10 Things That Will Make You Say "FML" in Buenos Aires

3. The drizzle you told yourself you’d beat on your way home explodes into a full-blown biblical deluge.

You swear you see pigeons line up two by two as you swim home.

4. The morning after said tropical storm (see above), you step on that one loose tile on Santa Fe that projectile vomits a shocking quantity of muddied water onto the lower half of your leg.

Who the hell thinks to tile sidewalks, anyway? Now you have to go all the way back home and change or smell like sewage all day.

5. In a bid to go native, you’ve bought your first pair of 1970s-revival platform shoes only to have the heel unceremoniously fall off your first night out.

A fine example of Argentine-made quality right there, baby. Your hobble home looks like a forward-moving Stairmaster routine.

6. It’s a billion degrees in January and the power goes out.

Disgusted, you hurl the small fan you’d hereto lovingly clutched to your chest across the room of your Palermo Soho studio. And then you cry when you remember the absurd amount of money that household items cost here. No more fans for you anytime soon.

7. You’ve been waiting an hour and a half for your colectivo, becoming intimately acquainted with your fellow future passengers, when three of the 152 buses speed on by one after another ignoring all of your indignant, flailed-arm protests.

Back to discussing Nestor’s hemorrhoids for the next 45 minutes.

8. Turnos: all day, everyday.

From paying your Movistar bill to picking up prescription medication to ordering a slab of asado sin hueso, you will be instructed to pull a number and wait a small eternity until that number is called, before invariably being told you lined up in the wrong section and have to start all over again.

9. There’s a tampon shortage.

In a bid to give life to Argentina’s “bourgeoning” tampon industry, the government bans all foreign imports. Except there’s no Argentine tampon industry. You and your vagina end up starring in your very own production of Not Without my Feminine Hygiene Product.

10. The price of Trapiche Malbec/Quilmes/Fernet (pick your poison) has tripled over the last few months because of inflation.

You dish out half of your life’s savings to buy a bottle anyway: how else are you going to console yourself now that you’ve broken your shoe’s heel, have to walk home tamponless amid an apocalyptic storm, and have no more credit to call a friend to cry about it all.