Nope, it’s a positive rant. I got back yesterday from a shitty trip to Uruguay and all I can say God dammit it feels good to be home! God bless this fucking country!
I was there for work, trying to defuck a monster PSA oxygen system at a pulp and paper mill 2 hours outside of Montevideo. The mill was a huge complex, but has little to no government regulations to meet so there are no safety protocols there. You fend for yourself and pray you don’t get hurt by someone else’s stupidity. Same thing with the driving. No law enforcement. Everybody drives like retards. It’s seriously not safe. To top it all off, the medical facilities outside the capital seem meager at best.
Because of my own lapse in judgement and the above mentioned lack of safety protocols, I came about 3 seconds from being hurty very badly and experiencing the medicine available. I ordered some changes made to the system, some large fittings were replaced with larger ones, and we fired it back up. Everybody was just standing by. Not so much as a yellow “do-not-cross” line or a manager responsible for yelling at people to back the fuck up. We fired up the compressor, the 1000 gallon tank filled to 100 psi and a loud leak could be heard. I was about to dive in and find it without thinking when the workers came charging in. (That’s what they do in 3rd world factories, throw bodies at problems regardless of skill/qualification/if-they-should-fucking-be-there.) About 3 seconds after I stepped back to let the workers have at it, a 10’ long 3" diameter hose let loose at 100 PSI and started pummelling everything within reach. Thank God nobody got whacked in the head or they probably would have died, but a worker who shouldn’t have even been there in the first place got whacked in the pelvis. Friday night he was having surgery on a testicle.
The whole town smelled like the plant because government regulations regarding emissions are meager at best. I don’t even want to think about how much sulfur I breathed, much less how the town lives with the odor.
Everyone in the town around the plant was stuck there because that was the job. Nowhere to go, no way out, no advancement. My heart goes out to them. We take for granted here that our lives are only limited by our own motivation and creativity. We take for granted things like being able to trust the government to keep us safe, good medical facilities regulated by the FDA, traffic safety laws that people are forced to adhere to, and big fucking cups of coffee! Good God I got sick of those little espresso’s that barely wake you up and get served in cups so small you can’t get more than 2 fingers on the handle!
This post probably doesn’t make much sense because I’m still exhausted from the trip but I can’t sleep because I’ve been drinking big cups of coffee and eating a lot of food all day, just because I can! But none the less, every time I visit a 3rd world shit hole I come home thanking God that I live where I do. Anybody who thinks this country sucks and/or isn’t the best place on the planet to live hasn’t seen how the majority of the rest of humanity lives.
Anyway, america was/is kinda still a superpower, uraguay is not. A lot of people dont realize how spoiled they are, thats one thing I hate about this country. Smoke a J, sit back and start to appreciate everything you have here.
But, at the same time, try not to think about how in the next xxx amount of years, China is going to be the new ruler and Americans are all going to be dead from obesity.
i went to ecuador, guam, and turkey… and every time i come back the worst of the worst in the states… is nothing compared to other places… even europe (france, norway, germany) the american way is way better… bigger is awesome… large stores room to move its awesome… norway was 150 ish a night and it was such a small room… 39 dollars at a holiday blows it away…
The US is the place to be… and you really don’t appreciate it til you leave to go outside of it…
other than the Fat people… france was full or gorgeous smelly ( i think deodorant is banned in paris) women
I actually spent about half an hour in Buenos Aires. My flight into the international airport was late, so about 20 of us missed our connection to Monte Video and got taken across the city to the national airport for the next flight over the river.
Oh yeah, they also pay $6/gallon for gas in Uruguay. Over half of that is government taxes. So they all drive these shitty little hatches. I saw one 1.8T Jetta and it seriously stuck out like a big pimp car, kind of like if we were to see a Maybach cruising around Buffalo.
It’s not even that they don’t work hard there, there do. (I’ve been places that are third world because the people don’t want to work.) They just have nowhere to go. God bless this country and its spoiled citizens and its structure that makes it possible for anyone to be successful. You know why we have an obesity problem? Because we can!
I felt the same way about my country after being in Mexico, and Mexico would be considered much better than a lot of others that I and my wife have been to, let alone the ones that we wouldn’t dare go to. There is some stuff that goes on in these countries that is everyday life for them, but downright scary to us pampered Americans.
its my travels that have also shown me how great we have it, and when leftist hippys bitch non stop about how they hate this country, and wana leave. If you don’t like this country then fuckin leave, its will give more room to those that realize taht we have it really good.
yea its kind of fun to go to a country and they are like … you have a curfew of 9pm.
i was in manta ecuador and apparently pay someone around 150 bucks to kill someone for ya… (i was debating it) but more north in Quito (moving towards columbia) i guess it gets really really bad. And if you look american… HA game over, you will be hounded for everything people grabbing you trying to reach in your pockets and shit… it was horrible… then in a drunken stumble going down the wrong road its like, well i’m sober time to run
Except for parts of Europe (damn, those French wpmen are hot), Canada, and vacation paradises like the smaller Carribean islands and such I have given up travelling. Good post, it captures a lot of truth.
I’ve been home for 3 days now, and holy shit. As unpleasant as it was I think that last trip has really done me some good. Montevideo wasn’t that bad (although the rest of the country was) but it’s just that at home I have it so fucking good. I can run to the store and get all kinds of healthy food. I can drive knowing that the odds are pretty good that everyone else will drive reasonably within the limits of the law. I know that if I get into just about any sort of trouble that I can’t handle, a quick phone call to 911 and my government will bail me out. I can go to work knowing that I have the right to work in a safe environment and if it’s not safe I can demand that my employer make it reasonably so without worrying about losing my job. I feel like I have a lot more potential than what will be used at my current job so I am looking for something better, I’m not stuck with nowhere to go. If I think there is something wrong with my government I can write a letter or go down to city hall and burn a flag on the front steps.
Sorry, I don’t mean to preach on and on and it’s not like Uruguay is THAT bad. It just feels so good to be home that I have a new appreciation. I hope I never get used to living here.
