Christmas drear

And in case we needed another reminder where we are — well, let me put this another way. Do you think that a person who makes his living installing windows should know how to install windows? If you answered yes, clearly you haven’t spent much time in Uruguay.

Incompetent window installation, Uruguay

What makes this even “better” — the guy who installed it has already been back once to fix the leaks.

And this is not BK Aluminios, an incredibly bad but high-profile business. It’s a little mom-and-pop shop that at least pretends to care.

“How did an egg get in there?”

Stocking up at the butcher shop for the holidays, we decided to try a pollo relleno (stuffed chicken). We had a choice: salado or dulce (salty or sweet). We chose the former, hearing that the latter had things like pineapples inside it. The guy helping us could have, but didn’t, explain what the salado stuffed shicken contained. Perhaps I should have known (ya think?).

Pollo relleno - stuffed chicken in Uruguay

Susan’s comment after cooking and cutting it open: How did a hard-boiled egg get in there?

Seems like I should have a clever which came first? comment, but I don’t.

Cacti

A friend generously brought me a cactus shortly after we moved here. One of my son’s friends figured out what kind of cactus it was, and stole a chunk. I never learned anything more about that. The whole top part you see is what has regrown in six years since he cut a chunk off.

Alas, a recent windstorm broke two of the three branches — but not the new one!

San Pedro cactus

I gave away the tip of one branch. The other I planted. The bright green indicates new growth.

Cactus growth

And the broken branches are busy regenerating as well.

Alas, two bits don’t seem to be faring very well.

San Pedro cactus cuttings

Maybe I’ll have to find another use for them?

Waterproofing: busy day

Since we’ve recently had painting done, we thought it time to try to address some persistent moisture problems on parts of the wall that couldn’t be painted. Inside, our new do-anything guy removed all the revoque (surface) of a section of wall, drilled lots of holes, and set bottles of Igol Infiltración, which eventually empty themselves into the surrounding brick and waterproof it. We hope.

Outside, despite being almost directly below a valley in the roof where the most water pours off, the owner/builder apparently made no provision for waterproofing the subterranean part of the sunken living room wall. Even though fixed in place, the pretty-but-shitty window on the right allows water into the wall as well.

Meanwhile, our Namibian tenant in the campo sought advice from a local South African with lots of building experience, and the two launched into solving water problems on the flat roof there. Typical of Uruguayan construction, the bottom of the drain pipe was slightly above the lowest part of the roof, leaving pooled water to soak through the inevitable cracks in the concrete.

I helped somewhat, but mostly watched and listened, trying to sort out what they were saying to each other in Afrikaans.

Between the to-and-froing, I managed to take Benji walking with all his buddies, and saw this decent-sized spider casually making its way across our path.

How many workers…?

At our place in the country, a low-hanging power line would have been dangerous for anyone trying to pass to the back of the property with a machine. After months — years? — UTE, the state electric company, got around to responding to the work order(s) to raise it

UTE worker overkill, Uruguay

I wasn’t there yesterday, but apparently the task involved four trucks and about ten workers, only one of whom was actually doing anything. The power pole was for the next street, so why other trucks came up our street so nine workers could watch one work — ? Ahh, the mysteries….

Benji’s dream states

And on to Mondrian and The Matrix…

All done in a few minutes with the amazing free Prisma app on iPad.

Tienda Inglesa: from class to trash

Tienda Inglesa: Lo bueno por menos

Classy may be too strong a word, but Tienda Inglesa has been for me the best of the handful of “large” (remember, Uruguay is small) supermarket chains in Uruguay.

Back in 2012, Tienda Inglesa sold LED lights imported by Renovables S.A., a wide-ranging and impressive Uruguayan renewable energy business. The owner, Rolando Ringeltaube, told me how carefully their company monitored quality control in China. And, he told me, LED bulbs should have a life of 20 years. Which, considering the history of incandescent light bulbs, seems an unlikely prediction. Still, they have to last longer than these mercury-laden compact fluorescents that seem to last about a year, no?

So imagine my surprise when an LED light bulb I bought there died after three weeks. They have a “no refund” policy, but thought about it a couple days, and gave me another. Which also died after three weeks. Once again, they reminded me of the “no refund” policy, but gave me a credit after a few minutes. Meanwhile, I walked to the lighting section to examine the packaging. Sure enough, they are now imported from China by Tienda Inglesa. No middle man. No quality control.

LED bulbs are great (10X more efficient than incandescent), but the Tienda Inglesa LED bulbs are now officially trash. Consider yourself warned.

Extremely poor quality LED bulbs sold at Tienda Inglesa in Uruguay

Walmart wisdom™ comes to Uruguay.

Update 5 January 2017: the latest Tienda Inglesa garbage LED light, acquired 3 December 2016, has started overheating and malfunctioning today, after 33 days.

Compet—

—Several years ago, getting a quote on a large order, I complemented the local lighting store on their prices, which were much better than another place I’d just been. The kid behind the counter said, ”Sometimes they’re more expensive. Sometimes we’re more expensive. There’s no real competition here.”

He used the word competencia.

competition and competence in Spanish