Cumbia sí, trabajo no
Last week was a pretty busy one. I spent part of it in Mexico City, seeing friends and looking for some computer gear I needed. Everyone’s talking about the new abortion legislation that will legalize the practice in the Federal District (the state that contains a large part of the city). The progressives, although (arguably) losing the presidential election, hold a majority of seats there and have struck back with legalized gay marriage, and now this. The church and other conservatives have, predictably, made a lot of fuss over being dragged into last century. Even the pope has contributed his share of outrage. I say congratulations, DF - it’s about time.
Paolita and Leo in the DF
Only two days after the above picture was taken, Paolita suffered a burglary in which she lost most of her computing equipment (read: livelihood). Since she’s an independent contractor, she’s counting on finishing her current job to pay for new stuff.
On Thursday, Leo and I set course for Poza Rica, where we’d been invited to give talks at their FLISOL arrangement. The plan had been for Paolita to come with us, but sadly, the above turn of events left her without the time and money to do so. We started out making good time, but found the highway blocked by a trailer crash, and had to backtrack a couple of kilometers for the “scenic route”. It was slow due to ongoing road work, but at least it wasn’t jammed with cars - apparently we were the only ones with a map.
Blocked highway
Alternate route
All in all, getting there took about twice as long as we’d hoped, and once in Poza Rica we found that our talks had been postponed to Friday. We got to know the local Linuxeros - an excellent gang.
Poza Rica gang
From left to right, that’s Leo, Adlair, the waitress, Marco, Christian, Xochitl and Jorge.
Although the event didn’t turn out exactly as hoped, we got to do the talks and there seemed to be some interest. The slides and source for mine are available. It’s a tiny project that illustrates how to get started writing and distributing free desktop software. It’s called “PopoMon”, and is a web-scraping taskbar alert level monitor for the volcano we all know and love, Popocatepetl.
On Saturday I was back home, and on Sunday we were invited to visit our neighbors and friends, Omar and Silvia, at their cabin. It’s located in the woods on the outskirts of Xalapa, less than an hour away by car. Once you leave the city, things change quickly:
Peace and quiet
More Xalapa countryside
Omar and Silvia
Me and Maru
Maru inside of a big ol’ tree
People were raising and serving fish nearby, using water diverted from a river. We ate some. It wasn’t at all bad.
Fish in a pool
Fish in a bucket