Category: Stuff

C’mon, now…

Given the heavy rain yesterday, I was eager to see if our tajamar had filled. According to locals, after the first filling, the draining water seals any porous regions, and the pond becomes more watertight.

Well, maybe the rain was coastbound. Was a little disappointed to see that the plants I transplanted at water level were still above water level after previous draining.

Meanwhile, the stuff in the corners—that I did NOT plant—appears to be thriving.

And I swear I heard a frog…

..and there’s this pretty little purple flower.

Paciencia…ya veremos. Patience…we’ll see.

Picture or it didn’t happen.

cedula

Though it’s been official for a few weeks now, today we got our new cédulas (ID cards) as legal citizens of Uruguay. Look at the expiration date (“Vence”) and eat your hearts out, fellow UY immigrants! To those not in the know, “E.E.U.U.” means Estados Unidos: United States. I blurred out my birth state so you wouldn’t know I was born in Connecticut.

But it gets better. My wife, being of a certain age, got one that says Sin Vencimiento — No Expiration. After a certain age, they issue your cédula for life. The trilingual kid from the attorney’s office who went with us said, Oh no, they’ve made a mistake! We have to get them to change it! Which, of course, to one of a certain age, being perceived as not of a certain age by a 20-something, made him a very cool trilingual kid indeed. More so with his second language being Hebrew, which my wife studied years ago, stories of which she shares in her captivating and highly recommended (by a totally impartial source, of course, of course) memoir The Lullaby Illusion.

 

Buying cool things really cheap in Uruguay

When my little bedside alarm clock died, I figured it would cost me at least USD 20 to get something here—if I could find it. So far, I have seen nothing even remotely appealing at any price.

Then I remembered dx.com, deal extreme, found a cheap little clock that had good customer reviews, and ordered it. Took a month to get here, but (drum roll, please)…

clock01

…total cost: USD 4.80 delivered from Hong Kong. Probably would cost more than that to mail it from here to Hong Kong. How do they do it? Dunno, but it’s a cool site.

clock02
Unadvertised benefit: free lesson in Chinglish.

 

Beach treasures

I’m not much of a phone person normally, but this morning two people called me and the conversations kind of went on, and my fidgety fingers emptied the little glass container of all the little gems I’ve stuck in my pockets walking on the beach – most from when we first arrived – and starting arranging them. The long one on the left is ‘musical’ – it rings like some crystals. I think of drilling a hole in one end and making it a pendant.

Sticking pebbles in my pocket on the beach, to bring home, is one of those things about which I occasionally ask why do I do this?

The answers range from elaborate, to the most simple: because I can.

Back and forth

A year ago, I ‘upgraded’ our internet service with a modem/wifi router from AntelData, the only-a-half-decade-behind local ISP. Immediately it proved inferior to the previous modem with our own wifi router, dropping connections and assigning identical IP addresses to different computers. I went back to revert to our previous arrangement. Oh no, can’t do that, you have a one-year contract. So at the end of one year, I again went back to the office. Now it’s oh no, we can’t change the router. You have to call tech support. (You know, the phone that never answers.)

Sounds like a good time to rant about how things should be, and how they do it ‘back where I come from,’ no?

Well, back where I come from:

You may find this amusing (or not). The additional info requested for the 8802 came back stamped “Return to Sender/Forward Time Expired – IRS 2970 Market St, Philadelphia, PA.”  After waiting on hold for 15 minutes, I spoke with a rep who said PO Box 16347 was quite old and hadn’t been valid for at least a year.
“But you just sent me a letter on May 29th with instructions to send the document to that PO Box.”
“Oh, well the Market St address is good.  Send it there.”

Of course, this is for a document we have ALREADY PAID the IRS for. Were they extracting money otherwise, I expect the approach might not be so casual. Just guessing.

An argument for buying local?

Moldy shoes in Uruguay

The trusty Timberlands on the left have taken me through Mexico City, Paris, Prague, Bratislava, Buenos Aires. Notice the mold growing on them. The same is true of most shoes we brought to Uruguay.

The ‘Freeway’ shoes, made in Brazil and bought here, remain unaffected, even though stored in the same (ventilated) place.

What to make of that? Who knows.

If, however, you find yourself here and similarly afflicted, the answer (leftmost shoe) is Blem – furniture polish – and a rag.

Enchufar: to plug in

A) Inclinado – B) Tres-en-linea (three in line) – C) Schuko (German)

Buy three appliances in Uruguay, and you may get three different types of plug.

If you do some of your own wiring, note that a mounting frame D from Argentina will not work with sockets from Uruguay (A & B), and vice versa. The width discrepancy amounts to a millimeter or less – way to go, guys! And (of course) Argentinian hardware is not widely sold in Uruguay. We bought our house from someone who built it with (cheaper) hardware he carried from Buenos Aires, which is why I know.

I like the compact tres-en-linea, especially with hot leads partially insulated (plug B). I have cut off perfectly good Schuko plugs and rewired new appliances right out of the box.

Other people prefer fumbling with adapters. Here’s one that will accept anything, including North American plugs:

But the question remains – what’s on the other end that plugs into the wall?