In Search of the Bicentennial Chile Dog

Chile Dog! OH Chile Dog!  Wherefore art thou Chile Dog?

Dogs—they’re pretty high on the list of big first impression makers for newcomers to Santiago—maybe all of Chile. I’ve written about them before (See It’s a Dog’s World). Now the search is on for the First National Chile-Dog (no… not chili dog– CHILE DOG!)

Dogs. Some people love ‘em, others hate ‘em, and most just seem to accept that street dogs are a part of everyday life in Chile. And that, indeed, they are. So much so, in fact, that not only is a nice big dog represented on the mural that depicts the most representative elements of national identity (see: Street Art Chile) where this friendly looking guy shows up:

but they will have their own special place in the 2010 Bicentennial!

The Bicentennial Committee has announced a photo competition devoted to the ever-present “quiltro chileno” ( pronounced KIL-tro, the word comes from the Mapuche language Mapudungun and means mongrel or mutt). These uninhibited four-legged creatures like to be in the thick of things and show up just about everywhere.

I’ve always been pretty easy-going about Santiago’s street dogs. They tend to keep to themselves for the most part, and they do seem to sleep a lot–pretty much any time and anywhere they feel like it:

They take part in everyday life. I’ve seen them wait for a green light before crossing the road and even crossing at the specially designated zebra-striped pedestrian crosswalks. They even use public transportation on occasion (as does this guy who hopped on an ascensor in Valparaíso (left) or the other one who hung around an open-air seafood restaurant (right) waiting for patrons to toss him a bite (which of course they did).

Quiltros can also be very playful–watch for them in the Plaza de la Constitución, right in front of La Moneda. There’s a group that often runs past my house, and
I always liked watching them play—until  of course, the night that a canine Ocean’s Eleven decided to hang out under my bedroom window, growling and barking and playing and fighting and yelping and following the every move of one particular female, as dogs are wont to do. When I discovered at a sleepless 3:30 AM that the carabineros won’t do anything, that Seguridad Ciudadano won’t do anything, and that apparently there are no dogcatchers or anyone else who can/will do anything and that the only viable option was earplugs, I was not quite as open minded about their right to public space anymore.

But they seem to have since moved on to someone else’s window, and I can now go back to enjoying their antics. And so can you. Catch your favorite street dogs doing their favorite street dog things, and send a picture (just one per person)
to the search for the Chile’s emblematic canine (the national Chile Dog!). You might even win a prize (cameras for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, and cash for the honorable mentions). Entries will be accepted through November 23, and all the details and fine print can be downloaded from the Bicentennial site (El Quiltro del Bicentenario).

The Bicentennial Committee organized this competition not only as a way to recognize the emblematic role the ever-present quiltro plays in our daily lives, but also to encourage their adoption and responsible pet ownership.

And for just a bit more inspiration, here’s a video made as part of the “Chile con mis ojos” (Chile through my eyes) series:  “Mi Quiltro Chileno.”

Cachando Chile on the Air-October 28

We’re back!
Cachando Chile on the Air starts its regular programming today, Wednesday October 29, 2009 on Santiago Radio.

 

Margaret Snook (that would be me) and Felipe Valdivia chat about life in Chile every Wednesday from 6 to 8 PM, (UTC/GMT-3 hours–as a reference, New York is currently UTC/GMT-4 hours–we’re on Daylight Savings Time).

Today’s topic is FOOD!

Please let us know if there’s something–or some place–that you would like us to discuss… Got a favorite (or least favorite) dish?  Restaurant? Picada? Place to shop? Fruit? Veggie? Meat? Spice? The floor is open to discussion!

Cachando Chile on the Air–Santiago Radio: www.santiagoradio.cl

Don’t touch that mouse!

 

Flirting with Frugal

“Frugal?” I’m thinking to myself, “Did he just call her frugal?”

“Veo que eres muy frugal,” he said again. Yes, I heard it right; my husband was complimenting a young woman’s frugality. Well, that’s certainly not going to set off any kind of flirt-alert!

We were out for the day with a student here from Germany for a research project. A very charming young woman—intelligent, interesting and interested, thoughtful, cheery—in fact I could think of plenty of nice things to say about her, but I could not understand why in the world he would choose “frugal” as a compliment. And for that matter, how would he even know whether or not she was frugal?

Now, where I come from, being frugal is indeed considered a virtue, though not something that would generally be chosen for flattering a young woman unless you were her father, her investment counselor, or her future mother-in-law.

I question his usage and he says, “Pero oooobvio po… Just look at her! Of course she’s frugal!” and I’m thinking he’s digging himself in pretty deep and she’s going to be offended… I certainly can’t see anything that would tell me whether or not she was frugal. Her clothes were neither flashy nor frumpy; in fact, the clues to her frugality were, well, frankly frugal!

But he’s insisting he’s correct, and well, yeah… it IS his language we’re speaking… so here we go again, off to find a couple of dictionaries, because my motto is, when in doubt, look it up… in both languages!

My trusty American Heritage Dictionary confirms my own understanding of the word: 1. Avoiding unnecessary expenditure of money; thrifty. 2. Costing little, inexpensive, such as “a frugal lunch.”

So far, so good, but then I turned to the Spanish definition in the RAE dictionary and got: 1. Parco en comer y beber. 2. Aplicase también a las cosas en que esa parquedad se manifiesta, como “una comida frugal.” In other words: someone who doesn’t eat or drink much or something that is restricted in its quantity.

Yes, once again we’re up against one of those famous false cognates, those pesky words that seems for all intents and purposes to be one in the same, but in the end, it is most definitely not. The English FRU-gal and the Spanish fru-GAHL may be cousins of sorts, but they are certainly not twins.

OK, first things first. My husband is vindicated, as he is addressing the fact that this fit and slender young woman takes care of herself and doesn’t overeat, which is indeed obvious by looking at her, and he has made absolutely no reference whatsoever to her financial habits.

Once again language provides us with some interesting cultural insights. In both cases the word refers to prudence and moderation, but one with respect to the consumption of food and drink and the other in the financial sense. The former refers to the absence of gluttony, while the latter privileges the absence of consumerism.

It’s curious too that both definitions use the same example (a frugal lunch) to illustrate a very different point. One is in relation to the amount consumed (intake) and the other with the amount spent (outflow), one with volume (quantity) and the other with value (cost). One is careful with calories, the other with money.

OK, let’s push this a bit further—just for the sake of reflection.

If language can in fact give us clues about the way its native speakers think, what is this word telling us about its use and meaning in English-speaking vs. Spanish-speaking cultures?

Speaking (or thinking) in the broadest of generalizations, I wonder if this example is really capable of providing some insights as bold as why English speakers tend to have more weight issues and a greater tendency to save money (long-term, inward thinking, as in pack away the calories, stash away the dough?), while many Spanish speakers, who are often accused of short-term thinking and living in the moment may be more prone to outward thinking, as in share the food and spend the money today because we may not be here to enjoy it tomorrow?

I am truly curious to know what others might think about why two languages took the same word—frugal—from the same Latin root—frugalis (thrifty, temperate, frugal, provident, worthy, virtuous)—and derived from it very different meanings in its modern usage.

And please, don’t be frugal with your comments!

For more false cognates see: Cynical or Cínico?

There’s a Chilean in my Closet!

Guess who's hanging up what?

Whoever invented the wire hanger should have established universal rules for using it.

There are certain rules that seem to have been established arbitrarily at some distant point in time and space when someone made the first move and said, “I’m going to do it this way.” If you had asked why, they may have simply said, “No reason, I can do it the other way if you prefer,” or “because I’m left handed” or “because my sister was standing on the other side,” but for whatever reason the reason happened to be, their method ended up carved in stone and we don’t even think about it until someone upsets the balance.

Like what, you ask? Like driving on the right-hand side of the road, unless you’re a Brit-influenced driver, of course, and therefore prefer the left. Or whether the toilet paper drapes over the top of the roll or dangles from below. Or whether you draw a circle by moving toward the right or toward the left. I’m sure there are plenty of other practices that we could all indulge any latent OCD tendencies in, but today I think I’ll just dwell on hangers.

In my orderly little pre-Chile world, we hung things up with the hanger hook pointing toward the back of the closet. Never thought about it much. Wasn’t much reason to. Until I noticed that the woman I first lived with in Santiago would always hang things up “backward” as in hook facing forward,** toward the door.  Personal quirk, I thought. Until I went shopping and oddly enough, most of the stores did the same. The sales clerks glowered at me for hanging things up the “right” way. And when I started sharing a closet with my husband, we ended up with a mishmash of hanger-use practices silently bugged us both and neither was (or is) willing to change. What was going on?
** How often do we see backward and forward meaning the same thing?

In my northern-hemisphere-oriented brain, the outward hook maneuver does seem to be more practical in that it only takes just one outward-downward movement to hang something up, rather than the push in, up, back, and down movement required for the “Chilean” method.

It is in my nature to try and make sense of things. Maybe, I thought, it’s because we’re on the other side of the world—like that bit about water in a sink swirling counterclockwise in the southern hemisphere (it doesn’t, by the way). Not even I, as originator of that cockamamie theory could muster up much enthusiasm for it. So I’m back to arbitrary. Not a very satisfactory answer.

I googled around for a while, searching for an answer to my relevant-to-not-much question, and although I did find a few versions of the hanger’s rather recent invention (might have been US President Thomas Jefferson, could have been someone else in the mid-1800s, although Albert Parkhouse generally gets the most credit for having designed the first wire hanger in 1903. Too bad he apparently misunderstood the directions on the patent for and signed away his rights to the fortune his employer then received. Parkhouse never saw a dime). I also found a nifty voodoo coat hanger and a slew of hanger manufacturers, but non one who would take a stand on which way the hanger is “supposed” to go.

So let me be the first to go on record as saying that hanger hooks should definitely point toward the back of the closet… In my world. Because I said so. Even though my husband doesn’t believe me. Or care.

May I take your purse?

In Chile, good manners and proper hosting etiquette stipulate that not only jackets are placed on the host’s bed, but women’s purses too.

Yes, really.

Note to all past, present, and future hosts: Please do not take what I am about to say personally. No offense is intended—at all… What you are about to read is simply a bit of mental musing on yet another cultural difference and my attempts to make sense out it all.

Here’s another one of those little things about life in Chile that I should be used to by now but that still takes me by surprise over and over again. The first time a charming new friend said upon my arrival at her birthday party, “Let me take your coat and purse,” I was stunned but still in the “when in Rome mode,” so I handed over my jacket along with all my cash, credit cards, checkbook, ID, and date book (no cell phone in those days)… basically, every portable thing of value I owned and watched it disappear into her bedroom.

As the house filled up with guests and the ratio of people I knew vs. those I didn’t increasingly widened, and as I realized that not even she knew everyone wandering about her house, the triple double dragon knot in my stomach (or was it a lark’s head hitch? or a Portuguese bowline?) just wouldn’t ease up: My Purse Was Unattended.

The evening ended well, and I recovered my purse with all its contents intact, but I kept wondering what I would have done if something had indeed disappeared. I’ve since heard many stories of the credit card that slips away during a party, that one check that goes missing from the middle of the checkbook (and later turns up cashed for some budget-devastating amount), the wallet that ends up $10 lucas lighter (and the accompanying feeling of doubt—did I really have that money when I got here? Very uncomfortable.

How embarrassing would it be to have to tell someone that something was stolen from me at their house? What is the proper Manual de Carreño (Latin America’s Emily Post) response to that situation? How should the host respond? Or maybe it would be rude to tell the host? But wouldn’t s/he want to know? Or would s/he feel like I was making some kind of accusation? Who is responsible in these situations? I always figured it was my responsibility to take care of my purse and its contents, so if I abandon it on someone’s bed for 6 hours, wouldn’t that make it own damned fault? Too many uncomfortable considerations.

Please don’t think it’s a case of hanging out with shady characters. Not at all. I certainly trust my hosts, and I’m not so paranoid that I worry in small groups of friends. But parties, especially birthdays, tend to get very large here. People show up with unknown friends in tow. Teenage and college-age kids of the household often make an appearance with a gaggle of friends and friends of friends. It’s not at all uncommon to see 50 or more people troop through a house during the course of a 6-8-hour birthday party. And at every one of those celebrations, the host’s bed will be heavily laden with purses.

What's in the Queen's Handbag, by Phil Dampier & Ashley Walton

I admit that my inner purse GPS has become far more advanced since moving to Santiago—a large city in which pickpockets and purse snatchers are pretty common (see Bye Bye Blackberry). In fact, when I go to visit my family in small-town America, where windows don’t have bars, cars don’t have alarms, gas caps don’t require keys, and purses dangle freely from restaurant chairs, they accuse me of rivaling Queen Elizabeth for purse-related paranoia, but honestly, I’m sure my purse has more valuable contents (are far less security) than the Queen’s handbag does!

Maybe there’s some secret Chilean purse-toting knowledge that gets passed down from mother to daughter; but the fact that I never had a Chilean mother would place me cluelessly dawdling behind the proverbial door when that information got passed out. Maybe all those purses contain no more than lipstick and keys, so their location is a non-issue. Maybe I need to check for a “Purse Content 101” course with a good section on party-going.

It is also true that I will usually want to get something out of my bag over the course of the evening. Although I will probably have no need for cash, check, or plastic, I just might want to get my hands on other practical items like tissues, cough drops, a pen, a date book, a business card, a cell phone, a small camera, etc. at some point during the evening!

So here’s my strategy. I hand over my jacket and politely decline the purse-relieving offer by stating, quite truthfully, that I will need to get something out of it during the night, and then I set it somewhere out of the way but within reach and get on with enjoying the party.