erm…sorry about the last blog entry. It was written during a period of extreme jet lag combined with some celebratory red wine. I won’t delete it, simply as a reminder to myself of the perils of BUI.
Jet-lag is a bit of a bugger but nothing compared to the torture of being confined in an aluminium tube with a bunch of irritating, screaming, children for two hours. Once the plane has taken off you can walk about, sleep, watch the film, and have a pee. Before you take off you’re supposed to sit still and deal with hell.
Luckily, it was only two hours before our plane left the ground in Toronto and headed towards the UK. No children’s lives were taken.
Now we’re back, and reunited with dear Humphrey, we only have our memories to comfort us through the cold rain of London.
Our visit was as perfect as any holiday can be. Apart from spending some quality time with Alex, his family, Tony, Catalina, and everyone else we also enjoyed the food, car-horns, weather, buildings, people and history of Mexico. We even enjoyed our experiences of the locals pre-judging us in the way that we would them in London.
No-one speaks English there. In fact they’re almost as arrogant about their unilinguality as the English. A white face with blonde hair is a signal of massive stupidity combined with a massive wallet. Oh dear.
“How much for this bracelet?”
“For you, as you speak such good Spanish, almost free”
The streets of Mexico City smell pretty similar to those of London except for the overpowering smell of their crap sewage system and the slightly nasty smell of fried corn.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved the tortillas and tacos that were in abundance in the streets; it’s just that it turns out to make proper tacos requires the production of some evil smelling gasses. Perhaps this is why so many taco vans were parked up by such smelly sewer outlets.
The amount earned per day on the Mexican minimum wage is around 40 pesos (£2; $4). We were paying more than that for the wireless Internet access in our hotel and it was still a major bargain. In fact, if you ever go to Mexico City (AKA DF) then Casa Gonzales is the place to stay.
In all we loved every minute of the trip. The weather, the wonderful people, the food, the buildings and the weddings. I even managed to indulge in one of my all-time favourite activities: wandering aimlessly around the city, talking all kinds of stuff, with Alex. If you’ve never tried it then perhaps you should. Call Alex, I’m sure he’ll understand.
At the end of it all I managed to leave my mobile in the cab that took us to the airport. We also managed to leave our bedtime MP3 player in the hotel. If ever you’ve doubted the existence of honesty and sociable behaviour, then please know that I’ve been re-united with both items. This is thanks to the cab driver, the cab company, Alex, Alex’s mum and the wonderful people at Casa Gonzales
Flying into a city at night affords those by the window a wonderful schematic view of the town as described by its lights. Generally speaking, all cities look similar from the air: small, isolated pools of amber light from the outlying villages become larger and more frequent until they eventually join together to form the central city. If you look into the distance you can usually see the edge of the central sprawl as it dissipates back into blackness.
Coming into Mexico City was not like this. People always tell you that Mexico city is “huuuge” or “absolutely massive” but it wasn’t until we’d descended low enough to see the lights that the vastness became truly apparent. At the stage where you can see the city, you are already inside it. The city extends as far as you can see in any direction and appears as a huge duvet of lights over a body of mountains. Every now and again we observed large dark areas and tried to establish what they were. Were they lakes ? Parks ? Holes ?
It was only once we’d descended lower still that we realised they were huge, self-contained, mountains poking through the duvet. There you go; it’s so big that it has mountains in it! Ten minutes of flying and we were still over the city and still we couldn’t see the edges. Suddenly I realised why I didn’t understand the maps we were sent in preparation: it’s just too big to grok at street-map level.
We’ve been here for nearly a week now and we’re only just getting our heads around the geography.
I’d planned to write a long rambling blog detailing the minutiae of the trip thus far, but apart from the fact that you wouldn’t read it, I can’t be arsed. So here is our trip to Mexico City in pictures together with wedding pictures. Animal lovers (bird lovers especially) may also like to see our pictures of Mexico City Zoo.
Michele and Tony really went all out to learn Spanish and I’m so proud of them. Tony now speaks so well he managed to have full understanding with Catalina, the friend of Alex he’s staying with. Michele speaks well enough to converse with cab drivers rabbiting at full speed. Even I’ve gone from knowing nothing to being able to order food and drinks, ask directions, and comprehend cab drivers when they’re trying to persuade Michele that they’d make better husbands than me 🙂
Seeing Alex again has been wonderful. I was filling up at the wedding.
More to come…
According to the voice of the internets, everything’s going great! Saddam, that evil, evil, wicked, evil, wicked dictator, Saddam “evil wicked” Hussein, has been murdered by the “democratically elected government of Iraq(tm)(R)” (formally known as the puppets of the USA). Peculiarly, Saddam was also formerly known as the puppet of the USA. In fact, without the help of the USA, Saddam Hussein and the Baath party would never have governed Iraq. Nor would the Taliban have governed Afghanistan.
Funny old world.
Watching the webternets’ reaction to the world is quite a fascinating way to waste considerable chunks of one’s all-too-scarce time on this earth. Not since Steve Irwin copped it have I seen such a huge reaction to the death of a human being as when Saddam was killed. Of course the reaction was nowhere near as great as that which Irwin received but entertaining nonetheless. First came the announcements, then the videos, then the humorously edited videos, like the one displayed here.
You don’t and should not care what I think of this event, but that’s all the more reason for me to document it:
In case you haven’t seen this, it’s a site that takes a photo of you and then tells you what celebrity you look like. It’s been doing the rounds for many months, but the boredom of the Christmas holidays gave me an opportunity to try it.
Now, I don’t mind being compared to Russell Crowe, but Angela Lansbury and Rachel fucking Stevens ?
So I used another pic and got totally different results.
Brittany Murphy and Paula Radclife….
FFS…
My results and proof that face recognition still doesn’t work.
As the year draws to a close, it’s important that we don’t forget those less fortunate than ourselves, such as the large mobile phone operators. These tireless organisations provide us with an almost adequate service throughout the year and all they receive in return is an inconceivably massive profit.
It is for this reason that traditionally on New Years Eve every man, woman, and child with a mobile phone donates a quid or two to the overlooked organisations. If you want to show your support then you can do the same by simply texting every arsehole in your mobile’s contact list on the stroke of midnight. Such a small amount of effort for such a worthy cause.
Remember, supporting these organisations supports profit and thus capitalism and thus freedom.
Oh yeah – if you have Christmas money burning a hole in your pocket then why not donate on-line to one of the following:
The bit between Christmas and New Year is strange in the UK. Nothing serious happens and business is conducted in the way we are always told life happens in remote Spanish villages: slowly and with a joyful lack of care…and lots of napping.
Christmas was cosy and lovely as it could have been with the exception of the traditional apocalyptic argument with my sister late on Boxing Day but the break is doing wonders for my health. And so much good food, drink and that. Pity I poured a glass of red wine over my sister’s cream carpet really.
There’s so much stuff to talk about and so little you’ll give a toss about…but that’s what blogs are all about really. Dump your brain onto the Internet every night and someone, somewhere, somewhen may find it useful or at least interesting. So leave now.
As I’ve got older the stroppy, intolerant side of my personality has matured into a really stroppy and really intolerant machine of hate. My first “proper” girlfriend told me about a conversation she’d had with her vicar/pastor/whatever that involved him telling her that you’ll never find someone you’re 100% in touch with and to stop looking. It always struck me as good advice (unlike the no-sex-before-marriage shit he normally purveyed), and whenever one of my friends has pissed me off for any reason since then, I clung to that advice and remembered it was natural, important even, that we disagree now and again. But nowadays I tend to just think “oh fuck it I can’t be bothered with this tedious cack.” Friendship isn’t supposed to be that hard. This attitude, when coupled with a judicious mixture of depression, intolerance and the enjoyment of sitting on my arse, in my flat, with my wife and parrot becomes quite dangerous. It’s really time we threw a spanner into our lifestyle engine and crunched it into a different form. Hopefully we’ll be living abroad soon.
But there are some things to look forward to. At the moment they are the idea of going to the Wickham Arms with Toby et al and then our impending trip to mexico to watch Alex get married! We’re pretty bloody excited about that last one let me tell you.
Sometimes dreams can really pull you to bits and by the morning you feel even more knackered than when you went to bed. My version of those dreams usually involve trying to sort computer problems out and those problems leading to more problems, which lead to more problems. Today I lived one of those dreams and it was just as stressful in real life. From 11am to 8pm with no break, trying to sort out a relatively simple network problem…on a Saturday…but you know what ? The pleasure and relief of finally managing to sort it out is such a pure pleasure that it almost makes it feel worthwhile. And then going home to see my wife and parrot, having a really good curry, with a bottle or two of wine, followed by some Eric B and Rakim…it actually feels abnormally pleasurable.
Michele is one of the only people on earth that I know who can also sing along with the entire lyrics of “Paid in Full” by Eric B and Rakim. Humph is currently refusing to go to bed and is sitting on the arm of this sofa tucking into her apple and carrot; she has a ginger carrot beard. Good bird. All in all my little family is quite happy at present.
Last week was a busy, busy work week. But I got a new pair of front teeth, that look pretty damn nice, my other teeth professionally cleaned and a diagnosis of an enflamed gut. I also had a couple of lovely pub evenings with people. And tomorrow is still the weekend! Woohoo!
Good night