Thursday, May 3, 2012

Bureaucracy, cars and health care

Sorry I haven't blogged in so long, everyone, I ran out of things to say. But since the blog is "Living in Mexico", I wanted to give you an overview of some of the time-consuming, somewhat frustrating details of living here.

Lately we got involved in the country's health care system and also bought a vehicle. This is how many hours it took:

- actually buying the car- 8 or 9 visits to ATM to get money, 2 visits to seller, then need more paperwork so run back home and get it, and a third visit to seller.
- get a factura (official receipt) for the car - one week and 4 more visits to seller.
- get a drivers license - go to Red cross to get an eye test 1/2 hour, go to Police station 1 hour, go to Licensing bureau 1 hour.
- get car registered- 1 hour to find out the factura is incorrect. several trips to car seller's place to straighten that out, then another hour at Licensing bureau.
-insurance- only 1/2 hour because of our beloved Paty. Great insurance covers us in the US as well.
-IMSS is the local health insurance. So far we've spent 2 hours at the office with a translator, one hour at the hospital waiting for an appointment that disappeared, and we are trying to set up another appointment.

Doesn't sound like much, does it? But think of buying a car and not getting it licensed and insured for 10 days, and having to drive it to various places uninsured because you have to get it registered first, and they have to inspect it.

Think of all these hours costing you money because you work for yourself and when you're not working, you're not earning. It was a frustrating couple of weeks.

But now we're on the road in our 2000 Nissan pathfinder!


Great stereo, speedy, comfy, Shadow loves it, everything works, except we have a check engine light. So I take it to the autozone and get the OBDII read. Then I take it to my usual electrical guy, who says he can't fix it. My other mechanic only speaks Spanish, and I can deal with that for simple things, but this is a bit too complex for me, plus we have a few other little details to tell him about. So I hire our friend Pablo to come with me.

I leave the car there Monday night, knowing Luis won't get to it until Tuesday. I don't hear anything until Wednesday afternoon, when Pablo calls and says Luis needs me to come over and get a part, and go find a new one. Luckily we still have the Mercury. I take the part, go to the new Autozone, wait 20 minutes, and they don't have it.

So I go to another parts place called Morua. He doesn't have it, but will order it and he'll have it the next day at 10. I wait until 11. He doesn't have it, it must be in the second shipment, come back at 2.

He doesn't have it, he calls them up. Tomorrow for sure. The next day, nope, they forgot to ship it.

At this point Armando, who of course I'm on a first-name basis with by now, is a bit embarrassed. He calls them up and tells me it will be there Saturday. I don't get there until Monday. He has the part. It's the wrong part. He makes several calls again, and after 3/4 of an hour tells me he can't get it.

I pick up the car as is, and Pablo and Luis are looking for the part.