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Ever since “upgrading” my iPhone 3GS to the new OS4, my phone has had a few problems. The response time of the touchscreen has slowed, and the sensitivity skips. Often, I am able to type out only three of the four digits required to unlock the phone. Once the phone is unlocked, it sometimes appears to be “hung” in a process, stuttering under my touch. Prior to the fourth iteration of the operating system, the touchscreen was more responsive; the images underneath the layers of glass moved more fluidly in sync with my fingers.

I have been getting used to typing my passcode more slowly and waiting for the phone’s processor to catch up to my inputs. But now I’ve noticed another problem, this one more serious. Once a week, my phone stops picking up the 3G network. If I’m outside of a WiFi zone, I’m stuck with the slower Edge network, where the gray “I’m doing something” progress wheel spins at half the speed at which I like to see it spin. If I reboot the phone, the 3G network comes back. But really. Should I have to reboot my phone just to check email?

Anyone else seeing similar problems since upgrading the OS?

It takes two to drive a bus in Quito: one steers the bus and one collects the people and their money by calling out stops in an endless monotone, a monotone interrupted only by lupine whistles at high heels and sunglasses. She tiptoes toward the bus as fast as blue stilettos permit. The giant blue shuttles converge in this hub only for seconds, before radiating to Floresta, to Parque Carolina, to Seminario Mayor, or down the hills of Cristóbal Colón, Orellana, or Doce de Octubre. Speed, movement, space are governed by wheezes and gasps for whistling breath as the blue giant’s diesel turbo lurches forward with yellow taxis sprinting to fill the void of traffic left when the bus exits the redondel. Taxis and rain drops disperse the sooty exhaust, grafting a new dark skin to hood and street. Office lights reveal the dealings and countings that are daily concealed by the tempered glass of the ink black edifices between which these city streets weave. Plumes of black smoke meet wisps of white cloud while the sun recedes behind the volcano. The Amazon’s clouds, airborne gifts of water, obscure the far side of the roundabout, and the bus collectors’ voices grow louder.

On Ecuador’s Pacific coast, high striated cirri fold in the sky like wrinkles of dry snow on a fallow western Massachusetts field. Boys launch fishing boats in the surf, standing in the hull and pushing their craft forward with poles that sink into the sand. And somewhere between, where the sea’s horizon meets the sky, the sun sinks behind a miles-wide cumulonimbus gray piece of the aerial ocean, trimmed in orange while hummingbirds, black butterflies, and habitual walkers glide back and forth in view from this hammock before the world. The setting sun’s pink pushes upward where it scatters into a few formless patches of unfolded cirrus snow.

Once each wave climbs as high on the beach as it can and begins to slide back into the ocean, it meets the next wave and churns sand and water into a chocolate milk that quickly dissolves into cappucino foam.

I have not had a decent coffee all week.

If you are ever in Same, Ecuador (pronounced sah-may) – a beautifully rustic, quiet beach town on Ecuador’s coast – here’s fair warning. Not a single establishment, neither restaurant nor bar nor hotel, serves espresso. Add to this, like in most of Chile, Nescafé passes for coffee. So if you ask “¿Tiene café negro?” and the person responds “si,” clarify whether they count water-soluble coffee-flavored crystals as equal to ground roasted beans. In a country full of coffee trees, the coastal preference for Nescafé is baffling.

But in case you find yourself in the Same situation, that is in a kitchen with no coffee machine, no stove top espresso maker, nor even a french press, here’s what you can do.

Whether or not you’re staying in the sprawling cliff-side Casa Blanca complex, visit La Tienda, a well-stocked general store on the Mediterranean inspired property.

Avoid the following
Café Filtrado: I’ve always wondered why, if coffee is just hot water run over ground beans through a filter, a cup of coffee could not be brewed just like a cup of tea. Given my dire outlook, I was willing to try this. It sounds like a good idea, but it is ruined in its execution. I like a strong cup of java, and doubling and quadrupling the number of prescribed bags per cup of nearly-boiling water only resulted in a stronger, more awful flavor.

Superior Café Gran Colombiano: This simpler bag of roasted, ground coffee has an alkaline flavor that sits at the other end of the spectrum of what I expect coffee to taste like.

My best cups of coffee came from individualized packets of ground coffee called Español. While you’re at La Tienda, pick up Scott napkins with the blue elephant and other psychedelic designs. One packet makes a good, strong cup of coffee.

Anyone else have a desperate coffee story?

WARNING: inevitably this is a three-handed affair, and depending on who is pouring the boiling water and who is holding the napkin-cum-coffee filter, there is the slight chance of scalding an understanding friend. Cuidado.

N.B. The classy, bat-bearing Bacardi coasters come free with a 750cm³ bottle of liquid happiness.

Although my focus here is on traveling from the U.S. to Quito, much of what I recommend applies elsewhere in South America, indeed in much of the world.

There’s WIFI everywhere. Ecuador is in the middle of an exciting explosion of Internet access, and you’ll see netbooks advertised daily in newspapers and magazines. That said, feel free to bring a laptop, iPhone, iPad or whatever else you want to use to get online. In fact, having one will make it very easy for you to communicate with the States. Here’s the caveat — bring a good lock for a laptop and make sure you keep up with anything else that’s portable and valuable. Once down here, keep the laptop in a safe or always locked up, depending on your living situation, when you’re not using it. There’s not much of a laptop-in-café culture down here, and that’s probably because laptop thefts are so common. If you are the kind of person who does like to use a laptop at a café, stop by Nocion Café, at Foch y Seis de Deciembre. A little place, painted orange, the owners are a friendly young couple. You’ll see netbooks and MacBooks side by side in this café. And their espresso is fantastic.

For calling the US, I strongly recommend setting up a Google Voice account (and learning to use it) and then a Skype phone number. The Skype number is a paid feature of Skype’s otherwise free services, but it’s not that expensive (ca. $20 for three months?) and it attaches a phone number to your Skype account. This is a way for people in the US to call you without paying international fees. You set up the number with whatever area code you want, so for some people, this will just be a local call.

Of course, you can still use Skype to connect with other Skype users (for voice, video, and text chat), but now you also have a number that friends and family can call from their phones and connect to you on Skype.

Add Google Voice to the mix, and you have a way to call any phone number in the US (and Canada) for free. It’s hard to explain how Google Voice works if you aren’t familiar with it, but basically you tell Google Voice (via its website) who you want to call and which phone number of yours you want it to use (in this case, the Skype number), and Google Voice connects your laptop with the phone number you want to call. I set this up for business (since I am working while down here), and it has also been useful for keeping in touch with family. The catch with Google Voice is that you have to register for it, and you have to register while you’re in the US. You can’t sign up for it once you’re down here. But, if you signed up for it ahead of time, it will work while you’re down here.

Speaking of geographically restricted content, Amazon digital downloads, Pandora, Hulu, and Crackle don’t work outside the US. The iTunes Store and Joost will work, but if you want to get access to the others, you can use a VPN or web-based proxies. They’re not as reliable (mainly because you are relying on someone else to keep them working), but when they do work, it’s just like being in the US.

For backing up your computer, I recommend Dropbox. Use the paid version if you have more than 2GB of data you want to keep backed up. It works flawlessly down here. Plus, if the unfortunate happens and your laptop is stolen, breaks, or otherwise inconveniences you, Dropbox will have all of your data accessible to you online (and ready to sync with a new computer).

A Flickr Pro account will let you create as many Sets of photos as you want, and since you can upload photos at full resolution, it’s a great online backup for your photographic recordings of your experiences. YouTube will back up any videos you take (edited or raw), within their time/GB restrictions. Use Vimeo if you have videos longer than 8minutes. The privacy settings for Flickr, Vimeo, and YouTube allow you to store videos/photos on their servers but leave them private if you want to.

For local communications, you’ll want a cell phone. Any GSM cell phone (except an iPhone purchased in the US*) will work down here. If you have one, just bring it and plan to replace the SIM card with one from an Ecuatoriano company. There are two major companies, Movistar (a division of the Spanish telecommunications company Telefónica) and Porta. Both have equivalent cost features and coverage in Quito (in my experience), but Movistar has better coverage outside of Quito. So, I went with Movistar. If you have a GSM phone and want to use it, expect to pay about $25 for a local SIM.

Because my iPhone wouldn’t work down here (see below), I bought the cheapest cell phone Telefónica would sell me ($60) with no monthly plan. Instead, I buy minutes $6 at a time. You can purchase cards with scratch-off codes to recharge your minutes or, more and more often, have your phone’s minutes magically recharged at tiendas all over town. I stop by the same places where I pop in to buy water and add $6 at a time to my phone.

*I have an iPhone and brought it with me. Sure enough, there is some kind of software lock on it that keeps it from working with anything but AT&T, so I was not able to use a Telefónica (Movistar) SIM card with it. I still use it on WIFI networks, but I keep it in airplane mode to keep it from roaming. Of course, you can buy an unlocked iPhone from Movistar, but plan to pay more than a grand for it.

Hail. On the Equator. WTF?

In Quito, Ecuador, clouds roll in from the northeast to shroud the neighborhood La Floresta in a mystical ether.

Handheld camera + a wall + Gnarls Barkley covering Radiohead’s haunting “Reckoner.”

Emma Williams contacted me a few weeks ago about including one of my photos of Echo Park in this year’s Schmap guide to Los Angeles. It’s not one of my best photos, by far, but I am honored it was included. In July 2008, during my summer biking autopia, I snapped this photo as the LA Critical Mass finished up in Echo Park.

Learn more about Schmaps.

At work, we host a lot of events.

Setting up for each event involves (re)moving tables, setting up chairs, setting up a lectern and projector equipment, testing the sound system, and sometimes setting up recording equipment. Once the event is over, we take it all back down again.

Sometimes we feel like we set it all up just to take it back down. Yet, we are happy. We have learned to embrace our fate.

So, we made T-shirts that display our team pride that double as protection for our office clothes while doing the dirty work.

I have to confess, I like working at a place where people get the joke – no explanations needed.

More over at Flickr