A Glimpse of the Future

Technorati Tags: Ecuador,South America,Cars,Chinese Cars,Import Cars,Asian Manufacturing,automobiles

When I was a kid, we got the first Japanese car in our little borough in Pennsylvania: a Datsun.  One of the ways my dad likes to wax nostalgic is to apologize over and over for making my brother Bruce and I ride in the back of that tiny two-door 1200.  But hey, we were kids, we didn’t know we were supposed to mind, and at least it smelled a lot better than our old Dodge Dart whose previous owner was clearly a cigar smoker.

As they might say in Jersey, we didn’t know from harbingers.  That little white Datsun portended the eventual domination of Japanese cars in the US.  Now, for the last ten years, we’ve been seeing Korean cars — Kias and Hyundais, and just like it went down with Japanese cars, the conventional wisdom WAS that they were junk, and the conventional wisdom IS that they are getting better and better.  There are also Daewoos and I just learned down here about SsangYongs, all from Korea.  So get ready for more Korean Cars.

But the big news for me was Cinascar – the dealer here in Quito of Chinese-made cars.  All kinds – trucks, pickups, SUVs, minis.  I’m including some pictures from their billboards.    

The red truck I see often walking home from school.  It features that very practical hinged sidewall design that you used to see on the Volkswagen pickup, where the sides as well as the tailgate can fold down. Not to mention the tie- down hooks all the way around, like every pickup should have and hardly any pickups in the US do anymore.

There seem to be at least four automakers in China, Chery, ZXAuto, Changhe, and Great Wall Motor.  Each of these companies can be found on wikipedia as well, which is where I found the links to their web sites.

If you happen to follow the links above to the manufacturers’ English-language web sites, you can appreciate that the immense differences between the Chinese and English languages, as well as the newcomer status of Chery and the other companies to the English-speaking market, are bound to lead to some interesting phrasings on these companies’ websites, and I love to go looking for these.  Here’s one from Chery, regarding their V5 station wagon:

V5, a combination of the functions of SUV.MPV and cars is a breakthrough in auto market, a mixture of multi-styles that leads the unique auto culture.
       ROOM: roomy space that carries styling life
       HOME: family use, enjoying happy life together
       TEAM: colleagues, clients and friends assemble in the vehicle.

Another example: a popup chat window on the ZXAuto page asks, “What can I help you?”  We can all have a chuckle at that, but we dismiss these automakers at our peril:  Wikipedia says Chery is working with the Ferrari/Lamborghini designers, Bosch for transmissions, their engines already meet the tough Euro emissions standards, and their painting facilities and manufacturing processes are state of the art.  They were hoping to have cars in the US by this year, but the agreements fell apart. It’s just a matter of time before these cars start making Kias and Hyundais look good, and then start looking good themselves.

Ten years from now I’ll be able to say I told you so.

How Bank Machines Should Work

Technorati Tags: Ecuador,South America,Money,ATM,Bank Machines,Small Bills

As you probably know, Ecuador’s official currency is the US dollar, so bank machines here dispense the familiar green stuff.  But they dispense it in a way that opened my eyes to possibilities that are lacking back in the USA.

Here’s a quick test:  what is your best guess about how many different money trays a standard ATM has inside?  Well, when I first moved to Austin my UFCU bank machine would give out bills in increments of ten dollars, so I for one assumed until recently that there were two money trays behind all that thick metal and friendly interface: one for 10s, one for 20s — though these days my bank and all the others seem to fill both trays with twenties (which I heard referred to once as “yuppie food stamps”).

So, how many money trays?  Here’s the truth: what I thought and whatever you were thinking, we were lowballing it big time.  I got $200 in cash from my bank machine the other day, and as this picture attests, you can fit at least 4 different types of bills in there.  Dollar bills?  From a bank machine?  Are you kidding me?  No, I’m as serious as the sub-prime mortgage crisis: this is the kind of spread we get every time we get cash.  And I like it.  It’s the way it should be, I’m beginning to think.  Ever try to buy a soda from a machine with a twenty?  OK, well, there are no soda machines here.  But in the States, this would solve your problem.

Colonial Brazil

Technorati Tags: Brazil,Brasil,South America,Travel,Minas Gerais,Paraty,Salvador,Bahia

Back to last summer, here are a few pictures from some of the gorgeous colonial towns we visited in Brazil.  The first picture is Parati or Paraty, the port that shipped off the Brazilian gold before Rio de Janeiro took over.  The last picture is Salvador da Bahia up in what is referred to as northeastern Brazil.  It was the biggest colonial city we visited, and in its day was the center of slave trade and now is the cultural heart of Brazil, with capoeira, candomble, and most of the country’s musical styles hailing from there.

The rest of the pictures are of the exquisite colonial towns of Minas Gerais, the state northwest of Rio de Janeiro whose name means “General Mines,” a bureaucratic triumph of paternalistic nomenclature that clearly distills the region’s only importance to the colonial Portuguese.

Fresh back from our trip I had planned to write in detail about the towns and the sculpture, etc. etc.  But at this distance, I’ll just let the places speak for themselves.  A wonderful trip with almost no U.S. tourists.

Carrot Head

Technorati Tags: Ecuador,carrot,large vegetable

If you don’t live in Ecuador, you probably haven’t seen carrots like these. In the US a carrot this size — if you could find one — would be about as tender as a giant Sequoia, but here they’re fine, just plain good eatin’.

I’ve seen pictures of cabbages in Alaska the size of VW bugs (or thereabouts) — supposedly that’s because of the long hours of daylight during the otherwise short growing season. What’s the story here? Is it the volcanic soil? The cool weather? The nearly exact 12 hours of day and 12 hours of night? Is it how the Coriolis winds cancel each other out on the Equator? So far, Wikipedia has nothing about this big fat stubby carrot phenomenon.