711 posts tagged “in english”
This blog has moved to its own domain: www.chivacongelado.com , the new RSS feed being at http://feeds2.feedburner.com/chivacongelado . Why?
After starting in MySpace (of all places) almost 3 years ago, I moved the blog to Blogger to take advantage of better blogging functionality. In March 2007 it was migrated again to Vox so that I could use the more user-friendly interface available there besides being able to post from my mobile device at the time (or so I said at the time).
In reality, I found a pretty user interface, that made very simple to import and display content, but didn't allow for unregistered comments, trackbacks, statistics, widgets, counters, etc., so the conversation didn't grow the way I would have expected. To make matters worse, even though their import utilities are excellent their export tools don't exist, so my content was literally trapped. This, as you can imagine, made me a very frustrated user, especially since their customer service just ignored me.
With the help of a couple of friends I was finally able to free my content, and am now hosting in BlueHost (GoDaddy was out of the question after the cvander debacle).
Installing Wordpress was very, very easy and you are now privy to the
results. The old blog will remain in its old place, but will not be
updated from now on. There might still be a couple of tweaks to be done, but pretty much everything is in place now.
Welcome to my home in the web. Mi casa es su casa. ;-)
This month's edition of Monocle, my favourite magazine, has an in-depth survey of Mexico (running at 36 pages) that features the best in current Mexican design, music, literature, business, media, hospitality and gastronomy.
It is very refreshing to see such a positive portrayal of the Mexican reality, as most international media tend to take the easy route, focusing only on what's wrong (which we already know) instead of what's right. Highly recommended!
- Its portrayal of the immigrant integration challenge: the mother, a low-skilled Finnish immigrant to Gothenburg in Sweden in the 1980's, doesn't speak any Swedish and cannot understand her surroundings, and
- The tackling of the situations a kid growing with two languages and cultures can face: supporting her parents in the local community and being harassed for her background.
After I moved to Finland, one of the things I learned to love was cross-country skiing, so when I was a student and was awarded a small stipend for school achievement, I used that money to buy myself a set of cross-country skis, poles & boots.
Since the past couple of winters have been pretty lousy in southern Finland and I was in Brussels for a year, it had been at least 3 years since I used my skis last time until yesterday. It was, however, like reuniting again with a long-lost friend.
Maybe I should start the Mexican Nordic Combined team? ;-)
My work, of which I usually don't talk about in this blog, can sometimes be great, sometimes frustrating but in the end one of the things that makes it worthwhile is the people.
To have an idea, you can check some of their public blogs:
- erkkola.net
- danielgoodal.com
- finlandforthought.net
- artojoensuu.wordpress.com
- digiantique.wordpress.com
- cognitions.typepad.com
- activefreemedia.com
A man without an abundant experience in politics, a man very different from his predecessors and one of whose parents had been born abroad, runs for the presidency of his country through a grassroots movement, great oratory and the promise of change in big, bold letters. His campaign imposed his candidacy on his party and eventually clinched the presidency with enormous expectations. The handover between administrations was smooth and the incoming government met with support from the international community.
I'm not talking about Barack Obama in '09, but Vicente Fox in 00'. I hope against hope that the sky-high expectations don't crash this time, as the challenges are many.
There's been a lot of discussion in the traditional media and the blogosphere about Mexico becoming a failed state after a report by the US military on such eventuality. Frankly, as gross as the news on the Mexican drug cartels are, I think it is an exaggeration for two simple reasons:
- Most of the violence in the country is restricted to the 6 border states (Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León & Tamaulipas) plus Sinaloa out of 31 states and a Federal District. Even when the situation in cities such as Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez has become difficult, they don't represent the whole country.
- The growth in the number of violent episodes is mostly due to the fact that the government, instead of ignoring the situation as before, is actually doing something about it and meeting the cartels head on.
I'm not innocent enough to say that everything is going beautifully, but I have a thermometer that most people in the international media don't: family and friends living in the country. I'm sure many of them would among be the first to start leaving if the situation becomes as untenable as these reports claim. Otherwise I'll keep on hoping for the best and agreeing with opinions like this.
In the meantime, tourism seems to be more affected by the international credit crunch than by that kind of news items. Fair, since most tourism attractions are very far away from where these sad events are taking place. As a tourist, I'd be more afraid in Los Angeles or Chicago than Cancún or San Miguel de Allende.
