Red wine in Buenos Aires, and other glories

I love Buenos Aires, with the food and the wine and the people and their outrageous accents, like characters in a Fellini film. Here I'm sitting at a beautifully laid table, awaiting the pouring of the vino.

And there it is! Wine has left the bottle. The fellow who organized this event gives the proceeds to charity, and we buy a bunch of wine and that goes to charity too. His charity of choice is a school in a disadvantaged corner of Argentina, not blessed like we were at this get-together.

The really weird bit of all this is it's part of a hobby I've gotten into, through a website called FlyerTalk. It's at http://www.flyertalk.com/. It's a forum for people who are trying to maximize frequent flyer miles. I know, I'm a nerd. This is not news to anyone reading this blog.

I'd gone to Argentina for a little break, right after having been in Cambodia for work. The timing was too close - I think the jet lag stuff that I used to mock is now beginning to catch up with me. I arrived with a head cold, an attitude, work to finish, and money worries. What I forgot to bring were a coat, boots, and sweaters. It was still cold this Labor Day weekend. Crap.

Fortunately, I was able to locate some Argentines willing to sell me locally made goods in exchange for my Cambodian rieles. Soon I was fitted out in fine style, the cold was going away, I remembered what a great economical option Buenos Aires is, and there were cute guys.

Why did I come home?

Every week the tourism board puts on a couple of free plays in the street. It was a bit cold for these poor performers, but they gaily acted out their tale of immigration to Argentina.

New friends in Argentina, at the historic Cafe Tortoni, where (among many other memorables) Jorge Luis Borges sat to write and drink bad coffee. The two guys are FlyerTalkers too - on the left a bloke from Ireland and the guy on the right is a New Yorker. I learned a lot from them about getting MORE miles, faster.

Enough for now. More sites and sounds and smells to come.

Eating Cambodian style

Fantastic fresh foods everywhere we went, for so little money - this was what I found all over Cambodia. Bright red peppers spicing up veggies, cooked so lightly it was eating vegetables the way God intended. Lemongrass and greens flash cooked in oil and added to chunks of garlic and more peppers.




Amuse bouche - pickled garlic cloves and spiced peanuts, selected daintily with chopsticks. More than a few of these ended up under my chair.

Fish soup with fresh vegetables, light noodles, cilantro and peppers. Served steaming hot. The fish had plenty of bones - it was wise to eat slowly. But as it was breakfast, this was very hard to do.

Another steaming soup, this one with goat chunks and spinach, into which we tossed mung bean sprouts and red pepper jelly for spice. Hard to beat, especially when it costs about $2.00.

This is a famous frieze from Angkor Wat, called Churning the Ocean of Milk. They had to do this, in order to work off all the food they'd eaten.

Waterlogged in Cambodia

I contacted a friend-of-a-friend who lives there as soon as I arrived, and she signed me up for a bike ride with a bunch of expats. We pedaled out of the downtown Phnom Penh area past traffic that is charitably described as terrifyingly chaotic. Motorbikes are the norm there, and they dictate traffic, and they follow no rules. No. Rules. At. All. Arriving riverside (the Tonle Sap first, then the Mekong as we island-hopped on the bikes) we took a ferry ride across and immediately were on rural, muddy paths on Silk Island. We heard silk operators clanking looms behind bamboo curtains as we rode past, and every child within view of the road would shout out “hello! Hello!”

The Ferry Boat (20 cents a ride):

After three hours, we stopped for an iced coffee (Asian style – with sweetened condensed milk at the bottom) near a Wat (temple). Heading out again our bike path dropped off into a deep stream. The first bicyclist tried to ride through, and ended up swimming his bicycle back to shore. On the far side we could see a dugout canoe, so he swam across and brought the canoe over to our side. It wasn’t exactly seaworthy – one end was almost completely rotted away. The weight of a human would've sunk it. But we were able to  stack some bikes on it and one guy swam the canoe across. Then a few of us would wade in and swim ourselves. We repeated the process till everyone made it through.  

Loading the canoe:

Swimming across:

Stinky water, choked with grasses, deeper than I am tall – when we got out we even theorized it’d be a good hiding place for snakes. It wasn’t all that pleasant, but we did feel like bad-asses when we were through. There are no more pictures of me after we crossed because I was wearing white cotton pants that were as muddy as they were transparent after this escapade. I had to buy a scarf to tie around myself, so as not to show off my underwear in the fancy hotel lobby when I got home. I looked like a wet muddy rat, with a very pretty scarf tied around its waist.

Phnom Penh life. Lively.

The sun beats down here – if you’re in the shade, it’s muggy but it’s fine. But the sun is so freakin’ hot.

Motorbikes rule this city. Cars drive slowly because they’re automatically at fault if a rider gets hurt. At stoplights the bikes and motorbikes and tuktuks and ciclos and remarques swarm in between the cars, stop right in front of them in the intersection, anything for a leg up on the chance to go. Seems like absolute mayhem but it’s pretty slow paced, so it doesn’t feel quite as dangerous as it might.

They are NOT up to code on what they carry.

That tuktuk is carrying two sofas.

For the evening I took off on a boat with the new expat friends for an anchored raft on the other side of the Mekong. We sat on the comfy raft (big soft chairs, coffee tables, a full bar) and drank gin, ate olives and cheese, to watch the sunset over Phnom Penh.

Nothin' like New York

There's my sister! The one looking at the camera, of course. Though I also really felt close to the Big Green Goddess by the time we left. Kyna had never been to New York, and I'd never been to see the Statue of Liberty. We took a few days between her posts and went to soak up some American-ness.

The statue is more than I ever thought it would be. The site is exhilarating - set apart from the city but looking squarely over it, pulling in people and beliefs and countries for a century, then putting them out on the streets of the U.S., asking them to get along and get things done.

The folds in her dress - that's metal, folks. It looks like gently draping cloth, but it reveals itself as mastery when you get close up. The image of a woman is one of the most important linkages we have as a society. We all believe in her. She just stands there, or rather strides, looking like she's ready to take on anything. Powerful and moving.

She's seriously got thighs that could crack walnuts, too. When I say she looks like she could take on anything, I mean the whole world. It's easy to believe in America when you're staring up at her.

And it's easy to believe in commerce in Times Square. Kyna and I rented a room on the 75634th floor of an enormous Marriott next to this photo. You know those 7 billion people we have in the world? They would all come pouring out of that place right before the Broadway shows were about to start. Kyna and I got tickets for Billy Elliott, which was cutesy and fun but nothing like the Addams Family would have been. Sorry, Kee.

Fortunately we found the best Mexican restaurant in the city, or at least the one with the most alcohol. This guy is filling up tankards with expensive tequila and jalapenos. When you take a drink of the resulting infusion, your eyes bug out of your head and your ears leak blood. The only remedy is copious guacamole applied orally. It was great luck that they happened to have some.

Father's Day in Amecameca, Mexico

Oh, Mexico. You never know what you'll find. We had rabbit tacos at a roadside restaurant, and outside this car was sprouting... something.

I had had a PERFECTLY AWFUL experience at a conference in a nearby city, and returned to the capital with my mood gloomy and my ego fair bruised. Luckily, a Mexican friend had invited me to spend the day with her family to celebrate Father's Day in Amecameca - familiar to one and all as the starting-off point for my brother's long-past ascent of Iztaccihuatl and Popocatepetl. These are two mountains, volcanoes really, that sit next to each other south of Mexico City. There is a legend about them, with Izta the sleeping woman awaiting awakening by Popo, the warrior. Something like that. Anyway, Kyle climbed them back in 1987 or so, and set a record for speed (probably because he then skiied back down.) He was with his friend Larry, and once they got back to Amecameca, a party with homemade ("bathtub") tequila was waiting for them. I hear that was the last time Kyle had tequila.

And this is Popocatepetl. Iztaccihuatl hid behind the clouds this Father's Day.


Anyway, on with the 2011 story! Gaby and her daughter and husband picked me up, dusted me off, and took me out of the city. We had another soul in the car: Gaby's father-in-law, Delfino.

Me and Delfino.

He is a retired barman from one of the old Cabaret clubs in Mexico City. He knew we'd want margaritas at the parrilla (barbecue) so he made sure we had all the ingredients. We also picked up some fruit - like these crazy red rambutan.

We stopped for a quick look at the church in Amecameca, and Jorge, Gaby's husband, explained the different motifs. He's a serious history buff, and loves to share his love of Mexico. That's not uncommon, I think, in Mexico: there's something that's like patriotism but resonates more with culture and the milennia this country has weathered.

 There's so much still here to see, from those early cultures. It seems to me that Mexicans have a lot to be proud of. Mexicans, also, are survivors. They take the good and the bad and they don't differentiate - both are valuable, both give us something.

So, enough philosophizing and waxing poetic about Mexico. It's time to eat. I am drinking the best margarita I've ever had, made by the master (Delfino) himself. The cooking bit is just for the camera.

 Tacos. Tacos!!!! This was the best lunch ever.

 A passel of adorable little ones regaled us with a talent show. Here they are rehearsing:

And in full voice:

Guess who didn't think about work, or stupid politics, or anything but sunshine, hammocks, tacos, kids and margaritas? Best antidote ever.

Pristina Kosovo

I spent all day in the hotel yesterday, Sunday, working like a madwoman.  Today is Memorial Day and I'll also work all day. Poor me! It's not the most exciting work, either - the skill sets one uses to create a Performance Monitoring and Evaluation Plan hover at the lower levels of intellectual development, like counting and pleasing clients. Hopefully someday soon I'll get to head into the more advanced activities at work - planning a real evaluation, training data collectors, getting into the field, cleaning data, analyzing, writing. I'm bored!

Kosovo is not as I expected - it's very modern, very European, and has advanced from the days of war (at least in the limited parts of Pristina I've seen so far.) The hotel, food, coffee, services, beer, that sort of thing - all very nice. They're big fans of America here, and especially of Bill Clinton:

The weather has been absolutely ideal - sunny with cool breezes, maybe 75 degrees - and people flood the streets to sit in cafes and have coffee. "Macchiato" is the very common coffee drink, kind of a mellow cappuccino (without the foam and nutmeg and attitude.)

The other drink is raki. I scared the bejeezus out of this guy when I sat down and asked if I could take a picture with him and his drink:

As I've come at the beginning of a project here, I'm watching my colleagues set up an office.  They know what they're doing, but it's a million-and-one small decisions (what color and when to paint the walls of the office, how much phone credit to give staff, how to hide the computer cables so the place looks nice...)  I opened a project office in Zambia last year for three people, though, and it nearly killed me - so many details.  It was my first time, so there are lots of mistakes I wouldn't make again (like trying to do everything myself, and relying on bankers).  Still, I have a ton of respect for the chief of party here, who will have a staff of a dozen and all the attendant office-related challenges and headaches. Here's the team, looking busy:

As many good things as there are in such a position (I'm sure the perks are nice, plus Kosovo seems a lovely place to live), they will pay for it with hours and hours of work outside of a 9-5 schedule.

I'm learning more about The Law than I ever knew existed.  It takes so much work to bring a case to trial, and so many people.  Another thing about the U.S. that I have always taken for granted - if I needed a court, a lawyer, and a judge to hear me, it's all going to be provided. (Yeah, I know nothing's perfect.) But here, and in many places, it's a luxury they don't afford.

This was my parting meal in Pristina. It's a hard boiled egg, wrapped in chicken, rolled in corn flakes, and deep fried. You don't get something like this just anywhere. I think it's called a Chicken Egg Roll.