evidence #234135156 that this town is just waaay too small:

the semi-psycho-seemingly-wealthy dude from last night? ended up with my flatmate a few hrs after we left him. he was over at our place this morning (luckily, i didn't come out of my room and actually see him...that would've been awkward, as we told him we had an "engagement" to attend this morning). tj told me about him later and we pieced it all together.
lisa and i almost coughed up a lung laughing.

so it's almost 6 a.m. and i'm just getting in from another night on the town in vallarta. i don't know why i'm always surprised it turns out this way, but let's just say it was once again a bizarre and slightly frustrating experience. i'm too tired to type out the whole tedious story now, so here's the gist of it:

- it was (subtly) married-man night at de santos.
translation: men from guadalajara who openly admitted they are married (interestingly enough, only one out of about six that we spoke to was wearing a wedding ring), some even with FIVE kids, blatantly hit on us ("us" being me and my fellow asian-in-crime lisa) and actually believed they had a chance

-it was also seemingly-wealthy-yet-sadly-psycho guy night at de santos.
meaning? an obviously plastered dude who is apparently taking a two-year "sabbatical" from working, yet can still afford to drive a beemer, told us barely-coherent stories about doing blow and being wrongly-accused of terrorist involvement or something in canada. he gave us his number and implored us to call him as he drove away in the bmw

last weekend at de santos, we met two pretty cool guys who manage the local college radio station here and had pretty decent conversations with them. unfortunately, it turned out they were only willing to interact with us if there was some chance of romance, which we weren't really feeling. these guys would've been awesome hang-out buddies and fun peeps with whom to shoot the shit. but no. friendship just wasn't in the cards.

is it so hard to find some people of the opposite sex who don't give off a strong stench of desperation and utter psychotic-ness? apparently, the answer is yes.

obviously, we need to stop frequenting de santos as much as we do, but there really aren't very many other options, and those slim options are truly no better, and very possibly not even as good.

the solution? weekend roadtrips and cheap flights to mexican cities.

however--
for now?
to bed!

pot pourri of potentially useless tidbits:

suddenly, a significant number of bands are putting mexico on their list of tour dates; bloc party, the strokes, pretty girls make graves and franz ferdinand have already made their rounds in the past month or so, and the new pornographers and the yeah yeah yeahs will be arriving soon. they're all playing the big cities, like the df, guadalajara and monterrey, and i've considered making the trek to catch one of the shows, but so far, i've let them pass on through. it'd be nice to see any of these bands, not really just because i'd enjoy the novelty of attending a concert in mexico, but because i've never seen any of these acts before. i guess i haven't been totallly gung-ho about going for certain though, since i'm not really obsessively into any of 'em--i just wouldn't mind seeing 'em live.
i'm realizing that what i'd really prefer to do is catch a show by a kickass mexican indie band. last year, i caught one show here in pv by a supposedly popular mexican rock band called qbo (at least i think that's their name) that was incredibly mediocre. i also went to a free show by another mexican band (live electronica--kind of like that french band rinocerose) called telefunka that was a bit more impressive (they performed outdoors for a music festival by the arches downtown). tj and i also "discovered" a band in san miguel de allende during our spring break trip that we may try to bring to vallarta; they're called pilaseca (banal piece of trivia: the keyboardist kind of hit on me) and they put on a pretty satisfying set. they have a popular enough sound to draw a good crowd.
anyway, i haven't witnessed a really mindblowing gig here yet, and i get the feeling i won't be witnessing it in pv anytime soon, so i'm willing to travel out to the cities to have that experience. i think i'm gonna place my bets on a band called chikita violenta (they seem to be big broken social scene fans), who are playing w/ the new pornographers in the df this thursday. unfortunately, i have school. it's also mexican independence day on friday and i have an evening boat cruise to attend.
some other time, i hope. dave and i are thinking of just going to azteca airlines and finding out which weekend has the cheapest return flights to the cities and plan a small trip based on that. (i also want to attend a professionalfutbol match.)

holy crap, that sure was a lot of blabber about music.

not much is happening on my end lately. all there is to do here is eat (or go to the beach, but mainly, i think it's eat). have i said that before? i spend the majority of my money on food. eating occupies such a big chunk of my life here, and as proof of this, i will actually admit that i keep up lists of restaurants and cafes that i have yet to try in addition to lists of favourite places that i've patroned. i'm currently on v.3 of the "restaurants to try" list (three establishments have been crossed off so far, with about 10 more to go--vallarta really is a culinary hub--there are literally hundreds of eateries here, not to mention taco stands!) and i'm pretty proud of my "top 10 places to dine" list so far. perhaps i will elaborate on these lists in a future post. right now, i'm feeling much too tired and lazy (i've been taking a nap every day after school lately, just like an old geezer).

so yeah, besides the good eats, i'm pretty bored w/ the pv right now. the nightlife here is unbelievably pathetic and frustrating; we frequent the same places every weekend, and this would be acceptable if the places were actually decent hangouts, but they're not--they're actually kinda slimy and touristy or pricey and slightly pretentious. there isn't a sneaky dee's or a red/green room, ya know? nor a cinematheque, nor a bubble tea house (okay, so the bubble tea i can live without).

i've figured that my honeymoon period w/ this town is now over. i still like the school and the kids that i work with and the ppl i've met, but they're all that make staying in this place bearable. the place itself has no real connection with me. yes, it can be extremely beautiful, but at its heart, i think this town is pretty shallow. or maybe hollow? or both. it takes some time staying here to realize this. i think the folks who've been living here for 20+ years see a different vallarta; maybe their perceptions of this place aren't the same b/c they knew this town before it changed--which it definitely has, even in the past few years. but even some of these ppl are realizing the current vallarta is not what they want, and a few of them have long-term plans to leave.

i'd love to see more of this country, b/c i know it has more to offer than just its resort towns. i caught a glimpse of that "more" during spring break, and i want to see as much as possible before i head somewhere else. i just need to figure out how i'm going to jam in all the travel this year!

back to school!
(it actually began over a week ago, but who's counting?)

what i did during my summer holidays (tj came up w/ a great idea--kids should be assigned to write about what they didn't do for their summer vacations...that would be so much more interesting--i, however, will now be boring):

- went to the jose gonzalez/juana molina/psapp show at trinity-st. paul's (the acoustics were perfect!) the day after i arrived home
- helped throw a bachelorette shower & party for charmaine (many compromising pictures were taken of her w/ random dudes in the club--not that my brother got worked up about them anyway)
- bridesmaid duties at my brother's marathon of a wedding (had to give a dinner speech, too--worst thing ever--the day itself was alright though)
- attended various dinners and family gatherings (stocked up on my memory of chinese food for the next year)
- spent a fortune getting my ibook fixed (wesley & his dad saved me a ton though!), buying a new harddrive and battery for it as well as a new ipod--had to get a UPS (uninterruptible power supply); we think the flow of electricity is not of great quality down here, and that may be what was messing up all my apple products
- hung out w/ friends, had lots of dinners downtown (mostly sushi sans philly cream cheese!) and bubble teas
- took a roadtrip to chicago w/ some friends and witnessed the last day of lollapalooza in grant park (i love this city and broken social scene played their greatest set ever...also caught ben kweller, the shins, of montreal, andrew bird and wilco)

so now i'm back in the land of sun and psycho-rain, and it's been an easy transition so far; i missed the kids and i'm really liking the new kids, and maybe it's just b/c it's the start of the year, but the teaching part is seemingly settling in as well.

as for the hurricane, john didn't really hit vallarta after all. we had hurricane warnings on wednesday and eventually they cancelled school for thursday, so we were all psyched up for this thing to land (all the shops on the malecon had taped x's on their windows), but in the end, it didn't. dave and i slept over at jenny-the-librarian's house to keep her and her dog "wolfie" company in boca de tomatlan, which probably would've been hit quite hard if john had struck here, but all we experienced were a few dribbles of raindrops. i've seen tons of crazier thunderstorms than what we got on thursday.
yes, we must sound insane for being slightly disappointed that vallarta avoided a freakin' hurricane, but we'd gotten ourselves so worked up over it that it felt like we'd developed all that adrenaline for naught.
my students told me stories about the tailend of kenna hitting pv a few years ago, and how nobody really took the warning seriously b/c they didn't believe that a hurricane could ever strike here (the sierra madres and the shape of the bay protect this area pretty well). the whole malecon was destroyed and the shops' windows shattered and there was a ton of looting. i guess this time they decided to take precautions just in case.
i hope cabo san lucas is okay.

an exciting prospect that dave came up w/ today:
taking his AP art class on a trip to mexico city! the df is apparently the hip, new contemporary art capital of the world (according to three articles i've read so far), and then there's also the diego rivera-frida kahlo connection. i want to be the second chaperone!! we could go visit the blue house (frida kahlo museum) in coyoacan and the house kahlo and rivera shared in san angel (i just uploaded the pics i took to flickr -- i'm still uploading pics from my spring break trip!)...and the modern art museum in chapultepec park, and rivera's murals in the palacio de bellas artes...excited!!!
well, excited, if we get permission to go...and i doubt we'll get permission to go if these lopez obrador protests keep taking place all over the city...i really hope some kind of resolution is found soon. i was nervous about passing through the airport in the df heading back here, but everything turned out fine, so who knows?
another good destination for that AP class would be oaxaca. unfortunately, they have protests (that seem to be taking on a more violent nature) of their own going on. sigh.
mexico sure has a lot of stuff going on all over the place lately.

[addendum: the ny times article on mexico city's contemporary art scene]