In English there’s the expression, “It’s Greek to me” in reference to something that the speaker has no way of comprehending. In Spanish, or at least the way it’s practiced in Argentina, the same concept is expressed “Chino básico” which is figuratively translated as “It’s Chinese to me” though the more literary (not literally) translation in English would probably be just “It’s Greek to me.” I did just a quick bit of research and it seems that a number of languages refer to this concept by referencing the Chinese rather than the Greek. I don’t want to get into a linguistic issue here, just wanted to throw that “Chino básico” expression out there.

In this weekend’s Ñ there is an article about blogging in Argentina. (Ñ is the cultural and literary weekend paper published by the Clarin news group). One aspect mentioned is the explosion of photoblogs in Argentina. Indeed, we know many people here who have photo blogs, mostly over at the free service fotolog.net. According to Ñ, Argentina ranks third on the list of countries with most fotolog users (behind the U.S. & Brazil).

The article goes on to describe Bloggocultura argentina and provides a listing of the some of the most popular and oldest blogs in Argentina. (I’ll be taking a look at those over the next few days and will let you know what I find interesting).

The minimum wage in Argentina is going up to $630 pesos/month (about US$217). The increase will impact almost a million workers.

I was delighted to see Marc Laporte’s blog of his new life in Buenos Aires. He’s an open source web developer from Montreal. The open source software movement is growing in Argentina, particularly in Brazil. Marc is very active in the development of the Tiki content management system.

“Buenos Aires – she is an old, elegant woman wearing a Bohemian hat.” That’s a great quote from Robin Sparks’ account of Buenos Aires.

Just went into the kitchen to get some chocolate milk and looked out the sliding glass door. It’s a very foggy morning here in Buenos Aires. Normally I can see well past the dome of the Congreso, 8 blocks away. But now visibility is around 3 blocks. That’s still quite a lot. I remember my undergraduate days at Sewanee when the fog was so thick you could barely see beyond your own outstretched hand. … yeah, I realize this post is totally irrelevant to anyone but it’s 4:40 am and I’m still awake…..