I am a workaholic - Part II

Sunday evening and I have that sinking feeling, that profound dread of what the week will bring. It is all because tomorrow is THE day of the seminar that we have been planning for weeks at work and I have done all I can to prepare my talk, even running through it in my head in the confines of my bedroom. And all I can think is what possessed me to agree to it at all?  What seemed to be a cosy seminar for students has now become a full-blown forum for academics, social researchers, prominent local figures from the ethical fashion industry and other people who 'know their stuff'. And me (who hopefully knows her stuff). In other words, I did not know what I was letting myself in for and the concept snowballed before my very eyes until it was too late to change my mind.

How bad can twenty minutes be? It is a challenge, I tell myself. But then the other half of me wonders if challenges are really necessary in life. Why do I want to take myself out of my comfort zone? Too late to consider all this now...

Next day I awake with the same feeling of dread after the inevitable dreams where everything goes wrong. The pain in the pit of my stomach only worsens as the morning goes on. At around 10am I make my way to El Centro Metropolitano de Diseño by bus, arriving in one of the most run-down parts of Buenos Aires that I have seen yet. Clutching my netbook tightly under my arm I hurriedly walk the few blocks to the centre where inside awaits the most beautiful space of sleek wood, modern-industrial wrought iron, exposed brickwork. The place is alive with activity, classes taking place, groups of people meeting over coffee, it feels creative and full of potential.

Typically I am the first to arrive of my company. No one knows if there are going to be 5 people in the audience, 20 or 60. There is no running order, no timetable, nothing. I should be used to this by now but still it irks me. The seminar starts almost one hour late with around 60 listeners in the audience, various speakers present their ideas and I still have no idea when it will be my turn. The second half of the seminar goes a little downhill; speakers have to rush through their carefully coordinated Powerpoint presentations, attempts at talks made via Skype fall apart as the sound quality deteriorates. Finally, as the penultimate speaker, I am called up to sit under the glaring lights and talk through my experiences of working in fair trade fashion. The look of horror on my bosses face when I start the talk in English instead of Spanish is palpable; it seems there was some miscommunication on this point but now is not the time to worry about it and so I plough on. Like many others, my talk is cut short as we are running well over time, it certainly is not my finest moment.

But it's done and I can breath easily again. I don't have that adrenaline-fueled high that I was expecting, just a sense of anti-climax, deflation, but best of all, relief.

Now onto the next challenge (watch this space for part III).

My name is Suzie and I am a workaholic

In London I was overworked, underpaid, always cramming my social calendar with too many things, always counting the days till the weekend and forever dreaming about THE trip to Buenos Aires where I would learn castellano; while away the afternoons in cafes sipping espressos while leafing through newspapers; hang out in bars sipping malbec, read all the books I’ve never had time to read and absorb the city like the proverbial sponge. And all those things I have done in spades (except the castellano which is definitely a work in progress).

Four months in and where am I? I have a paid almost full-time job, I am not overworked but I am definitely underpaid, burning the candle at both ends and living for the weekend. As I awoke this morning to a grey Saturday after the most splendid deep sleep I had the urge to make my way to Marks & Spencer to buy the Guardian and an almond croissant before settling down to the crossword. Instead I made coffee and toast and settled down to the Saturday edition of La Nacion to read about Guillaume y Kate and the royal wedding. Likewise, I have done the commuter run numerous times and, lost deep in my own thoughts, almost forgotten I am in BsAs. After all, the lulling motion of a traffic-bound bus and the weary faces of fellow commuters is much the same in any metropolis. But as I fall into something resembling a routine I find myself feeling more content than I have for weeks. Now I have purpose and a reason to get out of bed before 10am. Does this make me a workaholic?

While the routine is akin to my previous London existence there are certain things that keep me grounded in the reality of being here in Argentina.

Take for instance how I got the job in the first place. After several weeks of part-time voluntary work for the company I had never met Boss Lady. She writes me an email: when are you leaving Argentina / it would be great to meet you / do you have experience in making instructions for making garments, if yes I can pay you / let’s meet to discuss things. You would think this would be simple enough, but this woman is what you might call ‘elusive’. Everyday for a week I try to confirm an appointment with her but everyday there is an excuse, then I get tonsillitis which delays us another three days and I start to wonder if this was just not meant to be.

Then the interview: we meet in the Evita museum café and over tea and toast we discuss in a random cocktail of English and Spanish the endless challenges of fair trade, my time working in London, and the possibilities of me going to work in Salta with the producers that make the clothes for her company. Then she asks me how much money I need for me to stay in Buenos Aires before telling me she cannot pay me more than a minimal amount but that she will do what she can to help me find a cheaper place to live. We leave after agreeing to work together for an initial three months. Of course there is no job description as such, never mind a contract. I catch the bus home dazed, still a little weak from the tonsillitis I’ve had, and not quite sure what I have let myself in for.

The following days I am nothing short of engrossed in the task of finding the perfect place to stay for the next three months. I drop Boss Lady a quick mail during the week just to say sorry for not being in touch but I am muy ocupada with room-hunting. Her response comes within minutes:  ‘maybe you can try Craigslist [wow, hadn’t thought of that one…] or couch-surfing [yes I would really love to kip on someone’s sofa while I am working]’. That is the sum total of her assistance.

First week of work and I have not been given a proper brief for what I am supposed to be doing. One day she is sending me design inspiration ideas; the next sending me emails in English to correct at 9pm on a Friday evening. One day telling me she has magazines and fabric swatches I can borrow; the next asking me to join a team meeting at her huge apartment in one of the most exclusive neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires (as my colleagues have already informed me, she never sets foot inside the office).

I am confused. I like information, I like structure and I like boundaries.

I begin to wonder if I am just another clichéd product of the western world with our infamously over-developed work ethic, but my workmates seem to have similar doubts about Boss Lady. Perhaps she is someone who has more money than she knows what to do with and this is merely a recreational distraction for her. Perhaps I have misunderstood what we agreed to work on together and the antibiotics were still clouding my mind when we met.

Or perhaps I simply need to step back and be patient. I have studied Anthropology after all. I know about 'participant observation', the methodology that advocates a subtle level of involvement in the foreign 'society’ while maintaining a degree of distance to be able to observe and make sense of everything. So this is how I will proceed, and I keep my fingers crossed that everything will become clearer.

A welcome visitor (and a not so welcome one)

Lisa Lisa Lisa - howihavebeenlookingforwardtoseeingyou! Since the day you confirmed you had booked your flight I have cherished the thought of you here in this urban mass that I now call home! Yes, my gorgeous and wonderful friend, who I have known for close to twenty years, is here, and it gives the city of Buenos Aires a whole new lease of life for me.

Since she arrived just over a week ago we have done a lot, yet at times done little:

We have cheered with the football fans at a partido between River Plate (one of two of BsAs most celebrated teams, the other being the more notorious Boca Juniors made famous by none other than Maradona) and Banfield (Who are they? Exactly). The game was a bit of a non-starter, the players unenthusiastically dragging themselves across the pitch in the gathering darkness of a Saturday night. Both sides were lowering themselves to the all-too-common amateur pastime of throwing themselves onto the ground at the slightest tap on the shins by a member of the opposing team. Unimpressed, we left at half time in search of some better Saturday night entertainment.

We have been to a puerta cerrada, literally meaning 'closed door' which refers to the popular pop-up restaurants that chefs (and opportunists?) set up in their own homes, not dissimilar to the ones you might find in London. We chose one recommended to me by a porteña, Thai-Phillipino food with plenty of vegetarian options to cater for Lisa's needs. Once we found the place, which was well and truly in the 'burbs of the city, we were in fits of glee. First of all the house itself was gorgeous; high-ceilinged elegance with french-style shutters on the doors, the main room and the outdoor terrace, where we chose to sit, were pleasantly candlelit. And then the food: the roti bread was succulently sweet, the curry deliciously salty, the salad drowning in coriander and flavour.... Only the dessert, a fruit salad made from pomelo and an unidentifiable diced fruit, with green tea ice-cream, was slightly below par, Lisa describing its texture as being 'like snot'.

We have embraced the delights of Freddo, the Argentine chain that is a shrine to ice-creamy goodness; we have also embraced frozen margeritas, caipirinhas and Quilmes cerveza, as well as medialunas (mini croissants), pizza, and more Freddo ice-cream. Above all we have embraced delivery Freddo ice-cream brought straight to our apartment door. Never mind that you have to wait for about an hour for it to arrive, and you could have gone down the road to fetch it yourself twice in that time, that's beside the point: it comes to your door and straight to your sweaty, eager, waiting paws. In Buenos Aires you can get everything delivered: pizza, empanadas, cakes, sushi, McDonalds, alcohol, drugs (both legal and recreational), rental DVDs etc etc. In other words, it's the perfect place for hermits, the immobile and the lazy.

Sunday night, dinner at casa de Suzie y Lisa and it's the night before Lisa heads off to Iguazu waterfalls for a few days. I cook up a Delia Smith lentil Shepherds Pie (missing home-cooking? me?) for us and two friends. Through the night my throat starts to feel tender and strains at every swallow I take. I try to ignore it but it won't let me. Next morning I wake up to full blown tonsillitis and nurse Lisa goes in search of over-the-counter antibiotics. No luck, I have to force myself to move from my horizontal foggy-consciousness to go to the Hospital Aleman (very clean, organised and efficient by the way - I would recommend a visit should you be in BA with any unfortunate ailments). An hour and a half later I am back at the apartment clutching all the antibiotics and ibuprofen I need and ready to pass out on the bed again. Lisa asks me if there is any food she can get for me to keep me going while she is in Iguazu. "Don't worry Lisa, if worse comes to worst I can always get Freddo delivery", and then I am out in a drugged, restless, stupor, dreaming of dulce de leche, mascarpone, tramontana and chocolate amargo no doubt...

Living-Working-Travelling-Holidaying

What am I doing in Argentina? It's a good question; one I get asked several times a week and one I ask myself several times a day.

Well I appear to be living here as I am paying monthly rent but I am not paying any bills so that disqualifies me from getting a bank account which in turn disqualifies me from getting a job. But wait, I have a job. It just so happens to be unpaid but does that lessen the fact that I am working?

The term 'gap year' makes me cringe and 'career break' even more so. My initial plan (which has fallen to the wayside a little) was to embark on some anthropological fieldwork in readiness for a Masters on my return to London but so far it is still in the theoretical stages so I can hardly claim this is a 'research trip'. And anyway how do I say that without sounding hopelessly pretentious?

But people want an answer, the locals I meet, the other gringos and especially Jonathan from Metrobank who is refusing to send me a new debit card after I have mislaid my original one on the grounds that they don't expect their customers to take 'extended trips abroad'. Apparently the fact that I don't have a return flight to the U.K is too ambiguous. Apparently my status is too limbo-esque (if that is not a word it should be). And apparently I will be closing my Metro bank account on my return to the U.K (ha that will learn 'em). 

But for now the ambiguity suits me and I try not to think about it too much as I sit in my (rented) flat or do my (unpaid) job and stay put in BA a while longer.

Going solo in Uruguay

A goodbye hug and kiss to madre and then I am off on my lone travels for a week until we reunite in BA. It has been a few years since I traveled on my own. Where it used to fill me with nervous excitement, anticipation, and an intense feeling of freedom, now it makes me feel more of the nervous and less of the excitement. And yes, lonely too (much as I am loathe to admit it).

Eating in restaurants alone is no fun. I check my emails far too often and am unreasonably disappointed when there is nothing new in my inbox. I drink too much (bad) coffee and eat too much to distract myself. And I walk aimlessly, exploring the ciudad vieja of Montevideo. Anonymous yet not anonymous as surely I stand out, the only pale-skinned, red-haired, blue-eyed soul and this city is not so big that you can lose yourself in it.

At the hostel I am the odd one out, the only gringo. Low season being upon us, it has been solidly booked by a group of twenty or so Uruguayan university students. It’s like I took a wrong turning and found myself in a student halls of residence. The staff make an endearing effort to make me feel welcome sharing a beer with me in the lounge. Playing my namesake song especially for me is a sweet touch… ‘Suzanne takes your hand, and she leads you to the river...’, Leonard Cohen’s deep luscious voice resonates from the speaker behind me as I sit finishing my lunch just before having to leave to catch my bus north. It’s a fleeting moment of contentedness. I pack up my things and leave.

On arrival in Punta del Diablo, after finding my way through the sandy darkness from where the bus drops me off, I am met by the welcoming faces of a hostel-full of travellers. The night turns into a pizza de la parilla fest (pizza cooked on the barbeque) washed down with free-flowing home-made wine poured from a vat-sized communal bottle. I wake up the next day with a headache to match but am gently eased by the sound of the waves seeping through my bedroom window with the promise of some contented and calm days ahead.

Patagonian dreaming

Buenos Aires is addictive but a wee break to the South of Argentina comes as a welcome relief. Things I don’t like about Buenos Aires: you can drink the tap water but it tastes like bleach; it is situated right by the sea but you can’t swim in it (such a torture!); and then all the unoriginal city gripes: the traffic, the pollution, the poverty, the dangers (see previous blog entry about that). A relatively small list for such an overwhelmingly large city.

So, a holiday within a holiday with madre and madre’s other half.

Two days in El Calafate (trekking on the Perito Moreno glacier is stunning), two days in El Chalten for some lightweight trekking (for which I have put aside vanity and bought my first ever trekking shoes) and then two days on a bus heading north to Bariloche on Ruta 40. The name sounds grand, but the road most certainly is not. Mostly gravel, it means the drivers can go at the average speed of a milk float, slowing further at one point to allow an armadillo to bravely cross the road in front of us.

As we lurch up the highway on day one I wonder when the next food and toilet stop will be, the only respite from the relentlessly grinding open road. We eventually pull into the aptly named ‘Siberia’ cafe and toilet stop around lunchtime. Hunger draws us into the restaurant area where we are met with a groaning pile of fried meat empanadas, ham and cheese wedge-like sandwiches and cubes of cake. Fruit and vegetables have clearly not reached this remote back of beyond place. Ok, ham and cheese sandwiches all round then. Madre lifts the top slice of bread looking inside hopefully, willing there to be lettuce, tomato, mayo, butter, something. Nope this is minimalism incarnate, albeit with food.

We arrive in Bariloche late on day two (narrowly escaping scurvy) and drive around the lakes for the next two days. Sadly the sky is crowded with clouds and drizzle falls from the sky on both days. Well this is the Lake District and so it fittingly resembles my childhood memories of the Lake District in England. Just bigger: the roads, the mountains, the towns, the cars, the clouds, all magnified.

Now alone in a new city, a new country: Montevideo, Uruguay. Keeping my fingers crossed the sun will shine enough for me to enjoy the beaches further north.

Los ladrones

'Does this train stop at Tribunales?' a young local asks me in Spanish as I mind my own business on the station platform. At first I don't understand what he has said through a combination of my mediocre spanish ability and my mind being elsewhere. I tell him yes, then we squeeze onto the commuter-full train while he runs through the usual script: where am I from, what am I doing here, how long am I staying. Two stops later I force my way through the crowded train to exit on the other side. The stop is Callao and I am here on a mission to find the magical Citibank cash machine my classmate has told me about that allows you to withdraw 2500 pesos a go, much more than the usual 1000 peso limit, thus saving on withdrawal fees. I need to pay my rent the following day and my school fees in a few days so the rumour is worth verifying.

Reach into my handbag for my purse to swipe the door with my bank card and am met with a gaping emptiness. Nothing. I suddenly notice how light my bag feels. Wallet is gone. Must. Think.

The subte was crowded. The guy asking me questions. Can it be a coincidence? But he seemed so nice. Seemed normal. Was there an accomplice reaching his dishonest hand into my bag as I read the gringo script to the guy.

Then a mixture of feelings: anger, shame (how could I be so naive, stupid, careless?). Then trying to think of the positives: at least it happened before I withdrew £500 worth of pesos. At least they did not take my camera, my phone which were nestled cosily next to my wallet. At least there was no violence or attack; a shamefully silent, unguessable moment.

'Rule one ..... dont panic. Rule two ..... have a drink'. The advice of a comiserating friend from home when I tell him the news. Well, if you say so... I take his good advice.

Two months later and with the help of kind friends here who help me out with money (you know who you are!) all is okay and all is (almost) forgotten. I am walking in San Telmo with my new, more vigilant, grasp of my handbag and in search of a cafe for my daily dose of caffeine (although I know that the coffee is generally appalling here I still enjoy the ritual of sipping from a cup of bitterness while people-watching or writing emails. As with so many things, the idea overshadows the reality but I still cling to the idea as if I am living life through a film).

Suddenly, white foam on my bag, on the back of my dress, and a tiny woman as if from nowhere brandishing a tissue, wiping the mess one minute, pointing into the sky the next attempting to communicate to me what has happened. 'Gracias, gracias' I say, a little dazed. Then another small woman appears, also waving a wad of tissues and pointing at my handbag, at my hair which I realise has also been hit by the foam. I feel like a giant amid these two petit women and their onslaught of espanol and tissues. Suddenly it dawns on me. This could be a premeditated plot. I've heard about these kinds of gringo attacks and it seems a little odd that these two midgets appeared at my side so promptly. I take a firmer hold of my handbag, shake off the two women with one last dismissive 'gracias' and walk off decisively without turning back. 

Paranoia or carefulness? It's a fine line we gringos walk...