Educational

We are seriously considering the idea of returning to Buenos Aires for the last month of our retirement in order to put Tango back into our bodies. Actually, we aren't really considering it any more - it's considered a done deal. Many of you may be wondering why we'd go back to Buenos Aires, a city we've said we really don't like. To answer this, let us begin by summing up the six months we spent there.

We are easy going people. Therefore as expected, Buenos Aires ended up feeling like home. We liked our “hood”, we found comfort in certain foods (mostly and especially Korean and Chinese :o), we loved the weather and almost daily blue skies, we met some wonderful people (both foreign and local), and most importantly, Tango turned out to be perfect.

Regarding Tango, the overall experience was terrific. Although we were often frustrated by the experience of dancing in the super crowded milongas, we eventually found our way back to some of the ones that generally had more room to dance (rather than shuffle). As for learning Tango, our last two months were focused on two teachers who taught us more than we ever expected or could have hoped for.

All that said, Buenos Aires is still a stinky, noisy, ugly city. It is also, we repeat, not super safe. When the locals are warning you to not walk on the side streets at night (no, we don't mean the dingy ones, but rather anything that is NOT a main street) and they themselves look at the taxi and its driver and wave them by for looking sketchy, you can bet we're not making it up. Keep in mind, if you visit Buenos Aires and stay in hotels, take taxis door to door (instead of the bus), and eat only in restaurants, you probably won’t experience many or any problems (except for the possible screw-overs by taxi drivers and waiters). However, you also won’t experience (however slightly) what it’s like to live there either.

Regardless of all this, the Tango was sublime. We should enjoy our last month of retirement in a city we have become comfortable with, doing the thing we love most.

Let’s see how much this bright idea will cost us!

This is nothing new to us. Jorge & I often wake up with the same song in our head... usually with the exact same Tango song we heard the night before at the milonga. So it shouldn't be much of a surprise that upon posting the last post on selfishness, I received an email from Jorge with his very own (well-written) post on the same topic.

Here it is:

Growing tired of the selfish-fad?

I know I am.

I also know it's fashionable to be selfish, but let's face it – it's not a functional form of behavior to hold on to, given what we say we wish to experience. In order to have any positive, collective influence on humanity we must allow ourselves to let go of selfishness.

My lovely wife and I are participating in the Toronto International Film Festival for the first time this year. Yesterday was our first screening. We chose to go see "Waltz with Bashir"; a wonderful auto-biographical film about the effects of war on people and the complex process one goes through in the aftermath. You can read more about the film here: http://waltzwithbashir.com/. We suggest you see it if you can.

After the movie the director (Ari Folman) was there in person and we, the audience, were given a remarkable opportunity to ask him questions. The first hands rise and are given the chance to ask thoughtful, responsible questions. Instead, we get people asking trivial questions about missing scenes, random numbers and colours (numbers that were irrelevant, as the director pointed out), blah blah blah, "Next please." It wasn't enough that the questions were irrelevant, there also had to be dull and inane introductions by the questioners. "I'm such a fan of yours, I love you, my name is Bob Loblaw, and I have a wife named Mrs. Bob Loblaw and kids and pets and a car and a house (made of ticky-tacky) and I saw some trailers and I'm so excited and did I mention I love you?" My God. Shut up, nobody cares! Ask your damn question and let's move on. Maybe someone here isn't caught up in their own little bubble. It wasn't all bad; some people were thoughtful.

The questions were one thing and then this: the moment they announced there was time for one more question, people started getting up and leaving while the director was waiting for the final question. It's difficult to imagine people demonstrating this kind of disrespect, but I suppose we carry out the unimaginable every day, just like the movie depicted brilliantly. Here's a newsflash: we do the unimaginable because we are selfish and think we are the most important thing the planet has to offer. We don't listen, so we end up not hearing. We don't look, so we end up not seeing. All this because we are so damn caught up in our own egos. Human beings - sleep walking. Time to wake up!

I suppose I should have asked my own questions (although I didn't muster enough courage to stand up and project my quiet voice over the hundreds of heads). It was amusing witnessing how the director's exhaustive responses to the audience demonstrated his intelligence as he tackled the selfishness of our society.

In the end I felt inspired and moved by the fact that someone chose to go through such difficult memories and share it with the world. It must have taken tremendous courage to do so and my hat goes off to the director. Bravo.