World Press Photo

I went about a week ago (maybe it was a bit longer than that) to the World Press Photo. This is the third year I've seen it. In Santiago it usually passes through the Centro Cultral de Las Condes. The place gets some good shows but this is one of my favorites. The photos are very good, very serious and can be a bit overwhelming. They go to show you how watered down our newspaper images are, and how powerful photography is as a story telling medium. This year my favorite was a series of photos taken in the moments before and after a suicide bomber attacked Benazir Bhutto. There is one of her adjusting her veil in the last seconds of her life that is simple but very very powerful. In any case if you aren't familiar with the World Press Photo and you like photography or the news its worth checking out.

Santiago places: Bar Constitución

So last weekend I made it out with Caro to Bar Constitución, located in Bellavista along Constitución (the street parallel to Pionono where all the nicer restaurants are). The place has gotten a fair amount of attention and attracts a mid twenties and younger crowd. The bar itself is set up nicely, although the wall that faces it is made of crappy unpainted wood that doesn't mix with the rest of the place. It has a DJ stand and the place fills up quickly after 11pm. The place even has some good microbrews hard to find in most bars...Mestra, Kross, Capital....all a plus.

Everything seemed nice upon walking in, but it all went down from there.

Service in Chile isn't very good in general, but this place was an extreme. The service was horrible!

The waiter took forever to even bring a menu...the first round took quite a while...the second one I had to get up and ask if I could just walk around the bar and pour myself a beer..then they just stopped attending to us at all...and it has that stupid system quite popular in Chile where you pay in one line and then go to another to get the actual drink. Then when we finally got the bill they over charged us. Plus while I was at the bar just trying to get them to bring more drinks the staff was running around with all these bills all confused like they had lost someone's tab or something. It gave the impression that there was no manager and never had been one.

So its a place that has potential as long as you don't require food or drinks!

Olympic Gold Medals: Extracted from Chile

So this news is a bit old but I found it pretty interesting anyways. The medals that will be used for the upcoming Beijing olympics were made from metals in Australia and Chile. In fact the gold medals, all 2,000 of them, were made from gold extracted from Escondida, a gold mine located in the Atacama desert. The metal was then refined in China for their final form.

Interesting tidbit of albeit trivial info, something to pull out at random moments in cocktail parties and quite elevators.

Auctioning Lost Luggage

Every wonder what happened to that bag that continues to circle the baggage claim belt?...round and round it goes while you start to worry whether the (American) airlines has again lost your luggage.

Well if it goes unclaimed long enough in Chile, they will auction it for charity!

I have to say I was surprised by it all. It was auctioned, as I understand, by LAN Chile and the airport and the earnings went to support an NGO that builds houses for poor people.

The suitcases were sold of course without knowing what was inside. Seems like such a curious event, just imagine what you might find folded/hidden/stuffed/vibrating/nicely wrapped with a bow in that suitcase.

The Flower Lady: A Slideshow Story

So I've been wanting (and others have urged) to put some of my photos together into stories as a slide show with a narrative and everything...so here is a little test run of some photos I took a month or two ago in the Plaza Ñuñoa. Hope you like it.

Back in Chile-Back on the Blog

So its time for one of those I haven’t updated the blog for a long time type entries. It just seemed to get pushed further down on my list of priorities. I’ve been busy, I’ve been traveling, yadayadayada

I made it to Iowa to see the family. It was flooded, very flooded. But the weather was wonderful. It was nice to wear shorts and a short sleeve shirt. I also got to see the fourth of July for the first time in a long time…I think its been about four years now. Last time I was completely sick of all the flag stuff, all the patriotism, it just made me sick. This time around after not living in the US for three and a half years there was something nice about it, go figure. I even got to light off some bottle rockets with my brother.

So we’ll say that I’m back on the blog, there will be entries again, and again. Or at least I hope so.