Last night we attended our first ‘expat’ event here in BA… held by the ‘Young Expatriates Society of Buenos Aires’… YesBA.

We’ve met assorted (and sometimes sordid) expats in assorted places over the years. They’re an interesting breed. But not always in the way that you’d expect…. Sometimes they’re surprisingly regular people who hold the same views about most things as the majority of people do in your hometown USA, or UK. They seemed to have been beamed into their new environment and remain wholly untouched or effected by it.

Other times though, they’re totally off the wall and original.

We met one such character last night. Actually we had arranged to meet him there… the infamous, Yanqui Mike an American blogger who married an Argentine and has lived here for 4 years.

Because of his marital ties Mike is immersed, and committed to Argentina, on a much higher-level than most expats. We got some interesting insights about the country from him as we hoped we would…

Before he arrived we were trying to guess which of the guys there could be this Yanqui Mike character. Was it the guy in the bright red shirt long hair and suspicious goatee? Or what about that one drifting aimlessly around the bar looking at the ceiling? No. It must be the guy who just came in with the purple beret… “Hey Mike!?” “Oh, sorry!” Nope, not him either…

He, of course, found us immediately from our picture. And he looked everything and nothing like we expected…

Many Americans move overseas to reinvent themselves. And they do obtain an instant exoticness when doing so and a whole world of new stimuli to make things interesting… But all of this quickly fades. Things become regular and normal, ho hum. It still depends on who they are inside as to whether they’ll be happy in a new place or not.

Well, that’s enough obnoxious philosophising for the day… Till tomorrow…