Monthly Archive

Caetano Veloso doesn’t look like a rockstar. He resembles more a middle-aged tourist… And he doesn’t dance like you’d think a Brazilian rockstar would… instead his onstage moves were more like those of a drunk accountant at a wedding. But he and his band absolutely rocked the Gran Rex in Buenos Aires.

Most of the songs were technically impressive with tricky time-signatures and a lot of change-ups. It resembled American jamband/rock music,  but with a large blend of styles and some brazilian flare…

Argentines are generally very reserved at music concerts, but Veloso brought them to their feet on quite a few ocassions…

We and our friends were all very impressed with the concert. If you get a chance to see this guy somewhere we’d recommend it.

The Argentine peso is one of the few world currencies that has lost ground lately to the US dollar. Canada, Europe, Russia, Asia, even Brazil… virtually everywhere is getting more expensive for American visitors as the US dollar slides…

As a middle class American you can live well in Argentina… but only if you continue to receive an American wage in dollars… Unless you have some kind of special opportunity with an Argentine company or money to invest, we would not recommend moving to Argentina with the hope of finding a job here… You do not want to be beholden to the Argentine job market, as an English teacher etc, the wages are just too low…

What you can do is get some kind of online business going and get paid in dollars with your expenses in pesos, then outsource in rupees. (Of course, we recommend this to our Argentine friends as well.)

Getting an online business going from scratch is hard. But if you want it badly enough, you can do it…

We’ve been working and traveling heavily of late… which has cut down significantly on our posting… But we’re going to fight this trend and do our best to start posting regularly again.

We enjoyed our trip to North Carolina, it was familiar, easy, and relaxing… plus great to see friends…

But we’re happy to be back in Buenos Aires… where we have to stay on our toes in terms of the language, of course, but also in terms of opportunity… We met a guy at the wedding in North Carolina who had just returned from Argentina. He was extremely bullish and excited about our new home country… Evidently his business mentor told him, “if I were a young man, I’d move down here immediately”. He was trying to figure out how to persuade his wife to move the family (three kids) down… We, of course, identify with his enthusiasm. But we didn’t do him any favors when we accidently dropped the bomb on his wife by saying, “So, you’re planning to move to Buenos Aires?” “No.” was the abrupt reply… That little faux pas probably set him back a couple weeks in his plans, but, he still seemed confident that he could persuade her…

There are opportunities out-the-whazoo here. A couple of Americans recently opened The California Burrito Company on Lavalle in el Centro. When we went there the place was packed, business looked brisk, and the burritos were tasty… We’ve met a number of foreigners and Argentines involved in real estate, and the opportunities in this arena are virtually endless. There are places in Argentina where land is selling for less than $5 an acre…

We must admit to you dear reader, that we’ve been a bit tight-lipped about some things because we don’t want everyone to know about these opportunities… For that we apologize, but we’ll reveal all, or nearly all, in due course… Also, we don’t want to mislead you. As one Argentine friend said, “Argentina has opportunities, but it’s opportunity from crisis. Don’t forget that.”

We’re working with our Argentine financial writers, as that’s our biz, to prepare a report about what to expect in the markets around here in the short, mid, and long term. There’s anxiety here on the eve of the presidential elections, and certainly some pessimism. There’s inflation no doubt. Will it expand? Contract? What’s going to happen…? We don’t know any better than anyone else. But we won’t let that stop us from making some predictions…

Hasta la proxima.

We attended our good friends’ wedding this weekend in Asheville, North Carolina. It was well worth the trip. The wedding was held on the grounds of the Biltmore estate in the beautiful Blue Ridge mountains… It’s the largest private home in the US, at 150,000 sq feet, and is still owned by the Vanderbilt family.

George Vanderbilt, the grandson of Cornelius, had the house built in the 1880’s, it was completed in 1895. The place was stunning. We’ve visited many chateaux around Europe and this baby is as spectacular as any of them…

George Vanderbilt’s father built the family fortune up to $200 million by the early-mid 1800’s.  That’s the equivalent of around $87 billion in today’s dollars, double the individual wealth of today’s richest men. (There was no income tax in those days!) At the time the Biltmore was being constructed Vanderbilt’s employees where buying up the surrounding land. It took over 600 real estate transactions to cobble together the 100,000+ acre estate.

The Vanderbilts of today have done an excellent job preserving the place. Not only that, but we’d venture to guess that they might even be making a tidy profit off of it. No doubt the maintenance and operational costs are staggering. But the estate hosts around 1 million visitors a year. The place was packed when we were there and it’s not even peak season. The entry fee to the house, the basic tour, is $50. Then, there are upgrades galore available… the audio tour, the guided tour, the secret places tour, the rooftop tour, etc. The winery on the property is the most visited winery in America. The giftshops were humming with activity as were the restaurants. If the average visitor generates $50 in revenue, which is probably on the very low-end, that’s $50 million right there… the real numbers I’d venture are much higher.

The Biltmore was fairly pricey, but it delivered value… all the visitors we talked to were very impressed with the place. Speaking of delivering value, that’s one thing that, in business, Americans are pretty darn good at… We were impressed by the level of customer service we received at the Enterprise car rental in Charlotte, NC… With typical southern hospitality the office door was opened for us and we were greeted by a friendly, efficient, and clean cut young guy. Inside, the place was bustling with activity of these young go-getters enthusiastically executing the business of car rentals. The little economy car we rented was less than $30 per day… good value…

Likewise at the Best Buy in Asheville we shopped for some electronics… we were impressed by how cheap things were… $19 for a cell phone, $149 for a 7 mega-pixel digital camera, $499 for a laptop… All these things cost double or triple in Argentina… Argentina, however, delivers good value on other things like food, clothing, transportation, real estate etc. which is partly why we like living here.

Anyway, let’s get back to the wedding that we attended in the west Carolina mountains… The rehersal dinner was held at a ranch outside Asheville. Southern BBQ was on the menu and it was fantastic… We hadn’t had a good southern meal in a long time. The setting was a picture perfect lakeside pond and a converted barn… likewise, the wedding reception and ceremony were held at a converted historic barn on Biltmore estate. Everything was very natural and relaxed, but also elegant.

Our friends who were getting married invented their own service and wrote and selected all the vows and readings. It was non-religious, but not non-spiritual or non-emotional… It was original and special. We’re very happy for our friends. It was a long way to go for a weekend wedding, but we wouldn’t have missed it for the world. And we feel very fortunate to have gone…

It’s been a surprisingly cold winter here in Buenos Aires, not just for us, but for Portenos as well. It’s been one of the coldest on record… of course, it’s not that bad, but does take us delicate Floridians by surprise…

Anyway, we’ve been letting you down this past week dear reader, it’s becoming a bad habit with us…

It was a busy week, half of which we spent up in the northwestern corner of Argentina, in Salta province, on business. It was refreshing to get out of the city and Salta is way out… Where we needed to go, it’s a five hour drive, mostly on dirt roads, from Salta city. The land is like the southwestern US, high-desert. The big open sky was perfectly clear for our drive and the landscape was beautiful. But as we got close to our destination, the sky began to get sort of fuzzy up ahead…

There still wasn’t a cloud in the sky, but the wind was picking-up and we realized that the fuzzyness was airborne dust. By now the sky was dark with dust clouds and we watched as seemingly sentient walls of dust moved back and forth across the mesa. As we continued on our way one of these walls of dust slammed into the side of our truck and briefly blacked-out visibility from all windows… But the dust walls seemed to content themselves by staying to the other side of the valley. When we arrived at our dusty destination the roar of the wind was impressive and constant. It sounded like there was an ocean a couple of feet away repeatedly crashing against invisible rocks. The loud and powerful wind continued all night long and it seemed sometimes that the doors and windows might give way… We’ve ridden out powerful hurricanes before, and this was something similar. The next morning it was sunny and beautiful, with a light breeze…

Before this trip we had looked forward to showing off the new Castellano speaking and understanding skills that we thought we now had… But nay, it was not to be.

We were terrible. Maybe it was all the dust in our ears, or the altitude. Whatever it was, we spoke horribly, making even very simple mistakes… We could barely understand anything. Maybe it was that Saltanian accent, or the farm subject matter, that was throwing us off… No, no excuses can explain away the fact that we’ve made much less progress in the Spanish-language department than we thought we had. Luckily for us a bilingual friend was there to help out. But our plan of being linguistically independent and incisive, shedding the tourist foreigner label, becoming nearly Argentine with a slight accent, a Porteno out visiting Salta… was soundly dashed…

Until next time… and next time we might even write about something remotely useful…

At The Walrus English bookstore in San Telmo, our better-half picked up a copy of the historical chronical of the Buenos Aires Herald. This over-sized periodical contains headlines and story excerpts about Argentine history in English since September 1876… this is very useful for us to have a general idea of what’s been going on around these parts since then…

One hundred years ago the Herald was very British. Some of the excerpts from that time say things like, “The Prince of Wales visited dear Argentina and the entire country rejoiced in the splendor of his presence. Throughout his stay the people could forget all their worries, at least for a short while, and they loved him for that.” We exaggerate, but, only slightly…

Anyway, we’ll spare you any pompous commentary on the history of Argentina, other than to say that it’s been a wild ride…

The Herald has been a nearly continuous daily source of English-language editorial about events in Argentina for all that time. We salute them for that. However, some of the articles we read in the paper these days are a little shakey… perhaps written by non-native speakers. Well, with our 4th grade-level Spanish competency we dare not criticize…

Hasta la proxima.