After the markets and icecream, we spent much of the afternoon just sitting in the sun, eating, catching up on emails, uploading photos, that sort of junk. It was really quite plesant and relaxing.

We then had an invitation to have drinks (mainly of vodka) at Laura’s house that night; we got dropped over there, and then went down to the local bottle store, which we were told is set up as a front for the local drug-running mafioso,  and because of this, and their not caring too much about making money, prices are kept, shall we say, quite low. A wonderful night was had by all four of us, and the conversation in half English / half Spanish flowed very well.

Pisco Elqui

Pisco Elqui Plaza

On Wednesday, we went for a trip up to Pisco Elqui valley with Paulina. That is where the local spirit, Pisco, is made; it’s very strong grape liquor and is a little bit like a brandy.

To get to there, we had to take two busses, firstly to Viquña, then from there to Pisco Elqui. The busses were of the small and rickerty variety, and filled to the brim. We had to stand up in the second bus for some of the way, as we barrelled down the road at well over 100km/h in the heat.

We passed through small and picturesque village, and finally reached Pisco Elqui after a couple of hours. We wandered around the town plaza, and through the small markets and around town for a bit.

After a while we got hungry (and not just a little overheated), so we found a neat restaurant a distance away from the main part of town. It was called “La Esquela” (The School), as it was apparently converted from an old schoolhouse. We ate Pastel de Choclos, which I hadn’t had myself in many years, and for desert, this crazy traditional drink which was peach juice, with dried peaches floated on top of a bed of wheat grains. While very tasty, they were also huge, and we couldn’t finish them.

Pastel de Choclo

Dessert drink

After eating, we walked down the road, through to a set of cabins owned by our Aunt and Uncle, and down to a riverbank at the bottom of the property, the idea being to get away from the heat; maybe dip our feet in the water or go for a swim. However recent heavy rains had apparently changed the shape of the river considerably making this unfeasable, so we just rested in the shade for until it was time to go on the distillery tour at 5pm.

Although it was entirely in Spanish (and the guide punctuated every sentence with ‘ya’ which I found funny),  the distillery tour was pretty cool. Pisco is a liquor made from a particular kind of grape, and then distilled and aged. It tastes a bit like a rum I guess. Pisco Sour is the most common cocktail made with it, and the ones on offer here were much better than any I’d had back at home.

Coqiumbo at night

After arriving back in La Serena after our Pisco trip, we had a quick dinner and were then told that we were going to be driven out to Coquimbo for a few drinks, with our cousin and aunt and uncle. After a very slow trip driving along the beachfront road (traffic was horrific); we made it into Coquimbo at maybe 10pm or something like that.

Downtown Coquimbo was pretty lively, there were a number of bars around the central area filled with people, street performers in the plaza, and a bus with the label “Tourist bus” on the side; a double-decker lit up affair with an open roof, music blaring out, and people dressed in various costumes (barney, mickey mouse etc) dancing on top of it.

We found one street that had been blocked off to cars, with bars down one side of it, and filled with tables and chairs. Three of the bars had bands set up in front of them, and each band was taking turns at doing their sets. We managed to find a table in the crowd eventually, sat down and ordered a round of mojitos. One of the bands was seemingly playing traditional classics and every body in the crowd was happily singing along:

After some incredibly tasty nibbles including palm hearts, cheese bits, amazingly tender beef, and spicy sausage, and another round of mojitos (darn those two for one specials, haha), we were treated to some latin beat freestyle rapping curtosey of one of the audience members and his friends:

All in all, an exhausting, full on, and fun day had by everyone.

Internets are tricky Part 1

I always expected that it would be tricky to get decent Internet connections on this holiday, and I was not wrong. Once we’d arrived in La Serena, it was revealed that the USB dongle type Internet connection thing was inoperable; The Windows PC it was tried on, would spew forth tons of virus warnings whenever you tried to run the connection software.
I plugged it into my Mac, and installed the software, which seemed to go OK, but then the only signal I could coax out of the device was GPRS, instead of a HSPDA or UTMS signal, and thus it was slower-than-dialup slow. Not ideal. We took the device down to the Claro shop at the Mall, where it all functioned perfectly. Great.
Then magically, the next day it started working. Whoop. I managed to share it via the wireless on my laptop, so at least Fran and I could use it then. Later I replaced the virus checker on the PC, (turns out Avast was giving false positives), and all was well again.

It’s a bit like on Baywatch

Humitas. Delicious.

After having an awesome and huge lunch consisting of Humitas and a (deliciously sweet) giant watermelon, we took the bus down to another part of the beach, where there was tons of activities going on, such as bouncy castles, beach volleyball, kiosks with Internet right on the beach, girls in small bikinis giving away free ice cream. Yep, it was alright.

Despite this beach being much less over-run with jellyfish, (and far more over-run with smoking hot South American babes) it didn’t stop some people getting into trouble. We saw at least two instances where the surf rescue helicopter flew out over the water, dropped in a scuba guy, and then fished him and another person out of the (incredibly calm and un-dangerous) surf. I think there’s a general consensus that Chileans can’t swim for shit. The fun really came when then helicopter decided it was cool to do super low passes over the beach, sending beach umbrellas in all directions…

We finished up the afternoon by having pizza and beers at a place called Huentelauquen Pizzeria, which was a restaurant where half of it was shaped like a giant Pirate Ship. No photos of that because I didn’t have my camera with me (and cameras with big lenses on them are creepy at the beach, right?) and all the photos of it I can find on the Internet are wildly out of date
The pizza was alright, the beer was better, and for the first time in about as long as I could remember I felt totally relaxed and at peace with things. I was finally On Holiday.

Good idea / Bad idea?

While in this state of relaxation, and listening to the house band belt out a rendition of “Pretty Woman” I wondered if they should make a prequel to that movie. Where it’s 2 hours of Julia Roberts doing awful things while turning tricks with sweaty old men, and Richard Gere sits in board meetings getting rich. Should I start making my pitch to Hollywood now?

Gigs:

Little Pictures (x2): Fran mentioned that these guys would be hitting town, and I remembered seeing them at her alternative craft fair event last year, so I thought I’d pop along to give them some support as it’s got to be hard playing in an unfamiliar town.
Anyway, their first gig is at some weird multi-level club, in the basement level. Apparently the event is some end-of-semester student thing, and there are a very very young and very very drunk kids running around. Dressed in fluro. Throwing up all over the place. Most of them luckily spend their time upstairs away from the bands. I actually had to talk my way past the bouncers because I looked too old. Good grief.

Little Pictures at Pony

Managed to have a good chat to Mark and Johanna from LP anyway
Their second gig (well it was their third actually, they played a show at The Tote as well) was at Pony, which was a much more age-appropriate venue. Even though their set started at 2am, by that stage, the place was packed out, and they were a real hit with the crowd that night, who were begging for encores by the end of it. GG guys

Angelspit and Baal: This was actually the night after the first Little Pictures gig, and held in the same venue. This time, however, instead of a few drunken teenagers, there was probably a hundred or so cyperpunks and goths in full dressup, dancing away to Industral rock from Japan (Baal) and Electro/Industrial from Sydney (Angelspit). Both bands were pretty awesome, both Clara and I enjoyed it a lot

The Mars Volta: Since Clara put me onto these guys a while back, I’ve become a fairly big fan… mainly their album “Deloused in the Comatorium”, which is pretty epic. Anyway, we both got tickets for their gig at the Forum Theatre, which is pretty epic in of itself:

Forum Theatre Mezzanine

Forum Theatre Auditorium

It has this crazy painted-blue ceiling, so it feels like you’re standing outside, in this crazy Roman Colosseum sort of place.
The Mars Volta themselves… hrmm.. well they played for about 3 hours, and as far as we could tell, it was only material from their new album, which neither of us like anywhere near as much as “Deloused”. They seem to be big fans of the super-extended jam versions of their songs with additional sonic wankery toppings. They were very tight and had moments of sheer brilliance, but it got old after a while, and a bit of self-editing I think would have helped my enjoyment considerably.

A couple of Saturdays ago, I found myself with nothing to do, as plans I had fell through, and then I remembered that Joe Satriani was playing in town that night, also at The Forum. The Friday night show had sold out a long time beforehand, so I didn’t think there’d be any tickets left, but I went along to the box office at 7:30 or so anyway, and yes, they did have some available. Joe was excellent – I managed to get a decent spot, and could see and hear everything pretty well. Stu Hamm was pretty good on bass, although it sounded like the crowd were booing him at several opportunities.. I later found out they were yelling “Stuuuu”, which is some kind of in-joke with him. Videos here: Cool No 9 and Summer Song.

The Greenmatics: This is a band that a friend of Frans is in… Mel has been living in Melbourne for a couple of years, so it was very nice to be able to head along to their gig at the Roxanne Parlour – which is pretty hard to find (typically), and have people to chat to. Mel’s friends are crazy, like good crazy

Tricky: This was at the Prince Bandroom in St Kilda, on the day before Fran arrived back in town to visit. Ended up going by myself, mainly because a certain friend of mine who is a massive Tricky fan, was feeling too broke to come along, which was a huge shame. The gig itself was pretty awesome – the singer he had, which is a replacement for the one he used on the records, was amazing. Tricky himself “sung” on a handful of tracks (something for which a reviewer later gave him crap for), but he spent most of the time ‘conducting’ the band – being the producer that he is. Anyway, the show utterly rockes. Videos here: Pumpkin, Black Steel, Overcome.

People:

Well, this is going back quite a few weeks now, but the notes are there so here we go…( in roughly chronological order – I think)

Went out with Dana (the American girl I met at a cocktails meetup thing ages and ages ago) again, this time out to Pahran, because neither of us had been out that side of town before. Ended up wandering around looking for suitable bars… we managed to find a couple, including a very cool tiny little place, which was more a cafe than a bar, but it had a DJ playing in the corner, a going fireplace, a bunch of friendly looking people who seemed to all know each other, and Monteiths Golden on tap. It kinda had a bit of a “Sputnik Cafe” vibe – for those of you in Chch who remember that wonderful place We also managed to stumble upon the infamous Revolver bar, which seemed pretty cool… but mind you, we there during it’s more civilised hours – it’s open all weekend without closing….

The girl I mentioned in my last post.. didn’t really work out like I thought it might… eventually she had some time off during the weekend, so we arranged to meet up at Pony, to Little Pictures, and whatever band happened to be on before them. I get there, and she’s with this other guy, who she had mentioned meeting a little while earlier, but said they were just friends. They were definitely not just friends. Ah well, move on….

Managed to catch up with Greta, who is the younger sister of a guy I was friends with in primary school, who has moved here in the last 6 months or so. Went down Brunswick Street to find a cafe to get something little to eat and have a chat… we got pretty lost looking for the Black Cat, which is a place we both knew. It was hopeless Turns out our stories in how we ended up here are pretty similar. Anyway, headed into town after that, went to Murmur, which is a little bar, which I was a bit hesitant about the look of at first, but turned out to be pretty damn cool. We met up with some friends of hers there (including someone who was in the same year as me at the same high school… we knew some of the same people…. small world!!), and moved on to the Croft Institute, which is a two-level place, with the bottom level all decked out like a 3rd Form science lab, with the benches with sinks in, and science-y glassware all over the place.. very cool.

Also I’ve been helping Clara out with her computer woes. It hasn’t gone well so far… as most computer woes tend to do… I’ve also got her hooked on my Outrageous Fortune DVDs. Can’t blame her really, it’s the awesome

Went out again with Dana, this time to the Espy, hoping to see a band (whose name escapes me now), as neither of us had been there before either Turns out the band we wanted to see didn’t start till like 1:30am, so we went to the back room to watch whatever band was on in there. Whoever they were, they weren’t good. At one point, what we could only presume was one of the band member’s girlfriend got on stage and started to attempt to play the Tamborine… quite half-heartedly, while holding a can of coke. It was so appalling, we just had to stand there and laugh Then we wandered around St Kilda seemingly in an attempt to play every pinball machine in every bar we could find. Anyway, the night ended well. I’ve been hoping to catch up with her again, but her pending work-related trip overseas, plus the millions of vaccinations required seem to be conspiring against me

Movies:

I saw the Get Smart movie, and was actually surprised at how good it ended up being. Cool.
Managed to find a couple of really good box-sets of the original Battlestar Galactica (which is truly cringe-worthy) and the Evil Dead trilogy. These things make me a happy chappy.

Stay tuned for the next episode (hopefully coming pretty soon) in which Fran visits town again, we see a band from Iceland, an awesome movie on a stupidly big screen, eat rather too well, see an old friend, and get a rather sad bit of news…

Just figured I’d catalogue what I got up to in the weekend..

• Spent Friday evening with Becca and her friend Brad, got some beers and food down at the Northcote social club, and went back to watch some DVDs. I wasn’t in such a great mood after the events of the past week, and having to watch “Miss Congeniality 2″ and “Clueless” didn’t help.
• Saturday was shaping up to be a bit of a bust (it was raining pretty badly outside). Clara was completely AWOL, so DV8 was looking unlikely. In a flash of genius, I got hold of Anna and Makoto, who came round for an evening of Wii gaming. We played Tennis/Bowling/Boxing, Super Mario Galaxy and a fairly long game of Mario Party 8. Everyone was thoroughly entertained
• Sunday afternoon I managed to drag myself out to the Victoria Markets to get some fruit/vegetables to snack on (instead of my usual chocolate… I’m trying to be good). I figure I should bring Fran along when she visits in a couple of weeks. Ended up buying NIN’s The Fragile and the After Forever album pretty cheaply too.
• Sunday evening went out to Brunswick to a bar called “The Retreat” for Amy’s birthday celebration thing. Managed to catch up with a few of the people I spent New Years’ with, so that was good. The company was excellent, the band was good, the food was average, and the art… well… lets just say that the Third Eye/Glitter/Lady Bits rendition on the wall probably isn’t going to feature in a national gallery any time soon…
• Monday evening. Redeemed my movie horrors of Friday night by going to one of those internet meetup things at Nova, and saw The Counterfitters, which was excellent, but depressing, as most holocaust movies tend to be…

I also now have a copy of Boom Blox for the Wii. It’s extremely entertaining.

I managed to see Disasteradio in the end at the Evelyn on Brunswick Street. Excellent, as always, DRad always manages to put a massive grin on my face

Saw a local act, Gotye, play at the Prince Bandroom, which is a great venue in St Kilda – seems to host a lot of international acts there too.. (see pic of upcoming shows there)

Went to the Soundwave festival with Clara, out of the 40-odd bands playing, we only really knew about 5 of them between us… we managed to mostly avoid the Emo bands, and very definitely avoided Incubus – highlights were Divine Heresy and As I Lay Dying and from Autumn to Ashes(all of the grr metal variety. Mindless Self Indulgence were outstanding and loads of fun. It also helps that the female bass player is a total fox, and definitely had the moves
The Offspring were on last, and were great, nostalgia++. As per usual, I’ve got videos up at http://youtube.com/user/haxtheplanet.

The last couple of weeks I’ve been a bit run down.. mainly due to the fact I think I ate some bad chicken from somewhere (can’t work out which place it was though), and this week, i’ve had a cold, which I’m sure I caught off Clara, either that or it was caused by the excessive dust at Soundwave.

Some of my things have arrived by air-freight… mainly, my PC and my acoustic guitar. Also some of my posters and things… my room is definitely looking a lot more like “mine” now, which makes me happy.
Definitely confirmed now that my 200GB Windows system drive is utterly dead though, which is annoying, as a) it had 200GB of useful data on it, b) it had my Windows install on it, which is, well a lot of work to re-create. It seems like the logic board is the problem (I can see where one of the really tiny resistors has been knocked off), so I’ve managed to find an identical drive off eBay… hopefully replacing the board will solve the problem.

Paypal. Oh dear god. In order to pay for my replacement drive, it turns out I need a paypal account. Ok. I’d heard bad things about them before, and had tried to avoid them as much as possible previously (I’d only recently had to create an account to get some Skype credit). I wanted to change my address to my Australian one. Apparently you can’t do that – you have to close the account and make a new one – except the new one now always seemed to set the country as “New Zealand” no matter how many times I clicked on “change country”. Ass. Ended up having to use a different email address to make a completely different account. Sigh.

I bought the new instrumental Nine Inch Nails album “Ghosts I-IV” online from them for $5. It’s really quite great. I bought the Radiohead one the same way when that came out. Seriously, if all music was released like this, I’d never have to buy a CD, or look to pirate it ever again.

Last night Clara and I ended up at Section 8 bar which is very close to where I live, and is really quite great. It’s a shipping container plonked down in an empty lot down a small alleyway. Had a great mix of all sorts of different kinds of people. We spent much of the night bemoaning the fact neither of us had made any new friends since we’ve been here, because we’re both really crap at going up to strangers and making small talk. Both of us = rubbish at small talk….
We ended up having quite good drunken conversation there with some people however, an English guy and a girl, and an Aussie guy. Turned out they were tourists, and only in town for a short while longer. Typical!

After recovering from 6am-death-hangover, I got up.. eventually.. and decided I’d wander over to the Victoria State Library which is just spectacular, wandered around inside for a bit, saw the exhibits there on the history of books (from the earliest forms of writing through to modern literature, graphic novels etc) and also the one on Victoria throughout history.
Turns out, Clara had gone to the library about an hour before I did, completely independently.. I hadn’t mentioned I was thinking of going this weekend or anything. We really think the same a lot of the time… it’s really freaky……

Caught up this evening with Anna and Mokoto, who are friends of Caroline’s.. I’d met them a couple of times at most I think… but they moved to Melbourne about a month ago, and are living quite close by in an apartment in the city. I went over there for a small BBQ and a play around in the pool in their building. It’s a very flash looking place.. very much like an old hotel. Clara came by a bit later, dipped her feet in the spa, and we hung out for a while at their place. We’ve promised to drag them out into town very soon. Looks like we have new friends! Yay!!

I’m hanging out with Dan Minson on Monday, as he’s in town visiting for a few days – I’m pretty sure we’re gonna check out the History of Videogames exhibit at Federation Square… Becca has him pretty much booked out for the rest of the time I think… but between us I think we ought to be able to convince him to move here as well… add to the posse, as it were