New house, new license, a movie screening in autumn

We are moving again!
The area where we live is slowly being taken over by big developers. They are turning a family home with garden type neighbourhood into 25 floor apartment blocks. We now have 5 tall construction cranes within 200m from here and noisy concrete lorries drive past our house all the time.

Of course, there are pros and cons to this... pros, more people fit in less space. Less materials are needed to take gas and electricity to everyone, less miles to collect rubbish, less energy needed to heat the space etc... you get the picture.
At the same time: there is more noise, more cars, less sleep, more people, more dirt etc... We want to live in quiet neighbourhood and at typically 2-3 cars per household in this part of town, this is starting not to be what we had in mind. And of course, there has always been the threat of our landlord selling the house to the developers and kicking us out with 4 weeks notice. So we decided to look elsewhere and found a new home a few streets away (photos to follow) where we can move in within the next couple of weeks or so.

We had our current landlord/lady over the other day to have a look at the state of the house. Their facial expressions were priceless when they realised that we were growing tomatoes where they previously only had roses (what a waste of space - flowers with thorns?!)...

They asked incredulously:

• "What are those?"
• "Tomatoes."
• "But... they are ornamental only, right?"
• "No, they are tomatoes, you can eat them. Here, have one."
• Follewed by an unsure look at this dodgy looking fruit... they seem to have never seen a cherry tomato before (ie tomatoes grow in supermarket shelves, or something)

They also asked about our compost bin... and were equally unsure if we were joking when we explained what compost bins are for! We are glad they stopped there and did not make us open the wormery! ;o)

We think the upper class Santiago (in general) needs to reconnect with the land a bit more... they could probably tell us all about botox(?), eyebrow plucking, silicon enhancement and the latest shoes not to walk too much in... but when it comes to basic things (like fruit coming from trees and shrubs) they are fairly clueless....


Patricia got her driving license.
Here is the game, as long as you are not a resident, you can use your international driving license but once you become a resident, you need a chilean license. This involves retaking a theory and practice driving test as well as some medical tests and some psychometric tests. Sounds quite bad but it is actually a bit of a joke.

1. The practice is a 10min loop with an instructor (who does NOT take any notes, checks if one checks the mirrors etc... he is just there to see that you don't kill him or anybody else). 
2. Medical tests are a guy asking you "do you have hypertension? drink? smoke? high cholesterol?"... just answer no to all of those...
3. Psychometric tests a bit more fun, it is to see your brain-to-hand or foot coordination... quite fun... but I thought I did AWFUL in all of them and passed anyway without trying too hard either.
4. The theory test is about 35 questions (a,b,c,d sort of stuff) with questions such as "if someone overtakes you, do you: 

• a) get angry and flash them
• b) beep loudly to show your annoyance
• c) slow down to regain the safety distance
• d) overtake them quickly again

No kidding... You are also allowed (in fact expected) to read them all before the test (about 80 questions or so) as means of studying and then you can get up to 7 wrong... They were in shock that I did not think it was necessary to read the questions beforehand (and actually a bit upset too!)

I would say the most challenging part is to wait in line for 40 mins before you can speak to someone about the process (not to mention that you need to have your university title certified to prove that you can read... so if you have not done this in advance it is already gameover before you started!)


We also managed to organise a movie screening.
We bought a license to screen Vegucated and got a facebook event going. Soon some vegetarians and vegans helped us to spread the word and before we knew it we had over 200 confirmed guests! (ARGHH)... but don't panic: this is Chile.

Here words like "yes" "definitely" "see you there" etc... have slightly different meanings... they are more like "maybe, sounds good, let's see on that day how things pan out". Still, we screened the film to roughly 40 people which is pretty good and perhaps we may even show up at some point in the news section of http://www.vegan.cl/ :o)

The movie is about 3 average New Yorkers who want to try a vegan diet for 6 weeks (sort of the opposite of "Supersize me"). None of them initially have any interest in environmental or ethical matters, just health. It is fascinating to see their journey and transformation. They learn about where food comes from and to eat differently and all of a sudden, they are able to think more critically about issues that previously they had not even considered... anyways, it is available on-line for a few $$ so have a look or find a screening nearby, worth watching!


Autumn: 
Autumn must be around the corner, it's the time when the people of Santiago return from their summer holidays, kids are back to school and the rush hour returns to it's normal crazy gridlock type mess. We also noticed that the smog has sudddenly become a lot worse again.

Other than that, some trees are starting to lose their leaves and the mornings are notably cooler now, much to Christian's dislike. Still up to 28 - 32 degrees during the day which is not all that bad ;o)