Selling myself

Forgive me father, for I have sinned: It´s been a week since my last post...

All is still good down here, 10,883 kilometres from home... apparantly the earths radius is 6,376.5 kilometers which means that I´m a little under the earths diameter (12,753km) away from my leaba back in Porterstown. In terms of geographical position, for those of you with GPS gadgets, my latitude is just below the 33rd parallel south (at 33 degrees and 8 minutes south) and my longitude is 64 degrees 2 minutes west... Right so, now that we know where I am, what exactly am I doing... well not very much to tell you the truth...

I´m still doing the spanish classes although now my rate of attendance has dropped slightly to about 70%... but considering that the rest of my class are all a little bit behind me (grace au francais) it´s good to give them some breathing space..

I´m still living with this american dude but am actively looking for a shared apartment for a couple of months... (the argies don´t seem to have the tendency towards wohngemeinschafts or living communities that the germans have, so its not that easy).

I´ve done my cv and a covering letter and plan to drop into all the UN agencies / NGOs in town and try to get something to keep me ticking over for (literally) a couple of months... The plan is just to ambush them with "Hello, I would like to work for you for free for two months, interested?" and I´m hoping that one of them will be able to recognise a good thing when its standing in their doorway looking to solve that long-term filing problem when they see one. Fuck it, we´ll see what happens on that front... By the way, if anyone has any south American NGO/UN/Development contacts, then get on the blower....

According to the grand plan, I am also supposed to have started a tango class this week, but I haven´t. Although its not altogether as easy as one might assume. I don´t want to be in a tango class with chubby tourists (pot calling kettle...), but I would prefer to have a couple of locals in there, so that the spoken language is castellano and not "well gee honeey, you shuddna worn those darn hagh heels"... this would also be a cheaper option... anyway, I got an address of a place last night that could be promising, so I´ll check that out over the weekend...

Apart from that one of the lads left on wednesday so we went out to a great steakhouse on tues night for some bife de bife... very nice... unfortunately forgot me camera so didn´t take any photos...

Haven´t really been doing that much touristy stuff, but we decided that we would treat ourselves to a night at the theatre tonite. We´re going to see BA´s philharmonic orchestra and originally wanted to get great seats in the presidents box (for 10 euros), but everything was sold out so now we have had to console ourselves with seats where we can´t actually see anything. But I suppose seeing people moving their arms up and down vigorously isn´t what orchestras are renowned for so hopefully it´ll still be good. Might go to the opera next week if we can get good seats...

thats it for now... Will try to lash up some photos tomorrow if my camera plays along... hasta la proxima

La bouffe a BA

Been a while since my last update... but I´ve been busy so please excuse. I´ve been plagued by hangovers since I got to this place and I´m afraid its just not conducive to updating your Blog on a regular basis.

At the weekend we went to a soccer match to see BA´s famous Boca Juniors play against Argentina Junior. Boca is the soccer team that maradonna played for and most argies go nutz about them. I got meself a boca top to get into the swing of things, and at one point we got a bit lost looking for the stadium and nearly walked into a crowd of Argentina Junior supporters... A copper informed us that we should either take off our Boca tops or go another way, so we did that and eventually found our way into the Boca camp. It was a good match, but unfortunately we (?) lost so the crowd was slightly subdued.... plan to get tickets for the the next big match against River Plate, their arch rivals...

I´m now a real porteño (BA resident) as I´ve got a place to call home and something to get up for in the morning for. I bumped into this American chap who invests in property here and told him that I was looking for somewhere to stay. We came to an agreement that I could stay in his place for a while (rentfree in my own room), if I take pictures of his apartment and put them on the internet. So thats the plan... and I´ve been there since Monday. I´m living in San Telmo which is the arty-farty, bohemian, tango area of BA and its pretty cool. I just live around the corner from the lads as well... so its a sweet deal.

Apart from that I´ve also started my Spanish course and despite numerous heavy nights, I´ve also managed to attend it on a semi-regular basis. I´ve got four hours a day, from 10 to 12 and from 12.30 to 2.30... so it still leaves lots of time for monkeying about and it gets me out of the scratcher in the morning.

I did miss my morning class today though for the first time. We went to this posh french restaurant last night and it ended up being a bit of a fiesta to say the least... For starters we had a couple of Ricards, followed by a main course of vino tinto by the vat. It would have been rude to turn down the JB coffees and for dessert we had a nice Remy Martin. All that was washed down with cassoulet, rillettes and confit de canard. The faux francais (Swiss) punter who owned the place had never seen such consumption and spotted us a bottle of Moet & Chandon on the house... cos we said we´d come back ... and we will! All that booze with starters, main course and cheese came to 20 euros per lost consciosness...

I´m tellin´ ya,

YOU CAN´T LIVE ANYWHERE LIKE YOU CAN LIVE HERE...!

Don't cry for me... bife de lomo

Have met up with four friends (Bren, Dave, Eddie & Sav) down here who have established themselves as portenos (Buenos Aireans) since arriving a couple of weeks ago. Luckily enough I live just around the corner from them, so have been on the booze more or less all week.

Yesterday we ventured out to Recoleta to see the cemetary there. It´s a pretty impressive place, a bit like Pére Lachaise in Paris, also with its fair share of paddies... There were loads of sepulchres etched with O´Flaherty, O´Brien etc. I´d say there are more Murphy´s here than in Glasnevin.

Also went to see the grave of Evita Peron, whom the more informed of you might remember as Madonna in Evita. Still haven´t really copped on to what exactly her story is, but she was the missus of Juan Peron, long-time president here and seems to have been a pretty popluar person (although apparantly she was a bit of a bitch as well... depends who you´re talking to).

After that we went to this "Parilla" or steakhouse and had a tonne of sirloin and 14 bottles of tinto. We stayed in the restaurant for about 10 hours and had a great night.

Am still living in the hostel but hope to sort something else out on Monday when I start my Spanish course on Monday. Am going to buy a card reader and will then lash a couple of photos up.

El peso fantastico

Although the argies hate the fuckin´ thing, I think that the argy peso is the best thing since sliced bread. This city used to be quite pricey, but since the economic collapse of 2001, when the peso was uncoupled from the dollar, it has been hugely devalued. (currenty at about three pesos to the dollar).

For the locals, this was a pretty shit as their personal savings were suddenly worth nada and the banks ran out of reserves and closed up shop. (seehttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1721061.stm for the history). However, for the cheapo, pseudo-student traveller with a strong Euro in his back pocket, this place is heaven!

A bottle of beer in the most expenisive nightclub is about 1 euro, in a bar, its about 75 cents and in the supermarket, its essentially free. Thats right, you heard correct, they give you free beer in the supermarkets... To say that I am happy with my choice of destination is quite an understatement.

Day One:

I´ve just arrived in Buenos Aires, Argentina so I´ve decided to take a moment to inaugarate this site with its maiden post...

I left from Dublin yesterday morning and flew to Frankfurt where my flight to BA was leaving from. Luckily enough I managed to sneak my way into the Lufthansa Senator Lounge and spent the day eating and drinking for free. I was actually a little bit mickey-monk getting onto the flight last night, but I thought that that might help my chances of getting a good night´s kip. (I duly augmented it with a couple of Warsteiners, so I was actually fairly hammered during most of the flight).

I was chuffed to pieces with myself cos I managed to get a fantastic emergency exit seat and could stretch my legs. I was sittin´ there all boozed up and lookin´ smug at all the commoners that would have to sandwich themselves into regulation seating, when low and behold a man-mountain trundled up the gangway (with much difficulty) and starting eying up the chair beside me...

I´m not a holy person, but I did pray to Jesus, Allah, Muhammad and Papa Ratzi that he would keep on walking... alas he plonked himself down beside yours truly and rained on my parade. As if that wasn´t bad enough, the second he had his meal, he fell asleep and began to make these sounds that wouldn´t be out of place among rabid warthogs... (Dad, you´re like the fucking pan-pipes compared to this chap... I will never say another word...).

Anyway, so I didn´t get a single second sleep and ended up talking with the air hostesses all night...

I arrived in BA at about 9 this morning, but I didn´t get to my hostel for another couple of hours... the traffic in this city is loo-laa... The concept of lanes doesn´t seem to exist and everyone weaves in and out between cars to the extent that I very nearly soiled myself in the taxi on the way to the hostel.

I was sitting beside this mississipian who introduced himself with "Hi, I´m Steve and I voted for Bush!"... (those were the first words from his mouth, I swear to God!). He then proceeded to torture me with the intricicaties of Argentinian geology and the importance of amber for Kaliningrad in Russia... Holy jaysus... I had to staple my eyelids to my forehead!

Buenos Aires is an aesthically pleasing city. Most of it appears to be fairly open space and not too built up. There are lots of wide tree-lined avenues and green areas dotted with palms... The architecture is colonial and against a sunny backdrop like today, its fairly stunning.

The argies have all been very friendly and smiley up until now, patiently letting me squirm with my phrasebook. Have tried only to use "Habla usted ingles?" as a last resort, and try to communicate with spanishified french and gesticulation.

Next projects are to find a spanish course, a job etc etc... but that can wait till tomorrow... I´ll see whats going on in the pub tonite... Hasta la proxima...