Bearshapedsphere: Quirk. Perspective. Travel.

Bienvenidos Lectores de La Tercera/LUN/BioBio etc.

2011-08-20T10:35:00.003-04:00

Esta dirección lleva meses sin actualizarse! La dirección adecuada es bearshapedsphere.com.

Gracias por visitar y comentar!

I'm moving! Change your feeds to bearshapedsphere.com

2011-03-07T16:31:00.004-03:00

Having finally moved physically from Barrio Brasil to República, and with the patient help of Pam Mandel from nerdseyeview I am becoming a digital migrant of sorts, leaving behind the orange and blue, restricted format, three column pesky tiny photo and I don't know what else of Blogger (which has been a fine host, truth be told), to move into the bigkid sandbox of my own site.

I am certain this will bring me no end of fame and fortune, or at least a whole bunch of extra work to do while I figure out how to pretty it up and make it look like something other than a shell with a bunch of stuff in it. Comments should have migrated over (hallelujah), and hopefully you all will, too.

See you over there! And yes, I have organizing and some fiddely bits to fix, and a big empty space on my whiteboard where for more months than I would like to admit, it has read "xfer blog."

www.bearshapedsphere.com

Nary a Hanga Roa in Hanga Roa, Easter Island report 2, now with jabón gringo

2011-03-06T18:16:00.006-03:00

Before I left for Easter Island, I was charged by one of my work gigs with doing some research (and writing) on the island. This was nearly a first for me. I am the person who managed to go to Milan and failed to see the Last Supper because I simply didn't know it was there. And you'd think I'd have learned my lesson from this tiny snafu, but I have not. I continue to go places without exactly honing in on details before landing. For the most part, it works out.

But I knew more than a smidgen about Easter Island. I had even sort of vaguely plotted out a bikeride before leaving the continent (that's what they call continental Chile, the continent, or even "conti" which makes it sound like we all live in the village of Constanza, for which Conti is also a nickname. I had learned the names of the four volcanoes, and could even name several of the platforms on which the moai stand, and had planned to go horsebackriding and even scubadiving. I had looked at pictures of the two major clubs/discos on the island (Toroko and Topa Tangi), and I had hoped to go to both of them (and I did).

But one of the things I asked myself, which has a whole lot to do with language, which Pam has identified as one of the things I blog about the most (which was confusing at first, because I thought it was culture, but then I realized she was correct, and also a very good houseguest), and which I could find no trace of, in written or online sources is whether or not there would be any hanga roas in Hanga Roa.

A hanga roa is what we (on the Chilean continent) call the vertical sliding shades comprised of strips of bamboo or other thin wood woven together with brown string. They run on metal tracks off of small plastic bobbins, and you pull them across a doorway or balcony to keep the sun out. It took me a while to catch on to the name, and then I classed it together in my mind with salsa americana (american sauce, a bit like pickled cabbage and carrots, not to be confused with chucrut, which is sauerkraut), or cocina americana (literally: American-style kitchen, meaning an open plan kitchen)

I always like to have a secret mission behind the mission at hand (a week of vacation!), and it was to see if there were any hanga roas (see explanation) in Hanga Roa, which is the main town of Easter Island.

And I looked near the horses (the ones in town, there were horses pretty much everywhere):

And down the main street:

And at the stop sign near the library:

But I never saw a hanga roa. Maybe it's like this sign for jabón gringo (gringo soap), which I've never seen before either. A misnomer by any other name would be as sweet-smelling and/or shady.

Food and Drink Nostalgia, Chilean Style: Sorbete Letelier

2011-03-02T09:55:00.005-03:00

In an apparently Chilean tradition of basing hypersweet drinks on the flavor of dried fruit (see: Mote con Huesillo), there's a soda in Chile based on the flavor of dried cherries. And not just any dried cherries, but guindas. Guindas are sour cherries, and when dried, they wrinkle around the pit and become leathery. When reconstituted, they get that "fat raisin" texture I associate with my mother's noodle kugel or Ecuadorean quimbolitos (cakes cooked in corn husks).

So what's the soda? Sorbete Letelier. It looks like this (photo with an iphone I recently was told was "a relic" so pardon the quality).

What's so interesting about Sorbete Letelier is not necessarily that it tastes like your Cherry Coke married a Dr. Pepper and the spawn had a genetic anomaly that made the Cola taste as well as the kick of the pepper disappear and the sugar content double.

What's great about this drink is that it was here, and then it was gone. And when it came back, there was great rejoicing. From what I hear, I'm new here, myself. The beverage is originally from Talca, a city I admit not to knowing, but which I'm going to get to know pretty soon, I hope. S.L. was introduced in probably about the 1920s for local production, Castel bottling took over its production in 1958 and then pulled it from the market due to production problems in 1985. It returned to the market in 1997. It's still not available everywhere, and when it shows up, there's an occiasional rush of "tienen sorbete letelier!" (They have sorbete letelier!) and accompanying coin-digging-outage. I've yet to see anyone drink an entire one, but that might just be because everyone all around is wondering if they'll get a rush of nostalgia at taking a sip.

The reconstituted dried cherry in each bottle obviously goes to the person who bought the drink. I don't think this is the equivalent of who gets the worm in the tequila bottle, but I couldn't be sure, having never tried either. The expression for artificially-flavored sodas in Chile is "bebida de fantasía." Which still doesn't explain why Bilz tastes like bubblegum, but at least there's no gum inside.

See here for the drink's official website: Sorbete Letelier, and here for Urbatorium's writeup of the drink (in Spanish, with original label pictured). Dates supplied by above websites.

Green Celery to me! (Easter Island report, with birthday blabla)

2011-02-28T10:47:00.006-03:00

For reasons too complex and probably personal, all of which have to do with someone's precipitous and precocious death and feared short life expectancy and really, I am that person who has been to two cardiologists in the past three years only to find out that no, I do not appear to be in imminent danger of a heart attack, I did not scream from the rooftops that I was about to turn 40.

But 40 I turned, a year more than 39, one less than 41, and a birthday that has not put me into an existential tailspin, but rather makes me think about how great these next 40 years are going to be, and how glad I am that I didn't promise to run a marathon this year, because I think I might have a stress fracture in my left foot and my right ankle is the weakest link, goodbye! (only not, because even if she's weak, she's mine, and I'm keeping her).

So. I went to Easter Island to celebrate my birthday, and like any bike enthusiast, partial misanthrope and crazy person, on my birthday itself, I woke up early, grabbed the bike I'd rented the night before and rode up a dirt road to Ahu Te Peu on Rapa Nui, several km out of Hanga Roa, alone, blissfully alone. Except for these cows.

And then I rode back to get some breakfast. And that looked like this (the ride back, not the breakfast):

Then I set out again, this time passing the airport, where I snapped this through-the-fence shot

And I headed to Ahu Akivi, where seven moai face the ocean, are set up to receive the sun at their fronts and backs on the solstices, and where I sweated the sweat of the weary and humidity-unaccustomed and sat on a rock out from under which waddled a cockroach of mouse-like proportions. Photo of moai, not of the cockroach, for obvious reasons.

This bike route, for what it's worth, makes nearly no sense because I doubled back from Ahu Te Peu when I really should have continued on, and would have arrived shortly at Ahu Akivi, but I was hungry and didn't want to miss breakfast and wasn't sure how long it would all take. Also, the island is pretty small, and I was going to run out of road before energy, so it wasn't a big deal to double back.

From Ahu Akivi, where I traded mild conversation with what appeared to be a Chilean-French couple (also cycling), but I don't know for sure because we never asked each other where we were from, I headed back to the road, and made a left, heading over to Anakena, where en route, I managed to get a wicked case of chain suck (yay! poorly maintained, grease-less bike chains), and ganked my chain into a position best described as "twisted" such that a) I could no longer get into the easiest gear and b) there was great skipping and clickage.

No worry, I pedalled on, urged to the right direction by this downward-facing sign, and fueled by fiber cookies, iced tea and a camelbak full of water.

And views like this:

And the smell of eucalyptus and threatening rain, and finally, the long, long downhill to the beach where I felt like I was being towed in by the ocean. I later found out there's a "magnetic" spot at about km 15, where despite appearing to be an uphill, cars will coast up the highway, so perhaps this feeling of towing in was my bike being pulled by this same force.

At Anakena I ran into a Chilean family from Iquique who'd adopted me on a hike to Rano Kau the day before, and whose friend-of-the-family's daughter handed me a piece of poundcake that she'd baked, which she didn't know, but which ended up being my birthday cake. And they shared water with me because I'd drained all of mine, and they ultimately gave me a lift part of the way back because there was no way my twisty bike chain and I were going to make it up that uphill I'd just come down without that smallest chain ring.

And I stopped to say hi to the moai for good measure.

And then I rode the ten or so km back to the bike shop, where I told them about the twisty chain and they gave me a mango for my troubles.

And I sat and watched a wispy sunset and then ate some fish and mashed taro cooked in a banana leaf, but I didn't choose the restaurant particularly well, and the food was just okay, and (don't tell), I shared some of each with a nearby cat. Perhaps it was her birthday, too.
::::::::::::::::

Green Celery explantation: The closest expression to how Happy Birthday sounds when spelled phonetically and then repronounced in Chilean Spanish is Apio Verde, which means green celery. Green Celery to me? Happy birthday to me. You didn't think I'd let a day go by without language geekery, did you? It's my gift to you.

On the anniversary of the 2010 Chilean Earthquake

2011-02-27T00:42:00.004-03:00

On the anniversary of a terrible date in recent Chilean history, the 27th of February, nearly a year is completed from the 3:34 AM earthquake in Chile that would generate a tsunami that would wash away towns, and would knock one apartment building flat on its back (photo 13 in this photo essay), and leave many, many homes in uninhabitable conditions and many people more without homes to return to, I have to tell you a story.

It's about juxtaposition. As it happens, I was in Chile during the Haiti earthquake, then in New Zealand for the Chile earthquake, and finally, on Easter Island for the New Zealand earthquake. Yes, I am tremendously lucky, and hopefully, sufficiently thankful.

In Chile, we had fundraising events and a media bath of "send aid," or "send supplies" to Haiti. I know Haiti continues to struggle, and the trials faced in that country are much different, and dare I say harder than what would later be faced here and later in New Zealand.

Bear with me as I fast forward about six weeks from the date of the Haiti earthquake, to when I found out about the earthquake in Chile. I digested the information as best I could, far from the source, and with the occasional missive from friends who actually lived through it.

And then one day, not long after the Chile earthquake, I was walking around Rotorua, NZ, and saw this:

and this:

And I felt my knees nearly give, and then lock.

No.

Chile fundraises for other countries. No one fundraises for Chile, I thought. We're all wineries and deserts and lakes and skiing and hiking and the Andes. Not a charity case.

Time went on, and many millions of dollars were raised to help Chilean earthquake reconstruction efforts, which are still ongoing, particularly in the hardest-hit region of Maule, where adequate housing is still an issue, and where reconstruction is far from complete. So yes. People do raise money for Chile, and with reason. Thank you New Zealand, and everyone else.

And as if to prove that disaster can strike countries of every ilk, Christchurch suffered a devastating earthquake just a few days shy of Chile's 2010 quake anniversary. I took this photo almost a year before the most recent quake from when the Christchurch Cathedral was spiffy and upright, when the city of Christchurch hadn't been so shaken, when so many people hadn't died from having been simply in the wrong place.

And I see now that people are fundraising for New Zealand as well. For Haiti, for Chile, for New Zealand. Three hugely far-flung countries, with very different pasts and presents, joined in recent history by earthquakes.

It pains me to know that people are suffering, with physical and psychological pain, with death. In Santiago we all had to step over escombros (building debris) for months while waiting for it to be cleaned up. A year later, even in Santiago (which was nowhere nearly as damaged as Talca or other more southern cities), many buildings are still scaffolded, 2x4s holding up cornices in places where they could still fall. The people of New Zealand must be reeling, and my few contacts down there seem thoroughly shocked (though physically fine).

Maybe we're supposed to remember that calamity can happen in any place, at any time? That even wealthy countries can need to ask for help? That tectonic plates respect no borders?

I offer out hopeful thoughts for speedy recovery, body and soul for those who need it. To people in Haiti living precariously, to Chileans still hurting, missing loved ones, waiting for reconstruction, and to Kiwis newly shocked and injured, as well as the foreigners who may have been in these places when the quakes hit.

A tidy finish eludes me. Stay safe.

Poof! I'm home!

2011-02-25T23:46:00.003-03:00

Iorana!

Despite the presence of a wholly unlikeable seatmate on my flight home (oh! the scalp-scratching, the hangnail chewing, the using of saliva to clean the screen in front of him), I am so peaceful after an actual week off, that I find myself wondering why I don't do that more often. I very seldom disconnect from work, and the many hours of tappitytap that requires, and this week on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) was nearly internet free, with the exception of reading (and responding to) many, many, many birthday wishes from some pretty fabulous people, and reading the occasional news snippet. My heart goes out to the people of Christchurch, and once again I am thankful to have missed an event so jarring, so dangerous.

I think the trip from Rapa Nui to my apartment in Santiago is the fastest and brusquest change I've ever made. From being on an island with fewer than 5000 people and about as many horses (and many more than that number of ants!) to my balcony that overlooks downtown Santiago (a city of more than 6 million) took a little over five hours. It's a stunning shift to exchange the twinkling spray of stars overhead to the neon Entel Tower in such a short amount of time.

It always takes me an overnight to make me feel like I'm really on vacation. I know I'm being greedy, but I kind of hope it takes me more than that to start to feel like I've landed back in real life.

Hope you've all been well, and back to more navel-gazing, trip reports and photographic splendor (I hope, I haven't even looked at any photos yet) soon.

Rapa Nui Day 1 report, reflections, nada mas.

2011-02-19T00:40:00.006-03:00

Today a woman I had met not more than 30 minutes earlier handed me her adorable 14 month old daughter in a pink rash suit and matching flowered sunhat while she (the woman) struggled on the sharp rocks to get a foothold so she could get out of the water. They had been "swimming" together, with mom floating around and holding her little girl, urging her not to whimper when the water moved around. She pointed to her friend, and then to her friend's dog, who was being held nearby in the water saying, "be like the doggie, she doesn't whine."

I wasn't surprised by the woman handing me the child necessarily, as I had offered to help. But the kind of help I offered was, "can I give you a hand?" not "can I hold your baby?" But she needed help, and it was baby-holding she was after, and so I was on duty. I held the girl, who looked at me with eyes that didn't budge, not even to blink, but didn't pull her to me, as she was dripping wet and I was dry. Also? Not my baby.

And I could say it's because we were on Rapa Nui (Isla de Pascua, Easter Island) and that's the way things are here, except the woman with the baby was from the 5ta Región (near Valparaíso). Or I could say it's because I seem like a trustworthy person, perhaps good at holding babies. Earlier in the day I had helped a little kid at the place I'm staying (maybe 4?) put on her bathing suit top so she could play with a hose with some friends. I guess it's a five-and-under day for me.

The woman with the baby took her back and then retired to a round woven mat she'd brought down to the beach and as the woman with the dog got out of the water, I noticed that she had a band of bluish, slightly raised Rapa Nui tattoos around her left thigh. In the end, I was more curious about the tattoos than about the baby and why I'd been asked to hold her. But I felt too intimidated to ask.

I told them my name in case we ran into each other again, took a picture (with permission) of the lobster the dog woman's husband had speared, slipped on my flipflops and walked back home under puffy, rainless clouds and a fierce afternoon sun.

Chileans make fun of gringos speaking Spanish! (again!) This time: Lah Peeohhaira

2011-02-14T10:29:00.007-03:00

The last post, where I talk about whether or not walking more than kung fu (caminar mas que kung fu) is a potentially offensive expression, brought up issues of language and sensitivity. I am particularly attuned to language, and I like to think that I watch carefully how people treat each other, and try not to be a jerk in general terms, though I have been known to occasionally snap at people and later apologize. I'm not proud of that, it's something I'm working on, etc.

But getting back to the issue of language and sensitivity, consider this video from Canal 13 news, where they interview the creator of Askme, a little mobile kiosk where you can get maps, and a service that has some self-guided walking tours and some paid (downloadable) audio tours. Here's what I said about Ask Me on NileGuide, if you're into that.

And here's the video in question, which we will be discussing. Please pay careful attention to the following:

:30-:42
:54-:55
2:01-2:07

Ready? Watch:

What we have here is one journalist in the studio, and one in the field, making fun of how gringos talk. "Dohwnde estta lah Peeohhaira?" is supposed to stand in for Dónde está La Piojera links to #NG. (and there's actually one funny portion here, where the news guy is driving his segway, and says, "look, no hands" and someone in the studio says, look out, or your next line could be "look, no teeth").

But back to La Peeohhaira. I suppose this is funny. If you are eight. I know this is something I have railed against before, and it will never cease to bug me. As an adult, you should be beyond making fun of people's accents on national TV. It's the equivalent of tuning into NBC news and seeing someone do a Speedy Gonzalez imitation to repeat something Penelope Cruz said. (Yes, Speedy Gonzalez, a pretend Mexican mouse, himself an offensive caricature, and I choose Penelope Cruz because she is famous and a native Spanish speaker, not because I am concerned about her new baby who I'm sure is beautiful and has awesome eyebrows).

Eso no se hace (that is just not done). Except in Chile, sí, se hace (yes it is). I'm not necessarily complaining because it affects me personally, I know I have a slight accent in Spanish, and I'm (mostly) okay with that. But that's the point about -isms, they don't offend you because you're part of the group, but because you're part of the society, and as a society, we should just all sign up to join the "let's not be jerks" club.

Except in Chile, making fun of the way gringos talk is not considered to be jerky. See exhibit A, video above. And by the way, the Ask Me people are cool, and you'll notice that the owner didn't participate in this tomjerkery. This is a situation in which my wiring says one thing and the society says something else. It puts me in a grey area of offendedness. Am I still allowed to be offended by something that was not meant to be offensive? I have told all of my friends that pretend gringo accent talking is not funny to me, and for the most part, they respect that.

I guess I just have to go make friends with the people at Canal 13. Won't you join me in my one woman campaign to get people to stop making fun of (and imitating, which is worse) the gringo accent in Spanish? (and looks like we're not alone, the combined search results from "make fun of my accent" and "making fun of my accent" were more than 100,000, and I'm sure bearshapedsphere can't be more than ten of those).

and here's another post where I talked about something quite similar. Call it early onset repetitiveness. A trait I come by honestly. Are you listening oh schvester mia and Mamaj?

Caminar mas que Kung Fu: More lessons in Chilean Slang

2011-02-11T13:28:00.006-03:00

It wasn't until I heard the expression "caminar mas que Kung Fu" (lit: walk farther than Kung Fu) for about the third time that I thought to ask someone just who or what Kung Fu was, and why he walked so much. It's not that I'm not interested in language. On the contrary. I spend so much time looking at language that sometimes I miss the point entirely. So to combat that, sometimes I just let thing slide and ask about them later, or not at all. I have kind of a rule with is called "interesting or the rule of threes." If something is very interesting to me, or if I hear it three times, I will chase it down. Otherwise, people say things near me all the time that I don't quite know the genesis of, and I'm pretty mellow about it, though I can hear the file cabinet of my subconsicious creaking open and the scritch of a pencil against my mental index cards (white, lined), even as I follow the conversation into the future.

Well you can thank Abby for my recent remembering of Kung Fu, due to a recent blog post of hers on Abbysline where she talks about Chilean expressions. One day three of my friends and I decided to go for a walk. In the end, we walked up to the Parque Bicentenario and most of the way back downtown, including a little amble around the park while we were there. When we got back, I "mapped my run" (except this was a walk) and discovered that it was on the order of 20ish kilometers, or about 12 miles. I later commented to one of the saga-walk participants that I love to go out on walks, but not necessarily such long ones.

And there it was again. "Sip, si ese día caminamos mas que Kung Fu!" (yep, that day we walked a hell of a long way).

So I asked. It turns out Kung Fu was a tv program on in the United States from 1972-1975 that featured an orphaned Shaolin priest and martial arts master wandering the Western United States in search of his lost half-brother. The kicker here is that I have never seen the show, not even in syndication, but here in Chile, enough people have seen it (in reruns, I imagine, given the age of the people involved) to generate this expression, which seems mildly racist on its face, but Chileans disavow most knowlege of any presence of racism, so I'm not really sure how to handle this particular question, other than to avoid it.

So there you have it. Sometimes I walk more than an allegedly half-Chinese fictional character portrayed by a white man who existed on television in the 1970s, and into later years in Chile. I'm beginning to understand the shorthand, even though I still probably won't use it.

A Great Miracle Happened Here (I finally moved)

2011-02-09T15:31:00.005-03:00

Above this text you see a picture. A blarey, bright picture with funny gingham checked yellow curtains (not my choice), and a plate full of something, which you probably can't quite make out. It happens that it's my lunch. But not just any old lunch, a lunch partially cooked (the other part raw) on a stove that I installed with my own two hands (and a leatherman) in my new kitchen. A kitchen in which I have set up the previous satellite kitchen (baker's rack) as a place to eat while I ponder the great outside and marvel at the fact that I can stand up and whirl around and extend my arms, and oh my goodness, it's a real kitchen.

I am stupidly excited about the new kitchen, as well as the hallway of my new place. The hallway is also photogenic, but seriously? You can't all want to see pictures of my whole apartment. Trust me when I say there are parquet floors and they are vitrificados (finished), which means I will not have to do the wax-on wax-off shuffle again for as long as I live here.

I have been talking about moving for as long as some of you have been reading here, and for years, for those of you who (like me) don't easily keep track of time. My last apartment had many great features. It was not the one before it (a truly horrible little hovel, with carpet in the bathroom). It had a great view, lots of light, was conveniently located in Barrio Brasil, had giant windows, from which I would take lots of pictures. It was also too small for me and my stuff, so cleverly tetrissed into place. My proof of this is how easily all this stuff that was in my previous tiny apartment has expanded to take up so much space in my current home.

Oh heck, here's the darn hallway, with many linear feet of closetified (shelves and racks and things) closet. Oh, great organizational boon.

There's more, so much more. Many thanks to friends who heeded my crazy need to drag things over under cover of darkness, and who helped me to decide which stove to buy and whose little girl played with a box of scarves and then said "ep-ee" to get help to put the top back on.

There is great joyousness in the land, and maybe soon I will answer the question, "What made you finally decide to move" which is the question I have most been asked. That, and "When are you having a party?" Oh friends, do you know nothing about me?

Deets: About five blocks from my old place, near Metro Los Héroes on a street that if you block out the last two letters stands in as slang for the male genitalia. Oh, ri-KELM (as some people used to call it), I won't really miss you!

Santiago in 36 hours, and what happens to a pitch deferred?

2011-02-05T22:19:00.005-03:00

Is Chile so fome (Chilean for boring), that you'd only want to stay here for 36 hours? Or maybe I'm just bitter that I didn't write this piece. Not true! I did write that piece. I have continually been writing and rewriting it ever since I got into travel writing 2ish years ago. But this author sent hers in, and I didn't, and maybe she's famous in the kind of circle that makes you get published in the NYT, perhaps rightfully so. So my version sits on my hard drive, and hers is on your breakfast table besides your bagel and cream cheese. Please tell me there are tomatoes on that. And pepper.

So 36 hours of shopping! and fashion! Sounds fashion-shoppy. Also doesn't sound much like my Santiago. My Santiago looks like this. Or at least it did when I wrote that. If you read here, you know a little about my Santiago. It has crumbly old buildings and splashy new ones and people doing interesting things on the street, and being nice to each other and searching for good food and a restaurant where they will give you a full (rather than 2/3 full) glass of water and photos of stuff like this:

and this:

The thing is, everyone's Santiago looks different. Kyle's looks different from Emily's looks different from Margaret's looks different from Abby's looks different from Annje's looks different from all the people who aren't gringa bloggers, and every Santiaguino has their own version of what it looks like, what it smells like, what it feels like to put one foot in front of the other to arrive to their next destination, where with any luck they'll be served something tasty to eat or drink, or see something humorous, or get the refreshing spray that lifts off of the Fuerza Aerea (Air Force) fountain near the Salvador Metro, or look up and realize that all this time, there was a rainbow, just hanging there.

I happen to know I'm not alone (oh! this has been discussed ad fingers crampicum, though the story technically comes out tomorrow) when I say I believe it's really important for the person who trots out Santiago as their place to actually live here. Which is why if you've already clicked on the article above, I must make two admissions. One, I am a blunderer for never having emailed my pitch to the New York Times. I know my Santiago well, and I write about it all the time. Simma down (that's me talking to me) At least now I am free of the agonizing dithering of whether or not to send in my pitch/completed story. Two, I knew this article was being written, and could have taken the reins and taken the author all around town, showing her my Santiago. And I didn't. We had contact, and I declined to help.

And so what I get, what she gets, what all of us get, is a guided tour through Santiago by someone who really likes fashion (yes, I have more detail, no I will not give it). Which also explains why when Santiago won the New York Times' first place for places to go, they mentioned the Museo de la Moda. Repetition is the mother of invention, or something.

Ah, sweet Santiago. A new side revealed to me, which I will mostly ignore, and scratch my head about. A lesson learned about not grabbing tofu bulls by their soy horns, and the self-satisfied sleep of someone who has really made Santiago (and parts of Chile, even) her own. Or maybe the self-satisfied sleep is due to the new, improved apartmentage of your author (that's me). Details to follow for my beloved fans and "when are you ever going to move" harranguers, you know who you are.

And now, my "official" reaction to the piece. #NG, clickety do. And I really love the photo I chose for the head there, because that's what much of Santiago actually looks like. A little color, a little run-down, convenient, easy and pretty safe, but it never hurt to be careful.

And if I haven't worn out my link love, and you read Spanish, and want to see another person's perspective on what's on view in Chile, check out this Venezuelan author's take on Cafés con Piernas (coffee with legs) here in Santiago on MatadorNetwork (disclaimer, I work there), in Spanish.

Fashion waterwhat? Making fun of the Chilean supermarket

2011-02-04T00:11:00.005-03:00

Sometimes I wonder which colors really go together. Today, for example, I was wearing brown pants and a black shirt. I'm not sure if that's permissible by the various iterations of fashion police that troll the streets. I did have someone say something horrible to me when I was on my bike yesterday in a similar outfit (okay, maybe it was the same one, I'm moving and I don't know where anything is and I'm schlepping stuff hither and yon and hither again). Anyway, I chased down the horrible-talking people on my bike (they were in their car), lowered my glasses and insisted that they repeat their horribleness for me to hear from closer up. They declined, and I felt a giant ball of joy at mucking up their day like they'd mucked up mine. And then I set to schlepping again.

And I still didn't know what I should wear, or shouldn't. Why, I wish I were a watermelon, I thought. Then I'd always wear pink and green and no one would ever shout horribleness to me on the street as I was biking past.

A watermelon, you say? Why yes, a watermelon. They have their own fashion you know. You didn't know? Please regard exhibit A (three years of law school and a fancy diploma in an embossed folder and behind a piece of plastic allow me to say that). (Sandía is the word for watermelon in Spanish).

So think about it. The next time you're pondering whether you should or shouldn't wear something, think of the humble watermelon, which is picked from the fields, baptized something ridiculous, laid in a basket and priced a solid 3X what it should be, where it will sit and do nothing at all while you roll your combination cart-basket past and wonder if you'll still go this same supermarket when you move a few blocks south.

And that is all she wrote for this week. Taking bets on whether or not my internet provider (whose website was down yesterday, oh dear) hooks up my service on time and when they say they will. Kinda betting that's a no, sadly. Back sometime!

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

2011-01-31T09:35:00.006-03:00

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.

2011-01-27T09:27:00.006-03:00

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

2011-01-24T10:34:00.004-03:00

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

2011-01-20T22:59:00.002-03:00

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

2011-01-18T08:41:00.005-03:00

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)

2011-01-15T15:01:00.005-03:00

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.

2011-01-13T21:03:00.003-03:00

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

2011-01-09T13:12:00.008-03:00

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

2011-01-02T13:37:00.008-03:00

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.

Summer Cleaning! A panoply of things!

2010-12-29T14:45:00.004-03:00

A little summer cleaning. What with today being the ninth day of summer, and that having absolutely no relevance or significance to me, I would like to note the following:

Thing one: I do not care how many times you tell me that humid heat is better than dry heat, it simply is not true. Humid heat makes you wilt, takes away your will to live. Dry heat bores a hole in your skull and sucks the moisture out of your brain, but a dry, dessicated brain is better than a wilty everything. I used to live in Washington, DC, and recently spent a week in melty Buenos Aires. Chileans, stop deceiving yourselves, you got the better end of the heat stick (though not the sun stick, which bears no resemblance to a rain stick, I'm afraid).

Thing two: I made it all the way through past Christmas without eating any, but yesterday, at a synogogue of all places, I had my first piece of Pan de Pascua (vaguely similar to fruitcake, but not really) of the season. It was clovey and had lots of nuts in it, and the people at his progressive synogogue were pretty awesomely nice and the music and discussion were lovely, including Roma (as in Gypsy, not as in Rome)-inspired Nómade, which I can't seem to find a link for at the moment. I find a link to another group with the same name, but the sound isn't the same.

Thing three: I am digitizing my music collection and getting rid of a boatload of CDs, most of them recorded from my originals which are somewhere in the universe in a box. If you live in Santiago and are dying for some new-to-you music, talk to me baby.

Thing four: I also have a stack of books that is ready to go to new owners. How should I handle this? should I create a blog post so you can see what they are, and let me know what you want? In my brain there was a googledoc and we all participated, but then my brain got dessicated from the boring (as in drilling, not as in fome) sun, and today is weirdly overcast, but you know what I mean. If anyone wants to googledoc a Santiago book exchange, let me know and I'll pimp that doc. Otherwise I'll just look at my coffee table in sadness, wondering why it won't empty itself.

Thing five: I have been a busy bee, over at Matador, where I've been writing and snapping, like this:
23 Movies that will make you want to travel
and
Fashionistas do battle at House of Diehl's Style Wars in Buenos Aires

Thing six: I have also been a blogging fool over at NileGuide where I'm soon to be the Chile expert, not just the Santiago expert. Which I think might be exciting, or it might be a whole bunch more work. And I'm paid by the click, so clicketydo if you're curious.

Three Indie Movie Houses in Santiago
and
Santiago a mil, free and cheap stuff to do in Santiago in January
and
Mapocho to be used as a canvas for light, kicking off January 19th

Thing seven: There is no thing seven.

Books for the family

2010-12-26T20:16:00.003-03:00

I am a sucker for books. Books galore! Books a million. I love books. But I also love not having a lot of stuff. So the ideal situation is to buy books for other people (and theoretically, purchase an e-reader, but I'm pretty riotously not interested in that at the moment).

I also have this family. I mean, they're not my family, but they're mine, you know? We're not blood, and we sometimes go too long without talking, but the D-As (last name, not their hairstyle) are my family, probably since before they asked me to be H's godmother, but certainly since then.

So when I was in Buenos Aires in one of the chichi design stores that makes you want to act like you're a movie star, I saw two children's books on sale, one by Umberto Eco, and one by Ray Bradbury (called something like Switch off the Night) in Spanish, I was so happy to have these kids (H and her brother) to buy the books for.

I brought over the gifts on Christmas day, between catwatching (Abby, Charlie's doing fine!) and going to bed ridiculously early. I kind of expected the world to be full of chaos, of a boy running around throwing things and a girl making up her new "head" (one of those frightening disembodied heads you're supposed to make up and style the hair of). But when I got there, H was having a moment, and so I went upstairs to see what was up. Eventually she brought the head up and demonstrated how the hair could be streaked with a variety of colors, and offered to streak mine. (I declined).

She then noticed the envelope with the book on her bed, and asked what it was, and immediately settled down into reading the book with me. It's about a boy who never goes out to play in the dark because he loves light. One day, a girl (called Negra, or Black, in Spanish) comes to visit him to show him how you can turn on the night by turning out the lights. And they all lived happily ever after, playing with the crickets on the lawn.

H and I took turns, first with words, then with sentences, and then with pages when she grew tired. And she called me out on two pronunciation glitches I still have, which are the ll (I pronounce it like a straight English y, but it really has some j-ness to it), and pronouncing all rs like rr, even in the middle of words. It was funny and sweet, and I didn't mind it at all, and I listened in marvel, maybe for the first time, to how beautifully she speaks, how every sound comes out just the way it should, and I remembered that when she was tiny, she would say, "Soy juerte!" (I'm strong, but the word is fuerte with an f, not juerte with a j). And we never corrected her, but one day she just started saying fuerte. (And in fact, she is quite strong).

And I thought about how even if I were to live in Chile for another million years, and even bought another thousand books, I would probably never deshacerme de (get rid of) those pronunciation glitches. But it's okay, because your family, even your familia postiza (fake family) loves you just the way you are.

The keys to my castle in Buenos Aires

2010-12-24T20:13:00.003-03:00

Now that I'm no longer in Buenos Aires, despite the occasional workstoppage which might have conspired to keep me there (and I don't mean my own), I'll tell you that it's a lovely place to be, but the joy of being at home is not lost on me, despite it being Christmas eve an the whole world a giant dose of silence, except for the music in Arabic wafting around from my next-door-neighbor's apartment. He's not Middle-Eastern or even North African, just a studier of Arabic, and I guess he enjoys the music. Who am I to judge, do I not sing Julieta Venegas from time to time? I'm not Latina, in case you didn't remember.

One of the things that was so notable about my stay in BsAs (That's how we roll with the abbreviations in Spanish) was the kickin' apartment I rented while I was there. There was nothing particularly incredible about it, except that it had a decent-sized kitchen, a dining room table, a loggia (like a laundry room), and air-conditioning (so lovely in Buenos Aires, not necessary in Santiago) and wifi. All things (minus the air conditioning) that are a bit lacking in chez eileen, and some of the many reasons why one day I must move.

But one of the things I liked best about the apartment were the keys. See for yourself:

I mean, have you ever seen anything more charming? Every day when I would come home from being out and about, I would think, I wonder what's going on at the castle (where castle is pronounced caaaaahhhh sel)? The way I figured it, I had a key to the castle, the moat (for boating purposes) and the catacombs. In actual fact, I had three keys for the top, middle and bottom lock of my door and one front door key.

I tried to regale other bonaerenses and/or porteños with my tales of dragons and flaming torches and my nifty keys, and they all pulled out keys that looked pretty much the same. Which was disheartening, but did not ruin my joy at saying caaaaahhhhhhsel at all.

And while the apartment was far larger and spiffier with all its extra space and rooms and stuff, I had to give it back to its proper owner, who must make a mint renting it out, and it turned out she wanted her keys back, too. So I returned the keys to the castle, moat and all, and flew back over the Andes, where fierce turbulence turned many a traveler Sprite and coffee-speckled, got the last seat on the centropuerto bus (a steal at 1400 pesos), walked into my building, and turned my plain old regular keys in my door to find, not a castle, but my palace all the same.

I want to be in BA Buenos Aires, Big Apple

2010-12-21T15:08:00.004-03:00

You know, the first time I came to Buenos Aires, it brought me a certain nostalgia for how I imagined New York was in the 60s, or maybe the 70s. It's movida (hectic, active), there are buses (which they call colectivos, which is confusing since in Chile that's a shared taxi) careening everywhere, and people clickety clack in their fancy shoes this way and that. Also last night, I heard a neon sign buzzing on and off for the first time since I saw it in a movie a hundred years ago. Do neon signs still buzz in the United States? I'm not sure.

Last night it occurred to me to walk from where I am staying (in Palermo, but towards Barrio Norte) to where a friend lives in the Microcentro. I asked Google (like you do) to map it out for me, cautious to not walk near an area between 9 de Mayo and San Telmo that a few people have warned me is quite women-of-the-nightish, and set off hiking in the nighttime heat.

First of all, it is NEVER warm at night in Santiago. There is never a night when walking briskly will bring anything other than a slight flush to your cheeks, to say nothing of a backfull of sweat and a headfull of curls. But I soldiered on, approximately following the suggested route, and was again and again confronted with streets upon streets of activity. Coronel Diaz, Callao, Corrientes, Santa Fe, again and again and again, I'd turn a corner and find aother giant street full of people at 9 PM, another broad boulevard with its disorderly hodgepodge of handlettered and neon signs, urging me to eat! drink! go the the gym! (No thanks, I was sweating already). Santiago's not like that. A few main avenues and the rest is downright quiet. But this is Buenos Aires! Big! Loud! Opinionated! Hot!

Somewhere around a sweaty hour and 5 km later, I arrived, having made nary a false turn, thanks googlemaps, the giant paper map I had and the photo I took of my route on the computer with my phone, and no thanks to the man who (strangely) slapped my arm when I stopped in a bus shelter for a second to adjust my hideous running shoes, having torn my feet to blistery shreds earlier in the week, having forgotten about how winter feet plus summer shoes equals agony. I gave the guy what for and continued on.

So my experience in Buenos Aires continues on, and I woke up this morning thinking, hey, nice city. I could stay here a while. And then I turned on the television.

And LAN's Argentina flight attendants are on strike. Which I'm sure is over work conditions, and I completely get it, but feel pretty damn sorry for the people stranded in the two airports in Buenos Aires, because it's beginning to look like they're not going anywhere. And then I thought of me. Me! I might not be going anywhere, either.

Guess you've got to be careful what you wish for! Wonder how long it would take me to walk to Santiago?

Don't come!

Not in Santiago anymore! Buenos Aires version.

2010-12-18T12:40:00.007-03:00

Buenos Aires is not Santiago. In a million and one ways, even in my shortish trajectory between where I am staying and where MJ and Roman of House of Diehl/Style Wars fame are holed up, basically cutting a sloppy diagonal across Palermo, zagging where the train lines are, even in that short distance, such as it's been in the 48 hours since I've arrived, Argentina keeps on reminding me it's not just Chile with a pretty accent and a lot of sssshhhh where we'd say y.

And as if to illustrate my point, two days ago in the supermarket, three old ladies talked to me in the grocery store. One to ask if I'd tried the Greek yogurt I was loading into my basket (no, but hey, Greek yogurt, that's delicious!), one to comment about how people had left the bulk section (bulk section! where you can touch and bag your own food!) messy, and a third woman who was very animated in the cheese section (cheese section! it's like being in a cheese museum!) but I'm not really sure what she was going on about. I smiled and "sí-ed" and slowly slinked away. Number of people (not men, trying to chat me up or clearly on another planet) who have spoken to me on the street for no reason in the six years I've been living in Santiago= less than three.

Everyone and their brother wants do know where I'm from. "De dónde sos?" (where are you from) rings from the rooftops. Guesses include: Chile (duh, accent), Spain (strong J, cheekbones? who knows), France (I'm convinced this is about my definitive triangle of a nose), Salta (in the north of Argentina, but this because I said pues at the end of a sentence, which was a replacement for po which we say at the end of sentences all the time in Chile. In Chile in passing I am seldom asked where I'm from, something I enjoy very much. It's not that I don't look/sound like a foreigner, it's that Chileans are just not the kind of people to ask a lot of questions of unknown people (see above paragraph).

Giant mother of all saharan windstorms complete with sandblasting. I was at a semi-permanent fruit market on Paraguay, near the train tracks, buying half a watermelon (about $2.50 US) to bring over to the pizza and empanada-addled M and R, who I figured could use something fresh and crisp. Out of nowhere, a giant, violent gale-force wind with upgusts and downdrafts and hair-ripping speed sprang up, slapping me with sand and grime and man, I am so lucky I didn't wear that other skirt, because this one barely stayed down, and it doesn't have that much extra fabric. We NEVER get wind like this in Santiago. It's breezy in September, and ocassionally before a rainstorm flags might flap. But body-pushing wind in Santiago? never.

It smells like food. Wherever you go, you can smell onions a-frying, garlic a-sauteéing, tomatoes simmering. It's delicious. I haven't actually eaten out anywhere yet, since I've been either working or running around or both, preferring to fry my own onions and garlic here at my rented apartment, but it's so nice to just walk down the street and smell food. Chileans are so unhip to the smiling, happy, joyful smell of food that to say it smells like cooking you use the expression "pasado a" (reeks of). I say bring on the reekage.

And now I'm off to see how else Argentina can remind me I'm just not in Santiago anymore. Maybe spending all night taking pictures (mostly of other people) making fashion out of discarded and found items (though I never actually saw the plastic sausages being used) and then bailing early on the afterparty to get home by 4. Yeah, that'll do. (More to follow on StyleWars, really)

Wake up and smell the media lunas, or tomorrow in BsAs

2010-12-15T11:37:00.006-03:00

A couple of friends have noticed, and some have said something, and some have not, that I'm not quite present lately. I'm kind of here but not here, in two places at once, thinking about something else. In fact, the last time I was with friends and just relaxed into the moment was way too long ago. Sorry T if you found me unusual yesterday. It could be stress, it could be angst (midlife angst? has this been documented?), it could be that work is predictable, or that I'm working on a book that is kicking my 30-something ass. It could be a general floaty projectlessness I'm feeling at the moment (book notwithstanding), or maybe it's just time for some change. And if I am still living in this apartment by March without good reason, you have my permission to come over and drip water on my freshly waxed floor, which will make me so crazy I will have to move. In fact, I'll hand you a pitcher.

And so, in a state of tumult, there's nothing better to do than tumult myself some more, so I'm headed to Buenos Aires for a few days. There are a few reasons behind this trip. The last time I was in Buenos Aires (just a hop skip and a jump if you get a wicked cheap flight on LAN, like I did, or a 30-hour busride for the long-busride nonaverse), I was waiting out the fallout of the earthquake, waiting to find out if my apartment was habitable, and recovering from a wicked case of NZ-induced jetlag. I stayed in a hostel that was fine, but dirty by my standards, kind of unkempt, and had a really lame-o kitchen where all I was inspired to cook was pasta and sauce, and that was only because I scoured out a pot while perched over a pile of trash that seemed too damp to kick out of the way. The hostel did have a nifty rooftop deck though, where I could inhale all the second hand smoke I wanted and wish to high heaven I spoke more French so I could talk to the two women who had come over hill, dale, river, swamp and several borders from French Guyana, where one worked as a midwife, and the other an osteopath. From what I could piece together, they were living life well, and loving it. I wanted to shrink myself down and hang out in their unwashed backpacks. And come back to Chile and study French, que tampoco hice (which I also didn't do).

Needless to say (French women notwithstanding) this time I'm not staying in that same hostel. Hostels in Buenos Aires have it tough. They get used heavily by RTWers who have grown socially disabled, believing themselves to be the center of the universe and tend to one-up even the most one-upmanshippy of the one-upmanshippers, and the party-harders, who come home at 8 AM and sleep the day away, rising to purchase beer in the early afternoon, sliding on flipflops and a colorful, shapeless shift (the women), playing with the ends of their overlyblonde hair from so much time on the beach in Brazil. The men occasionally pull shirts over their bellies before they go out, reminding themselves they're not in Bali anymore.

I'm not anti-hostel. But when you pick the easiest-to-party-in/big-hype/major transit point on a continent, you're going to get a lot of people who aren't in the same mindset as a traveler who just flew a couple of hours for a change of place, a change of air, and to see some thoroughly bizarre anti-fashion show produced by an old highschool friend who I used to sneak into clubs with when we were too young to even go to the Ritz (16!), because Irving Plaza (14) and CBGBs (also 14) just weren't our crowd. Yes, we were the whippersnappers who got out of our taxi and had the velvet rope dropped so we could prance right in. And no, that had nothing to do with me, it was all my glam friends, like MJ.

So I'm staying in an apartment in Palermo. If the experience is lovely, I will sing the company's praises. If the fashion is fashiony and nobody tries to get me to drink a Redbull, Battery or whatever BsAs' equivalent is, I will also report on that. If I end up partying like a rockstar, I will have my head examined. And if I get to hang out with Kate and make fun of stuff that needs to be made fun of, and take lots of pictures and walk long distances and drink too much coffee, I'll be sure to let you know about that, too.

There's also news that there might be a Buenos Aires meetup for Matadorians. If that's your bag (and wow, if you know me at all, you can guess it's probably not mine because it's at a big club with a gajillion people), drop me a line and I'll try to get you in touch. I'll probably show up, but just to reject offers of a Redbull and then go home and sleep on my rented bed, which sounds much seedier than I hope it is.

And now, for your navel-gazing pleasure, may I suggest the rest of the internet? Tomorrow at this time I should be in my rented apartment, trying for what my friend K from law school (and the person who I sheltered from Hurricane Katrina with in a trailer at a hunting camp in Missippi), "a geographical fix." Wish me luck, and pardon the departure from your regularly scheduled OMG, I'm an expat, things are so different here! (but if you want to read about one of my favorite fruits (nísperos) on NileGuide, feel free to do so here.

End Brooklyn

2010-12-13T10:58:00.003-03:00

In San Francisco, when you reach the end of a street, where there is no more asphalt, and where it simply ceases to exist, they put up this little sign that says "End."

And it got me thinking. What if you knew when it was the last time you'd ever go somewhere, ever belong somewhere? Would you hold on to the moment, tying it around your wrist like a helium balloon? Or would you let it float away, knowing it would be replaced by more timely locations?

And what about people? If you knew it was the last time you'd see someone, the last time you'd talk? Would you create a preemptive nostalgia, drinking in every second until the tiny sign appeared, saying "End" and then slither away, a snake down the stairs, a stain down a drain?

I never knew when the last time was that I'd call Brooklyn home. I was away at college when my mother called to let me know that she'd sold the home where we'd lived from the mid 70s, where I'd carved the word "DOOR" into a door with the end of a screw I'd found, and then tried to deny it, where I'd run my hand through a plate glass window, where we lived with my father until he died.

I never knew when the last day was that I'd call Brooklyn home, and I definitely didn't know that walking down the street with my mother and sister and tiny nephew who would later shout "love you, love you, love you!" as a farewell, that I would see a sign that said "End Brooklyn" and wonder about any of this.

It's amazing what the folds of your brain can unfurl when you're busy doing something else.

What I ate and wore: Lo Vasquez (Trip report)

2010-12-09T09:55:00.006-03:00

I've done this trip many times, during the day and at night, though during the day when the highway is not closed, it's quite different, as you have to call SOS to take you through the tunnels, which cuts a tiny bit of pedal time, and adds a lot of standing around. Ideally, you can go in a group of people where some are much faster than you (easy for me!), and they can call SOS while you're still pedaling up there. But sometimes you have to wait all the same.

Having done this trip many times, you'd think I'd have a system, a plan, a working knowlege of what to eat/drink/wear etc. Every year I learn more, and after not bringing enough food last year (based on a previous year where I pedalled in record time, and therefore needed less food on the road), I have proven to myself that every year brings its challenges. Here I'm writing this all down so I can remember, and in case you're thinking of riding Lo Vasquez next year, maybe this can help you to figure out your gear.

This year's challenges were: not realizing I'd grabbed a pair of bike tights without a chamois inside (owie), wearing a backpack with my camera in it (which made me sweat and froze me, and also killed my back), and thicky, soupy fog for many km.

What I wore:

-aforementioned capri-length biketights. They used to have a chamois in them and it ripped, so I did surgery on them. They're fine for spinning, not so great for 125 km.
-clipless bike shoes
-long wool socks, pulled up or down as the weather dictated
-shoe covers (windproof, waterproof covers you pull over your shoes. They may also protect you from peeing on your shoes themselves in an ill-pointed squat. Just saying.)
-shimmel, long-sportsbra to the waist. This may also have contributed to the sweating
-breathable sporty shirt (purple) from the year of the flood
-arm warmers, like legwarmers but for your arms, pukey green
for bundling:
- an REI-brand jacket that I should have bought ten of, it's for x-country skiing, is windproof and has pull-outable sleevelets to use as gloves. It's beat up, but I will keep it.
- a fleece vest
- a crappy acrylic Bolivian poncho I bought for three dollars in La Paz.
- a pair of wind-proof gloves

I also wore a skirt, which was a whimsical addition (also purple), and made it clear to everyone from a distance (as though there were any question) that I am female. Also, my buddy Sonia was wearing a purple sweatshirt, so we were quite the purple pair. The poncho was a last minute throw-in, as I had lots of room in my panniers, and it weighs nothing. I imagined I could also use it to lie down on if I had to, though it's quite small.

What I ate/drank:

I have two secret weapons for falling-apartedness on the road. Hypersweetened cold tea and gummi something. I dislike both sweet tea and gummi anything, but when you just need a little extra kick, both seem to do the job. The gummis especially seem to release slow enough to get you farther than just another 500 meters. I had Haribo something sour and many of them were grapefruit flavored, which was quite horrible, but they did the trick. In the past, I've had gummi bears, and those work well, too.

-sweetened iced tea (homemade)
-water, I ended up drinking about 40 or so oz, which is not much, but it was pretty cold, and I also drank the iced tea and the coffee below
-thermos of black coffee
-gummi sours
- three small sandwiches, two of cream cheese and tomato, one of cream cheese and blackberry stuff (similar to quince paste, but made of blackberry)

Stuff I brought but didn't need:
-one pair extra socks for either changing in Valpo if it was too hot or extra bundling if it was too cold on the road. Didn't need them.
-chocolate. Everyone (amateur cyclists) says to bring chocolate, and I know I eat cream cheese which seems like it would be a bad idea because it's fatty, but I could not stomach the chocolate at all on the road. In all fairness, I don't love chocolate to begin with, and adding a sleepless night didn't make it more appealing.

Normally the weather holds until you reach the first tunnel (Lo Prado), and everyone comes out, suits up and holds on for dear, freezing life on a very fast downhill over the valley, and where the geniuses who put together the ride put a flood light on the right side as you're coming down, so you are blinded by it and cannot see once you get past it. This year it was strangely warmer when we got to the end of the first tunnel. I just put on the windproof fleeceish things, gloves and shoecovers.

We later found out why it was so warm, as the humidity levels had risen, and there was a very dense fog from after the second tunnel to quite a big past Casablanca, and again at Lo Vasquez itself. If it had continued much longer I might have gotten wet through the fleecey thing. Mist collected on our sleeves like a dusting of snow. This is the first year I've gone without a windbreaker. I might go back to that next year, or at least have one on hand.

When we got to Valparaíso, we headed straight to the bus station, each bought a small can of potato chips (craving salt) and some water, were horribly mistreated by a malas pulgas (evil-mooded, easily upset) busdriver who was flying without his assistant that day, and fell asleep on the bus for the long ride home. Since the highway is closed, the bus takes another route back and it's long enough for a decent nap (usually 1.5 hours, with this route more like 3)

So lessons learned:

No chamois-less bike tights
Chocolate optional
Think about bringing a windbreaker
Weather unpredictable
Preheat thermos before pouring in coffee

oh, and the best one: do some training before you go. Seriously, I'm not getting any younger here!

Bonus:

Stuff I wish everyone had:

-Lights, for the love of God, I cannot see you if you are not illuminated. I don't know how many pedestrians were almost hit on this journey. Cyclists also need to have lights. or a glow stick. Glowy bracelets are less than a quarter en route (100 pesos)
-the sense not to wear jeans. This doesn't impact my comfort, but it definitley impacts yours. Use some sense!

Stuff I wish no one had:

-Audible music, or at least ugly audible music. Though these people tend not to pedal very fast, so you can get past them easily.

Oh, and if you're late to the party, this is what I'm talking about.

While you were sleeping

2010-12-08T13:18:00.003-03:00

I was out riding through a fog so thick it looked like I could have eaten it with a spoon, had the gummy worms (secret weapon #2, with #1 being sweetened cold tea in one of the water bottles) not been enough.

Every year they close the highway from Santiago to Valparaíso, a distance of about 120 km from where I sit, and a whole bunch of people walk and ride out to Lo Vasquez, a Catholic sanctuary that celebrates Mary for the Assumption of Mary, Dec 8th. Many of them are religious pilgrims, I am a person who enjoys long, car-free bike rides.

I have many things to say about this tradition, and about different experiences I've had on the road from here to there. As luck would have it, I am about six breaths away from falling over. Turns out replacing a night of sleep with a night of pedalling isn't really an even exchange. You can add the bike, but you cannot remove the sleep from the equation.

But the thing I am struck by now is Luis. Luis was a guy I worked with at a publishing company. I was getting really into swimming, and told him how I was working towards a mile. And he said "you should never swim a mile." Why? I asked. Because you'll always want to swim a mile after that, and you have better things to do in the pool and with your time, unless you're planning on becoming a distance swimmer. Luis was a triathelete when I knew him, and I have reason to believe that he's correct.

Which brings me (right now, surely after I wake up I'll be in another place) to the thought, now that I've done this ride so many times, will I always want to do it, even though sometimes sleeping or riding half way or walking or not going at all would really be a better use of my time?

I have 364 more days to ponder. Coming up, what I brought, ate and saw. And if you think you've heard part of this story before, you have a very good memory, because here is last year's report. Now go eat some fog.

Bearshapedsphere, please help me!!!!

2010-12-03T13:15:00.003-03:00

As the internet lives and breathes and expands and contracts and mostly expands again, and lots of people have Chile on the brain, what with the giant earthquake, World Cup and then the miners, and the tiny piece of the web I've carved out for myself with blogging and writing for other outlets and generalized loud-mouthedness, I get more than a smattering of "heys" from around the place.

Some are from people that I've talked with for months or years, travelers that want to come and check out Santiago, or people who want to talk to me about blogging, or new business ventures in Chile or other generalized stuff. Sometimes it works out and we grab a coffee or run around the city at breakneck speed stopping for tasty treats and photo ops. It's kind of a fun way for me to travel without ever really going anywhere, which, though it may not appear that way from the outside, is what it feels like alot of the time).

And sometimes I get strange inquiries, like from the NY Post looking for stringers in Chile. Now that's a strange fit. I used to like the NY Post when I was a kid, but that's because it had the comics in it, and the NYTimes (paper of choice) only had political cartoons.

And then sometimes it's reporters. Or documentarians. Or people who just want to know how to get to Chile from Argentina (this is a strange request, as there are scads of websites giving out that info, and why you'd think I'm a better resource than them is beyond me).

I recently got a request from a reporter from a major news outlet to give her just a touch of information about:
cool places in Santiago
hip bars in Santiago
things most tourists wouldn't do in Santiago
and
expats living in cool homes in Santiago

There was no offer of a coffee, no "hey, let's get to know each other" just a generalized, "you, do my job for me." Really? Do your job for you? Well that seems fair. I'll do your job for you, and you can do mine for me. I'll leave my computer on and ready with the several places I work for's info on a long sheet of paper written in blue felt-tip pen, and lend you my brain, and you can just run along and be me. And me? I'll be me, too. That seems fair.

I wrote back a very polite note saying I didn't think I'd be able to help, holding my tongue about how truly annoyed I was by this reporter's patudez (freshness, and not in that morning mist kind of a way.

Then just yesterday I got a message from a documentarian who explained the project he's working on, and wondering if I could put him in contact with people that might be interviewed about something he's interested in (sorry for vagueness, will come back with more info as the project develops and I'm told I can put it out there). It was a paragraph or so long, had a sweet halago (compliment/flattery) about the blog and my wordsmithing, and was just generally on point.

See the difference? Get to know me, treat me like a human and not a fact-spewing machine, and have a project that's about communication or Chile or something else that has something to do with me, be polite and correcto and don't ask me to do your job, and you get results.

Julie recently wrote on her blog of writerly wisdom, Cuaderno Inédito about reciprocity re: asking for writing advice. It's terribly on point, and worth a read even you don't write for a living (or aspire to). It's about being connected, never asking for more than you can give (maybe to someone else), and about not asking other people to do your work for you. Words to live by.

Thanksgiving, 2010.

2010-11-26T01:10:00.003-03:00

At the risk of posting more than once about this Thanksgiving, and on boring you to tears with my exhausting tale of travels and fun in multiple hemispheres with two disgustingly photogenic children who are a part of my life due to my sister and brother in law, I wish to report that Thanksgiving dinner, with its stuffings (we make two) a turkey deemed "Fred" by my not-squeamish niece who will certainly not follow in my non-meating eating footsteps, cranberry sauce, roasted brussel sprouts and many other tasty dishes, was a small, but smashing success.

We are, for the first time in many years, alone. Our friends of the family, practically family themselves, are in NY, and we are in California. The best friend of a deceased aunt that stands in almost as an aunt herself, though is actually closer to a friend, is also not here, spending the holiday with friends in NY. My grandfather, who always insisted that there be quantities and varieties of cheese too great to eat or name, is long deceased.

We're sad, but happy. Sad for what we've lost, a commmunity, a house full of chaos and fruit salads and contributions-a-million, cello concerts by kids almost old enough to feel self-conscious (10, in case you were wondering). But we're happy. We're so lucky to have each other, the means to pull this all together and a three year old with a vocabulary to make you burst out loud laughing when all you want to do is make him stop.talking.just.for.one.second.

And now we have this year's version of pecan pie, for a once-a-year treat that you pretty much wouldn't want to eat more often than that. And a sister laying in bed willing her antibiotics to kick in. She'd like to note that she's thankful for doctor's offices open on Thanksgiving.

I wouldn't trade today for anything. Next year in San Francisco. But we'll skip the sinus infection in 2011.

Latin America at Ground Level ebook

2010-11-22T12:59:00.003-03:00

While most of us were out doing nothing particularly publish-worthy, Steven Roll of Travelojos (and who I got to meet in person in NY at TBEX last year) has been putting together some of his favorite Latin-America based and centered writers to create Celebrating Latin America At Ground Level, the Latin America e-book.

See?

Food, life, love, travel ingenuity etc. It's all compiled and edited and FREE. Download it here.

Oh, and hey, I have a piece in there. Which might be notable on its own, except that there's this whole long list of everyone else who has a piece in there, too. Hats off people. I'm delighted to be in such good company. And hats off, Steven, for dogged love of good writing and Latin America.

And speaking of dogged, Margaret from cachandochile shared her link list of all the book's contributors. And so I'll share it with you. There are a bunch of people I work with (at MatadorNetwork) am friends with (in real life and on the internet) and people I hope I'll meet one day. You too? Click and read.

Laura Quinn (Lonely Girl Travels ) Travel
Ernest White (Fly Brother) Travel
Kelly McLaughlin (Cancún Canuck) Mexico
David Miller (Matador, Operating on Stoke) Patagonia
Conner Gory (Here is Havana) Cuba
Eileen Smith (Bearshapedsphere), Chile & Travel in general
Ayngelina Brogan (Bacon is Magic) Latin America
Nicholas Gill (New World Review) Travel
Carlo Alcos (Matador, Vagabonderz) Travel
Steven Roll (Travel Ojos) Mexico
Jim Johnston (Mexico City DF and Live on Arrival) Mexico
Rebecca Smith Hurd (All About Puebla) Mexico
Mark Francis (Guate Living) Guatemala
Katie Alley (Seashells & Sunflowers) Argentina
Ben Box (South American Handbook)
Abby Tegnelia (The Jungle Princess) Costa Rica
Vicky Baker (Going Local Travel) Argentina
David Lee (Medellin Living) Colombia
Holly Elizabeth Worton (Ecohotelology) Sustainability, Travel, Latin America
Nora Walsh (Travel Ojos contributor) Latin America
Genny Ross-Barons (Roatan Vortex) Honduras
Leigh Shulman (The Future is Red) Travel
Margaret Snook (Cachando Chile) Chile
Cathy Brown (Expat Daily News in Central and South America)
Tracy L. Barnett (The Road Less Traveled) Travel
Jessie Kwak (Unpaved South America) South America
Mark Chesnut (Latin Flyer), Travel
Julie Schwietert Collazo (Matador, Collazo Projects) Americas
Jill Greenberg (First World White Girl)

Anyone else got any great crowd-sourced Latin-America based projects you want us to know about? Speak up!

Thanksgiving is afoot in Chile (sort of).

2010-11-18T21:55:00.003-03:00

Without the speedbump of Thanksgiving, Christmas is already in nearly full swing in Santiago. I have not yet seen sweaty men dressed up like oversized teddy bears-meet-Santa Claus in the viejito pascuero getup on the street, but today I went to pick up the usual assortment of sugar n stuff for my upcoming family visit at the supermarket and I nearly slipped and fell on a cane full of Suny (a soft caramel-like treat, but not like kraft, more like the inside of a candy corn but tastes like caramel).

Speaking of Thanksgiving, I have spent Thanksgiving here, in fact I think I was here twice for the big day, and once we celebrated it in opposite time, in May, which is when the fall foods you need for Thanksgiving are actually in season.

What we discovered, amid all the planning and purchasing and whatnot is that:

-sometimes you'll have to replace scallops for clams if you make that weird scallop stuffing, because they're very expensive at this time of year (maybe always, don't buy them, wouldn't know)

-cranberry sauce in a can is available at Jumbo (and maybe at Shangri-La, I haven't checked. Fresh cranberries may also be available at Jumbo, though we found out most people don't actually like fresh cranberry sauce.

-drying out marraquetas for stuffing takes like five minutes. Put in lots of sage and butter, very tasty.

-you are unlikely to find celery at the feria this time of year, but you can get it at the super market, particularly Jumbo.

-sweet potatoes can be found at the very back of the Vega, get off the metro at Patronato and enter from there, in the second to last galpón, there is a guy on the left side of the rightmost aisle that sells radicchio and fennel and stuff. He has the last of last year's sweet potatoes, harvested by hand so they're not moldy. Pricey and dry, but if you need them, you need them.

-cooking down zapallo give you a very wet squash mush, and you are better off buying pumpkin in a can for a pumpkin pie.

-Lúcuma is not traditional, but it tastes thanksgivingy.

-Having to wear a tank top on Thanksgiving is just wrong

-It doesn't really matter what you eat, being together with the people you love is the most important part.

Next time from San Francisco! (where many of the people I love will be waiting for me, clamoring for suny. Worry not, it's in the bag.)

What? No Brillo?

2010-11-15T09:31:00.003-03:00

I have a friend here that is great with words. He was the person whose FB status I saw that said "terremoto en Chile" and I knew it wasn't a tremor but rather an actual earthquake. He's also the person that hoofed it over to my house to see what was up and cleared me a path to be able to get back in, but I digress.

He has this expression that I love, "Ni un brillo" which means, it doesn't shine at all, but which you take to mean, it's not at all interesting to me. And I've heard him say it before, but the other day when he said it, I suddenly realized something.

Brillo pads, those steel wool chunks with the pink soap impregnated? That's brillo. As in brillo (BREE-yo), which means shine. And now every time I hear someone say "ni un brillo," I'll think of some never-gonna-happen comedy routine wherein I take a brillo pad out of my pocket and say, "here's one."

Except that steel wool here is called virutilla, and it's more of a mass moun than a countable one, mainly used to de-wax your waxed hardwood floors, and the countable version of this item is mago pads, and really, where's the fun in that?

This post brought to you by a very short night of sleep and one of the many stacks of notes I take on things I wish to expound on at a later date. And they are many, fear not. Brillo pad, anyone?

Missed opportunity, the rude girl and the older ladies that would have given her what-for.

2010-11-10T10:19:00.003-03:00

The other day on the way home from the beerfest in Malloco, I watched a really unpleasant scene unfold between the conductora (female driver) of the bus and one of the passengers.

First, the situation was tense. We were all walking back on the highway away from Santiago, hoping to catch the bus before it filled up at the entrance to the beer fest. It was late, some people had been drinking quite a bit, though my friend and I had had just a little beer, and were doing just fine. One of the passengers got on the bus, about 18 years old, lowslung faded jeans, a white belt with studs, some kind of tee shirt, medium length brown hair. She insisted on paying the student rate to get home from the beer fest at 9:30 at night.

And the driver wasn't having it. "You're not on your way to or from school," she said. And the girl insisted, "I'm a student, I pay the student rate." This went on for a while and the driver opened her "cage" (this bus runs near Pedro Aguirre Cerda and Cerillos, and all the buses on this route have metal mesh that divides the driver from the passengers), and said, "Bájese! No sea fresca!" (Get off the bus, don't be mouthy/fresh. -in the politest possible grammatical form). The girl didn't get off and the woman said she'd call the police, but the police were all busy directing traffic and trying to prevent people from walking up the highway to catch the bus, so there was no way they'd do anything, and the girl knew it.

45 minutes drag on when you're on a bus with drunken teenagers (the drinking age in Chile is 18), practicing their English and saying filthy things to each other, and I kept on thinking about this girl, and how rude she'd been to the driver. And also how much she was shouting and being the center of attention there on the bus.

As we got closer to San Borja, say a couple of blocks out, she started heckling the driver, "Sos shora, sos shora" (basically, you think you're so cool/tough, but with the lower-class and very looked-down-upon pronunciation of chora (cool), with the initial sh- rather than ch- sound). She went on and on, using words that are considered typical of the lower class, like "nadien" instead of "nadie." You could tell she was trying on this accent for size. It's not how she usually talks, she was just trying to put the bus driver in (what she thought was) her place.

It had nothing to do with me, but I was so angry at this fresca, this girl who, upon looking at her, was comun y corriente (just a regular kid), her clothes looked like she bought them at Patronato, where cheap knockoffs, and heavy doses of lycra rule the day. Not that I think that someone from the upper class has the right to denigrate a bus driver, but it would have made more sense if she at least came from money, which her appearance indicated was not the case. Just a regular kid.

We all eventually got off the bus, and I had to restrain myself from saying something to this girl about her lack of respect for the bus driver, her friends, the rest of the passengers and herself. I felt too young, too foreign, too angry to say anything. She showed up on the metro platform with me and I purposely got in a different car so I wouldn't see her again.

And the story could end here, but yesterday I was leaving the house to meet up with an out of town guest, and I saw a group of escolares (schoolkids, this time highschoolers, and actually from Liceo La Aplicación, which is near my house, here they are protesting) being given a dressing-down by some older women, maybe 60ish.

Y es mas, usas la corbata de tu colegio, y tomas en la calle! (And what's more, you're wearing your school tie and drinking in the street!) The kids were shrinking away from the women, but not saying anything. It went on, "Show some respect, who do you think you are, what kind of example is that for the other kids." And the kids were contrite. They apologized, and looked at the ground.

And since I love contrasts I couldn't help but compare the two situations. And wish that those ladies had been on the bus to give Ms. Mouthy a piece of their minds. And think about how sometimes, I just can't wait to get old so I can say absolutely whatever is on my mind.

What's in a hat? Fiesta de La Cerveza in Malloco, Chile

2010-11-08T18:35:00.003-03:00

Where to start? Every year, Chile has a bit of a beerfest out in Malloco, out the old highway to Talagante. It's a big, fun, family affair that really, people bring their kids to. They give out tiny tastes of beer and a big beer costs about $3, and a bigger one about $4, and that's alot for Chile, but still, the number of people that go is astounding, and we all stand around in the sun and take tiny tastes and then decide what to drink.

And in the middle of everything, as I stood back, I noticed two things. 1. Everyone at the beer fest was incredibly happy (though not many were particularly drunk). Joyous, smiling, wandering, sausage-eating, happy and 2. Hats! my goodness, they were everywhere. We are not a hat-wearing people in Chile and certainly it's easier to take pictures of hats than of happy.

And so I present:

Viking!

Mysterious girl viking with braids, that says Ireland on it.

Gold lamé furry viking hat.

a possible former viking hat, with horns removed. Qué opinan? (what do you think?)

Dueling headwear

This kid would look much more choro (much cooler) without the icecream.

Adoreableness alert with this wee porkpie one:

sometimes just one hat isn't enough

I'm not entirely sure she wants to be seen with him.

hat, no hat, hat no hat

There were many more spectacles (including a couple of cases of actual beer goggles) to enjoy, like an amusement park of dubious safety, baby animals (nursing llama, so cute!), and many sweet and/or fried items, and the one beer I bought turned out to be from a microbrewery near my house (they sell it there, don't think they brew it there, but who knows), and some very odd happenings with the to-ing and fro-ing (but actually mainly just with the fro-ing, but in the end, everyone was happy and since we went in the late afternoon, no one got sunburnt. If you want to go next year, give me a call and we'll get it set up.

And for more hats (like the chickenhead one) and other things from this great festivity, go to my hats-a-million flickr set here
.

Or go see what Isabel had to say about the event (and other things about her life in Chile here.

And this post has nothing to do with one of only about three fruits or vegetables I've ever come across that I didn't like, called a malloco, which I can only assume has nothing to do with this town, and which I talked about here.

Gender equality: what decade is Chile really in? (disturbing image below)

2010-11-05T11:33:00.005-03:00

Something we often talk about in Chile, locals and foreigners alike, is where we are socially. Where are gay rights, and abortion rights and racial equality? We sometimes use where the United States is as a point of comparison, for example for gay rights, you might say we're in the 60s, or maybe the 70s. For abortion rights, we're certainly pre Roe vs. Wade, as abortion is illegal and a prosecutable offense here.

But what about gender equality? Well, it's related to gay rights and abortion rights, but in a class all its own. Recent newspaper articles say that the salary gap is the same between women and men as it was ten years ago. Is that still happening in the US? Where does that put us?

I was feeling kind of positive about the move to liberate women with this cutesy ad in the Baquedano metro exhorting women to drop their pumps in the uneven streets, and wear sneakers to work. It's sponsored by ACHS, the worker safety commission (the same people who graciously gave me many months of physical therapy when I was hit by a truck on my bike on my way home from work). It reminded me of the transit strike in the 80s in NY, which is when women first started appearing in public in tennis shoes and skirts. Admittedly, it looks ridiculous, but take it from someone who walked about a mile in heels the other night, it's not a bad idea.

It says: Walking's good for you. Walk safely. Every year high heels cause more than 3,600 ankle sprains, 7,000 commuting accidents and 32,600 days off of work. Wear sneakers to and from work. High heel time is over.

And it made me feel nostalgic, and think, wow, in Chile we have to tell women it's okay to be comfortable. But at least we're on the right track (though I don't see anyone actually doing it). Aww. It gave me the warm fuzzy comfortable foot and back feeling. Sweet. 1980s sweet.

But that was short-lived, because the very next day I was up in El Golf doing a photo shoot (more on this later), when we passed this sign.

1980s? or 1880s? Horrible, woman hating, self-image hating, violent, anti-female, hate producing, sick.

It's an ad for non-surgical fat reduction (on a woman who is already of normal weight). I know I like all my non-surgical procedures to be carried out with a saw. In fact, I just got a haircut. Perhaps I should have suggested that be done with a saw as well. Imagine the ads!

Chile, what decade are you really in?

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There are many more examples, but these two visual interruptions of my regular day evoked strong reactions. And you?

My lakes crossing beat up your sound.

2010-11-01T09:58:00.006-03:00

I am fully cognizant of the fact that comparisons are wrong. You should never compare this to that, because either this or that will feel badly about what you're saying, or you may later regret it, or you may be at a party and someone may disagree with you vociferously, and then drop his drink.

Look, a picture to illustrate my point (and capture reader attention):

I don't care much about the vociferousness, and I'm about to make a comparison, or say something unflattering about someplace I've been, and you can say what you want, and even drop your drink, but there is a reason I wasn't wowed by Milford Sound. Milford Sound is one of the "must sees" of New Zealand's south island. You can take a four day (I think) walk on the Milford Track, you can take a bus in from Queenstown (or Te Anau). And you can spend a long day (in my case, seeing "Whale Runner" (love that movie) and something about a race car that features a person from the southern part of the south island, and seems to have taken on a cult-like following in New Zealand, though it's an American movie.

And so, the Milford sound. I was game. I was also tired from a whole lot of bike riding, and so I slept and woke, slept and woke. And then we were on the boat, and the best part of the whole thing was that an Indian woman, fresh from her wedding, mehndi still fading on her hands, gasped and said, "penguins!" And I said, "really?" and she said, "no, dolphins." Which is totally understandable because they're right next to each other in the kids' science encyclopedia, and when I saw an otter humphing across the beach one day in Maitencillo, and shouted out "nutria!" I wondered if I'd accidentally instead said "morsa!" (walrus, which it was not, but hey, pinnipeds).

And I just was so nonplussed by the Milford Sound. It might have been because there were so many people, or because we got there so easily, or because the weather spat between sleet and rain the whole time, or because I'd rather have been cycling, or it could be because I have this in my backyard:

Both of these on the lakes crossing between Chile and Argentina, and which I am still arguing with the travel agency about because they want to charge me more money because I stupidly handed over my Chilean ID instead of my passport when I got to the hotel (more to follow on that...). But the lakes crossing. So much bus-boat-bus-boat-bus-boat, but so much worth it, because it finally helped me to figure out why I thought the Milford Sound was just ok, though in general I loved the pants off New Zealand, and that sounds much wronger than it was supposed to, but it's a holiday weekend and I'm working anyway, so give me a break.

Also, look: kitty in Peulla (Chile).

And a rainbow welcoming us into Bariloche (Argentina).

And since I mentioned NZ movies, now's not a bad time to mention I wrote up a little thing on NG about "must-see" modern Chilean movies, where "must-see" is in quotes because there's really nothing in the world you must do. Wait, that's not true. You must live your life well. Or answer to yourself why you're not.

And also, if you've noticed a kick up in my mad photog skillz, it's not your imagination. It's Ricardo Portugueis, and his CasaK Taller Digital de Fotografía. Credit where credit is due. He took me out of manual and woke me up and got me to La Reina seven weeks in a row. Both astonishing accomplishments. Thanks Ricardo!

Curious and typo-ridden signs from the south of Chile and Argentina

2010-10-27T10:28:00.006-03:00

And no trip would be complete without a selection of the most curious and typo-riddled signs I could find.

So without further ado, I present you with "the most curious and typo-riddled signs" of the south of Chile and Argentina. Now, with snarky commentary!

Starting at the beginning of the trip, in Puerto Varas, we found that a guy named Taylor makes tours. As you can see, there are Taylor made tours. I wonder what he likes, that Taylor, and what kind of tours he makes. Or made. The sign isn't clear on whether this activity continues into the present, or if it's something he used to do, but doesn't anymore.

Then we have handmade crafts for Chilean hands. Now I have not done a complete study on how Chilean hands might differ from other hands, but perhaps these are politically-themed rings (maybe with a Chilean flag?), or gloves with the Fenix miner capsule on them? (pssst, it's by. por can mean for or by. In this case, it's by, not for.

Here on a boat in Lago Todos Los Santos, I am beseeched not to traspass. There is a word traspasar in Spanish, and it means to transfer, as in data. I don't have a USB port, so I figured I was ok.

On another boat, on you'll forgive me if I don't remember what lake, because all this boat bus boat bus boat bus got awfully repetitive, it is requested that I not throw trash to the lake. Here lakey lakey, are you ready? I'm going to throw you some trash! As it happens, I couldn't even get the lake's attention, it didn't seem to be in the mood for playing catch, so we didn't get to try out not heeding the sign. (pssst, its into the lake, not to the lake).

Now we're in on dry land in Argentina, where there aren't so much typos as uh-ohs, as in that means something else where I'm from.

And so I present to you the following, an organization called S.C.U.M., which I don't care what they do and how many free t-shirts I get, I'm not playing.

And another one which will will be a good time to point out the Spanish SMS speak for "no comment" which is 5mentario. (sin comentario)

And then, coming back to Chile, this time in Castro, we have the mysteriously spelled ajente. The word for agent is agente, and I thought it always had been, but what do I know about Spanish orthography? What I really enjoy about this word is that it sounds like a person who works for you (agente) but who you really don't have any contact with (ajeno, alien to you). Or an agente who really likes his absinthe (ajenjo). And it's forged metal, so there's probably another ajente out there, too. We could number them. Ajente 005, 005, 007. Oh wait, that's already been done.

Strange happenings and great hilarity in the south of Chile and Argentina

2010-10-25T08:30:00.005-03:00

MamaJ is a good sport. In addition to volcano sightings and foofy teahouses and tasty food (but way too much fish) and general pleasantness, we experienced a few things on our trip to the south of Chile that might make you either scratch your head or think twice about traveling with me (if you were considering it to begin with).

Protest: In Bariloche there was a big protest on the street with shouting and banners and signs (for which I love the word in Spanish, it is pancarta this seems to be the word only for protest signs, not posters, which in Chile is afiche). They were talking about taking away impunity from someone who should have been brought to justice but wasn't.

Shouting: Some of the spinoff protesters parked in front of the La Turista chocolate shop and screamed "asesinos, asesinos" (killers, killers) for some time in front of the store while I guided my mother away.

Theft: Several set-jawed over-windblown young teens came pouring out of a chocolate shop with dozens of boxes of chocolates under their arms, while the guard stood by almost nonplussed, and my mother and I flattened ourselves against a building so as not to attract attention or get in the way.

Bad bus drivers: We took a four hour bus trip on a bus company called Queilén from Puerto Montt to Castro and I don't know what was up with Mutt and Jeff or the driver and his ayudante (helper, the guy who puts the luggage on the bus, takes tickets, moves the curtains, etc), but they were acting like fourth graders. The ayudante would stick his finger in the driver's ear, they were slapping at each other, and they finally starting spraying each other with the deodorizing spray that they have on board. All this while driving a Greyhound-type bus full of actual living humans that hoped to arrive to their destination in that same state. Beware seats 3 and 4, which give you a very clear view of bus shenanigans.

More bad bus drivers, or the same bad bus drivers strike again: I forgot to mention when I originally wrote this that in pulling into the ferry to Chiloé, the bus driver actually hit another vehicle and popped his side/rear view mirror out of its fiberglass frame, and broke the frame. That's right. We hit another vehicle. And this was before the spraying and ear noodling.

Trafficking: We were on the bus from Bariloche to Osorno, which is a stunning trip with lakes and changing foliage, and in our case, lots of snow, and when we got to the border crossing, they made us line up alphabetically. Which we did, except for Mamaj, who was mysteriously not on the list, so she had to go last. As such, we had a chance to see everyone who got on and off the bus, including a very shifty character with his extremely small-eyed daughter. They looked a little out of place, neither lugareños (people from there), nor tourists, but whatever, it's a free border, anyone who wants to can cross it. But they cannot bring duffel bags full of pirated DVDs across the border. This led to a 30 or 40-minute delay, including a very unwashed grandmother ranting and raving, and in addition to being a bit odiferous, she had quite the potty mouth. My mother reports that when we got to Osorno, the dejected man and his small-eyed daughter recovered their bags from under the bus, light-as-a-feather luggage that fell in on itself with the bulk of nothing to keep it open.

Clown: Sometimes riding a bus in rural Chile, a person will get on the bus to tell jokes and do a little pattery thing they do. In this case, it was a man with a yellow wig, clown pants, suspenders and oversized glasses. His jokes were not funny, and his screeching voice most unpleasant to anyone's ears, including my mother's. She suggested paying him to get off the bus, which we did not, but I'm glad to know I come by it honestly, since that often occurs to me to do when the on-board entertainment is less than entertaining.

Water outage: When we first got to Castro after the Mutt and Jeff show, there was no water in the city. It was solved quickly, but looked like a doozy at the time.

But in spite of myriad combinations of things that could have truly gone wrong, Mamaj and I had a great time, with great hilarity walking down ginormous hills with someone's cranky knee and just about as many photos as you'd expect, none of which appear here. But you'll see them soon. Now I just have to go back and clone myself so I can do about 18 days worth of work in about six. If you see me faffing around on the internet, you have my permission to tell me to get back to it. And if I don't like it, I'll send Mutt and Jeff, the protesters, the unwashed grandmother, the clown, the chocolate-stealing children and the traffickers to keep you company.

In Bariloche, a tale of too much talking

2010-10-19T07:42:00.005-03:00

We're finally out of the wormhole and back on solid ground, alone, unfettered, and dag gummit, untalked to. What am I talking about? Mamaj and I took a trip from Puerto Varas through to Bariloche via the Lakes Crossing (it's capital-letter worthy, look it up), and the weather was mostly good, or at least not torrential, which is a near miracle for this time of year. There will be pictures, really! The lakes district is just as pretty as I knew it would be, just as pretty as it was the last time I was here. But untalked to. What's going on?

It's great to be on a tour, when all you have to remember to do is wake up and get on a bus. Someone makes sure your luggage goes where you're going, they point you to where to eat, hold your arm when you get off the bus (what is that about, anyway? you're just going to wrench my arm out if its socket if I go down).

But, what I just remembered that I despise about anything group-oriented is that there is so. much. talking. Everything we had to be told over the course of two days (where to be, when to be there, why the lakes are blue, the name of every animal ever sighted nearby, the delightful optional excursions offered (including visiting a working! farm! (what am I, six?)) had to be communicated to us. In Spanish. And Portuguese. And English. If it had been just one language, it would have taken up maybe 30% of the time we were in the bus/boat/bus/boat/bus/boat/bus, which is about 20% more than I might have liked. And then it had to then be translated into the other two languages. At many points which I wished I could no longer understand the other two languages, so I would not have to hear the same. talking. again. What with the 30% and 30% and 30% the talking seemed to occupy (at times), 90% of all available listening (or hearing) space. I'm probably exaggerating. It's a lot of talking, that's all I'm saying. And I'm of the set of people that like to see stuff. While we sit. And say nothing.

And now, we are in Bariloche, blissfully tour-free. We don't know where we're going or what we're doing, and we'll have to schlep our own luggage around, but with any luck, the only people talking will be us.

I don't know how people take multi-day guided tours (especially if more than one language is involved). Hats off to you patient non-oversaturatable people. Seriously, hats off, even those ridiculous matching Peruvian hats with the braids or that black ski cap with the little sparkly flower, or even your hat, man with the gym bag who didn't seem to have a single long-sleeved shirt with him but miraculously produced (and then never took off) a military-style blue fleece-lined ski cap with earflaps.
,
Thank you for listening quietly without saying anything. It's really what I needed today.

On leaving Coyhaique, a tale from Puerto Varas

2010-10-16T22:01:00.005-03:00

One of many things I hadn't considered in recent times, what with the miners on the brain, and also, hey MamaJ is in town, which means we're both out of town, is how the earthquake affected populations other than the affected populations. By which I mean other than people whose homes or livelyhoods were damaged or destroyed.

Tonight we were eating dinner in a lackluster pizza restaurant in Puerto Varas, like you do. We just wanted something small and simple, nothing over the top, garlic drizzled or particularly hearty, and micro-thin pizza seemed just the ticket. We were talking to our server, a woman in her late 20s about some misbehaving children running amok in the restaurant, which is pretty unusual in Chile. Chalk it up to there being inattentive parents all over the world, or people with bigger fish to fry than whether their children fall down off a wall they were climbing up (really).

So we got to talking to the woman, and everyone started asking where everyone was from. It turns out that she's from Coyhaique, a town on the Carretera Austral in a singularly gorgeous part of Chile that anyone would be lucky to live in, except for the cold in the winter (she said).

and here's a picture of a giant mate I took in Coyhaique when I was there a while ago, but there are no pics of Puerto Varas because my card reader is in my upper right hand desk drawer and I am nowhere nearby.

In fact, it was the cold (plus the earthquake) that drove her out, she said. By the time two months had passed from the date of the earthquake, a cubic meter of wood was up to 28,000 CLP. I don't know how long a cubic meter of wood lasts for cooking and heating, but 28,000 CLP is around sixty dollars, and it's a pretty big chunk of change. Wood prices rose as southern Chile was being rebuilt, and all the wood was slated towards construction, rather than heating. And heating costs rose. And so one day she took a bus to Puerto Varas and took a job at a pizza place where there's microthin pizza and children climbing the walls.

"So you came to the north," I said, which is funny because Puerto Varas is in the south of Chile, but Coyhaique is further south. Yes, she said. In Coyhaique you don't make any more money than in Puerto Varas, but in Puerto Varas you can live well on 250,000 CLP (around five hundred dollars, 172,000 is the minimum wage), she said. I didn't know how well she meant by well, but I'm certainly not going to argue with someone who left her home because of heating costs. I don't know how often she gets home, but I hope she gets to go when it's not too cold. And I hope she gets to eat all the pizza she wants.

Mine Rescue, a Capsule here a Capsule there

2010-10-14T10:27:00.003-03:00

Everyone and their brother has something to say about the mine rescue, and I'd hate to lose out on the fanfare, so let me say this. Yes, it was incredible.

It was incredible because a country could (and many do) forget very easily about 33 souls heavily entrenched in the bowels of the earth (and yes, the media here called it entrañas de la tierra, which sounds a little more like innards than bowels to me, but I suppose there's really not much difference). Chile has certainly shown its mettle both in human solidarity and in government and private effort to fix what was wrong.

But I would be remiss in not mentioning what was wrong. What was wrong is that a) poor, undereducated people have to work under terrible conditions. If it were not for these miners and many like them, the Chilean economy would be much less productive. They deserve more than a statue to commemorate their work. It's terrible work. And b) the mine had been closed due to safety issues. The company that reopened it should be ashamed. And since companies aren't capable of feeling emotions, the people behind it should be absoultley repentant. One of the most terrible things about law school was learning about US tort law and how it basically pits society's expectations and human value against dolla billz (all the cool kids say it like that, I have it on authority). And so it is with capitalism. I don't know how to fix it, but I'd like to go on record saying I think it takes the focus away from humans, and that's wrong.

My experience here in Santiago re: rescue was much like yours in whereever you are, except maybe I wasn't waiting on a time delay for the translations. It was emotional, exciting, exhausting. When the rescues started speeding up I felt like I could hardly keep up with the excitement. And yes, I cried. I'm like that.

When the final miner was pulled from the mine, Santiago erupted into honking and excitement, like it always does. Today's newspapers are splashed with good news, and the gossipy ones are already talking about dear Yonni Barrios, (whose first name practically spells the female genitalia in Sanskrit) who has both a wife and lover waiting for him outside. Except not, because the wife is singing Beyonce's "Irreplacable" to him (to the left, to the left), except who knows what kind of music she likes, so maybe she's singing something else.

I know three people that are up there right now, Kate, of horseracing fame, who is running herself ragged for Matador and whipping up photo essays at an alarming pace, a guy who used to work for one media outlet and then another, is now up there for Bloomberg, and a very unlikely journalist-musician-arts manager who is working as a fixer for Fox. Don't hate him for working for Fox, think about how much a starving artist could really use the cash, and how smart he is. And also how very tired he must be right now.

But me? I'm just here in Santiago. I've taken a bus past Copiapó, and that's about all I can say about it. The north of Chile is alien and strange to me. I don't hate it, but I'm just not sure I'd invite it over for dinner. And I don't think I could get 33 people in my apartment. And those guys are busy with media stuff and whatnot, so I doubt they'd come anyway.

And if you were wondering what all the chanting and singing was saying at the mines, check out this #NG post on chanting and singing, Chile style.

A day at the races, Sporting Club in Viña

2010-10-10T09:34:00.004-03:00

When Kate invited me to go to the races in Viña, I thought many things. I thought, no, work! and then I thought no work! And in the end, I decided to go because who else is going to make me get up and out of the city and go see horses run around a track and people lose their hard-earned money on them.

Kate was staying in Valparaíso somewhere, but I convinced her to come and meet me at the bus station, and after a wholly delicious and crispy fresh vegetarian lunch at the restaurant called Tropical which seems to have no website (silly rabbits, I'd give you free publicity!), and then a coffee at Samoeido where I snuck this pic of Kate while she was snapping me.

We (she, I am sense-of-direction-free) then navigated over the Club Sporting, which is on the other side of the Marga Marga, which at least one tourbook calls "a stagnant, stinking lagoon" that runs through Viña. I take umbrage with this, since in parts, it does not even run anywhere, and also, is completely dry, so dry so that there's a giant fería in it, and hey, that's not fair, the ferias in Viña run until nighttime! In Santiago you snooze and you lose with the veggies.

And then we went in through what is not the official entrance of the place, but where employees and the like wander through, and thank goodness we did, because got to see the spraying tanker truck filling up with its characteristic bra and undies flag above. Didn't know? Me neither.

And we wandered around and placed a bet or two with the kid with braces who didn't seem even old enough to bet himself.

And we were a giant spectacle, the gringas (women, even!) with their English, and their skirts and their mega cams. But then the horses started running and everyone forgot all about us, as they should.

And the flags flapped.

And we studied the racing forms carefully.

And made merciless fun of the strange English-esque names, but not of the horses, nor the jockeys, because look (and horsehats with earsleeves, who knew?):

and someone who was as lucky as I was did a little origami with his losing chit.

And then we ambled back, and I got back on the bus, having worked not a whit, (which I am paying for today) and Kate went on her way, up to La Serena, and later to Copiapó, where she will hopefully join the media circus re: miners, about which I am simultaneously a little jealous and not at all jealous.

But hey, horses. uyyyy, bad joke.

I'd like to teach the world to spell. Adventures in English orthography.

2010-10-08T10:49:00.004-04:00

First of all, sorry if you now have that song stuck in your head. Also, it is thoroughly my sister's fault that I am writing this today. I was all set to tell you about my day at the races, but then this came in, and well, who am I to mess with serendipity.

First, behold: Jhec of all Trades! One can assume that this photo was taken in San Francisco, unless my sister has up and left her 3 and 10-year old children to fend for themselves. I sense a lot of cereal and cucumbers being eaten in her absence, for what it's worth. (I'm sure she took this photo with her phone, as I've never seen her with a camera in her hands, strangely, as she is my sister).

Jhec of all trades. Could be a misspelling, could be the owner's name. Hard to say, but in any case, Jhec. Something's awry here. I bet they have an awesome deal on tshirts with words in English on them though, which are very popular here. Maybe I should pop in sometime.

Next, we revisit our old friend madafaca. (Remember that?) Here we have another take on the spelling of this expletive: mutafoker. While it is true that the madafaca spelling ignores the presence of the letter u, the mutafoker spelling uses that u, but puts it in the wrong place. Which really just gets to the point that Spanish doesn't really have that "uh" sound, much to many Spanish-speakers-learning-English' chagrin. It makes swearing at someone on the street that much more difficult. And also rayando muros (tagging walls).

Then, though I told you I wouldn't be taking you to the races today, I do have one quick pic for you. It's the area where they check on the dopping. Yes, the dopping. As English speakers, you know that in general, when there's a single consonant following a vowel, you get the "letter says its name" phenomenon, and when there are two, you get the "short sound."

Which is why doping is pronounced "DOH-ping" and dopping is pronounced "DAH-ping." However, as I look closely, I see it's anti dah-ping, and I'm wondering if they're anti people using dopplers on horses. But maybe that would be anti doppling. I'll put it on my list of things to research.

Have a well-spelled day.

___________________

And thanks to everyone who commented, stumbled and otherwise disseminated the piece on the would-be attack in Santiago. I feel supported, cared for, worried about, justified and otherwise past-participled. I also now know the answer to the age old-question "how do I improve my blog traffic?" The answer is almost kick the expletive out of the mutafoker who grabs you on the street and then write about it. Seriously? The blogosphere is rife with rubberneckers (hi rubberneckers!).

(Attempted) Street Crime in Santiago. How I almost became an attacker.

2010-10-05T11:23:00.003-04:00

I have seldom been so angry, felt so violent, came so close to running home to get my bike and find the ingrate who decided to ruin my night and go ruin his night. Or week. Or life. Or whatever.

I was walking home after a tough conversation with a friend, and it was early, around midnight. I wanted to clear my head, and did not want to deal with talking to a taxi driver about where I was from or who I lived with here in Santiago. It certainly wasn't the three dollars I was going to save that made me not take a taxi, and instead walk from near San Diego over to Barrio Brasil, where I live.

Barrio Brasil is not particularly unsafe. I know the routes I can take into and out of my neighborhood with relative certainty. I live between two major conduits (one more major than the other), and I always say I'll never walk in from the Alameda (the more major one) to where I live because it's too easy for someone to observe you and follow you in. And once you're in, there's no one unless you're near a bar, and even then, you can't really rely on those people for backup.

I found myself walking along a street I always say never to walk along at night, Manuel Rodriguez. It's a wide street, with traffic, but it has people coming off a highway (the PanAmerican highway), and they're not looking at the sidewalks, and you can't see from one side of the street to the other because of the highway exits. It is lined by a bunch of hourly motels, and not much else. There's not a lot of activity on the street, and it curves, so there's also not a good visual on the whole trajectory. I was walking along, headed north when I noticed I was closing in fast on the guy ahead of me, who was certainly dragging his feet. I didn't want to get in front of him, becasue I didn't want him behind me. So I slowed. And slowed.

He could tell that I'd slowed down, and slowed more, finally leaning against a sapling to cough. The cough was fake, like a child who was trying to stay home from school. Cof, cof. And I knew it. I could tell he was going to mess with me. But if I turned around, he'd catch me. And if I went straight ahead, he'd catch me. But straight ahead was home, so I went for it.

I broke out into a run, and hadn't gone more than twenty paces when I felt his hand. His hand. His hand on a part of my US-brand rose-colored courdoroy pants that was not his to touch. And I screamed, and flew into a rage.

I think I elbowed him, I may have also punched him. I know I grabbed his headphones, spun him around, tore them off his head and also ended up with his MP3 player. I must have kept running. Or he ran away, because when I turned back, his MP3 player and headphones in my hand, he was far from me. Far enough that I shouted, spat a stream of invectives at him to make sure he and anyone nearby heard. I yelled about what he had in his pants in the area that corresponded to where he'd grabbed me. I told him he was useless, feeble, a loser. I insulted his mother. And then I said, "Y te tengo el MP3" (and I have your MP3 player), which I dangled in front of him (from a distance). And he looked at me, and said nothing.

(I imagined him thinking) How could it be? A woman, a foreigner. So strong, so reactive, so over-reactive, so clearly nutso. And I threw his MP3 to the ground and smashed it. And I ran.

And I ran, and cried, and sobbed and cried. Because I hated that I knew I shouldn't have been where I was and I hate the fact that a misguided, misanthropic, misogynistic loser could muck up my night and my week. And then I cried because of how angry I felt, and thought better of grabbing my bike, and pedaling slowly through the streets, finding him and menacing him with my heavy kryptonite lock, and maybe listening to it make contact with his skull.

It would have been premeditated and cruel, violent and uncontrolled. None of which I think applies to me. But if you grab my ass in the street, I'm just saying. "Me buscaste, y me encontraste." (You asked for it.)

_______________________

And in the time that's followed, I've thought about all of it.

What if he had had a knife? What if he had had a gun? I assume he'd have threatened me with those things. I hope I would have had a more reasoned reaction, but I can't say I would have. Was he after money, or is he a mauler? I think neither. I think he was a person who saw a possible victim, and he wanted to make me mad. It worked. I wasn't even carrying a purse, or my camera, which surely I'd have used as a very pricey weapon.

And now I spend a lot of time looking over my shoulder and making sure I don't go anywhere I "shouldn't" at night. I've been one nervous nellie since this happened (10 days ago). I like to think wherever this lump of a human is, he's giving his ways a second thought as well.

And I also kind of wish I'd kept his MP3 player. On the one hand, what kind of music does a pretend-coughing groper listen to? On the other hand, maybe he had a file or two on there that could have helped me to find him. I couldn't identify him in a line-up, but I bet he could identify me. And I hope he starts to see me everywhere.

What Tallahassee do you need? (tales of autocorrect and Spanish vocab)

2010-10-02T09:55:00.003-04:00

The other day I was joking around with a friend via SMS about what size shirt he wanted me to buy. It was a joke, as I had no intention of buying him any clothes at all, as this is better suited to mothers and girlfriends, but haha, what size should I get you?

Or, what Tallahassee do you take? Tallahassee? Is there a very large contingent of people who have to text message about Tallahassee all the time? And wouldn't they, by now have created a shorter abbreviation? I (and maybe I alone, but I think everyone gets it) routinely refer to Santiago as Stgo. in text. Maybe Tallahassee could be t'hassee. or Tassy. I'm not really sure how the regional accent would respond to either of those. Any thoughts?

I'm sure there's a way to turn off my phone's autocorrect, and it might even behoove me to do so, or at least to pay attention to the words it tries to insert in my words' stead. Like Tallahassee, which btw, was a stand in for size (talla), which is not the word for all sizes, because tamaño is another word and is a bit more universal, referring to other things besides clothes, Tallahassee is more like the size of a garment (but not a shoe) that you wear (shoes are measured in número, as in "que número" or calzar, which means either "to square" "no me calza" means it just doesn't square, or just doesn't make sense to me, or in this case to wear a size of shoe "qué calzas" means "what size shoe do you wear?" (answer in my case, 38 or 39, depending on the shoe, which makes that Prince line "act your age, not your shoe size" a little less witty than in the United States, and near to nonsensical in my case).

Anyway, Tallahassee. I'm sure it's a lovely city. It's just not what I was trying to say. And everyone who got googled over here looking for info on that city, um? disculpa (sorry!).

One trip, several publishable works. A tale of travel writing prolifery.

2010-09-27T16:44:00.017-04:00

As I peruse my yearly budget and see where the bulk of my money has gone this year, I can't help but notice a giant chunk of it went to visiting New Zealand. I don't hold a grudge against the country, certainly its location in the effing middle of nowhere is a)not its fault and b) part of the grand appeal. Also, since I live in a really cheap apartment and my idea of a night on the town often includes a giant sandwich, like this one for about $5 US (#NG), my giant chunk might not be your giant chunk. Certainly, I recommend New Zealand as a travel destination. It's incredibly clean, beautiful, organized, and it's in the southern hemisphere so it's opposite landia, weather wise for most of you. Don't curse the winter, run away from it!

Red Hot Pokers, Otago Peninsula, New Zealand's South Island

When I tell people that part of what I do for a living is write about travel, they imagine that I'm some kind of expert travel writing ninja, with various magazines knocking down my door sending me hither and yon. These are the people that don't know me. The people that do know me listen to me excitedly talk about how there's an article here or there with my name on it, and consequently, enough money in my Paypal account to go out for a couple more $5 sandwiches, putty knife optional. I am open to the door knocking-on (but not so much knocking down), and imagine that at some point, as my trajectory improves, that will happen. For now I translate and edit a lot, and do a bunch of other stuff for a bunch of online outlets from the comfort of my sunny apartment and possibly wearing kelly green crocs.

But I wanted to show some of you what has come so far out of my trip to New Zealand, because it's the first time I've gone on a big trip since starting travel writing, at least with the goal of selling stories.

Pre-trip

Before the trip I was writing for a couple of different outlets, and ended up accidentally doing some research on volcanoes for NZ, which turned into a story on something different, volcanoes in the Americas. I also started researching a generalized story on winetasting in lesser-known spots, and ended up learning a bit about NZ's wine industry, though in the end the story turned into winetasting in South America.

A story that I wrote that actually published info I'd found about New Zealand came next with this one on glaciers in the southern hemisphere (on MatadorNetwork), and certainly that got my New Zealand wheels spinning a bit.

Mid-trip

While I was away, one of the editors at Matador wrote a little piece on my trip, which pictures a cyclist who could be me, but is not, amid many, many sheep, which was a frequent occurence on the actual trip.

Post-trip

When I came back I was inspired by the glowworms to write a piece on glowing organisms for Bootsnall, and then pitched a story to MatadorSports on riding a penny farthing, which turned into this high-riding piece (haha, so funny!).

A couple of months later I had my first ever "they-contact-you (me)" experience, when
Pam from Nerdseyeview asked me to write a story on the great pedability of New Zealand for AvidTrips. And then I pitched my first ever photo essay to MatadorTrips, and like magic, up went a photo essay on pedaling around the South Island of New Zealand.

And while the NZ trip certainly took a big bite out of 2010's financials, it was also really good writing fodder. And if I can keep traveling to my dream destinations and writing about and taking pictures of them, I feel like I've won the life lottery. But a little door-knocking wouldn't be bad. AFAR, WEND, other four-letter hipster magazines I might be missing, are you listening?

(and the answer is, of course they're not, as a freelancer you have to make your own work, so pardon me while I wind up and pitch). Got any of your own tales?

Is that a putty knife, or are you making me a Chilean sandwich?

2010-09-27T13:04:00.005-04:00

You may think, being a person of a certain age, and by that I mean nothing more than that you find my blog mildly entertaining, which puts you in your twenties and up, for the most part, that you know kitchens.

You've been in kitchens, you've seen what they contain, you know how to use some (if not all) of the implements contained therein.

Believe me, I thought the same. But when I came to Chile, I discovered four major departures. 1. The sponge is made of foam 2. there is no vegetable peeler, 3. the can opener looks like a medieval weapon (see the one from 1855, still in use in Chile)and 4. stovetop toasters (like the one here, sold vintage on this toaster site, the "square, nonelectric" one!

The sponges I bring from home when I can (though I just discovered they are available in the shangri-la of supermarkets. The vegetable peeler is remedied by bowing out of all peeling tasks that are not in my kitchen, lest the resulting potatoes show up the size of malshaped (misshapen?) dice. The can opener I just walk away from, or have someone else use, for the most part, though I have on occasion used the stab-n-rock (as I like to call it). In my kitchen I have that wacky thing with the whatsis you turn. And though I seriously injured myself in Feb. of last year with the mandoline, so far my can opener has taken no prisoners.

So I thought I understood Chilean kitchens pretty well, and you probably think you could identify most of the implements found in one, and also in most restaurants you'd care to enter.

Enter, the putty knife. This, it turns out can be used to move around meat (or mash up cheese as though it were play-doh) on the grill, scrape the same, or pile unthinkable amounts of avocado, mayonnaise or other delicious toppings to your gargantuan sandwich.

Behold, the mega sandwiches.

A closeup of (not my) sandwich, note the meat. Churrasco Italiano, beef, mayonnaise, avocado, tomatoes)

And presumably, Francisco.

And we weren't the only ones. Here in Viña, at Sandiwchería Sibaritico, 5 Norte 147. Sal de Frutas (local alka-seltzer) sold separately.

No one seemed to mind the putty knife, but it always does seem worth mentioning.

Lights/Luces at La Moneda, Visual Spectacular

2010-09-22T00:29:00.004-04:00

Qué quieres que te diga? (What do you want me to say, literally, "what do you want that I tell you (fun with the subjunctive, included!)" Santiago has a lot of really great public spectaculars. Like really, really great. Pequeña Gigante great.

We are tremendously lucky to have all kinds of gorgeous and crowd-gathering things here, and the bicentennial celebrations exceeded my expectations, particularly with this light show where they used the Moneda's (presidential palace #NG) southern face as its canvas. Most of what was really cool about the event was about watching things move, appear, disappear, protrude and retract, all convincingly done with light, but here are some pictures of what the night was like to give you an idea.

I went with a friend, and we stood on Paseo Bulnes, which is a great place to buy a jackknife, a rifle, or any other assorted implements of destruction, or to play with the wicked high ISO settings on your camera.

And to say there was a crowd would be a terrible understatement. Tens of thousands of people were there, and this was the second night we tried to go. We had tried to attend on the kickoff night, but we couldn't get anywhere near the building.

Here's one of the views we had.

and another, which reminded me of this building I saw in Oamaru, New Zealand.

and of course it ended with fireworks, of which I took a few photos, again enjoying the camera settings, and cursing the lack of a tripod.

At various times, the Moneda was "turned into" a greek temple, a garden, an underwater scene, the backdrop for four emerging moai (giant stone heads from Easter Island)

I loathe mob scenes with all my heart, and Chile does a terrible job of keeping people safe, moving pedestrian traffic and crowd control, which always freaks me out, but this was actually quite well worth it. In fact, I'd say it was one of the coolest visual effects presentation I've ever seen. If you have the patience (and some dramamine), you can check out some of the youtube videos posted on this site.

Next up: boats and planes, or the military shows its stuff in Viña. Patience my adoring fans, patience.

BTW, if you sometimes wish you'd known about this stuff before it was over, and you hadn't noticed over there in the sidebar, I'm a twittering fool, follow me at @bearshapedspher for more up to date details and whatnot.

What's your second last name? A tale of nomenclature and identity in Chile

2010-09-17T23:44:00.005-04:00

I have gone on and on about my name, my first name (always misspelled), my medical name (señora Barbara) and other nomenclature-related things, but I don't think we've ever explored my last name.

Smith, or esmeet, as I should pronounce it, so that we're all clear about what's going on, tends not to be a problem. People can either spell it on their own, or respond quickly to my "EH-say, EM-ay, EE, TAY, AH-chay). What truly worries people is my lack of a second last name.

Segundo apellido, they say (second last name). No tengo, I say. And they look up at me, perhaps expecting to see just half of someone, or perhaps a person who looks like they might have hatched out of an egg, since the second last name I'm missing is my mother's. It's not that I don't have one, of course (hey Mamaj!), but we don't use that last name, and anyway, at this point my mother and I have the same last name anyway. And believe me, I don't want my last name to be Smith-Smith, both because it sounds like I have a stutter and because mostly it's illegitimate children who are not recognized by their fathers that get the repeated (in this case mother's) last name.

Somewhere along the way I was told to put NN, for ningún nombre/ ninguno (no name/none, not sure here ) in the case where I was asked for a second last name. In general this works just fine, though people still give me the fish eye for not having two last names, and occasionally say "Allá no usan los dos nombres?" (They don't use both names over there?)

But the best part of the story is that another friend, for whom I shall shortly invent a pseudonym, (though she may later choose to identify herself) was also faced with the lack of a second last name, and chose the US-based answer to something when you don't have an answer, which is NA (not applicable).

And now, everywhere she goes in Chile, she's known as Samantha Gilbert Na. (except her name isn't Samantha Gilbert, of course, remember the pseudonym promise?). And then they look at her like she has two heads, because they're expecting someone who's at least partially Korean (which she's not). Or they think it's totally normal, and that her second last name is Na. Which is a fine last name, or the chorus of a song that's now stuck in your head.

na na na na na na na na

So what's your second last name? or alternatively, what's the song that's now stuck on repeat in your head-head?

Gearing up for Fiestas Patrias (Chilean national holiday)

2010-09-16T17:10:00.003-04:00

It's bicentennial madness over here in Santiago, madness I tell you. I nearly got pushed off the road by a bus full of pretend huasos (people dressed up like cowboys) singing and clapping and dancing the cueca, the supermarkets are jammed, people were trying to buy alcohol (in vast quantities) at nine this morning, Chilean flags are flying everywhere,a nd I just got buzzed (in my apartment) by three giant military helicopters (no telephoto, just an open window and camera at the ready).

Tomorrow begins the official holiday for the 18th of September "fiestas patrias," but you wouldn't know it. Everything is in various states of shutting down already, and we'll spend the next four days celebrating our (their?) Chilenidad in various ways.

So far my preparations have consisted of:

taping a postcard-sized Chilean flag to my window
buying veggies on a Thursday rather than the weekend because I don't think my fería will be on.
asking people what their plans are for the holiday
telling people what my plans are for the holiday (mostly playing it by ear, also working)
and writing four posts for NileGuide about
the national holiday
drinks for fiestas patrias
games for fiestas patrias
and the cueca (which, btw, is what tighty-whities are called in Portuguese, but we try to hold our heads high, keep our clothes on and not worry too much about it.

I keep promising I'll write about the fondas (parties specific to the holiday), and maybe I will, though the likelihood of me actually going to any is very slim. I have this thing about crowds, you see... Which leads me to the next thing I'm going to do to celebrate, which is go to the kickoff of the "light show" at the Moneda tonight. If you're looking for me, I'll be with several dozen thousands of my best friends. Followed by the third birthday celebration in a week. Feliz cumpleaños already, people!

Have a great night. Photos sure to follow!

Reinventing your comfort foods

2010-09-13T11:05:00.003-04:00

After blogging and commenting and talking about food availability in Chile, and eating pumpernickel bread with cream cheese and a marinated cucumber and red onion salad that reminds me of pickled herring, and the whole plate just kind of reminded me of childhood, I got to thinking more about comfort foods.

I guess if you've been mostly in the same place, your comfort foods change as you meet new people or try new dishes or revive old ones. You have the ones you grew up with, maybe mom's mac and cheese with buttered crumbs (this one seems to loom large in many people's gastronomic memories, though it's not something I grew up with), or lasagne, or ridiculously-shaped semi-burned hamburgers with drippy melted cheese on a bun that falls apart (again, extrapolating, not much of a meat eater).

And if you move around, you might have different comfort foods that make you smile depending on where you've been. The first time I remember reinventing a comfort food was during the six months I spend in Central America in the early 90s. It seemed like every time I moved to a new place, illness would strike. It is worth noting that I do not have a stomach made of gossamer fabric and delicate lace, but the different fauna wreaked havoc with my digestive system on more than one occasion on that trip, and at least one time it was my fault for drinking an ancient, putrid, dusty can of diet pepsi on the Mexico-Guatemala border in a room at a brothel that the proprietors let me and my friend Debbie have, where the door went neither all the way to the ceiling nor all the way to the floor.

But I digress. On that trip, I developed a bit of a fear unpredictable tummy issues, and a tremendous love for oranges (which I had never eaten much of before) and sleeves of saltine crackers spread with refried beans. I think I ate this nutritious never-fail combination dozens of times, and never got sick. To this day, I can buy some saltines (called "american" crackers here) and whip up (or buy) some refried beans and call it a meal.

You would think that comfort foods would be set in stone from childhood, but from what I can see from putting myself under the microscope, that's not necessarily the case. How about you? What's a comfort food you've developed for yourself, or that's come to you late in life, as a product of traveling or meeting new people or moving or marriage or whathaveyou?

Shangri-La, my gringo supermarket experience in Santiago

2010-09-10T10:34:00.006-04:00

Yesterday on my way home from the dentist, which is uptown, in a part of Las Condes that has a bunch of office parks (and apparently dentists offices) I was riding my bike back home, when I stopped into Shangri-La, or as you may know it, the supermarket.

It is always rumored that up in the hinterlands (and to be honest, this is not that hinterlandy, it's only about six miles from my house, but it a totally different social strata than where I live), there are gringo food products. Now, for the most part, I am perfectly satisfied with the products I can find close to my house, though in the two weeks I've been looking, I haven't found any decent mustard. Chileans think it should be sweet. Ick.

But on the whole, I eat what my local supermarket (NG) and feria sell, and I am happy. There are gringos who are probably less and more happy than I am with the food selections, and you can be sure that more than one of us has some secret nibbles stashed away in our suitcases when we arrive back in Chilito. But then there are things you can't bring back, or didn't know you'd want, or ran out of.

And that's where Shangri-La comes in. I was riding down Manquehue, towards Los Militares, when I saw the first sign (all photos taken on the sly and with my phone, it's not that the photo class I'm taking is wreaking havoc on my ability to focus):

The store was spacious, had a pretty complete and good-looking take out sections, salads, soups, sushi, sandwiches, other s food that slips my mind at the moment. But I wasn't hungry, so onward I soldiered.

The first thing I came across that gave me pause I did not take a picture of, but for dramatic effect, I will now take a pause. Ready? Pumpernickel bread. Fresh, black bread, which was sliced before my very eyes in a metal cage with a tiny saw that measured each slice at 10 mm, because heaven forbid I should have 11 mm slices. I have not eaten pumpernickel bread in years, and it's one of the few foods I remember my grandmother serving, and wow. Pumpernickel. It's in the freezer as we speak. Not quite molassesy enough, but close, very close!

Bread well-bagged and under-arm, I meandered further, and came across a product which gringos laud the appearance of so fondly that it reminds me of my BIL's frequent joke "We have a friend in cheeses" (sorry, didn't mean to offend). At any rate, behold the golden chalice of Shangri-La:

Cheddar cheese in Chile. I didn't even know it was possible.

I zigged and zagged throughout the store, sneakily taking photos, lest I get snapped at (no photos in the supermarkets in Chile, sad but true). And I found the following:

Haagen Dazs ice cream (hope you're flush, because it's about $8.25 a pint!)

Maple Syrup, for just $26.00 for 12.5 ounces. Practically a bargain, but hey! maple syrup!

Sara Lee frozen poundcake, which I'm sure is extra moist and delicious after traveling an additional 5,000 miles to get here.

American Frozen Pizza, at $14-$17.00 a pop, you can be sure to impress your friends. BTW, we have frozen pizza in Chile. It costs around $6-$8.

Boca Burgers

Some kind of fuel for the Chilean obese children's fire, frozen dinners, proving that the 80s really are coming back.

Snyder's of Hanover pretzels and two different "flavors" of Pam, nonstick spray

Terra Chips

and my personal favorite, and which I actually would have bought if I didn't already have a purchased-in-the-states supply under my sink, even if they are nearly $2.00 apiece:

scotchbright sponges

And then, just in case you'd forgotten you were in the nosebleed section of the city, they had these lovely uniforms for you to buy for your nana as she does whatever it is she does in your house and out on the town:

and shampoo for blonds! (though now that I look at this more carefully, I see it is conditioner. No worry, I'm sure the shampoo was around there somewhere)

There were also chocolate chips (but not a good brand), frozen waffles, frozen croissants, a bulk section where you pack your own dried fruit, dried morel mushrooms and other assorted ones, several varieties of bleu cheese. There was not interesting hand soap or OB tampons, where do you think you are?

And I bought some good mustard to go with my bread and a few other items (deodorant, birthday candles, I know, it's captivating!), and rode my bike home about six miles, passing no fewer than five other supermarkets en route. But none of them like Shangri-La.

Free Movies in Santiago and much more for the Fiestas Patrias (National Holiday)

2010-09-08T12:09:00.005-04:00

Not infrequently, I will complain about the lack of information about what's going on in Chile. Way too often I will discover something in the throes of happening or which has already taken place, but which I've failed to find out about. Not so this time! There's an incredible expo of free films at the Centro Cultural La Moneda (#NG) that you can read about in Spanish on the Centro Cultral's website here, but basically what you need to know is that from about 3 to about 8 from the 7th to 30th of September, there are free movies being shown in the basement theaters of this centrally-located spot. Show up early and grab a coffee at one of the two quiet (but strangely dark) cafés while you bide your time for your documentary or dramatic movie to start. It's unusual to see such a giant collection of Chilean movies being shown all together, and for cinephiles, Spanish practicers and people who're looking for something different, this is, as they say, top (say: tope)

However, this being Chile, it is currently nearly impossible to gain access to the Centro Cultural Palacio La Moneda. They are in the middle of revamping or redressing or re somethinging it, in addition to erecting a giant flagpole in front from which they will fly a Chilean flag of mythic proportions, which has a bunch of anti-military folk in a tizzy, believing that such a strong governmental presence is somehow anti-democratic (not sure I follow the logic here, but I hear all arguments). So what you need to do is go in from the Alameda side, but instead of walking down the fountain-lined ramps, go down the stairs to the parking lot and enter from there. Don't (like I did) run down the vehicle ramp, because there is a little pedestrian with a circle around him and a red line through him that tells you in a clear pictogram that no! this is not for you.

Other (hopefully) temporary preparations for the 18th include the closing of the main entrance into Quinta Normal, which led to me riding around in circles for many, many minutes, trying to get back out onto Matucana and back home, and the installation of bleachers outside of the Centro Cultural Las Condes (in El Golf) which seems to have also undergone a facelift in recent years.

I'm really looking foward to the upcoming and ongoing cultural deluge here in Santiago in the coming weeks, though I could probably do without the (likely) teargas on the 11th (demonstrations re: 1973 coup probable), and definite passing out of alchohol-reeking humans all over the street starting about the 16th.

Wholesome fun can also be had, at the Parque Ines de Suarez Fonda (Fiestas Patrias party), which is probably the most fome (boring) and family-oriented fonda, but still pretty fun, and especially good if you're skittish in crowds, where you can play with tops (trompos), cup and ball (emboque), climb the greased pole (palo ensebado), play rayuela (a game that's maybe a teeny bit like the Italian bocce) and perhaps fly kites (volantines), but it gets a little crowded in there, so you might prefer to do your kite-flying elsewhere. Parque O'Higgins is popular, but a bit more rough-and-tumble.

And of course, the military parade (parada militar) on the 19th is always a big draw.

But more on that later. Now go out and watch a movie. For free!

Traditional Chilean games for the National Holiday (ball in cup/emboque)

2010-09-06T20:00:00.007-04:00

September is when Chile celebrates. The national holiday (fiestas patrias) falls on September 18th, and between having survived August (#NG), and the upcoming festivities which include traditional games, a whole lot of eating and drinking, kite flying and of course, the cueca (the national dance), there's a lot to get prepared for. And this year is the bicentennial, so there's even more to get prepared for.

And informed about:

Margaret at Cachando Chile told us a little about one of the little kids' games that turns into a big kid game on September 18th, with competitions to see who can knock down someone else's spinning top. They also make a competition out of our version of the kid's cup and ball game, this time perhaps more aptly named the stick and cap game, or as we call it in Chile, emboque.

Emboque is a game where a stick and a cap are attached by a string, and with a flick of the wrist, the player manages to land the cap atop the stick. In other Spanish-speaking countries it's called bolero, boliche, ticayo, capirucho or coca, and in France it's bilboquet, or so the internet tells me.

En route, it looks like this:

and in case you were wondering, he's not cheating, he's (successfully) executing the advanced version, which involves having the cap on the stick and whipping your wrist around so the cap flies off, flips and lands again. For this part you can hold the string.

I am fairly useless at the emboque, though I fare slightly better with the american ball and cup game. I don't consider this to be a great weakness on my part, and I like to think if I were Chilean I'd be better at it. Now where's that bouncy-ball paddle game when you need it? I could really win a prize with that one.

___________
#NG = transparency. This is a post that takes you to outside of bearshapedsphere, and that I'm paid to write, though it's still excellent and bearshapedspherey.

Can isn't can and other wanderings in Spanish grammar

2010-09-04T15:28:00.003-04:00

Every now and then I like to talk about some pressing grammatical or pronunciation issue re: Spanish. Today is one of those days. You can blame the fact that I walked all the way from my house to the Recoleta cemetary (yes, we have a Recoleta cemetary, and may I say, it is a far sight more interesting than the one of the same name in Buenos Aires, photos forthcoming). And during that time, I thought about a conversation I had recently with a friend, in which she said, "El no puede ver a mi primo."

As an English speaker with a passing knowlege (or even perhaps a fairly deep knowlege) of Spanish, you might translate that as "he can't see my cousin." Imagine a situation where the person in question's line of sight is blocked by a pole or other obstruction, and as such, he has no visual line to the cousin, and poof, he can't see him. Demonios!

Now please erase the pole and the obstruction, and one of the aforementioned people. Because what you took to mean "he can't see my cousin" actually means what we would say in English "he can't be in the same room as my cousin" or "he can't stand the sight of my cousin."

Hmmm, the word poder (can, to be able) to mean something having nothing to do with actual ability. Interesting. (And in English we have a variation of that as well, you'll notice that both of the above approximations also use the word can).

Now consider another expression we use all the time, also with can.

I can swim!

The I can/I can't that we easily and mellifluously use in English has no place in Spanish. Well, it's not that it has no place, but it doesn't have the place it has in English.

I can swim (as in, I know how to swim, not as in, how will you get to the other side of the lake, "I can swim (there)", is expressed with saber, for "to know (how)"

Sé nadar.

not

Puedo nadar.

Here's a case in which we use our version of poder (but not podar, as that means to prune, as in to cut off part of a plant), can, yet in Spanish to use poder means something different, as in the case that someone offers you a lift in their boat to the opposite side of a lake, but you'd really rather hoof (fin?) it, so you tell them you can swim. To tell them that you're able, you'd say sé not puedo.

So there you have it. More proof that English to Spanish is not a one-to-one relationship, and further evidence (if you needed any) that it's frustrating when someone asks you completely out of context what a single word means. And also that listening to Beyonce does not prevent me from going on grammatical tangents while all the while overhearing whistles and hisses designed to inform me that, in case I was wondering, I'm female.

Happy Saturday!

Someone vandalized "my" graffiti!

2010-09-02T09:14:00.003-04:00

There was a story here. Instead of static pictures of street art, or street art meeting its demise, I was going to show you street art in progress. I went out one beautiful weekend day, and found some graffiti hobbyists doing what they do. And I took a couple of pictures, and talked to them about the work they do, and where they have done it.

I couldn't quite catch what the mural was going to be of, and here's a picture I took before I got close to them.

Felipe, the guy whose face you can't see, says he has a website where he posts pictures of his work, and that you can hire him to do murals. The other guy was a bit quiet. I think Felipe does their PR. I gave them my info to get in touch, but so far they haven't, which does not surprise me.

And so in my mind, there was this story about process, about how something started gets finished, and there was going to be a picture of the completed mural, over there on the north side of the Alameda on Manuel Rodriguez, not far from Toesca. So I pedaled back one day with the specific goal of taking the after to my before, and found, instead, this.

"My" urban intervention (the graffiti) had been "intervened," a sort of vandalism of vandalism, if you will, by a sign by the group chacon, who I now realize I know nothing about, despite them plastering my neighborhood with similar signs, this one anti-government (as most of them are).

And so the story didn't go down the path I was expecting. It didn't go from progress to finished, it went from progress to interrupted. And I was disappointed at first, because I'd figured out in my head where it should go, and this definitley wasn't it. And then I had to resign myself and take another picture, because I always say I like my photographic subjects to just be, not to be hemmed in. And so it was.

And in other, unrelated graffiti news, I noticed this guy in my second visit to this wall, to the extreme right.

and it reminded me of this figure I snapped earlier this year in Laguna Zapallar.

And I love the way memory works, that you can see something that reminds you of something else, and now they're two things together instead of one, alone, even though they're separated by more than a hundred miles, and I have no way of knowing if the one from Laguna Zapallar is still there or might have been painted over or had a sign pasted on top.

Clickety click.

Housecleaning! Literal and Figurative

2010-08-31T14:32:00.006-04:00

I am not, by nature, a tidy person. Sure, I'm organized in that I know where everything is, but that's only because I have a very good visual memory. So since I'm not naturally tidy, I have to develop certain systems, like every time I do laundry, I wipe the floor with the bathroom-floor towel (the washing machine is in the bathroom, so this really does make sense, and I do laundry obsessively, so the bathroom floor may be one of the cleanest in my whole apartment).

But in general, housecleaning does not come naturally to me, and this frustrates me into action periodically, and lucky you if you come over when that has happened recently.

So what does that have to do with this blog? The blog is like a house, in that I kind of live here, and you kind of come over. So if you'll forgive me this navel-gazing, let me say I've had this giant, cumbersome piece of furniture over in my sidebar that hasn't brought me much joy in a long time. And like many things that are excess, I have decided to ditch it, and to get some smaller, quirkier piece of furniture that more accurately represent who I am, and what I do.

So what I'm saying is, Buh-bye Blogher, with your insistence that you be above-the-fold, and requirement that I change the code because something changed on your end and your pocket change that you eventually deposit into my paypal account, but which annoys me more than several cups of coffee worth (which is really all it added up to) because you take up too much darn space.

If only I'd had a blog laundry to do, I'd have wiped that space clean a lot longer ago.

So farewell, Blogher and the periodic bump in traffic I got when someone (I'm pretty sure this is done by hand) liked what I wrote, and by to your weird pictures and your control of what's going on on the right hand side of my blog (which I constantly promise myself, like with my apartment, will change locations sometime, except in the case of my apartment, it will stay here and I will shimmy off elsewhere). I wish I had a long missive written like the one Pam Mandel wrote on Nerd's Eye View, and which I couldn't find but now have because she found it for me, in her case about why she was hanging up her Blogher hat, not just kicking them off of her blog.

Replaced with people and stuff I actually do/care about, like Nileguide, where I write about Santiago, Santiago and more Santiago, I swear I have learned and distilled more about this city in the past three months than I would have guessed, even with six years of living here. Come visit! Check out the guides! Tell me I'm fabulous (I snuck that one in there), etc. They pay me, but I wouldn't work there if I didn't like them and didn't think they put out a good product. It's regional, so the info largely depends on the local expert, but I can tell you for sure the local expert on Santiago knows quite a bit, and is always on the lookout for more.

And MatadorNetwork. I cannot say enough good about these people and the dialogue they generate and the stuff they do. I work as a peon there, but it's a flat structure, so I still get to play with the big kids, and I do mostly behind-the-scenes stuff but do sometimes write articles, and sometime soon will be curating a giant set of photos, and if you want yours in the photo essays, then get in touch with me here or on my Matador profile and I'll check you out. And please check out the "breaking free" trailer they put together for a new show, and ask yourself the question of the year "Would I rather meet or be this person?" and act accordingly.

And Lonely Planet. I know they don't need me hyping them, but they run this project called blogsherpa and all these bloggers from all over the world tag our blogs so that relevant content goes up on the LP website, and great happiness (and traffic, and some small amount of change) is achieved. I like it, because you can get on-the-ground info about where you're going. Of course, I'd like it alot more if they paid me mad dukats, but I like the project, and I like my fellow blogsherpas, and one day I'll even put up a list of all of them and you can wile away the hours reading about all kinds of places, and again, ask yourself "want to be? want to meet?" and act accordingly. I mostly write about Santiago or Chile, but have occasional posts up there about Uruguay or other places I've been. It's nothing new to my blog readers, but it's presented in a slightly different format, and I don't tag all the blabla, so it's not all there. Also, you can catch other blogsherpa reflections on Chile, which are sure to be different from mine.

And that's all I've got to tell you for the moment. Out with the old, in with the new. If I can't change apartments, at least I can move my virtual furniture around. The virtual world is the only one in which I don't have storage space problems!

The parade of unfortunately-named products

2010-08-29T13:21:00.004-04:00

If it's Sunday and beautiful out and I'm stuck inside because I have a big project coming up this week and know I should get some work done before that happens so I can run on my merry way to the gym, and various lunch and coffee whatsises, then the least I can do is share some unfortunately-named products and companies with you.

First, there is ARSE. I took this photo in Parque de Los Reyes at a skateboard competition. Who wouldn't want to hire a company called ARSE? They rent security gates and such.

Here below we have a can of coffee photographed at my mother's house. The word pico means, as you might guess, the peak of a mountain. But in Chile we use it to refer to something men have somewhere roughly south of the equator. How funny! man-part coffee! I know it's juvenile, but my sense of humor has become positively puerile since moving to Chile. I blame the Chileans. And am glad the illustration on the coffee depicts the former, not the later. Hey Long Islanders (and wherever else they sell this product), enjoy your coffee!

And then we have my favorite, photographed in a supermarket in Seattle, where people do not tsk tsk at you for photographing things unlike in Chile (Santiago supermarket talk here, transparency alert, it's a link to NG, one of my gigs, and yes, I become fabulously rich and famous if you click). And what can I say about this? In Spanish, a masculine word becomes feminine by putting an -a at the end. And puta is the rude word for a woman who works mainly on street corners and the like. So if you put an o at the end, you theorectically make the word masculine, and get a man who works mainly on street corners and the like, also sometimes called a "taxiboy," especially here in Santiago, and apparently after the Gus Von Sant Movie "My Own Private Idaho" but though I saw that movie, I don't remember that part.

And so I give you, "puto." Classic. Steamed, even.

And I'm kicking myself for not having a picture of the "barfy" brand hamburger patties I saw once, and many other products. What else you got? Travelers, I know you're out there laughing yourselves silly at what you've found.

And you can be as big of a jerk as you want, because I'm prepared. I've got my antimofo sitting right here beside me (photo taken in Sao Paulo at a Home Depot-type store). It's actually a dehumidifier in a can, an anti-mold product if you will. But I like my interpretation better.

Outsourcing? Correcto! The case of the Peruvian call center in Chile.

2010-08-26T09:30:00.003-04:00

The other day I found myself the recipient of the annoying screen of apathy. Yes, the screen of apathy. Despite having lived in this apartment for four years, I still don't have a solid structure/plan of when I pay my bills, and as such, I don't always pay my internet bill exactly when they'd like me to. The screen of apathy is the screen that pops up when you should be looking at one of a host of items, including work, the other work, the other other work, the blog, etc. And it's the rerouting of your internet to the screen of Telefonica's you-didn't-pay-your-bill-you-idiot.

Except I had. I got online to my spiffy bank late on Sunday night, transferred funds, typed in those ridiculous codes on the back of a card so one steals my identity and accidentally pays my bills for me, and all was good with the world. And then I went to the gym and came back, and poof! I no longer had internet. And there was great sadness.

I could have gone elsewhere, but I'd just done something strange and burny to my ankle, and it seemed a better idea to lay low here at the batcave than to wander limpingly through the streets bleating pitifiully, "wifi? wifi?" So instead I called Telefónica. Which was fun, where fun is the word that stands in for a barrel of what's the opposite of monkeys?

First of all, the number I was told to call on the screen of apathy was disconnected. Yay! Then, through genius machinations on my part, I discovered a working number, which I called and was told through the careless use of an endless supply of words (why do they talk so much? are we long-lost relatives?) that it was not the right number, but then I got the right one and all was good.

One disconnected phone call and seven non-connecting phone calls later, I got connected to the nicest Peruvian woman working in the most gigantic call center I have ever heard. There was so much chaos, so many people talking that I kept on answering questions that had not even been directed to me.

I was very happy for the help, and the woman did get my internet going again, but mainly she said "correcto." It was like talking to a person who has "you know what I mean" or "right" as their verbal tics, but hers was "correcto." I said something, "correcto." She said, something, "correcto." We were all very correct, and after she fixed my internet problem, or at least promised it would be fixed within an hour (and it was), I asked her if she was in Peru. I mean, I could tell she was Peruvian from her accent, but there are not a small number of Peruvians living in Chile (Spanish speakers, check out this article that talks about Lima Chica, from one of my favorite Chilean websites, Plataforma Urbana), so I asked her if she was in Peru.

And you know what her answer was already, don't you? Correcto.

This was my first experience with a Chilean company subcontracting out their call centers to somewhere else, and while the Peruvian accent (or some variation thereof) is lovely to listen to, I can't help but wonder how much money they save by exporting jobs if people a) can't hear anything the people are saying andt then b)keep the people on the phone for a long time, just to keep on hearing them say, "correcto."

You know what I mean?

My closet walks faster than yours, a tale of bilingual real estate snafus.

2010-08-24T17:25:00.005-04:00

Once again, I am thinking of moving. Don't get yourself in a snit about it because a) I hardly ever have people over, b) most of you don't even live in Santiago (yes, I do look at my referral log) and c) change comes very slowly to this one.

Among the reasons that I am considering moving include:

I am not cut out for carrying my bike up to the sixth floor when the elevator goes out (which it does with some frequency)
I am annoyed at paying so much to heat the hot water (I don't have a gas water heater, also called a califont, and the electric one costs a fortune)
My kitchen is only a few hundred matchboxes in size
In the words of someone who used to come over but doesn't anymore, my apartment is an "ice box" in the winter
My view of the Entel Tower was recently blocked by some 30-story monstrosity
There are wild cats that come in and break things, and wander around on the kitchen counters when I leave the window open and leave the apartment
Living and working in the same small space means I'm nearly always at work
I don't have enough storage space, and it's not entirely because I have too much stuff.

So I peruse the find-an-apartment-in-Santiago pages, which in my case is mostly Portal Inmobilario, mainly because they have pictures, and oh how I love a visual to go along with the marketing copy that will try to convince me that something that's on this side of the Alameda is actually on that side. And the pictures where someone snaps one of their bed, as though they were offering the furniture, rather than the room it's in.

And I tool around on my bike and check out available apartments, and ogle fancier buildings that probably don't have wild cats or the occasional drunken neighbor that shouts and slams things into walls or window panes that shift loosely in their frames with the breeze. I figure any apartment I change to is likely to solve some of the above shortcomings, because if it doesn't, I simply won't move.

So, in keeping with the last item on my handy bulleted list, I would like a bigger closet. It doesn't seem like too much to ask, as my current one is only barely wider than the door, and it's the only one I have, which explains the tension rod in the doorway where my coats live in the winter. Because I am very fancy and care terribly what you think of my housekeeping and organizational skills, and also really want you to comment on how many sporty waterproof jackets I have.

So back to the closet. Here's what one nearby apartment building offers. Not just a bigger closet, but a multi-talented one, and bilingual at that. If you live in Chile, you already know. But since most of you don't, please regard the fifth bullet point down in the following photo.

This building promises me a large master bedroom with a bathroom en suite, and a walking closet.

Yes, you read that right, a walking closet.

I have thought about this many times, and have come to the conclusion that this is one of two things. Either it is a closet that wanders around the apartment, begging the question, "Where did I leave my other shoe" and changing it to "Where oh where has my closet gone;" or it is some kind of an endless closet, inside of which I can go on long walks. Maybe it has a treadmill inside, or maybe a strong air current that pushes me back against the opposite wall as I walk, like one of those endless "lap" pools.

And so in my current space, I feel cheated. I am nearly certain that nothing in my apartment can do any tricks or has any hidden talents, unless you include when the municipal gas hose to my oven caught on fire, or the fact that my under sink area falls apart if you so much as touch any of the plastic "pipes." In fact, if it weren't for the cats, (and the occasional 8.8 earthquake, both of which led to quantities of broken glass, so don't take your shoes off when you come over), I'd say nothing interesting happens here at all.

And so while it may yet be months, or even years before I move out of this altoids tin (minus the minty smell and hinged top), you can be sure that any new place I find to live will have at least one multi-talented, bilingual feature. It could be a talking toilet (s'il vous plait!), or perhaps a stove that frys its own beignets as you sleep (or as you're waking up). Or maybe a self-sweeping dining room, or curtains that wash themselves, or a shower that waters the plants on your windowsill without dousing the rest of the apartment, but only occasionally because I only have cacti, as they are harder to kill.

Because if closets can walk (or be large enough to get your daily dose of exercise), I'd expect nothing less from the rest of an apartment.

How about you? Can your depto (apartment) do any tricks?

Graffiti and Veggies in El Tabo, Chile

2010-08-20T01:06:00.008-04:00

El Tabo is nothing special. Just a little town on the coast of Chile, between Cartagena and Isla Negra, nothing much to look at.

But it's a nice walk on the beach from my very generous friend C's house who had me out there last week to work and wander and go snappity snap with my camera, and it's home to a fairly impressive lot of graffiti, about which I can only snap and wonder, as I've never run into anyone in the act. For such a little town (see pic):

It has a pretty good variety, including these:

Some of which is either a similar style to or done by the same person as this (which I took in the same town last year):

And C aguantó (tolerated, stood for) all of my photo taking, and then we took the bus back, because what with all the vegetables, it would have been uncomfortable to walk home. Plus we got to hear YMCA by the Village People on the bus ride.

Though if we had walked back home, perhaps we could have pondered the grammatical and spelling errors contained in this sandfiti once more, which we enjoyed on the way there. Or at least I did.

(Mi amor, te adoro too mach)

Upside down because of the light, and when I turned it over it looked just awful, so please enjoy it patas arriba (lit: paws up). More photos of this trip, graffiti and Chile in general on my flickr page.

El Hoyo vs. La Piojera (two traditional Chilean restos do battle here on bearshapedsphere)

2010-08-17T10:00:00.000-04:00

In the timeless tradition of comparing things that are similar yet not the same, and about which people will have strong opinions (I give you traveler vs. tourist, blogger vs. travel writer, Chile vs. Argentina), I would like to pose to you today the question, if you had to choose just one meat-centered cultura guachaca typical Chilean restaurant that serves meat, more meat, wine, chicha and terremotos, which would you choose, El Hoyo or La Piojera?

El Hoyo and La Piojera are described in approximately the same terms. Traditional, down-home, a good place for a bar fight, but visited by friends and families alike in the afternoons. They're unpretentious, serve hearty portions, have websites (!) and just kind of generally make up what some Santiaguinos think is some of the best culture, ambience (where ambience is of the state-fair variety) and vast portions of meat the city has to offer.

I (a non-meat eater, perish the thought!) have been to both (as I imagine, have some of you), and here are my thoughts on the matter.

On the language front:

La Piojera

Name meaning: Place where lice jump about (lousery?), for the full-on hopping environment.
Jokes associated with name: Blissfully, none.

El Hoyo

Name meaning: The hole.
Jokes associated with name, at least two (both rated R): Has probado la lengua en el hoyo? (Lit: have you tried the tongue in the hole? (referring to the fact that they serve tongue at El Hoyo). No es el mismo el hoyo de arriba como el de abajo (The hole on top is not the same as the hole towards the bottom)
Bonus on the language: the waiter at El Hoyo complimented me vociferously on my Spanish, but the people at La Piojera said nothing.

Location

La Piojera is one big leap (maybe 20 meters) from the Cal y Canto metro. This neighborhood is dodgy at night, and if you think you're the only one that knows you were drinking in La Piojera, you are mistaken. Address: Aillavilú 1030, beside the Mercado Central.

El Hoyo is located along a side street near Estación Central. Quiet neighborhood with no through traffic because the bus terminal cuts off transit. If you go at night with anything less than a phalanx accompanying you, take a cab home, but during the day it's fine, and I actually walked there not too long ago from República, and it was fine, but that's me, not you. Address: San Vicente 375

Websites

Chile is one of the most connected countries in the world. Surely you don't think a little thing like giant slabs of meat would come between you and technology!

La Piojera's website starts with a picture of the front of the building, which is handy for finidng it if you've never been there. That's about the end of the practical information. No menu, no English translation, just lots of grainy photos.

El Hoyo's website has an English translation, the menu, and a map. They show you specifically the barrels that people stand around to enjoy the nibbles and (more importantly) drinks, and also have pictures of the food.

Food

Here I will admit to being at a loss. I don't eat meat, haven't in years (that's why I need your help!) Both places seem to serve all the traditional meat specialties, including

Lengua-tongue
Carne Mechada- Pot roast (sort of)
Arrollado- rolled up meat with more meat inside
Cazuela-brothy soup with meat and vegetables
Pichanga- a mixed plate para picar (as an appetizer) of grilled chunks of sandwich meats and hard boiled eggs, olives and pickled vegetables.

I can also vouch that El Hoyo has a giant salad with a hefty portion of every vegetable in season and an entire avocado, because that's what I ate when I was there.

Drinks

Terremotos: Both El Hoyo and La Piojera serve terremotos (literally: earthquake), a kind of young wine with a scoop of pineapple ice cream on top, served in a glass reminiscent of an old jam jar. I am not a huge fan of this drink, but can say that the one at La Piojera also has Fernet (a distilled alcohol commonly drunk in Argentina) in it, and that it's more bitter than the one served at El Hoyo, which just has the wine and the ice cream. The second round is called a réplica (aftershock).

Chicha: Both places also serve chicha in season, which is a kind of alcoholic grape (or apple) cider, normally available in September and surrounding months. It's sweet enough to confuse you into drinking too much.

Vino: I was at El Hoyo not long ago with Margaret of Cachando Chile, and she's a winewriter among many other talents, and she picked some fabulous wines for us to drink, at reasonable prices. I did not check out the wine list at La Piojera, but am guessing El Hoyo has more reliable wines. Confirm? Deny?

Ambience

El Hoyo makes you feel like you're going into someone's grandmother's country house because grandma up and moved to Reñaca, and they moved her piano out and put a bar in. It's a multi-roomed space, drafty and beat up, with the aforementioned barrels and judicious application of the Chilean flag's colors (which you Americans may notice bear a striking resemblance to your flag's colors). It's reasonably well-lit and when you sit down at your table you really could be at many lower-to-middle-class restaurants present "a lo largo de Chile" (the length of Chile).

La Piojera feels rustic, from the second you walk past the security guy posted outside until you shake the sawdust off your feet on the way out. It is dark, gives the impression of a cave, of a this-is-for-hardworking-men kind of place. There's a fabulous old cash register all decked out in elaborate metal tooling, and if you're lucky, someone's grandmother (or greatgrandmother) behind the bar. It's one giant room, and can get loud and messy, but that's what the patrons like.

Testimonials:

Anthony Bourdain came to Chile on No Reservations, and was not particularly wowed by the food. I don't think it's because he was taken to the wrong places, just that Chilean cuisine is still improving, and is actually improving by leaps and bounds at the moment. He was taken to El Hoyo, which he pronounced the best food he'd eaten in Chile, but then, his handlers took him to El Hoyo, and not La Piojera.

So I throw it to the wind. What say you, expat gringos, santiaguinos, people who have swung through Santiago on a lark, a whim or a long bus ride. I put it to you now:

El Hoyo or La Piojera? And why, if you don't mind.

Also, if you want to see what I said about these restos in more (or different) detail, feel free to check out the pages I wrote for them for NileGuide. It's a paid gig, so if you prefer not to send any money to the man (or in this case to me), please, by all means, do not click. Nothing if not transparent, don'tchaknow.

El Hoyo on NileGuide
La Piojera on NileGuide

And yes, I take pictures of all the food everyone eats and the outside of every restaurant I've ever been to, and I never tell the people why I'm there, and no NileGuide does not pay for my food, though they did for the $5 lunch blog, but I didn't eat that sandwich, so I'm not sure that counts.

And now back to the questions at hand: La Piojera (whoops, wrote about that one once before) or El Hoyo, and why? And if you've never been to either, which one sounds more your style?

Curiousity gets the Cuttlefish (411)

2010-08-14T14:04:00.008-04:00

Fishing pier in San Antonio on the Chilean coast, not far from Santiago

You have a choice in life or in travel. You can motor on on your own agenda, with your own invisible line drawing you closer to where you thought you wanted to go, or you can stop and observe. This deserves more introspection and navel-gazing than I want to go into right now, but some of you are like-minded, and know it already, or know like-minded people, like the illustrious and hilarious Audrey and Dan (or Mr. and Mrs. Scott, as you may call them if you'd like to see Dan's hackles raise just a bit).

It also helps if you're a bit of a chatterbox. And I am. I like to think I'm training to be an old lady, the kind that talks to you in the supermarket about how expensive the melons are, or about pretty much anything at all. But I'm not in training to be anything really, I'm already there. I will talk to pretty much anyone about pretty much anything at any time. In the United States that makes me quirky. In Chile, it makes me downright bizarre.

But the good news about doing something out of the ordinary (at least in Chile) is that people are quizzical, but not offended by your particular brand of crazy, and are often nicer than you might expect or hope, though you should always expect and hope the best. In this case, I think I get special dispensation for being female and foreign, but in general, whenever I have asked stupid questions of people here in Chile, they have been more than willing to tell me in detail about whatever it is I was wondering about. I think when you live in a world where everyone knows whatever it is you're doing, the chance to be an expert is appealing. Or maybe talking to a foreigner is an interesting tidbit for the day.

And so I give you, jibia (HIBB-ee-yuh). I have never seen jibia prepared anywhere, have only seen it as giant bleach-bright folded lobes of fish-flesh at the market. I was told it was "like a squid" (como un calamar) one time, but it certainly wasn't like any squid I'd ever beheld. (Not even the giant squid in Te Papa in Wellington, New Zealand, which to be fair, is decomposing more than a little at this point).

By asking, I found out that what's in this man's hands, are not, in fact, octopi, as I had surmised, but jibia heads! Jibia heads, I tell you.

It turns out jibia is a species of cuttlefish, which by the way, I have seen a cuttlefish while scuba diving, and it was petite and looked like it was wearing a frilly skirt. And I can promise and swear that if I ever see one of these massive jobbers coming at me, I will render my rented wetsuit unwearable by its next renter.

Fully clothed, with it's "cuero" (skin, or leather) still on.

De-cueroed. I asked the guy with the heads if the skin is hard to remove, and he said nope, it just slips off.

Ready for market.

So if I hadn't asked, I'd never have known. Next step, finding out what people actually do with the cuttlefish (i.e., how it's prepared), and continually being impressed at exactly how hard fishermen all over the world work, regardless of how easily the jibia heads and skin come off. (the heads they toss into the sea, which would explain the sea lion colony to some extent, photos forthcoming).

What did you find out today?

¡Que casualidad! (What a coincidence!)

2010-08-12T19:48:00.003-04:00

If you're a coincidence non-believer, you may have to adjust your brain for the time it takes you to read this blog entry. Either that or I expect a two page, single-spaced report on just what in tarnation you think is going on here.

I first noticed it in 1986, when, at a high school summer program at Penn State one of my classmates in the program announced, “I know one guy from Brooklyn.” To this, I raised my eyebrows, and replied, “and his name is Dave,” fully expecting this to be another one of those foolish comments someone makes when they find out something about you that actually is not a point in common. No, he said, “his name is __________,” with __________ being the name of a boy I knew, and would ultimately go to the prom with, him with a mohawk, and me in a peach dress I went with another male friend to pick out, and which we discovered only after the fact, did not provide enough coverage up top when I sat down.

Later it would happen again, this time in Massachussets, where the last administrative task I had to take care of at college happened to be rubber stamped by someone who had had my father as her science teacher the year he died. She looked at me, and said, Brooklyn? And she looked at my name, and she said, “Barry Smith was your father, wasn’t he?”

Coincidences follow me around like good luck follows other people.

Several weeks ago I was invited to a friend’s house here in Chile, and there was one surprise guest, who was to be a surprise because I know her, but didn’t know we had a friend in common. I went to answer the door and found instead, another guest, who I also knew, a woman I first worked with here in Chile when I arrived six years ago, and who I last saw in the US consulate getting a visa for her husband so they could go live in the United States. On another occasion, I also had the fortune to meet J for the first time at a party held by a Brazilian friend of mine, and J and I discovered that we shared an ex we were both lucky to call an ex (and who still cruises here from time to time, hey, I see you!). But maybe you’re not impressed with me running into gringos in Chile.

Then what about the time I met a guy in Belize, and a year later met his girlfriend in Portugal? Or the time I was looking through a friend’s photo album in California and found a guy I went to college with in Massachusetts among his photos? Friends who call me and tell me they’ve met friends of friends, or how one of my friends here is friends from home with someone whose blog I read in Angola (sorry, closed to new readers), or when I reunited with my best friend from nursery school a full twelve years later on the B-49 bus that whipped up Ocean Avenue and then Farragut Road, to deliver us to our high school?

Or the time I was coming home from a summer in Spain on a flight routed through London and ran into a good high school friend on the plane who was on her way home from Israel?

Or when, leaving for Buenos Aires I ran into F, (who I dated briefly) in the Santiago airport and when leaving Ezezeia (Buenos Aires) was spied by A, another pretendiente (suitor, if you will)?

I also run into people constantly. In the metro, on the street, up in La Reina, over in La Florida, downtown, in Maitencillo (the beach). There’s a guy named Guillermo who I run into every several months in random parts of Santiago. The the last time I saw him was at Piñera’s celebration party (we were both there to gawk), so we must be due.

Which is why when I figured out that Annjeanette, who is in the process of moving back to Chile with her family and who I know through my blog, had lived in the very same (smallish) apartment building where I currently live (and fight with the elevator, the kitchen and other assorted ills),it came as only a mild surprise. I feel like if I could do a graphical representation of the places I’ve been and the people I’m somehow linked to, it would be a stained and worn map, with star after star denoting coincidences (if you believe in them).

What can I say? For the most part I’m in very good company. Thanks for joining me on this crazy ride. Until our paths cross again!

Architecture Disrespect in Santiago and beyond

2010-08-10T11:00:00.007-04:00

Architecture disrespect is a term I coined one day when I uploaded this photo to my flickr stream. It's a picada, or sort of a snackbar at the corner of the Alameda (that's Avenida Libertador Bernardo O'Higgins to you) and calle dieciocho (thus the nubmer 18 on the sign). What we have is a beautiful piece of architecture, beautifully tooled and detailed that's been turned into an afterthought, a hat, if you will for a place to eat greasy sandwiches, wipe your fingers on waxed-paper napkins and drink a liter of beer at one sitting.

In my amblings about town, I soon realized that this was not the only gorgeous corner building in Santiago turned into something else.

Here's another one, same main street but a few blocks west. Not quite as garish signage, but still kind of grumpymaking from the historical preservation front.

Then there's this one, which I guess is a pretty good use of the space, signage not that egregious, though this building used to be blue before the Cruz Verde (literally: green cross) pharmacy moved in. On the Plaza de Armas, southeast corner.

And just so you know it's not just Santiago, here's an example from Valparaíso, down in the plan, not up on the cerrros where everyone will tell you all the beauty is, which is plainly not true. This is not far from the bus station, which I had thought was on Condell, but which Lydia was able to identify as being on Av. Uruguay. And she tells us (see comments) that it's not alone.

And in case you thought this repurposing of gorgeous buildings for fast food joints an the like was limited to Chile, here's a shot I snapped in downtown Montevideo (Uruguay).

But disrespect comes in many forms. You can let a building practically fall down, neglect it and build giant modern buildings beside it, like this one in La Paz.

Or, a continent away, you can take a beautiful, classically styled and built building, like this one in Oamaru, New Zealand and shine a kaleidoscope of colors on it so bright that it blinds nearby cyclists.

On the one hand, I'm more of a watcher and reporter than doer. A friend of mine refers to my photographic style as "documentarian" (who knew I had a style, I thought I just had an itchy shutter finger), so I guess on some level, I like these contrasts, even though I find them aesthetically disturbing. So I probably won't join any campaign to preserve, to fix, to prevent these advances. I'll just quietly stand nearby, whip the camera out, click, and walk away. All you'll hear is the velcro on my camera bag, and then I'm gone.

Feria report, and finding your closest farmer's market in Santiago

2010-08-07T12:04:00.007-04:00

Something that I love down to my crunchy granola toes about living in Latin America, or more specifically, Santiago is the ferias. Ferias are our weekend (or weekday) fruit and veggie stop, a place to yammer with your neighbors and thump the melons (but not too harshly, and not today, it's winter here) of your casero, or person who you always buy from.

You can tell that a feria is nearby by the (usually) ladies, wheeling a kind of luggage cart with a floppy plastic burlap bag (often red and blue striped) held up via grommets on a system of hooks it has. If you see them, and figure out where they're going or check out who you see coming towards you loaded down with freshies, you can triangulate and figure out where to go. The streets surrounding the feria will be full of off-spec vendors with sheets on the ground selling old clothes and electronics, and right before the feria starts, you'll see giant metal carts that the ferianos (people that sell at the markets) use to get their goods close to the feria.

But you came for the pictures and the rundown, didn't you?

I left the house with two empty reusable grocery bags, a little bit of cash, and a desire to fill up on delicious fresh veggies for the week.

I returned with this:

and a free vocabulary lesson for you:

habas (fava beans), 1,000
alcachofas (artichokes) 4 for 1,000
palta (avocado, 1/2 kilo), 700
brócoli (brocolli) 500
zapallo (squash) 300
rábanos (radishes) 300
cebollín (scallions) 300
mandarinas (tangerines (this word is also used for clementines), 1 kilo) 500
manzanas (apples, 1 kilo) 300
cilantro (cilantro, 1 bunch) 200
limones (lemons, 1 kilo) 150

The exchange rate has dropped recently, to 514 pesos to the dollar (apparently it's best when it hovers around 550 for export purposes, and this economy is run on exports), but that means at 5,250 pesos, I spent just over ten dollars. Oh, and it weighed 17.2 pounds, which I mention because this is not my regular feria and I thought it was much closer to my house than it is, and I would have been sad had I not ridden my bike. This one was on Martinez de Rosas, and the one I usually go to is on Sundays on Esperanza. And it's absolutely true that the character and culture of the feria, held just a day and about 15 blocks away is thoroughly different. Remind me to talk about that someday.

Wondering where your closest feria is? Well, they've got a website for that. The Ministerio de Agricultura (Ministry of Agriculture) put this website together a while ago, and while I often kvetch about the quality and accessibility of information here in Chile, I'm pretty impressed with this one. Select your comuna, corroborate its location on Googlemaps or Mapcity, and you're good to go. Be a good doobie, bring reusable bags, and then practice your quick draw Spanish explaining to the caseros that you don't want a plastic bag. Trust me, it's a challenge.

What's your Starbucks Alias? A tale from Chile

2010-07-29T10:18:00.006-04:00

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

2010-07-27T09:09:00.005-04:00

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?)

2010-07-23T10:34:00.007-04:00

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

2010-07-21T16:41:00.005-04:00

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)

2010-07-19T10:46:00.004-04:00

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

2010-07-15T09:25:00.005-04:00

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

2010-07-13T09:31:00.003-04:00

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

2010-07-08T18:04:00.003-04:00

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

2010-07-06T09:37:00.004-04:00

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?