What I Use: Mexico City (July 2023) (Premium)

The second trip to visit our apartment in Mexico City this year got off to a bad start, with the electric company inexplicably having just previously shut down our power despite our having paid the bill, the shutdown ruining our water heater, repeated issues getting the new water heater working properly, a second family of birds taking up residence in our water heater exhaust vent (with eggs!), a river of water that streamed down the stairwell of our entire building during a massive thunderstorm thanks to a clogged drain on the roof, and then one of big window blinds detaching from the ceiling and crashing down to the floor.

Yeah, it’s been that kind of trip.

And when you combine all that with the stress of me finally consummating my break with BWW Media and taking Thurrott.com solo, not to mention the associated work ramping up a reimagined email newsletter with our new partner, the incredibly busy work week during our first full week here (including repeated drama in the Microsoft/Activision Blizzard acquisition), some friends visiting and then staying three days past the time they were supposed to leave because of flight issues, and our daughter’s car getting totaled in North Carolina and us having to figure out the logistics of replacing that as soon as we get home, well. It’s kind of amazing my wife and I are still sane.

Sometimes life really piles it on, I guess. But you may be surprised to discover, given my general demeanor, that as we commiserated about this crazy string of problems over lunch the other day, my only takeaway was, “Well, it could be worse.” And it could be worse. A recent set of health evaluations uncovered nothing scary, for example, and I’m taking steps to address those long-time borderline metrics before they turn into something worse. As for those friends, you wouldn’t believe me if I explained how many times their flights were canceled and changed over three days, but I’ll just leave it at this: they left here at 5:30 am last Wednesday and didn’t get to their home near Boston until 4:30 am the next day. Yikes.

Anyway. You didn’t come here to listen to me complain, I know. But these things have helped frame our experience on this trip which, aside from all the problems, has been great. Bah-dum-dum, I’m here all week. Sorry.

As I noted in the article from our last trip here, we’ve mostly moved into a comfortable schedule in Mexico City. We have numerous wonderful restaurants within a 7-minute walk of the apartment, have gotten to know several people locally over our many trips to the area, and we walk each morning in what is the most beautiful park we’ve seen in Mexico so far, just one block away. It feels like home, or at least a home, and each time we come here we wish we could just stay.

That said, we’re always adjusting. When we visited in March, my wife and I literally just worked each day and ate out each meal, and so we didn’t do any exploring or sightseeing. We did that on purpose, as both of us had lots of work to do—I edited and published Windows Everywhere during that trip, for example—and because we wanted to experience a normal, day-to-day life as we do at home. (We don’t eat out that much at home, obviously, but it’s so cheap here. Most of our lunches cost about $3.50 each and I never eat breakfast.)

That worked out very well, but this time we knew we’d have those friends visiting, and we wanted to have some days in that interlude and otherwise during which we got out more and could explore. And so we kind of mixed it up this time. Some days were all work, and some were a mix of work and exploration. We were also able to take our friends on some unique Mexico City area experiences that we’d previously done with the kids, including the canal boats of Xochimilco and a hot-air balloon ride over the pyramids of Teotihuacán.

Let’s talk tech.

Computers

As I usually do, I traveled here with two review laptops, an HP Dragonfly G4 and a Lenovo Yoga Book 9i, and I was able to finish my write-ups for both while we were here. I actually received two more review inquiries while I was here—you may recall that Lenovo sent a laptop to me here on the last trip and that I shipped it back from Mexico before going home—but with our friends here and all the other busyness, I didn’t see how that could work. So I’ll get those when I return home and you can learn more in early August.

I’ve described this before, but I keep an older generation HP ZBook Firefly 14 here in the Mexico City apartment for “just in case” purposes and for book screenshots. This is one of my favorite laptops of all time, it’s comfortable and familiar like an old friend, and I’m always happy to see it. It was interesting to get it up-to-date and see the full volume of Windows Updates that had piled up in the intervening four months, but there’s nothing unusual to report there.

Home office

My More Mobile setup here hasn’t changed, but it works well for me, given the cramped nature of our two-bedroom, 750-square-foot-apartment here. I work from an IKEA table between the kitchen and the living room, on which I place a Nexstand Portable Laptop Stand, a Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Wireless Keyboard and Mouse, an Audio-Technica ATR2500x-USB Cardioid Condenser Microphone, and an HP Thunderbolt 4 Dock G4, all of which I left here in the apartment on previous trips. I keep meaning to get a microphone arm so I can suspend it above the keyboard during podcasts, but I still haven’t. It will happen eventually. For now, I use a few boxes from our Nespresso espresso machine to prop up the mic on its little stand.

My wife’s More Mobile setup has changed. She works out of the spare bedroom when we don’t have guests, using an IKEA desk and chair, an external keyboard and mouse (neither worth detailing), her laptop, which is held upright on an IKEA tablet stand (the same she has at home), and a 14-inch HP EliteDisplay S14 portable USB-C display (that’s no longer current). On past trips, I’d break out the Anker 555 8-in-1 USB-C Hub that I purchased in October 2021 and was using in my own home-based More Mobile setup until I went less mobile at home this past spring. And so it occurred to me to just leave the hub here in Mexico as part of her permanent setup. If I never need one again—for travel or whatever—I’ll just buy something then, as electronics are much cheaper in the U.S. anyway. (More on that in a bit.)

When we’re home, my wife and I each use a 27/28-inch display, and we’d like to do that here as well. But as noted, electronics are much more expensive here than they are back home. We’re going to keep looking, but at the department store here in Roma Norte, called El Palacio de Hierro, the least expensive 27-inch display costs $270, literally $100 more than it does in the U.S. We’ll figure that out, but so far, no luck. (There are zonas electronicas in the city and so maybe some cheaper options.)

And let’s not forget Internet access. Every time I buy a home or move—as when we moved to Pennsylvania in 2017 or when we sold that home and moved into an apartment back in April—the first thing I do is get the Internet set up. That was true here in Mexico, too, of course, though I had a representative from the building set it up for me, and he went with the cheapest 100/10 Mbps plan without checking with me first. That was actually OK, but in October 2022, I upgraded that to 500 Mbps, and it’s been fast and reliable ever since. And since then, they upgraded this plan to 600 Mbps at no additional cost. I have no complaints.

Phones and connectivity

Since our last trip, I switched back to the Google Pixel 7 Pro and have used it exclusively out in the world while here in Mexico City. I’m on a T-Mobile Magenta 55+ plan, which among other things gives me 5 GB of high-speed data in Mexico. In a nice bit of lucky timing, because my billing cycle landed right in the middle of the trip, I was able to use up to 5 GB in the first half of it and another 5 GB in the second. So I never had to move my Mexico-based TelMex SIM from my iPhone into the Pixel; I could have used that for very cheap data here if necessary.

Speaking of which, I did bring my iPhone 13 Pro, just in case, and the Pixel 6a because it has the Android 14 Beta on it, and I did upgrade to Beta 4 the day it was released. Otherwise, I haven’t used these phones at all, with the caveat noted later in this post.)

Related to this, my wife is still using a Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra on Verizon, and between her plan and relatively low usage out in the world, she hasn’t had to pay any extra, which is nice. But she was having a difficult time with group messages, where they would appear as individual messages and/or not download at all, and because we text with groups a lot (us and the kids, us and those friends who visited, etc.), this got aggravating and so she asked me for help. I had had this same problem in the past while traveling internationally, and so I originally went down a rabbit hole trying to find out how I had fixed it. But in the end, I just examined her phone: she uses the same Google Messages app that I do on Pixel, and if you dive into Settings > Advanced, there’s an option, “Auto-download MMS when roaming,” that was disabled on her phone (and enabled on mine). Turning that on fixed the problem. Sometimes it’s that easy.

Reading, entertainment

I brought my two-year old iPad Air with me to Mexico, as always. I did a bit of reading on the plane, and watched a lot of a Commodore documentary I bought on Amazon Prime (it’s not on other services) for background for my Tech Nostalgia series. But here in the city, I use it like I use it at home, to read the news in the morning and read at night.

I also brought my recently-purchased Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II and gave my OG Bose QuietComfort Noise Cancelling Earbuds to my wife after configuring them on her phone. We wore them on the plane, of course, and while I am sure that the new model offers better ANC when I’m at the gym, I wasn’t sure about that on the plane. Before this trip, I swapped out the default (medium) ear tips for the large pair, but on the plane, I never felt like they were sealed well. I haven’t needed them here.

Last October, we bought a 58-inch Hisense smart TV from Amazon Mexico and I attached an Apple TV 4K to it so we can watch Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, Apple TV+, Plex, and our other services. This works well, and we binge-watch shows (the final season of Ted Lasso, most recently) as we do at home. We really need a sound bar, however, and I’ve wanted to get a reasonably sized Bluetooth speaker (or a pair) for our balcony on music nights. And in researching options and costs, I came across something interesting.

I mentioned above that electronics are more expensive in Mexico than in the U.S., and that’s true. But in researching the JBL Charge 5 and JBL Flip 6 Bluetooth speakers on Amazon.com US and Amazon.com Mexico, I found something unusual: the larger and louder Charge 5 was on sale in Mexico for $125 (US), making it less expensive than cost in the U.S. ($140). I knew that both of these speakers offer stereo pairing, which I wanted, but also that perhaps one of them could serve as an external for the TV until we got a true soundbar. So we ordered two.

The sound is impressive. We’ve listened to music on the balcony in one- and two-speaker configurations, and using one with the Apple TV made a bigger-than-expected difference in sound quality, despite it being mono, further highlighting the need for a soundbar. This will work for now, and we’ll keep the speakers paired when we do get that soundbar. (It’s not totally seamless. You have to walk up to the speaker and physically turn it on before use.)

Health and fitness

Since the last trip here, I stopped using Apple Watch to evaluate the Google Pixel Watch, and then simply returned to my old Fitbit Charge 5, which does everything I need and gets 6 days of battery life, not one. I’ve used this to monitor my resting heart rate, which goes up at high altitudes and then usually settles down after 10 days or so, and that’s what I saw on this trip. But the Charge 5 can’t measure blood oxygen saturation (SpO2) like the Apple Watch, and its limited abilities with that require me to use a special watch face, so I haven’t done that. But my estimated oxygen variation, which the Charge 5 does measure, has been low (which is good).

I sync my Fitbit sleep and exercise data to Veri, the app I’m using with a continuous glucose monitor to, well, monitor my blood glucose. I was curious if the monitor on my arm or the extra in my carry-on bag (they only last two weeks) would trip up security when we flew here, but neither raised any alarms or eyebrows at TSA.

Related to my glucose monitoring, and per that previous article link, I adapted to a healthy low-carb diet just before the trip and have continued that here quite successfully. This has been surprisingly uneventful even in Mexico: I don’t really like tortillas anyway, and if you look at our food photos here or on Instagram, you can see that I haven’t been denying myself. I did get one humorous question at our favorite local sandwich shop, but no issues anywhere.

Between the new diet and my long-time intermittent fasting—I almost never eat breakfast and have never done so here on this trip—I can tell I’m losing weight. I’ll find out how much when I get home. And my average glucose reading has gone down dramatically, which is interesting, from roughly 100 mg/DL at the start to the 90s and now into the 80s.  (Mental note: how much is too much after three weeks?) I have a doctor’s check-up scheduled for the day after we return home, so she can check my weight and glucose and discuss how the diet is going. Then, in early September, I’ll get another full blood work done.

One interesting and related experience: I purchased additional FreeStyle Libre continuous glucose monitors from Veri (“at cost”), but they didn’t arrive in time for the trip. These things last for two weeks, and so I knew the one I had on my arm would die soon after we got here, which it did, and that I’d have to switch to the other one I had gotten upfront, which I did. But that meant that I’d be without a monitor for the last week of the trip, and that the ones I’d ordered would be waiting for me at home. That would have been OK, as I’ve pretty much figured out which foods to eat and which not to, but I’m still in this initial phase of hyper-vigilance. And I wondered if I could get a continuous glucose monitor here in Mexico.

I could: like so many other things that require prescriptions in the U.S., these monitors are available over the counter here and so I was able to get the exact one I’d been using for just $80, $20 less than my cost in the U.S. I was considering stockpiling them, but when I stuck the thing on my arm and then tried to sync it up with the app on my phone, I was told that this was a Mexican sensor and it would not work with my U.S.-based app. Huh.

Troubleshooting began. I tried getting the Mexican version of the LibreLink app on my Pixel, but the Google Play Store would not offer it. I considered switching to the Mexican version of the Play Store app to get it—I am in Mexico, after all—but its warnings about doing so made me nervous. Maybe try side-loading it? Too complicated. But then I had an idea: I have this review unit Pixel 6a sitting here running the Android 14 beta but otherwise doing nothing. Perhaps I could reset it, configure it for Mexico, and then get the app that way.

It worked. And so rather than waste the $80 I had spent, I was able to sync my glucose data to the other phone. I probably could, but am not, syncing that to my Veri account, as I had been doing on my Pixel 7 Pro. But there’s little need: I really just wanted to ensure that nothing I eat sent my glucose spiraling, and it’s worked well for that. (And my average glucose levels have continued to go down.)

Beyond that drama, my wife and I walk for about 40 minutes every morning at home, but we reduce that to about 30 minutes here because we walk to and from every meal, and a lot otherwise. I’m averaging around 8,000 steps a day, I think, but I’ve had days of 17,000+, 12,000+, and 13,000+ steps here in just the past week, way more than at home, plus it’s at high altitude. Of course, I can’t go to the gym here, and while I keep talking about doing bodyweight exercises here, I never do. Someday.

Luggage/bags

No changes here: my wife and I travel light, and we only travel light. And having an apartment in Mexico City has made that even easier because we left behind most of the clothes and toiletries we need already and only have to bring a minimal amount of each—mostly what we’re wearing—when we fly. Now, we use our carry-ons bags to bring things one way. (For example, my wife’s bag was full of bedsheets on this trip.) We also use Notion (PC and phone) to, among other things, track which items we leave behind and which items we want to bring on a future trip, and then we reference that and pack accordingly each time.

Anyway, yes, I am still using the same Rick Steves Ravenna rolling case and HP Renew Backpack that I’ve been using for years. They both travel well and do what I want, and the backpack can hold 2-3 laptops easily if needed. And since I pack so few things now, I can just put my CPAP in my carry-on and don’t need a separate bag for it.

(This will get even better soon. In September, I’ll be getting two new CPAP machines, so I can leave one here and not have to travel with one when I fly here. If you have a CPAP, you understand what a big deal that is. I will also be getting two new pairs of glasses with the same idea in mind; I wear contact lenses during the day, and have a few boxes here just in case.)

Travel

Last year, we flew back and forth to Mexico City several times at great expense because we were buying and then furnishing the apartment. This year, tickets have gotten much more expensive, though that is now starting to level off, and the apartment is basically done aside from a few small items (those speakers, for example), wall hangings, and the like. And so, we’ve taken fewer trips of longer durations this year instead. The March trip was notably expensive—$1000 each for coach—but for this trip, my wife somehow found Business Class seats for the same price, and as before, we had enough points on United to cover one of the tickets. Flying this way makes a huge difference. And we were able to book a similar trip for late October/early November, also with Business Class seats. It makes a huge difference.

One oddity, which we also experienced during part of our March trip, is that effective this year Mexico no longer observes daylight savings time. And that means that while the U.S. does so, between mid-March and early November, the time change between here and back home is 2 hours, not one hour as it is otherwise and always was before. This is a problem. Not a big problem, but still a problem.

As you may know, we used to do three-week summer home swaps in Europe, and the time change was always 5 or 6 hours ahead of our home in the U.S. This had some advantages, and we established a good schedule for work and leisure time. But among Mexico’s many advantages, it’s on the same continent as our home, and so the time difference isn’t that great. We can fly during the day and not overnight, for example, and feel normal when we arrive. And that one-hour time change was amazing: things were just one hour off, and it was doable.

But now things are two hours off. That means that First Ring Daily, which we record at 9 am ET, would start at 7 am here, which is literally when I wake up. And Windows Weekly, which starts at 2 pm ET back home, now starts at 12 pm, which is when I eat lunch. Meetings are off by two hours, etc. I start my day two hours behind now, which is weird: I usually finish Ask Paul at around 11 am on Fridays, but here it’s been closer to 1 pm (ET) or later. Etc.

Brad was nice enough to shift the FRD recording time to 10 am ET (8 am for me) while I’m here. And I’ve been eating a quickie charcuterie mini-lunch before starting Windows Weekly each Wednesday because I’d be starving by the time recording ended (usually 2.5 to 3 hours later). But I don’t like this schedule and I don’t know when I’ll experience the 1-hour time change when the U.S. returns to standard time. Our next trip here is in October through early November, so we’ll be dealing with this then too.

One more travel-related item: as with our March trip, we booked an Uber to take us to the airport because parking for three weeks is so expensive, and we’ll do the same on the way home. This worked surprisingly well despite the 90-minute drive time, and we got an Uber in Newark last time right away. So I am hopeful it will work similarly this time too. We shall see.

We fly home Monday.