Socialists, Social Events, and Associations

Sunday, December 15, 2013: “ Michelle Bachelet Easily Regains Presidency”…

Today was the run-off election.  None of the 11 candidates who ran on Nov 17 had a certain majority.  Chileans have now re-elected Bachelet, the center-socialist, and maybe she'll use her position wisely.    http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/12/15/michelle-bachelet-chile-presidency/4033693/

Recent Social Events in Puerto Montt: 

Frauenverein

Our neighbor in the apartment next door is Yolanda, a lovely woman of la tercer edad, who gave me a ticket to the traditional Christmastime Onces party by the Frauenverien of Puerto Montt.  Women of German descent, they do good works in the community, and hold these parties a couple times a year to raise money for their causes.  We gathered in the large hall of the Club Aleman, where thirty big round tables were set with plates of petit four sandwiches, cookies, and cakes of every kind.  Champagne glasses of freshly minced strawberries topped with sparkling soda, marked each place, and every table had a big bowl of Nescafe instant coffee, a pitcher of hot milk and a thermos of hot water.  (Photo is from the Club Aleman website ... there really were 30 tables, each set for ten, and every seat held a lively, lovely woman!) 

Yolanda sat me next to an English-speaker named Ursula, a young woman who told me she's known most of the women in the club since she was a child. She was attending with her mother, and many tables, she said, included three generations of women from the pioneer German families of Pto Montt.  During the first hour of chatting, sipping and nibbling, club members circulated among the tables selling tickets for the raffling of prizes.  You wrote your name next to whichever numbers you wanted on the offered page, 500 pesos per number, probably 20 numers per page. Other club members carried trays of more cake for those who weren't quite satiated yet!  I'm sorry I didn't figure out a way to wrap a sticky-creamy sweet slice or two to take home to Richard.

During the second hour, once all the tickets were sold, cut apart and folded, club members conducted the raffle.  What a scene!  While women with microphones stood in the front of the room by a long table loaded with prizes, a tiny, beautiful, white-haired mujer carried the big shopping bag full of tickets around the room, choosing someone here and there to pull out the winner of the next prize.  A red-faced runner carried the chosen ticket to the front, where it sometimes took two or three to decipher the handwriting and call out the name.  Prizes included donated store-bought treasures like a hair-dryer, and a crystal platter, as well as hand-made items like an afghan, and a set of embroidered towels ... plus a couple of cash prizes, some gift certificates to various restaurants, and a huge cake that would do any wedding proud.  I didn't win a thing, but thoroughly enjoyed chatting with Ushie about her work as a psychologist at the local prison, and her family's preparations for summer vacations.  

Almozar

Richard and I went together to the next event, when Marlene, of RePacMar, invited us to her home for lunch.  We walked about a mile and a half to her Angelmo office, arriving at the appointed hour (1 pm.  Not a half-hour late, the usual tiempo Chileno). Marlene drove us to her lovely casa, up on Puerto Montt’s fourth terrace.  She's a flower-gardener with a fine collection.  (I am a giantess in this country!)

Can you see that the centers of these daisies are blue?!?

Inside, Margarita, the live-in cook, served us pirotas con longaniza, a typical Chilean bean soup with sausage …delicious ... with tomato salad, homemade rolls, and a wonderful dessert of frozen blueberries atop a melange of shredded orange and banana.   

'Twas fun to talk about the language.  I made my usual complaint about how hard it is to understand, when I can’t see the words I’m hearing.  Harina / arena … Vas hacer /  Vas a ser  … ai yi yi!  Marlene understood completely, and gave another example:  Se pare / separe … the first means he pairs with someone, the second means he separates!    

Richard got onto a story from his voyage in the south of Chile … about trading fresh-caught tuna for a certain shellfish harvested by local fishermen.  “Puro” – he recalled, a bright red oyster-like flesh extracted from rock-like shells.

Marlene corrected him:  Piure  … She talked in Spanish about what an important source of yodo, this particular shellfish is.  Yodo, she said, the essential life ingredient.  ¿Que?  (photos from internet) 

Yodo was NOT in my dictionary. 

Back home later:  Google translate explained.

Have you guessed? 

yodo = iodine 

English-Speakers' Book Club of Puerto Varas

During a very lucky momento at the grocery store not long ago, a woman named Lia overheard R & I talking in English about how to ask for the cheese we like (from Wisconsin … lo siento … we haven’t found a Chilean cheese to compare with Monterey Pepper Jack, or with U.S. Cheddar.)  Lia introduced herself,  offering to help with our request if we needed some Spanish.  She’s Columbian by birth but has been living in Chile for decades, since she married the gringo, Thomas, who came to Chile 20+ years ago from New Hampshire to work in the salmon industry and is now building homes on the 30-acre farm he purchased in Pelluco, just outside of Puerto Montt.  We were satisfied more or less with the grocery store clerk’s answers about our cheese (“maybe next month") but Lia was so friendly we just stood there in the cheese aisle chatting.  While Richard and Thomas discussed their sailboats, Lia asked if I’d like to attend the English-Speaking Book Club in Puerto Varas with her the next day, Friday.   Yes, please! 

She picked me up outside my building at about 10:30 next morning.  We got stuck in traffic in downtown Puerto Varas as one of the elementary schools was celebrating its five year anniversary with a parade thru town.  But the book club group runs on Tiempo Chileno, so even tho we were 45 minutes late, we were not the last to arrive. 

The book, The Good Doctor, by Damon Galgut, is set in post-apartheid South Africa, in the almost-deserted hospital of the former Bantu homeland.  I’d Googled it the night before the meeting, so was not completely ignorant.  But what a pleasure when Vanessa arrived.  She and her husband had emigrated from South Africa some three or four years ago, so she was able to provide a lot of background for the story.   

I will ramble on about the various women of this group in future blogs, as I’m sure to be attending future book group meetings.  Next book:  The Dalai Lama’s Cat… which, I don’t know, doesn’t sound like my cup of tea, really, but I will look forward to hearing Sonia and Doreen and the others discuss it.  Doreen, Chilean, lived in Seattle for 40 years.  Sonia, Chilean, and widowed now, worked at UCLA for years before marrying a retiring American prof and moving to Texas.  He was quite a bit older than she, and told her that one of the good things about her country was that she should be able to live well there on their savings after he was gone. 

Filosofia with the Nueva Acropolis
A poster I kept seeing around town intrigued me, so last Wednesday night Richard and I walked about a mile across town to the house on Anibal Pinto where the local branch of Nueva Acropolis holds its meetings.  The advertised lecture:  
La Personalidad Como Máscara de Yo Interior. 

Interesting topic … who knew if we’d be able to understand more than 10% of the talk, but it would be a good chance to immerse our ears in Espanish, si?  

A very good speaker (he enunciated, spoke slowly and distinctly, and enhanced his presentation with gestures and tidy printing on his white board) delivered a review of basic concepts of filosofia:  the personality is comprised of el cuerpo fisico, el cuerpo energetico, el cuerpo emocional, y el cuerpo mente-deseo.  These temporal layers are all supervised by the a-temporal alma.  Sign up for the full course to learn more about Greek, Chinese, and Egyptian interpretations of the meaning of life! 

We did not stay for the coffee and chat afterwards, but might go back for another session one of these weeks.   

Asociaciónes

Two more things this week:
First:  My friend Beccy commented that my addiction to the soap opera is a legitimate way to learn to hear the language.  Thank you!  I have to add that Avenida Brasil has also been a great spark for good posture.  Every one of the women in this tempestuous telenovela set in Rio de Janeiro holds herself wonderfully straight, erect, long in the spine, breast bone held high, shoulders back, neck lifting the brain to the sky as if to affirm that her body is a conduit connecting her heart with the celestial spirits above. 

That’s an image of Life Force more accessible to me than yodo.

Second:  The cruise ships are delivering tourists to Puerto Montt on a regular basis again, now that the weather is warm and the sun is shining most days.  ¿Quien sabe quien puede aparecer?  Cat Stevens is scheduled to be in Santiago sometime soon.  Maybe he'll stop in down here, too?
Richard took this photo from the end of the waterside tourist pier just outside El Mall Costanera.  Those little boats actually deliver the tourists to Angelmo, almost two miles from the Mall.  The tourists have to ride the buses, or take taxis or collectivos, or WALK like we usually do, to get to el plazo central in Pto Montt.  

Saturday Morning Market

Today, just a few photos from the President Ibañez Mercado this past weekend.  Having arrived BEFORE 9:15 a.m., we walk upstairs first to visit the meat vendors, and look down for an overview of the regular fruit & veggie stalls:

Then we scan the central fresh fish area …

… on our way to the back end of the market where the farmers from the countryside have come to the city to sell. 

We are actually TOO early to catch "The Stevie Wonder of the Market," an aged, blind accordion-player with a great voice.  Maybe next week we'll go a little later again, and capture a bit of video for you.  

Buyers and sellers ...

   
lettuce and peonies ...




The crowd seemed to multiply by the moment ..
Have a great week, yourself, and eat as fresh as you can.  'Ta Luego.

Food, Glorious Food ...

All the walking we’ve been doing - up and down steep hills and stairways, back and forth to the Jumbo, the wine store, the fresh vegetable market, the fish market – creates so many advantages.  Fresh air, bella vistas, great stretches, potent taxing of the heart, and regular burning of calories … which means regular appetites for our favorite fuel:  good food. 

Richard fixed his special garlic-crusted fried chicken on Thanksgiving Day, with spinach and mashed spuds.  Nothing left-over, so we had to go out shopping on Black Friday, but only as far as the grocery store. 

At the fish markets, you buy the whole fish and then watch the expert clean & fillet it.  We like fresh Pacific Sierra, a mackerel-like white fish at about $2 US/lb, that we fried … still have a few pieces in the freezer.  We like Congrio, a delicious, white-fleshed, eel-like fish. $8 US for the whole fish.  We ate half of it fried, and cooked the other half in a tomatoey broth w. other veggies.

We will definitely try (still working up the courage) the picoroco, or giant barnacle. 

Eating picoroco at Angelmo Mercado in Puerto Montt

(watch the 1^st 2 minutes …after that the same video is repeated without sound.)  Last week I learned we are to cook the picorocos in their shells in a large vat of water for 45 minutes, before extracting them to serve with lemon.  Our friend G claims that the picoroco is actually a type of crab, but I don’t see that confirmed on the web.  We know they taste like crab, as we enjoyed a dish of them at the Club de Yates restaurant here in Puerto Montt when we first visited in 2005.  It’s gonna be messy to cook them at home.  Maybe we’ll eat them at the market.  Uncooked, they were going for $1 US each at the Angelmo fish market last Saturday: 

Today, for lunch, we tried the sushi joint on Rancagua Street.  Not too exciting.  For almost $17 US we had nori-wrapped maki rolls made with centolla (recently-thawed & bland), and maki with palmitos (vegetarian- pretty good).  Tried the “special rolls” – wrapped in panko crumbs & fried, with shrimp (good) & cream cheese (huh?) inside.  The green tea, by Lipton, was tasty.  We were the only customers for the young woman who served us.  She’d answered Richard’s very important question, “Tienes wasabi?” in the negative, at first; but fortunately another woman stopped in, and pointed out “el verde, abajo” so we got wasabi after all, even tho it was paste-style from a tube, a disappointment.    

You’d think a seaport/fishing village like Puerto Montt would have great sushi, Richard says.

Maybe not on Mondays.

Low-tide view from the malecon at Angelmo:  this boat doesn't fish anymore.

High-tide view of the beach on Isla Tenglo across the channel from the malecon we walk towards Angelmo.







Last week our friend, Marlene, the owner of the marine supply store, RePacMar, in Angelmo, joined us for lunch at a restaurant called “Adele’s Corner”  …Rincon de Adela … downtown.  Marlene is very patient with our Spanish efforts, and even ventured a few words in English.  I’d been accumulating my list of questions for her for weeks:

1. Where does the city’s water come from? (Well water is pumped into storage tanks arriba, and treated before being dispersed.)  My tap water is sometimes cloudy.  Marlene suggests that might be due to the storage tanks in our building.  When the water is cloudy, I drink the bottled stuff.
   Photo above:  one of the water tanks on the upper level of the city (left), and Volcan Calbuco (right).
2. Where can I get buttermilk for my Ranch dressing recipe? (Probably have to go to the dairy where the butter is made.  Nobody sells buttermilk in the grocery stores.)  I’ve been making do with Greek-style yogurt.  Mixed with a little cider vinegar, mayo, minced parsley & green onion, & a clove of garlic mashed with salt into paste, it’s close enough to Hidden Valley to satisfy.  Add some good wasabi freshly made from powder, and it’s perfect with celery and carrot sticks. 
   
3. Where can I get curly parsley?  Aka perejil?  Marlene says it’s available at the grocery stores or the Mercados … but we’d only found it once.  Everybody has cilantro; often we see the flat-leafed Italian parsley.  Sin embargo, the dark, curly kind, so full of flavor is rare.  Marlene insisted that we try the Mercado first thing on a Saturday morning, when all the gente from the rural areas bring their produce into town. 

Well, we’d been to both the Angelmo Mercado down on the waterfront and the President Ibañez Mercado up on the third terrace quite a few times, but not on a Saturday morning.  So this past weekend we hiked up to Ibañez at 10:30 a la mañana, Sabado.  ¡Que multitude!   The usual stalls, full of cherries, nectarines, carrots, cabbage, beets, garlic, onions and tomatoes served many buyers.  The fish and shellfish tables teemed with congrio, salmon, mussels, clams and customers.  AND that whole large area at the back … fully one third of the market’s indoor space, which we’d only seen empty before … now teemed with Chilenos at laden tables on which dozens of individual entrepreneurs displayed the spinach, cilantro, radishes, lettuce, potatoes, flowers etc etc etc from their gardens.  Picoroco and heaps of clams & mussels for sale at the very back.  Fresh-baked cookies and cakes at one table.  We had a lot of fun searching for the curly parsley … the one thing nobody had! 

We climbed up to the second level for a balcony over-look …oh, so sorry, the camera’s battery was inoperado.  But now we know.  Saturday morning really is the time to shop.  Next week we’ll have a charged camera.

As it happened, we found perejil at one of the regular stands after all.  A full, fresh, fragrant bunch, tied with a strand of straw, for 350 pesos … about 60 cents US.   I chopped some tonight for the latest batch of Ranch.

Two projects, outside of food, occupy our “working hours” (or maybe I should say our working moments) these days:  1) getting the boat “imported” into Chile, and 2) opening a bank account here.  Richard (a Taurus with moon in Capricorn) is patiently stepping his way along both paths.  Two weeks ago we took the bus (45 minutes) up to Frutillar, where his English-speaking attorney, Zandra, has an office just above the gorgeous Lago Llanquihue.  A lovely, blue-sky day allowed a view of the nearby Volcan Osorno:

…and we enjoyed a walk along the lakeshore to the Teatro, before getting the bus back to town. 

Zandra agreed that the prices R had been quoted for appraisal of the value of the boat, and for “agency” to get through the customs process of importation were both higher than normal.  She’ll act as coordinator with both appraiser and customs agent, and maybe that will turn out all right.  I’m almost positive that the price the customs agent quoted was due in good part to our atrocious Spanish when we met with him.  Who wouldn’t add a few hundred dollars worth of work to deal with such inept strangers?  Our Spanish is improving every day … but sheesh!  The language of customs, taxes, values, and bureaucracy is still very much a challenge. 

Meanwhile, the Se Vende flyers R had printed, and distributed himself among the marinas of Puerto Montt, advertise the Sailing Vessel Abrazo for sale at $35.000,000 CLP, or about $70K US.

Feedback says that’s too much.  Since the boat has not yet been imported, a buyer would have to pay the Chilean government a 19% IVA tax, plus some unknown customs charges.

Richard has already experimentally slashed the price to $28,500 CLP on the flyers at Marina Reloncavi … but he’s not advertising anymore till he gets Abrazo thru the importation process.

He’s found quite a few examples of “similar” boats on Yachts.com, and hopes the Chilean appraiser will agree to a value less than $30K U.S. for import taxes.

Vamos a ver.

The bank account project has involved already several hours with Spanish-speaking account managers, several trips to the copy service to print out US records required by the Chilean bank, and many dollars invested in special delivery of signed papers for wire transfer.  $5500 US minimum balance required or else they charge a service fee of $66 US per month.

On the plus side, if you maintain the minimum balance, the bank pays 4% interest.  When was the last time we saw that from a US bank?  

I’m reading a 1995 book called Trust:  The Social Virtues & The Creation of Prosperity, by Francis Fukuyama.  Very interesting.  The author proposes that modern, free-market economic theory is 80% correct.  What’s missing is the importance of cultural differences, something recognized in classical economics.  If there are high levels of trust in a society, the economy can be more efficient and successful than if trust is limited, for instance, to within close family groups.  The US, Fukuyama says, has a historically “communitarian orientation,” even tho we think of ourselves as “rugged individualists.”  And then, unfortunately, there has been a steadily worsening breakdown of trust in our country:  We spend more for police protection than other industrialized nations; we keep more than one percent of our population in prisons; we pay substantially more than Japan or Europe to lawyers so our citizens can sue one another.  These costs are “a direct tax imposed by the breakdown of trust in the society.” 

I recognize that one reason this book is so interesting to me has a very personal root.  When I was a kid, newly able to read, and Mom was soon to give birth to my next brother or sister, I studied the Baby Names book and learned that my name, Susan, means “trusting.”  I ran to Dad with this fabulous new information, but he made a terrible scowling face at the book, and said, “Christ! You don’t want to be trusting!  You’ll lose everything!”  Hmmm.  The “Question Authority” aspect his remark sparked was mostly positive, I think.  What else he planted in my subconscious, tho?  ¿Quien sabe?

One more quote from Fukuyama:   “In addition to its physical capital, the US has been living off a fund of social capital.  Just as its savings rate has been too low to replace physical plant & infrastructure adequately, so its replenishment of social capital has lagged in recent decades.”
I’m hopeful that Part V of this book will bring ideas for “enriching trust.” 

On the other hand, as part of my study of the Spanish language, I’m watching a telenovela called Avenida Brasil.  Originally in Portuguese, this celebrated soap-opera is dubbed for Chilean TV in Spanish, so there is that small problem of the lip-synch being un poco confundiente.  However, I’ve invested many hours and have begun to train my ear.

 

 The story involves unbelievable passion, revenge, fierce love, vast idiocy, and is set in Rio with scenes of children working in the huge landfill-dump, and wealthy ex-futbol stars in their Ipanema mansion, with lots of marketing in the Divino neighborhood and Copocabana beach scenes too.  I’m afraid I’ve become addicted.  According to Wikipedia, the series will begin in English in the U.S. next year.   If you go to the Facebook site:  telenovelas chilenas  you can scroll to find a link to the latest chapter.  I’ve just watched Capitulo 92. 

Onward, into the future.  May December delight you with holiday warmth.  We're wondering when the ssssssummer is going to show here in the Southern climes.
'ta luego ...