INT. J ROLAND KELLY - NIGHT

As in my earlier, post I talked about writing a song with an Ecuadorian I met here, and I needed a guitar. I was feeling that nervous-anxious itch, after not having played for six weeks anyway.

I walked around to different guitar shops in El Centro Historico of Quito, of which there are many, and decided on a little student guitar by Rosero Nunez. It cost $45 and is totally playable.

I don’t know who this Rosero Nunez (or the company) is. I do know that there are many small guitar-making shops in Ecuador, but I couldn’t find any information online about this one.

And when I can’t find information online; I blog about it.

All I have is the inside label:

Notice the hotmail email address on it.

I’ll pass that along, in case anyone wants a custom guitar.

I hear from an Ecuadorian peace corp’er that the country has many guitar makers that are 70 years old with no children who wanted to continue the tradition. So it goes.

My new guitar is quite inexpensive (but good) and in the store I purchased it, I saw many more Rosero Nunez guitars that were of really good quality but at a higher price.

I decided on my particular guitar because it was small (in case I have to travel with it), it was cheap (in case I have to toss it), it’s not large enough to make too much noise in my hotel room, and while being a “classical” guitar, it’s made for children so the strings are almost the same distance apart as in the American tradition.

Having a classical guitar is new to me. I have never had nylon strings, I’ve never had strings don’t fan out as you go down the fret board, and if I break a string I would not know how to replace it, as the strings have no “ball” and are tied on in an elaborate way.

Still it has a unique sound, and I’m quite satisfied.

I should say that many things in Ecuador are bootlegged, and just because the label lists it as being a Rosero Nunez, that’s no guarantee that it’s not a guitar made somewhere else with an Ecuadorian label. I bought a hat that says it was made in Italy and that is obviously not true.

Even if - it’s still a playable guitar.

-J Roland Kelly

Internet Cafes. They have always been a mixed bag, but I noticed something on my trip here to Quito.

Windows XP, which powers these places, has been turned into a mess.

It’s an old operating system; yes. The problem is that its been pirated at different evolutions of its development, and then it can’t be properly updated.

Microsoft has released certain high profile security fixes to anyone, even if the OS can’t be proven to be genuine, but where do you commonly go to get those updates? That’s right, and that isn’t happening.

So, it’s common that some of the OSs are five years old.

When I go to an internet café, it’s a crap shoot as to if the computer will run anything Ajax. Come on.

I have Wordpress set to use Google Gears, but anything of any complexity, a good deal of the time just causes everything to come crashing down.

I don’t like to take my laptop out of my room, so I write these posts, put them on a USB thumb drive and take them to the internet café.

Which means I can’t avoid these versions of XP, and it doesn’t stop there. I have seen many versions of XP where the Microsoft logo as been removed and replaced by another, or some hacker’s gang sign, or nothing at all.

Is this really how it is? Is XP so old and hacked that it can be de-branded or re-branded.

The other thing about all of this is viruses. Quito must have been hit hard a while back, because everyone is paranoid. There are all of these anti-virus programs running, that do no good.

First no one pays for an OS, so they are not paying for an anti-virus program. The result is that they have multiple shareware anti-virus programs running eating up resources, and the only thing that the programs do is make up viruses to try and get you to buy the program.

I bought the USB thumb drive here, took it out of the package and the first time I plugged it in, I was told there was a virus on it. Most anti-virus programs are themselves mal-ware.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not the kind of guy to move from Silicon Valley where I had a T1 connection, a 30” monitor, a completely Mac environment, to Quito only to bit*h about the internet.

I’m not one of those particular kinds of as*holes.

There are many positive developments here. The entire Amazon River basin has better wireless Internet coverage then my university hometown in the United States at the end of 2006. I’ll write about it sometime.

If I paid $80 bucks a month, all this bi*thing would be for not. That just kind of violates my living on ten dollars a day rule.

But when it comes to Windows XP, I think this is an excellent case study for Software as a Service (SaaS).

-J Roland Kelly

The last time I left the United States was 2004 and it was to Asia, not South America. Things change and one thing I notice is how music and movies are pirated.

For as long as I have been traveling I have seen developing countries violating copyright, no reason to get upset it is just how things work.

In the late 1990s, in the Middle East, I remember seeing music stores where you would pick out whatever you wanted and then the guy running the place would dub it onto a cassette for you while you waited.

I doubt, that many cassettes are being bootlegged now.

Later on when CD-Rs and CD writers where cheap and commonplace, you could buy an album or movie on one CD, in the case of the movie it would have to be rendered down badly to fit on only one CD, this format being called VCD.

The quality was bad, but the format was the standard and it was possible to buy a stand-alone VCD player. Understand? Not a CD player, not a DVD player that could play VCDs, but just a VCD player. Later on it would all come together.

Enter 2008.

DVD writers have replaced CD writers. How has this changed pirating? Well, as my friend Dennis would say the future is where they have the bigger and better guns.

You won’t hear anything more true, than from Dennis.

Okay, so you get more bang for your buck. I’m used to being able to buy an album or movie in low quality on a CD for a buck, but now you can buy five VCD films or the complete Stones or Beatles discography on a DVD for a buck.

What is this noise about inflation?

All the Rocky films for $1, or the Rambo films; for a dollar f*ck it.

When it comes to bootlegging I want to say something about Windows XP but I think that will have to wait until next time.

-J Roland Kelly

The Church La Merced in Quito

Here’s the way I heard it: the church was built between 1700 and 1742. The tower is the highest in colonial Quito and contains the largest church bell.

After construction, every bit of the building was blessed by priests except the 47m high tower, which as the story goes was quickly taken over by everyone’s best amigo El Diablo.

Also according to legend, the only one strong enough to resist the aforementioned Diablo in the tower was an African-Ecuadorian bell-ringer named Ceferino.

After Ceferino died in 1810, no one would climb the tower, and so the clock stopped and the bell remains un-rung.

Let me just restate this: the largest church bell in Quito has remained hanging in a 47m high tower for the last 200 years without human intervention; okay continuing…

The clock stopped at 6:50. I’ve been asking around trying to see if this is a special time.

El Diablo time. 6:50. Drink a beer.

No clear answer, but that’s 6:50 Eastern Standard Time in the U.S. (not accounting for daylight savings time) if you want to have that beer.

No daylight savings time in Ecuador, by the way people, because it’s on the equator.

I  know that sometime in middle of some night, that bell will ring, the city will gather around the tower, and a large drunken gringo in a red satin devil costume holding a heavy mallet will stagger out, just purely in terms of statistics I mean.

“NO HABLA ESPANOL, POLICIA. I’M THE DEVIL!” Stumble. Vomit. Handcuffs. Ticket home.

Maybe that gringo will be you. Maybe it will be me.

I’ve not found a devil costume, but if anyone needs a pope outfit shoot me an email.

-J Roland Kelly

The average pay is $150 per month. You’re in a $5 room. Everything is still. It’s 10 pm. Ta-Da. The MacBook Pro starts up.

No. Hell No.

I couldn’t find a way to turn off the start-up sound on my Mac without installing this program: StartupSound.prefPane.

There was some question as to if it would work on a modern Intel MacBook. I had no trouble. I don’t know why this isn’t just built into the operating system, except Steve Jobs is an arrogant son of a bitch.

Ta-Da… Come steal my laptop.

The majority of laptops I’ve seen of travelers are Macs.

Because of the Jobs & Pixar connection Wall-E (in the distant future) starts up with that Ta-Da sound. I don’t want to hear that sound past 2012.

Steve Jobs you’ve been warned. Watch it, buddy.

-J Roland Kelly

Two Saturdays ago, that being August 9th; well, let me start this way, there is a major avenue in Quito called the 10th of August (Av. 10 de Agosto), but I sometimes have trouble putting dos and dos together.

…Saturday, I go down to the lobby of my hotel and the woman behind the counter tells me there’s going to be a fiesta at six. I ask her, where? The hotel? She says no, throughout the old town.

Okay.

I go about my business; I do notice that they are setting up stages around El Centro (Old Town) and at six there was a very nice parade. It had period customs from Quito’s history, including women in pocahontas outfits. Got me?

One thing I didn’t understand, at the front of the parade were maybe five voluptuous cheerleaders on stilts.

Five voluptuous cheerleaders on stilts led the big parade. Why? In a parade about the history of Quito where else would they go; I guess.

There was a devil character in the parade, and it’s no secret that the devil has a big Spanish nose, but I’m just stating what everyone already knows.

So the parade was nice, and then it was over.

THEN THE REAL F***ING PARTY STARTED

I’ve been to a pre-deluge Mardi Gras, and this was just as big. There are only 1.4 million people in Quito, everyone must have been here in the Old Town, El Centro is not a small place.

This throw down was nothing less than the 200th anniversary of Quito being liberated from the Spanish.

I’m still not sure of the open container policy in Quito (later on, I did see people drinking wine in the street) so I Michael Jackson’ed it. You know, Jesus juiced it? Put it in a coke bottle.

I walked around the Old Town going from stage to stage all evening; a lot of stuff I didn’t understand. I think I saw people playing blades of grass, or some kind of leaf.

People had jumped the fence and were climbing on the statue of Mariscal Sucre, the hombre who defeated the Spanish in the final battle, and I did the same as it led to a better view of a stage. Gringolandia in Quito official name is Mariscal Sucre named after this field marshal.

In the absolute center of El Centro, the Grand Plaza, the oldest plaza, the first one, by the presidential place, they had set up projection monitors for a concert.

The entire plaza was filled with white plastic chairs.

It was an interesting contrast between the ancient plaza and modern technology, and after the concert was a fireworks display… they used the roof of the first cathedral in Quito as the base to launch the fireworks (this is also in the grand plaza).

I was close enough to see everyone on the cathedral sh!t their pants when fireworks exploded on the roof, as opposed to a few hundred feet above the roof. Ecuador needs to give the people who put that on combat medals.

This was the fireworks display after the concert; there would be a whole other fireworks display at midnight marking the actual 10th of August.

I was back in the Grand Plaza later on in-between shows, actually going to another stage, when El Presidente came out onto the terrace of the presidential palace for a smoke, or a photo opportunity, one. He came over to the edge and waved at the crowd for a few minutes.

The great thing about Quito is it celebrates itself often. There were Pre-Incan indigenous people here, then 100 years before the Spanish came, the Incas conquered, then so the Spanish couldn’t get it, the Incas destroyed the city, then the Spanish re-founded it, finally Quito was liberated from the Spanish.

Quitenos celebrate all this, although I hear the indigenous people don’t like the celebrations honoring the Spanish, you know because they’re not Spanish, and f*ck big noses.

I swear there are people here cheering on space aliens, and young uptown progressives cheering on the liberation of Quito from the space aliens.

More wine, please.

By 1:30 in the morning I was in Santo Domingo Plaza near my hotel dancing like a drunken madman. The entire plaza was a dance floor. It had started to rain and everyone was slightly wet.

Everything was breaking down. The one-two-three dance of salsa was turning into something tribal. People were holding hands and dancing in circles. Chinese vampires were standing in one place and hopping up and down. I, for some reason had dissolved into short jerky bluegrass movements.

Somewhere a Virgin Mary was crying real blood, and a stone Ganesha was drinking fresh pure milk.

Never in all my ever increasing years, has someone told me “hey, fiesta at six” and it turned out to be some kind of world super party.

Quito Luz de America - may God protect it.

-J Roland Kelly

Quito, Ecuador

 When I first got off the plane in Quito, I was exhausted. My cheap ticket from San Francisco ($550) was too Indiana Jones like, from SFO to LAX to Panama City to Quito. All of this was over night, and took 12 hours with layovers.

The flights themselves where not long enough to get comfortable, and I have a habit of getting good and exhausted before a trip even begins; it’s always been that way with me.

Maybe getting deliriously tired is my way of calming the nerves.

After all, what does it take a normal person to move to a foreign city with no connections?

So, there I am in the newly remodeled Quito airport trying to stand up straight and look okay for customs, and the first thing that I remember is that Quito is very high at an altitude of over 12,000 feet.

The air was thin, and I had been living almost at sea level in California.

No problems with customs. Ecuador offers a 90-day visa for US tourists. It’s my understanding that I can just cross the border and get another 90-day visa when the time comes. I guess I’ll find out in October.

I got my backpack, hid my cash, went outside to the smell of car exhaust (I’m getting less tolerate of these types of things and I think they use ¨dirty diesel¨ here), walked away from the airport, got a taxi, and started for the cheap side of town.

In the taxi, I realize how this routine is second nature to me.

Each time I put my backpack in a closet, I think never again. I even burned my passport once; then three months later spent 80 bucks to have it replaced for a trip to London.

This time things are different; my backpack hasn’t been dusted off since Western China in 2004 (excluding moving to California, which is it’s own country). In the down time, I’ve tried focusing on expressing myself in different artistic mediums but the backpack stays with me.

Now, I’m trying to bring art and travel together. It might be magic, it might be disastrous. I’ve never tried this combination before, but I figure others have made it work and I still have some youth to burn.

Back in the moving taxi from the Quito Airport, the driver says something into a CB radio that I don’t understand, which could be anything in Spanish ¨I’m leaving the airport, be back in twenty minutes¨ or ¨I’ve got the gringo, get ready,¨ just in case I calmly locked the three doors, leaving his door the only one unlocked.

At the first sign of trouble, I decide (and it seems totally rational at a time like this) I will kick this old man’s head off and take control of the taxi, but there never was a first sign of trouble, nothing bad ever really happens, and getting half crazy is half the fun of traveling.

I fell asleep in a five and a half dollar hotel room, woke up in the middle of the night, when nothing was open, went back to sleep, woke up in the afternoon and thought damn this place looks like San Francisco.

I had a good laugh; I didn’t pick up on that the last time I was here. It took me 12 hours to get to Quito from Mountain View, California.

How long does it take to get to San Francisco (North Beach) in accident laden rush hour traffic or public transit from Mountain View? I’ve been stuck in traffic for over three hours.

Commuting in the Bay Area, I will not miss.

Since the first night, things have been good. I am staying in the historic part of town (El Centro), which people just call the ¨Old Town.¨

It’s beautiful, and I found out they don’t allow cars into the old town on Sundays.

And even better, on the last Sunday of every month they close the main drag here from one end of the city to the other for every thing but bikes.

All of this has been reassuring, I was worried that since my last visit Quito might have fallen apart. There’s been a coup, multiple new presidents, etc. but costs are still low, crime is down, the things that needed to stay the same, stayed the same and things that needed to change, changed.

Don’t get me wrong, nothing is perfect, if I were half the man I were five years ago (slamming fist on table) I would take a power-washer to this place, who-ra.

- J Roland Kelly

Plus I can do a 45 in 35.

I´m here in Quito. I found a place for the month with free internet for $165. No problems with the visa. Don´t show up in Quito hung over as it is a very high city. Full report to come. J Roland

I found this thing called the South American Explorers. Sure, I joined. I don’t know what I think about the name, and definitely their website is from another time. And that time was not a simpler time, but hey, they offer a totally worthwhile service.  

They will store your sh*t. No sh*t! Backpack. Mail. Whatever.

So, get this. If you are relocating to South America you can mail yourself a package and it will be there in South America when you arrive.

I’m going to use this service to mail myself a crate of books (screenwriting, etc.) and maybe my guitar. I don’t want any hassles on the plane, books are heavy, and I don’t want go looking for a place to stay the first night with 40 pounds of printed matter.

The basic fee to join is $50 bucks. They maintain “clubhouses” in Quito, Cusco, Lima, and Buenos Aires with the main headquarters in Ithaca, New York.

Their clubhouses have wireless Internet. Boo-yeah. Apparently members are welcome to hangout at the clubhouse all day everyday until they close.

They offer travelers information on useful topics and try to create “greater awareness of this continent through the diffusion of information and cross cultural interaction,” all that good stuff… but man, I hope they can store some sh*t.

Totally worth the fifty bucks right there.

The clubhouses look pretty cool, like old colonial. Like you might go in and someone might be smoking a sugary sweet tobacco out of a cherrywood pipe, and you might hear them say “it’s good to own land, Stevens, I tell you it’s good to own land.”

I’ll be there using the high-speed Internet, away from all the kids playing Doom 57 in the Internet cafes.

Yes, sir. And they give d*scounts to bloggers who blog about them.

-J Roland Kelly