Carlos Bernal

Christmas Sauce-omeness part I

2013-12-12T11:16:00.000-06:00

Christmas is coming up, and of course that comes with a bunch of annoying stuff that people will complain about. BUT I happen to actually enjoy it...a lot. I find that it brings out a lot of the awesomeness that's in people, and I've already found a couple of examples of this, so here is part one of a new saga: Christmas Sauce-omeness.

Claire's parents are deaf and she decided to surprise them by signing the lyrics to the songs at her school event. Not only is it really cool that she decided to do this on her own, but also she is rocking it. I love it.

Spanish Playlist

2013-10-15T09:14:00.003-05:00

I decided to make a Spanish playlist for my girlfriend Barbara. The idea was to expose her to a few different genres that are not as easy to find in the english-speaking music world, but also to share with her some of the songs that I grew up listening to. I also included some spanish covers of relatively well-known English songs that I think are somewhat well done.

She seemed to like it quite a bit, and honestly I am pretty happy with how it ended up so I figured why not share it here? Of course you can listen to any of these on youtube.

Song	Artist	Comments
De Música Ligera	Soda Stereo
El Baile de los que Sobran	Los Prisioneros
Pensando en Tí	Mago de Oz	Cover of "Dust in the Wind", by Kansas.
Juégale, Apuéstale	Aterciopelados	Cover of "Play the Game", by Queen.
La Culpable	Aterciopelados	Sample of "Música Llanera", from the East of Colombia.
Te Lo Pido Por Favor	Jaguares
La Vuelta al Mundo	Calle 13
Dar es Dar	Fito Paez
Me Voy	Julieta Venegas
El Testamento	Rafael Escalona	Sample of "Vallenato", from the coasts of Colombia. The right version (performed by Carlos Vives) is hard to find, so here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvHpRplXz00
Carito	Carlos Vives
El Hombre Divertido	Wilfrido Vargas	Sample of "Merengue".
Rebelión	Joe Arroyo	Sample of "Salsa".
Tarde (sin daños a terceros)	Ricardo Arjona
Ella y Él	Ricardo Arjona

If anyone is interested I'll add some of the ones that almost made it to the list.

Customer Support experience SearsOutlet

2013-09-27T21:59:00.001-05:00

I would like to share my experiences with customer service dealing with a case this week.

Saturday Sept 21
I made an order for a washer and a dryer, the amount ia about 1400 dollars, I have about 2500 in my account.
I chose paypal as my payment method.

Sunday Sept 22
I receive an email saying my order was canceled. The first line of the email is
"No charge will be assessed to your credit card"
I decide to go to Lowe's and buy the washer and dryer there.

Monday Sept 23
I check my bank website and see the charge from Lowe's. There is a pending charge for the cost 1400 from sears outlet
which will cause an overdraft in my account.

I immediately call customer service, and speak with Sheryl. She was very nice and helpful and when I asked for
an email summarizing what was done to resolve the issue she sent the following.

I did contact our online solutions department to request a release of funds be faxed to PAYPAL in your behalf. This was done by Frank. This is not a guarantee that the charges will not or have not already gone through.

At this point, satisfied with the way they are handling it. I ask if they will refund me for the overdraft fees that my bank charges me, she says she cannot commit to that but I can call if the charges go through and discuss that.

Tuesday Sept 24
I check my bank account and see that the charges have gone through, so I decide to call them, to update them on the issue and see if they need to process this differently now that the money has been transferred.

I speak to Linda who, very aggressively tells me that they've done all they can do and she can't help me. I ask her about the possible overdraft fees and she responds aggressively with "yeah, how much do we owe you?".

I am transferred to her supervisor, and then his supervisor, Star, employee number 70060. She reiterates that a fax is all they can do, that I need to speak with Paypal and with my bank in order to get my money, and that if I have any other concerns I'll have to get in touch with corporate. She cannot transfer me to corporate and says the only way to reach them is through email or a letter.
I ask her if she can send me an email saying that there is nothing she as a representative of sears outlet can do to help me, she says no.
I ask her if she can send me an email summarizing what we spoke during the call, she says she can't.
I ask her if she's going to write notes on my account about the case, she says yes.
I ask if she can send me a copy of those, she says no.
I ask her if she can write them and read them to me so I can have a record of what she has said to me, she says:
"Sir i'm not going to do that, thank you for calling customer support, have a wonderful day." She hangs up.

I sent an email to corporate describing the situation and asking that they please reach out to me.

Wednesday
I get a phone call from my bank saying they have just received a fax from sears outlet asking to remove the hold they have on my account, they say the hold was there 2 days before but by now the money is in their hands so they'll have to send the money.
I call customer service again and this time I speak to Ally, who was very nice, understanding and helpful. She says she can send a fax to Paypal and ask them to process the refund, that the best thing I can do is call Paypal and ask them to expedite the process on their end.
She calls Paypal and transfers me to them. I am directly transfered to Jo from Paypal and after she, who tells me that the money has been transferred to sears outlet and that they need to process the refund. I ask them about the fax, and she says she doesn't understand why they are sending a fax, the refund process is done by the sears account manager by going online and clicking issue refund.
I ask for and receive an email with detailed instructions on how to issue a refund.

I call sears outlet and ask to be transfered to Ally, she is busy and they say they can try to help me or have her call me when she is free. I ask to be called back.

2-3 hours later I call again, and the representative who happens to answer is Ally. I explain to her the situation and she says that unfortunately she is not in a situation where she can help anymore so she transfers the case to someone else who will definitely be able to help. The problem is that it will have to wait 24-48 hours.
I ask if I can have her word that she'll keep track of this and make sure the case is followed and I am reached on Friday. She says yes.

Friday
My girlfriend gets a call saying that there is a delivery from sears scheduled for saturday for the washer and dryer. So she tells them that sears cancelled the order and gets transfered to billing, where she asks about the status of the order, they verify that it's cancelled and state 3 times that a washer and dryer will not be delivered on saturday.

At the end of the day, since I have not received the call I was promised after the 48 hours, I decide to call again and am eventually transferred to manager Maria, with extension number 14446. She tells me that sears has a deal with Paypal and they process refunds that way, that two faxes have now been sent to Paypal and that after they receive that they can hold on to the funds for up to 30 days.
She cannot verify that Paypal has received the faxes and so I ask her to call them and find out, as well as ask why it is that they're telling me that the faxes are not the way to process the refund.
She calls them and speaks with them, then comes back and says that they want to talk to me and won't speak about the issue with her, so she is going to transfer me. I accept and and put on hold, there was not a representative there ready to speak with me, after waiting for a while, I get Gustavo, here is his email summarizing our conversation.

In order for you to have a transaction refunded since it has been completed already and the money is on the merchant's account, you will need to contact them and ask to speak with the person that manages the PayPal account. Once you do so, they need to go to the transaction detail and click issue refund bottom, then your refund will credited back into your PayPal account.
Since the money remains into their PayPal account, we do not have access to take it out from there without their authorization not even by sending any fax requesting it since it does not work like that. Its their own responsibility to refund it since they have it.

I call sears outlet again and get Julie, who is nice and patient. She says that on Tuesday, Linda transferred the case to "offline" which is the department that "processes credits", and that normally they process them in 3-6 days, but they're running a week behind so I should expect it to go through in 10-13 days.
I don't understand why I wasn't told this before, or what the point of the faxes was at all.

I asked if I could be notified when "offline" receives the case and she said she would add a note to ensure that. I asked if I could be notified daily of the status of this given that my account is overdrafted and I'm being charged daily fees. She guarantees that between now and when the issue is resolved I will get daily updates from customer support.

My intention is not to get anyone fired, the people I have talked to have very hard jobs and are not given the tools and resources they need to assist the customers they are supposed to care for.
I believe that sears outlet can provide service better than this, especially if someone with actual decision power hears about the way a situation this urgent is being handled.
A 13 day delay to refund money that they said they would not charge me is not acceptable by any standards. I am posting this in as many places as I can hoping to get the attention of the right people.

Thank you, and have a nice day.

Math Grad School

2013-07-28T13:10:00.002-05:00

Quora is a site where people ask questions and other people answer them, they get votes and I get a weekly email with the best questions/answers according to the preferences I entered.

This is a pretty cool one that I read today, hope you enjoy it.

A lot of math grad school is reading books and papers and trying to understand what's going on. The difficulty is that reading math is not like reading a mystery thriller, and it's not even like reading a history book or a New York Times article.

The main issue is that, by the time you get to the frontiers of math, the words to describe the concepts don't really exist yet. Communicating these ideas is a bit like trying to explain a vacuum cleaner to someone who has never seen one, except you're only allowed to use words that are four letters long or shorter.

What can you say?

"It is a tool that does suck up dust to make what you walk on in a home tidy."

That's certainly better than nothing, but it doesn't tell you everything you might want to know about a vacuum cleaner. Can you use a vacuum cleaner to clean bookshelves? Can you use a vacuum cleaner to clean a cat? Can you use a vacuum cleaner to clean the outdoors?

The authors of the papers and books are trying to communicate what they've understood as best they can under these restrictions, and it's certainly better than nothing, but if you're going to have to work with vacuum cleaners, you need to know much more.

Fortunately, math has an incredibly powerful tool that helps bridge the gap. Namely, when we come up with concepts, we also come up with very explicit symbols and notation, along with logical rules for manipulating them. It's a bit like being handed the technical specifications and diagrams for building a vacuum cleaner out of parts.

The upside is that now you (in theory) can know 100% unambiguously what a vacuum cleaner can or cannot do. The downside is that you still have no clue what the pieces are for or why they are arranged the way they are, except for the cryptic sentence, "It is a tool that does suck up dust to make what you walk on in a home tidy."

OK, so now you're a grad student, and your advisor gives you an important paper in the field to read: "A Tool that does Suck Dust." The introduction tells you that "It is a tool that does suck up dust to make what you walk on in a home tidy," and a bunch of other reasonable but vague things. The bulk of the paper is technical diagrams and descriptions of a vacuum cleaner. Then there are some references:
"How to use air flow to suck up dust."
"How to use many a coil of wire to make a fan spin very fast."
"What you get from the hole in the wall that has wire in it."

So, what do you do? Technically, you sit at your desk and think. But it's not that simple. First, you're like, lol, that title almost sounds like it could be sexual innuendo. Then you read the introduction, which pleasantly tells you what things are generally about, but is completely vague about the important details.

Then you get to the technical diagrams and are totally confused, but you work through them piece by piece. You redo many of the calculations on your own just to double check that you've really understood what's going on. Sometimes, the calculations that you redo come up with something stupid, and then you have to figure out what you've understood incorrectly, and then reread that part of the technical manual to figure things out. Except sometimes there was a typo in the paper, so that's what screwed things up for you.

After a while, things finally click, and you finally understand what a vacuum cleaner is. In fact, you actually know much more: You've now become one of the experts on vacuum cleaners, or at least on this particular kind of vacuum cleaner, and you know a good fraction of the details on how it works. You're feeling pretty proud of yourself, even though you're still a far shot from your advisor: They understand all sorts of other kinds of vacuum cleaners, even Roombas, and, in addition to their work on vacuum cleaners, they're also working on a related but completely different project about air conditioning systems.

You are filled with joy that you can finally talk on par with your advisor, at least on this topic, but there is a looming dark cloud on the horizon: You still need to write a thesis.

So, you think about new things that you can do with vacuum cleaners. So, first, you're like: I can use a vacuum cleaner to clean bookshelves! That'd be super-useful! But then you do a Google Scholar search and it turns out that someone else did that like ten years ago.

OK, your next idea: I can use a vacuum cleaner to clean cats! That'd also be super-useful. But, alas, a bit more searching in the literature reveals that someone tried that, too, but they didn't get good results. You're a confident young grad student, so you decide that, armed with some additional techniques that you happen to know, you might fix the problems that the other researcher had and get vacuuming cats to work. You spend several months on it, but, alas, it doesn't get you any further.

OK, so then, after more thinking and doing some research on extension cords, you think it would be feasible to use a vacuum cleaner to clean the outdoors. You look in the literature, and it turns out that nobody's ever thought of doing that! You proudly tell this idea to your advisor, but they do some back of the envelope calculations that you don't really understand and tell you that vacuuming the outdoors is unlikely to be very useful. Something about how a vacuum cleaner is too small to handle the outdoors and that we already know about other tools that are much better equipped for cleaning streets and such.

This goes on for several years, and finally you write a thesis about how if you turn a vacuum cleaner upside-down and submerge the top end in water, you can make bubbles!

Your thesis committee is unsure of how this could ever be useful, but it seems pretty cool and bubbles are pretty, so they think that maybe something useful could come out of it eventually. Maybe.

And, indeed, you are lucky! After a hundred years or so, your idea (along with a bunch of other ideas) leads to the development of aquarium air pumps, an essential tool in the rapidly growing field of research on artificial goldfish habitats. Yay!

Original link to the question
http://www.quora.com/Mathematics/What-do-grad-students-in-math-do-all-day

Crazy morning.

2012-04-17T05:56:00.000-05:00

As some of you know I'm taking an online class in algorithm analysis, it's a lot of work, but also a lot of fun and last night I had to turn in one assignment. Of course I waited until the last second to start it so I had to work on it until late at night.

Also I'm competing against chino (one of my friends from high school) and the one does best gets a 3/4 pound burger from El Corral in colombia...delicious.

At some point I thought I had the program right but when I ran it it told me that the program had exceeded the maximum amount of memory that these programs are allowed to use. Chino had told me this would happen and how to fix it. Good. Then some other problems came up, i fixed those. But then something weird started happening the program would stop running in the middle of the execution, and it didn't tell me anything about what caused it to stop!

Not having any clue how to fix this i went to bed with a program that in theory worked, but could not finish executing for some mysterious reason. I stayed up until 5:30 working on a program so I could turn it in before midnight (US time) but it just wasn't ready. All that work for nothing...but oh well you know me, it was fun working on it.

Went to bed slept my 3.5 hours woke up at 9 to go to class. Chino got online while I was getting ready and asked me "did you finish it?"
"no it was running and it stopped for no reason, i have no idea what is causing it blablabla"
"it's not your code, you just need to increase the memory"
"i already did when it told me 'i'm out memory' but now it's not telling me that"
"shhhh...just do it"
"ok..."
I increased the memory of the program to 1gb, which basically tells my computer i know you're doing a shit ton of stuff, running mac os, making sure the battery is charging checking for wi-fi...all the stuff that a computer usually does, BUT i'm going to need you to devote a fourth of your workspace to this ONE task. (i had the max set at one eight of the workspace before)

well...i don't think i can express how i felt when i saw this so i'll just say what happened. The program started running (and i'm not exaggerating i thought for a long time about which number needs to go here, and i can almost prove that it did) FIFTY times faster.

50!

and most importantly it got way past the point where it got stuck last night. But oh well, too late now, I'll just finish it tonight or tomorrow and get half the points.

Now i needed to go to class, it was 9:40 so I paused the program, put the laptop in my bag and went to take the bus.

On the bus I was thinking dang it...i was so close, now i'm only going to half the points even though the program is right....WAIT! the deadline is midnight PACIFIC time! that means...(counts) 10 am! (counts again) yeah! (can't believe it, counts one more time) HOLY SHIT! i can do this!

So I opened the laptop in the crowded bus, finished running the program, it finished in like 10 seconds, and gave me and answer that looked really good.

Ok, now how do i turn this in...normally this bus will get me to the central station at 9:56 if i run inside i have time to get online, and turn it in.

Then traffic happened, the bus was stopping a lot and for long periods of time, dang it!

wait! some buses have internet...check...this one doesn't, but wait there's an open wifi network! connect! bus starts moving, lose signal. this was followed by about 10 minutes of get signal connect lose signal. It was the perfect go/stop ratio so that I wouldn't make it to the station on time but also I didn't stay in one spot long enough to connect.

Got to the station, 9:58! come on come on! i can make it! run. connect. can't find the network i ALWAYS find, try on my phone,
there's the network,
there's the website,
login,
put in answer
it's right!
check time!

Last attempted 12:07:03 ... 1 day late

Now it's sleepy time.

Easter Break - Finland

2012-04-10T19:46:00.001-05:00

April 5

Thursday, I did not have class and Julie, a French girl who I met on the Lapland trip had invited people to go to Turku with her and her friends. I said yes, and so I got up early to meet them at the city-center at 8. I think it’s the earliest I’ve ever gotten up in Finland. After I got off the bus, and as I was walking towards the meeting point I ran into Nanda and Fleur (I REALLY like her name) they were going to class so we just said hi and kept going. I got to the car rental place and waited about 5 minutes until Julie and her friends arrived. They were both from France and so I told them it would be great to speak in French because that way I could practice. We rented a Peugeot 107, the smallest car I have ever been in but it was pretty ok for 4 people. Patric and Camille sat in the front, Julie and I in the back. The drive there was about 90 minutes, and I slept for most of it, I made sure to tell Julie that she should wake me up if I started snoring. We got to Turku, parked the car and went to the Turku castle, it was pretty small and cute but it was worth the visit. It was built in the 1200’s so it’s pretty old. They’re tried to do interesting stuff with some of the rooms but the result is…cute. There is one room where they have a collection of toys from a lot of different eras, that’s kind of nice. There is another room in which they have some fake treasure, and a stuffed wolf and some creepy music playing. There is another room that’s pretty museum-like; there are a lot of objects belonging to the people who lived in the castle at different points. The shoes they had were surprisingly thin. As in they were long enough to be real shoes, but they only like 4-5 cms wide. After the castle we bought some bread, muffins juice and other stuff. Julie’s friends had brought some ham and other “charcuterie” from France, and so we had a very French semi-picnic right outside the Turku cathedral. It was probably -4 or -3 degrees…you know…whatev’s. We tried to go in the cathedral but they were having mass…freaking religion getting in the way of me seeing cathedrals.

Then we got in the car again and drove 10-15 mins to Naantali, a town that is known to be very sunny. It was…pretty sunny but still cold :D. We went in circles for a while until we found the fishing pole. We walked about 10 meters into the ocean, which was frozen. We kept throwing big rocks to make sure the ice would hold us. Then we got to the port, the frenchies had some coffee and I had a strawberry slush, I know…it was really cold, but I was thirsty and it was delicious. We got back in the car and drove back to Helsinki. Of course I fell asleep in the car again, but only for like 15 minutes I think, and when I woke up they were playing guess the…person/thing/object/idea. So I joined them after they finished the round. I had to guess Julie’s person by asking yes/no questions, you can keep asking as long as you get positive answers, but as soon as you get a “no” your turn is over. After a little bit I was the first to guess Tintin was Julie’s person, then Camille guessed Daffy Duck was mine, Patric guessed some Russian athlete that Camille had chosen; and then we all tried to guess Patric’s…it ended up being a muffin, because he saw it when we were choosing, it was really hard.

We got back to Helsinki, and they all went to their Hockey game so we said bye. I headed to the Central Railway Station to meet Ulla (Finnish lady who wants to practice English). We met and talked for a while, she was reading the paper so I asked her to tell me what was on the articles. We also talked about Lahti; a town near Helsinki where they have ski jump competitions, and they have an athletic museum where they have a ski jump simulator, so we decided that maybe one day we can go. We also talked about maybe having dinner this weekend since it’s Easter break. I said bye and went to my place, and then got ready to meet some people’s for party-time that night.

When I got home I realized that it was Thursday and I hadn’t turned in my logic homework that had been due the day before, so I worked on it, and got two thirds of the problems done, but there were 4 that were really strange/hard, so I left them for later and left for the party even though everyone had been there for a half hour already. I did post my questions about the homework on the course forum.

In my effort to be on time always, I have realized that sometimes it’s just impossible; I mean, things happen. But I always make sure I text people and explain why I won’t make it on time and I text them at least 5 mins before the meeting time so they don’t wait for me unknowingly. That way I’m sure that if I’m late it’s for a legitimate reason. So I got there late, but it was nice, I met this guy who stuttered a lot and I decided I would just talk to him for as long as he was willing to talk to me. I think a lot of people lose patience with him but I decided I wasn’t. He was a cool guy, studies English, tried computer science but didn’t like it, has been on mini-finnish-metal cruises. I went back home and went to sleep around 2-3 am.

April 6 – Friday

I’m not really sure what I did all day…probably worked on some Udacity (one of my online classes, the one that’s really easy)…yeah that’s what I did. The important thing is that I didn’t work on my math presentation which is the thing that’s really important. Oh yeah and I also worked on some of the logic problems I couldn’t get, but they were really strange, and when I can’t get the answer right away I subconsciously distract myself and so I probably watched a lot of Chespirito. I could have even gone to the sauna (barbara’s reprimanding voice “should have…done…something…better” except she would know exactly what it was). But anyway, this was the day that Carmen Jung, a Swedish girl/lady that I have met on both 70000 tons cruises was going to see a concert in Helsinki, since she knew I was here she invited me to go and so we were going to meet there. It was really cool! My first time hanging out with someone from 70000tons outside of 70000tons, that cruise is beast! Anyway I also told Javi about the concert, and he was like I only know one of their songs but I like it a lot…and it’s only 10 euros, so HECK YEAH!

That day my cousin Leslie, a really cool cousin of mine she's like 15? (by the way they found another tumor and removed it but they’re doing tests to see if it was malign or not), got on facebook and we started talking a lot…oh yeah! It was because of the status I posted about giving your life to give the world a shot at salvation, she asked me if I would give my life for someone else, and so we talked about a lot of stuff like that, it was really cool at some point I talked about giving one kid a chocolate bar that costs one dollar or giving 10 kids a piece of candy that costs 10 cents each, or saving or investing that dollar so in the future you can have more to give. I told her that for me life was about that, I know it’s not mine and I know that I will give my life for others, the problem is how to use it to make sure that I give the most. We talked about that and other things (which made me late for the concert but it was fine because last time I went it was supposed to start at 10 but didn’t start until 12), and at the end I asked her what she thought and she said: “it’s ok cousin, don’t worry, I’ll help you buy the other 9 chocolate bars”

I know she will. She’s awesome.

So then I went to the concert, ran into Javi who had brought 2 girls with him, from the netherlands. Turns out Javi had already made friends with the girl selling t-shirts also, who happened to speak perfect Spanish. I was impressed. Then the concert started, the opening band was really good. But I still couldn’t find Carmen…she’ll show up. After they were done we went for some drinks, I got a delicious dry apple cider. And then the actual band started playing, they’re called Norther, they were fun, maybe even good, but not enough for me to be like oh god I have to check them out. Still I decided to enjoy the show, headbang…maybe a little too much (my neck was sore the next day), and just have fun with friends. At some point some finnish guy comes to us and asks Javi and I “moshpit?” I was like “yeah! why not?” and so we had a cutesy 4-5 people moshpit, it was fun. One of Javi's friends was really strong everytime she pushed me, she pushed me. But it was nice and fun.

So yeah, just another normal Friday night in Helsinki, good metal concert, moshpits with nice people…like you do.

During the concert Carmen finally showed up and we hugged and said hi, it was a really cool feeling, like “I thought you were from that other world, where bands are constantly playing and there are infinite amounts of food and there is water all around you, and the guys from your favorite bands are eating breakfast at the table in front of you….but you’re here…does that mean that world actually exists? I didn’t dream it?” It was cool, she was there with her boyfriend who is working in Finland but is from Germany, so she was visiting him. After the concert we went to this bar, where I know they tend to play hard rock/metal as background music, because once I walked by it and I heard Opeth playing (only in Finland). We sat there and talked for a while. When we said bye I told her I was planning on going to Switzerland before I go back to the US, and she said we’d try to see each other there, “if not, I’ll see you on the boat next year”, I told her I’m not sure I’ll go, and it really depends on the bands, to which she replied something like “whatever, you know it will be worth it”. So she’s signed up to go for the third time, and her boyfriend for the second (he missed the first one). I guess there are people crazier than me :D.

I got back home around 3 am and went to sleep…hmmm basketball at 10 tomorrow…we’ll see.

April 7 – Saturday

Woke up at 10…basketball actually starts at 10:45…hmm but I could go back to sleep…ok basketball. So I got up got there right on time and played an awesome 2 hours of basketball. Then there’s Abdu, he’s a guy from Saudi Arabia, really good at basketball and a playing style really similar to mine. I like him a lot, and he goes to play every time I go…so every time. Also on Saturday we always go eat lunch after basketball, so we went, unfortunately it was closed because of some “easter” thing or something (:P). So we said bye and I headed home, hungry and sad, except not really sad. I’m not sure what I made for lunch, maybe sandwiches. But I got home (OH! Taxes! Yeah I also did, or tried to do that on Friday, no wonder I felt like I wasted a lot of time.) and showered…and maybe ate?... and by the time I sat in front of the computer it was 3. Ulla was going to pick me up at 4 to go to her house for dinner. So I finished my taxes and almost immediately the phone rang, it was 4, Ulla was outside, and I was still in my towel! So I got dressed and went. On the way there we picked up two of her friends Jussi and Tiina, while we were in the parking lot Over the Hills and Far Away (by Nightwish) started playing on the radio so me and a 45-ish year old lady enjoyed some awesome symphonic metal in her car (only in Finland). We got to her place; it was a really nice and cozy house, the furniture was all made in the same style; very simple clean, light, unpainted wood. “The boys”, that is Jussi, Kimmo, and I went to the basement to throw some darts. Unfortunately Kimmo does not speak English, and I speak even less Finnish so we could not talk a lot. But Jussi made up for that, he is a really nice guy, originally from Sweden, absolutely beast as darts, and played basketball growing up, then was assistant coach for the Finnish national Baseball team, then fell in love with golf. So he had plenty of stories and was glad to share them, also as his wife Tiina said, he tends to drag them out, which I didn’t mind at all. I won the first round of darts! But it was all beginners luck, also Jussi’s board at home is broken so he’s really out of practice (hadn’t shot in like 2 weeks!). Sure enough in the other 2 rounds he kicked our butts, but it was a lot of fun. Then I said to him “as a basketball player I have to ask…can you throw with your left hand?” and as a basketball player he replied “I can shoot a basketball just as well with my left, so yes I’m not as good, but I’m ok” and then we threw darts with our left hand for a little bit…I was pathetic.

Then dinner was ready, Ulla made delicious smoked salmon with a brown sugar coating. MMMM so good. Also, Finnish fun fact (triple F), Finnish people tend to peel their potatoes in the winter but not in the summer, this is because in the winter, the potatoes have thicker skin, so they think it’s too much. For desert we had mämmi, a finnish desert that tends to be controversial apparently some English tv show cook tried it and didn’t like it. I thought it was delicious, first I had a little serving, it’s this black…poopish looking thing with the consistency of mud, but you pour a little sugar on it and then some cream on top of that. Duuuuuuuuuude SO good, I had a second serving that was 3 times bigger than the first one. Good stuff. Then we talked about stuff for a while, Jussi said that Nightwish is much better now of course…because they have a Swedish singer hehehe. We talked about ABBA and how one of the girls was able to sing really well in English but didn’t know a word of it. And then Ulla let me borrow her Mamma Mia DVD, I’ve never seen it but I’m excited about it.

I took the bus back to my place and got ready quickly because the Italian girls had invited me and some other people to go to Karaoke that night (it was a busy day…and I still hadn’t started my math homework). It was fun, we sang…something and then we sang Another brick in the wall part 2, which was surprisingly boring to sing, all there is is the chorus, and then a solo and then the chorus twice. Also what makes the song good is that it’s sung by a large group of children, turns out it sounds pretty bad when it’s being sung by 4 young adults, who don’t know what they’re doing. Dang it, I can’t remember the first song we sang, but we did an ok job, they clapped a decent amount, which they definitely didn’t for people who did a crappy job, so it was alright.

Personally I wanted to sing some Sonata Arctica they had 3 songs by them

Tallulah - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20lwHaiomC4

Fullmoon - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfI8o_hzaDk

Victoria’s secret - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUszotxuwGo

And I turned in my little piece of paper for fullmoon, but time passed people left and even though I stayed there afterwards they never called my name…oh well, maybe they thought they’d had enough of me after another brick in the wall. At least I got to hear someone sing Tallulah, and everyone sing along to the chorus (only in Finland will everyone at the bar know the lyrics to a song that’s classified as metal)

I went home, knowing that sometime before going back to the US I’ll go sing some sonata :D. For the third night in a row went to bed at like 3 am.

Also I made a list of awesome/strange/unexpected songs at the karaoke.

Californication

Be our Guest (beauty and the beast)

Comfortably numb (someone sang this)

Defying gravity (from wicked)

Barbara-ann (hehe)

I’ll cover you (from rent)

Always – Erasure (the reason this game is awesome http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzA4ZY_ZGo0)

No rain (blind melon)

One – Metallica

Seasons of love (from rent)

Semi-charmed life

76 trombones (from the music man)

shut up and let me go – ting tings

speed of light – stratovarius (only in Finland)

Stairway to heaven

Welcome to the Jungle

That’s not my name – ting tings

Sound of music

Think of me – phantom of the opera

Angel of music – phantom also

Slaying the dreamer, wishmaster, like 2 more from nightwish :D…totally unsingable though.

April 8 – Sunday

On Saturday I told myself, ok you didn’t travel anywhere during this break because you needed to do homework…let’s get some homework done. But then the Italian girls (Ilaria and Roverta) told me they and another guy from Italy (Massimiliano) were having an easter lunch on Sunday and I had to join them. So I had to choose between math homework and homemade authentic Italian food…well math is hard so I told myself that I would sleep in (I needed it) and if I woke up on time to go to the lunch I would go. I did, and so I went, while we were waiting for the food we had a really enjoyable talk about the influence of the Vatican on the Italian government, of course that led to talking abortion, and taxes and all sorts of controversial issues. I was really surprised about how easy it was to talk with them about it, even though we were on different sides of the issues, I felt like I could push and use all my arguments and ask all my questions and they wouldn’t feel offended or take it personally. I even told them at some point that I really enjoy talking about things like this but I have to be really careful because sometimes it can hurt people. All 3 of them were like really? Why would anyone get offended or hurt? That was cool.

The food was delicious, it was like a rice lasagna; red rice/ham/eggs/cheese/rice/ham/eggs/cheese. Delicious and very filling. Unfortunately Ilaria (one of the girls) had to leave before the food was ready, though she was happy because she was going to the airport to pick up her parents who were coming to visit. Afterwards we had ice cream and then we left.

Ok, it’s Sunday, I have no more commitments, it’s time to do some mat…WAIT! I am taking an online course in algorithm analysis, I have homework due Monday night, and I haven’t even watched the videos. So there I spent the rest of the day watching videos, which were awesome…but still haven’t started math. I got to talk to Barbara for a few minutes but she seemed busy, it was nice to see her :D.

April 9 – Monday

Ok, sleeping in – check

Commmitments for the day: basketball at 7:45

Things that I need to do before math: finish watching the videos and do the homework for algorithm analysis…dang.

And so I did. I’m pretty sure I had delicious pasta for lunch. I did the questions, had a few wrong the first time, got them right on the second (and last) try…phew. Chino (guy from france, with whom I’m competing to do better in the class) didn’t, but he did the long programming assignment in like half the time it took me so that’s a little scary. Still for now “se lo echo” hehehe. I had some problems with a tricky part of the program and I thought I fixed it, but that created another problem, and now it was time to go to basketball, so I wrote what I needed on a piece of paper and worked out how to fix it on the bus (sigh…fine I might be a little geeky). Basketball was alright, Abdu was there and so we shot 50 3-pointers each, I made 21, 42% which was great, always go for 40%. Abdu hit 17, but he’s not used to the routine, I think he’s a lot better than me at 3 pointers, so soon he’ll start kicking my ass at that. The bad thing was that there were only 6 other people and they were not very good so we could not have really competitive games, it was still fun though.

On the way back I was going to buy groceries, especially drinks but the alepa (shop) was closed so no delicious drinks, I had to quench my thirst with ice cream, water, and grapes.

I fixed my program and turned it in, got it right!

Then it was sleepy time

April 10 – Tuesday

Slept in, :D

OK, NOW YOU’VE DONE EVERYTHING YOU COULD TO PUT OFF DOING YOUR MATH NOW LET’S DO SOME MATH.

Ok, fine, but first breakfast. I impressed myself today; first cooked a half diced potato, threw in a diced tomato, then 2 slices of ham cut into little pieces, salt, pepper and oregano (mmmmmm oregano), by now I expected the little potato cubes would be cooked but they were still hard, and the ham and tomato were starting to burn…hmmmm what to do? Let’s throw some water in, it should cover the potatoes and cook them more thoroughly and prevent the tomatoes from turning into charcoal hehe, also cover the pan to make sure all the heat is not coming from the pan.

Worked beautifully, when the potatoes were finally ready, I threw in 2 eggs, mixed the whole thing, and to top it off some cheese.

It was really good, too bad all I had to drink with it was water.

Still it was awesome.

Alright alright alright alright, math.

I did some math, I actually got a lot done, I was really happy with my progress, and if I do the same tomorrow, and thurdsay I should have my presentation ready on time (the deal is; this should be a 4 hour presentation which means I will be teaching my class for a whole week, the good thing is if it goes well, I won’t have to take the final exam, so it’s worth it, but a lot of work).

The initial plan for today was to go eat at the unicafe (university sponsored restaurant: full meal, usually delicious, for 2.40 euros) at 6:30, then go to the gym until 8 which is when basketball starts. Then basketball until 10 :D.

BUT THEN, Jessi, Linza’s boyfriend (linza is a girl from the us who studies in finland and who saved my trip here like 7 times, she’s awesome) posted on the facebook that he’s going to be part of a comedy night here in Helsinki. Awesome! I’m in! it was at 8 pm so I guess basketball is canceled, that’s alright, just for tonight. I invited some people on the facebook, but everyone was either busy or didn’t get the message on time.

Like I said, good progress in math, I liked the idea from the day before or working something out on the bus so I did the same, well I didn’t “work it out”, but I read the next proof that I need to explain and my understanding of it went from “wait…what?” to “oooh ok I…kind of…see what you’re trying to do…still no idea how, but I see where we’re going” so that’s good.

I got to unicafe, the special today was salmon in some cheesy sauce, so I went for it (the special is 4.70 euros, not always worth it, but tonight, definitely) it was delicious. Ok, comedy time, I walked to the place which was a little hard to find, it looked strangely quiet, so I asked someone if there was a comedy event there tonight, I wasn’t sure it was the right place. He said no…ummmmm ok…find internet, check the event…the place is definitely right…OH WAIT! I FORGOT TO CHECK THE DATE! It’s on May 3^rd don’t ask me why, I was completely convinced that it was tonight. Good thing all the people I invited couldn’t go!

Ok but what now…hmmm basketball starts in 15 mins…but I didn’t bring my shoes, shorts or shirt, alright, I can play in these shoes (good thing I wear basketball shoes as everyday shoes) this shirt is a little tight, and it has sleeves, bleh, it’s old I can rip off the sleeves but the shorts…I had been thinking that I didn’t have enough, only 2 pairs of short, when I’m playing 4 times every week. Alright fine! I went and bought the cheapest pair of shorts I could find (18 euros, and pretty good shorts actually). And basketball it was!

**********************

Now starts a big basketball update, you might want to skip it, though there is some interesting stuff about Finland itself, most is about basketball though and the friends I've made playing here.

I changed quickly and decided against ripping off the sleeves from my shirt, though I’ll probably keep using it for basketball so I’ll do it before next time. As soon as I walked on the court a team that didn’t have subs asked me to play with them and so I started playing, no warm up, no stretching not even a single shot so it was a slow start but I actually played pretty well tonight, though now that I think back it’s because I was going in a lot and not shooting I think my shooting was alright, but below average. I didn’t make a single 3 pointer…wait! Yes! One.

Jasmina is a finnish girl who goes to play a lot, for about 3 months I called her emmi…emmi is her friend. But now I know her real name, so that’s good. I like how she plays, she sets some really good and strong picks, and plays really good and clean defense, you can tell she focuses really hard when she plays. It’s fun to see her play, and she’s getting to know how I play so she’s really good at passing me the ball at the right time. I like it when we’re on the same team. She shoots with her left hand exclusively, even for open layups on the right side. But she’s good at getting tricky shots to go in, especially tonight, she played really well.

Then there’s…Mexican guy, I feel really bad I don’t know his name. But oh well, he’s really good, he can jump really high, one time I went up for a layup and he jumped like 20 cms higher than me and blocked the crap out of me, and he even called it he said “bajate!”. But it was in a fun exciting way, not really trying to offend me, I liked it. He shoots really well and actually he’s really good at going to the goal…even his defense is good so I guess he doesn’t really have any weak spots…ok wait it takes him a little bit of time to get his shot up from outside. But yeah he’s really good, also love it when he’s on my team, or when he guards me.

There were 4 teams, so we played half-court 2 teams on each half. First we played the blue team, they had 2 giant guys and I got to guard them both, the first one was really tall did not miss a single shot from mid-range, I’m pretty sure he kicked my butt, but he didn’t play for very long. Then there was the other one, his technique was really bad, and his outside shot was crap, but he was incredibly strong and heavy; I stood no chance he could move my whole body just with his arm, it was so effortless for him that it wasn’t really a foul, if he could manage to get the ball in the key it was over he made it almost every time. But it was not impossible to stop him from getting the ball, and when I had the ball there was no competition I made it almost every time I got it either because he wasn’t quick enough to get outside before I shot it or because he wasn’t quick enough to stop me from going in.

Then there was the white team, nothing really special, still fun playing with them. Oh but Aleksi was with them, he’s pretty cool, I didn’t like him at first because he plays really rough, which is fine, but he also used to get pretty mad when people fouled him. One time, a while ago, I went up for a layup with there was no doubt I would make but he still tried to stop me even though he was in a position where he would foul me for sure. I ended up accidentally hitting him in the jaw, which hurts a lot, it was the last basket of the game, so then he started yelling at me, I told him “I’m sorry we both went up and I accidentally hit you, it’s not like I was trying to hurt you, sorry”, and I just walked away. A few minutes later he came to me and apologized for yelling at me. I told him no problem. That immediately made me like him. And maybe I’m making this up but I don’t think I’ve seen him get mad or complain at games since then. Actually last Wednesday after playing I went to the gym to stretch and he came and said hi to me, and we talked for like 30 mins. He’s a surgeon, so I got to ask him about how that works in Finland. (Wow, this is a long digression from basketball, but I think it’s worth it, so suck it.) Medical School is really hard to get into in Finland, it’s all based off of an exam, no interviews, no resumes no nothing, which is kind of bad. Also it’s not really about how much you score, it’s about the fact that they take the best X-number of candidates, so even if you did well, if everyone else did too, too bad. He said that they have 2 kinds of health-care here in Finland, the public one that everyone has access to, the waiting can be long sometimes, but they offer everything for close to nothing to everyone. Then there’s the private option, which pretty much only big companies buy for their employees. The problem is that those are small and only offer basic doctor visits, diagnostics and prescriptions, nothing big like surgeries or long treatments. So when things get bad people end up being sent back to the public which works well enough to take care of it.

He said that people still complain about it, but he thinks it’s a really nice system, if he could change something about it, it would be to get rid of the private, or to make it seriously work and not just for “wimpy” stuff.

Ok, so yeah, he was playing for the white team hehe.

Then there was the yellow team. Abdu was in it, which is awesome, we’ve become the typical pair of players who play similarly, are deadly when playing on the same team, and always guard each other when on opposite teams. I think on the first play he got the ball at the three point line, and I was late to guard him so he hit it in my face. The next play I got the ball at the three point line, he was late so I went up and hit a three right in his face! It was awesome, we high fived each other. I LOVE playing with him haha! He knows my weaknesses, I know his, so it’s really hard, we’re really evenly matched…it’s just a lot of fun.

And finally there was Salla. So last week I went to work out before basketball and there was a girl at the gym too, she was wearing long-ish basketball shorts and a Mike Bibby shirt all other finnish girls who play wear tight shirts and short-ish shorts, so I thought it was weird. She was pretty short and looked like she was 17…ok whatev’s. Then I went up for basketball and a few minutes later she showed up too…alright, so it’s not just about the clothes, you play basketball…alright. She was, say on team 4, I was on team 1 and I was playing against team 2, then we played against team 3. When it was my turn to sit out and I was looking at the other teams playing I saw her making some really good, quick, and hard passes. Not only the fact that she could make the passes was impressive, but also the fact that she could see them. Intriguing. I didn’t notice this until today, but that day I didn’t see her shoot. She was organizing her team, passing to open people making things work without shooting. Her technique and her footwork were really good, she was also really good at faking going to one side and going to another, and quick too. The other thing that is hard to explain is that when she dribbled and passed and when she drove to the basket…it didn’t look like a girl was playing, normally girls just look weaker…it looks less natural and this is even for girls who are really good, almost all the time, even if you don’t know that it’s a girl from the way they play you can tell. The only exceptions that I have seen personally were 2 girls from the osu basketball team! That’s right, only 2 out of the whole team. And she’s only 17! I had decided that if she keeps going to play and she keeps impressing me I’ll try to talk to her, and then get her in contact with Lindsey the girl from the OSU team, she would know who to talk to in case she was interesting in playing in college in the US.

Anyway, by the time we got to play team 4 last week she had already quit playing, I was sad I didn’t get to play against her, but oh well.

Today, at some point, before we played each other we were both sitting out at a certain point and she sat next to where I was sitting, I introduced myself and we started talking. So her name is Salla, she had not played basketball for 2 years before last week, she saw that there was a time for “basketball” so she imagined that she could go shoot for a while, but when she saw that there were actually teams with pretty good people playing she was like oh god this is too good! She has been playing for 10 years (which is crazy considering she’s 17!) Had a really bad knee injury 5 years ago (at 12! That sucks). And had to slowly quit, she’s had surgery on it twice but they’re going to do a 3^rd one. Then I decided I had to ask her age, things didn’t add up, turns out she’s 21 (but she reeeeeeeally looks 17). She said that she feels in pretty good shape about basketball but her shot is really bad (which is when I noticed I hadn’t seen her shoot). Later on I saw her shoot, she got blocked but her technique was almost perfect (she even flicked her wrist!), I think ideally she should shoot a little higher, but on that shot she was almost exactly halfway between where girls shoot and where I think one should ideally shoot.

Anyway, I told her about the other times that you can play basketball here in Helsinki, but most of them didn’t work for her. I told her that Abdu and I are planning on trying to schedule some shooting sessions before the times when there is basketball. We ended up scheduling one on Friday since all 3 of us are free on Friday mornings and there’s no basketball on Friday.

SO! Now I have 2 really good, really serious shooting partners.

End of Basketball update

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As you may have noticed, I didn’t get to talk to Barbara a lot, I’m sure she’s been really busy, and so on the way home I decided that I would type this up, so she can read it when she has time, even if I’m asleep or not available, and know what I’m up to, and that I’m thinking about her.

Another thing I should mention is that between a lot of the things that I mentioned here I probably read some of "the howling miller" by aalto paasilinna. It's the book on which the song "black sheep" by sonata arctica (you might say i'm obsessed with this band...wait until I start talking about nightwish) is inspired. And I'm really enjoying it.

From that I figured it would be a good time to make a list of books i've read since the beginning of the year

Phantom of the Opera

The power of one

Angels and Demons

The hunger games, 1, 2, 3.

Invisible cities

Wicked

The wizard of oz

Geeze! That's a book every 2 weeks! I'd never read anywhere near this much. I'm loving it.

Asia Trip 2011 - Part 10 (Final) - India

2012-02-01T17:27:00.001-06:00

Saturday

New Delhi

In new Delhi, we looked for a way to get a cab we walked back and forth in the airport since it was maybe 2 in the morning. We eventually found the official place to get a cab and got one, bay 39 is where we were supposed to go.

We were intercepted by another one of the cab drivers who said he’d take us there for half the estimated price they gave us at the official thing, so we never made it to bay 39.

As we got closer to the hotel we started getting a little scared the neighborhood was not very…clean looking and we just kept thinking that we ended up getting a crappy hotel for looking online. The hotel was actually great, the people were really nice and polite to us (they kept calling us “boss”), everything inside was very organized and clean and the room was great they asked for our passports and we checked in. It was a good surprise. Before we went to sleep we talked with some of the people and setup our plan for the next few days. For about 1000 dollars we would get a city tour in Delhi, a car ride and a tour of Agra, then a car to Jaipur, a hotel there, and then a flight to Calcutta for all 4 of us. Things in India are cheap.

Also since we only got there at 2-ish in the morning and were leaving at 6 the next day the only charged us for one night, like I said REALLY nice people.

After naps and recovery we went out to see New Delhi, we went to the red fort, which has something to do with Delhi becoming the capital instead of Agra. There is this market on the way in where they sell fabrics and little wooden statues and purses and all sorts of stuff that tourists love to buy, apparently only people who are descendants of the original shop owners can work there. In 1857 the fort was captured by the English who broke through the main gate using an elephant. Building the place took 9 years 5000 workers and 10 million rupees. It’s crazy, nowadays if a building takes more than 2 years to be finished everyone gets angry and thinks it’s a crazy project. WE WANT RESULTS NOW!

We did not have time to stop by the rajghat (surprisingly easy to pronounce) which is where Gandhi’s ashes are held. But we went to the Gandhi museum where they have a lot of pictures and speeches, which were actually really interesting, I took some pictures of them and will see how many I will bother to put on the facebook of course if anyone wants to see more of them just let me know, they were really good I thought.

Most of what he talked about could be related to how having one big leader that was corrupt messed everything up, and I thought that what a revolution did in general was get rid of that one big leader (or government). But what comes afterwards, either a replacement that is chosen in the middle of chaos, or a break up into smaller units, smaller leaders that can (and usually do) take advantage of their new position. Where does true progress come from then? Dunno.

We visited Jantar Mantar which is an astronomy complex, giant pieces of equipment, that really look like buildings, were used to measure the position of the sun and other stars. People were so creative! Well I guess just creative in different ways than we are now, but man, it’s crazy to imagine how much ancient cultures knew about astronomy, and they ways they used to study it.

We visited the central gate, took some cool pictures and had ice cream, it was really hot. There is a big problem with people trying to sell stuff to tourists; as soon as you get out of a cab there are 5-10 people trying to stuff stuff in your hands. This lady selling henna tattoos grabbed Maria’s hand and started drawing on it, she didn’t know any better and thought it looked cool so she let her do it, we ended up deciding (not that we really had a choice) to let her do it, and Maria was happy. When she was done though, she wanted to charge us a lot of money so we ended up telling her to take 5 bucks and leave us alone. At some point some guys approached us told us his name and shook our hands, I’m pretty sure they were going to try something weird, but either we left too quickly or our guide scared them off, it was a little weird.

We visited Humayun’s tomb, which is a complex that includes some temples, the guy’s tomb and the tombs of some of his wifes, it’s really amazing to see such beautiful buildings and monuments. To think that someone was willing to spend so much time money and effort to building these things is crazy. I had a lot of mixed feelings, on one hand they’re literally awesome, but then again it’s a lot of resources spent on a building. Then again, if you have a lot of money and resources why not use them to build amazing cultural monuments that everyone will get to visit and be amazed by centuries later? Oh wait…you could use them to help all the starving people that live next door.

It was definitely an interesting experience and the whole time I felt incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to experience them.

Next up was the Lotus temple it is a temple dedicated to the purity and equality of all religions. A really beautiful building, in which anyone is welcome to come and pray to whatever they believe in. However they do have some kind of own religion with their own prophet. I didn’t find out much more than that. But the idea was interesting. We went for lunch, a little too spicy as always, and then another monument. A huge tower, in a plaza where there was another really big and heave iron pole monument. I don’t really remember the history of this monument but the detail on it was crazy, you can see it on the pictures, the craftsmanship is hard to believe. Only pictures can even begin to do it justice.

We went for some shopping which was nice because everything was so cheap. My mom bought little presents for everyone at home.

This was an exhausting day, we went back to the hotel and Maria and I jumped in the pool and played for a while before bed.

Sunday

Sunday…man what a day. We woke up early to go to Agra, mainly to see the Taj Mahal. I slept on the way there, which was nice, we got to the parking and as always were immediately surrounded by a bunch of people trying to sell us stuff, that, however is when my dad realized he didn’t have our passports…BAD. They had asked for them at the hotel in Delhi, and told us they’d return them but they forgot, and we did too. Luckily we didn’t need them until Monday afternoon when we were supposed to fly to Calcutta, but still, it was really scary, we called the hotel and sure enough they had them, and were happy to offer to mail them to us the next day, which was of course, crap. So we talked and fought for a little while until we got to the point where the guy would hire a cab to take them to our hotel in Jaipur, where we would be that night, we’d have to pay for the cab but this was one of those situations where you don’t have a choice and so we were just thankful that we would get them back, it was a scary time.

That being said it was time to visit the Taj Mahal, one of the 7 wonders of…yeah I tried to look up a list of the 7 wonders, there are like 70 lists of 7 wonders, I think the famous one is the 7 wonders of antiquity and I’m pretty sure the Taj Mahal and the Terra Cota warriors are 2 of those, but even versions of that vary from source to source, so who knows.

This place was awesome though, standing in front of something so majestic makes you feel small, but at the same time really happy to get to see it. The guy who had it built did it for one of his wives, the one who gave him the most children and so the one he loved the most (naturally). I think it was something like 13 or something else that was ridiculous. So ladies if you’re wondering why you don’t have a Taj Mahal, it may have something to do with the fact that you don’t want to share your husband with an undetermined number of other ladies, and at the same time give him 13+ children…so no complaining!

Seriously though this place was so beautiful, 22 domes one for every year that it took to build. The estimated cost fixed to represent today’s currency was 20,000,000,000 USD. INSANE, yet incredibly and undeniably beautiful. It’s closed on Fridays except for the Muslim mosque. I won’t try to describe it, there’s no way, pictures are on facebook. Man…it was crazy, there are 2 tombs in the center for the guy and his (favorite) wife. The stones that are used to decorate the whole place are semi-see-through so you can see light through it and sections of the marble that are not as think. It must look even more incredible under the moonlight. It’s also surprisingly cool inside.

I forgot to say that we rode from the parking lot to the monument on a camel, and the little sister of the kid who was in charge of the thought Maria was really cool so she gave Maria one of the key rings she was selling as a present. It was a really cool moment…Also I rode a camel! It was cool.

On our way back to the car a big storm hit, and it started raining a lot, and there was a big accident on the road so our driver decided to take an alternate route. This alternate route was not in as good a condition at one point we had to go through a puddle…that turned out to be about a foot deep. The car died halfway through it and it was pretty scary but eventually it started again and we kept going. We went through a few towns in the middle of nowhere where I saw the most poverty I have ever seen in my life. There were houses which basically consisted of 4 wooden poles about 4 feet away from each other that formed a square. A plastic square to protect from the rain and then some leafs to sleep on. Imagine a few hundreds of these back to back and that’s what these towns looked like. It was hard to see.

At some point we stopped for foodsies and realized that we had lost our license plate probably around when the car died in the puddle. Eventually we got to Jaipur, which apparently was completely new to our driver, he looked for the address for a while and couldn’t find it, asked a few people and still couldn’t find it. Sure enough, a cop saw that we didn’t have a license plate and pulled us over, we don’t really know what they talked about but the cop asked for the guy’s driver’s license, he pulled it out but didn’t want to give it to him since he’d get a ticket…they talked a little more, then our driver was quiet for a second…put the car in gear and drive off!

Yeah, insane, we were scared as heck, sat there quietly and hoped for the best, a few blocks down another cop pulled us over, he was standing in front of the car, the driver slowed down, stopped, and when the cop moved to the side to go towards the window, we drove off again.

It was a fun time, since we still didn’t really know where we were going so we kept driving around, hoping the cops wouldn’t find us…We ended up going to a place to put some credit in our driver’s phone since he was out. He called the hotel and got someone to come get us.

Got to the hotel, it was nice but no internet, also no food, so we went out for food, all we found was cookies and juice…but oh well. Then we got back to the hotel and then they did have food. So it was good.

Monday

We toured Jaipur, went to see a famous wall-house and shopped for more presents. We did not have a lot of time before our flight and our driver had no idea what was where so we just went to the airport and after going the wrong way only twice we made it and flew to Calcutta.

Calcutta

We had about an 8 hours layover so we hired another taxi-tour. We ate at KFC so our stomachs wouldn’t cry. Saw victoria palace and walked around the gardens, walked by the riverside, where there were a lot of little shops selling all sorts of exotic foods. And finally went to visit mother Theresa’s house. When we asked people about her their reaction tended to be very strange, they looked even a little mad and said that she got a lot of credit for not really doing a lot, but they really did not want to talk about the issue any more. When we got there though it was really cool, a nun told us they had just closed visiting hours but she would let us in exceptionally since we came from so far. The people there were all incredibly nice told us some of the history and showed us around. Apparently a lot of young people from all over the world go there to volunteer for a few months or years and then go back, so that helps them a lot. When we came in the nuns started cleaning Mother Theresa’s grave, they looked really happy and honored to do so. There was a general feeling of peace and niceness in the whole house. I was very glad to have visited.

We took our taxi back to the airport and that was it for India.

On the way back our flight stopped in Frankfurt, we had some pasta that was alright, but most importantly they had Mary Poppins available to watch on the plane, it was cool. Maria said that Mary Poppins (Julie Andrews) looks a lot like Barbara.

Asia Trip 2011 - Part 9 - China part II

2012-01-29T10:58:00.002-06:00

Thursday leave for

Beijing

We got to Beijing with no hotel reservation, I think that as we visited more and more cities we became more relaxed about planning ahead, luckily it all worked out quite nicely. In the airport, as it had become a habit we looked for some sort of tour agency, and found one right next to the baggage claim area the sign said that they would get you really good deals on hotels. We gave them the opportunity to assist us but all they did was search this website (which I’m sure was the company that hired them) and show us the results. They were all pretty crappy and we were pretty sure that we could get way better deals on the websites that we used, also their English was pretty bad so they couldn’t really tell us why one hotel was better than the others, also the website was in Chinese only. After a while I just asked the lady to let me look at the computer she was using so I could look at the options myself, she did and then went to help someone else. Perfect! I had a laptop and internet so I went on kayak.com and found us a nice hotel for a really good price. The lady was pretty confused when I gave her back the laptop thanked her and walked away but oh well. Oh right, the reason we didn’t do that in the first place was because there was no free accessible wifi network. As soon as we left the baggage claim area (in most countries that is a restricted area, i.e. when you leave you can’t go back in) we found a city tour place and asked for a tour to the great wall. They told us that all the tours leave around 730 in the morning so that was not an option they did tell us that we could hire a driver/car for the day and they would take us to the wall and then to our hotel for 1300 yuan. There was a guy also asking about a our to the wall, as it turned out he was on an 8 hour layover to LA so he figured he might as well go see the great wall. We invited him to join us if he paid for 25% of the cost of the tour and he was all up for it. Unfortunately when the driver got there he said he wouldn’t take 5 people (+Maria) we would not fit comfortably in the car so he couldn’t’ go with us.

I took an awesome nap in the car I think it was like a 90 minutes drive, and then there we were the great wall. There were a lot of people there, we parked in the parking area and started walking through this shopping area towards the entrance through which you get on the wall. There was a guy selling magic tricks, my dad and I are really into that stuff and figuring out how it works and he showed us 4 rings and how he got them to go into each other and then a chain and ring trick in which he let go of the ring and it tied itself to the chain. My dad and I decided that we would go see the wall and probably buy them on the way back to the car, so we walked away…for like 5 seconds and then my dad decided he couldn’t wait so we went back and bought them so we could know how they worked. They were actually a lot of fun to show to our relatives back in Colombia. We saw a spaghetti place and ate there (my family decided after a while that we would, as long as it was reasonably possible, avoid local food since it was spicy and their stomachs had already taken a lot) and then onto the wall.

It was awesome, literally, worthy of awe. The first thing you do when you get up there is try to see how far it goes…you start looking own at your feet and then your head goes up, to the left to the right, then the wall gets lost behind some mountain then it shows up again up another mountain and back down…as far as your eye can see, it is unreal, it never stops. Then you turn around and go again, halfway hoping that you will see the beginning of you couldn’t see then end, nope endless on this side too, how can something like that exist? The walking area on top of the wall is about as wide as one and a half car lanes and people are just constantly going up and down, it doesn’t get any less crowded as you get far from the entrance. It is fair to say though that although there were definitely a lot of people there, it didn’t feel all that crowded most of the time, every 100 meters or so there were “stations” there were areas the size of a living room that were covered and had windows, it did get crowded around those, people were looking to get away from the sun I guess since it was pretty hot. We walked to the first station and it became an uphill walk from there so my mom decided she would stay behind and wait for us. My dad and I decided it would be fun to go through 3 more stations the 3^rd one was at the top of a hill and we thought the view would be worth it. Maria Jose got tired really quickly, and so my dad started carrying her and then it was my turn. It was easy at first but it got harder as we got more tired and the Chinese summer sun kept hitting us hard. After a while, we reached an area where the wall became really steep, I would say it was about a 45 degree slope and so three were some hand rails to help people on their way up since it was just a flat path and there were no stair-like steps. When we got really close to the third station, our final destination, the hill became so steep that we had to go up really tall steps. The view was amazing. You can check out the pictures.

The way back was a lot of fun, Maria and I ran most of the way down while singing and it went by really quickly even though we were both really tired when we got back. We went back to the car and I napped on the way back to the city.

We finally got back to our hotel and went to go check in when they told us that they didn’t have our reservations, I checked my email and saw that Kayak had sent me an email saying that for some reason the reservation did not go through so I needed to try again. It turned out that the rates given at the hotel were cheaper than the ones we found online, so we told them that we were very upset but we would take the normal rates and talk with our agency later :p.

We relaxed for a while and my mom, somehow with her broken English found us a “tour” to go see an acrobat show. I had seen a similar one that was here at OSU and it had been awesome so I was excited about it. It was the same idea except it was more in every way, the stage was cooler the acts were harder and more impressive and it was really fun and exciting. They had some hat routines, jumping through hoops, contortionists, a guy with a mask that changed faces, and the final acts which was a spherical iron cage in which 2 bikes started driving, then they added another one, 3 bikes riding inside this tiny iron cage it was crazy. But THEN they added another one, with 4 bikes they did a lot of cool patterns in which the paths intersected each other constantly, one tiny mistake and they would all die, instantly, it was really intense. AND THEN they added a 5^th one, I don’t know how they did it, it was chaotic, crazy, scary, awesome. We all really enjoyed it and of course Maria thought it was the coolest thing ever.

We saw a KFC on the way to the show and asked our driver to take us there to get some food so we could eat at the hotel. it turns KFC has a completely different profile abroad from what it is in the US, although that’s kind of true for all fast food places, in Colombia eating at McDonalds is like a “cool” thing to do. But in the US, it’s what you do if you want something to go in your stomach, just something, it doesn’t have to be good. Apparently our driver misunderstood us because when we came back out and looked for him he was gone, nowhere to be seen. Hmmm ok well we’ll walk around and then get a taxi, show them the address of the hotel and we’ll be ok. So we did that, it was actually a pretty cool and active area, there were a lot of people selling cheap little cool toys, one was a slingshot that shot a little plastic sheet that would spin like a helicopter and light up on the way down. Another guy was flying and selling an unusual type of kite, except it was a lot of little kites lined up hanging from the string with no big kite at the end, it looked really cool and he had like 50 little kites flying. My dad thought it would be cool to have and so he bought it. When he looked at it like 5 seconds after buying it he saw that it had like 8 kites, not 50 and of course when we asked the guy he said “well of course this one is like 10 times more expensive but sure I can sell you one”. Really? I was still a little hurt by the guy who took our money in Shanghai, and so I decided I would not have it this time, so I was pretty direct with the guy and told him look you either give us the big one for the price or give us our money back, he said no and so I said I’d call the cops. Since I already knew that was a threat that actually meant something there (it wouldn’t in Colombia, the cops would probably laugh at you if you called them for something like that) I asked the next person who walked by us where I could find a cop and he told me. So I told the guy again “will you give me my money back or am I going to go get a cop” he didn’t and so I told my parents to stay with them and I started walking that way, my parents told me to just drop it again, but dang it I just wanted to win once! :P. After walking like 30 meters, a kid came and tapped me in the shoulder and said something like “hey friend it’s ok he said he’ll give you another one of the small ones for free, just don’t call the police”. I decided that would be good enough and my dad said ok, so we left. After walking for a while we tried to get a cab which ended being a lot harder than we thought, there were a lot of bicycle taxis but they were asking for 80 yuan, and we would need to take 2. So we kept looking for a normal taxi, eventually a motorcycle-taxi showed up and told us he would take all 4 of us for 40. I don’t know how that bike made it or how we fit in that tiny cabin, but we did. When we got to the hotel we started asking about our options for the next day and they told us that since we had to be in the airport at 1 we needed to leave really early because of traffic, plus it was kind of far. So we said ok and didn’t get to see a few places that we wanted to just visit and would only have taken 1.5-2 hours.

Friday

Our car didn’t pick us up until an hour after it was supposed to, and we went straight to the airport, the ride was supposed to take 1.5 hours plus however long traffic delayed us…it took us 30 minutes. So there we were at the airport with plenty of time, and not having seen the things we wanted to see. Oh well.

From Beijing, we flew to Shanghai, where we would get on a plane to New Delhi, well that got delayed so we got to hang out there for a really long time, maria was having fun, and we read some more of her book. They gave us cookies (a lot) and cans of milk tea which was actually pretty good, though not really satisfactory for a 3 hour delay. Maria drank a lot of tea because she really liked it and had an accident on the plane while she was sleeping.

That was it for China, next up India.

Asia Trip 2011 - part 8 - China I

2011-09-06T00:16:00.001-05:00

Shanghai

Monday

We arrived late Monday so all we did was go to our hotel, the highway was really big and well kept, it was pretty impressive. It was pretty hard to communicate with people, since no one spoke any English, not even the people at the hotel. The hotel was a super 8 hotel, but it was a little shady. There was no wi-fi and the LAN internet was really slow, especially google pages, as for facebook…completely blocked.

Tuesday

We got in touch with our friend Richard, who we had met in Bhutan and he suggested that we buy of those bus tours. We took a cab that took us downtown where we bought our passes. The idea is that these buses run continuously around the city and you can get off and back on at any station (14 total I think). So we got on the bus which took us through the historic part of the city, it’s always cool to see cities that conserve old buildings and have a nice looking downtown.

We got off at this stop where there was a little shopping area, we looked around and bought some stuff, my dad bought this little portable speaker of which all of his brothers wanted one back in Colombia. Still walking around we got to a spot where there were a bunch of people who approached/harassed us offering stuff to buy for really cheap, these included watches, iphones, ipads, designer clothing and other stuff that we didn’t really want. Later on, we saw this group of guys selling roller skate attachments for your shoes. They were kind of like those shoes they sell now that have wheels under them, but these were attachments so we thought it would be a really cool idea, initially they asked for 500 yuan (7 yuan to a dollar) and we told the guy to get serious and leave us alone, so he came back and kept offering lower and lower prices until eventually we bought a pair for 100. Then another guy came up and started offering me another pair for 100…80…60! ok 60, I thought it was a good deal so why not? My dad gave him a 100 bill and he reached in his pocket and gave us 2 20’s. Alright, good, no big deal.

We went into a McDonald’s, ordered lunch and when my mom went to pay for our order the cashier laughed and told us that 20 bill was not from there. After more careful examination it was pretty obvious that the bills, although they were the same color as the Chinese 20 dollar bills were Russian which made them worth about a 5^th of what we expected. We were a little mad/amused, and I decided to try and do something about it, I went back to where the guy had tricked us and there were about 8 other guys selling the same stuff, they all greeted me with smiles and some even laughed, it was pretty obvious that they knew what had happened. I asked them where the guy was and they acted like they had no idea what I was talking about, or which guy I meant, or like they understood English at all…all while laughing and (I think) making jokes about me.

There were some security people next to us since there was a jewelry next to where they were so I asked them for help and they basically said “just get over it and move on”. Don’t ask me why I decided that I was going to push a little further and so I said I’d call the police. After a few threats that were responded to with laughter one lady, who was kind of with the group, came to me and said “look there is a pubic phone over there the number is…whatever it was”. I think she thought I was bluffing, because she was laughing and still talking to the guys while she told me. I walked towards the phone...dialed the number…After they answered and asked me what was going on I looked at the lady and asked her the name of where I was, she told me, and looked back at the guys with a “he’s actually doing it!” kind of look. I said that I was at whatever place and that someone had just robbed me and the lady on the phone said that she didn’t speak English and so she would get an interpreter, while she was doing that the call was dropped. I thought about it for a second and said…ok I’ll just wait here for them to come. I looked up and all of a sudden the 8ish guys who were sitting there laughing had vanished. Completely gone.

It felt pretty good so I went back inside the McDonalds and finished lunch. When we came back out we walked by the same place and the guys were sitting there again but got up and started slowly walking away like it was no big deal…just walking away for no reason. I did not see the one guy who gave us the Russian bills though. We walked away and continued our journey.

Our tour bus took us by the site of the first communist party meeting, which was next to a beautiful park/garden. Maria had fun at first on her new skate/shoes but she got a little frustrated and since we all started telling her what to do, she got upset after a while. We got back on the bus and went under the river through a tunnel, I took a little nap while we rode around the business district. Some people from Mexico and Korea started talking to us on the bus, they were very nice. We went by a walking/shopping district but we decided not to stop there.

Our tour ended where it began, we found a nice restaurant where we sat down, had an overpriced smoothie, and asked to borrow the telephone so we could get in touch with Richard, our friend. He told us to get a cab and go meet him at work, he would invite us to dinner that night. We had peanut and strawberry ice cream for dessert…but that was also the first thing they brought apparently in Shanghai they prefer to have everything served at the same time so you can choose which order to eat things in, he also order a weird pineapple/shrimp dessert that happened to be very delicious. Richard is a teacher who goes to third-world countries and teaches…kind of general education and creativity to children, so he showed us some cool videos that he uses. We talked about some of the things we had noticed in China (oh and by the way in pretty much every neighborhood there were clothes hanging outside). One of the most interesting things he said was that people have a very strange love/hate relationship with china so everything that they find even remotely criticizeable becomes automatically a hot topic and it’s because of communism. With respect to Google and how they filter their results in China because the government demands it, he said that he thought it was a good thing, now peole may have access to 80% of the information and articles out there, but before Google, or if Google had not agreed to comply with the demands of the government they would have much more restricted access. Another example he talked about was that a new law that was about to be put into place, ads for luxury items were going to be banned in areas where there is poverty, some people will say it’s censorship and goes against freedom of speech, but some other people say it’s insensitive for companies to put up such ads and that it’s a good thing for the government to think about that, much like in the US you can’t have naked images in publicity.

We talked about other things, like culture and how much can be justified by that, girls being raped by their family members in regions of India, girls being sold between families in native tribes in Colombia?

It was a very pleasant dinner we were taken to our hotel where the internet sucked we slept and…

Wednesday

Left for Xi’an the next day. We ended up in the wrong terminal, but luckily we found out in time to run to the other one and make it to our flight…and find out it was slightly delayed.

Xi-an

Wednesday

We landed and looked for a tour agency as always, we found a good one for pretty cheap. The people were noticeably nice, a lot of people simply came to us and asked us what we needed and such, there was a guy who told us he studies English and so sometimes he just likes to act as tour guide for people to practice his English for free…although after having seen the movie taken I don’t really know that the guy’s intentions were all that good.

The first part of the tour took us to the ruins of Banpo a town that is supposed to have existed 6000 years ago. From there we went to the site of the (drumroll) terracotta warriors.

We got a guide who took us through the line, it was a rainy Wednesday morning but still the place was completely crowded. We waited in line for a while, and then got in a little car that took us to the site. We entered this huge hangar looking thing and got to see the first pit of warriors. It is really intense to walk in there and see rows and rows of warrior statues lines up as if getting ready to go to battle. The sight is hard to describe, so many things went through my head it’s such an overwhelming sensation to see something so grand in front of you. There were about 12 rows, about 5 feet wide completely filled with lines of warriors and horses in different stances. Each warrior’s face was modeled after an actual warrior or the army at the time; there are 4 kinds; generals, soldiers, archers and advisors. All of the statues were hand painted to great detail but they are so old that when exposed to sunlight the colors fade within 20 minutes. Some are kept in the dark for those reasons and are not available for the general public, also some are still buried. In some areas the ceiling collapsed, and so a lot of them were broken but they are being restored, which must be a pretty cool job.

The idea behind them is that in Chinese tradition terracotta (cooked dirt) warrior statues are very common, lots of people have them in their houses or offices as protection from evil spirits and energies, the emperor at the time built them with that kind of idea in mind, to protect him and the country. We visited 3 of the 4 pits that are there; the first one is the one most people probably see in pictures and documentaries. In the second one the statues are organized as if in a meeting room, it’s really dark in that one; the last one is as almost as big as the first one, and most of the warriors in this one are covered or still unburied, but they have 4 on display in crystal cases that one can get really close to. They also had a few displays that contained the weapons they were buried with, supposedly, and I didn’t hear about this until I came back to the us, the technology used to make the weapons made them not only really sharp but also incredibly long lasting, it is also a lost art in the sense that we have not been able to replicate the results.

They were found by a farmer in the 70’s while digging for water, now he’s really rich and happy supposedly…also he happened to be there that day signing copies of his book. Walking into the little souvenir store was really strange, there we were, 4 occidental looking people walking into the shop in a sea of locals, the farmer who discovered the warriors treated us very nicely, shook our hands and offered us to buy and sign his book for us, but whenever anyone else approached him and try to shake his hand he seemed a little annoyed. Right after that we walked into a section where they sold replicas of the statues, they varied in size from 2 inches to 7 feet. The person in charge, again saw us and approached us in order to offer us the statues, the life-size replicas, he said, were made using the same techniques used for the originals, dried (cooked) in the sun and not in an oven, which makes them more durable and they are made and certified by the archaeologists that study and restore the real ones. The price was 17,000 yuan (2700 USD) and after a while he even offered us a 50% discount and free shipping to Cartagena, a maritime port in Colombia it would only take 3 months.

We went ahead and bought our uncertified oven cooked 2 inch replicas, and went our way. The next destination they took us to was a silk factory, we got to see how they get the silk thread from the cocoon and then all the different products which ranged from shirts to bed covers. The stud was pretty cool and lookd like really good quality, the prices were not ridiculous, and I actually found a really nice shirt that I thought was not too expensive and treated myself to it. I’m still pretty happy with it.

Next up was “the hot springs” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_Guifei). We were not really sure where we were going or what the plan was but it was part of our tour so we assumed it would be awesome. It was, we entered this palace with really beautiful, typically Chinese gardens and houses. Again the attention to detail in decoration and architecture impressed us; the dragon statues on the ceilings gave it a really cool touch.

This used to be a palace built for the daughter of someone really important we got to see the bathing rooms for the princess which were basically huge and very luxurious (for the time) pools.

This also happened to be the place of the “Xi’an event” which had to do with the civil war in china and the communist party, also the fact that Taiwan is not really part of China anymore. They have little crystal cases protecting bullet holes in windows and walls with lettering that says “Xi’an event bullet hole”. The place was actually quite impressive (like most of the things we saw really) but it must have been really incredible to live there, a beautiful palace in the middle of the nowhere and where all you can see is mountains and forest around you. The lake in the middle of the palace reminded me of the song Lady of the Snow by Symphony X, and the imagery that Walter and I discussed a few times. We saw a poster for a show called song of eternal sorrow, it is a light/music/dancing show that they play there every night, it’s really beautiful and amazing…supposedly we didn’t get to see it because it was a rainy-ish day and so they were not having it, I was really excited about it but oh well, I’m hanging out in China so I don’t get to complain.

We got to the hotel, which I had booked online and paid for 2 nights before…for the night before…go me. They saw that we were pretty upset and lost and said that they really wanted our business so they gave us like a 50% discount on the night that we actually stayed there, it was really nice of them. The hotel was pretty nice although it also had semi-crappy internet (not as bad as in Shanghai), it also had an interesting assortment of goods available for us in the bathroom, men’s and women’s underwear, a vibrator-condom and, this one was actually really cool, a disc about 1.5 cm. tall and 2 cm. of radius with a label that read magic towel. It was 10 yuan I think so my dad and I decided it was worth satisfying our curiosity. We opened it…and it stayed that way, the instructions said put in water, we did and it slowly started expanding until it became a 40 by 40 cm. hand towel, it was pretty cool. Maria and I read some Goosebumps (the night of the living doll 3) and went to bed.

We would be flying to Beijing to see great wall the next morning.

Asia Trip 2011 - part 7 - Taiwan

2011-08-28T01:42:00.000-05:00

Taiwan
Saturday
Got to the airport and grabbed a taxi, the ride was long and not very pleasing to the eye. It was about 40 mins and all you could see was old industrial buildings that looked very run down, dirty and left to rot. Eventually we made it to Taipei, and everything changed, the city looked pretty organized and typical of a standard big city. Out hotel was nice and very chalet-like, after chilling for a little bit we went out to walk.

A few blocks away from where we were there was a pedestrian shopping area. All the shops were pretty much what one would expect from asian street markets, a lot of stuff for pretty cheap just all over the place, chaotic to some degree, but definitely fun to see. A lot of the stores had a platter with fruit at the entrance and a small furnace-type thing in which they burned trash; we later found out that they are offerings for the gods that bring them protection and good business. We ate at a “burger” place, and it was fun to order because only one person spoke English and it was hard for him to understand. We got ketchup when we asked for salt. I ordered a rice-patty roast beef sandwich, it was pretty delicious.

We headed back to our hotel, it was really hot. And we got ready to meet with Charles, the guy who convinced us to go to Taiwan and got us our visa appointments; he invited us to eat that night. Of all places, he invited us to Shin Yeh the restaurant on the 80th floor of the Taipei 101, the second tallest building in the world. The dinner was incredible, they ordered several dishes for everyone at the table to share:
-squid
-mushrooms
-chicken
-beef
-liver
-beef wraps
-eggrolls
-fish
-rice with beef
-rice with eggs
-fish ball soup

everything was absolutely delicious, and covered in delicious sauces and vegetables.

Then there was desert:
-almond flavored…liquid with tapioca
-mango version of the same
-coconut version of the same
-mango flan

THEN, since it had recently been Maria and my mom’s birthday the people sang happy birthday to them and brought us peach longevity cakes. Pictures on facebook. The place was really fancy and beautiful looking, the service was impeccable and the view, of course, unique.

As drinks, Charles ordered wine, beer and tea for everyone, and told us about how in Taiwan it’s better viewed to not drink alone, because that way you know that you’re drinking with friends and it won’t become a problem, so we all took drinks at the same time. His wife Angela, and his kids Tracy and David were with us too. Both of his kids study economy, and David was made fun of a lot because he supposedly studied Spanish for 5 years but did not remember a lot.

We had a really good time eating with them, the conversation was great. We really felt like we were among friends.

Sunday
The next day we went out for some walking around and sight-seeing, we went to see the presidential palace which was well guarded by police, who asked us nicely to keep moving and not take too long taking pictures. We randomly found a really nice park in the middle of the city that although, very simple looking, had that very distinct “asian forest” feeling.
We arrived at this complex that contains the national concert Hall, the Theater and a Huge monument that is still in construction. The buildings really feel otherworldly, no matter how many times you’ve seen the style in movies or whatever to see them there in front of you and realize that for them it’s just the natural way to do things is a feeling that’s hard to describe. (Pics on the facebook)

This is when we realized that had no local currency, we tried to get some through an ATM and my mom’s “international card” but it didn’t work. It was about lunch time and Charles had told us the night before about what is known officially as the “best dumplings on earth”, they are sold at a restaurant called Din Tai Fung, so we had decided to go there. We asked a policeman about where we could exchange some currency, again it took a while because his English was not all that good and our Chinese wasn’t either :P. But this guy had decided that he was going to help us whatever it took. Being a Sunday he told us that there would be very few places that would exchange currency so that was going to be really hard, but after we told him where we were going he stopped a cab told him where we were going and…listen to this…grabbed some money from his pocket paid the cab driver and told us that it was his gift to us for visiting his country! I still find it hard to believe, the guy’s picture is also on the facebook.

The dumpling place is crazy, they have SO much business but they have decided that they’re not going to expand, they want to make sure the quality remains the same and expanding makes it harder to control that. The way it works is there is a huge line outside the place and you get there and you order they keep your number and about 20 mins later they call you and THEN you get a table, once your food is ready, really smart system if you ask me. We used those 20 mins to try and look for a place to get local currency…we couldn’t so we sat down and ate the most delicious dumplings in the world and we had no way to pay for it.

Hmmmm…what to do? For whatever reason my mom decided to ask if they took US dollars as a form of payment and they were like yeah, why not? oh wait but we’d have to give you change…in the local currency! Damn right! so that was awesome. The dumplings were delicious I ordered us some pork, some chicken, then a huge one…I think it was pork too, and a beef soup.

I have to say that although I am completely ignorant when it comes to dumpings they were really delicious, so I believe it. We used out newly acquired usable cash to take another cab and go check out the area around the Taipei 101 building. The building itself is full of really fancy and expensive designer clothing stores, which is to be expected, there is a food area in the basement where we enjoyed some tasty KFC. On our way out we found a water fountain which my sister enjoyed very much. We decided that we had seen what we wanted to see for the day we had done a lot of walking and it had been really hot, Maria had been really good all day so we figured we would stay there and let her play as much as she wanted…so a lot. She got soaked, ran, jumped, danced, and had a blast, she pulled me in there and got me really wet too. After a while, a security person came and told us that at 7 every day they have a little light and music show with the water, so we stuck around for that; it was surprisingly good.

Cab home and bed.

Monday
We met Charles again for breakfast at a Taiwanese version of an “American diner” and then he took is to his work where he had scheduled some people to meet and listen to my dad talk about the stuff he presented in Bhutan. Meanwhile my mom found herself a Spanish speaking lady at our hotel and went asian-shopping for really cool cheap stuff.

By the time we met again we did not have a lot of time left, we walked outside the hotel and went to see the gate to the old city. On the way back we crossed the shop of a shoemaker; I forgot to mention this before but about half of the sole on my right shoe had become loose and was flapping every time I took a step, the guy saw it and demanded that I give it to him so he could fix it. He got to work like a beast it took him about 2 minutes to fix that, and then fixed like 3 other things that were not optimal perfect about the show, then proceeded to fix the other one. It was really cool to see him work so fast and passionately, to him it was like a game, like a challenge and he was really enjoying it. When he was done like 10 minutes later he charged me like 5 dollars worth.

We took a cab to see the palace museum, our last stop in Taiwan. It was pretty cool, we got to see these scrolls that basically created the rules for Chinese typography and all the ways to practice and master it. They also used some ancient paintings and recreated some of the scenes portrayed in them using 3d animation. The museum was really crowded though. Another really interesting thing that we saw there was a stamp station, My guess is they put them in interesting places to motivate tourists and locals to go visit and get the stamp from the place, neat.

Another Taxi took us to the airport in a ride that made us a little nervous; there are 2 airports near Taipei, and although we knew which one we needed to go to and tried our best to communicate that to our driver, we were not sure whether he got it or not. But it all worked out, at the airport we had some dumplings and spaghetti, which were surprisingly good and then…to China

Asia Trip 2011 - part 6 - Singapore

2011-08-20T21:18:00.001-05:00

Thursday
Before getting on the cab I had already noticed that they were very organized and efficient assigning cabs and sending people off for an international airport. The road away from the airport is beautiful, trees to each side that are very well taken care off, and a median made out of pots abundant with pink and purple flowers, the highway looked perfectly clean, and our cab driver told us that is a priority here.
As we got closer to the city the impression only became more intense, the buildings, streetlights, sidewalks, gardens, everything absolutely clean, and this is in the heart of the financial district of the city.
We headed to the Taiwan Embassy to get our visas for Taiwan.
Our driver was really funny, his English was decent and he really wanted to help us by telling us about the city, things to do and what we were seeing. He repeated himself a lot and made sure he was very clear. “there is a 1-hour difference between here and Thailand, so now it’s 11:45 there, which means here it is 12:45, because there is a one hour difference, between where you come from which is Thailand and where you are now which is here, Singapore” “if you have problems you can call the police, it’s 999, so you take your phone, you dial 9 (motion) 9 (motion) 9 (motion) then you press send or call (motion) and you talk to the police”…he was really nice though, cool dude.
Part of the reason, he told us, the city is really clean and the country works the way it does, is very strict police, there is a 30 dollar fine for jaywalking, and 300 for throwing a cigarette butt in the street. People, more than respecting authority, are afraid of it.

We got to the Taiwanese embassy where we were treated incredibly nice and they within a half hour they gave us our visas, it’s crazy how different things are when you know the right people :-) :-/ :-?

We went for lunch at this mall-ish area where a lot of businesspeople usually go for lunch, there was some good food but mostly delicious desserts and drinks. I had kiwi juice for the first time in my life, it was delicious.

Getting a cab here is different too as far as I can tell, we’ve taken one twice, coming out of shopping malls of touristy areas, and both times there has been a line where everyone is very organized and respectful and there’s a button that calls a cab for you when you push it. It seems to work really well, since there is usually about 20 people in line but it takes about 3-5 mins for you to get in your cab.

We got to our friend’s house, Kristine was outside waiting and playing with her two daughters, who “couldn’t wait to play with their friend Maria”; they didn’t waste any time. The house was a small 2 story house, they had just moved there a few weeks before. After settling down my parents and Kristine went out for some shopping while the girls, their father and I went to a neighborhood park. Alex, the eldest (4) built a castle, and BB the youngest (3) ran around, maria worked hard on the monkey bars and build a support platform for the see-saw. The girl’s father is from south Africa and he has a very dry (british?) way of dealing with and talking to the girls, I was a little shocked but I guess it’s just his way of doing things.

Our hostess made a delicious curry (?) dish and we got the opportunity to talk about a lot of things over dinner.
• Singapore is unofficially a “benevolent dictatorship” as Paul, Kristine’s husband, described it. Officially it’s a democracy, but the same party has been in power for a really long time. So they generally can do what they want.
• At some point the opposition party started gaining some strength and the main party stopped running the schools and taking care of the roads as a way to show their discontent. The key thing here is that people may have been unhappy with some things but not unhappy enough to make those sacrifices to make those changes happen. In general, he said the government does things well, and the people are happy.
• The general feeling about it seems to be that democracy is not that good anyway, they compare Singapore to England and the US and say, “they have a real democracy and they’re not doing that well, so what’s the big deal?”
• The press is all controlled by the state, which at the very least looks like a bad thing.
• There is no minimum wage, which allows for a big gap to exist in society; construction workers earn 300-400 singapore dollars per month (1 singapore $ = 0.8 US $) while ex-pat’s can afford living in places where rent is 25000 a month.
• Even tough some people live with really low wages, it’s hard to find poverty; Chinatown is supposed to be one of the poorest communities but, again, it looked very clean and decent. Part of the reason for this is that in their culture it is very important to take care of the elderly and of your neighbor.
• As for the construction workers, they “enjoy” some exceptions, I was told they tend to live in big buildings in which you will find 20 people per bathroom, and they travel in the back of pickup trucks right next to bricks or other building materials. Apparently the government just looks the other way and decides not to implement laws to prevent this because it would hurt the construction industry too much.
• We compared the country to a company in which a CEO has a lot of freedom to do things his way, but really cares and watches over how things are and where ultimately things are run well and people are happy.
• It seems to be, however a “plastic” society, in which a lot of things were created and are designed in the optimal way, and in which there is not a lot of culture, history or national identity. People spend most of their time working or shopping.
• THERE ARE A LOT OF SHOPPING MALLS
• We learned about the merlion, which was an icon designed to be a mascot of the country, it seemed to be an attempt by the government to create that national identity.

Friday
We woke up to the delicious smell of banana pancakes, ate breakfast with everyone and watched our hosts leave to take care of their respective daily responsibilities. After a little bit of planning we decided to go to Sentosa island. We took the subway and got there quickly. Once again, we were impressed by how clean and efficient everything was. Then we were supposed to go to Vivo city mall and get on the cable cars, or the monorail to go to the island.
Sigh…People in Singapore are VERY bad at giving directions, we looked for the cable cars for about a half hour and everyone kept sending us in different directions, then we found out the cable cars were really expensive so we went back got lost a few more times and found the monorail.
We got to Sentosa, it is an island designed to have a lot of attractions for tourist kind of like a theme park but you pay for the rides and not for the park ticket, although universal studios Singapore is there. Lunch was at chili’s because our stomachs needed a break from spicy asian food, but it was really expensive, the standard $12-15 fajita was 32 here (about 25 american dollars) food in general was very expensive in Singapore.
We went up the Merlion statue for a really cool view of the city and a show about the Merlion and the legend of Singapore. Then, again because of bad direction giving, my mom had to take a 30 min excursion to “the nearest” bathroom (there were 2 others right next to us, we later found out). And we headed back home.
We took a taxi that took us through Chinatown, and arrived at our hostess house, where BB and Alex were anxious to see Maria. They played and watched Gnomeo and Juliet, and I decided to go to this high tech center...Sim Lim square I think.
I was a little disappointed, I was expecting to see either really cool new things that I haven’t seen anywhere else, or pretty normal things at really low prices. It was neither, there was nothing you couldn’t find on ebay for similar prices the only semi-interesting thing was smart TVs with internet and “apps” were starting to get pretty popular.

That night we ate dinner at a little pizza place near our hostess house, and went to bed early.

Saturday
Flight to Taiwan

Asia Trip 2011 - part 5 - Thailand

2011-08-14T14:36:00.001-05:00

Monday
We got to the airport in Bangkok around noon, and were stopped by the immigration “doctor” because, coming from Colombia we were more likely to have yellow fever. The doctor took us to a corner and asked us “do you have yellow fever? No? ok” and put a stamp on a piece of paper…this took about 15 minutes but oh well. On our way out of the airport we found a place that sold city tours for really cheap, the guy told us that since it is low-season for tourism the government sponsors these cheap tours and so we took it for the next day. We took a cab and headed to our hotel; the highway to the airport was impressively well taken care of, there were little statues on the side every 100 yards or so, and they had HUGE advertising sings, imagine 5 normal sized US signs stuck together side by side. Traffic when we got to the city was crazy, it took about a half hour between when we got off the highway and when we got to the hotel.

The hotel was really nice, there was a sign that said that Durian was not allowed in the hotel, it’s a fruit that apparently has a really strong smell and takes about 2 weeks to get rid of if it manages to get in the ventilation system. In the room I noticed there was a bible and a book called the teachings of Buddha, which I thought was really cool. We went out for some food and to walk for a little bit. The area was very active, the first thing we saw where some massage parlors, a LOT of them, we didn’t ask but I’m sure all sorts of services are available…actually I was later told that Thailand is a place where a lot of Europeans come to “have fun” because of how loose their laws about prostitution are. Pretty much every other establishment in the area that we walked that night was either a bar or a massage place, each one of these had about 5 five sitting outside in uniform just sitting there chatting, not even inviting you in or telling you what they have inside, like in a lot of other cities, they were just hired by the place to sit there talk and make the place look pretty. We ended up finding a McDonalds, we all ate there for the equivalent of 8 US dollars. Back to the hotel and sleepy time.

Tuesday
Early in the morning we started our city tour, we began by visiting a few temples. The first one houses the biggest pure gold Buddha statue 5.5 tons of pure gold, crazy. It was interesting to see hoe they managed to combine tourism and devotion, even though there were probably 100 people going in and out every minute while at the same time there were about 5-10 people praying and meditating in front of the statue. Bangkok is a big city in which religion is very big (yes this is the same city that we saw the night before with the massage parlors and the bars) there are 400 temples in the city including one temple next to every public school. After the first one we went to a big temple complex (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wat_Pho) that contained a lot mini temples/rooms. The first one we saw had the biggest reclining Buddha, it was ridiculously huge, the walls of the room it was in, were again all completely covered in hand painted drawings of people living with gods among them and that told stories about the characters and how they interacted. There were a lot of people and it was pretty chaotic inside, also we saw some really pretty flower arrangements with loti and other cool flowers. There was a row of hanging pots in which people dropped little pebbles that you bought, supposedly as an offer to the gods for good luck. Maria did it and thought it was so cool.

It was very hot that day and the place was really crowded which made it worse, but we powered through it, we saw some towers that were the tombs of previous kings, and live size Buddha statues that also served as the resting place for members of important families in Thailand, these make up a big part of the more than 1000 statues housed in that complex. We saw the Saturday Buddha next, which is being guarded by 7 snakes that rise from behind him, and Maria Jose sat in front of him imitating his position. The Thursday Buddha, in sitting position and under an umbrella, was in a room in which no one is supposed to be standing, we were politely asked to find a spot and sit down, facing the statue, and not have our feet pointing to the Buddha as a form of respect. I think the last Buddha we saw was the Wednesday Buddha which is standing.

By now you probably figured out that there is a position of the Buddha for every day of the week, which one you worship depends on which day of the week you were born on. While riding in the car between places we booked 2 more events with the same company, that night we would be going to Siam Nirait and the next day to a safari/zoo. Our next stop was the canals we got on a boat and sailed around the canals of the city, you could see various aspects of the city, some houses that faced the river were very neat, modern and expensive looking, but we also saw people living in houses that were about to fall down. In front of temples, people are not allowed to fish, which means that you find incredible amounts of fish just living there, we bought some bread and threw it in the water to see the fish, it was fun.
When we got off the boat we had to almost fight off this lady that wanted to sell my mom some purses, my mom made the mistake of telling her “maybe later” which works great in Colombia because they can’t really ask you to buy any more but they also know that you’re not coming back. In Thailand and the rest of India, we would eventually realize, this causes the person to wait for you, in this case about 1 hour, so they can then tell you “I waited for 1 hour now you have to buy something.

In our next stop we found out why our tour really was so cheap, they took us to a jewelry store/factory and our tour guide asked us to look at stuff for about 15 minutes and then we would move on. My mom ended up buying some earrings, and then we were taken to a clothes shop where you select a fabric have them take your measurements and then they send you your suit/dress/shirt to your hotel the next morning, we looked at some stuff because my dad was kind of interested in a jacket but he ended up playing difficult and making the salesman mad…which he kind of enjoyed. It seemed pretty obvious to us that the tours are financed by those kind of places to take people there, if you see them while walking around, the average tourist would never stop and go inside, but when you’re taken there and have to simply walk inside you’re much more likely to buy something. Then they took us to our hotel where we had a little bit of time to shower, get refreshed and change to go to the show that night.

Our bus came to get us and take us to the show (http://www.siamniramit.com/oldweb/) at our arrival we were greeted with a flower that we could pin onto our shirts, girls were greeting everyone and taking pictures. When we got past the main entrance we saw 2 guys riding elephants and some people selling pickles to feed to the elephants. It was really weird, you get close to them with the pickle and then all of a sudden their giant trunk starts attacking your hand with a slow but steady pace, then the nose opens up and reveals 2 nostrils through which the pickle could have easily fit. When you’ve been worrying about the trunk for a few seconds you realize that there is a huge beast, twice as tall as you are and probably 10 times as heavy coming at you just as fast, that’s when you let go of that stupid pickle and make your escape. Hehe, not really but yeah it’s really freaky, their skin was really tough and they had hairs as think as the bristles of a broom, they were really calm and nice. My dad and I fed them but Maria was too freaked out. Then we went for dinner, which was included in the show ticket cost, it was a thai food buffet that was very organized and well setup in a room that fit probably 200-300 people, it was also very delicious. We thought about how everything was well organized and how it was a really good idea for tourists because they would get exposed to a good chick of thai culture, food, and a very interesting and entertaining show, also the cost was very reasonable but clearly enough to cover the cost, it would probably be a good business idea to try and develop in Colombia. After a while, a magician walked around the tables performing little tricks and announcing the show would start soon; he was followed by a line of drummers, singers and dancers that carried the same message. We went downstairs and saw a little pre-show dance, then walked through a little exhibition that showed the different styled of traditional housing in Thailand. In one of them there was a lady making bowls out or leaves and flowers that looked amazing, and gave my dad and me a little string bracelet that she blessed with a prayer for good luck, then we saw a little shadow puppet show before going inside the theater.

No cameras were allowed inside, you were actually required to put them in a little numbered bag that they would keep outside for you. The theater was huge, but only about a third full that night. The show was awesome, a few “plays” with music lights and dancing and choreography that talked about traditions and history of the region. The first one was bout a king and a queen and hot they met and saw the floating lanterns fly up and away, the same lights that are featured in tangled. The second one was about a clumsy merchant who came in a boat and fell in love with the clumsy lobster saleswoman in town, at the end they kissed. One was underwater and started with a guy diving from the top of the stage to the bottom of the ocean to find a pearl, some others included elephants and one had a magician that called for a participant from the crowd. The second part included religious scenes a forest in which mystical creatures live, a scary depiction of hell where souls were tortured and the king of darkness ruled, and finally a depiction of heaven and the gods living in harmony in the clouds. For lack of a better term I’ll say it was very Disney-ish…in a good way. I really liked it. That was it on that day, we all fell asleep during the ride back to the hotel.

Wednesday
This was, according to Maria, the most fun day of the trip so far. We got up early for a long ride to Safari World, our guide was very happy and enthusiastic and, although she had a very thick accent was able to get her point across. “Look for the pink umbrella” is what we were supposed to do to find her, eventually we found out this was great advice since the park was incredibly crowded. The first thing we saw was the orangutan show, it started with a few orangutans pretending to play some instruments and eventually led up to a boxing match, both the human and non-human animals were hilarious, they kept hitting everyone and making jokes, pulling people’s shorts and pants down, one of the monkeys was a stripper that demanded money every time she showed up. Overall they all really looked like they were having fun, the monkeys didn’t look sad or like they were being forced to do this, and they really looked like they were having fun while playing with their friends, the trainers.

After that we saw the sea-lion show, hilarious, it involved some basketball and a sea-lion performing cpr on a trainer. Then was the “cowboy show”, it looked a lot like the Indiana jones show at the Disney parks, a lot of special effects and explosions and a fight between cowboys and Indians. It was cool and funny but their Thai accents made it funny. Lunch followed and it was really impressive, the package we bought included the entrance ticket and lunch, apparently so did everyone else; in a previously empty room hundreds of us walked in the dining room and a huge buffet was ready and waiting for us. The food was not amazing, but the logistics were incredible, the people were completely unorganized and impatient but there was plenty of food for everyone and in about 2 hours they had fed about 600 crazy people.

Next up was the boat trip, it was a little ride in a boat in which you got to see mechanical animals and natives simulating a boat safari in the jungle in africa, a lot like the jungle trip in the Disney parks too. This one was a lot less…polished, some things were kind of weird, for starters the first native we saw was wearing a piece fabric to cover his private parts except…it didn’t cover them very well…also whoever made the robot/person spent the time to make him a penis, that was really weird. At a few points during the ride some effects were activated; the animals would move or roar and other such things, but pretty much at every one of those you could clearly see the laser that detected your arrival to start the effect, they didn’t try too hard to hide them. Also at one point there was a cage that hung above us within reach, the gaps between bars were about 4 mm. and there was a live snake sleeping in it, maybe I was just being paranoid but it seemed dangerous. I thought the ride was pretty lame but my sister really liked it. Oh, and also on the way out of the park there was a statue of a lady that squirted water out of her nipples. Picture on facebook, hilarious.

Then it was time for the safari, that’s right, an actual real life safari. We got in the car and started driving, it was SO cool, we saw antelopes zebras giraffes, just hanging out outside, we were the ones in the cage. A few zebras and camels decided to walk in front of the cars making the trip a lot slower (and awesomer). There was a “horns” area where there all sorts of animals with different sized and shaped horns, some were really long and thin and perfectly straight, others incredibly twisted and messed up, some pointing up some to the sides, it was really cool to see them all right there in front of you. The latter areas had more dangerous and bigger animals: hippos, bears, rhinos, tigers and lions, all separate. My mom fell asleep when we were entering the lions area (we were all exhausted) and so I scratched the side of the car in order to scare her, it worked beautifully.

On the way back we were again driven to a jewelry store, which by now had started getting a little annoying, while we waited I tried to take a picture of some of the stuff they sell but they told me it wasn’t allowed. Some of the ladies who worked there did Maria’s hair because like everyone else in that continent they thought Maria was so pretty. We got in the car and there were about 4 more groups of people whose hotels were in the same area as ours, unfortunately we got caught in rush hour traffic which means the ride took at least 2 hours, I’m not exaggerating. One of the guys in the van was having a terrible day, at one point he turned to us and said that he had a headache because Maria was being too loud, Maria was a little sad to hear that but she immediately started being really quiet and good. Later on the guy started complaining to the driver about traffic and demanding that he took him to the hotel quickly, the thing escalated to the point where the driver yelled at the guy “just shut up”. The guy was being really rude, I remembered I had some advil so I offered it to him and he calmed down. We eventually got home and then Maria and I got in the pool for an hour or so. Good day.

Thursday
To the airport in the morning, on our way to Singapore. One of the things in our mind was that our next destination was Taiwan since we were very cordially invited by Charles who we met in Bhutan at the meeting. However, since we didn’t have a visa, he insisted on making arrangements and set up an appointment for us in the Taiwanese embassy in Singapore.

Asia Trip 2011 - part 4 - Bhutan Last

2011-08-07T17:37:00.000-05:00

Friday
Yoga in the morning BAM!
We joined the group for a visit to parliament. Along with the Gho, when there is a particularly important event people wear a white sash, ministers and…something else, wear orange and blue, and the king wears a yellow one…It’s pretty cool. While waiting for the session we got to say hi to a few of the members of parliament and talk to them. All the members arrived and they finally let us in the room, I was really happy to see they decided to keep the Bhutanese style but make it really elaborate and elegant. Lots of paintings and details and flags and statues, it was really beautiful; in the back was a throne for the king to sit cross-legged. The session began and we got cool little earphones so we could hear a real time translation to English. Everyone was really polite and organized in the room, they each talked for a really long time though. One remarkable thing was that the spirit in the room was really cooperative, the intention of ministers when they talked was more informative than demanding “here’s the research I have done, and here are the results, therefore this is the suggestion I have but of course we can all improve it” instead of “my way is the right way and this is how we need to do things”, that was surprising.

After that most of the group went back to termalinca for some more talks, while my mom sister and I went to do some more touristy things (wow, touristy is actually a word). We went to the national traditional medicine hospital, they did tell us that traditional herbal medicine is very important and widely used, but I didn’t find out how much western medicine is used. Then they took us to the local paper factory, there were some ladies working on rope handles for paper bags, and a guy working on really big sheets of paper, we got to see a lot of the process which was cool and mostly done by hand or with very basic machinery. That day my mom also decided to get a massage at the hotel, and get me one too, it was reeeeeally good.

We decided that I would go meet with the guy while my mom and Maria hung out at the Hotel, but then my dad called and said that he and my mom had been invited to have dinner with one of the queen mothers, so I had to take Maria with me. She was unbelievably good, she understood that I really wanted to talk to the guy so she brought stuff to color, and her DS so she could play and have fun while letting us talk all we wanted.

As expected, it was one of the most interesting talks I have ever had first off the guy was really nice and cool. He was as eager to share anything I wanted to know as he was to ask about stuff from my/our culture that he was curious about.

When JY was a baby he had a problem with his liver, they went to see doctors in Bhutan who told his parents they should be really nice to him since he didn’t have much to live. When they went to see doctors in India the liver appeared completely fine and doctors didn’t know what to do with a perfectly healthy liver. After a lot of that his mom decided to take him to a monastery, not knowing what else to do, where they were received with tea and a celebration. The leader at the monastery told them that the night before he had had a premonition and knew that the reincarnation of a very powerful and important monk would be visiting them that day and so they had spent a lot of time preparing for his arrival that day. JY stayed there and began his training, his liver problems disappeared completely. He was in the monastery for a few years, then I think he returned home for a while until he was 17-ish when he went back for 3 years.

He said it was tough, mentally but also physically, obviously lots of meditation, but also really intense and painful yoga and even suffocation but he stopped himself and said that’s all he really wanted to say about that.

When I asked him about Buddhism itself he replied in the form of a question. “What is happiness? how do you “achieve” it?” I told him what I thought in particular that a lot of people find it in material things or achievements, but that perhaps the most pure form is achieved by serving others and making their lives better, making other people happy and sharing it with them. Although that was very respectable, he said, it still depends on particular things or events; one of the big goals in his training is to realize that perfect pure happiness is independent of everything and always available within you. When you truly understand that you stop reacting emotionally to a lot of the world’s negatives, you never lose control or get angry or scared, you can live and act while in perfect peace and happiness with the universe. Of course this is an ideal state that’s very hard to achieve and people spend their lives meditating about it trying to get there.
I thought that the idea was really interesting and amazing, and actually very much along the lines of how I think people should be, and how I try to be. After letting it sit in my mind I realized the idea is similar to the idea of heaven, a state?place? where you can live in perfect happiness even if your relatives or friends or even yourself are in non-ideal conditions or suffering.

Another really interesting difference between Buddhism and Christianity was the source of authority, for us the bible is THE word of god and that’s why it’s important, Jesus was the son of god and that’s why he spoke the truth and that’s why he is followed.

Buddha was different, he didn’t say this is true because I say it, his message was “I spent my whole life thinking and meditating about this, and this is what I found, you should think and meditate about it, and you’ll find if/that it’s true for yourself”

We talked for at least 2 hours, then we realized what time it was but before I had to go he took me to a basketball gym since I told him I liked basketball, there were some girls playing in some local championship, then he took me to his place and showed me his house, it was an interesting combination of wealth and humility, very cool and unique. His mom greeted us happily and showed us around the house. Their prayer room was really warm and inviting. Finally Mrs. D invited me to come back for lunch or dinner on Sunday.

Then JY took me back to meet everyone, the travel agency threw a party for all the guests, which turned out to be a lot of fun. The music started with a local artist who sang danced and played at least 5 different instruments. After he was done other people started dances and chants from their countries. It was a lot of fun.

Saturday
Hmm I decided to skip yoga that morning and sleep in, which was good. We went to the market, I was impressed by how clean and organized it was; there was a lot of variety which was similar to a Colombian market (except it’s a lot more messy and loud in Colombia). Then we did a little bit of shopping before we went to the local Dzong. On the way there we were told to try not to look to out right, the palace was there and it’s disrespectful to look that way since you might see the king walking around. The Dzong again was impressive and majestic. Then we finally got the chance to head to the Buddha statue. They are still working on the temple that it will be sitting on but the statue itself was complete in all its majesty, it was huge…of course and really humbling. We learned that he is holding a bowl because even though he was a prince he gave all his fortune away to live like the poorest. The reason his right hand is touching the ground is that, one day while meditating an evil spirit came to tempt him, he asked Buddha what the point of it all was, why meditate so much and try to achieve enlightenment no one will know if he does, and it won’t help anyone else. By putting his hand on the ground he replied “the earth will be my witness”.
We went to lunch and then to an art exhibit which was…meh, then we sat outside and talked with some people from the meeting until we saw some kids playing soccer, so we went to play with them. Then it started to rain so we went back to the hotel.

It was Saturday and I had asked our guide, Wangchuk, what partying is like in Bhutan so he invited me to go party with him and his friends. He came and picked me up and we went to this bar where we sat down and talked while we waited for his friends. I had a glass of local beer and a shot of local whisky, they were…as expected…hehe I’m a sissy. We got to talk a little bit about him; he has acted in a few local movies and only works as a tour guide only during the tourist season. He is a Buddhist and told me about a special date that was coming up, it is a special date that people use in order to quit some vice, he told me that he was going to try to quit smoking, last year he asked the gods to help him quit and promised he would try really hard, but he was clean only for a few months, so this time he was going to ask for more help. He said he needed to be really careful about how he asked, because one of his friends promised that he would quit drinking, and after a few weeks he drank again. Within a week, the guy went lost his mind, everyone was worried about it, and then he disappeared no one has heard from him since then. He told me he firmly believed that the gods made that happen to him because he broke his promise. It was really strange and different to hear someone believe something so strongly that’s so different from anything you are used to seeing people believe.

When his friends got there we talked with them some more, at one point one of them asked me about a band he really liked called “matelik” that’s what I thought he said at least, we later found out it was metallica, and he was going to see them in India. We then drove to a few places to dance, there was a lot of smoking and some drug consumption pretty much a standard bar/dancing place. In one of the ones we visited we saw a bunch of people from the meeting so we stayed there for a while. Before leaving Wangchuk told me that the prince (the king’s younger brother) was there that day and he wanted me to meet him. We went to the smoking lounge and caught him as he was leaving. He was wearing a very typical European party-boy outfit, and he was very relaxed and approachable when I went to talk to him, we shook hands and hugged. I then noticed that even though he was being very friendly with me and the other foreigners all the Bhutanese people stayed a little way away and bowed respectfully. I then told him about my guide who had brought me there and had done a great job of showing me around the country and the prince went and shook his hand.

Wangchuk later told me that it was a great honor for him that that happened and that he was grateful towards me because it was thanks to me that he got to shake the hand of his prince.

Great fun night, bedtime.

Sunday
We woke up in the morning and went for a “hike in the mountains”. After a 15 min ride, we got off the car and started walking up a trail. It was about a 45 min walk in the Bhutanese forest/mountain. It was really quiet, beautiful and peaceful; the trail offered a great view of the city and the region. We eventually got to the temple at the end of the trail. The first thing we noticed when walked in were some footprints on the floor. But these were actually footprints that went INTO the floor, a solid wooden floor with footprints pushed into it, it was very hard to believe. A monk used to stand there for hours and meditate, always the same spot year after year, there’s a picture on facebook, I had to personally ask the monk there for permission to take the picture, and he also showed us where someone is currently doing a lot of praying while kneeling down and some prints are starting to form.

On the way back to the city we went to the local zoo where we learned about the takin, bhutan’s national animal. The legend says that the “divine madman” one of bhutan’s deities, known for his outrageous antics, was hanging out with his devotees when they asked him to perform a miracle, he demanded a whole cow and goat to eat and when only the bones were left he stuck the goat’s head on the cow’s body, uttered some words and the first takin was born. Now you see them grazing in the mountains around Bhutan.

Later that day I met again with JY and we went to play basketball. We drove to the local college and although the gym was closed we found an outdoor court to play in. JY, 4 friends and I played for about 1-2 hours, it was very informal and fun, it rained for a little bit but we kept playing, we all enjoyed it a lot. Then I went back to the hotel and changed before we went to his house for dinner with his mom. JY and his mom were so incredibly nice, I was told that they considered me part of their family and so there was no need for me to thank them for anything, they gave me a decorative bowl made of Bhutanese wood that was filled with crushed roasted corn kernels because “they don’t believe in giving empty gifts” along with a traditional…carrying recipient it’s hard to describe but it’s really cool and I’ll be using it a lot. For dinner they made some sort of beef jerky in a delicious sauce, a cheese/pepper sauce that was really spicy and delicious, and asparagus along with white rice which they ate by making a little ball with the palms of their hands. It was SO delicious, the conversation was great and I really felt at home, they invited me to go back anytime and stay with them next time I visit Bhutan, and they’d help me with my visa. I could not believe how fortunate I was to meet this family and to be welcomes in such a warm and loving way.

Then JY and I went for a ride, he took me to the base of the path that leads to the temple where he had just spent 3 years, and showed me a lot of “treasures” along the way: some rocks shaped like fish and one shaped like an elephant, a spot where someone important had sex with his woman, and so now a lot of people sneak there to do the same, little caves where people hide gifts for the gods. It was cool to see all those things that only he could have shown me, unfortunately since it was dark and it was raining I couldn’t get any good pictures.

I was dead tired so when he took me back to the hotel I immediately fell asleep. The next day we’d be leaving in the morning.

Hmm… wait, at some point we had to go to out travel agency’s office because they had screwed up our flight, we were supposed to fly to Bangkok but they had us booked for Calcutta. There was some trouble because the flight to Bangkok was full but we went and showed them an email that showed we wanted Bangkok and it was their mistake, so they put us in first class…which was nice :D

Asia Trip 2011 - part 3 - Bhutan still

2011-07-22T09:55:00.000-05:00

Wednesday
On the schedule for the meeting they had yoga at 6:30 every morning, I figured I’d give it a try so I got up early and went there, plus I was jetlagged so I was wide awake at 5. It was really cool, and apparently I did really well, even for a non first timer. That day there was a trip to Punakha on the schedule it’s a town about 2 hours from Thimphu, where we were. The other road was really good, right? well this one was the opposite, it was really curvy (not a lot you can do there) but also really bumpy, so it was pretty annoying it was hard to sleep and relax but oh well.

Out first stop was the 108 stupa monument that we heard about the day before. It was huge and really cool; imagine all those people working hard to build something that big, all that hope and all those good intentions together in the same place.

Across the street was a Temple, we went up some stairs and then were told to take our shoes off and make sure not to take any pictures inside. I was about to enter my first Buddhist temple. There were 3 giant statues, the one in the center was of Buddha, as it was in every temple we visited in Bhutan, two other giant statues to its left and right, the silent was impeccable, everyone was really nice and respectful, and there were 2 or 3 priests there sitting welcoming us all. Every wall was covered with beautiful and colorful paintings done by hand with incredible detail. Some of the people sat down and meditated, and I decided it would be fun to try, it was very cool.
Unfortunately no pictures were allowed inside any of the temples in Bhutan, I did take pictures of Buddhist temples in other countries but they were not in the same style.

During the ride one of our guides was telling us about one of his “side” projects that he works at with the government, they have started a series of self sustainable farms. That’s right, tour guide by day, leader of sustainable development by night, that seemed to be a general trends though, it seemed that all of our tour guides were really well educated people who were working on really interesting things for the development of the country with the government but somehow it was still profitable and interesting for them to work as tour guides.

We finally arrived at Punakha where we ate lunch, it was really good (though, again, really spicy) but the area was really hot, and all we had were fans, no A/C, but oh well. After eating and hanging out for a while we went to the Dzong. Many years ago, Zhabdrung, who was the person who brought Buddhism to Bhutan, laid down to spend the night right next to where 2 rivers meet. He had a dream that night about a place where a lot of people would live very happily. The next day he described the dream to the people he led and decided to build a Dzong, it’s a mixture of a fort, town, and a temple. Supposedly this was built exactly as he had dreamt it with no blueprints or planning.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punakha_Dzong#History

It was really cool, the amount of work the put into details is incredible, ever single wall is hand painted and the paintings themselves are amazing. This Dzong is one of the most important ones in Bhutan; they keep their most sacred relics there, including the world’s tiniest statue of Buddha, which is carved from a vertebrae of Zhabdrung. All the relics are housed in a building where few people are allowed, this is also where the king has a second, private crowning ceremony.

It was really impressive and different. I felt really lucky and honored to be able to visit a place like that.

We drove back, got home exhausted and went to bed.

Thursday
This was the day that my dad was going to give his presentation, but there were presentations all day

I went to yoga again in the morning, but this time my mom and sister decided to join us too, which was awesome, although Maria almost fell asleep during the relaxation we did at the end. We went to the Chorten Memorial; as you walk in you see a little area to the left where they have these spinning bells the idea is that inside they have prayers to the god of love and compassion written and by spinning it a lot of times while you pray you cleanse yourself of your sins and accumulate blessings for you and your loved ones. The memorial itself works the same way excepts you’re the one who spins; the main building is in the center of the memorial and it houses statues of Buddha and other deities, all day you’ll see people walking around the main building praying with the same objectives, we walked around 3 times (make sure it’s clockwise while looked at from above, or it will have the opposite effect), while our guide told us about the place. Most of the people you see there are old people who don’t work anymore so they spend all day praying, but he said that around 6 am you’ll see a lot of young people who work in he city go there and walk around for a while before they start their day.

Maria Jose noticed there were 4 statues of white lions so we asked our guide about them. Apparently someone really important felt there was an evil spirit threatening him at some point, so he decided to call guru Rimpoche (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padmasambhava) and ask for his help. The spirit knew of guru Rimpoche’s power so he hid in the forest, but guru Rimpoche was not going to let that happen. They planned a big festival in the town, knowing the spirit would not be able to resist and show up. Sure enough, the spirit showed up in the form of a white lion so as not to be recognized, Guru Rimpoche found out it was him and with the help of the people subdued him and turned him into a protective deity of the region. Now the white lion is a very popular deity in the region around Thimphu, you see statues and paintings of him in houses and temples.

They wanted to take us to the art school, but it was closed because classes were already over, so we went to the little shop they have setup to sell their products which was really cool.

Our next destination was the Termalinca hotel, where we were going to see my dad’s presentation and also he wanted Maria Jose and I to say a few words. On the way there I asked our guide about Buddha, what his story was and why he was so important. My memory fails me but I’ll write what I remember and hopefully won’t offend anyone or look too much like a fool. He was born out of an armpit, which indicated from the beginning that he was special, he was a prince, and once, while hunting he pierced several trees with one arrow, another event in his life that indicated his uniqueness. As a king he was very caring of his people and visited them a lot. He saw a lot of suffering and started thinking about how to fix that. He mediated a lot…and after many years, achieved enlightenment. In itself enlightenment is a mysterious thing, but as a Buddhist achieving it is your ultimate goal and there are several paths that you must explore in a quest for personal and spiritual improvement.

We arrived at the hotel, and listened to a talk about cruelty-free silk, a few highlights were scaring elephants of their workplaces by using bees initially (in south Africa, I think) and then just by using the sound they make when attacking; getting spiders in a state of sleepy happiness using milk and something else, to make them produce very regular and high quality silk, and genetically modified silkworms. The person showing the project had asked the day before at another presentation what Buddhist philosophy said about genetically modified organisms, the person in charge gave a really interesting answer along these lines;
“I don’t know officially, and I have no authority to tell you what the official position is, but I’ll happily tell you how I, as a Buddhist feel about it. In this case where the means is not clearly objectionable, it depends on your goals and your state of mind, are you doing it to become rich and satisfy yourself? are you doing it to provide more and better products at a better price for more people and make their lives better?”
I thought that was perfect.

My dad was next and he gave his talk which went great, then he called Maria and me on stage so we could do our thing; everyone was really happy to see a family involved in something like this (he mentioned my mom and she stood up too) most of them told us at some point that they had wished they could take their families with them to the event but they thought it was too crazy, so they were happy to see that it could be done. After doing our little number a lady approached me, Damchae, she told me that she was really happy to have seen me up there, that she had a son who was a Buddhist monk and who had just returned from 3 years of meditation in the mountains, he is about my age, and she would love to arrange a time for us to sit down, have some coffee and just talk about stuff. AWESOME!
We scheduled it for that evening, ate lunch and then continued our tour around Thimphu. We went downtown, walked and saw the little shops, we saw a lot of people wearing the Gho’s which was cool, and we experienced a little bit of what everyday life in Bhutan is.

We started going towards the big Buddha statue (169 ft. tall), but found out it was raining up there, and since construction is still going on it’s very muddy and dirty so we took some pictures from far away and went back. We later found out that there was a dinner planned for that day, so I called Damchae, and moved my meeting with her son, Jamyang, to Friday.

Dinner was good, and then bedtime.

Asia Trip 2011 - part 2 - Bhutan

2011-07-16T18:40:00.000-05:00

Tuesday

After the longest trip ever to get there, we started our descent to the Paro airport in Bhutan, it was really cool to see how the pilot had to maneuver between mountains, to land, it must be really difficult or at least it looked like it, he had to make some sharp turns all while descending and then ther it was the airport.

It was incredible the architecture of the airport was typical Bhutanese, everyone we saw was wearing the traditional gho the view was incredible mountains all around, with little houses and temples popping up randomly. During entry there was a problem with my sister’s visa because her gender was “N” the guy told me to go find our travel agent (you can’t enter Bhutan unless you have a specified plan with a travel agency, I think) and so I walked all by myself past immigration, baggage claim customs up to the point where the cabs would be, found the guy with the sign that had our names on it, and then we walked back to immigration, no one stopped us, no one asked us anything. He talked to the officer, made a phone call and within 3 minutes we were good to go and drowned in apologies from them.

It’s easy to see that one of the reasons this is possible is because there are fewer people to manage, and enough well trained government officers to handle it. Maybe in this case it would seem to mean that the higher amount of government/person helped, but that of course cannot be generalized.

The drive to our airport was breathtaking; it was a unique mixture of good development and tradition keeping, a brand new road, with little traffic being cleaned by groups of people who, somehow looked happy while picking up trash from the road. Lots of family owned traditional farming on the sides of the road, and of course the mountains all around us. The river was incredibly clean, we drove by it for a really long time and it looked impeccable the whole time. Our guide told us the trip used to take 2 hours before they rebuilt the road, when they started construction the King personally visited the workers and asked them to please work on it really well and efficiently because it was really important, apparently they did so and the road was finished really quickly.

Our hotel was really nice, maybe too nice given the fact that a lot of the people’s houses are very rural and traditional, but maybe the idea behind it is “this is what we need, and this is what the tourists need”…who knows, maybe I’m just trying to justify it :p. No plastic bags in the hotel…I can’t remember any in the whole country actually, but maybe I’m just forgetting. Although they did say during one of the talks about trying to reduce the amount of plastic used.

We went to Hotel Termalinca where the talks were going on, I guess this is a good time to explain why we were here in the first place. Bhutan’s government has put in place a development measurement tool called GNH – gross national happiness – one part of this is concerned with sustainable development and policies that are in agreement with log term preservation of the environment. Both my dad and godfather have been involved in projects related to this, and so my godfather organized a fundraiser for several projects in this field, a lot of investors from the world were invited and my dad (and through him, my mom and sister and I) was invited to ~~invest~~ (haha, right) present the Las Gaviotas project from Colombia (look it up it’s really cool) and talk to some people to see if they can set up something similar in Bhutan, since they have a lot of pine trees.

The first event we got to see was some “hang-out time” with one of the queen mothers, there are 4 in Bhutan, the current king’s mom and her 3 sisters; they’re each in charge of one major project. She talked a lot about the building regulations and how they are some restrictions with respect to how much they need to stick to the traditional style, and how they make sure they’re earthquake proof, and other things.

She told us about this monument that she was in charge of, the 108 stupas in 2003 after a lot of attempts at peaceful talks, the King decided they had to go to war in the North of Bhutan. In her words, the King is not a King to sit in his office and direct direct the soldiers through a telephone, but he went out there and fought among his men, everyone in the country was really worried about him, so the queen mother started a monument consisting of 108 stupas, 108 is apparently a really important number in bhuddism, to pray to the gods for his safety and that of every soldier, everyone contributed, one of the guides in our group later told us he spent 3 days helping there. The war ended in victory with 11 Bhutanese casualties, the King was safe.

The next talk was about operationalizing GNH. The reason Bhutan is special is because they are working very hard to control the way the country develops. They came up with this ideal called Gross National Happiness which ideally would be able to measure development in a more complete and accurate way than other indicators used in the world. The basic concept comes from thinking that happiness is the ultimate desire of every citizen and therefore it must be the main purpose of development. Measuring happiness seems to be thus the most appropriate way to measure development, as opposed to GDP or other methods.

It is obviously really hard to measure the happiness of a country, but they decided they would try really hard but in 2008, they finally made the transition of turning GNH from a an abstract philosophical goal to a measurable concept. This is awesome.

There are 4 pillars to GNH:

-sustainable and equitable development

-preservation and promotion of national culture

-environmental conservation

-good governance

To measure this they use 72 indicators in 9 domains, they didn’t talk about every indicator but they did focus on a few so here are some the domains and some of the indicators in each

Psychological well-being

Some of the things they measure here are stress, compassion, calmness, generosity, frustration, selfishness, jealousy, frequency of prayers and meditation, and consideration of karma and suicide, among the population.

Culture preservation and diversity

Here they try to measure how many people and how often people speak Bhutanese (this makes sense because the king decided to make English really important in schools a while ago, now 85% of the population speaks in English, the goal is 100% by 2015), how often people practice the national games (archery is the national sport…badass), discipline, knowledge/participation in national traditions and festivals.

Time use

The main idea here is that people should ideally work 8 hours, sleep 8 hours, and then have 8 hours every day of leisure time. I thought that the leisure time was too vague, I mean I guess it could go from spending time playing with your kids to waiting stuck in traffic. But they did some research and found that most people were pretty close to those 8-8-8 goals.

Community Vitality

How much help is available from your neighbors, and how safe people feel, at the homes and in the streets.

Good governance

They measure how true it is that they have freedom of speech and association, also discrimination and equal pay for equal value of work. I thought that was really interesting obviously equal pay is ridiculous, but equal pay for equal value, THAT’s where it’s at.

Education

They said they needed to live up to 2 different standards. They wanted to make sure the education the government offered was up to conventional international standards, after they made sure that was achieved, and ONLY after, they started working on living up to GNH standards. They decided they needed to introduce meditation in schools and then showed us a video of a bunch of kids saying how awesome it was and how much they liked it and thought it was a good idea…except for the last kid, who said “I think it’s stupid and boring now I’m going to go play soccer” we all laughed.

The other 3 domains were Ecology, Health, and Standard of Life.

complement to GDP and others as development indicator

They specified that the goal is to add to, and not to replace other development indicators, which are good just incomplete. For example in Japan, they said life expectancy is 90, but it’s necessary to see what kind of life people have from, say 80-90. If they’re just laying in bed being sick for 10 years that’s not development.

They also gave us an example of how they use it to make decisions. They were debating on whether to have Bhutan join the WTO, initially and after hearing from a lot of them 19 of the ministers were for and 5 against. Then they examined it using GNH criteria, in short, they saw that it would raise stress, and material well being, as well as decrese equality, so the votes changed to 19 against and 5 for.

In 1961 the government had to undertake ventures because the private sector was too weak to do it, but then between 1982 and 1992 they went through a lot of privatization. Debt is about 60% of GDP, and the role of the government is seen, as much as possible, as a policymaker and regulator, not as a participant in the market. Unemployment is a little under 4%, and also they have policies to encourage the added value to natural resources, i.e. not dig and sell for other countries to process, but have the process happen in Bhutan.

Whenever the Government undertakes projects that have to use the land of some citizens, the idea is to provide to every family affected 1 job guaranteed plus 10000 units worth (about 400 dollars a year)

The last thing in the guy’s presentation was some words from Buddha

Buddha said:

Never commit wrong doings

Accumulate good

Watch out for your mind (educate yourself, and don’t let people corrupt you)

Another interesting thing to mention is how people feel about the government in Bhutan, the 4^th king (the current is his son, the 5^th) was apparently really awesome, every time he comes up in conversation you can almost see the love and respect in everyone’s face, he’s the one who came up with GNH, and created the parliament. I heard at some point that the royal family is extremely rich, but there is no tax money that goes to them, still they spend huge amounts investing in projects and works for the people and the country.

That evening we had dinner at a hotel with all the people in the event, they hired some local artisans to sell their stuff and to work in front of everyone, it was really cool. The food was delicious but really spicy, so my parents couldn’t enjoy it a lot.

Then…bedtime J

Asia Trip 2011

2011-07-13T18:41:00.000-05:00

Venezuela

We had a 17 “layover” in Venezuela, before leaving we asked the consulate in Bogota about whether we needed a visa to get in the country or not, they told us we needed one to leave the airport but it took 10 days and like 30 bucks per person, so we said screw it.

We arrived to the airport in Maiquetia, pretty tired at midnight, we decided it was worth a shot to try to go through immigration. We wait in line, get to the point where the officer is:

-Hello we’re here in transit for 17 hours

-Where are you going to spend the night?

-We would like to get a hotel, so it’s kind of up to you.

-Ok, have a good night welcome to Venezuela.

There were a few interesting things in the airport, a lot of advertising for socialism, the slogan “homeland and socialism or death” and a picture with big government projects, and the slogan “with socialism, the big milestones are done by YOU”

We got out of the airport and this cab driver approached us offering us to take us to a really good hotel and exchange currency. The official rate is 4.3 bolivares for one dollar, but he was offering us 7.5, apparently dollars are really hard to get for them, and so this black market comes up, the weird thing is that even at the unofficial rate things are pretty expensive, so using the official rate is really ridiculous…we went the unofficial way. Anyway the taxi driver was saying a lot of weird things and talking really fast, and messing up his conversion rates, so we really thought he was trying to scam us, also anytime anyone else came to talk to us he was like “hey these are my customers, don’t get in the way”…so we were pretty scared. But in the end it all worked out quite nicely, he took us to a hotel, where he talked to the manager before we got a chance and told us what the rate was. It turned out he was a really nice guy and was really helpful, he was just really aggressive approaching people and a little hyper.

We asked him to pick us up the next day so we could see the city for a while before we went to the airport at 5. He told us that since checkout is at noon at the hotel, we would be downstairs at 11:30, he also made sure to tell us that we had to check out at noon or they would charge us an extra night…like 3 times. Next morning I woke up at like 10:30, went outside and saw him there sitting waiting for noon to get there, and so we talked for a while. I wanted to ask him about Chavez and socialism, so he said that he’s the best president Venezuela has ever had and that he’s done a lot of great things for the people and the country. However he started teasing the parking lot guy and the manager of the hotel about it, and everytime he asked they got serious and replied something like “How I feel about Chavez is my problem not yours, and I don’t want to talk about it”, then the driver made fun of them.

Oh and at one point my mom sat in the restaurant and pulled out some work stuff, he started telling her how if she was traveling and on vacation she shouldn’t do work.

We asked the driver to take us to Caracas (about 20 mins away), and for some reason he just really didn’t want to go, he started saying that we didn’t have enough time, and it was raining in Caracas, and it was Sunday so everything was closed so there was really nothing to see there, we insistd a few more times but he just wasn’t going to have it “I’ll take you to this really cool place along the Caribbean shore, trust me you’ll like it a lot more”. During lunch he pretty much told us what to order and as soon as we got the chicken, he poured guacamole all over it and grabbed a piece.

He was a cool guy and after the shock and the scary part the night before, we decided to just have fun with it and see how much he would do.

Frankfurt

The flight to Frankfurt was not bad. The entertainment was good, Maria and I watched Tangled together, there was some Gnomeo and Juliet, Rango, Modern Family… The food was good and they got Maria some coloring books. Maria behaved awesomely, it’s incredible how good she is for a 7 year old, yes, there was a lot of entertainment but still she behaved really well for a 7 year old in a 10 hour flight. Oh at some point a baby started crying and somebody yelled “somebody give that baby a bottle”, jerk.

Kolkata

Nothing too exciting in Frankfurt or in the flight to Calcutta, same movies, which was awesome and Maria really liked. In Calcutta everyone was bloen away by Maria Jose, pretty much everyone who saw her stared for a while and smiled at her, I guess we were the weird ones there. She went to buy some kit-kat and I gave her the money to pay, the guys at the store were really happy and smiling at her a lot, when she said “thank you” the guy asked her what her name was and how old she was, and gave her a second bag of candy for free! Everyone in India was really cool my mom needed to get a hold of people in Colombia and a guy offered us his cell-phone to try to access the internet and to try to make a phone call, just like that. Security at the Kolkata airport is weird and pointless, you can’t get into the airport unless you have a ticket, then you get into a waiting area and you CAN’T check in until like an hour before your flight, which sucked for us because of of our 8 hour layover. After that it was all good, we checked in, got through immigration (lots of Indian decorations in the immigration room, that was awesome). And as soon as we got on the plane to Paro we were in Bhutan territory…

Oh wait, up to here, Maria Jose was keeping a little journal where she wrote every country we were in and for how long. She kind of forgot about it when we got to Bhutan.

Revive

2011-01-19T14:27:00.000-06:00

SO, apparently I have a blog, I remotely remember starting this a long time ago, but never evven posted, so here we go. I came across this while thinking about a place to store my new little project.

I call it It made my day, stolen from http://immd.icanhascheezburger.com/, basically the idea is to write down every day the little moment, action, happening, y/o/u....aeae (cf. les luthiers) event that made my day.

We'll see how I do, i'm not very disciplined, but i'll try to keep this up.