After a short meeting in the center of town this morning, I accepted a job teaching English 10 hours/week. The meeting was a second interview of sorts. What it felt like, though, was an interrogation. In fact, I left feeling as if I'd just been paroled by a prison board.
The issue was that the boss felt I was being flaky. She wanted to be sure that I wasn't going to quit after a few days or take something better that came along. And she said it in a way that was kind of accusatory, as if this had been my plan all along. She sighted my insistence on hearing back from other job opportunities as evidence for my lack of interest in the job.
Ok, so she was right to be a little suspicious. The job is not extremely important to me. The pay is more or less equivalent to U.S. minimum wage and the possibility that I might have to travel to different locations every week to work for only a few hours at a time does not excite me. The two reasons I am interested in this job are 1. To learn more about teaching English as a second language and 2. Meet more Argentinians. Further, as it turns out, I will have an opportunity to prepare Argentine students for the writing sections of the GRE and GMAT.
Going back to the interrogation, errr, meeting. Here's how it went down....
Interviewer: So Patrick
Me: Yes
Interviewer: (She closes the door) I sense that you are not very serious about this position. I question your level of commitment. You keep saying that you are waiting to hear about other jobs. To me that means that we must be a last resort or something that you plan to do if you can't find another job. Is that true?
Me: No. The reason I'm waiting to hear back about the other jobs is that I want to know what my options are in general and then make a decision as to which jobs I want and how much I would like to or can work for each.
Interviewer: So these other jobs, they are for teaching English as well?
Me: No, the job I'm waiting to hear about is as a tour guide and writer for a travel website.
Interviewer: So the other jobs are not for teaching English.
Me: No
Interviewer: (Sternly) So Patrick
Me: Yes
Interviewer: If you accept this job, do you give me your word that you will work to the end of the year and not just quit when something you want to do more comes along?
Me: (Commitment, Gulp) 10 hours a week
Interviewer: Because we are dealing with people here. And if we schedule with these people, we will tell them that Patrick is going to be the teacher and what happens if Patrick is not the teacher?
Me: I understand
After the meeting, I made a list of when I could and could not work and gave it to the folks at the front desk so that they could prepare my schedule for the coming week. I noticed that everyone in the office seemed happy and friendly with each other except when I was around. I was the kid who had just left the Principal's office after having been given a stern talking to. No one dared even make eye contact with me out of fear of my new boss's peripheral wrath. I didn't quite know what to make of it. Hadn't I just been given a job? Not only that, hadn't I just been offered one of the high paying test prep positions normally reserved for the vets? And instead of being treated like a new member of the family, I was treated as a tenderfoot whom the Colonel had reluctantly dropped into a platoon of Battle hardened green berets.
Normally, when you greet and later leave Argentinians, it is customary to embrace and kiss each other on the cheek. Men too. There were no smooches on the way out today. Ni smiles. I was the bad new boyfriend who had brought the daughter home past curfew and mom was now scornfully seeing me out the door.
Out on the street again, walking quickly, annoyed and bothered by the meeting, I thought of all the things I could have said. It was as if I had just been in a heated political argument or a spat with a significant other. After the fact, you think of a gazillion things you wished you'd have said that, had you said them, would have left you feeling less victimized. For example:
'With all due respect, I just got here a week ago. You wanted me to make a year long commitment on the first day I was here. Would you make a year long commitment after one day of searching for a job? That's almost like deciding you're going to marry after the first date. Do you really want to hire someone who would make such a hasty decision?'
or
'Look, I ate ramen for over 7 years so that I could have a bit of leverage in the job world. Shortly, you're going to begin making an easy 30% profit from me and you're giving me a hard time? Maybe you could at least say, 'Thanks for deciding to work with us''.
My guess is that my new boss has been burned before. There are a ton of English language schools in Buenos Aires. Educated folks from English speaking countries have their choice, more or less, of where to work. Yes, it would be easy to drop one job and move on to something with a few more perks or pesos/hour, especially if you're going back to your home country and don't care about having created a flaky reputation in Buenos Aires. To combat this, my interviewer now employer seems to have taken the approach of treating new job applicants, or at least me, as guilty until proven innocent. The effect I suppose is that I will be shamed into sticking with this job. If I quit, I will feel that I have gone back on my word and may in addition incur her disapproval.
But the strategy backfired. I left the office today with a bad taste in my mouth, feeling far less loyal to my employer than I might have if she had treated me kindly, with respect, as a new member of the family. My new boss could take a lesson from one of the best employers I've ever had, Ron Wehner, the owner of the Great Harvest in Upper Arlington. Ron has employed many people in his bakery over the course of 10 years and has likely been burned. Nevertheless, he still continues to treat new employees as new family members, makes a special effort to get to know each one, and to be generous in any way he can. After a few months of working for Ron, I no longer needed the extra money for which I had originally taken the job. However, I didn't want to quit because I respected Ron so much and wanted to honor my commitment to him. So, every Saturday morning for 9 or so months, I woke up at about 3 a.m. and hauled my you know what into his bakery to prepare the sweets and later knead dough until I was slap happy. Ron is genuinely a great guy, but he's also smart enough to know that you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. I believe that's one reason he has not only been successful at retaining employees, but also why he has been able to run a successful bakery in the era of the South Beach and Adkins Diets.
Clearly, I start my second job with reservations, but also with the understanding that my employer is smart to be wary of footloose travelers. My hope is that when I fail to confirm her initial suspicions, we can be friends....
Monday, June 30, 2008
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Ode to La Cocina
Instead of giving a rundown of my weekend, which thus far has been chock full of boring errands and prepartions for my teaching gigs, I instead want to talk about a subject near and dear to me, my humble Buenos Aires old school kitchen.Of course, it's not my kitchen. It's the guest kitchen of my hosts, Argelia and Guillermo Moabre (great folks by the way). I fell in love with this kitchen the first time I stepped foot in it. No, it would never win an HGTV award for kitchen of the year, let alone kitchen of the BC year. Nevertheless, it is a truly enchanting place.
The kitchen is a long galley style rectangle of concrete with three very old windows which do little more than let faint light in through their cloudy glass. The door is heavy steel with an opaque window of its own. The walls are tiled in a floral/wheat design. One table with a humble cloth sits next to the door. On it sit a basket of assorted jellies, a bottle of malbec wine, a few granny smith apples, and instant coffee. 
Against the opposite wall are two gas burners on a tile table. They stand alone as the only method of warming or preparing food.
Against the opposite wall are two gas burners on a tile table. They stand alone as the only method of warming or preparing food.
Next to the burners is a large laundry room style tub for cleaning dishes. On top of it leaning against the wall rests an old cutting board and above it are dish drying racks.
The refrigerator is half sized and on top of it sits a microwave, new this year and very out of place.
A hot water heater stands out in the corner and next to it sits a large piece of granite on top of a cabinet filled with pots, pans, silver ware and utensils in rickety drawers. Above this screwed into the wall are two metal cabinets filled with plates, bowels, and platters.
The kitchen feels authentic and basic. It's the type of room that's clearly not meant to impress, but instead to be a functional space in which to prepare and enjoy nourishment. It's not connected to a heating or cooling source and is therefore at the mercy of the elements, but it has cross ventilation and stove burners to buffer it from the seasons. To me, it symbolizes getting back to basics, removing myself from the modern era, taking a step back in time, and enjoying silence to cook, enjoy food, think, read, and write. In the middle of a hustle and bustle South American City, this 100 year-old kitchen feels as though it should be located in the Argentine Pampas or the rustic hills of Campo Basso, Italy. The lights are dim and in the winter it is chilly and sometimes cold, but preparing meals and spending time here gives you the sense that you don't need much more, that life can be easy and simple again. I like to think that this is the type of kitchen that Thoreau or Emerson would have been drawn to, or where my goat herding ancestors once huddled over a mug of hot tea or twirled plates of steaming pasta before heading back outside to the mountains to work.Wednesday, June 25, 2008
1 down, 3 to go?
One of my goals in coming to Buenos Aires was to learn to relax and not find myself in the position of having 4-5 jobs, as was the case for my last 9 months in Columbus. Despite my efforts to simmer down, I find myself again potentially having 3-4 jobs. Do I need the jobs? No, not really. I need one good job so I don't have to dip into savings (and I think I have that and will explain later). The reason I think I need to take all these jobs is this... I feel like I'm in the all-you-can-eat dining hall at Miami University again and I can have any and as many deserts as I want. They've all been laid out before me for the taking and if I don't eat them, the lunchlady is just going to throw them all away (I unfortunately know this to be a horrifying fact because I was at one time a university dining hall errr lunchman). Anyhow, what I need to tell myself is that I don't have to be the Takeru Kobayashi of jobs, that choking down 70 hours of work a week is probably about as healthy as choking down the same number of hotdogs, or deserts for that matter.
So I'm trying to practice restraint, to force myself to take on just enough work to get by, more or less, and to concentrate instead on opportunities for relaxation, friendship, language learning, and exercise.
That said, after a second interview this afternoon, I accepted a job teaching two ex-patriot kids from the U.S. I'll be teaching Reading, Science, and History for a total of 6 hours/week on Tuesday and Friday afternoons and will also have paid planning time. The curricular parameters within which I'll be working are very general and the job should allow me almost full creative and philosophical autonomy in creating lesson plans. The cherry on top is that 10 or so hours/week of work should in itself pay for my basic living expenses in Buenos Aires. Exito (or success for the Spanish challenged).
I strode happily out of my interview feeling as if a backpack of worries had been lifted from my shoulders. I had one good job and even if I decided to do nothing else, It was going to be ok.
On the way back to my host family's place, I stopped in at a great natural food shop on Arenales street in the Recoleta neighborhood (I believe it's called 'Natural Buenos Aires'). I was planning on treating myself to my favorite sweet in Buenos Aires, a Lemon/honey iced cake that for some reason is supposed to be healthy because it's low cal and doesn't have any sugar in it. I missed this cake the entire time I was in the U.S. and was looking forward to inhaling one as soon as I stepped off the plane. The good thing is that it still exists. The bad is that my health food shop was out of them today and won't have any back in until Monday. Demand for this cake was high last year when I was here. Health food shops would sell out of them on the same day the shipments came in and then be out of them until the following week. For whatever reason, the makers and distributors still haven't figured out how to meet the demand....In any case, I've had a dream of introducing this item to the U.S. Any venture capitalists out there, please write me privately and we'll talk. Just kidding, but not really:)
During the remaining walk home, I thought about how I might incorporate the rest of the jobs I'd been offered into one week, to shove them all into the suitcase of my life here so that I might be able to jump on it and latch it shut. Could I fit it all together and make it work? Could I do one or two of the jobs on the weekends? Would I be ok with the idea of working on the weekends? Did I come here just to work, and for not much money at that?
These questions swirled around in my head, combined with my desire to avoid the conflict that comes with telling someone, 'No, sorry, I can't do it'.
In the coming days, the plan is to figure out what I can and can't do. To figure out what I want to and don't want to do. And to find out more about each of the remaining opportunities to better inform my decision.
Also, I promise, on request of my sister, to continue to take pictures in the hopes of providing you a respite during my long winded entries.
So I'm trying to practice restraint, to force myself to take on just enough work to get by, more or less, and to concentrate instead on opportunities for relaxation, friendship, language learning, and exercise.
That said, after a second interview this afternoon, I accepted a job teaching two ex-patriot kids from the U.S. I'll be teaching Reading, Science, and History for a total of 6 hours/week on Tuesday and Friday afternoons and will also have paid planning time. The curricular parameters within which I'll be working are very general and the job should allow me almost full creative and philosophical autonomy in creating lesson plans. The cherry on top is that 10 or so hours/week of work should in itself pay for my basic living expenses in Buenos Aires. Exito (or success for the Spanish challenged).
I strode happily out of my interview feeling as if a backpack of worries had been lifted from my shoulders. I had one good job and even if I decided to do nothing else, It was going to be ok.
On the way back to my host family's place, I stopped in at a great natural food shop on Arenales street in the Recoleta neighborhood (I believe it's called 'Natural Buenos Aires'). I was planning on treating myself to my favorite sweet in Buenos Aires, a Lemon/honey iced cake that for some reason is supposed to be healthy because it's low cal and doesn't have any sugar in it. I missed this cake the entire time I was in the U.S. and was looking forward to inhaling one as soon as I stepped off the plane. The good thing is that it still exists. The bad is that my health food shop was out of them today and won't have any back in until Monday. Demand for this cake was high last year when I was here. Health food shops would sell out of them on the same day the shipments came in and then be out of them until the following week. For whatever reason, the makers and distributors still haven't figured out how to meet the demand....In any case, I've had a dream of introducing this item to the U.S. Any venture capitalists out there, please write me privately and we'll talk. Just kidding, but not really:)
During the remaining walk home, I thought about how I might incorporate the rest of the jobs I'd been offered into one week, to shove them all into the suitcase of my life here so that I might be able to jump on it and latch it shut. Could I fit it all together and make it work? Could I do one or two of the jobs on the weekends? Would I be ok with the idea of working on the weekends? Did I come here just to work, and for not much money at that?
These questions swirled around in my head, combined with my desire to avoid the conflict that comes with telling someone, 'No, sorry, I can't do it'.
In the coming days, the plan is to figure out what I can and can't do. To figure out what I want to and don't want to do. And to find out more about each of the remaining opportunities to better inform my decision.
Also, I promise, on request of my sister, to continue to take pictures in the hopes of providing you a respite during my long winded entries.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Clouds Over Buenos Aires
A blog entry with a title describing the weather is not a harbinger of a worthy post. I'll keep it short tonight. It was a cloudy and drab Buenos Aires day, very typical of the winter here. I allowed myself to sleep in late and ran a few unimportant errands in the morning before heading off to my final interview in the afternoon for a job teaching English in the center of town.
Walking all day through the streets of Buenos Aires is likely equivalent to smoking at least half a pack of cigarettes. Por eso, even though you're getting plenty of exercise dodging kamikazee cab drivers and killer whale buses, it's still an unhealthy activity. Buenos Aires is a tempting city. There are so many fun and stimulating places to explore that you want to walk around all day, bend around every turn to see what new unique shop or breathtaking corner apartment is next. It's like cheesecake that you just want to keep eating, but really shouldn't. I realized this today as I began to feel the effects of walking too much in the city, which can manifest in the form of carbon monoxide poisoning (headache, achiness, feverishness). If you're not already a smoker or used to dirty air, it's even harder. Being from Ohio, one of the dirtiest states in the union, I thought I'd become hardened to dirty air. BA is on a different level. The colectivos or buses that growl past you every 15 seconds spew out giant unfiltered plooms of diesel exhaust and every other Argentinian Cole Trickel driven cab chokes the air with oil exhaust from his gunked up engine that has been pushed too hard for too long.
Luckily, the carbon monoxide poisoning feeling lifted by the time I'd made it to the downtown office where the interview was to be held. It didn't, however, lift soon enough for me to have my wits about me. As instructed, I took the elevator up to the 9th floor of the building. There, I found a sign on the door 'American Forum', the name of the school by which I was to be interviewed. Inside, I found a number of classrooms with a conference room in the middle. No one was tending the conference type room in the middle and I decided that the reason for this must be that my interviewer was going to be late due, as she had told me previously, to a meeting she had scheduled before mine.
I waited and waited, almost fell asleep in the unattended conference room in a big leather swivel chair when it occurred to me that someone might be waiting to interview me in a different office on the 9th floor. The only other office was one with a sign that read 'Argentinian FORO'. My brain told me 'Argentinian Foro does not equal American Forum' and I couldn't think of any acronym for FORO that means a school for teaching English, but my common sense told me that I should at least walk in the office and see if that's where someone was waiting to interview me......And it was.
By this time, I was a good...20 minutes late. A great first impression for the supposed hardworking Midwestern American that I tried to portray myself as in my resume. As an aside, this was dually noted at the end of the interview when my interviewer said, 'I thought to myself, what kind of person comes to an interview for a job late?'
In spite of this, the interview went well, except for the most important question. The deal or no deal question. I was asked to explain how I would explain to an Argentinian the importance of the present perfect tense. The thought of not being able to answer the question did not make me nervous for the sake of possibly not getting the job. I wasn't particularly excited about this job in light of the prospects I checked out yesterday. However, there was a pride issue at stake and I did feel a challenge. I was the wannabe writer a year or so shy of a doctorate being asked a relatively simple grammar question and I was totally stumped. What the heck is the present perfect tense? Think Think. So what did I do? Here's how it went down...
Interviewer: So what do you do if an Argentinian says to you, why do I have to know this stupid present perfect tense. In Spanish, we just use the past tense.
Me: So do you mean, how do I explain the importance of different grammatical rules in general and why we should make an effort to use them? (this followed by a wise and long winded answer about the importance of cultural and linguistic acceptance even if it doesn't seem to make sense, paralleled with the seeming senselessness of masculine and feminine nouns and modifiers in Spanish).
Interviewer: Very good. But now tell me specifically, how do you say to an Argentinian that the present perfect tense is important?
Me: Do you mean philosophically. I'm not quite sure what you're getting at, could you say it another way? (As if to imply that the shortcoming was hers because her English wasn't good enough to convey the question)
Interviewer: Maybe I'm not expressing the question well. Here's an example. Argentinians say I had worked at this job for many years instead of I have worked at this job for many years. How do you expalin why the difference is important?
Me: (Score! an example. I don't know what present perfect tense is but I can figure this example out. I put my head down for 5 seconds to think and came up with the answer.) I had worked implies something that occurred in the past that is no longer the case. I have worked implies something that happened in the past, but continues.
Interviewer: Very good.
Cost of an undergraduate and two graduate degrees: $50,000. Cost of a one-way ticket to Argentina: $500. Ticket on the subway to get a job as an English Teacher: 90 centavos AR. Almost being stumped with an easy grammar question by a non-native English Interviewer: Priceless.
For some reason, the interview ended with me being offered the job. Granted, it's peanuts compared to what educated folks make in the U.S., but it's actually pretty darn good job in Argentina. I felt bad for not being able to muster the excitement about the offer and for not seeming as grateful as I probably should have when the interviewer explained that in 2 months, I might be able to ask for an extra 2 pesos per hour of work. The fact is, though, that I'm not desperate (yet) and teaching English for what to me is still minimum wage would be more for the experience than as a cash generator.
Anyhow, I was happy to have the option and did my best at the end of the interview to express my gratitude and to somehow undo any signs of pretentiousness I had conveyed. The interviewer explained to me that the option existed to work part time or full time and that I need only tell her what I was interested in doing.
I decided to walk home instead of taking the subte. I cut across Cerrito Street downtown past the perpetually closed for rehab world famous Teatro Colon Opera House and took a left at Avenida Cordoba, a street that would more or less take me straight home after a 3 or so mile walk up one of the busiest streets in Buenos Aires. I've always been partial to this particular street because it contains more health food shops and restaurants than any other in Buenos Aires. I hadn't walked up it since last year and was eager to see how my old haunts were doing. I did wind up stopping in a few old favorite stores and peering in the windows of Lotus and other granolay cafes, but what impacted me more this evening was the eery sky mixed with the perpetual motion and energy of Buenos Aires. The clouds were moving slowly but noticeably across the horizon with the distant winter sunlight breaking through meekly, just enough to paint soft oranges and pinks. Mix with this the rush hour of heavily scarved Argentinians rushing through the sidewalks and ascending elevators to refill the city's apartments. The smell of meat thrown on grills, the steam from which rose up past the neon store lights and on to the heavy winter clouds. The sensation of rain without it ever materializing. And me moving through the middle of it all, happily out of context.
Every different weather pattern and sky mixes with the city's vibe to create a new sensory soup of the day. Today's was something special that I'd never tasted in BA or any city for that matter. It felt like any number of first time experiences I had when I was a kid. But somehow it was even better because it was a more conscious recognition that it was indeed a special moment and feeling that would not soon be matched. It's moments like these that undo all of the negatives of having uprooted my life to move to the other side of the world....
Walking all day through the streets of Buenos Aires is likely equivalent to smoking at least half a pack of cigarettes. Por eso, even though you're getting plenty of exercise dodging kamikazee cab drivers and killer whale buses, it's still an unhealthy activity. Buenos Aires is a tempting city. There are so many fun and stimulating places to explore that you want to walk around all day, bend around every turn to see what new unique shop or breathtaking corner apartment is next. It's like cheesecake that you just want to keep eating, but really shouldn't. I realized this today as I began to feel the effects of walking too much in the city, which can manifest in the form of carbon monoxide poisoning (headache, achiness, feverishness). If you're not already a smoker or used to dirty air, it's even harder. Being from Ohio, one of the dirtiest states in the union, I thought I'd become hardened to dirty air. BA is on a different level. The colectivos or buses that growl past you every 15 seconds spew out giant unfiltered plooms of diesel exhaust and every other Argentinian Cole Trickel driven cab chokes the air with oil exhaust from his gunked up engine that has been pushed too hard for too long.
Luckily, the carbon monoxide poisoning feeling lifted by the time I'd made it to the downtown office where the interview was to be held. It didn't, however, lift soon enough for me to have my wits about me. As instructed, I took the elevator up to the 9th floor of the building. There, I found a sign on the door 'American Forum', the name of the school by which I was to be interviewed. Inside, I found a number of classrooms with a conference room in the middle. No one was tending the conference type room in the middle and I decided that the reason for this must be that my interviewer was going to be late due, as she had told me previously, to a meeting she had scheduled before mine.
I waited and waited, almost fell asleep in the unattended conference room in a big leather swivel chair when it occurred to me that someone might be waiting to interview me in a different office on the 9th floor. The only other office was one with a sign that read 'Argentinian FORO'. My brain told me 'Argentinian Foro does not equal American Forum' and I couldn't think of any acronym for FORO that means a school for teaching English, but my common sense told me that I should at least walk in the office and see if that's where someone was waiting to interview me......And it was.
By this time, I was a good...20 minutes late. A great first impression for the supposed hardworking Midwestern American that I tried to portray myself as in my resume. As an aside, this was dually noted at the end of the interview when my interviewer said, 'I thought to myself, what kind of person comes to an interview for a job late?'
In spite of this, the interview went well, except for the most important question. The deal or no deal question. I was asked to explain how I would explain to an Argentinian the importance of the present perfect tense. The thought of not being able to answer the question did not make me nervous for the sake of possibly not getting the job. I wasn't particularly excited about this job in light of the prospects I checked out yesterday. However, there was a pride issue at stake and I did feel a challenge. I was the wannabe writer a year or so shy of a doctorate being asked a relatively simple grammar question and I was totally stumped. What the heck is the present perfect tense? Think Think. So what did I do? Here's how it went down...
Interviewer: So what do you do if an Argentinian says to you, why do I have to know this stupid present perfect tense. In Spanish, we just use the past tense.
Me: So do you mean, how do I explain the importance of different grammatical rules in general and why we should make an effort to use them? (this followed by a wise and long winded answer about the importance of cultural and linguistic acceptance even if it doesn't seem to make sense, paralleled with the seeming senselessness of masculine and feminine nouns and modifiers in Spanish).
Interviewer: Very good. But now tell me specifically, how do you say to an Argentinian that the present perfect tense is important?
Me: Do you mean philosophically. I'm not quite sure what you're getting at, could you say it another way? (As if to imply that the shortcoming was hers because her English wasn't good enough to convey the question)
Interviewer: Maybe I'm not expressing the question well. Here's an example. Argentinians say I had worked at this job for many years instead of I have worked at this job for many years. How do you expalin why the difference is important?
Me: (Score! an example. I don't know what present perfect tense is but I can figure this example out. I put my head down for 5 seconds to think and came up with the answer.) I had worked implies something that occurred in the past that is no longer the case. I have worked implies something that happened in the past, but continues.
Interviewer: Very good.
Cost of an undergraduate and two graduate degrees: $50,000. Cost of a one-way ticket to Argentina: $500. Ticket on the subway to get a job as an English Teacher: 90 centavos AR. Almost being stumped with an easy grammar question by a non-native English Interviewer: Priceless.
For some reason, the interview ended with me being offered the job. Granted, it's peanuts compared to what educated folks make in the U.S., but it's actually pretty darn good job in Argentina. I felt bad for not being able to muster the excitement about the offer and for not seeming as grateful as I probably should have when the interviewer explained that in 2 months, I might be able to ask for an extra 2 pesos per hour of work. The fact is, though, that I'm not desperate (yet) and teaching English for what to me is still minimum wage would be more for the experience than as a cash generator.
Anyhow, I was happy to have the option and did my best at the end of the interview to express my gratitude and to somehow undo any signs of pretentiousness I had conveyed. The interviewer explained to me that the option existed to work part time or full time and that I need only tell her what I was interested in doing.
I decided to walk home instead of taking the subte. I cut across Cerrito Street downtown past the perpetually closed for rehab world famous Teatro Colon Opera House and took a left at Avenida Cordoba, a street that would more or less take me straight home after a 3 or so mile walk up one of the busiest streets in Buenos Aires. I've always been partial to this particular street because it contains more health food shops and restaurants than any other in Buenos Aires. I hadn't walked up it since last year and was eager to see how my old haunts were doing. I did wind up stopping in a few old favorite stores and peering in the windows of Lotus and other granolay cafes, but what impacted me more this evening was the eery sky mixed with the perpetual motion and energy of Buenos Aires. The clouds were moving slowly but noticeably across the horizon with the distant winter sunlight breaking through meekly, just enough to paint soft oranges and pinks. Mix with this the rush hour of heavily scarved Argentinians rushing through the sidewalks and ascending elevators to refill the city's apartments. The smell of meat thrown on grills, the steam from which rose up past the neon store lights and on to the heavy winter clouds. The sensation of rain without it ever materializing. And me moving through the middle of it all, happily out of context.
Every different weather pattern and sky mixes with the city's vibe to create a new sensory soup of the day. Today's was something special that I'd never tasted in BA or any city for that matter. It felt like any number of first time experiences I had when I was a kid. But somehow it was even better because it was a more conscious recognition that it was indeed a special moment and feeling that would not soon be matched. It's moments like these that undo all of the negatives of having uprooted my life to move to the other side of the world....
el dia de las entrevistas or day of the interviews
Yesterday I had three job interviews throughout the city. I was exhausted at days end and didn't have energy for a post, but I'd like to hit the highlights so to speak before I post anew tonight.
The first interview was at 10:30 a.m. in one of the best neighborhoods in Buenos Aires, Barrio Norte. The job is to teach two kids from San Francisco a few days a week. The entrance to the building was stately, but unassuming with a serious looking security guard in the ante room. Despite his stern demeanor, the guard let me in without any questioning and told me to go to the first floor. I responded with, 'Which apartment on the first floor?' And he said nonchalantly, 'The entire first floor'. I've never known anyone to have the entire first floor of an apartment building in Buenos Aires... The maid/housekeeper let me into what was a truly amazing pad. High ceilings, cavernous rooms, cool furniture, detailed moldings, stunning windows. Incredible. The mother whose children I was to teach arrived shortly thereafter. She appeared unpretentious and made me feel comfortable from the start, which was odd in my experience with people who live so well. We talked for about an hour and a half and shared our educational and political philosophies and it was clear that we were on the same page. To be honest, I hadn't been excited about the idea of teaching children from the states in Buenos Aires until I realized that the job would entail a good deal of freedom to create lesson plans based on my philosophy of education, cool people to work for, a limited amount of work, and pay similar to what I would make in the U.S. My interviewer and I left the apartment together, she to the grocery and me to my next interview. On the way, we chatted about where to find good seafood in Buenos Aires. Apparently, you have to go to specialty stores and should only buy fish on Wednesdays and never on Mondays. Also, you should buy based on smell, not on sight. My interviewer, hailing from the Bay Area, was not impressed with BA's seafood offerings, but being from Ohio, I think I'll be impressed with just about anything that isn't frozen. My interviewer also told me about auctions where I can buy cheap, vintage furniture. Apparently, there are a number of furniture auction companies and churches that do this type of thing and it's the in-the-know way of picking up cheap and sometimes cool stuff in Buenos Aires. This will be great for me since I'll be moving into an unfurnished apartment in a few weeks and will need to find a dinner table, chairs, couch/futon, bed, mattress, and maybe a coffee table and bedstand.
My next interview was at 1pm in a cafe with the owner of an apartment rental/sales/management company. I was to meet the managing director for coffee to talk about the job. It turned out that I had a few minutes to eat a quick lunch before moving onto the cafe and while I was doing so at the house of my host family, my host mom informed me that the owner of the apartment in which I was interested was in town and wanted to meet me to show me the place. I had 20 minutes to get to my next interview but keeping in mind that my interviewer was Argentinian and therefore would probably be late, I ran to my new apartment to meet the owner and check out my future digs. The apartment is on a semi-busy street only blocks away from my host family and still in my favorite neighborhood. It's located on the 7th floor, has a large balcony with a fantastic view that looks down a long, narrow, and only semi-busy street called Paraguay. The windows in both the living room and bedrooms are floor to ceiling length, the floors are parquet wood, the bathroom has a full length bath and a window above it with a great view, and the kitchen is galley style and por lo menos is not a kitchenette. The truth is that the place is small, needs fixing up, and the balcony is a little scary perched so high above the city. However, I liked it plenty and the price is right at about 430/month or so. Apparently, I can get high speed internet for about 4 dollars per month and cable is only slightly more per month. The ownder told me that the apartment will be cleaned and fixed up in 2 weeks time. I won't hold my breath...
After 15 minutes with the owner of my future apartment, a nice 30 something guy who lives in a province 300km away, I ran to my next interview. I was late, but as predicted, my interviewer wasn't there-score. I thought for a moment that I might be stood up, but after about 10 minutes, a rather stunning Argentinian woman walked into the cafe to greet me. It wasn't much of an interview. That is, she more or less tried to sell the position to me because she can't pay me much and I would be the only native English speaker in her office and someone who could best connect with clients from the U.S. That in itself, made me a hot prospect. I quickly realized that there was no need to sell myself, that I need only ask questions about the job and under what circumstances I would be hired. She indicated that the company could sponsor me with a work visa, would give me a free cell phone to use, and would allow me to teach the kids from San Fran two days a week. She also suggested that there were opportunities to advance...A trusted person to take over the management end of the business would be desired at some point in the future. It all sounded good to me. The most important aspect of this experience would be learning about the BA real estate scene and seeing if I could turn it into a livelihood. I left the interview somewhat quickly and told my interviewer that I would write by Wednesday to accept or decline the position. After thinking about it a bit more, I realize that I forgot the answers to or forgot to ask a few key questions such as, how long would I be expected to work during the day? Where would I be expected to work from? After I learn the business, can I work from home? What exactly will I be doing on a day to day basis? So, I need to have these questions answered before I say ye or ne to this job. What she's willing to pay would not be worth rotting away in an office all day just to learn a few things about real estate in BA. However, if there was an amount of freedom and independence within the job, then I'd be love to do it.
The last interview was in the center of town at a famous tango cafe on Plaza de Mayo street called Cafe 36 Billares. I was to meet a young couple with a laptop. When I first applied for the job, I had the sense that it was a long standing reputable tour guide company looking for serious applicants. The truth was somewhat different but refreshing. After insisting on walking and then running to get to the location, I wound up being 10 minutes late, a great first impression. Apparently, however, this means less in Argentina than it does in the states. At the back of the cafe, I quickly spotted the young couple, both of whom weren't wearing business attire and seemed a little quirky to be sure. After just a few minutes of chatting with them, I realized that yes indeed they were both quirky and eccentric, one more so than the other. But, I really like them. The woman was from Brazil, but spoke probably better English than I do and she's never been to an English speaking country. The guy was from the South of England and acted as his partner's laid back and rational foil. The company was forming as a result of the expansion of this British guy's tour guide business. He was getting more offers for tours than he could handle and so decided to expand by hiring guides and writers to fill out a website to attract travelers. This guy's fledgling business focuses on a niche of people who want small semi-private walking tours of the city. People who don't have much time, but whom want to learn a great deal in a short period. The interview was long but fun. Of all the interviews, this couple knew the most about me. They had clearly done their homework on my resume, my writing samples, and my answers to questions they had posed in previous emails. Despite the fact that I felt they were playing more cards than they had, I was impressed and felt that they were certainly smart, detail oriented, and ambitious enough to one day have a successful business. The job would be giving walking tours of the city and writing short pieces for their website to attract customers. I would likely be writing more than giving tours until September while the base of business was being increased and while the low season, winter here, passed. They expressed 3 or so times how much they enjoyed my writing sample and so it seemed then that they might offer me a position writing pieces for their website. I'm excited about the idea of writing for money in general and I told them as much, that I was more interested in producing a body of work on display than I was about making a ton of money from it. Maybe this wasn't the right thing to say, but it's the truth.
I left the interview again feeling like I had formed a connection with my interviewers. They were a bit weird and eccentric, but so am I. I came to Buenos Aires in search of more freewheeling intelligent risk-taking, and ambitious people and this couple certainly fit that bill.
I took my now favorite old school subway car back to my side of town and on the way tried to make sense of the potential opportunities before me. I liked all of them, but couldn't figure out how to make them fit together without making my life a crazy mess of jobs as it has been for the past year in Columbus. Ideally, these 3 jobs would add up to a 40 hour work week and allow me to combine doing 3-4 things I'd really like to do in this city: write, walk around, learn the real estate business, and keep a foot in the world of education/psychology. The coming days will tell whether I'm able to negotiate this...
The first interview was at 10:30 a.m. in one of the best neighborhoods in Buenos Aires, Barrio Norte. The job is to teach two kids from San Francisco a few days a week. The entrance to the building was stately, but unassuming with a serious looking security guard in the ante room. Despite his stern demeanor, the guard let me in without any questioning and told me to go to the first floor. I responded with, 'Which apartment on the first floor?' And he said nonchalantly, 'The entire first floor'. I've never known anyone to have the entire first floor of an apartment building in Buenos Aires... The maid/housekeeper let me into what was a truly amazing pad. High ceilings, cavernous rooms, cool furniture, detailed moldings, stunning windows. Incredible. The mother whose children I was to teach arrived shortly thereafter. She appeared unpretentious and made me feel comfortable from the start, which was odd in my experience with people who live so well. We talked for about an hour and a half and shared our educational and political philosophies and it was clear that we were on the same page. To be honest, I hadn't been excited about the idea of teaching children from the states in Buenos Aires until I realized that the job would entail a good deal of freedom to create lesson plans based on my philosophy of education, cool people to work for, a limited amount of work, and pay similar to what I would make in the U.S. My interviewer and I left the apartment together, she to the grocery and me to my next interview. On the way, we chatted about where to find good seafood in Buenos Aires. Apparently, you have to go to specialty stores and should only buy fish on Wednesdays and never on Mondays. Also, you should buy based on smell, not on sight. My interviewer, hailing from the Bay Area, was not impressed with BA's seafood offerings, but being from Ohio, I think I'll be impressed with just about anything that isn't frozen. My interviewer also told me about auctions where I can buy cheap, vintage furniture. Apparently, there are a number of furniture auction companies and churches that do this type of thing and it's the in-the-know way of picking up cheap and sometimes cool stuff in Buenos Aires. This will be great for me since I'll be moving into an unfurnished apartment in a few weeks and will need to find a dinner table, chairs, couch/futon, bed, mattress, and maybe a coffee table and bedstand.
My next interview was at 1pm in a cafe with the owner of an apartment rental/sales/management company. I was to meet the managing director for coffee to talk about the job. It turned out that I had a few minutes to eat a quick lunch before moving onto the cafe and while I was doing so at the house of my host family, my host mom informed me that the owner of the apartment in which I was interested was in town and wanted to meet me to show me the place. I had 20 minutes to get to my next interview but keeping in mind that my interviewer was Argentinian and therefore would probably be late, I ran to my new apartment to meet the owner and check out my future digs. The apartment is on a semi-busy street only blocks away from my host family and still in my favorite neighborhood. It's located on the 7th floor, has a large balcony with a fantastic view that looks down a long, narrow, and only semi-busy street called Paraguay. The windows in both the living room and bedrooms are floor to ceiling length, the floors are parquet wood, the bathroom has a full length bath and a window above it with a great view, and the kitchen is galley style and por lo menos is not a kitchenette. The truth is that the place is small, needs fixing up, and the balcony is a little scary perched so high above the city. However, I liked it plenty and the price is right at about 430/month or so. Apparently, I can get high speed internet for about 4 dollars per month and cable is only slightly more per month. The ownder told me that the apartment will be cleaned and fixed up in 2 weeks time. I won't hold my breath...
After 15 minutes with the owner of my future apartment, a nice 30 something guy who lives in a province 300km away, I ran to my next interview. I was late, but as predicted, my interviewer wasn't there-score. I thought for a moment that I might be stood up, but after about 10 minutes, a rather stunning Argentinian woman walked into the cafe to greet me. It wasn't much of an interview. That is, she more or less tried to sell the position to me because she can't pay me much and I would be the only native English speaker in her office and someone who could best connect with clients from the U.S. That in itself, made me a hot prospect. I quickly realized that there was no need to sell myself, that I need only ask questions about the job and under what circumstances I would be hired. She indicated that the company could sponsor me with a work visa, would give me a free cell phone to use, and would allow me to teach the kids from San Fran two days a week. She also suggested that there were opportunities to advance...A trusted person to take over the management end of the business would be desired at some point in the future. It all sounded good to me. The most important aspect of this experience would be learning about the BA real estate scene and seeing if I could turn it into a livelihood. I left the interview somewhat quickly and told my interviewer that I would write by Wednesday to accept or decline the position. After thinking about it a bit more, I realize that I forgot the answers to or forgot to ask a few key questions such as, how long would I be expected to work during the day? Where would I be expected to work from? After I learn the business, can I work from home? What exactly will I be doing on a day to day basis? So, I need to have these questions answered before I say ye or ne to this job. What she's willing to pay would not be worth rotting away in an office all day just to learn a few things about real estate in BA. However, if there was an amount of freedom and independence within the job, then I'd be love to do it.
The last interview was in the center of town at a famous tango cafe on Plaza de Mayo street called Cafe 36 Billares. I was to meet a young couple with a laptop. When I first applied for the job, I had the sense that it was a long standing reputable tour guide company looking for serious applicants. The truth was somewhat different but refreshing. After insisting on walking and then running to get to the location, I wound up being 10 minutes late, a great first impression. Apparently, however, this means less in Argentina than it does in the states. At the back of the cafe, I quickly spotted the young couple, both of whom weren't wearing business attire and seemed a little quirky to be sure. After just a few minutes of chatting with them, I realized that yes indeed they were both quirky and eccentric, one more so than the other. But, I really like them. The woman was from Brazil, but spoke probably better English than I do and she's never been to an English speaking country. The guy was from the South of England and acted as his partner's laid back and rational foil. The company was forming as a result of the expansion of this British guy's tour guide business. He was getting more offers for tours than he could handle and so decided to expand by hiring guides and writers to fill out a website to attract travelers. This guy's fledgling business focuses on a niche of people who want small semi-private walking tours of the city. People who don't have much time, but whom want to learn a great deal in a short period. The interview was long but fun. Of all the interviews, this couple knew the most about me. They had clearly done their homework on my resume, my writing samples, and my answers to questions they had posed in previous emails. Despite the fact that I felt they were playing more cards than they had, I was impressed and felt that they were certainly smart, detail oriented, and ambitious enough to one day have a successful business. The job would be giving walking tours of the city and writing short pieces for their website to attract customers. I would likely be writing more than giving tours until September while the base of business was being increased and while the low season, winter here, passed. They expressed 3 or so times how much they enjoyed my writing sample and so it seemed then that they might offer me a position writing pieces for their website. I'm excited about the idea of writing for money in general and I told them as much, that I was more interested in producing a body of work on display than I was about making a ton of money from it. Maybe this wasn't the right thing to say, but it's the truth.
I left the interview again feeling like I had formed a connection with my interviewers. They were a bit weird and eccentric, but so am I. I came to Buenos Aires in search of more freewheeling intelligent risk-taking, and ambitious people and this couple certainly fit that bill.
I took my now favorite old school subway car back to my side of town and on the way tried to make sense of the potential opportunities before me. I liked all of them, but couldn't figure out how to make them fit together without making my life a crazy mess of jobs as it has been for the past year in Columbus. Ideally, these 3 jobs would add up to a 40 hour work week and allow me to combine doing 3-4 things I'd really like to do in this city: write, walk around, learn the real estate business, and keep a foot in the world of education/psychology. The coming days will tell whether I'm able to negotiate this...
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Buy Starbucks
Today, I woke up at about 11:30 after having slept almost 14 hours. It's rare for me, but considering that I'd traveled for a day and a half straight without much in the way of sleep, it was needed. After starting the day with a late brunch, I mapped out a route to check out the sites of my 3 interviews on Monday. The first stop was a school for teaching English in the center of town. The interview with this company is on Tuesday, but the office was on the way to my other destinations so I decided to check it out first. On the way, I snapped what I thought was a cool pic of a mirror windowed office building opposite three different styles of apartments.On the way, I also took note of the prices of meat at the cheaper parillas, or grills. There has been a lot of hype about the increase in food prices in Argentina due to the 'paro del campo' or farmer protests over high export taxes. From my hasty survey of prices, it appears that the cost of meat has risen slightly, although increases in pesos clearly mean less to me than Argentinians. See below.
This is all in pesos. Bife de chorizo is more or less a high quality strip steak, I believe. 20 pesos is about 6.50 USD. Chorizo is sausage for approx 1.30 USD. And for a little under 3 dollars, you can get a 1/4 of a grilled chicken. At least at this particular parilla, the meat is still a bargain.
Speaking of meat, Burger King is working its way into the BA food world and to compete with McDonalds and capitalize on Argentinian's love for carne, they created the following. Eat your heart out five dollar footlong. Meet your daddy Big Mac. I'll stop there:)Yes, that's 4 all beef patties with ham on the top. How Portenos stay so skinny, I'll never understand.
As an aside, speaking of restaurants working their way into the BA food seen. Starbucks opened its first store in the Alto Palermo shopping center recently and there are still long lines out the door every day. The most shocking thing about this is that BA is a city of great coffee and cafes on every block. Now all of a sudden Starbucks opens up a shop and they beat every cafe in the city??? The lesson here is that Starbucks has a great BRAND. And it is cannoted with the U.S., pop culture (ie Sex and the City) and a slew of movies. Translation: Starbucks may have lost it's growth engine in the U.S., but the rest of the world might be plenty thirsty. I will be checking the price of SBUX stock tomorrow to see if it's still cheap. I recommend the same for all of my geeky stock buddies out there.
I anticipated seeing left over protesters/demonstrators at the Plaza de Mayo but saw only trash, trampled plants and foliage, and banners demanding veterans rights. Despite the talk of political tension, which there certainly is, granted, I saw nothing of the sort surrounding La Casa Rosada.
Toward dinner time, I took an amazing old school subway train back to my side of town and after hopping off, practically ran a good mile or two to try to get to the laundry mat near where I'm staying to pick up my clothes in time for my interviews tomorrow. No such luck. The laundry mat closed at 5 and I was there at 6. Luckily, they open up 2 hours before my first interview tomorrow so I won't have to rush out to buy pants and a shirt at Alto Palermo Mall (Which for my stock trading friends is traded on the NYC stock exchange and appears to be doing quite well-the Starbucks is located on the 1st floor).
Before my next trip, I grabbed a loaf of fresh bread at my favorite bakery, Tutti Pan (Which more or less means all different kinds of bread). I'm a fan of pan del campo, it's an italian style peasant loaf that costs me about 60 cents straight from the oven. And yes Ron (my former boss, friend, and owner of Great Harvest Bakery in Columbus Ohio) I will take pictures of the bakery for you:)
The evening ended with a long walk to my first interview location of tomorrow morning, a swanky apartment building on the border of the Recoleta and Barrio Norte neighborhoods, next to the British Embassy. On the walk, I passed by my old Spanish language school and was flooded by memories, good and not so good of my last long-term trip to Buenos Aires. It made me reflect that I feel wiser this time around, still excited but a little less wide-eyed and a little more grounded. The city still feels charming and adventurous, but the reality of actually having to live instead of merely vacation here is quickly settling in....
Saturday, June 21, 2008
1st Day/Long Day
This is me in my room at my host family's house after a day and a half of travel. The smile came easily, a combination of relief and excitement.All of my flights were on-time and reasonably comfortable. The 9 and a half hours I spent at the Miami International Airport allowed me time to make calls to friends and family, catch up on reading, and get some exercise by walking laps around the airport. The long flight from Miami was remarkably comfortable. I slept as well as could be expected for such a flight and the airplane was brand new, with video screens for every passenger that offered games, movies, and music. I chose to do none of these things and even turned down dinner so that I could attempt to sleep amongst the three screaming children surrounding me. As an aside, it's unnerving to watch the expressions of people around whom babies are being seated on long airline flights. It's as if they'd just been told that they would within minutes come down with a short-term stomach flu: Sadness followed by resignation to the fact that the next 10 hours will not be easy ones. I arrived in Buenos Aires and quickly identified my bag by its broken wheel and the big stupid looking dolphin on the front of it. I'd recently purchased this $9.99 masterpiece after a bargaining session at Marcs, a general store in my hometown of North Canton, Ohio. I was very prideful of this deal up until the moment that the bag's right wheel broke on the first leg of my journey. Then, as I took the same bag off the baggage carousel in Buenos Aires, the second wheel snapped off as if it had been glued on with art class Elmers glue. Luckily, the zipper held, but in lesson, that's what you get when you pay 9.99 for a suitcase. My second bag I couldn't find. Taking a lesson from a January trip in which I had valuables stolen at the EZE airport, I had my duffel bag, the one with more expensive items, cellophane wrapped so that no one could get into it. The problem is that many people have cellophane wrapped bags and they all look the same. So, if you don't have your name on the bag, it can be really difficult to identify it (yes, duh). After finally finding the bag by tearing away the cellophane to reveal the cheap brand name, I headed over to customs(aduana) and for the first time on a trip to Buenos Aires had to put all of my bags through the x-ray scanner (EZE is cracking down on people importing expensive foreign made goods, especially technology, into the country). I was stopped for my laptop and was worried for 30 or so seconds that I would have to pay a 50% tax to bring it into the country. However, I turned on my stupid American no hablo espanol act and when asked if the laptop was used or new, responded with the truth (used), and was allowed to go free (which I did quickly before the customs official wanted to take a closer look at my laptop or the various mp3 players I had in my bag that I was planning to give to my host family's kids as gifts) Argentina charges high import taxes on foreign goods to encourage people to buy only products made in Argentina. I don't blame them, especially considering the state of the U.S.'s trade deficit with China and the impact that has and will continue to have on the strength of the dollar. However, I can't say that I don't enjoy my cheap laptop, despite the heavy price the U.S. has paid for such things...
Outside of Aduana, a driver waited for me with a sign with my name on it. On the way to my host family's place, we chatted about the U.S. presidential election and the Paro Del Campo in Argentina. I'll reflect more on our conversation in a future post.
I was greeted at my host family's house by my great host mom, Argelia. She and her husband and two girls live in a giant 100-year-old European style house with 3 floors, a huge terrazo used for grill outs in the summer, and apartment guest rooms separate from the house. I spent 2.5 months last summer/Argentinian winter at their home while taking Spanish classes. Now, I'm back for about 2 weeks until I move into an apartment that Argelia's friend found for me. Argelia and I talked, drank tea, and snacked on cookies all morning as her husband and children wandered down the stairs at different hours to greet me.
After chatting with Argelia and then later with her brother and sister-in-law, I ventured out from the house to pick up groceries, check out the site of my next apartment, have clothes ironed for interviews, and to get some wool sweaters dry cleaned. Despite the talk of food prices increasing substantially, which they have, food is still very affordable in Argentina. I was happy to see that I can still buy my favorite torte de calabaza (a pumpkin pie with a layer of mozarella cheese and carmelized onions) for slightly more than a dollar. On top of that, everything else appeared to be pretty darn cheap. My shopping list included a large box of rice, vinegar, a large bottle of soy sauce, eggs, cue tips, and shampoo all for about $9 USD. At the lavadora or laundrymat, the cost of having 5 items professionally ironed was about $2.25 USD. And finally, the price of having 3 sweaters dry cleaned was a costly $8 USD.
After the errands, I ended my evening with a walk around my old neighborhood and enjoyed the 50 degree first night of South American winter.
This picture was taken at about 6pm in La Plaza Guemes. As usual, kids were playing soccer and skateboarding outside the steps of a grandiose basilica.
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