Chile

Right now I will just make a list of what I have been up to, and maybe in the future I will add some accounts of my journeys.

Last week I went to the Tesoros Humanos Vivos event, or in English “Living Human Treasures”. This was the launch of a search for more “treasures”. I did a short interview with the Minister for Arts and Culture, Luciano Cruz-Coke. The week before I had gone to an event with British minister Jeremy Browne, though I think I wrote about that already.

On Friday, I went up to La Serena. Actually I left on Thursday night and got there about 1am. I was thinking of just wandering around the town until I had to head off again, but decided to stay in a hostel. There was a HI there, so I stayed there. Unfortunately my “I used to work in a HI hostel” fell upon deaf ears. Always worth a try though…

The next day I went to the “Big Bang” event at Las Campanas Observatory. They are beginning the process of building the Giant Magellan Telescope, which is going to be a huge thing. I met many astronomers, the Australian ambassador and some other important people. There was also a free lunch, which is important 🙂

The hill behind me is Cerro Las Campanas, which they exploded in order to begin the building. While the explosion didn’t make much of a dent in the mountain, they will be making 70 more blasts.

Here is a picture of me inside the current Magellan Telescope. This was pretty cool to go and check out, though it would have been even better to go at night, when the stars are in full force. The Atacama Region (where the telescope is) and much of northern Chile is renowned as being the best place in the world for star gazing. I would like to spend much more time getting outside of Santiago, and doing things like that are a good chance.

We have also been working on the next edition of the I Love Chile print newspaper. That should be out next week, I wrote a bunch of stories in there. I reached one of the goals I set myself a while back, and have written my 200th article on the ILC website. Here you can see all of my articles. I have been writing a lot less articles lately, as I have many more administrative tasks to do, but hopefully I will get back in to the writing mode again very soon.

I am also back to my studies, I have two more subjects to go until I have apparently Mastered the Art of Writing. By midway through the year I should have myself a Master of Arts (Writing). We are currently talking about practice-led research. To be honest I don’t really know what I am talking about, but I am getting some good feedback from my tutor in the weekly discussion posts.

The best news story this week though, has been the similarity of former Energy Minister Rodrigo Álvarez, who quit on Monday. The guy looks exactly like George Costanza, and Jason Alexander even agreed on Twitter.

The worst news story was the case of Daniel Zamudio. That is not a pleasant story at all, and I don’t know why there are neo-nazis in Chile. That’s not something I am so interested in going into in my blog, you can read any news to know more about that.

Late yesterday afternoon I got an email from the boss asking if we could cover an “exclusive event” at Concha y Toro. They are a well renowned wine company, so of course I said sure thing. We had a full degustación, then some food afterwards. I got to meet some other writers and some of the people who run the company.

They have a sponsorship deal with Manchester United, which is very interesting from a sports management perspective. It also got some wheels turning in my head about some grand ideas involving world tours, footbag, freestyle football and a match between Man U and La U.

Speaking of La U, I went to the game (Copa Libertadores) on Tuesday night. They knocked Penarol from Uruguay out of the competition, with a goal in the final minute. The other team were not so happy and there was a bit of heave-ho at the end.

So that sums up pretty well what I have been up to. The next adventure: this weekend is Lollapalooza, and I have a press pass. Foo Fighters are playing a 2.5 hour set, that should be awesome. Unfortunately there are very few other bands on the lineup I actually want to see, but it should be fun to go along.