A return to Cartagena

Last weekend I came back to the wonderful city of Cartagena, on the north coast of Colombia, for the first time in 3.5 years. My first international AIESEC conference, Americas Expros 2002, was in Cartagena, in the section of the city called Boca Grande, and that's exactly where I have been all week.

Going for a walk on Sunday afternoon brought back good memories. The conference was my favourite AIESEC conference out of all that I've been to. I walked past the hotel where the conference was. There is now a McDonald's in front of the Hotel Costa del Sol that definately was not there the first time I walked past.

I am also staying in the Hilton Hotel this time, which is a step up from last time, but with less cultural charm. And my spanish is much better this time than it was last time too, which is nice.

I am here for work (hence staying at the Hilton) and have been doing 12 hour days each day, so haven't had much of a chance to look around. But work shall be finished by mid next week, and then I am staying in Cartagena until July 12, a combination of relaxing and AIESEC conferencing (the Colombian NATS conference will be in Cartagena in early July).

So all in all, it's good to be back here. What I am wondering is how much Bogotá will feel like "home" when I go back there after 24 days away...

Why men are happier than women

Men Are Just Happier People-- What do you expect from such simple creatures? Your last name stays put. The garage is all yours. Wedding plans take care of themselves. Chocolate is just another snack.

You can be President. You can never be pregnant. You can wear a white T-shirt to a water park. You can wear NO shirt to a water park. Car mechanics tell you the truth.

The world is your urinal. You never have to drive to another gas station restroom because this one is just too icky. You don't have to stop and think of which way to turn a nut on a bolt. Same work, more pay. Wrinkles add character. Wedding dress $5000. Tux rental-$100. People never stare at your chest when you're talking to them.

The occasional well-rendered belch is practically expected. New shoes don't cut, blister, or mangle your feet. One mood all the time. Phone conversations are over in 30 seconds flat. You know stuff about tanks. A five-day vacation requires only one suitcase. You can open all your own jars. You get extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness. If someone forgets to invite you, he or she can still be your friend.

Your underwear is $8.95 for a three-pack. Three pairs of shoes are more than enough. You almost never have strap problems in public. You are unable to see wrinkles in your clothes. Everything on your face stays its original color. The same hairstyle lasts for years, maybe decades. You only have to shave your face and neck.

You can play with toys all your life. Your belly usually hides your big hips. One wallet and one pair of shoes one color for all seasons. You can wear shorts no matter how your legs look. You can "do" your nails with a pocket knife. You have freedom of choice concerning growing a mustache.

You can do Christmas shopping for 25 relatives on December 24 in 25 minutes.

No wonder men are happier!

A weekend of camping

Due to Monday June 6 being a public holiday here in Colombia, and due to my host AIESEC LC having a lot of new members who hadn?t really got to know each other in a social setting yet, the LC decided to go on a camping trip for two days over last Sunday and Monday. So myself, one Brazilian and 18 Colombians embarked for 2 cold, wet, and thoroughly outstanding days at Neusa, around 90 minutes away from Bogot�.

Camping, for anyone who?s been already knows, is much more enjoyable when things aren?t always smooth smiling. If you wanted an easy comfortable weekend you should just stay home. And in that sense, this trip was truly excellent. It began in typical Colombian fashion with us departing in 4 cars from our scheduled meeting point in Bogot� two hours after the scheduled meeting time. One the way we passed this very random theme-park type complex, that has giant replicas of the Taj Mahal and a dozen other oversized buildings, just sitting there in the middle of nowhere and completely devoid of people. The logic of this eluded me at the time, and still does.

Once we were in the park grounds and very almost at our campsite, a tree branch that we ran over decided it wanted some revenge, and slashed one of the rear tyres of the car I was in. After emptying the boot of camping gear and adapting to the commencing rain, we changed this tyre with the spare, only to discover upon letting the jack down that the spare was flat. So someone went off with the spare to find a pump while I sat down on the road with a beer and started playing chess.

What followed was 2 days and one night of cold weather, on and off rain, wet socks, wet shoes, cheap food, 20 people trying to sleep in two tents, many fun and games with cool AIESECers from the LC, the occasional sporting injury from said games, and plenty of beer. Oh, and the entire grass campsite area was a minefield of horse-pats.

And then finally, in the car on our way out of the camp site, another group of people flag us down and us ask to help jumpstart their car, as their battery had died. So we willingly obliged and headed down the muddy access road to get from the main road where we were to the grass area where they were. We got their car started, but then whilst trying to get back up the access road, we got bogged. Or, to be more correct, we got bogged if we tried to go up, but could quite easily just role back down (so we weren?t stuck, just trapped). And so I went about thinking for another solution. We went driving along the grass by the side of the lake to see if there was another access road connected to this bit of grass somewhere. One was found. So far so good. We started to drive up it. Also good. But then, with the main road in site, we discovered this access road was entirely blocked by cut down tree branches (and quite a lot of them). And with this the final teamwork activity of the weekend could begin. A dozen AIESECers and 20 minutes of working in the rain later, plus one more jump start (this time to us), plus helping to push two more cars up this access road, and we were on our way back to Bogot�.

The way camping should be. Like I said, I had an absolute ball :)
I?ll post some pics if I get copies of them from other people.

The actual problem of the week #3

Well of course I wasn't being serious with expecting people to solve one of those millenium problems in the space of one week, so here is my actual problem of the week 3, this time a probability problem (a wonderful mathematical skill that is sadly lacking in most people). Although I'll admit, that in the case of this particular problem, figuring out the solution is mostly a problem in algebra.

The problem goes like this:

You have a bag (which you can't see inside of) that contains r red marbles and b black marbles, identical in every way except for colour (or color to you americans). You reach in, randomly pull out a marble, and then without replacement, reach in again and randomly pull out another marble. If the probability that you pull out two red marbles is exactly 0.5, what are some possible values for r and b? (i.e. the number of red and black marbles originally in the bag)

And yes, for this question both r and b must be positive integers.

There is more than one answer. In fact there are many answers. Full points if you can find a general way (or formula) of expressing all the answers.

And well done to Sherif for solving problem of the week 2.