I just posted my best photos from the concerts on flickr so click the link in the sidebar to check them out! I also have a LOT of video clips but they are all very wobbly and the sound isn’t so good- it’s hard to get a good video in a massive mob of rabid rock fans!

Overall I had a great week, very busy and tiring but tons of fun. Keane was amazing, definitely my favorite act!!

American Airlines is proud to announce the renewal of its most recent customer service policy.

 ”‘Making Customers Cry’ is a true innovation in our eyes. The runaway success we have experienced from all staff members has been astonishing,” says Cindy Ralf, a ticketing agent in Newark, New Jersey.

Indeed, ‘Making Customers Cry’ has been one of the most consistently applied customer service strategies American Airlines has ever adopted. From the flight attendants, to the gate representatives, to the ticketing agents, to the call centers, it seems like everyone at American is on board with this exciting new strategy, and most seem to relish putting it to use.

“It’s a simple concept really, and it takes minimal effort,” Ralf adds. ”Really, the whole concept is ‘minimal effort’. Just don’t try making people happy. I don’t understand why all the other companies in the world are so concerned with their customers satisfaction. I mean, it’s not like we’re risking bankruptcy or anything… Oh we are? Well, no matter. You already paid for the ticket so you’ll just have to deal with missing your connection. Unless you want to pay another $600 for a last minute fare on another airline… No I don’t know if there are any other flights you can take. Look, just call the help line, I don’t know how to rebook this… Yeah, I know I have been typing on this computer for the last 20 minutes, but I was just pretending to search for alternate routes, I’m really just playing Snood… No, I don’t care if the call center people put you on hold for 30 years, I can’t help you.”

Unconventional as it may be, the policy aligns perfectly with the rest of American’s standards: Mediocrity on all fronts, poor price-value ratios, and in general embodying, as an enterprise, an overly aggressive version of  Eeyore from A.A. Milne’s beloved children’s book, Winnie the Pooh.

“I never thought I would be paid for doing what comes naturally to me,” says Jorge “Sticks and Stones” Montoya, a former Lucha Libre fighter who currently is a call center agent in Dallas.”When I hurt my back in the ring, I decided to take a chance with American. Boy did it pay off! Now, even though I don’t inflict physical pain into my enemies, I feel like I’m really contributing to society by achieving American’s goal of inflicting emotional pain into each of their customers.”

So what’s next for this incredibly consistent, if not consumer friendly, policy? “Well, you know how the Geico Cavemen got their own TV show?” says Hank Antwerp, VP Public Relations. ”I don’t want to reveal too much, but I will say this: Survivor-style competition on board a plane! Real customers will compete to win amazing prizes- peanuts, ham sandwiches, pillows, blankets, earphones, reliable passage to their destination… All in the airport or on the plane! The best part? The participants don’t even know they’re being filmed!“

 American Airlines.
We know why you cry.

For more information, visit AA.com/WhyYouCry.¨

I added a link to Havanna Café to del.icio.us. Check it out, it has an English section. And now they have Haagen Dazs ice cream there, which from a business perspective is a really interesting brand. I wonder where that ice cream comes from… an American company with a quasi-Scandinavian name has a factory in South America? And transports its ice cream to Asunción, Paraguay, one of the most secluded and hottest cities on the continent. They must have some really great refrigerated trucks.

I’m not sure what people think of Haagen-Dazs around here, if they know it’s American or think it’s Dutch or something. I really don’t even know if most Americans realize it isn’t a foreign company. So ponder that for a while… I am getting hungry.

Coming up soon! Less than a month to go…

Here are some links for more info about the concert: (en español)

www.quilmes.com.ar
www.popartmusic.com

Complete listing of bands by day here- just click “more”

Thursday April 12th: Divididos, Catupecu Machu, Las Pelotas, Ataque 77, Bad Religion.

Friday April 13th: Keane, Babasónicos, The Psychedelic Furs, Arbol

Saturday April 14th: Los Piojos, Intoxicados, El Tri, Kapanga

Sunday April 15th: Aerosmith, Velvet Revolver, Evanescence, Ratones Paranóicos

Buy tickets here.

I’ve been updating the company’s website in English, editing out all the typos and rephrasing things so they make a little more sense. Check it out here:

Casa Módiga

Just to show how long it takes to get things done around here: this week we finally have gotten started on painting/printing our sales force vehicles. I’ve been working on this since December 1st. There was always another problem coming up with this project. One step forward, two steps back. Here’s a photo of one of the finished cars:

 Click to enlarge.

And now we have to send the first two cars back to get retouched.

I had an interesting experience in the grocery store this weekend while shopping for bread. As I was poking around the wheat breads…

Cross-eyed Man: Do you like wheat bread?
Me: Um, yeah.

CM: You should try my bread. It comes in two kinds. I make it with… (he goes on to describe the bread further… ) Do you know Natura oil? From Argentina?
Me: Yes (In fact, this is one of Casa Módiga’s products but I have no desire to talk more about vegetable oil). But I like bread with seeds in it.
CM: Oh this has lots of seeds in it, see? Sesame on top and more inside.
Me: Uhhh ok I will try it. (I take some bread and take a few steps towards the milk.)
CM: Where are you from?
Me: The US.
CM: Oh, the US! I want to go there. I think that I could make $10,000 if I could work there for 6 months. Here, you spend everything you earn.
Me: (What?? You’re a BAKER.) OK. Thanks, bye.
CM: Do you have a job for me there?
Me: No I don’t have a job for myself! (Taking more steps away)
CM: Is it hard to find a job there?
Me: For me, no, for you, yes. Bye.

At that point I turn the other way and he finally shuts up. Some people describe people like this as being “friendly” but I find the right word is “creepy”. I wish people would just stop asking me about going to the US- I really have no idea what the immigration laws are or where to find you a job or how to get you a scholarship! Give me a break.

Anyway it’s common for people here to try to sell you their products in the grocery store. I find it insanely annoying. Companies (mine included) hire girls to wear a uniform in the product’s colors (For example Blue and White for frosted flakes) and then whenever a shopper comes along, they tell them about the product, and that it’s on sale or has such-and-such promotion. And then they stare at you after you say no thanks and look for what you really want.

I told my boss about how I hate those girls.  “But how do you know anything about the products?” he asked.

Well, I don’t. I really have no idea what any of the products are, so I find whatever is the closest to what I know. For example, again, cereal. I want Total. There is no Total. I buy whatever has a bunch of vitamins listed on the side and has fiber. See? No awkward conversations or selling pressure necessary!

It took me over 3 months just to find the peanut butter. It’s not by the jelly, it’s by the yogurt. Of course!

Another time, a girl tells me that Brand X dog food is on sale. I think Why are you telling me this! I say “I don’t have a dog.”

The worst though was around Valentine’s Day, when a promoter, holding a box of Valentine chocolate, says “You should give some chocolate to your boyfriend for Valentine’s Day!”

WHAT??? No. That is wrong on several levels.

1.) You assume I have a boyfriend.
2.) You assume my boyfriend likes chocolate… and will not be offended for receiving a “woman’s” present
3.) You assume my boyfriend will not be giving me chocolate for Valentine’s Day. Because it would be so lame if we gave each other the same present.
$.) Wait, wait… isn’t HE supposed to give ME the chocolate?

Most importantly,
4.) You assume I will not eat the chocolates myself before my nonexistent boyfriend receives them as his romantic Valentine present.

Next time, she should just say this.
“You should buy yourself some chocolate!”

SOLD!

I just added two more videos today. One is of traditional Paraguayan musicians and another is from Carnaval last weekend.

Today as I ate lunch, the afternoon news reported that the current temperature was 35°C. Thirty-five celcius is approximately 1,054° F.

When it gets to be this hot, I find my self thinking about cooling down in any way possible. Walking to the comedor for some juice, I notice a large ice cooler.

“Hielo Glacial“, with a seal on the front balancing an ice cube on his nose. Oh to be that lucky seal! Or maybe, I could just jump into his ice cooler.

No, the way to go is to have a company pool. Take out the warehouse and put in a pool. We can have a barbecue for lunch, and just swim for a bit before getting back to work. Oh and towels should be provided.

The juice is really good today, a little coconutty. Icy cold. Maybe I could take a swim in the juice pitcher. No that would be sticky and attract flies.

Yesterday was a holiday. “Día de los Héroes” they call it. Heroes’ Day. Coincidentally we are getting “Heroes” (slogan: No, we are NOT X-Men) the TV show here too… Seems suspicious…

Back in the olden days, there was a crazy president of Paraguay who started a war, where the sparsely populated Paraguay battled Brazil. And Bolivia. And Argentina. That war ended so successfully (1 million dead and extensive territory lost) that now there is a holiday to celebrate this president. And I got a day off from work. Sweet. Thanks, crazy!

Today people celebrate this holiday by going out and completely filling every bar in the city the night before. I also heard fireworks occasionally throughout the day, which may or may not be related to the holiday. I personally spent my holiday sleeping, watching the episodes of Los that I downloaded, and reading magazines at the pool.

At the pool, the owner asked me why I don’t tan. “You’re always at the pool but your skin doesn’t get darker,” he tells me. I say, “I never go outside before 2 pm, because the sun is the strongest during those times,” and really I haven’t gotten burnt since I have been here. And I am also much tanner than when I got here. I just thought it was a funny thing to say to me. Much funnier than the time he told me I am looking more “robust, fat” and I should not eat so many hamburgers. Have I ever mentioned that this man is nearly blind and half senile?

So I have also started riding the bus home from work. I finally found out that there is a bus that takes me from work to the gym. Once I get done with the gym there’s one more that takes me right home in like 3 minutes. The only problem is that there is no way to take these busses in the opposite direction. I can get to the gym from home, but the #32 bus that takes me home from work doesn’t go in the opposite direction. I found this out the hard way one morning when Florencia was out of town. After waiting 30 minutes and not seeing one bus #32, I started looking for a taxi. I guess all the taxi drivers were sleeping in, because there were absolutely none at the nearest taxi stand. After another 15 minutes of wandering around I found one.

Cab driver: “What bus were you waiting for”
Me: “HUH??” (Cab drivers are nearly impossible to understand)
CD: “What.. bus…?”
Me: “Oh, um #32.”
CD: “No, that bus doesn’t go in this direction.”
Me: “Ohhhh.” Huh? How can it only go in one direction?

Still haven’t figured out this crazy bus system. But anyway, the busses are an endless source of frustration and ingenuity. I say ingenuity but there really is no word to describe the endless line of vendors, jumping on and off the bus, selling anything and everything: Candy, gum, soda, juice. Donuts. Bread. Toothbrushes. Nail clippers and manicure sets. Singing. Playing the guitar.

The busses themselves are archaelogical finds. I imagine the city government struck a deal with the survivors of ancient Vesuvius.  ”Well, you don’t really have anyone left to ride your busses… just give ‘em to us.” Afterwards, the Asuncion bus drivers put up their colorful fringe and stickers of Jesus and Mary in the front windshield, and set out on their campaign against using brakes. I hear that sometimes the bus drivers even race each other down the highway. Needless to say there are a lot of car accidents here.

So what else has been going on here? Well, Sunday night José and I had another sold out performance of epic proportions at the karaoke. Yellow, Otherside, Hey Ya, and some song I didn’t know by Blur. Hey Ya was a bit of a challenge, considering the words were misspelled and generally did not match the song. Otherwise we once again brought down the house. (“The house” consisted of a table of 3 middle aged women and 2 other people who loved U2.) The karaoke we went to was called “Karaoke #3″ of La Choppería del Puerto. Why Karaoke #3? Well evidently there are 2 other Karaokes within the bar-restaurant which takes up almost the whole block but is divided into several smaller sections, so each one is like an individually functioning karaoke. They just all have the same name… and the same guy running it on Sunday nights so it was a little slow. Next time, I will remember my camera. There’s always next time…

Check out the Videos page for some new clips from Carnaval in Encarnación, the Kchiporros concert (ka-chi-por-ros), and the Don Omar concert.

Also I added a MUSIC page, where you can listen to mp3s of some of my favorite songs and some of the popular songs on the radio and MTV here.

So I realize I haven’t updated anything in a while. But I have thought about updating. Seriously I have even thought (more than once!) Oh, I should write about this! I even went so far as to create a jpg image of an interesting screen capture last week. I was going to explain more about it (It exemplifies the weather patterns here! And the futility of predicting the weather because of the constant incorrectness of the predictions! And how it is insanely hot all week and then rains as soon as I go to the pool!) but it just never happened.

Finally here I am, I will give the fastest recap possible because, I am at work right now and I should be doing other more work-related tasks.

The first thing I can remember not writing about the past few weeks is that I am taking training classes to be a teacher at the CCPA (American-Paraguayan Cultural Center). These classes mainly consist of doing group activities, sometimes presenting things to the class, and reading articles about learning. For me it’s like going back to 3rd grade (We made collages out of magazines yesterday to describe ourselves). But I imagine that these activities are a good way for the directors to get an idea of how wwell the other students speak English. There are a few other Americans in the class: Two from Missouri, one from Pittsburg KS, one from Seattle, one from Tampa, and a Puerto Rican girl that is really from Rhode Island. Anyway I have 3 more classes left and then they will decide who is going to teach what. My plan is to do some advanced classes on Saturdays.

I also recently turned 23. For my birthday, Nathalie and I had a big asada (barbeque) at our hotel. She invited everyone at the French embassy so there were like 20 french people there. As for me, an interesting mishmash of friends showed up: Ruth, Moncho, Jose, some friends from my CCPA class, and a band that I met the week before. They didn’t play or anything but they just always hang out in a group. Sol and Flo were in San Ber so we had dinner all together the next night on my actual birthday at a really good Italian restaurant.

We got a whole bunch of food, incl. veggie burgers. At midnight Dorothea and Nathalie gave me a cake with a candle… then lured me away from it to throw me in the pool. Fortunately I got my revenge, when we threw Nathalie in the pool, too.

Next up was Valentine’s Day, or Día de Los Enamorados. It is not as commercialized here as in the US. Only 1 week before did I even see any Valentine decorations or promotions. I visited a few flower shops to set up displays of Chandon and Valentine presents for work. Valentine’s day is a lot more “couples” oriented here, no one really gives cards to their friends or family, they just do something special with their significant other. Normally I really don’t care about Valentine’s Day, since my birthday is more important and just a few days before, but this year I felt a lot of pressure about it. In the end I ended up going to a pub with Nathalie to hang out, which was fun, but I’m not going to go into much more detail than that!

For my birthday, Ruth and Moncho brought me 12 cans of “nieve” or snow. This is a product used basically just for carnaval to cover people in foam. It is kind of like shaving cream but not as dense. This present came in very handy the next weekend when I went to Encarnación, Paraguay (6 hrs on bus) for Carnaval.

Carnaval was so amazing and so much fun. The Carnaval in Encarnacion was nothing like the one in Brazil, which is enormous in scope and over-the-top in terms of the participants and extravagance of the floats and costumes. But, we were able to get front-row seats and experience it all, from a less commercialized perspective. I will post videos tomorrow to explain more!

**Intermission** Click the play button for some Carnaval-esque music. (I couldn’t find any of the actual songs they played but this is a fairly popular song on the radio and MTV)

You can see my photos from Carnaval on Flickr. Basically, everyone goes to this closed off section of street which has extra lighting and is surrounded by seats and bleachers. There are VIP sections sponsored by various companies (we were across from the Coke Zero section as you can see in the photos). They play lots of cumbia and Latin pop songs over the speakers and the whole crowd starts dancing, jumping, and singing along. In front of the bleachers, men carrying coolers shout “Leche, leche, leche!” selling beer, and little boys and men alike sell more cans of foam. Every person who is not selling something gets instantly foamed by the whole crowd when they walk by in the front. And, anyone in the crowd (or in the streets of the city all day) can and will spray you. The good news is that I kept my camera from being ruined by the foam, but the bad news is that I ran out of batteries and didn’t get to take many photos.

Around 9:30 pm, the King and Queen of Carnaval made their way down the street and Carnaval began. Then each club comes down the street playing music and dancing. Some clubs were just women dancing samba with their intricate feathery costumes, some had women and men, some had kids, and some were just drum corps. The drums were my favorite, there would be 30 or 40 drummers, with various types and sizes of drums, playing along to their song (usually another Latin pop or cumbia song).

Around 3 am we finally left, but Carnaval was still going strong. It was pretty cold, especially since we were soaking wet from the foam. I was ready to go inside and be warm.

That bring us to this week. I have just been in the same old pattern. Dorothea and I are going to the Don Omar (The King of Reggaeton) concert on Saturday night. Tickets are ridiculously cheap, for us anyway, and he is playing in the soccer stadium that is in walking distance from home.

I am also trying to plan out my “vacation” time that is coming up in April. My sister Meredith is coming to visit the first week of April, which will also be Holy Week here. I am trying to think of someplace for us to go outside of Paraguay that is not Buenos Aires… I am already going to be there from April 6 to 16th and that should be more than enough time! Plus, I am trying to think of things for us to do for a few days within Asunción. Not so easy, since there aren’t any tourist sights here! Anyway if anyone has a suggestion, let me know.

Oh yeah and evidently Bad Religion is coming to Quilmes Rock. I think I might know one of their songs. Yeah, that one that Sublime covered. Oh and Audioslave is still not confirmed. I wish I knew what was going on with them, someone just tell them not to break up until after the concert.

Check back soon for more songs and videos, I plan on uploading more tomorrow night!