The Joys of Househunting

House hunting. I hate house hunting. It’s one of those things that saps your will to breathe. However, these things must be done and so I posted a chirpy little ad on a few sites, underlining my Englishness and my state of employment, and received therefore a veritable swamp of offers as everyone here for some reason thinks the English are well-mannered and well-behaved, and they’re almost without exception bat shit crazy about a nice posh English accent. Result! (and who am I to tell them that they’re sadly mistaken?)

Now to winnow the heap. Shared rooms = out. Living with landladies = out, as I won’t accept any limitations or raised badly pencilled-in eyebrows on my comings and goings. Price over US $300 a month all included = out too. It’s a real sellers’ market at the moment. I visited a couple of total non-starters of the dark and dank variety. My favourite was when the landlady put her hand on my arm and reassured me that the place had great vibes as no drink, drugs or men were allowed on the premises. Absolutely my kind of place.

Finally lit upon a big old house between fashionable Palermo and neat Almagro that has seven rooms and lots and lots of light and open-air areas too. It’s currently being redecorated with a move in date of 1 December and I decided to take a decent sized airy room with big windows and a ceiling fan. The very nice owners have asked me what furniture I’d like and have therefore requested as much storage space as possible given my once more burgeoning shoe problem. I think we’re going to get on well. Of course, sharing with 6 other people may turn out to be a total nightmare if there are food stealers/bathroom hoggers/noisy buggers/nosey buggers… but I can always move out in a couple of months if that’s the case.

Still on the responsible front, have been to see my bosses and colleagues at the translation agency and to get the wheels turning for my residency visa. All is well and all is well and all shall be well. Or at least it had bloody better be. We had a chat about general taxation and private health insurance… which, forgive me the pun, will surely shape up to be a major headache sometime soon. I start next week.

On Tuesday I headed to the Thelonius club, arguably the jazz bar in BA, with my charming new doctor friend Ezequiel. His saxophone teacher is in the sax-heavy band that plays there every Tuesday. He had scored us a table super close to the stage and next to the speakers. Kissed goodbye therefore to another few frequencies in my hearing range. Could have been worse. There could have been a tuba. The couple right in front of us were necking so hard that it was going to take a surgeon to extricate the guys tongue from his enamorada’s tonsils. The band was very good. In fact all I can say is if I could write like those guys play I would hit the delete key a lot less.

As this seems temporarily to have become a journal, Wednesday afternoon I pootled over to the La Boca house of yet another insanely handsome and charming doctor friend (God love all this intelligent eye candy) Pedro, to chew the fat and drink yerba mate, which I can only liken to very bitter caffeine-fuelled green tea accompanied by a ritual as complicated as a Japanese tea ceremony, and which is a national obsession in Argentina and Uruguay. I am trying to learn to like the stuff as it’s a major part of the social culture here. Trying many different brands. The nice thing is that all Argies are delighted to share their culture with you, and enter into such an exchange with enormous bonhomie and patience.

Thursday I applied for my criminal records check within Argentina in order to further my visa application. By Argie standards it was a hassle free experience. Long may it last… In the evening, craving a little culture Graciela and I headed to a Bach concert at the recently renovated Teatro Colon. It’s a beautiful theatre in the old tradition. That night it was filled with the great and the good. Or at least the big and the noisy. I’d guess attendance was about 80%. A vast chandelier hung from the incredibly high ceiling and gilded naked nymphs sprawled against lyres above the boxes. On the minus side, the acoustics weren’t up to much and there was no bar which meant no G&T during the interval. A trip to the theatre without gin is a very poor trip to the theatre in my opinion, and I think my mama would agree. The large blonde American lady next to us with hair the colour of (with apologies to Roald Dahl) a female tightrope walker’s tights that have not been washed for the entire circus season got extremely uppity at being told she couldn’t take photos with her giant new SLR camera and grumbled throughout the second half. Only extreme diplomacy on my part prevented Graciela from ramming her programme into the woman’s ear.