The porteros

Almost every apartment building has one. Office buildings usually do too it seems. A doorman, or, here in BA, el portero. A super of sorts. A friendly face, sometimes. A guy who watches the building, the street, and the other porteros.

And before most of us get up in the morning, an army of porteros is at work cleaning the sidewalk and driveway in front of the buildings. Sometime after 6:00, and certainly by 7:00, the hoses and brooms come out. In Buenos Aires, the sidewalks need cleaning every morning; the dog poop and garbage that collects through the day is amazing. This is a city of dog owners who haven't quite picked up the global memo about picking up. It's one of the truly disgusting things about this wonderful city.

Some larger buildings have video cameras and a bank of monitors for security. Our building is a somewhat simpler operation. In fact, most of the time our building of twenty apartments shares the portero with the building next door. He is a big, friendly guy. And like his companeros, not so friendly when having his photo taken, which your faithful correspondent discovered early one morning. The matter, a trivial issue to be sure, is now working its way through the Argentine legal system.

Washing down the street itself is important for a portero too, but only in front of his building.

All of this cleaning seems to happen every day. Weekends and holidays too. It's an important job and all of us should be grateful for the work of  the porteros, here in BA, and everywhere else it happens too.

Deja vu all over again...

Sometimes you can be walking along and something looks amazingly familiar. And yes, we have seen this thing before. Somewhere else. Even I can remember, I think.



In this case, along a busy street in Hollywood (yes, Hollywood is in Buenos Aires), we stopped in our tracks to look at what someone had done to several tree trunks.

It looks much the same as what we saw in Dawson City, Yukon (over 13,000 km and five time zones north-west). We saw it first near the town's centre and then at the Midnight Dome.



Here in Buenos Aires the display promotes a Peruvian restaurant called Astrid y Gaston. In Dawson it's the work of an unnamed but generous citizen adding colour, and warmth, to life in a northern town.

Amauta Spanish School ~ No Jeem!

The Amauta Spanish School was a good experience. For Sherry, a writer, teacher and TESOL trained instructor, it was a great experience. And for me too, though my experiences were on a slightly different level.

Dirk from Hilversum in Holland

In my class there were two young lads from the Netherlands. Nice guys actually, though it will be a while until they start shaving, and they picked on me. As well, another older and more seasoned fellow, complete with hat, also from Holland, named Dirk (pronounced Deeerk). And there was a pleasant young woman from Switzerland, named Jennifer (pronounced Jennifer). Our teachers, Magali and Cesar, were both highly professional and generous.

The amazing Cesar. A wonderful teacher.

My classes began every morning with Cesar offering a greeting, and my reply always appropriate and welcomed. That was always a good start. However. Cesar would then offer a seemingly rambling  discourse, in Spanish of course, and turn to me, with an obvious, even to me, question ending in "...Jeem?"




This set into motion a response not always based on the actual question. Sometimes, it is wise to stick to talking points, an agenda, a script if you well. That might not be appropriate to language lessons. Of course if I could understand the question, my answer might have sounded just a bit more sensible, possibly even coherent. And Cesar's response to my answer would not have been, "No Jeem!" Followed of course by another mind-boggling bunch of Spanish.

There was the rather painful situation of being asked if I play sports. A simple enough question, to which I have a simple, one word answer, en espanol, "No." Alas, I thought we were talking about shopping of all things, so answered, quite well I thought at the time, and in my very best Spanish, "Oh yes, I buy groceries at Jumbo and at my local mercado, and I visit the farmacia for toothpaste and antihistamine." Cesar offered a slight pause and then, "No Jeem!" Followed by more confusing babble. In the end, and for reasons unclear to me now, I claimed to be the enforcer on a hockey team, which made the young lads from Holland treat me with a bit more respect.

Roberto and Sherry talk "tango"

And so, while Sherry was having conversations with tango instructors like Roberto, I was offering my very best "Si" response to nearly every question. Sometimes a "No" seemed to work too, though I will never know for sure. Either way, both responses always seemed to be met with, "No Jeem!"

I might have to repeat this class.

Photos by Jeem. Copyright 2013 by Jim Murray.

Cafe y facturas

The best way to start the day, even after you've already started it: cafe y facturas.

And what better than to sit outside at a neighbourhood cafe, where, if they don't always know your name, they know you.

Tormenta en la cuidad

It was the end to another sweltering day here in Buenos Aires with a high of 33 degrees. Yesterday's late afternoon sky was dark and heavy with cloud. At about 6pm we were walking towards the Subte to go to a play downtown. In the time it took to walk across the street the few drops of rain we felt turned into a deluge. We took shelter in a storefront doorway. These thunderstorms are usually short lived affairs, though this one proved different.

Throughout the city, thunder, lightning, hail and heavy rain caused traffic problems, power outages, and delays and closings to some train and subway lines. Multiple lanes of main avenues, and sidewalks too, were under water.

The national weather service, reported a seven degree drop in temperature between 6 and 7 pm, and 30 mm of rain. Wind gusts exceeded 60 km/h. The storm continued for another hour, subsiding to showers which ended near midnight. Not particularly significant numbers to people from Canada's south-west coast, but obviously a problem here.

Foolishly, in hindsight, we actually ended up taking a taxi to the Teatro San Martin where we were to see Macbeth. Surprisingly we made it in time, but the performance was cancelled due to the weather. We took a second wild and crazy taxi to a restaurant in Barrio Norte. Our taxi driver on this trip drove at a high rate of speed, without slowing for corners. To warn motorists and pedestrians alike of his approach to intersections, he flicked his brights repeatedly as he sailed through stop signs and red lights, it made no difference. His four way flashers were on continuously, negating the need for any signaling. It was a fun ride. The restaurant was forgettable at best, though the wine was nice.

The last two photos on the right are from the newspaper, La Nacion. The traffic jam is on one of the major freeways entering the city, and apparently duplicated throughout the metro region.