…about whether the the snap.com preview things currently popping up all over the intertubes are a good or bad thing. Here at agaveweb we value your opinion, cherish your patronage and are forever buggering around trying to make reading this rubbish less painful. Please be so good as to click either the Polls tab above or THIS HERE LINK that says POLLS! in block capitals and make your feelings known. Swift action will be taken according to the results. Don’t be intimidated by the 100% “marvellous” results. Cos that was me checking the system worked.
One vote per IP address now and enjoy the AJAXAJAX. Thanks in advance for your valuable feedback or “retroalimentación” in dubious Spanish.
My Fortress of Solitude
Here’s a pic of where I’m blogging from these days. Just decorated it with some prints from around these fair shores and a Big Lebowski poster (or “Identidad Peligrosa”) from Amour Fou your friendly neighbourhood video rental shop. 20 pesos no less.
We’re back from the land of the unpronouncable names and Nahuatl for “the place of the fishermen”. Try navigating around with names like Tzintzuntzan and Ihuatzio. Very good scrabble scores all round. It’s an incredibly beautiful area, which I won’t attempt to describe I’ll let the photos do the painting of thousands of words. Suffice to say it’s an unmissable part of the United States of Mexico abundant in flora, fauna, cuisine and even lightning and rainbows. Here’s the Flickr photo set of the Michoacán pix and here’s some of me faves:
In other news, i just noticed that me dad done gone and went and gotten himself a blog.
Via b3ta: They’ve remade the “I’m a PC” Mac adverts with Mitchell and Webb for the UK audience. Some are word for word versions of the US ones. Some aren’t… Also here’s Biff out of Back to the Future singing all the questions he’s asked.
Anyroad, we’re off to the hills today along with most of the population of Gwod who are having their puente weekend. As ever, more photos than you can shake a stick at on Monday/Tuesday. A bientot…
Monica had to go back to LA yesterday to check on her mum who took a turn for the worse with her Lupus. Hopefully things’ll stablise/improve a fair bit and Monica can come back in a couple of weeks.
My favourite searches ending up at Agaveweb for Jan 2007:
“gate.com sucks” – have to agree “safeway coinmaster” – perennial favourite “take away restaurants in bristol” – ¿? “roggy mcgee” – Sita’s cousin’s dog “para abrir un restaurante que necesito ademas de las sillas” (To open a restaurant, what do I need? other than the chairs…”) Good luck, mate. Tables for one thing. “como superar los miedos a la oscuridad” (How to overcome fear of the dark). That one probably went to Mi vida regida por el ridiculo though, what with the theme of darkness, fear, darkness, fear… I’d recommend changing the bulbs to increasingly low wattage over a period of months and starting a diet rich in beta-carotene post haste.
Ever eager to boost the number of pueblos mágicos we’ve visited, we’re off to Patzcuaro this weekend. Allegedly about 3 hours away and “hidden high in the mountains of Michoacán” if Wikipedia’s to be believed. It’s a bank holiday on Monday… Día de la Constitución or somesuch.. Jana and Victor know a grand place to stay so there’ll be six of us living it up there. Good times…
The weather here’s taken a turn for the nippy. It even rained yesterday. Not part of the plan at all. Anyroad, today the idea today is get some lesson planning done for tomorrow and maybe go to the torture exhibition if it’s still on.
Also I’m enjoying the music of this young lady found via Pat’s blog in Providencia, Guanatos, Jalisco, Mexico.
Have a photo of Las Cabaas in central Gwod. Used to be a hospice, y’know…
And this one reminds me of coming to the states and getting looks for not clearing up my table after eating in fast food establishments. Good to be reminded I’m not the only one. I do now though. Promise. And I was at Starbucks today again. Really must stop doing that especially given the extremely good coffee and wifi available at La Estación de Lulio and Mondo Café or many of these independant coffee shops.
And finally links to some other peeps on the photo tour. We’ve some suspiciously similar photos… de Eliazar, y El Charro Negro,. Can’t believe I missed out on the “abrazos gratis”…
Once again, don’t forget snap.com will show you previews of any links when you hover over them. And if you’re sick of that particular effect, click on the “options” at the top right of the bubble to turn them off completely.
On the photo tour, Eliazar told me a new (to me) Spanish phrase: “Dependiendo del sapo, así es la pedrada“. The stone you throw depends on the size of toad. I’m not confident enough to use this phrase yet, but I think it means something like you have scale what you’re using to the problem you’re facing. There’s no point in throwing a small stone at a large toad, nor a huge stone at a tiny toad… Maybe…?
If anyone reading can give an example, I’d be glad to see it commented. Even the usually excellent WordReference.com draws a blank on this one… A search for sapo gets you:
sapo m Zool toad ♦ LOC: fam (despotricar) echar sapos y culebras, to curse and swear:
Which is another one I’d not heard, “To throw toads and snakes”, to curse and swear… or better still, “effing and blinding”.
Yesterday after Tonalá, dining, decorating and skyping the world we were going to have our subjunctive class, however we ended up watching about a dozen+ back-to-back episodes of Bones on DVD. Strangely apt after driving past the new (¿?) Jaliscan Forensic Science Building on Lazaro Cardenas. CSI Guanatos indeed… Now there’s a series I’d like to watch…
Some of yesterday’s purchases… a metal agave thing, DVD shelf, and shining star things.
we made for Yoda the kitten way back in university in Swansea… I say for Yoda, but it was blatantly for us. Make your own cat TV with a cardboard box, cellophane and a long stick. Nowhere near as cruel as this though, not even close:
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I think March of the Valkyries would be a better soundtrack than “Under the Sea”…
Well, that was a lovely afternoon wandering round the city centre of Guadalajara (Guanatos to its denizens) and meeting likeminded souls. While sipping Coronas con sal y limon in La Fuente El Charro Negro and Eliazar turned up with cameras in tow and we decided to go off snapping shots of the centre, from La Fuente to Las Cabaas to San Juan de Dios. A couple more Flickreros joined us in the cabaas and we watched life unfold in San Juan. I hope we can do it again some time. Thanks to everyone for coming, looking forward to your photos…
Here’re some of my faves:
Then we had dinner at La Divina Tentación, a v. nice restaurant, though we got there at 8 and left at 9:30ish and were the only customers there. Outnumbered 3 to 1 by waiters. Good food and not hugely pricey. Recommended…
Today Sita and I went on a lightning trip to Tonalá where we bought more trinkets to decorate the homestead with, including a copper agave thing (photo one of these days…) which we bargained down from 300 pesos to 200, then came back to a shiny clean house thanks to M & D’s Herculean efforts. And a rug which “really ties the room together…”
Later today: giving a private class to Monica and Daniel on the delights of the subjunctive mood. In Starbucks, for our sins…
I’m quite chuffed indeed with how today’s project went of updating the look of nourishing nutrition, a health and nutrition site for a mate of mine, Jenny, in Santa Cruz, CA. It now features WordPress as a content management system and should be much easier to update. It also looks prettier thanks to basing it on an open source template and adapting it to the corporate branding.
Last night sita and me went to see Children of Men (again). Fantastic film that definitely bears a second viewing thanks to the rich visuals and nuanced acting. And big explosions… Today, hopefully round Anel & Claus’s for some kind of barby. And tomorrow the Flickr meet up. All continues to be well…
according to El Informador which I found via Living Without Borders which in turn I found because they got wind of the fototour and have complimentary things to say about my flickr photostream. Bless em. If you’re surfing in from there for some reason, then yes, in all likelihood it’ll be a Spanish speaking event, but there’s always the universal language of photography and beers. I’d have posted a comment over there but they have comments disabled. Anyroad, all are welcome. It’s nothing too formal and none of us know each other outside of Flickr commentaries and the occasional Flickrmail.
Anyroad, got to go. The home made pizza’s burning. Pizzas No’tardamos aren’t open on Wednesdays…
Blimey, 5+ peeps have signed up for the photo tour on Saturday along with a few maybes. If you’ve happened upon this blog, understand the language and have a camera, come along on Saturday at 1 – 1h30 to La Fuente cantina, Calle Pino Suarez in central Guanatos for a few hours wandering the streets snapping photos and cotorreando. Or post-photography chat in Los Famosos Equipales (Juan Alvarez 710) around 4pm. César, ¿te late?
Yesterday was busyish with translations, webdesignery and the nascent stirrings of an Oklahoma property listings service website that may be in the offing using Open Realty open source software. Also There’s a fancy new element to the site here you may or may not have noticed courtesy of snap.com. If you hover the mouse over links on the page you’ll get a preview popping up that shows you a thumbnail of where the links go. If it says check back later, try again in 15 seconds or so so snap has a chance to screengrab that page. Muy fancy as we say round here…
I’m thinking of organising a Flickr meet up for Tapatian photographers this weekend, it’d be nice to meet some of the folks who share their photos round this way and swap favourite places around Gwod. More news as developments become more solid…
Also, Atticus might well be coming to live in Gwod for a few months, as carry-on luggage in March. Sally and Martin deserve a break from him after 18 months or so…
Spanish phrase of the week: “Ganar la rifa del tigre” to win the tiger raffle. Whereupon it seems like you were very lucky to win the raffle, but the prize is a tiger. Which eats you. So ganar la rifa del tigre means seemingly good luck which turns out to be very bad.
Let’s start by saying there are two roads to Barra de Navidad from Guadalajara. One is “la libre”, 80, which turns off from the toll road to Colima 10 minutes after the Plaza Outlet Mall thing. This is the one we took as the signs said “Barra de Navidad this way” and looked good to me, despite Sita shouting “don’t turn off here!”. Depending on the traffic and the competence of the driver this windy, twisty, convoluted, corkscrew route will take around 6 hours and you’ll see more topes than you should ever have to see in one day (see video in César’s blog). That said, it’s a stunning drive through the mountains. We set off late and arrived after dark, Sita and Monica checked out 5 hotels or so before settling on El Marquez de Santana which was perfect. Clean rooms, close to the beach, cable, secure parking, A/C, friendly staff and a pool for 60 bucks a night… bargain.
We wandered into town and had an outstanding meal at a restaurant whose name I forget, which overlooked the lake. Then continued on to Rocktavios where there was live music and a few tequilas on the beach. Next day was quiet, breakfast on the beach where the (short/long sighted/ blind?) waitress said I looked like Ricardo Arjona of “Pinguinos en la Cama” notoriety. Then shopping for trinkets. Then beers on the beach, pozole, nap, beers, DanceDanceRevolution, meal, wander, bed. Lovely day.
Yesterday we set off in search of Tenacatita to check out the mangrove swamps. It was a lot further along the coast than the bloke at the hotel said, so we had breakfast in Cuastecomate and watched pelicans doing their thing in a gorgeous natural harbour surrounding. We eventaully got to Tenacatita and had more food and then hired ourselves a lancha and lanchista (300 pesos, 16 quid an hour) who showed us round the manglares at high tide. A lovely refreshing ride, with none of the fauna we expected (no crocodiles nor snakes) but a fair few crabs and different coloured garzas (storks, i think)… High tide meant dodging the low hanging mangrove roots but was fun all the way…
After all that, back to Gwod. But not on the 80, we went to Colima on windyish roads, then pretty much 5 star roads from there on taking about 4 hrs all in all.
But not before checking out b3ta’s Friday linksfest. Fave bits: UK cleaning product advert gets the video treatment: Cillit Bang Remix takes me right back to me happy hardcore days. ‘Ard core raver, do ya-self a favour… And the dirt is gone. Class…
Had a nice afternoon/evening yesterday. First round Amour Fou to sort out some computer problems and catch up on Anel and Claus’s teutonic adventures then on to Goa to eat our own weight in curry. A & C gave me a bottle of Shnapps which will doubtless help stave off the non-existant cold round here. Tonight’s festivi-dees include peeps coming round here for pizza and drinks then Bar Calavera at 10:30ish for some Pocilga Beat, choons and ale.
Word of the week: Pocilga. Literally a pigsty. As is this place looks like a pigsty. Unlike my tiny, freshly-painted, new office for example. (give me a few days…)
And I’ve added another room to the mansion here. There used to be a room halfway up the patio stairs that doubled as a storeroom/ cockroach graveyard. I’ve just tidied it, swept it and painted the walls and once I’ve done the ceiling I’ll have a decent little office and should free up some room around the place. What did people do before wireless internet? Just have to get a cordless phone and away we go. Again.
Have another misty photo from yesterday of Tonalá’s latest craze- Follow-you-round-the-room-Jesus . I reckon he’s looking at Daniel to my left, mind. Just as unsettling as one of my favourite YouTube videos.
I cleaned the lens on me camera today before heading off to Tonala, but by the time I got there the lense had steamed up on the inside with the special cleaning fluid. I’ve been googling ways to get rid of it but all the results come up as “DON’T put drops of cleaning fluid directly onto the lens as it can cause condensation inside”, well, I worked that out for myself. How do I get rid of it is the question… I’m hoping that leaving it to bake in the car for a while will sort it out. In the meantime, I’ve got some interesting pix of Tonala with a hazy frame effect… Just hope it won’t be a permanent feature of my photography…
Also, M & D got their wardrobe. Here’s Monica in the back of their car with it:
