There has been little to report for the last week because I have been bed-ridden with the influenza. Not even the exciting one, just the one that makes me cough up and snort out all manner of unspeakables. It’s still not quite gone either. The people here are fabulous, but the microbes are sods.

It is still my belief that in this city you can find anything, it just requires some serious effort. Hence, as soon as I was mobile, I rode the Metro to the end, walked uphill along the side of a freeway for half an hour, through slums (with often not one but two satellite dishes and some nice surrounding infrastructure; much nicer slums than South Africa or Russia), piles of garbage that one can’t help but think bodies could be amidst, past the mid-city forest, and to my destination. It turns out an Australian passport can get you anywhere, even into a Mexican military base. Once therein, I bought modelling supplies. My Spanish comprehension is somewhat skewed; I can’t explain I want the mail, but I can ask for sheets of high-impact styrene. Not a single photo of this adventurito, given my erroneous belief I couldn’t take a camera into a military base.

Unrelated to the purpose of this journal, but still interesting, I direct you all to our nation’s finest political party. A fairly solid platform, though my support was met by my lovely lady-friend’s “Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo”.

Finally, farewell to Leigh Swancott, now likely trying to overthrow the oppressive political system of the hereafter, or, at the least, discussing it seriously in some divine dive.

I quite safely and without hindrance found my way back to the new venue, the José Cuervo Salon. The venue was of a nice medium size, not unlike, for Melbourne listeners, the Hi-Fi or Palace before the unfortunate fire and wrecking ball. Probably not at all like post those events.

The support band, some kind of experimental screaming and weird noises thing, elicited an interesting response from the crowd: Mexicans will give, as a collective entity, a sea of the one finger salute interspersed with the old rotten tomato effect. The only cheer during this set was when the singer received a full cup of cerveza to the face. But, they admirably held the stage until they were finished.

The 'correct' assessment to give for how FNM played is that they were terrible, they couldn't contain their mutual loathing to the detriment of their musical prowess, and it was a disaster.

Now that my lady friend who is coming to Mexico prior to the Oceania leg of the tour, and will thus miss out entirely, has read the above and has maybe gone to get a sandwich, the true assessment is that Faith No More have lost nothing in the last ten years, though I don't think anyone could live up to the decade of expectations aficionados will have saved up. Rest easy that they are playing tight. The only low point was that Midlife Crisis was lacking somewhat; it just didn't have the musical layers of the recorded track. But, that is a small quibble, considering the impact of the rest of the show. One thing the Australian crowd will not get is Evidence sung entirely (well, almost) in Spanish. Who knew Señor Patton could speak almost fluent Spanish (calling the crowd gringos when they sang in English) and maybe even Italian (I caught those slips; I make them myself)?

Anyway, because my camera does not do well in low lighting, I found these. Judging from the angle, this lady was seemingly standing next to me for at least part of the night, and we probably went home with each other's sweat on our respective t-shirts, amongst that fine cocktail of fifty people's sweat you gain being third from the front in a mosh. The lucha libre mask was thrown up from the crowd (in fact, as it was being slapped into my face prior to hitting the stage, I feared it was a pair of Kylie Minogue hot pants).

I have now met some awesome locals who go to gigs most every week, so watch closely as this journal slowly decays into being a concert review.

I'm supposed to go to see Faith No More tomorrow, and after my past dramas seeing gigs overseas; getting horribly lost in Moscow looking for Aria, having a tornado hit the stage the day before I was meant to see Aerosmith in Venice; I thought I'd best do some research.

So I went to the venue. All seemed good.

Then it occurred to me to consult the Ticketmaster webpage. It names a different venue to that on the ticket.

So, I do what I can to find out what has happened. A plague of locusts has hit the original venue.

A FRIGGING PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS.

How, dear reader, can this not be cosmic? Every time I try to go to a concert in a country where I don't speak the language, damnation comes right out of the Old Testament to derail me. Maybe there is an interventionist god, and maybe he's not so much angry and jealous as just kind of a prick. I fully understand if there is doubt as to the veracity of my story, so wrap your translator around this.

Locusts. Langostas.

I'd best not try to go to any concerts when I have kids, or the first-born will die.

Everyone knows the pain of being subjected to an automated message on the phone. This pain is dramatically amplified when one doesn't speak the language.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's installment, when influenza zombies attack the train I'm on when en route to the new venue. The will probably launch locusts and bees out of their mouths at me.

Last Tuesday, after giving my maiden speech at my new place of employment, UNAM, and proving they have not hired a dud, at least for now, I dropped James at the airport. Happily, we found a last-minute puerile double entendre on a sign for him to photograph, only slightly contrived in nature. I enjoy this ritual immensely. Then I worked for the rest of the week. This does not make good print, so we move right along.

One may recall that one of the unexpected delights of northern Italy was the museum of Puccini in Lucca, which, looking back, I wrote pitifully little about. On Saturday I had the opportunity to see his last opera, Turandot, as performed live by the New York Metropolitan Opera. How? The magic of sending HD on them satellites to Mexico. The lesson of the day is that neglect has caused my Italian to atrophy, but my Spanish is good enough to follow the plot from subtitles.

Tomorrow I get a day off, due to industrial action. Some weeks ago, the federal government dissolved the state run power company, stating gross inefficiencies. They probably intend to privatise it, and while normally such actions send me into a red flag waving diatribe, the experience here is the opposite of at home. Here, it seems that when public utilities are privatised, costs actually go down and services actually go up (even within the banking sector!). This is because here, often workers aren’t the proletariat, but the lumpenproletariat in disguise. In order to be a worker, one has to, you know, work. But, to come to the point, as a show of solidarity with the electrical syndicate (yes, this is the apt synonym for union here), the education syndicate is blockading the campus tomorrow, and this isn’t like a NTEU picket line where they ask you not to cross, you inform them you have an exam in three weeks, and they shrug, look sad and let you through, this is proper closure.

So, now that I’ve come to a realistic withdrawal from my political philosophy for certain sociological situations, will a certain Italian crystallographer do likewise? Probably not, though the rumoured revision of stance on bike helmets is satisfying enough.

Trying to leave Mixquic at 2am, the majority of traffic was inbound rather than outbound, and the majority of bus drivers and guys who hang out the bus door (like bus squires? Yes, this will do) unhelpful and obnoxious. However, with the help of some young folk who delayed their night to help us, and a fellow directing traffic with little else to do when not waving his rag to shoo cars, we got on a bus, with the understanding we would change at some point.

It was at this point, when we got away from the crowds, that we saw the authentic Day of the Dead observances. Down a quiet residential road, many of the gates in the walls surrounding the properties were open, and families were solemnly keeping vigil in fold-up chairs and tending the wood fires they kept on the foot paths. Occasionally children threw fire crackers into the fires, or waved and then ran off to hide when we waved back, to the amusement of their older relatives. Sadly, from a mostly moving bus we could not take photographic record of these small and poignant scenes.

After only a few kilometres (not ‘kays’, other English speakers look at you funny when you say that), we were dropped at a deserted intersection with the rest of our fellow travellers, and told to wait for another scheduled bus. That never came. This was when the temperature seemed to plunge. Soon, an intersection window washer turned up and started directing people into taxies, random passing cars that would stop, or any other mode of transport that presented itself. His motives are still a mystery to me, ranging from why he was allocating transport, to why he had his detergent and squeegee at 2.30am at an intersection abandoned except for bus refugees. Eventually, a privately operated bus (imagine a standard bus, with the same paint job, but done up like the muscle car of a, erm… young man in Australia of Mediterranean descent, sticker obscuring most of the windscreen, black lit interior and all) pulls up, and the window washer convinces him to turn around and starts herding people aboard, declaring the destination to be Tasqueña. Suddenly, a massive crowd appears from no-where and pushes onto the bus. Despite Jimmy P’s certainty he saw this very bus involved in a crash earlier in the day, we assume safety in numbers and follow along. The window washer adopts the role of bus squire, and we are off, with the back door of the bus open for most of the trip, and the lady nearest to it, and thus most blasted by cold air and most at risk of falling out, screaming out for it to be closed at random intervals. All this for the equivalent of 50 cents.

Several kilometres down the road, the window washer bus squire decides he would rather go elsewhere than Tasqueña. A mother in her fifties with her three early-twenties young’uns shouts him down, and we are back on the way to Tasqueña.

Getting to Tasqueña half an our later, the station is empty, the washer squire gives us vague directions to head north before his new charter operation moves off elsewhere. We head through the abandoned and massive Tasqueña bus station, with only the woman in her 50s and kids, and decide to more or less stay close to them as far as out paths coincide. A couple of kilometres down the road, the same private bus passes us, but headed back to Tasqueña. Strange. Eventually crossing a major highway and trying to hail a taxi, a member of the family chases us down the road, asks us where we are going, and insists we can’t get a taxi or walk as it isn’t safe. At 3am, in the freezing cold, this family insists on waiting with us until they can hail a taxi they are comfortable with us taking and introducing us as their friends so as we might be even safer.

This was the tone of the day. Despite the fact we were jibbed on the way to Mixquic by an unscrupulous taxi driver, and encountered cranky PT staff at other points, one bus squire where the taxi dumped us waited with us to ensure we got a correct bus, while at Mixquic locals concerned for our safety urged us to be cautious, and outbound we were helped at Mixquic by young people who had better things to do, and again at Tasqueña by this family. These truly are good people who go out of their way to offer assistance to visitors.

After well earnt sleep to ease out aching joints, JP and I went back to Coyoacán on the Monday for to purchase more skeletons. Finding some nice ones, but fearing we were ripped off, we headed back to the Metro via another market, and at each step were stopped by clearly well-educated and affluent Mexicans, delighted with our purchases and enquiring where we had found them. We were many times informed we had in fact found excellent bargains. Photos of my procurements are in the gallery. Sadly I failed to take pictures of James’, and this is a pity as apparently it has been banished to some dark cupboard.

And thus, Dia de Muertos is finished until another year passes.

Reaching Mixquic, we found an authentic, if not traditional, Dia de Muertos celebration. Authentic, as this seems to have been kept a secret from foreigners (the LP Mexico mentions it without detail in three lines) while thousands of Mexicans fill the streets around the cemetery, with markets selling all manner of in-theme or random items. Not traditional, as the open houses and vigils seemed to be, while present, the exception rather than the rule, though we were a day early for the cemetery vigil and too late for the coffin parade through the main drag.

Entering the town, we came to a river that had been cleared of its dense carpet of aquatic plant life so that small canopied boats, adorned with jack-o-lanterns, may make trips several hundred metres up and back. Getting out own charter, we thoroughly enjoyed the ride and the conversation with local chap Manuel, while his uncle propelled by pole. Manuel, maybe seven years of age, quickly grew tired of our inability to work out what he was saying, but he has two dogs, two cats, four fish, and five somethings, and he reckons the river stinks.

Sitting down to get the beer-crime that is so common here: perfectly good beer tainted, nay, perverted with tabasco, lime juice and salt, we were set on by forty million kids with little pumpkins begging for lollies or money. We had none of the former and only large denominations of the latter, but these damn kids wouldn’t take no for an answer, because, after all, we were gringos and probably loaded. Vowing not to sit down again, we found a stall that sold lollies and loaded up Jimmy P’s pocket. Being that I had been looking for a black cowboy hat to keep the tropical sun of off my head with no luck (the omnipresent blanco just ehn’t my thing), when they were available I had to get one, as did James, and with it being dark but our hands being full, we looked even more obvious with the damned things on our heads. Thus, the tone was set: groups of younger kids chasing us down the streets for lollies, and crowds of older kids following us laughing and throwing the word gringo all about, like maybe we didn’t know what it means. Though I had it on good authority from some kid’s mum that lollies were good enough, while some of the kids were delighted, some others reacted with less than complete enthusiasm. Stingy gringos.

After finding a giant puppet skeleton with pig-tails dancing to live music, we headed to the cemetery, where people were more or less just milling about, and after loafing ourselves, we decided to move off at about 2 in the am, to find transit adventures not unlike those of our way in.

Achtung children! Swear-words ahead!

This episode of our serialised melodrama begins with recurrent character Jimmy P arriving in Ciudad de Mexico for the Dia de Muertos long weekend. Saturday was spent at my number one bohemian barrio, Coyoacán. This being a cultural centre, they didn’t disappoint, with coloured sawdust pavement murals and alters in the main squares, and the Cultural Museum putting on a display of alters in styles from across the country (I think; from minute to minute I have no idea what the dang is going on in this country) and a pantomime for the chil’uns teaching the kids about the wisdom of not being shyte-scared of the skeletons everywhere. I suspect we got the gist, even if the finer points floated off on the wind encoded in a tongue I haven’t grasped. After the show finished we went to La Casa Azul, the Frida Khalo museum, at which skeleton Fridas and Diegos tormented each other in their special, demented way. Saucy wench, she had pictures of Marx, Engels, Stalin and Mao above her bed (never mind that number 3 on that list murdered her sometime bedfellow, Leon Trotsky), and a mirror in the canopy. Lots of lovely paintings about her busted-up womb, too. After another visit to Trotsky (it seemed polite), we found what is surely now my new local, Bar Bizarro. Walls adorned with Bela Lugosi and bat-winged, partially-skeletal babies hanging from the ceiling? Indeed. Even if the precarious iron spiral staircase offers a challenge while carting up my spanky new terracotta Catrina, the guidebook, and two pints. We got chatting to a pair of locals, who we spent several hours with until the boy one worked out what we had hours earlier, that the girl one was sick of company and he was blowing the precarious balancing act that is getting a newly warm bed.

On the Sunday, we thought it clever to head out of the city to the country town of Mixquic (pronounced ‘miss-kick’, though after the thusly-revealed excitements, Jimmy P was heard to use ‘shit-kick’). It seemed easy enough: metro to Tasqueña, bus to Mixquic. The first leg was fine, what with my fine-indeed PT master-skills, but Tasqueña (how that name now fills me with dread) is cyclopean (thankyou, Señor Lovecraft) and we couldn’t find our bus amongst the multitude of others. A stupid thing to do is ask a taxi rank attendant where the bus is, and then believe their lies about it being too late to catch the bus, and how one should get a taxi. Then, a stupid thing to do is believe the driver when he gets shitty in deadlock in some town somewhere and tells one it’s really close and one should walk. More stupid is not only giving the bastard the full agreed price, but also, also, a tip. After determining where we were, and how very far from Mixquic, and inventing elaborate karmic scenarios as to what happened to that turd on the way back, we found the bus which it was ‘too late to get’ happily rolling up the road.

The fully occupied interior hummed with atmosphere under the orange glow of indicator lights, wired in as replacements for busted fluros, as we stood in the aisle and bounced along the randomly paved road. Finally, I was in South America. As the bus thinned out, we got seats right down the back, like the cool kids we are, and it was from there that we experienced the bus running over the gutter, or something of the like, and lurching maybe another kilometre down the road, until the driver pulls over, walks down the aisle to the back, opens up the hatch to the engine, reaches in, manually turns it off, fiddles around, comes out dripping oil, and gets out the back door without a word. We wait to see how the locals react, and after they start filing out, we do likewise and find the muffler and much of the exhaust system sitting out the front of the bus.

We set out down the spartan, dusty country road, with sparse and dead corn and interstitial frontier stores on either side, as utes, pick-ups and taxies with people sitting in the backs (yep, even the taxies had their boots loaded with a cargo of three or four people) periodically lit the scene a fitting reddish-orange with their tail lights. This is how we arrived in Mixquic.

And the theme continues. Just prior to my unfortunate illness, Alaster, associate from many years of university, passed through Ciudad de Mexico on his way south. We generally quested about for places for a beer, and when I accidentally ordered 5 litres owing to my lack of Spanish, I was distraught to find that Alaster, veteran of more drinking adventures than any man may rightfully hope for, has found age has caught up with him, and wished me to cancel the order.

With the security of company, broad daylight, guide book, and two compasses, we set out to find the 2 death cult temples. Out provisions were inadequate and we bought the city street directory. The first, and newer, was just a fairly average Catholic-style church which fancies itself to be a little naughty. Reasonably unimpressed, we journeyed on, into dodgier and dodgier territory, scattered with market stalls selling pirated midget erotica, and eventually came to the original alter of Santa Muerte set up local lady Doña Queta in her front window. This was the real deal. Genuine devotees offered prayers and and small gifts to the shrine, and those little Saint prayer cards were handed out. Alaster and I were both happy to have bought candy skulls as offerings, given the solemn attendees. The photographic record we made isn't great, but we didn't want to push the envelope too far.

Now, jumping two weeks into the future, over much porcelain abuse and boring work stuff, and it is now the eve of Dia de Muertos. On Wednesday just been, each of the faculties of UNAM observed yearly ritual and built a display in the central lawns, all orange marigolds, candles, and stylised skeletons. Then, they parade down the middle by school or organisation, like a far superior Moomba. The theme this year was the 200th anniversary of the death of Edgar Allan Poe. Prepare thyselves for blurry night-time photos...

My body has had enough of it's new residents, the Mexican Amoebic Army. Maybe ice blocks in drinks, maybe that glass of tap water I took a mouthful of, ironically while taking a stomach pill, but no matter the cause, there is no being farther than 50 metres from a bathroom. And, I've been offered multiple explanations, from house-to-sewer pipes which are of small cross section, to house-to-sewer pipes made of terracotta that warp and buckle and get generally pointy, but here one does not flush one's paperwork, one places it in the bin. By these circumstances combined, I am Captain Disgruntled.

The fraught route of internet diagnosis tells me that in rare cases such things as are living in me cause brain lesions. There is a solution: I can, in the heart of one of the biggest cities on Earth, go to see "Dr. Simi" for the sum of 30 pesos. Simi means 'similar' to a proper doctor. A fully trained doctor costs 1000 pesos, which for anything as clear-cut as amoebas is marginally excessive. The tip is to see Dr. Simi for a prescription but then see a real pharmacist. They don't have 'generic' medication here as such, they have, again, 'Simi' medication, something I suspect the undergraduate pharmacology students make out the back of Dr. Simi's chop shop. Probably not to the quality one would wish to put into one's own meat-shell.

However, the entrepreneurial spirit is alive, and I'm considering starting a band called Dr. Simi and the Brain Lesions.

Domingo, and I have a choice between the two obsessions I share with many Mexicans: death and leftist politics. To find the death cult, or find a Bolshevik. I opt for the later, and catch the metro to Coyoacán, in the south of the city. First, I investigated Viveros de Coyoacán, the botanical garden which is the nursery for all the other botanical gardens, and home to joggers and Mexican ninjas (I tell no lie). Then, I headed to the central square(s) and found a wonderful country town atmosphere, with colonial streets filled with charming cafes (it always founds snooty when someone uses charming in that context, like it comes from a mid-50s heiress in tweed with narrow lips and nose, but they were charming). On the larger of the conjoined squares is the first house Cortés built for himself while laying siege to what is now Mexico City, but this, apart from the tourist office (ooooo, foreshadowing) is closed on weekends (stupid guidebook).Thus, I headed to my goal, Calle Viena, and People's Commissar for Army and Navy Affairs Leon Trotsky’s fortified house and gardens, where he lived in exile until one of Stalin’s men had a question, so he came to pick Leon’s brain.

It was only fitting that as I left and stood on the opposing corner to get one final photo of the defences and watch tower, that I received a stab to the head of my own. A counter revolutionary bee, seeing the red of my beard, flew in to commit crimes against the proletarian class. Becoming entangled in the stiff bristles of the people, it became enraged, and in its insanity flew from the agrarian growth and straight back in again. Freeing itself of the people’s hirsute reform facility a second time, it honed in on, of course, this scholar’s left temple, where it made like Ramón Mercader did not thirty metres away and nearly sixty years ago, and with reactionary zeal deposited its bourgeois spike. That whole thing they tell you as a kid about standing perfectly still and they won’t hurt you? Crap.

A nearby shop assistant showed solidarity after I drew a picture of a bee and made stabbing gestures at my head, but could not help. Thus, I headed back to the squares and tourist information, where after creating another paper bee and making more wild motions, the two ladies went to find their English speaking colleague, who pulled out the sting, gave it to me as a souvenir, wrote the word for ‘ice’ on a piece of paper and sent me on my way to find a stall I could get a small-enough-picked block to hold against my head. Then I sat quietly to wait and find out if I’m allergic to bee venom. I am not.

So, while I walked past the Casa Azul everyone is breaking a neck to see, I didn’t go in, based upon these factors: my camera battery was dying, I was annoyed after tangling with that Stalinist bee, and I have to return to the Cortés house again (hopefully without having to draw nasty animal pictures).

However, before I went back to the hotel, I had enough charge for one last photographic assignment. When I heard that commuters on the metro had seen not just any Virgin Mary, but the Virgin of Guadalupe, in a stain made by water dripping down the platform wall, I expected a piece of crap. I at least expected it to be a photogenic piece of crap. It was not. It’s a small grey-brown water mark on a grey-brown stone that bifurcates at one point into two more curvy watermarks, that if one squints maybe look like the outline of a person. Maybe. And an indistinguishable person at that.

The market district, that occupies maybe 10 by 10 blocks east of the Zócalo (central square) should be renamed Needful Things, because if there is something you really want, you will find it. I’ve been looking for more good, wooden book-holders since I was given one for my 21st (thanks guys!), but I was looking for a specific kind. There was one stall out of hundreds that had them, and only one kind: the exact kind I’ve been looking for during the 7 previous years. I went to haggle, and found they were already half the price I was expecting with gringo mark-up. (And yes, I have been called gringo already). Naomi and I spent the better part of one of the three days I had to tie up loose ends before leaving Melbourne tracking down GP boots. I found a street today that only sells military surplus.

The Zócalo itself has much to see, and I still have to investigate the museum of the main Aztec pyramid that Cortes demolished most of, and the Palacio Nacional, but what I did see was an amusing juxtaposition: the Catholic Catedral Metropolitana. Inside it has a statue, the Señor del Veneno, which has the power to magically suck poison out of potentially assassinated monks. Outside, brujos (witch doctors) cleanse the souls of people with branches and incense. I stroke my beard at this. The building itself is beautiful, and how should one make an impressive European-style church more impressive? Bolt two together to make an uber church!

I like it here because despite the fact I stand out (and so would most everyone at home, except Ivan or maybe anyone extremely Mediterranean), you don’t get hassled, like in Beijing for example. I’ve been approached three times: once by an undergraduate who was hoping I was maybe an Americano, once in the market to buy a t-shirt, and once by some high school kids who wanted to interview me and take my photo for their homework (and I still have my wallet).

The city itself is much less crowded than one would expect for its 22 million inhabitants. This, I think, is because the greater city sprawls extensively.


The San Fran gallery is finished. Link on the right.
Also, people! Feel free to comment!

I am going to be milking that song for titles until there's nothing left to squeeze out. Here's a link to the clip, but be warned, it's not for those offended by the filthy language or \m/.THE METAL.\m/

Mexico is proving difficult to write about. I think this is due to the different nature of my purpose here; as a tourist, there is an urgency in recording your observations, and a convenient structure: I did this, then I saw that. No matter how random and chaotic one attempts to make their day, there is still an chronology of concentrated experiences.

However, living somewhere, and knowing that, and spending half of every day at work, things bleed into an unexciting patina, with occasional disjointed events and observations, that don’t tie into a compelling narrative.

So, here is a weeks worth of these observations.

The UNAM campus where I work is built on volcanic rock, with exposed piles of the same in which tarantulas live. I haven’t seen one yet, but apparently when there aren’t large crowds around they are seen walking across the paths, doing their own thing. There are also apparently scorpions in one of the libraries. I would say that too many people have told me these stories for them to be untrue, but, hoop-snakes.

The food deserves its own post, and I shall write one of appropriate size once the inevitable happens, and I get sick from street food. Apparently there are just various bugs that the locals have, and are immune to the effects of, that when combined with questionable (I had to explain the word ‘dodgy’ to a local yesterday, but I digress) hygiene of all but upper class restaurants, is going to put me out of action for a few days. Then, I will come back, superior in immunity than I am now. It has already been noted that I’m doing better than most; both myself and a fellow post doc have eaten twice at a torta (the next wanky Melbourne word for Panini [sic, should be o] to be sure) place on campus called, probably with more honesty than irony, Dirty Harry’s. He was intensely sick both times, and on both of my occasions, I’ve come up roses. As much as one can plan these things, I intend to eat something dodgy while my boss is away in a few weeks, and get it over with. While this seems like a bizarre outlook, one misses far more by trying to stay well than trying the food; much like the famous dodgy dumpling house at home.

The air is actually fine. Efforts to clean it up have apparently worked. The altitude becomes obvious when I try to both walk and talk.

The other day I accidentally tried to get onto the ladies only train carriage. The Metro here deserves its own post, and anyone tied to Melbourne’s system their own Gulag for the fraud they perpetrate against us.

Mexico has developed its own Death Cult. It’s fairly mainstream, with altars numerous in the market district. The government has denied it official recognition and tax breaks, but seems to be doing okay. I will try to get what photos I can, but it is advisable to use discretion in such an endeavour; the cult isn’t exactly wholesome, as I understand it. It should be noted that this is different to Dia de los Muertos.

“Cinco pesos! Cinco pesos!” – the most beautiful, musical sound, and, the cost of anything you will buy on a Metro carriage.

It seems Mexico isn’t so difficult to write about after all. In the interests of brevity, I might leave it there and resume with all the rest I have written and have to write in a couple of days.

I've been in Mexico for 3 days and really I'm not that enthused to order and compose my observations except for this. A complaint. Of course.

I forgot how trivial tasks become non-trivial when you don't speak the language. Buying toothpaste is a draining ordeal. Train tickets are a torture. You go in with a very specific request, and they absolutely have to cheerfully give you options, and after they come to understand that you don't understand them and want specifically what you asked for, they feel obliged to give you yet more options you can't understand.

Word perfect "I would like this [point point point] please" is an inadequate tactic here.

Word perfect "Can I have 20 train tickets" should not be a five-minute struggle. Yes, you have a fancy swipe card I can buy, but as you can plainly deduce, especially as I have explained it in your own language, I have no idea what your instructions for its use mean. Is it in your power to just tear of the twenty tickets I asked for? Clearly yes, so just do it. Fine, I'll buy the damned swipe card then. How many charges do I want on it, you enquire. 20! Twenty! TWENTY! Fine I'll take fifty. Or at least I think I did. I don't actually know what the result of that discussion was, except that I could see sheets of 20+ paper tickets and I didn't get one.

Far from being lazy types of stereotype, they are too damned keen to help, just not in a very considered manner.

Waking up in terrible pain from the twenty kilometre walk of the previous day, encompassing muscular, blister and sunburn pain, I spent the first hours of the day getting a free education from one of the hostel workers about how all good in the world came from Indian conquest of Europe (when, I’m not sure; he didn’t use the word ‘Sanskrit’ once), how the Out-of-Africa model of human expansion is an American lie, how the only good peoples of the world are those that don’t speak English very well, and how the English are the worst people on Earth. Apparently, the academic establishment for anthropology are morons, but they won’t be able to defeat the website he’s going to make with his facts, and facts other people will submit. As a bonus, he told me hated America, despite living there for ten years, and it’s a stupid country because David Letterman had the wild sex, but it wasn’t him who went to jail. I find it unfathomable that this untapped font of wisdom is stuck working in a hostel, and not making policy somewhere. Throw in a friendly yet gruff New Yorker who does no work, and an anxiety-ridden surfer who performs all the labour and shares a mutual hatred with the anthropologist late of Hindustan, and you get the quirky hostel that was home for 3 nights.

Anyhoo, I spent the rest of the day at Alcatraz. And, by the way, my main problem with that damned film was that the first time I saw it I couldn’t concentrate on the plot as I was so disturbed by the non-to-subtle foreshadowing screaming that Nicholas Cage had to stuff a hypodermic into his heart at some point. But, I digress. The ticket price includes ferries both ways; an introductory documentary and museum displays, which seem to linger too much on plants and the fekking birds the island is named after in Spanish; and the audio tour of the cell block, in which Prison Officer Pat Mahoney (I think) supersedes Roger Moore to become best audio tour narrator know to man (this man, that is). The cell block itself is actually much smaller than one might have thought, though simplicity was evidently its strength. The tour illuminates its history brilliantly. To round it out, the gift shop(s) had an array of actually interesting and nice merchandise, if somewhat impractical to transport. I procured the Alcatraz Women’s Association cook book (families of the prison staff lived on the island), and were I to have space I would have gotten an extract of the prisoners’ rules that sums up graduate study: “21. WORK. You are required to work at whatever you are told to do.”, and another to torment my future children with: “5. PRIVILEGES. You are entitled to food, clothing, shelter and medical attention. Anything else that you get is a privilege.”

Ah, a day in which I smelt Mary-Jane on more passers-by (note correct grammar; in English we never pluralise a verb. If you would say passer-bys, you are a bogan). I opted to follow my standard directive when in a new city and follow my walking-feet where they might take me. Based on today, San Francisco appears to be a city where, food excepted, one can find a full days intrigue without spending more than a dollar or two. I walked from my seedy hostel near Union Square to the Docks, then up around the shore finding interesting random humanity everywhere I went.

I am now prompted to segue onto a topic I have always much loved: boobs. I came upon thousands of pink-clad chicks (and a sprinkling of dudes) who love their boobs. It seems it is The 3 Day breast cancer fund-raiser festival in San Fran at the moment, and as photographic evidence testifies, they were camped in semi-hemispherical (one could even say, boob shaped) pink tents. One was brown. As I’ve said before on this tome of discovery, I have no antipathy to the brown ones. One of their slogans, on badges pinned to said boobs, was “Save 2nd Base”. One shudders to think what the equivalent slogan would be at a prostate cancer targeted event.

Moving on from this cheeky-yet-meaningful event, I went to Fort Point, under one end of the Golden Gate Bridge, where a fort has stood, in one form or another since Spanish times, having passed to the Mexican Republic, then the Californian Republic, and then the Union. The current fort dates from The Civil War, in which the commander of the time was a certain Col. Albert Sidney Johnston , a Southern gentlemen in the Union Army who would not hand over the keys to Confederate conspirators despite his sympathies, putting honour first, and then resigned his commission to join the Confederate Army, and became the highest-ranked officer to die in the war. Interesting.

While there, I attended a light artillery demonstration, and answered the call to volunteer in the cannon crew. Presented with the choice of assuming the role of runner or commander, I opted for runner, considering my taking charge or the cannon would effectively mean my taking the fort for the British Commonwealth on behalf of the Regent, and this would likely be a breach of my visa conditions. (on second thoughts, maybe I could have pushed the point and fulfilled 8-year–old Paul’s dreams and gotten now Governor Schwarzenegger on the phone). Thus, I gave the command over to a teenage girl, who, maybe based on my diligent adherence to international protocol, informed me I have nice eyes. Anyway, having faux-fired the cannon, we each got a certificate, and I headed off.

Next, I walked across the bridge and back again, and headed back to my hostel. As I approached said hostel and the sun went down, and various unsavoury types came out, including packs of the pink-clad chicks with lascivious looks in their eyes, I remembered the words of one of the umpteen Homeland Security guys I had to show this or that to at the airport: “Your not staying in Union Square? That’s a bad part of town”. Then I saw the sign above the place on the corner of the dark alley the hostel is down, a sign not noticed in daylight: Les Nuits de Paris Massage and Sauna. Classy and stuff. And it seems the hostel has over-booked my dorm tonight. And ah, the musical sound of sirens.

This is to serve as notice that another alien has safely entered the US. In the process of 3 days frantic packing and farewells, followed by pan Pacific aeroplane adventures, I have thrown my bio-rhythmic gyroscope well off kilter. It does no good to consult body whether it is hungry when both correct currency and a food outlet are available, as it doesn't seem to know until the later element is removed. Hence, that NZ$20 that has haunted my wallet since December will stay a while longer. The flights went well, with an aisle on one side and a vacant seat on the other for both. I have to go to bed now (even if body is unsure), but stay posted; my hostel in San Francisco is highly questionable, and chaos is sure to ensue.

Wooooo, perusing the journal of Joris, it seems it has been eight months since I last left Straya, and seeing the last place was NZ, it's more accurately been eleven months since I last left Straya. As I bound myself to writing here only on travel matters, lest I become another anonymous internet whinger (so, so easy) or bragard (also tantilisingly easy, what with the new letters to my name. Hang on, that was a restraint fail. Dang.), this has meant sod all has happened here for eight months.

Thus, to remedy this, I use the flimsy excuse of posting the NZ photos to keep the journal somewhat active. That and a promise of further activity. I leave for Mexico on October 2nd for one, maybe two years. Mira este espacio.

And thus, my first truly international conference is over. It’s always good to know that at the highest level, on the world stage, academics are still cliquey, bitchy and snippy with each other, one’s own boss being in fine, fine form. To illustrate, here is an excerpt of the report I made to my collaborators not in attendance (I’ve always enjoyed that word, ‘collaborators’; it sounds marginally nefarious). Names and places have been changed to cover my lemon:

“I’ll begin with useful news and via a sliding scale end with political thoughts (i.e. bull dust followed by outright slander).
Firstly, I think our talks went rather well, and were rather well received. We have some interesting experimentalist leads to follow up on, the most intriguing being that Person A of Institute 1 has [data] that he can’t explain. You see, [insert subtle hint that what is seen matches what my work predicts]. Person B of Institute 2 specifically mentioned in his slides that he wanted us to do neutrons off of, erm, something. I can’t recall what, but his talk will be on the internet soon. Furthermore, I saw Ken strong-arming someone from Institute 3 into something, but I’m sure he can add more details. A trip to Tokyo might be nice.

[the static of boring technical details]

We did again meet up with Person C from Institute 4, but she spoke more to Ken than myself. Maybe this connection can still bear fruit? Apart from that, Institute 4 was really quite under-represented. […] Also under-represented was Institute 5, with no Persons E or F, though Person G was good value. Into the dirt now, it strikes me that Person H has a nasty chip on his shoulder. Speaking of such things, Institute 6 were there in force and I really did feel an icy wind from their theoretical corner. Person I was reserved in conduct, though that might just be his manner, but Person J was not backwards in being forwards in assaulting our treatment of Coulomb, until one of his colleagues put him in his box. It seems his conjecture was based on the idea we are doing [something other than what we are doing]. Hostile (and I hazard to add, in some ways, foolish) little man. However, Person K may be a good name to store away somewhere: a pleasant and seemingly good experimentalist from Institute 6.
The open discussion section was derailed by the fact that Person L does not know what a [specific and basic concept] is.
Final thought: Person M is probably to be avoided.”

This is because Person M is clearly insane. Also, Person H kept bumping into me in the days after the conference and making passive-aggressive snips. Person H, mind you, is a full professor, as is Person J. I endeavoured to take the high road. Stupid high road. Sick of the high road.

At an academic conference, it is customary (in addition to being childish) to have an excursion day. From the options available to me, I took the Lord of the Rings tour. Not exceptionally cultured, or ‘Xtreme’, I know, but this is my goddamn journal and I don’t need to justify a thing… I mean… hello. While I have now seen The Remarkables, the mountains that were stretched and skewed and colorised to stand in for almost every mountain range in the films, including Mordor; and seen the mountain where the battle with the wargs occurred; and the river where the king statue hoobajoobs were pasted in; and stood at the river bend where magic horse river did its thing, it was a little bit on the side of meh, not as tactile as I might have liked. More rewarding was walking along the lake’s edge from the Queenstown botanic gardens to Frankton.

The quest for post-docs has yielded some fruit, though not as much as I had hoped. I was all but offered a place split between Sydney and Wellington, but I feel I have to decline. The reward for the sacrifices, both financial and personal, that this academic path has already dearly exacted was always to be a life experience somewhere alien and preferably with the opportunity of new language skills.

I’m currently in Auckland, which despite being a dramatic detour was the cheapest itinerary I could get. I only had a few hours here today, but these were quite sufficient. Auckland is just another New World city from what I have observed: no particular soul. Thus I went to the gallery, and found that it, like seemingly all galleries the world over, is undergoing major renovations. They did have a small and for the most part quality exhibition on, but this only filled an hour. One piece caught my eye for its technical competence, but upon reading the blurb (for which I know there is a better word) I discovered it was a ‘found’ piece that the ‘artist’ had added to. It was then quite clear which elements were the additions: the parts of low technical competence with the trendy but cheap and weakly articulated political thrust.

Thus, I am sitting in the departure lounge of Auckland International idly considering driving a pen into my forearm repetitively to alleviate the soul-crushing tedium. For the funsies. I might have grown accustomed, and indeed comfortable with backpackers’ hostels of late, but I shall never, never, get used to sitting in airports for hours. And now this diversion is over because I can’t think of anything else from this trip to complain about. Not that Mother would want to read, anyways.

Leaving Christchurch, Aunty, Anders and I set off by car for Queenstown. From origin to an hour or so from destination, the south island is, uncharitable as it may be to say, one continuous, sprawling, unrelenting farm. Paddock after paddock after paddock. Obnoxious lamb after obnoxious lamb after delicious lamb. Then, apparently, one reached breathtaking gorges. I know not, I was asleep.

Queenstown is Banff of the Southern Hemisphere. With a lake rather than snow, it is ringed by epic mountains, in possession of enticing walking tracks through forests that allow one welcome solitude, and in the centre of it a painfully artificial town that almost eviscerates the soul from the locale.

I gave my presentation on Monday to sixty-five of my peers. I got all the content in, but at such a break-neck pace that I lost my audience, and finished very early (the only person to do so thus far). Thus, there were questions. Many questions. We have seemingly tempted collaboration from an experimentalist who cannot explain data that my work seems to pre-empt. Also, post-doc hunting is coming along apace, though no news about tacos, sorry James. There was a young man who lowered the tone by presenting his work in a scruffy t-shirt and jeans, and declaring consternation with “Oh fuck!”, and I ain’t the one!

I have also had the fortune to meet a man whose work is referenced in my thesis, one John Millener, doyen of the nuclear shell model. This is like meeting a rock star for normal people, with their petty perspectives on import. I seized the opportunity to over-extend my reach and ask foolish questions. I have no idea what his responses meant. I feel this showed.

So, Christchurch. Seeing that written on most every building out of the corner of ones eye was a little uncomfortable, like being caught in some nightmare version of the deepest deep south, though no banjo was to be heard. Aside from this, however, Christchurch seemed a lovely little town, though they are under the delusion it is a big town, with a pleasant river running through the middle, beautiful stone architecture (replete with gargoyles), and hills in the middle distance. It was somewhat like a large Victorian township, but more picturesque and without the slightly sinister element of bogan boofheads with utes looking to drink and fight. No element of flannel was evident in Christchurch. Except for me. It also have a port town on the other side of some lovely hills, Lyttelton, which provided a fine opportunity for a coffee on the main street overlooking the harbour.

They do indeed do a fine coffee in this country, despite no obvious Italian influence. And I can no longer hide it, I suppose, especially when even baristas, nay, bariste, give me crap: over the last couple of years I have indeed become a coffee wanker. Actually, also a wine wanker, and art wanker (although that happened much earlier) and most certainly a travel wanker. I even push the envelope on beer wanker, although that is almost outside the realms of possibility. Meh, I care not. I am grounded by V8s and Cold Chisel. Dichotomous (well, I was always an intellectual wanker).

Anyhoo, next installment: Paul meets the equivalent of a rock star in the nuclear physics world.