E.M. Kinga Mac's Blog, page 2

Bacalar’s Posada El Refugio becoming one of the best budget hotels in 2017!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Bacalar, Quintana Roo, Mexico, January 27th, 2017 – Since the New Year begun, Posada El Refugio has been on the forefront of short term rental options and provides lodging, camping, parking for RV’s and campers, or lounging; for many travelers since 2007.

This spacious property offers a building with private rooms, another with two cabanas and a five-person dormitory, a huge palapa in the center of it all with hammocks, or a smaller area up front under a palm thatched roof where you can watch locals walk by, to have a “siesta”, or read a book. All guests have full use of the community kitchen with a gas stove or if you seek more flavor, you can cook something over firewood.

From almost everywhere you can see views of the lagoon for half the price of the sophisticated hotels nearby.

The Parque Ecologico sits just one block away from Posada El Refugio.

“It is a pleasant surprise to be recognized in the hospitality industry of this region. We will always strive to keep our clients happy and are grateful to accomplish this.” commented Nicodemus Arjona; Owner and manager of Posada El Refugio

Posada El Refugio is on Avenida 3

At the intersection of Calle 36 in Bacalar

Open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week

You can visit them on FaceBook at: https://www.facebook.com/PosadaElRefugioBacalar

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Upwork accepts Freelance Prostitution. Why do they even deal with such repu pimps and penny pinchers?

I liked Elance. It didn’t thrill me at all to learn they were merging with oDesk, because there, my identity was scrutinized for more than six months, while I was Aristotle verified on Elance.
Nevertheless, I had to move my stats to new Upwork if I wanted to continue seeking out projects and I did before my ratings from Elance were lost forever in cyberspace.
Upwork is like a cold sore that reoccurs- sometimes you forget about it, other times it burns when you try to smile. They are so proud of their millions of messages exchanged every day, talk about keeping the Upwork marketplace a safe environment, yet I have been noticing a lot of things being disregarded, even more so, simply ignored or overlooked, sometimes they play sleight of hand. Let me tell you how.
One fine example, to those of you who are familiar with Upwork,  is how ineffective their flagging system is. Or “thumbs down” feature for that matter. Both are a waste of time. Have you ever seen the website called “How to keep an idiot busy?” There are a few of them, but one, in my opinion, is more than enough, they can enhance the website in a variety of ways to keep an idiot busy.  I kind of feel like that when I deal with the thumbs, flags and Zendesk of Upwork. Just keeping myself occupied as I waste my time analyzing their inner workings. Thumbs down, not interested…Oh, darn, here is it again! Flagged for spamming, oh look how many he’s posted and still going. I’ll mark a few… Some days later, it’s like they were bumps on a log. Why do they even bother with the clicking option? How does it matter to them? They are bringing us into a sheep mentality, folks.
They insist that “It is people like you to help build this a strong community” etc, etc, a bunch of niceties and back pats, but why?

It reminds me of a combination of two films I still enjoy watching, both are profound and bizarre at the same time- 1984 and Brazil.
Following one of my recent requests (Client asking for free work), I noticed someone actually marked my bid for that job “Declined” with a note: Inappropriate Job Posting.
It is obvious the client did not get all melancholy with thoughts of his dearly departed mother and admitted to his gluttonous shame, because with that same job posting they hired another individual and got away with it.
Upwork reprimanded me when one day they learned I sent a client a dissected paragraph of what I can do with their prose (it was my own error, No more chatting for this grrl). In the meantime it is OK for the clients to ask for ideas, to watch an hour video before submitting a proposal, or even  promise a great rating if you bid the lowest (in caps actually). So that is not violating their policy, but my sample can suspend my account.
Since I mentioned the clients who prefer to be so cheap to even say it on their ad or even in the title of the job post (hello Upwork robots, can’t you FILTER certain words?); I took a little time and checked the details of a few previous jobs they posted. This particular firm (you’d think they were non- profit, but they’re not), with over 150 jobs, who paid a little over $1000 USD in total, has a template for each ad they post; it always ends with great ratings for low bidders.
This is a good time to use a calculator; I found another example very quickly- a 5-star client, 182 jobs posted, and less than 1000 USD spent. Why would Upwork even bother dealing with these “business” people?
It’s completely absurd!
But come to think of it, Upwork gets the buck from front and back,  And their service fee is usually carried by the freelancer, as expected by most clients. They will continue sending templated responses, just happy they’re still the busiest marketplace in the world. Amidst all this, there are many such as myself, who completed their 1099’s or other financial documents, and Upwork respects the privacy policy for some bogus company that needs 99 freelancers and opened an account that same day with no payment established.
It is abhorring when a firm that should be transparent in its negotiations, tends to one-half of their clientele, because indeed, they should realize we are their clients as well.
How can Upwork claim to be a fair marketplace with this type of freelance prostitution happening in front of their own snoopy noses? So the money is accepted from both sides, but the forgiving approach is only for a firm it seems.
They try to pacify us with sleight of hand tactics and patronize the client who has a business credit card verified with them. Heck, not even! All these fake job posts asking to hire 99 freelancers and payment has not been processed, some of them say they are major companies; if someone includes “Google” or another big business in their post, why can’t that be verified? Why little me, when I was verified on Elance with a live Skype video call? Eventually, a REAL human being wrote to me and told me why my docs were being denied. But it took almost a year of my nagging and harassing, I felt horrible just regressing to them.
And although the ID verification gives me a bad aftertaste and I will never change my profile photo, simply because they might get finicky about one thing or another, these observations are completely apart from that incident.
Of the three open requests I have at this moment, the last response I had so far is to “Good rating for low bidders?” (the two others are: “Ambiguous job descriptions” and ” Client asking for free work”).
According to them, the “Spamming” is solved.
So, returning to my last email, I got a reply that I am understood and am worried about my reputation (at 90% satisfaction). Besides the fact that I had to point out the obvious- that she did not read my request except for the first line of it (which only mentions what quack competition I have), I begged her to do so before she replies again.
Upwork might not have realized how much time I spend there and how little time I actually do get work, but because of this extra time, I have been investigating their processes in a lot more detail than some other freelancers might not have thought to do.

But am sharing this now and hope there is no policy to suspend my account for just expressing my thoughts.
Someone needs to crack a whip around that place, for certain.

Nose to Nose with wildlife- house encounters

A few years ago it was a tarantula that Kudra spotted in Zihuatanejo, GRO, Mexico. It came out of nowhere and was outside our palapa. It only had seven legs, one lost in some (probably unimaginable to us) kind of battle…

Kudra Mariposa Amiga was very careful with the arachnid, we let it walk toward our palapa and it disappeared in it shortly thereafter.

 

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Seven-legged housemate

 

About a year later we lived in a shared environment and while preparing a meal, I found a rat in the kitchen of a property in San Pedro la Laguna, Solola, Guatemala. It hid between many plastic bins I decided to move around when I was cooking a meal for everyone, which included about a dozen neighbors, and when that rat and I, when we had eye contact, I opened the kitchen door and called Kudra inside; she always likes to hunt, so with a few ninja moves of her nose, body and jaws got rid of lil’ dirty pest.

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Nope, you will not eat my food again! Hey, why aren’t you moving?

 

If a scorpion is in our presence, she sniffs cautiously around it, she just utters a sound, quite like a “Baa” to get my attention, pointing with her nose, eyes, her movements, all are following the stinging little critter until I get a hold of it. To this day and unlike me, Kudra never suffered a scorpion’s sting, I know she would not like it.

Going back to this post, last month it was an ugly and poisonous toad in San Ignacio, Belize that got her foaming at the mouth and lock-jawed (it really would not matter if the toad was easy on the eyes) until she got a good dose of juice of an entire lime rubbed on her gums. Of course, she hated it, but loved the man who gave me the “recipe” so long we were there.


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Poisonous amphibian

Regressing back to the story, because it is moving in a circular motion…
Yesterday morning Kudra spotted something scurrying through the shortly cut lawn grass toward the front door and even though there might be garter snakes as such, I urged her not to mess with it, but she was excited nevertheless and barking as it was slithering along the wall toward the door (which I closed, but the gap between the floor and door would have been fine).
It was not large. If it were, I would have been screaming and running bloody hell out of the yard onto the quiet street and waking my neighbors from their Siesta, it was perhaps 30 centimeters long.
I learned there are 59 non-venomous snakes in this region and 12 killers.
Kudra’s curiosity did not harass the snake much, it was completely docile and rather quickly Ssssed its path away, toward the lemon tree behind the bathroom, and possibly found a spacious home in the pile of rocks behind it. I have no idea if the yellow touched the red, but am quite sure the tip of the head was red.
Some men were clearing brush across the street last week and discovered a chunky boa constrictor they put out on the sidewalk. One of them said he’ll take it home, I really urged him not to, just let it roam freely where he can catch rats (even though the creature’s nose was constantly following Kudra’s movements. I figure because her temperature is higher than us humans, no?).
You know, even that this snake was tiny, I did not want Kudra to pester it, because baby piranhas might look cute to some folks, but I’d never touch them!

 

 

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Mmm, grapes and champagne…

 

Cover photo is a Scarlet Kingsnake. This snake does not get larger than 2 feet, so do believe is the one that became our new neighbor.
It is said if the yellow does not touch the red t is OK, but of course, there are exceptions, apparently an insect eater gets mistaken as the deadly Coral snake and gets decapitated with a shovel too many times, we give our regards to the poor creature.

(Originally posted on July 19th 2016 at https://www.facebook.com/DondestaKudra/notes)

 

 

 

Read this before you want to travel Latin America with your dog.

Today is a month since we crossed Rio de Pasion in Peten, the largest department in Guatemala.

It’s great to look back and see how far we have actually made it to, how darn many kilometers between San Francisco, Nayarit in Mexico through San Miguel de Allende, to Zihuatanejo Guerrero, via Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, to Lake Atitlan, to 2 more lakes that still have some tadpoles and fish swimming in it (why visit Amatitlan if it is dead, no? as depressed i can get, that might make me want to really taylor the concrete sandals I talked about in SPLL), 3 lakes in Guatemala, to here in San Ignacio via Rio Dulce, Livingston​, Punta Gorda, Dangriga​…

If you meet anyone who wants to replicate our journey or another one in a developing word country, please tell them to drop it.

I contacted Ellen show about this. I look at my life as if I am outside of it, Someone might tell me I have achieved a state of Zen…

I know I said this many times, and as sane as I am, I sincerely mean it. If I had a car, a driver’s license, or even knew how to drive, it would have made a difference for certain, but still, this is treacherous, yet so addictive, someone said “so you are going back” well no, we usually never go back anywhere, we just keep moving on…

As unimpressed​ I try to be, I would twist my eyebrow to it’s highest point hearing something like this…

Like WHAA? you really did this???

Well, then, damn, I feel so profound and over accomplished.

And much more so, very tired.