If you follow my tweets, you probably know that I am pretty happy over here in Mexico. But as everywhere, not everything is so perfect. This post is going to show some pros and cons about the Mexican banking system.

Opening an account in the local bank was extremely easy and fast. But once you are a client, the service does not look that good anymore.

First, they could not provide me with the “NetKey” (device for accessing online banking). The first time I tried to go back to get it, they told me that there was no Internet connection in the bank, so they cannot provide me with the device. I went back 2 days later and they still could not provide it to me. The third time, they could finally manage to hand me the device. But not without a lot of unnecessary paperwork (password & visa copies all over again) and questions like where I work and what am I doing in Mexico.

That I finally had that device, I tried to log in, put the website kept timing out. I needed to check back later. Everything worked fine then, after I tried some time later. Then, the second time I wanted to log in, it refused me access. I went to the bank to change my password. It still didn’t work. When I called the helpline, they could only tell me that when changing the password, they need to remove the first one in order for the second one to work. I went back to the bank again and told them my story. They said there was nothing like “deleting the previous password” and they could just try setting up a new password. After that (and of course 24 hours waiting), it finally worked.

Note that for all visits in the bank, they took new copies of my passport and visa, I got served  very slowly and without too much motivation.

Plus, the banks in Mexico are full of people all the time. The reason must be, because most of them get paid with checks and that there are not too many ATMs around. For client service, they have only one line and there are always people waiting for service already.

Once everything is set up and working, it works pretty smooth. In the online banking, I can give my phone number for them to inform me about every movement on my account. That is pretty useful for knowing when work transfers my salary. Also, it’s a security mechanism for noticing if someone might have copied my card.

I only have a debit card. But the cool thing is, that it’s a VISA card, so I can use it online. The bad thing though is, that there is only a PIN for getting money from ATMs, but not when paying with the card in a shop. When I asked in the bank if it was possible to put a code in there, they looked at me like I was stupid and said almost laughing that there was no way to do that and why I would want to do that anyways.

Bottom line: Until everything is working, a lot of patience is needed. But once everything is working, it works just fine, with the moderate flaw that they don’t let me put a PIN code on my card for paying in shops, which represents a security risk if someone gets hands on my wallet.

So I have been not-blogging all this time, so I decided to provide you with some updates. This time I have been quite busy with a couple of things. This is a short update.

My primary time-eater is obviously work. 8 hours a day, 6 days a week. But I love what I do, and I didn’t even really started yet. (Reminder: I am developing a management system for the Universidad de Sotavento in Coatzacoalcos). Anyhow, there is some news there… I will finally get my office probably next week. Until now I have been working in a provisional workspace in another department. As I am going to hire the first two programmers for my department , it really became necessary that I have an own, quiet office with all supplies such as huge whiteboards. I am involved in weekly director’s meetings which gives me the opportunity to bring my project closer to the rest of the people and gain feedback. Also, it helps me improving my Spanish, because there is no way to talk English in those meetings.

I have also been busy accommodating my house. Buying furniture, getting some works done (putting the A/Cs, removing a wall, paint walls, fumigate the place (from 20 million cockroaches), …),. By now, my place is almost ready, it’s almost only missing the gas tank/new tubing, a stove in the kitchen and a final complete cleaning.

I haven’t had as much nightlife as I had last time I’ve been here, but nonetheless we are all having great times here together, still partying, just less. I am starting to feel old, because I am already tired at midnight and want to go home. That’s the downside of a 48-hours week.

There is not much more to tell. I am going to try to blog more frequently. There is an outstanding rant about the Mexican banking system I will most definitely post here…

Stay tuned!

From Thursday to Sunday, Coatzacoalcos was in a state of emergency. CARNAVAL! Which means, people from all over Mexico come here just to see this. And I was right in the middle of that happening. No, seriously… in the parade! (Photo gallery)

The Universidad de Sotavento had a wagon in the parade and I had the honor to be on top of it. But only on Friday and Sunday. I have to say, it is one of the most unique experiences I lived so far. People are screaming like crazy at you for just waving your hand and even more when you start dancing. I believe this was my first time in national television.

On Saturday, I lived the Carnaval from the spectator’s point of view. In the middle of people! I liked the parade. It had a lot of creative and most of all colorful ideas. Most of them animated the people very well and creating a good atmosphere.

On Sunday, the playmate Romina Aranzola was with me on top of the wagon. Which makes it also the first time to meet a playmate in person. Half of the parade, I was not on the wagon, but walking on the side and distributing various things to people (t-shirts, soda, candies, …).

The amount of people watching the parade was overwhelming, like you can see in the picture, taken from a newspaper.

All in all, I had a really great time in the Carnival de Coatzacoalcos 2012. And if somebody wants to visit me, I suggest that in March next year for living it by themselves.

After 6 visits to INM (migration office) and around 1 month of time, I finally got my work permit approved! I am now officially allowed to work and stay here in Mexico until 13th of March 2013. For my second year here in Mexico, I will need to extend my permit. I strongly hope that it won’t be such a hassle for doing that.

For now, I will just need to wait for the paperwork in the university to get pushed through and I will be ready to go. Finally. I am going to develop a system for the university to manage and control different kinds of information, while having an impact on the university’s community. Beside that, I will have a couple of other, administrative, functions as Director of Engineering and Software Development.

Update 21/03/12:
I found the following lines in the website of the INM: “III. VISITANTE […] Podrán concederse hasta cuatro prórrogas por igual temporalidad cada una, con entradas y salidas múltiples […]“. It means that I can extend my permit a maximum of 4 times for the same amount of time (1 year) and that I can leave and come back multiple times in between. That’s good news. So I don’t expect difficulties for when I want to extend that permit.

With this post, I just want to un-worry everyone: Me, my friends and family are fine! Here, apparently it was shaking also pretty strong. The university got evacuated and all, but nothing happened. Everybody is fine.

Personally, I did not notice the earthquake though, because I have been driving in the car.

2356 MXN have to be paid, which is a little bit less than 150€. It’s the second payment I have to make, but it’s the final one.

The next action is to pay that amount to the migration’s bank account and go back with the receipt and, as far as I understood, they will hand me a form I have to fill out. After filling out that form, I will need to wait until my final papers are ready for pickup.

This is how I understood it. Not sure if that’s how it actually is going to go down. We’ll see.

Stay tuned

It says that I have to go the migration office and fill out a pre-registration form online. The form, I filled it out already, but I need to travel to the migration office again. I wonder what further information do they need from me. If this is just a pre-registration form. What is going to be a registration form? And when am I going to get my actual papers? I will have to find out…

I had the idea to learn Ruby on Rails already last year but I never consecutively followed that plan. Until now.

For my upcoming job, I will need to develop a management system for a university with all kinds of various tasks. I decided to definitely realize it as a web application since the requirement for the project is that it has an impact at the universitary community, so that students should probably be able to access the system from wherever they want to. There are not too many users going to be using the systems (~2500), so I thought for such a small-scaled application Rails would offer itself almost on a silver platter.

Quick detour: You might be wondering “What the heck is Ruby on Rails?“. It is a framework to develop web applications, based on the programming language Ruby. RoR follows a strict MVC (Model View Controller) and DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) philosophy, which makes it quite easy to maintain since every piece of code has it’s own spot to be – the same in every Rails app.

So, I started working through a tutorial-book called Ruby on Rails 3 Tutorial: Learn Rails by Example. The book walks the reader through several chapters which step by step makes him build his very own little Twitter-clone. Unsurprising enough, because Twitter itself is programmed in Ruby on Rails. The good thing about the book is that you learn and understand the concept of Rails very good while at the same time you see some results you could actually show to your friends.

After I finished that book I started reading another book (Agile Web Development with Rails) while at the same time adding features to my Twitter-clone and optimizing it. I stopped reading the book, because it seemed like more fun just developing. And since the first book gave me a pretty solid insight, I thought it was a good idea after all.

The current version, you can feel welcome to try, seems a little bit like Twitter in it’s early days. There is still quite a bunch of work to do until it’s actually a rounded-up piece of software. But as soon as I think it’s ready, I will release the source code as Open Source to mankind. If you are interested about further development on my Twitter-clone, feel free to follow the project updates.

So, what about my personal review? Oh yeah… Well, I am really excited about this framework, which makes it really easy to develop web applications very fast. You don’t need to bother about problems that just hold back actual development, and you can get to work immediately. I am a person who likes order… that everything is in it’s place. Rails gives me exactly that, which is another big plus. With the Rails hosting service Heroku, it’s incredibly easy to deploy your web application. Another reason why I like Rails is the big selection of so-called “gems”, software libraries which add extra functionality to your webapp. This means, you don’t need to re-invent the wheel for every feature. Like this, it’s incredibly easy to, for example, add file upload to your application. Thanks to it’s big community, many of these gems are available for free.

The big weakness of Rails however is, that without any big trouble it’s not easily configurable for higher scales. But for my current needs, that’s not really necessary.

For any questions about Rails development or need for discussion, you can contact me with a comment on this post or by Twitter (@iamtux).

If the information I found on the web, the next step would be to that my papers are ready to pick-up and it should not be more than 1-2 days after the clasificado status change.

A Mexican sunset, taken from my apartment window