Bouncing Around

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

A vos

Cafe Martinez, Avenida de Mayo, Micro Centro, Buenos Aires, Capital Federal, Argentina.

As I sit here waiting, after teaching a bit
I sip my steaming warm coffee and consider the fit
My sitting here wearing a polo, bright yellow and blue
Amongst all the others floating through the city, with so much to do

Two hours to kill why not a muffin de leche
Un buen idea amiga, "por su puesto" se dije
Pero, no se si podria seguirse asi
Porque tengo que mudar durante la dia, es un cosa importa para mi

But each day I awake, before the sun twice a week
I shower up in the dawn, strike my feet to the soaking street
Though the path I now take is worn by my Pumas
It's when you look up that you realize whats humaan

Cada vez una pela arriba en el edifico
Y cada subte asi un picina, los dos estan lleno, entonces, lo mismo
Pero hay un algo buenisimo sobre una dia nueva
Todo es posible cuando vive un la ciudad buena

The reason for the syntax, and AA BB rhythm
Is too appease my fellow cafe drinkers, trying to avoid a schism
Add on the fact that upon which I'm typing is an Apple
I'm pretty much forced to be doing something creative, or at least to dabble.

A vos means and to you. For example, 1. "Buenas dias" and the person would respond "no, no, a vos."

Tuesday, April 20, 2010


Here's a pic of me and the kid Mike I was talking about down there.

Blanca y Cookies

Yo chicos - I just read a few of my roommate/co conspirator in this argentine fiesta's last blogpost, michaelhromadka.blogspot.com, and he's on 14 I got to speed up or I'm overtaken like a non-American walking down the sidewalk by an American. (I do not consider myself many things: well organized, emotionally sensitive, introverted, un-awesome...modest?....and another thing I certainly never have considered myself is a fast walker. But damn, I honestly pull up behind these people like Earnheart Jr, I mean I'm closing 10 yards in under 2.3 seconds then phoooooshhhh, quick draft behind a two person group and slingshot right ahead of em like it was nothing. It's crazy cause it makes me feel like I'm not stopping to smell the roses and whistle a catchy ditty enough. Moving from America to Buenos Aires was like driving 65 mph your whole life then all of a sudden getting off at the BsAs exit, your still moving 25 mph but it feels soooooooooooo slow. But it's not really too bad cause most of the streets are one way so It's east too judge when you can hop on that diamond lane and cruise past all the old grannies chugging along.)

Wow, don't now where that came from but it really is pretty weird. So,so,so. How are you guys doing, for those who follow this blog, and for the even smaller group that I assume would actually spend their precious time not being forced to stare at a computer screen to read this blog, please comment and let me know something about yourselves. I guess let us know something about you. I am willing to bet one half steak, half chicken, gauc, corn salsa, spicy salsa, cheese, lettuce, tomato and onion, pepper and sour creme, and some red tabasco Chipotle burrito, that I will buying on July 13th of this year, that something really awesome and pretty darn funny has happend to at least 68% percent. I mean, I'm no doctor, but that is simple economics no?

So today I called 150 people. On a computer phone with a headset. I sat in a black swiveling chair while listening to a girl who graduated from UCLA's ipod mix. A very solid mix I must say. I talked to 16 people on the phone today, while clicking nonchalantly, is chalantly a word?, on different areas of the U.S. highway and road system. I convinced 5 people today that I actually am not a liar and want to help them, while thinking about what kind of vegetables I was going to put in my tuna mix for the sandwich I was going to make for dinner (I always assumed you could only use your crunchy vegetables, but alas tomato works). I made a sale today, but the darn gentlemen must have a poor time sense because when he was going to call me back with his conformation and credit card info I was out of the office for an hour. I like my job. I work with funny and cool people, I talk to people who really need help and I can really help them. I save them money and I save them from getting completely ripped off (30% of auto transport industry are scam artists, honest to God scam artist who steal peoples money) I like knowing that I have a honest and good product to sell people and I like talking to people all day. I dislike desks though. I dislike swivel chairs when the headset I'm wearing restricts the full 360 spin. But alas I am learning so much form this experience beyond simple cultura and linguistics. Apparently the first real job you get out of school isn't going to be as a professional gadget tester for Techland.com nor is it going to be assistant Quentin Terrentino in his next project. The reality is sometimes you have to work, and when you do that you really start to appreciate, and recognize, the things you are working for. I'm just now discovering some of this stuff but I do know one of them, ahhhh, welp I just paused on that part a little long so guess the jury's still out.

Wow, everyone okay? things got kind of intense back there, but you know like good intense, like a really spicy burrito.

My job is cool and I'm meeting more people every weekend, soon I'm thinking about implementing the great Only Speaking in Spanish Act (11.AATH.42222.A) But I can now understand about 80% percent of the people 75% of the time. Which is a drastic increase from even a month ago, so that gets me pumped.

Holy crap that volcano is crazy. A german dude I was going to play tennis with tomorrow can't cause his parents are still here. His parents are still here cause they can't fly back to Germany, those pesky golf ball sized, crystalized, pieces of ash tend to be discourteous to plane engines I guess. Here's a sweet article in about it.

Go see the movie Kick Ass, many people I know and trust with movie opinion have said it's one of the best of the year, of course that's only if you want. Didn't mean to demand that one there.


Blanco y cookies is a delicious ly epic chocolate bar I just bought instead of a newspaper. But the whole time I was just thinking about sour patch kids.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Las cosas pequenas

Allo everybody, long time no see - I hope everyone is passing well, judging by the crisp sunshine and pleasant crowds I'm seeing on the course in Augusta, Georgia it seems that spring has more or less sprung in the northland. El tiempo aca is finally reaching a state that I would determine as comfortably bearable (I don't know if I told you guys but the first two months here were absurdly hot. Una mixto de city building heat trapping, overcrowded public transit systems and 22 years of cold weather breeding really make my personal experience in the summer here quite a sweaty endeavor) But yea, the weather is wonderful now, cool breezes during the day and sunsets coupled with something I'm truly excited to say, the need for a sweatshirt. I've been waiting for the day when the blanket I keep crumpled in the corner of my room would finally be called up for use, and this past week I must say it has performed it's duty well.

First a few notes on some very subtle, but powerful interactions I've had of late. Yesterday, or maybe friday, (I'm working for the weekend for the first time in my life, so, as I'm sure many of you have discovered, these precious few days of late awakenings and day time movie watching tend to go by way too fast) But yes, last friday I believe I was cruising through my neighborhood a lookin for a new dining experience, Palermo, the neighborhood where I live is renowned for it's eclectic collection de comida. After passing up Pizza Kentucky I saw that delightful rotating sight, a chunk of lamb speared through the middle sizzling with an onion and dripping it's savory juices. The sanwich de shwarma I had form there was only 12 pesos, but tasted like a million pesos. Or roughly 125,000 USD I think. As I was snacking away on my flavorful middle eastern treat I walked through a row of cars waiting at a red light. One truck's window rolled down and a guy called over to me, usually at this point I just assume I'm not going to understand what he's saying and prepare myself for an awkward, and poorly explained interaction/exit. But alas, 3 months in a spanish speaking country and I was able to understand this phrase "where is plaza Serrano" and even more amazing I was able to devise this enticing little response in the socially alloted time "Four blocks that way." Wow, I know, that's like Steinbeck level stuff, but that really did happen.

The second passing that really got me pumped happened today in the disco, it's a grocery store chain, though I do enjoy a nice Sunday afternoon rave every couple of weeks. I was waiting in the atrociously long line (The disco's here have an impressive number of registers but are always, always lacking in the humans running these registers) I was in line and a nice old lady was making the tough decision between bag of rice cakes A and bag of rice cakes B. Apparently she had only one qualifier, Sodium level. She was clearly having trouble reading the small print on the back of the bag and come over to ask me to read it. Fortunately I know the word for zero in Spanish and I was able to help her out.

Also last night I went to a sweet house party of a friend of a friend. Met some sweet peeps and most importantly was able to speak some solid spanish with people who were cool. I was talking with a Mexican girl for a while and we bonded over our shared impressions of the Argentine world. It's these little things that are what I believe make the difference between visiting an area and living in one. I did buy some pretty awesomely gaudy sunglasses which I think help in making me look like more of a local, but after these two people approached me, in spanish, to help them, and then I was actually able to do it, I really feel like I am fitting in here. I got a long, long long way to go, but it's nice to have these checkups letting me know I'm at least going somewhat in the right direction.

I started my job this week too. If anyone is transporting their car somewhere in the US, AutoStar transport are the people to contact, just ask for Thomas. I made my first sale on Tuesday and I had a girl from Texas ask if she could friend me on facebook, or if she could text the toll free number I was calling her from, the job makes for a pretty fun time. More to follow on my job later.

BAFICI - Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente is currently going on in the city this week. 8 locations playing awesome independent films from all around the world all day. Tonight I'm going to see a sweedish film about a woman working in a hardware store that gets kidnapped or something?, but what I'm looking forward to most is the zombie flick that's coming up on thursday from South Korea, looks awesome.

I'll be back later this week to fill you guys in on some other interesting things that are going on here, but all in all it's good here and I hope the same for all of your respective locales. Good, great. Nice talking with you guys, I hate to be rude but I must step out. I'm getting eaten alive by mosquitos and need to take a quick dip in the bug lotion pit. Have a good night.

Chau

Oh and Las Cosas Pequenas means, if you didn't put it together already - the little things.

Friday, April 2, 2010

Una nueva carrera

Wassup, Que tal amigos

I was going to put this at the end, but it just seems to make more sense up here.

If you'd like to see some pics from our time go here

- Wowzers, I've had quite the busy couple of weeks. Apart from Megan Rumpza, Elizabeth, Jim, and Therese Cloyd coming to visit me, I mean Buenos Aires, I have finished my internship at DDB, met with 3 potential intercambios, housed two champions of the Netherlands and tried to look good the whole time. It's been awesome but I'm definitely happy to have all my space back to just being mine. I kept saying that once everyone's stuff was out of my room I would finally have the time to organize it (classic maneuver of successful procrastinators, blaming others for your lack of motivation..) I actually kind of did that today but was limited from the first actual cold I think I have had since high school. Which is Ironic because I am living in by far the warmest climate I've experienced and I was a constant snowboarder in not only the chilly mountains of the Rockies but the downright absurdly dangerous temperatures of Buck Hill and Highlands. Fortunately being the child of a Pharmacist and Nurse the phrase "Drugs are our friends" has been tattooed on the back of my eyelids since my first toothache. Unfortunately as some of you may know today marks the 2nd most holy day of Semana Santa - Viernes Santo - Good Friday - which means in the heavily Catholisized country of Argentina only but the most desperate of tourist stores would remain open. And Burger King of course, thank Je...or let's just say thank goodness. But I did manage to find one of the more corporate Farmacias open, but quickly after glancing at the price for what must have been a sinus/cold medicine (I guess the picture of the side view silhouetted man with his lungs orange and arrow moving up his throat is international) I was only pained more. Because I believe that medicine is only a benefit of the wealthy and I have yet to receive a substantial paycheck in Argentine Pesos, entonces, I must push through this engripe with as many oranges and small glasses of water I can find.

Anywho, like I said my family has come and left and it was truly a once in a lifetime experience. From our peaceful and conversationally inspired trip to Colonia, Uruguay (which fortunately came in perfect time for me, my 3 months granted as a tourist in the country of Argentina was about to expire, last tuesday actually, had we not made the skip across the Rio Platte) to Elizabeth and I's action packed trip to Mendoza - the wine producing epicenter of Argentina. It was cool to experience these strange and never before seen things with people you know so well, it makes for quite a funny time too I have to say. When you know someone really well you know exactly the experiences you've shared and can use those memories in making the new ones even more fun. I think that made sense right?

Well I will quickly tell you of the Cloyd Children's trip to Mendoza - We made a speedy decision to leave Buenos Aires on last Saturday night, Elizabeth was kind enough to entice me with the purchase of our bus tickets - bus travel is by far the superior means of travel in Argentina, of the things they do right, futbol, barbaques, and managing to sip on one beer for over 4 hours, long distance bus travel is truly their speciality. It's 15 hours from Retiro bus station in Buenos Aires to the Bus Terminal in Mendoza, crossing clear through the pampas of central argentina to finally pull in at the doorstep of the Andes Mountains. The bus though, wow, two stories, seats that recline to about 140 degrees, movies, airplane style food, and most impressively leg room. After flying domestically in the US for so long I've been trained into thinking that peanuts aren't free, bottles of shampoo are dangerous and that you should be perfectly okay sitting like a stick figure for 8 hours. These seats are soft, big and you have space to actually create yourself an area - basically there good for riding on. We arrived freshly on Sunday morning in Mendoza, taxied it up to our hostel - which Elizabeth had also booked after repeatedly reading the words "never" and "quiet" in the reviews on hostelworld. We get to the hostel and it too is bigger and more comfortable than any I'd seen before, at least in South America. It had two big dinning rooms, a half indoor/outdoor bar eating area and a pool (Though the hue of the water made me think of toxic waste) So, the hostel was really nice and we rented bikes from it to tour our new found city. Because my back tire was riding on near empty, I wasn't able to show these decent mountain dwelling folk how to really ride bikes, we made it through many of the landmarks of the town and up to the park. All beautiful, all peaceful, and most importantly it was all fairly quite and the aire was pristine - basically the exact opposite of BA. It's a smaller sized town so we managed to see most of it that first day.

Day 2 - When you hear Mendoza, at least down here, you think of the wonka factory but for wine consuming adults. Thats because about 80% of Argentina's wines are produced around this town. There are two main areas that hold these vineyards - Maipu and Lujan - the thing to do, as in most vineyard like areas, is to rent bikes and go a'samplin. We chose to go to Lujan where we saw 5 different vineyards with 4 other people. There was a lot of funny things that happened during this time but to digress into their stories would really make this post a imposing group of words. Basically we saw 2 of the really big/corporate vineyards - Chandon (yep as in the french Champaign makers) and Norman - they had nice organized tours with information and english speakers to quell our oh so potent curiosity. The highlight was rushing into the Norman tour that started 20 minutes earlier, profusely sweating, and then begging to have a chance to try the first wine we had missed out on because, you don't want to do these kinds of things out of order. The other two wineries we visited were very Boutique, family run business. Cabrini and Miguel Minni - neither of them knew we were coming (even though we paid a man and I watched him call and set up a tour, though he could have been faking it) and both of them were shocked to see we were riding bikes. Upon entrance to Miguel Minni the lady saw us riding in and came out clearly confused, amazed that we had made it over the highway and through the gravel streets from hell all the way to her little eden of fermentation. This too was shocking because as far as we knew this bike tour was a common thing to do as was the route we were on. I still don't exactly know what all of it means but it adds up to something I think. Anyway we finished the sampling and bussed back to Mendoza for another surprisingly calm night in our hostel (apparently it's only not quiet on thurs - sun)

Day 3 - We booked a rafting run on the Mendoza river coming out of the Mountains. Again we had to wake early and bus out of the town, but this time it was west into the mountain, I couldn't help but remember the images of Colorado's I-70 and hwy 6 going into the Mountains from boulder, the view is very similar, except here everybody kept speaking spanish. We got to the basecamp for the rafting session, which was fully equipped with sun chairs and a bar, met some people, schmoozed and then get all wet-suited up and bussed up to the drop in point of the river. The highest class rapid we hit was a class 3 but it was still a great time. After the float I talked to the head guide at the base camp (Argentina Adventures is the name of the company by the way and if you ever want to do anything extreme in Mendoza and don't know where to start - zipline, mountain biking, river rafting/kayaking, rock climbing etc... contact them) and I convinced him to email me later this week and put me into contact with the owner, I am hoping that this spring he can take me on as an apprentice so I could live a few months in the outdoors getting paid to do these kinds of things.

We bussed back to BA that night after meeting some Americans (one from Wisconsin unfortunately) and had some good old times with a few of the bottles we picked up in wine country. It was a great time and too quick. Mendoza is a mountain town, and I think I belong in Mountain towns, the only downside is that it's way harder to make cash money in mountain towns, once I get that figure out than I think I'll be good.

Phew, lots told and so much more to tell. I'll let this marinate for a while and then share some of the other funnier happenings of my families' time here. Basically what I learned though is this, anyone who wants to come down here, I got room, and it will certainly be really fun. So do it, just let me know a few hours before you take off. Okay cool sorry for the long one but It's been a while since we've sat down and talked.



Nueva carrera means new way, new path basically.

Chau

Hasta Pronto