Stuff

Some things are easier to cancel than others. In the spirit of public service, here’s the list:

CFE: Electricity. You can read the metre and they’ll tell you how much you owe, however you can’t pay it until the next bill comes along unless you want to stop the service completely.

Megacable: Basic cable is easy to cancel, you have to do it in person at one of the outlets and you just pay the percentage of the unbilled month. A day or two later they disconnect you and you never have to suffer The American Network or Holy Channel 22 again.

Gas: Zeta gas, since there seems to be no gas pipes to anyone’s house in Gwod you just fill your tank to whatever level it was at when you arrived. It’s probably for the best given that entire streets have blown up in the past that were meant to only be water drains… Minimum order for a tanque estacionario 300 pesos.

SIAPA: Water. Easy, bless them. You go to your nearest office with the metre reading and pay it and you’re done. They’re just happy to be paid at all it seems, as half their advertising campaign right now starts “Are you one of those people who don’t pay for their water?” And has a fresh faced young lad with an admonishing stare saying “Qué poca…” which means You´ve got some nerve, more or less.

TELMEX: Phone and interweb. This is a heady mixture of going to offices and fighting to not get disconnected from their labyrinthine phone menus. They´re split into different corporate sections, each with a different phone number, “Your call is important to us” muzak and wildly varying degrees of professionalism. Removing extra phone services was easy enough, just a question of 7 menus and a 10 minute wait on the phone, but to cancel the interweb tubes they gave me another number which didn´t even get answered when I rang the first 10 times. Then I finally got through to a human, then he said “un segundo” and disappeared for 20 minutes and I got cut off. All the conversations start badly when they ask you for your name and I have to spell out Gwyn and explain my lack of a 2nd surname… Anyroad, I could go on, but basically you have to take the complimentary modem to the Telmex office with a “victory” code that you earn if you win your phone battles and then they´ll cancel it. Sisyphean, I tells you.

Because of the aforementioned trials today we didn´t make it to Tequila, which is a shame but it would have been a long day…

Bit tired now, in 4.5 hours I´m making sure powerpoints work… saludos!

… ever since visiting Aranza´s house in a street named after a salmon

Sita is at pains to point out that she liked the song before I did. And therefore wins or something.

Ever wondered how people avoid slowly cooking themselves to death while dressed as Dr. Simi or, in this case, ¿¡Barney!? (from Farmacia Generi-K in Tonalá) what with Mexico´s high temperatures?

Today I can reveal all with this AgaveWeb exclusive aerial shot…

So today we went to get an 8 piece dining set of ceramics from Tonala, just to give them one more thing to inspect as we cross the state lines on Monday. Lovely they are. Almost as good as the Provencale ones from a couple of years ago. I might have to leave my guitar behind to fit them all in the car. We won´t know till Sunday though.

Also, the Sauza family granted us a last minute interview and so we´re off to Tequila for the last time tomorrow afternoon before our last meal for a good while in La Matera and then other stuff.

Still to sell on the furniture front: 2 x computer desks, 2 x chairs, 1 kitchen cabinet, 1 folding table and kitchen bits and pieces. Sunday is going to be hectic. And tomorrow. And Saturday. And not to mention Monday…

I can´t post without mentioning Monday´s entertainment, as you´ll see in the post below we were expecting a quietish meal with our Flickr friends, we got there and all was calm then one by one the patio filled up with familiar faces dressed as angels, devils, kings, shepherds, and er mermaids… I didn´t know what the merry hell was going on for a good few minutes. It turns out they´d all got together and planned a Pastorela, a nativity play crossed with a Christmas panto in our honour. It was hilarious and such an unexpected and lovely send off. My appreciation for the peeps in this good town knows no bounds. I promised not to make the photos too public, but if you´re not in my Flickr contacts shout out and I´ll email you the link, and if you are a contact, then click away hence.

We´ve really been spoilt for friends here in Guadalajara, more than anywhere I´ve ever lived and I sincerely hope we can return the favour wherever we find ourselves next.

Righty, we´re off for tacos then down the pub cantina.

No news from Colorado yet, for the record.

Been well busy. As of this very minute, here are our plans…

Tonight: Flickreros Tapatíos Despedida round Aranza´s
Tuesday: Photography course, last day… Presentation
Wednesday: R&R, packing, goodbying
Thursday: Packing, Down the pub. To be decided.
Friday: Cancelling internet, cable, phone, water, gas. Paying bills, Behrnard´s arrival at Amour Fou
Saturday: SIT 2007, drinks at Famosos Equipales
Sunday: Packing, furniture distributing, handing over keys, final quiet despedida at Chop on Av. Mexico around 8pm.
Monday: Hit the road, probably Culiacan, possibly further
Tuesday: Nogales and beyond… Immigration fun.
Wednesday: Arrive in L.A. Reunion with la familia (+ Atticus)
Thursday: Unpacking, packing, shopping…
From this point on things get vaguer:
Fridayish: L.A. fun
Saturday: L.A. to Oakland
Sunday: Unpacking, getting Sita installed in her temporary office
Monday: Buy a new computer which works (expect a lot of blog silence in the interim)
Tuesday: Packing for England
Wednesday: Leave for UK from SF.
Thursday: Arrive in UK, bus it to Taunton…

3ish weeks of catching up with lovely peeps in Taunton + Bristol + (possibly) London
Back to the States. Immigration fun.
New Year´s Eve and all that…
Find job / set up business. Take it as it comes.

There´s still furniture up for grabs, and also some new satisfied customers pix. Tell your friends!

Hugo and Pati finally kindly took Monica and Daniel´s beautiful banana painting off our hands, and some other stuff.

…

and now I´m a little tired.

The picture accompanying this article from yesterday´s Mural made me Laugh Out Loud…

They were caught stealing people´s credit card details and pins with a laptop and card reading thing. According to the last line they also moonlight as exotic dancers. Check your bank statements if you´ve been to a “Teibol” in Michocan lately 😉

Looks like I forgot to mention Sunday´s Flickr Photography tour. There were 20 of us and it all started wonderfully then from blue skies the clouds appeared and drenched us. Even the squirrels and turtles made themselves scarce. Other parts of the city got hail mind so we got off lightly. We were all in the same boat though so afterwards it made for good story telling in Tortas Toño, Providencia´s fresa torta ahogada emporium, and finally los Famosos Equipales.

More pix here.

I didn´t end up making it to the concert last night, it was cold and I´d been standing for hours already listening to a presentation on the Sony Alpha camera, which looks good for an entry level camera. Instead I bought cakes and we opened a fine, fine bottle of wine from Meg and Matt (Thanks M&M!) that we´d be saving to celebrate Sita putting another chapter of her dissertation to bed. Also played a bit of scrabble cos that´s what you do when the nights draw in…

I picked up the car this morning and it´s running like a charm, all ready to deal with the thousands of speed bumps that lie between Guadalajara and San Francisco…

Ah well, Thanksgiving tomorrow courtesy of Victor and Jana. I´m on spuds. Expect a photo or two. All the best y hasta pronto!

…but then at the last minute I got an email from Karla from Laboratorios Julio inviting me along to some kind of Sony camera promo thing at the same time, so that´s where I´m off in a minute. I´m also popping by a place that transfers LPs to CDs and afterwards, probably hitting a concert in aid of the Tabasco peeps who are going through a living hell right now after the floods. Them Plastiko folks are going to be there, and since I know the words to one of their songs it´ll be worth a go.

Yesterday was a national holiday, to do with revolutions and the like. So among other things I took advantage of the relatively carless streets to cruise around on a friends bike, went to McDonalds to fully engage in the essential mexicanness of the day and then, as atonement, went to see Fraude in the cinema with young Sita. A documentary all about how Lopez Obrador was robbed. Although there was an obvious bias it was still compulsive viewing and highlights just goes to show that it´s not just the gringos who know how to rig elections. Then we got interviewed by some internet radio-podcast peeps afterwards. Sita shone, and I think I said something intelligible, but it was a long day. I´ll keep an ear out for in the interweb.

Took the car in to be serviced today before the off. It´s going to cost a fair bit to fix all the little things apparently. Anyroad, got to go. Help finance the trip with our for sale page…

Sita sent me this link about an attempt to come up with a slogan or motto for the UK…

Here´s what I blogged at my temporary home, gwynunlimited.com last week… More posting to come.

So on Monday I logged in to my agaveweb site to write an entry on what I´d had for breakfast the day before and instead of the usual blue tones of the admin panel I got an assault on the eyes of video popups, paid links and all kinds of other obnoxious nonsense. “This domain expired on the 10th of November, to renew click here” I got a sinking feeling right away. Anyroad, basically it is a lot of hassle switching domain hosting companies and I´m still not sure it´s all going to be okay…

On the other hand, watching all my “work” from the last 3 years or more disappear from the internet is reassuring as even the waybackmachine couldn´t show my site. So if I ever need to delete all traces of me, it´s easier than I thought. Meanwhile, hopefully it´ll be back up by tomorrow.

So without my blog to help me, let´s see if I can piece together the events of the last week…

Monday: Phonecalls, emails, skypage, panic, a jaunt round the parque metropolitano and a fine chicken soup made by su servidor. Also watched La Reina de la Noche, all about Lucha Reyes. It was a bit too slow moving for my tastes. One of the most theatrical films I´ve seen in a while. In that there were probably 3 sets, max.

Tuesday: I went to the cabañas to hand in my photos for their postcard competition, outside there were hundreds of kids from all over mexico dressed up in their local garb, which was colourful. Then round Amour Fou´s to check they survived the weekend, then me Contemporary photography seminar and afterwards beers in el Fenix with some of the peeps from the seminar. Sita took advantage of the occasion to collect 6 interviews for her consumers of tequila chapter. Then home. And more soup.

Wednesday: Tequila, to arrange to interview some of the Sauza family and we also managed to ambush some folks from queretaro in a bar to interview them for the aforementioned chapter too.

Thursday: Finishing touches to the Belgian shopping centre site, adding all the German text, which messed up the design due to every word having 90 syllables and needed sorting. We went along for the SIT2007 press conference, but due to some other event happening there were hardly any reporters so it fell to me to film and photo the event at the last minute.

I got a bottle of me favourite tequila for my troubles though (Pueblo Viejo Reposado). Filming was the easy bit, since my computer gave up the ghost in a spectacular fashion, so I tried to install the editing software on Sita´s comp and managed to crash it and have to take it to the laptop hostpital down the road. For about 4 hours Sita harboured murderous thoughts since I might have lost her 15 audio interviews and 2 weeks´ work on her dissertation. Turned out okay in the end though. Thank Mayahuel. Ana stepped in to lend us another laptop and a desktop in the interim. It´s been a bad week on the tech front.

Yesterday: Starbucks. Though that´ll probably be the last time I go there since a large part of the reason for going there was because they had all the local papers for free. Now instead of a free selection, you have to buy El Mural. Which is a fine paper, but I like reading several. So I did the sudoku then went to Amour Fou to pick up their state-of-the-art laptop to have a play and then explain how to do stuff on it. that´ll be today. In the evening, Savora with Victor and Jana, and then round their´s along with Jose to put the world to rights and hear about José´s tribulations running the school while his mum´s been away travelling.

Today there´s lucha libre outside, so hopefully I´ll be there with me camera.

Righty, chances are this won´t be read by many folks so here´s hoping agaveweb is back in my hands by tomorrow. If not, it´ll have to be plan B. And I don´t know what plan B is yet.

Seems this bookr thing will slow your computer to a crawl if given half a chance, click the more link if you are rightly proud of your computer´s capabilities… Read More “Testing Bookr”

…but I’m filling me time. I’m trying to reign in the scrabble, boggle and moviegoing and just do stuff i won’t be able to do in a couple of months, like wandering round soaking up the mexicanidad with me camera(s).

On Tuesday Sita came back from the States, Colorado Springs sounds like a nice neck of the woods, fingers crossed and all that. I had me photography class and then we went to CosCafe. On Wednesday I went to the Mercado de Abastos and Jose came round in the evening. Yesterday i caught up with Boxer at his hamburger stand and then went to take some photos of the Hospicio Cabañas for a postcard competition they´ve got going, then a few beers in La Fuente and catching up with Javier. Time is flying by at a dizzying pace. Tomorrow Fernando´s grilling for us round his house…

Ooh, and i was made an “officer” for Ros´s Facebook group “You know you´re from Somerset when…” . My tagline: Bringing the sombrero to the South West…

If things are quiet at this blog, might I suggest a visit to me photoblog, which I´m still managing to update more or less daily.