December 30, 2010

In the morning we drove over to a garage nearby to get a new tire. Helene had called the rental agency yesterday and they told us they preferred for us to get a new tire before we handed the car back. This would create less hassle for them and be less expensive for us. The people at the garage told us that the tire we needed was rare and had to be ordered from Bariloche. The good news was that they would be able to get one over during the day and mount it for us. We could pick it up in the evening or tomorrow.

During the morning I had a number of email-exchanges  (using my phone and the ridiculously expensive 3G connection) with the guy at Bring Express (Norwegian Postal Service) responsible for sending my glasses to Brasil with too little margin to get them out of customs and without telling the sender about the small detail that you have to supply the receivers passport number when sending to Brazil. The glasses had still not cleared customs in Brazil. He was amazingly arrogant. He continued to claim that any delays in customs was the responsibility of the customer and that if we were stupid enough to send them too late then he couldn´t help it. It´s part of the story that they had told the optician there was plenty of margin and that they shouldn´t worry.

In addition one of his colleagues told me in the morning they would gladly send the glasses to me in French Polynesia as soon as they had cleared customs in Brazil. I contacted Dauro and Laura, and they told UPS in Brazil about this. They responded that this was not possible.

I contacted Bring Express again and they responded that this was of course not possible. No apologies or attempt to explain their error. They could, however, have the glasses sent back to Norway and then to French Polynesia. This would of course take an unspecified very large amount of time. I had told them I needed the glasses badly, the ones I am using give me headaches. What are they smoking?

Bring Express had by now used 3 months to not get me my glasses using their fastest international express service.

If you need to send something don´t use Bring Express. They are a bunch of arrogant amateurs left over from the postal monopoly days with no sense of service! Ah, it felt good to type that.

Jorge came home early from work wearing his party glasses. No work until next year!

In his hand he is holding the modem that might be the source of the internet problem. The provider claims to have double-checked the line, and everything seemed to be in order. It´s holiday now anyway and any replacement will not be available until after we leave.

Jorge and Carmen had proposed a picnic in the open. We packed our stuff and were soon at another beautiful location:

Trout barbecue preparations:

In the meantime the kids had a ball:

Yara:

July:

I´m king of the world!

We were not alone:

Once again the rain came drifting and when our food was ready it started pouring down. Given the climate here the locals have the same attitude to rain as Norwegians do: “Quit complaining and put on your rain gear.”

The trout was worthy of a gourmet restaurant:

After dinner the kids wanted to get some warmth in the car. I had brought my audio cable and we hooked my iPhone up to the car stereo. Party!

We stayed all evening and tried unsuccessfully to catch some fish:

When we finally decided to head home around 9pm our car wouldn´t start. The battery was flat. Note to self: Don´t let the kids play loud music for too long when the motor is not running. Everyone pushed (except yours truly, the photographer) and we managed to get the motor started:

On the way home Viktor and I discussed a lot of stuff. He is very curious, like his siblings, and the kids (mostly the boys) often discuss history, languages, chemistry, physics, astronomy etc. with us. Often they challenge my knowledge and push me to the brim of what I know. After that I use the copy of Wikipedia I have on my phone.

This time Viktor wanted to know more about the rainbow. At one point he said that the rainbow must have a finite number of colors. I countered and said that in fact it has an infinite number of colors. I went on to remind him that light is a continuous spectrum and that colors are ideas invented by humans. In fact every culture divides the rainbow in to a different set of colors. In Vietnamese a green leaf and the blue sky have the same color (“xanh”). In Turkish light blue and dark blue are two different colors (“lacivert” and “mavi”).

He said he still thought the rainbow had a finite number of colors. I went on to explain that it is parallel to a line which has an infinite number of points. His response was that that coudn´t be the case for a physical line. Once you go down to the subatomic level you cannot divide it into more than its quarks. My response was that you could move a quark a fraction of it´s size and then you would have a new point on the line shorter away then the next quark. (I knew I was on thin ice, since a particle really is a wave function, besides quarks aren´t free). He agreed that for a line this was correct.

Then, triumphantly, he said: But, dad, the rainbow is light. It consists of a finite number of photons, each with their frequency. So in any specific rainbow there must be a finite number of colors. I immediately understood that he was right, and that I was wrong. An ideal rainbow has an infinite number of colors, a physical one does not (actually, as I realized later on,  there is also a finite number of theortecial colors because photon frequency is a quantum property).

I told him “Yes, Viktor, you are right and I am wrong.” Helene turned to the side immediately and commented that this was an important event in family history. i agreed and said it would probably not be the last time Viktor outsmarts me on a science subject. Viktor was very proud and happy.

Later we got a good scare when we saw that parts of the main road had been hit by a landslide. We got out and Carmen spoke to the road workers. They could tell us that the road had been closed since 4pm! 15 minutes after we arrived they were finished clearing and the only reasonable road back opened again. Lucky break!

Another great day in the open. Tomorrow is the last day of the year and a big party in Argentina!

Eirik

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