happy birthday naldo! (i had some cake today, on your behalf)

note: location is santiago, chile

this morning i spoke to a friendly woman at the international police station. she said it would be no issue switching visas/passports. tomorrow, i’ll go to the aduana to see if i can extend the permit for the sentra…since it’s illegal to import used cars into chile.

one frustrating thing about chile is the overpresence of artificial flavors and colors. granted, fresh fruits and vegetables are everywhere…but i have yet to find a yogurt that does not have artificial flavors. organic would be nice too…but, for now, i’ll settle for natural.

i also finaly used hostelworld.com. i’ve heard about it from other travelers, but since i have the luxury (and sometimes hassle) of a car, i usually find it easier to just go on my own and look around at hostels. but it turns out that it can be very useful for negotiations, especially with unscrupulous hostels…because you can use the hostelworld price as a starting point (it is sometimes lower than the quoted price). well, at least i know from now on.

note: location is santiago, chile

since i’m considering staying here for a while, and my case is a bit unique, i thought that the us embassy might be able to help me out. turns out the woman i spoke to over there was pretty incompetent. i explained my unique case, and her response was….well, if you ignore all the externalities (switching visa from brazilian passport to american passport, dealing with car, etc.), you can try this option. that was like when i was asking around for the best bakery in santiago…’well, if you just want a piece of bread, you can try the supermarket’. great. thanks.

but, i did end up finding a good bakery in santiago. and i also found some answers to my questions. the man i spoke with at the chilean dept of visas was really helpful. turns out i just need to mail in a form. well, it’s a bit more complicated than that. if i’m just going to have one job, i fill out one form. if i’m going to have two or more, i fill out another. and if i want a professional job, i also need to mail in an original copy of my university certrificate. the last option seemed a bit strange…and maybe unnecessary…so the middle option is probably the one to go for.

one annoying thing is that many government offices are closed to the public after 2pm. tomorrow i will see about transferring from a brazilian tourist visa to an american work visa. another interesting thing is that a tourist visa for americans costs $100, but the work visa is free. It’s the exact opposite for brazilians.

note: location is santiago, chile

today started off slow. i ended up calling the very nice secretary at Universidad Catolica and she told me to hop on over. they seem to be the nicest university in santiago (they’re semi-private). there, i met with one guy and then hung around waiting for others to finish lectures, etc. it was nice hanging out with gloria, though….she’s really friendly and helpful. then, she arranged a meeting with another prof there….who seems smart and has the first exciting projects i’ve seen in all of chile! it turns out that they also have a vacancy. with such promising results, i rushed over the us embassy to learn about getting a work visa (and how to deal with the sentra) — they’re closed in the afternoon…so more on that tomorrow.

finally, i went to another meeting with an organization that i’ve been talking to over the last couple weeks. every meeting they lose a little more respect…especially at this one. but they mean well, so i’ll keep working with them…and maybe something good will come from it.

note: location is still santiago, chile

sentradiaries was recently hacked into. i don’t know much about hacking/security, but have since tried fixing some security holes in my website. today, i received an email from banco do brasil saying that my website has recently been involved in some fraud trying to steal their clients sensitive information. i’m guessing that they are not using cracker to describe a white person:

‘We have received information that crackers may be using *your* infrastructure to host a crimeware/trojan horse designed to steal sensitive information (office branch, account number and PIN) from our clients.’

speaking of security, the hostel i’m staying at is two buildings away from the indian embassy. it is also across the street from a nice hotel, the british council and the indonesian embassy. i think my sentra is pretty safe from theft….although it may get blown up.

note: location is santiago, chile

another chill and uneventful day. started off by going to see the presidential palace. it is supposedly open to the public the last sunday of the month…but it was closed. so we walked around a bit, watched some indiana jones on the tv then had a good dinner.

the hostel owner said that there was an interesting book fair going on at a nearby neighborhood. so i walked there this afternoon…it turned out to be a small fair with kids books. i felt a bit out of place, although the kids could probably read more of the books there than i could. the rest of the day was also pretty chill…just wandering around, seeing stuff.

chile is quite small, about 16 million people total and 7 million in Santiago. This makes it surprisingly easy to get in touch with important people who control money. Not the rich mine barons (yet), but people who run the equivalent of Chile’s NSF (National Science Foundation). Today, for instance, I was put in touch with the CEO of Fundacion Chile — a government backed (private?) organization which funds innovative projects. The CEO is busy planning next years budget, but hopefully we can meet early next week. chile only has a few big organizations like this…and i’ve already met with top dogs at another one too.

also, at our hostel is a pretty ridiculous guy. why? well, he’s trying to sail around the world. in a 35 foot dingy. by himself. with no desalinator. with no radio or emergency communication equipment (he’s a purist). pretty stupid, no? well…the really stupid thing is that he’s going around cape horn next….with the same equipment (or lack there of)…..after he was stuck in the pacific ocean for 6 months with enough food for only a couple. he was at the verge of eating leather when he finally met the trade winds. but still, he’s not going to buy a phone….because that would taint the adventure. his biggest fear of cape horn are the icebergs. honestly, who can say ‘i would have died if i hadn’t found that extra can of lentils’….or ‘if i hit an iceberg at night, i will die’. you’d think a physics professor would be smarter than that.

there’s also a mildly crazy woman who works on the main street a block from the hostel. today, she was wearing a star of david on her right arm and washing car windows when they stopped at the red light. she does two additionaly odd things. first, she often washes the rear windows instead of the front (maybe a good idea, since most people don’t have rear wipers and it’s harder to protest someone to stop if they’re behind you). second, she rarely asks for money after she wipes down the window. maybe she just does it for the love of washing windows with a dirty old rag. she also enjoys standing in the middle of the road as the cars speed by (see pic).

this morning i went to innovo, and guess what? ….yes, yet another meeting. every meeting results in another meeting — it’s so frustrating. this afternoon i hiked up san cristobal with two belgians i met at the hostel. belgium is an interesting country. recently, they went for several months without a president…because he couldn’t get along with the french side of belgium. although they house the EU parliament, one week per month, the entire administration moves to germany. belgium (in fact, their town) is home to stella….which is now the largest brewery in the world (they’ve bought up quite a few other brands, even in the us). belgium’s been taken over a dozen times. a while ago, the german part of belgium had a vote to leave belgium and rejoin germany….the resolution was a huge success..but the germans didn’t want them (i think it was the german side…but may have been the french side)

the hill was pretty nice, although the sunset was nicer after the storm then tonight. afterwards, we hung out at a bar in bellavista. it was fun until some chilean guy asked if he could join us to practice his english. he seemed nice enough, so we said yes….but he turned out to be insanely annoying. so bad, that we eventually just got up and left him at the table. surprising as it may sound, even in chile, if some stranger asks to join you, he may be a little bit off and lack social skills.

last night i met another mechanical engineer at the hostel, who is also looking for a job in chile. compared to him, however, i’m setting my bar pretty high. he’s just out of school and doesn’t speak spanish, so he’s up for anything that pays money….whereas i’m looking for a creative engineering job (R&D, product development, etc.). apparently interviews can be pretty different here — at one place he’s been looking at, he’s completed 3 out of the 4 scheduled interviews….including one interview where they made him look at ink blots! apprently in all of them he saw a female anatomy part…but didn’t feel comfortable saying that, so he made stuff up every time, and it seemed to work, since he was called back.

he also recommended i visit universidad catolica (one of the three big universities in santiago). it was a great idea (i had been kinda lazy before), and my visits there and at universidad of chile were somewhat promising. i also met a british professor — it was interesting to hear from somebody with a different perspective of chile. for instance, just 30minutes prior, a mechanical engineering professor had told me that there was very little money for research here…so there’s not too much innovative stuff. the brit (a biochem prof), however, told me that there’s tons of money for innovative research…but most people here are conservative and do rather simple research.

for lunch, i continued the pizza hut world tour (started in cambridge, uk with roshan, christy and eric). pizza hut here is a bit of a dump (especially compared to american fast food chains in some other countries). but, they do sell fresh juice. today i risked it by having a mystery fruit called ‘frutillo’, which turned out to be strawberry. and fresa/frambuesa are rasberry in chile (fresa = strawberry in other countries).

at night, a few of us from the hostel went out. turns out one of the guys was some crazy brit who wants to be the next che. he was talking the whole night about how the world should be run by one big government, use no money, everything should be mechanized and assume that people will always do the right (i.e.– generous) thing.

today i came closer to finding a job here. first, i met with some people at innovo (the technology transfer organization of Univ of Santiago). The director is quite nice and basicaly made up a small consultng gig for me over the next month. it’s not much work, and probably not much money, but i might take it. this afternoon, i found my first product design firm! (thanks google) actually, i found one industrial design firm, and one product design firm. it’s nice knowing that these kinds of creative jobs and people do in fact exist here. it’s also interesting seeing the technology that they do (and don’t) have. for instance, 3D printing is a very powerful tool….especially for product designers, as it allows them to develop cheap, quick prototypes which they can touch and show to their client. however, one firm sends their parts out to the us to be printed! …seems a bit ridiculous, no?

well, it looks like i might be staying in santiago for a month, exploring jobs and better understanding the product/technology development industry here.