3 June 2010

Not much excitement to report for the last few days. I've been largely dealing with the administrivia of starting a new job, finding out how things are done and making sure everything works as it should. Highlights have been;

• Dragging Alexis (the fieldy) out to my apartment to figure out why my hot water unit was not working, only to watch him do everything EXACTLY as I had, and it sprang to life. The look I got was priceless.
  
• Another trip to the Jumbo (the brand name, like Westfield I guess) shopping centre for exciting items such as an ironing board, a dish drainer (the thing you put your dishes in on the sink after washing them - and yes, that means that there is no dishwasher...), a clothes horse, and all of the food items I forgot to get last time.


• Finally understanding that the option to go to a shop to buy "dips" does not exist. If you want guacamole, hommus, salsa for corn chips etc, you'll be making it yourself from scratch! Not that that is such a terrible thing...
  
• Coming up with a "favourite" restaurant for lunch. It is nominally a seafood restaurant, but ask them to make a vegetable omelette and they deliver a very tasty result, cheap and usually the envy of the others. I was taken there when I was here in April and they also managed a good job then, so it's looking good!


• Managing to locate a number of sources of "papas fritas" - known to the western world as CHIPS! OK, so some aren't so great, but some others have been pretty darn good. Not necessarily up to the quality of our fave's in Perth, but there is hope...


• Braving the outside world by myself and managing to order a pizza, cut into quarters and take-away (not dine in), paying for it, and getting it all right. Yes, that shouldn't be too difficult, but small steps...


• "Perfecting" my banter with the locals about how I only know a little Spanish. It's proving surprisingly effective with most, with no-one having to shout at me yet. My biggest troubles come with the check-out chicas at the Jumbo, as they ask difficult questions about (as it turns out) whether I have a 'rewards' card, and don't seem to understand that the smiling, nodding gringo in front of them has no interest in such things. Come to think of it, they do tend to keep asking the same question over and over, so maybe I've got work to do with my spiel.


• I can now count to ten pretty much without thought. It's a shame that A$1 = 450 chilean peso's, so the numbers involved with any financial transaction tend to be in the thousands or tens of thousands. My next "learning objective" is to learn how to ask them to tell me the amount one number at a time :).


• Accidentally managing to set up Google to automatically translate any word I hover the mouse over into Spanish. Not only that, but I was looking at a recipe website today and it neatly converts the entire recipe into Spanish into a handy little pop-up. While I'm sure that doesn't sound too exciting, it is VERY useful.


• Watching a school parade involving dozens of cars/utes/trucks, tooting horns, kids all dressed up in fancy dress, all working their way along the street in front of the office
  

• Discovering the BEST spiced/smoked almonds on the planet (so far).
  
• Finding out that the office at the other end of our floor is a call centre for people who don't pay their debts. This being the first call centre I've seen in real life, yep, they look and sound like battery chooks. Alexis seems to think this is a likely source of "polola's" for himself - another new and interesting word - look it up!

On the down side of things, smoking is a fairly common pastime here, to the extent that smoking in cafe's is moderately common. There is the thought that if they sit on a designated side of the room, then it's all OK. It also seems to be OK to smoke in the stairwell of our office block, so my initial enthusiasm for getting a bit of exercise on 6 flights of stairs has diminished. Fortunately this doesn't extend to restaurants or offices (generally).

The weekend ahead is looking like I will be able to get out to some nearby towns. One of the other geo's, Samuel, is flying home to Santiago on Saturday for a few days and I am able to take one of the work ute's and drop him off at the airport, then it is mine for the rest of the weekend. My plan is to visit the 'resort' town of Caldera and nearby Bahia Inglesa, which are reputed to be nice although the photo's on the interweb don't look too stunning. We'll see. Depending on how that goes, the hills surrounding town look inviting for a bit of hiking to get some different perspectives of Copiapo.

As usual, I hope all is well in your world. Take care.