Mexican plumbing

I may have mentioned we have 4 bathrooms in this here mansion, anyway, last night they were all for nowt cos the water stopped. It was coming in from the street OK, ‘cos the little triangle was turning round on the meter, but the tank on the roof was empty and wouldn’t respond to gentle prodding at midnight. So Jose and I went to inspect the pump, which can’t have been working properly. Jose wrapped a towel around his hand and removed one of its fuses to look at, only giving himself a minor electric shock. I tripped the whole house off and took out the other one… Anyroad, it seemed like one of them was buggered. So I resigned myself to a trip to the Tlapalerias of Santa Teresita to get new fuses this morning. Overnight, somehow the tank’s full up again and that’s with no pump, so either there’s an elaborate fake pump system or there’s enough pressure from the street to fill the tank on the roof, but the water can only flow freely through the pump when it’s turned off completely. Please write your Mexican plumbing tips in the comments, and bear in mind the Spanish for pump is bomba.

As for the plans for yesterday, I got most of them done except agaveweb.com and the advertising. But they’ll happen today, mark my words. One of the highlights was filling in an application form for the job of “Correspondent” at the English school. Among the questions on the sheet:

What primary school did you go to? Its address, the years you were there, and what qualifications did you receive. If Kingston St Mary V.C. Primary school gets any phone calls from Mexico, you’ll know why.

What’s your sister’s name? What does she do? Where does she live? How old is she?

Have you ever belonged to a union?

Do you belong to a sports/ social club?

How old’s your mum?

Attach a recent photo here…

I took a photo of the app sheet, if you don’t believe me. Hopefully they won’t pass it on to the Mexican INS, although I was explicit that my visa was a tourist one and that I just wanted to know my options…

In other news, Ed from Taunton/Bristol/Plymouth (depending when you met him) might be coming over for Xmas. He’s in Belize right now, follow his Latin American travels here.