On my way to Bosques today, I was reading this article about luck and so far I’ve had some pretty clear signs and definitive experiences that lead me to believe that I’m not a naturally “lucky” person. Not that I’m not lucky to have the life I have, but I’m not lucky in life so to speak. We all know someone who dip-dahs through life, almost unaware this concept we call decision-making because they generally don’t have to take part in it – it’s as though things just fall into their lap. I was thinking that maybe it’s because they let things happen and therefore they just do, unlike someone like myself who is constantly measuring the good and bad outcomes of every situation. Maybe that’s part of it but I’m under no impression that my “luck” status would be otherwise if I wasn’t the way I was.
Anyhow, last week my mum dropped by Mexico City for an overnighter en route to a favourite destination of ours, Puerto Escondido. Come Saturday morning, we made way for the massive artisan market in Buena Vista via the Metrobus of course. As we passed Durango, we stopped at the subsequent set of lights, as you do (or some do here). A mass of bikers came rushing across Insurgentes, west to east, as our light turned red and continued to pass through another set of lights. Obviously it was some sort of organized “parade” of bikes, and among the ugly, low-rider types, there were police on their trikes, skeleton-mask wearing dudes, dudettes, and even kids on four-wheelers. As we sat through two sets of lights the cars behind, who couldn’t see or suppose what was going on to cause such a hold-up, began honking their horns.
I noticed a gold car impatiently nudging its way through the bikers as a means of regaining control of the path and getting where it wanted to be which was obviously more important than letting this group have its day. What choice did they have? The bikers slowed down enough to let her pass when they saw her crawling through them and when the driver realized this, she blew on the accelerator. Just as she saw the front of her car saw the other side of the road, a biker came flying around the side of the group, unaware of the car, and was impacted by it so strongly that his motorcycle ripped off the entire front fender of the gold car, his bike went flying into a tree, and he flipped twice before landing on his stomach and sliding under a car parked on the side of the road.
The incoming group of bikers immediately surrounded the gold car, like mosquitoes to my sister, and started revving their engines in anger. Luckily our injured biker was wearing a helmet. Luckily there were police scattered amongst the riders. Luckily there were paramedics in a van driving parallel to them. A crowd quickly drew and, though I will never understand it, there, within 30 seconds of the crash, was a photographer with his 300mm lens poking his extended eye between officials, bystanders, and paramedics. How was he there?! Unless these magazines have photographers stationed at posts on every corner of the city…how…it’s a phenomenon.
As police worked to move those angry bikers from the center of the road to allow traffic to flow south to north, I caught a glimpse of the driver, sitting with her legs swung around so she was at the wheel with the car door open. I can’t describe her attitude as anything else but indifferent. She was talking with an official and didn’t seem to be the least bit perturbed by what had unfolded. Whatever she was rushing to get to would be a lot further in distance and time from there and now.
So, do we chalk it up to “bad luck”? Or just another stupid driver? Some call it “fate” but I think I’m going to go with bad luck. Not that he was an unlucky person, but he did happen to have terrible luck that day. I wasn’t around on Sunday to pick up the Metro to find out what had happened to the biker but even if I was, there’s a good chance it might have been booted from the cover story in favor of a good and gory one anyway. No blood, no story apparently.
That was a Saturday morning shocker. But we had business to attend to. The market was more of a warehouse and even though it was stocked with plenty of tacky tidbits, there were treasures to be found and find them we did.
Mum had arrived with one too many suitcases to begin with and I was well into two, so as I caved under the weight of a box full of hand-blown glasses and watched mum balance herself with two long packages (one containing three rolled canvases, the other, all of the wood pulled apart that would make the frames), I wondered.
We loaded ourselves into the taxi with a grand total of 5 suitcases, a computer, 2 hats, a duvet bag packed with curtains, books, and a purse, 2 large side bags, and an 11x14 inch envelope containing photos I’d developed at Costco. Luckily the plane was only half-full, but unluckily, the airline was particular about its weight limits on baggage and there was a hefty fine to pay. In fact, it was cheaper to return to Mexico City to retrieve the luggage then fly back to Puerto Escondido than pay their fees. Ni modo. We had to get there and we had to get there with everything.
When we arrived, Ryan, the guy who we (I say “we” like I took part in buying the place, but I didn’t. They. They, my parents, bought it) bought the apartment from, informed us that the electricity bill had never been delivered to him and so since he hadn’t known that there was a bill to pay he hadn’t paid it. So when he went into the apartment that morning to check that everything was in place, he discovered that the AC was out, the lights didn’t work, the fridge was hot as the days there…no matter how much you prepare here, Mexico time is a fighting force that will undoubtedly disappoint your plans. The best advice is to just not make plans. Unluckily, our electricity was off and it was the weekend so there wouldn’t be any help until the work week arrived. Luckily, the apartment below Ryan’s was empty until Monday so we took an overnight bag there each and set up shop.
First thing first: we took a dip in the unreal ocean-view pool. Fresh out of the shower, I patted myself dry and thought about eating as I pulled a shirt out of my bag, a pair of shorts, a bra, uh….no underwear? I didn’t bring any underwear? Well, save the pair I was wearing when I arrived. Okay, bathing suit bottoms would suffice for the time being. We decided on dinner at Los Tugas that first night just to avoid collecting food at our “host’s” place. Delicious Portuguese cuisine!
Surprisingly, I relived the same shock I had already experienced during the “no underwear?!” incident earlier that evening when I went to get into my pajamas. “What? No pajamas?!” Unluckily (or simply absent-mindedly?) I had failed to pack both underwear and nightwear for my 6-day trip to Puerto Escondido, but luckily, I had brought with me two bathing suits and we discovered an over-sized t-shirt of my Grandad’s that he had packed into a box to be delivered to our place the following day.
Gerald, a kind German man and Rotary Club member who my Grandad befriended on one of his many trips to the small coastal town when he was doing Rotary work there some years ago (and continues to do as President of his local club), came on Monday. He delivered a slew of numbered boxes that my Grandad had organized, complete with inventory list before he and my Granny left a month earlier. He unloaded those into the apartment and we loaded our unbelievably sweaty selves into his truck. Being a well-doing, modest, bit beyond-the-hump kind of a man, we stuck to small talk with Gerald, inquiring about his Mexican journalist/insurance broker wife, Yolani, and thanking him repeatedly for taking us out today, especially since we didn’t have a car. To this, he always answered that he was retired, “It’s no problem,” then fell into a happy mumble about how he’s not too busy to help us out, retired something, something else…all the while smiling slightly under his light-gray, but heavy mustache.
Beds. We found beds at Ramon’s which wasn’t called Ramon’s but Ramon was a friends of Gerald’s and so that was how we knew the store as. Unfortunately, Puerto’s meager - colorful but meager - center was a bit lacking in the furniture department. There were plenty of papelerias, cerrajerias, farmacias, lots of –ias, but furniture styles didn’t really differ much between stores and tended not to stray far from primary-colored, metal-framed designs and cheap, flamboyant woodwork. I understood this, but with its rapidly growing real estate market aimed at foreigners willing to delve into their accounts at a single glance, a new market in furniture had to be growing up somewhere between the –ias and shacks.
Luckily, we were with Gerald. Our longtime resident friend located a carpenter who had a few nicely stained, cleanly cut items on display and we simply asked him to make a couple of side-tables, a dining table, two chairs and a bench based on the coffee table design that was on display. So it was done. Well, it’s been paid for, but we won’t know how it all turned out until Gerald returns to pick it up and pay the other half of the bill in three weeks. He was at some point drawing out sketches and measurements on the lady’s desk however, so I’m thinking that he will take his standards with him and measure their work up when he does return. On the ride back, we discovered that Gerald bakes his own bread and he likes bratwurst.
One day, while we were having a “business meeting” in the pool overlooking the ocean and sipping on rum and cokes, our neighbors approached us. Of the 6 apartments, they were the only neighbors of ours who were there at the time and some things needed to be sorted – boring things, like electricity bills, gas, shared patio buys, etc. We never did find out what the wife’s name was. Maybe it was the rum distorting out hearing, or maybe it was because she responded to both Dina and Lina when we tried to find out which one it was. So we decided we would just do this when we called to her: “Dlina!” She didn’t notice the difference and so neither did we.
Harvey, the hubby, was talking to us about house numbers one day after mum inquired about our address: we were number 1, he informed us on the second to last day of our stay. Not that it was his obligation – it was completely ours but we’d never bothered to find out so we had asked him what his number was and figured it out from there. As he told us his address, number 4, he stopped and stewed in his thoughts for a second. Then he looked down at us in the pool (yes, we were there again – business meeting) and said, “Isn’t the number 4 unlucky in China?” Since I’d just spent some time in China, I thought back to what I’d learned while I was there, and indeed, the number 4 was unlucky, Harvey. So if the number 4 was unlucky, then what number was considered lucky in China? 8, the number 8. I don’t know if the lightbulb moment I was experiencing lit up my face but it sure inspired me to take a hearty gulp of my drink. Now that I thought about it, that explained my sister’s uncannily close relationship with luck. Date born: 8/8/86. I guess the only way you could be more set-up to travel with Lady Luck would be to be born on this date in 1988, nevertheless, she has luck aplenty to deal with. My dad says she was born under lucky stars, that’s all, but I’m starting to think that this “8” business has something to do with it.
Here’s her story, if she doesn’t mind its being told. When she was 15, she got a job at a seafood restaurant waitressing. She decided one day that she didn’t like it and chose not to return nor to inform them that she was quitting. Not only did they not punish her for this behavior but offered her a job there some years later again. She didn’t take it of course – tigers never do something they don’t want to do.
When she decided that she needed to work, she went to stay with a friend at his house on Orcas Island for the summer and together along with another buddy, they did odd jobs around the place, like fixing the patio. The local Sherriff and town tiler offered her a job working with him doing tiling when he saw the three of them working and so she did a bit of work with Mr. Clever.
The next summer, she returned to Orcas and took up an unexpected apprenticeship with Sherriff Clever and ended up doing work for both Warren Miller and Richard Bach. Incidentally, Richard Bach and his wife didn’t have children and took a real liking to my sister. I would even say that Richard took her under his wing. That summer, he taught our thrill-seeking Jessica how to fly a plane, since it happened that he had a couple of things lying around a hanger on the island.
The next summer, she set-up her own tiling company at the ripe old age of 19 thanks to wandering into an apprenticeship.
As some of you will already know, Jess and I traveled to Asia together. During this time she decided that she wanted to be a vet – we all breathed a sigh of relief at this realization because she’d always loved animals but farted around at UVic for 2 years instead of getting her act together to do what she loved. She put out some feelers and applied to schools in the UK and Australia while we were in China. When she returned, she signed up to do Science courses for semester in order to bring up some of her grades and take other necessary old-haunt courses that she had evaded in high school. Granted, she worked hard for 3 months and sent in all of the requirements. By December, she’d received a couple of “no’s” and hadn’t heard from other schools so she’d accepted that she wouldn’t be going to vet school this year. Besides, she had already booked herself a ticket to Perth to go traveling for another half-year.
We were all together in Puerto Escondido over Christmas and New Year’s. She left on January 3rd and when she was waiting at an airport somewhere in the US, she checked her email on a whim and discovered an email of acceptance into the one school she really wanted to go to and where was it? Perth. She had 3 weeks to prepare her things before she was set to go, and would arrive there 2 weeks before school started. So she started trying to find a place to stay – and ended up chatting with one girl who she got along with really well. Her and her two roommates had been contacted by a lot of people and would be holding interviews this weekend. But Jess wouldn’t be there…oh well, you have to let some things go right? Wrong. She arrived and noticed an email from this girl which told her, in essence, that her and her roommates decided that they wanted Jessica to be their fourth roommate because they just had a feeling it was right. A week before school started, she was settled into her new house and was informed by the school that they had reviewed her profile and had decided that she could jump straight into the 5-year program instead of doing the 6-year program, usually recommended for students without a strong background in sciences.
So if that’s not someone born under lucky stars, then what is it? That said, she is very deserving of the luck that she does have and I will, one day, ask her to apply for my jobs when I decide to have them, ask my bank for a loan when I decide to re-enter the real world, and pick my lottery numbers when I decide to exit it again.
I don’t know how Harvey felt about being “unlucky” number 4 of the condo block but he did say something about putting a one in front of it and making it 14. Perhaps he is superstitious – the reason why we’re superstitious is because those superstitions are usually knee-deep in experience. S#*$ happens, does it not? Or maybe he’s just unlucky enough to have chosen condo number 4.
Our days became a routine – work in the morning (and twice in the afternoon for me – I don’t know why I agreed to do Phone English classes while I was on holiday, especially for a measly $25), poolside talks and drinks in the afternoon. I hate to say it, but even Zicatela and Carrazilillo were a chore. Well, the latter really is a chore – it’s something of a physical feat getting back up those stairs, but a total pleasure when you’re down in the deep bay. Zicatela has some brilliant brick-oven baked pizza, but I don’t remember the name of the place. Trust me – you’ll know when you find it. I think it’s opposite the cinema which in itself is discreet.
Well, there is no “lucky” side to this incident. Unluckily, my computer kicked the bucket on our third day in Puerto. There was no rhyme or reason, I just turned it on and was met with a black screen that read “NDLTR is missing. Press the enter key to continue_” which I did and the message just repeated itself. If anyone does know the answer I don’t want to know now because I’ve already reinstalled Windows and lost all of my photos and writing. Bummer. Big bummer. But this is the thing, when you’re struck with unluck, what can you do apart from accept it? Actually, here it is: luckily I had backed up all of photos onto CDs a couple of weeks earlier. It doesn’t make up for the make-me-go-nuts fact that I am left to “reconstruct” my computer and I’m a complete computer dunce, but it does reduce the pain that this random stroke of bad luck would have inflicted on me had it been otherwise.
All in all, we had a fantastic time eating authentic Italian food in this little nook of Mexico, drinking 2 x 1’s on the Adoquin, lounging and laughing poolside (sans loungers – they have yet to be located. I know, surprising isn’t it, ironic mostly – beach town yet no patio furniture), fixing up the place (I was our handyman for the week – although Gerald did barge in with his toolbox and electric drills at one point, he wore a whole lot of purpose on his face and did his work efficiently), pretty much “taking care of business.” If this is what doing business can be, I’m ready for more work.
Lucky or not, I had a great time in Puerto and am already planning a return trip… I guess I would have to say that I consider myself lucky to have gone!
