The first Latino perspective...

... comes to us from Argentina, which is a Spanish speaking country, so it makes sense. Because that's what Latino means, countries where people are speaking a Romanche or other.

The process of selecting real estate agents, or any other professional service provider in Argentina is gravely encumbered by the twin facts that a) there's very many of them and b) people here live in a sort of mental lala-land where being polite and sticking to the "social script" is adequate substitution for delivering a service. If you live up further north on this same continent you're probably familiar with the concept. So yes there are more sane providers of anything here than in the US, where there's generally only a couple and they're both insane. However, there's also a metric shitton of derps completely lost adrift with no business whatsoever.ⁱ

As part of these difficulties, you send a number of prospective agents a very clear specification (so and so item, to be had through a so and so contract by so and so entity for so and so purpose) and you receive questionsⁱⁱ!

Such as :

Respecto a su consulta departamento o casa en alquiler por tres años necesitamos hacerle las siguientes preguntas 1- cuales son las zonas que le interesan? 2- cuales son los valores que maneja en materia de alquiler, conexpensas incluidas.?

This translates to English as

Hello this is real estate dog. Please say which is center of town in town where I work - I do not know only work here. Please say if we are poor, I have no other way of finding out - it magazines it not say.

So far, I'm still willing to oblige :

San Telmo, Monserrat, San Nicolás, Recoleta, Retiro son los mejores, pero para una buena oferta que podrían considerar cualquier ubicación dentro de la ciudad - excluyendo Palermo, Belgrano.

En cuanto al presupuesto, sólo tener en cuenta que Argentina es un país pobre habitado por gente pobre y cotize por consiguiente.

The list of areas is good, feel free to use it yourself.

Palermo is excluded because it's where the idiot Californians have immigrated, and nobody wants to live with idiot Californians. The place even looks it, the same insufferable socialist atmosphere anywhere. For Aedification, I will recount two misadventures. First, a supposedly very good Indian restaurant. We go there (four people), plenty of empty seats, I proceed to a table (which I always do - fuck you, you don't seat me, get lost) everyone loses it because omaygerd "you hafta wait to be seated".

So I wait for maybe thirty seconds while a bunch of derps in uniform derp about with no clear purpose - perhaps they were just retarded, and didn't understand what they have to do, or perhaps they were trying, in their own servile manner, to make a tortured point about who's above who and who's important and who's there to serve in this American-style "restaurant"ⁱⁱⁱ.

Second, a pretentious nobody-knows-what but it calls itself "boulangerie". I sit down, waiting for a friend. I'm early. I read my newspaper. Friend shows up before the servant girl shows up, so of course we leave. Imagine this, a place with tables but without servants. That's Palermo in a sentence, except if I wanted to suffer in the socialist hell I'd go to San Francisco rather than Palermo, Buenos Aires.

Belgrano is excluded because it's where all the wanna-be Cali derps emigrated, and it looks essentially like Inglewood.

The last paragraph says "As to the budget, remember that Argentina is a poor country inhabited by poor people, and quote as such." This would appear the first time the poor people inhabiting this poor country encountered the concept of their own poverty face to face. At least judging by some of the responses, which I hurry to reproduce below.

Por otro lado, Argentina no es un pais pobre. Es un pais muy rico en recursos naturales y humanos. Simplemente esta muy mal administrado.
Lamento mucho tener esa imagen ante el mundo pero no puedo cotizar ningun
departamento en base a la imagen que se tiene de nuestro pais.

So you see, someone that has a bunch of resources that they run into a wall is not properly said to be poor. They were merely poorly managed. Like you know, the very smart kid that starts doing speed in highschool and dies a decade later, alone, dirty, on some dumpsters he doesn't even own. He's not poor, he's just... badly managed. The average famished streetwalker is not so much poor... she's just malnourished.

The country that had to beg the absurd, entirely new levels in special pleading before the courts not even a year ago, is a) surprised at the image it has in the world and b) not willing to play anymore. You know ? Because that's totally going to make a difference, and they can't ever become Venezuela, because only Venezuela could ever be Venezuela. What they are is a matter of their abstract "destiny", it's really the Real Them that's at stake, and it's my job (and the rest of the world's) to make sure they are treated and regarded according to you know, what they would like. This is how it works.

In lala-land.

Moving on :

Con todo el respeto q me merece vuestra persona la Republica Argentina no es un pais pobre ya que se ubica dentro de las 20 naciones mas ricas de la tierra y tampoco tiene gente pobre ya que cuenta con un pbi x habitante delorden delos 9000 dolares x habitante.

Dentro de America Latina somos la tercer economia detras de Brasil y Mexico, y de toda America la quinta detras de Usa Brasil Canada y Mexico. Tenemos 5 premios nobeles , tres de ciencias duras, dos de paz, un indice de alfabetizacion cercano al 95 % de la poblacion 3 millones de km2 de superficie y somos el principal exportador de aceite de soja de pellet de soja y uno de los principales productores de alimentos del mundo.

A su vez tenemos 3 centrales nucleares 5 satelites en orbita 25000 km de vias ferreas y relaciones pacificas con todo el mundo.

Tenemos mas de 1.000.000 de extranjeros viviendo en el pais q disfrutan de salud y educacion gratuita. 50 millones de lineas de celulares.

Y la lista sigue.

Usted es de ascendencia rumana?
De Valaquia Moldavia Transilvania Dobrudja Besarabia
De cual ciudad Bucarest Ploesti Boldesti Timisoara ?
Ex reino creado a fines siglo 19 con una dinastia de origen aleman
El ultimo rey fue Miguel hijo de Carol nieto de Fernando y la reina Maria
nieta de la reina Victoria de Inglaterra x ende primo de la actual reuna
Elizabeth de UK y de varios reyes y ex reyes europeos.
Sufrieron la dictadura de Ceausecu x 30 años y antes la dictadura del
Mariscal Antonescu
Tuvieron un lider q revonstruyo la gran Rumania Bratiaunu
Tambien a Horia Simma y Magda Lupescu personas no tan gratas.
Un pais supuestamente pobre tiene gente muy ignorante viviendo y
pregunta puede albergar a gente ejemplo como yo que no soy ignorante?

respectively

Because poverty and ignorance is the same thing, and knowing words is almost just as good as having money, not to mention that being able to speak and being able to be useful or productive are directly identical. Fancy that!

As a side note : Romanians know they are poor. Well, I suppose that's not exactly the difference, so do the Argentines, otherwise I wouldn't be getting all this wounded narcissism. Let's retry : Romanians freely admit that they are poor! Because... gues what ? They are!

The only difference is that Romanians were dirt poor twenty years ago (which they also freely admitted), and are merely poor now. Part of the reason for that change, from a few hundred to a few thousand GNP per capita, is directly related to said honesty. The other part of the reason, of course, is related to the fact that my yearly rent for an average detached house in the suburbs of Timisoara (500 sqm on two levels, fully furnished, plus that much garden) was about 22`000 RON, which works to about 6`500 dollars.

For comparison, you should see the 155`000 dollars derps here hope to get in the sale of a 80 sqm apartment, 10-20 miles from downtown. And all the agents admit that "nothing's sold for a year, and nothing's selling for another year". And all the "owners" in this "rich" country in their mind wait for better times. And starve by degrees, and wait.

Time to quote Mr. Wallace :

The night of the fight, you may feel a slight sting. That's pride fucking with you. Fuck pride. Pride only hurts, it never helps.

I originally thought, along with my local network, that the problem of this country is poor management. How does that happen with such regularity, one is bound to ask themselves. I didn't know.

I meanwhile figured it out. Argentina has exactly the management it deserves - it's not just the president, and it won't be fixed by beheading the president. It's everyone, the entire profession of management in this country, whether what's being managed is a schoolkid's lunchbox or the modest affairs of a real estate holder, each and every all of them are incredibly inept through this particular approach to reality as if it were lala-land, and if you wish for something hard enough and clench your fists and teeth hard enough it's going to magically materialize, and Argentina will be what every god fearing, country loving Argentine wishes it to be.

Sadly, the only place that path leads is Venezuela, but who is to be had that would listen ? Not being "an ignorant" is a little like "not being an empty hard drive". Sure, there's something there. But if what you've installed is Windows, then you're really worse off than had you preserved the seal intact.

The second Latino perspective...

... comes to us from Romania, as it happens, which is where the closest thing to Latin is currently being spoken.

I have an article, you see, published three years ago, titled Cum se suge pula - ghid pentru juma' de sex oral, which is to say "how is the cock sucked - a guide for half of oral sex". This article has been the second most read article on my site ever since, which leads they in the know to comments such as

Me I wonder if that's legit.^iv
Her lol. It does smack a bit of bad porno copywriting stuff, but after all, the basis for that is stream of consciousness sexuality in the first place, so... prolly good odds.

(after a while)

Her hahaha. What if all the chicks in Ro have eventually read it (cause srsly) and in time Ro men get like the best head on the planet and take ovar the world!

The comments in question translate to English as :

You don't even have to like the taste, in the end the man's the man, and if he wants to come in your mouth he comes in your mouth, if he wants to do it on your face he does it on your face. It's that simple. That's what my [boy]friend did to me a while back and since then I like it^v, I enjoy satisfying him I think any woman enjoys satisfying her partner^vi but I didn't like the smell. But if that's what he wanted that's what happened, in the end he's a man not a broad^vii to put up with... anyway since then I like it and every time I suck him off he covers my face and I love it. He also likes to come on skirts, I don't know why but the skirt turns him on, when he eats me out I always wear skirts he says it's hotter :))

Honestly, someone was saying there like "show him that you love him by doing it"... any woman loves doing it, let's be honest, any woman loves satisfying her partner, playing with his penis. Ideally you're on your knees before him to show obedience because after all he's the man and so he's the boss but there's also the variant where you lay out on a bed with your head hanging over and he sticks his penis in your mouth there he has the control, it sucks if he puts it in all the way because you choke but it is very pleasant. I tried it and I liked it, when he put it all the way in his balls were on my nose, I could smell them.

And with that, directly to our

Conclusion

There is a right way and there is a wrong way to do things. To quote a (meanwhile deleted) Greenspun article :

When I explained the problems with the product and the financials, Kaiser said "Isn't it possible that this is just your opinion, that Allen and Chip would see it differently?"

Relativism. It was impressive in a way to see Protagoras's sophism alive and well after 2500 years. But the "all points of view are equally valid and supported only by someone's opinion" ignores the fact that it is easy to measure the correctness of business beliefs: some people are losing money and some are making money; some companies are gaining market share while others are losing market share.

We gave up on the idea of finding any help from the Greylock corner.

So :

I. Romania went from the Congo to Austria in a few short decades.

II. Start sucking cock, Argentina. Start sucking cock immediatelly, and eagerly, for there's a lot of space empty at the Congo level.

1. A fine example in this line would be something like AGEO Propiedades (Echeverría 1515, info@ageopropiedades.com.ar ; 4782-6016).

   To hear them tell it, you're dealing with "una empresa líder en el mercado inmobiliario con más de 50 años en el rubro dedicándose a asesorar en la compra-venta de alquileres y desarrollo de Proyectos Edilicios" (ie, a market leader with 50 years' experience, dedicated to the sale, rental and development of Aedilic Projects).

   Practice's however a lot more prosaic than that lofty Edilicios. They rent offices they can't afford in a building they can't afford - because pretense before competence! "They" actually consist entirely of two agents : an ex trophy blondie past the age where tits start to sag and the trophy seekers move on, and her ex-playboy, now perceptibly creaky at the seams boyfriend. He carefully tans, notwithstanding that this brings out the liver spots, and stubbornly follows the latest Italian fashions, as deduced from the mags of the 90s. She tries her best to cover with creams and workouts the obvious observation that if Playboy Magazine wasn't busting the door down to get at her in 1996, it certainly isn't going to do it today. Or tomorrow. Or the day after tomorrow. Therein described - the totality of their contribution to the world.

   They don't know what they're doing, consequently have exactly no custom outside of the occasional noob (yours truly), and consequently have not two empanadas to rub together any given day. (A note about empanadas : they're a thin bread stuffed with meat, sometimes sweetened. They are inexpensive and ubiquitous. If you sit a gal down for a snack, two cups of coffee will run you say 50 pesos (about four dollars), but then four empanadas (about a pound of food) will run you about 40. And if something's a little more, it'll be the coffee not the food. It's quite disconcerting for someone used - like most everyone in the civilised world - with coffee as the minimum unit of socialised consumption. Here, it plays more the role of the cocktail, I guess.)

   So desperate are these people, that they actually proceed to steal 500 (five hundred) pesos from me - I suppose because it's the first sum of pesos in hundreds that they've seen this year. I am prosecuting the matter, obviously, but it is recounted here in the interest of furthering understanding of the Argentine mental lala-land. You think the US citizen is ridiculous, with his overdrawn credit cards and McHouse ? Come to Argentina, there's thousands of people here who pretend like they're from the magazines but haven't seen cash of any description any time the past week. [↩]

2. To be clear : asking questions in this context is the sure mark of not having completed highschool, something no diploma or equivalency certificate could ever wash.

   We're not dating, we're engaging in commerce, it's not a Valentine's day card, it's a fucking tender.

   To understand each other : if you run a widget sales unit attached to a widget factory which produces #1, #2 and #3 widgets in red and black colors, and you receive a request for offers on #2 widgets, you are not at liberty to respond by inquiring whether red or black. You are not at liberty to respond by inquiring anything, just like you are not at liberty to respond by sending love letters or newspaper clippings from 1985 editions of Idiots Illustrated.

   The only thing you may respond with is... a price quote! So you quote the cheapest, and if the quote is approved you deliver the cheapest. At which point the beneficiary is not allowed to complain about the color - had they cared, they should have put the specification in the request!

   This and only this is how business works. If you thought different you're stupid, and if your "business" works any other way you're not actually in business. [↩]

3. No, restaurant does not mean, "where you eat". A restaurant is a place where one's restored. If you piss me off you've failed at being a restaurant. Even if you have food. And no, once you piss a customer off, your food can no longer be good. [↩]
4. Discussing the comments below. [↩]
5. Education. It's what it is. [↩]
6. Incidentally, Ballas has a good point about all this. Not just the

   You know what they do get? They get to be valued by work, and in gratitude they are going to the front lines to fight for the media company's right to pay them less.

   he goes into a lot more detail in the discussion of child pix :

   Third question: what are the consequences of Randi's utopian fantasy of your job valuing you as an individual for everyone else at work?
   She believes her authentic self, via Facebook, should be accepted everywhere, home and work, so the suits should just shut their greed vacuums and embrace her baby pictures, her individuality-- after all, that's why they hired her, right?
   That sounds laudable-- except that she's lying. Ok, I have to pretend not to be sickened by her baby pictures, will she Like me live-posting My Summertime Threesomes? Huh. So now individuality has an asterisk: since Facebook should be on at work, everyone's Facebook should be nonthreatening, not mean, safe-- work appropriate.
   "Well, stupid, just don't put naked pics on Facebook." Fair enough, but whereas before it was my poorly thought out choice, now it is not allowed by work.
   "Well, Facebook shouldn't be on at work." Duh, of course it won't be on at work, no company would allow Facebook to be on at work, there's work to be done. So "ok at work" really means "if work saw it" and "Facebook" really means "the internet."

   That's not exactly the correct framework. What's really happening with the "bring your sexuality to work (if you're a woman)" trend is that the state still wants to be everywhere and do everything, and it has meanwhile figured out that women are biologically wired to satisfy. Because they have to be. So wouldn't it then be great (for the state) if that same force that makes Andrea from Romania go "well the man is the man, and his will controls, and what he likes I like" instead simply read "well the state is the state, and it rules, and its will I like" ? It would, wouldn't it. So what's required ? O, just a little "make room for female sexuality in the used-to-be male-oriented IBM" ? A few baby pictures and stuff like that ? Fine. And a little prosecuting of "trolls", which are exactly those asshole who can get in the way of this momentuous change,

   Keeping in mind that actual stalking has never been dealt with in any significant way ever, the desire of a few female writers to curb online anonymity wouldn't be enough to get an @ mention, except that this happens to coincide with what the media wants, and now we have the two vectors summing to form a public health crisis. "Cyberbullying is a huge problem!" Yes, but not because it is hurtful, HA! no one cares about your feelings-- but because criticism makes women want to be more private-- and the privacy of the women is bad. The women have to be online, they do most of the clicking and receive most of the clicks. Anonymous cyberbullying is a barrier to increasing consumption, it's gotta go.

   Yes, it is a barrier alright, by activating the coy reflex it prevents women from you know, embracing cold plastic seats with their vulva. But the purpose is not "to increase consumption", vaguely like that. The purpose is simply to make the state matter more, because it kinda already ate up all the old ones and it's either some more stuff to eat or the end. And you don't want to end it, do you now. That's sedition! [↩]

7. The Romanian "muiere" comes from Latin (and is cognate with the Spanish mujer). The apparent similarity with muie (oral sex) is without ethymological basis. It is used either neutrally or as a mild derrogative for females, in the exact manner it is used here : to signify that women are subservient to men in social relations. [↩]