I live across the street from the General Coordination of Finances and Administration of the Education Department of the Guerrero State Government, at Chilpancingo.
I had written two notes on my encounters with bureaucrats. This is a good news bad news story. The good news is that they are providing me, free of charge, wireless internet connection for my Toshiba Satellite Pro 4300 laptop. The bad news is that some gorvernment official, or maybe just an overconscientious IT person, has decided that chats and blogs, are out of the question. Maybe some state secrets about the poor performance of teachers.
I could not post my blog last night from home. Here you have it now. I am working from my workstation, MicroStar or some such. The Autonomous University of Guerrero in its infinite wisdom has decided that college professors have more sense than mere bureaucrats; at least I want to conceptualize it that way.
To finish this off, I can report that I went to the only telephone office in Chilpancingo where you could buy the new 3G iPhone. No crowd, no nothing, but free cookies and cofee, and nobody starting their iPhone service. The man in charge, should I call him a bureaucrat? looked at me like "I don´t want to waste my time with you". He did answer some questions, though. I can have mine if besides the two hundred bucks the iPhone costs, I give the sometimes richest man in the world, Carlos Slim, six hundred extra dollars for a "contract". If I want double the memory, 16 Gb, then I just give an extra hundred dollars.
That is why nobody was in a hurry to give their money away. What I saw though, were some worried people paying their dues to this new King of Mexico, for the more mundane "contracts" they already have with him . This is how fortunes and legends are made.
I had written two notes on my encounters with bureaucrats. This is a good news bad news story. The good news is that they are providing me, free of charge, wireless internet connection for my Toshiba Satellite Pro 4300 laptop. The bad news is that some gorvernment official, or maybe just an overconscientious IT person, has decided that chats and blogs, are out of the question. Maybe some state secrets about the poor performance of teachers.
I could not post my blog last night from home. Here you have it now. I am working from my workstation, MicroStar or some such. The Autonomous University of Guerrero in its infinite wisdom has decided that college professors have more sense than mere bureaucrats; at least I want to conceptualize it that way.
To finish this off, I can report that I went to the only telephone office in Chilpancingo where you could buy the new 3G iPhone. No crowd, no nothing, but free cookies and cofee, and nobody starting their iPhone service. The man in charge, should I call him a bureaucrat? looked at me like "I don´t want to waste my time with you". He did answer some questions, though. I can have mine if besides the two hundred bucks the iPhone costs, I give the sometimes richest man in the world, Carlos Slim, six hundred extra dollars for a "contract". If I want double the memory, 16 Gb, then I just give an extra hundred dollars.
That is why nobody was in a hurry to give their money away. What I saw though, were some worried people paying their dues to this new King of Mexico, for the more mundane "contracts" they already have with him . This is how fortunes and legends are made.
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2 comments:
Well said.
I´m glad you agree. Maybe when I am rich and famous I will be able to afford one of these babies.
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