Miscellany
Nov 18th, 2007, 09:53 pm
What’s going on with me:
- I’m pretty much done with my research paper about Muslim identity in Buenos Aires. While it ended up being twenty-five sheets, it really has about twenty-three pages (double-spaced) of content. I needed twenty-five pages of material, so it came up a little short. Oh well. I had more information, but I had to scrap it because it was either redundant or irrelevant. The good news: my tutor read it over, and she told me that I only have a few minor grammatical mistakes. ¡Qué bueno! Since the whole thing is Spanish, my third language, I’m pretty proud of myself for writing so much and so correctly.
- I saw a bunch of Argentine hippies listening to and performing West African drumming and dancing to it very early Saturday morning. I got pumped up by watching people play the djembe, a popular African hand drum and had big dreams of getting back into it when I go back to the US. Yeah, I play it. Watch this video I took:
- My friends and I ate delicious Peruvian food last night. Gotta love the spiciness.
- I typically go out every weekend and stay out until five or six in the morning. As crazy as that sounds, that’s pretty common here, and people still study and make it to work on time. While pretty much everything shuts down at 9 or 10 p.m. in the US, that’s when the nightlife begins in this city. I love it.
- I’m gonna miss all the locally owned and operated shops and restaurants when I leave. While regional, national, and international chains typically offer lower prices, they’re impersonal and lack character. You can actually talk to the owner and his or her family in these mom-and-pop places instead of some twentieth-tier manager who works by book.
- My forty-four year old host brother constantly says “Hay crisis” (“There’s a crisis”). I have no friggin’ clue why. He says it out of no where, and the conversations generally have nothing to do with crises. I could be talking about eating chocolate ice cream, and he’ll somehow find a way to fit in “Hay crisis.” He’ll say it an average of twelve times a day, and that’s just when I’m around. And I’m pretty sure it’s not an Argentine thing because I haven’t heard anyone else say it so much.
- This Pakistani uncle that has lived in Argentine for eleven years told me two Fridays ago that he hates the US. That really, really, really ticked me off. He didn’t say it to offend me, but he was just adding commentary when these Argentines were asking me about life in the US. Okay, I understand why people across the world are pissed off at American foreign policy and the government’s actions in other countries, but to tell someone they hate your country just crosses the line. I probably have more of a reason to say I hate Pakistan than him saying he hates the US since Bengalis were politically, economically, and socially marginalized when Bangladesh was part of Pakistan, but obviously I’m not the kind to hold grudges against an entire country and people instead of the country’s policies. He apologized soon afterwards.
Let’s talk about race and ethnicity for a bit:
- Argentines pride themselves on the fact that their country is the whitest and most European country in Latin America and forget that millions of non-white immigrants from East Asia and other parts of South America have come to this land since the end of Word War II to make new lives for themselves and improve their economic situation. Well, they don’t really forget. They just don’t think these immigrants are as good as the ones that came from Italy, Spain, Germany, and other European countries.
- Based on personal observations and what I’ve read, most supermarkets in Buenos Aires are owned by Chinese immigrants, who make up a small but sizeable part of the city’s population. So many that many Argentines simply refer to supermarkets as “chinos” (short for supermercados chinos, or Chinese supermarkets). Yeah, they’re not politically correct at all in this country. People commonly say “Voy al chino” (“I’m going to the Chinese supermarket”) when they say they’re going grocery shopping. It really annoys me. Just think of it this way: if I heard some white dude back in the US saying “I’m going to the Hindu” instead of saying he’s going to the gas station, it’d piss me off. I may not be Hindu, but I’m still South Asian and I would feel just as offended. Most of these people don’t find it offensive, but I’d like to see them tell a Chinese person they’re going to the chino straight in their face.
- Argentina has one of the largest Jewish populations in the world. After the bombings of the Israeli embassy and AMIA, Argentina’s most important Jewish organization, in the early 1990s, most, if not all, synagogues in the city put up barriers up front to prevent cars (particularly those filled with explosives) from driving into them and instated other security measures, such as 24/7 police protection and tall gates.