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February 16, 2003.
Have I ever
told you how much I love living here? Yes, probably all too often. Well, at the
risk of repeating myself and boring our regular readers, I have to tell you that
the story of Kevin and the Huichol Indian boy and the bike and the response from
this town to the boy's plight is what it's all about. A big bouquet to all of
you out there who responded so generously …and thank goodness for the internet! There
are numerous reasons why folks come down here on a one-week, prepaid, all-inclusive
package …and never leave. In my case, one of them is the appearance of businesses,
seemingly overnight and out of nowhere. (Sometimes they disappear the same way,
but them's the breaks.) One day last week, I went over to the Tribune offices
like I do every week, only to find out that a brand new restaurant, called Kuma,
had opened right across the street. It serves Chinese food and the Chinese owners
or chefs (I'm not sure, I didn't ask) were chatting by the establishment's front
door. How convenient and pleasant it would be to just walk across the street for
a nice Chinese buffet, just like the ones we "foreigners" are used to…
I'll have to check it out and tell you all about it, soon, as soon as I get hungry
again after all the moles my colleagues and I enjoyed at La Fonda. I have also
been told that we have a new Indian restaurant in town called Dasan's, and a Spanish
one too whose name I don't recall offhand. I'll have to try those too… Oh
my, so many temptations and so little time… And then
there's the other side of the coin, unfortunately. The stationery store located
next to the Tribune offices, the one I always used to go to for all my pens and
paper needs, the one whose employee told me that the plastic file storage box
I had ordered would be in the following day …closed. That's it. No sign.
No forewarning. Nothing. It just closed. And of course, I never got my plastic
filing box. Easy come, easy go, I guess. There is a highly
respected lady in this town who writes for one of the major Spanish dailies here
as the "social pages" columnist. I have always considered her to be
very lady-like, objective and apolitical in her columns (and I am proud to say
that she considers me a friend). Last week, she deviated a little from her normal
dulcet tones. I grinned as I sat there, reading her article …about TelMex,
my favorite pet peeve. She laced into them without mercy. But she also pointed
out something that I hadn't even thought of in my growing frustration with the
monopoly's newly-implemented voice mail box. As you may
recall, Telefonos de Mexico installed an automatic voice mail system last January
31st, without asking anyone if they wanted it (illegal according to Mexican law.)
The system was put into effect in only some of Mexico's 32 states, and Jalisco
was one of them. It made it impossible for many of us to log on to the internet,
caused much rage as we had to listen to interminable messages before being able
to dial any number, etc. etc. So what this lady pointed out was that this was,
according to her (and to many other national journalists in the days that followed),
just one more ploy to squeeze more money from users. How? Why? Because although
the service was being offered free of charge for the first three months, if you
called your friend who never had an answering service until now, and the voice
mail recording answered, you were now being charged for the call - automatically
- because a connection had been made. $1.70 pesos per shot, or approximately 17
cents. Now if your friend wasn't home when you called, you could still hang up
before the voice mail took over at the sixth ring, but if the line was busy, the
system takes over immediately and you are charged, immediately. As simple as that.
Cute, n'est-ce pas? No wonder the Consumer Protection Bureau received over 650
formal complaints in Guadalajara alone in less than one week! I
don't know about the rest of you, but every time I pick up the receiver, I still
get that sexy voice telling me to "Marque asterisco ochenta y seis para recuperar
sus mensajes" (dial asterisk eighty-six to recover your messages), then I
have to wait 'till she's finished with her heavy breathing before getting a dial
tone. Boy, would I like to "recover" her with a good, swift kick! In
addition, I no longer hear the beep-beep that used to advise me when I had received
messages, so I have to check every time I end a conversation… In
the "here we go again" category, the latest project proposed by the
National Fund for the Promotion of Tourism (Fonatur) involves combining/joining/uniting
the communities of Bahía de Banderas in our neighboring state to the north,
Nayarit, with Puerto Vallarta and Cabo Corrientes (Jalisco) into a single tourist
destination… Now, I don't know where those folks have been for the last few
years, but a couple of years ago, all these communities in fact did sign one such
agreement. That lasted one year and purportedly functioned very well for all concerned.
The next thing we heard was that there was a "dis"agreement and the
agreement lapsed, not to be renewed. Now these folks come over from Mexico City
with this "isn't this idea of ours great?" attitude, like it's something
new, original. What's up with that? Oh, and now they're also talking about building
a convention center for the entire bay area. In case you don't know anything about
this, suffice it to say that Vallartans have been waiting for a decision on that
matter for years now, sort of like the highway that would link us to Guadalajara,
the one they've been promised for some 20-odd years now. An
article appeared last week stating that movie theater operators were going through
an "economic crisis", a situation complicated by the passage of Hurricane
Kenna, according to the General Director of the town's three major theaters. In
the interview, he also mentioned that much depended on the quality of movies shown…
Now if the gentleman knows that this is the season for foreign tourists (as opposed
to the summer, when we welcome more Mexican ones), why isn't he showing more English-language
movies? For the past few weeks, he has featured an inordinate amount of Spanish-language
movies thus reducing the choice that might attract dollar-spending foreigners.
Makes one wonder, don't it? I always check my "Bulk
Mail" (a.k.a.: Junk or Spam) box …just in case. Sometimes an important
e-mail slips through, one never knows. Last week, there was one entitled "Never
get lost - for under $20". It peaked my curiosity so I checked it for viruses…
there were none, so I opened it. It promoted the "Road Whiz", a hand-held
gadget "As seen on QVC - Millions Sold!!!" It said that we could "Travel
with peace-of-mind" because it purportedly gave directions to over 70,000
key services along the Interstates - "Information that maps don't have!"
All we have to do is enter the state, the highway, and the direction of our travel,
and "Road Whiz" finds "hospitals, food, gas, lodging, rest areas,
and much, much more. Get directions between over 250 major cities - A great gift
for any driver…" I smiled. That gizmo just might mark the end of all
those male-bashing jokes about guys not wanting to ask for directions when they
are obviously lost… I hope you've all had a fabulous
Valentine's Day and I remind you that here in Mexico, the entire month of February
is the month of Amor y Amistad (Love and Friendship), so don't let all those good
feelings stop. Take good care of each other, dear readers. Hasta luego.pvmomto3@hotmail.com Archives
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