The beginning of 2002 was a series of bad decisions. What little money I had left from the previous year was blown on a 2 week stay on Cancún at a friend’s house. Sure, didn’t have to pay rent or food, but the real purpose of the stay was to get a job. Sadly, no one was hiring for my major, which was telecommunication. The dot com bubble burst took the majority of the possible job offers into oblivion.

I tried getting jobs in electronics shops, even with lower salaries, but no luck at all. So I came back to Mexico. I worked at Ericsson in 2001, then switched to a friend’s consultancy which seemed to be on the up and up. It wasn’t destined to be. So they shrank and out the door I went.

I tried to make end meets by odd jobs. I was good at html, so I was selling webpages. A client asked for Flash, so I taught myself how to use the dang thing. Then another client wanted an interactive CD. Self-taught again. I was happy learning by myself, I wasn’t happy with clients who took months to pay. To add insult to injury, the company made from the ashes of my last job hired me for a website, and strung me along for six months for a measly pay and thousands of small changes that took too much time. Always make a contract with stipulations, kids.

Around May 2002, a friend dropped a leaflet for the University of Nottingham in my living room. I didn’t bother reading it, but my dad did. He sold me the idea to apply and we looked at the options for masters. Nothing on the area of telecommunications, but plenty of opportunity on environment science. I was keen on the topic and my dad job was intertwined with it, so he was proud I was following his footsteps. I applied and got accepted and by September 2002, I was on my way to Nottingham.

During the summer holidays, I used to watch Telehit while writing or coding. MTV latino was getting a slight case of too many reality shows and Telehit still had good, fresh new music for all tastes. One afternoon, a fella with a thick accent was rapping about bangers and anthems, it was like rap, just not. It was Mike Skinner, from The Streets, with Let’s Push Things Forward. I imagined myself walking on the streets of Nottingham, carefree and relaxed like him, while life moves on. I did so on my way from Beeston to the University. I listened to Original Pirate Material so many times that I ended up having to acquire a new copy again later.

Let’s push things forward has one of my fave refrains “you say that everything sounds the same, then you go buy them…” So fuckin’ true. Stay safe out there and walk listening to a track that gives you peace.

-Sam J. Valdés López