I am a Man looking for a Woman San Miguel de Allende Mexico Announcements & News

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

November 30, 2006

Greetings:

VIP Club participating bar, EL PETITE, Hernandez Macias #95, reopens with an inauguration gala, tonight, November 30, with a special reception and live music from 6-8pm. The attached Market Bistro Restaurant will reopen sometime in December. Good luck Daniel.

BTW: Right next door in Romanos, they have a dinner show in the back patio every Thursday night, with Parker and Young playing from 8-10pm. Also, on Wednesdays, Frederico plays Latin folk from 8-10pm.

Also, entertainment wise, VIP participating restaurant La Frugua wants member to know about their weekly line up of entertainment:

• Tuesdays; 8pm, Tango Nights, with "Rio Negro,"
• Wednesdays; 8pm, Blues with "Robert Kaplan and & Joe,"
• Thursdays; 9:30pm, Pop, Salsa, Cumbia etc, with "Rossalba,"
• Fridays & Saturdays; 10:30pm, "Maria,"
• Saturdays; 3pm, Mexican Trio Music, with "Los Padrinos,"
• Sundays; 8pm, Bohemia with "Pepe Cordoba."

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

If you read guidebooks or travel articles about México, you will read that Mexicans are wonderfully accommodating, friendly, warm, and generous to strangers. You will be given the impression these people are the “Salt of the Earth” and maybe even virtually Saints. You will be told things like, “Mexicans are helpful to a fault” and “they will be so patient with you trying to learn Spanish.” While this might be true, I have, of late, begun to doubt the multitude of clichés that pour forth from all the guidebook and article sources about Mexico.

About 18 months into our expatriation experiment, my wife and I began to wonder what was going on in the heartland of Mexico. The clichés we had read in our pre-expat research were, frankly, beginning to fall apart. The longer we lived here, the more we were beginning to see things that the guidebooks gushed about Mexican’s congeniality weren’t necessarily true. Something wasn’t adding up.

Guanajuato is about as much in the middle of the country as it gets. It is truly the heartland of Mexico. Here life is uber-provincial. The dictionary defines provincial as, “a person of local or restricted interests or outlook; a person lacking urban polish or refinement.” I began hearing this uber-provincial stuff more and more as the years went by. I heard this from not only American, German, and Canadian expatriates but also from Mexicans who grew up in other parts of Mexico and who, for one reason or another, ended up in Guanajuato.

Certain things begin to happen to us that caused us to begin asking questions. After all, we were still very fresh and green expats who didn’t know much. But we began to ask about this or that once things started happening.

I guess it was the first time I was knocked into the street by a Mexican and subsequently hit by a bus that caused me to wonder what was going on. The second time was really what got me to wondering. I was pushed off the sidewalk not once but twice into the path of an oncoming bus and was struck. Not once did anyone stop to see if I was all right. The pushers never bothered to utter one word to me. My wife has also been pushed and shoved off sidewalks. I have a 70-year-old American gringa pal who was pushed into the path of a taxi and was nailed.

One just has to ask what is happening in Guanajuato, Mexico.

I wish I could tell you.

What I began to see long ago was that the Guanajuatenses on the street are practically running to get somewhere but never arrive on time for anything. Although all of Latin American (and Italy) is famous for how they regard time differently than the rest of the world, this has slowly been changing in the more metropolitan areas of Mexico. More and more, Mexicans are beginning to forsake their traditional understanding of what it means to be on time for anything. Not so in Guanajuato. It is just as traditional here as it has been for centuries. Some say the heartland of Mexico is “stuck in the past.”

But, what you have are Guanajuatenses running at the speed of light and, I can assure you, to get nowhere fast. They are absolutely not trying to get somewhere on time. It is a cultural affectation here in Guanajuato. They will never, ever arrive on time for anything. This is a total mystery in and of itself. Why are they running? They never arrive on time for anything so what’s the rush?

So, you may logically ask, why are they running down the sidewalk knocking gringos into the gutter? I wish I could tell you, but I can’t.

I have asked Mexicans because I have the facility in the language to do so. Most of those I have questioned are not from Guanajuato originally. They are here for a job, marriage, or whatever, and have been transplanted from other regions of Mexico.

To my amazement, these Guanajuato transplants have told me that they view the people of Guanajuato as some of the rudest, most ill educated, and most ill reared Mexicans in the country. I have gotten emails from Mexicans and as well as been told in face-to-face interviews that they regard Guanajuatenses Mexicans as anti-social. This is amazing. These are Mexicans from other regions talking about their fellow Mexicans. It very much reminds me of those from the Midwest and western parts of America talking about New York.

Now, I have to take the word of those who tell me this since the only place I’ve ever lived in this country is Guanajuato. But, I am beginning to take their word to heart and believe what they say, hook, line, and sinker. Our experience bears out what our Extra-Guanajuatenses have told us.

Once, I got an email from a Mexican lady in Puerto Vallarta. She had read some of my articles and columns but poo-poo’ed me as a crazy gringo. Then, she and another Mexican girlfriend came traveling through Guanajuato. She said she couldn’t wait to email me and tell me how many times she was shoved off the sidewalk and pushed away from the cashier’s counter in stores.

Just this morning, my wife was in line to buy some very delicious tamales. She placed her order and paid the guy. Before the seller could get out of his mouth, “One moment while I get your food” a Mexican lady, one of our congenial, warm, and kind Guanajuatenses, elbowed my wife out of line and cut in front of her. The seller had to be someone from some other part of Mexico because he noticed what happened and told this woman to get in line.

A month ago, some college student who thought it was appropriate to lay hands on me and shove me a good one shoved me out of the way in a pharmacy! I wish I could tell you that these are all isolated incidents but I would be lying. The guy pushed me as though I was a piece of furniture that was in his way.

The mystery is how Mexicans are supposed to be such kind, generous, and accommodating people to foreigners while in Guanajuato, you are just liable to be pushed into the path of an oncoming bus going at the speed of light. How…how…how is this so?

The other day, we were exiting the post office when we saw one Mexican do something to another Mexican. This kid, in his early twenties, walked by a lady who had set her heavy bolsa (a large shopping bag) on the sidewalk while waiting for a cab. This young man kicked the bolsa into the street. It seemed unintentional. He looked briefly and then walked off. The lady took off after him. While she was trying to corral him, a bus came by and squashed her bolsa and all its contents to smithereens.

My wife once had to catch an elderly lady who was shoved off a 12-inch-high sidewalk by two girls who seemed not to care a wit that they almost killed one of their fellow countrywomen.

Something else that goes on in stores all over the city—another mystery--is something that would get Guanajuatenses killed in America. When you go to meat counter or any place with a counter, Guanajuatenses will shove you out of the way to bark their orders to the hired help, even though the employee was already waiting on you. Don’t miss the picture here. There you are. You’ve just given your order to the butcher for a kilo of hotdogs when some Señora puts her hands on you (or elbows you) and knocks you into the middle of next week so she can be at the front of the line.

This goes on all the time, without fail, day and night—and there’s nothing you can do about it!

NOTHING!

Why they do it I cannot tell you. We have asked and are told that the people of Guanajuato are “malcriados” and “maleducadas” …this means ill-raised and badly-educated.

I think the mystery is how did they earn the warm and inviting reputation that you read in all the guidebooks? They certainly could not have meant the heartland of Mexico, especially not Guanajuato!

Perhaps it’s the other regions about which the guidebooks have been talking.

I do not know!

by Douglas Bower