50 aka Ferrari F-50

OK, I’m back, yep, still alive…you wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find a free day to sit down and write.

So what’s happened since July? Good lord, too much.

All of my exchange student friends are gone: Cesar, Vale, Lara, Vivi, Carlos, Enrique…the internationals all went back to their countries unfortunately. Tell you the truth, I enjoyed hanging out with them more so than with the Chileans, perhaps because we were all in a foreign country and had something in common together in this strange land.

Quick shout out to Timmy Burke because I said I would…what’s up kid?

I went home for Johnstock in August and it was incredible, really great to see everyone from home and Johnny absolutely killed it on stage. I’ve seen Blues Traveler live and my father rocked the greatest version of “Runaround” ever performed. They rocked until “officer friendly” shut them down at 10 p.m.

Highlights of the trip home:

Dancing with Nonie to the Who’s “Baba O’Reilly”. Yes, she was jumping and laughing, not going to lie, I thought she was going to fall over with her bad foot, but we both came out unscathed.

The campfire after. Benny held court talking about world politics. We didn’t agree about anything, and I think he was wrong about a lot of what he said, though on the domestic stuff he was on point with FDR’s “New Deal” and so on. 24 year old Nunes screaming how hot the 19 year old Emma Taylor is right in front of her. Also I thought Sean Kelly was going to end Benny’s life when the conversation shifted to familiar issues mixed with the US. Sean was talking about workers not getting compensated sufficiently after accidents and Benny comes out with “If you don’t like the United States you can get out!” Way off topic, but all was forgiven the next day. Benny’s since shipped off to the army, best of luck, bro. The most liberal, peace loving friend I have and he joins the army, there is no sense in this world.

Foxwoods. Best decision of the trip home. We were coming home from Fishco in Providence at about 2 a.m. We were on 195 and the road forked in two options, 95N and 95S. North takes us home, South goes through Connecticut. Nunes coyly says “Foxwoods?” Benny says “No way” and I’m screaming “Asbolutely”. So we took South and Benny pouted for about 15 minutes and then snapped out of it and was ready to have a good time. I was all about promoting the road not taken that night and Brian was eating it up. Nunes ends up winning $325 on a game of craps and he won a lot of money for the fellow players as well. There was a giant, fat black man screaming at Benny and me, “if you ain’t gonna smack ya boy in the butt, step away from the table. DO WHAT YOU DO BOY! SMACK ‘EM IN THE BUTT! The dice is gonna get cold, SMACK ‘EM IN THE BUTT, keep ya boy hot.” Benny and I decided to simplify things and we played roulette. We kept things very simple and put $25 on black. Low and behold the ball lands in black. So we put $50 on black, what do you know, black again. I’m content walking away with $50 a piece but Benny isn’t having any of it. So we toss $100 on black, and it’s killing me because I know we’re just throwing away $100 and neither of us are rich, I’m lamenting the decision until BAM, black again. OOOKK. Benny wants to toss $200 on black but I say no way, I say I want my $100. Benny agrees and pulls his money off too, and what do you know? The ball lands red on the next spin, we bought some victory cigars and in the gift shop and rolled home all grins and yelps, we spent two hours in Foxwoods and came out $525 on top, who says gambling’s bad?. I got home at 5:30 A.M. and my whole family was up, Dad was going to work and all the girls were going wedding dress shopping for Kate that day, after telling them what happened that night they just laughed.

Trips to Nonie and Jim’s house and to the camp to see Nana and Bups. Nothing crazy in these events, just awesome to be with grandparents, makes me feel grounded after wandering the world with people I don’t really know.


So that was the very brief recap of the trip home, I’d never been to 4 karol Drive for a vacation, but it was one of the best ever.


I broke another heart in Chile, I think this time more so than in any other situation. I’d been running around with this girl Jessica for a few months. I met her right before I went home and we’d hang out once every week or every two weeks. Truth be told I was never that into her, but she was cute and I had fun going out with her. I was just having fun and she told me that she was in love and wanted to date officially. I told her that I couldn’t offer her that and she told me it would be too hard to see me again. Two weeks later she sends me text messages at 5 a.m. on Saturday night telling me that I’d already forgotten about her. The next day she sends me IMs telling me that she used to feel things for me but “ya me paso” meaning not anymore. We went through this drill about three times with her telling me she doesn’t want to see me again and that she doesn’t like me any more and then she calls me and sends me texts, this last time it was for real for real though. I walked her to the metro and told her “Eres buena honda, ojala que no me odies, espero que podamos volver a vernos como amigos” I said that I wanted to be friends with her because she’s really cool, but I think that will be impossible on her end. Things really couldn’t have worked out between the two of us, she’s a single mother living at home with her mother. I could offer her zero stability as I’m leaving Chile in March. It’s not easy breaking up with someone whether you’re doing it or receiving the sentence. She was looking at me with doe-eyes about to cry and I just had to give her a quick peck and said “cuidate” and walked away. I haven’t contacted her since nor she me, which is for the better.

Chile is very excited about Barack Obama being the 44th president of the Untied States. Like the rest of the world the Chileans were all tired of the Bush Administration.

I am now a proud citizen of the USSA (United Socialist Sates of America). Do you think that Karl Marx would have ever dreamed that the US would be one of the countries to implement his ideals? No one even forced us to do it; we did it on our own and under a very conservative Republican president no less! I thought capitalism was Darwinist, the best companies survive, the ones who can’t hack it die. Essentially Merrill Lynch, AIG, Goldman Sachs and so on ran themselves into the ground while making mountains of cash for their CEOs and top executives and what are the consequences? Some of the execs have been fired and have received sickening severance packages and now your average American is suffering. Most of the executives, however, still will hold their prestigious posts in these companies and they will continue to still be able to work while there are many Americans who are now without jobs who can’t cover their basic needs. This is a deranged form of Socialism that we are running in our country, one that leaves the poor poorer and sustains the rich.

They have an expression here in Chile - “Cuando el gigante estrornude, todo el mundo se resfria” – “When the giant sneezes, the whole world catches a cold”, and they say this in reference to the United States. Our country has more influence in the world than we can possibly imagine. The whole world depends on the economy of the US to function well. When things are bad financially in the US, things are bad in the world as we can see in the markets all over the globe. I know hundreds of thousands of US citizens are without work right, but we’re not the only ones with problems. Chile, one of the most economically viable countries in Latin America is now feeling the effects of our crisis. I have had the pleasure to teach English in one of the most important companies in Chile, Molymet, but this multinational, multimillion dollar corporation is already having problems. The prices of molybdenum and copper have fallen drastically over the past couple of months and this is greatly affecting the company’s bottom line. They aren’t making near what they did only a few months ago. The company is very concerned with cutting costs, and though they have not laid any one off just yet, they have stopped hiring new workers. This is a company constantly in transition with people being moved around, people being replaced, new workers with new ideas coming into the company. I can count 8 workers that I know personally who have been hired over the past 6 months, and the company has decided not to hire any new workers for at least the next year. I suspect lay-offs will be coming in the not-so-distant future. This company has run an English program for the past 4 years, and I have a sneaking suspicion that our contract will not be renewed for next year. They have cut all training programs from the budget next year and English falls into this category. This is a terrible idea, though, they need English teachers more than they realize. Much of my job is pure conversation, keeping English fresh in my students’ minds so that when they have to talk on the phone or make a presentation in English, their English flows instead of having to search of the words, also in many classes I help them put together business presentations and I translate technical documents from Spanish to English so they can send information about important studies they have conducted in Chile to their plants in Germany and Belgium. Being a company with plants and offices all over the world, communication between the different locations is all done in English. If they do cut the English program completely next year, they will quickly realize they needed us more than they knew.

Feel good side note: If Molymet does cut the English program I am pretty sure I’ll still be able to continue teaching there. I have been approached by four students already who are concerned about the state of the program. They told me that if Molymet does cut the program they will pay me out of pocket with their own money for me to continue to come to teach them. They find the classes fun and they can tell that they have definitely improved their English over the course of my 7 months with the company. It’s going to be a rude awakening when I leave the teaching world and work for a company for real. The young guys in the company, the people from 26-30, are usually the ones working their way up the ladder, they go about their business without my attention from the big executives. I walk around the company like the mayor saying hello to all of my students who are the most important people in the company. The CEO, who’s not even my student, walked by my office the other day and saw that I was unoccupied, stopped in, shook my hand and wanted to shoot the breeze for a couple of minutes before his meeting, I certainly have an over-inflated sense of importance in this company.

Lately I’ve been bringing in articles from the Harvard Business Review which these hot shots are just eating up, talking about management styles, how to be a more efficient manager etc, things that are very relevant to their lives. I’m being paid to be educated by these successful businessmen because during the course of these conversations they talk about their styles and the reasons for why they manage like they do. One of the managers in particular, Mr. Pacheco, takes these classes seriously and has told me that he has now incorporated some of my suggestions in his office. I tell him “I’m not just here to teach you English, I’m here to change your life” which he gets a kick out of.

50 Cent came to Chile a week and half ago, yea, that happened and it was AWESOME. 50, Lloyd Banks and Tony Yayo in Chile…who knew? I’ve got only one complaint; there was no opening band and we didn’t enter until 9:30 and missed a half hour of the show. They played a crowd of about 6,000 in a half-full arena movistar. He played all his hits: “In the Club”, “Candy Shop”, “PIMP” and so on. Lauren will swear that they never played “Candy Shop”, but they did, get over it. I like how they didn’t even try to speak any phrases in Spanish during the concert. They just yelled in English, no “Hola”, no “Gracias” nothing in Spanish, I was expecting at least a little effort. I was quite impressed with the crowd, though, their level of English was far higher than your average Chilean. Not many people speak English in this country but I spoke to many people in English at the concert and when he said “take your lighters out” everyone did, suprising.

So the 50 concert marks the second time I’ve been threatened with a knife in a foreign country, cheers!

The first time was in Spain, but that doesn’t really count since I didn’t actually see the knife, I just took off running from the angry mob that had already beaten the crap out of me when one of my buddies yelled “KNIFE, RUN!”

Being the classy folks that we are, the four of us (Andres, Lauren, Alexis and I) were sharing a box of wine outside of the arena before going into the concert. We were talking amongst ourselves when we a drunk, drugged up old man of about 65 comes stumbling up to us. At first he was friendly enough, he told us to be careful about the wine because there are a lot of police around and they could arrest us for drinking in public. We thanked him for his advice, but then he didn’t leave. He said that he had stickers and was selling them for 100 pesos. We told him no thank you in a friendly tone and then he became persistent. “Stickers, solomente cien pesos!” (same word in English and Spanish except they say “steeekers”). Alexis, a native Chilean said “no we don’t want any stickers” in a hard tone and this drugged out old man’s eyes turned wild. He swaggered back and forth and then said “Do you know that I’m from La Legua?” The Legua’s a real nasty part of town with a lot murders. He then pulled out 4-inch butterfly knife from his shirt pocket and stuck the blade right in front of our faces. He was standing between Lauren and I stuck the knife in both of our faces. Being as it was dark, Lauren didn’t realize what it was until after he put the knife back in his pocket and said “OK, now you know” as he staggered into the darkness. To tell you the truth, none of us were really scared for some reason, it happened really quickly and the man didn’t seem dangerous. He was wasted and decrepit; I like my chances against him even with a knife.

My roommates Cristian and Claudio are both gone right now which is why I have some free quiet hours to sit and write, which is very nice. They’re good guys, but sometimes it’s refreshing to have the apartment to myself and just relax for an afternoon. Cristian’s travelling for business in the South of Chile and will be gone for two weeks. Claudio’s working on a project in Lima and will probably be gone for about a month.

So that’s about it for now, the state of Dan in Chile. Not quite as creative as the oKtober report presented by your friend and mine, Tom Kerrigan. I will try and write more soon, I know a lot of people were asking for an update. Hope all is well, emails, calls always welcome. Hasta la proxima.