Holiday music

There are probably fewer than 100 really standard Christmas songs in the world. The ones that truly stick are very simple tunes, things that non-musical, drunk relations can approximately remember and sing, with moderate ranges and few accidentals. Large books of 100+ Christmas standards seem to end up resorting to nonstandard songs. The standard songs get repeated endlessly in stores and shopping centers around this time of year.

I probably also dislike Christmas music more than most people because I've played lots of it. Anyone who plays music invariably ends up in a holiday concert or two, and because most standard Christmas tunes are relatively short and simplistic, they get crammed together into cheesy medleys, often with jarring key and tempo changes. The only other challenges to playing such pieces in a group are agreeing with the others in the group as to how many times to repeat the choruses, and not getting too bored rehearsing them.

A couple of years ago, Scott and I were in Italy around the holidays. On the whole, it was a great trip. All the churches, big and small, and all the towns put up elaborate creches and try to outdo each other. Venice also had a gorgeous Murano glass tree in the main square, lighted from inside. And because it's not really the tourist season, it's less crowded at the major landmarks, which also suited us fine.

There were also lots of buskers in Italy, folks on street corners playing music, hoping for tips. From Pompeii to Milan, they all played Jingle Bells, which has even fewer notes than most and requires no particular talent or finesse. One particularly dreadful rendition was from a saxophonist honking it loudly in one train car, then the next. It was getting on my nerves, so I told Scott that we should tip the first guy who was playing something besides Jingle Bells.

It was towards the end of our trip from south to north that we crossed one of the larger bridges in Venice. At the top of the arch, at night, in the cold, was a violinist playing Silent Night, decently well. Scott pointed out that he wasn't playing Jingle Bells, and we tossed a coin in his case.

Selling thrift

These folks are selling "high frugality dish towels." In case the link vanishes someday, the attached screenshot will enlarge if you click on it.

I'm basically in favor of the sentiments printed on these dish towels: drink tap water, compost, grow and cook your own food at home. I generally do these things already, and have for years.

But did you see the price? They want $45 for the set of four dish towels. Doesn't that strike you as something less than frugal? Even after we grow the cotton in an environmentally responsible manner and pay somebody, somewhere fair wages to spin and weave and sew it (presumably by machine), doesn't $12 strike you as a bit much for a dish towel?

Here is my idea of a frugal kitchen towel: all those already in my drawer. They came from wherever they came from, but I'm sure they're all at least three or four years old. I plan to keep on using them for quite some time to come. I may even mend small holes. I won't replace them to be trendy or to look good in my kitchen. They're still dish towels, and as far as I'm concerned, they look fine in my kitchen already. I will continue to wash and reuse them and avoid using paper towels, and if ever they reach the point where they're just too stained or full of holes to be worth continuing to use in the kitchen, I will relegate them to rag duty and go on using them for rags. When I get to that point, I may read the label to see where they came from, but I don't think I'll pay $12 a towel for cutesy designer ones.

NaNoWriMo inspiration

If you'd like to read the very first part of this year's novel, there is an excerpt here under Novel Info although the site is sometimes slow to respond during November.

A little over a year ago, I went with Scott to see author Brandon Sanderson speak at a bookstore nearby. For those who don't know him, Brandon Sanderson authored, among other things, Elantris and Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians. So far, I have managed to read only the latter. Brandon Sanderson also has the amazing but daunting job of finishing the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. It is the work that will probably make his other works more famous.

Sanderson was not the only author in attendance that evening. David Farland also attended, read an excerpt, and spoke about his writing process. After both had spoken and people came up to get books signed, David Farland had spoken to the handful of people who were interested and was still sitting there as Brandon Sanderson continued shaking hands and signing books. Since there was no line, I decided to talk to David Farland.

November was approaching, so I asked if he had heard of National Novel Writing Month. He had. I asked him what he thought of it. He said he liked the idea. (One of the hardest thing about writing a full-length novel is getting going to do it. The plot gets a bit stuck, the inner critic gets started complaining about what a mess you've made already, and Chapter Two never quite gets written. NaNo makes it a race, so there is motivation to press on even if things are not going exactly according to plan.)

He asked if I was going to write that year (2008). I told him I had written in 2006. I got to 50,000 words. I don't think I'd spend another minute on it, and I don't think I'd print out the manuscript if I needed to prop up the too-short leg of a sofa. Brandon Sanderson also described writing five "practice" novels that he will never publish before even attempting to publish one.

David Farland smiled and said, "Yes, but you learned something, didn't you?"

He was exactly right. I wrote in 2008, and while the result was far from perfect, it is something I could envision revising and showing at least to friends. It was also a lot easier. I picked an easier premise, planned the plot a little bit better, and generally had more fun with it. This year, so far, has proved even easier in all those respects.

I may never publish a novel, but at least I will learn what it's like to write one, what is involved in the process, and several things to do differently next time.

Greeks and Leeks

I went to the farmer's market today, and as I was buying some plums, the vendor in the next booth was talking a blue streak about how expensive the war was and how much longer his leeks were than any you'd find in stores. He was brandishing one of these leeks at potential customers, and it was about two feet long.

He was proclaiming that he and his veggies were from "San Guan Bautista" and I was thinking that his couldn't possibly be a Spanish accent, or he'd know how to pronounce that, and it wasn't quite Italian, either, although he sort of looked like he might be.

I asked him where he was from, originally. Greece, he said. Did I know where that was? I was, in fact, aware of such a place. I could pick it out on a map, and I even recall visiting once, but he proceeded to explain it to me, anyway. And then the rant shifted to how England had taken all the valuable antiquities, but they might maybe give some of them back if Greece builds a big, new building for them. (Being vocal and opinionated is a favorite pastime of many older Greek men.)

I explained to him that I'm cooking for only myself and I really have no use for long leeks. By the time I cut up one of his enormous leeks, I'd have six days' worth of leftovers before I added a single other thing to the soup.

I was still standing there, clutching my bag of veggies, trying to stand aside of the fire hose of rants, halfway listening, and taking in the expressions on his neighbors' faces, when two women walked up and asked the price of broccoli. He told them, and they must have taken him for Italian, because they said "grazie" as they turned to retreat.

I corrected them, "ευχαριστώ". I'm sure they didn't get it, but he repeated, "yes, ευχαριστώ πολή", and went right back to ranting in English without even bothering to ask if I knew any more Greek or how come I knew the word, or anything.

Perhaps if I can manage it, I'll try asking him the price of onions-or-something next week, in Greek, and see what language comes back with the answer. Something tells me, though, that if I convince him to start speaking Greek, convincing him to stop is going to be even harder.

A long bus trip to Salta

I did most of my trips within Argentina by air, simply because it is faster, but I arrived to Salta by bus. I think many people who live in Argentina do much of their traveling this way because it is cheaper than flying. In any case, it is very well planned.

The cama buses are designed for sleeping during long trips, and the trips themselves seem to be designed with sleeping in mind. The bus terminal is impressive. It has the feel of an airport inside, with lots of people coming and going, snack stands, shops, and so on. Instead of gates it has bus stalls lining one side of the loop outdoors. There are perhaps 80 or 100 stalls in the bus terminal in Buenos Aires. I suspect most of the smaller terminals have fewer stalls than this. The ticket doesn't say "Stall 32" but "Stall 30-35," meaning somewhere in this range, and that's generally close enough.

They had something set up that looked a bit security-ish, but they didn't appear to be checking much of anything. I showed the person there my ticket and he didn't seem too interested. He just shooed me through the door, out to the stalls, which are all connected. (Speaking excellent English is occasionally an advantage in convincing some officials that a conversation should be a short one.) Within about five stalls of the right bus turns out to be quite sufficient in finding the right bus.

Checking luggage consisted of handing the suitcase in question to the person standing by the back of the bus, who did take a look at the ticket and try to load the last stop's luggage first.

The bus is quite well-equipped. Quite a few bus companies compete for business, and I think it helps to have nice amenities. The cama buses cost a bit more, but the seats are larger (frankly too large for me) and recline further. The seat in front has a leg rest that folds out. It doesn't become a flat bed, but it's still fairly comfortable for sleeping, which is good because it's about a 20 hour trip from Buenos Aires to Salta.

There is also a bus attendant, who acts like a flight attendant. The next time you're on an expensive, domestic airline flight that refused to check your bag without an extra fee and didn't include more than sodas, consider this. The bus to Salta included meals. There's a lap tray with reliefs for the knees and raised edges so nothing goes sliding off.

They served a late-afternoon tea around five in the evening. Even once I convinced the bus attendant that perhaps Spanish would work, I couldn't convince him of, "nothing with caffeine," so he brought me a little bit of tea to go with my alfajor and the other cookie.

Around 9:30 or 10:00pm, just as I was starting to think that the tea was a little bit slim and beginning to ponder the granola bar I had tucked into my purse, the attendant came around with dinner. There was a salad of some sort, followed shortly by a foil tray full of pasta with tomato sauce and cheese, and some sort of little sweet. It was better than anything I've ever had on an airplane in the U.S.

There were a couple of movies along the way. I ignored one movie, in favor of my book. The one I watched (I've forgotten the title) was not a great one. I ended up following the subtitles in Spanish because the English audio was turned so low I couldn't really make out the words. The attendant made a point to explain to me (once he was convinced that I'd get it if he spoke slowly) that one of the other videos was Salteño music and dance. I watched parts of that one.

Bedtime was comfortable, and I managed to sleep most of the night, except that the stops woke me up. As I learned from another traveler later on, it's possible to get robbed without even leaving a bus. People did enter our bus selling magazines and other items. I'm a bit surprised the bus company tolerated it, but evidently they either tolerated it or turned their backs long enough. I'm glad I woke up at least a little at the several stops. They were usually signaled by the bus getting off the highway to lumber across town.

The morning meal consisted of a couple of packaged pastries and another drink, simple but good. And sometime shortly after noon, I arrived in the bus depot in Salta, collected my bag, found a restroom, and requested a taxi at the taxi stand.

The person behind the counter at the hostel had a paper map, a recommendation for a restaurant for lunch (a huge meal with more individual attention than I really needed for about $4; things are cheaper in Salta than Buenos Aires), and various suggestions of what to see around town. He explained it all in Spanish, and it all made sense.

It's a beautiful part of the country, and I'm very glad I went. I'm also glad I tried the bus, once.

An international exchange

It happened one evening in Tigre (photo) and again on a Saturday afternoon in Salta. I happened across a pair of guys juggling in a park. They weren't passing the hat, just passing equipment, practicing their juggling.

I watched them for awhile, and tried to wait until they were between patterns. Then I did something that women tourists probably don't do too often. I asked if I could juggle, too. They were a little surprised, I suppose, but they gladly offered me the use of their equipment to see what I could do.

I'm not the greatest juggler in the world, and I was pretty out of practice, but I can keep three balls and (usually) three clubs in the air, and do a couple of extra things with them, and in both places, I ended up teaching a couple of tricks. My Spanish isn't really equipped to teach juggling, so we all fumbled along in some mixture of Spanish and English and gesture. Words like "inside" and "outside" and "here" and "sooner" all served well. However we managed it, I'm glad we did. It was an opportunity

They all had clubs. One had very dirty professionally-made balls; the other three had tired tennis balls filled with rice or sand and taped over. (Tennis balls alone are too light and bouncy to juggle comfortably.) The fellow in the photo above had torches, of course, and he let me try them, too. It had been a very long time since I had last juggled torches, but I managed it a little bit.

Lost in the Subte

During the first week or so of my trip, there were people hanging around from the conference, and I mostly got from here to there by finding somebody who was going somewhere interesting and following along. Scott was the sort of person who could get off a train somewhere in Italy and turn the right direction. I'm not.

The first day I ventured out by myself, I decided to make my way across town to the MALBA, a modern art museum well to the northwest of where I was staying. Following my trusty, little street map (purchased at a bookstore in California), I hopped on a train, and headed for a dotted line. The line was labeled 'H', and there is a subway line named that, so I thought that was where I was going.

I got off at the station to transfer to H, and wandered around reading signs for a good, long time. It's possible to get from any one Subte station to any other on a single $1.10 ticket, so I was taking care not to exit any turnstiles, but some of the tunnels between stations run for a block or two underground.

There was a subway official standing there, monitoring the turnstiles I was not exiting, and he must have seen me looking exceedingly lost. He asked me where I was going. This was one of the times when my Spanish wasn't quite working at full speed, but I explained which station I thought I was going to, and he assured me I could not go that way. I showed him my street map. It turns out the planned H line only runs south from A, not north. My street map had the entire planned route as a dotted line.

In the process of explaining all this to me, the subway official decided he did not like my map. It is, he explained, a street map, and what I needed was a subway map. He fished around for awhile in the little pouch he was carrying and pulled out a pocket-sized copy of the official Subte* map. I had seen this map advertised in several of the Subte stations, but others from the conference who had asked about getting one were told that they were unavailable. Apparently, the trick is to find the right official at the wrong station and be hopelessly lost.

He explained where I should go, which was most of the way back to where I had begun and then onto another train, and I wandered off down the ramp. It turned out to be the wrong ramp, leading to some other train. He actually followed me down the ramp, turned me around, and walked me to the correct ramp. I'm pleased to report that I made it to the museum successfully (if later than planned) on my own, and didn't get lost on the Subte again at all after that. The new map served me well for several more trips out.

Now, for some reason, when I was out on my own, people came up to me to ask directions. It happened at least half a dozen times. I'm sure that if the words to explain that I wasn't from there didn't get the point across, the accent surely did. But the very last time I took the Subte in Buenos Aires, somebody getting on the train asked as I was getting off where the train went. I showed them my street map (not the one the official had given me; it was quite usable once I knew how to read it), and I in fact pointed them to the right train. They asked where I had gotten the map, and all I could tell them was, "from a bookstore in California."

There's one more postscript to this story. The wiki community includes various train aficionados, several of whom expressed jealousy (or at least interest) regarding my copy of the unavailable Subte map they had seen advertised. So I attempted to scan it. It is a little too large for the bed of my scanner, so I fiddled around scanning it in sections. I had only started to fiddle with the possibility of sticking the sections back together when I discovered the inscription about the Subte website. If you'd like to see a very nice, complete copy of the official map, you need only look here.

*Subte is short for "subterráneo".

A few awkward restaurant visits

The first time I ate a meal alone in Argentina, it was stranger than the other times I had dined there. I wandered into a restaurant at lunchtime and...nothing happened. The waiters did not come greet me, or ask me how many were dining. They just sort of stared. It seemed to happen whenever I dined alone. I found my own table and sat down there, and they proceeded to bring me a menu.

I ordered the hamburguesa. As I waited for the order to come, I saw that I was the only woman in a rather crowded restaurant (I still haven't figured out why, but other women did come in later). What came was a pair of patties with nothing on them, and a pile of fries. No buns, no lettuce, and so on. To order a hamburger as we know it, it's necessary to order the hamburguesa completa.

The napkins are different in restaurants in Argentina. If they bring you a fabric napkin, it's just the same as here, but the paper napkins used at sandwicherías and parillas (grills) are small, tissue paper affairs. They're not very absorbent, except when it comes to grease. They do work very well on grease, but it may take two or three to get the job done.

In fancier restaurants, the kind with cloth napkins, I often received bread with no bread plate. I guess I was just supposed to scatter crumbs all over the tablecloth, or at least that's what I ended up doing. After the meal, I always had to ask for the check. The waiters assume folks want to hang around and talk, otherwise.

The part I missed until I got back is that I was expected to seat myself, which is not the norm in a sit-down restaurant here at home. I felt like a bit of an intruder plunking down in any old seat, but that was exactly what they expected me to do. I only figured it out by asking somebody who lives there, after I got home. Next time I'll know.