The ultimate phrase

Yeap, it's a fact, I've discovered the ultimate phrase that will win friends and influence people! When I don't understand whats happening, just pull out The Phrase. When its time for some comedic effect, just launch into The Phrase. To pave the way for future Kiwis to go where I've been before... The Phrase.

So what is it you ask?

Well, its simple really, and its perfect coming from a foreigner who hasn't aced the language yet but has a sense of humour and comes from an easy going culture. It goes like this...

¡No entiendo, una papa!

Which means:

I don't understand a potato!

If you're not from here, you may not get it but let me assure you, it pulls in the laughs!

What has become apparent in reciting this phrase, is that a simple formula can represent whats going on. It appears that the ROI (return on investment, if you're not Andre...) on this phrase is directly proportional to the amount of effort I put into the delivery, times the inverse proportion of how expected it is.

Where N = effort, a = expectation

ROI = N(1/a)

So as you can see, the potential for comedic effect increases as the expectation of it happening declines. For instance, say I go to court in BA, and the judge asks me a serious question in Espanol. If I put in a 10/10 effort with “a” at about 0.01 the ROI will be 1000!!

Thats pretty much off the scale folks. Not that there was a scale to start with, but if there was... it'd be off it.

So now I just have to look out for these 0.01 scenarios and cash in big time!

Note: there are a few different options I could have gone with (some would impress kids on the street more than this one) but this phrase has the highest laughs to lowest offense ratio.

Give a dog a bone...?

This was one cheeky dog.

Most days it leaves its owners home from down the road. Walks along the pavement and stops at the lights. Then when the pedestrians cross, it crosses with them (its a really busy intersection). Once across the road it wanders over to this guys shop. It jumps its front legs up onto the window sill (note the dirty marks on the wall, prolly from the dog) and barks 5 or 6 times at the shop owner inside!

Once barking is done, the dog moves back to its position on the pavement and waits for the well trained shop owner to throw it a bone or two!

Thats one smart dog! (Or dumb shop owner, you be the judge of that)

Tigre and the river delta

Javier and I recently jumped on a commuter train and headed north to Tigre. Tigre is a fairly touristy (touristic if your speaking Espanol) area due to the river delta. Its my first experience of a delta. The Rio de la Plata (River of Silver) and its tributaries flow south from Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil. In its last 50 – 100 kms, it spreads out over a wide area. Hence the delta.

In order to see some of the delta we took a ferry ride. Click on the Google map link on the side of this blog to see the route we took. Its kind of like a large suburb/holiday town with a bunch of canals running through it, mixed with some very poor areas. Our 2 hour loop took in just a small amount of what there was to see. This included: a glassed in memorial house to a previous president, a school, many simple holiday homes, a resort or two and a few general stores.

According to Javier they've improved the water quality around the waterfront quite a lot. It used to smell quite bad. However, as you can see from the photos there is still a large amount of silt in the water. Who knows how far upstream it comes from, probably the Amazon I imagine. And it all gets trapped in the slow moving delta water which explains the presence of many dredging ships.

Make a Free Flash Slideshow

Bife de chorizo

There's nothing that represents Argentina quite like a big thick chunk of rump steak. Yeap. Yeah.

Last week Javi and I lived it up and visited the very popular La Cabrera in a stylie end of town called Palermo. Well, technically it wasn't THE Cabrera as that one was booked out at 6pm (thats 3 hours before the place comes alive!) so we went to their “back up” restaurant 3 doors down...

I guess thats what happens when the Lonely Planet says “if you eat at only one steakhouse in BA, make it this one.”

We started off with some complimentary bread. Good idea and pretty common here (although not much help when you're trying to avoid gluten...).

Then we tried Javi's recommendation of Provoleta. Its a large chunk of hot, chewy and ridiculously tasty cheese, bbq'd on the traditional parrilla and placed on our metal dinner plate that looked like a cow...

For the mains, of course we had the bife de chorizo which is a traditional cut of beef. And rather large. It came with a collection of sides in little dishes to share. Very nice.

And to finish it off (there's no way I could fit dessert), they brought a tower of lollipops to choose from!

You know you're in a big city when...

A group of locals debate what is the best route for you to walk to get to a location a kilometre way...

The ten step challenge for a new mother...

You've got a young one with you and you need to go to town. You can't take the car as its either too expensive to own one or the parking is insane. So you take the colectivos (bus). And thats where the fun begins.

1. Make sure the bus stops while avoiding stagnant water in gutter.
   

2. Climb the stairs (no low floor buses round here darl) with baby in arm and collapsible pram (don't even think about non-collapsible!)
   
   
   
   
3. As soon as you've got you and the crew onboard, grab hold of something. Friggin quickly!!
   
   
   
   
4. Ok? Assuming you got past step 3 wait in line for the passengers in front of you to pay coins into the ticket machine. Keep holding on for your dear life.
   
   
   
   
5. Tell the driver where you're going, he'll clock it into the machine while he's driving...
   
   
   
   
6. Get your coins (the only option - no smart card, no notes, no clicky card thing) and start feeding them into the machine, while holding baby, disposing of pram and still holding onto something (you may need more than 2 hands for this exercise).
   
   
   
   
7. Take ticket and change if required
   
   
   
   
8. Make your way to a seat (fingers crossed someone gives you one close to the front).
   
   
   
   
9. Sit down and keep holding on.
   
   
   
   
10. Get off the bus
    

Woop woop! You made it, congrats, your a legend!

Humility 101

There's nothing like failing at the local lingo to bring on a sense of humility.

I've been working on some key phrases recently:

Sorry I don't understand

How do you say?

Do you speak spanish?

I speak a little spanish

Speak slower please

None of these phrases will actually help me to communicate anything useful but at least the locals will know why there is a blank look on my face when they pour forth a volley of meaninglessness.

Mental note: The next time someone is struggling with English in Wellington I'll be more patient, I'll use simpler words and I'll realise that they aren't stupid, they're just struggling with a language which is more complicated than the one I'm trying to learn!

Murphy's Law

It appears that Murphy's Law works over this side of the planet as well...

Its raining.

Campus connections

Javi has a friend who is studying at a relatively close campus (40 mins walk), so we wandered over to catch up with him and his crispy group. They come under the IFES umbrella so they're pretty much family as all you TSCFers will know.

The first mission of the meeting was to get through the greeting process... Kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss...

A cool bunch of students, half of which spoke ingleise which was handy. There was one English girl and the other 6 were all Argentinians. I think I've probably thought of the English accent as a “foreign” accent but today it seemed very local as she translated everything for me. ¡Muchos gracias!

The second mission of the meeting was to hold my concentration. I was trying to pick out the occasional familiar word, while listening to a translation, while thinking about what my response would be to what they were talking about (the good samaritan), while struggling not to turn around and stare at every domestic flight, all of 500 metres away (my head is magnetised to anything flying...), while wondering why no one minds the long grass and all the rubbish lying around and while also trying to figure out a formula for how many greeting kisses (hellos and goodbyes) there would be in a generic group meeting...

Concentration was difficult.

2(n-1)n where n = number of participants

112

Thats quite a lot.

I wonder how long it would take 8 Kiwis to clock up that many kisses in public...?

Afterwards lunch was bought and consumed at the cafeteria (hey, that could be a Spanish word...?). A bowl of pasta for 4 pesos! Dang this gluten free diet. Gah.

I slowly became more involved in the conversation as the spanish only speakers drifted off, we joked briefly about the whole kissing thing. The English girl knew what I was talking about but had adapted to it very quickly and now took offense when someone didn't greet with a kiss. Interesting. I'm sure I'll adapt. Still, I appreciated the handshake from the guy from Patagonia. His parents speak English and he understood that I'd like a handshake.

Yeap.

Its solid.

*Deep voice*

Southern man.

[stretches out an empty, callused, bloodied and greasy hand]. Is there a gun there? Nope. Good. Firm shake. None of this mamby pamby floppy handy. Good on yah, mate. Pride of the south. *Grunts*

Yeap.

¡¡Gunshots!!

Its Sunday evening and gunshots ring out across the neighbourhood!

Uh oh, its an armed holdup...! 
No, a kidnapping! 
No, its a coup d'état followed by Martial Law and massive currency collapse!!

My Kiwi naïvety tempts me to go find out who's firing the guns...

But I couldn't be bothered getting out of bed.

Turns out its just an outdoor shooting range,

in the city...

on a Sunday night,

6 blocks away.

Javi's so used to the sound, he didn't even notice it until I asked.

Well, that was boring wasn't it?

Kisses

I received my first kiss from a guy today...

On the cheek.

I don't think that greeting is going to take off in NZ.

BA weather forecast...

Just how I like it.
All the time.

Cheers/Salut

Yellow Fever...

Write off Day 4... the Yellow Fever vaccine I received in Auckland got the better of me. I woke up with a fever and a headache at 2am. ah.

Fortunately for me the vaccination was only about 5% of the live disease... Great eh? I paid money to have a live disease injected into me! Crazy. Anyway, the fever only lasted for 5 hours but the rest of the day was spent recuperating. Combine that with an annoying back/headache and a bit of jet lag and I haven't exactly been at the top of my game in this first week.

However, the vaccination is worth it in the long run. If I head to the far north and there's a breakout and I get infected (chances are fairly low) the death rate is between 20 and 50%!

Javi's madre came home in the evening and was worried about me, lying in the dark in the early evening... (well, I guessed that was what she was trying to say...). Ah. How do you explain yellow fever vaccination with limited mutual language...? Looking through phrase book – ah, yellow? Amarillo. Feibre. Vacudo? Some charades... Shot in arm? Headache. Tired. Eventually I show her the translation of vaccination in my phrase book. Then she understands. Yah. Its not until 2 hours later I discover Google Translate. Ah. La vacunación contra la fiebre amarilla. I have a feeling that website will come in handy again... If only I could carry it with me...

First Impressions of Buenos Aires

BA is big, ridiculously big (greater BA pop. 13mil). The best way to illustrate the size, is to open these Google maps (they are the same scale) in separate tabs and compare:

Wellington, Auckland

Buenos Aires

Although Auckland might look like a similar size, imagine all of the city and the harbour as dense as Ponsonby and you'll get a better idea.

Its flat - think Christchurch, except its a 4 hour drive to the Atlantic (we are near a river mouth which is so wide you can't see the other side!) and about 15 hours to the Andes.

The streets feel similar to the U.S - honking horns, large trucks, lots of concrete which is often not well maintained (everyone looks after their own section of pavement), painted curbs, many 2 to 3 story apartments packed up tight, a grid system with the standard simple traffic lights (no arrows or traffic detectors to tell where the traffic is coming from) and generally less green space about.

The people look like Mediterranean Europeans. I could easily be in Spain or Italy and they talk as fast as the rumours suggest!

The accommodation around my area reminds me a little of Bangkok. It feels like many of the houses lack the trappings of a western home.

They have some very nice treats. Submarino is a glass of warm milk with chocolate dropped in and dulce de leche is a caramelised version of sweetened, condensed milk spread on bread. Naughty but very tasty!

There's a lot of PDA... I watched the big game (Argentina vs Uruguay, world cup qualifier) in a local cafe last night and it seemed like there was more action between the couples (who may or may not have a partner somewhere else in the city) in the cafe, than on the screen.

Screen: Kick forward, kick back, pass, pass, shot, save!

Cafe: Pash, pash, hug, kiss, touch, kiss, kiss, touch, pash!

And that was waaay before the only goal was scored.

I must be in another country... if that was happening in a south island bar, they'd get red carded for sure!

Time travel

Even though its my third time traveling east, its still a novelty to travel back in time...

I left Auckland at 8pm on October 14 and at 8pm on October 14, I watched a game of football at a cafe in BA.

I have arrived in BA!

That is all.

It was good to see you, Auckland

After 6 days catching up with friends in Auckland its time to go!

Thanks for the catch ups everyone

Christina at Pioneers, Williams and Lloyds out West, Greg and Rachel and the Maxim flat mates, Roger from SIM; Lisa; Lauren; Pete, Michelle and Nathan; Peter, Ruth and the Langtons at Ironique; Peter and Reuben at pitch and putt; Dave; Andy and Helen at St Pauls; Steve and flatties; Jeremy; Tanya and Sarah; Andy the 2nd cousy once removed :); Geoff and the bunch of new people I met along the way.

Hasta leugo Neuva Zelanda!
See you later NZ

Views of the Manukau

I'm staying with some friends in Hillsborough, Auckland that have an alright view...

A typically atypical day

This is an extract from an email prior to leaving Welly, written for an extrovert to illustrate a typically atypical day.

Got up at 8.30. Had breakfast, played with the kids for a bit. Practised Spanish. 5 min walk to cafe in Newtown for coffee with an Anglican rev./community worker/ex-greenhaus-resident. We talk about community, connection, ideas, people, the market, newtown, he offers to help wherever he can and to introduce someone who maybe helpful. Then Matt (peoples coffee) and Becky (community centre) walk by, we wave. Then Nathan (intellectually disabled heavy metaler, once he knows your name, you know you've made it in Newtown (he knows my name, as of March)) sticks his head through the door to tell us about the 5 heavy metal shirts he got for his birthday.

Then on the spur of the moment went with Rev up the road to The Club House for an hour of awesome drumming with local mental health consumers (not neccesarily intellectually disabled) and a professional drummer. Great fun! Wish I'd heard about it earlier. Most of the faces were familiar as they all come to the Greenhaus soiree (evening performance thing once a quarter). Then went home, made lunch from leftovers. Rode to town to catch up with Chinese friend just back from Argentina. Got a few tips. Then missed ex-colleague due to a delay with her Telecom text, dang Telecom!! Then bought some souvenirs for presents in Arg.

Skyped Javier (who I'll stay with in BA) to practice my Spanish. Hola (hello), como estace? (how are you), muy bien (very good) y tu? (and you), muy bien gracias encantado (very good thanks, please to meet you) Then put out flattie's washing, then made some calls to Auckland, then cleaned the bathroom, then wandered through Newtown to buy stuff, then dropped off another flatties overdue DVD, then dropped in to old flat to get my garden fork. Then dropped into ex neighbours to chat. Then walked the fork across town to the GH. Played with the compost for a while (working on making it less sick (too little oxygen, too little carbon, too much nitrogen, too much acid), it currently smells bad! Fortunately I like compost.

Then I did some homework for a course ive organised for a group of friends. Then cooked some left overs for dinner (no organised dinner on a Friday). Then the parent-flatties and their kids came home. Talked to the kids briefly then they went to bed. Then flatmate pours boiling water into a mug... and the mug starts leaking, and she's looking at the mug leaking saying "oh no, the mugs leaking what the heck" by which point I'm saying "put it in the sink!" as it pours all over the floor. Then other flatties come in, we watch 7 Days ondemand. Then flattie goes dumpster diving. Then we watch 7 days live. Then we shoot the breeze and eat chocolate... then i surf on the web for a while. Day over.

The Greenhaus goes to the snow

Recently I moved into a new flat called the Greenhaus (11 adults 3 kids!). Its kindof temporary at the moment, as I'm heading overseas for 2 months but in early Jan I'll move in properly.

Anyway, most of us went on a weekend away to Ruapehu to ski/board. I saved my pennies for other trips but had some good down time and took a few sweet pics...



We stayed in a great lodge in Raetihi. It had the works. Large fireplace with chopped firewood, gas heater at other end of passage, enough beds with linen and electric blankets for 10 of us, pool table, large living area, fresh roasted coffee waiting for us and I could go on! All for the measly price of 69 bucks each for 2 nights! Very nice.