Episode Summary
In this episode of The Expat Files, Johnny Mueller dives into the challenges expats face with telephone service in Latin America. He discusses the transition from government-run to privatized systems, highlighting improvements in infrastructure but also ongoing issues with signal quality and outdated wiring practices. Johnny explains how 'rat's nests' of wires on telephone poles contribute to signal problems and how these issues persist despite privatization.
He also explores the issue of cell phone interference caused by high-voltage transformers and tangled wires, which create stray magnetic fields that disrupt signals. Johnny highlights the problem of calls not connecting on the first attempt, with up to 50% of calls failing to connect but still being billed as successful. This leads to overcharging, which is often unnoticed by users due to a lack of detailed billing information.
Johnny calculates the cost of this overcharging for the average expat, estimating an annual loss of around $150. He contrasts the acceptance of such practices in Latin America with the more vocal opposition in the first world, suggesting it may be due to collusion among phone companies or a lack of legal recourse. He also touches on the broader issue of how first-world phone features have spread to other regions, causing inconvenience for expats.
In another segment, Johnny discusses the annoyance of ringtone or back tone songs that play when someone calls a number. He recommends using Skype for free international calls and humorously proposes a 'Back Tone Wars' app as a potential solution. He also highlights the economic disparity between first-world expats and locals in Latin America, using the example of ATM withdrawals. In the first world, the minimum withdrawal is typically fifty dollars, while in Latin America, people commonly withdraw five or ten dollars, illustrating the economic divide.
Johnny also touches on the use of propane gas in Latin America, noting its affordability and the historical context of its production and distribution. He mentions the availability of flex fuel vehicles in Brazil and the impact of government subsidies on the market, suggesting that the apparent affordability of flex fuels may be due to artificial manipulation. He concludes with a discussion on the use of propane gas in taxi cabs in Honduras, noting that more than half of the taxis were powered by propane due to its lower cost, but the experiment eventually failed due to safety concerns and improper installation.
Topics
Telephone service in Latin America, Privatization of public services, Infrastructure and signal quality, Wiring practices and outdated technology, Cell phone interference, Phone call billing, Infrastructure issues, Phone call overcharging, Cost of living for expats, Legal systems in developing countries, Corruption and governance, Class action lawsuits
Chapters
00:00:00 Opening 00:00:31 Unusual Telephone Issues in Latin America 00:01:16 The Past of Government-Run Telecommunications 00:01:47 Privatization and Improved Infrastructure 00:03:42 Understanding the Signal Issues 00:05:16 Cell Phone Interference from Power Lines 00:06:40 Phone Call Billing Issues 00:07:59 The Hidden Cost of Failed Calls 00:10:11 Phone Call Costs in the Region 00:10:43 Calculating the Cost of Incomplete Calls 00:10:51 Systemic Acceptance of Overcharging 00:14:28 Introduction to the Problem with Phone Calls and Back Tones 00:14:50 Discussion on the Annoyance of Back Tones 00:16:32 Proposal for a 'Back Tone Wars' App 00:18:37 Minimum ATM Withdrawal in the First World 00:18:50 Contrast in ATM Withdrawal Habits 00:20:12 Propane Gas Usage in Latin America 00:20:31 Flex Fuel Vehicles and Subsidies 00:21:58 Natural Gas Production and Use in Mexico 00:23:32 Propane Gas in Taxis 00:24:18 Reasons for Using Propane 00:25:39 The Disappearance of Propane Taxis
Transcript
Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.
[00:01] South of the border, down Mexico way That's where I fell in love when the stars above came out to play Hi everybody, I'm Johnny Mueller And you're listening to the Exped Files, Living in Latin America The one of a kind show that tells you what it's like to live, work, play and or retire in Latin America So let's get started Today I'd like to report on something unusual that's been happening with telephones down here And I should say that it's not just been happening, it's been going on a long time But people just now seem to be getting wise to the fact that they're being ripped off in yet another simple and subtle way And it happens nearly every single time they make a phone call
[00:49] And just one thing, if you hear a lot of strange noises in the background while I'm talking The rainy season has just started and as hard as it hits, it's so loud sometimes that it bleeds through my little studio So if it does, sorry about that And another thing, if you hear a dog barking once in a while in the background, that's beyond my control too So bear with me, okay? After all, this is the third world now But back to the telephone scam I was talking about Now let me explain something first Before about 5 or 10 years ago, when each country's telephone service was nationalized and owned and operated by the government You could expect that when you made a phone call of any kind, half the time or more, when you picked up the phone You wouldn't get a dial tone And if you did and tried to place a call, half the time it just wouldn't get through at all
[01:35] So it was very common for you to dial 3 or 4 or even 5 times before you finally connected with your party And that was for local or national calls If you tried to dial out of the country, it was even worse But in the last 5 to 10 years, nearly every single Latin American country has sold off and privatized those hopelessly inefficient dinosaur national telephone companies Or they've done partnership deals with transnational telephone companies and have drastically improved their infrastructure Which in turn has really improved their telephone service And some Latin American countries have actually brought their service up to first world standards That is, in some cases And I just read recently that every big trunk line is on fiber optics down here Which assures that phone calls are crystal clear and nothing like they used to be when the government owned the service
[02:22] Back then, every time you made a call, you sounded like you were in a tunnel or talking through a tin can Ok, so now that all the Latin countries have privatized or partially privatized And their communication infrastructures are basically first world You should be able to pick up your phone and dial anywhere and get a great signal and great service, right? Well, actually, you'd be wrong And I'm not saying that the quality of the signals are bad, not at all Not like the old days when cell phones first came in even in the first world You all must remember how it was 5 or 10 years ago When your cell phones up north pretty much took over from the landlines completely, remember that? And I'm sure you also remember telling the person you were talking to on the other end That you only had a bar or a bar and a half on your signal strength And the signal was breaking up and you'd jostle around and you'd say, is this better? Is this better?
[03:11] Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? I'm losing you, you're breaking up, I'll call you back Which actually was a pretty good reason to dump somebody you didn't want to talk to anymore I pulled that one a lot myself and I know a lot of people probably did it to me too And how many times did you walk toward a window or out a door or into a parking lot to try to get a better signal? Remember those days? Well, down here in Latin America, that still happens You still have to jostle around for a good signal Even if you're standing a block away from a cell phone tower, believe it or not And I've been wondering about that a long time, how can that be? So I talked to a friend of mine, an engineer I knew, from the company Ericsson that makes cell phones in Europe And he was down here doing some business on satellite telephone hookups, so he was just the guy to ask And when I did ask him, he just smiled, took me by the arm and led me outside
[03:57] He pointed up at a nearby telephone pole and he said, that's your reason right there Take a look at that rat's nest of hundreds of wires and cable, all bunched up in a ball around that big transformer You'll see nothing like that up in the first world, it's just not permitted And he said, little by little, that's all being changed But it's a remnant of the way they used to do wiring down here before all these companies privatized And then he pointed to another telephone pole on the opposite side of the street And he said, look at that big loop of wire over there that goes nowhere And he was right, on top of the pole, there was a coiled loop of maybe a hundred feet of extra wire That just ended right up there and didn't go anywhere And he said, in the old days it was normal for a guy who just wired a neighborhood or a section of town To leave a huge extra coil of wire on top of the pole
[04:46] So when they got the order to wire the next street, the next house, or the next neighborhood They didn't have to keep hauling the wire back and forth, they just left it on top of the pole for safekeeping Because if they left it anywhere near ground level, it'd just get stolen But being that this is the third world, that order to wire the next neighborhood or whatever Might not come for a month, a year, or maybe never at all And that's why every block or two, especially in a big city You'll often see big coils of wire on top of telephone poles, wire that goes absolutely nowhere But because these loops of wire butt up against a rat's nest of other connections and wires And often brush up against or are looped around big high voltage transformers You know, the ones that look like gray garbage cans on the top of telephone poles Well, if you know anything about basic electricity
[05:32] Extraneous voltages and currents build up by induction when power fluctuates around loops of wire And that causes stray magnetic fields that often screw up nearby cell phone signals And if you never took a basic electricity course, you'll just have to take my word for it Basically, cell phones are just very low power radios And you know how often you get interference on your radio Just turn your radio on and drive around a big city sometime And if you live in a city long enough, you get to know where those dead spots and bad reception points are But thankfully in the first world, almost all the big power lines and substations are underground And if not, they're very well shielded So that means these days, you don't see rats' nests of wires like that up north But unfortunately, it's going to take a lot of years down here Before they clean up all that power line interference and things don't look so third world ugly
[06:22] Okay, so you get cell phone dropouts and interference pretty regularly down here And believe me, it's like stepping ten years into the past But you just live with it Even if you have 3G wireless internet service and the latest Blackberry You'll have the occasional connection problem and interference And it doesn't pay to get a stroke over it But that's not the worst of it When you dial a phone number down here, whether it's a cell phone or on a landline And it doesn't matter what service provider you have The fact is, up to 50% of the calls you make will not connect on the first try That is, you'll get a dial tone And the phone number will seem to ring at least for a few seconds And then there'll be a silence, or the phone will disconnect Or you just might get a dial tone again Now, this is so common down here that nobody actually pays attention to it
[07:10] And everybody just redials as a reflex action And the second dial up almost always connects However, after that happens, if you look up your phone's call directory And check recent calls that you made You'll see that that first call that never got through Was registered as a successful connection As if the person on the other end that you were calling had actually picked up And the call registry will show that you connected with the other party For maybe 5 or 10 seconds of time But actually, you never did You just got a dead tone, or it reverted back to a dial tone But so what, so you call again and it connects a second time No problem, no harm done, right? Wrong, because you just got charged for 1 minute of phone time And 1 minute is the usual minimum billing time down here Whether your call connected for 1 second, 45 seconds, or exactly 1 minute
[07:59] Now, you see what I'm getting at here, don't you? On that very first call that you made that never actually connected at all Well, you just got charged for 1 minute of regular phone connect time And didn't even know it In fact, no one I talked to down here, and I've talked to a lot of people about this No one even recognizes that this subtle kind of ripoff is even happening They have no idea that they're being charged for 1 minute every time the phone call they make doesn't connect Now, I looked at my own phone registry in my cell phone And it only holds the last 10 numbers that I dialed So it's almost impossible to see how much accumulated dead time they're charging you for And another strange thing, if when I first dial a number and it doesn't connect The second time I dial that number, right after that And it does connect, and let's say I talk for 6 minutes
[08:47] After I hang up and I look in that phone registry again That number will only show up once, as a 6 minute completed call Somehow wiping out completely the information in the registry on that earlier call that never connected And if you use a cell phone with a prepaid phone card Which is the most common way to buy a cell phone down here by the way You can prove to yourself very easily just how they're ripping you off for at least 1 minute on nearly every phone call Now the funny thing is, if you have a monthly plan and are not using a prepaid phone card And they actually send a statement to your house every month Or you go down and pick it up personally because the mail sucks Anyway, you'll commonly get a nice detailed list of long distance charges But you'll just get one big cumulative figure for local charges
[09:35] That is, unless you want to go down to the telephone company yourself And request a complete printout of all the calls and charges that you made that month Which no one ever really does unless they've had a crazy outlandish charge on their bill And they want to go down to the phone company office and contest it Which by the way is almost always a waste of a half a day Since you'll have to stand in at least 2 or 3 long lines And repeat the exact same story to quiet a number of people Who in the end probably won't be able to help you at all So you might say big deal Why is Johnny nitpicking about a 1 minute overcharge? That's nuts But let me tell you Down here, the average 1 minute phone call is running 20 to 25 cents US And if you average let's say 200 phone calls a month Which works out to about 7 phone calls a day
[10:21] And since I have sisters I know that's on the low side So don't say I'm being unreasonable here Anyway, let's use that 200 phone call a month figure And let's be conservative here and say 25% of those That's one quarter Or 50 phone calls Never got through on the first try But you were charged 1 minute of time for each one of those incomplete phone calls That's 50 calls at 25 US cents a piece That means you're paying $12.50 a month For calls that never got through at all And that my friends happens in every single country down here And it seems like nobody's paying attention Except me I guess But that's what I'm here for right? So why are people down here so accepting of things like that Whereas up in the first world I know people who would blow a gasket
[11:07] Even for a little thing like a 1 minute overcharge Well that's because People down here are so used to the fact That in the old days, before privatization You rarely could get through on the first try either Though in the bad old days You never did get charged for an incomplete call So you have to wonder Is this a conspiracy between all the phone companies down here Did they all get together and set it up that way? That adds up to tens of millions of dollars believe me Well I don't have any proof of that But I know it's very easy to program software To do exactly that You know you really can't keep a thing like that secret forever In every phone company There'd have to be a handful of people who know about it But when you think about it I can't see anybody taking it to court And even if a bunch of people got really pissed off
[11:53] I've never seen a class action suit get anywhere down here either And just a little aside here Speaking of class action lawsuits If you ask even a white collar guy on the street What a class action lawsuit is No one but a lawyer knows what I'm talking about I've even asked bilingual businessmen in high end sections of town And they still give me a funny look Because they don't know what I'm talking about either But that's another topic for another show And just for your information There are some class action lawsuits going on down here right now But none of them were instigated by the locals Every one of them that comes to mind was started by a first world law firm Hoping to cash in by suing a transnational corporation with deep pockets A transnational that's been accused of human rights violations Or large scale environmental destruction
[12:40] So anyway any of you expat or expat wannabe lawyers up there Who are thinking of coming down and making your mark with a few class action lawsuits Well there's certainly a lot of targets And a lot of transnationals with deep pockets to sue And plenty, I mean plenty of horrific abuses Because the governments down here are so corrupt That nearly all the politicians are on the take I know it sounds like a blanket statement that's hard to believe But it's absolutely true So the transnationals come in They do sweetheart deals with high level politicians And they make a lot of them rich on the side With back door commissions And the environmental and social costs Well the environmental regulations are a joke And nobody's watching anyway And the minimum wage workers
[13:26] They keep their mouth shut because they prefer to have a job So the bottom line is It takes a lot even for a first world law firm To start a class action lawsuit down here But believe it or not it does happen sometimes Especially when there's a lot of bad press internationally That gets first world protestors out on the streets And it always helps when there's a nice undercover documentary or two So public outrage in the first world Is usually a prerequisite to a nice class action lawsuit down in the third world In fact it's happened to oil companies International chemical companies Power companies Mining companies And land developers And just like in the US When a class action lawsuit is successful The biggest winners are always the lawyers
[14:11] But let's get back to that little telephone scam I was talking about Well as for now anyway Everyone down here is stuck with the charges And if you're paying an extra twelve or so dollars a month For calls that weren't even completed The average expat could be dumping $150 a year in the toilet And it seems to many expats That the only way around this little problem Is to use a service like Skype And you people out there who use Skype know that it's virtually free I use it myself and it's highly recommended And in fact right now for basic Skype service You don't pay anything at all So computer to computer phone calls all over the world are free Check it out it's highly recommended And while I'm on the topic of phones Some things come up recently That really annoys all those people
[14:56] Who don't use telephones as a plaything And I'm talking about those of us Like me and a lot of other expats Who when we call someone we actually want to talk to that person And don't want to hear 20 seconds of their favorite Shakira or Lady Gaga song Though to tell you the truth I'd rather hear Shakira any day than Ragathon But you know what I don't want to hear one second of anyone's favorite song Whether it's down here up north I don't know about you but when I call somebody I actually want to talk to them I mean is that too much to ask I'm paying for the call right? I'll tell you what you pay for the call And I'll listen to your 20 seconds okay? But until then somebody needs to put an app button on the phone To reverse the charges I rather like the idea of voting for or against your cell phone back tone And if I like it I pay for the call
[15:43] Now there's an idea whose time has come And remember you heard it here first But until then please kill the back tones Who needs one more thing to drive you nuts huh? But you see everything first world eventually gets down here And it took a couple years for that ringtone business to really catch on Which was bad enough But now you got those backtones And like I said Latins are nuts about everything first world And now that back tone business is absolutely out of control down here And what's worse is that you actually have to pay for the song That you torture everybody else with every time they call your number In fact if there was a button on my phone That could eliminate or mute the other guy's back tone I'd do it every time Even if it cost me a buck every time I pushed it To me that would be cheap and sweet revenge
[16:30] How about it? Back tone wars A new iPhone app by Johnny Mueller Wouldn't that be cool? Now there's a money making idea for the phone company And you heard it here first Or maybe there's a hacker out there who could slip me the program How about it you guys? Send me an email Anyway it wouldn't be so bad But almost inevitably That back tone song that you hear for those first 20 seconds The one that the person you're calling loves so much They're willing to pay a monthly fee to keep it there The annoying song that everyone ends up hating Did you ever notice that it's always twice as loud as it has to be? I don't know about you But I can't even keep my ear up to the phone sometimes Don't I sound like a stodgy old man So just a hint to you guys up there with back tone songs It's not cute anymore, sorry
[17:15] It might have been funny the first two or three days you had it But it's just not cool anymore, please Thankfully I don't call the first world much So I don't have to listen to the newest back tones But I do make a few phone calls down here and it drives me nuts I'm telling you every sweatshop worker, shoeshine boy, and minimum wage farmer Has his very own back tone now And you have to wonder how a guy with a dirt floor and cold running water Even knows how to program in a ringtone or a back tone So everybody's got a back tone down here It's way too loud and it's only going to get more annoying So if any of you big shots in those phone companies are listening We really need a button that just wipes that noise out And me and a million other expats would be willing to pay for the privilege
[18:02] And I know up in the first world Everybody's got a ringtone and a back tone song too And I guess there's worse ways to spend your money But when I called my teenage nephew on his birthday up in the first world And I got his back tone song Some rapper with a twelve word vocabulary That's when I knew that fighting back tone fever was a waste of energy Okay enough of my whining So let's get back to business Well on a previous show I talked about withdrawing money from an ATM machine down here And I got some very interesting emails on that from you listeners Which reminded me of something I forgot to mention Let me ask you a question Have you ever seen anyone up in the first world withdraw five dollars from an ATM machine? Well you can't draw five dollars from an ATM machine If I'm correct I think the minimum withdrawal amount is fifty dollars
[18:50] Well here's something that will blow your mind If you're standing in line at an ATM machine down here in Latin America If you pay attention you'll notice that most of the common folks are withdrawing The equivalent of five or ten dollars at a time out of that machine Now that should give you a hint as to how really cheap it is to live down here That is if you live like one of the locals Because I ask you up in the first world how far are you going to get with five or ten dollars in your pocket? That's not even enough to pay the parking meter And here's a second question How embarrassed would you be if you were at an ATM machine and you took only five or ten dollars out? That is if the machine even permitted such a tiny withdrawal which it doesn't So how embarrassed would you be if someone was looking over your shoulder and you pulled out a five dollar bill?
[19:36] Just the fact that the people down here are comfortable with pulling out such a tiny amount And they don't even think twice about it Demonstrates that there's a huge economic divide between us and them Us meaning first world people and expats of course And them being the common latin man or woman Because the reality is the common latin man or woman can make five or ten dollars stretch a day or two Longer than it has any right to that's for sure And even a ten year old first world kid couldn't make that kind of money last an hour Anyway that's just another man on the street observation down here And in tying up loose ends on another theme A few shows ago I talked about how an awful lot of people use propane gas down here And I recommend even though it's expensive that expats use it too Because it's still about fifty percent cheaper than using electricity for cooking
[20:25] Electricity for drying your clothes and electricity for heating your water Now speaking about propane gas again I received some emails from people asking me about the availability of flex fuel and flex fuel vehicles Which you might know something about up in the first world That is a vehicle that can use more than one kind of fuel Like for example it can switch between gasoline, ethanol, a mixture of the two, propane or maybe even diesel For your information Brazil is way out front when it comes to using these kind of vehicles And in fact they've enacted some laws that force car and truck manufacturers to be flex fuel capable And if I'm not mistaken California is doing that too But they're not nearly as aggressive as Brazil And they did that in Brazil because they have very little petroleum But a lot of farmland and a lot of rainfall and because they have such cheap labor
[21:14] Their home grown biodiesel and ethanol is cheaper than imported gas Which I talked about in a previous program And I mentioned some not very well known things about Brazil And their flex fuel programs too Which everybody seems to be praising worldwide But as usual they don't know the whole truth And how nobody talks about the fact that there was a huge 10 year government subsidy on all that So even if those flex fuels appear cheaper than gasoline right now The market's been artificially manipulated So you can't really judge how much real progress has been made And if there was no subsidy from the beginning You have to wonder whether they actually could have competed with gasoline or other petroleum products at all Which brings me to the point I really wanted to make Now since Mexico is one of the biggest producers of natural gas in the world
[22:03] And in fact until about 20 or so years ago They just considered it somewhat of a nuisance and a useless byproduct That they actually had a hard time getting rid of It was something that just happened to come up out of the hole after they drilled an oil well I'm sure you've seen old time pictures and movies Where there's a big old controlled flame burning on the top of an oil rig Well that's just the natural gas venting out of the hole That they never thought to compress and then bottle as LP liquid petroleum gas or propane gas Which is something every efficient oil well manager tries to do today Anyway it was inevitable that Mexico would sell fast quantities of natural gas to the United States The world's biggest consumer And even the United States couldn't take it all So the Mexicans started compressing it
[22:48] And turning out huge quantities of propane gas And selling it throughout Central America And they ended up creating a huge market down there And because of that for many many years propane gas was much much cheaper Than the equivalent amount of regular gasoline or diesel For many years propane gas was 50% cheaper than the equivalent volume of gasoline Per heating unit value Which was a terrific deal for anyone using propane gas in Central America Well about 15 years ago when gas was still pretty cheap Like around $2 or less a gallon Which meant propane gas was less than a dollar a gallon A noble experiment took place down in Honduras If you'd have taken a trip down there 10 or 15 years ago You'd have noticed that more than half of the taxi cabs in many of the big cities
[23:37] Were being powered by propane gas And you know it immediately as you approach one of these taxis Because there was a strange kind of a sweet smell The distinctive smell of propane gas exhaust It's the same smell you notice when you walk into a lot of warehouses up in the first world Where they're using propane gas powered fork trucks And propane, which comes from natural gas, burns very clean Not like gasoline or diesel It puts out almost no carbon monoxide Which is what kills you when you suck on a tailpipe And instead puts out only carbon dioxide and water vapor Which is why half the United States uses natural gas for cooking in their stoves In other words it burns super clean Anyway that's not why the taxi drivers in Honduras burn propane gas in their cars
[24:23] Though that would have been an excellent reason too Why should a 6th grade educated taxi driver give a damn about that? They wouldn't have any knowledge of that anyway They did it because it was 50% cheaper than burning gasoline Now I've ridden on a lot of these propane gas driven taxis And the drivers tell me there's only three things they don't like about the system One is when they step on the gas they don't get a lot of acceleration Like they do in their motors powered by gasoline And two, they don't like the fact that there's a big propane gas tank in the trunk Taking up space where the luggage from their passengers should go Especially when they're taking them to and from the airport The tourists it seems, all tired out from their long flight Are just a little bit irritated when they gotta carry their luggage on their laps All the way to the hotel
[25:09] And thirdly, taxi drivers and owners don't like the idea that it costs about three to six hundred dollars To convert the carburetor over to propane But they really like the idea that their overhead pretty much dropped in half As opposed to a taxi that used only regular gas So anyway I rode in a lot of those taxis and I thought it was a very good idea But then in 2002 I left Honduras and went to South America for a few years And when I eventually did get back to Honduras in about 2005 I noticed that all those propane powered taxis were gone None of them were on the streets anymore Somehow the experiment was over and it must not have worked That's all I can figure Or maybe more likely there was an accident or two Maybe someone got killed or badly injured and that's my guess
[25:56] Knowing how careless those people are with propane tanks down here Considering they're all scratched, indented and rusted so badly And knowing the way these taxi guys drive It's impossible to think that they didn't have a few accidents Just a few rear end collisions and explosions and the experiment would be over Considering I've seen a lot of close calls with people hauling propane tanks myself But anyway, the experiment's over You won't find a propane taxi in Honduras anymore At least I haven't And for a while there, back around 10 years ago It looked like a lot of Central American countries at least Were ready and willing to switch a lot of their own cars and trucks over to propane gas And in fact, every propane gas company had some ads in the newspapers Offering to switch your car over to propane gas for $300 to $500
[26:43] And I really don't know what happened to that big marketing push It was out there alright, but it just never caught on And when I did talk to one of the engineers at one of the big propane companies down here He said that nearly everyone loved the idea But practically nobody put out the money to have their carburetors switched over But maybe that's a good thing Since everybody's a natural born tailgater And the fact that rear end collisions are the number one cause of traffic accidents down here Not to mention the fact that scratch and dented rusted and beat up old propane tanks Will sit like hidden time bombs in everyone's trunks Hooked up to carburetors with a garden hose duct tape and some super glue Well, that's just a way that common man does things down here So maybe switching to propane gas wasn't a very good idea after all
[27:35] You've been listening to The Expat Files, living in Latin America And don't forget you can email me on anything at all about Latin America The Expat Files at gmail.com That's theexpatfiles at gmail.com See you next time Nos vemos