A good day gone bad

Well, it´s fair to say that today I reached an all-time low in my traveling career.
It´s 3.30pm and I have just left the police station after making a statement.
But let me start at the beginning.....

It began as a great day - slept the best I have all trip (body clock finally nearing South American time. Yay!) Breakfasted early, and then hit the streets of Quito for my first look around since arriving late last night.

Having read all the conflicting information about the relative safety (or otherwise) of the New Town versus Old Town, I decided to stay my first night in the New Town. It seemed there was no avoiding the risks (muggings, assaults...you know the deal), so in the end it was a practical decision - I just added another night to my already-booked Galapagos tour accommodation.


Thinking it a good way to see the lie of the land and take in some Ecuadorian city life, I took a walk from New Town to Old. The new city is quite unremarkable - dodgy 70s architecture, lots of touristy hotels and cafes... But the Old Town is something quite special. It´s full of winding cobbled streets lined with brightly coloured colonial buildings, wide open plazas, and enormous cathedrals dating back to the 1500s. All this set amongst towering volcanic mountains which seem to rise up from behind the buildings. Muy bello!

All in all, I had a fabulous morning taking photos, wandering the streets, and sampling the street food. Discovered a fantastic sweet which consists of shredded coconut and vanilla-flavoured toffee, rolled into a ball. Less of a hit was the Empanada Verde - apparently authentic Ecuatorian food, but not sure where ´verde´ comes into it since there was no green, just cheese inside (phew).

Anyways, the sun was shining and all was good in the Spanish-speaking world (as far as I could tell, being merely a spectator). It was about 1315hrs, and I had just paid a visit to the Monastario de Carmen Alto and was impressed with the vast array of healing waters, honey and religious vestments for sale in the store on site. I was standing under an old archway, admiring the view up the street to the mountains, when suddenly I felt something wet on the backs of my calves. I looked down and saw bright green....something?? on my trousers. Before I had time to even ascertain what the substance was, a man in his 40s approached me and told me I had something on my legs. I had no idea what it was and was asking him. I´m sure he said ¨toilet¨ in response, which I took to mean that it was something quite disgusting, as you can imagine. He offered me a tissue and a quick smell-test convinced me it was....mustard. Bizarre. I looked around for some kids who were guilty of the practical joke on the poor tourist, but didn´t see any looking suspicious. I used the tissue the man gave me, but it did very little, given the extent to which I´d been hit with said condiment. He led me to a nearby toilet, which was part of a dodgy old restaurant (not a restaurant as we know it - more like people sitting around in a mechanic´s workshop eating at plastic tables).

We go into the toilets, the man gives me a few more napkins and I try to splash water on my lower trouser legs. It´s at this point that the man starts wiping my backpack and trying to get it off me. Unbeknowns to me, it was also struck by the mustard gun. He takes my camera from around my neck as it´s impossible to get my pack off otherwise. I show some reluctance in letting him remove my camera, but I think to myself "Why do I need to worry about him? He didn´t have to help me when he saw me out on the street covered in green... He must have genuinely good intentions or he wouldn´t have offered to help me...Just trust the man for once..." The man places the camera on the floor near my feet and I look up. He suggests I go into the toilet cubicle - I´m not sure why, and I´m distracted by this strange suggestion. Within 5 seconds, I look back and my camera bag is gone.
I am hysterical. Devastated. Disbelieving. And other unflattering things all at once, at that moment. The phrase ´howling like a banshee´comes to mind when I reflect on it. I run for the door, following the man who had lead me in there in the first place, crying "My camera! Thief!" I grab the man by the shirt and he just shrugs and ignores me, so I run back into the toilets thinking I might be going crazy, but of course I´m not. The camera is gone.

At this moment, I feel physically ill. I can´t believe what´s happened. I´m crying out of anger and frustration and the obvious loss of my photos (a camera is just a camera after all, but the memories are all gone...) The toilet and the restaurant-cum-mechanics workshop was full of people at the time of the robbery and still, yet everyone is silent. I am really crying now, and all these people are just standing around watching me. Some of them I know witnessed what happened.

After some more hysterical running around on my part (it wasn´t pretty, I assure you), an old man walks me around the corner to a police station. Sitting on the steps are a couple in their early 40s, and clearly speaking my language. My story comes spilling out - a barrage of anger and frustration and, dare I say it, defeat. I suddenly feel so defeated by this experience. What a ridiculous idea for me to come to this place on my own... I know it´s only a camera, but the stress is unrelenting. The constant looking over my shoulder, wondering if I´m safe, not being able to trust people.... At that moment I feel as though every last ounce of my will to continue on this trip has been sapped from me. I have never known such a feeling of defeat, at the hands of one of my own aspirations...

As some bitter sweet reassurance it turns out I was not alone in falling for this scam. The Aussie woman on the police station steps is waiting to make a statement about an almost identical incident yesterday (the most obvious difference being the attacker´s choice of weapon - in her case, mayonnaise). So together we sit and give thanks for the fact that we still have our health, in between feeling incredible frustration and anger about what happened.

The police at this station didn´t speak English, so eventually a police car arrives and takes us to another police station in the New Town. It´s a long, convoluted journey and I am exceedingly grateful for the company of my fellow Aussies. At the station we make a statement - a long, detailed document (good), which we needed to complete twice (bad) as evidentally there are no photocopies and both the police and myself needed a copy.

The inventory of lost goods looks like this:
Camera (big, fancy digi-SLR, love-of-my-life camera)
Crumpler camera bag
Ixus camera case
Camera accessories and memory cards
Internet banking security code generator device which I need to do internet banking
USB containing various important documents for uni applications (a major loss)

All in all, it could´ve been much worse. After all, I still had my new little IXUS in my pocket (major win). And more importantly, I´m physically OK.

Official business aside, I´m now nursing an incredibly shaken sense of purpose. And, dare I say it, an equally fragile will to continue. My tour to Galapagos starts tonight (leaves Quito in the morning), so it will be a nice chance for me to chill and take stock. Will reassess plans for the future while I´m away...

At times like this, travelling solo really sucks.

One for the road: Leaving drinks @ The Local

Took the new camera for a test-drive - click on photo below to see the results :)

Home, sweet home :)

Where the streets have no shame

My oh my, we're highly-strung creatures this week, if The Age online is anything to go by. Tuesday morning saw the front page declare (with pic), the launch of Google's latest initiative - Google Street View. I must admit that before I'd even had a chance to launch The Age website, I'd been directed to the GSV site, via a hyperlink in an email from a friend to my Hotmail address (the fact that I was checking my Hotmail before checking the state of world affairs is a matter I'd prefer not to dwell on here ;)). Anyway, the sender of said email had kindly gone to the trouble of personalising the link in such a way that when I opened the page I was looking directly at photos of my quiet, leafy, dead-end suburban street. It was only a matter of seconds before I'd found my car, and I confess that at that moment I did entertain the very fleeting thought of "My car's famous!"

'Celebrity vehicle' pride aside, the implications of GSV are perhaps more significant than the peoples at Google HQ first imagined. It has made front page of the same online paper for the three days since the launch, coming under scrutiny from 'privacy activists' such as the Privacy Commissioner, and the representatives from the Australian Privacy Foundation (God bless 'em - didn't even know they existed).

Needless to say, there's plenty of positive feedback about the site, from fascinated folk who appreciate the technological wizardry that allows us to 'walk' fearlessly down dingy alleyways in our pyjamas, and up Punt Road hill without raising our heartbeat... One dedicated GSVer even enjoyed an extended journey along the Great Alpine Road, somewhere between Melbourne and Sydney. But amid all the cheers and voyeuristic revelations, there are grumblings of those who feel Google has overstepped the mark and see it as "just another corporate encroachment on the individual minding his or her business". In this way, it seems Google may have hit a collective raw nerve.

Granted, we're a country of wide open spaces, and we're used to having privacy. Pre-GSV, we could have the occasional moment of indiscretion and get away with it. These days, it's not so easy. Part of the problem is that the site uses old photos, thus creating a strange distortion of time (the Google van apparently doing most of the snapping back in November last year). Thanks to GSV, moments we thought were banished to the annals of history are suddenly back before our very eyes. And the eyes of 60% of the country's population who have access to the internet. Confronting perhaps, depending on what one was doing back in November. If, like Mashup blogger 'JT', you were cheating on your partner, perhaps November was a month you'd prefer to forget. In a moment of seemingly uncharacteristic insight, JT declared his ex would "kill me if she sees this." "This" being the GSV photo of his car parked outside the house of the girl with whom he was having an affair... Ah, but the *camera* at least doesn't lie ;)

I could rant about this ad nauseam, but I'll refrain for fear of never stopping. I will, however, say how grateful I am that there wasn't a Google van around to capture me scurrying to the bins and back in my PJs at night, or casting an opportunistic eye over the neighbours hard rubbish offerings... Without delving too deeply, it seems I managed to escape public humiliation...in my own street, at least. Lucky stars, I thank thee!

At the very least, the GSV experiences of others are a handy reminder that out of mind is not necessarily out of sight. And that just as one should always wear clean underwear in case there's a need to travel by ambulance, one should refrain from having affairs in case there's a Google van driving by.

Oh, and it seems I have a friend in Kevin, who announced on Mashup: "I saw my car. Pretty cool." 'Celebrity vehicle' pride is alive and well.

Take two....

When one's in the business of coming up with 'Great Ideas', it's important to always remember the First Rule: Check whether someone else came up with it first. I humbly refer the reader to a fabulous website offering recipe ideas for all occasions: www.epicurious.com.au

So, here I am back at the drawing board, grateful only for the fact that I didn't announce my blog name to all and sundry, especially those friends with culinary interests, who'd have no doubt laughed at the title a little too quickly for my liking....

I am considering calling it The Vacuous Truth, after becoming somewhat intrigued by the rules of Formal Fallacies of late. Plus, I like the fact that it places me under no obligation whatsoever to speak an ounce of fact. But I am getting ahead of myself - who knows how many people have had my brilliant idea before me? ;)

.....and she named it "Epicurious"!

Epicurious n. (Aust.) blog dedicated to the practice of inquiry for pleasure, random happy insights, pleasurable surprises, and strange delights [Epicurus (341-270 BC), Gk philosopher + Curious a. inquisitive, strange, surprising]

And because the first person to read this is likely to be my my most curious friend, Dan, who is also a philosopher-in-waiting, I am including the following additional info:

Epicurus (Greek Έπίκουρος) (341 BCE, Samos – 270 BCE, Athens) was an ancient Greek philosopher and the founder of the school of philosophy called Epicureanism. Only a few fragments and letters remain of Epicurus's 300 written works. Much of what we know about Epicurean philosophy derives from later followers and commentators.

For Epicurus, the purpose of philosophy was to attain the happy, tranquil life, characterized by aponia, the absence of pain and fear, and by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends. He taught that pleasure and pain are the measures of what is good and bad, that death is the end of the body and the soul and should therefore not be feared, that the gods do not reward or punish humans, that the universe is infinite and eternal, and that events in the world are ultimately based on the motions and interactions of atoms moving in empty space.

+

curious (comparative curiouser or more curious, superlative curiousest or most curious)

1. inquisitive; tending to ask questions, investigate, or explore

   Young children are naturally curious about the world and everything in it.

2. unusual; odd; out of the ordinary; bizarre

   The platypus is a curious creature, with fur like a mammal and a beak like a bird.

(Interestingly, according to Wiki (from whence the above definition was borrowed), the platypus is the epitome of curious. I'd go so far as to say that, as an Australian who has an appreciation for non-conformity, I feel strangely proud... )