painting stripes.
I ran into this trabajador painting stripes at the Mexico City airport.
Archive for November, 2004
the burning season.
November marks the beginning of the dry season in Vallarta where all the foliage that has been wildly accumulating during the rainy season is hacked away, gathered up and burned. At all times during the day, you can faintly smell burning leaves and plants. Occasionally it’s over powering but mostly it’s like a sweet incense smell. As I float on my board and look back at the shore and of the town behind it, I can see hundreds of small plumes of smoke drifting up above Sayulita, as if the entire town and surrounding hills are on fire. I wish I had a picture of this.
friendster.
i just checked my friendster account for like the first time in 4 months. whoa that sucks. does anyone still use friendster? friendster is so outster.
Acclimation.
Today, I went surfing and it was a wee bit chilly, so I wore my rash guard which cuts the wind a bit. On the way home I was remarking to my self that it was beginning to get a little cold here in Vallarta and then I look at the LCD temperature reading. cold. hah! it was 80 degrees. I think i’m beginning to get used to this tropical lifestyle. or at the very least I am beginning to acclimate.
the turtles of La Laguna
This is a picture of the extremely voracious man-eating snappah-head turtles found at the illustrious La Luguna restaurant on the road to Nuevo Vallarta. La Laguna serves my favorite dish, “Mariscos al Ajillo”. Made with the Guajillo chile, I could eat this dish every day of the week. no problem. (and no, the turtles aren’t used in the dish, they’re just fun to look at)
los mariachis on the beach.
nothing like going to playa las Destiladeras, chilling out under a palapa and listening to the occassional mariachis.
my new girlfriend.
she’s 6′2″, her name is “sweetie cakes” and she’s fast and furious.
A Night in Sayulita.
Some photos from a wonderful Saturday night in Sayulita, with some new friends, in early November.
The Ropes.
Currently learning the mexican land purchasing system the hard way. trial by fire. making all the mistakes as I go along and learning from them (hopefully).
El Brujo.
When mom and I are in Vallarta, running errands, occassionally we stop off at El Brujo for some good classic mexican food. The best dish there is the Aguachile. A shrimp dish in a very spicy green sauce made from serrano chiles, cucumbers, onions, avacados and tons of lime juice. The bomb-diggie.
a taste of home.
Mr. Cream is a great little spot in Marina Vallarta. A place to go to when you have a hankerin’ for pancakes, waffles and the mexicanized version of an all american breakfast. but the coffee sucks, you’ve been warned. I especially love the warm and fuzzy feeling I get from the ihop-ish logo and color scheme.
sneakers to surfboards.
In my last life, as a high fallutin’ internationally renowned web designer, I collected sneakers like your grandma collects salt/pepper shakers. yeah, like that. I had forty pairs at one point. I never threw out a pair after they had been worn out, but still, i had a lot of em. more for the aesthetics then anything else, sneakers look really cool.
The more I learn to surf and get comfortable with the 7′6″ funboard that is my first “tabla”, I find myself lusting after the agility and speed of a shortboard. and the more i look at shortboards, the more i wanna buy one. I have one particularly cool looking board that i’m currently eyeing at the local surf shop. i’ve become resigned to the fact that it will be my next purchase. surfboards are very cool looking too. the aesthetics of surfboards are insane. this could get expensive.
and then I imagine that in the near future, i will be needing to get a wooden rack made, to contain all my boards and i think back to my closet filled with premium sneakers.
The Gringo Whistle.
The law of order on the waves decrees that the person on the “inside” of the wave has the right of way. Just as I am about to catch a wave, I hear over my left shoulder a brief whistle from one of the locals, signaling that he is taking the wave. Half of the time this is perfectly legit. and in any ordered society, the guy who just took my wave would then allow some other people to move up the line to catch a wave or two.
But noooooo…
The locals come right back to where I am, paddle out a foot or two in front me and take wave after wave. And even if I do have the inside right to the wave, I often hear the whistle anyway. So the law of order really goes something like this: if the local is on the inside, then it’s his wave and if you are in the inside and you have right of way, it’s still his wave.
So now, when I hear that whistle against my left shoulder, I call this “The Gringo Whistle”. Because only gringos are stupid enough to listen to it. And in the end, what use is playing by the rules, if they only apply to you if you allow them to. So right here, right now, I’m proclaiming myself a local of the Sayulita break. I will no longer pay any attention, at all, to The Gringo Whistle.
thank you
work, so far.
I haven’t talked about my work life too much. Work has been great, challenging but fun. For the first months I was here, I was basically a glorified go-fer. shadowing mom in meetings and running errands. helping her with drafting the garden and the kitchen on the remodel we are doing in La Cruz. Creating and Organizing the office. Meeting with various architects. Helping tweak the business plan on Playa Las Palmas (our larger project). Looking for new pieces of land for future projects.
About two or three weeks ago, we agreed that we should start splitting the work up so that we could get twice as much done. At first it was hard for me to go out and do things by myself. Run errands. Go to the bank. Pay the payroll at the job site. Supervise Camarino (our construction maestro). Getting bids on construction work. Talking to the accountant, etc… all the while, doing it in spanish.
Lately, I feel I’ve come along way towards being productive and feeling that I’m accomplishing tasks that benefit our company, while taking some responsibility off mom’s shoulders. That rivals the feeling I get as I drop in on a wave and ride it all the way to the beach.
I love Mexico. sorry kids, I ain’t ever comin’ home….
One Love.
I bought this awesome handmade tshirt, in Sayulita, last night. The shirt was designed by Luciano, an argentinean hombre living in Sayulita with his dad. They have a little restaurant on the main square. Stop by and check them out sometime, la napolitana pizza es muy rico.
Living with my parents.
I am currently living in my parents’ casita (guest house). It’s a wonderful little room above the garage, with it’s own micro-kitchen and bathroom. In order to save money, I decided to stay here instead of renting an apartment. I am paying rent, but it’s about a third of what I would be paying to live somewhere else. very convenient. especially considering that I spend a lot of time at the house, since we converted their second bedroom into an office.
It’s very interesting getting to know your parents again. Not many people have the opportunity to live with their parents, past the age of 24, I happen to be 30. I happen to really like my parents. and enjoy their company. But sometimes, as all couples do, my parents get into arguments. Sometimes I join in and sometimes I don’t. On those rare occasions when things don’t turn jovial and the argument escalates, I withdraw to my little casita. best to give them a bit of much needed privacy.
The way they argue though, completely reminds me of how my sister Beth and I would fight when we were kids. It’s literally the same dynamic minus the kicking, punching, biting, pulling hair, etc… Which totally explains our behavior as children (what? we were kids! Beth is a tough chick, she beat my ass many times!). we’re just chips of the old block. chalk it up to dna or something. Now my question is: why do my parents argue like this as adults?
I hope 7 years of therapy has taught me to be a better communicator then they are. one of these days i’ll try having a “real” relationship to see if this is the case.
i hope so.
Beautiful Girls.
Last night I went to this uber-chic invite only party. I’ll spare you the details, suffice to say that there were tons of extremely well dressed and devastatingly beautiful girls there. Since it’s the topic of this entry, I figured it’s a detail worth going in to.
As a contrast to my earlier entry about good conversations, this party was like being in a lifeboat on the ocean in need of a drink of water. My kingdom for a glass of water. Beautiful girls every where and no one to talk to.
I still haven’t quite figured out why, but I know that I end up feeling like a schmuck at these functions, trying to throw my little smile on, to mask the fact that I know three people at the party and they are off schmoozing. A smile to hide lots of standing around, being a voyeur and having far to little meaningful interaction. I do like going to these shindigs but then I always want to go home early. At several points, last night, I literally felt invisible. No girls turning their heads to catch my eye. No vague unspoken recognition of shared attraction. Is it the language barrier? cultural/class differences? my own introverted tendencies? I don’t know.
One thing I do know is, that it is so nice to see really beautiful girls. thanks for egging me to come out, last night, Miguel. I appreciate it.
Spanish Lessons.
Today was the first day of our new spanish class. Yes, we have a spanish maestro. His name is Manuel. He is a wonderful mid-50’s mexican boxer guy with a masters in linguistics from Cal Berkeley and a couple of other degrees thrown in for good measure. great guy, heart of gold.
I look forward to being able to understand more complex concepts and to be able to have a conversation without mumbling every other word.
The word for today is: Confianza (confidence).
Fish Tacos & Friends.
Last night I enjoyed a wonderful dinner of fish tacos at Albert’s, a funky little two table restaurant right off the main square, next to the church in Sayulita.
I was accompanied by my new friend Diana, a wonderful sweet girl from Vancouver, a world class skier, massage therapist and avid surfer. We had met early in the day while passing the time between sets, out on the water, surfing. Diane is staying for two weeks, decompressing from a hectic life in the north and completing a take-home course in biology (something like that. i can’t seem to remember the details, bad me).
We talked about our lives, our love lives, ourselves, all the things that lie just beneath the surface, waiting for someone to uncover. It’s amazing how much you can learn about yourself in a few hours of good conversation. It’s really nice meeting someone down here that I can have really good in-depth conversations with. I don’t have anywhere near that level of spanish yet and I haven’t met any americans here, that i relate to on that level. It was a nice little dinner, not romantic mind you. Just fun and filled with good vibes, introspection and conversation.
We ended a great dinner with a cerveza, on the beach, under the stars. Topping the night off with the most amazingly bright shooting star coming into the atmosphere to burn bright and sizzle out. What a great and auspicious end to a wonderful night.
So here’s to good peoples, good tacos and shooting stars.
LA, LA big city of dreams….
I recently went back to LA to hang with my friends and to vote, here are a couple of pictures I took.
For some reason whenever I go back to LA, I feel old, i don’t feel my thirty, I feel fourty. I feel the weight of responsibility. and when I come back to Mexico, the weight disappears as I step off the plane and I’m 24 again. I know this feeling will probably change but for now I am enjoying it.
viva mejico!
