User:Vagrant/Mexico

this will be a retroactive memory of my trip to mexico, starting with debconf6

humble beginnings

hey all, just wanted to let you know i made it to mexico.

the bus from albuquerque to juarez took about 4-5 hours, and from there within a half hour i was hurtling towards mexico city, and found myself in one of the largest cities known to humanity only a little before dark. after wrangling with an ATM that didn't want to give me money, i managed to find one that saw things my way (or at least pretended to by giving me money), and then i caught a cab to "hotel montreal" (recommended by the conference organizers) just as it was getting dark.

despite still totally blanking out sometimes, i'm starting to be able to manage basic, rudimentary spanish. enough to get a bus ticket, a cab, water, read items off a menu, and even order carrot juice. that feels like a big improvement.

the next morning, i walked to the bus station to catch a bus to oaxtepec. it wasn't far, and i managed to get a little exposure to the mexican marketplace. it took about an hour to get there, through some gorgeous, though heavily populated mountains. i managed to get off at the right stop, and with some looking around realised that the bus terminal was right where the convention center was. after stumbling through my cruelly broken spanish, and a person's pretty broken english, i managed to communicate that i was part of a group of people coming here for two weeks, and they gave me a room. the place was a little intimidating- very touristy. it also happened to be cinco de mayo, which isn't a huge deal here, but is still a holiday and an extended weekend, complete with the occasional explosion of fireworks in the distance.

i might have been the first person here, as far as i could tell, so i wandered around a lot and stood out like a gringo in a mexican vacation resort. i found a little ecological park sort of space, and wandered amoung the mangos and spotted porcupines and avocados and such. as soon as the sun started thinking about going down, out came the soccer balls, and everywhere there was open, flat space, people played soccer until pretty late.

eventually, feeling a little lonely and isolated, i just went to sleep. after a bit of that, two german folks stumbled into my hotel room, and all my attempts to speak (at least in my head) german came out in spanish, which is a nice change from how it used to be, as i'm trying to learn spanish after all (i used to speak german when trying to speak spanish). it was nice to have folks to speak mostly fluent english with. then some locals came by, and toured us around the compound, and a little bit through oaxtepec (it is very small- only about 8,000 people) in the back of a pickup truck in the rain. it was very refereshing.

i spent much of the morning with a someone from the U.K.(who came even later in the night), wandering amoung the mangos and all around, looking very much like two gringos at a mexican vacation resort.

and here i am, typing on one of many partly broken windows computers, at the price of 15 pesos an hour. hopefully we'll get real internet access soon. it is a free software conference, no?

sol de naranja

i woke up, and took a good look at the sunrise over a mountain. the horizon is always covered in something that looks pretty much like smog to me, but it's distant and beautiful enough you could delude yourself into thinking it was just mountain mists. well, i climbed to the highest thing i could find- a 15 meter diving platform, and watched the sunrise. the mountain (which i later found out is one of the largest active volcanoes in mexico) cast a huge shadow on the sky. the sun here is usually very orange, but especially orange on the horizon.

mas personas con peanuts i cervesas

slowly, throughout the next day, more people showed up. on many occasions, i found myself wondering where what few people were here went.

most of the people flooded in around 9 or 10 at night. some people felt the need to get the worst of local tastes, so they had a bag of chile peanuts and some corn snack with lime power and chile, of course augmented by some cans of mexican beer of varying degrees of pretty awful.

agua i chlorine i vigilacia a la noche

well, as it got dark and started to rain some, we found ourselves huddled along a little shopping area near the swimming pool, basking in the flourescent lights, and the security guards essentially told us to move along. you can get away with a lot when you're a bunch of foreigners standing around in the dark drinking beers in the rain, and we pretty much just stayed there until the guard left. eventually the rain subsided, and we hung out outside near the pool.

earlier that day, they had poured what looked to be 50-pound bags of chlorine into the pool. so, some people did some skin tests, to see if it would kill us, or maim us or anything, and then a few folks hopped in. eventually, i couldn't resist. i feel like it has been many years since i've been swimming in swim wear, and i wasn't about to start that night. despite what appeared to be much chlorine, it felt significantly less chlorinated than many pools i've been in.

mind you, clearly, there were signs posted that said the pool closed at 6, so we were a little nervous what with security guards prowling around at night, and having already possibly gotten on their bad side, with the not moving when they asked us to thing and all. well, diving into pools is not one of the more stealthy things you can do, so inevitably, after swimming around a while, the guards came around to have a little talk. i jumped out of the pool and was partly dressed by the time the guard got near us (the pool area is rather large). then, of course "habla espanol" was the question of the day (or night, as the case was). so, several of the people were native spanish speakers, but through a marvel of fate, "no" en espanol is the same as in english, and they managed to keep a straight face. unable to communicate, the guard wandered away, and we wandered off to drink a few beers near a cliff overlooking several cities in the distance.

on the way back, the pool was rather tempting again, but shortly after the first couple people jumped in, the guards showed themselves: "speaka spanish?" still, amazingly, nobody spoke spanish, at least, not within 30 feet of the guard. determined, he managed to find some not entirely willing translators, to tell us to stop swimming in the pool at night, and especially not naked.

Vegetarianos (unofficial debian subproject)

so, there's two menus for the sponsored meals here. there is "menu vegetarianos", and "menu normal". i've been eating mostly vegetarian (save for the big plate of red meat i ate when i said "i have no idea what's on this menu- i'll eat whatever i'm served" and some tasty crispy crikets from "el mercado" - more about the market later). early on, we formed a tight-knit group of folks, comprising only 6-10 people early on. though, in order to serve vegetarian food, we were require to order 20 plates. while the food in hotel restaurants has not been all that impressive, early on, it was made up for mostly with volume. it was also made up by the fact that the vegetarian table was, hands down, having the most fun.

now, deeper into the conference, we manage to span 2-3 tables of 8-10 each. so, there's a sign at each table, and one stands out more than the others. therein lies the a great division.

one sign is rainbow coloured, and dubbed the "gay vegetarians" table. it's done in some great circa 1996 WordArt or something, with a grey shadow of the letters trailing off into the background at an angle. of course, the gay vegetarian table is coveted. more specifically, the sign itself, as anyone who can bring the gay vegetarian sign to their table, is, of course, far more interesting than the table with a plain blak-and-white with grey shadow trailing off into the background at an angle sort of sign. so, a culture of acquiring the sign from the other table began.

i think it started off quite simply- people just snatching up the sign while nobody else was paying attention. i didn't get involved till it got a little more physical. someone had snatched the sign off our table, and two or three of our dedicated table members were trying to pry it from the hands of someone. so, what with my rudimentary knowledge of how to disarm someone with a knife, i figured it could help loosen their grasp on the sign. i didn't help much. but eventually got them away from the table, and two of us were still failing to pry it from their hands. eventually, we had them pinned to the ground, and only after much struggle did we manage to acquire the sign. i later found out it was one of the debian release managers. it's good to know release managers have a good grasp of things.

at dinner, the game was more civil, or simply a little more elegant. the classic, "walk up and snatch it while nobody was looking" approach worked decently well. i also managed to crawl very low to the ground, sneak up, and snag it without any resistance. but my absolute favorite required a bit of social engineering. i asked one of the spanish-speaking folks at the table to ask the waiter to fetch it for us- it took a little bit of hushed explaining, but eventually the waiter walked over, collected a few dishes, and snatched up the prized gay vegetarian sign and brought it over to us. i never thought of myself as much of a social engineer.

Toronja

well, i know what naranja is, so when faced at the juice stand with toronja, and really wanting grapefruit, i asked what it was, and they showed me a grapefruit. excellent.

El Mercado

there's smoke everywhere at market, and you can buy all sorts of swimming outfits, handicrafts... as you eat, sometimes someone will walk by trying to peddle hammocks. there's tasty crunchy crikets, or entire pig skins. it is certainly no cathedral, but the diversity and insanity of the bazaar.

we don't get sponsored breakfasts, but that's not such a bad thing, because at the market you can get fresh quesadillas (not what you think, norte americanos), gorditas, tlacoyos and lots of tasty fruit juices and drinks. they also make atole, a spiced chocolate drink, though quite posibly using swiss miss mix.

and the huitlacoche, mmmmmm. it's a fungus that grows on corn (in the U.S., called "corn smut"), and it's very tasty. it infects individual kernels, which swell up huge. i think it even infects the little strands you find in corn.

they use a really tasty fresh cheese (queso fresca, i think). they make the tortillas right there, by hand, and fry them on a big grill sort of thing. it is, by far, so much better than the poorly done westernized food they attempt to serve us at the hotel restaurant. you can eat well on 30-40 pesos (about $3-4).

talking up the mothership

oh, yes, i talked up freegeek at a BoF along with another fellow from venezulea, who was working on some computer recycling projects there. it was surprisingly well attended. i gave everybody a homework assignment to start up a freegeek in their local region.

bloody tango toe

this german fellow was teaching several people (including, in a bizarre twist of fate, three argentinians) how to tango. i managed to pick up the very most basic steps realtively easily, unlike most of my attempts to learn anything dancing related, and i think it is because of tango's historical roots as a knife fight- i can feel how the movements are defensive maneuvers, as well as attempting to vie for an opening. even without knives, it was quite fun, but i did manage to gash my big toe pretty good.