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.

Memories: March 30th, 2012

It begins on a Friday, Friday the 30^th of March 2012, with a relatively big tribute to Dio and Ozzy Osbourne, comparing it with El Foro which is one of the biggest structures for such an event. This bar, the TJ Art & Rock Café, I visit the most now after my confrontation with a dog at the other bar I swore to help in any way possible… sadly betrayed but not angry, why would anyone be angry because of that when you can always walk away. That went well, a bit mashed up, a bit wet, never one to miss on a nice mosh pit, always ready and I was about ready to go speak to someone but then I examined my surroundings. “Got too much meat around that fridge, fuck it I’m out”

I also got the tickets for that Transmetal gig we’re having on April the 20^th that Gustavo wants to go see so badly but apparently they don’t have some sort of seal or mark which they’ll put in next week when the guy in charge of the tickets returns with more of them.

Got home at 3 in the morning, had to check some stuff, found some of the guys still up and doing some play testing on someone’s house, Napo I believe it was, for the games we were to setup at 8 AM for a convention called Com Com… we had approximately 3 hours of sleep, when I speak of ‘we’ I mean most of the crew because apparently we all coordinated in a subconscious level and decided to get drunk and deprive ourselves of much needed sleep that not even a shower, hot coffee and some Taquitos de Birria could fix, yeah not even the salsceado ones and don’t look at me weird because of that. Stomach and throat are burning up… I hate gastric acid.

This place is relatively big, the biggest convention probably ever made for this kinda deal, and I dare compare it to Comic-Con International only because I see the possibility of it outgrowing the facility and bringing in more cash and people that ever before which, for this city, is good as we have always lived from the tourism. Getting there was a bit of an adventure and I found it funny at first that there was only another person, Springa, from our Role-playing Group, Tijuana RPG, present. Nevertheless we did our setup but found that we had no chairs or tables for that matter, apparently there was a lack of them everywhere but the staff was clever enough to get us some round tables and chairs plus water, because you can never have enough water for such a thing as being a Game Master.

9 AM and Zilvan arrives telling us that Napo and Rudy are outside waiting to do check in, Rosales and his brother, Luis, came later on with the rest of the stuff and the Dragon head. Alex and Toño, Emmet, who arrived considerably late, and Badilla, who was just playing and chatting around, it was a long day but it was fun as hell to get everything assembled and see people interested in Role-Playing games.

The fifteen tables in front of us have the Yu-Gi-Oh! Card game, should have brought my old deck but I’m sure they would have told me to “Fuck off and die in a fire with my legacy cheap one shot kill deck”.

1 PM and I’m exhausted of pulling people onto the tables, which to our surprise were actually full, brimming with people, we never expected these many, for once I am glad our theory of no one being interested in this wasn’t right at all. Napo, Springa and Emmet saw the most traffic, playing seven tables during the entire duration of the event, then Zilvan saw two or three, Alex saw two tables but they lasted somewhere around two hours, then Toño had two tables, Rosales had one early in the morning and I had two tables by the late part of the day, finally Rudy had no tables because he could never get the idea of Sailor Moon rolling there… no questions asked there. We covered all our bases and by the end of the day everything was said and done, we were tired, hung over, we hadn’t really eaten that much, there wasn’t any water left, we were pumped on sugar, nicotine and adrenaline, our voices boomed for ten hours, some were sweating, we got enough attention for people to interview the group, we were on the map now, no seriously we were on the map of the convention area, but most importantly we were now on the main radar and people now more than ever know that there is a group of Table Top Role-players who gather every Sunday from 1 to 6 PM on an abandoned plaza for our favorite games for no charge, memberships or fees.

Of interest, and for those who may want to know, the running tables were Star Wars D20 by Alex, Generic Dungeons and Dragons 4^th Edition by Zilvan and that other guy who I can’t remember his name, I have no clue what Rosales was doing but I can imagine something like “…And you find an elite mind flayer riding a beholder…”, Napo was running a homebrew of Diablo II on Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, Emmet was running a homebrew version of Final Fantasy Tactics, which was absolutely awesome and he had to make from scratch since the system was no existent for a table top, Toño was running Metal Gear Solid on an unknown system but the setting he had was awesome, which makes me sad because he only had the two tables with two players, Springa was running Slayers D20 with an awesome setup he took half an hour to make, which in no way takes credit away from Emmet or Napo who also took their respective amount of time to build their environments, I was running a homebrew version of X-COM: Enemy Unknown/Ufo Defenses using the D&D 3.5 system which turned out to be way better than expected and showed me, personally, that people are willing to sacrifice themselves for their team mates, and that is how the term Vazquez came to be and has become continuously used for said selfless sacrifice which the reader may remember or watch on the Aliens movie when Vazquez and Gorman blow up with a grenade thus giving the rest some time to escape.

Curiously, later on, I noticed there was a couple watching some of the books setup on the Star Wars table and it turns out that the lady was completely excited as she noticed the Vampire: The Masquerade Core Rule Book laying around in our table, she mentioned her fond memories of it, how she played it some 15 years ago and how much she would like to return to it. Funny thing is that I brought that book because I wanted to read it but I never managed since I was always busy chatting with someone, convincing them that we weren’t charging jack or simply inviting them to play with us.

This gig was done, we have pictures to prove we managed it, we have video, we have fond memories, Com Com 2012 left a good impression on us and so we did onto it, we laughed, enjoyed and everyone parted their own way but not before that happened… that question, which sparked us to sing along and that the reader may find on the bottom of this lecture, diary, story, whatever you want to call it. In any given case I was late for a party and I had to run, had to find something quick to eat but there was nothing nearby the taxi lane, called Bola, told him I would be there in 10, I was starving, had to get a damn hot dog on an Oxxo, a small convenience store just like 7-11 but you’ll find one of these every three or four blocks and that is no joke, and the thing fell off before I could finish preparing it, cleaned it off, ate it, ran, no cabs coming, called Bola to tell him I’m running late, had to go three blocks into the next boulevard and get a red cab, drop on El Mercado de Todos, keep walking down, called back, “Almost there, gimme 5”, got there, Doc was there, Mota is his last name but I have decided to start calling him Doc since 10 years of studying are well damn worth it for someone to be called a Doctor or Doc, then Bola who is Ozzy brother, Ozzy being a friend from high school and a mutual friend of me and Doc, and Choppa, or Chopper, Shoppa, Compulsive Shoppa who we also, at some point, knew as Torres and is a friend we met through Ozzy.

We finally go out to that house, located between lunar craters of all sorts, but not before passing through another Oxxo a couple of blocks away from Bolas’ house to get some beer, a couple of Bohemias and Heineken, and a sandwich because I’m still starving, no change as usual, paid with my credit card and got the money from each one of them, 200 pesos, funny number for a funny night, off we go.

“Man, fuck Edgar and his map” Was the general opinion as we ran through this horrendously Paint drawn map that made no sense at all, apparently Bola, Shoppa and Doc had a not so pleasant time trying to translate this with the help of Google Maps and even then we got lost a couple of times, fell into a couple of craters and finally managed to get to the house. Finally a well deserved party for the success of today.

The crew was there, same crew we saw when Edgar graduated on Wednesday, after five and a half years, from the Industrial Engineering career, which reminds me that, from what they said, they are not real Engineers but rather Licenciados which is the lowest step on the college branch… heh, makes me laugh even now. We had a couple of beers, then a couple more, people kept bringing Indio, I hate fucking Indio, but when you have no choice you go for what you get, even Light beer. We saw them playing some games, me from the back because I wasn’t up for any alcohol challenges as I had enough for that day with all that had been going on at the convention and the gig on Friday which had left me pretty roughed up, but I did enjoy a couple of vodka soaked gummy bears and worms, Doc had his full share of ‘em and he wasn’t enjoying them the next day, then I managed to get a smoke from some random dude that apparently was part of the Rebel Alliance group down here in Tijuana, damn the world is small, who I had never seen before although I was aware we had people from the official club down here and even members of the 501^st Legion that belongs to the Empire. Bro. A. came by, guy was drunk as hell when we were leaving and talking to his girlfriend on the Netherlands for like two hours but that’s OK as the party he is working for is paying for everything, I think, and hell making a two hour call to the Neatherlands, to your girlfriend, is quite something and I approve of this as I’ve done equal or worse, like an hour to the United Kingdom just to talk with a mate in Ipswich. There was also the weed incident which I will say nothing about except that you should NOT smoke weed in a kitchen where everyone is watching you do it before asking the owner if it’s cool or not, I personally don’t mind what you do with your stupid ass as long as you don’t hurt or kill someone.

Once gone we were looking for something to eat, we ended up going for some tacos that were 18 pesos, 18 fucking pesos each because they were using New York cut but hell they couldn’t spare any Guacamole, cebollitas, Salsa Verde o Roja, nothing extra aside from the meat, the tortilla and a damn slice of avocado, you, cheap, bastards.

We went to Bolas’ home to sleep. We managed. Doc was continuously visiting the bathroom. Shoppa was up since around 10 AM, same as me, we started chatting and sharing crazy stories, like that time I ended up asleep at Edgars’ bathroom in a party while taking a dump, when asked who was inside I replied with “¡El Papa!” or the Pope, which to clarify was something that started because of El Verguillas, a web series found on YouTube, in which a fighter says that he dedicates his victory to the Pope, or that time Shoppa ended up naked, along with some other thirty people, in a crazy party involving watermelon and date liquor that degenerated pretty fast with strip poker, no one could find their clothing or cell phones, there were five guys sleeping together, one next to each other. Good times.

Edgar had called in early in the morning, apparently someone had taken his keys with that bottle opener, La Llave del Chez as he calls it since it looks like those ancient keys, but that’s a mistake, a stupid rookie mistake, he had to learn from as you never tie a damn bottle opener to your key chain. Couldn’t find them, went back to sleep, but turns out they were on the leather jacket I had taken, Docs jacket as a matter of fact, who was doing the honor of opening the bottles… had to be a Doctor.

Edgar came for his keys, he had Domingo with him who apparently had a rough night, and we decided to go for something for breakfast, I proposed the Andobas but no one knew what it was and they didn’t trust me as it was in the downtown area, yeah you just don’t eat the three tacos for one dollar at first street and Revolucion or you’ll probably get some horrible third world disease you have never heard about, but to hell with it as we were already starving. Lend him a tener each, 10 pesos that is, to Edgar just as I had done to Bola for some gas, fucking 10 pesos a liter, and continued our path, the six of us in that small car but nothing compared to that horrible fucking Cube thing whatever the hell it is that looked like shit… whatever happened to aesthetics. Finally at the Andobas, located in 5^th street just below Revolucion Street and not too far away from Le Drug Store, where La Cupula is located in which all the Goths gather every weekend or so, on 4^th Street and Revolucion or Cesar’s, located over Revolucion between 5^th and 4^th street, where, yeah wait for it, Caesar Salad was invented, not the Roman Empire people. Everyone ordered a small torta de carne asada with a side of small fries, let me be clear that the size is relative in this place, with a coke, in my case a coffee, and we waited while they brought in the food by reading the newspaper or talking about random facts, like the Yakuza in the city, fact the government has never accepted, and that only recently they have taken into consideration as a real threat after accusations from certain people or the fact that EPN, the candidate from the PRI Party, looked like a clown, and continued to be the same stupid air-head who should keep his mouth shut unless he was in front of a teleprompter, as he was trying to create empathy with some indigenous tribes on the south of the country by dressing as them.

Finally our food arrived; my credibility rose as everyone gulped down their food and asked me how the hell I had found this place. It all goes back to when I used to go to El Divan de Alicia and Andy had proposed we go for a torta at El Andobitas which is somehow, maybe not, related to El Andobas who came as a reference from El Perro, the manager of El Divan de Alicia, and Alex, the same one that was running the Star Wars D20 table at Com Com. Funny how everything goes round and round.

We get off and I get dropped at the taxi site, fortunately there was a driver waiting to go out, El Tostiloco, and after so much going around, doing this and that, I finally get to take a bath, sit down, relax and enjoy some good hours of sleep on my bed. I know that I am missing details here but my mind is too strained and I cannot begin to figure out anything else except for this message that I leave to you, avid reader, which you may understand now that we have gotten to this point of the story.

And history speaks of a great moment during the convention but it is shrouded in mystery and myth. Only a small logical string remains in all of this… “Is this real life?”

Memories: The Dome

In early 2008 I found myself without a job, had quit somewhere in August of 2007, and wasn’t really interested in looking for anything at that point until I got a call from a friend.

“Fuck face”

“What?”

“There’s an employment fair down at Town Hall”

“Alright, I’ll drop in a few”

Got my boots, picked up some cash that I still had left over and went for the Taxi site just half a block away from home, things were quiet that day, there was a taxi already waiting to go out but he still had to wait three more minutes or so to comply with their ten minute policy, I looked around and suddenly my attention was caught by some rockets exploding, but rockets don’t explode in short controlled bursts, or in faster bursts, or in continued bursts, as a matter of fact who in their right mind would find himself exploding rockets during the late hours of the morning. Probably it’s another fight between the cartel and the police, as usual, but nothing to worry about.

We leave the site and travel seems just normal as usual, probably the cartel already fled the scene or finished with the police, or vice versa; there is another burst, then another, a couple more, finally the taxi reaches a roundabout, just halfway through the road to the main boulevard, and we find the path blocked by Federals who insist we move out of there, FAST. At this point we all know something really bad is going on. The Taxi goes right, keeps going right, more, more, at least fifteen blocks in which we find Federals, State and Municipal Police Officers blocking the path and telling us to keep going until we found one that allowed us to go through the path they were about to block with the condition that we burn rubber through the remaining road towards the boulevard to which the driver is more than happy to comply except he had to stop when he saw a truck unloading soldiers, on their desert camos, holding G3A4 rifles, their faces covered, eyes visible, not attentive to us but in a way ordering us to slow down and let them pass, we saw them rushing, from one side to the other, they lined up on what looked like a small warehouse, they did a tactical entry, they rushed inside, they cover their 6, they look at the ceiling, double time, what the fuck is going on.

We continued our way, I got off at Plaza Rio and went to Town Hall through the bridge that passes over the river, and there was nothing of interest in the damn Employment Circus, Circus because it was laughable at, had some tacos, which was the only good thing of the day, and went back home after everything had ended up on the Domed House.

Little was I aware of that the confrontation had proven to be lethal as the Military displaced the Police Forces and there was an indiscriminate fight that lasted some good two or three hours, there had been a couple of dead, there were casings all over the street, a kindergarten located half a block away from the house had to be evacuated, a friend, who was working for the SEMEFO, which is the Forensic Medical Services, told me about the gruesome scene inside the house, a soldier had received him on the entrance, he sat just two or three feet away from the entrance, he laid there motionless, half his head off, the other half covering the walls and ceiling, he hadn’t managed to take a single shot at anything, more casings, more blood, plaster, splinters, a radio that they had used to put Corridos on the open band and threaten the police that if they’d dare step into that house they would get shot, several times, with deadly AK-47s.

I still didn’t have a job…

Memories: April 16th, 2014

Back in 2012 or 2013 I was working at NAP, a company dedicated to Taiwanese replacement parts for cars that were cheaper and of the same quality to whatever you found on the market, and it was during one of my late arrivals to the company that while in a taxi I had the chance of speaking with one of the taxistas libres which brought up and interesting yet disturbing story.

There is a difference here with how tax drivers work as we have two types. The first type is the route taxi which travels through a designated path, why or how they designed it the way they did is still unknown to me, which you pay a fixed amount for a specific distance; the second type is what I would call a free roamer, it can go wherever it wants as long as you pay up an amount that the driver and the passenger come to negotiate before starting the journey, why is that, because of how easy it is to alter the taximeter for it to overcharge you. This became an issue back somewhere in 2007 when Jorge Hank Rhon, then the municipal president of Tijuana, ordered a certain percentage of all taxi routes to change plates to free taxi which in turn came to be because of the ordinance delivered to all unions in Tijuana to change the old taxis to something inside the range of the 2000s, the photo below should explain why and yes, I did go into several of these back until they changed the units and I paid somewhere around forty American cents to get to school then another forty to get back where nowadays I pay a full dollar for each round but at least we travel in aerostars now...

Anyway, so it turns out I started a conversation with this guy somewhere in the early morning in which we started with the common subject which is if he has enough money to pay the rent, not his house rent but the taxi and this goes the same as well for all route taxis which have to pay a fixed amount of twenty to thirty American dollars per day or one twenty a week which may not seem as much but take note that the union does not pay for gasoline and in some very specific cases will they fix the taxi for them, depending if it is a formal union or only one patron, same thing for any fines and the like.

After that he comes up with an interesting conversation about this woman that he had picked up somewhere last week, that is last week from when I was speaking with him, and he told me that she was somewhere on her mid or late thirties but said, respectfully, that she was a beautiful woman which he in turn told to her while giving her a ride, this brought up a peculiar rant where she admitted hearing this not too often anymore putting into note that real men don't exist anymore. He said something along the lines of, yes, you are right, respect, meaningful relation, the whole nine yards, then she says, what, no, that's what is wrong with men nowadays, they want a relation where things are split in equal measure and equal opportunities, those are fags, real men don't come and ask you with can I or by pleading something, they come and demand things and you do it because there is a division between a woman and a man, each has different tasks, women stay in the kitchen and home while men do the hard work and bring money home, also let me tell you that when I started working I gave him all the money and if he came home drunk at three in the morning demanding to have something to eat right away and I didn't have it you can bet he would beat me up because it was his right as my husband, I never complained and I loved him but unfortunately he died a couple of years ago... I miss him and haven't found anyone like him since then.

Back then it stroke me as odd and alarming but a month ago, that is recently, I spoke with one of my professors who told me that Tijuana and Baja California in general is considered to be a reactionary state, if it is considered amoral because of all the bars, alcohol, prostitution and gambling then it should be put into question as to why it was really brought in, it was just a thing of the moment and it brought cash in when there was none but there was a problem as most of these, back in the early century, were controlled by Americans and had unions that would only allow Americans to work in such places because they wanted to avoid cultural shock with American patrons. Hard to believe that in a place like this, in which I always thought we were liberal, is actually quite the contrary and PAN, Partido Accion Nacional or National Action Party, which is a right wing catholic party that has been in control of Baja California since 1989 may be more than proof enough of this even if people would come to say that they rather have them and change something instead of keeping with the old party and their corruption... needless to say I am doubtful of their claims and to put even more the thing about Tijuana being amoral I remembered something really important, this state, Baja California, is one of the few states where we don't have riot police and that would be because we've almost never had any problems with protesters or rallies unlike the center or south of the country where there is at least one protest in Mexico City every single day.

Memories: April 12th, 2014

The last three days have been hectic, this “Encounter of Students” has drained me off and my health has been going up and down since the beginning of the week. While I enjoyed several of the subjects and met interesting people I had more time to reminiscence more about my past.

One of the things that came through was while we were talking about the culture here in Tijuana, a strange mix of the idea of the “American Way of Life” with the national project of “Mexican Ultra nationalism”. The peculiar thing about this is that I've heard stories about the first and second half of the 20th century here in Tijuana and some of the most important things to pop into mind are the Casino Aguacaliente, made by none other that Al Capone; the dollar as a common currency and the peso as an unknown device which was looked upon with indifference; the musical stage was invaded by sounds coming from LA and ideas from down south, another peculiar mixture that could have only happened here. A more personal experience happened to me back when I was 5 watching TV, there in the screen was the American flag and I kept wondering why this why on the TV and not here in our backyards or somewhere else, so I asked my Dad and he looks puzzled then checks the TV and sighs while explaining me that I was looking at Fox 6, an American channel which was on the other side of the border and that I should ignore this as it was not from our country, he also explained to me what our flag looked like and why it was bad to salute a flag that wasn't yours while at the same time respecting them for who they are and what they think. No, English didn't seem to bother me at that point and even if I didn't understand it fully back then I could switch back through both languages with ease even if I didn't quite get every word.

I continuously asked myself why, why was this wrong in the end, as I grew up I lived in a Mexican influenced home, because both my parents had lived for more than forty years in central and south Mexico, thus it was odd for them to watch me use slang belonging to Tijuana and speaking in English for absolutely no reason, my Dad never had an issue but my Mom made fun of me and said that I should stop fucking around and do things the right way, which also reminds me the time she almost beat me to unconsciousness because I couldn't understand how to write a couple of letters or because I was a slow learner at school, I may still have a scar or two from those days.

From a different perspective now I understand why decentralization in Mexico is such a big thing and also why people from Tijuana and Baja California identify themselves with the region they live in and not the country, hell most of us would rather be American citizens if the US intervened and took over Baja California, not only we wouldn't mind losing our Mexican nationality but we also wouldn't mind joining them in putting some order back to where there is nothing but the effort of those who dared travel into the region, the peninsula of Baja California. A note of interest, that puts more into the idea of what I'm talking about, is that Tijuana is the city that is the furthest away from the capital, that is Mexico City, so it doesn't strike me as odd to feel like this now that I understand all those little details I just couldn't figure out when I was younger.

Well pity, my identity is skewered and my idea of nationality had been fixed at one point and then completely destroyed as soon as I joined my career, my understanding of culture is confusing and if someone ever asked me what is it like to be a Mexican I would tell them I wouldn't know because I have not a single clue and neither could I tell them what makes a Tijuanense a Tijuanense even after living almost 25 years in this city.

Memories: April 6th, 2014

I am feeling very nostalgic today, how nostalgic, very nostalgic, bands that don't exist anymore whose members I once saw live at a gig or two some five or ten years, maybe even twenty, then looking at pictures and quizzes that bring up mostly bad memories... I hate going back that far in time but the nostalgia even though it brings pain and sorrow it also brings back curious afterthoughts.

One of those examples that comes real quick is that old Trojan Horse at the San Ysidro International Border. The thing was built out of wood, which kind I don't know, with enough open spaces in between every carved piece of wood to be able to look inside the horse in case people tried to play funny with the thing and hide something inside of it like a bomb although more “official” sources would come to say that this is because of the transparency on the exchange between the two nations. This horse, with wheels, was parked exactly in the middle of the delimitation of both countries with one head looking towards the US and the other head looking towards Mexico. Figured it out yet? Yeah, the thing had two heads which I think meant something about the continuous interconnectivity we had and the duality we face in this specific region, the dualism face here has built a whole different concept which is foreign to the outsiders and in turn is chauvinistic in its existence trying to justify itself. This horse was there from the late 90s up until the early 2000s I believe. I do wonder where the horse is though...

 

 

What about crossing the border? Meh, once you do it once and get through the whole rush of going to a different country it gets old and tedious. Important fact about this is that the San Ysidro International Border is the most used border in the world, Wikipedia would go on to state that annually 350 million people cross it, so you can get a slight idea of how boring it is to be there for up to four hours, sometimes even more, during a slow day and at best one hour while back in the early 90s you could cross mostly relatively easy but yet again thirty minutes was the average wait time back in the day. Speaking of that I remembered being part of a group that ICBC, that is the Institute of Culture of Baja California, that let people borrow books while they were crossing the border which the idea of giving them something to do, something that would educate and nurture them the intellectual way, and it worked like a charm yet again because you are sitting for hours while waiting to cross and I recall people coming out of their cars, which is pretty common too, to get another book or asks us if we could sell them the book, no, no we couldn't because they weren't ours but it was still mighty fine of them to tell us this as it meant that the project was working fine.

Memories: April 26th, 2012

I’ve always wondered what exactly happened to my generation. It wasn’t until a year or two ago that I managed to catch up with all of them, and I have to thank Facebook for that since I never did the MySpace thing which I considered absurd especially since I had my own website back then. From all the stories I managed to get together I discerned that half the class from Junior High is married, this baffles me since most of us have 25 right now, and the majority have a kid, again this baffles me even more, which in turn means they could not finish their College education, gee I wonder why. I fall inside the other half of people that are not married but I can honestly say we ain’t better than the rest as this half contains people that became involved with the Narcs, either directly or indirectly, prostitution, became addicted to some substance, dropped out of High School or College to do nothing or find themselves comfortably six feet under for different reasons.

We graduated ten years ago… I still can’t believe that…

In High School, at the Preparatoria Federal Lazaro Cardenas which is the only Federal High School that I know of in the Country, I dropped out in 4th Semester and was the first of the gang to get a job, some 600 to 800 pesos a week which was miserable and wasn’t even worth it no matter in which way you try to explain this to me. Regardless, I was the one who made his own path… though I had no path, no future, I didn’t want to look at the past, I was suicidal and depressive, darkness surrounded me and I lived inside a bubble for some five or six years until the bubble cracked and darkness infused me and made me faster, deadlier, smarter, even more cynical than before, it permanently changed me for bad or good.

Ricardo is moving to Las Huertas soon, somewhere near where I used to work in an Industrial Park for a company called Flex Medical Disposables, formerly Availmed, which was a good training ground for my IT skills and where I participated with Alex, with whom I had worked in Telvista for the Verizon DSL Campaign, Bruno, who I met there and is one of the best Nortel PBX handyman you can find this side of the country, and Spencer, who was a Supervisor at Telvista inside Verizon DSL, under the Desktop Team for direct support to the plants. Back when I used to work there I remember they killed a lot of people, going from 2008 to 2010, and even saw once, me and Alex, a police truck that have been gunned down by Narcs, we even heard the automatic gunshots from distance loud and clear, and there was nothing left of them when we managed to get through the whole commotion.

Edgar and Ricardo also told me a story, which I have yet to confirm, about a man that went Grand Theft Auto somewhere in Las Huertas. By Grand Theft Auto I mean the video game and the term was being used because the man was captive, naked and hand-cuffed yet he managed to kill two Narcs, two bodyguards, unarmed, got out of the house, confronted the police and died. The confrontation, we thought, was most probably because the man was related somehow to crime but as I mentioned before, reader, I have yet to confirm this information for proper verification.

I once meet el Arpas at El Divan de Alicia, apparently Xavier knows him well and he tells me that "El Arpas is everyone’s friend", he was with a woman, that time, they called La Profe, who apparently is a real teacher, whom I forgot to ask exactly in which institution she gave classes as I never want to take my children to that school, ever. El Arpas is an interesting figure, he sells newspapers even at high hours of the night for 1 peso or either he'll ask for a cigarette and start telling you some REALLY dirty things while he does his infamous "Arpas" or "Shazam puro power!" quotes. He is always wearing this exotic masquerade ball mask that only covers his eyes and starts to dance to electronic music, mind you this man is above 40 years old, and he can dance good, he even once got into a bar in skates and danced with the skates, like that time I got drunk at that triple birthday, which Sergio took me to, in which we bought a bottle of Tequila 1800, then some cucarachas for the birthday people, beer, more booze, rum, vodka, you name it and then I was dancing Industrial at El Circo third floor like a mad man and playing with a guy that was doing some dancing with Kevlar balls in flames held by long chains. Fun times.

I remember that many years ago there used to be a placed called la Milla de los Perros where the exit for the Galerias Plaza underground parking is which leads to boulevard las Americas. You could buy all kind of dogs and animals there during the weekend, all of them were being sold by random people but I do recall seeing a couple or two that would come back every so often to sell the same breed of dog every so often which leads me to believe that they lived from that.

Eating an empanada of grounded meat out of a piece of paper that contains poetry from the ICBC, the Instituto de Cultura de Baja California, which was given to me after doing some Social Service, where I meet some really beautiful girls, and getting the food across with an apple Peñafiel bought by Badilla after he bought two of my Warhammer books which I sold for the cheap, cheap quantity of 20 pesos each. Which reminds me I have been selling several of my books at cheap prices with some really good responses, fortunately they will be the last thing I sell since I’ve got a job at another bar, La Naranja Mecanica or the Clockwork Orange, like the movie, with a general theme based off from the movie, and that should REALLY help me out. I was selling books with that dude over at 2nd street, before I sold my books to Luis and Badilla; that red beret bearded long-haired man was cool but a bit paranoid though.

Speaking to a man mounted in an avalancha who has no legs and only a part of his torso, we spoke while watching a concert of Christian Reggae in a small park just a few feet away from the International Border of San Ysidro, before them there was a band of what I believe was Bachata, and talked about the quality of the sound, which to say the least was very good, and how much would a Saxophone cost. He was a good and honest man.

Party Crashing

Back when I used to work at the Medical Disposables Factory there was this particular person that had to crash in order for the party to be really successful, just that it is not that kind of crashing that I’m talking about.

See, back when he started at the company he had bought a red Grand Am from my last boss, and he in turn had bought a pickup truck which he fixed in order to go through the Baja Rally every year, which had never been crashed, ever. When this guy bought the car, just a week or two after he had just been hired, he called everyone in the middle of the night asking them if they could come in and taking out of a ravine he had fallen into, no one believed him.

Next day he came in the car was in bad state but it still worked, apparently it had happened, the guy had fell asleep at the wheel, after a wild party, and went through the contention barrier downhill until he reached rock bottom. He was perfectly fine and had no scratches.

This continued through the almost three years I had worked at the company, eventually we said that the guy had to crash his car every time we went out drinking otherwise it wasn’t a real party, and I saw him crash that car more times that I could have ever been bothered to count for, hell, at one point we told him he should have sent a letter, a physical one not just an e-mail, to General Motors thanking them for making such an excellent car and that American car engineering had been proved time and time again under his alcoholism behind the wheel.

There was also this time when the guy took a friend of mine, the one that got me the job as an IT Technician there, and on the way home the drunken ass had missed the exit but he thought it would be easy to just do a rough turn and catch the exit, the exit was a damn ramp, the car flew through the air, meters, feet, doesn’t matter, the car was in the air and they sobered up as soon as they hit the ground and, somehow, managed to park so they could gaze at what was left of the right back wheel, it was just literally hanging there in an inclination of thirty degrees, they, again, had proven American engineering to be far superior to any other car because we are quite sure others wouldn’t have made it through.

So remember, if you ever have a friend that likes to drive really fast when he is drunk, and we all have at least one of those, then recommend him a General Motors Grand AM, it may just save his life and I am dead serious about this.

Memories: What was I doing when 9/11 happened?

So what was I doing back during 9/11?

We got asked this the other day for a class and even though I denied giving up my experience in class I do remember the whole situation and something interesting that came from it.

It was early in the morning, I was in Junior High in my second year, when I wake up to my dad watching the news, puzzled look, having breakfast. He was watching el mañanero with Victor Trujillo, using his persona of Brozo, who through an unusual serious method gave out the note of what had just transpired at the WTC in NYC, that there had been a fire, those were his words, and that the authorities were checking on it to understand what had transpired. Now it is easier for me to put an image of Brozo than actually describing it.

Right... yet he still delivered and did it well and even though the man has been on and off the news network through the years it is still refreshing to hear him talk with his typical satirical and highly spicy commentary.

At school they started to talk about the note on 9/11, that it was a plane that had crashed on the first tower and that shortly a second plane had crashed onto the second tower causing panic. While we were at it, discussing this as teenagers, we came to a conclusion that the US would go into a war with whichever nation had attacked them, at this time we assumed it would be somewhere in the Middle East, then we also assumed that by doing so they would go into a war that would last for way too long and raise criticism as to what their true intentions were, which we assumed was Oil. Such uneasy minds we were, so paranoids yet so right in the end.

Then we got note that the border crossing had been closed due to a possible terrorist attack through one of them or in a close city to the border, this is what I recall, so the border line was empty, which is something you will not see anytime soon.

While thinking about this something else came to mind, now there´s a problem because I can´t quite put my finger on the exact date but I remember we were in Junior High when this happened and it all goes back to the newspaper Zeta and the death of el Gato Felix, real name Hector Felix Miranda, who was assassinated four blocks away from my house. Back in the day I remember a small statue, a head and ultimately a plaque which states the following.

Now the untimely death of el Gato Felix is related to his articles speaking about one of the most prominent figures of the city, Jorge Hank Rhon, who has been continuously linked to drugs and other misdemeanors. So, was he killed by him? Most probably. Why am I bringing this up then? Well he was the Director of Zeta but his friend, Blan Cornelias, continued to run the newspaper back in the day which takes us to me again.

So, we´re at Junior High doing whatever we were supposed to be doing when there´s a detonation, and another, then automatic fire which prompted our teacher to yell at us to get away from the windows, us being in a third floor, then hitting the floor. What transpired that moment caught me by surprise, there was this ford explorer near the right side of the road which two pick up trucks blocking the path. It didn't take them long to run away, there was a man sitting next to a telephone pole with an M4A1, he looked bloodied, battered and beyond any possibility of surviving. A minute or two later a man comes crawling out of the explorer, it was Blan Cornelias who had just survived another attack by his enemies one of many he suffered since the death of el Gato Felix. About his bodyguard, there is something peculiar and disturbing about that case. I remember passing through that same pole from time to time to find a candle over a black spot that I don't recall from early times. Coincidence? Maybe, rather not know or mess with that which is no more.

Oh and about Blan Cornelias, he died of old age, ironically, at his house that was just next to the newspaper office.

Memories: April 14th, 2012

It is April the 14th, 2012, and I’ve stopped shaking. It is 3:09 AM PST and its 44 F outside, almost 6 Celsius for us living on the metric system, it has been raining odd for the last couple of hours, at some point it looked like a tropical storm with winds and all that but that is not the reason why I’m shaking right now.

April the 13^th, Friday the 13^th which some superstitious people may consider as a bad day to do anything at all which I assume includes breathing, turned out to be an interesting day to say the least.

First our classes were a bit tad boring but nonetheless I found appreciation on the first four hours as we saw an old Mexican movie called El Bulto which is about a man that got hit in the head by a club during a Communist meeting and woke up some twenty odd years later to find the world has changed, the next class was also interesting as I got a call from the Art Man who told me there are some positions available at the Axxa Building in front of Plaza Rio and that I may have a chance of getting a decent job over there for some decent money, finally the last class had us seeing a movie about the fall of the Berlin Wall and due to technical difficulties we could not finish watching Bowling for Columbine, not that it mattered to us. On a side note I could not get to the Axxa building since the rain was a complete pain in the butt and was too late when I got there to fill up an application form.

Some quick food and time for Vampire: The Masquerade with the Tijuana RPG – UABC Chapter, five members total, with four playing and me as a story teller, although there are more but most of them were unable to play since they had classes or were simply out of time due to other more important matters at hand, which turned out to be quite interesting. Turns out the group of players are now considered as the “Red Barons Flying Circus” as per our friendly Tzimisce NPC, Andrei, which is a tad bit crazy but probably not as sadistic or cynical as the rest of the player base. Ironically the setting for the story is January 7^th 1993 in the city of Tijuana, one day after the flooding began, and it goes hand by hand with the fact that during the time we played rain wouldn’t stop and only got worst. Abril actually lost the truck that takes her to Tecate, which is passing La Rumorosa, and got her mom to give her a lift.

Before leaving I noticed two interesting things, first there was this girl upstairs, on the second floor of the Cafeteria which is the place in which we play, that was playing in the X-COM setting I used back at Com Com but I never managed to get her attention to ask her what her name was; second, we also noticed that there is another table playing Dungeons and Dragons, 3.5 from what we understand, in a big table almost at the same time that we play and they do not belong to our group which makes us really happy about it, finally they manifest themselves without being scared of reprisals.

After leaving somewhere after 5:30 I took a bus and it took me around an hour or so to get back home which ended up being an ordeal but gave me enough time to enjoy a bit more time with that book I’m researching, All is Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque.

At Downtown I bought a pack of Delicados 20 with the last 30 pesos I had left on my credit card, no more money there and almost all my resources have been drained from my wallet which leaves me in a seriously dire situation for a job. I then decided to stop by TJ Art & Rock Café to check and see what was the show, never actually got the name or the bands, and to say hi to a couple of people then, for some reason, instinctively moved to El Divan and greeted everyone then had a Victoria before going outside for a smoke where I found Danny, a friend of Ozzy and Caguas who I meet when they invited me a week after the second anniversary of El Divan, who was waiting for Itzel, another mutual friend of Ozzy, Caguas and Danny. Apparently today is Caguas brother, Constantino or Constantine, birthday and he turns 21 so he’ll be celebrating at a small bar just a couple of feet away called Viehos which is spelt incorrectly on purpose. We enjoyed a couple of beers, got a free round from the birthday man, and while chatting and getting up to date on things we meet up with Caguas and Pablo who joined us for a couple more rounds and some more getting up to date and geek stories of pride, like managing to get Arch Linux to compile and run on a computer. While enjoying our time there our friend, El Arpas, dropped by with his Navy Captain hat, a trench coat and his flagrant masquerade mask, he started dancing in some very provocative manner that makes you want to pull your eyes out, since, well, you don’t want to see a man like that pull some Michael Jackson moves on the floor, and eventually got kicked out of the place and in the process, somehow, managed to break a bottle without caring a single bit about it.

An hour or so later I decided to make a quick run to the TJ Art & Rock Café to try and meet up with the moon but she wasn’t there or if she was I couldn’t find her so I went back to Viehos, had another round, went for some food at the 7-11, back to the bar, another round, went to El Divan then back into the other bar since Caguas didn’t want to leave his brother alone, although he had friends that came to have a couple of drinks with him but nonetheless we decided to stay at Viehos. Danny went for some food, came back after a couple of minutes and called the Horde for retreat on his Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor.

First we dropped Pablo off, while avoiding all the Police checkpoints, and got an interesting conversation going on with him on the road about him not being able to feel any sort of pain, or rather minimal pain, and having a high resistance to alcohol levels, which I’ve seen in the past although I’ve also seen the opposite of that and rightfully earned the title “Puke Buddy”. Which reminds me of that girl we were talking with outside of Viehos, because when you want to have a smoke it has to be outside the bars now since the Federal Law came in full effect, after 3 years, around 2 months ago which is becoming an absolute pain in the ass specially with the cold wind trying to kill you, who’s apparently is a friend of Constantine whom looked a bit drunk.

Then we went to drop Itzel somewhere at la Gloria, which is a bit far away, and while speaking with her she was asking me what exactly my career is about, History, and told her that the field is actually quite big and that I should be able to find something that pays decently once I’m off with my title. She also mentioned that she needed some assistance with a book her Faculty is producing as no one is going up for the challenge and I volunteered for the job as long as I can get paid or credit for making it.

Then we see a pickup truck pulling in fast, bright lights, codigos, the blue and red lights of justice, a police truck had just parked next to us and asked us to get our asses of the car and while doing so Itzel got to her house as fast as possible.

Who am I, what do I do, where are you from, what are you doing here, do you have any drugs with you, are you drunk, is this your car, where is your license… something popped there, Danny doesn’t have a license and neither do I, “Get in the back of the truck” is what I hear one of the officers tell Danny and they let me go, in the middle of La Gloria with no way of getting the hell out of this hole at 2:30 in the morning and they are towing the car away. A mordida was in order and 200 pesos paid his liberty, which included my ride back home, I was shaking, I was shaking badly, I wasn’t sure if it was because of the cold or because I stressed the fuck out after we were free, I managed to keep my cool but once they were gone the façade dropped instantly, I only had two cigarettes, one for each, Danny was fully awake now, I was fully awake now, hell that was really weird and we really dodged a huge bullet since specially since Danny had asked me to call his Dad but he never picked up, which ultimately we were grateful about.

I got home and offered Danny to stay, even if my parents were reluctant, but he said he needed to be at work at 6 so he was going home, se la iba a rifar, he was gonna go for it, I asked him to call me as soon as he was at his place and I went inside, that annoying dog is there barking like a little bitch, picked up something to eat, started to write this and at 3:20 I got a call from Danny saying everything was OK.