Don’t know how I got on the mailing list of these asshats, but at least they have a sense of humor!
“Journalists who stop at nothing to uncover the facts.”
[Insert comment about Tooth Fairy here].
Joke of the day
Category: Commerce
Products, services, marketing, names
The business card
When we first moved here, we found an older tapicero – upholsterer – to redo a bunch of used furniture we had purchased. We haven’t needed work done since, but I don’t that guy is still working, and I do think about it from time to time.
So when I saw a guy in the feria for the second time advertising his services, I thought it might be a good idea to ask for a business card. Which I did. This is what I got:
No card, no name. Just “TAPICERO.”
Which reminded one of the calendar I got from one of the other vendors a few weeks ago:
It hangs above my computer monitor, with retrograde Mercury and shoulder dates highlighted just in case I get a sudden and unexplained urge to buy electronics when I shouldn’t.
But noteworthy is “J&E” – they have a business name? Who knew? And if I told you the name, would you be able to find them in the feria? Maybe by the blue color of the truck in the photo?
No, instead they’re the cheese truck on the school end opposite the produce stand on the school end, as opposed to the middle-aged couple cheese truck a half block further, across from the produce stand where they usually wear maroon jackets.
That’s the extent of “branding” in the Uruguay feria.
There was a seed and nut stand memorably named 8 Búhos (8 owls) which appeared in Atlántida a couple of times. Since they were new, I asked if they planned to be there regularly. Always, they replied.
You guessed it: they’ve never been back.
Hell yeah, I can read Chinese!
The 1/10th of a Bitcoin I sent to my new account at Bibox has been received. Am I feeling genius or what?
Every yard should have one
Ah, Uruguay! Every day that I walk dogs with Syd, we go by this house. FWIW, only 4% of Uruguayans are black.
If you’ve been with me a while, you might recall similar remarkable coffee packaging (which El Palacio Del Cafe subsequently changed).
On another note, weather here went from very rainy to very hot. How hot? Just before I took this photo, all six dogs were in the recently filled swimming hole. I don’t remember ever seeing that before
Quite a lineup at the drugstore
40+ people lined up to get into a farmácia? That seemed a bit odd. I was on my way to pick up alterations from the modista (seamstress*).
I asked her why this might be. Turns out this is the first and only pharmacy on the coast licensed to sell marijuana. Aha!
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* 2 women’s pants extensively altered, torn men’s cargo pants turned into shorts, baggy shirt turned into tapered, all for $700 – USD 21.50.
Design Notebook 20181201
It took us three consecutive day trips to Montevideo to get our Uruguayan passports renewed (actually to get our Credenciales Cívicas updated, a process gratuitously complexified by various functionaries in different government offices) – but we’re now good for ten years, yay! The latter two days involved lunch at new places: Lisandro, offering a variety of sandwiches and salads, but better yet, a peaceful location in crazy Carrasco, and Estrecho, similar fare but better, on Sarandí, the busy walking street in Ciudad Vieja. (Fun to note that Lisandro’s web site offers the address of their other location in Zonamerica as “Driving Rage,” which could, in this country, well be a Freudian slip.)
Yesterday, in Estrecho, the waitress gave us tourist map.
At first glance, it seemed promising.
But then I looked closer.
I guess the idea is you find a bike and make your way, maze-like, through this circuit that just kinda looks like it was laid out to accommodate the sponsoring restaurants and stores. Since we were recently in the area, I looked closer and quickly found a couple that gave addresses nowhere near their Carrasco locations.
On the flip side, this:
Postage-stamp sized listings of exactly 100 businesses, with details in 6-point type.
In terms of design, it’s attractive, and not particularly informative. It might be interesting to follow some of these routes, but I find nothing compelling about them. Nor would I settle on any of the sponsoring restaurants without learning more about them.
In the end, though, it’s got maps. And I love maps!
Little pleasant surprises
The brakes on my bike had gotten bad enough that stopping without putting shoes on pavement was no longer a sure thing. (You will, by the way, often see Uruguayans braking bikes and even motos using that method.) So I rode it in the wilting heat this morning to the little bike shop for them to do their magic. Bicycle repair really does seem like magic to me, especially after I try to do it.
I then walked to Tienda Inglesa, where a cashier last night has shortchanged me 20 pesos. I thought something was wrong, but the mathematical part of my brain seemed to be on vacation. When I got home, I confirmed it. 20 pesos is maybe $0.60, but there are lots of new hires for summer in Tienda Inglesa, and it bothered me that the cashier had not counted the money up – at least not the small stuff – the way I’m sure they’re required to do.
Was she lazy? Incompetent? Perhaps skimming a coin here and there? I can’t speak to the first two, but long story short, at the end of her shift she counted 20 pesos more in her till than she should have, and all was duly noted by Tienda Inglesa, and promptly given to me after the requisite recording and my signing in a spiral notebook.
I was impressed.
Back to the bike shop, a pad had been replaced, brakes now threatening to throw me over the handlebars. For a total of 50 pesos, or $1.50. Which made me wonder when was the last time in my native country one could have had something like this done for $1.50 – the 1960s?
Russian!
I was surprised to buy something the other day and see the label in Russian.
And what was the product (don’t look at the pictures – oh wait, you just did)?
An outside vent cover. Interesting to note that the email address uses commas instead of periods. And the upper right is in German, but missing an umlaut: Der Grüne Punkt,” a European network of industry-funded systems for recycling the packaging materials of consumer goods.”
Hard to imagine what exactly this product did to win a gold medal at an industry trade fair. At any rate, remains a rarity to find a consumer product from Russia in Uruguay.
Along for the ride
Easy enough to explain: a clothes vendor in the feria, or outdoor market, transporting the whole setup. Still, a bit disconcerting.
Get thee to the Whoppspital
A couple of weeks ago, I posted Quadruple bypass on a bun, amazed that such an excessively unhealthy thing could exist, even in Uruguay, home of the chivito. The other day, riding the bus back from Montevideo, I spotted this:
Curious, I went back to the Burger King site to see what this monstrosity might be. I found no “Ultra Whopper,” but there’s the same photo:
To refresh your memory, on the product page there is a link to “nutrition information,” consisting of
To add to your gastric distress, perhaps you’d also like artificial chocolate goop or acrylamides via potatoes fried in “vegetable” oil.
But wait, there’s a punchline here, in the last line: Frente a H. Clinicas. So after scarfing down all this “good stuff,” you may not even need an ambulance: they can just roll you on a stretcher across the street to this grim monstrosity,
