20070417
A Dirty Dinner in D-troit
So as you can see I did something dirty tonight. I ate me a ton of White Castle.
20070414
Whose barn, what barn, my barn
Mexico city is not without it's pitfalls. There's traveler's stomach, kidnappings, and as I now know from the 13th morning, earthquakes. For the first time in my life I regreted getting upgraded to a high floor with a view. All in all thursday night/Friday morning's earthquake 'shook me up' a little. Despite being a california resident for a number of years, I've managed to dodge any serious tremors and at most just gotten a little annoyed from the shaking. However, at about 01.30 on the mroning of friday the 13th I got me a little bit of a scare. I woke with the feeling of being shaken and found, no it wasn't my lady love waking me up for snoring, but the entire building shaking at jerry lee lewis proportions (get the title yet?). Wasn't a serious quake, but let me tell you when you're on one of the top floors of a building on rollers or hydraulics you get enough movin to shake up the minibar and knock the water from the desk on to the floor ( damn those glass voss bottles, and damn the stone tile floors!). This was the first time I was actually scared enough to jump into a doorway in case of ceiling collapse, and I woke up for every aftershock. Despite the shakin, I still had to be bright eyed and bushy tailed at the office at 8am, btw that means I woke up at 5am regular (PDT) time. Suffice to say next time I'll take the room without the view.
20070403
Musings on Mexico City
I've been going back and forth to Mexico city for about a month or so now and a few things have really jumped out at me. First off, I can't handle the water, period. I've gotten sick 2 out of the four weeks I was there. Once from drinking horchata with ice (I know, super dumb) and once from either a green salad, or a fish taco that turned out to be a ceviche taco. So thanks to my culinary escapades, and Moctezuma's brutal revenge, I have bought cipro there twice and let me tell ya it's expensive there. The pharmacies don't take my insurance, and it's been between $18-$30 depending on where I wet to get it and if I bought a 7 day or an 8 day course.
The second big thing that I've noticed is that in Mexico city the media images of beauty are completely different from how the average person looks. This isn't a difference in degree, this is a difference in ethnicity. Most of the people you see have the more indigenous look, and are a little shorter with darker skin and darker hair. All of the women in ads are tall, fair skinned, and much more European looking. I was really surprised about this, and I guess that this isn't a new thing for Mexico, but it must be tough being told that the standard of beauty is unattainable because of your ethnicity.
And finally the driving in mexico city. I've seen some interesting traffic in my travels, from high speeds on the freeways in germany and the south of france, to the ridiculousness of naples, bombay, and now mexico city. Mexico driving is somewhere between naples and bombay. People pay little or no attention to lights, stop signs and lanes, but they're also not as agressive as the neapolitans. This isn't to say that the mexican drivers are without the latin machismo, it's just that they're more civil than their neapolitan counterparts. The indians in mumbai are nicer, but the roads are more chaotic with all the rickshaw cabs buses, and occasional overloaded tempo. Hopping in a cab there is definitely an experiance and there are all sorts of little things to get used to. There are the little things like, one way streets just dictate the direction your car should face, not the direction of travel. and on busy streets if someone misses a turn they have no compunction about reversing till they get back to where they wanted to be. All in all, I'm really glad I take cabs when I'm down there, cause a rental car would be pretty high up on the list of bad ideas.
The second big thing that I've noticed is that in Mexico city the media images of beauty are completely different from how the average person looks. This isn't a difference in degree, this is a difference in ethnicity. Most of the people you see have the more indigenous look, and are a little shorter with darker skin and darker hair. All of the women in ads are tall, fair skinned, and much more European looking. I was really surprised about this, and I guess that this isn't a new thing for Mexico, but it must be tough being told that the standard of beauty is unattainable because of your ethnicity.
And finally the driving in mexico city. I've seen some interesting traffic in my travels, from high speeds on the freeways in germany and the south of france, to the ridiculousness of naples, bombay, and now mexico city. Mexico driving is somewhere between naples and bombay. People pay little or no attention to lights, stop signs and lanes, but they're also not as agressive as the neapolitans. This isn't to say that the mexican drivers are without the latin machismo, it's just that they're more civil than their neapolitan counterparts. The indians in mumbai are nicer, but the roads are more chaotic with all the rickshaw cabs buses, and occasional overloaded tempo. Hopping in a cab there is definitely an experiance and there are all sorts of little things to get used to. There are the little things like, one way streets just dictate the direction your car should face, not the direction of travel. and on busy streets if someone misses a turn they have no compunction about reversing till they get back to where they wanted to be. All in all, I'm really glad I take cabs when I'm down there, cause a rental car would be pretty high up on the list of bad ideas.
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