Viva la revolucion!

As if the Sucre experience wasn't enough, we also took part in our first demonstration yesterday.

Relax, family, it wasn't a riot or anything. But hey, we were there. We're looking for ourselves in the newspapers today.

We were walking by the National Congress (after an interesting little adventure on the bus which I won't go into now) when we noticed a crowd of people gathering on the Congress steps, along with tons of news cameras and TV and two guys holding a net full of balloons.

A story! I thought (immediately alarmed at how excited I got and realising I was suffering from severe RG withdrawal).

Of course we had to go over, but we couldn't figure out what was going on. So Becca asked a guy standing next to us, and of course he turned out to be one of the main organisers, so he led us through the gates and next thing we knew we were standing on the steps of the National Congress with a bunch people raising awareness about organ donation in front of all the TV cameras.

We didn't look too out of place though. I swear.

And yes, Mom, it was a peaceful demonstration. Pretty anti-climactic really. They released all the balloons, everyone cheered and took pictures, and the media were pretty much packed up and gone by the time we got down the steps.

One demonstration down. What political cause can we take up next?

Five days and we're in love

All three of us fell in love last night.

For Island Girl, it was the dulce de leche cheesecake. For Becca and I, it was our waiter, El Guapo. For all three of us, it was the restaurant - Sucre.

And TJL, you may be wary about siphon and vino, but had you tasted this wine last night - wow. Best bottle of white wine I've ever tasted.

Talk about a sensory overload.

We walked into the restaurant last night and it was as though we were suddenly transported into one of the hippest restaurants in New York City. It's all one enormous room with a two-storey high bar lining one wall, all backlit and providing the only pop of colour in the room. The wine cellar was actually a free-standing room within the main restaurant (TJL you so could've gone in there and examined it, it was enormous), dividing it up into smaller more intimate sides, and everywhere was couches and tables, all in dark greys and rich woods and glass. Mirrors lining the other wall.

Oh boy, was pretty much all the girls could say. I was too busy drooling.

Everything was pretty much just about as perfect as it could get. We ordered a bottle of Torrontes, a spiced white wine that we'd read about, and it was perfectly cold and light and clear but with such a punch - it killed the last Best Bottle of White Wine I've ever tasted, the Zonnebloem at Tuscany's. (I don't know why I can remember Best Bottles of White Wine but never remember any fantastic bottles of red wine, but anyway.)

For my family, I will describe the food in detail. We started off sharing a salad with dried fruits, nuts, and some special leaves that I've never tasted before, and the tart tatin. Even the olive oil is more olivey here, so olivey that IG, who doesn't actually love olives, is kind of put off by it. (Becca and I, on the other hand, are practically chugging the stuff.)

Then, for the platos principales, we moved on to a crab risotto for Becca, some kind of pork thingy with sweet potato wedges for IG, and a gnocchi with mushrooms and tomatoes for me. Every time either one of us took a bite we'd practically keel over from delight. And every time someone sampled something off another's plate, they'd stare and practically shout in awe, "That's SO good! That's SO good!".

The Tittertons would destroy this place, I kept thinking. I want to fly the entire family all the way to Buenos Aires just so we could eat there. WAGS!

By dessert, Rebecca and I just couldn't take anymore. Robyn was a champion and went for the dulce de leche cheesecake (it made her so happy that she couldn't stop laughing while she ate it). As by that point we had also moved on to our second bottle of Torrontes, we were all so content that I could've just sprawled out on the table and died right there.

And then, there was the service.

I'm still not sure if he said people know him as Ricky or Keegan but as we've dubbed him El Guapo it doesn't matter. Rebecca and I did our best to turn on the charm but much of our innate powers were lost in translation as we fumbled around in clumsy Spanish (when Becca joked that she didn't want dessert because she was trying to lose weight, his response was to give a long lecture about a study done in America which showed that men actually like bigger girls more, instead of just telling her how ridiculously beautiful she was already and that he wanted to marry her). Robyn wasn't much help - she just kept repeating "Que rico!" as she raved about the cheesecake.

But we must've done something right. At the end of the night he gave us the card of the restaurant so that we would come back - but he also gave us another card, his own personal card.. Becca, who took them from him, glanced at it and honestly, her face just convulsed. With that same strangled look she passed the card to me.

MASAJE CALIFORNIAN, it read.

Oh God.

Even though we're still not sure if he was trying to drum up business (hey, we've wanted massages since we arrived here) or if wants to hang out, clearly we are emailing him today.

Talk about que rico!

So far, so good

We've decided to "take it easy" this morning (because we've been pushing ourselves so far up to this point) so here I am in the locutorio - the internet place.

Interestingly, the internet is way cheaper here than it was in Havana. There it was roughly $5 per hour at the closest internet place to our house, and the net was often down, not to mention it was close but still a few blocks away. This one is literally (yeah that's right, I said literally) right across the street from our apartment building, and it costs 2 pesos for an hour - about 70 cents. Something like that. So, Mom and Dad, I'll be able to keep in touch on a very regular basis!

True to form, we've already started giving people here our own names for them. The guys who run the locutorio we have dubbed Johnny (because he reminded us of Johnny S), and Johnny II (because he was works here whenever Johnny isn't here). According to Rebecca, there is an elusive Johnny III lurking about, but I haven't had the mucho gusto of discovering him yet.

We've also renamed our landlord and his dog. Again according to Rebecca, Leo looks far more like a Joe (to me he looks like a Leo, but I'm perfectly happy to call him Joe), and apparently I was the one who mistakenly renamed his dog. I was talking to him one night while his dog was maniacally bouncing up and down in front of us and for some reason I convinced myself he said the pup's name is Floppy. In fact, it's Florencia. Floppy, on the other hand, became our nickname for the chef in a cafe we ate at on Saturday who appears to have the habit of wandering around with nothing between - um - "him" and the world but his baggy black and white checkered chef's pants. ("I'm out there Jerry and I'm lovin it!")

The apartment is great (about a million times nicer than the one we had in Havana Mom and Dad, so don't worry, we are very safe and comfortable). The ceilings are superhigh and we have a microwave and a gas stove (Nicky the Fish, we were missing you last night because we attempted to turn on the oven to bake empanadas but of course the oven is apparently gas also, meaning you had to light a match to light the pilot light somewhere deep inside the oven itself. Naturally with the gas pouring out and our substantial fear of blowing ourselves up as we frantically searched for wherever the pilot light must be, we ended up using the microwave instead. Had you been here, however, we were sure you would've found it immediately and then cooked an amazing eggplant pasta for us instead.)

The gas problems do appear to be a bit of a saga, unfortunately, both within the apartment and within several of the apartment dwellers, but I won't go into all THAT detail now.

Leo (Joe) is very nice and not at all creepy as I 'd rather suspected he would be. He has an amazing collection of books and CDs and is very nice and soft-spoken. We can't figure out if he's Italian or Argentinian, gay or straight, but those mysteries will reveal themselves in time. (He's old though, so all mothers rule him out please - Becca's mom already asked if he was Jewish!)

Our little corner is ideal - as previously noted the locutorio is directly across the street, a grocery store is about ten feet away, and one of the biggest ice cream chains in BA has a store almost right next to the locutorio. Last night at about ten p.m. when Bryan Adams came on the radio and we'd already drunk one bottle of wine it became devastatingly clear to us how easy it is to run to the grocery store, buy two more bottles of wine and a siphon of soda, and then to the heladeria for what turned out to be quite possibly the most orgasmic ice cream cones any of us have ever tasted in our lives. (Yes, again, literally. Island Girl very nearly actually fell to her knees in the heladeria as she tasted her first dulce de leche ice cream.) I sense the two slightly geeky guys working on the late shift in there will soon become our new best friends.

There are also some gorgeous little cafes - Becca is now in fact enjoying a cafe con leche at the cafe outside and as every cell in my body is screaming for coffee I'm off to join her. More updates on the wonders of empanadas, sparkly scarves, and drinking wine with a siphon bottle of soda are on the way!

Estamos!

I did try to post an earlier post, on the first (second?) day we were here, but it doesn't seem to have posted. At any rate my pesos are about to run out so I will keep this one short:

1) We are here!
2) Man do people in Buenos Aires love their dogs. If only her Gussy were here, Robyn would be in doggie heaven. Dogs don't go to heaven, they all go to Buenos Aires!
3) We have seen Belen, she looks fabulous, she is exactly the same, she LOVED the Bermuda football jersey (even though at first she thought it was an England jersey and was about to jump on a plane and fly to Bermuda to kick 'College Boy's' ass!)
4) The level that my Spanish has deteriorated to is HORRIFYING
5) We have already sampled several botellas de vino - not a single one has been more than $4 US and every single one has been fabulous. My favourite so far? The medialitro we just bought in a cafe along with a siphon of soda water - the portenos drink so much wine that they often squirt soda water into it in a feeble attempt to slow down their alcohol intake. Clearly we had so much fun with the soda siphon that we ended up ordering way more wine than we usually would have.
6) The apartment is perfect, our landlord is very funky, and the Internet place is super cheap and directly across the street, so I promise I will post more soon!

Estamos!

We have arrived safe and sound in Buenos Aires! Though not entirely in one piece as the airline lost Becca{s luggage. Also Rebecca and I both have been alarmed at how rusty our Spanish is ... but so far all is well, our apartment is great, we have already spoken with Belen, and now we have to get food!

Oh God I've quit my job

And my sister, who I saw for about five minutes while she was in port in Bermuda, sailed out again yesterday and I might not see her until Christmas.

And she made me cry when she left.

And everyone at the Gazette hugged me lots and Bob made funny little speech about me asking the most important questions when things got heavy on the night shift ("pizza or sushi?"), and they bought me presents and wrote things in a book for me which made me cry (but not until later, because of course I couldn't cry in front of the Dynamic Trio, they would tease me forever).

And even the politicians (after their little hissy fit in Parliament yesterday morning, which while vastly entertaining left me feeling very trepidacious about leaving my country in the hands of all those people for safe-keeping) were all super nice and shook hands lots and told me to come back - yes, even some PLP ones were nice.

And what with everything I haven't slept more than four hours a night in the past two weeks, literally.

And all I want to do is throw my head back like a wolf and howl owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!

In short: what the fuck am I doing?

I'm perfectly comfortable outside of my comfort zone

I had the first "What the fuck am I doing" moment as I was drifting off to sleep last night.

The last time I had one of those moments was as I was packing my bags to go live in Cuba for four months. I picked up my Spanish dictionary and as I did so I suddenly realised I'm moving to a communist country where I really don't know the language, I have nowhere to live, and I'm counting on some course I found on the Internet.

I guess I just hadn't thought about it that way before. For the first time, I got scared. I thought, "What the fuck am I doing?"

Just then I heard some kind of Indian war whoop outside and looked up to see Johnny S barreling through my parents' yard, tearing his t-shirt off along the way, and throwing himself into our pool. Apparently he wanted to swim. He made some comment I can no longer remember, but I know it was funny because I recorded it in a journal later. I started to laugh at him and just like that I was ok again. I didn't experience any more "What the fuck" moments until I was actually in Havana, during my first breakfast there when I couldn't choke a morsel down because I was so afraid (those who know my penchant for food will understand how mortally afraid I must have been). Fortunately, Havana turned out well, to say the least.

I think it's because I never give myself time to think these things through - then suddenly it hits that I'm taking a rather drastic step, and I'm not at all prepared. So the immediate response is, "What the fuck am I doing?"

This, like that "I hate endings" diatribe in the last post, is a feeling I'm used to. Last night as I hovered between sleep and awake, out of nowhere that cold fear suddenly gripped my heart and I thought: "This is madness, I'm giving up a job I love where I'm making a difference with people I love and friends and family that I love and a paycheque that while leaving me with the valid concern that I'm being exploited still just might one day allow me to own a piece of the Rock - and I'm doing it to toss thousands of dollars down the drain to go to yet another unknown country for three months where killing cows is their big thing and then off to some snotty school in London where they'll all make fun of my grammar for a degree that I don't even technically need and let's be honest, is kind of a bird degree anyway.

"What the fuck am I doing?"

(The grammar fear was prompted by Sweater's unending criticisms of me for using the term "whatever", and his constant refrain that in London "proper people just don't talk like that".)

Fortunately I have come to realise this is all a part of coming out of your comfort zone. As Mach and I so sagely agreed nearly two years ago while crawling over the deck of the Seamans desperately searching for Lady Leeward, it's called your comfort zone for a reason. Nobody said being out of it was comfortable.

So I recovered quickly last night and, sadly enough, fell asleep dreaming of pensions - an obvious sign that I have been working too hard. Who dreams of pay-to-play?

Not me for much longer!

Time is officially running out

You get up to a lot of naughty things at boarding school.

Actually, you get up to a lot of things period at boarding school.

Sometimes those adventures seem like they only just happened, particularly when you suddenly reconnect with your boarding school friends and roomates - some of whom you haven't spoken to since you left seven years ago.

But most of the time they seem really far away, and it's strange to think that you were once that person who did those things with those other people, who were so close to you and are now scattered around the globe. It's strange to go back to that school, years after graduation, and look at where you lived - to think, I was standing right in that spot when this happened, when that happened. That's where I stood when I thought for the first time that I owned the world - and that hallway is where I was when for the first time I was really and truly scared, when my unquestioning belief in happy endings fell away. I was sitting right here when I fell in love and standing by this tree when my heart got broken. I made a major decision which changed the course of my life while sitting on this very bed. You get the picture.

It's strange to look at that physical space and know you once occupied it, that once upon a time it formed the borders of your world.

But what's even stranger is to be aware of that feeling BEFORE you've moved on from a place - when, because you've already experienced it so many times, you know it's going to happen again. When you can visualise it happening even while you're still a part of what you're about to leave. It happens at university, as you study the snow's purple glitter at night; it happens in Havana as you watch hip hop artists freestyling in your living room; it happens somewhere between Honolulu and San Francisco as you cling to a line in a night-time gale and your entire purpose of being narrows to don't let go.

Now, you answer your phone at the office where you've had so many mind-blowing conversations, knowing full well that at some point, months from now, you'll be standing there watching someone else answer that phone. Someone important compliments you, and even as he's saying it you have a flash of yourself in some distant future looking at the chair you were sitting in. You leave the office at 2am when the next day's edition is already coming off the presses and know that one day, months or years from now, you'll pick up a copy of the newspaper in a store somewhere and feel forsaken, because you're not a part of it anymore.

Everything you do becomes a string of moments, and you keep thinking, I will look back and remember this. I will remember this. And this. This is not a new feeling for me, I'm used to feeling homesick for places I haven't even left yet. But that doesn't make the feeling any less evocative.

It's the end of something. I know this has to end for something new and exciting to begin, but that doesn't mean I want this to end and that I won't always regret that somehow I couldn't have managed the new while staying in the old - all the old worlds I've lived in.

I just hate endings.

Deflated humps

It's entirely possible that I've never been this tired or stressed out in my entire life.

Am I jaded or just plain lazy?

I'm on the night shift tonight and was happily procrastinating on a sustainable development story (even though the Sustainable Development Project Team did blow my mind with some of their comments during our interview the other day) when a dear co-worker called in about a story. She'd been riding home and was diverted by the Police on Palmetto Road because of yet another road traffic collision.

Just as I was erupting into a tirade about the frequency of RTCs on Bermuda's roads these days and how unless someone had died I wasn't interested, she informed me this one was special because it appeared that the driver of the car had actually run the rider of the bike down.

Damn, I thought. I'll definitely get in trouble if I don't go look into this one. So, grumbling away to myself, I stomped out to my car and peeled off (I mean, checked both ways before using my indicators and pulling smoothly out into the road - I swear, Dad).

It was as I was musing over the intricacies of Bermuda road names (Marsh Folly Road turns into Palmetto Road for no apparent rhyme or reason) and just before I saw the scene of the collision that I realised I've changed in the past two years. Had I been forced to rush out of the office on a breaking news story like this two years ago, I would've had the music playing loudly in the car (my own personal life-soundtrack) and the adrenaline would've been going - the intrepid news reporter, called on as a witness for the people to the swirling drama of our lives. I would've felt really cool.

Yet there I was, irritated at myself because I'd been procrastinating all night and now would probably be stuck at That Place for a while, and pissed off at my fellow Bermudians for not getting their shit together. Who runs someone down in a car? And this is the second time in just a few weeks this has happened - a husband ran over his wife on his motorcycle repeatedly a while ago because he caught her cheating on him. And for some reason, despite the real horror of the situation, all I could think was: what are we, twelve?

Hot pink mopeds??

Hot Bartender actually forms a good segue to a story I need to put on this site.

See, I've actually met him before (by the way I've just been informed by other sources that he is in fact only 20, and is apparently one of the Lifeguard Crew, and that I shouldn't bother - shame). But the point is, that I've met him before, at a Department of Tourism media luncheon just about a week ago.

It was the Tourism Minister's second such luncheon, held to release tourism stats and introduce new tourism initiatives. As I'm the Tourism reporter at the Royal Gazette, I'm the lucky one who gets the invite.

The first one was great, lots of pop and sizzle, blazing a new path forward for tourism. This second one, held at the Wyndham Resort (formerly the Sonesta Beach Resort) wasn't so great. Lunch was a chicken burger (I'm a vegetarian) and the most exciting new initiative was the PASAs - "pop and sizzle ambassadors", four guys who will this summer whiz around the Island on hot pink mopeds talking to tourists and "spreading the love". Hot pink mopeds. Geez.

In fact, Hot Bartender, seated at my table (still not sure why he was there), was the highlight of the lunch. I'm always interested in what Ewart Brown has to say, but this was stretching it, I thought as I moved my poor dead fowl around on my plate.

After the lunch, I checked my cellphone - to find a message from Sir John Swan, the former Premier of Bermuda. Paraphrasing roughly, this is what he had to say: "Hey Sarah, John Swan here. Listen, I'm having lunch at Mid-Ocean Club today with GEORGE BUSH (Sr.), and was wondering if YOU COULD JOIN US and TALK WITH HIM A BIT. Call me back."

THE FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. Lunch (at the Mid-Ocean, wow) with John Swan and George Bush, Sr. And there I'd been, listening to Dr. Brown proudly detailing hot pink mopeds!

Frantically I called Sir John back, but of course by then it was too late - the President was back out on the golf course (and leaving the Island in about an hour) while Sir John was back in his office. I was crushed. Practically suicidal. Destroyed by the lost opportunity. The well-meaning words of comfort from co-workers ("Oh, that's the worst thing I've ever heard in the world!", "Hot pink mopeds? Really?", and "Who wants to interview George Bush? He's kind of an asshole, you know!") only served to heighten my despondency. I had to break the hot pink mopeds out into their own little story just to prove to myself that my life DOES have meaning.

And now I've just depressed myself again. What a way that would've been to end my time at The Royal Gazette. Don't think about it, don't think about it!

But the next time Dr. Brown doesn't want to give me a comment on something, I'm SO going to guilt-trip him ...

Every party needs a red firetruck pinata

I'm always slightly alarmed on waking up the morning after a big party to remember certain things which happenend which probably would not have happened had there not been an open bar.

Fortunately, memories of last night only have me raising my eyebrows slightly at myself, instead of gagging over the toilet in shame. Highlights include linking arms with a male friend and skipping (literally, across grass, in heels) over to the bar after we'd decided we were tag-teaming the bartenders (both of whom were ridiculously gorgeous, NOT dating each other, and had slightly panicked looks on their faces as they watched our progress across the lawn), and busting through the crowd to reach friends Nicky the Fish and IslandGirl while screeching: "My people! My people are here!".

As that's the worst of it, I think I got off lightly.

It was my old friend Em D'Less's boyfriend's 30th birthday, and while I barely know her boyfriend well enough to say hello to he seems to make her extremely happy - and for that our entire gang were quite happy to accept the invitations to his birthday. (Oh wait, I already told you about the open bar part, so you know the "he makes her happy" line's a crock and that we just wanted the free drinks.)

D'Less was going around introducing me to everyone as "my bestest friend in the whole wide world" - a line which was starting to get to me, until I confessed my irritation to a friend and discovered that D'Less was introducing her with the exact same tag.

Well, we said. We'll just see about that. "Let's get her to introduce both of us to someone at once," my brilliant-but-evil friend suggested.

Sure enough, about 30 seconds later D'Less popped up again (informing us for only the 34th time that she was drunk), and waved to someone she knew. "Introduce us," we chimed innocently. Happily she chanted: "This is my bestest friend -" and we pounced. Poor D'Less. She was so flustered. I think that was when we started taking wine glasses away from her (not the most well-thought out decision, as we then had to drink them ourselves).

To be honest I'd had low expectations for the night, but it turned out to be an excellent one. The spectacle of D'Less waving a stick around the dance floor like some kind of shroomed-out Jedi Knight (completely missing the red firetruck pinata dangling about five feet behind her) is one I will treasure, while GS's news that the Hot Bartender was 26 and single had me tripping back and forth from the bar WAY more than I should've been (until the end when GS informed me he'd made it up, and that in fact Hot Bartender was but a mere 19 and did have a girlfriend, though she was not at this party).

He couldn't have been 19. That's just a year older than my little sister, and he HAD to have been older than that. Clearly more reconaissance work must be done before we close this case ...

Oh, and happy birthday, D'Less's Man!

Losing my blogging virginity

Well, whaddya know. This computer stuff is way easier than I thought! Look out, world wide web, here I come!