notes for now (will expand more later):

- spending our last night in puebla w/ the ny couple...getting drunk, laughing, talking talking talking

- seeing this distinctive couple (not the ny one) in puebla at the museo amparo three days ago and then again today at the casa de leon trotsky in the df

- spanish-speaking ppl asking me for directions to frida's house, and i am actually able to help them out!!!

- taking the metro! coyoacan! casa de frida and leon trotsky, plaza hidalgo, cafe el jarocho and a churro relleno con cajeta while sitting in the square. yum.

- the red treehouse and feeling like a local (well, as much as i can, looking so conspicuous) in the condesa

a few more reasons why i like puebla:

- i passed by the radio global space again today, and they were blasting bloc party´s "this modern love" through the speakers! i immediately bounced inside and spoke to the slightly clueless volunteer guy or whoever standing there, and took a look at the playlist on the laptop...it looked like something off my ipod! josé gonzalez, beck...and stars!!! the dude played their cover of "this charming man" for me. i walked away w/ the lamest, cheesiest grin on my face. i wish i could´ve spoken to whoever´s playlist it actually was though, ´cause i´m 99% certain it wasn´t the volunteer dude´s.

- smoking survey guy approached me again today while i was sitting on a bench in the zócalo reading a book, and he got the vibe that i didn´t want to talk and was completely friendly and brief and cool with it. thank you, smoking survey guy.

- okay, so this one doesn´t have all that much to do w/ the city, but i guess we can stretch it and say i probably never would´ve met this couple if we weren´t all visiting here...last night, tj and i went for dinner at this amazing boutique hotel/restaurant that had an awesome, funky-yet-classy atmosphere, and we ended up talking to this couple from ny (the man was pakistani and the woman was originally from spain), and eventually, the conversation led to how i wanted to live in the big apple for at least a year sometime in the future. i asked the couple in which part of the city they lived, and they replied, "the east village," and i sighed in envy. then they exclaimed, almost in unison, "you´d love it there!" and "you look like you live there already!"
that couple is the coolest couple ever. if you ever want to compliment me, now you know what to say.

onto the d.f. tomorrow! we´re staying here.

four or five years ago, about two seconds before john mayer became a radio/stadium phenomenon, i took an insane trip from k-town to ny via the t-dot to see him play an intimate sony employee christmas party at the village underground in greenwich village. i spent a day in the city wandering around on my own, waiting for my cousin to get off work. while riding the subway to canal street, an older couple approached me and asked for directions. isn´t being mistaken as a local the ultimate form of flattery for a traveler?
it happened again today in puebla--twice!
i was walking along the paseo bravo when a group of older men politely asked if i knew where the public washrooms were located...then a lady with her son in tow asked me the same question in the casa de la cultura...
this got me wondering--maybe these people were just so desperate to find a washroom that they didn´t even care whether or not i was a local?! or maybe they didn´t notice that i don´t exactly look like your typical mexican...
nevertheless, i couldn´t help feeling a bit guilty letting them all down with a sheepish, "no sé."

puebla is definitely giving me the city-fix i needed so badly. i wouldn´t exactly want to live here, but the buildings and the buzz and the streetwise people are precisely what i want to be surrounded by right now. this city has an interesting blend of both the colonial and modern urban feel, which is appealing to me. the weather´s a bit cold, which is perfect b/c i´m used to seeing people wearing scarves and winter jackets at this time of the year, although it´s a bit unsettling for tj (who´s lived in L.A. her whole life).

we arrived yesterday afternoon, and right away, in the zócalo, we found a mindblowingly-simple-yet-brilliant art exhibit called el museo peatonal / the passerby museum (there´s also a short description in the first paragraph of this review); i was almost giddy, and felt like we´d found the holy grail--culture!!!
just a few steps away was another funky-looking exhibit called radio global.
now here´s something random--across the way from radio global was a little shop teeming with newspapers and magazines...i felt compelled to browse (as i always do when i see these things), and at the very top of a magazine rack, i spotted the february 26, 2006 issue of the ny times magazine--the one that features the toronto music scene and broken social scene in particular. what the heck?! i bought it for 15 pesos (the man who sold it to me probably thought i was nuts), and proceeded to read it in the lobby of my hotel. i´d read the article before, as it was posted on stillepost (is that thing still alive?) even before it was published, but there´s something about the tactile and reading...in any event, it made me freaking miss toronto like crazy (yeahyeah, you cynical readers out there are all like, "bss and blocks and all that junk is so ten centuries ago," but i don´t care!)...i missed t.o. and so i decided to go out for a walk in my stand-in city instead. (actually, there are moments where i feel i could be in ny when walking in the zócalo here...)

i strolled around aimlessly (but carefully) for about 30 mins., marvelling at the well-lit, imposing cathedral (that can be found on the 500-peso bill), and just as i was about to head back to the hotel, two guys approached me and asked if i wanted to do a survey on smoking. they looked pretty earnest (and had forms to fill out and everything), so i said sure, but then they figured that i probably didn´t speak spanish all that well (which i don´t--i really do understand a lot more than i can say). i didn´t end up taking the survey, but we did have a nice little conversation about learning languages (one of the guys was learning english and he was actually better than he thought he was; he had the opposite problem of mine--he could say more than he could understand), and that short, typically urban, random encounter was all i needed to cheer up and be content with where i was.

[p.s. i want to put up some photos of my trip so far, but this computer isn´t registering my usb key, so i guess it´ll have to wait.]

christmas in cuernavaca with christina

notes on cuernavaca:

we mainly chose to come to this place b/c we thought the heading ¨christmas in cuernavaca w/ christina¨ sounded really good.
unfortunately, this city is a tad boring.
we had a super-impressive dinner on our first day here, and an unbelievably pathetic night out afterwards (there are a couple of nice spots to have a drink in this town, but the music is absolutely fucking atrocious).
i spent the next day (christmas eve) wandering around the whole downtown alone, and found great peace and solitude in the grounds of a gorgeous 16th-century cathedral...a fitting setting for the season, even if i´m not really catholic anymore. there were moments of absolute completeness and pure satisfaction there; i sat in a courtyard listening to my ipod and just contemplated life for a while...i know it´s weird for some to comprehend, but i really do love just hanging out with myself sometimes--not all the time--but occasionally, it can be really, really nice to be alone.

cuernavaca is a city that was probably thoroughly charming around 10 years ago, but now it just holds pockets of charm and beauty in certain areas. pretty and sometimes even beautiful structures and homes can be found right next to run-down, unattractive shops and buildings in the historical centre. the juxtaposition can be a bit unsettling, but maybe some find this odd mishmash appealing?
another baffling thing--i´ve passed by vendors in different parts of town trying to sell heaps of electrical cords and plugs, piles upon piles of what i assumed to be car wires and other random parts, and very used porcelain dolls that look like they could star in their own horror movies ... who buys this stuff?!
i walked around everywhere...i even walked to the edges of what appeared to be the suburbs of the city and it all looked very pleasant, if you like that sheltered, two-kids-and-a-nice-family-sized-car (in addition to lots of money and a gated house) kinda life.

technically, however, we spent the majority of christmas day in taxco ("tacos & tostadas w/ tj in taxco"), quite a cute, charismatic town that used to be huge in silver mining. it was all winding streets going uphill and downhill and colonial quaintness. we even rode a swiss cable car over to a secluded hotel up on a mountaintop, which was not exactly what we were expecting to do on a christmas day in mexico...
there was a very photogenic church in the busy zocalo (main square), which was the focus of all the rooftop restaurants in the area.
we saved our appetites for a nice dinner at a swanky spot back in cuernavaca though. (i´ve eaten so much on this trip...i´d be a total chubby pudge-face by now if it weren´t for all the walking i´ve been doing!)
overall, it was a very lovely, lowkey christmas.

next stops: puebla, and then finally the d.f.!

i'm so tired.
tired tiiired tiiirrred.
yet i'm not sleeping.

there's a lot to say, but i'm too *ahem* tired to type it all out. it's all been a jumble of people, parties, work and utter boredom. i think i need wednesday to come and a chilly holiday in the centre of this country to refresh myself.

happy holidays, all three of you reading this!
here's to 2007.

a late report on last weekend's long weekend before this weekend officially begins:

i attended 3 films for the pv film fest; little miss sunshine (i know, i know--it was already out in theatres during the summer in canada and it's most likely available on dvd by now--nevertheless, i loved it and i loved the soundtrack); en el hoyo (in the pit), which was cool--it was a documentary about construction workers building a freeway in mexico city, and it was screened for free outdoors at los arcos, the arches on the malecon...they should have free screenings there every weekend...it was an awesome idea; the last film i saw at the fest was a documentary on leonard cohen that kind of made me all misty-eyed about cdn musicians...it was well made; a concert where the likes of the wainwrights (rufus, martha, their mother and aunt), nick cave, beth orton and jarvis cocker singing interpretations of cohen's songs was interspersed w/ interviews w/ the artists as well as cohen himself. at the very end, cohen sang "tower of song" w/ U2 as his backing band. pretty satisfying. the man is a genuine poet w/ a well-timed sense of humour, which in my opinion is one of the best combinations a writer could possibly have.

i still remember when i took that "intro to english lit" course in first year and one of the girls in my class announced that she was leonard cohen's niece while we were studying his song, "suzanne." my prof's eyes almost popped out of his head and he just about kow-towed before her. it was pretty hilarious.

what else...
on thursday, tj, lisa and i attended this avant garde-ish event called intimidad (intimacy)...it was a "sound art" thing where we were blindfolded and led to couches up on the roof of de santos where we sat and listened to different soundscapes (a girl screaming and crying, an underwater "captain nemo"-ish scene, the requisite sex sounds, jungle noise, etc, etc.) for about 30 mins.
my dj friend made some music for it and gave us invitations (that we didn't really need since the waitstaff there totally recognizes us by now and just let us through). the whole night in general was a good diversion--something a little different from the usual mundane nightlife motions we tend to go through.

friday was spent as a zombie recovering from the night before, having the consistently-good 2 p.m. brunch at kit kat in old town, and sleeping sleeping sleeping.

lisa and i spent saturday night checking out the two new resto-lounges in town while everyone else went to yelapa. our conclusions: azul is perfect for decent sushi (available 'til 4 a.m.!) that is consumed on a rooftop with a gorgeous view...the design of that place is quite impressive--lots of nice little details.
z-tai is a breath of fresh air when it comes to options directly on the malecon...we met the manager as well as the chef that night and everybody seemed very friendly and accommodating.
the music at both venues could be improved (some of it was random as anything--new order's "blue monday" followed immediately afterwards by REM's "losing my religion"? weird!), but at least now we have a couple of options other than freakin' de santos.

we have a week and a half left before christmas holidays begin...i think tj and i are gonna travel to places like cuernavaca, puebla and finally mexico city...back to the centre of this country!
it's gonna be my first christmas and new year's away from home. without snow. it's pretty trippy staring at palm trees here, fully knowing that it's december.