:: Buenos Aires Weekly ::

Buenos Aires is starting to be seen as the new gay-friendly city, and one thing leading to another, it is time to talk about Tango Queer. What is it are you going to ask me? From my readings, I got to learn that some people in the desire to open Tango lessons to a wider audience decided to offer classes to same sex partners. Tango is this kind of traditional/cultural icon that is starting to open a little to all. All, in the sense that you can be dressed as you like, you can choose to have a man or woman leading the dance, you can dance Tango on any type of music, can it be electronic tango, that’s fine too. So we’re starting to see here in Buenos Aires, this new Tango Queer orientation, which is of course not accepted by traditional milongas, for whom the clothings, the partner, the music still remains and should be an old-fashion way of practicing Tango. In any case, I’m fine with both, let the pure traditionals maintain why Tango was originally “invented”, which is a dance between a man and a woman, and let have the newcomers join this new Tango world, full of freedom, more open, more in accordance with our ever-changing world, I will say.

Pictures from Germany have been uploaded. You can access the link by clicking on the picture.

Fourth link’s uploaded and will let you discover Paris through our pictures. Click on the picture to access the link.

After all major cities adopted their open 2-deck city bus sometime ago for most of them, Buenos Aires finally will have its own touristic bus before the end of this year. Moreover Buenos Aires has been elected the 3rd best courteous city of South America. This is an important point as, for me, what I like best about the city, is the courteousness of its inhabitants. Porteños are super friendly, and really really nice.

Moreover since 2002, tourism keeps growing in the Argentinian capital. The Argentinian pesos is favorable for the foreigners, as the numbers speak for themselves: in 2005, tourism generated some US$ 3.500 millions in income.

The last 2 weeks have been busy at work. Due to my new responsabilities and new projects we’re trying to deliver on time. The courses I’ve been working on have been released, not without stress, and now is the “waiting” process of the client’s review. Waiting is a big word, since there’s other tasks to work on meanwhile ;).

As of today, my Buenos Aires daily blog has been added to the following blog: Bloggers in Argentina. For those of you, who are interested and curious to check other blogs about Buenos Aires and Argentina.

Now, I’m trying to drag Ati to go see “El Mundial de Tango” taking place in the city until the 27th. Among Tango competitions, concerts, and demonstrations, I need to go! — Let’s see if I can persuade him.

Today’s supposed to be a national day off, I mean it is a national day off still, but everybody went to work. Why? ’cause the Argentinian government pushed back the day-off to next monday so that we could all have a long week-end. Really cool initiative, isn’t it? I always believed I had a picture of San Martin to share with you. I know I have one, but can’t put my hand on it. Well General San Martin was an Argentine general and the prime leader of the southern part of South America’s successful struggle for independence from Spain. I could develop more about his life and story but that could take me a lonnng time. So I make it short. Here’s a picture of the main monument here in the city of Buenos Aires.

Gosh I can’t express how stressfull I was yesterday night watching the last episode of 24-Season 5. Few months to wait, until at least sometimes in March 07 in Argentina, to give me answers about so many things, about what will happen next. I say March, since I believe Argentina runs the show about 2 months after it starts in the States. In North America, they will start running the program on January 14th, so by mid-March for Argentinians. This is way too long! But well, meanwhile I had Ati discovered 24 sometime ago now, and we’re making a 24 maratho n as often as we can. Anyhow, I will miss 24, this is a really good show, good plots, good suspense, the kind of stuff that make you want to see more

I feel like I had to tell you all that my position is changing considerably in my company. From a Flash group project manager, I’m now in charge of Customizated Courses-packages. This is a first for the company and therefore for me as well. Let’s say that I’m training for 2/3 months as project manager assistant, and the deal will be that later I am fully in charge of the projects. Better tell you that this is big and a lot interesting-of course. Lots to do, lots to manage, but lots to learn at the same time. So this is what’s going on for me at that time

I wanted to share this picture which I find really nice and that I just stole from a local website. I felt bad to use this one on my daily blog, since this is not my picture, and I felt more appropriate to upload it here. The avenue Corrientes tends to be crowded day and night. This is one of the busiest avenue in the city. Of course, I can’t never be there during pick-hours since my work place is a little far from Corrientes, and the following picture has been taken- most likely- during rush hours. Which explains the crowd.

I’ve been using this blog to kind of put things I want to share with you. The last 3 entries have- indeed- nothing to do with Buenos Aires, or Argentina, in general. I said ok, I need to make an “Argentinian” entry today. So here it goes: yesterday night, we went out to a friend’s place, and music was playing in the background, from a national radio station. Until there, nothing really amazing. But then at exactly 12am, the radio started playing the national hymn.. out of the blues.. So I started asking Argentinians “Hey is tomorrow (or today) a national day off of some kind?..” And there a girl explained me that by law, all the radios in all Argentina, are required to play the national hymn. They can play any version possibly existing, from remixes, old versions, new ones, from national singers.. etc… but they have to play it everyday at 12am. I found this so amusing, that today I decided to share with you the Argentinian hymn. Check it at:

http://www.dc.org.ar/sonidos/Himno_Nacional_Argentino.mp3

Enjoy :) 

Third link uploaded that will allow you to discover pictures from Mediteranean beach cities and surroundings. Click on the picture to access the link.