I hire a Mexican lawyer to get my deposit back, visit a dentist I found on an expat forum, and spend an entire day trapped at home waiting for Amazon. Plus: I investigate the mysterious strings on Mexico City's garbage bags, contemplate the economics of the camote man, and have the strange realization that I'm happy here.

Please show some support for the podcast and get access to some extra content by subscribing to the Patreon page: http://www.patreon.com/onefjef

Instagram: @onefjefpod

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/onefjefpod

TikTok: @onefjefpodcast

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@onefjef

Email: [email protected]

You can also call the podcast and leave a voicemail at 1-669-241-5882 and I will probably play it on the air.

Thank you for listening, please do it again, but brush your teeth first.

Onefjef is produced, edited & hosted by Jef Taylor.

Tamales oaxaqueños, tamales calientitos.

Traemos de salsa roja, verde, mole y dulce.

Y también traemos atole calientito.

This is episode 56 of onefjef.

56.

Hola, mis amigos y amigas.

It's Jef Taylor.

Remember me?

It's been a minute, but I'm back.

Here we are.

We're here.

Are you here?

I'm here.

We're all here, aren't we?

That's like a callback to the very first episode, I think, actually.

For those of you who have been listening for that long, I love you very much.

I love all of you, but if any of you caught the reference,

then you get a big old prize.

Anyway, yes, this is the first episode back from the hiatus

of 2026, as I have dubbed it.

It's a great name for the break that I took.

The hiatus of 2026.

The word hiatus is the word.

It's a part of the I really enjoy that.

I wonder how you say hiatus in Spanish.

I'm sitting here on my terrace here, uh, at my apartment

in Roma Norte near Cibeles.

Cibeles.

Cibeles?

Cibeles.

Cibeles is a traffic circle.

In the middle of that traffic circle, there is a, uh, I believe

it's called Cibeles, the statue that is a exact replica of a statue

in, um, Mexic- or Spain rather.

What city in Spain?

Mm, Seville?

I don't know.

I couldn't tell you that.

There's also a replica of David, you know, Mi- Michelangelo's David, in another,

uh, park nearby, which also confuses me.

There's a lot of strange replicas of things here.

Something to think about.

Anyway, it's lovely, this terrace.

It's lovely.

It's a little piece of heaven is what it is, and so it's made a certain

element of my life quite nice.

I can get up in the morning and walk out on my terrace and drink my coffee and

have the sun in my face and look down and see all of the city happening below me.

And there's plants.

There's bougainvillea, I believe it's called.

Bougainvillea, which is a purple, viney, flowery plant.

It's very pretty, but it's thorny.

So beautiful but dead- not deadly.

Dangerous, but deadly sounds better.

Sounds good.

Beautiful but deadly.

Bougainvillea.

How have you been, Jeff?

I've been all right.

It's a mixed bag, really.

It's been five months.

A little more than five months I've been living in Mexico City, minus a couple

month-- weeks that I was in Cleveland, whatever, so four or five months total.

And it goes through phases, right?

I- it still feels like time has gone very slow because, like, if I was in my

house in Columbus and five months went by, I'd be like, "Oh, yeah, five months."

But here it feels like I've lived several lives in these

five months, four or five months.

'Cause I've already moved, for crying out loud.

I've already lived in two places.

I mean, that's-- Uh, speaking of which, how is the, uh, getting the deposit back

going from your last apartment, Jeff?

Oh, great question.

Thank you for asking.

Um, it's not going great.

So I hired a lawyer, uh, for twenty-five hundred pesos, which I

thought was quite a good deal, really.

And this was, I mean, three weeks ago, four weeks ago now.

And so he wrote up a, a lawyery letter, sent it to the ex-landlord.

No response.

Then he kept calling and calling and emailing and just bothering him.

And then about a week and a half ago, he messages me, and he's like, "I got

a letter back from their lawyer." So he-- Now, my ex-landlord has hired a

lawyer, and the ex-landlord's lawyer, you know, wrote something back to

my lawyer saying, "Well, no, no, no.

It's all wrong." Like, I'm right in this situation, and I'm not

just saying that because it's, you know, my brain and my ego.

I'm saying it because it's, it's true.

I'm correct.

I deserve to get my money back.

However, whenever I tell anybody that I've got a lawyer to try to

get my deposit back, like somebody who's from Mexico or Mexico City,

they laugh at me like I'm an idiot.

"Ahaha, nobody gives their deposit back here, Jeff.

Nobody gets their deposit back here.

Ha ha ha ha ha.

How naive, gringo." You know what?

I get my deposit back.

That's who gets their deposit back.

I do.

Me.

God damn it.

But apparently, it is a thing.

Deposits are not often returned here.

But I don't know that that would change my decision to get a lawyer.

I think I would still have done it even if I had not been so naive.

And I'll take it.

Like, it's not e- at this point, it's not even about the money, it's

the principle of the thing, right?

I don't stand for injustice, particularly when it's, you know, on me.

So we'll see how it goes.

I'll keep you posted.

It's interesting to be, you know, uh, dipping my toe in

the Mexican legal system.

Who would've thought that would happen four months, five months in?

I also had to go to the dentist, which, um, I have to go back to the dentist,

which wasn't hoping would happen in the next four, in the four or five months.

But I have, like, a toothache.

Still do.

And I've had teeth problems for years that I've had to get taken care of.

I just, I hate the, I fucking hate the dentist.

Nothing personal if you're a dentist.

I'm sure, I mean, I've met some dentists that are lovely people, but

the experience of going to the dentist has always been one that I abhor.

I'm an anti-dentite.

And when I was, like, eight years old or nine years old, I don't know how old

I was, we were going to the dentist.

My mom was driving us to the dentist, and I didn't wanna go to the dentist,

so I just pretended that I was asleep in the backseat of the car.

And I thought, "Oh, well, then she'll, she won't wake me up to go to the

dentist." It's, like, middle of the day.

She's just gonna be like, "Oh.

Oh, Jef, he's asleep.

Let's just let him sleep.

You don't have to go to the dentist." What kind of logic is that?

Like, that's really… Oof.

I appreciate my inventiveness, though.

Like, what a weird… Anyway, it didn't work.

Had to go to the dentist.

Probably had a cavity, 'cause I had a lot of cavities when I was a kid.

It's weird how you don't wanna brush your teeth when you're a

kid, 'cause when you're, get older, it's like, ugh, you didn't brush

your teeth before you went to bed?

I don't know, maybe I'm just a teeth freak, but, like, it feels gross

to go to sleep with dirty teeth.

But when you're a kid, you just don't give a shit.

Maybe it's 'cause your teeth are bigger when you're an adult.

Anyway, I went to the dentist 'cause I had a, you know, a gum toothache, still

do, and I was nervous 'cause, you know, you don't know what you're getting.

Mexican dentist, I have no idea.

I have no idea.

I'm not being prejudgmental, but I have no idea.

I do know that it's ch- going to be cheaper, which is great.

So I go, I find a dentist, like, on some forum, expat forum,

whatever, you know, English-speaking dentist, you know, Roma, Condesa.

So go there, very nervous, and, uh, no, it was fine.

It was fine.

It was great, actually.

I was like, "Oh, this is not painful." They have all this equipment.

They're very nice to me.

They're explaining things.

And, you know, they said, "We'll, we'll get back to you," the,

the, like, the main dentist.

It was a dental assistant sort of.

"We'll get back to you." And so really nothing traumatic happened

at the dentist office at all.

They gave me an X-ray, and they took some pictures, and they put some sort of

a filling on top of my gum that said-- they said would make it feel better,

but it really hasn't done a thing.

I have a feeling I have to get, like, major dental work done, and

it doesn't please me, but it has to happen because now there's pain.

So long story short, I pay, like, $50 for an X-ray and, like, an inspect-

an inspection, cleaning, whatever.

But I have to go back again.

The end.

Dentist story of Jef in Mexico City.

Hope you enjoyed it.

Ups and downs, lefts and rights.

It's not over.

That's the thing, the dentist story.

It will continue.

That's what I'm trying to say, is I have a very strong feeling that the

Mexican dentist story of my existence here has not reached its climax

Some of the garbage bags in Mexico have this string attached

to it, and I have no idea why.

Uh, I thought about it.

I've never looked it up, to be fair.

I don't really want to.

But they have, like, weird long strings attached to the bottom.

And at first I thought it was, like, a mistake.

I was like, "There's something wrong with the garbage bag," but no.

Every garbage bag has it, so it's clearly not a mistake.

And if it is a mistake, then boy, it's a big problem.

They've got a real quality control problem with garbage bags in

Mexico City because they've all got long strings hanging from them.

If anybody knows why the garbage bags in Mexico City have long strings

hanging from them, please send me an email, [email protected]

If you're listening to this because you're thinking about moving to Mexico

City, which I'm sure is a big, big hunk of my audience, is people like, "What

should I…" And then they're like, "What?

W- this is not helpful at all.

I'm not learning anything about what it's like." But really, my friends, if you

think about it, you are learning exactly what it's like to live in Mexico City

I may not have tips and tricks, my dear audience, but what I don't

have in tips and tricks I make up for in, oh, whatever this is.

You tell me.

I still don't know what this podcast is

But yeah, I'd say in general I'm doing okay.

I mean, there's the loneliness.

There's the, you know, getting up some days and just not wanting to deal with

how difficult it is sometimes to interact with the world that I exist in right

now, you know, because of the language.

Like it's getting better.

My, my, my Spanish is getting better, but it's still not good.

Like I had an Amazon package delivered today.

It's another horror story.

Like Amazon here, they don't want to leave it and they can't get in your building.

So you have to just wait all day for your package to come.

So number one, I need to start shopping locally, but number two,

some things I can't get locally.

So I don't need excuses for you.

I shop at Amazon, right?

That's how it goes.

We all do.

Let's not pretend.

Anyway, order from Amazon, they punish you here for it.

So I had to stay home all day and the package didn't come until

45 or something or 6:30.

So, I mean, I hadn't even showered.

So it's an airplane going over.

And part of me felt like, oh, maybe subconsciously I ordered

the Amazon package because I didn't want to do anything.

I want like a subconscious excuse not to interact with the world tomorrow,

but I didn't expect it to come at 6:45.

I thought it would come at like 2:00 in the afternoon.

So anyway, it's not as interesting a story as I thought it would be when I started

jumping in, but they can't all be winners.

They can't all be winners.

Also started going to therapy again here in Mexico City.

Like, maybe I'll go once a month I thought, right?

Just to check in, you know?

And so I found one quite easily.

I, I went… I don't know where I went online, somewhere I'm sure,

on the, the internet, whatever.

Probably just Googled it.

And, uh, yeah, uh, did the therapy in her house, and it, it was great, and she

seems great, and it's very nice to be like, "Oh, I have a therapist again,"

which is nice, and one that I like, so…

And inexpensive as well because, you know.

So, so that's good.

But anyway, the therapist was telling me at the end of our therapy, she was

like, "You know, you ever hear what Salvador Dali apparently…" Years ago,

he used to come to Mexico all the time.

Mexico's a big surreal art country.

A lot of surreal artists come out of Mexico City, and it all makes

sense because if you've been…

Or not to Mexico City, but Mexico in general, but, you know.

And they asked Salvador Dali one time, "Why don't you,

why don't you live in Mexico?

Why don't you want to move to Mexico?" Or something like that, and he's

like, "I would never wanna live in a country as surreal as my art."

And it's like, "Yeah, I get it."

And then my therapist proceeded to tell me a story about how one time she

was in an ice cream shop, and there was an old woman who had a parrot

on her shoulder and was feeding the parrot ice cream, an ice cream cone.

So.

So yeah, there it is.

I mean, there's many surreal things about Mexico City.

You know, there's the knife seller who blows a whistle as he's biking down the

street and has a bike sharp- a knife sharpener on the back of his bike.

There's the ringing bell garbage.

There's the… I mean, all the, the camote man, for crying

out loud, is the strangest.

I've talked about it, but there's one in my neighborhood that

just, he seems to love this area.

He seems… Like weekends, he's just walking around and around and around

the building, just blowing that whistle.

Insert sound of camote man whistle here

Yeah, it's loud.

And I can't-- I always think about this camote man 'cause it's like

he's walking around all night.

You don't often see people buying anything from him.

Like, he doesn't seem to sell a lot, but, like, he's out there all night

on weekends and all… I mean, just you hear him all-- quite a bit.

And it's just like how much money could you possibly be making?

I think I bought a camote once, like a, a sweet potato.

It was a camote.

And I bought one from the camote man, and it was like five dollars,

four dollars for the sweet potato, and it wasn't that great.

You know, maybe I found a bad camote man, but it wasn't that great.

It's a strange job is what I'm saying.

You're pushing a cart around like a steamer, essentially, around Mexico City.

Do they choose when to blow the whistle, I wonder, or do they have

to release the steam every so often?

The pressure is… Is it a pressure cooker?

It must be a pressure cooker, yeah.

But I really wanna know if they can choose when to release the steam.

This is why I need to learn Spanish better, so I could ask,

I could, like, ask him, you know?

Really so… See, I, I don't… I have no idea.

Maybe one day.

Anyway, weird, surreal to have a guy just wandering around selling sweet

potatoes with a whistle that squeals through the entire neighborhood.

Like, it-- that sound

That guy's gotta be deaf or he wears earplugs.

I don't know.

God, there's so many questions I have for the kamote man now.

Does he eat his own product?

I'm sure he does.

Does he get sick of s- eating sweet potatoes?

Does he-- How many sweet potatoes does he eat?

How did he get started?

Does he have to buy the cart himself?

Is that… Do you have to buy your own cart?

Hmm.

I don't even think the internet would have answers to a lot of these questions.

And AI would pretend to know, but then would be totally wrong about it,

as I found it to be quite a bit, so.

But yeah, it's a surreal country.

That's all.

There's a lot of weirdness here

Not so surreal, but the speakeasy thing is legitimately

out of control in Mexico City.

Like, there's all these bars and, like, some of the best bars in the world

apparently, and they're like quote-unquote speakeasies because you have to, like,

go down a back elevator to get to them.

And, like, it's fine, but, like, what-- can we define speakeasy?

Can we decide what that means?

Because it seems to mean a lot of different things.

Now it just seems to mean, like, a hidden bar, right?

That's it.

'Cause you make reservations for a lot of these places.

Like, it's not exclusive, you just walk in.

You just need to know where to go.

It's like a secret-y thing.

What a speakeasy originally was, was where they would sell

illegal booze, as we all know.

So it's confusing that that's turned into just a… Well, like, the hidden

part was always, but they've just kept the hidden part and gotten

rid of the illegal alcohol part.

Hmm, I'm overthinking this.

Apologize.

It's rainy season.

Summer's rainy season here, and everybody told me rainy season, oh,

it rains for like, you know, an hour or so every day at like 5:00 or 6:00.

This is what the internet told me.

This is what human beings to my face told me many times.

But the reality is, at least so far in my experience, it's been not that at all.

It doesn't rain necessarily every day.

It rains most days.

It doesn't rain for one hour at 5:00.

Sometimes it rains at 5:00.

Sometimes it rains at 8:00.

Sometimes it'll start raining at 9:00 or so and continue raining

on and off till I go to bed.

They should have said, "Oh, rainy season, it, it often rains, but it

doesn't start until after 5:00 PM."

That should be what, what they say, not it rains every day, because that

is… Perhaps some years it does, but this year does not rain every day.

But there are insane electrical storms in the city.

I've never seen anything like it.

These thunderstorms and electric- they just, it echoes through Brit- in like

a, we're like a valley kind of in, up in the mountains here, and so it echoes off

of the walls of the, the mountains that are around us, I think, or the buildings.

I don't know.

So it's quite dramatic.

The other day, or night rather, there was one going on, and I had

all of the h- lights in my house off.

Everything was off, and it was like the lights were on 'cause it was just

this constant flickering, you know.

Plus I was watching TV, so there was light anyways.

I should have left that part out of the story.

Disregard the part about watching TV.

I wasn't actually watching TV.

I was.

I was watching TV.

Sorry.

I had dinner with a guy I met, uh, at a Time Left thing a week or two ago.

Time Left, you can look it up.

It's an app.

It's like drinks with strangers.

It's just an app that facilitates drinks with people you

wouldn't meet, so I do it here.

It's fun.

You meet other people.

Anyway, I had dinner with this guy, Korean barbecue.

I'm in heaven because Korean barbecue.

And it was great.

He's a film guy, and it had been a while since I'd had a filmy conversation,

you know, like a talking shop kind of conversation, and it was, it was great.

I've been in a bad head space for the last couple weeks.

Two or three, four weeks, I've been in a bad head space.

Not negative, negative, negative, but, like, just not great.

Questioning my decisions, you know.

It's all part of the process.

It is, and you have to keep reminding yourself of this, that, that all these

emotions you have, the loneliness, the frustration, the avoidance, and

the positive emotions as well, it's all part of the selling most of your

stuff and moving to another country.

It's all part of it, that you came here because you were looking for discomfort.

So much talk about getting out of your comfort zone, Jef, last year,

how great it is, and now here you are outside of your comfort zone.

You have to remember that.

Perspective is a gift.

Anyway, I was walking home, and I don't know.

It was one of the first times in a while that I was like, "I felt at

home here." That I was like, "Okay, I live in Mexico City, and it's good.

It's okay." I even stopped and asked a guy if I could pet his dog, and he

understood what I said 'cause I could speak that little minimal Spanish.

I asked him how old the dog was, what the dog's name.

I felt good about it.

It's these little victories.

It's these little victories.

Patreon subscribers, I love you all.

Thank you for sticking with me.

Thank you for your support, financial, emotional, all of the things.

I really appreciate you, and I apologize for not having as many

Patreon-only ex-- events or, or, or, or, or, or recordings or whatever,

photos of late, but I will fix that.

I will make you feel special again, Patreon subscribers.

And if you yourself are listening to this and you're like, "What am I missing

out on? What have I seen? What are the Patreon subscribers seeing that,

that I haven't seen?" You know what?

You can find out.

I'm not gonna tell you, but you're gonna find out.

You go to patreon.com/onefjef and sign up for as little as $5 a month.

That's less than 100 pesos now because the exchange rate keeps getting worse.

I should change it to $6 a month 'cause that's 100 pesos because the

exchange rate keeps getting worse.

The peso keeps getting stronger.

Good for the peso.

I'm here for it.

I'm not happy about it, but I'm here for it.

Being here for it, it's like there's no choice.

I'm just here.

So it's not like I'm bragging.

It's-- it sounds like I'm bragging, but really, um, when I'm saying

I'm here for it, it just means that I exist in Mexico City right

now, and I have to exist with that.

It's funny, though, how, like, it is like an ocean, like a wave, right?

Your, your emotional state.

It goes up, and it goes down.

And the, the older I get, the more I realize and, uh, come to accept that

it goes up and it goes down because you need the down to appreciate the up.

This has been said by many people many, many times.

But I'm saying it again because the reason it's been said so many times by so many

different people is because it's true.

You need the low parts to get the up parts.

In my past, when I've taken antidepressants, the thing that I

didn't like about them was that it, it takes out the peaks on both sides.

It takes out the low peaks, like the low lows.

It takes out the high highs.

So you just kind of feel like, "Mm."

So you sacrifice the peaks of emotion when you take antidepressants.

And I'm not judging or anything about people who use antidepressants.

I've known many people who've used them for years and are… But for

me, it numbed things out too much.

It leveled things out too much.

Also, makes your penis not work at all, which apologies to my mom.

Sorry about that

Where was I?

Oh, I know where I was.

I was happy.

I was happy in Mexico City.

I was happy to be living here.

I was comfortable with my place in the world, in this life

right now, and I still am, so.

Anyway, patreon.com/onefjef, please sign up.

Support an independent podcast.

Support this rambling what have you.

I know I'm biased, but I think this is a really good podcast.

I go back and listen to old episodes now and again when I'm just, when

I'm feeling down about it, and I'm like, "This is good," in my head.

I'm, "This is good. This is entertaining." Understand, I'm biased,

but, like, if you're listening to this right now, realize that, like,

now I'm raising the bar, but, you know, I'm putting work into this.

I'm putting work into this.

Is it for me or for you?

That's the question.

It's for both, really, 'cause I wouldn't still do this if

not a single person listened.

But if one person listened, if I just had one listener every week, I would

really wanna know who that person is.

Would I wanna know?

I don't know.

It would be my mom, so I already know who it would be

I love you, Mom, of course, but I'm just saying that's who it would be.

So then I would probably change the content and not put the part about

the antidepressant penis thing in it.

I would have cut that out.

But there's more than one listener.

There's multiples, multiples of one listener.

There's two to three listeners.

Can you figure out how many listeners there are?

Because if you are listening right now and you're like, are there

really two or three listeners?

Am I one of these people?

Then you feel special.

So maybe there are just two or three listeners.

And yet I'm still recording a podcast for two or three people

patreon.com/onefjef.

Thank you so much for your support, for your listening.

Even if you don't subscribe to Patreon, thank you for listening

Listen to that tamales playing.

You guys want tamales?

I gotta get one of these one of these days.

Anyway, I'm glad to be back.

I'm grateful for everybody who's listening again.

I'll get these interviews moving along

Is the tamales vending guy, um, like making it charming or annoying?

That's the question.

You can tell I'm really in Mexico.

You hear that?

Every night, this guy

Try my mole, something

Yeah.

I wonder if they're good.

I always wonder, are they good tamales?

They must be.

I'm not a big tamale fan, to be honest, but I mean, I don't

hate them, but it's the texture.

It's not my, not my jam, but I'll try one of those one of these

days, those tamales from that guy.

But I won't do that now.

What I will do now is end this episode by saying thank you

for listening, my friends.

I appreciate you.

I hope that you're doing well in whatever life you're living right now.

I hope you're finding joy.

I hope you're finding perspective.

And I hope your heart is full of love, and I mean that in the

least cheesy way possible, which is difficult, but here we are

Please like, rate, subscribe, review.

It does help the algorithmical gods to tell everybody what to listen to.

And if you have yourself a moment, please go write a review, a quick

review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Ideally, Apple Podcasts is where the reviews matter the most.

Write a little something, something, something, something.

Say, "I love it."

And again, if you want to ask me some questions, anything

at all, suggest podcast ideas, whatever, [email protected].

And if you want to vent, scream at the podcast, or love on the

podcast, say wonderful things, you can call the podcast at country code

1-669-241-5882. Let's try it again.

1-669-241-5882.

Call it up.

Maybe I'll leave your voicemail message on the air.

Play it.

Maybe I will play your voicemail message on the air.

I will probably, unless you tell me not to

This is a last-minute outro of sorts that needs to be added because I was gonna

have this episode out Wednesday morning.

I'm not sure when it's gonna come out.

The power went out on Tuesday night.

It is out.

That's not true.

It was out.

It's, it's not out now, but it was out.

And so I couldn't, you know, I couldn't do, I couldn't do the internet

things and the editing things 'cause my computer needed power to work.

So I'd been told there's a lot of power outages in Mexico City.

I have never experienced one until today, so I guess, I guess that's exciting.

I don't exactly know why it went out 'cause there's no storm happening or

anything, and it was only my block.

I don't know.

Very weird.

Anyway, it did come back on, so that's good, but I'm not gonna

have time to finish this right now.

So I'll finish it as soon as possible.

And you're listening to it now, so it did get out at some point.

So yeah, don't worry about it.

Don't overthink things.

That's what I always say.

Is that what I always say?

It might be what I always say.

I'm gonna end this episode with a, one of my favorite quotes by

the late, great Kurt Vonnegut.

And the first time I saw this quote was a guy that I knew or met in film

school had a tattoo of this quote.

Uh, and that guy has since passed away, actually, very tragically.

He was a guy that everybody loved.

He was just that guy that everybody knew and everybody really liked a lot.

And he died quite young.

I think he was in his 20s or 30s.

And in fact, I think that I had invited him to my birthday party

at a bar in Brooklyn, New York.

This guy, Matt was his name.

And he texted me, and he said he couldn't make it, and it was, I

think, the next day or two days later that I got a call saying he died.

Wow.

Anyway, he had this quote, which is from Slaughterhouse-Five, tattooed on his arm,

and it honestly seems more appropriate now than it did when he was alive, you know?

"Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt."

I'll see you next week.

Very good, Jeffrey