Stuff

Daniel can’t get enough of the Mexican handicrafts…

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Breakfast in El Colibrí, once again molletes… They’re bread rolls cut in half with cheese and frijoles on ’em with the option of salsa mexicana and chorizo. José went for some kind of egg based thing as you can see. Then he went to work and I went to complete the orders received for artesania from Tlaquepaque.

You’ve two options if you’re after Mexican arts and crafts, one is go to Tonalá right on the outskirts of town where everything’s made and there’s lots of cheap shops selling less than perfect stuff, or Tlaquepaque which had its centre recently renovated and is awash with pricey boutiques. I went to t-paque because there’s a bit more to photograph, involves less walking, is slightly closer to the centre and also has a tequila shop where I knew I could get Sita’s 7 Leguas Blanco. I got some jewellery, and something that conformed to Monica’s request for “something metal you can put on the wall”.

I stopped by at la Mata Tinta, a cybercafe/restaurant run by a Scottish bloke (and his wife) who I met last year. He seemed to be thriving, getting the place ready for the forthcoming rainy season. I also took a taxi to the DIF (social security place) to catch up with a mate of mine from my photojournalism course. Nice to see him too and discover a different part of T-Paque, I couldn’t wander much because now it was getting to be the hottest part of the day and I was carrying me camera and lenses and awkwardly shaped wall hangings.

The taxi from Tonala to the centre took forever due to the construction of the Macrobus (or was it macrocamion) that’s causing delays all along the Calzada de Independencia built ready for the Panamerican Games in a few years time. Luckily the taxista had given me a price rather than have the metre running. I still got out of the taxi half a mile before my destination partly because of the heat, partly the traffic, but mainly because he’d started telling me jokes to pass the time… (¿Cuántos chinos hay en China? Ninguno, ¡puros lacios! Don’t even ask for a translation…)

So I checked to see if Anel and Claus were about at Amour Fou, sure enough they were. AF has now closed business but it’s still as hospitable as ever. We went for a swift pint in La Cava and then the plan was to head out to the middle of nowhere to see Aldo’s band plays some covers at the offices of Hewlett Packard, instead everyone’s plans changed and we met up with Jose, Javier, Hugo and co at Los Famosos Equipales and after that to a nearby fiesta on a roof.

And thus was last Friday. Good times. I’m having issues with uploading to Flickr with tags and suchlike, but here’s some of the set of Dia 3.

Sita’s birthday dinner last night was great btw. Shall put a few photos up soon. Thanks for the wellwishing

So I woke up on Javier’s sofa, he’d already made it to work and I had a wander round the Seattle area of Zapopan, it’s all huge mansions and pebbled roads. Gorgeous in the early morning light, then I ambled round the centre of Zapopan, I only had my little camera with me, so you’ll be spared more fisheye photos for now. Saw a chameleon car or two and also snapped a photo of a sign saying something like Beer for the same price as a bus ticket and such and such restaurant, established bloody ages ago… did a bit of email checking and shopping and then met up with Javier again for a torta ahogada near CEPE.

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I also made it back to our old house in calle Garibaldi, now completely refurbished/painted and the home of Juanita and her estetica. Me agave plants weren’t there any more and the garden looks a lot more Zen without the schipperke landing pad… I nipped into Waldo’s mart (everything for a dollar or 12ish pesos) and got some of their surprisingly good Polish dark chocolate for old times sake. Juan de Bonafont was even in the neighbourhood and greeted me with “Y dónde está el Atticus?” (so where´s Atticus?” which was brilliant. I said hello in the corner shop too just for good measure. The old barrio looked good.

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I had a quick siesta, went for a few tacos (chorizo was all they had cos it was early) then ambled to the cafe Fenix in front of the expiatorio where I’d announced I’d be to the Flickr folks. Many were already there when I arrived so I had a really warm greeting and passed out a few pressies and other requests to the crowds. It was great to see everyone again, there were also some peeps I didn’t expect to see from Flickr and elsewhere so though there was no official count of the numbers I had the rockstar treatment. Fantastic it was. Muchas gracias to all of you who made it. It was one of the many highlights of the week for me. And if you promised to visit us in Portland, we hope you’ll make it 😀

After the flickreunion I went back to Abuela desde Guanatos’s house with her and Fabian and had wine on the roof looking over the cityscape from the 5th floor, and listened to some esoteric records from the collection. A very nice way to end the day all round.

Here’s the link to Day two’s set on Flickr since putting them all in here ruins Flash‘s day.

It’s Sita’s birthday today and so I shall acquiesce to her request:

Personal Message
could you post this on your site?

They’re all as bad as each other if you ask me, but at least Obama can roll his Rs convincingly.

I nudged Josh and Liz in the direction of kittywigs the other day. Josh just alerted me to this, arguably better, site, in an email entitled “To Hell with kittywigs”. You’ll visit for the photos of cats dressed up, but you’ll stay for the brilliant Engrish:

It is spring new work! They are frog transformation goods!

Do you also attach to a cat and do hair? It is the costume play of a masterpiece “Anne of Green Gables”!

Cats to become a rabbit should gather immediately now here. This is the hat and shawl for disguising oneself.

You’ll probably have to wash them when they get dirty though in coleslaw.

Hover your mouse over the above image to see Elias‘s beautiful watercolour rendering of my butterfly pic. And if you’re feeling brave, click through and leave a comment in Spanish 😉

I wish I could draw.

I’m chuffed when I score over 400 in a scrabble game. In this game the tile fairy came up trumps and I got zincs on a triple with the z on a double letter netting me 110 odd, then a couple of bingos. My tiles are blue… Final score: 504

Dubious words include: goral, maes, skaw and ala, but they’re all valid.

This blog’s been a bit abandoned of late more due to an overload of work and little time to update it but in brief, saw Carrie Fisher’s show Wishful Drinking last Thursday. I hope to get round to a review. Not impressed would be the gist of it, but at least she put on the Danish pastry wig and recited the Help me Obi Wan Kenobi ‘monologue’… Almost finished Life on Mars series II and am looking forward to Ashes to Ashes. We’re off to Portland for a bit and have found a dog/housesitter. Yahoo!’s on and off… And some new sites to show off coming soon. Hasta pronto!

Read More “Your BBC Licence fees at work…”

While you’re waiting for something worth reading in these pages, have a stare at this…

My latest favourite song:

I don’t know if it’s a cover, a single or anything, but it’s catchy and fun. Fair play to ’em.

Other news in brief, Friday was tequila tasting, Saturday wine tasting, today 2nd hand camera lense testing & catching up with a mate from GDL. In between all that I’m upgrading blogs to the fancy new 2.5 wordpress platform and getting my photoblog off the ground again with a different taxonomy and some ajaxy goodness. Shall announce it soon enough. Back to Y! mañana, but I’ve found a few shortcuts to get there and back quicker…

And it has some very fancy Flash gallery options. Think I’ll stick to Flickr and Picasa locally though.

Alameda, CA

Early stages yet though, but it could be very hand if you need to quickly shop something on a friend’s computer.

Quick post before the weekend… a lot of readers of this blog probably already know Scott and Becky. If you’ve found the time to check up on my latest posts over here, you may also wish to spend time over Scott’s site, Wigleaf.com which is rapidly becoming the place to publish your microfiction and chameleon car videos.

Happy Easter in a day or two, and have a picture of the blossom from the cherry tree outside in the interim…

Flash recently alerted her readers to the existence of cow magnets. Which I think is delightful. I’m pondering ordering the Bessie Bovine explains all educational package (ages 6 and up)… Nothing worse than Hardware Disease… particularly relevant for Michael Eavis and his surfeit of tent pegs apparently.

So yesterday we wandered over to Berkeley Marina, a place I’d been before back in the dark old days as a NGO program manager for various conferences. It was nice to reclaim it as a site for walking and photography rather than learning about sustainability and human resources. We wandered along the lengthy pier and then had a Flip This House marathon evening with the remains of Meg’s surplus wine from the night before.

This morning we helped shift a few boxes for T’s move-in over in Oakland and discovered the delights of Zachary’s pizza and I had my first ever go on a Nintendo Wii. This afternoon, we’ll probably get out to enjoy the sunshine somewhere local and stockpile vitamin D for the deskbound coming week.

In Taunton’s local rag, The Gazette, there’s a first for local small-town journalism. At the time of writing, they managed to publish a headline for an Easter Extravaganza without resorting to spelling it Eggstravaganza. Which I think is laudable and without precedent. Maybe they’re moving upmarket or have just hired a new staff writer…

Sita bumped her foot in the middle of the night somehow and wasn´t up for driving to SCruz, so I chauffeured. Here´s a 3 shot panostitch of the redwoods. Click the pic for different sizes. I´m considering printing this poster-sized.

Yeah, this is an advert for Microsoft, but it’s funny and stars Amy Sedaris…

Office 2007 is a pretty good product too…

This photo still looks a little odd to me, having learnt to drive on the right side of the car… Also, please note the cleanliness of his fur after a visit to his usual L.A. stylist.

Made it back in from LA a couple of hours ago. Lovely to see the in-laws as always. Also on the way down all the thousands of acres of fruit trees (cherries? apricots? peaches? ) were in blossom and it was stunning. 2 days later and there was less of it, but Sita was driving so I could wave my camera at them. The less blurred ones are over at Flickr.

Also I liked the art display on our traditional visit to the 99 cents store,

Gursky’s photo there sold for $3.3 million a few years ago.