living la vita borghese

In our beloved southern hemisphere, a hint of spring is beginning to knock out the doors of our almost frozen lifes after a horrid winter, with its warm life-enhancing sunrays. The national anniversary, known as "fiestas patrias" is the official entrance to a new 2009 life cycle. This year there will be 4 days for celebrating: sept.18th, 19th, 20th and 21th. This is not comparable with patriotic July 4th solemnity; because September 18th in Chile is more a pedestrian celebration of excesses that remembers all of us of our past as country peasants with no other horizon in mind that drinking like a fish, eating chilean-version BBQ ("asado") until death, and dancing drum beat-filled Colombian Cumbia, which had became Chilean national dance by adoption. Chilean national dance "La Cueca" is soooo complex and elegant (as happens with Argentinian Tango) just a very few know how to dance it properly. Gay Boomtown version of "El Dieciocho" (The eighteenth, the national Chilean anniversary) obviously excludes bloody Chilean-style BBQ, because many of its socialites are PETA-friendly and "don`t eat corpses". They exclude, for equally obvious reasons, dancing Colombian "Cumbia", considered too popular and ordinary. They would rather spent patriotic anniversary listening a posh and smooth version of ambience techno, eating sushi with slightly non-anorexic friends at their apartment terraces, and drinking vodka-berries instead of more ordinary "Chicha", (a kind of grape cider which is customary at these feasts.) A rather more patriotic very few will opt for a renovated version of classic "empanada" (a mixture of chopped meat and onions inside a crust of baked dough) replacing the smelly meaty mix for delicatesse shrimp and Gruyère cheese.