It’s funny how often people tell me I’m lucky. I’ve never quite been able to figure out what ‘lucky’ means.
Do they mean I’m lucky because people pay me to do the work I do?
Or, because I’m alone and free of commitments? Or do they assume I’m the recipient of some senile sugar daddy who covers all my bills?
I want to ask them if their house and 2.5 kids and their dog/cat/swimming pool are all a product of luck, too. I feel like most would respond explosively with “NO! What?!! We earned those!”
Well, I’ve earned what I do, too, so please, could you fuck off*?
(*I mean this nicely.)
And, to prove my point, I’m going to tell you about all the emphatically NON-lucky things that have happend to me here since arriving in Argentina.
- My esim – the eighth I’ve purchased from the same company – didn’t work when I arrived in Buenos Aires. Just, didn’t. Which, when you’re in a new city and have NFI where you are or where to go, is somewhat, erm, head-fcking.
- I went running in a (very cold) thunderstorm two days after arriving and got very, very lost. Google can be a right dick when you’re soaked through and freezing and standing on the edge of an insanely busy Argentinian motorway on a Saturday morning.
- My first merry saunters to the local shops were a shock: why did everything cost more than it did back home? Even peanuts? Even shitty chocolate and shitty coffee?
The answer: politics. Very recent politics. I missed the last ‘good bit’ of Argentinina life by like, oh, a month. - Ok, the thunderstorm was cold and wet. But then it got hot. Very fucking hot. I do not like hot. I left New Zealand because of hot. And here I am, in a country already basking in 28-degree afternoons with 100% humidity. #climatecheckfail
- My second week here, I went to a FUN meetup party where everyone was 20-something-years old. I made an offhand remark to an American dude about feeling old, and he said, “What, how old are you? Forty-two?”
- I am not forty-two.
- That same week, I went to a gym and asked for a one-day pass. I found another (cheaper) gym the next day and thought nothing of this first gym until a month later when I found they’d signed me up for a year-long membership and were merrily charging my card $NZ43 a month. Which is a lot of money for a gym you’re not bloody going to. $150 and half a billion Google-translated emails later, they seemed to understand that I was not, in fact, a member, and that I did not, in fact, have an Argentinian bank account that they could refund the money to. But they remained silent on the issue of how to refund the money. It took another half-billion emails and much hair-tearing (my own) and the help of my dear Bosnian friend to extract my money from SmartFit, a gym I will never attend again and certainly do not recommend to anybody with a debit card and shit Spanish.
- I broke a mug in my Airbnb.
- I broke the blender in my Airbnb.
- I broke the entire freaking wooden blind in my Airbnb. On very my last morning. Technically, ‘I’ didn’t ‘break’ it – I pulled the thing as usual and it fucking snapped, crashing to the ground like the coming of Christ, entirely sealing me off from daylight and AIR, which I value very much, and also inducing an unholy fit from my Airbnb host (who had otherwise been quite lovely) and causing her to demand that I pay for the ’emergencia’ because she had a guest from Brazil arriving THE VERY NEXT DAY!! I managed to remind her that she’d told me on my arrival that the bloody blind was poorly manufactured “like all things Argentina” -hence it was NOT my f*cking fault – but left her a 10,000 peso bill anyway.
- Which I regretted, because that same day, I called an Uber to carry my ageing ass and my overstuffed backpack and my many bags of groceries (well, why leave them behind?) to my next address – which was 2km down the road, and which I would obviously have walked if not for said luggage, but it was HOT and my spine is WEAK, and when an Uber is $4, why the hell not? Well, I found out why the hell not. An hour and a half later, blessed Uber had directed my driver to Paunero in Emilo, some 16km away from Paunero in Palermo, 2km down the fucking road. My driver was livid, I was in tears; the driver also demanded 15000 pesos, which was quite a bit more than the original quote of 2300 – but, by the time he’d driven me to the place I was meant to be (yes, 2km down the road from where I’d requested the fucking thing) – I was so completely over the whole situation and he was so completely furious (and now knew where I lived) that I just handed out my last pesos and cried all the way upstairs.
- I have broken a mug, an ornamental dish, and a salad bowl in my new Airbnb.
- This morning I found my favourite headband had taken flight and is now residing on the floor of the apartment down below, the door to which nobody is answering.
- Having blocked my Westpac debit card (to keep SmartFit from billing me) I have now found that ANZ is charging the worst possible rate for pesos to NZD – but only after using the damn card all damn week.
- Don’t even get me started on my trials and tribulations with the f*cking exchange rate. I have USD, I have NZD, I have three debit cards and a credit card – I STILL CANNOT GET PESOS. There is no such thing as getting money from an ATM. You have to use Western Union (and pay $15 per transaction) or source some backstreet cambio to buy your cash at the blue dollar rate. Oh, and the cash has to be crisp, clean, 100-dollar bills – which I do not have because No1Currency at Newmarket in Auckland only had $50 bill… and $50 bills have a lower rate. FML.
Are we good? I’m not lucky, in any sense of the damn word. I’m just doing the best I can, the same as the rest of you 🤷♀️
a woman wanders 