that's right, it's Tuesday

Anna bought me a new ring! It's tungsten carbide, and I have an urge to try and scratch it up, but it's tungsten carbide, so intellectually I understand that's not going to accomplish anything except to maybe scrape some chunks off a masonry wall somewhere.



It has a sort of One Ring vibe to it. It's heavy for its size (see: tungsten), about the same shape, polished to an unbearable shininess, and impervious to scratching. (You can, however, break one with a pair of Vise-Grips.)

The three of us went to Six Flags Great America on Sunday, a nice old-school nuclear family outing. I can't remember the last time I went to an amusement park, let alone one that is now located in the forest of Silicon Valley corporate office buildings (you pass by McAfee and Adobe on the way there, for example). When Anna was a kid (back before television), Great America was in the middle of nowhere.

Despite the constant music and barker announcements on the speakers, it was more or less the same noise I remember from places like Riverside Park (now also absorbed by Six Flags). The new thing is apparently to have TVs everywhere, which is what drove Anna and J away from Marine World in Vallejo. Anna's grandmother bought the 3 of us season passes to Great America, so we can go a few more times this year.

We went on a rollercoaster! It looked pretty mellow, but it wasn't particularly, and then afterward we noticed it's called "Psycho Mouse" and it's rated a 4/5 on the intensity scale they provide. And I took J on the go-cart track, which was pretty awesome not only for him enjoying going fast, but also for me to remember how to properly apex corners. Sadly, the guy in front of me started driving like a loon to make it fun for his kid, and there wasn't room or horsepower to pass him, so I had to slow down.

And I am working! So much working. But it's fun. And I'm motorcycle shopping. And Anna is graciously assembling our wedding and somehow taking care of all of us while still getting some work done. And nothing is available for rent, and house prices are going down, so maybe we should just buy a house.

So, yeah. It's a little busy.

Chile update

In the Annals of Improbable Outcomes, the Ministry of Education is only delaying our program by a week, so we're going to leave Miami as planned on Tuesday, and WorldTeach will provide us with an extra week of training in teaching, Spanish, and Chilean culture. (This is also an extra week of drinking Pisco Sours, and of me maybe being able to do aikido someplace.)

I stopped my preparations when I had 16 days left; now that I have 6, the schedule feels a bit tighter, and Anna and I had gotten used to having another week together, so that's a little weird.

But! Adventure!

Chile update

I know, lots of updates. I've been asking lots of questions and gotten good answers from the WorldTeach field director in Santiago and the program director in Cambridge, and they've also been communicating any new information as they get it. The short version is that, if you'll pardon the language, everything is fucked five ways from Sunday.

• The English Opens Doors office building sustained heavy damage, and they're still not allowed inside. Their database with the information on volunteers, host families, and placements is down.
• English Opens Doors has other volunteers already in-country--WorldTeach is just one source--and those people were assigned to regions VIII and IX, which were the ones hard-hit by the quake. Contacting those volunteers was a priority, and I imagine pretty difficult, but they're all okay.
• The Ministry has to contact our host families ("which in itself can be quite difficult") to make sure they can still host a volunteer; they have to make sure the placement schools are safe; and they'd have to find new placements (which is time-consuming) if original placements are no longer workable.
• Once the program is delayed, it can't quite be spun up on a moment's notice, so WorldTeach is thinking to give us 3 or more weeks of notice before any departure date. (I have a cogent argument for them that the 17 of us who have already quit our jobs and given up our apartments would be more than happy to pick up and be in Miami on a weeks' notice.)

The other volunteers have been sending email to the list, and except for a couple of older women, most of the rest do seem to be 25 and under, as you'd expect. They may be in worse shape than I am, since I have unemployment and money saved up, and I gave up my apartment to my girlfriend, so I have a place to stay.

From the sound of things, we're not going to get a departure date before May, and I'd be grateful if it were that soon. In the meantime, I'm doing some paid research for one of Anna's clients, and I think I'll take off on an extended road trip around the 23rd to visit folks in Colorado and the Pacific Northwest. I'm also looking around for volunteer stuff in the continental U.S. I can do for the next couple months.

("Virginia? Sure! Never been there! Just give me the address.")

Given how much I wanted to go and how long I've been unemployed, I'm doing really well, and largely on an even keel. That's not quite the same thing as "good", but it's doable.

Chile update

Current status: chaos!

Calmer than chaos; more of an opaque, abiding lack of knowing.

Summary:

• My flight on the 16th has not been moved or canceled.
• The English Opens Doors program still wants us to come.
• WorldTeach was assigned the Santiago and Valparaíso regions this year, and they weren't so hard hit by the quake. People went back to work a couple days ago and life was normalizing.
• If there's no established departure date by the end of the month, the WorldTeach program will be canceled. There are backup plans for providing us with volunteer opportunities, the earliest of which would be May, and Ecuador would be an option, as well as a possible delayed Chile stint.
  

That's about it. There's not a lot of hints in there about probable final outcomes. I'm asking the field director what's up with English Opens Doors that would cause delays; I don't know how this whole thing works, but my first guess would have been that 2 weeks before our arrival, most of the details would have been worked out already. (That could be wildly wrong for any number of reasons, or our host families' houses could be damaged, or...anything, really, which is why I'm asking.)

We're continuing with my good-bye parties, because I'm leaving for somewhere. Depending on the Chile delay, I'm exploring a Colorado-Idaho-Portland road trip. I'm done with having nothing to do: it's not good for me (or anyone), and I've spent 9 months unemployed to get out adventuring and I can't take waiting any more.

Chile update

The damage in Chile turns out to be worse than the initial reports. President Michelle Bachelet said they wouldn't need international aid, but asked for it two days later; one of the voices on the radio pointed out that it sort of symbolizes Chile's self-image, where they're tending to see themselves as a fairly developed country--which it is, in many respects--but in practice, they're not quite there yet. There's a vivid photoset up at The Big Picture, and the news out of Concepción and Constitución seems to get progressively worse. It's clear that Chile will be rebuilding stuff for a few years.

We don't know yet what this means for the WorldTeach program. I had a pretty bad day yesterday, because WorldTeach finally got some information and sent us a pretty grim-sounding email saying that the English Opens Doors program we're associated with is "suspended" and might be canceled. WorldTeach is scurrying, trying to assess things and working up contingency plans for us, including possibly diverting us to the Ecuador program, which would be a May departure, and I think they have other ideas they're tossing around.

What does "suspended" mean for a program that hasn't started yet? I asked the WorldTeach folks, and part of the answer is that the Ministry of Education staff can't get into their building in Santiago right now, because they're not yet sure it's safe. They have a lot to deal with, and probably getting a volunteer program running isn't a priority compared to getting the school year started in the midst of a natural disaster. WorldTeach also says that this year's placements are in areas that aren't severely affected by the quake, although last year's were (meaning people who signed up for another year in the same placement were assigned to affected areas).

At any rate, things are far more uncertain than anyone would like them to be. I'll write more as soon as anything concrete turns up.

By the way, we're waiting a couple days before canceling the going-away parties. If nothing else, we can all meet at the Dutch Goose and watch me drink.

the weekend of busy

On Friday, Anna's temporary storage container arrived, so we could stash her stuff while getting my stuff organized in the garage. It's 7' wide x 12' long x 8' high, made of steel; it's exactly as wide as my driveway, it only rolls in a straight line, and it's not possible to move anything down my driveway without mid-course corrections. The driver was skeptical, but I took one of my 2x4s and by lifting with my legs was able to lever it inches to the side to steer it. (My body is fine, except for my left quad, which will be sore for a while. Imagine doing a bunch of leg presses at some weight beyond what you can actually do leg presses at.)

After that burst of activity, on Saturday morning we got up really early to go to the Zen program, and then I went pretty much without a break into the First Aid Refresher course, until 5pm. Then I had no energy for anything that wasn't a life-threatening emergency, and got a quick nap before we ate dinner and went to the Houseness cocktail party. Then I was done again.

Today, I drove back to Oakland for brunch with pals and lounging at Houseness, before renting the first season of Lost and mellowing out until bed (which will be soon). I'll have more to say about Lost at some point, which will be culturally irrelevant because I'm watching it 6 years behind the rest of the country.

(I also didn't get an iPod until 2006, and I still don't have a smartphone, and I just got a flat-panel TV a year ago. I am a curious sort of tech guy, indeed.)

Collapsing seems like a lovely idea.