Six Degrees of Failure

I managed a nice hike here in Salta. Although I went early, it was still hot and humid, but worth it for the nice views:

In other blog entries, I noted how cheap massages were in Mexico. In the US, they cost somewhere around $2 per minute. In Mexico, they are about $1 per 2 minutes. Here in Argentina, they are a little bit cheaper. Concordantly, Ubers are even cheaper than Mexico or Romania. 

The grading system here relies on a score from 0-10. 10 is the best, and anything from 0-5 is a failing grade. 

Me to host: There are six types of failing grades?

Host: Yes. How many in the US?

Me: One. 

Locals love yerba mate. Most of my students drank often from metal straws in metal cups filled with yerba mate and hot water. They'd fill their cup with hot water over and over, which reminded me of that yellow tea in Shanghai. You could sit at a restaurant for hours and they'd just add more hot water to your tea pitcher. No need to change the leaves because they somehow kept imparting the right amount of flavor. This still mystifies me. Not too strong, not too weak. 

Racial variety is very limited, both in people and restaurants. Montrose, CO has 20,000 people; Ridgway, CO has about 2000. Each of them has more different types of non-local food than Santa Fe, which has over 400,000 people. For example, Montrose has a Chinese restaurant, Nepalese restaurant, and Indian restaurant. Chinese and Indian restaurants are pretty popular in the US. Locals confirmed that Santa Fe has no Indian nor Chinese restaurants. I'd guess they're most prominent in India and China. 

The gyms here are the worst of anywhere I've seen. Old and cheap equipment, often broken. No air conditioner no matter how hot and humid it gets. I've broken out a sweat walking down the street shirtless at midnight. So yeah, A/C in a gym woulda been nice. 

Streets are sketchy too. I already mentioned the slidewalks and streets that are rarely flat. Intersections typically lack stop or yield signs and thus most intersections interactions rely on eye contact, posturing, and terror. Remember you can't run in or near streets since you have to watch each footstep carefully to figure out the right angle. I did tweak my right ankle fleeing a pushy driver. 

Most streets effectively have two lanes without any paint or other way to separate the two lanes. So, like with intersections, drivers kinda negotiate. Here's a view from one of those wonderfully inexpensive Ubers. I'm glad the locals can drive here, since I never could nor would. 

Vos Domestic Product

Speaking the local language here in Argentina will make it a lot harder for me to speak Spanish next time I’m in Mexico.

The word “you” is pretty common in most languages, even if you subdivide “you” if it’s formal vs. informal, plural vs. singular, male vs. female, weekend vs. weekday, tall vs. short, cloudy vs. sunny, or clever vs. not. I was thus disappointed to learn that I was using "you" incorrectly while here. The second-person singular is “vos” instead of “tu” like almost everywhere else that speaks Spanish. It’s also conjugated differently.

It's nonetheless way better than the German approach. 

I had this conversation with my host (entirely in Spanish, mostly translated):

I’m going to get an uber.

You’re going to fuck an uber?

No. Get. Coger.

Coger means “to fuck” here.

I’m sure it means “get” in Mexico and Spain and can be used to get a cab or rideshare, but I’ll try to blend in by following local rules. I learned this from my host, Victoria, seen here with a smile as usual:

Argentina is famous for its beef. Paradoxically, they don’t typically ask how you want it cooked and serve it well done. This is also popular in Brazil and many Asian countries. This is one way I’m not even gonna try to blend with the locals. Argentinian beef is a gross domestic product when so gruesomely overcooked.   

I horrified my host by telling her I put empanadas in my toaster. Makes sense to me. They're the right size. They get crispy on the outside and warm on the inside. 

Palta is avocado (aguacate elsewhere). There are many other examples of different words down here, but their management of -illa/o is most entertaining:

Strawberries – called “fresas” in most other Spanish-speaking countries – are called “frutillas” here. It means “diminutive cute little fruit” or something vaguely like that. Local strawberries are appropriate if you're thirsty. 

Butter - called "mantequilla" in most other Spanish-speaking countries - is called "manteca" here. So, Argentina considers strawberries relatively cute, unlike butter. I'm cool with that. 

Slidewalks

The locals here in Argentina, like in Bremen, are as warm as their Januaries. Here's only one example. They invited me to a going away party for one of their labmates. This is not standard practice. I'm not in their lab. I'm just a visitor. But I was invited and they made me feel welcome. 

The local infrastructure gets bonus points for having countdown timers on all traffic lights, like some other countries. Not the USA, since it would somehow lead to more road rage shootings. Not sure how. 

Trash cans are elevated and are walled with grids instead of solid metal or plastic. This isn't a complaint. The function of a trash can is to enable you to put trash in it and forget about it. They do that just fine. I just don't see why. Gerv speculated they were elevated to deter animals. He is a brilliant engineer. But I live in bear country with public trash cans that (like most of them) have solid walls and extend all the way to the bottom to provide much greater capacity.

Putting holes in the sides of those trash cans would only help spread the smell, which would attract more bears and get tourists killed. Oooh. I like it! So I now appreciate why local trash cans are as they are (never mind the absence of local bears). I hereby remind these nonexistent Argentine streetroaming bears that I am not a tourist; I'm here for work. Go eat an Englishman. Viva Las Malvinas. 

The sign below prohibits putting anything there without a bag. Obviously ineffective. 

I'm less keen on other infrastructure. 

I'm afraid to walk the streets at night. 

I wasn't walking through Las Ramblas in Barcelona, where I was pickpocketed several times. The most they ever got was a plastic hotel key while I said to the thief in Spanish: "Mi carretera es en mi hotel."

I wasn't afraid walking around Mazatlan, capital of the Sinaloa Cartel, even after there was a drugwar murder right across the street from me.

I fear the sidewalks. 

Sidewalks launch out pseudorandomly like a Picasso painting of and after a sustained artillery strike. They somehow manage every angle except flat. My buddy Duncan referenced Escher instead of Picasso. Here's an example. Given time, trees beat concrete every time. 

The elevator in my assigned housing requires riders to close two doors to use it, rather than closing doors themselves.

Assigned housing is iffy. The bed frame is broken. The mattress and pillow are soft and lumpy. Ants abounded when I moved in. Fans made a never-changed vacuum cleaned filter look clean The shower is tiny. The bathroom does include a bidet, which would be nice but I never use them. The towels and blankets could be combined into one airline blanket. They would then be thicker than the walls, which transmit sound like air. Internet is intermittent. My room has a clock, which was broken. I added a battery and it's still broken. The microwave door is broken. The A/C works wonderfully, which is worth quite a lot. The nearby gym has no A/C and limited hours. Keys and locks are silly.

They've eliminated coins, which is reasonable with such high inflation. Most of the streets around my apartment are one-way. This is quite convenient for me since I don't drive here. You just have to look one way before crossing the street. And also down to find the right angle on the slidewalk. 

American Undercover

I'm now in Santa Fe, Argentina on a Fulbright Specialist Award. My blog posts remain highly correlated with travel, and you're welcome. I'm even more boring at home. 

I've been playing American Undercover like I often do abroad. It's easy - just lie about your nationality. Many Americans play Canadian and that's pretty uncreative. I have limited myself to English-speaking countries due to obvious linguistic inadequacy. I was often Mexican in Timisoara because there was almost no chance of running into any real Mexicans (although in fact I did). In Argentina, I'd be expected to speak Spanish with a flawless Mexican accent. Never had it, never will - though I do try. 

You may think: but the differences between and within Englishspeaking accents are really obvious. Yeah. To you, fellow native English speaker. Can you spot the differences among different Spanish accents? Also, I might have been born somewhere and learned English somewhere else. 

For the first time, I played accidentally. I actually told an Uber driver the truth [Translated from Spanish]:

Where are you from?

Colorado.

Ah! Canada! Very beautiful.

Yes, very beautiful. 

Colorado is in Canada?

Excuse me, I got a WhatsApp. 

I was also graced with a free shot this morning. I sipped a morning coffee and realized it had whiskey. The waiter smiled and said he gave me a coffee from my country because I was friendly and left a generous tip last week. Took me a while to remember I had told them I'm from Ulster. I do have an Irish first name and Welsh last name. I do not know whether "Irish Coffee" is also "Northern Irish Coffee." I do know I got a free shot of whiskey. 

But region-based food names are highly suspect anyway. I keep encountering the same phenomenon as in my many Eurodining and other posts: so-called "American" food. Yes, technically I'm in the Americas now; no, according to many people I've asked, they don't mean "pan-American food" but specifically "USA American food." I also don't think they mean that the food contains Americans. 

This is only a partial list:

American ice cream. 

American cream is an ice cream flavor. Eww!

They also have Russian cream. Sounds worse. 

American ice cream "The Danube."

I lived in Linz, which is on the Danube. The Danube is very long but goes nowhere near Argentina. 

American pizza. 

   American sandwich.

American sandwich and Gringo milanese. 

Just threw this in for my Germanspeaking reader. (Yes, you, Gerv.)

First, I don't recall seeing "Berlin pizza" anywhere in Germany. 

Second, the menu does not include pizza with tuna fish, onions, and black olives [nor any of those three ingredients], which is common in Germany. No, really. That horrifies Americans but it's good. No, really.

Kentucky Pizza. It's a major chain that PREDATES KFC. That's right, If you think they ripped off the design from KFC, it's the other way around. The friendly "Kentucky" waiter asked me if KFC is a fancy restaurant in the US and I said that's where you take the junior high school football team after they lose. 

"Costilla" does mean "rib" but not "reab."

This is my favorite so far. All four of these earthly delights in one place?! Be still my beating heart! and hand....

On the opposite end of favorite, all the sushi restaurants in Santa Fe (population almost 400K) serve canned-tuna sushi. That includes western Colorado, quite far from any source of tuna. Ouray (population 900) had a sushi place that got uncanned tuna. The salsa sushi wasn't so exciting either. 

(Dis)honorable mention for the pizza cone. Brilliant. Add Doritos, deep fry it, license it to Taco Bell. 

I also grant an award for design to Fabric sushi from Buenos Aires. I've never seen any interior like this. Obviously a lot of work. Masterful indirect lighting. 

Come again? The bottom one reminds me of something. Very warm and archetypal.

Add some pink paint and soft lighting, a melange of tasteful aromas, maybe a little mood music. Those plants could be painted black and moved up top where they belong, perhaps carefully trimmed in the appropriate triangular pattern. A fishy smell would match the sushi theme.

 

However, our efforts to mimic reality might not include Aunt Flo. Also no crabs or “chlams” on the menu even though it’s a sushi joint. And no beer cuz we can’t have any yeast nearby. 

Azore loser

 

I was in the Azores for the last few days. Never been here before. I went because my ol’ buddy Christoph invited me to stay for a couple days at his pad on Santa Maria Island – known as the quiet island. Great fun. He smiled – and drank more alcohol – over those few days than the entire 24 years I’ve known him. He should get divorced more often. There’s another obvious reason for his altered affect but I was asked to keep it secret from all of my reader. That wasn’t a typo. You’ll figure it out, Gerv.

He had a dog named Luis Miguel who was as dumb as Christoph is smart. He didn’t seem to understand that he should get out of the way of cars or that leashes limit leaping. Looked painful. Over and over. But he is cheerful and non-threatening. Dye his fur blonde and release him in Hollywood and he’d end up on a casting couch stained white with coke and white trash wanna-be actress tears, then on the cover of Elle.

The trip declined after that. Flaneur means risk; risk means periodic failure.

I ended up losing the hotelfinding game. I had to spend last night in a hostel. I used to stay in them all the time. The internet here worked as well as the last time I stayed in a hostel – meaning none. Unlike then, decades ago, you expect a hostel to have internet. Also no A/C. I did at least get my own room by paying for it. Other aspects not so bad. Twin bed, fine, I’m not that fat. Shared bathroom, doesn’t bug me, I’m OK with being naked in public gyms and hot springs. (Well, more specifically, the showers in the mens’ bathrooms in public gyms.) No spa facilities, pretty bare room, no problem – I didn’t need more. It had a bed and a desk, which is enough for me. The mattress was only slightly firmer than air.

I came here to Ponto Delgado because Santa Maria Island doesn’t have any flights west across the Atlantic. Also, I heard there were hot springs here. When I checked into my hotel, they said the hot springs are all full and my bathing suit will get stained red from all the iron. That sounded kinda fun, but not the full hot springs. Why, I can get that at Orvis Hot Springs! I’ll probably be there soon after my arrival in Colorado to enjoy the shoulderfalls.

Oh. Portuguese. When I was in school, I was told that Portuguese is kinda like Spanish. That’s true, in the same way that Italian and Catalan are like Spanish – not enough that you can really communicate across languages, but enough that you can recognize many words after you fail to translate them. Some words are pretty easy. Even most Americans who (think they) don’t speak Spanish can probably figure out the Portuguese word “cerveja.”  

Many people on Santa Maria Island – like those in Dolce la Hulpe in Brussels – spoke surprisingly poor English. Unlike the stereotypical English speaking tourist, this didn’t bug me. I can pantomime. And I kinda respect them for bucking the dominant paradigm. As RATM says, fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me. I would guess what the locals here would understand is fuck you, ?? ?? ?? ??? ???????.

I think BCI. Waterloo thinking?

The 10^th BCI Meeting was glorious and emotional as always. This one was in Belgium’s Sonian Forest near Waterloo, the first BCI Meeting in Europe. It was also the first BCI Meeting with no bonfire. I organized an unofficial and “officially unendorsed” bonfire at all of the prior in-person meetings, so it was quite reasonably assumed that I would try to do so again. The Board and Podium were so worried I’d sneak off and organize a stealth bonfire that they threatened to follow me around at night. I was flattered. They ended up putting two bonfire parties on the schedule even though they had no fires, which we quickly dubbed nonfires.

 

I was up late every night carousing with an impressive crowd, driven by jet lag, willpower, and stupidity. Alcohol was involved. I brought a bottle of mezcal aged in bamboo barrels that I got in Puebla that seemed well received. Since it was Belgium, they sold beers through vending machines, which we rapidly exhausted. This exhaustion was exhausting but y’know commitment. The main bar kept closing on us just because it was 2 AM. I’m glad BCIs couldn’t track the disgraceful plans I kept formulating after the bar closed. Then they put up this sign and I realized they didn’t need a BCI. 

The bar is also unable to serve tap water. Multiple bartenders said there's a law in Belgium: giving a glass with tap water is illegal. Belgium is legendary for its silly government(s). So many people just did the same thing I did - ask for an empty glass they could fill themselves. From looking online, it seems that Belgium keeps waffling on whether restaurants should be required to serve tap water. This might merit a spinoff blog post titled "Belgian Waffles."

My shirt with “Will Argue Science for Money” seemed fitting, so I wore that some days. Glad I copyrighted that phrase. I was disappointed that I didn’t think of printing a BCI Society T-shirt too. I’m thinking of logos now. You think. We know. Could be interpreted so many ways.

Oh yeah. Those conferences have content too. I was quite impressed with Satellite Event 1, Gerv’s workshop on BCI for mass populations. The workshop was loosely based on our upcoming paper in Nature Reviews Bioengineering. Wolpaw’s talk was of course brilliant. So many posters with real advances, notably new directions. It wasn’t always that way, younger readers (not you, Gerv). The second meeting, for example, there was some buzz that there wasn’t anything truly new, just more advances in how to help the same group (people who otherwise couldn’t communicate). I could comment more on content and serious topics, but that gets away from the theme of the blog.

To Jose Millan: Jose, remember when I said that BCI conferences are ever more a reunion of old friends? That was 10 years ago. What are they now?

Jose: Older friends.

 

Thorsten Zander: Do you realize we’re the old guys now?

Me: In 20 years, we’ll look back on this and think we weren’t that old.

Mandet Mandate?

I poked around a little for fun. And I also did a quick online search. "Mandet" is a neologism in modern English, but bidets designed for men exist. 

I thought that all bidets were meant for post-potty cleaning. There's so much more. I learned that man-bidets could be used before or after sexual intercourse (presumably with someone else), treating hemorrhoids or jock itch, or even nobler goals. I remain too unsophisticated to appreciate the added value over a wet washcloth. Also unclear why any bidet couldn't be used by any sex, gender, or junk. 

These are images from a quick online search. Notice anything these men have in common? 

Rate them on a 1-5 scale for:

Youthful

Successful

Handsome

Physically healthy

Manly

Not-nerdy

But all products aimed toward men use such men, right? No. Wilford Brimley. Life Insurance. Senior living. Oxygen machines. Timeshares. AARP. Manpons. 

"But how do you market moisturizer to the Marlboro Man?"

--https://www.businessinsider.com/marlboro-man-meets-moisturizer-2011-10?r=MX&IR=T