Management book chapter 2: Perfectionists should kick themselves in the head (perfectly)

Last week we discussed the merits of building career option-value and warned about Brick Wall Syndrome (BWS) and the tyranny of the evil mongeese.  This week, we’ll tackle the advantages of being a perfectionist and make the argument that if you are a perfectionist you should try to kick yourself in the head (as perfectly as possible).

Like last week, this will not apply to everyone.  The truth is, this one barely even makes sense, is WAY too long and is almost certainly 100% inaccurate.  If you do somehow force yourself to read it all the way through though, I hope you can agree with me that, at the very least, some of the pictures are pretty entertaining…

Why

It’s not easy to kick yourself in the head at all, let alone perfectly.  It will require a significant amount of practice to get it just right.  You may be wondering why I’m suggesting this.  It’s mainly because perfectionism makes me cranky, but I’m happy to come up with some other reasons if my crankiness alone is not enough for you (that said, we will likely both end up regretting this).

The basic argument is that kicking yourself in the head provides all of the same compelling benefits as trying to be perfect (e.g., almost impossible to achieve, hurts a lot, not worthwhile, etc.) while at the same time being infinitely more entertaining for others to watch.

Kick yourself in the head image

See? Entertaining, right?

You might be thinking “This is preposterous, I don’t even know why I’m reading it”

Imagine how I feel–I’m the one writing it.  The worst part is it’s just getting started.

If you’ve read the last chapter about career option value, then you already know about Brick Wall Syndrome (BWS) and how it instills in you a drive to manage your career/life by continually seeking out the paths of greatest resistance and pushing yourself as hard as possible to break through all of the brick walls you can find in order to build option value (even though you don’t necessarily have any interest in these options).  You’ll also know that if you suffer from BWS, any career choice that looks enjoyable and/or like something that you could really excel at without any pain or suffering will automatically be classified as an utter waste of time by the evil mongeese who are in charge of your life decisions.  This much should be fairly obvious.  This chapter isn’t about BWS though, it’s about another disorder–perfectionism.

Overview of disorder

At this point, I should clarify that I’m not talking about the benign and mild form of perfectionism in which people take pride in their work and have high quality standards.  That’s a positive thing.   I’m talking about the more extreme version that keeps people up all night obsessing over things that even they admit are a waste of time.  This is the version that inevitably leads to a constant sense of failure and ensures that no matter how much effort you put into something, you always feel like you should have done more . . . and that someone else would have.

Perfectionism isn’t about building option-value by choosing difficult paths.  Unlike BWS, perfectionism isn’t concerned with what specifically you choose to do; whatever you choose, this disorder’s primary focus is in making you obsess over doing things as perfectly as humanly possible–regardless of how long it takes, what other important things are going on in your life or if anyone else cares.  This could lead you to do any number of things, e.g.:

  • Stay up all night making sure that every PowerPoint slide in a large presentation has a perfectly matching color scheme (note: it’s not about consistency–consistency is merely good enough; the perfectionist will likely have painstakingly tried several different schemes to see what looked best)
  • Spend 5 days of intense effort to do what should have only taken 1 day (it’s not that you’re slow, you simply weren’t satisfied until it was 5x better than what anyone could have done in 1 day)
  • Spend all day trying to come up with a perfect third bullet point here to tie this all together in a comical way (if you are a perfectionist and have suggestions, please leave them in the comments)

Perfectionism and BWS are not the same thing.  It’s true that they often come together in a tightly-strung, type-A, fun-to-be-around package, but they are not the same thing.  Individually they are bad; together, they are worse.  You don’t have to believe me about this; here is the proof:

Perfectionist 2 by 2 - simple image

Note: if this 2 by 2 doesn't constitute definitive proof to you, you may not have what it takes to be a management consultant

Self-Diagnosis

Diagnosing yourself to be a perfectionist is usually not difficult.  Most perfectionists are fully aware of their disorder and often secretly (or openly) proud of it.  It is even easier to diagnose it in someone other than yourself merely by observing their daily activities.

Here are some signs that may indicate you have this disorder:

  • You frequently work significantly longer hours than others that have your same job and do not understand how it is that they can manage to go home so early and not be more stressed-out all the time.
  • When you point out how proud you are of having gone above and beyond to make sure that all fonts/colors/icons/etc. are perfectly coordinated and aligned to the nearest millimeter (you measured), rather than receiving applause, people just look at you and shake their heads.  This seems strange to you.  Your conclusion from this is that you will have to try harder next time.
  • When other people actually do compliment you on your work, you think they are patronizing you–you know that you should have done more, and if they think that you were good enough, then they really have no idea what they are talking about and should be avoided.

If any of the above symptoms are present, you may be a perfectionist and should continue reading for root causes and home treatment options.

Root causes

If you are an obsessive perfectionist, whether or not you realize it, and whether or not you are proud of it, what you are really suffering from is almost certainly varying degrees of the following two root causes:

1)  You are afraid that someone else will judge you to be not good enough

2)  You suck at managing competing priorities

Or, if you are confused (which can happen if you’ve been up all night perfecting something), you may be afraid of competing judges not managing someone else’s priorities well enough.  If this is the case, see your doctor immediately.

If you are a perfectionist, you are in for a rough time.  Whereas the person suffering from BWS is off prioritizing things based on degree of difficulty and perceived rewards, the pattern behind your decision processes is distinct.  Due to root cause #1, your main concern is avoiding someone else thinking that you are not good enough.  This is extremely stressful and requires constant vigilance.  You always have to be on guard.  No matter how small the task is that you’re doing, you have no choice but to go above and beyond and make it perfect–regardless of how long it takes (you really hate deadlines).  Having to be perfect all the time is a lot of pressure.

This type of extreme perfectionism is primarily about downside protection.  You are far more concerned about the downsides of being imperfect than you are motivated by the upsides that might come from doing a good job; unlike someone suffering from BWS, it doesn’t matter to you whether or not what you are working so hard on will lead to any rewards (real or perceived), it just matters that no one finds any errors in anything you do.

There are side-effects.  This fixation on downside protection can, at times, make you fear taking risks and prevent you from attempting things that are unconventional or creative (even if you have a spectacular idea: e.g., starting a monster truck rental business).  You tend to avoid things that don’t have an established set of criteria for perfection because you know that they are far more likely to result in criticism and failure (though, I think we can all agree that a monster truck rental business would clearly succeed).  You may have less fun and work harder than others, but at least you won’t risk being a disappointment.

Who is this person that you are so concerned about letting down?  To you, this is an irrelevant question–it does not matter who they are, whether or not you have any respect for what they think or if they even exist.  Because it doesn’t matter who they are, we’ll call them Mildred.

Perfectionist Mildred single image

If you’re a perfectionist, your priorities are determined by Mildred.  One might say that you are Mildred-centric.  You are so concerned about letting down Mildred that you will consistently assign exclusive priority to whatever things you think are important to her (even if you are just guessing).  In fact, you will often obsess over them so much that you will lose sight of other things that a more rational version of you may suggest are more important (e.g., happiness, loved ones, eating tacos)–this is root cause #2:  sucking at managing competing priorities.

Mildred is not the (only) bitch in this scenario

You may be surprised to hear this, but it’s almost certain that Mildred…:

a)  Couldn’t care less and doesn’t even know your name (or is some minor character from your past who doesn’t remember you – e.g., your 6th grade English teacher)

or

b)  Is in fact a bitch, and realizes how easy it is to manipulate you into doing whatever she wants through pointing out your weaknesses

or

c)  Thinks that you actually are good enough  – uh oh!  Time to find a new Mildred

How you choose your Mildred

Despite your debilitating ailment, you likely still have some people in your life that care about you.  These people probably not only think that you are good enough; they may even think that you are great.  This automatically disqualifies them from being your Mildred.  You have to look for a Mildred that exhibits either A or B from above in order to be sure that you will generate enough anxiety to perpetuate your disorder.

A fun side effect of this is that the people in your life that care about you (and who are likely also the same people that you yourself care the most about) are unable to help you.  Due to the very fact that they think that you don’t suck, you will constantly discard any positive things that they ever say to you and instead make it clear to them that Mildred’s opinion is more important to you.  This is awesome for them.  Fear not, in time these people will go away and you will be completely undistracted and able to focus all of your attention on pleasing Mildred.

Remember, the goal of this disorder is for Mildred to be your taskmaster, and that wouldn’t work very well if you picked a Mildred that was supportive of you.  This is why this form of extreme perfectionism is scientifically referred to as BMBD, or Being Mildred’s Bitch Disorder.

It gets worse

If you have BMBD and you have BWS (which often happens due to a failure to vaccinate for these things in infancy), you are really in trouble.

Perfectionist plus option value equals screwed image

With BMBD alone, your obsessions are more random and tend to fluctuate.  Mildred on her own may make you strive to throw the perfect birthday party for your 3-year-old one day, followed by obsessing over the formatting in your monthly report (and not even getting home from the office until after your 3-year-old has gone to bed) the next.  It doesn’t really matter what you are doing; her main concern is that you are always perfecting.  You may end up sacrificing other things that are important to you while in your Mildred-induced perfectionistic frenzies, but at least there’s a chance that you’ll have devoted some of your energies to things that actually do matter to you.

As proven earlier, it’s much worse if you also have BWS.  If you have both, your Mildred instead will be collaborating with the other mongeese to ensure that all of your energies go into attempting to be perfect at things that are extremely difficult and that you are simply not good at.  They will pick virtually impossible tasks specifically targeted to your weaknesses (because that’s where the biggest challenges and brick walls are–as mentioned, BWS sucks) and she will make you feel bad about yourself for failing to do them perfectly on your first try.

Mongeese with Mildred image

Focusing all of your energies on trying to be perfect at virtually impossible things which you are in fact not good at is no fun.  It’s certainly not as fun as competing in a taco eating contest (the great thing about a taco eating contest is that everyone wins).

taco image

You know you want it

Home treatment options for BMBD

Unfortunately BMBD is not curable–as you may have suspected, you will always be Mildred’s bitch.  However, there are some things that you can do to alleviate the majority of your symptoms.  Similar to BWS, embracing failure is extremely helpful in fighting BMBD–if you let Mildred down enough times, she’ll stop caring so much.

If you aren’t ready to embrace failure, try the following:

Step 1: Admit you have a problem

Like so many things, the most important first step is admitting that you have a problem.  BMBD is not just a harmless personality quirk; at its extremities, it holds you back, pushes people away and prevents you from having the life that you want.  Upon accepting that this is a real problem, you might be tempted to lash out at Mildred…  Don’t – it’s not her fault.

Step 2: Admit that you are the problem

The second step is realizing that Mildred isn’t the problem; you are.  It’s true – you can ask anyone that knows you well and they will tell you.

Now that you are horribly depressed, it is time to move on to step #3.  If you are not yet horribly depressed, you didn’t do steps 1 and 2 well enough–please repeat until you have perfected them.

Step 3:  Perform some Mildred Judo

This step requires some introspection.  If you have BMBD, it means that you suck at managing competing priorities and will let everything else slide in order to cater to the ever-changing whims of your Mildred.  If you can improve on balancing priorities using a little Mildred Judo, you won’t have to worry about what your Mildred thinks.  On the contrary, it is your Mildred that will have cause to worry.

The trick is to make your disorder work for you rather than against you.  What you need to do is to pick a new Mildred that has a more macro view of your life… Maybe pick your future self as your new Mildred.  Pick a high-level Mildred that is judging you based on how well you live your life across ALL dimensions rather than a small-minded Mildred that gets caught up on minor details and loses sight of everything else.  This new Uber-Mildred will have no trouble beating up your current Mini-Mildred and setting a very different tone for what remains of your lifetime of servitude.

Uber-Mildred perfectionist image

Note:  If the number of Mildreds mentioned in the preceding paragraph is confusing, just try to remember:  Uber-Mildred = good, Mini-Mildred=bad, millions of milling Mildreds mysteriously melting = hard to say.  Better?

Pleasing your new Uber-Mildred will require a whole new and much healthier mindset.  For instance, Uber-Mildred will be very unhappy with you if you work late and blow off spending time with your spouse.  That said, Uber-Mildred will also be unhappy if you do sloppy work and get fired.  What’s important to understand is that Uber-Mildred doesn’t require perfection in any one thing in particular, but rather requires that you devote your obsessiveness to trying to be perfect at balancing all of your competing priorities in a way that optimizes your happiness.

With her in charge, it’s not about having the perfectly formated report, it’s about having the best overall life (within which the formatting of your report is merely one of many other dimensions and should be prioritized accordingly).  Indeed, pleasing Uber-Mildred is all about getting comfortable with the idea of making sure that you are ‘good-enough’ across all dimensions before you are allowed to expend energy to go for better/great/fantastic/boy-howdy in any one category.  This isn’t easy.  Uber-Mildred is a harsh mistress and pleasing her will require making trade-offs (especially in any areas that mini-Mildred was particularly obsessed), but pleasing her will ultimately please you.  Isn’t that pleasant?

Step 4: Try to kick yourself in the back of the head

I suppose this step is optional, but, as mentioned previously, very entertaining for your friends and family and, depending on how extreme your BMBD symptoms have been, the least you could do is provide a little entertainment to thank them for putting up with you.  In fact, if you make it to step 4, please upload a YouTube video and link to it in the comments section below.

YouTube Video image

I'm not kidding

Note: If you are also suffering from BWS, the above steps will still help you somewhat, but in addition, you will need to seek out  and embrace failure (as discussed last week).  A good way to make failure a part of your daily life is to travel.  Immersion in a foreign culture will almost certainly make you feel like a failure several times a day.  Not only will you stop looking for brick walls, you will likely have moments where you are eager to eat Top Ramen for dinner because it means that you don’t have to deal with looking like an idiot with your poor language skills in a restaurant and potentially ordering something that has calf brains in it because you didn’t recognize just one little word in the list of 10 ingredients and assumed it must be something benign like parsley.  Not that I have any experience with this.

Disclaimer:  The author makes no claim whatsoever to have figured anything important out or to have anything worthwhile to say about this or any other topic.  He writes things like this merely for entertainment purposes–mostly his own. You should definitely not construe this as advice or take action based on it–you could end up unemployed in Chile.


Beaches and mountains and wineries, oh my!: More reasons why Santiago rocks

While Santiago is a great city in and of itself, possibly its most compelling feature is its proximity to an amazing variety of incredible day-trips, ranging from beaches to wineries to mountains and more.  This is a tale of some of those day-trips.

Context

I thoroughly enjoyed writing about career related topics (e.g., Career Option-value) and will absolutely be writing a lot more involving evil mongeese in the near future, but I didn’t want to go too long without offering a little travel-related inspiration…

We’ve been in Santiago, Chile for a couple of weeks now and we continue to like it more and more (see our original post on Santiago).  So much so in fact that we are now seriously considering getting jobs and living here for the foreseeable future.  Anyone have any good leads?  🙂

We may sound crazy.  You may be wondering why we would consider living so far away from home.  There are many reasons.  In this post, I’ll discuss 3 of them: beaches, mountains and wineries.  Oh my.

Santiago day trip 1: Beaches

About a week ago we made plans with some friends to go skiing in some of the gigantic mountains hovering just outside/over the city.  We headed over to their house at around 9am to meet up.  When we got there, they told us that they had heard the weather was rough and it might be snowing too hard in the mountains for skiing to be much fun.  We are fair weather skiers, so skipping the slopes for the day was fine with us.  After some discussion about possible alternate destinations, we decided to drive to the coast for the day.  It was drizzling for most of the ~1 hour drive, so initially we weren’t all that optimistic about the beach.  We were in for a surprise.

We started at Isla Negra, which is a small beach town a bit south of Valparaiso and the site of one of Pablo Neruda’s houses (he’s kind of a big deal here).  The tour of the house was very worthwhile (this guy collected all kinds of crazy stuff, including a narwhal tusk!).  Beyond the house, the beach was fantastic which was helped by the fact that the rain stopped..

Isla Negra beach image

This was Pablo Neruda's backyard. I wish it were my backyard.

After our tour, we decided to drive a bit further up the coast to Viña del Mar.  Viña is a popular beach destination for a good reason.

Viña del Mar coastline image

It's always a beautiful day in Viña del Mar

The weather was significantly better at Viña.  We had an awesome lunch on an outdoor patio (keep in mind that it’s the dead of winter here) and then took to the beach…

Viña del Mar beach image

Everyone out enjoying this beautiful winter day

Also, there were some very cool sand sculptures.

Viña del Mar beach sand sculpture image

Such as this crazy dragon thing

We got some ice cream, hung out on the beach for a few hours and eventually headed back to the city.

Let’s recap:

  1. We woke up in the morning ready to go skiing.
  2. We determined that it was snowing too hard to go skiing
  3. Rather than driving an hour east for skiing, we drove an hour west to the coast
  4. We spent the day enjoying a sunny, warm and beautiful day at the beach and eating ice cream (because it was snowing too hard to ski).

Does this seem strange to anyone?  Is this sequence of events possible anywhere else in the world?  If so, let us know!  If not, join us in basking in the awesomeness that is Chile.

Santiago day trip 2: Mountains

This weekend it wasn’t snowing too hard.  With our friends at the wheel, we managed to make the ~1 hour drive east (though ‘up’ is the more accurate direction) and hit the slopes at Valle Nevado.  It was our first time skiing in the Andes and it was unlike any skiing we had ever done before (in a good way).

Valle Nevado ski lodge image

This is the lodge down at the base (yep, that's the bottom...)

Aside from the incredible views and massive amounts of snow in every direction, there is something quite unique about skiing in the Andes…

Valle Nevado slopes images

Hmmm... what's missing from this picture?

Trees.  There are no trees.  I’ve never skied without trees before.  They pretend that there are separate runs, but really it’s more of a free-for-all where you can pretty much go anywhere–there is nothing but snow and mountains for miles and miles and miles.  At the lodge, you can conveniently pay for a helicopter to drop you off further out if you’re crazy (we saw it go back and forth more than a few times), or some people apparently take a lift up and just head off in a different direction and have a friend pick them up near the side of the road somewhere down the mountain (or just hitchhike from there).

I’ve skied all over the US, but I’ve never seen this much fresh powder–certainly none that is this light and fluffy.  Also, it doesn’t get that cold (rarely below freezing) and apparently the day we were there was the most crowded our friends have ever seen it–sometimes we waited in lift lines for up to 2 minutes.

Valle Nevado lift image

This is the 'most' crowded it's ever been...

And another thing…

Echaurren glacier at the top of Valle Nevada image

At the top of one of the lifts you get an incredible view of the Echaurren glacier (top left) which is hanging out at around 17k feet

If glaciers aren’t your thing, there are also some spectacular views of the city way down below.

Santiago view from Valle Nevada image

That's Santiago city down there in that valley. If you look closely you can see the buildings... completely surrounded by mountains

Not only that, but the drive home offered some pretty spectacular sunset views.

Sunset on road to Santiago from the Andes image

Sunsets in Chile do not mess around

Let’s recap:

  1. 1 – 1.5 hour drive from city
  2. Amazing powder skiing, wide-open runs, not crowded, warm
  3. Incredible glacier views
  4. Incredible city views
  5. Incredible sunset
  6. If we were feeling lazy, we could have gone to the beach instead

Convinced yet?  If you still don’t agree with us that Chile is awesome, that’s fine.  There’s plenty more…

Santiago day trip 3: Wineries

On another day, with some other friends (people are friendly here), we headed north to the small town of Los Andes.  It’s about an hour, maybe 1.5 hours north, nestled in between the Andes and the Coastal Range (more mountains) and more or less surrounded by the vineyards of the Aconcagua Valley (you have to be specific because there are like 7 wine valleys within an hour or so of the city).

Los Andes, Chile vineyard image

The views were ok

Frankly, there wasn’t really any need to have a particular destination in mind, you can basically just start driving and stare in awe out the window at the amazing scenery beyond every turn.

We had been pretty fixated by the Andes, but we learned about a whole new mountain range on this trip.

Coastal range from Los Andes image

Those are part of the Coastal Range. Also awesome.

We stopped at one point and did a little hiking through vineyards to get to the top of a hill (which happened to be the site of some very interesting petroglyphs).

Los Andes winery and mountains image

This is what we saw

After we managed to tear ourselves away from these incredible views (and of course buy as many bottles of wine as we could carry after some wine tasting) we headed to our friends’ favorite lunch destination in the area…

Los Andes lunch spot image

Decent place to have lunch -- try the drunken chicken

As if the above wasn’t enough, we also were treated to a brief performance by these guys:

Huasos image

Huasos - Like guachos, but Chilean

Once again, let’s recap:

  1. 1 hour drive
  2. Spectacular scenery along the way
  3. Not one, but 2 mountain ranges (Coastal Range and Andes)
  4. Cool wineries that make great wine in unbelievable settings
  5. Drunken chicken for lunch
  6. Chilean cowboys

What more could you want?

In Summary

We used to live in San Francisco.  San Francisco is known for having lots of incredible day trips you can do near the city.  While we are big fans of San Francisco, the day trip possibilities around Santiago make San Francisco day trips look a little silly (in diversity, intensity and proximity).  We’ve only just begun exploring this city/country and so far we are blown away.

Where else can you do all of this and more so close to a major city?  Why doesn’t everyone live here??  🙂

Check out more photos in our gallery:

Beach day photos

Ski day photos

Winery day photos

We got featured on BudgetYourTrip.com

BudgetYourTrip.com is a very cool site.  They would be cool even if they didn’t post an interview of us.  That said, they did post an interview of us and you should check it out.

If you aren’t familiar with the new site Budget Your Trip, there are at least three reasons why you should be:

  1. It offers great resources to help you budget any upcoming trip you might have ranging from categorized cost benchmarks to planning tools
  2. The people behind it are very cool corporate America run-aways that have created a new life for themselves allowing them to pursue their passions
  3. They featured us in an interview on their site!  You should check it out:  Consulting Rehab feature on Budget Your Trip

Seriously, their site can really help simplify the planning for your next trip.  Check it out.  Tell your friends.

Enjoy!

If I were to write a management book about career “option value” . . .

I know a lot of people that are working very, very hard in jobs that they don’t have any particular passion for (and in many cases dislike quite a bit) in order to have greater “option value.” I was one of them; I spent the majority of the last 10 years building option value.

As we come closer to the time we originally thought we’d end this Career Break, I’ve started to think about the future and my career again. I’ve started to think about “option value” – how much I’ve accumulated and what I should do with it. If I were to write a management book about option value it would look something like the following.

It will not apply to everyone.

Sometimes “option value” is about building a great resume…

It starts young. You don’t even know it’s happening. All you know is that you have to work very hard in high school to get into the right university. You don’t question it, you just know it’s what you’re supposed to do. Everyone knows it–and those that disagree just have wrong-minded priorities (e.g., fun). You know better.

Once in college, you have to make sure you choose the right major, get the right grades, do the right internships and demonstrate the right leadership qualities in order to get the right job after graduation. If you are in pursuit of option value, determining which job is the “right” one involves very little reflection upon what you enjoy doing or what makes you happy; instead, it requires seeking out the jobs that are hardest to get, the hardest to do and the most likely to consume the vast majority of your waking hours. This is obvious.

Duh image

Of course, this job is just the first such job; the whole reason you worked so hard to get it is so that you would be qualified for the next job. That’s the “option value.” There is always a next job/accomplishment/promotion/whatever–otherwise, why would you be working so hard at the current job which you barely even like? If you weren’t doing it in order to get the next job, it would be a little crazy, wouldn’t it?

Each new job will likely be harder than the last. If you’re focused on pursuing “option value,” you will likely inadvertently have become convinced that any job that would be hard and/or painful is automatically worthwhile and important; also, you’ll likely believe that any job that looks easy and/or fun is almost certainly frivolous and a waste of time. Obviously, this makes sense, even though it is sometimes hard to explain to others in a way that they can understand–fear not, this is likely due to their wrong-minded priorities (e.g., happiness).

This logic will force you to continually seek out the path of greatest resistance and push yourself as hard as you can to get “there.” The destination is irrelevant; it’s the very fact that there is resistance that makes it seem worthwhile. In other categories of your life you likely don’t have the same confusion–for example, you may fully agree that walking through an open doorway is a much better idea than trying to walk through a brick wall–but for some reason this logic gets reversed in regards to your career.  We’ll refer to this as “Brick Wall Syndrome, ” or simply BWS.

firewall_clip_art_10163 image

Watch out for "Irritable Brick Wall Syndrome", that's even worse.

Most people fail or drop out at some point in this process–which is understandable, as it requires near-perfection as well as a fair degree of luck to navigate the course. The longer you go without a failure, the greater the pressure to be perfect all the time and the more (it feels) you have to lose. Unfortunately, being perfect gets harder and harder. The further up this ladder you climb, the more years and vitality it extracts from you and the harder it is to remember what you were doing it for to begin with. On a positive note, with each new accomplishment you earn an entirely new set of options for the future. After 5 years of this intensity you have quite a bit of “option value;” after 10 you could do almost anything. Imagine if you did it for 20 years – someday you’ll be able to do all of those things you always wanted to do – not today, but someday . . .

Sometimes it’s about accumulating money and/or stuff…

This often looks similar to the scenario above. It often layers on top of the scenario above. Having money has real benefits:

  • You can afford to buy products and services that free up time (e.g., car, take-out dinners, Roomba). There are lots of things you can do with more time. Things like looking for more brick walls.
  • You can spend money on stuff to reward yourself for your accomplishments and to prove to others that you are “succeeding” (e.g., houses, watches, monster trucks). Unfortunately, spending it on these things along the way requires earning even more to pay for them. That said, the value of owning a monster truck should not be underestimated.
  • You can even save money so that someday you won’t have to work so hard and you can finally afford to go out and do all of those things you always wanted to do. I guess.

While it is not entirely the same thing, there is no denying that more money = more “option value.” And, you can always have more; someone else always does (we refer to them as “jerks”).

Options don’t kill people, people kill people…

There is absolutely a place for pursuing “option value” and many benefits can come from it. It can indeed get you where you want to go. . . as long as you know where that is. The thing is, you don’t really need 1,000 options, you probably only really want 5. And if you only really want 5, why spend so much time building the other 995? The trick is figuring out which 5 you want and minimizing the amount of time spent accumulating those you don’t care about.

For example, let’s say I want to go on an island vacation. It would probably make sense for me to figure out which island I want to go to, buy a ticket and go. Right? Alternatively, I could put off reflecting on where exactly to go and instead work really hard for several years to save up enough money to buy tickets to 20 different island destinations (just in case the first one doesn’t turn out to be perfect). I still won’t have gone to any islands over these years, but I will now have several to choose from and at least I won’t be sunburnt. Note: I tried really hard to come up with a funnier example for this analogy. I failed (see below, failure can be a good thing).

Pursuing options merely for the sake of having more options is not often a recipe for long-term happiness. It’s all too easy to get caught up in this cycle–especially when you are working so hard to get to the next set of options that you don’t allow yourself time to reflect upon where you are headed or what is on top of the particular ladder you are climbing–be careful, it could be an angry mongoose.

Mongoose With Ladder image

Worse, it could be a giant mongoose. BWS sucks.

One way to break the cycle…

Seek out failure. Failing early is better. Anything is better than running into an angry mongoose on top of a ladder. It’s much easier to succeed if you’re already a failure–and much harder to avoid failing if you are exclusively a succeeder. Most happy people I know have had significant failures. Few happy people that I know are pursuing options for the sake of options (though, they may have monster trucks someday so you should still be friends with them just in case).

Failure teaches you that it’s ok to fail (if this seems obvious, great–if not, be careful, you may be suffering from BWS). Failure often leads to new perspective and a more open mind regarding what “success” can look like. Indeed, failing at what you think you are “supposed to” do may open the door to pursuing what you actually “want to” do. Weird.

Don’t spend all of your time and energy getting stressed about avoiding/fearing failure (a prime symptom of BWS).  Instead, embrace it–it can be more fun that you might think.

Now what?

If you’re working hard on something you don’t love in order to build “option value,” always know why you are doing it and how you plan to “cash in” on those options. You get to choose why and how, but choose. Choose something that inspires you and work specifically towards it. It doesn’t matter what you pick (e.g., travel, time with family, volunteering, ninja training course, etc.). There is no right answer and you can (and should) change it as many times as you want. The important thing is picking something specific rather than just marching forward without a destination–if you don’t choose, the angry mongeese will choose for you and you definitely aren’t going to like what they choose (it will probably be something scary, they eat snakes).

Angry Mongeese image

With them in charge, what could go wrong?? (Note: I am fairly confident that the $2 I paid for this photo is the best $2 I have ever spent)

Once you pick something that inspires you, it’s time to ask yourself when. How much ‘option value’ and which options do you need to pull it off? How much money? Be specific. You might be surprised. You might have more than you need already. It might be time to cash in–you can always create more options later. Plus, who knows what new ones you’ll find along the way…

Monster Truck Mongoose Jump image

Maybe you'll be able to pull this off

Wasn’t that a nice inspirational note to end on?

Note:  The author makes no claim whatsoever to have figured anything important out or to have anything worthwhile to say about this or any other topic.  He writes things like this merely for entertainment purposes–mostly his own. You should definitely not construe this as advice or take action based on it–you could end up unemployed in Chile.

Update:  If you liked this, you may enjoy Chapter 2: Perfectionists should kick themselves in the head (perfectly)


Kayak.com does more than you might think

You may have noticed that in the last couple of weeks we added a Kayak.com flight search box to our sidebar (over on the right).  You may have wondered why.  “Why would they do this?” you might have said to yourself.  You may be saying it to yourself even now.  Fear not, I am here to answer that question for you.

We decided to become affiliate advertisers for Kayak.com for 3 reasons:

1)  Travel is awesome. Everyone should do it more often.

2)  Kayak.com is one of the very best tools out there for finding ways to travel cheaply (if anyone out there doesn’t already know about Kayak.com, it compares fares against virtually every airline and aggregator (e.g., Expedia, Travelocity, etc.) and helps you find the very cheapest/fastest/best way to travel.

3) We don’t want to have to get real jobs anytime soon.  Someday we’re hoping to make some money off of this blog, and if you access Kayak.com through us, we will!  Wouldn’t that be great?  To be sure, we won’t make much money, but empanadas are cheap (another reason why everyone should travel).

But wait, there’s more!!

I only recently learned about this feature and it blew my mind.  It may blow your mind too.  You should sit down.

Have you ever been sitting around thinking to yourself:

“I really need a vacation…  I wonder where I should go?”

or

“I finally have a free weekend, maybe I can plan a trip!”

or

“I only have $300 to spend, I wonder if there is anywhere I could go for that much…”

Kayak.com can answer these questions very quickly for you.  Check out this link:  Kayak: Where can I go from San Francisco in Fall of 2010 for under $1200?

This feature allows you to tell it your origin city, your price range and your time of the year and it will tell you on average what it would cost you to go anywhere in the world within that price range at that time of year.  If you want to, you can even include activities (e.g.,where can I go skiing from Chicago in Jan for <$500).  Instead of skiing, you could also tell it beach or a temperature range or a few other things.  Seriously, this is cool.

In my opinion, this feature is under-marketed… I had never heard of it before I randomly stumbled upon it.  It’s extremely useful for preliminary trip planning to spur ideas when you know you have some time off at some point, but aren’t sure where to go AND also very useful for last minute travel when you suddenly have a few days and just want to get away.

Let’s review what we’ve learned

1)  Kayak.com is awesome

2)  Kayak.com is even awesomer than you may have thought

3)  You don’t want Ryan and Jen to have to get jobs; you want them to eat more empanadas.  To enable this goal, when planning or booking travel you should consider starting with the Kayak.com flight search box here on Consulting Rehab.

Word?

Cafe con piernas = Coffee, with legs

Buckle up, this one is going to be interesting…

Cafe con piernas: The background

So I was in Santiago for a few days back in 2002 and I vaguely remember going on a city tour with a tour guide that told us that there are topless coffee shops here–e.g., coffee shops in which the women serving the coffee are topless.  After telling us this he kind of laughed, so I laughed and assumed he was either making it up or that there was like one shop in the entire city and it was a complete oddity similar to this one in Maine (which sadly burnt down a few months after opening).  I was wrong.

What we’ve learned over the past week or so is that this is actually a bit of a cultural phenomenon here in Chile and has been for almost 50 years.  It’s called ‘cafe con piernas’ which means ‘coffee with legs’ and does not refer to an extra caffeine boost.  It started with a place called Haiti (which still has many locations around downtown).  At the time, the downtown area was full of almost entirely men coming to work (apparently the women usually stayed home) and the idea was to provide them some entertainment during the work day.  So, Haiti opened some coffee bars and had the women wear provocative clothing.  Unsurprisingly, this worked out pretty well and more and more similar shops kept opening.

In the mid/late 90s another coffee shop decided to differentiate itself by featuring what they called the “Millionaire Minute” which was a 60-second period during which all of the women would fully remove their tops.  Again, unsurprisingly, this innovation was largely well received by the clientele and was the catalyst for a whole new level of cafe con piernas experiences.  As you will see in a few paragraphs, I do not use the phrase ‘a whole new level’ lightly…

Cafe con piernas: The news report/video

I think that before I give you the details of our personal experience with cafe con piernas….

(sorry, just had a flashback)

Right, before I give you the details of our personal experience with cafe con piernas, it might be best if you watched the following video about it produced by a news agency in London in 2007 (it was aired on network TV, so should be safe for work):

Cafe con piernas news report (sadly, they have disabled embedding, so you will have to watch it on YouTube)

Ok, can’t put it off any longer.  On to our personal experiences…

The misadventures of Ryan and Jen – Chapter 1: The beginning

As we were exploring our new neighborhood over the last week, we noticed a very large number storefronts with big signs stating that they were ‘cafes.’  We were like, “Jackpot, so many cool looking places to get coffee!”  As we continued to explore, we noticed that many of them had either blacked out or, more commonly, mirrored windows (meaning, the kind that you only see your reflection if you try to look in)–this seemed odd…

Cafe con Piernas - Cafe Belen image

Looks pretty normal... except for the mirrored glass and the small sign that says "se necesita señorita" which other than being a neat rhyme, means something like "we need chicks" (all of them have this sign, which for awhile seemed like a solid job prospect for Jen...)

Later, we were walking around downtown and ran into a couple of other coffee shops called Haiti (the aforementioned original cafe con piernas institution) and Caribe.  These have normal windows and are usually pretty crowded.

Cafe con piernas -- Cafe Caribe storefront image

Looks perfectly normal from the outside

Unfortunately, this picture doesn’t capture it, but you can usually see the serving women from the street and they are all wearing very short, very tight dresses. Also, the area behind the coffee bar is raised up about a foot in order to maximize the view.  Seeing this triggered the memory of the ‘topless coffee bar’ comment from the tour guide during my first trip here back in 2002, so we started doing some Google research and began to learn all about cafe con piernas (including the video above and some links below).

Upon reading about these shops, you may be surprised to hear (I certainly was) how excited my lovely wife Jen became about investigating them first-hand.  After watching the video, she was all excited to go check one out first thing the next morning, saying  it was “a cultural experience”.  If you haven’t yet watched the video (seriously, watch it) an important and likely somewhat obvious fact to know is that the shops with mirrored glass are a bit more… shall we say, progressive than Haiti and Caribe–these two are considered to be the tamest of them.  Another fact you should know before I proceed is that all of these shops offer standing room only–no chairs, you drink your coffee while standing at the bar.

I suggested that we go to one of the tame ones, but Jen was having none of that.  Here is a direct quote from her:  “if I’m going to have to stand up to drink my coffee, I better get some ‘boob-age’.”  Seriously, that’s what she said.  There were other choice quotes from her as well, but I’ll save them for later; suffice to say, she was very excited–even more so than usual.  I think that now, in retrospect, she deeply, deeply regrets taking this stance…

The misadventures of Ryan and Jen Chapter 2: First attempt

There are literally 5-10 of the mirrored glass-type establishments within a few blocks of our apartment (I told you it was a good neighborhood!), and given that you can’t see inside, we weren’t sure how to go about choosing one.  Luckily, my Harvard-educated wife concocted a plan; the plan was to loiter across the street from a few of them and choose the one had the most in/out traffic (we certainly did not want to be the only ones in there).  It was a reasonable plan, but as we were camped out across the street from a few trying to look inconspicuous, Jen’s excitement turned into nervousness that she would be rejected because she is female.  Then after 5 minutes of not seeing anyone go in or out, the nervousness escalated.  We decided that we would wait until we talked to some locals and got some advice on where to go.  If one wanted to say this in another way, one would say that we chickened out.

That afternoon we went on a bicycle tour of the city (which was cool), and Jen excitedly asked our guide about cafe con piernas.  Understandably, he laughed.  Then, he explained that there are PG, R and X rated ones and that if we wanted to learn more about them (including how to tell which was which), we should go on one of their other tours–seriously, this is a big enough thing here that it is included in city tour itineraries.  He explained that here in Santiago it is often somewhat cold, so everyone wears layers and is completely covered up most of the time; in his opinion, the girls in cafe con piernas venues are merely wearing the sorts of things that women might wear on the street in a place like Rio de Janiero and that it is very popular here because it’s so rarely seen.  Makes sense.  The other thing he told us was that it should be completely fine for her to go into them–I later learned that that was all she needed to hear…

The misadventures of Ryan and Jen – Chapter 3: Oops!

The following day I assumed that Jen’s excitement would have blown over.  Again, I was wrong.  We got out of bed and she was almost jumping up and down when she said, “Wanna go get some coffee???”  I said, “Really?  Still?”

Her: “Yes!  He said I could go!!”

Me:  “Ok…”

We decided to attempt the same plan.  We first camped outside of this fine looking venue for ~5 minutes:

Cafe con Piernas, Santiago venue image

We couldn't tell for sure what those pictures were on either end of the sign, but we were pretty sure this place was classy

We saw one person go in, but in general we didn’t love the vibe, so we ultimately decided to keep walking.  About a block away we encountered this place:

Cafe con Piernas, Santiago - Cafe Rio image

We have a winner

We stood outside, casing the place, for 5 minutes or so while I repeatedly asked Jen if she was sure she wanted to do this and she repeatedly answered in the affirmative.  Eventually we saw a few men go in so we sucked it up and went for it.

Oh boy.

Seriously, this is challenging to write.  Taking pictures was the furthest thing from our mind (and likely would have resulted in us being beaten out back by a guy named whatever the Chilean equivalent of Biff is), so I’ll do my best to detail the experience in words (which will force me to relive this highly traumatic experience quite vividly–hope you appreciate this!)

The room was about the size of a bedroom.  The coffee machines/baristas were off in the back.  There was a narrow standing bar in the middle and then a counter along the walls where you could put your coffee; otherwise, wide open space.  There was fairly loud techno music playing and it was dark-ish, but certainly light enough to see the staff… Also, all of the walls were mirrored (and possibly the floor/ceiling too, though I don’t remember).  Equally weird was how easy it was to see out the front windows to the people on the street.

We were immediately greeted by a woman wearing the standardized uniform–5 inch heels, g-string/thong and very revealing bra; that’s all.  She kissed us both on the cheek somewhat provocatively and then asked what we would like.  She did not seem at all disturbed by Jen’s presence–nor did the other patrons despite what they were doing.  We ordered 2 coffees.  She told us that it would cost 2,000 pesos so I gave her 2,000 (this is more or less the normal price for coffee).  Then she asked if we might want to give her a little something extra for her.  Jen gave her another 2,000.

She went off to retrieve our coffee and we nervously looked around–which was pretty easy given all of the mirrors and the fact that we had situated ourselves at the stand-up bar in the middle.  This few minutes that we had to ourselves taking in the scenery and wondering what would happen to us when she returned with our coffee was a special time for us.  It probably always will be.  Whether we want it to be or not.

At the time we were there (~11am) the staff consisted of ~5 girls all dressed the same and there were maybe 3 male customers–each there on their own, and each ‘enjoying’ his time with one of the staff.  We had read a few accounts of other experiences at such places and had heard of one which said that the girls were unattractive, overweight and groped the customers left and right.  We heard another account in which the people said that the girls were very attractive but seemed completely disinterested in the customers.  In the 2 by 2 of x-rated cafe con piernas venues, Cafe Rio is definitely in the “winning” quadrant–very attractive girls, lots and lots of groping.

Cafe con piernas, Santiago 2 by 2 image

Note: Consulting Rehab does not necessarily condone or endorse the views of this 2by2

In fact, the word ‘groping’ really doesn’t describe the kinds of things that we saw reflected in the mirrors.  The other girls were definitely ‘dancing’ with the other customers–keep in mind, there are no chairs, so it was sort of a standing lap dance.  Some of the customers definitely had their hands all over (and under) the skimpy outfits of their dedicated girl.  And, we also saw one girl kneeling down in front of a guy for a couple of minutes appearing to provide a special service.  Truly, experiencing things like this with your wife is the bedrock of a strong marriage.

Soon, our señorita came back with our coffee and stood about 2 inches away from Jen, making it clear that she would be our companion until we left.  I’m not a religious person, but I have thanked god more than once in the last couple of days that she chose to stand next to Jen and not me.  Not really having a roadmap for situations like this, Jen struck up a conversation with her.  We learned that she moved here 2 years ago from Peru and her 6-year-old son lives back in Peru with her mother.  She’s worked at the bar the whole time and makes money to send home and to be able to go visit.  She also told us that the most crowded time of day was at 1pm, right around lunch break (keep in mind, these places are closed at night and don’t serve alcohol).  It was actually a very nice conversation and we would have truly enjoyed getting to know her if not for the dry humping (and more) happening a few feet away.

I don’t think I’ve ever drunk a coffee so quickly.  We were out within 10 minutes.  Jen was no longer excited.  We’re pretty sure we had stumbled into one of the hardest core ones based on what we’ve read and it felt more like being in a brothel or extremely hands-on strip club than a coffee shop.  Suffice to say that we were a bit messed up for the next few hours.

Cafe con Piernas, Santiago - Cafe Rio 2 image

2 hours later we walked by again to get a picture of the front -- Jen's face looked like this for most of the day

It was about 1pm when we walked by the second time and we saw 7+ men walk in within 2 minutes… curious how it works when the clients outnumber the staff… not curious enough to go back.  Interestingly, there definitely does not seem to be any sort of social stigma associated with walking in and out of these places… many of them are on busy pedestrian streets and we’ve seen people coming in and out of them quite a bit.

After this experience, despite our need to find an income, we decided that it was no longer a viable option for Jen to become one of the señoritas that they necesita.

The misadventures of Ryan and Jen – Chapter 4: Our tamer experience at Cafe Caribe

Because we had already done the hard part and gone into a hardcore one, we decided to try one of the tamer ones the next day to complete our research.  It was a world of difference.  There were men there, but also women and while the servers were definitely wearing tight dresses, it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Cafe con piernas, santiago - Cafe Caribe image

I fake tried to take a picture of Jen to get one of the staff, but she was wise to us and mostly escaped. There are better pictures in the links below

This was basically just a normal coffee shop.  In fact, I’d argue that the fact that you had to stand up to drink your coffee was weirder than the outfits the staff were wearing.  This was actually kind of a fun and different cultural experience–night and day from our Cafe Rio experience.

The misadventures of Ryan and Jen Epilogue

It’s been a few days now and we’ve mostly recovered from our experience, but as I said, our 10 minutes in Cafe Rio will always be a special time for us.  Writing this has been cathartic.  Let us never speak of it again.

Cafe con piernas: Our advice

If you are a tourist here in Santiago and want to be able to say you went to cafe con piernas (and it is worth checking out), go to Cafe Caribe or Haiti.  If you are looking for a coffee and some dry humping (or more, did I mention there was a staircase in the back that likely lead to someplace a little quieter…), try Cafe Rio.   Beware of the other mirrored glass establishments, you certainly wouldn’t want to end up in the unattractive/aggressive groping quadrant of the cafe con piernas 2 by 2.

Cafe con piernas: Other interesting links

Where to eat in Buenos Aires: A few of our favorite BA restaurants

Now that we’re settled into Santiago, it’s time for some reflection on our favorite places to eat in Buenos Aires.  While we may have mentioned from time to time that the food choices in Buenos Aires can be a bit repetitive (cycling through the 5 major food groups), there are definitely some amazing places to eat in the city.  In addition to the things listed in Time Out and on Trip Advisor, we’ve been lucky enough to find a few lesser known restaurants that we think are awesome, and you just happen to be lucky enough that we’re willing to share them with you!

Note: We’ve indicated the price we usually pay for the two of us, typically including wine (we like wine) and either an appetizer or dessert; we’ve noted exceptions.  Take these as rough estimates, not absolutes.

  • El Estrebe: If you’ve followed our blog, you know that we LOVE El Estrebe.  We found it around the corner from our apt. in Recoleta and noticed that it was always packed (after 9pm anyway – don’t dare try to go to dinner before then in Argentina).  They also have a couple of fabulous wines for around AR35-40 (that’s US$10) by bodega Viñas de Narvaez, on the first page of the wine menu (our faves are the malbec and the syrah).  Read our review here and our photo essay here, but suffice to say that this is probably the one restaurant we’ll miss the most when (or if) we go back to the US.
    • Neighborhood: Recoleta
    • Cuisine: Parrilla
    • Price: ~AR 200 – we usually share a steak since they’re massive (see below) but have 2 appetizers, dessert and a bottle of wine
    • Best for: Dinner

      Dinner in Buenos Aires: Perfectly cooked Argentine beef image

      Incredible bife de lomo from El Estrebe

  • Don Julio: Another great parrilla, this one located in Palermo.  It’s a classic, and classy,  kind of place – great service, great wine list, fabulous meats.  Another parrilla in the neighborhood is really popular with tourists (La Cabrera) but we think this is much better.  Try the Flecha de los Andes malbec – awesome.
    • Neighborhood: Palermo Soho
    • Cuisine: Parrilla
    • Price: ~AR250-300 (the above-mentioned wine is ~AR100, bumping our total up a bit)
    • Best for: Dinner

      Don Julio image

      Us with our favorite bottle of wine at Don Julio (yes, we know we look like we've had too much)- sometimes they'll let you sign it and they'll put it up on the wall

  • Dada: This one is a bistro located in centro, near Florida street.  The space is a little funky and casual with only about 10 tables, plus a bar.  They have amazing beef dishes (the ojo de bife is our favorite – amazingly flavorful – they actually appear to use seasoning it which doesn’t happen much in Buenos Aires and may be considered cheating…) but also a bunch of other good stuff, including a langostine risotto.  Smaller menu than most places, which we’ve found to mean that they do all of it well, rather than much of it poorly.  Call ahead for reservation, especially if you’re going on the weekend.
    • Neighborhood: Microcentro
    • Cuisine: French bistro
    • Price: AR250
    • Best for: Lunch, dinner

      Dada Buenos Aires image

      Funky, low-key place with amazing food!

  • Pizza Piola: Trendy environment, often playing techno or other clubbish music, and really good thin crust pizza – not only the typical Buenos Aires pizzas, but more creative modern cuisine style as well (think California Pizza Kitchen, but better).  Two of our favorites are the Carbonara and the Avandaro.  Best to get a reservation Thurs/Fri/Sat.
    • Neighborhood: Barrio Norte
    • Cuisine: Pizza
    • Price:  ~AR120 (~AR50 for a large pizza, AR20-30 for a small)
    • Best for: Lunch, dinner

      Pizza Piola image

      Thin crust, proscutto, brie and arugula - yes!!!

  • Pizza y Espuma:  If you want a good set lunch with pasta or a simple pizza, this is a good bet.  We stumbled across this place on our walk home from Spanish school – they have a couple of locations, including Palermo Viejo and Recoleta.  They also have pretty much the only white wine in all of Argentina that we really like, and it’s their house wine – San Felipe.  It comes in a funny short, fat bottle, and you can sometimes find it in the grocery store too.
    • Neighborhood: Recoleta, Palermo Viejo, others
    • Cuisine: Pizza and pasta
    • Price: AR80-100 (lunch price; variance based on whether we order wine or not – we highly recommend a bottle of wine for lunch)
    • Best for: Lunch (good fixed menu options)

      Pizza y Espuma Palermo Viejo image

      Location in Palermo Viejo - 2 levels, with plenty of TVs for football (and we think a rooftop deck too)

  • Cumana: This is a Buenos Aires institution that draws tons of locals and tourists alike.  They’re famous for their empanadas and cazuelas (stews/soups), and also happens to be the site of my unfortunate run-in with mondongo.  As such, we love their empanadas and some of their stews, but just be careful what you order.  There’s often a line out the door for this place during the lunch rush or dinnertime, but we’ve had better luck with a late lunch, around 2ish.
    • Neighborhood: Recoleta
    • Cuisine: Traditional Argentine
    • Price: AR100 or less
    • Best for: Lunch, dinner

      Cumana restaurant image

      Cumana (in Recoleta) sometimes has a line down the street of locals and tourists alike waiting to get in

  • La Morada: Not exactly the greatest ambiance, but this is our go-to empanada delivery place.  They have carne suave as well as carne picante (thank god for a little spice, finally!!), as well as some awesome caprese empanadas (we think of these as appetizer empanadas).
    • Neighborhood: Recoleta
    • Cuisine: Empanadas
    • Price: ~AR50 for a dozen (empanadas only, no drinks–usually covers us for 2 dinners)
    • Best for: Delivery (dinner)

      La Morada Buenos Aires image

      After much searching, our favorite empanada place in our neighborhood

  • Miranda: We tried this place for lunch soon after arriving in Buenos Aires on the recommendation of a friend (see our full review here) – good decision!  Every time we’ve gone, this place has been packed with businessmen and trendy Palermo Hollywood-goers (you know, the ones who leave their sunglasses on indoors).  The set lunch options here include an appetizer (try the chorizo or polenta), a main dish (we especially like the lomo sandwich and chicken kebab with tower of grilled vegetables) and drinks (includes house wine- yay!!).  That’s a LOT of really good food for not that much.  We’re guessing dinner’s pretty good too, but we’ve never been since the lunch option is such a good deal.
    • Neighborhood: Palermo Hollywood
    • Cuisine: Parrilla
    • Price: ~AR90 (lunch with wine)
    • Best for: Lunch, dinner

      Miranda parrilla Buenos Aires entrance image

      Only go here if you're hungry and you like meat

  • La Fabrica del Taco: Having come from California, we’re used to Mexican food being plentiful and cheap, and thus ate it around once a week before we came to South America.  Turns out, Mexican is hard to come by here, but this place makes some awesome (and pretty authentic) tacos, as well as good guac and pico de gallo (try saying that with a Buenos Aires accent and not laughing).  Margaritas are expensive (like most mixed drinks in Argentina), so we usually stick with beer or sodas here.  When we get that craving for good Mexican and food with a little heat, this is where we go.  Just be prepared for the kind of creepy collection of Mexican wrestling masks covering the walls . . .
    • Neighborhood: Palermo Soho
    • Cuisine: Mexican
    • Price: ~AR120 (AR12-15/taco, 1-2 should fill you up)
    • Best for: Lunch, dinner

      La Fabrica del Taco Buenos Aires Palermo image

      Just wait until you get inside . . .

  • Cluny: This is our fancy place where we go when we want to pretend like we can still afford the dinners we used to buy when we had paychecks.  It’s a beautiful, elegant space with fabulous service – we’ve been lucky enough to have the same server, Marcelo (and ironically, the same table) every time we’ve been.  It’s been described as “modern Argentine” as well as French, but we just call it delicious.  After trying a number of different things on the menu, our absolute favorite is the mushroom risotto topped with a incredibly flavorful hunk of lamb – best we’ve had anywhere, not just in Argentina.  Extensive (and somewhat expensive) wine list.  Great for a special evening out.
    • Neighborhood: Palermo Soho
    • Cuisine: French/Argentine
    • Price: ~AR300 (includes ~AR100 bottle of wine)
    • Best for: Dinner

      Cluny restaurant Buenos Aires image

      You can sit on the couches, or they have regular tables and a loft upstairs

  • La Salamandra: This is one of our favorite cafes, located in Palermo Soho.  The company is actually a producer of high-end dulce de leche that they sell in their cafe as well as in grocery stores throughout the country – it’s good.  They also make their own fresh mozzarella and use it in lots of their dishes – stuff like grilled vegetable salad, foccacia sandwiches and fresh quiches, definitely not your standard Argentine fare.  And if you order a coffee, they serve it with a ceramic spoon full of their dulce de leche!!
    • Neighborhood: Palermo Soho
    • Cuisine: Cafe, sandwiches, salads
    • Price: AR80 (no alcohol)
    • Best for: Brunch, lunch

      La Salamandra Buenos Aires image

      Be sure to order a coffee after lunch so you can try their fabulous dulce de leche

  • Lo de Mateo: This is another neighborhood parrilla that we stumbled across one afternoon while wandering around Recoleta.  We’ve been for both lunch and dinner, pasta and carne, and our favorite is the pasta lunch menu.  They have an awesome scarparo sauce – a red sauce with various types of onions, a touch of cream and then a bit of pesto in the middle – great with their stuffed pastas.  And the lunch menu includes dessert – their flan is my favorite.
    • Neighborhood: Recoleta/Palermo Viejo (it’s right on the line)
    • Cuisine: Pasta and parrilla
    • Price: AR80 (lunch, no alcohol)
  • Best for: Lunch, dinner
    Lo de Mateo image

    Nothing too fancy, just really good pastas and flan!!

    Any other favorites out there??

We got interviewed by Quitter to Winner!

And you should read it!  :  Consulting Rehab interview on Quitter to Winner

Quitter to Winner is a relatively new interview-based blog dedicated to “providing a resource for those quitting their job for a career break, sabbatical, entrepreneurial venture or new gig.”  There are some very interesting interviews on there providing inspiration for exploring some less conventional paths in life and I have no doubt the site will only grow.

Thanks to Michael at Quitter to Winner for including us!

Trip report: Wine tasting in Mendoza, Argentina

We decided to use Ashley’s visit as an excuse to go wine tasting in Mendoza (the top wine-producing region in Argentina, especially known for its malbecs).  We only had 2 1/2 days there before heading to Santiago, but we really enjoyed it – here’s a quick trip report:

Wine tasting: Choices, choices, choices!

There are several different wine valleys within an hour or so of Mendoza, the closest of which is Lujan de Cuyo.  Wineries aren’t the same as in California, where you can just show up and do a tasting – here you have to make an appt. in order for the guard at the gate to let you in, and you usually have to go on a tour of the winery before you get to the tasting.  As for how to get there, there are a couple of options:

  • Bike to the wineries: Basically rent a bike and cycle around to various wineries.  This is the cheapest option, but not the safest: people have been mugged, and we’ve also heard of traffic accidents since bikers share the road with everybody else.
  • Private driver: Hire somebody to drive you around for the day, but you make all the appointments, so you have to know where you want to go–this is harder than it sounds, there are ~1300 wineries in the area!!
  • Private guide: Same as the above, but the driver makes the appointments and supposedly knows a lot about wine and has contacts at the wineries.  There are a dozen of these on Trip Advisor, all highly recommended (usually by people making their first post), and at least 4 of them are named Javier.
  • Small group tour: Tours arranged by a private company, usually with a max of 6 people per tour.
  • Large group tour: Think tour bus.

We ended up going with the small group tour – we’d heard great things from several friends who had gone, as well as numerous positive reviews on Trip Advisor. We chose Trout and Wine, one of two main companies running such tours from Mendoza, and it was awesome (the other is  Ampora which we also heard good things about)! Our guide was Michelle, an American who studied abroad in Mendoza during college. She was great – very friendly, knew a lot about the area and the wineries and great to spend the day with. It was very cold the day we went, which made the vineyard tours a little less comfortable, but it was still awesome. We visited 4 wineries, including lunch at one:

  • Kaiken: Just started giving tours and tastings about 4 months ago.  This was our first stop of the day and was freezing cold when we started the tour out in the vineyards – seriously, we could see ice on the ground.
    Ashley at Kaiken image

    Cold but beautiful - how often do you get to visit wineries with the snow-capped Andes looming in the background?

    After a tour of the vineyards and facilities, we went to the tasting room to try their two high-end reds. Unfortunately, the tasting room wasn’t much warmer than outside – the wines were too cold to really taste them, so our host suggested we warm them up with our hands . . . not that our hands were any warmer than the wine after half an hour out in the freezing cold! We think the wine was good, but again, it was hard to tell.

  • Sottano: This was our favorite of the day, due at least part in to our awesome host, Diego. He greeted us all with a glass of rose sparkling wine then gave us a quick (~10 min) tour/history of the winery before moving us into the (heated!!!!) tasting room. The tasting room has a glass floor that looks into the barrel room below – very cool. We tasted 4 different wines here, which were all very good, and had a great time chatting with Diego throughout the tasting – very casual, very fun.
Tasting room at Sottano image

Ryan and Ashley in the tasting room at Sottano - note the barrel room below

  • Club Tapiz: We did a 5-course lunch at Club Tapiz in the second floor of the restaurant, overlooking the vineyards.  Wines were paired with each course (and poured generously) – this was a bit less of a tasting (without a lot of description of each wine as it was served) and more just drinking.  Food was not out of this world but definitely good and went well with the wines – we like having steak for lunch.
    Club Tapiz dining room image

    Beautiful dining room at Club Tapiz overlooking the surrounding vineyards

    After lunch, we headed downstairs to do an olive oil tasting (they also have olive trees at the winery), but the olive oil was frozen solid in the tasting room . . . upon discovering it was frozen, they told us that this is the sign of a high-quality olive oil which is either an interesting fun fact, or an impressive bit of improvisational olive oil salesmanship–we are equally appreciative either way.

  • Olive oil tasting at Club Tapiz image

    They eventually found us some olive oil that wasn't frozen to taste

  • Alta Vista: Our last stop of the day, this is a classic winery for tasting in Mendoza.  We did a quick tour of the winery, including seeing the old concrete tanks (something they use just in Mendoza) and the owners’ personal stash.
    Alta Vista owners' cave image

    Hmmm, wonder how we could get a key to that? There were bottles over 50 years old in there!

    Our tasting upstairs was great fun – the host was super friendly and poured great wines (we brought one to Santiago with us, will make sure it’s still good when we haven’t been drinking for 6 hours).  We also tried the Alto wine, their top wine – great way to end the day!

    Alta Vista Alto wine image

    This wine was phenomenal! 95 points means it's important

At most Mendoza wineries, you’re typically expected to go on a tour before the tasting.  We’ve done a number of winery tours (especially while living near Napa and Sonoma) and weren’t really excited about going on a tour at every winery and hearing the exact same thing, but we were pleasantly surprised by our experience in Mendoza.  The tours were very informative and we definitely learned new things – for example, at Kaiken we learned that you can graft branches for one type of grape onto the rootstalk of another in order to shorten the time from planting to production – we saw malbec vines grown from a chardonnay root base (didn’t know you could do that!).

Grafting image

Old chardonnay rootstock grafted to malbec branches - produces malbec grapes faster than planting new vines and waiting for them to mature

The wineries also did a nice job of not all telling us the exact same thing (we suspect this was thanks to Trout & Wine), and we only did a full vineyard tour at one winery, while the others focused on different parts of the production process or showing us what was unique about their wines/facilities.  We definitely came away with new knowledge about the winemaking process.

Overall, we were impressed with our experience with Trout and Wine.  It’s expensive relative to other options (we paid US$125/person during low season; high season rate is $150), but it was worth it.  High-quality transportation (mini-bus), great guide, tastes of reserve/high-end wines and a very customized experience – we were the only people there at every winery we visited.  Also, when you consider the base costs for wine tasting on your own, this wasn’t much more.  Average tasting fees are around US$10 (just for the basic wines, not the higher end ones we tasted with Trout & Wine), and the winery lunches are typically ~US$45, so that’s US$85 for 4 wineries, even before transportation.  And they sent a bottle of wine to our hotel before the tour as well – nice touch!

On day 2, we took a taxi to Clos de Chacras winery which was about 20 minutes away and did a tour/tasting there.  The tour was pretty good, but the tasting was somewhat mediocre (though possibly we had destroyed our palates and livers the previous day).  While it was relatively easy to do a tasting here (just had the hotel call and make a reservation and then hailed a cab), the seemingly lower quality tasting and more generic tour made us appreciate our experience with Trout and Wine all the more.

Where there’s wine, there’s food!

The Mendoza food scene isn’t exactly Buenos Aires, but we did find a few great places to eat.  Dinner the first night was at Azafran – we’d read online that you go into the cellar with the sommelier to choose your wine.  In reality, it wasn’t quite as cool as it sounded, but they do have a wine room in the front of the restaurant (with a window out to the street – wonder how that works for preserving the wine?).  We also went to Francesco, a fancy-ish Italian/pasta place off of Plaza Independencia – really good pasta but expensive for Argentina.  And check out what we walked past on our way to the restaurant:

Welcome to Mendoza sign image

At first we thought this was a massive leftover Christmas decoration hanging over Plaza Independencia, but apparently not. Definitely . . . weird.

We also visited the much-acclaimed Vines of Mendoza wine bar. Lesson 1: not open on Monday (when we tried to go, of course). When we went back on Wed., we were impressed with the wine selection and the knowledge of the bar staff, but annoyed that we couldn’t buy a bottle to share amongst the 3 of us. Apparently, they only sell by the glass and wouldn’t sell us a bottle . . . The place was freezing, and people kept coming in and out of the tasting room every minute or two the whole time we were there, usually leaving the door wide open behind them. Might be better in summer, but we don’t really get all the hype about this place after visiting. They’ve got a good website with info about stuff to do in Mendoza though . . . and they have a good cheese plate.

Where to stay? No easy answer

We learned through planning this trip that Mendoza doesn’t exactly have a plethora of great places to stay that are affordable. The market is roughly divided into super-expensive top end hotels, guesthouses/B&Bs with mediocre reviews, business hotels and hostels. We had originally wanted to stay in a cute B&B, but even the top rated ones on Trip Advisor had some pretty bad (and consistent) reviews.

We decided to stay in the Hotel Aconcagua, a business hotel located about 3 blocks from Plaza Independencia, which was super convenient. We booked a triple room online and they ended up giving us two adjoining rooms, which was great. The rooms were clean and quiet, breakfast was included and the staff was very friendly and helpful.

Hotel Aconcagua room2 image

Nothing fancy but perfectly nice - clean, quiet room and great location ~2 blocks from Plaza Independencia

The only problem we had were the obnoxious children running (yes, literally running) through the lobby while we were downstairs using the wireless. For example, these 6 children ran to and fro through the lobby for a good 2 hours, at one point playing on the luggage dolly and slamming it into a glass dividing wall, at other times jumping over the reception counter to take pens out of the hands of the front desk staff – seriously, we saw this happen. Keep in mind the parents were sitting chatting in a corner of the lobby and made no effort to control or discipline their children at any point over the 2 hours nor were they at all concerned by our very explicit gestures of displeasure. We’ve noticed similar, ahem, behavior, throughout our time in Argentina – have we just had bad luck, or have others noticed this phenomenon?  Anybody have an explanation for what’s going on?

En fin

We definitely recommend Mendoza for wine if it’s in your budget – from what we know thus far, the wine’s better there than in Chile.  We had been considering skipping Mendoza during our time in Argentina since we weren’t impressed with the wine tasting experience in Cafayate, but we’re very glad we did it – the experience is completely different and really worth the trip (and we found it to be unique and worthwhile even compared to our frequent trips to Napa/Sonoma).  There are a bunch of outdoors things to do as well, but we unfortunately weren’t there at the right time of year.  Overall, great trip – we just wish it had been warmer!!

Here’s the full album of pics from our trip if you want to see more: Our Mendoza pictures

Resources

We used several different resources for planning our trip.  If you’re doing the same, these might be useful:

Review of Anuva Wine tasting in Buenos Aires: Do it, you’ll thank us

You don’t have to go all the way to Mendoza to taste great Argentine wines!!!

We’d heard good reviews from friends who’d done tastings of Argentine wines here in Buenos Aires with Anuva Wines and had been meaning to do it for months.  When Ryan’s sister came to visit and we thought we wouldn’t have time to visit Mendoza, we decided to book a tasting with them ($40 per person when we did it).  Due to Ryan’s sister’s obsession with Argentine malbecs, we requested to do a malbec-only tasting, and Sarah from Anuva ordered in a few special wines for us from Mendoza.

Logistics:

Anuva’s tastings used to be held in owner’s home in Las Canitas, but they recently moved them to a trendy new hotel in Palermo Hollywood (the Rendez-voux Hotel) because the neighbors were starting to wonder at all the random people coming to the building every evening and leaving drunk and happy.  We were a little disappointed when we first found out that they’d moved, because we’d planned to go to dinner in one of the many great restaurants in the Las Canitas neighborhood afterwards, but we ended up loving the location in Palermo (and Palermo’s not exactly short on great places to eat).  The hotel looks brand new and is decorated in a cool modern design.  The tasting was held in the the hotel’s lounge/cafe area, with bright orange upholstery – sounds weird, but it worked – see?

Anuva wine tasting, Buenos Aires image

So many glasses, so little time

It might have been strange if hotel guests were using the lounge area, but for our tasting it was just us so worked great.  We arrived at the hotel and were greeted by Sarah, who I’d emailed with beforehand and who was hosting our private tasting.  Sarah had the table beautifully laid with an assortment of Anuva-branded tasting glasses at every seat (we like seeing lots of wine glasses waiting for us . . . means lots of wine).

The wine tasting experience:

We started with a tasting of a sparkling wine (the only non-malbec of the night), paired with a green apple/Roquefort cheese bruschetta (may sound weird, but it was really good!!).  Our next wine was a malbec rose, followed by 4 traditional red malbecs.  It was a great selection of wines – all with their own distinct personalities, all from different boutique Argentine wineries that we had never come across.  The wines were paired with quite a plate of munchies – as I recall, a massive carne empanada, several different cheeses, a cheese and quince-paste spread, several sausages and 2 different types of chocolate – yum.  I didn’t exactly realize they were each meant to be paired with a specific wine so started digging in when Sarah brought them to us . . . oops.  It was really cool when Sarah led us through each wine with its paired food–despite many, many trips to wineries in California (we are lushes) we had never really had a great food pairing experience like this–it really does make a difference.

Our favorite wine of the night was the San Gimignano 2007 Malbec – despite the name, it’s actually located in Mendoza.  It’s possible that Sarah skewed our opinions by telling us this was her favorite before we’d even tasted it . . .  Who cares, it was awesome.

Anuva wine tasting Buenos Aires 2 image

This isn't our picture because we were too tipsy to remember to take one, so we got this one from Anuva. That's the wine we loved on the right!

The company (Anuva wines):

Through the tasting, we peppered Sarah with questions, especially as we had since decided to add in a trip to Mendoza and wanted to know all the right wineries to visit, her favorite restaurants and any other pointers she had.  She was very knowledgeable and at the same time just fun to spend the evening with – we really enjoyed our time with her. At the end of the ~2 hour tasting, we decided to take 2 bottles home with us – Anuva has a cellar there at the hotel, so we walked out the door with our bottles that night.  And – this is awesome – we didn’t have to worry about bringing the right amount of cash as Anuva accepts both Paypal and credit cards – Sarah just billed us for the balance of our tasting and the bottles we took home.  If you haven’t spent much time in Argentina, I can’t tell you how (1) uncommon and (2) appreciated this is!  Anuva also has a business shipping wine to the US, so we bought enough to last us through the rest of our time here, knowing we could get more once we got back to the US (and decent prices too – lots of stuff under US$20).

Anuva wine tasting in Buenos Aires 3  image

The aftermath - a very happy Jen and Ashley with our host, Sarah (right)

The Verdict:

Overall, we’re big fans of the Anuva wine tasting.  We tasted wines from really special, unique wineries (that we didn’t come across during our time in Mendoza – definitely not on the standard tasting tour route).  Their willingness to do a custom malbec-only tasting as well as Sarah’s wine knowledge and personality made this a great evening and money well spent.   We don’t normally post ads for places we’ve reviewed (in fact, we have never done it before), but we really liked this, so if you’re going to do the tasting with Anuva, book it through us and help us fund our South American wine research – thanks!!

Bottom Line: Argentina makes some of the best wines in the world, so if you’re coming to Buenos Aires and you like wine even a little bit, it would be crazy not to do a tasting with Anuva!  And when you do, please remember to click through from this ad–that way, we can avoid getting jobs just a little longer 🙂  Enjoy!!

Avuna private wine tasting Buenos Aires booking image

Click here to book with Anuva!

p.s.  Anyone that does a tasting with them, please let us know what you think!

p.p.s  For those of you not planning to be in Buenos Aires any time soon; Anuva distributes wine in the US as well.  Click on the link above and you can see what they have on offer–everything they have is hand picked, great Argentine wine and for the most part quite affordable.  Some of you have asked what Argentine wines to try at home–buy a few through Anuva or join their wine club and we’re sure you’ll be quite pleased;  maybe start with the San Gimignano 2007 Malbec, it’s awesome)  We will definitely be buying wine from them after we go back to the US.