Saturday February 15^th ,  2014

Salvador, Brazil, 12 58.5S 38 30.0W 

Today's Blog by David (Time zone: UTC – 3.0 )

We did indeed arrive a week ago, on Saturday afternoon.  Quite where, if one were to judge solely from the sky-line was anyone’s guess -  one might have been forgiven for  thinking  you were in New York, Auckland or perhaps Panama City:

But any misconceptions you might have had would have been cleared up by that evening, by which time we had encountered most of the things you read about Brazil: we found a lively nightlife in the old town square, caipirinha (a local cocktail, with a similar impact to a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster (for Douglas Adams’ fans)),   money changers, one of our number was ‘mugged’ (or more accurately had his gold St Christopher removed from his neck)  and a young lad had leant over into a restaurant area from the street and stole a cigarette lighter –20 minutes later he attempted to sell it back to its owner and after that failed , returned it, gratis, after 2 or so hours)!   That was before the now routine traipse around the officialdom on Monday to legalise our arrival.

Well nearly!  Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle states that you cannot measure precisely both position and momentum (or speed) of an object at the same time.  The measurement of position is probabilistic, there is a high probability that you are indeed where you think you are, but there is a finite if small probability that you are elsewhere.  The more accurate you are about position the less you know about its momentum and vice versa. Has to do with the wave properties of matter, dontcha kno? (Where’s he going with this? Search me! Ed.) 

And so it is with Immigration when it comes to whether a crew is here or not. One of our number having  flown home on Sunday evening, by the time we came to check into Brazil, there was a very high probability that one of the crew was in 6 inches of snow in New York, having departed Brazil before he had arrived – as it were. The assembled Brazilian officialdom were unable to cope with a low probability of said crew  being present (particularly in the absence of his passport!) and so said crew member was never recorded entering Brazil.  Stamped out but not in, as it were.  But they DO play the lottery….?

And finally for today, an image from Ascension Island, from the Volcano Bar at the USAF Base there – or more accurately from the Gent’s Toilet.  It show how much they care for the servicemen – it being empty.

But all was well, because half an hour later it had been replenished – making one wonder what their men are made of?