Jun 11, 2008 | Culture Shock, Etiquette, Living-In, Plumbing, Spanish, Utilities
Man, my patience is tried. I’m fried, wiped out. I surrender. Ok, I almost surrender, but it’s touch and go. When bad things happen here – just everyday bad things – you come up against the culture shock thing big time. Because simple solutions...
Jul 3, 2007 | Communications, Culture Shock, Living-In, Moving-To, Utilities
I am posting this morning via my new hi-speed internet service from Amnet, one of the two cable companies here. YAHOO!!!! We have been using WiMAX, a wireless signal shot from a huge tower on the mountain behind us. The plan is to provide WiMAX to the entire country,...
Apr 21, 2007 | Living-In, Utilities
From Thursday 6pm to Friday around 7pm, the entire country was mostly in the dark. Fortuitously, the power was on for coffee in the morning and the play at night… otherwise, we sat around staring at each other. After sitting around in candlelight for 2 hours, we...
Jan 1, 2007 | Cost of Living, Living-In, Mail and Shipping, Utilities
Saturday I went to pay my utility bills: water, electric, phone, cel phone, tv, wifi. My cel is $8/month and I recently paid three months of that. I haven’t paid my phone yet, but that will be about $5 for the month. You don’t write checks in Costa Rica....
Nov 12, 2006 | Communications, Cost of Living, Living-In, Utilities
The difficulties associated with living in a developing nation is rich fodder for sarcasm and humor. It puts the "frustrating and hilarious" in our daily lives. As much as we are frustrated by these little difficulties, we’ve chosen to happily suffer...
Sep 10, 2006 | Movies, Utilities
Yesterday we got Directv. Finally! No TV for 8 months… actually, TV we can live without, we are online addicts. The boys (all three of them) play those online make-up-your-life games: Runescape and Ultima Online are the two hotties at the moment. Not me....
Aug 30, 2006 | Political Blah-Blah, Utilities
This is Alejandro who made dealing with the biggest and reputedly most frustrating bureaucracy in Costa Rica anything but. Right after I took this photo and put away my camera, he broke into this big grin which showed his devilishly handsome side… but I knew if...
Apr 11, 2006 | Communications, Culture Shock, Living-In, Moving-To, Real Estate, Skype, Utilities
Guess what? There is NO DSL at the new house. Notice I’m not calling it "our" new house anymore, am I? In my conversation with I.C.E. (Eee-say, the government monopoly that controls ALL the phone lines and ALL related services), when the Customer...