Carreteando de visita

Hace como un mes, salí con V, el C y la P. Habíamos preparado un sushi super rico en la casa del C y después salimos a sueciar, jeje. Fuimos a Ile Habana un rato y después andamos por Providencia buscando algún lado para seguir webeando y en eso topamos con el hermano de la Pamela y su amigo. Sugieron que todos fueramos al Ático en Ñuñoa. Partimos para allá. Llegamos y negociamos un poco con el loco en la puerta por el precio de las entradas. Subimos al segundo piso y pedimos nuestros tragitos y la cuestión. Arriba estaba más o menos piola. Bajemos al primer piso donde había una pista de baile, y ponían música ochentera. Estaba LLENO de weones. La luz estaba bajita así que no se veía mucho. Nos acomodamos los cuatro en la pista de baile, dejando nuestros abrigos en un mueble detras de nosotros. Después de bailar una canción, se metieron dos minas entre V/yo y C/P y se pusieron a bailar. Me dio mala espina al toque. Una de ellas estaba bailando con los brazos sueltos y me tocó el bolsillo trasero de mis jeans dos veces en como 10 segundos "por accidente". P y C subieron al segundo piso y yo le dijé al V que hicieramos lo mismo, ya que encontraba las minas enteras flaites. Obviamente estabamos las dos parejas juntos, para qué se van a meter entre medio? Na que ver. Terminó la canción y subimos. V me dijo que yo fuera adelante. En eso una de las chicas flaites le tocó el poto del V, cachando si hubiera algo en su bolsillo. Mientras V le pichuleó, voy acercándome a las escaleras y un weón curado me agarró de la mano y me tiró hacia él. Me enojé más que la chucha, y miré hacia V con cara de "pitéale a este weón desubicado". De reflejo, V le da un codazo a la cara, marcando no más, pa asustar, y le manda a la cresta.

Subí y les conté a P y C y subió V. En eso se le acerca uno de los amigos del weon desubicado y empieza a pedir perdón al V, que su amigo está curado, que hay que disculparle y la wea, y el amigo era tan latero que V le dijo que hablara con sus relaciones públicas mejor, y en eso el C asumió y le dijo que su amigo era el desubicado y que dejaron de webear.

De allí no tuvimos más problema. Pero sentí todo el rato que estaba de visita porque no cachaba el lugar, la gente, el barrio y además los weones andaban hinchando con cuático. Lo bueno es que mi equipo era bien sólido. jeje

The Valpo apartment search

I just read Leigh's blog entry Adventure on wheels and was reminded of various experiences I've had here dealing with/related to public transportation. This one has to do with going to the end of the bus 1 line in Playa Ancha.

After living in Viña for a few months back in 2004, I decided it was time to move out of my host family's house and find an apartment or house or something. I wanted to live in Valpo, an artsy, edgy, bohemic University city. So I saw a bunch of apartments, many of which I found ugly and overpriced. I'm sure they were giving me the gringo price. I saw a couple holes, I swear to God. But one of the stupider, funnier, scarier experiences was when I went to see an apartment in Playa Ancha. There was one for rent for 40.000 pesos ($80 dollars) a month and it was two bedroom. I'd been to Playa Ancha. My host father worked at the University of Playa Ancha. Cool, I thought, I'll be near la Universidad de Playa Ancha. The 40.000 peso figure was really surprising to me and I wanted to see the apartment as much out of curiousity as real interest in living there. So I called the number and the guy said to take the micro 1 and to get off at the Rodoviario. Okay, easy enough I thought. I caught the 1 and sat on it and we went on and on and on. Like 40 minutes into the trip I already knew I would not be renting the apartment because it was so far from the U. I had no idea how huuuuge Playa Ancha is. So I decide to call the guys and cancel, because they were waiting to show the apartment, but I no longer had cell phone service. So I thought, well the apartment is in front of the Rodoviario so I'll just go anyway and tell them I'm not interested. I was already on the way. We finally get to the end of the line, and the place is absolutely beautiful. The apartments are on a cliff right by the ocean. It kind of reminded me of Ireland. I imagine its a sort of ghetto-style Laguna Verde. (I've never been to Laguna Verde, but would like to go some time.)

So I get off the bus, and the driver asks me what I'm doing there..I said I'm going to look at an apartment. I got halfway across the street, totally freaked out and ran back and got on the same bus to head back home. Although the neighborhood didn't look too creepy, it was. It was like 45 minutes before I had cell phone service and I called the guys and told them I wasn't interested, that I'd been out there to the Rodoviario, freaked out and headed back to Viña.

But these liminal experiences are useful to get clear what a gringa should and should not do when in the "third world". And going to see a 2 bedroom apartment that costs $80 dollars a month in urban Chilito falls in the second category.

good advice: develop your people filter

So my experience with friendships with other gringos-friends I’ve made in Colorado, Minnesota, Spain and Chile-for the most part, is, that if a gringo seems to be buena onda – like fun, and enjoyable to be with, (s)he is enjoyable to be with and turns out to be a good friend. That strongly contradicts with my experience of friendships with Chilenos. Here I’ve found that not all people who seem to be buena onda, are. My first year in Chile, I had a bit of a hard time due to this difference. The mala-onda gringos I've met in my life, don’t even make an effort to seem buena onda. What’s the point? But apparently here in Chile it pays off, because it seems to be rather common that someone comes off as a good friend, but screws you over when given the chance. One day, upset and confused about some Chilean "friendships", I went to talk to my host mom, V, about some dynamics that I just didn't understand.

She gave me a very simple, good piece of advice. She said, you need to develop your “filter” for friendships. Just her saying that was enough for me, I understood what I had to do and put her advice to really good use. It's like I keep my new Chilean friends at arm's distance, so to speak, and don't trust them until we have a solid, understandable history. If I don't understand how the other person is relating to me, then I assume they are operating from different values and principles than my own and I don't trust them. I don't treat them bad but no me entrego, tampoco. I got along much better after receiving this advice, but not before stumbling along with it all for awhile. The nice thing about people who seem friendly and then turn out to be assholes is that it really makes you appreciate your real friends.

This I think is pretty upsetting to gringos, I've noticed other gringos go through similar things. For us, it sucks, because we like to trust each other. We're just used to it. Unless a gringo seems like a total jerk, I generally trust them. And really, to come to the realization that I couldn't trust anyone off the bat was pretty earth-shaking and upsetting for me, but I'm over it now because I'm blessed with a bunch of really nice friends here in Chile, both chilenos and afuerinos.

Another thing I found is that in Chile, it was much easier to make friends with guys than girls, at first anyway. I think it partly had to do with that I knew more guys than girls. In fact, I knew few chilenas when I arrived. The other factor was that lots of Chilean guys who I thought were my friends-like in a platonic-gringo-friendship sort of way-were actually joteandome. (Platonic friendships between males and females seem few here, not that common.) Ultimately they were interested in hanging out with me, not because they wanted to be my friends, but because they wanted to be my boyfriends. To be honest, I still find this annoying.

But my filter reminds me:

• that most guys who show interest want to date (I'm not sure this is totally true, but compared with gringo guys it happens waaaay more often, In fact it rarely happens with gringos.)
  
• that I shouldn't trust new friends until they gain my confianza. I sort of have a guilty-until-provend innocent mentality with the Chilean "other". Sorry, but I didn't arrive with that, so there is something to it.
• trust my intuition, almost always
  
• if a person is consistently buena onda and I enjoy their company and my intuition says they are ok, and we have a bit of history together, then I trust them.

When I lived with my host mom V, I found her quite prejudiced against people. When she met someone - generally someone about my age - right away, she often said she didn't like the person. I found her prejudice harsh from my innocent-until-proven-guilty mentality, but now I totally understand her, and realize she just has a highly-developed people filter. And you really have to pre-judge just so you don't get screwed over by someone. I'm prejudice too now. Upon meeting new chileans I don't always trust them to begin with. Sometimes there's something about them that makes me feel uneasy, and I start to watch my things, to make sure they don't steal from me, etc. If I meet friends of friends, they are almost always really cool people, so I trust them. But when I meet new people that my friends don't know, I do keep a bit of distance until I feel I can trust them. And I can't think of a case where someone has passed through the filter and then screwed me over. It seems to be working.

July 13: I'd like to add that this is my extreme filter, the one I had to develop four years ago because my social life was too unstable and unpredictable. I still use it from time to time. However, for the most part, I don't have to, because I've done a really good job of surrounding myself with really cool Chileans (and fellow foreigners) that I trust. This filter is quite useless when I'm hanging with my friends.

taxista care palo

And speaking of sketchy cab drivers, I only rely on sketchy alternatives when I've run out of options. A few years ago my folks came down South for a visit. The last night of their trip we stayed in the Best Western in Providencia. My parents had these beastly bags that they lugged with them for 3 weeks and getting them to the airport meant finding a larger-than-average taxi. So I asked the dude at the desk if he knew of any taxis that were vans, so as to fit everything in. He said no, but that he could get us a taxi with a big trunk. Me dio mala espina. First of all, he hadn't even seen the luggage that my folks had and he told me the taxi's trunk would be big enough, and secondly, the hotel receptionist seemed pretty flaite to me. So I turned him down and called Transvip. Unfortunately with them you can't set the time they will pick you up at. They ask what flight you are on and they decide when to swing by your hotel. And I wanted to be sure my parents got out of the country, hahaha, so, exhausted all other possibilities, I got help from the flaite recepcionist.

The taxi driver was pretty grungy looking when he showed up, and grungy is not in fashion in Chile and never was. You can deal with a grungy person from the States, and their grundge doesn't necessarily speak to their character, at least not in the same way. Here it means your dealing with a sketchball. So this grungy character shows up at our hotel and of course he didn't even have the orange license plate that all taxis in Chile have. Seriously, there's no way the receptionist didn't know one taxista. If he's going to do a favor for a friend, at least pick a friend who's a taxista. Anyway, the driver got the luggage into the trunk, barely, and we were off. When he dropped us off at the airport, there were cops right by the drive-up, so the taxi driver started trying to hurry my dad up in paying him. Of course, my dad understood about 20 words in Chilensis (not bad), but his Coa sure wasn't up to par to be able to understand the stressed-out pseudo taxi driver ranting at him to hand over the money quickly. Vuko and I were both pretty disgusted with the guy. It wasn't our fault that he wasn't a real taxi driver. That is most certainly his problem. I was kind of hoping the police would notice us so they'd fine the guy, because I really didn't like putting my folks in that position. My parents didn't even know that anything was amiss, and how would they? I'm glad for that. It makes the vacations even better.

Living in Chile, networking, networking, networking

After living in Chile four years I feel like I've gotten a "diplomado" in business, specializing in networking and negotiating. To get anything done well here, you pretty much have to work among people you know. For example, when Vuko and I moved from Valpo to Santiago, we were lucky Vuko's mom had the number of a good truck driver, and it even turned out to be cheaper because Vuko had a friend who wanted to move from Santiago to Valpo. Originally he was going to charge us 80.000 pesos for the move, he charged Vuko's friend and us 100.000 pesos, and we split this figure 5o/50. I doubt you could find a cheaper 3/4 moving truck complete with 2 teenagers to help move the stuff. And then when V's grandparents moved, they called the same truck driver. To look for a truck driver in the yellow pages is to risk a number of problems: perhaps they don't show up, maybe they charge you 3 times what they should, or in a worse scenario perhaps they steal stuff from you. That's why networking is so important and pretty much mandatory for getting anything done well here in Chile. The other reason networking is good, is that to get a good job, often Chileans rely on pitutos, someone that can hook them up with a good job, or who can get them into a good medical or law school.

The other important thing here in Chile is negotiating. It seems everything here is about negotiating. To bring faulty products back to the stores, sometimes you really have to build your case on why the store should take their low-quality product back. It seems each worker, at least in the multinationals, has to negogiate his own salary, and what you're paid has more to do with your negotiating skills than the quality of your work, although perhaps good-quality work does give you more negotiation power. Personally, I mostly negogiate with taxis, because they are famous for ripping people off, and they specialize at screwing over foreigners with their money, like charging triple the cost of the ride. I generally figure out how far I'm going before getting in the cab and then do the math to get a ballpark figure. Asking someone who takes a similar cab ride is useful to know what the ride should really cost, and then you just have to be stubborn and turn the ride down if the driver wants to overcharge. And, in normal situations, wait for the next taxi. And then there's always Sernac, servicio al consumidor in Chile, if you want to report a person or company that screwed you over.

Restaurant reviews: Ají Seco, completos in Ñuñoa

Ají Seco is a Peruvian restaurant in Santiago Centro, actually there's two. There's a small one and a larger one, both on San Antonio. I recommend the Ceviche mixto especial. It's to die for, a mix of shellfish and fish marinated in limón de pica, ají, cebolla corta pluma and accompanied with supersized corn kernels and this other variet of corn similar to cornuts. It's soooo good and not pricey. I hope its open on Sundays because I could totally go for another cerviche peruana.

Vuko ordered a tasty dish called arroz chaufa tres sabores; it came with rice, chicken, beef, shrimp, scallions, red peppers, and it tasted like it had fresh ginger and coriander and a few other spices. Christian ordered tacu tacu con lomo liso which features a mix of beans and rice topped with Sirloin steak and fried eggs. I tried the tacu tacu, which was good, as was Vuko's dish. I was craving vegetables so I ordered panache de verduras, which is basically stir-fried veggies. They were tasty as well.

The other good eats place I tried this weekend is a completo stand/restaurant in Ñuñoa. Apparently you can't call yourself Ñuñoino until you've tried these completos. They were absolutely delicious, with topped with tons of mashed avocado. And at only like 750 pesos. It hits the spot. Unfortunately, I can't remember what street it was on, because it was definitely a ways from Plaza Ñuñoa. But Vuko thinks it was at Grecia/Ramón Cruz.


So there are a couple of Peruvian dudes who work at the minimarket where I shop - go figure. Anyway they are nice guys and I've known them for a couple years now, although I've never asked their names and I don't think they know mine either. The other day I told them I'd eaten some Peruvian food, and it was cute, their eyes lit up and they asked me what I'd had and if I'd tried the ceviche. They also asked me which restaurant I'd been to. I said Ají Seco, and they said it was good, but one of them said there is an even better Peruvian restaurant at Teatinos and Rosas. I'm taking him as an authority on the subject (obviously) and plan to check out this other restaurant at some point in the near future. Ojalá.

Ceviche en 6.000 pesos en el Restoran Alpamayo en Teatinos con Rosas.
Ñami. Ñami. Ñami. Me dio hambre. Raw fish and shellfish ceviche, doused in lemon juice, acompanied with potatoes, sweet potatoes, giant corn, regular corn, corn nut like dealies...super tasty, onions. It's to die for.