Dear Nick,

This was the view from my apartment in Buenos Aires last night:


What´s the view from your apartment like? Oh yeah, Nexen.

hahaha

xoIan

Iguazu, I love you! and The Life in Buenos Aires

lit ulysses - james joyce

music major label debut (fast) - broken social scene

How appropriate that I be reading Joyce right now (400 pages in!). The wandering Bloom/Odyssean hero screams of me right now. Epic (in that mixed, muddled sense Joyce would´ve loved). But in its purest sense, epic, the perfect word for the falls.

Taking a bus up from Buenos Aires to Iguazu Falls, Adrian and I spent 4 nights kicking about the falls. One day on the Argentinian side, one day on the Brazilian side and, most importantly, one day by the pool. The hostel, you see, is a converted Casino that still very much feels like a little paradise. I even got used to coming home to a nice game of water volleyball with breaks for beer at the poolside bar. All this for a hostel!

More importantly, the falls themselves were amazing. On the Argentine side we did a little tour where we got a rainforest tour in a jeep, a boat ride up the river to the mouth of the falls for a drenching and inspiring view of the falls (the pressurized water and mist cleared up adrian´s ear!) and then walked about that falls for the rest of the day, hiking to the tops of all the drops as well as getting an awesome view of the aptly named ¨Devil´s Throat¨. As for the Brazilian side, you got a view from a little further back that allowed you to get a sense of the falls as a whole, plus it wasn´t as intensely crowded. However, one of the coolest suprises of the falls were the butterflies... they were everywhere! At times you felt like you were walking through fluttering clouds and they gave Iguazu this fantastic romantic edge that just couldn´t be beat. I´ve enclosed a couple photos to give you a little idea of how breathtaking it was, but be assured I have tons of photos should there be interest.

An overnight bus home later (greyhound could seriously learn from Argentine buses, our chairs became giant beds and we were served wine and a hot dinner, champagne after dinner, plus had movies constantly playing for us on the screens), and we were back in Buenos Aires, this time staying in the neighborhood of San Telmo. After a few days of panic searching (it seems things were more booked up than we anticipated) the horseshoe up our asses bailed us out again and we found ourselves with an aprtment in the heart of Palermo with a gorgeous view from our balcony in one direction, and from our living room that has floor to ceiling windows that open up completely in another direction. Adrian and I now find ourselves taking Spanish lessons and growing accustomed to the little pleasures of our day. For example, each day around 6 we indulge in a wee matte, a Argentine/Uruguayian tea that in its preparation and consumption is very much a social event. Imagine sheesha in tea form (and yes, with the nicotine, or we think anyways). Here´s a picture of us enjoying it, you can see the little matte cup with the metal straw... each time when you drink, you add a little hot water. It has a very strong, bitter taste, though it becomes quite releaxing after awhile. Adrian spends his days musing on how he can find a way to ship back kilograms of matte to himself in Calgary. All those of you who worked with me at the JCC, you´ll also notice that I´ve had to be equally macgyverish with this stereo to get it to work with my tape adapter...

Oh yes, I almost forgot to comment on the ridiculous club life around here. Well, Adrian and I, after a long day of house hunting, had no choice but to go out clubing 3 of the last 4 nights. The clubs around here are very simply the most hedonistic things I´ve ever experienced in my entire life. The nightlife starts at 1am (and that´s the time you arrive if you´re a loser... lol) and goes on until sunrise, and after that if you really want you can find after hours clubs that go until lunchtime. The last club we were at had 4 rooms, one of which was giant outdoor foam party (this wasn´t a special night, this is everyday), one room which had a ¨green room¨photoerotic shoot going on, and another which had the stars from the latest big brother pulling people up from the crowd to dance with them and what appeared to be strippers. The other room was techno. Anyways, I´m doing a poor job of describing it but just make it the most ridiculous club you could imagine and you´re probably somewhere in the neighborhood. So much fun though, our Canadian clubs look positively childish and repressed in comparison.

Music wise I find myself listening to Broken Social Scene a lot again, mostly because their latest album is the departure point for the thesis I pitched to Ryerson that got me the scholarship listed last entry. Perhaps I´ll explain my thesis in another entry. In the meantime, everytime I leave Spanish class I always seem to want to listen to Major Label Debut (Fast), probably because the song´s upbeat and happy tempo seems to match my mood so perfectly these days.

Haha, another long entry. Something for you to read at work though, right Nicko! Don´t you worry, I´ll be sure to make my next entry in Dear Nick form so you can enjoy it more thoroughly.

hasta luego Ian

Good News!!!
Just a quick update for a few pieces of interest. First, we got our apartment! We´ve got this great place in Palermo Viejo, around where Mr. Jorge Borges penned some of the greatest works of all time. The view is spectacular from our balcony and the landlady (a very cute 30 something former Spanish chef) has filled the living area with old books and games. I adore it. Check it out here.
In other great news, I recently heard back from Ryerson regarding doing a Masters in Communication and Culture. They accepted me... and then offered me a scholarship for 15 grand! That´s quite the offer for a guy who´s thesis stems from a reading of the latest Broken Social Scene record and will include such Canadian staples as the Trailer Park Boys. It´s like someone´s going to pay me to listen to indie rock and watch hilarious TV! All win.
Anyways, Adrian and I are famished after running around all day on no sleep (good night out last night) and no food (not so great day today) to get things in order so we could move into our apartment today, so we´re off to our favourite cheap restaurant we found in Palermo when we were here the first few days. I promise to write a big entry soon, as well as get that Dear Nick entry up I promised. In the meantime, in the spirit of ¨Circle¨´s comments on the last entry and his love for brevity, I´ve decided to post a poem that came to me in a divine flash of inspiration. Rhyming chose me.

The World´s Most Concise Anti-Nick Poem Ever Written
by Ian Dahlman

Nick?
Dick.

fin

xoian

New Format
Newly introduced into Casual Walks will be a new format of entry. The series will be entitled ¨Dear Nick¨ which will follow a series of letters addressed to our favourite jerk backhome and thus will try to be as jerky as possible in every facet of communication. To Nick´s delight they will also be concise. Jerks tend to be to the point... lol.
Otherwise we´re enjoying scorching hot weather up here in Port Iguazu, our hostel has a pool which has made for some delightful afternoons. Oh, and we also saw Iguazu Falls (one of the 7 wonders of the natural world) from Argentina yesterday and from Brazil today and were completely blown away, I´ll try and get the pics up when I´m on a more decent cpu at an i-net cafe in Buenos Aires (we head back there tomorrow to try and find our appartment).

Josh says I should blog more, he's right... or, Week 1

lit | beautiful losers - leonard cohen
paint | torres garcia
music | jaime roos

I've decided I will blog once a week minimum. I feel this is very ambitious, given the beautiful sunshine, cheap beer, and vibrant city life swirling around me (jealous?). Today may be a shorter entry, as this damn computer in the hostel makes a squuuuueaking noise every time you press a key on the keyboard. I feel I'm annoying every single person around me. Hopefully they understand.

First and foremost, what we've done (since we're largely playing this by ear). So far: half a week in Buenos Aires, a ferry ride across the river to Uruguay, one night in Colonia, and now we come to the end of a half week in Montevideo. We've had one day of torrential rain sandwiched by near constant 30 degree weather. I'm now ridiculously tanned, thanks to the beaches of Uruguay.

Despite a near constant run of injuries to Adrian (his ear is blocked and sore, he has a blister on his foot, and he split his toe on a Montevidean pier... to mum: Adrian sends many thanks for the very thorough first aid kit) we've quite literally had a horseshoe up our collective asses. Buenos Aires was spectacular, and when we return we're still very torn between two neighborhoods in which to rent an appartment: the more bohemian, real, but somewhat isolated San Telmo, or the more refined, connected, but vaguely sterile Palermo. The good news is that we've actually met people living in both neighborhoods through various random hostel connections, so wherever we wind up we'll be hooked into a community there, which I think is the most important thing. However, we likely won't be back in Buenos Aires for another half week, as from here we now head north to Iguazu Falls before coming back down. Since our hostel was in Palermo last time, we're gonna grab a hostel in San Telmo this time and get to know the area a bit more, then make our decision. Otherwise our time in Buenos Aires was largely spent meandering the streets at leisure, hanging out in some incredible parks (the one in San Telmo was so cool, nice forest with this crazy mix of locals playing chess, a little amphitheatre, and an almost surreal, greek-templish looking gazebo) and then partying with the hostelers at night. We've also taken to playing checkers most nights over our first beer, to which I'm happy to report Adrian looses quite regularily (though he seems to have the advantage at Shithead (a card game)).

As for Uruguay, our first stop in Colonia was very cool, a former port town that used to house a great many pirates and is a UNESCO world heritage site, but really only interesting for an afternoon. We walked the lovely cobbled streets, snapped a few photos, but wound up heading off the next morning to Montevideo.

Our time in Montevideo has been stellar, but since this is running on, I'll summarize the highlights via a cultural lense. We saw the constructivist Torres Garcia's works today in a great little gallery, my favourites were his various portraits of big figures in Western culture, such as Socrates, Velazquez, Dostoyevsky etc., they were very contorted and swirled with absolute personal involvement with them, mirroring the way an artist interacts with their works personally, which I thought was fantastic. As for music, Adrian and I were lucky enough to be chilling yesterday afternoon on one of the city beaches in Montevideo when we noticed that they'd blocked off traffic on a major road behind the beach and had started constructing a massive stage on the beach's edge. So in broken spanish I convered with a very friendly Uruguayan roadie (I was so suprised, North American roadies always seem surly) and discovered a band called Jaime Roos was playing a free concert at the beach at 930. So Adrian and I made the effort to come back to catch the show, to find about 8 to 10 thousand people gathered on the beach to watch what is apparently a huge band that has been around and stupid popular for 20 years close down the series of summer carnival concerts that have been going every weekend for the past 2 months. The crowd was incredible, the energy ridiculously contagious, and we found ourselves dancing on the beach to what I would say sounded like the latin version of a pop-jam band (imagine Dave Matthews had been born in Montevideo). Great show and those moments when you took a second, looked around you at the ocean of a crowd and got a sense of what you were experiencing were priceless.

I'll end with what I've been reading on the beaches... I just finished up Cohen's Beautiful Losers, a great Canadian novel that I think EVERYONE should read. The treatment and confounding/combining of spirituality, sexuality, and enlightenment is stunning and you'll have moments where you'll find yourself stupefied by the beauty of the imagery and prose, or ridiculously stunned and personally challenged by what you're reading. A great achievement. I've now begun another epic (I've been in that mood lately, having read sheppard's ha! and pynchon's gravity's rainbow) and have begun reading James Joyce's Ulysses. I'm only 30 pages in and I'm already enraptured by the prose, plus it helps that I'm coupling my reading with the TTC lectures on the book, almost as if I'm back in Uni taking a course, only lying on the beach while doing so. Mmmmm.

All the best to everyone, look for a new posting in a week's time (you can set your watches to it! assuming you're ok with your watch sometimes being late and a little rambling at times). Also, I'd like to put a shout out to all the new e-friends I seem to have on facebook. I promise I'll get round to writing on everyone's walls to say hello, though you'll have to forgive if I'm a little new to the proper etiquette of it all. Ciao!