Phoenix winters are not one bit like Uruguay

Well, on the face of it that would sound like a perfectly obvious statement. Tonight it SORT OF felt like early Winter in UY. We've had quite a bit of rain lately so the humidity is way higher than normal - but for just a moment there was a waft of woodsmoke smell in the air that was vaguely like Eucalyptus. Just for a moment though.

But no, not really. Probably one fireplace out of the hundreds in the area had something vaguely Eucalyptus scented burning in it - but on balance it just smelled sort of like a house fire. Nothing like that going on anywhere near here so its probably the creosote-product-type things people burn in their fireplaces. It's a log shaped roll packet but that's where its similarity ends. You're not even supposed to open it - if you did you'd probably see that you'd bought some tightly-rolled old newspaper impregnated with sticky coal tar.

Actual wood is DAMN expensive. So on balance there was really quite a STENCH in the air from all the fake logs being burned up. It was about 8:30 pm, which is usually when I do grocery shopping or cook dinner - but most couples would have long since finished with dinner, put the kid(s) to bed and lit the foul-smelling thing in their fireplace.

Fireplaces here are definitely more decorative than functional. Most of them cause a net EXIT of heat from the house making it MORE expensive to heat with the furnace already installed. There are gas fireplaces but I don't know of anyone who uses theirs. It's essentially a burner of natural gas with a fake "log" insert that makes it look like a smoldering fireplace. The log insert puts out very little in the way of heat. They're a great way to have a zero-maintenance fireplace that you can literally turn on with a wall switch - but you get a huge gas bill.

Yes, heat IS necessary out here in the desert. The most common is a natural gas furnace that's integrated with your air conditioning. Heat pumps are common too (i.e. an A/C unit that can be reversed and provides heat into the house) because this far south they're economical to run. They're certainly not the split system things like I had in Uruguay - that type of air conditioner really never caught on here. They're available but NOT from mainstream stores and generally EXTREMELY high priced.

Indoor propane heaters - the style with a tank in the back and two or three ceramic burners - are unknown here. I'm sure our "nanny state" forbids them. The tanks are readily available for gas grills but the heater unit, I've never seen. It'd probably be more likely to tip over on a carpeted floor. I saw them for sale in Mexico earlier this week - although the asking prices for just about any appliance there are pretty high compared to what I saw in Uruguay for the same item.

I bought back into the market

I won't say what stocks, what prices, mum's the word. I treated my newly-minted investment account like a trip to Vegas and put a similar spending limit on it.

I have to train myself not to watch it every day - which would be easy if one of the stocks wasn't in merger talks. But nonetheless, I'm in for the near-to-long term.

It's like the great depression all over again - the press says "buy 'em while they're so low!"

The crash has not been like Argentina 2002. One bank I use got bought out by a bigger one - but no major changes yet. I'm already moving assets away. The only fallout is that I used that bank to pay my monthly Sky Mexico bill. I'd let my balance drop below the $USD equivalent of the MX peso debt I have with Sky. It just happened - I wanted my balance at that bank to be pretty damn LOW.

(BACKGROUND: I use Sky as Spanish-on-demand lessons on my TV. Sky legally cannot sell into the USA but it's a don't ask-don't tell situation because they want the US revenue. However, if I use a random debit card to pay Sky and then do a transaction in Phoenix a few minutes/hours later - both get flagged as fraud. It takes a half hour on the phone - at minimum - to straighten it all out! So last night - as my Sky bill was due - I called another CREDIT card provider and said - look, you're going to get a charge for a card-not-present transaction for 1,000 MX pesos but you might also see card-present transactions here in Phoenix tonight. They asked me more than ten questions to verify I was who I said I was - smooth sailing. The Mexican payment via Visa went thru and so did three other local transactions made an hour later.)

I'm setting up with yet a 3rd bank and make sure they know that one card-not-present transaction in MX pesos per month is "kosher."

Crossing from Mexico to the USA - a moving target

The rules keep changing. I was thinking about going to Rocky Point with my dog. Last I'd read, all one needed was current proof of rabies vaccination.

Nope. Now its added expense: one has to get a health certificate signed by a vet. My particular vet costs $65.00 for this. Looks like just boarding her during any trip makes more sense.

That's the bad news. I got an envelope in the mail yesterday from the Border Patrol. I'm wondering, what in the heck is this... then I recall that they told me at the CBP office where I registered that I'd get an updated card in the mail that's a passport-equivalent.

That's what it was.

Here's their "SAMPLE" (public) images of the old and new cards. What, are you kidding, I'm going to put a picture of one of my ID documents on the internet? I will say I don't have the stupid mustache like the dude on the left. The card on the right is like the one I got in the mail. It was an internet-based activation process. The card is a complicated little beast made of at least three parts fused together. The documentation that came along with it made it very clear that there is an RFID chip inside it. It came with a sleeve that was lined with gold foil and the instructions are quite clear that the card should be kept in your wallet in that sleeve to prevent it being read by 3rd parties without one's knowledge.



It means no need to carry the paper passport on road trips south.

Just once, as big around as my arm from my elbow to my wrist.

Ok, enough doom and gloom. This one had me laughing the whole (2 minute) drive home.

I go to the supermarket daily. I've said it over and over on here - it's a habit formed living in Uruguay. Besides, it's a great way of not seeing just how much money a month I'm spending on food when its spread over 28 transactions vs. 3 or 4 :)

My local supermarket just started carrying Yakult.

The name is off-putting to the American-english speaking ear. It evokes images of some strange religion practiced by Ren and Stimpy or worse yet, it sounds vaguely Russian. Then when you pick up the bottle it says "fermented milk product."

The latina cashiers are all surprised. "I didn't know we sold that! My mom made me drink one of these every day growing up in Mexico!"

The cashier tonight asked me - "What IS this stuff? I've never seen it."

I'm trying to be diplomatic. "It's like Dan-Activ (an active culture yogurt) but cheaper and more effective. It just appeared in the store here and I always bought it when I lived in South America. I drank one every morning and then it wasn't a problem if I slipped up and drank the well water."

Yes its a cop-out but it's quicker than having the "Where is Uruguay?" conversation.

Oh my god, the responses you get... "Huh. My husband is never regular. He always tells me, JUST ONCE I'D LIKE TO PUSH ONE OUT AS BIG AROUND AS MY ARM FROM MY ELBOW TO MY WRIST all in one piece."

I started laughing and was like, "Don't take me there!"

I nodded over at the latina cashier a few lanes away and said, "Oh, it works. She knows what it is too, she was surprised to see it here and even more surprised to see a gringo buying it." (American girls don't know the proper word they really call us, which is gabacho."

I figured, I really don't want to know more about this unknown man's bowel movements.

So the woman asks me - "How long does it take to work?"

Hell, I don't know. But I answer anyway because I was hitting enter on the debit card machine and knew I'd escape shortly... "Three or four days." I'm trying to change the subject a little... "Don't let the description on the bottle put you off - where it says 'fermented milk product'. It tastes better than it sounds."

"Huh, how 'bout that. I'll have to have him try it. If I see him again I'll let you know."

"Well you have a great night - but I mean no disrespect - I'd rather not know OK? Take care..." and with that I'm the HELL out of there!

MTV-LA Asteriscos XXX becomes gay inclusive

MTV-LA is the version of MTV broadcast south of the border. It's seen in Mexico and all of South America except Brazil. They have had a late-night video show, well, forever that shows text messages from one lover to another superimposed over videos.

It's a fantastic way to learn the really explicit turns of phrase in Spanish.

I am rarely up to watch since its on late at night. I noticed this evening that messages between same-sex couples are appearing on-screen, something that had been conspicuously absent in the past.

It just makes an already great show even better. Where else can you read "Sus bubis son falsas?" or "mejor una muneca inflatable." (Your tits are fake / better a blow up doll)

:-)

talking to someone who is pretending to understand you

For over a year, I was that person. The first 8-12 months in Uruguay, I often times didn't have a clue exactly (if at all) what was being said to me. I relied on tone of voice, facial expression, context, and listening very carefully for words that I either for sure understood or possibly could guess at.

I was at a neighbor's house the other night. The primary language spoken in that household is Spanish but I figured this cousin of theirs who was younger than me probably spoke English. I was trying to fix something on their computer - the poor bastards bought a machine with Windows Vista on it. Lost cause. I keep telling them to run the restore CD and sell it as quickly as possible, then pre-order a machine with XP. But that's not my point.

Anyway I was frustrated with the computer and it takes some additional thought to talk with someone in Spanish so I figured I'd switch for a few sentences I couldn't quite process fast enough. The 13-year old daughter starts laughing. "He doesn't understand you at all, he's just pretending."

So I had a chance to ask how another person gets by in a society where they don't understand the dominant language. And the responses were the same. I listen for words I know, I watch the facial expression and tone of voice, and smile and nod when I think its appropriate. It was interesting to hear from another person going through the same thing.

Mexican adventure

I decided to explore a little bit of Baja California today. Drove from Tijuana to Mexicali. It was kind of surprising how good the road was... as with most major roads in Mexico, there are two that generally go the same direction. One is a "federal" highway, usually not so well maintained, two lanes, rather narrow. Then there's the toll road.

Those are nice. Damn right well better be for USD$8 from TJ to Mexicali. But it was a controlled access highway in every respect and oh baby you could go like a bat out of hell. The trucks are largely on the free road so there isn't much traffic.

My GPS was freaking out, this duality of highways was very confusing for it. I'd loaded map data for Baja and I'm not sure if I did it quite right. There was a manual or something but I ignored it. The battery on my PC was almost dead so it was better to do it fast than do it right. But it was close enough... there are not a hell of a lot of directional cues on Mexican roads. It definitely DID NOT provide turn by turn directions but it was a great reality check.

I knew I needed to re-enter the USA in Mexicali. To go any further would be too far out of the way. Next point of entry was Nogales. In TJ the border crossing points are well labeled on the road signs. Not so much in Mexicali!! I stopped and asked for directions like four times and eventually got where I needed to go. The express border crossing paperwork I did a few weeks ago paid off. ZIP into the commuter lane (after FINDING it). One car in front of me.

From the time I pulled into the commuter lane on the south side of the border to being back in the USA - less than three minutes. I estimate the wait in the regular lanes was 40 minutes to an hour. So, realistically given the 12 hours I spent doing the pre-clearance paperwork to get the ID card etc.... I just need to cross 14 or 15 more times to re-coup the time spent ;)

The border patrol has gotten creative with the location of their checkpoints. Obviously, no checkpoints on Mexican Highway 2d (or "second" as my GPS pronounced it... gotta love technology) naturally. But there's a pretty well established one east of Yuma, AZ. Nope, they moved it 50 miles further along. They look to see if you look remotely American and do the usual pass of the working dog around the car. Off you go...

So now I need to actually read the manuals that came with that GPS so that I can load the maps onto an SD card instead of into the device's memory... and definitely figure out how I can get files that show all the exact locations of the speed cameras on the roads. Once you have the coordinates for all the speed cameras the unit will alert you if you're traveling too fast ;)

International roaming on that trip to the border

WOW. Unless there's yet another month to wait for the data roaming charges I got off cheap. $2.98 on the bill carried over from roaming on Telcel Mexico. Worth every penny for that call I got too. But that's ten times less than I expected it to be.

Yes, I introduced a new tag - GSM. I gotta go back and re-tag all the old posts that are pertinent. Manana....

But what's six hours SOUTH of Phoenix?

Seriously.

San Diego is about 6 hrs. to the west. Las Vegas about 6 hrs. to the north. Albuquerque, New Mexico is 6 hrs. to the east.

For those of you who had social studies after your high school's open lunch hour and you were stoned during that class, one does not need a passport to visit New Mexico.

South is another story. You'll wind up somewhere in Mexico... but that's possibly dangerous, they don't all speak English and it's hard to find a Starbucks. Oh, and you shouldn't drive at night.

It's all true. Starbucks is very overpriced for that market, very few speak English and you shouldn't drive at night because there are dogs, stray farm animals and local vehicles on the road with no lights.

Yeah, and you might get robbed. But that can happen on the street near the Phoenix Airport or lots of places!

It's sort of the same as the attitude people in Wisconsin and Minnesota have about visiting Chicago. It's dangerous.

Great, buy into that idea and you get to stay home and watch whatever's on cable. Catch up on the weather channel and watch the steady diet of fear on the news channel of your choice. What's the threat level today? How many more died in Iraq? (Sure, these things are all important but for most of us only the first one might have a significant impact on your next 48 hours...) Oh, and be sure to believe it all.

I don't buy it - not completely. I have a healthy respect for risk but I'm not going to let fear run my life.

A real issue about exploring six hours south of Phoenix is that it may well take you six hours to get back into the USA. You might sit on the road overnight stopped in traffic on the Mexican side of the border.

There's not much of a middle class in Mexico. (There's less of one here in the USA every day - every time a kid drops out of school, every teenage pregnancy, every new gang member and every new Wal-Mart that opens squeezes our middle class more and more - but I digress.) So the border is real easy to cross heading south but not so much in the other direction. But paradoxically you see a fair number of Mexican-registered cars on the road in Arizona - I notice one or two each day.

You notice something about all those cars too - they are fairly new or at least very well-kept. I.E. the vehicles that get across are owned by corporations or by relatively wealthy people. A VW Jetta is a hell of a lot more expensive in Mexico due to taxes, keep that in mind the next time you see one on the road with Mexican plates.

The seed had been planted for this whole process while I was standing in line at the San Ysidro crossing between San Diego and Tijuana. The cars/travelers in the SENTRI commuter lanes do cross faster.

As the Customs and Border Patrol website says... it's a privilege and not a right to cross. It was interesting to see the demographic when I went to register myself and my car to use the express lanes going northbound. It's a seductive offer. Sell your soul to the man - give up a bunch of information - and get a faster trip north at the end of your travels. Even more seductive for their target demographic - wealthy Mexican citizens.

For me it's already a foregone conclusion. To live in Uruguay I had to give a set of fingerprints to the FBI so they could in turn tell the Uruguayan police I didn't have a record. Visa is everywhere you want to be - and Uncle Sam's nose is following the money every time that machine outside the US says "aprobado" and you sign the slip. Wire transfer? They collect that information too. So it's not like they're asking for anything new.

It DOES tie it all to a couple of RFID's. One goes on your car and the other goes in your wallet.

Signing up with The Man entails a trip to a border post. Nogales is closest but it had no times that were convenient to my schedule. I chose to go to Calexico instead.

They give you an approval letter that you print off the internet. You print it yourself and bring it with you. It has a succinctly worded list of documents you have to bring - if you're employed by someone. If you're self-employed as I am, it's more of a grey area.

The place is damn hard to find.

I've never been to a government office and encountered a representative that didn't speak English fluently. I am not one of these people who pisses and moans about bilingual education and adamantly says English First or English Only. Hardly. But it was a hell of a surprise when the gatekeeper/cashier for the whole process could not put together a coherent sentence in English.

It was a bit like a visit to a government office south of the border. Much more well appointed - US tax dollars at work to have the place air conditioned and as well finished as a retail store. Not a typewriter in sight, lots of high tech equipment. What it DID have is a lot of employees standing around with lots of idle time and an unclear process.

I had called to try to find out exactly what documents were necessary if you've been an employee half the year and self-employed the other half of the year. To borrow a phrase from the media "A telephone call requesting comment was not immediately returned."

So it began with the gatekeeper. Show her the letter and start asking about documents. It becomes clear that this conversation is not going to go far in English. We're clearly going to have a heated conversation about documents and I'm more accustomed to doing that in Spanish anyway.

I'll translate bits and pieces. It's not an unfriendly conversation, more a battle of wits. It's adversarial but sugar coated and respectful.

"What is all this? Where is your business license?"

"This is it. It's proof that I've registered with the state of Arizona and my tax ID numbers for federal and state."

"But you need a business license!"

"Not according to my CPA. This is as close to a business license as I have or need."

"You need a utility bill to prove your address."

"It doesn't specify that in the letter. It said rent or mortgage receipts - those are two recent ones. I have my voter registration card which was issued December 7th, 2007 in the state of Arizona. It was mailed to me."

"But you need a utility bill, everyone needs a utility bill"

"It doesn't say that in the letter. If anyone ever answered the phone here I might have known that. Instead I have this brand new voter registration card mailed to me by the state of Arizona."

"Ok. But your bank statement has to be the original it can't be printed off the internet."

"Your agency's own acceptance letter is printed off the internet. My bank doesn't send statements, it makes them available for download. This is very common."

She thought she had me. "You don't have your last year's tax return for your business. You have your own but there is nothing here for your business showing it paid taxes."

"My incorporation document shows that my business did not exist before August of 2007. Therefore there is no tax return for it for 2006 because it did not exist then."

Pause.... "So where are your tax reciepts then?"

"Here is the report from my payroll service showing the thousands of dollars in federal and state taxes."

"I've never seen anything like this."

"The dollar amounts on the report match up with the deductions from the bank account, I'm not hiding anything." She looks at me as if I have more to say but I remain silent.

It is at this point that I have to give thanks to the employees of the Uruguayan "Departamento" (state) of Canelones - particularly in the Atlantida and Pando offices - for training me to argue so well. Without help from them and other experiences I would have been intimidated and given up early on - or at least been beaten back to return a second time just because of the cross-examination.

Finally she assembled everything together into a file folder and handed me a "welcome packet" explaining the program. I'd gotten past the first step. "Ok take a seat, we'll call you."

It wasn't quite over but it was looking good. I was still VERY surprised that I'd just had to justify my existence and income IN SPANISH to an official of the US government.

Ok, time to regroup. Wonder what's going on in the outside world... The TV is of no help. Crystal clear picture, I thought it was a DVD. However the rabbit ears are concealed behind a fake plant on top of the cabinet where the TV is. The TV is showing channel 5 from Mexicali - Mexican television. I see a toy commercial showing a URL at the end - something at mattel.com.mx. Ok, it's childrens programming... Any messages on my cellphone?

My phone is roaming on Telcel, one of the Mexican services. Five bars of signal too! Must not be any T-mobile signal. This'll cost at least twenty bucks on next month's bill.

Then I get called for phase two of the inquisition. This officer has already been briefed about the weak spots in my documentation. I politely but firmly hold my ground. THIS conversation is in English.

"Well, ok, you do esentially have everything but you just have your business bank statement here. We need your personal one too."

This eventually got resolved. All I will say is they were willing to work with me.

So after that negotiation was finished, "one more thing..." It's a double sided questionnaire about previous travels. It's some of the same information that I was required to provide online at the start of the process - i.e. they're verifying if I was really the same person who filled out the online questionnaire. The questions would cause privacy advocates to foam at the mouth.

If you live in the USA you simply don't have any privacy. No sense raising the alarm about all the horses being missing when the stable door has been open for years.

They even ask about tattoos and piercings. I'm not kidding.

As I fill out the questionnaire I glance at the TV. I get distracted for a minute while I see one MX government ad about "transparencia" and then another touting (and reminding viewers of) human rights.

I turn the questionnaire in. They look it over. "Why were you in Uruguay so long?" I answer the question. "Write it down on the form just like you said."

Finally we're finished. The officer takes a picture of me with a little webcam they have attached to the workstation. They have the same little machine that foriegners entering the US encounter - the fingerprint reader. Again, I don't care about giving up the prints. Did it already to BE in Uruguay that long.

"Go pay the cashier." She points at the same lady where you start the process. I go pay the $97.50 fee. I get a receipt and get told to go back to the officer's station. This back and forth is eerily reminiscent of Latin American bureaucracy at its finest.

She hands me a card with a very bad picture of me. It outdoes my Arizona driver's license for having a bad picture. It simply says "SENTRI" - the name of the trusted traveler program and has some other information on it. The card is an RFID. There's a pamphlet that explains what the reader looks like in the "Sentri" lane at the border crossing and how to hold the card so the reader is most likely to correctly interrogate it.

"This card is not proof of citizenship. You still have to have your passport. You're going to get a card in the mail at some point in the future that IS proof of citizenship."

Then come the teeth in the process.

The officer hands me the "Know before you go" pamphlet. It's on the web. "Sign this." It's an acknowledgment that I've received a copy and will read/abide by it.

"You will get a faster crossing experience. However, be sure to declare everything. Now that you're in the program it's zero tolerance. If we catch you with an extra bottle of undeclared liquor it's going to be the full penalty the first time. You will have to pay 30 times the US value of that bottle AND have to pour it out. Ordinarily the first time we catch something like this you just forfeit it. Understand?"

"Yes, I understand." What am I gonna do at this point? Protest?

"Ok, last step, go out and pull your car up to the yellow area by the building entrance. I need to verify that the vehicle matches the registration and insurance documents and put a sticker in the windshield."

I go out to the parking lot. My car is the only one in the SENTRI parking area with US registration. It's also the oldest car in the parking lot, by a good five years.

I pull up. The cuteness of the dog is noted (yeah Shaggy went with). The numbers are verified. A sticker is put inside my windshield. When there is bright light shining through the sticker you can see the embedded radio antenna inside it. Otherwise its completely nondescript. No markings. Much thinner than one of those toll transponders.

I'm not sure in retrospect how I feel about the whole thing. But its done and whats more - I have nothing to hide. I might feel a lot different if I'd never gotten Uruguayan residency - but if I'd never been there I wouldn't speak Spanish. I'll write about what Shaggy and I find six hours south of Phoenix in the future when we make the trip. Gotta get her papers in order next.