weekend in brief

First, everyone should check out this really cool video that Dad sent me by email. I highly suggest watching the whole thing:

500 YEARS OF WOMEN IN ART


Anyhow, highlights of the weekend include me driving for the first time in almost 11 months, yesterday. I made crab cakes for Vale and her aunt and uncle (the kids got tuna with mustard, which is apparently a house favorite), and Vale and I had to go to the grocery store to pick up some key ingredients, like crab meat. So I drove Rodrigo's car to Alto Las Condes and back. It was kind of nerve-wracking getting in, just because it had been so long, but as soon as we started going it was fun and easy. Helped that it was Sunday morning and the road's weren't exactly crowded. And then, on the way back, instead of going straight to Rodrigo and Cecilia's house, I drove past it a little ways and pulled into a little mini parking lot/lookout type place, and passed the keys to Vale. She's 28 years old and had never driven a car, not even in a parking lot. So she had her first driving experience; she wasn't bad for a first-timer although the whole staying-in-your-lane thing would have been a problem had there been any other cars around. Pays to live waaayyyy out there.

Also we watched "Goodbye Lenin," a very sweet German movie about a kid from East Germany growing up and coming of age during the fall of the USSR. I liked it a lot, and so did Vale, although she fell asleep for about the last 20 or 30 minutes. We watched with Spanish subtitles and I got everything except for a couple of words here and there (like maybe 8 total the whole movie), which was a good feeling.

Yesterday also was my first time back at frisbee after a two-week absence, and despite having eaten a crab cake sandwich and fries before playing, which caused a few issues towards the beginning, I played really well and had a great time. Afterwards of course included a trip to Tortilla Factory. Blackberry, raspberry, banana, apple and blueberry smoothie and a cup of coffee plus the house corn chips and salsa...perrrrfect. Vale wanted to go buy some tea after that at a hoity-toity tea store in Alto Las Condes, so we walked across the street. I also hadn't just kind of mosied and people-watched and window-shopped in a mall for a long time. Malls, love them or hate them, are interesting places. We went into a couple of book stores trying to find a copy of Intérprete de Emociones (Interpreter of Maladies) but the translated edition is apparently out of print and sold out everywhere. Vale also dragged me into various clothing stores and made me try on coats. If I had money to burn I'd like to buy a nice pea-coat-type thing, the ones I tried on were really comfortable and I like the way they look. But the cheapest one was like 150 bucks (which, I suppose, isn't that much in the long run, but it's too much for me right now), so my very nice parka and various sweatshirts and fleeces will suffice just fine for the time being.

We're reading right now, in European Political Economy, about the adjustments that OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development--basically Europe, North America, some Latin America, and E/SE Asia) countries have had to make over the last 30 years to their trade and monetary policy and also to their welfare states. I think the latter is what I'm going to write my final paper about for the class. How countries like Sweden and Denmark, which have powerful social-democratic welfare states that, to me, seem overwhelmingly fairer and more appealing than the residual welfare states (bascially, no help until you're screwed, and then not very much) of the Anglo countries or the corporatist, conservative welfare states of Germany and Austria (extremely compartmentalized and unevenly distributed help based on job category). The de-commodification of labor in the Norwegian countries is wonderful but they are the most vulnerable to collapse under current structural (globalization, general aging of the population) and institutional (the EU, weakening of labor organizations) changes. It sucks for them, and I think how they respond to those changes has been and is going to be really interesting and instructive. Can they make it without compromising their whole systems, and what are they doing to try?

Speaking of which, I should eat breakfast and then get reading. We've got class today for the first time in months because we missed a couple of Wednesdays and need to make them up. Hope you enjoyed the video.