I don´t get the French
They sure do love to seem staging revolutions, but they just don´t like change, huh? First they were mad because there weren´t any jobs for the young and disprivledged. Now they´re mad because they don´t like the solution to that problem that their government came up with.
There is a 23% unemployment rate in France among the youth, which of course disproportionally affects the immigrant communities. So their governments suggested legislation that would ease employment requirements on young workers which seems on the surface to be a well designed solution. One way to battle underemployment is to reduce the cost of employing someone. Simply making a downward shift in the supply curve.
The young French, of course, seem to find this solution more than a little distasteful. They´d rather just live in their little world of make believe where everyone has a job for life and it pays great and they can all sit around and drink café and eat éclairs and smoke cigarettes.
The silly Frenchmen don´t seem to realize that they live in the 21st century, whether they like it or not. And whether or not they like it they have to complete in the world marketplace, where labor everywhere else in the world is cheap and productive. And it is economical to ship goods and services from one part of the globe to another. The other alternative is to allow their economy to continue to stagnate basically as it´s been doing for the last 20 years.
I guess this was the same country that thought that they could protect themselves from the Nazi´s by building a concrete barrier around their border. I guess it never occurred to them that it was possible to just go around instead of right through the middle. That same mentality seems to permeate the French collective unconscious today. Best of luck with that…I´ll be waiting to see how that works out for you.
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Democracy is the worst form of government that exists
How’s the rest of that quote go? Oh yeah, besides all of the others. One need only look at the recent elections in Palestine and Israel to confirm that sentiment. The world was shocked to learn that the Palestinians had elected a terrorist group to majority in Parliament. And now the world is confused by what the Israeli populace is saying with the results from yesterday’s elections.
Of course you could really argue that we aren’t talking about a true democracy in either case. Last time I checked when a nation maintains different rights for its citizens depending on their ethnicity we call that an apartheid regime, not a democracy. And the same holds true for an “authority” which is as corrupt as any government in the world has ever been.
Personally I found the most shocking thing about Hamas’ recent ascension to political power was the fact that it took so long. While the rest of the world looks at Hamas as simply a terrorist organization the truth is, as usual, more complicated than that. Hamas has always been incredibly popular among the Palestinian people. They have been providing much needed social services, schools and medical aid to the Palestinians people for years. They accomplished things that the Palestinian Authority was either too corrupt or too incompetent to achieve. And when you’re a group that has been shit on worse than any other in the world for the last 50 years or so, you’re grateful to anyone who is one your side. And of course Hamas embodies the struggle against the much hated “Zionist occupiers” as they like to call them. Oh yeah, and they convince young Palestinian men to strap explosives to their chest, walk into crowded Israeli areas and blow everyone they can to pieces.
But when Israel decided to marginalize Yasser Arafat they played into the hands of Hamas. Most people speak of the Palestinians as if they are on homogenous group with one clear mindset and focused set of goals. As a reformed Muslim I can tell you if there is anything Muslim’s are not, it’s organized, either politically or socially.
Believe it or not, Yasser Arafat and the PA represented the moderate wing of the Palestinian viewpoint. The extremists, yeah that’s Hamas. Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat’s interim successor, never really seemed to resonate within among the Palestinian people. He was always seen as the handpicked choice of the Israeli’s and the US and only present because those powers had decided that Arafat was no longer a partner in the peace process and not worth negotiating with. There was only one group capable of filling the power vacuum once Arafat finally died, and that’s what we see today. It could have been the moderates, but not once they proved to be useless.
The truth is this was all a forgone conclusion much earlier than that. Yitzhak Rabin’s murder in 1995 should go down in history as the most successful political assassination since Archduke Francis Ferdinand was killed by a Serbian nationalist and the world plunged into war for the first time. Looking back from our vantage point it’s clear that the peace process died with Rabin, and I guess that was the point.
Afterwards the Israeli populace could never seem to decide if they wanted to make peace or wage war. Every election swung from one political extreme to another. Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat did come awfully close to accomplishing something magical in Camp David, but not as close as some would like to believe. The media likes to say that Arafat walked away from 97% of what he was asking for. They of course neglect to mention that the 3% included Jerusalem and the Temple Mount as well as the fact that the Palestinian “Right to Return” was a non-starter with Ehud Barak. But Arafat never could make that final step, he was able to recognize the state of Israel, but never cement his place in history by making a lasting peace.
But in retrospect, now that Israel has decided to unilaterally draw it’s own borders, the Palestinians will get less, much less. And since the al-Aqsa Intifadah started the Palestinians have found a way to counter the deplorable treatment they’ve been receiving that attracts the attention of the world. When it was just a bunch of Palestinian kids throwing rocks at tanks no one seemed to care too much about their struggle, but once they started turning themselves into human bombs and terrorizing their occupiers everyone took notice.
Palestinians of course look at this as the height of hypocrisy. Of course Hamas is a terrorist group, but there is no definition of terrorism that you could manage to write that wouldn’t also include the Israeli government. They are in violation of more UN Security Council Resolutions than Iraq ever was, and it’s only because the US exercises it’s veto power constantly in their favor that they haven’t been declared a terrorist nation. When they launch missiles into civilian neighborhoods because they know a certain “high value targets” are in the area and civilians die, they call it collateral damage. When Hamas sends suicide bombers to blow up civilians its terrorism. What’s the difference again? The rule of law stop being applied a long time ago.
This of course makes the moral high-ground position of Israel and the US that they don’t negotiate with terrorists all the more absurd. Who else are you going to negotiate with? They’re the ones you’re at war with, if you want peace of course you have to negotiate with them. If they stopped being terrorists, there’d be nothing left to negotiate. It’s the only card they have to play and they’re not going to stop until they have something worth stopping for.
There’s so much blame to pass around in all of this I don’t know where to even start. And that’s sad for me because I’ve learned I really like blaming people. But I think the British are a good a place as any to begin. Yeah the Holocaust was terrible, but did you really think the people that we now refer to as Palestinians would be ok with being kicked out of their land? Stupid Balfour Declaration.
And what about all the other Arab nations? Why couldn’t you just have taken in the Palestinian people when they became homeless? Then they wouldn’t have had to live in tents for the last 50 years and maybe they wouldn’t be so pissed off. Come on, you have lots of land and money, help a brother out. But no it was more politically expedient to have the Palestinians living in squalor and misery so you’d have a card to play against Israel.
Or maybe it was Abraham’s fault. You just have written a clear and concise will. The people of my son Isaac get this side of the yard and the people of my son Ishmael get this side. See, no more bickering. Now go and play nice.
Really like everything else, it’s God’s fault. Chosen people, huh? Holy Land, eh? Milk and honey, you say? That all seems to have turned out to be a great idea. I’m still trying to imagine there’s no religion, I hear it’s easy if you try.
Maybe by some miracle Ehud Ohlmert and Ismail Haniya can find a way to work together for peace despite all their rhetoric to the contrary. Who knows, Nixon did go to China after all. But I don’t think that’s where the smart money is at. So for the foreseeable future Palestinians will be killing Israelis and Israelis will be killing Palestinians. And one day I’ll have to explain to my kids why these two groups of people hate each other. And that truly breaks my heart.
As much as it pains me to say it, I think my friend Scott might have the right idea. We should just nuke the whole Middle East and turn it into one big glass parking lot. You can still drill through that stuff and it’ll be so much easier to find the oil that way
How’s the rest of that quote go? Oh yeah, besides all of the others. One need only look at the recent elections in Palestine and Israel to confirm that sentiment. The world was shocked to learn that the Palestinians had elected a terrorist group to majority in Parliament. And now the world is confused by what the Israeli populace is saying with the results from yesterday’s elections.
Of course you could really argue that we aren’t talking about a true democracy in either case. Last time I checked when a nation maintains different rights for its citizens depending on their ethnicity we call that an apartheid regime, not a democracy. And the same holds true for an “authority” which is as corrupt as any government in the world has ever been.
Personally I found the most shocking thing about Hamas’ recent ascension to political power was the fact that it took so long. While the rest of the world looks at Hamas as simply a terrorist organization the truth is, as usual, more complicated than that. Hamas has always been incredibly popular among the Palestinian people. They have been providing much needed social services, schools and medical aid to the Palestinians people for years. They accomplished things that the Palestinian Authority was either too corrupt or too incompetent to achieve. And when you’re a group that has been shit on worse than any other in the world for the last 50 years or so, you’re grateful to anyone who is one your side. And of course Hamas embodies the struggle against the much hated “Zionist occupiers” as they like to call them. Oh yeah, and they convince young Palestinian men to strap explosives to their chest, walk into crowded Israeli areas and blow everyone they can to pieces.
But when Israel decided to marginalize Yasser Arafat they played into the hands of Hamas. Most people speak of the Palestinians as if they are on homogenous group with one clear mindset and focused set of goals. As a reformed Muslim I can tell you if there is anything Muslim’s are not, it’s organized, either politically or socially.
Believe it or not, Yasser Arafat and the PA represented the moderate wing of the Palestinian viewpoint. The extremists, yeah that’s Hamas. Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat’s interim successor, never really seemed to resonate within among the Palestinian people. He was always seen as the handpicked choice of the Israeli’s and the US and only present because those powers had decided that Arafat was no longer a partner in the peace process and not worth negotiating with. There was only one group capable of filling the power vacuum once Arafat finally died, and that’s what we see today. It could have been the moderates, but not once they proved to be useless.
The truth is this was all a forgone conclusion much earlier than that. Yitzhak Rabin’s murder in 1995 should go down in history as the most successful political assassination since Archduke Francis Ferdinand was killed by a Serbian nationalist and the world plunged into war for the first time. Looking back from our vantage point it’s clear that the peace process died with Rabin, and I guess that was the point.
Afterwards the Israeli populace could never seem to decide if they wanted to make peace or wage war. Every election swung from one political extreme to another. Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat did come awfully close to accomplishing something magical in Camp David, but not as close as some would like to believe. The media likes to say that Arafat walked away from 97% of what he was asking for. They of course neglect to mention that the 3% included Jerusalem and the Temple Mount as well as the fact that the Palestinian “Right to Return” was a non-starter with Ehud Barak. But Arafat never could make that final step, he was able to recognize the state of Israel, but never cement his place in history by making a lasting peace.
But in retrospect, now that Israel has decided to unilaterally draw it’s own borders, the Palestinians will get less, much less. And since the al-Aqsa Intifadah started the Palestinians have found a way to counter the deplorable treatment they’ve been receiving that attracts the attention of the world. When it was just a bunch of Palestinian kids throwing rocks at tanks no one seemed to care too much about their struggle, but once they started turning themselves into human bombs and terrorizing their occupiers everyone took notice.
Palestinians of course look at this as the height of hypocrisy. Of course Hamas is a terrorist group, but there is no definition of terrorism that you could manage to write that wouldn’t also include the Israeli government. They are in violation of more UN Security Council Resolutions than Iraq ever was, and it’s only because the US exercises it’s veto power constantly in their favor that they haven’t been declared a terrorist nation. When they launch missiles into civilian neighborhoods because they know a certain “high value targets” are in the area and civilians die, they call it collateral damage. When Hamas sends suicide bombers to blow up civilians its terrorism. What’s the difference again? The rule of law stop being applied a long time ago.
This of course makes the moral high-ground position of Israel and the US that they don’t negotiate with terrorists all the more absurd. Who else are you going to negotiate with? They’re the ones you’re at war with, if you want peace of course you have to negotiate with them. If they stopped being terrorists, there’d be nothing left to negotiate. It’s the only card they have to play and they’re not going to stop until they have something worth stopping for.
There’s so much blame to pass around in all of this I don’t know where to even start. And that’s sad for me because I’ve learned I really like blaming people. But I think the British are a good a place as any to begin. Yeah the Holocaust was terrible, but did you really think the people that we now refer to as Palestinians would be ok with being kicked out of their land? Stupid Balfour Declaration.
And what about all the other Arab nations? Why couldn’t you just have taken in the Palestinian people when they became homeless? Then they wouldn’t have had to live in tents for the last 50 years and maybe they wouldn’t be so pissed off. Come on, you have lots of land and money, help a brother out. But no it was more politically expedient to have the Palestinians living in squalor and misery so you’d have a card to play against Israel.
Or maybe it was Abraham’s fault. You just have written a clear and concise will. The people of my son Isaac get this side of the yard and the people of my son Ishmael get this side. See, no more bickering. Now go and play nice.
Really like everything else, it’s God’s fault. Chosen people, huh? Holy Land, eh? Milk and honey, you say? That all seems to have turned out to be a great idea. I’m still trying to imagine there’s no religion, I hear it’s easy if you try.
Maybe by some miracle Ehud Ohlmert and Ismail Haniya can find a way to work together for peace despite all their rhetoric to the contrary. Who knows, Nixon did go to China after all. But I don’t think that’s where the smart money is at. So for the foreseeable future Palestinians will be killing Israelis and Israelis will be killing Palestinians. And one day I’ll have to explain to my kids why these two groups of people hate each other. And that truly breaks my heart.
As much as it pains me to say it, I think my friend Scott might have the right idea. We should just nuke the whole Middle East and turn it into one big glass parking lot. You can still drill through that stuff and it’ll be so much easier to find the oil that way
Monday, March 27, 2006
Come on, light just a little fire?
When you walk around Buenos Aires wearing your Boca Jrs. jersey you get one of two reactions from complete strangers. Either merciless taunting and complaints about how ugly your shirt is, or enthusiastic cheers and thumbs-up signs. There is no middle ground. And when you walk around Buenos Aires the day of the Boca Jr. v River Plate game, when those two teams happen to be separated in the standings by a single point, and the newspapers are already calling this game a “superclasico”, the normal reaction you would get seems to be magnified exponentially.
The Argentineans really are quite mad about their football. Actually they are just quite mad, but their madness seems to express itself most evidently in relation to their football. My original plan was to attend the match in person and witness the madness firsthand. I endured trial and tribulation to achieve this goal, but alas it was not meant to be.
When I started asking around about how I could get tickets for this game I discovered I had one of two options. I could find a travel agency that catered to tourists and pay them a lot of money (and for this game, I mean A LOT of money) to come pick me up and take me in a nice air-conditioned bus to the game and give me a tour of La Boca. Or I could do what the Argentineans do, which is stay up all night Saturday queuing (although that’s far too generous a description for the madness that occurs) in front of the stadium, wait until 4 PM the next day when the game starts and hope to get one of the standing room only seats. But odds are you won’t get in anyways, and I’ll probably get mugged or knifed, seeing as La Boca is one of the most dangerous parts of Buenos Aires.
I try to avoid doing things the “tourist” way but I didn’t really like the second option either. So I went searching for door number 3. And I found it, so I thought. “Just go to La Boca a day or two before the game and try to scalp tickets on the street.” Simple enough, I can do that, I’ll just hop on the bus and head to La Boca.
My last job at Microsoft involved manually disassembling machine level computer code and cross-referencing it against various modules in various computer languages in various components of our operating system in order to isolate a particular line of defective code out of the millions of lines of code that made up Windows. This proved to be excellent practice for navigating the Buenos Aires bus system.
The standard Buenos Aires bus guide is, I kid you not, 192 pages long and contains everything you could possibly need to figure out which bus to take to get to a particular destination, except a route map showing where the bus actually goes. But street names, intersections, maps of various parts of town broken into little tiny quadrants, names of the routes, they are all in there.
It’s this sort of absurdity that makes me love Argentina. I haven’t found anywhere else in the world where everything is quite so ridiculous, seemingly for no other reason than the fact that we are in Argentina. After several confused minutes of pondering over the guide, determined that I needed the number 10 colectivo to get from Recoleta to La Boca. But I had no idea where to catch the number 10 and the guide was of no help. So I do what I always do when faced with such obstacles. I asked the nearest person.
One way in which the Argentineans seem to be quite like their fellow South Americans is that they all have this predilection for helping wayward travelers. Perhaps there is something in the culture that dictates that one should never fail to help with directions. Perhaps it’s simply out of necessity because not even long-time residents of Buenos Aires can understand their bus system. But time after time whenever I’ve been lost, and asked a random person for help getting where I need to go, they’ve always come through. This incident proved to be no different. A random stranger on the side of the road helped me out and I was off to La Boca.
Once I got there finding the stadium was no problem. The problem was that there were, of course, no tickets left for the game. When I asked the guy working at the cashier station he gave me the same look I have seen many times, “silly gringo, don’t you realize this is the biggest game in Argentina and you’re asking to buy tickets two days before the match, of course there are none left” He advised me to try asking on the street.
So I did, and after a couple people the best price I could find was $300 pesos (about US $100). Now it would have been super cool to be able to go to this game, but there was just no way I was going to spend that much. I’ve learned a couple things about myself while I’ve been traveling. The first is that I’m a cheap bastard. And the second is I only really want to go things I want to do, not things that I should do because they’re cool or will impress other people. No my excursion to the Boca Jrs. Stadium would have to wait for another day.
So when Sunday rolled around I decided to head to one of the many local bars, knowing that just about every TV set in the country would be tuned to the game. Whenever I watch football or talk about it I kinda feel like a poseur, because, well, when it comes to football I’m a poseur. I started wearing football jerseys because I they’re super comfortable, look really cool, and are way better souvenirs than those silly “I heart AR” shirts. Not because I’m a huge fan.
But in the last few months I’ve watched enough football to be able to appreciate the skill and athleticism involved in the game. And it’s really not that complicated to follow, you put the ball in the goal, you get a point. The one with the most points wins.
But there is more to football than just that. There are several levels of a game within a game within a game. It’s a constant back and forth, not only team versus team, but game versus the clock. The tension mounts with every bit of fancy footwork, every hard slide tackle, every break away and every save. Games are generally close enough that as the minutes wind down the anxiety among the crowd builds to a fevered pitch such that the scene is ripe for uncontrollable madness to erupt.
I’ve had it explained to me that this explains the hooliganism that is rampant among football fans. Personally I think Occam’s Razor cuts to the explanation that football fans are just a bunch of hooligans. Not that there is anything wrong with hooligan’s mind you, I mean who doesn’t enjoy breaking stuff and then lighting it on fire.
This game was a perfect example. Boca dominated the first half in every way imaginable, except the scoreboard. And they went into the locker room (or wherever it is they go) down 1-0. The second half escalated beyond belief and saw 3 red cards between the two teams. Just as time was winding down and with River Plate still up 1-0 Boca scored on a penalty kick with 30 seconds left in regulation to tie the score 1-1.
And of course the Boca fans, who only slightly outnumbered the River Plate fans in the bar I was in, began jumping and chanting and waving their banners as they are apt to do. The game was fantastic, I was on edge the whole time. I got to practice my use of the imperative clause in Spanish, “Vaya!” and “dale!” And of course the pejorative in several instances. I was never quite sure I got it right but it didn’t seem to matter because I was sufficiently loud.
The game ending in a 1-1 tie meant that everyone was somewhat pleased and there was nothing broken or engulfed in flames. I found this slightly unfortunately as I was prepared to see the Argentinean football madness, but I have faith in the spirit of these people, be patient and give it time and all things will come to be in due course.
When you walk around Buenos Aires wearing your Boca Jrs. jersey you get one of two reactions from complete strangers. Either merciless taunting and complaints about how ugly your shirt is, or enthusiastic cheers and thumbs-up signs. There is no middle ground. And when you walk around Buenos Aires the day of the Boca Jr. v River Plate game, when those two teams happen to be separated in the standings by a single point, and the newspapers are already calling this game a “superclasico”, the normal reaction you would get seems to be magnified exponentially.
The Argentineans really are quite mad about their football. Actually they are just quite mad, but their madness seems to express itself most evidently in relation to their football. My original plan was to attend the match in person and witness the madness firsthand. I endured trial and tribulation to achieve this goal, but alas it was not meant to be.
When I started asking around about how I could get tickets for this game I discovered I had one of two options. I could find a travel agency that catered to tourists and pay them a lot of money (and for this game, I mean A LOT of money) to come pick me up and take me in a nice air-conditioned bus to the game and give me a tour of La Boca. Or I could do what the Argentineans do, which is stay up all night Saturday queuing (although that’s far too generous a description for the madness that occurs) in front of the stadium, wait until 4 PM the next day when the game starts and hope to get one of the standing room only seats. But odds are you won’t get in anyways, and I’ll probably get mugged or knifed, seeing as La Boca is one of the most dangerous parts of Buenos Aires.
I try to avoid doing things the “tourist” way but I didn’t really like the second option either. So I went searching for door number 3. And I found it, so I thought. “Just go to La Boca a day or two before the game and try to scalp tickets on the street.” Simple enough, I can do that, I’ll just hop on the bus and head to La Boca.
My last job at Microsoft involved manually disassembling machine level computer code and cross-referencing it against various modules in various computer languages in various components of our operating system in order to isolate a particular line of defective code out of the millions of lines of code that made up Windows. This proved to be excellent practice for navigating the Buenos Aires bus system.
The standard Buenos Aires bus guide is, I kid you not, 192 pages long and contains everything you could possibly need to figure out which bus to take to get to a particular destination, except a route map showing where the bus actually goes. But street names, intersections, maps of various parts of town broken into little tiny quadrants, names of the routes, they are all in there.
It’s this sort of absurdity that makes me love Argentina. I haven’t found anywhere else in the world where everything is quite so ridiculous, seemingly for no other reason than the fact that we are in Argentina. After several confused minutes of pondering over the guide, determined that I needed the number 10 colectivo to get from Recoleta to La Boca. But I had no idea where to catch the number 10 and the guide was of no help. So I do what I always do when faced with such obstacles. I asked the nearest person.
One way in which the Argentineans seem to be quite like their fellow South Americans is that they all have this predilection for helping wayward travelers. Perhaps there is something in the culture that dictates that one should never fail to help with directions. Perhaps it’s simply out of necessity because not even long-time residents of Buenos Aires can understand their bus system. But time after time whenever I’ve been lost, and asked a random person for help getting where I need to go, they’ve always come through. This incident proved to be no different. A random stranger on the side of the road helped me out and I was off to La Boca.
Once I got there finding the stadium was no problem. The problem was that there were, of course, no tickets left for the game. When I asked the guy working at the cashier station he gave me the same look I have seen many times, “silly gringo, don’t you realize this is the biggest game in Argentina and you’re asking to buy tickets two days before the match, of course there are none left” He advised me to try asking on the street.
So I did, and after a couple people the best price I could find was $300 pesos (about US $100). Now it would have been super cool to be able to go to this game, but there was just no way I was going to spend that much. I’ve learned a couple things about myself while I’ve been traveling. The first is that I’m a cheap bastard. And the second is I only really want to go things I want to do, not things that I should do because they’re cool or will impress other people. No my excursion to the Boca Jrs. Stadium would have to wait for another day.
So when Sunday rolled around I decided to head to one of the many local bars, knowing that just about every TV set in the country would be tuned to the game. Whenever I watch football or talk about it I kinda feel like a poseur, because, well, when it comes to football I’m a poseur. I started wearing football jerseys because I they’re super comfortable, look really cool, and are way better souvenirs than those silly “I heart AR” shirts. Not because I’m a huge fan.
But in the last few months I’ve watched enough football to be able to appreciate the skill and athleticism involved in the game. And it’s really not that complicated to follow, you put the ball in the goal, you get a point. The one with the most points wins.
But there is more to football than just that. There are several levels of a game within a game within a game. It’s a constant back and forth, not only team versus team, but game versus the clock. The tension mounts with every bit of fancy footwork, every hard slide tackle, every break away and every save. Games are generally close enough that as the minutes wind down the anxiety among the crowd builds to a fevered pitch such that the scene is ripe for uncontrollable madness to erupt.
I’ve had it explained to me that this explains the hooliganism that is rampant among football fans. Personally I think Occam’s Razor cuts to the explanation that football fans are just a bunch of hooligans. Not that there is anything wrong with hooligan’s mind you, I mean who doesn’t enjoy breaking stuff and then lighting it on fire.
This game was a perfect example. Boca dominated the first half in every way imaginable, except the scoreboard. And they went into the locker room (or wherever it is they go) down 1-0. The second half escalated beyond belief and saw 3 red cards between the two teams. Just as time was winding down and with River Plate still up 1-0 Boca scored on a penalty kick with 30 seconds left in regulation to tie the score 1-1.
And of course the Boca fans, who only slightly outnumbered the River Plate fans in the bar I was in, began jumping and chanting and waving their banners as they are apt to do. The game was fantastic, I was on edge the whole time. I got to practice my use of the imperative clause in Spanish, “Vaya!” and “dale!” And of course the pejorative in several instances. I was never quite sure I got it right but it didn’t seem to matter because I was sufficiently loud.
The game ending in a 1-1 tie meant that everyone was somewhat pleased and there was nothing broken or engulfed in flames. I found this slightly unfortunately as I was prepared to see the Argentinean football madness, but I have faith in the spirit of these people, be patient and give it time and all things will come to be in due course.
If I was King
After being in Buenos Aires for close to two weeks you really start to understand why it is that the rest of South America seems to despise the Argentineans. I have a vastly different perspective after these two weeks than I did after my initial two weeks here over a year ago.
I think it’s because I spent the previous 3 months traveling through Colombia and Cuba and Panama and Brazil. It’s true what they say about traveling, it changes you and your perspective on the world. I feel like a different person, although I’m not sure I can describe how exactly.
People everywhere else I’ve been are literally the most friendly, social, outgoing people in the world. You can walk into any random bar not knowing anyone, let alone the language, and rest assured that you will not spend the night drinking alone. It’s easy to strike up a conversation with random strangers on the street.
This isn’t quite the case in Argentina. Granted they are far more outgoing than the folks back home, but nothing compared to their fellow South Americans. They seem a little more reserved here. Sure they go out in big groups to socialize, but they don’t seem to go out and meet new people every night, they mainly stick to the crowd they came with. Like they keep telling me, they are the “Europeans of South America.”
Someone told me that Buenos Aires has the highest ratio of residents to psychologists in the world. I can believe that. But the thought of a Colombian going to a psychologist seems beyond strange. I stayed in that country for a month and didn’t meet anyone I thought needed Zoloft. Argentina seems quite different. I guess that makes sense, Canadians aren’t the same as Mexicans, heck coffee drinkers in Seattle aren’t the same as party people in Miami, why would everyone in South America be the same.
I haven’t actually made any local friends as of yet. This hasn’t been too much of a problem so far as I’ve met lots of fellow travelers. I met up with a couple gringos at the hostel I started at and we’ve been hanging out for the majority of my time here. Great people really, I always meet the most interesting US citizens when I’m traveling outside the US. But they’re all only here for a couple of weeks, and after that I’m either going to have to find some more gringos to hang out with or somehow make some Argentinean friends. And that was one of the things I really enjoyed about traveling every where else, you get a much more “real” perspective when you can hang out with locals.
But I suppose every place has its own problems. If I could make up my own country I’d take the friendliness of the Colombians, along with the natural beauty of the rolling mountain countryside, combine the party attitude of the Cubans and Brazilians, and of course the beautiful beaches, add the culture, food and wine of Argentina and the political stability, civil liberties, economic power and opportunity of the US. And I’d have to find some way to make it as cheap as Colombia and Argentina. And of course mix in the fantastic fruit from Brazil. Well one can dream, can’t one?
Paul, the guy who runs the hostel I stayed at here in Buenos Aires told me that everyone has a place in this world. “You just have to find the spot that’s right for you.” I like that sentiment, I’d like to think that it’s true; I just don’t know that I actually believe it. I’ve been a lot of places in this world, and none of them really feel like home. Maybe the problem is that it’s true what they say “home is where the heart is” and mine, well, isn’t really anywhere right now.
After being in Buenos Aires for close to two weeks you really start to understand why it is that the rest of South America seems to despise the Argentineans. I have a vastly different perspective after these two weeks than I did after my initial two weeks here over a year ago.
I think it’s because I spent the previous 3 months traveling through Colombia and Cuba and Panama and Brazil. It’s true what they say about traveling, it changes you and your perspective on the world. I feel like a different person, although I’m not sure I can describe how exactly.
People everywhere else I’ve been are literally the most friendly, social, outgoing people in the world. You can walk into any random bar not knowing anyone, let alone the language, and rest assured that you will not spend the night drinking alone. It’s easy to strike up a conversation with random strangers on the street.
This isn’t quite the case in Argentina. Granted they are far more outgoing than the folks back home, but nothing compared to their fellow South Americans. They seem a little more reserved here. Sure they go out in big groups to socialize, but they don’t seem to go out and meet new people every night, they mainly stick to the crowd they came with. Like they keep telling me, they are the “Europeans of South America.”
Someone told me that Buenos Aires has the highest ratio of residents to psychologists in the world. I can believe that. But the thought of a Colombian going to a psychologist seems beyond strange. I stayed in that country for a month and didn’t meet anyone I thought needed Zoloft. Argentina seems quite different. I guess that makes sense, Canadians aren’t the same as Mexicans, heck coffee drinkers in Seattle aren’t the same as party people in Miami, why would everyone in South America be the same.
I haven’t actually made any local friends as of yet. This hasn’t been too much of a problem so far as I’ve met lots of fellow travelers. I met up with a couple gringos at the hostel I started at and we’ve been hanging out for the majority of my time here. Great people really, I always meet the most interesting US citizens when I’m traveling outside the US. But they’re all only here for a couple of weeks, and after that I’m either going to have to find some more gringos to hang out with or somehow make some Argentinean friends. And that was one of the things I really enjoyed about traveling every where else, you get a much more “real” perspective when you can hang out with locals.
But I suppose every place has its own problems. If I could make up my own country I’d take the friendliness of the Colombians, along with the natural beauty of the rolling mountain countryside, combine the party attitude of the Cubans and Brazilians, and of course the beautiful beaches, add the culture, food and wine of Argentina and the political stability, civil liberties, economic power and opportunity of the US. And I’d have to find some way to make it as cheap as Colombia and Argentina. And of course mix in the fantastic fruit from Brazil. Well one can dream, can’t one?
Paul, the guy who runs the hostel I stayed at here in Buenos Aires told me that everyone has a place in this world. “You just have to find the spot that’s right for you.” I like that sentiment, I’d like to think that it’s true; I just don’t know that I actually believe it. I’ve been a lot of places in this world, and none of them really feel like home. Maybe the problem is that it’s true what they say “home is where the heart is” and mine, well, isn’t really anywhere right now.
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