Another lovely day… met up with Ian, Adri and Larisa this morning in Cafe D’Val for chilaquiles and coffee. They’re all doing fine minus having their car impounded for inscrutable Mexican bureaucratic reasons… We’ve arranged an all-dayer for next Wednesday starting in La Fuente so catching up should continue then… They won’t be able to make it to tomorrow’s celebrations with Mum and Saturday’s official “Meet/ Rekindle Your Relationship with the Parents” BBQ, but there’s quite a few people coming so never mind. Anyroad, I left mum and dad to fend for themselves in the city centre and by the looks of dad’s photos they saw a lot and got around v. well in the afternoon heat.
That’s all for now. Have some photos of Dad and Sita frolicking with dolphins in Xel-Ha water park in the Yucatan…
And while we’re on the subject have a pun via b3ta.
So last night after a lovely meal at Maggie’s pub-restaurant (Fish & Chips x 4 & surf’n’turf for the record) frequented by all the local ex-pat Catholic pedagogic population, Martin innocently commented that he didn’t think the headlights were on. Next minute, neither was the dashboard or radio or the engine. This sounded grimly familiar as the same scenario happened to me on the way to a conference in Berkeley before all kinds of alternator-related fun. Everyone jumped out and I started pushing the car along Imperial Highway in me flipflops. Not ideal footware for motorway maintenance, and true to form they broke and fell off along the way. Sally & Sita are lifelong AAA (the America AA) members so they were soon on the blower to get towed. After 2 hours, multiple phonecalls, one police incident (ask Sally- on her new email address, kilcarsally (at) hotmail.com) and one member of the party going AWOL on the buses later and we got back to Downey, where I got hiccups again. Hiccups resurfaced at regular intervals in my sleep. Sita had to decamp in the middle of the night as the bed was shaking too much from them. Anyroad, today is the day of packing before the big off.
I went to check on our dear little rodents in the back garden and was delighted to discover that they’re back in touch with their lapine instincts of burrowing. Klem was nowhere to be seen, Lulu (gordito that he is) was halfway through the hole and the dog was running around enjoying the mayhem. I sent Atticus indoors, yelled ‘Jailbreak’ to Sarita and we put the emergency plan into action. Klem was hiding under the cage, Lulu was still digging, I scooped Lulu up and threw him back into the cage. Sarita cuddled Klem (klem’s not big on cuddles) to scold him and then he got locked up too. I’ll have to work out how to implement the new security features in their run. Maybe an ID card scheme. Or face recognition technology at the back yard gate… anyroad, wandering back to the kitchen, Atticus is gallivanting about Dalen St. but luckily comes when he’s called… So for now, bunnies are are locked up tightly, we’re not really packed, Atticus is contained, Martin’s off alternator & battery shopping and all’s quiet again for a minute or two. Give or take some yard sales on the road. Glad the minor disasters are happening before we set off rather than after, that’s fer sure.
Phone calls to blighty’s next on the list. As I keep mentioning, get yerselves on skype. Octagenatian and Nonagenarian relatives are excepted…
Am quite tired indeed, hence the lack of imagination going into this month’s poll. Let’s see if we can have a record turn out and break the previous total 5 (five) voters… well, 4 if you don’t count me…
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”
From The Telegraph of all places… who manage to dumb down scientific research to a point where it makes almost no sense then fail to provide a link to the original paper… :
A second language ‘changes personality’ By Robert Matthews (Filed: 03/07/2005)
If only Basil Fawlty had learnt a little Spanish.
Psychologists have discovered that people take on the characteristics of foreign nationals when they switch into their language – and such a change in the embittered hotel owner could well have improved life for the hapless Manuel.
The personality changes, however, run deeper than a desire to gesticulate wildly when talking in Italian or to plunge into gloom when speaking Russian. According to research, using different languages alters basic characteristics traits such as extroversion and neuroticism.
Researchers at the University of Texas made the discovery while studying the personality traits of bilingual English and Spanish speakers in the United States and Mexico. They began by establishing the attributes of native speakers, using the results of personality tests on almost 170,000 people.
The results showed that English-speaking Americans are typically more conscientious, agreeable and outgoing than native Mexicans, but also less neurotic.
I always feel more extraverted and less neurotic when I’m in Spanish speaking mode, happily talking to strangers, smiling and all that. But the second bit of the article makes no sense to me. Does racial profiling via 170,000 personality tests make it OK? And how the chingada do you measure “agreeability” and “conscienciousness”? Are they including undocumented immigrants in the test, I’d feel less outgoing too if I thought I was in constant danger of being deported and the government of the county I lived in was hell bent on building a 4.5 metre wall along its border with my home country with funds left over after waging a ill-thought-out and illegal war on abstract nouns and then legalising torture round the world… And then there’s the socioeconomic aspects of the respective countries…
Meanwhile, somewhere in Torquay:
Basil Fawlty: Manuel… [Basil thwacks him on the forehead with a spoon] Basil Fawlty: …You’re a waste of space.
The Skype me button on the right… Very soon we’ll be in Mexico and at TelMex’s mercy once again, so download Skype by pressing that ‘call me’ button and give us a ring on the computer… Tanya…
Also, I’m working on some interwebbery for a local nutritionist- have a gander at the design, the brief for which was “lush and green”. Am quite chuffed with the look, but it’s preliminary draft.
