Hmm, I seem to be on a writing spree. I’ve had a cold/flu since Sunday so maybe I’m starting to feel better. Also, we just got past the winter solstice so the days are going to start getting longer! Even though it’s the first days of winter (cold) the days get longer (sun) which is good (smile). Maybe the cold (the weather and the one in my nose) along with the short days accounts for my more-negative-than-usually rantings lately. Uruguay is a wonderful country. Those of you who live here can probably relate to some of the things I wrote about in my last few posts. Those who aren’t here yet should know what to expect. One of the things that attracts a lot of foreigners to Uruguay is that it feels like going back in time to a more innocent era. One of the things that drives a lot of foreigners crazy about Uruguay is that it feels like going back in time! There’s good and there’s bad which can sum up life anywhere on this planet. The good in Uruguay, in my opinion far outweighs the bad. Sometimes I get frustrated and impatient and wish things would change but then I realize that if things were to change too much it just wouldn’t be unique anymore.

With few exceptions every couple in the expat community here is binational. Gay (JP and me) and straight (almost everybody else). Has anybody else noticed this? We have Uruguay/USA, Uruguay/Canada, Uruguay/Brazil, Argentina/Canada, Germany/Canada, Colombia/USA, and more. It’s really one of the things I love about the community here. It’s not a North American group, or an English-speaking group. It’s nice. It is, for me, one of the special things about life in Uruguay.

It would be nice to have more out gay people in the group though. JP and I are getting tired of carrying the rainbow flag around by ourselves.

In my last post I ended with “we’re off to DHL”. If you’ve read some of my older posts you already know that I’m not a big fan of DHL Uruguay. But I’ll come back to this in a minute. In addition to sending the FBI report to Los Angeles we had the goal to pay my British Hospital monthly quota.

This post continues a theme that Brazzie wrote about on UruguayDreaming.com.

Here’s how we spent the last two hours . . .

1) Bill Pay Place in Punta Carretas Shopping — “Do you sell international certified checks?” “No”

2) Banco de la Republica in Punta Carretas Shopping — Pick a number. They’re serving number 52 and we picked number 78. I’m a pretty patient guy for a New Yorker but I didn’t want to sit around and watch the two tellers help 25 people and in the end tell us “No”. So we left.

3) Banco Comercial in Punta Carretas Shopping — “Do you sell international certified checks?” “No”

4) Next stop Bill Pay Place on 21 de Setiembre — “Do you sell international certified checks?” “Si”. “Great, we’d like a check for US$42.” “Sure, no problem that will be US$50 please. Let’s see your identification. What is your occupation? What’s your address and phone number?” I gave them my Washington State driver license. “No. We need a cedula or passport.” JP is anal about paperwork (he’s Uruguayan) so he had a photo copy of my passport on him. “Okay, thanks, that’ll do.” I gave them US$50 and they gave us a check made out to the Consulate of Uruguay. Not one bit of the personal information they asked me for was printed on the check… nada. The date, “Consulate of Uruguay”, the amount, two rubber stamps and two signatures. Also, it’s a check drawn on the “Banco de la Nacion Argentina, Park Avenue, New York.” The following words are on the check all in English: “Date, Pay to the Order Of, Dollars, Security Features Included, Details on back, original Document, Endorse Here, etc., etc.” It’s a US dollar check drawn on a New York City bank. But they printed the date “22 de Junio de 2007″ and the amount “cuarenta y dos con 00/100″. I have no idea if they’ll have any problem depositing this in Los Angeles. I’d imagine that it’s pretty common to see checks written in Spanish but I just don’t know.

“Oh, by the way, can we pay our British Hospital bill here?” “No!”

5) Bill Pay Place across the street from Punta Carretas Shopping—”Can we pay our British Hospital bill here?” “Si!”

6) DHL Office in Punta Carretas Shopping — “Hi, we’d like to send an envelope to Los Angeles and we’d like to prepay the return shipping back to Montevideo.” A blank look from the clerk. We explained it a couple of more times. He said “Oh, okay.” He got out a DHL envelope, put our paperwork in it and was about to seal it. “No, don’t seal it!” I said. “Why?” “We want to include a prepaid airway bill for the return shipping” I said. “No, you can’t do that.”

7) Post Office in Punta Carretas Shopping — “Hi, we’d like to send an envelope to Los Angeles and we’d like to prepay the return shipping back to Montevideo.” “Sure, no problem.” Then we explained it again to make sure she understood. “Oh, no, you can’t do that!”

Home — I logged onto FedEx.com, printed an airway bill from Los Angeles to my address in Miami and charged it to my credit card. JP called FedEx and scheduled a pickup. They should be here within two hours. FedEx rules.

Before you get the wrong idea, I really do love Uruguay. It’s peaceful, the people are nice and helpful, and the weather’s not bad but what is it with “the process” to do ANYTHING in this country? Absolutely nothing is as simple as you’d expect and everything involves paper, rubber stamps, and cash. I wanted to pay for the FedEx from here to Los Angeles with credit card — “No. Cash only please.”

Now, I’m not saying that everyplace should be like North America or Western Europe but efficiency and simplification of daily life are worthwhile goals no matter where in the world you call home. Efficiency is a dirty word in Uruguay. The rule of the land is make everything as complicated as possible so that we can create as many busy-jobs as possible. At the bill-pay place where we paid US$8 for a certified check there were 12 employees that I could count. One security guard, a manager-looking dude at a desk, six people attending the three customers that were there, then four cashiers. The attending clerks take the money (in cash, of course) from the customer, turn around and put it in a queue for the cashiers. Then when the cashier does his thing the clerk comes back with the receipt and change.

The other day I went to buy vitamin C. I started at the supermarket. “No. Only in pharmacies.” Okay, I went to the pharmacy. You walk into the place and there’s a counter with two clerks and two computers. “Hi, I’d like to buy vitamin C.” Sure, let me show you what we have. We walk over the the other end of the store where the vitamins are. I pick two bottles off the shelf. He takes them from me and walks back to his computer. He types some stuff in the machine then hands me a ticket. I then go back to the other end of the pharmacy to pay the ticket. While I’m paying he’s walking back with my vitamin C bottles and hands them to somebody else who puts them in a bag. The cashier gives me my credit card receipt and hands another slip to the bag person who then hands me the bag!

This isn’t unusual. I’ve only seen one or two small mom-and-pop pharmacies where the person who helps you will take your money and give you the products. 99% of the time there are at least three people (four at the British Hospital’s pharmacy) involved in any simple purchase at a pharmacy.

Besides the fact that all of these processes add complexity to everyday life it is, in my opinion, an incredible waste of human talent. When I run for president of Uruguay my platform will be free trade (as much as possible), generate technology jobs to compete in the world, and strive for efficiency.

The FedEx guy just left. He was very nice and helpful. He filled in the airway bill for us and left us with a bunch of envelopes and blank airway bills. He said it’ll be on a flight out of Montevideo tonight. Two thumbs up for FedEx.
=================================
JP wanted me to add a couple of things. 1) A clarification: it’s the process that’s inefficient, not the people. Most of the people we’ve encountered are very polite and do their jobs well. 2) The FedEx guy didn’t have change so paying in cash cost us an extra US$3.

Months and months ago I reported that the only thing holding up my permanent residency here in Uruguay was the legalization of my FBI report. Well, it’s still outstanding. The people I had helping me with my visa didn’t have any luck (I’m trying to be nice here) getting it legalized so I requested all of my papers back from them.

Here’s the scoop. You can either get the FBI report done yourself in the USA before you leave like I did or wait until you get to Uruguay and go to Interpol in Montevideo.

Option 1) Do it yourself — go to your local police department and tell them you need fingerprints taken to request an FBI report for yourself. They’ll charge you a few dollars, get your hands all dirty, and you walk out of there with a card covered in fingerprint ink. You then send that to the FBI office in West Virginia with a check (I think it was US$18). If you have a crime-free background they’ll mail the same card back to you with a “No Arrest Record” stamp on the back. Before you leave the US you have to have it legalized by sending the card to the Uruguayan consulate that serves your state of residency along with a certified check for US$42 and a return postage paid envelope (they prefer DHL). This is the step I didn’t do which has held everything up for me. The last step after you received the legalized card back is to have it translated by an official translator here in Uruguay.

If you check the FBI Web site they say how many weeks it can take to process your request. They also say that if you have a time deadline because of travel or whatever to write that on the outside of the envelope and they’ll do their best to process before your requested date. They were true to their word when I did mine. I only had about five weeks before I left Seattle and they got it back to me before the date I wrote on the envelope.

Option 2) Interpol Montevideo — You can go to Interpol here in Montevideo where they’ll take your fingerprints. [I haven’t done this so I’m piecing it together from what I’ve heard so if anybody has more accurate information please post it here.] They’ll give you an envelope already addressed to the FBI. You have to include the FBI’s fee in the envelope. I’m not sure how much Interpol charges for this service nor am I sure if you have to pay the round-trip postage or DHL expense additionally.

Some people have said that the Interpol route doesn’t take too long. JP just called the UY consulate in NYC and they said that doing it through Interpol could take up to six months whereas sending it yourself to an Uruguayan consulate is just a matter of days.

One advantage I’ve heard of the Interpol route is that you don’t have to have the report translated and the return envelope goes directly to immigration here in MVD. Translation costs about UY$68 (less than three dollars).

If anybody has any experience with the Interpol method please share it since I’m not sure how accurate what I wrote is. Doing it in the US myself was pretty painless. I just wish I had had it legalized before leaving the US. I didn’t know about that requirement or I would have. When I sent my birth certificate to the UY consulate in NYC to be legalized the got it back to me very quickly so I believe them when they say they’ll process it within a day of receiving the request.

Also, don’t be afraid to call the consulates in the US. Everyone I’ve spoken with (NYC) or dealt with in person (in Miami) has been extremely helpful, polite, and courteous. JP just hung up the phone with both the NYC consulate and the Los Angeles consulate and both were very informative and helpful.

We’re off to DHL now to send the FBI report to Los Angeles. Hopeful next week I’ll report here on the blog that it came back without issue — I’m the eternal optimist!!

This is a venting post!

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

Now that I’ve given birth to OutInUruguay.com I have a little more time to work on other things. I’ve been promising entries about electricity for a while so here’s Part I.

Part I, Electricity in the world. All of North America uses a common electrical standard Alternating Current (AC) 120 volts at 60 Hertz. Growing up in Canada or the United States you’re not exposed to any other electrical standards. Well, it turns out that most of the world uses 220 volts at 50 Hertz. While researching this entry I discovered that it’s commonly accepted that 220 V at 60 Hz is the most efficient way to deliver electricity but very few countries around the world use this standard.

To make this a little more confusing the terms 120 V and 220 V are not really accurate. 120 V really allows for a range from 100 V to 127 V. Anything you plug in should be able to operate with an electrical supply falling within this range. 220V allows for a range of 220 V to 240 V.

Uruguay uses 220 V at 50 Hz. The good news is that many of todays electronic items don’t run on Alternating Current at all. They actually use Edison’s original Direct Current (DC). That’s why almost everything you plug in has a “power brick” either inline (attached to the power cord) or in the appliance itself. That power brick converts or transforms the electricity from the supplied AC to DC. So far there’s nothing good about this. Those damn power bricks are a pain in the butt to carry around and are quite often a pain to plug into the wall, especially the ones that have the brick part directly attached to the plug. Here’s the good news… a majority of these DC converters accept AC power sources anywhere in the range of 100 V to 240 V and 50 Hz to 60 Hz. In my experience very few of them require one or the other standard (be careful though because there are some that only work on one or the other).

Those power converters that accept the full range may be plugged directly into the wall in North America or Uruguay. Some items like desktop computers have a switch on the power converter that lets you switch between 120 V or 220 V. If you have the switch set in the wrong direction when you plug in your computer you will instantly fry the power supply though if you’re lucky the computer itself should be okay.

For the items you have that can’t use 240 V directly you can buy converters or transformers. For the ones that can plug into the wall directly you’ll still need to buy adapters since the plugs here are a different shape than in North America. I’ll tackle converters, transformers, and adapters in Part II. In the meantime here are a couple of links with much more detailed information on the subject. Note that in these pages you will encounter some, gasp, “British English.” The expressions “mains voltage” and “mains electricity” translate to household voltage and household electricity in North American English.

Wikipedia: Mains Electricity
Electricity Around the World

Introducing OutInUruguay.com. Pablo and I have been working on several Web projects and this is the launch of our first big one. I’ve worked in technology for around 20 years but becoming a Web developer/publisher required learning a whole new set of skills — and I’m the first to admit that I have a lot more to learn! The cool thing is I’m enjoying the work. It allows for much more creativity than being a systems engineer.

About OutInUruguay.com. This site came about as the offspring of one of our not-yet-ready-for-prime-time projects. I was taking too much time learning new skills — content management systems, programming languages (HTML isn’t what it used to be — where the hell did CSS come from?), SEO, SEF URLs, Web hosting, etc. Since I’m the tech side of the team Pablo was getting anxious to sink his teeth into a project so he thought up OutInUruguay.com. When he pitched the idea to me I liked it. It works well with our yet-to-be-developed larger project and the subject matter is something we both know and love — Uruguay.

The original idea for OutInUruguay.com was to make a gay and lesbian community / portal for Uruguayans and immigrants/expats. It’s something that is definitely lacking here. The more we worked on it the less I liked the idea of creating a “gay”site. One of the problems the gay community faces in many countries is a self-imposed segregation. Many of my closest friends are straight and almost all of my friends here in Uruguay are straight. I don’t like segregation. Pablo agreed. OutInUruguay.com will not be a segregated community. The result is a community / portal site that stresses human rights and sexual minority rights in particular. Sexuality is only a part of what makes us all human. It’s a part that shouldn’t be forced into a closet but it’s still only a part of the whole. So if you’re straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, pan-sexual, asexual, none-of-my-business sexual, or just confused, you’re welcome at OutInUruguay.com. It doesn’t matter if you’re in or out (of the closet) you can participate in the community at whatever level you’re comfortable with. We have over 30 members already (we were beta testing in April) and, as far as I know, most of them are straight. I think the straight people I know who don’t have an issue with other people being gay are some of the coolest people I’ve ever met.

Please check out the site (OutInUruguay.com). I’m still finishing up some formatting things so if you stumble across light gray text on a white background here and there, don’t worry, I’m on top of it. Also, for some odd reason I can’t get the personal messaging system to allow you to upload a photo. Damn technology!

Hopefully by now you’re no longer reading this blog and you’re already over at OutInUruguay.com. For those of you still reading this, after you check out the site, please let us know what you like and what needs improvement. Be gentle though—we know we have a lot of work yet to do.

If you do not want to receive prescreened offers of credit from this or other companies, call the consumer reporting agencies toll free, 888-567-8688.

It’s been over a month since my last post. Time sure does fly. I’ve been incredibly busy on one of my web projects. We’re going to officially launch one of the sites any day. I’ll post more info here after we do.

My discontent with Miami-Box escalates. Google sent me a post card to verify my mailing address for my account. They sent it on March 8th. Today is the 26th and I still haven’t received it. Also, right after I opened my Miami-Box account I changed my address on Netflix from USABox to Miami-Box. Netflix sent two CDs to the M-B address and they never arrived here and they were never returned to Netflix. Since it’s too much of a hassle to send a receive DVDs I’ve canceled my Netflix account. Since I’ve been a customer for so long with never losing a single DVD before they didn’t give me any grief over the two missing DVDs. Besides, with Blockbuster right around the corner, three stores in Punta Carretas Shopping that sell DVDs and CDs, Apple iTunes movie downloads, and Amazon movie downloads, I think I can do without the stress of sending and receiving DVDs to the US.

All right, Miami-Box is officially on my Do Not Use list. It’s a shame since on paper (I should say on their Spanish-only Web page) they looked great. Now I gotta start changing all of my addresses back to USABox.

There are other mailing service options out there and I’d love it if people would post their experiences. I think the best one available is becoming good friends with anyone who works at any of the embassies here in town (and there are tons of embassies!). Apparently they receive mail and packages totally bypassing DNA (UY Customs). Sweet deal. Maybe I’ll offer some computer networking services in exchange for some package receiving services. Hmm — something to think about.

Back to USABox. (Yes, I’m including my affiliate link on each reference to USABox. I still have no idea what’s in it for me if you sign up with them using my link but, hey, what the hell, all of this affiliate stuff is kinda cool.) They offer different plans. Here’s their most current info for shipments to Uruguay from their Web site as of today:

I’d been using Plan 1 since arriving in Uruguay in November. It’s $35 per month (plus $9.95 per shipment to use FedEx instead of the other absolutely horrible shipping company who’s initials are D.H.L.) For the $35 you get one shipment of up to 5 pounds. Up until this month I’d been using the full 5 pounds each month so it’s been a good deal. As I wrap up my ties to the motherland I’m receiving less and less mail. For the month of March I’m under a half a pound and from what I can tell from the scanned envelope pictures, it’s all junk mail.) Effective April 1 I’m switching to Plan A.

In the interest of full disclosure I have not received any packages via USABox with merchandise that needs to go through DNA since I’ve told them to use FedEx for all of my shipments. Since it was a local DHL employee who recommended FedEx the eternal optimist in me believes that things will be simpler. I’m tempted to log onto Apple.com to buy something to test it out. I’ll keep you updated with my adventures in shipping / receiving.

Other options that are, one, the US to UY postal service. [Unrelated interjection: I just went to the USPS Web site and they have R2D2 running around and then a link to a Star Wars ad claiming that on March 28th two powerful forces will unite. I’m intrigued. Anybody know what that’s all about?] I’ve heard theirs much less hassle receiving items that you have to pay duty on. Also, if you ship an express package from UY to the US using the UY Correo the US side of the delivery is handled by TNT (who I’d never heard of before but apparently their a big international express company like FedEx). Again, no first hand experience yet but I’ve heard good things about shipping using Correo Uruguayo. Also, from what I’ve heard, receiving letters via Correo UY is reliable.

Enzo from Sociadad Southron’s Forum wrote me letting me know that he checked out some of the Google ads that appear on my blog page. One that he saw was USA2Me.com. Their rates are slightly higher than USABox but one service they offer is that you can elected to have them open a document and scan it for you. There are other services out there that do this as well. For me I don’t receive anything that’s so urgent that I need to see it immediately scanned online so I didn’t pay much attention to the companies that offered this service. Plus their prices are usually pretty high. USA2Me.com charges $2 for up to six pages and they’ll scan document only when you request them to. Here’s a link to their rates page if you want to check them out. For some people having that scan-on-demand option could be pretty handy.

Now, I don’t want to offend the other 100 million people who live in Texas but USA2Me.com is located in TX and you’d receive a TX mailing address. After living in a country whose dictator-in-chief is from Texas and living in Florida who’s Governor is the brother of the aforementioned dictator and, of course, also from TX, I did not want to have a Texas mailing address associated with me. I’ve lived in Miami a total of around 10 years over the last 20 years so having a Miami address for me was comfortable — almost like going home. Plus most of my friends are in Miami so I got a Miami VOIP telephone number from Vonage so that my address and phone number are in the same city. Kinda makes things easier. Oh, and another thing I considered is that Miami is pretty much the “Capital of Latin America” and most shipments from the US would depart from Miami International Airport so I figured it would be good to have an address close to the port of departure.

I just looked up USA2Me’s location in Humble, Texas, on Google maps. It’s just outside of Houston about 10 yards from Bush Intercontinental Airport. I couldn’t live with myself knowing that all my mail was being flown out of an airport with that name! Please, I want to clarify that I am not Texas-bashing. I’ve been to Austin and think it’s a really great town. I’ve spent some weeks in Dallas. Another nice city with some cool people. I’ve also heard that Houston is a very gay-friendly city which is awesome. Also, I think the Supreme Court case that eventually nullified all anti-sodomy laws (read anti-gay laws) in the United States originated in Texas. Great that the people fought back but horrible that the police thought it was okay to arrest two consenting adults in the privacy of their own home. So no, I’m not Texas bashing but I am Bush bashing but since I have occasionally reader from somebody on the state.gov domain I’ll leave it at that.

Wow I really did digress.

Stay tuned for future posts. I’m planning a two or three part series on electricity. Hopefully those of you planning to move here will benefit from what I’ve learned. After almost five months of living here I just this weekend learned something very important about the electrical system here versus North America. You’ll have to tune in later for the details.

Also, I’ve been photographing some statues and monuments around town so I’m planning to put them all in a post.

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

A few days ago I posted how much I love my Mac. Well, the next day the power supply to my laptop literal fried. A replacement is waiting for me in Miami right now and Miami-Box should deliver on Friday so all will be good in the world again.

The good thing about having this happen on a Mac is that I have a .mac (www.mac.com) account. My laptop continuously and automatically backed up my contacts, calendar, passwords, to-dos, etc. All I had to do was log into my Mac mini, enter my .mac info, and I was up and running again. I did have to install some software on the mini that I didn’t have on the laptop but that’s just a minor inconvenience. If I didn’t have my .mac account being without my laptop for two weeks would have been absolute hell.

I few days before my laptop went on a much earned vacation I was in the process of removing Entourage (Microsoft’s Mac version of Outlook) from my computer. Somehow in the transfer a bunch of my Yahoo! email was lost so if anyone’s written me to any of my other emails (other than ibmikey@mac.com) and I haven’t respond it’s probably because either Yahoo! and/or Entourage ate your message or it’s sitting in one of the folders on my laptop that I didn’t transfer via .mac. Anyway, I I owe you a response please write again.

Kind of related to this whole technology transition / mishap . . . A gringa who lives an hour east of Montevideo had emailed me. I don’t like to use people’s names on my blog without their express permission so let’s just call her TT. When I didn’t respond to her email after a couple of days she tried again. I’m glad she did! TT lives with a friend, VV, in an adorable old cottage. Last night they invited JP and me over for some wine and good conversation. It was a great time! TT, thank you for being persistent and not thinking that I was blowing you off by not responding to your first email (which I still can’t find anywhere!). TT and VV are both such wonderful people. Being able to make friends such as them through this blog is an incredible thing.

As far as posting photos . . . I’m falling behind. My photo processing software is on my laptop along with some photos that I want to post here. The rest are still in my camera. Once my laptop is back from its vacation I’ll get caught up with some photo posts.

When I left the motherland I had no set plans for working when I arrived in Uruguay. This may sound strange to some for an atheist to say but I felt that something would find me. I’ve been working on a project that I believe is the thing that found me. By starting this blog I got interested in other technologies that are available on the Internet. The Open-Source community is huge and the amount of quality programs available is mind blowing. Over the past month or so I’ve been doing hours and hours of research. I’m working on a Web project (with JP’s assistance as he’s studying for philosophy exams and doesn’t have as much free time as I do).

I’m going to keep the project details a bit of a mystery for now. I will say that I’ve narrowed down most of the technology that I’ll be using and I’ve bought my domain names. In the next five or six weeks I’m going to be working overtime getting the skeleton of my creation in place. When I start fleshing it out with content I’ll share more details on here my blog. One thing I will say is that I’ll be moving off of Blogger. If anybody has this page bookmarked as amavericko.blogspot.com please update your bookmarks to www.amavericko.com.

One last hint about my project. It is not Uruguay-specific. The best sources of information on Uruguay are Uruguay Living and a couple of the other blogs I have in my links section in the right column of this page. If you want some financial advice mixed in with some outrageously funny stories read FuBarrio’s blog.