Make your own Uruguay Simulator!

If you want the Uruguay experience:

• Take a blanket and soak it with water.
• Get a filthy dog and soak it with water.
• Drill holes in your roof.
• Break half your plumbing, short out half of your electrical system. Not just half-assed breaking, no, make sure that shit’s leaking into the walls and shorting stuff out everywhere.
• Rip out all your insulation.
• Then turn the AC down to 50 degrees, and lay under the soggy blanket with the wet dog so you can experience what everything smells and feels like here (Obligatory Mold Smell + dog ass), while you try and get a bunch of disinterested, hopeless, unskilled morons (extra-special drooling short-bus morons) to fix all the broken stuff. Using all the wrong tools (bubble gum, masking tape, and coat hangers get you bonus points).
• Oh, and pay 3x as much as you normally pay for the cheaper version of the stuff you usually buy.
• Then fire some morons, and help them sue you.
• If you want to get around, buy an ancient piece of shit car from 1970 and spend US$8000 on it.
• Then pay $8 per gallon to fuel it.
• Call someone to deliver something tomorrow, but then tell him you really meant next week but hey, why not just do it in a month, or not at all, if that’s what suits him. After all, you are a paying customer!

I’m sure I am missing about 500 other things but this should get you well on your way.

No, I didn’t tag this as humor because it’s not really funny.

Yeah, I been busy.

It’s been a while since I have written anything. The main reason is *probably* because I have been on a strict media fast. It makes me much happier burying my head in the sand. I’ve been happy playing with my little hydroponic garden with my 1000 pet ladybugs (who reproduce better than rabbits– all they do is screw and make babies!) and my homebrew video game projects and myriad other spinning plates.

I tend not to write much when I am happy. It’s more an outlet for my rage. Obviously. You people are rage vampires, feeding on the rancid bloodborne vitriol of my angst!

Drowning in a sea of morons is a voluntary choice. Once in a while they moron on you (I have just made moron into a verb) and you have to scrub it off (with bleach), but for the most part, it seems like you can go about your daily life without getting soiled.

Well, sorta…

But yeah, buy metals and commodities and hunker down and hope for the best because you have prepared for the worst.

I’ve been spending a lot of time in the Death Star. It’s easier here, getting things done. Well, sorta…

Never buy a condo under mine. Seriously.

A couple weeks back I found a wet spot in my guest bedroom carpet. Having no pets, it was a curious thing. So I vacuumed it up with the neighbor’s carpet shampooer and went about my daily life. The wet spot kept getting bigger. And more soggy. To the point where a pond was forming in the floor. And so I called the condo nazis to inform them that we had a leak, and to inquire about the process of getting it dealt with.

“We’ll send the plumbers over,” Gemeinschaftsleiter Frau Darth Murrischegesicht says, and so they did.

“Oh, this is definitely your AC condensate line,” PlumberBob tells me, after taking a 2-minute look at everything, “Not our thing. You have to call your AC guy.”

And so I call the AC guy, and he comes over, and we change the AC condensate line to drain into the water heater’s emergency overflow pan drain line.

Yet the pond continued to grow.

And so I called the insurance company and they said to deal with Gemeinschaftsleiter Frau Darth Murrischegesicht, and Gemeinschaftsleiter Frau Darth Murrischegesicht said to deal with the insurance company, and the plumbers said to deal with the AC guy and the AC guy and I did our best and it didn’t help.

Meanwhile, water began to leak into the ceiling of the downstairs neighbors. Which is why you should never buy a condo under mine. Seriously.

This whole situation is merely a microcosm of why governments are such bullshit– if there is this much moronism in such a simple situation, imagine what it’s like on a national level. Actually, don’t. It will depress the shit out of you.

So a week goes by with me getting angrier and angrier because the people who insist they know what they know do not actually know what they insist that they know, and are, in fact, surprising me at their very existence and continued ability to pick up food and put it into their own mouths. And the water continues to leak.  Meanwhile I am pulling the weight of all the idiots who should be fixing this– 10 gallons of water per day out of just the dehumidifier and the whole place is starting to reek of wet carpet and mold. 5 fans on, hourly passes with the carpet shampooer to suck the water out of the carpet. Setting up buckets and pans in a one-man reverse bucket brigade to keep my downstairs neighbor’s place from flooding. It literally squishes up water out from underfoot when you walk in there.

Sounds kind of like a small-scale model of what is going on with the feds.

And so I recruited my neighbor and we picked up a hammer and a drywall saw and went to town on the walls. And surprise surprise, we found the leak. A broken pipe was pissing a geyser of water out into the insulation, which was running down inside the wall and into the floor. And so we called the plumbers and told them what was going on, and they said they would come by.

A few more hours passed and we said, “fuck this, let’s fix it ourselves,” and so we did. The plumbers showed up at 9pm, 8 hours later. I told them to take a hike, since we’d gotten tired of waiting and did their jobs for them.

So the next day, I go in and tell Gemeinschaftsleiter Frau Darth Murrischegesicht that she will be paying me back for the work I have done, the repairs, the new carpet pad, etc etc etc and she agrees, but get this– she insists that the plumbers come in and inspect the repair before she can sign off on it!!! HAHAHAHA!

Yes. I laugh. Heartily.

You fuckers refuse to do anything to fix a plumbing issue that is clearly your domain (it’s even in the condo docs) and then demand the final say in someone actually getting up to do it themselves!? And then send the same crew of droolers to inspect the propriety of something they both misidentified and refused to take responsibility for when it was clearly their responsibility?

Wow… How… government!

(yes, I just turned moron into a verb, and government into an adjective)

El Buen Maestro

That’s what my downstairs neighbors called me after I went in and fixed the leaky pipes myself. Seeing as how the guy who installed them has probably fled Chile to avoid the torches and pitchforks, and the guy who I called to help me never showed up.

And so I learned how to solder copper pipes (because one of the first things I did during the teardown was to put the chisel straight through the gas line) and do Super-Duty Gringo jungle repairs on poorly-done Chilean PVC. And how to use plumber’s epoxy. And I actually did it right, because now there is no more feces raining down from anywhere but my own butt.

If this keeps on its current trajectory, in 6 more months I will have all the skills necessary to rebuild civilization from the stone age to the digital age after the zombie apocalypse wipes out humanity.

What had happened is that the “maestro” put a PVC pipe into an ancient iron one, and sealed it with nothing more than an entire tube of silicone. Said silicone was probably not meant for constant exposure to humidity and butt stuff, and so it fell apart 6 months later. And said pigiron shitty pipe was probably not meant for humidity and butt stuff either, because it had decomposed accordingly, and so I rerouted the other plastic pipes to another outlet, and epoxied the hell out of everything just to be sure.

Cutting the whole thing apart was a mess. It’s been done a hundred times; hero cuts into monster with chainsaw, getting sprayed with blood from head to toe, leaving a clean silhouette on the wall behind him. Only with me it was different in color and odor, as the reciprocating saw cut into the fermented sedimentary strata of poop in the bottom of the pipe… let me tell you there is no sensation quite like it. Last I felt this way was in Uruguay when I got a steaming shit shower from the backwards-built septic tank.

I knew better than to eat until I was done with this stuff, because I knew there would be gag moments. This was one of them.

I still don’t want to eat. I smell like a sewer. But it’s done!!!

Next I get to play with tile and cement, which is childs play for me at this point.

It’s funny, the whole situation, because I could have been finished with this crap a week ago had I just dove into it myself. Instead I kept waiting around for a guy I thought was reponsible to come and take care of it for me, because, well, I earn a lot more in the same amount of time for working my own job. It’s more efficient to do that and pay someone to do the repairs while I work, IF he fucking shows up to do said work. He said he would, and so I repeat the age-old mañanismo bullshit putting off my own stuff waiting on something that will never happen.

But hey, now it’s been fixed by a gringo, and con suerte it will endure for another century.

And now I am better than a Maestro Chileno. I am El Buen Maestro Gringo.

SOSAS

Same Old South American Shit (SOSAS) hooray for fun acronyms.

I came here to do a few small select things.

• Remove WifeBob from the Chilean medical insurance policy.
• Get the car’s paperwork renewed for another year.
• Go on an awesome road trip through Patagonia.
• Pack up my things into storage and rent the Volcano Lair out as a furnished short-term rental.

Even the best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry. We are, dear reader, once again in South America…

Let’s start with the first simple thing. I contacted my medical insurance rep months ago to ask how I might have WifeBob removed from the policy since she no longer wants/needs it. “Oh, all we need is your signature,” I was told, and so that’s what I went on. Months later, here I am in Chile to meet and sign, and “Oh, we need your divorce certificate.” Gee, would have been nice to have known that when I asked months ago, right? So I would have time to get a copy and bring it down with me? So now, in order to take care of this crap, it will cost me several days which may eat into my road trip and possibly make it a no-go.

Then the car. I keep, in my opinion, one of the best-maintained little shitboxes in all of Chile. Yes it often sits unused for long periods of time but I keep it in such a high degree of operational fitness that after 6 months of non-use, all I need to do is turn the key and it comes back to life. And so, I figured, it should be a piece of cake to take it into the inspection station, get my papers, and off we go on our road trip. Not so! I was rejected flat-out for “visible blue smoke” which does not exist. Not only am I mechanically inclined enough to know that this is bullshit, but I took it to a mechanic for further inspection, whereupon we both scratched our heads as to what they could have possibly seen to make them think it was so bad that they failed it outright and did not even bother to give it the emissions test. Oh, and they also failed it for having improperly-aligned headlights, even though nothing has changed since last year when it passed with flying colors and perfect emissions. Weird.

So anyhow, I have to “fix the problems” and then bring it back for re-testing. Which will eat into potential road trip time and may make it a no-go.

As to the possibility of the road trip at all at this point, it teeters on the edge.

The only potentially good thing in this little to-do list is the prepping of the place for rental, which is really just a matter of boxing a few things up, upgrading the locks on a closet, and handing the keys over to my chosen AirBnB rental manager (who I have dealt with in the past with excellent results). But, alas, he is on vacation right now and won’t be back until about a week before I leave. So if the road trip is delayed I may miss my window to do my dealings with RentalBob. In my opinion doing the rental stuff is more important than the road trip, and so the road trip plans are being squeezed from two directions.

Ahhhhh, life in South America. It is content to leave you alone completely, until you decide to do things.

In other news, I learned that since October, our citizenship file in Uruguay has finally passed muster (2+ years of waiting) and is now in the hands of the bureaucrat who will actually make our passports happen. Whatever that means. Nobody who is supposed to know seems to know, and they don’t answer emails or phone calls. The only information we have is that the next step should take 8 months (since October 2014), which means that in theory, in April, if all goes to plan, I can wrangle someone who will give me my goddamned passport. But, Uruguayan time being Uruguayan time, 8 months really means another 4 years. There is actually a formula for this:

Let Z = real time in months. Let Y = time promised by Uruguayan in months.

Z = Y (6 +- 48000)

Back in Chile

The BobMobile lives.

It sat for 6 months in the parking lot, with the battery disconnected, having collected a thick sludgy layer of condensed Santiago Air Slime, into which the local kids had carved finger graffiti with increasingly-desperate pleas of “Lavame” (Wash me!). I wondered if it would start, but BobMobile roared to life on the first crank.

I am getting BobMobile ready for another legendary BobQuest journey. This time I will hit the southern half of Chile in the hopes that I reach as far south as roads go, on the “Ruta Fin del Mundo.”

It really is the best little piece of shite car I have owned. I might just drive her up through the entire continent and bring her “home” to the US once my dealings in Chile wind to a close. If that becomes home again. You see, I can’t fucking make up my mind.

It’s weird being back here after a 6 month absence spent back in the old republic. As FrenchBob said to me a couple weeks ago, we expats are, “Avoir le cul entre deux chaises,” which means, “To see ones ass perched between two chairs.” It’s an excellent saying for folks who just can’t figure out where they belong anymore. I feel perfectly at home here in Chile, and I don’t miss the US. Yet.

I don’t know if it’s a “tolerance battery” that wears down, or if it’s just itchy feet. A few months in a place and then you can’t wait to get back to wherever you were before. All the same, I like to rearrange my furniture in an equal timeframe. Are we just wired for a necessary change of scenery within and without?

A series of unfortunate events

Just bizarre stuff this week.

The other day I headed to Napa to get some parts for the new (to me) BobWagon. First car I have owned in the USA in some 10 years. Maybe longer. The new BobWagon is a cast iron behemoth, the type of finely aged car that is too substantial to rust away, and can last forever if you take care of it. Its previous owner let some things go 🙂 Fortunately my Zombie Apocalypse skills come into play and I can have it running like a Timex with just a few dollars, elbow grease, and bleeding knuckles. It was a cheap purchase, and it’s a lot better than riding in the winter rain. So, yeah, Napa…

Anyways I was on the BobCycle, and this kid rode up to me on his scooter to ask me about my motorcycle. So we chatted a bit, and he headed out.

Same day, I had to go back to Napa for another part, and in the parking lot, as soon as I am backing out of my space, I hear a loud crash behind me and then a car comes careening across the opposing lanes right into a fire hydrant. Bent the thing to a 45 degree angle. No, there was not the stereotype movie scene geyser.

The driver was in shock and I had to pull him out of his car and shut off the engine. His face had been bashed pretty hard from the airbag deploying. He was just sitting there as his car filled with smoke, in a complete daze. After we sat him down and checked him over, got the first aid kit going, I left him to the folks at the car parts store.

Had I been a few seconds earlier I could have been wrapped up in that accident.

Next morning I read about that kid on the scooter, having been killed in a hit and run accident on the same road.

Had I been a few minutes earlier it could have been me. Maybe if we hadn’t crossed paths, he wouldn’t have gotten run over.

So then I go to see Interstellar at the movie theater, and right as the climax begins and they are about to enter the black hole, the theater fire alarm goes off and the movie stops and everyone evacuates. Nobody actually pulled the alarm, the fire team checked all the triggers. It just happened.

*Warning: spoiler alert*

So then fortunately we got to sit back down after a 30 minute delay (which allowed me an intermission to pee!) and then see that the theme of the movie is all about communicating across spacetime through tweaking events, and it leads me to wondering if all this weird Final Destination crap is significant.

Because it reminds me of the clusters of clusterfucks that seem to happen to me, like how my drivers license was suspended (unbeknownst to me) which led to me being taken to jail while I was backing out of the parking lot of the pharmacy, where I was getting medicine for my sick wife at the time, who then had to come bail me out, which then led to me to going through all the BS required to fix the situation, which I finally accomplished, the day before I had to take said wife to the bus station downtown to go see her family over Easter, which led to me getting pulled over on the way to the station, which led me to being re-arrested for the same “crime” which had already been resolved, but their records had simply not been updated, which led me to have to be bailed out again by said wife who spent her travel money on getting me out of jail for no good reason. Which added just a bit to my lack of respect for “authority.”

And the time that I got pulled over for some other bullshit thing, the cop taking insane liberties with a typo on my auto registration (he even removed the sticker from my license plate as “evidence”), writing me up a pile of expensive tickets, which led me to go to court, where I was pulled over AGAIN in the parking lot of the very court building (on my way to said court hearing), at which point I went completely raving Hulk postal on the cops and they actually let me go, which led me to wasting several hours in the court room explaining to the judge that the whole series of unfortunate events stemmed from some incompetent at the DMV. Which added just a bit more to my lack of respect for “authority.”

Oh, and between the sticker “evidence” confiscation and my actual court hearing, I was pulled over other numerous times because I had no valid sticker on the license plate. Scumbag pig cops have some kind of crazy radar for this stuff. It was so bad that I actually got a guest book for them to sign when they pulled me over.

Or, a rare pleasant example, how I ran into the guy who introduced me to Japanese Animation in high school at a one-shot arts theater screening of a Miyazaki film in Portland, Maine.

Anyways, it’s been a hell of a few days of weird shit, and I am wondering who is picking my spacetime banjo strings. Is FutureExpatBob stuck in some black hole tesseract tweaking his past self to take a certain path? Why, oh why, FutureExpatBob, have you put me through such misery?!

I suppose it’s better, though, than going through life blindly trusting people in suits and uniforms.

The Secret Argentine

Today I unearthed my old Argentina Pumas rugby jersey from my boxes of loot I brought back from Uruguay. And so I decided to wear it, after giving it a good wash to get rid of the Obligatory Uruguay Mold Smell (TM).

And so I went out, to do my daily stuff. At the grocery store, I went in to “la cava” which is a sort of glassed-off room where they keep the nice wines and higher-end imported liquors, looking for a bottle of Glenfarclas. They didn’t have the 15-year I was looking for but they did have a 10, so I took that. The guy was talking to me really slowly and clearly, because he figured I was an Argentine. I also noticed that he avoided using Chilean slang.

Honestly I had slipped up and forgotten to get rid of my Rio Platense accent, so it obviously fit with my appearance. It’s funny, the whole time I was on BobQuest, I kept forgetting to “sh” my “ll” and “j” my “y”, and now that I am back in Chile, I am forgetting to “y” my “j” and “ll” my “sh’s.”

And so BoozeVendorBob babied me the whole way through the process, more than he would have done had I been setting off his GringoDar. Then similar happened during checkout, the cash register lady was all step-by-step with me, handholding me through the truly complex and impossible-to-understand credit card transaction I had done a gazillion times.

And again, at the pharmacy, picking up some contact lens solution, PharmacistBob asked me something-or-other which I assumed was an inquiry whether or not I wanted the “boleta” receipt or the “factura” but it was noisy and I didn’t make it out clearly. So, “Perdon?” I asked and he took that split second that I knew was recognition of the Argentine rugby shirt, and he shook his head and corrected himself, automatically choosing the proper boleta receipt for a non-Chilean who couldn’t possibly be tax-exempting the purchase.

In the subway on the way back home, I got lost in thought and lost track of the station names. Not uncommon for me. So at the next stop, I was craning my neck to see out the window, with no luck, where we were. A check behind was blocked by another train in the station. A guy standing behind me took notice that I was looking around, and told me which one we were at. First time that had ever happened, so I nodded thanks to him. I am willing to bet he took me for a tourist who was lost.

So by simple wearing of a foreign team shirt, you are just about guaranteed to be taken as a foreigner here. I’ve shopped at these places more times than I can count, and never before have I been treated this way. Not that it is bad, it is just different, and a bit funny. No wonder the Argies feel like the Chilenos treat them like babies. Because they do. Even if they pretend not to.

So this means I must find a Chile team jersey and wear it, and see what happens. Or, to twist some knives, Peru or Bolivia.

Understanding the Viveza Criolla

If you spend any time in Latin America, you will find that things happen with a bizarre, backwards-zero-sum lack of logic that makes your head spin. Part of understanding this has to do with understanding the Viveza Criolla and its influence on the way the people think.

The Viveza Criolla, also shortened to “Vivo” is a behavioral phenomenon in Spanish-speaking, Latin-based cultures, whereby an individual tries to screw someone else over before his victim has a chance to do the same to the perpetrator. They brush off the guilt by saying, “Si no robo yo, robará otro (If I don’t steal from you, someone else will),” as if you should thank them for the privilege of being robbed by someone you know!

It is their way of forcing a zero-sum outcome to snag it away from the other guy before he even has a chance. It has become a way that society rigs outcomes in favor of schemers and shysters, and punishes the honest. It is to blame for the tiring plague of ingrained lack of trust, the penchant for socialist nonsense, and the laziness, lack of work ethic, and disdain for self-starters and those who wish to excel.

There is no literal translation for Viveza Criolla that fits, and the best a local has ever come up with to explain it to me is to describe it as a “Wiseguy” mentality. Some describe it as “artful lying.”

The term Vivo can be used as a noun for the act itself, or as the formal title of its perpetrator. The Vivo is viewed by its winner as, well, a way to get ahead. The Vivo is viewed by bystanders as a “good for him,” one-up street cred for the winner. The Vivo is seen by the loser as a part of life, and a learning opportunity not to be repeated (so he is more apt to pull the Vivo on someone else before the Vivo is pulled on him).

The Vivo, when caught, is a sort of wink-wink-nudge-nudge situation that is treated with an “oh, haha, you got me!” attitude, whereby both the victim and bystanders are expected to catch it first; if they fail to counter-Vivo, they are expected to take blame for losing because they were not sharp enough to see it coming. It is a bizarre backhanded outsourcing of responsibility.

Regardless of the result, the dynamic of the Viveza Criolla places more importance on getting away with the heist, than the actual fruits of the labor.

In the Vivo game mechanic, the instigator of the Vivo has nothing to lose, and is, in fact, strangely one-upped for being caught (you charming devil)! The loser, if he catches it, is also one-upped for catching the instigator. However if the instigator does not get caught, he is one-upped while the loser is one-downed. Heads I win, Tails you lose. It is, quite literally, nonzero game mechanics turned inside out.

And no, the bystanders will not necessarily warn the victim of his impending fall to the Vivo, for it is his responsibility and his alone to see it. After the fact, oh yes, they will all come by and say “Oh, yeah, we knew about that but we didn’t want to seem nosy.” Which flies in the face of Latino culture because they are the most inherently gossipy bunch of people I have ever encountered.

If the victim is lucky, someone might pull him aside and say something like, “Ojo, es muy vivo ese (Watch out, that guy is very untrustworthy).”

The Viveza Criolla is a negative, destructive cancer upon the social and economic fabric of Latin America, and one of the reasons the region cannot seem to pull head from ass and get its act together. It is the reason why Latin Americans do not trust each other, and, as the Peruvians are apt to say, “Your own hand cannot even trust what the other one is doing.” It is the reason for short-term profit taking with complete disregard to future business prospects, and lack of customer service.

This trust issue is not just between buyer and seller; it can happen with any agreement, from simply getting together for lunch, to major property deals, to selling a car, to employing someone, etc. To keep it elementary I will just describe the parties as “buyer” and “seller.”

Often times the seller, after making an agreement, will pull the Vivo and actually sabotage the deal, thinking that he is getting undercut somehow by the buyer, after they have already settled on the details of the deal. Thus, when some are negotiating prices (for real estate in particular), the seller jumps the gun on the Vivo, thinking he can get a better deal because “hey, there’s interest shown in this thing, that means I am not asking enough!” Counteroffers then come back to the buyer higher than the original asking price!

Often times the seller will simply kill the deal because he gets too nervous, thinking that smooth sailing means the worst, and that he will get really screwed in the end. It’s almost as if they cannot contemplate a square deal at all.

Sometimes the buyer, despite wanting what it is that he is after, will sabotage the deal after the fact because he thinks that it is too good to be true. Or something about the seller makes him question the quality of the merchandise. Both parties will analyze and re-analyze every little interaction until they have made themselves paranoid. This is why there is no such thing as customer service in Latin America. You are expected to deal with it if the seller fails to provide, because after all, it is your responsibility if you got stuck with the wrong end of the Vivo.

Another aspect which the Vivo invades is employment and contracted relationships. The roundabout Vivo thinking will invade the mind so much that if a mistake is made, the party at fault will feel the need to blame the wronged party and create extra drama around the whole situation whereby the one at fault will attempt to shift the blame and make themselves appear the victim. “I am being exploited! How dare you demand I show up at 9 and work until 5?! How dare you hold me accountable when I say I will be here tomorrow and I don’t show up until next week!”

Thieves, when caught, will become angry and try to turn the situation around, claiming “faltándole el respeto,” that you are disrespecting them, as if they deserve any.

The Vivo thinking is a source of much of the “Mañanismo” (tomorrowism) that has killed the work ethic, since it provides an excuse for them not to do anything. Why, they will be exploited for sure– better to screw the boss over first, before he can exploit the workers!

It’s very hard to explain, and I have tried my best, but there it is. You will encounter it if you venture into Latin America, so watch for it; maybe you can see it coming, maneuver it to your advantage, and get Vivo street cred for cutting it off at the pass.

Special thanks to BeelzeBob for helping me to understand 🙂

 

PS. The book is at 85 pages and counting…

Living abroad: is it worth it?

Living abroad: is it worth it?

When I first set out over 6 years ago, I would have said, “Yes, absolultely.”

This may be a bit dark and introspective, but if you have been thinking about moving abroad, please do read it and try to absorb what I say.

I was so hungry to get out of Homelandistan that I was blinded by the adventure, blind to the long-term consequences, blind to the difficulty and stumbling blocks, not just those newbies run into but those that continue to plague seasoned pros.

Maybe age changes things, maybe experience changes things, maybe wisdom changes things. At least your perspectives change. After a good heart-to-heart with BeelzeBob, who is also planning on returning to Homelandistan, as well as an excellent long conversation with SwingdanceBob in Uruguay, I think I have a good deal of it figured out, and this here is an effort to not only get my own thoughts in order but to share with others in the hopes that you may avoid the pitfalls.

SwingdanceBob was upset when I started this blog: “Everyone who starts a blog on Uruguay ends up leaving.” I called bullshit on that at the time, but SwingdanceBob was right.

It’s not just BeelzeBob pulling the ripcord. CaliforniaBob, DiverBob, ExFedBob, MexicanBob, BrazilianBob, GermanBob, and I am definitely forgetting a few other Bobs, have left already or are getting ready to leave Uruguay for greener pastures, most of them on their ways back to their Homelandistans. There are a few holdouts, but the numbers are dwindling. The Sociedad Southrun board which once thrived is now a mere husk of its former self with little, if any, activity. There are new arrivals but not nearly the way it was 6 years ago when the “first wave” seemed to be hitting (which also held, in my opinion, the best of the best and most adventurous souls that could be found).

Moving abroad will change you. It will stress you to your breaking point, test your resolve, change your opinions of people and places and things in deep, fundamental ways. It will change you as a person. I am not the same person I was a year ago, not the same person I was 5 years ago. And as you change, you likely will come to a point where you no longer want to deal with the pitfalls of living abroad and crave the simplicity and familiarity of your particular Homelandistan, despite its warts and its wrinkles. It sucks, for sure, but everywhere else sucks worse.

Perhaps, like me, you were so hungry to leave Homelandistan that you failed to cultivate or maintain friendships there, and when you return you find yourself a stranger in a strange land, with nobody to call, no shoulders to cry on, no moral support, etc. You will distance yourself from your family. They think you are crazy anyways for wanting to move abroad but once you actually take the step, it’s like a cutoff in their minds. You’re out of sight, out of mind. These are just a couple of the major pitfalls that nobody ever tells you about when they regale you with tales of the sugarplum fairies dancing on the other side of the border.

Moving abroad will stress and most likely destroy your spousal relationship as well. Call me a naysayer, but even if all things are going generally well for both parties, your paths and motivations for living abroad will eventually diverge, and the atmosphere will become toxic as those paths tug you apart. Once again, nobody tells you this stuff when you are signing up. It’s happened to countless relationships I have watched, and it happened to mine despite leaving the dark realm of Uruguay for the promised land of Chile. ExWifeBob and I have no ill will towards each other, and I still have great relations with her family, but time and stress have set us in opposite directions.

Probably the only relationships that will survive life abroad are those where the assignment is temporary. The having of the things, and the building of the nest, and the maintenance of owning an empire spread among many foreign lands are just a few aspects of what drives the couple in different paths. Not to mention those with children. Even the staunchest couples I have seen where both arrive with stars in their eyes and everything in alignment, I’ve watched the spark wither and die countless times. It’s not just Uruguay, it’s everywhere. Maybe there is something to settling down at home and having a simple life; it never sounds like it will suit me but then I look at the disaster trail behind me and wonder why I just didn’t plug myself back into the matrix.

When I set about my great South American adventure, I spoke a handful of horrible Spanish. Dunked into the flow of things, I had to swim or sink, and now after 6 years of it, I am pretty well fluent in the language. Learning this skill is one thing I do not regret, but listen to me please when I say this: It does not make things much easier. Anyone ought to think it should, but it doesn’t work that way. You will understand every word that is written or said, but you still will not understand the lack of logic behind you not being able to get done what needs to get done. And it will not stop the culture from ripping you off and raping you every time you take your eye off of it. Scumbags are scumbags because they lie, in any language.

South America, all of it, is the way it is for a reason. It is not for lack of foreign influence, it is not for lack of access to people or services or things. It is the way it is because of stubborn culture, ingrained (encouraged!) ignorance, and government interference with any and all things wonderful and efficient. When you get drafted for your adventure, you will show up thinking that there is opportunity at every turn, and why the hell hasn’t anyone done this yet? The simple answer: they have, and they failed miserably, not due to lack of trying but due to the locals mandating their failure. Every bright idea you have in South America is just the dying ember of someone else’s broken dream, and once you start digging you will find the buried bones of all those old ideas under the foundation of everything. No, you will not get ahead by holding the torch of reason high for all to see. That will just make it easier for them to come after you with their pitchforks and tear you down. The torch of reason makes them angry, actually. Like kicking a bee hive. Reason and logic are the Frankenstein Monster of South America.

So you left Homelandistan because you felt you didn’t belong. Now you are leaving SouthAmeristan because you don’t belong, and when you return to Homelandistan, you still find you do not belong because your old friends and family have stayed the same, and have not evolved to match you, you are extra alien, and nothing fits into place. The locals are ignorant and just as lacking as before, maybe even moreso. Because you are a citizen of the world, you are now triple-homeless. What to do? I don’t know the answer. Maybe I’ll go back to being a boat hippie. Maybe I’ll be so enamored with Asia (leaving tomorrow) that I’ll just repeat the same idiot behavior and head straight into the local Expat Draft Office…

As fucked up as it is, Homelandistan is still home, we have to face that. As much as I hate Big Brother, I love Big Brother. I am Winston Smith. This painful reality is sinking in. I struggle a great deal with the moral implications of this, because I find supporting the empire to be morally revolting, what with the rampant killing of foreigners, locals, and policesurveillancestateification of everything.

Some say hunker down and fight the system, some say walk away, some say quietly prepare for the worst… what do you do when all the trends point to shit? Can you do more for you and yours by staying in a place where you can be most efficient, most successful, and most able to make quick changes if things get ugly? Can you do more by bowing out and not feeding the beast? I certainly can’t do enough by being in South America. But I am starting to feel like I need to be where I can do the best for myself, because that is the best for the rest, my tide will lift all the boats, and I can only do that if I settle back in Homelandistan for a while, keep my head down, minimize my taxes as much as I can, all while eyeing the exit.

What I do know, and one thing BeelzeBob mentioned to me while discussing this matter, and another thing that nobody tells you when you sign up, is that we end up having more in common with our expat friends than anyone else anymore, and we have to stick together despite how far apart we are. It’s a strange patchwork adopted family.

So, living abroad, is it worth it, now? No.

I’m poorer for it, poorer in friends and family, lacking a true home, and I have passed up countless opportunities over the years chasing after bullshit in the third world. Sure I learned a foreign language in several local dialects but I could have done that for a few hours a week in a community college. Yes, a few investments in the third world panned out nicely but nowhere near what I could have made, had I simply stayed home. And had I not incurred the expenses of living in pricy places abroad, getting ripped off by locals, etc, I could have just bought a second passport. As it stands the Uruguay passport is still a “who-knows?” situation after another year of pestering and trying and, literally, 12+ kilograms of papers submitted. Yes, I weighed them.

I could have also gotten and maintained my foreign residencies and still lived in Homelandistan, vacationing once in a while in those places instead of living there. That would have been smarter. Even though I have no passports to these places, I can still head back to them and stay as long as I want if need be. That’s a pretty good plan B, your choice of 3 countries not to mention their trade partners.

Do I regret it? To be honest, sometimes yes, sometimes no. I am a firm believer that you should regret things you haven’t done, not ones you have, but then what grand things could I have done had I stayed? There have been lots of things I have wanted to do, which I couldn’t because I was stuck chasing papers in some asshole bureaucrat’s office, doing some moron’s job for them, or generally herding cats in the third world.

As I write this, I am getting my bags packed to travel Asia for 6 weeks, and I found out last night that the guy I trusted to finish the renovations on my apartment in Santiago has not shown up for a couple of weeks and I am probably going to return “home” to the same half-finished wreck of a place I left two months ago. What a nice thing to think about while you’re trying to relax on the other side of the earth… where you will be on a boat with no internet and no telephone for another 3 weeks…

My advice: stay put, keep your powder dry, cultivate your friendships, build your adopted family. Work hard in your Homelandistan where you know the lay of the land and the locals are less likely to fuck you, live within or below your means, save aggressively, but be ready to hit the road if you absolutely have to. Learn to sail and navigate, and you can go anywhere in the world. Just don’t give up your homeland opportunities at the expense of that shiny El Dorado hiding just behind the next hill.

Viewing people through BobVision

Or… “Why being a Libertarian/Anarchist feels like living in Solitary Confinement.”

I watched the film “Temple Grandin” last night. It wasn’t the first time I had seen it, but it was the first time I had paid attention. It was on TV a while back but I was preoccupied with other things so I could not devote my full attention to it. Also we tuned in halfway through it and I had already mentally put it aside telling myself I would watch it in its entirety some other time; why waste an hour filling my head with incomplete data?

Temple Grandin is an autistic woman who revolutionized the cattle industry, through her unique abilities with pattern recognition and geometry. She also helped quite a bit with autism awareness and knowledge.

Why this is interesting to me, having seen the movie, is that this sheds new light on the way I see people and situations and the environment. I am not autistic, but the way Temple Grandin’s perceptions are presented is *exactly* the way I see things. I have always had an innate talent for pattern recognition, an eidetic memory for all things mechanical and geometric, spelling, language (although I know many rules to bend grammar within acceptable modern standards, and use it liberally), speech accents, and the placement and relationships of things within 3d space; however, I, unlike someone autistic, can gauge other peoples’ emotional signals and function in social situations. Some might disagree with this considering the outcome of some things I’ve done in the past, but that’s not due to my inability to gauge social propriety– it was because someone’s need to be straightened out and/or have their bluff called outweighed my sense of maintaining politeness in a social setting.

I, and others, have called this an “extreme immune reaction to bullshit”

It’s not necessarily a Meyers-Briggs INTJ sort of thing either:

INTJs tend to blame misunderstandings on the limitations of the other party, rather than on their own difficulty in expressing themselves. This tendency may cause the INTJ to dismiss others input too quickly, and to become generally arrogant and elitist.

Nah… it certainly can’t be because I have trouble expressing myself. Therefore it really *is* because everyone else sucks. HA!

I was also blessed with (it might be the same damaged cranial tissue that gives me my analytical superpowers) a fairly sharp knack at solving lateral thinking puzzles and figuring out third options in two-way dilemmas. Even when I was a kid and watched people throw up their hands and say “damned if I do, damned if I don’t,” and give up, I got mad at them because they failed to take action and increase their chances at a nonzero-sum outcome. If either way you see no good outcome, take action anyways!!! WTF, right? Seriously.

It might also be that due to pattern recognition, I can instantly calculate through someone’s moral compass and arrive at a fairly accurate mathematical conclusion regarding whether or not said individual is a douchebag. Which may be why I find all things immoral to be completely revolting and unforgivable. Now your definition of immoral may be something completely different than mine, so please understand that when I say immoral, I use it not in a “Good vs. Evil” Latin context, but in a more Randian analysis: does the act or opinion reflect the core values of the individual– does it match or conflict with this person’s set of beliefs?

For example, this is why I find it so repulsive that bleeding-heart hippies preach about peace and love yet insist that everyone else be (violently) coerced out of their wealth in order to provide that peace and love. Such things are a downward spiral of conflicting morality and therefore unacceptable to me. Hence my continuing discontent with the things that are happening in the world as it heads into altruistic self-destruction and why, if I had to choose a label or “group” to be, it would be anarchocapitalist.

As part of this grand package of brain power, I also have a sort of distrust leading to dislike leading to seething hatred for people who cannot think with my capacity. Which, I admit, can be impolite. It’s something few probably ever consider– can you imagine what it would be like to have half the containment capacity your brainpan currently allows? Can you imagine being half as bright, or having half the problem-solving skills you presently possess?

*Not* thinking? *Not* imagining? *Not* problem-solving?

I can’t. I tried, and I can’t. It’s unfathomable to me: like trying to figure out whether or not there is an afterlife, and whether near-death experiences are a sort of exponential flare of brain activity that will seem like a lifetime of imagination-set-free to your perceptions as the last of the oxygen burns out… What would the opposite be like? What would it feel like to be that dim, thoughtless, unimaginative? The black hole opposite of sentience.

I am kept awake at night running math, geometric, engineering, design, and spacial problems in my head. It’s so loud in there that I often can’t turn it off, and usually don’t want to. When I am not thinking about this stuff, I am dreaming it. No, sir, your product is not good enough. I can make it better. Here’s how…

Solving the problems of the world, in the confines of my brain, 24/7.

This is why I get angry with people who cannot grasp the same things I do, who cannot think through these things like I do. Case in point: today I was an an electronics store looking for shrink-wrap tubing. I didn’t know the name for it in Spanish, but I explained to the clerk that it’s plastic tubing that shrinks when you make it hot, for wiring. He pointed me to a hot-glue gun. “No,” I told him, and explained it again. I know my Spanish was correct. He thought for a second, and then showed me a soldering iron. “No, but you’re getting warmer.” Finally the light turned on in his head, and he found the correct stuff, “retractil.”

Seriously, I have been in places where I literally drew them what I was talking about, with geometric precision. Any idiot could have seen what it was, yet these people scratched their heads and didn’t know what I was looking for, even *after* I looked up the word in a dictionary, told them, and explained that yes, you *must* have it in this store because that is logical and nobody else would have this sort of thing.

…except for shoelaces in a shoestore in Uruguay, which must be against the law or something.

But I digress. The dim behavior of others bothers me a great deal. They may not be capable of being thoughtful or considerate, but it bothers me nonetheless. Perhaps there is more to my bad reaction to loud sounds (especially barking dogs) simply because I consider it inconsiderate.

Or maybe I’m just autistic and haven’t noticed yet…

Haha, consider it inconsiderate. I am probably the only person who finds that word combination funny.

Maybe I *am* autistic… jeez…

I continue to digress… Why would people subject an animal to the stress which would induce it to bark uncontrollably? Maybe they don’t know that their dog behaves this way. But then why wouldn’t other people complain about it? Or why would the dog owner want a dog and profess to love it and care for it, and then not care for it (ie: stress it out by locking it on a balcony)? They can’t possibly not care! Or maybe they really, seriously don’t care, and I am just incapable of imagining the concept of not-noticing because brainlessness is just another paradox that falls into the same zone as the concept of afterlife or existence-of-God or Schrodinger’s cat. This sort of brainless immoral shit falls into my “completely unforgivable” category and really cheeses me off. If you were having dinner with your family and there was a dog barking at you incessantly from a balcony 5 feet away, wouldn’t you go and ask the neighbor what the fuck his problem was? No, people here just tune it out somehow, let assholes be assholes, and then the whole place becomes a hive of unrepentant morons– not on purpose, but simply because there is nobody around to stand up and ask why there is an elephant in the room.

Then there are people who say “mañana” or “semana que viene” or “por supuesto!” and then fail to deliver. Why? Seriously, in a world where you have the ability to sue someone for “loss to your honor,” where is your fucking honor in the first place? A man’s word is his bond, people. Stick to it. Do what you say you are going to do. Follow through. It’s not rocket science and any idiot can accomplish this. Even the people I find deplorably stupid. Maybe this is why I find the whole mañana culture to be vapid and increasingly unworthy of my patronage.

Peoples’ lack of ability to point out elephants (metaphorically, duh) is becoming worse and worse, in my opinion. It seems to me that that is the core thing that is ailing the world. Distilled into a buzz-word which I cannot stand but everyone knows: Political Correctness.

I had a long and interesting conversation during a drive with TennesseeBob, who is a Christian Libertarian type, about just how we handle the treatment of friends and family members who have crossed the line into where we deem “immoral thought process.” Do you forgive them because they are family? I say certainly not, but then family politics plays into life for some people. Then what do you do? You still have to deal with them one way or another should your paths cross. Then make sure your paths don’t cross, or cross the least amount that is possible. It’s a tough call, and one that Harry Browne talked about in his book “How I found freedom in an unfree world” (wow! Look at those used-book prices!!! Testament to the quality of that book) My advice to TennesseeBob was to just minimize his own exposure to them and certainly don’t let the dyed-in-the-wool commie feminazi sister-in-law be near his kids without him present to act as a censor. Although I do not like to practice it, I can respect the Christian “turn the other cheek” philosophy towards forgiveness, because it often is worth eating crow in order to maintain peace (non-zero). However from my standpoint, my other cheek is already bruised and my patience is worn thin. I recently came across a quote I really like: “Two wrongs don’t make a right, but neither does one wrong.” I am starting to wonder if 3 retaliatory wrongs will put the situation back on the course it was heading in before the first wrong occurred… Perhaps I will test the hypothesis.

I’m becoming a SuperVillain.

So how, then, must I deal with insentient people of lesser intellect who enrage and disgust me? As I have found, (being generous) maybe 3/4 of them are dumber than I am and of those that are on-par with me or smarter than I am, maybe 3/4 of those are misguided douchebags with questionable and/or or repellant morals. The statistical returns are diminishing daily and I find it increasing difficult to tolerate people. It’s affecting my personal life and relationships.

And no, for those of you who read this because you hate what I have to say, it’s not a case of “Uruguay was innocent and didn’t deserve my vitriol because the vitriol was always there and always will be,” I have this to say: you are partly correct. The vitriol was always there and always will be; however, Uruguay deserved every bit of turd-slinging and continues to do so. Uruguay taught me a lot about people, how they function (or don’t) in the head, and how immoral they can be, and few of those lessons were good ones.

Yes, I feel increasing rageful bitterness towards people in general, I admit. Maybe that’s just how life is for someone who is unable to forget things, and finds it difficult to forgive per the aforementioned novel-length rant.

Maybe I’ll snap one day, start calling myself Bob, and write an angry blog.

Oh…