While in Mexico City, I joined an online dating site that is popular there, duly creating my profile and adding pictures and information. Since I was in Mexico, I obviously wrote the entire thing in Spanish. Upon returning to the US (since this site is also popular here), I changed the location information to place my profile in Los Angeles. I didn’t bother to change the profile text because I was pretty sure that people are all shallow and only look at the pictures anyway (at least at first). Of course I was wrong, people are very interested in the text of the ads. And many of them seem to think (despite the pictures) that I am in fact Latino. I get other Latinos writing to me in Spanish or white guys telling me how much they are “into” Latinos like me.
Little do they know that my enchilada is made of matzah.
And the guys that contact me are different than the ones that used to contact me here when my profile was in English. Interesting, I think I will leave it in Spanish for a while longer.
One of the less pleasant aspects of Mexico City is the super loose concept of planning among the residents. On three separate occasions in the past 3 days I have had people let (what I thought was) an appointment drag on so many hours after it was originally planned as to de facto cancel it. “Let’s meet at 8″ Then at 7:30 a call, “I’m across town still. Let’s meet at 10.” And then at 9:30 “Can we make it 11?”
And I thought LA was bad about being late. The thing one has to do here is act as if you never made plans at all. Then if anything happens, it is total spontaneity. I realize this is one of those things that is strongly ingrained in me, and is a part of my culture, but I still think it is rude.
I can’t believe this. Several times since I have been back, while attempting to cross the street, cars have stopped and waved kindly at me to cross. This is freaky (and very nice)! In India (and LA for that matter) they would speed up and aim for pedestrians with a certain relish signified by a crazed stare and a slight drool from the corner of their mouths.
Yesterday I walked to the Berkeley Farmer’s Market with M&K and the kids.
I’ve been to street markets in the States, lots of times before. I’ve been to this particular market in Berkeley before. But I was astounded by just about everything this time. My many months away and many market experiences in Asia could not be more different from a sensory perspective.
Take for example the two images below. The first is from the (several hundred years) old vegetable market in the city of Madurai. The second is from Berkeley. On the left, I distinctly remember the following features: chaos, shouting, animals milling about, dirt garbage and dung everywhere, a crazy stink, a cool sense of scale, an ad hoc approach to everything. On the right: sterile environment, neatly aligned vendors, lots of perfectly safe to eat samples of cut fruit, an incredible sense of calm and quiet. It all seemed so strange.
