Went to Canning last night. In the taxi on the way home afterward, C and I agreed that we hate Canning and may never go again. This is mainly because there were no other dancers on the floor with us, only a huge writhing mass of flailing elbows, knees, and high heels. This dancefloor monster took me by surprise because the it was obscured from our table by a large unexplained scaffold, which made me unwilling to think about what I know of Buenos Aires safety standards. The bleach-blonde waitress wouldn't give me empanadas or beer, and everybody was subjecting me to a barrage of merciless Spanish, so I was running on empty by 3am, when the mass of perilous protruding parts writhed its way out the door heading for La Viruta. The tango taniwha was gone, but by then I was too tired and overwhelmed to even dance a milonga with G.

Such is the tanguero life - once more unto the breach tonight; some new milonga called Pigmalion. I have to summon up the blood...

Otherwise I've been keeping myself occupied with Spanish reading and incomprehension. Working my way through a history of Argentine literature that's being published in instalments by one of the newspapers, and watching Argentine films. They all seem to be about an old unemployed codger travelling long distances on deserted Patagonian highways in search of a dog. The only effect all this Spanish saturation seems to be having is the loss my ability to spell English words (have to keep looking things up, like 'codger').

Sometimes I wonder why I'm here, when I could be in Christchurch spelling perfectly.