Episode 11: The Deep South

In England, I rarely end up looking at a map of the world because I don't have a poster (or something similar) on my wall. Out here, for some reason, my shower curtain is a giant map so I end up inspecting it more often. Did you know that the world´s only 'carbon sink' country is Butan?

Anyway, back to the point - this week I am down in the south of Argentina on business. Buenos Aires is about 3 hours north (by plane), and is roughly level with South Africa and Australia. At the moment I'm in a place called Comodoro Rivadavia (not something you want to pronounce after drinking). As far as the above map goes, it´s on the coast to the right of the capital A of Argentina, and I guess it must be one of the most southernmost cities in the entire world. So south, in fact, that back in the day when they thought the world was flat you would have assumed you´d just fallen off.



It's basically the desert - which is odd because its also right next to the sea. So on the one hand I wake up and see the comically enormous sand dune dwarfing over the town (with not much grass/vegetation to be seen), and on the other I walk out the hotel only to have everyting blown away by the wind (it's known as la cuidad del viento, the city of the wind) whilst scrambling for my jumper and sunglasses at the same time because it's both blindingly sunny and freezing:

Exaggeration aside, as always, it's all fun and games.

Episode 12: hand gestures

Interlude 8: Boca

This weekend I took advantage of the bank holiday and did a bit of travelling - not too far, about an hour away to one of the Buenos Aires barrios called Boca, home of the football team Boca Juniors (but that's the last you'll hear of them for now because they deserve their own post).

What to say about Boca - well, on the way back the bus passed some 'houses', although you wouldn't really think they were houses because a few of them had the entire facing wall missing - it was very saddening to see.

However, this is not what Boca is known for - it is probably the most vibrantly decorated and colourful place I've ever been to. I'm not entirely sure how this came about, but here are some pictures to illustrate what I  mean:

Definitely goes straight into the top 5 'things to see' list in Buenos Aires!

Episode 10: How to Make it Big in Argentina

Picture the scene - you´re a budding entrepreneur (remember that Bush quote?) and you´re itching to spread your business portfolio to one of the biggest cities in South America. Here are 5 ways to make it big:

Number One - Sell grapes. I swear, for a country that has entire regions devoted to wine, I have not seen a single grape for sale in any one of the 18 million convenience stores/kiosks/fruit and veg shops. Get on it.

Number Two - Sell shoes. For a country that, in addition to wine, is a major major exporter/producer of beef, you would have thought leather would have been a cheap byproduct. Alas, it is not so - mens leather shoes are outrageously expensive in comparison to other items of clothing.

Number Three - Fill Potholes. I'm not sure how they get there, but even in pedestrianised areas there are big potholes that the government just doesnt seem to bother filling. Amusingly, I saw someone lay a sheet of glass inside one (in a pedestrianised area near work) - by the end of the day it was, of course, smashed into tiny pieces. I can only assume one unlucky bystander got quite hurt by this stupidity.*

Number Four - Make an Apple franchise. Probably the hardest of the lot, but there are a lot of people out here who want iPhones, iPods, Macs etc only to be outpriced (on Mercado Libre, the ebay equivalent, you can pick up an iPhone 5 for a cool $2,000). Millions of pesos to be made here...

Number Five - Buy your way into government. From there, anything goes...




*maybe not a great business venture, but still...

Interlude 7: Strike

Today, I'm posting this blog from the office. However, the office is also...my living room. What?

Today is one of the apparently common national strikes. What I mean by that is national in every sense of the word -I've been informed that a couple of trains and buses are running, but on the whole everything stops. I don't even need to ask or research it, I can safely say that it is some sort of protest at a) low wages b) high inflation 3) insecurity 4) currency restrictions 5) high unemployment 6) corruption 7) probably the humidity 8) all of the above 9) get the point yet?

In London, I have lived through a couple of train strikes (which turned out to be ''limited service'' anyway) and a handful of postage strikes. I might be missing something, but thats about it. Imagine if the government in your country was so bad/inept that the vast majority of the public workers (their employees) decided to take the day off work and either stay at home or march into town (for the second time in 2 weeks) equiped with casserole dishes and wooden spoons (see previous protest article). Imagine the look of delight on Ed Miliband's face if it happened in London, would be one for the photo album.

You might think that people here in BA would get tired of all this protesting. Well, they don't. Next march - 2 weeks.

Chau

Episode Nine: Guest blog - Jewish Life

Last week I was asked by UJS (the Union of Jewish Students) in London to write a guest blog for their website about my experiences miles from home, and how this differs from what I am used to.

The article can be found here: http://ujs.org.uk/news/blog/jewish-life-in-buenos-aires-argentina-a-participation-nation/

On a related topic, may we all hope for a speedy ceasefire in the middle east.

Episode 8: Why is English so popular?

English is the second most popular language in the world - and definitely vies with Chinese as to the title of 'international business language'. Chinese, as it happens, is a notoriously very difficult langauge to learn (especially for westerners) - and when we consider that the population of China is 1.3billion, maybe it isnt so suprising that 1.4billion people worldwide speak one of the 7 forms of Mandarin.

Either way there are many people in the world, especially here in south america, who have no affinity to England (or indeed America) but still find themselves learning English in school from a young age.

The question I´ve found myself pondering, then, is why/how has it become such a global language? Yes, Britain used to have an empire and we can see commonwealth countries such as south africa/australia still speaking english, but what I really mean is English as a second language. Personally I think that, rather than history, it goes down to the ease of the language itself.

I will assume, rightly or wrongly, that most of you have studied (at least at some level, even at 15/16) some other langauge than your mother tounge before. If not, hopefully this will all make sense anyway:

In english, think of the past tense of the verb 'to go'
-I went/ I was going
-I have gone
-I had gone.

And thats about it. If you want to talk about someone else (she/he, you etc) then the actual verb part (participle) stays the same:

-She went
-He had gone      etc

This, when you think about it, stretches to all other verbs with only a couple of exceptions - therefore, as long as you have a good memory then you should be able to have quite good english skills. On the contrary, (and I can only speak for Spanish here as it's been at least 5 years since I tried to learn french) out here it is completely different. Every tense has a different ending (won´t bore you with the details), and many of the most common ones are irregular, leaving you a lot of work to do in your head before eventually it becomes more natural* And for those of you familiar with the subjunctive tense - easily the hardest part of spanish to master - English doesnt have it. All we do it say ' I might/may do something', and thats as far as it goes.

So, the conclusion is simple - why is English so popular? Because it's easy (!), and therefore I guess we are all...lazy. Right?





*it´s taken me 5 years of classes to get to a good level; so if you're learning a language in the early stages and find it tough - give it time

Interlude Six: Los Beatles

Out here, I take quite a lot of taxis. Its roughly 3 pounds every 10 minutes, crazily cheap compared to what I'm used to. Anyway, whenever the drivers realise i'm English (usually after theyve said something in slang which makes no sense to me) they always say without fail - 'Ahh Los Beatles, Liverpool'. Every time.

But why? OK, the Beatles are one of the worlds most famous ever bands, and I would expect it from a few of them, but its not like whenever you meet someone from China you say ' Ah yes, that Great Wall is marvellous. I've seen many a picture!' is it, before trotting off for our afternoon tea and biscuits.

So I did some research, and it turns out 'Los Beatles' had a monumental influence on argentinian rock music - so much so they actually released two special compliations just for Argentina in the late 60's/early 70's. Not only this, but the records sold here were played at a slightly different speed (not sure why...) and almost all of the album covers had special Argentina edition sleeves/pictures. Finally, last year they opened up a special Beatles museum here in Buenos Aires - and all this for a country that (as far as I can tell) never saw them live.
The influence was so great that it sparked the creation of one of the more famous Latin American rock bands - Los Gatos (the Cats):


Is it me or do they look just slightly....similar?

The Beatles

Los Gatos

Interlude 5: Protest

Last night I witnessed the most amazing thing since touching down in Buenos Aires - I'm going to give a brief background to the 8th November protests, and then let my pictures speak for themselves:

8N, as it has been referred to on posters throughout the city, had been in everyones calenders for a long time. It was a protest of those opposed to the goverment, which actually turns out to be a very large number of people from all backgrounds. Mostly, it is based on economic woes (some of which I have already posted about here) but also corruption and inequality - and a main talking point was to limit the President Cristina Kirchner to only 2 terms (she's half way through her second). As i was walking to the meeting point I'd agreed with some friends, I heard lots of banging noises and I thought my headphones were on the way out;  turns out people had brought literally anything to make noise - pots, cutlery, drums, bottles, coins - anything. And what of the eldery people who didnt want to get crushed by the crowd? they were spurring everyone on from the balconies, smashing their pots and pans or making noise with megaphones, big speakers or horns.

I really have never seen so many people in one place - the papers this morning say that a monumental 700,000 people converged on the obelisk in the city centre. The noise was incredible, you could barely hear yourself think - these people feel so agreived about their government and the emotion was palpable. Anyway, enough talking - here's what happened (OK, I didnt take the first one):

Interlude 4: All Rights Reserved

To keep things lighthearted, today I bring you a taxi conversation from yesterday evenining - the subte (tube/subway) had totally broken and I was running late. Unfortunately, there was a lot of traffic even though we were ages away from the city centre.

My spanish is improving - definitely enough to speak freely enough with a taxi driver, or so I thought. I asked him how far away we were, and he proceeded to give me a sat-nav style description (but imagine setting the accent on the machine to 'cross between old man spanish/italian') ''we're going to go right until the right, then right until we turn left, then right and right until we arrive''.The word for 'right' in Castellano (argentinian spanish) is 'derecho' - it also works for rights and even can mean the law. Anyway, to me these directions made no sense - sounded pretty much like a massive U turn. So I contintued questioning him until I realised (with some help from WordReference when i got back)- the word for 'right' in Castellano is also the word for 'straight on'.

What a stupid, stupid system. They already have a phrase for straight on (todo recto), how does it POSSIBLY make any sense for these two words to by the same. Screw it, may aswell make 'left' the same - continuity is good, right?

Or did i mean have I got that straight? Either way, taking/giving directions has taken on new meaning.

Some people...

Episode seven: The economy and the Dollar Blue

In Argentina, you can obviously buy as many pesos as you wish - it is the same in any country in the world. However, within the last year, they have totally banned the selling of their currency. For example, I could walk into a bank and change 20 pounds/dollars into pesos, but i could not change the pesos back into pounds*.

What does this mean? Well, there is a large black market which has only grown since this new law** - you could walk down almost any street in the centre of town hear at least 2 or 3 people per street mutter 'cambio, cambio' (exchange) in your direction. Whilst officially the dollar is 'sold' at 4.7 pesos per dollar (it used to be 1-1 less than 10 years ago), the only place you can actually get hold of any foreign currency is on the street, at about a 40% mark up - so your looking at 6-1 for dollars and about 10-1 for pounds. This is the dollar 'blue', and i guess the libra (pound) 'blue' aswell

Why would anyone bother? technically, if you needed dollars, you can apply to the government for what i can only summarise as a 'permission to leave for holiday', along with the exact amount of currency you will need for your trip, and they will allow you to buy it. G-d knows what happens if you go over budget...
Anyway, this is a long process - and it defeats the point of holding the dollar. At the moment, inflation in america is at around 2% - but here it is widely accepted as around 25% (and even official figures show it at 13%). Thus, if you hold dollars and not pesos, you are protecting yourself from a loss of currency value and the act itself is like a wage increase - when you need to buy something, you change the dollars back to pesos and by that time the dollar blue rate will have risen. And yes, the people who i've asked so far in the office changed most of their savings into dollars BEFORE the law came into effect, and im sure anyone with access to an account that holds dollars would have done the same.

I can only conclude that this is a contributing factor towards their high inflation - many people sold their pesos in a short period of time, leading to a mass loss of confidence in the currency and therefore a loss of value.

This leads on to the other thing i've noticed - that in most major stores, you get between a 10 and 20% discount for using a specific bank card (e.g. standander, hsbc etc). Imagine if they had this in England!! The only reason I can deduce for these types of discounts (at the end of the day, the bank probably end up picking up the price difference) related back to what i said above - if the peso doesnt really have value and people don't want to hold it, then people generally wont keep much money in the bank (they might, for example, have a small account for groceries etc but keep their savings either abroad in dollars or in dollar bills) - therefore the banks have to resort to actually offering discounts to make people keep their money with them. At the end of the day, it all comes down to economics 101 - cash is king.


episode 8: jewish life (and antisemitism)

*what does this mean for me? well, i cant change my money, so leaves me with a massive disposable income!

**I've been reliably informed that its not actually a law, its a resolution. This basically means it was passed autocratically, and therefore not even discussed in congress!

Interlude 3: Quotes

The following is a (translated) list of rather unfortunate questions/quotes I have been asked in the last six weeks:

"Ah Justin Beiber" The 60 year old golf instructor. And pretty much everyone else, in fairness.

"Is it true an English company gave you £1,000,000 as a present? How can we do that?" a serious question from some colleagues at work. Was tempted to play along...

"Didn´t spurs lose to wigan today?" A 15 year old kid. No escaping, even thousands of miles away...

"Youre first task is to draw a caricature of everyone in the office, bring in some croissants tomorrow and list some interesting facts about yourself" Office induction. All still pending...

"Yeah, in the summer we have a bit of a mosquito problem, nothing major" said the fitness coach at football training whilst the mosquitos were swarming me. mental note - buy repellent.

Funnily enough, I don´t actually have any Falklands/Malvinas quotes. Wierd how life works...

Chau

Episode 6: Racism and Luis Suarez

For the eagle eyed amongst you, I actually went back and changed the title of this blog (at the end of ep. 5) because someone here in Buenos Aires said the following thing to me, completely in passing - 'que pasa, negro?' This basically means - hows it going dude? Surely this is casual racism? So I did a bit of research, and I have two (rather interesting) points to make regarding racism in Argentina (and surrounding countries):

Firstly, the use of the word negro as affectionate slang out here is widespread (and by that I mean said by a lot of people, both black AND white), and is not derogetary or racist at all. On the contrary, it is quite affectionate. Obviously, if you go up to someone who you don't know and call them a 'negro de mierda' then you might get your face kicked in - but these are two seperate issues.

Secondly, I refer to Luis Suarez - for those of you who don´t know, he is an immensely talented player for Liverpool FC in England. Born in Uruguay, he moved to Ajax FC in Holland before moving to england - and he has possibly the worst reputation of any football I know. This is partly to do with his tendancy to go down easily under a challenge, but in the most part due to his official sentencing as a racist by the Football Association (he was banned for 8 games) earlier this year.
I won't go majorly into the details, but essentially he was reported (transcipts are available of the trial) to have said to Patrice Evra (a black Manchester United player) 'tu eres negro' several times. This translates as 'you are black' - but only if you speak spanish from Spain. Here in Argentina (located just next to Uruguay where he grew up), there is not one native speaker I have yet found that would phrase it like this. The ONLY way that you could call someone black (whether it be affectionate or not) would be to say 'vos sos negro'. It means the same, but in these parts they conjugate their verbs using the 'voseo' form of spanish, (much to my annoyance and confusion in the first couple of weeks after arrival)

Now, I can't say I have read every single part of the FA report because it's very long (although what i did read shows a shoddy grasp of spanish with many missed accents), but if you add up both points as above you may see what I'm trying to get across. I will never know whether Suarez meant any malice in his words - all i have to go on is quotes from Patrice Evra himself. On the other hand, I am also not saying that Evra was lying - but it's not like the two possible versions highlighted in red are vaguely similar. Make of this what you will.

What I personally beleive is that we need to take some extra things into account here - was the onus on Luis Suarez (as a footballer from a foreign conutry) to learn what is and what is not acceptable in the UK? Perhaps. Do the English FA have their own predjudices against South Americans? I am not sure. I am all for eradicating racism from football (and all other walks of life), but making someone the poster case of what may have been a misunderstanding is perhaps unfair - either way, the media jumped on it and now this man is officially a Racist. What i also don't understand is why John Terry, who was found guilty by the FA of saying worse things (in english, no less) was given a ban of half the length.

In case you were wondering, I think that Suarez is a cheat and a diver on the football field, and for that I hate him - but this is an issue which transcends the football pitch and society must take an impartial view (as I have tried to do).

Either way, if found guilty then Mark Clattenburg, a born and bred English referee, therefore has no excuse...

Episode 7: The economy and the Dollar Blue.

Chau