Meet, See, Taste, Live, Learn

It’s funny. For all my life I’ve had this desire for adventure, to be let loose upon the world and explore every nook and cranny of it that I could. To meet interesting people, see beautiful things, taste exotic flavors. To live the life less ordinary and learn from anything incredible that came way.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m doing that. I’m doing that every chance that I get. When someone asks if I want to go somewhere, I’ll try it out. When I see someone that I want to meet, I’ll go up to them. If something looks tasty or sounds new, I’ll give it a try.

I am learning a lot about myself, the world around me, and others. In the past six weeks, I have let myself freefall through the new. But I miss the old.

UMass is “officially” kicking off tonight with a string of parties all over campus, including one at my house. With the rush of people back to Amherst and into the UMass mindset, people have been contacting me, checking up on me, letting me know that it won’t be the same without me. And for everyone that has done that, it is sincerely and honestly one of the most meaningful gestures that I’ve received.

To see the routes of life that I have planted over the past two years continue beyond me. The groups I’ve been involved with, the people that I’ve worked with, the people that I’ve partied with, and of course those many that fit in all three.
For everyone getting back into the swing of things back north, enjoy it and realize how great of a time it can be and is.

Now, with that out of the way…

Thursday night, I met up with a friend and we hung out at some friends of his apartment. The first sign that something was up was just how nice the lobby was, the permanently stationed security guard. Then my friend got a call letting him know that his friend was coming from the sauna to meet us. A pool, gym, and spa lead off from the lobby.

It turns out that the two guys living in this apartment are professional online poker players, and from the looks of it, pretty damn good ones.

The apartment was two stories. Looking at a bookshelf, a few caught my eye, including The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon. I commented on it and was told that the place was just a rental. They might be going to Thailand once they get tired of Buenos Aires.

Hanging above the living room area was a stereotypical trendy piece of art that you’d expect to find in a rental high-end apartment. About forty or fifty bicycle tires were suspended from the ceiling by wire, painted a broad array of rainbow shades. We tried to figure it out. The context, what the artist was trying to say, how many artists might have made it, if it was reproducible. It was probably the best conversation piece that I have ever seen in my life.

It turns out that one of the poker players is from Andover, MA and has a few friends in common.

They moved here from Las Vegas where they lived at a complex with tons of other professional poker players. They’ve crossed paths with all the big names - one of them actually plays Don Cheadle in online poker. Another one had actually used the bond that Michael Phelps was caught in a photo smoking out of (supposedly it belongs to another professional poker player).

We got into a conversation about the ridiculous degree of things that people would do as an assistant. They use theirs to shop, cook, clean, schedule, pretty much anything that requires effort. Somehow we spent a lot of time figuring out whether they could get people trying out to be their assistant to fight a live octopus in their apartment building’s pool. Needless to say, the conversation took some nice tangents.

We left to hit up a series of bars. At one of them, I tried ordering what sounded absolutely incredible, French fries with bacon, chicken, cheese, and hot sauce, but the kitchen had closed. I do plan on returning to try it. We ended the night at one of the clubs in the neighborhood. Had the expected experience…

Friday night I met up with a few friends at an ex-pat bar called Sugar with great happy hour specials. 5 peso well drinks. 4 rum and cokes = $5 US. The bar also played a string of those songs from the 90s. You know the ska/punk/pop rock songs that seemed a dime a dozen coming from a seemingly endless supply of one hit wonder bands and now nostalgic favorites. The whole trend is pretty much embodied in the career of Smash Mouth.

A group of left this bar to head to another one called 878 a few blocks away. To enter you had to ring a doorbell (seemingly a new trend in bar design in this city). We got in and the place had a very upper class yet chill vibe to it. The design was a bit retro with a speakeasy style. The walls were brick and lounging couches ringed and ran through the room. Pearl Jam was playing in the background, specifically the album Ten. Coming off a recent Pearl Jam binge, I was more than happy to chill and jam out here.

I’m a big fan and proponent of sitting in bars with groups of friends, being those people that sing along to all their favorite songs. Usually it’s just me with my friends watching, shaking their heads, and rolling their eyes.

We left 878 and took the bus to the other side of town where one of my friend’s host brothers was throwing a birthday party. An electronic band was playing in the living room, with a female singer conforming to my stereotype perception of female Argentine singers at hole in the wall places (beautiful, sorta trendy-edgy, and utterly hip) singing into some sort of synthesizer. The birthday cake was a home baked chocolate cake topped by orange, purple, and blue sprinkles, in a ring of chocolate covered wafer cookies. A fruit layer was inside.

The crowd there was older, in their late 20s and early 30s, all artsy professional types in the city. Talking to them, I realized that I was starting to get into a nice mold whenever I needed to break the ice with a crowd of Argentines. Be a foreigner. Be more extroverted, speak a bit in the broken language, and be full of stories of home and your travels there. It establishes an identity and a reason why you deserve attention. From there, you can blend in with the group dynamics as much as you want. But you just need something to contribute.

The next day I saw Inglourious Basterds. Reading Spanish subtitles of Germans in an American movie is a pretty international way to watch a movie. Beyond that, the movie was incredible, plain and simple. It provoked the whole spectrum of emotions and was truly storytelling as art.

That night, I went with a group of friend to a sports bar called Locos Para Futbol. That night, Argentina was playing Brazil in a World Cup qualifying match. The bar required a large amount of pesos to reserve a spot at the dinner they offered for the game. I got four slices of pizza, two drinks, an empanada, and some sort of chocolate mousse for way too much. But the experience was almost worth what we paid.

The bar was packed of fans from both sides. At the beginning of each half and each time Argentina scored a goal, the bar played the team’s anthem and the whole place would instantly start clapping and singing along. People wore capes of their country’s flag. Tons of people had jerseys. The crowd was perfect. People were banging on tables, hugging each other at the most minor play, the vibe was just right.

The game wasn’t. Brazil won 3-1. A cute group of Brazilian girls sitting at the table next to mine got plenty of opportunities to cheer.

We left the bar and ran into two Argentine friends of ours, one of whom was having his birthday party that night. We hopped in cabs and took it to his friend’s apartment, another one of those affairs with a pool, yard, and gym attached to their complex.

Around 1, the first crowd other than us showed up. A group of girls heavily made up, wearing clothes more befitting a club than a party. Something seemed a bit off about them.

More people kept trickling in and eventually we had about fifty people there. A few more American friends also came by.

One of my Argentine friends than took me by the shoulder to work a group of girls. I’d be the interesting American; he’d be the one showing me off. We went to a playground on the property and I found myself in front of the heavily made up girls.
Maybe it was the juxtaposition of them on the playground, but I quickly figured it out. They were all around 14. That was their average age.

Needless to say, I found another group and was able to break the ice with my Americanness. It turns out that one of them was a Bolivian girl and she spoke English with a British accent, another was an Algerian born in Yemen, there was a Peruvian, and two Argentines.

I quickly got familiar with the crowd and left the party with them around 5:30.
Each adventure I have, each place I go to, each person I meet, each thing I try, is more than what I did before. Slowly at first but now faster and faster, my networks expanding, the things I absorb, more.

Next weekend I’m bringing a bit of UMass to Argentina. I’m going to teach them down here how to make Peppermint Patty Shots. I hope there will be plenty of those going around back at home.