Random memories (April 28th, 2018)

When I worked in one of the many Call Centers here in Tijuana I had to chance to meet this lady who was a killer top model employee doing collections for several agencies, from what I heard back then from the co-workers, team lead and supervisor she was always in the top bill and had managed to once collect more money than all of her team mates combined, and from what I heard once she “couldn’t do it, she didn’t have the heart, it wasn’t for her”.

Turns out it was for her, she made very large bonuses for this and got paid in cash, dollars, no taxes in between.

After she got her bonus she would disappear for a couple of days then come back and keep working the same pattern, when I asked the supervisor about it he said he did not care, as long as she was making the numbers way above everyone else the company could care less about this.

Years later I found out that the reason she was missing work was because she was getting high on crack, this really surprised me but apparently her daughter in the US who was studying college (who may have or not existed for this matter) was not getting that extra money she was making.

The way they found out about this was because they found her at some sort of picadero, a place where junkies drop and pinch their shit in (whatever it is). Aside from finding her there it turned out she had ripped a little bit of her face (I confirmed this by chance when I found her randomly on the street), this was part of the high and drop down from the crack.

Tijuana sigue cambiando

Los días pasan rápido y sigo conociendo cosas nuevas, sigo observando como la ciudad cambia y se mueve al ritmo del mundo, como culturas chocan y “negrito” baila en el mercado de la Villa, vendiendo café y juntando dinero para traer a su mama desde Haití; en el centro las caras cambian, ya no es tener dos cervezas por un dólar, mares de gente pasando por toda la calle Revolución, bares abiertos las veinticuatro horas todos los días, bares en decadencia que incluso después de cobrar nueva vida con la calle sexta, la Plaza muere y revive en un lapso de diez años, nuevos turistas “inteligentes” nos visitan, no compran nada, toman fotos, no hablan ningún idioma de este continente pero aun así los vemos por las calles, la gentrificación cada vez mas obvia, la vieja Tijuana sigue y sigue muriendo, cada vez mas lejana a todos los que la conocieron, la ciudad global y moderna crece pero ahora lo hace mas hacia arriba que a los lados, lo obvio se ha vuelto más obvio después de tantos años de crecimiento sin control, si buscas con suficiente cuidado en las calles y en la gente podrás encontrar todos sus secretos, en el mundo están los pedazos de lo que fue alguna vez y que unidos son como la arena de playa, y cuando mas les duele recordar es cuando menos cosas quedan porque:

1.  def valor_cosas(cosa):  

2.      valor =3D 0  

3.      print("%s vale %s [nada]" % (cosa, valor))