spectral days

oh good. It´s nice to be inspired to write again. it´s been rather sluggish with an abundance of routine.

I´ve just dropped into an Internet cafe, a scene set by the cranberries, winded ¨ough¨ sounds from a multi player dark ages simulation and a pull out desk that is literally coming apart in chunks. the chap that runs the place was nice enough to wipe my pile of them (chips) away though. So hospitable here.

I was on my way to a “Recital depresivo acústico” whatever that means (not literally of course, you can figure that out eh, nice one), but realised, moments after contemplating how late i was going to be, that i had left the address of the place with Jorge, Marco´s uncle, no doubt still trying to remember the name of that other decent English speaking band of today, apart from Queen. As all my dark chocolate fell over the pavement I had a good laugh, and gave a square of what remained to the closet hired help, a security guard. Phew. There´s some sort of electro concert later tonight in Barranco, and i´ve been promised both costumes, and breakdancing. There are space invaders on the flyers, and my hopes are pretty inflated.

I´m not too worried about the chocolate. The cocoa content in the run of the mill supermarket stuff here is so low your checks collapse trying to suck out the good stuff. Sort of ironic really, considering the amount of other cocoa based products said to be doing the rounds here. I sprinkle cocoa leaf powder on my kiwicha in the mornings. It´s bright green and said to have more iron, calcium and protein than any other of the example foods they cared to list on the back of the bag. It also gives me a bit of an anxious tummy and makes my mouth go a little numb. All the better to get my mouth around Spanish lessons though, right?

The classes i´ve been taking are an hours walk away from my ´department´, and, thankfully, are coming to an end this monday. I definitely feel more confident speaking, but years of unwillingly sponging knowledge of second language learning theory through the compulsory papers of the the Otago linguistics money making wing (take ESOL, you can work in Korea!) have made me a rather prickly pear to teach languages to. To start with I thought it was a ploy to fire me up and in the process, as I´d learn to speak more passionately through arguing. There´s some Latin American reasoning for you. Well, today I definitely didn´t win the battle, and received my fifth lesson on the difference between ser and estar (two forms of the English ´to be´, which are differentiated with ´un monton´ of exceptions based on the ´permanence´ of the subject). I felt like such a delinquent staring out the window and snapping back answer today. Childish I know, but I had already expressed my desire to go over points I was actually struggling with, and I was missing a workshop from on creating electronic sound spaces from two Polish sculptors at the centre of Spanish culture. I checked out their work the other night, the highlight being when the older guy without the Atari t shirt strung two cables around his ears, popped another in his mouth, shone a torch in his face and shook his head spasmodically. That is to say, it wasn´t great. So this morning´s loss didn´t cut too deeply.

I´m out of here next week, I mean it this time. My family sent me a package in the mail, which is finally in Lima. When I´ve got my Whitaker´s dark, fishless omega supplements and applicator free tampons in hand I´m out of here! Exactly when that will be... well... the moral of the story is, don´t send gifts to Peru, but most of all, make sure people don´t send them to you. There are some handy taxes in place should you forget, roughly around the value of the gift in question. What a helpful reminder. I had a good long chat to a woman at DHL today. Essentially it breaks down to them needing to check the goods, give them a value three times what the original packing slip says, and base the level of tax on it. Looking at the break down, one finds nearly half of it is labour costs, themselves valued at what a house keeper gets in 2 days. I´m kicking myself most over accepting a new packing slip which, as the printer ´wasn´t printing´, was hand written and devoid of any of the incriminating break down details for further follow up. Thieves! All my years in unions and I still let the paperwork fall through my fingers. tut. tut. tut.

Well, that´s me just about ready to head home for a Chilean Sauvignon Blanc and some super spicy pumpkin soup. Time to head, the cranberries just became Brian Adams, and it´s not even the Spanish version. Oh but that doesn´t stop them singing along in Spanish. Sweet.

A little the art around the place for you.

This is from the grand shop Pulga on Berlin. I thoroughly recommend you check it out. The women there have kept me on the tip of what´s on here, and have finally address the question plaguing mankind for the last decade. What happens when you cross Radiohead and Pikachu. I won´t refer to any sort of sum of its parts for fear of hurting its feelings.

There was also a radiochu suit. But I´ve seen plenty to rival that already... this Autumn collection from Tarapoto.
This is more of a ´happening´. HEAPS of the buses here are poorly modified trucks.

Some gag about which one´s the dummy. This is from a wonderful exhibition of Alberto Quintanilla at Alliance Française. I hope this is some sort of translation mishap. I´ve gone for the long shot, sorry. The word above life is placenta.But in the best translation mishap, coincidence, or maybe great linguistic discovery (save my paper being accepted for a world languages conference in Toulouse!!!) .... the name of the coal oven used in a few indigenous dishes around here is umu. Actually, doing a double take on it... the spanish word for smoke is humo, so maybe it´s not such a great find after all. Good to reanalyse where we´ve been from time to time though eh? Here´s a visual aid to spruce up the sentiment.