Tag: Travel

Travel & Restaurants: Quito, Ecuador – Mistranslated American and Ecuadorian Cultural Symbols

Posted by J Roland Kelly – December 16, 2008

I’m still in Quito, and I continue to find things that are still new to me. I’m going to say as few words about the following pictures as possible.

Let me say the name of the restaurant, Menestras del Negro translated into English is something like Black Guy Beans.

ecuador-food

Notice the black guy. If you look closely at the menu, you will see an African guy hunting a dinosaur with a spear. Now, everyone knows the Chinese are the only ones in the modern era to hunt dinosaurs for food. But before you say, “oh, Ecuador is like that.” Check this out.

quito-restaurant

Old man Sanders and a guy with a bone fork in his hair together side by side. Fried chicken and beans- tasty. It´s all fun and games except for this restaurant.

kkk-restaurant

This by the way is just a Catholic church suit, as you might have figured out the restaurant is in a renovated church. But in case you think I´m seeing things that aren´t there, this is the front door of the restaurant.

kkk-food

Imagine seeing your refection in a door like that.

- J Roland Kelly

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Music & Songwriting: Handmade Ecuadorian Guitars by Rosero Nunez

Posted by J Roland Kelly – December 2, 2008

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

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Bootlegging: Knocking it up & knocking it off in Quito, Ecuador Part 2 of 2 and a case study with Windows XP for software as a service (SaaS)

Posted by J Roland Kelly – September 11, 2008

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. 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

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Bootlegging: Knocking it up & knocking it off in Quito, Ecuador Part 1 of 2

Posted by J Roland Kelly – September 5, 2008

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

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Storytelling & Screenwriting Inspiration: Quito, Ecuador Legend About the Church La Merced

Posted by J Roland Kelly – August 30, 2008

The Church La Merced in Quito

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

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