frustrations

Last night, coming home from work on the metro, the lights went out in the carriage, although the tunnel was still occasionally lit by florescents. It was dark for a few minutes until the lights came back on. I asked my friend who was riding with me, “has this ever happened to you before?” he said, “no, not ever.” Apparently, that was my first earthquake in Mexico City. Apparently it registered a 5 on the richter scale. Didn’t even know it at the time.

I realize that living someplace new, especially in developing countries, that there’s a lot of frustrations, especially in the first week. Today was one of those days that presented me with a lot of frustrations.

Yesterday during lunch, I bought a SIM card for my iphone so I can make calls without running up a ridiculous tab on my US phone. This was no small feat in itself. I went to several convenience stores which sell cheap cell phones only to eventually be directed to a Sanborne store where I eventually bought one for M$150. The problem is that the iphone, because Apple hates everything outside of their system, uses a mini-sim card. So mine is too big. Now, the only difference between a sim card and a microsim is the sim card has more inert plastic around the chip. That’s it. You can buy little handheld devices that are basically a specialized paper hole punch, except they punch microsim cards from sim cards. Unfortunately I don’t have one here.

But I was hoping that Sanborne would since they cater to a higher income clientele, who might have iphones. So today before work, I went to see if they could help me. I coudn’t actually find any employees. The store was open, but no one would help me, so I took a deep breath, shrugged it off as something in Mexico (sure, it does kind of make sense to open your store but not have all the counters staffed) and bought some good coffee to go.

Today, if you didn’t notice, is friday. My standard work day goes something like this:

• 6:30am wake up
• 7:00am leave house with Alejandro and his dad
• 7:15am get dropped at Metro station
• 7:45am exit metro and hunt for breakfast pastries
• 8:15am go to work
• 7:15pm get off work. Walk to metro.
• 8:40 arrive back at house. Shower, eat something light, chat with Alejandro and Silvia, update blog, check facebook, etc.
• 11:00pm go to bed.

So you can see why I would be excited to get off work at 4:30. It’s actually pretty nice considering we only return from lunch at 3.

Anyway, I was considering going to buy some tea (hard to find good tea in Mexico City, surprisingly) and go to the grocery store, but Saori had texted me saying she was available to Skype tonight, so I arranged to meet her at midnight her time, thinking Germany was six hours ahead of me in Mexico City. First mistake of the day. If it took me the usual hour and a half to get home, I would be right on time, I thought.

I should back up by saying that I haven’t spoken with Saori in over a week, not since before I left Houston. She’s been buried with a brutal competition until wednesday, and my weekdays are solid packed. It’s the one thing I’ve really wanted to do since I got here, and it’s killing me. I want to tell her about Mexico City, and I want to hear about her work, and how the competition went, and what she’s going to be working on next. So of course I cleared my schedule for her.

I calculated that by walking 30 minutes to a station on the 2 line, I could save at least fifteen minutes, not to mention changing trains twice and being smashed in with 3 million commuters. Leaving the office at 4:30, I thought I had ample time to ask if they had a sim punch at Sanborne along the way and still make it back to the house by six.

Second mistake, maybe. It’s a simple question. Can they punch my card? Si or No? After having to wait for another fifteen minutes to get service, they tell me no, I have to go to the local Telcel customer service center and exchange my sim card for a microsim. That doesn’t sound like it involves any waiting or lines at all. Fuck that.

So I walk to the metro at Revolucion monument. It’s a long walk along a major avenue which probably doesn’t get the tourist sightseeing buses. The monument was cool. Thousands of teenagers hanging out, playing in the fountains, skateboarding. The monument was interesting until some genius decided to put an elevator in the middle, up through the center of the dome.

Couldn’t find the metro. I found a big area under construction which I thought was the metro. I asked around: is the metro closed? I thought they me that it closed at 12:30. So I decided to walk to the next metro along the line. Got lost because where I thought I was and where I actually was were two blocks apart. I was two blocks, maybe five minutes walking, from the metro at the monument. Pincha gringo.

Asked for directions and finally found the station. Rode it back to the end of the line, and then sat back for the 30 minute ride in the privacy of a luxury sedan crammed into a microbus with padded benches and 15 other people to rattle and bounce our way though gridlock, and dust and exhaust. The combis are rendered much safer by the fact that in gridlock traffic it’s tough to get above 20 miles an hour, and frankly, I’m not sure a loaded combi could even get above 30 miles an hour, even on an open straightaway.

Finally made it back to the house a little after seven, or 2 and a half hours after I got off work, and just after 3 am Germany time. No sim card, no tea, and way too late for Skype. Fuck, fuck, and fuck.