In a pause

I'm having trouble connecting to the internet at home, due to a chronically failing telephone line, so I'm writing from the office and I'll have to keep it short. I'm working at the very place where the statistics of the influenza A epidemic for the south of Santa Fe are reported and analyzed, so you'll understand.

I really have no idea what's going on, except what everybody knows: the schools are closed for July, though other public places are so far deemed OK, and it seems the government might postpone the provincial primary election to be held next Sunday (July 5) for a month. Pregnant women will be given a couple of weeks off (with pay) until the peak of the flu epidemic passes. And there's a lot of paranoia around. It's tiring sometimes.

I haven't even caught a cold this winter (knock on wood), so I'll be back soon, I hope!

I have voted

I've just come back from my old primary school, where I voted. My DNI (Documento Nacional de Identidad) now has one more stamped-and-signed square near its back. Now to wait until evening...

Before the elections (III)

This is probably a breach of electoral law, but what the heck, these are littering the streets everywhere... This is my vote for tomorrow:

As you see, the ballot has two parts; on the left is the vote for the senators of the Progressive Front (whose major force is the Socialist Party, which rules Santa Fe Province since 2007 and Rosario since 1989), and on the right, the vote for the deputies (diputados, or what Americans would call Representatives). I'm mainly supporting Rubén Giustiniani for senator, and against the ghastly Carlos Reutemann. I don't care much about the deputies — on that department my vote is for the coalition rather than the candidates.

If I wanted to, I could vote for different parties, by manually cutting the ballots along the vertical dotted line; senators and deputies are formally separate elections after all. Or I could just vote for senator Giustiniani and leave the deputies' place blank (i.e. not placing any vote for deputies in the envelope I'll be given), but I feel it's important to strengthen the opposition in the Lower House.

I'll be voting at my old primary school, about four blocks from my house, probably just before noon as usual. Then we'll all have to wait until eight or nine in the evening to get the preliminary results. I'll blog about that as soon as I can.

I'm back!

Just a short note to let you know that I came back to Rosario from my vacations in Uruguay yesterday afternoon, and I'll be delivering my usual travel chronicle through this blog as soon as possible. For the moment you can see the pictures I'm uploading to Flickr at the set Vacaciones Uruguay 2009. It's good to be back!

Exit 2008...

'Tis the last day of 2008. One can't easily escape the temptation of the traditional year's end balance, so here it goes...

Overall, this has been a very good year. First of all, of course, love. I met Marisa in the last days of 2007, and a month later, when I went away on vacation with a couple of friends, I discovered I'd already grown used to her, and even as I had lots of fun and traveled through wonderful landscapes I couldn't help missing her. Nearly one year after that, I still feel her absense when we stay apart even for a few days. And so my quest for a place to live on my own also turned into a better kind of expectation — rather than getting away, getting together with the one I love.

It was also a good year on the work side. I didn't get a raise or a higher post or anything like that — if everything, I'm doing extra work for the same pay. But the new administration does things quite differently. Back then I was doing boring repetitive work, and almost completely pointless as well (the signing of tireless forms for the archives of dust, as Borges would say), while now I'm doing more of what I like, meeting new people, and being consulted on what I know. I was quite prepared to leave my safely stable, futile job last year; now I'm willing to wait until I get the monetary recognition I need.

This was a year for travel, too. I spent two-and-a-half weeks touring what I consider the most beautiful part of Argentina (so far), the desertic part of Mendoza and the forests and lake of southern Neuquén. Then I had my first try with Marisa (a week together, visiting Córdoba), in late March. In September we went to La Rioja for another week. And then, despite our conflicting schedules, we somehow managed to squeeze in an escapade to Victoria and another to Tigre. Now we're planning a trip to Uruguay on the first half of February. Always tight on cash, but ready to take any opportunity.

What else? So much! I was stranded in Villa María and survived. My office was moved and I actually got my own little space as "the computer guy". I had some of my photos of Rosario chosen for an exhibition. I sold a piece of software for good money. I resumed jogging and then stopped again. I sold a few pictures. I got scared shitless because of my liver's misbehaving and got well. I started a personal blog and a blog on religion and actually got some people to read them. I left Japanese class and regretted it a bit. From Marisa I learned not to set the alarm clock when I have no reason to wake up at a fixed time. I picked up some cooking from Marisa and her mother. I read a lot of books in English. I joined an atheist group and got my picture on a newspaper. I got some of my long-neglected teeth fixed. I bought gifts for a lot of people, and got many gifts myself. I acquired a few more white hairs. I kept my beard and my 5-year-old cell phone. I learned to let go of some cherished personal myths and hobbies.

Not much will change tonight at midnight, but even as we're all "work in progress", it's a special night. So everybody, have a nice year's end and a happy beginning for 2009!

Christmas at home

It's been a while since I last wrote, and I feel bad about that, given how often I used to post in earlier times. But such is the way of things.

The last year or so has been busy for me, mostly in the good sense (new girlfriend, new job routine, new places traveled to), but not spectacularly good for news (about the city, or the country or the world as a whole, for that matter). I seem to remember apologizing for a seemingly endless string of depressing political posts. I don't want to do that again.

Christmas season is about to end, thank Jeebus, and truth be told it doesn't seem like "the crisis" has hit that hard. Judging from the sheer volume of the throngs that squeezed along every inch of the downtown commercial streets last Monday (that's when I went gift-shopping myself), there's still lots of spare change in people's pockets for one last spending binge. The soft credits promised by the government have still failed to materialize (and seriously, nobody thinks they will, or at least it's highly doubtful they get past the nicest parts of Greater Buenos Aires) but retired people have got their extra 200 pesos, there'll be a similar supplement for minimum-wage workers and welfare benefits, and it seems the tendency to pay the aguinaldo before the holidays, instead of in January, has caught on.

As for me, I spent an unexpected amount buying little gifts for everyone in the family, which now includes Marisa's parents and her brother's family of three. Back in 2000, when I first got a stable job, and for more than a couple of years after that, I didn't earn enough for such luxuries as gifts, so now I love having the chance, although the act of going around and choosing the actual gifts is still stressful, being such a detail freak.

Since Marisa and I will each have dinner with our own families, and both driving yourself or getting a cab are virtually impossible on Christmas, we exchanged gifts days ago. I promised not to peep, so as to keep the surprise until tonight. There's no-one left at home that believes in Papá Noel (Santa Claus), and of course I don't believe anybody of divine origin was born on December 25, but one comes to appreciate the symbolic importance of waiting until midnight, as is the custom in Argentina, to open the shiny, bow-topped packages and peer inside to see what our loved ones thought we'd find nice or useful.

These days are exhausting, what with the summer heat and the crowded shopping malls and the explosion of red-and-green kitsch everywhere, and it's true that more people than usual feel depressed or lonely at this time of the year. In this sense I loathe Christmas. But maybe we should have more of it. It wouldn't be so special, but maybe one week as each season turns into the next, with less of a focus in overdoing (overspending, overeating, overdrinking) and more of simple expectation and celebration of our continued friendship. Our ancestors (no matter who they were exactly) had a developed awareness of seasonal change; why couldn't we? Imagine four short holiday seasons instead of a protracted one — better for the economy, for our digestive system, and for our inner peace.

Here's to a happy and peaceful Christmas, to all my readers. I'll see you again sooner than expected, I hope.

Image gallery

I've been busy revamping my website these days, which is why I haven't blogged here at all for a week. It's in Spanish, so that's also why I haven't blogged about it here. Anyway, I'm unveiling an image gallery in order to showcase my photos in a different way from that which Flickr offers. The system is not the best to be found, but I can control it some more. The idea is, I will continue sharing pictures of everything that strikes my fancy on Flickr, but I'll keep the more artistic photos for my gallery. I can't (so far) make a trade out of my photos, but this would be a first step towards establishing an online presence as a photographer with a portfolio.

The gallery can be accesed directly at pedeefe.com.ar/gallery2, or embedded into the website at pedeefe.com.ar/site/?q=gallery; the interface is practically the same. Go check it out and leave comments, critiques, or whatever.

Vacations!

I'm going on vacation! Tonight I'm boarding a bus with my girlfriend Marisa and heading for the province of La Rioja, in the northwest of Argentina. We're staying for a week in Chilecito, a town of about 30,000 in an artificial oasis near the center of the province, between two mountain ranges. Although it certainly looks like a lovely place and we'll tour the surroundings, checking out its vineyards and its abandoned mines high up in the sierras, our main goal is to see the marvelous geological formations of Talampaya and Ischigualasto, located south of Chilecito.

Talampaya is a national park; Ischigualasto, better known as Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley), is a provincial park and lies in the territory of the neighbouring San Juan Province. Both places are part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. They feature some weird geological patterns caused by erosion; Ischigualasto is also renowned for the presence of many, well-preserved ancient dinosaur fossils.

I may have time to leave a few scheduled posts ready for publication, but other than that, I don't think I'll be able to check this blog. I'm leaving comments open without moderation for registered users, in case you absolutely need to express yourself while I'm away. I'll be back, hopefully with good stories and many pictures, on Sunday, September 7.

My pictures of Rosario

Eight months ago (in November 2007) I had the good luck to sign up for a photography workshop organized by the Firma & Odilo Estévez Decorative Art Museum (I mentioned it in passing back then). The goal was twofold: to observe and discuss pictures of old-time downtown Rosario, and to do guided photo tours and take pictures of our own. Then you had the option of submitting pictures for selection, to be part of a joint exhibition. It was planned for April. It was delayed, of course, but the guys at the museum let us all know that they were working on it, and a few days ago I received an e-mail announcing that the exhibition will be held in August at the Center Municipal District Center (the name looks like a joke, but it's the District Center building for the Center District). My pictures are the ones above (click to enlarge).

That workshop and those pictures hold a special meaning to me. It's not just the first time somebody else selects some my pictures to be displayed somewhere. It's that, while on this workshop and while walking down those streets, I met Marisa and talked to her for the first time. Three of her own pictures will share the exhibition room with mine. And to think that we didn't know each other at all when we took them...

New blog in Spanish: Sin calma

I'm starting a yet another blog, mostly because I want to write in my own language, and there are a lot of things I'd like to write about which don't fit into D for Disorientation. So you should expect to see less personal and local content here. Sin calma (which translates as Restless) will get most of it, because I'll be writing for friends, acquaintances, people from Rosario, from Argentina, from the Spanish-speaking world, who'll be surely more familiar with the topics I'm writing about, and with my lexicon.

I still want to advertise what happens here to the whole world, but from now on I'll concentrate on major events (such as the development of the government-vs.-farmers crisis). Doubtless you've been seeing this trend lately.

If you read Spanish, go and read Sin calma. I'll be posting pictures more freely over there, too, so even if you don't understand the language, you'll still have eye candy. You're free to leave comments in English over there, or simply ask what it's all about, if you're curious.

Fieldwork

Today I spent a couple of hours doing fieldwork. My partner (whom I shall call B) and I went to survey the information flow, the computer equipment and the people who interact with it in one of the large public hospitals in Rosario. This is a job I'm prepared for but I'd never done it before, so I was looking forward to it. B and I are supposed to do this for all the major health centers in the city under provincial administration, but we're not getting real orders from anyone, so on our own we decided to start the survey and record the results, beginning with the hospital that is closest to our workplace.

We made a brief appearance there yesterday, and by the terrified looks we got from a couple of employees, it seems obvious that they think the new administration is out to plant spies among them, or worse, planning a general audit. In fact the audit has been quietly happening all this time. Previous administrations had a Supreme Leader take office and issue grandiose or inappropriate orders which might or might not be addressed to the proper person, and may or may not be physically complied with; this one sends out human probes who sit down, gently inquire about your activities and abilities, and then hand you a set of loose rules and leave you with something to do. That something is usually as great as it is vague, and (so far) comes with no funding and no immediate reward except your own sense of fulfillment. I didn't like it before. I'm not sure I like it now, when I think of things in the long run, but at least the painful feeling of doing stupid useless work for stupid useless people is gone.

B had to leave early so I was left with the hospital's IT people. They've developed a great system for the hospital, and (for a change) it seems the personnel uses it as they should. It's a pity those things can't be transferred automatically to a different place. The system runs on proprietary software, which is a problem, and requires robust equipment that most public health centers can't afford (or rather, that bureaucracy will never grant funds for), but the real problem lies in the people. So many are used to laziness and carelessness, and old habits die so hard...

I'm still here

I haven't posted anything here in a week, but I can assure you it didn't seem like that much. Somehow this week has passed like a breeze. I've been feeling a bit sick; I went to the doctor; I stayed home editing pictures; I started working on a software project plus website in the afternoon; I went to an art exhibition (works by León Ferrari; the link is to my coverage in Spanish for Alerta Religión); I paid a visit to my girlfriend's parents for dinner; I spent hours at the office developing a little reference system; I overnapped; my Internet connections (home and workplace) failed repeatedly. So that's why I didn't post.

That, and the fact that things haven't changed a great deal around me. Inflation keeps going on; the government continues to be desperately stupid; the farmers are back on the roads. We haven't had any more smoke from the islands, and fortunately we're outside the reach of the volcanic ash plume from Chile which is already hovering over Buenos Aires.

Given that my spare time is going to be drastically reduced, expect fewer posts in the near future. Don't give in to despair — I'm still here.

May Day and around

Like I said yesterday, May Day is like a Sunday over here, or it felt like that to me. So maybe it was appropriate for me to post pictures of churches! Of course, I only take pictures of churches from the outside, or else get inside only to snap a few shots.

Labour Day being like Sunday, it was only logical that it and the days before felt like weekend. I don't really have an entertainment schedule on weekdays, because I have to wake up very early to get to work in time, so I can't have a late dinner or stay up after, say, midnight. And I need siesta — a nap, sometimes an hour, an hour and a half, to fill in my daily 8-hour sleep quota.

Last Tuesday, however, I left the office and, feeling that going home would be a waste of a precious sunny afternoon, I went downtown to the Centre Català to visit a model ship exhibition (it was the last day). The lady in charge told me that I had to come after 5 PM. It was 1:30, so I crossed it off. In the meantime, though, I'd passed by a library and bought a book about the evolution of human food habits by Juan Luis Arsuaga, short, at a discounted price. Interesting reading, not dense at all. I have another one of Arsuaga's books, El collar del neandertal, a longer study of the Neandertals he and others studied in Atapuerca, a massive fossil reservoir in Spain. He writes simply, for the general public, yet showing no signs of struggling to popularize (or dumb down) the technical subjects.

After that I proceeded to the local seat of the government of Santa Fe, a massive building that takes up a whole block. In the past it served as a jail, as the police headquarters, and as an illegal detention center during the last dictatorship. Then the government took most of it, a part was set aside as a memorial museum, another section was turned into municipal offices, another one was turned into the new seat of the Natural Sciences Museum (the previous one burned down), and the huge central courtyard was turned into a public square (Plaza Cívica). There's a lot of space still unoccupied, or mostly unused.

I went there to visit a photojournalism exhibition — journalistic pictures taken in Argentina (and around) in 2006. It wasn't the last day to see them, but Wednesday was, and the visiting hours were really inconvenient. That's why Marisa missed it, and I went by myself at 2 PM, when everybody else was either having lunch or already taking a nap or working. It was a fairly large sample. It opened with a very significant picture of the recent past, the infamous shot of Alfredo Yabrán taken on the beach by José Luis Cabezas which probably cost the latter his life. The opening photograph for 2006 was a shot of Julio López facing a policeman, somewhere in court, during the trial of Miguel Etchecolatz. López disappeared, probably kidnapped by (former?) members of the Buenos Aires Provincial Police, the same organization that Etchecolatz used to command and that abducted and tortured López and hundreds of others back in the late 1970s.

The rest of the pictures were varied: a visual document of the ecological disaster that is the basin of the Riachuelo; scenes from the re-burial of Juan Domingo Perón when gangs of members of different unions attacked each other; candid pictures of famous idols/characters (Diego Maradona, Mirtha Legrand, Charly García); poor children washing car windows in Buenos Aires; people who make a living scavenging for food in a trash dump on a daily basis; Evo Morales taking office as president of Bolivia in traditional indigenous garb; Jorge Telerman celebrating something; a woman threatening to kill herself with a knife; penguins in Antarctica; a picture of the Payún Matru volcano in Malargüe, Mendoza, composed exactly the same as one I took last January... I must have been one hour in there. Then I walked around, went up to the third floor, and took more pictures.

In the end I got back home after 4 PM, ravenously hungry and terribly tired. It was too late for a nap. I had to wait till Wednesday for that, and then I could only lie down for an hour; then I met Marisa to go and see another photo exhibition, this time at the Bernardino Rivadavia Cultural Center. It was a very nice sample of black-and-white pictures by Peruvian photographers: study takes of young ladies, a few nudes, pictures of miners, a bishop, a nun, families in their homes, Machu Picchu, doctors, acrobats, funerals, carnival celebrations, indigenous women and men in the Andes, very young drafted soldiers.

I would've liked to see and work with the cameras of those times. The pictures were large but had a definition that digital cameras are attaining only now, and then only if you have the luck to find a good photography shop to print your pictures as they're supposed to be printed.

We topped off the "weekend" with a "Back to the Eighties" party in a disco that used to be in fashion for young teenagers when I was one. It was fun for me to hear all those international hits again, but we discovered we're not made for this. I've always been bothered by the overcrowded, smoke-filled, noise-saturated environment of popular discos, but this time Marisa and I felt it was too much, and our adventure ended soon... True, we'd had no suitable rest, but at 3:30 AM we were so tired we had to leave. A couple of years ago I would've been ashamed of myself if I left a party before it closed down, and furious if someone dared close it down before 5 AM. Sic transit...

Weekend miscellanea

Picture, web and blog updates...

After I posted a couple of portraits using a simulation of the film technique known as split toning, I was asked to write a tutorial, an idea I'd had for some time. So I went back to my website (which I'd neglected) and wrote this split toning tutorial for the GIMP (in Spanish). I need to expand it to cover other uses of split toning... and I need another tutorial for cross processing.

Last Saturday I went with the Rosarigasinos to the Flag Memorial. We took the elevator and went up to the top of the tower to take pictures of the city. It was just a while before sunset, and there was a noticeable amount of smoke from the island fires in the air, so I got interesting results.

I joined a couple of atheist groups on Flickr, which somehow I had overlooked all this time. How do you picture atheism? Well, while some groups emphasize criticism of religion (or blasphemy), there's one called "Atheists who love photographing churches" (exactly my niche!), and another one called "The Happy Atheist" where you're supposed to show positive, cheerful images — nothing offensive, especially to religion, and no proselytizing; just a celebration of (godless) life.

We had an interesting conversation/debate among several of the Rosarigasinos after the Flag Memorial session. When DrGEN comes we always end up talking about atheism and religion, and that day we'd had some harmless photo fun at the foot of the Memorial, which has a stone cross on a wall and the usual dedications to God and Mary and so on by some archbishop or general. That was in part why I looked for atheist groups on Flickr. Well, the discussion went along the lines of denouncing religion in the public sphere vs. tolerating the need for people to cling to their unsubstantiated beliefs, and it got rather heated, but Marisa and I had to leave early. We had a friend of mine's birthday party at his house in Funes.

Alerta Religión (my blog about the evils of religion and faith) is taking off slowly, with peaks every now and then. I'm at 10 daily visits on average today, which isn't much, but I've been found by the search engine spiders already, and I'm writing mostly for myself anyway.

On Sunday it rained like crazy, so most of the fires on the islands were finally extinguished and the smoke went away. It made for good photos, but it also caused traffic accidents. I started a group on Flickr to collect smoky pictures of the city, and some of the results were impressive. Check it out at Humo sobre Rosario ("Smoke over Rosario").

And that's it for today.

Weekend part 1: Visitors from Buenos Aires

It was a busy weekend. I signed up for Friday shodō (Japanese calligraphy) classes this year, and we began last week, so there I was at 7 PM, back at the old Japanese Association after my summer vacation and getting hisashiburi desu ne! ("it's been a while!") from everyone. You'll remember I decided not to keep on studying Japanese. I'm still firm on that, but I know I'm going to miss my gakkō. It's been four years and counting — you can't not get attached.

Just as we were beginning the class, I saw my first calligraphy teacher, Kyōko, just outside (I need to get a picture of her!). It was a huge surprise. She left for Japan in 2005 after two years volunteering in Argentina, but she made lots of friends, so she manages to visit every now and then, and now it seems she's going to stay and teach some Japanese.

After class I went to fetch Marisa and we took off for a friend of mine's birthday party at the Club Mitre (the place by the river, remember?). It was rather cool. We stayed longer than we'd planned. On Saturday morning we were supposed to be having a welcome breakfast for a couple of photographers visiting from Buenos Aires.

At 10 AM we were there with Claudio, another guy from the Rosarigasinos, waiting for our visitors to show up, when we got a call from one of them asking for directions. Fifteen minutes later, no sign of them, we called. They'd taken a wrong turn. Frantic exchanges ensued. They were using a GPS guidance system and it seems it was confused. Long story short, it was almost 11 AM by the time they were sitting before their coffee cups. Meet Slaff and SandroG...

Since the guys had to be somewhere else to have lunch at 1 PM, we could only walk them around for about an hour... They took a lot of shots of the river and the ships, and then we went down Oroño Boulevard, since they wanted to see old architecture. We only got as far as six blocks when their time ran out. They had some free time in the afternoon, so I hope they were able to see some more of Rosario, although in any case, as Sandro said, this surely wasn't the last time.

There was more to last weekend. The Japanese community was celebrating, and we were there to enjoy. Coming soon...

Shopping for languages

In case you read Spanish: did you hear about my newest blog, Alerta Religión? It's about the evils of religion and blind faith — seen as causes of intolerance, discrimination, and absurd suffering. Do pay a visit.

I feel like this year is really starting now. Summer's over — there are still hot afternoons but no more of those unbearably hot evenings, and almost always a breeze. Classes are starting, and soon I'll start mine as well.

This year (for the first time since 2004!) it won't be Japanese. I took the plunge and signed for Arabic classes last Friday. The Rosario Arabic School is a little house with an old-fashioned courtyard on Dorrego St., a comparatively quiet part of downtown, two blocks away from my old highschool. The head teacher is the one who founded the school back in 1945 — a respected member of her community, a talented translator, and probably a veritable fountain of history, though a bit hard of hearing.

To tell you the truth I'm not that enthusiastic about Arabic, but only a bit curious. When I started learning Japanese I didn't think about it, I only did it because it was a strange language and I liked how it sounded. As I progressed, I felt I could really learn Japanese, all of it, in time. Then I came to realize I couldn't. That wasn't a problem — I was satisfied with keeping myself at a level I could manage and continue practising and learning bit by bit. But the study schedule wouldn't let me do that, so I quit. Arabic I'm going to start with a different outlook, just checking to see if it goes well with me and perfectly aware that I will drop it the very moment it becomes a chore. It's not like I'm doing it to fill my CV.

I need to call my Japanese school to see when calligraphy classes begin, since they're independent of the rest and I intend to keep practising it, at least until Watanabe-sensei returns to Japan in July (and speaking to sensei and her daughter in class will be language practice, too — something to keep me from forgetting spoken Japanese for a while). And I'll have to check if the Arabic school also offers calligraphy courses. I once read somewhere that Muslims believe calligraphy is an art that God Himself gave us. I don't believe in any gods, but that's got to mean something.

And those are my plans for the end of March. In the meantime, Easter weekend is coming. I'll be leaving on Wednesday night for Córdoba, and back home by Tuesday night the next week. After that it's going to be work and study, no vacations or escapades, for a long time...

A wedding (and no funeral)

Susana and Facundo, two of the members of my photographers' group (the Rosarigasinos), got married last Saturday. They've basically lived together for ages, but they surely felt this was a major (even if symbolical) step. Wanting only a small ceremonial gathering where all their relatives and friends could attend, they got married in a small church in their neighbourhood, with a minimum of fancy arrangements.

From what I could gather, both would've rather skipped the church altogether, but unfortunately there's not any other comparable single place where you can get together all the people you love. So we all had to sit down and listen to the priest babble about Jesus, the Virgin Mary, the Christian duties of husband and wife, and the absolute requirement for them to bring forth as much Catholic offspring as possible.

I went around the temple taking pictures (the newlyweds, of course, didn't even think of hiring a photographer — they had about a dozen of them doing that work eagerly for free), so I avoided listening to most of the priest's patter. Marisa, who's no more a believer than I am, cried a little (this she had announced before the ceremony as being very likely to happen) and chose to grab a few pictures from her pew, since her camera is not that good to get indoor shots without the insidious flash, and the altar was already crowded. After that we hugged and kissed the newlyweds, and some threw rice at them as tradition demands. (The lady who swept the entrance of the church wasn't happy — Marisa got scolded for her fervorous rice-showering.)

After church we proceeded to Parque Independencia, which has some nice landscaping — a typical place for photo sessions of newlywed couples and quinceañeras, with an artificial lake, a white bridge, colourful trees, a row of columns, and a flower calendar (updated every day by the park's gardeners). The day was gray, with raindrops falling here and there as if ashamed of their solitariness.

Photo advice: a cloudy sky is good for this kind of event photography, because you usually have diffuse lighting coming from all angles, instead of the warmer but harsh light that comes from an unmitigated sun. Strong point-like light sources (e.g. the sun, but also a flash in the darkness) give faces a sharper look, with darker shadows and possibly blown-out highlights. You usually don't want that when you're doing portraits or weddings. The only thing you have to mind in cloudy days is the light coming from the background. You can (and probably should) use fill-in flash to compensate. That is, force your camera to use the flash even it says the amount of light is enough, so that the flash "fills in" the parts of the subject that lie in the shadow. Combine this with a "cloudy day" white balance, and you're set — better than sunlight.

Alerta Religión

I've just opened a new blog in Spanish, Alerta Religión, to deal with religion-related news of the kind I mentioned last Friday on my first post of Religion Watch.

The format is unlikely to stay the same, mainly because my online news sources for this are in Spanish, so I can just direct Alerta's Spanish-speaking readership there, while here I must at least translate and explain a bit more.

Some search engine bait... Alerta Religión: Recolectando entre las noticias diarias los resultados de la intolerancia y de la fe sin razón. Para los que no entienden cómo personas normales, sanas, se vuelven idiotas insensatos cuando algo se cruza con su religión.

Vacations: Walking with people

I realize I've so far written more about the landscape and the accomodation than about people. That's not right, since I met a lot of very nice people in the way. Marita and Aldo in Junín de los Andes, of course; but also Ana behind the counter in Malargüe's hostel, who got us one more day of stay by juggling with reservations; a certain backpacker and his girlfriend in Lake Huechulafquen, who gave me useful pointers and pleasurable conversation after a whole day of walking alone; a couple of guys from Buenos Aires, another couple of guys from somewhere else; a biologist from Córdoba named Gonzalo who taught me a couple of things about those curious birds I was trying to get pictures of; a girl from Quilmes (Carina) who pushed my lazy ass around in San Martín de los Andes and got me to see the Mirador Arrayán and Chapelco, as well as handing me the pamphlet that led me to my last hostel; Patricia, a girl from Spain, residing in Ireland, who must be still traveling around South America after three months away from home; a guy named Raúl and a girl named Josefina in San Martín de los Andes, who walked with me to Mirador Bandurrias on my last day there; Esteban, a guy from San Lorenzo (a mere 20 km from Rosario) who made and cooked pizza and empanadas from the basic ingredients, just for fun, while in the hostel; and others that I can't remember or whose names I can't recall.

I need to say this, because otherwise I might give the impression that it's OK for me to walk around shooting pictures and do nothing else. But the novelty of marvelous sceneries eventually wears off, and in the end it's often more satisfying to come back to wherever you're staying and have something for dinner while chatting about your adventures with people who may not have been there, and trying to describe what you saw to them, or with others who were there before and don't mind comparing notes, so to speak. Even better if you join others, or get others to join. Conversation for the time being, contacts for the future, at the very least; and the joy of sharing those things you (re)discover when you're on a trip.

I had so much fun during this trip. I also found myself, as they say, a couple of times — and as usual it wasn't a pleasant finding, but one always learns from these.

On Wednesday, January 23, I said goodbye to the people at Ladera Norte, and took a cab to the bus terminal. With me went Esteban ("Esteban the Cook"), who by sheer coincidence had not only bought his return ticket on the same day and the same bus as me, but also on a seat on the same row as mine, and along came Josefina, one of my trekking pals of the previous day, who had to exchange a ticket and wanted to wave us bye-bye in person. We departed San Martín de los Andes at 1:45 PM.

I slept long stretches, stared at the changing landscape, ate cookies, drank water, read and re-read Susan Sontag's On Photography (that Marisa had lent me), chatted with Esteban when we were both awake, got off the bus on every stop to stretch my legs. The trip to Rosario lasted almost 25 hours. When the bus entered my home city, I realised I'd missed it. At the same time, I saw it briefly as it was under the summer sun — large, sprawling, sun-scorched concrete; dirty sidewalks, very green trees; kids on wooden carts pulled by horses, sweaty joggers along the avenues. I stepped down from the bus, spent. It was asphyxiatingly hot, not nearly as hot as it had been while I was away, they told me later. I took a bus home. I felt weak, a bit sick. Maybe it was the heat, humidity, air pressure. I slept and slept, even though I'd slept maybe 16 of the last 24 hours.

I think I came back, truly, a week later.

Translating Borges

This should be directed to a new blog, but I already have too many, so it stays here. It's an English translation of the poem Las causas ("The Causes"), by Jorge Luis Borges, who is one of the very few writers whose poetry I can read all the time, and (I believe) the only poet to have earned his own space in my library. Let it serve as a break between the latest politics-burdened posts and the ones to come, and maybe as incitement for one more person to start reading Borges.

The poem is almost completely composed of literary/historical references, both external and internal to Borges' own work. If you don't know what something means, just note it down and check it out later.

The translation is entirely mine, though it was based on one I found in the net, which I believe to be also a self-made translation, in this case by someone whose first language is English (there's a telling mistake in the next-to-last line).

The Causes
by Jorge Luis Borges

The sunsets and generations.
The days and none was the first.
The coolness of water in Adam's
throat. Orderly Paradise.
The eye deciphering the dark.
The love of wolves at dawn.
The word. The hexameter. The mirror.
The Tower of Babel and pride.
The moon that Chaldeans gazed at.
The innumerable sands of the Ganges.
Chuang-Tzu and the butterfly that dreams him.
The golden apples on the islands.
The steps in the wandering labyrinth.
Penelope's infinite tapestry.
The Stoics' circular time.
The coin in the dead man's mouth.
The weight of the sword on the scale.
Each drop of water in the clepsydra.
The eagles, the auspicious days, the legions.
Caesar on the morning of Pharsalia.
The shadow of the crosses over the earth.
The chess and algebra of the Persian.
The footprints of long migrations.
The conquest of kingdoms by the sword.
The relentless compass. The open sea.
The clock's echo in memory.
The king beheaded by the ax.
The incalculable dust which was armies.
The nightingale's voice in Denmark.
The calligrapher's meticulous line.
The face of the suicidal one in the mirror.
The gambler's card. Greedy gold.
The shapes of a cloud in the desert.
Every arabesque in the kaleidoscope.
Each regret and each tear.
All those things were necessary
so that our hands would meet.