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Published: February 11th 2011
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Puerto Madero
Puerto Madero Well the morning found me with a mission on my hands. The evening before Anna had decided that she wanted breakfast in bed. She had already decided that she wanted 3 “media lunas” (half moons), they are similar to mini croissants and a sort of Argentinean speciality, and orange juice followed by coffee. Lucky for me we already had orange juice and coffee so as soon as I awoke I headed out to buy the media lunas.
Unfortunately for me it was a Saturday and as I wandered the empty streets it slowly began to dawn on me that it might be rather hard to find a place that sold media lunas this early in the morning. However I persisted and after half an hour I found a pub that was open and which sold the desired media lunas. Only on the way home, coming from the opposite direction, did I notice that there was a bakery not 50m from the place we were staying.
After a wonderful breakfast we decided to visit the harbour area, Puerto Madero. Buenos Aires is a vast sprawling city with a number of main roads dissecting it. Once you’re off the main streets you find yourself in amongst smaller one-way roads. This construction makes it fairly easy to navigate and while it is possible to catch cheap taxis or even walk, we discovered that the underground system is equally easy to use, though there aren’t a lot of signs indicating which station you happen to be pulling up in. To combat this we counted the number of stops we were going to take before we started craning our necks to look out the windows and check our location. After successfully arriving at our stop we exited the underground and began our walk around Puerto Madero. A lovely area, now modernised like all of the other disused harbours. All of the old warehouses have been turned into upmarket apartments and shops that sell expensive goods. The restaurants are all modern and overpriced.
One great thing about the harbour area is that while they were building one of the main roads through the area they had dumped all of the removed earth to a place near the ocean. This created a natural reserve where there are supposed to be plenty of birds. Unfortunately for us, we didn’t see any on our long excursion around the reserve. However it was midday by the time we arrived so it is likely they were being more sensible than us and staying out of the baking hot sun.
Something small, usually forgotten, but of such power as to instil an instant feeling of euphoria. That is a good childhood memory. For Anna one of those small, forgotten memories was of a cartoon character that I’d never heard of. Her name is Mafalda.
Anna discovered not only that Mafalda was Argentinean but that there was a little statue of this little girl in the area of San Telmo. Such are Anna’s fond memories of Mafalda we set off back to San Telmo to locate the tiny statue and get a photo. Unfortunately by the time we arrived the sun’s position prevented us from getting a perfect shot so we agreed to arrive earlier on Sunday and get the photo. This worked well because there is also a huge street market on Sunday which we both wanted to see.
Is it strange that we have such emotional weight tied up in these childhood memories, both the good and the bad? What happens to us as we grow that prevents us from forming the same emotional ties with objects. I know of various objects and toys from my childhood that I could never throw out. I’ll never play with them again, but I’ll keep them tucked away, and while I may never look at them unless I’m moving house or something, it brings me comfort to know that they are there.
It would be nice to think that they remind us of a more innocent time, a time without the stresses of this present day. And they do, but I think there is something deeper. Something lost. Let me try and explain, though I’m not sure this is going to work.
Early last year Anna and I discovered the TV series 24. No we weren’t both brought up in caves, we had heard of it before, and we had both seen various episodes, however we had never become addicted. That was until early last year when I purchased session one on DVD. What followed were warm cosy nights after long stressful days cuddling on the couch watching 24. The mini debates about whether or not we had time for “just one more” or whether it was time to go to sleep. These usually ended with us agreeing that we had time for just one more. And so for about eight months Jack Bauer and the CTU team became an integral part of our lives. And on a trip to New York when we stumbled across a t-shirt that had Jack on it we bought it without a moments hesitation. However when I think of 24 the feelings are not the same, the reality is, if they were the same then I think I’d be in trouble. But the issue is not 24, it is the association of feelings and emotions that we form with things in our lives. We stop. I haven’t had children yet, but that doesn’t count, like meeting Anna, the feelings and emotions associated with her are fantastic. But those feelings associated with inanimate objects that are founded now are not what they were when I was a child and this is loss. Does any of that make any sense at all?
After a long day out in the baking hot sun we returned to our apartment and picked up our laundry before having an early night.
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