Living The Dream

“So how’s life in Argentina? Amazing I bet..” “Are you going to stay forever?”

You hear these from friends back home constantly. There seems to be something about living abroad that they just don’t get. You are fairly sure that the majority of your British peers imagine that you are “living the dream”.  They think that you don’t work, or that if you do, it’s not “real work”, that you spend your days having and drinking sex on the beach (the idea that it’s ever cold doesn’t seem to occur to them, nor does the small detail that the closest thing Buenos Aires has to a beach is a dirty brown river). You dance tango, eat steak every night and occasionally have exciting yet brief flings with Gael Garcia Bernal lookalikes who woo you with their Spanish words whilst spinning you round in various exotic locations.

That idea does sound lovely, and is probably the kind of thing some of the more fortunate visitors to Buenos Aires might experience (in between being mugged, stepping on dog shit and warding off the incomprehensible cat calls of old men). In truth, the reality of “living the dream” is quite different.

Myth One: Life Abroad is One Long Holiday.

Last year you had two weeks off for the winter holidays in July. This idea appeared too much for many to fathom. Firstly, winter in July?

So it’s like…winter there now?                                      

 Yes.

They nod at you and feign what they hope is a look of understanding but their failure to grasp the two hemisphere concept is all too apparent from the dazed look in their eyes.  

Whilst discussing your excitement and need for said winter break, your friend at home comments that you are “always on holiday”. This, is simply not true. You work as hard, let’s be honest – harder than you ever did in England.

What?                                                                           

I hear you cry,

I thought Latin life was chilled out and everything was left hasta mañana.

The thing is life anywhere tends to be hasta mañana when you’re on holiday (did you mention you weren’t?)- unless you’re one of those adventuring types who spend all day writing itineraries for how to fit in climbing that volcano and having an authentic bear wrestling experience whilst updating your facebook status.

Yes the weather’s nicer but when you’re working in classrooms saturated with the leftover odour of the last groups’ teenage hormones life doesn’t seem quite so idyllic.  Equally, when you’re eating a Christmas dinner of chicken sandwiches and potato salad (apparent Argentine tradition) with no tree, let alone presents it feels more like you’re living the life of a lonely idiot rather than that of a clever dreamer.

Pause to consider that not only is Christmas shit and celebrated a day early but you also get the wrong days off at Easter and are missing out on any royally related bank holidays.

Here there are so many bank holidays that they become more of a hindrance than a cause for festivity. Whilst celebrating what seems like the tenth National Pride Day you are left starving, unable to leave the city, all modes of transport have been booked up for months. You have an empty fridge and are unable to purchase anything but flags (I’m sure Argentina would still be in G8 had they not blown all their money on copious amounts of nationalist paraphernalia).

You are so accustomed to holidays in general, wrong day or not, that you find it quite appalling that you are expected to work a whole month without a long weekend. This almost never happens, and even if does you get at least one day off for some nonsense like a national census where you are ordered to stay indoors to be counted.

You begin to get the feeling you are arguing against your own point. Best to move on.

Myth Two: Latin Love Affairs

Since moving to South America, the number of Latin lovers who have attempted to woo you has been limited to those who want to practice their English or talk about The Beatles (who you used to like before you moved here). Even they lose interest once they suffer your tango or salsa moves. Those that survive the dancing will usually then go on to bludgeon you into a coma with their lengthy cliché ridden monologues about your eyes, hair, accent or any other feature that happens to be visible at the time. Particularly problematic is that you soon tire of the “how England is different to here” conversation and have no desire to talk about your feelings, football or meet anyone’s entire extended family.

In the same way that British compatriots back home enjoy indulging in the fantasy of life abroad, Latin men seem to have similar unrealistic ideals about going out with a European. They imagine educated, glamorous beauties will whisk them away to a modern wonderland where the streets are paved with ipads and it rains money on Wednesdays.

In reality, it usually rains actual water more than once a week, and anyone who is here probably cannot afford to leave. Those who do manage to scrimp enough for the flight home are consequently so broke they cannot buy even a half price Walkman let alone an ipad.

Myth Three:  Once you move abroad you have two options:  Come Home or Stay Forever

English people, when asking about the future, seem to understand only two time scales: now and forever. They ask you if you are staying abroad forever, and when you say that you don’t know, you’ll just see how it goes, they look at you like you have officially gone mad.

But what’s the plan? They want to know. Haven’t you worked out and laminated a year by year flow-diagram-life-plan whereby you spend your days slaving away in a job you don’t like, get a mortgage and a husband and throw a few kids in for good measure? All because that’s what everyone else is doing and you really do feel like somehow you should be too.

People here also constantly ask you the same questions:

How long have you been here?

Over a year

Do you like it?  You reply that you do, they either look at you like you’re deluded for having left behind the ipad lined pavements or puff out their chests and glow with national pride (whilst smoothing out their flag).

They also ask you how long you are planning on staying. When you say that you don’t know they smile, like they understand, and shrug their shoulders (or, more likely, do the more local gesture for “I don’t know” involving a hand movement from chin to mid-air)

That’s what you like about life abroad, the absence of a plan is acceptable. Just like it’s totally acceptable to spend your entire Sunday drinking mate in the park and have fifteen national holidays a year for no particular reason.

The biggest myth for you, is why everyone else stayed at home.

Why nuts should be banned

When less than a couple of hundred got mad cow disease, the nation stopped eating beef. When swine flu caused roughly 4% of annual influenza deaths crowds of panicked people wore useless face masks for weeks on end. When foot and mouth hit Britain, over 10 million livestock were killed to curb the spread of the disease.

In such situations, moral panics sweep the nation so that within days people become terrified about the possibility of such horrors. The world is gripped with fear, reports of fatalities and even cases are reported across the planet, maps are drawn up to see how these monstrosities have spread, people everywhere call their doctors in a panic because they become convinced their runny nose is a sure sign of their impending death.

When thousands of people across the planet are known to be so allergic to foods that merely being in the same room as them can kill them, nothing happens.

Why is it then, that allergies, which arguably are much more dangerous than any of these diseases (they can occur at any time and cause the victim nasty often fatal reactions which become increasingly severe) do not cause similar hysteria. I am aware that Britain, for example, is a country which is extremely “aware” of the threat that allergies can cause. Companies are so “aware” in fact that they even bother to write on a stick of wrapped celery that it “may contain traces of nuts”. What exactly does “may contain traces of nuts” mean? That the same factory that packs celery also packs nuts? That they pack it on the same line? That nut fumes from a factory down the road may accidentally leak into said celery because they share a delivery truck? Or is that they are so terrified of being sued that they write it on every label they produce?

This over-enthusiastic labelling, disguised as a help, actually hinders the allergy sufferer. If they choose to follow such warnings they can eat practically nothing. There is very little on the supermarket shelves of England these days which does not carry such warnings. Last time I checked, natural yoghurt “may contain traces”. Ranges of nut-free products are increasing, but tend to be limited to confectionary. It’s all very well being able to eat a bar of chocolate made in a nut-free zone but if you can’t eat an apple for fear of contamination life becomes rather difficult.

Instead, the savvy allergic one chooses to ignore such advice, this is fine if one assumes that the companies are indeed lying, but what if a product actually does contain a trace of nut and one day causes a reaction? Then what do you do? Assuming that you survive such an attack should you then avoid everything and create your own nut-free zone home where you live in quarantine and anyone that enters must be screened for traces and washed in a special nut-free soap?

Another particularly tricky problem is the issue that those severely allergic could have a reaction just from swopping saliva with someone who’s been eating nuts. Does this mean that sufferers should enquire about the dietary habits of those they are about to kiss? This
could potentially be somewhat of a passion killer.  Might the allergy extend to a shared toothbrush? That could be a tricky morning-after situation; you try to leave discreetly yet brush your teeth before you escape in an attempt to cleanse yourself of the night before. Your host ate nuts the day before yesterday; traces still linger not on their breath but on their bristles. There’s one thing worse than a walk of shame and that’s a trip to A&E.

In Western society, health and safety laws have become so absurd that you practically have to fill out a risk assessment to leave the house. If one toy is found to be faulty, causing the death of one child the whole batch is recalled and parents everywhere are outraged, broadcasting their plight in the school playground, the papers and even on TV.

Nuts, cause thousands of deaths each year, and the number of cases of anaphylaxis costs the NHS thousands, if not millions of pounds a year. That’s without considering the cost of issuing each allergic person their own epi-pen. These pens costs £36 each, most sufferers carry two, and according to the label go out of date each year so each sufferer, reaction or not, costs at least £72 a year.

Do not despair, for I have answer to this problem. Over-zealous labelling is not what we need, nor is a “miracle cure” for the allergy which, quite frankly I don’t know how they propose to test. I most certainly would not be willing to participate in a medical trial where people feed me nuts to see what happens.  No, the answer is more simple. If the toy is faulty and someone dies, you don’t stock it. If swine flu’s about, you try and stop it spreading. If there’s mad cow disease you don’t eat beef. If someone falls over at the train station and breaks a leg, you employ an extra “health and safety officer” and pay them thousands a year to put up pointless signs telling people to be careful.  If 1 in a 100 in the
UK has a fatal peanut allergy and 1 in 200 has a tree nut allergy, everyone should simply stop eating nuts. Lives are saved, people with nut allergys no longer have to play russian roulette everytime they eat, the NHS saves money, millions isn’t wasted on ridiculous labelling, factories don’t have to control the spread of nuts, no one gets sued. Can you argue with that Mr Cameron?