Little pleasant surprises

bicycle

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.

Russian label

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,

Hospital de Clinicas, Montevideo — The Hospital de Clinicas.

Observations, Carrasco

Today we celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary a couple days late, after trying to resolve an import issue which I will probably write about tomorrow, in the furrows of Latin American bureaucracy. It was a very reasonable (~USD 25 each) gourmet lunch at Alquimista, #1 of Montevideo restaurants according to tripadvisor.com.

Exiting, I noticed this unique take on parallel parking nearby. Carrasco (which I’ve talked about here and here) is visually appealing, upscale, and in general hell for parking. And, lovely as it appears, maybe one would want to think twice about living in an expensive neighborhood where electrical fencing is commonplace.

And then there’s the supermarket Géant, where store display are ingeniously engineered to prevent passage of customers. But then, they also have the FILO shopping cart system. It’s not my position to label them idiots, but, given a label-maker….

Tiles

Shopping for most things in Uruguay is not fun, given prices, lack of selection and quality, and not-quite-ready-for-first-world business practices. But recently, shopping for tile, at least I found a title amusement in these ceramic tile displays.

Tiles, Uruguay

OK, the English-sign thing. That’s definitely got appeal. Of course they’re missing out by not including possessive apostrophes, but ta.

Tiles, Uruguay

I don’t see how ceramic versions of old American license plates would find a place in too many design schemes. But then again I’m often surprised at the limits of my imagination.

Tiles, Uruguay

Which brings me to what I bought for the terrace above our dining room, in an atempt to solve the moisture/mold problems below. I found a great deal on these 50cm (almost 20″) square tiles: good albedo for summer heat deflection, nice texture. The kid at the store (at a certain age, almost everyone is a kid) advised I should take my 24 square meters in two loads of about 300 kg (660 lbs) each, given my vehicle.

The first trip went swimmingly. On the second trip, I decided I should stop at Tienda Inglesa to stock up on wine, which involved a turn to the right up a ramp. As with the first trip, the tiles were vertical in the back, leaning to the right.

Kar-umpph! Load shift to the left! I did my shopping, then carefully re-leaned the tiles, noticing that happily, few had broken, and with them just corners.

Getting off the Ruta Interbalnearia, I realized we were short on cardboard, still necessary for fire-starting (it’s been a few weeks since this happened) and provision for night time puppy “accidents.” So I pulled slightly off the road, which involved a slight incline, and kar-umpph! This time the fall wasn’t quite as drastic, seeing as it was limited by ten bottles of wine – ten because that’s what fits into a very sturdy bag we have, gift from a friend in Mexico.

And – sorry if this disappoints you – the story does NOT continue with my ruing the odor of alcohol replacing (what’s left of) our new-car smell. No bottles broke, and though significantly more tiles suffered breakage, overall it’s not as bad as you might have imagined.

And there is – at least was – plenty more where it came from.

Finally, a major Mercado Libre success story!

Three months ago, I told about our original kitchen stove and attempt to buy a new one on Mercado Libre. That experience was so ridiculous that I abandoned the idea for a while. Yesterday I looked online again, found one I liked, asked if they actually had it (yes), ordered. Their confirmation included instructions on picking it up, which I didn’t want to do. So I sent an email yesterday evening after office hours with no expectation of a reply, but pretty quickly got a reply with delivery cost (USD 17). I replied saying yes please, here’s my delivery and contact info. This morning found a message from the seller from 8:00 last night: OK, we’ll deliver it tomorrow afternoon.

At 3:40 this afternoon, a phone call from the driver; he’s in El Pinar and will be here in 20 minutes. I try to explain how to get here, but he doesn’t seem particularly interested. Though easy to find, our house somehow eludes many delivery people, so I tell him I’ll stand out in front. Couple minutes before 4:00, I stand at the end of the driveway, and almost immediately a little nondescript truck appears from the opposite direction I expect, but no matter. Driver gives me a thumbs-up, I reply, very pleasant guy unloads the stove and delivers it to our kitchen on a hand truck. Beautiful!

kitchen stove Uruguay

It would be lovely to say I just connected gas and electric and ¡ta! But no. I decided to replace the plastic gas tubing, so rode a few blocks on my bike to the closest ferretería for that. Then discovered that the gas line nipple on the stove was slightly smaller than that of the garafa (13 kg propane tank), and the previous stove. The screw clamp wouldn’t tighten enough to seal it. Dug around in my collection of plumbing detritus, and found a clamp marginally smaller that, fully opened, barely fit over the tubing. Slathered a little silicon adhesive on the nipple por las dudas (just in case: “for the doubts”) and plugged in the electric …

… oh shit. The electric cord has a Shuko plug. I don’t have an adaptor, and don’t want to replace the plug because of warranty concerns. Oh but wait! Digging around in my electrical detritus, I find an Argentine Shuko socket to match our house installations! Find appropriate circuit breaker, pull out components, only to discover that the plastic frame that holds the plugs is broken beyond hope. Go to the nearby electrical shop, ask for a 3-socket frame plus one Shuko socket (which takes up two) and a filler cap, and the kid brings out a complete unit with one Shuko socket. Brilliant!

Presently, I have gas and electric up and running – uh, no. There’s no gas. Thinking the gas tank is low, I change it. Then, thinking my repair of the switch pin of the regulator (involving a small rusty nail) didn’t cut the muster, I replace it with one from our defunct barbecue grill – which, having being exposed to the weather for a while, exudes rusty water and doesn’t work any better. Ack! Now past 6:00 PM, I race to the hardware store again to buy a new regulator. Happily, they’re open until 6:30.

New regulator installed, nada.

Then the “D’oh!” moment. What if you had the on/off positions of the little cryptic plastic garafa-regulator switch reversed in your mind?

TL;DR (LOL): time to take dinner out of the oven.

Ya gotta love Fedex [not]

I was informed yesterday that I needed to sign and deliver a power of attorney letter pronto! regarding a Swiss-based investment in Panama that turned out to be a scam. Issue #1: it absolutely had to be delivered on legal-size stationery (8-1/2 x 14″). I do have legal-size documents from Uruguay. Alas, they date from the 1980s. “Legal size” hasn’t been here for a long time.

So how on earth to create a document that size? Visit a papelería and ask them to cut down an A3 sheet to size? Actually, turns out the solution is much simpler – shoot an email to our Canadian neighbors Janet and Wayne, and minutes later retrieve a ream of legal-size stationary from atop the wall that separates our properties.

Issue #2: OK, I am used to this; it has existed for the couple decades I’ve sent shipments internationally with “Federal” Express – but this is just total insanity:

Fedex - ridiculous pricing

If you have any insight into this, please let me know. Is it just a scam for people who don’t pursue details?

Catching up

It’s been over a week since I last posted, about dissecting a dead laser printer and discovering that it yielded several pounds of recyclable plastic. Today I was cleaning out files and found a photo taken a month ago.

Some low-functioning individual decided a more appropriate way to dispose of a broken printer would be to take it 180 meters from the nearest dwellings, and dump it in a field.

Meanwhile, doing a bit of spring cleaning – it’s amazing how much grows around the edges of those concrete plumbing junction box lids – I found that ants had been using this unused one as a dumping ground for sand as they made their nest under the patio. All the sand in the wheelbarrow came from that box, which means it probably came from below the wheelbarrow. Great!

After removing all the sand I could, I flushed the rest with the 3/4″ hose attached to our well. (Unfortunately not potable water.) “Someone” who saw the hose “come to life” decided it needed to be taught who’s in charge here. He managed to wrap it around this little orange tree three times, tightly.

Meanwhile “there’s something happening here” in the little park near the intendencia in Atlántida. And, as is to be expected, what it is ain’t exactly clear. Huge eucalyptus and pine trees cut down, all the tile torn up, and – nothing. The eucalyptus stump will send up new shoots; the pine in the foreground won’t.

The real question: will whatever they’re doing be complete in three months, when the summer season starts?

Stay tuned….

The kitchen scale

I left my kitchen scale out after making bread recently, unwashed, and some else decided to wash it – not just the detachable measuring cup, but the whole thing. Electronics and warm, soapy water don’t go together well. After a few days, it began to work again, but then simply died for good.

So my challenge was to take it apart without breaking any parts, because that’s what I do rather than simply chuck things. I’m curious about how things work, and how they’re put together. Also whether there might be any parts worth saving.

dissected kitchen scale

Despite its apparent simplicity. it was a little tricky –– some well-concealed screws beneath labels and the plastic readout cover. Nothing really useful to save.

I’ve made bagels and pizza dough a couple times since, but I really prefer doing recipes by weight, so have thought about getting another.

I bought this one with points at the Disco supermarket a few years ago, not thinking about the actual cost. Now I see they sell it at Tienda Inglesa for 40 bucks – yikes! They also show one for USD 12 at Tienda Inglesa so maybe, just maybe, I can get them to bring one to our local store. I suppose I could try ordering one online but *shudder* that has not gone entirely well for me in Uruguay (think mattress and oven).

Except for socializing at the weekly feria, I find little fun in trying to find and buy things here. But maybe that’s OK, especially when I reflect on the inordinate amount of stuff we accumulated before moving to Mexico — and that was less than three years after moving ourselves across the country, from North Carolina to ~~Nelson, BC~~ Spokane, Washington.

UPDATE: Yes, this does seem like a rather pointless blog entry, but it reminded me to look at Tienda Inglesa, and guess what?