Moving to Mexico: Getting Hooked Up (to the Internet)

We now have water, most of the furniture we need (see pictures below), except some odds and ends like a computer table to free up the dining table and to keep from having wires all over the place, and a local cell phone for delivery people and to call our few acquaintances. We will probably not get a local phone line since we got cable for the internet and TV. With the internet we will eventually get some kind of Voice Over Protocol for long distance. For now are using audio chat to keep in touch, plus the local internet cafe that uses Voice Over Protocol and charges $2 MX a minute.

If you have an AIM name (AOL Instant Messenger), iChat calls are free, but you need a microphone and speaker with your computer, which we have. The Voice Over Protocol cost is around $20 US for unlimited long distance anywhere in the world. That is about a 1/3 to a ¼ of our long distance bill in Atlanta. We pay for local calls on the cell phone by buying a certain number of minutes every few weeks. All of this, will cost us about the same or somewhat less than cable, phone, DSL and cell phone in Atlanta.

On TV we get a number of English channels for movies, CNN in English and Spanish, BBC from Hong Kong, and even a channel mostly in French for movies. This is not Canal 5, a consortium of 5 French speaking countries (France, Canada, Belgium, etc.), but it is better than what we had in Atlanta; and we can always change to another carrier later to get Canal 5. We got the second fastest Internet speed, 630k. The fastest is 1.5gb, but costs a whole lot more. The speed is about the same or slightly faster than Atlanta.

It took about a week to get the cable installed, but seeing as how no one had cable or even telephones 30 years ago, this is incredibly fast. Two days after the cable was installed the internet connection went down, maybe because I kicked the modem on the floor near the dining table. After much swearing, resetting, rebooting, I gave up and called the cable company in trepidation of having to deal in Spanish with one of those snotty geeks you get in the states. Nothing could have been further from the truth. The guy was pleasant, wanted to help, spoke slowly, apologized for putting me on hold once, fiddled with the modem settings from his office, and we were back on the air in five or ten minutes. Wow! It’s all still so new down here that everyone is trying to help everyone else find out about how things work and to make them work.

I wish I could say things will continue to improve in the future, as I suspect the guys will become as snotty and rude as the ones north of the border in a few years. But maybe I am wrong. The folks in the street are still invariably polite and pleasant when you say the right words, like “con permiso”, “disculpe”, “perdon”, “buenos tardes”, “mucho gusto conocerle”, etc. etc. And to think we took half their territory back in 1848, astounding. ;-)

Living Room (rug from Bernal, rustico from Apaseo, cushions from Querétaro)