14-20 October 2013
There was even a (Muslim) public holiday on Tuesday, so the
week was quiet in the scheme of things.
As we all know, Halloween is at the end of the month, this sort of pagan
celebration is lost in a tropical place such TL, none of the Halloween
creatures seem to be dressed for the tropics, unless you consider more the hairier
creatures. Come to think to think of it,
I have not seen a pumpkin in the beach side market either although it is
claimed that pumpkins are a plenty here.
I promised that I would let you know about how my survey
would go in Aimerahun – it was an utter failure! A number of things conspired against us:
weather, tree cover and most disappointing of all, one of the Differential GPS
units was not properly set up so it could not process the satellite signals
properly.
So the remaining DGPS unit did not work as expected – at one
stage the elevation increased by 24 metres in 45 min period even though the
DGPS was sitting in the same place. This
sort of error would have been “cancelled” out by the other (not functioning)
DGPS unit through processing back in the office or tying it back to a verified
point nearby.
I remembered a saying during the week from a previous job,
“for every complex problem, there is a simple solution that doesn’t work”. An appropriate saying considering the
complexity of differential surveying. As
I discovered later, it turned out to be a simple fix - all I had to do was to
reset the DGPS units and voila! It found all of the satellites in the sky instead
of just the Russian ones (Glonass). I
think I managed to iron all of the wrinkles with the DGPS units so I can start
surveying the Bonbonaro District next week.
The only positive from the survey was watching a butterfly
while waiting for the GPS to do its magic.
The butterfly’s wingspan was about 10 cms across and was largely black except
for when it had the sun shining through its wings – the back wings glow this
amazing yellow/gold colour. It danced
around for many minutes with another butterfly of similar size but brown in
colour (was this the girl butterfly?).
It seemed that I was the only one that was in entranced by the display. I hope to see more of the natural side during
my time here - it is hard to find.
The weekend was spent watching Australia’s butter-fingered
performance against NZ in the Bledisloe Cup, which is novel thing for a Vicwegan/Mexican
from the country where it’s AFL, AFL and more AFL… Sunday was a busy day with lunch at the Hotel
Esplanada, finalising the new housing arrangements at the palacio in Santa Cruz
and swapping books. Finding a good book
to read is hard here. A lot of people
use electronic books. Call me
old fashioned but I stare at a computer screen for most of the day so a book is
a welcome relief for these dimming eyes!
I better get ready for the week ahead and wish me luck for
the surveying foray in Bonbonaro.
Adeus
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