Turns out Uruguayan men are just as macho and overly confident as Argentine men.
A few weekends ago, I'm in Montevideo, visiting my friend Kaitlin, and we're standing by the guard shack at the Marine House, waiting for our cab, when...a group of Uruguayans walk past to leave the party. One of them breaks off from the pack and approaches Kaitlin and I, saying:
"You two are the most beautiful girls here." (We glance around. There are no other girls in sight.) "Especially you with glasses." (Katilin happened to be wearing her reading glasses that night.) (Meanwhile, all his friends leave the party, totally ditching him as he embarks on the hopeless quest of landing himself a gringa for the night.)
As if it could possibly go any other way, the conversation quickly goes downhill. Next thing I know, Kaitlin is somehow planting the idea of a threesome in this poor Uruguayan's head, then says something incoherent about how she isn't interested, but maybe she can watch him and I. Please note: KAITLIN WAS NOT DRUNK. She just wasn't paying attention to what she was saying.
So Uruguayan man turns to me and says, "What do you like about Latin men?"
I dance around the subject, lacking any sense of commitment: "They're all so different; it's hard to say."
He responds, "What kind of Latin do you like best?"
Again, "They're all so different; it's hard to say."
Kaitlin jumps in with, "I like Brazilian men." Very confident. Very much in the vein of "You're wasting my time, Uruguayan man, I prefer Brazilians."
To which our little Uruguayan friend says, in his broken, but easily understood English, "Brazilian men, small penis. Uruguayan men..." and he holds his hands about ten inches apart from one another "...wide."
And he was so earnest, so hopeful in his less-than-sober appeal for us to take him home that night and rock his world. It took all my willpower to not laugh my ass off.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Sunday, April 03, 2011
Participating in the political process
I probably didn't make an ounce of sense in my last post about Overseas Comparability Pay, but I did finally find the time to send a letter to my representatives in Congress: Senators Kerry and Brown, and Representative McGovern. Since this is an important issue for me and for my Foreign Service colleagues (and friends!) - and also because it might be more clear than my previous post, I'm reposting the letter I sent below:
Dear Representative/Senator:
My name is Ryan Janda and I am in the United States Foreign Service. I have served in Peru, Mexico and currently in Argentina. I am also your constituent.
I am writing in my individual capacity as a constituent. I support efforts to eliminate wasteful and unnecessary spending across all our federal agencies as part of the effort to reduce our national deficit. However, I am concerned by current legislative proposals that call for reversing a carefully considered bi-partisan plan to modernize the pay system of the Foreign Service that is in the process of being implemented.
The Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act of 1990 was adopted as a way to reduce the government-wide disparity between the public and private sectors and is a basic component of salary for all civilian Federal employees, based on annual survey data collected by the Department of Labor. As a result of this law, every federal government employee working in the United States received “locality pay” as part of their salary. Until 2009, the only United States government civilian employees who did not receive this part of their salary were Foreign Service personnel serving their country overseas.
Locality pay for Foreign Service personnel and other federal employees serving in Washington, D.C. is now approximately 25%. Under the law prior to 2009, Foreign Service personnel serving abroad sacrificed this part of their salaries and took large pay cuts to their base salaries. As a result, because retirement packages are based upon base pay (including “locality pay”), Foreign Service officers representing their country abroad received smaller retirement packages than their colleagues who stayed in Washington. This was not sustainable and in 2009 a bi-partisan solution was found to correct this policy problem. Closing the pay gap is not a pay raise – it is a correction of a 17- year-old unintended inequity in the worldwide Foreign Service pay schedule – an inequity that grew every year.
Today thousands of Foreign Service employees serve in hardship assignments around the globe, which now constitute nearly 60% of all posts. The number of unaccompanied posts has increased more than fivefold in the last decade. Assignments overseas are increasingly challenging, difficult and in many instances, dangerous. In my own experience living along the border between Arizona and Mexico, I listened from my bedroom many nights as rival drug gangs shot at each other down the block from my home. Many mornings we would wake up to find that more bodies had been dumped in empty lots around our neighborhood. Yet this didn’t dissuade any member of Consulate Nogales from showing up for work every day to help American citizens, increase bilateral cooperation on security and business initiatives, and respond to the hundreds of daily requests for visas. Although this is just a small glimpse of my own personal experience, I know that my colleagues in Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, among a host of others, are living and working in much more stressful environments, doing what they can to advance American interests abroad.
Due in large part to my colleagues’ unceasing and highly successful efforts to promote peace and development overseas, there has been strong bipartisan recognition that it is time to invest in diplomacy and development. Penalizing Foreign Service employees whose mission is to serve overseas to advance and protect our national interests by cutting their base pay undervalues the importance of their work, widens the gap between those serving in the United States and those facing hardships and sacrifices overseas and creates real disincentives to serving on the front lines of American diplomacy and development.
I am proud to be a public servant and honored to be a member of our State Department Foreign Service. I hope that you will support the Foreign Service and help ensure that its members are not penalized for service overseas.
Sincerely,
Ryan
Saturday, April 02, 2011
Amigos
For the first time in a very long time - maybe even ever - I had Jeff and Liz's undivided attention for ten whole days. Here in Buenos Aires, and then in Puerto Iguazu and Colonia. It was AWESOME.
I already wish they would come back.
I already wish they would come back.
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| Lovin' the Falls! |
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| The three amigos... |
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Spoke too soon
Like I've said before, and I will likely say again many times over the course of my career, I am very happy to have both a paycheck and health insurance. So when I complain about my job, it's because someone or some event out of my control has made things difficult or frustrating for me - this has nothing to do with my overall pride in serving my country as a Foreign Service Officer, or the joy I get out of working with so many talented professionals. Overall, I am happy with my work, I am happy with my colleagues, and I am happy with the life that I am blessed to lead.
That being said, there are a couple of issues currently ongoing that greatly affect my livelihood. These issues are complex, but I will try to summarize them for you so you can understand why they are so important to me and my fellow colleagues:
1. As you may or may not be aware, the government of the United States is currently operating under a "continuing resolution." What this essentially means is that our Congress has failed to agree on the 2011 budget and the U.S. Government is operating on a budget $6 billion lower than 2010 budget numbers until April 8. If, for any reason, Congress fails to agree on a budget and does not authorize another continuing resolution by April 8, the whole government (except for essential personnel) will go on furlough until a new continuing resolution or a 2011 budget passes. This means that we will not get paid for several weeks. When this last happened in 1995-1996, the government lost millions of dollars because of this and eventually did retroactively pay government employees for the furloughed time. This is not guaranteed this time, nor do any politicians want to see this happen again, as it is a very messy process and makes our Congress and our government look very, very bad. More related to the State Department, the Congress is seeking to cut $100 billion from the budget, as suggested by the House Appropriations Committee to meet their commitment to reduce U.S. debt. Both President Obama and Congress have stated that the majority of cuts will come from discretionary, non-National Security spending. Unfortunately for me and my colleagues, many of our Representatives and Senators do not feel that the work that we do classifies as National Security efforts. Without a natural constituency (such as that which the Department of Defense enjoys with its military bases in every state) or a strong professional lobby, that means that the State Department and USAID budgets are often the first to be slashed. It's an easy cut - it doesn't offend the voters in congressional and senatorial districts and our representatives get to look like they are making strong efforts to balance the budget (even though our budgets may represent less than 1% of the total federal budget). Over the long term, that means that we have fewer resources to meet an ever-growing list of initiatives that must be done, often to keep the peace or extend multi-lateral relations. We are lucky that we do have some defenders, and I strongly urge you to write to your representatives in Congress to let them know how you feel about this issue. I promise you I am doing the same.
As an excerpt from Senator Patrick Leahy's (D-VT) argument for counting the State Department and USAID as National Security initiatives, I give you this:
3. Let's talk about that 2-year wage freeze. I've already talked about how this relates to our Overseas Comparability Pay, but I haven't yet touched on a wider issue: that of our Foreign Service Nationals (FSNs). In every U.S. embassy and consulate overseas, we have a host of local employees (usually from the host country, sometimes from a third country) that form an integral and necessary part of our staff. I don't pretend to know all of the laws and regulations affecting their pay and benefits, but I do know these two things: their salaries are paid in the local currency (here in Argentina, that makes it the Argentine peso), and, as U.S. government employees, they are subject to the 2-year wage freeze. Without going into too much detail (partly to keep myself from appearing incredibly ignorant by publishing incorrect or badly understood information), let me just say that this is wreaking havoc on our FSNs. Largely due to perceived wage increase injustices in the past (whether or not that is true, I cannot say) and the fact that Argentina "enjoys" one of the highest rates of inflation in the world (not currently recognized by their government however), this has been very traumatic for our Argentine staff. As you can easily guess, on top of greatly affecting their purchasing power (many have to find new housing, move their children into different school systems, and make other life-altering household budget cuts), this is also harmful to our FSN-American staff relationship. We are working to remedy this situation as best we can here, but progress is rocky at best. It is easy for us, as Americans, to say, "Well, if the work environment is so bad, just leave," but this alternative is not available to all our staff. Hiring practices in Argentina are not the same as they are in the U.S. and the EEO laws are certainly not on par. More and more young adults are finding that their advanced degrees do not help them land jobs and are increasingly living at home with their families for even longer periods of time. On the older end of the scale, it is my understanding that there is a lot of age-ism practiced here - if you're over a certain age, your hireability apparently drops off a cliff. I've even been told that if you don't "look the part," you don't get hired. These limitations make it such that, even with the wage freeze, a job at the U.S. embassy is still one of the most appealing options out there (despite our not very Argentine work hours).
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
So you can see that I and my colleagues are closely watching our Congress (and the rest of our government), waiting to see how we will fare over the coming months. We are committed to doing our part to elevate the reputation of the United States abroad; to working with our foreign counterparts to create a more receptive environment for U.S. business interests and peace; and to sharing our culture with the rest of the world. But it is certainly frustrating to see that our jobs are often misunderstood or poorly imagined by our compatriots at home, so badly so that no one bats an eye as our budget gets massacred because our Foreign Service is viewed as "discretionary" spending. In the end, we will certainly make do with the budget we are authorized, but as our resources dwindle, so too does our ability to make forward progress.
That being said, there are a couple of issues currently ongoing that greatly affect my livelihood. These issues are complex, but I will try to summarize them for you so you can understand why they are so important to me and my fellow colleagues:
1. As you may or may not be aware, the government of the United States is currently operating under a "continuing resolution." What this essentially means is that our Congress has failed to agree on the 2011 budget and the U.S. Government is operating on a budget $6 billion lower than 2010 budget numbers until April 8. If, for any reason, Congress fails to agree on a budget and does not authorize another continuing resolution by April 8, the whole government (except for essential personnel) will go on furlough until a new continuing resolution or a 2011 budget passes. This means that we will not get paid for several weeks. When this last happened in 1995-1996, the government lost millions of dollars because of this and eventually did retroactively pay government employees for the furloughed time. This is not guaranteed this time, nor do any politicians want to see this happen again, as it is a very messy process and makes our Congress and our government look very, very bad. More related to the State Department, the Congress is seeking to cut $100 billion from the budget, as suggested by the House Appropriations Committee to meet their commitment to reduce U.S. debt. Both President Obama and Congress have stated that the majority of cuts will come from discretionary, non-National Security spending. Unfortunately for me and my colleagues, many of our Representatives and Senators do not feel that the work that we do classifies as National Security efforts. Without a natural constituency (such as that which the Department of Defense enjoys with its military bases in every state) or a strong professional lobby, that means that the State Department and USAID budgets are often the first to be slashed. It's an easy cut - it doesn't offend the voters in congressional and senatorial districts and our representatives get to look like they are making strong efforts to balance the budget (even though our budgets may represent less than 1% of the total federal budget). Over the long term, that means that we have fewer resources to meet an ever-growing list of initiatives that must be done, often to keep the peace or extend multi-lateral relations. We are lucky that we do have some defenders, and I strongly urge you to write to your representatives in Congress to let them know how you feel about this issue. I promise you I am doing the same.
As an excerpt from Senator Patrick Leahy's (D-VT) argument for counting the State Department and USAID as National Security initiatives, I give you this:
"Our Republican friends in the House should know that we cannot counter the influence of al Qaida and other violent extremists through military force alone. They should know that helping countries such as Southern Sudan rebuild after conflict, building stable democratic institutions in countries such as Egypt, preventing the trafficking of nuclear material and other weapons in the former Soviet Union, educating and providing jobs for youth who would otherwise be fodder for terrorist recruiters in the Middle East, combating the corrosive influence of organized crime in Central America, preventing the spread of deadly viruses in Africa and Asia—viruses that are only one airplane ride away from the United States—or supporting NATO, the International Atomic Energy Agency, or U.N. peacekeeping—these are all parts of our national security. It is the diplomats here and abroad, and the funds they administer, that help make U.S. leadership possible around the world."2. One of the State Department budget items that has strongly come under attack is a pesky line item called Overseas Comparability Pay. In the face of the two-year wage freeze that President Obama imposed on the federal government, many in our current Congress believe that this constitutes a salary raise, when in fact, it is not. The best description I have seen comes from the form letter the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) provided us to send to our representatives in Congress:
"The Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act of 1990 was adopted as a way to reduce the government-wide disparity between the public and private sectors and is a basic component of salary for all civilian Federal employees, based on annual survey data collected by the Department of Labor. As a result of this law, every federal government employee working in the United States received “locality pay” as part of their salary. Until 2009, the only United States government civilian employees who did not receive this part of their salary were Foreign Service personnel serving their country overseas.
Locality pay for Foreign Service personnel and other federal employees serving in Washington, D.C. is now approximately 25%. Under the law prior to 2009, Foreign Service personnel serving abroad sacrificed this part of their salaries and took large pay cuts to their base salaries. As a result, because retirement packages are based upon base pay (including “locality pay”), Foreign Service officers representing their country abroad received smaller retirement packages than their colleagues who stayed in Washington. This was not sustainable and in 2009 a bi-partisan solution was found to correct this policy problem. Closing the pay gap is not a pay raise -- it is a correction of a 17- year-old unintended inequity in the worldwide Foreign Service pay schedule—an inequity that grew every year.
Today thousands of Foreign Service employees serve in hardship assignments around the globe, which now constitute nearly 60% of all posts. The number of unaccompanied posts has increased more than fivefold in the last decade. Assignments overseas are increasingly challenging, difficult and in many instances, dangerous. There has been strong bipartisan recognition that it is time to invest in diplomacy and development. Penalizing Foreign Service employees whose mission is to serve overseas to advance and protect our national interests by cutting their base pay undervalues the importance of their work, widens the gap between those serving in the United States and those facing hardships and sacrifices overseas and creates real disincentives to serving on the front lines of American diplomacy and development."So, as you can see, Overseas Comparability Pay is incredibly important to me and my colleagues, as it determines our contributions to retirement and puts us on an even playing field with our civil service counterparts. Moreover, our civil service colleagues often do not have to choose between their jobs and the ability of their spouses to have a fulfilling career that contributes to household finances. In righting an inequity in our overseas payscale, Overseas Comparability Pay allows our Foreign Service families to be able to better afford to serve our country, even when our spouses cannot work. A much more organized and compelling argument was made previously by a friend whose wife has an engineering degree and has the difficulty of trying to find work every few years, except in those countries where we have no bilateral agreements that allow it. I encourage you to read his story.
3. Let's talk about that 2-year wage freeze. I've already talked about how this relates to our Overseas Comparability Pay, but I haven't yet touched on a wider issue: that of our Foreign Service Nationals (FSNs). In every U.S. embassy and consulate overseas, we have a host of local employees (usually from the host country, sometimes from a third country) that form an integral and necessary part of our staff. I don't pretend to know all of the laws and regulations affecting their pay and benefits, but I do know these two things: their salaries are paid in the local currency (here in Argentina, that makes it the Argentine peso), and, as U.S. government employees, they are subject to the 2-year wage freeze. Without going into too much detail (partly to keep myself from appearing incredibly ignorant by publishing incorrect or badly understood information), let me just say that this is wreaking havoc on our FSNs. Largely due to perceived wage increase injustices in the past (whether or not that is true, I cannot say) and the fact that Argentina "enjoys" one of the highest rates of inflation in the world (not currently recognized by their government however), this has been very traumatic for our Argentine staff. As you can easily guess, on top of greatly affecting their purchasing power (many have to find new housing, move their children into different school systems, and make other life-altering household budget cuts), this is also harmful to our FSN-American staff relationship. We are working to remedy this situation as best we can here, but progress is rocky at best. It is easy for us, as Americans, to say, "Well, if the work environment is so bad, just leave," but this alternative is not available to all our staff. Hiring practices in Argentina are not the same as they are in the U.S. and the EEO laws are certainly not on par. More and more young adults are finding that their advanced degrees do not help them land jobs and are increasingly living at home with their families for even longer periods of time. On the older end of the scale, it is my understanding that there is a lot of age-ism practiced here - if you're over a certain age, your hireability apparently drops off a cliff. I've even been told that if you don't "look the part," you don't get hired. These limitations make it such that, even with the wage freeze, a job at the U.S. embassy is still one of the most appealing options out there (despite our not very Argentine work hours).
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
So you can see that I and my colleagues are closely watching our Congress (and the rest of our government), waiting to see how we will fare over the coming months. We are committed to doing our part to elevate the reputation of the United States abroad; to working with our foreign counterparts to create a more receptive environment for U.S. business interests and peace; and to sharing our culture with the rest of the world. But it is certainly frustrating to see that our jobs are often misunderstood or poorly imagined by our compatriots at home, so badly so that no one bats an eye as our budget gets massacred because our Foreign Service is viewed as "discretionary" spending. In the end, we will certainly make do with the budget we are authorized, but as our resources dwindle, so too does our ability to make forward progress.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
One down, 19 to go...
My one-year anniversary as a Foreign Service Officer just passed. That is a whole year with a paycheck and health insurance, guys! ROCK.
On Argentine Men: One wink too many
As part of Steve's Hannukah gift extravaganza for his wife, Katie, Petra and I volunteered to babysit FROGMAN! one night so they could go out for a date. Steve cashed in on our offer a few Saturdays ago and Petra and I had a fantastic time, ordering out pizza, Chinese food, and ice cream. What?!!! A girl's gotta eat.
So we're sitting there, with our computers, surrounded by this feast, and FROGMAN! is out cold in his room. Even George and Gracie (the dogs) are stretched out on the floor somewhere, leaving us to our dinner and chatting.
Of course, at one point the conversation turns to men. Since Petra is leaving for Norfolk, VA, in June, she decided to post a profile on Match.com in the U.S. to see if there was anyone in the Norfolk area who might be willing to be her tour guide when she arrives. We think it might be interesting to peruse Match.com's catalogue of men here in Buenos Aires, while we have the site up.
Turns out that there is a completely separate Match.com for Argentina and the only way to browse the participants is to open a profile. Since Petra has the U.S. profile, we sign me up for the Argentina profile. Being the survey-loving fool that I am, I actually fill out some profile items, like my height, eye color, amount of physical fitness activity, my dislike of smokers, and the fact that the one thing I can't live without is oxygen. Yes, yes, most people answered the question of what they couldn't live without a little less realistically and entered things like their i-Pad, coffee, and their dog, but I thought they were wrong. It really is amazing how many things we can live without, but oxygen? There's just no getting around that pesky gas.
So, needless to say, we start cruising around Match.com Argentina and, in the male looking for female category, aged 31 to 42, we compiled the following observations:
You probably know what's coming next...
I completely forget about signing up, but Match.com Argentina approved my profile and the emails started pouring in. The first email was from a good-looking thirty-something who writes, "You don't have a picture up, but I really like your height." And it just started going downhill from there. Match.com Argentina gives you the ability to "wink" at people, too, which seems to be the internet version of, "Hey, I think you're cute. Wanna suck face some time?" In less than a week, I had racked up at least 20-30 emails and a good 50-60 "winks." Most of the guys just wanted to connect with someone and hoped that they would find romance. However, I even had some Brazilian write to me, hoping I could help him with his Spanish (oops, forgot to mention on my profile that I am a gringa). But I finally deleted my profile when a 57-year-old man "winked" at me. As much fun as the attention of a number of desperate Argentine men can be, I draw the line at men older than my parents. I just can't do it.
Although, to be fair, I had no intention of dating ANY of the men on Match.com Argentina. Call me old-fashioned, but I like meeting people the more traditional way: drunk in a bar.
Tee-hee!
So we're sitting there, with our computers, surrounded by this feast, and FROGMAN! is out cold in his room. Even George and Gracie (the dogs) are stretched out on the floor somewhere, leaving us to our dinner and chatting.
Of course, at one point the conversation turns to men. Since Petra is leaving for Norfolk, VA, in June, she decided to post a profile on Match.com in the U.S. to see if there was anyone in the Norfolk area who might be willing to be her tour guide when she arrives. We think it might be interesting to peruse Match.com's catalogue of men here in Buenos Aires, while we have the site up.
Turns out that there is a completely separate Match.com for Argentina and the only way to browse the participants is to open a profile. Since Petra has the U.S. profile, we sign me up for the Argentina profile. Being the survey-loving fool that I am, I actually fill out some profile items, like my height, eye color, amount of physical fitness activity, my dislike of smokers, and the fact that the one thing I can't live without is oxygen. Yes, yes, most people answered the question of what they couldn't live without a little less realistically and entered things like their i-Pad, coffee, and their dog, but I thought they were wrong. It really is amazing how many things we can live without, but oxygen? There's just no getting around that pesky gas.
So, needless to say, we start cruising around Match.com Argentina and, in the male looking for female category, aged 31 to 42, we compiled the following observations:
- Argentine men are not modest. About 75% of them have as their main profile picture a shot of them topless. I decided right there and then that I clearly can't use Match.com Argentina as a dating medium.
- In the 31 to 42 age range, about 75% of Argentine men are divorced with children. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does make me feel like I missed out on the first round of marriage. (Although secretly I hope that my life only has ONE round of marriage.) It also reminds me of the high rate of divorce around here. What is up, Argentina??!
- Argentine men write profile summaries like Hallmark cards. Very, very sappy. I hear that Argentine women like this, just as they like their men to text or call them 15 times a day, tell them how wonderful they are every hour on the hour, and just woo them into a willing puddle of romantic goo, but...BUT. I am my mother's child and I find the overly saccharine language to be a bit overwhelming. It reeks of a man who is far too dependent and needy...which makes sense since Argentines generally live with their parents until they get married. Needless to say, not my cup of tea. (Hey, in theory it sounds great, but in practice, well, I'd be all like, "Yeah, yeah, I'm fantastic, I know. Now would you please get up off your ass and take the trash out?!!")
You probably know what's coming next...
I completely forget about signing up, but Match.com Argentina approved my profile and the emails started pouring in. The first email was from a good-looking thirty-something who writes, "You don't have a picture up, but I really like your height." And it just started going downhill from there. Match.com Argentina gives you the ability to "wink" at people, too, which seems to be the internet version of, "Hey, I think you're cute. Wanna suck face some time?" In less than a week, I had racked up at least 20-30 emails and a good 50-60 "winks." Most of the guys just wanted to connect with someone and hoped that they would find romance. However, I even had some Brazilian write to me, hoping I could help him with his Spanish (oops, forgot to mention on my profile that I am a gringa). But I finally deleted my profile when a 57-year-old man "winked" at me. As much fun as the attention of a number of desperate Argentine men can be, I draw the line at men older than my parents. I just can't do it.
Although, to be fair, I had no intention of dating ANY of the men on Match.com Argentina. Call me old-fashioned, but I like meeting people the more traditional way: drunk in a bar.
Tee-hee!
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
So mad I could spit
In mid-January, I hosted the most tragic asado of all time. And today I got slapped with a $2,600 peso fine for it (about $650 U.S.).
Here's how it all went down.
I reserved the party room through the porteros at my building for the Sunday of Martin Luther King weekend. I sent out invites to 20 people.
Two days later, the portero on duty tells me that they started tearing apart the parilla that day to work on its chimney, which reaches to the 15th floor from the ground floor where the party room is located. Building management hadn't bothered to notify the porteros and it seemed unlikely that the work would be complete by the weekend.
So I consulted my girls and we decided to bring a Weber grill to the building and continue as planned. We asked the porteros if this would be okay and if we could still use the kitchen, the tables, et. al. as reserved. They said yes. We said GREAT!
Day of asado arrives. We load up the mini chimney with charcoals to burn them down to embers and, since the party room is entirely enclosed in glass, we take the mini chimney outside so it can smoke in the free air. The porteros tell us to take it inside. So we do.
When we try to set up the grill outside of the party room, but not inside the pool area - just outside where the smoke can escape in the free air - the porteros once again tell us to set it up inside the party room. We think this is nuts, since the party room immediately fills up with smoke, but we soldier on.
The guests who have arrived at this point are now congregating in the pool area, to keep out of the smoke, and my friend Katie goes into the kiddie pool with her 8-month-old son, Ethan (a.k.a. FROGMAN!). Her mom and sister hang out by her side, chatting away and keeping her company. I continue to play hostess and move from the grilling group to the arriving guests to make sure everyone is comfortable.
I go upstairs for a minute to pick something up - I don't remember what - and when I come back downstairs, there are three Argentines completely unknown to me who are in the midst of screaming at Fran (our Argentine asador), Petra, and Monica. I have no idea what is going on, so I stand there for a minute, taking it all in.
Quickly I realize that these three people live in the building and they seem to think that our asado is going to set the whole building on fire. We listen to them, without talking back, and try to move the grill to a more acceptable location. They scream even louder, seeming to think that by moving the grill, death and destruction are imminent.
So they scream and they scream and they scream, as Petra and Fran quietly put the fire out. The grill is still smoking so one of the men (there were two men and one women) starts walking toward the grill with a full 2-liter bottle of water and tells us he is going to put out the fire, apparently by pouring his water all over our steaks and chorizos. This, of course, is the straw that broke the camel's back. This is when Petra stands her ground, gets in his way, puts her face within inches of his and says, very calmly, very evenly, but very, very pointedly, "Basta. BASTA. Ya se apago." Which is the equivalent of, "Dammit, enough! Back the fuck off!"
Didn't seem to phase him at all. He continued advancing with the water bottle. Petra said, one last time, "BASTA," and so totally got in his way that he couldn't but listen to her.
Meanwhile, the other man is screaming at me that my guests are not allowed in the pool. Which, by the way, is completely untrue.
And the woman is still screaming about god-knows-what and whipping out her cell phone to take pictures of the RAGING FIRE. Which at this point is a sad little Weber grill, smoking a little around the edges, with no spark whatsoever to speak of.
To make the best of a bad situation, Petra and Fran then took all the meat up to my kitchen and finished preparing the meat there. All our guests arrived in the meantime, each bringing a side dish lovingly prepared, and we feasted. And feasted. And feasted some more.
Meanwhile, a thunderstorm raged outside. Which, to my line of thinking, made it so that, had our building really caught on fire, I couldn't imagine that the fire would've lasted long. Moreover, it made it so that the man's argument about my guests using the pool quickly became a moot point.
So, we ended up having a great time, eating, chatting, eating some more.
When the last few guests dwindled down, we cleaned up like the party room had never been cleaned before. It was SPOTLESS.
Nevertheless, that crazy, rude woman had submitted an official complaint. Turns out she's also a member of the building's version of a condo association board - which I didn't know existed. She and the two gentlemen, who clearly don't know a damn thing about being civil and have nothing better to do than to find fault with the tenants, are all on the condo association board.
So they complained. And now I have been fined - and my party room privileges have been docked for 6 months.
There are many things I find wrong with this situation, first and foremost being that they also fined and punished Vanna, another embassy employee resident of the building. The letter claims she was hosting the party, which isn't even remotely true. She arrived long after the incident with the grill and was just another invitee.
I am also pretty pissed off about the way they treated me and my guests. They never introduced themselves, never calmly asked us to do what they wanted us to do. They just screamed at us and cited some list of building rules that I've never seen nor heard of. It seems to me that this whole situation could have been dealt with calmly and rationally, like adults, with none of the fuss, or tension, or screaming. Life would have been so much easier had they just said, "Hey, I happen to be a condo association board member and my name is... Did you know that you are not allowed to use an outside grill in here? Would you please put out the fire on your grill?"
But no. They were all, to a "t", assholes. And it pisses me off that now I have to go into the embassy tomorrow and explain to our General Services Officer why I've been slapped with a $2,600 peso fine. Their attitude and behavior really taints my affinity for this building and my other neighbors. And, well, it just plain sucks.
Here's how it all went down.
I reserved the party room through the porteros at my building for the Sunday of Martin Luther King weekend. I sent out invites to 20 people.
Two days later, the portero on duty tells me that they started tearing apart the parilla that day to work on its chimney, which reaches to the 15th floor from the ground floor where the party room is located. Building management hadn't bothered to notify the porteros and it seemed unlikely that the work would be complete by the weekend.
So I consulted my girls and we decided to bring a Weber grill to the building and continue as planned. We asked the porteros if this would be okay and if we could still use the kitchen, the tables, et. al. as reserved. They said yes. We said GREAT!
Day of asado arrives. We load up the mini chimney with charcoals to burn them down to embers and, since the party room is entirely enclosed in glass, we take the mini chimney outside so it can smoke in the free air. The porteros tell us to take it inside. So we do.
When we try to set up the grill outside of the party room, but not inside the pool area - just outside where the smoke can escape in the free air - the porteros once again tell us to set it up inside the party room. We think this is nuts, since the party room immediately fills up with smoke, but we soldier on.
The guests who have arrived at this point are now congregating in the pool area, to keep out of the smoke, and my friend Katie goes into the kiddie pool with her 8-month-old son, Ethan (a.k.a. FROGMAN!). Her mom and sister hang out by her side, chatting away and keeping her company. I continue to play hostess and move from the grilling group to the arriving guests to make sure everyone is comfortable.
I go upstairs for a minute to pick something up - I don't remember what - and when I come back downstairs, there are three Argentines completely unknown to me who are in the midst of screaming at Fran (our Argentine asador), Petra, and Monica. I have no idea what is going on, so I stand there for a minute, taking it all in.
Quickly I realize that these three people live in the building and they seem to think that our asado is going to set the whole building on fire. We listen to them, without talking back, and try to move the grill to a more acceptable location. They scream even louder, seeming to think that by moving the grill, death and destruction are imminent.
So they scream and they scream and they scream, as Petra and Fran quietly put the fire out. The grill is still smoking so one of the men (there were two men and one women) starts walking toward the grill with a full 2-liter bottle of water and tells us he is going to put out the fire, apparently by pouring his water all over our steaks and chorizos. This, of course, is the straw that broke the camel's back. This is when Petra stands her ground, gets in his way, puts her face within inches of his and says, very calmly, very evenly, but very, very pointedly, "Basta. BASTA. Ya se apago." Which is the equivalent of, "Dammit, enough! Back the fuck off!"
Didn't seem to phase him at all. He continued advancing with the water bottle. Petra said, one last time, "BASTA," and so totally got in his way that he couldn't but listen to her.
Meanwhile, the other man is screaming at me that my guests are not allowed in the pool. Which, by the way, is completely untrue.
And the woman is still screaming about god-knows-what and whipping out her cell phone to take pictures of the RAGING FIRE. Which at this point is a sad little Weber grill, smoking a little around the edges, with no spark whatsoever to speak of.
To make the best of a bad situation, Petra and Fran then took all the meat up to my kitchen and finished preparing the meat there. All our guests arrived in the meantime, each bringing a side dish lovingly prepared, and we feasted. And feasted. And feasted some more.
Meanwhile, a thunderstorm raged outside. Which, to my line of thinking, made it so that, had our building really caught on fire, I couldn't imagine that the fire would've lasted long. Moreover, it made it so that the man's argument about my guests using the pool quickly became a moot point.
So, we ended up having a great time, eating, chatting, eating some more.
When the last few guests dwindled down, we cleaned up like the party room had never been cleaned before. It was SPOTLESS.
Nevertheless, that crazy, rude woman had submitted an official complaint. Turns out she's also a member of the building's version of a condo association board - which I didn't know existed. She and the two gentlemen, who clearly don't know a damn thing about being civil and have nothing better to do than to find fault with the tenants, are all on the condo association board.
So they complained. And now I have been fined - and my party room privileges have been docked for 6 months.
There are many things I find wrong with this situation, first and foremost being that they also fined and punished Vanna, another embassy employee resident of the building. The letter claims she was hosting the party, which isn't even remotely true. She arrived long after the incident with the grill and was just another invitee.
I am also pretty pissed off about the way they treated me and my guests. They never introduced themselves, never calmly asked us to do what they wanted us to do. They just screamed at us and cited some list of building rules that I've never seen nor heard of. It seems to me that this whole situation could have been dealt with calmly and rationally, like adults, with none of the fuss, or tension, or screaming. Life would have been so much easier had they just said, "Hey, I happen to be a condo association board member and my name is... Did you know that you are not allowed to use an outside grill in here? Would you please put out the fire on your grill?"
But no. They were all, to a "t", assholes. And it pisses me off that now I have to go into the embassy tomorrow and explain to our General Services Officer why I've been slapped with a $2,600 peso fine. Their attitude and behavior really taints my affinity for this building and my other neighbors. And, well, it just plain sucks.
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