17 February, Montevideo, UY

It’s a Tuesday. I arrived Sunday morning and so’ve been in Montevideo about 50 hours. I am at 35° South latitude, furthest South I’ve ever been. I finally get to see certain constellations

This is the first time I’m sitting down to write in months. I last wrote with a word processor when I concluded Part One of my observations on Bali and Nusa Penida, Indonesia, last August.

I said my next post would be Part Two, but of course, the life we all live now moves too fast and is horribly crowded with slop and garbage, so haven’t gotten to that. Have faith, I shall. I have great stuff from Nusa Penida I want to share with you.

I’ve only used the typewriter and handwriting since last August, which is different. It’s note-taking and structure-making more than writing.

Oh, wait – and I’ve spent time with the stupefying reductionism of social media and messaging again – mind-numbing, attention-deficit inducing, crap writing. They think it’s quick-witted, but it’s puns and jokes from punks and blokes. Sigh. People don’t read anymore. So they can’t write. They can’t read. Illiterates.

But I write every day. Still. 50 years, every. day. I quit all the major socials I was on back in 2021, but have been posting to BlueSky lately which is a smaller, more chill place to engage. Friendlier, open-source, ad-free for now … so In addition to @mtksf.bsky.social, I cover the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs @theroadspur.bsky.social there.

It feels good, to be back at the keyboard, I guess. How’re you?

It’s just us. Maybe like 30 people will read this, at most, so get comfortable, make yourself at home, grab a tea or a beer or whatever. I do appreciate whomever you are. Thanks. Tell ’em MTK hipped ya.

The climate here is unique to me – in the mornings it’s cool and pleasant, but by 10 am, it gets warm, humid and sticky. Then around 4 o’clock in the afternoon, the temperature is several degrees cooler again. One can go from shorts and a tee shirt to a pullover and a scarf, the way we do in San Francisco, but the middle of the day there rarely, if ever, gets this warm: high 70’s. It’s 80° F today, – high season.

Montevideo, like San Francisco, is surrounded by water, a city on a peninsula. But the peninsula is pointier, and rather than a bay, it sits at the delta of the Rio de la Plata, which flows down from the confluence of the Rios Paraná and Uruguay at Punta Gorda in Uruguay. The Paraná itself descends from the Rio Grande and sediments from the north are brought down through the continent to the South Atlantic Ocean, here. The water in the river and delta appear brown because of this:

Uruguay sits to the East of the Rio de la Plata delta, and Buenos Aires, Argentina, to the South and West. I hope to visit BA next week.

Montevideo is a clean, orderly city. It’s relatively flat and has diverse botany. As a port city, much of that diversity is from Colonialism – eucalyptus from Australia, fortnight lilies from South Africa, jasmine from Asia via Europe. The climate and the river allow palm trees and non-native conifers to grow comfortably adjacent to one another at the coast.

Montevideo is diverse culturally from Colonialism as well. Because of Brazil to its North, the Spanish spoken here is influenced by Portuguese and sounds different.

I have heard Spanish, Portuguese, South African idioms, English and French already. Prices are going up and people are moving here right now. There is building and development everywhere. Like how Bangkok was when I went a couple of years ago – new apartment buildings going up all over the place.

Dawn, here

well, that’s it for now. Happy Year of the Horse to my Chinese friends.

love,
mtk