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.
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.
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.
Tiranos TembladTV posted four days ago its first Summary of Uruguayan events in seven months. The narrator explains that during this period, more than a thousand videos have accumulated, too many to show all. And then — drum roll — starts the summary of events with a dog barking at a balloon (1:40).
In case you’re new here (or to refresh your memory), here’s where that clip came from (added long after Syd’s comment):
The Summary is fun to watch all the way through. Even if you don’t understand the narration in Spanish, you’ll get the drift. There are a few bits in English.
So — if one dog year equals seven human years, Benji should have gotten 2.14285714285714 minutes (128.5714285714284 seconds) instead of 4 seconds. But the clip I posted originally was only 24 seconds long, and it was the “lead story” here, so good on ya, Benj. You’ve still got potential years of silliness ahead to claim your remaining 124.5714285714284 seconds of fame.
And remain oddly invisible, even in broad daylight.
Well, the town has decided to work on drainage, and lo and behold, with foliage gone we have plainly visible frogs! And of course Benji doesn’t quite know what to make of it.
For anyone who has dealt with driving in Uruguay, there is nothing here particularly unusual: a pedestrian wandering into a highway, curious interpretations of the meanings of those lines in the road, red lights that don’t apply to city buses.
The best rule for driving in Uruguay is to try to watch every person and vehicle — pedestrians, bicyclists, motos, and other cars and trucks, constantly imagine the stupidest thing they could do — step into traffic, swerve in front of you without notice, run stop and yield signs — and plan for it.
In this case, I might have been distracted by the conversation and so didn’t see the approaching out the side window. Fortunately, the passenger’s field of view allowed her to see it before it cleared the A-column for my view, and warn me. Locals will recognize the voice 😉
When we bought this vehicle in 2010, the blind spot was one of the more pronounced criticisms I could find online.
The triangle caused by the A-pillar split should be helpful, but since my eye level is near the top, it provides no help. Still, I have most often had problems with the passenger side, so perhaps I had a lapse of attention.
Which — when driving in Uruguay — can prove expensive, dangerous, or worse, as perhaps you can imagine.
From sunny t-shirt weather the last couple days to this: perfect ruination of the weekend for which two of our neighbors ventured out from Montevideo. Sometimes pouring rain, sometimes just rain. The wind has been subdued compared to prior years (2012 perhaps the worst so far).
SPOILER: this video is just three minutes of driving. Nothing actually happens. Which is actually exactly how days like this feel. (Though I did get my Kindle library organized — aren’t you excited?)
