You know you have officially registered yourself as a foreign resident when you start receiving SPAM mail from your home country. I actually got a solicitation to subscribe to The Economist, by mail. I used to get tons of this stuff when I was in college, I assume, because our addresses could be accessed online by automated programs, but I had not gotten anything since I moved down here more than three years ago, until now. I wonder how they got a hold of it. Is it really worth sending unsolicited mail this far? I have a friend who's mother used to subscribe to magazines using strange spellings of her daughter's name, just so she could track what companies were selling their info. Will I start getting credit card solicitations now? What about Pizza hut coupons? I could really go for some cheap Subway....

So they caught the SPAM king, or one of them anyway. And, in fact, my spam level is much much lower than it ever has been since college. I used to get at least 25 a day in my account I have had since 1998. I even went so far as to open another account because the spam was so bad that my inbox would fill up if I didn't check it 20 times a day. And now it has dropped off to about 2 or 3 a day. That's a pretty good track I think.