My week is a donut.

29Oct09

Sometimes, mom and I enjoy bagels and caffeine before work. It’s never a consistent day of the week, because neither of us can handle routine very well.

It’s funny how different people view abstract things. And it’s a lot easier if you’re able to attach it to some kind of visual. Much like dreams, you can’t really portray to others what you’re seeing in your mind without using words and images that we can associate with physical things in our real world. The concept of time is much like this as well.

My mom is a mathematician. She sees her weeks like a row of five boxes with two boxes on top. All of the boxes are the same size, but somehow they all perfectly align. There is no color associated with any of these boxes, not even black and white. As she was describing this, I imagined a plastic pill box thing.

My week is a donut. I think that our days are visualized in much the same way, however I used more of a donut shape to describe it. It’s kind of ellipses-like, but as I move through the week, the camera angle changes. Very dynamic, as if I’m in the center of the donut (not the hole!) as it goes around. Though sometimes I can see it from the outside when I’m looking at the week as a whole, if I’m trying to plan something or figure out what’s going on. Somehow, Google Calendars has probably affected this because I do have colors attached with various days and events. There are also lights and darks, sometimes varying with my mood. Either way, they both hold pills.

Our view of months are a lot more similar, both are in ellipses with different colors associated with the seasons. Perhaps the ellipses changes with the sun’s orbits, because there are definite places where it is more or less stretched out. Does everyone visualize time similarly? Or is it just because I’ve learned most of my concept of time from my mom?

Back to routine and circles. The concept of time for me is arbitrary. I don’t go to work every day from 9-5, salsa classes at 7pm every Tuesday and Thursday, or complain if it’s Monday or Friday. This system does not work. I don’t know or care if it is October, Wednesday, or 2:36pm, unless I’m trying to connect with someone else and their concept of time. It is a standardized system, but that’s not how I structure my day. I get done what needs to get done, work as much or as little as necessary, no matter what day or time it is. I think I’m okay with that. Just don’t be upset if I don’t know the time.

I am a thumb, sitting on the nail.
The world is a hand, and most structures that you look at will fit within this system.
It’s okay that I don’t go into further detail with this right now.
It is also okay that I delayed work for three hours this morning to enjoy a bagel and caffeine with my mother.
The Tao of Granny prevails.


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Yo ho, yo ho.

16Oct09

October! The most wonderful month of the year. Though I can only speak for the midwest in saying that, since we have been graciously blessed with pumpkin patches, changing colors, and premature frostbite.

June. Another phenomenal month. The onset of summer vacation for students, a popular month for weddings (which really means cake), and celebrating people whose parents must have enjoyed September at least once.

So what happens between June and October? Plenty of things. The weather is warm, the spirits are high, the work is aplenty. In my life, here are just a few highlights:

Started working for Donna Cox, with the eDream Institute. AJ and I have enjoyed baking for our Monday afternoon staff meetings, and learning all about stereoscopic visualization.

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Attended the Siggraph Conference 2009. Somehow managed to finagle not just one but two float tickets, a spot on the PSCC SCSC (uhh… basically liason between students and professionals), hung out with some really talented people, and tried our fair share of cajun cookin’ and beignets.

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Made a second trip to South America, this time spending a couple weeks in Brazil. Hang gliding was among the less risky activities we tried. Among the more risky, probably included the overall driving experience between cities, enticing random Brazilian locals with our non-portuguese spanglish, and generally the entire stay in Rio.
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On the CUDO front, we’ve been gaining momentum and started off the fall with a bang. Helped as the advertising liason for an all day design-a-thon to benefit the Wesley Evening Food Pantry. They are now fully equipped with a hearty set of brochures, website, logo, and materials. Co-coordinated Champaign-Urbana’s very first Pecha Kucha, with a miraculous 350+ turnout and an insane amount of press coverage. Especially for something that is impossible to pronounce.

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Built a website, manage a mongologue. Worked on a video for the Morrill Act Land Grant Conference, tried my hand at architecture with a project for MTD, helped behind the scenes for Wolfram | Alpha’s Homework Day, and just for fun designed a logo and a giant check.

I love conferences. They really just make me sing with glee. Aside from the Siggraph and Wolfram’s upcoming user conference next week, I’ve also attended the UIUC College of Media’s Sandage Symposium, and hung out with some fellow inspirational geeky type at the ACM Reflections | Projections conference.

Though it’s been busy, there have also been some scattered road trips. Like visiting my lil bro in Mizzou, and then driving straight to Louisiana to help Kerry move in. Not to mention trips to Chicago to see a couple of Bob’s Cali friends who are studying beer brewing. Though Chicago is cool, they also were able to make it down to Champaign to see RJD2 with me at Pygmalion. On the other concert front, I saw No Doubt in Chicago, and the National at Ellnora.

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Oh. Did I mention how I officially graduated? Because I did. And I’ve got two diplomas to prove it.

Hope I didn’t leave anything out in my scattered attempt at summarizing the last few months.


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Day 21, Sunday

21Jun09

We caught a cab at 4am, groggy and depressed to leave. From Lima to Miami to Chicago, we slept and reminisced most of the way back.

As one adventure passes, surely another is quick to come.


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Day 20, Saturday

20Jun09

Danny woke us up at 5am to catch our flight. I was feeling a bit better, and luckily was able to move. Danny drove us and Javier to the airport, so we could fly back to Lima. We found a nice hotel in the middle of the city, and napped on a bed bigger than a hummer.

We hung out at Plaza Mayor, saw a few sites with sweet architecture, and hung out at another people-watching park. We had a late lunch, and headed over to the movie theater and paid a whopping $6 for 2 tickets and a large popcorn. “Motor y Motivo”, was sort of like Spice World meets Peruvian Jonas Brothers with a Gypsy King vibe.


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Day 19, Friday

19Jun09

I spent the entire night miserably hugging the throne.

At first, we weren’t sure what exactly caused this intestinal revolution, but it wasn’t pretty. Turned out it was just food poison from an undercooked burger the night before. Blast.

At least this was the end of our journey and had nothing pressing to see, aside from the Cuzco markets. The room was freezing, so I spent the entire day laying on the couch in the hostel lobby. As usual, I was probably quite a confusing site for all who passed by, including the people who worked there. The entire day was spent attempting to finish a piece of bread.


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Day 18, Tuesday

18Jun09

Earliest morning by far, 4am wake up call and were in line for the buses to Machu Picchu by 5am. We were pretty far back in line, but managed to be within the first 150 people, about the 5th out of 12 or so buses. The bus ride was comparable to Lombard Street times a hundred. When we arrived, the line wasn’t incredibly long, but we ran as fast as we could through the park, careful not to stop and get distracted by the marvelous views. We cut it pretty close, but managed to get 2 out of 400 tickets to Waynapicchu.

We enjoyed a gorgeous sunrise over the sun temple, just days before the summer solstice (which is a huge deal, and calls for week-long parties and Incan magic). We met up with another all-spanish tour, and learned about all of the importances within the ruins. A lot of it seemed to be anthropological speculation, and nobody really knows what it was originally called by the Incans, although I suppose that’s why it’s a “wonder” of the world.

After our crash course in Incan history, we wandered around and spent way too much time stalking the llamas. We wandered until it was time to run off to Waynapicchu. It was a steep climb, but we did it in a swift 25 minutes. Unfortunately, that was nothing compared to the 5-10 minutes it took the Incans to scale the slopes. They must have had super long legs. I think I would have liked the Incans. Up we climbed, and wandered all over the boulders, valleys, peaks, and more ruins. We spent a significant amount of time just pondering our insignificance in the world.

When we finally found our way back down, it was pretty late in the afternoon and we were exhausted. We headed back down via bus to Aguas, and ate an insane amount of chinese food and powerade. Not long after, we hopped the train and headed back to Cuzco. It was pretty late, and all we could find was street cheeseburgers to sustain ourselves. The ride back didn’t do much for our stomachs, so we passed out pretty quickly.


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Day 17, Wednesday

17Jun09

We spent the morning packing all of our stuff up and running back and forth between eating our breakfast, getting ready for our journey to Aguas Calientes: the land of Machu Picchu! Danny arranged for us to have a van drive us through Ollentayambo, with a few tourists from the last couple days, Javier from Costa Rica and another Ecuadorian family who took a particular liking to us. We stopped at a few places before arriving at the train station to see some gorgeous vistas.

We boarded the train, and grabbed some corn and cheese from an old woman passing by outside the window of the train. After an hour of train, we finally arrived at Aguas Calientes. We explored around, and found that it was quite a touristy place. Found a nice little pizza place (seems to be a trend, but it was soothing to our tummies… along with my addiction to mate de coca) and shared a few hearty giggles with their mascot parrot, Polly.

We found that there wasn’t much to do in the town besides shop and wander around, so we spent the evening playing jenga and chess over pisco sours, guacamole, and alpaca kebabs.


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Day 16, Tuesday

16Jun09

Today’s tour was of the sacred valley. A lot of the same people from our tour yesterday were there again today. We began by bargaining our way through the markets, leaving with significantly more swag and empty pockets. We chatted up some musicians and found our way to a decent bargain for charangos. The cheapest non-decorative one was over our budget, although we managed to talk him down to all of the money we had in our possession.

We toured all around the gorgeous Sacred Valley, climbing way too many stairs. We stopped through Pisaq, where we saw and climbed through agricultural “steps” and hiked all over the ruins. Apparently it is illegal to grow anything there anymore, due to preservation and climate issues. Next, we stopped at Ollentayambo, where we had a nice 35 minute hike to the top of a mountain. From here, we could see the entire Sacred Valley in all it’s glory. We stopped at a traditional place for lunch, and filled ourselves with 3 helpings from the buffet, and as always— chocolate cake. On the way home, we stopped at Chincheros, where we learned how alpaca wool was woven into blankets, scarves, wallets, etc. We even got to see a guinea pig farm, a Peruvian delicacy.

When we got back to the hostel, we were attempting to choose a place to eat from our Lonely Planet book, however got sidetracked by Cumbia music playing in the dining room. The tour guides were having a fiesta! On our way out, we were invited to stick around and party with them, and showed them how we dance their dance in America. Nevertheless, they were impressed and kept insisting that we drink more Cusqueña.


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Day 15, Monday

15Jun09

5:30am flight to Cuzco. Blah.

The Lima airport is such a strange place. It appears fairly well organized and designed, until you actually have to interact with the whole process. A lot of inefficiencies, the most annoying including an “airport tax” that isn’t simply added onto your ticket. You have to actually stand in another line, pay X amount of cash (depending on where you’re going and who you are), and if you don’t pay it, you can’t get through to your flight. I still don’t understand why this isn’t just a flat fee that’s added on to your ticket.

The view on the flight was spectacular, as we flew over snow-capped mountains and gorgeous landscapes.

The first person we met at the airport was a travel agent / tour guide / hotel representative, Danny. He greeted us with a friendly smile and talked us into accepting his travel package for the next few days. He drove us to the hostel in his car, which he was very proud of, and sold us on a couple travel packages, including a city tour, sacred valley tour, and Machu Picchu tour.

Our room was extremely cold, so we walked around for a bit, feeling a little woozy from the altitude. The cafe we stopped at for lunch didn’t help much either. I don’t particularly understand how a restaurant can function with a bathroom that doesn’t have running water, toilet paper, soap, or lights. hrmph.

At 2pm, we met up with Danny for the City Tour. He took us to the main plaza and we joined a large tour bus full of international spanish speaking people. Our guide, Jackie, led the way.

First, we went to the church, Quri Kancha, which housed the temple of the sun, as well as a few other Incan temple remains. Despite the fact that the Spanish had colonized the area and built on top of these ancient buildings, it was the Incan walls that withstood thousands of years of earthquakes, due to their advanced earthquake-proof building techniques.

Afterwards, we went to Saqsahuaman (aka “sexy woman”), which was another magnificent set of stone temples. There is a lot of symbolism in Incan architecture, including influences from their natural “gods” such as lightning, condors, pumas, and snakes. We saw a sacrificial alter where they slaughtered animals, virgin women, and children of high class families.

To round off the trip, we went to the fountain of youth, the highest point on our journey of 3765m (appx 12,352 feet). Carl chugged an entire bottle of coke so we could collect some of the water to drink and rub on our faces. Apparently the water is filled with iron, and is supposed to keep your face young forever (To prove this, Jackie admitted that she was actually 70 years old). The ancient Incan kings used to bathe in this every day, and the special thing about the water flow was that no matter how high or low the water level got, the flow was always constant.

A couple of kids got sick on the bus, which was pretty disgusting, especially when we were trying to chow down tamales. On our way back, we stopped at a factory that supplies a lot of the markets with alpaca goodies.

On our way home to the hostel, stopped for a nice pizza and ice cream dinner. Not too traditional, but apparently you’re not supposed to eat meat when adjusting to the altitude.


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Day 14, Sunday

14Jun09

Carl’s birthday!

After a nice, cheap breakfast, we walked around and found ourselves some plane tickets to Lima and Cuzco. It took us about 3 trips to various ATMs to get enough cash, (seven curses to credit limits and places that don’t take cards).

Apparently there was a massive church festival in the middle of the town, so we saw a ton of little groups working on these religious art pieces in the street. It looked like sidewalk chalk, made with colorful wood chips, but smelled like moldy play-doh.

We enjoyed the best birthday lunch ever of empanadas, apple pie, chocolate cake and Inca Kola. Huge lunch for under $5. Despite all the ATM drama, I am in love with South America :) After lunch, we enjoyed a most relaxing afternoon in the park, just people watching and wandering through the street paintings. At one point, a local family sat down awkwardly close on our park bench and struck up conversation. Carlos, a police officer in town, told us all about Piura and how the only “tourists” in their town are mostly from Peace Corps. Friendly people.

We caught our taxi man to the airport and flew to Lima.


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