Mexico City... Still Interesting After All These Years

I made my first trip to Mexico City more than a decade ago, albeit just to the airport.

Since July 2007, I've made a couple of dozen trips here, working on a very large project with PEMEX, the state-owned oil company. Yeah, it is crowded (25 million people). Yeah, it is dangerous (the kidnapping capital of the WORLD). Yeah, it can be smoggy and dirty and poor. Still, I've grown fond of the city. You have to love a place where the opposition party pays people to dance buck-naked to protest the government (show times are 10 and 2, by the way).

It is really a shame that crime and corruption are so pervasive here. Most of the people I deal with are polite, intelligent, and exceptionally nice. It takes a VERY long time to begin or end a meeting because of the ritual of handshakes, hugs, and air-kisses. The Mexicans are a very touchy-feely people.

This trip is a short one... I flew down this morning and will fly back to Houston tomorrow evening. I'm taking a few pictures (with my iPhone, so set your expectations accordingly) so you can see some of what I see.


Nice to know that my iPhone knows where I'm at while I'm in Mexico.

A room with a view... from my hotel room.

Lunch was interesting. Yes, those are octopus suckers there in the middle of this dish.

My current home-away-from-home. The rooms here are very nice, and the rate is better than either the Camino Real or the Sheraton Maria Isabel.

Oh, yeah! I am TOTALLY going to wear this robe at some point! I'll spare you that image, though. You may be reading this at meal time.

So, you notice that I didn't put in any "work" pics. I did that intentionally. Work is work, whether it is in Houston or Ciudad de Mexico. We all know how bone-numbing business trips can be, with cramped flights, long lines, stalled traffic, interminable meetings, and the resulting to-do lists. My workday started around 4:30 this morning and ended about 9:30 tonight. Tomorrow will be at least as bad.

Signing out for now,
Big S Ranch

The Weekend In Pictures

We had a very busy and fun weekend. For anyone who hasn't perused our Flickr site, let me explain. No, there is no time. Let me sum up.

Friday night after work, I stopped on the way home to pick up a pallet of sod for the front yard.

When I got home, I saw my son's newly-lifted pickup in my driveway. We weren't expecting them, so it was a very pleasant surprise.

The next morning, I laid out the sod in the part of the front yard I'd prepared the previous weekend. When the sod was in the truck, I thought I had WAY too much. As it turns out, I could have used about 6 more squares. Oh well. I think it will suffice.

After the sod work was done, we loaded up the truck and we headed to Austin. There, we picked up our 19 yr old daughter so she could give us a tour of her school, THE University of Texas.

After three hours of tromping around the UT campus, we ate dinner at my favorite Austin Mexican restaurant... Not Chuy's, not Baby Acapulco (those are favorite Mexican DRINKING restaurants)...

On Sunday, we drove down I-35 to visit my in-laws. My father-in-law turns 80 this week. His wife (my step-mom-in-law) has had several major surgeries recently, so we wanted to check on them.

We finally got home around 6:30pm on Sunday. It was a wonderful roadtrip and, as usual, I needed to go back to the office today in order to get some rest :)

Tomorrow morning, I'm off to Mexico City, the kidnapping capital of the world, even though the US State Department has issued a travel alert for Mexico: http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/pa/pa_3028.html

Signing off for now,

BigSRanch

How Does This Thing Work Again?

My little MySpace blog has reached the end of its useful lifecycle.
If I can get this page to work, I'll put my new blogs here.