Every city has its own walking rhythm, it’s own choreographed set of steps that let you get from point A to point B without obstructing traffic, or getting mashed by your fellow pedestrians.
In Copenhagen, as a friend and I strolled down the Strøget, or pedestrian street, we could not figure out why time and time again, these graceful Danes (because really, as the Paris of Scandinavia, how could they be anything but) kept on crashing into us. And then my friend came to a sudden screaming realization. PIVOT, she shouted. She had observed the Danes, walking towards one another, and just as strong shoulder was about to brush strong Scandinavian cheekbone, they would swing to the the side in a kind of dos-i-do, with the do (meaning back) replaced with the front side. So enthralled with her pivot was my friend that she walked dangerously close to the residents, a veritable pivoter with impunity. And time and time again, she would pull it out at the last minute, and remain unscathed. I could never really get the hang of the pivot, and just did the duck and dodge, and together we pivot-dodged through the crowds to yet another konditori (pastry shop) with its upside-down pretzel bearing sign to nibble, what else? a danish, here called viennese pastry (wienerbrød)
In Tokyo my main walking problem—aside from the insanely long distances which I chose to traverse stemmed from the fact that the Japanese drive on the opposite side of the road from the one I’m used to, and thereby walk on the opposite side of the sidewalk. I’d be blithely one-foot-in-front-of-the othering when out of nowhere, a girl in giant shoes in Shibuya would appear before me and almost take out my shins. I tried the pivot, but it turned into a dance. I was afraid she would turn her ankle, and tried to run away, turning headlong into a stream of people headed into the subway, a convenience store and most of importantly, straight towards me. If Japanese culture didn’t dictate that they be generally conflict-averse, I’m certain I’d have been trampled.
So what’s the secret to walking in Santiago? We don’t sashay, and we don’t pivot. We just sort of clomp along the cobblestones or the paved streets or in between buses in front of ususpecting cyclists traveling at 15 kph (oh, have I got a story about that one!). On the metro escalators you can forget about one side for walking and the other for standing, like in my once-hometown of Washington, DC. It’s standing room only, on the escalators, and to insist otherwise earns you derisive looks and the occasional “¿Qué onda?” (what the h…?) or at least “tranquila,” (calm down!)
No, the secret to walking in Santiago is to leave the house anywhere between five minutes to a full half hour before you think you need to. The goal here is to go with the flow, move at the ¾ speed of a Washingtonian, ½ speed of a New Yorker. If you give yourself enough time, you won’t need to weave in and out of the traffic like a Boston bike messenger, or a slalom downhill skiier. You’ll be tranquilo (calm), and arrive like everyone else does, just about ten minutes late to work. ¿Qué onda?
Friday, February 27, 2009
Thursday, February 26, 2009
On the Lonely Planet Travel Blogger Contest
No matter what happens with this contest, I will be glad to have been a part of it. I can see that the road ahead is long, and likely littered with my own spent cyber carcass as I am soundly thrashed by blogs of better repute, more traffic and less interesting names (my opinion) than mine. But it's all in good fun, and I really appreciate the people at Lonely Planet having set the stage for the contest.
Most of us have our pet blogs, our friends (that may or may not know us), from whom we take levity, wisdom, and the occasional provocation to yell at the computer screen. I for one can tell you that a) you're welcome b) no really? and c) I can't hear you.
I like the contest for a number of reasons. It proudens me (which you can say in Spanish, me engorullece), and it also humbles me (which you cannot). It also puts me into contact with people that inhabit my sphere, but with whom I've never before crossed paths. We're kind of neighbors, and it's nice to know that even if I couldn't exactly ask them to borrow a cup of sugar, I can at least wave hello when I see them in the street. Or online, whatever.
So here's the contest logo, if you didn't see it elsewhere, and all you have to do is clickety, and vote, and so it goes.
here's where you do the clicking
One thing that I have not yet mentioned is that I have spent entirely too much time on my referral log, just seeing where all you pretties have come from. This view is not exactly a full spectrum, as it turns out that when one hemisphere is awake, the other one is sleeping, and vice versa, statistical outliers/insomniacs in Australia notwithstanding.
But look at all the little lights you've lit up. Keep it going! And while you're at it, could you spell something?
Most of us have our pet blogs, our friends (that may or may not know us), from whom we take levity, wisdom, and the occasional provocation to yell at the computer screen. I for one can tell you that a) you're welcome b) no really? and c) I can't hear you.
I like the contest for a number of reasons. It proudens me (which you can say in Spanish, me engorullece), and it also humbles me (which you cannot). It also puts me into contact with people that inhabit my sphere, but with whom I've never before crossed paths. We're kind of neighbors, and it's nice to know that even if I couldn't exactly ask them to borrow a cup of sugar, I can at least wave hello when I see them in the street. Or online, whatever.
So here's the contest logo, if you didn't see it elsewhere, and all you have to do is clickety, and vote, and so it goes.
here's where you do the clicking
One thing that I have not yet mentioned is that I have spent entirely too much time on my referral log, just seeing where all you pretties have come from. This view is not exactly a full spectrum, as it turns out that when one hemisphere is awake, the other one is sleeping, and vice versa, statistical outliers/insomniacs in Australia notwithstanding.
But look at all the little lights you've lit up. Keep it going! And while you're at it, could you spell something?
Comfort food
Many years ago, when I thought San Francisco, California was a long way from home, and also that it was a good idea to pierce my own nose with a needle, I stayed at the Marina District flat of my a high school friend’s quite-a-bit-older sister. Looking back I realize she must have been around thirty, but her Irish photographer husband and her dogged insistence that we eat sushi (circa 1990) made her seem far more worldly than I would have dreamed of becoming at that age.
At the time, my friend’s sister was a teacher, and was soon to move to Japan with her photographer huband and their new baby for a teaching gig (the sister, not the baby). I asked her what she thought she’d have trouble adjusting to, and she paused and said that she thought of how strange it was that her daughter’s comfort foods wouldn’t be the same as her own. The friend’s sister (FS) had spent the first few years of her life in China, and grown up in a Chinese-speaking (and mostly eating) household in Brooklyn, which she believed molded her palate. In Japan her daughter would grow up with miso soup for breakfast and would probably later miss the tang of an umeboshi pickled plum when she moved away.
The topic of comfort food looms large among expats. Here in Santiago it is not unusual to get an email indicating where a certain food oddity (such as shredded wheat cereal) may be located. Answer: nowhere. After my pecans were seized, I went from place to place looking for replacement pecans, including a place where I’d remembered having seen them a couple of years earlier. No pecans, they said. Not for the last couple of years.
Pecans and shredded wheat aside, I have friends who call each other if they find cheddar cheese like we know it, or some kind of veggie meat subtitute like the Argentine “milanesa de soya” which is the tofu of chicken-fried steak, if you will. At the beginning the cravings hit you hard, and you simply must find a cheezit or a graham cracker or you will die a slow death. Please insert violins. The more addicted to processed food you were when you got here, the worse it is.
I’ve come almost completely to terms with wishing for certain food items. Most things (aside from salty carby snacks that are not potato chips) that I would want are available, or I can make them myself. Store-bought hummus is unknown, and I have to import the right kind of chickpeas (canned, of course) to make my own, but you can get it in the occasional restaurant. I make my own natural peanut butter, and also my own paneer. So in short, for most things I’ve developed a work-around.
Back to the states. Every now and then, I go home, where I eat bagels and feta cheese (but not together) and kalamata olives and broccoli in garlic sauce and sometimes even Breyers’ mint chocolate chip ice cream. But after a while I start to get that cooking itch, and want to whip something up for my family.
The last time this happened, I was on Long Island, visiting my family and we went out in search of supplies, because I was going to make garlic bread. Bread? How could it be so hard to find bread? Wherever we went, it was too hard, too soft. In a word, it was añejo (old). It was not the marraqueta, the split-in-four fresh-from-the-oven French bread we get here in Chile, which would have been perfect. I made the garlic bread, but it came out just okay. And I was so disappointed.
Before I came to Chile a friend’s coworker who’d lived here talked about buying bread so fresh and warm you had to put it in a paper, not plastic bag. She waxed on and on about the fresh bread, about buying extra so you could nibble a piece on the way home and still have enough when you got there. Got it. The bread? It’s good. But I didn’t know it would be so good that I’d miss it when I wasn’t here.
So there’s still hope for my friend’s child, who must be (gasp) a teenager these days. She may have grown up on mochi and those fish-shaped waffle-like sweets filled with red bean paste, but, having moved back to the United States by now (I checked), I’m sure she can really appreciate a good Mission-style burrito.
Mmmm, burrito.
At the time, my friend’s sister was a teacher, and was soon to move to Japan with her photographer huband and their new baby for a teaching gig (the sister, not the baby). I asked her what she thought she’d have trouble adjusting to, and she paused and said that she thought of how strange it was that her daughter’s comfort foods wouldn’t be the same as her own. The friend’s sister (FS) had spent the first few years of her life in China, and grown up in a Chinese-speaking (and mostly eating) household in Brooklyn, which she believed molded her palate. In Japan her daughter would grow up with miso soup for breakfast and would probably later miss the tang of an umeboshi pickled plum when she moved away.
The topic of comfort food looms large among expats. Here in Santiago it is not unusual to get an email indicating where a certain food oddity (such as shredded wheat cereal) may be located. Answer: nowhere. After my pecans were seized, I went from place to place looking for replacement pecans, including a place where I’d remembered having seen them a couple of years earlier. No pecans, they said. Not for the last couple of years.
Pecans and shredded wheat aside, I have friends who call each other if they find cheddar cheese like we know it, or some kind of veggie meat subtitute like the Argentine “milanesa de soya” which is the tofu of chicken-fried steak, if you will. At the beginning the cravings hit you hard, and you simply must find a cheezit or a graham cracker or you will die a slow death. Please insert violins. The more addicted to processed food you were when you got here, the worse it is.
I’ve come almost completely to terms with wishing for certain food items. Most things (aside from salty carby snacks that are not potato chips) that I would want are available, or I can make them myself. Store-bought hummus is unknown, and I have to import the right kind of chickpeas (canned, of course) to make my own, but you can get it in the occasional restaurant. I make my own natural peanut butter, and also my own paneer. So in short, for most things I’ve developed a work-around.
Back to the states. Every now and then, I go home, where I eat bagels and feta cheese (but not together) and kalamata olives and broccoli in garlic sauce and sometimes even Breyers’ mint chocolate chip ice cream. But after a while I start to get that cooking itch, and want to whip something up for my family.
The last time this happened, I was on Long Island, visiting my family and we went out in search of supplies, because I was going to make garlic bread. Bread? How could it be so hard to find bread? Wherever we went, it was too hard, too soft. In a word, it was añejo (old). It was not the marraqueta, the split-in-four fresh-from-the-oven French bread we get here in Chile, which would have been perfect. I made the garlic bread, but it came out just okay. And I was so disappointed.
Before I came to Chile a friend’s coworker who’d lived here talked about buying bread so fresh and warm you had to put it in a paper, not plastic bag. She waxed on and on about the fresh bread, about buying extra so you could nibble a piece on the way home and still have enough when you got there. Got it. The bread? It’s good. But I didn’t know it would be so good that I’d miss it when I wasn’t here.
So there’s still hope for my friend’s child, who must be (gasp) a teenager these days. She may have grown up on mochi and those fish-shaped waffle-like sweets filled with red bean paste, but, having moved back to the United States by now (I checked), I’m sure she can really appreciate a good Mission-style burrito.
Mmmm, burrito.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Necessity, it would seem
"More news from Santiago" they clamor. Less navel gazing! More nuts-and-bolts. This is what I like to pretend is happening, and I run the show here, so here goes.
The other day I went to take out the trash, to the tiny room in the hallway where we all deposit our disposeable whatnot, and I came upon this scene.
I post this poor quality, dingy picture because it illustrates the following:
-I really dislike flash photography
-What a trash room looks like in Santiago
-That several apartments on my floor have red "rechazado" (rejected) signs referring to our gas de cañeria, or municipal gas supply (as opposed to canister gas), meaning that there's something not up to code, most likely a leak. (I include mine among these)
-What I'm talking about when I talk about electric tea kettles; and lastly
-The one of the neighbors is atrasado (late) on the electric bill.
You have to work pretty hard to have your electricity cut off in Santiago (several months usually) so it could also be that they have not paid their gastos comunes (monthly building maintenance fees paid by the renters, not the owners) for just three months, at which point the concierge wrenches open the painted-over electricity cabinet on the first floor and shuts off your juice.
Whatever the reason, someone up on this floor is reading by moonlight and heating up water in the trash room. I think it's probably the skinny black-clad gay rocker boys at the far end of the hall, of whom there seem to be more than the legal occupancy limit, but maybe some are boyfriends.
Anyway, back to heating up water in the trash room. On one hand, its very resourceful. On the other hand, yuck. Who wants to drink tea brewed with water heated amid stinky garbage smells? The boys in 608, apparently, that's who.
The other day I went to take out the trash, to the tiny room in the hallway where we all deposit our disposeable whatnot, and I came upon this scene.
I post this poor quality, dingy picture because it illustrates the following:
-I really dislike flash photography
-What a trash room looks like in Santiago
-That several apartments on my floor have red "rechazado" (rejected) signs referring to our gas de cañeria, or municipal gas supply (as opposed to canister gas), meaning that there's something not up to code, most likely a leak. (I include mine among these)
-What I'm talking about when I talk about electric tea kettles; and lastly
-The one of the neighbors is atrasado (late) on the electric bill.
You have to work pretty hard to have your electricity cut off in Santiago (several months usually) so it could also be that they have not paid their gastos comunes (monthly building maintenance fees paid by the renters, not the owners) for just three months, at which point the concierge wrenches open the painted-over electricity cabinet on the first floor and shuts off your juice.
Whatever the reason, someone up on this floor is reading by moonlight and heating up water in the trash room. I think it's probably the skinny black-clad gay rocker boys at the far end of the hall, of whom there seem to be more than the legal occupancy limit, but maybe some are boyfriends.
Anyway, back to heating up water in the trash room. On one hand, its very resourceful. On the other hand, yuck. Who wants to drink tea brewed with water heated amid stinky garbage smells? The boys in 608, apparently, that's who.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
How this whole mess got started
I've been asked not a few times how I find myself in Latin America, how I find myself in Chile, how it all started, this interest in a part of the world to which I have no real claim other than that I've adopted it.
I was twenty-one years old, with multiple bottles of sunscreen, a tiny Spanish-English dictionary, a six-month supply of tampons, too many teeshirts and pairs of cotton socks and barely a lick of common sense when I landed in Mexico City in October of 1992, for a six month trip on busses and boats, bicycles and the occasional buey (ox) down through Central America and back up again. It was a stint motivated by a million tiny factors: the belief that three years of high-school Spanish meant that I could communicate, a fabulous summer job that had plumped out my bank account enough to afford stepping out of my life for six months and finally, not wanting to sit around and wait to find out if I’d gotten into the law school of my choice (answer: yes).
So off I went, optimistic and unprepared, functioning at a two-year-old’s linguistic level, sticking out like a sore thumb and ready for some serious adversity. There was the time when, having already been relieved of her on-the-bus bag (you know, the one with the passport), the friend I was traveling with lost her tongue, leaving me to stutter out all the Spanish for the next couple of days. Or the time when, defeated after a lightning-strike pickpocketing, I took out my anger on a street dog, chasing it down after it stole our loaf of bread. Both of these in Mexico, and no, I didn’t catch the dog, though it makes you wonder what I would have done if I had.
But then there was the simple hospitality of my busmates in Guatemala, who shoved over just a little bit more, to help me improve my perch on the narrow green seat of the yellow Bluebird schoolbus on which we traveled, which hopefully would not hurtle off into the stratosphere and into the ravine below like the one before us had, this on the way to Chichicastenango. In Nicaragua between Managua and Rama, a man and his son took me in as their newfound friend when they saw me pull tape out of my backpack and repair a paperback book whose cover had torn off. Lo arreglaste? (you fixed it?), they asked, incredulous that I hadn't just thrown it away.
A month later in Honduras a woman who worked as a seamstress at a lingerie factory confided in me that after having all the children I wished to have, I could get a (shhhh!) type of surgery that would prevent me from having more children, but that I shouldn’t tell my priest or my husband. Single, Jewish and already aware of the existence of tubal ligations, I nodded my head solemnly at her advice.
I ate beans and rice endlessly, searched for the best Salvadorean pupusa I could find, learned to love avocado and fear tomatoes (too easy to get sick!), to drink soda out of a plastic bag with a straw (there were no plastic bottles at the time), and hold unknown children on my lap (with a special prayer for good diapering technique) and even suffered through a night in a hostel on the coast in Costa Rica where the giant palmetto bugs scurried so loudly this way and that on my hotel room floor that I had to sleep with the light on and a sock over my eyes.
This trip pushed me out of my comfort zone and into a place where I could remake myself. I was left to my own devices, and simultaneously disregarded by and cared for by strangers to the left, right and center.
I left for my trip to Central America a foolish and defensive 21-year old, a Brooklynite, a recent college graduate, a person who believed that the world she was venturing into was different than the one she was leaving. Six months later, and several pounds and teeshirts lighter, I returned at the ripe old age of 22, much more freckled, much more confident, with a decent working knowlege of Spanish (I was now linguistically at least ten or twelve ) and the belief that people around the world are pretty much the same. In the words of a long-ago exboyfriend “Everyone has to go to the bathroom, and everybody likes to get mail.”
And to all the people who took care of me on that trip and didn’t take advantage of me when they could have and smiled just a little brighter than they needed to when I walked into the room, well this is your mail. Thank you.
I was twenty-one years old, with multiple bottles of sunscreen, a tiny Spanish-English dictionary, a six-month supply of tampons, too many teeshirts and pairs of cotton socks and barely a lick of common sense when I landed in Mexico City in October of 1992, for a six month trip on busses and boats, bicycles and the occasional buey (ox) down through Central America and back up again. It was a stint motivated by a million tiny factors: the belief that three years of high-school Spanish meant that I could communicate, a fabulous summer job that had plumped out my bank account enough to afford stepping out of my life for six months and finally, not wanting to sit around and wait to find out if I’d gotten into the law school of my choice (answer: yes).
So off I went, optimistic and unprepared, functioning at a two-year-old’s linguistic level, sticking out like a sore thumb and ready for some serious adversity. There was the time when, having already been relieved of her on-the-bus bag (you know, the one with the passport), the friend I was traveling with lost her tongue, leaving me to stutter out all the Spanish for the next couple of days. Or the time when, defeated after a lightning-strike pickpocketing, I took out my anger on a street dog, chasing it down after it stole our loaf of bread. Both of these in Mexico, and no, I didn’t catch the dog, though it makes you wonder what I would have done if I had.
But then there was the simple hospitality of my busmates in Guatemala, who shoved over just a little bit more, to help me improve my perch on the narrow green seat of the yellow Bluebird schoolbus on which we traveled, which hopefully would not hurtle off into the stratosphere and into the ravine below like the one before us had, this on the way to Chichicastenango. In Nicaragua between Managua and Rama, a man and his son took me in as their newfound friend when they saw me pull tape out of my backpack and repair a paperback book whose cover had torn off. Lo arreglaste? (you fixed it?), they asked, incredulous that I hadn't just thrown it away.
A month later in Honduras a woman who worked as a seamstress at a lingerie factory confided in me that after having all the children I wished to have, I could get a (shhhh!) type of surgery that would prevent me from having more children, but that I shouldn’t tell my priest or my husband. Single, Jewish and already aware of the existence of tubal ligations, I nodded my head solemnly at her advice.
I ate beans and rice endlessly, searched for the best Salvadorean pupusa I could find, learned to love avocado and fear tomatoes (too easy to get sick!), to drink soda out of a plastic bag with a straw (there were no plastic bottles at the time), and hold unknown children on my lap (with a special prayer for good diapering technique) and even suffered through a night in a hostel on the coast in Costa Rica where the giant palmetto bugs scurried so loudly this way and that on my hotel room floor that I had to sleep with the light on and a sock over my eyes.
This trip pushed me out of my comfort zone and into a place where I could remake myself. I was left to my own devices, and simultaneously disregarded by and cared for by strangers to the left, right and center.
I left for my trip to Central America a foolish and defensive 21-year old, a Brooklynite, a recent college graduate, a person who believed that the world she was venturing into was different than the one she was leaving. Six months later, and several pounds and teeshirts lighter, I returned at the ripe old age of 22, much more freckled, much more confident, with a decent working knowlege of Spanish (I was now linguistically at least ten or twelve ) and the belief that people around the world are pretty much the same. In the words of a long-ago exboyfriend “Everyone has to go to the bathroom, and everybody likes to get mail.”
And to all the people who took care of me on that trip and didn’t take advantage of me when they could have and smiled just a little brighter than they needed to when I walked into the room, well this is your mail. Thank you.
Monday, February 23, 2009
A great miracle happened there
We were five. Two pint/tablespoon sized and three adults. I arrived early, bugged the hotel staff for a crib on several occasions, drank nearly a liter of water, figured out the cards in the slots for electricity, walked through the Mr. Rogers' neighborhood-like maze that was the resort and waited. I'd left my house at 6 PM the night before, arrived a few countries and territories later, at 3 PM arrived at the hotel complex where my family and I would spend the next six days, hopefully without incident. At 6 PM local time, or maybe a little later, I spied the first of the S/S clan (which makes us sound much more sinister than we really are), and ran out to meet them.
I have to lay claim to being a fairly independent traveler, usually preferring tours only when they're necessary, like the cycling trip to Cuba I took in 2000 through a nonprofit called Global Exchange, when American citizens should have only gone to Cuba with a license (not sure of the status these days), or when it involved a high-altitude trek through trail-less mountain tops and lakes, like the trip I did near Volcán Antesana in Ecuador in 1996. You may also note that I crossed the south-west of Bolivia just this past December in a 4X4 with five of my new closest friends. So add deserts and salt lakes to the conditions that require a little coddling (if you can consider the provision of very rustic sleeping conditions and bread and rice for lunch and dinner coddling).
So, independent traveler at an all-inclusive resort. I was expecting to come home and try to write a diatribe like David Foster Wallace's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, his rail against cruises, except that his writing is approximately a quadrillion times more adjective-ridden, much snarkier, and far more brilliant than mine. It also turns out he is dead, which I didn't know, and which makes me want to go off on a sad tangent about how I'm bummed I won't get to read anything else by him, since I've already read Infinite Jest, which was his most gigantic and impenetrable (but well worth it) tome.
So. Some people go to all-inclusive resorts for the alcohol. They made a mint on me and the rest of the S/S clan (oy! that sounds awful, must work on it), unless it turns out that salad makings are as expensive as that blond Dominican rum they pour into everything. I was essentially there for the unlimited chickpeas, which I ate at every meal at which I could find them. We have chickpeas in Chile, but they're not the same, even with a pressure cooker and a pound of salt. So I hit the chickpeas pretty hard, also the artichoke hearts. I hope never to see another tortilla chip or the freakish yellow goo that comes out of the machine next to them labeled "spicy," which it really is not. And if I never eat another one-inch cube of cake, that would be okay, too, though really I have no one to blame but myself.
We played at the pool, and played at the beach. We watched the nephew of meningitis fame get knocked down by a wave or two and chant "rocks, rocks" over and over as we passed the resorts impressive (to a two-year-old) collection of sharp and smooth pebbles in all the planters. The niecelet made a friend, got her hair braided, went horseback riding and made a clever geography-related joke, wondering if (as we were in the open-sided truck) on our way to the horses if the trip was taking so long because in fact, we were going to Haiti. MamaJ knitted a gorgeous white alpaca scarf for me to take back to the Chilean summer (the yarn having previously traveled from Peru to Chile to the United States and then to the DR and now back to Chile), and also probably wins the most-sunscreen-to-least-exposure-to-sun award, bundled up under the sunshade with the scarf and all. And my sister got to try every kind of grilled fish known to man (it seemed), including cuttlefish, which she swears was tasty, but pescavarian-label be darned, I just could not bring myself to try), and took long walks on the beach, sans kids! I took copious note of everything and also copious photos, which just as soon as I get over the ultra-rapid coffee detox they put me on on this vacation (seriously, there was brown water. It was not even coffee-flavored, I was not amused), I will post some.
So there you have it, vacas (lit: cows, but used in Chile to mean vacation) in a nutshell. We started with five, and ended with five. There were some mystery bug bites and a touch of sunburn on a certain 8-year-old but aside from that, we have arrived unscathed. Believe me, I'm as surprised as you are.
I have to lay claim to being a fairly independent traveler, usually preferring tours only when they're necessary, like the cycling trip to Cuba I took in 2000 through a nonprofit called Global Exchange, when American citizens should have only gone to Cuba with a license (not sure of the status these days), or when it involved a high-altitude trek through trail-less mountain tops and lakes, like the trip I did near Volcán Antesana in Ecuador in 1996. You may also note that I crossed the south-west of Bolivia just this past December in a 4X4 with five of my new closest friends. So add deserts and salt lakes to the conditions that require a little coddling (if you can consider the provision of very rustic sleeping conditions and bread and rice for lunch and dinner coddling).
So, independent traveler at an all-inclusive resort. I was expecting to come home and try to write a diatribe like David Foster Wallace's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, his rail against cruises, except that his writing is approximately a quadrillion times more adjective-ridden, much snarkier, and far more brilliant than mine. It also turns out he is dead, which I didn't know, and which makes me want to go off on a sad tangent about how I'm bummed I won't get to read anything else by him, since I've already read Infinite Jest, which was his most gigantic and impenetrable (but well worth it) tome.
So. Some people go to all-inclusive resorts for the alcohol. They made a mint on me and the rest of the S/S clan (oy! that sounds awful, must work on it), unless it turns out that salad makings are as expensive as that blond Dominican rum they pour into everything. I was essentially there for the unlimited chickpeas, which I ate at every meal at which I could find them. We have chickpeas in Chile, but they're not the same, even with a pressure cooker and a pound of salt. So I hit the chickpeas pretty hard, also the artichoke hearts. I hope never to see another tortilla chip or the freakish yellow goo that comes out of the machine next to them labeled "spicy," which it really is not. And if I never eat another one-inch cube of cake, that would be okay, too, though really I have no one to blame but myself.
We played at the pool, and played at the beach. We watched the nephew of meningitis fame get knocked down by a wave or two and chant "rocks, rocks" over and over as we passed the resorts impressive (to a two-year-old) collection of sharp and smooth pebbles in all the planters. The niecelet made a friend, got her hair braided, went horseback riding and made a clever geography-related joke, wondering if (as we were in the open-sided truck) on our way to the horses if the trip was taking so long because in fact, we were going to Haiti. MamaJ knitted a gorgeous white alpaca scarf for me to take back to the Chilean summer (the yarn having previously traveled from Peru to Chile to the United States and then to the DR and now back to Chile), and also probably wins the most-sunscreen-to-least-exposure-to-sun award, bundled up under the sunshade with the scarf and all. And my sister got to try every kind of grilled fish known to man (it seemed), including cuttlefish, which she swears was tasty, but pescavarian-label be darned, I just could not bring myself to try), and took long walks on the beach, sans kids! I took copious note of everything and also copious photos, which just as soon as I get over the ultra-rapid coffee detox they put me on on this vacation (seriously, there was brown water. It was not even coffee-flavored, I was not amused), I will post some.
So there you have it, vacas (lit: cows, but used in Chile to mean vacation) in a nutshell. We started with five, and ended with five. There were some mystery bug bites and a touch of sunburn on a certain 8-year-old but aside from that, we have arrived unscathed. Believe me, I'm as surprised as you are.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Empty Threats or How My Family and I Spent our President's Week Vacation. An Essay by Eileen Smith
My family and I have a terrible time of meeting up in places we're supposed to be when we're supposed to be there. My first memory of this involves me standing outside in 17 degree (F) weather, in steel-toed shoes (it was college, trust me, it was all the rage) in Danbury, CT waiting for my sister to pick me up. She, meanwhile was wandering around the bus station in the same town, looking for me to pick up. There were hours, there were. Frustration, and confusion, and finally multiple phone calls to our mother, in Brooklyn, whereupon we triangulated, figured out where we were and got together for a long, uninterrupted weekend of sisterly love and not a bit of fighting (we were like that, don't worry, we think it's normal).
Fast forward several years and there's me in Bogotá, Colombia pleading with the counter people to please let me miss my flight and get on a later one, the later one that will have my then six-month pregnant sister and six-year old niece on it, for a connecting flight to Cartagena, as their flight had been delayed. I was denied, and shuttled off to Cartagena, where I would wait, leaping up at every plane arrival. Peeking among the broom-toting (what was that about?) people meeting families, amid hugs, bag exchanges, taxi getting, everyone was with their people. And me? I was in the airport. Eventually I went over to the counter to find out if I could at least find out what plane they were on and what time it might arrive (to save myself all the jumping up and anticipation). Oh, easy they said, S (my niece) was on the 3:15 plane, and she's already arrived, alone. My sister would be coming later. Poco probable, I said (not bloody likely). Why's that? they said. Because a) she's six years old, and doesn't speak Spanish and b) I was on that flight, and I think I might have noticed if she had been on it. I walked away from teh counter poor in information, but rich in frustration. Eventually they arrived, sweaty and frazzled (as were we all), and we settled into our hotel rooms, and went out to seek food. All was well. But the stressometer took a while to calm.
Then we have last year's Smith family vacation. The first ever with three generations! We were all due to meet in Tamarindo, Costa Rica for a week of gringo festivities. Me, my sister, my niece and now 11-month-old nephew (the one that was in utero in Colombia), and Nyeamah, as my niece used to affectionately call my mother, her grandmother. Two days before the trip, I was in a little beachside town cantina in Costa Rica (on bike, another story here entirely) and I thought to check my email. Trip cancelled. J (nephew) in hospital. AGH! What should have been a relaxing week on the sand and in the surf with my family turned into an emergency trip to the hospital to spend time with the now sullen niece S, limp nephew J (bacterial meningitis, fun for everyone!), and the rest of my catatonic family. As my brother-in-law smartly put it, after J was released from the hospital, pale, weak but still our little trooper, "This is something he will never remember. And the rest of us will never forget." To this day, we make jokes about Costa Rica. Remember when we were in Costa Rica? It's how we refer to my nephew's 14-day hospital stay. The beds weren't very comfortable in Costa Rica. Remember those families (it was a four-bed room after he was out of the PICU) we met in Costa Rica? My niece (now 8) sat me down one day and said seriously, "Aunt Eileen, you know we didn't really go to Costa Rica, right?" Yeah S, I know. We all know.
And why do I mention this now? This FAIL-athon of family vacations, missed connections, frozen toes, sleepless nights, sick babies and freaked out mes? Because we're at it again. This time it's the Dominican Republic. I leave tonight for a spaghetti-bowl of flights, from Santiago to Miami to San Juan to Punta Cana, describing a shape I like to call backwards drunken 7. My family (remember them?) is leaving from New York tomorrow afternoon, and we have plans to rendezvous at the hotel (since I arrive 3.5 hours before them after 3 flights and 15 hours, I decided to opt out of the marathon airport wait) after that. We've already suffered one casualty, as my sister's husband is tending to his very ailing mother, and her affairs, and won't be joining us. To be honest, though this is a huge insult to the family vacation (the fact that he can't go, and that his mother is so ill), if this is the worst that happens, we will feel like lo hemos sacado barato, or we've gotten off easy.
I've already told my family, if they aren't where they are supposed to be, when they are supposed to be there I am never going ANYWHERE with them, EVER again.
I thought about opening a poll of what might go wrong, but it seemed so defeatist. And we are such positive people!
Oh yeah, also, I'll be gone next week. If you didn't guess.
Fast forward several years and there's me in Bogotá, Colombia pleading with the counter people to please let me miss my flight and get on a later one, the later one that will have my then six-month pregnant sister and six-year old niece on it, for a connecting flight to Cartagena, as their flight had been delayed. I was denied, and shuttled off to Cartagena, where I would wait, leaping up at every plane arrival. Peeking among the broom-toting (what was that about?) people meeting families, amid hugs, bag exchanges, taxi getting, everyone was with their people. And me? I was in the airport. Eventually I went over to the counter to find out if I could at least find out what plane they were on and what time it might arrive (to save myself all the jumping up and anticipation). Oh, easy they said, S (my niece) was on the 3:15 plane, and she's already arrived, alone. My sister would be coming later. Poco probable, I said (not bloody likely). Why's that? they said. Because a) she's six years old, and doesn't speak Spanish and b) I was on that flight, and I think I might have noticed if she had been on it. I walked away from teh counter poor in information, but rich in frustration. Eventually they arrived, sweaty and frazzled (as were we all), and we settled into our hotel rooms, and went out to seek food. All was well. But the stressometer took a while to calm.
Then we have last year's Smith family vacation. The first ever with three generations! We were all due to meet in Tamarindo, Costa Rica for a week of gringo festivities. Me, my sister, my niece and now 11-month-old nephew (the one that was in utero in Colombia), and Nyeamah, as my niece used to affectionately call my mother, her grandmother. Two days before the trip, I was in a little beachside town cantina in Costa Rica (on bike, another story here entirely) and I thought to check my email. Trip cancelled. J (nephew) in hospital. AGH! What should have been a relaxing week on the sand and in the surf with my family turned into an emergency trip to the hospital to spend time with the now sullen niece S, limp nephew J (bacterial meningitis, fun for everyone!), and the rest of my catatonic family. As my brother-in-law smartly put it, after J was released from the hospital, pale, weak but still our little trooper, "This is something he will never remember. And the rest of us will never forget." To this day, we make jokes about Costa Rica. Remember when we were in Costa Rica? It's how we refer to my nephew's 14-day hospital stay. The beds weren't very comfortable in Costa Rica. Remember those families (it was a four-bed room after he was out of the PICU) we met in Costa Rica? My niece (now 8) sat me down one day and said seriously, "Aunt Eileen, you know we didn't really go to Costa Rica, right?" Yeah S, I know. We all know.
And why do I mention this now? This FAIL-athon of family vacations, missed connections, frozen toes, sleepless nights, sick babies and freaked out mes? Because we're at it again. This time it's the Dominican Republic. I leave tonight for a spaghetti-bowl of flights, from Santiago to Miami to San Juan to Punta Cana, describing a shape I like to call backwards drunken 7. My family (remember them?) is leaving from New York tomorrow afternoon, and we have plans to rendezvous at the hotel (since I arrive 3.5 hours before them after 3 flights and 15 hours, I decided to opt out of the marathon airport wait) after that. We've already suffered one casualty, as my sister's husband is tending to his very ailing mother, and her affairs, and won't be joining us. To be honest, though this is a huge insult to the family vacation (the fact that he can't go, and that his mother is so ill), if this is the worst that happens, we will feel like lo hemos sacado barato, or we've gotten off easy.
I've already told my family, if they aren't where they are supposed to be, when they are supposed to be there I am never going ANYWHERE with them, EVER again.
I thought about opening a poll of what might go wrong, but it seemed so defeatist. And we are such positive people!
Oh yeah, also, I'll be gone next week. If you didn't guess.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
When things are not what they appear or maybe they are. Sbarro's in Chile
I had noticed recently that in the stand-alone downtown foodcourt (do we have these in the States?), that a Sbarro's was going to open. In general getting a slice of pizza has not really caught on in Chile, though Verace on Jose Miguel de La Barra and Vortex (I think) and Rocco's "New York Style" pizza up in Providencia do what they can. Pizza is a whole different post here, about what constitutes pizza to a Brooklynite, and what constitutes bread with cheese and sauce.
But the other day I was out to lunch with a friend, and rather getting my usual veggie combo at Buffet, with its salty salads or gigantic vegetarian "pancake" which is a towering pile of crepes and salad makings "encrusted" with about two inches of chopped hardboiled eggs, I decided to give Sbarro's a try.
It looked vaguely Sbarro's-like. The pizza was cut in sixes, rather than in eights, to give you the authentic chance of actually filling up on a single slice of pizza. They had stromboli, and plain, veggie and pepperoni pizza, but didn't seem to have baked ziti, though the meatballs were bobbing around in their vat of sauce, just like at home.
I opted for cheese, and pleaded with the woman to please heat it up, though she insisted it was already warm. Chileans like their food cooler than I do, and I prevailed. I got the combo, with a "ligh" salad (don't pronounce the t, it will just confuse people) which was vaguely Americanized-Greek in nature, with little flecks of cheese, red onion and black olives (without pits!). I also got a diet coke, which I was asked if I'd like to supersize (no thanks), and went to pay. It was about 2500 pesos, which is around four dollars, cheaper surely than any Sbarro's in the United States for something similiar. There was neither hot pepper nor garlic powder to put on my pizza and I was denied a little plastic cup to put my salad dressing in "on the side." The employee checked with her manager, but apparently he/she said no. No plastic cups! No garlic powder! Just where do you think you are?
The pizza was... fine. Neither good, nor bad, but to be fair, I'm not a huge fan of Sbarro's. It's what I eat in the airport (at JFK) before my overnight flight to Chile because it's the only vegetarian option. The best part my pizza-eating in the foodcourt, of course was when I picked up my pizza with my hands and began to eat it. Because just like in the US, that black plastic cutlery just doesn't cut it (pun intended). Stares abounded.
Lesson learned. Next time go to Buffet.
In case you're interested, Chileans tell me that there used to be a Sbarro's at the airport in Santiago. I usually get the tuna and avocado wrap from Dunkin' (don't say the donuts part, that will confuse people, too), and think that after my latest experience, even if Sbarro' opens at the aiport again, I will continue to do so.
But the other day I was out to lunch with a friend, and rather getting my usual veggie combo at Buffet, with its salty salads or gigantic vegetarian "pancake" which is a towering pile of crepes and salad makings "encrusted" with about two inches of chopped hardboiled eggs, I decided to give Sbarro's a try.
It looked vaguely Sbarro's-like. The pizza was cut in sixes, rather than in eights, to give you the authentic chance of actually filling up on a single slice of pizza. They had stromboli, and plain, veggie and pepperoni pizza, but didn't seem to have baked ziti, though the meatballs were bobbing around in their vat of sauce, just like at home.
I opted for cheese, and pleaded with the woman to please heat it up, though she insisted it was already warm. Chileans like their food cooler than I do, and I prevailed. I got the combo, with a "ligh" salad (don't pronounce the t, it will just confuse people) which was vaguely Americanized-Greek in nature, with little flecks of cheese, red onion and black olives (without pits!). I also got a diet coke, which I was asked if I'd like to supersize (no thanks), and went to pay. It was about 2500 pesos, which is around four dollars, cheaper surely than any Sbarro's in the United States for something similiar. There was neither hot pepper nor garlic powder to put on my pizza and I was denied a little plastic cup to put my salad dressing in "on the side." The employee checked with her manager, but apparently he/she said no. No plastic cups! No garlic powder! Just where do you think you are?
The pizza was... fine. Neither good, nor bad, but to be fair, I'm not a huge fan of Sbarro's. It's what I eat in the airport (at JFK) before my overnight flight to Chile because it's the only vegetarian option. The best part my pizza-eating in the foodcourt, of course was when I picked up my pizza with my hands and began to eat it. Because just like in the US, that black plastic cutlery just doesn't cut it (pun intended). Stares abounded.
Lesson learned. Next time go to Buffet.
In case you're interested, Chileans tell me that there used to be a Sbarro's at the airport in Santiago. I usually get the tuna and avocado wrap from Dunkin' (don't say the donuts part, that will confuse people, too), and think that after my latest experience, even if Sbarro' opens at the aiport again, I will continue to do so.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Tocaya
Ailin, aylin, Aline. These are the ways in which my name (Eileen) is often misspelled here in Chile. In truth, it really doesn't matter to me how people spell my name, especially if it is at that coffee chain which shall remain nameless which I shamefacedly patronize because darnit, they know how to make an iced americano. What does it matter to me how they spell my name, provided the barista on the other end says something recognizable so I can pick up my coffee? Anyway, I'm the only shmo who would ever get an iced americano in the middle of the summer when there are frappucinos to be had, so it's hardly a moment that generates confusion.
Another time when people ask me how to spell my name is if I give them my phone number and they want to put it in their cell phone. Cómo se escribe? (lit: How is it written, meaning, how do you spell it?). Again, it doesn't really matter to me, the important part is that you know how to find it again. Begin with an E, an A, it doesn't matter to me.
If I am asked my name in an official context and have to deletrearlo (spell it), I will pronounce it in the most Chilean way possible, and spell it very slowly in an attempt to get it mostly right. Eh, ee latina, ele, eh, otra eh, ene. If I don't say "otra eh" I end up Eilen. Which might be a nice name somewhere, but it is not mine.
There was a brief period when people knew how to spell my name. There was a year-long reality show when I first arrived in Chile called La Granja (the farm). A slew of attractive Chileans (and one Czech girl, if I'm not mistaken) lived on a farm and whispered hateful conversations to each other under cover of darkness. There were a lot of tears as well, I recall. Most of the participants were flash-in-a-pan celebrities. And one of them was named Eileen (spelled just like that!). She felt like a princess, or so she said and so it appeared on the front page of the newspaper when she was kicked off the show and had her 15-minutes of fame. And for those 15 minutes, eh, ee latina, ele, eh, otra eh ene seemed like it might just catch on.
But really, it's not the spelling that's odd here, it's the name. I'm sure I've mentioned before all the cheek-kissing we do upon entering or leaving an event here in Chile. If you are introduced directly to a person, you say hola and then give the kiss. But if someone arrives and takes it upon him or her-self to go around and kiss everyone, they often say their name to you while you are cheek-to-cheeking. Fernanda, they say, and muac! (this is the kissing sound in Spanish). In all the time I have face-to-faced with someone, exactly once has someone put her cheek next to mine and said "Aylin." We were both so surprised. Did you say Aylin? My name is Aylin! (sorta).
And for the first, and probably last time, I had a tocaya*. And though normally that is something that makes people laugh, I think we were both secretly annoyed. When you're used to having something all to yourself, sometimes you just don't want to share. And for me personally, I wanted to call it a jinx and make her buy me a coke. Or an iced americano.
*your tocayo is the person who has the same name as you.
Another time when people ask me how to spell my name is if I give them my phone number and they want to put it in their cell phone. Cómo se escribe? (lit: How is it written, meaning, how do you spell it?). Again, it doesn't really matter to me, the important part is that you know how to find it again. Begin with an E, an A, it doesn't matter to me.
If I am asked my name in an official context and have to deletrearlo (spell it), I will pronounce it in the most Chilean way possible, and spell it very slowly in an attempt to get it mostly right. Eh, ee latina, ele, eh, otra eh, ene. If I don't say "otra eh" I end up Eilen. Which might be a nice name somewhere, but it is not mine.
There was a brief period when people knew how to spell my name. There was a year-long reality show when I first arrived in Chile called La Granja (the farm). A slew of attractive Chileans (and one Czech girl, if I'm not mistaken) lived on a farm and whispered hateful conversations to each other under cover of darkness. There were a lot of tears as well, I recall. Most of the participants were flash-in-a-pan celebrities. And one of them was named Eileen (spelled just like that!). She felt like a princess, or so she said and so it appeared on the front page of the newspaper when she was kicked off the show and had her 15-minutes of fame. And for those 15 minutes, eh, ee latina, ele, eh, otra eh ene seemed like it might just catch on.
But really, it's not the spelling that's odd here, it's the name. I'm sure I've mentioned before all the cheek-kissing we do upon entering or leaving an event here in Chile. If you are introduced directly to a person, you say hola and then give the kiss. But if someone arrives and takes it upon him or her-self to go around and kiss everyone, they often say their name to you while you are cheek-to-cheeking. Fernanda, they say, and muac! (this is the kissing sound in Spanish). In all the time I have face-to-faced with someone, exactly once has someone put her cheek next to mine and said "Aylin." We were both so surprised. Did you say Aylin? My name is Aylin! (sorta).
And for the first, and probably last time, I had a tocaya*. And though normally that is something that makes people laugh, I think we were both secretly annoyed. When you're used to having something all to yourself, sometimes you just don't want to share. And for me personally, I wanted to call it a jinx and make her buy me a coke. Or an iced americano.
*your tocayo is the person who has the same name as you.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Perros Callejeros
Stray dogs. The very words make you want to pull in your extremities and take a peek over your shoulder. Street dogs can snarl. They can bite. They're desperate. They don't know social graces and will stop at nothing to assert their dominance, or grab a bite.
Enter the Santiago stray dog (perro callejero).
I'm not going to tell you that every stray dog in Santiago is a bed of pet-me-now roses. Certainly as a cyclist they present somewhat unique... challenges. If I name the following people, Mariela, Stephanie, Sonia, me, you will notice we have something in common. We were all riding our bikes when dogs came up and bit our legs/feet. Some of us went to the posta (public clinic) to get rabies shots, and some of us didn't. But more than anything, we were all stymied. You see, the stray dogs in Santiago are unique.
For one thing, did you see the adorable cardboard construction some neighbor has made for these dogs? This is not a one-off, they're all over the city. Even the little police hut in the nearby plaza has home-made found-materials doghouses. People love the dogs here.
They won't eat bread. Seriously. You think that the dog is standing nearby hoping for a crust. They're well-fed and they just want a little extra protein. Give them some of your ham or save yourself the trouble. They'll smell the bread and walk away.
Another unique thing about the stray dogs in Santiago is that they know how to cross the street. Not joking. They wait at the corner for the light to change (and the pedestrians to begin to cross), and they go with the group. I suppose this is Darwin's survival-of-the-fittest at its most basic. Smart dogs know how to cross the street. Less smart dogs don't make it.
But one of the things I like best about the dogs in Santiago is their fashion sense. Sure, you get dogs in matching vests, and even ones with tiny hats from time to time, but people have such a warmth in their hearts for the stray dogs (or such a bizarre sense of humor) that they routinely dress them up, wrestling them into neckbands, scarves, and as you can see here, even a (made-for-humans) shirt.
Which is good, because you wouldn't want to show up at your house without having dressed for dinner.
Enter the Santiago stray dog (perro callejero).
I'm not going to tell you that every stray dog in Santiago is a bed of pet-me-now roses. Certainly as a cyclist they present somewhat unique... challenges. If I name the following people, Mariela, Stephanie, Sonia, me, you will notice we have something in common. We were all riding our bikes when dogs came up and bit our legs/feet. Some of us went to the posta (public clinic) to get rabies shots, and some of us didn't. But more than anything, we were all stymied. You see, the stray dogs in Santiago are unique.
For one thing, did you see the adorable cardboard construction some neighbor has made for these dogs? This is not a one-off, they're all over the city. Even the little police hut in the nearby plaza has home-made found-materials doghouses. People love the dogs here.
They won't eat bread. Seriously. You think that the dog is standing nearby hoping for a crust. They're well-fed and they just want a little extra protein. Give them some of your ham or save yourself the trouble. They'll smell the bread and walk away.
Another unique thing about the stray dogs in Santiago is that they know how to cross the street. Not joking. They wait at the corner for the light to change (and the pedestrians to begin to cross), and they go with the group. I suppose this is Darwin's survival-of-the-fittest at its most basic. Smart dogs know how to cross the street. Less smart dogs don't make it.
But one of the things I like best about the dogs in Santiago is their fashion sense. Sure, you get dogs in matching vests, and even ones with tiny hats from time to time, but people have such a warmth in their hearts for the stray dogs (or such a bizarre sense of humor) that they routinely dress them up, wrestling them into neckbands, scarves, and as you can see here, even a (made-for-humans) shirt.
Which is good, because you wouldn't want to show up at your house without having dressed for dinner.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Sr(a) Perez de Arce is in big trouble
I don't know exactly who Sr(a) Perez de Arce is. I have a vague suspicion that he/she may have lived here sometime in the last sixty or so years since my building was built. I wonder how he/she had the furniture arranged, if he/she ever fell asleep in the living room and woke to find the rain trickling down the wall where the hinged windows close in the middle, looked at it and said, oh darn, I'll have to repaint, again. (or is that just me?)
When I lived in DC I owned a house that had been built in 1908. One day I went to the census archives to find out who'd lived there before me. Just names, but they told a story. Southern-sounding names, old-timey monnikers, and finally some Chinese ones, proving that in fact, the Chinese family that owned that place over in Cleveland Park actually might have owned the house at some point. In this house the previous owners had also left me things. A ballet slipper, an old wooden cart in the crawlspace in the basement, some foreign coins, the colilla (butt) of a pito (joint). They also left about six layers of who knows what kind of floor covering over the gorgeous mosaic that graced the tiny entryway floor. (astroturf, rug, carpet, burlap sticky tiles, vinyl tiles).
This apartment didn't really come with anything of note. Oh, it had an escoba and pala (broom and dustpan) and fifty years of floor wax accumulated in the corners of the rooms. It also has curtain rods, which I really appreciate, especially when I have a particularly large load of laundry to dry.
But the main legacy of any previous tenants here is their names on the bills. There's the aforementioned Sr(a) Perez de Arce who appears on my electric bill and I can't quite remember who on the gas bill. You see, the gas bill bothers me not even a little. It's low, and it's all cooking costs, as the only place I use gas in the house is the stove. Spending money on cooking food is not spending money on eating out, so the bill comes, and I feel virtuous and I pay it.
The Perez de Arce bill is quite another story. This is to whom the electricity bill comes. I am one person, tend to be only in one room at a time (though it is said I have a tendency to leave the kitchen light on). But my electricity bill is astronomical (for Chile). More than 20,000 pesos this month (about $35). The problem, unequivocably, is the hot water heater. Almost all homes in Chile have a calefont. It's a relatively awful gas-powered system of heating the water randomly between scalding and iceberg for the ten minutes in which you're bathing. Some people don't trust the pilot light and light them (sometimes with a match) before every shower. It's a very other-country experience for those of you with instant access to hot water. It also means people with calefonts may wash the dishes with cold water, but then again, they might not.
But I don't have a calefont. No, I have a hot water heater. A big cylinder hanging from the ceiling of my bathroom which provides some of the most delightful showers I have ever taken, and also gives me hot water for dishwashing with no notice at all. Guests have also reported enjoyable bathtimes. Which almost makes up for the giant bill (most of my friends pay 5,000 pesos, but pay more for gas, of course). In fact, I never think about the electricity bill except for when it comes, and when I pay it (online, natch).
At which point I get a bit frustrated with Sr(a) Perez de Arce and wish he/she would work on conservation a little more.
When I lived in DC I owned a house that had been built in 1908. One day I went to the census archives to find out who'd lived there before me. Just names, but they told a story. Southern-sounding names, old-timey monnikers, and finally some Chinese ones, proving that in fact, the Chinese family that owned that place over in Cleveland Park actually might have owned the house at some point. In this house the previous owners had also left me things. A ballet slipper, an old wooden cart in the crawlspace in the basement, some foreign coins, the colilla (butt) of a pito (joint). They also left about six layers of who knows what kind of floor covering over the gorgeous mosaic that graced the tiny entryway floor. (astroturf, rug, carpet, burlap sticky tiles, vinyl tiles).
This apartment didn't really come with anything of note. Oh, it had an escoba and pala (broom and dustpan) and fifty years of floor wax accumulated in the corners of the rooms. It also has curtain rods, which I really appreciate, especially when I have a particularly large load of laundry to dry.
But the main legacy of any previous tenants here is their names on the bills. There's the aforementioned Sr(a) Perez de Arce who appears on my electric bill and I can't quite remember who on the gas bill. You see, the gas bill bothers me not even a little. It's low, and it's all cooking costs, as the only place I use gas in the house is the stove. Spending money on cooking food is not spending money on eating out, so the bill comes, and I feel virtuous and I pay it.
The Perez de Arce bill is quite another story. This is to whom the electricity bill comes. I am one person, tend to be only in one room at a time (though it is said I have a tendency to leave the kitchen light on). But my electricity bill is astronomical (for Chile). More than 20,000 pesos this month (about $35). The problem, unequivocably, is the hot water heater. Almost all homes in Chile have a calefont. It's a relatively awful gas-powered system of heating the water randomly between scalding and iceberg for the ten minutes in which you're bathing. Some people don't trust the pilot light and light them (sometimes with a match) before every shower. It's a very other-country experience for those of you with instant access to hot water. It also means people with calefonts may wash the dishes with cold water, but then again, they might not.
But I don't have a calefont. No, I have a hot water heater. A big cylinder hanging from the ceiling of my bathroom which provides some of the most delightful showers I have ever taken, and also gives me hot water for dishwashing with no notice at all. Guests have also reported enjoyable bathtimes. Which almost makes up for the giant bill (most of my friends pay 5,000 pesos, but pay more for gas, of course). In fact, I never think about the electricity bill except for when it comes, and when I pay it (online, natch).
At which point I get a bit frustrated with Sr(a) Perez de Arce and wish he/she would work on conservation a little more.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Writing for love and occasionally money
Every now and then I get unsolicited "fan mail," which is only sometimes about Santiago and what it's like here, and sometimes is about how I get my ideas and only about half of that is from my mother. I like being connected to people, and I love the idea that my aimless blatherings with a side of tangential whatsamawhosis can bring a moment or two of levity, or might even (gasp) make you think from time to time.
I've just been twittered (because heaven forbid I spend even one iota of my short life without input from someone I only know in a country I like to call computerlandia) by a new good friend inside the computer recommending that I apply for a position in Lonely Planet's crack blogging team to blog about Santiago. I'll be honest; I don't actually tend to write about Santiago as much as I tend to write about every other thing that crosses my mind while I'm crossing the street or my eyes staring at the computer screen for the umpteenth hour. But I wake up with words on my fingertips and also on the tip of my tongue, a veritable thoughstorm that wants to come out, which makes me sound much more in need of psychiatric intervention than is actually the case. And if someone wants to add me to a team, or offer me another platform or even (gasp!) pay me, well then, sign me up.
And so I did.
And thus, a blog entry was born, at this, nearly 1 AM Chile time on Feb 6th, just a few short days before I go on what is alleged to be the first ever Smith family vacation. Alleged because we'll believe it when we see it. We have reason to doubt, we do. But we're optimistic all the same. And just a little bit superstitious, which is why we're not going to Costa Rica, which is a whole story in and of itself.
I've just been twittered (because heaven forbid I spend even one iota of my short life without input from someone I only know in a country I like to call computerlandia) by a new good friend inside the computer recommending that I apply for a position in Lonely Planet's crack blogging team to blog about Santiago. I'll be honest; I don't actually tend to write about Santiago as much as I tend to write about every other thing that crosses my mind while I'm crossing the street or my eyes staring at the computer screen for the umpteenth hour. But I wake up with words on my fingertips and also on the tip of my tongue, a veritable thoughstorm that wants to come out, which makes me sound much more in need of psychiatric intervention than is actually the case. And if someone wants to add me to a team, or offer me another platform or even (gasp!) pay me, well then, sign me up.
And so I did.
And thus, a blog entry was born, at this, nearly 1 AM Chile time on Feb 6th, just a few short days before I go on what is alleged to be the first ever Smith family vacation. Alleged because we'll believe it when we see it. We have reason to doubt, we do. But we're optimistic all the same. And just a little bit superstitious, which is why we're not going to Costa Rica, which is a whole story in and of itself.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
El Ascensor, de nuevo (the elevator again)
Here I go again about the elevator. Last night I came home around 11 PM and ended up in the elevator (which I have written about before, which either shows how interesting it is or how few things I have to talk about, judge for yourself here.) with three other people.
The elevator is small, and four is about its maximum capacity, though I believe it claims it can carry six. When I was young, I was in a play about getting stuck in an elevator, and we all carried on about the dreams we had for ourselves and what we would do if we got out without dying. I remember precious little about this play, except I had a sarcastic line about my kibbutz father being Idi Amin, which, poor imaginary kibbutz-father, that's a hell of a character assassination.
At any rate, whenever I'm in the elevator with multiple people I wonder if we will get stuck (as the elevator does from time to time), and what we will talk about if we do. I think I might suffer from elevator anxiety, actually, but it is not unfounded, as I have gotten stuck in this beast before.
The elevator is an old relic, and you have to punch in your desired floors one by one. Well, you can punch them all in at once, but the elevator will only "remember" the first one, and then you'll have to punch them in again.
Machismo and culture dictate that I walk into the elevator before any men present, and that I let them pull the door and then the gate shut. At this point, though, I tend to take charge. I ask everyone "A qué piso van?" (what floor?), and start the process of punching in the numbers. It's not because I have secret aspirations of being an elevator monitor, that guy who in the cool 1930's buildings in Manhattan, sits on a little stool and uses a sewing-machine like wheel to open and close the doors when the elevator arrives at the appointed floor. It's because I live on the sixth and final floor, and no matter who is in the elevator with me, my button goes last. I always ask everyone else because I prefer to minimize my time in the elevator (see elevator anxiety, above), and also because, even though it's childish, I prefer not to say the word "sexto" which means sixth when asked what floor I'm going to, and saying "seis" (six) makes it sound like I don't know my ordinal numbers in Spanish. Which I do, though I get tripped up on eleven and above.
The other thing is that at a very heightly nearly scraping 5'7", and the fact that hey, I'm not from here, and adding to that, I often come and go with a bicycle, nearly everyone knows who I am and where I live. And maybe I'm spacy, or just flighty but I can get into the elevator with the same person five times, and still not remember their floor unless they're my hallmate. So every time I ask what floor people are going to I feel like a little bit of a jerk for not remembering. And so I send out a semipublic apology to the people who live in this cute old building just steps from the Santa Ana Metro. And it goes a little like this: Sorry I don't know what floor you live on, I'm just not that copuchenta (gossipy/nosy). And also, third floor: ladies' lingerie!
The elevator is small, and four is about its maximum capacity, though I believe it claims it can carry six. When I was young, I was in a play about getting stuck in an elevator, and we all carried on about the dreams we had for ourselves and what we would do if we got out without dying. I remember precious little about this play, except I had a sarcastic line about my kibbutz father being Idi Amin, which, poor imaginary kibbutz-father, that's a hell of a character assassination.
At any rate, whenever I'm in the elevator with multiple people I wonder if we will get stuck (as the elevator does from time to time), and what we will talk about if we do. I think I might suffer from elevator anxiety, actually, but it is not unfounded, as I have gotten stuck in this beast before.
The elevator is an old relic, and you have to punch in your desired floors one by one. Well, you can punch them all in at once, but the elevator will only "remember" the first one, and then you'll have to punch them in again.
Machismo and culture dictate that I walk into the elevator before any men present, and that I let them pull the door and then the gate shut. At this point, though, I tend to take charge. I ask everyone "A qué piso van?" (what floor?), and start the process of punching in the numbers. It's not because I have secret aspirations of being an elevator monitor, that guy who in the cool 1930's buildings in Manhattan, sits on a little stool and uses a sewing-machine like wheel to open and close the doors when the elevator arrives at the appointed floor. It's because I live on the sixth and final floor, and no matter who is in the elevator with me, my button goes last. I always ask everyone else because I prefer to minimize my time in the elevator (see elevator anxiety, above), and also because, even though it's childish, I prefer not to say the word "sexto" which means sixth when asked what floor I'm going to, and saying "seis" (six) makes it sound like I don't know my ordinal numbers in Spanish. Which I do, though I get tripped up on eleven and above.
The other thing is that at a very heightly nearly scraping 5'7", and the fact that hey, I'm not from here, and adding to that, I often come and go with a bicycle, nearly everyone knows who I am and where I live. And maybe I'm spacy, or just flighty but I can get into the elevator with the same person five times, and still not remember their floor unless they're my hallmate. So every time I ask what floor people are going to I feel like a little bit of a jerk for not remembering. And so I send out a semipublic apology to the people who live in this cute old building just steps from the Santa Ana Metro. And it goes a little like this: Sorry I don't know what floor you live on, I'm just not that copuchenta (gossipy/nosy). And also, third floor: ladies' lingerie!
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Baby Bop suffers a fall, or how a drunk driver gave hundreds of kids nightmares!
The other night (let's call it Saturday) I was on my way to meet up with some friends for libations (don't get excited, I had a gigantic late-night coffee) and decided to go on foot. From my house I pass the Pan American highway, on which is perched the Santa Ana stop of the spiffy Santiago metro, and then toodle up the street and up the street, passing minimarkets and verdulerías (fruit and veg stores) and even De Los Reyes, a Peruvian restaurant that also specializes in sushi, and actually has a futomaki with oshinko in it, which is the only time I've ever seen oshinko here, so I have a special love for them.
A couple of blocks later comes the Plaza de Armas. The Plaza de Armas in Chile is like the zócalo in Mexico. It's the central square, the ground zero for the city, from which everything fans out. This particular Plaza de Armas has a cathedral, several restaurants, a funny little roofed arcade with lots of Chilean comida chatarra (fast/junk food) including the famous completo (hotdog with unspeakable things atop), a giant indigenous man's head as a statue, another one of a horse which I don't remember who it is but I'm sure he's important, people playing chess under a gazebo, etc.
There are also scads and tons and groups and lots of people. It's a place to grab some shade, sketch for money, even do some busking if the time is right. It's kind of a little Lima over there, too, with lots and lots of Peruvians, though calling it little Lima shows a complete ignorance, because Limeños do not come and live in Chile if they want to go somewhere else. Most of the Peruvians around are from the southern part of Peru, where work opportunities are sparse. So they come to make their lives and generally be looked down upon in Chile, the great white south (at least that's how some people see it).
So I was walking along the Plaza de Armas, advancing towards my drink spot when I heard a soft impact, followed by an "oh!" I (along with my 800 or so best friends) turned around to see a señora splayed out on the ground, having just been hit by a car, which was speeding off into the distance, crashing into cars and pillars and posts like a ping pong ball on the way to the big bonus.
It's a sad state of affairs that the woman was hit while walking through the plaza, poor thing, and I'm hoping she wasn't hurt too badly. But the thing that really makes this event memorable, is that lying on the ground beside her was Baby Bop, Barney the Dinosaur's cousin (I had to ask to find out), similarly waving her arms and legs, and moaning. A giant crowd formed, but no one took off her mask, perhaps along the same lines of how you don't take off a cyclist's helmet after an accident until the paramedics arrive.
I had places to be, and I don't like the whole gawking-at-a-scene thing. There was a set of stemmed balloon flowers, and one of them had gotten away, so I brought it over to where the other ones were, and a man said to me, those are her balloons. And I wondered, if only briefly, what people would think if inside the Baby Bop costume was actually a man.
And then I continued up the street where I ran into the guy that ran the internet café I used to go to when I lived in Bellas Artes, and also came across the car (with the drunken schmuck inside) which had caused all the damage. I may not be a gawker, but I do like to take the occasional snapshot, if only with my snappy pink flipphone.
What I saw is what follows:
I did not, of course see it sideways, it's just that through the wonders of modern technology, my internet connection is acting up. I'm sure Telefónica would like to believe it is not their fault, but I know it is. So sideways photos for everyone!
A couple of blocks later comes the Plaza de Armas. The Plaza de Armas in Chile is like the zócalo in Mexico. It's the central square, the ground zero for the city, from which everything fans out. This particular Plaza de Armas has a cathedral, several restaurants, a funny little roofed arcade with lots of Chilean comida chatarra (fast/junk food) including the famous completo (hotdog with unspeakable things atop), a giant indigenous man's head as a statue, another one of a horse which I don't remember who it is but I'm sure he's important, people playing chess under a gazebo, etc.
There are also scads and tons and groups and lots of people. It's a place to grab some shade, sketch for money, even do some busking if the time is right. It's kind of a little Lima over there, too, with lots and lots of Peruvians, though calling it little Lima shows a complete ignorance, because Limeños do not come and live in Chile if they want to go somewhere else. Most of the Peruvians around are from the southern part of Peru, where work opportunities are sparse. So they come to make their lives and generally be looked down upon in Chile, the great white south (at least that's how some people see it).
So I was walking along the Plaza de Armas, advancing towards my drink spot when I heard a soft impact, followed by an "oh!" I (along with my 800 or so best friends) turned around to see a señora splayed out on the ground, having just been hit by a car, which was speeding off into the distance, crashing into cars and pillars and posts like a ping pong ball on the way to the big bonus.
It's a sad state of affairs that the woman was hit while walking through the plaza, poor thing, and I'm hoping she wasn't hurt too badly. But the thing that really makes this event memorable, is that lying on the ground beside her was Baby Bop, Barney the Dinosaur's cousin (I had to ask to find out), similarly waving her arms and legs, and moaning. A giant crowd formed, but no one took off her mask, perhaps along the same lines of how you don't take off a cyclist's helmet after an accident until the paramedics arrive.
I had places to be, and I don't like the whole gawking-at-a-scene thing. There was a set of stemmed balloon flowers, and one of them had gotten away, so I brought it over to where the other ones were, and a man said to me, those are her balloons. And I wondered, if only briefly, what people would think if inside the Baby Bop costume was actually a man.
And then I continued up the street where I ran into the guy that ran the internet café I used to go to when I lived in Bellas Artes, and also came across the car (with the drunken schmuck inside) which had caused all the damage. I may not be a gawker, but I do like to take the occasional snapshot, if only with my snappy pink flipphone.
What I saw is what follows:
I did not, of course see it sideways, it's just that through the wonders of modern technology, my internet connection is acting up. I'm sure Telefónica would like to believe it is not their fault, but I know it is. So sideways photos for everyone!
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
The mother of all stepfathers
A bevy of interesting things must have happened in 1981, but I remember only one. It was the year in which one member of the Smith family extravaganza that was science experiments and freakish foods and trips to Chinatown and long bikerides and hanging on the fence waiting for my father's paddleball games to hopefully not end with a broken wrist, simply was no more. Sure, we had mourning and sadness and pick-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps and other assorted death-related conversations and periods of morose thoughts and whatnot.
And then one day a classmate of mine asked me if I thought my mother would remarry. It was not something I'd thought about, and I kept on trying on the word stepfather. My stepfather. I could have a stepfather. Would he be a kind stepfather? a nurturing stepfather? A violent jerk of a stepfather? I wondered these things.
In the end, I grew up and left the house without a stepfather, and if my mother were to remarry now I'd have a "mother's husband," not a stepfather. I'm too grown, too independent, too fully formed to get another parent at this age. Unless he has a boat. But I digress.
So I figured I'd go my whole life without a stepfather, and I figured that was okay. Of course, having one would bring the grand total of humans bearing a Y chromosome in the extended family to three, and that might be interesting, but aside from that, I really haven't given it much thought. Until recently.
Recently (and now my mother is going to find out and be all kinds of annoyed with me for not having mentioned this earlier) I suffered a kitchen incident. Not an incident really, so much as an accident. There was a great slicing. And flight from the house, amid applying pressure and the eventual application of stitches (still with me, mom?).
As it happened, this was on the outside of my right thumb. Nobody really wants details, so let's just say the stitches are out and I'm fine and all that. And in my defense, this was during a period of great familial stress, so I decided to mostly keep mum on the topic. So what's this about the stepfather?
Well, it turns out that the word for stepfather in Spanish padrastro, also means hangnail. You know, that pesky little piece of skin that won't stay stuck down to the side of your nail and you clip it and nibble at it and man does it ever hurt, and you try lotion and even gloves at night and darnit, why does it keep happening?
Well the location of my injury is right in the hangnail zone, and between the "curaciones" (bandage changings) and the stitches and the steristrips, I am pretty much healed. But there was this matter of (sorry) dead skin to contend with. And I won't give details, because really, who wants them.
Let's just say that only 28 years after my father died, I finally got the mother of all padrastros, the most beautiful of hangnails. And it didn't come with a boat, so I just performed a little home surgery. Please! no photos!
And then one day a classmate of mine asked me if I thought my mother would remarry. It was not something I'd thought about, and I kept on trying on the word stepfather. My stepfather. I could have a stepfather. Would he be a kind stepfather? a nurturing stepfather? A violent jerk of a stepfather? I wondered these things.
In the end, I grew up and left the house without a stepfather, and if my mother were to remarry now I'd have a "mother's husband," not a stepfather. I'm too grown, too independent, too fully formed to get another parent at this age. Unless he has a boat. But I digress.
So I figured I'd go my whole life without a stepfather, and I figured that was okay. Of course, having one would bring the grand total of humans bearing a Y chromosome in the extended family to three, and that might be interesting, but aside from that, I really haven't given it much thought. Until recently.
Recently (and now my mother is going to find out and be all kinds of annoyed with me for not having mentioned this earlier) I suffered a kitchen incident. Not an incident really, so much as an accident. There was a great slicing. And flight from the house, amid applying pressure and the eventual application of stitches (still with me, mom?).
As it happened, this was on the outside of my right thumb. Nobody really wants details, so let's just say the stitches are out and I'm fine and all that. And in my defense, this was during a period of great familial stress, so I decided to mostly keep mum on the topic. So what's this about the stepfather?
Well, it turns out that the word for stepfather in Spanish padrastro, also means hangnail. You know, that pesky little piece of skin that won't stay stuck down to the side of your nail and you clip it and nibble at it and man does it ever hurt, and you try lotion and even gloves at night and darnit, why does it keep happening?
Well the location of my injury is right in the hangnail zone, and between the "curaciones" (bandage changings) and the stitches and the steristrips, I am pretty much healed. But there was this matter of (sorry) dead skin to contend with. And I won't give details, because really, who wants them.
Let's just say that only 28 years after my father died, I finally got the mother of all padrastros, the most beautiful of hangnails. And it didn't come with a boat, so I just performed a little home surgery. Please! no photos!
Sunday, February 1, 2009
phonetic spelling of English words in Spanish causes mayhem, news at 11:00
The English vowel sound system. Oh! the English vowel sound system causes problems, it does. There's that whole marry/Mary/merry dichotomy (trichotomy? certainly not a tracheotomy) where native English speakers have one, two or three pronunciations of those words, depending on where they are from. I had three growing up, with a fierce Brooklyn accent of which only one audio tape exists, and would otherwise morph into the memory of childhood, like the time I was jumping rope in sandals and managed to get the rope between my toes and the shoes, yank my feet up out from under me and land in a bruised heap upon my tender knees. On the pebbly sidewalk. Ow.
At any rate, I used to have three, and now that my accent has flattened, I have two, and many native speakers of other languages just look at me sadly when I pronounce one and then the other and they hear nary (no pun intended) a difference. For more details on the marry, Mary merry merger and more phonetics than you ever wanted to know, click here.
Spanish has a much more limited vowel-sound pallete, which is made up for by the existence of thankfully now only two subjunctive tenses (the future has all but disappeared) and the tricky single r, which for some reason vexes me more than the double r, regardless of how many times I chant the trabalenguas (tonguetwister) about the railroad and other fun words with r and rr.
Erre con erre cigarro, erre con erre carril, rapido ruedan los carros de la ruedas del ferrocarril.
Ahem. So Spanish doesn't have all the vowel sounds of English. Chileans love to borrow English words. This leads to some very... strange spellings (and later pronunciations of borrowed words).
Consider the following spelling and pronunciation of our fun DJ pituto (which itself means a nepotism-like favor system extended to friends). Behold, the diyei. You know, the diyei. Sounds like some Yiddish fearmongering word. Watchit! the diyei knows where you sleep!
But the true prize on this poster is actually in the lower right hand corner. I'll give you a minute to find it.
At the door the price is 2,500 pesos (about four dollars at today's exchange rate). But if you bring a flayer with you, that's right, a flayer, a person who tears flesh off of animals, (which in Spanish would be a despellejador) well then it's only 2,000 pesos.
Seems like a bad idea to me to invite flayers to your concert, but hey, anything to save a buck. Or in this economy about 75 cents.
At any rate, I used to have three, and now that my accent has flattened, I have two, and many native speakers of other languages just look at me sadly when I pronounce one and then the other and they hear nary (no pun intended) a difference. For more details on the marry, Mary merry merger and more phonetics than you ever wanted to know, click here.
Spanish has a much more limited vowel-sound pallete, which is made up for by the existence of thankfully now only two subjunctive tenses (the future has all but disappeared) and the tricky single r, which for some reason vexes me more than the double r, regardless of how many times I chant the trabalenguas (tonguetwister) about the railroad and other fun words with r and rr.
Erre con erre cigarro, erre con erre carril, rapido ruedan los carros de la ruedas del ferrocarril.
Ahem. So Spanish doesn't have all the vowel sounds of English. Chileans love to borrow English words. This leads to some very... strange spellings (and later pronunciations of borrowed words).
Consider the following spelling and pronunciation of our fun DJ pituto (which itself means a nepotism-like favor system extended to friends). Behold, the diyei. You know, the diyei. Sounds like some Yiddish fearmongering word. Watchit! the diyei knows where you sleep!
But the true prize on this poster is actually in the lower right hand corner. I'll give you a minute to find it.
At the door the price is 2,500 pesos (about four dollars at today's exchange rate). But if you bring a flayer with you, that's right, a flayer, a person who tears flesh off of animals, (which in Spanish would be a despellejador) well then it's only 2,000 pesos.
Seems like a bad idea to me to invite flayers to your concert, but hey, anything to save a buck. Or in this economy about 75 cents.
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