How to drink "mate"

1) Pour

2) Sip

3) Look cool

Mate is a traditional caffeinated tea-like drink from southern South America. Unlike tea or coffee, the filtration process happens while drinking, not before: a special metal straw has a closed end whith tiny holes in it that allows in the infusion but keeps out the herbs. A special "cup" or gourd is filled with "Yerba Mate" once, and then hot water, usually from a thermos, is poured into the gourd. Lastly, the straw goes into the gourd and the infusion sipped via the metal straw. You can read all about it here.
The habit of drinking Yerba Mate is so common in Uruguay that you can often see young and old drinking it on the streets.

Iran: how long will this government last?

Its been six months since the fraudulent elections in Iran, and despite all the arrests, imprisonments, torture, and killings of protesters, the opposition is still very strong, as the recent demonstrations follwing lead opposition cleric Hossein Ali Montazeri's funeral show.

It seems clear this goverment won't complete its full term, the question is how long will it last, and what will happen afterwards. I pray for a fully democratic government in Iran that will help stabilize the middle east and prove that full-fledged democracies are viable in muslim countries.

Panic Attack

A few weeks ago I arrived home in Montevideo anticipating a peaceful vacation in this small corner of the world.
Little did I know...

Distrito Federal

More snapshots from Mexico City

Teotihuacan

Walking down the Avenue of the Dead in this precolumbian city, you can almost feel the weight of time adding to the thousands of tons of masonry -over twenty centuries since its first buildings were erected.

I was particularly aware of this fact because only a day before, I had been marveling at five hundred year old cathedrals in the historic distric of Mexico City and all the history since the Spaniards arrived in Mexico.

Knowing that the builders of this city faded away without ever coming into contact with the people of the Old World feels like watching the remains of an alternate current of history. What if the the Europeans had never crossed the Atlantic and the Mayans had thrived and expanded? Perhaps I'd be posting pictures of ancient Roman ruins and wondering the same thing.

Viva Mexico!

The Zocalo

You can feel the flow of history in this town, from the 500 year old cathedrals, to the glass towers from the age of corporate globalization just a few blocks apart, to the great cities abandoned long before Columbus was born. It is also a city of sights and smells: ubiquitous food vendors fill sidewalks with the smell of cooking, the ever-present always-on flashing red and blue police-car lights, the pedestrian-only commercial streets. And in spite of all the hustle and bustle one would expect from the second-largest city in the world, it is surprisingly orderly, and it feels quite safe -at least it feels that way so far -maybe I haven't come across a "fun" neighborhood yet...

Family pictures

I found this old family picture, and I thought about how the past seems like a foreign country: most things are easily recognizable, but just different enough to make them seem a bit strange, unfamiliar. The infant on my great-grandmother's lap is my Dad.

Fall

Chevy Chase, Maryland

Story

Of course they had to be French...

Europa in distress

After reading this article, my original intention was to reflect on the irrational fear of change that afflicts so many of our species. A useful survival trait perhaps, in an era of tribal warfare, but no more. At a certain level, I feel that Europeans are avoiding their responsibility to take on their share of leadership in the world.

I was reminded of the ancient myth of a Europa in distress, and started searching for an appropriate image to go with my yet to be written post. Aside from finding the great bronze piece above, I became more interested in the details of this mythical woman who lent her name to a continent, and so I -ahem- binged her. Thus I found myself browsing this lost presentation. Intrigued by its, shall we say, uniqueness, I looked into it and found it was put together by a school kid. It was then that it hit me -I always talk about how everybody has something to teach and today I was taught ancient mythology by a 6th grader.

This was a completely wasted half-hour, you say? Maybe, but I could never give up such care-free moments of surfing on this world wide web, our brave new sea of information.