Going to Washington, D.C.

I haven't been doing too much that I think is worth writing about lately. Currently two part time jobs and applying to MBA schools is taking up the majority of my time, but tomorrow I'm finally doing something exciting! I'll be in Washington, D.C. for about a week.

This is my third time over there and I've already got many of the monuments and museums out of the way, so maybe this time I can experience a bit more of the city proper. I'm looking forward to some ethnic cuisine and some quality exploring. The description of DC on wikitravel is pretty awesome: "[DC] has a collection of free, public museums unparalleled in size and scope throughout the history of mankind, and the lion's share of the nation's most treasured monuments and memorials. The vistas on the National Mall between the Capitol, Washington Monument, White House, and Lincoln Memorial are famous throughout the world as icons of the world's wealthiest and most powerful nation." Sounds pretty epic. Stay tuned.

Next Level Beats

My friend Seago has introduced me to some interesting music videos. A couple of them are rap videos with the requisite bad language and sexual themes, so don't watch them at work or you will probably have to go to jail for blowing your coworkers' minds. The main theme that strings the following four videos together is that it's hard to tell if the artists are serious.

The first group I present is Die Antwoord, which apparently means "the answer" in Afrikaans (google translate thinks it means "the reply", but whatever. These guys hail from South Africa. I'm not going to try to describe them or compare these people to anything. There's no point.

This video has some dancing in it that I wish I could emulate.

Another video from Die Antwoord.

I'm pretty sure that Jack Parow here is also South African. He raps while switching between English and Afrikaans, and his way of speaking makes it hard to sometimes tell which is which. His little gimmick is a hat with a cartoonishly long bill. Is he serious? I'll let you decide. He sounds good though.

This is some weird 80's synth pop group called Bronski Beat. I include them only because this song is referenced in the first video I posted by Die Antwoord.

Enjoy.

Beware the Prickly Pear

I was recently browsing in the produce section of my local Meijer store, and after grabbing the usual grapes and oranges I had a quick peak at the "weird" stuff section. You know, the little area with the odd coconut, pomegranate, or starfruit; the stuff you may have heard of but still don't buy too often. Well they had something I'd never tried before: prickly pears!

I've never even seen these things sold anywhere, so I just jumped right in. Didn't know how they are eaten, or what a good one looks like, so I just started squeezing them and giving them a good looking over. They were 3 for $2, so I did a good amount of fruit moving around. I put the three winners in a provided plastic bag and that was that.

But, these little guys aren't called prickly pears because they used to be prickly. This diabolical plant has two types of spines. The big mean ones are removed by the pear technicians, but there are also very fine, transparent, hairlike spines to deal with. These detach and become embedded in the skin. So after touching countless of the little things, my hands were covered in little bits of pain. It was like having 15 or so splinters at the same time. I definitely looked like someone to avoid, walking around a supermarket, staring intently at my own contorted hands and mumbling painful expressions to myself. I got most of them out, but I'm typing this with a band-aid on one finger. Shouldn't those things have a warning label or something?

Well in case anyone would like have a little taste test at home, if you avoid hurting yourself you've won most of the battle. Peeling and eating the fruit is pretty straightforward.


How to eat a prickly pear:

The culprit. Use a rag or gloves or something while cutting to avoid being poked a bunch by invisible pricklies.

First cut off either end of the fruit to get rid of the stem and other inedibles.


Then make a slight cut towards the center, and simply peel the rind off of the fruit with your hand. It separates easily.


Ta-Da!


The fruit is nice and juicy. There are seeds throughout but they are edible. It has a bit of a watermelon sort of taste.

Prickly pear fun fact: the eagle eating a snake on the flag of Mexico is perched on a prickly pear cactus. The legend is that the Aztecs built their capital city of Tenochtitlan at its location because they were told to look for the eagle by the god Huitzilopochtli(whose name is hereby declared unpronounceable). Tenochtitlan(present day Mexico City) literally means "the place of the cactus fruit" (source here).

Colombian Candy Bars

While I write a bit more on Colombia, I thought this was worth sharing by itself.

The name of this delicious Nestle treat is Beso de Negra, or "Black Kiss" according to Google Translate. The African American woman pictured blowing a kiss on the wrapper is a bit risque by American standards. I think it's a nice little illustration of how race is treated differently in other countries. The treat is like a chocolate covered marshmallow atop a cookie. The tagline is "delicious chocolate flavor... delicious cookie".


Here is a much more attractively named ripoff of Baby Ruth sold in Colombia: Baby Johnny's!

Rail Line to Machu Picchu Destroyed by Floods

There aren't a lot of pictures to show of my current adventures, which include job hunting and MBA night classes, but I've still got a few little things up my sleeve.

In the mean time, I've been following the dramatic events in Peru. Haiti is obviously where the world's attention is rightly focused at the moment, but many of the areas I visited just a few months ago have been destroyed by heaving rains and mudslides. The PeruRail line I traveled on from Cusco to Aguas Calientes was damaged to the point that the nearly 1,300 tourists that had come to see Machu Picchu needed to be airlifted out.

As the train is the only way for tourists to get to Machu Picchu aside from mountain hiking, the city of Aguas Calientes is being evacuated of its residents as well. With tourism at zero for the near future, there's no money coming in and no reason to stay.

BBC News reported that "some tourists had to rely on locals for food after cash machines dried up and prices for some goods soared."

An MSNBC blurb on the evacuations.