I Was Late to Class

It probably appeared that I was hungover and had slept through my alarm when I arrived at Ecosystem Dynamics and Function class two and a half hours late on Thursday, the 10th of October. But that was not the case. I had stayed in the night before, studying and sipping chamomile tea, getting into bed at a reasonable hour. But I had misinterpreted the class schedule and had somehow accidentally convinced myself that the class meets at 2pm.

Aware that I have a tendency, or maybe even a special, uncanny, talent for experiencing extreme difficulty while trying to do extremely simple tasks, I had already taken measures to prevent something like this from happening. I have my class schedule programmed into a Google Calendar such that it sends updates to my phone with alarms that go off 24hours, 1 hour, and 10 minutes before each class starts. Somehow in the period of time between Wednesday at 9am and Thursday at 10:30am, I failed to notice any of these updates. But by Tuesday afternoon, two days earlier, it was already too late. The delusion that our class meets at 2pm had already cemented itself firmly into my brain.

On Tuesday afternoon I was in a different class. We were planning a group project. My group agreed to meet on Thursday at noon. “Does anyone have any schedule conflicts?” asked one of my group members.

“Ummm,” I thought, recalling, incorrectly, that all my classes meet at 2pm. In fact I have classes on Monday and Tuesday that meet at 2pm. But on Thursday I have Ecosystem Dynamics and Function, known colloquially as EcoDynaFunc, which meets at 9am. “As long as we’re done by 2.” I said. For the next two days I went about my business thinking that as long as our meeting didn’t run late, I’d make it to EcoDynaFunc without a problem.

But at about 10:30 on Thursday morning it suddenly, and for no reason that I can understand, dawned on me that there was in fact a problem; class had started an hour and a half ago at this point and I was in the shower. So I quickly towelled off, dressed, and realized that I hadn’t rinsed the shampoo out of my hair. Next, I jumped on my bike and pedalled frantically to the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation (ECCI) building, where our class normally meets. Finding no trace of our class in ECCI, I carefully combed through the documents I had been given in previous classes, searching for a clue as to where class was meeting at that moment. My fear was that like the previous week, the class had split up into groups and wandered off into the forest, to do fieldwork– a place where I had no hope of finding them.

I gathered from the document that in Week IV, on Thursday the 10th of October, class is to be held in The Crew Building, which is located at The King’s Buildings, a separate campus some 15 minutes’ bike ride away. So I put my helmet back on, which by now had a frothy residue of shampoo and sweat coating the inside of it, and headed toward The King’s Buildings.

I had no luck in my initial search of the classrooms on the first floor, the second floor, or in the basement of the Crew Building, so I went into the bathroom and thought about what other courses of action I could take as I rinsed my head in the sink and tried to clean the shampoo out of my hair with paper towels. At this point it occurred to me that I would probably also miss my meeting with the group from my other class. Our meeting was scheduled for noon that Thursday, and by this time is was close to 11:30. So I got out my phone and started typing an email to the group members explaining that I wouldn’t be able to make it to the meeting.

With my phone out, it occurred to me that maybe I could use my phone to send text messages to people in my elusive EcoDynaFunc class. I had the phone numbers of about 4 classmates, so I texted them, asking where the class was. Then I went back into the bathroom. A few minutes later the shampoo in my hair was slightly less noticeable and I had received a text message!

My classmate’s instructions for how to find the class seemed dubious. Her text indicated that the class was being held in a sort of coffee-break room, but I followed her instructions, and sure enough, behind the coffee-break room is a hidden conference room with a video projector. The professor squinted at me as I silently mouthed the word “sorry” and tip-toed into an available seat.

So as you can see, what appeared to be an incident of irresponsible, possibly drunken laziness was actually a story of courage and perseverance in the face of adversity. My phone, our class schedule, my shower, and even my own brain had all betrayed me on that fateful Thursday morning. But due to sheer strength of will I was able to overcome the odds and arrive at class two and a half hours late and with shampoo still in my hair.

Ambulance Collides with Bus

Today I rode the Bus Ruta 302 Circular Sur  Izquierda. I got off at a park at the south end of the Airport. It's a fun place to go because you can watch airplanes land and you can eat chuzos de cerdo (pork on a skewer):

After that I got back on the bus, which loops around the city and takes me back to the neighborhood where I live. 

The tiny microphone in my camera wasn't very good at capturing the mambo music playing in the bus. We also passed these mosaic pyramids in the median of La Avenida Oriental (Eastern Avenue.)

But as we maneuvered through traffic, an ambulance crashed into us! It wasn't a bad crash and no one was hurt– but if anyone had, it would have been convenient that there was an ambulance. 

The bus driver gave the paramedics a stern talking-to.

Then she looked at the part of the ambulance that contacted the bus.

Then they looked at the part of the bus that contacted the ambulance. The police came and stopped traffic. Everyone got mad and honked their horns and yelled. 

People on the bus were impatient and didn't know what to do.

Then the paramedics got back in their ambulance and left.

This is the bus. The bus driver flagged down another bus that was driving the same route and all the passengers switched to that bus. This is where the crash took place:

View Bus Crash in a larger map

Boléro

I discovered a secret place where one can listen to a vast collection of Bolero music on vinyl, that was recorded all over Latin America during the middle decades of the 20th century; Where Jorge, the bartender, will talk your ear off, telling you intricate stories about each and every track. It's called El Bolero Bar. Also, by reading this article I learned how to embed google maps into this blog! This is where you can find El Bolero Bar:


View Bolero Bar in a larger map

But I should warn people that even with this map, the place is hard to find; in order to get there, you'll think that you're entering the garage of a giant condominium complex.

Before last night, the only time I had heard the word Bolero was in reference to the 1928 orchestral piece by Maurice Ravel, which is actually spelled Boléro:

As it turns out, Bolero Music is also a genre of slow dance music that began in Spain and became popular in Cuba and some other places in the Americas. Most of the records Jorge played for me didn't sound at all like Ravel's piece.

Refrigerators vs. Water Heater

Here's an outdated and partially completed blog post:

Hot showers are a luxury that I don't want to do without unless there's a good reason. Carlos, who serves as the boss of those living in this apartment will not allow me to run the electric water heater for more 10 minutes, which is enough to create about 30 seconds worth of lukewarm water. After that the water is icy cold. Once, when Carlos wasn't home, I ran the water heater for an hour. I was able to take a hot shower for a full 7 minutes! Carlos claims that running the water heater for longer than 10 minutes at a time (how frequently he doesn't specify) would be very expensive– resulting in an energy bill of as much as $500,000 COP ($284.25 USD.) But I don't think that's possible. Also, he runs two separate refrigerators 24 hours a day– so I would think if he's concerned about energy costs, that would be the first thing to consider. When I try to talk to him about this, he speaks so quickly that I can't understand everything he says– but the gist is that I should be grateful that he has put a roof over my head and how dare I ask for anything else. According to his rhetoric, if I don't understand each and every word he says, then I must not understand electricity or the way it's billed in Colombia.

For the time being I've accepted that trying to talk to Carlos about this is much less pleasant than resigning myself to taking cold showers. But I felt compelled to investigate the issue and show my findings to the internet.

This is the badge I found on the water heater. I think the important information is that it uses 800 Watts. Assuming I run it for an hour each day (realistically I would run it less) I did the following math:

I'm not sure how much they charge for electricity in Colombia (Carlos hasn't shown me any previous bills), but Wikipedia  has a list of how much they charge in other countries. In order for 24.8kWh to cost $500,000 COP, the utility company would have to charge $20,161.29 COP per kilowatt hour. That's 20 times more than the country Wikipedia lists as charging the highest rate for electricity, which is Tonga.

but I still don't think that's a good reason to do without hot showers.

Visas

I've neglected to update for a while, but here's the latest: I'm looking to move to a different apartment and renew my tourist Visa (or get some other kind of visa that would allow me to stay longer.)

Fortunately, there's thorough, up-to-date information on this website:

http://medellinliving.com/how-to-extend-a-tourist-visa-in-medellin/

I hope to update again soon with material that's worth reading.

Assassin Bug

One thing I had been hoping to see in Colombia is an assassin bug. I had seen this video before leaving the US. It's about wheel bugs, which are closely related to assassin bugs.

In the last two months I had seen a lot of hemipterans, but upon inspecting their mouth parts I had found that they all lacked the rostrum (syringe-like beak) of the assassin bug– until today. I was standing on the platform of a metro station taking photos through a window, when one suddenly lighted on the glass in front of my very eyes!

Here you can see the bug's rostrum.

And here the rest of its body is in focus. Next I want to see one of these bugs carry out an assassination.

Small Things

I'm working on acquainting myself with the fruits that are available here but not in North America. One is the guayaba (guava.) One good thing you can do with it is make jugo de guayaba (guava juice.)

First you hold the fruit in your hand.

Next you slice it. Notice that the inside is pink and the outside is greenish– sort of like a tiny watermelon.

Then you put the guava chunks in a blender with sugar and water. Other fruits are good too. Next time I'd like to try putting a maracuyá (passion fruit) in there as well. After you blend it, it's good to pour it through a strainer into a pitcher. This will remove the vast quantity of buck-shot-like seeds.

This house looked good.

I've been paying a lot of attention to gutters recently, and this one is home to by far the best flora of any I've seen in all of Colombia.