Surprise Series #7

every morning i walk to the school for my spanish class. it's a long walk, but the perfect way to start my day slowly while getting some exclusive time to listen to my favorite musics. like most colleges or universities, many of the windows on the exterior of the building are littered with advertisements for upcoming concerts, events, and student groups. let me tell you how astonished i was when i took a gander at one and found my very own father, Egons K. Dunens, starting back at me. i quickly looked around and upon realizing the coast was clear, took the paper with me. for your viewing pleasure, indisputable proof that my father, Egons K. Dunens, was down here in argentina:

now please compare it against this and tell me that Mario Ruben Bao and Egons K. Dunens are not the same person:

now i'm not completely sure what to make of this. for those of you are who unable to read the posted paper i found, it says that my father under the name of Mario Ruben Bao was murdered by the city police in 1993. now, i've been under the assumption for sometime that my father was born in germany, immigrated to the u.s. at the age of five, and subsequently spent the rest of his time as a resident of that country. however, this paper seems to show otherwise. while pretending to be a mild-mannered acoustical engineer by day, has my father really been a government operative jet setting around the world? we know that the u.s. was not particularly fond of some of argentina's governments in the past. was he sent south of the border to destabilize a potentially dangerous situation?

what we do have is more evidence of my father incognito:

so whether or not this is all just a string of likely coincident, i'm almost 100% certain now that my father was formerly an operative for the united states government who had an assassination attempt on his life in argentina when he was working to destabilize their government and then faked his own death to get away and retire to a quiet life with his family in back in the old u.s. of a. quite the surprise indeed.

Bad U.S. Movies on Argentine Cable Series #3

SANDOKAN!!!!!

seriously. that is how excited i am about this movie. let me apologize first because 1) this is not actually an american movie. it was made by italians and 2) this was never released theatrically but was a tv-movie/mini series. that withstanding, my what a tour de force this picture is. just look at that poster!

this came on the international film channel but still had poor english dubbing. the poster pretty much says it all. not only is Sandokan a pirate, he is also the tiger of malaysia. what more do you need to know? the plot you say? really? ok.

turns out Sandokan was from the proud ruling family of Malaysia and beloved by all their citizenry. then the evil british empire came wanting to make them suffer under the rule of mercantilism as colonists. Sandokan's father wouldn't have this and the brits went ahead and slaughtered the entire family, extended and immediate, who were over for dinner inconveniently enough. Sandokan, just a small boy at the time, was able to escape the pools of blood and make it out to sea, establishing himself as a pirate before retuning many years later to seek revenge and free Malaysia from the evil rule of the limeys. and woo a british girl. apparently he is not so mad at the sins of that far away country as not to desire their women. meh.

in a truly sublime scene, Sandokan is revealed as the son of the former sultan when he fights a tiger one on one. you can watch it here and it is a sight to behold. the music from the clip is the actual theme music as well. seriously, wait through the part of the pictures of Sandokan and the tigers and wait for the tiger v Sandokan match. Sandokan is in the red trunks and the tiger is wearing the striped ones. just amazing work.

this masterpiece definitely veers way past "so bad its bad" territory into "so bad this may be the best moment of my life and i shall cherish it always" territory. i advise you all to find a copy of this and watch it. i hope and pray netflix has this. make sure it's the Kabir Bedi one.

high point: when Sandokan relates his bloody, traumatic past to his new wife right after they have just consummated their marriage. awkward........

low point: Sandokan cares not for low points and refuses to let his film have any.

"yeah, right" moment: the fact this movie exists.

Surprise Series #6

so normally when someone says "oktoberfest" the natural associations are (in no particular order), munich, beer, sausage, sauerkraut, etc. in fact, i'm guessing that in most cases some of the last words people would think of would be argentina or november.

IRregardless, i attended oktoberfest in november in buenos aires. Mark, a half german half english friend i made in my spanish course, invited me along to the celebration being thrown at the german embassy in belgrano, a nice neighborhood in the north of the city. it was a good time. the cost of entrance not only bought entrance but also a nice beer mug commemorating the event or a big cookie for the kids. warsteiner beer was served (i know it's german but i don't know if it's from bavaria), the crazy white sausage and other meats were present, and potato salad and sauerkraut were everywhere. they were even giving out free cotton candy and had live music.

so that was fun and unexpected.

Surprise Series #5

october 28 was a very special day down here because it was the presidential election. polling was done on a sunday, which seemed a little curious to me, until i realized that everyone over the age of 18 is required to vote. 100% mandatory with few exceptions including extreme age (which they put at 70 or over) and some health-related reasons. i've been reading "a short history of the argentinians" by Felix Luna and recently read a portion about a pseudo-political party called the radicals. the radicals operated around the 1910s and refused to cooperate with any other party, refused to take any governmental seat offered to them, and refused to vote in every election since they believed it crooked. part of me wonders if the mandatory voting was a response to past political actions.

the political landscape is interesting here (to say the least) since there is one dominant party, the peronists, and then several others whom can't seem to grab enough of a share to really make an impact. i would think that naturally this would lead to alliances and a search for common ground amongst the parties not in power, but i've been told from a couple different people that organization in this regard is very poor and rarely happens. as a result, the peronists typically have a very easy path into the larger offices. even more strange to my democratic-republic, mostly-two-party mindset, when a peronist fails to gain entrance into an office, the party typically works to make the newly-elected person as ineffective as possible so that there is little chance he or she can make an earnest run at the position again. apparently, many of them resign in frustration.

on election day, i spent a fair share of my afternoon meandering around with Liz and a person we had met that morning at church who was passing through town on business. we found a polling station and ventured inside. immediately on our right, a wall was plastered with print-outs containing all the names of the eligible voting residents in that voting-district. this, apart from including most of their personal information, told the voter which line to go into next in a separate hallway.




i ventured back in the general direction most people were heading and found an absolute throng of people just packing the hall in seemingly everlasting lines that snaked in and out of each other. one defining feature of these lines was that they were separated by gender as male and females vote independent of one another.

unable to make my way into a room to see the ballot, my brief excursion into the poll was at its end. i found out the next morning that the peronist candidate Cristina Kirchner (and wife of the president she was succeeding) had won the election with something around a 46% majority which freed her from a later run-off.

while several pieces of the election process caused me to pause (the mandatory vote, the crazy polling station, election on a sunday), the most surprising aspect was that all the grocery stores, bars, restaurants and any other place that sold or served alcohol had to go dry for a complete 24 hours before the election. this definitely made sense, but was largely unexpected in a place where people have a drink with every meal as if that is mandated by law.

lots of things

i haven't posted much recently and thought i'd try to give a quick run down of the past couple weeks:

- those toe things i bought worked out well and i'm blister free now

- my spanish course at the university of buenos aires has 12 people in the class and we represent Japan, China, Korea, Turkey, India, Germany, Denmark, Brazil, and the U.S. so that's been fun.

- i went to a club that was supposedly going to play hip hop music and it turned out that it was a special night for a breakdance competition. i haven't exactly seen Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo but i'm pretty sure i lived it that night. while it was all portenos doing the stuff (and they were very good), they were all decked out in early 80s hip hop apparel like bucket hats and sleeveless t shirts. funny stuff.

- our friends Luis and Katie took the three of us out to a sleepy little town in the Pampas called san antonio de areco. it's about a two hour drive northwest from buenos aires. after a delicious lunch, we headed to a museum about gauchos and visited an artist known for his depiction of that lifestyle. along with the sterling company, it made for a highly pleasant trip. the picture is the bridge that crosses the river in town (we had to cross it to get to the gaucho museum). this picture is off the town's website but when we went it was clear and beautiful and windy. i don't have any of those pictures from the girls yet. sorry.