New Years Day in Buenos Aires

...we saw in 2010 from the roof of the Hotel Dandi...where we went after a ridiculously cheap fixed price dinner at a cheap and cheery local canteen at the end of the street. We were served veal with tuna sauce and capers(from which I abstained), chicken in a kind of salsa sauce with Russsian salad follwed by home made fruit salad, then fruit bread, small pieces of madeira like cake with chocolate bits and nuts and raisins - oh, and of course a glass of champaigne. "We" being H , myself, Alan(San Francisco psychologist) and his partner Monty - who'd flown on a day trip to Iguasu and back. H knows them from his trip to Ibiza with E,et al a few tears back. They are friends with his mate C, the ex pat Brit now living there who worked for Visa , now has given up corporate life to train as a psyhologist. Alan is his role model, apparently, since Alan worked on Wall Street , then gave it all up and also became a Dr of psychology.
They said Iguasu was so humid their hands began to swell up. Monty was so concerned tht he looked their symptoms up on the net. H explained it happens in very hot weather and we often get it when we've been hiking abroad or even in Britain in the summer.

The canteen was patronised only by locals from the neighbourhood and even by 11pm was only 1/3rd full(most portenos do the family thing at New year )...so the few places that remain open are mostly expensive restaurants with all inclusive shows. Not us at all. We were encouraged to go for such a package deal by our hotel, over in the tourist redeveloped dock area, at 1200 pesos a head! We ended up paying just 60 pesos at the local canteen. Their were no tourists apart from ourelves. The other tables were occuppied by 3 pensioners(one of whom I saw this morning walking his small dog), two elderly men sitting alone at seperate tables - one was talking to himself and the other spent 20minutes playing with his salad - and an end table of s local kids in their early 20's.


From the roof of the hotel we watched fireworks exploding from all directions of the city. We were six storeys up - so alot of it went off around our heads - a new experience, not always pleasant ; a bit like being in the firing line! After about 1/2 an hour a gorgeous spannish hunk joined us -

a huge explosion, I turned around and there he was, a vision of tawt muscle in a combat green t shirt, shaven head, stubble chin and beaming teeth -

H reconised him as the boyfriend of a fenmale guest - we'd seen them at breakfast. Well, in this version of things, Mr Hunk just smiled at me and nodded - in my New Years fantasay version, well, I'll let you guess what happened next!

Yesterday I had a brilliant tango workshop with Lorena in the morning. I now have the idea to come back for a month or more sometime later on this year - maybe rent a flat - encourange friends to come visit - so I can do consistent daily tango practice/tutorials with Lorena.She is going on tour abroad again soon but am thinking possibly August would be possible.She says she'll definately be in B's A's then.She says I have the potential to be a very good dancer - and this is my dream - so I'm not hesitating about it anymore.

I checked my emails on webmail yesterday afernoon - just wondered if there'd be anything from Decongested about my last submission to them..but nothing...so, although am not that certian about the piece I sent them..no news is good news. I followed a link to Liars League site, where I speed read a very good short story called Pain Killer...(I think) and left a brief comment to say how much I enjoyed the read)..

BG