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Buenos Aires News: Edition 13

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Gay marriage is now legal in Buenos Aires after President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner signed the bill into law last week.  Perhaps the best headline I saw about this was, “Argentina approves gay divorce.” :) Here’s what else is making news over the past week:

Argentine Peso Gets Lift From Record Soy Harvest as Volatility Gauge Sinks [Bloomberg]
Argentine currency traders are reducing expectations for peso fluctuations to the lowest since March as a record soybean harvest swells export revenue in South America’s second-biggest economy. Economists predict it will weaken to 4.2 per dollar by year-end, according to the median of 13 estimates in a Bloomberg survey. The consensus forecast was 4.5 per dollar a year ago.

Buenos Aires on a leash [The Christian Science Monitor]
Argentine dogs live a life of pampered sophistication in this elegant city as dog walkers can earn more than teachers here.

Debate over legalising abortion intensifies in Argentina [BBC]
After the recent vote by the Argentine Congress to legalize same-sex marriage, the legalization of abortion seems set to be the next big debate in the country.

American, JetBlue partner on select flights at JFK [Crains]
JetBlue, light on overseas options, links passengers to Europe, South America and Japan via American flights, while American sends domestic passengers to 18 new cities via JetBlue.

BA Construction Activity Rises 10% [InvestBA]
Recent headlines regarding Buenos Aires real estate sales activity have been improving steadily this year, and La Nación says builders are starting to feel equally optimistic. During the first five months of 2010, the construction industry posted a 10% increase in new projects under development, while the sale of condominiums and single-family homes advanced 7.1%, according to the Universidad Argentina de la Empresa (UADE).

Lower Congress Approves Glacier Protection Law [The Argentina Independent]
After 12 hours of debate, Argentina’s Chamber of Deputies approved a law that would limit mining and oil drilling activity in the country’s Andean ice fields on Thursday morning. The legislation’s provisions are similar to a glacier protection law that President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner controversially vetoed in 2008.

Maradona to continue as Argentina coach [AP]
Diego Maradona will reportedly remain as coach of Argentina’s national team, a decision he is expected to announce next week after meeting with Argentine Football Association president Julio Grondona.

What’s the deal with Buenos Aires? [NY Post]
Argentina’s capital is overhyped, overcrowded and terrifically annoying. It also might be one of the best places you’ll ever visit.

Private Parking Lots Forced To Offer Space For Bikes In Buenos Aires [TreeHugger]
In a city where bike theft is a very good reason to make you doubt about riding somewhere, providing parking facilities is almost as important as creating new bike paths. This is the case in Buenos Aires (and many cities around the world), and the reason why it’s so good to hear that the government has pushed a new law to provide several bike-parking facilities, including spaces inside private parking lots at lower rates. If you ride in Buenos Aires or are thinking about doing it, you need to read this.

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Buenos Aires News: Edition 5

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Fires Burn Over 1,200 Acres In Argentina [LAHT]
A state of emergency has been declared in Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego province, where more than 500 hectares (1,234 acres) of forest have been scorched by several fires, forcing the evacuation of dozens of people, officials said Sunday.

Argentine automakers to sell at cost, protect jobs [Reuters]
Argentine automakers will sell basic models at cost through state-subsidized loans in a plan to protect jobs in Latin America’s third-biggest economy from the global economic slowdown. Local plants of Renault SA, General Motors, Peugeot, Ford Motor Co. and other automakers will participate in the government’s plan to protect 150,000 auto industry jobs and to keep production from falling steeply next year.  Now this is an interesting idea!

Argentine Unions Want Floor for Peso Devaluation [Bloomberg]
Argentina’s union leaders want the government to put a limit on the peso’s devaluation, claiming that a softer currency will fuel inflation and undermine workers’ buying power.

Madge blows $1 million in hotel bill [The Times of India]
Madonna reportedly shelled out a million dollars on the Four Seasons hotel in Buenos Aires after she and her crew checked out from its posh premises. The megastar blew an alleged 9,000 dollars per night to stay at the hotel’s private mansion while her 200 backing dancers, singers, make-up artists, choreographers, managers and security checked into another 110 rooms – costing at least 600 dollars each.  Now, I know where at least part of my ticket money went!

Argentina Gun Swap Wildly Successful [IPS]
As a disarmament campaign launched 17 months ago in Argentina nears its end, the government and civil society groups involved in the initiative announced that it has far exceeded even the most optimistic projections, despite the lack of publicity.  The Interior Ministry reported that the programme, in which people voluntarily swap their firearms for cash, has so far collected over 102,000 guns and 721,000 munitions, all of which were destroyed.

Why Have So Many Restaurants Closed in Buenos Aires?  (english version) [La Nacion]
An interesting read, about the closure and pending closures of almost 300 restaurants in Buenos Aires due to the economic crisis. Many of these restaurants had relied on the tourist market and thus increased prices so significantly that they lost the locals. It will be intersting to see if the new visa tax that goes into effect on January 1 will cause a further decline in tourism and what the fallout will be.

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Random Observations: Weeks 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, & 18

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Yep, as the title shows, it’s been awhile since we’ve posted any of our random observations. Why you may ask?  I think it’s a combination of having too much work to do as well as becoming more familiar with our surroundings.  It’s amazing how quickly one adapts to their surroundings and things you once thought of as strange become commonplace. 

So, what are some of the things that we haven’t quite adapted to and still notice? Well…

  • Now that it’s summer, we’ve been constantly battling the mosquitos here. In NYC, mosquitos never seemed to be a problem, but here they must have ample breeding ground because we have them all the time. It doesn’t help that screen windows don’t seem to exist here either.  We’re about to make a trip to Easy (like Home Depot) to see about buying some screen and trying to rig something up.
  • There’s still dog poop all over the sidewalks. The summer heat makes it even more enjoyable.
  • Driving is still insane here – taxi drivers are crazy, lanes in the road are not observed, stop signs are simply “suggestions to stop,” and pedestrians never have the right of way.

And, we have noticed some new things too:

  • It's Candy HereHalls are just another candy here, and not something that you only take when you’re not feeling well. Our Spanish tutor offered us some “dulces” (sweets) the other day and proceeded to pull out a pack of Halls.  They’re also sold in all the kioscos and come in a  lot of varieties.  I suppose this is much better for the Halls company as they can sell a lot more here.
  • My Spanish has improved a lot in the 4+ months we’ve been here (although I did originally think that at this point I would be much better than I am now, but that’s another story). Anyhow, the issue now isn’t knowing the right word to use, it’s how to pronounce it. I still can’t believe that it often takes me several tries to properly pronounce a word and the people I’m talking to still can’t figure out what I mean. It’s not like it’s that far off!  I would think that they could infer what I mean, but nope, that doesn’t seem to happen much.
  • Breaking a $100 peso bill here is always a real pain.  The $100 peso bill is worth about U$S 30, but breaking it is about the same as trying to buy a pack of gum with a U$S 100 bill back home. The stange thing is that $100 peso bills are the most common bills to get at the ATM. We’ve now reached the point where whenever we buy something over $50 pesos, we try to use a $100 peso bill if we have it just so we can hoard the smaller bills we receive back. We also use them whenever we go to the grocery store or a larger store, because small merchants hate breaking them.
  • I always wondered what the motorcycle helmet laws were here, and luckily, Michele and Tom’s Blog answered my question. It turns out that the law requires that you have a helmet on your person when riding a motorcycle. This means that it does not have to be on your head, so you quite often see people with the helmet half on their head, hanging on their arm, etc.

Ok, that’s all for now, but we promise we’ll try and post more frequently.

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Buenos Aires News: Edition 4

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Seems like our new Buenos Aires News idea was popular enough to be “borrowed” on another site, so I guess we’re doing something right.  (Though some credit would have been nice.)

Argentina Playboy Bunny Campaigns for Whales in Chile  [Merco Press]
Argentine top model Vanesa Carbone cat-walked topless in front of the Japanese embassy in Santiago de Chile to protest Japan’s indiscriminate whale hunting and the use of animal skins in human clothing. Save the whales! (And yes, there is a photo on their site too.)

Spain’s Bets Sour in Latin America [Wall Street Journal]
Argentine lawmakers Wednesday approved a draft law to seize back the country’s largest airline Aerolineas Argentinas and its subsidiary Austral from its owners, the Spanish group Marsans. The measure approved by Argentina’s lower house of Congress Wednesday declared Marsans’ properties to be “of public utility,” which is enough under Argentine law to allow expropriation. Marsans claims the airline is worth $250 – $450 million while the Argentine government wants to pay 1 peso (.30 cents) for the airline.

Argentine political soap opera bubbles along [San Francisco Chronicle]
Argentine Vice-President Julio Cobos has become an outcast in the government after he cast the tie-breaking vote in July’s farmer’s strike against his boss President Cristina Fernandez, but his popularity soared.  His approval rating is twice that of the president in some approval polls, but that doesn’t mean it’s any easier to come to work for him.

Yes, We Have No Monedas! [Slate]
Subtitled “Inside the world’s most annoying economic crisis,” this is yet another story about the shortage of coins in Buenos Aires and the many interesting ways people are dealing with it. Michelle and Tom’s blog has their own interesting experiences with the Argentine coin shortage. Truly a strange problem to see…

Fernandez Unveils Stimulus Plan for Argentine Economy [Bloomberg]
Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has unveiled a 13.2 billion-peso ($3.9 billion) plan to spur the country’s consumption and exports in a bid to counter the effects of the global financial crisis. Whether it works or not remains to be seen.

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