Rant

One of the things that I can't STAND about Chile is the fact that everyone and their dog smokes here. Inside, outside - i swear they'd smoke on a treadmill. The stench is so overbearing- especially in confined places...and with so many ppl doing it, there's no way to avoid it, I'm constantly surrounded by it & I'm sick of having smoke being blown right in my face ( a downside of being tall in a land of short people- when they blow their smoke "up", it's right into my nostrils! ) In Japan people smoked, but I swear it wasn't as bad as it is here... I don't know if the filters are different there or what- the boys would all chain-smoke and it never bothered me as much as it does here. I googled it, and you haven't been able to smoke indoors in CA for 15 years now... I never realized what a blessing that law was until now.

SECOND thing: how "unsafe" it is at night here (esp for females). After leaving the club for Val's bday, I was initially planning on just walking home, since it is literally only like 10 minutes from my apt. I know this was probably kind of dumb, but I hate feeling limited/restricted solely because I'm female...However, I got a little turned around, and asked one of the people who watch over the cars on the street (uniformed, walkie talkies, another 'watcher' 10 feet from us) to point me in the right direction. I was in a really well lit area, and there were lots of cars passing etc, so I felt safe enough. The guy basically told me there was no way in hell that he was going to let me walk home- that it's not safe at all. He would get me a taxi, and to just wait. I figured since I was all turned around, and not exactly sure where I was in the maze of streets in Bellavista, that that was probably best. It took awhile for an available taxi to drive by and so I waited on the corner. There was a car parked with 3 girls & a guy in it maybe 5 feet from where I was, and after awhile, one of the girls gets out and starts talking to me, asking me if i needed a ride or anything- that it wasn't safe for me to be standing out there alone. (for the record- i wasn't alone..there were the street attendents & I wasn't drunk so I was plenty aware of my surroundings) Her other girl friends eventually joined her, and they invited me to join them at a party they were going to if i wanted. They were super nice, and genuinely concerned that I was out there 'sola'. I told them I was just waiting for a taxi, and they were pretty adamant that they should take me, because apparently taxis at night 'sola' are unsafe too- "muy peligroso"... These girls were really sweet, and kept saying that they understood if i didn't want to go with them because they were strangers (not really the case- I was just ready to go home & didn't want to be around any more smoke! All 4 of them were smoking...) After insisting that this was what i was going to do, they offered to walk with me to the corner where more taxis were passing so that I could flag one down since the street we were on was kind of smaller. However, just then an empty taxi passed, we all yelled at it, and the street guy told the driver where I was going and I was off. The taxi was perfectly safe- the guy was nice, and it was cheap.

It drives me nuts that as a woman, my freedom has been stripped or at the very least, severely compromised like this. You can't go out at night alone - you need to have guys with you, or be in a group of 3 or more. Well, all of my guy friends live no where near me, and if your friends bail last minute, or you want to go home early- you're screwed. I realize that not everywhere is going to be as safe as it was in Japan, but even in the US, it's not like this (sure certain areas are worse than others, but still...) There is just so much paranoia about females going out/home alone, it's crazy. I know I need to adjust to it and heed/abide by what, literally, everyone has said, but it's hard- it goes against my nature. I've always been so independent & it just sucks being restricted like this.