August, 2011: TexMex, Leaving Mexico

Before leaving Mexico, I need to go over to the central of the Federal District, to see an angel.

The Angel of Independence is found in the city centre, and it is on every tourist route for the city. Placed on the foot of the statue, are the bodies of the heroes of the War of Independence with the Spanish. Including the body of Hildago, who was executed in Chihuahua and had his head chopped off. Of course, after the war, they 'sew' the head back to the body and found its final resting place under the statute. The bodies are actually there for viewing by the public, I would guess it would be kindna gluesome. Luckily, or otherwise, it was closed by the time I reached the statute.
The area around the Angel seems to have been turned to a Little Korean. Korean restaurant lined the streets.
It has also been turned to a gathering place for gays, with men openly holding hands and whispering sweet nothing into each other's ears.
You don't see that in other area When I was there, there was some gay-pride event going on.
After leaving the Angel I went straight for the Mexico City Hard Rock Cafe, trying to add one more teddy bear to my collection. When I ask if they have HRC teddy bear, the counter gal looked puzzled. It looks like Mexico branch don't stock the bears anymore. Either that or HRC has discontinue the bears worldwide. In anycase, the HRC looks like it's in the uptown side of Mexico DF, totally different from the Cathedral area.
There was one more place to go to before leaving Mexico. It's near the HRC and it's supposed to be a busy park on Sunday. But by the time I was there, it was closed for the day. The place was dark, and this is the kind of place we are warned about wandering into in the night.

I was trying to get out of the place as fast as possible when something lighted up on the gate fences caught my attention. It was a long row of movie poster, and the character on them looks vaguely familiar. It was a man called Cantiflas, wearing a hat with thin moustache by the sides of his nose. The poster was interesting enough, and I kept going from one poster to next down the row, forgetting about leaving the place. Then I came to the poster of the Cantiflas cartoon, and it was total recall for me.
I have seen this before on Singapore TV. And it was dubbed in Chinese.
This show was "filed' in my brain under "TV shows I enjoyed but could not recall their name until Google came along", along with shows like: BJ and the Bear, The Banana Split Show, or Mat Yoyo.
It looks like Cantiflas is a well-loved movie series in the Mexico, and enjoyed a long live. By the time I got through the posters, it was quite late in the night. I made may way way away from the park, hoping I was in the right general direction. I was feeling better when I saw a lone teenage girl coming towards me on a busy road. I guess the area is not really too dangerous. Then tall building starts to appear and maps were found on the street. I gotten at ease enough to buy some drink from the convinient shop. As I left the shop and was trying to overtake a Mexican in front of me, I gave him a shock. I guess everyone out at this hour is worried about their own safety. Lucky, a left turn and I found a metro station.

The next morning I rise bright and early. I have an early plane to catch. I was hoping to get a brief stopover at Housten downtown before going home the same day. Unfortunately, some screw-up on the part of Continental counter staff meant I got on the next plane 2 hours later. That means, no Housten jalan-jalan at all. Well, with 2 hours of free time, I went to made complain at the counters a couple of time, and wrote an email of complain in my head to Continental. When I was home, I actually wrote and emailed it. The outcome was Continental sent me a 100US$ voucher for use with my next booking. But given the terms and condition, I may end up pretty useless.

When I was at Housten, I checked that the airport has not left-luggage facilities (this being post-911 USA), so the late flight might be a blessing in disguise.
When I was there in Housten, NASA has just shut down it's Space Shuttle program, their women soccer team has just lost to the Japan team (Nadeshiko), and they were heavily in debt (until the European got in the news by having a bigger Euro crisis). That did not stop the custom officer to be cocky and all. He saw the box I was carrying, and deftly flipped open his butterfly-knife to open up the box.
The guy, with his shaven head, looks familiar. When I was on the flight back, Fast Five (no.5 on the Fast and Furious franchise) was playing on KrisWorld. It remind me that he looks like either The Rock or Vin Diesel, and I think he fancy himself to look like one of them, too.
Incidentally, Fast Five was set in Brazil, which would be my next destination...