Activity Log

I’ve been wondering for a while whether it makes sense for seats in airplanes to be uniformly spaced. Except for the front row (or front rows of various sections, if the plane is large) and the emergency exit row(s), there’s an equal distance between seats. The result of this is that small people are sitting in seats that are too big, wasting space that could be allocated to larger people.

It seems reasonable to assume that the spacing between seats should be portioned according to the curve of the heights of travelers. This would put the limited space to better use.

Is there some reason that airlines don’t do this? (Or do some airlines do it?) I can think of a few reasons they’d want to avoid it:

• Half of all short and average-sized people are stupider than average, and they might complain about the seating being unfair to them, even thought it obviously would not be.
• Maybe there is some operational benefit to uniform space distribution and the uniform weight distribution that this implies.

  Maybe it would somehow adversely impact boarding and deboarding, or would make providing food during the flight more difficult somehow. Maybe planes are designed assuming certain weight per space ratios in certain parts of the plane.

• Groups of travelers would often be separated. I’d end up sitting apart from my wife in such a configuration.
• Data about the heights of travelers would have to be gathered.
• Maybe the distributions of heights vary on different routes, making planes less interchangeable among routes.
• Seats would need to be allocated at the last moment, maybe.

I think it would be worth it, though.

On an inexpensive flight to the US, I could go, buy one Wii and one game for the Wii, and come back. I would end up paying less than what I’d pay to buy them here in Mexico.

Alma unwisely packed some jewelery in her luggage last weekend. Someone - there’s no real way to know whether it happened in Mexico City, Charlotte, or Boston - stole it. One item was her (our? my - I paid for it - ?) engagement ring. I’ll probably continue check in luggage, but I’ll from now on make doubly sure that I don’t pack anything of intrinsic value.

I’m a bit reluctant to write about this, but I should. So I’ll be vague.

I know some Mexican people who live in the US, legally. They’re getting married next year. The mother of one of them lives in Mexico, and probably always will. She has no visa, and is planning to sneak into the US rather than go through the long, uncertain, and humiliating process to get a visa.

Why? Because she wants to go to the wedding, and she believes her chances of being able to get there are greater when attempting to do so illegally.

Limit cheap flights? I’m skeptical, and doubt that pollution from planes is anything close to that from cars and generation.  And, unlike cars, planes really do improve quality of life.  Better to look into making more efficient planes, I think.

Alma’s visa was delivered on Saturday. Now that the process is done, I feel like I can talk about it some more.

She applied for a visa interview appointment in March. It was scheduled for mid-September. The wait times at the embassy in Mexico City are really that long.

When the appointment came closer, I asked an immigration expert I know for help. Her advice was invaluable. We also got two letters of support: one from my dad and one from my brother’s rep in Congress. The letter from the representative was sent directly to the embassy. I do not know whether it was received or whether it had an impact.

I went with Alma to the appointment at the embassy. It was at 7:30. We arrived just after 7:00, and there were literally hundreds of people waiting outside. Adjacent to the embassy is a side street which was cordoned off. Entrance to the interview area was via that street. People were allowed in in groups, based on their scheduled interview times. We waited a while under a tarp that’s set up. There were signs saying that photographs of the embassy are prohibited.

Smaller - but still large - groups were called to another waiting area. There there were periodic announcements about how certain items may not be brought inside, that if your application has two or more errors adiós, and so on. Some staff were available to answer last-minute questions about forms and to do crowd control. They were not friendly. When you got one’s attention, you could ask a question. After answering curtly they’d wander off, so you had to say “Wait please, I have another question.”

Eventually Alma’s group was allowed into the actual interview area. I was not allowed in as I didn’t have an appointment, and especially because - I was told - I’m a US citizen. I could see inside for a moment; there were portraits of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and Tony Garza. The decor was typical of US government facilities: ugly and dated looking. I left, ate breakfast, and waited for Alma.

Finally she was done, told me she got it, and we went to have breakfast. She had her forms and supporting documentation with her, but wasn’t asked to show most of it. She never had a chance to present the letter that my dad wrote. There was little privacy during the interviews. She overheard interviews that took place before hers, including a denial.

Well, she didn’t get it that day; it had been approved, but it would take several weeks for the actual visa to be delivered. That finally happened on Saturday.

Tips for Mexicans who want visas to visit the United States.

These apply specifically for Mexicans who want to get a B2 tourist visa. Maybe they’re relevant for other classes of visa, or for people from other countries seek visas, but I do not know.

When you apply for a visa to visit the US, there are several things that your assessor will want to see. Two are no-brainers: they want to know that you’re not a terrorist and they want to know that you’re not a criminal. What’s less obvious, but just as important, is that they want to know that you have ties to Mexico and that, at the end of each stay, you will promptly return to Mexico. Intention is impossible to prove for any reasonable definition of “prove”, of course, so instead they look at indicators. If you’re an adult, you had better be employed or retired. And if employed, the longer at the same place the better. You’ll want a letter from your employer, stating your position, how much you make, etc. They’ll want to see evidence of a bank account, which hopefully has a significant amount of money in it. If you own property, you should prove that. Etc.

They might ask you domain-specific questions about your work. For instance, Alma, who works as a webmaster, was asked what programming languages she uses. I imagine that they have canned questions of a similar nature for other professions: a mechanic may be asked what kind of cars he specializes in fixing; maybe doctors are asked in what field of medicine they practice, etc. I do not believe that your specific answers matter. Rather, what matters is your ability to answer them confidently. A “doctor” who says “uhh, I, like, you know, help sick kids and stuff” won’t look nearly as legit as one who says right off the bat that he is a paediatrician.

During your interview, answer honestly. Don’t equivocate. [Una nota para hispanoparlantes leyendo éste: “to equivocate” no significa lo mismo que “equivocar”, sino “dar evasivas”. No lo hagas.] When filling out your application, there will likely be some ambiguous questions. Either answer to the best of your ability, or leave them blank in the hope that while you’re waiting outside the embassy, the staff can help you. The staff isn’t friendly or very helpful, but if you can get and hold their attention, they should give you decent advice. If you can’t get them to help you, fill in the blanks you left to the best of your ability. Some questions you won’t be able to answer accurately at all. If you’ve been to the US before, but that was ten years ago, it’s natural to forget the exact dates of your last trip. So put down the year and an approximate month. Tell the assessor that you can’t remember exactly when. There is no point in lying to the assessors about this; they know when you last visited the US - and probably much more besides - already. Don’t lie about other things either. If they catch you, adiós.

This isn’t legal advice, of course. I’m just trying to distill what I know in the hope that the process makes a little bit more sense and that fewer Mexicans are denied entry for no good reason. It might be relevant for people from other countries, but I don’t know for sure. My guess is that it isn’t wrong, but it may focus on things that aren’t relevant to other people. And yeah, I know; I should translate this to Spanish.

Politics.

There is one word to describe all this nonsense: “shameful”. For a variety of reasons that I don’t want to get into right now, I don’t often refer to the US as “my country”. But I felt ashamed that morning outside the embassy, and I feel ashamed - and angry - writing about it now. Given the reprehensible treatment of people who are trying to follow procedures correctly and honestly, it should be no surprise whatsoever that so many Mexicans attempt to enter the US illegally. Many applicants are old people, whose children now live in the US; they want to visit their kids. They’re not wealthy or well-educated, and they didn’t get a member of Congress to support their application, nor did they have access to an immigration specialist. Many of them, undoubtedly, made unimportant errors on their applications and subsequently had their petitions for visas denied, at a non-refundable cost of some $100 USD, which is a lot of money for such people.

Being allowed to go where you want to go is a human right. Aside from the rare person who would present a genuine and predictable danger to people already in the US (this is limited to violent criminals and people with serious communicable diseases, as far as I can see), there is no conceivable reason whatsoever to deny entry to the US to anybody. Some people might have misguided economic ideas, but for the most part it’s racism. Or maybe nationalism or some other word; the point is that discrimination based on country of birth is no less abhorrent than discrimination based on genetics.

Some people will enter the US and attempt to stay there. That’s good for the US! Some people will enter the US, see the sights, go shopping, and return home. That’s also good.

In addition to being dehumanizing, the process is needlessly complex. If it were true, I would just say that governments worldwide make things more complicated than they need be. But it isn’t true. I’ve looked for official documentation about immigration to Canada and the UK. It was easy to find and easy to understand. It was even friendly. I also remember that Australia’s procedures were quite simple, although things may have changed since 1999. A Mexican does not even need a visa to enter Canada; they’re necessary to go to the UK, but they are quick and easy to get.

The actual decision-making process is not, as far as I know, documented anywhere. It seems to be to some extent arbitrary; if your assessor doesn’t like you, tough luck. It have been told that there is an appeals process, although my understanding is that it is not at all transparent and that decisions are rarely overturned.

I don’t think many Americans realize just how badly the US treats foreigners who are trying to do the right thing. I’m sure most would be extremely indignant upon receiving such treatment from other countries.

It costs MXN $385.47 per person per direction to fly from Toluca to Veracruz, Veracruz with interjet. The flight is just under an hour. To go by bus, with Uno, it costs MXN $470, and takes 5.5 hours. More if traffic is bad or roads are flooded or whatever.

The flight is about an hour, and getting to Toluca from the DF takes an hour, plus time in getting to Metro Observatorio. Even taking into account the need to get to the airport well ahead of time (which proved to be unnecessary in my case, but is probably wise nonetheless), the overall length of the trip is much reduced, and, even better, the worst parts of the trip - being trapped in busses and/or planes - is substantially less.

Next time I go to Veracruz, and maybe even Xalapa, I can’t see myself going by bus.

Last weekend, Alma and I went to Monterrey. We were lucky, because it rained on Sunday, which killed the heat, which made the climate much more bearable.

We flew with Interjet. Given a limited sample size of one round trip, it seems like a decent airline. They fly out of Toluca, not Mexico City, and have a relatively limited set of destinations. But their prices are - for the time that we booked our tickets - the best in Mexico. The planes are comfortable, for planes.

It’s a lot easier to get to Mexico City airport, but getting to Toluca isn’t too bad; there’s a regular bus service from Observatorio to Toluca airport ($80 MXN per person per direction), which takes about an hour if traffic is ok.

Recommended.

Monterrey is noticeably wealthier than Mexico City (or, for that matter, anywhere else I’ve visited in Mexico, with the possible exception of Guadalajara, where I haven’t spent enough time to really be sure). Being attractive to foreign investors will do that. I’m told electricity service doesn’t randomly stop all the time, even in wealthy areas. And, being close to the US border, shitty transportation infrastructure is less of a problem (although I think it’s better anyway), because decent roads and rail are only two hours away.

I can’t see myself wanting to live there due to the heat and the car centricity, but in many ways it does seem more attractive than Mexico City.

I don’t think that central and southern Mexico will ever catch up to the north without a sea change. People here prefer to be poor.

Dear Lazyweb,

I’m planning a trip from Mexico City to Boston in late November. If I bought today, I could get tickets for $293 with Northwest. Tickets with American Airlines, with whom I have a frequent flier account and a fair amount of miles racked up, would cost $364. I can someday use those miles to upgrade to first class or fly cheaply.

The difference in cost is $71. Are the miles I would get from flying with AA worth $71? How can you figure this out?

The details don’t matter a lot. What matters is how I can work out the dollar value of frequent flier miles, especially without navigating AA’s hopelessly shitty website. The question comes up every time I plan a trip that I will pay for (as opposed to traveling for work, where my employer pays).

Update: my brother pointed me to this article which clears things up: I should almost certainly buy the cheaper tickets. Although the duration of the trip probably varies, and I’m willing to pay a bit more for a shorter flight, so that’s a consideration too.

I was just told about kayak.com.
It is a travel search website that actually works. Amazing. I
thought there was some natural law that the people behind travel
websites have to be idiots (that’s a technical term,
you know). (See mexicana.com for confirmation of what I mean. Or,
better yet, don’t. It isn’t worth your time.)

The people behind kayak clearly
are not idiots. Seriously. I’d be happy if the site didn’t have any
of the cool ajax shit but simply worked; it still would be the best in
its field, bar none. But with the cool ajax shit, it’s orders of
magnitude better than any competition I’m aware of.

All of this, of course, raises the question of why airlines, with
billions of dollars at their disposal, are completely incapable of
programming sites that work to any reasonable standard. Granted, most
of those billions go toward new aircraft, fuel, customer harassment,
and marketing. But still.

Wow. Seriously, finding out about kayak, after having struggled with
other, indescribably shitty, travel sites for so long, is as though,
after all my life having to hold my breath to swim underwater,
somebody said to me, “hey, just ******* and you can breathe underwater
just as though you had gills.”

I bought a new camera last weekend, and I bought some memory for it too. The
memory’s packaging was in English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. Cool.

Credit where credit is due: it may be in Texas, but DFW Airport is the nicest
I’ve been through since Singapore.

I got back from Germany last night. A nice trip, although a killer flight, and I wish I could have stayed longer. From what little I saw, Germany seens great. However, when you go to a new place, it often takes a while for the woo-shiny-new gloss to wear off and for the problems to surface. So I don’t doubt it has its share. Still, things seem really modern (far more so than in the US) and usually efficient. I saw one SUV the whole time I was there. Traffic was sane, and the food was pretty good. Although I don’t think eating traditional German food every day would be a wise idea; very heavy on the meat and not much in the way of vegetables.

Work-wise, I think there is value in trips to other sites because you tend to build camaraderie that way. The same thing happens when you go out for lunch or drinks with the people you see every day, of course, but I think it’s more important for people you rarely see, and mostly deal with over the net.

Last month, I wrote about bad terminology in “computer science”. One term that I forgot about is “overloading”, when applied to functions/methods/opterators/etc. In English, to overload means to place an excessive burden on something. But if you use the overloading technique when programming, you’re actually lessening your burden as a programmer. Assuming you use some taste and good sense, of course.

In Mexico, you can buy Revenge of the Sith in a store for approximately $300 MXN ($28 USD). I saw it today for $285, but I’ve also seen it sold for more than $300. You can also buy a bootleg copy on the street for $50 MXN or less. In the United States, where the average income is substantially higher, you can buy it on Amazon for $18, or at Best Buy for $20.

Yet people wonder why illegal copying is so rampant. Are they truly that stupid?

I’m going to Germany tomorrow. I’ll only be there for 4 complete days. Work purposes. Counting both directions, I’ll be in transit for about 2 weeksdays. I hope it will be enjoyable and informative and a good opportunity to buy clothing that fits. I will miss my fiancée, and need to find some good gift to bring back. No idea what, though.

Curry enchiladas. How delicious do those sound? Got to try it out.

Australia down 2-1 in the Ashes. Oh, the schadenfreude.

Alma resumed English classes yesterday morning. She understands most people
speaking English, apparently, except me. Hmm. I’ve been told more than once
that I speak faster than most people. There are exceptions, of course. People who
speak slowly drive me nuts. By speaking rapidly, I’m just following
the golden rule. That makes me a good person, or something.

When I was in Puebla last month, I picked up Catholic propaganda in a
cathedral. It was all about the Mormons. So I guess you could call it
anti-propaganda propaganda. Thing is, it makes the Catholics look really bad,
and the Mormons look great by comparison. It’s full of unbacked assertions
and “that’s bogus because it’s not how we define the term in Catholisism”.
Kind of disappointing, I guess. I’m a pretty devout atheist, but reading
about religion is still interesting, and I was let down. Maybe my hopes
were too high.

My friend and coworker, Mauro, came back from the United States last week,
bearing, among other things, a hard drive full of linux distributions that
we need here. It was effectively destroyed by airport security.

I feel more secure. Do you?

Let me blunt. I don’t want a bunch of redneck, never travelling, “God”
worshipping, Democrat or Republican voting, basically from anywhere in the
US that’s not the Northeast or the West Coast, Arab hating, Muslim hating,
that Muslims and Arabs are the same thinking, TV watching, car driving,
R pronouncing, idiot Americans lowering my shareholder value!

They’re the ones who want all this extra “security”, all of which makes
everyone less safe, hinders the economy (of the US and other countries
that trade with it), and wastes people’s time.

(Or decreasing my safety, which they’re doing too.)

Got back from la provincia yesterday afternoon. We didn’t complete the square;
our route ended up looking more like a triangle. Never enough time. Oh well.
Had some good food, and saw some impressive sights, and holy crap Guanajuato!,
and so forth. Photos to follow, maybe.

I have to say, though, I was pretty unimpressed with Guadalajara. Definitely
not what I had expected, although now that I’ve been and gone, I’m not sure
I remember what it was that I was expecting. Ditto for León, but
then, it didn’t come so highly recomended.

Driving was definitely the way to go. We couldn’t have spent an afternoon in
a water park on a whim if we’d been going by bus.

Travel plans for next week: load up ipods (and figure out how to use the itrip
that Arturo lent me. I guess it won’t work too well in the DF because the
spectrum is so full.), pack clothes and cameras, borrow a car.

Drive from Mexico City to
Guanajuato, via Querétaro. Probably eat in Querétaro,
probably spend the night and the next day or two in Guanajuato. From there,
go to Guadalajara. Guadalajara is named after the best Mexican song, or
something like that. Get tequila, since we’ll be so close to Tequila. Listen
to Mariachis.

Mexico to Guadalajara via Guanajuato makes roughly a 7 shape. Let’s throw
an L in front of it, completing the square.

Drive from Guadalajara to the coast. Probably avoid Puerto Vallarta, because
there’ll be lots of people there. Some small coastal town will do fine.
Eat costeña food. Drive along the coast to Acapulco. That’ll
probably take two days. Enjoy Acapulco.

Resist the temptation to just never return to the Distrito Federal and
noise and crime and pollution, and keep going towards Oaxaca. (We were
there over the New Year, after all. Not that long ago, really.)

Return to Mexico via Cuernavaca.

Unpack, pick up kitten from Paola. Back to surreality. This is Mexico City,
after all.

If, at any point, people attempt to converse in English, except died in the
wool native English speakers, claim no English, because you’re from
Gales (Wales). You’re already highly amused by this.

I’m taking a substantial pay cut, at least in terms of international
exchange rates. So therefore I found the cheapest flight from
Providence I could find. (Although I have a suspicion that traffic within
Boston will be the best it has been in years during the DNC, the airport
probably will have very tight security.)
It’s going to be a very long flight, with multiple
connections and carriers. I will arrive in Mexico City Wednesday evening,
with greasy skin and a drousy mind, a bad attitude and a sore throat,
and more optimistic and excited and nervous and craving of
cecina than I
have been in a long time. That’s really good. It’ll be better when I eat said
cecina.

There’s a lot of stuff I need to take care of first. Packing, storing, closing
accounts, good-byes - the usual, tedious nonsense that goes with a move.

I’ll be staying with Hans Petter when I first arrive, and there’ll be
a lot of people to meet the first few weeks.

Of course, Boston now seems more attractive than it has in years. Friday night
I hung around Harvard Square with Duncan
and thought about how much I’d miss the place.

Not too much, I expect.

Got my visa today. Hooray.

Author Franklin Foer claims that “humans crave identifying with a group. It
is an unavoidable, immemorial, hardwired instict. [And that] to deny this
craving is to deny human nature and human dignity.”
(Source) What a pretentious sack of shit. That, or I mustn’t be human.
No, that can’t be it, because he comes across as a pretentious sack of shit
in the whole interview. Like a goddamn NPR reject, which is what the Atlantic
seems to be full of. That, and very smug, and quite conservative,
former stoners.

Received confirmation that my visa has been approved. The move to Mexico is
closer than ever. Am excited.

Aggression takes a new turn: “Get out of my way. I’m going to Kendall
Square. I’m probably smarter than you.”

Sandino’s
ipaq
looks cool. I’d buy one, if I thought I’d ever use it. Oh, and it
would have to be able to run emacs.