Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Morning people

Montevideo people
My morning walk to work, I see pretty much the same stuff, that being the same people. During the summer there are usually a few transients sleeping here and there trying to find a break from the wind or shelter from the rain. Lately they have disappeared.

Leaving the apartment the first thing I come upon is the cloud of pigeons, eating the bird seed thrown to them by the pigeon lady.

Next it's the "Walking Man", a fairly large gentleman who is walking at the park near the engineering school. He's not walking up and down the hill, I sometimes want to tell him he would get more cardio exercise if he did. He used to ask me for the time, but he's figured out by now that my Espanol isn't so hot, even though I would just show him my watch.

Ol' Limpy, OK, not a person but a dog. Ol' Limpy is a mutt that hangs around the amusement park. He or she walks with a limp, probably hit by a car, but always wagging its tail.

Then it's the Friendly Window Washers, two amigos at the stoplight that make a few pesos washing windows. They're always nice even when the cars are honking because they might be holding up traffic. I see them give directions once in awhile to Argentine tourists.

My favorite, "The Skipping Lady", huh? She's at the park every morning running up an down and around the circular park benches, but the funny thing is she is often running backwards and, skipping or hopping around. I have to hand it to her as she is always there.

The old couple. Don't know much about them but we always seem to pass each other around the same time.

The dog people. Always a new group of folks letting their dogs, do their thing, at the park in front of where I work. I've only been approached once by a dog, a golden retriever, asides that the dogs play with each other and make a "mess" around the park.

So thats the morning people post that I have meant to do for only a year or so...

Monday, February 23, 2009

3 days into a 4 day weekend

Woo Hoo, well it's day 3 of my 4 day weekend for Carnival. Pretty much all of South America is like this, taking a long weekend for Carnival, but here is the funny part.
Uruguay had all of it's Carnival festivities at the beginning of the month, the big party right now is in Rio. So basically it's a national holiday to go party in Rio and everyone here will tell you so.

For me, I'm watching streaming movies on the internet. I'm not into the whole downloading movies thing, but I wonder if it wouldn't be faster sometimes then waiting for the movie to buffer.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Blah day

Rain rain and more rain! Went to church this morning and my walk to to both the bus stop and church was in the pouring rain. Thankfully I didn't wait long at all at the first bus stop and when I walked the to second bus stop the express bus was just pulling up, this made my day. See there are two buses I can take to Carassco, one being the 104 bus which makes plenty of stops along the way. Could be hard plastic seats or possibly a newer bus with upholstered seats. But, there is an express bus which costs only 5 pesos more (Around a nickel) and it's more like a tour bus with nice reclining seats and makes no stops along the way, the choice is clear! Unfortunately I can't figure out how to take that bus back.

On my way home my wait for the bus was much longer as the buses don't run as frequently on Sundays. When the first bus dropped me off at the second bus stop I was whipped by the winds and rain along the rambla. I was very happy when the bus arrived and I finally made it home.

Not ashamed to admit I took a nap after all of that, LOL.

Watched Valkyrie with Tom Cruise http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0985699/maindetails
Not to bad a movie.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Book Corner - Finished Reading

I know, it's about time!

The Agenda - Inside the Clinton White House
Paperback 448 pages
Bob Woodward

I only read this because I had liked the other Bob Woodward book I read and thought this one would be interesting, but sadly it bored me to tears. I had to force myself to finish reading it.

The Road
Paperback 287 pages
Cormac McCarthy

Apparently this is going to be a movie this year. I read this in two days, but mostly because I was bored.

Don't you like my in depth book reviews!

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Blow your horn

Yesterdat as I was walking home I saw a cruise ship pulling out and as if on queue, 3 big blasts of it's horn. Wow, talk about loud!
A couple of you understood the 3 horns, leaving port.
Audios!

Monday, February 16, 2009

Flipping Burgers

big mac
I had lunch at my Pastors house yesterday and the conversation turned to the unemployment for young people here in Uruguay, about 50% I also found out that the kids who work at McDonalds make about $1 per hour. There are no overtime laws here so they work anywhere from 48-60 hours per week.

Now put this into perspective. When you go to the mall the line at McDonald's is always full of young kids. A Big Mac meals costs around 150 pesos, at an exchange rate of 22 pesos per hours thats $6.81.

The dividing line between the haves and the have nots is wide!

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Nice day for a walk

It was a beautiful day for a walk, and a walk is what I did. I again took the long walk to Mercado del Puerto and still have no idea how far that is. This time I stopped at the Museo de Carnival (Carnival museum), 50 pesos, kind of surprised me as there really wasn't much to see and nothing in English.

There were to big cruise ships in port and tourists everywhere.

As I was waiting for a bus at Ciudad de Vieja I noticed a young couple that were obviously tourists trying to figure out the bus schedule. I asked them where they were going, Carrasco, don't know why, not much to see. Anyway, the bus they needed didn't stop at the bus stop we were at and I pointed them in the right direction.

Most bus stops have metal signs with the numbers of the busses that stop there, if the signs are there at all. Others have plastic signs but almost all of them have the bus numbers pealed off or missing.

I was going to walk home and as I was walking down a side street that went towards the rambla I saw a bus stopping that went to my neighborhood so I jumped on and rode home.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Baby Tero

I saw a baby Tero for the first time this morning, just thought I would mention that :  )

Rhino Beetles

For a couple of weeks now I have noticed large amounts of Rhino Beetles appearing in the park near where I work.  They are on the sidewalk, a fresh bunch every morning.
Don't understand why there are so many, and why they all appear to be dying, on their backs, little feet in the air.

I thought the birds would be feasting on them, but not so.

Monday, February 9, 2009

Blog Changes New

I made yet some more blog changes.  I realized that I had some bookmarking buttons in the left hand column that were totally redundant in that I have bookmarking capabilities built in via the "Add This" button on each of my posts.   I know The Doc Report is a little slow to load so I have been wittling away at the dumb stuff.  I hope your taking advantage of the subscribe features and not visiting the blog :  )

I also enabled Blogger "Reactions" features which is supposed to allow readers to click reactions to each post such as funny, interesting etc. but I have yet to see this feature and have looked with a couple of different browsers.

The geekiest thing I have done which is most transparent to the reader is I added some code that changes my posting title to Title - Blog Name.  What?

Well Blogger posts by default appear in listings as Blog name - post name, ie.e The Doc Report - Blog Changes New but with the code I added it now appears as Blog Changes New - The Doc Report.  So should the post appear in Google etc. it would draw the potential blog reader :  )

If anyone is interested in the hack please comment.


Wrap Up

I haven't posted in awhile, and now I don't know where to start but here
goes.

Tawny the kitty is gone. I took her to the Sunday ferria (open market)
near my home and through a little Spanglish was able to give her away to
a mother and daughter, the little girl loved Tawny and I'm sure the will
give her a good home.

Carnival continues and I can hear the drums at night.

Still very warm, in the 80's. The beaches have been packed.

I'll think of something more interesting to blog about soon!

Monday, February 2, 2009

Carnival begins

And so it begins 40 days of parades and lots of drums. I can hear the
drum beating away now, probably along the main road through the old
city, 18 De Julio.
As I walked to work I saw vendors setting up at Parque Rodo, handmade
crafts and lots of Virgin Mary stuff. Also saw someone selling little
Styrofoam boats that I gather is to light something up and set it
afloat, what I don't know.

Also saw another large cruise ship pulling into port and when I got off
work plenty of tourists strolling about.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Blog changes

I made a few blog changes as you can tell, added a new header image and
removed several of the widgets that I thought were just slowing down the
browser load time and not doing the blog any good anyway.

Book Corner - Finished Reading

Ambush Alley - The most extraordinary battle of The Iraq War
Author: Tim Prirchard
Paperback 343 pages

Absolutely a cannot put down book. Wow, what a tale. I had scene the
story on the History Channel but to read the stories gave me chills.
A must read.