Cutting-edge lighting in Uruguay

Behold an 8 watt bulb twice as efficient as the toxic and wretched compact fluorescents, which seldom come close to their promised eight year life span. This could have a life span twice that or more (according to the guy who manufactures them, ahem). And it runs on 110-240 volts! What’s not to like, even at 18 bucks a pop?

When one blinks out after five months, and the supermarket doesn’t give refunds on light bulbs, that’s what.

However, the store promised to check our repairing it, and call me back. In Latin America, when a business promises to call you back, it generally means we’re through talking. Go away. Knowing the distributor of these lights (who also replaced all the store’s fluorescent bulbs with LEDs), I figured I had a fallback plan.

A couple of weeks and a few in-person inquiries later, the store really did call back saying they had una solución. They gave me a credit for the full price – nice! I promptly bought another.

I note with interest that some of the first light bulbs manufactured are still burning 100 years later. Why can’t they last that long now? The bottom line: it really is a conspiracy.

New, modern trash collection

This thing appeared on the corner this morning with no notice, and no mention of whether it’s for trash and recyclables, or just one or the other. They’ve appeared around town the last few weeks, but I guessed we didn’t get one because our street was too narrow, and we’d continue using our basket-on-a-pole.

First thought: now I can rid of big stuff that doesn’t fit in the basket!

Second thought: how do they empty that thing?

UPDATE: though a neighbor told me they emptied them by hand (!) they do indeed have lifts on the garbage truck. Instead of running and grabbing bags out of baskets on poles, the two people riding on the back of the truck jump of to maneuver this bin into place.

Fresh bread

The beep of a motorbike horn and the bread guy’s here, bringing two loaves of home-baked whole wheat bread as he does every Wednesday. After the first month of buying his bread we found we still had a loaf of store-bought ‘whole wheat’ bread – it wasn’t even moldy.

While locals and foreigners alike moan about the excessive government bureaucracy and anti-business climate in Uruguay, the bread guy shows the free market at its best. In the United States, no doubt he’d run the risk of arrest and imprisonment, ‘for the protection of the citizens.’

Yard man

Walking toward the beach, a bicycle approaches. A guy my age or more, graying hair, riding at a decent speed. With his left arm, he carries a rake. With his right arm near the seat, he tows an electric lawn mower, cord neatly coiled atop. I turn and watch, somewhat in awe, and listen to the whirring of the lawnmower wheels, quieter and quieter.