Sunday

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Pre-Script: this was supposed to be posted on Sunday night, but I haven't had internet at my house - an issue which has been solved in a theoretical sense but not a practical one (i.e. I know what the problem is, I just haven't been able to fix it yet). So, sorry for the lack of bloggage - and put yourself in the mindset of "Sunday night" when you're reading this.

Today was a weird day.

I woke up with a brutally sore throat, which came as a total shock. Usually, I can feel a sore throat coming several days in advance; it starts as a tickle in the back of my throat, and gets progressively worse until the 3rd or 4th day when it reaches an apex. In other cases (particularly after nights when beer is on the menu), I wake up with a sore throat that gradually dissipates throughout the day, never to be heard from again. Today's seems to be the natural, non-alcohol-induced kind (I did have some beer over at J's house on Friday night, but I've never encountered any sort of delayed alcohol-induced sore throat, that seems unlikely), but there was no lead-up.

I suppose it could have been something I ate - I ate a lot of crackers yesterday, maybe the salt? It's not like I ate a whole package, though. I had sushi for dinner, and at the end I had a couple bites of straight wasabi, because I love the wasabi spiciness - the brief but powerful rush of tingling in your mouth and nose, and the fact that it doesn't linger like "regular" spiciness - so I suppose that could have been it. Maybe the salt of the soy sauce contributed too. But that's never happened with sushi before, so I'm skeptical.

(By the way, side note about sushi last night. The entrance to the sushi restaurant was inside the deli next door. When we arrived, they didn't have any tables, but they had extra tables set up inside the deli. So for the first 20 minutes or so, we sat there at our plastic table and chairs, studying the menu as customers filed in and out, picking up their groceries, before being ushered into the very posh sushi restaurant.)

It's no Sushi Kan... Deli Kan?

So, as is often the case when I feel even the slightest bit sick, I resolved to stay home and take it easy today. I tell myself this is so that I can nip whatever may be coming in the bud, but in reality it's just an easy excuse to be lazy.

Of course, this led me to stay home all day, and aside from stepping onto my balcony for a few brief moments, I haven't been outside. This is something I've been trying not to do while in Colombia, so hopefully I'll at least muster the energy to take the garbage out to keep the streak going (ed: I didn't. The streak is over). But so far, most of what I've seen today has been the inside of my apartment, and since I'm nicely settled in and used to the place (pictures soon, I promise), when I'm inside it doesn't feel like I'm in some exotic new country.

At some point today, I decided to listen to an album by the Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (that's the one with Do You Realize on it). I hadn't listened to it much before; I just downloaded it shortly before leaving the other continent, so apart from the aforementioned state song of Louisiana (or Oklahoma? I forget), I wasn't particularly familiar with the music. But as I was sitting at my desk, either doing some schoolwork or reading, the music made me stop what I was doing, close my eyes, and enjoy the moment. This is not a common occurrence for me; even though I'm constantly listening to or playing music, it's not often that I get totally absorbed in it. I think this has something to do with the logical and mathematical nature of my brain; whether I try to or not, I'm always simultaneously listening to the music and analyzing it. Concerts are never the superlative, life-changing experiences they seem to be for other people. But it does happen every now and then.

Sometime in the evening I started getting hungry (this, on the other hand, is a common occurrence), and I decided to make something large for dinner so I could take the rest for lunch tomorrow. Since my fridge isn't yet fully re-stocked, and I'm still accumulating kitchen equipment, my cooking possibilities for this type of meal are limited: basically, rice or pasta. Last time I made rice, so I went the pasta route, and the sauce was a very traditional (for me) mix of onions, green peppers, broccoli, tomatoes and a bit of tomato sauce.

So it was that I sat down to dinner, excitedly awaiting the first bite of a nostalgic dish, listening to the same Flaming Lips album (it had been put on repeat by this point). And it seems like all of these things - the mild sickness-induced drowsiness, the lack of outside reality, the tastes-like-home food, the affective music - conflated to sweep me away in a wave of emotion. What emotion that was, I cannot tell you. I wouldn't call it homesickness, because I wasn't particularly sad. And also, as mentioned, I feel at home here. Maybe home-wistfulness?

Or maybe it was simply living on another continent setting in. I've been in Colombia for three and a half weeks now, and I've bathed in a mud volcano, eaten lots of interesting, new food, and been immersed in a totally different culture, but I never got an overwhelming sense of I'm here now. Now, I didn't really get that sense tonight, either, but it was something close. Something like the feeling you get on a cold autumn night - a general warmth and sleepiness, the summer over and a long winter about to set in.

I don't know what that means, since the closest thing I'm getting to winter around here are the trade winds that come around in November for a few months, and give the 32˚ air a bit of a breeze to cool us off. Not exactly snowball fight weather. I suppose the significance is that it was something that felt like home, a feeling I've had every year of my life up til now. But this is home - for the next 10 months, at least.

Sorry to get all meditative on you guys. It's back to silliness and things being lost in translation tomorrow, I promise. Maybe I'll even get around to posting pictures of the school and my apartment.

Notes From Friday

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I usually try to focus these blog posts on a single topic/story, but sometimes there are just a few tidbits here and there I want to pass along. So, without further ado, here are some of said tidbits.

*****

I've mentioned this once before, but it was just a quick aside buried deep in a mostly-unrelated story, so I thought I'd mention it again: last week, a teacher band was formed for the purpose of playing at the school's first mass. I played (play? Not sure what our future is yet...) drums in said band. I'm telling you this because my colleague E wrote a blog post about the mass, so check it out! And check out the rest of her blog while you're at it!

*****

Another reason I wanted to mention the teacher band is because one of its members is a new friend of mine, and he's involved in both of the other two tidbits of today's post. This new friend's xlog-name is M, and he plays electric guitar and bass in the teacher band. He's one of the two music teachers at school.

And last night, M and I almost got arrested!

Okay, not really. But we could have been, because we were doing something illegal. Namely: we were men and we were outside.

I'm serious! This sounds like something you might read on Ian's Blog (I am just linking all over the place today), but in Colombia? What's the deal?

Apparently, last night was some sort of women's night in Barranquilla. At first I thought this meant men couldn't go to bars, but in actuality it was much more wide-spread than that; we weren't even allowed to be on the street! Obviously, I had a lot of questions about this, but M didn't know much more than I. This is not a regular event; last night was the first one, ever. M's understanding was that it was some sort of social experiment to see if nightlife-related violence was reduced, but he also brought up the very good (and also hilarious) point that of course nightlife-related violence would be reduced, since nightlife-related violence is usually alcohol-fueled, and without men, who would be buying the women drinks?

Anyway, last night M and I went over to J's apartment for the evening (if you don't feel like clicking the link, J is a displaced Canadian who I met on the bus this week. I also found out last night I am J's 3rd replacement at my school - meaning he taught the same classes as me 3 teachers ago), and even though it was only about a 10 minute walk (more like 25 on the way back...), we were terrified! Okay, we weren't terrified. What were they gonna do? Give us a stern lecture? I would have just pulled the gringo card, and I would have got out of even that. (by the way, maybe this is common knowledge, but I just found out last night that gringo refers specifically to Americans, so I'm not one - as someone who is often, and wrongly, referred to as a gringo, J was sure to make this point very clear.)

*****

Before venturing out into the wild unknown of no-men-allowed Barranquilla, M and I had been hanging out at my apartment. I had invited M over because we take the same bus and we were thirsty, and I had drinks.

We were thirsty because yesterday after school the teachers had a Friday soccer game, which I believe is a regular thing (there was one 2 weeks ago which I had to miss because I had to go get my blood taken or some other moving-related administrative thing (by the way, I'm O negative, which I already knew, but I guess they won't let you just tell them your blood type), and then last week it was raining), though I didn't find out until yesterday that these Friday matches aren't so much games as training sessions (they're effectively the same thing, I guess it's just the motivation that's different).

Training sessions for what, you ask? Well, as I just found out yesterday (I found out a lot of things yesterday) the teachers are going to a soccer tournament soon. It's a tournament for all Colombian SACS Schools - SACS is some kind of accreditation that allows students to receive both a Colombian and American high school diploma, and my school just got accredited last year.

So anyway, there's this SACS soccer tournament in October. As far as I know, that's all it is. Maybe there's some sort of educational conference component to it, but I haven't heard about that. Oh yeah, and the tournament is in Bogotá! I don't know yet if I'll get to go, since, as mentioned, I just found out about it yesterday, but that would be amazing, obviously.

*****

One last note: yesterday I got my Cedula, which is the Colombian everything card - it's like a combination driver's license/SIN card/probably everything else? The most important result of this is I can now open a bank account and consequently receive a pay cheque. Things are coming up Dave.

(Colombian) Kids Say the Darndest Things

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Here are some of the more entertaining responses to questions I've asked/activities I've ran in class recently.

Where would you like to sit when I make a seating plan?

"I want to sit at the back because I'm tall" (lots of kids wrote the opposite, but this was the only one who was considerate enough to think about the short kids)

"I want to be near Mr. Dave desk because I suck in math. I'll like in front"

"In the second line because I can't see very well. I (HEART) CANADA" (brown-noser)

"In wath ever place the important is the class." (let's hope this kid is sitting at the front of English class)

What was one thing you liked about math class last year?

"Well, I really think math sucks, I hate numbers and formulas, but I liked the teacher because honestly he was very good at math, he was very cool, handsome and cute. By the way, math is cool, I like having it as a subject, and I do care about it. But I hate having homeworks everyday, I know it really helped us do better and become better students but it was really boring and it was such a disaster, but anyways I can survive math classes for another five years."

(this is all over the place - this person alternately hates, respects and genuinely likes math, touches on the mindless tedium of homework, professes their love and ends with a rumination on the state of their educational future. A Tour de Force.)

What are you excited for in math class this year?

"Well, I expect to learn more about equations cause I want to be a MACANIC ENGINERE." (he's already got the spelling of an engineer down)

In class on Monday we did an activity on Cartesian coordinates in which I had the kids draw a picture on a grid and then write instructions on how to re-create the picture using ordered pairs. Some of the more creative pictures included: a really sweet guitar, better than I could have done, the word "gringo" (by an American kid) and a train, complete with emanating puffs of smoke of escalating sizes.

Here's a response that isn't so much hilarious as just plain amazing. In grade 7, we were talking about geometry terms, and specifically the difference between lines, line segments and rays. I asked the kids to come up with everyday objects that are analogous to each of these things, for example a line is like a highway because it's continuous on both ends, a ray is like a flashlight because it has one fixed end and one unfixed end, and a line segment is like a rope because it has 2 fixed ends.

Well, when I was asking about rays, one kid told me that the number Pi is like a ray because it keeps going forever in one direction (i.e. its decimal places). That is some seriously abstract thinking.

On Tuesday, we did an activity where I asked the kids to find and measure 10 angles in the classroom. Some of the more hilarious "found" angles:

• my coffee cup (360˚)
• the kid's protractor (180 ˚ - measuring that must have been kind of meta)
• a golf club (there were no golf clubs in the classroom, I don't know where he got that idea)
• the fan (this required standing under it and laser-sighting it through the translucent protractor - good thing it wasn't moving)
• the A-frame of a swing set that was obviously out the window
• an angle that the kid just blatantly drew on the board
• shirt collar with the top button undone, creating a bit of a v-neck
• one kid just went around measuring people's faces

The Food Fiasco

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Warning: this is a very long post in which not much happens. Though I guess that's the case with most of my entries, so if you've gotten this far, you're probably committed (thanks mom). Also, as each day goes by I get better at Spanish, so these harrowing tales of dumb foreignerism may not be long for this world. This may be my Stupid Canadian Magnum Opus.

(Who am I kidding, I'm going to get into all kinds of crazy trouble! Stay tuned!)

Let's just say the past couple days weren't kind to me as far as food went. No, I'm not violently ill because of some weird Colombian street food, thankfully - it was more of a frustration-based fiasco than a vomit-based fiasco.

It started Sunday morning when I woke up to discover my fridge was unusually warm. I fiddled with the settings all morning before eventually concluding that it was just simply broken. So, there went a bunch of perfectly good food - I don't know any of my neighbors well enough to beg for fridge space, and it could have broken as early as Saturday afternoon, since I was out most of the day on Saturday. I thought about telling the security guard at my building, but I don't really know the Sunday guy as well as the weekday guys, so I decided to wait and tell the school people who are helping me with the transition once I got to school on Monday.

By the way, not only did I not have any food, but I had just run out of water (and though I'm one of the most liberal tap water drinkers you'll find, I don't drink the tap water here), so unless I wanted to drink 30˚C Coke (I didn't), I was going dry.

*****

So, on Monday, after not drinking anything for breakfast and then talking for 3 and a half hours, it's safe to say I was thirsty. I knew enough about how the cafeteria worked to get myself a bottle of water during recess; I just had to buy some tickets (they come in multiples of 100 pesos, or 5 cents), and then present my tickets at the cafe. No problem. I headed back to class, water in tow, and talked for another 2+ hours (sheesh, long mornings at this school - class starts at 7, lunch starts at 12:30), this time well-lubricated.

Upon the half-hour of lunch, I headed down to the cafeteria since, conveniently, I was on duty there, so I could make good use of my time by trying one of the tasty-looking creations they conjure up here for lunch.

This proved more difficult than I expected.

I still had what I believed would be enough tickets for lunch. I discovered that it wasn't, in fact, enough for the corn dish I wanted, but it was enough for a hot dog, so I waited at the hot dog stand for about 10 minutes. I was just thinking I was pretty close to getting my lunch (it's kind of hard to tell, there isn't much of a line system) when one of my students noticed what I was trying to do, and informed me that I couldn't use regular old tickets to buy the food, and I had to get a special hot dog ticket. Okay, that's stupid, but I figured I'd just go get myself one of them hot dog tickets, and 10 minutes later I'd have my food.

Then he (the student) told me they weren't selling the tickets anymore; they stopped selling at noon. GAH. So, I got back to patrolling the cafeteria. Another 10 minutes went by, and another of my students, somehow aware of my situation (I guess when the stupid Canadian teacher tries to do anything it spreads like wildfire), informed me that I could buy tickets at the cafeteria office. So I headed over there, and asked for a hot dog ticket, only to discover they weren't selling hot dog tickets, only corn tickets, and I didn't have enough regular tickets to trade in for a corn ticket, but whatever, I just shelled out the cash for a corn ticket and held on to my regular tickets (are you still with me?).

So THEN, I went back to the hot dog/corn guy, and showed him my ticket. He told me there was no more corn, and I could plainly see that he was making hot dogs, despite my inability to buy a hot dog ticket.

Okay, seriously, is the world conspiring against my ability to get anything to eat???!

So I asked a student, who cleared up the situation: they simply ran out of hot dog tickets, so people were paying for their hot dogs with corn tickets, which COST MORE, so it's stupid, because why can't we just pay with the REGULAR TICKETS, since they come in 5 cent intervals (as opposed to the hot dog and corn tickets which are face value of the item). Man!

Anyway, the end result was I got myself in on the last batch of hot dogs before the bell rang (only with the assistance of yet another student - by now the entire student population knows I'm an idiot - apparently I had to tell the guy I wanted one even though I was standing right there looking desperately hungry), but luckily I had the rest of the afternoon off (since I had already talked for more than 5 and a half hours) and was free to enjoy my hot dog in peace. It was tasty. And weird. I'll describe it sometime.

*****

After my satisfying lunch, I headed upstairs to ask the school director if there was any word on my fridge getting fixed. As a matter of fact, there was - there would be a guy at my apartment at 3:30, and the landlord's secretary would also be there in case they needed to go out and get parts, or something. Great! I could relax with the knowledge that my fridge would be fixed right after I got home, and then I'd be able to head to the grocery store and re-stock, all before dinner time.

Of course, that's not how things happened.

I got home by 3:30, as instructed, and waited.

At 4:30, I got a call informing me that in order to give me time to get home from school (I had already been home for an hour), the guy had been told to come after 4. The timing of this call was, to say the least, conspicuous. I waited some more, and sometime after 5 I put in my own call to see what was up. This time, I was told the guy got delayed, but would be there "soon". So I waited some more.

I should note that the waiting game is a tedious exercise for me. I can't really focus on anything important while I'm waiting - I can do minor tasks, but I can't get started on something like a lesson plan (which, coincidentally, I had to make) when someone is coming to my house to fix an essential appliance "any minute". So I kept waiting.

Around 6:30, I got a call from the school director. Unfortunately, it stopped ringing after 1 ring. I called back twice to no avail. I kept waiting.

About an hour later, the director called back to inform me that she had tried to call me but her battery had run out mid-call. She had been calling to see what was up; she had no news of her own.

I kept waiting.

At about 8, I got too hungry, and made myself a tasty albeit dry meal of pasta with olive oil, salt, pepper and oregano, with air to drink. I was just about to give up waiting...

...finally, after what seemed like slightly less than an eternity (an eternity is so inconceivable a length of time the hugeness of it becomes meaningless, so slightly less than eternity is a much more impressive amount of time. Thanks, Douglas Adams), the dude and my landlord's assistant arrived. It was 8:30.

Of course, you can probably already guess they weren't able to fix the fridge. The dude needed another part, which he couldn't get because it was too late and the stores weren't open. The whole point of the landlord's assistant coming was in case this happened and they needed to drive somewhere and get the part.

Oh well, at least I could stop playing the waiting game, and Walter assured me he'd be there the next day at 4 with new part in hand. He also he would come by himself. This was significant because I understood all of these facts, which is definitely progress for me on the Spanish front.

*****

Fast forward a day. I arrived at school with no lunch in tow for the second straight day (I don't need to explain why), and during the 4-hour break I had between classes I resolved to get myself a corn ticket, and do it right this time. So, just before noon, which is when the ticket office closes (even though it was open the previous day sometime between 12:30 and 1 when I had my previous adventure - this is one thing I haven't yet figured out), I headed over. On the way, I ran into fellow whitey K; she was successfully returning from the same mission I was currently on. During the conversation, the door to the food office, which was about 3 meters away from me, slammed shut. Foiled again.

(By the way, seems like a dumb idea to me that the food office should close at 12 when senior lunch is from 12:30-1. I guess they're saying if kids forget to pick up their tickets earlier they just can't eat?)

So I headed up to the teacher's lounge and explained the situation to very helpful and fully bilingual teacher H. He very graciously took me under his wing, leading me over to the kitchen and explaining the situation to the two Lovely Ladies of Lunch, and though I couldn't understand the conversation, I presumed he was (purposely) making me out to be a pathetic and clueless foreigner, which was also the pose I was attempting to meekly strike in the background.

Unfortunately, that idea didn't pan out, since the Ladies haven't started making hot lunches yet (that starts next week).

Shortly after this failure, my bus hero got wind of the situation and took it upon himself to lead me around in search of the chick who sells the food tickets, since I am a teacher, it's not like she's just going to turn me down (I would have used this tactic if I remembered what she looked like/had any idea where she was - I had already tried knocking on her office door).

Of course, she somehow proved to be nowhere on the school grounds.. well, okay, for about 10 minutes. The school is tiny, so it seemed like we were walking around for a long time, since we looked everywhere more than once. Anyway, eventually she was found, I got my ticket, and ate my corn and cheese dish.

*****

At 4:00 I got to play the waiting game again, but this time it was only for about 45 minutes, and shortly thereafter Walter had fixed the fridge. I sped over to the local grocery store, having forgotten that it was 20% off produce day (every Tuesday!), and I needed produce!

So you know what? Throughout this entire escapade I never missed a meal, and in fact, all of my meals were pretty good. And I got 20% discounted produce! So, for all my griping, I don't really have anything to gripe about. Thanks for wasting 2,000 words of your time! Come again!

Loose Connections

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I know my parents. (I think this is generally apparent.)

My parents have friends named E and S.

E and S have a son.

This son has a friend named D, who used to teach in Peru.

A former colleague of D's from the school in Peru, named D2, now works here in Barranquilla at the British School. I've been in e-touch with D2, but have yet to meet him.

This morning I hopped on the bus to get to school, and the first face that greeted me looked out of place - another whitey! Like me! After staring each other down for a few seconds (not really), he decided to make idle white chatter. But it wasn't just any chatter - he asked me, out of the blue, in English, without having heard me speak, if I was Canadian. How did he know?!

It was weird, though a stranger on the bus knowing who I was isn't unprecedented. So we got to talking, and it turns out he's been here for a while, after having spent 16 years as an accountant and also some time in the Canadian Forces (though he didn't look old enough to have done all that, maybe I mis-heard the 16).

Another Canadian! My excitement caused me to forget about his strange, unexplained knowledge of me. I haven't spoken to a Canadian (apart from a few static-y minutes of failed attempted Skype with my family) in several weeks, which is almost definitely the longest streak of its kind since I didn't know how to speak.

I eventually discovered that he used to work at the school I presently work at, and he recently ran into the senior school principal, who informed him of my existence (my legend precedes me, apparently). And when he saw me enter the bus with another teacher who I eventually figured out he already knew, he put 2 and 2 together.

So what does this story have to do with the opening lines of this blog post? Well, my new Canadian friend, J, now works at the British School, and knows D2. A very satisfying completion of the circle. Kevin Bacon would be proud.

The Ottawa International Jazz Festival

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So, this post has nothing to do with Colombia. Sorry. But you know what, it's Xave's Xlog, not Xave's Xolombian Xlog, so I can xost about whatever the xell I xant. (it would actually be kinda fun to make the whole x thing a recurring xlog gimmick. Okay maybe not)

Anyway, this past June/July Ottawa had a jazz festival, as they do every year, though I hadn't heard about until I lived in Ottawa this year, likely because it's over-shadowed by the famous Montreal Jazz Festival and less-famous Toronto Jazz Festival. Fortunately, it seems that a by-product of these two prominent fests being so close in both space and time is that Ottawa manages to bring in a very impressive line-up for their own celebration. But for whatever reason, whether a relative lack of popularity, or more federal funding or something else, Ottawa's jazz fest is way, WAY cheaper. Case in point: I got a student pass to the festival, which got me into EVERY SINGLE CONCERT except one (the festival headliner, Al Green - though the pass got me a discount if I wanted to buy tickets to that) for a mere 50 dollars. That is just insane, and you will find out how insane if you read on and hear about the caliber of musicians I got to see.

By the way, I'm posting this now because I wrote most of this shortly after the festival, but never got around to finishing it, so here's the finished product. What follows is a chronological history with brief reviews of the shows I saw.

Souljazz Orchestra - this was a free concert, announced at the last minute along with a couple of others, to kick off jazz fest. I saw the Souljazz Orchestra in the fall along with a brass band from Chicago. They're a local band, and are quite good. The group is comprised of 6 members - keyboard, drums, 3 saxes (alto, tenor, bari), and a girl who occasionally sings and mostly plays auxiliary percussion. They play lots of solid funk and latin grooves, but their songs are often intricately arranged as well. Solos are probably the group's weakness - not to say they aren't great at it, they just don't exactly compare with the likes of Pat Metheny and Gary Burton (postscript: this is probably a confusing reference, but it makes sense if you read these concert reviews out of order. I'll leave it up to you to figure out what order I wrote them in. Good luck, I don't even remember.) Pretty excellent for a free concert though.

SMV - Stanley Clarke, Marcus Miller and Victor Wooten

If you're a bass player you're salivating right now. These are three of the best electric bass players in the world, playing a concert together???! Craziness. Here's the deal: they formed a group and recorded an album a couple years back, and evidently spent a good deal of time arranging their songs for three electric basses (along with a drummer and keyboardist). It sounded weird when I first heard about it, but they really did a great job with the arrangements, and it ended up being one of the best concerts of festival. Those three guys are all masters, so as you can probably guess most of their time was spent trying to one-up each other on unbelievable solos. There's nothing like it.

One of the cool things they did was they each did a feature piece. Victor Wooten played the most amazing electric bass solo piece I've ever heard. Later, Marcus Miller played a song on bass clarinet which actually wasn't that great. Finally, Stanley Clarke did this piece on stand-up bass that I can't even begin to describe - it had a bunch of different sections, and at one point became a slow, dirty blues that was amazing.

If this group ever comes anywhere near you, I'd highly recommend it. I wish I could describe it in better detail, but this is one of the ones I'm writing several months later, and plus, it was indescribable to begin with.

Gary Burton Quartet Revisited with Pat Metheny - the concert I was most excited about in the whole festival, and the primary impetus for buying the student pass. In addition to the two musicians mentioned in the concert title, virtuoso Antonio Sanchez was on drums and old dude Steve Swallow played bass.

I was so excited for this concert mostly because Pat Metheny is one of my favourite guitarists ever, and I've never seen him live. Furthermore, this is the perfect setting for Pat Metheny - I'm not a huge fan of his solo stuff, but as a featured musician in someone else's group, he's just an amazing guitarist.

It was a great concert, but it didn't start well. I was biking down shortly before the concert, and carrying an umbrella in anticipation of the forecasted rain, when I decided to swing my umbrella around like I was sword fighting or something. This, of course, ended up with me getting the umbrella caught in the spokes and flying over the handlebars onto the cement bike path. I was pretty scraped up, but the concert was starting soon, so I didn't have time to worry about that. By the time I found the friend I was meeting at the concert it was pouring rain, so I got to huddle up against the fence while an absolute torrent blasted the many open wounds all over my body.

At first it was pretty uncomfortable, especially since the music wasn't as revelatory as I was expecting from a group of this caliber. At some point, though, everything changed - the rain let up, and the quartet found their groove. Gary Burton is a pioneer of jazz vibraphone, one of the best of all time, and he was on his game. Pat Metheny did his thing. Antonio Sanchez is one of the best drummers alive. Steve Swallow was the weak link, but he looked like he was about 85, so I couldn't really blame him.

After a few standard tunes, Pat Metheny busted out the distortion and reverb and played an amazing solo that was like 8 minutes long. After that, he grabbed his famous 42 string guitar and played a crazy solo piece, followed by a really cool acoustic guitar and vibes cover of Summertime, and then one more guitar-vibes duet with another, very different, acoustic guitar. (on the evening, I think he played like 7 different guitars.)

After this 3 song interlude, Sanchez and Swallow (that sounds dirty) returned and they played a couple songs, finishing with a latin tune that was one of their best of the night. It was still raining, but the crowd was raucous, and if my memory serves me there were 2 encores. Just a fantastic concert.

Michael Kaeshammer - Michael Kaeshammer was part of the free Canada Day line-up, so I stopped by to check it out. I didn't know much about him, but had heard his name here and there. Man, he is incredible. He plays piano and sings, accompanied by bass and drums, but it's more than your standard piano-trio-with-vocals. He really puts on a show, getting the crowd into it, dancing around his piano (he did one song where he literally danced around his piano, very slowly, drumming on various parts to the beat until finally getting back around and playing again). A great performer.

The Wayne Shorter Quartet - Wayne Shorter is a legend. He played with Miles Davis, he co-founded Weather Report, he played with Joni Mitchell, his name is just all over jazz history. But he's gone in some interesting directions of late, and this wasn't my favourite concert. The whole concert was one song, about an hour long, which I may point out is longer than any piece of music I'm aware of, including classical music (symphonies are often longer, but they're broken up into movements, the longest of which I'm aware of is about half an hour). There were great musicians in his quartet, notably Brian Blade on drums, and sometimes the jam session coalesced into something cool, but these moments were few and far between.

The Worst Pop Band Ever - I came out of Wayne Shorter unsatisfied, so I wanted to get some more music in. I didn't know this group, but there was always a late night concert at the National Arts Centre after the outdoor shows had wrapped up for the evening, so I decided to check it out.

These guys are a jazz combo out of Toronto, and they were dece. The coolest thing was they had a guy playing turntables, something I've never seen in jazz before, but it worked really well. Other than that they were a totally normal jazz combo, with a rhythm section plus sax. They played mostly (all?) original material, some of which was pretty cool. It was fairly apparent why they were playing a small, late night show as opposed to a big outdoor concert, but it was fine. Also worth pointing out - the drummer, apparently the group's spokesperson, seemed really lame at first, but he told a couple of really funny stories which caught me by surprise after my initial impression.

The Bad Plus - one of the most innovative groups currently working in jazz. I don't even really know how to describe their music, but I'll give it a shot. I suppose I should first mention that they're a trio (piano, bass, drums). First of all, their songs are extremely well-arranged, and almost never follow the standard jazz model of melody-solos-melody. I mean, there are melodies, and there are solos, but it all seems to flow so well - there are lots of sections that can't really be considered melody, but the band is still doing something together. Notably, in one of their last songs, there was a section in which the three of them just played shots together in some sort of seemingly random pattern. But it honestly went on for like 3 minutes. It was insane. There had to be a pattern, because it would be near-impossible to memorize 3 minutes of a random pattern of notes. But they never messed it up.

They also have an interesting repertoire. I didn't know a lot of it, but it was about half-original (all originals written by the bass player), and half covers. Some of the originals were really cool, and their choice of covers was great also - they played a song by Stravinsky (it's extremely rare for jazz groups to cover classical music) and they also played Tom Sawyer by Rush, which the crowd absolutely loved.

I was standing in the standing room area, off to one side but pretty close to the stage. About midway through, some guy screamed "you guys fucking rock!" in between songs while pianist Ethan Iverson was introducing the music. Iverson, an extremely awkward emcee (the drummer and bassist both looked way more personable), didn't know what to do with it, so they just got back to playing, which was a good decision. Those guys did fucking rock, and it was probably my favourite concert of the festival.

Al Di Meola and the New World Sinfonia - I guess Al Di Meola is pretty famous, but I didn't know a lot about him beforehand - but that's the great thing about having an unlimited pass. So he played the later show the same night the Bad Plus played - they had 2 evening shows at Confederation Park each night, with the later one being the more high profile.

Anyway, Al Di Meola is an incredible guitarist, and he had a really cool band with him (the New World Sinfonia - 6 or 7 guys who played all kinds of cool stuff, including various percussion instruments, guitar, accordion), but something about it just didn't work. The songs didn't really seem like songs - I could rarely pick out a discernible melody. It seemed like things were arranged well, and Al often did really cool duets with other musicians, but it just wasn't as impressive as it should have been, or something.

One thing Al had going for him was stage presence. He was probably the best crowd conversationalist I encountered at the festival. He even had some good retorts up his sleeve for you guys fucking rock guy.

Brian Blade Fellowship Band

Another highlight of the festival (there weren't many lowlights). Brian Blade is a middle-aged drummer who plays with my favourite jazz combo of all-time (the Joshua Redman Elastic Band), and previously played in this festival with Wayne Shorter, but he also has his own band, and they were the closing act of the festival. The band included piano, bass, drums, and a couple of sax players.

Their repertoire was interesting in a similar way to The Bad Plus; it just didn't sound like the standard model of jazz. It was maybe a little more orchestral? This is another one of the 2-months-later reviews, so it's hard to say, but they seem like one of those groups that's taking jazz in new directions. Or at least directions that are new to me.

But the best part of this band is watching Brian Blade. He is by far the most energetic drummer I've ever seen; he's pretty much jumping up and down as he plays, and several times he was so into it the hi-hat was rocking precariously, and though it never fell, it was pretty darn close.

Another Getting-To-School Adventure

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To you, my beloved readers, this tale is simply "A Getting-To-School Adventure", since I never told you about the first one (it wasn't that interesting, really), but I like to direct my headlines at myself, since I assume that I'm my only audience.

This morning, I arrived at the bus stop around 6:20 AM, which was a little later than I usually aim for (and by 'usually', I mean the one day of school prior to this morning). This meant that I missed my fellow teacher (and math department head, coincidentally) who takes the same bus. No big deal - after several days of training and the first day of school, I've got the bus figured out.

So the first bus ambled up, looking rather full. I didn't quite catch which bus it was, so I walked towards it with the intention of peeking around at the front, where the route is generally listed. Upon making this several-meter trek, I encountered a man who I took for a bus employee - around here, there's the driver, and there's the guy who collects your money, and when the bus stops, he's usually hanging out the door to make sure everyone who wants to get on gets on before the driver takes off, which, by the way, doesn't usually happen, and more than once now I've entered/exited a moving bus, so anyway, this guy was hanging off the side as the bus approached, hence my assumption he was the money collector guy - and this guy surprised me by asking "(name of my school)?".

How did he know where I was going? Many buses pass by this bus stop, going to many destinations, and even the ones that take me the right way stop first at Barranquilla's most populous university, which is a much more popular stop on the route. Lots of people around here (including transportation personnel, as I discovered in my first getting-to-school adventure) don't even know what I'm talking about it when I tell them the school's name.

In any case, I got on the bus, since this guy seemed to know what he was talking about, even though I was pretty sure this bus wouldn't get me all the way to school. It was absolutely jam packed, to the point where I was the one hanging out the entrance as we drove away, which was pretty exhilarating. After driving for several minutes, the bus came to a stop in a weird place (which isn't uncommon - passengers just tell the driver when they want to stop). Apparently, my guide had requested the stop, and at this point he hopped off and motioned for me to hop off at the same time. I had no idea where we were, but once again, this guy knew his stuff, so I followed.

By the way, astute readers (and since, as previously mentioned, the readership of this blog most likely consists exclusively of the writership of this blog, it is a fair assumption that 100% of the readers are in fact astute) should now be realizing that my assumption that this guy was the money collector of the bus had just been proven false, since he had exited the bus and therefore was now unable to collect money from anyone on the bus. (also, speaking of money collection, my precarious position of only being about 40% inside the bus had seemingly exempted me from having to pay!)

So who was he? I didn't recognize him, and I had already had a week of training plus one day of regular school. I was almost positive he wasn't a staff member, but that positivity was now weakening with the newfound knowledge that he was not a bus dude.

Anyway, he led me over to a nearby corner, where there were a few people who looked like they were also waiting for buses (good sign!) as well as a few people who were just hanging out. One of the hangers was a coffee vendor - there are many portable coffee vendors around here, they carry around this rack of thermoses sort of thing - and shortly my guide was thrusting a thimble sized cup (another peculiarity that is common around here) of Caffe Tinto (black coffee with sugar, the default in Barranquilla) into my hands, free of charge (I didn't notice if he had paid for me, or if it was just on the house).

After a few minutes of socializing (him, not me - not many English speakers around this corner), he whisked me off to the other side of the street to catch our next bus. Also, our party had gained another member - a woman who, according to her garb, was a nurse. I didn't recognize her either, but I didn't think much of it, because there is also a hospital on the way to the school, so I just assumed that's where she was headed.

The first bus that came our way wasn't much of a bus at all - more of a van. But I've been on buses of varying sizes here, so once again this was something I didn't think much of - especially since, as I've now mentioned three times, my good friend seemed to know what he was doing. Upon hopping into the van and sitting down, though, I noticed something odd - the 4 passengers who had already been seated inside were children, all wearing uniforms from my school. This was a school van. (They don't do school buses around here, instead they have a fleet of these 10ish person vans.)

At this point, my surety that Mr. Busandcoffee wasn't a member of the staff was beginning to severely wane. (I was now also forced to assume that my new nurse friend was a school nurse, even though I had met the school nurse the previous week at training, and I thought there was only one.) And my incorrectness was confirmed when the van drove non-stop to the school, and upon arrival everyone dutifully filed out.

I guess I was just wrong - my transportation hero does work at the school. It was embarrassing that I didn't know him, though our lack of ability to communicate probably masked some of that. In any case, I won't be forgetting him any time soon. After getting out of the bus I thanked him, and began toward my classroom.

But then something weird happened - he turned around and headed the other way, toward the school gate. Was I right all along? Did he not work at the school? Did he just go to all that trouble to make sure I got to school okay??! (other questions abound: once again, how did he know where I wanted to go? How did he know that nurse?) Needless to say, I was mighty confused, as I watched my hero saunter off into the sunset. (it wasn't sunset, it was like 6:45AM)

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

Fast-forward to 12PM. (Classes end at 12PM this week - because it's the first week of school, we're trying to ease the students into it, thus the short day.) Every day this week, after school ends, I have rehearsal with the newly formed teacher band. The band consists of the two music teachers on piano and bass, an English teacher on guitar, yours truly on drums, and the religion teacher on vocals. The purpose of these rehearsals is to prepare for mass on Friday, at which we will be performing several religious songs.

Setting up for rehearsals is somewhat luxurious - after years of playing in student groups in which the band sets everything up, and often has to transport the equipment great distances from the storage space to the rehearsal space, the teacher band has a whole maintenance crew at our disposal, who apparently have nothing else to do at 12:15 than haul equipment up one flight of stairs for us.

It was during this set-up process that something caught my eye. A face I recognized but couldn't place. Maybe just one of those faces - that reminds you of someone else, you know? But then the face smiled at me and waved, and that's when it hit me - there was my guy! He was wearing different clothes, which was why I hadn't immediately recognized him. It was like something out of a movie - except usually the guy in the movies who you recognize-but-can't-place-because-he's-now-wearing-different-clothes-and-particularly-maintenance-clothes is a bad guy who you figure out the identity of one knife-slash too late.

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

As of the writing of this story, I have no reason to believe he's a bad guy, so the tale has a happy ending. And also a clears-up-so-much-confusion ending! I wouldn't recognize him, because the maintenance crew wasn't at training. Good on him for recognizing me in the early morning, since we had probably only seen each other around school a couple times and never spoken, but I guess I stand out a little more around here. But now it's him that stands out, not me - as a shining pillar of grace, kindness, and heroism.

Paulo Blart, el Mall Cop

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Just a quick xote on the xlog tonight. One of the oddities I've noticed here in Colombia (obviously, there are many - I'm keeping track of them and will periodically publish a collection when I've accumulated enough) is the extensive mall security. The first thing that happens when you walk into the mall is a bag check, the kind you'd encounter at a sports event or concert. If you're lucky, you might even get metal detected.

And then, when you exit certain stores (I've only been to the 2 huge Wal-Mart style places, so I don't know if this goes for smaller stores, though I doubt it), you're supposed to show your receipt, which the security guard signs. My first encounter with this part of mall security was the first time I went shopping at the mall, and declined plastic bags, purely out of habit - I actually needed some for use in garbage bins. Anyway, I was carrying something in a box, and after a couple minutes of lingual struggle, I figured out he was telling me I was supposed to put the box in a bag. A total reversal of North American culture, in which we're discouraged from using plastic bags. I've since learned that it's frowned upon around here to bring your own bags.

My second personal encounter with mall security came today, when I entered Exito, one of the Wal-Mart clones, and set off the sensors. After a fairly extensive search of my bag (they were very determined to find out what had caused the disturbance), the dude found a package of aspirin which I had bought previously (and at a different store), but still had some sort of tag on the inside which, apparently, one is supposed to remove upon purchase. Luckily the guy was friendly about it - for a transgression so severe as forgetting to take the tag off of a product I had paid for a day before at a different store, I could just as easily be detained in a dark basement mall jail, unable to communicate to explain myself, trapped for eternity!

Connections

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Connections are great. I'm speaking of people-connections: the kind that get you free stuff because of who you know. At my age, these usually take the form of friends' parents. Some of my better connections in the past include: a family member of a family-run microbrewery, who would bring cases of beer to band practice, a fellow sports fan whose father could get good tickets to Leafs games, and restaurant tickets to Jays games, and my sister who, being a musician, has been able to sneak me onto guest lists for various concerts through her music friends. One of these concerts was even a fairly well-known band, Islands.

And let me tell you, if this past Friday was any indication, living in Colombia is going to have its perks.

Allow me to explain. After talking music with some teachers last week, a couple mentioned they were going to something called the "Miche Rock Festival" on Friday, and invited E, K and I to go with. The Festival was basically a battle of the bands, mostly local bands with a couple coming in from other parts of Colombia, including Cartagena and Bogotá. (I just learned how to easily do accents! It's so much easier than I thought! Just option-E and then the letter you want the accent to be over. On Macs, anyway.)

Well, it turned out that one of said teachers (who we will call K2, like the mountain, since there's already a K) was able to get us in to the VIP area, since her boyfriend is in a band which has played at the festival before. Sweet! There's our first connection. I don't know if this is how all concerts work in Colombia, but VIP area simply meant the best spot. Front and centre. Also, there were dudes constantly wandering through, selling beer for a dollar and plantain chips for 50 cents (though that was probably the same in the commoners area).

And you know what, the bands were pretty good! I wasn't sure what to expect, since it was a rock festival, and all of the music I'd heard so far down here had been exactly what I had expected: salsa, merengue, tropicalia, latin pop, etc. I hadn't heard the faintest hint of rock. But there were some very solid bands, and only really 2 that I genuinely wasn't interested in, and in both cases this was because they played some serious death metal, with growling and everything.

(Aside: whenever one of the heavier bands played, and there were 3 or 4 that fit this description, a fairly large section of the commoners area turned into a sort of rotating mosh pit. People just ran around in a circle, like that game where you get a bunch of people in a pool and run around the outside until the current is strong enough that you can just float along. They were relentless. Between the 3 or 4 bands, they must have been running in a circle for more than an hour. I kept expecting the circle to start levitating, like a gyroscope.

More aside: During the second-last band's set, the VIP area, which had been fairly tame compared to the revolutionary commoners, became a hockey style mosh pit. This is the type where people run at each other from several meters away, ultimately ending in a body check. The funniest part was when the male host of the event, an energetic and engaging radio-DJ type, came down and started hockey mosh pitting with 4 10 year olds, getting them all to team up on him. They loved it.)

The best band of the evening by far was a sort of reggie-ska group, who had, in addition to the standard band set-up, a trumpet, flute and congas. They played a Bob Marley cover (all bands were required to play one cover), and a couple of their own songs, which weren't as reggae, but in the same sort of vein (I'd describe it better, but I don't remember all that well). Also, when the radio started blasting through the loudspeakers right in the middle of one of their songs, they just shrugged it off and started the song over, which was a stark contrast to one of the growlers, who had walked off the stage after their own sound problems.

At some point, I asked K2 what "Miche" was. She told me it's a local music store, owned by a guy who is coincidentally named Miche. Good to know - I've been wanting to get a guitar, now I know at least one place where such a transaction may be possible.

Oh yeah, and Miche is a parent at my school.

After Miche Rock wrapped up, we headed over to a latin jazz bar which we had been invited to by M2, another teacher. M2 also happens to have lived in the U.S. for many years, after growing up in Barranquilla, and has been tasked with taking care of us North American teachers. In the last week, she helped us get cell phones, internet, and apply for our Cedula, which, from what I've gathered so far, is sort of like a SIN number with a photo ID, and is necessary for doing almost anything around here.

Anyway, this jazz bar is a favourite spot of M2's, and on Friday it was her sister's birthday, so they had a big crowd of people there. It's a really nice bar (no 1.00 beers, that's for sure), and is completely hidden from the street - there's absolutely no way anyone would know anything was happening inside this building without already being in the know. In addition, M told me this is where the musicians from Barranquijazz (Barranquilla's upcoming jazz festival) will be hanging out after their shows - and there are actually a couple of pretty big names, namely Ahmad Jamal and Joao Bosco.

Oh yeah, and did I mention that the owner of the bar is M's dad? Good old connections.

An Evening of Engineering

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I didn't do anything particularly exciting yesterday afternoon/evening; after returning from school, I went to the mall to get some groceries, made dinner, went back to the mall to get some household stuff, and, well, here we are. By some fluke, however, I was faced with three separate challenges of engineering during this epic (boring) journey. This is their story.

I had met a fellow teacher at the Colombia version of Wal-Mart to help me shop (I didn't really need it, but it was very nice of her). Upon checking out and having all my new items bagged, she was sure I would take a cab, since I had bought about $100 worth of stuff, and $100 buys you a lot more in Colombia than it does in Canada. She thought there was no way I could make it home without some sort of automotive assistance.

Little did she know.

Engineering Problem #1, Solved.

Upon arriving home, I began to unload my new possessions, among them a sweet bridge-over-sink style dish rack.

Beautiful, ain't it?

SO WHY DOESN'T MINE LOOK LIKE THAT??!?!

The legs were meant to attach with the mechanism shown: the smaller cylinder was supposed to fit into the bigger one. However, this proved to be impossible on two of the four corners. Shoddy Colombian manufacturing I guess. We need some good old fashioned Vietnamese labour over here.

To solve this problem, I first tried the strategy employed by most when facing a challenge such as this:

That proved unsuccessful.

Next, I used my Engineering Skillz to brainstorm! I came up with the extremely complex and forward-thinking and engineery solution of getting something pointy and pointing it at the thing.

Easier said than done.

But, after literally minutes of hard work, it was finished. Engineering Problem #2, Solved.

Now, you're probably wondering about the third engineering challenge, as mentioned in the introduction. Well, after I thought of this idea for a blog post, I had to figure out how to set the timer on my camera!

Engineering Problem #3, Solved.

The Hammer

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This is not a story about me; it is a story about my new colleague E. In fact, I wasn't even there. However, it's such a good story I had to pass it along.

Unlike mine, E's apartment was ready upon her arrival here in Barranquilla last week. Consequently, she had some time to get settled in and organized before our training started this week. However, that didn't stop her from locking herself out of her apartment within the first few days.

But it's an apartment building, with guys at the desk 24/7. So, no problem, right? Just show the guys some ID and they'll let you back in.

Wrong.

Apparently, E's apartment building doesn't have spare keys. So, several minutes after informing the front desk, one of the guys showed up with a bunch of tools, and spent about half an hour attempting to break in. Yes, that was the only way to get back into the apartment. Doesn't exactly scream safety when anyone with a few tools and some free time can just waltz into your apartment!

Anyway, eventually he succeeded, by creating a bunch of holes in the door frame near the lock, and then using the old credit card trick. Not bad, front desk guy.

Oh yeah, did I mention the "hammer" was an unloaded gun? After the successful B&E, the hammer was promptly re-loaded.

Apartment - First Impressions

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I moved into my new bachelor pad here in Barranquilla last night, and it is pretty great. In fact, I would go so far as to call it ballin'. I'll leave most of the description until I have accompanying pictures, though.

This is the first time I've moved into a furnished apartment (in 4th year I moved into a place some friends already lived in, so I guess you could call that semi-furnished, but I had to BYO bed/dresser/etc), and it's definitely a sweet deal. However, I discovered today that "furnished" is not quite all it's cracked up to be.

Case in point: today, my shirt tripled as oven mitts, a tea (tee?) towel, and a shirt. Now, I bet you're wondering, "what did you need oven mitts for, Dave?". That's a lie, you're not wondering that. I needed oven mitts for food. Obviously. Shut up, Dave.

Specifically, I had made pasta for the first dinner in the new place (if you know me at all, you're not surprised by this), and required oven mitts in order to strain the pasta. So I used my "oven mitts" to pick up the pot, carry it over to the sink, and.... wait, where's the strainer? Oh that's right I DON'T HAVE A STRAINER BECAUSE I JUST MOVED IN AND I DON'T HAVE ANYTHING. So, my ingenious method to strain the pasta involved dumping it onto a plate (because the pot had no lid, which would have made things infinitely easier), after which the plate still had lots of water on it in addition to the pasta, and was really hot, so I had to pour cold water on it for a while, then try to hold the pasta at bay while tilting the plate slightly in order to let the water run off.

Then I saw another pot, which had a spout and a lid.

Oh well, it all worked out, and my pasta was ready, if lukewarm. Next, I poured on the "salsa de tomate" I had recently bought on my inaugural food run (which also included eggs, bananas, cereal and a mango). The sauce came in this weird bag with a twist cap (I think a lot of food here comes in bags), so I opened it up and squirted some out.

It smelled like ketchup.

Greeeeeaaaaaattt. I get to eat pasta with ketchup for dinner. I know some people like it with their macaroni and cheese, but ew. I resolved to taste some, just to make sure, and lo and behold, it didn't taste quite like ketchup; sweeter than I would have liked for tomato sauce, but doable. So I continued squirting it on the pasta, and set down to eat.

After a couple bites, I realized my first impression had, in fact, been the correct one. It was basically ketchup, and it was gross. I couldn't go on much longer, and eventually I had to rinse the sauce off the noodles and just eat them plain (and getting somewhat cold by this point, what with all the rinsing). After several rinses, the ketchup taste remained surprisingly strong, but I just grun and bore it.

Later, when putting the tomato sauce away, I turned it over and saw the word "ketchup". It was actually quite a relief to know that the standard tomato sauce here is not, in fact, ketchup (and that the standard ketchup is, in fact, ketchup), and I should be able to find the real stuff next time.

Other fun apartment facts:

• upon exploring the master bathroom (that's right, I have 2 bathrooms... actually, sort of 3. More details to come), I found one of those removable shower heads and a tap... not in the shower. Beside the toilet? And soon it dawned on me: I HAVE A BEDET! Rad. I haven't used it yet, but I think it's safe to say I'm already converted to the ways of the bedet.
• After eating a banana, I didn't know what to do with the remains, since I don't have any wastebaskets (this furnished thing isn't all it's cracked... you get the picture). My solution: I threw 'em in the freezer.
• Upon returning from my inaugural grocery run, I introduced myself to the man who I assume is the regular night shift guard. This is a translated transcript of the conversation: "What's your name?" "Luis" "Nice to meet you, Luis. (shake hands) I'm David (Da-veed) and I'm Canadian. My Spanish isn't good, but I learn." Then Luis offered up a high-five. What a cool guy. (P.S. I do know how to say "I am learning", I just forgot to say it that way. The way I said it probably made me more endearing, though)