Greetings from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Vancouver must be one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Today is a gorgeous sunny day. The mountains that form the backdrop for Vancouver still have patches of snow on them.

While everything is still fresh in my mind I want to list some of the things that stand out after being away for so long and some of the differences between Seattle / Vancouver and Montevideo. Nothing here is intended to be a value judgment (except for the dog crap on the sidewalks!). Some things are just different between Uruguay and Washington State & British Columbia. In no special order:

1. No dog crap on the sidewalks. None. Haven’t even noticed any by the trees along the streets.
2. Most sidewalks here are in perfect condition. A few places where tree roots have pushed up and cracked the sidewalk are usually patched with cement or blacktop.
3. Roads in Seattle have potholes. Roads in Montevideo are usually free of potholes. Perhaps because it gets colder here and there are many more cars here.
4. There are many more cars here! Montevideo doesn’t know what traffic is. People there complain if they have to wait two cycles of the traffic light to get from Blvr Artigas to Avenida Italia. Traffic here is crazy in comparison. Both in the cities and on highways.
5. People drive between the lines.
6. Drivers stop when somebody is waiting to cross the street. To be honest, this is unusual even compared to many places in North America. When I lived in Seattle and friends would visit I’d always warn the ones who rent a car to be careful because cars in front of you may stop suddenly to allow a pedestrian to cross the street and to watch out for pedestrians who always expect cars to stop.
7. Some of the crosswalks here make chirping sounds to make it easier for blind people to cross the street.
8. All street corners are wheelchair accessible.
9. Electrical outlets have two sockets. In Uruguay there’s always only one socket. The only exception I saw was at a Canadian couple’s house after they remodeled. They had two placed in all outlets.
10. Self scan and checkout at the grocery store. I’d totally forgotten about them. You walk up, push some buttons, scan your groceries, swipe your credit card, and go.
11. Adding tip to the restaurant charge on your credit card. Here they leave a blank space so you can write in the tip amount. In Uruguay you don’t have that option. You either leave the 10% tip in cash or, if you remember ahead of time, you ask them to add it to the bill before the process the credit card charge.
12. Restaurant tipping here is 15%-18%.
13. Restaurants are much more expensive here! Probably from two to three times what you’d pay for something similar in Montevideo.
14. Garbage dumpsters are either inside buildings or in alleys. In Montevideo they’re on the streets.
15. Recycling is mandatory in Seattle.
16. Jaywalking is illegal and often ticketed in Seattle. I immediately found myself looking around for cops before crossing the street.
17. More people standing outside smoking in Seattle than MVD. Both cities have banned indoor public smoking but it seems that more people smoke here — outside, on the sidewalks. The plots of dirt surrounding city trees have become big ashtrays.
18. More homeless people in Seattle than MVD.
19. More people begging in Seattle though they’re 100% adults while in MVD they’re usually very young children.
20. I’m more on guard walking around downtown Seattle than I was in most places in MVD. Most of the homeless people in Seattle are harmless but some just seem very threatening.

That’s all for now. JP will be here tomorrow. It will be interesting to know which differences are apparent to him that I just take for granted. I’m sure he’ll be impressed by the newness of most of the skyscrapers in Vancouver, the mountains, and the diversity of the people. Oh, and since it’s summer here and the weather is finally nice he’ll appreciate the warmth too I’m sure. Today, driving up from Seattle, it was sunny and about 73 degrees the whole way. A perfect day.

Ten days later I still have a cold. A couple of days ago I felt like I was about to shake it for good but no such luck. Here’s an excerpt from an email I wrote Shirley today:

“I still have a cold. It’s horrible. I can’t get warm in this house. Not true. I can’t get this house to be consistently warm. The lowest setting on the gas heater in the bedroom makes it too hot overnight. One click lower it gets too cold overnight. THERMOSTAT! I never thought I’d miss that word so much!”

Urofish has an excellent entry on his blog about home heating and insulation (lack of) in Uruguay. I echo a lot of his observations about growing up in a cold climate, in my case Westchester County, followed by the mountains of New York State, and finally Eastern Long Island. We had our share of very cold and snowy winters, especially when we lived in the Catskill mountains. I seem to remember being covered in snow before the end of November with it finally melting in April sometime. Mom couldn’t afford to run the heat 24 hours so at night she’d lower the thermostat a few degrees and when us kids woke up for school we would raise it. (Ahh, the days before automatic thermostat timers.) Sometimes we’d supplement the central heating with a wood-burning potbelly stove. That thing put off a lot of heat and really helped save on the oil bill.

Once, as an adult, I was living in Manhattan in a pre-war (cica 1920s) apartment building. The bedroom had large corner windows plus one large window off to the side. I think they were the original windows. One winter morning I wake up and notice that I could see my breath! Sometime during the night the oil burner in the building broke down. The high temperature for the day was 18 degrees (negative 8 degrees Celsius). A friend of mine who lived on the first floor and I made our way to the elevated subway (brrrrrrr) and took the train north a couple of stops to the Bronx. We spent several hours in the sauna at Bally’s Fitness. This is my only clear memory of being cold in a home up north.

In Uruguay the winter weather is mild. Today is 55 degrees (12 C) and sunny. It’s beautiful outside and it feels nice walking in the sun. The problem is that it’s 55 degrees and shady in the house. Because of the way this house is built we only heat the master bedroom and the office. As I noted in my email to Shirley, the bedroom is either too hot or too cold. The office is smaller, has lower ceilings, and has a built-in electric heater with a thermostat. It’s very easy to keep the office at a comfortable temperature. The bathrooms, hallway, and entire first floor are without heat. I found a scarf in my closet today. I’m going to start wearing it every time I leave one of the “safe rooms.”

For those of you who haven’t moved here yet, remember to check on the heating situation of wherever you choose to rent or buy. Read Urufish’s entry for the details on the types of heat available here. Mild winters feel brutally cold with inadequate heating!

This is a venting post!

I know, I know, I’m doing a lot of bitching but I consider this my therapy, okay?

Hola everyone. It’s been a while since my last post. I’ve been very busy working on my Web projects. Plus for the entire month of February I was forced to used Microsoft Windows (yuck). I’m gonna do some venting in this post. Normally I try to concentrate on the good and forget about the bad but right now I just have a need to let some frustrations out.

First topic for venting: Miami-Box (www.miami-box.com). I’ll start by saying a few good things about them. They’re cheap, the people are generally pleasant, and they do a great job delivering letters and magazines. Now for the not so good. On January 31st the power adapter for my Apple laptop (my girlfriend as JP refers to it) died. So, on January 31st I ordered a replacement online from Apple. It arrive in Miami at the offices of Miami-Box on February 6th. Well, that’s when they emailed me telling me that they received it. According to FedEx they received it the day before at 1:55pm. I didn’t have the power adapter in my hands until late in the day on February 28th — 28 days after I ordered it and 23 days after Miami-Box received it.

Miami-Box ships out of Miami on every Thursday. My package arrived there on a Monday. It should have been delivered to me by February 12th or 13th at the latest considering it would have to go through UY Customs. For some unexplained reason it didn’t ship to UY until the following Thursday, February 15th. The following week JP called them asking when they’re going to deliver it. They explained that it was being held in UY Customs at that they could represent me and pick it up (for a fee) or that they can give me the paperwork (for a lower fee) and we could pick it up ourselves. We asked them to do it for us and do it ASAP. On February 26th they delivered to the house the paperwork for clearing Customs. JP called them back. They asked him who he spoke with the previous week because they had no record of us requesting them to do the clearing for us. We were left with two options — return the paperwork to them or go to the airport and take care of the clearing of Customs ourselves. Early in the morning on Wednesday, February 28th JP went to the airport with the paperwork from Miami-Box and attempted to clear customs.

I believe I wrote about the DNA (UY Customs, Dirección Nacional de Aduanas) process in another post. To sum it up you have to move papers around to nine or ten different people receiving signatures, stamps, and approvals at each station. That Wednesday morning JP made it through four or five of the stations before they told him NO! they won’t release the package to him. It turns out there was no invoice in the box so they had no idea how much the adapter was worth so they didn’t know how much tax to charge him!

After he came home I printed the receipt from Apple’s Web site and went back to the airport. Since JP had already started the process I only had to go to seven different people to finally pay the taxes (two different taxes collected by two different cashiers on two different floors). In the end I was happy since I had the adapter, packaged nicely in three nested boxes.

All together, Florida sales tax, shipping from Apple to Miami, shipping from Miami to Uruguay, transportation for JP and me to and from the airport two times and the taxes charged by DNA cost about US$120. The adapter itself cost US$79.

Okay, finally as of last week I have my laptop up and running again. The story continues though. In the meantime I called Apple support (using Internet VOIP phone service Vonage which deserves a post of its own). Apple arranged to have another adapter sent out to me for free since it’s within my warranty period. The box they shipped it in was to be the box I used to return my defective adapter. Also, they were including the paperwork and shipping label I’d need to return the defective one. They said I’d have ten days after receiving the new one to return the old one or I’d be charged US$79 (plus tax and shipping).

On March 1st I received an email from Miami-Box stating that they received the adapter from Apple. It made it on the flight to Uruguay that same day. JP called Miami-Box on Monday. They said that this time it wasn’t held by DNA and that they’d deliver to the house on Thursday or Friday. Since we had only ten days to return the defective one to Apple and since all the return information was included in the box with the new one we arranged to pick it up at the Miami-Box office here in Montevideo on Tuesday. It didn’t arrive at their office until yesterday. JP went to their office with the defective adapter in hand planning to use the info received with the new adapter to ship the old one back to Apple via FedEx. Well, that didn’t happen.

This time around the people in Miami-Box in Miami opened the package from Apple, threw away the box and all the paperwork and put the adapter, which was packaged in a zip-lock bag, in with the rest of my mail. That’s why DNA didn’t hold it to collect tax, they didn’t see it. Since Miami-Box threw away the box and papers that came with the adapter we had no way of returning the defective one!

Today I called Apple and explained what had happened. They wanted to ship me a new box so that I could return the defective part. NO! I told them that I’ll pay for the return shipping, just tell me where to send it and what information to include in the package. They told me. JP ran over to Punta Carretas shopping to send it via DHL. (After my last experience with DHL I’d sworn that I’d never use them again but FedEx is on the other side of town and we wanted to get this out to Apple ASAP.)

DHL charged US$58 for three-business-day delivery and because of the way they do thing it’ll probably get held in US Customs upon arrival in the United States. The Uruguayan Post Office would have cost half the price and with FedEx I had never paid more than US$30 to send anything to the US (and they get it there in two days).

Lessons Learned: I will never use Miami-Box again for anything other than magazines and letters. Even those I’ll switch back to USABox. And I will never use DHL again neither for sending or receiving packages. NEVER! And, I’ll do whatever I can to avoid having anything held by DNA. Hopefully UY and USA will enter into a free-trade agreement and all this Customs b.s. will be a thing of the past. (Oh no, I brought up politics so I’ll probably get a ton of email about US imperialism and the reasons they want a free-trade agreement with UY. All I know is that I don’t want to pay huge import fees and spend half a day trying to get things released from DNA.)

USABox might cost a little more but their advantages are worth it. They email you the moment they receive anything in Miami (I’ve checked the delivery time of things on FedEx’s Website and USABox usually emails me within two hours of receiving packages). Also, for envelopes they scan the envelope, post the picture in your inbox on their site and email you a notification. They’ll either send you your mail on a set schedule (e.g. once a week, or once a month) or they’ll hold it until you notify them to send it. When you request them to ship your mail you go to your USABox inbox on their Website. You put a check mark next to the items you want them to ship. This is cool since if you have one thing that you need urgently or if you have something that you suspect will be held up by DNA you can have them shipped separately from the rest of your mail. If you receive junk mail you can delete it from your inbox which will tell them to throw it away for you.

Another cool thing about USABox is that they won’t open your packages unless you request them to (you have to describe the contents and declare a value on their Website). When you enter your shipping request they give you the option to repackage everything for you. If they do repackage and if it reduces the cost of shipping they’ll split the savings with you. USABox normally uses DHL to ship but for US$9 more they’ll use FedEx instead. From what I’ve heard FedEx is much better at clearing things with DNA (actually, a DHL employee here in Montevideo told me this). After everything I’ve gone through with DHL using FedEx is worth the nine dollars.

Oh, one more venting thing. Miami-Box’s Website is only in Spanish and as far as I can tell all of their employees are monolingual (Spanish only). Now, I know, everybody in the world doesn’t need to speak English, and they’re an Uruguayan company and Uruguay is a Spanish speaking country but they’re offering a service shipping from the United States to Uruguay. Everything they receive in Miami is in English (letters, magazines, and most importantly, packages). If they had an English speaker in Miami opening packages they might have realized that the paperwork that came with my Apple adapter was important. Another point is that Montevideo is a world capital and there are people here who are more comfortable with English so why don’t they at least have their Website in both Spanish and English?

If you decide to join USABox and click on any of my USABox links on this page I’ll get a referral credit. I have no idea what that means but it sounds cool so if you enroll with USABox please use one of my links, okay?

I have some more venting to do (about Microsoft, Windows, and Internet Explorer) but that will have to wait. Since it’s been so long since I posted any photos I wanted to upload a few then I have some work to do.

The Family

Parque Rodó

The Golf

Playa Ramirez

Around Town

Often people ask me what’s different between life in Uruguay and the United States. That’s such a huge and very general question. I could devote this entire blog to just pointing out differences. For this entry I’m going to report some statistics. These are just numbers and numbers are easily manipulated plus methods of gathering facts can differ from country to country.

Since numbers are neither good or bad and interpreting numbers is often very subjective I’m going to only point out a few of the differences that, in my opinion weigh heavily in favor for Uruguay. 1) Overall crime is less. 2) 94% of the eligible population voted in the presidential election. 3) HIV infection rate per capita is half of the US. 4) A huge percentage of the population is nonreligious. 5) Terrorism is virtually nonexistent.

Okay, some of the numbers I don’t like. 1) They sell Big Macs here! 2) There is crime. 3) Wages are very low. 4) Telephone service is very expensive. 5) Internet usage is relatively low.

Here are my sources: Nationmaster’s page on Uruguay. CIA World Factbook page on Uruguay. Nationmaster’s page on US. CIA World Factbook page on US.

Population: UY 3,344,000; US 298,444,000: UY has 1.2% the population of the US
Area: total: 176,220 sq km (slightly smaller than the state of Washington); US 9,826,630 sq km: UY has 1.8% the area of the US
Life Expectancy: UY 76.33 years; US 77.85 years

CRIME
Assaults per 1,000: UY 1.3; US 7.6
Burglaries per 1,000: UY 1.6; US 7.1
Car thefts per 1,000: UY 1.2; US 3.9
Year abolished death penalty: UY 1907; US n/a
Fraud per 1,000: UY 0.33; US 1.26
Murder by firearm per 1,000: UY 0.025; US 0.028
Prisoners per 100,000: UY 209; US 715 (highest of all nations in the world)
Rapes per 1,000: UY 0.05; US 0.3
Robberies per 10,000: UY 1.57; US 1.38
Total crimes per 1,000: UY 21.70; US 80.06

DEMOCRACY
Civil and political liberties (scale 1 (low to 7 high): UY 6; US 6
Compulsory voting: UY strict enforcement; US n/a
Presidential election voter turnout: UY 94.7%: US 49.3%

ECONOMY
Big Mac: UY US$1.82; US US$3.15
GDP Real growth rate: UY 6.5%; US 3.5%
Gross National Income (per capita): UY US$5,617; US US$33,070
Literacy: UY 98%; US 99% (UY ranks higher than 153 countries in the world including Spain, Greece, Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Israel, Panama, Colombia, Mexico, China, Brazil, and India)

HEALTH
% of population using adequate sanitation facilities: UY 94%: US 100% (UY is tied with Paraguay and is higher than 94 other countries listed including Costa Rica, Panama, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela, China, and India)
% of population using improved drinking water sources: UY 98%; US 100% (UY is tied with or higher than 116 other countries)
HIV AIDS Adult prevalence rate: UY 0.3%; US 0.6%
Happiness level> Quite happy: UY 59%; US 53%
Happiness level> Very happy: UY 21%; US 39%

MEDIA
Average cost of a 3-min. local call: UY US$0.17; US US$0.09
Personal computers per 1,000: UY 102; US 544
Mobile pones per 1,000: UY 190; US 651
Televisions per 1,000: UY 229; US 741 (Americans watch 28 hours of television per week. Statistics for UY are not available.)
Internet users per 100,000: UY 20: US 55 (Highest is New Zealand with 79 and lowest is Tajikistan with .07. World average is 18.4)

MILITARY
Expenditures per capita: UY US$73; US US$936

PEOPLE
Ethnic groups: UY white 88%, mestizo 8%, black 4%, Amerindian (practically nonexistent); US white 81.7%, black 12.9%, Asian 4.2%, Amerindian and Alaska native 1%, native Hawaiian and other Pacific islander 0.2% (2003 est.)

RELIGION
Church attendance: UY 31%; US 44%
UY: Roman Catholic 66% (less than half of the adult population attends church regularly), Protestant 2%, Jewish 1%, nonprofessing or other 31%
US: Protestant 52%, Roman Catholic 24%, Mormon 2%, Jewish 1%, Muslim 1%, other 10%, none 10% (2002 est.)

SPORTS
World Cup Wins: UY 15; US 6
World Cup Wins per 10 million people: UY 43.911 (#1 in world); 0.203 (#49)

TERRORISM
Global Terrorism Indicator: UY 0: US 3 (scale from 0 to 5; 0=no terrorism deaths)
Terrorist Acts > 2000-2006: UY 3: US 98