Government Chats

In a slightly odd turn of events, this week I ended up at a panel session with two members of the Chilean cabinet: Minister of Energy Jorge Bunster Betteley and Minister of Agriculture Luis Mayol Bouchon. They each gave a short talk, introducing their ministry and what they are doing at the moment, as well as giving a lot of background information.

Unfortunately, the Agriculture talk was unbelievably boring, and seemed to only discuss water supplies throughout the country in great detail, but the Energy talk was significantly more interesting. The Minister talked about the Chilean power network, gas prices, dependence on foreign powers for fossil fuels, and the increasing role of alternative technologies. Impressively, Chile has 35% of its energy coming from hydroelectric sources. The rest is made up of mainly coal and natural gas, with some other renewable technologies thrown into the mix (don't say my blog isn't educational...).

It also gave me an excuse to see the seriously nice (and expensive) Grange School where the talk was held, and who kindly invited me along...

Valparaiso Cerro Abajo

Last week I had the luck to be invited on a school trip with 7th Basico, who were spending the day in Valparaiso. Valpo is a large city about 90 minutes drive from Santiago, which used to be a major shipping hub in the South Pacific. According to Wikipedia it's the site of the longest continuously running Spanish language newspaper, and of Latin America's oldest stock exchange. The Guardian also has a semi-interesting article.

On the trip we visited a few museums, went to an organ recital, walked around the town, went in a funicular, and took a harbour tour (it's still a big container and naval port). It's quite a dirty, sprawling town that has a lot of character and is a very interesting place to look around. However, it's also the site of an annual downhill bike race (Valparaiso Cerro Abajo), and you can see one guy's ride downhill here - pretty impressive stuff:

Terremoto

So today I experienced my first earthquake! According to the USGS, it measured 5.5 on the Richter Scale, and 17.22 UTC, which is 14.22 my time - just as lunch was finishing. I was in the office doing some marking (/on Facebook) with the others, when the floor started shaking like someone was playing really loud, bassy music below.

(You can see more info from USGS here)

Initially, that was exactly what I thought was happening until people started getting under desks and someone mentioned it was an earthquake. The shaking got stronger and then stopped after about 15 seconds. Although it was definitely noticeable, nothing was falling off the walls or toppling over, so it was hardly chaos.

This kind of thing happens really frequently in Chile, given their unfortunate geographic position, and so there are established drills for earthquakes, just like we have fire drills in England. Everyone knew exactly what to do (except me) - we all went into the playground and counted the children. Maintenance then inspected the buildings to make sure everything was alright, and we went back inside.

Such fun.