Day 48 Tuesday 8 June – Bye Bye Centro Cultural Aikido Guayaquil

Another productive day. First I did the rest of my interviews at the toaster. Then asked my last questions to Miguel and did one more interview. Almost done here!

In the evening I had my last Aikido practice. We skipped the meditation and went straight to exercises and leg torturing. The lesson today was a continuance of a day before, but I was able to follow it. We did a number of different forms of kokyo nage (katate dori en aihanmi). They were the usual forms but with irimi tenkan, ura, omote. Forms that look a little like Ikyo and forms that look like tenchi nage or pushing the chin up. A lot of them were new to me, and it is hard to remember them all. There were so many!

Meanwhile, I get a free lesson of Aikido Etiquette. When kneeling down with the students, first kneel right knee, sit down and put your hands – fingers closed – on your legs with your back straight. When bowing to Osensei or the sensei, left hand, then right hand on the ground and bow, saying “onegaishimasu, sensei”. Literally, this means “do me this favour (teacher)”, but could be translated as “let’s have a good game”. Then you get up, right leg first (right? It’s difficult writing this the day after).

At the end of the practice, Herbert address his thanks to me for training with them, and there were some pictures taken, which I will post here as soon as they arrive in my inbox.

Day 47 Monday 7 June – One down, where’s number two?

Yeah, a productive day today. I did three interviews today, including one at the toaster. In the morning, I started out going to Miguel to ask if he contacted la economista to see if there is time for interviews. He called her and handed me the phone. No problem she said, you can totally come over this afternoon. So I did and interviewed her. By then it got 5 O’clock and the maestros were done working. So I’m going back there to get some more interviews tomorrow in the morning. So if all goes well, I can wrap up the toaster tomorrow, and then I only need about 2 interviews in the office and some extra questions for Miguel. I may just wrap this baby up nice.

On the dark side, I totally feel like I’m getting dumped by my other case. The director is telling me every time I call him: “call me tomorrow” “call me on Monday” “call me in 30 minutes” “you know what, I’ll call you after my meeting” (he totally didn’t). I’m getting sick of it, but I need to stay polite, because I need this case. My only other option is to go to a factory in Tena, which is a 5 hour drive from Quito. Honestly, it’s a nice case, probably even nicer than the one I’m hunting now. But Mariela is just going to kill me if I have to move to Tena now. Almost makes me feel like sitting down and cry that ‘life isn’t fair’. But that’s just a little dramatic, don’t you think?

Truth is, we’ve been calling for a month with the hope that we now get to be a full month together, and I want that. I want to be in Quito, with Mariela and my friends. Have fun. Go out dancing. Do all the stuff I haven’t been doing in Guayaquil. And now I’m close to feeling myself forced in having to choose between my personal life and my studies. Yes, I know I’m here for the latter, but this just makes me feel bad. I was hoping to finally have a good time again in Ecuador, and now it’s getting jeopardised.

And my bottle of rum is finished… I need a hug.
Or I need at least a lot more people reacting to my posts... Where are you guys?

Day 45 Saturday 5 June – Barbacoa at the office

I started the day with asking Lenin for an interview. He agreed and would come to me later (but when he did, I had to get started on the barbeque). After that I went to the general manager and asked him for the rest of the interview. He had time at that moment. However, after a while Miguel stumbled in after he had been planting trees for his political campaign (now I get why sometimes the boys would shout Rendón Presidente) and besides making it impossible to ask certain questions, he also started answering for Ricardo in a joking fashion. I decided to wrap it up and maybe ask some separate questions later. I thanked him and went to the task of the barbeque.

Miguel told me he had asked his wife to take care of things, though he had forgotten to tell her I don’t eat meat. The general manager and Miguel laughed about it, but when I called her, she was sympathetic and told me she’d arrange something for me. She showed up later with some vegetarian ‘meat’ that I had seen at the lunch canteen multiple times before.

I started out with cleaning the tables a little, putting the stereo and some chairs down. Stalyn and Victor helped me with cleaning the floor a bit. Juan cleaned out the pool. At around 1PM there was a barbeque and meat and the place looked alright for a party. But we still missed some basic stuff like gas and a wine opener. Miguel set the tone by pushing Juan into the pool, getting himself in there as well. Juan just laughed at this and started swimming a bit in the pool. People started opening the crisps bags and eat those. Miguel told me to call everyone down, because it wasn’t time for working, but for having fun. Some people were still working in the office and that couldn’t be. I did so and it still took a while for everyone to come down. So after a while, Miguel went up himself to order everyone to come by the pool.

Then everything else arrived. Though some things were still missing, but that is the result of asking a vegan to organise a barbeque and then tell your wife to buy the stuff. Though I had invited most people, (some didn’t show up) the organisation wasn’t so very good. But it was about the fun and the time spent together. The meat was put on the barbeque; the wine was poured in plastic cups and the music was playing. Miguel made a game, doing a really absurd laugh and saying that the one to guess who it belonged to would get a bonus. I don’t think anyone guessed. But everybody laughed while he did this.

A while later Miguel did a toast. After thanking me for inviting the people, he said this was the first party of many more to come, as a way of strengthening the ES family. Then the party continued.

After eating a bit the younger men were starting to push each other into the pool, after Miguel had also thrown Paolo into it. Javier, Luis and Walter were the first to go in. Lenin and Stalyn went in voluntarily later. The general manager and Victor were cooking the whole time (the women from administration had helped with preparing the meat earlier).

Later at the party, even Victor, Nicolás and David were pushed into the pool, but not after their consent and the opportunity to empty their pockets of cell phones. The younger guys were not really fond of the wine, and gathered money to get some beer as well. Miguel just sat and watched with a smile on his face how everyone seemed to have fun at the pool. The gestures of throwing Angel, Ingrid or me in the pool were responded to with a ‘no’ and this discouraged the rest of further attempts. Even though probably neither of us would’ve been angry about this. I understand they didn’t dare throw me in the pool, since they didn’t know me well enough to know whether it would make me angry.

When later the guys spur on Paolo into pushing the general manager into the water while he’s is taking a picture with his blackberry, things take a different turn. When they help him out again, he definitely doesn’t look pleased. Later Miguel tells me the general manager was very angry and left after he fell into the pool. Miguel blamed the beers for this, making the young guys more drunk and this made them spur on Paolo into doing what he did. And that this destroyed the party. Indeed the pool was getting empty, we cut the cake and ate it and people were slowly leaving. Most of the meat and all of the wine was finished.

The boys cleaned up the place, I helped a little, and we took a company car to drive home and drink some more at our house. Now this is not clear to me, but supposedly Miguel called and said this wasn’t allowed. I’m not sure why, though at the moment of writing I recall the amount of alcohol involved… We drove the car back and each of us took a taxi or a bus to our own homes, and that was the end of the day.

Day 44 Friday 4 June – Spending money on a girl

Yesterday, Mariela called me to ask me for money. Something I had not expected, and I didn’t like the idea at first. However, I know how poor she is and she told me she needed the $30 for T-shirts for the women of a sports team from her region. I thought about this for a second and agreed with it. The only problem was, how to get her the money, because I have no idea of how the banks work here. ‘Luckily’, Sarah still owes me money, so I asked her to bring it over to Kallari. Problem solved, happy Mary. Of course, if we hadn’t been calling each other almost every single day for the past weeks, I would’ve been more suspicious.

Today was a bit of a useless day. I didn’t get to do any interviews at all. Everyone was really busy. Tomorrow I may do 1 or 2 I hope. And hopefully one with Ingrid today in the evening. But tomorrow is also the BBQ by the swimming pool. I invited almost everyone personally, I hope the word has travelled a bit since then. But at least the mayority is coming and that is a good thing to know. The thing is, I need to go buy meat with Miguel tomorrow… What a joke! “How many vegans does it take to organise a meatfest?”

Going back to the house after work was a real pain in the ass again. I always prefer to take a bus, but here’s where that goes wrong: The bus system in Guayaquil is one big chaos. There are bus stops along the roads, but they are usually ignored. One needs to hail the bus (by extending the arm at shoulder level, palm down and moving the fingers towards you). This presents a couple of problems: if it is dark, you are almost bound to spot the bus you need way too late. Second, if it is dark, the bus driver may not even see you. And if the bus is full enough he may just actually ignore you.

The other chaos component is that there is no central information about routes or times. Though the busses usually pass by every 20 minutes or so, there is still no secure way of knowing which bus you need to take. Ingrid already told me I needed to take bus #63 Verjeles to get back, but if that bus passes you by twice without stopping, what can you do? I could wait for the third; take a different bus that does stop for me; or take a taxi. Option number one could result in me getting frustrated when the third (and fourth and fifth) bus pass by without pulling over. Option number 2 is no option, because the information about busses suck. So I take a taxi. There is no wonder why the traffic in Ecuador is so terrible, but I’ll tell you about the traffic some other time.

Later that night I get cheered up by the all-time awesome-est episode of HIMYM: Swarley (series2-ep7). And I discover that the actrice of another great series, Morena Baccarin, plays a big role. I wonder if Ammer knew that. So I end my day with watching old episodes of HIMYM, drinking a cup of rum and wishing it was 5 days later, where I’m back in the bus to Quito.

Day 43 Thursday 3 June – 4th Aikido practice

The fourth Aikido practice in Guayaquil almost was in danger of non-existence. When I arrived at the dojo, there was nobody. I called Herbert (the sensei) and just as I was calling, the replacement teacher arrived to open the door. Herbert wasn’t coming today and this was for a number of students a reason not to show up. I don’t really understand why, because his replacement doesn’t wear a hakama for no reason, he is competent. Nevertheless, when a father showed up to bring his kid to practice and heard that Herbert wasn’t coming, they both left. Later I heard that he thought his child would be hurt or something. Remembering how the same boy was thrown around on Tuesday, I couldn’t imagine it any worse (even though he wasn’t harmed in any way on Tuesday).

Anyway, there we were, the two of us waiting for at least two others to show up, since a private lesson just wasn’t going to happen. Luckily for me, two others did show up. And this is still close to a private lesson. We started out like most days, but we skipped the torturing of the legs and we didn’t do any rolling either. I guess we skipped all that, because we weren’t going to use the legs that extensively today. We proceed after meditation with a form of kokyo ho, standing up. That is, a kokyo nage without the nage (throw), meant to relax.

We then continue with the basic techniques and spend quite some time on them. Ikyo was just a bit different then I’m used to. That, or it is explained differently. Starting with bringing uke out of balance by pushing the elbow up and walk forward, bringing the arm down. Here is where it really is different: you don’t continue the forward movement, but rather walk around uke and while turning him around, blending him with the mat (tatami). The Ura version is different in my memory as well. Pushing uke out of balance all the same, but by stepping into the back, doing an irimi tenkan, bringing him to the knees, kneel down with the knee closest to him in his armpit. At this point the hand of uke rests on my knee, and then kneel down entirely. This technique has been known to me before, but we never use it because it is slightly uncomfortable. Then move away, while still controlling the hand and let go.

Nikyo, as we do it everywhere, starts out the same, omote and ura. But when turning the hand in to the lock position, the arm of uke rests on the knee of tori, who is at that moment in a stable and relaxed position. This makes it that tori has all the time in the world to get the right grip. Now in omote, tori does the same as with ikyo: turn around uke and kneel down. Pushing uke’s arm down in a 45° angle and pushing the fingers to his face. The ura form is about walking out, pushing uke’s hand to your chest (not the shoulder), while holding the elbow down, and bend forward a little. This should hurt like hell, so Uke kneels down. Sensei shows us that if you wait too long with putting this lock on, uke can go down earlier and kick tori in the groin. And that would not be the desired effect. Anyway, after uke kneels down, you blend him with the mat and make the usual end control (pinky side in the elbow and turn.

The sankyo technique we did the hard way. Even with omote, grabbing the hand in a lock and pushing it to the face. Then hack down and step in front, pulling uke down on the way. The end control is done standing up. Ura is different. When the hand goes to the face, tori makes a tenkan, ending up on the other side of uke, but since this hurts, uke moves along. Then ‘push’ uke down and move in the opposite direction (standing in front of uke and moving towards him), dragging him down further.

When I tell sensei later that we do the basic techniques a little bit different in the Netherlands, he says I should teach next week. Being only 5th kyu, I’m not sure I wish to. Besides, I’m not even sure I still know the Dutch techniques that well…

Day 41 Tuesday 1 June – 3rd Aikido practice

I started doing my interviews today. The first one went quite alright. We didn’t have a really private place to sit, but I think it wasn’t stopping my interviewee from talking. We talked nearly 50 minutes and this gave me quite a good idea of how things go here. The other interview was with the general manager, but he had to go halfway, because something important came up.

After work I take a bus to the dojo. Stalyn joins me to show me the way. The busses still confuse me and I still don’t understand how the people who live here can make anything out of it.

We skip the meditation at the beginning and start right away with stretching. We stretch our upper bodies a bit more this time, but after that we torture our legs as well. When I get back, I may be able to do a full split… When we practice our rolls, we do a variety of them. Forward rolls while looking backwards, or with the legs together; or backwards while holding one foot.

There seems to be a preference for kokyo nage and irimi nage. Today we did a variety of these again. Including variances that are new to me. For example, holding the head of uke, making a turn and then throw. Or just simply pulling uke forward, turn him around and throw.

Lastly a technique where you step behind uke and grab him by the throat, turning around with one hand in his back, so he has to fall backward at some point, for lack of balance. We end with cracking our backs and the usual meditation and thanking.