They didn’t come last Saturday. Weather or something.

Today showed up mid-afternoon. Cleaned inside Argentinian Ñuke wood stove, scraping off chucks of oxidized metal – a.k.a, rust – broke bricks to secondary combustion chamber because something wasn’t removable to allow access to stove pipe. Their weapon, a half-inch black flexible pipe with wires stuck through the end (read: brush) unable to clear second bend in stovepipe, advertised as 45 degree elbows but instead 30 degrees.

Investigated rooftop; decided they’d come back tomorrow to replace broken bricks in stove (how?) and next week to clean chimney from (precarious) above.

Ya veremos – (now) we will see.

Sorry if a bit incoherent. Es lo que hay –  that’s how it is.

We went today to visit Mauro of the motorcycle accident in the hospital, who sports a large and ugly scar from having his spleen removed – Frankenstein-style stitches from his navel up (to remove the spleen – ?). He’ll be there another few weeks.

We had to take a couple elevators to find him. The elevators are the type with a single, automatic door and buttons you push to go to the desired floor. You know, like in a hotel – ? Seen them before?

An additional feature in each elevator is a chair with a person in it to push the buttons, taking up perhaps 20% of the floor space. As a result, a wheel chair would not fit in the elevator.

But, a full time job for a few more people. Welcome to Uruguay!

Later: told Santiago* about the elevator operators, adding es Uruguay.

Soy Uruguayo, he replied – ¿Me lo vas a decir a mi?

Or roughly, Hey, I’m Uruguayan – YOU’RE going to tell ME about it?

*masseur: 1-hour+ ~$30

How to pay bills in Uruguay:

Electric, water, telephone:

1. Set up automatic debit through your Banco Republica account in pesos.
2. Forget to fund the account one month, at which point automatic-debit contracts cease.
3. Go to individual offices, take a number, wait – nah.
4. Take bills to supermarket, pay at cashier when you check out.

Property and vehicle taxes:

1. Go online, enter property ID numbers, transfer money from bank account.
2. Or, spend an hour or more in a dreary government building

• • where the main entertainment consists of guessing how many thousands of people have rubbed against the concrete columns painted flat white a dozen years ago, in order to make them so filthy looking.

• That, or staring blankly with the ‘waiting is our second national sport’ look of resignation.

In some regions, like swanky Punta del Este (nya nana na na na!) they have only the latter choice since their departamento lacks an online payment system.

And then there’s Abitab.

You can pay bills at the ubiquitous Abitab, buy concert tickets, wire money, and probably a half dozen other things, but since paying all our bills there for six months yielded not a single ‘Abi’ on my points card, I had decided Abitab was the last resort, refuge of computer illiterates and credit-less souls.

Once our son was set up in Gato Dumas in Montevideo in March, the school gave us a sheet with payment options – bank transfers through three banks, or Abitab. Since any in-person dealings at the bank have the same tenor as the government building above, and being wary of an online transfer (because what a nightmare undoing a mistake!), I went to Abitab, expecting a blank stare, and lackluster and/or indifferent service, and a struggle.

What a surprise: school name, student name and ID number, tap tap tap and up comes the total, late fee included (oops: duly noted): fast, friendly, professional.

Who’d a thunk?