mindstalk | Entries tagged with chiletrip2

M, 20 months, has come to toddling into my room in the evening or late afternoon. Because I'll be on my netbook, and she's learned from S's iPad that that means entertainment. Of course, I don't have a touchscreen, which she had trouble with -- though I tried running xneko and secretly moving the cat to her finger. But I've played songs with Totem's visualization on -- she clapped to Cam Ye O'er Frae France which I may have said already, and liked Monster's Lullaby -- but I've also started showing AMVs. The weird sounds and weirder graphics hypnotize her, and I'm entertained too. She's too young probably to realize she can't understand the Japanese. Even so, I've wondered what impression some of the wacky visuals make on her brain. Tutu, Macross Frontier, Mahou Shoujoutai, Sora no Woto AMV.

Tonight the older girls wanted to watch, and despite everyone being able to see the baby got angry and pushy and wandered off. mlc23 has written privately about how her 4 year old gets stroppy with TV exposure, and after a TV-less day the kids really wanted more of even my bizarre offerings. So I get to try to infect them with anime. Added Tutu Hold Me Now, a 12K English cover, and Mushishi One-Eyed Fish to the list. They might be fertile soil... though I don't know about reading subtitles, even for the 7 year old. Though she's (still) reading Fellowship.

"They're talking German" (no)
"The mountain is so tall."
"The princess is the beautifulest."
"Does Japan look like that?" (satellite view of the 12 Kingdoms. So, uh, no.)

18 days since the last one. Not that I've heard much from people stateside!

That dinner party I mentioned was okay. Was an English Speakers Association event. Lots of strangers, and loud. Partly a tasting of Chilean wines, with small portions of food with each wine. And Saturday we went to a day party for the workers at the observatory, again of mild interest to me, though I had a nice walk outside the play area, and saw a couple of horses.

I didn't get chicken pox. The older kids recovered, but now the 20 month old has it.

We've played a bunch of Rail games. I just won Australian Rails! Nice minimalist track along the south, and the cards to make use of it, especially taking nickel to Cook for a 246 total, and then drawing fish to Cook for 10 when I was already built to Port Lincoln. Two more turns, and victory! G wasn't far behind, unlike the previous games of Lunar and Martian Rails, which were S > me >> G, as he got bad luck or made poor choices. I guess we're actually mixing up the victory orders pretty well.

I finally finished the Baroque Trilogy... a week ago, in fact! It even had a decent ending, at least by Stephenson standards. A bit rushed (after 1800 pages!) but some actual closure. Was it fun? Yes. Do I want to re-read any time soon? Hell no.

I've re-read Order of the Stick books, noting some art details I hadn't, like some of the jokes when Roy is interviewing in Origin of PCs, and how the army moves in the battle for Azure City.

I started Henry James' _The Bostonians_, since I'm going to Boston. The edition introduction made me think I wouldn't enjoy finishing it -- unpleasant people being unpleasant to each other -- but the first part is supposed to be a nice social portrait.

I'd started re-reading Sunshine, specifically to take notes about it, but haven't gotten far yet. Distracted by RPG reading, politics news, RPG thoughts, games.

I introduced G' to the joys of black pepper, which she now applies as well as salt to her pepinos, cucumber slices.
S' no longer microwaves her pasta, because G' doesn't, because G' is too impatient or something. I've tried to encourage S' to be her own girl, not just imitate her older sister, but no success.

I made more sets out of my Flickr photos, so there's some more order. Still a lot to do with the 1400 or something photos.

Have made my first sun tea. 3 or 4 green or white tea bags in a mason jar, on the ledge in my bedroom that's both north and west facing -- recall north is solar down here -- and backed by curtains, so it's basically a little greenhouse. It's come out decently, usually a bit more bitter than ideal but it's hard to get my ideal.

I found a metal bar outside that's find for trying pull-ups on. I used to be able to do some, but that was like 40 pounds ago. I've been exercising a bit more regularly, patio jogs, slow squats, push-ups, and some sit-ups, plus single-leg balance, leaving my calves persistently sore, probably from the barefoot patio jogs.

We had Thanksgiving dinner last Saturday, with a few of G's co-workers from the observatory. Good, standard stuff. Played Fish Eat Fish with the kids, and I was the first one out. Then a couple of Catan games with one of the 'workers, so we had 4 people for once. I was introduced as the Catan shark, and gave evidence by almost winning the first and outright winning the second. I think the trend is for me to win Catan, S to win various little Cheapass or bean games, and G to win rail games. I did win Martian Rails in the past week, though it was quite close. I mostly played among the Alpine cities in the center west, such that when the big card to Ares U came up, it was free and fast money for me. We'd played Lunar Rails before; both planets have more interesting boards. Played Russian Rails today, with a much wider spread of scores.

Kids have chicken pox; I just hope my blood test claiming antibodies was on the mark. Mostly the middle kid; the oldest seems to have inherited G's immunity to poxes. Youngest gets to enjoy stomach flu or something instead.

I've made meat sauce here a couple of times, though both times I felt like some addictive element was missing. Don't know what, though. Not enough spice, maybe, or maybe there's some flavor to cayenne besides capsaicin; I've been using red pepper flakes, and not as much as I'd like, since I'm the local spice fiend.

Cleaned out my browser tabs, especially a lot of reading on income inequality. I'll link dump some other time. Been splitting attention between Wikileaks, RPG stuff, and System of the World more recently. Also finishing Noein, and earlier finished Railgun and Sora no Woto. Stephenson is frigging hilarious, at times; the Dappa/Peer/faeces throwing conversation was priceless.

Thanksgiving was followed by a Chilean BBQ Sunday, birthday of another co-worker, held by the family of his Chilean wife. Lots of meat, lots of salads, buttery rice. Hot dogs (salchicas), ribs, chicken -- just for appetizers. Steak (excellent) and pork and chorizo (not so much) at the table with the salads and starches (also corn, and a cheesy potato thing that was good.)

Tonight, some dinner party. I'm not sure what or why, but I borrowed slacks.

No fennel in Chile. Snickers and Milky Way in the store, but not 3 Musketeers.

I've signed up for Arisia. Need to look into actual domiciles in Boston.

Baby M claps her hands to Steeleye Span's Cam Ye O'er Frae France, and seems to like Silly Wizard's Donald McGillivry (sp). S' likes Meg Davis's Monster's Lullaby, which I first discovered from her mother. G' is still reading the Hobbit.

Food is sort of on Spanish schedule here. The rest of the family has breakfast, big lunch (cooked by the maid during the week) at 14 at least for the home crowd, and dinner 6-8. I tend more to have my first meal be the big lunch, with a third meal at 10-midnight. The Deutschule goes from 8 to 13:45, whereas the same ages in Chicago got 9-14:45 (and high school 8-14:45, IIRC.)

My best wishes to any Americans trying to fly tomorrow.

I'm trying to make my meat sauce in S's crockpot, though I didn't thaw the meat in time, and I'm light on the spiciness given local preferences.

S had me try some late-season white Moscatel wine with sweet grapes. I don't positively like it, but I do like it more than typical dry reds. I also had a loquat, common garden fruit here; more seed than fruit so not a big commercial fruit. Artichokes are 8 for a mil from a guy on the way to school, so we're having a lot. That's like a quarter each. Apricots are really good now.

*I'm* making myself big salads everyday, so getting a lot of lettuce at least. Will have to go out for more, since I slept through this morning's shopping trip. I hope my shins will have recovered from yesterday morning's exercises.

I was told last trip that OJ is rare here. We currently have an endless supply of clementines so I don't care. Milk is typically hyper-sterilized and sold at room temperature, though kept in the fridge once opened. I'm not sure if it tastes any worse than normal US milk. You can't buy hazelnuts or brazilnuts here, but they have something of their own they call hazelnuts, smaller than true filberts. Sadly, I wasn't too impressed by the taste.

Oh yeah! Remember me going on about the walls and fences and Mediterranean architecture? I'm told the ubiquity of the walls is actually a development of the past 10-20 years, due to high crime rates as La Serena's population explodes. The fact that visible first-story windows typically have bars on them seems to support this. :-(

I just got Eldest Daughter reading The Hobbit.

The food store turned out to have a separate fancier cheese section, like US supermarkets, with imported brie and camembert. The Danish brie wasn't good at all, at least by brie standards, more like a block than runny. The native goat camembert is decent.

Yesterday I was going to go for a walk, but G hauled out some bicycles, so the two of us went on a ride instead. 11 km total by his odometer, up the hill and through back streets and down a long road full of schools, including the Deutschule (now recognized by the German government!) that the elder kids go to. That was fun, and I experienced staying in low left gear for a while; lots of uphills.

Biggest other Out thing was going to an art walk Saturday. La Serena has a bunch of statues along an avenue downtown, and an expatriate with a PhD in art forgery and reproduction gave a walking lecture about the statues. Lined up in the 1940s IIRC, in a manner reminiscent of Greek temples, where you step up through a marble gateway into an outdoors sacred space, with statues of the gods and the nature of the gods. Almost all the statues were apparently copies of copies -- like, someone in 19th century Europe making a neo-classical statue inspired by ancient ones, and various students making copies of *that* which eventually ended up here. Or were made here. Or made for use by students here. It also had some modern Chilean sculpture, in local basalt. Photos up on Flickr, though still not organized much.

Otherwise, it's been sleep in, play with kids, read online, go shopping with S, play games wit G&S or just S if G's up at the observatory. I've played tag and hide-n-seek, chalked with the kids (I think that was basking incident day), listened to meltdowns, gotten good night hugs and given rides. I realized that the Alphabet Song is to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle, and told the kids. I've gotten at-length exposure to an 18 month old for the first time, so when people say chimps are as smart as a 2 year old, I have some other calibration point other than 2 year olds to compare that to.

Also gotten a local SIM card, mostly for emergencies at this point, and a new hat, in the same utility space as the one I'd gotten last time at the airport, but which is kind of grody two years later. S picked me up so fast that I'd forgotten to look for a replacement; now I have a white floppy hat with a wider brim and more adjustable strap. Entel seems to offer unlimited mobile data for $70/month. Gurk! I also found dried meat, 'charqui', in the store -- not jerky with flavorings, just dried meat. One's goat, one's horse. Also got a Brita water filter, since the water here is very hard and tastes like LA water; G&S are used to that, and the kids even more so: G' said "what's wrong with this water?" when I poured her some filtered stuff.

Empanadas are a standard food here. Pastry of sorts with meat, cheese, onion, hard boiled egg, raisins, and one olive. Always one olive. I think it's manually placed, not scooped in. I still don't like the olives but the empanadas the maid makes are great. Haven't had store ones.

We watched a couple episodes of MacGuyver, made in the 1980s when torture was still bad, something done not by Bulgarian Communists but by particularly corrupt Bulgarian Communists. "Uncle, surely you don't mean torture!"

Stray dogs are everywhere. Some mix of released dogs, maybe feral dogs, and pet dogs who just go for walks on their own.

Whee! Fun 2 hour conversation with S, like back in college. You can't see it but I'm smiling.

Oh right, also spent half a day doing retroactive budget balancing of my trip. Find delta net worth, add up recorded expenditures, see if they match. Not entirely, and it's a larger gap than I feel can be reliably attributed to the food purchases that I didn't bother recording. I'd like to think I messed up my delta net worth calculation, what with the shuffling money between accounts and credit cards, but it's hard to see.

Still, I can say that average lodgings were $90/day, not counting the free ones, but counting 4 hostel days at $22/day, and 5 Mallaig B&B days at $40/day. Conversely, Paris apartment had $125, and 3 Amsterdam days seem to have been $200. I either messed up very badly there or didn't get the Internet deal pricing I thought I was.

Total intercity travel was $1040: trains London-Edinburgh, Edin-Glasgow, Glasgow-Mallaig-Edin, Edin-Leeds, Leeds-London, Lndon-Paris, Paris-Amsterdam; flight Amst-Madrid. Actually, hmm, I think Edin-Glasgow (twice) isn't there, but that's like $16 per trip.

$146 in credit card foreign currency fees, $92 in ATM card currency and ATM fees.

Accounted-for food purchases average $22/day, which feels quite low, but I'm bad at gut average feel. Many days of eating out expensively, spending nearly that much on a meal, but OTOH I ate in for almost all of Paris.

It all comes out to a bit under $4000 a month, not counting the flights to and from Europe; 2/3 of that is rent, even with expensive foods (though hardly any drinking.) Stay in hostels and buy groceries and you might spend 1/3 of that, though I don't know how cheap hostels in London or Paris are. Glasgow was $22/day but that's Glasgow, and I don't think I could have lived in hostel dormitories for 3 months.

And while pricey, most of my rent money went to Airbnb apartments in London and Paris, at cheaper rates plus more room + kitchen than most hotels would give. I wasn't cheapest, and certainly not planned, but it wasn't most expensive either.

S spent a lot less on 5.5 months in South America, but that was hostels + camping -- I haven't asked how much camping -- plus South America, plus 1990s dollar exchange rate. A fair bit of my trip would be cheaper just with a lower euro, though the dollar/pound relation was pretty much standard; both currencies are weak. Lucky me.

Huh, must be a meteor night, going by the LJ banner. Ah, Leonids tonight or tomorrow night. Hmm, sleep or go outside? Oh, there's a security system, no going outside after hosts go to bed. *turns light out* Also, lots of cloud cover.

S took me to Jumbo, a supermarket++ in town. I couldn't find a hat I wanted there. I did find like half a dozen varieties of lettuce, or things called lechuga anyway. I got a couple, one similar to a conventional green-red leaf, one like a small extra crinkly and also extra bitter red leaf. Had them with basil, cherry tomatoes, carrots -- the ones here are shorter, squatter, and sweeter than the ones I'm used to -- and the usual dressing, for my first straight salad in quite a while. I'd looked for sorrel in the market, since R introduced me in SF, but S laughed that possibility off. Jumbo also had a a whole aisle of pasta, with lots of varieties, various spinach pastas, and flavored ones with herbs or oil built in. I was tempted by the dill one -- yes, I'd looked up the Spanish for dill -- but remembered we had some at home so that was silly. Bread selection -- this is why I'd looked up dill -- was eh, though I deliberately got a curry bread and accidentally got a spicey (sort of) bread. I wasn't impressed by the texture of either, though I note I've eaten a fair bit of the curry bread. Makes me think I'm living in Yakitake. "Azuma Kasuma presents Ja-Pan #17, curry bread!"

The cheese cooler wasn't very impressive, apart from being 1/3 Gouda. S was prompted to mention G's French co-workers, who were introduced to cheddar cheese and viewed it as building material.

I forgot to tell S this, but S' age 4.5 knows what "basking in the sun" means. Or at least applies it to people lying down on towels; as I was just sitting on the patio, my claim to be doing it was disputed. I tried to tell her about lizards on rocks. Anyway, I'm impressed at the phrasal vocabulary there. G' has been impressive too but is 7, the daughter of two verbally fluent Techers, and reads a lot, so I'm starting to take it for granted. After all when I was her age I was 6 months away from reading Moby Dick and had read much of Malory, so really she's just performing at par. :p Of course, I didn't know three languages.