Mexican Weather and Crack Cocaine

The weather has been appalling all week, with terrible rains overnight and cloudy cool days and just typical British weather, this isn't good enough for the Mexican Desert, i want heat and sun and even if i cannot sleep at night i want the heat. We had a river running down the centre of the main road in Rosarito.

The Rio Rosarito



I am not sure how big a cocaine problem Mexico has but when i went to the toilet of the plant this week, i found a crack cocaine pipe in the cubicle, Now I am not normally a party pooper but when i work in a plant i like to think I am safe and not likely to be killed by someones else's mistakes but a crack cocaine user is not someone who I want around me when in a dangerous place like a power plant, so i had to inform the plant manager. I felt bad as i know they will conduct a full drug screening of all the plant guys and the culprit and anyone else who uses drugs will be caught and probably fired, a sad day for all, but I have to think about mine and everyone else's safety.

Well the job has been going OK, we have completed all the preliminary start-up commissioning and when we went for a start up, I think we broke the Steam Turbine. A bearing got really hot after about 30 minutes and then started to vibrate to the point it destroyed the vibration probes, this could mean they have to strip the turbine totally again, so I may be going home after they check monday and find it looks like a train wreck inside the bearing. Home sweet home and it is really sunny and hot there.

Winter in Baja Mexico

I can't believe the miserable weather after the wonderful sunny start I had here. the second week started with banks of fog rolling in from the sea, cold and misty all day long, not really cold just cold relatively speaking. This went on day after day, at the end of the week we got some sunny afternoons and then last night it goddam rained like hell all night flooding the roads and even the stairwell of my hotel. It feel like I am back in the UK. The rain was the heaviest for 3 years, why do i always get the records wherever I am working.

Anyway we went out to the local tourist town for a lobster dinner, it was a pretty poor attempt at a tourist town, full of crappy tourist souvenir shops, discount pharmacies and Lobster restaurants.



Our friendly taxi driver drove us into a cheaper place and it was a very nice family run place, but to be honest Lobster without anything special is pretty boring and without much flavour, so i didn't really rave about it but to get out of the hotel for the first time it was OK, the taxi driver was stinking drunk also, the wafting odour of alcohol laden breath was almost intoxicating itself, he is such a nice guy though, he gives you a beer on the way home from the plant and you join him having a drink in the car. We have a full day running test in the plant this weekend and we have to be up at 4am and finish in the plant at midnight. this could be the beginning of the end of the trip to Baja Mexico. I need some of that tropical sunshine of home and some home cooking, fantastic salsa and corn chips can be tiring if you have it every meal for weeks on end. The soups are also fantastic but just too much.

Amazing Plunge Shower

This hotel never ceases to amaze me, wehn i was offered to change rooms to a larger suite for free we took the opportunity but when i saw the shower, it is the most unusual I have ever seen in my life, it resembles a plunge shower almost a roman style design, it is so strange i asked how old the hotel was, as i thought the place was so old it was before real showers took off in the 50's, but I was told the place was built only 18 years ago, so it was a cheap method of building a shower

Plunge Shower, I feel Like a Roman Gladiator



There is a FOX movie studio just up the road and it is where large action things are done, they have some old galleons in the studio and the actors sometimes stay in this hotel, we were told that an actor was here one night with all the crew and they were getting hammered and someone took exception to something that was said and one hell of a brawl broke out with guest and actors and hotel security getting involved, i have to find out who the actor was, probably Nick Nolte or Oliver Reed, we will see, but at the moment it is like a ghost town, and unfortunately it is just fog bound and quite fresh

Taxi Drivers???

The local taxi driver that we have adopted is a funny guy, not that he tells funny jokes but just his mannerisms, he probably wouldn’t be appreciative of me saying that but he is a funny little Mexican mustachioed shaven headed guy, his taxi is appalling but as we only drive in straight lines up and down the coastal highway I am not too concerned, the seatbelts probably stopped working a long time ago and he must have just cut them off and the stub ends are still hanging out of the slots. The car rattles and squeaks as it drives along, I imagine sometimes that the wheel bearings are shot and a wheel will fall off when they finally collapse, the door handle in the passenger side is missing and a piece of string is the opening device, the back seat is pretty grotty all stained and part of the roof lining is missing but he has such a happy disposition that I couldn’t think of getting rid of him, he is waiting for us in the morning and at night he is ready to pick us up, he loves showing off his cell phones and waves at everyone in town even the police, when he took us to the chicken place for lunch, he just cut across the traffic like nobody else was on the road so crazy and typical Latin-American. He was telling us since the local drug wars have been raging the number of tourists has fallen to nothing and everyone here is suffering, our hotel at night is like a ghost town, maybe 6 or 8 guests in the restaurant at night, there maybe a few more who eat much later but the hotel is really empty. We are getting a local lady to do our laundry as the hotel doesn’t do it as a service, which I thought was bizarre, so she comes in a does a bag of laundry for $5, I can just imagine her in a stone sink bashing the laundry away on some rocks with a little bar of soap, the funniest laundry cleaning I have ever seen was in Sri Lanka, I accidentally walked the wrong way around the back of the hotel and into the laundry area, there was a little man in a loin cloth stood in what I could only call a concrete box full of sheets and soapy water and he was stamping away, the human washing machine, he looked at me as though I was an alien, I was looking at him as though he was an alien, I kept walking and tried not to think about it anymore. Human washing machine what next, human farming machine????. Only kidding.

Local drug war update- 4 more found dead in my town last night, Mutilated-Oh Hell!!!!

Best Quote of the Week

Phone answering machine message - '...If you want to buy marijuana, press the hash key...'

Street Food, Ey Chihuahua !!!!!

If you read any travel guide and look up eating at street vendors then it will tell you that your going to die and you will contract terminal diarrhea, your face will puff up like a pumpkin, and amoebas will be dripping out of your nose, well that is probably true but i have eaten out in the street vendors twice this last couple of days, I had a barbecue chicken and tortillas it was delicious and I felt great, I was told yesterday by another tourist that there was a great taco stall just 50 meters passed the hotel, so tonight we went to eat at it, they were cooking some great looking beef on a charcoal grill, then they just chopped it up and mixed it with onions and cilantro and tomato salsa and Guacamole, you put on salt and lemon and stuff it in your face, my god they were just amazing, in fact they were better than amazing, so delicious, the funny thing was we were just sat at the side of the road and watching cars go by with some funny looking gringos, it is very dangerous here as the narco's are robbing and killing folks and you just have to be aware of folks around you, they even have a military checkpoint down the road, but street food here is very nice and a way of poor people to eat, so if you get a nice place it can be very interesting and a real experience to eat with the locals.

Mexican Food, Ey Chihuahua !!!!!

I have like mexican food since i was working in the USA, but since arriving here, it is a timely reminder that Mexican food is really nice, the hotel restaurants prepare everything fresh, it takes much longer than a normal eatery but it is well worth the wait, everything is tasty, with flavours of onion and Cilantro, or Corriandor to europeans, full of freshness and unique taste, the spiceyness that is spoken about is all in the Salsa that comes with every tray of Nachos, we had two types in the last hotel, one was made with avocado and green chillies, very unusual and very tasty but not too hot, the other was tomato based and full of many other things plus red chillies and quite hot but full of flavour. They make some fantastic soups and being a soup fan i have been trying them all and my work colleague who is mexican has been getting different stuff and it all looks very nice, i have to try the local fajitas, they look fantastic, I like the food here, probably even better than Indian food, which i also like alot. I will keep the reviews coming of the food here in Mexico.

Video Review Of the Month, James Bond, Retire!!!!

I have seen many new movies this last month and the miserable attempt of some of them to deceive the paying public with their misleading reviews is deplorable.

1. Max Payne, 0/10, piss poor plot, totally without any redeeming features, misleading trailers with demons which dont actually exist. So thin that i almost turned it off and gave up but as a true professional i percevered.

2. James Bond, in french 2/10, poor plot, James Bond was a moody miserable shit all the way through the Movie, some interesting stunts but it didn't hold the movie together enough, Roger Moore and even Pierced Brosnan were much better with some humour in the movie, this one was too dark and miserable.

3. Eagle eye, 3/10 a strange start to the movie with some reasonable acting, plot was thin but watchable but once you realised what the plot was it is a rip-off of I-Robot with a computer taking over the government, too thin a plot and silly

4. MamaMia, 7/10 a really silly movie of a stage play but the plot was really well woven together to incorporate the Abba songs, ( I am an Abba fanatic, just love the old songs) the acting was average but how can you act when your singing, it was silly and funny and very enjoyable.

5. Hell Boy 2, the Golden Army, 9/10, now I know i like science fiction and fantasy movies but this was particularly entertaining, the way the old members were brought together and the underworld was introduced was slick and funny, it was fast and well produced, some very entertaining scenes and special effects

6. Body of Lies, 5/10, The action movie was acceptable with some good acting and an interesting plot but a little too complex, the subject of the movie being the war on terror is a little too disturbing and not good material but was watchable.

7. Chihuahua, of Beverly Hills 0/10, a complete and utter pile of beverley hills dog shite, probably the worst movie ever made, talking dogs for gawds sake, a stupid plot and awfully misleading trailers about Mexican dog cities, so bad I was making terrible comments all the way through even though i only saw it so my little girl cvould watch it, by far the worst movie i have had to watch in a long time

8. Tinkerbell, DVD release only, 2/10, horrible animation from Disney, poor animation and silly plot, being tinkerbell is an airhead, which we all know, so bad I had to walk away as my little girl watched it but for her it was great.

9. X-files 2, -2/10, pathetic, I thought the x-files was about extra-terrestrials, not some piss poor murder kidnap detective story, just a complete joke of a movie, they all deserve to never work again in the industry

10. Madagascar 2, 6/10 A well made rounded movie for kids, a silly story with a plot of sorts but not as funny as the original, great for kids and I enjoyed it also

Las Rocas, what a beautiful setting in the desert

Well we took like 2 hours to get here by taxi, i didnt get upset as I slept through it all, the roads are under redevelopment so as you can imagine it is total chaos, we saw the plant where we are working go passed and then we were counting down until we got to the hotel, it was much further than the hotel office told us but it is the good side of Rosarito not towards Tijuana (Hells gate), the actual spanish translation is Devils Asshole,
so we arrived at the old looking hotel, but it is clean and well kept, the tiled floors look well worn, poor things but the rooms are big and spacious but the views onto the gardens and pools is wonderful ,i can hardly here the thundering traffic along the highway good job really.

So here are the hotels gardens

Tijuana, what does it conjure up in Your Imagination

Well I now know why most Mexicans want to go to the USA, mexico on the border is a miserable place and Tijuana especially is about as horrible as you can get, millions of poor people living in chaos and totally unplanned cinder block housing in a desert. The traffic is just unimaginable with shocking road signs and Baja mexico is nothing like you would expect of a holiday resort, it is a desolate desert with nothing growing, hotels surrounded by shanty housing and the most obvious symbol of thirdworldness is the mountains of shite everywhere, just trash thrown everywhere, the housing looks bad but to have it surrounded by mountains of trash make it look even worse. The obvious signs of a dictatorship are everywhere, jeeps full of masked military, men with guns at every post and armed guards wherever money is about, just amazing to see it, This place is not a good one to be driving about so we are moving to Rosarito to a place down the coast, called Las Rocas, supposedly an old hotel from the good old days that mexico was safe to visit without the fear of being kidnapped or assinated just for fun.

Heathrow Airport a National Disgrace

I think that most of you realise i use the airports all around the world quite a lot and for the most part they are usually new, clean, efficient and acceptable, I have had to use Heathrow Airport in London twice in the last week and the experience has shown me just how amazingly poor this place is. It seems like i had travelled back in time when airports were leftover from wars, it is a shambolic place, no clear layout, poor links around the airport, cheap looking and not very clean, in fact some toilets i used were the smelliest i have used in any airport anywhere, quite unacceptable. What has happened for londons premier airport to be like it, probbably it is all about money, they make money non-stop so why do they bother spending any on building an airport for the 21st centuary. It has an air of a cheapo third world place, a glorified cattle shipping yard. I have seen some fantastic places, like the new one in soeul Korea, which is fabulous and basically every airport in the USA is designed for ease of use, but heathrow is just a joke, ugly smelly not for user comfort, just not acceptable in the 21st centuary, the only problem is that they cannot just knock it down and start again. pity really

Crazy London

Well I arrived in London to a miserable, grey, cold, wet horrible day, what a return, it is always grey when I get back to the UK, I know that I cannot ever return to live here, I love being British and I love the country but after living in the warm tropics I don't like living like an Eskimo, wrapping up and avoiding the wind. I went to my hotel and went straight to bed as I didn't sleep for 2 minutes on the trans-Atlantic flight, I managed a few hours sleep and then went to eat and watched a bit of TV before I went back to bed only 8 hours later so I took a wonderful Valium to get me away, I lasted 5 hours before waking up at 4am, not great but better than staring at the TV all night long, I went into the office next morning and was given all my documents for the embassy and then traveled into London on the train, it was quaint as i don't often get on the train these days and i was able to have a look round at the crazy London building scene. Everywhere you looked there were things being built everywhere, this is a hangover of the silly money that was circulating around the globe. I got the tube to Oxford Circus just off Regents Street, the big shopping area, it was heaving with millions of shoppers all spending like crazy. The Embassy was small and empty, i just got there before they closed and i was given two forms to fill in, with incredible questions,

1, What is the shape of your nose
2, What is the shape of your chin
3, What is the shape of your forehead
4, Pay £98 for the document



I also had to provide fingerprints from my thumbs and photos from the front and side, like a convict, I was then told i should come back 2 days later to pick up my document. When i went back the document was given to me and looked more like a passport, a multi-entry work permit. I was also told that the trip had been delayed 6 days so i was able to go and visit my sister and brothers in good old chesterfield, I had my big bag with me and i had to cross London by tube and lug this 20Kg bag up and down stairs onto trains and up escalators across roads and finally to the rail station which has changed completely since i last used it. it is now called St Pancras International as the cross channel trains now travel all the way to Paris and Brussels, i was lost as it was huge, i wandered around for 20 minutes trying to locate the ticket office and the platforms, almost as big as Heathrow Airport but with only a fraction of the signs. I had been delayed by a tube being late as a jumper had managed to shutdown the tube line for 2 hours and create a huge backlog, then i missed my connection by 3 minutes, so i had soup and a sandwich in a really nice food court in the station, more like an airport really. The train ride was great apart from one of the engines catching fire and having to stop in the middle of nowhere for 30 minutes and then having to change my train and lug my big bag over the platforms and onto another train where i couldn't get a seat, life is such, by the time i got to Chesterfield the night was black at 4.45pm, and raining and cold, i went to my sisters house and settled in with 10 cups of tea and biscuits, I went to bed that night and slept 13 hours, yes 13 hours, the best sleep i have had in 10 years i think, i felt great, the next day i was processing my banking statements, i found i had 2 accounts that I didn't realise i had, and they had charged me £40 to have a dollar account that i thought i had closed 4 years ago, i was also charged tax on my interest on my Euro account, this was due to me having my credit card delivered to Australia and then the bank decided i was not a resident anymore and informed the tax office, miserable buggers, cost me £350, i wasn't happy, I had to spend 2 hours in the bank getting all my account sorted, i demanded that they eliminate the dollar account and not charge me, which they did, but as for the tax, you can't get your tax back and unfortunately it was only 10 days ago that the tax had been paid. Well no it is a matter of waiting until i travel Tuesday morning to the airport at 3.20am, that isn't nice is it, but at least i have a nice destination, Tijuana Mexico, just hope the drug barons don't think I am a US police spy and bury me in the sand.

Costa Rica to Tijuana Mexico Via London

Well it is just the norm for me these days, I have to pick up a work permit for a job but is via some country thousands of miles away. I am traveling to Tijuana Mexico, a beachside resort on the Pacific coast of Mexico and to allow me to work there, I have to pick up my work permit in London, yes this is totally insane, i live 2 hours flight from Mexico city, but i have to spend 4 days flying to London and getting this piece of paper. I know I could have flown to Tijuana and told the immigration i was on holiday and they wouldn't have batted an eyelid, but my company have this policy of doing the right thing, they don't pay bribes and they don't have guys working without the correct paperwork even if it costs 10's of thousands of dollars to get the necessary paperwork. i don't really mind as i get to visit my old office in Bracknell and see all the old guys, who will look lots older than last time, i of course look much younger and far more dashing than i ever did, i am also full of sh*t.
Mexico could be good and the weather seems warm and dry from the forecast as long as i am not mistaken for a drug dealer and kidnapped and executed then all will be good.