The Worst Thing About Journalism

The worst thing about journalism is doorstepping. Hands down.

I'm sitting outside the Agriculture Ministry on Paseo Colón, doorstepping an emergency meeting because of the drought that's affecting all the country's crops. It's blisteringly hot, I haven't had lunch and the nearest shop is at least 10 minutes' walk away - and I can't walk off to find food and water in case I miss the important ministers when (if) they come out to speak to the press.

I got the last-minute call an hour or so before lunch time. I'd been day-dreaming about lunch all morning... Sushi and salad at Green Eat... yes, please! Then suddenly, the phone rings and I'm summoned to the Agriculture Ministry to follow this meeting. 

"Shall I buy lunch on my way there?" I think to myself. I ponder. I ponder some more. "Nah, I'll be back in time for a late lunch and it'll be much nicer. And if it goes on for hours, I'll find something over there."

Big. Mistake.

First rule of journalism: Press conferences always start way after they're scheduled to start. It doesn't matter if you're in Argentina, the UK or Kazakhstan. One of the worst moments of my journalistic career was standing in the freezing cold in the middle of a golf course in St. Andrews, Scotland, waiting for then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown to exit the hotel where he'd been at a G-20 leaders' meeting. Were he to come out of the hotel, I was under strict instructions to pounce on him, ask questions and elicit breaking-news answers. Did I have any questions to ask him? Did I hell. And did he come out of the building? Did he hell. I waited there for over an hour and all I got were blue lips, rosy cheeks and freezing-cold mitts.

So I should've known better. At least with Gordongate I was well-fed. No such luck this time. I need a pee and I'm starving hungry. There are about 35 journalists here and I have no clue what I'm doing. Worse, they are all in pairs and can at least do tag-team to buy refreshments. And, very much like Gordongate, I have no questions to ask the minister when he comes out. Oh, and just to add insult to injury, I stubbed my toe on the freaking bank steps yesterday because the security guard was being so uncooperative, and now I'm limping around everywhere. Life sucks...!

In total, I spend five hours at the Agri Ministry. I eventually return to work, utterly ravenous and sun-scorched, with a very minor, very un-breaking-news-like three-line story. So that was worth it then...

Attempting to Bake in Argentina

Cooking outside your own country is never easy. The Irishman was on his way to visit me in Buenos Aires, arriving on his birthday, and I wanted to bake him a cake. 

I set out looking for ingredients in one of the biggest supermarkets around, but came a cropper as I got to baking powder and icing sugar. After about an hour pounding the aisles, I eventually found what I believed would be baking powder, purely because the logo looked familiar. 

Icing sugar, on the other hand, was a different story. It doesn't exist here. After much searching, I found some rock-hard packets of hardened chocolate and knew this would be the closest thing. Basically, you boil some water and then put the closed chocolate packet into the bowl of hot water so that it melts. Then you squeeze it out of the packet to cover the cake. Not exactly icing - just plasticky-tasting melted chocolate, but it was better than nothing.

Contending with my oven is hard at the best of times, but it was only when I came to bake the cake that I realised the knobs have no temperatures on them, so I pretty much guessed the temperatures. I also had to guess the weights and measurements of the flour and the rest because it was only at the last minute that I realised I had no weighing scales. I'd already spent a fortune buying baking tins and other equipment. Do men realise the lengths we go to?!

Makeshift cake icing...

I just about managed not to burn myself lighting the oven by sticking my hand into the gas chamber with an enormous matchstick and the cake came out 20 minutes later looking vaguely reasonable. I covered it in the weird melted chocolate stuff and finished off with chopped up minature alfajor biscuits. Well, beggars can't be choosers!

Ok, it's not exactly Hummingbird Bakery standards... But it's the thought that counts, right?

The 5k Debacle

I'm running the McDonalds 5k run in the Bosques de Palermo on Sunday - crazy, I know, for McDonalds to sponsor a run, but hey, I guess they have to do something good to offset all the burgers. Anyway, as usual, they can't just send out t-shirts and race packs in the post so I received an email explaining I must go to Alto Palermo shopping centre between certain hours of the evening to pick up the pack.

I head there straight after work as it's on my way home (sort of) and I go straight to the kiosk on the ground floor that says McDonalds 5k Run in big letters. After I've queued for ten minutes, a lady comes around with a clipboard, I find my name and she tells me I need to go to the first floor to collect my t-shirt. I head up to the first floor and queue for another five minutes before finding my name on the list and being told I need to go back to the ground floor to pick up my t-shirt. I refuse to do so, since I don't want to spend my entire Friday evening on this wild goose chase, so the heavily pierced young lady walkie-talkies down to try and sort it out for me. I wait and I wait and I wait.

Fifteen minutes later, I finally get my bright pink race pack. Nothing's easy in this place...

I spend the next half hour or so wandering around Alto Palermo. This is a hugely upmarket shopping centre - much more so than, say, The Trafford Centre or any UK shopping centre and I wonder where the rich Argentines get their money from. There are shops that are way more expensive than any high-street store in the UK and a leather jacket made in Argentina can easily set you back £500.

I buy a couple of pairs of earrings from a nice little kiosk and head home.

The Tube

After my horrendous "I hate Buenos Aires" tube experience last week, I heard there was a different route I could be taking to and from work, and have been taking it ever since. 

It involves a 20-minute walk for 10 blocks all the way up Fitz Roy to Dorrego station, and then it's a really simple straight tube journey for another 20 minutes or so to Florida station, which is a 2-minute walk from my office. I don't get a seat until I'm almost home, but on the way into work at 6:45am I can get a seat maybe 3 or 4 days out of 5, which is better than nothing.

The other thing about walking to the tube at 6:45am is that everyone is still out from the night before, particularly on Friday mornings after a Thursday night out. There are beer bottles in the street and students spilling out onto the pavements from bars. It all makes me feel very old and boring...

Riding the tube here is a bit like being in 80s Britain. Every single office worker wears grey, black or brown clothing, often seemingly corduroy or similarly bland outfits, and the hair dos range from 80s perms to mullets. Whereas I thought the tube in London was an antisocial place, in Buenos Aires it's a bit like a mortuary. Everyone just sits still with their head down, ignoring everyone else. They don't read books. At all. They just sit there. Well, it's a long journey so I take a book with me every day, sometimes a magazine, always in English, and people stare. They seem to think it's really odd. It's quite uncomfortable, really. God forbid one day I read a tourist guide or something...

On the way home it's just a game of sardines, rocking from side to side and bashing into each other while trying to keep hold of the flexi-handle things. And trying to keep my bag safe from pick pockets.

And I thought the London Underground was bad... Honestly, I take it all back. 

Nob Hill - one of the residential buildings I pass on my new route to work. Looks pretty nice actually!

Getting My Documents

Today it was time to get my documents in line to become an official Argentine (temporary) resident. Fortunately, my work hires a visa company to organise these things, and I just have to get a taxi to the Registro Nacional de Las Personas at 9am. A rather handsome and confident young man from the visa company immediately spots me as the stand-out Brit on arrival and greets me at the entrance to the government building. He begins speaking to me in very broken English and I have to wonder why he assumes I don't speak Spanish. Fair enough, I've only just moved to the country, but it's fairly safe to assume I will be able to at least get by in the local language, given that I'm working as a journalist here.

Mr Handsome escorts me to another entrance, where he isn't allowed to pass. He tells me to put my passport in a box at the front of the waiting room and then proceed to wait for up to two hours for my name to be called. He will wait outside. I wonder how incompetent my employer and the visa company must think we are if they think I can't do this myself without Mr Handsome waiting outside for me. I mean, not to be cocky, but it was more than 11 years ago that I moved to Brazil alone and managed to get myself a visa at the Federal Police station in back-of-beyond Palmas, Tocantins. If I could do that at the tender age of 18 with only three months of Portuguese then I think I can just about manage this one at age 29 years old, with 14 years of Spanish under my belt...

Nevertheless, Mr Handsome waits outside and I take a seat, immediately pulling out my Blackberry. After a few minutes, I start to hear some background noise and I look up to see that the security guard is trying to get my attention. What have I done now?! Mr Gruff Security Guard points at a sign behind me and I crook my neck around to see what he's pointing at.

"No Mobile Phones," reads the sign. Oh Jesus, no mobile phones in a waiting room?! Whatever next?

I look at my number tag. I'm number 104. The little ticker machine is on number 54. This is going to be quite a wait. And I have nothing to read.

I study my surroundings. The waiting room is packed full with hundreds of people, but they are almost all Hispanic-looking, with most of them speaking Spanish amongst themselves. At first, I think they are Argentines, but eventually I decide this place is definitely just a registry office for foreigners and therefore they must be from all over Latin America. I spy a few passports and realise they are Peruvians, Bolivians, Colombians mostly. I'm the only Brit I can see, though there appears to be one American.

A man comes around with a big silver tin of coffee and I jump at the chance of refreshment, since there is no shop or drinks stand in the building. I pay a few pesos for the coffee and take a sip. Uggh. It's full of sugar - there's actually sugar in the massive vat of coffee he's carrying. Gross. Why do South Americans automatically sweeten their coffee? 

Finally, after about two hours, my name is called and I get my photo taken and sign some forms. Now I just have to wait a couple of months and I'll be all official with my Argentine national ID card, the DNI! Yay!
 

My First Weekend Shift

Today is my first weekend shift at work - something I'm entirely used to, as a journalist, so I head towards Palermo station at 7am for a nice early start. The streets are deserted and the only people I see are drunken revelers heading back from their Saturday night out. After the ten-minute walk, I arrive at the subte station to find the entrance firmly gated shut. As I start to walk down the steps to see if there's a sign, I hear a man's voice from a few metres away.

"It opens at 8am," he says, looking at me as if I am an absolute lunatic for trying to get the tube to work at such a ridiculous hour on a Sunday morning. 

Jeez. This would never happen in London. I'm so surprised they don't open the underground network until 8am but I guess the guy is right, I'm the crazy one. Nobody goes to work at 7am on a Sunday morning - just me. Everyone else in the city is busy sleeping. 

I walk across the huge main road and check out the signs at the bus stop, but it's like trying to read Braille. I have no idea where all those stops are, and the map might as well be in Japanese. In any case, it doesn't look like any of the buses go from here to the Microcentro. (And who would want to go to the business centre on a Sunday morning anyway?!)

I begin to see people in matching "10k" t-shirts walking in the direction of the Bosques and I realise there's a coordinated race on this morning. Ah, that's the kind of thing I should be doing, instead of going to work! 

I decide to get a taxi, and end up back on the other side of the road near the man who thinks I'm crazy. He shakes his head in bemusement at me again as I finally manage to flag down a taxi. I begrudgingly pay the 8 pounds or so it costs to get to the centre.

On arrival at work, I find the main entrance thoroughly bolted with massive chains around the handles on the big glass double doors. What the...?  

I panic - was I suppose to let the security guards know I'm working today? Who do I call to let me in? I don't think I have a number... 

Eventually I notice there's a buzzer with a grate to the right of the door so I buzz the reception. A very sleepy-looking security guard who I've never seen before eventually ambles slowly to the glass doors and, after a thorough questioning, he lets me in. I explain that I work upstairs and he phones up to my office security guard before giving me the all-clear. Then he bolts the chains behind me, explaining that they have to keep the building locked up on evenings and weekends because of crime in the area. Wow.

The area is, of course, completely dead on weekends, and I know I have little chance of getting lunch near the office. It's a decent day, despite being overcast, so after a few hours' work, I walk down to Puerto Madero and cross the bridge to a very touristy deli restaurant called Market Place. I had been to this restaurant when I came to Buenos Aires with my parents in 2008 and was impressed with the freshly cooked food, but this time I find it overpriced, overcrowded and badly run. It takes ages to be served, and eventually I get a very dry and disappointing salad and sit outside to people-watch and enjoy the view before heading back to the office. 

Sunbathing on the roof

Back home in the evening, I decide to venture up onto the roof of my apartment building to watch the sun go down. I have to go up a narrow staircase and open a big, hot metal door with a key. I shut the door behind me and watch the beautiful sunset. The door is constantly banging behind me in the wind. 

When I descend to the second floor an hour later, I'm greeted by a rather riled-looking old lady who steps out of her apartment door to tell me off. She gives me a real talking to for allowing the door to keep banging while I was up on the roof. Apparently there's stone I was meant to put in front of the door to stop it banging, and she's really mad at me. Good way to make an impression with the new neighbours!

Back in my flat, I tuck into some of the salad and fresh quiche I bought at the organic market yesterday. Mmm, bliss. Maybe I can get used to Buenos Aires after all. 

The One Where The Bank Blocks My Card

Arrrgh! Is anything going to go right for me in this city?!

I get an e-mail from my Mum in the morning to tell me the fraud protection service at my bank left a message on her answerphone - one of the numbers I have listed in my contacts with the bank. Last Monday, I tried my card at an ATM in Palermo and had it denied. I even tried it at my own bank and it still didn't work. There are hardly any ATMs in the whole of Palermo and when I asked in the shops, they told me to go to the Microcentro, which is a whole half an hour away. How can a major shopping district for rich people do without cash machines? Especially when the supermarkets don't even take cards...

Anyway, I try calling the bank's 0845 number from the office but it doesn't work from outside the UK and there's some problem with the phones at work. My Mum tries calling and is told they can only speak to me personally. Eventually, after several attempts, my boss tells me it's ok to use my work mobile and I call from there. My card has been blocked because I didn't tell them I was moving to Argentina. Grrr! Anyway, no major harm done, and after a few security questions, my card eventually gets reactivated. 

At lunch, I find a cool place called Picnic, a vegan café/restaurant on Florida, right by Catedral subte station. They do great salads and interesting sandwiches, and the first floor eating area is perfect for people-watching. Argentina, unlike the UK, doesn't have many sandwich shops like Pret a Manger and Marks & Spencers, as there's no real lunchtime sandwich culture, so it's nice to find somewhere that reminds me of home a little.

Today's people-watching from the first floor of Picnic included this rather odd grey rectangular giant chasing an innocent pedestrian down Florida... 
 

The One Where I HATE Buenos Aires

I leave work at 6pm at usual and walk the ten minutes to Catedral station before descending the steps to the subte. To my surprise, there's a thick wall of people on the platform, about six deep until it reaches the platform edge. What the...? I'm used to this in London at rush hour, but it's the first time it's been like this here in a whole week so I know it's not normal. 

I could walk back up to street level and get a taxi, but I don't really want to spend money to get a taxi home from work when I can get the tube - I'm just going to have to get used to this. I wait and after five minutes or so, the train arrives. It's empty because  this is the first stop on the line, so the entire thick wall of sweaty bodies piles in and we stand like sardines, waiting for the doors to close. Unfortunately, because I was at the back of the human wall, I find myself crushed in the doorway between an enormous sweaty fat man and a couple of tall, skinny, long, greasy-haired men.

There seems to be a struggle for the doors to close and I hear a throat-clearing over the loud speaker, followed by a very short announcement from the driver. Unfortunately, I don't understand a word that he says as he speaks so quickly, except I know it's bad because it leads to a collective groan from the mass of sweaty passengers.

We stop at the next stop and dozens more people squeeze in, squashing me even tighter into my smelly human sandwich. Then, at the next station, we stop, but the doors don't open.  After a while, I hear the driver's voice again and this time I understand, "There is a problem with the doors. They won't open. We will continue to the end of the line, Congreso de Tucuman." 

Congreso de Tucuman?! That's 15 stops away! He gives us absolutely no opportunity to get off the now-moving train and we're forced to stand like sardines all the way to the very end of the green line. I can barely stand as the amount of floor space beneath me is not equivalent to the amount of space my feet take up and I'm practically on tiptoes, half crouching, one leg bent out to the side in excruciating fashion while I simultaneously try to keep hold of my two heavy bags. 

Finally, after about 15 minutes of slowly moving through stations without stopping, the train stops and I hear another muffled announcement. I don't quite catch all of it but, as the doors open, I realise I have an opportunity to alight and I seize it. I step off and follow the mass of people as they confusedly move up the escalator. This is Pueyreddón station. I know it's not too far from Palermo - five stops - and I can just get a taxi. The rest of the tube line seems to be broken anyway.

But the moment I step out of the station, I realise the sky is black and it is literally bucketing down with torrential rain. A hundred or more passengers have just got off at the same station and there are various buses letting people off too. There isn't a taxi in sight. I walk across the road and try to fathom the signs at the bus stops, but they make no sense. 

I wander further. Surely I'll find a bus at some point that's heading towards Palermo - it really isn't far, but it's too far to walk in this rain. I stand in a shop doorway and Blackberry my colleague back at work for advice and he tells me which buses to look out for, but there are none. 

I walk around in the rain, searching for a taxi. Several go past me with their lights on without stopping. More than one drives past and splashes me dirty black puddle water. As I get more and more saturated with the rain, I get more and more exasperated and allow myself to think, for the first time, I HATE Buenos Aires. How can there be no taxis in the rain? 

I walk for 30 minutes in the rain. It's coming down harder and the taxis seem to be more and more scarce. There's only one thing for it - I have to go back to the tube.

I've walked aimlessly and I have no idea where I am, so I have to just retrace my steps until I finally get back to Pueyrredón. I descend the steps and see that finally the platform has emptied out. A train eventually comes along and I get off ten minutes later at Palermo and walk the remaining ten minutes down the cold, dark, rainy streets to home, where I jump straight into a hot shower.

It's taken me 1 hour and 50 minutes to get home. In London it used to take me 25 minutes. This is insane! I've missed my usual Skype slot with home and I'm so exhausted I'm not going to be able to do anything tonight. It's getting late. At this rate, my life is going to be working and commuting and nothing else.

Ugggh.

There's only one thing for it - I'm going to have to start running home.


 

Buenos Aires Woes

Why is everything so difficult here?

Woe #1 - The sardine-effect on the subte. Whereas in London I would at least get a seat after a couple of stops of being squashed in a hot, sweaty, human sandwich, here I have to stand for my entire 10-stop journey, while I get jolted from left to right, hitting my fellow passengers with my enormous bag as I go.

Woe #2 - The oven in my flat is from about 1853. There is no button to light the stove or the oven. After two days of vain attempts, my neighbour finally came around last night and showed me how to light it manually with a super-long match. I have a massive fear of fire. This is not good.

Woe #3 - The supermarkets don't take cards. What is all that about?!


Yesterday, on my way home from the Palermo Soho experience, I decided to stop at one of the small local supermarkets in Palermo Hollywood to pick up a few bits and pieces.

I fill my shopping basket with a ton of essentials - shampoo, conditioner, bread, toilet roll. I am shocked to find a loaf of bread that's 16 pesos. That's about £2! A small bottle of non-main-branded ketchup is also about £3 and practically everything is more expensive than it would be in England. I can barely believe it. No wonder the restaurants are so full here - it's cheaper to eat out than in!

Finally I get to the counter and the Chinese dude behind the till puts all my items through. I go to pay with my credit card and he shakes his head at me.

"No credit cards," he says in heavily accented Spanish.

"Why?" I say, thinking the machine is simply broken.

"No credit cards in supermarket," he says. This is a permanent thing, it's not just for today. 

I have racked up more than 100 pesos of goods and I only have 60 pesos in change, so I have to put most of it back. The shop assistant looks at me as if I am stupid.

Bear in mind this is a decent-sized supermarket, larger than, say, a Tesco Metro or Sainsburys Local in the UK. And they don't take credit or debit cards. Unbelievable!