coldhearted scientist وداد

If you have a job in Mexico City then the only time to leave is the weekend but I have determined that the weekend is actually when you should stay because the traffic dies down and it is a completely different place.

Right now it is 14 degrees Celsius but during the day it was 26 and sunny, and you could see the mountains. This will continue.

Lazy and also needing an hour to argue with my university about pay, I did not get out of the house until noon. Then I walked from here, near the fountain of Diana the Huntress, through the Zona Rosa to Roma. I decided I liked the Zona Rosa´s seedy charm, after years of disdaining it. I also noticed that it has many nice, neglected buildings which could be good candidates for renovation. I ate a taco de lengua from a stand.

In Roma, I went to the street fair and stopped off at the Péndulo for coffee and to read the papers. I looked at books, and bought a movie and a CD. Next I continued to examine the street fair, walking to the end and then back. I ate a California roll and a mango with chile and lime. Then I started on my way home.

Below Chapultepec, on the street that leads up to the Angel on Reforma, were three large vans filled with riot police and I realized: the movement #132 march must be about to arrive at the Angel. When I got there I saw I had misunderstood the route of the march: it was not ending at the Angel at 5 PM, but starting there and going in the other direction.

I stuck around to see it assemble; more and more people came. I acquired a bumper sticker, a poster, and a lefty rag. I asked for a T-shirt but did not get one. One member of the march told me he had seen PRI agents filming us and had therefore filmed them.

The transit police seemed to be enjoying this; I considered joining the march but felt I had already walked enough. Had I realized I had a camera with me, I would have taken pictures.

I came home to leave off my things, and then headed out on a Paseo de la Reforma bus to the Auditorio, to look for the Centro Cultural del Bosque where there was a play I wanted to see. I did not get find it in time so I strolled back, past the lake and under the trees, to the Cinépolis Diana where I bought a ticket for the new Colosio movie I had been too tired from walking to go to last night, opening night. People were arriving by cab but for me this is just one of the neighborhood theatres.

I bought guava juice and read academic articles on a bench in the middle of the paseo until the movie started. Before the film came ads for presidential candidate Peña Nieto, which were loudly booed and also laughed at by this audience which had come to see a film denouncing the corruption of his party.

The movie was interesting and the audience was fascinated. Many stayed throughout the credits – I like this kind of audience. I came home then and I have been scouring the Internet for discussions of the Colosio murder, and that was all I did today.

Axé.