You can find everything on the Internet - including 'Moose Milk'

I did a quick search and here is one recipe for Moose Milk......

Moose Milk

• 1.14 litre dark rum
• 1.14 litre Kahlua
• 1.14 litre vodka
• 4 litres of vanilla soft scoop ice cream
• 4 litres of partly skimmed milk (have to be health conscience)

Mix gently until frothy with still a few ice cream lumps.

Liberally sprinkle nutmeg over top.

Enjoy and give vehicle keys to a designated driver.

There are other versions including ones with rye ("Canadian" Whisky) but it also had a dozen egg yokes in it......and that wouldnt be so pretty in the morning.

B.

Nothing says Canada like Moose Milk. Moose Milk?

We have been invited back to the Canada Club Happy Hour!

What was sent to us (in English, Spanish & French) :

You and one guest are cordially invited to the Canada Club Happy Hour! Thursday, September 18 2008 from 7:00PM - 10:00 PM (doors close at 9:00 PM).
The Canadian Embassy, Buenos Aires Tagle 2828 (between Av. Figueroa Alcorta y Juez Tedín -- Palermo Chico).

Come out and meet our new Canadians and enjoy some Moose Milk!

Phone: 4808-1000
FAILURE TO RSVP IN ADVANCE, MAY RESULT IN NO ADMITTANCE.
To gain entry to the event you must RSVP, so please respond to this message before noon, September 18 with your name, phone number, ID type and number (and that of your guest, if applicable) via email.

Please bring picture ID as all guests are required to sign in.

See you there!


Anyone know what we Canadians are calling 'Moose Milk' these days? We havent been away that long!

But really? All that security just to get a beer?

Instead, we will be at Granda Bistro for dinner with friends.
It will be Canadians having dinner with Kiwis in a French restaurant in Argentina.

B.

We are averaging 1.5 restaurants per day

Believe it or not, it's true. It has been a great run.
The refrigerator failed and had to be taken away for servicing. A rental fridge was located and was brought to the apartment and the broken one sits in the back stairwell waiting to be picked up.

Eating out every day is not because we have a rental fridge but because we have many friends.....who dont cook either!!!

• Thursday night was an industry reception at the Emperador Hotel Polo Club Room - new work friends.
• Friday's dinner was at Bice with the two Superintendents who are on a 30 day rotation and Friday was crossover day - old work friends.
• Saturday morning was at Amaranta for as good an Eggs Benedict as I have ever had. Mimi had waffles.
• Saturday night was at Kebaytina, a restaurant owned by a Haitian Canadian from Quebec - dinner with new BA friends.
• Sunday lunch was at the restaurant in the Malba Museum of Latin American Modern Art - where we met two Canadians who moved here from Edmonton and bought a vineyard in San Rafael.
• Sunday dinner was at El Manto, an Armenian restaurant with 2 other couples. It was our latest reservation yet - 9:30 pm and it was on a school night. Mimi and I had Spanish lessons at 8 am the next morning.

Tonight we are staying home for home-made empanadas. Ok, we are having empanadas that Esperanza made (we dont cook, remember?).

B.

I am now in the club

After 7 months of processing including translations of birth certificate, marriage licence, passport, proof of residence here, 4 visits to the Immigration office here with 'advisors', a trip to Toronto to visit the Argentine consulate, 5 sets of finger prints...and tremendous assistance from several staff here in our office - I now have my DNI.
The DNI is the Documento Nacional de Identidad. It comes in the form of a little booklet with a burgundy cover. It has my picture, thumb print, address, birthplace, signature and yes, it has a number. My number. It is an 8 digit number (just like phone numbers here).

It is used for everything. Voting, moving, organ donoring, car rentals, getting the 'locals' price on airfares, paying your dinner bill (they ask for a document number when you pay with a credit card), getting stopped on the street by a cop, having a bank account, transferring money to Canada, you name it.

The photo is one of those - 'quarter turn, no smile, no glasses' pictures....and I noticed that I am starting to look old.

So when they say 'ver are zee papers?' (in Spanish, of course) - I flash my little burgundy book!

B.

BA burned while we went to the Philharmonic

Wasn't there something similar said about Rome?

It was an interesting day yesterday.

First thing every morning, I read the BA Herald. It is the local English paper and it gets delivered to the apartment.

The headlines show 7 cars of a Greater Buenos Aires commuter train burned to bits. The reason(s) given are commuters got tired of sitting on a relic of a train that had been stalled on the tracks for 2 hours and they were all very late for work....or it was left wing militants who did it. They trashed the local Castelar train station as well.

Either way, it seemed like.......just another day in BA.

The fact that the other headlines described the possibility that the government would have to eat a nearly $1 B debt for nationalizing the Aerolineas airline and that Black Thursday had hit the stock market. I was afraid to turn the page to see what other problems had happened overnight!

Anyways, it was a quiet day in the office. We met with partners, we produced some oil - no mention of trains being burned up - although we do fly LAN not Aerolineas when flying in country.

We did end the evening by attending a free (with a donation) concert performed by the Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional who were accompanied by the Coro Polifonico Nacional. The concert was held at the Facultad de Derecho to enjoy Hayden's 'La Creacion'. Translated: National Symphony Orchestra with the National Choir performing Hayden's 'The Creation' at the Faculty of Law building.



It was a delightful 2 hour concert in a beautiful hall that seated about 800 people. La Creacion is sung in German so we could follow along equally as well as everyone else!

There was one stick swinging incident. The lady sitting in front of Mimi had put her hair up with a chopstick and she kept moving back and forth in her seat. I thought Mimi was going to pull out the chopstick and stick it somewhere else.
The concert was part of a Friday night series put on by the National Symphony Orchestra. I think we will go back....we don't have to take a commuter train to get there.


Then we came home from the concert and found that our freezer is on the blink. Esperanza had spent the day cooking for us. I could be eating 30 empanadas and 2 containers of pollo and rice today.


In the Saturday Herald - the president, Cristina says "Arson is useless." A hell of a response.


B.

Now where did I put those M & M's?

One of those days...

It happens once in awhile...call it :

• the post-wedding celebration blues;
• or you just got the bill for the wedding;
• or your brand new white golf shirt just got washed with Brian's new red maple leaf boxers;
• or the unions just wont give you a break and then they want to get paid for the days they were on strike;
• or you just stepped in BA sidewalk dogsh*t.

"Alexander" days dont happen very often but when they do, we have a stash of Fruit & Nut bars and M & M's in the apartment.

We can also get Freddo's ice cream delivered to the apartment. We have the number on speed dial.

B.

Dont just send them a ticket or an invoice......

....climb to the top of the building and slap stickers all over their billboards.



On the day we returned to Buenos Aires, we noticed big 'stickers' on many of the large billboards in the city. In the Buenos Aires Herald the next day, we read that these billboards are breaking the law.

If I understand it correctly, the family of the elected official known as the 'Minister of Public Information' (or equivalent) OWNS the company that is responsible for ALL billboard advertising in the city. This company has annual revenues of $100 MM pesos (~ 30 million bucks). That is a whole lot of billboards (big and small), banners, signs and sides of buses & buildings.




His department slaps stickers on your billboard and you then write his family a cheque to get the stickers removed. That is one smokin' hot deal.



I plan to run for office in the next election.



B.