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)

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.