Christmas in Kiev and the Fear of War

This is my friend Roma, hungover and waiting for my taxi to arrive in the lobby of his apartment building on Kyiv's left bank, about 30 minutes from the city center. It was Orthodox Christmas morning.

I met Roma and his friends the night before at a 24-hour sushi and pizza place called MAFIA Україна. The restaurant was conveniently about a block from my hotel, on the principal thoroughfare of the city, Khreshchatyk Street. The name was hilarious, and the menu and decor were so over the top that it was hard to tell whether this was satire or not. It wasn't. 

I dined alone, but as I was eating I saw a sign with an arrow pointing towards a staircase. It simply said "Karaoke" in red neon lights. After paying my well-priced tab for what was unmistakably good sushi and Neopolitan pizza, I headed down. 

In the basement, there was a small room, about the size of a high school classroom, with a parquet dance floor squarely at its center. Around the room were cheap tables, and event chairs, with mirrored walls and a disco ball in the center light fixture. There was a DJ booth by the stairs. 

I sat at a table alone and panned the room. There were two men at a table across the room from me. They were around my age (mid-30s) with dress clothes untucked as if they'd left work and hadn't returned yet. It was maybe 11PM. 

In the corner of the room was a table of about 4-5 girls and 3 guys. Roma was sitting there. They all looked like they were in their early 20s, and all of them had liters of local beer in front of them. They looked like a lot of fun, and the girls were gorgeous. I sent over a round of beer for the table. 

The DJ knew I was a non-Ruso-speaking foreigner and he cracked jokes at my expense. I knew because the two off-duty suits laughed at me and pointed, and the DJ mixed in some English words in a teasing, kind of smarmy tone. I fired back with some drunk barbs in English about fucking their mothers. The suits didn't understand, the DJ did (he grinned) and 1/3 of the other table erupted in laughter. "Dude, come over man!" said Roma. I obliged, and he thanked me for the beers. 

Roma and one of the girls spoke English and spoke it fluently. They were huge hip-hop fans and actually performed on a karaoke circuit in Kyiv. They flawlessly sang Ludacris, Eminem, Dre, and other classic songs without looking at the lyrics on the screen. The suits sang Ukrainian and Russian hits that gave us time to talk and drink. 

After god knows how many drinks, we decided to split. The snow was pouring down in blizzard conditions, and it was about 3:30AM. Roma asked me if I wanted to come to their after-party at his place. He lived with the two other guys. I said "sure", not knowing where I'd be going, or how I'd get back to the hotel. 

We jumped in a small Russian-made car and practically slid through the snow-covered empty streets of early Christmas morning Kyiv. After about 15 minutes we started crossing a bridge. I panicked a bit because I saw the lights of the city behind me, and I had no idea where we were going. If I got let out of the car I'd be on an empty bridge outside of Kyiv, Ukraine, on Christmas, in the snow, with no ability to read or speak the language. 

My fears subsided as we reached the other side. Once there, we entered what I can only describe as a dystopian, communist urbanscape. Row after row of 25-story buildings lined perfectly symmetric avenues as far as the eyes could see. We parked in front of one of them and got out to get groceries at the 24-hour store. Inside, I offered to pay for anything and everything, as the currency had buckled and a basket of groceries would cost me less than dinner in Panama. We bought a bottle of brandy, vodka, peach nectar, cheese, cigarettes, and some locally-made Dorito rip-offs. 

Up in the tower, we sat at a kitchen table and drank. We banged the table like a beatbox so the guys could rap in Ukrainian. We ripped warm shot after shot of vodka, then mixed the brandy with warm peach nectar. The cheese and chips were gone within 10 minutes of sitting down. The girls split after a few rounds, and it was just me and the boys. Roma was translating for me. They told me they were all in the Ukrainian military and out on rotation from the eastern front (Donetsk, I believe). 

I remember being drunk and speaking with bravado as if I too could relate to them. I couldn't, but I didn't know what else to say. The boys told me more about school, and about getting paid to study in Kyiv. The apartment was also paid for by the military, which is why they shared it. None of them grew up there. I can't remember where they grew up, though. We were so wasted we started playing the knife and hand game, which quickly faded to looking for more chips, to no avail. 

By the time 6AM rolled around, I knew I'd have to crash there and crash soon. Roma gave me his room, and he grabbed a blanket and pillow to sleep on a small couch in the tenement hallway. The apartment was bare, but his room had hip-hop posters covering each wall. Looked like many of the rooms I slept in growing up. I woke up about 5 hours later with one of the worst hangovers ever. I looked out the tower window and saw a blanket of snow. I needed to get "home", but had no clue how. 

I woke Roma up on the couch and asked what I could do. He called a taxi company and set me up. He escorted me down to the lobby, waiting for the cab. He went with me into the cab to pay the fixed rate (about $3 USD) and told the driver to text him as soon as we reached my hotel. He said the same to me, and we dapped up and said goodbye. 

Slushing back over the bridge into Kyiv I felt like I would vomit. My head pounded but when I saw the city getting closer I got the rush that all travelers get when they finish a small adventure. I felt like I did Kyiv as good as one could do Kyiv in a snowstorm on Christmas eve. As we approached my hotel on Khreshchatyk Street, I saw a McDonald's. I asked the driver to stop and let me out. 

I wanted a hangover burger, Christmas be damned. He didn't understand me and refused with his finger, taking me right to the hotel and calling Roma while I was in the car. I was so stubborn that I got out, walked back to the McDonald's, and ordered a black bread Bic Mac, hash browns, and two coffees. The only people in Mac D's on Christmas were me and some middle eastern men, who I assume were Muslim and not celebrating the holiday. 

I washed down the meal as anyone would with a hangover, feeling guilty after, and making a B-line straight for bed at the hotel. I never saw Roma again, and I hope that he, his friends, and his family are OK. 

I'm sure he's fighting on the front as we speak, with the boys from the tower, and hopefully still alive.

Why I Love Brazilians

Tonight the US Soccer team takes on Brazil in their first international match since the World Cup. I'm pretty sure no one cares around here, but playing Brazil in soccer is always a challenge, always fun to watch, and always garners some sort of attention. But enough about the beautiful game. It got me thinking. I don't think I've ever met a Brazilian I didn't like. Seriously. In a nutshell, here's why:

Brazilians are fun, period. Poor, rich, black, or white, they often have these perma-grins, and a bounce around their day to day life as if they were at a party 24/7. It's hard to get a Brazilian to stand still, or even be quiet. Outside of the Chinese, Israelis, and Americans, they're pretty much the loudest people on earth. But unlike the uncomfortable screams of the multi-tonal Chinese language, and the retarded banter between two 20-year-old girls from equally uninteresting parts of California, Brazilian noise is almost always made in a celebratory tone. And man, do they like to celebrate.

I remember being in Punta del Este about three years ago with an American friend of mine who likes to party. We stayed in a hostel that every tourist does, called 1949, and bunked up with a group of about 15 Southern Brazilians. In one day, as my friend and I popped in and out of the ocean, taking naps, site seeing, eating, and stopping for the occasional beer, the hostel Brazilians did only two things: drink beer, and dance. Without exaggerating, I would estimate that between the 15 of them, they took on close to 200 liters of Brahma in a 15 or 16 hour period. They also had a boombox with them wherever they went, blasting heavy electro samba beats or 80s hair metal exclusively. I'm not sure if they even ate. But the greatest thing about this group was that they didn't stop. We went to bed before them, 2am, and were woken up by them. Doing what? You guessed it. Drinking beer and dancing. This time playing their own bongo drums, and chasing the suds with Marlboro reds and tropical fruits. This was at 7am.

Another great thing about Brazilians is that they agitate Argentines for all the right reasons. The soccer rivalry is fun, but it's lame to actually take that seriously outside of just being a game. Argentines take this too seriously because while being a dominant force in the region, they are usually on the losing end when up against Brazil. It's kind of like the Red Sox/Yankees rivalry. "Close but no cigar" is annoying as fuck when your rival owns a case of cigars, and "close" is a word rarely thought of.

There's also this weird Argentine/Brazilian rivalry based on Brazil's recent economic success. Argentines won't admit this, because they used to look at Brazilians as the fun, but poor and struggling neighbor. Argentines used to tout their wealth in Buzios and Rio in the summer, taking advantage of a strong currency, and an open tourist economy. Now, with the Argentine peso floundering, and the Argentine tourism economy holding together a large portion of the local wealth, the tables have turned. Literally.

Not that the Argies don't still fill the beaches in Buzios, or haggle for fresh coconut milk on the sands of Ipanema, but the percentage of Brazilians visiting their country has grown exponentially in recent years. Also, with the Brazilian Real slowly climbing towards 1 to 1 with the US dollar, and the peso sinking into the 4s, Brazilians have massive spending power abroad. And they know it.

It's kind of like if when a fat shy guy hits the gym and becomes all confident. His attitude changes, he starts getting chicks, he dresses better. You're happy for him as a friend, but deep down you kind of hate the douchebag he's turned into, and the fact that he's scoring more, and looks better than you do. This is kind of like the relationship between Argentines and Brazilians economically. They come to Buenos Aires wearing garish gold jewelry and gaudy Italian designer attire, breezing through shopping malls and bars with the economic ease of a gringo or Japanese tourist. But they do it in Portuguese, a language different enough to confuse the average Argentine, but similar enough to aggravate them that they don't know even a word in Spanish.

That's another thing. The language. I love hearing Brazilians speak Portuguese. If ever a language represented a people in it's sound, phrases, and natural cadence, it's Portuguese with Brazilians. The language bounces, with multi-tonal phrases that ebb and flow almost seamlessly with the sentiment of the speaker. They also have an incredibly hard time pronouncing other languages without their own style of speech and accent. In Boston, "Red Sox" becomes "Heggie Sockies", and my personal favorite, "Big Mac" becomes "Biggie Mackie". It's an endearing and honest way of speaking, and it's fun. Much better than listening to an Argentine say "Sprite", or a Gringo trying to pronounce the term "Horarios" correctly.

Lastly, they're fucking HOT. While physically speaking, most Brazilians don't have the slender or smooth physique of an Argentine, or Southern European. But what they lack in slenderness, they make up in shape. Brazilian booty is legendary, and with good reason. The women are shaped, and round, and tan. They walk with a confident swagger, and they have very few body issues when it comes to being exposed. You can almost feel the energy from a Brazilian woman even before you make eye contact with her, and while they often tend to overdue it with the make up and accessories, you seldom hear them talking about how fat they are, or why they need a better nose, or smaller chin. I say, more power to them.

All this being said, however, go team USA. But I still love you guys.

Top 5 Places to Pick up an Argenhot

If you've followed this site at all-and the sparcity of posts may have inspired you to call it quits-you may have read the guide to dating Argenhots. But dating an Argenhot means nothing if you don't know where to go to meet them, and why these places work. Here's a list of 5 of the best spots around the city to meet the Argenhot of your dreams. In no particular order:

1) Starbucks: Yeah, they're a multi-national, illuminati, soul-less, indigenous farm crushing corporation. But damn, they make a hell of a coffee. Argenhots love this place. Why? Because in Argentina, Starbucks is a luxury. There are very few of them, and the prices are so inflated that some of their coffees are the cost equivalent to 20% of your average worker's daily wage. Argenhots like to feel special, chic, and cultured. Starbucks gives them all of these things, plus a staff of soft-spoken gay men, blended sweet fruity drinks, and comfy chairs.

The strategy is simple. When you order your drink, do it in the WORST Spanish possible. Chances are that these girls are rich, studied English for most of their lives, have grown tired of Argentine men, and have no foreign friends. They will immediately pick up on your shitty accent, shoot you a stare, and talk to you. Rely on the slowness and ineptitude of the Starbucks staff to give you about 5-8 minutes of chat time with your Argenhot as you wait for your coffee. If you don't have a number, e-mail, or a facebook invite by the time that 18-peso latte is ready, then move on. It sounds shady, but you can do this multiple times a day, if you can handle all that caffeine.

2) UADE Business School: Believe it or not, Buenos Aires has a pretty good business school (insert joke here). The UADE campus is made up of a few bleak-looking buildings smashed together on the corner of the world's widest avenue, 9 de Julio. It lacks any outdoor space set aside exclusively for its students. What this means is that when they're not in class, UADE students flood the steps and giant sidewalk partition in front of the school. Depending on the time of day, it can look like an outdoor cocktail mixer full of driven, confident, middle-class 21-year-olds. There are also a ton of cafes and shady choripan places lining the surrounding streets, so you don't have to feel like a creeper that lurches around a school to pick up women.

The strategy here is a bit more complicated than Starbucks, and is only for inermediate to upper-intermediate Argenhotters. An Argentine business degree has very little international pull, so most of these students will not speak English, nor will they think your goofy foreign accent is cute. If you can't speak good conversational Spanish, forget it. You're best bet here is to approach with a beer or a joint. Deep inner insecurity and the overwhelming pressure to constantly succeed makes business students some of the biggest drinkers and recreational drug users on the planet. And this is universal, no matter what country. Weed is decriminalized in BA, and no one cares if you have an open beer out in public on a sunny afternoon. Go right up to someone, offer what you got, and tell them you were waiting on some friends, but they bailed, and you wanted to check out the scene around the school. These types of Argenhots like to talk about themselves a lot. If you can get past that, and the beer will help, you should have a pretty good chance of stretching after-school beers into a night on the town.

3) Retiro Station: Retiro is the central bus and train terminal for Buenos Aires, which essentially makes it the ground transportation hub of the entire country. The station is massive, and is split by an outdoor walkway filled with burger and beer kiosks that blast cumbia, Nigerian jewelry salesmen, and knock-off clothing vendors. It's a cavalcade of sound, language, and most importantly, diversity. People from all over the country converge here to either depart, arrive, or sell their wares to those doing both. The type of Argenhot here is the polar opposite of Starbucks girl, but just as gorgeous, only in a different way. If dark skin, smoothe black hair, and round deep eyes are your thing, this is your place.

The strategy here is a bit tricky. First off, this is not the safest place in the world, so make sure you're aware of your surroundings. Do NOT talk to someone's sister, or any girl who seems to be hanging around a bunch of guys. This is not the Buenos Aires you see on post cards. Most of these Argenhots are from the poorest parts of the country, and the men tend to be very posessive, old fashioned, and have a palpable disdain for foreigners. Look for an Argenhot that's working at one of the bars or burger shops, and be direct. Tell her you love her eyes, that you're not from around there (which will be blatantly obvious), and ask her about where she's from. Remember, she's most likely Argentine, but not Porteña. Play off the commonality of being an outsider in a big crazy city. Pretend you like cumbia, and if she works in a restaurant or bar, TIP. This will go a long way, and trust me, it's worth it. These women are some of the most beautiful in the country.

4) La Bomba de Tiempo: This one almost didn't make the list, as it is packed with foreigners, and annoying hostel hippies. If you aren't familiar with "La Bomba", I'll break it down. It's an outdoor acoustic percussion rave held every Monday in a place called Ciudad Konex. Picture the party scene from the Matrix 2, but with a bit less people. This place is FULL of dancing, drinking, stoned Argenhotness. These Argenhots could also be catagorized as Argenhippies, but don't let that fool you, they're still still as hot as that little princess from Recoleta who hates Dad and starts her mornings with a valume and a good cry. Argenhippies tend to look like what a hippie chick would look like in a movie if she was played by Jessica Alba. Unbelievable as a character, but you don't care, you live in suspended disbelief.

You've got a 50/50 shot at finding some form of an English speaker. The great thing is, it doesn't matter whether you do or don't. Most of these girls are creative, artistic, and most of all, fun. Talk about music, art, how much you hate pretentious girls, and why you love Buenos Aires. Or, just shut the fuck up and dance. Everyone else is. Avoid talking politics at all costs, especially if you're from the US. This will never end well, and at best case scenario will cause a lot of awkward tension. Keep it light, fun, and creative. There's always an after party, so wait 'til then to make your move. And yes, in this country, the hippies shave!

5) Alto Palermo Shopping Center: This place is perfect for those of you who prefer older Argenhots. Like a fine malbec, many Argenhots get better with age. This is especially true in Palermo, where many of the women are wealthy and don't work, giving them lots of time to stay healthy, but also causing them to be bored out of their mind. Buenos Aires has an extremely high percentage of single women over 40. My theory is that this comes from many women marrying early out of family pressure, and divorcing in their mid-30's when they realize it was the wrong decision. Also, infidelity is huge down here, and that is a big marriage destroyer. For whatever reason, this modern mall is full of bored rich women looking to fill the void of their lack of a purpose with lingerie from Caro Cuore, facial cremes, bags, and shoes.

Don't try to slick-talk these Argenmilfs. It won't work. Think of them as the older version of Starbucks girl. Chances are, they've traveled extensively, own their own apartment (and maybe even a beach house on the coast), and have dreams of one day moving to Barcelona or New York. Your game needs to be really tight to even come close to breaking through to one of these women. Avoid talking about your petty achievements, they're not impressed. Talk about what book you're currently reading, what kind of things interest you as a person, and why you are either visiting or living in Argentina. Don't be intimidated. They can smell fear. Good luck, and have fun.

Memorable Quotes from 2009

It's been a while since my last post, but being out of Argentina has given me a lot of time to think about some of the funnier things people have said to me or I've overheard over the past year or so. In honor of my first post of 2010, here's a list of the best quotes that I can remember. Enjoy:



Me: "Donde esta calle Paraguay?", Clerk: "Para que?", Me: "Paraguay", Clerk: "Para, no entiendo."

Diego: "I need you to pick up a package from the Israeli embassy in NY", Me: "Why? What is it?", Diego: "Don't worry about why. We'll just say it's a wrist watch."

Anonymous: "You're stupid for carrying weed on you. It's really easy to get busted.", Me: "But you've got 4 grams of coke in your pocket!!!", Anonymous: "Yeah, but if I get stopped I can swallow it quicker and there's no smell."

Evil Flor: "Can you buy me a Jansport bag when you go back to the US?", Me: "You threw me out on the street, made me homeless, and started dating a customer of mine. And you want me to do you a favor?", Evil Flor: "Never mind. I didn't think you paid attention to little details. I'll get one online."

Fernando: "Este no es un Chino. Es Japones", Me: "Por que?", Fernando: "Porque los Japoneses tienen ojos mas Chino que los Chinos, viste?"

Pepe: "Buenos Aires tiene la mejor pizza del mundo. Es la verdad. Me fui a Sweden."

Mini Flor: "I like you, but I'm not sexually attracted to you. It's not that I won't have sex with you, but it's going to take a while. Can I buy you a beer at least?"

Yenon: "I been to your country to work. Very different than Israel.", Me: "Where did you go? What did you do?", Yenon: "I lived in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Sold Dead Sea salt to fat black women who yelled a lot.", Me: "How was that?", Yenon: "Traumatic."

Brendan: "I tried to find you at the bar last night, but you guys were closed early.", Me: "So what did you do instead?", Brendan: "Some Venezuelan guy payed me to get naked on film and dance around with some whores in a club nearby. I think I punched the Muppet and then blacked out. You guys should stay open later on Thursday."

Fernando: "I'm a communist, so of course I support Chavez, Morales, and all of the leaders who support the rights of the people and the workers.", Me: "What about Kim Jong Il?", Fernando: "Who's that?"

Me: "I have to leave work a bit early tonight.", Diego: "Why?", Me: "There's a Colombian locked in my room, and I want to make sure she has enough water."

Bar Customer: "I hate America. No, really, I do. I even cheered on 9/11. But you seem pretty cool. You have facebook?"

Marcelo: "Do they eat chicken in the US?"

American Hostel Hippie: "You know that bag of Doritos you're eating represents everything that's wrong with corporate consumerism penetrating the developing countries in Latin America?" Me: "Dude, you travel with a desktop computer and a 23-inch monitor." American Hostel Hippie: "Yeah, but only so I can blog about economic and social inequality. I serve a purpose."

Lisa: "I swear to God, in Germany, the salt is much saltier."

Semester Abroad Student: "They suck at speaking Spanish down here, man. Trust me, I'm from California."

Me: "Your boobs are fantastic." Anonymous: "I know. My Grandma bought them for me."


That's all for now. Happy New Year.

Cops and Robbers

I should have never went for orange juice. It runs through your head, over and over, like a broken record. I could have stayed at home. I could have gone without it. I could have picked another supermarket. I could have just said hi and left. But life doesn't work like that. Life can't be managed in the past. You make decisions in the moment and live with the consequences. That's life. On Sunday morning, my craving for Citric brand orange juice cost me a whole lot more than the $6.50 pesos sticker price. It cost me $450 pesos, a bit of my pride, and a hard-learned lesson about corruption, poverty, nationalism, and depravity. Ironically, I never even got the OJ.

It rained torrentially on Saturday night. It was the type of rain that happens in Buenos Aires during the spring. The type of rain that falls in streams rather than drops. The kind that floods streets, closes subway lines, and stimeys even the toughest of car winshield wipers. We closed the bar early because of it. After a quick game of darts and a trip to Burger King, my night was almost over. My friend Louis and I headed back to San Telmo just as the day, and the rain began to break. What had started out as an ugly Saturday had transformed into a beautiful Sunday morning. The outdoor Feria, or open market, was being set up piece by piece, as it always is on Sundays. The trees were green with week's worth of heavy rain and there was an odd silence in the streets. It was kind of like a tranquil calm before the storm of 4,000 tourists were to fill the streets. You would be a fool not to want to walk around and enjoy this type of morning. Even if you had been up working all night. So Louis and I did just that. We took a walk.

After a few quick passes of the plaza, a half of a joint, and some debate over whether or not pigeons could fly more than a few yards at a time, we decided to pack it in for the night. I knew I was thirsty, but a half joint will do that to you, so I really thought nothing of it. We got into the house and Louis went to his room directly. As the door shut on the basement room door, I had second thoughts. OJ. Fresh squeezed, no sugar added, delicious. Why the fuck not. It was 8:30am. The only place I knew where to get it was just opening, and a mere 3 blocks from my house. So I made a u-turn and walked to the store.

I got to the supermarket, doors just opening. Jackpot. I would be in OJ heaven within a matter of minutes. Then I heard my name called, loudly, from across the street. It was my roommate Jose, a bone-skinny 18-year-old Ecuadorian film student with a penchant for drinking, and a bad habbit of being a loud drunk. I couldn't ignore it, so I crossed. Jose was at the door of a 24-hour hamburger joint. These are pretty typical down here. It's generally a rough crowd that hangs there in the early morning, especially on weekends. They serve beer, cheap food, and most importantly, NEVER CLOSE. If the steel bars surrounding the food counter don't immediately turn you off, the smell of piss and the sight of sleeping drunks, whores, and lost-looking hippie travelers should. Almost as soon as I entered, Jose was kicked out by security for being too rowdy. "Security", and I use the term loosely, was man in his mid 20s, average built, with a shitty blue uniform and a police issued nightstick.

As I turned to make my exit and go back to the supermarket I heard my name again. "Andy, my friend!" yelled a short, well-groomed dark-skinned man dressed in a tuxedo jacket and pants, no tie in sight, and a white undershirt unbuttoned almost half way. It was Wilbur, a Peruvian man who works as a waiter in the plaza. I had met him 3 months earlier, ironically, in this very place. He's a fixture in the neighborhood, and one of those guys who remembers names, faces, where you're from, and what you do for work. He's quite remarkable in that sense, actually. Wilbur waived me to join him at one of the plastic picnic-esque tables that lined the sides of th walls near the windows. I obliged and pulled up a seat.

At the table with Wilbur were two girls, most likely in their mid-20s, and gorgeous. The skinnier one was from France. She had that look too. I knew she wasn't from around here. The shorter, darker girl was from Puerto Rico. They looked like they had been partying, but in a place like that, everyone did, including me. They had beer. Once again, I obliged. We were about halfway into our second glass, and the French girl's third cigarette, when Wilber motioned to the slender one to accompany him to the bathroom. Now, as a bartender, and a street-smart person in general, I knew exactly what that meant. Unfortunately, so did the security officer. As he glared down the aisle towards the bathroom he feverishly sent a text message and motioned towards the manager. In Argentina, cocaine is relatively cheap, plentiful, and unfortunately an all-too-normal thing to do at 9am after a heavy Saturday. I paid it no mind and started talking baseball with the Puerto Rican.

Within minutes of Wilbur's return, two P.F.A (Argentine Federal Police) patrol cars pulled up in front. My first thought was "sucks to be you Wilbur". He had witnesses, but he didn't seem to be phased. I gave the French girl a look as if to say, "you too". She was stone-faced. I will admit, however, that I felt a tinge of fear. You get used to that down here. The police have never rubbed me the right way, and as a foreigner, you can never be too careful. We've all heard of nightmare scenarios with police. Corruption, extortion, physical abuse, threats, planting evidence. This is an unfortunate side effect of a police force that is grossly underpaid, has very few checks and balances, and has a reputation for being dirty. As the two uniformed officers approached the table, I noticed that they weren't looking at the girls at all. They were looking directly at me and Wilbur. My nightmare had just started, and I already knew that this wouldn't end in a hand shake and an apology.

We were ordered to stand up and move to the back of the restaurant. The girls stayed at the table, and Wilbur and I went to a darker corner of the room, no windows. By the time we reached the wall, 2 officers had turned into 8. Four were in flac jackets, the others in plain uniform. One of them seemed to be the captain, but I couldn't really tell. The next ten minutes was like the movie "Groundhog Day". "Do you have any coke", the officer kept asking me. "No", I repeated over and over. I emptied my pockets about 5 times. Each time a different officer. I removed my shirt as well. Had my mouth searched and my pants shaken. Over and over this continued.

The officers did the same to Wilbur, had a bit of a huddle, and brought him into the bathroom. I asked if I could go and was promptly denied. Within minutes I was flagged into the hall where the bathrooms were. The bathroom hall looked exactly as you would expect it to in a place like this. The smell of urine was unbareable. The only light came from a solitary red light hanging from the ceiling. There was green mold draping the walls like it was painted there. Wilbur was in a stall with the biggst officer. He ordered me in. I panicked, and said no, trying to justify my innocence. Before he even processed his response, the other officer kicked me in the back of the knees. I fell fast. It took my breath. I was pulled up and shoved in the 5-by-5 stall.

Officer big man told me we would both be booked for cocaine posession. I gave him a look like he knew I was innocent and he was fucking with me. He didn't care. He said we were together, and that Wilbur was merely holding the coke for me. We all knew this wasn't true, including Wilbur, but the officer was fine with his story. He asked me if I'd ever been to an Argentine jail. I said no, as I've never been to any jail. He told me that if I didn't want to go he needed a favor. Money. Wilbur's pockets had been searched. Nothing. My pockets were filled with my weeks salary. Roughly $450 pesos after the Burger King and taxi costs. They knew how much I had. I had emptied my pockets a mere 10 minutes earlier. I tried to give him $100, but it didn't work. He reached in my pockets and took it all. Then he told us to leave seperately, not look back, and not be seen for the rest of the day. If I hung around, he said it would cost my legs. I didn't argue.

The walk home was short, but one of the longest ones I've ever taken in my life. "I hate it here", "I hate police", "I hate Wilbur", "I hate San Telmo". It all swished around my head like a bad dream. A confusion of anger, sadness, and the horrendous feeling of being violated. I didn't even notice that the Feria had started. No green trees, no pigeon talks, no OJ. Sleep felt good, and I settled in pretty well. I had to go back to work in a few hours, and I couldn't afford to be in a bad mood.

And so it was. I had my first real experience with police corruption. It was my first taste of what I'm sure thousands of people go through each year. In an eerie way, that actually helped me cope. I was unlucky, but certainly not an anomaly. I tried to think of it like an Argentine would. Wake up, smile, go about your life, and appreciate the good moments in your day. Move on. Hey, at least on the bright side, it made the ousting of my beloved Red Sox from the playoffs a bit easier to swallow. Life is short. I never want to forget that.

Bar Rules 101: Argentine Edition

The theme is real simple. You go out to a bar for a variety of reasons. You go to socialize, drink your pain away, celebrate, get laid, listen to music, dance, or maybe just to get out of the house. No matter how you cut it, the underlying theme is that people to bars to have fun and escape what would seem to be the underwhelming normalcy of their day-to-day grind. But once you dim the lights, crank the tunes, and get the sauce flowing, people behave in very strange ways. Most of the time, you as bargoers don't even realize this. But you know who does? Bar workers. That's right. The people who serve you drinks, listen to your stories, flirt with you, and occasionally kick you out or clean up your puke. So, as one of the aforementioned workers, I've decided to put together a list of common mistakes made by you, the customer, as well as some varying groups of typically horrible customers. Don't worry, we all have our douchey bar moments we wish we could take back. Maybe this will help you stop before you become "that guy" or "that girl".

Here it goes:

The Yeller: This is one of the greatest ways to make a bartender angry. Yelling at the top of your lungs when everyone can hear you perfectly. Alcohol kind of has the same effect on your inner volume as listening to headphones while trying to talk to someone. You can barely hear yourself, but the rest of us want to stab you in the larynx with a dull pencil.

Whistling and Snapping: Snapping and whistling is a good way to never get served a drink. And don't tell me it's cultural. You know what else is cultural? Female circumcision in parts of Africa. It doesn't make it right, scumbag. I am not a dog, nor am I "boy", "kid", "boss", or "chief". Next time try making eye contact with your server, and motioning in a polite way that you'd like something. Your mother should have taught you this, but in lieu of her knowledge, learn by reaction.

The Playboy: Now, this is a tricky one, because these guys can usually make your bar shitloads of money. A playboy is a guy who usually goes to a series of the same bars regularly with the sole purpose of scoring pussy. They're not always good looking, but they ALWAYS have money. The problem is that if you don't have a vagina, the Playboy gets a bit too alpha-male and often gets aggressive with other male customers and staff. Also, the Playboy often comes off as creepy or too aggressive, which can have a negative effect on your female clientele or staff. Which brings me to my next point...

Hitting on the Bartender: Sorry girls, but this is a double standard. Deal with it. As a bartender/customer for around 8 years, I can safely say that I've never walked into a bar and picked up the female bartender. Does it happen? Yes. Is it common? No. Believe it or not, most female bartenders I know have boyfriends. If they don't, they usually have rules about dating/fucking customers. Just because she's nice to you doesn't mean she wants to fuck you. She gets paid to be nice to you. Male bartenders on the other hand are typically whores for easy chicks. Sorry, but it's a double standard. What can I say. But when little miss C-cup with daddy issues and an effinity for making rash decisions wants to slosh around with the guy that made them a strong daquiri, it's kind of hard to say no. Sexist? Maybe a little. Don't believe me? Give it a try.

The Freeloader: No one likes a freeloader in any realm of their life, but in bars, freeloading scumbags are an epidemic. There's usually one in every group. The guy that never buys a round. You know him, don't you? Shit, you may even be him. The freeloader in a group sense rarely bothers the bar staff. After all, they're poaching free drinks off your dumb ass, not off us. However, the freeloader that makes our blood boil the most is the one that rolls in solo, buys 1 or 2 drinks, and expects a night full of free piss. In almost ANY other industry these people don't exist. But there's something about a bar (mainly alcohol and social looseness) that inspires cheapness and undeserved self importance. Of course I understand the concept of volume-based business and discounts, but most of you freeloaders are just plain old fucking greedy. EVERY bartender tosses out a free beer or two, but it's usually because you deserve it, and never because you ask for it.

The Showoff Tipper: Everyone loves tips. That is not an opinion either. It's a fact. Think about it. If someone gave you extra money for working hard, being polite, or just because they're in a generous mood, would you say no? Of course not. That being said, some people step over the line with the manner in which they tip. Flashing around your cash and showing the rest of the bar exactly how much more generous you are is pretty corney. Don't get me wrong. We will smile and take the money, but it's still lame. It's kind of like the bar equivalent of men with small penises reving up the engine to their red sports car around women to show them who's boss. We know who the big tippers are without saying anything. And we respect and treat them well. Being flashy about tipping is an attempt to draw attention to YOU, and less about showing your appreciation for the service.

Part 2 Coming Soon...

Passport Wins

I'm the last person you should ever listen to about relationships and picking up girls but since you're reading this you're not really listening, yeah? So read this:

The first trip I took to BsAs I didn't party all that much the first couple of weeks, I was too culture shocked to really get into it. The first time I really went out big was after I gave a speech at the game industry conference they have down here, EVA. I gave my speech in english to a standing ovation and then rocked out to dinner and drinks in Recoleta with the VIPs from Sony and the top 4 people in the local industry. Everything was paid for, it was baller as hell. After that the Sony people wanted to know where the party was at so my local amigos took them to Crobar. The Sony expense account was charged a couple hundred dollars to reserve a VIP table with a few hundred pesos worth of drink credit. I stood looking over the dance floor and told my friend "I feel like a demon god."

I went around trying to dance with some girls, they were kinda doing their own thing and that got me nowhere. So I was sitting back drinking and my man Chilkowski who runs NGD Studios told me "we have a saying here, let me see if I can translate it. The wallet kills the stud, but the passport kills the wallet."

"No entiendo," I said.

"Speak english."

It was just that simple.

So I went around speaking english to different girls. And I started getting e-mails, if I had a cell phone at the time they would have been phone numbers. I would go up, project a good onda and say "how y'all doin?"

"Oh, where are you from?"

"Why, the good 'ol U, S and A."

"Oh what part of the USA?"

"Like, California." (Seemed like the best State to rep, I'm not really from California.)

"Oh I love California! My dream is to go work in fashion in Los Angeles."

"Yeah I've been to LA a bunch of times, hell of a city."

It was easy. The english, to a large subset of argentinas, is like a hot knife melting through any of the typical reservations from talking with a stranger. There was a time when being American was like a shining badge of hope; and I've heard stories of what Russia was like for expats earlier this decade, or east Asia. These days America has pretty well done shot its global image and the attitude is interested for sure, but more from a point of novelty rather than admiration. None of that history really matters though, its still the ultimate opener.

Lots of guys figure this out early in their time here and they fall on it like a crutch. The truth is you have to speak some spanish, the more the better. English is a great opener but its only sustainable with only one of fifty girls who really know the language. And being foreign definitely doesn't give you full license to be a total dick, you just have to be less of a dick than the typical argentino.

I say, lets cross-pollinate cultures to the max.

My Ayahuasca Ceremony Experience

My friends have told me that I'm a very stable tripper. My friend Duncan once had a bad time on shrooms, thinking that all the blades of grass were judging him after I told him to shut up, and he sped off down the road repeating loudly "I do it because I like it." I was able to shift between a seeing god mentality to being practical about saving my friend's life, and after that was resolved I enjoyed the rest of my trip. I once walked into a Bank of America after being up all night on acid, wearing a blue-stained Army of One t-shirt, a black neon hawaiian shirt and a faded blue stripe on my face, and I had a completely straight faced conversation about BoA's international wiring terms to Argentina, which caused this cute Ethiopian girl to start cracking up at the end of the conversation when I said in monotone: "thank you, this is something I'll be considering."

Robert Anton Wilson has told me that there are 8 circuits of consciousness - I had previously lived on the seventh at the max. He also suggest that DMT, the active ingredient of Ayahuasca, is the nuerochemical key to the ultimate level of consciousness.

The thing had been built up in my head for years. In college I could score almost anything but DMT was far too exotic for Virginia Tech. I had to move to South America before it would become available to me. Going into it I wasn't sure whether it would be a tumultuous vision quest or a detached, out-of-body experience like my grandpa experienced on ketamine and scotch before deciding he'd rather blow his brains out than live with my grandmother. I was most afraid that I wasn't sufficiently detoxified and that my 300 pesos investment would be for naught. These were rather like the fears one has before losing one's virginity, until you find that you're (hopefully) with someone you love and everything is just awesome, fears were not needed. In this case, I was about to have sex with god.

On the subway three juggler kids were performing, a little girl and two boys. I had a glass bottle of coca-cola full of water that I was going to drink during the ceremony, I let the kids drink it instead and gave them ten centavos, even though I could have given them twenty pesos. The one kid wanted to keep the bottle, just to have something, but I told him I needed it and he gave it back.

I arrived at the house, a couple blocks off the Malabia subway exit. The house has a buena onda, skylight, couches, bean bag chairs, wind chimes, scented candles, stuff like that. There was a loft room where we all stashed our shoes, an entry hall with the atrium skylight and a main room where the ceremony took place. They had taken out all the furniture that was there from my contraindications interview a few weeks prior, there were little mats lined about, a pillow for each, and red and orange vomitus buckets tucked to the sides along with a liter bottles of water. People were advised to bring their own sleeping bags. I was immediately struck by the demographics of the people there, I at my age of 24 I was probably the youngest person in the room. These were not teenage psychonauts, these were mature human beings bearing the weight of decades of life experience and seeking to have a resolution forward. Clearly we were in for something of a different tenor than a party drug.

Geronimo is a young shaman with much lighter skin than I expected and short dread-locked hair, he politely greeted everyone. When I met him I asked "sos Geronimo?" and he said "lo mismo" with the kind of basic grace you'd expect from a wizened diplomat. We all sat down and he laid out the rules, during the ceremony nobody is to talk to each other or interact, the bathroom is around the corner, breakfast will be at 8 and we can all talk then. Simple and respectful, and in retrospect the whole thing had this vibe that you are an adult taking care of your own detox, respecting the rules and taking responsibility for your own experience, but they will be there to help you in any moment. I saw a used 2 liter Pepsi bottle filled with a thick, purple concoction, like the syrup for Grape Soda with the consistency of cough formula. I asked the lovely young woman sitting next to me if that was the Ayahuasca, she informed that it was. When I was asked her about the experience she said "es tu proprio" and "no esta en el mente, es en el corazon." All I could do was try to get a good stretch in so as not to waste precious brain cycles thinking about unnecessary aches and tensions in my body during the experience.

Two little girls helped in the ceremony, they were probably about 8 and 6; both wearing pink outfits with pastel-green socks. The 8-year old wreathed our heads in a fragrant tobacco while the 6-year old playfully bent her toes against the ground in rhythm to Geronimo's blowing over the Ayahuasca bottle. It was like The Holy Mountain meets Disney, but overall wholesome and family friendly. He then poured the mixture into a little China cup and the 8-year-old came over to offer it to me first, I look at her, shrugged, took it by one hand and threw it back. The taste was bitter, like everyone says, but I didn't think it was so bad. I'm the tipo to chase whiskey with beer and put tobasco sauce on everything, so maybe I'm outside the mean. The cup was returned, re-filled, and passed out to everyone in turn. When everyone had been served, the lights were cut and Geronimo began his chants.

After taking the elixer I immediately felt a sense of alteration, but I couldn't tell if it was just anticipatory jitters or a real chemical interaction. Then I started to wonder if I was going to get the experience, a concern I remember having shortly after taking mushrooms and LSD in the past, how little I learn. I just figured "no expectations, keep doing the prana yama." Geronimo's chants became more fierce, more passionate. I kept filling my lungs and slowly releasing them. I started to see faint black-and-white closed eye visuals of aymptotic cusps and centipedes, of dawns and horizons and big bangs. And before I knew it I got everything I ever wanted and more, and I was getting higher than Holy Fuck - as advertised.

It was not a hallucination. It was not a vision. It was like being held by god. It was like having sex with the universe. It was an honest, sincere consummation of everything; supreme ecstasy, an ascent into heaven. Geronimo's throat wobbling was the music of the spheres. Since DMT is produced by our pineal glands and released three times during our existence - birth, puberty and death, I was basically experiencing the awe of death preemptively. And the evangelion is that death is beautiful, death is the path to awe, death is eternal life. I saw my entire life ahead of me, the growth of my son, the love I will share with some woman out there and the other kids we'll have, working the earth, the bi-cameral local government and me and my friends having cervezas while the other political party, our wives, conspire in the other room. I felt overwhelming compassion for all humanity and a profound desire to make love every single day until I blissfully die.

Then I heard everyone start puking. The girl told me that the first time she took the sacrament only two out of twenty vomited. Well, this must have been a particularly strong batch, because everyone was puking up roses. The delicious nuances of their upchuck reflexes was the most hilarious thing I'd ever heard and I let out this satyr-ish belly laugh. Geronimo belched loudly. I laughed at that too. Then I farted a little bit.

I then decided to focus and ask the plant for some answers that I had wanted. Ever since I was 18 and I learned about both DMT and the form of programming known as the memetic algorithm, I've had the dream of building a software engine that can produce interactive content dynamically, it goes by the name of Directions-Thoughts-Materials or DMT, and I've sought out the chemical as a means of understanding directly what would be involved. I realized I already had the architecture pretty well defined, so I asked what kind of authoring language would the engine require. Geronimo's chanting gave me that answer. I received the keystone that will begin a year's worth of work. The authorship language will be a form of chant. People can just chant into the mic and lay down lines of script that will define how a bunch of data spins into a battlefield or a cathedral or a valley which is then populated with warriors or lovers or farmers, or really whatever the hell you want to come up with. Then on your second pass you can go over the text with the keyboard and the dev environment would offer a sumptuous feast of inverse parsed accents that you can add to the "nam"s and "ni"s and "chihueps" and so forth and these accents will code the permutations on the resulting creation. Finally the wave form that your ending throat wobble takes (the "hei, wueya, wueya wueeeaya wueeeeeyaaaaaaaa") will spin the matrix of variables that balance the gameplay to whatever style you desire to imbue. Obviously making that work with real software, data structures and everything, is a tall order, but I have the user experience encapsulated, and it is wonderful. We could all be shamans with this engine, spinning universes and dramas and meaningful decisions out of our tender voices. This was less than fourty minutes into the experience, and already the pearl of my quest was obtained. Ayahuasca was a gracious host.

I leaned forward, prostrate, and I realized why Moslems pray the way they do. I also realized why Arabic men sometimes beat their wives and sodomize them, they're pissed off about living in the middle of the desert, very simple. I also realized that when you pray like that it doesn't matter where you live, you are surrendering to the great lord. I resumed my upright position and sat in a hindu meditative stance and appreciated why they do that. Geronimo came by and poured florida water over my hands causing them to clasp together and I appreciated once again from my childhood why Christians pray the way they do. I hit my head against the wall and touched the top of my scalp and realized why Jews wear Yamachas on that position. Later, Geronimo came and doused my head with water, touching that top-point with the print of his thumb, and I saw a great pyramid rising into an erupting pulsar of light. There is no religion, there is only god and a multiplicity of techniques that work.

Feeling bold, I then asked the plant what was in store for humanity in 2012. The plant answered me honestly, "isn't it obvious? Humanity is on the verge of receiving Holy Death." I think what that means is that regardless of whether we all die in some massive extinction event, or there are a bunch of wars and disasters and lots of folks die and the survivors have a better attitude about living, or we have this Singularity where everything is coming up bubblegum and we all get to live forever, we will embrace the paradox of death and wake up. From this point on, death became the overriding theme of the night.

I accepted my own death, but then I started to think about some blog posts on this guy's survivalist site and I ended up getting the notion of someone pointing a gun at my head... in my head, and I couldn't get it out. I started thinking about what that would be like, then I started thinking about what I would feel if my yet unborn son had a gun pointed at his head, and I started to think, if it my was me on the other side of the trigger and pulling it meant eliminating that risk to my family, would I do it? Could I end another human life? I decided that I could, but if I had to give away ten million dollars to prevent myself from ever being in that kind of position, I would.

The weight of the hammer of a gun hung in mind my as infinite, as a halving of a halving of a halving. It was the same sensation I had when I was a child and I would have nightmares of an infinite tower that could not be climbed or two strangers on an infinite desert plane barely missing each other and by chance, dooming themselves to an eternity of solitude. I thought about Mel Gibson's Apocalypto and how these cultures bathed themselves in death rites as a way of anesthetizing the paradox, cutting off heads and throwing them down steps, while the priests know astronomy and math to pull the strings and the stern Catholics look charming in comparison. Geronimo went into an impassioned chant and I pictured starving mothers in Somalia with breasts deflated over a caved-in rib cage and eyes filled with "why?" I thought about what it would mean to be truly "safe" from those who might want me to share what I have, to pull the trigger consistently and with precision, how I would hate to be good at that, how I felt sorry for the soliders and the mercenaries who resigned themselves to professional butchery. I experienced the last minute of the life of Cho Seung-hui. I rolled the word "death" and "muerte" over my frontal lobe, tasting their textures, comparing the connotations of those sounds to the Japanese idea of death which is more of a rebirth, which seems only practical in a culture where at one point (two, now that I think about it) a hundred thousand people just evaporated in a flash of white light and a million anime plotlines would be born from the ashes. I weighed whether it is better to have the Christian mentality and guard your life and that of your family and produce as many new lives as possible and be like that, or whether its better to acknowledge that all that life-loving behavior is just what your brain wants you to do and we're all just floating around a big electron and it doesn't really matter whether someone shoots you and your kid in the head or not, which I imagined is the attitude of a lot of the people getting the poorest lot in this world.

I found myself at the brink of enlightenment, filled with love, bounding out of the socio-sexual moral circuit into the higher circuits, to the very higest, and being dragged back down to the reptilian paranoia of kill or be killed in the name of an unborn child. But then I realized, I can do better.

I realized that there's two ways this global deleveraging, this global transformation, can play out: either the gulf between rich and poor goes exponential and lots of people get shot in the head, or smart traders and people who have lots of money can act as conduits, taking it out of the markets where government bailouts have nowhere else to go and bringing it into the real world, investing it in sustainable human happiness. That's the easiest way that this process can go on peacefully. Imagine if a mere 10% of hedge fund managers decided to donate just half of their monstrous winnings to things like the proliferation of grass-based agriculture, renewable energy, water and transportation infrastructure, sponsoring children to become happy adults instead of desperate potential killers. We're already talking about a couple hundred billion dollars. That alone could make a tremendous difference, if applied intelligently. We can make this happen. We are the ones we've been waiting for.

I changed from being a person hanging on to fear and selfishness to being a person fully embodied with intent to make my life the best it can be and then leverage that to helping everyone I can. If I make 20k shorting Eurodollar Interest Rate Futures, I'll spend half of that sponsoring street kids in Buenos Aires. If I make 200k following silver or natural gas or palladium I'll spend half of that building infrastructure in rural Argentine towns. If I keep winning I'll keep giving more and more until the money itself is worthless.

I couldn't sleep. I just hung out, thinking about what I wanted to do, about the women in my life, about my son, about gentler things than Holy Death. The sun slowly arose. I got about forty minutes of sleep. Then the little girls and their mother returned to administer breakfast. We all sat around and feasted on fresh fruits, on bread with that chocolate-like substance that has no refined sugar in it, on mate and tea. We talked. It was human and divine. With much adieu I left and took the subway back home to write all the things that I had in me to write, to tell my dad that he was a great father, to get back in touch with old friends, to scream to the trading blogs I frequent that the secret is not caring about the numbers and then giving it all away. I saw a poor kid juggling on the subway and I slipped him that 20 peso bill with no fanfare.

Ayahuasca

I could go on an on about my own experience, but I'll save that for another post. The short of it is, I went into the experience with a lot of ideas and came out with precisely zero; and I've never felt cleaner. I am God's anointed one, an ascendant starchild, and you can be too. This isn't about me at all, this is about you, you are a genius and with the right spark you might just realize it. If you want to, here's how you can properly cash in on premature enlightenment for about 80 USD.

1) Detox for one week. All that stuff you put into your body every day to stay sane in an insane city, you gotta get that shit out. Just take it easy, deleverage, no caffeine, no cigarettes, no marijuana, no alcohol, no spicy foods, red meat, fried foods, and take it easy on the refined sugar. Get a little exercise, do thorough stretching, sweat a little. Abstain from sexual activity for the 24 hours before just to have fresh libido. You will need to at least sweep up the temple that is your body.

2) Attend an Ayahuasca ceremony, in Buenos Aires there is a service that produces these ceremonies called Urkumanta. Take of the Ayahuasca.

3) This one is very important, after you imbibe the bitter fluid you need to drink a bit of water and start breathing prana yama. Real slow in through the mouth using the tongue as a suction pump to effortlessly take in air, real slow out through the nose. Just keep at it, don't worry if you're doing it right, you're going to do great. Nice and slow, nice and deep, fill your lungs, focus on the breath. This dispels all nausea and magnifies the beneficial impact.

Do these three things and you will get everything you ever wanted out the treasure vault that is your soul, you will gain a profound appreciation of what you are, what you aren't, why you're here and why you must live for the day for now and forever; you will experience joy more profound than a multi-stacked orgasm with someone you love or the birth of your own child or being born or becoming famous or creating an immortal work of art, and most importantly you will get higher than Holy Fuck.

Its A Re Heavy Life Boludo

What do these three pictures have in common?








They all explain, in a very loose metaphorical kind of way, why we haven't updated in a month and a few monedas. We were living the palatable life here, we got caught up in some Argentina drama, and we got spat out as indigents.

Andy lived in more places in a few weeks than there were Presidents in that couple of weeks in 2001. I found myself carrying everything I owned in a relay for a few blocks to the nearest hostel, making eye contact with a leather faced guy driving a beaten 20-year-old car with a half-shattered windshield and no window pane.

"Es complicado," he said as I tried to stack a fan on top of a wheeled suitcase.

"La vida es," I replied.

At the end of the day you dust off your shoulders, look at your losses and scratches, and say "fuck it, this is Argentina."

Argenhot of the Week !

Oh how I want to be your Romeo, Julieta. That's right, this week's Argenhot of the Week is none other than 28-year-old Porteña sensation Julieta Prandi. She was first discovered at some low-end casting in Martinez in 1998, her senior year of high school (how hot is THAT?), and her career took off from there. She's been on a bunch of garbage TV shows down here making guest appearances, but her true successes came as a bikini and high fashion model. One lil' fun fact you probably didn't know; she has written over 150 poems, due for publication in her own compiled works poetry book later this year. She's also now the co-host of an Argentine TV show called "Zapping". Applaudi per Prandi !!!

La Plata

I´m going to describe my investment strategy that I think could work for other expats, and try keep it simple. Basically, I´m betting on the price of silver going up while also expecting the price real estate to go down. I want to sell silver after some paradigmn changing events come to pass and buy some land from Argentines who are willing to haggle down because they need the money. I think land is the best thing to own provided you´re willing to live on it and do some work with your hands, I think that if you don´t have the freedom to grow your own food, you aren´t really free.

In the spirit of keeping this simple, first the practical stuff, you can get exposure to the price of silver in three ways:

- first you could go to one of the jewelers near Tribunales and ask to buy some plata "para inversion" and they´ll sell you a physical piece of metal, I think everyone hold some physical metal in case all the electronic systems break under the weight of their own fiction. Just think of it as saving money for the long term, the idea is you´d take this down to a bank when banks are in dire need of solid assets and they´d pay you a lot more than you bought it for.

- second, you could buy SLV through a stock account, SLV is an exchange-traded fund that supposedly holds silver, when people buy more shares of the fund the fund buys more silver to keep things level. If you already have a stock trading account, this is an easy thing to do, you don´t have to pay much over the spot price of silver like you would in a jewelry store and you can sell really easily.

- third, you could get really aggressive and play Silver Futures, with leverage! I have an account with OANDA where I can bet with as little as one virtual ounce, if you have a couple hundred bucks or so and you want to work with that, OANDA is your best option. Lets say you have $137 bucks in there with a 10:1 margin, that means you could buy $1370 worth of "silver" and let it ride, if silver goes up 10% from there you´d double your money. If silver increases 5 times over you´d have fifty times your money. If you want your account balance insured and you want an exchange-traded instrument, you should get a Futures account with Tradestation or Interactive Brokers, you´ll need at least 5k, preferably closer to 10k for that. When trading with leverage, you shouldn´t fire off all your ammo at once, buy conservatively on the dips and set orders above prior peaks to automaticallly buy bigger chuncks. I like to use a pyramid pattern, buy 1 chunk, then set an order to buy 4 chunks above a prior peak, then 3 chuncks above the next peak, then 2 above the next, then 1, then let her ride.

Now that I´ve established the how, I´ll address the why.

Basically all the paper money we use is based on fantasy. Money as we know it is a pyramid scheme. Governments go into debt with Central Banks for say, 10 bucks, that 10 bucks is lent out to commercial banks ten times over, so now you´ve got 100 bucks out there, those banks can make a bunch of loans to each other and multiply the money another 10 times, so that 10 bucks is now 1000 bucks. Most money exists electronically, the cash you take out of an ATM is only a small fraction of the money supply, if more than 10% of bank deposits were withdrawn the rest of the money would evaporate. Argentines get this more than Yanquis because it actually happened here, tipo multiple times boludo. So you´ve got this risk of everything imploding all the time, and on the other hand you´ve got this constant pull to keep increasing the money supply with more debt, because the previous debt has interest attached, and that interest has to come from new money to get paid. The pyramid keeps expanding, money gets tied up in paying interest, prices rise.



The peso went into hyperinflation three times in the 80s, 10,000 pesos got stamped as 10 australes, then like a year later 10,000 australes got replaced for 10 pesos, then they did the 1:1 peg with the dollar, which lead to more inflation by 2001, and then the banking system collapsed. People who held gold and silver during this time were able to take it down to the bank and get cash to buy food or pay rent. Paper you can print, metal you can only dig up.

The dollar is the biggest pyramid scheme ever, it has funded uncounted invasions and coups, along with bood jobs, private jets and the purchase of Argentina´s best assets. That scheme, like all others of its kind, will collapse, it is just a matter of when. For decades time was bought for the system by wrangling oil deals with the Saudis, and also by supressing the price of gold and silver so people would buy stocks and Treasury bonds instead. The way that you supress prices is buy selling what you don´t have, called "short selling", big banks that are in arms with the government can short sell without even borrowing the stuff, this is called "naked short selling" even though its mostly hidden.

Usually when you short sell you want to buy at a lower price to even the score and pocket the difference, but if your game is to support a global financial empire, you might just keep these positions open, because buying up enough gold and silver to return what you borrowed would raise the price. If the price of gold gets bought up by hedge funds, Indian wedding planners, scared doctors and redneck survivalists, the US government can just bail out the banks that are short. But the US govt. doesn´t own any silver. Also, silver has a lot of medical and industrial uses, there is less of it than gold, its cheaper so you can buy some even if you only got like 20 bucks, and its historically cheap. In the Roman times 12 ounces of silver got you an ounce of gold, during the British empire the ratio was closer to 20. Right now its like 75 or 80 and the highest the ratio has ever been as 100, when these metals were at their historic lows. Just holding this stuff you´re allowing yourself a 5x return on investment, while gold maybe has 2x in it. Leveraging you could do extremely well, provided you don´t fumble the ball, which is the big "if" with leverage.

Lastly, land right now is fucking ridiculous in Argentina, people are asking fourty dollars per square meter for a small plot in Cordoba last I checked online, something like fifty grand for a whole hectare, if you´re willing to spend close to a million dollars you could get down to like 3k a hectare, but sheesh man, you´d have to be stupidly hopeful to think that all those people are going to sell for those prices. Argentina´s economy goes through these hysterical cycles of shock and awe, crash and boom, wild and wet, not unlike dating an Argentina. Because real estate is the only thing Argentines see as a reliable investment, it tends to react in a delay to this cycle, so while Argentina is already in a recession the quoted real estate is still living in 2005. Once people start really hurting for cash and the flow of foreign currency gets tight, they will lower prices.

Let me put it this way, I´m not trying to predict the future, I´m just trying to ride it. I like people and thats why I´m trying to tell you how to avoid getting thrown off. If things recover and we get iPod living with the growing jobs and all that, cool, adelante, your silver investment won´t go to 0. If we´re in the eye of the global economic hurricane, then you´ll be able to turn your silver investment into enough cash to buy some land at lower prices. Or at least you´ll have some shiny stuff to look at.

Dating Emergency 101: An Argentine Woman's Perspective

by Antonia Cossia

“Oh, yes, I am the great pretender; pretend that I’m doing well. My need is such, I pretend too much; I’m lonely, but no one can tell” -Freddy Mercury


Spare me some of your attention and I will try to explain just how many argentine women have become just as beautiful as sentimentally complex. For most men, falling for one of us can be an amazing experience. Either amazingly wonderful or amazingly rocky.

Most of the complications come because some of us are scared to death to show how we feel, just in case the man in front of us plays us for fools because “we are too easy”, or leaves because “it’s too much” for them. That is, of course, in case they even explain why they’re going away.

Ever since we’re old enough for make up and high heels we have to deal with pretty much the same awkward situations any other girl has to deal with anywhere else in the world: first period, first bra, first date…

There are a few differences when it comes to social pressure: for example, Argentina has one of the highest rates of eating disorder cases, mostly among young women (by that I mean girl from the age of 12 to 18).

When it comes to argentine men, I honestly cannot explain what it is that they have inside their head, so I will not bore you with dull hesitation. Some of them will speak honestly about their feelings, some of the won’t and most of them will say exactly what they don’t want to say, but will say it for the sake of not looking undermined in front of their peers.

Argentine women, on the other end... We cannot make up our mind. Either because we are proud creatures, or highly prejudiced; because of fear, shyness or because we are still hung up on a previous relationship and we are oblivious to the man we have in front of us.

Whatever the reason may seem, a man needs to know patience is always a key to getting where they want to be. We will try and keep you guessing, and create some mystery, and in the end you were either “picked” or not: we knew the answer all along; we were simply making sure you were “worth it”.

Hesitation is our specialty, no doubt about it. I must be honest: no matter how tough we want to show ourselves, we are all just hoping the “gaucho” will eventually use his brains and notice how we could turn the amazingly rocky into amazingly wonderful. Again, it’s all a matter of making sure we won’t be wasting our feelings, our time and so on and so forth.

Found any contradictions yet? I bet you have.


*

E. G. Hesitation, a one act play by an argie-female:

I cannot believe this is happening to me, but it IS happening to me. I am checking my emails every 2 minutes and I am glancing at my msn account every 4 seconds (not joking, situation is critical). I can’t smile, can’t tell jokes and I can barely eat (which is outrageous for my standards).

This never happened to me before, I promise. I’m having second thoughts for the first time in my life: Is he ever going to talk to me again? Does he even care about me? Was this whole “thing” one big fat bogus in my head? Why can’t he just talk to me?!

Funny thing is: I am usually the smart-pants who will either lecture or “pick up the mess” when a guy dumps one of my friends. Yet this time around, I find myself writing about how bad one can feel when things go wrong with someone you particularly cared about.

Let me try and put it in words: I feel… sad, ok, then anxious, the sad again, barely ok, a little less anxious… and sad again. I cry a bit, smile very little, smile a little more… and cry another bit. There is nothing any friend, sister or anyone can tell that will make me feel better. Word.

And by now, I don’t know if I am being stupid, if I was even more stupid in the past, or if he is being a complete bastard because he is not talking to me. Or maybe I disserve it. Now, that cannot be it, right?

See, I messed things up from the start. I let him sweep me of my feet… and then I let my big mouth get in the way. I kept the “just a flirt/just sex” speech far too long, and played along as if nothing meant anything to me other than an occasional meeting.

I was dishonest, but not to him: I cheated on myself by forcing to believe my own speech. I practically ate my own garbage! And I fed him the same thing until he was stuffed and ready to go. Even if he was only in for fun, with all the more reason I should have made it clear I wanted more.

Maybe I still do, but please do not let him know.

All of those “coulda’ shoulda’ woulda’” are completely useless now. They are “Drama Queen” material. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is none other than typical argenhot behaviour.

Lovely feeling, this lovesick thing, right?

Dia de Amigo

"Feliz dia de amigo" scrawls mercilessly across the news feeds of my facebook account. Complete with poems from girls, gushing soliloquies of personal memories, and vague whimsical compliments, you immediately realize that for Argentines this day is a big deal. And although it does have a sort of hallmark-esque cheesiness to it, the sentiment is dead serious. But to fully understand why, you need to understand the concept of friendship through the eyes of an Argentine.

Argentines, as you may have read in previous posts, are extremely passionate people. And the camaraderie between friends and family is no exception. For starters, look at how they greet each other. A hug and a kiss on one cheek. And that's for EVERYONE. Whether it's your first time meeting someone, or saying hi to an old friend, that's how it works. And it's very important. In fact, at times it's pretty annoying. When you walk into a room, you often have to go around kissing and hugging 10 or more people. But if you don't, it's insulting. Guys, girls, doesn't matter. That's how you greet. Even if you are busy doing something, you stop, and greet everyone. A hand wave or a thumbs up just don't cut it.

Now, I do realize that friendship as a general term is universal, but there's something about the depth and seriousness of how people treat friends here that is unique. Look at the tradition of drinking Yerba Mate, an Argentine staple beverage. The routine is simple. One person serves the mate and passes it in one direction, much like a joint, until the recipient finishes the entire cup. When it's done, it gets passed back to the server, refilled, and passed to the next one up. This goes on for the entire process, sometimes hours. It's a basic concept of sharing that really identifies the concept of Argentine friendship. And it's the same way with food, booze, weed, whatever. If you eat in front of someone without food, you offer them some, ALWAYS.

Taking the concept even further, many Argentines extend the same sharing concept as far as to let you stay in their house, borrow something from them, or help you find a job. And you don't even really need to know someone that well to get these courtesies. I've so far crashed about 3 times at the house of a security officer who works next door to me because we went out for beers and the train to my house wasn't running yet. But it's not like he tossed me a blanket and told me to hit the floor. No. All 3 times, the guy has set me up in the bed in his son's room, moved his son to the couch, and even went so far as to have his wife prepare full-scale roasted chicken feasts when I woke up. I don't even know the guy's last name, but I'm a guest of honor after a few late night beers. The crazy thing is, down here, that's the norm.

It's not to say that there aren't the same universal issues with friendship down here. Sure, there's betrayal, phonies, acting distant, being a douche and ditching your buddies for your lame girlfriend. All that happens here just like anywhere else. True friendship, however, runs deeper than the Rio de la Plata, and it's a big factor that makes Argentina a beautiful place to live. I mean shit, how else would you be able to get through the hyper-inflation, crazy hot chicks, low wages, and corrupt political system if it weren't for the strong bond of friendship.

I like this holiday, and you should too, even if you're not down here. So do yourself a favor, tell your friends you love them, buy the first round tonight, and plant a hug and a kiss on your co-worker, even if it's awkward. I'm going to hug some Argenhots, write a few sappy text messages, and spend time with my adopted family of crazy locals. Gringo. Out.

Argenhot of the Week !

It's been two painstakingly long weeks since you last gazed upon some barely-dressed Argenculo. And morally I can't let that slide without feeling just a little guilty. So this week you get two, and neither have the last name Attias.

Your first cup of piping-hot Argengreatness is Ms. Zaira Nara from Belgrano. Until recently, Zaira was better known for a sex tape scandal involving her sister, Wanda Nara. Wanda, a famous vedette who once dated Maradona, rose to Argentine notoriety when she leaked a tape of her blowing (and apparently she was good at it) some Argendouche all over the internet. Past sins forgiven for her sister's mistakes, Zaira has carved out her own career as a top model and TV personality. She is now leading a major campaign for Pantene, as well as hosting a morning CHILDRENS TELEVISION PROGRAM......Yes, that's right. Children. Anyway, enough about that. Let thy Mate gourd runneth over with a heavy pour of her ample hotness.

Ok. I lied about the "neither have the last name Attias" thing. Sorry, can't help it, this family has Spartan-esque genes. So, here's sister number 3 (there are 4 in total). Honestly, with all that's mentioned above, I think I need to change barrios and head up to Belgrano. There must be something in the water. Gaze into those deep brown eyes, start hating your life, tell your boss to suck it, and move down here. Gov. Sanford did, and who can blame him. Everyone loves that Atti-Ass ;) Gringo. Out.

Citric: Jugo of The Gods

Sometimes you´ve got to appreciate the simpler things in life, and the native joys of the place you live. Living in South America, you´ve got to appreciate that here, fruit grows on trees, and that makes for some delicious juices. Citric is an exception in this country, a business that sells a pure, awesome, delicious product for a reasonable price. While The Coca-Cola Company wants to sell you boxes of from-concentrate, juice-like beverage with 30% fruit in it, these hombres are 100% exprimido, pulp and everything. Not only is the orange juice on the par of premium Florida product, but at Tucuman prices, they also make Pomelo juice, Lime juice and Lemonade. Haven´t tasted the last two but the Pomelo is bright pink, none of this washed out beige coloring you´re used to, and the taste is just real. All the hype about organic, relocalization, eating right, its just words compared to the taste of this goodness.

I am in no way paid by the company that makes these juices, I´m coming from a genuine angle that this stuff is integral to the good life in Argentina. Drink it and become immortal, if only for a few minutes.

Gringo of the Week !

by Patrick Dugan

Mark Sanford was, a few months ago, a potential contender for the Republican presidential candidate in 2012, thought now it looks like that role will fall to Ron Paul. Sanford knows how to get the most out of his vacation time, he recently took off to get-up with his Argentina liason, one Maria Belen Chapur. Mr. Sanford, you could not have picked a better city and nationality of woman with which to ruin your career and marriage. This is one politician that knows the meaning of Argenhot, and if you´re not convinced here´s a racy e-mail he wrote:

"You have a particular grace and calm that I adore. You have a level of sophistication that so fitting with your beauty. I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificent gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of the night's light - but hey, that would be going into sexual details ..."

If you are into conspiracies you may enjoy Cryptogon´s take on the issue, suggesting that Sanford was tagged and played, his personal desires being used as a chip for some political reason that we can only guess at. I had to do something to take this above gossip rag level.

Apetito por el Arte

por Antonia Cossia

El nombre de la exposición ya dice mucho de lo que el visitante puede encontrar. En “La mesa está servida”, los artistas plásticos Milo Lockett, Felipe Giménez y el dibujante Miguel Rep exponen no sólo sus obras, sino también el modo en que trabajan.

Durante las dos semanas previas a que abriera la exposición, Lockett, Giménez y Rep trabajaron en sus dibujos, instalaciones y pinturas en una sala del Centro Cultural Recoleta, en el barrio homónimo de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. “Estamos abriendo la cocina”, contó el artista marplatense Felipe Giménez.

A diferencia de otras muestras, la dinámica inicial que Giménez aplicó en “La mesa…” consistió en pedirle al público su aporte: las frases que más recordaran de sus madres o padres. Aquellas palabras que los hubieran marcado, acompañado o inspirado.

“Traté de que fuera una frase que fuera lo suficientemente conmocionante”, arriesgó Giménez. El resultado fueron dos sendos murales cargados de frases, desde el imperativo “Abrigáte” hasta el refrán “A Dios rezando y con el mazo dando”.

“La idea era que yo escribiera la frase, o sea, yo soy el que hace la obra, pero con las ideas de los otros. Es mi mano lo que está sobre la obra, pero son las ideas las que me hacen escribir la obra”, explicó Giménez.

Durante las dos semanas previas a la inauguración de la exposición, cualquier visitante del CCR podía participar, ya que en ese tiempo se buscó “romper un poco la frontera” entre espectador y artista.

El resultado fue la obra “Lo que me dijo mi madre, lo que me dijo mi padre” y además, la “Éstos son los hijos de estos padres”, donde los participantes de la experiencia ponían su nombre a una de las figuras de un tercer cuadro.

“Hacer estas obras era que grotescamente se vea que la obra a uno le viene del otro, y que la gente también aprecie eso. Que ellos forman parte de la obra que uno hace”, expresó Giménez, mientras seguía trazando a mano alzada un dibujo.

Por casualidad, justo en la última semana de la “cocina abierta”, se realizó el segundo festival Ciudad Emergente en el mismo Centro, con participaciones de bandas, DJ, artistas gráficos, puestos con publicaciones y autores independientes.

El público que acudió a la muestra, organizada por el Gobierno de la ciudad, se encontró con dos silenciosos artistas sentados en una mesa de tablón, dibujando sus nuevas obras.

Eran Giménez y Lockett, dispuestos a charlar con ellos, y a demostrarles que en el taller de un artista, simplemente “no hay secretos”. Ahora, la mesa está servida, y los murales, junto a las instalaciones de Lockett y el aporte de Rep, serán exhibidas en el Centro Cultural Recoleta hasta el 12 de julio.

Buen Apetito.