I am back in Puerto Rico paying a short visit to my mom and taking care of some errands like her taxes and so on before returning back to the US. I often get the question “what is PR like?” “Is it like the US?” Of course there are some obvious differences related to language, culture, environment, and politics. For example, Spanish is talk of the town; you can run around, barely clothed, in January to frolic in some pretty soothing ocean waters; and and unlike the US, a large percentage of the population actually takes politics very seriously, which means 81% of the voting population hits the voting booths, there is a mainstream culture of protest, and people party vigorously during voting season (and this makes politics personal, domestic, familial, leisurely, and thus, it gets woven into the fabric of everyday life ).

But while there are those and many other obvious differences, I am more interested (at least today) in the more subtle ones, the “fixings” and “toppings” related to things like commodities, street dogs, the law, and government services. These are more or less supposed to be standardized and thus the same between the mainland and this small Caribbean island but in fact, there are minute disjoints here and there that can be at times frustrating and, in more rare instances, amusing.

So let’s start with the amusing ones. We have US Post Offices here that look, smell, and operate as they do in the US: with lackluster aesthetics and more or less disgruntled employees. So yesterday when I walked into the local PO to buy some stamps, I was sort of floored to see that one of the tellers was also moonlighting, in plain view, running a business on the side, selling purses and other handbags that were nicely displayed on the wall. Now I can’t imagine this was legal, at all. But who knows?, perhaps there is some obscure US PO clause that, with the right paperwork and initiative, allows employee to operate a small consumer-oriented business at the same time that they process money orders, sell stamps, and accept packages. After a day of horrid horrid errand running, the handbags for sale at the post office washed away my scowling frown and I only wished I had my camera. Perhaps allowing such entrepreneurship is what the PO needs to keep employee morale high and can also be used to secure another source of revenue (they can get a commission for every article sold).

When it comes to dogs, there are wayyyyy more street dogs in PR than in the states and frankly, I find the mutts, known in local lingo as “Satos” are the most appreciative mutts I have met. If you want to get a solidly down-to-earth-and-street-smart sato, by all means, come here and get one. We now have one, “Isabella” (a.k.a. Gordita/Chubster) and she is a gem who I would like to steal in my suitcase but I am afraid my life as an academic would come to a screeching halt if I did, for she is as demanding as they get. All she wants is to be pet and hugged and to make this happen, she rams her small head into your hands. If she fails, she switches into “kiss-you-to-death-mode.” Kiss-you-to-death-mode is kicked into turbo-gear after you shower and, especially, after you put any lotion on. At this point, if she is near you, Gordita proceeds to attack you as if you turned into some human sized T-Bone Steak and licks every last ounce of any lotion off . I usually feel like I need to take another shower after this Gordita-fest, so I try to bypass her after shower time. But aside from such quirks she is as good as they get.

Now for the most part the commodity goods in PR are exactly the same as in the US. But there used to be this 6 year period when Sara Lee sold chocolate pound cake in Puerto Rico that I absolutely LOVED and this was cake simply not to be found in the United States. This is something I could never understand because well, it was fantastic tasting stuff, and it seemed like a pretty standard commodity good that should not be limited to a 100 mile long and 35 mile wide island. When I came here I used to buy like 6-7 of them, freeze them, and take em back to the US. But then one year, poof, they vanished. I always imagined that there was some Vice President of Sara Lee Puerto Rico who also was very fond of this chocolate pound cake and decided to authorize local manufacturing despite a strict cancellation order from the headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio. And then it took like like 6 years for them to catch on that in fact he disobeyed such corporate orders.

Business and other such relationships are more informal here, which can produce for pleasant and unpleasant experiences, sometimes together. For example in the last few days, my/my mom’s lawyer was unwilling to give me a firm time or date for appointment. And since I needed to discuss a really obscure set of legal documents and deeds that may have required a visit to an equally obscure government agency, I pushed and pushed to get something out of her. Finally she agreed to meet with me but only during her morning manicure session. After a 15 minute conversation while her nails were being painted blood red, it was clear I was not the only client in such a predicament, as another one showed… It was pretty amusing.

I did find out I had to visit this obscure government agency “CRIM” related to property taxes and it took me 8 conversations to get directions there. No one could explain it because they did not know the street names and it is not only an obscure agency but is truly also tucked away in a seriously obscure location. One person basically said “look take a taxi” otherwise you will never get there. But finally one person knew of two streets it was near which was enough for me and I fearlessly proceeded to what I thought was going to be a pit of despair and a total time sink but that turned out to be the quickest of the day’s errands. I found out that I in fact did not own a gabillion dollars and that a change of address would take only minutes.

After I left, I was in a sate of total glee. After departing from CRIM, I could care less that Citibank had lost $4000 in deposited checks days earlier, that my mom’s SS tax information did not come in time, that I could not find the location of the accountant because their office had moved due to a fire in their office , and was ready and pumped to fight the Medicare prescription plan for enrolling my mom on the phone when in fact she has alzheimers (and they were told of this..) and can’t really make these decisions, but as I was partaking of my moment of glee, I promptly hit a shard of glass, and my tire exploded. Oh well, at least I was a block away from Western Auto and could contine uninterrupted with my endless day of errands….