Not your average mountain
So, the Popocateptl is erupting quite nicely. Which is not such a good thing, considering that it is about 60 Km from where I live.
Now, nobody anticipates a mountain-removing blowout, but the warrior mountain can nonetheless make life pretty miserable for us, inhabitants of the biggest city in the world.
Ash fell from the sky last Thursday. Tonight the TV and the CENAPRED web site show lava spewing out of the crater.
Some villages that have been wisely built quite close to the crater are being evacuated right now. The people are clearly pissed off: those are poor villages, and the people there own very little but some livestock. And during evacuations, the livestock (cows. goats, chicken) either starves or is stolen.
Some have declared that they would rather face the uncertainties of the volcano than the grim certainties of displacement, improvised shelters and undignified accomodations --- experience shows that refugees have a habit of getting forgotten in camps.
The eruption is also a hot potato (you will pardon the simile) for the governmentl; whatever it does, it is a bad choice.
Forcing evacuation (at gunpoint) will raise the ire of the intellectuals. Any loss of property will be blamed on the government (and, by immediate reflex, on the President Vicente Fox Quesada).
On the other hand, if evacuation is simply advised (but not imposed), and if shit happens, the government will be considered guilty of inaction.
The deciding factor is, what will the volcano do ? The answer, of course is whatever it damn well pleases.
Emigration dreams
Aside from these disasters & devastations, what happens in my personal life ? Christmas is creeping in, and once again I realize that this holiday has been designed with the purpose of making out of place people feel like shit.
We have signed contracts for January, which is good. What happens afterwards is anyone's guess. I am sending out a couple of CVs every day.
I noticed a disturbing trend in job offers in the US: about half of them require citizenship or at least a green card. I can understand that, since hiring foreigners requires a long and expensive ballet with the IRS.
Nonetheless, I find the job market for my (scant) talents fairly reduced.
And besides, do I really want to live in the US ? Maybe I should be more specific. I would like to live somewhere small, with high technology companies and fun Internet stuff. And fairly safe. I have had enough fear here.
Said "somewhere small" could be in Texas, in Canada or in the Netherlands. I would easily adapt to nearly anywhere, I guess.
But then I would not be in Italy, my homeland. I would once again be a prey for homesickness (nostalgia, even).
SO blues
Every now and then I would just like to cut loose. Then, this sudden fear that it would be the most amazingly stupid thing I have ever done strikes me. And I oscillate.
She takes it much better than I would have a right to expect. I mean, how can you keep loving an inconsistent bastard that is looking for a job in the only country that you dislike ?
What is good
Today I made a T-shirt for mibarra. It is a spoof of the covers of O'Reilly books, and the title is "Banishing Microsoft" - under the title a creepy, Cthulhu-like creature waves its tentacles.
I found the picture on the net, and had that printed at the local COSTCO (which realized that my membership was long expired, and promptly charged me $24 to renew it. Ouch. Expensive time of the year).
Anyway, mibarra liked it, which made my day. I had lunch with Miss Nice, which was as always good. She bravely tried to mantain a conversation, even if I was moody and brooded over the soup.
Her good humor is contagious, so after lunch I was somewhat happier.
This morning I tried to see an Iridium flare, but failed due to cloud cover on the Eastern horizon. I was treated to a spectacular sunrise, complete with smoke plume from the Popocateptl.
I am writing very serious nodes these days. Very factual. Very much ignored, but do I give a damn ? No. I node for the ages. That, and the fact that I have enough XPs and not enough nodes.
I am glad that there other people here that like photography. Insanity loves company.
the cage door SWUNG open ! and subsequently the hamster said: