Should you be having an easy going kind of Saturday evening with nothing on your agenda except doing the laundry and viewing a few World Cup games you may also wish to swing by Pology online. We’ve mentioned it before here at Gadling, but the June issue is so darn good I felt the need to give it a plug once more. I usually head over to get the latest in culture topics around the planet, but today I was only there for the eye candy. Start with Thailand in pictures where you’ll find women in hill tribes playing on laptops and a smiling toothless Thai woman. It may sound odd here, but you’ll need to see it for yourself. I haven’t seen such a beautiful well-rounded batch of photos from the area in a long while. That alone makes it worth the visit.
GADLING'S TAKE FIVE: Week of April 22
Your attention please! I said your attention
please! Since it’s the end of the week it is now time for me to present to you five fine posts you may have missed over
the last few days. Just make sure you never miss them again. (Smile.)
5. Casanova’s Pizzeria – Oakford, PA
As
you may have noticed I haven’t been blogging as much as usual, but it’s for good reason and cause. For starters I was
out sampling the town in Oakford, PA earlier this week to bring you dispatches on what the natives are eating. If you
ever find yourself in the area make sure you check out Casanova’s Kitchen and be sure to order the
"scrapple."
4. America’s Best Campsites
Although camping
may not be Karen’s activity of choice, she points those ready to soak up all that nature has to offer to a fine piece
out of Sunset Magazine on America’s Best Campsites. Grab you sleeping bag, tent, and other camping gear and head on
over to Karen’s blurb.
3. Buenos Aires: Newest Expat Oasis
For
those of us looking to jump ship when things in America have gone completely haywire why not head south to South
America? Better yet, make it Buenos Aires where it is said to be the latest and newest expat oasis. Neil does a
fantastic job offering his insight on other expat locales like Prague in addition to providing his forecast on the
scene Buenos Aires.
2. Tipping Tips
Thanks to Erik I know not to ever leave a tip in Japan, where the pocket change can often be considered an insult.
Whew! But what about tipping here in the U.S.? What is the norm these days? If you’ve ever been a little unsure on how
much you should leave after having your fine meal and glass of wine click here to get all the guidance you’ll need.
1. More on Ugly Americans
It disheartens
me to go abroad and find my fellow countrymen acting a snobbish fool. Had they no clue what the outside world was like?
Did they not know everything that goes down in America doesn’t necessarily go down overseas? I’m sure you’ve come
across an ugly American at one point or another or maybe you are an ugly American. Sigh. Again, Erik does wonderfully
in getting a debate started or the World
Citizens Guide and whether or not we are as bad and as ugly as they really think we are.
Buenos Aires: Newest Expat Oasis
This is
exactly the type of article that gets me in trouble and makes me quit my job: waxing on about the next expat dive where
rent is $250 a month, food is cheap, culture is thriving, and leisurely days are spent hanging out in cafes, sipping
drinks, and reading the paper.
According to The
Washington Post, all this and more awaits disillusioned souls who want to ditch the working world and
disappear into the next expat Nirvana—Buenos Aires.
Cities come and go on the expat radar (I myself fell for the allure of Prague just before it got hot in the early
90s) but today, Buenos Aires is it. Thanks to an economic collapse in 2002, the city is extraordinarily
inexpensive, which means artists and writers can flock there to do their thing without being quite so starving.
Others show up to start businesses, or just to drink and lounge about (every cheap city seems to have its share of lazy
expats).
The curse of any great expat city, however, is often the expats themselves. I cringed when I read about the
Young Expatriates Society of Buenos Aires. Prague had such organizations and before I left, 25,000 Americans had
invaded the city and nearly ruined the place. Is Buenos Aires next? Judging by the impressive, in-depth
Washington Post article, I can only guess that the onslaught has already begun.
Outside Magazine Preview: Miracle in the Andes
Nando Parrado’s story on the 72 days spent in the
Andes and the long trek home may not have hit book shelves yet, but it has most certianly hit my heart. Outside magazine has an exclusive excerpt from Miracle in the
Andes in their current issue with only a small fraction of the piece available online. For me the story is still
fairly new, others may vaguely remember, some might find it hard to forget, but Outside names it one of the greatest
epics of all time. The year was 1972 when a plane carrying a young Uruguayan rugby squad crashed in the Andes leaving
the survivors stranded and forcing them to subsist on the bodies of their friends. Nando Parrado, hero of the saga,
tells the awe-inspiring tale 34 years later in his book Miracle in the Andes to
hit shelves on May 9, 2006. If the piece found online isn’t enough for you make sure you scoop up the latest Outside
for more or check out the Q&A
with the author who touches on his recent return to the crash site, the book & movie Alive, as well his strange attraction to ice axes and
crampons.
The Meat of the Matter in Argentina
Years ago when I was making my way with a backpack through Argentina, I
made a stop along the road in a dusty little town whose name escapes me. I took a short stroll through the town’s
streets, which took a mere minute or so, and dropped into a run-down, uninviting-looking restaurant on a lonely corner.
When the waiter asked what I wanted, my first inclination was to have the roast chicken.
That sounded just
fine, a perfect way to get a belly full of lunch before tossing my guitar back over my should and continuing up the
road. But then the word parrilla caught my eye, and I
thought "a steak? for lunch? why not?!" Now, you might say, duh, everyone knows Argentina is steak country,
but I wasn’t thinking clearly. I’d just spent four hours on the road and a steak just didn’t seem like the thing to
order. Well, that steak, and several subsequent parillas, remain the best meat I have ever had. Even today, after many
trips to Peter Luger’s in Brooklyn, I’ve yet to find a cut of beef that matched those I had in Argentina. And I love to
eat steak.
And so I was intrigued and delighted to read this homage to Argentinean steak over at
an obscure little journal called idleword. I cold go on and on about the heavenly gustatory bliss of chewing a piece of
bloody cow flesh, but I’ll let the writer here, and the accompanying photos do it for me. Suffice it say, my belly
is rumbling as I write and my fond memories of those succulent cuts are nearly as vivid as the day of that first beefy
meal.