To begin, that's the thing!

MILLER'S VERSION:

Today my first day at work. A wide open, second-story office on Mendoza Av., in Belgrano, blocks away from el Barrio Chino. I knock on the big red door, am led to the place, and meet a few American writers, French design interns and other, random, shabbily dressed young, bearded men; all type on lap tops, drink espresso from stained cups, and need to wash.

I am forced to wait 15 minutes for the boss to show up; normal here, in fact, punctual. He comes, he's Kave, an engineer or young-business-man from Berkley, CA. He runs the show, outsourcing B.aires graphic designers to the U.S. - half the price of New York firms, and twice the quality of dirt-cheap India firms. Solid sell. Plus B.aires is a classy, sexy, design city. (Just look around at the angular, glass arc skyscrapers at the puerto; perhaps too the colourful, gay Flogger-hipsters; the several artsy universities. Every attractive girl I meet here is in communications, or graphic design. Zero exceptions.)

Anyway, we chat. He tells me what my job's going to be. To wit: re-arranging words from a pirated maths textbook to post online to avoid copyright infringement. Immediately I remember a scene from Henry M's Tropic of Cancer, his joy in editing the comma and vanguard semi-colons of news print: his absolute, wonderful joy of the simplicity, the order from it, the miraculous symphony, or something, of grammar. His love. I think, maybe I could handle a few weeks here, maybe this grows. Maybe I learn something, start my own competing firm later.

He tells me to watch over one guy, and see what the work looks like. I sit and I begin to wonder something. I ask the guy a few questions. My wonder expands. I am not at all interested in the job, but I am interested in how this guy does it. He is paid 5 dollars an hour, 40 hours a week to replace "Find the solution" with "Solve."

Kave goes to the office makes a few phone calls, chats on phone. He's waiting there, still, when I return 15 minutes later, he's typing away, emailing as we resume the first-day interview. He barely looks up at me the whole time, chatting, typing, I can hear the emails being sent away in these enormously loud "whooshes" that sound each time.

"Whoosh!"
"So that's that," I say, I sit down, he doesn't look up.

"Hmmm, yes. So, let's see here. You speak spanish?"
I try a few words or two. He tells me I shouldn't have put advanced spanish skills on my resume.

"Whoosh"
"Listen what was your GPA in college?"

I tell him, he looks up.
"Look man, you don't seem that interested in this gig."

"I'm not. This isn't exactly what I was looking for."

He looks back down at the keys, a bald white man, black round shades, walks in and we are introduced, they chat about some more super star Argentines coming in that day for designer gigs.

The man leaves. Kave says we should stay in touch.

I'm about to leave, but am struck with a sudden, genius urge.

"Listen, Kave. Here's what I'm going to suggest. I've been thinking the whole time I arrived here that you could be doing better. This thing your doing, with the textbooks - first of all it's illegal. Just switching around words doesn't free you from breaching copyright. However, that doesn't seem to matter much anyways, so let's talk about money instead."

He stops typing, looking up, looks interested.

"... What I wanted to say was, you can fire three of those guys out there, typing away like mad, and hire me at three-times the salary, and I will still get your shit done for you faster than if you had them working around the clock."

He smirks, he smirks because he doesn't understand.

"Let me ask you a question," I say. "How the hell don't you guys know how to use Word yet? There's codes you can do, this is monkey work."

"Listen, Tobin, pal. I'm not sure what's your deal. We tried Control-F, find and replace, that shit doesn't work. It takes too much ...

"I'm not talking about that. Trust me." I interupt.

"I make it so you hit one magic key, and the document get's completely switched, brand new. Your x's become y's, your a's b's, and so on. One button. Doesn't matter what doc you have open."

(Dear reader, please hang out a bit more. Computer talk done soon.)

"Whoosh" he says, "show me."

"I'll do it. But if it works, you pay me 500 pesos, today. I promise it will save you hours. You'll be able to fire three of these guys out there, at least."

He looks happy, pleased, maybe annoyed: intrigue, yeah.

"Agreed."

(So I show him what is called a Macro. It's a WORD trick I learned from some maniac teacher in 3rd year. I made it so when you type out dog, the magic key makes it cat, and when you type out tea, it becomes coffee. I figure keep it simple for him.)

I hit CTRl-ALT-M and ten doggies become kitties, and twenty teas turn to black, sober coffee.

He gives me the cash, and says something like I should stick around. I say, "yeah, maybe I'll give you a call."

Outside, I walk full-face in the sun, slowly and happily down Juranemento Av., looking for a good chinese restaurant, a place to sit, have a beer and read Hemingway. The day isn't even struck noon.