A Mexico Début

June 28, 2007- Happy birthday Mom! Mexico D.F. (district federal) as they call it here.

We arrived on Sunday night. What can I say about my first few days and impressions?

My very first impression was not an especially good one. We entered a very large taxi, a 4x4. Drove along large roads, zooming in and through traffic. In the fast lane, a car in front of us stopped. Just stopped in front of us, without any warning whatsoever. The driver shifted over to the passenger side, opened the door, on the side where cars speed by, with a gas can in hand. Yes, ladies and gentleman, the man ran out of gas and simply had to fill his car up...in the fast lane! Our taxi driver showed no sign of anger nor frustration. He calmly switched lanes when an opening was available in the middle lane!

The electrical lines are a complete mess. Reminds me of Taiwan’s style of organising electrical wires, a basic mish-mash.

Arrived at the Sheraton Maria-Isabel Hotel on Reforma Road and Circuito Interior. A mere 175 US dollars per night. It’s on Alcatel! I slept soundly for a first night in a foreign city, at the launch of a new adventure.

The Monday, we had breakfast downstairs in the restaurant. 28 US dollars each. Thank goodness breakfast is included in the room rate. Open buffet with lots of fresh fruit: strawberries, mangoes, bananas, fresh orange juice, cactus juice, you name it, they’ve got it and even more. Simply heaven.

Next door to the Sheraton is the American Embassy. As we sat eating our exotic breakfast comfortably, I peered behind the curtain and saw a lineup of folks waiting for hours to apply for a visa to enter the States. This feeling of separate reality, dichotomy, was the first of many to be had in the days to come.

After Manu left for work in a taxi, I took the metro to electronic district. S.J. de Letran. I was out early, everything was closed until 10. Walked around the streets. Rep. de Uruguay street is under construction. The way they go about fixing a road seems primitive compared to our modern ways. Very few machinery, men manually picking at the road, digging deep to access water pipes and whatnots. The sidewalk is uneven, covered with cracks, holes and planks to cross large gaps. Can be quite a challenge if you are elderly or in a wheel chair to get around this city.

Checked out what kind of converters are available to convert our computer and external drive. After two days of covering all possibilities, on Wednesday I finally bought a power box to run the hard drive of the computer (250 pesos, plus a cable to go with it 50 pesos). Returned to another store called Steren and bought the 440 pesos converter. I have just finished setting it all up, the computer and external drive that is… I crossed my fingers, praying that it wouldn’t explode! It works! So now I have access to all my old Paris computer, including the doc project!!!!! Hallelujiah!

Tuesday and yesterday I met Isabel, the lady who helps Alcatel expats find apartments. She is one heck of a character! I’ve got to tell you about her. She picks me up at the hotel’s corner in a larger family size van that looks like a rusty clump of metal ready for the dump. I barely had the time to introduce myself when her cell phone rang. She is one talented lady. Can handle 3 phones and driving in this crazy city at once. During our time together, she mostly spent it on her 3 phones. Switches lanes without chekcing her mirrors, blind spot nor flicking on the turning signal, because she’s a busy woman and is concentrating on her phone converstation, making sure the person on the other end of the line can hear her nice and loud! On more than one occasion, I had the feeling that an accident was rather close. After visiting a couple of cheesy apartments, we stopped at her place to pick up some numbers of other places to visit and picked up her cleaning lady, her ‘mou-cha-cha’ Vicky is her name. Vicky had a not so easy childhood. Forced to work at a young age by her father to pay for her brothers’ studies. They are now professionals, one is a lawyer. She had a baby in her early teens. Married a man. He left her and her baby with no money for another woman. Vicky took to the street in tears. A woman walking by noticed her, inviting her to work for her in exchange for a roof, food and some money. Today Vicky is a full-time cleaning lady. She seems like a happy person. I heard her humming along during the car ride to the bus stop where she takes the bus home to the foothills just on the outskirts of Mexico City.

…later on in the day

The metro is cheap, 10 rides for 2 American bucks! It’s a little on the slow side at each stop and not as well serviced as the Paris metro, it often demands a stretch of a walk to get from the metro station to your desired destination. It’s rather quiet. The people I mean, they don’t talk loudly, they usually keep to themselves, either reading a book, or just daydreaming: But if you are lucky, which you are on most occasions, you get to hear really loud music, music of all kinds. They are played by people who sell CD’s, musicians as well as so-called musicians. Today I had the chance to hear “I just called to say I love you”, it was so loud I felt the hair on my ear drums falling off. The guy selling this CD went off at the next stop, and in came another dude, but this time it was classical, music for meditation and relaxation…, and then this dude went off at the next stop, and another one came onboard, a very old man playing a Scotch-taped mandalin with nylon strings looking like they needed a changin’. The man just strummed and picked randomnly with no hint at all of a melodic line nor of a steady rhythmic pattern.

Walking through bohemian Coyoacan from, Frida Kahlo’s house museum to Hidalgo Plaza: I was walking along a street when all of a sudden an opening in the wall showed me in to a market full of wonders. It was a market specializing in food, especially fruits, kids’ costumes, party accessories and hand woven baskets. I floated through one end of the market, winding in and out of the aisles, going with the flow of my curiosity until I reached the other end taking me to the street. Simply magic. Mexico es magico!

People say that Spanish is an easy language to pick up. I would like to believe them. But the problem is that whenever I open my mouth to speak to a Mexican, it comes out in French, English or Chinese, especially Chinese. My Spanish teacher in Paris explained to me that it is normal. When learning a new language, the words that first come out are those of the acquired second language. For me, that’s Mandarin. I sure hope this fades with time and that the Spanish kicks its way in my brains.

Unlike Taiwan, Mexicans don’t take much notice of foreigners. It still feels weird to me, because after living 3 years in Taiwan, I got used to that kind of behaviour…of standing out like a sore thumb in a crowd of Taiwanese. After two days of being in Mexico and questioning this, I thought that perhaps I look like a Mexican. I have dark features. I have a somewhat olive complexion. And my arms are quite hairy. Not to be insulting to the Mexican women with hairy arms…on the contrary, it is rather comforting for me to be amongst a hairy-armed woman a few times a day.