Más De Villa De Veyva

La Roca
Originally uploaded by Phil Chan.

Villa De Veyva continues to be a great place to hang out. I've been enjoying being a tourist for the first time in ages (maybe the first time), wandering around the cobbled streets, taking lots of fotos of people's houses, buying gifts for people and generally relaxing.

The food festival has created a great atmosphere in the town. During the day food stalls jammed with delicious meals and snacks cover the town's plaza and at night the restaurants fill with people and music. The plaza was host to some great local musicians last night and I grabbed some cool movies of them playing tradional music.

I've had a good chance to think while I've been here and have, obviously since I'm a nerd, gotten stuck into the next version of Elevation. This time focusing on multiplayer mechanics and how to dynamically generate the graphics for the buildings rather than using prebaked images. I'm still entertaining the thought of locking myself up somewhere and working for the rest of the year, so if I still don't feel like traveling after the Galapagos Islands, I'm going to pick up a laptop and hide in the Argentinian countryside somewhere until Brendan comes out in October.

I've also continued my Colombian integration. It started with people asking if I was Colombian rather than automatically assuming I was an extranjero (forgeiner) then, for the last month people have been calling me Felipe rather than Phil (actually Phil sounds a little odd now, but I'm sure I'll get used to it again... someday). Somewhere along the road I ended up with a band in the colours of the Colombian flag wrapped around my wrist and today I bought a woven bag to carry my stuff aroud in rather than using a backpack. The final step will be to start wearing a pair of loose fitting white cotton pants and matching shirt, which I'm actually eyeing out. Depsite all that, and what many people back home seem to be saying or encouraging me to do, I will eventually leave this wonderful country and return home... I have to pick some stuff up before I move here anyway :)

I've also been making good strides with a copy of Cambio, a Colombian political magazine, that I picked up and am very happy about. Who would have thought a magazine would be easier than a 1000 page novel written in the style of magical realism... ok, everyone, but I'm still happy to be able to read so much. So crazy stuff happened out here last week with El Presidente making some changes to ambassadors to various countries without consulting anyone, including the people that were being shuffled around, which I can finally understand and is completely crazy. It seems like pretty much all the politicians out here are corrupt... which is completely different and shocking compared to Australia

Oh, today is my little-big sister Megan's 35th birthday, so Happy Birthday Meg!!! And yes, I did get you a present :)