Category Archive

It’s nearly a year that we’ve lived in Buenos Aires. A whole hell of a lot has happened and we don’t even know where to begin… But, we’re not going to get into all that right now anyway… Instead, we’d like to shamelessly self-promote a project that we’re involved in.

If you can read Spanish and would like to know what’s going on in Latin American and world financial markets then be sure to check out this free daily email newsletter at: http://moneyweekes.com/

Here are some of the latest articles:

Baja de Tasas, Sólo un Remiendo

Más Acerca de por qué el Sector Inmobiliario Mexicano es Prometedor

¿Cuál Será la Suerte del Dólar?

Semana Negra…¿Hay una Luz al Final del Túnel?

Saludos!

Much more to come as we approach our one-year in Argentina anniversary…

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 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…

One of our contacts here is a New Zealander involved in real estate. He reports to us that there is a phenomenon of Kiwi farmers selling off their farms in New Zealand and relocating to take-up farming in South America where the costs of land, labor, and expenses are lower.

One favored location is Uruguay. There are evidently quite a few farms for sale in Uruguay for reasonable prices. So, these Kiwi farmers relocate with their families, selling off the pricey New Zealand land and buying a functioning farm down here.

New Zealand agriculture is highly sophisticated, primarily because the government lifted all subsidies for farming and agricultural products, so Kiwi farmers were forced to compete on the world market. What happened was that they did exactly what people have to do when competing in a free-market… they worked hard, they innovated, they were efficient… or they went out of business. The result was, predictably, that New Zealand is now a world leader in agriculture, having pioneered some highly successful methods of farming…

Could there be a lesson here for other countries? In the United States big-farm subsidies have lowered prices for junk food and for food additives like high-fruitose corn syrup, which have made these items ubiquitous in the American food supply… And we would wager that this is a major contributing factor for the expanding waist-lines of the American public. A big conspiracy no doubt, no pun intended… But, this is all fodder for another post, let me get back to those innovative Kiwis and their new farms in Uruguay…

So, when the New Zealanders relocate to South America they find themselves in the midst of a new and different culture of course. One issue that our acquaintance had noted was that if a Kiwi woman worked on the farm as Kiwi women are prone to do, they find themselves sometimes ostracized by Uruguayan women who wouldn’t be caught dead socializing with someone who does manual labor, let alone do manual labor themselves…

So, this culture clash can sometimes be an issue for these immigrants from down under. One could cry foul at the lack of ‘progressiveness’ amongst these Uruguayans, but that would be a waste of time… Instead these Kiwis have opted not to stray too far from the major cities, Montevideo, Colonia, Punta del Este etc so that they can go into these cities to satisfy their social inclinations… and as long as they get a good manicure before going to any parties… no one will be the wiser that they may have sweated during the week.

Anyway, we hear that the fancy farming techniques of the New Zealanders are paying off. They are grabbing market share for certain agricultural products. This spells trouble for inefficient and mismanaged farms in the area… and could create some resentment. We, on the other hand, praise these innovations and efficiencies born of the free-market and hope that this wacky idea spreads in South America and the rest of the world.

Travelers voted Buenos Aires the second most desirable city to visit after Florence, Italy… While we find that an impressive coup for this south american metropolis, it’s not surprising. The longer we stay here the more we like it…

Hasta la proxima.

Back in the 60s and 70s the British invasion consisted of iconic bands like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, and Led Zepplin taking the US by storm, and rightly so…

In the 80s there was an action movie called ‘Invasion USA’ consisting of a narco-terror group sneaking into the US and their inevitable demise at the hands of Chuck Norris in his prime…

The recent forced hype surrounding the Beckhams’ relocation to LA from the UK more resembles the latter invasion rather than the former to us, but of course in a less threatening way… (and thankfully for the Beckhams, Chuck Norris is not involved, at least not yet…)

The frat-like-metrosexual-pop-futbol-star is cool out on the pitch, and his fembot-chav-contrived-popstar-wife looks the part… But are they cool enough for LA?

You bet they are!

And they’ve got the cash to buy their way in anywhere… 

We admire the organizational and promotional efforts by their media team to attempt a coup in the US ‘celeb’ marketplace… It seems by all measures to be an impressive, well thought-out, mulifaceted, multimedia approach… all they have to do now is shake the perceived forcedness of the campaign…

But don’t we already have enough empty headed subjects for our empty headed media…? Do we really need to import more? Maybe so, there’s evidently room in the American celebritard consciousness… And thank goodness for that!!

Anyway, at least we can hide from it all down here way south of the border… if we really wanted to…

This post was supposed to be about self-worth, and how it doesn’t really matter what you look like as long as you enjoy life and do something productive. But we got derailed by those damn Beckhams.

Today we’re standing-up the US Ambassador to Argentina… We were invited to a 4th of July party hosted by the US Embassy and the current ambassador Earl Anthony Wayne. We were invited not because of our connections to the embassy, we have none, but instead because of some Argentine business partners of our employer and their connections to the embassy.  (Of course, every American expat with a pulse was probably invited to this same event.)

Anyway, we say “no thanks”!

The 4th of July celebrates US independence from Great Britain. We feel that the US government currently embodies the imperialism from which the forefathers of our country revolted. The founders were the insurgent leaders against British military might and suppression in the colonies.

The founding-fathers of the United States were intelligent, worldly, and brave men… nothing like the men who currently lead our distressed country.

We grew up a few miles from Jefferson’s Monticello, a house which he designed himself, filled with innovations invented by him and books of learning that he actually read… He traveled the world and spoke multiple languages.

After leading the colonial army to victory on the battlefield, General George Washington had to be begged to leave the farm that he had quietly returned to and become the leader of the country.

To compare any of these men to George W Bush or Dick Cheney is laughable.

No, we celebrate the 4th of July in our own way, apart from any association with the current US government.

The plot always seems to grow thicker, like the recent half pardon (which will probably become a full pardon) of Scooter Libby. Just when you think they can’t sink any lower, they find a way to do it…

It tears our soul. There’s turmoil in the soul of America and the only solution is something better… and that’s what we’ll celebrate this 4th of July, that, and how our ancestors fought like real patriots against the suppression of liberty by the establishment super-power imperialists of the day.

It goes something like this…

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands, which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.  [Declaration of Independence]

And on… Amen!

Happy 4th of July!!

We must apologize, dear reader, for our sluggish editorializing on your behalf of late… That’s because we’ve been two-timing you… We’ve fallen into the embrace of another, blog, a political blog no less…

Much of our free time has gone towards promoting the candidacy of presidential hopeful, Texas Congressman Ron Paul at: http://goronpaul.blogspot.com/

We’re not really even ‘in to’ politics, but Dr. Paul, actually has us excited…

I know, I know, this is a blog about Buenos Aires. What do American politics have to do with anything? Well, as an American living overseas, it has a lot to do with it actually…

The US is powerful and highly influential around the world. Argentines know a lot about the US and American politics… because it affects them… You’ve probably heard that Argentina is anti-American, that’s true in a sense. But they, like most people in the world, understand the difference between the American people, and the US government.

Why don’t they like us? Well, I’m not going to get into the entire history of economic and political relations between the US and Latin America… but it comes down to the fact that they don’t like us pushing them around, manipulating things in the region, and acting with favoratism towards some countries and not others. You can argue till you’re blue in the face about whether we do this or not. But you’d be hard-pressed to deny that we don’t throw our weight around down here…

The fact is that our image as a bastion of democracy and economic prosperity is tainted by our bullying… So called, ‘foreign aid’ is used for political gain… We practice protectionism in agriculture to help American farmers, however the vast majority of those benefiting are in fact large corporations… In the past we have supported oppressive and anti-democratic regimes to advance our own self-interest.

Ron Paul is the only presidential contender who will put a stop to all that… Paul will end all foreign aid. He’ll put a stop to ‘corporate welfare’ and protectionism. He will put an end to our military-adventurism overseas. He will bring our military, currently occuping over 100 countries, home. He will close the thousands of overseas military bases. He’ll protect the US borders instead of the border between Iraq and Jordan…

He is a non-interventionist, not an isolationist… Look at how we trade with Vietnam now, how much better that works than fighting them and losing 50,000+ lives… Trade, not war seems like a good motto to me…

Then, we can stop ignoring Latin America and help them the best way possible which is to trade with them… and not the corporate sponsored, trade organization sort of (NAFTA)trade either, but real ‘free trade’ that brings prices down and increases the quality of goods and services.

By doing this we’ll make a lot more friends than enemies.

There’s a lot more that can be said about all this, but we’ll leave it at that.

Please take a moment to look into Ron Paul and see what he’s about. At his official website: http://www.ronpaul2008.com or my other blog at: http://goronpaul.blogspot.com/

(Also, be sure and check out the videos about him on Youtube.com… There’s a very interesting online grass-roots campaign swirling around the man.)

You might not like his positions on everything, but, he is honest and has real integrity. You can vote for him and not feel like you have to take a shower afterwards… Why take one of the ‘lesser of two (very evil) evils’ when you don’t have to?

Here’s Ron Paul at a recent appearance on Bill Maher’s show…

The subject of American coffee came up again at a dinner we went to last night with an American expat and his 6-month pregnant Argentine wife… She revealed to us that the Argentine nickname for American coffee is ‘umbrella juice’, perhaps a tad more flattering than the French ’sock juice’…

But umbrella juice is coming to a street corner in Buenos Aires soon, fellow blogger Alan Patrick reports… Starbucks will be opening up here in the coming months…

 They said it would never work in Paris. But, of course, it did. We’re quite sure it will flourish in BA as well… especially if it’s true that there are 70,000 Americans now living in Buenos Aires according to our new expat friend. That’s a lot of umbrella juice drinkers! But it’s not the foreigners that will make it work, it’s the irresistable fashion of carrying around those cups and the convenience of getting that fix on the go…

More to come from way south of the border…

We arrived back in BA this morning… It feels great to be back!

Here’s some of what we missed in the US:

- The coffee. (This is going to sound very snobby, but, the French have a name for American coffee which translates to ’sock juice’. After enjoying Argentine coffee for months, cafe americana tasted awful… even in nice restaurants, you order espresso and they give you some diesel fuel in a small cup…)

- The food. (We went to some of our favorite restaurants back in Florida, and despite a few exceptions it was disappointing…)

- The excitement. (We missed the daily adventure that comes with the language, cultural, and geographical complications we face in BA.)

- The prices. (It’s tacky to talk about prices, but, we were shocked to find how fast money disappears in the US comparitively…)

We could go on, but you get the idea. We enjoy life down here…

But it’s not for everyone… We talked to a couple of Latin Americans in south Florida, who had been to BA, loved it, but had absolutely no desire to live here. They appreciate the lifestyle, the culture, and the many things that the city has to offer… but their main complaint was the business environment. They say there’s a different set of values in business. What people say and what they do can be entirely different things…

We have not experienced this ourselves. People have kept their word in our dealings… That’s because these people understand how important ethics are to a lasting and successful business. Sure, you can screw someone once or twice, but that’s it… Then you’ll no longer have the opportunity to do business with them, or their contacts, again… Especially in this internet age, word gets around, fast… Reputation is important in South America. If you’re careful and deal with the right people you can reap the substantial opportunities that exist down here.

To find some good contacts, I recommend the Argentina Owner’s Manual from International Living. It doesn’t cost a lot, but could save and make you a lot of money if you’re thinking about doing business in Argentina.

When we first left Florida for Buenos Aires the real estate bubble had just burst… or, maybe it had popped months earlier, but people were only then realizing it… Now it continues to slide. Many of the bright red ‘for sale’ signs have faded to a pink in the Florida sun…

Most people we know are pretty savvy real estate investors (or savvy enough not to be real estate investors at that time). They weren’t really effected too much by this, but we’ve heard of some people in serious trouble… who bought way more than they could possibly afford. When the market went south, these people were caught with massive mortgage payments and negative equity.

The Buenos Aires market is humming with little or no credit. That was the problem with much of the US boom is that it was funded by creative and risky mortgages. So, there’s a theory among real estate speculators in BA, that when the Argentine banks do offer mortgages (and they’re supposed to in the near future) that BA real estate will really take off.

The BA market is still cheap relative to other major world cities… It’s this perceived value that’s driving the market. However, as prices continue to rise, they’ll reach a point when this value no longer exists in the eyes of buyers (other than the speculators) then price increases will slow, stop, or fall… As we expats and Portenos enjoy this boom, we need to keep our eyes out for that time. It may well be a long way off, but you never know…

We’re still in Florida where it’s warm… But reports from back home in Argentina say that it’s gotten damn cold, in the 20’s and 30’s. It’s late fall in BA, so, this extra cold wave comes as a surprise.

There’s been a spike in electrical and gas usage: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20670001&refer=latin_america&sid=av0tvGQPKLKU which has caused Argentina to withhold some gas exports from Chile.

The cold is the only thing we’re not looking forward to on our return trip to BA…

We like to think of the US as an efficient capitalistic business-friendly free-market sort of place. But the fact is that the US is a hot-bed of bureaucratic monkey-business just like so many other countries.

There’s plenty of red-tape here. Everywhere you go you need a permit or permission for this or that. We came back to deal with our taxes… get a new vehicle title, and other sorts of personal business issues… What an incredible waste of time and resources!

It’s infuriating when you think about it. You spend the first four months of the year working to pay your government masters. (Even if you don’t live in the US or use any government services…) Then you spend dozens of hours navigating their labyrinth of a system just to give them the damn money!

If you don’t think it’s a system of coercion, then just try not paying your taxes and see what happens… You’ll be harassed, threatened, robbed, kidnapped, and held hostage… all because you didn’t pay them tribute. It’s amazing that people tolerate this…

And where does the money go? We shiver at the thought. The waste. The pork. The wars. Ughhh. Our vote in ‘08 will be for the constitutionalist Dr. Ron Paul: http://GoRonPaul.com

His chances of winning are about as good as those of hogs taking flight and the nether-regions icing over. But sometimes a man has to draw his line in the sand and stand for something.

We’re back in the ol’ USA, visiting family and friends, handling personal business… doing maintenance on our ‘American lives’.

How does it strike us being back after an extended stint at our new home in Latin America? Well, life is easy… we speak the language and there are no surprises. It’s for the most part relaxing and familiar, but of course, we haven’t been gone long…

We’re not from Florida, it’s another one of our adopted homes, we’re hardly ‘from’ anywhere, or so we think…

In BA when people ask us where we’re from we have different answers every time… We name different locations in the US, where we’ve lived, whatever strikes our fancy at the time.

But, we can’t shake our ‘Americanness’ and that’s something we’ve reflected on during our time in Argentina. Having spent the majority of our lives in the US, it has shaped who we are, more so than we realize…

Sure, we’ve lived in other countries too. We hold other passports. Our fore-family came from other countries, of course, some more recently than others…

But we fell out of a birth-canal somewhere off of the Chesapeake Bay. Our nationality and an entire set of life parameters were selected for us… just like everyone else.

That’s one thing we don’t like about the US or Argentina, or anywhere else for that matter, is nationalism. It’s so emotional… Of course, that’s what people like about it. It gets the blood flowing and makes you proud. But it can make you sad too.

Until next time…

Yesterday we made the expatriate pilgrimage to renew our visas… a one hour fast-ferry ride across the Rio Plata to the pretty historic coastal village of Colonia, Uruguay.

Unfortunately it was a bit overcast, but we still have some nice pictures to show you (almost all of which were taken by our better, more talented, half)…

We wrote an article recently for a very good (and free) email newsletter, called Early To Rise (ETR), about blogging: http://www.earlytorise.com/2007/04/28/blogging-for-fun-and-profit.html

Your editor used to work with ETR and still does sometimes… Michael Masterson, the man behind it, is a mentor of ours. There are many smart and successful people involved with the publication.

Anyway, the reason we bring it up is because readers have asked us about blogging, how to get people to read etc. We offer some modest information in the article about this topic.

One problem we have with blogging though is that it is so temporal, so fleeting… You rack your brain for something interesting, something fresh and real, then boom… it’s dated… it’s over with.

Please, dear reader, if you haven’t read them before go back and read our ‘old’ posts… our naive first murmurings from Buenos Aires. We don’t ask you for much. Just because they’re a couple weeks old doesn’t mean they aren’t good…

We never liked participating in the temporal arts, like live music or drama. “Who will know that we were so brilliant that day?” we thought…

We liked writing and painting where our craft can be put on display for at least a few hundred years… But, we do take solace in the fact that the great Russian writer Dostoevsky wrote one of his novels, Brothers K or Crime and Punishment, not sure which, as a weekly column in a Moscow newspaper. (That’s sort of like blogging.)

He did this to pay his gambling debts. They’d pay him each week to cover his debts enough so his creditors wouldn’t take a final payment on his hide… It’s amazing that such genius resulted, in a way, from such baseness…

Our blog pays our gambling debts too since we don’t have any… Cheers!

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…

Part of the reason we’ve been lamenting our productivity lately is because we came across this website and blog: http://fourhourworkweek.com/blog/

 This guy, Tim Ferriss, is a sort of Anthony Robbins 2.0… He lived in Buenos Aires and actually competed in the world championships of tango. He’s also done a whole lot of other things that we are jealous of… 

An interesting guy. We’ll probably read his book. If we get around to it…

I’ll apologize in advance as this post has nothing to do with Buenos Aires or Argentina…

But if you’d like a good testosterone boost, and a look at some impressive defense/fighting skills you’ll want to see this video:

http://www.flicklife.com/f357cb02c655671a432f/Bad_ass_takes_on_5_guys.html

This guy must be a trained boxer… with a good stance and a heckuva jab…

We were going to avoid this subject because it is a charged topic for Argentines and because of our scant knowledge of the accompanying history… However, at Discovering Buenos Aires our ignorance is one of our endearing traits, almost our raison d’etre here in BA, so, we’ll cast aside our better-judgment and give you our take on this 25th anniversary of the conflict…

We recently read an article over at the International Herald Tribune, which if we weren’t living in Argentina, we probably wouldn’t have noticed anything, but since we are here in Argentina it seemed to us that the article was slanted unfairly towards the Brits…

The Anglos have the attitude that Argentina should give up it’s silly claim on the islands. But, geographically (and historically as you’ll see), one would think that Argentina would have rights to the islands 300 miles from the Argentine mainland.

However, British imperial claims die hard even if they be thousands of miles away from Britain… British institutions are indeed strong and foster economic growth, ie. Hong Kong,  but does that give them ownership of dirt they “found” a million-miles away in some else’s backyard?

As we understand it this war was completely avoidable, as most tend to be, and because of the pigheadedness and arrogance of the countries leaders (mostly trying to score political points) just under a thousand had to die…

Also we hasten to mention that the Malvinas are desolate, fairly useless, little islands that no one would really need to fight about anyway…

Fellow blogger Yanqui Mike has some background details (which are accurate according to other sources, not that we don’t trust Yanqui Mike…)

“With independence, they [Argentina] got the Malvinas from Spain as a package deal.

“The UK then signed a treaty recognizing Argentina’s independence.

“The newly minted Argentina sent a governor, built a prison, and started to farm and trade. A few years later, the settlers gave birth to some babies…the first people ever born on the islands.

“Now comes the yanquis [USA]. The Argentine governor of the islands had placed some pretty strict rules on the hunting of seals. Not long after, he caught a US merchant ship illegally hunting seals and seized it.

“The US consul in Buenos Aires protested that his government didn’t even recognize Argentina’s ownership of the Malvinas.

“The US sent a warship to get the ship back but the yanqui captain overstepped his orders and destroyed the entire Argentine settlement.

“The UK then took advantage of the confusion and seized what was left of the islands without firing a shot. They later deported all the Argentines. That was 1833.

Of course this was a sore-spot for Argentina for many years… And more from Wikipedia about the period leading up to the war…

“…Argentina was in the midst of a devastating economic crisis and large-scale civil unrest against the repressive military junta that was governing the country. The Argentine military government, headed by General Leopoldo Galtieri, decided to play off long-standing feelings of nationalism by invading the islands, although they never thought that the United Kingdom would respond. The ongoing tension between the two countries over the islands increased on 19 March when 50 Argentines landed on the British dependency of South Georgia and raised their flag, an act that is seen as the first offensive action in the war. On 2 April, Galtieri ordered the invasion of the Falkland Islands, triggering the Falklands War.

“Britain was initially taken by surprise by the Argentine attack on the South Atlantic islands, but launched a naval task force to engage the Argentine Navy and Air Force, and retake the islands by amphibious assault. After combat resulting in 258 British and 649 Argentine deaths, the British eventually prevailed and the islands remained under British control. However, as of 2007, Argentina shows no sign of relinquishing its claim to the Falkland Islands (the claim is included in the National Constitution).”

The victory was a political boost for the Thatcher government and a wave of nationalism swept the UK… The loss was politically devastating to the military dictatorship of Argentina, which was forced out and a democratic election took place shortly thereafter.

Because of the attack by the military junta Argentina’s claim to the islands has been discredited to this day. But the historical rights of Argentina over the Malvinas are undeniable. Of course, the people of the islands, the Falklanders, who have been there for generations and consider themselves British also have their rights.

Argentina is still healing from the wounds inflicted by the military dictatorship. The loss of the Falklands War was a painful part of those troubled times. But Argentina should not suffer forever because of the sins of unelected leaders during a period of turmoil.

There must be a diplomatic solution to this, similar to what Britain negotiated with the Chinese in regard to Hong Kong… The British can only ignore Argentina for so long.

It’s rainy again today… After weeks of sunshine, it’s starting to feel like London around here, London in the summertime at least…

I haven’t spoken about one of the big advantages of living overseas where you don’t understand the language well… no TV!

Yes, we could turn the thing on and watch BBC or CNN, but we can get all that on the internet. Would it help our spanish to watch Argentine TV, maybe, but I don’t think I could stand it…

I realize the advantage of not watching TV when I’m on the internet… at certain mainstream websites I see little tidbits of the things that come on American TV… news about ‘Dancing with the Stars’, the latest in ‘American Idol’ gossip… and I thank goodness I don’t have that crap foisted on me like you do with TV, where it seems more invasive than the internet.

Sometimes you find yourself on a channel because of inertia, or you’re not paying attention, and before you know it you’ve consumed precious minutes of your life-span on some worthless rubbish…

In the US I bought a large flat-screen TV just because I thought we should have one. And we could watch a movie every now and again on it… Of course I ended up turning it on way too often and wasting countless hours that I’ll never get back.

I sold the flat-screen about a month after buying it… I’m just not responsible enough to own one…

But then in the US I would feel like I was ‘missing out’ on something… Even though I knew darn well that I wasn’t.

Here we are TV free.

While I wouldn’t recommend moving overseas to get away from the boob tube… It’s a little fringe benefit of doing so…

 I’m posting this picture that we took at the park the other day of a man teaching his daughter to ride a bike, running along side her…

There’s nothing really notable about this scene, which is the point… Judging by some of the emails and comments we occasionally receive though this blog, I feel it necessary to explain that life is very ‘normal’ here.

Argentina is not a ‘third-world country’ by any means. The vast majority of people you see in the street are regular, well-dressed individuals, like anyone you’d see anywhere. The scenes that you see throughout the day are normal everyday activity like you’d see anywhere. Most people who read this blog I’m sure understand this…

And once you figure out how to navigate a few irregularities, and things you’re not used to, you can live as free and as happily here as you can anywhere.

You can indeed live here without speaking spanish, you can do it through the contacts listed in the Argentina Owner’s Manual and at International Living… That’s pretty much what we’ve done. There are services that can take care of any hassles, like setting up a phone line, internet, and utilities. Then there’s an entire English-speaking network of Argentine professionals, lawyers, consultants, real estate agents etc. The upper-class mostly speak English, it’s sort of a status thing…

While I think it’s ridiculous not to learn Spanish… It’s not like it’s Japanese… It takes time to learn, but you can get by just fine in the meantime. Plus, there’s a large and growing expat community here… While I don’t recommend it you could pretty much live in an English-speaking world in the middle of Latin America if you wanted to…

A recent Economist poll named Buenos Aires as among the cheapest of the world’s major cities. Tourism and GDP growth are both at record levels. For the 4th straight year the economy grew by more than 9%…

I could live anywhere in the world. But I choose to live here because I love value… getting a good quality of life for my money… And I enjoy being in the midst of so much opportunity and potential…

Even if you aren’t considering moving here. If you might invest in Argentine stocks, real estate, or business, you’ll want to review this crucial report about a country that undoubtedly holds the world’s best values: Argentina: The Owner’s Manual

The peso will only stay devalued against the dollar for so long. Don’t kick yourself after this window of opportunity closes… Check out the Owner’s Manual and see what this country has to offer while the time is still right.

My wife pointed out that many of our recent posts are about mansions, social clubs, fine dining and other hoitey-toitey stuff…

The fact is that we live in a bubble here in Buenos Aires. We are isolated from the vast majority of real Argentines. We read the paper in Spanish as best we can, but many complicated local social and political topics are over our heads…

You can tip someone the equivalent of $1 or $2 and they’re excited… It’s difficult for us to grasp the reality for so many who have so much less. We take a lot for granted…

The local grocery store delivers. They’ve got guys who push the groceries down the street in a stack of bins on wheels. They deliver right to your kitchen. We asked how much we should tip them and we were told 1 peso which is the equivalent of 35 cents… I’m sure they make most of their money in tips, like a pizza delivery person. But they do a hell of a lot of work for so little.

I tipped one of them 10 pesos, the equivalent of $3.50 for delivering 5 bins by hand, uphill, 5 blocks away… He couldn’t stop smiling after that. And I felt good.

But I feel guilty for not doing much more for so many others out there sweating for pennies to get by… The cartoneros (the people who collect cardboard from the trash for recycling), the dirty kids who juggle and do other tricks in front of cars stopped at traffic lights, the guys selling umbrellas out on the streets on rainy days… all hustling to make a living. It’s sometimes difficult to watch. But just because you don’t see it doesn’t make it go away…

Their day is coming though. The emerging markets, China, Brazil, Argentina, India, Vietnam, these will be the success stories of this century. And, I for one, am rooting for them all the way…

We’ve read that violent crime is now surging in many American cities after over a decade of declines. Most of this is gun violence between gang-bangers and other disaffected youth… In the US we know what to look out for in terms of crime, where not to go, and what to do…

Here in BA we’re not so sure. We were cautious when we first got here, but as we’ve become more familiar with the city, we may be getting over-confident and setting ourselves up for trouble. We’ve been walking around here at night more so than we would do in Baltimore….

We don’t really know what to look out for here. We first kept an eye on the poor-people collecting the card-board, but now we realize that these are hard working guys doing what they can to make an honest buck. They’re polite and don’t seem to be at all a threat. We’ve given them some money, even though they don’t ask for it…

What I think you have to watch out for, like in most places, are the angry young men. The ones that don’t want to work for a living… the lay-abouts looking for an opportunity to make a fast buck with a little crime. My wife and I walked past a group of young grungy looking guys the other day… and they tried to make contact with a little “hola amigo…”. We flashed a look that hopefully came across as, “I’m going to ignore you now, but if you want to push it I’m going deal out some punishment no matter what happens…” We’re pacificsts at heart, but every once in a while our Irish blood pumps hot… Anyway, nothing at all came of it…

While we are enjoying the city to the fullest we do need to keep our guard up. We read in the paper of robberies and an occasional murder, (you don’t know what’s not reported) but for a city of this size (12 million) it seems pretty darn safe in comparison to many places. (Much safer in comparison to Brazil. We’ll address Brazil in a future post…) That’s all for now, but we’ll keep you updated, dear reader, on the safety situation over time.

Hugo Chavez led an “anti-imperialist” rally at a soccer stadium here in Buenos Aires to counter Dubya Bush’s visit to neighboring Brazil. Comically, Chavez will say anything to contradict and spite the Bush administration. Most Latin Americans and sane people in the world generally do enjoy a bit of Bush bashing (of course Bush is an imperialist). But Chavez is obviously a low-life opportunist politician and everyone knows it… who just like Bush is spending his constituents money to win friends and influence people in the region. What Americans don’t realize is that his approval ratings in Latin America are as low as Bush’s are in the US.

North and South Americans both realize that these two are a pair of power hungry idiots who should be tossed out of power as soon as possible.

Our conference hosts flew us from Bonn in central Germany to the port city of Hamburg in the north to have a look at another part of their business. After arriving we were scheduled for a tour and dinner. As we were headed out the door we took the lining out of our jacket because it didn’t fit well over our suit jacket, this proved to be a bad decision as we had forgotten about the walking tour we were supposed to go on…

So we had a tour of the port wearing the equivalent of a wind-breaker… And on the bus ride there we sweated a little bit with our suit and tie on the warm bus, so little we usually wouldn’t notice. But we did notice when this perspiration practically froze after about 15 minutes out in the icy wind swept docks of Hamburg. The tour went on for almost an hour and a nice little drizzle developed about half-way through.

Everyone was cold. But your editor who lived in Florida for 5 years before moving to Argentina was particularly ill-prepared for the Nordic winds coming down on the Elba river from the North Sea. The port was interesting, a kind of Amersterdam on steroids… (the newer part is similar to Puerto Madera, except not as nice) But by the time we reached the restaurant we were frozen solid… So, now we have a nice little head-cold to take with us back to BA. We can’t wait to feel the warmth of the Argentine summer! But of course we have a nice long flight ahead of us before we do…

It’s very encouraging at this international conference… the success of our partners in emerging markets like Romania, Poland, and Russia, places similar to Argentina… Of course there are big differences but the Eastern Europeans have overcome numerous obstacles that we as Americans can barely imagine… the unreliability of the postal service and vendors, and the dishonesty of business partners. But they are well rewarded for their efforts. With much less competition and a fresh enthusiastic market they can make some serious money quickly. And they can take a significant percentage of market-share… something unheard of in the US except by very large companies. The future looks very promising for these companies and I hope we can duplicate their success in Argentina.

 Which reminds me that we will be looking for bi-lingual writers and marketers in BA in the coming months. So, if you know of anyone please contact me through this blog.

 Cheers!

Well, the gods smiled on us and we received our bag yesterday morning… The only thing is out of our two suits only one is wearable. The other had been chewed up by Floridian “silver-fish”, little bugs that ravenously eat fabric… Anyway, a suit with holes in it is not going to work here in Germany, especially at meetings with suited Romanians, Poles, South Africans, French, Australians, Brits, and Russians. So to avoid international embarrassment I’ll go American business-casual…

Surprisingly though the Germans are very laid-back about getting started in the morning, here it is almost 10am and we haven’t started yet, people are kind of strolling in… and another stereotype broken… the sun came out for a few minutes this morning! 

When you take up residence in a foreign land it’s only natural to have moments of confusion about who you are and what you’re doing… But when you have one of these moments in front of German Immigration officers after being pulled aside while attempting to enter the country… well, that spells trouble…

“Speake de Deutche?” he asked, more forcefully this time…

“No, I don’t speak German. And I’m not doing anything wrong… just trying to go to a publishing conference in Bonn.”

“Where’s your ticket from here to Bonn?”

“I don’t have a ticket yet. They only gave me the tickets for Buenos Aires to Sao Paolo, and Sao Paolo to Frankfurt. They said I’d get the tickets for the next leg when I arrived in Frankfurt.”

“So, you don’t have a ticket?”

“No, they haven’t given it to me yet.”

“What about your bagage, where’s your bagage ticket?”

“I don’t have that either, it was on my boarding stub and I must have accidently left it at my seat…”

“You’ll have to come with us.”

After a 14 hour series of flights, your weary correspondent was whisked passed immigration, following the big ‘agent’ in the black leather jacket and followed by two other burly German plain-clothes polizei.

When we reached the investigation nook and a large stainless steal table, he said, “Empty out everything from your pockets. You haven’t been handling any drugs have you?”

“Drugs!? No, I haven’t… I don’t… anything…”

I held out my hands and was swabbed by a plastic testing device. They had taken out my laptop and were running tests on it as well as looking through my bag for the third time.

The disturbing thing was the way they were looking at the drug test kit and talking about the unfolding results… They seemed to be arguing with each other about what the results meant… “Oh, god”, I thought, “do they know how to use that thing?! Did I touch something in our apartment building, in the cab, in the airport??”

Then the agent in the black jacket put the drug testor in his pocket and stepped close…

“Look you’re coming from South America, so, we have to take precautions… You can go now.”

Maybe it was my appearance, the beard and need for a hair-cut… Our fumbling with answers about ‘living’ in Argentina, but only having been there for two weeks… Our story always sounds suspicious (even to friends and family). The roster of Central and South American countries on our passport certainly didn’t help…

Whatever it was I sure as hell hope I don’t have to go through that every time I enter Europe from South America!

After the interrogation we had to run to make our train for Cologne. We shivered on the platform as the train pulled up. All of our warm clothes were in our checked luggage. And when we arrived at the Cologne station we came to find that our checked luggage did not get there with us… We wondered the train station in our short-sleeved polo shirt until we found one of the few coats for sale (it was an ugly thing with a pathetic fake fur collar and the brand name ‘Russian Solid Jeans’, but dammit it’s warm!). On a Sunday afternoon all the clothes stores were closed. So, here we are with a week long conference ahead of us and only the clothes on our back…

Will our bag show up? We’ll see… More to come from the land of the Huns…

This morning we met with our legal council here in BA, an Irish-Argentine who went to the London School of Economics, to discuss the pitfalls of hiring and firing in Argentina. Sure enough, it’s as I feared. They follow the European system of ‘employee rights’, “the worst part of the system” as he put it. What that means is that even if you hire someone part-time, or on a freelance basis they can sue you for benefits and other perks if you pay them on any kind of regular basis. If you hire someone full-time you have to give your left kidney to get rid of them even if they’re stealing from you.

As in much of Europe this makes employers more hesitant to hire… voila, less jobs and slower growth…

When our American colleagues were in town we discussed how rounds of firing are healthy for a business and motivating for employees. It’s a crude fact, the mention of which makes Europeans cringe. But of course, when you see someone else working less hard than you and getting paid as much you feel like you either need to work less or go somewhere else where you’ll be better acknowledged and compensated… It’s a vicious cycle that I’m sure leads to the demise of many companies (and then there are no jobs for anyone!). When the dead weight is cut it’s an acknowledgement to those who stay that their work is appreciated and valuable.

If you think it’s all about going out to fancy restaurants, lounging in cafes, and enjoying the low prices down here… then my friend, you’d be mistaken. There’s real work being done, hours spent chained to a computer… researching… looking for employees… making deals… etc etc

And yes, we think we’ve even made a small breakthrough in working on this semi-silly little blog… If you look to the top left you’ll see a new link to sign-up to have the blog entries emailed to you. Yep, we now have the ability to build an email list. For those of you in our business you know that when you can do that you can have an online business.

So, my point is that I think theoretically one could use this WordPress blog format to create a money-making website and eletter. The great thing is that with this you can almost completely cut-out the tech people and do everything yourself with a professional look and feel. I just might try it with a financial eletter, but we’ll see. Oh, and do sign-up if you don’t get enough email already…

I’ve seen it argued on other expat blogs whether or not BA should be compared to Paris… To me it does indeed have a Parisian flavor to it. There are many fine examples of French architecure, but it certainly doesn’t have the architectual splendor of Paris… So, I’ll leave it at that for the moment and I’ll post as many picures as I can in this blog to let you draw your own conclusions… Also, check out this website with many very nice photos of BA: http://baires.multiply.com/

We got into Buenos Aires on Tuesday, other than a snafu bringing our parrot through customs (he did make it), everything went smoothly… [BTW: We 'smuggled' him onto the cabin of the plane because he was supposed to go down with the luggage but we were worried something would happen to him down there, so, we put his cage in a discreet gym bag and carried him on instead of checking him. Luckily we didn't go through security again right before getting on the plane. It went fine except once when we were giving him water he made some noise struggling to get out, but we neutralized that with some coughing and zipped up the bag...] Like us, he was happy when the flight was over…

The weather has been great, it’s summer, sunny in the mid 70s with a cool breeze. We’ve been going out to eat a lot at the outdoor restaurants to enjoy the weather and the low prices…

It’s been a little tricky setting up the home-office. We’ve had some close calls with the electrical adaptors, one of which started smoking and was briefly on fire, another one made my laptop screen flicker wildly… Also, it’s been a helluva time setting up the wireless in the apartment.

Argentine retail of electronics is pretty far behind the US. They don’t have any “big-box” stores that we’ve seen, (which is why we had to buy the adaptors at sketchy mom-and-pop shops…) It’s slim pickins and expensive, and they only keep one or two of each item in stock, then you have to make sure that what’s in the box matches what the box says… and of course you have to communicate in Spanish which is tricky in itself for some of us… So, I finally struck pay-dirt after buying the second wireless router…

But configuring the router was a different story. Of course, it didn’t go as the ‘EZ 1-2-3′ setup claimed… but after finally getting in touch with the US technical support, in India, via my Skype internet phone we got things figured out. Now Shirley and I don’t have to work from our bedroom tangled in a web of cords…

As you can see things are coming together. I’m studying my Spanish, getting ready for classes, so I’ll have some idea of what’s happening around here… And maybe someday we’ll even get a business going!