'Settling' in Buenos Aires

South American Hell

Summer in Buenos is too hot to sleep.

Even if you do manage to collapse exhausted in a pool of sweat, the AC on, you will doubtless be very rudely awoken, the house shaken to its foundations by a violent clap of thunder that sounds more like a Baghdad car bomb.

In Ireland, as children, we used to count potatoes to work out how far away the storm was. Flash! One potato, two potato, three potato, four. Thunder! Four miles! These storms are right there; hardly a potato chip could squeeze between the lightening flash and the belly wrenching thunder as you wake in panic like an Arab kid in Abu Ghraib.

I came back to the flat yesterday to find my neighbors outside which usually means a power cut. One of my neighbors is a ham radio freak, I tried to shuffle by but he trapped me in friendly Porteño style. He had another joke. He always has a joke when there’s a power cut. I failed again to catch the meaning in its entirety, understanding only that Lucifer or St. Peter (not quite sure), doles out various quantities of buckets of shit to an Argentine, a Mexican and a guy from the USA as they pass the fiery portal.

Oh no…

I had really only stopped to see whether the elevators were working again but now I found myself trapped listening to the end of the joke desperately deciphering meaning from context. The friendly geek, in an effort to accomodate me, switched into English but this made matters worse, ruining his comedic timing. There are few languages as unintelligible as Porteño English learned in silence from ham-radio manuals.

The barrel shaped neighbor used a British translation technique, HE RAISED HIS VOICE, the grammar perfect, the nouns unintelligible. Finally he switched back to Spanish for the punch line and belly laughed at his own joke.

I’m at sea. Standing uncomfortably feigning a smile as the geek looks around to his neighbors for reaction; they’ve doubtless heard the joke before in its pure Spanish version, they weren’t listening. I give up desperately shuffling jigsaw fragments of logic in a vain attempt to deduce humor. To this day I have no idea why the Argentine guy avoids spilling the bucket on himself, but I had manage to deduce that the elevator, the water and the electricity were inoperative.

Joy is mine!

Desperate electrical workmen interrupt us by tearing 1950’s fuses from a box in the wall beside us. I use the excuse to sneak away, with another polite smile, to start my long walk up 14 flights of stairs to my sweaty apartment.

Come to think of it Porteño English is a bit of a problem in economics classes too. The European names of mathematicians and economists (mostly German when you think about it), are mangled into the strangest concoctions only understandable to someone fluent in River Plate Spanish.

Krugman seems to survive intact, but they like him.

I used to intervene, asking the lecturers to write the names so that I might recognize the author and look them up later. This technique added shame to confusion, the teacher trying in vain not to misspell on the whiteboard so I stopped asking. Later, I tried another technique trying to be helpful. I would re-pronounce the name: “Ah! You mean LIEBNITZ!” I rapidly gave that up too; there was no connection between the noise that came out of my mouth and their mathematician they all knew and loved. The word I had uttered had no meaning and the class just assumed it was something unitelligable from me out of context in my bad Spanish which further added to the confusion. Now I just glance at my neighbor’s notes and fix the spelling in silence.

I need to escape the heat so while the Porteños go south to their “countries” in Patagonia it is off to the lands of hard currency for me. No more non-flushing toilets! Instead I shall try to put some shekels together to fund my ridiculous lifestyle. I’ve been thinking about limo driving and taking paparazzi shots of drunken celebrity sex but I’ll probably end up technical writing.

I take a plane to San Fran at the end of the week, give a shout if you have any better suggestions and a happy Christmas to all.

Posted by Tony Phillips at December 14, 2006 11:29 AM