Free Chile Pages & Chile List ads for all registered users!       Log In
Day 274 of 1827: Meetup Misfires

Day 274 of 1827: Meetup Misfires

This morning, I bought a muffin at OK Market for breakfast.  The cost was 890 pesos.  I tried to give the cashier 1400 pesos, but she would only take my 1000 peso bill because she couldn’t figure out the point of the other 400.

I did what I could to educate her, but either she wasn’t interested in learning this morning, or else my Spanish was not good enough to convey the message I was trying to get across.

As I left, I wondered if she had any career aspirations.

Maybe she’s content being a cashier at a convenience store and doesn’t mind the low pay in exchange for not having to do basic math.

Maybe one day she will decide she wants to do something more with her life, and she’ll take the necessary steps to educate herself and increase her value to prospective employers.

Maybe one day she’ll come up with an amazing business idea, move to Thailand and hire somebody to do arithmetic for her.

Maybe one day she’ll discover that there’s a calculator built into the cash register.

After work (another productive day at Conectas!), I met up with my New Zealand bound friend and a couple of her friends.  They were going to a Spanglish meetup and had invited me to come with them.

Being on a Spanish high from last night, I was super excited to join them, and I rushed out to the El Golf Metro station to join them.

Or was that the Pedro de Valdivia station?

One phone call later (in Spanish!), and we finally found each other.

We were actually supposed to go to the Manuel Montt station.

Finally, we got to the Shamrock Bar where the event was being held… and the place was packed!  There was barely any room to stand, let alone find a table to sit at.  We asked the organizer of the meetup, and he indicated that there would be a few people leaving at the end of the current iteration (a popular way to organize polyglot meetups is to switch languages every 20 minutes or so).

Rather than wait around, we decided to move on to a different event.  In Bellavista.  And we decided to walk there.

Okay… well, that gives us about 40 minutes to practice Spanish.  Our group consisted of my Chilean friend, a German traveler and 2 guys from the US (including me), and we were all fluent enough in Spanish to keep a conversation going the whole time.

hehehe I’m talking in Spanish!  *squeeee!*

This event (which I later discovered was organized by CouchSurfing) was being held at a place called Bar Santería.  There must have been at least 50 people there from all over the world.

And I discovered that I had very little in common with anybody I talked with.  At first I thought this was because there’s a huge difference between travelling and living abroad, and I just didn’t have enough of a common perspective with these people to form connections.

But the more I think about it, the more I question whether that had anything to do with it.

I’ve had lots of problems with meetups since I arrived in Santiago.  In the past, I just assumed I was having difficulty because I was showing up without knowing anybody at the event… but arriving with friends didn’t help this time, either.

Maybe it’s not just a matter of knowing people when I go to meetups or finding the right “category” of meetup — I think I just have to accept that the “large group” format is not the way I do things.

When I look at my work life, everything I do is through relationships and one-on-one communication.  I find clients through my contacts, I find service providers by being referred, I keep up with industry news by talking with my peers… I never go to conventions or entrepreneur meetups or anything like that.

And come to think of it… why wouldn’t my social life work the same way?

So, no more meetups for me.  At least now if someone were to ask, I’d be able to tell them why.

Secrets!
Locks attached to the bridge over the Mapocho River near Bellavista.
I wonder if these were always here, or if they only started appearing after Now You See Me premiered in Santiago.

Leave a Reply