Soundtrack

I have to accept, I have never been a gadget-junkie, but since I got my iPod, I am the happiest kid on the block. Individualized music, when you hang out most of the time by yourself, is a must. Walking to work, in the supermarket, even when I wonder around the city. I prefer listening to music instead of hearing this city, it is not a loud city, does not have the chuspa that I am used to anyways.
Below I decided to share with you my favorite music, mostly from this part of the world, I think matches this city+me in this city+how I feel about this city and my new life:

-Bajofondo Tango Club presents Luciano Supervielle (the entire CD)
-Faithless: Miss you less, see you more (No roots)
-Bersuit Vergarabat: el Viejo de Arriba, Toco y me Voy, Vuelos, Disconexion Sideral, Porteno de Ley
-Bjork: Isobel
-Depeche Mode: Just can't get enough, Everything Counts
-MC Solaar: la la la la
-La Mala Rodriguez: la cocinera
-Lauryn Hill: To Zion
-Los Fabulosos Cadillacs: Matador, Vos Sabes, Carnaval toda la vida
-Frida Soundtrack: Burning Bed
-Outkast: Crumblin' erb
-Pequena Orquesta de Reincidentes: Blanco y amarilo
-Pink Martini: Una Notte A Napoli
-Sertab Erener: Yavas yavas
-Sezen Aksu: Bir baska ask
-Thievery Corporation: Lebanese Blond
-Zero 7: in the waiting line
-Carlos Gardel: Por una cabeza
-George Michael: Flawless
and there are a couple of songs I love but dunno what they are called, I will refer to them as: Tiki tiki ta ta, Pepepepe and Asli's favorite song!

Jury Duty in Carrasco...A surreal weekend with Corina

There are certain nights in my life that I wonder, how the hell I find myself witnessing these surreal stories, which when one tells others, there is a high probability that the listener doubts the legitimacy.
Last night was one of those.
Corina came yesterday. This is her first visit to Montevideo and we were both so happy to be able to hang out again, after so long.
The plan for the weekend is to have fun, so I decided to give a call to the "photographer"--who turn out to be a 20-year old wannabe music producer/agent--thinking it could be fun for Corina to listen to the band he was talking about last time I saw him. He was super excited to hear from me, and told us that they recently finished a video clip, and invited us to see the video and hang out while the band jams in one of the member’s house in Carrasco (a neighborhood of upper-class Montevideanos, reminds me of West Palm Beach, with big houses, and even malls, and mall rats).
We schlepped our fabulous asses with public transportation all the way to a mall, where they met us and took us with a car to the house. (First advice to pendejos (boys): never make chicks take the bus to go see you if you have a car. They probably will never come back, if she is wise.) The house was exactly how I imagined, an American town house, with 3 cars in the garage, a dog, color coordinated living room, with little--and unfortunately ugly--souvenirs from countries visited, scented soaps and matching towels and tiles in the bathroom, etc.
The band was there, all dressed up. Cori and I entered, and as soon as we saw them, we knew they were not more than a bunch of twenty-year-old dorks who think they discovered the rock music by copying the RS songs, and sin pena! The host of the house and the soloist, who looked like he was no more than 12 years old and 5' 3"(I am being generous), was wearing a t-shirt that said: Keith Richards! The guitarist had a baseball cap made out of leopard print velour, the drummer looked like the Scooby Doo, and the manager with this Buddy Holiday glasses, thought he was the shit.
Cori and I did not look at each other for a while, because we knew we would laugh immediately. The real comedy came when the director was screening proudly his work, the first video of Limousine! As soon as it started I tried to think of something bad (Inside my head: Something bad happened, something bad happened) so that I would not laugh as hard as I should have. It was sooo trucho(I have seen many student movies in my life, and even the worst one was not this bad), so amateur, so tasteless, that made me feel bad. Of course I told them my opinion, which they wanted to hear so badly, I was harsh; Corina tried to be nicer by appreciating the effort. Then they wanted us to see all five (and as horrible as the first one) versions, back to back. I could not take it anymore, we left soon after. Our hosts did not want to leave their house; they tried to be nice to us by offering the approximate cab fare, which we "kindly" refused.

The night began asi...

We decided to erase the memories of the horrible video by going to a boliche in the old city, where people were a bit older and the music was much original. After having a drink, and realizing that we were too tired, we asked for the check and came to realize that we were 10% short of the amount we need to pay! Que verguenza...I talked to the manager to see if it was ok with him, he said yes, and said they have a lot of dishes back there! I smiled and told him it was not a funny joke. Really, it was not.

Walking home from the old town, we heard this loud salsa rhythm from a pub called Lido, located inside a shopping strip. We had to enter, in order to complete our surreal Friday night. Lido club reminded me of those kitsch Latin joints in Brooklyn, consisted of a couple of tables with red-green tablecloth and a small dance floor, yet lacked the Latin heat for some reason. Cori and I were the best dancing couple there. We left the place after one dance, when I sensed that dudes were about to make a move to ask us to dance with them. As we were running out, I heard somebody say something like "tortilleras" (a vulgar way of calling lesbians in Spanish), we laughed and ran home to a good night sleep.
But there was still one more stop we had to make: the weird bar around the corner from my apartment. As we were approaching to my place, we heard loud argentinian rock coming from my street. Once again there was a weird party at the corner (it is not a bar, but every once in a while the owner throws these cool parties for his friends). We wondered as we own the place, and danced to the familiar rythms of Fabulosos Cadillacs and Bersuit, and others, using the last bit of energy we had before we crashed and went to our separete neverneverlands.

Saturday was the day of Mercado de Puerto of course. I had to wake up really early and work at the office for a bit, which sucked. As soon as I was done, picked up Cori and Mauro and we were on our way to Cori's first time at the Mercado. Mercado de Puerto is an old frigorifico (a refrigerated warehouse) in the old city, by the port; in the old days all the meat to be exported would go there and from there would be shipped to Europe. Now it is a big complex of restaurants, parillas mostly, very loud and colorful place Montevideanos spend Saturday afternoons feasting on meat and Medio Medio (a semi-sweet sparkling white wine). It is definitely my favorite activity in this city.

We had 6 bottles of Medio Medio and some asado (cow's chops, delish), and left the place half-baked, without smoking! The hours following the lunch, we had ice cream on the ice-cold Pocitos shore, crashed a major league football game (well I did, they got caught at the door) and went to Nico's neighborhood and dance for hours with the local candombe (Uruguayan folk music made with drums) group. When it finally ended, it was 8 pm, and we went to Nico's house and had a long nap, before going out again!

I think we had so much fun earlier that we should not even try to go out have even more fun, but we tried, we went to a bar in old city, but called the night around 3 am, thank god.

The last image I have of the night is the Nuevo Machu Pichu club (an underground version of Lido) we passed by on the way home.

Sleeping in his arms was all I could think of....I dreamt of someone singing me Mi Carmelito by Bersuit Vergabarat.

Ah Montevideo Ah!

Listening to tango/ambient music 2 am in the morning in my office, after a lovely and loooong day at work, makes me think about decisions one make about her life. Where would I be now, if I did not think that the idea of working for a community radio far from my own country did not sound interesting to me a year ago.

I could be anywhere now.

But I am here, and I am happy. I don´t even know why I am happy. It must be the independence.

PS: The graffiti on the picture is made by sankono, I scouted for the cops, it was 4 am, we were working all night long, he finished the last letter and we ran back to the office; a total adrenaline buster, I assure you. Anyways it means "grey atrocity, " a great name for the horrible statue they built in front of the municipal building of Montevideo.

To All My Fabulous Girlfriends..

Recently, some of my happily "we"ed friends separeted from their other halves suprisingly, and joined the single-late- twenty-something-succesful-female life . As in our patriarchal societies, it is bad to be a single woman, they are all, I am guessing, going through tough times getting used to this new role where ever they are. (Welcome back dahlings!)

Since I left my happily-coupled life in Cuba, I was not sure about where I was fitting in this picture. Sometimes, having a long-distance relationship could be even harder than being single again; it is a very blurry area, especially if you are not sure, when will be the next time you will see your media naranja. Anyways, all I know is, I was sad, felt miserable for the first couple of weeks of sleeping and waking up alone, and not hearing "Hey gorgeous, come back to bed, don't go to the gym this morning!" Nobody reminded me anymore that I was special, smart and beautiful. Nobody to cook for, nobody to care for.

And I guess the hardest part of all was that I did not have any of my girl friends to hang out with, do all the things I have not done while being with a man. Nobody to talk to.

When I got here, I thought I knew what I wanted from life. I thought it was all set up, at least it was pretty much clear what I would be doing here and then after. For obvious reasions, in three months I have been here, so much happened, and I could not control most of what happened, I felt week and stupid afterwards.

Then a couple of weeks ago, I had a moment. Here I was after two hours of body combat, at my cold apartment, alone, watching TV, eating dinner. Then another day, on Sunday, I had brunch all by myself, in my room, alone, not even reading a quality newspaper, without friends. I separated my self from my body and looked at myself: what a pathetic view I thought. Why am I all alone in a foreign country? Why am I not with the ones I love so much? I left my boyfriend, I left my friends, I left mom so that I can do what I think is right. But now I am left here, miserably sola.

I am sure years ago—very few but there were moments—I felt the same way a couple of times, being alone and bored, and I was not even in a foreign country, I was in Istanbul, or even in NYC. I have chosen to go out, get drunk and forget how bored I was, or hang out with people that I really did not care so much, just so that I would not be alone. (This statement just saved me a couple of thousands of dollars I could have spent on therapy later, I am glad I found out all by myself).

I am not going to explain in details why, seems very unimportant right now, but I decided that I was not going to think that being alone is all that pitiable. Since that day, I started discovering this city, the way I want to, going to the places I think are interesting, wearing all the funky clothes I can, even though it does not match with this city’s ambient or the people who surround me. It is not so bad after all. I don’t know how long it would eventually take me to get to know new people, or re-unite with my good friends (and I miss them so much), right now I feel relieved and happy first time in months.

Now I can say it out loud: I am alone and it is fabulous. And it is entirely my choice...