Delays

I have been so busy with work lately that writing in this blog has become a distant second in my priority list. There's the spiral of few entries reducing the number of views, and a small number of views providing little incentive to spend an evening writing here. Also, the difficulty in simultaneously finding the device I snapped a photo on, the appropriate cable to download it, and a functioning computer has been a frequent barrier.

So I have a few photos at my disposal so I'll post them now, without worrying about giving any commentary of any interest. A small group of us from the PUC went for a bike ride, my first off-road riding in many years. We were dropped off  on the outskirts of Santiago in a small town (if that) called Ermita. We crossed the Mapocho and found the trail was much rougher than anticipated, with lots of rock slides and impossibly steep sections. But the views were amazing, and despite several technical difficulties, we did reach Santiago again. It took almost 6 hours instead of the 2 that had been estimated. Very fun, and a high point of the month for me.

 

Aside from that, life has been fairly ordinary. No teargas exposure this week, at least for us (another Fulbright fellow who is at the U Chile (which as a public school has students on strike) was letting us know how the Carabineros (the national police, basically) have been very aggressive with teargassing and spraying water (apparently the water is laced with an irritant, so it's more like a chemical wash than just water) canons onto the campus, even disrupting a major hydraulics conference happening on campus. Of course, their aggression is predictably met with some rocks and paint from a handful of 'encapuchados' (literally 'hooded ones') which allows the escalation of the exchange, and the news follows the script by showing how out of control the students are with dramatic selective footage, looped to give the impression of endless chaos.

We visited someone who lives in the neighborhood of Renca, where we saw a 'dog show' on the plaza. Random people marched their untrained dogs (all Jack Russells, so I guess it wasn't completely random) around inside a small fenced area, while an occasional stray wandered in as well. They were promoting spaying and neutering, a desperately needed service here (I mean for pets), and other novel concepts like not abandoning dogs, and picking up the crap they leave behind. The street dogs are not very mean here, at least, probably because they appear well fed, though we were also warned that feeding street dogs causes them to consider the street their home and then they'll be defensive of it. I still prefer Bolivia's policy of feeding the street dogs to the large cats at the zoo.

OK, I know everyone (OK, I mean in case there is anyone) who reads this, hydroclimate, while featured in the title, has been getting short shrift. I did participate in a trip up north to a small town called Ovalle, near La Serena. We visited a reservoir and surveyed a complex water storage and distribution system to satisfy the cities and the agricultural orchards (avocados and pisco grapes for the most part, though white wine grapes were expanding too). I have some photos, but they were apparently downloaded somewhere else, so I'll post them later. It was another time where, traveling with faculty and research staff from the PUC, and meeting with a very accomplished faculty member at the university in Ovalle, that I realize how strong a research community they have here, highlighting my occasional pondering of what I'm even doing here. But here I am anyway, and nobody seems to mind.

I started with the concept of freedom last entry, and there's more where that came from. My typical bike route to campus includes a few sections that are like that shown here, where people express their own vision of freedom. The car coming at me head on is driving on the wrong side of the road (giant arrows mark the direction, so it's not ambiguous), and the bicyclist follows suit, riding to the left of the auto just to keep me on my toes. If there is no traffic using the street in the direction it was desinged for, why can't someone use it as they please? It's really just freedom to use things as we see efficiency demands.

The street in front of our apartment building suffers from this tyranny of free expression as well. There are two left-turn lanes, just outside our bedroom windows, and there is a left turn arrow that stays green long after the arrow for straight traffic becomes red. But rather than wait in the correct lane, people wanting to go straight constantly (really every single light change, all day and night) ride up the left turn lane then stop at the light so they can be first in line to go straight when it changes. The pathetic rule-followers, expecting to be able to turn left at a green arrow become stuck behind these people, and lean on their horns. The city respects this individual freedom by having their only action to this being the posting of a small 'no tocar bocina' sign under a tree at the curb. I lend my support to this scene by wearing ear plugs to bed.

Freedom

Sadly, when I see the word Freedom I hear Mel Gibson's voice in Braveheart.  It is a recurring theme in Chile, from the mundane to the movement trying to fundamentally change education. The latter is ongoing, since the latest round of talks between the students and the government seem to have collapsed. The conservative government is very stubborn, and is predictably not responsive to the demand that education be free, or even arranged differently in any substantial way. The students are also holding firm, and aren't all that interested in offers for lower interest rates for loans and expanded scholarships.  So the government forces have tried to kick the students out of some of the schools they have been occupying, which spurs the reaction of rocks and paint being thrown at the police vehicles, and the liberal use of teargas against the students.

I stumbled into a scene a couple of blocks from our apartment where I snapped these photos, and then the wind changed direction and a diluted teargas cloud introduced me to the acrid smell that precedes anything intense, which our whole family ran into a couple of days later. Last Thursday, as we climbed up out of the metro toward the bus terminal, the station had very few people in it, and most of them had scarves of other clothing over their faces. As we stepped off the train it smelled strongly of overheated brakes or some kind of fire, and it quickly became much more intense. Throats were burning and eyes running, we ran, gasping for breath for the nearest exit, which unfortunately was a few hallways and flights of stairs away. It turns out the police has attempted to re-take the campus of the University of Santiago, just above the Metro station, and their liberal use of teargas filled the station. Was that a bad parenting moment?

Anyway, we boarded our bus quickly enough to escape it. We had to leave the country to renew our visas, so we're in Mendoza, Argentina for a long weekend. It's quite nice, though expensive and much more touristy than I expected. The wine is cheap though, and it is very good. This morning, while we expected sun, the sky looked gray. It turns out the Chilean volcano Puyehue awoke again yesterday, sending ash over much of Argentina again. Our lungs aren't getting a break here. And tomorrow we head back to Chile again, and there are city-wide protests planned for tomorrow and the next day. Such excitement!