Hi and welcome to the Adventures of Timbo.
When Rachel’s away… the men shall play!
Here you can see the latest action from the life of Timbo!
DG: “An introduction please Timbo?”
Timbo: “Hello. I am Timbo.”
Timbo on his Bed
DG: “Nice. Quality programming methinks. Hee hee. Not.”
Timbo: “You sound demented”
DG: ” No i don’t”
Timbo: “Do”
DG: “Don’t”
-Pause-
DG: “Don’t. Mirror bounce back no return!”
Timbo: “Sulk”
Yes, yes… sounds like Iguanas. Long tail, grows back if shot (reference to Starsky&Hutch- did you get it? Did you?), brazilians follow their trails, nicaraguans eat them, mexicans keep them as pets, generally lazy and difficult to get alongside.
A bit like customs officers then. “Las Aduanas” are the customs and excise folk here in Chile. They’re proving a little difficult. Our air freight has arrived and i was told i could collect it from the airport and clear it through customs. Only, i went to SCL and the import company i was to meet with, doesn’t have an office at the airport! And customs can’t clear the freight without paperwork held in their office in the centre! So…I spent my afternoon in the centre, learning the word for delivery (entregar) and trying to cut through the bureaucracy! And then, after all that, the aduanas at the airport were closed at 5pm. “Manana, manana!” I say through gritted teeth!
Its strange- in Chile, some places are really efficient and smooth. Then some places require you to go to three different people within the space of a minute, for the simplest of transactions (like buying a croissant!).
I’m a scotsman. No wonder i’m having difficulty finding the aduana, getting on their tail only to chase a long paper trail! I haven’t resorted to shooting them yet, but then, they might grow back! I’m certainly not going to keep one as a pet (hola el senor aduana! que tal esta dia?) but when i finally get my hands on our stuff, i’ll probably want to skin them alive and grill them!
My cousin stated emphatically yesterday, that he was a “professional blogger”. If that were a job, i think i’d agree with him. He’s also a minister of the church. I, however, have no job, and therefore, it could be said that my job is the blog! Anyway, he’s just overhauled his blog. I preferred the earlier one. Sorry Grrrr. Although the pictures out your window are cool.
Was notified tonight, that people are viewing our website through the blog of Ryan and Morag Renfro. Good one guys. Thanks for staying in touch and for the funny account of our wedding. You can view this here. I really like Ryan’s site designs. Their wedding site (see links) is fabulous. Great photos.
Talking of photos, I’ve finally managed to install Gallery 2, but haven’t yet managed to see any of the photos i’ve uploaded! And i haven’t managed to fully integrate the G2 installation with WP yet either, as i’m missing some modules that will display thumbnails in the sidebar (the menus on the right hand side). Trying to figure these things out at the same time as finding a house here in Santiago.
Oh well, heres to blogging eh? Easier than finding a house when there are nothing but flats and when i don’t speak much spanish!
Isaac? Isaac? Who the ## is Isaac?
Actually, its another acronym, for an instrument on telescope UT1 at Paranal! Rachel was introduced to it today and will be learning to use it over the coming months. Its an infra-red telescope, which means it detects extremely short wavelengths and high frequencies (am i remembering my physics correctly?); the hot bits within the spectrum, or, in this case, within the universe. Pretty cool.
I’ll let him take his place once a month or so. Then its back to Doug in Santiago. Right, Rachel? I’m sure he can cook really well, but I don’t think he’s on your wavelength (sorry!).
This morning I learnt a bit about an instrument called SINFONI (made up of the AO and SPIFFI - I have acronyms coming out of my ears!).
It splits the light from the telescope into 32 slices, and then finds the spectrum of each slice. The result is a spectrum at each point in a 32 x 32 grid, so that you can see what elements are present at each point in the image. It’s a bit hard to explain - see http://www.eso.org/instruments/sinfoni/overview.html for a picture if you’re interested. It’s very clever. In addition it uses adaptive optics, which means that the telescope mirror bends to compensate for the flickering due to the atmosphere. The resolution is amazing - especially if like me you’re used to X-ray images, where almost everything is a dot.
It’s strange working in such a multi-cultural environment. I reckon 2/3 of the folk here are Chilean, and the rest mostly european (mostly french speaking). All the paperwork is in english, but the conversations are in a whole range of languages. The food is pretty multicultural too - and very mix and match. This morning one girl had avocado, melon and blue cheese (on it’s own) for breakfast. The only thing I’m missing on the mountain (other than Douglas of course) is a proper cup of tea - they have a few Earl Grey, and lots of fruit teas, but next time I’m going to bring my own bog standard teabags. I can’t do proper work without a good cup of tea!