Do you feel liberated?

Militarily speaking, I mean. I felt more like threatened this morning when at 5 AM the dogs went berserk, and rather than finding a hare or skunk with our super powerful flashlight, we came upon two soldiers marching up our road in full gear.

Since sunrise it´s been a non-stop roaring of helicopters and humming of planes. It´s the joint-command liberation of Punta del Este, you see. Now that we may have oil, our military is readying to protect the basin.

Your chance to be discovered

Extras are being sought for a Coke ad to be filmed at the Punta del Este airport on October 20 and 21.

Candidates should be male or female between the ages of 25 and 65. The casting will be done at a hotel in Punta del Este to be determined, and the pay is US$30 for the day. Not much, but your chance to break out!

If you´re interested, get in touch with Alejandra Inciarte at alejandra underscore inciarte at yahoo dot com, or call her at zero nine nine one five five seven nine seven.

The Plan Ceibal - One Laptop per Child in Uruguay

If you ever venture into Uruguay (meaning exiting Punta del Este) you will no doubt come into at least visual contact with a) kids in public school uniform -- the white overalls and the blue ribbon tied in a large bow, which I found quaint until my foreign husband shared his views -- and b) their now ubiquitous accessory, a green and white notebook computer. Children from the less prosperous sectors of the population in Uruguay clutch these machines with much greater passion than a middle class child will show for whatever Wii or Xbox he or she happened to add to the toy collection.

Welcome to Plan Ceibal, the One Laptop per Child initiative pioneered in Uruguay, which has caused much controversy and opposition. An article in The Economist this week explains the basics of the plan, and talks about its "checkered start" and at best appears to describe the project in faintly positive terms, based on educational considerations.

Mauricio attends the rural school on KM105 of the Interbalnearia, and once nearly fractured a finger when his brother tripped him and he fell, ready to protect the computer with his life while screaming "The computer!!! The computer!!!! He´s had Internet connection at school since August.

It misses the point. Plan Ceibal requires Internet connectivity in order to work, and thus has made wiring every school in the country -- and by extension, every corner of the country -- an urgent matter. The Economist points out that two out of five rural schools have no connectivity. What I see is the miracle that those 3 out of 5 rural schools with connectivity represent, and the fact that the rest have a good chance of being connected in the near future.

Also noteworthy is the fact that the Ceibal notebooks bring hundreds of thousands of kids into contact with computing and the Internet in a manner other than gaming at a cyber cafe, the de facto introduction for poor, third world children. No matter what the percentages, the effects of this revolution will be for the better.

The knee-jerk reaction has been to say that the money could be better spent on increasing teacher salaries. Well, all teachers are being given a meaningful aid in performing their jobs. Good teachers will do an even better job and some mention the laptops as an effective aid. As for kids saddled with bad teachers, there is at least a learning or engagement opportunity that does not depend 100% on the quality of their teacher.

Nicole's garage sale

Our friend Nicole de Waele has decided that less is more and she's holding a two-day garage sale to clear out some of her fantastic housewares. Anyone who's been to her home can attest to quality of her antiques and Eurpean and traditional-style tableware, accessories and knick-knacks.

She also paints and maybe there will be some of her paintings on sale.

The name of the house is "El Grillito", located on Francia at the corner with Buenos Aires street (Parada 12 or thereabouts if I remember right). Entrance on Buenos Aires street.

The sale will be on Saturday, October 10 and Sunday, October 11, from 11AM to 6PM.

Maldonado, Uruguay's most prosperous town

Since everyone is in agreement that Punta del Este is not Uruguay, we can safely state that Maldonado is Uruguay's most prosperous town.

A news article this week confirmed what I had always said: Maldonado is the largest working-class to middle-class transformation hub in the country. It just bubbles with newly acquired prosperity, and according to El Pais, it is in the midst of a commercial property boom. Yes, you've heard right, there is a commercial real-estate boom, which has brought prices per square meter to match "the most expensive commercial square meter in Montevideo" as my accountant incredulously noted, at US$25 per m2, in the World Trade Center office complex.

Of course there is much more expensive commercial property in Punta del Este, but if we're talking Uruguay, downtown Maldonado is as expensive as Montevideo's commercial property jewel, the WTC.

This is no surprise to us. We tried to purchase land in an out of the way, dangerous neighborhood in Maldonado a couple of years ago and found it to be more expensive than in downtown La Barra. We tried to rent warehouse space and found it to be only 50% of the cost of some prime location commercial space in Punta del Este. So there you have it.

New bill on solar panels and alternative energy generation

Something caught my attention in the press this week, as good for the "man on the street" as well as for adventurours entrepreneurs: the announcement of coming regulation on alternative energy generation. 

If sanctioned, the new law will require that six months after its enactment any new sporting, health or hotel facility include solar panels for water-heating needs. 

Two years after sanctioning, the new regulation would require that industrial or agro-industrial facilities also use solar panels for water heating, and 3 years after it would cover all new swimming pools will have to be heated with solar panels only, with the exception of other renewable sources of energy.

Now the good part for the "man on the street": AT LAST, the bill would introduce tax exemptions, including import duty exemptions, for locally manufactured solar panels and for the parts/components involved in their manufacturing, and the same exemptions to imported panels that "do not compete with locally made panels" however that may be determined.

I know that in many developed countries alternative energy generation is subsidized at various levels by government entities, but here subsidies didn't exist until 5 minutes ago, the monopoly government-run energy and power utilities were ANTI alternative energy generation (it slowly chips away at their monopoly, that's how they see it) and it took much strong-arming from higher levels of the goverment to force them to ALLOW a private company or individual to even start generating for their own consumption. 

Not too long ago (could still be the case), the prices paid to large industrial generators who sell their surplus energy to UTE were BELOW the price paid by the same utility to import the natural gas required to make electricity. Government would force them to call a tender to award X number of watts to alternative generators, UTE would boicot the tender by disqualifying half the bidders. Etc.So finally things appear to be changing, thanks in great part to that big drought last year.

Urgent appeal: benefit dinner at Lapataia and help needed teaching English

I just received news of a benefit dinner to be held tomorrow, Friday, Oct. 2, at 8 PM at the Lapataia farm, with proceeds going to help the Escuela Rural #36 Rincon del Diario, located on Camino Lussich. The dinner will be a barbeque, with tickets costing UYU470 without wine, or UYU600 with wine.

There are a couple of ESC members going already. Anyone else interested please call Margarita Arsenault at cero nine four, six one five, one eight seven for directions or reservations, or email her namesake, margarita at marabierto dot com

Flor Rubio, who teaches English as a volunteer, tells me that the school serves children from working-class families, with a total of 50 kids and two teachers. For those of you not familiar with the format of a rural school, usually they involve large groups of mixed grades. Often the kids are served a meal and have a vegetable garden to work on at the school.

The importance of Flor's volunteer work lays in the fact that English language acquisition is key in this country to socio-economic mobility. No English, much harder to join the middle class. It's that simple, so anyone who is ready to volunteer twice a week to teach these kids will be more than welcome. Flor is 78 years old and says she's tired and will be glad to help someone else take her spot. And that the kids are great and a joy to teach.

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Post-dinner scriptum: Well, that was a nice time. We had a table with 14 expats/repats, the food was simple but abundant and tasty, and we even walked away with raffle prizes. The only downside was the live music and tango dancing, which was torture to our ears and hindered conversation and was beyond description in terms of cheesiness. Another problem was the cold at the tables, which made us all huddle around a lovely firepit. The staff was extremely nice. Conclusion: Great location to have a gathering in warmer weather, sans "entertainment".