Last Smoke Of The Year
December 31, 2007 | Filed Under Argentina | No Comments
[Almost done pork barbeque rubbed with equal parts of paprika, brown sugar, and salt along with a little sage, allspice, garlic powder, oregano, corriander, mustard powder, nutmeg, and black pepper.]
Few hours till feast time and then after that, party time! With the newly invoked daylight savings time change, there will still be a speckle of […]
some more pirovano
December 31, 2007 | Filed Under Argentina | No Comments
This bit of Pirovano at Ayacucho 260 was built around the same time as the former Angolan embassy (circa 1922) & shares some of the same features. No exposed brick or relief above the main entrance, but it’s easy to tell it’s a Pirovano. All you really have to do is find the signature behind the tree:
The entrance is eye-catching even without a relief… decorative columns, wooden doors, & some nice knockers:
The central design incorporates a lot of Neocolonial elements into the overall Tudor look. Swirls & shields mix with blocky borders, stepped like a ziggurat. I wish there was a way to see the stained glass from the inside.
A few more coat-of-arms designs are scattered equally over the façade:
Originally constructed as a private hotel for Nicolás Celesia—no clue who he was, but he must have had cash to spare—it now appears to be abandoned. Some of the lower windows […]
Christ! It’s 95° again!
December 31, 2007 | Filed Under Argentina | No Comments
It’s hot right now in Buenos Aires. That’s nothin’ crazy: its summer. What kinda gets me, though, is that it was 95F/35C last night at 3 in the morning!
I’m feeling it because our new digs never had A/C… and we’ve been trying to find time to decide on what unit we want and how much we want to pay for it. My Missus is also predicting power outages this summer which would leave us feeling like we had a brand-new Lexus in the driveway… and no gas to be had.
For you out-of-towners (at least Midwesterners), 95/35 is not too hard to bear here because the humidity is only about 37%. Back in continental Chicago, Indianapolis, Louisville, Memphis the humidity on a hot day like this would probably be 95%. Add to the equation that my neighborhood is very breezy and we have great cross-ventilation and […]
sneak it in
December 30, 2007 | Filed Under Argentina | No Comments
There’s nothing like taking advantage of the holidays & upcoming vacation to introduce massive changes in rate structures. It doesn’t come as a surprise, but changing rates while people are away having fun means they’re less likely to complain when returning to Buenos Aires. Maybe no one will notice…
I certainly did. This week after receiving my newly updated ABL tax, my bill went from 36 pesos to 90 pesos. It’s paid bi-monthly but it’s still a 250% increase any way you look at it. This past year my rent went up 30% as well. Adding insult to injury, this week I received a notice from the building admin stating our expensas were going up a flat 30%. In one shot. What joy.
So I did a monthly plot (in pesos) of what I’ve paid over the past five years for basic services. This past year has been insane… not to mention […]
Board Games & Ambiance: Acabar in Palermo Gets the Night Started
December 30, 2007 | Filed Under Argentina | No Comments
Bars use a number of devices to keep their customers drinking. Salty snacks keep people reaching for their beer and games of pool or darts make time pass quickly, so quickly that it always seems time to buy the next round. At Acabar, a restaurant in Palermo, they have adapted these traditional bar techniques to make them a little more table friendly.
In a corner towards the back of the restaurant sit stacked a wide variety of board and card games, including Uno, Pictionary, and Tabú. Whether waiting for food or waiting to digest dinner before ordering dessert, customers can take any game they want and make it an hour long event. For foreigners who may be unaccustomed to the Argentine tradition of a long, long dinner, these games also help slow our pace. After all, games are a really great way to get a group […]
Summer’s Here and the Time is Right…
December 29, 2007 | Filed Under Argentina | No Comments
I truly ADORE Spring in both the city and the province of Buenos Aires Argentina!
However, being in the cattle bidness (and now, in the planter game)… I’m glad to see primavera over and done with. There’s much less work in Summer.
If you include a little post-solstice flurry, this year has been, how shall we say?, HELLACIOUS for my Missus and I.
In no particular order:
We built a bridge (yes, Virginia), we planted crops (corn, soy, linen) for the first time since dinosaurios trod our fair turf, got rid of all our 150 sheep, we retired on full pension a gaucho after 40 sterling years of service to the S.A., we hired his son, we fired his son under very contentious circumstances who took all his horses, ended up with no horses, we bought a beautiful horse that we later discovered was pregnant… so we couldn’t work her but she was […]
super power
December 29, 2007 | Filed Under Argentina | No Comments
Sitting on the edge of the port of Buenos Aires, a massive electric station helps run the city (marked in orange above). It’s so big that it can be seen from the entrance of the National Library. I’d never been to see it because it’s not the kind of area you generally want to stroll around, but Fabio had his car yesterday. What a massive hunk of a building. At first we didn’t think we’d be able to get very close given the container storage:
The naval guys didn’t seem to care if we went in though. I couldn’t believe how it looked at sunset:
Opening in 1933, this power station belonged to the CIAE but doesn’t look like an Italianate palace. It’s most like the substation on Calle Estados Unidos. Bulky & monumental, the mini-temples on the top & the giant obelisks were too cool for words. Even the entrance gate […]
Quickies
December 29, 2007 | Filed Under Argentina | No Comments
Just a few brief notes before I go spend my Saturday in the sun beside someone else’s swimming pool in a place cooler than hellish Rosario.
First, I’ve uploaded a couple of short videos of Fito Páez’s concert at the Flag Memorial (Fito Páez en el Monumento, and again Fito Páez en el Monumento) to YouTube, so you can see a bit of what it was like. Check them out. They’re fragments, not whole songs.
Second, I’ve replied to one at the Daylight Messing Time post regarding the absurd time zone change starting tomorrow, with further info on the government’s energy saving “plan” (the word is a stretch).
Third, I’ve also replied to s regarding transport subsidies and prices unrelated to reality in Argentina. Since this is a past post, you may miss my carefully-crafted, thoughtful reply if you don’t check it out again.
Lastly, there may or may not be an “old […]
Manu Chao’s Unusual Concert in Buenos Aires
December 29, 2007 | Filed Under Argentina | No Comments
This month in Buenos Aires, Manu Chao joined La Colifata for a live radio broadcast. La Colifata is the radio station run by patients at the Borda Hospital - a psychiatric hospital. There was a rumor that Manu would be playing a live show at the hospital, and since he’s done it once before during a visit to Buenos Aires, it seemed worth checking out.
I’d never been to a psychiatric hospital (I swear) and imagined a Jack Nicholson moment out of “One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest.” We entered the complex through security and followed groups of people who looked like Manu fans. We walked down a dirt path deep into the complex before we heard music and amplified voices coming from a clearing behind the hospital. Finally, we joined a crowd of people in a semi-circle at the center of which was the man himself, seated, playing an […]
out with the old
December 28, 2007 | Filed Under Argentina | No Comments
At least that’s the idea this time of year for most of us. Businesses in downtown Buenos Aires feel the same way.
A long-standing tradition makes it ok to throw any & all scrap paper out your office window on the last business day of the year. I’ve always missed taking pics for some odd reason in the past but managed to catch it this year. The clean-up crews were already beginning as people continued to dump paper onto the street… they should have just waited until everyone went home for the day
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