I heard you were into Jesus, so I got you some Jesus
For Britt’s 33rd birthday we went to CDMX, Mexico City, and painted the town pink.
Pro Tip: if you’re ever asked what the largest city in North America is, it’s not in the USA. It’s Mexico City.
To celebrate Britt’s birthday we took a walking food tour of Coyoacán in Mexico City with Sabores Mexico Food Tours. 10 points to our guide, Enya, for an excellent tour and secretly arranging a little birthday treat for Britt.
Zoológico de Chapultepec // Mexico City’s free zoo
Mexico City’s zoo is free to access, and weirdly, equal parts cool and scary. I’m Australia animal enclosures are 1) large and spacious, and 2) very, very, very securely separate from humans. It’s very hard for humans to touch or be close to animals.
But at Zoológico de Chapultepec I could very much just jump into the lion’s area.
Every day in Mexico I’m confronted with the stark difference between Australia’s “let’s assume you’re stupid, we’ll try and stop you from dying” modus operandi to Mexico’s “let’s assume you’re smart, we’re not going to try and stop you dying”, which honestly, from an intellectual point of view really appeals to me.
“The 90s were better. They just were. I’m sorry, but it’s science.”
In a world consumed by the idea of creating content, Burt Bacharach created the most evergreen content we’ve seen in recent times: “what the world needs now is love, sweet love.”
The Rebel's Guide to Getting Married
Most people don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing.
They imitate others, go with the flow, and follow paths without making their own.
They spend decades in pursuit of something that someone convinced them they should want, without realising that it won’t make them happy.
Don’t be those people. Don’t be those people in planning your wedding.
Reject the status quo. Reject the norm.
Embrace who you are. Embrace the idea that people like you two get married like ’this’! Embrace your weirdness, your uniqueness, the things that make the two of you a couple.
This is the way of the rebel.
This is the way you’ll find in The Rebel’s Guide To Getting Married.
I’m unsure how many more Om Malik blog posts I can read before I trade in my Canon EOS R5 for a Leica. Please stop taunting me, @Onmyom@mstdn.social :)
Every day I experience another “Mexico moment” and I am hesitant to share them publicly because I don’t want to ruin things here, nor be a stupid gringo. But today was great.
We bought a car back in October but it hasn’t been registered to me yet because to register a car you need a drivers license and to get a drivers license you need residency plus proof of address and a blood test.
Proof of residence is hard because addresses aren’t really a thing in regional Mexico so you use electricity bills and most electricity bills are in the name of a corporation because individuals can’t own properties.
So I find out last week I can get a letter of residence instead of using an electricity bill.
It takes me like four different government offices to find the right person in a back office of an office that is full of young people talking and laughing and this lady agrees to help. We’re talking the back office of the back office of a building without a sign near the building I thought I had to go to.
I need this important letter and she drafts it up, spells my name wrong, we correct it, and then the big boss of the department needs to sign it. By big boss I mean “President of the Municipality”.
He’s busy talking to important people.
She sits there for like three minutes clearly thinking it all through and then she just forges his signature, smiles at me, and hands me the letter.
I get a blood test from a local doctor and I’m now a licensed Mexican driver.
Policy and procedure means everything and nothing over here.
Wednesday in Todos Santos
Wednesday in El Pescadero
If Marie Kondo can give up on having a tidy house you can give up on a whole range of crap. Celebrate quitting, cancelling and giving up. Not everything or everyone needs to be driven to the edge of sanity.
This is on the menu as Fresh Water or Agua Fresco.
Sometime before now Mexicans weren’t taking to actual water that was fresh and without watermelon straws, so smart boffins in Mexico City mixed in some fruit and sweetener, and hey presto, fresh waters and an obesity problem!
Ed Catmull in Creativity, Inc.:
“We aren’t aware that the majority of what we think we see is actually our brain filling in the gaps.”
Nick Cave:
“Rather than feel impotent and useless, you must come to terms with the fact that as a human being, you are infinitely powerful, and take responsibility for this tremendous power. Even our smallest actions have the potential for great change, positively or negatively, and the way in which we all conduct ourselves within the world means something. You are anything but impotent, you are, in fact, exquisitely and frighteningly dynamic, as are we all, and with all respect, you have an obligation to stand up and take responsibility for that potential. It is your most ordinary and urgent duty.”
A smart Australian government would’ve sorted their colonising the indigenous population problems out before the Internet.
UnClobber by Colby Martin 📚
“In the essentials, unity; in the nonessentials, liberty; in all things, charity.”
From Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull 📚
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
D.H. Lawrence:
“the world fears a new experience more than anything. Because a new experience displaces so many old experiences.”
Anthony shared this signed cover art in today’s edition of The Sizzle and very few images can conjure up so much nostalgia. I still remember visiting the shareware kiosk (computer in a box) at Video Ezy and downloading the shareware version of Doom onto two 3.5" floppy disks.
