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)…
…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.
I’ve mentioned the noisy airplane advertising and motorcycle advertising. This story comes from our friends Syd and Gundy who used the motorcycle advertising service, with a rather remarkable result.
Their dog Leah disappeared on Christmas afternoon 2011. They had briefly attended a get-together near us, then returned home to prepare dinner for guests joining them at 5pm. At about 4pm, Syd took the dogs out to the woods for a walk. Fireworks exploded. Leah went into panic mode and fled. Syd searched, returned home for an uncomfortable dinner, and then their guests joined them for another search. He continued searching on his own until dark and early the next morning and again in the afternoon.
Two days after, a Spanish-speaking friend suggested an ad on the loudspeaker bike, and went with them to order it. While making the aural message, the company suggested posters, included in their cost. The posters ended up in vet offices and places where dog food is sold. One of those posters was seen by that same friend’s daughter’s ex-boyfriend, who had seen a Facebook posting by a couple in Pando (20 km away) showing the dog they had found at the beach in Atlántida. He realized they were likely the same dog, told his Facebook friends how to contact his ex-girlfriend, who told her mother, who emailed Syd and Gundy a link to the Facebook posting.
Thus Leah was rescued, having been very well taken care of in the meantime, as a result of noisy motorcycle advertising.
Though the noise part actually contributed nothing.
Saw this nifty little video yesterday, and remembered the comfrey (Spanish: consuelda) I transplanted last year from a friend’s place after they raved about it. It immediately wilted and looked dead. Don’t worry, she said, it will come back! Indeed it did.
As soon as I finished the video, I dug some up and took it to the campo.
Spread to your heart’s content!
This is looking south (remember, here the sun’s in the north) toward my ragtag garden dominated by zapallos that I didn’t plant.
Goal for next year: grow stuff I actually plant, other than tomatoes and loofahs.
My volunteer garden gave us a zapallo like this for dinner last night. Deliciously smooth and sweet, unlike others that we thought were of the same variety.
On this plant, they start out looking (well, sort of) and tasting like zucchini, then they get big and long, and even bigger, and if you leave it until the stem dries out, they will keep all year in a dry place (except that they didn’t last year).
Do an image search for zapallo and you’ll see a boggling array of shapes and colors, including some that look like pumpkins, which is how the word translates. Those with very orange flesh are called zapallo cabutia. All very confusing.
Thursday brings the feria (street market) to Atlántida, Uruguay. While you can get this noise any day, you definitely will hear it on feria day. All day.
In a country where fuel costs are among the highest in the world, and where the cost of anything with a motor is 50-500% more expensive than in the United States, someone thinks it a great idea to fly a plane blaring 15-second audio advertisements. 15 seconds because the plane is too fast for anything more.
Hand-fed as chicks, these sociable guinea hens come all the way from the neighbor’s yard to peck the ground at my feet, as if they can find nothing to eat in the 100 meters between.
Even when I’m using a noisy 5.5 HP lawn mower. I stopped it to take pictures; when it was running they would let it get even closer than this before moving.
