Author Archives: ram5400

Clamoring for an international perspective

Today, July 28, is Independence Day for Peru.

I could weave some elaborate metaphor/parallel about how this also means a day of independence for me (I’m Peruvian), because tomorrow I coincidentally hit the road for Argentina. That would be corny, though, and I don’t think it merits further explanation.

I ate dinner yesterday at the Taste of Portugal BBQ restaurant with my cousin. It was one of those family-owned ethnic restaurants with the low-quality menu and humble atmosphere, so low-key you’d walk by it if you didn’t already know it was there, The Leaky Cauldron-style.

It was my first time doing eating Portuguese food and it won’t be the last. The steak practically fell apart in my mouth. Delicious.

Anyway, I’m writing about Portuguese food to illustrate my love for trying out foods from different cultures. Turkish food is great. So is Peruvian (that’s almost cheating, haha). I love sushi. I have yet to try out much Indian food, though when I worked at Dunkin’ Donuts in my younger years, I shared some spicy stuff with my coworkers and it wasn’t too bad.

I think that having an interest in other cultures, trying out new things, etc., is important.

Manu Chao, an internationally recognized musician I love, likes to globetrot. He said in an interview once that he loves traveling and that his career as a musician is really an excuse for him to continue his exploits around the world. Thing is, he likes to get to know the local population. You know, real, everyday people, whatever that means.

He found all of the members of his band, Mano Negra, in the subways of Paris, where their best musical education was to find a way to play music people could identify with enough to stop and listen. With that band, he also once rented a train car and traveled up and down the countryside in South America playing free concerts for the masses in small towns, etc.

He’s definitely got a broader perspective, and I hope I can get a small piece of that while abroad. Here he is playing Clandestino, a song about the plight that immigrants face around the world:

Location: East Stroudsburg, PA, United States

The mental refrains in place before zero hour

Three more days until Argentina. Still working on paperwork. Still have an entire book on Argentine history to read.

I planned on writing a retrospective entry on Friday, my last day of working at Hayward Laboratories, detailing the cultural things I learned from all the Latino immigrants there. Now it’s Monday at 4:33 pm as I write this, and most of my former fellow workers are just getting home after a day of repetitive factory labor.

I was only there for two months, but there must be something about factory workers, stuck with their own thoughts for hours on end, that packs them with life advice. I think it takes a certain kind of pensive person to work there for seven, eight, fifteen years, someone comfortable with him or herself.

A woman named Geo, a short Hispanic lady from I’m not sure what country, gave me some unsolicited advice during my first week that isn’t necessarily profound, but I still think about everyday:

No mire para atras ni para los costados. Tu mire para adelante no m�s, siempre a lo que viene.

Translated approximately: Don’t look backward, don’t look sideways. You just look forward, always at what comes next.

Another man, a balding, red-faced and bespectacled mechanic, I’ll call him Alvin, seemed to have something loose in his head. By that, I mean he offered me one of his life philosophies every single time I spoke with him, as if he were telling me so he could convince himself of something. And he laughed. A lot. I read a quote once that was simply, “Laughter eases the pain.” Maybe it applied to him:

Everything is the way it’s supposed to be. It took me years to realize that. No more, no less.

He also told me I should pray, that praying helps. Afterward, like I said, he would burst out laughing.

So that’s some of the mental baggage I’ll be taking with me to Buenos Aires. Given that I’ve been thinking a lot about life direction and such, the two quotes above have been a refrain in my head lately.

I learned Spanish profanities from such countries as Mexico and Puerto Rico too, which I won’t detail here. I will say this: Apparently the word “ahorita,” which usually means “right away,” changes meaning to “later” when one is in Puerto Rico. You can imagine the kind of confusion this causes in a factory setting.

I’ll have to reconcile the Peruvian Spanish I’ve known my whole life with the Argentine Spanish soon. I wonder what changes between those? I also wonder what is formal speak and informal speak…? I’m not sure. I hope I don’t say anything entirely inappropriate in front of a professor while I’m there. Chances are that I might.

And the contact list in Argentina keeps piling up. I have an uncle, a family friend who happens to be a journalist and another who’s a DJ. I’m going to be contacting them over the next day or so…

Location: East Stroudsburg, PA

Of working in factories and other things

It’s a week before I head to Argentina, and I’m nowhere near ready.

I’ve procrastinated the preparations all summer long, so over the past week and a half it’s been a game of catching up – rushing to get vaccinated, calling relatives, booking hostel reservations, etc.

I think I’ve ignored the trip for so long because life in general has been moving especially fast recently. I needed to take a breather for a minute, and I wish things would just slow down while I catch my bearings. Like a lot of people, I’m not sure I know what I want anymore.

This summer, I worked full time at a factory, Hayward Laboratories, producing Palmer brand cocoa butter beauty products. I’ve shoved things in boxes, over and over again, and put caps on bottles, monotonously, for eight hours every weekday for the past two months, all to buy a Canon Rebel T2i camera for the trip. I also wanted to know what it was like to work a “real job” as opposed to silly part times at Dunkin’ Donuts, etc.

The work takes place in a dismal, squat building built in the 1800’s where none of the machines work properly and the concrete floor is caked with decades’ worth of grime. I knelt down to pick a bottle off the floor once and my pant leg was smeared black. There’s no air conditioning, so on hot days, it gets to be more than 100 degrees inside.

It sounds horrible, but it’s an easy job. The lines come fast sometimes, but really the hardest part is fighting sleepiness.

In the short time I’ve been there, though, I’ve seen lots of people filter in and out of the company. Most people don’t last more than a day. It can be “soul crushing,” as my one friend who used to work there says. I’ve had two mild nightmares about being trapped on an endless assembly line and even woke up once saying, “Wait, I’m not at work – I don’t have to do this crap.”

How this ties in is that, on this job, I’ve had time to think. A lot. And while we do have conversations with each other on the line, for most of the day the workers fall into silence. So I’ve been stuck with myself, rethinking my life and all the major decisions I’ve ever made over and over again.

This is hard to put concretely, and I’ll be coming back to this, but I’m hoping to find some direction in Argentina, whatever that means. Somewhere in the back of my head I’ve thought that I might prefer to stay working at Hayward for a while, giving me more time to figure things out. I’ve even thought that I might decide to stay in South America.

Funnily enough, most of the workers at Hayward actually happen to be Spanish-speaking immigrants. I’ve met people from El Salvador, Peru, Guatemala, Mexico and Columbia, most of which came to the United States looking for the clich�d “better life.” One guy, a supposed chef, even moved here because he was bored with his life in Puerto Rico and he just wanted to get away.

So far, the plan is this: I’ll be leaving on Thursday, July 29, getting there two days before the program starts. My uncle, Tio Rico, who’s lived in Argentina for most of his life and I only met once when I was very young, will pick me up from the airport and drive me to a party hostel at Milhouse Avenue.

On November 26, I leave for Peru, where I will be staying with family, visiting Machu Picchu, the rainforest, Lake Titicaca, etc. I plan to stay there through New Year’s.

After that, who knows?

One thing in particular has been getting me through these days, and it’s listening to this musician, Manu Chao, who is one of the world’s most popular artists but we hear almost nothing of in the States. He sings in six languages and his lyrics really speak to me – more on that later. For now, here he is serenading Diego Maradona, one of the best Argentine football players of all time:

Location: East Stroudsburg, PA

Language, language, language

I may be stereotyping here, but I love African writers because of the way they use the English language. It’s so emotive, so powerful.

In particular, I’m talking about Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Mbwil a M. Ngal — and I suppose being exposed to the writings of these three figures is enough to warrant that above statement, because at least these guys have something that other writers don’t.

So I really believe in the use of language, which is brought about by my comparative literature major that I mentioned in the last entry (this discipline compares literature from different cultures and languages, hence its emphasis on language itself). By the way, I call comparative literature by its short form, CMLIT, a lot.

That said, not only CMLIT, but also my upbringing shaped my perspective on language. My family hails from Peru, so I grew up in a bilingual household (Spanish and English, that is). You notice certain discrepancies between languages in a setting like that: little things like certain phrases or humor not translating quite the right way. Then you start to realize that language even codes the way you perceive yourself, others, the world.

Fascinating stuff.

So I’m going to escribir en espa�ol cuando me da la gana, just to keep you on your toes. Since I’m going abroad to Latin America, I thought it’d be a cool thing to do.

Now I’m going to post this really cheesy video of a Pablo Neruda poem (number 20 from 20 Love Poems and a Song of Despair). I’m a sucker for poetry being read out loud, especially in other languages. There’s a certain music to it, no?

Location: State College, PA

An end-of-semester beginning

Usually I write into a personal journal whenever I feel the need to talk about something.

I’m a writer. That’s what I do.

So changing gears — for a blog! — will take some getting used to, especially since I haven’t really used a blog since the junior high school days of <www.livejournal.com> and <www.xanga.com>, when I was a hopelessly romantic goth kid.

At some point I decided, you know, to keep all of my thoughts to myself.

Until now, that is.

All that said, I’m a double major in journalism and comparative literature at Penn State University. I’ll be studying abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina this fall.

According to one of my comparative literature (CMLIT) teachers, we’re hopelessly ensconced in the American lifestyle of work, work, work — that is, all work and no play. Things are so fast-paced here in the consumer-driven states that we don’t ever stop to really breathe in the air. I might be putting words in his mouth at this point, but regardless, it’s how I feel.

I hear things are a little different in other countries. How different, I’m not entirely sure, but I suppose I’ll find out in a few months.

Chances are people are really busy everywhere in the world — I don’t think that’s a uniquely American phenomenon. But there just might be some truth to this whole “American lifestyle” thing. I mean, what is the American lifestyle, anyway?

Well, I hope to post some multimedia slideshows, audio interviews, videos, etc., during my time leading up to the trip as well as my throughout my journeys in South America. I have family down there and such, so it should be exciting. But more on that later.

Thanks for reading. Like I said, I’ll be posting more, so watch out.

-Ricky