Saturday, July 24, 2004
Tomorrow I'm going to turn 33. I fell in love with Mexico when I was 27, charmed by its vibrant life, novel sensual sounds, spicy food, exotic girls and ambient mess. Six years later, I'm hard-pressed to find any redeeming feature in this country. The doctor's diagnostic would be that I'm sick and tired of Mexico, suffering of burn-out due to unrealistic expectations that I harboured in the first place.
I'm convinced that Mexico's population in its multitude is condemned to remain anchored in the thirld world, emigrating to the USA to serve as unskilled slave labour under the leadership of Chinese or Indian businessmen. The dominant attitude towards technology is one of doubt, fear, or childish enthusiasm. I'm a high-tech entrepreneur by heart and soul, so out of place in Mexico that I feel like a polar bear in the Sahara - longing for my pristine horizons made of ice and blue sky.
Mexicans are keen to invest their wealth in real-state, multi-million dollar residences that represent all the tangibility, safety and simplicity required by an elite that embodies Mexico's deficiencies. Too many fortunes were lost during the Internet heydays when dumb-money was poured into ridiculous hair-brained ventures. Now the backlash is as violent and stupid as the upsurge once was.
Unless you have inherited the patience of Nelson Mandela while enjoying the luck of a lottery winner, don't even dream of creating a successful technology startup in Mexico: you would be wasting your time and energy, like I did. Only distributors of IBM, HP and Nortel can prosper in Mexico. If your activity is more advanced than shifting boxes, you better quickly look North and sell to the USA, like a handful of high-tech startups did, thereby ensuring their prosperity.
"Trente-trois printemps" - and my future is riddled with question marks. Definitely, Mexico is not for me and I'm not for Mexico: the lifestyle, the sounds, the food, the girls and the mess get on my nerves. As much as Britain grew on me like a flowering seed, Mexico developed as a cancer that will kill me slowly unless I take drastic measures.
I pray that in 12 months I'll be writing new entries of this blog from the comfort of a first-world living-room, travelling as little as possible to Mexico. Maybe my company will have succeeded in establishing a beach-head in the USA, perhaps I will be leading projects in the Thames Valley, in any event the nauseating smell of tacos would be a thing of the past.
Mexicans who read these lines, please don't get offended - there is nothing personal in these statements. I made a monstruous mistake moving to Mexico in order to build a telecoms company, I'm sole to be blamed. Most of my foreign friends love your country - all for their own particular reasons. My experience is not typical, I belong to the category of fools who see Patagonia as the promised land for charter beach tourism. The next time I'll pick Ibiza, I promise!
Thirty-three candles, but no decent chocolate cake to plant them. I want to take this opportunity to tell all the people who love or support me that this year I'll be acting with the little intelligence that God has granted me and make right a situation that has lasted for only too long. The curtain will draw on the Mexican episode...
Posted by Serge @ 10:22 PM MEX [Link]
Saturday, July 3, 2004
Mexico sometimes surprises me, positively that is, since the negative impressions abound and are not even worth mentioning in most cases.
Have you ever been in a tall building during a strong earthquake? I have, and the feeling is not the most pleasant. The 1985 earthquake of Mexico City killed nearly 10,000 people trapped under the tons of rubbles of hundreds of collapsed buildings.
On Wednesday I learned about the story of a man who went to work early on September 19th 1985, in the Torre LatinoAmerica. For you who do not know Mexico City, the Torre LatinoAmerica was the tallest skyscraper in Latin America when it was built. An impressive structure of glass and steel. At 7:17AM, our man was sitting at his desk, on the 25th floor of the tower. His chair suddently rolled all the way to the far wall of his office... and then again to the other wall. He walked to the window and could see the buildings of what is now Alameda Central being destroyed. The tower oscillated more than 6 minutes. The man painfully walked out of the building and reaching the street... - miraculously unharmed - threw up.
Torre Mayor is the new tallest building in Mexico City and Latin America, at over 225 m. of height. Deloitte & Touche have their offices there, and visiting them for a meeting I couldn't help thinking about what would happen in an earthquake ("hmmmm, where is the nearest parachute station"). I quizzed some Deloitte staff, and to my surprise, none of them was afraid. Now I understand why.
Torre Mayor is also the tallest building in the world with a seismic-proof structural design. This is the masterpiece of Mexican structural engineers Enrique Martinez Romero. A complex setup of seismic dampers would absorb most of an earthquake's energy while the tower would show a lateral movement of less than 60 cm, which would subside after less than 40 seconds.
In other words, not even a 8.1 magnitude earthquake could interrupt the work of the Deloitte & Touche auditors. This amazing feat of engineering is to a large part owed to the professionalism of a Mexican firm, demonstrating that exceptional individuals can break through in any country to achieve the most impressive results.
If only Mexico had more Enrique Martinez Romero's and universities to produce talented engineers, this country could truly become an example for Latin America. Unfortunately, for a time to come, Torre Mayor will remain a lonely diamond lost in a coal mine.
