Dodging & Fudging the Issue of Death and Dying

Cementerio de la Recoleta - Buenos Aires - Argentina (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

During my stay with a local Argentine couple, there were two occurrences of deaths that happened within the family. The first time, I didn't ask too many questions but assumed that they deal with death the way we do in North America. But the 2nd time around, a brief interaction with the girl that lived in the house led to a startling revelation. The conversation went like this:

"My grandmother passed away yesterday"

"Oh, I'm sorry to here that"   (me)

 "Thanks....yeah we are gonna go bury her today"

I walked away for a few brief minutes and then the conversation sank it and I went back to my housemate and asked her if when someone passes away in Argentine culture, it seems as if the funeral is the next day. She confirmed to me that in their culture, burial is very quick and can even happen on the same day.

The Argentine Serpentine Spits Venomous Poison From Her Fangs

There is nothing more entertaining in the world than watching two people arrive at the same destination on the same day, each with a plan on how they were gonna mess with the other persons head. Every 3 months, my church has a massive gathering of all the churches in the region to mark the end of another trimester. It is a HUGE family event and I knew everyone would be there. And in my gut I knew that somehow, the Argentine Serpentines path would cross for the first time ever since my arrival in Argentina.

In my mind I made a resolve that if I saw that sneaky snake, I was gonna ignore her. One of my greatest strengths as a person is my ability to stick to any resolve that I make.  However, there are a few times in my life when my resolve gets overridden because someone else had plans for how she would handle an encounter with me and had made up a resolve of her own.  I can only imagine that when the two of us woke up that morning, we were thinking the exact same thing. We knew the other person would be at the same event and each of us had to make a plan in advance to gain the upper hand.  One of our plans would indeed triumph that night.........it just wouldn't be mine.

Canning Candida

English: A basket of garlic (allium sativum) offered for sale at the farmers' market in Rochester, Minnesota (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you are expecting a baby girl and you are considering "Candida" to be lovely name, I advise you to think again and perhaps come up with some variation instead unless you want your child to go through life getting made fun of for having the name of a fungus.

Unfortunately for me, I became quite familiar with Candida during a brief brush with Oral Thrush. I'll try to explain things to you in a way that will cause you not to lose your lunch. On your tongue there is a whole ecosystem of microorganisms. One of these is Candida at it is harmless in itself because its population is regulated by the other organisms living in the ecosystem. However, every so often a situation arises where the population of Candida somehow does not get regulated properly and the growth gets out of control.

Eventually what happens is the fungi spreads to sides of your mouth, throat making painful to swallow or eat or drink anything.  What I believe happened with me is that I was coming to a time where i had confront some deeply painful events that happened to me in Canada. To make a long story short my stress went up, my immunity went down and all of a sudden Oral Thrush appeared out of nowhere like the Joker in Gotham City.

Flirting with Fair Prices in a Feria

There is no doubt in my mind that if the government and the people of Argentina had a fb page where they had to set their relationship status, their status would be set to "complicated". It seems as if every single time is ready to throw in the towel and give the "It's not you it's me" speech, the other throws a curve ball to keep them at arms length.

One of the places I hadn't been to on my last few trips was a little park called "Plaza Almagro". Sometimes exploring even the tiniest and most insignificant of places can bring gigantic results and this day was no exception.  It somehow worked out that my first visit would happen on the weekend. Unbeknownst to me there is a large open air market that happens in Plaza Almagro only on the weekends. Prices for food are dirt cheap and as a result lineups are long and getting there early is an absolute if you want first dibs.

Madonnas Sticky & Sweet Tour: Live in Buenos Aires

"I don't know if everybody knows about my history with Buenos Aires and Argentina. It's been 13 yrs since I have been here. I have an incredible relationship with this country.  There is something magical about this place and it's not tangible."     -Madonna




Dec 6th 2008, Madonna returned to Buenos Aires but this time for a performance that was bound to draw alot alot less protest than when she portrayed Eva Péron in Evita. 3 hrs and one day of presale was all it took for 70 000 tickets in River Plate Stadium.  The overwhelming response to Madges return to Buenos Aires prompted them to add another show date the very next day on Dec 7th.