Raw

The way i remember the story, on the way home from the beach, my father spotted some fishermen in a small boat, hauling a shark onto shore. He stopped the car, walked over to them, and, not speaking the language, bargained with them for the shark's jaws.

I doubt that's a 100% accurate rendition.



We've had those jaws in our family ever since that time in Somalia, some 30 years ago, and they remind me of the rawness of overseas living. I now have them at home, and i now also carry a permanent reminder of that rawness.



This weekend also marks the end of my Stats class. I took 80 minutes (out of 240 allowed) to get an 89% on the final exam. I think i finished the class with a low A.

I set out with two criteria for this class: watch none of the dvd lectures (it's an online class - all lectures are provided on a set of 6 dvds), and no use of the special features of the fancy calculator that was marked as a requirement for each homework, quiz and test. I even managed to go the first couple weeks without using any calculator, after which i grew tired of long division (not to mention square roots) and started using perl for nothing more complex than sqrt().

Now that i'm done with the class, i plan on watching the dvd lectures; maybe the material will start to make sense.



Taking closeups of one's own arm (these 3 are full frame) is a little tedious and best not done in a hurry; pardon the imperfections.

Trash Talkin'

That bandage cost me $150. Dawn, the woman who put it on me, was very nice and i recommend her bandaging to anyone. Hopefully she will one day be able to travel to Rome and see the original cause of the wound she was bandaging.

Mountains

We went to Colca Canyon, the second deepest canyon in the world. The deepest is a few hundred km away, Cotahuasi Canyon, but would take at least a day to get there, provided the road is actually passable. Colca Canyon is famous for its farmland views and the possibility of sighting the Andean Condor, one of the largest birds in the world. The drive from Lima to Chivay (in Colca Canyon) is rather nice: sandstorms, 1000m drops, winding roads with plenty of switchbacks, falling rocks, gutted dirt roads, lots of dust, steep climbs, views of altiplanos, vicuñas and the other andean dromedaries, ichu, etc, etc. Oh, supposedly the highest sand dune in the world is along that path, just outside of Nazca.

There's nothing like the air at 4000m. I'd like to own a hotel and bar up in Chivay, i bet it'll start doing very, very good business up there in a couple years.

Also close to Nazca (the place mainly famed for its lines, like the one on my arm) is a 1700 year old aqueduct, still in use. I got to crawl through part of it - it is too low to stand up in and very narrow, probably much like the tunnels the Viet Cong built during the Vietnam War. These Nazca were quite smart; one reason the aqueduct is still in use is that it uses redundant supplies of water: some coming from the closest river and some coming from the mountain springs. More redundancy is built in for the water to areate - the aqueduct itself runs underground (the area gets quite hot and dry), with entrances every few meters. These entrances are spiralled in different directions so that any way the wind blows, air will blow into the well and provide oxygen for the water.

Part II

It had been a while since i pissed off my mom, so i got a new tattoo today. If you have x-ray vision, you can see it here. It's opposite the other and (partially) reflects a different culture i was exposed to as a youth. Two or three more cultures to go before i get my own going on.