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I found this great cartoon today. It kind of reminds me of my bed and a morning two days ago when i woke up with thoughts flying round my head, so I got up and watched a beautiful sunrise.

Insomnia Cartoon

Facbook cheerfully reminds me that i’ve to say Happy Birthday to some people today:
Julie Gilstrap and Colin Snodgrass…

Well its been a while since we’ve told you what we are doing at the moment. As you can see from the blog, we’ve grown quite lazy in updating it but in the last two months we’ve been travelling with Rachel’s family and Rachel has had a two week shift (yes… the longest yet). After a week of recovery time, which unfortunately coincided with Chile’s National Independence Day celebrations- the “dieceocho” or “fiestas patrias”- on the 18th September, we’re settling back to “work” and normality, whatever that is. Facebook, BBC, Scrabbulous and blogging…. So we’ve been out of the loop for effectively 8 weeks.

We had a fantastic trip to the north of Chile with Rachel’s parents and their two foster children, Liam and Savannah. Rachel’s brother turned up to the surprise of everyone one day after they all arrived (carefully coordinated only 4 days before by William and Doug). And what a welcome too! “want an egg?” asks Rachel’s dad calmly while her mother weeps for England. And we were 7.

Thankfully, our Land Rover accommodates 7 people. But not normally their luggage too. So we borrowed lots of toys from friends, the most important being an enormous coffin sized roof box, from Gaetane and Hughes (Thanks guys!). Thanks also to Paula for her GPS, which provided endless entertainment on days when the road made one turn every 200km. It also took us on a lovely tour through the rougher parts of Antofagasta in search of a Shell Station, up one-way on gradients even the Landie struggled with and over railway lines.

Returning through Argentina was a “long way for a short cut” as we might say in English, but translates badly in spanish to mean “you must go on the long road for a radical hair cut”. North west Argentina is largely untouched and uninhabited but stunningly beautiful albeit on a large scale. The high altitude salt lakes and the mountains of the 7 colours were particularly memorable. In fact, 7 might as well be the meaning of life. 700 miles to a very big tank and 7 hours a day driving. 7 pesos to the £.

Well, since then, we’ve had 2 visitors who claim to be welsh but are actually Brazilian and practically English, studying in Birmingham and Chile (for 1 year) respectively. We’ve got another two friends staying with us tonight, who live in La Serena when they are not getting married in the US or skiing near here. Then we are looking forward to two visitors to Chile at the end of October/November- Stephanie Biden, one of Rachel’s university friends and Chris Reilly (you know who you are huevon). Today has been the first day in Santiago when it actually feels like Spring. So they’ll be looking forward to a tan then since the UK didn’t have a summer this year!

Of course, all of this has so far avoided mentioning the rugby world cup! Scotland, Argentina and Namibia got Doug’s support, while England and Wales and anyone playing Scotland gets Rachel’s support. Chile didn’t even qualify, despite a chilean complaining to me last week that their qualifying match was unfair… against Portugal and Uruguay. It’s great to get coverage of the matches here in Chile. Although it does serve as a terrible destraction from studying for Doug.

Studying? More studying? Yes, Doug starts a distance learning MSc in GIS and Project Management this month… which will keep him busy. He’s trained in it before, but needs an update and to learn another software package, called ArcInfo if he wants to use it at work in future.

Rachel’s work is going… although not always well. She is grateful to have some time in Santiago to get on with her research.

Some prayer requests:

We’re back to the UK at Christmas and New Year this year which will be marvellous. We hope to catch up with you all, or, in the memorable words of an american friend, “all y’all”.

31 Minutos (Chile) Education Show (re-directs to YouTube)

This show for kids was filmed at Paranal last year and features a familiar-looking astronomer, named Luna Menguante (”The Falling Moon”). With (nearly) blonde hair, thick rimmed glasses and a jumper fit only for someone who “boldy goes where no (wo)man has gone before”, Luna Menguante explains how Paranal is one of the finest spots for observing the stars in the world.

We hope you enjoy it. We were in fits…

While it is in spanish, it is spoken slowly and clearly and is recommended to those learning the language!

This is a video we took on the largest salt lake in Argentina, Las Salinas Grandes. Here they “mine” or grow the salt under the desert sun, dig it up, dry it, then pack it into sacks for export.

We took a small diversion off the main pass from Chile to Argentina and had tea in the middle of the salt industry.

The Salinas Grandes are an incredible sight. The salt forms homogenous hexagons of around 1-2 feet in diameter, divided by small ridges, where the crystals accumulate as the ground water (from surrounding altiplano mountains) evaporates under the perishingly pure sunlight. This surface formation extends into the nothingness… broken by little except the road and some deceiving mirages.

The lack of a near horizon makes judging middle distances very difficult. Thus with clever positioning you can appear to lift someone with one hand and pick up a Land Rover with the other! After taking lots of perspectiveless pictures of ourselves and the Landie, I thought it might be fun to video the Landie for the Land Rover Club Chile (and the rest of the YouTube world). So here it is! Enjoy!

Is it just me or is your day in the office increasingly distracted by the myriad of “networking sites”? I realised yesterday that, if i want to, i can spend an entire day interacting with people entirely over the internet.

Facebook is my biggest weakness- a quick message to someone becomes a day of responding to messages, notifications, individuals asking me questions, playing scrabble games and reading other people’s profiles!

I received an email reminder from LinkedIn, a professional networking site (which was originally sold to me by offering “employment opportunities”). Yet on top of notifications regarding the social life of my friends, I don’t care.

This blog is being interrupted by an MSN messaging flashing at me menacingly and uh oh…. now there’s a chat in Skype too!

The telephone goes. It could be someone calling from the UK, from Chile, a message on Skype being passed to me through a computer, a message waiting on our landline, an SMS message being translated to “english” over the telephone or an email being translated. I hesitate and miss it but i fear it will only return to me in another form later today!

I feel like a London commuter sometimes- emerging from underground, mobile phones sing a co-ordinated chorus telling passengers that the world has moved on while they’ve been on the train. Except that i’m not the train and i’m not unwittingly out of range. I’m voluntarily out of range!

Perhaps I should simplify my life? Cut the phone links, drop my email address, focus on Skype and Facebook? Maybe if I leave the old forms they’ll just shrink into insignificance, shrivel up and die (in some computer harddisk sort of way).

But no… the old technology doesn’t stop bothering me because i stop bothering it. Mr Gates is way too clever for that! A pop-up reminds me that i’m tardy and slow to update my version of MSN and at the bottom of Skype, it tells me that i’m out of date and could be enjoying higher quality Skype calling! How much better can it really get? Am I really that old? I’m cyber-hoarding and I know it. Yet I can’t face hitting the uninstall button for fear of losing those essential contacts, made over 10 years!

What is mildly frightening is that i don’t work! How do you manage it?

Must go. Another pop-up is distracting me!