Expat Life

Not sure if you heard, but last weekend the Mexican government seized Luz y Fuerza del Centro, Mexico City’s power utility. The government’s reasoning: The company was inefficient and corrupt. (To quote Joan Cusack in High Fidelity: “That is shocking.”)

I’m all for Mexico ramping up its efficiency. And Luz y Fuerza workers were notoriously bad — they’d siphoned so many dollars off the public that they built themselves a $10 million basketball gym. Meanwhile, customers in their offices often had to wait hours, just to speak to a human.

Good on Calderón, for taking a stand. I just wish we knew more about what’s supposed to happen next. According to El Universal, the government has mentioned hiring some of the workers back. But what is the public supposed to do in the meantime? We no longer have an electricity company. (Does anyone else think that’s weird?) It’s gone. Dissolved.

People can still pay their light bills at the bank, but no one has explained where that money is going, or whether we’ll all be in arrears once the new agency opens. And what if you have a power outage? To whom do you complain?

Sporadic outages have popped up around the city, although no one has come out and said, “It’s because they closed Luz y Fuerza!” Yesterday, Alice’s power was shut off, and she came over to store some things in our refrigerator. She mentioned that Contramar had no power, and neither did several comida corrida places in her neighborhood. People were eating in the dark.

“The issue is that no one knows who’s turning the lights on, and who’s turning them off,” she said.

Later, I asked our neighbor Carlos: What happens if we lose power? Whom do we call? I thought that he, being Mexican, would know how to handle all this.

He smiled at me and said, “Don’t suffer if you are not suffering.”

Huh.

Never thought of it that way.

But he’s pretty much right. It seems like in Mexico, all you can do is educate yourself about what’s going on, and then hope and pray that the worst stuff doesn’t happen to you. We have no control over any of it. I have candles, windows, a man I love, friends, a gym to take showers at. I made a particularly awesome apple-granola crisp this morning. I guess those are the things that matter, and not the possibility that we could lose power.

Going to go eat my apple crisp now. And by the way, props to Gancho Blog for helping me understand this whole Luz y Fuerza mess.

About a month ago, while paying the visit to the chicken lady at Mercado Cuauhtemoc, I spotted a guy selling paper goods and remembered that we needed plastic wrap. Without thinking much about it, I picked out one for 20 pesos (less than two bucks) and took it home.

I have since cursed every day of this plastic wrap’s existence. This is it below.

(Yeah, Wezer Shine! I’ll “Wezer Shine” you, in the eye!)

It’s not that it’s not sticky. It’s too sticky. It clings to everything. It clings to its own cardboard tube, causing holes when I try to peel off a piece. It clings to my fingers. It clings nicely to a bowl, but that result is not worth the horror it takes to get there.

This box has no metal teeth. Did you know they even make plastic wrap boxes without metal teeth? I didn’t. This means I have to dig out a pair of scissors every time I want a piece of plastic wrap. And of course the wrap clings to the scissors, too.

When I do manage to cut off a piece — it took me awhile, but I learned the secret’s in the angle of the scissors, juxtaposed with the angle of the wrap — the plastic immediately shrinks back onto its tube. (Like a snake scurrying back into its hovel!) So if I want to cut another piece, I can’t tell where I started. There are no seams, people. NO SEAMS.

After two months of this crizzap, I decided to say basta. Last time I was in the States, I bought a tube of plastic wrap from Target. It looked really pretty. Especially when placed daintily on a table runner.

I cannot wait to use it.

A few days ago I went to Superama to buy a few groceries. As I made my way to the herbs, I noticed cilantro was missing among the bunches of epazote, mint and flat leaf parsley.

I wanted to groan. This store NEVER has cilantro. Or… maybe it was hiding somewhere.

I asked an employee standing nearby if they had any. He shook his head. “It hasn’t arrived,” he said.

Arrived? Arrived from where? We live in Mexico. It should take up half the space in the produce truck! I didn’t say any of that, though. Instead I told him, “You know, four out of five times that I shop here, the store has no cilantro. Isn’t that odd?”

“I guess you have bad luck,” he said.

I bought the rest of my groceries, and ended up stopping for cilantro at the mercado near my house. But I didn’t see it immediately, which caused me to get all worked up all over again. (What the eff is going on in this country?) The guy there asked me what I needed, and I said in the sweetest voice possible, “Do you have any cilantro?”

He led me down the aisle, and pulled a thin, rather wimpy bunch of cilantro out of a grocery bag. I thought about bad-mouthing Superama to him, but I didn’t.

Later that night, I deconstructed the story in detail to Crayton. He told me that since Superama is owned by Wal-Mart, there is probably a reason why our local store never has any cilantro.

“They’ve determined there isn’t a high demand for cilantro in the community,” he said, very business-reporter like.

“That’s CRAP!” I exploded. Although I didn’t say crap. Sorry mom.

I don’t know why cilantro has me all worked up, but it does. This is a basic staple in Mexican cooking. I should be able to find it on every corner. And actually, it IS on every corner, chopped finely as topping for tacos. What about the poor ama de casa who just wants to make tofu dip, dammit?

I didn’t have enough for my tofu dip, so I ended up using it in a layered tortilla casserole. Which fell apart in the oven.

Somewhere up there, the cilantro gods, in shackles and chains, are doubled over and laughing.