Posts:
By Christoph Wackher The pension bar, showing the minimum income residency visa applicants must have, moves every January, and last October’s reform of the migration law matters to people already living here, not only to newcomers. Much of what circulates about the...
Tom and Elaine watch the rain in Cuenca. But while their lights stay on, Ecuador is ordering factories to disconnect from the electricity grid. What does that tell us about the country's power supply? Rain was beating against the windows hard enough that Tom had...
A power plant usually has a dam, a turbine or a chimney. In the chilly New England state of Vermont, one increasingly looks like somebody’s house or apartment. The American state has been installing batteries in homes whose owners are tired of losing electricity...
By Michael Torney Asunción is in a pre-gentrified condition with new hotels beside old dirty concrete shells, it’s difficult to know if they’re being built or torn down. Construction blocks the cracked, tumbling sidewalks so I walk in the street. An old man in a shirt...
Shortly after seven on a January evening in 2015, a computer at Banco del Austro sent an instruction to Wells Fargo in the United States to the effect: "Send lots of money to Hong Kong and Dubai!" Since it appeared to have the proper credentials, Wells Fargo acted on...
Tom was drinking his morning coffee when Elaine opened the refrigerator. “Tom, how long will the food last if the power goes out?” “Depends.” “On what?” “How often you open the refrigerator.” He was rather pleased with that answer. It was concise, technically...
Three times they prepared to hang John Lee, but three times the trapdoor refused to open. At Exeter Prison on February 23, 1885, the condemned man stood on the gallows with a hood over his head and a rope around his neck, waiting for the floor to vanish beneath him....
Quite a lot, actually I have been watching the revived version of Time Team on YouTube, including an episode in which a small group of archaeologists investigates a mysterious standing stone in a cleared forest in Derbyshire, England. The new programme is pleasant...
By Caroline Hopkins Legaspi Sometimes a miserable bout of diarrhea is caused by nothing more than nerves or a 24-hour stomach bug. Lingering gas and bloating can be set off by a recent long-haul flight. But similar symptoms could also represent something far more...
By Michael Torney Buenos Aires is a capital city swarming with 20-storey buildings that glower over the narrow one-way streets, the other lane often occupied by restaurant terraces. These small streets have not been widened by a Haussmann bringing in light at the...
Sherlock Holmes was able to solve an impressive number of crimes partly because he never had to do chores. We are told that Holmes conducted chemical experiments, played the violin, studied cigar ash, disguised himself as an elderly woman, and occasionally fired...
By Frances Hogg Lochow A friend in England approached me several months ago with a request to help an expat incarcerated in the women’s prison in Azogues. The woman had no access to reading materials and hoped to have some English language books. I collected several...
YouTube has thousands of portable power station reviews, enough to keep a prospective buyer watching until the next power cut. You can watch a bearded man in a check shirt run a circular saw in a forest, charge his battery from solar panels beside a camper van, or...
One of the odder features of modern air travel is that airports have become brilliant at selling almost everything except the one thing a traveler actually needs at six in the morning. My last trip took me through four international airports and one ecological airport...
By Michael Torney The ancient cultures in pre-hispanic Peru depicted the three worlds, the world above, the world in which we live and the world below. Travelling in the Andes it’s tempting to see these represented in the sky above and all around us, and in the...
Tom wasn't looking for a protest. He was trying to get across town. He had left home expecting an ordinary Wednesday morning in Cuenca. Instead, somewhere near the historic district, he found the street ahead of him filled with people. Not a few dozen. A river of...
Two years ago, when Ecuador’s electricity supply began to falter, I approached emergency planning with all the technical sophistication of an antebellum mortician. I bought candles. This was not entirely foolish. Candles are cheap, require no instruction manual and...
The other day I stumbled into one of those discoveries that makes you wonder how many useful things have been sitting under your nose for years. We've all had that experience. You buy a car and six months later someone casually mentions that the mirrors fold in...
When I was young, a pair of Levi's or Wranglers blue jeans seemed like essential kit. They were tough enough for outdoor work, respectable enough for most indoor activities and could be worn for several days without needing to be washed. More importantly, they were...
Everyone in Carlos’s bakery was laughing. The woman beside Tom leaned against the counter. The man in the hat shook his head. Carlos was still smiling as he handed over the bread. Tom smiled too. It seemed the appropriate thing to do. Outside, Robert caught up with...
