What's your Starbucks Alias? A tale from Chile

After I was born, I was a wee thing in a swaddly shirt that pinned my left arm to my right shoulder, due to me being born with a broken collarbone. My family would refer to me as "the one with one wing," though since I was one of, well, the only white baby in the hospital in Crown Heights, Brooklyn (which no longer exists, and which I just realized is on the same street as the home of a high school boyfriend), it was easy to know who I was.

They also called me Eileen (when not joking about my broken collarbone or other distinguishing features), after my maternal grandfather, an Ashkenazi Jewish tradition of naming with the first initial of a deceased relative. This relative died while I was busy gestating, knitting together a collarbone which would later break and form a funny knot like a treebranch, only presumably, less dark.

My name never caused me much woe, until around the 80s sometime, when the song Come on Eileen came into vogue, and I had to be serenaded rather than spoken to, and joked about. There was also this spate of jokes, and well, I'd rather not tell them, I suppose. So Eileen. It's a fairly run of the mill name. Nothing too interesting, got a couple of extra vowels that might trip you up a bit, but it's not hard to remember, doesn't require any unusual tongue gymnastics or glottal stops. Just a name.

And then I moved to Chile. While the names Edgardo and Rodrigo might together be my nemeses, I have yet to meet a Chilean that says my name the way I used to expect it to be said.

But I'm over it. Really. Aygleen is my new name, similar to the now-abandoned "Idreen" my nephew called me briefly. It doesn't bother me. I even say it that way, so as not to trip people up.

Here's where I confess that I go to Starbucks. Sometimes. Okay, not just sometimes. More than a little. It's reliable, the coffee is big, there's wifi, and I'm a capitalist pig. Are you over it yet? I am.

So when I go to Starbucks, they invariably ask my name. They say, "Cuál es tu nombre?" and I reply "Aygleen" and they say "Cómo?" and I say "Aygleen." (the g is sort of silent, but the l is way pointier and further back than in English).

And then I saunter down to the coffee pickup area, waiting for (usually) a tall americano or an iced americano with extra ice (or an espresso over ice, but never request that at this coffee shop). And the great hilarity begins.

There's the (presumable) abbreviation:

(Eli)

Then there's the holy vowel chaos:

(Aylen)

Sometimes there's close, but no cigar:

(Aileen)

Often it's as though they think I'm ill:




(Ailin)

It's gotten to the point where R, my partner in crime and Starbucks, waits, eyebrows raised at the counter to see what they've labeled my cup. Luckily it's fairly unusual to hear of someone named anything similar, and no one ever orders an Americano other than me (it would seem), so it's easy enough to figure out which one is mine.

And now let's switch continents. I was recently in NY for a travel bloggers thingame , and having a caffeine emergency, like you do. I hopped into a nearby Starbucks in the West Village, and when asked my name, I thought, well, it's not fair, I always have to give a foreign name and they always get it wrong. If I give them my name in English, it's a freebie. Grandpa Ely (my namesake) would want me to set down more of a challenge.

So when they said, "And your name?" I said, "Maria Elena." "What?" "Maria Elena."

You see, it would have been an unfair advantage in the "Can anyone spell my name correctly or pronounce it well" game to give a name so easy, so simple, so American (by which I mean USA-ian, though actually the name is Irish, but of Greek origin, related to Helena, which is how I came up with Maria Elena). So I gave the first name that came to my mind. Plus my ahijada (goddaughter) has a similar name, and yes, I'm Jewish, so not really her godmother per se, but it works for me and her family and anyway, that's not the point of the story.)

And how did they do on Maria Elena at one of the plague of Starbuxen (as I like to call them) in the West Village at 8 AM one morning on a sultry summer day?

You be the judge.


(Maliana)

Thanks to my sister for pointing out this NPR piece on "your starbucks name" , not that they need my traffic, but I love NPR, and also, I have thought of inventing a new Starbucks name, but I might forget and then my coffee would get cold, and I would be sad. Or melty, in the case of the iced americano.

And in the interest of full disclosure, one time I was out with Abby, and this happened, but it was up on Isidora Goyonochea, close to Sanhattan (I know, I hate that, too), and it's the closest you'll get to being in the United States here in Chile, and also, it wouldn't be fair to judge all of Chile on the basis of one barista at Starbucks up in El Golf.


(Eileen)

I know, I was shocked, too. Maybe Shefali Kulkarni, the reporting fellow at the Village Voice who spoke her piece on All Things Considered, should give ordering coffee in Chile a whirl. I'm betting they'd write it Chefaly. Maybe she should visit. She'd be in good company.

So, what's your Starbucks alias?

Chilean swear words and their kindergarten equivalents

Chileans are a bunch of potty-mouths. There, I said it.

I have never heard so many, so colorful, so floridly descriptive garabatos (swear words) any place else in my life. Of course, I've also lived here for a long time, and seem to have an ear for such things. I also think that your grandmother (but certainly not mine) was right, and that they lose their impact when you use them all the time. And if you were wondering, for the most part I don't participate.

One of the main garabatos is "conchasumadre." It means, roughly, that part of your mother's anatomy through which you arrived to this world. Charming! Think for a moment about shouting it at your kid's next little league game or if your niece takes a dive during her ballet recital. Saying it in Spanish might not be your style, so choose some other language and just let it go! You'll be the talk of the town!

But sometimes even in potty-mouth Chile, someone will get partway through the swear and have second thoughts. What if a child is nearby (most probable). Or maybe the family priest (unlikely). Or what if I just decided that your mother's anatomy doesn't bear shouting about? Well, don't worry, they've got a silly expression for that. Chileans have an out as they get half-way through the word, and they can say instead of the term at hand, contumelia.

Apparently this is an insult that we come to from Latin, but whatever its underlying meaning is, it can't be as grosero as the Chilean version.

Occasionally, the speaker gets even closer to the actual term, and inserts instead, Conchalí! This one is particularly clever because the word concha (which originally just means seashell) is actually present in the replacement word, and also, Conchalí is a comuna, or district of Santiago (which I don't believe I've yet explored on bike on its own, but I have been to all the surrounding comunas by bike, so I may actually have crossed in without knowing). It makes me want to replace the offensive word not just with Conchalí, but with other nearby comunas, like Quilicura or Huechuraba or Recoleta, or the best of all, Independencia! (just because it's a great name, no harm meant to the other comunas). While the possibilities are not endless here, they are various, since in Santiago alone we have either 32 or 37 comunas, depending on how you look at things (some are considered part of the RM, or región metropolitana, but geographically they technically are not).

Another silly replacement word for a swear word is chupalla, which is a kind of hat, but takes its power from the fact that chupar means to suck. I know, you wish you'd thought of it yourself.

And for those of you who have a passing knowlege of Spanish, you'll know why I should have posted this on a Wednesday. (miérrrrrcoles being the stand-in for mierda, which your great aunt Gracie would have said, "sugar, honey, iced tea).

Have a great effing day!

Who's coming to visit Santiago? (and bearshapedsphere?)

Living in what Chileans often like to call the "poto del mundo" or the world's backside (I like the word tush better, but the phrase just weighed better with backside, try it, you'll see), you'd think that the number of people coming to visit or stopping by to say hi would be small to negligible.

After all, who wants to come to Santiago when you could go to neighboring Argentina and eat beef until your pores are weeping cholesterol, or watch elegant older men dance tango with nubile young things that will never give you their number? Chile has a reputation for being "Latin America Lite," an impossibility beyond logical fathoming. It is Latin America. It cannot be a lighter version thereof. Your Latin-America-meter is miscalibrated. May I suggest some porotos granados while you get it fixed?

Ahem.

And so, my soapbox disassembled, tucked away for some other time, I wanted to tell you about some of our recentish visitors. Since moving to Chile, a couple of people I actually knew from the real world BC (before Chile) have come to visit. Mainly, Mamaj. She's hilarious, easily entertained and only complains about the cold. A good guest, by all stretches. She also allows me to pause and take pictures, including this ridiculous one of her "hitchhiking" in San Pedro de Atacama, which I've posted before but never stops entertaining my socks off. Also, she doesn't have a camera, so she never takes pictures of me (score!)



But Mamaj has to come visit. I'm her kid. There's also this other whole group of people that have come through town in the last couple of years that I've hung out with or dragged hither and yon or let drag me hither and yon. Travelers, people I've met before, people I've not met before, people who've found me through my writing, through twitter, through TBEX or who knows how.

A couple of well-placed (and reasonably normal-sounding) emails, and we're off. I don't do a background check or anything, just a cup of coffee and a portal into my life in Chile. Sometimes I miss people because I'm not around, or am actually where you're from (Looking at you, Linda and Craig from Indietravelpodcast (though I had met up with them in Christchurch a month or so before), but lots of times it works out, and it's usually great. People come to visit here, and I get to learn about wherever their "there" is (or was, or will be), usually over a long walk or something to eat or drink. The conversations often turn away from travel and to something more overarching. That's my favorite. Sometimes I find new friends, or in one case, a primo político (someone who's like a cousin to me, though we have no family ties). A found family, if you will.

In what I believe is their order of appearance from most recent into the past, here are some visitors that have made the trek down to Santiago.

Anil from Foxnomad
Audrey and Dan from Uncornered Market
Ivy Manning who is a foodie, writer, and cooking instructor
David Miller, Senior Editor at MatadorNetwork who also has his own sites and writes all over the place
Laura (David's wife), who I share a birthday with, and their tot, who doesn't yet blog.
Chris from the Art of Nonconformity
Heather and Eric from dirtyhippies
Jeff Jung from Career Break Secrets
and a slew of people who either don't blog or don't blog anymore. I'm looking at you Padraic, Maria and Pam, Sam and Rich, etc.

Anthony Bourdain apparently also came to visit, but didn't make an appointment to stop by. I know, I can hardly believe it myself.

So I guess what I'm saying is, even if you feel like you're kind of stuck where you are for the count, eye-opening visits can come from out of the blue, even if you live on the tush side of the planet.

Just let me know if you're on your way. Pam, Marie, are you reading me?

Lessons from a three year old

This is not about Chile and it's not really about New York, and maybe you will forgive me or maybe you will aggressively click elsewhere because you prefer to gaze at your own navel than watch me pontificate on my own.

I recently made a trip to the states and one afternoon, my sister's kids and I went to a playground made of brightly colored plastic so they could run up and down things and slide and whatnot.

My niece is nine, already a señorita and a little unimpressed by slides and the like, so while she deigned to go down the slide a couple of times with her brother, she later peeled off to show off her superior (and long-legged) climbing skills and ambled off to redo her hair.



Which gave someone an idea.



And I doubted, I did, as he took one step forwards and two steps back, and then two steps forward, and one step back.



And he stepped some more. Check out how tightly his left hand is gripping the side of the slide.



Looking a little awkward here, but it looks like he's going to make it.



A little lip biting and shuffling and determination pay off, and the moppet (I'm not allowed to call him that any more) surprises everyone, especially himself.



And when I saw the pictures, I thought, that's probably how we should all live our lives. With grit, determination, and last but not least, joy for when it all pays off. And don't forget the underbite.

Though maybe with a little less blurriness.

A little splash of Santiago autumn in your winter (or summer)

They say that a sudden cold snap gives the very best foliage leaf-peepers could ever hope for. Looking at pretty, color-changing leaves is written into my history, as crispy shufflewalking to school as a child reminded me of crunching through the first layers of spanikopita which my foodie parents introduced into our meal rotation sometime in the 70s, swearing about the drying-out phyllo optional.

I love the changing leaves, and would nearly develop a case of what here we call tortocolis, but I suppose in English is probably called a stiff neck, craning to the right as I walked to the post office in college, back when a) I lived in New England and b) people sent things through the mail. As an aside, I got my second piece of real mail this year, and it was from the IRS, and no, it was not an audit notice, and I did not even have to go get it from the post office office, miracles do happen.

So, back to the leaves. This year's winter is brutal in Santiago, and people who live in precarious housing are particularly screwed. I may be cold, but at night I can follow some of Abby's clever tips, and a few of my own I'm going to write about, and at least one of which I already mentioned here.

But before the winter set in and most of the trees lost their leaves, or at least their color, we had the most spectacular Santiago fall I've ever seen, most of it concentrated through the park along the river in Providencia and if I smelled hard enough, I could almost smell some apple cider and cider donuts from Atkins, but instead I went to La Tetería and had some chai.

So bundle a little tighter (or turn up the AC if you're in the northern hemisphere) and have a look, at some Santiago fall, just for you. Because color like this is never out of season.

Papeleo in Downtown Manhattan

If there's one thing that Latin America does better than the United States, it's the papeleo. This word comes from papel, meaning paper, and has to do with anything that involves pushing papers this way and that, whether it's under a window or through the mail or any other way. In short, bureaucracy (which I have only recently learned how to spell, and of which I am inordinately proud).

Latin American bureaucracy is often multi-step and usually involves waiting in long lines. My main papeleo in Chile usually has to do with residency, and for the moment I am in the clear until 2012, when I will have to re-up to keep my residencia definitiva (like a green card). The story behind getting this is long and unwieldy, and your mileage may vary, but I basically had two one-year residencias sujeto a contrato (residency subject to work contract) and then applied for residencia definitiva, which took some months, and I had to get a piece of paper stamped to continue the vigencia (efficacy/up-to-datedness) of my carnet because it had expired but my paperwork was "en tramite" (in process). Your mileage may vary because this was during the amnesty period for people from the Americas (but not the US or Canada) who were in Chile without papers.

Whew.

So, Latin America, tramites, papeleo, bureaucracy. But it was the United States government that had me sweating to a different tune just about a week ago, when I was in the middle of a summer cold. You see, I file my taxes electronically. And just after I hit send, about ten minutes later, I thought to myself, d'oh! there's some more income I forgot to report. I work freelance in the states, and I had forgotten about some checks I'd been issued, where normally almost everyone pays me through Paypal.

But you can't file your amended tax return electronically, for this you need paper. So I trudged into the city to the office of the people that prepared my taxes (and oh! was that sum of money not fun to part with, but I hope to take over once I see how they did it with all the me living internationally and freelance and all that stuff) on a day when the outdoor thermometers downtown said this:



(which is about 38 Celsius, if you were wondering)

But at least I got to do this (love the mirrored camera-holding self portraits):



And see this:



Which was great, because if there's one thing I love almost as much as street art, it's murals. This one in the Fulton Street subway station exit near Dey Street.

And then there was this moment when my tax guy told me I could simply write a check for the extra $5 I owed, and for which I schlepped all the way downtown to sign a single, solitary piece of paper (couldn't we have done this by fax?) and I smiled, and said to him, "I don't have paper checks in the US." (This because I hate the papeleo). And great incredulousness ensued and I handed someone at the office a $5 bill and they brought me a thick-bottomed glass of water and asked me about Santiago and I signed the paper and then went on my merry way, going right back to the railroad because I had a summer cold and if there's one thing worse than a summer cold, it's a summer cold with no diet rootbeer. And papeleo. But at least you got some pictures out of it.

Next time from Santiago!

Blogging as storytelling

Blogging is many things to many people. It is keeping people up to date, it is carving out a space of fame (but sadly, probably not fortune). It is a record of what was going on in your life at any given moment, or even a portfolio to send prospective employers to. It's networking. We blog because we can, because we like to, and because it's there.

We blog for all of these reasons, and for one reason more.

We are storytellers.

From the first breathy recordings we have of me as an almost three year old, with a wicked Brooklyn accent, recounting the events of my day (and then... and then... and then...) up until thirty-cough years later, I am a storyteller. I have been telling stories since I could, both because I love to hear my own voice and because I love to talk to people after I tell my story. There's the one about the guy with the infected tattoo on the overnight bus in Argentina, the one about the giant sow that surprised me on an island off the coast of Honduras walking down a narrow path, the trip to a Mexican restaurant in West Virginia, where one patron explained to another what a tohr-TIL-a was (it's like braid, but it's rouhnd). I love these stories, one and all. Other people might have a sixpack of stories, or maybe even a dozen. I have a flat of them. And when that flat is exhausted, there's another flat waiting below, like a never ending supply of farm-fresh eggs.

Blogging can be many things to many people. For me, it's a place to share with you my great love of storytelling and my great love of hearing other people talk and meeting other storytellers and listening to their great collection of tales.

One egg at a time.

Loving Santiago's Street Art, and bemoaning its demise

Here in the home camp, we have been going through a metric crapton of photos and other assorted memorabilia from the Smith family Robinson (what?). Anyway, those will show up in another place and time, and wow, I could go on forever about that. And I also now see that a) I really should label my photos better/at all and that b) my niece and nephew are going to have it really easy when they go through my photos when I am dead, because most of them exist only in digital form, and hitting delete doesn't take much energy, I don't believe.

But miraculously, I was able to find a couple of pictures I'd been looking for, to bring you this.

Sometimes you're just walking along, minding your own business, hanging out with Margaret your photographer (blogger, winewriter, translator, etc) friend, and you spy a colorful alley, this one off of Parque Forestal just west of Plaza Italia.



And you go off to investigate and open the pretend shutter on your pretend camera, or the real shutter on your pretend camera, or real shutter on your real camera (but not the real shutter on your pretend camera, because that's just silly), and you get this.



And then four months later, I happened by on my bike, as I am wont do to, and I caught this vision (go phone photography!)



And I know it's just paint, and it's possible that the person whose building it is never wanted the mural or didn't want it anymore, or even that the very artist who painted it had come to cover it up. But that's not likely, and it was art, and it was my art, mine as in that I get to see it whenever I pass that corner, and now not.

And maybe I'm just too emotional to fall in love with street art, but I was disheartened, and I still am. Which is why I have to go out and take pictures of everything, even if my niece and nephew have to get finger cramps hitting delete, delete, delete a million years from now when I die.

Love the murals of Chile? Me too! See more here, here or here.

Eating an Argentine Empanada in New York

Of all the things you could eat when wandering the streets of downtown Manhattan, whether it be a knish, a pretzel, a slice of pizza, a samosa, a soft taco dripping with salsa verde, the thing that appealed to me the most on my first day in "the city" was this.



It's an Argentine empanada, served by a Salvadorean counter guy (not pictured), in New York along side Mexican hot sauce. It had tuna and some kind of sauce inside, and was quite tasty, though the dough would have been much better had it been heated in a convection oven, rather than the microwave held behind the counter. I was feeling very pan-american when this $4.00 empanada was handed to me, and was happy to see that despite the normal diminutive size of Argentine empanadas, this one was roughly meal-sized. In a case where your appetite is worn down by the heat, I suppose.

And this is what the place looked like inside:


(Ruben's Empanadas, Church Street Location, I believe).

At the time of this meal, Argentina was still in it to win it re: world cup, and we were still haunted by the idea of Maradonna stripping off and running around Buenos Aires. Chile had already been trounced by Brazil, and I was still hoping Paraguay could pull off a win. Maybe rather than an empanada I should have been eating chipa guazú, instead.

But I'll never give up on my cheese and corn empanada (with scallions!) from the Picá de Los Cuñados on Brasil, just off the plaza. I'm back on the 16th, who's in?

Santiago, the Indianapolis of South America! Now, with fewer bugs.

I just read a book (yes another one, yay, books!) in which the writer quotes another traveler as saying that "Santiago is the Indianapolis of South America." Independent of the fact that I dislike intensely the comparison of X is the Y of Z (Buenos Aires is the New York of South America! Copenhagen is the Paris of Scandinavia! Ow, my aching this-is-like-that-o-meter), I'll admit I am particularly confused by mountainous, quirky, nearly seven million strong Santiago being compared to a place that's famous for car racing, and perhaps nothing else.

But what I really want to talk to you about is bugs, and this funny little car that, with any luck, you can catch roaming the streets of Santiago. And so I present you: the car.



Santiago is fairly free of bugs. You may occasionally see some lumbering around, but I challenge you to find the urban scourge, the cockroach, in any great quantities or in any great frequency pretty much anywhere in Santiago. Certainly it's not that Santiago is cleaner than other countries (Brazil, for example is generally overrun in the Northeast, and its level of cleanliness would make your grandmother feel inadequate), but perhaps drier. We do have a profusion of spiders and the horrible rotating fly vortexes (vortices?) in the summer, which even the cats aren't interested in, but for the most part, things that walk are bicho (bug) non grata (grato?) in Santiago.

Perhaps it is because of Truly Nolen. This seems to be the main extermination company in Chile, and while I would rather caulk any mystery holes and use boric acid or some other non-toxic method to rid any place I live from critters, should I find myself in the possession of some, I would want to call these guys just so I could have this handy car (or truck) come by my house, probably mostly so I could get a better photo.



And while they seem happy to say goodbye to cockroaches (chau cucarachas, which is weird because I thought we called them baratas), You can guess from the ears on top of the vehicle that they'd also be ever-so-happy to rid you of any spare Mickeys and Minnies you might have running around. And if you were wondering, the word for getting rid of rats is "desratizar" and I make up alot of words, but that one is real. And I've never seen a rat or mouse in Chile, por si te preguntabas (in case you were wondering).



Top that, Indianapolis.

And as another aside, the first several times I saw the Truly Nolen vehicle, I couldn't help but think of Macheezmo Mouse, that 90s era Portland fast Mexican food mainstay. Just me?

A travel quote that grabbed me, and a little library love

Yesterday I went to this place. If I were on the quest for a new religion, I would worship whomever was required so that I could be in this place always. Or at least when I come visit my mom.



Oh, it was wonderful. There were books. Nearly floor to ceiling, multiple floors. And of course I had to take this picture on the sly because everyone in NY is nutso with the "nopicturetakinghere" and whatnot. But look how pretty! And no books were harmed in the taking of this photo, I promise.

And while I was there, I took out a book called Into Thick Air, by author Jim Malusa, in which he "bikes to the bellybutton of six continents" and tells the tale with great cleverness, and a wry, not unbearshapedspherelike sense of humor. And I laughed, and turned pages as fast as my little eyes would take me, and at the end, he says this:

Everybody has a plan, something that may or may not happen--but that's really not the point. It's the plan that counts, the pleasure of possibility.

He rounds out the sentiment, saying "You might hope to sail alone to the palm islands in a boat of your own design. To please your spouse in a remarkably athletic way or marry the right person the next time around. Or to sell your house before the plumbing goes and more to a carefree condo at the clean edge of a golf course until God's call."

I am so glad I went on that virtual ride with Jim Malusa. He's so right about the plan thing. You've got to have one, to look forward to that ribbon, that graduation, that bridge-jump, that whathaveyou. I plan to spend some time thinking about what this next year might bring. And about how off his rocker Jim Malusa is. Wonder if he's coming back to South America any time soon. And I wonder if he likes libraries. I'll bet he does.

Got a quote that's turned your head lately? Let me know. Warning: if you quote the Mark Twain bowlines bit, I will block your ISP. I don't know how to do that, so please don't make me learn.