So my job in Ericsson didn’t last long. Just a few days over the sixth month stretch and out of the hundreds of trainees hired, less than 15% were still around. All the money spent/wasted on teaching us new technologies, for what?

A friend told me there was an opening at the company he worked in. It was in La Condesa, before it was fully gentrified, but it was getting there. The office was near the corner where the car crash from Amores Perros was filmed at that’s really all I have to say about that particular neighbourhood.

My boss’ name was Saskia and she’d done her dues on the field of telecommunications. She worked hard and had gone indie, starting her own company at the end of 2000. She hired two of the better engineers she knew and they worked as consultants, then there was my friend, an accountant, a receptionist, another engineer, and me.

The mood was cool and easy going, it was an old house retrofitted to be an office, before it was fashionable. We did a couple of trips, one to Tampico as inspirational speakers to a younger generation of engineers, and one to Veracruz, to sell equipment and update the firmware nearby. I had a horrible panic attack near Orizaba and I swore I was having a heart attack. Thankfully, a military doctor helped me out.

Then September 11 happened, and then the dot-com crash repercussions came in waves. I was promised some tools and a laptop, and out of the window that went due to budget crunching. The receptionist was fired as a cost cutting measurement, then it was my turn. Last in, first out. The company limped for a few months and then went bankrupt. Saskia was heartbroken to let many of us go, but she couldn’t do anything about it.

I never did anything great in that job. I had plenty of ideas, but never had a chance to develop any of them. I did a lot of odd jobs, helped with installations, and had fun with the food around the area, before gentrification took it all from us working stiffs.

Dave Navarro’s Trust No One album came earlier in 2001, and it kinda got lost in the shuffle. Navarro himself wasn’t keen on it in retrospective, preferring to be part of an ensemble than being a solo artist.

I love the album, and I’m torn between the Venus in Furs cover and Rexall. Perhaps Rexall is the better choice. A personal track about his parents meeting in the namesake pharmacy. A song for that strange year of 2001. I don’t identify with the lyrics, but the general mood of the song is perfect for my short term working for a small company gobbled by international affairs.

-Sam J. Valdés López