An interview next week?

I met again with Ismael - the man with the Oriental house - and got a couple more names from him. One was Jose de la Fuente, a lawyer in Cochabamba who has been studying the effects of state control and environmental impacts of gas exploitation in Bolivia. That sounded interesting, since it was an aspect I hadn't really considered before (frankly, I expected the state-owned company of Petrobras (Brazil) and the state-owned company YPFB (Bolivia) to behave pretty much the same in terms of environmental stewardship. At the least, Bolivia's state-run mining companies have pretty dismal records I know). But I decided he would be worth talking to. Ismael wasn't sure if he spoke English, which he doesn't. And I *hate* having to call someone on the phone and ask them for something, especially when I want to sound professional, and having to do it in my broken Spanish (which is slowly improving, but I can say a lot more than I understand - especially on the phone). So I muddled through a couple of conversations with him, and I think I'm going to interview him on Wednesday. That will give me time to find a translator. I went onto a site called couchsurfing.com (which is a cool place to meet people to stay with when you travel, by the way), and found all the profiles in Cochabamba that claimed "expert" levels of knowledge in both Enlish and Spanish. We'll see how that goes. I might try posting at the university, too, and I met a girl whose job is to translate documents (for a company that makes oxygen for hospitals - random), although she mostly translates Spanish-German. But she might know someone, at least. I'm going to her house for a Carnival party tonight, so I can ask.

Carnival continues to build, with everything being shut after 12pm for an extra-long siesta, and the level of water-ballooning on the increase. In fact, when you walk down the street, you'll see spots with heavy concentrations of balloon scraps - a sure sign to watch the windows of the building accross the street!

I spoke with Luis Gomez, a journalist in La Paz (who does speak English). He sounded tired, and I was hoping he wasn't sounding tired of Ismael sending students to him. But he said to email him, and he would start coming up with contacts to get me closer to the government. I also asked him about archival footage of stuff like Evo's speech announcing the nationaliztion. Which reminds me, in his speech, Evo proclaimed "It's Bolivia's gas now," which I think would be a perfect title for my film.

That's all my news for now. Not much, I know. Other than that, just erratica: I saw electric utility workers doing something with wires on the streetcorners, and their ladders were just plopped down on the edge of the lane, with no cones or anything, and hordes of cars streaming by. Not exactly what we would find in litigious America! And once I started looking, I noticed that the wiring system seems to be one wire for every building, hung outside at about one story up. That is, a whole lot of random wires just running all over, criss-crossing the streets, heading in and out of buildings.

My favorite internet place (I always have one, the one with the fast computers, the good headsets for Skype, etc) is right past a street of funerarias - funeral homes - and displayed prominently in the front windows of each are caskets for infants. As if funeral homes weren't morbid enough already.

All the car alarms here make this sound that is just like the "alarm" sound from a sinking ship in the "electronic talking battleship" game I used to have when I was a kid (and yes, the game is just as cool as it sounds). So that's my new muebles joke for Cochabamba - whenever I hear a car alarm go off, I add "blub blub blub. That ship is a goner!" to myself.

All the minis and taxis here have aftermarket alarm-horns, like a cop might have. But the drivers have perfected the operation of the switch to time the sound to make it sound like it was whistling at a girl. Which seems to be the main strategy of Bolivian flirting for men: whistle and make kissing noises at any cute girl, as long as she's far enough away that you won't have to actually maybe talk to her.