Website incognito

My website (the one I'm not officially naming here) is up, and though still empty, some sections are already open and being filled in with actual content. Initially, I tried a CMS (content manager system) to organize it all in a standardized fashion with a minimum of coding, but I'm an old-fashioned geek and I missed the freedom that comes with writing your own HTML. Throw in a lot of PHP (chaotically written and rewritten), and I'm in heaven, although (or because?) it all takes four times longer to get done. But the result is exactly as I want, not as the programmers of PHP-Nuke, Joomla! or XOOPS would feel like.

As I said before, I'm trying to stay anonymous for a while, and pointing you directly to the site would defeat the purpose, but you could try some things to find it, such as — I don't know — joining my initials with hyphens, to begin with. (OK, that was silly, but let me play my little game.)

The weather's awful again, so I don't think I'll be able to go jogging this week. Argh! I was about to go yesterday, because at noon the sun had come out; I took a nap and when I woke up it looked like the sky was going to fall down. And I felt more tired than before the nap, though that must've had to do with the atmospheric pressure and the heat. So I stayed, and then it didn't rain at all. Today the sky looks even scarier, but I think I'm going to try a short run (I foresee that I will get soaked and catch a cold).

No luck for the photographer, either. With the website taking up my time, and the weather so menacing, I haven't been out there with the camera, seriously, for a week. Last Sunday I was invited to go on a photo safari to the south of the city, but I went out the night before and that killed the plan. I'm told it went very well. There's a whole sector of the city that I don't know — with old mansions surviving along certain avenues, dating back from better times (when in Rosario la Zona Sur wasn't yet a synonym of No-Man's-Land), and a huge park on the municipal border. Well, that won't go anywhere anytime soon.

This blog will resume its usual boring news mode in a few days. Be patient!

My news

If you're wondering why I haven't been blogging lately, the answer is: I've been doing other things. First of all, and most importantly, I got myself a website (a real, personal website, with a domain name and all). It's still quite empty, and I'm not revealing here where it is, since I'm trying to keep a low profile on that. I'll be dealing with sensitive topics (religion, politics — the kind of thing that ruins dinner tables when brought up) and I don't want to be immediately associated to them. You might say this is already what I'm doing here, but this is just a small blog hosted by a free provider, in a language that effectively isolates me from my everyday environment. My bosses and most of my acquaintances don't read this blog.

I've wanted a website for some time, and I wasn't really doing anything about it because I was busy with my blogs, and because I thought it would be expensive. Not prohibitively expensive, but then I'm not going to make money out of it. However, I was under a wrong impression. Web hosting, today, is available at a ridiculously low cost and with reasonable quality even in Argentina. And if you're content with a .com.ar domain, there are no additional costs.

Anyone with a minimum of imagination will be able to guess my identity from my website. Just going to nic.ar should suffice. (If you can't pick up that hint, well...)

Another reason why I haven't blogged as of late is that I started jogging again. The weather has been warm and wet, not a pleasure, but better than the cold, for me. So several afternoons I could've used for blogging were spent on jogging and stretching. I don't live really close to any suitable jogging circuits, so I have to spend some time going to and returning from it.

And finally, as I promised in my last post, I don't want to bore my readers to death with more politics, and since politics is all over the news these days... I'll do a summary of that soon.

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.

Joggin'

One of my jogging buddies dropped off for more than a week as he suffered and recovered (he's still recovering, in fact) from an intestinal infection (nasty stuff — I'd never seen such a big guy forced to dine on just two cereal bars)... and there are only two of us left now, so we changed the route to better suit our comfort. The path that went along the coast around the city center was closer to poor Mr. Quick Guts' home, which we used as a base; now that's he's not with us (temporarily) we've moved to the north.

The first time we jogged by a recently opened avenue that communicates the northwest part of Rosario (including my neighbourhood) diagonally with the center-north coast of the river, bordering the (also relatively new) Scalabrini Ortiz Park, and then we continued north along the Costanera up to the Contemporary Art Museum (MACRo), a simple structure built on former grain silos painted in several hues of blue, pink and purple. A lot of people go jogging or take a stroll for sport, or for fun, or walk the dog, in this circuit.

The next time we started directly at the coast and went past the MACRo until the area near the old Rosario Central train station and the Parque España. This was all abandoned railway and port facilities a couple of decades ago, but the station and its annexes have been refurbished, turned into exhibition rooms, museums, a children's entertainment center, and a Municipal District Center. The park has a huge parking lot, statues of famous musicians, a promenade, a private school and a culture center; it was all sponsored by the Spanish government. A couple of years ago part of the paved elevated shore broke and sank into the river, so a wide strip of the park is closed off pending full repairs (which will cost gobs of money — the national government promised it'll pay, and we're still waiting).

Finally, yesterday we went jogging again, and this time I chose the place: the coastal circuit starting at the Leandro N. Alem Park, near the Gigante de Arroyito (Rosario Central's football stadium).


This time there were really crowds — lots of younglings and a miscellanea of young couples holding hands, veteran athletes, older guys and girls trying to recatch their health, a few groups of teenagers and 20-somethings training (football semi-pros?), some running around, others stretching in the grass. Further north we entered Alberdi and passed by a couple of hip bars, a stylish gym next to a disco that I used to attend, and a few nautical clubs. The river was not crowded, maybe because the sun was already setting and the wind was considerable; in better conditions the wide Paraná is dotted by kayaks, sailboats, windsurf tables, jet-skis, and the occasional yacht, sometimes watched from above by gliders.

We stopped at the Bajada Puccio (the place where Puccio Avenue goes down to meet the Costanera, and the focal point of young summer fun in Rosario), caught our breath, stretched a bit, then went back jogging to the park, and then a bit more around the Gigante stadium. Fortunately for us, it hasn't been terribly hot lately; before the sun sets, a cool breeze blows from the river.

It's still difficult for me to keep a suitable jogging pace. I paused and walked in mid-way for about a block's distance, half because my legs were tired, half because I had no breath left. In general, for someone as un-athletic as me, I'd say that's perfectly OK. As a plus, my legs don't hurt at all, and I'm not excessively tired — it seems it's more a problem of resistance and metabolism than actual physical inability. The only "downside" is that I feel ravenously hungry all the time since I started the gym+jogging routine. That's certainly not a problem for me!

Getting physical

As part of my personal remake, as I told you already, I decided to counter my forceful sedentary habits (6 hours a day before a computer at the office, and maybe 1 or 2 more hours at home) with physical activity. It's a real pain. I'm too old for this, I've never done any sports consistently, and my body is plainly not made for that. I did a fair amount of workout at the gym more than a year ago for many months, with interesting but not spectacular results. I have no gym buddy to keep me from staying home when I should be sweating.

Anyway, I did start the gym (I'm in constant pain!) and decided to go jogging with two friends of mine who also go to another gym every other day. Now these are people who've had training and consistent physical activity at some point in their lives, and they're younger than me, so obviously I can't follow them for long. Fortunately we're friends enough that I can tell them "don't even think of slowing down because of me" and get "we for sure won't!" for an answer, no offence taken. We're doing a short course starting at number 0 of Pellegrini Avenue, going down to the south-eastern tip of the city center, then left (north and north-west) following the curve of the riverside Belgrano Avenue, and ending right in front of the National Flag Memorial. We're supposed to walk then, but yesterday the guys decided they'd try jogging our return as well. So far I've joined the party twice, on Tuesday and Thursday, and that's it for the week.


If I can't go jogging I'll be doing a slightly different aerobic exercise by using my bicycle. I tried going from home to the Japanese Association at a slow relaxed rhythm; it took me 25 minutes, probably more than it should, but considering my state and the horrible traffic, it was excellent; I didn't stop once except at the traffic lights, and then I returned home immediately without resting in about the same time. Moreover, 25 minutes is what it takes me by bus to go Japanese school, if I count an average of 5 minutes waiting at the bus stop. Therefore I think I'm going to use the bike for that when classes resume in March.

Security is a concern; people on bicycles are easy targets for opportunist thieves, and I have to cross a raised railway line surrounded by a small villa miseria. I don't think this will be a problem, though; I'm more worried about my composure when I enter class all sweaty and with a messy hair. Anyway, this can help my health and save money, so I'll make the effort to train during February.

All in all it's clear I can't set my goals too high, or set goals at all, in the manner that other people train to achieve ever longer distances. My goal is to stop the deterioration that is sure to happen at an accelerated pace if I'm sitting at the office, travelling in buses and at home for 10 hours a day. Any kind of physical exercise is appropriate for that... I only need to achieve a balance.