Archive for November, 2006
Tuesday, November 14th, 2006
Guitar Player at Poetry Recital
Featured Audio 1: Live Guitar Player at Poetry Recital (8MB 192kbps mp3)
Featured Audio 2: CeciliaPoem (990KB 160kbps mp3)
I spent the evening at a poetry recital that had me passed out for the first half until this RAD guitarist started to play. Cool.
Then I snagged this guy’s poem. I love the sonorous timbre of his voice. Puts me right to zzzzzzzz…….
No Comments » - Posted in Travel by Damon
Sunday, November 12th, 2006
Graffiti Bridge
Sometimes you walk past something without noticing, your mind focused on something else, 
until some kind of warning flag goes off in your head and you retrace your steps to see what the heck your subconsious was paying attention to while you were daydreaming along. These kind of grand perspective tricks are one of my favorites. As I walked along the avenue across the river, I only glanced at the mural on the far bank and kept walking…then it struck me, WHOA! I took the photos slightly off of perspective. Hopefully when Melanie and I return to Santiago, we can get a good shot of this one.
1 Comment » - Posted in Society and Culture, Travel by Damon
Sunday, November 12th, 2006
Santiago Cultural Festival
Featured Audio: CulturalFestivalMedley.mp3 (40seconds, 128kbps MP3)
I spent Sunday afternoon scoping out Santiago’s Quinta Normal Park, near the center of the city and site of the annual City Cultural Festival. A pretty good time to be had by all. First I saw some drumming
. 
Then I saw some a really hot salsa band and got a great recording but didn’t take a photo. Then I saw this traditionally out of tune family band.
Walking out of the south end of the park, I stumbled onto this crazy building that is one-third a tribute to classical architecture, one third middle-eastern architecure, and three quarters Andy Warhol.
No Comments » - Posted in Travel by Damon
Wednesday, November 8th, 2006
Oud Music at Lecture
Featured Audio: “Francois Burgat Oud_Player.mp3” (128kbps MP3, approx. 3.5MB)
My chilean friend Veronica invited me to a lecture at the University of Chile department of Humanities, and we agreed to meet at the Grecia subway stop, a pleasant fifteen-minute evening walk from the southern Santiago humanities campus of the UC.
The featured speaker was Francois Burgat, a French expert on western relations to the arab world, especially regarding France’s relationship to arab countries. I assume the lecture was interesting, as it was fairly well attended. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to understand the original French, and the Spanish translator, even though she appeared to be doing a very good job in the parts I could hear, spoke through a microphone either with a bad connection or entirely blown out speakers, and I had a hard time following the exact nature of Burgat’s points.
No Comments » - Posted in Travel by Damon
Tuesday, November 7th, 2006
Sushi Guarded by Carabineros
In a typical month, I will almost never stick to a particular food style, instead sampling from a variety of home-grown and foreign cuisine. And approximately once a month, on a very hungry mid-afternoon, a colleague or friend will mention their recent visit to a great sushi place, and my rumbling stomach will hang on to those words, first subtl
y and then more aggressively turning me from a mild opportunivore into a voracious sushi craver, much as a mild comic book hero turns into the wings of vengeance with small doses of substance x.
