New York has the Empire State Building. Agra has the Taj Mahal. Cochabamba has a really huge, modern movie theater.

Seriously, it's the most modern, expensive-looking thing I've seen in Bolivia. It seems like it belongs in Orange County, not the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

Today I got to meet with Ismael, who was not what I expected. Not in a bad way at all, just kind of funny. First, let me remind you that before being a film maker, Ismael was in the Air Force and then a law professor. OK, form a mental image of what that person might like and what kind of house they might live in. Got it? Alright, I'll continue. I took a taxi to his house, which I couldn't find at first because I was looking for the address 69. Neither I nor the taxi driver saw it, although there was a 169, so I rang the bell. A nice old man answered and chatted with me and the taxi driver, confirming that this was the only block of the street I was looking for. Across the street was a large compound built in pseudo Chinese garden style, with dragons over the gate and Chinese Buddha statues inside. Beyond was a large white house with a conspicous glass-tower staircase attached. When I first saw it, I thought it looked interesting, if a bit out of place. It turns out that this was address 69, but neither I nor my cab driver could tell because the 69 was sideways and engraved in a gray stone plate in the wall, instead of being on the normal, standard address plate. Going into the house was a Bolivian woman dressed in a sari, with ankle bracelets and an ornamental third eye painted on her forehead. This was Ismael's wife, who was getting ready to host a vegetarian cooking class in her home. She ussered me inside the gate and into the house, whose entire bottom floor was devoted to an octagonal meditation space with a floor dominated by a giant yin-yang. Upstairs was the kitchen and living room, which were decorated by a Hindu shrine, various Indian statues and portraits of the Dalai Lama, and a coffee table almost completely covered with polished stone spheres of various colors and sizes. The house was well designed, with skylights, lots of glass, natural wood rafters, and white walls. It managed to allow a lot of natural light without feeling "modern" or museum-like. The bedroom wall that faced the living area was entirely of frosted white glass with a sliding door, which I imagined allowed for the light from the main room to filter into the sleeping area. The only thing that seemed out-of-place were the kitchen cabinets: light, unstained wood in a sort of Shaker style, which looked more like they belonged in an episode of "This Old House" than the sleek, white surroundings of the building I was in.

While I waited for Ismael, I got to listen to the ladies chat about vegetarianism and how much they watched TV (most of them didn't have cable, and only watched the news. One of them had cable, but only because her kids wanted music and movie channels); they talked a little about Evo Morales although I got the impression that it was farely superficial conversation. I felt like I was around the modern equivalent of 19th century English female aristocracy: that is, a group of wealthy women who didn't have to work and had been groomed to not form serious opinions about anything, instead dabbling in fads such as vegetarianism and Eastern religion ("I am so fascinated by India!" proclaimed one woman, without adding how or why), and making sure they live in a way that they can appear proper when discussing television (as the woman who has cable has not). In fairness, I may have formed this impression partly because I'm reading a novel about 19th century English aristocracy that deals with sexism in that era. Really, I didn't know these women hardly at all, but I guess coming from the streets of Cochabamba into a world where people can afford to indulge in such deliberate ways of living, I couldn't help myself.

I was looking around for pictures of what might be Ismael, wondering what he might end up being like. I had a couple photos singled out, and my guesses turned out to be correct when Ismael showed up, 30 minutes late: wild, shoulder-length curly hair pulled back into a short pony tail, spectacles, portly, in a gray sweater and clutching a leather satchel. He seemed more absent-minded-professor than ex-military. He ussured me up through the glass tower of stairs into the "music room," a smaller octagonal room at the top of the house with several cased instruments, a massage table, and a floor covered with singing bowls.

My host was friendly and accomadating, and seemed genuinely interested in what I was doing. We talked a little bit about the gas nationalization, and he sympathized that I haven't been able to learn much from the English-language press: "it's complicated in the Spanish press, which reports on it all the time!" he explained. But he did give me a number of places to start: a Mexican journalist who covered the 2005 Gas Wars in El Alto and might be able to get me an interview with the vice president and with the Minister of Hydrocarbons; a woman in La Paz who can act as a translator and might have some governmental connections for me; and his son, who is currently writing his masters thesis on Bolivian and Brazilian relationships regarding natural gas and would know people I can talk to. He also told me that for interviews with people like the Hydrocarbon Chamber (the industry lobbying group in La Paz), oil companies like Petrobras, and the opposition parties in the government, interviews should be easy to get because all those groups like to have voices from outside of Bolivia that let them play the role of victim. So that's encouraging. He said that Evo Morales used to be a speaker every semester at his school before he became president, but since the elections he's so busy that he's almost impossible to talk to. If I wanted a chance, I'd have to follow him around the country and the world, and hope to catch him playing football and then try and talk to him for a few minutes. And really, I probably don't have the tenacity or resources for that. Kind of a shame, because that would be a really cool interview! We came back into town together, where Ismael had to go meet his new group of students from the US, and said we should get together for coffee and we can talk about how my ideas are coming. Nice guy. And a valuable resource, I think.

So all over Bolivia I've been seeing these people at random little tables selling "SOAT." What is SOAT? It's not in any dictionary. I finally did a Google search for Spanish-language "SOAT" articles, and learned that SOAT is some sort of acronym for car insurance, which the government recently mandated everyone have. So now, in every roundabout and public plaza, many sidewalks and even inside little family restaurants, you see someone, often times like a 19 year old kid, with a plastic table, a clip board, and a money box. Taped to the table will be a computer-printout sign that says "SOAT: $49" or some such price. Now, I'm going to go out on a limb here, and predict that this is an industry that could use more government regulation. I mean, these people don't seem to even have brochures or contracts, let alone be actual companies. As far as I can tell, you give them your money, they write your name in a notebook, and if something happens, you give them a call and hope they give you some money or help. And I'm just going to take a crazy random guess and say that the Bolivian court system isn't prepared to handle thousands of new small-claims cases based on fraud and breach of contract (or non-existence of contract, I guess). Anyways, it smells like disaster, if you ask me.