Here is a picture of the mayonnaise display at the local COTO supermarket. I think it speaks for itself and the Porteño love of all things mayonnaise–after all, it is the perfect sauce that compliments a wide variety of foods…even Caesar salad!
Portland recycling habits die hard.
We are used to separating out all paper, cardboard, glass, plastic; we are used to composting. It is disorienting to just throw everything out with the trash.
Actually, there is some limited recycling in Baires, and it is accomplished by the “carteneros,” one of whom is pictured here. They are are private citizens that go through the trash and separate out some glass and some cardboard to resell on their own. They often wheel around their inventory on very large carts, with many close calls on the streets between the larger carts and the taxis and buses.
After talking to Ian’s friend Guadalupe, we are now trying to separate items in our trash for the carteneros to make it easier for them to recycle.
Photo by Flickr user nbreazeale used under a Creative Commons license.
This stint in Argentina is my second foray spending an extended period of time overseas as an expatriate. The first time around, I was just out of college and spent four years overseas–three in Asia working for an aerospace corporation, and one in Europe, well, just messing around.
Some might think that being an expat with kids makes the experience harder, but there are many positive inputs that the wee ones bring to the adventure!
PROS OF BEING AN EXPAT WITH KIDS
Okay, perhaps these are not the most attractive exterior adornments for windows, but they work really well!
Click on the pictures below for a better look at the shutter systems that you find on nearly every apartment building in Baires and that I call “garage doors for windows.” The shutters are usually white or wood colored, as shown in these photos.
On the inside of every window there is a manual or electric control that allows you to manipulate the shade (garage door) to any position you wish. You can close the shutters down completely, with no gaps between, resulting in a very dark room. You also can lower them all of the way, but leave gaps between each horizontal slat in the shutter, which gives you privacy and light at the same time. They insulate the apartment from the heat when lowered completely, an important feature since many of these buildings have single-paned windows.
Wow, we’ve had quite a run of luck here lately!!
1) Huge Leak. We turned the air conditioner on in our room two nights ago, and it leaked all night long with a steady fast drip down the wall. We awoke to a huge puddle on the floor! *Sigh*
2) Door Knob Broke Off. Last night, Ian dashed out to make the late-night gelato run and the door knob on the apartment literally came off in his hand. It is a very old door, and the area the knob was screwed into has been so abused over the years, there isn’t really anything left for the screws to bite. Double *sigh*.
(No one has come yet to fix either problem–but that is to be expected.)
3. Ants. We have an ant infestation (on the positive side, they are the cutest little ants I have ever seen). Today, we got home from running errands and it looked like we had an ant party in the kitchen. So far, the apartment managers have left us a can of Raid to deal with it–something I love spraying around my kitchen!! I would give my kingdom for some of those ant traps they have in the US.
4. No Ballots. Tom and I are having a hell of a time getting our ballots. (It’s a long story.) Suffice to say, I am currently sitting by my open window on the 5th floor of my apartment building, leaping up at the sound of any vehicle outside of my place to see if it is the Fed Ex truck. (I have low expectations since this is the same driver who said I wasn’t here an hour ago…)
I love that Argentinian bus drivers all conduct their vehicles as if they were driving taxis…very small taxis.
They dart in and out of traffic nimbly, like a taxi. They accelerate and decelerate like a carnival ride, and like a taxi. They straddle all of the lane lines, like a taxi. There seem to be as many of them on the road as there are taxis. They stop every couple of blocks on their routes, but in between every stop, the enormous buses manage to dart across three to four lanes of traffic from the extreme left to the extreme right of whatever avenue they are driving.
The bus system is chaotic and decentralized, and the buses themselves spew a noxious mix of black exhaust; however, I must applaud the lack of a hub and spoke system. The decentralized nature of the buses means that you can catch a bus from somewhere near your home and go to within a few blocks of pretty much anywhere in the city.
Photo by Flickr user monkey.cl used under a Creative Commons license.
The International Herald Tribune has this interesting article on the coin crisis.
A kiosk owner bribes a bank worker with cookies to break bills. Subway workers let commuters ride free because they can’t change their cash. Bus companies resell the coins they collect at a steep black market markup.
Argentinians are increasingly scrambling to get their hands on pocket change for everyday transactions, as soaring inflation makes the copper and aluminum that coins are made of worth more than their face value. Many suspect profit-seeking hoarders are scooping them up to stow away.
The Justice Ministry is meanwhile investigating Buenos Aires currency distributor Maco S.A., for allegedly withholding nearly 5 million pesos in change to resell on the black market. The company denies the allegations.
An anonymous Central Bank hot line has meanwhile received 5,000 complaints about black market coin sales since it opened in February, according to the bank.
There are some cool stats here, but their ultimate link between the coin crisis and recent inflation seems tenuous, at best. The coin crisis has been around for many many years if you talk to Porteños… .
Our experience with Argentine cuisine thus far seems to support the notion that if you feed your livestock massive quantities of what they naturally eat, then that meat is chock full of important nutrients that you wouldn’t find in grain-fed or feed-fed animals in the United States, thereby eliminating the need for vegetables all together.
So if your beef is high in CLAs and Omega 3s, and contains higher levels of vitamin E and beta carotene, why the hell should you bother to eat a salad?
Actually, in Argentina, it appears that cheese has replaced salad. Meat and cheese! And if you want some variety, you throw some yummy pastry dough around your meat and call it an empanada! (In which they might include egg, because you don’t want to stint on the protein!)
Now, in all fairness, it is early spring here, which can be a tough time for produce. But, having said that, it is clear that the fruit and the vegetable are second-class citizens to the meat and the cheese when sitting at the table.
There are worse ways to go!
The little gem pictured here is the Guia “T,” and if you aren’t agoraphobic, it is the key to living in Buenos Aires.
(Agoraphobes, you need a comprehensive pile of grocery, restaurant and gelato delivery menus–yes, you can get almost anything delivered here).
The Guia “T” is a hand-held miracle guide to the millions of different bus lines and their routes, the subway, and all of the streets in this thriving metropolis.
We have already begun to to think of the geography of Baires in terms of the Guia “T.” In other words, we live on Page 9. (As in, “you live on page 9–nice neighborhood.”) We are looking at schools for the girls on Page 7 to begin with, Page 8 if we have to.
Also, we can time how long it will take us to walk places because each page of the Guia “T” has a grid superimposed over it, and it takes about 10 to 15 minutes to walk across a grid rectangle.
How did we happen upon the Guia “T?” Ian, of course. Once again reinforcing the adage that one shouldn’t move overseas without an Ian. (I kind of think of my younger brother as a Zans…you know, from Dr. Seuss. “At our house, we open cans. We have to open many cans. And that is why we have a Zans. A Zans for cans is very good. Have you a Zans for cans? You should.)
The subway has been free here in Baires for the last two days because of the coin shortage. So, although you can buy a cash card and swipe it to pay your fare, for the cash riders, there is no change. No change means they can’t charge the cash card users either. Result…FREE SUBWAY RIDES.
What are they doing about it? From what we can determine, they are trying to get more coins into the hands of the subway operators…whatever that means!?!
Subscribe in a Reader