April 2010
2 posts
The Message Board: It's Over, Now What?
themessage-board:
Video #2
Giulia Rozzi’s series of videos about brides on message boards is hilarious. As someone who is planning on planning a wedding sometime in the near future (wow, that was about as vague as possible) I haven’t wanted to even glance at wedding message boards for fear my eyes may bleed. The only complaint I have about these videos is that Rozzi doesn’t...
March 2010
3 posts
2 tags
Quick question...
How do the men and women that wear suits to work every day handle the heat?? I’m seriously impressed when I take the subway, sweating buckets in as little clothing as is decent, and see people wearing full suits and looking comfortable with out a drop of sweat. My dad once told me that business suits are one of the most impractical clothing items ever invented because they don’t keep...
February 2010
9 posts
Curling is now sexy? →
Last post on curling today, I promise.
My fiance informed me last night that he enjoyed Twilight (the movie). He didn’t understand when I laughed uproariously, so I explained the craziness that happened in the U.S. and why I didn’t have any interest in seeing it myself (too much whining). He shrugged and said that he just thought it was “pretty good” and wanted to see New Moon. I think I may have to buy him an...
rant: so uncomfortable
I know I mentioned the strange (at least to me) bra habits of porteñas in an earlier post, but a sighting yesterday has forced me to return to the issue. Now, visible bra straps, like a regular bra with a racer back or tube top, while somewhat tacky are understandable. I generally hate using convertible bras because I find that they pinch and twist so I understand that other women think...
3 tags
Spanish is not the same as English
One of my biggest pet peeves with my English students is when they try to argue with me by saying “but that’s not how it is in Spanish!” As soon as I hear the words “But in Spanish…” I feel my ire rise. Spanish and English are TWO DIFFERENT LANGUAGES. You can’t just translate, word for word, from Spanish to English. I know that sometimes the student just...
More subte sightings
So I’ve been lazy lately and haven’t gotten around to posting about the awesomeness I’ve seen on the subte lately, but it’s been throwing too many fascinating subjects at me lately to not post.
1.) I saw my first real jumpsuit on the subte. I kind of considered the jumpsuit as a fashion urban legend: everyone has heard of it, and my best friend’s cousin knows someone...
January 2010
9 posts
subte sightings
Since my office moved I have to take the subte twice a day and sometimes more if I do something fun after work. I thought that I would see MORE crazy things than I actually do, so sometimes it’s a bit of a letdown. That said this week I saw two things that gave me pause:
A women wearing jeans, a long-sleeve black shirt and a puffy vest with a fur-lined hood. That outfit wouldn’t be so...
2 tags
And they ask me why I'm jumpy...
My boss has decided to renovate our new office by himself- if this is a good idea or a bad one only time will tell. So right now the exceedingly loud drills are actually drowning out the muffle-less motorbikes and buses on the street. Which is something I never thought would be possible.
Not. A. Peaceful. Work. Environment.
Dub d'oh! →
An interesting article in Slate about how movies are dubbed into other languages. I always kinda wondered what the process was. I don’t actually watch that many dubbed movies (if it’s dubbed it’s also pirated so I’m not so sure about the quality) but I do watch some dubbed television. My favorite is The Simpsons dubbed into Spanish. It’s actually really popular here...
You do understand what a master's is, don't you?
Last week my boss informed me that he wants to design and market a program to English teachers in Paraguay. It will be aimed at teachers who either need to brush up on advanced grammar and want some instruction on teaching techniques and literature, or teachers that already speak fluently but want to learn more about literature and educational topics. He wants this program to be intensive and...
4 tags
heat kills fashion
Today was quite a warm day (around 90 degrees), so, understandably a lot of women were wearing tank tops. Unfortunately this also mean a lot of bra infractions. I honestly lost count of how many racer-back tanks I saw worn with regular bras. Now, I understand when you don’t have a good bra to wear with a cute shirt, but you have to at least wear a nude color bra, or try to match the straps...
“Bingo! Bingo!! BINGOOOOOO!!!!”
– Admittedly insane man I passed on the subway stairs this morning. Yelled directly in my face.
December 2009
13 posts
Count
Number of times (today) I’ve checked the weather report for tomorrow for Minneapolis: 5
Number of times (today) I’ve looked up my flight information: 3
Number of times I’ve looked at the clock on my computer to see if it was magically 4pm and I could leave work: approximately 1487
Working the day you’re flying home for Christmas sucks.
2 tags
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Maldita sea...
was something I repeated over and over again this morning as I could not open the door to our new office. I am not exaggerating when I say that I waited outside of the door for 2 hours. I’m usually the first to arrive in the morning at 7:50am and my boss didn’t get there until 9:40. I simply could not get one of the keys to turn in the lock. The keys here are very different from what...
Changes
So my office has moved. I can no longer walk to work, but instead take the subway to the center of the city. Honestly, I miss the walk. Even in the rain, or when the sidewalks were crowded I enjoyed people watching. It was also nice to know that no matter what I did after work I still walked about 3 kilometers every day.
That said, once we made the move and I saw the new office I’m really...
1 tag
“Fuck ligatures”
– On the t-shirt of a teenage boy at my gym last night. I don’t even understand what statement he’s trying to make. As a former clarinet player, to me a ligature is a small device made of metal and screws that holds the reed onto the mouthpiece. I really hated playing the clarinet, so I...
“Sunshine make me laugh.”
– On a man’s t-shirt this morning.
The Big Pink, “Dominos”
“Welcome to my Princess Time!”
– A t-shirt on a teenage girl I saw while walking home this afternoon. More on the misappropriation of English later.
3 tags
Men
It’s a well-known belief that Latin American men (stereotypically) are more aggressive towards women. They have no problems yelling things at a woman they find attractive on the street, and a lot of the “dancing” that happens at clubs is better thought of as long make-out sessions. That said, most of the stuff I’ve heard have been pretty tame: “que linda!”,...
November 2009
13 posts
3 tags
Things I hear...
We live in a rather large apartment building. Fortunately we can’t hear much street noise, but we can hear our neighbors and almost everything they do. Music, television shows, when they use the microwave, a old dude’s hacking cough, when they wash dishes, etc. Once I heard someone going to the bathroom in a rather explicit way (I”m almost positive it was the hacking cough dude)....
Long week
So, you guessed it, this week has been long and frustrating, but not without its share of interesting sightings.
Every day when I go to work I walk past a pizzeria on a corner. It’s called Kentucky and has great pizza and empanadas and in the morning they have coffee and media lunas for breakfast. Every time I walk by I think about how nice it would be to skip work and just sit there...
1 tag
That above is the whopping electric bill my boyfriend and I received for the last two months. Yes, the total is AR$6.75 or about U$1.74. For two months! We do live in a small apartment and we try to avoid using the air conditioner, but still! I know that a lot of it is due to subsidies by the federal government, but, honestly, Argentina, I wouldn’t mind paying U$10 or even U$20 if that...
Flooded
So it suddenly started raining very hard here which means one thing in Bs.As.: the streets will be flooded. They have problems with the sewers so they don’t drain the streets well, especially at intersections. Of course it started raining about 15 minutes before I had to leave work and I had a private English class scheduled for directly after work. As you know I usually walk all the way...
So the picture above is of the lovely public botanical garden in the Palermo neighborhood of Bs.As. It’s large and, as you might expect, filled with plants, flowers, a few greenhouses and, interestingly, cats (people drop unwanted cats there, the place is crawling with them). However, I was recently told that the garden was closed for several months a year ago for a very surprising...
“I am so excited I can hardly stand it!!!!”
– My mother, in response to the news that my boyfriend received a tourist visa to the U.S. Adorable.
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Banes of my existence
If there’s one thing I hate about living in the big city it is this:
Pigeons are disgusting, dirty and disturbingly not afraid of humans. That’s the worst because all animals should feel the fear of God when I walk by instead of flying at my head.
But if there is one thing I hate more than pigeons themselves it is the woman who feeds them copious amounts of corn everyday on a...
Catch up + rant
So the past few days have found me running around this fair city quite a bit for different reasons (note: Argentine immigration is ridiculous) so I’ve fallen behind on my posts. Also, due to the fact that whenever I was out and about I was basically running to my next destination I didn’t really pay as much attention as usual to bloggable sights. I will say this however, the Argentine...
3 tags
Hair cut
So I just got back from getting my hair cut (which is awesome and super cheap here, by the way, I paid less than $4) and I had to add an extra post. Imagine a rather overweight woman + a red, transparent tube top + a black halter bra and what does that equal? My jaw dropping just a little. I mean, wearing a halter bra with a tube top is bad enough, but even owning a red, transparent tube top? And...
3 tags
Two-fer
So last night I had to work my old shift at work (long story) which means that I worked from 4pm to midnight. Walking home at midnight can be a mixed bag in terms of ridiculousness because in general there are less people out on the street, but the crazies tend to come out at night. Anyway, last night was pretty tame, but I spotted the following:
I watched an ambulance, complete with flashing...
October 2009
2 posts
2 tags
