The Volcano

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After arriving in Colombia on Wednesday and then spending Thursday meeting some school people, touring the school and seeing a bit of the city, the school set us (and when I say 'us', I mean the two other North American teachers, who we will refer to as K and E, K's mom C, who is visiting for the first week or two, and me) up with a trip to Cartagena, the 5th largest city in Colombia (right behind my hometown Barranquilla), and is about 100 km west, along the Caribbean coast. Cartagena (Carta-hay-na) is known for its old city, which dates back to the 1500s, and was the target of several famous pirate attacks!

I'm not going to tell you about Cartagena today, though - rather, I'd like to tell you about something we did on the way. Namely, we bathed in a volcano.

There's the volcano! Okay, it's not that impressive as far as volcanoes go.

There were literally no other tourists at this place when we got there, even though there were something lke 30 or 40 employees ('employees' is a loose term - lots of them were just hanging out, and somehow I doubt there was any sort of pay structure, employment insurance or union).

So we had the place to ourselves. As soon as we had figured out how to pay, we changed, and started up the rickety staircase. Soon enough, I was climbing down into the hot, molten lava.



Wait, actually I forgot, we weren't bathing in hot, molten lava. It was a mud volcano.

And it was so weird.

It was the most buoyant substance I've ever been in, so when we lay down we were actually lying on top of the mud. The funniest part was when the guys organized us into a row of mud people; they first oriented us correctly, and then slid each one of us into our proper slot, like they were parking us. Being the last one of the four in, I had the privilege of seeing this process in action. Below is the result.



After we were shuttled into our places, the three guys spent about half an hour giving us massages. They also had to periodically wipe mud out of our ears and eyes. It was probably more effective than trying to hop on one leg, though given the density of the mud (the guys weren't standing on anything), we probably could actually have hopped.

About halfway through, we were flipped over so that the dudes could work our backs...

Lower... lower... too low! Lower...

After the dudes finished with the massages, we got to play around for a while. I spelled my name and drew pictures on the surface, a testament to how thick that stuff was. When upright, we came to equilibrium when the mud was about at our belly buttons, and it was almost impossible to go down any further without someone pushing us down. Not that there wasn't anywhere to go; apparently, the thing is 2300 meters deep!

Eventually we were forced out because the next group arrived.

Um, they had a lot of people.

Whereas we spent more than 30 minutes getting massaged and generally frolicking, they got about 5 minutes, if that. And many of them didn't get massages. Also, there were at least as many people waiting in line as you can see in that picture.

The early bird gets the mud volcano massage, I guess.

Air Travels Continued

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Hey guys, I would really like to tell you some actual exciting things, like the day and a half trip I just took to neighboring Cartagena, bathing in a volcano, or impressions of the school I'll be working at, but all of those things require pictures, so while I figure out how this newfangled technology stuff works, I'll continue my boring story about airplanes!

On Thursday I told you about my air travels, with an emphasis on airports. Today we look at airlines! I know, exciting, right? But don't go away - today's entry also includes Amusing Anecdotes, but they're at the bottom meaning you HAVE TO READ THE REST OF MY BORING DRIVEL TO GET THERE!

So, without further ado:

(I lied, there is further ado. Ado! Ado ado ado ado adooooooooooo! Ado all over the place, ado in your face! Ew. Adew?)

Airline Rankings

3. American Airlines - this wasn't even close. American Airlines sucks. They had no home entertainment system like the other two, they had no food (even though my subsequent flight, which was half as long, did), and they oversold it (I know all airlines do this - I even studied it in my undergrad (I know, industrial engineering sounds great right), but having people left behind at the gate is an indication you've over-oversold). Just an unpleasant experience.

2. Air Canada - Air Canada made a strong showing. They have the home entertainment system thing going on, and on the Toronto-Vancouver flight I watched Sunshine Cleaning, which was great. Unfortunately, the Vancouver-San Fran corridor wasn't so high-tech (i.e. no home entertainment system), probably because it was a shorter flight.

1. Avianca Airlines - Avianca Airlines, the flag carrier of Colombia, stole the show. They've got the home entertainment system, and it's better than the Air Canada one. It has a removable control thingee that is an interface controller, keyboard, and even a video game controller? Crazy. Also, they served me a meal... on a 2 1/2 hour flight... which was listed as having no meal. Big ups, Avianca Airlines.

Other notes:

• there was a kid sitting behind me on the Toronto-Vancouver leg who was friggin' hilarious. He was probably something like 2 1/2, old enough to be talking a lot but young enough to be an idiot (in a good way). Also, he had an English accent. So, when I tell you that he said "mommy! Are we flying yet?" (say it in your head with an English accent) when we were clearly still on the ground NOT MOVING, it was the funniest thing I've ever heard.
• the lady sitting beside me on Toronto-Vancouver is from Victoria, so she flies in and out of Vancouver a lot, and it has always been too cloudy to see the mountains. We saw the mountains. Apparently I really lucked out on that one, and it was unbelievable. Every time I see mountains it catches me off guard - I've seen them lots of times, and even climbed a couple, but I always forget how majestic and beautiful they are.
• Three hours later, I flew out of Vancouver at the height of sunset (does that make sense?) over the Pacific. I mentioned yesterday that Vancouver is #1 on my list of places to visit in Canada, and it moved up at least a couple of places based on those views.
• I watched Star Trek on the Avianca flight. I've never watched any Star Trek before (except for when I was a kid and re-runs were on all the time on every channel, but even then I never sat through a whole episode), but the movie was enough to make me think about getting into it a little bit. I really, really enjoyed it. The movie's only downfall: the climax occurred at the same time as South America was coming into view. I didn't know what to watch! Avianca made the decision for me, though - the movie automatically shut off since we were close to our destination. I still have to watch the end.
• On the day of my travel from Colombia to San Francisco, I woke up at about 9:30AM (PST), and by the time all was said in done, I was in bed by 10:30PM (CST) the next day. That's 39 hours of awake, which in and of itself isn't earth-shattering, but as far as I can remember is a personal record.
  

The Inaugural Colombia Blog Post

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Well, I'm in Colombia. That's ColOmbia, with 2 o's. It's amazing how many of you silly North Americans spell that incorrectly (yes, 30 hours on a continent makes me one of them).

I have a lot I could write about, and for the first couple weeks I think there will be a bit of a backlog on the blog (backblog?), but I want to try to focus on just one topic per entry to keep things interesting. With that in mind, today's piece will be all about various aspects of my air travels in the last couple weeks. I've had four flights recently, because I visited my parents in San Francisco (through Vancouver) for a week before coming down south, and then had a layover in Miami on the way here, so I've got 3 airlines and 5 airports to blog about. Here goes!

Airport Ranking

4. Miami - This ranking is likely somewhat unfair to the Miami airport, given the state I was in (it was Florida). I had flown out of San Francisco at 11PM, arrived 7:30AM Miami time, having gotten no sleep (I can't sleep on planes), and then had a 7 hour layover. I wanted to sleep during the layover, and I thought it might even work out - even though I can almost never sleep on any form of transportation, I believe the primary reason for this is the upright position one is forced into, so curling up on an airport floor, after having stayed up all night, sounded perfectly fine. I even had a comfy travel pillow and a blanket. Last but not least, my dad had texted me his google results for "where to sleep in Miami airport".

So what went wrong? Well, I couldn't find these alleged best spots, since the map system was ridiculously bad. I never found "concourse A" on a single map in the whole airport (they had concourses B through J). And there just weren't any other good spots - it was loud, bright, and I didn't want to use ear plugs or a blindfold since I had valuable stuff with me.

Anyway, the point of me telling you all this was that the 7 hours I spent in the Miami airport were unpleasant, hence its low rank. Other things that suck about the Miami airport:

• I had to go through security again, since my connecting flight was in a different area
• the currency exchange place didn't have Colombian Pesos
• much of the airport was under construction, which might have accounted for my inability to find the supposed sleeping zones. However, this construction was not at all marked on any maps. When trying to find the gate for my connecting flight, an airport employee pointed me in a direction which ultimately ended up being under construction.
• The airport is shaped like a U, and I basically had to go from one tip to the other. It was honestly a couple of kilometers. I don't understand why there isn't some connection.
  

3. San Francisco - I really didn't spend much time in the San Fran airport, even though it was the only airport I visited twice on the trip. I had a beer at a bar literally right beside my gate on the way out, which was predictably overpriced. The airport was okay - I doubt it would have moved in the rankings if I had spent more time there. Perhaps over Toronto, but probably not to spots 1 or 4.

2. Toronto - another one that's difficult to rank, since I've been to the Toronto airport many times, and generally been pretty impressed by it (thanks to fatherly first class lounge connections), but on this visit all I really did was have a burger and fries in the "Red Rocket Grill", which was so tacky I loved it (they actually tried pretty hard to make it look like a subway car). Also, the burger was surprisingly good.

1. Vancouver - I've never been to Vancouver before. I've been to 9 provinces (Newfoundland), 20 states, and 4 continents, but not one of the biggest and coolest (so I've heard, anyway), cities in Canada. It's almost definitely #1 on my Canada to-visit list. And the airport did nothing to change that stance. It actually looked nice on the inside, something that could not be said for any other airports I visited, its wireless internet was free (which I took advantage of when we were stuck on the ground for half an hour and my iPod could still reach it, advising my parents to leave a little later to pick me up), and it had Orange Julius!!! I know this isn't exactly earth-shattering, but I got an Orange Julius, and I haven't had Orange Julius in probably more than a decade. I used to get Orange Julius somewhat often as a kid, so drinking an Orange Julius at the Vancouver was very nostalgic and awesome. Orange Julius Win. I also had a Monte Cristo.

Unranked: Barranquilla - Barranquilla's airport isn't exactly on the same playing field as the other 4 - for one thing, it's tiny, and for another, when I was there, I was ARRIVING IN SOUTH AMERICA. Obviously Barranquilla wins. Also, the Barranquilla airport was the first airport in South America (like I mean in history not in me)! Cool! One other great thing about this airport is that I didn't understand the customs form because it was in Spanish, and after a bunch of me being like "je ne sais pas but in Spanish" they were like screw it, just go.

You know what? Let's stop there. I still have an airline ranking and a bunch of miscellaneous notes, but I tend to babble, so let's break things up a bit. I'm off to Cartagena tomorrow, a trip organized by the school (they are seriously pampering me, I'll tell you about it sometime), so catch ya later folks.

2009 Albums I've Listened To

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Since we're about halfway through the year, I thought I'd take stock of the 2009 albums I've listened to so far. This is more a reference list than anything, I'll write a quick sentence but no extensive reviews or anything.

Andrew Bird - Noble Beast: solid, I generally like Andrew Bird, will keep.

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion: Amazing. The first 2009 album I listened to, and my favourite so far. Saw them in Montreal in May.

Antony and the Johnsons - The Crying Light: really like it. Beautiful arrangements.

Art Brut - Art Brut vs. Satan: only listened a couple times, not a huge fan, will give a couple more listens before deleting.

Bat For Lashes - Two Suns: great, probably in yearly top 10 so far. A couple of really really good tracks.

Bill Callahan - Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle: pretty good, doesn't blow me away, but I'll keep it around.

Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career: an interesting record, they have a unique sound and a wide variety of styles even within the album. A keeper.

Dan Deacon - Bromst: pretty sweet, and often pretty funny too. Seems like Dan Deacon is a cool guy, would love to see him live sometime. Probably in top 10.

Dave Matthews Band - Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King: I've heard it called DMB's best album, but I definitely disagree. DMB's become a little too adult contemporary or something. Carter Beauford still rocks out though.

Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca: one of the most recent albums on my playlist, and the one I'm currently obsessed with. Probably the album with the most stunning moments, though not as consistent as some others. Contender for top 5.

Franz Ferdinand - Tonight: Franz Ferdinand: solid, a couple of great tracks, a keeper.

Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest: so far, I haven't fallen in love, but there are 2 tracks that are probably in my top 10 songs of the year, so I can definitely see myself really liking this eventually.

Isis - Wavering Radiant: it's very rare for me to get into heavy metal (though it has happened before), so I don't fault these guys for their quick deletion.

Junior Boys - Begone Dull Care: really like it. Saw Junior Boys in Ottawa in May (with Max Tundra), and they put on a great show - the duo adds a drummer for their live show, which is an excellent decision.

Kasabian - West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum: listening for first time right now, not particularly enamored. (wait, did he just say "the loonie's on the rise"? I thought these guys were British.)

The Lonely Island - Incredibad: amazing, though obviously in a category of its own.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart: meh. It's good enough I've kept it around for a few months, but after a couple more listens I might get bored, candidate for deletion.

Passion Pit - Manners: in the early stages of my listening, but very solid so far.

Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix: another one I've only listened to a couple times, and I didn't really like it the first time, but it's grown a bit since then. Probably not top 10 material but maybe a keeper.

St. Vincent - Actor: awesome. Top 5 contender.

Wavves - Wavvves: I'm just not a fan of the lo-fi. Deleted. The whole Wavves blowing up at that music festival in Spain thing was hilarious though.

Woods - Songs of Shame: only 1 or 2 listens, wasn't blown away.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz!: pretty solid, probably top 10 but not top 5 contender. 'Zero' is one of my favourite tracks of the year, and 'Runaway' is up there as well. Really looking forward to seeing them at Bluesfest.

Europe Excerpt #4: Cinque Terre

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The following is an excerpt of the journal I kept while in Europe for a month last summer. This entry details a day I spent in Cinque Terre, a national park on Italy's Mediterranean coast. Be sure to check out previous excerpts:

Europe Excerpt #1: The Europe Playlist

Europe Excerpt #2: The Awkward Couple (this excerpt is actually from the evening immediately preceding today's entry)

Europe Excerpt #3: Scaling the Mountain

For context, 'Cinque Terre' means 'five lands' and refers to the 5 towns in the park that are connected by a coastal hiking path.

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Woke up and got out of there after preparing for a long day of hiking. I resolved to consume something, preferably Italian, in each of the villages.

Village #1 (Riomaggiore). Consumption: salami and mozzarella panini for breakfast. Tasty.

After breck, I set off on the Via dell Amore (the road of love), aka the coastal path between Rio and Manarola. It was the shortest and most populated path of the journey. Manarola is similar to Rio, but a lot smaller (Rio and the northernmost village, Monterosso, are the biggest). (Ed. Riomaggiore is the southernmost town - the hike went from south to north.)

Village #2 (Manarola). Consumption: Mela e Cardamomo (apple and cardomom) juice. I have definitely never had a drink, or a food for that matter, where cardamom is one of the 2 principal ingredients. It wasn't amazing, but it was unique.

After the juice I kept going towards Corniglia. Corniglia is set much higher in the landscape than the first two; you have to climb a winding staircase containing 382 steps to get to the top (there's a sign letting you know and congratulating you). I stopped in at a cafe for:

Village #3 (Corniglia). Consumption: a small vegetable quiche. Decent.

It was while eating this quiche that I met Mark from Chicago and Pete from Detroit. They were 15-20 years older than me (Ed. they still are, presumably) but they were cool so I kept going with them. The third leg of the hike was the longest yet but not that hard, but it was very hot, so we stopped in Vernazza, a town jutting out on a bit of a peninsula, for some...

Village #4 (Vernazza). Consumption: gelato. I got melon flavour, and it tasted a bit like cantaloupe, but mostly like sweetness. Tasty.

Vernazza also happened to be where Mark was staying, so we stopped in for a pit stop. Upon starting up again, we found out from fellow travelers that a) the last train left Monterosso (our final destination) at 6:30*, b) the hike from 4->5, the hardest of the 4 legs, would take anywhere from 1.5-2.5 hours (some 55ish y/o Germans said 1.5, then revised it to 2 as if to say we North Americans suck at fitness) and c) it was 4:00. OK, that part we didn't find out from fellow travelers.

*because of the 24 hour train strike lasting from 9-9PM which luckily didn't affect me directly, though the spill over might. (Ed. it didn't)

Anyway, it ended up taking us one hour. Boo yeah. Take that Germany. Monterosso, the most northerly town, has the only real beach on the island (Ed. I think I meant in the park. it's not an island). I brought my bathing suit in case I felt like swimming, but we got a drink first and afterwards I had lost my swimpetite.

Village #5 (Monterosso). Consumption: Limoncino, as well as a couple beers and some complimentary olives and snacks. The limoncino (which we assumed was the same thing as limoncello, a regional specialty), was a lot more alcoholic than I was expecting, but not terrible.

Oh yeah, previously we had found a dude selling limoncello on an extremely narrow and treacherous part of the hike basically straight from his orchard. Hilarious. So anyway, Pete left, Mark and I had another beer and got on the train, with him departing at Vernazza.

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I did some more stuff that evening, but it wasn't particularly interesting, so I'll cut the excerpt off here. Hope you enjoyed, and stay tuned for more bloggy goodness!

The Day my Internet Life Changed

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If I wanted to be a big cliche, I would start this post like this:

August 14, 2008.

Except I don't want to be a big cliche. Also, I don't remember exactly what day it was, and I can't seem to figure that information out via web history or anything. But I think August 14 is pretty close.

So how did your internet life change that day, Dave? Well, I'll tell you! That is the day I got Google Reader.

If you've never heard of Google Reader or similar services, also known as "RSS feeds", "news readers" or any other permutation of the words "RSS", "feed", "news" and "reader", here's what it is. It's basically a service that lets you subscribe to various blogs and other websites, so that anytime new content is published, it goes straight to your inbox. All your subscriptions are managed in a folder system on the left, and you just have to click on whichever one you'd like to read. Here's what mine looks like:

So now I have all the news and stuff I like to read about delivered straight to my door. By the way, I should mention that almost every website ever has an RSS feed. It's not just for blogs. cbc.ca, for example, syndicates every story (I think) posted to their website to their RSS feed. Furthermore, there are different formats to RSS feeds - to continue with the previous example, CBC's feed only includes the headline and a one sentence-summary, but you can click on the headline to read the full story if you're interested. I like this format for CBC, since they obviously publish a ton every day, and I don't have time to read it all, but I have time to scroll through the headlines.

Now, I have a lot to say on this topic, and there will probably be many follow-up posts including my favourite blogs and some of the reasons I don't like Google Reader, but I suppose we should stick to today's topic: how exactly did Google Reader change my internet life? There are a couple answers:

1. It's my default thing to do on the web. If I don't have any e-mails to answer, don't feel like playing some stupid Yahoo Game, and don't want to while away the hours on Facebook, I'm probably reading Google Reader. In fact, I'd probably read Google Reader ahead of those things most of the time.
2. I'm much more current in certain fields. It's not like Google Reader has caused me to become interested in different topics; now, it just requires less effort keep up my interest. I've always liked astronomy, but now that I subscribe to a couple of astronomy blogs, I actually have some knowledge to go along with that interest.
3. I'm all over the internet. One of the great things about blogs is their ability to link to other blogs. If something big happens on the internet, there's a pretty good chance one of the blogs I read will link to it, even though I only subscribe to about one googleth of the blogs out there.
4. I'm into the blog culture. I didn't read blogs much before getting Google Reader, but now I'm all up in this bitch. I think there's a very good chance I never would have started this blog if not for Google Reader. Can you imagine how much worse all your lives would have been without my hilarious stories?!?

Okay, I'm gonna cut myself off here, since I could go on for hours about Google Reader. To be continued...

The Phone Debacle

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Last night, I was at a friend's house, and when I left to bike home, it was raining pretty hard. It wasn't too far, so I just grun and bore it, and arrived home 15 minutes later, soaking wet. Needless to say, I rid myself of my soaking clothes ASAP, not thinking twice about tossing them in a heap on the floor.

When I got up this morning, I couldn't find my phone, and eventually realized I hadn't bothered to take it out of my pocket when I arrived home last night. Well, when I eventually recovered the old girl, I discovered that it had tragically passed overnight. I was even presented with a time of death: 3:10AM. This was several hours after I arrived home, so perhaps if I was a little more diligent with my bedtime routine, I could have prevented the unthinkable. But alas.

I've got a new phone now, so all is (mostly) back to normal. However, being phone-less for one afternoon was long enough for some CRAZY PHONE ADVENTURES.

The first crazy phone adventure wasn't that crazy - I just went to school to meet some people when I was supposed to go one of their houses, an instruction that had been revised via text (the reviser knew about my phone dilemma, so this one's on her).

While at said classmate's house, I mentioned my plans for later - playing basketball with some people in the evening. I invited a friend (Ian) who I thought would be into it, and told him I'd be by his house shortly before seven, since I had been informed the bball was going down at, you guessed it, seven. (Isn't this exciting?!?)

OK. Fast forward to about 4:15. I got home, and was in a rush because I had to eat dinner and shower before tutoring at 5, since I thought I wouldn't have time between the hour-long tutoring session and bball (it was a half hour bike ride away). Since I was in such a rush, I didn't check my e-mail until shortly before 5. This was unfortunate, since I had an e-mail waiting in my inbox informing me that basketball was at 8, not 7. Well, okay, fine for me (I had no other plans), but I had to tell Ian, and this proved to be difficult since I had no phone, and on top of that, had lost all of my contacts. Oh yeah, one more thing: it just so happens that Ian has been without internet for a few days, so I couldn't simply e-mail him. This leads me to believe I have discovered some sort of anomaly in the age of communication: when one party has no phone, and the other no internet, communication becomes impossible.

Well, I didn't have time to worry about that, since I had to rush off to tutoring. After tutoring, I went straight to the Rogers store in an attempt to get a new phone. They required the postal code of the billing address; unfortunately, since my family is on the family plan, that billing address is my parents', an address I do not know since they moved a few months ago, and I've never mailed them anything.

So I headed over to my friend Janet's house, with two goals: retrieve my parents' California address, and get in touch with Ian somehow. Luckily, I had asked my mom about her address within the last 48 hours, so it was fresh in my inbox. The second mission, contacting Ian, proved to be more difficult. None of my friends who would have his phone number were online, and given the nature of the age of cell phones, I don't know anyone's number by memory. Eventually I had a brainwave: check facebook for friends' phone numbers. I checked 3 or 4, with zero luck, until I came across a friend who lists the website of his home business. Luckily, the phone number for this business is just his cell phone! So I borrowed the use of Janet's roommate's cell phone, and sent a text to Matt, to be forwarded to Ian.

Unfortunately, I couldn't stick around to find out if it worked, since I had to go back to the Rogers store, with billing info in hand. Of course, when I got there and told them my parents new postal code (i.e. zip code), the chick got confused since it wasn't a Canadian address. I eventually figured out she had all my info right in front of her, so I guess the billing address thing was more of a confirmation than anything. Anyway, I was worried at first, but she just had to put a call in to her boss (in which she had to speak some sort of weird password that included her name and "zulu" and a few other words...?!?) and it all worked out.

At this point, she described my options: since I've had my current phone for more than a year (more like two and a half), I qualify for a "hardware upgrade". Great! Except that a hardware upgrade requires a new 3 year deal. Given that I'm likely leaving the country in a few months, this didn't seem like a good deal. Option 2 was to buy a new phone outright, and with the cheapest one being 70 bucks, I just didn't feel like it.

So I asked if they had some sort of temp phone I could take for a few days. Well, it turns out they have a big box of crappy lost and found phones or something, and after a few minutes of digging, she found a functional one, complete with charger! I am now the proud owner of a (free!) Nokia 3120b, which, according to Google, is a 2004 phone.

So while I'm still missing almost all of my contacts, at least I've got something. But boy, let me tell you, losing your cell phone is a lot more devastating than losing your... home phone? I'm not even sure how that would happen. I guess address book is a better old-timey analogy. Whatever.

This has been another installment of CRAZY PHONE ADVENTURES.