Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Apparently some of my friends think it's funny that I've lived for 5 months in a country where I don't speak the language and I have yet to buy a dictionary.

Haters.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Two unlinked, disconnected* cultural observations

1. As far as I can tell, upper middle class Argentines take more pictures than I can smile. I am hopeful that I can keep these pictures off facebook. But not that hopeful.

2. The glass is not quite half full. I'm not sure how to say this without sounding like an American, but Argentines do not believe in filling glasses. Doesn't matter the size, you will get less than half of your glass filled. It's cultural, apparently.

* I try to use the word random less frequently because most uses of the word random are not really correct. As a practicioner of chance, I prefer to be precise with my words of uncertainty whenever possible.

Truths

Models that you may or may not have turned down will be immensely more attractive when you see them on the runway.

You may or may not regret not being interested in them.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Fun with spanish

In Spanish, you can translate "I eat," "how," "like," and "as" with the same word: como.

Also, the word for wife is the same word for handcuffs.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

...

Stuff to say, crazy things done, eating dinner with models, etc, but I'm a bit lazy on that front, sorry.

Saturday, September 6, 2008

The one in which I try to die, parte dos

I'm apparently not so good at taking the 60 bus out to the suburbs. There's about 80 different variations, the driver will tell you "si" when you ask him if he's going to your destination, and have I mentioned that I don't speak Spanish? I don't speak Spanish.

Let's try diary form:

All is fine and well on my journey so far, I have managed to start a conversation with Super Hot Girl. She is the stereotype (to me anyway) of your basic beautiful Argentine girl. Basically perfection is what I'm saying*. but she's 19. Have I mentioned how I only meet young girls here? It's totally acceptable, ftw. She speaks perfect English, she tells me she wants to get out of Argentina (I'm liking where this conversation is going), and then the bus turns off the road I want to be on. No problem, she assures me, we'll go back to the road I want to be on. I ask her a few questions about this, and she says we will go back to my road. Assured in my knowledge that I will recognize such road, I go back to talking to her. And by talking to her, I mean trying not to stare.

SHG and I are in the midst of a scintillating conversation -- while I think when should I get her number? -- when she says, "you need to get out here." "Here?" "HERE! Go 5 blocks that way, and maybe 3 that way. Suerte!" I am confused, I don't want to leave, I'm trying to figure out if I have time to write my number on a piece of paper, and the bus stops. I get off, she tries to open her window to say something to me and her window won't open.

Well, thank you SHG for the fact that I didn't get lost, but I really was quite okay getting lost with you. Should've stayed on the bus. My game is way too rusty. I lose. Evan approximately 6 years ago would be so ashamed of me.

I start wandering through town. I don't recognize anything. I don't think it's a bad part of town, but honestly I am pretty bad at discerning these things. It certainly wasn't Vicente Lopez or Olivos (posh northern suburbs) so I end up running (safer than walking) for 15 minutes...30 mins...45 mins. This running thing is starting to get tiring. Finally, I see an old man come out of a house. I ask for directions. Like a good Argentine, he refuses to just tell me where to go, he wants to tell me many many things which I will smile politely and nod at while thinking "are you going to tell me where to go yet?" I jest, because really I was far away (a mile? a mile and a half?) from the stadium at this point, so I was in pretty bad shape. He was very nice to me at zero gain to himself. More running and a few more wrong turns, and I make it. I play some soccer (poorly, it's rather embarassing), tweak a muscle, and then spend time pitying myself for how I was once a good athlete.


Cliff's notes: I didn't get girl's number. I suck at life.



* Diego says to me, "Evan, everytime I talk to you, you are talking about a different girl." Life in Argentina, che.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

lol mbaments

I'm not sure that people who work in MBA Admissions offices are very bright.

Today I got an email from London School of Business that had a typo in the subject. This was something I recall happening frequently last year.

And Fuqua can probably recall my many rants on the things I would get from MBA schools last winter. Like, why would a school from some ugly city in the cold North ranked 49th pay $3 in postage to unsolicitedly send me brochures that probably cost a few dollars, and not include a fee waiver or some sort of potential scholarship incentive? They know my GMAT score, it's in the file when they pull it from GMAT.

Anyway, though I find the process immensely distasteful, a bunch of schools are having recruitment fairs in Buenos Aires in the next week. I frequently have free time in the afternoon, so I figured I'd wander out there. What I find distasteful is that elite schools go out and recruit and lie to people about "yeah, you have a chance to be admitted. We take people every year who are well below our GMAT/GPA means." Of course, most of those admittees do not fit my demographic profile. Seriously, if you need to be recruited to apply to Stanford or Northwestern, you should save your time and money: you aren't getting in.

So basically they spend all this money to go out, basically lie to people so that they can reject them and keep their numbers high for USNews rankings. Awesome; I'm pretty sure this is not a job I could ethically allow myself to do, unless maybe I was starving. Maybe this is why they don't like their jobs and can't ever spell anything right in anything they send me.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

The one in which Diego saves my life

So I head out to Olivos (northern suburb) on Saturday night. I was taking the bus instead of the train; not exactly sure why. There's pros and cons to both, and they come out to relatively similar time frames. I've taken the bus out there at least a few times, although I have more frequently taken it back into the city.

Anyway, bus takes a little detour from what I was expecting, but I've read that this sometimes happens, so when the bus driver turned back towards the route I was expecting, I wasn't too worried. Five second later, we were getting on the Pan American Highway. Apparently there is more variability in this route than I thought. Oops.

Since I had just purchased my guide to the bus system 10 minutes before (ironic, no?), I decide to try and see if I can figure out where I'm going. Oh no way, no how. So I just ride the bus for awhile, as we seem to be going down the Autopista Panmericana and I figure maybe I'll see Olivos. Nope. I think maybe I see a sign for a city I know, so I get off. I call Diego, read him a sign where I was. Fortunately for me, he knew where I was, more or less. And he told me it was a really bad area of town and that I needed to get out of it immediately.

So I start running down the side of the Pan American Highway. Good times, jogging down the feeder in khakis and dress shoes. Eventually I find a Walmart, Diego picks me up, and I still have two working kidneys.

Ended up at a birthday party for a girl I don't know, so it was still a successful Saturday night.