Buenos Aires - Final Thoughts

• I still can’t believe that my company ships me all over the world.  I love my job!

• Parts of Buenos Aires were beautiful.  Other parts – not so much.  I would like to see what the country looks like outside of the city.

• The people are wonderful.  I loved interacting with them.  They were very helpful and friendly.

• I was amazed at how much American music from the 1980’s I heard.  At first I thought it was just in the tourist areas.  Then I realized that it’s everywhere, in the stores where the locals shop, in the taxis, the restaurants & bars.  It’s actual Argentine radio stations, where you hear the announcer say, “y ahora una canción de Huey Lewis and the News”.  It was interesting.

• I learned a number of Spanish phrases (some carry over from my job in the International Center) so could ask a lot of yes or no questions to get what I needed.  However, I learned very quickly that there is a VAST difference between speaking Spanish, and UNDERSTANDING Spanish.  Yeah, I got lost quite a few times when the conversation veered from where I was trying to direct it.

• Yes, it was a long flight – but if you want to see stuff, you have to go to where it is.

• Despite it being a VERY long flight – isn’t it pretty amazing that you can leave your house and in less than a day, be standing in a hotel room 6,000 miles away?

• No matter how fun it is to go somewhere, it’s a lot more fun to come home.

That’s about it.  Thanks for reading the saga.

JBD

Buenos Aires – Day #6 (Sunday, March 30, 2014)

Sunday is here, and it’s time to fly out.  I awoke this morning to the sound of someone in my room crushing a plastic water bottle.  Tired and disoriented, I spun in the direction of the sound, ready to pounce on the intruder.  Nothing.  I must’ve been dreaming.  There it is again.  WHO IS IN MY ROOM???  I spin around again – ready to pummel who-ever is robbing my room.  No one.  What is making that noise?  Perhaps I am hearing the person downstairs, through the vent in the floor.  That must be it – but wait, there’s no vent in the floor.  Someone is behind the curtain in my room!!  Finally I crawl out of bed, and pull open the curtain.  I found my intruder!  It was the rain hitting the metal edging outside my window.  As bummed as I was that I wouldn’t be able to go out and explore on my final day, I was relieved that no one was robbing me.

Since it was raining – I did miss out on a few things that I wanted to see – such as the church a block over, the Plaza de Mayo (I thought a picture would be nice, since I work at the Clinica de Mayo).  And . . . I never got to ride the Metro/subway.  Someone asked, “what, you didn’t have an umbrella?”  No – it was pouring!  On the upside, we took a taxi to lunch, and – once clear of the tall buildings – I got a waypoint/marker for my GPS.  Then, comparing that point to the marker on my house, I was able to find that I was standing 5822.5 miles from my home in Rochester. 

Leaving for the airport, we embarked on our 21.5 hour journey home (from hotel door to the front door of my home).  Our trusty steed was again an Airbus A330.  The first leg was back to Atlanta – a 10.5 hour flight.  Since I don’t sleep well on airplanes, I had the good fortune of watching 3 movies (Argo, Now You See Me, and Brave).  Plus, somewhere over Peru, I got to watch as we flew over a thunderstorm.  You could see the lightning form in the clouds, and suddenly *ZAK* a bolt would shoot out.  It was really cool.  Also – due to the GPS in the plane, I got to watch us fly over the equator.  Unfortunately, since the GPS screen isn’t a constant update, but just once per minute or so, I didn’t actually get to see the “LAT: 0.0” on my screen, but I did get to see the updates on either side of it, so I knew when we crossed.

The majority of the flights were uneventful.  However, standing in repeated baggage, customs and security lines made me very aware of government waste – like the guy who stamps my entry form, and then the other guy 100 yards away who collects it.  That’s all he does, is stand there with is hand out and you hand him the form!  Since after having the form stamped, I don’t need to show it to anyone – why not have the guy who stamps it, just keep it?  I just saved the TSA about $52,000 per year per person.  Ta-Dah!!

Finally, I arrive back in Rochester, took a short nap, and then Lisa and Grace arrived home.  It was a great reunion!  Grace shouted my name and then hugged me for about 15 minutes, giggling like crazy, only stopping to say, “mom, daddy’s home.”  It was sweet.

This ends my journey to Argentina.

Buenos Aires – Day #5 (Saturday, March 29, 2014)

The final day of the International Vascular Symposium is complete!  We tore down and packed up our equipment and hit the town again.  Since it was a short day, we met up with our new friend, Santiago, for lunch.  He took us to a friend’s restaurant.  Apparently, no tourists know about this eatery, but somehow the guys from U2 have been there (unfortunately, the owner had no idea who they were), as well as the drummer from Metallica, and many Argentine celebrities – whose pictures adorn the walls of this tiny shop.  The food was fantastic.  After lunch, Santiago gave us a tour of the city – taking us to a very nice area and a not so nice part of the city. 

We got to see the poverty of people living in corrugated steel sheds, and the areas where the new immigrants with no money “land” in the country.  They live in dumpy shacks called villas (pronounced “vee-zhas” – and, although spelled the same, looking NOTHING like a “villa” you would find on the French or Italian Riviera.  We also saw more affluent neighborhoods where people turned a portion of their house into a store & would then sell fine jewelry or other products from their renovated living room.  All in all, we spend nearly 4 hours with Santiago, seeing the sites, going shopping and hearing stories.

We got back to our hotel about 6:00.  It was just enough time to get cleaned up to ride the shuttle to dinner and a Tango show.  Dinner was okay.  I thought mine was okay, but Betsy and Julie (my colleagues) were unimpressed with theirs.  I have mixed opinions about the Tango show.  It was very well done, but – like opera- was an unspoken story that I had to figure out as it unfolded.  Well – I’m not terribly good at that, so spent much of my night watching the operation of the lighting and audio system (yeah, I’m a geek some days).  Would I recommend it?  Yes, because everyone else in the room really enjoyed it – as did other people I met, who attended the day before.  However – it wasn’t my thing.  By the time the program was done, it was around midnight.  So . . . back to the hotel and time for bed around 1:00 a.m.  I’m glad that I’ll get to sleep in a bit on Sunday morning.

Bye for now.

JBD

Buenos Aires - Day #4 (Friday, March 28, 2014)

Hola once again!  Day number 2 of the conference is in the books.  The day went very well.  I haven’t lost anyone’s presentation, and even fixed a few that weren’t working.  It’s much appreciated by the presenters and makes me feel like I’m doing my part.  Now just a half day on Saturday, and we’ll be done.

So – when today’s session was done, we grabbed a quick dinner and then headed out to a place called Bar Magico.  It is a small establishment that hosts 3 magic shows on Friday and Saturday nights.  The first show started at 9:30, then another at 11:00, and a third show after that.  We only stayed for the first 2 shows.  Unfortunately they were all in Spanish, but it was fun to watch them just to see what would happen and watch other magicians work.  The first magician was Marcelo Insua.  He was fantastic!  He also spoke English, and every now and then would speak English to catch us up on important parts of the show.  For my colleagues, I think the best part of the show was when he made a coconut fall out of his empty hat.  It landed on the table with a loud and dramatic *thud*!  I could’ve watched him all night. 

The second show was pretty good magic, but not as entertaining.  It’s possible that we were just too tired to enjoy it.  By this time it was 12:00 – 12:30 a.m.  We cut out after that show and made it back to the hotel just before 1:00 a.m. 

Then it was off to bed.  We have to be downstairs for breakfast at 7:00 a.m. on Saturday.

That’s it for Day #4.  See you tomorrow.

JBD

Argentina – Day #3 (Thursday, March 27, 2014)

Hello, and welcome to day 3 from south of the equator.  The conference started today – and the onslaught of presenters needing my attention rained down in full force.  This is a very busy conference.  Presentations are either 8 minutes or 5 minutes.  So – in the course of 2 ½ days, there are about 90 presentations and 10 panel discussions.  The first time I worked this program – in 2009, I wasn’t prepared for the volume of presentations, or how quickly they would come at me.  After devising a storage and organization plan (with a lot of technical help from some smart computer guys that I know), I now have a much better system for taking in the presentations and getting them on-screen, that makes me far less frantic.

After the program was done for the day, my colleagues decided they wanted to stay in for the night.  I wanted to hit the grocery store, as well as stretch my legs.  I took a stroll down the Avenida 9 de Julio (9^th of July Avenue).  It is a 12 lane street – the main drag, as it were – near us.  In the center of the Avenida is El Obilesco – a monument erected in 1936 that resembles the Washington Monument.  I was taking pictures of El Obilesco, and put down my camera only to have a huge bolt of lightning flash behind the Obilesco - I missed it by about 3 seconds.  BUMMER!!  THAT would’ve been a great shot, don’t you think?  Then . . . it started to sprinkle & I was about a mile from my hotel.  I still had to hit the grocery store, and get some supper – so started to head back.  Just as I got to the grocery store, it started pouring!  Needless to say, I shopped rather slowly.  Fortunately, I got in the slowest checkout line (no matter where I go, I get the same thing), so the hardest rain let up by the time I left the store.  Then, grabbed some pizza, and back to my hotel to Skype with Lisa and Grace.

That about wraps up day #3.  Bye for now.

JBD