Creative ways to finish off the food in my kitchen

1) Pinto beans marinated in cider vinegar.

2) Spinach/carrot/mackerel fried rice.

3) Near-lethal doses of yerba mate.

4) Paprika on everything.

Preoccupied

I like doing little literal internal translations of things I say in Spanish. For example, I just told my boss that ”I finish of terminating the translation” and she replied ”What good.” When I went to get some water and our secretary offered to bring me a pitcher, I told her ”Don’t preoccupy yourself.” And when I leave for the day, I will tell them ”I go me. We see us the Monday. Is open the door?” And these are pretty comprehensible examples, all things considered.

I don’t have a real post today. I’ve been putting all my energy into writing songs, partly inspired by my time here. I toyed very briefly with putting some lyrics up here as a sort of filler, but as Voltaire wrote, ”Anything too stupid to be said is sung,” so I think I’ll wait until I get a demo together. I’ll be converting this from a travel-blog into the regular sort (that is, I will change the title) when I come back to the states next week. Thanks to everyone for reading. I may have one more Buenos Aires post in me before I leave, but no promises.

Linkage

Read my buddy Jack’s blog here!

But remember, you don’t have to stop reading mine just because his is better. You can read both!

Ingrate in an ungracious land

I have been a bad blogger… I had friends here this past week and didn’t find the time to sit down for this stuff. Will make it up to you somehow. But not today. Apologies in advance: I need to get a little rant out of my system.

I have a little over two weeks left in Buenos Aires. The experience has been extraordinary, probably the most remarkable time in my life. Here ‘extraordinary’ means ‘not ordinary’ and ‘remarkable’ means ‘to be remarked on’… I wish I could say it was the most fun I’ve ever had or the best experience of my life, but that would be a lie.

I’ve developed the ol’ love/hate relationship with this city. When I’m feeling confident and happy, Buenos Aires is vibrant, profound, historical, warm… and when I feel unnoticed and alone the city is self-centered, unfriendly, filthy and obsessed with the past. I think the two impressions are equally correct. Of course, I could list adjectives all day and they would all apply somehow, so I need to explain myself.

I’ve been through so much here that I can hardly remember what I was expecting it to be like. I know I thought people would be more friendly and hospitable here… I guess I have that stereotype about people almost everywhere outside of the northeast USA, whether it’s the south, the midwest, Latin America, India… Anyway, in my experience it’s not the case in Buenos Aires. People are generally friendly, but I can’t think of three times a stranger has asked if I was lost, gone beyond what I asked of them, or volunteered help in other ways. My first week here I remember as a nightmarish series of episodes of being lost and of people demanding money from me.

The music, which is what I came here for, is a total grab-bag. I came here to play, to participate in the music world, but I was eventually forced to give up, because I was told that you need to have friends before you have any hope of getting work. So I’ve mostly been an observer, and some of the shows I’ve seen have been fantastic. But the two shows that had the largest audiences and the most publicity were undoubtedly the two worst of them all. Please don’t tell me it’s like this everywhere.

At easily half of the events I attend, major themes of the night are Buenos Aires or Argentina. How does a city get away with being so narcissistic? Before you object, these are not tourist events only that I’m speaking of. It’s just as true of events where I’m the only foreigner in the audience. Maybe this is just something we Americans have an unusual perspective on, the USA not having the same sort of national unity or pride as other countries.

To any Porteños or others offended by what I’m writing, I say: these things have been a large part of my experience in the last two and a half months. As far as the ‘filthy’ part goes, though, well there’s no disputing it. The river is revolting. The air pollution is far worse than any of the US cities I have seen (yes, that includes LA). There are no parks of any size, except right next to the river and perhaps in the richest neighborhoods. Of course, I was spoiled growing up in Ithaca, but I will not forfeit my right to complain because of that.

All right, I’m done. Please take as a counterbalance all of my good reviews and positive entries… I don’t have the heart to qualify this rant at the moment.

.

.

.

Hey you, who have read this to the end: leave a comment!

A tan in Buenos Aires

I heard an awesome, Flamenco-ish bird song yesterday. Here’s a rough transcription:

Onto the post…

When I decided to come to Argentina, I got some comments from my friends:

• “Oh, maybe you’ll finally get a tan.”
• “Have you gotten your shots yet?”
• “I guess you’ll be eating a lot of burritos down there.”

My beloved Santa Feans: Argentina is not the same as Mexico. If Buenos Aires were flipped across the equator into the northern hemisphere, it would be about level with Albuquerque. In the middle of the Atlantic, of course. Also, Buenos Aires is a rainy, overcast place. And finally, it’s at sea level. So don’t come from Santa Fe NM, at 7000 feet in the desert, to Buenos Aires expecting a tan. I will be coming home as pasty as ever.
For the same reason, you don’t need shots for malaria or yellow fever or anything like that. I have seen some signs about dengue, which are a little confusing:

“Without water there are no eggs.
Without eggs there are no mosquitoes.
Without mosquitoes there is no dengue.”

..um, are they telling us to give up the use of water?
As for the food, they don’t, unfortunately, eat burritos here. Porteño cuisine, from what I’ve seen, mostly consists of huge slabs of beef, roasted chicken, empanadas, pizza, and pasta. For dessert they have anything you can put dulce de leche on (caramel sauce from Mt. Olympus). And they drink lots of yerba mate, a habit I’ve picked up — it’s so cheap! I’ve drunk a cup or two every day for two months and have spent a total of $3. I got a single cup of the stuff for almost that much at the Aztec. But aside from the mate and the dulce de leche, I’m going with Mexican food, hands down.
You might be shocked to hear, if you’ve ever eaten a burrito with me, that I’ve taken a break from spicy food down here. You just can’t get it — the grocery stores don’t have hot peppers, cayenne, salsa, hot sauce (they didn’t even know what that was)… I don’t even know where to get black pepper. I did stumble on some chipotle tabasco in the import section of a more upscale supermarket… and a 5 oz. bottle cost $10!
I bought it anyway. Totally worth it. Seriously, have you tried that chipotle stuff?

The language barrier

I’m getting pretty good at Spanish. Not truly fluent yet, but it’s coming. But when I got here, it was a total mess.

When I arrived in Argentina, I mostly knew Spanish as a written thing. High school subjects always culminate in impractical things: as calculus is to math education, a Borges short story is to Spanish education. I was all loaded up with tenses and vocabulary and grammar, but impoverished in some other ways:

I’m realizing that people always get by without fully understanding each other, even two native speakers. In fact, we have dozens of phrases devoted to obscuring our exact meaning — “basically,” “it’s just that,” “I’m thinking that…” There’s nothing wrong with this (although I bet Ayn Rand would disagree), and arguably these phrases carry meaning of a different sort: not concise X > Y meaning, but meaning about our intentions, our confidence, and so on. But I’m kind of slow with that sort of thing, and the Spanish equivalents of these phrases are still a big hurdle for me.

Case in point: when I went to my politics class here, I found that what kept me from understanding the lectures had nothing to do with Marx or Lenin: it was always transitional and qualifying phrases that confused me. The single thing that threw me off the most was the professor’s habit of saying “esteeeee” while her brain was catching up with her mouth — I thought she was saying “este” or “es de” or “éste,” so I was busy trying to parse a nonsense word while she had moved on to the next topic.

I’m always having to ask people to repeat things and clarify things, and I often run into another problem — I don’t know how to communicate exactly what I didn’t understand. It’s like not being able to look something up that you can’t spell. I ask “sorry, once again please?” and half the time they start from a point about 2 minutes before where I lost them… and I don’t know if it’s better to interrupt and say yes, I got that part, or just let them waste their breath and hope I’ll catch what I missed when they come to it again. I’ve learned to just repeat the last thing I understood and make a confused face while I trail off, and that seems to work.

Sometimes it doesn’t, though. I find it endlessly frustrating to have a person detail something that I already understand. I realize it’s not exactly a good attitude, by the way — it’s just pride and impatience — but there’s no better way to get me coiled up than giving me a long, deliberate spiel about how Wednesday follows Tuesday, especially when it’s introduced by “listen to me” and punctuated with “got it?”s.

This is why I can’t watch political debates — on top of this infuriating presentation style, more than half the time they’re explaining how Tuesday follows Wednesday.

D. Keeling, intern

The other night I had a bad dream where I was ripped off buying a box of matches, and when I got home I realized I ALREADY HAD A FULL BOX. So, you see, my subconscious has been dealing with some heavy stuff lately.

Anyway, I’ve recently acquired a ridiculous amount of tango music on my computer. I spent two days copying CDs from the library of a tango culture center called FECA, where I’m now interning, all the while rubbing my hands together excitedly and saying things like “Excellent, my plan is coming to fruition!”

Well, maybe not as movie-villainish as that. And, in between inserting and removing CDs from my disk drive, I got some translation done. UNESCO recently declared Tango to be “part of the world’s cultural heritage,” and it was my task to translate the application form sent to UNESCO on behalf of tango from English into Spanish.

That’s a reasonable task. The form was only available in English and French, for whatever beaurocratic reasons, and there ought to be a Spanish version when the music comes from a Spanish speaking region. The only problem is, the English version was obviously written by a native Spanish speaker:

• “These organisms depend of the city of Buenos Aires”
• “the elaboration process for the candidacy of the nomination of Tango”

and a couple other gems. It’s the false cognates that give it away — “organism” and “elaborate” don’t mean exactly the same things as organismo and elaborar. Plus there’s “depend of”, coming from depender de.

So, I’m offended by the inefficiency of the whole thing — the author should have written it in Spanish, and I should have translated it into English, right? This  is why the UN doesn’t get anything done.

Review — 2 O’Clock

Check out this band!

I just saw them at Cafe Vinilo. I know I said, in very recent memory, that I don’t like Beatles covers, but I guess I’ll make an exception when they’re awesome. These are Beatles covers for Beatles fans, to be sure: the only downside is, if you don’t know the music inside and out they might not always make sense. But I, for one, was basically breast fed on the Beatles, and I loved them. You should especially check out “I’ve Just Seen A Face,” which was an exception to the rule that I don’t like covers of my favorite songs (it’s just a bummer you’ll know what song it is from the beginning, because part of the magic for me was not being sure during the intro). Also great are “Lady Madonna” and “We Can Work It Out.” The arrangements on Youtube are the same as the ones they played in concert.

The singer is more confident in her sassiness than usual for the singers I’ve seen here. She has flawless pitch and tone, and 95% perfect pronunciation — maybe it’s immature, but I always giggle when singers here say “her” like “Herr.” Not a big deal, really. Anyway, the guitarist (and arranger) is just great. The arrangements are really inventive, obviously the product of a lot of thought and hard work, with total awareness of the meaning of the songs, even when the arrangements stray really far from the originals. I like the group as a duo because both musicians take up a lot of space, so to speak, and when it’s just the two of them they don’t get in each other’s way, but it might get crowded with even one more musician up there.

By the way, they don’t only do Beatles stuff. They played Billie Jean by Michael Jackson and Breathe by Pink Floyd and a couple other. But it was mostly Beatles. Thanks for reading!

Culture shock pt. 2 — the Pope’s work ethic

So I asked a friend here about my experience in the soup kitchen (this post). He said the reaction I got was not exactly hostile, but more “don’t you have anything better to do?” Not something you’d expect to get from a soup kitchen, right? Well, he chalks it up mostly to religious reasons: Catholics, he says, view work as a penitance, a bad experience, whereas Protestants think of it as a sacrament, something that is good in itself. So Protestant volunteers are allowed to find satisfaction in volunteer work, but Catholics see it as punishment. Hence the “what are you in for?” kind of attitude. And since I’m from the US, I’m used to the more enthusiastic Protestant mindset.

I think he’s probably right, the religious difference is causing the disconnect here. And that’s all well and good… but don’t the creeds of Catholicism and Protestantism say basically the opposite? I thought Protestants believe you’re saved solely through your faith, and good deeds are nice but not necessary. And Catholics believe that your actions do have an impact on whether you get into heaven, hence the idea of mortal vs. venial sins, and Hail Marys, etc. So why are Protestants the ones with the volunteer culture?

Culture shock

I am trying to find a soup kitchen to volunteer in. I’m not going to claim any particularly noble motives — I want to meet people, and I need more things to do because I have so much free time. Anyway, you’ll notice: I’m trying to find one. It’s harder than I thought it would be.

I’ve emailed a couple different volunteer coordinators in the city, and I discovered, as with everything in this city, if I want their help I’m gonna have to fork over some cash — between $120 and $300. Not ready to do that, I googled some words and found an address that looked promising, a “comedor comunitario.” I figured I could go there and ask if they needed help, and if they didn’t, I’d ask if they knew of somewhere else I could try.

Google maps let me down and it was kind of a pain finding the place. But I eventually got there and wandered inside. I went up to the folks behind the counter, and a lady came out, very warmly, asking what she could do for me, do I want something to eat or drink? But once I explained that I was there to volunteer, not to eat, the hospitality vanished. She was impatient and unfriendly, basically walking me to the door and saying that she couldn’t help me. She told me twice that the work didn’t pay — apparently she couldn’t believe me the first time I said that I understood that. Before I was ejected (they actually closed the door behind me, when it was open before), I did manage to get out of her that I could come back tomorrow and see if they need help then.

What am I doing wrong? I’m trying my best to have the right attitude here. I don’t want to volunteer out of pity for Argentina. I don’t have a superiority complex about this. The US has soup kitchens too. Maybe I’m oversensitive, but it seemed like I offended that woman somehow and I honestly have no idea how. All I want to do is wash some dishes.