A quickie today.
We start our death project. We may die from it.
Our taxi mounted a median to get into another lane to get onto the highway.
We played futbol with some Peruvians. I score twice. We may have won a billion to billion and one.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Monday, May 16, 2011
City Tour
Saturday we went on a tour of Lima. We went to a nice little park that had a whole bunch of olive trees. Apparently Spanish conquistadors brought 20 or so trees to Lima. Over the ensuing 400 years they have grown to over 3000 trees. After that we stopped by what looked like a big pile of mud bricks. This a big Inca pyramid that people have been digging up for a long time. What is really surprising just how many bricks there are. But the pyramid wasn't a burial pyramid like the Egyptians, it was more like a platform. At the top there were huts. So you could say it was just a big pile of dirt. Impressive. After that we drove around and say a bunch of old Spanish government buildings in San Isidro. The Palace of Justice was big and fancy looking. The tour guide said something about the tallest building in Lima is an apartment complex and that there was something significant about the Sheraton here too. Eventually we found our way to the center of Lima and Peruvian government. The yellow building of the city government and the big royal palace of the president. Interestingly, the president doesn't live in the royal palace. Imagine if Obama lived in a big mansion in Martha's Vineyard or some place where the super rich live.
The hardest part to get used to is all of the police walking around with loaded AK-47s and riot shields. The general impression is that if these guys left, the city would slowly turn into anarchy. Back in the 1980s, the country was struggling with gang warfare and subversive groups trying to over throw the government. The president at the time (a Japanese born man) basically gave the police free reign to root out the problem. A lot the buildings reflect these times. Wealthy people have tall walls with barb wire or electric fences on top. The really wealthy have guards and the neighborhoods close their gates at night. Yet most Peruvians think Americans are running around with guns shooting the heck out of everyone. Strange.
At night we went to the Magical Water Circus. It is 13 water fountains. In the center of the park is a huge fountain that they do a Pink Floyd-esque laser light show. The fountain mists water into the air and green lasers do different shapes or show video scenes. Definitely the highlight of the trip so far.
Next post will be about the church.
The hardest part to get used to is all of the police walking around with loaded AK-47s and riot shields. The general impression is that if these guys left, the city would slowly turn into anarchy. Back in the 1980s, the country was struggling with gang warfare and subversive groups trying to over throw the government. The president at the time (a Japanese born man) basically gave the police free reign to root out the problem. A lot the buildings reflect these times. Wealthy people have tall walls with barb wire or electric fences on top. The really wealthy have guards and the neighborhoods close their gates at night. Yet most Peruvians think Americans are running around with guns shooting the heck out of everyone. Strange.
At night we went to the Magical Water Circus. It is 13 water fountains. In the center of the park is a huge fountain that they do a Pink Floyd-esque laser light show. The fountain mists water into the air and green lasers do different shapes or show video scenes. Definitely the highlight of the trip so far.
Next post will be about the church.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Brisas del Titicaca and some church
Friday night we went to a place to see the Brisas del Titicaca. It is a group that tries to preserve the culture heritage of Peruvian groups. Everyone region has its own dance, clothing, and music. I can't say which region had which dance because all of the background information was in Spanish and no one understood it. There was a Peruvian flute band. They had a big bass drum and a snare with 15 people with flutes marching around the stage. They did a number later with pan flutes. A link of some of the dances on YouTube. You can't really explain it. They would have a traditional dance with the large group. They would have smaller dances doing Marinera.
Between dances, the band would plan songs and people would come onto the dance floor and dance. You could tell who was foreign and who was native just by dancing. We were hugely terrible. We can't move our feet. We can't move our hips. We have absolutely no rhythm. But apparently the you have to learn your region's dance when you are in school.
We went to the church of Saint Francis of Assissi. That church and monastary was built in the late 1600s. A lot of paints were from the 1690s. We went into the public crypt. I will update this later when I have more time.
Between dances, the band would plan songs and people would come onto the dance floor and dance. You could tell who was foreign and who was native just by dancing. We were hugely terrible. We can't move our feet. We can't move our hips. We have absolutely no rhythm. But apparently the you have to learn your region's dance when you are in school.
We went to the church of Saint Francis of Assissi. That church and monastary was built in the late 1600s. A lot of paints were from the 1690s. We went into the public crypt. I will update this later when I have more time.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Friday
Today we finished working on IP telephony. We set up 5 customers and two SIP servers so people could call each other. We spent about 4 hours working on that and got it done before lunch. There is always rice with lunch. After lunch we spent the rest of the day learning PHP. So far I find PHP to be very similar to C#. Except there is just one form of variables. We will see what it is like on Monday. Tonight we are dancing.... We are going to Breezes of Titicaca where we will do something. I am not sure what. I just know we will be forced against our will to dance. Yuck. Tomorrow we wander around the city and go on a Magic Water Circuit in one of the parks.
Yesterday we ate at the a local fast food joint. It is called Bembos. It is fast food but it has a sit down atmosphere. I would say a step between McDonald's and Steak n Shake. I had the Ave Caesar which had a grilled chicken patty, lettuce, tomato, bacon. It also came with fries and a drink.
Here is our group.... 7 Peruvians and 7 gringos.
They volunteered for this class. They are currently in school doing other work. In fact today they had to leave for another class. So sometimes we will be without them apparently.
And a few pictures of the view from my hotel room window....
Yesterday we ate at the a local fast food joint. It is called Bembos. It is fast food but it has a sit down atmosphere. I would say a step between McDonald's and Steak n Shake. I had the Ave Caesar which had a grilled chicken patty, lettuce, tomato, bacon. It also came with fries and a drink.
Here is our group.... 7 Peruvians and 7 gringos.
They volunteered for this class. They are currently in school doing other work. In fact today they had to leave for another class. So sometimes we will be without them apparently.
And a few pictures of the view from my hotel room window....
Pisco Sour
The drink of the Peruvians. I am not sure what all is in it but it awesome. I am sure Google will have the recipe. You cannot go to a restaurant and not order this drink. That is all I have to say about that drink. It is really strong so it could get too intense.
On our way to Tecsup we took a different route and went through a neighborhood. It took me a long time to figure it out. This neighborhood had gates and small doors in the gates. Each house had its own tall wall and some even had guards. At the exit of the neighborhood was more guards. I finally figured out it was a nice neighborhood. It is weird to see a gate at the edge of the road with thick door. The walls have to be 15 feet tall, maybe a foot or so thick. The architecture style of Lima is concrete squares. It is like some form of postmodernism. Wealthy places can be noticed on the build quality of the roads and how clean the parks are. Near Miraflores, people are always sweeping and picking up trash. The roads don't have many potholes. Near Tecsup, there are bumpy dirt roads and trash burning in the park. It seems to me that Peruvians don't have a concept of "bad" vs "good" neighborhoods. If they have someplace to walk, they will walk through anything.
Today in class we learned about extensions and creating dial plans to deal with those extensions. I think at this point that IP telephony is completely useless unless you have to call long distance. Basically what you do is have a Asterisk service in two locations. You can call the far away server and use that to make local calls. Thus you save a ton of money. It is really hard to set up and I am lucky there are so many NET people on the trip. A nice part of IP telephony is if you an Asterisk server in Indiana and one in Virginia, one would be able to make local calls.
Yesterday we had dinner at Che Santiago. There I had my first try at the world famous Pisco Sour. We chatted up the night and after two hours it was time to go back to the hotel. Today at a restaurant near a park in a lively part of Lima I tried alpaca for the first time (I don't know the name of the park, but the restaurant was called Shedina). It was really good. It was really tender and really juicy. After dinner we walked through the park. I have never seen so many cats running around. It was ridiculous. There had to be 30 cats running around the park. Near Tecsup it is dogs, around Miraflores it is cats.
Time for bed. Adios.
On our way to Tecsup we took a different route and went through a neighborhood. It took me a long time to figure it out. This neighborhood had gates and small doors in the gates. Each house had its own tall wall and some even had guards. At the exit of the neighborhood was more guards. I finally figured out it was a nice neighborhood. It is weird to see a gate at the edge of the road with thick door. The walls have to be 15 feet tall, maybe a foot or so thick. The architecture style of Lima is concrete squares. It is like some form of postmodernism. Wealthy places can be noticed on the build quality of the roads and how clean the parks are. Near Miraflores, people are always sweeping and picking up trash. The roads don't have many potholes. Near Tecsup, there are bumpy dirt roads and trash burning in the park. It seems to me that Peruvians don't have a concept of "bad" vs "good" neighborhoods. If they have someplace to walk, they will walk through anything.
Today in class we learned about extensions and creating dial plans to deal with those extensions. I think at this point that IP telephony is completely useless unless you have to call long distance. Basically what you do is have a Asterisk service in two locations. You can call the far away server and use that to make local calls. Thus you save a ton of money. It is really hard to set up and I am lucky there are so many NET people on the trip. A nice part of IP telephony is if you an Asterisk server in Indiana and one in Virginia, one would be able to make local calls.
Yesterday we had dinner at Che Santiago. There I had my first try at the world famous Pisco Sour. We chatted up the night and after two hours it was time to go back to the hotel. Today at a restaurant near a park in a lively part of Lima I tried alpaca for the first time (I don't know the name of the park, but the restaurant was called Shedina). It was really good. It was really tender and really juicy. After dinner we walked through the park. I have never seen so many cats running around. It was ridiculous. There had to be 30 cats running around the park. Near Tecsup it is dogs, around Miraflores it is cats.
Time for bed. Adios.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
First day of class
We wandered around campus for 2 hours soaking up the sites. Tecsup is a very hands on, lab oriented facility. They have a big tall red brick wall with barbed wire on top. The campus consists 7 or 8 little buildings. The buildings are much. Concrete floors and ceilings with concrete wall supports. Pretty basic stuff. The area around Tecsup is another story. The roads are lumpy, bumpy, and compacted dirt. Dogs are everywhere. Though for such a poor city there really aren't that many homeless people or people begging. Maybe I haven't seen the really poor area but this beyond any American comprehension.
The drive to and from campus was very interesting. Sometimes you let people in, other times you cut people off. Sometimes you stop at lights and signs, other times you don't stop. You use your horn liberally. Sometimes the road is 2 lanes other times it is 5 lanes. Sometimes you turned from the middle lane. You do whatever. Though no one was getting in accidents, no one was slamming on their brakes, no accidents to speak of. It was organized chaos. As long as you kept driving, no one cared. It will definitely will take a long time to get used to. Gas here is 12+ soles. I have seen Peugeot, Renault, Citroen, and Skoda cars. They even sell natural gas at the gas station. The city goes from nice housing to bombed out Sarajevo. Almost every house, store, and building has a gate and a tall fence. Depending on how old the building is and how wealthy the owner is the walls can be electrified barbed wire to pointy metal.
Our class was 2 hours of lecture, an hour lunch, and 5 hours of messing around with getting our telephones to connect to the router. It wasn't ridiculous. We use Linux (CentOS). Ping the telephone to make sure you can connect to it. Reconfigure its settings. And call. Simple for right now. Maybe in a day or two it will be much different....
The drive to and from campus was very interesting. Sometimes you let people in, other times you cut people off. Sometimes you stop at lights and signs, other times you don't stop. You use your horn liberally. Sometimes the road is 2 lanes other times it is 5 lanes. Sometimes you turned from the middle lane. You do whatever. Though no one was getting in accidents, no one was slamming on their brakes, no accidents to speak of. It was organized chaos. As long as you kept driving, no one cared. It will definitely will take a long time to get used to. Gas here is 12+ soles. I have seen Peugeot, Renault, Citroen, and Skoda cars. They even sell natural gas at the gas station. The city goes from nice housing to bombed out Sarajevo. Almost every house, store, and building has a gate and a tall fence. Depending on how old the building is and how wealthy the owner is the walls can be electrified barbed wire to pointy metal.
Our class was 2 hours of lecture, an hour lunch, and 5 hours of messing around with getting our telephones to connect to the router. It wasn't ridiculous. We use Linux (CentOS). Ping the telephone to make sure you can connect to it. Reconfigure its settings. And call. Simple for right now. Maybe in a day or two it will be much different....
Dinner
Green beans, mashed sweet potato, and chicken with BBQ sauce.
Roll
Garden salad
Brownie
Crackers, cheese, butter, and light ranch (Tim?)
Cup of Coca-Cola and tea
The chicken was on top of the sweet potato so the BBQ made it taste weird. Overall, it wasn’t a terrible meal. I liked the brownie. The meal looked like the old satellite lunches that the public school served. I mean, I have had much worse.
Nine o’clock we are nearing Panama. Cue Van Halen….
You probably can't see everything but it is food.
Later we had Milano cookies, an apple, small turkey sandwich, and a drink for a snack.
We lost one
Once there were 7 students going to Peru. Then we lost one. Some say we had to throw him out of the plane when we were over the Gulf. Others say we crash landed on a desert island in the ocean and had to eat him. Really, he was late and missed the plane. D’oh! As I am writing this, we are flying over the Florida Keys. I can see the white highway snaking along the blue surroundings. I also see 2 tankers passing each other with the country’s single most important life blood: oil.
The first plane was a MC-88 (I believe) which took us from the comfortable and spacious terminal at Indy to the cramped terminal of Atlanta. You never realize how large an airport is until you need to take a tram to get to your gate. That flight took about 1.5 hours. The next leg is on a Boeing 767-300-something, Atlanta to Lima. It is very interesting to point out how many Asian people are going to Peru. If I remember correctly, Asians make up the largest non-European, non-native, and non-mixed group. Additionally, a lot of people are speaking Spanish and the instructions are English first, Spanish second. Previously there was just English. For this flight I am sitting behind the engine before I was in front of it. It is ridiculous how loud it gets….
Almost right after our take off from Indianapolis we came across the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It was nice to see the beast from the sky with no people. Come 3 weeks it will be crowded with over 400,000 people to see 33 drivers try to out maneuver each other for the sip of ice cold milk and immortality. Not immortality but close enough. Sadly I didn’t have my camera so I couldn’t take pictures but I think we were still below 10,000 feet. (We can’t use electronic device below that.)
Flying is weird. You sit on the taxi way going a handful of miles per hour before stopping at the end of the run way and wait. Then the engines rev and you are thrown into the back of your seat as the plane takes off. After that you are pointing upwards until you reach your cruising altitude when the pilot cuts back the engines and you regain your hearing. The weird feeling is when you feel like you are dropping out of the sky or rolling backwards as if this is a roller coaster. (It could be all in my head but probably not.) Then you land you are thrown out of your seat to slow down. I will just take the bus next time.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
In 36 hours....
In 36 hours I will be on a plane to another country. Nothing too exciting to say at the moment. All I know is that I will miss two weeks of television. That is something I will not stand for. I will have more to say as the day draws nearer.
Today is Mother's Day. Happy day to all of the mothers.
Today is Mother's Day. Happy day to all of the mothers.
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