In the midst of oblivion

OK, the title is pretentious... but I'm enjoying a four-day extra-long weekend, courtesy of Argentina's Catholic heritage, and I haven't felt like writing, really. Things haven't changed much.

It rained again, and a few dozens of people are still waiting to get back to their flooded homes. It also rained north of here, where the situation is much worse. April tends to be rainy, unfortunately, so this emergency will probably carry on for some time.

Back here, I started jogging again. My right leg is definitely feeling funny, but not in a painful way. I'm doing my usual circuit along the north-central coast of the city (6 km total, with a pause in the middle) and I hope I'll regain by breath soon... The heat is much less than it was only a month ago, and the mosquitoes are slowly disappearing. We do have bugs — in fact, we're being visited by a species I'd never seen before:


This guy is a member of the same genus (Diptera) as the common mosquito, though it's technically not a mosquito but a fly. Its actual color (in daylight) is grey-greenish. The darker stripes are clearly visible, but only in the picture it's possible to see some faint plumes along the antennae. It doesn't bite. These things were so strange for us here that even the newspaper devoted a short article to them. They are Chironomidae or chironomids, aka non-biting midges.

On an unrelated note, there was some horrible police repression of a demonstration in Neuquén; a teacher participating in a peaceful protest demanding for a salary raise was shot with a tear gas capsule practically at point blank and died within hours. Neuquén is ruled by a rightist proponent of trigger-happiness who is (was?) also running for president. As significant as this is, it's all in the media, and it's not finished yet, so I'll wait a bit to comment on it.