BODRUM, TURKEY San Miguel de Allende Mexico Announcements & News

November 21, 2006

Greetings:

    Your VIP Club welcomes ROMANOS RESTAURANT BAR into the club. Romanos, Hernandez Macias #93, 152-7454. Romanos has become a San Miguel landmark restaurant. Now under new ownership, Dave and Patrice Brucia offer the same hearty menu with good-sized portions as beforehand while adding some new entries. Romanos is open for dinner Tuesday through Saturday. VIP Club members may take 10% off their bill. Romanos does not take credit cards.

    VIP Club member Beatriz provides Tango lessons at her studio, located at Zacateros 21. She offers members a 10% discount when paying for a month's worth of lessons.

    VIP Club member Ross MacDonald wants members to know that beginning November 24 the San Miguel Fitness Center and MacDonalds Casa de La Salud are having their first annual membership drive with many discounts and price reductions for the gym, vitamins, chocolates etc. Ross also will soon have a new website under San Miguel Fitness that will provide discount coupons, a medical referral service and other valuable and diverse services to sanmiguelenses. Do know that the San Miguel Fitness Centers offers 20% off to VIP Club members.

    VIP Club participating boutique and fashion center, "Goldies" has moved off Canal and is now located at Zacateros #19, in the old Clan Destino location. Hours are daily: 10:00-am-6pm, 154-7521.

      Maru Riba, owner of VIP Club participating restaurant La Princesa, on Recreo, would like members to know La Pricesa has a new chef, Angel Flores, who comes with sterling credentials earned at Camino Real Hotel in Mexico City and while in Cancun. La Princesa now offers a new and diverse menu with many various specialties.

     Silvia, of L'invito fame, has opened another local pizzeria with wood burning oven located on the corner of Calzada de la Luz and Calzada de la Aurora. Her other location is Ancha de San Antonio, 32B. Both are open everyday providing home delivery.  Call 154-6228 or 154-1000.

     Members do know, if you are in business or an artist, who might be having an event or even a garage sale, Your Club will be more than glad to post your event in our newsflashes. Yet do know, if your event is time sensitive, we can not guarantee we can send your notice out right away because we only send out newsflashes that are germane to new club business, so get your notice to us early. Do know that the VIP Club website is being viewed more and more by our robust membership <www.vipsanmiguel.com>. Your Club's site's advertising rates are very reasonable.

     Brrrrrr . . . everybody is talking about the weather. All will use more propane. Remember Your Club's discount from Noel Gas. So far the reports are good with many members saving big time on their propane bill. One member, who has three properties, says they paid or their VIP membership just with the savings. Also, with the weather getting colder, the poor out in the campo lack warm clothing. Both Biblioteca Publica and our local post of the American Legion have drives to collect coats and sweaters to give to the less fortunate. Why not look in your closet and permit your older garb to warm the needy.

    Your Club wants to wish our American membership a Happy Thanksgiving. It goes without saying how much we all have to be thankful for here in San Miguel. A belated Happy Thanksgiving to our Canadian members.

     Thank you for the good turn out and VIP Club members who attended my reading at the Authors Sala on November 10, and special thanks to Susan Page and the steering committee who were thoughtful enough to invite me to read excerpts from my work, it warmed my heart.

     Please include,  member Arden O'Rourke, in your prayers and good thoughts. Arden, a fine lady, was involved in a horrific auto crash with an 18 wheeler up at the border. Presently she is in a coma in San Antonio, Texas, and she's in trouble. A silver lining might be that, as of today, it has been reported  she has moved her arms and  legs and periodically has opened her eyes before slipping back in unconsciousness. Get back with us, Arden!

     Members and friends, please don't sleep with open flame heaters operating in bedrooms or you just might not wake up!!!

RIP: Elfie Guillen.

     Thank you for your continuous and loyal support.

Your San Miguel VIP Club

I’ve written quite a bit about The Ugly American Syndrome. In my columns, print and online magazines, and in every book I’ve written, I’ve mentioned this topic. I get a lot of mail from readers, either praising and agreeing with me or chiding and condemning me.

As of today, I think I will begin cutting Americans some slack, especially American expats in Mexico, regarding The Ugly American Syndrome. My visit to the bank today convinced me that maybe I’ve been too harsh and need to lighten up a bit. I think my readers (the chiders and condemners) in San Miguel de Allende might breathe a collective sigh of relief over this announcement.

What happened is something that should not have surprised or shocked me. I guess I simply have reached the end of my expat rope—at least today. When I get my quarterly royalty checks from my book publishers, I take them to my Mexican bank and deposit them. Because they are drawn on a foreign account in the States, there is understandably a hold on these checks.

I get that and it doesn’t bother me one bit.

But here is what I’ve been told ever since I began depositing royalty checks into this account:

“There will be a two-week hold on this check.”

At the end of two weeks, the wife and I go off to the ATM to check the balance and the funds are not there. We go back to the bank. The bank officer tells us:

“Oh, there is always a three-week hold on foreign checks.”

We wait another week, go to the ATM, and the funds aren’t there. So, we go again to the bank.

“Oh, there is a 22-day hold on all foreign checks.”

The next day, we go to the ATM and the funds are not there. We go into the bank:

“There must be some mistake. There is always a 25-day hold on all foreign checks.”

We wait three more days and go to the ATM to check things out. There are no funds. We drag ourselves into the bank with the wife trying to talk me out of murdering someone.

“Oh my, my! There is always a 30-day hold on all foreign checks.”

In Mexico, as I have written before, nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, is as it seems. Nothing will work with any degree of logic or reason known to the rest of the world. Here two weeks can mean pretty much any amount of time. In Guanajuato, Mexico, two weeks means many things. It can mean three weeks, twenty-two days, twenty-five days, or thirty days. And let me tell you, each bank employee will tell you something different each time you make a deposit. They will look you straight in the eye and tell you whatever comes to their minds, whether it is the truth or not.

What I do not get is just why no bank employee knows how anything works! This brings me to a conversation with an American expat who has lived in Mexico much longer than I have. She said once that what Mexico needs is a Business Manager. These people need a Business Manager in everything that has to do with anything to show them how things work. This is because in all aspects of life, at least in Guanajuato, no one who does anything that has to do with something knows just how it is suppose to work.

Trying to do banking in Guanajuato is not the only thing that doesn’t work. I would love to tell you that this is so but I would be lying.

Once we tried going to the movies. The theater manager was at a party and was having too good of a time to show up with the keys to the box office to sell tickets. She sent word that someone was welcome to come and get the keys and sell tickets, otherwise we would all have to wait.

Can you begin to imagine what would have happened in America when this movie theater manager finally showed up? She or he would have been lynched by the crowd.

Here is the really bad thing. This sort of “Qué Será, Será, whatever will be, will be…” service is vastly tolerated all over this country. The Mexican nationals, at least from my observation, seem to tolerate a level of service from providers that Americans and Europeans would not tolerate for a second!

Only those who have spent time internationally seem to be perturbed by those of their fellow countrymen who settle for or offer this, “The future’s not ours to see, Qué Será, Será…” service.

Well, the next time I see some American tourist or expat acting out The Ugly American Syndrome, I am going to march up to them, pat them on the back, and tell them, “I feel your pain, Bubba!”

by Douglas Bower

Article Source: EzineArticles.com

I thought I would write a follow-up to my column, “Move Over San Miguel de Allende Here I Come”, since this is the only thing, writing, that prevents from committing murderous acts of rage (Just Joking!) As you recall from the previous column, I wrote how I tried to deposit a royalty check from my publisher and was told the check would clear on four different dates. We were shown, last week, on their computer screen that the funds would be available on the 18th of December.

Well, today is the 18th. We marched down to the bank and, of course, in the truest sense of TMO (Typical Mexican Operation) the funds were not available. We went into the bank so I could seize a bank officer and choke him (just kidding!). No, we talked to this guy who thought it cute to mumble at us. He actually told us something entirely new.

He said that “the 18th” did not really mean “the 18th” but it meant sometime after 6 p.m. on the 18th but before mid-night on the 18th and…and…maybe even the 19th.

CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS?

This my dear readers is what we anal-retentive Americans (and “strung-tighter-than-piano wire Germans”) have to deal with when we become expatriates living in Mexico. It would seem, and I could be wrong, that Mexican banks just make up stuff as they go along. There are no policy manuals, procedural steps, no rules, just the “fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants” way of doing things.

“Qué Será, Será: What ever will be, will be. The future’s not ours to see. Qué Será, Será.”

This is exactly how things are done in central México. I have to tell you though, those from other regions of the country are as dumbfounded as I am. They tell me that this region of Mexico is “stuck in time and history.” They are provincial to the point of having been throw into a time loop and cannot escape the temporal hole they’ve been in since the middle ages. Time forgot central Mexico and no one seems to really care to crawl out of this dimensional morass in which they are quagmired.

What are we going to do?

I do not know. But, we are looking to other areas of Mexico that may not be like living in a Latino Twilight Zone.

My fellow American expat said this:

“That what Mexico needs is a Business Manager. These people need a Business Manager in everything that has to do with anything to show them how things work. This is because in all aspects of life, at least in Guanajuato, no one who does anything that has to do with something knows just how it is suppose to work.”

She has no idea what truth she spoke!

by Douglas Bower