Cuba

A nation is not a complex of wheels, nor a wild horse race,
but a stride upward concerted by real men.
-- José Martí
The risk of posting after being away for a week is that people may opt to skip over a lengthy post of vignettes like this. If that's your wish, be my guest, I guess. From time to time, I got ideas about things I would want to write about, but instead of firing up the laptop on vacation and putting them down, I am typing on the flight from Varadero to Toronto. It was this or watch the Will Farrell movie.

Last year, Kenji loaned me his 24 season 1 DVD set, and I got hooked enough to be interested in seeing more. After completing a season 2 download, which I am currently working [out] through, I decided that if I wanted to get seasons 3 through 5, I had better get them started, since the older seasons are not as easy to find as the newer episodes. For some reason, I elected to start a season three download on this laptop instead of our basement computer. This meant that downloads were way slower, and also were interrupted whenever I took this computer with me to Campbellford or away for a weekend. After almost 40 days, the 24 season 3 download was within an hour of completing when Cheryl and I left Kingston to come to Toronto the night before our flight a week ago. Although I haven't watched any more 24 since being away (I did watch a minute amount of TV and video, which I'll get to), I am relieved that I won't be waiting after the next three eps of season 2. Fascinating.

Just about every miniblog or list on the right of this page has had updates in the intervening week, as well. Cheryl watched The Prestige, which I had already seen, but we both watched The Queen which I also liked. I rounded out a day of scuba diving appropriately with a couple of episodes of Sealab 2021 from the Season 4 DVD set that my parents got me for Christmas. There was also a lot of reading. Cheryl got through about ten books, unless I greatly miss my mark. I was far less literary, although some of my selections were arguably a bit heavier. I completed Misogyny, which Rachel was reading in Arizona, and got for Cheryl and me. Then I moved on to The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins (a holiday gift from Cheryl), read last month's Wired, and ploughed through the most recent in Jeff Lindsay's Dexter series. (the TV adaptation is brilliant, but I thought the book was mediocre, and this sequel isn't worth the read). Finally, I have been able to start Homeland Insecurity, the latest volume in the Onion's archives. With that my reading queue is exhausted. When I get home, I will probably have another Wired, and after that, I may read more Douglas Coupland, or take the collective recommendations that Cheryl has had and read some Guy Gavriel Kay. The internet is greatly restricted in Cuba, and we never connected anyway, so clearly didn't download any more music, but we did end up buying the CD of some Cuban musicians who were serenading buffet diners one night. I'll end up taking a picture to go in the music array, but you shuoldn't expect it to link to an AllMusic review. I don't expect one exists.

I like reading Wired for a number of reasons - often the ideas in the articles are innovative and practical. However, I am increasingly wondering if I also like it because they occasionally are the same ideas that I have already had, and the magazine flatters me by thinking that my ideas are noteworthy. In the issue we read this month, there was an article expanding on the value of feedback-type evaluation systems (where others do the job of evaluating users or services, like on eBay or TripAdvisor.com. The article explores the same area that I have wondered about - how people can and do "game" these systems. Another full page spread (not available online) showed a map of the world, encouraging would-be travellers to consider visiting certain areas before they experience political change, climate change, or continued neglect or ruin. Cheryl had already had to endure my treatise on why Cuba should be visited before Castro dies when Wired advised her to do the same thing. I should hasten to add that if you are contemplating a trip to Cuba, sooner may be better than later. Despite posters wishing Fidel "80 años mas", No one expects him to live 160 years.

With this in mind, Cheryl and I took a day trip into Havana two days ago. I had lived there for a few weeks in January 2002 (while doing the best medical elective of all time), but Cheryl had never been. The tour was insightful, not least of which for the chance to see the regular appearance highway billboards painted with political propaganda slogans (these are predictably absent from the resorts). It is nearly impossible to go anywhere in Cuba and not see the face of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the Argentinian-born doctor best known as a Cuban guerilla leader. I continue to feel that the revolution was a victory for the majority of Cubans, who as a people continue to enjoy a standard of living far exceeding all of their Caribbean neighbors (with free education, health care, dental care and so on), and yet as near as I can tell, there is little motivation to innovate or exceed standards or quotas, and people don't have access to "nice things", meaning that even on a resort, fruits and vegetables are not premium quality, and the facial tissues are perforated in a way that they have to be torn apart like toilet paper as you pull them out of the package. At the risk of exposing my bias, the fact that the island is isolated from the internet is indicative of the restriction on the types of liberties we take for granted. Canadians can come to Cuba, but not many Cubans will be allowed to come to Canada, even should they be able to afford it [and naturally, most can't].

I also did a set of four scuba dives while away. There are a few dive sites near Varadero, but when weather is not cooperative, dive excursions travel from the North to South shore of the island, to the famous Bay of Pigs. The diving there was reputed to be better than in the North, so I was hoping for at least one day of bad weather so that I would get to go for that reason, but also because of the historical interest in the area. I dove in Varadero on Saturday and there was very conveniently enough wind that we had to go to the Bahia de Cochinas on Monday. The ride was two hours each way, and the only point of great historical interest I saw as the roadsign visible as one approached the shore that read "Hasta aqui llegaron los mercenarios" (The mercenaries made it this far). The diving was also good. It was a "wall dive", meaning that the coral forms a type of cliff, which you dive over, and swim alongside. I was treated to the sight of a barracuda which was missed by the others in my party, but I was unable to draw their attention to it in time.

I think lastly, I have to share some entertaining translations, with one serious one. Our resort, like most, has a buffet restaurant, and a couple à la carte restaurants where you can place orders for the food you want (the food also tends to be higher quality, and you get to feel special dining here since patrons with short pants are not permitted). Cheryl and I managed to score meals at all three of these places on our resort (the reservations are first come, first serve, and visitors to stay Saturday to Saturday or Sunday to Sunday not uncommonly find that there are no reservations available for them, despite their entitlement to a pre-ordained number of à la carte meals). I recognise that I have made light of miserable French translations in the past - this time the victim language was my own. The side veggies that came with Cheryl's supper one night were translated as "gluttonies" on the menu. The tuna was misprinted "tunny", and at one restaurant, a quick scan of one menu revealed only two items which were translated without spelling error. One of these items made intuitive grammatical sense to a native English speaker. I should have written some of these down, since I am not creative enough to come up with stuff this ridiculous. In my last meal, I chose for my dessert the "Opera in my way", without any specific expectation about what this might be. It turned out to ba a tiramisu-style cake with a caramel sauce.

Che Guevara's immortal phrase in a letter to Fidel is "Hasta la victoria siempre". If you ever see a picture of Che, there's a good chance this phrase appears underneath, and among other places, it is also inscribed in handwritten letters several stories tall underneath his image on the side of a building in the Plaza de la revolución. To me this is an ambiguous phrase to translate - while our Havana guide translated it as "until the victory which is forever", but I might be forgiven for reading another connotation about "always waiting for victory".

I'm not sure if I'll ever really understand this expresson, but with the Cuban people's friendliness in spite of restrictions on personal liberties, the luxury living in the backyard of the socialist state, maybe ambiguity is more appropriate.

The plane will soon be landing. It's been a great vacation, but now I'm excited as anything to see Neva and Hugh.


I almost forgot. Inside our in-flight magazine, there is a puzzle with animal shapes and you have to try and identify the pattern and predict which one comes next. Unable to figure out the sequence, I peeked at the answers.

The answer reads "The missing animal is the donkey." In French, it reads "L'animal manquant est le singe." It's the same puzzle.