Guadalajara

The different prices of 1 liter of water in Mexico, Bonafont brand (Mexico’s #1):

MXN$	USD$	Where
4.1	0.31	Wholesale (monthly volumes of ~MXN$5,000)
5.3	0.41	Sam's Club (a package of 12 for MXN$64)
8.1	0.62	Farmacias Guadalajara supermarket
10	0.77	OXXO convenience store
14	1.07	7/11 at Mexico City airport
34	2.60	soda fountain at the movies (Cinepolis)

As a kid some of the books that I most reread were from the Time Life science library, an affordable expensive (at that time and place) and fascinating book collection my parents happily bought for the family. They say that when I was very, very young the book I loved the most was the one about Primates, which had lots and lots of great pictures of monkeys.

But I don’t remember that far (I have a poor memory of very early childhood).

Been playing with travel sites all day, (Kayak FTW!) and I discovered several interesting anomalies with which I plan to tour the world for some $2k in air travel. Flight arbitrage, if you will.

You see:

• Travel within Europe is really, really cheap. As in €30 £5 London – Madrid round trip. So Europe can be thought of as one point: London, by far the cheapest hub.
• Round trips are a considerably better deal than one-ways. I understand they are the industry’s version of wholesaling but a 40% difference seems too much (a one-way can be 140% the price of either round trip leg)%.
• Travel order is everything. Mexico-Tokyo, one way is some $900. Tokyo-Mexico, one-way too, no less than $2,000! That’s right, the exact same distance can cost you over twice as much depending on where you start!

Putting it all together, my plan is to buy the following round trips: Guadalajara-Toronto, Toronto-London, London-Tokyo. I travel from Guadalajara to Toronto, then to London, then to Tokyo, where I stay 3 months. Then I return to London, where I stay some 6 months (to travel cheaply around Europe), then I return to Toronto and stay some 3 months, and only then do I return to Guadalajara.

All this for some $2k!

It’s a tad complicated and wasteful, and I need to plan far ahead, but the price’s pretty good, right?

Can you think of something else?
Know any other anomalies? Youth discounts? Passes?
Got any tips?

I haven’t bought yet but I think I will soon!

Finally! I’m in San Francisco, for at least two weeks, in what should be my beachhead for a longterm stay!

No offense to the big apple, but San Francisco is just so much better. If New York is Mexico City, San Francisco is Guadalajara: prettier, classier, cleaner, ampler, prettier peopled…  

I’m amazed by the huge number of Asians everywhere (Asian women never fail to transfix me…), by the opulence and beauty of the city, by the overwhelming wealth and retail saturation of America (one forgets it so easily in the 3rd world), by the beggars, by my cool hostel, by how it has rained all day long, by how the swankest part of town (Union Square) can be right next to the seediest one (Tenderloin), by how stereotypically rural Mexican where most of my flightmates (rarely does one get to see so many cowboy hats, boots, and rebozos), by how happy I am…

The words came to mind when I was looking for a great Mexican restaurant around town (figured better late than never to get to know my city!) and by far the best online resources I found where English-language Frommer’s and Fodor’s.

I ended up going to Sacromonte and it was excellent. Interestingly, I ate some of the best Mexican food this city has to offer surrounded by foreigners.

After 3 years of searching for local soulmates in this middle-of-Mexico, beautiful-but-digitally-backward city of mine, as I’m packing for the states, I google idly on San Francisco and, behold, I find the incredible blog of a Guadalajara genius with the same web obsession, the same reading compulsion, the same format fiddly inclinations, the same penchant for writing only in overcrafted English, the same relocation (his some 2.5 years ago, to go work with Max Levchin ^ELZR, no less).

His name’s Sergio I. Villarreal Pou and following his commenters’ links I’ve found a tangle of worthy local websites (say, the multiple-personality disorder No Limit studio or the gorgeous Arathael) that opens up what is to me a wholly uncharted local sphere. Which I’ll probably be exploring some thousand miles away…

“Jalisco va a dominar el mundo,” says one of dad’s friends from Los Altos, a migrant region of Jalisco. “Estados Unidos va a dominar el mundo y los Jalisquillos van a dominar Estados Unidos.”

Hoy, en la fila para ordenar de Il Tavolo, que siempre es exquisito, habia un grupo de amigas que siendo su primera vez pidieron una enumeracion de lo que ofrecia el bistro. Ya para terminar la retahila menciona el cajero que tenian “tes de raspberry y naranja”. “Naranja y que?”, pregunta confundida una de las amigas (la mas bella, de cejas oscuras y cabellos claros, a la Kate Winslet). “Naranja y raspberry”, responde inmutable el cajero y sigue impasible durante la larga pausa en que la amiga evidencia seguir en ayunas. “Uno de naranja,” acaba respondiendo atolondrada.

Siguieron el resto de las amigas y ya para cuando toco mi turno habia encontrado en mi Blackberry (!) la traduccion de raspberry, que me evadio en ese momento. “Frambuesa!” Es lo primero que le digo al cajero. “Es raspberry en epanhol”. “Es lo mismo”, me responde enfadado. Pero no, no lo es. Porque con frambuesa te hubieras comunicado, con raspberry confundiste.

Lejos, muy lejos, estoy de ser un purista del espanhol o un paranoico anticolonialista (si acaso soy el colonialista…). Como cualquier amigo puede atestiguar y al igual que muchos de ellos, mi lengua materna es el spanglish y hoy en dia escribo (blogs, correos, messenger) casi siempre en ingles siempre que mi interlocutor lo hable aunque sea como segunda lengua. Pero trato siempre que hablo con alguien que solo habla espanhol de anotar mi spanglish natural con sinonimos o parafraseos en espanhol. No hacerlo, no intentarlo siquiera, es lo que me espanto de este cajero. Si no te preocupa que te entiendan, para que hablar?

Ahora que siguiendo esta logica del entendimiento la verdad es que no hay mas que reconocer que sino fuera por flojera, condicionamiento, y, si, pedanteria tendria todo el sentido del mundo sustituir blog por bitacora, messenger por mensajeria instantanea, marketing por mercadeo (la otra vez vi marquetin!), link por enlace y asi (en vez de etcetera, que es nomas latin para “y el resto…”). Hasta ahi todo va bien para los academicos pero porque parar ahi? Por que no es medico de ninhos el pediatra, medico de la piel el dermatologo, musculo del corazon el miocardio, aprendiz por si mismo el autodidacta, inflamacion del estomago la gastritis y asi?

Y bueno, ya siguiendo esta logica de entendimiento hasta sus ultimas consecuencias, por que no aprender Esperanto, “el buen lenguaje”?

Right outside my friendly neighborhood store I found this tiniest of weeds clinging to life by the sidewalk. She’s doomed, I know, but how to tell her?

Hace ya casi un anho de la FIL y yo apenas subo este cuentito que tan simpatico se me hizo. Libertarianismo para ninhos.

Via Richard, un bizarrisimo video local: La Tapatia de El Personal. Producido por alumnos del CUAAD ^WP, el video es practicamente una guia sui generis del centro de Guadalajara.

Ah, no se, es tan malo que es bueno… Ademas de que siempre es raro ver cultura local capturada en medios como el video y la musica.