We don’t do anything special for Christmas (except attend our neighbors’ lovely afternoon food fest). I mentioned to my wife that she normally hangs red ornaments on our ficus tree, at least. She reminded me we have a fast-growing puppy who probably find them great fun to attack. Good point.
We’re also not Jewish.
But in the country we came from, bagels are ubiquitous, and in Uruguay they’re nonexistent. Well, except for one place in Montevideo owned by an American. There’s a place called Donut Shop that advertises bagels but makes — well, you decide.
So she asked the food processor and bread-object specialist (that would be me), to make bagels.
Obviously I’m low on the learning curve, but they were delicious with cream cheese, smoked salmon,1 organic tomatoes and red onions.
Plus, always a treat in Uruguay, the taste made us feel we were somewhere else, somewhere one has a choice of tastes. Restaurants are gradually getting better here, offering variety. One nearby puts the old Uruguayan standbys like chivitos and milanesas under the heading, “Lo de Siempre,” the ‘always available’ stuff. I take that as a good sign. But I can still have fun tormenting recent North American arrivals by asking them what’s their favorite Thai restaurant in Uruguay.2
1 unfortunately from Chile, but that’s all we’ve got
A few days ago I was in the Disco supermarket here (yes, the one with the shopping cart idiocy), and was surprised to see that they’ve installed four self-checkout stations. This is old stuff up north, but not thirtyyears old as the Uruguay jokes go, so maybe the country is catching up faster?
When I went to the wait-for-a-number cashiers, I noticed there were six (seven?) instead of the previous four. Well, that’s good. Except the new number-display is farther away and the numbers appear to be smaller. I couldn’t make out which cashier to go to. No problem; the appropriate cashier waved his arm. He also thought it was amusing.
I asked him when all of this happened.
“Two days ago,” he told me.
Ready attendant, but no one to whom to attend
Which pretty much explains why nobody was using them.
Fast forward to this morning — Christmas Eve, and the predictable jam-packed shopping crowd — and suddenly quite a few people thought these were an OK idea. Myself included.
Generally, I try to keep things here upbeat. But walking daily in a sprawling area whose owner or owners are unknown, that is sometimes difficult.
Consider this: from one day to another, a dumped load of furniture and windows appears in the middle of nowhere.
They could have left all of this near a trash container. They could have left some of it near a recycling container. Instead they just dump it carelessly. In fact, I would argue contemptuously, since they managed to smash at least one of the windows.
It’s not a spot where other stuff has been dumped. There are several of those. No, just a new, random location.
Update — per Syd comment. I took a marker with me on our walk today. The person who did this might pass by again, might not. But anyone who does will read it:
“Left by a human pig.” Play on ser humano, which means “human being.”
Walking dogs yesterday, we got into a discussion of bugs, as in garden variety. Syd and Gundy had a bunch of green spiders, and he wondered what they were, and whether they would hurt his tomato plants. He also mentioned a long green beetle with long antennae with balls on them. They were all over the blackberries, but apparently not harming anything.
Returning 45 minutes later, within a few meters of his front gate, returning, one landed on his arm, as if to say, “Welcome home!”
Uruguay “sort of” legalized marijuana at the end of 2013. Being a place where free-market is generally considered a bad thing, and government somehow a creator of wealth, the experiment has proceeded with predictable ham-fisted bureaucracy. The government controls all production, licenses growers and buyers, limits the amount they can buy in a month, etc. At present there are maybe 16 pharmacies (all in Montevideo AFAIK) where one can buy marijuana, and they have had their bank accounts closed because of the ham-fisted and arrogant United States federal government. This echoes the contradiction between state and federal laws in the U.S.: marijuana is legal in California and Nevada, but if you transport it across the border you’re committing a federal offense.
However, there is good news: Hemp Planting to Triple in Uruguay. And the Expo Cannabis has gone from rinky-dink three years ago (according to Syd) to quite impressive.
As you might guess, most of the crowd was younger than yours truly.
The first display inside the door showed a variety of products including hemp oil, and dog care products that Syd really wanted to buy. Not for sale? It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize the display was for the Museo del Cannabis Montevideo.
Nearby, a display of plants.
We quickly noticed a number of booths had hydraulic presses. We were a bit mystified, then watched a demonstration of extracting cannabis oil with heat and pressure — far safer than using toxic solvents, which then have to be boiled off.
Many booths were selling seeds and growing apparatus, and the government was there with a booth where you could register with the authorities. Several booths centered on medicine and healing, as did a number of the presentations/panel discussions.
I started asking questions about seeds when I saw “AUTO“ in some of their names (autofloreciente). Fascinating stuff.
My only regret is that I didn’t ask more questions, because in the car on the way back, discussing what we had seen, we had plenty more.
Setting out to do a good deed, I end up needing one
Ah, it gets complicated. Buckle up.
Starts with a WhatsApp call from Fernanda in Montevideo, an Urguaya whom we met at a recent asado (barbecue) of Jerry, our American country neighbor.
She has sold her apartment in Montevideo (we knew) but still needed to retrieve a few things. Apparently locks had been changed and Jerry’s Uruguaya “secretary” had arranged to meet her and help out, then showed up at the wrong time with the wrong keys, and blamed it all on Chuck.
Chuck is Jerry’s longtime friend, who unbeknownst to me was now at Jerry’s place here, while Jerry is in Miami, heading off on a cruise to Cuba. Turns out the keys he gave were the ones Jerry told him to give.
Fernanda leaves for Spain on Friday, needs a solution. Surely I have a number for Chuck somewhere — ? No, I don’t.
But then remember I need to pick up the charged battery from local ANCAP service station after failed jump-start of Mike and Michelle’s 18-year-old Ford yesterday. So, why not drive a few miles more and talk to Chuck?
Might have worked had I not first turned off after the Ruta Interbalnearia bridge, to the ANCAP station. The Interbalneria is bumper-to-bumper, with lots of people now exiting to take Ruta 11 in my direction, so it seemed to make more sense than stopping there on the way back.
At ANCAP, I learn that Mike had earlier retrieved the battery on foot, and texted me. My current interpretation of smartphone being “camera,” I was offline and got nothing.
Oh well, let’s connect with Chuck.
Back-o-mind wondered if he might be driving into Atlántida for early supper.
Indeed. 100 meters short his drive, we passed. I waved. He waved. Because you wave at everyone, whether you know them or not. Didn’t occur to me that he couldn’t have seen me anyway, driving straight into the sun.
I waved my arm out the window after he passed. Beeped the horn. Nothing.
And so I thought, if I can just turn around and catch with him…. So, slam into reverse, aim for that last driveway, and fail, totally. Backing up in haste, in hurry, with limited vision given dusty windows and light (notice shadow), I quickly found myself in a not-insignificant ditch.
Stuck. As in, you ain’t goin’ nowhere.
Can’t even open the door. Crawl out the passenger side, call neighbor Mariana, whose father Manuel has hauled my car out of mud before with his tractor. Alas, she’s in Montevideo, and he’s not there. Let me call Abel, she says. Calls me back with good news.
Ten minutes later, a kindly white-haired man rolls up with a big John Deere tractor. We spend a few minutes finding a place to hook onto the car. Then, with no effort at all from the tractor, he gently pulls me out onto the road.
I try to give him some money, but he of course will have nothing to do with it. We’re neighbors, he says.
I got two coins in my change last Thursday at the feria. They are the same diameter, though one is slightly thinner.
Here the thinner one is on the left. It’s quite plain, not at all distinctive, and just looks cheap compared to the one on the right.
When you flip them over, the distinctive one clearly states its value. The other you really have to take into bright light (as I did for the picture) in order to read.
Yes, that wretched coppery coin is worth FIVE TIMES the other.
Normally I get rid of them in the very next transaction, so normally I would not have one to show, but this was from my last purchase of the day.
Is it just me? I asked the cleaning girl today when she arrived. No, she confirmed, everyone hates them.
Issued in 2011, it says Bicentenario de los hechos historicos. Which means (drum roll, please) Bicentennial of historic events. What events? They’re not saying.
Part playmate, part plaything — dogs will be dogs. When Benji came into our lives, Gita played with him, but, being somewhat matronly, she had her limits. Which I thought delightfully karmic, since it reminded me of her introduction into our lives, and how patiently our then-matronly dog Karma put up with Gita (Bhagavad nothing; short for Dogita, and properly spelled Guita), who equally more or less terrorized Karma. And invoked karma.
FWIW, this is my 1,000th blog post. How time flies when you spend it documenting trivialities!
