TBEX '10 report, No wifi, lots of waving, and in the end, radiant insects

In a profusion of handshaking, hugs and exasperated gritted teethed comments about how there could possibly be no wifi at a bloggers conference, I saw my Idon'tknowwhats this weekend at TBEX. My peeps? My tribe? My friends? My coworkers? Yes on many counts.

TBEX is the Travel Bloggers Exchange, and it was a two day set of panels of VITBs (very important travel bloggers) talking about what they think, what they know, and answering (and occasionally not answering) questions from the audience. This year's was TBEX '10, following a tiny but well-attended TBEX '09 that followed last year's Blogher in Chicago.. There was a palpable nervousness in the crowd, as if there was a limited amount of real estate, and people weren't sure if they'd brought enough fencing to stake their claim. Or if they'd get the spot with the well. One of the speakers, a prime example of a VITB, actually one probably in the running for MITB) made reference to there being enough internet for all of us. I think he's right. I also think you should just do what you like, and what you're good at, and figure the rest out later. But then, I always was a bit of a Pollyana (insert HTML code for laughter here).

What I was left with after the conference was that I felt that there was a lack of clarity. Blogging was painted with the same brush as writing for the web, ethics and the law were treated as one in the same (gah! nerd alert, I graduated from law school, it was deadly, and wow are ethics and law ever not the same). I'm also painfully careful with my words, and I was frustrated by people's inability or unwillingness to tease out the difference between ads and affinity arrangements, group and personal blogs, etc. I would also like to have seen breakout groups to get some decisions made, and for people to join forces with their like-minded souls.

But it was great to rub shoulders with some true friends, people I've known online and in person for years, some of whom I'd be hard-pressed to run into anywhere but TBEX. I also met some new keepers and if they like me, too, maybe they're reading here too and nodding. An abridged version of a piece of mine was read as part of the community keynote hosted by Pam Mandel and Mike Barish and it's the first time I've ever heard my voice coming out of someone else's mouth (in this case Pam Mandel's, and her ilk was definitely already mentioned in the paragraph above). I was thinking I'd like to do that again. It also made me want to do voice posts, something I've played around with before but never really figured out. Oh, blogspot, how you mock me. Tune in for OMG, I'm trying to move to Wordpress and I am freaking the everlovingsosueme out.

Coworkers were in abundance, people from Matador, people from NileGuide, people from Bootsnall. Some I joked and laughed with, some were more waves from across the room. Apologies for that if it irked you.

And I hate to say it, but one of the best things that happened to me all weekend was that I came back to my mother's house and for the first time in eons, I was privy to a secret twinkling roving lightshow put on my fireflies. And I've had them on the brain since I wrote a story for Bootsnall about them (and other living things that bioluminesce). And on the one hand, I was so delighted to see them that I dropped my stuff in the middle of the lawn to cup my hands around them and watch them glow. And on the other hand, I was secretly thankful that I hadn't written an article about something nasty, like a centipede invasion.

Because that would have been even worse than two days without Wifi.

Thank you to all, and to all a good night.

A Merenjunge! (A big mix of stuff, Chile, TBEX, World Cup!)

The first whiff of real air after airconditioned, heated, dehydrated air on an overnight flight is damp. The breeze outside of JFK smells oceany. Like I just got hit in the face with a sheet of seaweed. And not nori. Something decidedly more rank.

After I get out of the car at my mother's house, it smells like green. Freshly cut spinach, maybe even sauteed in the summer heat. With sesame oil. Or maybe I'm making that part up. It's a culinary jungle out there.

Changing hemispheres gives you climate whiplash, for sure (thanks Pam of Nerd'seyeview , for the terminology, wordsmiths should hang together), but it also creates a wild smell sensitivity. Everything I don't smell when I'm in Santiago, which so far has been humid summer heat (our summers are dry) comes swirling around me in an olfactory maelstrom. It's a lot of input sometimes.

Tomorrow I'm off to meet my tribe, my people, the other travel bloggers with whom I exchange emails and messages and tweets on an hourly/daily/weekly basis. TBEX is a'happening, and for me it will be filled with meeting coworkers from here and here and an editor or two from here and a bunch of people I haven't seen in a few months, or even a few years, and many of whom I've never seen in the northern hemisphere.

But maybe that's not interesting to you, and you came to get the dirt on Santiago. I don't have any dirt at the moment, but do have two aromatic things to share that you might wish you knew about or had access to.

First, a recipe and description of navegado, a Chilean mulled wine that's perfect for today's frigid temps. It's getting down below freezing there tonight, and I really feel for everyone, especially people like Domingo, who really have no protection from the cold.

And then, a perfect $5 lunch in Santiago for the sandwich-lovers in all of you. In all truth, I had to invite a friend to eat this juicy chacarero, because I don't eat meat. And it would seem she's hooked. The next week we were back again to try some more of the sauces on our sandwiches. And a hint: if you're like me, and don't eat meat, you can drop the price significantly. And for all that is good and right for your stomach, I beseech you to get the small, not the large.

And in other news, Chile plays Spain today at 2 PM EST in the world cup, our last match of group H. So far, we've beat Honduras and Switzerland, both 1-0. If we could dust off and do it again, that would be a colossal feat, and would position us well for the next round. And yes, I've blogged about the World Cup, and Chile's roll in it as well. Here on bearshapedsphere (it's one word, people!) and on Nileguide as well, here and here.

So in short, stuff smells, people are good, Santiago has tasty food and drink, and Vamos Chile! Oh yes, and more than my fair share of links. But you like that.

See you post TBEX!

Seasonal Jetlag, and coming/going home

It's a kind of strangely New-Yorky cold out lately in Santiago. It's crisp but not bitter, but there's a cold wind that will catch that strip of skin that shows when your shirt rides up and your pants don't sit at your waist.

I was in the car with a friend recently driving up past El Golf and there were twinkly bluish lights strung through some straggly-limbed trees, on the sidewalk, all loops and disorganization and I said "Se ve como Nueva York en el invierno" (It looks like New York in winter).

Winter in New York is beautiful. It's cold, but it's Thanksgiving and Nutcracker soldiers and shopping bags and rustle and chestnuts roasted beside pretzels with towering piles of salt, and which I haven't eaten since I was a child.

And it doesn't smell like chestnuts here, but we do get to open our eyes some mornings and see that the mountains are out. And it probably won't snow down in Santiago, but there's this sense in the air that it might.

And I am 5,000 miles (more than 8,000 kilometers) from New York, but tonight I will close my eyes and wake up and it will be New York. But it won't be winter.

At times like this I don't know whether I'm two seasons ahead or two seasons behind, as though I wear a giant season watch on my wrist and I don't know whether to go forward or back for the local climate. And that's approximately the same amount of confused I'm likely to feel when I wake up on Thursday morning and find myself wearing clothes I won't need again for weeks, by which time the New York summer will have seeped into my pores and I fall asleep and find myself back in Santiago again where it will still be winter, but will never be New York.

And I will be home.

Santiago Nor-Poniente. Northwest Santiago. A bikeride against all reason.

Saturday morning was beautiful, if somewhat puddly, and I decided to go out for a quick ride around the neighborhood. Instead what happened was this:



Those of you who are either from or now live in Santiago are rushing your hands to your heads in feigned (or real) eye-rolling surprise, saying, "Eileen, what were you thinking?"

You see, Santiago for most gringos, and many people who read here (I believe, correct me if I'm wrong), follows the metro line. It exists as far west as Pudahuel and as far east as Las Condes. It touches La Reina, flirts with Ñuñoa, dips down into San Bernardo, winds across parts of Independencia and then stops. But in actual fact, Santiago sprawls out every direction until flat land runs out or a highway cuts it in two. It's not fancy, it's not visited, it doesn't have museums or flashy apartment buildings, but it's where millions of people call home.

My original plan was reflections, and I started in the skate park where I always go. And from there I tried to loop around to the park at Quinta Normal, but got distracted, and ended up on another street, Avenida Carrascal. Which I followed, and followed. Because it was new. And I love new.

Here's where I came over an overpass and then turned around again to catch the mountains for a minute.



And here's where I'm being exhorted to "pimp my sneaks" (enchula tu tilla) but I wasn't in the mood, and don't think my motion-control brooks addiction running shoes were what they had in mind.




And the ride continued on, and on, and I crossed streets I hadn't heard of, and wondered how much I stuck out as I pedaled by, and I vaguely wondered if I'd have to retrace my steps to return home.

And there were more murals



Some of which were maybe not so friendly-feeling. I'm not sure if I had crossed into Renca here yet, though I believe I had. This on the corner of two streets, one of which was ominously named, "calle 3," which in Chile is nearly always a bad sign.



And onward I rode, crossing the river, and following the one main street, which turned into another, and another as I passed a vast open-air market on a street called Condell. A street by the same name exists in Providencia, but this was not Providencia Condell. It was partially paved, very barky (hello dogs! sorry, I didn't mean to scare you!), and almost free of cars. This street gave way to Brasil (another downtown street with which it has no relation), and Miraflores (ditto). And I was starting to wonder just where I was and how I would ever get back.

I ended up running into the Panamerican Highway, which also goes past my house, but didn't seem like a good route by bike for the return trip. I had a brief conversation with someone at the gas station, who asked after my suitors. I believe it was a piropo (flirtatious comment), though I couldn't say for sure.

And I doubled back and finally, finally, saw this:



Which you wouldn't think would make me happy. A dirty, garbage-strewn river? Why would that make me happy? Because it marked the crossing back into a part of Santiago I could vaguely conceptualize. Now I was in Cerro Navia. It's got no metro, and I'm guessing, not a whole lot of gringos. But it had me on Saturday morning, and we had a fine time.

With a little plaza with an abandoned metro car:



And a play structure not unlike some of the ones in the plaza in Barrio Brasil, and a señora who I talked to for a little while about the plaza, and did not laugh too heartily when I asked if I was in Lo Prado. I was not.



And I continued back towards Santiago known, because up until now, for me, this had been Santiago unknown (though I have been to C.N. before, I have a friend that lives there, but I've only ever been by car). And there were more murals:



And the mountains did their mountainy thing (probably crossed into the comuna Quinta Normal by now)



And on days like Saturday you start to think that you could live anywhere, because it's all so beautiful and perfect. Except it's not. Renca and Cerro Navia are both considered to be places where people are not waiting for you with milk and cookies. Each comuna has as we say in Spanish "lugares y lugares" (literally, places and places, meaning it's not all the same), and I touched on some of the nicer parts of these comunas, and still did not spend a lot of time with my camera out of the bag. And speaking of places, these comunas are not places I belong, because I have no reason to be there. Except that they're part of my city and why can't I ride around on a beautiful day and smile at people with babies in strollers coming home from the feria if I want to?

And how boring would my day have been if I'd taken only this picture, and hadn't ridden a couple of hours to a place I'd never been before?



Reflections: Pretty. Self-reflection: even better.

But no swimming.

Why do people love photos of Chilean policemen?

It seems sometimes that I have taken a million and one photos of policemen here in Santiago. Maybe it’s because I know they’ll let me, maybe it’s because it seems so strange to see so many all the time (this, a function of the fact that I live downtown, more than anything), or maybe it’s because I just can’t get enough of how their riot gear reminds me of the teenage mutant ninja turtles.



Pictures of pacos (semi-derogatory word for police officer, the correct word is carabinero) are also tremendously popular on my flickr feed, to the point where I’ve created a set of paco pics for those of you who love them so. And here it is.

I am so happy to live in a democracy where police intimidation seems to not be a problem (correct me if I’m wrong), and where I’m free to take and publish pictures of police officers doing what they do without recrimination. Though admittedly, most of these photos just have them standing around. Sometimes with dogs.



This one even turned up in that article about me, and so far no one has come breaking down my door.



And I have to say, I believe that police officers, in their green uniforms, look particularly snazzy against a red background. Coincidentally, the Telepizza in Plaza Italia (ground zero for pretty much anything happening in Santiago) was recently painted red. I think you’ll agree they look fab here. And just so you know, although there's not usually this many, there are always police officers around here, since it's a point of conflict in the city, particularly at night on the weekends.



Though maybe the red background isn't as good as this rainbow one with Brazilian police officers at the gay pride parade in Sao Paulo a couple of years ago.



It makes me want to start taking pictures of other civil servants, like the (unpaid) firemen, two of whom I’ve met recently, or of mailmen. Oh wait, I do that, too. (see the original post about the mail snafu here.



I’m not much of a rule-following, police-are-here-to-protect-you person. I view the police more as a benevolent presence than a set of people out there to fight for my rights. I actually don’t spend much time thinking about them, though I do take a boatload of pictures of them. I wonder if they’re out there taking pictures of me, too?

Chile vs. Honduras, World Cup and seeing a happy city!

I love seeing Chileans happy.

I mean, I love seeing everyone be happy. But especially in Chile, where I feel like people are often just kind of muddling along, where the ecstacy meter doesn't budge off of not really, seeing people be elated is extra super special.

Which is what found me waking up at 6:45 (in the morning, in the dark, in the cold, oh please throw me a pity party) to hop on my bike and ride over to Plaza La Constitución, (opposite La Moneda) to stand in the cold and take pictures like this:



and this:



You see, it was Chile vs. Honduras this morning in the World Cup, Chile's inaugural game of the 2010 world cup (Spanish lesson: Copa Mundial, not to be confused with the Copa Cabana (her name was Lola, am I alone here?))

And people were out in their silly hats:



and wigs:



and oh, they painted little flags on their faces (no star)



and here (with star!)



or maybe even their whole face



and otherwise trotted out their patriotism



and then we all shouted gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool, and it was good



And this man talked to his son on the phone about how fabulous it was



And it started to rain, but just a little. And the game ended without Honduras pulling a tie (but without Chile scoring again, which they really, really should have). And we all headed to Plaza Italia



and here we are at Chile's ground zero for anything happening



where as always, there was visible police presence



and I had to run, because I had to get work, but that's okay, because I got to meet Felipe. That's this man's pooch. Also dressed up for the occasion.



And everyone, but everyone, was elated. I'd wake up at 6:45 AM in the freezing dark for that most days. Well worth it. Chi-chi-chi-le-le-le!

More photos in this Chile World Cup set on my flickr page.

And Margaret of Cachando Chile has something to say in her post, Goooool Chile! First World Cup Win, too. And no, we didn't plan that. We're just brainwave sisters sometimes.

Domingo's tree and my own ignorance

Many evenings, as the darkness envelops the city and the dogs run barking down the street and people who study in the evening turn up on corners, smoking cigarettes and joking around, you'll find me riding my bike down a street that runs to the west from the middle of downtown to well past my house. It's called Catedrál, (Cathedral) for the cathedral in Plaza de Armas. But further down, where I live, there's another plaza with another church, less well-known, more damaged by the earthquake, called Santa Ana.

Here's the church, damage 2/27/10:



And right on the other side of the church is an empty lot that has always intrigued me. The reason I have had my eye on this lot for the past few years is because of this tree:



I have come to think of this tree as mine. It's my orange tree. I've never gotten close to it, never picked an orange, but every time I talk about the empty lot (to describe the striking mural on an adjoining wall), or to otherwise orient people, they never know what I'm talking about.

I have been attributing this to my superior observation skills. I notice things that other people don't. Windows, doors, dogs, murals, details. And it's my tree because I saw it and you didn't. I've always found it curious that my tree gives so much fruit, as the little spot it's planted into can't possibly get that much water, and without adequate water the fruit is normally withered and sparse. Yet it never occurred to me that maybe someone was watering it.

On Saturday after leaving the gym I decided to spruce up my mural and graffiti flickr set, thinking that I'd tool over to a secret little street and snap some pics. Then I thought of another, and went over there as well, even posing my bike next to the mural for great urban effect (or not).

And the whole time I was out snapping, I kept on saying to myself "el naranjo" (the orange tree, not to be confused with a great hike which I'll write about sometime). Oranges are a winter fruit, cheap at the market right now, and plentiful on the tree the last time I'd been by.

So I took my tree's picture, through the fence as you saw above. And I felt vaguely more urban, more self-satisfied than I had before. I am a noticer. I have a tree.

And then I noticed that the empty lot's gate, which is always closed, was open. And I went inside to get a better picture of the tree and came upon a set of people chopping onions, drying laundry, and otherwise living.

We got to talking, and the main presider over the lot, a man just a little older than me, shook my hand, showed me around, talking about how this part of the mural used to have even more risqué pictures in it, but how "they" had painted over it.



And we talked about the mural in general.



And then I told him how I'd always noticed the lot, because I thought it was incredible that there should be an orange tree in an empty lot (which I was realizing was not as empty as I'd thought), and I asked if they ate the oranges. He said, yes, but they're not sweet, though they are good for quenching your thirst.

And then he dispatched a friend who he called "hermano" (brother), but who I suspect is not, to climb the tree and fetch me some oranges.



And I was left thinking about how I believed myself to be a good observer, because I had noticed the orange tree and the mural, but am actually an ignorant ass, because I failed to notice this.



This is Domingo. He lives in the lot, in pretty much the conditions you'd imagine, scavanged construction, etc. He let me into his lot, talked to me about pricing cargo tricycles (it's a crazy idea I have), about his family, the earthquake, places he'd lived. And then gave me oranges from his tree, and didn't mind that I'd never noticed he was living there.

This is not my tree. This is Domingo's tree.

Flashback Friday, Christchurch version. Handwritten.

Feb 11th, 2010, Christchurch, New Zealand, written on the back of half of my "ticket" issued to me by Flight Center, through which I bought my ticket from Auckland to Christchurch, the extralong layover during which I ate some squash salad with feta and stretched out on three seats and drooled into the carpet, my camera hugged to me as though New Zealanders were nothing but a set of rampant camera thieves.

This was my first evening in Christchurch, and it's what I wrote, with a pen, on paper, something we (gasp) probably don't do enough of. I was eating one of my only restaurant meals while in New Zealand, and I believe it was noodley and sweet and the portion seemed too small and overpriced, and I think it had shrimp in it. My waitress was from a smallish city in Japan and had been living in Auckland for six months.

And here is it, decoded from my dad-was-a-scientist and only-righthanded-person-in-my-family handwriting. Starting with the asterisk.



2/11/10 7:19 PM (or as we say in Chile, 11/02/10 19:19)

It's not fair to compare Christchurch to anywhere--not fair to Christchurch and not fair to the other places. That said, there is an element of Seattle, of San Francisco, of Ushuaia and of Stanley (Falkland Islands).

Seattle for the green smells and bicycling everywhere, watercovered, determined backpacks, all gear and hip(ness) and weeping willows.

Ushuaia for the giant tourist shops selling sweaters and cruise wear and in general for being fairly full of grey-hared practical older travelers in (matching red) wind breakers and fanny packs.

Stanley because it's kind of dead and touristy and filled with tourists and no locals and if you do find some it's like you're interrupting and talking too fast.

San Francisco becuase it's heavily Asian-influenced and because of the trolley.

But in the end, Christchurch is just Christchurch, a place I landed today after 28 hours of travel, happy to stop moving and with that tinge of "where am I, exactly" which will probably dissapate as I spend the night and wake up again. It's like I have a place-repellent on me. Sometimes it just takes a while (for it) to sink in.
:::::::::::::::

Anyone else want to share a page from their book?

Foreigners not allowed. No Extranjeros!

I am a foreigner in Chile. I'm not from here, will never be from here, will likely never lose my accent, will never look Chilean.

That said, my plight as a foreigner is somewhat unfraught. It is possible that someone will look at me and think I'd be fun to rob, to bother, to make fun of. But it's equally possible (and much more likely) that they won't.

Foreigners like me (professional, educated, English-speaking) don't tend to really bug Chileans too much. Sure, there's the occasional "stupid gringos go home," or as a friend of mine and I were recently instructed to "vuelven a su país" (go back to where you came from) when she wouldn't allow someone to cut in front of her in traffic. But for the most part, we trammel through this crazy world without anyone really minding.

Not so, for our Peruvian and Bolivian brethren. Peruvians, in particular raise the ire of a certain set of closed-minded Chileans. The thing is, the Peruvians who make their home in Santiago are often economic refugees, earning better (and under worse conditions) than at home, and are sending younger brothers or children to college while they live out their lives here, in Santiago, in a place where more than a smattering of people don't want them around. Of course, there are exceptions. There are Peruvian doctors, professionals. Nobody seems to mind them (once they realized how educated they are), nor the PhD students nor the restauranteurs (it is commonly known that Peruvian food rocks the socks off of most Chilean food).

But getting back to the working-class Peruvian. He's probably about as welcome (and about as essential to the economy) as Mexican people living in California. Sorry to draw a possibly inept analogy, but it's the closest I can come with populations you know about. And though folks seem to have a soft spot in their mind for a nana (maid) from Peru, this is no consolation, it's racial profiling. So neat! So clean! Such a good cook! Such beautiful Spanish! So cheap!

There was a break-in in my building a few years ago. Many break-ins in Chile are said to by "por dato" which is to say that someone let the thief know that you wouldn't be home and had something nifty worth stealing. When this happened in my building everyone immediately decided that not only had it been "por dato" (which didn't make any sense, since the person whose house was burgled was actually home at the time), but that it was the concierge who had tipped the burglar off. Which doubly makes no sense because jobs are hard enough to come by in Chile without losing yours over something completely stupid like getting one of your tenants robbed.

Oh wait, there's one missing element. The former concierge (he was eventually fired, though not due to the break-in) was Peruvian. He had also wanted to move into an empty apartment somewhere in the bowels of the building but they wouldn't let him because "first he'll bring his girlfriend and the next thing you know there'll be 14 Peruvians living in that apartment." It didn't seem likely. His girlfriend lives in a big house in Recoleta. Didn't matter though, he was Peruvian.

Which brings me to the sign up here at the top of this post. It's for a set of apartments around a plaza right off the Plaza Brasil, just a few blocks from my house. And there on that sign, for all the world to see, it says "no foreigners."

I don't know what the official policy on discrimination is here in Chile (though I'm sure I should find out). But I can tell you one thing. I have half a mind to try to rent the apartment and then whip out my handy-dandy cédula de identidad de extranjeros (foreigner's carnet or ID card) and dare them not to rent to me because I wasn't born here.

And I bet they'd pull me aside and whisper "we mean Peruvians."

As if that weren't loud and clear already.

Alcayota, my squashmelon!

No one really knows where alcayota comes from.

No, seriously, not even Wikipedia is sure if it's from Mexico or Peru, and that's a wide expanse of place to have come from. Last night at a friend's house we were eating marraqueta with a jam made from alcayota and postulating on where it might come from. I'm happy to report that my linguistic geekery is intact, and though some thought it might come from Asia, I was pretty sure it comes from the Americas, due to the similarities in its name to other things I'm pretty sure come from the Americas, like camote (sweet potato), and chayote (christophine, a weird squash with a little-shop-of-horrors mouth on one side).

In addition to not knowing where alcayota was from, we were also wondering if, in botanical terms, it was more like a squash or a melon. None of us are botanists, and this got us into a discussion of what the difference is between a squash and a melon (I was guessing the fact that melons can be eaten raw), and where their seeds are located and how they grow. This rapidly evolved into a monologue about my inadequately-warm compost when I lived on T street in Washington, DC, and how I had all these mysterious "volunteer" plants growing in there and so I actually transplanted one (and later moved it to Columbia heights), and I wondered for a long time if it would grow into a baby melon or a baby squash. In the end it turned into a canteloupe, which rotted before we had a chance to eat it.

Here in Chile, people buy alcayota, and bake it or boil it and scoop it out of its shell and let it rest with sugar (I'm dubious about how this affects the jam), and then cook it until it is a stringy, gloppy mess. Sound terrible? I thought so, too, until I finally tried a homemade alcayota jam with a touch of orange last night at some friends' house.

And suddenly, what used to be an insipid, disagreeable, unpleasantly-textured glop transformed itself into a caramelized, soft, slightly orange-scented sweet treat. I'm as surprised (and relieved) as the next person.

And for the record, it's a squash, not a melon. And those little pastries you buy on the side of the road near Curacaví that claim to be alcayota empanadas? They've got nothing on the real thing. The real, stringy thing.

And also for the record, I have come to the conclusion that people from the north or south of Chile have a mano de monja (literally, nun's hand, means good with confectionary or food in general) when it comes to jam. Poor me, from Brooklyn. What are we good at?

Oh right. Snark. Too bad one of alcayota's alternate names is shark fin melon, and not snark fin melon. We could have been onto something. I guess I'll leave the jam to the experts for now.

Fun with Spanish grammar, a personal anecdote.

He’s a personal, a friend said, describing someone we both know, trying to distinguish him from someone else of the same name.

A personal what, you may wonder. A personal friend? Or perhaps a personal assistant? Bodyguard? Chaplain? Computer? Contact? Customer? Member? Shareholder? Shopper?

If you live in Chile you know the answer to this. The person who is walking around the gym with the word "Personal" printed on the back of their shirt is a personal trainer. A person that runs you through the paces at the gym for a not unsmall sum of money, in the case of my gym something like $300 a month when the actual gym (if you pay by yearly contract) costs about $35 a month. Eeep, that’s a lot of money.

But if you’re getting an assistant, bodyguard, chaplain, computer, contact, customer, friend, member, shareholder, shopper and trainer all in one, I suppose it’s worth it.

You may wonder why the trainer is called a personal (and not a trainer), or perhaps you are wondering where I got all my clever examples. I got them from a concordancer, like this one , which can tell you the word environment in which your word of choice tends to be found (description mine). And I know that because I used to teach English and study theoretical linguistics and I secretly love the resurgence of corpus linguistics, and if that didn’t make you want to stop reading this, then you’re a big geek, too, and welcome!

So, a personal. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, when I’m not perusing the obscure language geekery forums late at night. Joking, mostly.

I have come to the following conclusion. The reason that “personal trainer” in English is abbreviated to “trainer” is because we know that the second word in the phrase tends to be the noun, and that’s the important part. What kind of house? A white one. Are you with me?

So then there’s Spanish, and the great tendency to (at least in Chile) import words and phrases willy nilly (but not that one, because we have enough problems figuring out how to pronounce Llewelyn Jones in Spanish without introducing willy-nilly (seriously, how do people pronounce that street name?)). So rather than creating our own phrase for personal trainer, which would probably be something like “Entrenador personal” or maybe “Entrenador individual” or even "Entrenador privado" (I'm really stretching here for another term), we import “personal trainer.” Sounds posh! (for $300 a month in a country where that is about the monthly minimum wage, it’d better be!)

But then there comes the abbreviation. In English we try to take the noun, which tends to be the second word. And in Spanish they like to take the noun, too, though it tends to be the first word (programa verspertino (nighttime program) is still a type of programa (program). Following the Spanish grammatical pattern, of taking the first word as the noun and important part, this is applied to the imported English expression (which works in the opposite order), and takes the first word of the phrase “personal trainer” as the noun, and therefore the important part.

And so you get a whole bunch of men muscular (hey! Spanish grammar) walking around my gym in shirts red (look at me! Spanish grammar again) that say Personal on them. Except the new shirts say personal trainer on them, which wrecks the story a little bit. Until someone tells you that they’re reading “un comics,” (a comic book, origin of plural unclear). There’s no concordancer in the world that can explain that to you.

And I shan't even try (though I’m sure it’s a hypercorrection).

Surprise beach stop in New Zealand, Feb 2010 cycling trip

New Zealand Flashback

It is icky and grey out, and I have a non BPA Nalgene bottle in my lap with tea inside, so first it's a hot water bottle, and then a cozy drink. So let's all think back to this southern summer, when long sleeves seemed like overkill and surprise beaches cropped up out of nowhere, and made a pretty good day even better.

Hunts Beach, South Island, New Zealand (north of Bruce Bay)



I had plans. Well, to say I had plans is an overstatement. I had a generalized idea that I would follow a messy U shape roughly from Greymouth back down and around up to Oamaru on my cycling trip in New Zealand. I would pedal until I couldn't pedal anymore, until I saw something beautiful, or until night fell.

What I didn't count on was the scarcity of lodging. It's not so much that lodging is scarce (boy, I'm just a study in contradictions today!) so much as it is that the weather is at its loveliest on the South Island (by which I mean the winds are not strong enough to knock over your campervan, and the rains are just intermittent, not constant) during a very short period of time, much of which is during January and February, so everyone and their brother is out and about in the South Island during that time. Loads of Kiwis, Europeans of every stripe, more Chinese people than I would have expected, people from India, the occasional American, etc. And these people? Apparently they like to sleep! In places! Which made my life a teensy bit more complicated than I would have anticipated.

I had spent a couple of days at Franz Josef, because it's got this giant glacier you might have heard of, a whole lot of birdsong, nice walks, a Whistler-like feel to the town, a very overpriced but decent supermarket, and also because I just needed some rest. And I sat down with the hostel manager to have him look at the map with me, and announced my desire to stop at Lake Paringa the next day. (Lake Paringa is said without the hard G sound, paring-a, not par-inga, if you were wondering. Troublingly, Tonga is also pronounced this way Tong-a, not T onga. Tune in tomorrow for more stuff I didn't know)

After pointing out where the really bad uphills were (everywhere, it turns out, including the three spires of doom between Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers), he asked me if I'd called ahead to Lake Paringa to see if they had space. Call a lake? Sounded kooky, but if he told me it had to be done, well, then, it had to be done. He took care of calling the lake for me, and despite his adorable Kiwi accent, there was no space to be found. Continuing past the lake was going to make my day too long, and so instead he offered to see if they had a spot for me someplace along the way.

I was annoyed about having to cut short a day, thinking of the almighty kilometer, and how much I enjoyed watching those numbers go up and up, and how dejected and tiny I would feel at having a low-kilometer day because long-distance cycling is largely psychological, and I was just rested enough with two days of hiking instead of biking to view a short day as a punishment, rather than a reward.

But cycling being what it is, I was able to pull out a smile for the ride, even though the viewpoint to Fox Glacier was a five km surprise uphill (not the kind of surprise anyone likes), and the spires of doom were quite doomy. And then the ride rolled out before me, a giant ribbon of asphalt, the painted dividing lines shimmering in the bright sun. Sun! on the South Island! It was spectacular.


surprise! 5km uphill through a subtropical rainforest. Sweaty!

And I arrived, to the place the hostel manager had recommended (Pine Grove Motel, population, three) and it was early, maybe 4 PM, and I'd have happily pedaled out to Lake Paringa, but then I'd have to pedal back again, and it seemed not all was well in the sitting portion, and I decided to shower, eat and wander.

Which is how I ended up on this beach, which I had nearly completely to myself, except for a woman who approached me and said, "You the lady on the pushbike?" Which I had to think about for a minute, because truth be told, I'm not much of a lady, and pushbike is something we don't say in my neck of the woods. And also, there must not be much news about if someone finds me worthy of gossiping about.

But in the meantime I just had to sit. And to walk. And to take pictures and enjoy the occasional dog that showed up and chased my birds away. And it was exactly what I needed, to take some time to be awake and not on the bike, so thanks hostel guy, and thanks motel owners and thanks ornithologists who listened to my poor-quality birdsong recordings and told me what they were over breakfast the next morning.

and here's the happy dog:




and the bird it was chasing (not quite so happy):





And I saw this rock and its squiggly lines:



and this crazy, oversized, gilligan's island-esque mussel



And I stood in the water and looked back to where I'd come from:



and wondered where the troll who this hair belonged to had run off to:



and mused at the mysterious lack of apostrophe in this place name.



and I got back and had dinner, and still had time to catch this:



I may have missed Lake Paringa, but I found a new secret spot in New Zealand just for me, a dog and a woman who asked me if I was the lady with the pushbike. And a hundred million sandflies, some of whom may no longer be with us, if you get my drift.

Want more New Zealand blabla?

New Zealand cycling gear report here
Approximate route followed (the winged out part I did by bus) here
Pedaling report from New Zealand here