Guess what... Good News!

Hi everyone!

I've been trying to sit down and write some news for a couple of days now, and I finally got a moment, when Niki is not busting my balls for sitting in front of a computer all the time.

So finally, the good news: We got a flat!

Seriously. No joke!

I am sitting here now, sipping on apple juice (yeah... seriously, I'll get some beer later), listening to sweet, soothing music (Entheogenic, if someone is interested) and sharing this jolly good news, yay!! :)

I must also stress the fact, that we are two lucky lunatics. Perhaps - enter deity of choice - is looking down on us, with more compassion and understanding to our wacky ways, than we thought... Anyway, check out the photos. The flat has two rooms, and it's got everything we need. The best part is that we pay very little for it, but I won't tell you how much, because someone might want to google out this post, and come and take it away from us. The location couldn't be better. We live in a part of Palermo that is called Hollywood, just 3 blocks from Plaza Serrano, where we can enjoy a rather satisfying offer of bars. It's not as quiet as it was in Olivos, but it isn't very noisy neither and there is lots of green around - trees and parks so we like it a lot. Telemedia is just across the street, so it's convenient for Niki. Oh, I forgot to say that we got this flat thanks to them..











Yesterday, we went out with a friend of mine, Dawson, a guy who works with me at the company, whose name I will mercifully ommit. We went to Plaza Serrano for a couple of beers and later continued at home, drinking some rakija that Christian and Peter brought for Niki from Hungary. We played some guitar and although the original plan was to go out again, we were not able to execute the plan, as I got "a bit" tipsy, as usual.. Christian and Peter didn't join us because they went to see River vs. Defensor Sporting (although it was 0-0, the previous game was to credit of River who scored 2 goal on away game in Montevideo, so they advance to 1/2 finals of Copa Sudamericana), but today Peter has birthday, so we'll probably go somewhere out.

In the meantime I am trying to figure out what is the cheapest way to go and see the Iguazu Falls. It's about 1300 km from Buenos Aires, so it's not going to be easy. My parents are (hopefully) coming in February and we would like to make this trip together. I mean it's really IMPRESSIVE, everyone I met tells me that this view is simply unforgettable. I think the best way would be to rent a car, because this way we would be relatively independent and we would also have a chance to see other interesting things in the area of Misiones, you can read more about it here. As a side note, if you know the flick called "The Mission" with Robert De Niro, it was set in that area.

I guess, that's it for today. We'll keep in touch!

Kisses and hugs from the gauchos.

News Update

Hey everyone!

Sorry for not writing for a long time. This is partly due to the fact that nothing that much interesting occured recently, partly because we are rather busy, and partly because we figured that we'll stop sharing uncertain news as it brings us bad luck...

But we are alive, still fighting and not giving up. Honestly speaking we don't have much choice anymore as our flight back to europe left on monday, without us on board, so there's no turning back - it's either success or "mom, dad! send us some cash!".

We had a couple of outlooks for finding a flat recently, but since I am tired of posts like "looking for a flat" and especially "finding a flat", I decided not to share any good news until we have keys in our hand. Last week we found a really nice one-bedroom apartment in Palermo, with separate kitchen, furniture and fridge for around 900 peso/month, but then we had some misunderstandings with Telemedia. It appeared that when they say "we'll give you garantia" they mean something different, and it was just not good enough for the owner of that flat. You see what I mean? Then on Sunday we went to a grill party at Ale's sister's and met some people there. We had a chat with a bloke called Santiago, and when he heard that we find it rather difficult to find a flat, he proposed us to move in to the flat that he's renting, because he's got to find something closer to his workplace. That deal (would have) meant that we could get a two room apartment with furniture etc. for about a 1000 pesos, and wouldn't have to pay comission and deposit. That (would have been) sweet!! Two days later we were told that Santiago's brother was kicked out from his own apartment, and the situation got complicated. "Zonk!" again... Well, I understand that, you know. If such a situation affected my brother (btw - Happy Birthday, man!) I definitely would think of him first. Neither the less, we were pretty disappointed. Now there's yet another promise of a solution to our tiresome situation, but I simply dare not to speak about it on a public forum.

My work is shit. Period.
I mostly survive by putting headphones on and entering my personal "happy bubble" until I can go home.

Niki is doing well at Telemedia, against all odds continously proving that she can do better than what the rest of her machoistic work environment might have thought of her beforehand.

Our little business project is also looking good. Just finished the basic presentation and some people might be interested in it, so now I'll develop it in more detail, meaning that I have to write a business plan. It's fun. Have you ever seen anything like it? See one here. I'm really looking forward to it... Either way it's going to take me some two months probably and then we'll be ready to move on to the development phase. We're looking at some 6 to 12 months until the launch date, that is if everything goes well and as we all know that it happens only in american movies.

Speaking of movies, see these:

- Grindhouse: Death Proof
- You.Kill.Me

and don't see this:

- Grindhouse: Planet Terror


Now for some sports news:

Poland lost to Hungary in their friendly encounter. What a f****** disgrace..! It's amusing to read what Hungarian press says and what Polish press says. Only for those who enjoy the benefits of speaking both languages though... English speaking press comments with somewhat less excitemet, as anticipated.

Either way, I think scoring the match's only goal from a penalty is not a reason to get excited. Imagine what would have happened if he missed... Now that would've been fun, no? :D All right I'm teasing you all Hungarians, I do love you! Congratulations for winning against Poland for the first time in 20 years. :)

In the meantime, Argentina rolled over Chile (2-0) in the South Africa 2010 World Cup Eliminations phase, and then walked over Venezuela (also 2-0).

More importantly River finished off Boca in the Superclasico (well done lads!) and is still competing in Copa Sudamericana, with next match on Oct.30 against Defensor Sporting from Uruguay.

Oh yea, I almost forgot that Poland won against Kazahstan (3 - 1) in the Euro 2008 eliminations, in a home match that saw a 1-0 lead for Kazahstan in the first quater, and a black-out and a hat-trick by Ebi Smolarek in the second quarter. The tickets were, curiously enough, the most expensive in Europe. Well done PZPN, if anyone is willing to shoot Listkiewicz, I volunteer to give assylum in Buenos Aires...

Also in the meantime, Polish politicians continue to happily throw shit at each other, in their last week before the parlament elections, and do so with little regard to what people really need. Hopefully someone will put the "evil twins" away...

So what's up with Gyurcsany? I have no patience to follow Hungarian politics after all this mess in Poland...

And the last, but not least, a small showcase of a neighbourhood in the center of Buenos Aires, called Villa 31. It's something similar to "favela" in Brasil, where people live without running water and central heating. Sorry, but I couldn't find anything in English.

Hugs and kisses from the gauchos!

Some new Photos

Photo Update

Tigre

Hey Guys, this is Niki writing now. Ah so dificult in english... So I just want to share with you my little trip to Tigre. Here you can find some information about the place
OK. So its really amazing, the river and than there are other rivers, and you can only go to the houses by boat. Beautiful old trees and old houses. The Godmother of Ale has a house there, a 100 year old house,the garden has really old trees,and also they have limon and orange trees.It is totally separated,we could only see the other houses on the other side of the river.There was also a shop,and we had to go shopping by a boat :) I really enjoyed it.We were also fishing,I catched a small fish :)And of course as we were four girls, all day long sunbathing....Marcin unfortunately couldnt come because he was working,but Im sure we will go together as well because Ale can get the keys to the house whenever she wants.We made lots of photos,but I dont have them yet because were made by the camera of another girl,but as soon I will have them I will put on the internet so you can all see :)
So it was a nice weekend,now Monday again,I will have my first show in telemedia tomorrow,hope will be good....
Lots of kisses to all of you

Couple of quick news

Hi!

Just a quick post, because I am helping Niki to cook some chicken.

First of all we want to thank all of you who posted comments on the blog and gave us a good injection of strength and faith. Really guys, every time we read things that you write to us we greet the day with a broad smile, so keep on doing it. Remember, that we are also interested in what's happening with you out there!

Things are starting to clarify, as Niki wrote in one of her comments :D She finally got the job in Telemedia, the contract is signed, and they are willing to help as much as they can with organizing the paperwork for her work permit. Also they want to help with finding the flat, meaning that the damn "garantia" is not our problem from now on. She's widely regarded as the saviour of Telemedia Argentina, the godsend from HQ in Hugary. This means that she'll have a bit of pressure from the others, but at least this would also provide some motivation.

I acually envy my girfriend for having a good job. I want it too!!!
So far I am working for a small "hush-hush" company that capitalizes on naivety of lost american teenagers (but not only). The company provides chat services in three areas: normal chat, love couch chat(as in "tell me your love problems and I'll tell you what to do) and psychic chat (as in "will I get together with Johnny from the 7th grade? He's so cute!"). I am doing the last one, which - I know - is hard to believe. I'm a psychic!!! ... maybe a psycho... I work 6 days a week / 6 hours a day, but it's going to change soon, so I will have a plus free day. Unfortunately I am not in the position to choose the free days myself. No way I can get Saturday and Sunday off. I am a bit pissed off at that, because I will not be able to see the long awaited Boca Juniors - River Plate derby in Saturday, and I will also miss the small field trip to Tigre, that the girls organized for tomorrow. Not to mention the salary, but whatever - I am still looking for something better.

In the meantime - and I don't know if I mentioned this before - I am using my relatively free time to work on a small business idea that we have with Niki and Ale. I will not reveal any details just yet, because too many things can still go wrong, but if it actually does work out - we'll be settled. For now we need to find someone who will invest some money (not some - A LOT!) into this idea. Actually there is such "someone" - we just have to convince him, that it'll work. And it will work, I know it - it works in Budapest, so here it'll work even better. Today I spent most of my day working on a presentation and writing to all sorts of companies we'll need later, just to get some idea of how things work here, and how much things cost.

Dear Mom and Dad, don't worry!
We are not into drug trafficking! :D
It's legal, I promise!

Thanks again for thinking of us and supporting us! You're the best!

Somewhere between

Shhhhhhh....

People...

I don't know where to start.

There have certainly been some developments in our stay here. Definitely. A couple of things happened and they sort of changed the way we perceive things now.

On Friday we went to our first job interview, but before it happened I received a couple of phone calls, that - in fact - were caused by me sending some + 20 CV to various job offers, quite randomly to be honest... During the course of those phone calls I learned that yes - there IS work in Buenos Aires, but unfortunatly for us they all require us to have working permit etc.

And this is where things get complicated.

After calling up the Direction Nacional de Migraciones (no translation necessary, I believe) we found out that it is still possible to convert our tourist visas into ones that would allow us to work, but we would be obliged to present a couple of documents that are rather difficult to obtain at the moment. Namely, original birth certificate and some papers that would state that we have never had anything to do with bombings, manslaughter, theft, fraud, kidnapping, etc, which is in short: crime. All of these must be presented in original and officially translated to Spanish. This costs money (strangely enough - I actually have my birth certificate with me). But there's more. The only way to obtain a work permit here is to have a company that would employ us (here we go again... Catch 22 --> no work permit without work, and no work without work permit). We actually have to include a copy of a contract for 1 year minimum (so no bouncing around from one job to another - we don't like this) and some other papers provided by the company, which at the moment I don't care to detail. 

This doesn't look good.

We actually found a job where they don't ask us to be legal, but the problem here is that we would earn something around 100.000 HUF... Together. And this doesn't look good neither. Plus the job is shite. Nevertheless we kind of don't have many options so tomorrow we start and we'll just go with the flow and see what happens. Of course we're still sending CVs like mad.

The flat didn't work out neither, so we're still at Ale's. It's not as in "it didn't work out because we had bad luck", it's as in "it didn't work out because we changed our mind". By doing some simple math we came to conclusion that, although it would still be possible to cover the rent (850 pesos), not much more would be left for anything else. The problem here is that a few days ago we were so sure about taking that flat, that we payed 200 pesos to reserve it (today we were supposed to sign the contract). Now we are in the middle of a fight to get it back...

Instead we decided to stay put and see what happens with the previous flat. Alex is still there, painting it, and not in the prison so there should be a chance. We hope to know more this week as we really don't want to over use Ale's kindness towards us. As you can probably see there is a difference between paying 850 peso / month (plus extra 850 to the real estate) and paying 500 (with no extra charges).

This all brings us here. We are not quite sure where.

Somewhere between.

A piece of advise to all those who ever want to follow our steps. First of all: bring money and bring a lot if it. That is if you want to be secure. Buenos Aires is cheap in terms of food and stuff, but the salaries here don't look so great. Second of all: have some contacts. Even Argentinians say that contacts are everything here. At least have somewhere to stay at the beginning. Ale is literary our good angel!

Honestly this have been a couple of very mesmerizing days, quite difficult too. We had some down moments, when we were (are?) thinking whether it makes sense to stay here, work for peanuts and have just enough to keep us going or should we better go elsewhere, like Spain. But then I would have to abandon the idea of studying, at least for some time. It would also mean that we lost a terrible lot of money just to come here and flee in despair, which is not the idea I like best. I'd say we stay and fight, and most importantly be patient.

We have some two weeks to decide what's it going to be.