Posting in the rain

Reminds me of that famous show tune by Freed and Brown. There are so many ditties in my past mentioning that famous event. Rain on the Roof (Lovin' Spoonful), It Never Rains in Southern California (Albert Hammond) to mention a few.

Speaking of ... sitting on the deck watching the rain pummelling my surroundings. Reminds me of my living in the grande casa in Craig Henry where I would sit in the garage and watch it pour. That place was not stereotypical of suburbia, where the garage is so full of crap, one could only fit a pencil let alone a vehicle. We almost always had two cars parked at 3 Wolverton in the garage (pronounced gayr-udge which we hear on British TV).

Big list of things to do today, rather over the next few days. The most pressing is a SIM for my Ottawa cell. I have been using a product called Rebtel for years which can be set up to do wifi calling 100% of the time. D will decide (unlike most decision which my baby makes) with respect to the priority of what we do and in what order. We spoke to Hugo and will make an appointment at immigration to go in and do the temporary to permanent visa manoeuvre. We also need to see if I still need to fill out their FMM entry form due to my visa status now and what it will soon be.

The surf at Playa Madera is very active and seems to be intruding into the sand higher than I am used to seeing. I imagine with upwards of 2 inches or precip expected today, that is likely to affect the surf. I always get a kick out of how one can look at a handful of web sites with accurate forecasts but differences of temperature and current conditions. The site I use on my phone proudly states the weather when you really need it. I am still looking for something in my past or looming in the future where I go to their site when I don't really need the forecast, whatever that means.

We will have to be quite creative when selecting footwear for such heavy rain conditions. I initially suggested rubber-based sandals then Dominique pointed out how wretched the rainfall is when it pools and picks up who knows what sort of contaminants on the ground. The worst pooling I saw was in Addis Ababa where the drainage system for rain was so immature it hardly did anything. One day I worked from my guest house and was informed there was a 3-foot wave coming down Arat Kilo (street where I worked) at one point midday. Dominique favours some sort of boot, so we shall see. Close to Plaza Kioto there is a Copell maga shoe store which will probably suffice for finding some garb.

The visit to immigration was less than what we expected. We had been informed by the embassy in Ottawa that once we were in Zihua, we had 30 days to go to immigration and they would issue the permanent residency visa. Once we got there and inquired about what we expected, we were told that they could not issue the permanent visa as the visa type in my passport said Temporaire. The agent told us all she can do is process for the issue of the temporary resident visa. This was contrary to the story from the embassy at home, but what could we do ... nada.

Some 2.5 hours later, the visa was finalized and I got my temporary visa card, for a whopping 5,800 or so MXN pesos. Supposedly I now have 3 more years of temporary visa then can apply to make it permanent.

This was the culmination of expenditures in excess of $750 to get the visa approval and subsequent pasting of the temporary visa in my passport. Then there was the 15+ hours of time it had taken me to prepare all the paperwork for the initial interview in June of this year that led to a second interview in August. Then there's the fee I had to pay today of about $425 CAD to get the card. This whole exercise has cost me north of $1,100 as well as close to 20 hours for time spent prepping and waiting at the embassy then the processing done today. It will involve seriously more time and cash outlay to finalize this process three years from now.

What was most intriguing (and annoying) was I followed the instructions verbatim on the Embassy of Mexico's web site related to GETTING A PERMANENT RESIDENT VISA and then all this. Not only that, the advice I was given perhaps by the embassy did not include the mention of the 4-year temporary visa waiting period to become permanent.