there's always the second approach

unclear where to start...i've been so lax with the blogging. thankfully i was able to see a handful of you on my whirlwind 'shhh-don't-tell-the-fulbright-friens-that-i-left-the-country' tour, or at least, those of you willing to come watch me eat wings, fries, bagels, pizza, indian food, and raw fish. (or, it goes without saying, imbibing some delicious beer.) see photo above...

in any case, taking the break "from the field" turned out to be productive and perhaps even necessary, as advertised. at the first of the two presentations i gave, i went to antwerp. turns out the worst storm in many, many years hit europe the morning we approached brussels. which led to a revelation: my favorite new phrase. it was uttered by our co-pilot, after we started to land and then, didn't. i was drowsy, so i didn't really get it at first. thankfully first captain jack whats-his-name clarified: winds were so strong that the captain decided to...wait for it: "execute a missed approach." that's right. i was so distracted by the phrase that i almost failed to notice the man violently vomitting in our cabin. happens. it was unclear if we missed brussels for good, or if we would give it another shot, but turns out the captain was able to bring us in on the 2nd try. which i suppose was the way to go, seeing as how there weren't many options available in other euro destinations: i mean, the germans shut down their entire train system for 24-hours. for the first time. ever.

that saturday, while at a party with some friends in brussels, i myself 'executed a missed approach' when a friendly looking EU employee was rejoined by an amorous member of his group. i completely meant to do a u-turn at the bar...

anyhow, i'm back in bogota now, which is excellent. except for the bit where i finally realized that the missing 40-gigabytes of my hardrive were in fact being used by some wanker intruder. apparently, and so sorry i don't understand this, hackers can creep and use hardrive space from a remote location with a hidden server. or something. in any case, i had to wipe and reformat the puter. which, since i'm not the most organized person you've ever met, proved to take longer than it should have. but hello host organization to the rescue! turns out lots of the introverted engineers at CERAC know lots about puters, and even helped me upload all my stuff onto their network.

in other news, old friends have convened on the city for a few months, libby's coming down for 3 weeks, and next weekend is carnaval in barranquilla. which clearly warrants a trip to the field.

speaking of, i plan to get out of bogota soon. to the "real" field.

more to follow...
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