La Ruida

It is a common understanding that that which makes us great is generally also that which makes us weak. Take me, for example (a right I claim as the person wielding the keyboard): I would say that my best characteristic is my extroverted exuberance, yet doesn't the giggly determination that wins people on a good day also alienate and frustrate them on a bad? Martha Stewart is both widely revered and widely despised for her near-manic attention to detail and quest for the perfect centrepiece.

Mexico City is no exception.

My favourite part of the city: the noise. Taco stands, market vendors, whistling parking assistants, carhorns, children, young lovers, samples of pirated cds, howling corn carts, noisemakers, organ grinders, rattling peseros (little green buses often in questionable condition), birds that catcall flawlessly, the sharp r's and t's of Chilango Spanish.

My least favourite park of the city: the noise. I live in an amazing apartment, with a bedroom facing onto an open courtyard-y type area. Our neighbours - those right beside and those right above - bless them, know how to throw a party.

A few Saturdays back, I arrived home at 12:30am to the charming yet abrasive sounds of a live mariachi band and singer next door. I was mildly entertained by them - much like seeing kids playing street cricket (as opposed to street hockey) in England, what more proof do you need that you are living in Mexico than live mariachis?

At 2am, as the trumpets faded, the techno started upstairs. By 3am I was considerably less than impressed. By 3:30pm I was beginning to grind my teeth. By 4am I was borderline mental with seething rage. By 6am I was finally beginning to doze off a bit from sheer exhaustion. By 8:30am, as I was munching on my breakfast, the music... finally... stopped... (Which is, incidentally, about when my wild fantasies of ironic auditory revenge began.)

Pavel and Luis, in comparison, merely registered the all-night entertainment as happening. While I thrashed about and gnawed at my sheets and envisioned elaborate scenarios in which I trotted upstairs with a machine gun, Pavel and Luis dozed shallow-ly without concern. This, Pavel would explain to me the following morning, is how it's done, you see. Mexicans know how to fiesta without such frustrating limitations as sound level restrictions and neighbours who call the police.

Man I wanted to call the police that night. I've done it before, up in Canada. It was vindictively satisfying.

I don't enjoy having to accept this intrusion into my precious repose, yet it - as well as other things - have made me realize just how delicate and wound-up we Canadians are culturally. In fact, I have come to the belief that we are not so much nice, as foreigners allegedly insist we are, as much as we are stoically, determinedly obedient. We don't turn our music down at 1am because we want to respect the auditory needs of our neighbours, but because someone told us, some time ago, that that is The Proper Thing To Do. And, damn it, our middle name, collectively, has got to be Proper.

I believe this because I am shocked by the number of occasions in which I have turned away from something casually Mexican with a murmured, oh in Canada that would just be considered RUDE. Necking teenagers, teeth clicking in their fervour, are a regular cause of my prim horror. Double parking as well, although less so, and the ruthlessly elbowing and pushing required to actually get onto the Metro in the mornings. When our Argentinian guest remarked only on the underdone potatoes and overuse of pepper after I cooked her dinner, I was taken aback that she hadn't obeyed the choke it down and smile protocol.

I love my country very much, yet what shameless little Bluestockings we are! Will our lacy little underthings really get sullied if we were to try a little forthrightness? Will the sky fall if we creep out from underneath our parasols and shake it up a little?

So my neighbours kept me awake on Saturday night with their enviable cavorting, fine. Canadian propiety, as evidenced by my mortal offense, dictates that perhaps they should have packed up the trumpets before dawn's early light, and indeed that might well have suited the vast majority of the other residents in this building. Yet, really, if you stop to think about it, wouldn't it have been better if I'd been able to think, well, I'm not going to sleep tonight, maybe I'll go watch some telly. Or, better, what if I could have DARED to roll up my bloomers and just jumped in? These are people who know how to party - why call (or wish you had the option to call) the police on them! Join them! Knock on their door and say, hey, you're keeping me awake, hand me a glass and teach me the words to the next song!

Now, okay, fine, me knocking on a stranger's door and joining in the fray is about as likely to happen as, well, me overriding my Swedish/Scottish/Canadian squeamishness and trying sauteed ant eggs, chile crickets and many other of the sublime delicacies this country has to offer. But it's an interesting idea and a provoking realization of cultures colliding.

I will learn much from this country.