Good morning from Buenos Aires, Argentina. It has been almost exactly 4 weeks since I arrived and I am certainly feeling a lot better. The MRI revealed that it was in fact a herniated disc (L3/L4). Quite large according to my doctor here, you can see the snapshot I took of the MRI. However the doctors here have told me that even a case like this, given my current mobility, that they will self-resolve usually within a six to 12 week time frame. So, I just have to continue resting and following my physical therapy regimen, which i am. So we will see.

I am using Microsoft Dictation for this, and it appears to be working really well. I really don't see the point in using a special software such as Nuance which is really quite expensive.

I have been proceeding slowly with the personal knowledge management, as well as looking into artificial intelligence. The explosion of these kinds of products has been really quite something. Now obviously, it cannot write my blog. However, this time I am going to use it to see if I can rewrite the blog as I have dictated it to see if it can make any improvements. At the time of this dictation, I haven't really decided on which API package I'm going to use however I will, and I will detail it below in the blog.

I have to admit that waiting for the passport is a little stressful. I knew what it was going be like when I got here, but the reality has been hitting me a little bit lately. It is simply not getting any feedback. Especially now that my back has improved as much as it has (I would say I have seen about a 60% improvement to date). I am actually able to get up and move around very easily, I can sit at my desk for reasonable periods of time working on my computer, and I have no problem going out to eat.

But there is no doubt that it is still weak. I can tell immediately when I have walked a little bit farther than I should have, which currently is only about four to five blocks. However, I'm walking in a relatively balanced fashion, I can feel a weakness and instability in my right side, especially the hip, and i still have occasional periods where i get shooting pains down my leg to the foot. They are getting less frequent.

 Well, another shock from the world banking system. Out of nowhere my debit card with my local Argentinian bank stopped working on Friday. I checked online, there was still money, there was no warning e-mail from anybody. I went to the bank thinking that it would be something relatively easy to fix and I was informed without a great deal of ceremony that they had closed my accounts. Unfortunately, which probably depressed me even more, I couldn't really understand what they were telling me. I suspect it had something to do with the form that I submitted a couple of months ago about the source of my funds that I was wire transferring to the bank. Now, they let me withdraw all of my remaining funds immediately. But the very fact that they did this, and with no warning whatsoever, made me feel like a criminal. And I was having a miniature panic attack right there in the bank. How dare they do something like that?! It's not like the quantity of funds that I am transferring, a few thousand dollars here and there, can be in any way related to something nefarious. But again, there is no one you can talk to. This decision is never made in the branch itself. It is made by some organization or department quite far distant, with whom it is impossible to speak in any manner whatsoever. F*ck them!

I am writing this just after having gotten home. I am trying to maintain my cool, but it is depressing. I don't fit into any nice convenient box for anybody. And trying to wrestle with these horse fornicators (and that is an insult to horses) is frustratingly futile.

So now for my remaining time in Argentina, I have to budget myself because I have no way to get money into the country anymore. Western Union, as you may know from earlier blog posts, has blocked me, again for no reason that they will tell me. I am not exactly desperate for cash right at the moment, but I am grievously offended that these sons of bitches who have imposed all of these regulations on the financial community have affected me to such a great degree.

And please! I am aware of all of the things that they claim they are trying to prevent, i.e. drug trafficking, human trafficking, money laundering, etcetera. I truly don't care! When one is affected by a false positive simply because one doesn't fit some algorithm, that is something for which these people should be hauled out into the street and just put down for implementing. And I seriously doubt that they are having a huge effect on the criminals. Criminals, by definition, will just turn to other (illegal) ways to move their money around.

I apologize for my rant here. Perhaps it is not the best idea in the world to write directly after having experienced something like this. And, as I just quoted to somebody the other day “ It is not the event that affects you as much as your reaction to the event”. However, writing this rant has helped me process it. It really did demoralize me a little bit to have an event like this come out of nowhere and affect me in such a grievous way, without my having any power over it.

Having said that, I need to get a grip, and just continue on with my life. Everything that I have been doing with the other passports and languages and everything, is to allow me independence as much as possible from these kinds of organizations. And I can do no more than I am doing currently.

I have finally started working on the Internet marketing and Internet business books that I got for myself. I am realizing that one of the reasons that I have hesitated so long to read these books, is that the type of salesmanship that they talk about in these books has always been something that I have avoided quite rigorously. However, I am trying to work through the books, because they do in fact have a lot of very useful information. I will try to do brief reviews of them in the next blog post.

I am planning to go to Ushuaia this weekend, in Tierra Del Fuego. Just for two or three days. I don't have much of a bucket list, but I felt it would be silly to be in Argentina and miss going down to the far southern point to see the jumping off point for all of the Antarctic expeditions.

My next blog post will be about that trip.

I am planning to send my blog subscribers a survey. If this is something that would bother you please let me know, but unless I get a great deal of negative feedback I am going to send out the survey in the next month or so because I am very interested in who my readership actually is. I would very much appreciate you responding to the survey. 😊

And that is all for the moment from Buenos Aires. Although I did forget to mention that my laundry got stolen from the laundry shop the other day. It was apparently a very unusual event according to the people that ran the laundry but thinking about it, I think I know exactly what happened. I had a pajama top from Qatar airlines, and I got it in 2022. It is just a very light sleepwear jersey, but it said Qatar 2022 in huge burgundy letters on a gray background. And I think it was sitting on top of the laundry bag and some passerby went “Oh my God a World Cup jersey I want that”. I get a chuckle out of thinking of the look on their face when they realize it is just a piece of cheap sleepwear 😊.

 And … last item. I tried re-writing this blog post using Quillbot, Chimp Rewriter and Rytr.me. I was singularly unimpressed by the quality of what these AI sites produced. Full disclosure - I did not spend hours trying to tweak the output. I may be too demanding or too egotistical but I actually preferred my writing style. I haven’t given up yet. I have my two books, the one on hotel construction and the one about my life as an ex-pat. I really need to get those in shape to publish and I might be able to use one of these to do the heavy lifting for initial editing. I’ll see. But first impressions were not that great.