funtobealive

the relative silence of the funtobe has come to its end. so did the crazy south-central america tour. 30 flights in 30 days is more than what i would wish for my enemies. the stop after Lima was Chile. santiago is really reminded me of Hamburg- clean, organized and kind of boring. the concert was played in a University owned by Opus Dei. i can tell you i have never seen a place so reach in my life. it makes Harvard look like a poor place. after Chile we went to costa rica. by far the greenest place i have ever seen. it was striking how come in such a naturally beautiful place they have managed to build the ugliest city ever- Sun Juse. the only attraction in the city was that we got to see a house in the middle of town on fire. it is kind of scary and cool at the same time to stand so close to sirius fire. it took the police at least 45 min before they got everybody out of the scene. i guess the police in costa rica is not that good since the country has no army! ( what a lovely concept for an Israeli…)
the day after the fire i went to see a different kind of fire- an active volcano. this was scary and cool in a somewhat different way than the city fire. standing so close to the tip of a smoking volcano doesn’t sound like a very funtobe thing, but it was worth every second of fear, and the 7 bucks…
the last stop was panama city. if costa rica was about fire than panama city was about water. the panama canal made me understand the power of water. in 8 minutes- a huge cargo ship was lifted with no effort at all, and no electricity or power used whatsoever. just water flowing. simple equilibrium.
well- that is it from south america. because it was fun…

FTB has a wonderful career in lima. in the last 2 weeks we played here for almost 2,000 people. not bad for a silly funtobe.
the funniest unfunny episode happened yesterday. my colleges and i took a taxi to the place where we hall where the concert took. since we are with a cello, ( a horrific instrument with a terrible tendency to take too much space), the violinist of the group did the obvious thing and put the violin at the trunk of the car. the problem was that the opening mechanism of the trunk was a peruvian state of the art high-tech invention in the from of a silly rope. when the idiot driver tried to open the trunk the rope broke. ( puta de madre was his reaction…). the violin ( that worth at least 3 times the car worth ) was looked inside the trunk. the good thing about Peruvian that they are very eager to help. in no time al the people standing around started to take the taxi apart. that was easy enough. opening the trunk definitely wasn’t. our violinist was about to explode and take behead the taxi driver. he asked the security guard standing beside to shoot the look of the trunk. ( the guard refused politely ).
in the end someone brought a long hook and managed to fiddle around with the lock. the violin was saved- the taxi however looked as if it belongs to the dumpster.

a day in mexico city is really not enough for anything. for sure not when one has to play a concert on that day. never the less FTB was trying to get the most out of it. apparently i was fortunate enough to see the city in its empties condition.( they have a long vacation bridge weekend between may 1st and the national day 5 de Mayo.), well, if this is how it is when it is empty i really don’t want to know how is it on a normal day. what a crowded place. when you fly in you realize why it is considered the world biggest. it takes so long to fly over the city that just the thought of doing the same by car is scary. no body really know how many people are in Mexico city but it is something between 20-25 million, at least half of the 25 million like to sell 1 dollar junk on the street. and half of the half do it with a very loud megaphone. from my short encounters with the mexicans it seems they are much less nice and pleasant than other latin american nations. service or just common courtesy is not included in the general behavior. the ultimate highlight of the whole thing was by far the guacamole- this was a sirius OMG. i really don’t know how can i leave on knowing that i have left behind the world most amazing guacamole…