pets, food, tables

After reacting for weeks to imagined cat shadows in the apartment (second stage of brain disintegration?), I did almost buy a baby duck at the local fería. (Did you know how cute they are?! OMG! etc) I was going completely chica-chica while R was driveling of how a chicken (the other option) or a duck are NOT happy in an apartment, how they will grow, and whether I will want to eat them then... I ignored the latter part and said they told me all of that before I bought my cat, too.
And then I retorted with Friends as precedent. I don´t really know why I am such a chicken. But I did not buy my baby duck.
Instead we bought the best table in the world and ever. It is big and fancy (extendable ends), and made of wood of a pretty kind and color.
Tomorrow we´ll go to the fería again (a table is great, but it´s probably even better with chairs). I´ll see about the duck thing then. And keep you posted.

Internet!

The new apartment is slowly becoming more inhabitable. I love it because there are windows for every room, the place is sunny, warm and bright, the floor throughout is made of parquet, and there is a bidet (how decadent is that!). We are currently using about 1.5 of the available (3) rooms, plus the living room, or as they say, el líving. Fascinating how (and when) English enters the Spanish language… Other examples: There are “líders” who are indeed leaders, but Líder is also the name a supermarket chain (the other chains are called Jumbo and Extra, apparently the level of entrepreneurial “creativity” in baptizing is universal). At university people are studying for a “bachillerato.” There is tipear, clickear (Haz clic aquí), a political “mitin,” “el flash” (for cameras) and “sushi,” spoken, at least by R, like “sutschi.”

Now. we have a kitchen, sponsored by R.s parents. Both a kitchen and a fridge were supposed to come around now, so it was fun when the kitchen came about a week ago. More funny still is that we can´t use it. The kitchen takes its energy from a gas ballon which we don´t have. So, the last days`task was to find that gas ballon. Well! Everybody you ask says, well everybody has one (or more). You just change the empty ones against a full one.
Some gas-filling guy with cross eyes and teeth so crooked and yellow he seemed to have jumped right out of one of those colorful 19th century novels, deliberated selling us one, but then reflected that he might need it, too… This kind of search is something completely unknown to me.

First there is the obligatory no, which to my ear, always sounds rude for lack of sugarcoating (no thank you, maybe later, ups we´ve run out of that one…) But Chileans seem to just save words, letters, time… Another example. Scene: an internet place, me leaving. Girl: Numero? – Me: Cuatro. – Algun imprimado? – No. – Ciento cincuenta – (exchange of money) - Gracias. – A ti. Over and out.

Anyway. What I like about this kind of search is that you start to be happy when someone says, you know there is someone/something/I´ve heard someone say once there might be, on occasion, a guy on Independencía and Las Heras. And then you go. There is nothing of course on Independencia and Las Heras, at least nothing obvious. You start looking around, asking around. The day before yesterday, we went to about 3-4 places in that fashion, finding not a single damned ballon.


Today at 11am, we have a rendez-vous with destiny, a guy who allegedly has a ballon. In that spirit, yours truly…


PS: Has anyone seen “Inglourious Basterds” and has an opinion s/he would like to treat me to? I need some input. My brain is kind of stuck between repulsion, high-speed intertext readings, and some kind of carnal pleasure (the technologics minus the let´s-show-the-groins-in-close-up violence)

we are the world.. we are the children... (why why why IS my brain torturing me?)

Being sick

Well. I loved Sontag´s Illness as metaphor so much it seems apt to have an(other) entry on sickness. And timely, too!
I have come down with pneumonia. It is almost exciting. I cannot remember ever having had pneumonia. I even stopped smoking a week after I got back to Chile! The word pneumonia sounds scary and oldschool and it reminds me of TBC which again reminds me of Klaus Kordon`s “Die roten Matrosen” and the untimely death of its hero´s love pretty blond interest. And of course, TBC reminds me of Susan Sontag who writes in her great "Illness as Metaphor" that the “noble” death of the exihilarated thin (no appetite), “transcending” white (!) death of TBC was romantized in literature whereas things like cancer are an abject, gross, blaming-the-victim kind of sickness…
Well. Maybe the only thing I will really learn here is how to wait. It is certainly the only thing that I should learn, soon, if I am not to loose my mind! Rodrigo told me upon one of my impatient fits that impatience is a sign of having been pampered as a small child when all your needs were met immediately (apparently too much so). That kind of comment shuts you up, let me tell you… Although I`m talking “shut up” in the comic figure kind of way, incoherently mumbling and with clenched fists in your pocket…
Example: I went to the doctor. My appointment was at 6.30 but I had had another appointment at 4, and I did not feel up to clamber up the hill twice that day – feeling lousy, with heavy coughing, some kind of allergic skin reaction, completely congested and many more disgusting details I will spare you… Also, I foolishly thought showin up early at the practice might help squeeze me in a little earlier. When I entered the doctor´s office, at 7.15, I had certainly learnt I was wrong. It does not. Patience is a virtue and I haven´t got it.
The doctor however, was a real comic figure. He was small, bald, white-frocked, with a stetoskope stuck on his head quite permanently – are they called stetoskope? Those mirror-like things, a bit alien, like a hairband with a UFO attached to it. But he was friendly, entertaining, old-school (taking time for his patients, you see…). He insisted on showing Rodrigo the inside of my nose – “you should know what she looks like inside” (wtf!?!)-; I might mention that at this point various torture instruments were already stuck into my nose, so there was no possiblity of defense. After some more cleaning and coughing and explanations and a transcript to x-ray my lungs, I was also given a anti-histamin and anti-congestion shot – “gluttonal”! When my incomprehending outstretched arms did not waver, the syringe señora showed me: in the ass! Well! And I thought those days were gone!
I will return to my sickbed now, pop some more penicillin and wonder about my body, and after the narcisstic face changes into boredom, about other people´s bodies...

happier days

my birthday:

About Language

I recently realized that my homesickness has reached a new height. In a recent LEO-discussion an energetic lady told off the various bickering participants like toddlers. She claimed that a certain word difference is “gehupft wie gesprungen.” An even more gruesome example of my homesickness would be feeling whinesome reading a citation of “Pippi in den Augen” on spiegel.de ... (insert vomit smiley here)

Of course, there are funny Spanish words – and then there are funny Chilean ways of saying things. As a token of affection or nicety, everyone is saying things such as “chicitito” or "chicillos" (instead of chico), “besito” (instead of beso), “sopita” (instead of sopa) and so on. This excessive use of diminutives can lead to funny moments, such as when a vendor, selling quite an enormous backpack, asked her co-vendor for a “bolsita grande” (a big tiny-bag).

Nevertheless, I seem to be making progress on my Spanish. Firstly, I was told by several people that they thought I was Brasilian – “you sound like Brasilians when they try to speak Spanish” I(note the “try to speak” part). At another occasion there was musing that I were having a French accent. (I can assure this is not true, regrettably or not). Like most (I'm tempted to say "every true") Germans, I seem to be happy about having almost any other accent as long as it is not a German one. Is the implication of this (still) a wish to pass as a non-German? I was talking to an American in the hostel in Santiago, and funnily enough, he did not even ask but wanted to know whether I came directly from France to Santiago. It was a very short conversation I admit. I find the backpacker scene tiring now. Hey I´m a surfing Uruguayan – hey I´m a hip girl from Vermont, “you know, (close to) Boston and New York…” (yeah sure) – Hey, I´m an Californian skiing teacher. My thought for the day: I used to think Obama would be assassinated by the Religious Right. Now I think Obama IS the Religious Right.
Ehm.
did I miss something that happened in Gringo-land?


But then I watched a movie and the credits said, a guy on the team, gaffer or something, was called “Gonzalo Palta” (Palta meaning Avocado), and that made me think of ALF and I was happy. No problemo!

Food Days

These days are the “days of the empanada.” In truth, the 18th of September is the day of independencia – not the 11th of September, as I had thought. This one is the day of the military coup. Rodrigo said, make that mistake to the wrong people and they kill you. I try to think/hope he was just playing up the “dangerous (Latin) world” part; they are always very anxious here. (And there is the joke that the gringos stole that day, too, by having an even worse 11th of September…)
Anyway, the Day of the golpe, the coup, is not exactly celebrated, and not exactly commemorated either. I don´t know much more of yet; I am not surrounded by very political people – politics still reeks of “danger” and “trouble”, at best, futility. I just read that a third of young Chilenos is more or less apolitical, which I find astounding. Not in comparison to Europe or the States (where the figures are the same or higher, I imagine) but for the context of a country that just got rid of its dictatorship. I don´t know. Surely seems like democracy is not the hottest thing after all, at least not in this form.

Well, the 18th of September is for eating empanada de pino, a fatty delicious dough filled with pieces of beef, onions, a bit of boiled egg, olives and raisins. I think one would be enough for a calorie-comfortable day, so I had about 3 and a half. On the first day. Señora Viviana, who invited us recently to have lunch at her house in the neighboring town of Lago Algo, said it´s the healthiest empanada there is. There is also one that is filled with cheese and then deep-fried, so she might be right.



After the empanada day, there is the meat-and-potato day. The family meets and starts preparing various foods from the morning onward, mostly meat and hum, potatoes.
It is barbecue time, or rather, time for asado. Lots of wine is involved, three kinds of formery free-running, former animals, and some salads. All very relaxed and friendly; the presence of 3-year-old Angela helped when I would tighten up about all that family presence. Rodrigo and I were preparing Kartoffelschnitze (to general appreciation) in an outdoor oven, while the radio was blasting the Cueca.



I continue to be fascinated by this tradition. read this: "The Cueca has rich historical roots in both African and Native American cultures. The dance is a parody of the courtship of a chicken and rooster. The dancers wave handkerchiefs above their heads during the dance. These handkerchiefs can symbolize the feathers of the bird or the rooster’s comb."
Yesterday Chile´s president Michelle Bachelet had to/the pleasure to do the chicken dance on National Television. I savor the thought of Merkel, Schröder (less funny) or Kohl having to do a national dance.