavioral economics.  I am currently reading “The myth of the rational voter” which deals with the subject.  “Influence” by Cialdini and “Stumbling on happiness” by Gilbert were a good insights as well.  For a glimpse at some of the pop psychology relative to the topic, there are some good TED lectures at: 

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_asks_are_we_in_control_of_our_own_decisions.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_on_the_psychology_of_evil.html

Perhaps I will make more progress on my willingness to deal with things I don’t have much hope of ever fully understanding.  I consider the world of people I interact with.  The world I live in is full of engineers and businessmen and rather rational, honest, intelligent people.  It is easy to forget that there is a world of people that don’t occupy that sphere in character-space.  I consider how inept I am when people lie to me, or try to manipulate me or intimidate me or otherwise take advantage.  Most of my strategy thus far has been to work to not have to interact with such people.  I must say I think it has worked well. 

At times you meet people that live in a different sphere, tutoring at the jail, or playing bar gigs in a bad part of Denver at 2 in the morning.  Beyond dealing with those people, there are occasions where you wish you could help them.  Give them some advice on a tricky situation or how to deal with difficult people in their life.  I don’t have much to offer.  But if I want to understand the messy thing that is humanity, it seems like you need t understand the other half better.  Aside from limited forays like tutoring at the jail, or being in bars late on the sad side of town, I suppose reading pop psychology is an easy way to try to get a better understanding of the interactions of people.  I still don’t really have a desire to have any additional drama in my own life, but I am interested in understanding.  People are fascinating beings.

It has been fun to try to discuss politics and economics and psychology with people from Argentina, France, Japan, Guatemala, and Mexico over the last few months despite the language issues.   In fact, it has more value than the diving or language lessons that drew me to those places.  It is a tough vantage point to get to, but I would really like to understand how Americans and America is viewed around the world.  The educated people I talk with shade their stereotypes and motivations as we both attempt to present ourselves as rational people. 

I get that people resent the rich powerful country.  I get that people would like their country to be more rich and powerful.  I get that people who perceive problems in their country would like to believe they are attributable not to problems with their own culture but to a culpable outside force.  And it is true… the dates and types of revolutions each country undergoes shapes them.  The American government has played an opaque and disturbing role in some of these countries.  However, most of the non-Americans I am apt to meet have talked to more than one American and see us as individuals.  Many people are willing to separate the people from the government of a people’s country.  Although I think that may be part of their lens in Latin America where there have been dictators until relatively recently.  By comparison, the American government represents the people much more closely.

I see that people bring the history of their country and culture as a lens with which to view America and Americans and but so far, I haven’t been able to get a better sense of the astigmatism I know exists in my own lens.  (See the ego blog entry)  I can feel it coming on though.  Perhaps there will be more insights here to come.

I also am hoping that writing will be a larger part of what I do going forward.  This blog is something of a practice field.   Constructive comments are welcome either here or by email.

Math and Measures

Oct 30

Last night I went to a student party.  I wound up sitting next to a Swiss Journalist.  She seemed to claim that anything could be interesting.  So I explained my idea that it might be possible to describe the optima of the female form using surface integrals.  She was duly polite, but I suppose not everything can be made interesting to everybody.  Perhaps someday I will get to do the research and write the paper.

I encountered another good freshman calculus problem.  There is one knob on the shower here.  An electric heater adds a fixed maximum amount of watts so after a point you begin to compromise between flow and temperature.  And students always asked me why would I ever need calculus.  If you were living in Guatemala and had to save one or two weeks’ pay to buy a heating element that you needed to size for your desired minimum flow and temperature of course.

Warm showers are good, but there is another nice thing about Guatemala-  The average height.  I have brothers that have frames that are 6’ 1” and 6’ 3” and shaped in a way that you could hang a lot of muscle from them.  They choose to hang another tissue type, but that is another matter.  I always felt cheated being 5’ 10”.  Here, for a few weeks, except when I pass tourists from Scandinavia, I get to be the big tall guy.    



I had to take the banano out of my pocket for this statue



Richard de Ingletera



Straight if not Tall



Making a mess of the sheets

Oct 29

I suppose I will wash my own sheets again with my laundry.  In Buenos Aires I felt compelled to manage my own sheets and towels.  The family here is more on the fastidious side.  But, I roll over so much I make a mess of them in a hurry.  They should probably attach a generator to me at night to capture all that spinning energy. 

First day of class

 Oct 28

I am actually getting a routine going for Spanish school.  Find the Laundromat and note the hours.  Get a gym membership.  Stock up at the pharmacia.  Locate the school.  My instructor is Julia and she has what I need- patience… and enough English to give me instructions too complex for me to understand in Spanish.   So far, I definitely like the Spanish academy of Antigua http://spanishacademyantiguena.com/

I have also noticed the traditional carrying of baskets on the head by women here.   It seems to do wonders for ones posture.  I don’t know what it does for ones spine.  I have a suspicion that the women here are going old school with basket carrying largely for the tourists benefit.  Men also use their heads to carry a load.  Imagine a backpack where you unhook the straps and attach them in front around your forehead.  This seems to work less well for ones posture.

Below is a pic of Rebecca, Olga’s mother.  She is an excellent cook which is good since I eat breakfast, lunch and dinner here.

Arriving in Guatemala

Oct 27

I rode in from the airport with another student, Dominick.  He was a fiftyish guy from in Hong Kong who has been running businesses in the states for some time.  We had a lot to agree on.  We talked about culture and economics and politics.  But not in Spanish.  Hopefully I will get to that point.  When I got to the house I met Olga, her mom Rebecca, and her sister Irma.  For a while I thought Irma was her daughter.  She seems like a giggly teenager, but, she is 30 and has 4 kids.  With the family, I talked about hair, and my house and the weather and food.  And that was a stretch.  Time to hit the books again.

My bedroom has somewhat more ambiance than a prison cell and perhaps another foot in length.  The walls and floor are painted.  However, I get the sense that this room was a garage or storage area that was absorbed into the house.  It has a distinct cement smell I don’t detect in the rest of the house.  They offered to let me use the other bedroom upstairs in a few days if I prefer.  It currently has a young woman in it who was born and raised in Montreal.  However, I have been advised by the young Brit, Richard, not to refer to her as Canadian in her presence.  It is important to her that she is French.  I guess one just can’t escape the French while traveling.

Dolphins Video

This vid is thanks to Naoko, as are the rest of the underwater pics here.

Diving Pics

Diving Pics

Isaac Plays with sea lions

The Ship Don Jose

You know the routine

 Oct 28

I am actually getting a routine going for Spanish school.  Find the Laundromat and note the hours.  Get a gym membership.  Stock up at the pharmacia.  Locate the school.  My instructor is Julia and she has what I need- patience… and enough English to give me instructions too complex for me to understand in Spanish. 

I have also noticed the traditional carrying of baskets on the head by women here.   It seems to do wonders for ones posture.  I don’t know what it does for ones spine.  I have a suspicion that the women here are going old school with basket carrying largely for the tourists benefit.  Men also use their heads to carry a load.  Imagine a backpack where you unhook the straps and attach them in front around your forehead.  This seems to work less well for ones posture.

Diving in Baja / Espiritu Santo

The trip to La Paz was arduous.  I drove 4 hours to Atlanta, flew to Dallas, Flew to Cabo San Lucas, rented a car and drove from Cabo to La Paz.  After running around in La Paz trying to figure out where I should be, I wound up on the ship Don Jose.  Valerie, the dive master, showed me around.  Her first language is French and I found that so are most of the divers.  So much for Spanish practice in Mexico.

My bunk mate is a Frenchman named Alain.  I was a bit worried at first that I would have the French experience where he knows 10 words of English but will only use 2.  He went to bed early without a word and I stumbled around in the dark trying to do my normal compulsive organization thing. 

However, in the morning he gave me the full story.  I suppose he is like me, he doesn’t come across as overly friendly just by looking at him, but is willing to share stories and opinions about anything and everything.  His English is certainly better than my French so he deserves credit for that as well.  I guess if we get papas fritas, I won’t refer to them as freedom fries.  It turns out this is his first recreational dive since retiring as a commercial diver.  He laid pipeline under freshwater and did underwater welding and repairs.  -Fascinating work. 

He gave that up and works for the water and sewage dept. near Paris now.  He repairs big 12’ pipelines that come into the water plant.  He says they won’t drain them for repairs to diverters and other equipment, but they do lower the level a few feet so there is air in the top.  I wasn’t sure if he was working on the inlet side pipes to the treatment plant or the outlet side or both.  I have to find a way of asking that won’t offend him.   The stereotype for for divers is that they are friendly with strangers.  The stereotype of the French is the opposite.  It feels like things are pulling in the friendly direction.

Oddly enough the other English speaker, who won’t get the dive briefings in French, is a Japanese woman my age named Naoko.  I hung out with a Japanese woman my age on my last solo dive trip to Mexico.  Murray definitely didn’t like that. I think fear of me meeting other women is a driver for Murray to go with me on trips, so there is an upside.    Too bad I couldn’t get her here to Baja, the weather is great and the scenery is amazing.  It reminds me of Colorado except the mountains are shorter and green with shrubbery.   

It is going to be odd being unplugged for a whole week!  My cell phone is now only good for taking pictures, I don’t need my wallet, and my computer is now an over glorified typewriter. 

Monday

We started the day by diving a large open wreck.  I love the 3D movement aspect of diving, but being somewhat uncoordinated in two dimensions, it does give you many more ways to bump into people.  This is especially true when you are all concentrated around one small boat wreck.  Looking up at the surface of the water is like being in a children’s book where everything is upside down.  As I spun around inside the wreck, I could look up and see a big puddle of air on the ceiling from the other divers who had been through.  It shimmered and flowed like Mercury.

On the second dive of the first day, I couldn’t get below 15 feet.  I skipped out on the third dive of the first day and the first dive the second day.  At least on a Scuba trip, even if you can’t dive you are still on a boat in a beautiful place and can watch the see the sea lions and hang out with people.  

I also have one other piece of common ground with the French.  We both prefer Speedos.  You don’t know much trouble I got in thinking I could wear my Speedo to swim at the beach in FL with Murray’s family.  I had to buy a pair of full length trunks at the expensive beach front shop.   I grew up on swim team.  As a swimmer, you wore speedos.  Of course Murray’s nieces wore dental floss, but apparently that is beside the point.  You could have cut bikini bottoms for both of them from the fabric used to make my speedo.  But the French know better than to let shame get in ones way.  I am here with 5 men and 7 women and over half the guys are in Speedos despite their having a gut that advertises “Hey I’m in my fifties”.

Tuesday

My ears bothered me today and it took me longer than the others to get down on the first dive.  On the second dive, I couldn’t get below 15 feet.  But the dive was shallow so I followed our group from above and watched the sea lions and the larger fish hunting the smaller. 

Towards the end of the dive we saw what appeared to be a river of fish.  It was perhaps ten meters in diameter and so dense that it appeared to be more fish than water.  The river extended below the water for as far as we could see in either direction.  It is fascinating enough to see a school of fish that all seem to move together, synchronized by something we can’t detect.  The reflective eyes and portions of the fins all turn at once creating giant semaphores beneath the water.  I detect no propagation delay as they flip left then right.   They truly seem to move as one.  Near us the river develops a branch and plumes of synchronized fish ebb and flow around us like smoke plumes.  I almost worry about getting lost, you can no longer see the other divers as a mass of fish changes course and blocks your view as a moving silver wall.  We are in the last ascent phase of the dive and watch the fish river below us as we slowly rise and decompress until they become a barely visible fog below us.

The food here reminds me of things I would cook were I Mexican.  We get lots of chopped vegetables and meats.  Everything is simple without too many spices.  The soup relies almost solely on cilantro to taste delicious.  At one point we had pressed chicken seared in olive oil.  Sometimes the onions are big enough to pick out and sometimes they are not.  It gives me something to do while listening to the others formulate their sentences in English.

In the evening I found that two of the French contingent, Jean Claude and Anne, had never met the rest prior to the dive.   The couple was happy to practice their English with Naoko and me.  They managed to not talk a word of work.  We talked about the US and Japanese propensity for talking about work.  We discussed the differences in nations at length.  We all conceded that we have trouble telling the ages, and sometimes the individual faces of other races apart.  It appears that it is true that all of us white people kind of look the same to the Japanese. 

There would be no mistaking the face of our captain.  He has long, wizened, white hair atop a weathered, broad face.  It is though someone gave him a script for the archetypical sea captain.  He is a mystery.  He doesn’t avoid the passengers completely, he engages enough with his few words of English to get you wondering, and then he disappears. 

Wednesday

I am sleeping amazingly well on this trip.  Perhaps the gentle rocking of the boat in the wind protected alcoves at night take me back to some infantile cradle experience.  Or perhaps the thin, high density foam over plywood bunks provides the kind of firmness I need in a bed.  Or, perhaps it takes being this far away and this unplugged from my regularly scheduled program to relax.

After the first dive, one of the Frenchman, Phillip I think, became visibly upset about how the dives were run.  Apparently we weren’t optimizing our air use or groups size.  He was one of the more gregarious in the dining room so perhaps he just wears his emotions on his sleeve more than others.  Everyone else was thrilled to see all the hammer head shark and it didn’t look like he could get anyone to take part in his anger.  Hopefully his venting is done.  I get emotionally drained before others do.  So, watching people vent is never my favorite pastime and I get even more uncomfortable when I don’t know what they are venting about.

I went on all four dives today.  We saw an amazing array of life, manta rays, sea lions and hammerhead sharks.  I think of all the times Murray wanted me to stop swimming at the beach for fear of sharks, and here I am with a group of people seeking them out at El Bajo.  When we took a short power boat tour around Los Islotes, the juvenile sea lions followed us like a pack of puppies.  We then went for a night dive.  The sea lions were still there under the waves and still very curious about us.  The mollusks and sea cucumbers were amorphous, slow moving animals that seem like they must belong to another universe.  Or perhaps they are what we will evolve into after a million generations of watching reality TV and eating McDonalds. 

At dinner I began to notice something that I think of as American about the French contingent.  Most of the guys seemed to have wives that were 10-20 years younger than themselves.  This was true for Jean Claude and Anne whom Naoko and I have been diving with as well as several of the other couples.  If you are diving in the sea of cortez you probably aren’t poor and I suppose this phenomena of trophy wives tends towards the affluent in both societies.  Only Phillip, the hothead, seemed to still have his original factory installed spouse.  I don’t think the age difference is a bad thing in and of itself, being a toy boy as I am.  But it makes me sad to ponder all the failed marriages not just in the states, but France and elsewhere.

Friday

If you want to know what is “in” when it comes to underwater fashion, you don’t have to look far.  From fifteen foot whale sharks to one inch juvenile puffers it seems like everyone is sporting polka dots these days.  Even the frumpy Moray Eel is putting on spots to rock the reef.

Sawanee reef is a great dive.  We have done it a few times now.  In fact we have done most of the better dives at least a couple of times now.  The divemaster says her preference is do re-dive the best dives rather than to head towards more mediocre dive sites.  On many of the dives the visibility has only been 30-50 feet or so.  As you descend and head towards the reef you hear it before you see it.  The coral look like underwater bushes but they don’t have the same flexibility as wood.  They are of more a ceramic consistency and they clink together in the currents and sound like a million pebbles raining down. 

I have noticed, here and in Cozumel, that the dive masters are as interested in the micro-life as they are in the big game.  Those of us that do this once or twice a year tend to be focused in on sea lions, sharks, or at the least a big eel.  But there are a fascinating collection of life forms smaller than your thumb to consider. 

My favorite so far would lend itself to a neat parlor trick, if anyone you know has a parlor on a reef.  There is a certain worm that lives in a hole.  It has a feeding a gill end that sticks out of the hole.  When you move your hand a few inches from it and snap your fingers, it disappears into the hole.  This is cool for at least two reasons.  The first is the movement is fast.  You don’t think about worms moving faster than you can see, but when you snap your fingers, they are gone.  You don’t even see them move, they just disappear.  Perhaps creatures that small exist on shorter time constants, but it looks like magic.  The second awesome thing about this is that I can’t hear me snap my fingers under water.  I feel that same friction and release feeling you get when you snap your fingers on land, but for me there is no sound.  Apparently for the worm it comes across like thunder. 

Murray would be jealous of our dive just outside the city of la paz.  The whale sharks were incredible.  They aren’t too intimidating as they don’t eat anything larger than plankton as do whales.  But, they must be 15 feet long and weigh a thousand pounds.  On our second trip out, we got an extra treat when the dolphins showed up.  There were three and they buzzed us a number of times coming tantalizingly close, almost to where you could touch one and then they would zip out of site.  If you gave chase, they would go slow enough to keep just ahead of you. 

The dolphins are truly players; they play you the whole way.  Somehow they know you are interested in touching them and they play that and stay just out of reach.  It reminds me of my complete teenage experience with girls.  For those who get frustrated enough by never quite being able to catch and touch a dolphin, you can pay to go get in the tank with the ones in captivity.  I suppose that is kind of like the topless bar of the dolphin world.  A paid outlet for those who are frustrated that they can’t get close.

They weren’t quite topless, but a third variety of oceanic wildlife showed up: Mexican twenty-somethings in bikinis.  In this part of the water there is no scuba so we were just skin diving.  The bikini girls were fun to look at for a while as well.  They both had cameras and lots of tats.  After a little while they got annoying as well, they seemed very willing to muscle in between you and the whale sharks and to get close enough to risk spooking the whale sharks into diving.  It made me wonder if there is a correlation between amount of tats and poor manners.  It would be interesting to see if anyone has done a study on that.

I found out today that Anne and Jean Claude are both Rheumatologists.  So even though she is attractive and younger than Jean Claude, perhaps she doesn’t qualify as a trophy wife.

Saturday

I am back at my hotel and after an hour of staring into my email client, I had the sensation that the room was gently rocking.  I need the horizon in my peripheral vision as an anchor after a week on the boat.  Funny how a computer screen has provided an anchor all my life and only after a week away does my head require a piece of the real world to keep my bearings and balance.  There is a metaphor in there somewhere but I refuse to torture it further.

Sunday

My flight was 2 hours behind and I was not going to make my connection so the airline put me up in a hotel.  The place is actually exceptionally nice.  It is right on the beach and has the largest pool I have ever been in.  And yes- I wore my speedo to do laps as newlywed Mexican couples played in the water.  The place is called the Barcelo in San Jose, just down from Cabo San Lucas.  It is very American centric.  Beyond having everything labeled in English and Spanish and the staff speaning English, you notice things like the mariachi music piped into the high end buffet area.  I heard mariachi muzak versions of Lou Reed and Meatloaf.  Now there is some cognitive dissonance. 

The beach here is pretty amazing.  I haven’t been on a beach so clean and free of shells and sea weed.  I expect the groom it somehow.  It was great for running on.  I love that barefoot running on wet sand feeling.  However, here the sand was strangely soft and your feet sink in, even where the sand is wet.  It gave me flashbacks to a recurring nightmare I had as a teenager where I was running from an assailant with a gun in soft sand and the sand caused me to run in slow motion.

Despite the luxury surroundings, I was bummed out not to see Murray.  We only had two days before I leave for Guatemala.  Now we just have one.