Category: Mexico

Was I being hit up?

I went out to eat today. Good for me. Had a great salad and soup. Read about 1/2 of a Hardy Boys book. But, since my family is away on a trip, I was alone. This is the first time I have been to eat in this restaurant in 2 years without having my family with me. We don’t go there often, maybe once a month or so. When I walked in the hostess acted surprised that I was by myself. She wanted to know where my wife and 2 children were, why they went away and why I did not go with them. All somewhat fair questions, but should I feel obligated to answer? We have no marital problems, but what if we did? Was she digging for juicy information?

I think I have figured it out though. She thinks I’m a hunk and she is trying to off my wife. Well, I got news for her, she is not in the same league as my wife. My wife has me for the rest of her life (or mine, whichever expires first).

The lights of the email account are on, but nobody is home

I have been wanting to get permission to operate my ham radio here in México. I have been here 2 years and have finally gotten things moving the right direction. I have all the paperwork in place that I think I need except the final form that I have to fill out with the FCC equivalent office, COFETEL. One of the extra requirements that I have been working on this week is that I need a local ham to “sponsor” me. They just have to write a letter and say that they are willing to make sure that I operate within the rules.

I wrote an amateur radio operator in an adjoining state to see if he could put me in contact with someone here. I wrote him because he had a nice, current looking, web page dedicated to radio. No reply after 6 days. I finally found the ARRL equivalent in México which is FMRE. They have a listing of members at their site. There were several in my state of Yucatán. I did a QRZ lookup on them and found several in my part of town. I have now written to the Yucatán division of FMRE, the Mérida chapter of FMRE and 3 individual FMRE members. Not a single reply.

If you have an email address posted on the web somewhere, would you do the world a favor and update it? I have no idea if these are out of date email addresses, or if my emails are getting caught by spam filters, or if no one wants to touch a foreigner with a ten foot pole, but they are not answering. I am not even asking for a sponser. I am just trying to get information as to where the COFETEL office is so that I can start the official paperwork. It is necessary to contact someone individually because COFETEL’s website is broken. The main page comes up fine, but if you try and burrow in to actually get any information, their websever is serving up junk.

México’s Next President

Does México have its next president? I hope so. Felipe Calderón (my candidate of choice) seems to have won the election. The first official count was completed yesterday and Calderón won by .58% (not much). He also won in the initial unofficial count.

Obredor is calling for another count, saying that the first count was unjust. I don’t mind a recount. I think that is the prudent thing to do when it is this close. And, maybe Obredor will come out the leader the next count (which will require at least 1 more count). But, crying that the count was unfair, illegal and whatever other slanderous remark you can add, is uncalled for. Obredor is not helping his cause by acting like a 10 year old in school. He should demand a recount because it is a close election, not because he thinks it was handled illegally.

I read an article this morning saying that the election was “stolen” by Calderón. As if he did something shady to make it happen. What is shady is that the PRI party stayed in power for 71 years in México. It was a dictatorship in which no one, that I have ever met anyway, felt held fair elections until the year 2000. At which time President Vicente Fox won. By the way, that party only won 22% of this year’s votes. Maybe the people really did not like the dictatorial rule by the PRI.
The article I read was comparing this election in México to the 2000 US Presidential election in which Bush beat Al Gore. Of course everyone remembers the recounts over and over. Which, by the way, Bush won every time. This article states: “Lopez Obrador and his backers understand full well that they must now use all means necessary to reverse this hijacking of democracy. Progressives in the United States and across the world must lend their voices to Lopez Obrador’s cause, and national, state and local governments should be pushed to pass resolutions demanding that the Mexican government launch an internationally-supervised recount.”

I am not at all against a recount. But don’t do it because you have to whine and say things are illegal (who in their right mind thinks the political landscape in México is completely legal?). Do it because you want to see a fair election. But, of course, make sure the re-count is done in a legal manner as well.

I am the most important person in the world!

Ever run into anyone with that attitude? Of course we all have. This week gave two great examples of that.

We had made arrangements with a person that was supposed to come get some stuff out of the house we are renting. He has been saying he would come for 4 months. I called him Saturday and we arranged a Tuesday, 10:00 am time. We don’t currently live in the house but are starting to move stuff over there. So, we made a special trip to be there at 10:00. At 11:00 that morning, I got a text message from him saying that the truck they had borrowed would not be available until 2:30 in the afternoon, so he would be there then.

Whatever happened to calling before the appointment to cancel? I messaged him back and said that 2:30 would not work as all of our afternoons were filled except Friday. I heard nothing back from him. So here I sit on Thursday night (after messaging him to check to see if he is showing up on Friday) expecting to get a phone call from him Friday afternoon, probably around 5:00, asking me why I am not at the house to let him in.

The second incident happened today when a taxi pulled into the lane of oncoming traffic because he felt like he needed to be ahead of the 7 cars in front of him. By doing so he blocked people from being able to pull into that street, which then blocked the people that he would have been behind from being able to pull out. So because one man felt like he was more important than everyone else, he made the situation worse and probably delayed his ability to reach his destination much longer than if he would have just waited.

As I was writing this, I thought of several more examples from this week, but I will stop at these two.

Wandering around Mexico City

Ten hour layovers can be fun, especially around Mexico City. The downside is when the layover is from 8 at night to 6 in the morning. I jumped into the METRO system after depositing my bags in a secure locker at the airport. I asked around for something interesting to see. Immediately I was pointed to the Red Light district and the bars. Neither of which I wanted anything to do with.

Then it was recommended that I try the Garibaldi stop. That is where I found close to 200 mariachi playing their music in hopes that someone would drive by and hire them. That was fun. I called my wife from there and let her listen to some of the music with me.

Then I hit Bellas Arte. A section of the Centro Historico where there are some amazing buildings with some of the most beautiful architecture.

Back to the METRO and on to the airport. Problem was the METRO stops running shortly after mid-night. I got within one stop of the airport and got kicked out. Taxi time. Not sure what you have heard about the taxis in Mexico City, but basically they are to be avoided at all costs–especially at night!

No choice. I took the taxi and lived to write about it.