Muggings, Auditions, and Ice Cream!

Ok, so the 3rd part of this blog title was a total reach for some 3rd thing, but humor me, dangit!

I wanted to update the status of the job situation as well as throw in a few mugging stories :)

Ok, so the ball is officially out of Alex's court when it comes to the job hunt.  Yesterday I was running behind (shock shock) and had to take a cab from one side of Buenos Aires to another.  turned out to be a $40 cab ride (damn subway not working),  I get to where I'm going to, and the "interview" is essentially the guy telling me all the main points of the job and seeing if I'm still interested.  And then giving the, "ok, we'll bring you in to do an audition soon."  Ok, this company has a crappy habit of taking FOREVER to contact me. So since I didn't want to spend another 2.5 weeks to come in and audition, I offered to audition the same day.  He told me he could write an email of when to come in the following day (today)  Naturally, I didn't get an e-mail.  After mulling it over, and encouragement from friends,  I called today to say what's going on?  The guy apologized and told me to come in and audition today.  

I get to the audition and in my personal opinion, kinda botched the whole thing.  monologue... he had me do it again just so he could hear what I was saying, and i stumbled like a barefoot man on a football field of broken glass both times.  Didn't help that I had to do the monologue in a british accent.  And for those of you who know me, I can do a pretty good aussie accent, but british is a little tricky for me.    I decided to do "I'm just a Bill" for my song, and It was relatively ok, except that in the two verses I did, I totally screwed up the note when the melody drops on "still"  as in "...but today I am STILL just a bill"  Both times.  Also didn't that I had no accompaniment. I CAN hit that note, which is why it sucked it came out so bad.  Then on the dance part, I don't know if it was just to humor me so that he could get rid of me, he showed me 4 postures and a walking step and I had to do it on my own.......like really?  REALLY?  that's all you're going to give me?  You can just tell me I don't have the job so that I don't have to humiliate myself doing the easiest choreography on the planet......Just kidding, I'm not sure how I did it, but I was miraculously able to stumble through the postures when he had me do it on my own.  

As I said before, didn't feel like it went that well, and I'm sure everyone right now is thinking, "Alex, stop with the defeated attitude"  The funny is, I don't feel defeated.  Sure I know it wasn't my best work today, but I've said for a while before the interview, I'll get the job or I won't.  The nice man thanked me and said he'd be in touch.....meaning if I do get the job, I'll hear about in about 2 months when I'm back in the states.......oops, did I just say that?  I walked out of the audition place, put on my headphones and blasted "So what" by Pink.  In all honesty, I did what I could, I had fun, and worst case scenario is I don't get the job. Not the end of the universe.  :)

Ok, so fun story before I head home.   The bus I've been taking from either my old neighborhood or my job to where I'm living now is the 64.  It drops me off about 10 blocks away from where I live now and I walk the rest.  Not the greatest (or safest) setup to be walking late at night, but it's what I've got and I've done it before.  So last night I had dinner at my homestay families place.  They recommended that I take the 29.  It would drop me off about 4 blocks from my house.  So I look for the 29, and after much time, a friend (who was luckily in the same area at the same time) had to show me where the darn station was.  So I take the 29, it actually goes past my station because the buzzer on the bus to signify you want to get off was broken.  So I holler to the bus driver that I need to get off, and exit 1 block away from where I wanted to be, but now I'm on a major street, so this is probably better than walking down some darker residential street, right?................................

......................

................

............

...............

......................

.............................

....................................

heh, yeah wrong.   So I'm walking home, and I see across the street on the left there's a park.  It was one of those moments where if you think about it, it happens.  Because I swear I thought, that's the last place I'm going to go because someone's going to try something with me.  Sure enough, less than a minute later, some guy calls me to on his bike.  I don't say anything because 1) can't understand the guy, and 2) I know better than to announce I'm from the US on a street at 2 am.  I'm not the sharpest American knife the drawer, but yeah.  So he asks if I'm from Argentina, and I'm thinking it would be stupid to lie since it was clearly obvious I wasn't.  So he asks for a peso (in spanish, go me!) so he can take a subway or collectivo, don't remember.  So I give him hoping he'll go away.  Then he asks for a 2nd one, and aside from the fact that I didn't have another, I wasn't going to give him another.  So he insists I give him another.  I say no.  Keeping in mind this is all going on while he's on his bike and I'm walking.  Then he starts saying some stuff that sounds like he's going to bash my head in.....that's what I got out of what he said, but I could be wrong.  Then he reaches inside his pants in that tragic that people down here do to try and signify that they have a gun and tells me to give him my cell phone.  Now for those of you who don't know, I've lost a phone, was given a phone for free which was subsequently stolen 2 days later and had to buy a 2nd one a week after that.  There was no way I was giving this man my cell phone unless there were 2 or more of him or if he could show me a gun.  Which in this case the "hands down the pants, hey I have a gun" thing was a little funny since he wearing gym shorts, and would basically need to have his gun in his underwear to keep it up....(no pun intended)  So I refuse to give him my phone, he keeps talking, and then he grabs my arm.  I jerk away and jump back on the sidewalk.  He starts to ride away at this point in that "slowly just so you'll think I'm leaving, but I could come back at any point" sort of way.  He's saying all these bad things about me (like I care) but then he starts to thank me for the peso he gave me.  Like a lot, then almost waving at me to make sure I was ok.  Weird finale to a failed "mugging" attempt

Ok, so this next one happened about a month ago.  My friend from Scotland, Jojo, and I went to dinner with a group of friends to have a sort of send off for one of our friends at the school from Ireland.  Afterwards, we offered to walk her back to her hotel.  She insisted she was ok, but Jo and I insisted since we weren't going to get to see her again.  if I remember correctly, it was probably about 15-20 blocks at midnight on a street known for not being the best for walking at night.  We walk and chat and get to about a block from where we drop her off.  There's this area where the sidewalk gets huge right outside this big corporate building I think it was.  The sidewalk is ginormous ......and there are a few kids running around and some sleeping off the side of this building.  yeah, that's somewhat comment.  We reach the end of the block, say our goodbyes to Fiona, and Jojo and I head back the direction we came to take a bus.  We pass by the area of kids who are clearly looking at us.  And one pops out in front of us from no where, no older than ten, and says "Dame tu plata."  Now Alex has a few moments of sheer stupidity.  1.  While he knew it was obvious this kid wanted SOMETHING, alex forgot what plata meant (money).  2. Alex actually stopped (yes, stupid Alex) to engage this tiny person in some sort of conversation.  3.  Alex starts giving a total 'tud.   

So the whole flow of the conversation is.....

*Boy comes in front of us, with his hand down his pants in that "Hey, I have a gun" sort of way.  

 

Boy : "Dame tu plata"

*Alex stops, Jojo continues walking

Alex: Plata?

Boy:  Plata plata

Alex:  Que significa Plata?  (trans - What does plata mean?)

Boy: Dame tu plata.

*Alex figures out what plata is.

Alex:  No! No voy a darte mi plata (No, I'm not going to give you my money)

At this point, I hear Jojo call me because in her persuit of escaping the situation, 3 more boys have come up to her while I was dealing with the "handgun" kid (pun completely intended).  One of them was apparently telling her to give him her stuff, one was apparently begging for money and who knows what the 3rd was doing.  I tell handgun kid "Gotta go" and go and grab Jojo and we get out of there.  Jojo was pretty shaken up about it, and deservedly so, the girl had her wallet, her camera, her international phone, and her ipod all in her bag.  If you had told me that something like that was going to happen to me, I probably would think I would be overdramatic and traumatized about the whole situation.  But truth be told, I found the whole thing hilarious.  Now I've talked to some people who have said, "they could have been armed, there could have been a gang of adults around the corner, something bad could have happened....." and not that I don't agree to the potentiality of all of these, but yeah.  I'm not going to hand over my money (I didn't have any at the time anyway, it all got spent at dinner) my bag, or ANYTHING just because someone sticks their hand in their pants.  Even if he had a knife or something, I'm pretty sure that even though it's been 4 years since I ran varsity track, I could outrun a ten year old.   Jojo eventually calmed down about the situation and then proceeded to tell everyone the following week. 

It does raise the realization though that in many cases, people who do things like that, dont' do it because their @s$holes or anything, they do it because it's just something they do to get by.  It doesn't make it right, but that's honestly we way I feel. Also doesn't change the fact that I would be super pissed if someone stole anything from me, but that's really the idea. The thing that does suck is that there are children in the city learning right now how to do these sort of things, of course they weren't successful in the situation with Jo and I, but I'm sure they'll keep doing it, and they'll get better.   It's really hard to see that. Kids shouldn't be out trying to mug people and sleeping in the streets.  I don't care what country it is, or if it's viewed that I'm comparing another country to the States.  That's just heartbreaking nonetheless.

Anyway, didn't mean to make the switch from lighthearted to serious.  I just really wanted to share some "comical" stories about how to survive a mugging.  Obviously, if anyone has a knife that looks like it could be thrown or a gun, you go ahead and hand over that ipod, otherwise, tell them to "besa mi culo"  (I don't really suggest you do that, plus I'm not even positive it's correct.)