Words from Wik

What is the significance of wishing you a happy 21st of September, you may ask? Well, that is exactly the question I asked after I got a text message yesterday wishing me a good day, and it came up in a phone call with a friend as well. I got a bit of an explanation in Spanish over the phone but wanted to find out exactly for myself.

So, naturally I went to Wikipedia and found the article on September 21st. Unfortunately, that page wasn’t very helpful, it didn’t list the things that were mentioned to me, only the fact that it was the international day of peace. So I went on the Spanish Wikipedia page for 21 de septiembre instead, and that proved more useful. Depending on which Spanish-speaking country you live in, they celebrate different things on this day. For Bolivia it’s the following, and quite a line-up to be put all on one day:

First day of Spring (something definitely worth celebrating after that awful winter of +5 degree overnight lows, as well as all those cloudy days)
Student Day
Photographer Day
Doctor’s Day
Day of Love, or Love Day (whichever sounds better to you!)

So yeah, I am pretty sure there are enough things there to warrant the wishing of Happy 21st September! Then again, people in South America tend to find the smallest reason to be happy and wish each other all the best, and that makes this place so interesting.

Take care, and once again Happy 21st of September!

Just an update on the things going on in Bolivia, I left things kinda open at the end of my last post, so I wanted to close off how they ended. I ended up going to the grocery store a day or two later, expecting it to be near empty of the most important food items like I had heard, but instead I found the store full of everything I could have wanted to buy! So instead of leaving with pictures of empty shelves I left with over $100 worth of groceries! (I still wanted to stock up.)

Similar thing with gas. Yes, there was a shortage and people were stocking up, causing an artificial rise in demand. But a few days into the ‘situation’ I went to a gas station, waited 15 minutes in a 15 car lineup, and then filled up no problem!

Oh, and the rumor that the military was being deployed in the city? Didn’t happen. And last weekend, we went out to some discos but they were not letting people in, and instead were closing early because there had been two deaths in the city due to some ‘problems’. Well, that turned out just to be another rumor also, there were no deaths. But that kind of shows the misinformation that floats around and makes things uncertain, and doesn’t allow people to make the right decisions.

Anyways, now the problems are all but over. Almost all the roadblocks have been lifted. My project at work is mobilizing to site (we were waiting for the roads to open. I will spend the next 4 weeks or so in the field, meaning all the perishable food that I stocked up on will probably go bad!) Politicians have decided to spend some time talking (though not before about 30 people died in a province quite far from us). Honestly I expect things to flare up again (there are already rumors of blockades being put back in place), but right now all is well.

Okay, that’s the update in Bolivia. Next thing I wanted to say is that this will be the last time anyone will receive an email when I make a post! I am disabling the automatic email notifier. Why you may ask? Well to be honest, when I had the automatic email notifier on, I felt like I had to write something REALLY REALLY RIDICULOUSLY GOOD for it to be worth you getting an email and heading over to read. So I am disabling it, but I will now feel more free to write small, insignificant little things that keep people in the loop of how life is different here, and what I’m doing or what is happening. BUT, for those that still want to be notified of when I update the blog (both of you), there is an option with an RSS Reader. I use and highly recommend Google Reader (anyone with a gmail account can easily set up a Reader account), and will give a brief description below of what exactly it is, and how it can make your web life easier! For those of you that regularly use an RSS reader just skip the next part (but not before adding my blog to your RSS feed!)

Anyways, an RSS reader allows you to have one place to go to see when your favorite sites have been updated. I use mine to get updates on some people’s blogs, as well as get news on Formula 1 happenings (www.formula1.com) and Digital Photography news (www.dpreview.com). Those are sites that cover my hobbies and I found myself going there on a regular basis, so now I use Reader to know when there is something there worth reading. See the screen below for a sample page from my reader, click to see it full size.

So what I do is whenever I am at work I have gmail open, and once every couple of days or so (or several times a day for those boring days) I click on the Reader link and it loads up Reader with the latest news. I can then read the headlines as well as the start of the article, and if I want to read on I just click the link. Really easy, really convenient. You can add whatever you want there, almost any site that updates with new information once in a while will have an RSS feed you can subscribe to.

Of course, there are many other RSS readers out there, I just find the Gmail one most useful as I always have Gmail open. Anyways, consider trying it out if you haven’t yet. I will admit when someone first told me about these I was a little hesitant to set it up, but now I check it as often as my email.

If you need any help setting it up or adding my blog to your subscriptions, let me know!

In case you haven’t heard, Bolivia is going through some political tension right now. If you go to Google News and search Bolivia you should have a pretty good idea of what’s going on. Headlines include “Bolivia’s tax disputes lead to blocking of gas wells, highways”, “Bolivia crisis cuts natural gas supply to Brazil by half”, “UPDATE 1-Brazil says it won’t tolerate overthrow in Bolivia”, “US ambassador given up to 72 hours to leave Bolivia”, “Chavez Expels US Envoy to Show Support for Bolivia (Update3)”, “Eight killed in Bolivia clashes, US tensions rise”, “Brazil held to 0-0 draw by 10-man Bolivia” (oh yeah, that last one was the result of the latest football match). Anyways, here’s my impression of what the country is like to live in right now.

I won’t get into the reason for the unrest and protest, you can read about that in the articles above if you like. But in general what has happened here as part of the protests is people block roads. They do that to disrupt basic services in order for their protests to be noticed higher up. So there is no transport of fuel, food, and other essential things. For the last week or so, you could buy gasoline in the morning, but by the afternoon every gas station was empty. Now I am told that there is no more gasoline in the city; in my case I got 3/4 of a tank so I am okay for about a week or so, but once that runs out I’ll be looking to get myself a bike!

Then there’s food. On the weekend I took someones advice and stocked up on water and some canned goods, but because I was hearing mixed impressions of what is going to happen, I never took it too seriously and didn’t really stock up. Today I was told that supermarkets are pretty much empty, haven’t been there for myself to see but I believe it.

Then there’s the rioting. When blocking roads is not enough to get the attention of the federal government, people in this city went ahead and stormed, burned, destroyed, and in general took over every government run building. This included the national phone company (we use that company at work, and after the raid for half a day our cell and work phones did not work), tax agency, and others. This made for some great TV footage, but it’s mainly isolated to specific locations, and the rest of the town is just like normal, you wouldn’t even know anything is up.

Now another reason I didn’t really stock up on food was that our company has an evacuation plan for expats and foreigners in case things get hairy. I expected that if things get as bad as they are now, or as bad as people predict it will be, we’d be on our way out. Well I just found out today that won’t be the case. We are staying in Bolivia for whatever may come. I’ll admit at first I was a little annoyed at that, I was expecting the company to take us away before we had to stock up on food, water, gasoline, take care of where we go, put up with a military presence, etc. But now for me it’s actually an opportunity to really live and experience things like a local, not have an easy way out, and put up with the annoyances that everybody else must put up with. So for me it’s okay.

However, for some others it’s not that great. Some other expats who have family and pregnant wives have expressed concern that the company is making the entire family stay, not evacuating the families that have no business purpose to stay. This I must agree with. And evacuation is something that is still possible now (only by air, rail and road transport is blocked as mentioned above), but even that may not be possible later as airports get ‘taken over’ or fuel shortages prevent planes from refueling. Already American Airlines has stopped flights to Bolivia.

So what’s every day life like? Not much different. A few interesting things happened at work today. Some of the more important people were given radios to be able to communicate in case things got worse still and phones stopped working. But otherwise things are normal. There was a company dinner planned tonight. I went swimming at 8:00 pm. I went to a friend’s barbecue at 9:00, had good food and beer, a normal day. At 12:00 midnight we were told that the city had been, or is about to be, “militarized”, or have military deployed, and so we all went home right away. But there was no military on the roads that I could see.

So every day life is okay. The place I live is a fairly safe neighborhood (the only down side being that several important political figures live there, with a potential for trouble from people looking for them). But otherwise I am going to work tomorrow, there is a try-out for the Brazilian BG Energy Challenge on Saturday. Life is as normal.

So that’s about it for the current update, should anything major break I will do my best to write about it and let you know.

For my first real trip out and about in Bolivia, another BG new grad and myself went on a two day hike in a town a couple hours away from where we live. The area is higher in elevation and provides a slightly cooler climate, which was a good break from the heat and humidity we usually have in Santa Cruz. It’s also more mountainous and jungle-like than the city.

The hike was through some very dense forest, and our guide Erwin had to use his machete often to cut a (very narrow and small) path for all of us. It was some tough hiking though, and being tall did not help me, at some points I had to go on all fours (with my backpack on) to get through the dense greenery! There was so much pathless jungle to navigate through that by the end of the hike our guide could not raise his machete hand to even point things out to us!

We had a nice campfire on the night we spent in the jungle, and met some other Italian hikers there who were doing a similar route, though we never actually saw them while hiking! Other highlights included looking at Puma and Jaguar tracks on the ground, though we never spotted the animals themselves! (Click on any of the pictures to go to the gallery and see more).

All in all it was a nice trip, all the more so because it was my first getaway in Bolivia after all the time I spent working in the field. It was also a bit of training for me as I plan on climbing some mountains in Bolivia’s Andes, which I will be doing in the next few weeks, so stay tuned for some pictures and stories from that!

Hey everyone, long time since I posted. Somehow just haven’t found the time or the topic to write since I’ve come to Bolivia. What I have been meaning to do is let people know what Bolivia is like as a county. There’s a lot of things going on right now here, and I wanted to write about some of them, but didn’t really know how.

Anyways, I found someone else’s blog entry that explained the current situation so well, I had to pass it along. So if you have any interest in Bolivia or South America in general, give it a read.

Before you do, some background (so that you better understand what you read):

– Santa Cruz is the rich province in the east; all the government is in the west.
– Most people from Santa Cruz dislike people in the west in general (similar to Canada’s western alienation, Scotland’s dislike for being ruled from London, etc., but more severe and slightly racial), and the president specifically.
– The majority of the people in Bolivia are native Americans (aka Indians; Bolivia and Peru are two countries in America that didn’t completely wipe out their indigenous populations with settlers); most of the rich people here are what they call “whites” (what I would call people of Latino descent, Hispanics). The indigenous have a distinctly darker skin tone, and are usually poorer. The current President, Evo Morales, is of indigenous origin.
– The currency here is Bs (short for Boliviano’s). 1 B = 15 cents.
– MAS is the current governments political party name.
– When you get to the line in Spanish, use Google Translate or Altavista Babelfish to find out what they are saying (viewer discretion advised if you use Google).

Alright, here is the link!

First of all, Merry Christmas to everyone! Don’t forget the true meaning of it all, as there’s more to it than gifts!

Here are some pictures from a little safari I had in South Africa. The entire time I couldn’t help but think I was watching the Lion King, but in real life. So the following are the starring cast:

Opening scene to the movie

Little Nala

Bugs eaten by Timon and Pumba

Little Simba

Rafiki

Teenage Simba

Zazu

Sarabi, Simba’s Mother

Pumbaa

There are no pictures of Timon, they were too fast to catch on camera.

Take care!

Wiktor

Wow. I just read an article that blew my mind. It’s about the latest that can be done to have one’s DNA analyzed for health risks and other things. Amazing. Read here. If you only read the first page you will get the picture, but I couldn’t help but read the entire article.

I don’t know, maybe I have been behind the times, but I am amazed this can be done on a large scale and cheaply. I will seriously consider this, as I think many young people would.

So you may or may not have heard about the storm that is currently over the North Sea. Well if not see here. Basically a big storm is going over the North Sea, and flooding was feared for a while, as well as disruptions in oil production. The worst seems to be over in the coastal areas, but where I am right now it’s still not good.

Biggest effect this has had on us is with our fresh water supply. The sign below was posted around the platfrom last night:

Our fresh water is shipped in to us and stored locally, and with the storm ships are unable to come and replenish our supplies. So we’re effectively sitting ducks, rationing our water until the storm passes, and have no laundry in the meantime. Now this may seem like no big deal, but trust me, it is. See, no one comes offshore with 5 or 7 or 10 of everything. Most people do laundry every other day, and have only a couple of sets of things to wear.

I myself have only 3 t-shirts and maybe a couple more underwears. And I arrived on Wednesday, and tomorrow is day 4 of my stay, so guess what? I begin cycling the shirts I wore already. A couple days after that I will do the same with underwear. And you know it can’t be good when everyone on the platfrom is doing the same. Latest news is that maybe Monday the weather will be better. And maybe not. And it can only get worse. We can still use the showers right now, but who knows how long that will last?

So on my latest days off (and probably my last days off here on my North Sea assignment) I flew all the way down to South Africa. I had heard a lot about the place, so I thought I would go see what it’s really like.

My impression is this: South Africa is the easy, tourist friendly Africa; hence it is not the ‘real’ Africa. It is pretty easy for an English speaker to get around, there are lots of tourist places to stay and visit, and the (white) people are generally well off and enjoy a decent standard of living.

That said however, there are other issues with the place. Some places are inherently dangerous, and you have to know about them and avoid them (dangerous as in Taxi driver groups having gun battles between each other and killing each other/bystanders, all over who gets to run what routes). One other issue is cultural (or more closely racial) inequality. Most of the well-off people are white, and the majority black population is still, in general, less educated and in lower paying jobs, or unemployed.

This inequality also affects the white population. Affirmative Action dictates that companies must hire 80% black people for new jobs. This makes it hard for employers because of the education level differences still present, and also for young white South African looking for jobs. The people I talked with say most white South Africans looking for jobs have to either go abroad or start their own business.

Some of these things make me think of the movie Blood Diamond, and the line TIA (This Is Africa), referring to how some things just are the way they are in Africa, and likely won’t change for a while. That’s how I felt about some things here in SA, the inequality and other points as well.

Anyways, that’s it for my sociocultural analysis, next post I’ll try and put up some nice pictures!

So the other day I am at my local supermarket here in Aberdeen, Scotland, and I go to buy (among other things) some blueberries (mmm…… blueberries…..). Here in the UK they always write where the fruit is from, and lo and behold, these blueberries happen to be from Canada! See below:

Now I must say I never thought Canada would be known for exporting blueberries, I thought we just exported arctic ice and maple syrup. This, however, gives me one more reason to be proud to be Canadian, to have a little more sparkle in my eye when I say “my accent is not American, it is Canadian” when people here mistake me to be from “below the 49th”; it gives me the strength I need to endure here in this country with Haggis and deep-fried Mars bars; it keeps me warm at night and keeps the bad dreams away when I am all alone on an offshore platform in the middle of the ocean. I am all the more PROUD to be CANADIAN. I AM CANADIAN.

Umm, okay, end of beer commercial. But really, I miss Canada, can’t wait to be back and see you all there. Oh, and the blueberries were delicious.