Glaciers and more terremotos

On Sunday I finally got to spend some time in the mountains. A group of 11 of us set out to walk to the Glacier el Morado. The start of the walk was at Bano Morales, a small village at the end of Cajon del Maipo situated 92 km from Santiago at an altitude of 1880 m. Although a public bus does travel up to the village we had hired a Jeep and a minibus to take us up there. The group was a mix of colleagues from the university where I work and a few of their friends. The walk up to the Glacier took around 3 hours up a dead end valley with the glacier at its end that crawls slowly down between the the mountains Morado (4,320 m.), and San Francisco (4,320 m). A  relaxing lunch stop at Laguna el Morado (2400 m) was taken before completely ignoring the signs telling us not go any further. We actually walked all the way up to the mouth of the river pouring out of the glacier along with everyone else who simply ignored the sign. As we sat and looked at the glacier I couldn't help wondering how long it would be before the glacier completely disappeared. Some photos of me at the glacier are below.

More photos here

The walk back down was slightly quicker but oddly seemed longer than the walk up the valley but then it always does for some reason. Anyway, I was pretty glad to get back to the village and even more glad to sit down and have a beer or two.

The drive back was long and uneventful, at least so we thought. We managed to miss a 7.2 earthquake during the drive back. The epicentre was in the Maule region of Chile, some 180 km south of Santiago, it was measured at 6.2 in Santiago I think. This follows the 5.2 tremor in the early hours of Saturday morning. 

It was a great trip that I thoroughly enjoyed and good to get out of the craziness that is Santiago for a day. Thanks to Vitalie and Matej for organising the trip!

A

Last night the earth moved for me

Sometimes you stumble across a phrase that is more useful than it should be. I have found this phrase in Spanish. 'Aprendo espanol' - two words that bring a smile to anyone and seems to break the ice. For those of you who don't know this means I am learning Spanish. Today I went to the barbers, normally a rather mundane exercise where you have to make a patter of  small talk that never changes and is so predictable, just cut my hair. When you have to entrust the process of cutting your hair to someone who doesn't speak a word of your language the whole process becomes far more of an anxiety provoking experience. Did he understand me? Is number three with the clippers the same in Chile as the english speaking world? Questions that go through your mind as you sit in the chair completely at the mercy of someone with a collection of sharp instruments. Anyway I used my killer phrase aprendo espanol which got a smile, I followed this with my new words for the day 'maquinilla electrica', 'numero tres' and pointed to the sides and back of my head. He did a very efficient and professional job, asked me the usual questions, where I am from and how long was I in Chile and we got on like a house on fire, all for less than half the cost I would pay in Brisbane. I think in future in Brisbane I am going to claim I don't speak any English and only speak Spanish.

Last night I had a rather interesting experience. Either I had a dream in which the earth moved for me or I was woken up by a small earth tremor. Sadly I think it was the latter. This is the first time during this visit that  this has happened, I am still talking about the earth tremor here. A quick search online has revealed more details that can be found here
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/usc0008pgw.php#details
Apparently it was a 5.1 magnitude at 160 km depth about 45 km from Santiago. I guess the depth would have weakened it significantly. I also guess that lots of small tremors are a pretty good thing, releasing pressure between the plates. Long periods without any serious activity are possibly not a good thing but I am certainly not an expert, thats just a hunch.
Enjoy your weekends and I hope the earth moves for you too.
A

Democracy?

This weekend there is a state election in Queensland which if the polls are correct will result in a landslide victory for the Liberal and National Party. Australia has compulsory voting which I've always felt is undemocratic, surely one has a democratic right to choose not to vote, you can of course simply spoil your ballot paper. Anyway, in order to avoid a fine I voted this week, I had to go the Trade and Industry Queensland offices in Santiago. These are a rather grand 11th floor suite of offices where prospective investors are invited, encouraged and no doubt sweet talked into to buying a piece of the Queensland mining boom pie. I live in the electoral constituency of Ashgrove which is actually quite important although probably not in the grand scheme of the overall result. Ashgrove is important because Campbell Newman, the former mayor and as of yet unelected Labour leader and prospective next premier is standing. I don't have a lot of interest in who really wins the election, personally I think the last people who should be entrusted with running a state or country are professional power hungry politicians but can't help thinking it would make things interesting if Labour win the election and their leader doesn't get elected. Besides, I don't really like Campbell Newman, an annoying short bloke with shifty eyes, bit like Ricky Ponting.

Last night I attended a British and Irish Late lunch. These are a group of British and Irish ex-pats who meet on a monthly basis for what I assume are networking purposes. Apparently they normally meet at lunch but for some reason met in the evening for the first time. It was actually a rather pleasant evening, we met in a restaurant and were served some interesting tapas and drank some quite good wine. As is usual with a group of ex-pats you can usually guarantees some pretty good conversation with people who generally have interesting stories and lives to discuss. It turned out that being British or Irish was not actually essential as there seemed to be a few American there as well. I am not actually sure how I got on their mailing list but will probably attend again.

This weekend a few of us in the faculty are planning a hike in the mountains on Sunday so I look forward to reporting on that particular adventure next week.

Have a good weekend
Andrew

Grand Slams are like buses

I have to start by congratulating Wales on their third Six Nations Grand Slam in eight years. They've now equalled the exploits of the heroes of the seventies. The victory on Saturday against France came quite fittingly in a week when one of those heroes Mervyn 'the swerve' Davies sadly passed away. The fact that so many of this current group of players are so young suggests a promising and exciting decade of Welsh rugby. Wales are touring Australia later this year, playing a game in Brisbane in June, unfortunately I will still be in Chile.

Last week I started Spanish lessons, 2 hours per week. It's actually quite frustrating not being able to speak the local language so I am keen to learn. I hate making people speak English.  You can learn a lot by watching young children learn to talk, they don't care about mistaking mistakes and have no 'first' language to fall back on or to confuse them. They just seem to learn new words and grammar by association. The basic rules are the same for all languages, a sentence needs a verb (that has a tense and conjugation), a direct and indirect object, an adjective.Quite straightforward really -  just have to jump in the deep end and accept I am going to make mistakes.

The cost of living in Chile is quite a bit less than what I am used to in Brisbane. Initially it doesn't feel like this as there are around 500 chilean pesos to the Australian dollar. The amount of pesos you are handing over in transactions still makes me feel like I am spending more than I really am. When you actually do the conversion you usually get a pleasant surprise. One day last week I made a trip to the local supermarket. This is an interesting experience in itself as there is always an element of surprise when the labelling is all in Spanish. I got home and thought I'd have a look at the receipt, I didn't pay too much attention to the prices when in the shop. I realised I'd paid $3 for a bottle of wine and $6 dollar for a small jar of pesto sauce. This wasn't the cheapest bottle of wine in the shop either,it was a perfectly drinkable bottle of carmenere, a red grape that is unique to Chile. Incidentally, I also bought a six pack of beer for the same price as the pesto.

Still on the subject of money. On Friday I was given a cheque from the University here, this is to cover my expenses while in Chile and to cover my teaching at QUT. The cheque was for over $6,000,000 peso's (around $12,000). The question was, what the hell was I supposed to do with this cheque as I didn't have a chilean bank account. I had to cash the cheque at a bank which turned out be a rather large stack of 10,000 peso notes. So I became an instant multi-millionaire along with I suspect half the Chilean population. Fortunately, my Chilean host Beatriz was with me and she had a bag with her. So we walked back across the university campus with her bag bulging with the equivalent of $12K in used bank notes. Once back at the physics department a conversation began as to what I should now do with this as I didn't really fancy taking the metro and walking home with this on my person. This is not a reflection of my level of trust of Chileans, I wouldn't feel comfortable doing this in Brisbane. Anyway, to cut a long story short we decided that I should pay half the amount back to the university which would then be transferred to my Australian account (and then on to a QUT account), the other would be kept in a safe over the weekend until Monday when I would open a bank savings account and deposit the money, I had to wait until Monday as I needed my identity card which I was going to pick up Monday morning. So I now have an identity card and saving account, three weeks to the day after I arrived in Santiago.

Saturday was St Patricks day, I am sure no one needed reminding of this. I had been invited to a beer tasting  and bbq afternoon to celebrate two members of the physics department being promoted to faculty positions. I thought it would be appropriate to take along some of the black stuff. Anyway, to my surprise this proved quite difficult or impossible. I couldn't find Guinness anywhere, the nearest I could find was a bottle of craft Chilean stout beer. On my way home from the bbq I really fancied a Guinness so thought I would stop off at the local Irish bar/restaurant, Flannery's, they would surely have Guinness. The party was in full swing with plastic Paddy's everywhere in their green hats and shirts, some even in kilts, but no Guinness!

So I hope everyone had a good St Patrick's day and managed to find a pint of Guinness.

A

Has anyone got the time?

The photo above is of the new students and academics on the PUC Masters in Medical Physics on the first day of the course last week. This was the culmination of many years of hard work by Professors Beatriz Sanchez-Nieto and Paola Caprile. I am pleased that I can offer some personal involvement in the first semester of this exciting project for Chile and Latin America.

A quick update on my activities over the weekend. Saturday afternoon I was invited for a BBQ at the home of the Dean of Physics and her husband, also a physicist in the faculty. Also there were Beatriz and her family including her mother currently visiting from Spain. The afternoon was thoroughly enjoyable and a combination of the heat and the fine Chilean wine made it extremely relaxing.

On Sunday I had decided to go and watch the Chile Classic, a golf tournament on the US PGA nationwide tour which seems to be spreading its wings. The tournament was held at the Prince of Wales Country Club. The day started with a bit of confusion about the time, I woke up and was a bit slow and lazy getting going, it was a Sunday morning after all. At some stage I happened to look at my mobile phone and notice that the time was showing an hour earlier than my watch. No one had mentioned anything to me so i assumed that daylight saving must have ended and I was not as late as I thought. Once at the golf club I looked at the list of the tee-times of the players and realised that these times were in fact daylight savings time. Very confusing.  Still not sure what time of day it was I spent the afternoon following the Aussie James Nitties and the American player Darren Stiles. Neither of them played scintillating golf and both finished some way below the eventual winner. Still, even watching a professional golfer having a pretty ordinary day is still a pretty good experience for us 20 handicappers.

Still not to sure about the situation with the time I went into the university on Monday morning to find the time on my computer had changed (to the same as that showing on my mobile phone). Apparently, for many years last weekend was the end of daylight savings, in recent years the government has pushed back the change into late April. Unfortunately anything computer based does not seen to be able to handle this change, so it seems that cows are not the only things in the world that struggle with time changes.

Last night I had my first Spanish lesson, not my first ever, I've been taking Spanish the last year, but my first in Santiago. So I will have lessons twice a week, I am hoping that what I learned previously will come back to me, its been a few months since the last lesson. I also have no excuses for not being able to practice.

More later.
Andrew

The end of another week, my first full week in Chile. I am actually quite looking forward to this weekend, I am determined to try and forget about work related matters. The weeks leading up to leaving for Chile were pretty hectic and nothing really changed once I arrived, finishing off grant proposals and organising lectures. This week I finally submitted the NHMRC grant proposal to our research office, they will go through final checks and then submit it for us. There is a certain sense of relief that comes with having submitted it and knowing it is now out of my hands, all I can do is wait. The successful grants are announced mid October usually.
The quote above appeared in on my facebook newsfeed today and I thought it worth sharing. I was a big fan of Christopher Hitchens, and still am, even though he sadly lost his battle with oesophageal cancer late last year.   He was a person who was certainly was not afraid of controversy, he expressed his support for the Bush-Blair led war against Saddam Hussein and subsequently changed his political stance, he was a critic of Mother Theresa (and he did have a very good point) and more recently was known for his strong very public dislike of the supernatural nonsense that passes as organised religion. He was someone who helped me to begin to break free from the outdated belief system I was surrounded with as a child and young adult. I say begin because it is ongoing, it is extremely difficult to begin to think for oneself when it means going against something you were indoctrinated with as a child. It is quite simple to understand why this is the case, there is a clear evolutionary advantage to a brain that believes what it's parents tell it, especially when told the stakes are so high. Random mutations that produced brains that didn't believe would not have lasted very long on the Savannahs of East Africa 100,000 years ago, natural selection would have dealt its cruel hand. I have developed a keen interest in neuroscience and evolutionary biology in recent years and am amazed at what we are now in a much better position to explain with our increased understanding of the human brain and mind. My favourite example (courtesy of the neuroscientist Sam Harris I think) of evidence that our brains went through most of their evolutionary development 40-100,000 years ago is relatively straightforward. Why is it that for most of us city dwellers the sight of a spider sends us into a heightened state of anxiety (this is the case in countries where the spiders are not poisonous or the slightest bit dangerous) and yet we will jump in our cars everyday and quite happily cruise at 80 mph without an ounce of fear. It's obviously not an  analysis of the relative risk but something more primitive. Anyway,I could ramble on about this for much longer, but it's Friday afternoon and I want to go home.

Have a good weekend.
Andrew

Time for another update. Its halfway through my second week and things are going well so far. I signed a contract on the apartment I am staying in yesterday, of course it was in Spanish. The apartment will fine be for my time here. Its quite small but relatively cheap and a nice location. There is a Starbucks around the corner, I don't normally go to Starbucks but it is surprisingly difficult to find good coffee here. Nescafe seem to have a monopoly on instant coffee here. There is one good place, cafe de roma one metro stop away that I know from previous visits. Its a real Italian style espresso bar, you can either stand and read the paper inside or sit outside on the pavement and watch the world go by. I also joined a gym last night, it is 2 minutes up my road, which incidentally has the rather grand sounding name Napoleon. Its quite small, split over 3 levels with machines, loose weights, cardio machines. I'll probably try some classes as well, they do spin and something called Body Power which I understood to be interval training with weights, then again with my spanish it could be ballet dancing! I normally do bootcamps and boxing in the botanic gardens at lunchtimes in Brisbane which I'll miss, we have a good little group of regulars.
This is the first week of semester, I gave my first lecture on Monday, the second is later today. There are six students on the course, three of whom I know from the summer schools I have taught on the last few years. They only wanted to take six in the first year as they don't have the resources initially to supervise them for their research projects. If we could find some funding then I would like one or two of them to spend time doing some research project time at QUT (Julia Gillard, if you're reading and still prime minister, we would like some funding for a good cause).
I have to mention the weather. Since I have been here, there has hardly been a cloud in the sky and 30C every day. The nice thing about the climate in Santiago is the low humidity which makes it feel extremely pleasant. There is a constant haze hanging over the city due to the pollution I think, it does make for some beautiful sunsets over the Andes each night though.   I have been reading about all the rain they have been having back in the 'sunshine state', crazy.

till next time
Andrew

Yesterday, Friday I had my first dealing with Chilean bureaucracy. I am in Chile on a temporary residency visa and therefore have to get an identity card. This is a two stage process. The first stage is to visit the Policia de Investigaciones Chile (PDI) to get a certificate to confirm that I am a foreigner with the correct visa. This is a rather busy place where the procedure seems to be to obtain a ticket with a number on it, for a small fee of course, a bit like the cheese counter at the supermarket. Then you sit and wait with all the other foreigners until your number is called. Interestingly, all the PDI people at the desks were women possibly because maybe you were less inclined to get aggressive with a woman when they refused you the right to remain in Chile. Fortunately someone at the university, Don Christian, who I had arranged to meet, knew someone there and so somehow I jumped the queue. I already realising that in Chile knowing someone who knows someone is quite useful when dealing with bureaucracy. They took my photo and other bits of important information and gave me the ‘certificado de registro de visa’ I needed. Don Christian and I set off on a mission to stage 2. At this point I wasn’t really sure what stage 2 involved as Don Christian, my trusted guide through the process, didn’t speak a word of English. So I followed him to the Metro station and we got a on a train in the direction of the university, at this stage I wasn’t even sure there was a stage 2 so I thought maybe that was it. We occasionally tried to have a conversation on the train but it usually didn’t get very far, I nodded as if I understood and he smiled knowing completely well I hadn’t understood a word; so most of the time we both stared out of the window in uncomfortable and rather frustrating silence. We didn’t get off the train at the University so I quickly worked out we were going somewhere else. Somewhere else turned out to be the ‘Registro Civil’ in a place called Vespucio, a few stops down the line. Once again, we took a numbered ticket, this time for free and sat down to wait. The wait lasted around 45-60 minutes, I lost track of time as I got totally absorbed in watching the locals come and go. Chileans seem to have certainly learned that patience is indeed a virtue, a quality that is probably essential in a city of 6 million. Anyway, eventually we got called up and a pleasant smiling chap took my photo, 4000 chilean pesos (around $8) and my finger print electronically. He then also took my finger prints the old fashioned way using ink and paper and then sent us on our way with me clutching a piece of paper, that Don Christian I think told me was very important. We headed back to the university with me wondering where my small piece of plastic identity card was, maybe there was a stage 3? Once back at the university I was introduced to a Paola Flores who spoke some English and explained the situation to me, apparently I have to go back to the ‘Registro Civil’ once my identity card is ready. So that was how I spent Friday morning. Respect to the Don!

I have to write a few words about the University where I am now working, I have an office in the theoretical physics department, I have always really been an experimental physicist but I think there was a spare desk there.  I keep expecting Sheldon from the Big Bang theory to walk into my office at any time. I have been to lunch a few times with a few people from the department and it was pretty interesting, we spent one lunchtime discussing the merits of programming in Mathematica versus FORTRAN and eventually the conversation predictably turned to the merits of PC versus Macs.  There are quite a few other foreigners in the department so English seems to be the language of choice. On the subject of languages I have been organising Spanish lessons; English is really not widely spoken so I am keen to learn as its pretty frustrating losing the power of communication. There also is a gym on campus as well which I am hoping to join before my fitness drops, I’ve been on a few runs a couple of evenings, it stays light until  8.15 pm here at the moment and it’s still dark at 7 am in the mornings which I quite like as I am not really a morning person. Queenslanders take note, the local cows seem to cope with daylight saving, at least there seems to be a plentiful supply of milk in the supermarkets and I haven’t noticed any significant curtain fading!

Till next time

A