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jueves, febrero 08, 2007

Culture in Puebla

Puebla has a very interesting culture.  For example, yesterday I had some free time to enjoy the city a little.  I ended up walking up to the computer market.  This place is in a grey zone between a flea market and a full fledged store.  It consists of a number of shops little bigger than stalls where people sell computer and technology elated wares: Cell phones, USB memory, MP3 players, computers (desktops and laptops), computer memory, blank CD-Rs and DVD-Rs, and so on.  It's a lot more interesting than Fry's because there are a lot of little places intead of it just being one big place.  The people there are friendlier to boot.

After just looking around this place for a while, buying nother (I have, in fact, bought a few things there, such as a USB-to-SD adaptor for under $12 and a monitor for $30), I walked back to the zócalo--the town central square.  Right new the Zocalo was a place that reminded me of the 1960s: A number of long-haired men selling arts and crafts, and a group of these hippies beating the drums together.  They had more hippie culture than Berkeley had the last time I went there.

- Sam

17:56

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martes, febrero 06, 2007

Life in Mexico

Life is going well with the students I currently have.  This morning, I had them read outloud New York Times articles, correcting their errors in pronounciation.  This afternoon, I challenged their reading comprehension by having them listen to an article (without reading it) and then asking the questions about the article.  It was very challenging for them.

- Sam

17:51

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miércoles, enero 31, 2007

Young Marine Dies Of PTSD - And Neglect

From http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/geiger/47452/:
He died earlier this month at the age of 25 -- not in Iraq, but back home, in Minnesota.
He died of wounds received during his seven-month tour of duty in Iraq, wounds different from the ones that earned Schulze two purple hearts. This young man died of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, of wounds to the soul and not the flesh. He died because the government that was there to send him far away to fight in 2004 wasn't there for him when he got home.

Full story

I have a dear friend who works in the VA who works very hard to make sure that people do not slip between the cracks there. It is a very hard job to fight so much apathy.

17:05

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martes, enero 30, 2007

OK, I'm back on MySpace; Mexican gyms

OK, guys, I'm back on MySpace. I finally got around the connection problems by using TinyProxy on the server hosting my web page, and bouncing all of my connections through that server.

Mexico is going well. I have joined a gym. The prices here are crazy. When I lived in Fresno, $30 a month (after a $200 membership fee) gave me:

A large number of treadmills

Stationary bicycles

A number of elliptical machines

A weight room and a large number of weight machines

A large locker room, bathroom, and shower

A swimming pool

A hot tub

A steam room

A sauna

Now, for $40 a month (after a $9 signup fee), what I get is a lot more threadbare here in Mexico:

Three treadmills, only one of which works

A few stationary bicycles (they call those "spinnings" here. I had to explain that "spinning" means something different in English)

A weight room

To use the lockers costs $4.50 a month extra

Only two small show stalls in the bathroom

So, gyms are more expensive and offer less around here. At least I'm able to get in to shape again. :-)
- Sam

17:02

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jueves, enero 25, 2007

I'm about to teach Angelica and Olivia English

OK, after some struggle, I got access to MySpace. In more detail: this ISP in Mexico uses one of those mandatory HTTP proxies that hijacks traffic on port 80. All well and good, but this particular proxy and MySpace don't get along, making access to MySpace impossible. The workaround is to open up a SSH tunnel to my web server, have that SSH tunner connect to an open proxy (right now I'm using one in Algeria; slow as mollasses but at least it works), and proxy over the SSH tunnel.

Anyway, I'm about to teach an English class; I have two students. Algelica, who I have known for over five years, and Olivia, who I just met. I gotta go!

14:18

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domingo, enero 21, 2007

More on Pizza Patron

When I told my friend Michelle last night about how people went ballistic over Pizza Patron accepting pesos in the United States, her comment was that people who get upset over something like that think their bellybutton is the center of the universe (The Spanish word she used is soberbio).

In Mexico, as it turns out, they accept dollars at toll booths as far south as Jalisco.

* * *

Looks like MySpace is doing some internationalization work; they now have a Spanish-language interface at es.myspace.com.  Looks like they are still getting the bugs ironed out; the blog categories, for example, are still in English.

Lets see if they fixed the bugs with accented characters: áéíóúñ¡¿

I already have work and a place to live.

- Sam

11:36

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sábado, enero 20, 2007

I'm in Puebla!

I made it to Puebla, sooner than I expected.  It was one of those, you know, coincidences.  Last night, I stayed at a hotel in Tepec that kicked me out at 5:30am.  Thankfully, they warned me the night before so I was able to shower and go to bed before 9pm.  I got up early, and was on the road so early that it was still early afternoon when I arrived in Mexico City.  For the first time, I was able to drive through Mexico City without getting lost.  The secret is to stay on the major roads; for going to Puebla from Guadalajara (Toluca), that means going through Chaputepic (Mexico City's version of Central Park/Golden Gate Park). In fact, the signs started saying Puebla as I was driving in Chaputepic.

The worst thing that happened in Mexico City was getting stuck in heavy traffic for over an hour.  That's just par for the course; they always have some construction project that slows down traffic to a crawl.  Mexico City is actually quite beautiful now that I know it well enough to drive through it without worrying about getting lost.

I also had no problems with running low on gas this time; since I know where the gas stations are, I got gas before going through any of the long stretches where there is no gas (Sinaloa north of Mazatlan and Michoacan east of Guadalajara; there's also a no-gas stretch in Baja California between El Rosario and Guerrero Negro)

Anyway, it looks like I already have a place to stay and my boss wants to talk to me early tomorrow morning.  He was, shall we say, not amused that my mechanic delayed my arrival here by a week.  I'm flattered, actually; that means he has work for me.

- Sam

18:59

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miércoles, enero 17, 2007

I'm in Santa Ana

I'm going to spend the night tonight in Sanra Ana, Mexico--the same town I spent the night in one day before returning to the US.  However, the route I too to get here was different than the one I took last December.

Instead of going through Sonora and Baja California and crossing through Mexicali, I went through Arizona, crossing through Tucson.  It took me 7.5 hours of driving to hit the Mexican border (8.5 hours on the clock, since I lost an hour when I entered Arizona), and another 1.5 hours to get from the border to Santa Ana.  Since this is where I spent the night when I came up, I know exactly how long it will take to get me to Puebla.  I should arrive there Sunday afternoon.

22:49

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martes, enero 16, 2007

Getting the paperwork to drive to Mexico

I just got all of the paperwork to have permission to drive to Mexico and spend the next few months there. The process was simple and straightforward:

Go down to the Mexico consulate and get my FM-T visa. Even though the place was mobbed, with a line of people waiting to enter the consulate, and standing room only in the waiting room, once I told someone who asked me what I was waiting more that I wanted a FM-T (Tourist visa), I was quickly let in and only had to wait in a short line before being serviced. I was out of there within 10 minutes.

With FM-T in hand, I next went to the border and got six months worth of Mexican insurance for considerably less than the same insurance costs in the US. There are a number of places that sell insurance right on the border.

I then entered Mexico and got my FM-T stamped. This is a simple process: 1) Go to the bank right on the border and give them $22.50 (it was only $20 last year); they stamp the FM-T saying you paid your money. 2) Go the the immigration office with passport and FM-T in hand and the person there will stamp your FM-T. Note that I did this process in Spanish. At this point, it was legal for me to be in Mexico for six months.

I then had to find the Banjercito to get permission to drive my car in to Mexico. In Tijuana, go through the turnstile to the taxi stand, turn right, cross the street to the McDonalds, turn right again, cross the street to where all of the "importacion" places are, make a left at the second street and the Banjercito is at the end of the street.

It was a very sleepy and quiet afternoon at the Banjercito, with people sitting around looking bored. I found a single lady manning the desk and gave her a photocopy of my car registration, passport, and now-completed tourist visa. Did I mention they very nicely copied all of this for me for free? Did I also mention that you technically need the pink slip for your car, but this didn't stop me from getting my papers? Did I also mention that my car was in the US while I was getting this paperwork. After giving her my credit card (you need one of those for car permission), she quickly asked me a couple of questions and processed my request, giving me paperwork for my car.

The paperwork includes a sticker which I will put on my windshield (parabrisa in Spanish). Like the process to get my FM-T, this entire transaction was done in Spanish.

At this point, it became legal for me and my car to go to Mexico. The biggest annoyance was the 20-minute wait to get from Tijuana back in to the US. Let's compare this process with the process of going from Mexico to the US. Not to go in too much detail, but the process requires filling out an application pages long, paying a large fee just to get the application processed, and waiting weeks or even months to get the visa application approved.

I will be going to Mexico tomorrow. I will try to post blogs, but I only once got internet access on my way up, so I don't know often I'll be able to post blogs during my road trip.

20:33

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viernes, enero 12, 2007

Restaurant chain gets death threats for accepting peso

A restaurant chain gets death threats for accepting the peso

From the article
A pizza chain has been hit with death threats and hate mail after offering to accept Mexican pesos, becoming another flashpoint in the nation's debate over immigrants.

Dallas-based Pizza Patron said it was not trying to inject itself into a larger political debate about illegal immigration when it posted signs this week saying "Aceptamos pesos" - or "We accept pesos" - at its 59 stores across Texas, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada and California.
Just a few of the many other links to this story: 1 2 3 4 5 6 (Spanish)

I have been getting feedback that some people aren't interested in my more geek blog entries. That in mind, I have a new blog which I devote to geeky topics.

13:24

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Sexo: Male

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Estado: Puebla

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