An inquisitive old fart with a camera
In class, I heard an announcement of a meeting tomorrow at 37:15. Someone said that in Buenos Aires the clock reset weekly instead of daily. So today was Monday, and the meeting tomorrow was at 1:15 PM.
I know the Argentinian government is nutty, but even in a dream this seemed a little overboard.
But we’re on our way to Rosario, so we’ll find out when we arrive in Argentina tomorrow.
At about 129 o’clock.
No, I’m not going all inspirational on you.
I should more properly title this, Dare You to Grow, but then you might still assume I refer to you, which I don’t.
Inspired by the audacity of this tree that clearly has no intention of rolling over and dying, I decided that various cuttings from avocado tree and sprawling geranium bush deserved a chance.
I stuck them into the sand/dirt/rubble bordering neighbor’s unkempt lot with a challenge: I dare you to grow!
Check back in a couple months.
We got involved in Couchsurfing when we lived in Mexico, and hosted a number of interesting, and fun, people.
One time it was Sara and Sébastien from Paris, en route by bicycle from Anchorage Alaska to Ushuaia, at the southern tip of Argentina and the southernmost city on the planet. When we hosted them, we had no thought of moving from Mexico. When they learned we were in Uruguay, the became our first return couchsurfers before heading back to Paris.
Similarly, Marjorie and Jörg, retired five years and traveling extensively in the Americas from their home in Lörrach, Germany, stayed with us in Mexico, and when they learned of our move promised to include us in their South America trip. We shared their delightful company for a few days as they got ready to head home, while this rather impressive refitted Toyota Land Cruiser parked in our driveway.
As an added bonus, they taught me some new German words: Grünschnabel, Quatschkopf, Quasselstrippe, and Frostmemme. You’re on your own for the first three; the last means someone who’s always cold. I’m not sure I’ll be using them any time soon, but you never know.
They are, after all, kind of catchy.
Compared to the north, beef here is local, grass-fed, delicious, and cheap. As a result, we eat more, sometimes as hamburgers. Inevitably, the wife has lamented lack of dill pickles to accompany them. She tried making some. They were close, but not crunchy.
She recently brought home this:
Ajías Catalanes – Catalan chili peppers. They’re hot! They’re great! Who needs dills?
But this raises an interesting question. Uruguayans in general will not touch spicy food. Something with pepper – just a sprinkle of black pepper – is considered picante. Yet they grow hot peppers; you can buy them in the supermarket.
And now we see they pickle them (at the bottom of the label: Industria Uruguaya).
Why?
Besides us, for whom?
Today:
Caught up on three months’ worth of accounting.
Got curious about Javascript (why?) and from scratch learned enough to solve (with help!) the FizzBuzz challenge.
if( i %3 === 0 && i %5===0){
console.log(“FizzBuzz”)
}
Oh yeah, I know you’re awed 😉
Listened to the second learning Morse Code podcast (almost through the easiest third of the alphabet woohoo).
Replied to months-old email from the high school teacher who introduced me to the formative work of summer camp counseling.
Thought about mowing the grass. Nah.
Walked the dogs.
I took a laptop body (no monitor; long story) to the local computer repair place. The worn-out power receptacle, they had told me, would ridiculously cost maybe a hundred bucks to procure. So this time I said I didn’t care what it looked like, that I wanted una solución Uruguaya. In other words, just make it work, as cheaply as possible. Any connector; I don’t care: it’s just a question of connecting two wires, on either side, no?
He indicated it might take a week, this being Semana Santa.
Less than 24 hours later, he calls to tell me it’s ready. Can it be?
I pick up a decidely funky, but perfectly aceptable, altered machine, and pay 500 pesos – 25 bucks. Can’t complain, if the thing works again and gives me a Linux play machine. ¿Sirve? I ask. It works?
Sí. (You expected a different answer?)
Back home, there’s a storm, but all high-rolling thunder, no ground strikes. I start to set it up, and it boots going beep- beep- beep- beep- beep like it’s got a stuck key. I plug in the monitor, and just then the electricity goes out.
But the neighbors’ lights are still on. I check the breaker box. Main breaker tripped; can’t turn the power back on. Unplug the monitor, try again – works fine. By now I’ve also unplugged the laptop and video cable. Plug in the laptop to power – no problem. Start to reconnect monitor and OUCH! nasty shock from the video cable. Ain’t right.
So somehow the process of replacing a plug and socket has resulted is sending 220 volts through the video output?
Five minutes before his closing time, I deliver it back to the shop. This doesn’t sound like it should end well.
A bank far away wants confirmation that we live in Uruguay: an original utility bill with our names on it. Easy?
Utility companies in Uruguay will not allow two names on an account, even for a married couple.
No problem – put one bill in wife’s name.
Standard addresses outside of cities do not exist. Our house has no number, only a name – which we could change at will. Our street does not have a name – it has two, one of them a number. Some mail arrives addressed to our town; some to our section of the town. We receive mail with at least two different postal codes.
No two utility companies address their mail the same way. In fact, the water and electric bills have such different addresses that you would be nuts to assume they would arrive at the same place.
When I took three bills to the Post Office to ask how mail should be addressed, the postmistress looked at each in turn and said, yes, that’s correct, even though at least two bore no similarity. Had I pointed out that early in our stay, one of the bills arrived with handwritten notes from the PO telling the carrier where to deliver it, she no doubt would have replied, yes, but he knows where you are now.
Official property designations include numbers for padrón, manzana (yes, as in apple), and solar. Some of these numbers appear, in varying forms, on the bills. Some have no reference.
By now, you want to suggest, why don’t you ask one utility to modify their address? Well, chances are you haven’t tried to do that, and I wasn’t eager for an exercise in futility. But I did, in February, go to OSE, the water company and issuers of the most cryptic address, and to my amazement and delight the 20-something behind the desk said no problema and changed it, advising me that the new address would appear on our March bill.
It didn’t.
Returning to the same 20-something in April, he tells me it is not possible to change the billing address in the system. Had I pointed out that he himself claimed to have changed it six weeks before – sorry; not the best use of my time.
I photocopied the architect’s plans, in which he specifies every bit of data that could be used to identify the property, stuck it in an envelope with notations and the two bills, and mailed it off to far away.
Ya veremos. We will see.
Semana Santa – Holy Week or Easter Week – is also referred to as Semana de Turismo (Tourist Week): the last gasp of high season. Though shorts and t-shirt weather, time to start thinking firewood, chimney cleaning, and a passive solar heater I have in mind.
Being the wife’s birthday, we had a ‘splurge’ meal at the Armenian restaurant Garní in Solís, near Piriápolis, where we’ve been going off and on for over a year. It’s about a half hour away.
Though we haven’t been there in a while, Michel, the waiter, knew exactly what we were going to order.
Sitting in their shaded outdoor area a block form the ocean, we started with a meze of tsatsiki, hummus, tabouli and a delicious eggplant concoction, with pita bread and a half-liter of white wine. We shared a lamb shish kebob and enslada belen, a wonderful mix of eggplant, apples, red pepper, cashews and prunes (I think). And another half-liter of wine.
I got a laugh out of him with my comment (actually no need for Spanish; he speaks English and French as well) comimos como Uruguayos – we ate like Uruguayans! Servings can be HUGE here. He repeated it and got a laugh out of the chef Ani (who also speaks English, and also Armenian and Turkish). We normally don’t eat dessert, but when Michel came out and started talking to us in a low, conspiratorial way, we figured they were going to offer us a free dessert since it was the wife’s birthday, something that had come out earlier in conversation.
No, not that. The entire meal was on the house.