Living like Hemingway: October 2011

For once I am posting without pictures so you'll have to just listen to me rant. The past few weeks have been exciting, tumultuous, occasionally dull, and overall eye opening. Since the end of July we have been living with a French study abroad student (name will be omitted). A twenty-three year old girl, born in Bordeaux, spent most of her life living outside of Paris before coming to Uruguay for a 6 month stint. Spoke Spanish moderately well, English the same (not judging there, my Spanish is growing but still weak). We tried to include her in some activities only to have her always decline. No problem there. She probably wanted to have her own experiences. I include her in this rant for only two reasons. Reason 1. for those of you who know me well you know that while a generally kind-hearted and nice guy I am, I have my sarcastic/straight shooter/blunt side that I am not afraid to hide and none to ashamed of. Well I am pretty easy going I like to think. I try to accept people for who they are, but there are limits. I renamed this French girl Sloth; no not to her face. I am a trained sous chef and sushi chef. I love food, and think it to be an important part of life, culture, personal well being,etc. Sloth did not feel the same way. I said no picture but here is a picture of sloth

alright, alright, you got me. thats Sloth from the Gonnies, but you get the idea.

At the beginning of each week Sloth would venture to the market, buy a bunch of random vegetables, cut them up with a steak knife while holding them in the air (no cutting board involved). This in itself is enough to drive me crazy, as a good cook with strong knife and other culinary techniques her methods were rather irritating. She would then take these hacked up veggies, put them in a large pot and brew them (note the use of the word "brew" not cook), no broth used, maybe water? not sure really. Once soft and mushy she would put what were once delicious veggies into a food processor and blend until puke green and goopy in texture. I coined the final product "witches brew", which would then be stored in our tiny fridge for the remainder of the week. She would scrape a few large spoonfuls out each night and reheat for a first course, followed by really stinky fish (i love fish by the way so understand that i'm pretty sure this fish was cod, which is good in general, but this cod was aweful. we have been told not to mess with the fish in the local market) the fish was cooked in a pan, with water. no seasoning, not oil, no flavor, lots of nasty smell throughout the apartment. All of this would be tolerable had it not been for the sound of Sloth eating. This of course is where the name "Sloth" came from. Its hard to explain the sound of her eating but i'll do my best to dig deep into my English Major self to find the proper adjectives. As she ate, i could hear her digesting simultaneously. There are those that simply just don't properly close their mouths when eating and then there are people who, when eating, sound as though it is from a trough. I felt as though I could hear her intestines processing the food, however the noise came from her throat. Consequently I would put on headphones whenever in her presence during mealtime. or as like to call it.. feeding time.

So you say, "Aaron, thats really mean to make fun of that", and i respond "well i suppose you are correct." So now i tell you why after months of listening to these nauseating noises that I am digging in and writing on it. Reason 2. Three days prior to the end of September the Sloth let us know that she would be moving out. We said "totally cool, we understand you probably want to live with some younger people, non-couple, best of luck!" Into the picture comes Susanna, the evil warlord who poses as the leasing agent for our apartment.
Pictured below:

A woman who has given my better half more than a little shit whenever reasonable requests are made, such as, "the oven doesn't work", the washing machine will not turn on." She found these to be unreasonable requests of someone paying money to live in an apartment that advertises the accommodations of a washing machine and working oven. These were unreasonable requests of "spoiled, uptight Americans" needless to say she didn't like us living there. She blamed us for not being able to rent out the other room in the apartment, even though the room was rented out to Sloth, and they were getting extra money from our room due to my presence. At midnight, 3 days prior to the end of the month, she lets us know via email that we had to be out of the apartment as of the end of the month! no contracts were allowed; when a contract was originally requested by us, it was met with disdain, distrust, and outright anger at the thought of following the legal rules of renting an apartment. "contract!, hell no, that means we couldn't evade taxes and throw you out on a whim with no place for you to go. Homeless you shall be!" obviously that wasn't a real quote, but lets pretend it was. I have disdain for Sloth because she knew for a while that she would be moving out and didn't have the guts to let us know so we would not be surprised at the last second and thrown out onto the streets. Once all the facts became clear she became sheepish, would not look us in the eyes, and made rather amusing attempts to sneak in and out of her room and out the door without being seen by us. Unable to face up to the situation she had caused for us, even after we had let her know all was good. I think we were very good roomates. We did ALL the cleaning, engaged her in conversation regularly, were quiet at night, went out of our way to include her in activities, and offered her the opportunity to learn both Spanish and English simultaneously, after she told us that both were serious goals of her's.

Well the next day a light shone through the sky at us, my fiancee found us a cheaper, cooler, and much larger place to live. we now have a great view of the city, the river, and a spanish looking roof deck (pictures to come) Chalk one up for the good guys (aka us) Before moving out of the old apartment we needed to get our deposit back. The evil Susanna did a walk-through and proceeded to accuse us of stealing ugly motel 6 style pictures that were on the wall, having blood all over the bed (it was a little spot of wine) but she insisted it was blood. by the way.. blood turns brown once oxidized and dried. on the other hand red wine stays red foever. the stain was red. we admitted we were liable for it in the deposit before she ever even saw it. Obviously this woman had never given back a security deposit before. She deals with college age study abroad students, not seasoned late twenty something adults such as myself. The weather here has been getting warmer so we no longer needed the down comforter on the bed at night; therefore, I packed it into a large plastic bag for safe keeping and in its place laid out a blanket more suited for warmer nights. On the outside of the bag i wrote our names so that Sloth would not see it and think it was for her room. When Susanna, I mean the evil warlord saw that i had written our names on the cheap plastic bag which by the way was out bag, she accused us of thinking that the comforter was ours! furthermore she accused us of taking the blanket outside of the apartment! Why we would ever do that is beyond me. She continued making insane accusations until we lost it, raised our voices, and proclaimed to her " what are you, Sherlock Holmes!" i still chuckle about that moment. she didnt' understand it but it made me happy. and we got the deposit back.. Go Us!

Sorry for the ranting and raving. I've been carrying that one on the chest for a while now and needed to get it out of my mind and onto the screen. The new place is closer to the city center and in a district called Palermo, which is know to be the "artsy" district (or barrio as they say here) I have also been hanging out more with one of mi lady's best buddies who is a Fullbright Scholar. Times have been fun! Mi Lady and I leave for our next adventure on Wednesday (october, 12th) to Paraguay. There we will be flying into the capital city Ascension, checking out the sites and the scene before traveling to see the ruins of the old Jesuit Missiones. We may go on a ecological tour to see leopards, wild boards, maned wolves, more monkey's, and giant carpinchos, which look like giant hamsters! picture below: yeah i know i said at the top i wouldn't be posting any pictures this time but i mean c'mon, did you really believe me!?

Awesome Right?! We saw babies during out Iguazu trip however this is the big momma!

For my readers.. look forward in about a week and a half's time for the Paraguay photo blog post

Now i'm going to change the subject out of nowhere. My beloved Arsenal has been struggling in the premier league this season, and as they struggle, I struggle a bit (the mark of a true FANatic (read Fever Pitch). despite me lacking a television I have caught every match. Many dissapointing results, but for those out there who are Arsenal fans, aka Gunners. I am instering below a blog post from one of my favorite bloggers (Arseblog) total credit to this man, he wrote this not I. Below is the link to his site if you are a Gunner and want a great blog to read daily, also below is a post he made that really brightened my day and could maybe help others understand why I and all others in this camp are Gunners!

first here is my favorite arsenal blog, one which i read daily no matter the weather: A Cultured Left Foot, written by Yogi's Warrior
http://aculturedleftfoot.wordpress.com/

And here is Arseblog from which the post below is from
http://arseblog.com/
by Arseblogger
Why I love Arsenal

By arseblogger on October 5th, 2011 / Arseblog, the arsenal blog / Leave a comment

The Green

The green of the grass. Every time. It’s greener at Arsenal than anywhere else. The only time I can remember it being as green somewhere else is the first time I saw Arsenal play live. It was some time in the mid-80s, in a pre-season game against Shamrock Rovers here in Dublin.

Under floodlights, a packed terrace in a south Dublin suburb, a battle of the O’Leary brothers if I recall correctly (of course it’s possible I’ve just augmented my memory of it). David the Gooner, Pierse playing for Rovers. The pitch was amazing that night.

We lost.

The Red (and white)

I love our kit. Red shirt, white sleeves. It’s timeless, classic and simple. Which is why it’s annoying when Nike get it so wrong sometimes. I like that Chapman added the white sleeves not for aesthetic reasons but to make it easier for our players to pick each other out,

My favourite kit is the one we wore in the 1979 FA Cup final though. Maybe it’s because it’s the first game I remember properly but maybe it’s just because it’s awesome. It’s timeless, classic and simple. Which is why it’s annoying when Nike foist yet another blue monstrosity upon us because of its leisure wear properties.

And if I could find a pair of the hooped socks from the mid-90s I’d buy them in a flash.

The Fans

As difficult as things are at the moment, and as depressing as I find it that people speak to each other online in the ill-mannered, pig-ignorant way they seem to think is acceptable, in real life the Arsenal fans I have met, and meet, are brilliant.

Generous, funny, passionate and intelligent. The first time I ever did that weird thing of ‘meeting people off the internet’ was for the Arsenal v Barcelona Champions League game at Wembley. As part of the Arsenal Mailing List a meet-up had been arranged and off I went to a bar within sight of the stadium. Nobody touched my special area. I drank beer with people I hadn’t met before and despite the result it was fantastic. I’m still in touch with some of those people.

Through Arseblog I have met hundreds more, many of whom I would consider my friends, and those friendships are borne out of one thing and one thing only, Arsenal Football Club.

The Irish connection

Clearly this is what made me an Arsenal fan. I don’t remember clearly why I became an Arsenal fan but as a child of Irish parents living in England I’m sure I was searching for some kind of identity. Much as you might laugh now, Terry Wogan wasn’t it. Remember, this was a world in which I was a Paddy when I lived in England (in spite of my Yorkshire accent) but I was a Brit the moment we returned home.

Brady, O’Leary, Stapleton, Devine, Rice, Nelson, Jennings. All just Irish to a small boy. There are a generation of Arsenal fans here whose first real trauma in life was the departure of Liam Brady to Juventus. A player that many of us never saw play except on TV moving to a club in Italy, played out in tiny snippets in the newspaper, and it was enough to cause heartbreak.

I can only imagine how torturous it might have been to have blanket coverage, rolling news and non-stop rumour and gossip for the duration of the saga. Oh wait, I don’t need to imagine at all.

The Records

I don’t remember the name of the book (was it the Rothman’s one?) but I had one at home as a kid and it listed each club and gave their various records. For example, record win, record loss, record attendance etc.

I used to know that book off by heart and back to front. I knew that our biggest win and biggest defeat had come against Loughborough Town and that our record attendance was somewhere in the mid 70,000s for a game in the 30s or 40s and that no other team could beat it.

I played football stat Top Trumps against all the other teams in the book and Arsenal could win lots of times. And if we didn’t I’d just make them up so we did.

Our record appearance holder is an Irishman, David O’Leary who, as I say, blotted his copybook a bit as manager of Leeds. Particularly when he dared have a go at our dreamiest ever player. What was he thinking?

Highbury

Football moves on and business more than ever calls the shots but there’s no place like home. I’ve always loved city centre stadia. One minute you’re walking down a residential street, you turn a corner and there’s a gigantic football stadium.

Highbury might not compare to the Grove in terms of facilities, ease of access (maybe we should make it more difficult for people to get out) and the rest, but it has all the character. It’s always worth a walk past, to see that amazing East stand facade, and a touch depressing to see the apartments and gardens where so much Arsenal history took place.

But who will ever forget it?

The Cannon

I’ve never been one for tattoos but I always said if I got one it would be the old cannon. What a symbol of a club. It’s not a cock perching on a ball, nor any other kind of bird or wild animal of varying ferocity. I’ll see your wild animal and raise you a cannonball in the face. I think you’ll find there’ll only be one winner.

I get why they changed it, business, copyright, blah blah blah, but the new sanitised, we’ll sue you if you use it anywhere, version just doesn’t come close.

The The

Not the band. The fact that we have a The in front of our name and nobody else does. There’s no The Chelsea. Certainly not a The Liverpool and definitely not a The Sp*rs.

There is, however, The Arsenal. It’s ubiquitous and unique. It is ours. Sometimes you hear a pundit refer to us as ‘The Arsenal’ on the telly and even if that pundit is one who you would like to smear with meat paste then chuck into a pit with a pack of starving jackals it’s still nice to hear.

Maybe it’s a small thing, maybe completely insignificant, maybe you could say we don’t even a need a ‘the’ but the fact is we have a ‘the’ and nobody else does.

We are The Arsenal.

The Players

I know, in this day and age where all our players are shit and useless and should be sold/killed/minced up and fed to cats etc, people’s affinity with players isn’t what it was.

Yet under no other circumstances could I blindly worship another man the way I have with Arsenal players. The list goes back as long as I can remember. Liam Brady, of course. As a burgeoning centre-half I have to admit that Willie Young’s tackle on Paul Allen in the 1980 FA Cup final won him a place in my heart and taught me a football lesson I never forgot.

I can remember fervently praying that when Charlie Nicholas left Celtic he’d choose us and not Man United or Liverpool or Sp*rs. I could barely understand why he’d want to go there anyway. They didn’t have a ‘the’ for goodness sake.

Rocastle, Bould, Merson (the glug-glug celebration did it for me, for some reason … ahem …), Bergkamp, Pires and Cesc were all obvious. But why, along the way, did I have soft spots just as big for Tommy Caton, Edu, Philippe Senderos and more? Players of varying quality who meant as much to me as the bone fide geniuses. I guess that’s the beauty of it.

—

I’m sure there are loads more if I stopped to think about it for longer, or if I had more time. But sometimes it’s worth stepping back and realising that Arsenal is something that you should cherish. It is, for all intents and purposes, a marriage, a lifelong relationship and committment.

For richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, and all that. We’re a bit sick at the moment and if you, like some columns I’ve read lately, want to leave your poorly partner because it’s all too much of a chore to lift him/her onto the toilet and then do the wiping, that’s entirely up to you. I’m sure you’ll be back once we’re on the mend though; when the good times return, which they will.

We can all be concerned and worried about where we are and where we’re going but we’ve been here before and we’ll be here again. This is nothing new in the life cycle of this football club.

I offer no solution today though, and present this simply as something to counter-balance the bile, hatred and invective that has become far too large a part of supporting … wrong word … following the Arsenal at this moment in time.

Up the arse.

back to Aaron writing now........... This is why i love THE ARSENAL!

These are reasons for rising above the little hiccups in life that we have encountered in Uruguay with Sloth and Susanna the evil warlord. This is why many of you see me walking around in one of my three Gunners jersey on a regular basis, this is why i spend an hour each day after i wake up reading about my beloved team (its part of my routine as much as breakfast,lunch, and dinner), this is why i cheer, this is why i stand up for them in arguments with other futbol fans, or futbol wannabe fans. you know who you are. When i can name more players on your squad then you, then its not really your team. Sports aren't "real" many say. well no, they are entertainment, but they are more than that. they bring people together who otherwise might hate one another. They give hope to people who are down and out. Yes, our teams disappoint us sometimes, but without those disappointments, without those days spent feeling awful after a loss, listening to your rival buddies give you the business about how your team is lousy, without those moments, those days, those feelings, we could never feel as great as we do when THE Arsenal wins and we wear our jersey's with pride, chin in the air, chanting "Arseeeenaaaaal FC, is the Greatest Team in the World!" Its a feeling that front runner type fans, aka those that only support a team because they are good, those that jump ship when the Wins stop coming, such as many manchester united or city, chelsea, fc. barcelona, real madrid, new york yankees, boston redsox, dallas cowboys, la lakers fans, i could go on but i won't, its something those fans will never understand. Within the Gunner Family we all have our own passions. For me its ecology and biology of wetlands. for my best gunner mate its computer programming. but when we sit down to watch the ARSE! we speak the same language! its a beautiful thing!

UP THE ARSE!

also if you are on twitter, join in and follow me, Porteraj2. if you follow me i'll follow you, as long as its not off a cliff.

finally.. PLEASE write your congressmen. For many of my readers this would be Eric Cantor. Better yet start marching outside of his office and home. He has declared that he considers Obama's "The American Job Act" to be dead in the water. The GOP won't even vote on it or discuss it... There are a lot of people suffering and rich arrogant selfish white guys in power like Eric Cantor and John Boehner don't care how much you suffer through unemployment or lousy pay. They are rich, and as long as you keep supporting them and not standing up and fighting like Egyptians, Libyans, and many others have done so across the Arab world. Americans showed they can march in Wisconsin as well as on Wall Street. Now lets take this fight to the republican douchebags front door. Your suffering isn't their problem unless you make it their problem.

Bam!
Poof!
and i'm goooooooone!

Till next time

Living like Hemingway

Oct 27, 2011

What Fox Won't Show You

Oct 21, 2011

View from the terrace

Uruguay celebrates its Bicentenario!

Oct 10, 2011

2011 in Uruguay: A part of history

Oct 9, 2011

Thoughts from a traveler.... Spiral Thinking