Off to see the countryside...

Tomorrow morning I am leaving Bogotá for a week or so, and getting to see a new part of this country. I am going to Manizales for the national conference of AIESEC in Colombia. It is in (or very near to) the "coffee zone" of the country, where a lot of coffee is grown, and I am told it is very beautiful and picturesque. I think there are certainly parts of this country that rival Australia in terms of sheer natural wonder and beauty, and without the wide variety of lethal Australian animal life. I'm often surprised when foreigners tell me they would be scared to travel in outback Australia because of the stories about snakes, spiders, and other such things, or scared to go swimming because of sharks, jellyfish, crocodiles and what not. As an Aussie I never really give it a second thought. I think Bill Bryson describes the situation very aptly in the section about Sydney in his book "Down Under". An amusing story often attributed to Douglas Adams of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fame gave it a nice stab too, although I am not convinced he was the one who penned it.

Anyway, Manizales is where I will be for the week and so Manizales is what I will enjoy for the week. Bueno.

Experimenting with some photos...

Okay, this is a picture of my bedroom in Bogota. From the other side of the room you get a great view out the window.

And this is the view of the area of Bogota where my work is. This was taken by me from the top floor balcony of a client's building. Quite nice.

Tomorrow I will be a millionaire...

Yes, thanks to Colombia having one of those currencies where everything costs 1000 times more than it should (for example, a bottle of water might cost 1000 pesos instead of 1 dollar like in other places) I will be a millionaire as soon as I receive my first monthly pay cheque.

Although some people think the definition of a millionaire is one who has an annual income of more than a million currency units. In that case, I guess I became one as soon as I was accepted to this traineeship. It doesn't feel any different though.

Perhaps Colombian people think of billionaire status in the same mindset as Aussies think of millionaire status then. This gets me thinking about which countries in the world would be the best to enter the TV show "Who wants to be a millionaire?" in. But I guess other factors like population have to be taken into account. For example, it would be easier to get on the show in a country like Australia, with 20 million people, then in the USA, with 300 million or something, since each week only 10 people get on the show. This reminds me of when I was selecting which school to go to in Canberra for Years 11 and 12, just before university. An advantage of going to the small school that I went to was that it would be easier, mathematically speaking, to get the top mark in my school at the end of year 12, which was a goal I wanted to achieve because it came with a $2000 prize and you got your photo in the paper. Roslyn is probably the only one reading this who knows how that went. But it ain't important at the moment.

I just received my first ever text message on my mobile phone here in Colombia! Cool.

Tomorrow morning I will be working from a client's office for the first time on this traineeship. That should be fun. In the meantime, I have a report to finish, so me thinks it is time to publish this post.