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| Brisket sandwich Gorilla BBQ (Photo credit: niallkennedy) |
If you landed on my blog then today is your lucky day. Because today happens to be the day where i dish out a delicious dish of one of the greatest secrets to settling down successfully. With the influx of social media, there is no end to the message "follow me" "sign up for me" "listen to me". And to a degree you do need to push people abit to get your name and your brand out there......for a little while.
One of my greatest secrets to success as an expat is adopting the philosophy that "Less is More". The less that I make it about me, the more I end up having. Each person has their own interest, mine is filming, literature, books, writing, and languages. Although those are areas that I am inflamed with passion, it doesn't mean that I can't let sparks and embers of other interests hit my firewood.
Food and cooking were never one of my passions but I have a ton of foodie friends and know people who are chefs. They are always out trying new places, new recipes and blogging about it. And the chefs now and then throw events like what's called a "Pop Up Restaurant", its a restaurant where the chef takes over someone's space for one nite and has his/her food instead of the restaurants usual menu.
In order to grow as a person, I find myself forcing myself away from my video camera and my books and coming out to events that normally I would bypass. And I believe this is one of the greatest secrets to not just life as an expat but to everything you'll ever want to do in life, stepping outside of yourself. If I didn't step out of myself, my blog would be boring and short lived and perhaps limited to writing about what goes on in my personal circle.
Another reason for stepping outside of yourself is that you never know who you are gonna meet and what kind of a role they may play for you in the future. This is important in life but it is especially important in another country where if you want to survive you have to create connections. Just about every single time an expat announces a new product, the journalistic side of me shows up there asking questions, trying out what they have, getting footage and if appropriate blogging about it.
Quite often these things that are foreign to me and I previously had no interest in. But when you show interest in other people's things, people remember that. Even if their event or product eventually doesn't pan out, the memory of you taking time out to show interest in something they feel passionate about is muchly appreciated and you gain respect within whatever community that you are trying to integrate into.
This principle applies to social media as well, I am always tweeting out things that are out of my regular set of interests. And more often than not, after I tweet or share it I learn more about it and start to get interested. It is the reason why if you were to talk to me, I could talk on a broad set of topics because I've used social media to expand my mind and not beg people to follow me.
One of the nites that eventually turned out differently than what I expected is when Larry of El Tejano opened up a little place on 1191 Uruguay for brisket. Larry is from texas and started out by creating a texas style tabasco sauce and then moved on to add brisket and wanted to open a brisket place here in BsAs. I came out to record footage of brisket being made into sandwiches and tacos. The brisket stand eventually fell through and didn't work out as planned. But i have no regrets coming out and spending an evening shooting footage of brisket.
However there is a happy ending to this story. Instead of having a storefront where brisket is sold El Tejano ended up throwing brisket BBQ events that takes place every Friday in Palermo. It is a dinner where one can reserve a spot. It takes place in Palermo at a place called "Reserve". For 150 pesos you'll be treated to smoked brisket, corn bread, dessert and so much more.....
@eltejano03
