the network

There was an international conspiracy.

Weeks ago, a Japanese woman in Stuttgart contacted a Mexican-American in Arizona.

The plot was hatched. A selection was made. A special delivery was planned. Stuttgart turned the job over to Arizona who coordinated with eyes and feet on the ground, deeply embedded in Mexico City.

The stage was set.

I got up an hour earlier than normal and headed downtown in the hazy sunrise hours to the Pasteleria Ideal, one of the oldest and most famous bakeries in Mexico City in the center historico. I loaded up my trays with a mountain of pastries- conchas, garibaldis, bearclaws, croissants, cookies, muffins of all types. I probaby bought about five pounds of bread.

At the packaging counter, it was fun to watch the guy basically play pastry tetris to get all the pastries in the giant cardboard box they gave me to carry it all out. Finally, they put on the cover and tied the entire thing up with about three yards of string for carrying.

I lugged the awkward box across the center historico all the way to Hidalgo where I was able to catch a bus across to my office. My arm was sore today from lugging it around, actually.

My office was thrilled, they commented how huge and delicious everything was.

For lunch, I took my tupper to the comida corida with the other intern and got a chile relleno with rice and beans and agua de tamarindo. It makes me happy to go there, because they recognize me and know me and are always so happy to see me. It's nice to be a regular.

A little after lunch, I was called over to the front door, and boom! trap was sprung. A massive spray of sunflowers in a bouquet, carried buy none other than Alejandro, with his girlfriend in tow. Alejandro, dear reader, was my first friend and guide in Mexico City, and after abuelita passed away, I was afraid that I'd terminally disrespected him and his family. Alejandro, rememer, is the cousin of my good friend Sal, a.k.a. Chavo, a.k.a. Arizona.

We chatted a short bit while I held the weighty bouquet, and I introduced myself to Isis, his novia. It was great to see him again, and I re-invited him to my birthday dinner that night.

A little while after that, my coworkers crept up on me and surprised me with a cake made out of a stack of pastries, complete with lit candles on top. It still makes me grin to think on it.

Normally, for birthdays, the office buys a cake and they have a little cake and eating party in the meeting room cum dining room, but since I brought the pastries in the morning, I asked them to defer it, since it was given to me as an option. But I guess they still wanted to make me feel special, so they brought out the concha cake and sang "las mananitas" to me while I wore a ridiculous hat.

And of course, all day, everyone in the office came up to me to say "felizidades" for a salute, the traditional Mexican greeting of a hug and an a peck on the cheek.

The flowers turned out be so massive I had problems finding a container for them. Vania helped me by filling up a small wastebasket with water and we put them in there, and then to prevent the weight of the bouquet from toppling the container, we weighted it down with (what else?) marble and stone tile samples. I set it on the floor by my desk and it made me happy every time I looked at it.

For my birthday dinner, K met me at La Chirindongueria, a pizza place near the Cine Chino close to Reforma and Hidalgo station. I'd told everyone that I'd be there at 8, but I found myself running late leaving the office.

Due to the teachers protests (also, I jumped out of work to go shoot the prosters a few times) Reforma was shut down to traffic so the bus I was riding diverted, and I bailed. I had to pick my way through the aftermath of a riot. Trash everywhere. I passed through the man gates of two giant metal barricades blocking the streets. FInally I made it, and of course, the heavens opened up and started to pour rain.

K was there already, and we chatted while waiting for a table. I'd invited the office, but no one was able to come, mostly because the Lyon team was working until 9 or 10 every night. Ramferi,  one of the former interns, came with his girlfriend, and so did Zach, a young midwestern who I'd met for a beer and a talk about cities after he contacted me from readng my blog. Ram's girlfriend was really amused at the story, in spanish, she said, waggishly, "So you guys met online?"

Actually, it was a really fun dinner. Everyone spoke Spanish or was sympathetic to the gringos working on it. K's fluent, and she's really social, so she enjoyed talking with everyone and made them feel welcome. The six of us ate our way through four pizzas (two for one! orale! ) and we parted ways after the rain had let up a bit.

I was able to catch Saori online at the office and we chatted back and forth as I worked on my stairs for this project in Lyon. She was overcome that I'd worn my "you are my favorite architect" button to work that day. It was something she'd picked up for me in Helsinki. I missed her so much, but having the flowers from her helped bring her closer to me. She took off at the end of february. It's been so long since I've seen her.

Anyway, I''ve been debating what I should get for my birthday, and I think its going to be a pair of WarbyParker glasses to replace my current ones. It's time to get a more distinctive look and my current lenses are getting a little beat up.

I brought the flowers home today. Of course, as soon as I stepped out of the building, it poured biblically. In Mexico City's rainy season, it doesn't rain as much as it floods vertically. Even managing to hold the umbrella with one hand and the hefty bouquet in the other, my shoes and jeans were soaked in minutes. I caught a sitio taxi near my office, and proceeded to sit in traffic for the next 30 minutes. I could have taken the metro or the metrobus for the amount of time I sat, fuming, in the humid cab, watching the meter creep up as we sat in traffic. When the driver made a wrong turn, relatively close to the apartment, I'd had enough. I threw 100 pesos at him, and took off on foot in the rain. It wasn't like I was going to get more wet than I already was.

Being soaked by rain makes me angry and miserable. It feels like displaced frustration coming to the surface, but in general, I hate rain. It's especially intolerable here, a city of asphalt and concrete that floods even after a little rain. I literally walked through puddles up to my ankles.

Rackum frackum and all that. Other things I need to get better at- grace in unpleasant situations. Everyone has push button frustrations. Everyone is miserable walking with water sloshing around in shoes. What differentiates someone is how they respond, with dignity, humor, and calm, or with general malice to the world.

The flowers look great on the dining table. I recut the stems and found a large enough vase,  and after ramen for dinner, I had a half liter of Fuller's London Pride bitter. GOOOOD stuff. Might have to go back for another bottle.