She Said...

August 19, 2007

There are times when many things happen, which it gives me pleasure to share with you, dear reader. Sometimes, they are most appreciated by visitors to Ourtown who are sincerely interested in getting a little insight into our everyday lives here, while at other times, my telling of them is directed mostly to my fellow residents, who have lived through similar experiences themselves, and end up feeling a little better with the knowledge that they are not the only ones to have done so.

There are weeks where the space allotted to me does not suffice for all I'd like to share with you, while there are others, like this one, when very little of note, or I should say, noteworthy - has happened, deserving of this space.

Now that I've paid my Telcel bill three months ahead of time, every bill has been delivered on time - of course... now that I don't owe them anything. Not so with my TelMex bill. This one didn't arrive at all this month, for the first time in over a year, that I can recall. Perhaps Mr. Slim didn't like the fact that we told you he was earning $29 Million a day…

And just as I told you last week about how excellent their repair service is, I can tell you now that Cosmored certainly doesn't fall into that category. But I'll get back to that later.

I had a few friends and relatives in town this week, none of which had ever been to Vallarta in the summertime, the rainy season. They had all heard about how much we love this time of year, but it is not something that anyone can fully understand or appreciate, unless they've lived it in person.

On Saturday night, we had agreed to meet and have dinner at ViteA, on the new Malecon, a.k.a. its extension. I parked at the Benito Juarez parking garage, but by the time my friend and I got to the door which gives out onto the Malecon, the skies had opened up, so between there and ViteA, which is just a few steps down, we both got soaked to the bone. The same happened to my relatives who were coming from the other end. So there we were, sitting at our table, soaking wet. It was 8 o'clock. My cousin asked me, "How long do these rainstorms usually last?" I told him, "About an hour, an hour and a half." Outside, children were running and laughing in the warm, pounding rain as their parents slowly walked behind them, indifferent to the fact that they were soaked. The rain stopped at 9:30. My cousin looked at his watch, then at me, in disbelief. We all laughed. Although the rain had stopped, the thunder and lightning - what I like to call one of Mother Nature's more spectacular Sound & Light shows - continued. He asked me, "And how long does that go on for?" "Oh, a few hours," I said. And so it was. Them sitting there, enjoying the superb food, watching the Sound & Light show across the sky, oohing and aahing, while I enjoyed watching them, for hours. Our clothes were nearly dry by the time we left the restaurant.

But all was not light and beauty in Puerto Vallarta. The storm caused myriad brown-outs, flooding and power outages - again. With the destruction of so many trees, and consequently their root systems, and the paving over of so much rain-absorbing areas, the town's ancient and obsolete drainage system is having a very hard time coping with the excess water and the powerful currents it causes.

One of the areas affected was mine. I got home to find that some of our neighbors had no light at all, while others, including myself, had a brown-out.

The next day, the people across the street woke up to find that their internet service was down. As they don't speak Spanish, they asked me to call Cosmored to get it repaired, which I did on Monday. Once, twice, thrice… only to be told at the end of the day that they "wouldn't be able to get to us due to the number of calls they had…" Tuesday, I started calling them again, repeatedly and often. Finally, by the afternoon, I told them that these people's work, and their income, depended on the internet, and that they'd better send someone over right away in order to avoid further complications… They finally did. The WiFi modem had somehow failed to reset itself properly.

Tomorrow is Thursday Night Charity Bingo. We should all remember that the needs of the kids at the Refugio Infantil Santa Esperanza children's shelter do not diminish just because it's low season in Vallarta. They need food and clean clothes all year 'round, and now school supplies too! And they certainly can't make do with what they receive from the DIF family services, so I really hope a lot of you will show up at Langostinos for this fun event.

I also have another friend coming in tomorrow. Though this will not be his first visit to Vallarta, he also has never experienced our summer thunderstorms. I'm looking forward to seeing his reaction too.

Well, by the time you read this, all the kiddies will have gone back to school and the town will officially go into what the locals woefully call septihambre. In case you're not familiar with the term, septiembre is September. Hambre is hunger. Thus septihambre, the month of hunger, financial famine if you will. On the positive side for the rest of us, there will be relative calm for a while, except for all the incessant construction work going on all over town of course. Those of us who have been cocooning in or near our homes will be able to go "out and about" again, until November when the snowbirds fly back down to this, their home away from home.

With all the good movies coming up, I'm sure we won't be bored. And with so many of our favorite restaurants still offering special "summer discounts", we won't go hungry either. By the way, does anyone know if they're going to have a (real) donut shop in one of those mega shopping centers and plazas going up all over the place?...

I want to thank all of you who have sent me emails expressing their sympathies on the theft of the painting I bought from Steve Fisher a few weeks ago, at the Bingo auction. That's all I have for you this week, folks. So I'll end it here, wishing you a most delicious week, full of love and serendipitous happenings …and a Happy Birthday to all the Virgos out there too!

posted by Anna Reisman @ 5:15 PM