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The Simpsons in Spanish & a Bungee Fitness Class · onefjef

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This is CDMX Dispatch number seven, the first one in a while that has not been
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considered an official episode, and also the first one in a while that will be
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released to the Patreon subscribers first.
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So congratulations, you're back.
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I've been living in Mexico City for a little more than two months now,
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and in some ways it's getting easier
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You know, I'm meeting some friends, doing social stuff
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taking Spanish classes, so forth and so on.
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But in other ways
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I wouldn't necessarily say it's getting harder.
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No, I would.
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I would say it's getting harder in a way
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It's the loneliness 'cause when you do a thing like this, like what I'm doing
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here, there's phases of adapting to your new life, and I think the first
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phase is just like excitement, bliss, everything's wonderful, this is gonna be
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great, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
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Honeymoon phase, I believe they call it.
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It's like you're, you know, still a tourist, but you're actually gonna stay.
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And the second phase starts when you realize you're not a tourist anymore,
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and that you have to actually deal with real-life things like groceries, um,
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bills, getting work, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and also that learning Spanish
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is gonna be harder than you imagined.
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And then I think the phase I'm in now is the I understand this is my new life, and
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I understand this is what I chose, and I understand that I knew this was gonna
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be hard beforehand, and I understand that all of this is a part of it
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But I'm lonely.
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I'm lonely.
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And it's funny, I didn't really think that I would be, or I didn't consider
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it when I-- before I moved here.
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Not that I would have changed anything, but I guess I didn't comprehend the
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loneliness, you know, the level of it.
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It comes and goes, but Sundays are always hard, I feel like,
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because... I don't know.
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Sundays have always been hard.
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Why should it be any different in Mexico City?
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And for me, there's also like this, this nagging judgment of myself that I really
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have to shake, and it's that like, "Oh, okay, you're living in Mexico City now.
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Are you doing the things that you wanted to do?
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Like, are you spending time in the wonderful park?" And the truth is, I
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haven't done a lot of those things.
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I've done some of the things, for sure.
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And so when I think about it, I can say, "Okay, no, you have done a lot
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of stuff." It's just different, right?
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I think that's the thing is I experienced Mexico City originally
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as a tourist for an extended period of time, but I was still a tourist.
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There was nothing real about it.
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I wasn't really buying groceries, right?
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And as a result, it was, you know, of course, it's all gonna be magical.
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You're a tourist, right?
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You know you're leaving.
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You know when you're leaving.
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But there's a moment after you move to a place, for ex-- after you, you
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know, expatriate or whatever the, or repatriate to a place where you
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realize, I, I'm, I'm not a tourist.
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This is my life.
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This is my real life.
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And I don't feel like I have roots here yet.
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I don't know how long that takes.
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Not like familial roots, just like roots, you know?
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Roots like I grew in Columbus and I grew in New York.
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I mean, I guess if I think about it in another way, the positive way,
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I could say I do have some roots here, but you know what I mean.
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You know what I mean.
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And if you don't, um, email me at onefjefpod@gmail.com,
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I'll explain it to you
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This morning, Patricia and I went to this, uh, I don't know what it's called,
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bungee aero fitness or something.
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I don't know what the name of it is.
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It's apparently all over the place, um, in the United States and elsewhere.
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But y- you go to this place.
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I would never have even occurred to me to, to even do this.
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I would never have done this by myself because it was entirely in Spanish, and
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had Patricia not been there, I wouldn't have been able to understand a word.
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So not that I understood a word.
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She ex-- You know, she translated.
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I understood a few words, but y- Anyway, so this class, they
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hook you up to this harness.
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There was about five of us in there, all women and me.
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They hook you up to this har-harness, and then you, you know, you- you're,
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you're dangling from like a bungee cord from the ceiling, and you can kind of
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bounce and stuff, and then you do like different aerobic exercises, and there's
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like one where you fly or fall over.
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It's, it, it's interesting.
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It's fun.
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The issue that I really had was that I don't think that these harnesses
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are necessarily ma-made for like the male anatomy, if you follow my drift.
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Catch my drift.
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Follow my drift?
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It's catch my drift I know for sure, but is it also follow my drift?
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I think it is.
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I think that one works as well.
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So yeah, there was a little, um, discomfort in that
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c-certain parts of the, um...
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But yeah, I mean, it was different.
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It was interesting.
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Uh, it was out of my comfort zone, but it was easier and I-- Again, I... It's
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what I said I think a few episodes ago is it's like this whole experience
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would be a lot easier if I had somebody to do stuff with, and so it's like...
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particularly somebody who speaks fluent Spanish, so
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Yeah.
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And then she gave me s-uh, some kefir and explained to me how to make it.
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And I'm gonna give it a shot because I made yoga, yog-yogurt, not yoga.
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I made yogurt in, uh, Columbus, as I think I've mentioned on the pod, but I
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have never made kefir, and kefir is like a f-a family member, I think, of yogurt.
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Patricia believes it's superior in every way, but I'm not
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entirely sure that's true.
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I would say they're equals.
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But it's-- I'm gonna give it a shot.
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I named it.
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I don't remember what name I gave it.
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Let me check.
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I named my... I named my kefir Beacho, which I think means, like, little,
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cute little one or something like that.
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And that's... It's not cute.
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It's disgusting.
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It's like this little re-white blob.
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But, you know, it's like kombucha, right?
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The same, like a host kinda thing.
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Anyway, uh, so that was nice.
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You're asking yourself, longtime listeners that is, are asking themselves, "What's
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going on with Patricia, Jef? You haven't talked about her in a long time."
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Yeah.
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Yeah, I haven't, have I?
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Well, we'll see if she'll come on the podcast.
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I think she might come on this week or next.
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No promises on that end.
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And that won't clarify anything as to what's going on, quote-unquote, with her.
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And, uh, I don't really feel at liberty to go into it, so I'll just
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say that, you know, we're good.
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We're good.
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So.
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I mean, clearly we're going to, you know, bungee, whatever,
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acros something together, so.
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But it's also complicated.
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So good and complicated, we'll call it that.
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Yeah.
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And next week I start taking extreme Spanish classes.
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Again, a long story, but I'll be taking six hours of Spanish per day,
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two classes of three hours a piece.
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So that'll be a lot.
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That'll make my brain hurt.
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Um, but after this week I'll be fluent like a local, so.
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That's all it takes is five days of six hours a day.
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And then you know the whole language, so that's exciting.
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It's one of the great things about Spanish is it only takes six hours a day,
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five days in one week, and that's it.
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I think what this whole move brings up in me is this idea of, like...
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Because I do think about what it would be like if I was still in Columbus.
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You know, I have nostalgia a little bit.
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Not a lot, um, but a little of, like, hanging out with my
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cousin or, you know, whatever.
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But, uh... And that's comfort, right?
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That's comfortable.
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You know what I mean?
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That's the comfortable choice.
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It's also the static choice, right?
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It's the same, same choice.
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It's the, "I'm satisfied with this level of life." And then there's what I did,
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and, you know, there's no winning because it's like I miss the comfort of home.
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I miss it.
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I do
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But I also know that I was not necessarily that happy back in Columbus.
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So good, bad, good, bad, good, bad, good, bad.
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It's all a rollercoaster, isn't it?
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It's all a rollercoaster
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It's just a ride, as Bill Hicks said.
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Just a ride.
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Friend of mine told me today that in Mexico, when you meet somebody, people
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usually ask, "Where are you from?" instead of, "What do you do?" Because it's more
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important to know where a person's from.
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You get more information from that than you do from just their stupid job.
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And I'll be honest, I love that.
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I really do.
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And it says so much about the differences between the United States
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and Europe and so forth, and Mexico.
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Because in the United States, it's always like, "What do you do?" I even do it.
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'Cause in some cases, I think you can get an idea of who a person is, but it's this
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idea that identity is tied to your job.
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That's the thing that I, I think is terrible.
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Like, 'cause it isn't.
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It's, it shouldn't be.
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You're not your job.
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You're not your stuff.
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You're not your... You are where you came from, though.
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You are your roots, you know?
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I don't know.
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Something to think about
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Nighttime is a feminine verb in Spanish And that's interesting.
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Not that I don't think night should be a woman, but it does seem strange,
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the arbitrariness of the assignment of masculine and feminine nouns in
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all the languages that have masculine and feminine nouns, which, you know,
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French, I think Italian, yeah, et cetera.
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Number one, with masculine and feminine nouns, okay, no.
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That's one thing that English did right is to get rid of that nightmare,
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because that is... There's no purpose.
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Okay, if somebody can tell me the purpose of having masculine and feminine nouns
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in a language, email me at onefjefpod or call me at 669-2415-882, and leave
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a message and let me know, 'cause I honestly have no idea, and I don't wanna
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search for that because I don't want...
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I don't know why I don't wanna search for that, but I'm not gonna do it.
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So anyway, not a fan.
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But I would be more of a fan if there was some logic to the masculinity and
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femininity of some of these words.
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Uh, but, but there isn't.
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There isn't.
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Like, night is a woman, which again, I don't wanna have to explain
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this, but you understand, like morning should be a woman, which
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mon- which, which it is, la manana.
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But the night, it should be a man.
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It should be.
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La luna, a wom- the, uh, a moon is a woman.
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Again, the man in the moon is like... And I'm not trying to be sexist.
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I, I apologize if, if you take it that way, but the man in the
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moon is a thing, and it's strange that the moon is a feminine noun.
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That's it.
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I'm ending that part of this podcast right now.
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So that aside, went out with my friend, uh, Bernie, Bernie tonight.
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He was on the podcast, I don't know, several episodes back.
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You can look for it, Bernardo Pacheco.
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He's a new friend.
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He's a Mexican guy, and he, uh, I, I, I really love hanging out with him, but
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the thing I realized tonight was that, like, one of the main reasons I wanna
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learn S- Spanish is because, you know, I have several Mexican friends here,
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and when I go out with them and they run into friends or we meet up with friends
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of theirs, it's all Spanish, and I don't understand what's going on, so I just
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sit there and I'm just like, "Uh, okay."
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And I'm not blaming anyone.
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This is m- you know, my problem to fix.
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I'm in Mexico.
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I've gotta learn the language and yada, yada, yada.
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But I, I don't like it.
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So it makes me wanna learn the language even more because I just can't.
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I don't like not understand.
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Be like, "What did you guys talk about? What did, what did you say?"
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And then it's like the sigh of, "Well, I, I told them where the
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bathroom was Something, you know.
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Anyway.
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I mean, that's been the case.
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It was the case when I was in Korea.
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I remember when I was living in Korea, I worked at this one school as a, as a
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teacher, of course, and I-- there was a night, it was like we were all going
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out, all the teachers were going out.
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It was some planned thing.
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So I was the only English-speaking teacher at the school, and so-- and
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there was like eight other teachers.
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So we all went out and, like, had dinner and had drinks, and all got quite drunk.
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And I remember I couldn't speak Korean.
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I didn't really... I could read Korean, but I couldn't speak it.
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But the only thing that I could say, I mean, I could say annyeonghaseyo and
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kamsahamnida, like, you know, thank you.
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But the only other thing I could really say was, uh, what was it?
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It was, like, in the subway, in the metro, it was like next station in Inya- Inyagon.
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So I forget how it went, but it was next station is so and so station.
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And I heard that so often 'cause I took the subway a lot.
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And so I could say that, right?
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I was-- And I started being like, I was drunk, and I started being like,
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"Next station is Jef station" in Korean, and people thought it was hilarious.
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Hilarious.
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These Koreans, I had them in the palm of my hand with my, with my, uh, dumb,
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not gringo, but you know what I mean.
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In, in Korea, it was, uh, waeguk.
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Waeguk was foreign American man, I believe.
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Yeah, miguk was general foreign person, and waeguk was
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foreign, like, was, was gringo
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Yeah.
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Solid Waygook, Waygook humor there.
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Solid Waygook humor.
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Quite a line there.
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So yeah, it's a thing here too.
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We went to this restaurant, I think it was in Doctor's, and it's been
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open for, I don't know, 50 years or something, this old Mexican restaurant.
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And it was legit.
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It was like, you know, a like very old looking laminated menu was all you got
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But boy, was the food good.
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And isn't that always the way?
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Isn't that always the way?
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Yeah.
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Que mas?
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I'm super tired
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I have been taking six hours of Spanish a day every day this week.
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Five hours one day because we cut the class short, but most of the
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day is six hours a day in a row.
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Like, there's no real break.
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I mean, there's like 15-minute breaks, but that's about it.
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And it's a long story as to why.
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Like, I didn't sign up for six hours, but it just happened.
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Uh, I don't, I don't wanna get into it.
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Suffice it to say that it's a lot of Spanish.
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It's a lot of-- It's a lot.
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And, um, when I get home, I'm s-- my brain is so tired.
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It's so tired.
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Because of course it is.
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And I'm doing this next week too, and possibly the week after as well.
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Today in class, I mean, I learned, learned a lot of things in class
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today, but in, you know, there's a portion of the class where we just
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talk, you know, about whatever.
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And I don't know how The Simpsons came up.
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Oh, yeah.
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One of my classmate's notebooks had a font on it that said... I don't know
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what it said, but it was a Simpsons font.
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It was, like, the font of The Simpsons at the beginning of
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the, the show The Simpsons.
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And so I said, "Oh, it's The Simpsons font." And then the teacher heard me, and
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he was like, "Oh." And he went-- talked to-- the story about how The Simpsons are
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still-- 'cause I would see, I still do, uh, not I would see, but I still do see.
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Uh, there's a verb tense for that in Spanish, I swear to God.
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So
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I would, I, I still see Simpsons, you know, graffiti Simpsons and advertising
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all over the place here, more so than in the United States for sure.
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And I asked him why, and he was like, "Well, The Simpsons is still
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popular here because it's funnier in Spanish than it is in English."
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And he proceeded to tell a story about one of his old students who, when he
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asked him why he was learning Spanish, he said to, to be able to understand
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Shrek, the, the movie Shrek in Spanish, because it's apparently better as well.
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So
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I'm not gonna say that that's a goal of mine.
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Like, that's not... Uh, even in-- Okay, before I learned about this, that was a
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0% reason as to why I'm learning Spanish.
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But now that I've learned that there's a lot of people who agree that The
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Simpsons is better, I don't give a shit about Shrek, but The Simpsons is better
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in Spanish, it makes me want to now learn Spanish so that I can understand
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why The Simpsons is better in Spanish
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But if everybody, if anybody out there, rather, already knows why it is that
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The Simpsons is better in Spanish, you know, onefjefpod@gmail.com, 669-241-5882.
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I'm starting to nail that, I think.
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I really think I am.
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I don't think that's the number, though.
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669-241-5882, that's the number, yeah.
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If it isn't, that would be a good explanation as to why I've gotten
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no voicemails lately, because I gave out the wrong number.
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But unfortunately, I think that I've been giving out the right
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number the whole time, and I just haven't gotten any voicemails.
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My friend picked me up tonight.
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Bernie picked me up to take me.
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We were heading to this party.
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We were going to go to this party, but there was a line, blah, blah, blah.
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It doesn't matter.
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But he's driving me through Mexico City, and it was like, you know, 9
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or 10 o'clock at night on a Friday.
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It's a Friday.
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It's through like, you know, the popular part of Mexico City and
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I had never ridden in a ca-- I've ridden in like Ubers and shit, but
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I had never ridden in a car with a friend of mine going through
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Mexico City at night on a weekend.
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And, and yeah, it was like, wow.
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It was another one of these moments where I'm like, "Whoa, I live in
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Mexico fucking City, and I don't understand a word most of these people
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are saying." But I will someday, and that's the, that's the important part.
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I will someday
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There are no, uh, lines on the streets here to separate the lanes, you know?
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In the United States they have, most countries really, they have
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lines, you know, they paint on the streets so that you know where your
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lane begins and ends on the sides.
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They don't have that here.
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But some of the roads are, like, four or five lane roads, but no lines, so people
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are just guessing where their lane is.
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It is, uh ... I mean, needless to say, it's a bit, it's a
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bit chaotic, the streets here.
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It's ... No, it's not even a bit chaotic.
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It's legit.
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It's legit chaotic, the streets here.
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And people just roll through lights.
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There's bikers, all, there's all these motorcyclists and mopeds that just,
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like, split lanes like willy-nilly and then roll through lights and
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Yeah, it's crazy.
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But it kinda checks out because as we've talked about on this podcast,
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as I've talked about, I don't know why I say ... It's the royal we.
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On this podcast, you do not need to prove to anyone that you are able to
21:21
operate a motor vehicle in order to get a driver's license in Mexico City.
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Do I need to say that again?
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I will anyway.
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You do not need to prove to anyone that you n- are able, that you have
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ever, that you have any idea how to operate a motor vehicle to get your
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driver's license in Mexico City.
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And with that in mind, I don't know if the lack of street lines, you
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know, lines on the street, is, like, almost like a f- a middle finger.
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Like, it's, uh, y- I don't know how that works exactly, but, like, you
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know, "See if you can drive now, funny boy." You know what I mean?
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Yeah.
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I don't really know if I know what I mean either, but yeah.
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I imagine you do.
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Anyway, I think this has been a good CDMX Dispatch.
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I've actually gotten several DMs on Instagram over the last week
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or two saying, from random people that I don't, that I don't know
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personally, saying, "Hey, I love these, uh, I love your solo episodes."
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So thank you to those people.
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I really appreciate it.
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And, uh, yeah, keep listening, and please message me again.
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I would love to hear from you again, or any new people, about whether you, what
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you like and what you don't like, if you have any questions, whatever it is.
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So you can also email me at onefjefpod@gmail.com Call me as
23:02
always 669-241-5882, country code one.
23:06
It's also in the show notes.
23:08
And follow me on social media @onefjefpod on Instagram, @onefjefpodcast on
23:13
TikTok, and I'm putting videos on there like every day, so go there.
23:17
It's exciting.
23:18
You'll get to see me.
23:18
You get to see my face behind a screen.
23:25
That was, that was my effort at making a, like a growl sound.
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Um, yeah, that's all.
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And, uh, Patreon subscribers, you're hearing this first because I love you.
23:38
I hope you enjoy it.
23:40
I hope you appreciate that you're hearing it first.
23:42
I hope it's something.
23:44
It's something.
23:45
Someday I'm gonna get ads on this podcast, and you'll get the ad-free version, and
23:49
then it's gonna be valuable to you, and you'll be grandfathered in, whatever
23:54
that means in terms of this podcast.
23:57
Perhaps you'll be grandmothered in.
23:59
Perhaps you'll be nieced in or nephewed in.
24:02
Perhaps you'll be sistered or brothered in.
24:05
Perhaps you'll be grandmothered.
24:06
Oh, we already did that one.
24:07
Yeah, you're right.
24:08
Aunted, uncled in.
24:10
Perhaps you'll be first aunt once removed in.
24:13
All right.
24:14
Uh, and this episode is officially...
24:19
Let me think for a second
24:24
Over