Lollapalooza comes to Chile! (and I am nearly certainly not going).

Are you going to Lollapalooza? Do you wish you were? Did you know that it's in Chile this year, April 2nd and 3rd? Should I consider that a celebration of when I will have been in Chile for seven years? It's so nice of those thousands of people to stand together in Parque O'Higgins, not far from my current or future home (YES! I am moving, it is a miracle, I am hoping the Rio Mapocho will run clear in miraculous accompaniment) for many hours on end, absorbing the sun with their upturned faces as much loud music wafts over them.

But I will probably not be going. It's not that I have anything against Parque O'Higgins, I've been many times, usually around the national holiday (September 18th) to catch stuff like this going on.



It's an okay park, if a bit of a peladero (literally, bald thing, but what I mean is that it's mostly untreed, and the parade grounds are a giant parking lot scar in the middle of the park). And it has this little lagoon of dubious cleanliness, where children splash and swim, despite signs indicating that they should not.



It also has this quirkly little Pueblito thing, which is a fake little huaso (Chilean cowboy)town, and Fantasilandia, an amusement park, and fairly newly, a skatepark with the possibility of doing a 360 through a tube.

But I will (almost definitely) not be there for Lollapalooza. Oh, I get it that it's a big deal, the first time the festival takes place outside of the United States. And friends repeatedly tell me that the Killers are getting back together. The Killers! And I think about how old and doddery I've gotten and how much I enjoy acoustic music like Nano Stern who I saw at Teatro del Puente (remember that?)



Or Donavon Frankenreiter, who came to a bizarre, very poorly-organized concert at Mall Sport on the lagoon there. (Seriously, the crowd control was mythically bad, a cluster idiocy of even post-Chilean proportions, in most other countries there would have been a riot, and sorry for being bringing up the political, but man I hope Egypt gets their way).



But Donavon was fabulous, and gave a tremendous show, and he and his accompanying guitar guy even pulled up closer to the audience when they felt they were too far away, and threw mikes into the crowd for people to sing along, and he was just generally all lovey, and he sang the song for us that he wrote for his son, and he muddled along in Spanish and I thought about how I should have offered interpretation services so he could have talked to the crowd, but really most everyone up there understands enough English that he could have spoken more, but anyway, yay, concert! And yay acoustic music, and yay Donavon coming closer, and yay newish camera that pulls light from nowhere, and yay Kyle (on location this week) for asking the seminal question "but do you really plan to take photos at night?" which encouraged me to buy said camera. And yes, and with vigor. Or much clickage.

And yeah, I like many things, among them, photography and quietish music. And I think I'm really going to like my new apartment. Though I will miss this view:



But I can't wait to get the keys and dance around to folky music at a moderate volume and show you all what the new place has to offer.

Photo "reveal" and open for more discussion.

Thanks to everyone who participated, peeped, tweeted or commented about the photo. What am I talking about? This entry, and the following photos.

The woman, is in fact, selling orange juice. She has a shopping cart and a juice squeezer and oranges, and a trash bag at her feet. Five years ago this shopping cart/juicer phenomenon was almost unknown. I'm not sure when it first came up, maybe about three years ago. It's new, but has taken hold, and considering all the other stuff that's sold on the street (fried sopaipillas, fried egg rolls, etc), I feel like it's a pretty good addition to the street-food scene.

I have no way of knowing if that is her child or not. I had assumed it was, but a number of you wondered if the child was or was not hers. I also don't know if it's a boy or a girl, or why he/she is so warmly dressed. I was wearing a sundress and breaking out in a sweat. There is no second child in the carriage, and the child was pulling the newspaper out of the carriage sheet by sheet.

I had not noticed that the child was on the other side of that metal partition. We do not generally have a crippling fear of kidnapping here, so it didn't seem strange to me that the child was not closer to the woman selling juice.

People who work independently often wear aprons or what we call cotones, which are button-up smocks over their clothes. The guy who sells sandwiches outside of the Registro Civil near my house wears a white cotón every day, so her wearing an apron did not surprise me. Plus it could have pockets for her to easily keep change in without sticking her hands in and out of her pants pockets, which might get juicy.

The question was asked about whether this was her main job or a supplement. Again, I have no way of knowing this. Given the time of day and how hard it would be to safely store all of her items and drop off her child elsewhere before getting to work (very unusual are the jobs where you don't have to be at work before 10 or 12, including at the mall), I'd guess it's her main gig.

I was also surprised to see her costly items, and have never seen anyone use a pack and play on the street before. I also wondered who dropped her off in the morning, and if that person would come and pick her up later, or drop off more oranges. Does she work for herself, or is there a middle-man who takes care of the orange procurement, and other associated tasks. Does he/she take a cut? Does she make enough to live on? Does she have more kids elsewhere? Does the kid like orange juice? What will she do when he/she gets bigger? These are the main questions that ran through my mind.

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And now if you'll accompany me, we can address the 64 million peso question (that's only $128,000 if you were wondering). The Peruvian question.

Is she Peruvian? Why do we care? Before answering this question, you have to know that in Chile, the word Peruvian (peruano) is heavy. It's loaded. Rather than being a simple description, like Irish or Belgian or Canadian, it comes off as an accusation. There is a history of strife between the two countries, based on land grabs and wars and treaties. But the Peruvian question is not based in history. It is based in the present.

Presently, there are many Peruvians who have come to Chile, specifically to Santiago. A bit of a "little Lima" (pequeña Lima) has developed on the north side of the cathedral at the Plaza de Armas. Snacks like Sublime (a chocolate bar) and drinks like InkaCola are sold at the many internet cafés and locutorios (telephone offices) that advertise low rates for calling Perú. Fresh food, from papas rellenas (stuffed potatoes) and chicken and rice and a thin pudding called mazamorra morada (made of purple corn) eaten as dessert are prepared off site, and sold in disposable containers which people tuck into, standing in groups, talking, smiling, laughing until long after dark. Late at night, when the street-eating is over, shuttle pull up and call out the names of various parts of the city that people might be going home to.

So what's the problem? The problem is that Chile is Chlie, and Peru is Peru. Chile has enjoyed a fairly strong economy for some time, and while Peru has a moneyed elite, much of which lives in Lima and sends their kids to school in the United States for a year, or for college (their school year coincides with the northern hemisphere's, unlike that in Chile, which is opposite, the year starting in March and ending in December), well, some of the rest of Peru has their sights set differently.

It's probably quite a bit like any country A with immigrant B situation. The people fron country A learn to have negative associations with immigrant B's culture (in this case, "too much noise, too much mess, music, ideas, etc."), and begin to blame immigrant B for economic hardship "they take all the jobs, they work harder than Chileans, they live 10 in a small apartment, there's no way I can compete!" And the unsettling feeling that the mother country is less yours than it was when there were fewer people from country B sending their kids to your kids' school, etc.

It is long and complicated. I am not a sociologist. But I am an immigrant here, and I think I (and many of my gringa commenters, friends, readers, etc.) are just vaguely assimmilating the idea that word Peruvian is (especially in English) taken to mean anything other than "a person from Peru." We resist anti-Peruvian sentiment, reject xenophobia. When we say that the woman is probably Peruvian (as I was originally going to say, before I opened the photo to comments instead), I mean: the law of averages dictates that she is from Peru, as I have bought juice on the street a number of times, and the person that sold it to me (for 500 pesos, about a dollar) was Peruvian in every case, or at least had a Peruvian accent, though I did not ask to see her national ID card.

There's so much more to say, statistics to give (I heard a dato recently that five years ago there were fewer than 150,000 immigrants in Chile, and now there are more than 300,000 (on Radio Futuro, don't have a print/web source at the moment). This Wikipedia article says that there are 85,000 Peruvians living in Santiago. Out of a population of about 6 million, for about 14%. For people used to living in a fairly monocultural place, it represents a change.

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The important part for me here is the difference between saying what you know, and saying what you suspect. I don't know if it's her child. I don't know if she has another job. I don't know how much money she makes, or where she lives, or if she's from Peru. All I know is that I saw something curious on my way to a work meeting the other day, and I took a picture. What is true is what is evident. Everything else is conjecture. Thanks to the fine folks at MatadorNetwork for encouraging my thought process and a critical eye towards what I see and what I communicate.

Coming soon: much less heady and fun-to-read topics, silly pictures and other tomfoolery.

A photo for comments, an experiment. Downtown Santiago

I don't know if I want to tell you what to think about this picture. What you see is probably very different from what I see, and if I tell you what I see, will you still see what you were seeing before? Or will you replace your own vision with mine?

But I can't leave a photo uncommented. So I ask you to think first. Take a minute, look at the image and tell me what your eye tells you. Roam around the four corners, look at what most grabs your attention. Does this image say anything to you? Santiaguinos? Gringos in Chile? People with no connection here?

I will tell you that it was January 21, 2011, about 9:05 AM, and that we are on Calle Nueva York, outside the stock exchange. The rest is up to you. See it bigger on flickr.

And yes, there will be a reveal, where reveal doesn't mean the truth, just what it made me think. I'm not right, I'm just an observer, just like you.

Chilean Solidarity

All for one and one for all.

Once again, the topic of individuality vs. group think comes to center stage. This one triggered by a conversation I had with a friend of mine about arriving to the movies with some buddies and finding no set of seats together large enough to seat them all together, other than in the first two (uncomfortable) rows. There was confusion afoot, and everyone got separated, as the "individualist"(American) assumed they should all sit seperately but comfortably, and the "group-thinkers" thought they should all sit together in the first two rows, neckache included.

When I heard the story, I thought immediately of this thing that happened to me the other day, and how me extrañaba (sounds like it means "it stranged me" but actually means "it was so strange to me" at the time, but I couldn't quite figure out why.

I had to get into what to me is the upper reaches of the city, specifically to Vitacura. Well, more specifically, to El Mercurio. The best way for me to get close is to take a colectivo, or shared taxi. So I went to the corner where you wait for the colectivos, and traffic was crawling. And every colectivo that went by was already full. I got to talking to some women that were also waiting, about what to do next. Should we keep waiting? Call the company that sends the colectivos? Hope for the best?

Finally a colectivo went by and he told us that the one behind him had two seats. But our groupleader took it upon herself to decide that that was not enough. By virtue of the fact tht I'd talked to them, we were no longer a group that was two-strong, we were now a posse of three. And if there weren't three seats in the colectivo, then we'd share a taxi, each paying about two dollars more to get to our destination, it ws decided. No, I said, you guys go ahead, I'll wait for the next one. And then she thought about it again, and decided that no, if there weren't three seats in the next car, she would pay for the taxi herself.

It was all very curious, this getting subsumed into group think. Why did she think that my needs pertained to the group. Was it because I was nice? a gringa? a little stressed about getting where I was going late? I forgot to wonder, because then a colectivo came with three seats free, and we paid him a little extra to take a faster paid highway, and like that, I was spat out closeish to where I needed to go and I farewelled my new friends with an air kiss, pressing our right cheeks together.

And I forgot to even think about it or comment on it until my friend came up with the movie seat conundrum. In the case where group think was going to get me where I was going faster, I'm all for it. But I don't know, sitting in the first two rows of a movie? That's just uncomfortable. What does that make me, an opportunist individualist? It definitely makes me less Chilean than empanadas.

Media, El Mercurio and Elephants

And now for the new media portion, followed by a nursery rhyme that's so cute, you'll want to learn it, even if you don't speak Spanish.

Media; my cryptic talk about the media was about a couple of intereviews with El Mercurio about being a "famous" (?) travel blogger.

1. Little magazine article in the Sunday El Mercurio travel magazine here.

2. The film version, which features not a small number of some of my more recent favorite pictures of Chile, here.

The feedback has been lovely, with the issue of whether or not I sound Chilean center stage. "Your accent is slight," they say or "You're more Chilean than beans" (this is s compliment, really). I still hear my accent, of course, and my goddaughter (age 6) recently pointed out a few pronunciation snafus that I still have. But still, it's nice to know that I sound more like a person who lives here and less like a person who doesn't, since that is actually the case.

However, no matter how long I live here, I'll still never have grown up here. And while I'll have five little monkeys jumping on the bed, or I like to eat apples and bananas as cutesy childhood songs, Chileans have elephants swinging on a spiderweb.

Un elefante (an elephant)
se balanceaba (was swinging)
sobre la tela de araña (on a spiderweb)
como veía, que resistía (when he realized that it was strong enough)
fueron(!) a llamar otro elefante (he went to call another elephant)

And the elephants keep piling on, and the numbers go up.



And though it's not part of the fabric of my youth, if I want to surprise anyone around me, should the song happen to come up (as it did at a concert I went to recently), I can sing along. Though then they'll talk about the issue of whether the last line has the swinging elephant calling elephant or a comrade and I remember that I am, in actual fact, significantly less Chilean than beans. But at least I have a sweet song about elephants (which I now cannot get out of my head). Oh, and bit of snazzy news coverage.

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fueron is grammatically incorrect for the first version as it is the third person plural. It should be "fue," but, probably for simplicity's sake, it is often sung with fueron for all versions, even the first one.

Observations, part 2, and welcome novatos (newbies)

First, a hearty bienvenidos to those of you who may have come from a news outlet that, in order for me to arrive for my appointment there (because a. I am stubborn and b. transantiagoinforma.cl really let me down on the directions) had me walking along a highway in a skirt and girly shoes. Here it is, ready? Bienvenidos!

More news on the cryptic first paragraph as I have it in my greedy little hands. But here's a picture I took of a projection of my own giant face in the studio where we filmed, and word to the wise, if you're going to be mic'd, for goodness sake, do not wear a very loose skirt, because the guy who has to mic you will probably clip the microphone pack to the waistband of said skirt, and thereby be privy to more of what you have on below your back than you were hoping.



Now back to the business at hand. Observing.

I had written about the new light project to use the Mapocho as a canvas for light here, except it's not yet January 19th, so who knows that that is about.

And last night I had a chance to check it out, first from on the bridge that is the Teatro del Puente, where it looked like this:



And then from the wrong side of the river, which yielded this view:



and later from the right side of the river (right side being the south side, closer to the Alameda). Where I spied this configuration.



I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. At the time I saw a keyboard, but now I see a musical score. You may see what you like, and certainly pop by some evening in the next year to get a better look. There are many spotlights casting colorful light into the water, this was just one, near the bridge at Purisima.

I marveled at the loads of people zipping right by, who didn't even hesitate to get a better look, who didn't see what I was seeing. And then I also slowly slinked away from two guys who may or may not have been opening a bag of something not quite legal on a bench facing the river, and whipped their heads around to see what was going on when they heard my camera shutter click. (not pictured)

And then R and I went back to the Teatro del Puente where we watched a tocata (small concert) by Nano Stern with the energy of every single person we'd seen ignoring the light artwork concentrated into one, bearded, sweaty, long-haired mega ultra talented musician (oh! the guitar riffs, oh, his gorgeous voice). I really enjoy his music and was blown away, along with 139 other fans and family members (heard his cousins recalling childhood memories of him during the long pre-show wait).

And here he is at the beginning of his show with his snake-emblazoned guitar and a musical instrument that he got more sounds out of than any of us expected.

And if you're dying for some audio input, this song is a great place to start. His lyrics and voice are both way older than he has any right to be able to pull off.

And then late, very late, because the concert started late and ran over, I took a cab home, and listened as the cab driver observed (as they often do), that I'm not Chilean. That seems to be the one thing people almost never fail to notice.

You may not be quite as observant as you believe. Or at least I may not.

Observant. That's me. I'm the person who will tell you that in upper class Chilean Spanish people say "raya" for the dash that separates the ninth and tenth digit of their national ID number, and in the middle and lower classes people tend to say guión. And I'm the first person to point out when a graffitied wall has been repainted with new graffiti. I just notice stuff.

Which is why I was so extra surprised when I was walking not three blocks from my house the other day and saw a little sandwichboard sign saying "Tottus, ya inauguramos" which means Tottus (a supermarket), we're open!

Really? Open? A new supermarket? Three blocks from my house? Impossible. It seemed like some kind of a joke as R and I walked through a mostly empty parking lot to enter what is, in fact, a brand new supermarket just three blocks from my house. I have no idea how this thing was built without me noticing. I pretty much walk and bike everywhere, pass by there with some regularity, read the newspaper, and still? I had nothing. So, brand new supermarket, and me scratching my head, wondering how it went in without me seeing it. Also, strange new products: an $8 box of falafel mix (how many people in Chile even know what falafel is?), and bake-your-own marraquetas, which I have to say look downright tempting. Marraquetas are sort of the national bread of Chile, 4 french bread rolls cooked so they stick together. Perfect for sandwiches and things.

So I continued on my day, with my new 75 watt lightbulb (gasp! Tottus does not have that lightbulb tester thingy which certainly would be illegal in the states, non-Chile dwellers, it's basically an empty live socket which you stick the bulb into and press a button to make sure it's working. Shocking! (oy, bad pun)). And R and I went out for some nibbles, and then made our way along the plaza, the same plaza where I have a cup of coffee at least a few times a month, and go to to take out my plastics recycling, and bike past, and walk past to get anywhere that's not downtown, pretty much (which is uptown from me, but that's another story), and we found that one of the better ice cream places in Santiago (Filippo, if you're wondering) had opened a location. Right there, on the plaza. Where I go all the time.

And I hadn't noticed it either. I'm thinking I'm going to have to rethink how observant I believe myself to be. I wonder what else I haven't noticed lately. Or what else I think is true and really isn't.

Yay, new supermarket and good icecream. And I say I want to move out of Barrio Brasil, why?

And it has come to my attention that I write about supermarkets far more than is probably normal.

Supermarkets on NileGuide
The Shangri-La of Supermarkets
Donating your coins (or not) at the supermarket

Santiago tops NYT list of places to go in 2011

I went to sleep in a city with relative anonymity. We're not Buenos Aires. No one comes here for the boliches (discos) nor to go to a milonga (tango hall). Some friends of mine visited from LA one time (and by friends I mean people I met on the road and who helped me cross into Chile from Peru with their their guidbook under their arm, and me, floating free, with nary a guidebook but a healthy arsenal of Spanish and a growing infection on the left side of my right ring finger for which I would later get treatment at a local private health clinic in Arica, but not before being thrown out of the public hospital for having private health insurance). So these friends from LA. They wondered what kind of stuck I'd gotten in Santiago, what had happened to me, why I didn't leave.

And then they got here. And they adored it. Loved walking around, seeing architecture, eating more than a healthy number of completos (Chilean style hotdogs slathered with mayo, avocado and tomatoes, I think they may be an acquired taste and I don't eat meat, so don't look at me), and washing them down with gallons of tuna (prickly pear cactus) juice, which is much tastier than it sounds. And they said, we get it. We know why you live here.

I don't know if the New York Times knows why I live here. I'm not even really sure they've ever been here, or spoken to anyone who has. They trot out the same examples of fancyness I profile on NileGuide because they pay me to (and because the things really are nice, and hey, who doesn't want nice on vacas (vacation), and choose a very strange example of up and coming culture in Santiago. the Museo de la Moda, which is nice because it's in a converted old masion, and interestingish for a one-time-visit for its displays, but when I went there a couple of years ago, I was there alone (except for the trusty Mamaj, who is always up for an adventure). It's not on the metroline, is not on the tourist trail, and is mainly frequented for the posh café outside where ladies who lunch well, lunch.

But yay, the New York Times noticed us, put us number one on their list of 41 places to visit in 2011. That's good for me on some level, puts an official stamp of approval on a city I've been encouraging people to visit for almost seven years. Professionally it's good for me, because I can start pitch letters saying "recently-touted as one of the top destinations for 2011 by the New York Times", etc. And I'm still playing by-the-click for NileGuide, and everything I wrote in this piece about how the NYT found Santiago worth of visiting is true.

But there's a part of me that loves the undiscovered, the secret, the mine and yours but only if I choose to share it with you. And I've got the sneaking suspicion that Santiago's not much of a secret these days. Maybe that raises the bar. Or pushes the envelope. Or begs the question, or wags the dog. Whatever it does, it doesn't make me want to be anywhere else, just to get to know this city better and on my own terms. And offer help to tourists standing with maps squinting at the horizon, and let them practice their high-school Spanish with me if that's what they want to do, so they can run off and tell everyone how nice and helpful people in Santiago are. Because they really are. Even if some of us aren't originally from here.

Quoting strangers and the desk of madness

These quotes are gleaned from the scraps of paper and tiny notebooks that adorn my desk like a lesser version of "A Beautiful Mind." There are no strings, if you were wondering. Hey look, here's a picture. Scraps of paper on the coffee table for sorting (not pictured)



1. Buenos Aires, Ezeiza airport (EZE), 2009, security line (one Argentine to another, taking off his belt): Te juro que me compro una hebilla de cartón (I swear I'm going to buy a belt buckled made of cardboard.

2. San Francisco, SFO, two blonde girls, about 6 and 8. I had overheard the parents say that they lived in Cuzco, Peru, and this was their first trip back to SF in a while. Girl one, being led to the restroom by her mom, as dad stayed behind with the luggage. Points towards the center of the corridor and says, "Mom, what's that?" "A moving walkway," mom responds, and then whisks the two girls into a bathroom. I'm tempted to follow to see how they respond to the hand dryers.

3. Shared ride quote from a woman who by her voice I'd assumed was in her teens, xport within Buenos Aires to my accommodation.
"Yeah, so the hostel, is like, really great, plus I like, stayed there before, but it's near the um bakery which so so good, but it also put like two kilos on me the last time I was here." And then, "I'm dying to see Tron, that's like my main goal this week. Maybe you're not that excited about it, because I'm like 37 and I remember when it was big the first time, you know?" At this I had to turn around and see that in fact, she was a grown-up, adult woman. I hoped her run-in with the bakery turned out okay and got out of the car.

There's probably more deep in the depths of paper scrappage and notebookage (notebookkage?), but these are some of the kinds of things you see me writing down when I pull out a tiny notebook and a pen, or my phone. I don't know how the rest of you walk around and never anotar (write down) anything. It would make me insane.

But luckily I have these pretty unremarkable pictures I took of some really remarkable places with probably my first digital camera in around 2000. Top, Gulfoss, Iceland, Middle, near the national Mall in Washington, DC, Bottom, Jokulsarlon, Iceland. They keep me smiling, most days.