I'm hungry. Not in general, but for some of the comfort foods from back home. I've been told most people miss their friends and family when they are away from home for extended periods of time. But after a while, most people start to really crave some of the foods back home. I sure know I am. What kind of foods do I miss?
Bacon? It exists, but not it's more like fried ham.
Pizza? Simple thin crust only. Only ham and olive toppings mostly.
Breakfast food? Not really, mostly just breads and yogurts here.
Perogies. Nope, haven't seen any at all.
Thai food. Not really. In fact, rare to find anything ...
I met a guy from Ireland at a pub about four weeks ago here in Buenos Aires. Once we got a few beers into our system, I thought I would pick his brain about what happened is his country. In North America we all know that they got themselves into a bit of a debt crisis, but the how and the way are mostly lacking from media over here.
In short, it was their own fault. Banks were participating in predatory lending, and most people in Ireland were hungry for credit. Many of this guy's friends had three of four credit cards, fancy cars, and banks were basically giving away mortgages to most people ...
Today is my mom's birthday! Like almost everyone older than me, she just turned 39 today. That means she has many long, happy years of bingo playing ahead of her!
My mom was pretty sad when I moved out of Chilliwack, but she's been taking my absence like a trooper. I try and do a call with her at least once a week, and we catch up on all the excitement back in cow town. I hope she has a great day today, and that people at work treat her to lunch or something awesome like that.
Happy Birthday Mom! ...
Well, it's officially midnight in Buenos Aires, which means I can start wishing happy birthdays. Today of course is Dale's 31st birthday. Dale is not only a trusted friend, but the second (and arguably less good-looking) half of BraveNewCode, the company that Dale and I both own.
The last few years have had ups and downs, seeing me move from Vancouver, to Chilliwack, and now to Argentina. Amongst all the turmoil, there have been only a few constants, and Dale has been one of them. For the most part, I have talked to Dale nearly every day for the last few years, sometimes about politics, about ...
I went for a walk at lunch to clear my mind, and ended up strolling through a little park in Palermo. There was an empty bench that was cast in a bit of shade from a large tree, so I sat down with the intention of relaxing for a few minutes while listening to music.
About 45 degrees to my right was another guy on a bench casually reading a book, and 45 degrees to my left was another guy who was taking a little nap on his bench. Just a couple of dudes enjoying a nice sunshiny day in the park.
A few minutes later, this old women approaches the guy reading a book and starts muttering to him in Spanish. ...
It shouldn't be a huge surprise based on the previous few entries, but I'm starting to get a tad restless in Buenos Aires.
Unlike Canada where the WiFi is generally reliable, the WiFi here is pretty spotty, which makes it hard to get out of the house to work. The last week and a half it's been absolutely terrible, with constant drop outs and complete blackouts for an hour or more from time to time.
Back home, I would often go to Starbucks to break the day up a bit, but the WiFi at the nearest Starbucks has been down about 50% of the time I've been there, and none of my e-mail works for some strange ...
One of the strange side effects of being tossed through a plate glass window was that I pretty much had a complete medical evaluation of my entire body done over the course of a year. The stack of papers I collected from the hospital due to the initial injury and subsequent surgeries was about 100 pages worth of material. I also have two or three CDs with the raw digital data from both CT scans and my MRI. It's an amazing amount of material, and an incredible amount of insight into my own body.
Reading through my admission report from the night of November 4th, 2006, I remember reading that the ...
Observe this photo from the KatKam:
If you look closely, you can see some kind of flying object in the sky. I can only assume it's an airplane, but it looks like it's flying from the top of the photo down to the bottom.
As a kid, I used to think every time I saw an object like that that it was the Space Shuttle. As an adult, I now know that the Space Shuttle doesn't fly every day like I thought it did as a kid. But I guess that has to be a normal commercial plane and the fact it looks like it's flying strangely is just due to the curvature of the earth.
But then I have to ask, why doesn't the ...
Last weekend I flew up to Puerto Iguazu and checked out Iguazu Falls. It was a great trip, and it was nice to get out of town for a few days. Puerto Iguazu reminded me a lot of Tofino actually, without the surfing. It was a quant little village with only a few main streets. The people were friendly, the food was good, and there were less bars on the windows and graffiti than here in Palermo Soho in Buenos Aires.
The WiFi in my apartment (which is shared between about six suites) has been really dodgy lately, so I've moved over to a little coffee/pizza shop across the street. The photo pictured ...
I started an Iguazu Falls posting last night, but it's undoubtedly going to be a large post and will take me a while longer to put together. Look for it tomorrow or Wednesday night sometime.
According to my little iPhone widget, I only have 37 days left in Buenos Aires. Obviously that's not much time, and it means that I've already been here almost 50 days or so. I'm heading to Ushuaia for St. Patrick's Day, which means I only have four other weekends to do some more exploring within Buenos Aires.
My current landlord has $1,100 USD of damage deposit, and I'll be looking forward to getting that ...
I'm currently at around 35,000 feet, somewhere between Buenos Aires and Puerto Iguazu. No, I'm not blogging from the plane, but rather I've set this post to publish while I'm up in the air.
I wasn't going to do another post before leaving for Iguazu Falls, but then I remembered my weekly Friday updates and wanted to get another in. So I thought that for this week's Friday update it would be fun to create a few lists about what I enjoy here so far, and what I miss the most.
Things I Love About Buenos Aires
The People - Everyone I have met here has been super nice, especially when they find out ...
Sexy, that's what I'll say.
When I first looked into purchasing a few silver coins, I did it under the assumption that the coins would mostly be worth value due to their intrinsic silver content (called the 'melt value'). While some collectors coins fetch a hefty premium on top of their melt value, most bullion and high purity coins are mainly traded for their metal content.
That said, I read a post recommending the purchase of the Canadian Mint's "Silver Wolf" coin a while ago as opposed to the Silver Maples since the author claimed they would fetch more value in the after market. Sure ...
Traveling the world for leisure is obviously a great adventure. While I get to enjoy the weekends and the evenings, I'm also working as I travel, so most of my days are spent building plugins for WordPress and helping keep things afloat. But I do get to venture out from time to time free of computers and cell phones and enjoy some of what the world has to offer, for example, this weekend's trip to the famous Iguazu Falls.
But other types of travel are for more nobler causes. As an example, a good friend of mine from the Vancouver area, Rebecca Bollwitt, recently got asked to participate in a ...
Right before I left on my big adventure, almost everyone in my family was talking about going on a New Year's diet. Years ago I was having trouble dropping a bit of weight, so I tried the Atkin's diet when it was all the rage, and lost so much weight that it wasn't even funny. Since that time I've studied up on why low carb diets work and have to come the one conclusion that refined carbohydrates are pretty evil. So while I'm not as lean and fit as I once was, I try to stay away from anything that causes big spikes in blood sugar and insulin, such as sugars, starches, flours, etc.
My mom started ...
So last night I was really craving a kick ass steak dinner. I generally eat pretty healthy during the week, which means I look forward to indulging a bit more on the weekends. I did a quick Google search and ended up deciding that I wanted to visit La Cabrera, which is a very well known steak house and also the #3 restaurant (out of about 770 or so) in all of Buenos Aires on TripAdvisor. So I was definitely looking forward to it.
Jump ahead about 15 minutes and I found myself outside of the restaurant, just south of Plaza Serrano. It looks like a nice enough place, and there are a few people ...
To be perfectly honest, one of the items from my childhood that I miss the most is going for a bike ride. Back when I was about 17 I picked up my first real mountain bike, a Specialized Rockhopper. Compared to most modern mountain bikes, it was a bit lacking - it didn't have shocks, or fancy XTR equipment, but it was fun to ride and was a fairly modern metal matrix design (at the time). I remember a lot of good memories of hanging out with Jeff and Brennen and heading into the trees for an afternoon of biking. One time in particular we decided to cross the Chilliwack River with our bikes, only ...
As soon as I leave Buenos Aires, I'll be heading over to Ireland to visit my friend Andy for a few days. I'm not sure how long I'll be in Limerick, but afterwards I'll probably make my way to Dublin to explore that city a bit more. Another friend of mine from Vancouver, Tanya, is probably going to meet me in Dublin for a bit of exploring, so that'll be fun.
Sometime in June I'd like to make my way to Serbia to visit my friend Milan.
But outside of those two bookends, I really don't have any plans for Europe. Truthfully, it would be great to meet up with people I know along the trip, but I honestly ...
As the title says, I've been in Buenos Aires now for 37 days. After next week, I will have officially crossed the half-way mark here, at which point I'll be winding down and starting to get in my last sight seeing before leaving. I still have almost seven weeks here though, which is still quite a bit of time.
This last week was mostly uneventful, other than a very late night out at the pub last Saturday night. Unlike North America, most people don't even go out on the weekends here until midnight, and often later. I was in a little pub at around 5am and they were still serving drinks to a packed ...
Here's a quick video update from Buenos Aires on roughly day 34.
And just to clarify - when I was talking about free kisses being awesome, I was referring to the ladies! ...
