Other Jobs

In my last entry, I failed to mention my other 3 part time jobs....

I also teach English about 10 hours a week in the leafy, residential, upscale neighborhood of Belgrano far north of the city center. The agency for which I teach does most of its work with employees at Argentina's Hewlett Packard headquarters adjacent to Chinatown in BA. I have about 6 or 7 students total and the classes are mostly 1-1. The students with whom I work range in speaking level from intermediate to advanced. Apparently, native teachers are reserved more for advanced speakers. On top of that, Hewlett Packard only hires, I believe, people with at least a basic level of English. So, I will likely not be working with beginning learners in this position (Although I recently arranged a trade with a yoga instructor who is just beginning to learn English, in which I provide 1 hour of English class in exchange for one hour of yoga class).

Much of what I do at Hewlett Packard is to have conversations with employees, help to explain grammar, illustrate common sayings, explain new and useful vocabulary, and help with cultural insights. Selfishly, the job allows me a chance to learn more about Argentina and Argentine history. As I've obsessed about in this blog, I've been trying to piece together an understanding of what it is like to have lived in a country with such comparatively outrageous economic and political swings. To find out, I ask questions such as... how do you deal with 25% inflation or what was it like for you and your family during periods of hyperinflation (when it was very common, for instance, if the price of milk at the grocery store was lower in the morning than in the afternoon). And I ask what they think will happen if the current rate of inflation continues. If middle class incomes are only $7-10 thousand/year and prices now aren't that far different than they are in the U.S., a 25% rate of inflation can put a damper on, well, eating.

Despite my gripes with the U.S., the government or, as discussed earlier, our consumerist system has done a good job of providing us a relatively strong and stable dollar over a long period of time, with minimal inflation. The result is that if you live in the U.S., maintain a decent job throughout your life, and save somewhat dilligently, you can more or less enjoy a high standard of living (If you weren't devastated by investing in the stock market during the dot com or real estate busts or by medical expenses or credit card debt or college loans....). The strength of the dollars that we have saved has more or less held up and inflation has been minimized. The same has not been true in Argentina. Despite the best efforts of the middle class to save and get ahead, they have consistently been thrashed by political and economic instability. The result is that it's nearly impossible to 'get ahead' here as part of the middle class and people don't concern themselves much with saving, let alone investing, even in solid work environments like Hewlett Packard.

Getting back to the original topic of conversation, talking with folks at Hewlett Packard has been enjoyable. I pick their brains about Argentine history and their experiences and I spend the rest of the time telling them that the U.S. isn't exactly what you see on TV, which is to say that we don't generally swear as much or that not all men in the U.S. treat women so badly and that while guns are a problem, it's not every day that we are ducking cover due to drive-bys, at least not where I've lived.

Despite the fun I've been having, the negatives of the job are quickly outweighing the positives. That is, I almost know that I am for the most part wasting my time by taking the 70 minute round trip there everyday. Here's why.

1. The pay is good for AR and for an English teacher, but I'm not working enough hours to justify the travel time and energy. Often, I'm only working 2 hours/day. 2 hours per day= 50 AR pesos (a dismal 16.50 USD). If it takes 70 minutes travel time, and 2 pesos for the round trip and if I have to spend an hour in the cold while I wait between classes, that means I'm making about 12 pesos an hour or 4 dollars an hour, not nearly worth the effort of the trip, especially when I came to AR to do much more than talk in English with people, when it is most convenient for them. Granted, the job is easy and fun, but there are plenty of those types of jobs that I could do in the states (and for more money) so there's no reason for me to be doing it down here unless the experience were just that overwhelmingly impactful.

2. I like all my students, but they cancel often when they have busy days. And, they typically cancel at the last minute, leaving me stranded in Belgrano with nothing to do but wander Chinatown or answer emails in a cold/busy/expensive locutorio. Granted, I have cancelled class a few times due to travel plans, but my students cancel about 3-4 times as much as I do, and as I said, often at the last minute.

3. While the conversations I have are enjoyable, I again am not here to speak in English all day. Sometimes I feel as though I'm in the states or I might as well be. I'd much rather spend the same time with conversation partners speaking Spanish. Granted, the experience teaching English is a good one, but I feel as though in almost 2 months of doing this, I have learned the basic gist of teaching intermediate to advanced English. More or less, it is a matter of finding subtle and effective ways of correcting details, introducing specific vocabulary, and emphasizing key grammatical rules. If I'm going to continue this sort of job, my time would be better spent with beginners.

4. Due to the travel time and the way in which this job has been spaced out through the week, I haven't had a chance to exercise, write, or read as much as I had hoped during this trip. Spiritual reallignment was supposed to be a large part of my BA experience and instead, thus far, it has been all about work (well, I did have a lot of fun with my parents for 2 or so weeks).

So, in short, when my job as a tour guide picks up, I hope to minimize or cut out entirely the job teaching English. It was nice to hit the ground in BA running with this job and to meet some people, but the negatives are outweighing the positives.

Speaking of the job as a tour guide... Well, I haven't actually given any tours, except for practice tours. I have instead spent the past 1.5 months preparing by memorizing scripts, learning about Argentine history, walking the tour route, and practicing with friends. I'm supposed to begin giving tours in September and I feel ready.

My knowledge of Argentine history, culture, and architecture has grown exponentially (it didn't take much seeing as how up until this point I knew next to nothing) in the last few months and so has my interest in discussing it. Passion, I think, is necessary for a tour guide. You've got to be able to convey interest in order for someone else to care and to enjoy the tour. I didn't honestly care much about AR history before, but now I'm hooked.

Learning about the history has explained and helped me fit together puzzle pieces to answer many of the same questions I've been pondering in this blog. It has made my everyday experience in Buenos Aires more interesting and meaningful as I'm able to more intelligently assimilate current events and my new life here into a more meaningful and comprehensible whole. One example is that I'm finally beginning to understand why so many Argentines have no interest in politics or in voting in elections, despite the fact that voting is obligatory. The following explains why...

I'm currently reading 'A Brief History of the Argentinians'. One curious point it makes is that the founding fathers of Argentina were very concerned that the immigrant algicultural nation that they were organizing was not sophisticated enough to participate in democracy. So, they decided that it was their duty to do for the people what they could not. That is, they justified autocratic rule by reasoning that the people were too ignorant, undisciplined, and lacked respect for authority to such a degree that they were unfit to govern themselves. And, the founding fathers did so not out of spite it seems or because they were power hungry, but out of a desire to see the country succeed, for altruistic reasons (if that is possible from government leaders).

I make this claim because the turn of the century in AR was its glory day. And during this time, universal suffrage did not exist.

Men got the vote in 1912 and women not until 1951 (due to the work of Evita). In short, the country was set up by a strong, intelligent, and apparently somewhat benevolent autocracy... and thrived as a result. The founding fathers helped implement new agricultural technology, worked out trade deals, structured the tax system, and attracted chests full of foreign investment in the city...Did all this so masterfully that BA and AR in general boomed. Out of the soil of the pampas it shot up to become the 7th wealthiest country at the turn of the century, without democracy. At the time, AR experienced widespread economic prosperity, a growing middle class with a relatively high standard of living, and immigration from all over the world was not only welcomed but encouraged (not out of kindness, but as a means of labor for the pampas). Public transportation was introduced and buildings and public infrastructure of the highest quality were constructed.

It reminds me a lot of today's China. If China had been a democracy, is there really any way they could have made the economic and infrastructural progress that they have made in so few years? Could they have put on such an elaborate and amazing olympics? Could they have organized such a gigantic country and moved it towards empire without autocratic power? I don't think so....Is autocracy ok? In general I don't think so but there are times maybe when it is necessary for the growth and stabilization of a country....It is undeniable that a great deal of progress can be made in a short time if the majority does not rule. But that requires that a ruler or rulers be benevolent and with power so often corrupting, this idea has spawned more examples of dictatorship and despotism than wide scale prosperity....

But I digress.... My fourth and final job is to write reviews of restaurants and other landmarks for the same company for which I will begin giving tours. Each article is 800-1200 words long (a few pages) and involves both a trip or two to the place I'm reviewing as well as historical and other descriptive detail research. All said and done, the time that I put into the articles is far more than the money I earn for them. In fact, I figure I am very much doing this company a favor by essentially donating my services to them. However, the idea of writing for any sort of money is exciting to me. I figure that I have no body of published work in existence, save this scatter-brained blog, my editorial days for the Miami University student paper, and a few letters to the editor in various Ohio newspapers. So, my idea in donating my time is that I might be able to get another job writing in the future if I am able to point to the body of published work that I produced. My foot in the door, I suppose.

So far, I have written 3 reviews. One of the Jardin Botanical Carlos Thays or the Botanical Garden, a 100 year old garden of trees, plants, and flowers that supposedly exhibits the major plant life from the various regions of Argentina. The next review was of an almost 150 year old cafe that specializes in 5-0-clock tea hour that includes gigantic platters of cakes, cookies, and finger sandwhiches, as well as a fine tea selection and a boatload of artisan baked goods. The final review was of an Argentine barbecue/Spanish restaurant called Rodi Bar. They are supposedly known for their filet mignon (called lomo here) and it did not disappoint.

All in all, the assignments have been fun. It's cool to go to restaurants in the form of a critic-kind of a dream for a foody like me. It's also been good practice in the sense that it has forced me to engage in the writing process on a regular basis, which makes it that much easier to sit down and begin writing in general.

4 jobs sounds like a lot, but between cancellations for my English classes and the fact that I'm just finishing training for the guide job, I'm not as busy or stressed as it sounds. However, I could and should make things easier than they already are by giving up the English conversation classes at HP and instead finding more barter or trade deals. Maybe I could begin trading English classes for meals at fancy restaurants or more Spanish classes....