Beautiful Summer Sunday
Mood:  hug me
Topic: Chile
I went for a walk to the Parque Arauco shopping center just before 1pm  I didn't feel like eating alone at a restaurant last night so I just had some bread and Chirimoya allegre ice cream, which my paltry freezer couldn't keep hard.

I went to breakfast this morning--it was very nice.  There was someone else there when I arrived, then I was alone.  Not a bad place but I eat there alone all the time.  They have a bar, too but nary a soul in it.

I took a walk around the block.  The street out front, Americo Vespucci, is rather busy but the twisting, often dead-end streets behind are very quiet.  Flower-decked yards surround single story houses of varied architecture, with sidewalks occupied by women walking dogs.

At lunchtime I took another walk through the neighborhoods over to Parque Arauco.  The shopping center has doubled in size I think since I last visited it.  It was fairly crowded.  I headed for Starbucks, threading through the courtyard packed with cafes.  I guess it is in the 80s, but dry.  I got a cappucino and a muffin de arándano (blueberry) and sat down to read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo outside for a bit.  I walked through the shopping center but, not being into shopping couldn't find anything I wanted other than the cash machine.  A jazz band was performing in a second courtyard.  I decided I felt like US food so I went to TGI Fridays and had a big burger.  Read for a while there, too then headed back home as it was fairly warm by then.

I'm lonesome.  Missed Darb's birthday, then it was Mom's and tomorrow Dad's and Valentine Day.  May go out to eat tonight just to see other people.

Back in the Big City
Mood:  hungry
Topic: Chile
I started the girl with the dragon tattoo on the airplane.  Good reading--I didn't notice most of the trip.

I slept in today, missing the hotel breakfast.  I'm pretty tired after ten days of 16 hours or so.  Finally (hungry) I went up to the corner near where the Hyatt is, with Alonso de Cordova about two blocks away.  The street I am on has a pedestrian/bike path down the center so it is a very nice stroll though there are many cars.  I went to Piola, a pizza place there to which I think I have been in the past.

They didn't have the Neapolitan pizze I wanted, with anchovies, so I got one with arugula and old ham which was very good, as was the 0.5l of Kunstmann Torobayo beer with it.  I phoned up Darby to wish him happy birthday and caught him on 64 approaching Chesapeake.

After that, I went across the street and through some ritzy neightborhoods, then down a plaza of restaurants to the grocery store where I picked up some staples (coffee, spaghetti, potato chips; I went there last time I was here so I knew where I waa going) before heading home.  It is about 80 and all the flowers are in bloom.  A very nice walk.

I just put the groceries away and am thinking about what next...I was going to stop at a Starbucks but I couldn't find it so I'm coffeeless today.

Voyage to ALMA Austral summer 2011
Topic: Chile
The flights from Charlottesville through Buenos Aires to Santiago were mostly nondescript.  I had a great exit row seat with many feet of legroom so I rested fairly well though it was cold.  I did get some sleep though not enough.  BA looked summery and of course the airport was warm as it is minimally air conditioned.  I picked up the United Red Carpet Club internet (the club was closed) and answered some emails then headed to the gate.

Pedro met me at the Santiago airport and whisked me to the Vespucci Suites.  Very nice older style room on a back corner on the fourth floor.  I can see the Andes dimly through the haze, and gardens adjacent.  Minimal kitchen--the fridge wouldn't work at all for an extended stay.  They have pots and pans downstairs should I want to cook though.  The grocery is about two blocks away--I found that last trip.

Rested a while and caught up on work yesterday until the hotel restaurant opened, then had a pumpkin-pear-rosemary soup, steak and caramelized onions surmounted by a breaded pepper and surrounded by french fries for dinner.  That was good though I was the only soul in the place.  I had a pisco sour too.  I packed and collapsed in bed just after ten.

Dragged myself out of bed at 430am for my 515am cab.  Waited in the lobby from 505am until 530am then had the desk clerk call a cab.  'Oh you're going to Calama?  I hope you have an umbrella!'  No sign of the scheduled cab by the time I left at 540am.  The cabbie asked if I had my rainjacket.  I guess the news here has covered the wet desert story pretty throughly.

The airport was mobbed--clearly vacation season!  I had no problems getting to the gate, on the plane and to the site, where I arrived at 11am.

Quite flooded here--they had to evacuate for water--computers were in an inch and more of water.  The canyon has a lake (stopped up at one of the culverts) and the road washed out above the guardhouse, other washouts on the way to the AOS.

Looks like I chose a disastrous time to come but when have I been here that there hasn't been a disaster?  Heavy rain two nights in a row.

Back in the control room, still has gaps in the ceiling tile from the explosion which ushered me out before Halloween.  Still no emergency exit door.  At least, I don't see a new gas system through the ceiling gaps.

The sun is out and it is balmy and breezy.  Back to work!

Proposal Review Time
Mood:  caffeinated
Topic: Chile

All day drilling before the NSF team reviewing the proposal for ALMA Operations 2012-2015.  Eduardo has found an interesting-looking place for dinner tonight--http://www.restobarky.cl/paginainiciokyingles.html

Clear and cool in Santiago.  High winds at the ALMA site have shut down the antennas.   60 mph and 17F makes for a miserable experience, even for astronomy.

Earthquake Swarm!
Mood:  blue
Topic: Chile

WOW!

That was quite a string of aftershocks!  All of them very nearby.  We
went to the window to see the window washers across the street lowering themselves.  A moment late we were running down the stairs under evacuation warning.  I was last out, as usual, just after an announcement that an inspection had declared the building sound.  There were some local power outages; cell phone service was lost or overloaded.  The new President was sworn in.

Every building had a crowd of people outside.  Although loudspeakers
announced our building to be safe we decided to be safer and went to
Subway for lunch.  As it was early, there was no line.  We got back to
the building at about 1:30; one elevator was thankfully restored.  There
was a long line at Subway.

The string continued, on the coast west of Rancagua, with a total of twelve in the next six hours or so, all of them all nearby and fairly strong, none of them leaving any doubt in anyone's mind that pachamama wasn't serious.  I left the building after the tenth and came to my apartment as it is easier to go down 4 flights than 19!  I knew commissioning ALMA would be exciting (several multiline images now) but I had not included this dimension of excitement. 

 

Back to normal? Not quite...
Mood:  not sure
Topic: Chile

Awoke to another small tremor this morning--throughout the day there were ones off Valparaiso, felt easily here in Santiago about 80 miles ESE of that port city.  The aftershocks are down to about once every other hour now.  The most evident result to us is that we still only have one working elevator of five in our 19 story building, and it is a sometime thing going only to floor 15.  The photo shows the building; the glass stripes are the elevator shafts (left one works sometimes); in the foreground is the Spanish Embassy. At least there is an operator.  That makes running out for lunch inconvenient.   The stairwell is fairly boring--the only features of note are the hairline quake cracks there, which Alison keeps mental note of.  I'm too busy watching my clumsy feet.  Last night attendance at the ASAC meeting by video in Japan kept us aloft until midnite, at which time the lift was most definitely not running.

This is the first ALMA Science Advisory Committee meeting I've missed in 13 years.  When my first flight was canceled and I was bumped from the second there just wasn't a good way to get there though others did.  The telescope is back up, as the new crews were able to reach the site over the weekend to run it.  The weather looks on the mend also.  We have two interferometers running in parallel, the OSF one mostly to debug new antennas and the software and the AOS to commission systems.  At the AOS the compact ACA config pads were supposed to get the antennas up there (100-200m baselines now, clearly not great in Bolivian winter conditions) but the quake has delayed the move to 15m baselines which would have been more useful this time of year.  That is now scheduled for a week from now or so. 

Another lovely day in Santiago.   In the break before the ASAC telecon Kartik and Rao invisted us over for dinner.  We had masala dosas, crepes with a filling of flavored potatoe and a chutney from Karnataka in south India.  Kartik provided some Bollywood blockbusters for background. I brought a bottle of 2008 Veramonte merlot from the Casablanca Valley from the local grocer which I thought went very well.  Alison, Mark and I had a great time. Kartik and Rao cook up the dinner in the background.  One good thing about the current apartment design is that it allows the guests and cooks to interact.

 

Apartment Living
Topic: Chile

This was the first weekend in the new apartment though I've been here a week.  Good internet--downloaded 2.5 GB of EVLA data though not speedily.  A desk.  The kitchen us open which helps as the last one was the size of the walkin closet and closed.  But it has the most impossibly small fridge I have ever seen outside the most basic dorm room.  My hotel had about three times the refrigerated space I think.  It doesn't even come up to the level of the sink.  The previous apartment came stocked with some food to get one through the first nigh; not this one.  Good thing as it would not fit.  The frozen meats don't really freeze in the tiny freezer compartment designed only for ice cubes.

 In the bedroom a limbo is required to squeeze between the TV stand and the bed.  I slept on the window side to unencumber Ida Lee's route to the banos.  No room for a chair.  I hate watching TV in bed.  Kartik had a solution for the Oscars--turn it around and sit on the verandah. That works fine at night.  Of course the noise from Apoquindo, the main artery only a few score feet away is pretty deafening (so one cannot leave the door open at night; there is no AC in this apartment).  By day the porch is pleasant enough were it not for the view of a garbage pit and portapotties it affords.  One might go to the pool but there is no pool. 

There is a hot tub but like laundry, that is an added expense ($4/dip). 

Stuck in Tent City
Mood:  down
Topic: Chile
LAN bumped me from the first leg of the flight and there were no options to connect (well they offered to fly me to Cordoba where I could get a bus to BA)...I remain in SCL.

The situation at the airport was very confusing because it was evolving and still is I think.  Found the correct line after 15 minutes of searching.  There was a very long hot wait and then a burst of action. A LAN rep told us that the main tent was too crowded and we would need to follow her to get our boarding passes so we followed her to a secure area normally requiring a boarding pass to enter.  She vanished after a short while.  We ended up being isolated.  The boarding passes were all issued to those who did not follow the LAN rep (only those who arrived later, or who had gone into the tent earlier).  A new LAN rep revealed our fate and offered to fly us to Cordoba.  She took names and ID numbers and vanished.  Never saw her again.  A new LAN rep offered to rebook me the next day.  She vanished and we never saw her again.

We asked about Delta boarding and were told to wait for an announcement expected ca 6:30pm but were told we were in the correct place (still the secure but outside area).  Then we saw a line materialize--these people had Delta boarding passes!  A security person checked the manifest, saw Ida Lee's name and said he would get a boarding pass.  He never was seen again.  A second security person, who overheard our plight, examined her passport and offered to get a pass.  He vanished with the passport but Ida Lee chased him down.  He shouted at her for following and threw the passport back at her.  Still Delta folks with boarding passes streamed by.  Finally we found a senior Delta agent who left and actually did return with a boarding pass and off Ida Lee went.  She was able to leave on time by the skin of her teeth.  Delta was also not so overwhelmed as LAN of course.  She has arrived in the US now.

I was completely drained by the whole 8 hr experience.  I just took a taxi back to the apartment so I'll work from Santiago and join the meeting by whatever arrangements Koh-Ichiro has enabled.

Earthquake shakes
Topic: Chile
Ida Lee is here.  We're 180 km NW of Santiago in Zapallar on the coast. The quake hit just after 3:30am and we knew it was a big one.  It grew and grew and we ran outside with other guests until it seemed safe to come in again.  We ran out once more for a major aftershock, and there were many minor shakes (another just minutes ago).  Everything here is on steep hillsides over the Pacific--had nightmares of just sliding down the hill in the bed!  Lights are still out but water is OK (even hot water) but the hotel has a generator.  We understand the country is in a 'state of catastrophe'.  I don't know how the internet is working but the TV and radio and newspapers were not though we just got a TV station on (wish I could understand it).  We are told the airport is closed for 24 hours at least and that the planes have been flown over the Andes to Mendoza, Argentina.  Ida Lee was to fly out tonight.  Both major routes back to Santiago are reportedly closed--the northern route 5 on which we came by landslides, and the southern route 68 through Vina del Mar also by landslides.  Folks in Santiago I have reached say they are fine but shaken.  Delta confirms no flight for Ida tonight we will stay here--the hotel is very nice and has a generator and internet somehow.

One car full of Americans just got on the road, saying they had a few cases of beer and intended to make their flight tomorrow.  I think we'll just hold still for now.

Just talked to Kartik, who said it was much scarier in Santiago--both big plate sliding glass doors in his apt shattered (we are one floor up from him when we're home).  There were no emergency lights in the stairwell but he is OK though shaken.  I guess he sent a more coherent message out.

Clear skies and stable ground!

February
Topic: Chile

                Crowne Plaza Hotel Hotel Front Desk: 56-2-6381042
                136 AVE. B O'HIGGINS P.O. BOX 488-CORREO 21
                SANTIAGO, 00000 CHILE
20 Feb  8:00pm Dinner with Grotz family--I propose meeting in the bar for a pisco sour, followed by a stroll down Pio Nono in Bellavista, close to the Crowne Plaza, to dinner at El Meson Nerudiano
                http://www.elmesonnerudiano.cl/ for dinner and music.  Follow spanish links, english ones are partial
21 Feb         Could visit downtown--best things are the Precolumbian museum, the Market, shopping in Bellavista
                The Chinese warrior exhibit is at La Moneda: http://tinyurl.com/yabalhm 
22 Feb         Could visit our area in Las Condes and Los Domenicos craft market http://tinyurl.com/ye4cmos
                Both a straight shot on the metro from Baquedano near the Crowne.
23 Feb  5:00pm Kathy Grotz leaves Valparaiso on the cruise

Figure on left shows way to dinner on 20th.  On right shows downtown.  Below shows to Los Domenicos (my apartment with an asterisk).