November 29, 2012
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Report # 946
Wow my last entry for November, Christmas season is in full swing and I’ll definitely be out taking some Christmas pictures of some of the places around here soon. On Monday morning I finally decided to call the lady at Teleperformance to find out what on earth happened, since I hadn’t heard from her in 10 days. I called her and she answered this time and told me that they are in the process of preparing my letter and that eventually I’ll have to pick it up from the downtown location.
I’m not sure exactly when this will be, but either way I definitely won’t be working until 2013, that is for sure. I really don’t mind when I start, as long as I know for sure that I will get an opportunity to get this done. Tomorrow I will definitely force myself to go to the national migration institute and see exactly what I would need so I am prepared in advance. I have continued looking at other jubs as well, though the Teleperformance one seems to be the by far the best lead right now.
I went for a run at Fundidora Park on Monday morning and returned home and had a shower before walking up to the Las Galerias Mall. I had the super cheap spaghetti and pizza combo, though I think the next time I go for that I’ll only eat half the pizza in one meal as it’s a lot of food. I also had a frappuichino from Santa Clara, which seems to be my newest favourite frappuichino place. I headed home and applied for some jobs in the afternoon and that was about it for Monday.
On Tuesday I went to Interplaza and had lunch at Super Salads and went to see the movie The Dinosaur Project. It was a movie about a British scientific team that headed to a remote jungle in Congo to investigate the possible existence of dinosaurs in modern times. It was kind of a thriller type movie, so very entertaining. I was going to go to the migration place yesterday, but I slept in a little late and I had to be at the Valle Oriente Mall by noon to meet a friend.
We went to Starbucks and had frauppuichinos and then we headed over to a buffet called Los Generales. The food was good because it wasn’t fatty fried stuff and it was a more healthy type of buffet. I finally had lots of fruit, though it probably didn’t help that they were covered in lots of chocolate sauce. We headed back to the mall and walked around for a long time before seeing a movie from Spain called Cambio de Planes (Change of Planes)
I have to say that it had to be one of the best movies that I had seen in recent years. It was a very touching story about a man who encounters a young teen in the hospital and his mom isn’t around to sign the papers for him to continue with his cancer therapy so the boy asks the man to act as his father and sign. And they end up being great friends and both the families and other characters come connected along the way…. just a wonderful movie.
Of course I had to have popcorn too, so once again it was failed day in terms of healthy eating. Today I’ve already done my run around Fundidora Park, and I plan to have Super Salads, so definitely a healthier day. On Saturday Mexico will inaugurate their new president, Enrique Peña Nieto to start his first and only six year term in office. A lot of people in Mexico are upset as they believe his party cheated to win these elections.
He is from the PRI…. Institutional Revolutionary Party in English, the party that ruled Mexico for over 70 consecutive years until they were ousted from power in 2000. After 12 years on the sidelines the party has returned, thus giving some people a little bit a fear that its the same old PRI from before. Now I’m sure there was some fradulent activity taking place, but it would be a bit of a stretch to say that all of this fradulent activity was being done by just one party.
From what I have read there were accusations of PRI party people giving gift cards to people who voted for them, and there probably were, but President elect Nieto won by over 3.3 million votes…. this wasn’t such a squeaker. I really can’t see the PRI being able to buy or bribe that many voters, and imagine that the other parties behaved 100 % honestly themselves. The Mexican court looked into this and has certified the win, and while some people may not think it was fair, I don’t think the outcome could have been altered enough to change the results of the election.
Of course cheating is cheating, and bribing someone to vote for someone else is wrong…. no matter if one person was bribed over hundreds of thousands….. it’s wrong. What really has to be done here is to look to the future and to ensure that the people who are trying to bribe voters with gift cards and vote buying, are identified and punished for these very serious crimes…. no matter which party they work for.
The reality is now though that on December 1 Enrique Peña Nieto and the PRI party will lead Mexico, and people will be better off focusing their efforts on working together with them to help create a better Mexico, and holding the party to account when they believe they are not pursuing an agenda that will have a positive impact on the country and the people in general.
Peña Nieto has been pretty busy this week as he has already travelled to Washington D.C. to visit U.S. president Barack Obama and to Ottawa to meet Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper:
From: esmas.com
From: torontosun.com Andre Forget QMI Agency
I think it was a good plan by him to meet with the leaders of the NAFTA countries and to discuss what some common goals and priorities are for the countries over the next couple of years.
With Nieto in power for six years, Obama for over four more years, and Harper at least until sometime in 2015, the leaders will have plenty of opportunities to meet and work together over the next few years. I watched the press conference meeting that Nieto had with Obama, and I read about his conversations with Stephen Harper, and there was a lot of positives.
Harper said that he does prefer visa free travel, and that once Canada fixes the broken immigration system, Mexicans will be able to visit Canada without visas once again. I’ve long been against the visa requirement, and I hope this will be something that happens sooner rather than later. And US president Barack Obama and Nieto talked about things related to immigration, and certainly a lot needs to be fixed on that front as well.
So while Enrique Peña Nieto is not the president that many people in Mexico wanted, for better or for worse, he did win the election. And while there is no excuse for fraud and cheating, ultimately the decision to accept a gift and change their vote lies with the voters themselves, so anyone who did sell out their democratic principles to change their vote and receive a gift really has only themselves to blame.
While there is a lot of not so nice stories in the personal life of Mr. Nieto, he will utlimately be judged how he performs as president over the next six years. If he can do what so many other Mexican presidents have failed to do over the years, which is to really boost salaries in this country, raise living standards, combat the corruption, and put a halt to the drug violence, he will be remembered very fondly as a president. And with a whole six years he has a hell of a lot of time to implement some great policies and create some very positive changes.
A lot of people are against Nieto as president, but just like with every election in any country, sometimes the person that you didn’t vote for wins, and after its time to accept the results and get to work for the good of the country. If Nieto truly cares about this country and can govern without corruption, and the citizens and the people from the other parties work together to help him out, the sky is the limit for the next six years in Mexico.
If people choose to spend the next six years pointing fingers, and fighting and politicians from every party go against all the other parties on every single measure, then of course the next six years will be a mess and things will look no better by 2018. People and politicians have a choice, and if they choose positivity over negativity, to help over to hinder, compromise over disagreement, and hard work over corruption, I believe these next six years will be very good for Mexico.
And the stronger Mexico gets is not only better for the people in Mexico, but for Canada and the United States as well. NAFTA has been so great for the three countries, and the stronger each one of them are, the better off the continent is as a whole. And I’m sure no one in North America wants to end up like Europe right now ! For the next question:
Do you view NAFTA and similar agreements between countries as a positive or a negative ? What changes would you implement to the NAFTA agreement ?
That’s all I have for today. I will leave you all with some pictures from Ixtapa, Guerrero. Take care and I’ll talk to you all on Sunday, bye for now.
Comments (3)
Good you called to find out what was going on with that job offer since you didn’t hear back from anyone for over a week. At least now you know you’ll start in 2013. Better late than never! You have time to prepare and make sure you’re ready to start. Good luck.
The food and movies sound amazing, as always. That’s surprising to have a “healthy” buffet!
Beautiful pictures of the sunset.
It sounds like that dinosaur movie was like another type of Jurassic Park? I’ve seen Jurassic Park only once, but it seems to me that it was the same…about dinosaurs being discovered alive.
I am definitely keeping you in my thoughts on the job front. That has to be so frustrating to not hear back from people and to have to sit around and wonder what is going on. I hope something opens up for you soon.