Sunday, March 29, 2009

I'm continually impressed by the ability of Argentines to ask intensely personal questions when they meet you for the first time.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

El Cine

Ceci and I saw the Watchmen today. Total price for the two of us? $5, ship that.

She wasn't too happy with my movie picking after the movie. It's a pretty complex movie -- and I think whenever you have subtitles, you lose some nuance* -- and it's three hours. It's all over the map, the story is occasionally difficult to follow, there's a ton of violence (the director is Zack Snyder of 300 and Sin City fame), blah blah blah. I will say that I thought there were some things in this movie that I thought were hilarious, but they were way too subtle for an Argentine audience. For example, the Pat Buchanan bit had me doubled over laughing out loud whereas no one else in the theater saw any humor at all.

I liked it quite a bit. I'm going to download it and watch it again. I noticed things in the movie that I don't normally notice: for instance, I enjoyed the songs they picked for the score, I enjoyed quite a bit of the visuals which normally don't impact me much. And yeah, it was complicated. So much so that I'm surprised it made it to #1. I mean, it's not Memento complicated, but it's not an easy movie. I will be fascinated to see if it has staying power...my guess is that this movie is too complex for the American public.

Anyway, the first movie she and I saw together was Slumdog Millionaire, after which she thought I was a great movie picker. We followed that up with The Wrestler, which she stopped paying attention to after about the first 30 minutes and now The Watchmen. In fairness to me, we're normally wandering around the suburbs and then decide to show up to a movie. We show to a theater that has 3 options and I try to choose the best one. So I think I'm doing pretty fantastic.

* That's leaving aside the discussion I had the other day with some friends of whether Spanish is in fact a less-nuanced language than English.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

According to Tim, I have $2000 worth of frequent flier/hotel points between the 3 main accounts that I have. Ship that. Is that enough for a nice honeymoon? Truthfully, probably not.

Also, if you have any frequent flier accounts, you should really follow that link and sign up.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Restless in 5th gear

Something you'd probably never guess about me is that I was fascinated by...trains, planes and automobiles as a kid. Apparently (I have only foggy memories of this), I was obsessed with a certain kids book I had that was called...wait for it, "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles." Apparently I used to insist that they read this to me alot. As they say in Argentina, literally translated, I am hard head. In fact, I remember at least one or two birthdays at the Strausburg railroad in Pennsylvania.

Somehow along the line I lost the fascination. As anyone who has ever seen my rides knows, cars are not the most important thing in my life (I still like to drive fast, but acceleration is less important). I fall asleep on airplanes before takeoff, and I think trains are useful only for getting me from point A to point B. Preferably without a wait, although after a year in Argentina I may be learning patience....maybe.

Anyway, the point of this post was to say that all Portenos used to tell me how dangerous the trains were at night. I now take the last train to Capital several times a week. So far, I don't really see the danger, but we'll see...

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Meet Ceci

Well, the blog is called (tongue in cheek, of course) Why You Want To Live In Buenos Aires, and right now she is my reason to live here. Meet Cecilia.




She looks cute. I look like me. This was our first date, the day before Valentine's Day.





This was our third date. Here we are in the Rose Garden of the Palermo park. She's pretty, kind, fun, mature, and endlessly fascinating.



Now you know why I had her hold the camera.