Nopo huevon! Cachai? - Lenny back in Chile...again

Not again...!

2007-10-27T17:22:00.000-05:00

Damnit! Fate really hasn’t smiled upon me lately. So, I was meeting up with my friend Carla at Starbucks to do some recordings. I brought my notebook, and I don’t even know why, since I didn’t use it at all. Well, we did the recordings and since we both had kind of a shitty day, we decided to have an easy-peesy beer to round off the day at her favorite bar “Hemingway’s”. It was quite a walk, but we stayed firm and didn’t take the bus. We got there had a beer and a really good time chatting, laughing. We finished our beer, paid the bill, were about to leave and... where is my backpack?! Allow me to introduce myself: Lennart Kluge, Chilean thieves’ new favorite target. Blond, english speaking, perfect. This guy must have at least 300,000 dollars on him all the time. And the family jewels. As if it wasn’t enough that they stole my fucking wallet three weeks ago, they also had to steal my backpack with my computer in there! And it’s still a mystery to me how they did it. My backpack was between my chair and the wall. Hell, my leg was even touching it. But the wall was just a separating wall in the middle of this place and it ended right behind my chair. So I guess the thieves were sitting at the table around the corner and just waited for a moment in which I was a little distracted to just snatch my backpack from around the corner.

It is not so much the actual value of the machine they stole, but the files and other information on my computer that are now lost forever. Naturally I don’t have a backup copy. I think throughout the coming weeks I will experience this loss bit by bit everytime I realize I need a file on my computer in order to do something. I don’t even wanna think about the fact that they hardly can sell a computer with a German keyboard here in Chile and will probably charge a ridiculously low price on the black market. But I am doing fine so far. It seems like there was nothing on my computer without which I couldn’t do at the moment. Plus, my flatmate Marina has been so nice and lets me use her computer while she is at work (which is why I am able to write this here). Also, my friend Pamela has an “excess” computer which she might lend me for the time being.

Some of my friends are kind of surprised that I apparently got over this loss so quickly and that I am already cracking jokes about it. In situations like these I always remember what my grandfather, whom I never knew, used say to my dad when he was a kid: “Son, don’t get upset about things you cannot change anyway.” I think that is a healthy attitude and I am trying to live it.

...and at least I am not that poor bastard who posted once at his university something like:

Computer stolen!

You can keep the computer but could you please take the CD with the label “Diploma thesis” out of the drive and leave it in my mailbox at Schillerstr. 14.

Thanks!

Now, THAT guy is in trouble...

Officially Gringofied

2007-10-22T21:10:00.000-05:00

OK, time to update this thing again. I’ve had a lot of what I would like to call “social obligations” lately which did not allow for a more frequent maintenance of this blog. Also “social obligations” sounds a lot better than “getting wasted with friends and people that become friends after three Cuba Libre”.

But I don’t want to leave the impression that I haven’t done shit the last weeks and only been partying out. On the contrary, I’ve been a good boy and went on with my job search, in which scope I carried on with my usual activities (online search, newspapers, etc.) as well as continued building my network and met more or less important people that could possibly help me out. However, all in all what happened ever since my last post either isn’t really worth writing about or is just none of your business.

Anyway, in a nutshell, I am a bit disappointed with the outcome of the interview on the job fairs that I had, since almost everything has been postponed so far. Resulting from one of the job fairs, I was invited to one further interview, but have been kicked out right after the first (weird) group interview. And I am still waiting for the others… ah, well… As of now, I am still unemployed (One of the first things I sure as shit would do, is to update my blog as soon as I had a job, so don’t worry about that), I am in two processes, and still try to get a hold of a certain individual in another company (who is never in her office) in order to get my foot in. Please forgive me for being a little superstitious and paranoid, but I prefer not to name the companies at this point. However, if I am lucky my period of unemployment might end by the end of this week. So better knock on wood.

The only thing that had happened to me the last weeks worth mentioning is what I would like to call my “official gringofication”:

A few weekends ago my Finnish ex fellow student from my university in Germany who now works in El Salvador, came with her Canadian boss to Chile on a business trip. (I just love globalization :)) Since she knew that I was also here, we met up. Naturally, I showed them around town a little bit, what entailed a few rides on the metro (subway, tube, S-Bahn, whatever you wanna call it). Of course we spoke English on the metro, which always calls a lot of attention. But as I was not alone and talking to my phone but with two people, I felt not as uncomfortable as usual.

So, all of a sudden some fat guy that was next to me bent over and made sounds as if he was about to puke right in front of my feet. In a reflex, I leapt backwards. His little fit was over after about 10 seconds and he got off at the next stop apologizing and indicating to me that he apparently drank too much. After the first shock, we were all laughing about it and cracking our jokes. We got off the next stop and I felt so young and energetic that I decided to sprint up the stairs to the surface.

Having arrived upstairs, we were crossing the street to get to the central market, our actual destination…when I realized that my wallet was gone. Shit. In a snap reaction I ran downstairs the metro station again in the initial belief that my wallet fell out of my pocket during my little sprint to the surface. But once I was downstairs, that little incident on the metro dawned on me again. I thought it through one more time.

That guy pulled off an enormous show, pretending as if he was about to throw up in the middle of the metro. Of course he had the attention of all surrounding passengers on his side. Including me. So, noone noticed nothing. As he was faking his involuntary personal protein spill (thanks to George Carlin for this great euphemism) towards me, I jumped right into the arms of his companion behind me, who then just had to serve himself from my front pocket. My FRONT pocket! Hell, even I have troubles getting my wallet out of there. But what can you say, these guys are professionals.

After this realization of events I returned to the surface…broken, desperate. Apparently my friend and her boss had the same train of thoughts while I was down there and came to the same conclusion. And we all damned ourselves for not having realized what had been going on while we were still on the metro, as these guys naturally couldn’t beat it instantly after having robbed me but had wait for the metro to stop. It kinda gives me the chuckles that my friend and her boss didn’t realize what was going on, since they are living in a country where stuff like that is a lot more common than here. And by the way: I usually never go out with more than 30,000 pesos (ca. 40 EUR) on me. Of course, THAT day I made an exception and left the house with more than 70,000 pesos (ca. 100 EUR). Oh well, shit happens.

The thing is, I don’t really mind about the 70,000 pesos. However, I DO mind that my friggin debit card was in my wallet. No debit card, no access to my German current account. Which leaves me with severe liquidity problems. I still do have money… I just can’t access it. So I didn’t have another choice but to ask my dear friend Joakim to lend me some money. And I am afraid I have to do it again. I already took care of the problem and told my bank to wire some money to my friends account here… however, I did this about one and a half weeks ago and the money still isn’t here. I am starting to get worried. Next time I will try it through Western Union. I hope that will work.

I also asked my bank to send me a new debit card. But they told me that they already send out the new debit cards for this year and that mine is most probably at my parents’ house. Great. I didn’t really plan on worrying them even more about my current situation, but I guess, I don't have any other chanche but to tell them now.

So this was the story how I got officially “gringofied”. I guess you’re not a real gringo if you haven’t got robbed yet. Sorry, didn’t post any pictures again, but I really don’t take that many pictures. Plus there wasn’t even an event that would justify taking my camera. And if there was, you could have counted on me having forgotten my camera. Instead I will post some of my recent favourite Youtube videos. Deal?

Everybody knows this song, but I just laughed my ass of seeing the video… long live the 80s!

Can you believe I already know this shit by heart? I think there are better things to waste your grey cells on…

What really happened in Star Wars!

Deloitte woll'n das was passiert...

2007-08-27T20:35:00.000-06:00

Hmm, it actually looks like my Plan B is taking some serious shape now. Last Monday I went to the institute where I want to start teaching English, talked to the head teacher for 10 minutes and left the building with an interview appointment for Wednesday afternoon. Went there on Wednesday did the interview and now I am invited to the one-week training session for teachers starting on today. The final decision of whether they will hire me or no will be made on Friday after the last training session. However, I am positive that I will do a good job. Other than that, I was told from people that taught English before that it’s highly unlikely that they turn me down as there is a huge demand for English teachers in Santiago. But I’d rather not be too sure about it and start my training session with due motivation. Finally something to do again!

It must have something to do with the time of the year, because all of a sudden job fairs here in Santiago sprung up like mushrooms… well, to be exact, there are three job fairs… and one I can’t go to since it’s exclusively for the students of the respective university… so there are just two left for me… But still better than nothing!

So, the first one was last week on Thursday and Friday. If you ask me, going there on Thursday was a waste of time, nevertheless, mandatory. Here is how it worked: I was invited by two companies, namely Deloitte and Unilever, for a job interview on the actual fair on Friday. However, in order to be admitted to that interview I needed to attend the company presentations on Thursday. I was told that the two presentations I had to attend were from 3 pm to 5 pm and from 5 pm to 7 pm. Well, getting there it turned out that the times I was given were just presentation blocks. That is to say that within these two hour blocks there were a bunch of presentations of which each one was merely about 20 minutes. Of course the first presentation I had to attend was almost at the very end of this block. So I had to kill two hours until it started. After that one I had to kill another hour before I went to the next one.

I have to say that this fair was held literally in the outskirts of town. It took me at least one and a half hours just to get there, and once I got there I was lost in no-man’s-land. There is just nothing to do around there to efficiently effectively and productively kill time in between. Well, apart from that I didn’t even have a penny with me, so I couldn’t have spent anything anyway.

After having attended these presentations (which basically didn’t tell me anything I couldn’t also get from the company web site or Wikipedia), I got my stamp as to verify that I was there and went home…of course it was rush hour.

Next day I had these interviews, and what can I say, I think they went quite well. But I try not to build castles in the air this time. Deloitte and Unilever are most probably gonna contact me throughout the next two to three weeks to tell me whether I proceeded or not. Oh, and by the way…they didn’t even wanted to see the stamps that proved that I attended the presentations the day before…speechless.

After my scheduled interviews I still had a whole bunch of resumes left, so I went around and handed them out. Surprisingly, when I handed in my resume to LAN Airlines they had a little interview with me right away, even though I didn’t have one scheduled. Seems like, they are looking for people with my profile at the moment.

I also used the time in between and after the interviews to get a bite to eat since I, as usual, didn’t have any breakfast and was starting to get hungry. How pathetic: the event was sponsored by brands and companies such as Nescafé, Maggi, Nestlé, Coca Cola and Triton cookies. So, I fed myself with their samples all day… A spoon of Maggi soup here, a bite of ice cream there a mouthful of coke to flush it down and for dessert two to three candies wrapped in paper saying “Banco de Chile” or “Telefonica Chile”. Now that’s what I call a corporate lunch.

By the way, a few weeks ago I got proof again that the world is just a small place. My friend Carla was telling me about a mutual friend of ours who went to the Hyatt Hotel to see this Jazz singer called Trebeka… I beg your pardon? Little did she know that the exact same jazz singer I got to know personally about one and a half years ago when I was doing my internship in Beijing while she had a hotel gig at that time in the same town. So last weekend my friend Beba and I went to see Trebeka in the Hyatt Santiago. During her break I walked up to her, and needless to say, she was stunned to see me in Santiago. Well, I was surprised enough that she remembered me. So now Beba and I are on the guest list of her farewell party in the Hyatt on September 8. Sounds fancy.

Plan B!

2007-08-19T21:16:00.000-06:00

As some of you might know, I recently returned to Santiago, after I went to Hamburg for 10 days. The reason for my little excursion to the homeland was the impending death of my grandmother. When I came she was still alive but after two strokes already in a pitiful state: Not able to move, not able to speak… not at all a nice sight. I wouldn’t wish anybody such terrible last days. There is no way to know for sure, but I think she recognized me, when I came. And seeing me seemed to be the last reason she needed to finally let go, as a few days later she passed away. Finally. Fortunately. After so many years of suffering, she is hopefully in a better place now. May she rest in peace.

Besides for my grandma and especially for my mom, who needed all my support, it also quite came in handy for me to finally get out of Santiago after all that happened in my non-existent work-life and my private life. The whole thing to go to Hamburg was a pretty short-term decision: my mom called that Tuesday and on Friday I was on the plane. Before the call I already planned to leave town for the weekend, in order to get some distance between me and all these things that had been happening in Santiago. Being with my family and in my country gave me the calmness I needed to reconsider my plans for the next months.

So after these big disappointments with Procter & Gamble as well as BASF I came to terms with the thought that the trying to take the direct way to get the job of my dreams might not be the best idea, given that I want to start entering the job market within the next 10 years. As many Zen masters most probably said long before me: “Sometimes taking a detour might get you safer and faster where you want to be”… or they didn’t and I just discovered a great philosopher within myself. Anyway, time for PLAN B: Burn this city to the ground and start a new life as hermit in a cave in the Andes.

But as this might get me into some trouble, I think the alternative of starting to teach English will also do. It is not really related to my studies, but a) it fills the gap in my CV. A gap of half a year might still pass “journey to find the inner self” but anything longer than that is just baaad; b) I can finally answer the question of whether I am currently working in the job interviews with a confident “yes”, which will shed a slightly different light on my engagement; c) I will start earning some money. Not a lot, but enough to stop living off my savings; d) I am getting busy again. I tell you, if I don’t find anything sensible to do soon, I am going nuts!; and e) I think it will also be quite an interesting experience teaching English in which I as well might get to know important people that could be useful in my further proceedings.

Regardless of my job as an English professor, I will continue looking for a business management related job. Since I gave my abidance in Chile a higher priority than immediately finding a job in marketing, I decided to broaden my focus in the job search a little bit. So now I am not only looking for jobs in marketing but also import / export (since I think my languages might give me quite an advantage there), controlling, and whatever sounds interesting. Surely I still want to get a job in marketing. But I fear that, let’s say, half a year of teaching English will cost me a respectable amount of credibility: “Oh, so Mr. Kluge, you have been teaching English for half a year, very well, it proves that you master this language, very good. It also proves that you don’t put your head in the sand and bail out as soon as things don’t turn out as planed. Nice. But the end of your studies is already one year gone…do you still know how to spell marketing?”…shiver… So, I will try to get my foot into the door of the world of business management as soon as possible.

As soon as I have my foot in the door, I will continue looking for the job of my dreams…and when that opportunity comes, it’s mine! Well, that is unless I really enjoy what I will be doing at that very moment. You never know.

Anyway, this is how my Plan B (besides pulling that Nero thing) looks like. Nevertheless, I set myself a deadline of five months: If I still haven’t found a business related job until the middle of January 2008, it will be better for me to leave the country and go somewhere where my chances are better to find a job. Knock on wood that it doesn’t come that far.

Life's not fair...

2007-07-31T19:06:00.000-06:00

I don't wanna sound whiney, but I feel like shit. Aside from some private life and family issues I don't wanna talk about here, a cold a caught on top of my conjunctivitis which ruined my weekend, also my two last big hopes of employment eventually got shattered.

On Friday evening I received an email from P&G telling me that they wouldn't take me. As this email was written in English and seemed to be standardized, I still clinged to the hope that this was a misunderstanding, as all my correnspondence with this company had been in Spanish and someone in particular so far. I wanted to clear this up on Monday, but in reality I already dealt with the fact that I got turned down over the weekend. That was a good idea, since I only received the confirmation for that on Monday.

This really upsets me. And makes me sad. And disappointed. And insecure. And all at once. For the last two days I completely lost my appetite, basically stopped eating and had to assume the consequences this had on my body. I spare you the details.

Damn, I came soooo far in their goddamn process. I started in February with this crappy online questionnaire. Passed. I took the exam in May. Miraculously passed. I had the first interview in June. I also passed that. I had my last interview last week. Thought I passed. Thought I left a very good impression. Well, I was wrong. Thinking about how much time and effort I put into getting into this company makes me sad, almost angry. But what is worse, is that I put too much hope on getting hired. In fact, I almost took it for granted. I thought about how to most conveniently get to their new headquarters everyday, I subscribed to the P&G newsfeed to be updated of what is going on in the company, hell, I even imagined how my business cards would look like. No wonder that this email literally tore me down. But, hey, that just the way it is. Deal with it. You still have the possible alternative at BASF.

Well, that's what I thought until I called them this morning: "The final word is not spoken yet, but we are most probably going for another candidate. You know, it's your Spanish level. It's just not sufficient for this job."

That just gave me the rest. Sure, there is a last spark of hope, but lets be realistic. I am not gonna get this job. Period.

Why? Why do I get turned down over and over again. Excuse me if I am showing a complete lack of modesty here, but I am smart, probably more intelligent than wide parts of the population. I can think critically, objective and analyze quickly. I proved myself in a plethora of tests already. I speak three languages with near fluency. My English is probably better than that of 99 % of the chilean population (which is an important criterion in most of the management jpbs here). I gained a lot of experience abroad. I lived in Germany, in the USA, in China, and this is my third time in Chile. I am proactive. I am a leader. I enjoyed a brilliant education in one of Germany's most reputable Universities of Applied Sciences. So what in hell do others have, that I don't!? Telling myself that it's "their loss" that they didn't hire me doesn't make it any better.

However, fretting about it neither. So what can I do? Look forward. What can I do now? Now, that I am effectively out of options. At least for the moment. Of course I talked to my parents as well as to some of my former fellow students, and I tell you it is kinda soothing to know that there are others out there that have to deal with the exact same problem. My father, businessman as he is, drew a very sober analysis: "You grazed the jobmarket son. You exhausted every source of possible employment and did all you could do. Seems like there are no job opportunities for you there. A half a year gap on the resume might still pass as a "time out to learn a different culture and the language". But a gap any longer than that is just bad. So if you don't have a job until the end of August you should seriously consider getting an internship there or... leave the country."

Leave the country... well, at least it sounds reasonable. All of what he said sounds reasonable. As usual. Apparently there is no chance here for me. Or is there? Maybe it was all only about wrong timing. Most of the companies I sent my CV to told me that they were not looking for anybody at the moment. But they would contact me as soon as an opportunity comes up. Maybe that moment will come. But if it comes, will I get in? Would it be easier to get into a job in Germany? Or will I even get more opportunities? I don't know. It's really hard to say. But I tell you leaving is about the last thing I want to do this very moment. For one thing, I still have a lot of ties here, my friends and most of all my girlfriend. Moreover, I really like this place. For another thing, call me stubborn, but I have my pride. I came here almost a year ago with the goal to build up my life here in the medium term. I know that I have a accept a failure, but I don't want to give up yet. The last thing I want to do is come home empty handed: "Oh hello there! Yeah, I had a great time looking for a job in Chile, eventually giving up on it and crawl back home on all four. It was the time of my life!" No thanks.

So what are my priorities? Do I wanna get a job in marketing? Do I wanna be in Chile? Is there a way to eventually unite both? Well, maybe there is. I was thinking about starting to teach English. As a temporary solution. I have no or few doubts that I will get a job as an English teacher there. They always look for those. They pay lousy and it's not the job of my dreams but at least I would earn some cash and most of all, I will be busy again! I tell you, if I don't get busy with a job soon, I am going nuts. Another side effect this job would have is that I would get a work permit and could stay in the country without having to leave the country every three months.

However, I still have a doubt about all that: Will this be an obstacle for me when, lets say, half a year later applying for a job in marketing again?: "So, what did you do the last half year? Oh, you taught English! Nice! Interesting! At least you must really master the language and didn't give up and went to Germany when things started to look really bad... But do you still know how to spell marketing?" Don't look at me, I don't know.

I can virtually see the mid-twenties nodding their head saying "Go for it! Don't give up! Live your dream! Stay in Chile!" and the generation of my parents shaking their head saying "You're ruining your professional life and wasting your time here son! Hit the road! Go to where the opportunities are!"

As far as I am concerned, I don't know what to think and what to do right now. I think the issue is still too fresh. I might get out of Santiago for the weekend. Alone. To some quiet place. To think about my further proceedings. Even though I think my stubbornness will win, you never know...

UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!

2007-07-24T21:26:00.001-06:00

Yes, that is my eye. And no, I am not posessed by some evil spirit. I got myself a pretty little viral conjunctivitis (zu Deutsch: Virale Bindehautentzündung). Ouch. Well, it doesn't actually hurt that much, but now I have to show up at my next job interview (see below) looking like I got shitfaced and beaten the crap out of this weekend. Well, I have no doubts that they will believe me when I tell him that it's an infection. But still, I'd rather look pwetty...

So, I went to the doctor and I found out that a bunch of morons are working there:
When I did the appointment on the phone that morning, they asked me for some information, including my RUT number, which is like the Chilean social security number. I told them that I am a tourist and therefore don't have such a number. So I gave them my passport number.
Assuming that I was all set, I went there later and did't consider it necessary to take my passport with me.
That was a mistake.
Of course they asked me for personal information again, as well as for my passport number. I told them that I don't know it by heart and that I already gave them my number.
Big big confusion in her eyes.
Long story short, they couldn't find out that number to save their lives, even when they called the general reception downstairs. I finally suggested to use my German ID number, which is different, but they accepted it anyway. After they some serious troubles filling out the form on their computers and various "I-don't-know-how-to-do-this" phone calls to their co-workers, I had been waiting for an hour already and eventually the doctor called me in.

So the conducted the diagnosis and handed me over some drops. He told me in the worst case this thing will last for about a month, but in my case (for whatever reason) it will last a week.
Good.

And I don't know why, but he did a visual test with me... and I faced the cruel truth that through some lenses my sight was better than without them.

...

Fucked up. I am getting old, man. I mean, I am still fine and I don't need glassed... BUT, DUDE: I NEED GLASSES! WHAT THE FUCK?!...

News from the job front:

BASF: Yesterday, I had an interview with them. I think it went quite well. However, there are still at least two more to go with this company.

Procter & Gamble: I have my big and last interview with them tomorrow at 9 am local time. So keep your fingers crossed for me!

Peace out yo...

Pimp my Blog

2007-07-19T16:09:00.000-06:00

As some of you might have noticed, I kinda souped up the design of this Blog... pretty cool, eh? :) But this "little HTML editing" took me a lot longer than I thought, which suprised me especially since I was just taking an already existing template and shaped according to my gusto. Still I had to try and error, upload, download, edit pictures and... ah, hell. I don't wanna bore you with the details.

I think it is already enough that I have been that bored lately. That's right. Until last week, I always had some list to take care of, some contacts to exploit, some interviews to go to... and then suddenly last weeks I was out of things to do. Weird feeling, considering that I've been busy with the search for a job ever since I came here in March. Or, well, at least busy procrastinating. Now, besides buying the sunday newspapers and checking the online job markets once a week, I can't really do anything but sit and wait. Well, at least I got to catch up with answering badly neglected emails and all that other stuff I've put off doing for the past weeks. And of course pimping my blog.

But I wouldn't be myself if I hadn't found a means to spend this free time more unproductively than that: I found this fabulous website where you can watch a couple of TV series online. I chose the series "Heroes". If you're as much of a sci-fi / fantasy nerd as I am, and don't have too elevated expectations concerning the logical coherence of the plot, this series can be very entertaining. All in all I was very impressed of the quality of the whole thing considering the very fast loading time. You just need to download a plugin for your browser and you're all set. Well, why don't you check it out yourself?

Oh, and I have news from the front: Yesterday, after two attempts to call Procter & Gamble to find out what the deal was, I received a phonecall from one of their HR people. Well, long story short, he asked me some stuff about my CV and told me that the next and last interview will be this or next week. I'll keep you posted about it.

I also finally got news from the Unilever trainee programme. An mautomatically generated mail told me that I qualified for the next round and presented the schedule for the next steps... I really hope I get this thing at P&G, check out this timeplan:

July 13th - August 1st: online activities
August 13th - August 27th: 1st group interviews
September 6th - September 28th: 2nd group interviews
in October: Entrace to the company

...roight! As if I wanna wait that long. So keep your fingers crossed!

I äm bäck!

2007-07-13T17:45:00.000-06:00

Wow, has been a while since I wrote in here… So where do I start? So many things happened since I last updated this blog, it wouldn’t even be possible writing them all down. Let alone remember them from scratch.

OK, here is how I do it: I will give you a general update on what I’ve been up to the last eight or so months and will make an effort to update this baby on a weekly base now. Maybe that way older anecdotes worthwhile telling will find their way into my updates as necessary references in order to explain the context. Got it? No? Ah, screw it. You’ll see.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway… since I didn’t (significantly) rename the blog you can well assume that I am in Chile. Not still in Chile, but again. I came back home to Germany the end of December and completely f*cked up my happy happy joy joy Christmas time, as I didn’t manage to have my Bachelor Thesis done and printed the day I came back. On the contrary. Christmas became a balance act between sitting in the light of the Christmas Tree and sitting in the light of my desktop lamp. Also, I have had better New Year’s Eves before and the last week before the official deadline was just horrible. Getting up at 7 am, sitting down at the desk, getting to bed at 3 am. Thank God I was not the only poor bastard out there. These last days I could always see some of my dearest fellow students online at the most impossible times. Good for moral support. But nevertheless: Never again! Well, that’s at least the proposition. I am kinda curious if the eternal student in me will eventually grow up. Maybe as soon as I have a job. Which leads me to the next topic.

After I finally handed in my thesis and came back home, I instantly started preparing my applications, choosing companies to send them to, finding out their addresses and eventually executing the whole process. Because I really like Chile, because I have a girlfriend here (her name is Carolina), because I have friends here, because I eventually managed to understand the Chilean gibberish and because of your mama I decided to go back to this country for a third time. Also, it doesn’t really leave a bad impression on your CV when you go abroad to work right after your studies. I didn’t really count it, but I think if you take together the applications I sent by post (yes, actually ink and paper, my dear fellow 21^st century people), the ones I sent out via email and the ones I needed to put into an online form, it think they sum up to about 100 applications. As soon as these applications were taken to the post office, I felt a great relieve, which was, however, by far not comparable to the relief I felt when finally handed in my thesis.

Now I really had the time to take a deep breath and rearrange my thoughts, as I didn’t really have another choice than to sit and wait for the answers of the companies I sent my applications to. My daddy was so nice and sponsored me almost two weeks on the Spanish Isle of Fuerteventura, where I basically didn’t do anything all day but eating, reading and sleeping. Nice. And what else was I supposed to do in a hotel which was basically occupied by old people? Sorry, I mean “Senior Citizens”. I combined this trip to Spain with a short excursion to Ludwigsburg where I visited my friend Lutz and the Italian city of Genoa to visit my friend Jacek who works and lives there. Awesome place, by the way.

Coming back home, I found a disappointingly small return rate of my applications. Even though the companies must have definitely gotten my CVs by then, only a few confirmed the receipt of it. Being aware of the fact that literally all of Chile was on holiday (it was summer here in February) I gave it a few more weeks but eventually set a date to go back to Chile. It was to be the 20^th of March.

21^st of March, I landed in Santiago de Chile and was more than happy that Carolina picked me up. She took 2 weeks of holidays, so we really got to enjoy the first two weeks of being together again. After that, I continued my search for a job. I decided to personally pay the companies which should have received my CV a visit. All of them. In my suit. Believe me, that took me a long time. Three weeks to be exact. Well, visiting about a hundred companies, just to ask them whether they have received my resume or not and if they didn’t, handing it in again doesn’t sound like too much of an effort. But you gotta consider that even though most of these offices are the town’s business district, a lot of them are in the middle of nowhere. So I boldly went where no metro has gone before… Blisters on my feet, a sore back and some almost sunburns where the consequences, but as the Dude would say: “New shit has come to light, man!” Not only did I learn that Human Resource people are always in meetings, that the buses always turn where they aren’t supposed to and that they have a really weird way of street continuations here in Santiago (the street ends abruptly and continues 5 km further up the crossing street). It also turned out that about 95 % of the companies didn’t even get my CV. I actually do believe that they received it, but that it got lost in the companies’ document nirvana. Anyway, of course I handed it in again right away or sent it to the person in charge via email. I supported my personal visits with follow-up calls to each of these companies and, abracadabra, I was suddenly part of various selection processes and some companies even wanted to see me personally. Now, that’s what I call progress!

I also leveraged my personal contacts, of which I gathered many the past months, few of them were viable, however. Nevertheless, one of them got me an interview with a producer of wooden panel. They wanted me to be the first and only company representative in Latin America. What an opportunity! I actually flew to Germany the beginning of May to combine this job interview with my dad’s 60^th birthday. I only stayed one week and then flew back. I didn’t get the job. Bastards. But can’t nobody not takin’ me down, yo. I went on with my quest for work. I continued squirting my contacts, mostly in vain, I sent my CV to virtually every single head hunter in town, I regularly checked the newspapers and the common online job markets, I signed up for a job fair, I signed up for a trainee program and whatnot…

…and it seems to be paying back now. After having officially finished my studies the end of February, I have been unemployed for about four and a half months now. Not good. However, a few weeks ago my agenda was suddenly packed with job interviews. Well, when it’s raining, it’s pouring. And even though most of these companies were rather looking for people with more work experience or not really the kind of company I would like to work for, it is definitely better than nothing. And lemme tell you what more: right now I am in the recruitment process of Procter & Gamble, BASF and I wouldn’t be surprised to receive and email from Unilever next week either. These are companies I definitely wouldn’t mind working for.

Well, I shouldn’t count my chicken before they are hatched, however, I kinda think I will get a job at Procter & Gamble. I am further in the process there than at BASF or Unilever and already survived the hardest part in their process. And let me tell you this process is tedious: First you have to answer and online questionnaire. If they think that the result of this matches the profile of someone they would like to work at their company and if they think that your CV is interesting, they will invite you to take an exam. This is step two. The exam is basically testing your critical thinking by having you answering 50 questions concerning math, interpretation of graphs and charts as well as text comprehension in 65 minutes. Miraculously I passed this exam and was invited to step three, the actual interview. Went there, done that, thought I left a good impression and thought that that was it, since the website only outlined three steps in the process. Well, I was wrong. There is still one more interview to come. A so called panel interview with a few more people who are apparently a little more important than the one I had my last interview with. Well, I had the last interview about three weeks ago and recently found out that I passed it. But I still need to wait for them to fix a date for the panel interview. They are a little busy right now, since they just moved the Latin American headquarters from Venezuela to Chile. Considering these circumstances I am more than glad to give them a little more time: The thing with this company is, that they don’t hire according to demand, but according to supply. That means that the process of getting in is so tedious and hard that they consider the people that passed this entire procedure worthy of working there even if there is no free position available at the moment. I think it is fair to assume that there will be plenty of free positions at this company as soon as they’re done moving headquarters. I would really, really like to work for this company, so keep your fingers crossed that I will pass the next step as well and don’t have to go through the entire process again, because BASF and Unilever are just as big and will have a recruitment process just as annoying and time consuming as Procter & Gamble. And I really don’t wanna go through this again. On top of that, ever since I got here, I’ve been living off my savings. And believe it or not, but I start to run outta cash. So I better get a job soon. *knock on wood*

Other than that I can’t really tell much. I live with my buddy Jorge in his beautiful, but cold as shit apartment, which is conveniently just a 5 minute walk to Carolinas place. Unfortunately, as I already indicated, this apartment has no central heating. Well, having an apartment with central heating is actually very uncommon here. And since I am in the southern hemisphere and winter is coming you can imagine that I am freezing my butt off in this apartment. Yes, Latin America can also be very cold. No, there are no donkeys in the streets. And yes their public transportation system is technologically more advanced than Germany’s. Even though only in this respect. Some month ago the government introduced a major change in the public transportation system and logistically really screwed up. More often than not you have to accept travelling across town in literally packed buses. Anyway, since I don’t really wanna spend the whole day in a freezing cold apartment, guess where I am spending most of my week… you guessed it: Starbucks! Damn, literally everybody that works here already knows my name.

Unfortunately, mainly due to the lack of a monthly income I didn’t travel that much really. But I don’t wanna leave you completely without pictures, so let me see if I have some nice ones for you…

A’ight, hopefully you hear from me again next week…and hopefully I will have another interview by then.

Lenny gone Hip-Hop...

Horses on the Street.

We had a nice party on the rooftop of Carolina's boss and I could experience this amazing sunset

And this is my my girl Carolina

I also have friends (weird but true): These are Joakim from Sweden and Lorena from Chile. Also known as J.Lo ;)

Pinochet's death, cultural values and coins

2006-12-11T11:29:00.000-05:00

First of all, my sincere apologies for the fact that I didn’t keep you updated, as promised. A lot of things happened in between and just as many curiosities I took note of which I could have shared with you here. However, my thesis has been stressing me out lately. It still is. Therefore, I refrained from updating my blog lately and dedicated my time to my thesis. Nevertheless, I am going to temporarily rearrange my priorities, for something happened today, that is definitely worth an entry:

Pinochet died.

I just came back from a party spontaneously organized by Paulina, the host mother of my friend Juliette, who had to go to the exile during the regime. Needless to say, that she was visibly relieved. In fact, according to her, this night was the second time in her life she got drunk. And I assume that she is already in her sixties. By that measure, what happened does mean a lot to her. On my way to this party I had to get of the bus earlier, since they blocked the entire street of Providencia, which is the street where the hospital is located in which Pinochet’s corpse is being kept. I missed to get off, got off too late, went back, took the wrong turn (you know my sense of direction ;)) and found myself in front of that hospital. Together with a couple of hundred Pinochet supporters that were mourning his death. I told myself not to miss such a unique opportunity and took some pictures and videos, as you can see. In fact, after I left the party with a friend, I just missed the relocation of his dead body from the hospital to the Escuela Militar (military school) by ten minutes. Such a shame…

Well, to give you my personal opinion on the event: I am really glad and grateful that I was given the opportunity to be at the right time in the right place to be able to experience such a historical moment. This is something I can tell my grandchildren. At least something, since I was way too young to realize when the Wall came down. ;) Nevertheless, I don’t presume to be able to judge what had happened. I am not Chilean and I don’t share this emotional tie with most of the Chileans that were alive during Pinochet’s regime. Even though I think it is somewhat perverted to celebrate a person’s death (and believe me, they were celebrating) I do understand the relief that most of the Chileans must feel right now, despite him escaping secular judgement. But in turn they (at least Paulina and her son) did understand and accept that I did not want to take sides on this issue but rather assume the role of a neutral observer. I think if you are a foreigner in a country you are in the privileged position to be able to assess a national matter without emotional undertones that distort your judgement.

And as with every issue there are always two sides of the coin. Now don’t get me wrong. Pinochet’s deeds are absolutely incompatible to my moral concepts and ethics and I would not support a regime such as his. But as I learned from living in different countries moral concepts and ethics are by no means absolute, but different from country to country and changing over time. The way moral concepts and ethics are defined always depends on the circumstance of the people that define them are in. Take Nazi Germany as an example. People just came out of a devastating war, were desperate and looked for a strong character to guide them. The result was the Third Reich. In fact take a look at most of the dictatorships in this world and you’ll see that most of them were born out of despair, as people were more willing to sacrifice for the so called “greater good”. (I would like to make a reference to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs at this point. A really interesting theory with regard to this topic) The values we nowadays call our own were shaped by past experiences. Human rights are no natural constant but nothing more than an invention which is consistent to the ethical and moral concepts of the western world of today. You wonder why China apparently does not want to comply with human rights? Well, maybe it is because those are based on standards which do not share the fundamental values of their culture. Go figure. But that is a different issue.

Nevertheless, this is exactly what separates the people on this issue and keeps them from having a discussion on a mature level: different values. When it comes to controversial characters such as Pinochet, Hitler or Saddam Hussein, people tend to be very short sighted in terms of the objective evaluation of their deeds because the two sides of the coin are separated by a barrier of fundamental values. Let’s come back to the actual topic and take the case of Pinochet as an example. His opponents mourn the thousands of people that were killed during the Pinochet regime. They do not consider that without Pinochet Chile would probably not be as economically privileged as it is these days. Either that or they do not accept the victims of the regime as an adequate sacrifice for the economy or rather the “greater good”. Well how much is a human’s life worth? Answer: it depends on the price the market determines. As cynical as it might sound, it is true though. I lived in China and experienced first hand how little a life can be worth if you are living in a culture that emphasizes the “greater good” over the individual. In fact, how much a culture values a human being depends on the stage of social development this society is in. But that is a different story. Let’s now take a look at the supporters of Pinochet: They emphasize what a blessing this man was for the Chilean country and economy in particular. They do not consider that the victims are considered a horrible price that was paid in order to reach this goal by the opponents of the regime. The price of a human’s life is determined by the market, but sometimes there are several markets within one country.

I have my values and I know what I think about the Pinochet regime. Nevertheless, I do not judge as this is not my culture and I know that cultural values are different everywhere you go. I think when confronted with situations like these, it is really important to be aware of the fact that values are not something absolute. Only by recognizing this and objectively analyzing both sides of the coin enables us to make thorough decisions on what we want and prevents us from succumbing to the sweet-talk of the Pinochets, Hitlers and all the other demagogues on this earth. Don’t just focus on what a bad person Pinochet was and the horrible deeds he did, even though it might be tempting. Try to understand how it came to this, how this regime came to pass. If everything he did was so absolutely horrible and unacceptable, why then did (and still does) he have supporters? Stand up for what you believe in, but know what you believe in as well as what the others believe in and don’t just blindly follow, as this is exactly what leads us back into oblivion and makes us susceptible to demagogues.

Well, talking about the two sides of the coin, those were my two cents on that matter.

So, and talking about the two sides of the coin all the time I feel kinda bad that I am only able to present you pictures from the pro-Pinochet fraction. But that's unfortunately all I have.

1. Waiting for something to happen

2. Gracias...

3. The Pro-Pinochet crowd

4. Providencia... empty

5. Falabella fortress

Concerts and Earthquakes

2006-10-30T21:46:00.000-05:00

OK, I am about to leave for Chiloé where I am gonna spend my weekend with a couple of friends, so I have to hurry up with this entry.

To be honest not a lot of things happened lately. I went to two concerts the last two weeks though. The first one was a concert by the percussionist Airto Moreia (I hope I spelled that name right). He is Brazilian and supposedly one of the world’s best percussionists. The show was, well, weird… but interesting nonetheless. The first song he played lasted for ages (I think about 20 minutes or so) and 75 % of that time was basically him making some noises. Funny guy. But amazing voice you have to say that. I don’t know how many octaves he was able to sing, but came from growling deep to squeaky high. In the end of the concert the songs became a little more samba-like and thus a little more danceable. This was the part when the whole audience jumped up and started dancing around… That’s what I love about South America. You would hardly see that in Germany.

The second concert I went to was last Saturday. The band was called “El Chico Trujillo” and was just great! They played a kind of music which was something in between Cumbia and Ska… and the club was burning! They are one of these “must-see-live-bands”. Seriously these guys, especially the singer, didn’t only know how to play a very danceable music, but also fire up the audience. The atmosphere was awesome, and I am definitely going a second time, if I have the chance.

Other than that, there were quite a few tremors the last two weeks. Nothing serious, but if you’re in a building you definitely notice them. Especially if you live on the 9^th floor…sway, sway, sway. Funny feeling. But I am not worries. Small tremors happen all the time here, which doesn’t necessarily mean that a big earthquake is coming up… at least I hope so.

Oh, and another observation that really annoyed me, especially today: The biggest bills you can get in Chilean Pesos are the 10,000 Peso bills (Well, actually it is the 20,000 peso bill, but you hardly get that one). 10,000 Pesos are about 15 Euros. Now, in Germany, if you’re trying to pay your taxi or a pack of cigarettes at the kiosk and you’re trying to pay with a 50 Euro bill that is usually still acceptable. Admittedly they start looking weird at you, if you’re trying to pay with a 100 Euro bill. But this is where it starts. No earlier than that. Well, try to pay a taxi or a pack of cigarettes or any single item you purchased here with a 10,000 Peso bill. “Ay, no tengo sencillo!”: “I’m sorry, I don’t have enough change”. Why do people never have change for a bill that is worth about 15 EUR (except for supermarkets maybe)? Why are they not expecting people to pay with a bill like that? And if I just have to accept the fact that nobody has change for a 10,000 Peso bill, why are they even that common? Basically every single ATM here will hand out your cash in 10,000 Peso bills. Nothing smaller than that. And remember this is not Bolivia or Honduras, where you can live off 10 Euros for an entire week like Riley. This is Chile. One of the most expensive, if not even THE most expensive country in Latin America.

Pictures:

- Concert Airto Moreia

- Concert El Chico Trujillo

- And another sunset from my balcony... I just love these Santiago sunsets. ;)

Fat but at least not broke…

2006-10-15T15:04:00.000-05:00

… that’s what Juliette told me how we would come back from Mendoza when we were on the bus to that Argentine border town last weekend, which – again – was a long one. Monday was off. Well, what can I say, she was right. It’s sooo cheap over there and the food is sooo good… Well, at least compared to Santiago. Both of these criteria are not really hard to fulfil from that point of view. But first we needed to get there.

Since the most cost-effective way to travel around South America is the long distance bus we hopped on one of those and enjoyed a 7 hour ride. Or maybe 9 hours? I don’t quite remember, but I can tell you that much, we spent a lot of time freezing our sweet little butts off standing in line at the border control, which happened to be way up in the Andes. The fact that it was so cold that you could actually have a snowball fight (in mid-spring!) up there was not helping. So, we stood in line forever, checking out of Chile. And then we stood in another line checking in to Argentina. It was actually way worse on our way back, but I am coming to that.

Having arrived in Mendoza we first embarked on our crusade to get a cab, which turned out harder than we expected. Eventually we got one though which took us to our hotel. Nice. A three star Hotel with swimming pool for merely 22.50 € per night. Since it was already around 10 – 11 pm and we were quite exhausted from that long bus right, we decided to just quickly check out a bar, have a drink or two and then go to bed. Our bar of choice was the Uvas Bar in the Hyatt Hotel. Yes, Hyatt Hotel. Wow, luxury. But being in Argentina, drinks and snacks were still very affordable. Nice to be able to afford a decadent lifestyle once in a while. And food and beverages were not only cheap, but also good. The cheese platter was exactly what I needed and my “Americano” cocktail, didn’t quite turn out the way I expected it to be, but it was still OK. FYI, and Americano is a long drink made of Campari, Martini and soda. Simple. I asked for it, they didn’t have it. So I explained its composition. Simple. What I got was a bottle of soda… and a whole long drink glass filled with Campari and Martini… pure! Yukkie! Too much booze for me to take. The first sips weren’t really pleasant, but I gradually diluted it with the soda and after a few minutes it was quite drinkable.

The next morning we slept in and only got up in time to get some breakfast before it was over. Except for us, there were merely two people sitting around, which didn’t bother us much though. Besides getting tickets for the winetasting tour the next day at the tourism office, we basically spent the whole day walking all across Mendoza, eating, taking a nap and checking out the Parque San Martín. I tell you, this park is impressive. It is huge. In fact, it is located right outside Mendoza and almost as big as the town itself. I figure setting up a park in Mendoza, especially of these dimensions is a masterstroke, since Mendoza itself is nothing more than an artificial oasis with less than 2 rainy days per year. So we walked deep into the bowels of that park and actually wanted to go up the Cerro de Gloria (Hill of Glory), but then we figured that in the soccer stadium right adjacent to the Hill, there was a soccer game going on between two national Argetine teams. And there were many platoons of policemen accompanying the fans to the stadium and securing the area. So we figured that these teams might be prone to rioting, and we decided to go straight back to town instead of walking up the hill first and then running into the masses of fans exiting the stadium on our way back. We had a reservation at the restaurant at 10.30 pm, but since we refrained from walking up the hill also still some time to spare. So, we decided to check out the chocolate factory we heard about. We would have loved to get a little tour through the factory, Willy Wonka style, but it was quite a small one and the shop was very busy when we got there. Mmmmmh… chocolate… in all sizes and varieties. But I got a grip on myself and only bought a box of conitos de dulce de leche (chocolate cones filled with dulce de leche which is a caramel like cream), 3-4 small things for instant consumption (the conitos were meant to be indulged in at home) and a box of mixed chocolate for the ladies in the office. And as Juliette and I were on our shopping spree, something funny happened. Juliette walked up to me and said “I just overheard a conversation and I think it’s 9” “No, it’s 8. They would have told us on the bus if there was a one hour time difference between Santiago and Mendoza. And even if they missed out in that, we would have noticed somehow.” Well, we asked and it turned out that Mendoza indeed is one hour ahead of Santiago. How can you spend more than 24 hours without even noticing that you’re lagging one hour behind?! But that explained why there was no more live music at the Hyatt Bar the other night and why it sounded like they only played for one hour before we came, according to the waitress. This also explained why there was virtually nobody in the breakfast room that morning. But then also: “Damn! We have to be at the restaurant in an hour already and we still have to get home and I still have to take a shower!” and “Damn! If we hadn’t noticed that, we would have totally missed our bus back home tomorrow night!” That indeed would have been quite a problem, since Mendoza was packed with “Santiagonians” which needed to be back by Monday night the latest. Chances that we simply could have hopped on the next bus to Santiago in case we missed our bus, were infinitesimal. But the most immediate problem then was the reservation we had at the restaurant. What made the whole situation even worse was that Juliette was starting to feel sick all of a sudden, so she had to rest easy in our room for a while. Fortunately we managed it to postpone our reservation by half an hour. We were late anyway. I think I have a bad influence on Juliette. :) The ambiance of the restaurant was terrific, the food was great, the bill was low. All in all we only went to the most recommended and best restaurants in town, since it was still dirt-cheap. Food and price level. Two good reasons to move to Argentina… however, only as long as you have a first-world salary. After enjoying that good food, we decided to go straight to bed, since we had to get up early the next day for the wine tasting tour.

Around 9.10 am we hopped on a small bus to go wine tasting. Oh, that of course also included a visit to and a guided tour through two vineyards, but hey, we had our priorities… Nevertheless, the tours were quite interesting, since these two vineyard we visited couldn’t be more opposite. The first one was huge, producing wine for the masses, largely for export. The wine tasting part was also good. The second one though, was a rather small, pretty, family-owned one, which also exported, however, as demand exceeded supply, not as much as the first one. The wine tasting part of it was very good. The wine offered to us there was definitely of a higher quality than the wine of the first vineyard. The speciality of Mendoza (which humbly calls itself “the world’s wine capital”) is the Malbec grape, which is hardly cultivated anywhere else in the world. In fact, our tour guide in the second vineyard proudly told us, that the founder of that vineyard was the first one to introduce the Malbec grape to Argentina (which originally is from France) and made the first Argentinean Malbec wine from it. I must say, even though I am not too much of a red wine fan, I really liked the Malbec (which, however, also has the reputation of being a “beginner’s wine”). But I was even more intrigued by the Cabernet Sauvignon they grew there. I liked it so much that I even treated myself with one bottle. For no more than 5 €… Just give me a few more years down here and I will come back as a wine expert. After that wine tasting tour there wasn’t much action going on with the two of us… We met up for lunch with a really nice welsh couple, which we met on the tour. They’d been travelling for a couple of month already in the scope of their journey around the world. Whereas it was his first one, it was already the second one to her. Wow. Envy. After lunch Juliette and I just did some reading for school and dozed off by the pool (nice rhyme, eh?), since we already had to move out if our room that morning. To give our little trip a smooth finish, we decided to the Uvas Bar in the Hyatt Hotel again, before we had to get back on the bus to Santiago. The drinks were good, but then we really had to hurry up, get dressed appropriately for the temperature in the mountains (it was constantly over 25°C in Mendoza by the way) and get to the bus terminal. We took the night bus to Santiago, so we’d get there early in the morning and not waste any time. Usually I don’t mind long trips, but I didn’t like this one. Since my stomach had been occasionally giving me trouble throughout the whole weekend, how could I even hope that it would give me a rest during our trip back? I think the problem was that I had air in my tummy, which due to the altitude when passing through the mountains, expanded. Not a pretty feeling. But let’s not forget about the border control. Chileans are said to be a lot more European in their behavior than Argentineans. That became evident at the border. Whereas getting into Argentina just involved waiting in line for a long time, getting back seemed to involve a lot more formalities. Policemen with drug-dogs were passing us by as we were waiting in line to check out of Argentina and then waiting in line to check in to Chile. Since it was in the middle of the night these lines weren’t even half as long as the ones we had to stand in when getting to Argentina, but virtually nothing moved. The folks at the counter were not in a hurry at all and took their sweet little time to get us all set up. I had no other option than to keep waiting for maybe an hour. I was tired, since it was about 4 am, I was feeling nauseous for the aforementioned reasons and, of course, it was frikkin cold outside. And then finally I managed to get to the counter and checked in to Chile. I thought that was it and was ready to get back on the bus. But no, still one thing more. All of us had to get on the bus and get their bags out of there. Customs control. We were crammed into a little room and asked to form two rows. Seriously, I felt like facing an execution commando. Then we waited and suddenly some customs guy who just got off our bus came in and held up some kind of dried tomatoes in a bag: “Whose is this?!” This was the point when I slightly got scared that they would start shooting one after the other until the culprit would step up to the plate and confess voluntarily. Well, the culprit was a young American kid that was sitting right behind me in the bus. The irony about the whole situation was that he was loudly expressing his concern about not declaring what he had brought from Argentina. Seemed to be a good boy. However, the reaction from his friends was “Nah, don’t worry about it. They won’t check. They don’t care.” Well, I always said it: Peer pressure is a bitch. And because of that he almost got into trouble. But the guys at the customs officer didn’t take it out on him, so the kid didn’t have to pay a fine, but also couldn’t keep his dried tomatoes. Well, there is a life after dried tomatoes, so that wasn’t much of a tragedy. Finally, we could get back on the bus, I started to feel better and eventually fell asleep. Arriving in Santiago we just took a cab, since the metros and the right buses weren’t running yet and went straight home. I had to catch up with some sleep.

And right now I have to go, since I am going to a concert of the apparently best percussionist on earth, Airto Moreia. That’s gonna be interesting.

I’ll keep you updated!

Pictures:

- Juliette and I on a park bench in the Parque San Martín.

- Me, leaning on a grape press made in Germany.

- B&W picture of the bodega in the vineyard.

- Rodrigo, Lindsay, I and Lisa (my co-worker in the company) at a little get-together at Juliettes place.

- A sunset from my balcony in Ñuñoa

After the Fiestas Patrias

2006-10-01T14:13:00.000-06:00

OK, this entry is not gonna be as long as the previous one. Promise. Also because I don’t have three entire weeks to cover, but just two. Which were admittedly not that spectacular. So, the weekend before last were the so called Fiestas Patrias (Patriotic Holidays). These Fiestas Patrias are characterized by Fondas (kind of outdoor parties), Chicha (Sweet alcoholic must… as delicious as dangerous), Cueca (traditional Fiestas Patrias dance which involves the constant waving of a hanky while dancing) and most important of all, a long weekend. Well, at least this time, since the Fiestas Patrias (hereinafter referred to as F.P.) happened to be on a Monday and Tuesday this year. So a friend of mine and I seized this opportunity to get out of town. I would have like to go somewhere I haven’t been to before, but since most of these places are far far away and virtually every single citizen of Santiago was leaving town for family visits which led to en extreme scarcity in tickets, we decided to go to the coastal town of Valparaíso, also called Valpo. This is a very nice and laid back town about two hours away from Santiago. Since both of us have already been there and saw everything there is to see, there was not too much to do this time. So in the search of cafés, restaurant and a place to stay overnight we basically walked back and forth downtown Valpo about 6 times. After we had dinner at a very nice place, we decided to cancel our plans to still hit the night spots and instead got a bottle of wine and drank it in our room before going to sleep. The next day, we went to another rather small coastal town (I forgot the name though) nearby to meet up with some more friends. There we also spent the most time in a café before heading back to Santiago. So, all in all, quite a nice excursion but not very eventful. Except for the fact that I left my book on the bus. Stupid me. You gotta know that about two years ago I put this exact book on my Christmas wish list. A friend of mine highly recommended it to me. Since I wanted to have the original English version, it was not so easy to get your hand on that book. But my parents eventually got it and since I was living in South-Germany and they live in the northern part, they sent it to me by mail. The parcel never arrived. But I didn’t give up and put it on my wish list a second time the following Christmas. It arrived and I held it in my hands. That was about a year ago I think. Since I haven’t read it yet, I decided to take it to Chile. And to make long story short, I took it out of my backpack when I was on the bus, but talked all the way instead of reading it and eventually forgot it, when I got off the bus… And I just read like the first five pages. Well, maybe I am not meant to read that book… Back in Santiago we went to a fonda in the quarter Bellavista. Could have been a lot more fun if it hadn’t been raining and the people had been somewhat more decisive: Hey, let’s go to that club! Oh, the ticket counter is closed. Well, let’s have a drink in the bar. Oh, the counter is open again. Let’s finish our drink first. Oh, now the ticket counter is closed again. Let’s leave. Where? Dunno. Let’s just go. OK. Where are the others? Dunno. Shall we go nowß No, wait… horrible…

The world is a village. I realize that every now and then. But this sensation seems to hold true especially for Santiago: First, I have a friend from the time when I was studying in Santa Barbara, her name is Juliette. That was 4 years ago. After I came home to Germany, she stayed in the States to continue her studies. So, every time she would go home to France, she dropped me a line asking me to meet up in Germany, France or Switzerland with our mutual Swiss friend Fabian. Either I never had the time or the money to meet up or I was at totally different place at that time. But it never happened. So, as I was arranging the whole thing with Santiago, it turns out that Juliette is also here, doing her semester abroad. We hang out quite often now. Second, the last time I was here I got to know this German guy called Haiko who was doing an internship here. Nice guy. But since he arrived at the time I was about to leave, we didn’t get to do a lot of things together. I invited him to my farewell party then, which is where he hooked up with Pamela, a friend of mine from Bolivia. That was the last night I saw him. So, a few weeks ago, I was sending out emails telling people about my new phone number. Also Pamela. A few days later the replied and told me that Haiko is also here and they’re still dating. He arrived here around the same time as I did and will also go back home in December like me. We already hung out a few times. Third, in the office, as I was talking to my Chilean colleague about my studies and so on, our intern Lisa overheard that I study in the town of Villingen-Schwenningen and told me that she is actually from Donaueschingen, which is about 20 km away. We even found out that we used to go to the same clubs in that area. Moreover, my boss told me that she had also been living in Villingen-Schwenningen for four years. She moved to Chile right as I was about to start my studies there… It’s a small world.

Well, talking about work, I still like it a lot. I like my colleagues, I like the atmosphere. The problem is just that I cannot concentrate there. Right now I am in the phase of where I have to do a lot of reading for my thesis. I am very distractible, especially by noises. There are a lot of noises in the office. Let it be my colleague Ulli on the phone, me chatting with Lisa or the masses of Spanish students from the nearby school, that daily drop by our office to tell Ulli about their problems with the language, with their landlord, with their boyfriend or just with life in general. Moreover, from 4.30 pm on the sun shines directly through the window on my screen, which doesn’t make reading the PDF on my computer any easier. So in order to escape these distractions I didn’t go to the office the week before last, but basically spent every day at my favourite Starbucks in the quarter of Las Condes instead. I thought I would get a lot more work done over there. Yeah, right. As you might figure, that was not the case and now I am behind schedule. I am considering not going anywhere most of next week but just stay home with my earplugs in, me on the couch, my notebook on my lap and nobody coming in or going out. If that doesn’t provide me with the environment I need to study in peace, I’d better file an application for McDonald’s soon…

Other than that, not much happened lately. But here are some fun facts!:

OK, nobody will care about this, but I have to say it anyway: I just love avocados! And I am in the land of avocados (where they are called paltas instead)! Whereas you pay a fortune in Germany to get your hand on one of those, they cost like nothing here and they are in virtually every food. I even started to eat more salad, just because of my beloved avocados. Vote avocado!

So, how many different bottle sizes are there in Germany? We basically just have 0.2 l, 0.33 l, 0.5 l, 1 l, 1.5 l and that’s it, isn’t it? Well, multiply that by, let’s say, three and you get the picture of just how many different bottle sizes they have over here. It’s crazy. From the tiniest bottles (I think something like 0.15 l) to ridiculously huge vessels (I think 3 l was the largest I have seen so far… or maybe even 3.5 l)… and like a hundred more variations of size in between these two extremes. A friend of mine was told that there is apparently a market for all these different sizes, so they keep on producing them instead of just economizing and focussing on maybe five sizes. Well, I can’t really imagine anybody saying: “This trip from A to B will take me approximately 2 hours and 32 minutes. Due to the forecasted weather my trip back home will take about 12 % more time. I will stay in B for 3 hours and 53 minutes, but will drink 43 % less than during the trip. According to my state of health my daily consumptions of liquid has risen 3 % above the normal level. So what I need for this trip is a bottle that contains exactly 2.1534 liters of water.” I don’t think so.

Well, maybe I just became really sensitive to that lately, but I really have the impression that every 10^th woman I see here is pregnant. And they’re not just getting there, there pregnant for everyone to see. Kind of a “9^th-month-in-your-face-pregnancy”. It appears as if Chilean women just skip 8 months right after the conception. But I don’t understand why you hardly see any pregnant women in Germany and here they are all over the place. Is it extremely hip to become pregnant here? Or conversely totally lame in Germany? Is the Germany population shrinking and the Chilean soaring? I don’t know…

OK, enough for now. I keep you updated!

P.S.: The pictures are by the way:

- The living room of my apartment, so you get an idea how I live

- A mural in Valparaíso

- A house on a hill in Valparaíso (with the obligatory Latin American power cords spoiling the picture… as always)

- My friend Juliette and I

- A beautiful sunset in Las Condes (in front of my favourite Starbucks store)

The first three weeks

2006-09-19T22:10:00.000-06:00

Saludos!

Well, my third week here in Santiago is about to come to an end I do have some things to tell.

Sooooo... where do I start... hrm. I think it would be the best to start from the start:

Even though my flight here was long, it was nevertheless quite unspectacular. I flew with Iberia. Not recommended. In my subliminal first world ignorance I thought "a time-honored European airline such as Iberia can't possibly be worse than such a third world carrier like LAN Chile." Well, I was wrong. Next time it's definitely gonna be LAN Chile again. Let alone the on-board entertainment program, LAN has definitely more leg space. Very important! And I also think, I am remembering the flight attendants to be prettier on LAN flights... It's the fringe benefits that count! Since I didn't want to burden the family assets that much, I picked to cheapest flight I could get. The concession I had to make for this price however, were two stopovers. One in Brussels and one in Madrid. I mean I knew that they were getting stricter with European smoking laws, but I didn’t expect them to be such hardasses already. In Brussels, where the vanguard of “Europeanism” resides I wasn’t surprised, nevertheless, also not pleased to find that there was not a single smoking area in the entire frikkin airport. At least in Madrid I could prepare for the upcoming 13 hour flight, but the conditions where not a lot better, though. All smokers constipated in one little corner. Like cattle to the butcher. Smokers – a class increasingly shunned by society. But this is not the time for political discussions. Later maybe.

The advantage if you are going to work for a company that arranges internships and the like, is that you’re sitting right at the source of all things important when you come to a foreign country. So, they took care of getting me a place to live. The apartment me, myself and I am living in is just great. Just as my landlord. Nice guy. A little older than I am and speaks quite a good German, even though we speak Spanish. He himself actually lives here, but now moved to the pension he is working at. I assume he needs the money. But he left me almost everything I need on a daily basis. He even left me a stereo and I think it is brand new! How fun is that? The only two things that bother me about this apartment are that the next Metro station is faaaaar away and I don’t really trust the Micros (buses), and that there is a goddamn construction site right in front of this house! Every morning bang bang bang, shout, clang, rattle, screeeeetch… every morning… all day… I don’t even need an alarm anymore to get up in the morning. And it’s not like, they’ve almost finished. Nooooo... They’re barely half way through. Thank God I basically just come home to sleep, but as awesome as my apartment is, they really should have told me before.

I had about one and a half week before I started working in this company. So of course what I did was running some errands, learning how to get to and away from my place by bus, buying stuff, and visting old friends. I also bought a bike! I figured that haven’t done any serious, regular sports for one and a half year, that I am horribly out of shape, and that I am basically tired all day. I feel that I am slowly getting back into shape again and I am feeling a lot better, thanks to the in-house gym and last but not least my bike, which I use to ride to work every day. Also saves me the money for the bus. But I was a little too optimistic in the beginning. First of all, I need a helmet. I thought it couldn’t get worse than in Beijing. But there the “Rush Hour” does not really deserve its name. It’s more like “Standing Hour” or rather “Standing HourS”. Nothing really moves there and I was usually faster by bike than by car. So, no real hazard. But being a biker here in Santiago is being an outlaw. Cars are the absolute rulers of the street, but their kings are the Microbuses. I think one of the criteria for employment as driver for the Micros is a suicidal tendency. This can be observed every day in the streets. They drive like they have nothing to lose. I believe that this is even more fuelled by the competition that exists between the drivers, since I think they get to keep a share of the profit as well. So you can image that riding your bike on the main street is no fun, unless you like the absolute adrenaline overkill. That’s why told myself to just take the smaller streets to work next time. But this is where problem number two starts. I never realized that, because the last time I was here I always took the bus or taxis. Santiago is like one-way street mayhem! If a street does not have at least four lanes, it is a one way street. And it’s exactly these four-lane streets I try to avoid in order not to get killed. So I had no other choice than to make my way through the urban maze. What makes the matter even more complicated is that quite a few streets change their direction at a certain time of the day. I tried not to drive too much on the sidewalk and against stream of traffic in a one way street, since I don’t know how much this is tolerated by the authorities here, but I finally found quite an acceptable non-kamikaze way to work and back. Of course those are two different ways due to the one-way streets…

But the thing really drove me mad was my strange encounter with Chilean red tape. Wow. I thought Germany was bad and Chile, despite having the reputation of being quite European, a lot more relaxed on these issues. But this is apparently not the case. So, let me line it out for you: If you are foreigner coming into the country with anything else but a tourist visa, you have to register with the local authorities. First step: You get to the airport and have to get by the immigration police by showing your visa and some other document. Done that, no problem. Next step: You go to the office of the international police downtown, pick a number and get yourself registered. Done that, no problem. Next step: You go to the registration office closest to your home and get yourself registered again. After that you just have to come back two weeks later and pick up your ID. And this was the point when the trouble started. Since it appears as if you even have to register if you want to go to the restroom, these offices are always horribly overcrowded. So the first time I went, I picked a number – I think it was 64 – and waited… like an hour or even longer. My call was about to come up. They always called in three at a time. “61, 62, 63!”. OK, next call then. After about 10 minutes of nothing, the next call: “70, 71,72!”. What? Hold on a minute! I didn’t wait here for half an eternity just to be passed over. So I went inside and told them. Fortunately, they didn’t just hand me a new number, but let me slip in through the back door. After a while I also got attendance. The guy in charge, looked at my visa, then looked confused, then walked away to talk to his colleague and finally told me that these morons from the Chilean Consulate in Hamburg put a wrong stamp in my visa. Therefore, I had to get it corrected before he could get me my ID. And to do that I had to go to the aliens department downtown. The next day I went there and it was – of course – totally overcrowded. But I already knew how to play this game, so I picked a number and waited for about one and a half hours. Gees, fun times! By the way, you literally have to pick a number everywhere, even at the notary. So, as it was finally my turn the guy in charge, looked at my visa, then looked confused, then walked away to talk to his colleague and finally told me that I was in the wrong department. The aliens department could only take care of visas which were issued in Chile. The department that takes care of visas issued in other countries is right across the street. Great. So I went there and asked if I was right. The woman behind the desk gave me a piece of paper with an address on it. So, I exited the building, followed the address on the piece of paper and re-entered the same building through another door around the corner. I told the woman at the front desk about my problem and she told me to go down to the end of the hall. Having arrived there I told my story one more time. I was getting really good at this. The guy understood what I meant, but told me that in order to have the stamp corrected they needed the director… who was not in at the moment. But I could come back tomorrow. Frustrated I was about to leave, as the woman at the front desk, surprised by my prompt return, asked me what happened. After I told her, she said that the director would be back the same afternoon and that I could come back at around 4 pm. I still had three hours left until 4 pm so I went to a café, had some, well, coffee and killed some time before I came back at around 4.30 pm. Again, I went down the hallway and told my story one more time. “Yes, I do understand your problem and yes the director is in right now, but there is no public attendance in afternoon.” I was boiling inside. But she would see what she could do for me anyways. Then, finally after like an hour of waiting and conversing with two Brits who were in a similar situation, I got my passport back with the corrected stamp. This threw me all back to the start, so I had to go to the international police again in order to be able to go to the registration office. One of the days after I went to the international police, I wanted to go the registry quite early so to cut down waiting time. I think when it comes to the registration office, I have to redefine the term “early”. I didn’t expect the line to be that incredibly long already so early in the morning. So I left and went another day instead, picked a number, waited for an hour and finally got myself registered. All I have to do now is go there again and pick up my ID. I don’t even have to wait that long to do that, thank God. I tell you, that was quite a journey and I am glad that I don’t have to do that again…

Another situation that also tested my patience was the process of getting a cellphone here. In a mall, I went to one of the stands of the biggest national mobile network operator with the intention to buy a prepaid SIM card. I didn’t need a new cellphone, since I brought my own, pimped-out, brand-new one with me, which came with MP3 player, camera, Bluetooth, a flashlight and much more stuff you actually don’t need. The frustration was quite big when I found out that my phone was SIM-locked. I.e. I cannot use other SIM cards than those from my original provider T-Mobile. Later I found out that it is possible to unblock the cellphone for a fee of 100 €. Call me stupid, but I really wanted to use my cellphone, last but not least since I am using the Walkman function every day and I don’t see the logic in carrying around two cellphones with me all day. So I ordered this code to unblock my cellphone. Unfortunately, it had to be sent by snail mail to the address of my parents’ house, since it had to be paid upon delivery. I was told that it’s gonna take about 2-3 workdays to get there. After more than a week and no confirmation from my parents’ side, I called T-Mobile. “We’re so sorry, but due to technical problems we were not able to make any deliveries the last days. We are working on it, but you will have to wait for your code around 2-3 days more.” Technical problems… right… But then finally after 4-5 days, the code arrived and I could eventually resume my crusade for the golden SIM card. Back at the huge mall Parque Arauco I went to the first stand of the said provider Entel and asked for a prepaid SIM card. “Ya no me queda”, nothing left, sorry. I didn’t worry too much, since there are two more stands of Entel in this big mall. But also the second stand “Ya no me queda” as well as the third “Ya no me queda”. Great timing. Why today!? And I had been pressured for weeks already to “finally get a goddamn cellphone!”. It was the next day when the miracle finally happened and I held a cellphone with a Chilean SIM card in my hands. My number is by the way 0056 8 46 55 315, if anybody feels the urge to call me.

Other than that there was not much else out of the ordinary happening these last three weeks. Two weekends ago I did a wine tasting tour and consequently got trashed before noon… This state was reinforced by some Cuba Libre the same night at the clubs. I felt like such a dilettante. I don’t know jack about wine and regularly drive my dad into desperation, because I cannot even tell a Cabernet Sauvignon from a Merlot. And Lenny this amateur goes on a wine tasting tour. Anyway, was fun. ;) The last weekend I was down for a hike in the Cajon de Maipu (Canyon of Maipu) in the outskirts of town. We went with two Chilean guys and maybe I got the Chilean definition of hiking all wrong, but I was all set and expected a lot more than just driving and getting out of the car once in a while just to get back in after five minutes. As we finally reached our destination, we eventually hiked. 20 minutes up, 10 minutes break for pictures, 20 minutes down. And back to Santiago. But this was a whole day trip after all.

I am sure you’re quite curious how I like my work. Well, there is not much to tell, because nothing spectacular happened at work yet. But all in all I like my work. I am basically the cock of the walk in this office, which I thought would give me some sort of privileged position. Well, it didn’t. My colleagues are an Austrian woman, two Chilean women (one of them is fluent in German) and a German girl that does her internship in the company. I must admit that Lisa, the intern, and I are speaking German all day, but the lingua franca in the office is Spanish. So Lisa and I speak Spanish to Ulli (the Austrian), Karen (the Chilean that speaks German) and Pia (the other Chilean) all day. That’s the way to learn a language. But it is also good to know that I can express myself in German in case that I have serious problems. Unfortunately, up to now I am working very independently on my thesis and there is no need to talk too much to my other colleagues. But I am sure that I will have to consult with them more often the upcoming weeks. Marion, the German founder of the company and my boss, is hardly in the office, since she has a full time job at a financial news agency. Once in a while, however, she drops by. Like for my first official introduction. This encounter really confused me for a couple of minutes. I mean, if you are expecting a boss or a founder of a company, you’re expecting somebody not younger than 45 and kind of humorless. When this tall, attractive woman in her early thirties walked in and welcomed me with a smile I didn’t quite know what to say until my head managed to reconcile my expectations with the actual situation. But no need to complain. I mean what do you want more than an attractive and nice boss?

So, right now I’ve reached a phase in the work on my thesis where I have to start reading the first pile of literature I gathered, so it is not very likely that I will go to the office next week. But Monday and Tuesday are off anyways because of the Fiestas Patrias… which reminds me that there is a fiesta waiting for me right now. I’ll keep you updated. Gotta go.