explained because the situation here related to them is inhumane at best. That is for another post though I can't bring myself to write it. It's a shitty topic to dedicate a post to.
Back to the topic at hand, I had no cell phone when I moved here. I did get one within the first month but the problem was not solved by that purchase. The cell phone was just a handset with a dial pad for making or receiving calls. Knowing the time was still an issue.
I remember leaving early for my appointments so that I would not need to find a place that displays their clock or ask people on the sidewalks as I walked or waited for the bus. There were times when I would just go into a store, grill or cafe to sit down and ninety percent of them had a clock on the wall. Placement was the question though. I began to ask myself, "Why can't I find these kinds of places (ones with clocks) when I am walking past them." Then I started to speculate that they are placing the clocks in places where you cannot see them unless you are near the register or in a booth drinking your coffee. Grocery stores, coincidentally, had their clocks on the wall in the back of the store. Next, I had to wrestle with the idea that the entire country may be doing these kinds of things on purpose, or not.
The first time I went to micro centro (which is downtown Buenos Aires), I did see some banks with clocks on their signs, but less and less of that as you get farther away from downtown. I wear a watch now and have stopped thinking about this topic. It only comes to mind when I recall the first days, weeks and months after my arrival. I am trying to cover oddities of life in a different culture. After all, this is part of my story. Maybe these little tips will help someone else out.
Tenes la hora?
The above asks, "do you have the hour?" but we would say, "do you have the time?" In Spanish, the hour is what you read on the clock. If you use the word for time - tiempo - then you are asking if they have time to do whatever. Also, the word "tenes" is used to speak to one individual (informally) and it goes with the pronoun "vos" meaning "you". The word should have an accent over the second 'e' in the word but I continue to use English keyboards and operating systems on my devices. This lesson only serves for Argentina, Uruguay and some parts of Spain. All other cultures will use "tu tienes" in the same situation. Just the same, people understand all forms of Spanish in countries that speak it like we who live in the north can understand people who live in the south (USA).
"Tenes la hora?" is something I asked whenever I had to, in the early days, because I needed to know. As soon as I started to learn how to say it and understand the kinds of responses that question would bring, I used the question often. People would gladly tell you the time, but some would tell you the wrong time, and they would do it with a smile and all the normal nice words and gestures you would expect from respectable people here.
It happened so often that I had to wonder if they were doing it on purpose. As it tuns out, they were! When I learned to ask directions (and followed those directions) I began to find out that many, many people had sent me in the wrong direction. This is something that I know to be true with many proofs to that fact. Nowadays, I can speak well enough to give people directions and I usually turn to see what they do when I tell them how to get to their destination. They routinely ask the next person how to get there, as if they were doing a survey on how to find the place they are looking for. When they get a large percentage of people saying the same thing, then they are off to follow the most popular trend. Crazy!
I saw that happening so often that I started to watch now many people they would stop and ask as they walked. My only assumption is that misdirecting someone is the norm rather than the a rare cruel joke. Now that I have grown kids, they tell me how people like to do those things as an inside joke of sorts. I have learned that it is the norm in schools - a joke of sorts. It also stems from the comedy programs shown on TV - I wrote a post on that subject a while back with some videos posted as examples of the stupidity there was (at that time) on the television during dinner at a restaurant.
The things I talk about on this blog seem small but whenever I run into a visitor to Argentina, these kinds of topics come up even when I do not mention anything about them. The other day I ran into a lady from France and this very topic came up along with the price of socks. She was amazed that you cannot find good socks at a reasonable price. I still struggle with that. Maybe that will be my next post.
