I want to summarize shortly what I did during the past few days here in Peru. Christmas away from home is of course something special. New Year as well. But due to the wonder that’s called Skype I was actually able to communicate almost as well as if I was in Switzerland. So on the 24th of December I called some of my relatives. To say they were surprised would be an understatement. My grandparents are still used to the prohibitive high prices from only a few years ago. For example before leaving for Japan (for six months in 2003 and 2004), my dear coworkers at namics gave me 300 CHF worth of phone cards. I don’t think I phoned for much more than three hours with that budget. I think Skype was just coming up then (I remember faintly that one of the missionaries in Hokkaido was using it), but back then SkypeOut was not yet available. So my family and friends in Switzerland would have had to install the Skype client and purchase and connect quite some audio technology. This is getting easier but still a lot more difficult than just picking up the phone (which is almost always installed by a skilled electrician). So this time I set up my mum on Skype but also knew that I’d be able to make use of SkypeOut for ridiculously cheap prices. So, after that praise (which probably could be applied to other VoIP-companies as well, but I just happen to use Skype) let me finally get back to my topic. The evening of the 24th I spent with a Peruvian/Swiss family in Lima. We ate turkey, had some more Panetone (as if I had not already had enough in December 2005) and watched the firework over Lima. The 25th I invited some friends from church and work to eat a cheese fondue. At the Wong supermarket near my house I found instant Gerber fondue that I just had to heat before eating. From the before-mentioned family I borrowed the Rechaud, the obligatory utensil in every Swiss kitchen around the world. Some people quite liked the fondue, while others didn’t really care for it all that much. I was prepared for that occasion and had brought Spaghetti. But no-one wanted them, so it can’t have been all that bad. :-) A few us then spent some hours talking and the idea popped up to do a Peruvian evening the next night. So it came to be and two of my friends at work cooked a nice dinner. We ate it while watching Shrek 2 and The Pianist. The latter I quite liked while the former is simply pale in comparison to the first Shrek (that’s why I’m so glad that Pixar doesn’t do sequels - or rather only when required to by Disney). The 26th there was a school-end party at the school including a meal for the professors. And two days later, there was the graduation of the 5th year classes. I have made one picture of that available for general viewing at Flickr. All the others are only visible to my Flickr friends due to privacy reasons. Sylvester we spent almost in the same fashion. Watching a film and eating chicken.

I wanted to extend my 3-month visa today. So I went to the appropriate office here in Lima (Migraciones at Avenida España) to find out how it works. An extended search on the Internet did not reveal much useful information. When I finally found the right counter, I told the woman about my wish. She had one look at my immigration card and then declined to do anything. Apparently you can only apply for an extension during the first two months of your stay, not later. So now I’ll have to pay 1 US Dollar for every day that I choose to stay beyound my original last day. I’ll have to visit the office again a few days before leaving the country in order to pay my debt. As I’m planing a trip to Puno anyway, I’m now wondering if it might be a good idea to go over the border to Bolivia and visit La Paz for a few days in order to get an extra three months for free. I guess I will have to check if it’s possible to pay the debt I’ll have until then (about ten days’ worth) at the border. That solution would also help extend my visited countries map. ;-)

I stumbled over the expat webblog directory today. It’s a list of weblogs by expatriots sorted by country they fled to… As of today my weblog is listed in the category Peru there. Julien, who maintains the project, started the project because he himself spent a few yours outside of his country France. Update: Forgot to say, I found this via iFeedYou.

I was surprised by that high number: 10% of us Swiss live abroad. As Swissinfo.org reports: Praktisch in jedem Land der Welt leben heute Schweizer. Fast jeder Zehnte mit einem roten Pass lebt im Ausland. Und jährlich werden es mehr. Didn't find the English article but translated to English says "In almost every country of the world there are Swiss people living. Almost every tenth with a red passport lives abroad. And every year there are more of them". Also the short facts (a feature I quite like in Swissinfo by the way) are interesting. 623'057 Swiss living abroad 60% of them in EU countries France gets the biggest share: 166'199 The biggest population outside of the EU: USA with 71'419 442'643 people with two passports 100'421 older than 65 years 475'340 allowed to vote 95'325 registered to vote What makes me sad though is that of the 475'000 people allowed to vote only about 95'000 are registered for it. Shame on you. What I do not know is if that number includes people like me who live abroad for just a few months. I didn't bother to register for vote (missing two or three votes that way). If the 475'000 number does indeed include all those who only are abroad for a short time, then the 95'000 number does not seem all that bad as before. But still. Update December 30: I now found the original and official source material in German: Auslandschweizerstatistik 2004. Haven't had a look, yet, but maybe it does answer my question for the original article (about who is included).

The Inquirer reports that apparently Dell UK ships new computers with Mozilla Firefox pre-installed. A slashdot-commenter seems to confirm this: My sister got one of these, to my surprise, the fox was there. There is an icon on the desktop, along with Internet Explorer's and about 30 others. I believe Internet Explorer came as default, but I didn't observe the first seconds directly. It seems a standard install, no obvious branding or skinning - the start page has been set to Dell's EULA. Neither browser masks the other that I can tell, of course each has it's standard 'I'm not the default' message. (Via Slashdot)

So, meine Mama bloggt jetzt auch. War mein Weihnachtsgeschenk. :-)

Anfang 2006 gibt es zwei gute Konferenzen die mich selber sehr reizen würden. Leider bin ich bis April in Peru und kann nicht gehen, aber vielleicht hat es unter meinen Lesern Interessenten. Erstens die LIFT06 in Genf am 2. und 3. Februar. LIFT has a simple goal: connect people who are passionate about new applications of technology and propel their conversations into the broader world to improve life and work. Die Liste der Speaker ist sehenswert - vor allem für eine Schweizer Konferenz. Zweitens findet am 8. Februar in London ein Workshop mit dem Thema The Future of Web Apps statt. Da ist die Liste von Speakern noch eindrücklicher (Yahoo! mit Joshua Schachter von del.icio.us, Eric Costello von Flickr und Tom Coates, Google mit Steven Crossan, David Heinemeier Hansson, und andere). Der Workshop kostet läppische 75 Pfund. Nichts wie hin!

Just found this funny short essay about religion in our day names. A short extract: Happy Wednesday! No, wait. Check that. You likely know that “Wednesday” really means “Woden’s Day” -- a nod to the Teutonic god. I, for one, do not worship Woden. I'm not wont to worship Woden, and, well, wouldn't worship Woden. Perhaps you pursue a personal relationship with Woden. But maybe not. ... Let’s re-name everything, and pretend our culture appeared out of thin air, thirty seconds ago. Sure, it would be a massive, and massively strange, project. We could make a court case out of it, since the Constitution itself doesn’t afford different protections for expression of mostly-dead religions and expression of religions more widely practiced. Or, we could just chill, and recognize that, for example, Saturday is Saturday, whether I worship Saturn or not. And we could even say that December 25th is “Christmas” whether you’re a Christian or not. Heck, maybe then, with one of the most painfully annoying melody lines ever written, we could even wish you a merry one. Go read the full one.

Some notes about what I did the past two weeks. At work, there were three projects I was involved in. First I prepared the Debian-Edu rollout which is now scheduled for end of January. I patched the installer (see also the followup) a bit and tested the configurations. The big change will be, that the users finally get central user accounts and a home directory on the server. So the’ll be able to log in at different computers and have the same configuration and data. Second we set up a course for the non-computing students here. This will start in January as far as I know. And third I’m busy preparing the courses for the computing profs here. They will get some courses in Linux, OpenOffice, Python, PHP, MySQL, etc. Stuff they will need to properly teach the curriculum in use here. Details about this will follow when I have them. While not much I also had some time outside of my work. Almost two weeks ago now I moved into a new apartment. It’s the Casa Colibri in Miraflores. Quite nice, though I have to say that my current room stinks. I hope the room where I’m planned to move into once it’s free is better in that aspect. Sunday the 11th I went to a football match between San Martín and La U with Oliver, a friend from work. Unfortunately we (“La U” that is) lost 1:0 because of a penalty. Was quite a boring match. Maybe because there were only very few matches to go before the end of the season and the positions in the league table were pretty much fixed already. The season should start again in Match and I hope I can go to another match then. Last weekend some of us young people at church had a meal together. Including gift-exchange. I was so stupid not to take my camera (may actually have been a good think). But it was a great evening. Six of us ended up going to a friend’s home and talking the whole night. So without going to sleep we made us some breakfast the next morning and went to church directly. To the early 8:30 service instead of the usual 11 o’clock service. Oh and I also saw King Kong on the day it came out last Thursday. Quite liked it but still am waiting for Narnia. With a bit of luck I can finally see it today. It was at least announced as “upcoming” last week. But when I now look at the cine.terra.com.pe Web site it still lists it under “Próximos estrenos”.

Zürich hatte heute morgen einen Stromausfall. Vielleicht ist ja deshalb der Server auf dem meine anderen Sachen laufen (wie patrice.ch oder die Blog-Liste und Mail) momentan offline. Medienpraxis hat den Server auch bei Metanet und ist ebenfalls offline. Kommt hoffentlich bald mal wieder hoch. Update 09:11: Der Server ist wieder da. Auch Medienpraxis erreiche ich wieder. Und hatte wirklich mit dem Stromausfall zu tun. Metanet hat eine offene Statusmeldung: ...