I'll get right on that

I canceled my health insurance policy this morning.

My plan requires small co-payments for office visits. But you don't pay when you're at the office. They bill you for them.

I told the woman that I thought I still owed three co-payments, probably something in the neighborhood of US$15 total.

The woman nodded. "Those should show up in the system in a month or so and then we'll bill you."

Right. But I'm leaving the country on March 31. I'd feel better if I paid you. So ... if you could just tell me exactly how much I owe.

"They won't be in the system for a month or so. The bill should come in May."

By which point I'll be long gone.

"Well . . . Maybe someone else could pay your bill for you?"

Just then, a new identity — forged by years of observation and assimilation — reached its zenith.

Which is to say I smiled broadly and shrugged.

Super!

I've been trying to sell myself all day. It makes me feel a little cheap and slightly dirty.

And after today, I'm not sure I wouldn't do better selling my blog by standing on a street corner in a long, pervish overcoat.

The best part of a rejection email in this case is when it reads: "Hi. Thanks for the pitch, but we're going to have to pass on your blog about fruit."

Well. Yeah. I mean, when you put it like that!

Horton hears a what?

Today was a ridiculously nice day. The sun shone brightly, but not with the blazing intensity of January. It was warm, but not too warm. The sky was clear. A breeze blew ever so slightly. . . . which is more than this post will blow if I keep writing about the weather. But I'm just saying. It was frickin' awesome today.

Hey, so, as of 12:01 a.m. Sunday, we're back on our normal time zone. Two weeks ago we were four hours ahead of Chicago and now we'll be down to only two hours ahead. Crazy, huh?

Wow. I swear. The time zone here is just like the weather. If you don't like it, wait a little while and it'll change!

Right now, in order to force my computer into the right time zone, I have to set it to think it's someplace called Grytviken. I'm not making that up.

OK. Geez. You know what? I'm really sorry.

It's obvious, isn't it? I'm sort of avoiding the elephant in the room.

It's just that I don't even know what to say about the latest NY Times article on Buenos Aires.

Le sigh. The spirit is willing but the snark is weak.

Hey, speaking of elephants in the room — because I was, unless you skipped that paragraph — I saw that "Horton Hears A Who!" came out. And the first question that came to mind was how they were going to translate the movie title into Spanish. There are posters up all over the city so I didn't have to wonder for long. It's "Horton y el mundo de los quien". That's "Horton and the World of the Who."

Meh. I mean, it was never going to be the same, was it?

* * *

I want to recommend a place to get breakfast, but first I want to tell you what happened when I went this morning for a bite to eat.

The door was locked, which is not that strange because some businesses ask you to knock or get buzzed in as a security precaution. But the door to this place isn't always locked, and so I struggled with the handle before I caught the eye of a woman inside.

She walked over to the door and, failing to conceal mild contempt, told me that it was locked. Then she opened it for me.

I smiled and shrugged as if to say, "Huh! I'm such a boludo!"

I grabbed a magazine from the rack and took a seat. The young woman reached for a menu but I stopped her by politely telling her my order.

She could barely tolerate my request for a café con leche and three medialunas, and it showed in her face.

She brought out my coffee and served me three medialunas from a tray sitting in the window. I added my usual amount of sugar to the coffee cup and took a sip. It was shockingly strong, espresso with the merest suggestion of steamed milk on top. I added more sugar, but it didn't do any good.

I considered what that much espresso would do to my insides and set the cup aside. . . .

. . . which is when I realized that she hadn't brought my sparkling water. Not that I had ordered any. But café con leche normally comes with a small glass of sparkling water. Except this time.

Hey, but listen. This place is usually great for breakfast. Good medialunas. Bread baked on site. Excellent coffee. Nice selection of magazines and newspapers. Cool atmosphere. Not crowded.

You should stop by for breakfast. Maybe not for lunch or dinner. But for breakfast. It's called Masamadre es con M and it's at Olleros 3891.

Good luck!

* * *

Maybe you're wondering if there's anything that's changed now that I am down to my last couple of weeks in BsAs. I can see, say, having a list of things I want to see or do before I leave.

But I have dispatched with that whole ordeal by telling myself that I'll be back somehow or another before too long and, really, there's enough to see here for two lifetimes. So trying to fit anything extraordinary in two weeks would be a little silly. I'll just see what comes my way.

So, no. The only difference between the me of now and the me of a few months ago is that now I am spending my pile of coins with reckless abandon!

¿Que si tengo monedas? ¡Me sobran monedas, che!

* * *

Before I hit the farmers market this morning, I stopped off at Chacarita for some shots of the cemetery. I stitched together the panoramic photo at the top of this entry. It does an all-right job of giving you perspective on the place, but still falls short.

As always, you can click on the image to enlarge. If you scroll to the right, there's a woman walking in the shadow, which will give you a sense of scale.

* * *

There are different rules for public display of affection here. Maybe I should say that there is only one rule: Display as much affection in public as you can and display it with your tongue.

The idea is not new to me. I've seen it here, obviously. And it was all over the place in Spain.

But.

Today I took a crowded bus back from Chinatown.

A young couple got on the bus and then proceeded to maul each other inches from my face for the duration of the 40-minute bus ride.

I am not a prude. And I don't wish my frigid northern sensibilities upon the warm Latin peoples.

But it was making me a little nervous. Part of me wanted to turn a hose on them and scream "NO! If the bus hits a bump, you're going to bite off her tongue!"

Fibertel

I canceled my Internet connection yesterday.

You have to show up in person for this. I was already at Santa Fe and Pueyrredón, so I stopped at the Coronel Diaz office of Fibertel.

The Coronel Diaz office of Fibertel looked like the place where hope goes to die. People with long, tired faces milled about. There weren't enough chairs. Agitation hung in the air.

Also, it smelled like feet.

I took a number. My number was 42. They were calling number 82.

Ugh.

I remembered Fibertel had a few offices in outlying neighborhoods, so I decided to give one of those a shot.

Score! The Villa Urquiza location, at Avalos 1910, had exactly one person waiting before me. I was in and out in about 5 minutes. It was fantastic.

I told the woman who helped me about my trip to the Palermo branch earlier that day and how I would so be blogging about this when I got back home.

"Really?" she asked. "You're going to blog about this?"

"Sure," I said.

"But how many people could it possibly interest?" she asked.

I threw my head back and my deep, booming laugh echoed across the office. "You obviously haven't seen my blog," I shouted behind me, adjusting my cape and leaping skyward in a single fluid motion.

Ñoquis

Today's entry begins with a short quiz. Please do not skip it. It is "de carácter obligatorio", as they might say here.

You own a business or run an organization. You want to know how many people you have working for you. Do you . . .

1. Call human resources/personnel and tell them to whip up some numbers for you?

2. Use your high-level access to enter the corporate intranet and pull together the figures yourself?

3. Ask interns from a local university to conduct a census for you because, honestly, fuck if anybody really knows how many employees there are and what they're all doing?

If you answered (3), congratulations! You're the mayor of Buenos Aires! You don't need to read this entry. In fact, I'd rather you didn't. This city is held together by string; you really need to get back to work.

If you answered (1) or (2), you might want to read on.

* * *

Of course, the city government census is political. The relatively new mayor has already tried to get rid of some public employees, which caused a huge shitstorm.

Now, the public employee unions are contending that the census is just a pretext for being able to dismiss more employees.

One of the central questions here is how many "ñoquis" there are in city government. Ñoquis are what we would call in Chicago "ghost payrollers," only with a far more awesome name. They're ñoquis because, like the delicious dumplings, they only show up once a month — every 30 days to collect their checks.

The mayor says no register exists of how many employees there are and what their jobs are. The Clarín article notes that the estimations of the number of public employees in Buenos Aires run from 110,000 to 120,000.

I guess you could say: Hey, those numbers don't vary that widely. There's less than a 10% difference between the first figure and the second.

Or you could say: WTF? There are 10,000 people who may or may not be working for you?

You can probably guess which option more accurately reflects my sentiments.

I believe the mayor when he says no one knows the real number. But the census has only a small chance of determining that number, because politics on both sides will inevitably come into play.

They'll probably have about as much luck counting ñoquis as Cristina has had counting air conditioners.

Butcher

There's a butcher not far from my apartment with an amazing variety of beasts for sale.

Llama, deer (including breaded deer cutlets), boar, frog, rabbit (including rabbit burgers), an ostrich-like bird called rhea, pig, pheasant, partridge, hare, a giant chinchilla-like rodent called viscacha, goat, duck.

Yeesh. Half that list sounds like someone went berserk at a petting zoo!

As to any of you wondering whether people actually eat these things, the answer is sure, sort of. Few of these critters are terribly common in Buenos Aires. But a lot of them are more popular in regional and/or rural cuisine.

Going out on top

Maybe I should just leave now, because it's never going to get better than this.

Walking up Angel Gallardo toward my apartment, I heard sirens and saw a stream of motorcycle cops coming at me.

They were clearing traffic to make way for . . . a visiting dignitary? ¡¿la presidenta?!

No.

The Iron Maiden motorcade.

Calle Florida

Usually, I avoid Calle Florida at all costs.

Pedestrianized streets are great. I wish there were more of them. But Christ on a crutch! It's hard to walk down that street without feeling ogled, marked, jostled . . . and icky.

It's crowded with wide-eyed tourists in safari hats and lined with businesses gleefully fleecing them. Not that there aren't plenty of locals there, too. Because there are.

In fact, I would say that of the city's 3 million people, at any given moment, most of them are on Calle Florida. Standing right in my goddamn way.

But the other day I stuffed my wallet and my camera deep into my pocket, steeled myself, and took a stroll down Florida.

It was a warm evening, but Calle Florida was not warm. So many air-conditioned stores had their doors open that the cool air poured onto the street. It was disconcerting.

The street is usually full of touts and street artists, most of whom I habitually ignore.

But the guys in the photo above were way too good to ignore.

They looked like hell, like they'd just rolled out of bed for this 8pm performance. (I was hoping they'd ask the crowd for requests so that I could shout "Take a freaking shower and cut your hair!")

But they sounded great — well-rehearsed, but loose. More than the usual number of jaded porteños stopped to listen for a bit. And I stopped to listen for a few minutes too. I would have stayed even longer, but I had somewhere to go.

What? You think I just spend half my time wandering aimlessly around the city?

OK. You're right. I do.

Hotel Bolivar

Avenida Corrientes

It is nearly impossible to shoot street scenes that capture the feeling and perspective you get from walking around the city. But the other day I was on Avenida Corrientes heading toward the emblematic obelisk that stands in the middle of Avenida 9 de Julio. I took the above photo. Click to enlarge it.

I vividly remember looking at a photograph of that obelisk in a high school Spanish textbook and thinking: "Buenos Aires? Huh."

Oh crap! No, what I meant was, I remember thinking: "Buenos Aires? What an impossibly romantic place, full of mystery and wonder! O, to dance the tango and dine on world-class beef! To read Borges and wile away the hours in turn-of-the-century cafes! Someday I shall live there."

The obelisk is flanked —

Wait. Before we go on, I have to confess something. I lied two paragraphs up. I'm really sorry.

I do remember seeing that photo in my textbook in high school. But overall, my reaction was much more along the lines of "huh." I was probably a lot more worried about when class would be over and if I could finish my homework for next period by the time the bell rang.

* * *

The obelisk is flanked by two small plazas that stand in the middle of what is supposedly the widest avenue in the world, Avenida 9 de Julio.

I walked by as an honor guard was taking down the flag down in one of the plazas. When they finished, they strolled back to their waiting bus.

I love the surreal image of these flesh-and-blood toy soldiers against the banal backdrop of a crosswalk in the middle of downtown.

Cityscape: Plaza de Mayo

Every time I go to take a photo of the city — not just a building, but the city — I come away disappointed. It just doesn't fit in the frame.

But I may be on to something. Here's a panoramic shot of the Plaza de Mayo, with the cathedral on the left and the Casa Rosada straight ahead.

I employed some quick-and-dirty Photoshop nerdery to stitch together four snapshots. The preview image at the top of the post doesn't do the idea much justice, so — as with all the photos on this blog — you can click on it to get a larger version.

There's an even larger version, with perspective added, here.

It's not perfect, but I'm looking forward to doing a few more of these.

La Vineria de Gualterio Bolivar

It was not the best meal of my life.

There was a lot to like: The food was good. The service was friendly and gracious. The room was sleek and clean. The wines — five of them — were delicious and well paired. I roped Robert into going and we had a great time.

But the place really screwed with my head. I still don't know exactly what to make of it.

We paid just under US$60 each for the meal (including the wine and the tip) and my fear was that I would leave feeling I had overpaid. But no; that's not it. And I didn't leave disappointed either.

I just left a little confused.

Robert (whom I thank for most of the photos in this post) was definitely onto something when he said the dishes were a little muted — no flavors really popped.

It's sort of the Argentine interpretation of the foams-and-small-plates school of cooking, complete with bife de chorizo and papas — though, of course, the potatoes were partly a foam.

I wouldn't not recommend this restaurant, I just don't know who I would recommend it to.

If you're coming from outside Argentina, then, sure, US$60 probably sounds like a great deal and I think you'll probably enjoy your meal, though I don't know if you'll be blown away.

I wouldn't recommend it to my Argentine friends because, frankly, I'd be embarrassed to tell them I spent US$60 on one meal. If they could get past that, I think they'd actually be more likely than people from abroad to enjoy it, but that just brings me to another point:

None of the diners in the restaurant was a native speaker of Spanish. Like so many other aspects of the meal, I don't know quite what to make of that either.

* * *

This is not a complete rendering of our meal, nor am I going to be able to accurately describe all the plates. We practically begged our waiter for a written list of what we were eating. He said he'd write it out if we'd like, but in the end he didn't.

Working left-to-right, top-to-bottom, among the dishes were seaweed and fish-skin candy (resting in a bowl of salt); remarkably crispy deep-fried dill and basil; a beautifully buttery potato foam with a potato, egg and truffle square resting in a pool of butter; trilla (fish) sitting atop a grilled plum; duck confit cannoli with a peapod; bife de chorizo with roasted tomatoes and chimichurri sauce; a tea jelly coated with citric acid, and a dessert plate that included a pistachio ice cream, a square of warm chocolate cake, a chocolate cream and two other things that I'm quite sure I was able to identify at the time.

There were other elements, too — a shooter of ceviche; a pork cheek swimming in a deep, smoky broth; a meaty piece of pollack served alongside puffed rice in a paella reduction; a two-temperature pea soup; candied almonds; bonbons, and a lollipop that tasted like toothpaste.

No pictures of the wine, but we enjoyed two glasses of a Malbec rosé, a Viognier, a Cabernet Sauvignon-Cabernet Franc blend, a Tannat and a glass of Malbec port to wrap it all up.

I'm looking over this list and wondering (a) why is it we didn't need a crane to get us out of the restaurant? and (b) why in the world am I so conflicted after all this great food and wine?

* * *

We got to the restaurant at 9pm. It was 1am when we walked out. We covered a lot of ground — foodwise, obviously, but also conversationwise. Mostly it was me expounding on my philosophy of blogging . . . until Robert threatened to get up and leave, at which point I started talking about fruit.

We also found time to talk about the best meal of our lives and what kind of things play into that.

For both of us, the best meals of our lives had been while we were traveling. It's easy to see why this might be.

When I see tourists here, I sometimes flash to how exotic and mesmerizing Buenos Aires must seem. Seeing what I see every day and knowing what I know, it can be hard to put myself in that perfect place, but I do at least remember how exotic and mesmerizing it seemed to me — enough so that I quit my job and moved here.

Wednesday night's meal wasn't the best of my life, but I did like it. I also liked walking around for half an hour afterward and talking about the city, both as it once was and as it is now.

It's not hard for me to see how you could have the best meal of your life in Buenos Aires. And why not have at La Vineria?

La Vineria de Gualterio Bolivar is at Bolivar 865 in San Telmo.

Feed me

What is among the worst things you can say about a restaurant?

"It's terrible; don't eat there!"?

Sure.

But at least as bad is, "You have to eat there! We had the best meal of our lives."

Because you know what a fan of low expectations I am. So an endorsement like that is just asking for trouble.

And yet, how can you ignore that recommendation? Especially when it comes from two seasoned travelers who make fine food their business.

What I'm trying to say is that a month ago I tipped off the Slow Food couple to a new restaurant I was starting to hear good things about, but had never been to.

They went and raved about it. Specifically, they termed it the best meal of their lives.

And, you know, maybe you think I shouldn't trust them. But I also keep reading good things about it online. And would the Internet lie to me?

Exactly.

So I'm going tonight.

Fidelito

Andrew wanted to take a photo of one of the memorials that have gone up for people kidnapped, tortured and "disappeared" by Argentina's dictatorship. (There are more and more such memorials. Line of sight has photos.)

The mini-memorials are part of the sidewalk and follow the formula: "Here is where so-and-so was taken as part of state-sponsored terrorism on such-and-such a date."

It's jarring and effective. Yes, there are other monuments to victims of the dictatorship. But these work well because they're integrated into daily life. You're walking along trying not to step in dog crap and suddenly you're confronted by the fact that four people — usually named on the plaque — vanished from the spot where you're standing.

I knew there was one of these plaques on Callao not far from Corrientes. Andrew took photos while I diddled with my camera. I was still fiddling around when I heard Andrew say, "Gee, I wonder why they were taken."

He was being sarcastic. I realized this when I looked up and saw the Communist Party headquarters. They were rounded up because they were communists.

Decorating the entrance to party headquarters was an item of stencil graffiti that just became dated this week. "Aguante Fidel." ("Hooray Fidel" or "Hang in there, Fidel" or "Right on, man!")

[Digression I: This is a good time to mention again the young woman blogging from Cuba. In the latest entry, she mentions that neither she nor her parents have known any leader besides Fidel, who's been in power since 1959.]

[Digression II: At the risk of pointing out the obvious, the communists who were victimized by the Argentine dictatorship have their own little dictatorship going on down in Cuba now and are victimizing whoever they see fit. (I'm pretty sure absolute power does something. If only I could remember what!)]

Before I lived here, I knew that Fidel had a lot of defenders in Latin America. But I'm not sure I understood exactly why.

Here's the thing: Many of his defenders are hardly communists and they're not blind to the hardship and injustice of Castro's Cuba. But in a region that has often been abused, manipulated and battered by U.S. foreign policy, it's hard to sell short the enormous appeal of a single man on a tiny island who has defied the United States for decades.

No, I am not blogging

I have a houseguest for a few days.

Andrew is someone I met within a week of coming down here three years ago. Now that my time here is almost up, he's back again. (Although he's not here because of me.)

He was in my apartment for only a few minutes before I sat down at the computer.

"What are you doing?" he asked. "Blogging?"

"No! I am not blogging." I use my computer for other things, you know. Like reading other people's blogs. And killing time between writing blog entries.

Five minutes later we were talking about the lunar eclipse I had watched off my balcony the night before.

"Did you blog about it?" he asked.

As if I would blog about something I just saw out my window.

In any case, there is more to my life than just this blog. For instance, there is my other blog. I am still trying to figure out what to do with it. It's slow-going, but there has been a little progress and I remain hopeful that I can either get money or a little more exposure for it — ideally both.

Aside from all that: This week, when not at my computer, I have been doing even more walking around this city than usual.

I sometimes think about the idea of opening a restaurant. Sometimes I think about what I might name it. One name that never crossed my mind: Crack.


And here's an amusing name for a cheese shop. If you don't speak Spanish, you won't get it. But let me just take this opportunity to assure that anyone who does speak Spanish is unleashing peals of hysterical laughter right now. Honest.