Episode Summary
In this episode of The Expat Files, Johnny Mueller explores the multifaceted experiences of expats living in Latin America. He begins by introducing Expat Eddie, a long-term expat known for his privacy and wisdom, and discusses how living off the tourist trail can resemble the 1960s and 1970s in the U.S., where neighbors knew each other and were polite. Johnny also highlights the challenges of living near evangelical churches due to loud noise and the availability of large firecrackers, which are not illegal in Latin America.
Eddie shares his experiences with constant noise from fireworks and other disturbances, especially since he's over 40. He has taken matters into his own hands by purchasing fireworks and confronting the kids responsible for the noise. Johnny notes that in Latin America, having a narco or a corrupt politician in the neighborhood is common and even considered a positive because they deter crime. He also shares his brother's perspective on the deteriorating environment in Chicago, where gang activity and road rage are increasing, and his brother has become so affected by the environment that he has stopped listening to Johnny's podcast.
Johnny then discusses his brother's reluctance to move to Latin America due to his conservative nature, contrasting it with his own experiences. He touches on the penmanship of Latin Americans, noting that they often have formal, neat handwriting for public situations but messy handwriting for personal use. Johnny suggests that intelligent people have poor handwriting, which may be a stereotype. He also comments on the idea that expats' success in Latin America often doesn't relate to their college degrees, giving examples of expats with various degrees who have found success in different industries.
The episode also covers the inefficiencies and peculiarities of government systems in Latin America, particularly focusing on the process of transferring license plates when buying a used car. Johnny highlights how the system is flawed, as the new owner inherits the previous owner's license plates, which can lead to issues with vanity plates and the eventual adoption of first-world systems in a clumsy manner. He shares a humorous anecdote about a Latin man wearing a t-shirt with the English phrase 'ass man,' which he and his wife are unaware of, illustrating the cultural adaptation and misunderstanding of first-world elements.
Johnny further comments on the inefficiencies in the ticketing system and the leniency toward drinking and driving, attributing these to the cultural norms and behaviors of the local police. He concludes by discussing the 'gringo advantage,' where impatience can be a virtue for expats starting businesses in Latin America. Finally, he shares a business idea he learned from expats: fixing shopping carts in supermarkets, which are often in poor condition. He outlines the steps to implement the idea, including hiring a local mechanic, using a van as a mobile workshop, and negotiating with supermarket managers for free cart repairs to gain entry. He notes that this business can be started with minimal capital and is particularly relevant for expats with limited funds.
Topics
Expat Life in Latin America, Living Off the Tourist Trail, Noise and Firecrackers in Latin America, Evangelical Churches and Their Impact on Neighborhoods, Eddie's Experiences with Neighborhood Noise and Disturbances, The Presence of Narco Figures and Corrupt Politicians in Upscale Neighborhoods, The Impact of Crime and Violence on Expats and Locals in Latin America, Johnny's Brother's Perspective on the Deteriorating Environment in Chicago, Johnny's Brother and His Reluctance to Move to Latin America, Penmanship of Latin Americans, Expats and Their Success in Latin America, Vanity Plates in Latin America
Chapters
00:00:00 Opening 00:00:32 Expat Eddie's Wisdom and Privacy 00:01:56 Living Off the Tourist Trail and Community Life 00:04:51 Evangelical Churches and Noise Issues 00:06:07 Eddie's Frustrations with Neighborhood Noise and Disturbances 00:07:25 Eddie's General Thoughts on Neighbors and Life in Latin America 00:09:23 The Reality of Living in Upscale Neighborhoods with Narco and Politician Influence 00:10:02 Johnny's Brother's Experience with the Deteriorating Environment in Chicago 00:11:33 Johnny's brother and his reluctance to move to Latin America 00:11:50 Penmanship of Latin Americans 00:14:13 Expats and their success in Latin America 00:15:26 Vanity plates in Latin America 00:17:52 The Flawed License Plate System in Latin America 00:19:12 The T-Shirt Anecdote: Cultural Adaptation and Misunderstanding 00:20:37 The Ticketing System and Law Enforcement Inefficiencies 00:22:19 The Gringo Advantage: Impatience as a Virtue 00:23:03 Introduction to the Business Idea Discussion 00:23:23 The Shopping Cart Repair Idea 00:24:12 Potential Earnings and Business Model 00:25:32 The Importance of Local Experience 00:26:10 Target Audience for the Business Idea 00:27:03 Potential for Expansion and Franchising
Transcript
Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.
[00:14] Hello there all you expat wannabes, I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to the Expat Files, living in Latin America. The show that tells you just what it's like to live, work, play and or retire down here in Latin America. It's a mix of the good, the bad, the ugly and the great and it's all right here so let's get started. I guess it's time I give you some real expat wisdom from people like Expat Eddie who we haven't heard from in a while and from other short and long term expats who really do deserve their 15 minutes of fame but sorry I'm only going to give you 15 seconds alright. First I'd like to say to all you new listeners because all you old listeners know this already, well Expat Eddie is really one hell of a white trash philosopher. Unfortunately he wastes almost all his philosophy on me which I guess is a good thing because
[01:00] I can pass on at least some of what sticks onto you and when he gets on a roll sometimes he can make you laugh so hard you wish you would have recorded it however if anyone ever did that that would be the end of a beautiful friendship even though it's so much better to hear his words of wisdom with his trailer trash southern accent that it is coming from me I'll tell you that but he's a guy of extreme privacy in fact we could all take a few lessons from him on that sometimes I think he wrote the book on how to become an anonymous expat but like he said if he did he wouldn't be anonymous anymore and even though he's a very wealthy guy now with a couple of dozen restaurants he's pretty much completely off the radar I mean he's got no Facebook no Twitter no smartphone no Skyping either not under his real name anyway let's just say that Expat Eddie has disconnected himself from Big Brother
[01:50] more than any legit guy with money I've ever met and since he's been down here a long time like me off the tourist trail he picks up a lot of little tidbits and files them away for future reference and these are little tidbits that short-term expats and wannabes and people living on the tourist trail wouldn't ever notice like for example the other day he said to me Johnny isn't it funny that almost all gringos and expats around our age the over 40 crowd if we sat down for a moment and thought about it most of us could remember the names of all the parents and kids who lived within a block or two of our own houses in the old neighborhood you know back when we were like 12 but today in the states anyway you'd be lucky if you could remember the names of the two families that live on either side of you and in that way living in Latin America
[02:36] off the tourist trail that is is a lot like living in the 60s and the 70s back in the old neighborhood in the states when everyone kind of knew everyone and people were genuinely polite when neighbors actually smiled and had conversations with each other and sure there's always going to be a jerk in the neighborhood you know the guy who's dog barks all night or that over-populated family next door whose kids are always screaming at high volume all the time and how about that talentless kid who got the drum set or electric guitar for Christmas yep that rings a bell all right because I was that kid anyway just lately Eddie had his own little bad neighbor crisis now you might remember that Eddie lives in a very nice gated community in Salvador which means all the other families in the neighborhood have a certain amount of money too but that doesn't
[03:24] necessarily mean the family has culture or education just like in the states people with new money especially can be a bit crass like that family with a couple of adolescent boys whose extensive walled-in property butts up against Eddie's backyard now like he said they're not bad kids but the fact is they absolutely love blowing off massive amounts of fireworks and though the explosions can start at any time midnight seems to be a favorite bewitching hour for them and like Eddie says there's no point at all calling the cops because fireworks of any size shape or explosive power are not illegal in Latin America the fact is you could load up your car your truck or your garage with enough firepower to take down a building and no one would even give you a second look in fact you wouldn't believe the size of the firecrackers
[04:12] they sell down here now you might be familiar with ladyfingers or black cat little firecrackers well down here you can get them 50 even a hundred times as big you know what an emergency flare looks like right kind of like a stick of dynamite well down here they sell single firecrackers bigger than that and since in Latin America there are no noise ordinances and even if there were they'd be so far down on the priority list that the cops would just laugh at anyone who made the call oh and by the way if they actually had and did enforce noise ordinances then I have to start by closing down every evangelical church in Latin America oh and related to that here's a little priceless word of advice I wish someone would have laid on me before I first came down to Latin America you don't ever want to rent buy or build within five or six blocks of one of those
[05:01] evangelical churches so do drive around roll down your windows and scout out that neighborhood on Saturday and Sunday nights because believe me if you're within a few blocks of one of those churches you'll be buying a few of those giant firecrackers yourself if you know what I mean because you see the problem is in tropical Latin America and even in the altiplano churches do not have air conditioning so they fling their doors and windows wide open and unfortunately it seems that Jesus is either hard of hearing or doesn't listen to his flock unless they're screaming in unison at high volume anyway back to Eddie and his noisy neighbors there are these two pyrotechnic teenage boys that live right across from Eddie's backyard who do at times drive him absolutely nuts however there's more of a karmic irony in this than you might think since Eddie is a great fan
[05:47] of pyrotechnics himself and he's the first to admit his homemade bombs and firecrackers back in his trailer court days were a thing of beauty and he's 60 percent deaf in his right ear to prove it but now that Eddie's on the bad side of 40 he's no longer amused when multiple things go kaboom in the night and he gets especially pissed off when he looks out to his backyard in the morning and sees spent rocket husks and wads of firecracker bits bobbing in his pool now occasionally Eddie sees the parents of these kids and they're always very nice and polite and once he even politely rolled down his window and mention it to the dad who was ever so sincerely apologetic and said he'd put an end to it which he did and after that the intense barrage of bombs and rockets only blew off when mom and dad were not at home and how did Eddie know that well twice he walked around the
[06:37] block to the front door and repeatedly rang the doorbell but no one answered not even the cleaning lady yet the bombs went off so he knew those kids were home though too chicken to come to the front door and take it from Eddie face to face so Eddie took things into his own hands he went down to one of the big city markets and bought 50 bucks where the fireworks now down here in Latin America you have no idea what 50 bucks will get you when you're shopping for fireworks anyway two days later at around 10 pm when the neighbor boy started blowing off their stuff Eddie blissed him with about 20 of the biggest firecracker bombs I've ever seen and all he had to do was light them and heave them over the back wall and of course yours truly was invited to hold the zippo so for about five minutes it was desert storm without the desert anyway since that little Saturday night incident
[07:25] all's quiet on the western front but back to what Eddie says in general about the neighbors he says and many of us long-term expats can back him up on this for the very first time since he was a little kid he knows everyone by name who's living on the block he says they're all very good neighbors even the narco in the neighborhood and by the way if you live in an upscale or gated community you're gonna have a narco in the neighborhood guaranteed and how will you know that besides the black limos and the bodyguards well believe me the rumor will go around the neighborhood fast enough and I'll tell you the narco who lives in my neighborhood does not have wild parties or bodyguards sporting ak-47s and people and trucks coming and going at two and three in the morning none of that that's all Hollywood eyes low level narco stuff now my neighborhood narco and Eddie's
[08:15] too are low-profile family guys with very nice houses and very nice landscaping and you know there is a saying in Latin America that it's nice to have an upscale narco in your neighborhood and that goes just as well for having a crooked politician living nearby too sorry about that I forgot the phrase crooked politician is redundant anyway the common wisdom is that it's good to have a narco in the neighborhood because no thieves or criminals would dare screw around in his neck of the woods now again I'm not condoning the lifestyle but I'm just saying that's one of the little things you just might have to deal with in Latin America if you live in an upscale community because you know narco's and thieving politicians can afford to live anywhere they want and that's going to be in upscale neighborhoods where many expat gringos
[09:03] live too so it is a fact of life down here that your kids just might be going to school with Tony Soprano's kids and by the way if you do get invited to his kids quinceaños party you might want to show up even if you don't like going to those things now you know I might joke about this but it's really true if you live in a nice neighborhood or have a beach house you will be very likely sharing your neighborhood with thieving politicians and the occasional narco so get used to it oh and here's a little tidbit for all you guys up there still living on the treadmill I was just talking to my brother the other day and he says things are getting rather ugly up in Chicago behind Detroit it just might be the murder capital of the world and he says the Chicago Tribune is saying they've got over a hundred thousand gang members alone in the city
[09:48] though some are saying it could be double that two hundred thousand because those are police statistics and it's in their best interest to spin those numbers down anyway my brother's got an office in downtown Chicago and he says lately that when he gets the office in the morning he's been pulling his shades down and leaving him that way all day because like he said looking out the window while he works is making him more depressed than ever and like he said it used to depress him to look out the window when there was nice weather outside but now he says even when it's a nice day there are ugly depressing things down on the street that were never there before and he said it's getting worse by the week and now like never before he just hates going to work and he said road rage is way up too everybody's flipping the finger at each other and most people seem to be in a rotten mood or depressed a bit most of the time and he said although it was never really
[10:39] fun to get up at five in the morning drive to work and come back home at 7 30 at night now he says with 10 or 12 years left before he can retire it feels like a prison sentence he says and that's why some months ago he quit listening to my show altogether he says listening to me depresses him too not me actually but it's what i'm saying that depresses him because he's one of those guys who's so firmly locked into his treadmill that he'll never make that expat leap and he does not want to hear about gringos who've done it like me or eddie especially eddie who way back when would often end up crashed on my brother's couch too my brother used to say that eddie's high school yearbook had him down as the least likely guy to succeed in fact he said the other day with a snarl on his face he said johnny you know what when you play the lottery the worst
[11:28] thing is not when you lose the worst thing is when your next door neighbor wins so you could say my brother has sour grapes about eddie but my brother who's actually got plenty of money to make the leap down here is just too chicken and set in his ways to make the jump sound familiar now i'd like to mention another totally politically incorrect tidbit that eddie laid on me but i think it gives some food for thought now we all know the cliche that doctors have really crappy penmanship right well along that line eddie said to me the other day johnny you know it's funny to me how some really stupid people i know have great penmanship and it seems like all the smart guys the brilliant ones even have chicken scratch all right so maybe there's a lot of truth to that but what does that
[12:13] have to do with latin america now i don't know about people in the first world because i haven't studied it but almost every single latin american person that i know has two distinct sets of penmanship they have that formal really nice penmanship when they know someone's going to see it like if they're writing you a note or signing a birthday card or filling in a form stuff like that but for example if they're writing a grocery list or making a note for themselves or jotting down something in an address book well most of the time it's chicken scratch so what does it say about latin americans in general what does it say about gringos and expats who pretty much have consistent penmanship good or bad anytime any place like for example my penmanship is horrid all the time and eddies well eddies is very broad flowing and well artistic he's got what he calls
[13:04] stupid people penmanship but then again so did my dad not to mention nearly everyone who signed the declaration of independence of course that day i guess they were on their best behavior which just might blow a big hole in that stupid people good penmanship idea huh oh well hey now for the uninitiated out there there's an idea for a master's feces did i say feces oops Freudian slip i meant theses anyway now i know eddie's got a kind of inferiority complex because he never graduated from college but i'll tell you what 99 out of 100 expat wannabes would gladly trade places with him especially when they meet him and see his lifestyle but you know he comes from that generation you know the tail end of the baby boomers whose mother always said you gotta get that
[13:51] college education you gotta get that degree or you're gonna be a bum like your father or you're good for nothing drunken uncle harry you get the point so eddie in his own mind kind of suffers from that a bit and nothing you and i can say can make guys like eddie feel 100 good about that and you know as far as expats go in general i have to mention this i don't think i've ever met one successful expat whose success had anything at all to do with the career that he chose or graduated with in college almost always the degree had nothing to do with it i mean i've got expat friends who are history majors that own import export businesses and friends who are music majors that own shrimp farms and expats with philosophy and psychology degrees who own coffee and rubber plantations i even have a friend with a master's in police science who owns a zip
[14:41] line and a whitewater rafting company of all things then there's an expat friend of mine who's a civil engineer who thought he was going to come down here and build highways and bridges and he ended up mining a granite deposit and eventually owning a hardwood flooring factory then of course there's all those expats i know that came down here with history physical education art or african studies degrees who ended up with very nice successful internet companies and by the way some of those people had huge student loan balances that they just walked away from and knowing how crooked the student loan business is how can you blame them so the point is well you know what the point is and now something i'm sure you've never heard discussed before do any of you guys out there have vanity plates on your car now what you didn't know is that there are no vanity plates in
[15:32] america not officially anyway sure once in a while you'll see a car that has some kind of cute english saying on it from up in the states but that can only happen when someone's brought the car down from the states and they haven't got it registered yet in the latin country the car arrived in so here's the scoop on that now as you might have guessed from listening to some of my shows that latins with money are beyond superficial they have this huge adolescent desire to show off their wealth and anything they have it's all about the show and your car and your clothes and basically what you can afford and how important you look without of course any regard for practicality or intelligence at all that's why so many dickless wonders down here drive hummers yes they do drive hummers and you know that stupid fad has long since become a joke up in the states but where do
[16:21] you think all the hummers went you don't see many of them in the states anymore now do you well guess what now that they're looked on as a silly excess in the states thanks to the lag time effect they've found themselves a nice market niche down here for macho guys who have to show off their new money most of them of course being thieving politicians and you might assume hummers would be really big with the narco crowd but guess what the really successful narcos down here remain a success and survive a long time by keeping a very low profile at least when they're out on the town they keep a low profile that is compared to thieving politicians who just ooze ill-gotten gains in that case the last thing you're going to want is a hummer that takes up two parking places and needs a couple of bodyguards just to keep an eye on it in the parking lot anyway like i said
[17:09] latin males in particular have huge self-esteem problems and when they suddenly get money they just absolutely have to show everyone that they've suddenly become important and that's why there's been a huge move throughout all 20 countries in latin america to legalize vanity plates but you know as of now because of logistical issues it just can't be done though it'd be a great source of extra revenue for latin governments and why not you say it's not brain surgery hell you just take the order and print the plate and give it to the guy right yeah well that would be the way it works in a government that kind of functions well let me tell you why no latin governments figured it out yet that's because down here in latin america when you buy a used car of any kind when you sign the title as the new owner the previous owner does not take the plates off the car you are
[17:57] not issued new plates at the license bureau the new owner inherits the very same license plates in fact the only time you get brand new plates on a car is when you buy it new and that of course screws up the whole idea of vanity plates let's say a guy buying a brand new car gets a vanity plate well if he did the next guy he sells that car too is going to get stuck with it and since latins have not yet figured out sophisticated humor that i guess eventually has to come because of the lag time factor and all but the fact is if there were vanity plates in latin america you could get stuck with a very lame if not embarrassingly pathetic plate yourself just remember latins love anything and everything from the first world including vanity plates of course so when they finally figure out how to get them down here the first thing latin american car owners
[18:46] are going to do they're going to copy existing first world vanity plates whether they get the stupid joke pun or reference or not and you know that's going to happen simply by seeing how latins are in love with t-shirts that have stupid crude and even retarded sayings on them in english of course yet they wear them proudly not knowing what the words mean now you might not think that's a deal at first but get this last week i was walking through a middle class shopping center off the tourist trail of course and i saw a latin guy with a t-shirt that said right on the front in big letters ass man a-s-s-m-a-n now normally if that were up in the first world it would be kind of a rude college thing to have a t-shirt like that but get this this guy's walking along the causeway holding hands with a woman who i presume is his wife because he with his other hand
[19:34] is pushing a baby carriage now i could be wrong but somehow i don't think that any woman in the states no matter how fine her derriere was would want her husband or boyfriend wearing a t-shirt that proclaimed that fact to the world you know because you see down here in latin america off the tourist trail anyway i'll bet you a thousand dollars that guy had no idea what those words meant in english it was just the fact that the t-shirt had english words that made him so proud to wear it and being that that guy in his little troop made me crack up i stealthily snapped the photo and later when i showed it to eddie he laughed and said johnny maybe that guy's t-shirt had nothing to do with his woman's ass at all maybe he was just telling the world that he was an ass man but you know i think eddie was giving the guy way too much credit the guy and the girl were
[20:22] surely clueless about the whole thing you get the point now really you gotta love the way latin american governments have made their own kind of twisted and imperfect copies of first world governmental systems like that license plate example i just gave and you gotta love the way the transit cops handle the ticketing system down here too for example if you get pulled over at one of those roadblocks and you don't happen to have your license on you or your registration is out of order or you're not current on paying your yearly license fee it turns out you're not the one who gets the ticket at all even if for example you get a ticket for going the wrong way down a one-way or by speeding or running a red light which by the way all three of those circumstances are highly unlikely since running red lights speeding and making illegal turns and other roadway gymnastics are part of everyday driving here anyway if you are the driver and you do
[21:12] happen to get a ticket the guy who the cars registered to is the one who's going to have to pay the fine which might not be you at all and another thing supposedly throughout latin america ordinances against drinking and driving do exist but the only place in latin america i've ever seen a breathalyzer that worked was in costa rica but those first world donated devices didn't work for long due to maintenance issues and such but that's another story anyway over the years i've known quite a few locals who got into car accidents while totally blitzed out on alcohol and none of them not one got a ticket for drunken driving and that might be because the cops down here in latin america are notorious drinkers themselves they're forever getting drunk and crashing police cruisers you see that in the paper all the time so they're apt to
[21:58] let a little minor vice like drinking and driving slip by and by the way before we leave expat eddie there's one more little eddieism i'll lay on you right now which kind of describes our gringo advantage in another way now of course you know the old saying patience is a virtue right well eddie says when in latin america impatience is a virtue when applied to expat gringos that is because like he says it's the whole motivating force behind the gringo advantage that we have in business i mean for example if we weren't impatient about the bad service or about standing in lines or the countless times we're stuck somewhere just twiddling our thumbs standing around in a store a mall or an office just waiting for something to happen wondering if the whole damn staff is just completely forgotten about us and when that starts getting on your nerves and
[22:44] it happens to you enough times chances are you're going to start thinking about ways you can do things a hell of a lot better and a hell of a lot more efficient and that's how so many expat businesses get started so i guess eddie's right depending if you're south of the border or not impatience can really be a virtue now here's something i think you'll really find interesting since expat wannabes are always asking me for business ideas and the best ideas always come from people who are down here with boots on the ground like for example that great group of first just a few weeks ago in june and after a few days these guys were just boiling over with ideas for example one of them told me about a very low cost idea of his though not glamorous at all might just have the perfect niche now don't laugh when you hear this idea just listen now this guy
[23:34] who came down to the seminar reported to me that he'd been in two or three of the big shopping centers he said he noticed right away and i have to agree with him that about 95 or more of all the shopping carts had bad unstable wheels and were dirty and grungy looking so anyway this guy suggested why not quickly count up all the bad carts it could be 50 or 100 and write up a little proposal offering to fix up every one of those carts like new again now this guy looked up metal shopping carts on the internet and it turns out they go anywhere from 100 to 200 bucks when new so he wouldn't be out of line at all by asking maybe five or ten dollars per cart to fix them up good is new so if the place had 50 or 100 carts to be done he could make 250 to a thousand bucks in probably less than a week maybe even in a day or two and here's the beauty of it that
[24:23] gringo doesn't have to do anything at all he just hires a local guy a mechanic maybe a car mechanic to do the actual work and the power washing to clean him up and the gringo would only supervise and do a little first world marketing and promotion and you pay this guy tops a hundred bucks a week but where do you fix these things well that's easy too you might for example want to buy a beater van for three or four thousand bucks and have your basic tools and equipment in the back and have your guy fix one cart at a time in the back of that van parked where else in the rear of the store where they have the loading docks and the dumpsters and of course you have a nice first world logo painted on your van and you're in business and the only drawback here is you probably have to speak a little bit of spanish but just to your mechanic your worker since the managers of these small medium and big supermarkets generally speak a bit of english
[25:13] since many of them went to useless business schools and have business administration degrees and how do you get your foot in the door easy just tell the manager to hand over one or two of his worst shopping cart disasters and you'll do the repair job on them for free anyway you get the idea and the fact that a cheap little business idea like that would never have been born but for the fact that someone came down here and had boots on the ground for a little while just a little while like a week and even though some of you might be thinking now well that's pretty lame fixing shopping carts well you have to remember a big portion of the expat files audience are people who want to get out but don't have a lot of money to start a traditional business and there are some people out there listening who once did have a nice decent thing going up in the states but now they're upside down on their mortgage are swamped with credit card
[26:00] debt and or student loans don't have a pension yet and are not ready to collect social security so they really are coming down leaning mean and looking to start some kind of business for example i can't tell you how many emails i've received from people asking me if coming down with five grand wasn't enough to get them started well i always say if you go low budget down here it's not that tough to live on a thousand bucks a month if you listen to my advice but you just can't book a flight down here get off the plane and ask a taxi driver to take you to a backpacker hotel so you can camp out and do some kind of business powwow with the rest of those five bucket night backpackers because believe me backpackers are not high in the business acumen department they're just on vacation hanging around looking for the cheapest food and housing that they can get but you knew that already and that's why you're listening to the expat files right
[26:48] now expat eddie has a number of his little restaurants in shopping centers so i tossed that shopping cart idea out to him and he said you know what johnny i'll bet if you marketed that business right you could actually sign long-term maintenance contracts with all these big grocery stores then maybe you can expand and turn that into a franchise hey only in latin america not such a dumb idea huh anyway before i go today i like to mention once again that i'm putting together a very nicely detailed report on health care in latin america everything you need to know about getting first world health care when you jump off your treadmill and decide to come down here as a
[27:33] voter down mexico you've been listening to the expat files living in latin america coming to you twice a week from somewhere south of the border email me the expat files at gmail.com and don't forget to check out expat wisdom.com to sign up for your free reports on latin america see you next time nos vemos