Quantifying the unquantifiable, Getting Better after Breakthrough Covid Infection
Of all the household tasks, perhaps the most vexing is the putting on of the duvet cover. For those who don't know, the duvet cover is a giant pillowcase-type-thing that goes on a down (or whatever) quilt. But unlike a pillow, the down duvet has no body to it, no...
Breakthrough Covid Infection/Infección Irruptiva por Covid, post double vaccination with Sinovac
One of the many tasty things I ate that I could not taste. I could feel the lime though. Read on to learn about chemesthesis. A buzzing, churning, roiling, banging, grinding machine has been just outside my door for fifteen months. Inside the house, I hear it less,...
On sewing, nostalgia and the challenges of the day
Way back in a recess of my mind I am sitting in the backyard on East 19th Street in Brooklyn and it is early summer. My grandmother is sitting in one of those woven beach chairs with the light aluminum frame, like the one she uses when she sits out in front of her...
New (to me) feria report, and the continued joy that living in Chile brings me)
In talking about the civil unrest, this fríend of a friend asked me what it would take for me to leave Chile. And it’s a good question. For a while I was seeing a gringo exodus, but it was mainly the same people that always leave, end of the contract, short-termers,...
Not just curtains (leaving centro/social upheaval and more)
Curtains! Not a scintillating topic. Except why do I need curtains? And why have I spent fifteen minutes out of the last several days trying to get them back from the place I left them, and why do I leave empty handed, the smell of burnt coffee in my nostrils, as I...
Don’t forget to turn your cats off, a linguistic lesson from Chile
I thought I knew about cats. Yes, cats. After 15 years in Chile, surely I know enough not to look for their fifth foot, from the expression "no buscarle la quinta pata al gato," which means to keep on looking for an explanation for something when there is none. I also...
8M, the International Womens’ Day March in Santiago, Chile (a commemoration, not a celebration)
"Casi me emociono" said a woman standing next to me as I used the back of my hands to dry my own eyes. She "almost" got emotional. It was her way of saying it brought tears to her eyes, as it had mine. I was tempted to tell her "Y no soy ni chilena" (I'm not even...
In Which a Near-Dooring Leads to Tone Policing (tales of cycling and slang in Chile)
Yesterday, as I periodically do, when nearly killed by a flung-open taxi door a solid meter from the sidewalk, I stopped to look the perpetrator in the eye. I developed this policy a long time ago, of wanting to personalize the cyclist, give the door-flinger a little...
December Newly-Returned-to-Santiago Feria Kvell/Report
There is this piece of Smith family lore, by which I usually mean to introduce something false, which I will later disprove or reframe, except in this case it's true. It tells of a time when I, fresh from a brutally cold winter in Santiago, landed in my mother's...
I might officially be Chilean
Something really big has happened. After fourteen years in Chile, something enormous has taken place. I have not purchased a home, gotten married, had or adopted children. I have not applied for my Chilean passport, adopted (or had) a cat, nor have I decided to leave,...
