CENSUS ARGENTINA 26/OCT/2010

Tomorrow is census day in Argentina which means it is a bank holiday. Albeit a bank holiday where everything will be closed. Hence i reccommend a trip to the supermarket today.
Under Argentine law all households are obliged to have at least one person in the house allday to answer the questions for the census.
If you are there when they call you will need to answer all of their questions as best you can. Even through a closed door if you feel the need.
The questions are along the lines of
Name
Country of origin
Do you have a plasma tv.
Do you own or rent your abode.
Are you a native Indian ect ect ect.
The person is unlikely to speak English so it should be a great chance to test your Spanish.
Usful answers Soy Turista no entiendo =i am a tourist i don't understand.
Kind Regards
John and Clara Boyle

Misiones: over 200 children dead due to malnourishment in 2010

Misiones: over 200 children dead due to malnourishment in 2010
In a country that produces enough food to feed 500 million people per year. How the hell is this possible



Misiones Province Governor Maurice Closs announced that more than 200 children have died thus far this year in the province due to malnutrition, but defended the "Zero Hunger" administrative project that, he said, has allowed for a 20-percent reduction rate in these types of deaths.

"In the 90's, 33 out of 1000 children died as a result of malnutrition. In 2009, 329 children died and this year, 206 deaths were registered," said Closs.

Closs went on to claim that, in accordance with administrative plans, "there has been a reduction of 20 percent."

The governor praised and defended the plan that detects and assists malnourished and underweight children and said that "we will continue working to reach our maximum potential." Closs threw in another statistic: "In the United States, the rate is at six percent."

In the past few days, authorities in Misiones have come under fire after the death of a two-year-old boy in Apóstoles, Misiones and the death of a 15-month-old baby girl, both malnourished.

The baby had been receiving assistance from the "Zero Hunger" programme.

Closs responded to criticisms: "The boy from Apóstoles did not die from malnutrition, he had a health problem, hydrocephalus. The baby girl, before receiving assistance, didn't even had a national identity document. Social workers took her to the hospital for the first time, and she didn't die because of malnutrition, she didn't die because of the programme, she died because of extreme poverty."

"This programme is necessary and these deaths prove that," he said.

In all of Argentina, deaths due to malnourishment are registered at 13.8 out of 1,000, according to official data

Beware of this rental scam

Land Locked Bolivia to gain access to the ocean again

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11595368

MySpaceBA.com Blog: Furnished Apartments in Buenos Aires: Frinks Friday 22nd OCT 2010 Friday night drinks fo...

MySpaceBA.com Blog: Furnished Apartments in Buenos Aires: Frinks Friday 22nd OCT 2010 Friday night drinks fo...: "Time Friday at 8:00pm - Saturday at 4:00am -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Location Kra..."

Frinks Friday 22nd OCT 2010 Friday night drinks for the EXPAT comunity

Time Friday at 8:00pm - Saturday at 4:00am

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Location Krakow Bar
Venezuela 474
San Telmo, Argentina

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Created By Frinking

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More Info Yep, another new Frinking Venue! Molly Malones was a great night, but in the interests of getting around the place and trying new places out, we thought that Krakow might be fun, so lets see for ourselves. It's on Venezuela, just off Bolivar, and a block from Belgrano. They even have a web site so you can check it out for yourself - http://www.krakow-cafe.com.ar/index-ingles.html

So, from 8 this Friday, the usual gang plus hopefully many more interesting people, will come along and join in the fun. Again, this bar is close to the centre of town, and very handy for the subte and collectivos, with taxi's always an easy option in BsAs.

Buenos AIres Hash House Harriers Sun Oct 24th 2010

Yes, another two weeks go by and here we are for Hash Number 524. So for all those planning to head to Carilo for the Big Bash, here is the perfect excuse for possibly the Last Urban Hash of the year, before the summer fun commences. What better place to hold an Urban Hash than in Wonderful San Telmo - The heart of Bohemian Buenos Aires and home to Tango Tango Tango.....

And for all those who can't make Carilo over halloween weekend, then here's your Hash Fix for October.

So .....

Announcing HASH #524
The Urban Dash

Hares: Inspect Her Assets, Tongue y Lingus, Just Joanne & Just Luciano.

Date: Sunday 24th October 2010


Weather: Should be fine but check the latest forecast here.


Time: Meet 11:00 Run 11:30


Hash Fee: Arg$20.00


To Bring: Beer Mug, Plate, Fork, BAHHH T-Shirt.


Location: San Telmo - The home of Joanne and Luciano, on Defensa 889, Apt 2b (Meeting outside of course), close to Estados Unidos corner with Defensa.

We will have a Walkers route, a Runners route, plenty of beer (I hope), and after the hash, Joanne and Lucano are inviting us back to their apartment for excellent food, and copious amounts of beer and plesant company.

WARNING: On sundays, Defensa hosts a street market, and cannot be used by cars, but there are plenty of car parks and on street parking nearby. Bags etc., can be left at the apartment.

If in doubt contact Inspect Her Assets on 15 5809 4939 (Liam).

(If somebdy with ten minutes to spare could translate the relevant details into Castellano I would be grateful).... On On


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MySpaceBA.com Blog: Furnished Apartments in Buenos Aires: FAQ Apartment Rentals Buenos Aires

MySpaceBA.com Blog: Furnished Apartments in Buenos Aires: FAQ Apartment Rentals Buenos Aires: "27/08/2010 - FAQ about Furnished Apartment buenos airesUseful information for anyone moving to Buenos Aires Buenos aires apartment rental..."

FAQ Apartment Rentals Buenos Aires

27/08/2010 - FAQ about Furnished Apartment buenos airesUseful information for anyone moving to Buenos Aires



Buenos aires apartment rental faq
Buenos Aires Apartment Rental FAQ By David Burg Relocating to another country is never easy. It involves countless hours of research, phone time, and seemingly endless amounts of paperwork. Despite the hassles, thousands of expatriates make the decision make the move to Buenos Aires, Argentina every year. It might be the "buzz" of the city, the cost of living, or perhaps the beautiful people and culture, yet most agree: It's worth it. Whether you can afford a luxurious Buenos Aires apartment, or you're seeking something more economical - the city seems to offer something for everybody. There are many things to keep in mind though as you begin to navigate the exciting process of moving abroad. This article will address several common questions - and hopefully make the move easier.Do I need a visa to rent an apartment in Buenos Aires? No. Although some expatriates do have long-term visas, many foreigners live in BsAs without one. The requirements are different for each country, but if you're from the UK, EU, United States or Australia/New Zealand, you'll automatically be granted a 90-day visa upon entry. This can be extended to 6 months by visiting the immigration office. If you want to stay longer, you can travel to nearby Uruguay (a two hour boat ride), and re-enter Argentina with a new visa.Do I need a co-signer or credit to rent an apartment? Most foreigners do not rent apartments in the same way the Argentine citizens would. The easiest way to rent Buenos Aires apartments is through an apartment agency that works specifically with foreigners. They can usually offer a variety of furnished and temporary apartments without any co-signer or additional paperwork requirements. If you choose not to work through this kind of agency, you'll need a garantia. Basically, this is an Argentine citizen presently living (preferably owning property) in Buenos Aires who will vouch for you.What ID do I need in Argentina? Most foreigners find that a copy of their passport and perhaps a Driver License suffice for using credit cards, and renting in BA. Most businesses are used to dealing with foreigners. If you want to open a bank account or sign contracts though, you'll need a DNI (Documento Nacional de Identidad) and/or a CUIT (similar to a tax ID number). Both these require a lot of work to get, including a new visa status.Where are the best areas to live in Buenos Aires? You can find many luxury apartments all over the city, and every neighborhood has its own charm and character. Many foreigners choose to live in the popular neighborhoods of Palermo, Belgrano, or Recoleta - but you'll find expats in wonderful places all over the city. Furnished apartments in Buenos Aires can usually be found easiest in the aforementioned neighborhoods, though.Who can I contact to begin arranging my move to Argentina? There are many agencies that can help with arranging accommodation, but a select few have developed a well-deserved reputation for working with English-speaking clientele, and only working with dedicated apartment owners. Working with a reputable firm will make your move easier, and save you money in the long run.By David Burg, MySpaceBA.comEspecially if you're interested in renting luxury apartments in Buenos Aires, it's important to work with an agency that has contacts with the best buildings in the city. With the right agent, you can secure beautiful units your preferred neighborhood, including some apartments with pools in Buenos Aires. MySpaceBA has experience working with expatriates of all nationalities, and can provide a wide range of support to those relocating

Chile Miners Rescue within Hours

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11503646
Chile miners should be reached 'within hours'
Click to play
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AdvertisementChile's mining minister Laurence Golborne: "We have to be very careful"
Rescuers hope to reach the 33 miners trapped underground in Chile within 24 hours, the mining minister says.

Laurence Golborne said drilling equipment was being changed in preparation for the final push, but he said it would be three to eight days before the rescue mission would begin.

Engineers said the shaft was now just 34m (112ft) from the chamber.

The miners were trapped 700m underground when part of the San Jose mine collapsed on 5 August.

Continue reading the main story
Chile's Trapped MinersGraphics: Guide to rescue
Mine rescue timeline
Profiles: Trapped miners
Family's diary
The miners have now been underground longer than any other group.

Andre Sougarret, the engineer in charge of the drilling, said the final part of the operation would have to be handled very carefully.

"There are dangers - that we break through the hard rock, and when we break that, someone might get injured," he said.

"That's why we need to send a camera down the shaft to make sure they're not going to be in danger."

Mr Golborne said the camera would help determine if the miners could be winched up through the exposed rock, or if they would have to wait for the shaft to be encased with steel piping.

He said the casing would take three to eight more days, and a decision would be made on Saturday.

Huge cranes have been brought in to lower the metal casing if it is needed.

Officials say everything needed for the rescue is now in place.

It is expected to take an hour to winch each man to safety.

They will be given a pair of sunglasses to protect their eyes when they emerge into the sunlight.

Their relatives, many of whom have been camping at the site for the past two months, are preparing a party to celebrate their rescue.

Hundreds of journalists from around the world are expected to cover the event.

The men were trapped by a rockfall at the gold and copper mine near Copiapo, about 725km (450 miles) north of the capital Santiago.

FRINKS= FRIDAY NIGHT DRINKS

Frinks - October 8th 2010 - Back to San Telmo -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- After last weeks less than succesful attempt to try another pub, the committee (OK, that's Jo and myself decided!) to re-group back on safer ground, and head back to The Gibraltar, at 895 Peru, (Estados Unidos), San Telmo, this Friday night for Frinks. For new readers, Frinks are FRIday Night drinKS, and is simply an open invitation to join like minded souls for a beer, a chat, and generally meet new and old friends alike. We meet up from around 8 o'clock till they throw us out. The Gibraltar has good beer, good food, and although it's usually busy on a Friday night, unlike other places (see last week) there is no cover charge to get into the bar, and it's generally easy to find us. If in doubt PM me. Look forward to seeing folk this week for Frinking!

Gathering investors to get in at the beginning of the boom

Dubliner Denis Fahy, a 12-year veteran of Buenos Aires, is putting together a fund of Irish investors and local banks to buy high-end residential properties in the city.

Using as a base the Coldwell Banker international price index, widely used for international price comparisons by companies relocating executives, he calculates that high-end residential properties of around 200sq m (2,152sq ft) in size cost on average US$1,907 a square metre in Buenos Aires compared to US$6,965 in Dublin.

The aim will be to let the fund's properties to relocating executives on two to three-year leases with an average rental yield of 8.5 per cent a year before taking advantage of the rise in values by selling out within five years.

For Fahy the attractions for Irish investors are obvious: "It is like investing in Ireland 10 or 12 years ago. We are just at the beginning of the property and credit cycle."

After more than a decade's experience developing property here, Jack Murphy knows the ropes in Argentina and says that despite its reputation for bureaucracy and corruption, it is a country where you can do business.

"Argentina is full of pitfalls. The problem here is that everyone wants to shortcut and, once you start taking shortcuts, you've had it because you'll say to a guy 'fix this for me' and you pay him some money and then it never ends.

"We go the straight way and it takes you longer but in some respects it doesn't take you that much longer. Just that here everything has to be instant. Nobody plans for next week and, if they want it, they want it now. My attitude with planning is that it is a painful process but listening to people I know involved in construction in Ireland it is the same there."

Another boon to the property market is the sudden influx of massive numbers of tourists. When its peso was pegged at one-to-one with the dollar in the 1990s, Argentina was South America's most expensive country. But following devaluation it has become very cheap, sparking a tourism boom.

Over four million tourists are expected to visit the country this year with projected growth in the sector of 10 per cent a year.

There is a massive shortage of hotels in the country and 200 are under construction or ready to break ground.

To fill the gap there is a huge short-to-medium term apartment rental market in Buenos Aires. Many of the smaller foreign investors who have bought into the local property market in recent years are involved in this sector, among them John Boyle of Mayo.

He and his Argentine wife Clara sold their house in Ireland in 2004 and bought a four-bedroom detached house in the swank northern suburb of Martinez for US$82,000 as well as two apartments in the city which they rent through their website www.myspaceba.com, along with 140 properties for other investors, 30 of whom are foreign.

Boyle has recently moved into sales with his sites www.argentinapropertysales.com and www.buytorentargentina.com.ar helping foreigners buy into the market and then managing their properties for them.

A typical €50,000 investment will yield around 9 per cent per annum based on 10 months occupancy, after management fees.

"The strength of the euro means property is cheaper now for Irish investors as the local market is in dollars, but any future appreciation of the dollar will benefit the investor," says Boyle.

"Prices are dirt cheap and the tourist boom is forecast to double visitors within the decade. The risks are offset by the investment opportunity."

Rooneys Boutique Hotel Buenos Aires

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/health/2010/1005/1224280398214.html
The Irish Times - Tuesday, October 5, 2010Taking a risk that paid off
'I had no experience whatsoever, but you learn as you go along, and I delegate a lot. I think I was never cut out to be a chartered accountant,' says Kieran Rooney.In this section »
Putting a price on our healthMake the most of your chemistDoes it work? Can butterbur help relieve migraine?A call to actionNo need to get in a panic, it's only a breastHow Kieran Rooney ignored the roar of the the Celtic Tiger era to establish a business in a country that was on the brink of financial ruin, writes ISABEL CONWAY

PICTURE THIS. Ireland’s Celtic Tiger is roaring for all it’s worth. Jobs for chartered accountants and other young professionals are there for the picking. As colleagues rush to acquire overpriced luxury apartments and top-of-the-range cars, financed with whopping loans and fat pay increases, Kieran Rooney is taking off to a place where the economy is on the verge of collapse. By the time he settles into Buenos Aires, Argentina is in chaos: unemployment is spiralling, there’s a nationwide strike, the banking system has all but shut down and the middle classes are rioting.

Back in Dublin in 2001, while working on contract for the HJ Heinz Company, Rooney could have had it all, and he was to be later recruited to work for Kerry Group in Brazil. But the lure of Buenos Aires and, significantly, love – a year earlier he had met his future partner, a law graduate, in an Irish bar – changed his life.

Abandoning the security of chartered accountancy to the astonishment of family and friends, he set out to make good in a city where people were taking to the streets, banging pots and pans in protest amid the economic ruins, having lost all their bank account savings, and without any prospects for the future.

There were no jobs, and inflation was running at nearly 30 per cent. But he took his Belfast father’s advice: “Whatever you do, do something.” Rooney, one of six born and bred in Andersonstown, by now teaching English in Buenos Aires for wages that did not even pay his rent, and barely fed him, saw a niche abroad for Argentine-crafted ladies’ designer shoes.

“My friends and brothers christened me Al Bundy” – after the hard-luck shoe salesman in the TV series Married with Children – “and some people, especially accountant friends, thought I was completely mad. There was an element of snobbishness too, people turning up their noses at what I was doing: selling shoes.”

Over the next four years Rooney spent months at a time footslogging across Ireland and England, visiting upscale boutiques. Once back in Buenos Aires he would rush out to the shoe design shop and factory with his orders.

His glamorous line in shoes was called Gabriela Castro (Gabriela is his wife’s name), remembered by Irish shoe lovers as the Jimmy Choos of the provinces, sure head-turners at a wedding, the races or a big night out.

“Not having a regular salary makes people fall back on their entrepreneurial side. Having had good jobs in Australia and Ireland in chartered accountancy, and plenty of job offers then, I was brought back to basics,” he says. “People can be too proud and believe jobs are below them, and limit themselves by thinking that.”

With the profits from the shoe business, Rooney hatched a plan “to do something in tourism”, as Buenos Aires was becoming a popular long-haul destination. He began hunting for a building to start a hostel or small hotel, but prices were high in the right locations. As luck would have it, the property he identified as a perfect potential boutique hotel – a large chunk of a turn-of-the-century building in an up-and-coming part of the city centre – was going cheap.

Gabriela takes up the story: “It was full of potential, but it was also full of squatters. The owner could not get them out, and the place was completely dilapidated; it was in a terrible condition.”

Close to Avenue Corrientes, Buenos Aires theatre and a bookshop precinct on the corner with Avenue Callao, the 18-room third floor on Sarmiento 1775 was once a well-known boarding house for bachelor writers and musicians, including Leopoldo Lugones, a famous 19th-century poet.

Today the building again echoes that era of elegance and refinement, with restored granite and marble floors, lead-glass windows and art-nouveau furniture, as well as photographic copies from the national archives of Buenos Aires’s life and times and its love affair with tango. A couple of times a week tango classes are held for guests, along with bespoke tours of the city and cultural outings.

In the early days the project was “mega-stressful”, say the couple. No bank credit was available in Argentina, and Irish banks did not want to know either, so they had to borrow from family and friends. Rooney even had to sell his car to pay bills and become project manager because he could not afford to pay the architect.

Now the business has broken even at last and loans have been repaid, so “that pressure is off”.

But first there was the difficulty of removing squatters, red tape and supervision of a huge renovation project before Rooney’s boutique hotel could open for business, two and a half years ago.

“We paid and bribed some squatters to leave, relocated a few and took more to court. Being a lawyer, Gabriela knew the ropes. As a last resort I turned off the hot water and took some doors off the hinges,” he says.

“At that stage my office was in the former drawing room; I was like a dog marking its territory, surrounded by squatters.

“I remember having palpitations – it felt like a heart attack – going to the city council offices almost daily. In the end attrition won out.”

Bribes were never requested, possibly because he was a foreigner. Officials, used to the “brown envelope” culture to move things along, may have been embarrassed or afraid to ask.

The couple have two sons, Ignacio (three) and Ruairi (one), and Rooney says he loves being a father and a hotelier with a relatively short working day, from 10am to 4pm.

“I had no experience whatsoever, but you learn as you go along, and I delegate a lot. I think I was never cut out to be a chartered accountant,” he says.

“I don’t miss Ireland, except for contact with my large family and friends. Buenos Aires is a friendly city; the people are big survivors. Like us Irish, they don’t take themselves too seriously and enjoy life no matter what.”

rooneysboutiquehotel.com