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Bubba

Mar 14, 2007, 9:15 AM

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My auto insurance agent in Guadalajara interceded on my behalf to have the Nissan dealer in San Cristóbal do some insurance covered body work on my Xtrail. The dealer, it seems, had had my car for two weeks and had yet to start working on it. Two things came to light. First, he could hardly understand a word they said over the telephone and, secondly he discovered that it takes weeks longer for dealers to do body work down there than in Guadalajara since the parts have to come from Aguascalientes and, as he said Nissan Mexico told him, Chiapas is stuck way down in the far corner of Mexico and it takes time to get the parts there. I think people in central and northern Mexico think Chiapas is the other side of the moon.

When my Guadalajara insurance agent found out I was intending to take some intensive Spanish in San Cristóbal, he told me that their Spanish down there was strange and almost incomprehensible. He said I should learn my Spanish in Guadalajara.

(This post was edited by Bubba on Mar 14, 2007, 10:56 AM)

sfmacaws

Mar 14, 2007, 11:05 AM

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Jonna - Mérida, Yucatán

Bubba

Mar 14, 2007, 11:54 AM

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Welcome to the boondocks Bubba! You now officially live in the Mexican equivalent of 20 miles outside Minot, North Dakota. Or maybe the equivalent of somewhere in mid-Alabama where they also talk funny and no one can understand them. That's it! You've found the Alabama of Mexico!! It's got it all: poverty, incomprehensible language, traditional mores, very distinct classes.... I'm amazed at how far you've gone only to return to your roots.

That´s it. Bubba´s favorite all time post. You left out religious zealotry used as an intellectual bludgeon to keep the poor in place and amoral oligarchical control over the despised poor who pick the cotton and shine the shoes and gut the chickens and clean the toilets and sell the chiclets in the plaza at $50 Centavos for each packet of two.

And, in Alabama, that was fine as long as those downtrodden masses were (our) black folk but when they came in talking funny and eating strange food - well, that´s another thing altogether. You know, like the Eastern Europeans "invading"France and Germany.

You have awakened me to the reason I sit here in the Ajijic country club writing about my innermost feelings that led me on my quest from South Alabama to Chiapas in a torturous quest for truth.

How could young Bubba know that day he set out from Montgomery with a bandana full of Tom´s Peanuts and Moon Pies in the 1960s that his arduous journey would lead him right back to mama 40 years later. Dreams were shattered along the way from Paris to The Haight but Bubba, having sold his soul for a piece of the utterly boring Napa Valley, escaped to Peoria-on-the-Sump only to find it too reminiscent of that South Alabama country club he fled as a youngster so his solution was simple:

Live among the country clubbers in Ajijic for part of the year but assuage the resulting guilt by slumming it periodically with the slave wenches (figuratively speaking) out on the back forty in Chiapas.

Damn, that was perceptive of you.

I now have what every American secretly wants. To be fulfilled by traipsing about among the poor at my leisure bestowing upon them my left over moneda and stale tortillas while certain in the knowledge that, while they may go to bed with a tortilla and some chiles that night, my estate in Ajijic awaits my return with stores of whiskey, Coca Cola and foie gras.

This was the fundamental attraction of the Peace Corps. Cheap, clean and easy cleansing of the soul. Contribution without real contribution. Adventure without a downside.

You have hit upon the essential character flaw in Americans.

(This post was edited by Bubba on Mar 14, 2007, 12:50 PM)

Gringal

Mar 14, 2007, 2:23 PM

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Suffering succotash, bubba.

Your take on the advantages of dual residency reminds me of the "joys of camping". There are many otherwise sane people who deliberately endure the misery of camping for "vacations". Their ancestors worked their tails off to avoid all that. They would be laughing their burros off to see what their descendants are doing for fun.

"I'm hammering on my thumb because it feels soooo good when I stop."

(This post was edited by Gringal on Mar 14, 2007, 2:35 PM)

sfmacaws

Mar 14, 2007, 8:41 PM

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I kind of enjoyed it when the lightbulb went off too, until right after I hit Post Reply. Then, I realized that I too have found my childhood home over here on the overpriced coast in an elite town full of snobs who love to talk about their social consciousness ... it's Santa Barbara south. Damn!

I hate Santa Barbara, spent my late teens and early twenties desperately trying to escape it. It would pull me back when life got too tough to make it in the big city. I was so thrilled when I realized I hadn't had to move back there for 5 years! Whew! I was about 27 then. For the next 30 years I only returned for overnights with the parents and then their funerals.

So now, in my dottage, here I am back in Santa Barbara. I knew these people reminded me of something, I wish I hadn't figured out what it was.

Jonna - Mérida, Yucatán

roni_smith

Mar 14, 2007, 10:13 PM

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I am so glad I lived in the Midwest till I was 9
followed by years with live-in servants in Brasil
followed by years in the midwest

I can live in many places,
and know how to be
purposefully inappropriate
in some of them :).
------
Planning for Mexico Move Blog

Bubba

Mar 15, 2007, 10:34 AM

Post #7 of 8 (1444 views)

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I just posted a lengthy message here only to see it disappear as "this thread does not exist". That is really irritating.

Actually, some other messages have disappeared as well. What is happening?

(This post was edited by Bubba on Mar 15, 2007, 10:48 AM)

Papirex

Mar 15, 2007, 12:14 PM

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Bob, I have had that happen to me with the same message a few times when I was replying to a post. One of the reasons I use my word processor (Microsoft Word) to write my posts, and replies to posts, is that I don’t lose them when I copy and try to paste it into the reply box if the string has been locked, etc.

I believe the cause of the occasional problem was that the original poster was editing their own post at the same time that I was trying to post my reply to it; they were always marked as having been recently edited by the original poster when they would appear. If I wait 5 or 10 minutes, I am usually able to post my reply. I have no idea if that is the same problem you are having now.

There have been some weird things going on with Mexconnected for the past week or so though. Every single time I start my computers in the morning I need to log in again. I always put a check mark in the box to remember my log in, and I do stay logged on for the rest of the day. I never log off, and I have never, or seldom had to log on for years.

I am not saying that Mexconnected has done it, but one of the biggest problems with commercial websites is that they will let amateurs do some of their upgrades, and things get messed up.

One of my daughters is a computer professional. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from The University of Alaska in Fairbanks with a degree in applied science; her education was for computer science. The U. A. F. was one of the first universities in The US to have a super computer; it is a very good school.

She has told me that one of the problems she has run into often, is companies that will have someone that is “good”, but not educated with computers make changes and upgrades to their software, resulting in problems too often.

Every time my credit union does an upgrade, there will be one or more things that will not work correctly for a week or two, until they patch it. That has happened once or twice a year for the last 7 or 8 years, ever since they replaced their old DOS system, which was so full of bugs it was pathetic.

One of the advantages that I have is that I know I am not qualified, if I need to do something complex, I call my kid.

Rex

"The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved" - Victor Hugo