Archive for the ‘Non-Travel’ Category

I’m not going to beat around the bush, and I’ve said it before but Argentinian TV is pretty much universally awful. I was in a supermarket the other day and the TV in the corner was tuned to an entertainment show which consisted of 2 young trendy dudes talking to (“Do you have a boyfriend?”) and physically assessing 5 scantily clad female dancers (give us a twirl close-ups on the boobs and arse type of thing). Then a man dressed up as a monkey came on and they asked the girls which one of them was single. The lucky girl stepped forward and gave the monkey a kiss on his monkey cheek whereby he collapsed in mock-ecstasy twitching on the floor.

I am however proud to reveal that there is one light in the darkness that is Argentinian TV and that is Diana Arroz. A play on the Spanish word for rice, this advert (for rice, obviously) made me laugh out loud the first few times I saw it, and I still haven’t got bored of it. The song (which can be heard being sung and hummed all over Buenos Aires) goes “Hoy hice arroz. Lo hice para vos. Yo soy Diana Arroz.” (Today I made rice. I made it for you. I am Diana Arroz.)

I recently posted a status update to Facebook informing the world that I had discovered my local supermarket here in Buenos Aires stocks 17 types of tinned corn, which I found to be a little excessive. A couple of my friends commented that I should buy each one and review it.

Which is exactly what I am going to do. And what’s more I will document it all at CornWars!

I went for lunch with a friend a couple of days ago, we had a sandwich each, a drink and a coffee. The bill came to 128 pesos. That may not mean anything to you but had we not finished our delicious lunch, we may well have choked on it.

Everybody that has spent any length of time in Buenos Aires has stories about how expensive it has become. I first came here nearly 3 years ago when 6 of us ate (in a good but basic cafe) a main meal and dessert and had change from 100 pesos. The first thing you’re going to do is look up how much 100 pesos is. I’ll save you the bother, as of today 100 pesos is  £17.54 ($25.50 or €21.25). That makes our lunch clock in at £22.45, London prices indeed.

To put this into some sort of comparison, I went for a job interview the other day. It’s a customer-facing role for a professional company, requiring language skills and technology experience. Take home pay is 3,000 pesos a month (£526.33). If you’re sharing a decent flat and lucky enough to pay Argentinian rates (as opposed to tourist short-term rates) your rent & services will come to around half of that. This leaves you with £263 a month, that’s 10 lunches for 2. And I am, of course, one of the lucky few.

Whatever great economic progress the government is trumping, the fact remains that living here remains a struggle for the vast majority of the population (working full-time in a coffee shop pays about 1,200 pesos a month).

To illustrate this, there is a nice parallel to the Big Mac Index, the Ugi’s Pizza index, which tracks the cost of a plain Muzzerela pizza at resolutely working-class pizza chain, Ugi’s Pizza. In the last 10 years, it’s gone from 2 pesos to 16 (64% in real terms). If that’s just too depressing to contemplate, here are some great shots of people who just won’t be put off by a 16 peso pizza.

After a couple of months planning and a successful trial evening last week, we are very pleased and happy to be able to announce a new dining experience in Buenos Aires.

Real Mexican Food has finally arrived in the Argentina capital. Xochitl means homecooked food, prepared by a very capable pair of Mexican hands, you will have never tasted anything quite like it.

We can take parties of up to 8 people and are currently available Wednesday and Thursday nights. A 3 course freshly-prepared meal, costs only 60 pesos per person. For more details visit our website or drop me a line at thegringostarr [at] gmail.com

Hasta pronto!

• Only men drink alcohol, except Tia Maria which is only drunk by women
• It’s not possible to like beer and not like football
• There are only 3 things important in a women’s life: washing clothes and talking about it, cooking food using packets of processed crap for their families and having men that drink beer and watch football whistle at them in the street
• A flooded street corner is “News”. It deserves a 20 minute live segment
• Commercials that take up half the screen and have sound are to be shown during a football match.
• By law, football commentary must mention Diego Maradona every 45 seconds
• In case they forget what they are watching, it’s advisable to run a trailer for the program you are showing during that very same program
• Argentina has already won the 2010 World Cup. It’s just that the rest of the world doesn’t know it yet
• Light entertainment shows kill your soul just a little bit each time you watch them
• To be a star on Argentinian TV it’s important that you don’t actually look real

Just in case you think I’m being overly harsh on Argentinian TV, I give you this, from Senorita Gimenez herself, Argentina’s biggest TV star. This show is real, and it wins prizes.

You may have had a problem or two getting here if you used a jontyjago.com/blog link, this is because as of today the address has changed and everything has moved to www.gringostarr.net!

Nothing else has changed (although there should be in the next couple of days) – if you have any problems, let me know.

Cotopaxi is an active volcano close to Quito, Ecuador. The summits of the volcanos in central Ecuador are the furthest points from the earth’s centre due to the bulging of the earth at the equator. This is a timelapse video taken from Nasa’s APOD site which shows what happens above Cotopaxi in one night. Full explanation here.

There’s a nice article over on Going Local Travel about how the Argentinians are claiming that they invented the internet (or the word at least). Obviously this is a little bit of fun (I hope so) but it does raise the question of how we define which country invented what. We might say that it was the British that invented the railway or the French the guillotine, when in fact it was an individual from those countries that did the actual inventing.

However it can be confusing if the person doing the inventing has, at some point, changed countries. Which country can lay claim to the invention? This came up recently as I was having a discussion with an Argentine friend about the inventions that had come from Argentina. At one point he claimed that the ballpoint pen was an Argentina invention. Being a trivia nerd, I patiently explained that a Mr Laszlo Biro had been the inventor of that particular implement and that I was pretty sure (as I know 110%) that he was Hungarian, not Argentinian.

Indignantly he pointed out that whilst being born in Hungary, Mr Biro had moved to Argentina and had died as an Argentine citizen, therefore the ballpoint pen is to be considered Argentinian. Indeed, Argentina has even gone so far as to commemorate Inventor’s Day on 25th September, the man’s birthday.

Biro did indeed, with his brother, move to Buenos Aires in 1940, fleeing the Nazis. And in 1943 patented the pen in question in Argentina. However, he filed the initial patent in 1938, 2 years before moving away from Hungary. The pen was first produced and sold in Argentina as a “birome”, (the Biro brothers’ partner was another Hungarian emigré called Meyne) and it is still called by that name to this day.

Now, I’m in no position to resolve this; my gut feeling is that the man was born Hungarian but died an Argentinian so I think both countries can lay claim to him and to his legacy. They didn’t invent the Internet though, I’m not letting them get away with that one…

Last year I volunteered for 3 months for a youth club in Buenos Aires, helping out with English lessons, homework and all sorts of stuff. In November I organised (and wrote) a quiz to help raise some funds, and last week the club organised another fund-raising event and I was asked to write the questions. I’m publishing them here for your enjoyment (the answers are below in white text – highlight to see them, but no cheating!). If anybody wants to use or adapt them for another quiz, feel free. Or if you need a quiz writing, let me know!

Round One:

1. What is the currency of South Africa?
2. Which country was founded in 1948?
3. What type of animal was the first in space?
4. By value, oil is the most traded product in the world what is the second?
5. Which chess piece can only move diagonally?
6. Who was the first president of Argentina?
7. Theoretically, what is the minimum number of strokes a player needs to make to win a set at tennis?
8. The Amazon river rises in which country?
9. What was the name of the airplane that dropped the first atomic bomb?
10. How old is current teen heartthrob, singer Justin Bieber?

Round Two:

1. Geneva stands on which river?
2. Who did Diana Spencer marry?
3. On which island was Nelson Mandela imprisoned?
4. What is the capital of Canada?
5. Which film won the 2010 Best Movie Oscar?
6. How many countries does the equator pass through?
7. In which month, of which year did Neil Armstrong land on the moon?
8. Which small Norwegian town hosted the 1994 Winter Olympics?
9. How is Norma Jean Baker better known?
10. Sebastien Loeb has been the World Champion for the last 6 years in which sport?

Round Three:

1. Name the road-system that links Prudhoe Bay in Alaska to Ushuaia.
2. True or False: Elizabeth Taylor has been married 7 times.
3. The mobile phone company Nokia is from which European country?
4. Who is the CEO of Apple?
5. Who did Sirhan Sirhan assassinate in 1968?
6. On the pH scale, what number is pure water?
7. 61 is the international telephone dialling code for which country?
8. In cooking, what is the main characteristic of a dish described as all’Arrabbiata?
9. Vicentico is the lead singer of which Argentian group?
10. Which is the largest fish in the world?

Round Four:

1. How old was Elvis Presley when he died?
2. Which are the 2 ingredients of a Screwdriver cocktail?
3. In which direction can Derek Zoolander NOT turn?
4. If a piece of music contains the instruction “p”, what does that mean?
5. What do the letters HTML stand for?
6. Which has more calories – 1 banana, 1 apple or 1 orange?
7. Which South American artist is famous for painting fat people?
8. Of the 30 players called by coach Diego Maradona to the preliminary squad for the 2010 World Cup, how many currently play club football in Argentina?
9. In which year did Ronald Reagan take office?
10. According to the 2008 US Census, which is the 3^rd largest city in the USA, by population?

ANSWERS

ROUND ONE ANSWERS

Rand
Israel
Dog
Coffee
Bishop
Bernadino Rivadavia
12
Peru
Enola Gay

ROUND TWO ANSWERS
Rhone
Prince Charles
Robben Island
Ottawa
The Hurt Locker
12 (Sao Tome and Principe, Gabon, Republic of The Congo, Democratic Republic of The Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, Indonesia, Kiribati, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil )
July 1969
Lillehammer
Marilyn Monroe
10.Rally Driving
ROUND THREE ANSWERS
Pan-American Highway
False (8 times to 7 husbands)
Finland
Steve Jobs
Bobby Kennedy
7
Australia
Spicy Hot
Los Fabulosos Cadillacs
10.The Whale Shark
ROUND FOUR ANSWERS
42
Vodka and Orange Juice
Left
To be played quietly
HyperText Markup Language
1 banana
Botero
10 (Palermo, Veron, Sosa, Mercier, Blanco, Rodriguez, Otamendi, Insaurralde, Garcé, Pozo)
1981
10.Chicago (1. New York, 2. LA, 3. Chicago, 4. Houston, 5. Phoenix)

Now, this is supposed to be a blog all about my travels, rather than indulging in my nerdy gadget-love, but I’m going to make an exception and tell you all about my PowerMonkey (well there’s a sentence I never saw myself writing).

Before you get all excited and report me for primate abuse, a Powermonkey is a solar-powered charger that ensures that none of your gadgets need ever to run out of juice on that long flight or bus journey. And honestly, it’s one of those things that doesn’t need to sell itself any further, at least not to me.

I have found this thing insanely useful and whilst travelling used it pretty much every day. It’s very simple – it has a central charging unit which you charge when near a plug socket or using the solar panel. This central unit can then be used with a variety of adaptors to charge your gadgets.

2 big problems stand out – I didn’t actually get the solar charging to work. I would leave it charging in the Colombian sunshine for an hour or so, the bar on the charging unit would show power going in, but when I unplugged it, the level was the same as before. Now this could just be that I needed to leave it longer, who knows, but to be honest I was never so far away from a plug socket (the other, more traditional way of charging it) that this was a problem.

Secondly I only actually used it for my iPod. It doesn’t charge laptops (for that you need to spend another 30 quid or something for the PowerGorilla, and even then I’m not sure it charges a Mac), my camera has an external charger and the adaptor for my phone didn’t work very well. And then I lost the phone, so that was that!

However, simply being able to charge the iPod made this an absolute must-have gadget – particularly when not travelling with a laptop – thanks Rach!