Omnia Mutantur

Can any Spanish speaker explain the mathematics of this La Nación article?

Un total de 257 personas murieron violentamente entre enero y marzo anteriores, de acuerdo con registros de la Cruz Roja.

La mayoría de los fallecimientos ocurrieron durante accidentes de tránsito, especialmente choques (el 34 por ciento).

Este cuerpo de socorro también atendió durante este primer trimestre del presente año 24 asesinatos, casi todos con armas de fuego (el 26 por ciento de los casos).

So we have 257 violent deaths, of which 34% belong to traffic accidents. Then they say we had 24 murders, which accounts to 26% – but 24 is only 9% of 257. They could mean that 26% of people were murdered with firearms, but they said that almost all cases were firearms. Or maybe they actually mean that 34% was the number of collisions resulting in deaths. Then there’s 8 people who drowned, for 3%, leaving 37% of violent deaths unaccounted under miscellany.

Way to give out useless information.

Ricardo Costa Rica, News and politics

Oh boy, Amnet really outshone itself this time.

We want to cancel our account, so Vero called them and asked for the form we’re supposed to fill. What they sent us was a Word document with an embedded image, which was actually a scan of someone else’s cancellation letter. This included their customer’s ID number, his address in La Uruca and his scanned signature.

I think we’re doing the cancellation in person. Maybe that way they won’t have it scanned, ready to send to someone else.

Ricardo Costa Rica privacy

I was just reading a news item about some people in a car with tinted windows and no license plate, who approached a kid’s car and signaled him to stop. When he didn’t, they pursued him and shot his car eight times. Scared, he finally got out of the car, at which point they identified themselves as cops.

Right before stepping on his neck and breaking two teeth.

So it seems that we now have the cops to worry about as well. We’re one more step closer to becoming the United States, but getting to pay twice as much for a hard disk in the bargain.

Awesome.

It got me thinking more about how safe Berlin is. When I was coming here, Gabriele gave me directions that included a bus and a subway. I asked, as delicately as possible, if it was safe for an obvious tourist to use those in the middle of the night, while carrying cash for the rent, a laptop and a large suitcase. She replied that the main danger in Berlin was catching a cold.

She wasn’t kidding. I feel like a mirror version of Charles Dance stepping out of the movie in Last Action Hero and discovers the impunity of New York.

I’ve been here for over three weeks. When I arrived I decided on the general rule that when something’s less than 2km away, I’ll walk. As a result I’ve seen a lot of the city – on my first full day here I must have walked a total of at least 14km, and I’ve done an average 3km a day. I’ve been consistently straying from the touristy areas, to explore and find little corner imbiss that aren’t mentioned anywhere. On occasion I’ve gotten lost half on purpose, to make sure I visit areas I otherwise wouldn’t. Hell, I’ve walked home for 3km at two in the morning, and haven’t felt threatened once. Sometimes I’ve been on relatively dark alleys, having followed some Google-provided directions, and I run into women alone walking in the opposite direction without a care in the world. I haven’t seen a single person I could finger as a crackhead. On occasion you do see some odd-looking groups, but they’re only part of the city’s cosmopolitan quality – goths or punk kids or soccer fans minding their own business.

Allow me to show you a thousand words.

When was the last time you saw a BMW Z3 parked outside overnight in Costa Rica? Almost nobody here has garages, so most cars sleep outside – from Toyotas to Lexus and Masserati. Not a window broken, not a radio stolen. I wonder how long they would last in Escazú or San José.

Of course, this could all be tourist naiveté, so I’ve asked around. Nadine from C-Base, who has lived here for about a decade, told me that even as a woman alone she never feels threatened, nor has anything happened to her or anyone she knows. No guns pointed at her head, no knives pulled, nobody even grabbing her purse and making a run for it. Others report the same.

This is not all because of the heavily-armed Gestapo teams prowling the Berlin streets – half the cops I’ve seen look like someone handed a green polizei jacket and a walkie-talkie to my mom.

And about that kid who got shot at by cops who hadn’t identified themselves, the most that the OIJ chief can say is that it would have been odd for thieves to use a siren. Right. Because when I’m being chased by car thieves, I really want to take my eyes off the road to figure out what that wailing noise is (and pause to consider if the people shooting at me for no good reason may be paid to protect me).

But it’s OK, the government will make San José safer by opening fire when you don’t stop your car for unidentified strangers in a dark vehicle.

Ricardo Costa Rica, Travel Berlin, Costa Rica, safety

I got a divorce almost four years ago. Recently my ex-wife contacted me via IM and mentioned that she was moving to Panamá. A few years ago she had mentioned in passing that she had a spot of trouble getting a civil status certification – I didn’t think of it at the time, but now my spider-sense started tingling. What if she moved to Panamá and I needed to start sending documents back and forth via DHL?

Being a paranoid with a nice strong distrust of other people’s ability to do their jobs properly, I decided to verify. I sent Harold, my bike messenger, over to the Registro Civil to get me a certification of marital status. After standing in line for 1/2 an hour to pay 50 colones worth of stamps, plus 2 hours on the main line for certifications, a civil servant told him that he couldn’t issue it, because my status was in process. He wouldn’t disclose any information, since Harold wasn’t me.

We were both rather surprised at this, since I’ve been divorced for three years, and have the Registro-stamped paperwork. Harold himself delivered it back then, and requested a certification just to make sure. I call my attorney to ask him if he knows anything about it, and now it’s three of us who are confused.

Cue Ricardo standing in line for over two hours to talk to someone, while reading The Machinery of Freedom, which I had brought along as a prank from my subconscious. When I get to a human, he insists my status is “in process”. He checks a lot of personal information to make sure I’m me, and then repeats himself.

“Yup, you’re in process.”
“Why?”
“I can’t tell you”
“But I’m me. You just saw my ID.”
“Yeah, I know. But I can’t tell you.”
“I just answered all your questions.”
“The system won’t show it. You need to go to a different window.” He scribbles a number on a piece of paper. “Show them this, ask them what the problem is. The line is back there.”
“Can’t you check?”
“Nope. Separate system.”

I leave, since I’m not only about to shoot somebody but have a meeting that I’m late for, and return two days later carrying a Call of Cthulhu book this time. Visions of a shoggoth gurgling through the throngs of people dance in my head. After a long wait, the gentleman at the second line is more helpful. Sitting behind some thick plate glass, he insists the other guy’s system is wrong and shows me the screen: there, in big bold letters, it states I’m DIVORCED. I already knew this, I say, and I have the paperwork to prove it. He suggests I go back to the other line and talk to the first guy again.

I try to strangle him through the glass.

Seeing that I’m serious about this, he takes the piece of paper and disappears for 20 or so minutes. When he returns, the piece of paper with the number in it has a lot more information, all unintelligible by laymen.

“Take this”, he says, “and go to Document Delivery.” Seeing me reaching through the small window again, he is quick to mollify me. “It’ll be quick, there is never anyone there. Tell them you have a ticket stuck in 2A but I can’t see what it is from our system. He should explain.”

Lacking any other recourse I go to Document Delivery, where surprisingly there is no line – only a public official speaking to his wife on the phone. He promptly hangs up (promptly in this case being anything under two weeks), and checks on the third system yet what my status is.

“So you have a ticket?”
“So they keep telling me”, you bunch of useless fucks, the director’s commentary track adds.
“When did you register the divorce?”
“Three years ago”
“Three months ago?”
“Three years ago. And change.”
“Well, let’s see…”. He loads up my profile. “Yes, you married Hellen Carrillo, then divorced her. Let’s see this ticket… Ah, here it is. You married her again.”

He says something after but I don’t really hear it, with all the voices in my head screaming at the same time. I manage to beat the reptilian brain into submission and ask him to repeat.

“The paperwork is missing. That’s why you’re in process.”
“Of course it is. I haven’t even seen her since.”
“Since what?”
“Since I registered the divorce.”
“Ah”, he smiles, understanding, “It’s one of those. A basura. Don’t worry, it’s quite common”.

He proceeds to explain that the system throws up these little garbages all the time, so they’ll just clean it up. Not right now, of course, but until after they’ve done a proper study to see if it’s truly a basura, and not just that I remarried three years ago, within days of my divorce, and forgot to file the documentation.

You know, since I was too giddy in the second honeymoon.

And so I run through the gauntlet again. I had to send my bike messenger several times to check out on the status of the clean up – he started asking people whom he spoke to for their name and ID, because the issue wasn’t being fixed – but I’m finally back to divorced.

For now, of course, until the Registro’s system decides to change my mind for me.

Ricardo Costa Rica, Personal, Random funny stuff

Here’s a brilliant conference by Hans Rosling on how developing countries are pulling themselves out of poverty. Besides being the most sui generis and amusing talk on economics I’ve ever seen, he presents viscerally the difference an extra $10 per day on income can have in the quality of life.

I was surprised that he didn’t point out that, on his presentation, the listed means for development are almost opposite in importance to the goals, which could indicate why attempting to follow the same path once you’ve reached development leads only to stagnation.

Using his Gapminder tool, checked Costa Rica’s progress on GDP (graph after the text). Even knowing the effects that the Carazo administration had on our country, it was still shocking to see on the chart how far backwards we had ended up in terms of GDP.

Presenters, take notice: that’s how you give a talk on a dry subject.

Read more…

Ricardo Costa Rica, Math and economics, Restaurants and bars

It’s official. Costa Rica’s educational system has gone down the drain.

I stopped by Torneca today to buy six screws of a specific size. As soon as I arrive at the cashier, their system goes down. A flustered lady singals a bored-looking fellow and asks him to write me a manual bill for the screws, each one worth 81 colones (about $0.15). The fellow disappears, blank bill in hand.

Five minutes later he returns triumphantly, having written on the bill “6 screws – 81 colones”. He hands it to the woman, and then the fun begins.

Woman: “That’ll be 81 colones.”
Me: “Are you sure?”
Woman: “Yes, look”, she replies, showing me the bill.
Bored Guy: “Oh, no, that’s 81 each…”
Woman (Confused): “But why didn’t you put the total in?”
Bored Guy (Apologetic): “Well… I didn’t have a calculator…”
Me, just wanting to get the hell out: “It’s OK, it’s 486 colones.”

It’s 6 times 8, you know, not like I just calculated the square root of pi to the 12th position and elevated to the power of the number of people in the store. Still the woman ignores me, probably thinking I’m trying to rip them off by pulling a number out of a hat, and proceeds to rummage through her stuff to find a calculator. After stabbing it with her chubby fingers, she turns back to me.

Woman: “That’ll be 480 colones.”

I hand her the 500 colones I have in hand. She gives me back my change. I check it – she just gave me 105 colones.

Me (showing her the coins): “You should have given me twenty.”

The Woman is absolutely flustered by now but, probably deciding to trust me, takes out 20 colones and hands them to me. Her eyes pop out of her head when I hand the 105 back. I didn’t bother to explain – she’s probably still trying to figure it out.

Ricardo Costa Rica, Math and economics

I was reading the news today about Costa Rican congresswoman Evita Arguedas, who was elected for the increasingly more inappropriately-named Movimiento Libertario. It seems she’s been ostracized by party leadership because she voted against what they thought. Now, I’m no fan of Evita, but I still think the whole business is hilarious. Luis Barrantes, a congressman from Alajuela, went as far as accusing her of:

She stood apart, made a decision different from the rest of us.

Cue green tea coming out of my nose.

Here’s the full news bit for those who read Spanish.

PS: At least Otto Guevara seems to have stopped using the word libertarian altogether and now just refers to their politics as liberal.

Ricardo Costa Rica, Freedom, News and politics

I’ve heard many complaints regarding CAFTA, and most of them boil down to the same issue: foreign corporations are bigger, and they’ll swallow our poor competitors whole. People with this argument often use words indicating size, implying that by girth alone these behemoths will squash our tiny industry.

What most of these people actually mean, and what they never tell you, is that they’re afraid that these companies are just plain better. It’s not their magnitude that scares competitors here, but the fact that having actual competition would require them to get off their bloody asses and produce something that’s up to international standards.

Allow me to tell you a story.

Read more…

Ricardo Costa Rica, Math and economics

For those of you who read Spanish, there’s a good opinion article published by a member of PAC evaluating the current Movimiento Libertario (almost as aptly named as Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker Trilogy).

El señor Raúl Costales predijo la extinción del Movimiento Libertario como movimiento ideológico si quebraban con sus principios fundamentales al aceptar dinero de impuestos mediante deuda política. Después de esto podría ocurrir cualquier cosa. La sentencia del señor Costales hoy parece más contundente que nunca.

It’s sad that even the PAC group can see the situation more clearly than those who still argue the Movimiento still has something to do with Libertarianism.

Ricardo Costa Rica, News and politics

We’re looking to hire another ASP.Net / C# developer for a long-term project. As I had mentioned before, we’re small team and want to keep growing by adding dedicated, team-oriented people with a sense of humor.

You must have experience with C#, Javascript, DHTML and XSLT 1.0 to create modular and reusable components. Familiarity with MSXML 3+ interfaces, XPath and advanced XSLT templates is a plus. It’s fundamental that you have a keen eye for UI detail, and feel comfortable working directly with an user on design issues.

We’re a lot more interested in good, experienced developers than degrees.

If you’re in Costa Rica and interested in a job with us, just let me know.

Ricardo Costa Rica, Science and Technology