Making Water go Uphill
May 25th, 2003
It certainly beats your common or garden water feature.
That’s the truth! I saw this mentioned on BBC World Service while I was in Latin America. Now I know how it works!
Archive
Archive for May, 2003
New technology ideas
May 25th, 2003
bq. Notes from a conversation with Dan Hill pertaining (in particular) to address books on mobile phones. I make no claim to their originality or their novelty. Almost certainly they’re on page six of a really well known influential book that I almost certainly should have read by now…
I love the idea about self-repairing addressbooks. This would be a great addition to anything on the net, too, such as email address books, IM buddy lists, blogrolls, etc.
Made it back
May 23rd, 2003
Got into Washington DC at about 12:30 last night and home by 1:30. Uneventful flights all around. I swore I was going to get searched at customs in Dallas, though. I had just been to Nicaragua and Mexico, two fairly significant players in the drug trade. The customs guy just said, “Nicaragua, huh? That’s different.” All I could do was reply, “yup, it sure was,” and he sent me on my way.
Last training day
May 21st, 2003
Today starts the last training day here. I’m doing demonstrations this morning and then participating in a meeting this afternoon with bunches of people from USAID, a major contractor, and the Embassy Consular office. Aught to be fun!
I had a chance to hang out a bit with someone last night in the La Condessa part of town. Quite a happening little place. It is the new “in” part of town, so there was quite a variety of people. The food was good. We went to an Argentine restaurant and had Morcilla (a red/blood sausage, not made with blood here, though), and churrasco, a thin steak flash fried on a super hot grill. Mmmmmm!
My Sunday
May 20th, 2003
Mexico, cont´d
May 19th, 2003
Day one, done. Another nice mission. After work I headed across the street to a bar for a drink or two with one of the folks I´m working with. It was nice to just talk about stuff other than shop for a while.
It is about 9:00 now and I´ve found myself another internet cafe with seats outside in the nice breeze. It is supposed to rain tonight, and if it does before I get back to the hotel I´m sunk. That´s part of the fun of all this, right?
Interestingly enough, the folks here have enough different questions about things that we´re totally reworking my schedule to accommodate them. I don´t mind that a bit. They´ve already demonstrated competance in the basics, and the fact that they have some other questions about how processes are to be applied is refreshing. It proves that they´re thinking about this stuff and giving it some condiserdation.
Two days to go, then a half day of Chris, the tourist, then I´m home. Home until Croatia, that is.
Seeing the sights
May 18th, 2003
So I get in yesterday and managed to hook up with one of the people I whose contact information I was given. We took a real nice walk around the center of the city to see the Zocolo (plaza) and the surrounding areas. Two real hightlights stood out for me. First was the excavations of the pyramids just beside the cathedral, and second was the Bellas Artes (fine arts) palace. I am going to try to get into the latter on wednesday for a show – I am told by reliable sources that the theater portion of the building is stunning. I wrote a little more about those sites on my laptop, but I will not be able to put it on a network until tomorow at the earliest.
When I do, there will be pictures to upload, too. I spent the better part of the day at a major historical site and I got some pretty good pictures. I also got the mother of all sunburns, but it was worth it!
Tomorrow starts work at the USAID Mission here. They are actually located in the Embassy, so I have to go through all that clearance garbage first thing and hope we get done in time for my first meeting.
One thing I did notice is that the sun comes up late here. In Nicaragua it was quite bright by 6:00am, here not until about 8:00. I may have to resort to using my alarm clock instead of just waking up to the sun.
In Mexico City
May 17th, 2003
So I’m here! I can’t believe the size of this place. I started to keep track of how long we flew over continuously enhabited areas before we landed, but I completely lost track. This is a _big_ city.
I’m in a hotel that is 2 blocks away from the Embassy where I will be working so it will be an easy walk in the morning. There is a market a block away, so water will be easy to get, etc. More fast food than you can shake a stick at is here, too. All the usual suspects.
The city is on a high plateau, akin to Denver and Isfahan, so the air is a little thin. I’m walking around, but taking it slow and soaking up the Zona Rosa. Tomorrow I’ll try to get to the pyramids or Zocolo or something like that so I can say I saw a sight.
Wrapped up
May 16th, 2003
All finished in Nicaragua. Tomorrow (Saturday) I’m up at 4:00am or so, on the way to the airport at 5:00 and on the plane on my way to Mexico City by 6:50. Next checkin is from Mexico.
Chris & the volcano
May 16th, 2003
We all knocked off from work a little early yesterday. The Mission Director (!) arranged a car for us and we all went to the local active volcano and one of the nearby towns that has a lot of artisans and shops.
The volcano was very neat! I didn’t have anything to judge the size of it, but it definitely isn’t as high as the one on Maui (10,000+ feet). Unlike the one on Maui, this volcano is clearly active. The crater was a straight drop to huge shelf, and the area below the shelf was lost in a sulphurous smoke that was constantly being put out. Parrots were living on the walls of the crater! Anyway, I tried to take a couple pictures, but I’m not at all sure how they came out yet. I’ll check them out tonight and post one or two if any good.
Oh yeah, and we went shopping after that. The women wanted to do it. Men are hunters, women are gathers. I spent a lot of time waiting. Actually, it was a lot of fun trying to bargain in my broken Spanish.
This is the last day in the Mission here in Managua, then tomorrow morning I’m off to Mexico City.