Weather, an energy crisis, and elections!

What can I say about late fall / early winter in Buenos Aires? It's a lot like Dallas so far... last week we were down in the low 30s most every night. Now we're back up to the 70s in the day. Actually, yesterday it was so nice that I sat out on the veranda whilst soaking up some sun. Although now I've managed to catch a cold over the weekend... probably from that human bacteria frappe known as "El Subte", the subway. Now I just have to wait it out.

The good news is that there's fresh fruit, veggies, & produce on every street corner around here, so I've loaded up on oranges to make fresh juice. You can get 4 kilos (almost 10 lbs) for 5 pesos, or less than $2 USD. What a deal. The vendor I buy from is from Peru... much like half the neighborhood. Sometime soon I need to write about this neighborhood; apparently I traveled 5000+ miles to Buenos Aires, Argentina so that I could live in "Little Lima", as the locals call it. And they use that exact English title when they say it, ha.

OK, weather report time. The sudden antarctic front (parts of Argentina were colder than Antarctica!) last week also created an energy shortage, day by day. The cars in the city use natural gas instead of American style gasoline. The fill up stations are supplied by the city via a pipe system (so no delivery trucks are needed and all that). Because the gas was needed to heat homes, businesses, etc, each night at around 6p or so, they turned off the pipelines to the gas stations and the taxi drivers, etc, were out of luck until the following day! On top of that, Argentina is Paraquay's sole supplier so Paraguay was cut off immediately until Argentina could take care of the local citizenry first.

As if all that weren't enough, yesterday they had the big election for "el jefe del gobierno", of which the energy shortage was a key issue. It was a horse race between 3 candidates and Macri won (I just knoowwww you care about that). The runner up gets the position of "little helper sidekick" to the overall winner. Interestingly, Hugo Chavez was actually criticized during the election debates (trust me, around here blaming the US for all the ills of the world is a national pastime so it's shocking to hear some unfriendly words tossed towards South America's newest dictator). Maybe shutting down that opposition TV station in Caracas will end up biting him in the end... then again, maybe he'll just shoot (or "desaparecer") all of his opposition. I assume that's the advice his little buddy in Cuba, Fidel, is giving him.

It's also a law that the citizens of voting age HAVE TO vote. You can throw an empty ballot in the box if you want, but you still have to sign in and vote. Anyway, I'm still trying to decipher what this election was, but I think it was the equivalent of a major state governorship (ie., not president). Tack on the fact that one third of the country lives in this city and, next to president, it may be the most important position. But who knows. Anyway, that's life in the city right now. Next time I'll write about this neighborhood I live in... Faith healers! Televangelists! Peruvians! Bolivians! Hassidic Jews! Oh yeah, and the occasional Argentine as well.