This is a chilean phrase I learned today that means “to stir up trouble”, “to take the mick”, “to take the proverbial pi**”. Brilliant!
Fregar is from the verb to stir. I guess the chileans must think a pita is a poor excuse for a type of bread…and feel the need to jest about it.
While Rachel continues to work up the mountain in her longest shift yet, I’m completing an intensive spanish course this week. I’m exhausted and stressed.
Spanish is fine while there is a direct translation, but in the last two weeks, i’ve encountered the most popular forms of the language… which happen not to have direct translations and thus make little sense to us british ignoramuses.
Then there are irregular verbs. Don’t get me started. Our tutor starts one day, “we’re going to look at irregular verbs in the subjunctive tense. Don’t worry, there aren’t many”. But, unfortunately, irregularity appears to be proportional to daily use- to say, to put, to know, to do, to think, to start , to leave and to sleep, are all irregular verbs. B**t***s.
Excuse my french, or spanish, or english. Its the same in all of them. I’m hating spanish tonight. But then that’s because i’m being tested on it tomorrow (una prueba). Que pantoso! as they say here. That means, quite literally, as far as I can understand, “Pants!”. Fair point.
I’m really angry this evening. For the second time in as many months, I’ve heard these words and it makes me walk around ready to punch someone.
Some opinions shared by a friend “that you cannot trust anyone in Chile, except, perhaps your own gringo friends” is slowly and sadly being proven. In addition to our bikes being stolen last month, soon after their arrival in Chile, our monthly charges for the upkeep of the building, payment of concierge and insurance has, apparently, been stolen by one of the concierge staff.
It has emerged that since he left just 10 days ago, he has “walked” with more than £500 of charges. In that sense, “it could have been worse”- he only stole £60 of our payments. But it’s not clear if there is any form of insurance or recompense for this.
It is very hard to want to trust anyone here. We really did believe that the concierge concerned, Eugenio Pavez (incase he checks on Google!), was friendly, honest, trustworthy and fun. We shared time good and bad times with him. I would forgive and welcome him back because he did his job really well. But I don’t think the other residents will share my views! And even then, the system (in its current form) doesn’t allow more secure payments.
While the wife is away…. I’ve been off to hear U2 play! I was offered a ticket by a friend at Church and was delighted to take the opportunity to hear my favourite band play live, in the Estadio Nacional Santiago! They were amazing! I was delighted to share the experience with over 80,000 chileans.
There were three stages to the evening… and three “stages” too, as follows:
What a show it was. The stage set of U2 for their Vertigo Tour was incredible. Almost 30m high, and 50m wide, it included two walk-along arms and the creation of a “Golden Circle” in front of the stage, containing 450 sleepless U2 obsessives who had camped at the stadium for the previous night in the hope of getting a ticket! The back wall consisted of a web of giant LED RGB pixels which displayed album graphics and key messages to the stadium during each song.
These messages included, rather controversially, picturing the new President Michelle Bachelet with former President Pinochet, whose regime resulted in her Father’s death. More encouragingly, it proclaimed a message of “COEXIST” to those who feel Abrahamic faiths won’t or can’t tolerate each other. And the message of Amnesty International, including the 6 articles of the UN Bill of Human Rights were read in full as a song’s conclusion.
Songs from a range of albums were played, including 6 of my favourites. I’ve listed them below, for any U2 freaks out there, in the order they were played:
City of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
Elevation
Until the End of the World
New Year’s Day
Still Haven’t Found
Beautiful Day
The First Time
Sometimes You Can’t Make it on your Own
Love and Peace
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Bullet The Blue Sky
Miss Sarajevo
Pride in the Name of Love
Where the Streets have no Name
One
(1st encore)
Zoo Station
The Fly
Mysterious Ways
With or Without You
(2nd encore)
Mothers of the Disappeared
Yahweh
All I Want is You
For more information about their tour and pictures from the Santiago Concert, see U2.com.
I’ve got some mobile phone recordings and videos from the concert. I’ll post them soon.
Doug/
This week, I’ve been attending the joint United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and European Organisation for Cooperation and Development (OECD) Seminar on Fiscal Policy for the region. You might think this would be beyond me… indeed, after the first session without the assistance of interpretation via a clever little machine, I was sure it was beyond me too!
However, with some determination, the seminars have proved very interesting and have been an opportunity to learn more about the region, the comparative performances of Chile, Argentina, Peru, Mexico and Brazil (to name the primary participants) on issues of taxation, income redistribution, fiscal policies to manage the economy, fuel taxation and pensions.
However, i’ve also learned a lot about spanish…. this region is highly diverse and as a consequence, so is the language. After listening to lectures given by individuals from each nation, i’ve put together a rating of intelligibility of spanish for each nationality. This can be seen in the sidebar below (go to the bottom of the weblinks).
Peruvians come out top… their spanish is both slow and easy to understand. I can listen to their lectures without translation! Chile… i’m sorry to say, runs bottom of the rank. Fast, difficult and said without breathing. Probably in response to the smog that every chilean lives with in Santiago!
To add to the difficulty, today, we had lectures in english with spanish slides, lectures in spanish with portuguese slides (that was wierd… i didn’t notice till the end!), lectures in spanish with english slides and then one in what can only be described as kling-on (central american spanish). No comment and no offence intended! I admire the interpreters for their work!
Generally speaking however, its been great to attend the seminar and to learn the spanish terms for economic concepts and phrases…. that is… if they exist. Today, I laughed when told that there is no term in Latin American spanish for “corruption”. Nor, apparently, for “Willingness to pay” (an important concept for a transport economist!) which slipped out in the middle of a chilean’s discussion of air pollution.
The latter gives me some hope that I might find a job here- there is a lot of scope for the use of economic evaluation methods in policy making here in Chile, for example, assessing the health costs of air pollution in Santiago. Anyone can say its high… but how high?!!