A good day for it

Costa Rica doesn't feel like a third world country for the most part, but it is most assuredly still a developing country.

But I have to give them a lot of credit in some areas. Yes, our utilities are interrupted more often than we're used to in the United States. Yes, the infrastructure in general is having trouble keeping up with the march of progress. There are too many cars for our roads, insufficient telephone lines for our population, etc.

Yes, there is waste and inefficiency and red tape on a grand scale but, sometimes, you do get a glimmer of actual logic and forethought in the way things are addressed.

Easter Week is a major holiday here, and almost everything is closed from Wednesday on. Very few businesses are operating, and most people are off on vacation somewhere.

It's actually an excellent time to modify the national phone system.

Starting today - and it has, indeed, started today - we have eight-digit phone numbers instead of seven. All land lines have an extra "2" tacked on to the beginning, and all cell phone lines have an extra "8".

Very few businesses will lose calls because of this, because most people are on vacation and calling each other instead of their offices. And there are still four whole days of vacation for people to discover, remember, and get used to the change. And to update the address books in their cell phones - a non-trivial task, given the size of a cell phone's memory nowadays. Ask me how I know.

And let us not forget the updating of the web sites. I'm kind of proud of myself for remembering that one.