Author: vargocity

New Apartment = New Shoes

My preparation for this trip has been less than rigorous. As such, packing properly could be an impossible, if not aimless, task. My suitcase included a complete electrical adapter kit. However, one little visit to any of a number of websites may have told me that the outlets in Colombia are the same as in the US. Better safe than sorry in this case.

One important thing that I did think to look up before leaving was the weather. Being equatorial, individual regions of the country enjoy fairly consistent weather throughout the year; weather that one might assume to be very warm. However the weather in Bogotá is not hot at all. As I type this it’s about 2PM and a cloudy (semi-damp) 63 degrees. I really enjoy it so far but have slight issues with the cold floors. Having not been in a developing country for about 2 years I must have forgotten the ubiquity of construction materials of choice. And, truth be told, once again I did not give much thought to what the accommodations would be like before arriving.

Which brings me to the real purpose of this post, to provide some insight into my living arrangements. I am living in Central Bogotá which is also, paradoxically located on the eastern edge of the city adjacent to the mountains. It’s very near the university where I am working (Universidad de los Andes). It’s a rather young private university (less than 60 years) but is independent of both the church and the state – a rarity for Colombia and South America and universities in general. So far I am impressed with it and am gathering material for a post in the near future about some of the impressive architecture. More importantly my apartment is about a 5 min walk from campus (++).

Also, I have a roommate, Adriana. She assisted me with finding the place and provided some other housing options before I arrived. She’s a student in industrial engineering and is originally from Cali. She’s been helpful in showing me around school and helping me find where to buy groceries, etc. It’s also good to have someone around to try and speak Spanish with. I think I’d go nuts if I was living by myself, but she could very well be thinking that have a gringo around will get old fast, who knows (+).


Prior to my arrival she warned me that she had an extra room but no bed or closet. Partially on the advice of my professor here, I said no problema and arrived with a sleeping bag. At the last minute I left my sleeping pad at home to make more room. Again, I’m not sure what I expected but I can not state it more clearly than to say the floors are very hard, flat and cold. Thankfully there is the couch to sleep on while we wait for an air mattress from a professor (|).

With sleeping arrangements taken care of haphazardly, I can now focus on food. Space is at a premium here (as I should have known) and thus there is little room for food, let alone food for two people. We split a tiny fridge and I am realizing that much of the food I enjoy eating needs to go in the fridge. I miss my big American fridge at home. Nonetheless I am figuring out my way around this new kitchen (though not turning around in it) and discovering what I can prepare and what might be considered a little too daring. So far I have been motivated to make meals for myself at home since I don’t know anyone else and am still figuring out the neighborhood. Plus, I have my limit for eating out alone (|).

The only thing I can think to give a negative rating so far is the shower situation. Adriana has tried to explain to me how the hot water heater works. It’s really my fault for not having figured it out yet. Like last night she had turned it on and asked me to turn it off in 20 minutes. She told me it was so she’d have hot water in the morning and she wouldn’t be running the gas all the time. Because running the gas for an hour is like using 12 light bulbs for an hour. Cool, makes sense and I’m down with the energy savings vibe but I have no idea how she knows when to turn it on and when there’s enough hot water for a shower. When I got in there this morning well after she had gone to a 7:30 AM Saturday class there was not any hot water. I’ll work on getting to the bottom of this (-).

I feel like I should have known better what to expect but I guess it’s a reminder that you have to walk a mile in another man’s shoes and wipe your feet on the same entryway rug as him before you truly know his way.

DEK…? WT"F"

You can know something for a long time before you finally fully realize what it means. This period of less than complete awareness of a situation is usually described by people who have just won the Super Bowl or have experienced the passing of someone close to them. It usually goes something like, “I’m waiting for it to hit me” or “it hasn’t had time to sink in yet.” Later they find themselves at Disneyworld or they open a drawer to come across an old picture and awareness is heightened.

Yesterday I had a moment like this as I embarked for South America. Though I have not formally introduced it in a post, I’ll be in Bogotá for the summer working with researchers and their data to develop my thesis. I knew I was going but it doesn’t always set in that you’ll be in a foreign place until you are confronted with some of the differences. The Avianca plane that carried me from Ft. Lauderdale to Bogotá provided this (see left) subtle hint that there was no tuning back and gave me a deeper understanding of exactly where I was. Ironically it did this by confusing me. I thought I had the sign figured out but I asked someone today why there was a “K” and they had no idea. No worries I had the aisle.

One thing that becomes very clear with a fair amount of travel is that the same books keep popping up over and over again. On each of my flights yesterday I was sitting one seat away from a woman reading ‘Wicked.’ Maybe I’m jumping the gun here, but when I was traveling several times a week for work at Akzo, it was the DiVinci Code. That thing was everywhere (they had everybody on that case). Maybe it’s because they only sell certain books in those airport magazine stands. If someone gives you one of those books as a gift, they probably picked it up, last minute, at the airport.

In any event I arrived safely, found my accommodations and have since begun my work.

Robobots & Convincicons

Tuesday night I went to see a sneak preview of the new Transformers movie. Save the fact that my seat was two away from the outside wall and one row from the front, it was pretty entertaining. At first I thought the perspective was going to make me ill, but ultimately it was the humor that was most disturbing. However, this is not a movie review (this is), rather it is a re-visitation of my fascination with advertising.

Transformers prominently features two major product lines that obviously made huge deals with the studio. The movie is like a big commercial, which is becoming more and more common these days. It’s almost exactly like this picture except that car shouldn’t be German. I don’t wanna ruin it for you but one’s a car company and one’s a computer manufacturer. Watching the movie I was more interested in some of the more subtle product use. For example, when the noticeably un-nerdy and, for some reason, Australian code breaker from the NSA decides which media to use when transferring the most important sound in the world (which disappears from the plot) how does she choose? Something tells me there’s more to her portable disk of choice than meets the eye. I couldn’t resist, and neither could the screenplay writers.

One particularly interesting aspect of this use of film as advertising, is its use for personal/group publicity. For example, when sports jerseys are worn in films, whose name will appear on the back. Did Clinton Portis’ agent get on the phone with Spielberg and make that happen? Or was it just because the story was taking place in Washington and they probably don’t sell a lot of John Hall jerseys? There’s a particularly interesting scene that gets at these deals in Thank You for Smoking. Nick Nailer is meeting with a Hollywood executive to strike a deal that will feature a lead man smoking in his next movie.

Maybe this sort of thing has been happening for ages. Actually, that is most likely the case. As long as there have been things to sell, there have been people trying to sell more of them to us. It is somewhat ironic that it took this movie to help me see – or at least motivate me to write about – how advertising is transforming entertainment.

John Hall’s agent… you’ll be hearing from me.

A Pacific Trip to the Atlantic Coast

I am not sure if anyone else is running into this problem but this year has been abnormally bad with ticks (for myself). I’ve found three in various places on me so far. Though none following our trip to Connecticut, the area perhaps most infamous for the insect. The latest came during a trip to the Georgia/South Cackalack coast over the weekend.

I suspect it hopped aboard during one of a couple hikes around the marshes of Skidaway Island State Park. Our first clue should have been the deer we saw when we pulled in to find a site. In any event, after the ride down there without A/C and following an incredibly hot, yet remarkably dry (see our camping record) night we were in desperate need of showers which would not come until several hours later.

After rising early on Saturday and making a second trip out to the Skidaway Narrows, we decided we’d try and make it to Hilton Head and get some beach exposure before heading to Savannah. Neither of us had ever been to Hilton Head but had heard a great deal about the place. Lauren from her mother and me from the hoards of high school classmates who sought the place out as a spring break destination. I was very surprised to see some of the attention put into sculpting the island’s development, which I can only imagine was a rapid and entropic process hesitant to be wrangled. The island has its share of retail including big box stores like Lowes and Best Buy as well as outlet stores. These merchants line the large main road (highway) through the island. However, all the stores are barely visible from the roadway. They are accessible via smaller service roads that line the main road but are hidden behind large stands of tall pines. They’ve managed to maintain some of the area’s attractiveness while adding businesses and limiting access points. It’s almost like a boulevard but there is no parking on service roads. The parking lots are also didactically interesting (if that may be said). Again, large tress have been preserved and provide shade for the cars.

As an example consider these two gas stations I snapped in passing. The top from the main route on Hilton Head Island. The gas station barely visible and, in this case I think the service road runs on the opposite side of the station and the division provides enough room for a landscaped bike/ped path (not that it’s used). The bottom gas station is something we’re probably all more familiar with. This example comes from somewhere in SC, AKA Juarez, MX. Of course there are a number for reasons we see both approaches and HHI is not perfect (I’m sure we could get the flaws of developing ecologically sensitive barrier islands at all), but it is good to see real-life case studies for how things can be done differently and hopefully better.

That said I do not want to get into all the ways that Savannah’s Historic Review Board manages to have it’s way in the city’s growth and rejuvenation while the surrounding coast gets gobbled up. I like what they’ve done but think that those in the historic district could be leveraging their power to ease some pressure on the coast. Regardless, I always enjoy my time in the old city. We stayed in a wonderfully restored bed and breakfast thanks to a wedding gift given to us by friends from Atlanta. It even had showers, or as I like to call them, the watery grave of the Skidaway tick.

http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf
All in all it was a great weekend to get away from all the video games, gutters (which are finally back up), and possible injuries that Atlanta offers. It was a also a fitting way for Lauren and I to spend our last weekend together before I leave to Colombia (where ticks are not one of things you have to worry about).

Summertime

I have not been writing much lately and tonight began to consider why that is. There are actually several reasons. Most are centered around the fact that I have not been conducting my day to day in a manner that I am proud of. I have refrained from broadcasting such lesser points of my behavior but alas I have arrived at a point where I feel I must bear my soul in order to move on. Feel free to skip this post and return when better news is in the headlines (ie Transformers sneak preview coming up).

This summer and the last month in particular have seen me in a inexplicable spell of apathy and laze. My Spanish has hardly improved (I don’t think changing the menu language on my iPod is going to be enough), I have not run even a mile in preparation for an upcoming 10K, and there are still times when Lauren has to help out with housework. I have not done much in the way of yardwork, though the grass has not need cut in over a month. I did do some cleanup but it wasn’t too much. In part I blame the weather (heat mostly) but that’s a cop-out. I have tried to do a few other things around the house, but if you read this blog regularly you know the type of trouble I can get into when attics and insulation are involved.

My time has been taken up by a fury of activities that I engaged in rarely, if ever, in the months leading up to summer.
Video Games. I got an Xbox from a friend and FIFA 07 is slightly addictive, shall we say.
TV. A number of influences have led to this decline but mostly I have to attribute it to my increased access to DVR and HDTV at various people’s home (mannying, SB, and most recently in CT). In spite of this and the former I think my eyesight is holding up.
Soccer. I regularly play pick-up at Georgia Tech at 12:30 (M,W,F,Sat). Here is where my weather excuse fails me, I mean 12:30!!!.
Work. This is not a substantial commitment at the moment but I could use the money. I’m continuing my work with the Emory project I had worked with over the semester. No P-trak, just data this time.

And then there are the random things that come with summer: trips to be made (Providence last weekend), baseball games (5 this week for the visiting Sox and Tigers), and trips to the doctors’ offices (3 offices just this week). Mali had an eye infection after boarding and I fell off my bike. I managed to stay out of the emergency room but went to student health services the next day and was told that I had a slight fracture in my radius. I was then sent to an orthopedist/sports medicine clinic and was told that if it was fractured it was not serious enough for cast, etc. and instead they just drained the fluid from the joint and I was on my way. On a lighter note, it was a wholly surreal experience.

So… from this list I can easily see where more time needs to be devoted and which activities can be cut out. However, that’s only half the problem. I feel like my attitude has also changed in the last few months and I haven’t felt too good about some of the way I’ve acted. In general I offer too little respect to others and too much to myself.

One day I killed a snake that I found while cleaning up in the yard. I justified it as preventing a future attack on Mali, but kept thinking about tales of monks who, while digging foundations for buildings, move the worms they encounter to new dirt. I thought also of times I had captured flies in the house using a cup and a piece of paper so they could be set free later and I wondered what had (has) happened.

Later that same day I volunteered to give a man who was going door-to-door a ride to Autozone. I told him I needed 15 mins to do some things and he was gone when I came out. I found out later it was a scam and it was a good thing I had taken the extra time. I rode around the neighborhood for 20 min trying to find him just so I could verbally assault him as a way of releasing my anger, fear and vulnerability.

Today as Lauren graciously picked me up from the game the car behind her honked and I tried to wave them around her. I went on to respond vulgarly to some of the things he yelled at me and I am not proud of that. And all this only hours (4 hours in the constant 95 degree sun [weather is not an excuse]) after we picked up four out-of-towners who were wearing Tiger’s garb and waiting for a bus that I am not sure would have come or taken them to the game.

Forward will I go, as we all must. Patience, humility, forgiveness, and less video games.

Nine-Eleven times a Millionith; 0.000911

For me it’s always easy to remember the moments of intense nervousness, full of adrenaline, and a need for action. Specifically I am talking about replaying emergencies and tense moments in my head. Especially those involving self-injury seem to be the most vivid, carrying with them their added urgency. Yesterday saw one such moment at the Vargo-Stockman household.

I had taken to the attic for some insulation repair. Our house is fine during the days as it is afforded shade by some large trees on the property. However, in the evenings, when the temperature outside begins to level off ours continues to rise. We’ve already taken measures like installing fans. We feel the problem lies in-the-sulation, as they say in the business, though some might say we have the in-solution to your heating and cooling problem.

In any event I had taken to the attic for some insulation repair. I had been up there for what I guess would be approaching an hour. I was fully equipped with gloves, mask, and even some glasses I couldn’t stand to wear. Not prescription, as you might wonder after finishing the story. One thing I had not prepared for was head protection and as I leaned to get a tight space I felt my head hit the underside of the roof. I continued on until the cold, wet feeling of blood on my head drowned me.

I hopped out the attic as fast as I could and remember starting to breath harder. the sweat from being in the attic had already soaked my clothes an I peeled them off before I really knew what I was going to do. Also, I grabbed the phone and started a 911 call before I was finished with my pants.

I had the chance to glimpse myself in the mirror and continue to describe it as the cover of DMX’s Flesh of my Flesh, Blood of my Blood album, though upon closer reflection it was not THAT severe. I finally arrived at the conclusion that a washcloth applied to the wound with pressure was a better solution than a shower.

By the time EMS, or EMT, or AMR (the ambulance) showed up the bleeding had stopped, I had already tried to cleanup some of the blood spots from the floor and had retrieved my vaccination card to check my tetanus booster. Not to say they were slow but just to say that I was calming down, the wound was not as serious as I had first thought, and that I was ‘with it.’ It turns out that scalp wounds bleed a lot and that was what really set me into a panic. The only thing the two woman paramedics really offered me was a ride to a hospital of my choosing. They didn’t check vitals or even offer to clean the wound until I asked if they had materials to accomplish such a task. Instead of jumping in the glorified van for an expensive ride to the hospital, I asked to wait for my wife to get home. The medics checked with a supervisor and said it was fine if I choose not to go to the hospital but they could not leave until Lauren had arrived.

The next 10 minutes passed with an air of relief and palpable awkwardness. When Lauren walked in she said it looked like a scene from a porno flick with two young and uniformed harlots standing around the guy, vulnerable and shirtless. Of course, it couldn’t have been further from that and I was glad to see she had come to my rescue and that they could leave. We never went to the hospital but everything turned out fine as I proceeded to milk the minute benefits of such a misfortune, like an afternoon bath.

Kickball

This Sunday I had the chance to experience something that I haven’t had since grade school; kickball. For a long time I have been against the apparent resurgence of playground games for adults. For so long these games seemed designed to allow everyone to play and keep kids (or now adults) occupied. But I have to admit that getting out there and playing yesterday with the Atlanta group Kickball Rocks!!! was fun. I am not sure if I will make it out every Sunday to Candler park to join in but the option will something I consider from week to week. Thanks to Laurel for setting the whole thing up and getting us out there.

Oklahoma City

I love watching the Women’s College World Series and I am not afraid to admit it. I find myself watching it on ESPN2 every year. I guess I first got into it while I was at Michigan and had a friend on the team. I went to a couple of games but never really followed it intensely. Two years ago while channel surfing I stumbled upon a game in a round before the finals. The fact that Michigan happened to be involved piqued my interest and the announcers notified me of the upcoming broadcasts for the championship games. Michigan won and moved on and I tuned in to see an amazing extra innings game against favorite UCLA. That year Michigan prevailed and obtained their first NCAA women’s softball championship.

Since then I run into softball while channel surfing in June and always try to stop to catch up on what’s happening, and to see how Michigan has fared. It’s not just Michigan that keeps me watching, it’s the game itself. Obviously there is some bit of novelty in catching a sport that is on TV rarely (see track and field, olympics) but if it were only that I’d tune into bowling and arena football. The size of the field and the influence of the pitcher are two of the most stark differences between the women’s game and the men’s. Every year at least one team seems to make it through to the finals on the arm of an insanely tall pitcher with braided hair and a cyclone delivery. This wunder-pitcher will usually throw every pitch of a WCWS for her team, which I assume makes the trip to OK City a little boring for other pitchers. The main pitches of interest are the change up and the riseball, and the ball reaches the plate faster than in the MLB. Nonetheless the girls still add another degree of difficulty by moving toward the mound as the pitch arrives. This is the drag bunt, where players are halfway to first by the time the ball is hit. It seems a great strategic move on the shortened field but the fielders still make the plays and get them out with regularity.

This year Tennessee had the wunder-pitcher in senior Monica Abbott, but failed to seal the deal against Arizona after winning the first game in the best of 3 series. If you happen upon it next year I recommend checking out the WCWS, it beats arena football.

Cleveland

Cleveland, being from Michigan (Detroit at that) you and I are sworn enemies. You and I get off to a bad start since you’re from Ohio (a worthless state and my nemesis state), but now I have a whole new bag of reasons to hate you. The Pistons are out of the playoffs, the Tigers trail in the AL central and dropped 5 in a row the Indians (the leaders), and nobody would pick the Lions over anyone, even the Browns. As Cleveland continues to batter Detroit sports I wanted to focus on a couple positive things about the city and the situation.

1. Thanks for B.O.N.E. Thugs n’ Harmony, Cleveland. Straight from East 99, they’ve been slangin’ that ye yo and takin’ no shorts and no losses since I was in high school, and probably even before that. They came out with a new album in May that I’m surprised I even heard about. I hope they get to perform at one of the two finals games in Cleveland.

2. Major League is a classic sports movie. Thanks go to your Cleveland Indians for being the butt of a motion picture joke that even made it to sequel status. I am thinking that your Indians are not just the centerpiece of the plot but also the entire motivation for the idea. You guys were so bad for so long that it just made sense to give you something with a happy ending. I’m surprised there weren’t movies about Boston winning the world series before it actually happened. But Boston is a completely different town; historic, proud, renowned (for good). The people of Boston wouldn’t take such sympathy from Hollywood, they’d get drunk and fire GMs until they finally won. You, however, relish the attention and still have not been to the World Series since 48. Good movie.

3. Drew Carey… Hey! thanks for nothin’. Wait should I be thanking Chicago for Harry Caray’s lovechild? The names are eerily close (if only they looked alike).

4. Rock and Roll. Every time I see a shot of that glass pyramidal Louvre rip-off on your shore (of our Great Lake) I rack my brain to imagine why the Rock and Roll hall of fame resides in Cleveland. It turns out that Cleveland had a DJ who played rock and roll (how interesting) and beat out Memphis (home of recording studios and artists who play rock and roll) in USA Today Poll and you can’t argue with that. To top it off new members to the hall are inducted every year during a ceremony… IN NEW YORK! I can already see Cleveland beating out the likes of a New York borough or LA for the hip hop hall of fame, thanks in part to BONE and their uncanny ability to win despite the absolute absence of value or quality.

So thank you Cleveland for playing some small role in things of some good, but please never forget that our hockey team is better than yours.