Hey.
Been awhile, Drugstore-fans, hasn't it?
Right now, I'm sitting at the table in the kitchen of the same house that I was staying in when we last met. It was somewhat freezing when I woke up this morning in the concrete box of mine on the roof, so I went to where I am now to seal up the kitchen and use the oven, thereby creating my own personal summer.
I'm making banana bread, that wonderful method by which my mother prevented the waste of bananas. Of course, here, they don't recognize this as bread, so much as they recognize is as "budin," which I take to be somehow related to pudding. The nice thing about that is that it does give lie to the idea that banana bread might somehow be healthy, being that it is not, containing more sugar than all of the export of the Dominican Republic.
I have successfully completed what I imagined to be the 0th and 1st stages of my plan here in Buenos Aires. In stage 0, I came to Buenos Aires, resumed with most of my old contacts and make temporary arrangements to live. Now completing stage 1, I have found means for what I believe to be sustainable living. I am paying 900 pesos a month in rent, which I tell myself is not a bad price for how nice the house I am living in is. I have also found work at two english institutes which gives me a fixed income of about 3000 pesos a month. This will be month which comes with a full "paycheck" (cash in an envelope) so I expect to be able to pay a month's rent without using my savings and have enough left over to eat and even spend on meals at restaurants.
There are a few problems. The job I like pays only 20 pesos an hour, is located in the most-loathed downtown of Buenos Aires, and it forces me to wear nice pants and shirt. Irritation aside, this will make a significant increase in my expenses for dry cleaning, and in a country where text messages are a quarter a pop (1 peso), you can never really tell what's going to be expensive and what's not.
In my other job, I make 35 pesos an hour, I can wear T-shirt and jeans, and is only a 30 minute walk from my home. Sadly, it puts me into daily contact with the most hated thing in Christendom. Small, energetic children and requires me to work much time outside of the hours that they actually pay me. And worse, despite the fact that she is a thin and tall dark-skinned woman who appears to be about 25 years old, my boss is more interested in making sure I do the things they pay me for than flirting with me. As only taxi-drivers in Buenos Aires seem to grasp, there is nothing more terrible than having a beautiful lady-boss who is actually expects you to show up to work on time. Nay! Early, even.
The other problem as I am transitioning out of stage 1 is that stage makes it somewhat impossible to get to the point where I'm spending most of my time involved with music and saving some money. The job that pays me better (and is some 2000 of my 3000 pesos) is from 5:30-8:30 or 9:30 M-TR. My other job is daily (except sunday) from 10-2 or 10-4. As you may notice this leaves me precious little time to do those important things like find people to hire me as a trombonist, find trombone students or english students, or do any of the things that I wanted to do while I was here, like compose, or start a webcomic. Oh, or eat or sleep.
I have recently asked that half my hours with the little latino bastards from hell be stricken from my schedule, which will hopefully give me some time to prepare the next stage while maintaining a baseline income.
Regarding housing: I appear to be doing better than most foreigners to whom I speak. And everyone's rent in the house got hiked, so I'm now paying the least rent! Schaudenfreude, methinks. But it does make me look like a spaz, though, I may still be paying much above what the thing is actually worth.
Ja ne, friends.
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