Los Seis Amigos, Ep 3.

Here's Ep 3 of my Dad's video about their trip to South America:



Direct link here.

In the middle of a protest in Palermo

Em and I went to dinner last night in Palermo with her parents, Jim and Helen. Unfortunately we chose to go to Palermo. We had a bit of trouble finding and deciding on a place to eat, but we eventually did and were told there was a 15-20 minute wait. So we grabbed a beer and waited at the bar for a table.

While we were waiting this happened:



They were a bunch of restaurant and hospitality workers wanting a pay increase of 40%. It started out a little uncomfortable and noisy with them throwing flyers etc through the door, but the part i didn't film was later when they started kicking the door and hitting the windows with flashlights.

We eventually filed out the door, through the protest, without paying for our drinks at the bar. I think most of the people in the restaurant did the same thing for their meals. The restaurant would have lost a lot of money. Em made a joke later that we should have gone to the next restaurant and ordered some beers, then when we were booted out, the next one, staying one step ahead of the protesters and drinking for free.

Our restaurant wasn't the only one targeted. They seemed to be raiding all of them. Flyers were everywhere, showing where they'd been. We walked away from the protesters and past a restaurant we'd seen earlier which had a wet cement pavement out the front that had been roped off to stop people walking on it. The barriers were smashed and the ropes gone, and the cement full of footprints. We got into a cab, still hungry, and headed back to Recoleta for a late dinner. It wasn't the nicest way for Jim and Helen to say goodbye to Buenos Aires.

Read about it here:

Nueva protesta de los gastronómicos - La Nación

and a similar one in Las Cañitas:

Una ruidosa protesta de Gastronómicos modifica la rutina de Las Cañitas - El Clarin

Getting a Student Visa

I had to try to go and get my student visa the other day. It wasn’t fun. I went two weeks ago to initiate the whole thing, and then returned the other day to try to finish it off. Between these times I got an email from my uni saying that the immigration department had written to me and I needed to collect a letter. The letter was basically saying that the dates of my period of study were incorrect, so I needed to have an official letter from the Uni stating the correction. But I didn’t know it said that because I couldn’t understand it and my uni didn’t explain it.

So I headed to the immigration department, and waited in the first line for about fifteen minutes, and presented my documents, and the guy at the counter said something I didn’t understand and pointed in some direction, and wrote something on my papers which I also didn’t understand. I walked in the direction of his finger, and ended up at another desk. I showed my documents, and the people behind the desk looked confused, and asked if I’d been to the other desk and I said yes, and they looked at the documents again, and I thought they said, ‘this is different, remain waiting here’.

So I remained waiting for about fifteen minutes, and then one of them came out from the desk and asked if was waiting for something… Hmmm. Yeah, my visa? No – wrong desk, go to the next building. So I went to the next building, and tried to show my things to someone, but they said go to another line, so then I went to the other line and they said, no you need to go to another line, so I went to the other line, and they said, no you need to go back to the first line I stood in. So then with Brennan’s help we asked someone who looked like they had a skerrick of an idea how the stupid place worked, and he confirmed I had to go to the first line again.

So I went to the first line again, and the woman let me know that the dates were wrong and I needed a letter showing the correction. So I moved the document that was on top to reveal the document underneath showing the correction, and she said, hmmmm, yes but it needs to be legalized. So I stood there looking confused for about 3 minutes, and she eventually said, well maybe if it’s signed by the same person as the original it doesn’t have to be legalized. It was, so I didn’t have to go to another part of town, and wait two more days to get a stupid letter legalized by some stupid department that legalizes things.

But I did have to go and stand in another line. Which I did, and got some other bit of paper that showed that something had been corrected, I think, but the guy behind the counter didn’t tell me that, and all he actually said to me was ‘you’re done here’ in English. Then I went back to the second line of the day to ask if I needed to wait in the first line of the day again – the answer was, of course, yes - and so I headed to the first line of the day, waited 15 minutes, to be told that the system was down and I’d have to wait. So I waited for 10 more minutes, and when the system came back up they asked me what the guy in the line in the other room had told me, and I said that he had said ‘You’re done here’ in English, and they asked what that means and I couldn’t really explain, because ‘you’re done here’ is as ambiguous in English as it is in Spanish, so he looked confused, and I looked confused, and I asked if I have my visa yet, and he said no, and that I should return next week.

Here is a graphical representation of the process:



Or for those of you who associate better with audio, imagine going to the RTA during lunchtime, with this on your mp3 player, on loop, at an uncomfortably loud level, but so that you can still just hear what people are saying, but you only understand 50% of it, and when your number is called, you arrive at the counter where the person is rude to you, let alone smiles at you, and tells you to go next door to another building to take another number:

Update - Episode 2 of Los Seis Amigos is out.

I was lucky enough to have my parents, uncle and aunt, and two friends visit BA a little while back. This is a video series created by my dad about their visit to South America. The first episode is all about Buenos Aires. Looking forward to more!



Direct link here.

Second episode:



Direct link here.