Drugstore Gaucho

After hearing so much about the occasionally lauded, more often derided, Argentine public health care system, I decided that it merited investigation. Or my girlfriend wanted me to get tested for HIV, gangrenous penis and other sexually transmitted boogiemen. In either case, I went to the hospital and was treated to brief (thank god) anthropological journey through medicine in another country. Being that I've still not finished/done my paperwork to be legal here in Argentina, and thereby get the health insurance my company would provide, I'm on the public plan. I'm not sure as to what the limits of the public plan is, in light of the fact that I have done zero actual research regarding the topic. So I can only offer what I might call hearsay, or what anthropology might call the data from my informal interviews. In conversation and eavesdropping with my friends and co-workers (that is to say, a statistically non-representative sample, but c'mon, how do you know w

(This post from some time ago last year, in 2012) It's with a heavy heart that I make post number 70 on this blog and eradicate the 69 from post count that has stood so long as warden to this mostly ignored corner of the internet. I thought I would write something, it being late and I being bored, but reading previous entries has moved me to make a post in the vein of the spotty narrative that has sort of evolved out of the last couple of entries. This country, despite it's great size and previous importance to international politics, exists in a paucity of information about itself. As far as I know, my blog is the only English language source detailing the day-to-day in Buenos Aires that isn't run by an idiot tourist/exchange student breathlessly detailing their life-changing experience. Well, that's not true exactly. My gringo friend Ben has a friend Paul (our names truly are hideously monosyllabic, aren't they?) who has some kind of internet presence, but he

I took a trip to Brazil and this scene has been on my mind ever since then. I can't explain why. My girlfriend and I were staying with her cousins, people who definitely inhabited the upper half of that famously abrupt divide between the rich and the poor in Brazil. We had been staying in their daughters playroom--a little space about as large as a walk-in closet, but every conceivable surface covered in dolls and toys. When we laid down on the inflatable mattress that we nestled in between the overstuffed bookshelves (stuffed mostly with toys, no books) we would look up towards the ceiling the three tiers of shelving bolted to the wall, so full of dolls that they leaned precariously outward, looking down at us with their shiny fake eyes. The father of this toy-laden child told us that it was impossible to reduce the number of dolls that she had; that if one were to go missing she would know instantly. I doubted it, being that at least half of the dolls were obstructed from view

Another technical account of getting started up in Buenos Aires. Per my training in anthropology, I would like to whine defensively that this is based purely off of my experience living in Buenos Aires and is no way representative of what living in Buenos Aires is an standard/typical/objective sense, if such a thing could be established. A different friend informed me that he is planning to come down to live here had some questions after reading my previous posts. Therefore, I answered them and now, published them, grammatical worts and all. Thank you. That did help me gauge where I'll be stepping off, I think. My goal is to be down there in September. Would that be shooting myself in the foot from the get-go? Also, who did you fly down with? I'm planning on buying a ticket this week. What's your story with health insurance? I don't have a TEFL certification. Is this necessary going in or could I take a class while there if necessary? What would a good cushion be going

This is a Facebook message I wrote to a friend who was thinking about moving to Buenos Aires himself. It's funny how I respond much better to prompts than to total freedom. I blame education. Sam old buddy, howdeedoo, Funny you should ask a question that is so eminently on my mind. Regarding your questions, BA is exactly how I remember it. Kind of a pain of the ass, kind of great. The moneda situation has been rememdied, the people are still short tempered, it's still over crowded and a pain to get around anywhere. The primary difference would be my economic standing now that I'm here under my own power and, more importantly, earning in pesos. But even from a dollar perspective, the city is a little rough. Inflation has struck the city pretty hard in our absence, and food prices have also risen pretty extremely. Whereas before, on the dollar, I always said that Buenos Aires was not cheap exactly, but a surprisingly good deal considering what you were getting, now it has mov

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 cont