26. Placebo / Fútbol (B.A, Argentina)

Sorry for not updating this page lately, but I've been pretty busy working, and well life hasn't been too exciting as I've settled in to the working man Mon-Fri routine, whereby I don't do much all week except work and anticipate the weekend, which is much the same as the life of a non-traveller.

I was hoping to be writing about the concert put on by Placebo, one of my favourite bands, whom put on a concert here in BA on April 4. But unfortunately, on the day of the concert, I got struck by my first case of food poisoning since I've been here. Evidentally lunch that day was a bad one and the effects on me were diarrea, vomiting and a bad fever, which meant I missed the concert that night and a day of work the next day. The real stinker was a class got reallocated to another teacher because of that.

Sick with fever

Speaking of work, starting next week I've got an almost full schedule of 16 hours a week in company plus 3 hours with a private student, so hooray. Living off those wages is the next challenge...

On Sunday I went to a fútbol (that's soccer) game. Fútbol is often described as a religion in South America, and I guess to some extent that's true. Buenos Aires has a few teams in the national competition, I think four or five, and whenever the local teams play each other it's usually a spectacle of passion. Boca Juniors vs. River Plate is one of the most famous local derbys, but another is Racing vs. Independiente, which I went to on Sunday with Juan and a friend of his. Now, I'm not too much of a football fan, being from NZ I prefer Rugby or Rugby League, but this game was pretty exciting nonetheless. The match was played in the stadium of Racing, so was 4/5 full of the blue and white of the Racing supporters, with two sections allocated for the Independiente supporters wearing red and black. A massive security operation outside the stadium ensured the supporters of each team were kept separated. Leading up to kick-off, both sides taunted each other with a range of songs sung at volume with a lot of passion. I wish I knew at least one of the songs.

The Independiente supporters

When the first goal came (to Racing) the home supporters (me included) went nuts with cheering and group hugging, which took a couple of minutes to die down. Soon after the opposition equalised, which shut up the locals. We were sitting close to the Independiente supporters so could see their faces, and watching the exchange of crude gestures between the supporters of the two sides was most amusing. Happily, in the second half Racing scored two more goals so won 3-1.

A Racing club Tatoo. They take it seriously here

A few things were missing from the stadium - for example, a scoreboard, a clock and a big screen for those replays. There weren't any announcements either, e.g. "that goal was scored by Ramirez" so if you blinked and missed the goal, you missed it. But the passion of the fans more than made up for these deficits.