Product Inspection

Here's a funny Buenos Aires phenomenon. It seems to be policy in one store nearby, and I've heard that it happens elsewhere here, though I'm not sure how often.

I bought some cheap computer speakers today at a stationary/office/electronics store, something like Staples back home, though quite a bit more downscale. These cost 40 bucks. Last year I bought some cheaper speakers from the same store, that cost ten bucks. Both times I had to go through the "product inspection". The cashier tells you to go over to the security desk. The security person stamps your receipt, and tells someone to tell someone to get someone else from the right department to come inspect your product. This final someone opens and inspects your product package, makes sure it has all the parts it's supposed to have.

I guess this is to prevent people from saying "hey, I bought these speakers but they didn't have the power adaptor in the box." Anyway, today it took a good five or six or eight minutes before the person from the computer accessory dept. came over for the inspection. And I was sitting there kind of steaming, not so much because of the wait but because I felt the whole thing was a display of a lack of trust. Like the store was saying 'we expect you to scam us, so we're going to nip it in the bud.' And this is a relatively upscale place by buenos aires standards, a place with some moderately expensive stuff.

But when the computer accessories department guy showed up, my testiness melted right away, and I was reminded of the nice aspects of this town that go along with the infuriating ones. He was a young guy, and very nice. He stepped through the whole inspection, showing me the different parts, which plug goes in where, etc. And then he had a terrible time re-assembling the speakers into their styrofoam and squeezing it all in the box. It just wouldn't all go in there. We weren't speaking much, he could tell my spanish sucked, but we had some very nice non-verbal communication, peppered with a bit of spanish. I helped him, we tried this and that, and we laughed a fair amount and the futility and triviality of the task at hand. I think he really appreciated that I didn't get impatient on him. So a little testiness on my part (which really is pretty rare -- lord knows I have patience) turned into a lovely little interaction.

Pigeon Feeding

Not much to say about Buenos Aires here, except that they seem to be a little more relaxed, or brave, about feeding pigeons here:


There was another woman feeding a pigeon that was sitting in her hand, but I didn't get a good picture of her.

I really like this picture. It looks better in the big version, of course.

Man asleep on a bench outside my apt.

This man was asleep yesterday on a bench in the little plaza across from my apartment here. This is a frequent site, people catching a little nap out there.

Looking at this picture closely, I noticed a couple things. First, the guys clothes are nice and clean. So he's not living on the streets. I'd guess that he lives way out of the center of town, and probably has very badly paying work around here. He might even be working a couple different jobs, and so catching a nap between them.

Buenos Aires proper isn't that big of a city, it's about 3 million people. But the metro area is huge, it's 13 million people. And the outskirts are usually less dense than the center, so lord knows it spreads way, way out. I always feel bad for guys like this (if in fact he lives on the outskirts) who have to travel so far for menial work. Just another reminder of how well some of us have it.

Oh, one other thing I noticed is that he's not wearing socks. I was really surprised when I noticd how expensive socks and underwear are here, relative to other clothes. My guess is that all the socks we get in the US are from bangladesh or vietnam or some place with absurdly low labor costs, whereas here they minimize imports and so these things are probably produced domestically.

So, dude on the bench probably travels three hours each way to his lousy job, and still can't afford socks.

Bueno, let's start this again

I've been here three days, getting adjusted. I have a few thoughts maybe worth sharing.

First, I've been sleeping so, so very much. My first day, after just a few hours of bad sleep on the plane, I slept five deep hours during the day, then a whopping eleven also very deep hours that night. The next night it was ten and a half, and today I dragged my ass up after just eight but felt totally sleep-deprived.

This frequently happens to me when traveling. I think a couple things are involved.

First, it's a big change (I'll resist saying 'trauma') to uproot your life in one place and relocate to another place, even if it's just for a while. Rapid long-distance travel is a new thing in terms of human development, so our brains, which evolve slowly, haven't quite gotten used to it. I think this is especially the case when the change is dramatic. The change from New York to LA is nowhere near as dramatic as the change from NY to BA, in large part because of the change in language.

Speaking of the change in language, I think that's the second, and more important thing that makes me sleep so much when I travel overseas. I think it's just a bunch of work to try to understand things in a language that you're just not that good at. It seems to take a great effort to try to absorb and understand as much spanish as I can, and to be constantly thinking of ways to say things in spanish. I remember this from my travels in Mexico. During my beach vacations there, the effort of dealing with spanish plus the heat plus the sun, plus a couple of happy hour beers, would drive me to bed around 9:30 every night. Which is very, very unusual for me. Here I'm just sleeping late.

I guess this isn't really a post about buenos aires. Maybe I should put this on the 'personal' blog. But for now, here it is.