I didn’t understand how that schedule worked with work until Argentine eBay-er MC explained that managers will arrive in the office at 9:30-10:00, that lunch is an extended affair and that the work days don’t end until past 7:00 p.m.

In vacation mode and without work to attend, for me this meant dining after 10pm, for hours, staying up past 4 a.m. and waking past noon every day in Buenos Aires.  Perfecto!

On Day 2, we did the map-guided tour of Recoleta Cemetary, last resting place of elite Argentine public figures such as Eva Peron (Evita).  Unlike most cemetaries in California, with graves in the ground, the entire cemetary in Recoleta is comprised of crypts with above-ground vestibules and below-ground chambers.  Coffins often are visible through glass or wood doors or metal bars.  Also unlike in the U.S., where sites are purchased in perpetuity, sites at Recoleta effectively are leased and payments must be maintained to keep them.  My understanding is that a waiting list exists to take over abandoned sites.  I suppose that means the last resting place is only for a nap!

I assume there must be some architectural conventions followed, but there’s still a mix of apparently more classic and some more modern styles. We saw Evita, including the epitaph that inspired the musical, and scores of government figures.

One morbidly fascinating sight we saw: A lot of feral cats are around the grounds; we saw one emerge from through the metal bars of a decrepit, overgrown crypt with a half-eaten pigeon in its mouth and continue the feast.

Somehow, the historical, public and tourist nature of the cemetary made touring it less morbid and somber than I imagine walking through another cemetary might be.

La Boca is not the kind of neighborhood for casual strolls — it can be downright rough in spots. Don’t stray from the riverside walk or the tourist sections of Caminito, Del Valle Iberlucea and Magallanes, especially alone or toting expensive cameras. There’s nothing you’d want to see outside these areas anyway.

Hm, so i guess inland on Defensa isolated on one side of a deserted street with a fancy SLR wasn’t so smart. My bad!

But the most story-worthy tale is about how I evaded robbery at gunpoint on my very first day in the country!

We had walked all the way from the Recoleta neighborhood to the San Telmo neighborhood, the latter lined with quaint shops and, on Sundays, a street fair for crafts and antiques.  The La Boca neighborhood wasn’t much further, so we kept walking, now in the late afternoon.

As we left San Telmo behind, the streets emptied of people and the apparent economic conditions seemed to decline. We saw a burnt, rusted car parked rotting on a street. But it was still broad daylight and we did see others here and there. Had I read my Lonely Planet guide more carefully, we might have heeded its warnings to avoid all but the major, most touristed streets of La Boca, regardless of time of day . . . .

This photograph could have cost me my life!

Instead, just a couple blocks from those safer areas and perhaps 50 yards from a full children’s playground, we’d paused to photograph two artfully painted building facades. My friend was across the street and later told me she saw a dark car pass her and make a u-turn towards me. I was standing a foot into the street taking photos and saw the car, with its dark tinted windows, approach uncomfortably closely, allowing little space between it and a high curb to my left. I saw at least 3 people, who appeared to be locals, in the car and remember being puzzled briefly that locals might be stopping to ask me a question.

Ah, but that’s not what they wanted. The car now immediately next to me and inching forward slowly, a dark-haired guy perhaps in his late 20s/early 30s in the back passenger seat brandished at me what appeared to be a silver, 9-millimeter pistol. Almost at the same time, either he or someone in the front passenger seat (and this is why eyewitness testimony can be so unreliable–I don’t know exactly what happened) grabbed my right wrist, which held my fairly new Canon Rebel EOS XSi SLR camera. I just reacted. I jerked my wrist and camera away and ran to the rear end of the car and beyond; I ran right by the passenger with the gun, behind the car and across the street. LTS just saw the car approach me, between the two of us, and then saw me sprinting from it.

Thankfully, the car didn’t turn back, continuing onward and away from us. And within 30 seconds we were at the children’s playground surrounded by others and a bit shaken.

Later, I told my friend that in the blink of the moment, my immediate impression had been that the man with the gun was a petty thief and didn’t intend to shoot me. Of course, I didn’t know that, and I would never risk my life for a camera. But I just didn’t freeze; I just reacted and ran and lived to tell the tale of flight over losing the fight, with just a minor abrasion to my wrist.

The plan is 2-2.5 weeks in country, with stops in Buenos Aires, El Calafate in Patagonia (for the Perito Moreno glacier and a trip across the Chilean border for some trekking in Torres del Paine), back to Buenos Aires (the hub for many domestic flights) and then a couple of days at Iguazu Falls before heading home via Los Angeles to see my niece.

Bon voyage!

In brief:  I upgraded to iPhone Firmware 2.1, and my Microsoft Exchange integration broke.  I work at eBay, where we use Microsoft Exchange, Outlook and Web mail.  With my BlackBerry Pearl, everything just worked, without a thought.  With iPhone Firmware 2.0, 2.01 and 2.02, I was delighted that everything just worked too — a seamless transition from RIM, right?  Wrong!  With iPhone Firmware 2.1, email stopped arriving completely and all my contacts and calendar events were deleted from my iPhone and no longer syncing.

This was a disaster because of my setup.  I have a PC at work and a Mac at home, but I have (foolishly?) relied for the past 2 companies and 8 years entirely on my work Outlook to manage my calendar and contacts.  In other words, I have no other complete record of calendar events and contact information other than in Outlook.  With the Exchange integration broken, I now had an empty iPhone calendar and empty contacts.  Nothing, no ability even to call anyone without looking up their number in Outlook.  (No one memorizes numbers in this day and age, do they?)

Realizing this is a dangerous dependency, I recently had started to look to backup my data online.  First, I installed Yahoo! Autosync to sync Outlook with Yahoo! Address Book and Yahoo! Calendar.  This didn’t work very well.  I have close to 1000 contacts records in Outlook.  Inevitably, the number of contacts, in Yahoo! Address Book didn’t match the number in Outlook, Yahoo! Autosync failed to merge records for the same person, and, in many cases, critical information was missing.  Probably some sort of problem with field mapping.  Inelegant.

Second, I exported my Outlook contacts to a comma-delimited .csv file and then imported them into Gmail.  This had the same problem as Yahoo! Autosync — mismatched record counts, non-merged records and missing data.  I also tried Google Calendar sync to sync between Outlook and Gcal.  This worked fairly well but takes an inordinately long time to complete; I think the application starts afresh with every sync.

With broken Exchange integration and no clear solutions on Apple’s discussion boards, I now needed an alternative method to get calendar and contacts synced with my iPhone.

Here’s what I want:

• Ubiquitous access to email, contacts and calendar — from my work desktop, from my home desktop, from any Web terminal and from my mobile device . . . . For me, this means Outlook, Web mail, Gmail/Gcal, Yahoo mail/Address Book/Calendar, Mac Address Book/iCal and iPhone
• Uniform data — no duplication of entries, no omitted entries and consistent data across platforms
• Over-the-air sync — what good is a mobile device if I have to plug it in to get data on it?

Clearly, as much as Apple claims to be targeting enterprises with the iPhone, Apple isn’t ready.  They don’t even use Exchange at Apple is my understanding.  They don’t understand enterprise activation.  They don’t understand Enterprise-level support:  After several calls to Apple, their ultimate advice was:  We have no idea why Exchange broke, too bad, good luck.  Thankfully, email spontaneously restored after a couple of days, but I will no longer trust to the Exchange integration for my calendar and contacts, which remained broken last time I attempted to integrate.

Next post, the available options.

Recall my most recent complaints:  (1) abysmal battery life and (2) broken Microsoft Exchange integration.

I was sometimes getting less than 5 hours of battery life, even after Apple replaced my unit with a new one.  Firmware 2.1 plus some more prudent battery conservation practices have all but solved #1.  I’ve read too many articles, blog posts and discussion board threads on this to recount.  Plus, I’ve finally succumbed to logical suggestions — most of which I daresay I had heard already — from BW and ES.  Here’s what’s worked for me:

First, I’m only fetching data now, and only hourly.  Such is the disappointment of and lowered expectations in performance of the iPhone 3G that the very reason for buying it — push — is what must be disabled to provide more reasonable battery life.  I’m not even upset that I don’t get push, because it was working so poorly — that battery-killing wheel seemed to be spinning constantly — and I’m so grateful for longer battery life.

Second, I’ve slightly reduced the number of accounts from which I’m fetching data.  I have work Exchange, Yahoo, Gmail and MobileMe accounts.  Instead of fetching data from all of them, I’m forwarding Gmail to Yahoo and fetching from Yahoo.  I use MobileMe only for calendar and contacts syncing, so I have it set up but never check that email.  And I’m even fetching from my work email account.  I came to terms with the fact that I don’t need push email to distract me in meetings, and I already get push when sitting in front of my destop with Outlook open.

Third, I’ve turned brightness down fairly low.  Even with a protective film on the glass, it’s still bright enough for me.

Fourth, I’ve left Bluetooth and Location Services on.  I use my Bluetooth headset to and from work every day, it’s too much of a pain to go into Settings to deactivate and activate it repeatedly, and I’m not convinced it’s a drain on the battery.  For Location Services, much of the time I have this off, but I just end up switching it on when prompted when using Google Maps or some other geo-aware application that calls for it.

Finally, I’ve left both 3G and Data Roaming turned on.  As eBay alumnus Ryan Spoon notes, push has a much greater effect on battery life than 3G.  I know at least one other iPhone 3G owner — ES –  who switches off 3G not because of the perceived battery life drain but because he believes the network is unreliable and results in dropped calls.  I’m accessing the Internet often enough that I want the speed from its being on all the time.

The net effect?  I can go over a day without recharging.  And I don’t live in constant fear of a sudden drained-battery-induced shutdown.  Frackin’ fantastic.  Reasonable battery life?  Check!

Next, I’ll bemoan the complete failure of Exchange integration, my data sync requirements and then the awkward but functioning solutions I’ve devised.

Today, Apple released the new 2.1 firmware, and it’s broken my Exchange integration.  Right now, I have no calendar, no contacts and no email — the unit is useless to me without these core functions.  I’ve tried deleting the Exchange account and re-adding it, but that doesn’t help.  Apple support forums indicate that at least a few others are experiencing the same problem.  Frankly, I’m sick of the inability of the iPhone to perform basic functions, and I’m seriously thinking about switching back to BlackBerry.

Two reasons to buy Apple products:  (1) They just work and (2) sex appeal.  So far, (1) is absent leaving my iPhone decidely unsexy. 

I don’t think the Korean population is particularly large in this area, and plenty of Korean grocery stores are nearby, so I’m not sure how long this will last. I, for one, will continue to buy any kimchee from a local Korean market. But how cool!

Postscript: This post the first I’ve written on my iPhone WordPress application.

Is anyone excited about the Olympics?

It’s just around the corner, but I don’t think I’ve ever anticipated the Olympics less. Perhaps it’s age. I have a mild interest in watching the U.S.A. basketball team, but, other than that, ho hum.

What are your requirements? Are you thinking of a wireless Bluetooth headset?

J.I. just got the original Jawbone, which has come down in price quite a bit, particularly since a new model has been released. I wrote three blog posts on the original Jawbone, with mixed reviews: http://www.joonsookim.com/blog/?s=jawbone.

In general, I think you should be considering (1) sound quality, both receiving and transmitting, (2) ease of use, (3) physical comfort/fit and (4) durability.

Here’s what I think the options are:

I’ve looked at reviews of other Bluetooth headsets. Some folks like various Motorola versions. My sense is that these four above are among the best if not the best. Certainly, the BlueAnt and the Jawbone receive the highest acclaim.

Lemme know if you have more questions!

With this said, I continue to get some feedback that the Plantronics Discovery 925 transmitting sound quality can be spotty. I’ll likely check out the Jawbone NinjaAssassin at some point and will let you know how that goes.