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Siouxsie and the Banshees- "Dazzle" |
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Work has been crazy this week. The company is switching buildings soon, so they had us all move to the downstairs room while they clear out upstairs to prepare for the first round of moving. Also, I've been switched projects. Still don't know exactly how I feel about that.
January wasn't the best month. It was tough, on all levels. So to celebrate the end of it and the start of what promises to be an interesting one, a couple guys from work (Nico and Emiliano) and myself decide to go to a "tenedor libre" on friday. A "tenedor libre" is a staple of Buenos Aires life. A plentiful all-you-can-eat buffet that offers a ridiculous amount and variety of food for a relatively cheap fee. This one is my favorite. "Grant's". I think I went there on my second or third day ever in Argentina. This same one. I've been there a lot of times over the course of the last 2 and a half years. With all kinds of people. With my mom, with a group of hungry Germans, with friends from the old Hostel as well as people from school. We sit there and talk for a couple of hours about pretty much anything that comes to mind.
Nico is one of those people with a bizarre fascination with asian countries, and especially the Japanese culture. Yeah, one of those guys. He watches anime. Harbors crushes on asian chicks. He even studies their language. Combine this with the fact that he likes Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and listens to metal, and you'd think he was a basement-dwelling acne-ridden virgin otaku, precisely the kind of person I usually can't stand. But the guy is surprisingly cool -- not to mention socially adept-- for someone with his questionable interests and bad taste in music.
Emiliano is an all-around cool guy who joined the company about a month after I did. He's a bit like Jorge Bedoya from home in that he's the kind of person who'll show up at your door to help you out if you accidentally murdered a prostitute. He's the level-headed friend who shows you how to wipe your fingerprints off the scene, and he'll even hack the body in little pieces for you. Yeah. I think I've been watching too much Sopranos. Anyway, cool guy with a good sense of humor.
We eat. Oh boy, do we eat. A financial setback at the start of the week left me more of less crippled for the rest of it, surviving on the good will of others (specifically, Mariana... and Nico's credit card), so it's good to just give in to gluttony. We bump into this other Colombian guy who had come with us in our epic trip to Quilmes Beer City. As a sidenote, I am fucking sick and tired of how many Colombians seem to be flooding the streets of Buenos Aires. Everywhere I fucking turn, I hear that jarring Bogota accent. It's like shut the fuck up, go find your own country to pillage, jerks. Anyway.
Anyway, on the way back from our feast we get into an argument about cheating. It stems from a comment I make about one of our coworkers' romantic misadventures-- something like "oh, you Argentines and faithfulness". And boy, they flip out. At this point, it's a completely valid comment. I've been in this country for about two and a half years and in all this time I've struggled with the Argentinean idea that cheating is acceptable. I've come across two, maybe three guys who are genuinely care to be faithful to their significant others. Most everybody else cheats like there's no tomorrow. Not only that, but they don't give a shit. No remorse. No guilt. No fucking decency. And this bugs the shit out of me because I certainly don't think cheating is fine. I think it's one of the lowest fucking things one can do to someone else. If someone puts their trust in you that way, to just go ahead and betray that for a moment's fun? Fuck. I've been in situations where it hasn't been completely black and white, and when it's especially difficult to behave a certain way, but the few times I've had something to come clean with, I have. And we've worked it out.
Am I old fashioned? Jesus fucking Christ. Emiliano goes off in some bizarre tangent about dogs being loyal, and if I'm loyal then I'm behaving like a dog-- some bizarre nonsequitur comparing canine behavior to humans with the intention of justifying unfaithfulness or something to that effect. Even now I still have no fucking clue what he's trying to say. He's a smart guy, but he really lets me down this time. He's all over the place with the dog analogy, and then backs out with a pathetic cop-out question, "do you believe in marriage?". Whatever. That is irrelevant. I believe in respect. I believe in trust. And here this guy is trying to make me feel like some kind of old-fashioned prude because of it? Fuck that. Maybe I would've thought tales of sexual exploits and disregard for feelings and whatnot were cool in high school, but not now. It just makes me want to punch someone in the face.
Anyway. Take a taxi ride back home after that. Again pretend to be of another nationality-- Canadian. Because it's always fun to say "aboot". Come back to an apartment that is pristine and spotless-- the cleaning lady did a great job. Yes, I hired a cleaning lady to come to the apartment and clean it up on a weekly basis because I am a studenty slob and I'm too damn lazy to throw out those empty pizza boxes myself. There's about 18 pesos worth of change sitting inexplicably on top of the TV. I guess it's from coins scattered across the room. She really did do a great job. Decide to pay her extra next time she comes around.
Anyway. Sit home for a while. Change. Then take the bus and head over to Mario's where it's bad-horror-movie night. Mario is one of those guys who gets off on bad movies. It's not like he doesn't know there's better stuff out there, the guy knows his shit, he just likes knowing that he's stuffing his brain with absolute garbage. Mariana is there, as well as Alejo, Matias, Valentina and another girl I'd never met. We shoot the shit for a little while and watch "Jeepers Creepers". Well, they watch it, Mariana and I take the opportunity to have yet another argument about useless, insignificant shit on the kitchen floor. Things get mellower when a joint is passed around and the usual pseudo philosophizing about words and communication starts up. At this point, everybody's drowsy and incoherent, so Mariana and I take off to her apartment. She shows me baby pictures, we discuss the merits of the Sean Kingston song "Beautiful Girl", have sub-par sex and fall asleep to the sound of Mazzy Star.
Wake up at around 9:30 AM because Mariana has to go somewhere. I look out the window, feel the cold breeze and decide I'd like to see what this side of Buenos Aires is like in the morning. Wander about for about half an hour before I get ridiculously bored and take a cab back home. There, I find the people from the bank finally delivered my debit card. Took them long enough. Am happy to finally have it but shocked and appalled that they wouldn't need my signature. Anyway. Watch a couple Simpsons season 9 episodes and fall back to sleep 'til 5 o' clock. Wake up horrified and remembering that I needed to take a bunch of clothes to the laundry store. Put on my "all out of clean clothes" outfit and run to the laundry store. They're closed. Curse lazy laundry store people.
Decide I feel like a chicken sandwich, so walk all the way to the Coto supermarket a few blocks away. Am shocked by the incredible amount of attractive girls in skimpy outfits who seem to pick saturday late afternoons to do their shopping... in skimpy outfits. Buy all the stuff I need and get in the obscenely-sized line to the cashier. Big, black American gentleman in front of me has ridiculous-shaped shoes and head. I know he's American 'cause he paid with dollars, didn't say a word the entire time and bought Pringles. Who the hell still buys Pringles? The mentally-challenged and the homesick American. (note: I'm not saying Americans are mentally-challenged, just that nobody really buys Pringles here)
Come home and make the best chicken sandwich I've ever made. For someone with this limited culinary experience, this is a huge thrill and an enormous accomplishment, so I call Mariana up to tell her all about it. Then she lets me know that a former good friend of ours who had recently slipped out of view (and, for a short while, into the psych ward) had recently attempted suicide. Fuck.
To make matters even weirder, I find this video of my mom and my uncle being interviewed in shoddy Barranquillan TV. This has been a bizarre fucking day.
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