Silly Chile

Chile has a lot of coolness going on. For example, check out this beach below. I´m looking forward to going back a couple more times. I haven´t ventured outside of Santiago very much but I know there is a lot of stuff I should see. Hopefully I´ll be able to make that happen.

Some beach. Water, rocks, sand, etc.

Chile also has some really odd customs (compared to what I am used to). For starters, everything seems to have weird hours. Offices are typically open from 8 or 9 am to 6pm. This does not include financial institutions, however. The banks are only open for customers from 9am to 2pm Monday thru Friday. I don´t know how people find time to go. I´ve never been inside one but I always hear stories about long wait times and bad experiences. Combine this with the fact that is is very difficult to qualify for a bank account, and it doesn´t seem like something I´ll be doing any time soon. From what I hear, a lot of documentation is required to get an actual, factual checking account. Most options also charge a commission to keep your money. No thanks. I did learn of a very simple option recently that acts as a prepaid credit card with PIN. That might be the way to go.

From the top of my building, you can see this really fancy venue for parties. I´ve been a couple of times.

Back to complaining about explaining odd hours, retail stores close at 8 or 9 in the heart of the city. Grocery stores are open until around 10 or 11 at night. After this time, there are restaurants and bars open until 2 am during the week.

On the weekends, it´s a whole different story. A lot of places close early on saturday and almost every store is closed all day on Sunday. This seems very inefficient, and I´m still trying to get used to it. I asked people why they think that the stores are closed on Sundays. The main response is that people deserve time to rest. I completely agree with that, but it would be a lot more efficient if people had days off in the middle of the week and worked on weekends. There´s simply not enough time during the week to get chores done especially when commutes can eat up another hour on each end of the work day. For being such a developed country, I sometimes have trouble understanding how they advance. I´ll just keep my eyes and ears open to try to figure it out.

A pleasant street called London right by my building

Bars, restaurants, and discos take full advantage of the weekend. An early closing is 2am. Most dance clubs are open until 5am. When people go out on Friday or Saturday night, it usually starts with dinner around midnight. Seeing that the grocery stores and everything else closes around 10 pm, that late night time in which I would normally be getting ready for bed serves as a napping hour.

Chile is as silly as fruit on your head

Now let´s talk about things that don´t make any sense at all:

-People water the sidewalk here frequently. I get that they might be cleaning it. I don´t understand why they waste so much water to do so. A quick spray maybe once a week or so should do. The guys with the palm fronds do a pretty good job of sweeping up (although there has got to be a more efficient way). Silly Chile

-Everywhere you go, you´ll see people carrying stuff. Some carry a purse. Others use a rolling cart. Backpacks are really popular, and often times there are attachés or briefcases. Those are the common items. The other day, I saw a fella walking happily down the street carrying only a plate and a knife. He seemed pretty proud of his dishes. For a second, I thought he was going to chop me up and eat me right there on the spot. He had the correct utensils after all. Silly Chile

-To be "on top of the ball" means that you are tipsy and on your way to getting drunk. I guess this makes sense when it is explained. If you were trying to balance on top of a ball, you might be a little unsteady or tipsy. Silly Chile

-"Number 10 guy" means "Number 1 guy". If you look at this on a scale of 1 to 10, I guess it would be logical to expect the higher number to be better. Still, it can be a little confusing. Silly Chile

-You wouldn´t inquire about someone´s last name by asking "Abram who?". Instead, it´s "Abram how much?" Silly Chile.

A cute little Coca Cola delivery truck

-The term "third aged" is used to refer to elderly people. We use the term "middle aged" to refer to, well, middle aged people. It would seem logical that there should be a term for people older than this. However, there is no such thing as "first aged" or "second aged." Silly Chile.

-When you ask someone "Where are we?" you aren´t referring to your geographical location but rather to the date on the calendar. This question is equivalent to "What is today´s date?". To ask "Where are we?" you would say, "Where do we find ourselves?". Silly Chile.

-When shopping for shoes, you might be asked "How much do you wear?" This means "What is your shoe size?" Silly Chile.

-Because there is not really a word for "it" as it is employed in english, phrases like "How´s it going?" "That´s me." or "It was him" become "How are you going?", "I am me." and "He was him." Silly Chile

-Almost no one likes cats here. How is that possible? The gringo internet was founded on funny cat videos and memes. All of these are lost on chileans. I have laughed at a couple for several minutes only to find that the locals explain it as "cute, but not funny". Silly Chile

I'm back

Schwoof. It has been awhile since I updated this thing. There has been lots of new stuff going on. Let's see if I can remember some of it.

While I´m settling in nicely, there are always new things that surprise me here. For example, I spied this can of Kem below at the bakery yesterday along side a pepsi. I have no idea what kind of drink it is, but the can is cool. Check out the octopus and macaw.

The people in this store, Castaño, are generally pretty nice. They call me "joven" or "young one" all the time. They also use the formal version of "you" when they speak to their customers.


The big adventure last weekend was going to mercado central. It´s a busy, smelly place where one can buy seafood of all kind. I saw octopus, a lot of fish, clams, oysters, and much more. Check out the pics below to see some of the fish.

ugly dead fish

He looks like he wants to tell me something

I went to the market with squid in mind. That´s what I ended up getting. Below is a picture of one that I bought. It was my first time preparing fresh squid. Their bodies pull apart easily, and you can check out their unique anatomy. What I didn´t know is that squid have quills. These are used to shoot their ink. They are not especially sharp but they seem pretty strong. I removed the quills out of a couple of squid thinking it was a piece of plastice that someone had put in there to preserve the shape of the squid. Nope, it´s all organic. It was odd because it felt and looked exactly like man-made plastic. Whodathunk?

getting ready to cook the squid

I´m constantly finding more english words that are being employed in Chilean spanish. Check out this package of cookies from Castaño below. I didn´t want to tell the manufacturer, but they spelled cookie wrong. No one seemed to mind. Also, no one seemed to mind that these kukies didn´t taste very good. I guess that´s a good thing. It´ll cut down on my craving for sweets. They don´t have butterfinger bars or reese´s cups here. Oh man, I wanted those. At least they have honeydew and cantalope here. Yumm. Fun fact- Chile is a main supplier for fruits in US safeway stores. Their cherries are amazing.

want a kuky?

I´ve had my first and second earthquake here in Chile. If you´ve never experienced one, this can be your first second-hand earthquake. Actually, I hardly noticed the earthquakes. They were around 5.0 on the Richter scale and more than 100 miles away. I was in the top floor of my earthquake-resistant building each time. As such, the floor just swayed back and forth slowly for around 30 seconds. It felt like my bedroom was floating on water and moving with the waves. That´s all.

In spanish, there are two words for this event. A temblor is a small rumble that causes little to no damage. A terremoto is a powerful, destructive earthquake.There are generally 1-2 terremotos every 20 years. Santiago experienced an 8.8 quake in 2010 that people still remember vividly. A coworker described her experience of the event to me in great detail. There was another one around 7.5 in March of 2012. We should be good for about 20 years on the big ones. For reference, the 2011 Japan quake that caused the major tsunami with world-wide effects was 9.0.

view from my floor

Next is a picture of $38,000 Chilean pesos. I think their money is pretty. It´s a little more water-resistant (and less smelly) than American dollars. In case you´re wondering, $38k CLP is equal to about $80.50 USD. 

Chilean Pesos - CLP

What do I do at work, you ask? Right now I´m working in an internship position for an international consulting firm. I compose market research reports for Canadian companies who are looking to import their products to Chile. It is very dynamic. I learn a lot about each of the clients so I can help them better. This position will end in about a month so I can start in a real job that pays real money. More info on that as it´s available.

how I use my computer these days

Well that´s about it for now. I´ll try to keep up with this more and write as things happen. It works better that way. Ok, stay tuned.