You turn your back for 10 minutes, then the next thing you know your kitchen and other parts of the house change colour.
We’re in two minds about whether to leave it white or paint the same colour on the door area. Comment if you’ve really nothing better to do…
We went to the opening ceremony of the festival in Tequila yesterday. Click on the picture of Sita and Jayna (sp?) for a slideshow of the highlights. We took the toll road for 89 pesos (9 bucks, 5 quid). The journey there was easy enough- through foothills and fields of agave as the sun was setting. But it’s a steep price for 25 miles of dual carriageway. It’s not like we were going to Wales (How much is the Severn Bridge these days?). Anyroad, we got there and made our way along the route of the procession and found a bar to settle in (El Mesón del Mezcal). Before we knew it we were freebied up with margaritas and chips and salsa while two blokes trundled along the road pausing only to fill their minicanon with gun powder, tamp it down, light the fuse and fire it into the air. An indio beer and a torta ahogada later and the procession arrived, just like Taunton’s carnival, but without a float playing Wurzels hits.
We wandered into the town centre after all the desfile had passed by and drank in the sights. They cut the ribbon on the festival and the P.A. system launched into Tequila. Anyroad, a nice little evening. I missed the turn off for the toll road on the way back so it took an hour or so as I wasn’t up to overtaking the lorry we were stuck behind. Got back to Guad, dropped off Victor & Jayna and went to Rene’s house for beverages, tales of surgical disasters, and light snacks. Got home quite late. But all in all a grand day.
What do you reckon to this?
http://agaveweb.com/menu2.htm
It’ll have some rollover nonsense added at some stage. Like hover over the “contact” sign and a Mexican police car will appear and an alert box will take you to PayPal for 400 pesos…
Me Mum wants to see worms and tequila for some reason…
…in Kingston St. Mary, south west England. Meanwhile in Mexico sunshine as usual… Here’s some photos me dad took. I’m actually a bit jealous, but I’ll get over it. Belated giving of thanks this evening and tequila festival tomorrow in Tequila. I’m driving. Arse.
The latest bell/whistle I’ve added to the blog, just to make it load slower for dial-up users, is a blog map, bottom right. I’m not convinced it’s a useful addition but it can stay there for a week or two to see if there’s a burgeoning blogging scene in Gwod. So far, it’s not looking good. There’s an 18 year old student- Mexico is my body, Chivas (the local football team, not the whisky) is my blood, He tells us. And there’s La Perla’ who’s a graphic designer who likes to go out drinking. And fair play to her.
I had to pinpoint where i lived on a huge scale map so it’s got me living East of Tlaquepaque, which isn’t strictly true. That’ll foil the burglars for a day or two…
Last night Sita, Jose and I went to an Argentinean restaurant, La Matera I think it’s called named after the gourd thing you drink mate out of. Mate wasn’t on the menu however, probably because it’s illegal in most countries. Jose chose the place after a recommendation from his sister about the food there and a colleague at work who recommended the meseras. Anyroad after 30 minutes wait or so, we ordered lomo, medium rare and bugger me if it wasn’t the most delicious piece of meat I’ve ever sunk my teeth into. Melts-in-your-mouth good, on a par with the filet mignon we had in Buenos Aires, and the filete in ‘La I Latina’, Guadalajara. Not only was it delicious, but plentiful too and there’s still some left in the doggy bag in the fridge. This place is only 5 or 6 blocks from the house, whenever I land another job I know where we’re going to celebrate.
Their chips weren’t bad neither…
So plans for day… AgaveWeb, possibly Tonala/Tlaquepaque (It’s market day), and a quiet evening, for tomorrow it’s round some mates’ house for Thanksgiving. Talking of which, happy TG to my american readers. William Burroughs wasn’t a fan, mind. Never was the cheeriest of folks though…
Off to an Argentine restaurant with Don Jose and Sita’s in the gym
Eureka! As in I’ve done it, not found it… Gwyn’s Blog- Self-absorption Central now has an RSS feed so I won’t have to change to a more modern blog engine after all. Thank you to Mensink.nl and hostsave.com for your help along the way.
What’s an RSS feed? Well, click here for a detailed explanation from WiseGeek.com. It’s something Flash asked me about a few posts ago and I said I’d look into it… so if you’re using firefox (and if not, why not?) you can add a “live bookmark” by clicking the orange icon on the bottom right of the window. That’ll add an entry in your bookmarks folder called ‘Gwyn’s Blog- Self-absorption Central’ and have the last 10 posts always listed.
There’s probably more to it than that, but I’m just starting up with this new fangled technology. I’ll try not to post too often about it. Business as usual will resume tomorrow…
Well while Sita tried to meet up with Dr. Muria (famous tequila historian) I gave my CV to the Museo de Arte de Zapopan to see if they needed anyone with my particular skill set. I won’t hear from them for 2 weeks apparently. Anyroad, spent a nice afternoon in Zapopan and went on to Zapopum, the expo/art showcase thing down the road from there. The highlight was the trained dog show- it was being televised for a local TV station and we were encouraged to look as enthusiastic as possible for the cameras. I wasn’t really getting into it until it all started going wrong as the dogs got collective stage fright. “They were all fine this morning” we were assured. Still we saw a corgi jumping through flaming hoops and I’m full of ideas to try out on Atticus when we get back to the US in the Spring for a few days.
Don’t know why I didn’t try this earlier… actually it’s cos I didn’t know you could put percentages in IMG tags, anyroad, not much news today. Saw Harry Potter last night, the cinema was full, not bad for a monday night 8:45 showing. At 2 and half hours it was pretty good value for money; I’m always happy to see what the state of the art in CGI is and anything else (acting, plot, etc) is a bonus.
We went to wander round a part of Guad called Seattle yesterday, gorgeous area. It’s a prosperous village that got swallowed up by the ever-expanding metropolis. They never got round to naming the streets though, so vertical ones are alphabetic and horizontal numeric. The blocks are about 3 times the size of your normal ones. 
Every house has a garden and the streets are cobbled with local volcanic stones. Really tranquill too, tree-lined avenues, little neighbourhood shops, bikes, dogs, birds swooping around and handy for Super WalMart. The latest Flickr photos tagged “seattle” are from there. Today we venture to Zapopan to check in on the Colegio de Jalisco and suchlike.
So I phoned last week offering my services as a volunteer translator and they called back saying they might have work. I called today and they told me they’re looking for an English teacher to teach small classes of their employees. For free. And that they didn’t have any courses or materials yet. I’d be designing them… anyroad, to cut a long story short, I politely declined citing my web design work. To which they said they actually needed someone to do web stuff and they’ll call back. I’m quite chuffed at that, this would be the perfect inroad to getting some projects to come my way. I might know by tomorrow…
Sita did her stint playing Snakes (Chutes in US speak) and Ladders with kiddies in the town centre yesterday while I wandered off and took photos. Changing the world one Mexican at a time…
Once again we managed not to go a-Pottering last night. Jose turned up and we had another evening of informal political debate and updates on his philandering. Which was grand. Adolescent wizardry tonight though, hopefully.
To see the latest photos of the town centre, click here for the flickry slideshow. And have a picture of a frog to tempt you that way. 
I ended up making shepherd’s pie based on an old family recipe I found on the world wide wibbly web, with a few adaptations. During my research I found out that I was actually cooking cottage pie, since shepherd’s pie is made with minced lamb not beef. You live and learn. Anyroad, it was well nice and I got to use the Salsa tipo inglesa I blogged about a few weeks ago. And it goes pretty well with tequila, who’d’ve thunk it?
It wasn’t all put together as last minute(ly) as I’d feared because Sita’s first Tequila class only lasted 2 hours, not 4. It was just introductions from the 15 or so people there and reading a few powerpoint slides. So we had time to nip over to Waldo’s Mart (the 99 cent store across the road, well, 13 pesos including VAT) and stock up on extra forks and stuff. It looks like all the people Sita was hoping to interview for her project are coming to talk in her class. Saturday classes run from 10 to 2, there’s no way I could have hacked that yesterday. Sita is made of stronger stuff, it appears.
Next Saturday it’s a field trip to the town of Tequila where there’s a festival of some description going on, I might have to come along for that one. On Friday night we’re going to a Thanksgiving dinner with some teachers from the American school, which’ll be a laugh. Tuesday evening another mate of mine’s coming over for tea and bickies. So the social scene is picking up nicely. The employment scene is also starting up gradually. Jose’s got a few leads, and there’s another gringo graphic designer in the area whom I might be meeting next Friday. Voluntary work appears to be easy enough, though. Sita’s off to staff a creche for the women’s rights organisation today in the town centre. And I’m expecting translation work from the Gwod Metropolitan Park people any minute.
AgaveWeb.com is crawling along, I’m a bit stuck for what to do with the site and need more inspiration. I was playing with rounded corners, first using CSS, then giving in and going back to the dark age of tables. I’ll work something out… Jed themed maybe? A lengthy flash animation of a black tail in bracken, then Jed jumps out, frisbee in mouth into a puddle. The muddy water splashes the camera and a menu pops up with options…. No that has nothing to do with Agaves. I’m open to suggestions…
We planned to see Harry Potter yesterday but Sita was too knackered after a late night and academic stuff, so we watched War of the Worlds on DVD instead. Maybe today… keep your eyes on the “Media Box” on the right for my two cents. Harry III was my first review for this website… June ‘04 seems like a while ago. Well, it was…
and finally, here’s a video currently doing the rounds on the interweb of GTA playing grandma. More non-sequitur-riddled-posts coming soon…
I rock. no really. I do. I’m this close to getting an ecommerce site up and running for a client… It’s taken me the best part of a day, but i’ve done it. nearly. And a mailing list application too. Just call me Mr. PHP. Actually, don’t. Really. Paco will do. Zank evuns for open source…
(see above and click for bigger, if you so fancy) Photostitch couldn’t tell arse from elbow of the view from our roof. I feel reassured about the place for humans in photographic collage again.
Big day tomorrow, we’re having another in our series of “sophisticated dinner parties” and, after consulting my mum by skype about the menu, shall be preparing some kind of regional feast. Maybe photos later.
Lots of good news from the PAPÁS crowd today. Email me if you’re interested… and it’s also nice to see Arturo and me Dad getting along famously in the comments section.
and it turns out there’s a freeware application that stitches together your photos in minutes. Expect lots more photos like this one…
Click the picture for bigger, it’s a composite of 26 photos I took on Sunday standing in the market by la Iglesia Santa Teresita. Browse around on Flickr and you’ll also find pictures from La Barranca, the huge canyon where Guadalajara suddenly comes to a grinding halt. It’s also where the UdeG school of architecture is, so on weekdays the park is full of furtive young couples carrying their blueprints around in cardboard tubes. Lovely.
So Sita’s got her life in gear volunteering for a women’s rights organisation on Sunday and starting a university course on tequila on Fridays and Saturdays. We only heard about it today and it starts on Friday, serendipitous as me dad just said. If I had a job, I might’ve signed up too, but we can’t quite afford it. As long as Sita comes home and gives me word for word recollections of her 4 hour classes each day I’ll get by. For all you hispanohablantes out there, here’s the link to the U de G page.
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.
Well, it rained for the first time in a month or so yesterday (the last time was on the way to Phoenix, Arizona from L.A.). Proper rain, mind, none of your namby pamby mizzle- lightning, thunder, the works. I’ve always wanted to take a photo of lightning so I went up on the roof and took several 16 second exposure, low aperture shots, it took about 5 attempts, but i got one. . It’s far from perfect, i was holding the camera as still as possible with no tripod, aiming at the sky. Next time I want a city scape with forks of lightning above it, like this second pic, which has had a few minor photoshop elements added, and features at least one deliberate spelling mistake… 
Had a nice chat with Sally t’other night. The bunnies have become tunneling machines, and their run looks like a building site. Lulu’s the main culprit and he wouldn’t even stop digging when Sally stared at him. So Sally, bless her, went to All American to get chicken wire to go under the run and installed it all herself. Nice one, KilcarSally 
Today the plan: Update my CV, pick up the laser printer from the repair shop, pass by an English school that’s looking for gringos as part of the part-time non-teaching staff, get agaveweb.com off the ground. Finalise me postcard size ads and get them to the printer, bulk email the lake Chapala non-profits… Work out why we’re getting so many phone calls that either hang up (I think our number is v. similar to the Cuarenta Principales (top 40 radio station…) or are banks/ loan sharks/ lawyers wanting to find the previous occupant… Anyroad, more news as, when or if it happens. Cheers, gwyn