Category: Commerce

Products, services, marketing, names

boWINdow

After a horrible experience with an aluminum shop that truly cares for neither quality nor customer service (if you’re local, think of the initials of the major competitor to the major hamburger chain and look on the Ruta Interbalnearia), a friend referred me to a friendly mom & pop operation.

Satisfied with my first window, I went back to them with a simple diagram of what I wanted next: a ‘bulging’ window for the kitchen. I had a diagram from the top. I had a perspective drawing. They had no idea what I was after? A hood for a stove? This went on for a while, until finally, exasperated, I said se llama ‘bay window’ in ingles, at which the proprietor threw his hands in the air, with a prolonged aahhhh! and slumped back in his chair with a huge smile.

Problem solved! You just need to know to say boWINdow.

The flete

Anticipating holiday guests, a friend asked me to arrange transport (a flete) for her stuff, filling the guest space, to another friend’s shipping container in the country. With a local reference, I produced a hard-working driver with an ancient truck that did not inspire confidence.

flete1

But it worked just fine. The second of two trips. Truck: 1954 Commer.

Consumer goods in Uruguay tend to be shoddy, so bringing decent things when you move here makes sense. Linens and towels. Clothing. Hand tools, even comfortable chairs and a couch. Still, I marvel (sometimes poetically) at the quantity of stuff people feel the need to import.

Or perhaps I should say, feel the need to possess.

The 40′ container is now perhaps 60% full. Of unused stuff.

Leñero

firewood truck, Atlántida, Uruguay

Leña means firewood, and the guy who sells it is a leñero. This guy appears on weekends and holidays near the zoo (yes, we have a zoo). He always waves to everybody. I’ve waved to him for a couple of years when I walk the dogs, thinking one of these days I want to ask him about that truck.

Finally did: 1954 Commer (English). He’s got a better one, he says, and plans to put the engine from this into that. I didn’t ask when, or how long he’s been planning that; meaningless questions in the land where ‘next week’ can mean ‘next month.’

Coffee in Yesterguay

Probably 98% of the coffee sold in super (and other) markets in Uruguay is ground and glaseado – meaning sugar added.

As far as I know, the only place to buy real coffee is Palacio del Cafe in Montevideo. They do not have a stunning selection, but they do have rather stunning packaging:

Coffee label in Uruguay in 2014: not exactly politically correct

You can also get their coffee at Tienda Inglesa in Punta del Este (in the bakery section, natch). In that case, however, you’ll get more modern (say, post-1930) graphics.
Current cost UYP 355/kg = USD 7.45/lb.

Ñuke: wretched Argentinian wood stove

We recently bought a new Chilean wood stove with a five year guarantee.

It replaces the poorly designed, ugly, poorly built Argentinian Ñuke (great name, eh?) that we have had two and half years.

With its top removed, you can see (lower arrow) an air channel for secondary combustion that was completely filled with rust flakes, and (top arrow) a triangular air tube whose top was almost completely rusted off. I bought fire bricks in a local supply yard to replace the ones the Ñuke chimney cleaner broke and never replaced.

We’ll probably find a use for this in the campo now that we’ve finally taken possession of our farm land and remarkable little house (more to follow).

Speaking of which, I’m thinking of writing a(nother) book: 14 Acres and No Clue.