#559 – The Expat Files: Living in Latin America – Water, Electricity, and Language

Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.

[00:00] South of the border, down Mexico way That's where I fell in love when the stars above came up to play and now I wonder 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 Sometimes I get emails from the over 50 crowd who were down in Latin America a long long time ago with the Peace Corps or some Do it good or group anyway They tell me they do remember how it used to be down here in Latin America when the government owned everything

[00:45] Everything was a monopoly the utilities the phone companies the water companies However, these days pretty much all that's left of those monopolies are the water companies And of course, like I mentioned many times before you don't want to have municipal water in short because it's polluted In fact, it's ugly coming out of the tap There's no pressure and so unreliable that in most instances is rarely on the whole day normally Well normal for down here Anyway, that means six eight ten twelve hours a day meaning you have to have a cistern That's a big-ass water storage tank By the way that automatically gets topped off when the city water is flowing So when you hear the word cistern, it's not just a tank It's the tubes and check valves and sensors and a pump to the cheaper systems like that

[01:35] Which can hold about maybe a hundred gallons can run as little as a hundred fifty bucks complete and maybe twenty or twenty five Bucks to install. Remember plumbers don't get brain surgeon wages down here They get 15 to 30 bucks a day. Don't believe me. Come on down. Get your boots on the ground Come and see for yourself. However, I advise you not to get cheap 100 gallon unit get something That's five or even ten times as big. Hey now, there's a t-shirt You can never be too rich too skinny or have too large a cistern that you have on the front of the t-shirt and on The back a photo of Kim Kardashian's cistern But I digress as usual. Anyway, when you have a cistern It automatically kicks in when the city water shuts down So you'll never know when that happens and you won't have to worry if you have a big enough cistern

[02:24] So bottom line don't let any do-gooder know it all up in the states say it's a shame that in third world countries Governments are privatizing those formerly public utilities Sure, you'll hear the odd case of poor people picketing government buildings when they privatize water For example, because you see when that happens the price automatically doubles triples Sometimes quadruples and at first thought you might think those poor people and those terrible capitalists ripping them off like that But let me tell you a little story my maintenance guy and cleaning lady both indigenous people They live in the same little tin shack and cement community about a mile from my place out in the coffee fields And my maintenance guy tells me he gets water about eight hours a day However, he only pays a buck and a half a month for the privilege

[03:11] Of course, it's dirty polluted over chlorinated municipal water that dribbles out of the tap with a stream as thick as a pencil and Noticeably cloudy and you know just the other day I said to him Would you be willing to pay three or even six bucks a month to get clean high-pressure water 24 7? He said why sure now remember here's a guy that makes around 300 bucks a month And he'd still pay three even four times as much if the water came 24 7 and with good pressure Oh, and by the way in gated guarded communities that have their own well There's always a full-time plumber slash maintenance guy on the premises that keeps the system working. He's called a Fontanero that's fontanero. Now if you write that out in letters, you'll see it's got the word fountain in it So there's another one of those many Spanish English memory aids

[04:01] Fontanero fountain Anyway, like I said, I get emails occasionally from the former Peace Corps do-gooder crowd who did come down 20 30 even 40 years ago Most of them tell me they remember just how primitive and rustic it was when they were down helping poor Short dark people by building solar outhouses for Jesus. Wait a minute. I could be wrong about that Scratch the solar panel part that came later Anyway, these guys and gals remember in great detail how the water the electricity and the phone service went out at least a couple of Times a week sometimes for hours and hours even days But I'm here to tell you even off the gringo tourist trail way out in the boonies that kind of stuff rarely happens anymore unless it's a big storm with a lot of lightning strikes or a natural catastrophe an earthquake or maybe a tree

[04:50] Lapping off a power line now in the old days something like that might take days and days to fix Let's talk about electric power. Everybody needs that 24 7, right? Well, if your electric goes out you take a copy of your electric bill and you dial up the emergency number that's on it And way back when when these were government monopolies almost always it would take you two or three tries to even get through and when you did there was more than a 50% chance the line was busy and if by chance it wasn't you'd be Put on hold so long you'd eventually give up now a little over 20 years ago I lived in a luxury condo in Costa Rica and the power would go up three four five times a week for an hour or two Or three at a time back then my Spanish really sucks almost all my friends were gringos or upscale Latins who spoke English

[05:37] Now when I did complain about it and gringos wine and complain about such things. I'd say this is nuts How can you plan anything? How can you get things done? Well, you know some of those gringos would laugh when I said things like that They'd say is that right? You say when your power goes off it stays off for a couple hours at a time Why Johnny that's because you live in that high-rise tower where the Swiss ambassador lives You have diplomats in your building. So you only have tiny power outages now when our power goes out We just crack out the beer the wine the candles the Coleman lantern the Sterno the shortwave radio and settle in So then why am I bringing this up? Because so many people who were down many years ago still think public services are well crappy

[06:23] That said how about some real present-day off the gringo tourist trail examples electric power for instance Well a couple of days ago a huge storm rolled through this is the rainy season You know lightning and thunder everywhere you have an experienced lightning storm till you've been in the thicker one down here in Latin America Anyway, I was out in my place in the coffee fields and I saw lightning hit a power pole about two blocks away and completely fry The big transformer that was on top of it And I mean it was like an electrical explosion you see in the Hollywood movies almost look like someone planted a bomb sparks everywhere then boom Lights out so then an hour later when the storm passed I grabbed an old electric bill and phoned up the emergency number and a lady's voice Recording came on the phone in Spanish and by the way there is no press one for English down here

[07:12] She said press one if you have billing questions press two for emergencies So I press two and then the recording said please punch in the number of your contadora. That's your electric meter Contadora now if you notice the word contadora has the English word count in it So there's another Spanish English memory aid your meter Whether it's a water gas or electric meter is called a counter order in other words It's counting units of water electricity or gas by the way smart meters have not invaded Latin America yet Oh, yes, I've seen one or two, but only in brand-new subdivisions In fact one expat gringle friend of mine who built a new house Had his smart meter removed by an electrician who just replaced it with one of the old meters

[08:01] Easy as that. He just told the electric company was causing television and computer interference and they said, okay pull it so anyway, I'm on the phone to the electric company and by the way a company of any kind down here is called an Impressa Impressa, so the electric company would be the Impressa Electrica. Anyway, I was talking to a real live lady on the phone How about that and she said would you please go over to your fuse box? By the way fuses are called fusables How about that one? Anyway, she said in Spanish, of course, go to the fuse box and switch the breakers a few times I guess they have to tell that to every idiot who calls up and says they've got a problem They're not gonna send a truck out if an easy fix is just to flip the breakers That sometimes does it when it's simply a power surge that came down the line and kicked out the main breaker

[08:49] However with my particular problem, that wasn't the case now I've been down here long enough that I can tell she was happy to be speaking to a gringo Doesn't matter if I was a male or female. I was probably the only gringo She'd ever really spoken to in her life. So she actually tried to keep me on the phone. By the way Here's something really crazy. It's gotta make you smile. What do you do when you blow a circuit breaker? Well, you flip them back on right with a click. Yeah, flip them back on Well, do you know what they call circuit breakers here? I mean, come on. Nobody really uses fuses anymore They use circuit breakers, right? Well, like I said, you flip them on when they blow Well, the Spanish word for circuit breaker is flip on

[09:35] I'm not kidding you flip on now How do you suppose that came about if you don't believe me just going to any hardware store and say flip ons poor for poor now when you get down here, you'll find it really helps a lot that all the technical things and gadgets and switches and TVs and Appliances, etc. Practically everything that makes your life convenient and easy was invented up in the first world And so when those items got down here to Latin America, they had to name them in Spanish But most of the time thankfully they did it by bastardizing the English word somehow So by sheer luck and to our great advantage There are hundreds if not thousands of Spanish words that carry along with them the English root Providing easy and instant memory aids and you know, I could probably list a thousand

[10:22] How about this one micro on the that's microwave about electric circuit circuito electrical about television television or stereo a Stereo or how about sofa get this so far lamp lamp era telephone telephone Oh jacket jacket car Caro automobile automobile tube as in electrical tube or pipe tubo guitar guitar whiskey whiskey So you see this kind of thing kind of goes on forever There's no limit to it Which is a very good thing for clueless gringos who have sort of a mental block when it comes to learning languages Now I know a lot of expats who live on the gringo tourist trail

[11:10] And they've been there for some years now and they just can't learn their Spanish How can they when all their neighbors are gringos? However, when you're off the gringo tourist trail or slightly off the tourist trail, there's a difference You know, you will be forced into learning Spanish Even if you're a language dunce like me now for all you expect gonna bees and wannabes who don't know a lick of Spanish I was like that too when I came down. I knew a tiny bit of French No Spanish at all and back then 26 years ago. There was no internet no CD Spanish courses some Conversational courses on cassettes and I had some of those but they didn't seem to do me any good because once I got down here Latin America I found out the kind of Spanish they speak when they teach you up in the States is not the kind of Spanish they speak Down here. This is street conversational Spanish Not the proper old world book taught Spanish that you get in high school in college up in the States now

[12:00] You can't say it's not useful to learn proper old world Spanish It's good for reading Spanish literature, which by the way, I can hardly slog through man I've tried but I just can't get excited about it, you know, Shakespeare was the same way with me So guess I'm a hopelessly cliched kind of bourgeois common guy By the way, speaking of Shakespeare It said that he had about a 9,000 word English vocabulary in writing all those plays and sonnets So why am I bringing this up? Well fresh green gringos and expat gonna bees and wannabes are always asking me for little tips and pointers to fast-track the Spanish learning process and it's true There are hundreds of books and CDs and online courses to learn Spanish But like diet books and CDs most people get off to a good start and then they drop the ball

[12:47] Now you might remember that one of my expat insider seminar attendees wrote a very good book called fast Spanish It was all about the best ways to learn Spanish in Latin America with boots on the ground That said based on my experience learning Spanish. I'm gonna give you some tips You probably never heard before remember I came down here with zero Spanish a self-professed language dance And it took me five years to communicate decently in Spanish with my cleaning lady But before I give you those tips, let me lay this on you It's a perspective you might never have heard before as it turns out linguistics experts say that there are just 250 words that constitute the essential core of any language and without those words you cannot construct a logical Understandable sentence so, you know based on that you have to be an extreme optimist

[13:37] Just think about it. If you learn just one new Spanish word a day in less than a year You'll have enough words down so you'll be able to function and get around so then why not learn two three four even five words a day Then within two or three months you'll have it down and get this linguistics experts say that Seven hundred and fifty words constitute all the words that are used every single day by most all people who speak conversationally on the street think of it you really only need to learn about 750 words and you'll pretty much be able to handle anything that comes up in day-to-day conversation So then suppose you learn five words a day. That's it. Just five months You'll be there and how about this linguistics experts say that?

[14:26] 2,500 words should enable you to express everything you could possibly want to say in any informal street conversation and then experts say 5,000 words constitutes the active vocabulary of a born native speaker with a high school education 10,000 words constitutes the active vocabulary of a native born speaker with a college education and finally they say with 20,000 words under your belt you can read understand and actually enjoy a solid work of literature such as a novel However, if you're well short of that 20,000 words, you can use my excuse that is that you just don't dig Spanish literature It's boring long-winded and gives you a headache and you know I've expressed that opinion a number of times in mixed company and I still get invited to parties the gringo advantage rides again

[15:16] You know, the Spanish language has about half as many words as the English language experts say that's why it's so much easier for native English speakers to learn Spanish and So much more difficult for native Spanish speakers to learn English By the way, according to the Oxford English dictionary The English language has the most words of all languages coming in at around 2 million words. That's it Here's a couple of what I think are very good Spanish language learning tips Personal picks I discovered as I mumbled and fumbled through the Spanish language myself I know I know there's always those quick studies that can pick up a language in a couple of months Don't you hate those guys? But now I'm talking about the average person and language lung kids like me and do note you can learn all the Spanish

[16:03] Vocabulary you want you could be an expert you can learn 20 30 40 thousand Spanish words and know all your tenses inside out And that's what you might need if your goal is to read Spanish literature and enjoy it as for me I'll take my 2,000 hard-earned Spanish vocabulary words Thank you very much as for the desire to learn more and to reach higher Spanish literary plateaus Well, I'd much rather get a subscription to Netflix In fact, I think I've only met about three or four gringo expats in my life who read Spanish literature for pleasure Now, let me tell you when you first get down here and your Spanish really sucks There will be a time when you sit down somewhere Strangely enough most likely it'll be in a cheap backpacker hotel Anyway, I promise you at one time or another

[16:50] You'll run into a gringo reading a Spanish literary classic and hell as far as you're concerned It might as well be written in Vulcan, you know when you're a green expat and you just don't understand shit There's nothing more intimidating than a guy like that And the funny thing is it's almost always scruffy, odiferous backpackers who are Spanish majors in college Of course, they'll be able to read and digest boring Latin literature And they'll defend it, even remain aloof, in the face of dilatants and uncultured slugs like me Now, I was an engineer in a past life, so I'll defend Faraday and Tesla and Newton, Richard Feynman, Einstein, etc. But I don't get any pleasure out of reading their books, in fact, they're dead boring But where were we? Oh yeah My personal tips on learning Spanish Now remember, 250 words, that's all you really need to get around

[17:39] But remember, they have to be the right 250 words And if you're thinking words like Vato esse cabroni puta, hey, you'll fit right in in Mexico Now if you go beyond that and learn, let's say, a thousand Spanish words By the way, that's about as many words as a five-year-old kid knows, in his native language Anyway, just learning the top 1,000 words in Spanish will get you to the point where you can understand roughly 90% of the spoken language on the street That's more than enough to muddle through practically any conversation So, even if you miss 10 or 20% of what the other guy's saying, you'll get the gist By the way, if you want to know those key Spanish words that you really should learn first There's a nice thorough report called the Spanish Word Frequency Study

[18:26] And if you send me an email and ask for that, I'll give you the link and you can check it out In fact, here's some of the statistics from that report It says, number one, learning the first 1,000 most frequently used words in Spanish Will allow you to understand about 76% of all non-fiction writing About 80% of all fiction writing And an astounding 89% of all oral speech Now, if you're really ambitious, it says if you learn the top 2,000 most frequently used words Which is about how many words an 8-year-old kid knows That'll get you to about 84% for non-fiction reading 86% of all fiction reading and about 93% of the spoken Spanish language Now, note, after you've learned around 2,000 of most frequently used words

[19:11] After that, you don't improve your comprehension much at all So don't stress, even if you only attain that 8 or 9-year-old level You'll still understand more than 90% of what people are saying on the street And they'll understand about 80 or 90% of what you're saying too That's even if your past and future tenses completely suck Though you might have to repeat what you're saying a few times for them to get it Oh, and you'll know when to repeat a phrase all right You'll see that strained look on their faces So again, it's important to start out with the right 250 words And now for the second of my Spanish language tips for dumbasses Get some cheap clone post-it pads And each day, stick one on each of five items you have in the house

[19:56] Of course, writing the Spanish word for that item on the post-it pad Then, after a few months, your house will be a fire trap And visitors will think you've gone nuts But you'll be mastering some of the very common Spanish language vocabulary words too But do be smart about it For example, if you've got a tropical fish tank with 17 fish You don't want to label each and every one of them And not just because the post-its won't stick and the fish won't like it either You know what I mean Oh, and by the way, the post-it note thing extends to your car, your closets, and your workspace too Now, this is important You just can't think the words in your head when you go past the post-it notes You have to sound them out So you'll be talking to yourself a lot And the neighbors will probably think you're nuts and keep their dogs and kids away from you

[20:42] But that's all right It's all part of your plan B, boating with your feet And let's face it, they just wouldn't understand Okay, my next tip is very useful And I wish someone would have told me this a long time ago Now, you know there's a past tense and a future tense Past perfect, future perfect Well, just a lot of screwy tenses to keep track of And right off the bat, when we start learning, we get frustrated and uptight About all those tenses, not to mention irregular verbs too Okay, so here's a great tip for conversational street Spanish Forget about all those screwy past and future tenses Just learn everything in the present tense and you'll be fine Why? You'll find out in a hurry once you get down here That Latins will understand the point you're trying to get across Even if it's always in present tense

[21:30] They're smart, they figure it out Just like you and I figure out easily What the Nicaraguan lawn boy is saying When he's trying to explain something to you in his 50 words of English There's a slim chance in hell he'll get the tenses right But you'll understand what he's talking about And vice versa So that tip again, learn everything in present tense The future and past tense will take care of themselves Once you get down here and start talking to the people You'll pick it up You'll hear the locals' variations on verbs you know And slowly but surely, you'll be adjusting your phraseology accordingly It'll come to you However, if you cling to this tip in a structured Spanish class, you'll flunk out But really, once you're down here, who gives a crap As long as the people understand what the hell you're trying to get across So again, save yourself countless hours of studying and drilling

[22:18] And just avoid everything but the present tense Until you're completely comfortable with it Then move on Yeah, I know, I know You're thinking Johnny, you really got off the track here I started off the show talking about water and electric utilities and such And here I am talking about how to improve your crummy Spanish Anyway, I left off by telling you that Lightning completely destroyed A power pole transformer about two blocks from my place in the coffee field Then I got on the line, spoke to a real live person And she told me to flip the flip-ons Gotta love that, huh? And then she asked me if the neighbor's power was out too And I said, I don't know, I don't have any neighbors But I can tell you this I saw Lightning hit a transformer And believe it or not, transformers are called transformadores here

[23:06] How about that for a memory aid? And I said, it blew up like a bomba Yeah, bomba is a bomb You know, la, la, la, la, la, bomba And now you're probably thinking, hey, this Spanish stuff, it ain't so bad They have so many words that are practically in English I think I can get the hang of it Johnny did Anyway, then she said, it really blew up That's unusual In usual That's unusual in Spanish In usual And then she said, okay, well, send someone out And I said, when are they gonna get here? She said, well, depends on traffic and all that But pretty soon Okay, so that phone call went out at 730 in the morning They showed up at 9 Not really that bad Since I'm way out in the boonies in the coffee field So two guys show up in a pickup truck With a ladder and some electrical tools They knock at the door

[23:52] I told them Lightning hit the pole and a transformer They went up on the ladder Sure enough, they said the transformer had been burnt out Now, these gray pole-top transformers I'm sure you've seen them all over the place in the States Kind of look like a small metal trash can They weigh probably 75 pounds So anyway, the two guys went up, pulled it down Took it apart in their truck and said, oh, too bad Can't fix it here I'm thinking, uh-oh Now they have to go back to some kind of supply depot And pick one up and come back That's gonna be a couple hours Maybe tomorrow Then I said, how long is it gonna take you to get another one? And the guy says, let me see He unfolded a map of the area Went on his smartphone to check a site He marked the map with his pen

[24:38] And he said, there are some unused transformers And a new subdivision about two miles from here I said, what unused transformers? Why is that? Well, he said, the construction business is going great guns And there are many guarded gated communities That aren't finished yet But the infrastructure is in place It's all there So we have a lot of poles and a lot of transformers That aren't being used So he said he's just gonna go scab one from another subdivision That doesn't need it right now So anyway, half an hour later They're back with a brand new transformer in the back of that pickup truck By the way, if you haven't figured it out already What these electric company guys were describing Was another completely different take on the real estate bubble here Only they'd never describe it as a bubble They're just looking at the construction boom as a great opportunity for work

[25:26] In fact, they told me this story about how the company's hiring and training More and more installers and alignment all the time They both said the company can't keep up with all the new projects and subdivisions In fact, one of them said it's just crazy right now But where was I? Oh yeah Let me recap the service I got from the electric company Which by the way is a joint public private enterprise So I made the call at 730 in the morning By 11 a.m. I was saying goodbye to those smiley happy guys with my power fully restored You know my only regret is I forgot to ask them about their training And how much they get paid Oh well Oops getting towards the end now If you're planning on signing up for my July 2016 Expat Insider Seminar Just go to www.thenewexpat.com

[26:15] Click the link on the top of the page that says Johnny's 2016 Seminar And you'll get all the information and sign up details It's your chance to experience that perpetual spring weather Because we'll be smack dab in the middle of the altiplano And while you're on the new expat.com webpage Don't forget to check out those terrific pre and post seminar trips Arranged by John Galt And I assure you if you take either one or both of those You'll be talking about them for a long long time So if you're coming down to the seminar Do spend an extra couple days and take advantage of one or more of his trips By the way people have been asking me if I'm tagging along on John Galt's trips Well maybe if he calms me the hotel rooms Oh and don't forget to go to my YouTube channel To see the slides and pictures that go along with the Expat file show

[27:03] Do subscribe it's free Oh and by the way for those of you who've seen the YouTube on my show number 557 And were wondering why there was a slide there With a bunch of chickens on water skis Well that's because I asked my overqualified YouTube master Jennifer To find a slide with Latin chicks on water skis Yep she put up Latin chicks on skis alright Chicks of the feathered kind No hidden messages there but I could be wrong 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 if you want me to help you sort out your own Latin American plans

[27:49] Schedule a one on one consult with me Just send an email and let me know at the expat files at gmail.com