Or, how I learned to stop worrying and compare everything to California
People have long compared Chile with California, and for good reason. They are both (relatively) thin, long countries, with every climate imaginable just a few hours away or, to put it simply, where you can ski and surf in the same day. And though I’m especially partial to spicy East Asian food and the occasional (daily) burrito, neither one of which Chile really has in any great supply, its undeniable that the politics between the two areas bears more than a striking resemblance.
That’s right folks, today is Sunday, December 13, 2009: the day of the Chilean presidential election, when millions of Chileans will be streaming to the polls, against their greater apathetic inertia, to cast their vote for the man that will be leading Chile for the next four years. And while the matchup between Chile/California was more similar before Gavin “Golden Boy” Newsom dropped out of the governor’s race, here’s a quick rundown.
Continue reading →
With the semester officially over and almost everybody I know gone from Santiago, my friend Jena and I decided to go down to visit the south for a brief time: she´s going home after a week and I´ll be down here for another week after that.
We flew into Puerto Montt on Sunday, arriving around 9 am and immediately blowing that popsicle stand to get to Puerto Varas, a nearby town. Puerto Varas was a charming, touristy town with a surprising amount of German influence: the architecture, the food, the people, everything. Jena, who comes from Austrian stock and is nearly fluent in German, was in heaven when we sat down to a breakfast complete with omelettes, empanadas, and some apfel struedle (delicious). Continue reading →
Our journey began at 4:30 in the morning in the Santiago airport: a group of 11 bleary-eyed Gringos carefully checking and rechecking our bags, and getting ready for the trip. Most had been able to grab a few hours of sleep before coming; I, unfortunately, had not.
I’d been kept up writing a last-minute piece for the Santiago Times, a quick tale of my personal take on Chilean wine, accompanied by the note to my editor “I think this is what you were talking about…but please let me know if I’m just way off the mark and I’ll figure out something else,” thinking to myself that this had better be on the mark, or there was no way I’d be able to fix it in time while on my trip.
Continue reading →
Right now I’m procrastinating going to bed, which is somewhat of a bad idea, considering that I need to get up early to make it to the strangely prohibitive 8:30-11:30 am hours for the American Embassy tomorrow for their help planning my trip, but until I’m actually set to fall asleep, I figure now’s as good a time as any to update.
Continue reading →
With school ending this past Thursday and a few hours to kill before the Thanksgiving meal, I decided to start a project I’d been thinking about doing for some time. The idea is basically a phone headset built into a glove, allowing a user to do a comical hand motion while actually using the phone (pictured below). Below, the steps taken and the final product, and finally the final product in use by its designer.
Continue reading →
I’ve been failing pretty hardcore at this whole “updating” thing, but I’m hoping to get back to a more regular schedule in the next couple of weeks that’ll let me do a better job. I’ll do what I can to update, and hopefully there will be several more coming very soon.
We’ve entered into a sad part of my trip; many of my friends are finishing up school and heading off. Some are going straight home, others are traveling around for a while in Patagonia, Buenos Aires, or other various LatAm destinations before heading back to the states, where UC’s new semester begins in way way early January. I’ve got a bit more freedom and in no rush, so I’m staying until my classes are over and then heading out. My plan is to go down to southern Chile for a couple weeks with a friend of mine in early December and get back to Santiago in time for my parents’ arrival.
Continue reading →
I’ve had my iBook G4 for a long time. I got it in the summer of 2005, right after high school, making it almost 4 1/2 years old, roughly 143 decades in computer years. It’s been very good to me, though I regularly have to change and update it as times change and old programs become obsolete. There are a few structural problems, certain issues that have never been resolved and continue to be a bother, but for the most part they are just minor nuisances, paling in comparison to the many ways in which my computer helps me in every aspect of my life.
Continue reading →
Bonus points to anyone who comments.
I’m back from Argentina, which I will talk about in greater detail soon, but in the meantime please check out THIS ARTICLE that I wrote for AssociatedContent.com. AC, as the cool kids call it, collects stories from all around and pays its writers based on page views, so check it out, I says. This particular story netted me $1 upfront (woo!), and I hope to make a tiny bit more as people read it. Other than that I’ve apparently made 26¢ from page views, which is 26¢ more than I’ve made from the Santiago Times, though mostly what’s up there are my articles from the ST.
Speaking of which, I quit my job, basically. I’ve been having differences with the publisher, which I went into some detail about in a previous post. I told them I’ll still try to write a little about the election, but I’m basically over it. I told him it was because school is too time-consuming, which is partially true, but I’d rather just have the time to travel and do other writing, either for this blog or for other places more likely to turn into money, or my new favorite activity: reading in the park.
Continue reading →
