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July 27, 2006
I've Got Some Junk Food That's Better Than That
Shawn noted on his recent trip to the United States that sugary cereals like Kellog's Corn Pops® have 1/4 of the protein in the United States compared to the very same brand (Kellog's Corn Pops®) in Mexico. I noticed a while ago too that cookies (the really sweet kind that are like Oreos®, not the panadería kind that are more like homemade) also have considerably higher nutritional content in Mexico than their United States counterparts.
For example, Marinela is a brand of cookies here. They're owned by Grupo Bimbo, which is a vast bakery empire (think Wonder®) that started in 1945 in Mexico and has since gone worldwide. Their USA division owns brands you're sure to know: Oroweat®, Entenmann's®, Boboli®, among others. There are several types of Marinela cookies, including sandwich cremes and chocolate chip. But the Marinela cookies are quite different from the same types of things that you buy from Kraft-owned Nabisco in one detail: they have vitamins.
I'll grant you, they're not something that any nutritionist is going to include in a healthy diet regimen. However, compared to their American counterparts, they have a measurable amounts of vitamins. Check out Oreo® Cookies which have 4.7 calories per gram and do not meet any percentage levels for the RDA of Vitamin A, Vitamin C or Calcium. They do have 10% of the iron and 2g of protein per serving, so that's something.
In contrast, Marinela's "Principes" cookies (a chocolate wafer cookie with white chocolate filling) has 4.8 calories per gram and 3.1 grams of protein per serving. Yet a serving also gives you 15% of the vitamin A, 11% of the vitamin B1, 12% of the vitamin B2, 10% of the vitamin B3, 13% of the vitamin B6, 25% of the vitamin B9, 14% of the vitamin B12, 22% of the vitamin C, 15% of the vitamin E, 29% of the iodine, 15% of the iron, and 12% of the zinc that you're supposed to have daily.
What's up with that? Why doesn't the most powerful country in the world have junk food that's healthier for you than the junk food in Mexico? Granted, it's probably not all that important to most folks. But don't you find it a bit odd?
Posted by crispy at 07:11 PM | Comments (4)
July 24, 2006
Rainy Season
I think it's safe to say that we're firmly within rainy season here, so at last I can tell you what it's like.
I know. You were just waiting on the edge of your seats.
But it's a considerable thing that looms in the back of your head when you hear it: rainy season. We always know what that term means where we live and we're kind of used to what it means. Surely though, we've all heard stories, seen representations in movies or watched footage from obscure places that show weather that is extreme for what we're used to. I hear rainy season and I think of towns going through their annual season of inaccesability by motor vehicle because the road is washed out or constantly covered by too much running water. I hear that and think of rain measured in days or weeks, not minutes or hours.
Luckily, in Guadalajara, the rainy season isn't so bad. On occasion, you get amazingly heavy downpours, where the streets fill with standing water and you'll be soaked to the bone if you're caught outside. Most of the time that lasts for about 30 minutes, but then it can drizzle on for another four or five hours. Often, that's all you get: nothing but light drizzle for hours.
The streets can flood, and in fact, a couple of weeks ago, that stranded me at a restaurant. It started innocently enough, with normal, even rain that gave way to heavy rain. The streets started to fill with inches of running water and traffic was making a great splash passing through the intersection. Suddenly, the flow of water from the drainage grates reversed and started to gush back out and into the street. These geysers made the intersection a huge river through which traffic could not pass. We stayed at the restaurant, having dessert, then coffee, then a tequila on the house. Eventually it let up, officials came and opened up some other drainage and the water cleared out of the roads. Luckily, we had nowhere else important to be, because we'd not have been able to get there.
Most of the time, the rain happens at night, after 10 or 11. That isn't a steadfast rule though. Right now it's raining at 2 pm, and has been raining since 11 am. But often it will rain lightly for several hours at night, cooling things off the following day. It also helps to wet things down so we don't have so much dust in the air.
Our friends Larry and Joseph have warned us that if we're out somewhere and it starts raining (or if we're home, planning to go out and it starts raining), we should just stay put and wait it out. From what I've seen of the rainy season so far, that's good advice.
Posted by crispy at 02:47 AM | Comments (1)
July 22, 2006
The Road to Bogotá: Part Three
[part two]
People want me to get there already.
In truth, I wasn't sure I was going to write much about Bogotá. This is a blog about my Mexican experience, and my trying to get to Bogotá was Mexico in a nutshell. Yet to make a long story short and to put down my thoughts on the Colombian capital, let's just say that on the third day, we walked to Chapultapec Park, participated in a riot at the Aerolíneas Argentinas office, and at last flew into Bogotá.
We arrived very late at night in Bogotá, which had us a bit wary, since all sources advised being cautious at night in the city. I expected to find it crawling with people that might cause one to be worried about being robbed, killed, or at least hassled about something. Instead, it was practically deserted, apart from random cab drivers and a few people outside clubs. It seems that everyone in Bogotá has heard how potentially dangerous it is in the streets at night, so nobody (and I mean nobody) ventures out in them after dark.
We arrived at our hotel and found our room to be surprisingly small for the suite we had requested. Our guidebooks and online sources reported that the Hotel Saint Simon had rooms for $45 USD per night, and suites for just a few dollars more. Despite the fact that we had added some padding for inflation, we were shocked to find that our dinky room was $79 USD per night and the suite which we eventually took so that we'd have a larger bed was $103 USD per night. I was even more upset when upon showering the first morning there to find that there was no hot water whatsoever.
We went out to cash some travelers checks we'd bought before we left, because once again, guidebooks advised not using ATMs in Bogotá due to crime. We wandered around for half an hour trying to find a place to which we were directed by locals, but it wasn't where they said it was. Then we tried another place that we were told cashes them to find that they didn't, and again someone there told us that another place cashes them down the street. We went there to find that they didn't cash them either. People at that place told us to try yet another place that cashes them, and alas, that place was closed. We later tried that place and found out that you could cash them, but only if you have an account with that bank.
In the midst of this frustration, which was really getting me angry, I decided it would be nice to get my shoes cleaned. Traveling and walking around in the rain the previous evening had gotten them dirty, and I'd been turned on to shoe cleaning of shoes that don't get polished in Guadalajara by one of the many shoeshines that work in downtown. At first in Mexico, I had been skeptical about the whole idea, but afterwards I was shocked to find that my old boots looked brand new. Therefore, I decided that having them cleaned in Bogotá would make them look nice for the rest of our trip.
I was approached by one guy that asked to shine my shoes. I asked if he could not shine them but rather clean them, and he indicated that he could indeed. Shawn was annoyed by me at this point because I'd stopped to get my shoes washed while we were knee-deep in the travelers check saga. As the shoeshine started in to work, he told me that he was going to use a very special soap to wash the shoes, which would enable me to not wash them again for four months. He even had a friend that came up while the other was working who told me that the soap was of the finest quality, and posessed special characteristics that bordered on magical in their shoe preservation abilities. I was a bit confused as to why the hard sell was necessary, since I had consented already to having the shoes washed.
After it was all done and they'd told me that I would not have to wash my shoes for four months four times each, I looked down to see my dark, wet shoes that I knew would dry to their lighter color (they're kind of tan). I asked how much I owed and the guy that cleaned them told me $40,000 COP (around $15 USD)...each shoe.
I asked them what they meant and they repeated the price. $15 USD, per shoe.
In Mexico, I pay between $15 MXN (about $1.40 USD) and $25 MXN (about $2.30 USD). I won't get into the kinds of things I was thinking that a shoeshine costing $30 USD should include. Since I didn't ask the price before he started, I didn't really have a leg to stand on in denying him payment. I further considered that if there were someone in the capacity of an offical to whom I could have appealed, they would have backed down on the price. Yet there was nobody around to use as backup in my argument to refuse their declared price, so I decided it was best to just pay them and move on. Remember, at this point, I had been told over and over about how dangerous Bogotá is, so I didn't want to cause any trouble over an amount of money that I could live without.
At the end of our time in Bogotá, I would have flatly told the guy where to go and given him like five bucks. By the time we left, I would have learned that Bogotá is not so dangerous as people make out that it is, including the people that live there. They do suffer from a high murder rate (23.4 per 100,000 in 2003), but that has dropped by 50% within the past 10 years. You can understand why they feel nervous, but the wave of post-traumatic loosening-up is lagging behind the decline in violent crime in Bogotá. It seems a little overly-nervous in a lot of places there in the way people act and precautions they tell you to use in order to be safe in their city.
At the time, having been in the city for not even 24 hours, I decided to pay for the lesson of learning to always ask how much it should cost beforehand. I should probably do this everywhere, but I learned to be sure to do it in Bogotá. Most of the time, the price you get stated is not what you expect because it's cheap, not because they're trying to swindle you. Yet it seems that Bogotá does still have traces of people living desperately that will do whatever they need to in order to make a buck, and tourists are very easy targets, unfortunately.
Those of you that travel, take note. If you go to Colombia, you should expect to pay no more than $7,000 COP at the most expensive of shoeshine venues (airports, apparently) for a pair of normal shoes. Owners of clown shoes, be prepared to pay slightly more.
As the shoes dried, I found that he'd used a brush that had been used for polishing black shoes with black shoe polish, so despite any delivered promises of the miracle cleaner (good for four months!), my shoes ended up being tinged with grey, just like the clothes in that old detergent commercial. Some parts that stick out more are more of a solid black.
On the positive side, when we returned to the room at the Hotel Saint Simon, we found that we had hot water. The maid, who had visited our room while we had our first Bogotá experiences, had turned on the water heater in our room, hidden behind a small closet door I'd not even noticed until seeing it left ajar by the maid. It should also be noted that the rooms at the Hotel Saint Simon, while lesser than expected for that price, were appointed well and the staff were all considerably friendly and some exceptionally so. The price also included a small breakfast that included some hot options, like eggs.
In the next installment, we'll have some photos of the city and - HURRAH! - things start to turn around for us at last.
Posted by crispy at 03:41 AM | Comments (1)
July 17, 2006
Leaving Las Vejigas
My houseguest who was staying for a bit over a month to check out Guadalajara and take a couple of intensive Spanish courses will be leaving early tomorrow morning. I'll miss having her here, but I will be writing more in the blog after her departure. We might even finally make it to Bogotá, where we will eat more things with cheese in them than you ever thought possible.
Posted by crispy at 06:11 PM | Comments (7)
July 05, 2006
CNN Suggests Violence May Result From Election Uncertainty
I'm watching the CNN program, Situation Room on Wednesday, 5 July 2006 and they just ran a story on the Mexican presidential vote count that is still going on here in Mexico. They said that violence might possibly break out, depending on the outcome.
While I admit that I'm relatively isolated here in Guadalajara, the idea that violence is going to break out seems ridiculous here on the ground. Sure, people are anxious and they want their candidate to win. There also is a long tradition of corrupt politics in Mexico. However, the idea that people are going to get violent about the presidential election results is really stretching to make the story more sensational.
The piece cut footage from an interview with expert Doctor Octavio Pescador of UCLA, who cited areas in Mexico where violence has recently occured. Yet these situations were not related to the selection of the future president of the country. The local media are not talking about the possibility of violence.
CNN is making an incredible leap in reasoning.
Posted by crispy at 05:42 PM | Comments (4)
July 03, 2006
Outcome of Mexican Elections Uncertain
As of midnight after the elections, the presidential elections are too close to call in Mexico. Both the conservative PAN (Partido Acción Nacional) and the liberal PRD (Partido de la Revolución Democrática) are claiming victory. When the last of all the ballots from the 300 electoral districts come in on Wednesday and are counted, it is expected that the winner will squeak by with less than one-tenth of a percent (0.01%) over the loser.
People have been asking my opinion on this, as to whom I want to win. The problem is, as is the case in the United States, neither side is worth a damn. The PAN, while doing some great things for Mexico over the past six years under the leadership of Vicente Fox, sucks up to the United States and a very limited range of business interests, and that benefits only a very small segment of the country. The PRD candidate is proposing a short-sighted plan to help the poor (simply handing out money and not changing any of the root causes of poverty) that will consume 50% of the national budget. One side is effective but cowardly. The other is gutsy but irresponsible.
We'll just have to wait until Wednesday to know who will win out.
Posted by crispy at 12:13 AM | Comments (0)