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November 30, 2007
Christmas in Panama
Shawn and I have booked our tickets for spending some of his Christmas break in Panama City.
We'll be there during the coolest time of year, when the average high temperature drops down to a brisk 86° F. It will be a nice change after freezing our behinds off in Buenos Aires in July.
Seven out of the ten tallest buildings in Latin America are found there, and they have a very diverse populace. We're particularly excited that this means they have a lot of Indian restaurants, which means that we should have little problem finding tasty vegetarian food there.
We leave on 19 December and will be flying on Copa Airlines.
Posted by crispy at 02:38 PM | Comments (3)
November 15, 2007
Beirut
Beirut at Night
Restaurante Beirut
Avenida López Mateos 1308
esquina Lázaro Cárdenas
Shawn and I walked by this place many times while we were on our way to Tai Spice, and we would always say, "We should check that place out sometime." Since we were on our way to have Robert and Kay's delicious Asian dishes, we were never tempted enough to stop. A recent disappointment with one of our regular Lebanese cuisine outlets lead us to finally try Beirut, and we were pleasantly surprised.
It is a small restaurant with about 12 tables and a bar, but the bar is not one where you can actually sit at the bar. A few of the tables are outside, where they also have drive-up service for tacos arabes, which is what Mexicans call any of the various things that come stuffed in pitas like gyros. They also have hookah service, which they call shishas, with flavored tobacco that lasts 30-40 minutes per order.
The food there is relatively standard Lebanese food for around here, although their drink list has several items I've never seen on a Lebanese restaurant's menu before, like agua de flores and yogurt drinks. It seems a little expensive. For example, an order of four falafel with a little salad is MXN $67, although they are larger than average. The quality of everything we have had there has been top notch. They have a vegetarian plate with five items for MXN $99, and everything on it is quite tasty. The service is also very attentive, and they seem pretty quick in the kitchen.
Interior, Restaurante Beirut
They play funky belly dancing videos on the TV and they have a couple of odd fountains with colored lights. On the way out the door, you can stop and check out the items they have for sale, like music CDs and incense. They are open most nights until 11 (I believe on Sunday it is considerably earlier), but they are closed on Mondays.
Posted by crispy at 08:58 PM | Comments (0)
November 14, 2007
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bus
Local Area Bus, Guadalajara
Today, almost two years after moving to Guadalajara, I took the bus by myself for the first time.
Before, I usually took taxis or walked to my destination. On a couple of other occasions, I took the bus with Shawn. It was not that I thought I was above taking the bus, nor that I was afraid of the bus being dangerous. The drivers do tend to gun it then slam on the brakes, so it is not necessarily the smoothest ride one will ever experience. Still, I can handle that.
The main reason that I previously avoided taking the bus here is that the one time I took the regular bus with Shawn, it violently and completely disillusioned me of the notion that Mexicans are always sweet and polite. Before taking the bus, I found most Mexicans (apart from the one "Gringo Go Home!" driveby shouting we managed to survive) to be unfailingly friendly, kind and welcoming. In almost all other situations, Mexicans seem very polite and nice. On the bus though, they have some socially acceptable licence to be complete jerks and they revel in it. That is not to say that they are in your face, what-are-you-gonna-do-about-it jerks. It is a lame passive-aggressive rudeness that has a particularly Mexican (or is it tapatio?) flavor.
When I went on the bus with Shawn before, we had to stand because all the seats were already taken. No big deal there; I don't mind that much at all. I did not expect any of the people on there to give up their seats for us. Yet when old people boarded that were barely able to remain standing on terra firma and not a single able-bodied person offered them their seats, I was aghast. Mothers with infants and bags of groceries got on, and nobody offered up a seat. When someone got up from an aisle seat to exit the bus, the person sitting in the window seat would quickly slide over to block access to the empty seat. Riders are instructed to board through the front door and exit from the rear, but even when politely asked, people would not budge to let others move from the front or middle of the bus to the rear exit door. I suspect a frail, blind abuelita who was missing an arm could board carrying a hacking Tiny Tim on her back and nobody would surrender his seat to her.
No, because of the dog-eat-dog atmosphere of the regular bus, I was not all that keen to use it. Yet with Charles out of town, the need to start trimming the budget, and my desire to get out and about more, I decided it was high time for me to start using the bus in Guadalajara.
There are two primary types of inner-city buses, the TUR/Turquesa line and regular lines. They differentiated by their service class, with TUR and Turquesa being more upscale. That just means they have cloth-covered seats, air conditioning that usually works, and best of all, they are rarely full. I am not sure if that is because their price being double the cost of the regular lines keeps their ridership down, or if that is because they have a policy of not stopping for new passengers if all the seats on the bus are taken. We have heard that the latter is the case, but I've seen Turquesa buses go by with people standing now and again. The problem is, there are a very small number of routes (like 2-4) served by TUR/Turquesa, and the remaining hundred or so are served by the regular buses.
A regular bus costs MXN $4.50 (about USD $0.40), and there are no transfers. If you need to take only one bus to get where you are going, the trip costs you MXN $4.50. If you have to take two buses, the trip costs you MXN $9. If you have to take three, it is MXN $13.50. You get the idea. There are so many different routes though, it is unusual to have to take more than two different buses to get to your destination. Of note is the fact that here, bus drivers make change for you. You don't have to have exact change or forfeit any extra.
Local Area Bus, Guadalajara
The TUR/Turquesa buses are turquoise in color, and the regular buses are white or tan, for the most part. Each bus is numbered for its route, although some numbered routes are split into "A" and "B" or "Via 1" and "Via 2" because they have slight differences somewhere along the route. The routes are all loops, although it is often the case that the loop is just turning around at the end and tracing the first half backwards. I'm not sure if a passenger could pay once and just ride around indefinitely, or if they charge you each time you pass the start or end point of the route. Most routes start in the early morning (between 5 and 6 am) and stop between 11 and 12 pm. Much to my annoyance, there are no late night or 24-hour bus routes.
To catch the bus, one must go to a designated bus stop, and when the desired bus comes along, put out her hand to flag it down. Most stops are used by multiple routes, so the driver does not know that a person wants to get on his bus unless they signal in this way. From inside the bus, a request to stop is made by pushing one of the little buttons on one of the handrails that run along the aisle.
Shawn has had buses fail to stop at a designated stop even though he has his hand stuck out to signal the driver. Did they not see his hand? Did they not stop because he is a gringo? Were the bus drivers just being jerks? Any one of those is possible. Sometimes if the bus is in the left lane and there is other traffic in the right lane, the driver will just skip the stop, just like our water delivery guy will sometimes skip bringing us water if there is no good parking spot right in front of our building.
Bus Stop, Guadalajara
There is a book for sale at newspaper and magazine stands called the Guía de rutas del transporte público, which details the bus and light rail routes. It is about 5" x 7" and costs about 15 pesos. In the front of the guide, it has an indices of colonias (neighborhoods), major streets and sites of interest. Each entry in the index lists the route numbers that run by that neighborhood, street or attraction, so to go from point A to point B, one must find a route number that is common to both. If both places do not share a common route, the map of the route must be used to determine where two routes, one for each point, intersect. The hard part about doing that is that the route map shows the route on a map of the entire Guadalajara metro area that is like 2" x 2". It is nearly impossible to really determine what streets the buses run on by looking at the map, so they just give you a general idea. Then one has to verify that the routes actually do cross (or to which they come close) by reading the list of streets the each route takes, also listed for each route in the guide. They do not make it easy.
Macro Shot of Route Map, Guía de rutas del transporte público
At times, people get on the bus with guitars and sing for tips. The guy on my bus today was not too bad. Shawn, on the other hand, tends to score people that bang on guitars not set to any recognizeable tuning with no recognizeable rhythm while they yell along. It would be really cool if they had a 15-piece mariachi ensemble strolling up and down the aisle playing music like on the Tequila Express, but I do not think that is likely to happen any time soon. Nor are they likely to have go-go dancers or geishas serving tea.
It would probably take something like that to make me sincerely love taking the bus in Guadalajara, and as it is, I am not sure that I will ever be able to stomach how inconsiderate people are on it here. Maybe I will just try the old chestnut that is so good for dealing with crazy people that yell at you on the bus in the United States: plug in the headphones, crank up the iPod and just pretend they are not even there.
Posted by crispy at 01:48 PM | Comments (4)
November 13, 2007
Mothra!
The Moth That Ate Cleveland
I often talk about how this place is teeming with life. Larry gives me a hard time when I remark about this, because he and Joseph lived in Puerto Vallarta, where it's really teeming with life. But to me, I've never lived in a place with so many different kinds of wacky bugs, reptiles, birds and animals.
About once a year, we'll be sitting in our living room and an enormous moth or butterfly comes in through the open window. Above is this year's model, which we first noticed when it flew into Shawn's face. We were able to catch it in a plastic bag when it stopped to rest, and we released it back into the wild.
You can't really tell from the photo, but the wingspan on this thing was at least five inches. The piece of wood on the left (there are two pushed together, but you can see the line where they meet) is four centimeters (just a bit more than one and a half inches) wide.
Posted by crispy at 12:31 AM | Comments (2)
November 12, 2007
Cheese
Chris and Shawn, Mío Cardio
Posted by crispy at 08:44 PM | Comments (4)
November 11, 2007
Scary
Donald Kerr, Director of the National Reconnaissance Office, says that Americans need to change their definition of privacy to one based on the safeguarding of their personal data by government and business entities.
His statement was made in testimony before Congress, which is reviewing The Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act. They are trying to decide whether telecommunications companies should have immunity for their helping the US government conduct illegal wiretapping, starting back in 2001.
I remember back when the Clintons were pushing for national healthcare, and Americans were freaked out about the government having, and being responsible for protecting, everyone's personal medical information. The American public doesn't seem all that worked up about the having their calls and emails monitored without warrants; why not let the government keep track of all your details? I guess Bush's exemplary job while in office has changed people's minds and convinced them that the government should be trusted with such personal information after all!
Posted by crispy at 04:37 PM | Comments (0)
November 10, 2007
What's All This To-Do About Torture?
With the confirmation of Michael B. Mukasey as the Attorney General, the United States once again renewed my satisfaction with our decision to leave the country, as well as my disappointment in our (ex)compatriots' apathy and willful ignorance about what their government is doing at home and abroad. It does not, however, surprise me.
I was astounded when it became clear that Americans would settle for nothing less than an invasion of Iraq, despite the flimsy evidence that the administration used to justify such an attack. I was shocked when the majority of Americans fell for Bush's little trick of associating Saddam Hussein and September 11th, despite the fact that no connection between the two existed. I was even startled when the Abu Ghraib photos seemed to elicit little more than a shrug and collective "what are ya gonna do?" from the collective American consciousness.
That was the last straw for me, the final point from which there was no turning back. I did not want to be a part of an America that was indifferent about using torture on prisoners, even if they were called "detainees" or "enemy combatants." I expected a tidal wave of outrage from my fellow citizens when it was discovered that the White House, under request from the CIA, asked the Justice Department to give an opinion on the legality of torturing suspected terrorists. That outrage never came.
Oddly enough, some of the leftists that I thought would be most infuriated about their government's lust for torture there were more outraged over the fact that Shawn and I found Mexico to be far and away more tolerant and socially progressive than the United States. Their reactions ranged from skeptical rolling of the eyes to aggressive verbal arguments.
Usually this manifests itself when we relate that in our experience, Mexico is far more enlightened about the gay issue. For some reason, people in the United States tend to underestimate the bigotry that exists there. This could be an artifact of our tendency to associate with more liberal and tolerant people, combined with a touch of false consensus effect (Ross, Greene & House, 1977), but maybe it is because many Americans do not consider the systematic prejudice that exists there to be an urgent problem. So often the victims of such bigotry are told that they are rushing tolerance by well-meaning folks that do not have to deal with such prejudice and think that justice will just work things out eventually.
Yet the Mexican public is also much more progressive and proactive in its approach to the idea of torture. The public line is that it is not to be tolerated, period. Were there public debate about whether nor not an interrogation technique constituted torture, there would be no public indifference about it nor would politicians be allowed to dodge the issue. It would be declared inappropriate. It might be argued that such certainty exists because torture, carried out on its citizens by the government, is a historical reality here. Nobody here would deny that either. International groups such as Amnesty International and Physicians for Human Rights have reported cases of torture in Mexican detention facilities in recent times, and I have no cause to be skeptical about this. I am sure that the majority of mexicanos would not doubt it either. Mexico has historically been, and in many ways, continues to be a corrupt country.
However, the political situation is changing rapidly here, and like most countries crawling out from under repressive regimes, Mexico's new government and her people are unequivocal in denouncing human rights abuses that were permitted in the past. The studies that are refered to by the above groups in which more torture was found to be going on than previously thought, were conducted with the full support of the Procuradúria General de la República (the Mexican Attorney General's office), although no government officials were permitted to be involved with the analysis or the publication of the results of the studies. Mexico has also instituted legal and social programs aimed at the elimination of torture in the country, such as a program where forensic physicians are trained to recognize signs of torture in detainees.
This stands in sharp contrast to a country where the Attorney General cannot decide whether or not waterboarding is torture and believes that the president should be allowed to ignore what he considers to be an unconstitutional law if he believes it infringes on his executive rights. It does not surprise me that Mukasey will not claim that waterboarding is torture, nor that Americans are not going to make much of a fuss over it. On the other hand, I think it would really surprise Mexicans if anyone in their government hesitated to make a very clear and public statement that such an interrogation method was illegal and unacceptable. Here, the failure to be upfront and clear about that would be political suicide.
Mexico certainly has its fair share of problems, but it seems to emerging from the darkness of an authorian past while the United States seems, at least to us, to be sliding headlong into a future where individual rights are sacrificed whenever necessary to allow the ruling junta to continue its clandestine operations.
Posted by crispy at 05:14 PM | Comments (3)
November 07, 2007
Ana María Salazar In a Taxi Honey
Ana María Salazar
It's not a regular phenomenon, but there are times when I am swept off my feet by a woman.
The most recent occurence happened when I learned of the Mexican news broadcast in English by Imagen Informativa, a news/talk network out of Mexico City. As I mentioned before, it's difficult to get hard news about what is going on in Mexico in English. Delivery of The News in Guadalajara, at our local Librería Sandi has been disappointingly sporradic, and the Guadalajara Colony Reporter, well...they seem hesitant to allow their gringo reporters cover political news.
It took a while to track it down. All our Mexican friends knew there was a news broadcast in English, but nobody knew any specific details that would help me find out where I needed to set my dial to hear it. Finally, the ever-helpful Charles told us that it was broadcast on Imagen News, and that helped me locate it over the Internet. On the Imagen web site, I learned that it is only on at 5:30 AM and 11:00 PM, but luckily, they carry MP3 files of each broadcast on their web site. I downloaded all the ones they had available, ranging back over the previous four or five days.
From the first "Hello Mexico," I was hooked. I check in almost daily to get my regular fix. Not only is it great to have such an easy way to keep up with what is going on in Mexico, but to have it presented by such a savvy host is a real treat. Salazar was raised in a bilingual household, got her bachelor's degree from Berkeley, a law degree from Harvard, served as the United States Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Drug Enforcement Policy and Support from 1998 to 2001, and now, in addition to being the head of her own international consulting firm that specializes in negotiation and mediation training, Grupo Salazar, she hosts two radio shows, Imagen News and Living in Mexico, a tv show called Seguridad Total, and writes for two blogs, Mexico Today and Mexico Decide. Phew.
On top of all that, she's got a really, really sexy voice.
Even you extranjeros can listen to the MP3 files of her weekday and weekend shows, if you want to keep up with important things going on in Mexico. If you are fortunate enough to be living in La Republica, you can find your local Imagen affiliate and tune in.
Posted by crispy at 01:27 PM | Comments (0)
November 04, 2007
Flood Relief
Most of you have probably heard or read about the flooding in southern Mexico, in the states of Tabasco and Chiapas. Thousands have been evacuated, but many will be left homeless. It's really terrible.
In the event that any of you wish to donate to relief efforts, you can do so easily online through the Red Cross, but the above banner, lifted from the Tabasco state web site, indicates that if you donate to one of the accounts run by either Banamex or Banorte, the bank will match your donation.
I am not sure if those of us in Mexico can take advantage of this offer by donating in cash in the local branches of these banks. That would be a lot easier than having to do a wire transfer to the accounts. I will look into it though and report back here in the comments of this entry. That is, unless any of the readers in Mexico happen to know one way or another and would care to enter a comment letting us know.
Posted by crispy at 10:33 PM | Comments (0)