Family on Lifetime
Exciting news ... the film Josh directed, "Family", will be premiering on the Lifetime Movie Network on Saturday, Jan 27. Josh says: To my knowledge they will be airing the full frame (4:3) pan-scan version from crappy digibeta instead of HD, which is mildly painful, but hey – it's on the TEE-VEE!

  posted by John : 5:34 AM

 
Weekend in Caracas
My work-buddy Stu and I had a good weekend here. Saturday we could see clear skies over the mountain (El Avila), so we rode the gondola (El Teleferico) up to the top. A french company built the original, now-rusting, teleferico in 1956. The Austrians came to the rescue and constructed the ultra modern system that is in place today which opened in 1999. The silent tropical ski-lift took us over King-Kong like jungle terrain up to a height of 7,800 ft, with expansive vies of the city below. At the top we were rewearded with an equally great view of Carribean Sea, with a thumping latin beat booming from the ubiquitous sound system at the visitors center. We then walked the extremely eroded dirt road to the village of Galipan which is slightly down the slope toward the Carribean. After a few beer stops the fog came in and we decided it was time to face the exercise that awaited us and head back to the cable car station. There we enjoyed a fine fondue lunch before heading back down to city level.

Saturday night, a colleague from our project hosted a party for the contractors at his house. We were multiply treated to private Venezuelan cooking lessons of various corn-flour based staples; then to a full-on barbequed beef dinner created by the Argentinians on our project. They also chose the wine to compliment the meal. After the main course, yet another fondue of chocalate (the world's finest by all accounts is the El Rey brand of Venezuela), and more wine. I liked the Malbec the best.

Sunday started with a sleep-in and sleep-it-off morning. At breakfast I read in the newspaper that the Sabana Grande area, where we stayed during our first week here, had been radically changed and all the stall-vendors had been forced out. Stu went along with my desire to walk the two miles from our hotel to there. I love the opportunity of being a pedestrian that this city offers. Sure enough, all the hundreds of plastic tarped t-shirt and DVD pirate flea-market stalls are gone, replaced by strolling crowds and a few freeze-statue-type buskers. Also added is a huge police presence including the occasional machine-gun toting guard. There was a cheery and very middle class group marching up the boulevard in some form of celebration or protest -- I assume it was the former. If this is a result of a Chavez action, it is certainly a step in the right direction toward reclaiming what was once an acclaimed part of the city.

We proceeded on by taxi further into the "wrong-side" of town, to La Candelaria, where I'd done some recon on the excellent tasca restarants there. At El Granjero de Candelaria they put the Bears vs Saints game on TV, then fed us well. After that we moved on, with the help of a female police escort who walked us around the corner and down a block, to the nautical El Barco de Colón. There we had a plate of portuguese-style bread, hard-cheese, proscuito and olives (there must be a catchy name for this dish) and watched the first half of the Patriots vs Colts game.

The gods of software projects have been very kind to us indeed.

  posted by John : 7:24 PM

 
This is a test post from Google Docs , the online word processor which used to be called Writely until it was absorbed by the sponge that is Google.

  posted by John : 5:49 AM

 
on the road again
Back in Caracas. I'm getting very comfortable being here. Really wanted to stay on the metro line, and we were promised a hotel there, but we're back in the 1950s hotel. The Hotel Tamanaco used to be the swish place when it was built on many acres on what was the outskirts of town in the early 50s. Now its in the midst of the city, though this has remained a nice area. Went down to the gym yesterday morning. I could feel the ghost of Jack LaLanne in that windowless wood-floored space (Jack's still alive and making juice in the US, but his ghost was there anyway for some reason). Not feeling quite so ambitious today, but I do plan to exercise in the mornings at least a few days a week. I like the head-clearing feeling after running or cycling, even if its just a little while.

Last time at the Tamanaco I got my haircut, so this time I'd made plans to get fixed up again before going in to work. I went for the cut/shave combo. The haircut was good, but the shave was a wonderful experience. There were three hot towel applications, two complete shavings, a cold towel, clippings of runaway hairs everywhere - nose/ears/eyebrows, lotions followed by light waving of a towel for the cooling evaportive effect, and a nice powdering to finish it off. It was more than a half hour, and when it was done I felt like I'd just had a good nap it was so relaxing.

The third question I was asked when I walked into the office, after two "how was your New Year?"s, was what had I heard about the reclamation of Cantv (the telecom company I'm working for) by Chavez's government. Though the story was all over the news, it was pretty scant on details. Nobody knows what effect that might have on this project. Hopefully they keep on with it, and continue to pay us foreign workers.

  posted by John : 3:32 AM

 
Today's coincidental headlines...
U.S. News
 New York gas smell not dangerous
 Parts of Texas capital closed after dead birds found

Scary...

  posted by John : 11:00 AM