An Unexpected Candle Lit Dinner

Last night Papicito gazed out of the window at the lawn and commented that the garden could do with watering, but he never got around to it.

Just before Chiquitito's bedtime the skies grew rapidly black and it started to rain. The smell of fresh rain on the dry earth gave off a gorgoeus smell, and as the rain quickened the storm gathered pace with louds rumbles of thunder and huge flashes of lightening.

We went and stood on the under cover terrace to watch the storm when the biggest crack of thunder went off right over head at the same time as an enormous flash of light. Everything went silent, and we turned around to see that the electricity had gone off.

The daylight was quickly fading into night so Papi went to check that it wasn't just us and to get our supply of candles from the garage, whilst there was still enough light to find things. Usually the power doesn't stay off for long, but we wanted to be prepared.

Chiquitito was tired and didn't put up an argument about bedtime, even though the power cut had upset his routine. His room is the smallest of our three bedrooms, and without his fan on it gets unbearably hot, so we put him to bed in our room with the windows open and the tiniest of breezes.

We lit our citronella candles, to ward off mosquitos, and sat on the terrace with a pre-dinner drink, watching the storm rumbling on. The inside of the house was an uncomfortable temperature, whilst outside was perfect.

Still no electric.

Luckily, I had baked a quiche the day before so Papi was able to prepare dinner by candlelight (the two candles in the kitchen were far superior to any of the others we have and I will definitely be buying some more of them!)

We ate outside - with the glow from the candles supplemented by the bright lightening. The lightening flashes were so frequent that I made Papi venture out into the wet to make sure there was nothing on fire in next door's garden!

Two hours after the power went off it came back - to the sound of cheers from us and our neighbours.

But do you know - it was so romantic sat outside drinking vodka and coke by candlelight that we didn't come back in for quite a while.

Welcome to 21st Century Telephony

When we lived in the UK I always had an uptodate mobile (cell) phone, on contract, so therefore heavily subsidised, and I always had (and used) lots of inclusive minutes and texts. Whereas Papicito has never been a mobile lover; indeed before we met he had a reclusive handset that rarely left the house.

It came as a shock when we moved to Malaysia in 2008 to discover that whilst phone calls were incredibly cheap, even on PAYG, handsets were not. I struggled to get my 3 handset unlocked, so grudgingly I downgraded to a basic Nokia handset, something to similar to the one on shown here.Mobile phones were still in the early days of internet access so I guess I didn't miss what I'd not been used to.

When we moved to El Salvador in 2010 we were provided with phones from my husband's company, contract phones that allowed free calls to each other, but once again not technicalogically advanced and quite heavy to carry. Hence we named our "new" phone el bricko! A year or so on and we got offered the chance to upgrade, to a more advanced phone, but at extra cost, so we took the sensible decision to keep with whatever phone we got offered for free!

So, despite having all mod cons with our iPad and Nexus, for six years we have been living in a telephony timewarp.

Then, a friend who was in a pre packing frenzy before their move oerseas advertised her 32gb iPhone 4s at a very reasonable price. I looked, I ummed, I arghed, I procrastinated, then Papicito said the nicest words a husband can: "Have it if you want!"

Two months later I can already see how it has changed my life. I no longer carry my cumbersome iPad around with me, or even the sleeker Nexus7. Instead my handbag is barely any heavier with the addition of my iPhone. Now I don't have to look dumb when the dental rceptionist asks if she can WhatsApp my appointment reminder, I can squirm when the mechanic is delighted that he can FaceTime me with the arrival time of my car and I can Skype family back home using a normal phone, instead of having to talk into the back of the iPad.

We were discussing an upcoming shopping trip to the US and Papicito asked me if I wanted a new iPod for Xmas, to replace my elderly 80GB one. Er....no! I have plenty of space on my iPhone for a reasonable amount of music. Well would I like a new compact camera? Er.....noooo! My iPhone is my new compact camera!

I am loving my twenty first century telephony - even if it is at least one model out of date. To me it's perfect!

Have you visited Kokoland at Multiplaza yet?

San Salvador does not have a huge range of quality places to take toddlers to play, and although our local malls had a few options they all closed down before we had junior.

A few weeks ago I was surprised to see a new play area being built in Multiplaza mall, and today we got chance to visit and check it out. As Friday is no longer a kinder day for Chiquitito (that's another story) I was looking for something child friendly for us to do together so we headed on to Multiplaza to see what it was all about.

Situated in the basement level, it is on the opposite side of the open plan area to Le Croissant shop and next to the new Juan Valdez Colombian coffee shop. Surrounded by a low wall and an open entrance, it seems to entice passing children in a way that the Pied Piper was familiar with.

Aimed at children 1.10 metres and shorter (aproximately 6 years), Kokoland is designed on a castle theme, and surprisingly entrance was FREE! As a British person well versed with the story of Tintagel and King Arthur, it is more precisely a Camelot theme, as there is the central castle, a large dragon and a sword embedded in a stone. A little bit of Cornish history in El Salvador!

When you enter you have to remove your child's shoes, leaving their socks on. You have to accompany your child inside and you will be asked to remove your shoes. If you are not wearing socks or tights they will give you some rather sexy feet covers to wear! 

TOP TIP: take a pair of socks!

Your shoes will get stored in a cubby hole until you decide to leave.

What is there to keep your little one occupied?

In the centre of the play area is a large castle, with turrets, a lowered draw bridge, walls and two slides. The structures have a springy feel to them and are covered in a plastic fabric finish. There are steps leading up to the slides and steps that seem to lead up to the turrets. Junior wasn't sure about climbing onto the turrets, and I felt like they didn't really have a use - they could have been more enticing to children - maybe if the could have got inside them.

There is also a large dragon, made to look as if he is lying on an island, with part of his tail submerged under the water. However, Junior decided that the section of tail that was on its own was a snake, and nothing I could say would persuade him otherwise. The dragon is perfect for climbng upon and Chiquitito and the two year old playmate who arrived after us were happy to sit astride it then slide down its nose!

I guess the reason they are so fussy on footwear is due to the fancy floor finish. The carpet is padded to give a soft landing if children take a tumble, and has a very pretty pattern on it.

There is also a sword embedded in a stone, that Chiquitito was fascinated with. He was pretending to pull the sword out and was busy making sword swah buckling movements (I put that down to watching Peter Pan the movie several times this week).

Around the edge of the play area are several play zones where children can match objects etc. The pictures spin around, and whilst Junior was not particularly interested in matching the objects he loved to see how fast he could get them to spin around. There is also a mirror that distorts your image, which caused much hilarity with both my son and his playmate.

I was surprised to see they had a touch screen games centre, that looked a lot like a larger than life iPad. I was even more surprised to see the choice of games available, as they were not aimed at young children. The two games we tried was an object hunting game and a Mahjong game. There was also a message that said 1 game free, and it said you had to pay for further goes. At the moment this was not in operation, but I wonder if this is how they plan to recoup some of their costs?

Is it worth a visit?

I would not make a special journey just to use this play facility, but if you are in Multiplaza and want something to occupy your young child then it is worth a visit.

We stayed for half an hour, and I suspect that was largely due to it being totally new and there being someone else for Chiquitito to play with.

At almost three years of age there dertainly wasn't much to keep him occupied for much longer, but it might be different if a few children were playing together.

We got a new electricity meter today!

I am always complaining that our electricity bills are too high, and Papicito often jokes that it is our neighbours, running their always on tumble drier from our electricity supply. We didn't really think this was happening, but we do know of people here in El Salvador who have discovered that their neighbours have a socket wired to their meter.

Anyway, here is what happened.

I was sat at home and we had a power cut - not unusual in these parts. This got me thinking about our electric bills, and after the power came back on I went to the fuse box and switched everything off.

Next door's tumble drier was still whirring away.

I went outside to look at our electric meter and it was still going around! I gazed at all the dubious looking wiring that surrounds our meter ande wondered if Papicito could be right after all!

I emailed our landlord:

"We have a question about our electricity supply and wonder if you can help.

Our electric bill is still very high, no matter what we use or do not use.

Today I turned off all the switches in the fuse box, but the electricity meter was still spinning!

There are a lot of wires coming out of the meter - is there anything that does not have a switch in the fuse box? Or, as a joke - are our neighbours using our electricity!

Thank you very much, Mamasita"

Our landlord is always prompt at sorting out problems, and back came the reply:

"We will request an inspection from Delsur, when I know the day and time of the inspection I will notify you"

Perfecto!

A couple of days later l I received another email from our landlord:

"DelSur says it does not need to inspect the meter.  I will contact an authorized electrical technician to check the ,eter that is outside of the house and if necessary repair the cables inside the house if that is necessary. Let me know when it will be convenient for the electrician to call."

A couple of weeks later and Delsur appear and changed the meter to a flash new looking one. I tried asking about the dodgy looking wiring, in my best Spanglish - but guess what - the wiring remains!!

Now all that remains to be seen is whether the electricity bill reduces at all?

Water water everywhere......so why is my electric bill so much?

El Salvador has two very distinct seasons.....the dry season that lasts from about November until April and the wet season that drags on from May until October.

At the moment we are at the beginning of the wet season, and although the days are generally cooler they are also greyer, and there are more mosquitoes about.

The rainy season brings two main problems for me - Chiquitito is not able to have unlimited access to the garden (although we are looking forward to lots of puddle splashing in his wellington boots) and getting the washing dry can become difficult.

As the rainy season progresses the air seems to become damper and drying washing can be problematic - unless you get a good few hours of sun or you are lucky enough to have a tumble drier.

We brought a tumble drier a couple of years ago, but it rarely gets used, mainly because electricity here is very expensive.

In our last house our electric bill was $50-$60 per month. Here it was $120 when we moved in. We had our water pump fixed and the bill dropped to about $80 a month, then since Junior arrived it has been almost constantly $100.

So why is the bill so high?

We have two tv's, a laptop that is often in use and all the other usual appliances, like washing machine, tumble drier (seldom used), fridge freezer, microwave etc. We do not have air conditioning (happy memories of the days we did) but we do have a ceiling fan in the lounge and a couple of free standing bedroom fans.

Another problem is that our electric meter is apparently faulty. But despite our landlord calling in an electrician and submitting a request to the electric company - almost 2 months ago - we are still waiting for a replacement. That too will be another story to tell you!

I think the biggest sole consumer of our electricity is the electric water pump, also known as the bomba.

Why do we need a water pump?

We are lucky that we have a water tank (cisterna) underneath our garage. I'm not talking about a small water tank.....but one that is large enough to hold enough water for a month's use. How do I know this - well, that's another story!! This tank is what gives us the luxury of running water if the mains water is not working. We are lucky, I know of people whose water supply is only connected for a couple of hours every other day. They have to fill all available containers and the large sink (pilla) in the utility room to survive.

The mains water supply fills our tank and then the bomba pumps the water from the tank to the house. Not constantly - the tank has a header tank and a pressure gauge that is set to 40 psi, and once the pressure drops to 20 psi the pump kicks in to refill the header tank.

When we are showering, using the washing machine or watering the garden the pump uses a lot of electricity. Our monthly water bill is usually around the $3 mark (plus we spend around $7 per week on bottled drinking water), so it is the cost of the electric that makes using the water expensive.

A chance conversation with a friend this week led me to an amazing discovery that no-one has ever told me before.

She told me that her pump had broken and she was unwilling to spend the money that it would cost for a replacement.

However, she assured me that the water pressure was perfectly acceptable in the morning (when you most need showers and clothes washing) and was adequate in the afternoon.

So, today I unplugged my bomba and decided to see if this is really true.

Will the water still flow?

Nervously I started the washing machine and stood guard in case of a water shortage.

The pressure on the tank dropped slightly, but much slower than when the pump is plugged in.

At around 32psi, when the washer was almost full, I decided I did not need to keep watch.

On returning a while later I was surprised to see that the psi had risen to 36 psi and everything seemed to be working fine.

My first non-pumped washing cycle is almost complete and I am now keen to continue this experiment to see if I can make a saving on my electric bill.

Come back next month to see if this has made a difference, and if so - how big a difference!

"Ay orrrrrrr mi chiquititos"

This week I caught myself calling Chiquitito "pet", a north-east English expression that both my Grandmother and mother use, and after laughing at myself it made me stop and think how much my language has changed over the years, and more recently after five years of tropical living.

Papicito and I both originate from the UK, and whilst we can (and do) lapse into our local dialect, we had different childhood  influences and education and I do not think we sound that similar.

So what new words have worked their way into our every day vocabulary over the last five years?

Our first two years of expat living were spent in Malaysia, and whilst we learned a few pleasantries of Bahasa Malay we never picked up much of the language. As an ex British colony there was enough English spoken that we managed to get by.

The main word that we picked up in Malaysia, and still use today, is "ay-orrrr". I always thought this was a Chinese word, but a Malaysian friend has recently told me that it is a Malay word. And its meaning? Any time you need an expletive "ay-orrrr" will do the trick. If  your friend told you they had just had an unexpected windfall "ay-orrrr" is the perfect exclamation. If the car in front of you does something unexpected and you break sharply, why risk Junior learning a profanity when "ay-orrrr", with extra "orrrrrrrr" fits the bill perfectly.

Can I just add that Chiquitito, who is learning to talk in both Spanish and English has also mastered a fantastic "ay-orrrr" this week.

We have lived in El Salvador for approaching three years now, and as a former Spanish colony, where English is not spoken as much as I had hoped for, we have had to make an effort to learn basic Spanish.

Of course, in the house we speak English to each other, but there are some words of Spanish that have become part of our every day vocabulary, and I know that we will continue to use them even when we eventually move on to somewhere new.

"Si" ("yes") is the most common Spanish word that we use, then probably "gracias" ("thank you") and also "con" or "sin" to denote whether we want our cold drink "con hielo" or "sin hielo" - with or without ice.

One of the words that I use on a frequent basis is the Salvadoran word "dundo" or "dunda" depending whether it is a man or woman that I am berating. It is considered very impolite to call someone stupid in El Salvador (estupido/a), but "dundo/a" is an accepted slang form.

(The difference between the a or o at the end of a word is masculine and feminine - o for masculine, a for feminine).

So when I do or say something daft, or someone else does "dunda" is the perfect word, and always guaranteed to make the Salvadoran you're talking to laugh with surprise. Likewise, when someone makes your life difficult, like the shop assistant who over charges you then rolls her eyes when you complain - a 'dunda!" muttered under your breath (or out loud if you strongly about it) makes you feel better!!

I also use "chiquitito" and "chiquitita" a fair amount too, and it is our pet name for our young son. It is a term of endearment, so instead of calling someone "dear" or "darling", or when talking to a close friend, you would use the expression "mi chiquitito/a".

The other word that I will probably take away from El Salvador is "super". But hang on a minute, I know what you're thinking - surely "super" is an English word? Yes it is, but it is a word that gets used here all the time. Is something really good? "Super bien!" Very fast? "Super rapido!" Is someone very clever? "Super inteligente!"

If you want to learn more Salvadoran slang words then check out Jose Herrera's blog.

So, until next time, adios mi chiquititos.

PS - What's your favorite word that you use every day that is not from your native language? Share it with us in the comments box below!

Has anyone seen my cat?

So, the saga of car ownership in El Salvador continues.

After two trouble free years in Malaysia, where we long term rented a car - expensive but hassle free, we decided to buy a car when we arrived in El Salvador - mainly because car rental is exorbitantly expensive.

The first mistake we made was to buy a car unseen, before we had even arrived.

Before you start to think we were totally stupid, it was an expat guy who was leaving the company that Papicito works for. So we thought we could trust him! Wrong!!

The photograph he sent us showed an old if tidy looking Nissan Pathfinder. We asked around and people who had known the car said it was a good buy.

So we handed over our $3,000 and looked forward to being mobile on our arrival.

It didn't help that we arrived during the wet season, but the car had been parked in an underground car park, the inside was inches thick in green mould, the battery was flat and there was a huge dent in the rear passenger door, that was so bent out of shape that water poured in when it rained!

That started a long process of trying to make the best of a bad job by spending money keeping the car afloat, including a new engine (but that's another story).

Two years later, when the car was finally driveable, we decided that as we now had Junior and were going to be here for another couple of years that we would upgrade.

Once more we bought a car from a member of staff who was leaving, but this time we got it checked out by our mechanic, and handed over the cash.

Incidentally, we sold our old car to a bloke from Santa Ana for not much less than we paid for it!!)

We were now driving a slightly newer Mitsubishi Montero, and the difference was similar to upgrading from a Skoda to a Rolls Royce!!

We had the car serviced and everything went fine for a month or so. Then it started cutting out at junctions. The revs would drop, the brakes would go heavy and then......the engine would stall.

It went back to the garage and had a mountain of things fixed. Still it cut out at junctions.

And it sounded noisy - like driving a car with a hole in the exhaust.

"Don't worry!" said the mechanic. "There might be a small hole somewhere, but this noise is normal!"

By now I was beginning to doubt the expertise of my mechanic, and he spoke no English, which made explaining problems difficult. So I swapped to a highly recommended English speaking one.

He came, he checked the car, attaching all sorts of monitors, that were able to tell me, amongst other things, that the airbags had been disabled (presumably after the smash the car had been in said the mechanic, as he pointed out the slightly misaligned bonnet on the car).

He took the car away to fix it and it was like a dream. He emailed, sent videos and photos and I felt like I was there in the shop with my car, like an anxious parent at a sick child's hospital bedside.

The car returned and drove like a dream......for a day, then back to square one! The car went back to the shop to have every possible connection cleaned. It came back and drove like a dream....for a week.

So, there it was......I had spent the GDP of a small country on my car and it still died at junctions.

On a plus note, it was intermittent. I'd maybe get 3 weeks good driving then a day, or if I was unlucky a week of bad driving.

And this is how we continued for nine months or so.

Then the car needed servicing and suddenly it was impossible to drive, cutting out all the time, so I sent it back to the mechanic.

He serviced it, replaced numerous parts and brought it back last week. It seems to be working ok, but I am nervous, waiting for it to cut out.....which usually happens at a really inconvenient point, like half way around a busy roundabout in the morning rush hour traffic.

Today the mechanic came for his money, and to check it over.

And as we stood talking he said "Your exhaust is noisy because whoever had the car before removed the cat!" (for the non-technically minded amongst you he is referring to the catalytic converter).

So that's it! My car has spent the last ten months mourning the loss of its cat........if anyone finds a 20 year old metallic green cat purring at the door step...please don't take it in thinking its homeless.

Give me a call and maybe my car will run like a dream when its returned!

Has anyone seen this cat?

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