Almost done, boys and girls. Exams are going this week, remedials next two weeks (for which, I’ll have no students – unfortunate how mediocrity is promoted here), and then it’s all over. Still hoping to hit the Amazon the first week of July, Alan sent me a link to a place that seems to have a really good deal for one – but I’m having a hell of a time creating an account with them, I’ve tried twice and an email was supposed to be sent to me “in a few minutes” – that was two days ago. I’m guessing it’s done manually and not automatically, which sucks. They need someone to program in an autoresponder.
New levels of suck
Alan, Sara and I went to a concert today at the salt cathedral in Zipaquira. All we knew ahead of time was that it was a joint effort between the Italian embassy and one of the universities – it sounded promising enough. And the salt cathedral seems to be a place where the acoustics would be great. Sadly, the acoustics WERE good – if only they hadn’t been, we might have enjoyed it more…
It turned out the music was “modern”, and by “modern” I mean “sucky”. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to modern by any stretch – I love Philip Glass. But this…this was just awful. And it didn’t help that the musicians were terrible too. There was one song that was supposed to be solo voice but also had a trombone playing with it for some reason – I honestly could have played better when I was in high school band than this musician, he/she was terrible. But we had some good food for breakfast and lunch, so it wasn’t too bad a venture. Last time I try for any kind of concert here though, I’ve heard horror stories and now I’ve experienced it too – I think I’ll stick with the gringo pubs for the last few weeks :)
Star Wars…whoa-oh-oh Star Wars….
Call me Nerdlinger. I went to see Star Wars Episode III yesterday – twice. Always nice playing hooky to go see a movie in the middle of the day :) Helps that I was done teaching by noon every day this week…
Anyway, the movie was MUCH better than the other two prequels. The storyline was actually solid, the special effects actually weren’t overwhelming or distracting, and the acting was, if it’s possible, cheesier than the originals. Good stuff :)
Other good news on the Nerdlinger front – figured out today that my replacement motherboard has USB 2.0 instead of USB 1.1 which I had before. Score! Much faster transfer to and from my Jukebox. Me happy.
Yet more good news. I went in for my one week checkup after Lasik surgery – and apparently I’m at better than 20/20 vision. Not bad for one week, and apparently it will get even better over the next 2 or 3 months. Screw the new telescopes, I may be able to confirm the moon landing first. Oh, and I have video! Dr. Otero had someone filming the surgery and he fiddled around with iMovie and created a little DVD movie for me. I haven’t had a chance to play around with it myself yet; if I can compress it enough, I’ll put a copy up on here so anyone interested can have a look.
“It passed the first test – I didn’t go blind”
Well, as of today I no longer need glasses or contact lenses. I had eye surgery all of 24 hours ago (actually, a little less than that) and everything went perfectly. I was in a little bit of pain yesterday, but by the evening that was pretty well gone, and today I’m not feeling anything. Well, not entirely true, but it just feels like I have a bit of sand in my eye, nothing major. And certainly a good trade off for having, at this point, almost perfect vision already. And it’ll improve over the next 2 or 3 weeks too. This morning, for the first time since I was a little kid, I woke up and could see (well, almost, I had these patch-like things over my eyes so I don’t rub them). Greatest feeling in the world. And the best part is that I had it done at the clinic that actually invented Lasik surgery, they’re using technology that’s ahead of stuff in North America, and it only cost me about $1200 for all my appointments and the surgery, including after care for 6 months (not that I’ll be here for that, but whatever). At home it would’ve cost me somewhere around $4000 – quite the savings!
PS Saw a British show called “Street Hypnosis” last night – damn near pissed my pants when I saw a guy with road rage kick (literally) the crap out of a dummy he thought was the driver of the car in front of him.
Ho-ly crap! My computer is fixed!
Ho-ly-crap! My computer is fixed! The main problem was fixed up last Thursday (CPU and motherboard replaced), but I still needed to get a memory chip replaced too. That was finally done yesterday, so I’m back to where I was a few months ago, woohoo! Now all I have to do is get my video card fixed and we’re all set…
So what does that mean to you? Well, I’ll tell you! I finally got my pictures from the Galapagos Island all edited, which means that YOU can now check them out! Go to my Colombia page and check it out!
As well, a reminder for those of you who use newsreaders or decent browsers that you can set a live bookmark for my page. That way you never have to load it up to see if I’ve updated, you just have to check the bookmark. There’s a link on the left (under the Firefox link) or for those of you already using Firefox you can use the orange button at the bottom. Later!