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Published: September 13th 2018
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Did you know?
I didn’t either I suppose there a little things about everywhere you go and make you stop and go “wait, are you serious?”
And so I don’t know if I mentioned this, but next week is the Fiesta Patrias in Chile (Father Party?) which is to celebrate when back in 1810 Bernard O’Higgins chased the Spanish out of Chile...and maybe they then drank green beer, but I doubt it, but all I know is that the country is shutting down next week for holidays. So its a little bit like St Patrick’s, but without the Irish, and with Chileans, and three times as long (there’s three days off).
So that’s not the thing that made me go “wait, are you serious?” - as a Canadian, I think we could probably use three days off to celebrate the birth of our country as well, as it is a very good country (and maybe not just a day that sometimes falls in the middle of the week...just give us the long weekend dammit...but I digress). We actually have to hang a Chilean flag somewhere on our house, and we have to do it in the proper fashion (blue has to be on the left
Our Chilean house
Azul goes on the left idiot! if hung horizontal, please see the attached diagram), or else we could get fined by the police...for real. It’s times like these that I wish my good buddy Max was here, as I’m sure this would send him into a rant on fascism, and perhaps he could give the Cabineros here a piece of his mind, and hilarity would ensue.
So today I went and bought myself a $4 Chilean flag and hung it up on the Jurassic Park T-Rex fence outside our house (we need to keep los malos out), and at first it was hung up wrong as the blue was on looker’s right (home barbequer’s left), but Steph set me straight with the handy diagram that she sourced from some other expats. Additionally, you have to give a few ”regalos” to your local garbage and newspaper deliverers and others, basically 5,000 Chilean pesos or $10 CAD per person, and they are not shy about reminding you...including a note dropped by your place saying they are coming by on this day to collect, and thanking your for your cooperation, much like members of the mob looking for kickbacks. Which makes me wonder what happens if I don’t give a gift, and I assume that garbage probably just piles up in front of my house, which I guess is ok since we have a that T-Rex fence and it would just sit outside the property.
Anyway, hopefully the flag is hung correctly and we don’t get fined...moving on to a few other things...
...an interesting tidbit if you are a student of history is that yesterday was the anniversary of the 1973 coup by Pinochet. So a different September 11th than we have in North America. I guess though it’s not a good night to go downtown (downtown here is the government district) as there are a lot of protestors, or I guess more like agitators, that are downtown and may end up throwing molotovs and causing a ruckus...not totally sure why, this is something that our nana told us so my Spanish is not quite there where I can actually chat with her in detail as to why (assume it’s something against the establishment)...
...on a lighter note, the pool maintenance guy was by, and so we wanted to ask him how we could turn on the pool heater. He said “I’m just the pool maintneance guy, you need someone else for that”...I mean who, like the pool heater maintenance guy...is it not all related?
...thought we had found a car to buy, we had been perusing the lots for cars here, mostly used...I was feeling pretty proud of myself that I finally closed a deal and put down a deposit, and thought I got a good deal on a used Mazda CX-5...which fell apart today just as we were handing them the cheque, and the form read that the engine was oh, a different size than was advertised and was told to us, and not in a good way...would you mind double checking I asked, oh that’s just a typo they said...nope, it sure wasn’t...the only redeeming part of this for me was when I got to tell them in Spanish, I’m not buying here! But now it’s back to awkward conversations in my bad Spanish with used car salesmen...at least I caught the mistake...not sure what the term for greaseball is in Spanish, but today I wish I did...
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Anna D
non-member comment
“Our pool maintenance guy came by”
- Said no one in Vancouver, ever ?