Land of the Free · 2:04pm Jul 17th, 2014
(For people following this sort of thing: yes, The Most Dangerous Game Contest will get an update tomorrow. We're waiting for a few last scores from the judges to evaluate who'll be moving on to the Audience Participation Round. Keep your ear to the ground)
Hi guys. So for those of you who did not know, I was away in Peru for a week on volunteer efforts, helping a local community set up a water treatment facility so they could have clean drinking water and whatnot. Good work. I wasn't as big a fan of the whole evangelical spread-the-word-of-the-Lord deal that came with it, but hey, at least there's functional benefits to it as well as spiritual benefits, if you want to take that view of things.
ANYHOW, after the most horrifying six hour plane flight of my life, I am finally returned to Eagleland.
God bless Earthbound
Which is good, because for my last few days in Peru, I managed to contract some kind of horrifying flu. From where, I do not know. What it is, I have no clue either. All I know is that I've got the worst fever, and want to crawl up in bed and be there forevermore. My fever actually broke yesterday, but somehow after the airport confiscated my antibiotics, liquid water (which human beings require for hydration) purchased from a duty-free shop, and put me through a six-hour flight at high altitudes and low temperatures... it came back!
Go figure.
I've got a doctor's appointment coming up... soon, I hope, so hopefully I will be on the mend soon and not die now that I've finally made it back to the fatherland.
Anyhow, here's some various observations on my time in Peru:
-I am not much an engineer, so I was not very highly involved with the actual construction of the water treatment facility. Instead I helped out by using my burgeoning knowledge of Spanish (I'd like to think my conversational Spanish has improved greatly by my time in Peru) to teach the local folks how to run the plant, what to use the purified water for, and so on. I'm not entirely sure if our lesson plans were a little juvenile for the audience (at one point we had them making play-doh representations of germs) but I'm trying to keep in mind that a lot of these people may not have had the best opportunity at education, so maybe it was indeed necessary to make it clear that there's tiny monsters in unclean water that will murder you.
-Favorite lesson, incidentally, was when we put some salt in a few cups of bottled water to help illustrate that "Looks clean!" isn't actually a good methodology for "I should put this in my mouth!" I think that one did a pretty good job of getting that point across.
-Also, funfax: because of various slip-ups with how we'd ordered our parts (primarily the issue with "What you can buy in the U.S. and what you can buy in Peru) and how we'd planned to build the whole thing, the final version of the water-purification set-up actually needed a fair bit of jury-rigging. To the extent of the design including a bike tire and linoleum. I didn't get a picture of its final state 'cause FEEEEVER at the time, but I'll see if I can get one from someone else.
-Yes, it does work.
-Chinese-style restaurants are apparently insanely popular there. Like woah. They're called Chifas, I believe, and they're friggin' everywhere. Like, within walking distance of where we were staying, there were no less than five. And you basically couldn't go a mile down the road without being in sight of at least one. Seriously, it was nuts.
-Transformers? Also apparently crazy popular in Peru. There were advertisements for the new movie (or cookies based off of it) everywhere, and at the local Wal-Mart-equivalent, there were basically entire aisles devoted primarily to Transformers and Transformers paraphernalia. Seriously. It was everywhere. Some of it, I am not sure was entirely licensed by Hasbro. If for no other reason than Megatron apparently being a rock'em sock'em robot:
"Seems legit."
-Everyone in Peru seemed really nice, though I'm not entirely sure if any of that had to do with the overall gratitude for what we were all doing there. They were really understanding about my various manglings of their language, and were pretty happy to help me learn what'd gone wrong when I screwed up.
-The World Cup is real in Peru. Gas stations offered combo deals associated with the World Cup. There were insta-popcorn bowls sold with World Cup branding. There was literally a sign that said--in Spanish--"My mother gave me life, but football gave me the reason to live it." Funfax: I actually talked about it with a couple of people before the finals happened, and it turned out they supported Germany. Apparently they're aware that Latin American solidarity is a thing, but they also consider Argentina kind of proud and arrogant. Who knew?
That's it for now, I guess. I may have more to say on the subject later, but I am sick and bleh. Have a nice day, guys. In place of me. Because I am not having a nice day.
If that weren't clear already.
They have Wal-Mart, but not sanitary water?
Hope you get better soon. Which country confiscated your antibiotics? That would be extremely dangerous for some people. Were you missing some documentation for them?
Did they have My Little Pony?
I'm glad you enjoyed your trip in Peru. I hope you feel better. Be sure to drink a lot of fluids, especially peppermint tea and water, get plenty of rest, and eat a lot of chicken noodle soup with plenty of spices if you have a runny nose.
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They have a place called Wong, which is apparently like Wal-Mart, but seemingly less evil.
The water thing actually has to do with how supply can't meet demand, which causes rolling brownouts and somehow results in the water system mixing with the sewage system (and after that there's no real fixing it). I'm not entirely privy to how it all works, but it's something like that.
Dunno where the antibiotics got confiscated. They just weren't in my suitcase when I got it back from the airport (which is when I needed them), is the thing.
They actually do! Kind of. Most of it was actually Equestria Girls paraphernalia. I'm assuming this was because of how a lot of Peru's stuff works, where they just sort of sell things with popular American characters on them and hope it works out.
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Thanks. Will do.
Could you call it...
a Perflu?
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Somewhere, some Peruvian security guards are sitting in a back room with a half-empty bottle of antibiotics, saying, "I don't feel a damn thing from this shit!" But in Spanish.
someone must have paid them to try and kill you, but they were too lazy to do it themselves so they just settled for taking away everything you needed to get better,and let your fever do the work for them.
Somebody wants you dead, Obs.
Just thought I'd let you know, since you appear a bit unaware.
I will find you... And I will trim your beard.
The Rock 'em Sock 'em Transformers are legit.
And stupid.You can find them at Toys R Us.Speaking as an African... Are you sure it's not leptospirosis? It has symptoms similar to really bad flu, is extant in Peru, and is spread by rodents. I thought I had a bad case of flu and a bad heat rash in Liberia once, it turned out to be Leishmaniasis.
I hope you get better, Obs, but I think this blog post has finally proven what I have been long seeking proof for: you may be the greatest human being ever.
Or at least best mod and nicest person I have ever met.
Could be Ebola.
If you feel like your eyes are starting to bleed, post the results of the Most Dangerous Game contest as quickly as you can.
Then call 911 or something, I guess. I'm not a doctor.
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Full on mother mode was activated. This is actually really good advice, though.
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Stigz, you are the worst Liam Neeson ever.
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And you're the worst Time Lord ever.
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But I thought I was the Doctor in real life.
2293912 What you thought was right, is
leftwrong.Alright, I've booked my flight to Peru, gonna buy me some motherfucking Transformers.
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It's most likely prions. I mean, I've noticed that Obs hasn't been as sane as he used to be . . .
Wow, never heard about that in Peru. Didn't know you spoke Spanish, either. Pretty damn cool, Obs. Good work out there.
2293903 I'm not even a mother...
Welcome back, feel better soon, and all good stuff like that!
I'm just waiting to see the next phase of the judging to start!
I've always wanted to travel to South America. Other than Australia, it's the only inhabited continent I've never been to.
¡Atheistical Charities Exist!
Sorry you're sick, Obs, but at least you can say you gave your fair share to a quota of "good deeds". Spiritual lifestyle or not, that's nothing to shake a stick at, and workin' hard to help a country that has:
as a consistent problem... That's a really good thing. I mean, really, how does that even happen?
Hopefully the plentiful amount of eagle tears here will be able to cure your illness!
Hope you get better soon.
I couldn't find any "I hope your weird fever from Peru breaks" cakes, since that would be oddly specific, so I went with the next best thing I could find:
c2.staticflickr.com/4/3194/2998676765_2ab553a735.jpg
You're the only god anyone needs, Obs.
You bless Mother 2, actually.
Hope you get better soon, Obs. Society will collapse soon enough without the infinite wisdom and swag that is you and your beard; I forget which one holds which.
I hope you get well soon.
A few assorted comments as someone that lives in South America:
- About the educational level, it likely depends a lot on where you went to; I believe Peru, like many South American countries, has a wide spread in living conditions and educational levels. Though if the place you went to needed foreign help to set a water treatment plant, it was likely on the poorer end of the scale...
My own country has places where the living conditions are as good as in Europe or the US, and places where the living conditions are closer to those in poor African countries.
- About the "what you can buy in the US" part, gosh, I hate it. One of the sites I consistently visit is Instructables, but more often than not to build anything from there requires a healthy amount of jury-rigging
- About thinking Argentina proud and arrogant, that is not exclusive to Peru
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Actually, which country did the confiscation might be irrelevant. When the US determines security procedures for international flights any country that wishes to be able to have direct flights to the US has to implement them. This includes the rules of not being able to bring liquids into flights, all the rules about metallic objects, the new restriction about not being able to board with an electronic device that does not power up, and so on.
FYI, the flu is caused by the influenza virus, so antibiotics will not do anything to alleviate the flu because antibiotics kill bacteria and not viruses. In fact, some doctors believe overuse of antibiotics can be harmful both because they replace they deplete the helpful bacteria in your gut and promote the proliferation of antibiotic resistant strains.
Now if a doctor had heard your symptoms and prescribed you the antibiotics to take, you should, of course, take them (standard disclaimer: I am not a medical doctor, and you should take any medical advice from strangers on the internet with a grain of salt). However, if you had just been given the antibiotics as a precaution for traveler's diarrhea or other gastrointestinal distress associated with travel to third-world countries, you may want to re-think taking antibiotics in response to illnesses that are likely viral in nature.
A fever that breaks/returns at regular intervals (around six hours?) is one of the hallmarks of malaria.
If you get the chance, be sure to see a travel doctor. They're much less likely to mis-diagnose a foreign bug.
Good work, and I hope you get well soon! Also hope it's not malaria. I've had it; no fun at all.
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Most likely.
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The best part is that there actually is an ebola outbreak going on right now in Africa.
Patient zero, man!
I think Obs is a pretty cool guy, eh fights waterborne diseases and doesn't afraid of anything.
The engineers are looking back on the project with one of three attitudes:
1. Pride at turning out a working product in the face of unexpected resource constraints.
2. Nerve-wracked hope that that bike tire job didn't fall apart just after they got on the plane.
3. Some combination of 1 and 2.
Seriously though, that was an awesome thing to do. I hope you feel better soon!
Goodness, I hope you're lucid enough to tell the legitimate well-wishes and useful advice from the funning around.
I mean, prions are serious. Don't be shy with the eagle tears!
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Eh, it's better to be excited about winning a sports event than to be excited to be invading Poland again.
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You lose power to the pumps and the pressure will cause everything to go backwards. As soon as the tiniest bit of contaminated water finds pure, you are essentially fucked.
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Well the good news is that when I went to the doc, we managed to trace at least some of it to a horrifying sinus infection that has now managed to spread to my ears (possibly as a result of the high altitude conditions I was exposed to during the planeride). So... antibiotics are a go, I guess. I'm decently sure it's not malaria, since the fever doesn't seem to be returning in any significant capacity. Just gotta keep to the bed and take my amoxicillin at regular intervals.
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Yup, antibiotics are the appropriate measure to take for a sinus infection. I hope you feel better soon!
2296511 O yes... planes and ear infections. :( Well, at least it's something you've got good treatment options for! Get well soon.