social ineptitude

Today was roommate Rose's despedida, goodbye party, occasion for good food, too much wine, the uncountable "occasional" cigarettes and opportunity for me to retrospectively admire the current heights of my social ineptitude. I am trying to cling to the idea that it is not me, it is cultural. My conviction, shaky to begin with, reached the flimsy stages of a fatamorgana about ten minutes into the evening.

My sins read more or less like this:

- I start overly aggressively communicative, trying to make up for the times when I refused the whole cumba-party atmosphere, coming home from a failed tango lesson and a fresh fight with R, only to go straight to my room, defensively thinking: This is freedom too ...

Anyway, I am thinking of that, they are thinking (I guess): Is she high? Or newly deafmute?

- I try to make jokes. That's my worst sin I think. Half-way through the joke I realize it does not sound funny in Spanish (that could be my Spanish) and therefore no-one understands, therefore I try to change the joke or the general drift of what I am saying, making it now completely unintellegible. Nobody laughs, but everybody looks at me very patiently and between pity and boredom. I swear I can hear R's brain sometimes.

- After the inappropriate jokes that noone understands as a joke - mostly it's a problem of irony - and now that they already think I am an idiot, to top it off I start political topics that only interest me.

When people respond to the topic, I am so enthusiastic (and intellectually starved I might add) that I drown them in my questions : Instead of encouraging to elaborate I kill the moment. (is there a "moment" for political conversations? I feel sometimes there is, some people have to get drunk, some have to trust you, some have to suddenly discover a momentary interest in the subject or in uttering an opinion...)

- Being the positive and life-loving person that I am as you all know so well, I think: Well, that could have been worse! and in an attempt to seize the moment I ask for some girl's phone number because "we" won't be here for her birthday but at some dude's wedding in el campo (I will report).

I fully intended to flatter her and make her feel important, but somehow the question must have come out rather rude and demanding. Yet I was not sure whether it's worth getting into a rectifying "no-I-really-meant"- discussion or to shut up, not talk so much, so loud, so OFF in general and just hope (and pray) she sees through my social handicaps some better person that should be somewhere inside me.

Really.

I was never queen of sociality but I was doing ok at one point, can you forget how to do that?

I got mail!

haha el correo de chile is slow but sure - everything comes home to me in the end...

this way I had the pleasure of Christmas in a half-sunny, half-windy end of January: something new. Now something blue please; oh wow, the choclo is making me high... and the presents of course...

pour some sugar on me...

Sorry, I sort of lost track of my "going-housewively-homely" subject in the last post.

Yet I believe it is thanks to this tendency that my repertoire of Chilean recipes is up by over 100 % - to 5 (five!) recipes! (yes, I completely made up that "process". I just suck at introductory paragraphs. Anyway, I want to write about my feats.)

So far I was able to make ensalada chilena - which is (give and take and ignore R's strange pride in the dish) basically tomato-onion salad, albeit a good one - as well as Pebre, a spicy coriander-tomato-onion-chili-dip (works as purée as well. I like playing with the mixer).

My two new accomplishments are called porotos granados, meaning beans "so far untranslatable to me." Rose said they are called cranberry beans in English, which I find equally intriguing. The beans do look sort of purple-spotted. green-purple. I don't know much about beans, my way of distinguishing until now went: They are green, red or white. Green with some red is confusing.

But I also had generally little clue as to a bean's original state (with shells/pods and all). Anyway, the dish is great. I'm a big fan of the current choclo season, young choclo, big choclo, as well as the ubiquitous pumpkin. And porotos granados contains the beans, the pumpkin, corn, and a number of other ingredients I don't remember right now.

My next dishes were pastel de choclo and humitas, and that now is really as Chilean as it gets. I mentioned the slightly disappointing (in terms of novelty) tomato salad, then there are of course empanadas (like in every country on this continent), Pisco was Peruvian first, and the porotos are an stew, when it comes down to it ...

But! Pastel de choclo - and also it's relative humitas are fairly "exotic", at least for me, and even though humitas are basically the same thing as the Mexican Tamale (different name same species, as ALF would say... ).

It is quite an elaborate preparation to get the corn paste you need for both dishes. Here's your recipe:

Buy ten or so of the big choclos.

Rip off the leaves (it's harder than it sounds).

Get rid of the "hair" of the corn (it has hair. did you know that?).

Cut off the grains with a knife (spray yourself and everything around you with juice while you're at it), grind the corns (since you don't have a grinder, be in perpetual fear that your improvised mix-thingy will explode from heat exhaustion).

for humitas

Add to that paste slowly-sautéed onions and aji and lots of Basil. (which they call albahaca, but because Chileans notoriously drop or swallow sounds and sillables, it sounds like albaca. So it makes me think of lamas and I get all confused).

Fill them in the "best leaves" of the corn, which you selected earlier (sorry.. forgot that..). I have no clue how to select them, and R kept being contradictory in the selection process.

Put 2 leaves that "go well together" (same irreproducible process as for the selection) one over the other, put paste on it, wrap together quickly.

This you must do rapidly (even though you don't know how)

Now bind it together with a string (what? I needed string??)

If you are making pastel, it's comparatively easy.

Put paste of choclo (without basil, but if you want with an egg or milk.. there are different recipes) layered with the onion-chicken paste. Like a lasagne.

Put sugar on top.

Oh, this is really important, and I was at first adversed to the idea but it is absolutely necessary to eat both dishes WITH SUGAR! only then are they really good...

here's proof I really did this:

the paste

the finished humitas

me putting them into water

(oh yes, you have to cook the humitas and put the pastel in the oven. didn't I mention? Well you go and find out where to buy that choclo - I'll post a picture of that soon - and then you call me and I promise I'll give better instructions..)

Recovering

someone I would call The Chilean Dude

Somebody said that in dark/conservative/G.W.B political times, people tend to become introvertive and mind their own business (even more than we do anyway).

Piñera has been elected, and I am still annoyed about it (not that it's my country, but still). Yes, it was foreseeable, but insult is added to injury every time I read another stupid op-ed, such as the LA Times editorial on how the election of a rightist, populist billionaire was proof of the strength of Chilean democracy... Yeah. Sure. Anyway.

So, these last days were for the "Carnival de Valparaíso". The weather was ominously cold and therefore "scenic" or whatever would be the latest slang words among photographers, beautifully shot etc.

So, there:

this was something like a death-theatre-show. really cool, good music too.

everybody's watching...

I must say, I was impressed, and especially taken with the giant puppets - called "monos" (apes) if my treacherous ears have not deceived me (as they do so often...)

Costumes ranged from the more regular...

to the absolutely crazy, logic-defying stuff... it's obviously a very personal distinction..

This was the highlight of everyone who saw it: A paco lets them go wild...!

And here's that scenic light, the afterglow...

politics and aspirations

Did any of you ever do this one-post-a-day-blogging month? I think I will try that - yes, I know it was in November but what could be more individualist than to pick your private NaBloMo or what it was called - so I'll do that. not this month though.. maybe the next..

I was thinking of this because it is much harder that it looks to select your brilliantly random from your boringly repetitive ideas. Recently, I had no look in structuring my thoughts, none at all. And I heard that if you are FORCED (well, voluntarily forced) to do this EVERY DAY, you probably learn ways of outtricking procrastination. And also to let go of perfectionism. Write that boring thought.

In this spirit, here are my thoughts of the day.

1. Piñera won. We don't like that, but I'm not sure about the extent yet. Have to wait and see how immediately different life in Chile will feel with a right-wing opportunist VERY rich president ...

2. I am writing an application, and it is a total nightmare. I sort of forgot about how nightmarish things get when you have a seven-point list of things to hand in, in two languages, plus language certificates and diverse other proofs and credits.

Speaking of the language certificates, I was appalled to learn that after an entry test to study Northern American Studies, 5 or 6 obligatory language classes, half an intermediate exam in English, a full hour of the final exam and the final written exam AND my master thesis being written in English AND a good Toefl test AND studying in the States for a year - they still make me do a goddamn language test.

Yes, on the one hand that is okay, because my rant just now reads like a really annoying person (my tree, my baby, my career). And I can just picture an entirely unimpressed dwarf of a person (sorry, it's my fantasy after all), working a boring office job, looking you in the eye saying, You are able to read after all, right? It says plainly here, no exceptions.

But it is a pain in my private parts to go and get the stupid thing.

That said, wish me luck and press the appropriate fingers, please!

Auferstanden aus Ruinen…

eh, wrong text, wrong time - but that’s how I feel … Happy New Year, everyone… gentlemen… good morning…

I had been told about New Year’s in Valparaíso more or less since meeting R, therefore, I thought, it can only be disappointing due to high expectations. It wasn’t.

First of all, a good build-up: Valparaíso’s fireworks are totally famous, everyone said misty-eyed. Chileans (!) around me were planning (!) furiously where to be when, with whom, how to get there …. Which made sense as the city steadily swelled to a triple of the original 500.000 (that’s 500.000 if you count the entire area but guess where all those New Years guests were hanging out). Accordingly the traffic was supposed to be deathly (admittedly this probably does not need much). It was, too, with public places being jammed up by cars and everyone hoarding for the next world war. I gave up on buying myself yogurt when I saw the lines reaching till the back of the supermarket.

Second part of the build-up was privat nature – constant fighting between R and myself right down to the moment when his Santiago friends came and everything dissolved into a night of enamored bliss.

The fireworks were absolutely amazing! I have seen some great fireworks in my life, but these clearly made the top five, with lights bombarding the sky all along the bay from Cón Cón, Riñaca, over Viña to the South end of Valparaíso, Playa Ancha. There was a giant, yellow, full or almost full moon hanging over it all which turned orange in the afterglow – amazing! The crowd was one of the best I have ever experienced – everybody was going absolutely and truly crazy up on the crammed paseo Yugoslavio – even before anything had started - people threw confetti all around and popped the corks way before 12 – interestingly, no-one here bothered counting, so for about two minutes and two minutes after 12, everybody went wild (while I was blankly looking at my watch), until the fireworks started shortly after 12. Those pyrotecs want to toast too, I imagine.

Then we all – the Santiagonian friends Alex, Victor and Danielle (that’s how it sounds not sure how it’s written), R and myself – together with EVERYONE ELSE descended on the streets of the flat area. People, sometimes costumed, were drinking and dancing in the streets. the police lets everyone have it with drinking this day (everything else would have been suicidal). It’s safe because people don’t buy their own firecrackers, and I love this. After some time of here and there, randomly hugging people, and finding an abandoned pink platform shoe (also tooth paste and a mirror) which inspired the single guys to go play Cinderella, we went to a party. It was an interesting set-up of gays and people who said “No, I’m not against gays, only - he is so gay, isn’t he? It’s just .. gay, you know? Is that one gay too?” Eventually, after I had left, the remains of our group were thrown out for overdoing it with their tolerance. From what I understood, the final offending phrase was “So, why do you like dicks?” Bonding on the toilet, the drunken guys made confessions regarding similar areas, unfortunately, I only understood half of that. A guy asked R permission to dance with me: Whatever you like, this is weird. I had been told that the party here goes until 8, and while I had been settling for 4am, I am proud to report that, with a little bit of help, I made it till 7am.

Then, at dawn or madruga, R and I were walking home : the streets were still packed and littered with garbage; in one area, whitish fog was in the air, biting your eyes – apparently here the police had put its foot down.

The friendly and alcohol-prone friends came home later and continued partying yesterday – but I was so out, I slept through it, after going through the ritual of a) mariscal (marisco soup), b) terremote (literally: earthquake, it’s made of cheap white wine and pineapple ice cream. And yes, that sounds like it tastes.)

To summarize:

Clearly, everything Christmas is not, New Year’s is. I did not make any resolutions (but one of them must be to quit, again, soon). Phone connection was down until 3 (I apologize if anybody was trying to reach me). Happy 2010 everyone!