Día 4 – 9pm
Got up very early to do the podcast. Although I think my contribution had limited success due to the intermittent Internet. Our guest speaker on climate change new his stuff and the we really got into the details of the issue in the aftermath of Obama accord with the Chinese. Because I kept breaking up on Skype I don’t think my impressions of the political situation came over that well. Hopefully I can rectify that next week. Spent the rest of the morning working on my presentation for Kosmica’s final evening. Did a lot of tweaking but I think it’s finally looking like I want it to. Some more work required tomorrow but I'm not far off. It’s good enough that I will be able to relax tonight. Had dinner this evening with Nahum the organiser of the conference, Carrie, Rob and Nicola who are all speaking. Interesting evening in which discussion moved easily across subjects. The main topic of conversation, of course, which was happening as we ate. The police presence in Mexico City generally is very high but walking to the restaurant there were cops everywhere. I've seen more guns this wee than I have in my entire life. I went into a 7/11 to buy some water the other day and the security guard had a 3ft shot gun. It's not scary as such but unnerving when you're not used to seeing that.
Before dinner at 5pm I walked down to the paseo de la reforma to see the protests streaming past and it was an impressive sight. Very nosey and passionate but peaceful. 30,000 people walking from different parts were congregating on one of the main squares called the Zocalo. I felt somewhat uncomfortable however voyeuristically observing such an event in a passive detached way, like I was intruding on something that I lack the knowledge to fully comprehend. Dyan from the conference has put me in touch with two journalism students and I'm interviewing them tomorrow for the podcast so I’m hoping they can express in some way the importance for them of what is going. I’m kind of disappointed that I haven’t been able to do more exploring while I have been here but it just hasn’t been that kind of trip. But this to me is more enjoyable that simply sight-seeing.