Chipinque

Lovely afternoon walk, saw Monterrey and surrounding cities from atop, quite spectacular...followed by a meaty dinner (of course) and aching legs for the following week...

I saw light

Whenever I see 'light' in this type of composition I feel I might be at the lucky moment when I shall gain sudden wisdom, alas this turned out not be wisdom though, just showed me very clearly that there were another 500 meters to climb...tch, and this could have been one of those philosophical moments in one's life!

Backstreets of CEDIM

Finally find out about lunch possibilities outside the school...accompanied by a security guard on his walkie-talkie. Our path is full of dry flaky lime stone powder soil that gets into our shoes and clothes. On our right we're flanked by the grafittied yellow wall from the toilet bowl manufacturing company (appropriately yellow wall?!) beyond which the insane Sierra stretching gazes impassively at all humanity.

Grafitti

Pathway to luncheon

Sierra 

Glad we were accompanied...

Students underground

one of the things I love here is the student lounge space...couches for siestas, snuggs and social networking; and longitudinal desks for late night gaming...that's what Design school is about, right?!

Next time you smell peanut breath

from your table fan, you can guess where it's been!

Stall in downtown Monterrey selling traditional mexican snacks.

This isn't a post-Tequila effect...

just a regular early morning view of the mountains as we get to work...

The Sierra Madre

A chameleon in limestone...changes in layers, shapes, textures depending on the angle you look at it...

Chilelectrifying

One red salsa is not enough, nope. There must, at all times, be many gradations of hotness...which start with very hot, so imagine what voltage they go up to....

Ooh the snacky-candy is so Indian

loads of limon, chilli, sugar...

I got Pork-ed!

Am becoming the Microwave Maestro...so with much delight I cooked up a large pot of orzo with beets and corn, mind you, even sizzled some chopped onion and garlic...and then as a flourish added some chorizo to jazz it up...I didn't realize that it would be pork since I knew pork was called puerca, so assumed when it said chorizo cerda, it would NOT be pork...alas...as my apartment steadily grew porki-fied, I grew increasingly nauseous and eventually fled into my colleagues apartment offering them free home cooked luncheon (fortunately, they are pig-friendly!). But, AK is not to be beaten so easily and I cooked up a Pollo con ancho y poblano rice delight instead...

The shadow crossing it - a do not consume sign?

Ancho delight

Monterrey downtown

A few scattered buildings of interest, empty museums, a ghostly down town with mostly closed down bars and restaurants due to safety issues, kind of creepy to occasionally see trucks pass by manned by AK-47 toting green suited marines...

Monterrey downtown

Old government building, now a museum

View of the cultural museum

Outside the contemporary art museum

Designed by Ricardo Legorreta, reception area

Interior, with cafe on the side

MMR Jan 14th

Mystery Meal Revealed...in the cafeteria today...requested the server to put some green stuff on my plate because the refried beans looked scary (like liquid clay?), the green stuff turned out to be some sort of vague watery guacamole business. The Pollo Adobado looked better than it tasted and now the entire meal lounges in my belly making it very hard for me to charge up the class to strategize on design strategy for the Diesel competition...zzzzzzzz

Healthy snack-age

Strange and wonderful...

Groundnut candy with molasses and sesame

Cactus crisp with multi cereals 

Candy decadance...

CEDIM

Also surrounded by these strange limestone mountains, we're walled in and so either we freeze (like the past two days with -0c or boil). The school is small and functional in design, very Rm Koolhas-ish, lots of windows and natural lighting. As with most architecture here (and the availability of space) it's all on the ground floor. Entrance to the faculty area is via finger print tech...which of course hilariously failed the day the power went out, leaving us wide open for gangsta attacks.

Cafeteria versus Studio cuisine...

I think I win this round ;-)

Chicken chipotle and some caldo 

Arroz with fresh poblano, chilly & queso

=

Fancy a burger?

Walk through and get yourself one at the Burger Army :-)

Am here at a place called Suites...Jail House Rock!

Views from our minimum security Jail...migt I add, what I initially thought were snow strips on the Sierra (on google images) turned out to be bare naked quarry sites for the world's largest cement company CEMEX. 

Suites from the outside

Roof top overlooking the mountains.

7:15 AM, sunrise.

Looking east from the roof top.

My studio.

Looking into the suites (jail)

Almost there...

Minnesota in winter looks better from the sky...

Getting here...

Nothing like a cup of noodles in the middle of two gastronomic experiences in airline travel. Next time I will carry frozen cooked veggies with me and dip them in here...yum. And of course watching movies through the space of two seats made me feel like a homeless lurker slopping down noodles from a soup kitchen while watching TV through someone's home.