Travel Weeks 48-49
Days 330-344:
This new shared house with an impromptu coworking space (for a small e-commerce business) in the downstairs has proven to be the perfect stimulus for me to find my groove again. I have my own little work station where I spend at least four hours a day grinding away on “work,” which is still currently defined as learning about web development. In the last week or so, I’ve realized I’ve been neglecting my Spanish studies and have redoubled efforts on that with a textbook review and vocabulary exercises. I really can’t wait to get my own language learning platform off the ground because I’m noticing Spanish words slipping in when I try to think in Chinese.
| Carrefour Market | 880 ARS |
| Total: | USD 7.53 |
Not much to note here other than I’ve developed a taste for “breakfast mix” (cashews, almonds, raisins, and sunflower seeds) and otherwise splurged on some salami, cheese and crackers for a lazy weekend afternoon snack.
| Vea | 985 |
| Veg and eggs | 120 |
| Total: | 1105 ARS (USD 9.45) |
I wasn’t able to do any shopping on Monday because, otherwise unbeknownst to me, the city went into a 72-hour quarantine lockdown over the weekend to prevent people from celebrating “Student’s Day” with barbecues or whatnot. Fortunately, I had enough food to stretch two extra days (though a bit light on the fresh salads). I picked up ground beef and tortillas to eat tacos from Thursday through Sunday, corn flakes, and a big bottle of Listerine, which was a good price (320).
| Carrefour Hypermarket | 1612 |
| Lettuce, tomato, potatoes | 60 |
| Total: | 1672 ARS (USD 14.30) |
I had to use my calculator app while shopping to make sure I could actually cover the grocery bill before hitting up the Western Union for more cash at an even higher exchange rate (now up to 130.4 pesos to the dollar). I bought lots of yogurts, and a 500g bag of “breakfast mix” (which I hope I am able to ration for a while), and a 250g bag of ground coffee (253 pesos) to tide me over until my next Starbucks trip (which really isn’t a big deal, I just didn’t want to run out of coffee on the weekend or take a second trip out in one day). I also picked up some fresh pasta and puff pastry sheets to turn the taco meat leftovers into a sort of pie instead of the usual empanadas. It is nice to have such a selection of fresh pastas in the fridge aisle that are only marginally more expensive than dried pasta. I suppose eventually I’ll upgrade my tastes a step further to buying truly fresh pasta from the shops where they make it (like the one that is 20 feet from my front door).
| Helado Mailho (1/2 kg) | 390 ARS |
| Total: | USD 2.99 |
I wanted to go to the Vea to take advantage of buy-one-get-one free imported Nestle cereal, but it seems that it was another unexpected holiday “Dia de la comerciantes” and the supermarket was closed. It wasn’t a big deal since that taco pie provided enough leftovers to last two days. The important thing was procuring some ice cream to preemptively reward myself for a live televised event on Tuesday night, especially since it is still too early to start drinking again.
| Vea | 680 |
| Veg (pepino, ajo, banana) | 170 |
| Cabbage, verdeo, pomelo | 130 |
| Total: | 980 ARS (USD 7.52) |
It’s crazy that I still go out of my way by four blocks to shop at the old vegetable stand around the corner of my previous flat, but all of the vegetable shops near my new house leave me disappointed by their price or selection or quality. Despite having to skip a Monday grocery shopping trip, I didn’t really have much to buy at a supermarket, mostly just taking advantage of some weekly specials. It is weird that they have bags of “commercial” carrots that are cheaper (50 pesos per kilo) and better quality than any of the vegetable shops (typically 60 pesos per kilo). The most exciting thing is that after several weeks of gathering soy sauce, sugar, corn starch, and msg, I can exercise some Chinese cooking muscles with kung pao chicken as the first dish on the menu.
As predicted, this period was really cheap, averaging $2.79 a day in expenses. At 216 dollars a month, I could stay in this house and work on my project for the duration of the pandemic.
Running Total: 5795.68 USD (RMB 39354.4)
Daily Average: 16.85 USD (RMB 114.4)