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.

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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.

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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 Рfrom Toyotas to Lexus and Masserati. Not a window broken, not a radio stolen. I wonder how long they would last in Escaz̼ or San Jos̩.

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.

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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.

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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.

Perhaps, even more tellingly, is the backwards-going line of our economic growth during those four years (Y axis is population in millions):

And since:

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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.

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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.

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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.

I just started consulting again full time, and created a company with a team of close friends called Arquetipos. We have the vision that you either do things right or don’t do them at all, and that these should extend to every aspect of the company, specially those areas that involve communication with clients. As part of the process of building up the company’s identity, Rodolfo Dengo designed a gorgeous business card, and we set to finding a local printer to produce them. We had some optional items we could have lived without, such as infrared coating on only some sections of the card, but we were sure we could find someone to print them out locally without much fuss.

We went to three different local printers and asked them to get us some printing tests, something to convince us to go with them. We were expecting these would be their best work, geared towards winning us as clients.

We were wrong.

Each and everyone had serious problems: the text looked jagged, the colors had bled, the solid blue had streaks. At one place some cards had a brown gunk on them I’d rather not inquire about. Not a single one was even up to the level of the tests I printed with my $50 Pixma, much less being anywhere close to acceptable.

On our fourth attempt we found a provider who swore they could do everything we wanted, on professional quality. We requested a quote. It took them almost two week to get it to us, and they demanded we printed at least 2,000 cards, without them printing a sample first, and with no re-print if the results were sub-par.

At this point, had I found the right double-sided card stock, I would have done them in-house myself.

In the end we decided to try Overnight Prints, an online printing site. Rodolfo was unsure and asked if we should risk it. Why not? – I replied – We already know results here are going to be crap. We sent them our specs, including the Spot UV coating on the logo. They gave us a quote, way below anything we had found here. Their minimum lot requirements were lower as well. We paid via credit card, and waited.

Two days later the cards shipped. For days after that they were in Costa Rica. We opened the box, hoping for the best.

The cards were everything we expected, just like they had plucked them from Rodolfo’s mind – printed and delivered here faster than it took some companies to give us a quote, and at under 80% of the cheapest local cost.

We needn’t sign onto CAFTA for local printers to have a problem – they have already lost.

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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.

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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.

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On a more personal note, Jorge has a great article called “…and they didn’t even get the votes“, analyzing how the Movimiento Libertario fared after they decided to be PUSC re-incarnated. Jorge gets his point across rationally, succintly and directly, much more than I think I could do.

My own personal take, in short, is: great. I hope they went ahead and spent money like they were really going to get 25% of the vote. In that case they’ve squandered 3 times as much as they are getting from the government, and got royally fucked.

How I love it when there’s an actual price to be paid for betraying your principles.

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1. The grudge vote
2. ¡Ya ganamos! / Salí a votar
3. Being on the winning side

The grudge vote

There were two kinds of people in this election: those who were voting for Arias right of the bat, and those who would even have voted for me as their Dictator For Life if Arias was the single other choice.

The second crowd were there because Arias pissed people off – plain and simple. There are many reasons for this, the least of which are the cell phone telemarketing messages that his team left. When Arias first ran for office, 20 years ago, he was perceived as a young guy trying to make a difference inside the party. This time around the perception among many – even if they didn’t articulate exactly like this – is that he is just an rich, arrogant egomaniac who was just running for the hell of it, throwing money at the problem because he could. Some felt the Sala IV had been co-opted into allowing the re-election, and that angered them even if they didn’t understand the rationale behind it. Some were driven over the edge by the fact that he just refused to debate Ottón Solís, arguing that he was so far ahead that Solís’ request for a debate was nothing but a desperate measure (hell, even a friend’s father, who worked closely with Arias during his presidency, kept saying that he would vote for anyone but him and PUSC). Finally, some were flat out angered by the fact that he was so sure had already won, that they felt the urge to prove him wrong.

By no means I thought that the vote would be as tight as it was. I personally expected Arias to be just under 40% with Ottón close behind, with an abstention rate of around 40% (it was 35%). Just a week ago I told Jacqueline and Jorge that this would almost certainly spell a victory for Solís in the second round, because everyone would gang up against Arias and Solís would win solely based on the grudge vote. From the way things are looking, he may just sneak under the fence on the first round.

I guess people hated Arias even more than I thought.

On the other hand there were those people who were with Arias, and that would have voted for him even if Noriega came out and handed copies of campaign money receipts personally signed by Arias himself. Among those there were people like my father, who would go out to vote even if you blockaded his front door, but on many others I noticed a repeat of an old tendency.

¡Ya Ganamos!

A few days ago I noted Jacqueline wrote on her blog that for a guy who is certain to win, Oscar Arias sure is campaigning hard. I commented:

28 years ago Luis Alberto Monge ran against Rodrigo Carazo, who had a party that was considered a mongrel made out of outcasts from other parties. Nobody gave Carazo a chance, to the point that Monge’s slogan was “¡Ya ganamos!” (“We’ve already won!”).

Since they’d already won, nobody went out to vote. Monge lost the election.

Everyone in Liberación assumed Arias would win, and that he would do so by an overwhelming amount in the first round. Even my father, who is usually pretty objective in his analysis (he pointed out a similarly atmosphere of undue confidence in the last election, which Liberación lost), was dead certain there was no possible way that he would lose. The elections were not going to be even close and, as my dad said, there’s no way Ottón Solís will ever be president of Costa Rica.

And guess what? Many Liberacionistas didn’t go out and vote.

Now, we’re talking about my decidedly non-statistical approach of asking random friends who I knew were Liberación sympathizers. You won’t get an error margin from me. But it was clear that the PAC people were out campaigning, having voted early, as were those of us who had gone to vote for Mendezovia, Joeburgo or whatever else we fancied our null vote being. Liberación people were home, confident. Streets were clogged enough as it was. If they had already won, why bother?

PAC, on the other hand, was busy with their ¡Salí a votar! (go out and vote!) campaign. And go out to vote people did.

Being on the winning side

Four years ago, when Otto Guevara ran for president, a lot of people who liked his job in the Asamblea didn’t vote for him for the presidency because “he didn’t have a chance“. Those people went out and either voted for Pacheco, because he looked like a kindly old man, or for Rolando Araya, because they were afraid of the chance of a senile old fool becoming president.

They wanted to feel like they had a chance of winning with their vote. Why waste your vote? was what I heard over and over.

I’ve got no doubt that happened again this time. The “everyone but Arias” camp looked at their Guevaras, their Echandis, their Ã?lvarez Desantis and thought why waste my vote? There was no way they would go with Arias – that was the reason they were flirting with other parties in the first place. PAC was there, ready, and looking like it had a shot. Why not? Wouldn’t it be nice if that arrogant Arias bastard got mud all over his face when he was forced into a second round?

If you want some numbers to back that up, here we go. So far Liberación Nacional has 40.5% of the presidential vote, and almost the same percentage for Asamblea Legislativa. These are people who are committed to the party, whatever happens – the type I described above. PAC has so far 40.28% of the presidential vote but only 25% of Asamblea vote. That 15% difference are likely people that don’t care about PAC’s legislative stance, or what the party claims they want to do with control of the Asamblea. That 15% went to other minor specialty parties, like the one oriented towards people with disabilities.

But those people, when faced with the choice of who to vote for president, decided to cast their vote maybe not for Solís, but for someone where it would count against Arias. Their need to be on the winning side, to not waste their vote, benefitted PAC.

In the end…

Who knows at this time what the hell will happen. Arias (let’s stop pretending this is about political parties) has 40.51% and Solís has 40.29%. There’s still 7.1% of the voting tables untallied, and 4.4% which have tally inconsistencies and need to be re-accounted. That’s a full 11.5% of the votes unaccounted for. Normally those would be insignificant, nothing but the error margin, but with a difference of 0.22% between the two parties it really can throw the election in either way.

I’ll hazard a guess, however. Over 60% of the votes untallied are outside urban areas, where Arias is stronger. A large number of those are in Cartago, Heredia and Alajuela, agricultural areas that have been told to fear CAFTA as if it were the apocalypse itself. Limón and Guanacaste are poor areas, where PAC’s litany against our growing inequality and how we need to even out the social classes finds fertile ground. I do fear that once the smoke has cleared, we’ll have Ottón Solís as president.

The sole idea is enough to make me hope that for once, my pessimism is absolutely, completely, flat out wrong.

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• Oscar Arias: 40.8%
• Ottón Solís: 40.3%
• Otto Guevara: 8.2%

Guevara is exactly on the range that Borges and Asociados predicted he would get (as opposed to the over 15% that the ML was getting before they decided to dump the principles).

The difference between Arias and Solís is 0.3% – a tenth of the error margin of the best polls. While the lesser evil is currently ahead, if the numbers as much as sneeze we’ll wake up tomorrow with an pro-union power-hungry ultra-dogmatic elect president (as opposed to the power-hungry egomaniac).

Yay.

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And here I am, sitting with Channel 7 on, watching the count and wondering if people will actually give Ottón Solís a chance to completely fuck this country over.

PS: I voted for the Independent Banking Republic of Mendezovia.

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As you can imagine, I’m a big proponent of dollarization – but if the government doesn’t want to do it, and the vast majority of people are content the way things are, that’s their problem. It’s always good to read alternate opinions, however, and – once again via Marginal Revolution – I’ve found an article discussing if Argentina should have dollarized back in 2001.

Enjoy.

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Imagine that. I wonder who could benefit from the party taking money from the state. Surely not the presidential candidate.

On the news item, it’s rather interesting to see how he phrases his rationalizations.

“We need to get in power and, when we do, we’ll eliminate political debt”, said Guevara.

Just like I said it would happen, he’s saying think of the good we can do. Soon enough he’ll be comparing himself to José Figueres, who got in power via a military coup and proceded to disband our national army.

And nevermind that a president would not be able to do that – political debt is in our constitution, so it’ll require a constitutional assembly to achieve it. Far more interesting is that we seem to have now a “libertarian” who cares about “power”.

That explains a lot.

PS: Just in case there was any doubt as to who elections benefit, check out this other news item: Elections will give a financial respite to political parties.

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It’s been brought to my attention that on November 2004, Malavassi published an article in La Nación entitled Political Debt – One more step towards legalized national corruption. On it, he decries how public financing of political parties has led the country on a road to corruption, as well killing the spirit of civic collaboration on people if they’re actually interested in a party’s message. Ã? la Frank Zappa , we’re only in it for the money.

His article closes with the following quote:

As for what’s up to me, I’ll fight for rejecting the state’s contribution. And will contribute everything I can, expecting only to get back a good government.

His recent resignation, then, is indeed likely due to a conflict of interest, although not with the advertised party: the Movimiento Libertario is probably decided to take the state’s money, and he’s resigning ahead of the official announcement. He may not even believe that they’ll be good government anymore.

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