Three things the French love

There are three things that the French hold dear to their hearts: the first and foremost is Market Day.

I've talked about this before but now that I have often joined the fray, as it were, I can say without qualms that the French truly enjoy going, once a week, at least, to a designated place where you can be jostled by the rushing crowd, charged twice the normal price for any commodity, sold cheap good from China as if they were made by laborious French craftsmen, and generally made to spend on a Sunday meal what you usually spend for the rest of the week.

No matter where you go in this country, no matter how small the village or how far from the nearest paved road a huddled dozen homes may be, there is a Market Day, which is as inevitable as death and taxes.

The little old lady across the street may lay prostrate with age and infirmities six days a week but on Market Day she will hustle out of bed, put on her support hose, grab her cane and shopping bag and rush like a rugby fullback through the throng in search of dirt encrusted mushrooms and smelly cheese.

It used to be that Market Day was the day when farmers and stock breeders near a town would bring their products--usually bread, cheese, fowls and their byproducts, vegetables, meat from slaughtered animals (rabbits, lambs, and so on)--to sell to town folks. There is still some of that but for the most part you have professional salesmen in special trucks that fold out to become well-lit and well-stocked stores, hustlers with mounds of cheap shoes or shirts or whatever the season calls for; specialists who sell soaps made from fruits and vegetables, or bunches of vanilla roots, or oils extracted from exotic seeds; food from Morocco, China, India, made by immigrants from those countries or Spanish paella, Danish pastry, or Japanese sushi all made by French cooks.

Which brings me to the second thing the French love most: eating at the market.

Now, I know about eating at a "mercado": Mexicans have been eating in the town market for hundreds of years, if not thousands. If you, dear reader, are ever in the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, you will see the beautiful representation of Market Day in Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital. Among the hundreds of little figures you will see some sitting down to a meal after having done their shopping for leather sandals and snakeskin belts.

But for the French--at least the modern French--eating in the market on Market Day, is a novelty. And it is such fun for them that they are willing to pay exorbitant prices for six oysters and a cup of bad white wine (a cup is an exaggeration because what they give you resembles the little containers you get from the nurse when they need a urine sample.)

The crowd in the market prefers sitting on rickety plastic chairs and eating with disposable plastic forks over unstable picnic type tables rather than take the damn oysters home to enjoy them with a decent and much less expensive entire bottle of white wine.

Today, after a couple of weeks of the nicest, warmest indian summer days, the curtain finally came down on summer and the rain and cold told us the party was over and that winter would soon be here. But, you could't tell it from the crowd at the market: they hustled and bustled and shoved each other around in order to eat the six oysters and buy dirt encrusted mushrooms.

Which brings me nicely to my third point: a third thing that the French hold dear is freshness! Only surpassed by the Japanese who seem to like eating fish while the poor things are still squirming around on the plate, no other country makes such a big deal of "freshness" as do the French.

Perhaps it has to do with the fact that sometime in the past the things brought to market were indeed freshly picked vegetables and fruits, and freshly slaughtered animals. But, the only "fresh" thing I saw in the market today was the mud on the cèpes, those huge, brown mushrooms that bloom in the autumn midst the shady, humid woods. Although, according to my wife, that's a good sign. (Go figure.)

A lot of the prepared food looked pretty warmed over and the fish and meat on the counters looked like they had been in the fridge for a while. The tangerines were so fresh they were still green and the green peppers had been around so long they were turning red.

There are many things I like about France; there are many of its traditions which I like and admire. But, Market Day is not one of them. Not because of what it is but because of what modern life has made of it: the commercialization of a great tradition to the detriment of small producers and the gain of greedy merchants.

There are places, to be sure, where Market Day is still what it was meant to be. In smaller towns and villages that are not "profitable" for the roving bands of greedy merchants and hustlers of bad goods, local farmers do bring their products to the market. I remember a market day in Vic en Bigorre with farmers bringing in their live rabbits and chickens, a fellow that made and bottled fruit liqueurs; and in Gimont on a Sunday buying from a local lady a "barquette" of cherry tomatoes for one euro which are the best cherry tomatoes I have ever had.

I should start a petition on Change.org to get cities to change the name "Market Day" to "Cheap Crap at Expensive Prices Day." Market Day should be an "appellation contrôlée"and should be reserved for markets that welcome local producers of authentic and good fare.

Roadtrip to Spain -- Part 1: Aranda de Duero

We were supposed to have left on the 13th of September because I did not want to spend my birthday, the 15th, on the road, driving. But, because of circumstances which I will not discuss again for the sake of my health, we did not. We left--you might have guessed--on the 15th.

So, on that date, we put everything but the cats--literally--into the car and off we went south toward the border with Spain.

* * * * * * Conversation as we headed out of the city * * * * * *

Claudette

Did you check the tire pressure?

Me

No.

Claudette 

Did you check the oil?

Me 

No, 

Claudette

Did you check the water level of...

Me

Look, these cars don't need checking of anything. You can go 100,000 kilometers without once opening the hood. If something is needed the computer will tell you. So, stop with the asking if I checked. I did not check. There is no checking involved in my trips. I just go.

(Sepulchral, icy silence ensues. Then a few minutes later:)

Claudette

Well, when I went to Spain with my parents, they did not leave the town without...

Me

For God's sake that was 50 years ago and those cars hardly ran 50 kilometers without a breakdown, they used up more oil than gasoline. Things have changed a bit since then. We don't need to hand crank them to start. There's paved roads and we won't be attacked by bandits that look like something out of a painting by Goya. 

(More silence, rain starts to fall. I start the windshield wipers and it is obvious they are falling apart.)

Claudette

You should have checked the windshield wipers. They need changing.

Me

Arrrgh!

* * * * * * * * * * * *

It's about 350 kilometers from Biarritz to Aranda de Duero but we managed to get there just a few minutes after 15:00 hours. The house we had booked for our stay was in a zone for pedestrians; we had to leave the car a few blocks away. (Later, the owner of the house showed us a parking spot that was just a block away; very convenient.)

It was 16.00 hours by the time we met the landlady and she gave us the key. Here's Claudette going into the house.

We had the whole house to ourselves.

They say that God protects the innocent and the stupid. We didn't know that we had arrived the day that the "Fiestas" of the town started. Aranda de Duero is in wine country so the patron saint is "La Virgen de las Viñas", the Virgin of the Vineyards. (Unlimited supply of wine? Spaniards having fiestas? What could this lead to???) 

The town has dozens of "Peñas"; these are social clubs who each has as a home base a "Bodega", an underground cellar, cut from the stone bed on which the town was built. These Bodegas were used to store wine so they are cool, somewhat humid and each has an exhaust passage to allow the gasses produced from fermentation to escape and not pose a danger to the workers--not to mention the ruckus and brouhaha that dozens of drunken Spaniards can produce in an enclosed space.

 Nowadays, the Bodegas are mainly used for dinners and drinking parties of the Peñas. On the days of the Fiestas, anyone can go into any Bodega and when you do, there is always a club member there to offer you wine and some tapas to eat. Admittedly, more wine than tapas, but there you are.

But, that was for us to experience later. We were starving upon arrival, so as soon as we were settled in, we headed for the part of town where the bars and restaurants are. Every one of them was crowded with singing, drinking, laughing, loudly talking locals. We wanted to eat the town's specialty: roasted lamb. So we found a good restaurant in a  side street.

After a San Miguel to quench the thirst acquired from four hours of driving, we had a half bottle of good Duero wine Señorío de Nava, crianza, 2008. The meat was a quarter of a lamb brought to us in a hot, earthen plate.


It was accompanied by a bowl of salad, and that wonderful oven baked bread typical of León y Castilla. Here is a better picture of it.

So, hunger satisfied, thirst quenched, off we went to explore the town. The place was jumpin'! The bars were full, restaurants with every table occupied, the streets crowded with townspeople dressed in funny costumes, and bands, bands, bands.

It seems that every Peña has a band and on occasions such as these, they gather to play in the streets. First they play in front of their Bodega, and after having had a good many cups of wine and other spirits offered by their own Bodega keeper or the people in near-by bars, they march off playing, followed by their supporters who were dressed in funny, strange, or weird clothes, with painted faces, and cups of wine in hand.

The bands play popular and traditional songs. But, from time to time, they stopped marching and played a "jota", the traditional dance music of this region of Spain. And people in the crowd would dance. Here's a smidgen of a jota:

I think that even I would dance better than the guy in the red shirt on the right.

We thought: "Well, isn't this wonderful and colorful. What good luck that we arrived when the locals are in such a festive mood. What we didm't know was that this was scheduled to go on until four in the morning of the next day---and for the next seven days! And, we were right in the middle of it. Thank Goodness for double windows.

Supposedly, all of this was in honor of the Virgin, so one would imagine that the center of activity would be the church. But we walked by the place, and no one was there!

RIEN Á VOIR! CIRCULEZ! CIRCULEZ!

Since there was no action at the church, on we went to a street from where a lot of music and revelry seemed to be emanating. That street was lined on one side with bars and "asaderos", restaurants whose specialty is roasted lamb. In front of one of the most celebrated ones, there was (what else?) a band playing and a guy dancing.

Late in the afternoon quiet descended on the town. We thought that the "Fiestas" were over; but that was not the case. It was just a break in the fandango, a sort of catching of their collective breath in order to go at it until the very end of the night's "Verbena", a sort of concert, dance, drinking party that was to last until four in the morning. It did not last until four in the morning--it lasted until SIX in the morning!

Here is the town resting before the all-night party that was to come. Notice the painting of the house (on the right) that was demolished. When an old house is torn down, they put up these tromp l'oeil until the new house can be built or they leave the old facade (house on the left) for the same purpose.

We, of course, went to sleep early--around midnight. Thankfully, the double glazed windows on the street side kept most of the noise out. The next day, we got up around nine in the morning and wanting a cup of coffee and some breakfast, we went out and into the quiet of the streets. We went by a store that was both a pharmacy and a ham and sandwich shop. Rather appropriate, I thought.

The sandwiches this place sells are great. They are made with that local, round bread and the very good Iberico or Serrano hams. You can also buy a whole leg of ham which can cost from 90 to 250 euros, depending on the weight and quality.

Our final night in town was like a grand finale: all the bands of all the Peñas paraded through the streets playing and drinking, followed by huge crowds. As each band reached its home Bodega, they would file in and a crowd of their families and friends would follow them into the place to drink and dance till into the wee hours.

Not content with the racket of the bands, while all the marching, and playing, and drinking, and dancing was going on, there was a loud and long fireworks display.

The day after, after some more coffee and rest, we were off to the next stop: Toledo! I'll post the pictures and text about that city in the next blog entry.

A Tail Of Two Cats

The title to this blog entry might seem facetious to you, or you might think it a rather bad pun, but it does make a point about our two cats.

People who have not had pets do not understand or do not believe that animals have personalities just as different and distinct as humans do.

Take our cats, please. (No, that's an old Henny Youngman joke: "Take my wife, please.") But, I digress.

Our two cats, or maybe I should say our cat and the other one that comes to eat and sleep here during the day, are as different in behavior and habits as any two humans can be.

Lea,  the cat on the right of this photo,

has the personality, habits, and finicky character of an old spinster (she is old BTW; we guess she is 12 years old which would make her a 70 year old person). If you are a film buff like I am, I would describe her like Millicent Wetherby, the spinsterish woman played by Joan Crawford in the movie Autumn Leaves. Or perhaps an older Jane Hudson as played by Katherine Hepburn in Summertime, the movie about a spinster who goes to Venice and falls in love with Rossano Brazzi. 

Well, Prince, the cat on the left of the picture would make a convincing Renato de Rossi, the character played by Brazzi in the same movie. He is dashing, handsome, amorous, and quite the man (uh, cat) about town.

In this photo,

 you can see that he is not one of perfunctory sleeping habits, much to the dismay of Lea. Yet, much like in the movie Summertime (and if you are too young to remember it or have seen it, here is a link to a clip in Youtube.com (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h67MxIl795w) Lea is just as reluctant to give in to Prince's shenanigans as was Miss Hepburn when Rossano Brazzi tried to charm her out of her wits and to stay in Venice. In the movie, Jane's common sense and old maid morality prevails and she leaves Venice. In our house, Lea's spinsterish spirit prevails and she has no truck with Prince.

Joan Crawford's behavior toward Cliff Robertson in "The Autumn Leaves" it is not too far fetched to describe what happens to Lea when Prince comes around after being out all night doing who knows what all over the neighborhood. (See the 1956 trailer for the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiDz3vcEBnQ).

When he comes in, like the rake that he is, he goes up to Lea and kisses her (actually rubs noses). She accepts his gesture but then strikes at him, as if saying, "You smell of another cat, you cad!" Prince nimbly jumps out of harm's way, like the young, street-wise cat that he is, then jauntily goes to have his milk and food, after which he sleeps all morning. Nevertheless, when he leaves to do his rounds, she stares out the window, longingly.

But, back to why I named this entry "The Tail Of Two Cats."

There are many things that give insight into an animal's personality and its state of mind. But, in a cat, the most telling (apart from the meowing, purring, and growling) is the way they move or manage their tail.

Lea is constantly at war with her tail. She chases it, bites it, paws at it with her claws to such an extent that we find tufts of her hair on the rug and her tail looks like those Christmas tree branches after they have gone dry and have lost all of their pine needles.

To me this "tail chasing" denotes Lea's character and anxieties. Like all old maids, she is highly strung, mildly psychotic, and always chasing herself instead of chasing a male cat.

While Prince, on the other hand, never chases his tail. He does chase other cats, especially his nemesis the black cat that lives in a street near-by and dares invade Prince's territory.

When he is not fighting, Prince's main occupation is sunning himself in front of the house or on top of our garden table. His tail, a thick, furry thing that serves him well as as rudder when he is jumping from roof to roof, keeps a sort of time when he is at rest. Like a metronome, it flips from side to side, at regular intervals, as if he were humming to himself and thus marking the beats to a song.

When he is about to get into a fight or he is on the alert, his tail stands straight up, like a battle flag.

It reminds me of the Japanese soldiers in movies like Kagemucha.

Lea, in contrast, uses her tail mostly to display anger or displeasure. She shoots it straight back as if streamlining herself for a run.

Prince being an expressive cat, uses his tail in a lot of ways which (being a cat psychiatrist I am in a position to know) I think allows him to be a more settled, well-adjusted feline; while Lea, which is always at odds with her tail (and it seem with Life itself) is so nervous her hair falls out.

Prince seems to have learned his cat ways from Tom, a cat that lives across the road in a neighbor's house and whom we suspect is in fact Prince's father.

That's Tom sitting on a post of our front fence. As one can see, Price looks a lot like Tom. Prince has taken over the street from Tom and occasionally he lets him know who is boss now so Tom is always on the lookout for Prince. He is, in fact, afraid of him -- as one can see from the way he looks when Prince is approaching.

Tom has a funny way of expressing himself with his tail. He never meows or purrs or utters any sound at all. But, he twirls his tail when we feed him. Its his way of saying, "Thanks for the chow."

Strangely enough, there are no female cats in our neighborhood (except Lea and she has been "fixed", as they say). So, I wonder how this cat saga is going to develop when a she-cat appears on the block.

I bet there'll be a lot of tail wagging.

Dummies defeat designers: not really news!

So, I imagine some guy in the design department of an automotive manufacturer pitching the first idea ever for a wireless device that would lock/unlock a car's doors with just the push of a button on the key itself:

"You know what happens," the guy said to management, "to a lot of people (he did not want to say women because he would have been accused of being a misogynist by the one woman on the management team) they leave the car and forget to lock the doors, or think that they will be back in five minutes so they are too lazy to lock them, and ¡bam! a car thief makes off with the car in a New York Minute. So, here is the perfect answer to that problem: a wireless device to lock the doors of a car with just the push of a button."

The guy was given a substantial raise and he was promoted to head of design at the car company.



OK,  now flash forward twenty years. How do you defeat such great design? Easily. A few days ago, a person I know (no names, please) got out of the car, dutifully clicked on the device to lock the doors and walked away from the car. Why do I say that this wonderful design was defeated? BECAUSE THE PERSON LEFT A WINDOW OPEN! And, not only that, when the car alarm complained by bipping, this person, ignored the beeps and was even annoyed by them!

I wish they would make talking alarms that would shout insults,

"Hey, dummy, you forgot to close the door!

TV clickers, those long black things with lots of buttons that allow you to change channels, adjust the volume, and so on were designed so that one didn't have to get up from the couch to go twist a dial or push a button on the TV set itself when you wanted to change channels or adjust the volumen. How can a person defeat this design? Easily: you leave the clicker in another room!

Some smart designer made a brush with a handle that fits neatly onto the handle of the matching dust pan. Thus you keep both items together neatly without having to look for one or the other when you want to, say, pick up the cat litter that your cat pushes out of the litter box.

Why is it, then, that every time I want to use said items I can find the brush but not the dust pan or the dust pan but not the brush? Foiled again, Mr. Designer.

Pens are a favorite subject around our house. It seems you can never find one when one wants to write down a message or take down a telephone number. My wife buys boxes of them and they all quietly, mysteriously disappear. So, she decided to get a pen designed to avoid those pesky pens that run away. She got one of those pens that are attached to a base by a chain!

Oh, yeah? Well try to find both pen and base. They seem to have run away like those prisoners that escape chained together in those prison movies.

When I worked in the systems support department of a large corporation, we systems engineers dreaded the time we had to answer calls for support from users. No matter how "fool proof" we or the designers of computer software made things, users would find a way to defeat the design. Idiots and fools can prove incredibly ingenious when it comes to making stupid mistakes or defeating the purpose of a design.

Take floppy disks, for example. Most people nowadays do not remember why floppy disks were called that. It was because they were indeed floppy, made of very thin material. So, they came protected by a harder plastic cover. Well, there was always some enterprising moron who would look at the thing, figure that if the floppy was going to be read by the machine it should be taken out of its cover! One guy cut the cover with a large pair of scissors, put the floppy part into the floppy disk reader, and after the reader crunched it up into a ball of plastic, he brought it to us at the systems department to complain that his machine did not work properly.

There is a web site http://www.darwinawards.com that records the fatal disregard of the obvious, the warning sings, the defeat of designs that are meant to keep you safe. The results are tragic...although they do make me laugh. I especially like the story of the man who turned off the lights of his car to "save electricity." A 40 ton truck showed him it was a bad idea.

There has been a lot of reports lately that car makers are working on production of "driverless" cars. That is, cars that drive themselves. Well, if that doesn't scare you into becoming a Jehovah Witness I don't know what does.  Can you imagine some guy defeating that little piece of design? "Oh, let's see what happens if ..."

Nothing, absolutely nothing is "idiot proof". Only an idiot would believe things can be idiot proof.

I have conceded to the constant nagging

Well, there is just so much nagging one can stand. I won't reveal the source of said nagging but, there you are. Or rather, here I am...writing another long entry, back in the saddle again, as it were.

So, here is the catch-up, not ketchup, c-a-t-c-h-u-p, as in getting you up to date.

We came back from Mexico (Oh, it seems so long ago, as if it had happened in another century) in May of last year. And the first order of business was to retrieve our cat, which had been parked with a relative (I won't name names) for the duration of our five month trip--or so we thought.

We went to fetch her and, (to quote the girl in Gone With The Wind), " Oh, Lordy, Lordy" we were told that said feline had (to quote a character from the film Brief Encounter) "Offted it", taken a powder, scrammed it, jumped the hoop, taken it on the lam, in other words, gone!

W. C. Fields said that absence does not make the heart grow fonder; if anything, it gives a fella a chance to get a drink. In the case of our cat, it gave her the chance to see the town because not wanting to wear out her welcome, she disappeared into the wilds of Biarritz.

We had given up hope of finding her when one day she appeared on the roof of our wash house. But, resentful as only a female of the species can be, she would not come into the house. Skinny as an anorexic fashion model, she would only come, hesitantly, to have food we left by the garden door.

Finally, after a few days of that, growling as if resentful that we had abandoned her for so long, she consented to come into the house.

Soon after our wayward cat came back, another cat (almost a kitten) started showing up in our window. We had been feeding Tom the Cat, the cat that belongs to the neighborhood, for a while and we thought that this new arrival might be one of Tom's descendants because it had the same striping but very blue-green eyes, not like Tom's dark green ones.

Prince as a kitten.

We called it Princess, because it was so dainty and beautifully colored,; but as it grew and became a muscled, well-formed male, we had to change the name to Prince the Cat. Not only has it grown in size, it has grown in strength and muscle power. Prince has taken over from Tom (in fact he has beat up poor old Tom a few times). He fights off any stray cat that comes into out street and has even jumped a sissy dog that strayed away from its home a few houses down the road.

As you can see, he is not much on the well-mannered pussy-cat form. He is a laid-back cat who has rough nights and needs a rest after having his breakfast.
 
On the home front, there was summer to contend with. My wife started posting our spare bedrooms on a B&B site and had quite a nice response. We had myriad guests from a nice Indian guy from Singapore to a Russian family.

After that, the family that usually rents our house for two weeks during August came to stay and WE offed it to Paris. That was a great trip. As usual, we went by the national roads rather than the superhighways. The nationals are more colorful, there are a lot of nice towns to see on the way, and places to eat and stay. This time we made a stopover in Lectoure, a town famous for its beautiful high tower.

The evening we stayed there was balmy so we looked for an outdoor place to have dinner. We came upon a vary nice terrace, with tables and candle light, which was the restaurant of a hotel. We waited to be seated and when the waitress came, she asked if we were staying in the hotel. We said that we were not and that we just wanted dinner. But, she said, I can't give you a table if you are not staying in the hotel. Trust the French to figure out a way to turn away business.

Rebuffed, we went on our way and found a very nice restaurant with a very busy and nicely appointed terrace, with huge umbrellas that protected the tables from the few raindrops that fell. After a very good dinner in that terrace restaurant we walked along the village, which was quiet and peaceful--everyone being home and in bed.

Paris was, well, Paris: full of summer tourists and the hustle and bustle of a large city. We stayed away from the usual stomping grounds of the crowds. I only visited the Louvre a couple of times and when we went I usually steered clear of the gathering places for the herd: the Mona Lisa, the winged victory, etc. There are so many other things to see, many of them never visited by the crowd.

We like to take city buses into and from the city. It is like being on a bus tour. Number 52 goes by most of the "sights" of Paris and leaves you just on  the Hotel de Ville or the Madeleine.

This is one of our favorite café-restaurants in Paris, Le Livre.

The shopping area of the Louvre.

One of my favorite areas of Paris: the Pantheon is to the right of that fence but that beautiful church and tower flank a street that goes down to the Rue Mouffetard, the oldest part of the city on the left bank. Hardly any crowds come to this part of town.

And, of course, the carrousel at the Hotel de Ville. This is where number 52 drops us off.

OK, so back to Biarritz we came at the middle of August. Fortunately by then the highways were not so crowded as at the start of vacation time. Now it was time to get ready for all the late summer activities: the visit from the kids, doing some gardening and taking some local trips with the AFLACOBA crowd.

September was taken up by the Biarritz Film Festival. Since we are members of AFLACOBA, the Latin Americans in the Basque Country association, we get a special price. There were a lot of good films and documentaries this year and the "Latin American Village", a sort of market place for people selling food, wares, and goods from Latin American countries was as usual noisy and fun.

The Biarritz Casino where the Latin American Village is housed.

One of the many musical events of the Biarritz Film Festival

The AFLACOBA also organized a trip to a very beautiful, historic and colorful Spanish town just south of us: Pasajes.

In the small boat you can see on the bottom right corner, one goes from one part of the town to the other, the older part, which is on the other side of the bay.

Pasajes other claim to fame, other than its colorful beauty and anchovy canning business, was the fact that Victor Hugo came here and rented a house for the summer. It is also the place where he received the terrible news that one of his beloved daughters had drowned in a boating accident.

October and November are sort of the doldrums around here. The town is resting from all of the tourists that have crowded it for two months and everyone is doing house chores and getting ready for the big vacation and celebration: Christmas.

I took the time to start a new novel: "Diego Rivera and Don Porfirio Díaz" about the fictional meeting in Paris of these two seminal personages of Mexican history. But, I also finished another novel, "The Story of a Doctor, his Town, and his Country", which I printed two copies of and sent to a Novel contest by the great editorial house Planeta in Barcelona. I also finished a book of short stories and sent that to another contest in Cadiz, Spain.

So, then came Christmas: it was, as usual, a great dinner with friends and family. On the 24th we had the traditional oysters, foie gras with champagne, and a splendid dinner that was topped with Christmas pudding. On the 25th we had a great lunch of salmon and lamb chops; the fish course featured a great Sancerre white wine.

We were a bit disappointed we could not get away again to go back to Mexico. And, having been spoiled by the temperate and constantly nice climate of Dolores, the town where we stayed for five months, we were not prepared for the constant rain and cold of this year's winter.

 Ship wrecked by the storm; torn apart against the rocks.

 Yet another storm coming from the south, from Spain, courtesy of the North Atlantic.

We are prisoners of the climate here: few days are nice enough to go out and about. We stay indoors and I we write or work, as the time permits. The garden is a mess and we will have a lot of work to do in the Spring and Summer.

Right, so that is our catch-up. I will now post my weekly blog with the usual sarcasm and wit. Please leave some comments on the blog.

APT
Rodolfo

And now for the FINALE!

Some of you will remember that two weeks ago I published the last of my Adventures in Pension Land. As anyone who has dealt with a government agency knows, things are never quite over, especially when you write them irate letters mentioning the many discrepancies, erroneous information, lack of service, wasted time, useless paperwork, and just plain injustice that they cause.

Well, I wrote my irate letters, emails in fact. I wrote to several people, mostly the national director, some of his staff, and the regional director of the state (Nuevo León) where I had had to conduct all of my requests for a pension.

The first to answer was Maria Magdalena Perales Cosain whose position according to what was stated under her name in the email is Coordinator of Public Relations (Coordinación de Relaciones Públicas).

She wrote to me and asked for me telephone number, which I gladly gave her.

Since her telephone call was not forthcoming, I emailed and asked her if she was going to call at all. I then got a phone call from her.

The gist of her phone call was to defend the IMSS refusal to give me a pension. She said that she had looked up my case and that according to Article blah, blah, blah, and Article blah, blah, blah, the IMSS was within its right to deny me a pension.

After I explained that she was not telling me anything I did not already know, I said that I did not believe that I had not paid for my SS for more than 402 weeks, 98 short of the 500 I needed to collect my pension. I explained that the people at the IMSS Sub-Module 4 had said that the IMSS had started computerizing the weeks paid as of 1982. So, I believed that in the paper archives from 1967 to 1981, there must be some trail of the weeks I paid in those 15 years of work.

"I can't believe that I did not pay any SS for those 15 years," I said.

She argued that indeed the SS system started computerizing the paid weeks in 1982 but that for workers who had started paying before that time, "an algorithm" was used to calculate the "probable" weeks I might have paid before that time.

So, a life time of work, hundreds of thousand of pesos paid by me and my employers, and these bureaucrats leave a worker's pension up to some damned algorithm?

I said to this woman that I understood that they could hide behind their laws and regulations and deny me a pension. But, I said, it is precisely those laws that are unjust.

I also complained that I had not received any information or help of any kind from their hundreds of employees and in fact, they seemed to do everything possible to hinder or make difficult the requests for pension. Never mind that they offered no information, never mind that they offer no guidance or help, never mind that they don't have things as simple as signs to help one find the right office, never mind that a simple sheet or pamphlet with simple instructions would go a long way to saving a worker time and money while requesting a pension, never mind all of that...what I wanted to know was:

WHY DID AN EMPLOYEE OF THE IMSS SAY TO ME THAT THE IMSS WAS NOT IN THE BUSINESS OF GRANTING PENSIONS, THAT IT WAS IN THE BUSINESS OF DENYING PENSIONS?

I also said I thought it was unjust that I had to go back to work and pay SS for another year JUST SO I COULD BE REINSTATED IN THE SYSTEM!

She counter argues that the IMSS has an employment "bank" (banco de empleo) that helps people in such cases to find a job.

WELL, WHY THE HELL DID YOUR PEOPLE NOT TELL ME THAT?  I asked.

Anyway, of course, she was not phoning me to help me. Like all good bureaucrats, she was phoning me to restate the case of the IMSS and saying that they were within their right to deny me a pension.

WELL, LA-DI-FREEKING-DA! Thank you, Ms. Perales, for calling me to tell me I am F...well, denied a pension.

Not to be outdone, I also got an email from Natividad Elia Méndez López; her email says that she is the Head of the Benefits Department (Titular de la Jefatura de Prestaciones).

Her litany was much the same: they were within their rights to deny me a pension due to Article X, Y Z, and so on.

THE IMSS PEOPLE ARE VERY GOOD AT TELLING YOU WHY THEY WON'T GIVE YOU ANYTHING; AND THEY ARE VERY BAD AT TELLING YOU HOW YOU CAN GET ANYTHING.

Both of the persons WHO CONTACTED ME are probably very happy that I have withdrawn my savings in my AFORE and have thus terminated all possibility of ever getting a pension, thus cutting off all ties with the IMSS.

WRONG!

I AM GOING TO START A CAMPAIGN ON SOCIAL MEDIA TO INFORM AND WARN OTHER WORKERS OF THE INCOMPETENCE, LACK OF GOOD WILL, AND SHEER DISREGARD FOR THE NEEDS OF WORKERS BY THE IMSS.

I am sure most of us are already aware of it but perhaps we can avoid some of us falling into the same traps I fell into.

Incompetents and uncaring bureaucrats like the ones I met, and the ones I have been talking to, should NOT be handling the well being of Mexican workers, especially in their old age. The incredible insensitivity of these so-called state workers has left the majority of people who have worked all of their lives without any source of income or health care.

BUREAUCRATES OF THE IMSS, I WILL SEE YOU IN TWITTER, FACEBOOK, WEB CAMPAIGNS AND ANY OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA SITE THAT I CAN THINK OF.

FIRST OF ALL, I AM GOING TO DEMAND THAT YOU ANSWER THE QUESTION YOU HAVE REFUSED TO ANSWER:

HOW MUCH OF THE BUDGET OF THE IMSS GOES TOWARD PAYING THE SALARIES AND THE PENSION PLANS OF THE BUREAUCRATS THAT WORK FOR THE IMSS?

And you, my dear readers, please re-twit, re-post, or send to your lists this blog entry. Sorry if I am not my usual funny self, but this is no laughing matter.

BTW, I AM GOING TO TRANSLATE ALL THE BLOG ENTRIES OF "ADVENTURES IN PENSION LAND" AND THEY WILL BE THE START OF A BLOG REGARDING THE IMSS.

Adventures in Pension Land - The Final

You, the guy in Russia who—for God knows what reason—reads my blog will remember that I was denied a pension because—according to the Social Security System—I had not paid my Social Security for the proper amount of weeks to said system.

Never mind that I had worked since 1967 and I, or my employers, had paid religiously; never mind that I had paid voluntary Social Security for my mother for years; never mind that I could prove that I had worked for several employers for a total of at least 18 years, that if you do the math (18 x 52 = 936 weeks) you would come up with more than enough weeks to warrant a pension.

All of this had meant nothing to the Social Security System.

Trying to see if there was a solution (i. e. a logical and reasonable way of getting the Social Security to acknowledge my payments) I had gone to the Sub-delegation to inquire about a "recount" only to be told that I had been dropped from the System because I had not paid any Social Security since 1999.

OK, so granted that that was true. "You mean to say," I queried the fellow who was telling me that if I wanted a recount, I would have to go back to work for a year so I could be "reinstated" in the system, "you mean to say that from 1967 to 1999, which is a total of 32 years, and given that God or the Universe have not changed the amount of weeks in a year, that out of the 1664 weeks of that time period, I only paid Social Security for 402?"

"Yep," said the fellow and he bid me good day with a smile. I wondered if he, being an employee of the IMSS, would have as much trouble getting HIS pension.

So, given the boot in the rear end that I got from the IMSS, the only thing left to do was to get the money that I and my employers had saved for my retirement, i. e. the so-called AFORE.

In the taxi I took to the bank where I was going to claim my savings, I told the driver my story. He said,

"That's why I don't pay Social Security."

"You mean to say that you taxi drivers don't have Social Security?"

"Nope," he said. "What's the use? They are going to find a way to deny it anyway. And a lot of people say that they are going to go broke soon and they will stop paying pensions. Their hospitals are a mess so I go to a private doctor anyway."

This is recurrent comment regarding Social Security which I hear from a lot of people. It is not only a common worker like a taxi driver that repeats it; I have friends who have been in business for years, and who have been educated in the best universities—they too believe that the SS system will soon go bust.

HELOOOO, SOCIAL SECURITY! ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION? Most people in Mexico believe you will either cheat them out of their pensions or that you will stop paying the few pensions that you ARE paying because you will go broke! YOU HAVE DONE A LOUSY JOB NOT ONLY PAYING PENSIONS BUT IN INFORMING PEOPLE WHAT IS GOING ON!

The taxi dropped me off at the BANAMEX module that handles the AFORE accounts. I took a number (Oh, God, how many numbers must one take in the world before we can find peace?) and waited...and waited...and waited.

Fortunately, the girl executive who called me into her office was very efficient. She took my "denial of pension", processed it, and within fifteen minutes she had the proper papers for me to sign. I did and she said,

"Now you will have to come back in two weeks to claim your money."

"What? Why?"

"Well, it is not up to us," she said. "The request has to go through several government offices and it takes them two weeks or so to process it."

It seems the government is not aware that we are in the computer age.

She wrote the date I should come back on my paperwork and also gave me her email so I could check back with her to see if the money had been freed.

Sigh! Off I went: back to Dolores Hidalgo on the night bus. (There are no direct flights to Dolores. Why? There is no airport in Dolores or even close by). Six hours later, at 4:30 in the morning, I was trudging along the quiet street of Dolores.

Fast forward two weeks. I email the girl in BANAMEX and she replies promptly that my money is ready to be collected. Off I go on a bus. Six and a half hours later I am taking a taxi from the Central Bus Station in Monterrey and I am headed for the BANAMEX module to collect my "pognon", as "Les Tontons Flingueurs" put it.

At the BANAMEX module I was told I could go directly to the "Client Services" window. I could claim my money there—but I had to (sigh) take a number. I did. It was 32 and the number on the counter was 29. Well, that's not too bad, I though. Wrong!

OK, so now I am sitting before the "Client Services" window along with the other two people who had numbers before mine. I look at the corresponding window and notice that there is NO ONE there! Well, me thinks, the girl must be in the "powder room" or somewhere like that. She will be back soon. Wrong!

An hour later, no girl. Empty window. Next to the "Cient Services" window is another window that is happily doing "services" for other customers. When that girl was free I saunter up and ask,

"Excuse me, where is the person that is supposed to be in the "Client Services" window?"

"Oh, she will be back soon. You see, she has two jobs, so she is at the other job now."

"And, pray tell, when will she be free from her "other" job and come to do this one?"

"Oh, I don't know," she said smiling beatifically as she flapped her false eyelashes.

Oh, that did it! Boy was my dander up!

I spied a guy with a suit and a tie. That must be the manager, I thought. I got to him just before he punched the code to go through a secure door and into the back office.

"Are you the manager," I asked.

"Why, yes," he said.

"Would you step this way, please? Can you read what it says in the far window?"

"Yes," he said a bit puzzled.

"Do you agree with me that it says, 'Client Services'?"

"Yes, yes, what is..."

"Then why the Hell is there no person there to give us clients the services we require!?"

He was, uh—how shall I put it—taken aback.

"Uh, I am sorry," he stammered, "how can I help you?"

"First of all, get someone to give the people who have been waiting for an hour the services they require. Now as for me, I have come on a damned bus 500 kilometers to collect the money from my AFORE. So, how about it? Give it to me."

"Please come this way," he said and he took me to his desk.

Before he looked up my file, he called someone over and asked them to tell the girl in "Client Services" that there were people waiting for her.

The man told me that it was his last day on the job. He was being promoted to a bigger branch office. (Must be for the fine services he offered on this one, I thought.) He quickly got to the bottom of things and soon my money was in an investment account with a bit left over so I could (finally) buy my desired MacBook Air!

I called my son and he took me to the nearest Apple distributor. I got my beautiful MacBook Air and a Magic mouse! Ah, the wonders a Apple technology. I love both things, but that is another story.

So, brrrrrummm, back I went to Dolores on the night bus.

Well, that's the end of it, I thought. WRONG!

About a week after I had "finished" with the Adventures in Pension Land, I got an email from the girl in the BANAMEX module. She told me that the SAR, (Sistema del Ahorro para el Retiro, the System for Saving for Retirement) had kept 10% of my money, and that if I didn't claim it within 20 days, they would consider it a "voluntary donation" to the government's SAR.

Now, think about this: why, if there is an AFORE (which is saving the money they take from your paycheck and from your employer so that you can "supplement" the pension the government is going to give you); and there is the IMSS (the Social Security System), the INFONAVIT (which is supposed to help you save for a house); and I don't know how many agencies that are supposed to give you money back (which they have taken from you throughout your working life) when you retire, why is there yet ANOTHER system, the SAR?

Who the hell created such a mess of agencies and systems and what not, that are not only costly to run but are so inefficient that they make a mess of things, in fact, make it impossible to get a pension unless you hire someone to wade through the mess? And even then, who knows if you get the damned pension or if the IMSS won't go broke in a couple of years and you will get nothing?

Well, tired of busses, I decided to take a flight from Mexico City to Monterrey to claim that last portion of money. Even if I broke even with the cost of the flight, I would not let the government have a single penny of my money.

I had been invited to a friend's birthday in Puebla, so it would be an opportunity to take a bus to Mexico City, go to Monterrey on an Interjet flight, and come back to Mexico City to go on to Puebla for my friend's birthday.

This time things went smoothly (almost). I got to BANAMEX, got (sigh) my number and waited for the "Client Services" girl to call me up. (This time there WAS a girl at the window!). When my turn came up, I said,

"I have come to claim the portion of the money the SAR kept. I have recently retrieved my AFORE but the SAR portion was not included."

She looked at me as if I was speaking Upper Babylonian or Ancient Greek or a combination of both.  She hit the panic button (literally). The manager came running. (The new manager was a woman. I don't know why women complain about equal job placement: they seem to be running everything nowadays, but that's another story.)

"What is the problem?" asked the Manageress.

"This man says that we have to pay him...what was it, sir?"

I explained to the Manageress what I wanted and told her to consult the girl who had warned me about the money the SAR had kept. The Manageress when off to consult with the girl executive and back she came.

"I will have to see if you are on the list," she said.

That sounded ominous so I asked, "What list?"

"The list the SAR puts out what authorizes us to give back the money."

"What!? It is my money. Who the hell are they to say if I can or can't retrieve it?"

"That's the way it is," she shrugged.

Off she went. I sat down and waited...and waited...and waited. An hour later, she came back with a printed list.

"It seems you are on the list. We will pay you the money."

She gave the "Client Services" girl a printed sheet that authorized the payment.

Well, NOW it will finally be over, I thought. WRONG!

The Client Services girl clicked and clacked on her keyboard and then said, "OK, the request has been put through. It will take an hour for the SAR to approve it and we will give you the money then."

I was dumbfounded. They just refused to make things easy for me! I just sat down and stared at the wall for an hour. After that, she called me, gave me the money and I left without saying another word.

Tomorrow I will write an EPILOG. I have emailed a couple of the Directors of the IMSS, and their reply and my reply to their replies, are worth a mention.