What‘s the Difference Between La Margarita Promotional Video and a Naked Lady?

Last year my very good mates Brian and Gaynor come over to do a documentary on my life here in Argentina and at the same time do a promotional video on La Margarita. The idea of the video was to give an idea of what it’s like here on La Margarita in the form of moving pictures to help potential guests decide if they wanted to spend some time with us.   I may be a bit biased but for me they did a fantastic t job and it’s a wonderful video. Brian with the very able assistance of Gaynor used all his filming skills to give a great idea as to   what it’s like here in the pampas and I loved it. Once it was finished we eagerly uploaded it to YouTube and then put a link on our web page to the video. Now the video covers many things such as the gaucho life style in Argentina, the wonderful horse riding here, the charming   gaucho town of Tapalque, the interesting route to La Margarita amongst many other things. It also shows Raquel our chef cooking some traditional dishes and boy can she cook some great food as many of our guest comments confirm in our guest book on La Margarita.

When we loaded the video onto YouTube and then put the link onto our web page the start frame that came up was Raquel decorating a cake (umm it’s a very tasty looking cake for sure). However, much as we love Raquel’s cooking, as do our guests, I wanted to have the first frame of a gaucho or someone riding a horse – something very estancia if you get my meaning. I asked Brian if he could try to change it. He tried but no luck it kept coming back to that frame of Raquel decoration the cake. After some investigation he found out that YouTube chooses the frame that goes on (and there are only 3 choices). There are apparently only three frames we can choose from - in our case one was a street sign (umm hardly gaucho), one a picture of a car umm and of course Raquel’s cooking. Nothing we could do could change it. Brian did some investigation and found that it was to stop people promoting their videos with frames that have nothing to do with the video.  It turns out that many people were putting frames of naked ladies as the first frame to attract attention to their video – seems it worked but not any more cos it can’t be done (at least it is very difficult to do unless it is a video about naked ladies of course) since you only have 3 frames to chose from so unless your video has muchos naked ladies you will be out of luck grrrr. No indeed no  more naked ladies  which is a shame because a shot of a Lady Godiva type person riding one of our  horses may have helped our viewing figures –who knows!  Still rules are rules - we still have a fantastic   video but we are stuck with the opening frame showing a cake being cooked which is a shame in some ways because   it gives the impression it is a cooking lesson video – which it is not    because the video covers in a beautiful way much more than that here in gaucho land.

If you haven’t seen the video here is the link – it’s definitely worth a few minutes of your time having a peek – sorry to sound biased but it really is good…………..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoDLCEZ0WRo&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

This is David Cummings Alias the English gaucho hasta la proxima.

Telephone Saga Part 3! –only joking but this is interesting

As some of you may know when I am not running La  Margarita ( umm  well in truth Susana runs the guests side of it  these days I am the farmer! ) I am involved with Tierra Estates , a property company  I started  some years ago here. One of my earlier  customers was   Abby who purchased here and has  (not going to give her surname) decided that now is  the time to sell her very nice apartment she purchased a few years ago in central BA. She wasn’t going to spend much more time here and so it was time to sell. We have been in contact over the years since we look after the apartment for her so she turned to me for advice. We got it valued and started the process to sell it – as it happened we found a buyer really fast and started the ball rolling. Since Abby wasn’t coming here to do the signing of the sale we needed to get a power of attorney so we could handle the sale for her and of course the money side of it. I said the best and least inexpensive way to do that (on our lawyers advise) was for us to send her by email a power of attorney document in Spanish and for her to take it to the Argentine Embassy in New York where they can do the power and they can also verbally translate it for her to make sure she knows what she is signing and then send it back to us. 
Off she went to the embassy and spoke to someone who said ok come back in a few days and we will have it done. On returning a few days later imagine her surprise when the receptionist asked her if she could wait a few minutes since none other than the Ambassador wanted to see her. Poor flustered (her words) Abby said “I can’t I am just not dressed properly for meeting him” (having just come out of the gym!)  “Don’t worry about that” the receptionist said “he just wants to have a quick word with you “. Totally flustered Abby was ushered into the Ambassadors huge office and in he came and invited her to take a seat. “What can this be about” she thought terrified? As it turned out the Ambassador was just checking that she knew what she was doing and that she knew the people she was dealing with here in Argentina. As he said there are so many Nigerian type scams in the internet he just wanted to  make sure that she knew what the document meant as she was signing a power of attorney and she was happy with it. She confirmed everything was ok  and the meeting was over but there you have it -  an Ambassador who cares and I take a bow to him it was such a good thing to do and hats off to Argentina for having such an excellent ambassador in the USA – great stuff and great story for Abby to dine out on

This is David Cummings alias The English Gaucho hasta la proxima vez

You Are Not Going to Believe This – Telephone Saga Part 2!!!!!!Grrrrrrrrrrr

You can probably imagine that living in somewhere like Argentina can sometimes be a bit chaotic – hey what I am talking about a bit chaotic it is bloody chaotic. However, when one is chaotic such as moi one can feel quite comfortable in that situation – an orderly life was never going to be on the cards for me for sure. I remember when I used to live with the lovely Lotta in Sweden  in the 90s how I used to complain how orderly it was.  I recall, once cycling down the road on my bike going the wrong way and every few moments an orderly Swedish person would point out to me the error of my ways vigorously pointing in the direction I should be going in. I am sure Swedish people, lovely as they are, would find the chaos of the Argentines well let’s just say chaotic. Indeed if there is an opposite in countries Sweden and Argentina are them – riding the wrong way down a street is the norm here so when you cross a way one street don’t forget to look both ways please!

Now my last blog talked about the never ending saga we had with getting our telephone working in the estancia – it took over two years to get it fixed - yep have a look at my previous blog to hear the whole chaotic story. Well finally a few weeks ago we got it fixed and I published my blog and few pics of us celebrating the historic event and  at last putting the broken phone saga to bed  – whoops  see for a moment I thought was living in Sweden and  I should have known better of course  .

 Last week we were using the phone when all of a sudden it went dead (up went the “ no funciona “ sign again – oh no I thought not another two years of waiting for it to be fixed again. Then all of a sudden it started to work again but  oddly on the line there was someone in Tapalque talking to  someone else from  goodness knows where  – a sort of old fashioned crossed line – do they still happen in  England  - no doubt they don’t happen in orderly Sweden . Anyhow Raquel found herself in a three way conversation when one of the other persons asked who the hell Raquel was. She explained that she was speaking from La Margarita – the person asked what the phone number was and she told him. “that’s my phone number” he said “and has been for the past few years so you can get of my line “.  Poor Raquel perplexed  she apologized and spoke to Susana  about this new telephone saga. Susana spoke to the guy who then said he was going to sue us – umm you can see this is developing into a chaotic situation eat your heart out Sweden. Susana obviously explained that it had nothing to do with us it was the fault of that monopoly Telefonica who were to blame “ok he said but I gotta sue somebody “he retorted.  Now this is   probably why there are more lawyer s in Argentine per population than any country in the world, I mean you never know when you will need to sue someone for a crossed line!  Susana spoke to Claudio who we have been dealing with getting our phone fixed who over the years has become a friend of the family we have been dealing with him for so long. He said ok I will see what I can do and that’s where we stand at the moment. Our phone works but it also rings in the other guy’s house and we have these strange three way conversations   - see as I said it’s chaotic.  Claudio bless him  is no doubt  on the ball and will have it  fixed almost certainly by  this time  next year – in the meantime no doubt us and the other party on the crossed line  will become friends over a mate and sort it out  between us

        This is David Cummings alias The English Gaucho ringing the Swedish Embassy just to see how easy it is to get a visa there!

       On a final note I want to say that of course my little blog and our little problem with our telephone is of course the size of an ant when compared to what has happened in Japan – the phone problem gives me the chance to write a little jokey blog about it but that can’t be done for the terrible terrible tragedy in Japan - all we can do is donate a bit of money and hope above all hope that it doesn’t get any worse for them - my heart goes out to them

Happiness is Phone that Works (after not working for over two years!!)

Celebrating the Estancia phone working - yeeeeeeeeees

I remember my odd moan at BT (British Telecom) when I ran a business in the UK when the phone didn’t work for a few days. It was the usual rant like look I am running a business here and you aren’t helping me, get it fixed or I will use another service. Nearly always it worked and the line was up and running in a few days. Switch to Argentina a few years later and you find me running a business i.e. La Margarita. When I purchased the Estancia the phone worked – not great since it often cut off but I could communicate reasonable well with La Margarita when I needed to when I was away from it . After about two years of owning the Estancia the phone every now and again started to play up – it would cut off for no reason in mid conversation.

 It was the sign of things to come because one day about two  and a half years ago the phone decided that it had done enough work  and refused to function  any more – there  was a loud hissing noise for     a  few days and then that was it – the line went dead . Now I tried my BT tactic here. Hey get the phone fixed I am trying to run a business here or we will use someone else – oh yea who is that then, came the reply, since we have a monopoly in these parts.  We had the same conversation and we had the same response for well over two years - yea ok we will fix your phone   but we are waiting for some spare parts and they are on their way - honest! Now the expression manana manana came to mind many a time over this period. I would have my little rant and then forget about it - send messages by pigeon post and life would move on – Winter would come then Spring then Summer  still no phone………………………………..  

When I first arrived in Argentina my patience levels were low I admit. I was used to things not working but also used to then being fixed pretty rapidly. The more I Iived here the more I had to learn to be patient. It was tough at times but over the years I leant it well. So when the phone broke I had already learnt somewhat to be more patient. However, it not working for well over two years sorely tested my patience as you can imagine. To make matters worse we were paying for the line each month – a line that didn’t work I mean ask you. No matter how many times myself or my office rang Telefonica about us paying the bill for a phone that didn't work  we got the same answer “if you cut the line of we can’t fix it  “ “err yea that’s logical but when will you be fixing it “well we are waiting for some spare parts blah blah blah” - heeeeeeeeeelp.

This ritual was played out and the months and years came and went with the same complaint from us and the same answer from them.  With despair setting in  we, about two months ago decided to do something about it. We assumed it was the trees in our woods that were blocking the signal so we purchased an antenna to move the ariel up higher so that we would get a better signal. As always happens when you decide  to head something of at the ridge Murphy’s  Law cuts  in i.e. because  you have decided to  take action in a different  direction the original problem gets fixed. One day last week Claudio, who we had  been dealing at in Telfonica turned up unannounced at  La Margarita and said the spare parts have arrived – whaaaaaat-  and that in a few minutes we would  have  a  phone – well of course we all ready had a phone but it didn’t bloody work . He said well this one will yea yea yea . Full of pessimism we waited a few minutes while he hooked a few things up and then we heard the sweetest sound we had not heard for years – yep the phone was ringing. It was an unbelievable joyous occasion it really was – after well over two years of not being connected to the outside world we were suddenly in the loop. It was truly an amazing thing. If you want to try it here is the number 00542283420316- go on please call us we love it when that phone rings its music to our ears and all it took was as the song goes a little patience - can’t guarantee we will answer it cos we may still be celebrating.

I f someone asked me what was the greatest invention of the 20^th century for me  it has to be the phone – without it for few a day’s  life can be just a tad difficult without it for  few years and it’s just antisocial .

This is David Cummings alias the English  Gaucho off to make a few calls to my Mum and Dad in the UK – it’s been too long!!!

Llamanos por favor!!!!