Archive for the ‘Buenos Aires’ category

How To Be A Traveling Freelance Writer

February 23rd, 2012

Many people have asked me whether it’s difficult to work and travel all the time like I do, and my answer is always the same: You just have to discipline yourself and work wherever you are! After having this conversation yet again yesterday, I decided to make it easier for everyone to visualize the process, by chronicling a typical morning for me.

WAKE UP! … at 11 a.m. (after nodding off sometime around 6 in the morning, having dropped Tylenol PM in desperation around 4:30. Circadian biorhythms that do not coincide with the time zone where one is — which, today, is Buenos Aires — are among the drawbacks of constant movement).

Teeth/ face/ hair/ contacts.

Change from sleeping lululemon yoga pants into … waking lululemon yoga pants (bought at the source: Vancouver!).

(Today I’m gonna be SO PRODUCTIVE!)

Check Facebook. Giggle. Frown. “Like” things. Make pithy comments. Check Wonkette, check HuffPo. Cluck disapprovingly at story about National Enquirer running a cover photo of Whitney Houston in her coffin, while simultaneously clicking all the various links I need to click in order to view said photo. (She looked great.) Read my horoscope. (Today I’m gonna KILL IT!)

Go downstairs, chat with friend in whose house I am currently crashing (a fabulous, internationally acclaimed artist), who is busy sewing bits of paper together. We discuss current events. We discuss our day ahead. (Both of us: Gonna PRODUCE! Great stuff! All day!)

I head out. Go directly to cafe suggested by friend. Discover too late that it is less of a cafe, and more of a fabulous artisan chocalatier with a very limited menu. (Danger!) Realize I should leave immediately because really good chocolate is one of my Kryptonites; however, decide that I am obligated to stay because: a) I don’t want to disappoint my friend and b) they already saw me walk in and I can’t just leave because that would be rude and c) I will be so busy KILLING IT today with all my productivity that I won’t have the time nor the mental energy to peruse the vast glass counter filled with truffles and bonbons and all sorts of delectable hand-crafted chocolate treats and delights in hundreds of shapes and sizes and flavors and varieties.

Look around for a work space. The place looks like a Victorian romance novel threw up all over it: shades of pink and cream, prim marble-topped tables and crystal waterfall light fixtures and lampshades smothered in silk roses, elaborate spinning tabletop carousels, and fussy quilted reproduction Louis XIV chairs and settees and ottomans — upholstered either in Pepto pink velvet or pink-and-white toile. Beribboned carousel ponies and flowered teacups are painted on the windows. Along the front window are four barber’s chairs with violent pink-and-white stripes lined up along a long counter, and it is here where I sit and pull out my iPad and prepare for my day ahead … which? Is gonna be fabulous. And productive.

Examine limited menu. Order eggs Benedict and coffee.

Check Facey again. Update my status.

Time to KILL IT. Open “Notes” to see my to-do list. The “Note” on top is not my to-do list for today, however, but a list of books I’ve been interested in reading. Oooh! Remember I have no unread books on my iPad. This is bad, terrible in fact, for someone who travels a lot, even though I’m stationary at the moment, but HEY I will be traveling again in a few days, and I will require books!

Spend four minutes on iBooks downloading two books (categories: Spirituality and Horror), then spent the next 26 minutes browsing the online bookstore.

My breakfast arrives sometime in this time span. Either there has been a gross breakdown in translation (possible), or Argentines interpret eggs Benedict as a single fried egg on top of sweet French toast alongside four wet arugula leaves (also possible). Coffee is good though.

Time to kill it! Open document from client. Realize I need a more advanced spreadsheet-editing app than the one I have on my Pad, if I want to complete my work as efficiently as possible. Which of course I do, as I am productivity machine.

Search online through several iPad forums to research the best app for what I need. (I have to be diligent about this! I can’t just pick any one! My productivity is on the line here!) Learn that what I want is Quickoffice and that it is $10. A bargain! Click link in forum which takes me to Quickoffice web site. The site says the app is now $15. Still reasonable! Click download link and am taken to App Store where it is now $20. WTF. Click Buy. With this new technology I can WORK AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT.

While app is downloading, check Facey. Note who “liked” my status. Note who has posted since I updated my status but did not “like” it.

Quickoffice app has downloaded. Still checking Facey. Read a couple of news articles. Read the comments below the articles. Roll eyes at moron commenters while mentally composing the indignant responses I would post if my comments weren’t visible to my friends on Facey.

Sneak a glance behind me, at chocolate counter. Look back down at Pad. Look at counter. Look at Pad. Look at counter. Pad. Counter.

I need distractions! Go to YouTube. Watch old ESPN commercial with Drew Brees. Giggle. Love New Orleans. Watch the NYC Soul Train Flash Mob tribute to Don Cornelius. Smile! Love New York.

Decide I want a flash mob doing the Electric Slide and a Soul Train line at MY funeral. Ponder whether I should write my wishes down and have them notarized and delivered to next of kin, otherwise I might have a basic garden-variety funeral with lots of crying and solemnity, which would be unacceptable. Ponder death, meaning of life, importance of ritual. Look over at chocolate counter again.

I need distractions! Go back to Facey. Someone has posted the new Gorillaz track featuring James Murphy and Andre3000. Go to SoundCloud. Do I want the SoundCloud iPad app? Well, yeah! Download.

Look at chocolate counter again. Notice that, as per Argentine custom, no server has acknowledged or approached me in the past hour to remove my dishes or find out if I want more coffee, which I do. Become annoyed. Drum fingers. Look at chocolate counter. Ooh, are those …? No. No!

I need distractions. Check on progress of SoundCloud download. Done! Listen to new Gorillaz song. So good. Post it on Facey.

Decide the waitress has forgotten me entirely and that I must therefore approach the counter. Instead of ordering another coffee as planned, find myself ordering box of assorted truffles. Danger! In panic, blurt out that I would like to pay my check and leave. Fork over an inordinate amount of pesos for a bad breakfast, good coffee, and what I am assuming are great chocolates. Snatch little gilt box from saleswoman after admitting they are not a gift — yes lady, you heard me correctly, they’re for ME — and scurry from cafe/chocolatier.

Decide everything went to hell today due to my initial bad decision to work in the wrong type of cafe, and that I must now go out in this beautiful day, with the sun shining and birds chirping frantically, to find the correct type of cafe for my work output and well-being, one with healthy salads and bubbly water and no distractions. It is only 2:30 p.m.! Plenty of time to be productive today.

The Lost Argentine Diaries, Part 2

May 7th, 2010

Transporting back into Argentina circa almost-exactly-three-years-ago …

, 2007

I have gravitated toward this international hippie neighborhood in Buenos Aires called San Telmo. It’s a network of old narrow cobblestone streets and ornately scrolled buildings with little terraces everywhere, decadent but still ghetto enough to legitimately call it bohemian.

Today was a national holiday, Argentina’s version of Labor Day, so all businesses were closed and folks were out partying pretty hard. There was a big drumming street party out in the square in San Telmo, with about 20 serious drummers who knew how to play and a huge cluster of people dancing around… they slowly wound their way through the streets and stopped in front of a truly fabulous v. old Gothic cathedral. Starry night, full moon, faded decadence, lots of musicians, artists, tango dancers. It’s what I imagine New Orleans’ French Quarter was like, back in the day, when interesting people could still afford to live there.

Next I go to Patagonia and see some more really, really intensely cool shit. How lucky I am, how lucky I am, how luckeeeeee I ammmmm.


The Lost Argentine Diaries, Part 1

May 5th, 2010

We’ve been rather California-heavy here at the lohdown in the past few weeks — and I’m still too sad over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill to write anything fun anyway — so we’re gonna go back in time a few years. To 2007, to be exact, when our intrepid heroine spent a fantastic and way-too-short three months in Argentina. I dug up some of my scribblings from back then — I’d forgotten about most of them — and will post them here.

My camera broke while I was there, so photos are tragically few. But let me assure you: it’s beautiful, y’all. Me encanta Argentina.

Here is the first email I sent home to family and friends after arriving in Buenos Aires (in Argentina-flag blue) …

, 2007

In the spirit of emulating how I must sound to Argentines when I speak in Spanish, I have run the following through an online translator into Spanish and back into English …


Hello each one! I have been in Buenos Aires during lightly more than one week now and while my Spanish remains abysmal, I have noticed a minor progress of my aptitude to remember words and phrases, and understanding what is the above mentioned to me. I do not have many news of excitement to do a report. I have spent most of my time helping my friends to obtain their matter ready to move in their new house and they should be completely moved in before the way of the week.

Till now I have been remaining in a hotel in the neighborhood of Palermo of Buenos Aires that is the bucket of enthusiasm. There is amusing life at night, many agreeable parks and nice buildings, etc. The climate could not be more perfect and the people of Buenos Aires are very friendly and very patient with my slaughter of their language. I have met some friends of friends from England and we had a big time exploring the bars and clubs of Buenos Aires.


It is interesting to see the people smoking everywhere – the sight of the people within centers of shopping with cigarettes lit in the hand is quite habitual. Buenos Aires is in the process of rules imposing who smoke, nevertheless, meaning that the people will have to go to areas designated to smoke. Then this will turn into really the city of the Good Air. Also, it seems that each person has companion dogs; they take them everywhere, and you see tons of walkers of the dog with 8 to 12 dogs simultaneously, throughout of the city. The general routine here is the ideal one for me – the people wake up late, take siestas and then go out in the city much late; it is quite habitual for the people to leave for the night at 1 a.m. and not to return to the house up to 5 or 6 a.m. This city remembers me of New Orleans from many points of view. The American dollar goes completely far here and to buy items / eat for dinner is fantastic. No complaints by no means.

My projects are to walk in Buenos Aires for the following couple of weeks and then to spread myself to other parts of the continent. I am not sure exactly where I am still going to be, I will explain all of you when I fix myself.

Salud,

eeeeeeeeeeeee

Traigos en Buenos Aires