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.
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…
So matey rings our doorbell yesterday, strimmer in hand, promising to work wonders on our front garden, lawn and trees, ‘Bien profesional, bien bonito’. I feel quite chuffed that I manage to haggle him down from 300 to 150 pesos (15 of your earth dollars). I close the deal with a handshake and leave him to it, wandering back to my design stuff. I hear the strimmer (weedwhacker in US parlance, I believe) whirring away. The doorbell rings again, he needs to go and get seed and fertilizer for the lawn and can I give him the money in advance. If this was the UK/ US I wouldn’t have done it, but after my dealings with the gasfitter bloke who sorted out the boiler, this is the level of service I was expecting. If you cut lawns for a living, you won’t have much in the way of pesos to buy extra stuff. So I gave him 130 pesos and he saunters off. This was yesterday. No sign of him today neither.
Then my hopes were raised when some gardeners pulled up outside the house today, but they were there for Senora Teresa next door. I asked if they knew about this landscaper from yesterday and they patiently explained, ‘parece que te chingó ese jardinero’ (Oi reckon you got screwed over by that there gardener bloke in Wurzel) which I’d sort of worked out for myself. Ah well.
It hasn’t put me off gardens, though. Oh no. In fact I went for a meeting with the director of Guadalajara’s Metropolitan Park to offer my services. I’m going to make them a website to attract corporate sponsors and more volunteers to the, frankly, near-insolvent parque. I had a wander round and it’s a big old space, but there weren’t many people there today. They come in the mornings- 6am, evenings, 5pm and weekends apparently. So the photos I took to put on the website are a little unappetizing for now. Bless them though, it’s had a rocky old history. In 1992 a local politician tried to sell it off as a golf course and pocket the change but got caught last minute during a close analysis of accounts after the streets exploded (long story), and since then they’ve got by with volunteers, military and community service people. They can’t afford to buy trees so all the new plants are grown from cuttings from local forests and they’re looking for sponsors for the BBQ areas. The plan is to be a world-class, self-sustaining tourist attraction by 2010. I reckon they’ll do it too, and let’s see if I can’t help with a bit of HTML.
but that’s not stopped us chilling with Olga and co. and being treated to a slap up meal at Sacromonte last night, and breakfast at cafe Azteca this morning. Ronaldo and me had a wander round the centre and Chapultepec this morning I snapped a few shots of the centre then went chasing bouncing cheques. again. A nice morning all in all, though I was knackered by the end of it and had a meeting about the jewellery site this avo. I’m wondering if I’m in a secure enough mental state to watch 28 weeks later/ Exterminio 2 later on…
I’ve almost finished on the cirugia plastica site and Dr. Hector gave me a bottle of San Matias Anejo Reserva tequila to celebrate which was a very nice gesture. A smoother tequila I’ve not tasted and much better than free liposuction. Though, come to think of it, maybe there’s surgery they can do to help you pronounce RRs better in español. I’ll ask me dentist.
Thanks to Monica, Annelise, Kristen, Mike, Vanessa and anyone else I’m playing scrabble with on FaceBook. It’s well entertaining. I promise I’m not cheating, I’ve just been very lucky with the tiles. Except in the game I’m about to lose to Claire… where it’s been raining vowels for the last 10 moves… Mustn’t grumble.
Grumble.
The above’s a short video of the charming little animated ‘green white man’ on all the pedestrian crossings in Oaxaca. I like how he encourages you to run, not walk, the closer it gets to the stop again. I also wonder if there’s a backwards setting in there somewhere…
As you know, no news on this blog means there’s lots of news occurring, but no time to write about it. In brief, we made several gourmet home-made pizzas last night with a couple of lovely folks from Bowdoin. Today’s Wolfe’s Neck with dearest Atticus, picking up Blackcurrant & Apple juice, Twiglets and as many Creme Eggs as I can stomach, from the UK Essentials shop in Freeport. Tomorrow, if the weather holds, tis a Flickr meet in Brunswick of all places… so maybe some more Mainecentric photos will follow soon. And that is the mere tip of the iceberg in terms of current events round our way.
As per usual, Monica’s beaten me to this post, but I’ll try and compete all the same… It’s getting harder to do now she has a new camera and is getting the hang of Picasa…
The last time I went to the Mercado de Abastos (wholesale food market) it was closed down for the day what with it being Good Friday and all that and I’ve been meaning to go back for ages, so today, on a whim I said, “Once you finish that game of Pacman, Monica, let’s go on a mini phototour”… So 65000 points or so later we headed off and the first thing I saw was another carro cameleon…
The majority of the market is burly Mexicans chucking fruit around from lorry to stall but they were well friendly, posing for photos and suchlike. Then there’s a covered part where we stocked up on spuds, bananas, mangos, strawbs and a lone pitaya (“Dragonfruit” which I couldn’t bring myself to eat as it looks like a tightly packed ball of coloured maggots and seeds wrapped in a spiny skin…) The heat got too much after a while and we withdrew to the house and made smoothies for everyone (except Atticus, who just got ice chucked in his water bowl). Anyroad, here come the photos:
More Mercado de Abastos pix over at Flickr.
…and 2 big telly’s worth of cable rubbidge. Furniture’s more or less in the right place. Sita’s got the Huey Dewey Decimal system going in her office. And the dog seems to get on with the neighbours. All is well.
Had a moment when we couldn’t get the shower working, mind. But it turns out you just have to pull the nozzle on the bottom tap down. Remember that if you come and stay, cos washing your hair’s a veritable bugger otherwise.
Thanks for all the birthday wishes again. I’ll reply individually once I get back from t’shops. And Starbucks (7 blocks away), there’ll probably be a nearer one soon enough. We had a luvverly curry last night with co-birthdayee Meg and other Oakland celebrities.
