Oct-2016

 

Newsletter Oct 16  Argentina

We got here on Thursday 27 of October 2016.  The plane was full (as usual) but we had Premium Economy seats which were much more roomy, and at the section front so that I could easily stand up and only 5 meters from the loo.  We took our normal Zanax pills after supper at midnight, and both slept very well and comfortably. 

​

Zanax is not a sleeping pill, but a muscle relaxant, so you just relax (wine helps) and drift off to sleep naturally, and when you wake you have none of that stiffness you normally get from sitting in an airline seat for hours.  I never take Zanax outside a plane, though Amber does once or twice a year in extremis.  It could develop into an addiction though.

​

On the Friday we were walking up to town on Bolivar when these 4 English women were all saying Hello etc.  Then we realised they were all BA stewardesses off our plane, who were staying at the Sheraton in the centre and were going to have a look around San Telmo.  They looked so different and ordinary humans out of their uniform.  One of them was particularly looking for antique clothes, so Amber told her of a lovely shop with masses of lace etc on Plaza Dorrego which is owned by one of her tennis friends.

​

We carried on into town to our money man to get some cash, and then on to Avenida de Mayo and to Cafe Tortoni, the premier old-style café, large and ornate, frequented by Borges etc.  When I was here in the 70's I used to come here a lot because they had jazz bands (Porteña etc) playing in the evenings, but now it has mostly a tourist clientele (who they?).

​

In BA waiters are mostly older men, whereas in UK they are invariably young men and women.  They are very stylish, walking around with great style, carrying large full trays at shoulder height with panache.  I think they individually buy the food from the kitchen and the drink from the bar, and are paid by the discount.

​

Then on the way back we met our friend Mercedes, who runs Casa San Telmo, the premier holiday let company there, who wanted to show us the derelict house she had bought for not very much.  It was about 1900, 4 rooms wide, 4 floors tall, and with great potential indoors.  A project, which Mercedes loves, and which Amber would also relish, but which makes me shudder.

​

It is on Chile, a block up from Amber's yoga teacher's place, and opposite what looks like a café bar, something to do with old racing cars, but shuttered.  When we were first in San Telmo it was being done up, and as we walked past you could see inside, it was very big, and there on the wall opposite was, stuck to it, a silver Mercedes 300 racing car (Fangio's) the same as Moss won the Mille Miglia in at over 100mph average speed.  I was bob-smacked, and spoke to a bloke there who invited us to the grand opening the following week.  Froilan Gonzales, a mate of Fangio's, and who had won the British grand prix in about 1950, was there!  I talked to a few people, including the owner.  When was it opening for business?   Not sure, maybe in the next month or two.   It never opened for business.  Typical Argie, he had done it just for fun, without any definite plans for its future.

​

A confusing thing about BA is that shops and restaurants generally have no signage, and when they are closed they have metal shutters, so you have no idea they are there.

​

The cost of everything is astronomical.  Last year we could boast of having a good meal at our favourite restaurant for £20 including wine.  Now prices have doubled or more, and seem to be the same as UK.  Our friend Judy Dugdale, who had a flat in town with a swimming pool, and did English language classes, and who was planning on taking Argentine citizenship, has just given up and gone to Florida.  A lot of expatriates who were living here for the cheap life must be very worried.  Still, taking the long view, in my recollection Argentina has every 10-20 years or so always swung from much cheaper than UK to much more expensive, and back again.

​

Had a conversation with our friend Seba.  He is appointed in the national judge's office, and works a 6 hour day, with one and a half months paid holiday.  Plus they get an extra 13th month salary.  They legally get time off for sickness of a family member, taking exams, and no-on is ever questioned anyway.  If they originally got the job for party political reasons, they then have it for life under the same terms.   Most people in his office hardly ever turn up for work.  And they all belong to a union, who negotiates regular salary increases.  Much much better than working in the private sector.  This is one area where Argentina is in the lead over UK, though I think we are fast catching them up.  We are all doomed!

​

Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has not made a nice quiet exit, like David Cameron.  She is still slapping on the make-up, rousing the rabble, with some success, and the right-wing want her arrested, like Trump/Clinton.  And not at all like Jeremy Corbyn.   We could probably do with one of her in UK!

​

Downloading film torrents seems to be relatively easy here in Argentina.  In UK the downloading web sites are mostly blocked by the authorities.  Here we can get The Revenant, Hail Caesar, etc, no problem. 

​

Justification?  The majority of what we download we would not pay to see, anyway.  In UK we often go with our friends Sue and Nic, who are in the film business and can get free admission at any cinema.  We also get free vouchers, from Barclays Bank or whoever.  CDs are history, and you can't buy a memory stick of a movie, and if you are going to download it anyway, it is too tempting to do it with a few keystrokes for free instead of doing it with a few different keystrokes and paying 15 quid for the privilege of getting the same thing.  I think a future system might be where you have an easy small payments system, and an automatic thing at the end of a movie (before the credits) where you can click on the number of pounds or dollars you want to pay, say $0, $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, or enter any other amount.   I would gladly give, say, $2, after seeing The Revenant.  Not a masterpiece, but I would pay $2 to support the making of such movies in the future.  Many people wouldn't, of course, but enough would to make a difference.  And some movies are rubbish, so you wouldn't want to pay anything anyway, and would not want to encourage the making of such movies in the future.  In fact you would stop it even before it even got to the payment notice.

​

Today it is raining, occasional thunder and lightning, but still 24deg.  Here it's good, you get one or two days of rain, sometimes quite heavy, and then several days of really good weather, with the warm temperature maintaining through the evening.  Not like the UK, where 85%-90% of the time it is damp, cloudy, with occasional drizzle, sometimes rain, in memory it seems to be constantly like that, with only a handful of fine days in the year.  And the dark!  Por favor!

​

Wow, what a lot I've written!  Obviously an 8 month break has allowed a considerable build-up of garbage to develop.  So, enough already!