The Ants Are Eating The Orange

We just got back from Parque Tres de Febrero with the kids. It was very beautiful. But damn, it's hot. 34 degrees. I don't know if this is usual for this time of year. I was expecting 22.

We found an old merry-go-round that was something right out of a David Lynch flick. It was made of old faded green and red wooden boards and crudely drawn imitations of Mickey and Minnie and Mighty, an overweight Jerry, and a variety of other blatantly disregarded copyrights.

The kids loved it. We paid 5 pesos to a guy sitting in a hot little shack next to the dilapidated coin-operated helicopters and airplanes and he got out and spun the wheel into motion and played eerie Argentinian pop while the kids circled round and round on a boat and then, a bus.

We stopped for jugo de manzana and Olive chased the birds. When she'd fall and I'd help her up, she'd say, "gracias" and "de nada." The locals watching her run around like a little hooligan thought this was rather amusing.

We saw rows of ants in the grass carrying sticks and leaves ten times their size. Holden fed them some of his orange.

He's speaking longer and longer sentences now. Today, I think was the record when he looked up and said: "The ants are eating the orange."

Then he stepped on them.

I blame the Ant Smasher App we used to keep him occupied on the plane.

Going To The Zoo

We live two blocks from the zoo. Our first day here, we went hunting for elephants, lions, zebras and giraffes.

Differences

One of the great things about exploring a new world is taking in the subtle differences that makes it distinct from your homeland.

Here are a few key cultural idiosyncrasies.


1. There is no consistency in building materials. Houses are made of red brick, covered in cement block, plaster and spray-painted corrugated aluminum. Sidewalks are a madman's mosaic of slippery sleet, street stones, Lego blocks and holes. It's like they patch up anything with whatever is around.

2. Everyone jaywalks. This makes complete sense to me. Everyone, everywhere should jaywalk.

3. In Buenos Aires, you pay for your fruits and vegetables separately from your groceries at the corner store and market.

4. You can't take a step without fearing for dog poo.

5. Everywhere you look, you see over-tanned former beauty queens.

6. None of the streets run parallel but off in their own directions with no regard for an overarching order.

7. Here, you'll see five workers and twenty pedestrians watch a man in a green vest climb through trees and swing from power lines like a monkey, cutting down branches with a chainsaw.

8. There are mist machines in park. These things rule. We need some of these in Canada. Another good idea for kids: Fenced in sandboxes around playgrounds to keep them in and the kittens out.

9. I stumbled across a youth gang smoking cigarettes, drinking beer by the litre and trying to look bad-ass downtown. They were about 10. Adorable. I took their photo, but they didn't really like that.

10. Couples necking on park benches. They're everywhere. Where else do you see that? When do you use the word necking?

I dig it.

In a phrase, Buenos Aires is More Mad Max than Mexico.

Old Is New

South America feels like a new corner.

This place is more second world than I expected, with graffiti on every spare surface and tangled electrical lines and uneven roads and blaring horns. There are yellow signs warning of motorcycle riding purse snatchers - or women riding motorbikes. No one speaks English. No one knows for sure.

In our little old lady's apartment, the phone and Internet dont work - so that was a huge disappointment. Our key didn't work either - so we were prisoners in our own home (you need the key to get out too) until I banged on the building manager's door and spoke to his wife or daughter or sister about how I have a key but the key's no good and I need a new key and they should call this number for a key and something about a key. Between wild-eyed gestures and inane repetition, somehow it made sense and they gave us a working piece of metal. Venturing out to get food in flip-flops I slid all over the slick stones and nearly broke my neck.

More by packing oversight than anything else - we brought our Vitamix blender with us.

So at least there will be juice.

The Trip Over

We left Vancouver Jan 31st, 2012.

It was a crazy-long trip. The plane was late into Toronto and ever later leaving, adding hours upon hours on a stationary plane. There was a lot of time to sit and think about how long we'd been sitting. There was time to get twisted and to go a little mad. These pretzels aren't working. Where's the foam on my headphone? I can't hear in my ear. What? What the hell?

While we were scratching at the exits, the kids were doing great. They slept most of the 24-hour journey. They played with games and coloured straws and chatted with our Chilian neighbors and said "Hi" and "Hola" to almost everyone on the plane.

There was one major tantrum in the Santiago airport, but other than that they were great little travellers.

Camilla met us in BA, but like everyone so far spoke less English than we spoke Spanish so we blundered through with gestures and cryptic strings of un-conjugated verbs and French, sorta French.

The moment we arrived at our apartment, a wicked lightening storm began, with relentless rain. It was a massive storm. 30 traffic lights went down in the city that night.

I hadn't slept at all. I was sick. Maria didn't rest much either. We were exhausted. When we hit our place, we got back that twitching look that only parents of newborn twins can know. We circled the bed slowly, like survivors on an island watching their rations disappear.

It all worked out though. In the end, we took shifts until the kids fell asleep and then crashed until morning.

Where Are We?

Okay, I guess the first place to start is where we are.

I'm sitting at an old mahogany table under a gaudy glass chandelier in a heavily mirrored two-bedroom flat in Palermo. It's a little old lady's haven complete with a crystal decanter of sweet sherry. I know cause I tried it. It has cheap brown replica antique furniture from the 70s and wooden crosses everywhere.

I like it.

There are fake plants adorning the gazebo outside that blasts in sunshine. The windows have heavy white plastic shutters to keep out the nuclear explosion of sunbeams too. I wrenched those suckers wide open. We're on the top floor and the light wants to crawl up the walls and dance on the furniture of this damp, cramped space, and I'm all for it. Everything is exposed. Maximum sunlight. I like it.

Right now it's 4 degrees and rainy and dark and grey in Vancouver. People are huddling in the gloom and mould and wet and thinking about how they want to kill their neighbours. And their neighbours are thinking the same. I hate that city this time of year.

That's why we wanted to leave in February. It's the worst.

It's summer here. I like summer. And I like this neighbourhood.

The best part of Palermo is the parks. Five parks in five blocks. That's why we chose this place and the cheesy old lady furniture and the cramped quarters and the crazy blinds. We wanted location and that location meant we are two blocks to the zoo, the botanical gardens, a great big park called Las Heras, and the Japanese gardens.

We are in the middle of park-land. It's great for the kids.

Mike Is Coming

I sent this campaign out to the creative directors, copywriters, art directors and fellows (and fellowines) in general that I most admire in Buenos Aires.

English Copywriter in Buenos Aires

I am an English copywriter in Buenos Aires.

In a former life, I was an English copywriter in Hong Kong. That's when I really got into writing blogs, for better or worse.

I've been here three days. And I don't really know much about advertising in Argentina besides the fact that they do some great work.

Is this the reason we're here? No. Well, no. Maybe. No. I'm not sure anymore.

Um. We like the climate and we want to learn Spanish too. And it seems like a neat place. And we like steak. But the ads were a big part of it. For me at least.

I came here without knowing anyone. I barely speak Spanish, having taken five months of lessons twice a week for an hour and a half a shot. But in my short time here, it appears that I know more Spanish than most people know English and that's cool. It's the perfect place to learn.

So this makes it a way crazier venture than when I came into Hong Kong hoping to score a job at a 4As ad agency without knowing anything, really. Because at least there they spoke English, somewhat, and my Cantonese was restricted to swearing and things that people shouted at me, like Fie Dee La (faster) and Ho Sun Foo (work harder).

Actually, what makes this even more ridiculous is that I've dragged my whole family into this one. Before, it was just me. All I had to do is keep trying. Now, I have my wee twins, two-year-old Holden and Olive and my fiance/girlfriend/wife-to-be/baby-mama/lover Maria. So that's a lot more pressure to make things work.

The good part is, I still have my business back in Canada. And by working remotely, I can keep the fires burning. Such is the beauty of the Internet and the modern age.

Either way, as a Buenos Aires English copywriter, I hope to shift a pitch in the radar of the big agencies and hopefully pick up some work. I'll tell you about my plan in the next post.

February 4th, 2012, 2:39 a.m.

We've been here two nights. This is our third. And they just hooked up our Internet about six hours ago.

So now, finally, we're rolling: Communication-wise at least.

The point of this blog is two-fold.

One, it will keep as a diary of sorts. Maria can upload pictures to keep you up-to-date with our goings-ons in fine pictorial form and I can write a few things here and there to offer a glimpse of our world if you are at all interested.

Two, it's going to help me organize my thoughts and collect my observations in a place less likely to be lost to fire, water or fallout damage twenty years from now.

That's about it. In previous blogs I've set out elaborate missions and plans, and one thing I've learned is that if you tell the world what you want, you are just as likely to have people get in your way as you are to find similar spirits. So I'll keep my personal agendas under my hat, and hopefully the kind kindreds will steal a glimpse when I'm walking in the wind and point my pointed shoes the right way.