Thu., Nov. 25, 2010 at 2:47 p.m.
Today hasn´t turned out exactly as expected but it still has been interesting. I was supposed to meet a friend who lives here for lunch this afternoon but somehow we couldn´t connect as we were at different ends of the same shopping mall. Now let me tell you what is so special about this mall. You could easily find this place in any downtown district of almost any major city in North America. It is sort of indoor-outdoor, with two Starbucks, one on each end and almost every other chain store one could imagine (or not imagine) Almost everyone here looked middle class or well- off, people with laptops and cell phones and i-phones and whatever, dressed exactly the way we do in Vancouver (not right now, it´s already winter at home.) I must have spent an hour here just people-watching. Whereas in ciudad Juarez one could die by gunfire from narcotraffickers if one is not careful, on Paseo de la Reforma it would be from boredom.
Earlier I walked the elegant boulevarde of avenida Obregon, admiring the fountains and the neo-classical sculptures. I did a bit of a coffee shop hop, beginning in la Plaza de los Obreros. It´s a nice little place with brick walls and ambience, and good music in the background (well, I think that Manu Chau is good music, anyway) Afterward I stopped in a small second hand bookstore with bookshelves just packed with books where I bought a small volume of short stories by a Mexican author. The proprietor couldnt find the right change for the note I gave him and seemed surprised and perplexed that I let him give me the book for a bit more than what he was asking for it. Then I stopped at another place, this etablishment being quite clean and elegant. The server there (I think he might be the owner) tried at first to talk to me in English then switched to Spanish when he discovered my facility with the language is pretty good. He was kind enough to bring me a wooden coat-stand from which I could hang my knapsack while I was drinking my coffee. It turns out that he was in Victoria and Vancouver last year and just loves our fair cities (excuse the italics again, nothing personal).
Then I went to meet my friend, who did turn up but not in the same part of the mall as me. After this I walked back to my neighbourhood and stopped in the sort of pretentious looking cafe that you see everywhere in Yaletown. For those of you who don´t know Vancouver, Yaletown is a neighbourhood in our downtown which is kind of like Condesa in Mexico City, but minus the palm trees, and minus the charm. It was originally a warehouse district and in the last twenty years or so it has morphed into a trendy neighbourhood of boutiques, hair salons and overpriced restaurants. I really still can´t understand why people want to go there, but the public is gullible, eh? I also find it ironic that all the yuppies who now frequent that area are just the same kind of people with soft hands who have probably never done a day´s hard work, outside of the gym, in their lives.
Anyway, the quesadillas I had in this place were very good but they serve them on those same rectangular Japanese plates that I am sick of looking at in Vancouver, and the plate was lined with paper so that the moisture from the food made it difficult for me not to eat paper along with my quesadillas. The staff there were very kind to accept my constructive criticism, even if they were probably thinking, there goes another Gringo without any class.
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