Archive for May, 2010
Already spending hundreds for new & original text? Wait! An advanced Unique Content Creation Software can easily save you all that. It seems like you can finally produce hundreds of fresh and unique sentences and paragraphs for your Site at minimal effort. Producing extra sentences, paragraphs, and text-blocks for your Site(s) has never been easier – read more right here.
Quick review
By researching and analyzing a large amount of Websites Unique Content Creation Software automatically collects and stores information that it finds as highly relevant to keyword/keywords that you provide it with. In order to make it easier on you, the program automatically sorts the entire information into categories or to be more specific – into subtopic groups. At this point all you got to do is to easily construct yourself new readable article(s) that can be quickly added to your website(s) or blog(s).
What is in it for us?
Now that we understand how it works, let’s see what is in it for us:
* It enables you to grow your Sites much faster than before.
* Helps on preparing creative headlines.
* Highly effective for those who want to get into the affiliate business.
* No need to spend hundreds anymore while relying on external providers.
* Focusing on specific niche(s) becomes much easier.
Final words
A lot of trouble and frustration is involved with constant development of WebContent; no doubt that Unique Content Creation Software can effectively help you bypass these difficulties at almost zero effort. The best advice would be to try it by yourself and experience how it easily takes any on-line business to the next level. One thing is clear – there are many other great advantages provided by this solution simply because it offers so many important opportunities for webmasters.
Dan Kazinsky
http://www.articlesbase.com/article-marketing-articles/unique-content-creation-software–unbelievable-technique-684340.html
Did you know that “Easy Videos To Site” Tool easily enables you to benefit from one of the most popular and effective marketing techniques on the Web? Webvideos are definitely more effective than plain text, what explains their growing popularity among Website owners. By using an advanced VDO-to-Web converter you can easily add movie files to your WebPages – read more in the following article.
Introduction
“Easy Videos To Site” Tool compresses your videos into another file format called Flash-Video which enables you to display your videos on any Web page/Browser. Before your Webvideo(s) can be displayed on your Webpages you need to add a small html code onto your page(s) and post the files to your Webhosting server. By the way the files created in this process are streaming webvideos – they enable you to start watching them immediately without having to wait for a complete download.
Advantages
Let’s examine some of the important advantages provided by this solution:
* Videomarketing is more viral than plain content marketing.
* Website(s) visitors today respond more to movies than to text.
* Compressing raw movies to 10% or less of their original file size!
* It gives your visitors an important and immediate personal connection with you.
* It enables you to upload your Webvideo(s) to video-sharing sites and attract more visitors.
There are plenty other pluses provided by this technology simply because it opens up various opportunities for almost any of us.
On the bottom line
It is important to know (especially for newbies) that “Easy Videos To Site” Tool installation is quit easy and requires no special technical or professional skills. Now that you understand how it works the best tip would be to test it live so you could truly experience how it can improve the performance of your marketing efforts.
Ben Goldman
http://www.articlesbase.com/video-articles/quoteasy-videos-to-sitequot-tool–the-unbelievable-truth-705489.html
It seems like with Pay Per Click Program you get an amazing opportunity to easily develop successful Pay-Per-Click campaigns. If you ever dreamed of a technique that’ll enable you to anticipate successful p.p.c online-campaigns, then your dreams are about to come through. Read the following article and find out how this technology can help you to dramatically increase your online-income.
Overview
By providing it with a list of keyword(s), Pay Per Click Program automatically finds and stores all relevant PPC-Ads that would have been triggered by that list. From this moment each Ad is being tracked each day – logics says that if it is being advertised for minimum 7-10 days, we can learn that there is a high probability that it is profitable or the advertiser doesn’t know what he/she are doing. Now comes the fun part where you’ll be able to reveal which Keyphrase(s)-ad(s)-landing page(s) combination truly makes profits for that advertiser(s).
What is in it for us?
Let’s quickly examine some of the top benefits provided by this unique method:
* Highly effective for affiliates who focus on multiple markets.
* We can identify and ’spy’ on successful affiliates and merchants.
* Any online-marketer can afford using it with minimal budget.
* No need to be a professional in order to use it.
* Easily identifies the best converting Landing Pages.
Summarizing this article
The main reason that makes it so popular among many online-marketers/affiliates is the fact that Pay Per Click Program requires minimal effort/cost in order to get outstanding results. There are plenty other pluses provided by this special invention, simply because it enables to transform any internet-based business much more productive and profitable. The best advice would be to test it live so you could truly evaluate how it can improve the performance of your webmarketing efforts.
Joel Blumetti
http://www.articlesbase.com/ppc-advertising-articles/pay-per-click-program–the-unbelievable-truth-689351.html
Located in the South West of Britain, Devon, is a big county. The county touches the borders with Cornwall in the west and Dorset and Somerset in the east. Its shore line follows the English Channel in the south and the Bristol Channel in the north. This is the only county in Britain with two separate beach fronts.
Devon, the third in size of the English counties has a population of 1,109,900. The cathedral city of Exeter is the county town and the county has two independent governing authorities, city of Plymouth which has a port and the Torbay urban sprawl of seaside tourist resorts that are added to Devon County Council.
Plymouth is the largest city in Devon. Most of the county has rural background which includes National Park land and density of population is low by British standards. 950 km2 (365 square miles) are covered by Dartmoor.
Britains only natural UNESCO World Heritage Site is situated in the county. Famous as the Jurassic Coast for its geology and geographical features the Dorset and East Devon Coast are also located here. Along side its neighbour Cornwall, Devon is popular as the Cornubian massif.
This geology of both National Parks gives rise to the landscapes of Dartmoor and Exmoor. Devon has many seaside tourist resorts and several historic towns, cities and villages. Its weather is very mild, which attracts large number of tourists and helps in its economy.
The name Devon was kept by the Celtic people, who inhabited the southwestern peninsulas area of Britain at the time when Romans invaded in 50AD. In his 1607 edition of Britannia, William Camden, explained Devon as one part of an ancient and wider area that once contained Cornwall.
There is a dispute over the use of word Devonshire in place of Devon, which means who? and officially it is not recognized by the term Devonshire in these modern times, except for the name of the Dorset Regiment and Devonshire. Another theory that says the shire was added due to a mistake while making the original letters protected for the Duke of Devonshire who was a resident in Derbyshire.
One of the rural counties is a part of the seafront of Torquay, in south Devon at high tide with the problems and advantages that are related to these. In spite of this, the county’s economy is dependant heavily by, Plymouth and Exeter, its two main urban centres.
Like neighboring Cornwall, which lies in the west, Devon has a disadvantage of economically weighed by other parts of southern Britain, because it has seen the decline of several core industries, noted among them are farming, fishing and mining. So consequently, major parts of Devon have succeeded in qualifying for the European Community Objective 2 status, especially around Bideford Bay, Exmoor and the Hartland Point peninsula, which is a little bit cut off from main industrial Britain, due to its poor up keep of road and rail transport links.
Well, there is plenty to digest here about Devon and hopefully has given you food for thought.
Frederick Williams
http://www.articlesbase.com/travel-articles/devon-uk-info-for-tourists-and-visitors-698286.html
Can’t afford hiring a ghostwriter? Don’t have time to develop original content by yourself? Well, Unique Articles Generating Software is definitely a solution you should seriously consider. As a Site owner or a Web promoter you always seek for that precious ‘Internet fuel’ and much of it. Let’s take a quick look and see how this innovative tool can save you hours of extra work.
Short background
Unique Articles Generating Software is based on an advanced internal engine that automatically collects paragraphs and sentences from other Websites that are all highly related to a given keyword or key phrase you enter. What’s next? After collecting the entire data into an embedded database, it starts sorting it into subtopics groups. Now comes the best part where all you got to do is to easily assemble in just few clicks completely new and original article(s) for any purpose.
Main advantages
This solution undoubtedly provides several important advantages:
* Powerful solution for WebMarketers who publish on free Article-Directories.
* It helps on-line businesses to simply attract more visitors from SE.
* Enables you to prepare continuous Newsletters at almost zero effort.
* Helps you to focus your time more on making money rather than on writing.
* Helps on preparing creative headlines.
Conclusion
If we want to summarize the following review we can clearly say that Unique Articles Generating Software easily transforms WebContent development – automatic, exciting, and highly effective. Now that you understand how it works the best tip would be to run it on your systems so you can evaluate the exciting opportunities that it offers. One thing is clear – there are many other advantages provided by this webmarketing assistance tool simply because it is a powerful webmarketing solution that provides so many opportunities for beginner and experienced webmarketers.
Dan Kazinsky
http://www.articlesbase.com/article-marketing-articles/unique-articles-generating-software–unbelievable-technique-684330.html
The 18th arrondissement of northern Paris is located on the Right Bank of the Seine River. Its land area is about 2.3 square miles (a sliver over six square kilometers). The population is one hundred eighty five thousand and the area is home to about seventy thousand jobs.
The distinctive Moulin Rouge (Red Mill or windmill) is the central highlight of this historic district. It is one of the world’s best-known nightclubs or to use the French term, cabaret. The Moulin Rouge was built in 1889 by the owner of the Olympia, Paris’s oldest music hall located in the neighboring ninth district. You can’t miss this building because of the imitation red windmill on the roof. Josephine Baker, Frank Sinatra, Mistinguett, Edith Piaf, and many other famous entertainers regularly played the Moulin Rouge. The story has it that Elvis had a crush on a can-can dancer and never went to Paris without stopping at the Moulin Rouge.
This cabaret’s most unusual star was undoubtedly Joseph Pujol, who performed under the name Le Petomane. His act consisted of “singing” from a rather unexpected body opening. His “songs” included the French National Anthem, La Marseillaise, and an imitation of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. I’m told Sigmund Freud used to catch his act. Believe it or not, for many years Pujol was the highest-paid entertainer in France. A present-day British comedian Mr. Methane dressed like a superhero does the same sort of thing, but to my knowledge has not played the Moulin Rouge.
This historic cabaret, arguably the site where striptease was born, has been immortalized in paintings by Toulouse Lautrec and to a lesser extent by two films nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award, the 1952 version starring Jose Ferrer and Zsa-Zsa Gabor and the 2001 version starring Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman.
Butte Montmartre is a hill about four hundred feet (one hundred thirty meters) high not very much more than a hop, skip, and a jump away from the Moulin Rouge. Its height and natural beauty have attracted religious ceremonies since time immemorial. Montmartre was probably used for druid ceremonies in the distant past. It once hosted a temple to the Roman god of war Mars. Saint Denis, the Bishop of Paris and the patron saint of France, founded a church there before he was martyred in the mid-Third Century. His church, the relatively unknown Saint Pierre de Montmartre, claims to be the founding location of the Jesuit order of priests. You are more likely to visit the hill’s other church, the Basilica du Sacre Coeur (Basilica of the Sacred Heart) described below.
The area itself was the site of the first Paris Commune insurrection in 1870-1871 and its former gypsum mines serve as unmarked tombs for many partisans of this French revolution. The whole affair was pretty bloody and the Archbishop of Paris was one of its many martyrs. When Paris was reconstructed in the Eighteenth Century by Napoleon III and his minion Baron Hausmann, the poor people of Paris were driven out of the city center to Montmartre and other parts of the outskirts.
From the late Nineteenth Century until the end of World War One Montmartre was home to the artists and their milieu. Among those who hung their hats in Montmartre were Salvador Dalí, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, and Vincent van Gogh. The list goes on and on. In later years the artistic center of Paris, and in fact the world, switched from Montmartre to Montparnasse located in the south of Paris. In 1965 in his famous song La Boheme the popular French singer-songwriter Charles Aznavour tells the story of a painter reminiscing about his youth in a Montmartre that has ceased to exist: Je ne reconnais plus/Ni les murs, ni les rues/Qui ont vu ma jeunesse/En haut d’un escalier/Je cherche l’atelier/Dont plus rien ne subsiste/Dans son nouveau decor/Montmartre semble triste/Et les lilas sont morts (’I no longer recognize/Neither the walls nor the streets/That had seen my youth/At the top of a staircase/I look for an atelier/Of which nothing survives/In its new decor/Montmartre seems sad/And the lilacs are dead’).
Montmartre is no longer bohemian. But what is? If you stroll around the Place du Tertre you won’t have any trouble finding artists, some of whom are struggling. Many renowned artists and other cultural figures such as Jacques Offenbach and Francois Truffault are buried in the Cimetiere de Montmartre (Montmartre Cemetery).
In 1873 Paris city council expropriated land at the summit of Montmartre for the construction of the Basilica. The foundation stone was laid in 1875 and the church was opened for services in 1891. The Basilica was only completed in 1914, and formally dedicated after the end of World War I. Go to top of the dome for a spectacular panoramic view of Paris, which lies mostly to the south. The church and its surroundings have often starred in films, most recently the 2001 movie Amelie. You may want to take the funicular (cable-car) to get to the top of the hill.
Among Montmartre’s museums you will find the Musee de Montmartre, the house where the painter Maurice Utrillo lived and worked in a second-floor studio. Several other well-known artists including Pierre-Auguste Renoir lived here. In 1990 his painting Bal au moulin de la Galette, Montmartre featuring local people sold for more than $78 million. You might also want to stop by the Espace Dalí, a museum devoted to the famous Spanish painter Salavdor Dalí. More extensive collections of his work are found in Figueres, Spain and Saint Petersburg, Florida. Another museum is the Musee de l’erotisme in the nearby Pigalle section of the district. Do you need a translation?
When we launched this series we promised you a Paris vineyard. The fifteenth arrondissement in southern Paris also hosts a vineyard. But Montmartre’s vineyard is much more famous. Local intellectuals planted the vineyard in 1934. They chose a northern exposure (is Paris really that hot, temperature wise?) and organized the first grape picking a year after the planting, about three years too early. This ceremony attracted both the President of the French Republic and the Minister of Agriculture. With the exception of the World War II years, every October the grapes are picked and wine is made in the cellar of the Mairie (the local City Hall). Local artists paint labels for the bottles, sold in April at a charity auction. Yet one more reason to visit Paris and Montmartre in the spring.
Of course you don’t want to tour Paris without sampling fine French wine and food. Let me suggest a sample menu: Start with Foie Gras avec Gelee de Viognier (Goose Liver Pate with Viognier Jelly). For your second course savor Chevreau a l’Ail et Herbes Sauvages (Baby Goat with Garlic and Wild Herbs). And as dessert indulge yourself with Granite aux Pommes et Calvados (Apple and Calvados Ice). Your Parisian sommelier (wine steward) will be happy to suggest appropriate wines to accompany each course.
Levi Reiss
http://www.articlesbase.com/travel-articles/i-love-touring-paris-the-historic-eighteenth-arrondissement-719211.html
It is probably the simplest solution that enables you to easily add video(s) onto your Site, that explains why “Video For Flv” Tool is becoming highly popular these days. If you look for a quick way to stream your digital movie(s), you should try this advanced technology. If you search for solutions that’ll enable you to convert your movie to Web format – read the following article.
Getting some basics
Before you can display videos on your site you need an advanced “Video For Flv” Tool that’ll enable you to convert (and compress) those into a special file format called Flash-Video (.FLV). The next step will be adding a very short html code to your targeted page and then uploading the new files onto your Webhost server. This encoding process transforms files into streaming webvideos – they don’t have to be fully downloaded in order to start watching them.
Quick benefits and advantages
The solution described in this article enables us with the following:
* Easily upload training or demo-videos to promote your products or services.
* This Web-marketing solution is a fraction of the cost of TV commercials.
* It helps your visitors feel more comfortable doing business with you online.
* It enables you to upload your Webvideo(s) to video-sharing sites and attract more visitors.
* Videos engage with peoples’ emotions and people purchase based on their emotions.
We could list many other important great advantages provided by this technology simply because it enables you to easily manage this highly effective multimedia technology on your own without being dependant on others.
Conclusions
The reason it is highly effective for home users, SOHOs, and Small Business users is the fact that “Video For Flv” Tool requires minimal effort, administration, and resources. The best advice would be to try it by yourself as this is the best way that truly enables you to experience the advantages mentioned above.
Ben Goldman
http://www.articlesbase.com/video-articles/quotvideo-for-flvquot-tool–the-unbelievable-truth-693362.html
For those who’ve thought about relocating to an island paradise such as the United States Virgin Islands, but have hesitated about leaving the continental U.S. behind, here is some information on just how easy it is to make the move.
Of course, if you have a business that you want to bring to the USVI to take advantage of the Economic Development Council corporate benefits program you are not required to buy any real estate, residential or commercial. You can still qualify for the EDC business program, save taxes on your business profit, lease the commercial or office property you need, and rent a condo or apartment.
Chances are you may well fall in love with the beautiful islands and decide to stay year round. You might also buy residential real estate and rent it out the half a year you are away.
Whatever you choose to do, you have plenty of options. While the large apartment communities of 100+ units or more, with clubhouse, pool, laundry room and perhaps gated entrance, are not to be found in the U.S. Virgin Islands, there are lovely apartments of various sizes and styles in large homes or estates that have been subdivided. You can also find condo communities that range from standard to sumptuous, some right on or near the beach, and many with group activities or public areas.
There is also plenty of commercial property for sale or lease for your business if and when it qualifies for the EDC program.
With the Virgin Island’s crystal blue Caribbean water, its exotic fauna and flora, its pristine white sands and some of the world’s best scuba diving and snorkeling, the lure of the tax savings and corporate benefits through the area’s Economic Development Council are just an added plus to living in a sumptuous wonderland of natural delights.
Whatever you want and enjoy, you can find it here. Whether it is rain forest, mountain trails, sunny beaches, or breathtaking views along majestic bike trails, you can find it in the United States Virgin Islands.
To start your application process for the USVI EDC program and start on the road to corporate benefits and tax savings in the world’s greatest paradise, contact the nearest USVI Economic Development Council office today. They are located in Washington DC, New York City, and on both St. Croix and St. Thomas islands.
Garland Choate
http://www.articlesbase.com/travel-articles/living-and-saving-in-usvi-129356.html
Working with the right “Clips On Players” Tool can make it a lot easier for Webmasters to be able to upload video(s) onto their Site. The most important thing about this technology is that it requires no more than several clicks to convert your digital movie(s). The following quick review describes the latest information about how you can quickly and easily put a movie onto HTML pages.
Quick introduction
This advanced “Clips On Players” Tool encodes and compresses your videos to the popular Flash-Video (.FLV) format which is being used by sites such as YouTube. After processing your file(s) all you’ve got to do is paste a small HTML code to your Webpage and upload the new file(s) onto your hosting Site. This encoding process transforms files into streaming webvideos – they are transmitted to your viewers continuously as they arrive with no need to download them first onto the hard disk.
Quick advantages
Let’s quickly examine what is in it for us:
* Enables you to create complete Web-Videos with a player and controls.
* It enables you to upload your Webvideo(s) to video-sharing sites and attract more visitors.
* No need for any programming skills.
* Enables you to redirect visitors to your newsletter registration page.
* Upload very small file size compared to other similar solutions.
We could list many other important great benefits provided by this advanced tool simply because it isn’t just about file conversions – it is about providing you with a powerful marketing tool.
Bottom line
If you need to display Flash-Videos (.FLV) on your Website, no doubt that “Clips On Players” Tool is something you should seriously consider. At this point the best advice would be to run it on your systems as this is the best way that truly enables you to experience the advantages mentioned above.
Ben Goldman
http://www.articlesbase.com/video-articles/quotclips-on-playersquot-tool–the-unbelievable-truth-693614.html
As millions of baby boomers reach retirement age and U.S. health care costs soar, Mexican nursing home managers expect more American seniors to head south in coming years.
Mexico’s proximity to the USA, low labor costs and warm climate make it attractive, although residents caution that quality of care varies greatly in an industry that is just getting off the ground there.
Here’s more:
After Jean Douglas turned 70, she realized she couldn’t take care of herself anymore. Her knees were giving out, and winters in Bandon, Oregon, were getting harder to bear alone. Douglas was shocked by the high cost and impersonal care at assisted living facilities near her home. After searching the Internet for other options, she joined a small but steadily growing number of Americans who are moving across the border to nursing homes in Mexico, where the sun is bright and the living is cheap.
For $1,300 a month–a quarter of what an average nursing home costs in Oregon–Douglas gets a studio apartment, three meals a day, laundry and cleaning service, and 24-hour care from an attentive staff, many of whom speak English. She wakes up every morning next to a glimmering mountain lake, and the average annual high temperature is a toasty 79 degrees. "It is paradise," says Douglas, 74. "If you need help living or coping, this is the place to be. I don’t know that there is such a thing back (in the USA), and certainly not for this amount of money."
An estimated 40,000 to 80,000 American retirees already live in Mexico, many of them in enclaves such as San Miguel de Allende or the Chapala area, says David Warner, a University of Texas public affairs professor who has studied the phenomenon. There are no reliable data on how many are living in nursing homes, but at least five such facilities are on Lake Chapala.
"You can barely afford to live in the United States anymore," said Harry Kislevitz, 78, of New York City. A stroke victim, he moved to a convalescent home on the lake’s shore two years ago and credits the staff with helping him recover his speech and ability to walk. "Here you see the birds, you smell the air, and it’s delicious," Kislevitz said. "You feel like living."
Many expatriates are Americans or Europeans who retired here years ago and are now becoming more frail. Others are not quite ready for a nursing home but are exploring options such as in-home health care services, which can provide Mexican nurses at a fraction of U.S. prices.
Retirement homes are relatively new in Mexico, where the aging seniors usually live with family. There is little government regulation. Some places have suddenly gone bankrupt, forcing American residents to move. Some Mexican homes have rough edges, such as peeling paint or frayed sofas, that would turn off many Americans.
"I don’t think they’re for everyone," said Thomas Kessler, whose mother suffers from manic depression and lives at a home in Ajijic. "But basically, they’ve kept our family finances from falling off a cliff."
Residents such as Richard Slater say they are happy in Mexico. Slater came to Lake Chapala four years ago and now lives in his own cottage at the Casa de Ancianos, surrounded by purple bougainvillea and pomegranate trees.
He has plenty of room for his two dogs and has a little patio that he shares with three other American residents. He gets 24-hour nursing care and three meals a day, cooked in a homey kitchen and served in a sun-washed dining room. His cottage has a living room, bedroom, kitchenette, bathroom and a walk-in closet.
For this Slater pays $550 a month, less than one-tenth of the going rate back home in Las Vegas. For another $140 a year, he gets full medical coverage from the Mexican government, including all his medicine and insulin for diabetes.
"This would all cost me a fortune in the United States," said Slater, a 65-year-old retired headwaiter.
On a recent afternoon, lunch at the Casa de Ancianos consisted of vegetable soup, beet salad, Spanish rice, baked dogfish stuffed with peppers, garlic bread and a choice of four cakes and two Jell-O salads. Slater’s neighbor doesn’t like Mexican food, so a nursing home employee cooks whatever she wants on a stove beside her bed.
Like many retirees, Slater has satellite television, so he doesn’t miss any American news or programs. When he wants to see a movie or go shopping downtown, the taxi ride is only $2 or $3. Guadalajara, a culturally rich city of four million people, is just 30 miles away.
For medical care, Slater relies on the Mexican Social Security Institute, or IMSS, which runs clinics and hospitals nationwide and allows foreigners to enroll in its program even if they never worked in Mexico or paid taxes to support the system. He recently had gallbladder surgery in an IMSS hospital in Guadalajara, and he paid nothing.
Many of the nursing home employees speak English, and so does Slater’s doctor.
The Casa de Ancianos began accepting foreigners in 2000 as part of an effort to raise extra money, director Marlene Dunham said. It built the cottages especially for the Americans and uses the income received from them to subsidize the costs of the 20 Mexican residents at the home.
The program was so successful that the nursing home has plans for 12 more cottages, a swimming pool, a Jacuzzi and a gazebo with picnic area. The nursing home now advertises on the Internet and through pamphlets distributed in town. Some U.S. companies have also begun investing in assisted living facilities in Mexico, said Larry Minnix, president of the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging, which represents 5,800 nursing homes and related services.
However, Minnix cautioned that lax government regulation poses dangers at smaller homes.
"It’s the same danger you have of going across the border looking for cheap medications," Minnix said. "If you don’t know what you’re getting, and you’re not getting it from people you trust, then you’ve got an accident waiting to happen."
Since many nursing homes are run out of private homes, regulation by state health departments is often spotty. Managers such as Beverly Ward of Casa Nostra and Maura Funes of El Paraiso, both in Ajijic, said that Mexican officials inspect them only once a year, unlike U.S. inspectors, who may visit a home several times a year.
The U.S. Embassy said it had no record of complaints against Mexican nursing homes, but some residents in the Lake Chapala area reported bad experiences at now-defunct homes.
The first home that Jean Douglas lived in after she moved from Oregon was staffed by "gossips and thieves," she said. It went out of business. Irene Chiara of Los Angeles also lived in a home that was shut down by Jalisco state authorities.
"It was filthy, and the food was very bad. It was all made in the microwave," she said.
Some Mexican managers also underestimate the costs and difficulty of running a retirement home. Two hotels turned into assisted living facilities, The Spa in San Miguel de Allende and The Melville in the Pacific Coast city of Mazatlán, recently abandoned the business, their managers said.
"It was very expensive to run it," said Luis Terán, manager of The Melville. Some managers said they were especially selective when admitting foreign residents, to make sure they’ll be able to pay. Medicare, Medicaid, the Department of Veterans Affairs and most U.S. insurance companies will not cover care or medicine as long as patients are outside the USA.
Some American residents said they had doubts about the quality of Mexican medical facilities and would go back to the USA if they became seriously ill. Jim May, 74, a resident of the Casa de Ancianos, said he recently decided to move to Texas to be closer to Veterans Affairs hospitals.
The language barrier can be daunting, and Mexican food can be very different, some residents said.
Some residents said they miss home and find it hard to make friends with Mexican residents. "It’s a very nice place, but it’s lonesome," said Polly Coull, 99, of Seminole, Fla., a resident at Alicia’s Convalescent Nursing Home in Ajijic.
Mexican entrepreneurs are doing their best to prepare for a tide of Americans. In the Baja Peninsula town of Ensenada, the Residencia Lourdes opened in 2003, offering care for patients with Alzheimer’s disease and senile dementia. The towns around Lake Chapala have at least five small retirement homes. Most of them opened in the last five years and house from one to 25 foreigners. The largest, Alicia’s Convalescent Nursing Home, consists of four renovated homes, one of them specializing in stroke victims and another for Alzheimer’s patients. Prices range from $1,000 to $1,500 a month and include everything except medicine and adult diapers. The rooms are outfitted in Mexican style, with murals, hand-carved beds, arched ceilings lined with brick and individual patios.
In other American enclaves, in-home healthcare services have sprung up to serve the retirees. In Rosarito, just south of the U.S. border, INCARE provides nursing aides to retirees starting at $8.33 an hour, less than half the cost of the same service in nearby San Diego.
Developers of independent living facilities for seniors are also beginning to look to Mexico. A Spanish-U.S. venture is building Sensara Vallarta, a 250-unit condominium complex aimed at Americans age 50 and older in the Pacific Coast resort of Puerto Vallarta. And in the northern city of Monterrey, El Legado is marketing itself as a "home resort" for seniors.
Academics and government officials are beginning to take notice. In March, the University of Texas at Austin held a forum for developers, hospital officials, insurance companies and policymakers to discuss health care for retirees in Mexico.
"With the right facilities in place, Mexico could give (American retirees) a better quality of life at a better price than they could find in the United States," says Flavio Olivieri, a member of Tijuana’s Economic Development Council, which is seeking funding from Mexico’s federal government to build more retirement homes, including senior apartments. "We think this could be a very good business as these baby boomers reach retirement age," he says.
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