Caracas update

Sorry to anybody who might have been waiting for a new post the last few days.  The truth is I haven't been doing very much worthy of posting; I've settled into a nice little rut for the time being (which for now is rather welcome) - watching the World Cup matches in the morning, doing a bit of walking around in the afternoons, and working in the evenings.  I haven't been quite as productive as I'd like, but then again I think I set rather high expectations for myself in this regard.  I've gotten some practical things done, like getting a cell phone (not easy with a foreign passport) and figuring out how to exchange money and get food without too much hassle.  Mostly, though, I've been doing a lot of walking around, something that's not particularly practical but that I can more or less successfully rationalize to myself as such :-).

Chavez and Bashar

I'll have a longer post on the way later tonight or early tomorrow, but I just wanted to post some quick thoughts on Chavez's appearance with Syrian Bashar al-Assad that is ongoing as I write:

Of Carlos Marx and Barbie Girls

No matter how much you read about it, the polarization – or, better yet, schizophrenia – of Venezuelan society is plain to see the moment you step out into the streets. Below my window to the left are buildings with flecked exteriors and roofs of corrugated metal; looking out to the right, one sees only sleek glass-and-steel skyscrapers.

First post from Caracas

As anyone actually reading this blog probably already knows, I arrived in Caracas the other day to do research on community media and government-run information technology access centers called “Infocentros” [A good, if possibly overly flattering, overview can be found here]. I’ll have more specifics to post about my work next week as I (hopefully) begin talking to some officials and get a better idea of what I’m looking at/for.

Of course when you’re in a foreign place for the first time (and for me Caracas is about as foreign a place as I’ve ever been) you have to expect that you’ll make a certain, probably very large, number of mistakes.