Mein momentan absolut liebster Autor kommt nach Zürich und ich hänge während der Zeit in Peru rum. Shame on me! Oder so… Ist trotzdem schade, dass ich den Vortrag von Donald Knuth nicht anschauen kann. Bitte bitte macht davon ein Video. Seine Bücher The Art of Computer Programming versuche ich durchzuarbeiten. Den ersten Band habe ich jedenfalls zusammen mit Managing Gigabytes nach Peru mitgenommen. (Via Peter)

Die Story ist zwar eine Weile her, aber doch interessant. Laut den neuesten Statistiken zur Steblichkeitsrate in der Schweiz leben verheiratete Leute länger: Offenbar trägt aber auch die Ehe zu einer höheren Lebenserwartung bei. Gegenwärtig könnten 89 Prozent der verheirateten 30-jährigen Männer damit rechnen, ihren 65. Geburtstag zu erleben. Bei den ledigen seien es nur 75 bis 79 Prozent. Bei den verheirateten Frauen sind es gar 94 Prozent gegenüber 90 der Unverheirateten. Also liebe Leser und Leserinnen: heiratet, falls ihr leben wollt!

Nach Italien, Irland, Schweden, Norwegen, Malta, Mallorca, Lettland, Neuseeland und weiteren Ländern hat nun mit Tessin auch der erste Schweizer Kanton das Rauchen in Lokalen grundsätzlich verboten. In separaten klimatisierten Räumen wird das Rauchen weiterhin gestattet sein. In St. Gallen wurde so ein Rauchverbote kürzlich auf ein Postulat von EVP-Kantonsrat Reto Denoth hin im Kantonsrat diskutiert. Durch den Widerstand der rechten Parteien ist der Vorschlag aber gescheitert. Ich hoffe, so eine Regelung tritt auch bald in den deutschsprachigen Kantonen in Kraft. Denn ich möchte endlich auch mal ohne Gesundheitsbedenken in eine Bar gehen und diese auch ohne stinkende Kleider wieder verlassen können. Wenigstens ist das Starbucks rauchfrei. Und ja ich weiss, dass bei dem Thema viele nicht mit mir einverstanden sind. ...

So today I finally got the written permission to do my civilian service in Peru. My responsible contact at the Civilian Service office in Mels has been very helpful and also sent me the documents by E-Mail. That helps a lot when you are not in the country anymore to get the physical documents. So my service will start on October 31, 2005 and continue until April 26, 2006. But I will probably do the final days of that service back in Switzerland. ...

We spent this weekend at Colca Canyon, the deepest canyon of the world. Edgar, one of the language teachers at the ABC school, led us around. We had a great time seeing the canyon itself, condores, hot springs, traditionall villages and stunning nature. I’ll write a more detailed report some time later this week. Also I have to upload about 100 pictures more to my Flickr photo page. A note about my pictures on Flickr: the pictures where people can be recognized are only visible to friends. So get an account (yes it’s free) and add me to your contact list. I’ll then add you to my friends list too, and you’ll be able to see my private pictures. ...

I’m currently uploading some pictures to Flickr. So you can go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/patrice/tags/peru/ to see my pictures from Peru. But I don’t have much time now so I’m only uploading very few pictures. Will have to go to school shortly. This weekend I’ll be away for a trip to the canyon near Arequipa. I’ll probably write about that Sunday night or Monday afternoon (Peruvian time).

Shoe sizes are measured differently around the world. Just now I was wondering how shoes are measured in Peru. I did not find an answer yet and would be grateful for any information. Specifically I’m looking for a conversion from European to Peruvian shoe size. The Internet and Wikipedia addicted guy I am, I first went for the Wikipedia article on shoe size. There is some information in there, but most useful is the link International Shoe Size Conversion Charts. Unfortunately this charts do not include Peru yet. The author also writes that he would be grateful for any information about the sizes used in Latin America. Funny what little details start to interest you when traveling abroad… ...

Saturday in the evening I arrived in Arequipa and was fetched at the airport by my temporary parents Oscar and Silvia. The plane was about 40 minutes late, though. The flight was only about 50 percent full which makes me wonder about the future of LAN (the airline). But maybe that was just an exception or it’s completely out of season. Yesterday I had some stomach problems. I suspect the altitude change as the reason for my sickness, though it may also have been the pizza I got in the plane. Silvia put me on a diet immediately and I am feeling much better now. I hope to resume normal eating tomorrow. I had my first Spanish lesson at the ABC school today. My two teachers are called Sandra (for grammar) and Edgar (for 1-1 language practice). They have started at quite a high pace which is fine for me. I just hope I can keep up with that pace when practicing the vocabulary. Today’s two topics were verbs (especially the regular ones) and family vocabulary. So I’m now able to talk about my hermanos (brothers), can say that I’m soltero (single) can answer questions like ¿Cómo te llamas? (What’s your name?), ¿De dónde eres? (Where are you from?), ¿Cuántos años tienes? (How old are you) and some more stuff along those lines. Even after only this few hours I was already able to talk much better with my family during dinner. For the beginning it’s an advantage that Oscar know English quite well, though. I haven’t had much time to take pictures, yet. So you’ll have to wait for those to be available. Also I haven’t taken any real time out to the city. I’ve only walked a short distance from the house to one of the main avenues. My first impresison: lots and lots and lots of taxis. And very hectic streets. There is an Internet cafe just across the street from where I currently live. It seems, that at least in Areqiupa that’s a major way for people to get online. There are eight stations here and all are currently in use by Peruvians (except one of course which is in use by a certain Swiss). My guest family doesn’t have Internet access at home, either. Oh and the language school is also only about 50 steps (probably less but I’m not going to count them) from my home. So everything important is really close for me. ...

After all the excitement on my day of arrival everthing seems to continue on smoother lines now. Shortly after writing my blog post yesterday I was picked up at the hotel by the Rodriguez family. I then stayed at their home yesterday and today. It’s planned that I’ll return there after Arequipa. I’m now waiting for my plane to Arequipa which is scheduled to fly at 19:40 (it’s 18:40 in Peru now). Through a contact in Arequipa I was able to confirm my stay at a family in Arequipa and they should now know I’m coming and pick me up from the airport. I spent most of today and yesterday learning Spanish. I did not invest too much time learning the language while still in Switzerland because I just didn’t have any time left to invest. I’m looking forward to learn that language full-speed now and it definitely should be a lot easier than Japanese. :-) Even though I have lost much of the Japanese I knew there are currently many situations where I wished the people would understand that language, because I can only think of the sentence in Japanese but not in Spanish (of course if they understood English or German or French that would be even better). But anyway, staying with a Peruvian family and learning at a school for one month should do wonders to my Spanish abilities. Maybe I should also switch my computer’s language, which thanks to the wonders of Mac OS X (or Linux for that matter) is easily done. There’s not much more to tell for now. Just a question to the gadget-equipped part of my readership: does anyone know if it is somehow possible to send MMS from Peru using an Orange mobile phone? The information I found on the Orange Web site about roaming in Peru says there is no way. Would be nice to be able to moblog from time to time. ...

I have now safely arrived in Lima, Peru. Checked in at a Hotel and am now using some free WiFi available from my room. So I was almost able to call my mum using Skype. Unfortunately she is not online with a microphone-equipped computer. But still: the wonders of modern technology… Anyway. With arriving there were no major problems. Flight, Immigration control, luggage check, etc. Though the flight was a bit uncomfortable. I had a bad seat (right in the middle, with one person to the left of me and two on the right). According to the ticket I was sitting on the aisle but I wasn’t in the mood to fight with the person who took that seat and switched quietly. Also - and more important - during my Austrian Airlines flight to Tokyo I had my own TV screen, while here with Iberia there were only a few shared ones. But as the flight only makes for two of the ca. 220 days of my stay in Peru, that’s not too important to me. But after coming out to the reception hall the problems started. I have a contact in Lima where I can stay for the first days in Lima (two days now and a few days after coming back from language school). At the airport a tourist office guy chatted me up and told me he was sent by those people. Actually he asked me whom I’m waiting for and I told him the name. Then he said he was sent by them. While I found it highly dubious in the beginning, it started to make sense after a while in the conversation. So he helped me to get to a hotel and we went for a drink. During the drink he asked me about my friend “Willy S.” (full name known to me). I did not know such a person and told him so. We then realized that I was waiting for “Wilson R.” and that he made a mistake at the airport. He was actually sent by Willy to pick up another guy. Ouch! I phoned my friends here in Lima, told them about the problem, and they are now coming to pick me up this morning. Somehow I always seem to have some similar problems when arriving in foreign countries. When going to Japan I had met a nice young Japanese guy on the plane. In the airport he helped me get a ticket for the train. It was more expensive than the price that I expected, though (I had detailled information about how to get to my target when arriving, including ticket price). So I asked him about this. And only after about 15 minutes of discussing he finally realized he had purchased the wrong ticket. A few weeks later a friend told me, that maybe that guy at the airport had purchased a ticket to Ishikawa instead of Ichikawa (which sound quite similar, especially when pronounced by a Swiss guy who does not speak Japanese well). So after all that excitement yesterday I stayed at the Hotel, watched a bit of TV and slept. Though I’m probably quite jet lagged because I was not able to sleep the times I wanted to. Tomorrow, October 1st, I’m flying to Arequipa for language school. By the way: my time zone is UTC-5. You can always check my current time online. ...