The cable TV’s back

Here’s the promised photo of Sita, F and some day-glo pizza (issues with white-balance…) from Friday night.

Then last night at about 10.30 after the Oscars and just as we were about to watch LOST, I got a phone call from Fernando, a good friend of ours in Guadalajara. Which was great and I asked where he was and he said “Fuera de tu casa”. My first instinct was to think ah, Calle Garibaldi, Guadalajara. He says no… tu casa. So my next thought was he was outside his house in GDL, because often in Mexican Spanish you refer to your own house as “your house” as in “mi casa es tu casa”. Then he gives up explaining and says “Just go outside, pinche Gwyn” and sure enough, he’s there in the flesh outside our house in Alameda. I was stunned. Turns out he’s here for a week on Hewlett P related business in Mountain View down the road and had flown into Oakland airport (15 minutes down the 25mph road) and called by on the offchance. Bless him. We’ll meet up again sometime later in the week when everyone’s not knackered. But I still can’t believe he showed up last night. Fair play, Cala. Chido verte, gracias y nos estamos viendo!

¡Salud!

Puff and Merlin are being picked up in a couple of days. We’ll have to have some kind of celebration/ tea party to see them off. I don’t reckon Merlin will notice any change, mind. Puff will be missed.

On me way home to blighty t’other week, i listened to the Jon Stewart’s audiobook on America- Democracy Inaction- a grand listen and the best bit is he’s off promoting it around cable TV land, so yesterday we got to watch him on “The O’Reilly Factor” (A Rupert Murdoch-sponsored, right-wing talk show bastard-fest) defending all that is true and right. O’Reilly scolded him for saying “Je ne sais quoi” since they’re boycotting France for their Iraq stance on the program. Stewart says that’s bollocks and why not boycott Saudi Arabia, then? Anyroad, long story short, O’Reilly came off worse for once, having invited someone with an ounce of intelligence. Huzzah.

On the techie front, i’m switching my browser to Firefox, it’s ace. Especially with the new Explorer that installed itself at me with the XP Service Pack 2 thingy and seems to rival your average bonfire night for pop-ups. Can’t recommend it enough.

Here´s what I blogged at my temporary home, gwynunlimited.com last week… More posting to come.

So on Monday I logged in to my agaveweb site to write an entry on what I´d had for breakfast the day before and instead of the usual blue tones of the admin panel I got an assault on the eyes of video popups, paid links and all kinds of other obnoxious nonsense. “This domain expired on the 10th of November, to renew click here” I got a sinking feeling right away. Anyroad, basically it is a lot of hassle switching domain hosting companies and I´m still not sure it´s all going to be okay…

On the other hand, watching all my “work” from the last 3 years or more disappear from the internet is reassuring as even the waybackmachine couldn´t show my site. So if I ever need to delete all traces of me, it´s easier than I thought. Meanwhile, hopefully it´ll be back up by tomorrow.

So without my blog to help me, let´s see if I can piece together the events of the last week…

Monday: Phonecalls, emails, skypage, panic, a jaunt round the parque metropolitano and a fine chicken soup made by su servidor. Also watched La Reina de la Noche, all about Lucha Reyes. It was a bit too slow moving for my tastes. One of the most theatrical films I´ve seen in a while. In that there were probably 3 sets, max.

Tuesday: I went to the cabañas to hand in my photos for their postcard competition, outside there were hundreds of kids from all over mexico dressed up in their local garb, which was colourful. Then round Amour Fou´s to check they survived the weekend, then me Contemporary photography seminar and afterwards beers in el Fenix with some of the peeps from the seminar. Sita took advantage of the occasion to collect 6 interviews for her consumers of tequila chapter. Then home. And more soup.

Wednesday: Tequila, to arrange to interview some of the Sauza family and we also managed to ambush some folks from queretaro in a bar to interview them for the aforementioned chapter too.

Thursday: Finishing touches to the Belgian shopping centre site, adding all the German text, which messed up the design due to every word having 90 syllables and needed sorting. We went along for the SIT2007 press conference, but due to some other event happening there were hardly any reporters so it fell to me to film and photo the event at the last minute.

I got a bottle of me favourite tequila for my troubles though (Pueblo Viejo Reposado). Filming was the easy bit, since my computer gave up the ghost in a spectacular fashion, so I tried to install the editing software on Sita´s comp and managed to crash it and have to take it to the laptop hostpital down the road. For about 4 hours Sita harboured murderous thoughts since I might have lost her 15 audio interviews and 2 weeks´ work on her dissertation. Turned out okay in the end though. Thank Mayahuel. Ana stepped in to lend us another laptop and a desktop in the interim. It´s been a bad week on the tech front.

Yesterday: Starbucks. Though that´ll probably be the last time I go there since a large part of the reason for going there was because they had all the local papers for free. Now instead of a free selection, you have to buy El Mural. Which is a fine paper, but I like reading several. So I did the sudoku then went to Amour Fou to pick up their state-of-the-art laptop to have a play and then explain how to do stuff on it. that´ll be today. In the evening, Savora with Victor and Jana, and then round their´s along with Jose to put the world to rights and hear about José´s tribulations running the school while his mum´s been away travelling.

Today there´s lucha libre outside, so hopefully I´ll be there with me camera.

Righty, chances are this won´t be read by many folks so here´s hoping agaveweb is back in my hands by tomorrow. If not, it´ll have to be plan B. And I don´t know what plan B is yet.

Tanya passed on this poem to me, as requested, bless her. I’ve had quite a few worse things round my way of late, but it tends to be nearer 4 a.m…

Things

There are worse things than having behaved foolishly in public.
There are worse things than these miniature betrayals
committed or endured or suspected; there are worse things
than not being able to sleep for thinking about them.
It is 5 a.m. All the worse things come stalking in
and stand icily around the bed looking worse and worse and worse.

Fleur Adcock

And here’s a photo of Sita, her sister and her Dad from the Downey photo collection, click for bigger version.

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…

I’ve been mightily impressed by the efficiency of TelMex’s DSL service. Ordered it Monday morning, modem arrived Tuesday and plumbed in by Thursday. I’d’ve had it going two hours earlier too but I had to ring the help desk as it didn’t like my password (beautiful renditions of ‘Octopus’s Garden’ and ‘Oh, Darling’ on hold though).

The phases have been pretty much: travel 1700 miles, find a house, meet up with old friends, fill house with furniture, get DSL & cable, get studying/working. We’re entering the last stage there. But over the last week or so have really got to know the city well just from running errands. Last time we were here (2 years ago) and it was all public transport, and when I was here in 1998, even moreso. Driving is a lot easier than it was made out to be. The only real challenge is from the whole tope (speed bump) vs traffic lights thing. One obviously on the ground and ready to put your steering and suspension out if hit at over 10 mph and the other hanging stupidly high and keeping your vision off the ground. If you’re looking for street signs as well, that puts another hazard in yer way. Yet I managed to drive with a flat pack office desk, 4 plastic chairs and a table from Plaza del Sol to our house in rush hour yesterday, so all’s well. Maybe I’ll add ‘Guided Tours’ to my already eclectic business card.

Plenty of room for visitors, book your flights to Guadalajara now and we’ll pick you up at the airport… It’s still gorgeous weather too.

Skyped me folks yesterday, and was informed that Dad had made another foray into photoshopping. I’ve got this creation of his as my wallpaper for now.