Since I’ve come to Buenos Aires, I’ve had a few different living situations. I’ve stayed in a corporate hotel (which I don’t recommend) in Recoleta, in a friendly bed & breakfast in Boedo, in an apartment by myself in Palermo Soho, and with roommates in Monsterrat and San Telmo. Now I’m back on my own, this time in Las Cañitas (which is phenomenal).

Yesterday, I mentioned that the buses in this city run all night, a fact I discovered during my two-week-long stay in Montserrat. My apartment was on a street called Santiago del Estero, a block and a half away from Avenida de Mayo (which leads to the building that houses the Argentine Congress), and three or four blocks away from Avenida 9 de Julio (one of the widest streets in the world, in the middle of which you will find a miniature Washington Monument.)

The place was cheap, the building seemed nice, and my two roommates – a 33-year-old British woman in love with Argentina and a 24-year-old Australian man traveling the world in search of ideas for his next invention (though he would never reveal any of his previous ideas) – were welcoming.

But the sound of passing buses literally shook my room day and night. A can of Coke left on my nightstand for more than ten minutes would have exploded for sure if you opened it too soon after picking it up.

The speakers on my computer weren’t up to the job of drowning out the sounds of the street, and it seemed rude to be wearing headphones whenever I stayed inside.

I did have one blank CD, though, and we did have a stereo (without an auxiliary input). In retrospect, it might have been worth the few pesos it would have cost to buy a few more blank discs, but I never got around to it, and the songs listed below were played so often over the course of those two weeks that I’ll probably never play any of them on purpose again.

So I pass them on to you! They work really well for blocking out unpleasant noise, and, unlike just about anything else in life, work a lot better if used in moderation.

Like my last playlist, the only song not on the iMix is a mashup by The Hood Internet, and is linked to a free download. It’s replaced on the iMix by the original versions of the two songs that were mashed together.

1. “The Best of What’s Around” by Dave Matthews Band
2. “New York, New York” by Ryan Adams
3. “American Girls” by Counting Crows
4. “A Murder of One” by Counting Crows
5. “Summer of ‘69″ by Bryan Adams
6. “You Might Think” by The Cars
7. “Oh Yoko!” by John Lennon
8. “Two Points for Honesty” by Guster
9. “Beat It” (feat. John Mayer) by Fall Out Boy
10. “Lyric” by Zwan
11. “Hands of Time” by Groove Armada
12. “Feel Good Inc.” by Gorillaz
13. “Tambourine Reckoning” - Eve (feat. Swizz Beats) vs. Radiohead by The Hood Internet
14. “Paper Planes” by M.I.A.
15. “Stop and Stare” by OneRepublic
16. “All These Things That I’ve Done” by The Killers
17. “Kids” by MGMT
18. “Breathe Me” (Mylo Remix) by Sia
19. “What You Got” (feat. Akon) by Colby O’Donis

Buenos Aires is not, as far as I know, known for its great Chinese food. However, if you happen to be in the Las Cañitas neighborhood (which is where all the cool kids, including me, live), there’s a take-out only place called Min-Min which makes a mean chao mi fen con verduras (vegetable chow mei fun - like lo mein, but with very thin rice noodles). There are two nearly identical locations: one at Migueletes 623 and one at Olleros 1767. (There’s also a different, nice-looking Chinese place on Maure, but I haven’t tried that one yet - I’ll let you know when I do.)

Speaking of good Chinese takeout, if you happen to be in Miami, Florida, Kim’s Chinese Restaurant in South Beach (at 1245 Lincoln Road) is the best you’ll find, and it’s not bad at all. The only thing they don’t do very well is General Tso’s Chicken.

This leads me to my final recommendation of the morning: if you want the best General Tso’s Chicken in America (and, in all likelihood, all of the Americas) you have to go to New York, a fact that surely comes as no surprise. The place from which you have to order, though, may surprise you quite a bit. It’s called Wu Liang Ye (at 215 East 86th Street, between 2nd and 3rd Avenues; there are also locations in midtown on Lexington Avenue and on West 48th Street - but I’ve never been to either of them), and it looks like a typical Manhattan Chinese place, which it pretty much is. Except for the all-white meat General Tso’s.

To get the best version, you can’t simply order the General Tso’s Chicken. You have to specifically ask for it with all white meat, and they’ll do it for you, no questions asked. The difference is striking, and I expect thank-you notes from the people who take my advice on this one. I mean, I’m telling you about life-changing General Tso’s here.

Public transportation in Buenos Aires is great. You don’t need a car at all - you can get pretty much anywhere in the city by bus or Subte (or bike or foot - but I haven’t seen that many bikes).

The buses cover a lot more ground than the Subte does, and they run all night, whereas the Subte usually stops running at around 10:30. (Remember that when you consider renting an apartment near a major bus route. Any realtor who tells you that the “buses stop running at 8PM” is a lying scumbag. Discovered that little nugget the hard way. And always be on the lookout for lying scumbag realtors. That goes for any city in the world.)

The only thing is, the bus guide, called the Guia “T”, can be pretty confusing to use, especially if you’re just learning Spanish*. You can buy one at almost any magazine stand, or, if you prefer, from some guy standing on a busy street corner or walking up and down a Subte car. The book goes for about 5 pesos (AR$5.00) for the pocket version, which is all you’ll ever need.

I had planned to post a step-by-step guide to using the Guia “T” here, mainly because I myself needed someone to show me how to use it when I first arrived. However, I just found this two-minute-long video produced by Lauren Saffa that clearly explains everything you need to know.

When you’re near a computer, Como Viajo (also mentioned in Lauren’s video) is even better. Click ¿Que Me Tomo?, type in where you are and where you want to go, and it’ll tell you which bus to take, where to pick it up, and where to get off.

And now, whenever you visit this tremendous city, you’ll have no excuse for getting lost!

*The Argentines don’t call their language “Spanish”, they call it “Castellano” [pronounced kass-tay-SHAH-no]. Just so you know.

UPDATE: Watching the video again, it occurred to me that it was recorded in 2007. I’m pretty sure the minimum price for a bus-ride is now 90 centavos, not 75, and, shortly, it’ll be going up to $1.10 (which is still incredibly cheap!).

At the end of May, one of my best friends got married, and at his wedding I learned that he had become a vegetarian. Actually, he had told me this about a year earlier, but since he lived in Washington, DC and I lived in Miami, I had kind of forgotten, and I didn’t really believe him until I saw him turn away the surf and turf – which was excellent – at his own wedding dinner.

The man became a vegetarian as a result of his becoming a doctor. Apparently there were things he learned in med school that convinced him that meat-free was the way to go. Plus, he’s always been a dog person, which I believe had some bearing on his decision as well.

At around the same time as the wedding, my sister got a new baby dachshund. Her (the dog’s) name is Madison:

The pup’s got personality, and is even more adorable in real life, if you can believe it. So I grew kind of attached to little Madison.

Now, obviously, I would never eat a dog, and I would flip out in a major way if anyone I knew told me that he or she had just eaten dog for dinner last night. But this got me thinking: cows, pigs, and most other animals have personalities, too. People give them names, keep them as pets, take them to the vet, talk to them in baby-talk voices, and all that.

I ate them. Regularly. In huge quantities.

You can see where I’m going with this. Like countless nine-year-olds who get their first dog, cat, or hamster, I felt like a criminal for eating animals, who, had they been a little luckier, could have lived happy lives as people’s pets. Also, I had the expert advice of a close friend who was (and is still) walking the vegetarian walk. So I, too, decided to become a vegetarian.

Unfortunately, about a month after I made this decision (and I had stuck to it for the whole month!), I moved to Buenos Aires.

This is a place where, by my estimate, 90% of the restaurants are steakhouses. So I caved. Over the past few months, I’ve eaten an obscene amount of steak (more than at any previous point in my life). The best was at Cabaña Las Lilas in Puerto Madero.

(You don’t have to my word for it, though, check out this write-up by the New York Times from 2006, part of a piece called “Meals Worth the Price of a Plane Ticket” – pay no attention to the prices, however. Because Argentina’s continuing inflation problem, everything has gotten dramatically more expensive, on the order of 2 - 3X, since the review was written.)

Las Lilas provided perhaps the best meal I’ve ever eaten in my life. No joke. I had the “lomo” (beef tenderloin), but I would imagine that everything else there is pretty spectacular, too.

People have said that the restaurant is touristy, overrated, and overpriced. Touristy, maybe (I managed to find it, after all), but it is, without question, rated appropriately, and it would be well worth a visit at twice the price (which it almost certainly will be by this time next year).

Buenos Aires is also a place in which supermarkets sell a 12 oz. cut of Angus beef for the same price as a cup of Ramen noodles (AR$5.00 or about US$1.55; you can check the current exchange rate here).

If you’re living here, and you do decide to go the supermarket route, I can recommend no better recipe than Patent and the Pantry’s Balsamic Steaks. I’ve made them like five times since I’ve been here. The taste-to-effort ratio on this recipe is ridiculously high. Virtually no effort for a fantastic meal. When you’re finished cooking, your plate will look like this:

(That’s not my picture, it’s Gwendolyn Richards’, but the plate really will look like that. Mine did. If this woman hasn’t already published a cookbook, she really should.)

The bad news is that these recommendations - of a steakhouse and an easy, delicious recipe for cooking steak - come with a surprise ending. That picture of Madison has gotten to me again, and I am trying to be healthier. I’m giving vegetarianism another shot. That’s right. I’m going to do it incrementally this time. Red meat will be the first thing to go.

I just can’t look at pictures like this one:

without thinking that somewhere, someone thinks that it would be perfectly normal to kill poor little Madison and eat her, and that I might be doing the same thing to an animal that’s just like someone else’s loving, loyal pet.

But I don’t mean to stop you from enjoying the recommendations I’ve just provided. I’m serious. Go ahead. Do whatever you want.