I got back from the feria today, unpacked fruits, veggies, cheese, nuts, and other good stuff, and found these in the bottom of the bag.
The first digit of the three items on the left is a 1. The second digit of the first item is also a 1. A cursive 1, I guess.
The list on the right has a classic Uruguayan backwards 9 and Z-style 4, but other than that the numbers are pretty legible. The letters, however…see if you can figure them out and then scroll down for the answer.
marron (green pepper)
calabacín (squash)
remolacha (beets)
lechuga (lettuce)
cherry (tomato; it doesn’t get cold enough in Uruguay to grow cherries AFAIK)
Residents of Uruguay can bring in some things duty-free. I think currently it’s three times per year, has to be by courier or Uruguayan Post’s program, and value limited to USD 200, including shipping costs. I used it recently to ship down a refurbished Macintosh keyboard. The day after it arrived my wife’s Macintosh keyboard started to fail as well. So I ordered another for around USD 50, again with some clothing items my wife wanted, keeping under $200 and under 2 kg (courier service charges by the kilo).
The same keyboard new in the US is USD 163 new, which is quite ridiculous. I don’t want a wireless keyboard – not long ago I wired our two computers with ethernet and turned off wifi – but even if I did, what Apple offers, USD 99 in the US, is ridiculous here:
And Apple is “different” enough that anything else I can buy locally will only work with Windows. I tried. Keys all jumbled, regardless of computer language settings.
To get here, the goods had to be shipped to Florida, consolidated, cleared through Customs here, and delivered. Today we discovered the sodden delivery notice in our mailbox:
There is no date. Apparently it was from yesterday, telling me that since nobody was home, we won’t do that UPS/Fedex thing and try again. You have to come to our office (oval: what?) hour on the seventh of January two-thousand-backwards-nine-nineteen.
I went to the DAC office, less than two kilometers away, and was told by a lady with a broom there that I would have to go to Montevideo. I pointed out that we were standing at the intersection of Artigas and Circunvolación, as indicated on the slip. She then went inside and asked the girl, who recognized the name and directed her to a top corner shelf, which she could barely get to through stacks of boxes.
As she did that, I scanned the shelves, immediately spotted the USPS Priority Mail box and retrieved it.
So, another “something actually accomplished” in Uruguay, something that those living in lands of consumer convenience probably can’t even begin to appreciate. And on a further ‘Murkan note, I got a kick out of the receipt: when was the last time you got a receipt with “God bless” handwritten on it?
No doubt the last time you ordered from Saved Computers.
1 something times maybe 20, or 20 liters, and one of the worst attempts at a 9 that I’ve seen yet. His annotations are in dark red, but why stop there? What’s with the month scribble? And since when is a 7 simply a crossed 1?
What’s starting to make sense is that this handwriting actually mirrors the way many Uruguayans speak. Not all, but many, especially the important people like electricians, mechanics, and plumbers: largely incomprehensible mumbles to a non-native.
Alas, I didn’t pick up handwriting samples in Colombia, Peru, or Bolivia, where they speak clearly, so I’ll just have to hypothesize for now that they also write legibly. Seems a stretch, but you never know.
The first thing about this presupuesto (estimate) you might notice1 is the 9 that looks like a lollipop. And you might recall that the 9s of Uruguay are a near-obsession of mine.
But no, I’m sure I’ve mentioned this, but don’t find it: when you buy house paint in Uruguay, the cost varies with the color. You don’t just ask “how much does a liter of thisbrand cost?” — you have to ask “How much does a liter of thisbrandin this color cost?”
So I picked a slightly cream color and got the cost for 20 liters, UYP 2,596 (about USD 17.30/gallon). At the last (unhelpful) place I bought paint the cost for them to mix the color was a multiple of the cost of the plain white, so I wrote down another price.
Uhn huh. If you take the 20 liters of plain white, ask them to add color and mix it for you, they will charge you 89 pesos — less.
If you’re one of my three (or is it two?) regular readers, you might recall that the 9s of Uruguay bother me. And if you look at this one, you can see that obviously the writer was taught to make a nine starting with a counterclockwise loop, which then rejoins itself and veers off at an angle to look like a 9. Unless it doesn’t, in which case it ends up as a P.
But what’s up with that first digit — ?
It’s a 4. It just happens to be upside down.
How the hell did someone learn, or decide, to write a 4 upside-down? Also, if you clicked on the link above, you might note that the 3 here is verging into the territory of the 2 on the linked page.
Uruguay is not an exotic country, but does hold some mystery. If you’re willing to squint just right, with your bad eye.
