Another spanish word of the week: La Baticueva. Bat cave. Bats of course, are called murcielagos… Here’s the one we saw in Los Colomos park t’other day. We also managed not to molest any of the fauna, which include abandoned house rabbits…
M & D are still casa-less, but they’re on it. We’re off for a meal somewhere and then bowling. It’s been a while, not since Ed was here this time last year. I think I’ve seen The Big Lebowski more times in the last 2 years than actually gone bowling. Anyroad, I’ve put on some nice, clean socks especially and am ready for a few white russians and fluking the occasional chuza (strike) at the bolinche…
Another car crash occurred at the crossroads outside out house, quite a nasty one actually. I wasn’t here for it though, Sita was. Luckily our house is on the ‘safe side’ of the dangerous crossing. Anyroad, they took out a chunk of the electricity/telephone pole and now it’s being kept up by the wires. I always thought the poles were to keep the wires in the air, but turns out I had it the wrong way round.
I was feeling pretty guilty at not having achieved anything at all yesterday save for a few blog items so I packed up my camera and mp3 playa and set off for a stroll. I thought I’d check in on the area where I used to live 8/9 years ago, called Tolsa. I was very happy to find my taco shop, Tacos Rafa was still in business. They’ll serve you anything you like as long as it’s Tacos al Pastor in freshly made tortillas. They remembered me and we spent half an hour reminiscing about the good old days. Then their son (also Rafa) came back from work. He was 6 or 7 when I saw him last and he and his brother (Luis) used to hang out with us in the casa internacional. Anyroad it was a grand reunion. And the tacos aren’t half bad neither. They said to come back, even if i wasn’t hungry and I said I’d bring Sita along for them to meet her. Lovely peeps. Here’s their photo:
I ambled back home via Mondo Cafe in Chapultepec (for one of their famous bucket’o’coffees) then off for farewell drinks for Sarah as she is moving on to better and fulbrighter things in Wisconsin, Belgium and Guatemala if memory serves… Victor y Jana came out ‘n’all and we had a stormin’ evening in the Sacromonte bar replete with veggies and chile, cueritos (soggy pork scratchings) and ceviche (riceless sashimi on a budget/ marinated raw fish) and then some proper food. If you’re reading, Sarah, you’re going to be well missed round here. Don’t be surprised to be hounded to the ends of the earth, or belgium, by skype…
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…
In other news, I just opened the door to Sita’s office and was attacked by something that looked for all the world like some kind of crazed diurnal bat. I armed myself with my camera and went to investigate upstairs where it had fled…
Just a moth. A huge bloody great moth. Brooding on the window with murder on its mind. With big mothy mandibles. It’s still there… I’m sleeping downstairs tonight.
What follows is a post from yesterday about my new photo blog that promptly crashed once I started publicising it. I’m still not sure what caused it but after reinstalling all manner of stuff it’s back up and running…
Alrighty, I got my lappy back and it’s been going for 4 hours straight with no crashes. It does, however, sound like a dying lawnmower with the volume on 11. Anyroad, in that time I got a photo blog up and running. I’ve been meaning to do it for a while now and I finally got round to it. The thing with publishing photos in this blog and Flickr is that the pix I post are usually related to recent posts or a recently taken. With this photo blog I can publish stuff I like that’s been out of circulation for a while.
That’s it for now, PHP class in a moment, then dining out with the casa garibaldi crowd and victor and jana. Good times. And I reckon we can’t be more than 24 hours away from rain by now…
So I woke up on Javier’s sofa, he’d already made it to work and I had a wander round the Seattle area of Zapopan, it’s all huge mansions and pebbled roads. Gorgeous in the early morning light, then I ambled round the centre of Zapopan, I only had my little camera with me, so you’ll be spared more fisheye photos for now. Saw a chameleon car or two and also snapped a photo of a sign saying something like Beer for the same price as a bus ticket and such and such restaurant, established bloody ages ago… did a bit of email checking and shopping and then met up with Javier again for a torta ahogada near CEPE.
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I also made it back to our old house in calle Garibaldi, now completely refurbished/painted and the home of Juanita and her estetica. Me agave plants weren’t there any more and the garden looks a lot more Zen without the schipperke landing pad… I nipped into Waldo’s mart (everything for a dollar or 12ish pesos) and got some of their surprisingly good Polish dark chocolate for old times sake. Juan de Bonafont was even in the neighbourhood and greeted me with “Y dónde está el Atticus?” (so where´s Atticus?” which was brilliant. I said hello in the corner shop too just for good measure. The old barrio looked good.
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I had a quick siesta, went for a few tacos (chorizo was all they had cos it was early) then ambled to the cafe Fenix in front of the expiatorio where I’d announced I’d be to the Flickr folks. Many were already there when I arrived so I had a really warm greeting and passed out a few pressies and other requests to the crowds. It was great to see everyone again, there were also some peeps I didn’t expect to see from Flickr and elsewhere so though there was no official count of the numbers I had the rockstar treatment. Fantastic it was. Muchas gracias to all of you who made it. It was one of the many highlights of the week for me. And if you promised to visit us in Portland, we hope you’ll make it 😀
After the flickreunion I went back to Abuela desde Guanatos’s house with her and Fabian and had wine on the roof looking over the cityscape from the 5th floor, and listened to some esoteric records from the collection. A very nice way to end the day all round.
