trophy case

No steak in BA? Is that like no Guinness in Dublin?

Warning: I have no idea what I am talking about, but the following sums up what I think/feel/have heard

So in Argentina all the farmers are protesting the new tax rates. And by protesting, I mean blocking all the major highways, picketing in the city, and refusing to butcher their cattle, pigs, and chickens. I believe they are only delivering the fruits and vegetables that they would lose if they didn’t sell. So Ana just called me after going to the grocery store and told me that basically there is no meat in the grocery stores now. (Which is sort of like saying there are no more cars in Detroit, or gas in Saudi Arabia).

So I am no expert, but my understanding is the following:

The gov’t has serious price controls on food to ensure it is affordable and doesn’t cause runaway inflation. They also limit the amount of exports on certain foods, such as beef, which are more expensive if you were to sell it abroad. (I heard that there are similar issues affecting the US agriculture markets where it’s more profitable now to export basic foods than to sell it in the US). Historically, the land-owning farmers have been the richest and most economically successful, but they get a lot of help when the weather doesn’t help. So the government passed a moderate tax hike on the farmers and are holding a tough line on the price controls, and naturally the farmers don’t like it. I heard one story that you have all these farmers riding brand new John Deere tractors protesting the tax increases – the story concluded that if they have money to buy brand new John Deere tractors, why are they upset about higher taxes? Not the best logic in the world, but I see his point.

Anyway, if what I understand is true, it is a pretty interesting case where the rich land-owners are brilliantly playing to the popular support and the President is not really doing herself any favors. Meanwhile, I cannot eat steak tonight. In a country with more cows than people, I can’t get a steak.

United at it again.

Congratulations to DC United for winning the 2007 Supporters' Shield!

Imperialism and Starbucks

According to the local papers, ironically (see last post), Starbucks is opening a few locations in Buenos Aires - probably this year.

Maybe it's time to move back.

Nah.

Coffee? Or Café? Or Tangent?

I was never much of a coffee drinker in the US. I never really liked it. Well, when I was in college and working on finishing a paper at the last possible minute, I would drink Nescafe with sugar and cream, and I kind of liked it. But I think technically that’s not coffee – that’s just a bunch of chemicals dumped in water with sugar. And at 4 AM, anything other than the paper you are writing seems pretty good.

Then with the advent of Starbucks, and their cacophony of coffee concoctions coupled with chocolaty creations creating a cuisine of complete calorie contamination (sorry, I got carried away), it was easy to find some sort of drink with a ton of caffeine that hid the flavor of coffee pretty well. (I hear they even are trying out a new Dulce de Lecce Frap!) But, on the other hand, I could never figure out how to order what I wanted and seemingly always walked away with some slight difference than what I had in mind. “Venti java chip frappucino light, no cream.” Hell, it took me the ten minutes I was in line to remember how to say that. God forbid someone was talking to me while I was in line! But then Ana introduced me to black tea. Well, to be fair, like many things, she introduced them to me, and I ignored it until someone else introduced it, and then I presented it to her like it was new. And she patiently reminded me that she had suggested I would like it long ago, and I blew her off in my dismissive “I don’t like change” sort of way that I’m trying to shed with the subtle change of countries. So then I started ordering “Venti iced soy chai latte.” I think. (See, I don’t like change, so I ordered the same thing every time, but rarely got the same thing.) But a) what the hell is venti? (I’ll come back to that) and b) I think I was paying like $27 (ok, maybe that’s pesos) for a drink. Granted, it was an excellent excuse to get up from my desk and walk around for a little while, maybe stopping in IT for a bit to talk about futbol before coming back to make debits equal credits. But still, one could seriously buy lunch for the price of a venti anything.

And it was that realization that led me to the discovery that I could buy a liter of chai tea for less than the price of a venti anything. And a liter of soy milk (ok, soy milk isn't that cheap), and I have iced chai lattes in my thermos to take with me to work every day for a week. Sure, it wasn’t the same, but I have to admit I liked the idea of not giving my money to Starbucks. Not sure why, exactly. I know why I don’t like Wal-Mart, but I am not sure why I don’t like Starbucks. OH! It’s the obnoxious manner in which you have to learn another language to get a drink. And their insistent denial that a “small” is a “tall” when in fact they have a “short” that they don’t tell you about, so when you say “I want a small coffee” they give you a tall even though you really want a short. Kinda´ reminds me of Bill Clinton – they change the meaning of words, and tell you they don’t have what they do in fact have and everyone who speaks English even remotely well knows that by small you mean “I want the one that is less big, or does not contain as much, or is of a lesser quantity.” But not at Starbucks, where small does not exist. Things are only short or tall. But that’s OK, because they like short people, too. Good thing they don’t make the short people hide and pretend they don’t exist, like their short coffees.

And here’s a little secret. Starbucks really isn’t all that good. It’s just marketing. Sure they have their concoctions that are like adult candy, and it’s a nice place to go and read the paper or chat or keep the kids entertained for 15 minutes while you guzzle caffeine to keep you alert enough to prevent them from stabbing themselves in the eye with the plastic fork they found on the floor next to the trash can. Wait, should they be putting that in their mouth? But the best part about your child taking his hands filled with chocolate from the sponge cake and face covered with whipped cream from the hot apple cider (actually, I would bet most parents who take their kids to Starbucks in Washington make their kids eat the veggie sticks with cheese, so in their case they are smearing the soft cheese all over the place) is the reaction he invokes in all those people who are working on their laptops at Starbucks with their annoyed face that someone would actually bring a child to a Starbucks. I mean, people are working here! And they have a point – I mean, Starbucks is practically an adult playground. Without the strippers. And the alcohol. And the whole “no minors” thing. And the fact that they actually have drinks intended for children. And healthy overpriced venti snacks. And overpriced short organic milk.

Somehow this turned into a tirade against people who are or have been annoyed that Ana and I brought Isa to Starbucks, blended with a brief commentary on the upper middle class obsession with paying too much for healthy snacks for kids. It’s supposed to be a whimsical commentary on drinking coffee in Buenos Aires. There are no healthy snacks for kids in Argentina. Nor are there any Starbucks. Coincidence?

And another little secret. Venti is Italian for “ridiculously oversized,” which at McDonald’s is called “Super Sized” and outside of the US, is called “Family meal.” But I’m not going on that tirade. This would become a venti commentary.

But here, in Buenos Aires, I drink coffee. Not with chocolate and ice and enough sugar to make a Snicker’s bar envious. Just a simple cortado – which means cut, because it’s a strong coffee/week espresso cut with milk. And I do add a little sugar, but a reasonable amount. I am by no means a coffee aficionado. I don’t know the difference between Colombian and Hawaiian. (In terms of coffee, I mean. I am fully aware of the difference of Colombian and Hawaiian pineapples, waves, music, language, political leaders, and people.) I only know that Argentines prepare their coffee differently – I think it has to do with the roasting or something. I really have no idea. Maybe they put crack in it. But probably not a venti shot of crack, just a short shot.

Anyway, since I’ve started working, Argentines have asked me about US coffee as we sip our cortados and mull over accounting issues. And this is the point of my whole story. (I bet you never would have guessed that.)

In my office, we have this fantastic coffee machine where you put your little espresso cup and push the button, and it grinds up your coffee beans, does whatever one does to make a cortado, and pours it into your cup. So we all have our nice little espresso cups, well, there are actually jarrito cups – about twice the size of an espresso – and quietly work our way until the end of the day when everyone leaves in a mass exodus to go do whatever it is they do for 5 hours before they eat dinner. And some very nice person or elf or magical being mysteriously and surreptitiously cleans all the coffee cups for tomorrow. (Which is kind of how I like to think of the coffee beans and water as well, because when it blinks and says it’s empty of some ingredient, I go away and come back later to see if it has magically found what it needed. And it usually has. God knows I’m not educated enough to figure out how to operate that thing…)

But some of my clients don’t have the fancy coffee machines that magically refill themselves. So, they do the obvious. They call the café on the corner and ask them to deliver cortados for everyone. And a little while later, a nice man (actually, he seems a little grumpy this week) arrives with a tray and a few cortados, maybe some media lunas (that would be Spanish for croissant, which is French for “fancy bread you Americans can’t make”) and we pay him, and a little while later he comes back for his cups.

One could argue that this is horrible because now you don’t have a reason to get up from your desk, walk to Starbucks, and stop by the IT department on the way back to talk about futbol. But first of all, we are in Argentina, so there is no Starbucks. Secondly, we are in Argentina, so you don’t need an excuse to socialize. Thirdly, we are in Argentina, so everybody talks about futbol. Not just the guy in IT. But more significantly, the whole water cooler culture doesn´t seem to be the same here. People do a whole lot more chatting and socializing here, but from my experience, it just doesn’t take place while they are working.

Now excuse me, I have to call the IT guy. But he’s from Independiente, so I don’t want to talk to him about futbol. He clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

The 10%

3 Americans are visiting Buenos Aires, so the story goes, and only one of them speaks any Spanish (much less Castellano - the local dialect). They want to go to Boca - a working class neighborhood on the waterfront that has a very popular spot for tourists and artists. In the tourist section, the houses are all painted bright colors, there are atisans selling their crafts, boats docked there (some for years or decades), cheap food, art, tango dancers, the whole 9 yards. Outside of the tourist section, it's probably one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city with an incredibly strong sense of barrio. It's also (not coincidentally) the home of the famed soccer team Boca Juniors - one of the most famous soccer teams in the world, and the beloved team of Diego Maradona.

The 3 tourists know they want to go to Boca. The one pseudo-Spanish speaking one knows the street they want to go to is called Caminito - it's a pedestrian street and cabs routinely drop tourists off where the street meets the waterfont.

Interestingly, Caminito is close to a word camineta which in Spanish means t-shirt, but in Argentina means soccer jersey.

The one tourist who knows a little Spanish tells the cab driver that they want to go to Boca - to camineta. So the cab driver hears "I want a Boca soccer jersey." Bueno - he takes the three of them to La Bonbonera - the temple that is the home of the beloved Boca Juniors soccer team. (I write this clenching my teeth because we are de River - their rivals - and Boca plays River this weekend...) Now Caminito is about 5 blocks from La Bonbonera, but is in the heart of the working-class neighborhood. On one side of La Bonbonera lies a huge empty lot, which I believe the club owns because they want to build a bigger stadium but don't have enough space. Coincidentally, when I last went to La Bonbonera, there was a goat in the big empty lot tied up and eating grass. Not sure why. Apparently, when these 3 tourists arrived, the goat was also there.

Anyway, they arrive at this big empty lot flanked by some homes that to the American tourist eye probably appear as anything between unappealing to dangerous, and say to the cab driver "Is it safe for us to get out and walk around?"

Now, a friend of mine told me that "not all cab drivers in Buenos Aires are dishonest - only about 90% of them." So imagine a cab driver with the meter running being asked by three people the following:

"Should I get out of your cab and pay you now, or should you take me someplace else for more money?"

Guess what the cab driver said.

"Oh no - it's not safe."

So..... they decide to go buy leather. An excellent idea in Buenos Aires. So they tell the cab driver (who now knows he has 3 marks in his cab) to take them to "Sexo Sexo Sexo Murillo." Sexo replacing the number Seis. So the cab driver hears "Take me to Sex Sex Sex Murillo." At this point, I can only speculate as to his reaction to this, but it eventually is resolved that they are trying to go to a specific address on Murillo - an address well-known in BA as the leather district.

"No existe" he says. That address? Oh, that address doesn't exist. Yeah - no idea where that would be. But hey, if you want to buy leather, I know a place - I'll take you there.

Seriously.

So off they went, on the highway, into the Provincia, to some store in some unknown location while the cab driver lets the meter run as they look at leather jackets they don't want to buy and are warned they will never find another cab, so he'll just wait for them.

Eventually, they got back to the hotel safe and sound, with the only crime being ripped off by a dishonest cab driver - but hey, it's only 90% of them. Which is actually quite surprising, because despite BA being a safe city, everyone seems to know somebody who was briefly kidnapped by their cab driver and his co-horts and taken for a city-wide tour of ATMs - forced to withdraw cash to hand-over to the cab driver. You know - to pay the driver for the tour he's providing.

Me - I try to stick to the other 10%.