Tag Archives: Humor

Travel cage match: Santiago, Chile vs. Buenos Aires, Argentina (part 1: Food)

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2 cities enter.  One city leaves.

Will it be Santiago, Chile – the home of enormous mayo covered hot dogs and some of the most impressive mountain views anywhere in the world?

Santiago Mountains image

or

Will it be Buenos Aires, Argentina -where you can (and more or less have to) eat steak 5+ times a week?

Buenos Aires City image

We spent 6 months researching–4.5 months in Buenos Aires and 1.5 months in Santiago–in an attempt to answer this frequently asked and extremely difficult question:  If you’re headed to the Southern Cone, which of these 2 great cities should you prioritize?

Research wasn’t easy.  We worked relentlessly day in and day out to try as many restaurants, go on as many day trips and explore as many on and off-the-beaten-path attractions as possible.  We’ve also done an extensive wine comparison.  I don’t know how we stayed motivated.

There are five high-level categories to this competition, each of which will be thoroughly analyzed in it’s own post with a winner declared:

  1. Food – Quality, diversity and overall dining experience
  2. Drink – For these countries, this one is mostly about the wine
  3. Livability – How easy would it be to live here as an expat
  4. Visit-ability – How fun are these places to visit
  5. People/Culture – What are the people and culture like and how open are they to foreigners

Obviously, much of this is very subjective and our opinions should be taken with a grain of salt.  You may agree or disagree with our conclusions; our hope is to provide enough context such that you can draw your own conclusions based on your own preferences and priorities.  Our other hope is that this series of posts becomes a useful reference so that next time someone asks us the question of which city to spend more time in we can just tell them to read this rather than rambling about it for an hour–sadly, the rambling will likely continue.

Let’s do this.

Today’s category is…

1. Food

We like food.  We like food a lot.  Trying authentic foreign cuisines is one of our very favorite things about travelling, so this category is a pretty important one in our minds.  Let’s break it down:

Most crave-worthy:  Winner – Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires: We’ve been back in the US for a few months now and we haven’t bothered eating steak.  We know that it could never measure up to the Buenos Aires version that you can get at places like El Estrebe, Dada and a number of other stellar places (see our where to eat in BA post for recommendations).  My mouth is watering just thinking about it.  Beyond just the steak, we can’t forget the empanadas…. oh, the empanadas.  The empanadas were unbelievable.  Also, Provoleta is missed.  We crave these things often and if/when we go back to visit BA, food will be one of the biggest reasons.

Argentine steak image

Want

Santiago: It’s not that the food was bad in Santiago, it was actually pretty good.  That said, we certainly don’t crave anything we had there.  Food is not as core to the culture of Santiago as it is to Buenos Aires.  It’s fine, but it’s unlikely to blow you away.  However, if you are a fan of giant hot dogs, Santiago is the place for you.

Chilean hot dog completo image

Yep

Best food diversity:  Winner – Santiago (by a landslide)

Buenos Aires: Virtually every restaurant in Buenos Aires has an identical menu.  As we’ve written about previously, there are really only 5 types of food in Buenos Aires (steak, pizza, pasta, empanadas and Dulce de Leche).  They do those 5 things quite well, but that’s pretty much all they do.  If you head into some of the more touristy areas you can find a handful of foreign cuisine options, but not many.  Despite the high quality, after a couple of weeks the monotony of eating the same thing every day does get to you.

Buenos Aires food pyramid image

Sometimes it's possible to combine all 5 food groups in one meal

Santiago: Santiago, on the other hand, is full of all kinds of different cuisines.  Peruvian and Japanese are probably the two most common (and quite good), but we also had some of the best Indian food we’ve ever had, there are lots of Chinese restaurants (which the locals strongly suggest avoiding), Seafood, Italian, American, French, you name it.  From a dining perspective, Santiago offers far more international options than Buenos Aires.

Peruvian ceviche image

We do kind of miss the Peruvian ceviche

Best dining experience:  Winner – Buenos Aires (if you have a few hours)

Buenos Aires: In BA, dining is definitely an experience–whether you want it to be or not.  For dinner it is usually a 3+ hour experience.  This is not (usually) the result of bad service, but rather is intentional.  In BA, dining isn’t really about eating, it’s about being with your friends and family.  Service is usually quite efficient and impressively formal up until they finish bringing your food; after that, you will have a very hard time tracking down your server to get your bill.  This is by design.  They would never want to give the impression that they were rushing you out and fully assume that you will spend another hour or 2 sitting around the table after you finish eating.  That’s simply how it’s done.  At first, this can be a bit unsettling for those of us from countries that tend to be in more of a rush.  After you get used to it though (and assuming you are not in a hurry), it’s pretty awesome to allow yourself to fully experience a meal with your fellow diners.

Santiago: In Santiago, the dining experience was far more similar to what you would find in the US.  Servers are interested in turning tables fairly quickly and in some cases may even clear your dishes and bring your check while you’re still chewing your last bite (update:  we have it on good authority from someone who has spent much more time here than us that this is usually not the case and perhaps we were going to the wrong places.  Either way though, they definitely value efficiency more in Santiago and meals were much quicker relative to BA) Great if you’re in a hurry, but otherwise nothing special.  I’m sure there are exceptions, but even/especially the fancier places we tried were not that memorable.

Overall winner in the food category:  Buenos Aires

Santiago is no slouch, but dining is core to the entire culture in Buenos Aires and as long as you eat meat and can handle the lack of diversity, they do it extremely well.  So, if your single top priority in choosing between these two cities is food (and you like meat), you should definitely prioritize Buenos Aires.

As important as it is though, food is unlikely to be the only factor in your decision making process, so stay tuned for future posts to see which city wins in the remaining categories!

Do you agree or disagree?  Let us know what you think!

Rehab phase 1 is almost complete; Phase 2 is coming

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Today is our last day in Chile. Tomorrow we return to Argentina. Next week we return to the US.

Phase 1 of rehab has been intense

We have been unemployed and in South America for almost exactly 6 months now.

For 6 months we have had no deadlines and no responsibilities.

We’ve had neither cellphone nor blackberry and we’ve tried to exclusively spend our time doing things that we want to do rather than things that we were supposed to do. For instance, look how long it’s been since I last got a haircut:

I need a haircut image

Luckily, I'm getting a haircut later this week

We’ve slept for as many hours as we chose to every night (except for the damn 4am geyser tour in Atacama).

Geysers de tatio image

Stupid geysers. Stupid 4am. Stupid, stupid.

We’ve taken lots of daytime naps, we’ve enjoyed bottles of wine for lunch and we’ve consumed more steak then we had eaten in the previous 10 years combined.

Dinner in Buenos Aires: Perfectly cooked Argentine beef image

And we'd do it again

At times, we’ve seen amazing landscapes. At times, we’ve sat on park benches and watched dogs play for hours. At times, we’ve sat on benches and had people try to steal Jen’s purse – that was entertaining.

We’ve read lots of books. We’ve tried to read many Spanish newspapers. This has gone poorly.

We’ve lived in 2 countries and immersed ourselves in their cultures- Argentina for 4.5 months and Chile for 1.5 months. We are happy to help you plan your trips.

We’ve sat in cafes for hours – in the beginning we had lots to talk about… later we just stared at each other… then we started bringing books… then we ran out of books… Now we don’t go to cafes so much.

Each of these things has been a critical part of our rehabilitation. By completely removing ourselves from our old environment and the associated pressures/peers/challenges, we were forced to gain perspective. We were humbled on a daily basis. It was annoying.

Through immersing ourselves in foreign cultures in which nothing is expected of us and no one cares about our resumes or has a vested interest in what we do next, we found perspective on who we had been and on who we want to be. At times it was freeing, at times it was frustrating – both are part of the process.

Through meeting people on the road (both travelers and locals) our perspective on what life can look like and the sheer number of different possibilities that exist and can lead to happiness has expanded immensely. As has our definition of happiness-now we think it requires frequent napping.

Finding this perspective was the goal of rehab phase 1. This isn’t the end. We don’t have any answers, but this new and broader perspective will serve as the foundation for phase 2.

Rehab phase 2:  Re-entry / where we go from here

Next week we will fly back to the US and begin phase 2. We are not sad to return, we are excited to start a new chapter of this adventure. It’s like a choose your own adventure book, except written for adults instead of 8 year olds.

To say that we are ‘returning’ is not entirely accurate… we don’t have a specific home to return to. We have a storage unit full of stuff in San Francisco and a car in Seattle. We have no jobs and no place to live that is our own. And, due to poor/rushed planning all of our other clothes are in that storage unit, so we will have to continue wearing the same 5 outfits that we have been wearing for the last 6 months even though all of our sweaters and socks have holes in them. This should make a strong impression in job interviews.

We won’t be picking up where we left off, we will be starting fresh in a new city. We are planning to live in Seattle for a variety of reasons. It will likely rain a lot, but also be much cheaper.

The prospect of starting fresh is a little intimidating at times, but with our newly broadened perspective, we are excited to construct lives that offer us balance. We don’t know what it will look like exactly. From a distance, it might look like a dancing penguin. No one knows. That’s what makes it exciting.

dancing penguin image

Let's hope that it doesn't look like this dancing penguin

Jen is looking for a ‘real’ job. I plan to pursue a number of entrepreneurial projects that I have been toying with for some time. In both cases, we will only consider things that we think we will genuinely enjoy. We have already accumulated plenty of option value in our careers and are ready to cash in and find things we love. The evil mongeese can suck it.

We’d like to have a dog. And we’d like to have lives that allow us to keep the dog alive. We suspect that the dog will appreciate this as well.

We plan to have hobbies outside of work. We’ve heard that this is possible. Jen would like to teach English as a foreign language in the evenings. I’m excited to return to improv comedy. Maybe we’ll even do something athletic–fear not, we pledge to continue drinking enough wine to keep ourselves firmly out of shape.

We believe that we are ready for phase 2, but re-entry comes with a number of risks. We need to be ever-vigilant for any signs of relapse.

Signs that we might be relapsing:

If any of the following occur, we may need to buy plane tickets or at least some steak…

  1. We don’t actively pursue hobbies
  2. We eat take-out dinners more than twice a week
  3. We have more than 3 days in a row of unhappiness at work (a couple of days can happen anywhere from time to time – at 3, we torch the place)
  4. More than 50% of the friends that we spend time with on a regular basis have MBAs
  5. We spend more than 10% of our social interactions complaining about our jobs
  6. We eat lunch while still typing
  7. The idea of getting a dog dies due to impracticalities of work schedule
  8. The dog itself dies due to neglect
  9. Multiple instances of cancelling social events occurs due to last-minute work conflicts
  10. We check emails on our phone while mid-conversation with others
  11. We don’t manage to leave the country at least twice a year
  12. We achieve Starwood platinum status (and are proud of it)

There are almost certainly others. We will need your help to avoid relapsing. That is why we absolutely plan to continue this blog. It will become less about South America (though there are still tons of topics we’ve been meaning to write about on Chile/Argentina and still plan to), and more about Seattle and our re-entry.

We hope to be an example not just of a couple that left our jobs to travel for 6 months, but one that also made a successful return to our careers and are better off than we were before we left.

Stay tuned.

Any other relapse warning signs you can think of that we should watch out for??

Atacama: A Vacation within a vacation within a vacation

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First…

we packed up our apartment in San Francisco, put most of our stuff in storage and went to Buenos Aires.

Then…

after ~4 months we left a couple of bags with a friend in Buenos Aires and went to Santiago.

Then…

after ~1 month we left a couple of bags with friends in Santiago and headed up to San Pedro de Atacama. We’ll be here for ~5 days.

Like a dream within a dream within a dream…

this is a vacation within a vacation within a vacation. We can only hope that the ‘kicks’ are timed correctly and we will be able to return to Santiago and then Buenos Aires and then the US with all of our things and ourselves intact.   If anything goes wrong we could become lost in vacation limbo forever. Obviously, this would be horrible.

We have to be careful.

We can only hope that our subconscious doesn’t create evil projections that are able to catch us and throw us out of our vacation early. To avoid them we will have to choose a new and exotic destination every day. We will go to crazy places like the Valle de la Luna, Los Geysers del Tatio, Las Lagunas Altiplanicos and others. If things get desperate, we may even go so far as to go sandboarding in the desert and/or cross the somewhat unpredictable and recently unstable border into Bolivia. Hopefully these crazy environments and activities will be enough to confuse our subconscious and keep us safe.

Time moves much slower here than in reality.

Because we have total freedom to choose what we want to do in each moment, every day spent in a normal vacation is worth 10 days of life at home (just add up how many hours you spend enjoying what you want to do vs. doing what you are supposed to do in a normal 10 day period in reality and you’ll see what I mean). Many theorize that this time distortion compounds with each additional layer of vacation abstraction–each day on a second level vacation is worth 100 days of enjoyment in your normal life; each day on a third level, 1,000. We’ll be here for ~5 days on this third level vacation which means that for us it will be the equivalent of 5,000 days worth of normal life enjoyment. You will hardly realize that we were gone, but for us, we will have experienced ~14 years of enjoyment here in the arid high-altitude desert of Atacama. If, upon reading this, you are now depressed by how little you enjoy your normal life, consider joining us–there is still room on our afternoon tour.

Unfortunately we do not have any spinny tops.

When we return… if we return… we will have no way of knowing whether or not we are back in reality or are in yet another layer of vacation. It’s entirely possible that we will spend the rest of our lives unsure whether we are on vacation or not. We are okay with this. If we do end up in vacation limbo, please consider joining us, but under no circumstances should you attempt to rescue us.

By the way…

If the last 6 months have just been a dream and rather than traveling in South America we’ve actually just been sleeping in a conference room using our laptops as pillows while making slides for a big presentation tomorrow… Please don’t wake us up; we will be cranky.

p.s. If you haven’t seen the movie “Inception” go see it. Then this will make (at least some) sense.

Management book chapter 2: Perfectionists should kick themselves in the head (perfectly)

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Last week we discussed the merits of building career option-value and warned about Brick Wall Syndrome (BWS) and the tyranny of the evil mongeese.  This week, we’ll tackle the advantages of being a perfectionist and make the argument that if you are a perfectionist you should try to kick yourself in the head (as perfectly as possible).

Like last week, this will not apply to everyone.  The truth is, this one barely even makes sense, is WAY too long and is almost certainly 100% inaccurate.  If you do somehow force yourself to read it all the way through though, I hope you can agree with me that, at the very least, some of the pictures are pretty entertaining…

Why

It’s not easy to kick yourself in the head at all, let alone perfectly.  It will require a significant amount of practice to get it just right.  You may be wondering why I’m suggesting this.  It’s mainly because perfectionism makes me cranky, but I’m happy to come up with some other reasons if my crankiness alone is not enough for you (that said, we will likely both end up regretting this).

The basic argument is that kicking yourself in the head provides all of the same compelling benefits as trying to be perfect (e.g., almost impossible to achieve, hurts a lot, not worthwhile, etc.) while at the same time being infinitely more entertaining for others to watch.

Kick yourself in the head image

See? Entertaining, right?

You might be thinking “This is preposterous, I don’t even know why I’m reading it”

Imagine how I feel–I’m the one writing it.  The worst part is it’s just getting started.

If you’ve read the last chapter about career option value, then you already know about Brick Wall Syndrome (BWS) and how it instills in you a drive to manage your career/life by continually seeking out the paths of greatest resistance and pushing yourself as hard as possible to break through all of the brick walls you can find in order to build option value (even though you don’t necessarily have any interest in these options).  You’ll also know that if you suffer from BWS, any career choice that looks enjoyable and/or like something that you could really excel at without any pain or suffering will automatically be classified as an utter waste of time by the evil mongeese who are in charge of your life decisions.  This much should be fairly obvious.  This chapter isn’t about BWS though, it’s about another disorder–perfectionism.

Overview of disorder

At this point, I should clarify that I’m not talking about the benign and mild form of perfectionism in which people take pride in their work and have high quality standards.  That’s a positive thing.   I’m talking about the more extreme version that keeps people up all night obsessing over things that even they admit are a waste of time.  This is the version that inevitably leads to a constant sense of failure and ensures that no matter how much effort you put into something, you always feel like you should have done more . . . and that someone else would have.

Perfectionism isn’t about building option-value by choosing difficult paths.  Unlike BWS, perfectionism isn’t concerned with what specifically you choose to do; whatever you choose, this disorder’s primary focus is in making you obsess over doing things as perfectly as humanly possible–regardless of how long it takes, what other important things are going on in your life or if anyone else cares.  This could lead you to do any number of things, e.g.:

  • Stay up all night making sure that every PowerPoint slide in a large presentation has a perfectly matching color scheme (note: it’s not about consistency–consistency is merely good enough; the perfectionist will likely have painstakingly tried several different schemes to see what looked best)
  • Spend 5 days of intense effort to do what should have only taken 1 day (it’s not that you’re slow, you simply weren’t satisfied until it was 5x better than what anyone could have done in 1 day)
  • Spend all day trying to come up with a perfect third bullet point here to tie this all together in a comical way (if you are a perfectionist and have suggestions, please leave them in the comments)

Perfectionism and BWS are not the same thing.  It’s true that they often come together in a tightly-strung, type-A, fun-to-be-around package, but they are not the same thing.  Individually they are bad; together, they are worse.  You don’t have to believe me about this; here is the proof:

Perfectionist 2 by 2 - simple image

Note: if this 2 by 2 doesn't constitute definitive proof to you, you may not have what it takes to be a management consultant

Self-Diagnosis

Diagnosing yourself to be a perfectionist is usually not difficult.  Most perfectionists are fully aware of their disorder and often secretly (or openly) proud of it.  It is even easier to diagnose it in someone other than yourself merely by observing their daily activities.

Here are some signs that may indicate you have this disorder:

  • You frequently work significantly longer hours than others that have your same job and do not understand how it is that they can manage to go home so early and not be more stressed-out all the time.
  • When you point out how proud you are of having gone above and beyond to make sure that all fonts/colors/icons/etc. are perfectly coordinated and aligned to the nearest millimeter (you measured), rather than receiving applause, people just look at you and shake their heads.  This seems strange to you.  Your conclusion from this is that you will have to try harder next time.
  • When other people actually do compliment you on your work, you think they are patronizing you–you know that you should have done more, and if they think that you were good enough, then they really have no idea what they are talking about and should be avoided.

If any of the above symptoms are present, you may be a perfectionist and should continue reading for root causes and home treatment options.

Root causes

If you are an obsessive perfectionist, whether or not you realize it, and whether or not you are proud of it, what you are really suffering from is almost certainly varying degrees of the following two root causes:

1)  You are afraid that someone else will judge you to be not good enough

2)  You suck at managing competing priorities

Or, if you are confused (which can happen if you’ve been up all night perfecting something), you may be afraid of competing judges not managing someone else’s priorities well enough.  If this is the case, see your doctor immediately.

If you are a perfectionist, you are in for a rough time.  Whereas the person suffering from BWS is off prioritizing things based on degree of difficulty and perceived rewards, the pattern behind your decision processes is distinct.  Due to root cause #1, your main concern is avoiding someone else thinking that you are not good enough.  This is extremely stressful and requires constant vigilance.  You always have to be on guard.  No matter how small the task is that you’re doing, you have no choice but to go above and beyond and make it perfect–regardless of how long it takes (you really hate deadlines).  Having to be perfect all the time is a lot of pressure.

This type of extreme perfectionism is primarily about downside protection.  You are far more concerned about the downsides of being imperfect than you are motivated by the upsides that might come from doing a good job; unlike someone suffering from BWS, it doesn’t matter to you whether or not what you are working so hard on will lead to any rewards (real or perceived), it just matters that no one finds any errors in anything you do.

There are side-effects.  This fixation on downside protection can, at times, make you fear taking risks and prevent you from attempting things that are unconventional or creative (even if you have a spectacular idea: e.g., starting a monster truck rental business).  You tend to avoid things that don’t have an established set of criteria for perfection because you know that they are far more likely to result in criticism and failure (though, I think we can all agree that a monster truck rental business would clearly succeed).  You may have less fun and work harder than others, but at least you won’t risk being a disappointment.

Who is this person that you are so concerned about letting down?  To you, this is an irrelevant question–it does not matter who they are, whether or not you have any respect for what they think or if they even exist.  Because it doesn’t matter who they are, we’ll call them Mildred.

Perfectionist Mildred single image

If you’re a perfectionist, your priorities are determined by Mildred.  One might say that you are Mildred-centric.  You are so concerned about letting down Mildred that you will consistently assign exclusive priority to whatever things you think are important to her (even if you are just guessing).  In fact, you will often obsess over them so much that you will lose sight of other things that a more rational version of you may suggest are more important (e.g., happiness, loved ones, eating tacos)–this is root cause #2:  sucking at managing competing priorities.

Mildred is not the (only) bitch in this scenario

You may be surprised to hear this, but it’s almost certain that Mildred…:

a)  Couldn’t care less and doesn’t even know your name (or is some minor character from your past who doesn’t remember you – e.g., your 6th grade English teacher)

or

b)  Is in fact a bitch, and realizes how easy it is to manipulate you into doing whatever she wants through pointing out your weaknesses

or

c)  Thinks that you actually are good enough  – uh oh!  Time to find a new Mildred

How you choose your Mildred

Despite your debilitating ailment, you likely still have some people in your life that care about you.  These people probably not only think that you are good enough; they may even think that you are great.  This automatically disqualifies them from being your Mildred.  You have to look for a Mildred that exhibits either A or B from above in order to be sure that you will generate enough anxiety to perpetuate your disorder.

A fun side effect of this is that the people in your life that care about you (and who are likely also the same people that you yourself care the most about) are unable to help you.  Due to the very fact that they think that you don’t suck, you will constantly discard any positive things that they ever say to you and instead make it clear to them that Mildred’s opinion is more important to you.  This is awesome for them.  Fear not, in time these people will go away and you will be completely undistracted and able to focus all of your attention on pleasing Mildred.

Remember, the goal of this disorder is for Mildred to be your taskmaster, and that wouldn’t work very well if you picked a Mildred that was supportive of you.  This is why this form of extreme perfectionism is scientifically referred to as BMBD, or Being Mildred’s Bitch Disorder.

It gets worse

If you have BMBD and you have BWS (which often happens due to a failure to vaccinate for these things in infancy), you are really in trouble.

Perfectionist plus option value equals screwed image

With BMBD alone, your obsessions are more random and tend to fluctuate.  Mildred on her own may make you strive to throw the perfect birthday party for your 3-year-old one day, followed by obsessing over the formatting in your monthly report (and not even getting home from the office until after your 3-year-old has gone to bed) the next.  It doesn’t really matter what you are doing; her main concern is that you are always perfecting.  You may end up sacrificing other things that are important to you while in your Mildred-induced perfectionistic frenzies, but at least there’s a chance that you’ll have devoted some of your energies to things that actually do matter to you.

As proven earlier, it’s much worse if you also have BWS.  If you have both, your Mildred instead will be collaborating with the other mongeese to ensure that all of your energies go into attempting to be perfect at things that are extremely difficult and that you are simply not good at.  They will pick virtually impossible tasks specifically targeted to your weaknesses (because that’s where the biggest challenges and brick walls are–as mentioned, BWS sucks) and she will make you feel bad about yourself for failing to do them perfectly on your first try.

Mongeese with Mildred image

Focusing all of your energies on trying to be perfect at virtually impossible things which you are in fact not good at is no fun.  It’s certainly not as fun as competing in a taco eating contest (the great thing about a taco eating contest is that everyone wins).

taco image

You know you want it

Home treatment options for BMBD

Unfortunately BMBD is not curable–as you may have suspected, you will always be Mildred’s bitch.  However, there are some things that you can do to alleviate the majority of your symptoms.  Similar to BWS, embracing failure is extremely helpful in fighting BMBD–if you let Mildred down enough times, she’ll stop caring so much.

If you aren’t ready to embrace failure, try the following:

Step 1: Admit you have a problem

Like so many things, the most important first step is admitting that you have a problem.  BMBD is not just a harmless personality quirk; at its extremities, it holds you back, pushes people away and prevents you from having the life that you want.  Upon accepting that this is a real problem, you might be tempted to lash out at Mildred…  Don’t – it’s not her fault.

Step 2: Admit that you are the problem

The second step is realizing that Mildred isn’t the problem; you are.  It’s true – you can ask anyone that knows you well and they will tell you.

Now that you are horribly depressed, it is time to move on to step #3.  If you are not yet horribly depressed, you didn’t do steps 1 and 2 well enough–please repeat until you have perfected them.

Step 3:  Perform some Mildred Judo

This step requires some introspection.  If you have BMBD, it means that you suck at managing competing priorities and will let everything else slide in order to cater to the ever-changing whims of your Mildred.  If you can improve on balancing priorities using a little Mildred Judo, you won’t have to worry about what your Mildred thinks.  On the contrary, it is your Mildred that will have cause to worry.

The trick is to make your disorder work for you rather than against you.  What you need to do is to pick a new Mildred that has a more macro view of your life… Maybe pick your future self as your new Mildred.  Pick a high-level Mildred that is judging you based on how well you live your life across ALL dimensions rather than a small-minded Mildred that gets caught up on minor details and loses sight of everything else.  This new Uber-Mildred will have no trouble beating up your current Mini-Mildred and setting a very different tone for what remains of your lifetime of servitude.

Uber-Mildred perfectionist image

Note:  If the number of Mildreds mentioned in the preceding paragraph is confusing, just try to remember:  Uber-Mildred = good, Mini-Mildred=bad, millions of milling Mildreds mysteriously melting = hard to say.  Better?

Pleasing your new Uber-Mildred will require a whole new and much healthier mindset.  For instance, Uber-Mildred will be very unhappy with you if you work late and blow off spending time with your spouse.  That said, Uber-Mildred will also be unhappy if you do sloppy work and get fired.  What’s important to understand is that Uber-Mildred doesn’t require perfection in any one thing in particular, but rather requires that you devote your obsessiveness to trying to be perfect at balancing all of your competing priorities in a way that optimizes your happiness.

With her in charge, it’s not about having the perfectly formated report, it’s about having the best overall life (within which the formatting of your report is merely one of many other dimensions and should be prioritized accordingly).  Indeed, pleasing Uber-Mildred is all about getting comfortable with the idea of making sure that you are ‘good-enough’ across all dimensions before you are allowed to expend energy to go for better/great/fantastic/boy-howdy in any one category.  This isn’t easy.  Uber-Mildred is a harsh mistress and pleasing her will require making trade-offs (especially in any areas that mini-Mildred was particularly obsessed), but pleasing her will ultimately please you.  Isn’t that pleasant?

Step 4: Try to kick yourself in the back of the head

I suppose this step is optional, but, as mentioned previously, very entertaining for your friends and family and, depending on how extreme your BMBD symptoms have been, the least you could do is provide a little entertainment to thank them for putting up with you.  In fact, if you make it to step 4, please upload a YouTube video and link to it in the comments section below.

YouTube Video image

I'm not kidding

Note: If you are also suffering from BWS, the above steps will still help you somewhat, but in addition, you will need to seek out  and embrace failure (as discussed last week).  A good way to make failure a part of your daily life is to travel.  Immersion in a foreign culture will almost certainly make you feel like a failure several times a day.  Not only will you stop looking for brick walls, you will likely have moments where you are eager to eat Top Ramen for dinner because it means that you don’t have to deal with looking like an idiot with your poor language skills in a restaurant and potentially ordering something that has calf brains in it because you didn’t recognize just one little word in the list of 10 ingredients and assumed it must be something benign like parsley.  Not that I have any experience with this.

Disclaimer:  The author makes no claim whatsoever to have figured anything important out or to have anything worthwhile to say about this or any other topic.  He writes things like this merely for entertainment purposes–mostly his own. You should definitely not construe this as advice or take action based on it–you could end up unemployed in Chile.


If I were to write a management book about career “option value” . . .

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I know a lot of people that are working very, very hard in jobs that they don’t have any particular passion for (and in many cases dislike quite a bit) in order to have greater “option value.” I was one of them; I spent the majority of the last 10 years building option value.

As we come closer to the time we originally thought we’d end this Career Break, I’ve started to think about the future and my career again. I’ve started to think about “option value” – how much I’ve accumulated and what I should do with it. If I were to write a management book about option value it would look something like the following.

It will not apply to everyone.

Sometimes “option value” is about building a great resume…

It starts young. You don’t even know it’s happening. All you know is that you have to work very hard in high school to get into the right university. You don’t question it, you just know it’s what you’re supposed to do. Everyone knows it–and those that disagree just have wrong-minded priorities (e.g., fun). You know better.

Once in college, you have to make sure you choose the right major, get the right grades, do the right internships and demonstrate the right leadership qualities in order to get the right job after graduation. If you are in pursuit of option value, determining which job is the “right” one involves very little reflection upon what you enjoy doing or what makes you happy; instead, it requires seeking out the jobs that are hardest to get, the hardest to do and the most likely to consume the vast majority of your waking hours. This is obvious.

Duh image

Of course, this job is just the first such job; the whole reason you worked so hard to get it is so that you would be qualified for the next job. That’s the “option value.” There is always a next job/accomplishment/promotion/whatever–otherwise, why would you be working so hard at the current job which you barely even like? If you weren’t doing it in order to get the next job, it would be a little crazy, wouldn’t it?

Each new job will likely be harder than the last. If you’re focused on pursuing “option value,” you will likely inadvertently have become convinced that any job that would be hard and/or painful is automatically worthwhile and important; also, you’ll likely believe that any job that looks easy and/or fun is almost certainly frivolous and a waste of time. Obviously, this makes sense, even though it is sometimes hard to explain to others in a way that they can understand–fear not, this is likely due to their wrong-minded priorities (e.g., happiness).

This logic will force you to continually seek out the path of greatest resistance and push yourself as hard as you can to get “there.” The destination is irrelevant; it’s the very fact that there is resistance that makes it seem worthwhile. In other categories of your life you likely don’t have the same confusion–for example, you may fully agree that walking through an open doorway is a much better idea than trying to walk through a brick wall–but for some reason this logic gets reversed in regards to your career.  We’ll refer to this as “Brick Wall Syndrome, ” or simply BWS.

firewall_clip_art_10163 image

Watch out for "Irritable Brick Wall Syndrome", that's even worse.

Most people fail or drop out at some point in this process–which is understandable, as it requires near-perfection as well as a fair degree of luck to navigate the course. The longer you go without a failure, the greater the pressure to be perfect all the time and the more (it feels) you have to lose. Unfortunately, being perfect gets harder and harder. The further up this ladder you climb, the more years and vitality it extracts from you and the harder it is to remember what you were doing it for to begin with. On a positive note, with each new accomplishment you earn an entirely new set of options for the future. After 5 years of this intensity you have quite a bit of “option value;” after 10 you could do almost anything. Imagine if you did it for 20 years – someday you’ll be able to do all of those things you always wanted to do – not today, but someday . . .

Sometimes it’s about accumulating money and/or stuff…

This often looks similar to the scenario above. It often layers on top of the scenario above. Having money has real benefits:

  • You can afford to buy products and services that free up time (e.g., car, take-out dinners, Roomba). There are lots of things you can do with more time. Things like looking for more brick walls.
  • You can spend money on stuff to reward yourself for your accomplishments and to prove to others that you are “succeeding” (e.g., houses, watches, monster trucks). Unfortunately, spending it on these things along the way requires earning even more to pay for them. That said, the value of owning a monster truck should not be underestimated.
  • You can even save money so that someday you won’t have to work so hard and you can finally afford to go out and do all of those things you always wanted to do. I guess.

While it is not entirely the same thing, there is no denying that more money = more “option value.” And, you can always have more; someone else always does (we refer to them as “jerks”).

Options don’t kill people, people kill people…

There is absolutely a place for pursuing “option value” and many benefits can come from it. It can indeed get you where you want to go. . . as long as you know where that is. The thing is, you don’t really need 1,000 options, you probably only really want 5. And if you only really want 5, why spend so much time building the other 995? The trick is figuring out which 5 you want and minimizing the amount of time spent accumulating those you don’t care about.

For example, let’s say I want to go on an island vacation. It would probably make sense for me to figure out which island I want to go to, buy a ticket and go. Right? Alternatively, I could put off reflecting on where exactly to go and instead work really hard for several years to save up enough money to buy tickets to 20 different island destinations (just in case the first one doesn’t turn out to be perfect). I still won’t have gone to any islands over these years, but I will now have several to choose from and at least I won’t be sunburnt. Note: I tried really hard to come up with a funnier example for this analogy. I failed (see below, failure can be a good thing).

Pursuing options merely for the sake of having more options is not often a recipe for long-term happiness. It’s all too easy to get caught up in this cycle–especially when you are working so hard to get to the next set of options that you don’t allow yourself time to reflect upon where you are headed or what is on top of the particular ladder you are climbing–be careful, it could be an angry mongoose.

Mongoose With Ladder image

Worse, it could be a giant mongoose. BWS sucks.

One way to break the cycle…

Seek out failure. Failing early is better. Anything is better than running into an angry mongoose on top of a ladder. It’s much easier to succeed if you’re already a failure–and much harder to avoid failing if you are exclusively a succeeder. Most happy people I know have had significant failures. Few happy people that I know are pursuing options for the sake of options (though, they may have monster trucks someday so you should still be friends with them just in case).

Failure teaches you that it’s ok to fail (if this seems obvious, great–if not, be careful, you may be suffering from BWS). Failure often leads to new perspective and a more open mind regarding what “success” can look like. Indeed, failing at what you think you are “supposed to” do may open the door to pursuing what you actually “want to” do. Weird.

Don’t spend all of your time and energy getting stressed about avoiding/fearing failure (a prime symptom of BWS).  Instead, embrace it–it can be more fun that you might think.

Now what?

If you’re working hard on something you don’t love in order to build “option value,” always know why you are doing it and how you plan to “cash in” on those options. You get to choose why and how, but choose. Choose something that inspires you and work specifically towards it. It doesn’t matter what you pick (e.g., travel, time with family, volunteering, ninja training course, etc.). There is no right answer and you can (and should) change it as many times as you want. The important thing is picking something specific rather than just marching forward without a destination–if you don’t choose, the angry mongeese will choose for you and you definitely aren’t going to like what they choose (it will probably be something scary, they eat snakes).

Angry Mongeese image

With them in charge, what could go wrong?? (Note: I am fairly confident that the $2 I paid for this photo is the best $2 I have ever spent)

Once you pick something that inspires you, it’s time to ask yourself when. How much ‘option value’ and which options do you need to pull it off? How much money? Be specific. You might be surprised. You might have more than you need already. It might be time to cash in–you can always create more options later. Plus, who knows what new ones you’ll find along the way…

Monster Truck Mongoose Jump image

Maybe you'll be able to pull this off

Wasn’t that a nice inspirational note to end on?

Note:  The author makes no claim whatsoever to have figured anything important out or to have anything worthwhile to say about this or any other topic.  He writes things like this merely for entertainment purposes–mostly his own. You should definitely not construe this as advice or take action based on it–you could end up unemployed in Chile.

Update:  If you liked this, you may enjoy Chapter 2: Perfectionists should kick themselves in the head (perfectly)


Cafe con piernas = Coffee, with legs

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Buckle up, this one is going to be interesting…

Cafe con piernas: The background

So I was in Santiago for a few days back in 2002 and I vaguely remember going on a city tour with a tour guide that told us that there are topless coffee shops here–e.g., coffee shops in which the women serving the coffee are topless.  After telling us this he kind of laughed, so I laughed and assumed he was either making it up or that there was like one shop in the entire city and it was a complete oddity similar to this one in Maine (which sadly burnt down a few months after opening).  I was wrong.

What we’ve learned over the past week or so is that this is actually a bit of a cultural phenomenon here in Chile and has been for almost 50 years.  It’s called ‘cafe con piernas’ which means ‘coffee with legs’ and does not refer to an extra caffeine boost.  It started with a place called Haiti (which still has many locations around downtown).  At the time, the downtown area was full of almost entirely men coming to work (apparently the women usually stayed home) and the idea was to provide them some entertainment during the work day.  So, Haiti opened some coffee bars and had the women wear provocative clothing.  Unsurprisingly, this worked out pretty well and more and more similar shops kept opening.

In the mid/late 90s another coffee shop decided to differentiate itself by featuring what they called the “Millionaire Minute” which was a 60-second period during which all of the women would fully remove their tops.  Again, unsurprisingly, this innovation was largely well received by the clientele and was the catalyst for a whole new level of cafe con piernas experiences.  As you will see in a few paragraphs, I do not use the phrase ‘a whole new level’ lightly…

Cafe con piernas: The news report/video

I think that before I give you the details of our personal experience with cafe con piernas….

…

…

(sorry, just had a flashback)

Right, before I give you the details of our personal experience with cafe con piernas, it might be best if you watched the following video about it produced by a news agency in London in 2007 (it was aired on network TV, so should be safe for work):

Cafe con piernas news report (sadly, they have disabled embedding, so you will have to watch it on YouTube)

Ok, can’t put it off any longer.  On to our personal experiences…

The misadventures of Ryan and Jen – Chapter 1: The beginning

As we were exploring our new neighborhood over the last week, we noticed a very large number storefronts with big signs stating that they were ‘cafes.’  We were like, “Jackpot, so many cool looking places to get coffee!”  As we continued to explore, we noticed that many of them had either blacked out or, more commonly, mirrored windows (meaning, the kind that you only see your reflection if you try to look in)–this seemed odd…

Cafe con Piernas - Cafe Belen image

Looks pretty normal... except for the mirrored glass and the small sign that says "se necesita señorita" which other than being a neat rhyme, means something like "we need chicks" (all of them have this sign, which for awhile seemed like a solid job prospect for Jen...)

Later, we were walking around downtown and ran into a couple of other coffee shops called Haiti (the aforementioned original cafe con piernas institution) and Caribe.  These have normal windows and are usually pretty crowded.

Cafe con piernas -- Cafe Caribe storefront image

Looks perfectly normal from the outside

Unfortunately, this picture doesn’t capture it, but you can usually see the serving women from the street and they are all wearing very short, very tight dresses. Also, the area behind the coffee bar is raised up about a foot in order to maximize the view.  Seeing this triggered the memory of the ‘topless coffee bar’ comment from the tour guide during my first trip here back in 2002, so we started doing some Google research and began to learn all about cafe con piernas (including the video above and some links below).

Upon reading about these shops, you may be surprised to hear (I certainly was) how excited my lovely wife Jen became about investigating them first-hand.  After watching the video, she was all excited to go check one out first thing the next morning, saying  it was “a cultural experience”.  If you haven’t yet watched the video (seriously, watch it) an important and likely somewhat obvious fact to know is that the shops with mirrored glass are a bit more… shall we say, progressive than Haiti and Caribe–these two are considered to be the tamest of them.  Another fact you should know before I proceed is that all of these shops offer standing room only–no chairs, you drink your coffee while standing at the bar.

I suggested that we go to one of the tame ones, but Jen was having none of that.  Here is a direct quote from her:  “if I’m going to have to stand up to drink my coffee, I better get some ‘boob-age’.”  Seriously, that’s what she said.  There were other choice quotes from her as well, but I’ll save them for later; suffice to say, she was very excited–even more so than usual.  I think that now, in retrospect, she deeply, deeply regrets taking this stance…

The misadventures of Ryan and Jen – Chapter 2: First attempt

There are literally 5-10 of the mirrored glass-type establishments within a few blocks of our apartment (I told you it was a good neighborhood!), and given that you can’t see inside, we weren’t sure how to go about choosing one.  Luckily, my Harvard-educated wife concocted a plan; the plan was to loiter across the street from a few of them and choose the one had the most in/out traffic (we certainly did not want to be the only ones in there).  It was a reasonable plan, but as we were camped out across the street from a few trying to look inconspicuous, Jen’s excitement turned into nervousness that she would be rejected because she is female.  Then after 5 minutes of not seeing anyone go in or out, the nervousness escalated.  We decided that we would wait until we talked to some locals and got some advice on where to go.  If one wanted to say this in another way, one would say that we chickened out.

That afternoon we went on a bicycle tour of the city (which was cool), and Jen excitedly asked our guide about cafe con piernas.  Understandably, he laughed.  Then, he explained that there are PG, R and X rated ones and that if we wanted to learn more about them (including how to tell which was which), we should go on one of their other tours–seriously, this is a big enough thing here that it is included in city tour itineraries.  He explained that here in Santiago it is often somewhat cold, so everyone wears layers and is completely covered up most of the time; in his opinion, the girls in cafe con piernas venues are merely wearing the sorts of things that women might wear on the street in a place like Rio de Janiero and that it is very popular here because it’s so rarely seen.  Makes sense.  The other thing he told us was that it should be completely fine for her to go into them–I later learned that that was all she needed to hear…

The misadventures of Ryan and Jen – Chapter 3: Oops!

The following day I assumed that Jen’s excitement would have blown over.  Again, I was wrong.  We got out of bed and she was almost jumping up and down when she said, “Wanna go get some coffee???”  I said, “Really?  Still?”

Her: “Yes!  He said I could go!!”

Me:  “Ok…”

We decided to attempt the same plan.  We first camped outside of this fine looking venue for ~5 minutes:

Cafe con Piernas, Santiago venue image

We couldn't tell for sure what those pictures were on either end of the sign, but we were pretty sure this place was classy

We saw one person go in, but in general we didn’t love the vibe, so we ultimately decided to keep walking.  About a block away we encountered this place:

Cafe con Piernas, Santiago - Cafe Rio image

We have a winner

We stood outside, casing the place, for 5 minutes or so while I repeatedly asked Jen if she was sure she wanted to do this and she repeatedly answered in the affirmative.  Eventually we saw a few men go in so we sucked it up and went for it.

Oh boy.

Seriously, this is challenging to write.  Taking pictures was the furthest thing from our mind (and likely would have resulted in us being beaten out back by a guy named whatever the Chilean equivalent of Biff is), so I’ll do my best to detail the experience in words (which will force me to relive this highly traumatic experience quite vividly–hope you appreciate this!)

The room was about the size of a bedroom.  The coffee machines/baristas were off in the back.  There was a narrow standing bar in the middle and then a counter along the walls where you could put your coffee; otherwise, wide open space.  There was fairly loud techno music playing and it was dark-ish, but certainly light enough to see the staff… Also, all of the walls were mirrored (and possibly the floor/ceiling too, though I don’t remember).  Equally weird was how easy it was to see out the front windows to the people on the street.

We were immediately greeted by a woman wearing the standardized uniform–5 inch heels, g-string/thong and very revealing bra; that’s all.  She kissed us both on the cheek somewhat provocatively and then asked what we would like.  She did not seem at all disturbed by Jen’s presence–nor did the other patrons despite what they were doing.  We ordered 2 coffees.  She told us that it would cost 2,000 pesos so I gave her 2,000 (this is more or less the normal price for coffee).  Then she asked if we might want to give her a little something extra for her.  Jen gave her another 2,000.

She went off to retrieve our coffee and we nervously looked around–which was pretty easy given all of the mirrors and the fact that we had situated ourselves at the stand-up bar in the middle.  This few minutes that we had to ourselves taking in the scenery and wondering what would happen to us when she returned with our coffee was a special time for us.  It probably always will be.  Whether we want it to be or not.

At the time we were there (~11am) the staff consisted of ~5 girls all dressed the same and there were maybe 3 male customers–each there on their own, and each ‘enjoying’ his time with one of the staff.  We had read a few accounts of other experiences at such places and had heard of one which said that the girls were unattractive, overweight and groped the customers left and right.  We heard another account in which the people said that the girls were very attractive but seemed completely disinterested in the customers.  In the 2 by 2 of x-rated cafe con piernas venues, Cafe Rio is definitely in the “winning” quadrant–very attractive girls, lots and lots of groping.

Cafe con piernas, Santiago 2 by 2 image

Note: Consulting Rehab does not necessarily condone or endorse the views of this 2by2

In fact, the word ‘groping’ really doesn’t describe the kinds of things that we saw reflected in the mirrors.  The other girls were definitely ‘dancing’ with the other customers–keep in mind, there are no chairs, so it was sort of a standing lap dance.  Some of the customers definitely had their hands all over (and under) the skimpy outfits of their dedicated girl.  And, we also saw one girl kneeling down in front of a guy for a couple of minutes appearing to provide a special service.  Truly, experiencing things like this with your wife is the bedrock of a strong marriage.

Soon, our señorita came back with our coffee and stood about 2 inches away from Jen, making it clear that she would be our companion until we left.  I’m not a religious person, but I have thanked god more than once in the last couple of days that she chose to stand next to Jen and not me.  Not really having a roadmap for situations like this, Jen struck up a conversation with her.  We learned that she moved here 2 years ago from Peru and her 6-year-old son lives back in Peru with her mother.  She’s worked at the bar the whole time and makes money to send home and to be able to go visit.  She also told us that the most crowded time of day was at 1pm, right around lunch break (keep in mind, these places are closed at night and don’t serve alcohol).  It was actually a very nice conversation and we would have truly enjoyed getting to know her if not for the dry humping (and more) happening a few feet away.

I don’t think I’ve ever drunk a coffee so quickly.  We were out within 10 minutes.  Jen was no longer excited.  We’re pretty sure we had stumbled into one of the hardest core ones based on what we’ve read and it felt more like being in a brothel or extremely hands-on strip club than a coffee shop.  Suffice to say that we were a bit messed up for the next few hours.

Cafe con Piernas, Santiago - Cafe Rio 2 image

2 hours later we walked by again to get a picture of the front -- Jen's face looked like this for most of the day

It was about 1pm when we walked by the second time and we saw 7+ men walk in within 2 minutes… curious how it works when the clients outnumber the staff… not curious enough to go back.  Interestingly, there definitely does not seem to be any sort of social stigma associated with walking in and out of these places… many of them are on busy pedestrian streets and we’ve seen people coming in and out of them quite a bit.

After this experience, despite our need to find an income, we decided that it was no longer a viable option for Jen to become one of the señoritas that they necesita.

The misadventures of Ryan and Jen – Chapter 4: Our tamer experience at Cafe Caribe

Because we had already done the hard part and gone into a hardcore one, we decided to try one of the tamer ones the next day to complete our research.  It was a world of difference.  There were men there, but also women and while the servers were definitely wearing tight dresses, it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Cafe con piernas, santiago - Cafe Caribe image

I fake tried to take a picture of Jen to get one of the staff, but she was wise to us and mostly escaped. There are better pictures in the links below

This was basically just a normal coffee shop.  In fact, I’d argue that the fact that you had to stand up to drink your coffee was weirder than the outfits the staff were wearing.  This was actually kind of a fun and different cultural experience–night and day from our Cafe Rio experience.

The misadventures of Ryan and Jen – Epilogue

It’s been a few days now and we’ve mostly recovered from our experience, but as I said, our 10 minutes in Cafe Rio will always be a special time for us.  Writing this has been cathartic.  Let us never speak of it again.

Cafe con piernas: Our advice

If you are a tourist here in Santiago and want to be able to say you went to cafe con piernas (and it is worth checking out), go to Cafe Caribe or Haiti.  If you are looking for a coffee and some dry humping (or more, did I mention there was a staircase in the back that likely lead to someplace a little quieter…), try Cafe Rio.   Beware of the other mirrored glass establishments, you certainly wouldn’t want to end up in the unattractive/aggressive groping quadrant of the cafe con piernas 2 by 2.

Cafe con piernas: Other interesting links

Game 3: Argentina 2, Greece 0

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We’re relatively new to this, but as far as we can tell, Argentina always wins.  This is probably a good thing as it’s usually much better to hang out in crowded places with very passionate drunk people that are happy rather than angry.  We watched this game (which was thankfully at 3:30pm rather than early in the morning) at a bar called Sugar in Palermo with a few friends.  Sugar was a decent venue with a couple of big screens, but it was more of an international crowd which is a little less fun than hanging out with just the locals.  If it’s nice out during the next game we’ll likely head over to San Martin Square where they have big screens setup outside and tons of people turnout to watch.

Anyway, Argentina vs. Greece…

I have to believe that there is some good comedy to be had regarding each of these countries’ ability to have massive economic crises… Greece thinks they’re all that for almost taking down the EU this year, but Argentina does that sort of thing more or less every decade whether they need it or not (hey, I tried).  Not only is Argentina better at screwing up its economy, it turns out they are also much better at futbol.

Argentina_Greece_Worldcup_2010_stats image

I'm no expert, but seriously Greece... only 3 shots on goal?

It wasn’t a very exciting game until the last 20 minutes or so.  Argentina appeared to only be half trying–likely because they had already qualified to advance to the next round and didn’t want anyone to get hurt in this game.  Also, the 2 guys that have been scoring all of Argentina’s goals so far weren’t even in the lineup for this one.  Presumably, they were just sitting this one out to conserve energy for the next round–that said, it’s become more and more apparent that the basic strategy is to get the ball to Messi who then runs through 6 or 7 defenders by himself and ricochets the ball into the net off one of his own players; so basically, the other guys just need to stand near the goal and he will score via them.  With so many players on the field it seems like favoring one player so much is a suspect strategy, but it clearly seems to be working.

messi_shrug image

In spanish, this expression translates roughly to: "You guys... always trying to take the ball from me... so cute"

A theory…

Other than Messi being unstoppable, I think I know why Argentina was able to beat Greece so easily…

Exhibit A:  Greek flag

greece-flag image

Notice the shade of blue--much darker than the Argentina flag blue right?

Exhibit B:  Argentina’s Away uniforms which they wore for this game vs. Greece

argentina-away-2010 Image

Look familiar?

Clearly, Argentina was able to fool the Greek team by wearing jerseys that bore no resemblance whatsoever to Argentina colors, but rather very closely resembled Greek colors.  The Greek players likely had no idea why they had so many teammates on the field or where their opponents were–you can imagine their surprise when their teammates started scoring on them (this is why Argentina had to wait until near the end of the game to start scoring).  This is similar to the kind of clever strategy that earned Maradona his nickname “the hand of god.” (<–for those unaware, this nickname is based on him using his hand to knock in a game winning 1986 World Cup quarter-final goal vs. England and then proudly telling the press how he managed to trick the referee into thinking it was his head by putting his hand really close to his face when he did it–the goal is one thing, bragging about it later is a whole new level)

Hand_of_God_goal image

What hand??

Highlights

If you missed the game, here is the highlight reel.  Be sure to watch how Messi plows through the entire Greek team and then basically makes it impossible for Palermo not to score in the second goal (this sort of thing happens often)

Good luck Mexico, we’ll see you Sunday 🙂

p.s. for some perspective on just how seriously this sport is taken here in Argentina, check out this great blog post:  http://www.vamospanish.com/blog/2010/06/22/when-game-is-on-buenos-aires-is/

Feria de Mataderos — You’re not in San Telmo anymore…

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Interested in something unique to do in Buenos Aires? Read on…

“Feria” is the word they use down here to refer to an open air market.  Most sell various arts and crafts as well as clothing, food and antiques.  There are several of them in varying shapes and sizes all over the city (and country).  Some are every day, some are only on certain days of the week.  Probably the most common one for tourists to check out is the Feria de San Telmo which is every Sunday and stretches from the center of the San Telmo neighborhood all the way to Plaza de Mayo across streets that are closed weekly for the occasion.  It’s usually pretty full of tourists, but we enjoy the San Telmo market… despite being quite crowded, it somehow manages to maintain a laid back vibe; this is much assisted by the fact that the vendors are super chill and I’ve never seen anything even remotely resembling an aggressive sales pitch–on the contrary, they are usually just hanging out and enjoying the day.  San Telmo is roughly a 10 minute cab ride away for us, or a 30-45 minute walk.  This is obviously far too convenient, so in our continued desire to get off the beaten path and find more stuff to do here in BA, yesterday we decided to go to the exact opposite side of the city of Buenos Aires to check out a different Feria:  Feria de Mataderos (Fair warning:  I’ve encountered very few Argentine websites that don’t begin with an annoying animated intro that includes music that plays automatically–this site is no exception)

Feria_de_Mataderos_map Image

For context, we live in the top right corner and the city is ~80 Sq. Miles; so this is a bit further than 'off the beaten path'

Why we went:

We were looking to do something a bit more adventurous than normal and see a different side of the city (literally), and this delivered.  There are several ways that you can get there by bus as detailed on their website, but we decided to splurge and take a cab.  The cab took nearly 30 minutes (I told you it was far), but still only cost about ~US$10.  It was pretty cool driving through so many different parts of the city that we hadn’t seen before.  It definitely changes as you get further out–still quite pretty, but the lower buildings and wider streets give it a more tranquil feel (at least as viewed through a car window, it’s entirely possible that some of these neighborhoods are somewhat unsafe).

Jen had heard at school that Feria de Mataderos was more traditional/authentic, far less touristy and would include lots of gaucho (~cowboy) type stuff, good food and maybe even some live shows.

gaucho-pants image

For context: According to Google images, these are "gaucho pants" -- apparently Argentine cowboys wore heels

Did it deliver?

The quick answer is Yes.

There was a main stage area where they did dancing shows and other stuff that seemed exciting  which was kind of cool.

Feria de Mataderos stage image

If that's not a live show, I don't know what is

And of course lots and lots of booths selling all kinds of stuff

Feria de Mataderos booths images

One of many streets full of vendors

Much of the stuff on sale was similar to the stuff you’d find at other ferias in the city, but this stuff seemed higher quality and more authentic on average (and was cheaper).

Feria de Mataderos booths with Argentina flags image

Argentina will never be accused of lacking patriotism

It also felt far more neighborhood-ie if that makes any sense.  While I’m sure we weren’t the only tourists there, it felt like the majority of the people there were from the neighborhood and turned out every Sunday which gave it a cool vibe.

Also, unlike San Telmo and many of the other ferias in the city, at Feria de Mataderos, there is lots of food!

Feria de Mataderos Choripan Image

That, my friend, is Choripan... Grilled chorizo cut down the middle, smothered in Chimichurri and served on bread; it's obviously very healthy

Feria de Mataderos Choripan with Jen Image

...Doesn't she look healthy?

You’re probably wondering where we found that Choripan…

Feria de Mataderos grill image

Some people say "where there's smoke there's fire," in Argentina it's more appropriate to say "where there's smoke, there's meat; lots of it"

Aside from lots and lots of meat (the above is only one of the multiple meat venues), there were also several booths with traditional foods from all over the country such as humitas and tamales, locro, empanadas and more.

Feria de Mataderos locro booth

This locro/empanada/tamale/other stuff booth had a very long line

This being Argentina and all, there were also tons of sweets–lots of fried pastries and some very fat women sitting behind freshly baked cakes that looked quite tasty (we wanted to get a picture of this, but were afraid of the aforementioned very fat women–we figured we could outrun them, but they seemed to have lots of friends).  Also, there were some candy type things:

Feria de Mataderos fruit candy image

This was some sort of fruit candy with popcorn--looked really cool, but we didn't eat it; also possible that someone just spilled a bucket of popcorn on their candied fruit

We had also heard that there would be animals.  We had heard right.

Feria de Mataderos Llama image

For instance: We were greeted by this rather smug looking and well dressed llama

Feria de Mataderos Llama backside image

Later he showed us how he really felt about us; disgusting, yet entertaining--both the event itself and Jen's excited desire to capture it on camera

In addition to our Llama friend, there were lots and lots of miniature ponies.

Feria de Matadores pony image

Of all of the ponies, this one definitely had the coolest hairstyle. If you're into punk ponies that is. (I am)

Aside from the animals wandering around, one of the highlights of this market is said to be the Gaucho shows on horseback.  Apparently the Gauchos perform various cowboy skills and other feats of strength/prowess while on horseback.  We did see the gauchos and the horses, but I think they must just have been warming up because not much was happening.  That said, plenty of people were waiting around expectantly, so I’m sure the shows do happen.

Feria de Mataderos gauchos

Or... it's possible that the gaucho feat of strength is just sitting still on a horse for a long time... if so, the show was awesome!

In Summary

We had a great time and while the Feria de Mataderos is unlikely to rock your world, it is sure to be an enjoyable Sunday afternoon and will allow you to get a much more authentic glimpse into Argentine culture and tradition as well as allowing you to see a different side of the city.  A perfect 3-4 hour outing off the beaten path.

Quick tip:  Be sure that you have a way to get home arranged before you go–we found it to be quite difficult to flag down a taxi as this is quite far away from the city center and cabs are a bit rare (also, apparently the neighborhood is a bit iffy safety-wise if you stray too far away from the market).  Either know the right bus to get you home or bring a phone and call for a cab to pick you up (which we keep hearing we should be doing all the time anyway, but we continue to tempt fate with flagging down cabs on the street).

Enjoy!