Reduce, re-use: yes; recycle: no

A little over a month ago, I began drinking sparkling water (agua con gas) instead of wine.

I love the vastly reduced clink-clank of bottle recycling, and the cash savings will certainly buy a little sushi, but I didn’t feel good about the single-use plastic water bottles from the supermarket. Given tightening purity standards in China for recyclables, many municipalities up north have gone from making a little selling recyclables, to paying much more to send them to a landfill.

I don’t know the status here. I don’t know if plastic is really recycled, and if so, where (but they seemed serious about it last I checked, seven years ago). But then I remembered how we got drinking water before I installed filters: the water guy who comes around every Monday morning.

He brings pressurized bottles like the one on the left. Total waste is reduced from a bottle with three types of plastic, to a little piece of plastic wrap. Plus the water stays fizzier because the bottle is pressurized. Also it costs less. And the delivery guy is friendly and helpful. For example, after starting delivery only a few weeks ago, we were out last Monday morning. We returned to find six bottles of water at our doorstep, to be paid this week, no problem.

So how many times can these pressurized bottles be re-used? I have no idea. However, this is one delivered today:

refillable water bottle, Uruguay

Notice the phone number. Phone numbers in Uruguay no longer begin with zero. In fact, they haven’t since late 2010. So, chances are these bottles have been around a while.

I like that.

The scoop

We haven’t gone out for ice cream this summer, and Syd mentioned vanilla with walnuts and maple syrup, and seeing as we had the latter two ingredients – and the weather being insufferably hot – I procured the former.

I think it’s been eight years since I used the ice cream scoop we purchased here. It was a piece of crap then, and now, even on ice cream fresh from the store, it was even more a piece of crap:

Yes, digging into relatively soft ice cream it bent completely back. Instead of going back to the drawer, it now goes to the trash.

This is, unfortunately, all too typical of products purchased in Uruguay. We discovered this early on, of course. However, as a followup, I’m happy to say that those new garden tools mentioned in that 2012 blog post are still going strong – I used them both today!

Startcoin, stopped

A few years ago I started paying around with cryptocurrencies. I’m not sure what got me onto Startcoin, but it was probably during a particularly frothy period where a gimmicky 20-something took to YouTube to present himself as an expert and this was The. Next. Great. Thing.

Some time ago, an exchange warned me to move my holdings to my own wallet, since they were delisting it for lack of activity. Duly noted – recent global 24 trading volume USD 2:


Think that’s bad?

Think that’s bad? Here’s the most recent 24 hour trade data:

Of course if there’s no trading, no nothing, it’s kind of hard to connect with the network to update. This was a few days ago:

This is today:

I’m almost half way there! How exciting! Maybe when I’m up to date, I can transfer my few dollars worth of Startcoin to one of the two exchanges that still list it (why?):

Then I can place an order to dump my stake and watch the price dive – a true market influencer? I doubt I’ll ever get there. Still, it’s fun to watch. Of the thousands of cryptocurrencies, 95% or more will follow this trajectory into complete worthlessness.

By the way, this “investment” was not with real money – I long since recouped my capital in fiat currency. This is playing with froth.

Not playing

Unusual fuss last night; dogs wouldn’t come in. Bandito the Shih Tzu was burrowing impossibly into the aloe vera, backed by chain link fence, until I had to swat at him with a flashlight to flush him. He went inside, I went inside. Then Susan announced that Mocha was inside, she not seeing, as I did, something a foot long hanging from his mouth.

My first thought was a rat, but he jumped on the couch and deposited a young comedreja (possum). “Dead,” I said, but Susan reminded me how well they play dead, so I grabbed it by the tail with a piece of paper towel and deposited it outside the fence, where our dogs couldn’t get at it.

Alas, the morning light revealed that it was not, after all, playing dead.

It’s not the first, but a little less mysterious than the last.

Currency value decline a.k.a. inflation

I stopped by the butcher to get menudos (giblets) and corazón (beef heart) for the dogs. To my surprise, prices had jumped significantly from the last time I looked at a receipt a couple weeks ago:

receipt

That’s a 25% and 10% increase respectively.

Same thing at Tienda Inglesa:

receipt

Mushrooms have gone up 22% in the last two weeks.

In our little local store, the price of eggs has gone up 8% in the last two weeks.

This is not a case of higher prices for tourist season. All of the price hikes have happened in the last week or two, as tourist season ends. And the USD exchange rate has been steady for the last several months (although the highest since we’ve lived here).

I don’t pay attention to too many prices, although I do recall when we first moved here, our son liked to order entrecot (boneless ribeye steak) at Don Vito. It cost 245 pesos, which seemed expensive – at least compared to what we ordered. Here’s where we are with that at the moment:

menu

Granted, it’s been almost ten years, so that’s not entirely unexpected. I remember being appalled when red peppers hit 99 pesos/kilo. Now you’re lucky if the price gets that low. And of course produce varies with the season.

But all these significant price jumps in a very short time, given my expectation of 10-12% per year, have definitely got my attention.

It’s that day

When you see chairs lined up either side of the road, it means tonight is the Carnaval parade in Atlántida. But they’re not there just as a nice gesture. If you want to sit, you have to pay.

I went out to see part of the parade one year, and haven’t felt compelled to do so again. You can find more in the Wikipedia article on Uruguayan Carnival (which apparently doesn’t meet Wikipedia’s high editorial standards, oh my!) and find videos of our local desfile here.

In the road maintenance office

“So, the heaviest tourist season is over. What now?”

“Well you know that heavily-used pedestrian crossing by the Playa Mansa?”

“Of course. Leading to the most crowded beach, saw a lot of pedestrian traffic. Typical January. What about it?”

“It’s kinda faded.”

“You’re right. Now that the bulk of the tourists are gone, this might be a good time to repaint it. You know, so cars can see it better. Safety thing.”

“My thinking exactly.”