Mon, 29 Oct 2001 08:30:10 -0800 (PST)



I have made it back to Toronto, and I am still alive. There were a couple of interesting stories from my last few weeks in Santiago.

About a week an a half ago, I was in a bar in Santiago, and this guy started talking to me .. turns out that he is Canadian as well, and furthermore, his name was "Yann Morgentaler" ... yes the son of Dr. Henry Morgentaller -- the famous Abortionist ... turns out that his parents divorced, and his mom moved to chile about 10 years ago. He gave me his phone number to hang out while I was in Santiago, but I couldn't find it the next day ... the number turned up when I was packing my stuff to come home, so I didn't bother calling ... could have been interesting.

Last weekend (oct 19+20) we had not one, but TWO visits from the police ... (for those of you counting, that makes 3 visits from the police to my apartement in the 3 weeks that I lived there). First thing saturday morning, my room-mates and I were spitting out of our window onto the ground below, and a building across the way. About 30 minutes later, there is a cop at our door giving us shit about how we could have spit on someone, etc, etc ... He then left without doing anyting ... apparently according to my room-mates, the cops in south america take it more easy when there is a "gringo in the problem", beause they are worried about getting the American Embassy on their asses. After that, we went and played raquet-ball, and afterwards, I was walking with one of my room-mates (David) through the parking lot of our building ... The concierge/security guy comes up to us and says "can you guys keep the noise down tonight" ... well, smart assed David says "I don't have time to talk to you" .... so the security guy gets all pissed off and tries to block us from entering the building ... David then askes me to hold his drink, and I could see a fight coming, so I told him not to do anyting ... luckely he listened ... then we go up to our apartement, and it turns out that the exact same thing had happened to my other room-mate (juan-carlos) about 5 minutes before, and he had also said "I don't have time to talk to you" ... well, this obviously infuriated the concierge/security guy, and 5 minutes after this, there is a knock on our door ... it is the concierge with 4 friends, and they pushed their way into our apartement .... I didn't understand most of the conversation, but he was basically threatening us, and he was pointing at me and saying "this guy doesn't say much, but I know he'll fight"... so my room-mate called the cops, and when they saw us calling the cops, they decided to leave. The cops showed up in about 15 minutes, and we could have potentially pressed charges, but didn't ... Later on, the Administrater of the building cam and talked to us, and it turns out there had been problems with the concierge before (being drunk, threatening people, and sleeping on the job) ... he was fired that night.