Foam Party

At times it's hard to fathom how people survive in the face of adversity. For instance, over the last couple of days, we have been out in Bogota collecting materials to build the studio and have witnessed people with horrendous deformities carrying on with their lives by collecting money and surviving in the only way they know possible. It is a far cry from Britain where the welfare state provides for anyone with a cold, let alone a life changing illnesses.
In a way their plight is indicative of the way Bogota functions as a whole. The society, to a large extent, functions in the face of adversity. We have found, for instance, that we are able to get hold of anything that we want to build our studio, we just have to approach everything laterally. We are used to building in a certain way and being able to get hold of what we want in a certain manner.
However, in Colombia, things are not as easy for the untrained foreign eye. To counteract this we have employed a local friend Diego, who has a lot of experience of building studios, to help us get hold of what we want. He has helped us traverse through the myriad streets and areas of the city to find exactly what we need. But, this being Bogota, we have had to approach certain things as a local would do. We bought some second hand tools the other day as good tools cost the earth over here. Unfortunately the drill we bought broke quite quickly. The next day we took it to get it fixed in the engineering district of the city. It was incredible to witness exactly how this part of the city operates, I mean you can get anything, fix anything, do anything, as long as you know where to go. People who survive on very few means are able to achieve what we take for granted, they just have to make sure they can get by with what is presented before them. Here is a culture that will fix anything, the polar opposite of the disposable culture that has grown in the West.
Without the help of Diego we would have been screwed. When we said that we needed insulation for the studio walls he said that he had just the thing in mind. A little while later we were stuffing a van full of foam offcuts in the foam district of the city (where else?) and sending it on its merry way for a price so reasonable I don't want to write it down.
So here we are with another day dawning and more work to do. Our time is precious and the schedule remains tight but we are getting lots achieved in a short space of time with the help of our friends.