About a month in, I'm starting to admit that this is actually my life. Also: my sister and nephew visited, we went to a cooking class, watched a mariachi band play an inappropriate song, argued about whether Spanish 6 is a real class, and I had a breakthrough in my second Spanish lesson. There's also a story about two Ukrainian sailors, a Bob Dylan cassette, and a shirt I still own but have never worn.

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: onefjefpod@gmail.com

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 make sure you have a plunger.

Onefjef is produced, edited & hosted by Jef Taylor.

Well, I think leaving times are a special time because it's a transition, and so

you're closer to the scene, you know?

And so it's a time You are closer to the scene.

So it's a time that you have more truths apparent, more love apparent, more sadness

apparent, more suffering, more joy.

Opens you up.

Yeah, so your heart is really open.

Cracks you wide open.

You see the life thing in a way.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's totally true.

Yeah.

That's a very good way of putting it, actually.

Yeah.

It makes me feel seen.

Yeah.

Yes, I am cracked wide open.

I arrived in Mexico City about a month ago.

Give or take a few days.

And for much of that month I've been in the mindset of a tourist.

Albeit one who has an apartment here.

I've been existing from excitement to excitement.

From dopamine hit to dopamine hit.

Rarely allowing myself the time to stop and just breathe.

To process the reality of this new life of mine.

To actually take the time to create a life here, instead of just pretending.

Because when you're a tourist, you can stand on the outside looking in.

You're kind of expected to, really.

The glimpses you do get of the inside are fleeting and often somewhat inauthentic.

You don't have to figure out where to buy toilet paper, or spatulas, because

your brief time staying wherever you are staying won't require that, and

in fact it rejects the mundanity of day to day life wherever you are.

That's part of the fun.

The fun of travel, right?

Escaping your day to day life.

Escaping the mundane.

And for the last month, in spite of the fact that I've had to buy

toilet paper and a spatula, that's largely where my head has been.

A feeling that this isn't my real life, when in reality

this is precisely my real life.

This right here sitting in my apartment in Roma, on a Sunday morning, drinking coffee

in a living room, that has gradually started to feel more More and more

like my own, in spite of the books and plants and unfortunate motorcycle decor.

This is where I live now.

This is my normal life, in spite of its present abnormality.

And I need to start living as if it is.

I need to stop living on the outside of Mexico City and

start living on the inside.

I need to stop avoiding interacting with this place.

I need to stop drinking so much.

I need to stop distracting myself so much, I need to find a routine, I

need to stop ordering food from Uber Eats, and it feels appropriate on

this Easter morning, almost a month into my time here, that I do a reset,

because isn't that what Easter's about?

Rebirth?

Reset?

They both have re in it, so.

I'm running with it.

And I think that this is what Jesus would want, really.

When he did the best magic trick of all time, came out of that tomb, and

scared the shit out of everybody.

Why isn't that in the Bible?

If a friend of mine got crucified, died, and was buried, and then

a few days later was alive, I would be freaked the fuck out.

Pardon my French, but I don't think there's any indication in the Bible that

people were like, whoa, what the hell?

Jesus, what?

I thought you were, you think there'd at least be one line that

says, I thought you were dead.

Maybe there is.

I thought thoust was dead, said Jimmy, who's the apostle

nobody ever talked about.

Little Jimmy.

Yeah, he didn't get the credit he deserved.

He cooked most of the food, except for the body of Christ.

Course only Jesus cooked the body of Christ.

Usually they ate it raw.

So anyway, that's what I've been thinking about this morning and this weekend.

And um, I just got back from a yoga class and that feels like a good start.

So here we go.

Month two.

I also made some new music.

What's your overall opinion of Mexico City after what, five days here?

I think it's all right.

I wouldn't want to stay here.

Oh, well.

It's a little big.

It is large.

Yeah, it's a little crowded.

Parts of it are very crowded, yeah, but parts of it aren't.

Most of it's pretty crowded.

You even think that the neighborhood you're staying

in, Condesa, is, feels crowded?

Just the way that, like, the, the traffic flows.

Oh, there's a lot of traffic, yeah.

Yeah, and that, that, to me, symbolizes crowded.

Yeah, I wouldn't want to drive.

No, not at all.

No, we didn't try the subway.

So that's true.

It changed a lot of things actually because the subway I think in the middle

of the day would have been just fine.

Yeah, and that would have, um, but it's still a lot more crowded, you know,

oh, yeah, it can be yeah, but I've never actually ridden the subway once.

I think rather than the super long uber rides I think it

might have actually been faster.

That was fine.

Yeah, I don't mind uber rides.

But what was your favorite thing about your trip?

I need to think you go first.

That's the knife guy, by the way, you hear the whistle?

He's riding a bike and he's got a knife sharpener.

I saw, we saw a knife guy over by the tree.

The museum the other day.

It's the most random thing ever.

Was that your favorite part of the trip?

The knife guy?

Uh huh.

No, it really wasn't.

Probably the cooking class.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, that's true.

I think that was probably my favorite.

And, and the mariachi bands was fun, but it might not be my favorite.

What was the mariachi band like?

They were right up close, and it was very loud.

We were at a restaurant.

Yeah, we didn't get that much food, but.

Well, you said you weren't hungry.

Well, that's true.

But then you ate lettuce one piece at a time for the entire time.

Yeah, but the lettuce tasted really good though.

Oh, he was?

I didn't even see that.

I ate all the lettuce.

That's where it went.

Thursday evening, and I'm feeling good.

I just had my second Spanish lesson.

And, after the first one that I had last week, I will be honest, I felt stupid.

But this one, this second one, you know, I'd spent a lot of

time studying over the week.

And it went really well.

It went really well, and I feel good.

I feel like confident, and I feel like I'm gonna be able to learn this language.

I mean, obviously not perfectly or at an incredibly high level right away,

but yeah, and I really had a good week.

My sister and my nephew were in town, and yeah, we had a really good time.

Too much to really go into, to be honest, but one of the highlights I'll say

was last night, when There's a square here, I think it's Girobaldi Square.

There's all these mariachi bands in the square, and you can just

go and rent one, if you want.

Like, rent one for a weekend, take them home with you.

I'm not entirely sure how that transaction works, because obviously

I've never done it, but it's really quite something to see.

And then there's a restaurant there.

It's just an experience.

There's just like four or five mariachi bands playing all the time, and I don't

know, I feel like a lot of people, at least in the United States, who haven't

been exposed to a lot of mariachi music, have a negative feeling about it.

And maybe I had that feeling at a time as well, but I do not anymore.

There's a real joy in mariachi music that you don't get in a lot of other music.

A palpable feeling of joy.

And I am all in for that.

I don't understand a lot of what they're saying, of course.

Not yet.

But This restaurant, you know, they sat us at this table that was

right in the middle of the action.

So there's like a band playing right in front of us, like a eight

to 10 person mariachi band playing right in front of our table for

the entire time we were there.

Like we had dinner and drinks and it was so much fun.

Everybody loved it.

And, uh, yeah, they played one song that was Somewhat inappropriate.

And you learn the fuck your mother song at the, that I did.

Yeah.

we're gonna sing it on the 4th of July.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And eat, uh, on the 250th anniversary.

And only us and Rachel, Yvonne will know what we're talking about.

Yeah.

We're going to, we're gonna eat Mexican food and sing.

We'll give, we'll say we're gonna on mariachi.

We'll, we're mariachi Yvonne.

We need a song sheet for this one.

Right?

Right.

Can you give us a song sheet for Chinga two?

He will be like, no, no, I cannot do that.

. Rachel will be like, I'll get you one.

. You know, Mia's in Spanish three or four or five already.

I something I think.

I think she wouldn't know yet.

I don't know.

I don't, that's, I don't think she's in Spanish five.

I don't know.

Think Spanish five is a class.

Okay.

What are you talking about?

Somewhere?

There's a class called Spanish five.

Well, yeah, but it normally only goes up to like four.

What are you talking about?

Normally I can find many, many textbooks that are Spanish five.

There's six and seven as well.

Really?

Yeah, it doesn't just stop at four.

Yeah, but it's just like different levels.

It's like one, two, three, four, and then one, two, three,

four again, but just more.

Why would you start go back to one again?

Why wouldn't you just continue to go upwards?

This is like Go on, Owen.

Let's hear that.

I need to gather my thoughts.

Talk about something else.

I get concerned about What about your schooling and your education

when you say things like this?

Don't distract him.

I want to understand what the logic is here with 1, 2, 3, 4, and then

back to 1 again if you pass 4.

But no, but it's like a higher level of 1.

Well number 2 is the higher level of 1.

No, no, but it's like, it is 5, but it's just not called 5.

There is Spanish 5, I promise.

And 6 and 7 I would imagine as well.

I'll show you pictures of the book.

Huh, okay.

Spanish level six.

Yeah.

Yeah, but it's level six.

This is a class called Spanish six.

I'm We'll look it up on the phone immediately when we stop this

So that was great and then we went to this tower it's this very tall

building by the Palais de Belle Arts It's one of the taller buildings

in the city and you can go to the very top and there's like an outdoor

observation deck and And It was amazing.

It was beautiful.

I'll put some photos and videos in the Patreon.

But anyway, it felt like a really great way to end their trip and just

a great day for me because earlier in that day we went to a Mexican

cooking class that, it was incredible.

What was so great about the cooking class?

We cooked a lot and the food was really good.

It was fun to learn about the food because we got, it was more than

just the cooking, it was like the history and, and the, the history.

Yeah, I forgot the chiles.

Oh yeah, that was really good.

That was really spicy though.

Uh huh, some of it.

Some of it was.

It wasn't too spicy though.

Well, some of them were pretty spicy.

Some of them were pretty spicy.

The habanero ones.

Yeah.

I liked making the tortillas.

Yeah, that was fun.

Yeah, even though I never made a perfect one.

No, me neither.

No, your first one, your first one was a disaster.

Oh, well, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, your first one.

No, but you, you made some perfect ones because you had the better press than me.

That's not why.

That's very much why.

It's not why.

I made, every one I made was perfect even though my press was terrible.

That's false.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I thought making the salsa was interesting because every time I've made salsa it's

been like just chopping up fresh tomatoes and fresh jalapenos and stuff and mixing

it up in a bowl with a bunch of stuff.

Yeah, that's not fair.

That's not what happens at all.

No, you're supposed to roast the tomatoes and then just squish it up.

Yeah.

Which is, yeah, we're gonna do that a lot easier than cutting it up too, frankly.

Yeah, I bet you could do with some other things too, like with kiwi salsa.

Oh, you guys, can you go ahead.

Go crazy.

That might be good.

Be sweet.

A sweet salsa.

The toma Tomatillo.

There's mango salsa, you know?

Oh yeah.

I've had mango salsa.

Yeah.

Good.

That's very good.

It's a mango.

We get.

It.

Doesn't really taste like mango though.

When we all go home for the 4th of July, we're going to make, for

America's 250th anniversary, we're going to make a lot of Mexican food.

So,

it seems appropriate, right?

Considering the political environment.

And perhaps we'll hire a mariachi band as well.

I don't know how much that costs in the Cleveland area, but if it's

reasonably priced, if they can play patriotic music, I'm all in.

We did a food tour where we just, one of these tacos we had was just like, they

Roast it like cook it all day in this oil and then they like marinate the tortillas

in the fat from the the meat And then you get the tortilla with the juice and

the fat from the meat and then you get the meat and oh That was a good taco.

Got me sick though Yeah, well, we don't know what got you

sick something got you sick.

Oh, yeah, and you couldn't poop for days died Yeah, tell us about the

time you pooped It was magnificent.

Was it?

Even with the bidet, I clogged the toilet.

It was Did you really?

Oh, yeah.

Was there a plunger?

Yeah, it took me like three, three sessions.

Oh, thank God I wasn't there.

Yeah.

That was the night I left him at home.

I had a feeling.

I was, I was a little worried.

It was, it was bad.

I thought it was never gonna go down.

We're so similar.

Um, I clogged the toilet this morning as a matter of fact.

Uh, yeah, I've clogged toilets all over the world.

I could do a whole episode just about that.

I've gotten a bit better at not clogging toilets.

How do you clog it with the bidet?

I don't know.

Have you pooped since?

Uh, no.

I'm not a very frequent pooper.

Interesting.

Actually, not at all.

Huh.

But when I need to poop, it happens.

Well, I mean, that's Not when I, like, need to poop, but like,

if there's a time where I should poop, it just sort of happens.

What's the longest you think you've gone without pooping?

I don't know.

I want to say there was a time, maybe January last year or the year

before, I might have gone maybe two weeks, and that was pretty rough.

One time I was in Korea, I had to put my hand in a garbage bag, stick it

in there, because I had no plunger.

Yeah.

So I just had to take it and start to take it on out of there.

And we all, as well, got to watch the Orion spacecraft take take off in my

apartment here in Mexico City, which felt like one of those memories that I'll

kind of have with me forever, because it was a significant moment, you know?

Space exploration moments are always pretty big, and we haven't

gone to the moon in more than 50 years, so, I don't know.

It was really, it was special to have my sister and my nephew

here in my Mexico City apartment watching this momentous event.

Oh, you went on the balloon ride, too.

Oh, yeah, that was fun.

It wasn't like As fun as I thought it was going to be.

How, why did you think, how much fun did you think it was going to be?

I mean, I thought it was gonna be cool, like you're way up in the sky.

Right.

Excitement.

And what.

It's just sort of like you're sitting there, you know.

In your mind, what did you expect to be, expected to be?

I thought it'd be more like, I guess, exhilarating would be the word.

Oh, all right.

Like, more like a, you know, like on a big zip line.

We did that in Guatemala.

Well, you've seen a balloon.

When's the last time you, like, saw a balloon that was

like, looked exhilarating?

Never, but I don't really see hot air I don't really look at

hot air balloons very often.

I've never really seen one in person.

Interesting.

I mean, we were high above the ground on those zip lines.

It's interesting that you're comparing an air balloon ride to a zip line.

Well, I thought it'd be similar in excitement level to like a zip line.

That's confusing.

Because you're like way high in the air and you're like, Flying around.

Right, I mean in that sense, why, is an airplane ride as exciting as a zipline?

The similarity between a hot air balloon and a zipline is that you can sort

of look around and see everything.

You can look down and see everything.

Interesting.

But in an airplane, you only got that one window.

Like, in a zipline, you know you're sort of just hanging

out in the middle of nowhere.

Next time you're here, we'll go do a zipline.

They're the longest one in the world here somewhere in Mexico.

Is it very long?

It's four and a half hours long in one line.

Well, yeah, all right.

You have to bring lunch.

You have to bring lunch and eat it while you're going.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I'm glad you came to Mexico City.

You should come by yourself, Owen, because then we could have some real fun.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, go to all the What?

Go to all the where?

Gambling halls, of course.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gotta bet on the ponies again.

He's not even old enough to rent a bike here.

You can, you can gamble here at any age.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, yeah, anybody.

All right.

Maybe jet skis?

You can rent the bikes.

Jet skis.

I don't know if there's anywhere to jet ski in Mexico City because the lake that

it was built on is pretty much gone.

Well, we could just like dig up part of the city.

Okay, we'll do that.

Any last things to say?

Uh, God bless America.

Wow.

You have to Viva Mexico.

Okay, that's better than what he was going to say.

What were you going to say?

I didn't say anything.

What was I going to say?

No, no, no, you have to say it now.

Yeah, what did you think he was going to say?

Yeah, you have to say it.

Yeah, just the lyrics.

Oh, oh, yeah.

Yo chinga tu madre.

Perfecto.

Patricia invited me over a few weeks ago to her house to meet her sisters

and her brother in law and their kids.

And so, yeah, I went over and I had a great time.

They're wonderful people.

And, uh, at one point I was talking to the, her brother in law, um,

whose name escapes me, but he is apparently a very big football fan.

And when I mentioned to him that I'm from Cleveland, he was like, Oh, I'm so sorry.

And I thought like, even in Mexico city, the Cleveland Browns reputation,

It's, it's, it's still there.

I, who knew how far that the reputation of the Browns went, but

apparently it goes quite a ways.

Oh!

I finally threw my garbage away.

I heard the bell.

I looked out the window.

I saw the garbage truck sitting about a block away.

I grabbed my garbage.

I walked down my stairs and I took that garbage right to that garbage

truck Gave the guy ten pesos and he took my garbage and I felt like a

king for about an hour Talked to an old friend of mine John tonight And

I mean it was great to talk to him.

It's always great to talk to him.

He's a great guy One of the more wonderful humans I've had the

pleasure of knowing in my 52 years.

But, you know, I don't usually bring up the podcast to anybody because

I feel like I don't want to be the guy with the podcast who talks

about his podcast all the time.

But he brought it up.

So we talked about the podcast and, you know, we talked about

episodes, different episodes.

And I can't tell you how much I enjoyed that because I get so

little feedback on this anymore.

So When I first started the podcast, a lot of people were like giving me

feedback because it was new and everybody was like, oh, yeah, I'd love that.

But now that's died off.

That died off months ago.

And now it's just me continuing to pump out these episodes every week.

And I just don't get a lot of email or, you know, I get some

voicemails, which I really appreciate.

And the emails that I do get, I really appreciate, but very few.

So this is just to say that, like, if you are listening to this podcast

consistently, or even now and again, or right now, this is the first time

you've listened, it would mean a lot if you would just throw me an email

at onefjefpod at gmail, just say, you can even just write, I'm listening.

That'd be great.

Because sometimes it feels like I am talking into the void here, you

know, like I'm just talking to myself.

And in a sense, I am talking to myself.

And that's okay, because You know, we all talk to ourselves, whether it's in

our head or out of our head, but my inner voice has always needed something to,

has always wanted to be heard, I guess.

My inner voice has always wanted to be heard.

And this gives me a place to make it heard.

But my inner voice is also one that is critical, self critical and full of

doubt and full of insecurities and all the things that we all suffer from.

And so it's hard for my inner voice to maintain a level of confidence.

To continue to express myself, be earnest and so forth on this medium

without any kind of feedback.

So, John, thank you for that.

And just for the conversation.

When you do a move like this, it's really isolating.

You know, it's isolating.

Especially when you don't know the language.

It's really isolating.

And I took a walk tonight and I was thinking that maybe that's why

I like Living in a foreign country where I'm a stranger, like, because

like I've always been an outsider.

I've talked about this on the podcast

and maybe this living in a foreign country where I don't speak the

language very well yet, um, allows me to continue to be an outsider.

It's like my comfort zone, right?

Which is weirdly ironic, considering all the talk I've released about

getting out of one's comfort zone.

Maybe this has been my.

Maybe this whole move has been getting into my comfort zone.

But it turns out my comfort zone is not all that comfortable.

So, uh, maybe comfort zone isn't the right term for it.

Perhaps happy place.

Yeah, I like that better.

Happy place.

But I think there's some truth to it because, you know, I went and

had dinner by myself at a, uh, at the movie theater down the street.

And it was very crowded tonight.

It's a Friday night.

It was crowded.

So I was sitting by myself at this table eating a pizza, and I couldn't understand

anything, really, that anybody was saying.

And I thought to myself, I thought, even if I wanted to be, like, friendly

and interact with other people, like, it would go only so far.

I mean, they probably speak English.

Let's, you know, let's assume that they don't speak English,

but it would only go so far.

Although I did once have a extended conversation with two Ukrainian men on a

park bench in Kiev years and years ago.

Yeah, I was sitting on this park bench in Kiev, right on the Dnieper River,

and, uh, There were these two Ukrainian guys sitting there, and I just tried

to ask them what time the subway closed, because the subway closed at,

I don't know, what time it was, 10 12.

And I wanted to make sure that I got on it before I can get back, before I

went to get a taxi back to the hotel.

And we just struck up a conversation, but it was so broken English.

Like, it was like drawing pictures, and we, you know, one of them kind of

spoke English, the other one barely did.

But like they invited me on their boat.

They were sailors.

I think they may have been gay, but there were sailors and

they invited me on the boat.

They gave me a tour of the boat.

And we sat in the, um, unlike the bar slash dining hall or whatever of the boat.

And I gave them a cassette of Bob Dylan that a friend had made for me

and they put it into the sound system.

And we sat there and drank vodka.

For, I don't know, a couple of hours, like just shots of vodka

and tried to talk to each other.

And then at the end of the, you know, we got off the boat and the one dude

gives me the shirt off his back.

Gave me the shirt off his back.

And I still have it.

And when I was moving this recent time and I was like trying to get

rid of things, like, that was one of the things I was like, I don't

know if I can get rid of this.

I've never worn it.

It just wouldn't fit me.

It was, you know, built like a sailor, this guy.

I don't know.

But I still have the shirt that the guy gave me off his back.

It's called, it says like, Telavia Games on it.

It's not a nice shirt.

I mean, he probably didn't even want it.

He was probably going to throw it away.

But he's like, oh, I'll give it to this American guy.

Anyway, I think that's all for this week.

If I think of anything else to say, I will record it and add it.

But yeah, I'm hungry now, so I have to get something to eat.

But As always, thank you for listening.

If you have any questions about Mexico City, about my experience, about, uh, any

element of anything, you know, you can ask me about astrophysics if you want.

I won't be able to answer you, but I will try.

You can email the podcast at onefjefpod@gmail.com.

If you would like to call the podcast You can call and leave a

voicemail at 1 6 6 9 2 4 1 5 8 8 2.

That's 1 6 6 9 2 4 1 5 8 8 2.

Patron subscribers.

I hope you were enjoying getting to listen to this early before the proletariat.

Nothing personal against the rest of you and to the proletariat, and that's

not, I don't feel like that's offensive.

It's a, it's a termin of endearment.

From me to you.

If you would like to join the elite, the proud, the Patreon

village of onefjef, please do go to patreon.com/onefjef and sign up.

You'll get access to all these, uh, CDMX Dispatch episodes early.

You'll get access to a lot of photos and videos that I'll be posting on

there, and a bunch of extra content yet to come, and that has already come.

So, you.

It's a smorgasbord.

Smorgasbord.

How do you is it smorgasbord?

God, I struggle with that word.

It's a variety.

It's a whole magical world of whatever.

I don't know.

God, I'm hungry.

All right.

Thank you to all of you.

I love you all.

Sending my love from Mexico City to all of you all over the world.

Whoever you are, wherever you are, I hope your life is going as well.

And if it isn't, you can fix that shit.

I'll see you soon.