Keeping up is hard to do

I am consumed with blogger's guilt. Faced with the terrible choice of experiencing Buenos Aires, or blogging about it, this week, the blogging part clearly lost out.

Fear not. Tomorrow is Sunday, with hours of vacant time looming. I promise some kind of enormous prose dump. Right here, on this very blog.

That is, assuming I don't yield to the siren call of Evita's grave. Right there in the Recoleta Cemetery, just a handful of blocks away. Not as full of celebs as, say Pêre Lachaise, but still on the list of things a person's gotta visit. Then there's Montevideo, though I'm kind of saving that for next weekend.

I promise, I will try harder. Honestly. Really. I will.

For those of you who check this blog just to see if I'm still alive, the answer is "Yes". Though I am quite tired, what with all the walking and sightseeing and general taking a gazillion hours of classes a week. But my Spanish, she is better than ever. I can say things I couldn't even say in English, now. Not that that's necessarily a good thing.

The plain people of Ireland: Here, this is very disjointed today.
The management: Yes, it is. And your point is?

Doomed as doomed can be

At the end of last week, I decided to take advantage of the extraordinarily low cost of private lessons (about $28 U.S. an hour) and paid for ten lessons, so that I ended each of the last four days in school with an hour-long private lesson with Ciro, possibly the most charming Spanish teacher I will ever have. (His name is the Spanish version of 'Xerxes', a fact which I also find charming).

During today's class we listened to the music of the awesome Astor Piazzolla, who single-handedly invented a kind of fusion of tango and jazz, which earned him popularity outside of Argentina and the fury of the purists at home. At the end of class, Ciro recommended the Libertador bookstore as being a possible place to pick up some interesting tango CD's at a reasonable price.

Oh, dear Lord! The librería Libertador! I am doomed as doomed can be.

Readers of this blog will know that books are my major weakness (or 'punto debil', if you prefer). This store will be my complete and absolute downfall. Here is what I staggered home with earlier this evening, for a total expenditure of $23 U.S.

A 200-page dictionary of Lunfardo
The collected Father Brown stories (in Spanish)
A CD of Astor Piazzolla selections (20 tracks), with accompanying 100-page booklet about his life and work
A CD of Osvaldo Publiese selections (20 tracks), with accompanying 100-page booklet about his life and work
The Sibelius 2nd Symphony and various orchestral works (68 minutes), with accompanying 48-page booklet about his life and work
The Rachmaninov 2nd and 3rd piano concertos, with accompanying 48-page booklet (80 minutes)
10 volumes (each illustrated, 48 pages in length) from the Biblioteca del Conocimiento series , covering topic as diverse as "Human Beings", to "Physics: Energy and Motion", to "Literature: from Romanticism to the Present"

Let me tell you, a world in which it is possible to get a CD of the Sibelius 2nd Symphony (some of the most joyful music ever composed), for under 2 bucks is OK in my book.

¡Dear God, I'm doomed as doomed can be!

Tuber Abuse

Our research has determined that tuber abuse is rampant here in Argentina. In the name of "gastronomic excellence", it is routine practice to kidnap whole gardens of sleeping potatoes, to haze them by forcing them to imbibe large quantities of alcohol until they are drunk, to gouge out their eyes with unimaginable cruelty, finally killing them by repeated bludgeoning with nasty instruments left over from the Spanish Inquisition. All in the name of bringing the tasty side-dish "smashed potatoes" to the diner's table.



¿Won't you help put an end to these barbaric practices?
¡Join the smashed potato boycott now!

Princess Twinkly

I had planned to bring you further ruminations about Buenos Aires today, honestly. But I've added an hour of individual classes to my daily schedule, so that I didn't get home tonight until 6:30pm. So you will have to wait a while for your dose of pseudo-profundities.

But I feel confident that you will forgive my failure to blather on about B.A. when you visit this link, brought to my attention by my good friend Paul B.

http://rathergood.com/princess_twinkly/

Hasta luego, chicos and chiclets!

Organized sets

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gaelstat/sets/72157606952153455/ (Colours of La Boca : 36 photos)



http://www.flickr.com/photos/gaelstat/sets/72157606952284279/ (Personajes de La Boca : 36 photos)



http://www.flickr.com/photos/gaelstat/sets/72157606948285300/ (La Boca Set # 1 : 15 photos)



http://www.flickr.com/photos/gaelstat/sets/72157606952374965/ (La Boca - entire set : 152 photos)

¡¡Hay un montón de fotos!!

Bessie (or, as she is known hereabouts, Isabel) would like you to know that 150* new photos have just been loaded to David's Flickr account.

These are accessible at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gaelstat/,

but have yet to be organized into any coherent grouping. Go ahead, check them out! They are pretty fun.

*: all taken today, almost all in La Boca.

THE OTHER OLYMPIC GAMES

Way cuter, if you ask me! Guinea pig archery, what's not to love?

La vida cotidiana : la ciudad

I've been postponing writing about Buenos Aires itself because the topic somewhat overwhelms me. Truly, of all the cities I've spent time in, this has to be one of the most stimulating. Which is a good thing, but I have so many impressions, and there are so many sensations to try to capture, that it's hard to get down in any coherent form. So, forgive me if I resort to the slightly random bulleted list option, rather than aiming for any kind of linear narrative.

There is a slightly frenetic buzz to the city that is maybe best captured by the local version of a 7-11 store in the U.S.:





It's almost like there's a kind of hyper-industry, an excess of entrepreneurial spirit, that maybe results from relatively recent experience with economic catastrophe, and an ongoing sense of potential instability. It manifests itself in all kinds of little details. Thus, for example, the local tobacconist on the corner will not be restricted to selling sweets, tobacco and newspapers: there will also be a couple of tables in case someone wants to have a coffee and doughnut, as well as a couple of "locutorios" (phone booths to make long-distance calls), and often as not a couple of booths dedicated to internet connections at the back of the shop. Similarly, even the tiniest of cafés in the city center transforms to a lunch place from 11:30 to 3:00, even if only to offer three or four "menús del día". Furthermore, it's entirely normal to see the waiters from such establishments scurrying along the sidewalk, making full-service deliveries (complete with linen and silverware) to local offices. Invariably, whenever I've taken a taxi and engaged the driver in detailed enough conversation for him to know where I'm from, he has pressed his card on me, reminding me that he is available for airport service. On my way to school every morning, I pass the main court building, outside of which it's not uncommon to see distinguished elderly gentlemen (retired lawyers?) selling law texts on the sidewalk.

People, with the exception of the loathsome, snotty waiter at the vile "Broccolino" restaurant,



have been universally charming, and extremely helpful. This covers not only the teachers and staff at school, but also the charming Dr Gualtieri and her assistant, assorted waiters and attendants in shops, the doormen in the building, taxi-drivers and random passers-by. I am beguiled by the people of Buenos Aires.

I am less charmed by the pavements of Buenos Aires, which pose a significant health hazard to all and sundry. If you come here, be warned - these sidewalks are lethal! In two weeks, I've already witnessed three full-fledged spreadeagle accidents, and uncountable near-misses. Compared to the lurking pitfalls of the porteño footpaths, the quaint cobblestone streets of Guanajuato were a cakewalk.

Prices are almost uniformly ridiculously low. My most common experience is that I will look at the price of something, go through an initial thought process that it's a little bit on the high side, then make the realization "Oh, wait! That's the price in pesos". Dividing by 3 makes everything a lot more pleasant. The only exception to date, oddly enough, has been the price of stamps: to send a postcard to the U.S. costs 5 pesos, which is about $1.66 U.S., a bit on the high side. But, as I mentioned in a previous post, spending more than $20 U.S. for dinner is a challenge.

Further impressions to follow.

El Príncipe Feliz

I should have known better. Yesterday evening my options were:

1. Join the assorted 19- and 20-year olds for a so-called "Buenos Aires pub crawl", which promised - for less than twenty bucks - free drinks and appetizers at each of no fewer than four bars, followed by V.I.P. entry to a "hot club" in the city center.

2. A relaxing dinner alone, with an opportunity to catch up on some Spanish reading.

OK, I'm a wuss. My 51-year old liver and I chose option 2.

The root of the problem was my choice of reading material. Rather than eat to the accompaniment of the bloodless prose of Borges's "Ficciones" (which, I hasten to add, are just fine if you are in the right kind of mood), I opted instead to bring along a Spanish translation of collected stories of Oscar Wilde: "El Fantasma de Canterville y Otros Cuentos". I had bought the book earlier in the day, for its nice simple prose - a fine choice for non-native speakers like myself. So my dinner courses were punctuated by intermittent sections of "El Príncipe Feliz" (The Happy Prince).

Problem was, I'd forgotten the effect this particular story has on me. As a kid, I could never make it to the end without bawling my eyes out. And sure enough, the Spanish translation had lost none of the tale's emotional wallop. By the time my espresso was served, when the swallow dies and the prince's heart breaks in two, well - let's just say I had to go to the men's room to compose myself.*

The Happy Prince: reading it in public is a bit like watching "Brokeback Mountain" with the lights on - a recipe for embarrassment.

Damn you, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde! And I mean that in the best possible way.

* I'm all better now, I swear.

**************************************************************************

Tráeme las dos cosas más preciosas de la ciudad -- le dijo Dios a uno de sus ángeles.
Y el ángel le trajo el corazón de plomo y el ave muerte.
Has escogido bien -- dijo Dios -- porque en el jardín del Paraíso este pajarillo cantará eternamente y en mi ciudad de oro del Príncipe Feliz me glorificará.

Bring me the two most precious things in the city -- God said to one of his angels.
And the angel brought him the heart of lead and the dead swallow.
You have chosen well -- said God -- because this little bird will sing for eternity in the gardens of Paradise, and the Happy Prince will bring me glory in my City of Gold.

At the odontóloga's office

As I've mentioned many times on this blog, one of the joys of overseas travel is the way that just being in a foreign country can take something that would be tedious at home and transform it into something exciting and different - instant adventure, if you will. A case in point was my visit to the dentist earlier today. Readers will recall that the most exciting episode of last Sunday evening's tango spectacle debacle occurred when the Mentos I was chewing lifted a filling right out of one of my lower left molars. That's right: Mentos -- "the freshmaker" and "the toothbreaker".

As a result, 11 a.m. today found me in the office of the efficient Dottora Paula Gualtieri, who took care of my little dental emergency with great charm and professionalism. (In the course of trying to reach Dr Paula during the week, I did end up chatting with her father on the phone for five minutes. Though it seemed inappropriate to ask him directly, it seems highly unlikely that the family is in any way related to the infamous General "Malvinas" Gualtieri. Just in case anyone was wondering.)

There were some notable differences between this morning's appointment and a typical dentist's visit in San Francisco:

• In the ten years that I've been going to Doctor Victor in S.F., neither he, nor his dental hygienist, has ever greeted me by kissing me on the cheek.
• Judging by the numbering system that Doctor Paula was using for my dental chart, Argentine patients appear to have 48 teeth. Something I hadn't personally noticed up until now, but you can be damned sure I will be on the lookout for those toothy porteños from now on.
• For what it cost to replace the filling ("el empaste"), I would barely be allowed in the building where Doctor Victor's office is located. 100 pesos. That's 33 US dollars, children. For 30 minutes of the dentist's and her assistant's time. I felt almost embarrassed.

There were some similarities as well:

• Apparently, it is a global requirement for all dentists to give you a free toothbrush, a tiny tube of toothpaste, and a leaflet showing you how best to brush your teeth, before allowing you to leave the office.
• You're never done. By definition, there's always something else. Whether it's the poking around your mouth with sharp pointy metal tools, or an innate ability to spot budding caries from 500 meters (I lean toward the former explanation), every dentist wants you back in that chair.

I consented to one more visit, because - I have to admit - I had been wondering if that surface irregularity I could feel with my tongue might not be a new "hueco" starting up. So, by the time I leave Argentina, it's possible I may have racked up nearly 100 bucks in dental bills. Will I be endeavoring to recuperate this expenditure from Kaiser Permanente? I doubt it, somehow. Life is way too short....

On my way home from the dentist, I wandered along Avenida Rivadavia (the Buenos Aires equivalent of Toronto's Yonge Street - it's very long) for about 40 of its 100 blocks. I didn't have my camera with me, but maybe it's just as well.

Schpring-Schprong Biscuits!!

Coming shortly - OPERATION BAKED GOODS continues!! Watch this space carefully.



The term “schpring-schprong biscuit” refers to any of three biscuit varieties (Kimberley, Mikado, and coconut cream) made by the Jacob company, each of which contains a type of coconut marshmallow filling, which has a kind of springy consistency, from which the name derives.

If you would like to see pictures, try this link

http://gaelstat.com/Documents/december2005quizexplanations.doc

The above Argentine efforts remain a poor shadow of the real thing, but are not the last word on the topic. I will return to this very important subject.

Taming the Photostream

Some of you may have noticed that I've been making relatively indiscriminate use of my little HP R827 in recent weeks. I make no particular apology for this - what's the harm, after all? But it does mean that my Flickr photostream is becoming less navigable. The total number of images is rapidly approaching the thousand mark. Realizing that not everyone wants to wade through every single image that I have uploaded, I will try to be a little more proactive about organizing the photos into sets, which may be a little more user-friendly for those of you just browsing. I won't make any rash promises, but here are links to the first two Buenos Aires sets (I'm repeating the link to the tango set, just for completeness):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gaelstat/sets/72157606875016250/ (Signs and Windows)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gaelstat/sets/72157606819220655/ (Colores del Tango)

Gotan Project

Upon Rodrigo's recommendation, I've been listening to the music of Gotan Project, specifically their 2006 CD, Lunático. I highly recommend it. The first and final tracks in particular (Amor Porteño and Paris, Texas) are remarkably fine. But the entire album is pretty terrific:

Admiral Brown

Yesterday evening, the waiter in my favorite local restaurant was anxious to tell me all about Admiral Brown, the famous Argentine patriot who was born in Ireland. As usual, my ignorance was shocking. So here, as an antidote to your possible ignorance, is a section from the Wikipedia entry on the mariner in question:

Admiral William Brown* (also known in Spanish as: Guillermo Brown) was born in Foxford, County Mayo, Ireland on June 22, 1777 and died in Buenos Aires, Argentina on March 3, 1857. Brown's victories in the Independence War, the Argentina-Brazil War, and the Guerra Grande in Uruguay earned the respect and appreciation of the Argentine people, and today he is regarded as one of Argentina's national heroes. Creator and first admiral of the country's maritime forces, he is commonly known as the "father of the Argentine Navy". Over 1200 streets, throughout Argentina, are named for him.

See, this blog aims not only to entertain, but to inform and to educate as well.

*: not to be confused with the fictional Richmal Crompton character "Just William".

La vida cotidiana : en la escuela

Don Quijote's global reach doesn't actually extend as far south as the 35th parallel so, even though I arranged and paid for my classes here through dQ headquarters in Salamanca, the school is not a don Quijote school per se, but has so-called "sister status". What this appears to mean in practice is that they follow much the same format for classes - that is, morning classes have more of an emphasis on covering formal grammatical constructs, while afternoon classes are devoted to conversation.

Two changes are evident though, both of them entirely positive, in my view. The first is that they are less strict about sticking only to grammar-related stuff in the morning, and will substitute watching a film, or - if the mood of the class is such that it seems like a good idea - just let the conversation unfold (this willingness to abandon the strict grammatical curriculum is particularly helpful at the more advanced levels). The second, extremely welcome change, is that - for students taking six hours class a day, instead of going straight through from 9 to 3, with just two 20-minute breaks, we actually get a whole hour for lunch at 1pm, reconvening at 2pm. I can't emphasize enough how much more civilized this is.

So far, the teachers have been uniformly excellent - better than many of the dQ teachers I've had over the past year. They are highly enthusiastic, very good at managing class participation, and seem much more imaginative in their use of multi-media and their choice of materials to discuss during class. I'm really liking it a lot, and am learning a lot.

It's a relief as well that, each time when I return to class, I appear to be forgetting a lower percentage of what I had learned previously. I've started to read pretty extensively, starting with Argentine authors like Borges and Robert Arlt ("el juguete rabioso"), as well as my near-daily dose of my old favorite, "El País".

The only slight snag is that, unlike at the various dQ schools, the demographics of the student body are much more homogeneous, and I appear to be the only student over 30 in the whole place. Which is fine - it's not as if there's any kind of age-apartheid, or anything. It's just that - well - have you spent 30 hours a week in a classroom with a bunch of 19-year olds recently?

They're sweet as all get out and everything. But, Lord, at times - they are just sooooooooo damned young.

At times it makes me wish for the glib certainties of youth again. But - then again - maybe not!

Tres perritos porteños

I promise I will have something of substance to blog about later on, but starvation sends me out in search of dinner. In the meantime, here are three sleepy pooches I captured earlier in the day.

Hasta pronto, chicos!

Strike Threat Averted

I hope everyone will be happy to know that my temporary mal humor of yesterday is a thing of the past, and I am no longer threatening industrial action. I put it all down to the temporary discombobulation that accompanies a three-day weekend in a strange city. Yesterday afternoon's walk around the Abasto district, documented in the preceding post, thoroughly reinvigorated me.

So please forgive any peevishness on my part. This blog will continue unabated. In fact, just try shutting me up.

Which is not to say that your comments are unwelcome - the more the merrier.

But now I have to go do my homework. Which has to do with midget Argentine serial killers of the early 20th century. It doesn't get any better than this!!

(And yes, arrangements are under way to replace the filling that fell prey to Sunday evening's ill-advised Mentos. Let it be a cautionary lesson to all my readers)

Pictures galore

I've been out sacar-ing photos like a maniac, and uploading them to Flickr fairly indiscriminately, I'm afraid. I did try to bring a little order to today's efforts, by subsetting out a collection:

Colores del Tango .

Enjoy!

Strike Threat

OK, readers! Here's the deal. I know that you are out there, reading this blog. Statistics tell me so. But if you want me to keep posting with any frequency at all, you're going to need to make yourselves heard.

I've posted something like 15 times in the past week, and all I get in response is a single comment.

Is that the best you can do? I sincerely hope not.

Remember, I'm the one here who is thousands of miles from friends and family. So a line of encouragement would be not only welcome - it would be a common courtesy.

Because the silent treatment can work both ways. And if that seems like a threat, so be it. But use your imagination and put yourself in my position. It's frankly dispiriting to feel that one is simply typing into the damned void with every post.

Macho Posturing as an Art Form

Yesterday evening I attended an "espectáculo de tango" at the Borges Cultural Center (not what is shown in the photo above). Probably the most exciting part of the evening was when I managed to dislodge a filling while ill-advisedly chewing a Mentos (a hazard that somehow gets downplayed in those zany commercials of theirs). So I'm sure that some future post will deal with life in an Argentine dentist's office.

But anyway - yes - the tango. Well, avid readers of this blog will recall that, where THE DANCE is concerned, I am something of a philistine. There was that unfortunate giggling episode at the flamenco performance in Sevilla last year, induced by the deadly seriousness of the performers and the mild whorishness of the female dancer's costume. Of course, THE TANGO takes itself very seriously as an art form as well, nowhere more than aquí in Buenos Aires. Though at least the costumes weren't as overtly whorish.

The performance lasted an astonishing 90 minutes, roughly 7 of which, in my view were worth the price of entry (10 US dollars, so I'm not really complaining about that). That is, there were roughly seven minutes in which one was mesmerized by the dancing. Problem is, in order to spin things out into a "spectacle" of 90 minutes, there had to be some kind of gimmick. The gimmick was this: there were 3 men and 3 women on stage (and the usual chairs, to be used as clichéd props). Elementary combinatorics shows that this allows for a total of six possible pairings (in the macho world of the tango, don't look for any non-normative coupling). So, the added entertainment value was to watch as assorted couples formed and reformed, or batted their eyelashes, or sulked, for a total of 90 minutes.

Well, excuse me for saying so, but that kind of inane musical chairs is about as interesting to watch as Heidi and Spencer on "The Hills". Or wondering which cheerleader will go to the prom with which jock. At least the cheerleaders and jocks don't mope around with expressions of mock solemnity as if their pet parrot had just died.

So, for the seven minutes or so that the dancers actually danced the tango - that part was great! The rest was forgettable, yawn-inducing padding. But I know that you will want to hear my impressions expressed in verse. So here goes:

WARNING --- DOGGEREL ALERT --- IMMEDIATELY AHEAD

(continue at your own risk)

Truth be told, I'd rather watch a particularly hairy orang-utan go

apes**t crazy over finding the ripest, the juiciest, the most perfect, mango

than submit to watching another macho, but secretly fruity, Argentine man go

sneer at his partner as he drags her across the floor in that faintly misogynistic ritual known hereabouts as THE TANGO

There's more, but I'm not sure my gentle readers have done anything to deserve it. Oh, OK, if you insist:

Everyone raves: "as soon as you can, go
see a show; it beats everything, even the music of jazz great Django
Reinhart; don't go alone, get together a gang, go
in a group." But here's the thang, tho'*
I know it's heresy to say it I can think of a dozen things I'd rather do -- catch up on my Jack London, read Call of the Wild again, or maybe Fang. Oh...
I know it qualifies me as a philistine but fact is I'd rather curl up with the budget proposal of a particularly earnest Quango**,
listen to Mirella Freni singing Cio-Cio San, go
see Robert Downey starring as Iron Man, go
watch Brando find new uses for butter in that last Parisian tango.
Heck! Even take classes in how to throw a boomerang. Oh!
Please spare me all the fuss and fandango.
Fact is: there's almost nothing I want to do less than sit through another unintentionally hilarious performance of Argentines and Tinas going through that argy-bargy ritual they call THE TANGO.

*: poetic licence.

**: Quango = Quasi non-governmental organization.

(OK: I've been slightly exaggerating my antipathy here, for entertainment purposes. Fact is, the parts of the show where they actually were dancing the tango were riveting. It's just the padding I found underwhelming)