I have a general policy of not buying insurance on things I buy. I've also rather carelessly dropped my iPhone onto concrete sidewalks a few times over a past year, decorating it with rather nasty dents. Consequently, when part of its screen stopped responding to touch scarcely a month before the warranty expires, I was a trifle nervous about taking it in to be fixed.
My fears, however, were unfounded. The "Genius Bar" tech merely verified that the screen really had the problem I described, suggested I buy a $10 protective case and handed me a shiny new replacement iPhone on the spot. Best customer service experience ever!
![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/opiummmm/foxies/happy.gif){kind=small}
pleased
NOLA stands for New Orleans, Louisiana. On the 14th of June I went there as part of an 18 person group from Cornerstone to spend a week helping Mercy Response restore some of the houses that were damaged by hurricane Katrina and the and flooding it caused. Mercy Response is based out of the Vineyard church grounds in a suburb of New Orleans called Kenner and is working on 30 houses at the moment. They have a big "tent" for the volunteers to live in. The tent has both wifi and air-conditioning. The AC is important because Southern Louisiana is extremely hot and humid. Although the tent is pretty close to airtight, no food is allowed into it just in case. Food is stored in a nearby kitchen and there are bathrooms in a nearby trailer.
We spent our first full day in New Orleans itself, exploring the city as regular tourists; we even had lunch at the NOLA equivalent of Fisherman's Wharf (with the quality and price that implies). Wandering around downtown, I was amazed by how much fun the area seemed to be, what with bars that sold hand-grenades and the like. When we were tired from walking for hours, we piled into a street car and headed uptown to the Garden District, where we played in a lovely park that moonlights as the official mosquito breeding grounds for NOLA. After having our our fill of the park, we headed back to the waterfront to explore some more and fill the hunger pangs gnawing at us from the inside. We had dinner at a restaurant where one member of our group (Tania) used to work when she lived in New Orleans some years ago. That place was much better, although the culinary fiasco of lunch hadn't exactly set a very high bar. Tania left dinner early, supposedly to buy coffee, but no sooner had we walked out of the restaurant than she descended upon us bearing gifts of beignets, which are vaguely like beavertails or funnel-cakes. Not being one for copious amounts of powdered sugar, I blew most of it off my beignet, prompting shocked responses from the others.
On Monday we started working on houses. The 18 of us were split into 4 crews, each assigned to a different house. Since I had a little experience with mudding and painting, I volunteered to lead a crew of 4 to work on a house belonging to a man called Joe, where we would be assisting a contractor who was already working for Joe. All the supplies we would need were supposed to be on-site but when we got there, the contractor informed us that there was no paint so we ended up just caulking and spackling the window and door frames as well as the trimmings.
Consequently, we finished up early and decided to visit a man whose house had been worked on by 2 of my crewmembers last Fall. His name is Anthony and he served as a firefighter for New Orleans for 21 years but is retired now (not surprising since he's 87 years old) and teaches French. He was asleep when we arrived but my loud knocking woke him up and he instantly recognized the 2 women who had worked on his house last year, inviting us in to chat. Anthony regaled us with tales of his adventures as a hurricane survivor, punctuated by frequent trips down memory lane into his colourful past. My favourite story was his decision to paint the inside of his entire house bright pink after it was restored, despite having lived with dull grey walls for decades before the flooding. Fortunately, he was convinced to go with a more subdued peach colour instead. Although Anthony is very funny, it's hard to get a word in edgewise when he's talking so it was a bit of an effort to extricate ourselves from the conversation when it came time to depart.
In the evening we watched a couple of short documentaries about the hurricanes and their effects on people's lives, which motivated us to work hard all week. I learnt that the first people to respond to the flooding from Katrina were the Mounties. That's pretty impressive, considering how far they would have had to travel!
On Tuesday we showed up at Joe's house again but this time the contractor was not around and the door was locked. There was supposed to be a key waiting for us at a secret drop-off spot but it was nary to be found. One of the contractor's other crewmen showed up and assured us that somebody would swing by with a key so we sat around in the grass and talked while we waited for it to arrive. While waiting, one of my crewmembers (Karen) and I needed to use a washroom so we walked a block to the nearest one. On the way there Karen remarked that she didn't want to use the washroom at a fast-food joint because she wasn't buying anything so she would use the one at the gas station beside it instead. I pointed out that she wasn't buying anything there either but she insisted that this was somehow different. When I explained that this distinction was merely one she had been socially conditioned to accept, she realized that this was true. As it happened, there was no toilet paper in the men's washroom and I didn't feel it was fair to ask for some when I wasn't buying anything so I just bought some TP and then proceeded to restock the washroom with it before using it. Karen found this greatly amusing.
After 2 hours had passed and no key had materialized, we gave up on it and fell in with another crew who were working on a house belonging to a woman named Joyce, who had grown up in that house and was very attached to the 4 foot long bathtub she had once used a a child! Several other people working on her place had offered to replace it but she would have none of it. Joyce also has exquisite taste in chandeliers, much to the consternation of the electrician on whom it had fallen to install them. Upon my arrival I was assigned the task of installing a set of drawers into a bathroom cabinet for which there were no instructions. After carefully analyzing the components, I was able to determine how they needed to fit together for the drawers to work properly. The actual installation was straightforward by comparison. I spent the remainder of the workday helping install window blinds and attaching hooks to doors before we cleaned up the place and left.
After dinner we headed downtown to serve food at the New Orleans Mission (a homeless shelter/food bank type place). I don't think they were used to having so many volunteers at once because there was far less work for us to do than we were capable of. Every time they gave us a task, we swarmed it and were done in a few minutes. The only other volunteer present was a local museum curator who had been ordered to perform community service by a court after a DUI indictment. She'd spent a night in the slammer as well and has no desire for an encore.
On Wednesday morning we went back to Joe's place armed with the knowledge that his wife would be around with a key for us. We were looking forward to finally getting started with painting. Once more, it was not to be. No sooner had we arrived at the site when we were greeted by a plumber who insisted that his insurance wouldn't let him work at a site where there were any volunteers present. Sounded pretty daft to me but Joe politely asked us to yield to the plumber because he really needed the plumbing done. Respecting his wishes, we headed back to camp yet again, extinguishing any last hopes we may have had for painting those trimmings. Perhaps God is saving them up for next week's group.
Meanwhile, Mercy Response had been preparing to assist victims of flooding in Iowa by sending some of their tools and staff there from New Orleans. They had a bunch of us inspecting the gear to make sure it worked, cleaning it, branding it and packing it up for loading onto the trailer. It's amazing how much gunk a powerful jet of water can knock off something! After a long day of working in the blazing sun, we took advantage of the heat by playing on a slippy-slide. After dinner some of us built a 2nd floor for a borrowed 20-foot truck so that it could hold all the gear that needed to go up to Iowa. Well, I'm being a tad liberal by including myself there, since I mostly just watched.
The plan for Thursday had been to load up the trucks and trailers with gear and supplies in the morning and then head over to a house where we were to install wood for the floor. That might have happened if the Bobcat hadn't decided to take a sick day, forcing us to rely on good old bone and muscle for lifting several heavy palettes of supplies onto the truck. Although we did get everything loaded in the end and sent off the first response team to Iowa, the resulting delay and fatigue caused us to end the workday earlier than usual. A few of us took advantage of this unexpected spare time to hit Wal-mart for some fresh fruits and vegetables, for which we'd developed a craving over the previous few days. I hadn't realized until this trip just how spoiled we are in California when it comes to healthy food!
After dinner we sat around in a circle to sing worship songs, lead by the talented (and seemingly clairvoyant) brothers Bjerke. It was like camping, except that the sky was a ceiling and the fire was a single candle. And we had air-conditioning. The Bjerkes ran through their entire set list (plus a request from me) before ending with a repeat of an old favourite. Anthony, who had spent dinner engrossed in conversation with Suzanne (whom he knew from her work on his house last Fall) and then stuck around for the musical fare, thanked us for the work we'd been doing and tried convincing Suzanne she should move to New Orleans.
On Friday a large contingent of us headed over to the house of a man named Jimmy, who needed a Pergo floor installed. I'd never seen a hardwood floor installed before but by the time we let, I felt like an expert and was even teaching my new skills to one of the other volunteers! Jimmy was so happy to see his floor being installed that he bought us delicious gumbo and po-boys for lunch. He also gave us a crash course in New Orleans cultural history. Apparently it is a longstanding tradition to take the family to a local bar, where alcohol may be ordered to go! Jimmy suspects that may have something to do with the high car insurance rates.
That night we finally made it out to Bourbon St in the French Quarter again. Seeing people walking (and occasionally dancing) in the middle of the street at night was really neat and made we wish we had a street like that in San Francisco. We eventually ended up at a jazz bar called Sing Sing that was refreshingly devoid of tourists and drunks. We were mildly dismayed to realize that we'd walked in just as the band was about to go on break but decided to stick around until they came on for their next set because we liked what we heard of their music before they walked offstage. That proved to be a good decision as they played through some good songs when they took the stage again, although we left before the set ended because it was getting pretty late.
The next morning we cleaned up the camp so it would be all minty fresh for the next group and then flew home to San Francisco. This week will live on in my memory long after the aches and pains vanish over the next few days. It's a great feeling to have helped people recover from the ravages of Katrina and to know that the gear we sent off to Iowa will be used to bring relief to those currently in dire straits from flooding there. The only thing better than having a prayer answered is being the answer to somebody else's prayer.
![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/opiummmm/foxies/sad.gif){kind=small}
exhaustedPlayed paintball today for the first time in my life. Indoors. After the first time I got hit in the face, paint splattered through the airholes of my protective mask, under my glasses and into my eye. Not fun. Even after wiping the paint off my eyelid, I couldn't see very well because my goggles had greasy paint smeared all over them. That made the entire experience less enjoyable than it might otherwise have been. It's hard trying to shoot at people when you can barely see them. I accidentally fired at the referee a few times before realizing he wasn't on the opposing team! He didn't say anything then but later on he reprimanded me for taking "blind shots", a term used to describe the tactic of sticking your gun out from behind a barricade and firing into the opposing team's general direction. In my case, it made little difference because I couldn't see even with my face exposed. Maybe if the arena was filled with fog that would even the odds.
tiredI hit somebody while biking home today. I was in the bike lane, proceeding at a good clip down a nice flat stretch of road. A large delivery truck was parked along the curb. As I zipped by it, a guy jumped out of the truck and into the bike lane, about 4 feet in front of me. Calling out to warn him, I braked hard and skidded into him pretty hard. Of course, I apologized immediately but not before he swore in surprise at being collided with. The great thing about bicycles, however, is that I didn't even knock him over and he seemed to be fine.
thankfulI haven't updated this blog much in the past several weeks. In fact, this has been the longest dry spell since I started it 4 years ago. It's not that I don't feel like blogging any more or that I've been too busy to write. It's more that, after more than 2 years at VMware and a year in San Francisco, I've mostly settled into some steady patterns of life and there isn't as much novelty about which to write these days. While I'm not bored, I don't want to write about the minutiae of my life all the time because, quite frankly, it wouldn't be all that interesting.
I've considered blogging about ideas instead of events but there's no temporal cue to do so, which means that those posts end up languishing in the purgatory of my mind. While there's a small temptation to call it quits, there's no real gain from doing so. Leaving this blog on simmer, however, would allow me to make occasional updates to it when something particularly interesting does happen. That's probably what I'll end up doing.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
pphaneuf was in town this weekend so I finally got to meet him. I also managed to leave my iPhone at Yvonne's place last night and was without it until she returned it to me at dinner tonight. Although I'd been without it during my 2-week trip to Guatemala in August, it was noticeably harder to get through the day without it today. But I've thought of a way to make smartphones even more indispensable. uncomfortableWent camping in Pinnacles national park for the New Year's weekend. What with 2 stoves and a fire-pit, I think we ate better while camping than I had at home the previous day. Spotted some cool animals: woodpeckers, turkeys, deer, various birds of prey, etc. Hiking with a 3-year-old is an interesting experience: mostly fun but slower than usual. Finally went spelunking for real, after hankering to do so for the past few years. Best part about spending New Year's Eve in the wild: once the sun sets, we just waited an arbitrary length of time and decided to bust out the champagne. Update: Although it was so cold at night that our water froze, being able to see the Milky Way band for the first time in my life made this trip well worth it.
On the train home there was a 'Nam war vet who was pretty disconcerted that the soldiers who were sent to iRack multiple times had managed to sue for 130 grand. My sympathy for him was tempered by his blatant racism.
soreThe last time I tried flying a kite I ended up crashing a $300 kite into a utility pole. So when some of my friends suggested we spend the afternoon flying a kite at the Marina green today, I was adamant that it be a cheap kite. We went to a kite store in Chinatown and I asked for the kite that was easiest to fly. With a knowing look, the proprietress directed us to a selection of kites whose prices ranged from $24 to $30. We ended up with one that looked like a turtle.
Upon reaching the green, we did our best at deciphering the vague assembly instructions and then began trying to get our kite soaring. It wasn't as windy as we would have liked but there was another guy flying a kite with no trouble so we kept at it despite making little progress. After about an hour or so, I guess the guy couldn't bare to watch any more because he came by and informed us that we had a piece of the kite assembled backwards. I've no idea how he could determine that from dozens of feet away but after we spun that piece around, the kite shot into the air and stayed there with minimal effort on our part.
satisfiedI've been pretty busy with work for the last few weeks and haven't had anything particularly exciting about which to write. That streak ended today when a pick-up truck backed into me while trying to parallel park. I was riding behind it when it stopped. I stopped behind it and was about to pass it on the left when I discovered, to my horror, that it was reversing. Although there were a few feet between us, it's impossible to backpedal on a bicycle so I tried to dismount as fast as I could but to no avail. The truck slammed right into my front wheel while I was still seated. In desperation I kicked off and flipped backwards off the bike and onto the road.
Almost immediately thereafter, the truck stopped moving and the driver got out to see if I was OK. My calves hurt from being mashed against the pedals but I was otherwise unhurt. [Ironically, I'd been hit right outside the best hospital in the city.] My bike's front wheel was completely destroyed and the kick-stand had been snapped off but the frame looked undamaged so I exchanged contact information with the driver, who gave me and my bike a ride home. I estimated the damage at roughly $200 so he handed me that amount in cash and said I could call him if it turned out to be insufficient.
I'll be taking the shuttle to Palo Alto tomorrow and will be in NYC until next Wed so I won't need to use my bike for another week, which should give me enough time to have the wheel replaced.
relievedSeven years ago, on my very first co-op job at KL Group, was the last time I worked downtown in a real city and I've had fond memories of the experience every since. So when VMware recently acquired another floor at Stevenson Place near Market and 2nd in SF, I jumped at the chance to work there. Today was my first day working at the new office, which I now share with Grant, who is also on the UI team.
Unlike Manhattan, where rampant paranoia requires a background check on everybody entering an office building, getting into Stevenson Place was pretty easy. Once inside the VMware suite, I found my office and discovered that the movers had managed to transport my enormous potted peace lily without damaging it, which made me happy. Grant showed up later and we eventually left the building to eat lunch at a dim-sum place up the street. The food was good but we decided that spending $30 apiece on lunch would have to be reserved for special occasions.
On our way back from lunch we decided to try gaining access to the roof. To our dismay, the topmost floor does not permit access to anything. But the real adventure hadn't begun yet. See, like most office towers, Stevenson Place has 2 sets of elevators and the VMware offices are only accessible via the lower set, although it is the highest floor served by that set. Rather than taking 2 elevators to get back, we decided to simply get off at the floor above it and then take the stairs down.
It seemed like a sound plan until we discovered that it isn't possible to get back into a floor from the stairwell. Disappointed, we decided to walk down all the way to the bottom and take the elevator back up after all. Upon reaching the bottom, however, we discovered, to our horror, that the only exit was wired to trigger the fire alarm if opened. We were trapped in the stairwell.
Fortunately, our cell phones still had a decent signal so we called one of our coworkers and got him to take an elevator down so he could rescue us. Having had enough excitement for the day, we managed to stay out of trouble after that.
It took me slightly longer to bike home than I'd expected: 21 minutes instead of the 15 it took me to get there in the morning.
happyI helped lead a landscaping project at the SF zoo this morning. Some of the volunteers wore wading boots and extracted weeds from a pit filled with mud. Every single one of them ended up covered in some pretty strong-smelling mud by the end. But at one point I overheard one kid saying to another, "I thought this would be boring and we wouldn't get to do anything fun but pulling stuff out of mud is awesome!"
As a token of appreciation, the zoo let all of us have free access to the zoo for the day. While walking around the primate discovery centre, I was struck by the degree to which other primate species are endangered by human activity. Comparing the population size of humanity with those of other primates casts light on a perspective we don't usually consider. While there are several billion of us on the planet, many other primates number in the thousands. If we take scarcity into account, the life of any other primate would be orders of magnitude more valuable than that of a human being.
That's a hard stance to wrap my head around because we're naturally inclined to empathize with other members of our own species but, as I watched some of these other primates interacting with other, I realized that they exhibit the same complex emotions and social relationships that cause us to empathize with other humans (not unlike elephants). It made me suspect that the mental limitations that allow us to indirectly inflict suffering upon millions people in far-flung parts of the world are probably the same ones that allow us to steadfastly decimate the struggling populations of many other species.
tiredAnybody who's met me knows I have a metabolic rate of which supermodels would be envious. While that is convenient in many ways, it does cause me undue hardship when buying pants. I have a 28 inch waist so it's generally been tricky to find pants that will fit me. Living in the US, however, has made this even harder. A pair of pants I purchased at American Eagle is labelled as having a 28 inch waist but is actually 31 inches! Apparently, in an effort to make increasingly obese Americans feel better about their expanding waistlines, they've been inflating the size of inches! I guess they figured nobody else would notice because the rest of the world probably uses metric anyway.
amusedDiane and I went to see the Blue Angels perform for Fleet Week yesterday. They were pretty amazing to watch and I was glad I biked because those who drove had a terrible time getting their cars to and from the event. One of my roommates, however, does not like the idea of having an air-show at all. I'm in two minds about it. While I realize that it's a publicly funded recruiting event for the Navy and Marines that burns a lot of fuel, it's also a free public work of performance art enjoyed by a large number of people.
![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/opiummmm/foxies/confused.gif){kind=small}
confusedPeople had been telling me for several months that I should visit Austin because it's an oasis of liberalism in Texas. This week I finally had a chance to spend a few days in Austin by virtue of staffing the VMware booth at a career fair and delivering an info session on the UT Austin campus.
Several people encouraged us to try the Texan BBQ but I was not particularly impressed by it. What did impress me about the cuisine in Austin were a couple of restaurants, one Thai and the other Korean. Although I'm not usually a huge fan of Thai food, Madam Mam's had me the moment I tasted their spring rolls (wrapped in soft rice-paper, not the thicker hard wheat-based things that are commonly mistaken for spring rolls but are actually egg rolls). Koriente is a small but delightful place run by a couple of the nicest people I've ever met.
The climate in Austin took me by surprise, however, despite having grown up in a pretty hot and humid part of the world and hearing about the Texan summer beforehand. Despite the stupefying heat and humidity, I was able to walk around downtown Austin without sweating too much as long as I mostly stayed in the shade of buildings. Wandering around gave me a feel for the city's vibe, which I quite liked. There are plenty of sidewalks and bike lanes in active use and only one person tried to run us over while we crossed the street. I even passed by a church whose banner read "deliberately diverse and fully inclusive". There's also just enough urban sketchiness to keep it feeling real but not enough to feel unsafe. The street hooligans are definitely more polite than those in SF but I guess they never know who might be bearing firearms ;-) All things considered, aside from the oppressive heat and humidity, Austin meets the Tony standard for liveable cities. In fact, the only thing that disappointed me was the noticeable lack of outdoor art.
Speaking to throngs of CS and ECE students at the career fair was interesting. Both those fields seem to be dominated by people of South Asian descent in Texas, although most of those at the undergrad level are US citizens who speak English fluently and whose parents probably migrated to Texas decades ago. We encouraged just about everybody who handed in a resume at the booth to attend our info session at the end of the fair. Consequently, it was extremely well-attended with probably over 90 students showing up to pack the room. I think they enjoyed my presentation because they laughed at my jokes and asked a lot of questions afterwards, mostly about how to get jobs at VMware.
happyUnlike the last time I was at the Warfield, this time we were on the floor instead of up in the balcony. There were also twice as many opening bands. The first one was actually fronted by one of the guitarists from New Pornographers itself: Todd Fancey. His band was alright but not memorable. Next up were Lavender Diamond, who were pretty funny onstage with their overly patronizing remarks directed towards San Francisco's hippie legacy. Lead singer Becky Stark has a mesmerizingly beautiful voice that generates a trance-like aura.
The New Pornographers ended up playing a lot of music from their newest album, which I only picked up before the concert but they did manage to get their most popular numbers in. A random girl at the concert was so taken by my Vibram Five Fingers that she had me email her their website so she could get a pair for herself. Some dumb-ass in the audience kept yelling at them to play more songs; apparently that was not something they'd ever been told in the middle of a concert before. Thereafter, when they paused between songs to talk to us, they made cracks about how they could have played an entire song during that time.
calmEight of us went on a wine tour yesterday. We had a stretch limo to ourselves and it was driven by an excellent guide. In order to avoid the impact of high-traffic tourism we stuck to Sonoma instead of venturing into Nappa. The quality of wine in both regions is roughly equivalent but Nappa is more crowded due to winning many competitions in France.
What with my affinity for sweet wines, I ended up purchasing a bottle of sherry. At one of the wineries, there was a barnyard theme in effect and we poured our excess wine into metal boots after each sample. Although I don't think I would repeat the experience, as I'm not that fond of wine, I'm glad I did it once because I learnt many interesting facts about the wine-making process.
hungryVMworld was this week and I had a pass for Thursday. Although only attendees from Wednesday were supposed to attend the VMworld party that night, I was able to masquerade as somebody else and go anyway. I'm glad I went because the party was incredible; I've never seen anything like it in my life; it was as though they'd brought Vegas to us. Outside there were several free carnival games with little prizes and Smash Mouth was playing. Inside they had several different rooms that had been turned into representatives of various colourful SF neighbourhoods and they each had different forms of food and entertainment. The entertainment included stand-up comedy, karaoke, a mariachi band, 80's arcade games, costumed dancers, a jazz band, etc. And everywhere there was an open bar with a variety of beers and wines.
On Thursday morning I was on duty at the "genius bar" to answer questions about Workstation, although most people were, unsurprisingly, interested in Virtual Infrastructure. I also went to a bunch of breakout sessions. The most amusing of these was the panel discussion at the end where technical heads of several competing companies made snarky comments at each other for an hour; final verdict: Infiniband is kicking 10gigE's ass.
Altogether I was impressed by how well the conference was organized; we even had a booth for attendees to check into their flights! And a professional cartoonist had been hired to produce humorous illustrations of various virtualization-related terms, which were hung all over the place as decorations.
amusedHaving re-ignited my enjoyment of paddling last weekend, I went kayaking in the SF bay with some friends yesterday. City Kayak are some of the most customer-friendly people I've ever met. They let you reserve kayaks online a few hours before you want to put in and pay using paypal. Although they were a little hesitant about letting people into touring kayaks (as opposed to sit-on-tops) without a lesson, it wasn't that hard to talk them into it. And they happily agreed to refund what I'd paid for somebody who didn't show up.
We paddled under the Bay Bridge, past the giant Cupid's Arrow sculpture and to the Ferry building before turning back and going the other way. Every time a motor-boat whizzed past us, we were bounded up and down by its wake. Aside from that, however, it was a calm day and we did not have any difficulty maneuvering around the bay. While it was nowhere near as exciting as going down rapids, I think I'd like to do this more often in future.
chipperI took a tour of one of SF's 2 water treatment plants this morning. This one only deals with 15% of the sewage while the other one handles the rest. When sewage first enters the plant, the large inorganic debris are removed before anaerobic bacteria are added to the sewage in a large egg-shaped tank. Then the sewage is passed through an enormous tank that uses gravity to separate the heavy solid waste and light scum from the water. Finally, the water is aerated to help the bacteria break down various toxins before they are extracted from it and returned to the egg-shaped tank for reuse. Unlike every other water treatment plant in the bay area, this one does not subject the water to a 3rd cleansing stage because it is dumped 4 miles off the coast instead of into the bay.
Most interesting fact learned on tour: the single largest spike in sewage production occurs every year during the half-time break for the super bowl; they refer to it as "Super-bowl surge".
hungryI spent the Labour Day at Stinson Beach in the North Bay with a bunch of friends. The water was so cold that my legs felt numb after being in it for several minutes but the sun was strong enough to dry me up within a few minutes of getting back onto the sand. After playing beach volleyball and tossing around a frisbee for a few hours, three of us decided to canoe around the inlet behind the beach-house.
Things seemed to be going well at first as we watched the porpoises frolicking in the water and pelicans flying around above them. Then we discovered that the wind had blown us a long way from the beach-house. We made a valiant effort to paddle our way back to the beach house but the waves would have none of it; we could only make headway along either direction of an axis perpendicular to the direction in which we needed to go. After struggling mightily for a long time, I decided that our only shot at getting back was to hug the shore and thereby avoid the big waves.
We fought our way to the shore and were managing to paddle along it toward the beach-house for a while but then the wind began blowing us away from the shore despite our best efforts. Suddenly I felt the canoe lurch and turned around to see that Ryan, the other paddler, had jumped out and was attempting to pull the canoe behind him as he waded through waist-deep water. This too did not last long as the water got too deep for him to wade in. Fortunately, I was able to beach the canoe so he could get back in and this time we actually did make it all the way back.
Lunch has never tasted so good.
exhaustedMy 2nd week in Antigua was much calmer than the 1st. I think Antigua takes about a week to explore and after that people start behaving more like temporary residents than tourists. The 2nd week of Spanish was definitely useful though. On my last day of class I took my instructor out for horchata and lunch at La Fonda, after which we watched a marching band parade around the city.
I've never flown into the US from a country other than Canada before so I hadn't realized that a 55 minute layover at Houston would be cutting things dangerously close. Despite managing to use the US residents line at Immigration - it's about 5 times faster than the one for visitors - and having no problems anywhere else, I would have missed my flight to SFO if it hadn't been delayed by half an hour.
Anyway, I'm happy to have clean drinking water on tap again and be free from mosquitoes and 2nd-hand smoke. I've posted all the photos from my camera online.
satisfiedNavigate: (Previous 20 Entries)