Saving Money
Mood:  vegas lucky

Managed to get a little work work done today before my visitor showed up to give her science talk.  I managed to introduce her around, and I think that the talk was quite well received.  Afterward we went to lunch, about six of us, at what used to be California Creations on Isadora Goyenechea (a street I tread so many times it is imprinted on my sole).  It is now Oporto, quite nice, all open air under expansive umbrellas reclining on cushioned couches.  I had a nice potato, caramelized onion and beef plate with a wonderful tarta for dessert, and chirimoya allegre to sip. 

 Afterward it was off to the Ops review, where we had to save oodles of money with no clear idea how to do it.  The speaker didn't seem to help, reeling off numbers which had no support as the basis of the costs, with some few proposed savings.  Not sure how useful the meeting was except to expose some underpinnings which might better have been left closeted.  Then to Flannery's Irish Pub where the beer was all Scandinavian.  Of course, all of the days problems were quickly solved, if only we can recall how tomorrow morning.

Election Day in Chile
Mood:  celebratory
Topic: Chile

Another sunny warm day in Santiago--a few clouds moderating the sunshine way up high.  Today is election day in Chile.  I spent the day reading and writing in my flat, then watching the playoffs.  The Vikings outscored the Cowpokes by an order of magnitude, under a great effort by 40 year old Brett Favre in his 17th year as quarterback.  His rushing yards are down, but his passing yardage this year is his best in ten years, and in the top few of his career. 

 

Nate convinced me I should to watch the Jets-Chargers game at a bar, but then I realized that on election day and sunday the choices would be limited.   I turned to CNN Chile to see Frei's concession speech--he lost by about three points to Pinera, billionaire owner of LAN Chile airlines and other businesses.  This will be the biggest change in government for quite a while--the center left coalitions of the last few presidencies will give way to a more rightist government.  Frei signed the proclamation which brought ALMA to Chile so there is some fondness for him but let the new adventure begin.  I left on a walk down Isadora Goyenechea.  Everywhere there were car horns sounding.

Cars full of cheering folks, mostly young, were traveling the boulevards waving Chilean and Pinera flags from the windows.  They are all honking -- ... which means 'MS' when they should be honkind 'CL' -.-. .-..  Well no one knows Morse Code any longer.  Sure enough the bars were closed, and most of the restaurants.  Ruby Tuesday was open but it seemed hardly what I wanted.  I stopped in a 7-11 type place and picked up some salad and a container of chirimoya allegre and headed back.

 

Sipping a tall drink of chirimoya allegre on the veranda while watching the game.  Go Chargers!

 

 

 

Year-end updates
Topic: Chile

Just stayed in the apartment most of the day, first working on the various yearend reports, then deciding to take the kitchen for a test run.

First breakfast--easy enough as I had cereal.  Everything in the store seemed to be high-sugar, nothing like the healthy selections at my Kroger.  I did find a fruit and nut filled granola, which I tried with the longlife milk which came in the apartment fridge.  Also, instant coffee--no filters or drip cup here, and the supermarket again was instant-heavy.  The Unimart also had a limited selection of fruit juice, from which I chose grapefruit, which turned out to be the oversugary red variety.  I didn't find any fresh-squeezed juices.  After a little work catchup, it was lunchtime.  The cooktop is gas, which is great.  I cooked to Pavo dogs for lunch in olive oil; that turned out pretty well.  Not particularly tasty as I had no condiments for it, but it allayed the hunger.  I decided to roast the chicken I had bought for dinner.  It had pretty much thawed, and I had garlic powder (very very fine here), salt and oregano to mix with olive oil for a rub.  Oops no pepper--onto the grocery list.  The oven had strange symbols on it so I looked up the make and model on the internet.  Not much info.  I think I put it on 200C bake and got ready to put the chicken in.  Oops no foil.  Onto the list.  In it went, naked, for 15 minutes, after which I lowered the temperature to 160 C.  I decided to go for a walk to the store during the bake wait.  It was a warm lovely afternoon, with occasional breezes and the ten minute walk went quickly, though still my walk was a little hobbled by the blister left from the day before.  I looked over the veggies and fruit in the store--only a single hand of rather brown bananas was left.  I didn't see any chirimoya, which I was interested to try.  I decided to press on, finding a cloth grocery sack with which I could haul back a larger catch.  I picked up a 1.5l carton of carmenere ($3) and a few other items and headed back.  I was unable to locate tin foil or plastic wrap anywhere.  No microwave (or other) popcorn.  I grabbed a dry-roasted container of mali (peanuts) and whizzed through checkout back to the apartment, now redolent with roast chicken aromas.  I peeled some potatoes and made an oil coating to roast them.  Into the oven.  I watched a terrible movie, the last part of it anyway, while the roasting completed--Deadliest Sea--sort of a Perfect Storm Discovery channel knockoff.  The view is sunset toward the mountains from my balcony.

With some microwave peas, dinner was fairly good, though the low budget carmenere left a lot to be desired.   I finished it off with my other purchase of the day--chirimoya allegre sherbet, which was very fine indeed.  I worked a bit more on a report, then discovered the Ravens Colts game on TV.  Wow ESPN Chile had something besides soccer!  The announcer spoke in Spanish, which was a good language exercise as I pretty much knew what he was going to say.  As a kid I was a fan of the Unitas Colts in Baltimore and I've never forgiven them for skulking out of town in the middle of the night for Indianapolis.  But they were too good for the Ravens--Manning was impressive, and it was clear by halftime (midnite) the Ravens were going down.

 

Last Day, Astrobio 2010
Mood:  hungry
Topic: Chile

Owing to the conference party last night up at the La Parva ski resort the meeting began a little later today, at 10am.  I had decided not to join the party owing to some work I needed to get done, so I slept in a bit.  The walk over to the UN site in Vitacura is about 50 minutes from here, much of it along the Presidente Riesco avenue along which autos race in that direction in the morning (it reverses in the afternoons).  After one passes the golf course, there are some shops, then the densely built area close to the river begins. I cut through on a small street, Luz, then down Costanera.  By the end of the walk, the blisters had begun to make themselves known. 

The UN compound consists of low buildings surrounded by gardens; the meetings were in the midst of them.  Across the street from the entrance is ESO, on whose grounds the new ALMA building is reaching its second story.  The meeting hall was

darkly paneled, with a crescent of national flags at the back and a large circular table with microphones, and additional seating at the back and along the sides.   It was an excellent venue.  At breaks we congregated in the breezeways where the posters were enjoying coffee and cookies.  In the image at right, Tom Wilson is unloading his talk I think.

I had to tend to a telecon midway into the last session and so missed Tom's talk, but Cecile gave an excellent one, as did Bill Dent also.  The conference ended with a talk on evolution, noting that Darwin had spent two years in Chile on his epochal voyage.  I shared a taxi with Tom back to the apartment to spare my ballooned feet and after washing up a bit headed off to find the grocery store.  That was about a ten minute walk--it became clear where it was==I just followed the density gradient of folks carrying bags of food.  Alas, I cut wine and beer off my list and determined to carry only lighter items, of which I still ended up with a borderline manageable three bags.  Back at the apartment, I decided just to have Edam cheese, the last of my bottle of wine, and the cocktail mix of meats I had bought for dinner.  The wine knocked me out for the night.

Santiago Entry
Mood:  not sure
Topic: Chile

I arrived in Santiago last night over the Andes for a three month stay.  Breezy and summery and cool, the contrast to freezing Virginia was welcome.  We traveled down newly built highways bypassing rush hour traffic to my apartment hotel in Las Condes, a five minute walk from my office.  It is also a neighborhood I have come to know well on many previous stays, though none of them had exceeded three weeks.

On the way my guide Alina told me that the Xian terra cotta warriors are also in Santiago until the end of April, downtown at La Moneda. We had just seen a collection at the National Geographic Society in DC; the contrast will be interesting.  With about ten at each exhibit, we only have 350 exhibits to go to see them all.

The apartment is nice, but is within earshot of the busy Presidente Riesco thoroughfare.  Small houses, remnant of the neighborhood a decade or so ago, alternate with skyscrapers, such as the one my apartment is in, on the eighth of 18 floors. 

 

I am next to the elevators, but the sound doesn't seem to compete with traffic.  On the right as one comes in is the aisle kitchen.  Gas cooktop--good.  Oven, microwave, pretty well outfitted though the place settings for four show some missing pieces so one could only seat three.  Breakfast items prestocked in the fridge--nice touch--yogurt, bread, juice, water, candy and a bottle of Syrah on the sideboard.  Very nice.  Living room has a table for four, well-cushioned couch, chair, stereo and a generous balcony running the length of the unit with a pair of wicker chairs and table.  A view toward the Andes through neighboring skyscrapers gives way to the pool below, a long dive down. Double bed and TV in the bedroom, where the internet cable is, though there is no desk and no outlet there for my laptop.  Onbed computing I guess, or on the floor, or on the balcony. Walkin closet with ironing board and iron, and laundry basket, seven shirts, underwear, undershirts washed once a week but not pants (?).  No safe.  Bathroom small but whirlpool tub and nicely outfitted with hair dryer and mirrors.  No washcloths or nasal tissues.  All in all, quite nice though not quite the Boulevard Suites, where I have stayed before (but it is a 40 minute walk away--though the metro has now been extended so that it is not that far now).

 I know well the restaurants here, though there are always changes.  I walked down Isadora Goeyenechea to a cluster of restaurants.  It is always a great walk, past the nicely lit church at El Golf.  I passed by TGIFriday's and went to the place next door, where I was one of two tables and three diners.  Had 'Ecuadorian shrimp risotto', which was fairly tasty, and cheap enough at $13.  In bed shortly after ten. 

 Sunny again this am. I moved into my cubicle at the office and settled in to a day of reading proposals and attending telecons, ended by a great colloquium in Charlottesville, brought to us realtime by the internet--we could even question the speaker!

 

 

The museums here go in for big time.  The Peragmon Museum has a full scale, but only ~1/3 of the whole, temple which they had transported here from Turkey in the 20's.  The Pergamon Altar, as it is called, was a ~football field sized temple in which priests offered sacrifices (animal innards) to the Gods in 165 B. C. Then around the corner from that they had an entire entrance to the market in Miletus, a Roman port of a few years later.  Go through that gate and turn around and they have the monumental Ishtar gate, which Nebuchadnezzar built in Babylon ca 580 BC.  Although the museum concentrated on ancient Greece, Turkey and the Near East, it made the Louvre look like an underachiever in those areas.  All with earphones playing English commentaries too.  Only bad spot was that you had to leave the museum to go find toiletten.

Went to Der Rosenkavlier tonight.  The State Opera theatre, which has
been on the main drag here (great name--Under the Lindentrees--for main street) since 1742 or so though rebuilt after the war.  It was as great as 4 hours 35 minutes of wonderful music can be; I enjoyed it.  Der Rosenkavalier (The Cavalier of the Rose) is a comedy, bordering on farce, so it was witty and funny though a lot of those jokes in German made little sense to me.  I downloaded a synopsis from the web and read along on my Palm Pilot, which helped a fair amount.

 UVa won a game 47-7 and Chile beat Colombia to get into the World Cup.

Meeting begins...
I had to give the opening talk; Leonardo got to the airport to find his travel agency had cancelled his ticket with no warning.  Luckily I had my usual presentation ready to go.  Had to pay 4 euros to read the email telling me about it, then another 4 euros to read his reply.  Arrgh.  Anyway the talk went fine and the cloudy rainy cool day wore on.  We had a big discussion on how to get spectroscopists to measure line frequencies when many people never refer to their measurements, making their citation counts low and tenure a distant dream.  The conference dinner followed, another ten minute walk in the rain.  It was fine, at a northern Italian restaurant.  Ten more minutes in the rain and I collapsed into bed.

 On Sunday, Went to get on the Tram and found out why there was such a ruckus outside the window--a Marathon had shut down the subway and roads, and crowds were cheering along the blocked off streets.  We walked to the next open subway station and went down town.  Gary and I went down and visited the Roman ruins.  Sun came out just long enough for lunch along the Rhine, then we looked around some more.  Every time we got to the Cathedral, they were having a service and we could not go in further than the vestibule.  Gary needs a hip replacement so didn't want to walk too much; we arrived back to the hotel to meet Crystal, Susanna, Brian and others.  They had had a time finding the hotel, as the cabbie could not drive them there owing to the marathon, but there we were.  Went off for a gigantic pile of pork and potatoes again and small beers--seems to be the norm for this region.

Strasbourg to Cologne
Next morning the sun peeked through the shutters on the window and sounds of activity aroused me at a little past seven.  Breakfast was the usual buffet of canned fruit, sliced meat and cheese, pastries, juice but this time there were runny scrambled eggs or part-boiled eggs.  I chose the former, a croissant and fruit then headed to the room to check out.  The TGV to Stuttgart, which I was to take to Karlsruhe, was a moment or two late but soon the cathedral spire appeared again, then shrunk in the distance, then passed behind buildings as we headed for the Rhine.  There were some delays in Germany and we entered the station a few minutes late.  I walked across to track 3 for the ICE to Koln, which was late.  It arrived as ICE503; I thought I would have to wait but then the numbers changed to ICE 600.  The cars were all in the wrong place too, not following the organization posted at all and I had to hasten to the far end of the train, where I jumped onto my car just as the door began to close.  But I made it, and was on the way to Cologne.

Gary arrived 7ish Sat night and we went around the corner to find something to eat--a place around the corner seemed convivial so we went in. Some local Soccer fans were partying there bigtime in their red and white team colors.  We thought we read that the team was the Cologne Clowns but I think that might have been the name of the fanclub instead.  Anyway we ordered and a huge pile of potatoes, sausage and sauerkraut soon arrived.  Couldn't possibly eat it all.  Beer and food are certainly cheaper here.  The beer all comes in little tiny 20cl glasses and is very light and unsubstantive in flavor.

Grenoble to Strasbourg
Topic: France

At breakfast I again met Andrey, who was heading to the laboratory at the University for tests of his KID detector, which he hoped would be mounted into a large array capable of imaging the millimeter sky at several wavelengths at once.  Another prototype KID device was also to be detected.  Andrey noted that the devices themselves weren't difficult to construct.  A challenge was to be able to deposit the necessary layers on the large surface area required for widefield imaging--typically today several thousand detectors might be fit on a 5 inch surface.  The technology was different for space than for earthbound telescopes, as on earth the atmosphere limited sensitivity so meeting the 10^-16 NEP noise figure was less daunting a task than meeting the 10^-19 figure required for deep space.  Andrey was involved in the Russian Millimetron radiowave space projects, a 12m telescope.  Although the full aperture would be used at 2 THz, the inner 3m or so were to probe up to 6 THz.  Of course, this was still only a concept, with a meeting next week in Paris to further develop the science case to push the design forward.  We discussed the plight of laboratories which produced the high tech but not very saleable devices needed for modern submillimeter astronomy.  The foundry at JPL was threatened by a lack of appropriate space missions (hence the interest in Millimetron), that at Virginia by inconstant funding from the government--what was the situation with the European foundry at Delft I asked.  Andrey shrugged and said that the problems were different of course--that group was centered on a professor whose retirement was only a few years away, and in the continental scheme would dissolve upon his retirement without a plan.  But the Dutch had such a plan, to make the group independent of the professor, and he was confident that their plan would succeed.

Time to check out so I returned to the room to gather my things and head via the tram to the gare.  The train was a minute late, but I soon found a seat (turned out that with a senior discount first class cost the same as coach for younger folks) in a private room and we headed to Lyon, an hour and a half journey.  In Lyon, the Strasbourg train was easy to find and I promptly located my seat and settled in for the five hour trip to Strabourg.  We passed through Bourg en Bresse, near a marvelous church in which rested Margaret of Austria and her family, who had spared no expense to build it, but there was no stop.  Further stops at Besancon and Mulhouse before arriving on time in Strasbourg. 

From my train seat to the hotel was only seven minutes' walk across a broad semicircular tree-graced plaza.  I noted a few families on the grass, then saw a grizzled guy taking a whiz in the shrubs--I was to see a fair number of down on their luck types in Strasbourg.  In the room, I checked the map and found I was only a short walk from the Cathedral; I tidied up and headed out.  The city was beautiful--in two blocks I crossed the river Ill which encircles the old town and was on the Grand Rue to town center.  Although there were nice shops, the street was torn up for utility work and not such a good choice for walking. 

Before long, the stunning verticality of the sandstone cathedral spire, ascending to 142m, portruded above the half-timbered shops.  The Alsatian architecture was a delight; clearly I had arrived in a different place.  In a moment, the marvelous half-timbered Kammerzell house, a hotel and recommended restaurant on the Cathedral square, was before me.  I headed straight for the cathedral and read that it closed at 7pm just as the clock struck.  Ah well, I wandered the nearby streets another hour before heading for the Kammerzell, recommended by my friend Fred.  They had a table and I was taken to a marvelous vaulted room, painted all over with ancient scenes, including one of Tantalus on the wall across from me.  Great wrought iron chandeliers hung above.  The dinner crowd was just arriving, the waiter brought a bouche amusee, a tiny little rectangle of pizzalike character.  Fred had recommended the Choucouterie trois poissons and although my eye dwelt for a moment on the choucouterie de canard confit I ordered the fish.  For the entree, I chose the salade aux poireaux, and the wine, a half bottle of Alsatian reisling, 2007 Mosbach reserve particulere.  The salad was fine, a green and white cylinder of leeks in dressing with three tomato eighths and three lemon slices encircling it.  The fish was absolutely wonderful, an oval mound of salmon on one side and a white fish (flounder) on my side sprinkled with dill and bits of tomato.  On the side like ears were two halves of a mussel; all swimming in a butter sauce.  I dug in...mmm some of the salmon was smoked.  Beneath the mound was a pile of sauerkraut.  It was all just wonderful.  As I was pondering the final bites a violinist entered the room, serenading us with tunes from the nutcracker, Air on a G String, the march from Mozart's K331, a medley from Carmen and other crowd pleasers.  The crowd was indeed pleased, and I think his hat was filled as he left.  As for me, I had to decide on dessert.  I chose a Sable Choco-crunch avec poires, always choosing the pear dessert especially when it involves chocolate.  It arrived a small round tart with a few pear chunks, mounted by vanilla ice cream (from Madagascar, the menu gushed) and a trio of nut-embedded chocolate bark shards arranged to resemble the spire of a cathedral.  Around it a sauce lapped the plate's edges.  I shouldn't have, of course, particularly after all that butter but it was very good. 

The tables next to me left, and I decided to do the same, choosing a different path home through the Place Gutenburg and Place Kleber then down the rue du 22 Novembre by the St Pierre le Vieux church, across the Ill and back to my room.  Although I wished I had more time in Strasbourg and cursed my ill-considered decision to head to Cologne in the morning at 9:45, I decided to check the NPR newscast one more time, check out the TV and head to bed.