Keyboard troubles. I woke up today at 2pm and missed the keynote talk, but was just in time for lunch. I have an excuse though; I was up until 4am fighting with this laptop. Since I've been here the laptop has been an agony. Some letters didn't want to be typd at all, others woulld often ddouble themselves, and sometimes do a sksip-doduble. Panic requests on the Debconf wiki yielded no joy. Noone knew where to get a keyboard, until Gunnar said the Internet Cafe would have one. So I went there, Fabio the owner, a local Debian enthusiast, greeted me and sold me a PS/2 keyboard to plug into the laptop. Finally I can type. Yesterdays blog entry took eight hours to type. It should have taken an hour or so. The agony was profound. People looked up from their laptops as I pounded the table and shouted my frustration every hour or so. The new keyboard has solved everything. It took getting used to because it has the Mexican layout. I have to reach farther than normal to reach the left-shift and enter keys, and the angle brackets are in a different spot, but it is heaven to type at full speed again, even with the network lag.
New foods. Today I broke my fast, because I found the grasshopers, at the Mercado Oaxtepec. The grasshoppers are small, and fried with salt. They taste delicious, identical to bagoong, a Filipino delicacy made from shrimp. The saltiness in the chapulines (grasshoppers) was less intense than in bagoong, and the chapulines were also sweet and sour, making the perfect crunchy snack. I hope to find out where they prepare the chapulines so I can get some fresh live ones to boil and butter, like shrimp. I have a theory that they will taste identical to shrimp. Bought a "mamey" from a street vendor for P5. It is like a cross between an avacado and a papaya. The flesh is bright orange and sweet, firm, not juicy. In size and shape, it is like an avacado. The skin peels and feels like an avacado. The seed is the same size as an avacado seed, but is very pointy, and glossy black. It tastes very nice. Update on the mango situation; I found mangos at the Mercado Oaxtepec. Judy Wilson from Belize explained that the mango season is only twelve weeks long. Gunnar said that the reason I couldn't find any ripe mangos at the hotel is because the hotel staff harvest the trees every morning. There were a lot of different types of mango at the market, large, small, yellow, rainbow, green, etc. I stopped to watch some women scraping the needles off some cactus leaves. Later on, a Debian member helped me buy some prepared. You don't eat the cactus leaf directly; you boil or fry it. I had a preparation of cactus leaf, which tastes just like pickled string beans, on some tortillas. Many tortillas at the mercado were green. The Mexicans say the green corn flour is more highly refined, and therefore of a better quality than the plain colored tortillas. I also saw some green kidney beans of enormous size, almost as large as my thumb. They tasted good.
Cigars and rum. As you leave the entrance of the resort, the prices drop very quickly. At the Mercado Oaxtepec I bought a chella (355ml) for P6, and a quart of beer for P12. There was a bottle deposit which seemed sane and reasonable to me, the same as I charge my beer customers; half the price of the beer in the bottle. Beer bottles aren't cheap. If they gave away $0.50 cents per glass beer bottle in Canada, you'd never see a broken beer bottle anywhere. In Tijuana I learned to enjoy a refreshing drink called "agua de aros", or "rice water". At the mercado noone knew what I was asking for. I ran into some Mexican Debian members, and they said it is called "horchata" in most of Mexico. I asked about buying loose pipe tobacco, and Cuban cigars. I'm amazed; I've seen no Mexicans smoking in this area, although the stores do carry cigarettes. Everything seems clean and bright. The nearest cigar shop is in Mexico city. Cigars are considered "high-brow" in Mexico, and few people smoke a "pipa" (pipe). The hard liquor, like tequilla and rum is about half the price you would pay in Canada. Not as cheap as I hoped, but not terrible.
Visiting the convent. Today I walked into the convent, which has been converted into a museum. It is a beautiful place, built on classic and medieval lines. I felt a profound peace walking around the cloister, the rooms, and the trees and flowers of the peristylium. The convent was built to last, and even to defend. Most of all, it was built to be lived in. It had windows with pleasant seats everywhere. If I was ever a nun, I would want it to be in a calm place like that. The view from the roof was great. The rain spouts were broad, and they ended in thick metal pipes which looked like cannons from the ground. I have not yet been in the cathedral itself.
Some things I cannot write about; there are many Intel representatives here, and some delicate politics are in play. Hasta manana!