December 20, 2012

• Report # 953

  Another three days have gone by and I still don’t know if my work documents have been handed into the migration institute or not. I called the company on Tuesday afternoon and I was told the lady who has to sign the papers and go in was out of town on Monday and Tuesday but that she would go on Wednesday. I didn’t call yesterday but I thought I’d just give them the few days and call tomorrow. I can’t imagine what excuse they’ll have if they haven’t done it by tomorrow afternoon seeing as that would have given them another three full days !

  So it’s very obvious that I’ll be spending Christmas and New Year’s here in Mexico, though I still have no idea what I’ll be doing on those dates exactly… I’ll definitely be doing something. The best I can seem to hope for now is that the company gets my papers handed in this week and that I receive the authorization sometime before the end of January. I can only stay here in Mexico up until February 15, so either way I’d be going home by then.

  I really don’t need to be in the country to receive the authorization, but it is something I’d like to have before going home. So like the last few weeks all I can really do is wait and be patient, though I’ll definitely be calling the lady tomorrow afternoon and if she gives me some other excuse I’ll be extremely, extremely disappointed. I felt a lot better on Tuesday though I didn’t want to rush myself so I decided not to go for a run. I ended up just having lunch at Subway and walking just around the streets for over an hour.

  I stopped in a small neighbourhood park that I’d never been to before and just sat on the bench and relaxed in the sun for almost two hours. Before heading home I walked up to Starbucks and just had a piece of cake and a frappuichino. Yesterday morning I went to Fundidora and did my 10 km run and then I just relaxed by the duck pond for a while, soaking up some sun and cooling off. Aferwards I just walked to Chilis and had something to eat before heading home.

  The last few days have been super hot, around 30 C (86 F) though the next few days here will be around 17 C (64 F) I love the climate here in the winter how it’s a mixture of nice hot summer days, and cooler fall days. Though the temperature never seems to go up or down gradually, some days feel super hot, and then it cools right down for a few days than gets hot again… its a fascinating climate. I definitely have to enjoy it now though because there will become a point in the year where there is no more cool days, and nothing but heat !

  Arturo messaged me on Facebook asking if I wanted to go to the same club as last week but I told him I had something to do this morning as I really didn’t want to spend another mid-week night awake all night doing practically nothing. I just did a quick search through my site to find out the last time I put together an accumulated list of thoughts into one entry, and I found # 14 in February, so if I did the search correctly this will be number 15.

                                                   My Thoughts on Life: Volume 15

  I wasn’t going to say anything about the shooting tragedy at the elementary school in Connecticut, as tragic as it was, I’ve talked about various school shootings before and had said in the past that tragically they would occur again, and unless some important changes are made to the way the American society views guns, these tragedies will continue to happen more often than they should.

  After reading all the talk about guns, people defending them, people speaking out against them, I really felt I had to weight in at least a little. Some people have said the gun laws are stricter now than they’ve ever been, yet these horriffic shootings seem to be occurring more and more often. Just in the past few months in the US, there was the movie theatre shooting, the Sikh temple shooting, the Connecticut elementary school shooting, and a shooting at a mall in Oregon.

  And while it’s obvious it’s not the guns themselves that are responsible for these crimes, but the severely evil, sick, and twisted people of this world, clearly it’s still too easy for certain people to obtain guns. I don’t care what anyone says, but anyone who thinks they have a right to carry a gun with them at all times, whether they go to church, the grocery store, a restaurant or work….. they people are extremists with their views on the weapons.

  While obviously this isn’t to say that they’d be responsible for shootings, I think it is important to point out many people in this world have a shoot first think later mentality, and that poses a danger to the safety of many. I’ve said before if people want to hunt they should be in registered hunting clubs where they have to have the guns registered, and the weapons should only be allowed to be carried along the way to the trip.

  Living in a world where almost anyone could just carry a gun with them would be ridiculous and it’s obvious that it would lead to at least some unnecessary shootings. So one of the main problems is the stores who sell guns, they clearly care a lot more about profits than they do about public safety. I’m not a psychological scientist here, but selling a highly powered weapon to a guy with Nazi symbols or tattoos symbolic of Satan on his body really sounds like it would be a horrendously bad idea.

  It’s obvious the people selling guns don’t care about safety too much as long as they are making money. Someone has been selling tons of high powered weapons to people belonging to Mexican drug cartels, and then they wonder why the violence near their cities along the border is so dangerous. Now obviously there are gun owners who are extremely responsible and normal people who would never in a million years do anything bad, but how many more deaths do these people need to see before realizing that something needs to change.

  If by creating stricter gun laws even just a few lives are saved, even just a few shootings are averted…. it would be worthwhile. Some people will shout and scream that this isn’t fair. Well what is not fair is just so many children just died in a senseless and sickening act of violence. What isn’t fair is people died just sitting and watching a movie. What isn’t fair is that people in their place of worship were massacred just for what they looked like. These things are not fair, and in fact they are plain out disgusting.

  So anyone in the pro gun crowd who is complaining that strengthening gun laws isn’t fair really needs to put their ideas into perspective. The types of guns sold and available are also a problem. There are people who have weapons that it’s painfully obvious would not be used for hunting. Why are these type of weapons sold to private citizens in the first place ? That needs to change !

  Fixing these gun laws and making it even harder to keep these weapons out of the hands of the wrong people is only part of the problem though. The whole process of being able to obtain a gun needs to change. There needs to be a thorough background check done on any individual, and anyone with previous criminal convictions, psychological disorders, or that shows any troubling warning signs needs to not only be denied the right to receive a gun, but to be given the help they need immediately.

  Not only would this process save lives, it would truly work in keeping weapons out people in this world who really have no business ever owning a fire arm, and possibly getting them much needed help. Now people will tell me that the really bad people will always find ways to obtain guns, and I agree with that. Despite all of the improvements made, there will be some people who still find a way to obtain a firearm, however, it would be a lot harder, and I don’t think anyone would argue that some lives would be saved and some tragedies would be avoided, and that is a great start.

  And in a lot of these shootings, a background check on the individuals with the guns would have revealed these are people who are extremely sick in the head with horrific psychological issues, and thus with the background checks they would have been denied had the stores selling guns operated under stricter rules. So unfortunately there is no solution that can save every single life and stop every single tragedy, but that doesn’t mean that nothing should be done.

  The point I keep driving home, if some lives can be saved, and some tragedies can be avoided, than it’s certainly worth creating a society with stricter gun laws, a society that does all of the background checks possible on a person, and most importantly, a society where people stop having their love of carrying weapons with them at all times. I know people have their believes, but after seeing all of these tragic shootings and deaths take place, just in the last six months alone, I would think most people would understand it’s time to really have a meaningful debate on the gun issue.

  If politicians and people sit back and change absolutely nothing all I can say is the blood will be on all of their hands the next time something like this happens, and adding to whatever future tragedy could unfold would be the knowledge that had something been done, it could have possibly been avoided… I don’t believe anyone wants to imagine anything like that. On a lighter topic I just want to go into people who say they will do things but don’t do them.

  A few times in the past few weeks I had made plans with someone. I called one person on a Friday night and I was told that they couldn’t talk to me at that time because they were busy, but we’d talk on Saturday. Well I called on Saturday, never received a call back, even though we had planned something for Saturday. Then on Sunday I had plans, and never heard from the person all day though at night time gave me some excuse of sustaining some sort of injury at the gym and having to go to the hospital.

  Who knows if that happened or not, but even still I think they could have found a way to let me know. I don’t have much patience for these types of people though so usually after they are this way with me once I just toss them out of my life and move on. I think in terms of the company trying to help me with my visa paperwork, while they always seem to have excuses, they just haven’t been all that prepared and organized. And I know it’s not everyday they are hiring a foreigner to work with them so as frustrating as it is I do have some sympathy.

  I’m more disappointed with the people at the migration institute who don’t even know their own rules about hiring a foreigner. They work there and they are the organization that changed the rules, so I would think the people who work there should know very well the process, the truth is they really don’t ! So all I can say with this is people who work for a company, especially a government run organization really should know their own rules and policies well if they are to work there and deal with helping the public.

  I’m sick of reading about all these divisions of the world. Dividing the world into North/South/West, East/  White people, latinos, Asians, Arabs. At the end of the day it’s one world and to come up with all these names for different types of people is ridiculous. For example when people in the Arab World refer to “The West” what are they referring to exactly ? They consider even Europe part of the west I believe even though they are probably trying to mostly refer to North America.

  What about Australia and New Zealand ? They are more east than those Arab countries, yet they’d probably consider them West too because of the people who live there. I will agree with the people who live in those countries that there is too much ignorance towards them and most of the rest of the world, myself included, really doesn’t know as much as we should about those countries and the culture.

  I have talked to some Arab people from countries such as Morocco, Algeria, and Qatar, and a lot of times they are very friendly, though I can definitely tell their views are different from mine. And I can’t fault them for that…. they have grown up in an entirely different world. For example a girl from Qatar told me that people who aren’t religious have no morals. I couldn’t have disagreed more. There are many great people in this world who don’t choose to follow any particular religion, and there are many religions people in this world I’m sure can be classified as not the best people.

  Now obviously many religious people are super people, and many people who aren’t religious aren’t such great people, but my point is a person can’t make such a blanket statement that is not only speaking for everyone, but is completely 100 % untrue. I’d like to think the relationships with people between different cultures are possible, but there is no question within a number of religious rules it can be very tricky at times for the more religious people.

  I’m sure there are situations where couples from very different religious and ethnic backgrounds have made it work, but unless they both have great understanding of one another, an openness for religious knowledge, diversity, and understanding families it could be very challenging. I’m all for those types of relationships breaking the norms and surpassing all of the doubters and obstacles along the way. I believe a world with more interracial relationships that mix religions and cultures together would be a much better place. More of those success stories would go along way towards diversifying the world and creating a place with much more equality.

  Finally I like to joke about the word Gringo. A Mexican guy once told me that during a war the Mexican troops heard the English speaking soldiers says “Green Go” and that is how they came up with Gringo. Mexicans seem to think of Gringos as Americans, while in Central and South America a Gringo is pretty much any white looking person from North America, or other parts of the world as well. Personally I think the word is just silly and there is no need for people to use it.

  I can say for a fact if anyone ever calls me a Gringo I would point out that there are more latinos living in the United States than the population of Canada. And if people truly believe those are gringo countries, than in my opinion the people who choose to reside there would be Gringos too ! Either way though the word is stupid and people really should avoid using it. There are many other words that have been created to describe people from different places, and I’m just not for these types of words usually, as anything that makes divisions in this world is not needed.

  Anyways I’ve wrote a novel today so I’m done. For the next question:

  What are your thoughts on “My Thoughts on Life” ???

  I will leave you all with some more pictures from Monterrey. Take care and I’ll talk to you all on Sunday, bye for now.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  • 11:49 am
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