An extra day: 29 February 2016

Posted on 2016-02-28 by Andreas Moser

Tomorrow, you will receive a precious gift: an extra day.

Because 2016 is a leap year, you will have 24 hours more in your year. Even those of you who pretend that they don’t have enough time, have no more excuse not to do what they want to do.

Make use of this rare opportunity! Don’t go to work! (You can blame it on not knowing about this oddity or on operating on last year’s calendar.)

Instead, use this unexpected extra day to do what you have always wanted to do:

  • Learn how to dive.
  • Climb a volcano.
  • Send a letter to a relative or friend that you haven’t contacted in years.
  • Learn the cricket rules.
  • Make a barbecue.
  • Turn off your phone and read a book.
  • Milk a cow.
  • Use a bus or a train that you have never used and see where it goes. Walk back.
  • Draw a pirate treasure map and hide it where people can find it.
  • Use rope skipping as your only means of moving all day.
  • Wash your cat.
  • Join a narco syndicate for an undercover report.
  • Cook as much spaghetti as you can and invite your friends.
  • Write a short story (and send it to this blog for publication).
  • Try to get into the neighbouring country, evading the border controls.
  • Run for public office.
  • Emigrate to Bolivia.
  • Tell your children the truth.
  • Repair your bicycle.
  • Pick up a language course and learn a new language.
  • Give chocolate to everybody whom you meet today.
  • Enrol in university.
  • Start a flash-mob.
  • Go walking into the same direction as long as you can or until you reach the sea (or fall off the earth).
  • Build a snow sculpture.
  • Plant a tree.
  • Drive backwards all day.
  • Pretend that you don’t speak your native language.
  • Build an aquarium.
  • Eat only ice cream all day.
  • Go to your kebab shop and offer to help in the kitchen.
  • Put up a zip-line in your backyard.
  • Do some parkour jumps.
  • Join the military.
  • Take colour copies of all the money that you have.
  • Fix the buttons on all your clothes.
  • Catch a fish.
  • Get vaccinated against yellow fever.
  • Try to buy a train ticket for 30 February.
  • Paint your house in a different colour.
  • Give away all the clothes you have not worn in a year.
  • Write a sudoku.
  • Go to the park and ask strangers to play chess with you.
  • Enrol in a monastery.
  • Record the sound of a helicopter and play it as loud as possible when people are close.
  • Read the constitution.
  • Eat vegetarian for a day.
  • Talk about bombs and explosions all day to attract the attention of the FBI.
  • Volunteer at an animal shelter.
  • Buy a Chinese newspaper and sit in the park in Chinatown, pretending to read it.
  • Go hitchhiking and don’t worry about the destination.

I hope you will enjoy your extra day! Let me know what you did.

Posted in Life, Time | 17 Comments

Photo Studio in Bolivia

Posted on 2016-02-28 by Andreas Moser

Around the office in Cochabamba, where I have to go every month to extend my Bolivian visa, there are all kinds of merchants and service providers: food, drinks, copies, foreign currencies, pens, flight tickets, you can get anything here.

And for those who forgot to bring a passport photo, there is a studio:

Fotostudio.JPG

A mirror, a white screen, a chair, why would one need more?

Posted in Bolivia, Photography, Technology, Travel | Tagged | 6 Comments

Easily Confused (56) Republican debates

Posted on 2016-02-28 by Andreas Moser

How Republican debates used to be:

How Republican debates look now:

Even I, as someone who is very interested in politics, have stopped watching these debates. There is nothing new to be learned from them, there is nothing of substance. My main criticism is not even directed at the candidates, as embarrassing as some of them may be, but at the moderators:

If someone doesn’t answer your question, interrupt them, and ask them to answer the question. If someone makes outrageous claims and statements, follow up right away. If someone lies, call them out right away. If someone promises to “repeal” laws, ask them how this is the President’s authority. But that would mean that journalists actually had to study the issues themselves, not just report poll numbers and re-play soundbites.

How primary debates (in both parties) should be carried out:

Or maybe it would already help to cool tempers if candidates were given a chair, so that they don’t need to stand for 90 minutes.

George H.W. Bush, Ross Perot, Bill Clinton

Posted in History, Mexico, Politics, USA | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Food in Cochabamba

Posted on 2016-02-24 by Andreas Moser

Some of you have been asking what we eat in Bolivia. A lot and rather unhealthy, I always answered.

Now there is a video to illustrate what I meant with that. Cochabamba is known as the culinary capital of Bolivia, but it may well also be the capital of diabetes.

A lunch menu at a Bolivian restaurant (soup, main course, maybe a dessert, and a bottle of cola) costs around 3 dollars. No surprise then that I hardly cook myself. Obviously there are restaurants catering to tourists (or snobs) which are more expensive, but I prefer the small restaurants that suddenly open up everywhere around lunch time. Sometimes it is only someone’s garden or garage with a few tables and plastic chairs. There will be a sign in the street advertising the menu of the day. You can’t get anything else, there will be the same food on every table.

At night, chefs are popping up at every street corner, putting up a grill or a gas stove or pulling a huge pot of soup on four wheels behind tem. Each of them too has only one specialty, with some of these small businesses preparing and selling it at the same street corner for years. For example, close to my home, at the corner of America/Bolivar, you can get trancapechos (you see them from minute 2:45 in the video on) as long as they have enough bread, burgers and eggs, sometimes until after midnight. Because there is only one dish, you simply order by mentioning the number of huge burgers which you want. Uno is absolutely sufficient, and for 1.50 dollars you will get full. I often pass by that stall after my late-night run in Abraham-Lincoln-Park.

Trancapecho street

Interestingly to someone from Germany, Paulaner beer is very popular. There is even a “Paulaner Fan-Shop“ in Cochabamba, where you can buy beer mugs. For those who prefer the beer from northern Germany, there is “Bierhaus Dortmund“.

Between all the unhealthy options, I have finally found one vegetarian restaurant.

(Zur deutschen Fassung dieses Artikels.)

Posted in Bolivia, Food, Travel, Video Blog | Tagged | 17 Comments

Video Blog: Victory Party of the NO campaign in Bolivia

Posted on 2016-02-22 by Andreas Moser

Going for a walk in Cochabamba last night, a few hours after the polls had closed, I came past Plaza de las Banderas where a small group of supporters of the NO campaign, the campaign against granting President Evo Morales of Bolivia the possibility to run for another term, had gathered. They were only a handful and didn’t look too happy. All day there had been reports and indications of electoral fraud. The optimism of the campaign had evaporated. Everyone knew all along that the result would be close, but now the tension was enormous.

NO small group.JPG

I was hungry and kept walking down Avenida Ballivian until I found a chicken restaurant. They had the news on TV and just as I entered, the first prediction was shown: The NO campaign would win by 51%. The eyes of the patrons were glued to the TV, but showed no joy. Either these were mainly SI supporters, or they couldn’t believe it yet.

But for me, this was enough to skip dinner and race back to Plaza de las Banderas. Slowly, more and more people with NO-flags and with red T-shirts arrived, although it was still a small crowd.

The passing cars began to honk in support, their drivers raising their fists through the windows. And then, it was like everyone who hat voted NO had heard the good news and was rushing to the square  in the north of Cochabamba. The roads which had been pleasantly empty all day (motorized traffic is banned on election days in Bolivia) filled with motorbikes, cars and trucks from one minute to the next, with red flags waving and music blasting from everywhere. It was like a second carnival.

NO truck.JPG

The small group had swollen into a jubilant crowd, and I found myself in the midst of it.

NO child.JPGNO LeyesNO back 1No back 2

(Hier könnt Ihr diesen Bericht auf Deutsch lesen.)

Posted in Bolivia, Photography, Politics, Travel, Video Blog | Tagged | 2 Comments

Evo, don’t take it personally.

Posted on 2016-02-22 by Andreas Moser

Photographed in Cochabamba on the day of the referendum, in which a majority of Bolivians rejected a constitutional amendment that would have allowed President Evo Morales to run for a fourth consecutive term: “Evo, I love you. Forgive me.”

Evo te amo.JPG

Posted in Bolivia, Language, Photography, Politics | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Who predicted the Result of the Referendum in Bolivia?

Posted on 2016-02-21 by Andreas Moser

I did:

prediction Twitter

And the result:

resultado 22Feb2016

 

Posted in Bolivia, Politics | 5 Comments

The Referendum in Bolivia is actually not important

Posted on 2016-02-21 by Andreas Moser

In less than two hours, the polls will close in Bolivia. Soon thereafter, the result of the constitutional referendum will be announced. Half of the country will be happy, half of the country will be sad. Some people will dance, others will cry. Some will light fireworks, others will jump from the balcony.

My dear Bolivian friends, it’s really not worth it! Don’t get hung up by the result, and even more so, don’t hang yourself because of it. Don’t let it strain friendships or relationships.

no-si-kissing

  • If you are on the SI side and the NO side won, don’t worry: MAS will still be able to put up another candidate at the next election who will propose to continue the politics of Evo Morales. The agenda of MAS does not depend on one person. It’s a large party and they have plenty of people. If not, you can run for President yourself.
  • If you are on the NO side and the SI side won, don’t worry: It doesn’t mean that President Morales will get another term, it just means there will be another election with him as a candidate. But there are plenty of able opposition parties and candidates who can run again him and by no means is the next election a sure thing for anyone. If necessary, you can run for President yourself.

Now let’s all be happy that the alcohol ban will be lifted on Monday.

And if there are reports of election fraud, then both the SI and the NO voters should unite, demand an investigation and prosecution if warranted. Because anyone who commits fraud in an election or a referendum displays blatant disrespect to voters from both sides. The integrity of democracy is far more important than the outcome of the referendum, particularly on such a relatively minor question. The Bolivians who gave their lives and their liberty in the fight for democracy didn’t fight for the question of two or three or four presidential terms. They fought for free and fair elections, regardless of the outcome. Let’s not forget this priority.

Posted in Bolivia, Philosophy, Politics | Tagged | 4 Comments

My Shadow is a Cowboy

Posted on 2016-02-21 by Andreas Moser

The great thing about a hat is that your own shadow suddenly looks much cooler.

shadow.JPG

(Photographed on the walk from San José de Chiquitos to Santa Cruz la Vieja in Bolivia. But that doesn’t really matter for this photo, does it?)

Posted in Bolivia, Photography, Travel | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Video Blog: NO campaign in Santa Cruz

Posted on 2016-02-21 by Andreas Moser

It was Sunday evening, I was sitting in the central square of Santa Cruz in Bolivia, resting from the half marathon which I had run earlier that day. It was Valentine’s Day and of course I was by myself, when I suddenly heard the sound that I like so much, that gets my pulse racing, makes me grab my camera and run towards it, as tired as my legs may have been after running 21 km in the morning. That sound is the sound of political protest.

I caught the beginning of a walk by the NO campaign, the campaign against changing the Bolivian constitution, against allowing President Morales to run for a fourth term in office. Even if you are not too interested in politics, these videos give you a nice glimpse of the area around the cathedral in Santa Cruz.

The crowd grew by the minute. People who had sat in the park playing with their children, eating ice cream or staring at their phones (the big difference between Cochabamba and Santa Cruz: people sitting in a park in Cochabamba eat, people sitting in a park in Santa Cruz stare at their phones) had gotten up to join the parade.

No1No3No2

Bystanders were clapping in support. None of the cars which were forced to wait because of the march honked in frustration. Even this child showed his support.

NO kid.JPG

And like any good political protest, it ended with the singing of the national anthem.

(Hier gibt es diesen Bericht auf Deutsch.)

Posted in Bolivia, Photography, Politics, Travel, Video Blog | Tagged , | 2 Comments