Most all-inclusive resorts have high levels of security personnel at all entrances (including on the beach, especially at night when guests aren’t out) and rules that only people staying at the resort are allowed on the property. (Resorts also have all sorts of other security measures – from wristbands that identify you as a guest to lighting around the property to security cameras to – as pictured above – (usually) well-hidden razor wire along the perimeter to dissuade non-guests from entering the property!)
Even with the occasional death, accidental or otherwise, the odds are incredibly small that something will happen to the average tourist. Millions of people visit Mexico every year and there are a handful of tourists who are hurt or killed, often because they don’t use common sense and take risks they might not take at home in terms of staying out late, drinking too much, going to dangerous areas of town or whatever.
I live in a small Canadian prairie city of ~200,000 people yet we have all sorts of crime including shootings and murders. But I don’t live in fear going about my daily business here so why would I act differently just because I’m traveling to a larger centre that has more of *everything* – from high-end clothing stores and fancy restaurants to yes, crime and murders.
Humans are really bad at risk assessment. We think flying in an airplane is more dangerous than driving a car when the reverse is true. Although incredibly rare, airplane accidents tend to have mass deaths whereas car crashes tend to kill people in small numbers but, taken together, exponentially more die in car crashes compared to plane crashes. Similarly, a story about a single tourist death or the mass shooting of a number of locals in “Cancun” (though likely in the city proper, not in the tourist zone) makes us think that these places are more dangerous than they actually are.
It’s obviously up to everyone to decide how comfortable they feel if they are thinking of a trip to Mexico (and there’s part of me that likes when people decide to stay away from Mexico as it helps push down prices for those of us who aren’t too worried about going!)
But ultimately, if someone is worried about the risks, real or imagined, of visiting Mexico, there’s always Disneyland! 😉
(In completely unrelated news, we went skating at the local outdoor rink today and I got my ass handed to me by a bunch of 12 year olds doing non-stop toe drags and various other dangles in a game of shinny!) 😉
Earlier this week, we finally got around to trying their “Drop & Go” option where you can just leave your cans and bottles with some kiosk-generated tags then, a few days later, you later get a call that a cheque is ready.
This is way easier than waiting in line with a bunch of bags in the noisey main area then waiting again when you get to the front of the line while your recycling is counted then possibly standing in line a third time to get your money for the recycling you’ve brought in, all while moving around on a floor that’s usually a bit sticky and did I mention the noise?
But not only did we get our money without waiting in any lines, we got a nice note with it. (Of course it also reminded me I’m glad this program didn’t exist when Sasha was small and a babysitter mistook our recycling bin for our garbage bin – a mistake I didn’t discover until I dumped a bag of what I thought was recycling onto their chute and saw a dirty diaper among the cans and bottles! Who knows *what* our note would’ve said then!) 🙂
Beer Me! is a YouTube series where a couple hipsters from BC drink half a dozen of a certain kind of beer (they claim in an hour) rating each on things like artwork, taste, reliability, etc. while getting progressively more wasted. (They also occasionally do a bottle of hard stuff.)
There have been some funny episodes but my favourite is where they tie into a Beer Advent Calendar which has 24 beers instead of their usual 12 plus Advent Beer Calendars tend to have a lot of higher alcohol winter beers – stouts and porters and strong ales.
(I can’t remember if I had this particular one – none of the names ring a bell – but I do I know I’ve had a couple Advent Beer Calendars over the years. But this video also reminds me why I don’t buy them anymore. I don’t mind the odd 6.7%+ beer but for 24 days in a row with only one or two lighter beers for relief? That’s too much!)
So you may have heard that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had an “embarrassing” video of her dancing in a college video (which, in turn was a remake of an earlier mash-up) highlighted recently but that it didn’t go as well as the anonymous right-wing troll who tweeted it had hoped.
As always, Metafilter has lots of great insight and commentary including a new-to-me term (neme or “nuclear meme” which a meme that backfires), why AOC resonates with millennials and why older conservatives don’t get it, the role of mash-up culture in the meme wars and the use of anonymous trolling in politics in general.
I realised that our social calendars this holiday season were as full as they’ve been in years due to a little miracle called “Pace Gets His Home Alone & Babysitting Certification”.
So compared to other years where we had the hassle and expense of lining up babysitters if we wanted to go out, this year, we had a built-in babysitter that meant we got to (almost) every party we were invited to – from early December to New Year’s Eve, whether they were kid-friendly or not.
I had a few memorable conversations and recurring themes during the various parties that I wanted to capture:
What makes someone successful? Their job title? Their salary? The size of their house? How many countries they’ve been to? If they enjoy their work? If they enjoy their family? If they have a successful marriage? If they have a kid? Kids? Professional accomplishments? Public profile? Some combination of all of the above? Some of the above? Or does it depend on the person???
Related topic that came up, especially at parties with people I knew from high school and university – now that we’re all basically middle-aged, where we are in our lives – who ended up where you expected, who ended up somewhere completely different, who became (conventionally) successful, who struggled for whatever reason, who surprised us.
The peripheral trauma experienced by people who work in certain professions – directly in mental health most obviously to healthcare more generally to law to education and yes, librarianship as well.
Unsurprisingly, knowing Shea and I, we engaged in a wide range of political conversations with everything from some the most radical (er, meaning “cool”) people we know to outright climate change deniers. Fun times.