Work

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Unpacking Is a Chore

I awoke to sunshine at 6:15 this morning. I really don’t remember mornings here been so bright! I thought I might be able to go back to sleep, but was not able to. I read for a bit until the call of breakfast was too loud to ignore. Interestingly enough, I’d been up over an hour and awake for nearly two before I even thought of having coffee!

After a lazy couple of hours doing a more thorough sort of the mail, I finally dressed and started to bring things in from the truck, unpacking as I went along. I never think that I picked up much extra stuff during my travels until I found myself at a loss as to where to put everything when I get home! But I finally got things under control (nowhere near done) and was able to head to town to get groceries.

The road out to highway 2 was the best I can ever remember it being, with only one or two serious potholes, so the drive went quickly. My first stop was the carwash to fill one of my five gallon jugs with potable water. Thankfully C&C had warned me that there is no water filling at the grocery store right now since the renovations are still ongoing and that the carwash was the place to go. I was not impressed with the carwash station since it does not fill the jugs completely.

I ran a couple more errands and then went into the grocery store. It was a mess. I’m disappointed that so far all the upgrades are cosmetic. There sure isn’t any extra space! Prices were dire, but I shopped the sales and actually had something to show for my $125 (including quite a bit of meat). Kale was on sale, so I’ll be having quite a lot of that in the next week!

Back home, I was able to put together a nice lunch even with the kitchen being only half unpacked, then I headed to C&C’s to get non-potable water for doing dishes and washing myself. Charles was on his way over to my place to level Miranda, so he helped me with the water and then we headed back to Haven with Brutus in tow (he’s so shaggy he looks like a bear!).

It took quite a bit of doing, including two trips back to his house by Charles for different jacks and some tool fetching on my part, for Charles to get Miranda level for me. Even though the gravel is hard packed now, he could only lift Miranda so high before the jack would sink into the ground. He finally got her up using two jacks. She’ll stay on them for the time being, with a large log under the frame also holding some of the weight, but Charles intends to get a different type of jack and some blocks to do a more permanent job. Miranda has been unlevel for so long that it feels strange to have her level! When I moved her last year, I should have brought her west a little bit and out of the dip her left driver’s side tire is in. Live and learn…

After he was done, he graciously helped me get my swing out of the shed and set up. The weather is so unseasonably warm that I know I’ll use it all of this month as well as through June and so it’s worth setting up. Then, I offered him one of my last two Pacificos!

The beer pretty much knocked me flat, so I spent quite a bit of time in the swing, enjoying my view and the fact that I have internet in the yard now!

Then, it was time to deal with the kitchen so I could make dinner. I’m nowhere near done, but I was able to make brown rice, caramalised onions and Brussels sprouts, chicken, and gravy — even if I had about as much energy as it takes to open up a tin of beans and eat them cold! 😀 But the effort was worth it! Fortified by my yummy dinner, I did a clothes putting away blitz and then set up my office since I have a medium-sized job due Monday night that I’m hoping to start on tomorrow.

As promised yesterday, here are some pictures of the door damage. It’s hard to see because of the black on black. Charles is certain the damage was not there when he came by on the 27th and so this would mean the attempted break-in occurred while the neighbour is out on bail…

In this picture, you can see the gap between the door and the frame, as well as scratches and the torn rubber gasket. The door is bulging outwards.

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The door bulge is more visible in this one. The scratches betray the amount of effort made to get in. I’m happy to know my deadbolt and frame are that good!

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And here’s the damage to the frame:

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Finally, all the nasty haze during the day is so worth it in the evening…

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Tangible Linguistic Progress

I’ve been watching the US series “The Bridge” for a while now and highly recommend it if you like well plotted episodic mysteries like “Fargo,” “Broadchurch,” and “Happy Valley.” It takes place on the US/Mexico border between El Paso and Juárez and delves deeply into the dark side of Mexico. Needless to say, there is a lot of Spanish in it. I am surprised by how much I am understanding without looking at the subtitles and how much vocabulary I’m picking up, a lot of it “naughty.” I really need to watch more Mexican programming and having rather a crush on Demián Bichir now, I just might have found a way in. I’ll have to check out his filmography and see if he’s done anything else I could be interested in. 🙂

I’ll get back to this point in a bit, but for now, let me digress. Work has been very slow for the last week or so. I was supposed to start a large transcription project when I got back from Mérida, but the funding for that has been delayed and so the company does not want me to start just in case in takes longer than expected for the money to come in. When this project lands, it’ll keep me busy for ages, but it’s left a huge hole in my schedule. Moreover, I had to burn a bridge with a new client I picked up in February. So I really don’t have much on my plate right now. Rather frustrating since I’m starting to dip into my savings. But I’m not at crisis point yet and I’m working leads.

All that to say, I was done with my day by noon and by 1:00, I decided I wanted to go out. I looked up the movie listings and learned that “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2” was playing at 3:00 at Gran Plaza. I had just enough time to hoof it over there and grab a quick lunch before the movie.

I took the Camarón-Sábalo bus up Avenida del Mar to Insurgentes, which took me to a couple of blocks of Gran Plaza. I got in at 2:30 and decided to have Chinese for lunch. The lineup was long and when it got to my turn, the server looked mildly panicked, then very relieved when I fluently started with, “I want a number one to eat here.” I’ve been to this chain before a few times, so I knew the routine. No, I don’t want to upgrade to the cheese and shrimp rolls and, no, I don’t need a double sized jamaica (hibiscus) juice for $9 more. 🙂 Interesting that the Japanese places have very strange soy sauce (despite Kikkoman brand sauce being readily available), but the Chinese places have the proper thick soy sauce for their rice. Hmm.

When I was done eating, I had just five minutes before the movie started, but I wasn’t worried since there are always commercials and previews. The title of the movie in Spanish is “Mi Gran Boda Griega” and I had to rehearse that because it always runs together in my head as “Mi gran bodega” (my big storage unit)! A Wednesday matinée was only $29! Wow!

The theatre was almost empty and every other person there was an older expat. The commercials started and there was a really funny one for Cinépolis about this guy calling everyone in his black book looking for a date to share his points with. When the punchline came, that he could only find a big hairy dude, I burst out laughing. There was dead silence from the rest of the theatre. Well, that was embarrassing!

The movie finally started after a few previews. It was very formulaic and recycled a lot of jokes from the first one. I loved the first “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” and the sequel was exactly what I wanted. I didn’t want the wheel to be reinvented, but rather to know how my beloved characters are doing. Of course, all the Greek had only Spanish subtitles, so I was once again the only person in the theatre chuckling to herself. I can’t wait to buy the movie so I can rewatch it. I’m glad I missed the 1:00 o’clock showing and that the one at 3:00 was the last one or I would have turned around and gone right back in to see it again!

Coming out of the theatre, I grabbed an ice cream for the walk to Avenida del Mar to catch the bus, with the intention of riding to Centro and doing some shopping at the Mercado. I waited at a proper bus stop with another person for more than 20 minutes for a bus that is supposed to run every 10 minutes… and it just flew past us. I was not impressed.

Not being in the mood to wait another 20 minutes, I crossed Avenida del Mar to walk along Insurgentes to Ejército Méxicano (2.5KM) to grab a bus to take me closer to the embarcadero. Imagine my surprise as I was walking along, just two blocks from Avenida del Mar, when I looked behind me to see a bus marked “Chula Vista” stopping a short distance away. I knew that one would take me right to the corner of Juan Carrasco and Gutíerrez Nájera, about a kilometre from the embarcadero! I had no idea that bus went out to Gran Plaza. This is a major revelation! But the bus was behind me and only a couple of people were getting on. I didn’t have a hope in hell of catching it, but I still went into a full out run and, sure enough, it pulled away from the curb just as I reached the door. But the door remained open and the speed was very slow, so I jumped on! Whew, I felt like an action hero! The driver took my $20, gave me my change and receipt, and told me to move as far back as I could, which wasn’t very far because the bus was packed.

Thankfully, someone got off not to much farther away and I was able to get a seat behind the driver. This was one of the older busses with no bell. I was quite proud of myself when we approached the corner where I wanted to get off and knew to call out, “Baja, por favor.” The literal translation is “down, please,” but it means, “I want to get off.” The driver pulled over exactly where I wanted off! It’s about a block before Juan Carrasco, where I can grab a street that runs at a diagonal and save myself a few steps.

I’d hoped to get a chicken for dinner, but the stand was closed, dang it. 🙁 And then, I passed the rough bar where men tend to say rather rude things as I pass. I normally ignore them, but thanks to “The Bridge,” I felt more confident in using certain rude words. So when a guy called out to me today, clearly not expecting this Gringa to understand him, I called him a “pinche cabrón” (Google that at your peril), told him he needs to respect women more, and asked him how he would feel about someone talking like that to his mother or sister? I must have made sense because he looked very ashamed of himself. Good!!!

I know I need to make more effort to listen to Spanish. I’m reading at a decent level now (got through the Harry Potter books!), so I’m really at the point where I need to find a TV show to suck me in. But still, this was a very good day language-wise!

 

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Doors Closing and Opening

Something important happened a month ago that some of you on Facebook could have possibly deduced from the fact that I was taking a Wednesday afternoon off here, going to town midday on a Thursday, and getting up late — the amazing proofreading contract that I’ve had since last summer came to a very abrupt end.

It wasn’t the end of the world.

I would have loved to have done it for another six months, but I knew that every shift had been a precious gift. So I had a the money to cover a couple of months’ worth of expenses stashed away in my emergency fund (thanks to the low cost of living here in Mexico!). I’d still want to work hard at making up the lost income to touch those saving as little as possible, but the contract ending wasn’t the bottom dropping out event a similar situation had been the fall of 2014 when I first got to Mexico.

Well, to my surprise, in addition to a reference, they gave me a severance payment! What a gift! My being let go was a business decision that I could understand and this generosity made that decision all the more easy to swallow.

So instead of having to work myself to the bone in January to make sure I could cover February expenses and the lack of income from my Mérida holiday without touching my savings, I could take it easy somewhat easy…. but still remembering that I have a trip home and a flight to Europe to pay for in the next few months!

I’d been granted the gift of time I’d been looking for for so long — time to learn new skills (coding apps for iOS and doing WordPress development!) and to find new clients without the nagging voice at the back of my mind counting all the money I wasn’t making.

The very next day, I was taking the first steps to signing on with a new transcription client. And just a few days after that, after beginning a training program that revealed some ugly truths, I told the client that they were paying slave wages and I wasn’t interested in working for them after all!

That was scary… and liberating! The thing is, I haven’t been living paycheque-to-paycheque for the last year or so and I’ve gotten used to having a better than subsistence level of income. Transcription was the wrong field to get into because it tends to pay slave wages, but I’m now in a position to wait for the better clients to come along.

And sure enough, one did. Her rates aren’t amazing, but they’re fair, and it’s the kind of transcription work I want to be doing. If I had clung to the first opportunity that came along, I would never have bothered to keep looking and therefore found this one.

And then, something else came along, another proofreading contract that pays well and for which the client is hoping to build a long-term relationship!

I am absolutely slammed with work right now after several quiet weeks of getting myself sorted and it is fantastic! I have a good mix of tasks, I haven’t had to make any budgetary adjustments (Mexico being so inexpensive helps, of course!), and I’ll be able to enjoy my time off in Mérida. So far it looks like it’ll be ten days off. I had planned to do proofreading there for the old contract, so if I have to do a little proofreading for the new one, it won’t be a problem. 🙂

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On Mexico Time

My headphones crapped out on me last week so finding time to search for a replacement was high on my list. I made do with my Sony earbuds, which I use to listen to music on my mobile devices, but my ears ached after a day of transcription with them and I could still feel them in my ears after they were out. But where to find a decent selection of headphones in Mazatlán? Back home, I’d head to Amazon…

I pondered this problem, searched for headphones (auriculares and audífonos) in Maz (thinking there might be an electronics store like Best Buy), and, based on my search results, decided to start with Office Depot.

Getting there today was a bit of a drag. Holy smokes. I didn’t head out until about 1PM because I wanted to make good inroads on my day’s transcription, which was difficult. I figured that I’d be at Office Depot within an hour. Well…

I waited and I waited and I waited for a bus to take me there at the corner of Juan Carrasco and Gutíerrez-Najera, to no avail. This was something like my fourth (and LAST) time doing this. I know that the buses I want pass there, but they are obviously very irregular and I’ve never caught one at this corner. So I schlepped down to Paseo Claussen to grab the tourist bus that goes up the Malecón. As I did so, a bus that could have taken me right by Mega (nearer to Office Depot than the tourist bus) whipped by so fast that I didn’t have time to flag it down. Augh!

The tourist bus took forever to come. By the time I got settled in one of the last seats, I’d already been gone more than an hour. Traffic down Avenida del Mar was, of course, terrible and so the ride was slow. I hate to sound so negative, but I have no idea how anyone can rely on the bus service here to get anywhere since there are no schedules and the routes change so frequently…

I got off just past the Rafael Buelna roundabout so I wouldn’t have to cross the busy road on foot, then I headed right for the bank. The exchange rate is just getting worse and I couldn’t even take out $4,600, settling for $4,200. I went into the bank to get my $500s broken up and this time asked for $200 worth of change. I had written it as “$200 of $1, $2, $5, and $10, doesn’t matter how many of each,” and that seemed very clear because the teller just started counting out change.

Unlike in Canada and the U.S., Mexico doesn’t seem to have “rolls” of coins, like 10CAD worth of quarters, for example. Instead, she made a pile of $100 worth of $5 and $10 coins then held up a large baggie marked “$100” and asked if that was okay. Inside were $1 and $0.50 coins, which was perfect. If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice that I didn’t get any $2 coins and instead got $0.50 coins, but that was absolutely fine and fulfilled my objective of having small change. I’ve been getting by just fine with my stack of $20s, but having exact change gets me out of restaurants faster.

I was shaking by the time I got out of the bank, having failed to get some lunch first since all the restaurants along the stretch I’d walked were closed. I decided to try the Sole Mar café next to Scotiabank since I’d heard they make great coffee and a midafternoon espresso sounded wonderful. I ordered it “con panna,” which I vaguely remember meant it’d have whipped cream, which was correct.

 

espresso

It was rather decadent (and broke my rule of not having sugar in my coffee), but really lovely. 🙂 For lunch, I took a chance and ordered the enchiladas mole, knowing full well they’d likely be some fast foody microwaved disappointment. I was half right in that they were fast foody, but, dang, they were tasty! The chicken was well seasoned and the sauce had a bit of kick. I didn’t mind the $75 I paid for them at all even if I knew I didn’t get much value for my meal (no veg with it, for example). I think the espresso was $30 or $35, very good value. There are a few Sole Mars in Maz, including one near the cathedral, so now I finally know where to get a coffee in town!

Then, I hit Office Depot, where they had a good selection of headphones in several brands and quite a price range. I knew I’d find what I needed there. I pulled out my phone and started researching the various brands, narrowing down my choices thanks to Amazon reviews. I don’t buy super expensive noise canceling headphones no matter how much my clients tout them. I’ve tried them and they are over rated. I buy midrange headphones, never spending over 50CAD, and get a new pair every couple of years. My budget for today was hopefully no more than $600. One pair by Sony was only $349 (29CAD), well rated on Amazon (including by two transcriptionists who swore by them!), and a better price than if I’d bought directly from Amazon. Sold!

I like shopping at Office Depot because I tend to be left alone until I express a need for help. After about a half hour of going through the headphones and looking up reviews, I was ready for help because the pair I wanted were locked to the shelf. I just had to look up and around and, boom, there was a clerk ready to assist me. He unlocked them and took them to an available cashier who checked me out smoothly. I then had to show the security guard my receipt and I was out of there.

Since I was right by Soriana, it made sense to get a few groceries and paper goods. I had a laugh with the bagger at checkout when I told him to be sure to put my cold stuff in my insulated bag because the last time I bought butter there without having the bag, I had a mess when I got home!  Thankfully, there were taxis waiting outside, so I was able to get back to the embarcadero quickly. I didn’t need a taxi on this side.

I can’t believe it’s already 6PM. I still have another hour or so of transcription to do and I’m just about ready for dinner. My errand took way long than it should have and was a good example of an afternoon where I would have been much better off springing for the pulmonía in both directions.

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Handling a Power Outage with Aplomb

There was a planned power outage scheduled from 6AM to 2PM today. My laptop battery can last most of a day if I do a few tweaks to conserve power, so my only concern was internet access since my modem needs power. Of course, if I was home, power wouldn’t be an issue, but I’m not so well equipped in Mexico.

In case TelMex was also down, I made sure last night to buy some data for my phone so I could get internet through Telcel today. I picked their 1GB package good for a week as that would ensure enough bandwidth for the day while not being a huge investment if I ended up not needing it.

The first thing I did today was string an extension cord to the truck from my office window. The power went out at about 6:40, so I plugged my modem into the extension cord, went out to the truck, plugged my inverter into one of the truck’s 12V outlets, and came back in to see if I had internet. I sure did! That was fantastic since it meant that I could keep working from my office instead of having to do so outside with all the mosquitoes! As a reminder, that’s because I only have TelCel internet with a cellular booster, which needs to run off the truck battery as well.

To preserve computer battery life, I left the computer in sleep mode when I wasn’t actually working and instead checked my emails on my phone. This meant that by the time the power came back on at 1:30, I still had 10% computer battery life left (about one hour of run time if I kept it in power saving mode or 30 minutes if I had to work)! If the outage had gone on, I would have used a bit more truck battery capacity to charge my computer, no biggie.

The only thing I would have needed for today to be totally stress-free is small solar trickle charger to keep my truck battery topped up during the day. It’s one of those things I keep forgetting to get because I’m still so used to having everything I own with me at any given time. But I knew that one day of running the modem wouldn’t kill my battery (I mean, I ran my booster for several days when I first arrived), so, really, I wasn’t particularly stressed today.

Those of you who follow me on Facebook know that I did have one power-related emergency today: I forgot while I still had power to grind coffee beans for my second cup of the day. My solution to that was not a joke. I put some beans in a baggie, put a cloth around the baggie, and then put the cloth-wrapped baggie on a smooth rock from my yard. I then used a rounder rock to grind the beans. The cloth kept the rock from going right through the baggie and getting ground beans everywhere. My ‘primitive’ grinder worked perfectly!