For my Mage parties, new and old.

This video is quite... exceptional. I hope you get a grasp of at least a tenth of what they say (that's about what I got from it on my first watch).

It is all about the nature of the universe.

El infierno pa'l pueblo, y el dinero pa'l... pa'l gobierno?

¡Felicidades! ¡Bienvenidos a Carstenlandia, la Tierra de los Pobres! Donde puede pagar más por vivir peor.

Vivimos en un país esquizofrénico. No me quedan más explicaciones...

Subir impuestos a todos los bienes y servicios, aun cuando sea 2%, involucra aumentar el precio en alimentos y medicinas. En un país donde el salario mínimo está entre los 51 y los 55 pesos por día... está jodido. Y si dicen (dicen, no he sacado yo la cuenta) que la cansta básica anda por ahí de 900 pesos al mes... Aún peor. ¿La idea es que "ahorre" cien pesos el trabajador de salario mínimo? Y eso es con los precios ideales, ojo. Y ahí no está contemplado el costo de la vivienda, de cajón. Idioteces.

Parece que vamos a hacer más pobres. Supongo que piensan venderlos de una manera u otra: Si hay gente que no puede pagar alimentos y vivienda, ahora habrán más. Y si había gente que apenas pagaba ambas cosas, ahora no podrán pagarlo.

(Y no soy el único que lo dice)

Blogging from the road

Very well. I'm currently in the road from Cuernavaca to Mexico City, as I often am. there is a lot of fog around the road, which means people should be worried about things going bad with far easier than they do in a sunny day.

It also means that the road looks exceptionally beautiful, as only the rows of trees and a small strip of green grass can be seen at either side, and then all is white. It would have some sort of mystical feel to it, were it not for the "rancheras" the driver put on the stereo.

Crap. I'm complaining about bad music in a beautiful scenery, and the scenery then changes with wires and small, grey houses. We're entering the ring of urban poverty around Mexico City. It expands for several kilometers, diluiting the bright green of life with a dull gray of concrete and blocks. Thousands of families that do not have the resources to have a decent living, much less a pretty home, live and die here everyday. There is next to nobody to tell the world the history of their lives, much less to help them better the living conditions they have.

I can understand why people might just look here and think "how ugly does this look". But I cannot understand why those people wouldn't be able to see beyond aesthetics and into ethics, and realize that sometimes people does not have a choice on how or where to live. Or that it is not enough to have strong convictions, a lot of effort or faith in some god or other to make things better.

Sometimes it is needed some luck. Sometimes the goodwill of others. And yet sometimes, there is probably nothing anyone can do on an individual basis, and only big groups of people (and then the right people) can have a decision on the fate of very large numbers of people.

People die of starvation in Mexico, one of the biggest producers of food in the world. We have a lack of clean water that will make people use non-sanitized water in the southern region, where water is most abundant, and in the north, we simply don't have enough water even if we do have the way to make it drinkable and to send it to everyone.

We already got into Mexico City properly. Soon I'll stop writing for today. For now, I see hundreds of cars in the road, as it is currently the time when people get to their offices. And now I have to think: Do we really need to use that many vehicles? Is there no way to make a rational use of vehicles, and of working hours?

Are there no jobs that could start earlier, or later, to keep the streets and avenues a bit faster, with less cars and trucks at peak hours and a more continuous usage all day? And besides... it shouldn't be too difficult for companies to make use of collective transportation for their workers. Just like schools in Mexico City must do now (by law), big manufacturing plants, or large offices could be forced to use collective transportation for their workforce, or at least for a percentage of it. Maybe It's just some hallucinogen cuality of being awake and writing for a blog since so early, but it's something I just thought about.

It was 7:35 am when we got into the City. Let's see how long it takes to reach Taxqueña, the terminal where I get off the bus. Right now it's 7:55...

In any case, I'm putting the laptop on my backpack. Whenever I post this, I'll include the time I arrived Taxqueña here: 8:05am

Radio, News and Jazz at work

If I don't make much sense, tell me so. I'm sleepy.

Some people talk their workdays away, chatting every once in a while to stay awake and make time go by, but for that you need first and foremost smart workmates, the kind that can sustain an intelligent conversation for more than 15 minutes in a row. If you don't, then you require workmates that are funny, which makes the time at work more fun an bearable (specially in tedious workplaces, or when your job is too repetitive). If neither smart nor fun people can be found around, then most people resort to music. Ipods have made a lot in way to better the posibilities of people to stay focused on their job ahead and to forget about tedious workplaces or cube companions, even if they are only the heirs of a tradition started by brick-sized walkmans, portable radios, and later, the discman.

Right now, I'm sort of near the cutting edge but not quite so. I'm using my cell phone as a portable radio. Yes! with 4GB of music stored in the microSD memory of my Sony MusicXpress cell phone, I would rather listen to the radio most of the day: there was simply something missing, like a lack of interaction with human beings or something like that (not that everyone was a complete waste at the office, but you can't show too openly that you don't have a minimum faith in other people's humanity). Rather than hearing music I love and hold dear, I prefered to start my day with a radio news program by Carmen Aristegui, then follow with a science program called El Explicador (The Explainer), and then a healthy dose of light news, entertainment and jokes in a show called "Tal Cual" (translating that is difficult, but is close to "As Is"). In total, some 5 hours of continuous radio listening at MVS Noticias, a single radio station. Sometimes I listen the second newshow, sometimes I don't. Either way, later in the day, I listen to Horizonte (107.9 FM) a station that promises news AND Jazz. And casually, that's what I'm listening to right now, with great pleasure.

Later, at 6pm, I listen (when I can) to El Weso, at W Radio. The only program I'll ever listen from that radio station, for a story too long to talk about right now.

So... just like that, I spend more time listening to radio than working, and most probably, more than I spend talking with human beings, or sleeping. TV? who needs that?!