Mall Thoughts

Today, since the training sessions I was a part of didn't get done until later, I didn't have a chance to go anywhere far from the hotel, but I did decide to check out the local mall to see what it was like. Basically, it was like an American mall except for a few small differences.

Inside of the mall there is a lot of security. Outside of most of the bigger stores (like Sears) there was a guard stationed along with guards inside. Also, stores that sold expensive items such as electronics or jewelery had guards at the entrances of the store.

The stores were basically what you'd have in the US--clothing, electronics, a food court, a Bath & Body Works type place, shoe stores, sporting stores, and a liquor store (which is the one you probably won't find in the US). The most interesting part of the clothing stores were the female mannequins. As opposed to US mannequins, each of the female ones were molded to be nipping out something fierce. Seriously, I think the nipples on some of those mannequins (even though they are covered up by clothes) could stab right through you.

Prices were actually more expensive than in the US. After figuring the exchange rate I went and searched out how much different items cost. Here is what I found:

--A 750 ml bottle of Absolut vodka was $25 (I checked that for you, Alex)
--Xbox 360 games were between $60 and $80
--An actual Xbox 360 would run you about $550
--Most new DVDs were between $20 and $28
--The third season of Alias on DVD was $65 (I checked that for you, Kristin)
--A moderately priced suit coat was $200 to $400 (there were some cheaper ones for $100 or so, but nothing really below that)
--Jewelery, especially watches, was insanely high priced. A cheap Citizen watch was $500 to $1,000
--A pair of jeans was about $30 to $50
--An iPod (the 30 gig, I believe) was about $400

There actually wasn't much of anything that was cheaper than the US. Now I'm sure that if I was in a seedier part of town I would be able to come across items for much cheaper, but the nature of the part of the city that I'm in is that it is very affluent.

Now I'm getting ready to wake up early tomorrow morning and catch my plane home. All in all, it was a very nice trip. For being a work related trip, it was still an enjoyable time. Oh, but before I nod off to bed, here is a picture of the worms that I ate. I actually liked them!

It is a Business Trip After All...

As much as I would have loved to have had time to see the city and its sights, I've unfortunately been working, although not all of the time spend with coworkers has necessarily been "working". I have had the chance to get plenty of Mexican food in my belly. I seriously feel like my stomach has expanded by a factor of at least two.

So far I've had enchiladas, chitarra, pollo (chicken) in pepper sauce, a gigantic kiwi martini, plenty of Mexican beer (light, of course), along with some worms. Yes, worms. I'm sure most people know the Mezcal worm that is traditionally in the bottom of tequila bottles. Well, the worms that I ate are similar to the Mezcal worms. They look more like very large meal worms, however. I ate them by themselves and in a tortilla. They're fried, not raw, so they were actually quite good. You heard it here first, I love fried worms.

Beyond eating tons of food, I've been quickly getting reacquainted with my Spanish skills. I find that I can read and understand what is spoken in Spanish, but my ability to speak it is still horrendous. It's been nice to be able to sit at a table with some of the Spanish people in our training and be able to understand their conversation and, occasionally, participate (even if I interject using English and a few butchered Spanish phrases).

Tonight everyone from the training sessions are going to be heading out to a supposedly very famous and historic restaurant on the north part of Mexico City, which is about 45 minutes to an hour away from where we are located in the southwest part of the city. When I asked one of the firm partners that works here how long it would take to traverse across the city by car he told me at least a few hours. That's amazing! I think about how long it takes to drive through the Twin Cities from the west edge of Minneapolis to the east edge at St. Paul and then compare it to the HOURS it would take to get through Mexico City. The grandiosity is amazing.

Here's to hoping I get to try some more exotic foods tonight! Oh, and I took a picture of the worms so when I get a chance you'll all get to see exactly what ended up in my stomach!

Totally Different

Well, I made it to Mexico City fine. It's interesting, however, the stark difference between my expectations and the reality of the city. At every turn, since stepping off of my plane, things have been almost exactly the opposite of how I had been led to expect them to be.

When people have talked about Mexico City one of the key points has been how dirty and grimy of a city it is and how crime ridden it is. I know that part of it may have to do with the part of the city that I'm in, but from everything I've seen, this city appears to be a decently modern, first world type city.

As I disembarked from my plane I wholeheartedly expected to enter a ramshackle, cobbled together airport but instead I was amazed at the shiny newness of the terminal. Apparently the airport had been renovated within the last year or two and it definitely shows. The shops, the waiting area, and even the terminal were all leaps and bounds nicer than what I would have expected and, I am not joking, this airport felt more modern than the Minneapolis airport.

After going through customs I met up with my manager and driver to head out to the hotel. The driver drove us to our hotel in a car that's much nicer than mine (a newer Stratus) and on the way I didn't feel like I was in a foreign country at all. Sure the road names had a definite Spanish flair to them, but the majority of the billboards and ads were in English. Most of what was being advertised was also US based products.

The apartment buildings and factories and office buildings all looked, for a lack of a better word, normal. Only a couple of times during our half hour trip to the hotel did I see areas that looked run down or garbage ridden. This was so much different than expected.

Arriving at the hotel I was again amazed. This place is great! It has an art gallery, fancy restaurant, a stylish bar, broadband (and wireless) internet, spa, and some pretty pimp rooms. It might not quite be the Marriott Marquee, but it beats the hell out of your local Motel Six.

As I sit here in the bar drinking some cheap (yet classy) beer listening to the thunderstorm outside, my thoughts wander over all the pre-conceived notions I had going into this trip and how most of them have turned out to be wrong. The only ones that seem to be panning out are the ones dealing with security--there are definitely a lot of security guards around, but I am assuming it is because I am in a very nice part of town, and the language barrier, which really hasn't been a barrier at all. Most of the people I've dealt with so far speak English, at least to a degree, and for the few that don't my Spanish is passable enough that I can get the point across.

Knowing all of this and knowing how I generally feel about planes (I hate them), I find myself torn. I'm slowly starting to get bit by the travel bug. Seeing new places and new things is becoming more and more fascinating every trip I take. In Chicago I went out to some really high class restaurants. In New York I'm visiting famous clubs and going to Broadway shows and seeing celebrities. In Mexico City I'm seeing new parts of the world. The descent down of my flight was jaw-droppingly beautiful. Never have I seen such an urban sprawl. It is city as far as the eye can see.

Even more odd, I find myself wanting to be confronted with more international tasks so that I can see more of the world. I know that I have at least one more scheduled international trip this year, and that is to Australia, as well as a few more trips within the US so I can see even more of the world. And next year I think there is a very good chance that I can see even more of the world because of the nature of my job and the company I work for. Who would have thought that I'd actually like my job and learn to like to travel? Not me, that's for sure.

Sweet!

You know, for all the things that are wrong with Blogger (the downtime, the bloated website, the obligatory blogger bar on your website, etc.), it really is nice that it basically uses a form object that's accessible from anywhere with an internet connection.

That's exactly how I'm writing this now--on my blackberry through its internet browser. Sure, it takes a while to type on this tiny keyboard, but at least I can do it. This will come in very handy when I have a lot of downtime in the airport (like right now).

It's kind of cool that I get to go to mexico for work, but it sucks that I'm pretty much getting gyped out of two days off this Memorial Day weekend. I hope my manager is sympathetic to this and will give me a free day or two to use in the future.

Anyways, I'm about an hour away from making my first international trip. I hope it goes well.

Traveling Yet Again

Jeez. It seems like I'm never going to be home. I just got back really late Thursday night and now I'm flying out to Mexico early tomorrow morning. I don't know what I'll have for internet down in Mexico so any updates might be non-existant until I return on Thursday. Hopefull, though, in my downtime I'll be able to get out and take some good pictures. I'll be in Mexico City and I'm told there are some great pyramids to go see that are only about an hour from the city.

I still don't know if I'm used to this whole flying concept yet. Yes, it is a little bit easier for me to handle, but I think that's only because I'm getting a lot better at actively lying to myself and making myself believe that I'm actually not flying. When I have an aisle seat I persuade myself that it's a train or bus I'm on. When I have a window seat I try to make myself think it is some sort of carnival ride or a simulator at a museum or that we're on a string guiding us from point A to point B.

When I actually give in and let myself realize that I am, in fact, on a plane at 30,000 feet in the air I do start to get panic-y, but I try to divert my attention by playing on my PSP or watching movies on my laptop or reading a book. It doesn't always work, but it helps.

Anyways, I'm going to be in Mexico. This should be interesting.

Casket Architects - Dance on the Death Nerve CD Review

High school, at least in the midwest, is a grimy breeding ground for crappy bands which can't do anything other than cover “Brown Eyed Girl” over and over again, all the while trying to learn how to simply write one cohesive song. Amongst this limitless amount of talentless, hack bands there is occasionally a group of kids that come together to form a band which, actually, isn’t half bad (and can actually write their own songs). From that point -- the defining moment of realization in which they come to see they are better than their high school brethren -- the band usually goes through the “trying to hard” phase in which they attempt to outdo all of their influences. Teenagers are invincible and they know all. They can conquer the world. And it is only natural that this attitude seep into their creation process. It is this phase that Casket Architects feels like they are stuck in.

The band is far from being in high school, but throughout Dance on the Death Nerve you get the feeling that they are trying to mix together the Misfits, the Ramones, Converge, and Sonic Youth all the while showing that they are equally as good, while managing to meld all of these different styles simultaneously.

There is not so much a standard sound that the band possesses, and I refuse to refer to their style as “sci-fi deth rock” as they do on their website and press sheets. Instead you can feel the leanings and direction of each song individually. They do not possess a singular sound, but instead a grouping of sort of similarly sounding songs. For example, “Deftwitch” is a lean, classic punk song that puts on display their love of the Misfits. “Observer”, taking a much different direction, sounds like a mellow Every Time I Die with the noisy influence of Sonic Youth.

The reason that so many of their songs fall into one stereotypical, predominant influence is the brevity of each track. With only three tracks breaking the two minute barrier, the majority of the songs on here feel all too brief to properly develop into full-on, thought-out tunes. When they do expand to create something with a little substance, such as on “Casket Architecture” and “Solar Surgeon”, they come across as a really tight merging of classic punk and modern noise-core.

Given some time to develop themselves into a cohesive unit, instead of the amalgamation of hodge-podged influences and song pieces that they currently are, they could come out way ahead of the current underground, revitalized classic punk genre. Until then, however, they just don’t rise above what they are trying to emulate.

Traveling Again

I'm in New York as I write and will be here until late, late Thursday night. So blogging will no doubt be light. I'm off to try to figure out the train system and get to CBGB's to see Danko Jones. Wish me luck... because I have no clue where I'm going!

Bye Bye Dome

Well, looks like it is official now. The Twins are going to get their new ballpark, and from the sounds of it the stadium is going to suck even more than the Metrodome... except it'll be outdoors. There's not much positive about the new stadium, in my mind.

The new stadium is going to be a few blocks from the Target Center and warehouse district meaning that pretty much all summer when there are night games, the area is going to be even more overcrowded. It's bad enough as it is down there, but it'll no doubt be a tremendous hassle to get around on the nights when there is both a Twins game AND a big event at the Target Center.

From what I've read it's also not going to be an overly spacious stadium and will be very compact, which is kind of what one of the complaints about the Metrodome was so I don't get why people would rather be cramped outdoors than indoors. I know on some of the hot summer days I'd rather be inside the dome where it is climate controled rather than being cramped next to some uber-fat guy who is covered in more sweat than a boxer in the seventh round.

One thing that most people won't care about, but I do, is that the stadium will be built on top of what is, right now, the cheapest place to park downtown. So instead of parking for $5 for the day, as I do now when I have to drive, I'll have to park in one of the other parking establishments, with the cheapest being $7.50 a day and most being around $10.

If anything, this new stadium is going to get me to stay away from baseball games than go to them. Right now I like to try to make it to Twins games because it's cheap. I have a feeling that with a new venue there isn't going to be a whole lot of $3 and $5 cheap seats days with dollar dogs.

Whatever, though. Just as I was getting back into baseball and the Twins, I'm going to stop caring again because of the idiocy of moving the Twins from the dome to a new, seemingly ill-designed stadium

Expensive

Man, having a place of your own (even if you're only renting it) can get spendy quick. Since I've moved into my new place a month ago, the expenses that have built up just buying stuff I need in the house has been pretty eye-popping.

Yesterday I made the biggest purchase since I moved in--a grill. Now this isn't just any grill. I could have settled for a small charcoal burning grill or even a moderately sized gas grill, but that wouldn't be any fun, now would it? No, instead I went out and bought a ridiculously huge grill that you could probably put an entire pig in if you wanted to. If you want some details, check them out here.

I thawed out a nice big ham steak to cook on it tonight (after I go buy a gas tank for it, that is) and break it in. I think I should also probably buy a tarp for it, but that's another chunk of change I'm not all that interested in spending.

Last week I bought myself a 20" true flat tv for my room so that I could watch movies up there when the big screen was being used in the basement. I don't want to be a dick and steal the tv when my roommates are using it.

On top of those two big purchases I also had to get a dust bust hand held vacuum for cleaning the stairs and the tight areas that Roomba doesn't get to. I needed two lamps for my room since there is no ceiling lights in it. A touch lamp to go next to my computer desk and a five way directional uber-lamp manage to light everything up nicely at night.

Let's see, what else did I have to get? We needed a toaster and a water filter for the kitchen. Our water has kind of a rust taste to it and we were getting sick of it. The toaster we need to make, well, toast.

To get our place in decent order when we moved in, Karl and I dropped about $150 on cleaning supplies, utensils, and other odds & ends to get the place in order. We shouldn't have a need to get any more cleaning crap for a year or two.

On the tools side I picked up a drill, a saw, assorted tools like a hammer, screwdrivers, and pliers, along with other odds and ends. I really needed the saw to cut down a bunch of overhanging trees in the back yard that hadn't been taken care of probably ever. Thank goodness my grandma sold me her old push lawn mower for cheap or I'd have had to throw down some serious change for one of those.

All in all, this has been a very expensive month. It is now time to take a few months off from purchasing anything in order to recoup and regain a few dollars in the old checkbook.

Horrible Experience

About a month ago I moved into a new house in St. Louis Park, MN. When I looked at the place a few months ago with my roommates, it was easily the cleanest and most pristine house that we had looked at when shopping around for a place to live. We were so impressed that we made the decision the day of looking at the place that we would lease it.

A little more than a month later we came to move in and expected everything to be in just as wonderful of shape as before, but we were terribly wrong. The place was an utter sty with nothing cleaned up and the house basically unlivable until we took care of the crappiness that had come to infest it within the last month. And to make matters worse, the person we were renting it from was in Iowa, never showed up to collect the papers, and was basically unreachable the entire time.

What kind of landlord is not going to be around to collect his check, make sure the people moving in are, and take care of switching everything over? Obviously not ours. Seems like he couldn't give two shits about anything. I can get into more of his ridiculous antics later, but for now I want to show you all the pictures I took to document how shoddy the house was when we arrived. If you want to see higher resolution versions of the pictures below, they're all in this flickr set.


Let's start with what we found in one of the closets. You'll see that the panel has been ripped off and there's some wonderful garbage on the floor. I wonder why the panel got ripped off? Actually, I wonder more why when whoever was doing whatever they were doing didn't put it back on when they were done.

Ahh, moving right on to the garage (sorry for the haphazard ordering but I'm just following my Flickr stream). As you can see there is no way in hell we'd be able to put a car or anything else in the garage with all that garbage. It was a pile of sheetrock, magazines in boxes, wood scraps, and other junk.

Here's a look at the other side of the garage with junk still on the shelves. You can also see that there's some old doors and refuse towards the back of the garage. I guess we should have looked closer into the garage before we took the place, but I figured when we were there looking that the crap was in the garage as they were in the process of moving.

When you look at the garage from a little further away you'll also see the bags of wet, gross mulch that they had left in the driveway. They stunk, were all wet & icky, and weighed a ton.

Here you can see that only one of the lights works. No doubt we just need to put a new bulb in it, but regarless of what we have to do it was annoying to have some parts of the house only partially functional (just wait, there's more than just a light that doesn't work).

Here you'll see that they left lawn chairs, a fire thingy, and lots of ishy leaf piles by the back porch. Again, it was obviously too much for them to take some of their stuff with them or clean up in the least.

On the porch it was even worse as they left a crappy ass charcoal grill, boxes of gross-ness, more bags of garbage, and planters with dead plants in them. Some people might like to move into a house that has that "already lived in" feel, but this is going to far.

You see how this picture is so dark? The reason for this is that one room in the basement had no power to it. All the outlets and lights were dead. This only just got fixed last week after probably 10 phone calls to JPL Investments (the company we're leasing from), which is basically one dude--Patrick Lonergan. The cobwebs also kind of sucked.

Well look at this! Paint cans and garbage! Guess what else? They're still freakin' there! When we finally got Patrick to get someone to move the garbage out of our place they wouldn't take paint cans because you can't put them in a dumpster and have to have them specially disposed of. At least we moved them all into one closet for now, but it's still ridiculous tha we have to have that shit in our house.

Water spots on the floor. Cute. Obviously there was a leak there at one time. Let's hope it doesn't happen again while we are living there.

Is it too much to ask that light switches and outlets have covers on them? We found multiple switches/outlets without covers or covers that were utterly broken. We ended up having to replace them ourselves. I still haven't given Patrick the bill, but I doubt it's worth the fight for the few dollars, especially considering he's next to impossible to get to return a phone call.

Looks like they forgot some junk when they left. As much as I love having ratty clothes from the 70's in my closet, I'd rather they be mine and not left there by the previous tenant (which just so happened to be Patrick himself along with his wife).

Not content just to leave their clothes in my closet they crammed some old desk in there as well. How truly wonderful. What was even more wonderful is that the people who came to clean crap out refused to take it out so Karl (my roommate) and myself had to carry it out.

Tired of seeing pictures of garbage and crap that was left in the house? Yeah, so were we. It was more and more frustrating to see how much disarray the house was left in when it was vacated.

Tah dah! More junk! They must have really loved their freakin' hangers. There were so many of them in all the closets. Why couldn't they have left cool stuff like comic books or motorcycles or cage dancers? Instead it's hangers and garbage.

You can't really see it in this picture (or in the other bathroom pictures in the Flickr group), but the bathrooms were terribly dirty. The bathtub had pine needles, dirt, and grime in it. The sink had dirt in it. The toilets were a tad bit on the unclean side. It was just gross all around.

Sure, they leave all their garbage and junk but take the curtain rods? And oddly they leave the curtains... We changed out these curtains without rods for some blinds. Are you starting to get the picture of how incompetently cleaned and prepared this place was?

This is one of my favorites! The company that painted the walls decided to paint over all of the cable jacks. When the cable company came out to hook stuff up, they were a tad bit unhappy about it, and had to actually replace the connectors. I also found out that the cable jack in my room can't be hooked up to the cable box so I get no cable in my room. I can only watch DVDs.

The microwave was coated in grime and had some caked on crap on the turntable (which you can see here). I had to scrub like a mofo to get this, the fridge, and the freezer clean, as you'll be able to see in the next picture.

There's still remnants of that orange goop in the freezer because no matter what I did I couldn't get it all to come off. It's some of the most adhesive crap there is. There are a bunch of pictures of the grimy fridge and freezer if you look through the photo set.

Water damage to the carpet. Killer. I didn't remember that being there when we looked at it, but it very well could have been. I don't remember looking too closely at the carpet. I hope the water doesn't leak in again as I now have my tv in the basement.

There's a sliding door for the bedroom in the basement (the one that had no power initially), but the door has no rollers and isn't attached. This is next on my list of things to talk to Patrick about fixing since right now it's just a plank sitting in a lot in the wall. It doesn't work.

Ooohhh, look at that--more crap! More buckets of paint and other assorted garbage that could be thrown out. Unfortunatly we still have the buckets of stuff over with the paint in a corner of our basement.

Yep, you guessed it, even more crap. The paint cans are still in the basement. I'm tempted to pay to have them disposed of and send the bill for it to Patrick, but I doubt he'd do anything about it because he doesn't really seem to care about anything.

Here's a bunch of old, broken blinds and broken lamps and broken other garbage. I'm so glad that he left this stuff instead of getting rid of is so that we could, you know, actually put stuff in this room.

Ahh, Christmas, and we definitely had a lot of presents left for us in the house. It's just too bad that they mostly were equivalent to big, smoking piles of coal. What makes the Christmas tree so special is that Patrick justified its presence by saying it was there when they got there so he thought he'd leave it.

Most of the floor was like this before we dusted it up. There sure isn't anything better than sawdust all over the floor! Man, I don't think I can keep up this dripping sarcasm anymore. It's just too much, so let's just end with another picture of yet more paint cans.

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. More stuff left in our basement that couldn't be disposed of so we're expected to deal with it. There really is no better place to rent from than JPL Investments! And just so you know, I'm not serious about that in the least. If you live in Iowa or Minnesota, stay clear of them for sure.

So now you all have a visual tour of the hellishly messy environment I was forced to move into upon getting to the Minneapolis area. I have a feeling the next year is going to be pretty rough whenever anything goes wrong since our landlord doesn't seem to know the first thing about client care. Oh well, it's a learning experience, right?

I really don't think it could possibly get any worse than this in the future when I move into or buy a new place. Seriously, I think I've burned through so much bad karma moving into this place it would be quite a ballsy manuever for the big guy above to put me through the same hellish experience all over again.