Oy!

I have all this stuff running around my brain that I want to talk about but for the past 3 days I've been working on this project that is about the slowest, most tedious thing you could imagine. I have to research, then print out reports for information that is missing, then sit and enter the missing information piece by piece. This morning I woke up at 4:30 with all of this on my mind and it was less painful to just get up and do it then to lie there and toss and turn so already, even though it's only 6:30 pm I am ready for bed! Must .. .stay . . .up!

Had two vet visits already this week and I am now an amateur vet with supplies in the laundry room but will give specifics on the next post.

For now I just wanted to say hey.

Free Rice Word Game

I found this site a couple of weeks ago. Sent it out to my folks and Dad at least loves it. Increase your word power while donating rice to people who need it. A game and a charity all rolled into one. Play it daily and help the world. (Actually I have not looked into the specifics but it is a great word game. Bookmark it NOW!)

http://www.freerice.com/index.php

A New Water Dish and More Mexico Observations

Last weekend when I was home for about 40 hours before heading back to Cuidad Mexico I ran out to PetSmart for cat food and litter supplies. The cats have a food dispenser and a water dispenser but the water dispenser has bothered me for a long time because it can get pretty nasty and there is no way to clean the reservoir. Also it's stagnant water which is why they routinely drink from the toilets - after all it's the freshest water in the house! In PetSmart I discovered the Drinkwell recirculating water dispenser. It has a large reservoir that is removable and easy to fill and clean. You plug it in and it delivers a constant stream of water freshly charcoal filtered. When I came in Friday night I was thrilled to see how clean it still was, and the cats love to drink directly from the stream!

I'm sure it would work well for small dogs too so if you're a pet owner consider purchasing this item - I highly recommend. It's available on the Doctors Foster and Smith site but I found it on sale at Petsmart. As a bonus since it's moving water it will improve the Feng Shui of your home!

So anyway, my assignment to Santiago is going to be slightly delayed (I know, it already has been delayed - that's the nature of working for this company). Because few people in South America are bilingual in English, and because I am not nearly to the point of being able to communicate in Spanish, they have decided to send one of the guys from the Mexico office to Santiago to do the first part of the training. I will go back to Mexico to cover his job while he is gone and then once it's time to train in the part of the system I know best they are hiring a woman who speaks excellent English and I will go to train her.

I got this news Wednesday and initially was tremendously disappointed but over the past few days I think it's a good thing. For one thing I will be a short 3 hour flight from home and so hopefully I can work it out so I am only gone for a couple of weeks at a time and then able to be back here for a few days before turning back around. Since I'm a total sucker for the holidays I like this idea. Secondly, Carlos (the guy who will be going to Santiago) works in an area that I am not terribly familiar with and taking over his work will give me excellent training in this area which I think is crucial to me for future projects as well as my ongoing understanding of this business and our system.

Also I like the Mexico office. The people are great. Typical for me I tend to get along well with everyone but especially the guys. Don't get me wrong - the women are great too but they are very young, petite, pretty, fashionable, quiet and they just do their jobs and don't offer opinions. So I can't really identify with them at all. The guys are outgoing and voice their opinions and they're funny and smart. They're really aggressive about teaching me Spanish and making me use what they teach me. They say "fuck" like me.

Part of the reason why I work from home mostly is the Atlanta office is miserable. Very quiet - no one likes each other, everyone gossips, people are miserable - this attitude permeates and I tend to not get much done when I'm there because the environment is so awful. In Mexico everyone gets along, or at least they act like they do. Everyone eats lunch together. In Mexico (and this is not just in our office but everywhere) it is customary when arriving in the morning and departing at night to personally greet all your coworkers with a kiss on the cheek. Men shake hands but women/women and men/women do the cheek kiss thing. It freaked me out my first week but I've gotten used to it now and it's kind of nice.

So I'm looking forward to going back in maybe a couple of weeks to do whatever work needs to be done. The nice thing is that I will have different accommodations, although at this point I'm not sure what they'll be. This means I will not be a prisoner in the hotel at the airport and will have more of a Mexico experience that I can share with y'all.

A Pile of Loot!

Another week in Mexico is finished and I arrived back home tonight about 11 pm in a cab from the airport which feels terribly excessive and non-frugal to me. I try to hit hitch rides to the airport whenever possible because I like to leave my truck in the driveway because I don't have a security system and it makes it look like I'm home what with the lights on timers and all. But it seems not at all easy to find free rides back from the airport. I have the option of taking MARTA (the Atlanta "subway" system) but I would have to go all the way into the center of Atlanta and then change lines and come all the way back to my side of town and THEN take a cab from the station to my house (about 10 miles). All the while dragging luggage and my own tired ass. Sam kind of laid it on the line and told me to just take the cab and stop mooching rides from my friends because I can expense it. I'll still take rides where I can find them because even if I walked around with $1000 in 20's it is gut-wrenching to watch a cab meter ticking off the 1/8 miles. I'm hopeless.

So anyway I'll spare you the details but it was a fairly brutal week. Brutal in a weird kind of exhilarating way. Problems like I dealt with this week make my stomach burn and yet it really pumps me up to deal with them and make progress, and progress was made although it could have been better. Still I find myself sitting here in front of the computer at 11:42 pm on a Friday night (10:42 pm Mexico time - oh sure that justifies it) and I just kind of have to write a bit before I can wind down.

I've spent 16 of the past 26 days in Mexico and I'm fairly certain I'll be back, maybe soon. I changed most of my leftover pesos back to US dollars after the first trip but now I don't bother - I simply empty my wallet in flight and change back over to whatever I have of the currency of the country I'm flying to. I have a little change purse from Japan that I use for the purpose of storing whatever currency I won't be using for a while. Tonight I emptied my wallet of pesos and put the US money back in and I was shocked at how much Mexican coinage I had accumulated:

I know a lot of people who throw all their extra change in a jar and then once a year take it to the machine at the grocery store and buy a new BMW or whatever but I always try to keep my change to a minimum which I suppose is why I drive a 6 year old truck. But at least it's paid off! I found myself wondering how on earth I had managed to accumulate so many coins and realized with some embarrassment that Mexican coins are confusing to me! I far prefer to pay with paper money because I have to look so carefully to figure out which coins to hand over to round out a purchase. What a doob I am. Some of these are 10 peso coins which is roughly (very roughly) about $1 US and are highly useful for tipping bellboys and the guy who opens the car door in the morning. But the rest turn me into a babbling fool. So I have this pile of loot because of my own pride. I would rather walk around with 2 or 3 pounds of metal than embarrass myself with a cashier. Today in the Mexico City airport I went to the bathroom 3 times hoping there would be an attendant so I could put down a fistful of coins as a tip (fistful = roughly 30 cents) but no such luck which is unheard of in my brief experience there.

So anyway as I mentioned it was a rough week and long hours and no time to flit about Mexico but in the interest of sharing I have to tell you that I was there alone this week for the first time. The first week was me, Sam and Michael and during off hours we did that kind of business/social thing and it was great. The second short trip it was me and Michael and we did the same. This time me. The office have come to know me as a bit of a culture-glutton and this week instead of going in a car to a restaurant for lunch the whole office walked to a nearby "place" for take out. I can only describe this place because I don't know what to call it. It was kind of like a garage - with a roll up door onto the street. The whole place was maybe 400 square feet and most of it was a sit down dining area with about 5 plastic patio tables. The kitchen was not much bigger than my tiny bathroom and the cooks were a mother/daughter team. Every day there are two main selections that come with rice and plantains or rice and an egg, soup and a large drink (Monday it was a lime juice drink and Tuesday it was a guava drink). It is a full, hearty, home cooked "real" Mexican lunch and for everything it is $35 pesos (roughly $3.30). Unfortunately they don't do receipts so I can't really expense it but I'll try. It's just that down home. It was fun. You kind of walk into the tiny kitchen and tell momma your order then wait outside on the street and they bring it out to you and take your money. Then you walk back to the office, dodging stray dogs and vehicles. This is not what you should imagine Mexico City to be - this is just the area where the office is. Mexico City really is a very slick cosmopolitan city with a rich history but I think it is very cool that one can have an experience like this without ever leaving the city limits!

So anyway I took a couple of photos from my hotel window. I was looking out across at the airport and they are working on some landscaping. They are tending it carefully. I looked out the window at the exact right moment and saw a Mexican sprinkler system:

Can you see it? A big water truck and a guy on top hosing down the landscaping! WAIT!!! Here's a better shot!
Time to go now. Time to sleep in my own bed with my cats hogging up all the space. I have some other things to share about this week but will do it later when I've had time to vacuum and recover!

Hasta Manana y'all!

My flight back to Mexico today is a night flight which means I will be landing after dark which I have heard is a sight not to be missed. I know from my vast 3 weeks and 2 round trip flights so far that Mexico City is enormous - it stretches as far as you can see. Michael (our developer and IT genius) flew in at night and tells me it is Christmas with Santa Claus. As much as I am sad to be leaving home once again I am really looking forward to seeing this. I've requested a window seat and hope I can get it and I'll try to take pictures. In the meantime, here are some daytime views from the airplane: Mexico City lies at the bottom of a "bowl" created by mountains. The air pollution is kind of rough on me - the second I step off the plane my eyes get red and watery and kind of stay that way until I get back. Evidently the winter months are the worst so I am really hoping we get this project finished before December! Nevertheless it is a breathtaking view from the airplane.The above shot is about 15 minutes out of Mexico City. I always ask for a window seat. This really isn't smart because if you have to get up it's a true pain unless you end up with empty seats next to you. But I love looking out at the ground. When I was flying to and from Japan we flew over the southern coast of Alaska and it was just the most amazing thing - so rugged.

I used to be terrified of flying. In my previous life (the early 80s) I remember one flight from Houston to Ontario, CA that was so frightening I wanted to hit the pilot when we finally landed. Also I've had a couple of commuter flights that made me understand what it's like to be a falling leaf in autumn. But when I started this job and was ordering truckloads of orange juice and toilet paper into warehouses it finally hit me that there are tens of thousands of flights per day and maybe once in a blue moon there is a problem. Now I'm more terrified of driving 285 than flying. The sky is full of highly trained professionals with other highly trained professionals watching their every move. The ground is full of idiots who use their vehicles as weapons. I just watch the flight attendants. If the day ever comes when they freak out I will freak out but until then I'll just white-knuckle my armrest if there is turbulence!

How could you not love a sight like that?

Sam (da boss man and cool dude with tattoos) called this morning. He's been bouncing back and forth between Mexico, Santiago, and his home in Reston, VA for the past few weeks. I never know exactly where he is but he went home to Reston this weekend. Turns out we will both be in the international terminal at Hartsfield this afternoon and so I'm leaving a couple of hours earlier than planned so we can catch a late lunch and get caught up in one of the fine terminal dining establishments.

It's really difficult to blog from the hotel. For one thing the hours in Mexico are all crazy - in the office at 9 (I like to start working at 7) - lunch for 2 hours at 2 or 3 -- back to the hotel by 7:30 or so unless there is a business dinner in which case back to the hotel around 10 or 11. The hotel charges $5 per hour or $22 for 24 hours for internet in the room. I hate getting only one hour because I feel like I then have to be tied to the laptop for that whole hour but also hate getting 24 hours when I know I will maybe be online for a little while. It's not my money - this is all expensed - but I think I'm too frugal for my own good. Anyway, since I will be there this time without Sam or Michael to dine with I might be online more and will try to check in a bit.

Adios for now!

Sydlantajap Mexiago

Follow me here y'all - I promise there is a logical train of thought.

I hate commercials. They are an unwelcome interruption in the few TV shows I like to watch and since I don't have tivo I have to mostly put up with them. Usually I spend commercial breaks getting little things done - put a load of laundry in, take the trash out, dust, shred the day's junk mail . . . but there is one series of commercials I love and I drop everything to sit and watch them with delight. Hoping you have them where you are. The AT & T series of commercials running now just delight me no matter how many times I see them because they are brilliantly creative and funny.

I was back in Mexico this past week - left Wednesday morning and drove back into my driveway at 10 last night. I discovered that some of my very favorite shows are available on the internet once they have run and so I figured I could watch them in the hotel at night but that connection is so slow that the steam runs about 30 seconds and then there's a wait while it buffers and then 30 more seconds run so I gave up and now that I'm back I'm spending the day cleaning the house of cat hair and cat gak and watching the past week's episode of Grey's Anatomy.

Actually watching on the internet is kind of great. Your average one hour show is about 42 minutes of show and 18 minutes of stupid commercials. When you watch on the internet you might be behind the times but if you can ignore people talking about it the next day and watch your one hour show on the internet you are saving about 7 hours a year. I have about 4 hours of not to miss TV per week so I am spending about 28 hours extra per year living my life. But this is Barbie math and if you challenge me on it I will simply go get a pedicure to avoid your logic. When you watch on the internet there are fewer commercials - a one hour show has maybe 3 or 4 15 second interruptions.

Anyway, today I pulled up ABC on the internet so I could watch the Thursday episode of Grey's Anatomy and there are four 15 second commercials that you have to live through and today's commercials were the AT & T commercials that I love and while I was listening to them and mopping the kitchen floor I made up my own:

I'm a Project Administrator. I live in Atlanta but my boss bounces between Sydney and Santiago. I've lived in Japan but recently began commuting to Mexico. I need a network that lives where I do: Sydlantajap Mexiago.
I have been cracking myself up all morning.

I fly back to Mexico tomorrow night for another week trying to get this project solid. The cats hate me but luckily it's a hate/love relationship. They are getting lots of wet food right now. Between bites they give me the cold shoulder and I mop around them.

Video!

As promised . . .