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Flags Fly Again

Flags fly again in Paranal this time with the flag of Monaco alongside Chile and ESOs. As I left today, by bus, Prince Albert, Crown Prince of Monaco arrives, by Chilean Air Force chopper (not the bike of the same name). He is having a flying visit, quite literally, to Paranal before going onto San Pedro De Atacama.

Santiago: Day two

Woke up this morning feeling guilty for being in bed and sleeping, it was only seven thirty. This guilty feeling also happens sometimes when I am on holiday; I think it's about being able to relax. I am off out now to hunt croissants for breakfast.

On BBC World News it's all Bush in Britain. I must say in passing that the BBC World channel is so much better than CNN. The reporting and substance is superior by far. Take Iraq coverage post war for instance; they are showing some hard truths of the war that aren't even getting an airing on CNN.
***
I find myself somewhat disappointingly sitting in a Dunkin Donuts for breakfast; I count myself lucky it's not a MacDonald’s. Last night I ate with Andrew at the Majestic; the only Indian restaurant in Santiago, and very nice it was too.

The remainder of the night was spent uselessly channel hopping. I am so glad nobody can count the hours we all spend on this useless pastime. Although sometimes surfing the Internet can be thought of as the same. I had my last hop and just managed to get the TV off before falling asleep.
***
I find myself sitting in a courtyard of the Chilean foreign office buildings leg weary and slightly bored. My plan this morning was to get into al Centro find a cinema and catch a movie. The taxi arrived around 1000h and with instructions to take me to a cinema closest to the Plaza de Armas. He did. The cinema turned out to be a porn one! If I still had the name and number of that taxi man I would love to know what made him think that was the type of movie I wished to see. Whatever, I now find myself waiting for the hours to pass before 1300h. If he had of taken me to real cinema I would have been comfortable and watching a movie, now I am walk weary and sweaty.

Santiago streets stemming from al Centro are nearly all the same. Global food joints, Mac'y D's, B King, you name it. Chemists; there are so many I must presume everyone is ill here. Then paper shops, they are everywhere; WHSmiths is not going to get a look in here. Then there are the Galleries. These exist at the ground level of the large buildings that make up al Centro. The only things in these (of any interest) are the coffee with legs joints. This is a phenomenon that I have never seen before: Coffee Shops with hyper scantily clad women. Main clientel of these shops are businessmen, and on the whole well dressed businessmen. Perhaps the only thing I could take back to England is this idea, if it does not exist already; I could become rich! Don't worry mum I did not go in.

Other things to be found in al Centro are English book stores, if anybody knows where they’re then please tell me, cause I still cannot find one.

There are of course your normal high street stores, clothes shop and just stuff that are plainly not interesting.
***
What do you think of underground restaurants? I myself don't really like them, there are some good ones though, esp in London, but the restaurant I am in right now is not one of them; plus I am the only person. It's only just 1300h. Lets live life on the wild side. Sushi arrived.
***
I am in the cinema, sushi was not really up to standard but cheap. The league of extraordinary gentlemen is the show. Will report all afterwards.

In the taxi ride over I had a half English-speaking driver, full of love for the UK, although he asked me from which country does Charles and Diana come. I have noticed in Chile that people get a little confused with the naming convention we have for our little country of ours (they also call it the rabbit, something to do with the shape). What is the UK? What is GB? Is Wales in England? These are the types of questions I commonly get.

Australia 17 - England 20

England......England......England......England......England......England......
England......England......England......England......England......England......
England......England......England......England......England......England......
England......England......England......England......England......England......
England......England......England......England......England......England......
England......England......England......England......England......England......
England......England......England......England......England......England......

...

Santiago: Day one

The taxi without a speedometer is how the day started, I just hope to hell the plane has more instruments. That’s South America for you, never be too sure.
* * *
Andrea my wife padded around the house naked this morning, checking the taxi for me and offering coffee; it was still dark outside. The phrase used for pregnant women "she is starting to show" does not cover it anymore. Last night when I came home she looked so alive, alert, happy and of course so beautiful. This morning she looked the same, but with a mask of sleep. She had grown so much, sorry, the baby and Andrea have grown so much over the past week. I still find it amazing.

It was looking at her this morning and seeing her naked and pregnant that I had the thought that she and our unborn baby gives me so much to live for; it would be quite inconsiderate if I was to be snuffed out now. You think these things when you take taxis in Chile. Once up in Iquique after a taxi ride I actually kissed the ground on finally surviving what was a most hellish experience.

The plane is almost coming into Santiago I must switch off now.
* * *
Planes; you always come off them with a certain smell. First it's on your hands then eventually in your clothes on the longer trips. On landing a bloke crosses himself, does he do that in every taxi as well?

Santiago is so different to Antofagasta; there is no real comparison. Of course there is a comparison, I just can't right now think of one, or more appropriately cannot be bothered. First the weather; it gets a lot hotter here than Antofogasta, today walking to the foreign office I was sweating buckets, but then I was dealing with Chilean bureaucracy, not easy in the cool of winter.

Things run a lot faster, the taxis included, things also seem to work as well. But lets not carried away it's not all rosy. Santiago has the un-pleasure of being one of the most polluted cities on the Earth. Santiago is literally a bowl with about 5 million people living and worse all driving in it. The bowl catches all the pollution; perhaps Santiago is an example of the whole of the Earth in the future.

The mission in Santiago is two or even three fold. Firstly to get the marriage of Andrea and I legal here in Chile; we are trying to do this ahead of Juniors birth. Secondly to get my sad and sick iBook mended. On all these fronts so far all is going well, iBook is in the hospital and our wedding certificate is being translated as we speak, I hope.
* * *
The news is,
1. The day has gone extraordinary well. Things should not be this simple. It makes me think am I in the “Better than Life Game” (people who know Red Dwarf will be the only people to understand this reference.)
2. Ian has found a good pram, by Graco. It does everything except feed the baby. I am sure its high tech especially so compared to any prams Andrea and I had as babies.
3. My iBook has a bad logic board. This is the second iBook to go in two years, I dare say they are not as school bag hardy as Apple would like us to believe. Get AppleCare is my advice.
4. I saw a nun with two mobile phones this morning in a taxi, why did she have two? She was a secret agent of course; she probably had a gun and sexy lingerie below the get up. Hmm, been on my own to long already.
5. I saw a taxi man in a traffic jam mopping his brow; maybe learning to hate his car.
6. I found my first hotspot today. Parque Aruaco in Santiago, somewhere near the Mac shop. Very civilized, I read my email, downloaded some rss feeds and sent a photo to Andrea. I did have this sudden urge to buy chalk and draw a strange shape on a nearby wall or floor, I held back though.

Swing Low Sweet Chariot

The England Team have now made it to the Rugby World Cup! I just finished watching the second half of the match. On reading the BBC Sports site it would seem it was even stevens in the first half; I felt England were all over the French in the second, the French knocking on more than catching it, and giving penalities away like they going out of fashion, and making school boy errors in the kicking game (running outside of your 22 to kick the ball!). England on the other hand seemed well drilled, not making the errors their counterparts were. All managed by the flyhalf of the day Wilkinson. From watching the second half France did not stand a chance.

Go England.

New Wedding Ring

What does a wedding ring mean? It is different for different people, it has to be. For me it's a symbol of my love for my wife, our promise together. I remember once bravely declaring "I will never wear a wedding ring", now I would hate to be without it.

The rings itself, the physical part, is meaningless, as they say it could be made just from a ring pull of a Coke can. It's the symbolism, the meaning thats important to me; the thing it means to my wife and I. My wife and I chose Titanium rings, Titanium being a non-precious metal. Luckily we both decided against the idea of Gold or Platinum from day one on the ring choice.

A new ring has just arrived for me. A slightly smaller one. It fits so much better.

book: Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson

Unlike this blog entry/review of Quicksilver, Volume One Of The Baroque Cycle (ISBN: 0-380-97742-7), by Neal Stephenson is long. This entry is short to read this book wasn't. Anything else I could write would be nothing compared to this wiki.

A must read.

Panther arrives in Paranall

Got to use Panther 10.3 today for the first time. Two new 12-inches had turned up over the past week, I am busy configuring one. It would seem there are a few nice changes between 10.2 and 10.3 namely expose, I am using it seamlessly only after a couple of hours of using the system. Other things I like are the finder, I like all of it, brushed metal and all and have completely gotten use to it in no time at all. And the user switching will be so handy at home.

However (the posh but) I am not happy with the fee and upgrade time needed for the system. I am afraid that I am getting on the band wagon of "why should we upgrade and pay through the nose so periodically?" It just seems a bitter pill to swallow. Of course there are a whole host of other new things as well, like journaling, new animations on application opening and the like, but really, really is it all worth US$129? I think they should make it the cost of postage and packaging. Its getting to be not worth the full bucks. IMHO of course.

But is Mac OS X still the coolest OS around?

And that was the weekend

Four events. Three medals. One of each metal. Swimming wise it was not a bad weekend. However my club the Autoclub did not win the competition, such a shame.

Pamela, Andreas's sister, came around yesterday, we had a lovely pasta salad, followed by a trip to get ice creams and with a detour to watch some rugby. Rugby here in Anto is played on sand/dust pitch, looks terrible for the players.

Saturdays highlight was spent trying to find a lightfitting for the babies room, seems they do not exist here in Anto. We want to have a paper lamp shade, one of those globe type ones.

And that was just some of the weekend.

Cuba 2003 Minisite

“Finally.” I sigh, sitting back on the chair and relaxing for just a while. Finally I have finished our Cuban 2003 minisite. I think with the time spent on this project we are all so lucky it did not run over into 2004. So please feel free to have a look at our Cuba 2003 minisite. I hope you enjoy.

The minisite is more a visual display than anything else. Letting you see something of what we saw. Albeit, something that I am so conscious of, through tourists eyes. Our tourist holiday to Cuba took us to see Havana for just a couple of days, and then onto the beach paradise of Varadero. Oh and there are some naked pictures of women and us in there! There isn’t really I just wanted to write that to see if the hit rate would go through the roof. There is lots of porn, sex and all that other stuff as well (No there is not, another hit test). Just hope Mum and Dad don’t read this post!

Cork for nose please

I have been banished from the house. Crime? Sneezing to much. Every so often ljust start sneezing and then I don't seem to stop for hours, sometimes through to the next day. It's like an ultra cold, but with just the sneezing. Of course it must be an allergy, to what I don't know.

Today we ate pizza for dinner. I am sure it's not the pizza, please don't let it be that. The nanny was round today cleaning, maybe some dust got into the air or something, that has to be more likely than the pizza. I hope.

At least it's not cold out here even though it's overcast. It's 1915h and I am in shorts and T-shirt, I am sure back over in the UK it is really chilly. I am sure the allergies will be worse over there.

In fact it aint just sneezing, mucus seems to be pouring out of my nose, if my bum was doing this then I would have the shits! Looks like it's bog roll stuck up my nose for tonight then. Poor Andrea.

Third and final helping of Matrix

All over the Internet world bloggers will probably at sometime mention that they went to watch the latest and perhaps final installment in the Matrix Trilogy and give us their opinion. Just like me with this blog they will also just like me be blogging in a similar fashion, writing about people blogging about Matrix, such is the multiplicity of blogs and their contents. Of course with all their subtle difference so inherent to humans. So I apologize for the multiplicity, lets hope there are some subtle differences in my own offering.

Firstly I enjoyed the film. Full stop. However it could have been something more, it promised it, but did not supply and in the end leaves you wondering if there will be a next one, to finally answer questions. How can Neo control machines in the real world? How can the Smith be transported into the real world? Stuff like that did not get answered.

The film follows a biblical tail. Neo believes enough about his path that he will lay down his life for it; there are similar story lines around in other older books, especially those found in churches. Neo does a great impression of Moses with the machine sea. Bravo.

This EMP weapon Zion seems to employ in their ships. Why don't they use it more often in their fight with the machines? The ships do not seem to loose there on board systems to these pulses. These questions kept cropping up with me during the film. Another; why did getting the ship back into Zion become so important, was it for the EMP, then why did they think to not have one ready!

The opening scenes with "Merv" and Neo being stuck at "Mobile Ave" seems to be a waste of twenty minutes. With Merv not being seen in the film again. The scene were the Smith being in the real world being surround by really thick humans not working out who he was, OK I was watching the film knowing about him, but really they were acting daft for a while.

Things I liked in the film were the effects, nothing looked unreal, and if something could have looked unreal then there was so much for the eye to see that you really could not register the unreality. This happened a lot in the Dock fighting scene, all of it happening in a computer, but looking so real. The film excels in this, along with fight scenes. The punch between Neo and Smith was excellent; I have felt that effect whilst being punched myself, of course to a lesser degree. I thought the Trinity death scene was well done, they did not go over the top, and I liked the scene. I, probably being in the minority, loved the M2 dance scene, I thought perhaps we were going to get something like this with the entrance to "Merv's" nightclub; I enjoyed the joining of music and film together. Chance lost to annoy many and please just me.

So less philosophical questions and more beat 'em up style for this one. It worked, but I cannot help feeling there will be another Matrix sometime soon, and hopefully I will be there to watch it.

On the Bus

I am on the bus going down to Antofagasta from Paranal. The bus still feels stuffy; it sits out in the desert sun before we leave heating it up like some sweat box from a WWII film. This heat I don't like.

The driver is obviously Chilean, his music tastes colllide rather jarringly with mine. At the moment he is blasting throughout the bus some Luis Miguel faker, which sound worse than the real Luis (if that is possible.) I am trying to drown this out witht he Chemical Brothers, but not to much avail.

None of these things improve my state of mind. Look out the window and there is nothing pleasant to the English eye, just browns in their infinite color schemes. Yes the desert is impressive, but only for a vacation. Don't forget your sun tan cream.

So I write these words, trying to take my mind off the here and now, by writing about it. Does it make sense? Well it's cheaper than therapy, and as I write the miles, sorry, kilometres, sorry, kilometers roll past, the brown. Taking me closer to my loved one.

Each click is taking me closer to my wife and our unborn child, in tow. How I love them both.

Thinking of them; that is something new, the 'them' part, makes me feel better, the bus is finally cooling to a more temperate temperature, one of the Chemical Brothers' better song is ringing in my ears - The State Of Us. Now if I could just convert the driver!

We have almost made it to the Pan-American highway, Route 5 as it is also known. The bumping and shaking stops. I start to feel closer to home now.

BBC

Two links that I just found from Tom Coates website are a must read. They are about one of the great British institutions the BBC. Living abroad really highlights the importance of the BBC around the world, and of course in the UK (what would you all do without Eastenders?).

Link #1: About the BBC
Link #2: Past, Present, Future - History of the BBC

First of October

Its the first of October already! It's getting so close to Juniors coming into the world time. Luckily Andrea seems to be organising things, she has lists and tables. The baby's room is almost complete, we need a new light fitting and curtains, we installed a Cot and some other furniture the other week. Other things seem to be very small clothing and socks, tiny socks, socks were my thumb would feel at home in. How small is she/he going to be?

We still don't know the sex, this has I think made things a little more difficult on the buying front, unisex colors all around; I think though this is good. If its a boy or a girl I would not want to swamp them with pinks and blue just depending on their sex. Keep it unisex is what I say.

Its all such an exciting time... The waiting thought is not easy.