Stumbling into a bookstore along Av. Corrientes
At night, with the bright lights shining from the famous theatres, Corrientes is a galore of sightseeing, its wide avenue giving you ample space to mull and get lost in your own thoughts.
Yet the one thing that I love most about Corrientes other than the perfectly symmetrical view of the obelisk you get when crossing the road, is that littered along the street are its famous old and dusty bookstores. Walking to meet my friend and a friend of hers for our vegetarian dinner last night, I found myself unwittingly drawn to these numerous old bookstores along the avenue, all oozing with the musty yet alluring smell of good second-hand books waiting for an owner to claim them.
The bookstores make you feel like you’re in a completely different world, and with the towering bookshelves full of treasure and knowledge, it’s hard not to feel like a child in a large candy kingdom. There usually aren’t many English books, but there are plenty of old Glamour or design magazines from the 1990s, and it is common to find yellowed Mafalda comic books or a collection of newspaper articles from a particularly weird year, like 1978 for example.
I wanted to encounter a book in Spanish that was relatively easy to read yet interesting enough, not some 5-year old kid storybook talking about birds and trees. Guess what I found for a ridiculously cheap pricetag of 20 pesos? I found a book about beauty queens and make-up tips, all in good quality, full-colour pages! It was the perfect thing to read and learn Spanish! Without any hesitation of course, and at the risk of looking like a empty-headed bimbo, I bought it.
Now time to enjoy some bimbo-ness this upcoming long weekend!
: )
What a difference a few months make
Almost one month since my last one-liner post. Many things have happened and in this hiatus of not penning down my thoughts, feelings and experiences, I have seen some very wonderful things and some changes in my life.
As mentioned, my family came to visit a couple of weeks ago. They were here just a short 2 weeks, but during this time, we had a family vacation all together after almost 5 years; they saw latin america, and more specifically Argentina, for the first time, and they loved it; we had fights and arguments, but also much laughter and more importantly fun together as a family that cares and truly loves each other. It was impossible to believe how fast the 13 days flew by and in a rare glimpse of time, they teleported back to hot, sunny, flooding Singapore.
During the last one month, I also started working here in Argentina. I now work in a small firm of stock analysts, (thankfully I work in English) and everyday I’m learning more and more. And each day I realise how much more I have to learn. But the miracle is that my colleagues are amazingly helpful and nice; at least I haven’t seen the politics that I was so well-prepared for in my former bank; at least I have a boss who is upfront and usually in a good mood; at least I don’t wonder all the time if my boss really is a hypocrite at heart; and they even pay for lunches – everyday! Yes, that also means you eat in and work at your desk literally from 9am-6pm; the only exercise that I get nowadays is the back and fro 100m walk from the subway station to my office.
I realised that my previous experience in SCB has shaped alot of the ways I do things; the way I treat my colleagues, the secretary, my boss, and also the way I am more keen on working hard at improving what I currently do. I don’t dread the late hours or coming in the earliest anymore; I don’t even mind eating at my desk during lunch when I used to complain when I even had to do it at all; and I don’t even mind that my salary has been greatly reduced because of the change in currency; which doesn’t keep up with inflation in a land of high living costs.
4 months ago, I quit my former job and bought my ticket to go halfway round the world, no job in store, income-less and friendless in this part of the world (ok, I did know J’s family and alot of his friends, but still it’s different when you actually have your own friends). I left my family and friends in southeast Asia and started a completely different phase of life. I found out that after a period of separation, there are some friends who no longer keep in touch; others only because of the easy facility of facebook, and then those others, the jems who make it a point to connect with you no matter what, to remember you when they buy something, just because they had you in mind. There were days I felt lonely, and suffered from a lack of personal space, yet lacked the confidence and security that Singapore offered to be able to venture out alone. Yet with necessity and time, I manouveured my way around Buenos Aires, brushed up my Spanish and even attained a level that allowed me to be my family’s tourguide around the city, without any external help. Now I’m working again, after a break of a couple of months, and I’m really enjoying it.
8 months ago, at the start of this year, I greeted 1st January 2010 with fireworks in Hong Kong, together with Val and Aunty Adeline’s family. It was a wonderful beginning stuffing ourselves with yummy cantonese dim sum and heavenly desserts. I was still floatingly rotating on my International Graduate program, and had no idea what I wanted to do for a living. Then I joined the Global Research desk, where I had a thoroughly enjoyable 2 months working with a team of people that I honestly respected and admired. I realized that work could actually be fulfilling. And that when I enjoyed my work, my bosses appreciated the output and insight I contributed. I had to some pretty tough decisions to make then, but I made them and they served me very well. I keep in touch with ex-colleagues from SCB and when they talk to me about work – telling me they can’t wait to leave and that so many of those that I started out with have already left – I think to myself, thank God I made the right choice and left; and that I didnt waste my last 4 months complaining about a situation I had the power to change. I still remember thinking that I had no idea what 2010 would bring me, and lo and behold, it is already the middle of August.
What a difference a short span of time makes, and what a difference honestly, when you dare to make the boldest and bravest decisions, because you never really know how much you gain unless you take the first step forward and try it. I’m sooo glad I did!
Argentine: Defined?
There is, apparently, a definition for the word “Argentine”, which is mostly a joke invented by other countries in Latin America, and also mostly true. It goes like this – “An Argentine is an Italian who speaks Spanish and desires to be like the French.”
Doesn’t sound south-american at all. In fact this saying sounds as if it was trying to define a mix of European nationalities. But this is also where the truth lies – Argentina, one of the latin american countries with the highest percentage of its population being caucasian, since most of its people are descendents of Italians and Spanish. There are also descendents of Russian, Jewish and other races, but the majority can rightly be said to be from Italy (especially the South) and Spain. There had been a campaign organized by the people of Chile and Argentina to kill all the indigenous people in both countries many decades ago, with the objective of spreading the Spanish language and infiltrating the land with the new-found culture, resulting in a rapid diminishing of the indigenous culture and languages. Since then, Spanish has become the national language in Argentina, spoken by everyone, including the small remaining indigenous minority. In order to trade, work, get about your daily life, Spanish is essential.
Ok, now I have covered the part about Argentines speaking Spanish. Why are they called Italians then? Although the direct descendents of Italian immigrants do not make up the entire population, Argentines in general are extremely similar to Italians in terms of their gesticulations, and mannerisms of speech. They speak loudly, gesturing always with their hands, giving you little personal space, and are flambouyant in their speech. My argentine friend sometimes even makes the mistake, when he is overseas, of assuming that some Italians he sees from afar are Argentines, and the truth is only obvious to him when he hears them speak. Fine, the Italian description makes sense then.
What about the part of them wanting to be like the French? Remember that Buenos Aires is almost always referred to as the “Paris of South America”? This is mostly attributable to its very European architecture which define the city, constructed by or under the strong influence of many European designers and architects which came here to exchange ideas, learn and teach, especially because Buenos Aires was one of the cities most open to foreign culture. Don’t forget also that 100 years ago, Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world, because it exported alot of cattle, grain and other commodities to other countries. Up till 15-20 years ago, Argentina had always aspired to be like Europe, which just by nature of being important and one of the largest economies in the world, gave it an economic and cultural model to follow. It associated more with European culture than with South American culture, and hence, other latin american countries saw Argentina as snobbish and always trying to be out of its league. In a way, the general mentality of Argentines are that they are superior to the other South American countries, and like the French, who are synonymous with arrogance and self-assumed superiority, the Argentines behave likewise. Perhaps that is beginning to change.
Some one to two decades ago, the governement and the people in general realized that it would not do for them to constantly emmulate a culture and an economy that was not theirs. In comparison, Argentina would always be the underdog compared to an economy like Europe, and so, there started to be a shift in mindset and cultural mentality. Argentina started to realize that they wanted to pay more attention and give more value to the culture which was theirs, without the influence of any foreignors. They started focusing on things which were uniquely Argentine, like Tango, gauchos, and cumbia. It was also more recently in the 1990s when there started a widespread scale of teaching Spanish as a second language to foreignors in Argentina, and even more recently that more foreignors started discovering and realizing the beauty of both its cities and natural resources. But more than that, Argentines have been adjusting their emphasis to aligning more with South American cultures, and looking to other South American economies for guidance, such as that of Brazil and to a lesser extent, Chile.
I think the definition of an Argentine might be beginning to change, but it is still only in its infancy. There are many things which Argentines still proudly retain and hold tightly as their make-up and essence. But there are also some things which they are letting go.
Spanish classes: From the viewpoints of both teacher and student
Just two weeks of Spanish classes and I have learnt so much about Argentina, the Spanish language, and also life in general.
Yesterday Debora and I spoke about the process of learning Spanish, and she related to me her own experience in teaching Spanish and Spanish literature to children just into their teens in a public secondary school, and to adults above the age of fifty who are studying the language and its literature in a school specially for people their age.
One big difference between both groups of students is their desires to learn. The former attend school because they need to fulfil an obligation to their parents who enrolled them into classes; they are at thirteen years of age lost between maturity of adults and the innocence of young children. Right at the entrance of the phase of puberty, they experience hormonal imbalances and display a rebellious streak that is sometimes difficult to keep under control. Essentially still young and attention-seeking, they shout through most of the lessons, if not speaking at the top of their voices, a mix of some deeper voices and others at higher pre-puberty frequencies. For them, it doesn’t make sense to attend language classes since after more than a decade on earth they are able to speak Spanish and use the appropriate terms and grammar. To them, it is a waste of time to sit through classes about Preteríto Imperfecto, Preteríto Pluscuamperfecto and Presente de Subjuntivo. Whether they can structure a sentence based on language rules is of little importance to them. As such, Debora spends more of her limited time in these classes teaching them to analyze a text, to critique the way a prose has been written, and simply to form sentences that are longer and much more elegant.
The problem with children of this generation is that they spend alot more time watching television programs, playing computer games, going on websites like Facebook and youtube, and texting on their handphones. They are used to instantaneous gratification, and with online chat and SMS increasingly becoming the main mode of communication between youngsters, they cut their words and use short-form for everything whenever possible. They talk alot using very little words. Like this. They speak but not converse. They like things short. And easy. Not complicated. So Debora tries to help them link more subjects together in the same sentence and to express themselves with greater variety and extent of vocabulary. One thing she especially likes about teaching teenagers is that being in contact with them enables her to understand and comprehend a little bit more about their tastes, their likes and dislikes, their behaviour and current fascinations. It keeps her feeling a bit younger she says.
The latter group, made up of older, mainly retired or just pre-retirement adults, is quite different. They are mainly Argentines who because of a particular family or economic situation, were unable to complete secondary school when they were much younger, and as such, have a strong desire now that the situation is different to attain the education they never had. They can speak perfectly well; communication per se for them may not be a problem, but perhaps they had never been taught the right way to structure sentences together; they are not able to read of write and this illiteracy has irked them enough to push them into enrolling for classes. Unlike the children still undergoing puberty, they are less impatient, more determined and less temperamental. They have, hopefully, a wiser point of view, a less miopic lens from which they see things with grander scale. These older students possess a lot of knowledge and years of experience which the former group has completely no idea about. Their lives are of course different as well; maybe they are going through menopause, maybe they just want something to enrich their lives and to start living again.
Personally, I have always thought and still think that learning a language is a completely different experience from learning to do any other thing. In language classes, you feel like you are a child all over again, learning the most basic and essential verbs or grammar to even form sentences so people can understand you. Then you have to learn vocabulary in order to expand your scope of conversations and to be able to have a decent dialogue about things other than food and the weather. A large part of language classes often include conversations with the teacher asking you what you did the day before, or to describe your own country and through conversations like these which you might not have normally, you discover so much about yourself, your knowledge of your own country, you even realize your pride for your homeland and find yourself defending the differences in culture and thinking your nation has.
In the past 2.5 years of learning Spanish, I’ve grown to love the language, not just for being foreign, but also for its romantic roots, its very particular words which give Spanish such an intense and colourful flavour, and the beauty of its constant evolution. Spanish, like all other languages, is spoken differently all over the world. Slang and words particular to a country or even province, combined with the unique intonations and accents as a result of specific and different experiences globally is what makes learning a language so interesting and captivating. “Lumfardo” used here in Buenos Aires, typically by Portenos, is similar to “Singlish” in Singapore and “Cockney” in England. You cannot say that you have really learnt a language until you can integrate with the locals and speak in their local version of the language. I can’t say I’ve actually learnt Spanish yet. Give me a few more months. I’ll tell you more then.
