Monday, October 14, 2013

Feriado

Today is a feriado day. Another holiday. Argentina has a lot of feriados. Most people I asked do not know what we are celebrating today. But one person said that today is to commemorate the colonization of Argentina, so I am going with that. Here are a few feriado observations made over the past few months.

1. The most frequent statement that the new missionaries write to me in their weekly letter is that "the mission is hard". They are right. Especially when they are trying to make the transition from non-missionary life to missionary life, another culture to Argentine culture, their native language to the northern Argentine castellano and a life generally focused on themselves to a life focused on others. But the transition happens quickly and in a few weeks they will be writing like the rest do, "this is the happiest I have ever been"!

2. You can really tell a lot about a person by the ring tone they choose on their cell phone. Some make perfect sense and match perceptions of the phone's owners. Sometimes a heavy metal ringtone seems out of place with the person who chose it. And sometimes you just think, "Yep, I could have told you who owns that phone". For example, Diane's ringtone is the theme song from the TV show, "I Dream of Jeanie". When people hear it ring, they always smile.

3. The transistor radio will never become obsolete. It just never will. Somewhere someone will always broadcast the local weather over an AM or FM frequency and someone else will always tune in to listen. It has nothing to do with technology. It is all about trust.

4. Advertisers are just fooling themselves if they really think a consumer is more likely to buy something because it costs $99.99 instead of $100! I love the fact that some gas stations are advertising premium gas here for $9.999 argentine pesos. Ask any attendant how much premium gas costs and they'll tell you, "10 pesos, Che".

5. And finally, isn't amazing that while these two spoonfuls look the same...



One is sugar and is sweet and the other is salt and is...salty? You would think that they could be distinguished a little more to reflect their vast difference in taste....or maybe they could just sell sugar for $9.999 a kilo and salt for $10.00 a kilo! Now, that would do the trick!!

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