like sands through the hourglass

Yesterday I met up with Abraham, the couchsurfing guy who contacted me after I already had said yes to my current host. I caught the metro all the way out to where he studies at the University city, which is exactly that: a city. With a student population of over 250,000, a supermarket (which doesn't sell booze on Fridays), a internal bus service (9 different routes), an extinct lava pit (man I wish I had my camera), a library which is covered in the world's largest mosaic, a fire station and an ex-Olympic stadium all to it's own, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México is a behemoth of a campus. Abraham took me for a drive around it. The drive took a good 20 minutes, and there were a couple of traffic snarls along the way. We hung out at the campus for a while with a few of his friends, and then headed back to his girlfriend's place for a while. We had some beers, mingled with a few more of his friends, ate tacos and left for a party for his friend who had just finished his masters. We got a bit lost on the way, but it turned out that the party was a 10 minute walk from where I'm staying. I dropped some stuff off and grabbed a jumper. A great party, I met plenty of interesting people there and learned about student culture in Mexico City.

You know that time of the year when it's daylight savings and you have to move all of your clocks forward by an hour? And that one clock you forget to change will be the one you'll be relying on on that morning you have an important meeting at work? Birthdays are kind of like this. Your brain goes through the motions of changing every age register inside you head to a new number, so that when the question "how old are you?" is asked, the new updated number comes out. However, after a couple of beers at the masters party last night, my thoughts must have been mingling in the lounge room inside my head, where the time on the VCR had yet to be flicked forward to 28. During a conversation I was asked how old I was, and casually I answered "27", and continued on with the conversation. About a minute later I realised my mistake and then thought I would sound stupid correcting myself on how old I am, so I kept quiet. Like a chump. Now I feel like I've covered over my true age through some desperate act of clinging on to youth rather than the true reason, the onset of dementia thanks to old age.

For what it's worth, I had a pretty good birthday this year. Maria and her folks took me out to a fancy seafood restaurant and treated me to some Mexican / Central American dishes. There was plenty of corn related food type things, and surprisingly a dish with raw fish, which didn't taste anything like Japanese food. Compared to the previous two birthday (2006 I was in the middle of giving away everything I owned to go travelling, 2005 everything seemed to be falling apart around me), it was a fairly good day. After a party nap, Maria took me out to meet some more of her friends at a little house party which continued until the wee hours of the morning. Dancing occured, chatting photos transpired and a shoe was thrown out a window, supposedly never to be returned. While I miss my mates back home, I was treated as if I had been in Maria's inner circle of friends for years - which for someone I only met only two days earlier is pretty cool.

Today I go to the MX Beat concert. Tomorrow I go to Tijuana.