3/14/2011 - Buenos Aires, Argentina: Car Jacking Trannies

Ok, so I know I´ve been incredibly lazy with this whole blogging thing. And I´m pretty sure I know the reason. It´s because I haven´t really been doing anything incredibly interesting. After the ridiculously long ride from near Ushuaia to Buenos Aires, I´ve been on a break. So honestly, I´ve just been fucking lazy. For the three weeks I have been living in Buenos Aires, I don´t have a whole lot of stories to tell. That said some fun / sad / awesome / boring stuff has happened so I´ll get to it.

After arriving to Buenos Aires, I immidiately felt at home. I knew I was going to like this place. It´s dubbed the ´Paris of the South´ which I think is a pretty apt description. Aside from the generally friendly people (Parisians are notoriously rude) and incredibly tall buildings everywhere, there are a lot of similaritites. Like the great food (sandwiches!), coffee culture, public transit, and high desinity living. And from what I remember when I visited Paris a few years ago, I loved it. Therefore, in a place where I can (well almost, I guess) speak the language, and know a bunch of great people, I know I should be content here for a few months.

A couple of weeks ago in the early afternoon heat, I get into a hostel looking for a party or a few new friends to meet and hit the city. It was a long lonely week on the road. I was stoked to be around people again, but the hostel I stayed at sucked. I don´t know how it happened, but everybody in this particular hostel was kind of unfriendly. Wierd, but I´ve met so many people that live here, that I just hit up some old mates and we grab a drink the next night. It was nice and low key, but they clue me in on how they got jobs and an apartment in the city. The plan starts developing, and the next step is to get out of a hostel and save some money by couchsurfing.

I don´t know if I´ve said it before, but couchsurfing.org is the best website on the internet. If you like to travel you should be on it. Really, I´ve met so many wonderful people through that website that I can´t begin to compliment it. Anyhow, once in Buenos I hit up a few surfers, thinking I´ll have to move around for a few weeks, before I can find an apartment and settle down for a bit. Again, I get incredibly lucky when the first surfers I hit up turn out to be totally awesome people. I was greeted with an ice cold beer on a hot humid afternoon, and all three of us hit it off immediately. I originally asked to stay for three days, but after a couple of weeks, I´m still living with them. I don´t even know how I managed that because I killed thier cat. Ok, not really, but thier long hair persian cat did commit suicide. The official story is that Duncan the cat watched a pigeon from the kitchen window. Then at one point jumped out of the window, caught the bird, and fell twelve stories to his death. It was a pretty hectic morning searching for him, and investigating the crime scene.Ultimately the sad truth was discovered, and miraculously Mariana and Sol took the news rather well. They are truly fabulous and geneours people. Even today after my first real day of working a graveyard shift. They brought me home a giant cheese burger from Burger King. How fucking nice! Just incredible people. Not to mention funny, witty, and all around delightful to be around. I have no idea how I´m going to thank them when I leave. What a great network for giving me an avenue to meet such cool people.

Alright, so the original plan when comming here was to get a job, because honestly I`ve had so much fun that I blew all my money. I had already made the decision that I´m not ready to come home yet, because really it´s like as soon as I start looking at plane flights, fun time is over. I´ve got to go back to California, get a job, find an apartment, blah blah blah. Fuck that, that´ll happen in a few months when I´m so home sick and broke, I´m forced to take my claws out of this continent and retreat. So intermitienly between naps, tv, and poking around with my guitar. I do look for jobs, and somehow successfully landed one. Thanks again to craisgslit, I found a job working nights at a little hostel nearby. It´s pretty chill job. I work the graveyard shift, so the hardest part is keeping myself entertained when nobody is around. I was describing it to my dad, and I told him that I´ll work for three nights at about seven to nine hours and I´ll make almost exactly as much money as I would working two hours at my old engineering job. I think it´s hillarious, it really puts things into a great culture perspective. But really it is an unfair comparison, because rent isn´t a thousand dollars a month, and I´m not working my ass off nearly fifty hours a week. At least I´ve got some income now, but it´s not enough to survive. I was basically relying on my tax return in hopes that I´ll get a lot of the taxes I paid back. After plenty of bitching, my old company finally sends the paperwork to the correct address. I was able to do my taxes, and it´s great fucking news. Since I only worked three quarters of the year I dropped down a few brackets, and I´m getting enough of my money back to go to Brazil. I´m so stoked! Thanks Uncle Sam! It was so relieved.

After being gone for so long, I´ve become homesick plenty of times. I really do miss family and friends the most, but there´s a lot I miss about my own culture. Burritos, burgers, sushi, and pho are pretty high on the list too, but there are plenty of other things. Like local live music, driving in a familiar place, my favorite bar: The Press, more food, and living in a place where I can zip to the mountians, big city, or beach all within a few hours drive. I remember in La Paz I was watching ´Cops´ on TV, and I was stoked when they pulled over some cross dressing car thief on the 10 freeway right near where I went to college. I was hanging with Teresa at the time and was like "yeah! I used to drive that freeway everyday! And I used to live just on the other side of those bushes in the dorms!" Then proceeded to bore her with stories of college and home. I´m sure from that show she got a great impression of my home town, but whatever. It was all pretty silly, but anything that brings back good memories of places and things at home are more than welcome. Even if they are car jacking trannies from Pomona.

That said, I was ready for a nice taste of America. Good thing one of my favorite punk bands, Rise Against, is in town. I´ve seen them before in San Diego with some great friends. It was such a fun road trip, and concert that there´s no way I´m missing this show. Of course, I´m lazy and forget to buy tickets. So the night of the concert I show up, and pay an extra five bucks to the bouncer, and sneak in.  The opening bands are actually tolerable, and when the main attraction comes on the crowd is really pumped up. I´ve been to a bunch of concerts, but these kids are really crazy for this band. So, like any good American I jump right into the mosh pit, and yell all the lyrics at the top of my lung along with everybody else. After about the third song I pat my pocket and realize some really bad news. My camera is gone. I was wearing jeans in which the camera has never fallen out before, so I´m guessing it got stolen in the action. Who knows, but what´s certain is there is no way of getting it, or more importantly any of my pictures back. Fuck. Only thing I can do is enjoy the great show, and take out some frustration jumping around in the pit. It definitely works, because I´ve come to peace with my camera being gone. I was pretty pissed for a while, but looking at the bright side, I saved a ton of great pics on this blog and people tag me all the time in pictures on facebook. Also, now I get to go back to traveling the way I love. Without a camera in front of my face trying to capture a memory I´m already trying to memorize in my head. So I feel it´s not the worst loss, but it´s still frustrating about the pictures. Oh well, shit happens. Anyway, the show was fucking great and since I didn´t let it bother me too much, I had an amazing time. The band played great, played new songs, and it was loud and rowdy where I watched the show twenty feet from the band. Then in true concert style, I got a knock off tee shirt on the way out and walked home sweaty and tired. It was fucking great to get my taste of English speaking American culture. That should hopefully hold me over for a while.