T O T K a t

...it's not all fun and games, you know.

As you may or may not know, my teams are spread across the globe; currently they're based in London, Woking, Buenos Aires and Bangalore. Some of the London and Buenos Aires positions rotate in that the guys come to the UK for 3-6 months at a time for training and building relationships with the other operational, development, business and management teams and go back to Buenos Aires again. Thing is, there are a lot of them and the time it would take for all of them to rotate through a UK position would be of the order of years. That, plus the fact that things are just Different out in Argentina and there are various strategy communications and processes to train the guys on, means that I need to go out there to visit.

Thing is, I have a lot to do while I'm there. So I'm going to be there for 2.5 weeks. This is not amusing. 22 hours approximate door-to-door travel time and 2.5 weeks in a country, by myself, where I don't speak the language. Oh and the flights are every other day in each direction, so if something happens that my flight is cancelled on the way back I'll be delayed by at least 2 days. Let's just say I wouldn't choose to do this unless I really needed to.

I left home at 18:00 (BST) yesterday and arrived in my hotel at around 15:15 (BST) today. Now I'm on Buenos Aires time (GMT -3). Having had (British Airways, low calorie option) breakfast at around 6am local time, I was pretty ravenous by 2pm and a lot of places were shut, but then I stumbled across Florida street. It's a pedestrianised street that runs from San Martin Park up to the cathedral. And on it I found a shopping centre near the hotel that has a food court. Lots of options, quite a few of them beef based. Heading for the stand with the biggest queue, I ended up with a sirloin steak, some salad, a bread roll and a diet coke. All for $20 - that's Argentinian Pesos (exchange rate at around 6 to 1) - making that £3.40 for lunch.

I've spent the rest of the afternoon so far in search of a power socket adapter. The guide book says "standard European 2-pin round", when I asked at work I was told that "yes, it's the same as Europe". Well not in this bloody hotel it isn't. Three pin, two slanted and no allowance for round pins (unlike in the electrical shops I hunted around which all had power sockets that could go either way). All of the shops seem to be shutting up now, including the street traders (selling mostly crappy knockoff "designer" jumpers, leather bracelets and sketches of the city's landmarks) which are pretty prolific.

One thing that really hit me on my wanderings was that the well-known leather shops of the city also tend to sell fur, and not just the odd stole but wall's hung with 20 or so wolf skins. It's pretty shocking, coming from the UK where you just don't see that kind of thing.

I'll probably try to investigate one of the cafes I passed earlier for dinner, but knowing my luck, they'll all be closed later. Eh, there's always room service if I get desperate. It's not exactly expensive here.

Well, my body thinks it's past midnight now and I've just got back from one of the Time Out recommended local food houses - El Establo. The home-made ravioli with beef stew was really quite good. The tomato salad tasted a bit odd, or rather, the dressing did. And when it appeared on the bill as a mixed salad, I tried really hard but was told that they cost the same anyway. I'd swear the tomato one was $8 and the mixed one $13. *grumble* Still, he understood what I meant! In Spanish!

I did try to finish with a cup of tea, my head is killing me with the cold turkey on that front, but of course it came as; pot of hot water, single tea bag on the side and a small jug of freshly heated, frothy milk. Bleh. Anyway; olives, tomato salad (huge), home-made ravioli with a beef stew (tons of it, I feel rather stuffed now, and it was served up onto my plate for me from the metal dish it came in - kind of like in a posh Indian restaurant) and a small pot of tea. All for £7.60. Can't complain too much really.

Oops. Battery dying now - and the problem with the socket adaptor remains.

Power strip bought - it takes European style plugs and the plug in end works in the hotel. Sorted.

Fed - more on that tomorrow.

So the guys took me to a pub last night. And the beer was actually pretty good! So good that I drank about 33% more than I did the night in London when I got really really sick after a few beers and was completely fine this time. OK, so I had a couple of tiny pieces of pizza and some nachos with chilli (oh! oh! I learned that Argentinians actually don't like spicy food! which explains the 'hot pizza' I had on Monday night that was not even vaguely spicy at all), but that wasn't enough to call dinner by any stretch of the imagination. Which is kind of good, because given the calories in beer I could do with at least trying to keep the numbers down.

I am going to go home fat again. *whimper*

Having had rather some success with eateries so far, as recommended by the Time Out Guide to Buenos Aires, I went in search of a couple of potential places for dinner tonight. They were one block away from each other but a little step from the hotel. On my way there I was stopped and asked for directions, by a an old couple who were Argentinian I think. It's always a good sign when travelling and people think you're local. The bad part was that I speak very very very little Spanish, so I had to trot out one of my few phrases and hot foot it away.

Further down the street I walked through the filming of a Peugeot 206 commercial, so that was fun. They didn't seem to mind people walking through, maybe it saves on the cost of extras? Anyway, I got to the junction where restaurant #1 was supposed to be. But yes, you guessed it, no show. In fact, there was a restaurant, but definitely not the right name. So I carried on to the location of the next one. Not a chance, and no open-fronted places that could have been a restaurant either, just a long, blank wall on one side of the road and a huge hotel on the other (same chain as the one I'm in, but clearly posher than mine).

Now my UKian stomach is really rumbling. It's 2015 and there's nowhere around that looks feasible. So I walked on back, past my hotel and to the trendy Italian I went to on Monday, Filo (do excuse the pretentious web site, it is quite nice in the flesh though you can laugh at copy like ' indiferentes stay out'). At least the bruschetta and pizza were good there, so it can't be all that bad.

Well, there's cow on the menu, so I'm having beef carpaccio to start and a lump of beef for a main course. Lack of copious amounts of cheese and bread in this meal will be a Good Thing and I'm looking forward to the cow. I did pretty well with ordering, but couldn't remember the words for 'practically raw please' when asked how I wanted my steak cooked. Oh well. I tried. Breadsticks have arrived so I shall attempt to ignore those until my starter gets here...

OK. So there was bread. 2 breadsticks. I gave in. And there was cheese. The carpaccio came on a large dinner plate and reached from side to side in a gentle mound, topped with huge shavings of an approximation of Parmesan cheese. Underneath the slices of beef was a huge pile of spinach, rocket and other small, green leaves. It looked bloody enormous until I realised it wasn't beef all the way down.

Nice.

Now for the main course.

They're really not big on please and thankyou here, but they're massively into saying 'you're welcome' when thanked and... Oh there's my main course. Time to enjoy!

Ohgod.

Seriously.

Oh. God.

And this place isn't even particularly good at cow, I'm told.

I'm a dead person. Really. The cow is just... you know that instant brain reaction a lot of people get from really good chocolate? Well, this steak does exactly that for me. Instant endorphins or whatever it is. Happy happy for the brain and the gut reaction, so to speak, is emotional. The chef has No Fear of cooking this stuff the way I like it. 2 seconds of intense heat on either side. That's it. Seared meat. OK, so the mushroomy sauce (which I suspect to be made largely of butter and cream) is helping, as is the perfect seasoning of the meat, but it is just amazingly good steak.

I'll start to take bets on how much weight I'll put on by the time I get home. I'm reckoning 3-4kg, given the food here.

I spent most of today walking around Buenos Aires, eating too much and talking for hours. This place is huge and has masses of history. There's so little time and there's no way I'll see much of the city while I'm here, but I've tried. And I'm very grateful to my guide, not only for showing me around, but keeping me from going too nuts by myself at the weekend. (muchas gracias!) Tomorrow is going to be a day of work, but today it was good to at least try to switch off and get some history. Photos are uploading now... though it was hard to take many as it isn't a good idea to have a big camera in this city.

Ooh, and it turns out that the steel flower was built by Lockheed Martin (for whom my PhD supervisor worked before he was at Imperial. What a small world it really is.

When I went out this morning, in search of shampoo (the hotel shampoo is vile and make my hair feel like sticky straw) and food (I missed breakfast; I'm really tired), there were about 15 riot police standing just to once side of the hotel. When I came back, they were lined up either side of the hotel entrance, in full riot gear with helmets, shields, batons and though I didn't look too closely, I can imagine they have firearms too. They're still there now (I had to go and get my room card fixed again, those things are pretty unreliable) and I have no idea why. There is a coach outside, but it's empty. That's all I can see.

Worried? I don't know if I should be. The police here are armed anyway and there are always a few around the place near the hotel, more so at night. Maybe this kind of thing is normal? I'll have to ask the guys tomorrow.

I'm in a South American country, where the language is Spanish (with a twist) and I don't speak it. But, dammit. I was doing pretty OK until now. I've managed to order in restaurants, complain that the bill wasn't right, get my room key fixed a couple of times and all in Spanish. Really bad, phrasebook Spanish but there nonetheless. However, I just tried to get room service (I'm tired and I just don't want to go out in the cold night) and I tried in Spanish, but couldn't be understood. Nor did I understand what she was saying. At all. I asked (in Spanish) if she spoke/understood English and she didn't even understand that, or I didn't understand her reply. I had to put the phone down.

So imagine it, you're tired, a bit cold, a bit hungry, been in a country for a week where you really don't understand much of what's being said around you and can't put more than a couple of sentences together and actually be understood (and the chances are that the response is going to be less than totally simple at which point you haven't a clue what's going on) which is quite stressful and the stress really builds up after a while and makes you more tired. Then that happens. (oh and your room is on the 11th floor and only one of the three lifts goes as far as that floor and it has a mind of its own, you can wait for up to 10 minutes for it to come to the 11th - for some reason it likes to sit on 6th)

I'll just have that bottle of fizzy grapefruit I bought earlier and go to bed. I can eat in the morning.

I have a pile of fresh, clean clothes; which is more exciting than you might think!

20:20 And... this is more like it. After failing to eat dinner last night through sheer frustration, and anything for lunch today due to having unhappy guts, this evening I am having a steak.

Since I left the hotel, I have spoken only Spanish and nobody has looked at me like I'm an idiot, asked me to repeat myself, or spoken back at me at fifteen million miles an hour. I have got myself a table, ordered dinner and am waiting for it to arrive. OK, I was asked if I wanted an English menu, but got an approving, paternal smile from my wrinkled waiter when I politely declined, then ordered from the Spanish menu neither by pointing nor even having it open at the time. And I've asked for my steak to be 'really raw please'.

I'm sitting in Florida Garden; not quite what I expected from the guide book as it is really a cafe that seems to have a _huge_ selection of cakes and coffees, and they just happen to serve hot dinners as well. It's bright inside, like a cafe would be, and because it is only 20:30 or thereabouts, everyone around me is sipping coffee and possibly eating cake; it's just too early for dinner around here. So, apart from the English book I'm reading and the funny accent, I really stick out as a foreigner because I'm having dinner at this hour. I'm surrounded by riveted copper-covered columns and there's a wonderful copper-covered staircase cutting through the middle of the ground floor, going up to the first floor. I've just noticed that the bar is pretty lively with people sipping aperitifs, so it isn't just coffee drinkers at this hour, and in a city that doesn't have a drinking culture anything like the Europeans do, it must be the hard core who are at it at this time on a Monday.

20:50 now and food should arrive soon...

21:20 *burp* food eaten. The place is still full of really old people, but I am no longer the youngest person in the place as a young couple have showed up. I'm contemplating dessert, but I'm sure that will blemish the evening's almost satisfactory record on the communication front. However, I think I'm feeling brave. *deep breath*

OK, so I managed it. And while I waited for the dessert menu, I watched the barman a little bit behind me, serving a cognac to a customer. Legal measures? In this country? Apparently not. It looks like if they like you, you get a bit more. I have _no_ idea what I just ordered for dessert, but... let's see what arrives.

It appears to be an iced coffee. Bah. I was hoping for something me exciting and, well, dessert-like. Oh well. Better luck next time (or I should bring a local, or go point at the cake counter). Not sure I like this iced coffee. Nope, it's quite vile. And now I'm stuck drinking it otherwise it will be difficult to get attention for the bill. Eh. You live and learn.

Home time. And an evening of moderate success... tomorrow, I'll pick up my new leather jacket from the shop I was in earlier - yeah I managed 'with buttons', 'too big' and 'too small' earlier in a shop where South Africans and Americans were being pounced on, in English. I think my accent confuses the locals here, they ask where I'm from every time. Soy Inglesa! Dammit! ;o). Actually, I'm glad they ask as I really don't want to be thought of as American (North, of course, with my pale skin and lack of Spanish).

Now to ask for a reciept so I can claim it back later, and I'm off back to the hotel, via a 24h shop to get water.

22:00 and I return to the hotel; victorious! I'm told, by the girl in the shop where I was trying on jackets earlier, that I should get an Argentinian boyfriend so I can stay here. Aha ha ha! So funny! (Actually, I have musings on the Argentinian culture, but later. Not now.) Aaaanyway. Fed and mostly happy. Let's see if my jacket is OK tomorrow.

...if the lift would actually come to the 10th so I can get to the 11th. Stairs, you say? Just try it: They're alarmed.

22:20 - where's the sodding lift? *sigh* This is what you get for a cheap room around here.

22:35 - Bed and Boston Legal time... Denny Crane!

What an absolutely beautiful day! It started a little earlier than expected, due to a weird problem with my Blackberry setting itself 90 minutes forward so my 9am alarm actually work me at 7.30am. I carried on thinking the time on my Blackberry was correct until I started up my laptop to check email... no wonder I was tired, I'd had 6.5 hours sleep, not 8 as I'd thought (yeah, I was up late watching episodes of Boston Legal last night while trying to stay warm in my hotel room...). Anyway, I met up with Ale (one of the guys from my L1 team) in the foyer of the hotel and waited for Dario (one of the guys from my L2 team) to come in his car (he'd called earlier to say it wasn't starting up). The two other guys who were going to come, didn't (one was sick, poor thing) so we headed to the boat club a little later than planned, but it was OK.

We got sandwiches, drinks and some cake for later and hopped on a tender to the boat. Boy, is she beautiful! Bigger than any privately owned boat I've sailed on, but obviously much smaller than the Soren Larsen. And she can really turn on a sixpence; Ale backed her into a really amazingly tight space, to fill up on water, with absolutely no trouble at all. Anyway, we headed out into the estuary, munching on our sandwiches, and the wind and water were kind to us and we were making between 4 and 6 knots most of the time, I think. There were so many other boats out there it was a mass of white sails as far as the eye could see.

We sailed on out into Rio de la Plata and down along the line of the coastline of San Isidro, past the cathedral and south a little further. I'm not sure how far down we got, I was too busy enjoying the water. Heading back in after a couple of hours of relaxing going, and it was amazing the number of powered boats that were in a real hurry to get back to the boat clubs. We were cut up and battered by wash several times, but it just seems to be how it is on that estuary. Fighting off the mosquitoes as the light was fading, we headed back to the boat club to eat our cake and drink coffee... and I must say that, as a non-fan of coffee, I really did quite like the coffee there. It wasn't bitter at all.

Then it was off back to my hotel to drop me off, we stopped off at a roadside parilla and ate lomitos and chorizo - something so Argentinian, those little carts - with the smelly main road on one side of us and the river on the other. It was a really relaxing day. Even though I was with people from work, it didn't matter and I forgot about work for the first time in the whole 2 weeks I've been here, and for at least a few hours. I feel good!

I'm packed.

I leave in the morning.

I'm not very good with goodbyes.

I'll be back in the UK the following morning.

And everything will be different.

Especially me.

I was 64.4kg before I left for Argentina. This morning, 64kg. And I thought I was going to get fat while I was away! I didn't eat properly a lot of the time, I must admit. I had huge breakfasts on a lot of days, then no lunch (or a salad with lots of cheese in it) but then sweet things during the day, dinners with lots of cheese, butter or cream and a good few pints of the lager in Buller.

Kinda weird really. But at least I feel like I can almost trust myself not to obsess about the numbers. Almost.

I think I might have just been lucky with the weather when I was in Argentina; I never saw a cloudy day while I was there. It did rain a couple of times, but that was only when I was in the office and didn't notice. Whatever. I miss it. It's been mostly grey since I got back to the UK and that rather does have an effect on my background mood.

As I was loading my shopping into bags at the till earlier today, I thought I saw something when I put the giant garlic into the bag. Pulled it out again and, yes, it was from Argentina. (usually, I'll be religious about checking the origin of all of the fruit and veg., but for some reason I don't tend to look at the garlic)

Oh nuts to it... I can't explain this and have it make any sense. I miss Buenos Aires, even though I couldn't be independent there (due to the lack of language). If life were different, and I were a lot younger, I would try to go and spend a lot more time there.