Field notes from Bogotá (Part 2)

Wrapped up the research on Thursday, 11 people over three days. All went well with the local facility, other than the fact that the research lab was two floors above an outdoor cafe and every night at 7 they turned up the music, providing us with a nice background soundtrack for our evening session recordings.

After we wrapped up the research, I got the chance to go out with Flor Marina (and family) from the team for the evening. Started out with a drive up into the northeast hills overlooking the city, where the locals hang out, eat roasted corn (gigantic, buttery, and with fantastic salt from the local mines).  Dropped back into town and into a neighborhood with a couple dozen places with drinks and live music.  It’s a three-day weekend, and it was payday, so everything was absolutely packed; we ended up in a club with a live local Vallenato band, the place just vibrating with dancing, shouting, and having a good time.

And to give a sense of the technical space, I’m sitting at a pizzeria right now and my Eee PC can see at least 30 WiFi access points - and there aren’t that many buildings nearby.  Mobile phones are of course prevalent, but little in the way of data-enabled phones.  And anecdotally there’s little to no use of GPS due to a lack of quality maps.

Only caveat so far?  Speaking Spanish requires a lot more control of the muscles towards the rear of the cheek, in order to properly vocalize some of the vowels. It’s been quite a long time since I’ve been in practice, which means my mouth hurts.

Saturday update: Out walking the neighborhoods today, through Chico Norte and to the north of La Cabrera. Continue to be amazed by the architecture - lots of brick construction (facades, fences, sidewalks), expansive plate glass windows everywhere, and an overall timeless modern feel (not Soviet concrete or 60s/70s modern).  Lots of wide avenues with greenery down the middle, bike paths everywhere (thanks to their mayor from about 10 years ago), and a ton of little parks with kids playing and people walking their dogs.