Mar 2007

When you sign up to volunteer in South America, you should probably expect a certain amount of personal stretching. But when, like TP member Brian Chu, you're asked to don a lab coat and carry a stethoscope, you have to start wondering exactly what you're in for.

A month-long stint volunteering for a medical centre in Huancayo, Peru is the latest adventure in five months of trekking across South America for Brian. Pre-departure, Brian wrote:

Leaving in half a day. It's about freaking time. Didn't intend to wait this long to leave but plans change quickly, as I'm sure they will along my travels. That's why I've only got a plane ticket with an open return date and one night's accomodation booked. Other than that, just a loose plan and general direction in my head that I'm secretly hoping won't come to reality. Spontaneity's the key this time round.

So far, Brian's wish for a journey guided by spontaneity has been pretty well rewarded, albeit with a fair share of bad luck: in Potosí, he took a tumble, landed unconscious and relied on Bolivia's dirt-cheap health system to restore him to order; a couple weeks later and still in Bolivia, a horse-ride gone wrong warranted another fall; and in the ever-expanding theme of things falling over, Brian's bus toppled sideways as it attempted to make the 8 hour trip from Ayacucho to Huancayo. Talk about bad luck.

Toppled bus between Ayacuho and Huancayo. Photo courtesy of Brian Chu.

Despite all these rather dangerous experiences, Brian keeps the complaints to a minimum and the humour to a maximum. Witty writing and photos carry his blog, which seems to be guided by the same principle of spontaneity as his travels. As a reader, you never really know what's next. Then again, it doesn't seem Brian does either.

It's simple. You get 10 minutes to name the 192 UN Member States, or as many as you can.

I named 107, which means I forgot about the other 85 countries. Can you beat me?

There are about a dozen buttons on my browser's toolbar, shortcuts designed to take me exactly where I want to go without the hassle of typing in web addresses.

And then there's Stumble! If I want to be surprised, hitting Stumble! will take me to some random and remote corner of the web that I've probably never been to before. If I like the page, I can give it a thumbs up. If I don't, well, thumbs down it is.

The idea behind StumbleUpon is to let you share sites that you like with other people who have similar interests, and vice versa. Set your interest as Food/Cooking and click Stumble! and you might end up with a recipe for The Best Lasagna Ever. Set your interest as Travel and you might end up on this gloriously wonderful and informative site.

The latest addition is the ability to stumble upon random videos, like this remarkable one about the world's first Bionic Burger. Watch and be enlightened.

When confronted with an incidence of spam on Travellerspoint, a range of emotions can pass through my body. Annoyance is probably the predominant one. It's closely followed by a rush of "I'm so powerful" juice as I hit the "Delete this thread" button. But sometimes, just sometimes, a spammer has been so creative in their work as to draw my admiration. No, not admiration of their craftiness. Rather, I admire their dedication.

Take a close look at the screenshot below (or look at a bigger version).

Notice that Mr.aak63 not only took the time to offer his services: he also took the time to take himself up on his own services. Now there's dedication (and perhaps a mild case of schizophrenia).

I am male.

Apparently though, my writing style is rather feminine.

I have discovered the Gender Genie, a tool that calculates the gender of a writer based on a simple analysis of his/her writing. It's all about how often keywords like "around", "with", "if", "what" and a bunch of others get used.

I inserted the first couple paragraphs of my previous blog entry and I ended up with a Female score of 183, which beat my whimpering Male score of 157 into submission. According to the wisdom of Gender Genie, I am a female.

But I dare not rest there. In an effort to discredit the tool (ie. make myself feel more manly), I decided to test blocks of text from Sam and Peter's previous blog entries. The results have proven some relief.

For Sam's slab of text, the machine scored him a 188 for femininity and a 125 for manliness. Peter didn't fare much better, with 244 vs 197 clearly indicating femininity.

So what does all this prove? Nothing I guess. Just that the internet can be used to discover lots of things, but when it comes to discovering your own gender, there are better methods.

Mr. Eric

ps. Around here it's around 10:30 am. What does this have to do with anything? See my comment below.