going to town

My friend Joyce laughs whenever I tell her I am putting on my big-boy pants to go to town.

With all of the weight I have put on, "big boy" may have a completely different meaning than what I intend. Whenever I go to a larger city, I prefer to dress as an adult rather than in my pre-school clothes -- the outfits we northerners tend to wear around town that give casual a questionable name.

Other than going to church, I have not put on a pair of Dockers for months. The primary reason is that in Mexico I have not ventured past the city limits of Cihuatlán since at least October. Or, it seems that long.

Yesterday I broke my surly bonds and headed down the road to Manzanillo. I had no choice. My six trips to Oregon since August have left me with a pile of dry cleaning that needed tending to. And, since the nearest dry cleaner is in Manzanillo, I took my Hobson's choice.

I am not fond of the drive to the Big M, and I am not certain why. It is only a 26-mile drive. Admittedly, the main highway that takes me there is two lanes with limited shoulders in places. And there is always a potpourri of vehicles with varying driving speeds. The scenery is always pleasant. I can easily leave my house in Barra de Navidad and arrive at the dry cleaner in 30 minutes.

Even though my sole purpose for the trip was to drop off my dry cleaning before I head north again, I decided to stop at La Comer and Sam's Club. The Sam's Club stop was for the industrial-sized cleaning materials Dora needs to keep my mini-hotel high on the Trip Advisor list. But the stop at La Comer had an entirely different purpose.

When I moved to Mexico in 2009, there were three large grocery stores on the west end of Manzanillo: Soriana, Comercial Mexicana (whose name changed to La Comer when the Soriana organization purchased it), and Walmart. I thought that I would end up spending a good deal of time shopping for groceries there when I would make the weekly trip to pick up my mail. Probably because they looked like Safeway stores in the 1950s -- lots of merchandise on offer in a utilitarian fashion.

But that is not what happened. I quickly discovered that I could save myself a trip to Manzanillo for grocery shopping when I discovered the combination of Hawaii and the corner abarrotes could provide me with everything I needed. (The mail drop was replaced by a postal box in San Patricio.) 

My grocery stops in Manzanillo were reduced to my twice-a-year trip to the city. La Comer was always on the list because it is in the same mall as my optician.

A lot of us wondered what Soriana would do with Comercial Mexicana when it bought the chain in 2016. For a long time, nothing happened other than the name change to the slightly-swanky La Comer -- best pronounced with one's nose squeezed tight. The same way the English pronounce "croissant."

Then the big changes started in the summer of 2020. The store was kept open while the interior was essentially gutted and re-worked in stages. When I was last in the store in October, it was still a construction site.

Joyce told me in December that the new construction was complete and the store looked fantastic. (She is particularly fond of here superlatives.) When I stopped yesterday, I discovered for myself that she was correct. The place was as bright and modern as any supermarket north of the border -- luring customers to sample its wares.

I wandered over to the pasta section and was surprised to see La Comer carries my favorite brand -- Rummo. The usual shapes are there, including bucatini.

Bucatini is my gold standard to test the availability of good pasta. Most Oregon supermarkets flunk the test. La Comer, on the other hand, offers it from three different makers. The transformation is complete. (Alex at Hawaii regularly sells bucatini.)

For me, La Comer is symbolic of Mexico's economic development. Grocery stores of this type are not built for northern tourists. They are built for middle-class Mexicans to spend their excess income on what they see as a better style of life.

And, just as I discovered that Hawaii and the local abarrotes could meet my grocery-shopping needs, the appearance of high-end grocery stores are no more a threat to "authentic" Mexico (whatever that is) than building wider roads. It is part of the economic process of Mexico growing into its place as the 11th richest economy in the world.

I guess all of that is worth putting on my big-boy pants.

mooning for adventure.

Like everyone else, I am a sucker for the big "one-off" astronomical events.

Super moons. Planet conjunctions. Meteor showers. Solar eclipses. News of similar events is similar to the percussive call of the sideshow barker that pulls us into the heavenly freak show.

Of course, none of those events are "one-off." Every astronomical event that slips on stage is cyclical -- well, with the obvious exception of dramatic climaxes that end up creating a huge crater in the Yucatan peninsula and provide material for another Gary Larson cartoon.

As enticing as the Big Events are, my favorite sky-watching pursuit is the phases of the moon. There is an obvious moral in the lesson of the moon whose ability to be seen is dependent on its flashier cousin the sun.

As the month passes, the moon chases the sun and draws closer and closer. But, instead of benefiting from its proximity to the sun, the closer it gets during the day, the less light reflects from the moon's surface until it almost disappears in the day sky.

It isn't until the moon is furthest in its orbit from the sun (as viewed from Earth) that it attains its full glory on its own. Light will reflect off of the full surface of the moon only when it rises just as its source of light is setting.

The sun-moon chase is part of our common history as humans. The Inuit know the tale as the incestuous Igaluk chasing his beautiful sister Malina. Or the competition between Helios and Selene in Greek mythology. The chase echoes deep in our souls. 

Scientists, of course, will explain all of this as nothing more than the orbit of the moon around Earth and Earth's orbit around the sun. Simply a Keplerian calculation.

The photograph at the top of this essay was taken in last week's full moon cycle. On the same day that the Perseverance probe landed on Mars.

That evening I had dinner with Joyce and Gary. She was thrilled by the video of the Mars landing, and with the very idea of humanity reaching out into space. That was not a surprise. She is one of the few people I know who tracks the possibility of seeing the space station orbit overhead. She even has a ticket to Mars.

I say "few people" because most people I know have become blasé about space exploration. My grandmother was born in 1892 in Northcote, Minnesota. Not only did she experience a move to Oregon in her twenties, she witnessed the introduction of automobiles, airplanes, home appliances, victory over European and Asian fascism and communism, electricity, phonographs -- and space travel. When she died in 1977, she left a world that she would have not recognized in 1892.

In 1961, Miss Dix wheeled a portable black-and-white television set from the West Concord AV room into our sixth grade classroom. My friends, Keith May, Neil Hodgin, Daurel Colony, and I watched rapt as Alan Shephard was shot into space, and, almost as miracuously, recovered from the ocean.

The next year, the same television, this time in Mr. Vaught's class, brought us John Glenn's flight. And so it went through high school.

Television was there reporting on our space adventures -- until that day in the summer of 1969 when my college friends and I stopped our beach reveries to watch Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins launch into space. Four days later, in a friend's basement, about a dozen of us gathered around another television to watch Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.

That memory is why I am so fond of an episode of "The Crown." Episode seven of season three centers around Prince Philip's fascination with the 1969 moon landing and his own mid-life crisis.

Because princes having some privileges, he arranges a personal audience with the three astronauts. Up to that point, he had been struggling with his purpose in life, and, like many of us, thought he had found it in the technological wonder of the moon landing. He had "an almost jealous fascination with the achievements of these young astronauts."

Instead, as a result of his audience with the astronauts, he discovered they astronauts were just ordinary men -- not heroes with extraordinary qualities. (Tom Wolfe, of course, offers a completely different portrait in The Right Stuff.)

At a meeting of frustrated middle-aged Anglican priests, he summed up what he thought was really bothering him.

My mother died recently. She ... she saw that something was amiss.

It's a good word, that. A-Amiss.

She saw that something was missing in her youngest child. Her only son.

Faith.

"How's your faith?" she asked me.

I'm here to admit to you that ... I've lost it. And... without it, what is there?

The ... The loneliness and emptiness and anticlimax of going all that way to the moon to find nothing, but haunting desolation ... ghostly silence ... gloom.

That is what faithlessness is. As opposed to finding ... wonder, ecstasy, the miracle of ... divine creation, God's design and purpose.

What am I trying to say?

I'm trying to say that ... the solution to our problems, I think, is not in the ... in the ingenuity of the rocket, or the science or the technology or ... even the bravery.

No, the answer is in here.

Or here, or wherever it is that ... that faith resides. 

F. Scott Fitzgerald had a great sense of the human condition. "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."

I suspect he was trying to say that humans inherently possess a first-rate intelligence because we are all capable of holding opposed ideas. We do it every day.

I have yet met a person who believes solely in the scientific method to describe everything in their lives. Any scientist who has been in love or read a novel or experienced a sunset knows that most of life's offerings lie outside the boundaries of science.

That is why it is possible to see space exploration not only as a great technological achievement, but also as the type of adventure that helps give meaning to our lives. Often to enhance our faith.

Knowing how a rocket works does not take away from the possibility that the wolf will eventually catch the rabbit in the sky. 

the naming of things

Several years ago, Mexico provided funds to local communities to erect signs proclaiming their names.

The signs were metal and painted in bright colors with images of the individual community's icons. For blogger-photographers they were a boon. Every essay needs a hook, and nothing is more effective than an establishing shot.

Barra de Navidad was no exception. Its letters were not only colorful, but they also proclaimed how Barra saw itself. Sailfish. Dorado. Even the fallen-arms Jesus with his theological ambiguities.

And, unlike most towns and cities that placed their eponymous signs on their public squares, Barra de Navidad decided not to do that. Probably with good reason. Barra's square is not the center of activity for the town. Most of the time, it has the sad countenance of a disused parking lot.

But Barra does have a center of activity. Its malecon topping the remnants of the sand bar that provided the town's name. There is no better view -- with the laguna on one side and the bay on the other. It was the perfect place to erect that sign. And that is exactly what happened.

It was a hit. Every tourist that walked by had to shoot the sign. Usually with family members clamoring over its letters.

Maybe it was loved too much. The combination of the letter-climbing, the sea brine, and petty vandalism had its toll on the sign.

First, the accent lights were stolen or broken. Then the metal started giving way. There was no choice but to cart the sign away.

It was soon replaced by another sign that was supposed to be temporary. Its peculiar use of English was not a propitious sign for the future.
 

Its utility ended abruptly less than two weeks ago, being the victim of the same factors that killed the first sign. Too much love, brine, and vandalism.

I recounted most of this tale two weeks ago in a mere shadow of itself. Even though I had not solicited any solutions for a future sign, northerners, being the problem-solvers they are, posted lots of comments with numerous ways to preserve a future sign.

One of those suggestions was to cast the letters in concrete other than in metal. Someone was paying attention to that avalanche of advice.

When I walked to the malecon yesterday, I ran into a work party uncovering a stack of letters. Even before I interviewed them, I knew this was not a Sesame Street road show. The letters were for a replacement sign. This time in concrete.

Because I had other boats to sail yesterday, I decided to return this morning to see how much progress had been made. It turned out to be a lot.

The sign is not yet complete. The "Barra" portion of the sign will accompany "de Navidad" just below it. The letters will then be painted in a pied pattern.

I really liked the first sign. It not only had character, it captured the essence of this little village by the bay. I hope this third sign will re-capture that long-lost spirit.

At least, it appears its survivability has been heightened.   

suppose they gave a boat race and nobody came

We will never know the answer to that hypothetical.

At least, not in Barra de Navidad today. Because there was a sailboat race, and a lot of people came.

Every year during the northern tourist season, some diligent souls organize events to answer the question: "What do we do now in Barra?" In The Before Times, opening our local Facebook pages was like reading the day's schedule of events on a Caribbean cruise. Bingo. Specialty Dining. Boat rides.

All of those announcements are in English because that is the target audience. And most of the events are for Good Causes. Like raising funds for the local schools.

But there is another purpose, as well, and it is one that a lot of people seem to think is a bit grubby to discuss. I rack that up to too many hours sitting in front of the television pretending we are part of the Crawley family.

Barra de Navidad makes its living off of tourists. For decades, this little village by the sea has been a destination for Mexican tourists.

Since the 1990s, a large share of tourist revenue comes from winter visitors from Canada and The States -- especially Canada. In January and February, it is easy to imagine you are in a suburb of Toronto. With the exception of the absence of chilling snow drifts, of course.

The cruise-like activities are designed to encourage northern visitors to exchange a few of their hard-earned dollars in exchange for momentary joy that just might transmorph into a lasting memory. And that is exactly what appeared to be happening this afternoon.

I attended men's Bible study this morning at a restaurant that makes its winter living off of the breakfast pleasures of northerners. Ominously, we were the only customers there.

In a way, I was not surprised. When the Canadian government announced it was clamping down on Canadians from leaving the country, a large contingent of Canadian visitors here upped pegs over the past three weeks to avoid getting trapped by new restrictions. The usual dining haunts have been consistently light on customers since then. 

The sailboat race that started today at noon has been thoroughly publicized on Facebook. But if the target audience had flown the coop, I feared it would be lightly attended.

When I arrived at the malecon, I thought that was the case. Other than a construction crew that was busy at work on a project I will write about tomorrow, there were only a handful of spectators even though the bay was abloom with sailboats.

I am quite find of sailboats having picked up the habit while living in Greece and England, and then for a week every summer plying the San Juan and Gulf Islands. Nothing can cause me to smile and chuckle as much as seeing a boat in full sail -- especially when cast against the shifting shades of blue of the bay and its sky.

I needn't have worried that I was selfishly watching the sails gently gliding like a corps de ballet. There were plenty of other spectators.

I found most of the northern tourists in the series of restaurants that line the thin wisp of strand that was once a grand beach. They had sought the shade and company associated with all grand sports.

Best of all, the boats had attracted customers to Mexican businesses where a mutually-beneficial exchange of cash and mementos were under way.

Every time I write about these events, I receive mail and comments that I am abetting the gringofication of Barra. The usual line is that the little Mexican community that is here all year is somehow diminished by providing sport specifically for northerners.

I have never fully understood the argument. Barra has long been a tourist town. Admittedly, it first bent to the will of Mexican tourists. The local businesses did what they could to attract the out-of-towners to Barra and then to their specific businesses. 

Those same businesses are simply doing the same thing to accommodate northern tourists. The commonality is the free market exchange of goods.

Ironically, while some folks are complaining about the loss of Mexican authenticity on this side of the bay, business people on the other side of the bay in San Patricio Melaque are asking what they can do to the same end. Maybe they should talk to the organizers. They seem to have hot on a successful formula.

Those cruise-to-Jamaica ideas would appear to be applicable there as they are here.

And, before I wrap up this essay, let me congratulate all the crews of the boats that participated in the race. You put a smile on my face -- and I am willing to bet you did the same for a lot of other people today.      

moving to mexico -- resources

So, you have done the hard part.

You have decided to sell your house and move permanently to Mexico. Visions of sunlit beaches and snow-capped volcanoes samba in your dreams.

Now comes the learning curve. You are not even certain what questions you need to have answered. But there are some that have started gnawing at you.

• Should I bring my car?
• How do I ship all of my personal belongings?
• How do I get a visa?
• Should I buy a house or rent?
• What details should I consider in a purchase or rental contract? What terms need to be negotiated?
• Where should I live?
• What will my monthly costs be?
• Can I bring my pet King Cobra and Bengal Tiger?

I decided in 2006 that I was going to retire and live out my last few years in Mexico. And I asked myself all of those questions -- well, maybe not the one about the tiger -- and a lot more.

Because I am a traditionalist, I bought every book I could find about retiring in Oregon and pored over them every night in my hot tub. I posted a list in 2007 of the books I was reading (lamps unto my feet). Fourteen years later, I suspect the material is dated. but new editions may have been published.

The books were very helpful in covering the categories of questions I should ask, and the authors did their best to provide adequate data to answer some of the questions. But, by their very nature, the books could only provide general information. And I needed answers to questions relating to my situation.

Based on the books, I narrowed down my search to six cities in Mexico. I planned to audition each place for six months and then move on to another. (That plan fortunately soon crashed on the shoals of reality.) To prepare for those moves, I needed to find people who knew each area.

That is when I discovered Mexico blogs. Wayne on Isla Mujeres. Joanna and Teresa in Mérida. Gary in Mexico City. Jennifer in Morelia. Felipe in Pátzcuaro. Babs in San Miguel de Allende. Nancy in Mazatlan. Andee in Chacala.

Not only could I learn about living in their portions of Mexico, I could also get a feel of the lives they chose to live by reading their past posts. It is one thing to read a book written by someone whose background you do not know. It is far more reassuring to take advice from people whose lives make contextual sense.

All of them were willing to provide advice and none was bashful when it came to opinions. And that was exactly what I needed. I wanted raw reality, not Chamber of Commerce fluff.

Of that group, Wayne has hauled his writing over to Facebook, Gary has moved back to England, Teresa has moved to California, Nancy continues her blog at Lake Chapala, and Andee died just before I could meet her. In fact, most of the blogs I relied on in making my decisions are no longer being written.

Unfortunately, it appears that Facebook has attempted to fill the gap. And it fills the gap quite inadequately.

I belong to several Facebook groups that purport to offer advice to people who are considering upgrading their lives with a move to Mexico. I suppose some of the questions are answered to the satisfaction of the posters. But I am not certain that answers to such questions as "How much does it cost to live in Mexico?" are very helpful when answered by people who live all the way from a simple home in Oaxaca to a penthouse in Mexico City.

Part of the problem is the format of Facebook. Complex questions and answers are reduced to bumper sticker slogans. And the person who asks the question has no idea of the veracity of the person who answers.

I also suspect trolls are responsible for what appear to be the most inane questions: "Can you buy prescription drugs in Mexico?" -- "Do Mexican women make good wives?" -- "Are there fruit markets where I want to live?" I have often imagined that the old KGB office in Moscow is filled with operatives peppering Mexican Facebook pages with these gems.

If I were making a decision on the details of my move to Mexico right now, I would avoid all of the Facebook advice pages unless you have always wanted to play Diogenes.

I would start looking for updated versions of the books in my list (or others) to build a proper framework of questions. I would then start reading well-written blogs from the areas you are curious about. There are also some valuable internet resources listed to the right of this essay.

If you are currently going through the decision-making process, I confess that I envy you a little. Making all of these choices was one of the best experiences of my life -- even when I was fully aware that each decision would be swept away when the tide of time swept across it.

Enjoy the move. Mexico is not paradise, and life here is not perfect. But every day in Mexico will let you appreciate simply being alive.

And that is good enough for me.       

 

keeping our eyes in our heads

One of the things I miss about flying is getting to know the person sitting next to me.

Bill Buckley reportedly said: "Ninety-nine out of a hundred people are interesting. The other one is interesting because he is different."

I have certainly found that to be true with my cabin mates. Everyone has a tale to tell, and I have learned a lot by just getting to know new people for the short hours it takes to get from airport to airport.

In 2016, I was on a flight from Portland to Los Angeles on my way home to Mexico. The youngish man sitting next to me was engrossed in a book when I sat down. I waited until he put it down and introduced myself. He responded in kind: "Nice to meet you. Ruben Navarette." He paused for a moment to see if the name meant anything to me. It didn't.

During the flight, I discovered he was a newspaper columnist. I probably had read some of his pieces, but I had no idea what his politics were.

We started talking about one of our mutual favorite topics -- immigration. I had just read a series of books and articles on the topic -- including Jorge Castañeda's Ex Mex: From Migrants to Immigrants, that had given me an entirely new set data to analyze immigration from Mexico to The States.

We had probably talked about immigration for close to an hour when he informed me, in addition to column, he also had a podcast, and  he wanted to know if I would like to be interviewed. Even though I was intrigued by the idea, I told him I had no qualifications other than regurgitating what I had recently read. He laughed. "How would that be any different than any Talking Head?" You have to like someone that sardonic.

Since then, I have read his column whenever I see it. Sometimes, I agree with his position. Most often, I do not. But he always makes me think about the topic -- often through new analytical tools. I am far more interested in the path than I am in the conclusion. THat is probably why I find George Will's writing so compelling.

This morning, I was pleased to discover Navarette's column in the morning newspaper. His subject matter was not what grabbed my attention. What looked like a throwaway line in the fourth paragraph turned out to be the hook that drew me in.

[E]ven my actual best friends and I don't agree on everything. I'm old school. Back in the day -- before social media taught us to "unfriend" those who think differently -- you didn't have to agree with someone to be their friend.

I do not know when it began, but I have noticed a rash of "total unfriending" among people I know. Tempers have become so raw over the virus, politics, and whether ketchup on hot dogs is evidence of moral degradation that long-time friends have split the proverbial sheets. 

A woman I have known here for at least a decade and I had a conversation on the topic this week. I had not seen her recently in the social circles with which I associate her. When I asked her why, she informed me she would not associate with people who had politics that differed from hers. The way she worded it, I knew there was nothing left to discuss.

I found that a bit sad. Like Navarette, I disagree with most of my best friends on a lot of topics. Some of my best conversations have been with atheists, socialists, and anti-immigrationists. Even though their views are not mine, I always learn something new. Probably because we argue interests instead of positions.

The trick, of course, is that we respect one another. And, because we do, we can focus on the intellectual joy of working through ideas and concepts. Hatred cannot get a foothold with that respect.

For the first time since I started Mexpatriate back in 2007, I have been forced to make a decision to ban a commenter. And it was a tough decision because he always had an interesting bit of information to add to discussions. Unfortunately, he also had a tendency to personalize issues in a manner that evidenced itself in personal attacks, attacks that have caused several readers to complain. Eventually, he made one too many Larry-Grey-at-the-dinner-party slurs.

Buckley and Navarette are correct. People are interesting, and the best friends are people with whom we can disagree and from whom we can learn.

That is one of the joys of being adult. Reverting to the toxic social hierarchy of junior high does none of us any good.

Mahatma Gandhi seems to have a good contribution to almost any discussion. I suspect this is how he would sum up this "defriending" culture (even though he probably never said it): "An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind."  
 
Here's looking at you. 

know yourself; know your enemy better

"Know your enemy and know yourself, find naught in fear for 100 battles."

I should have remembered my Sun Tzu when I strapped on my gear to do battle in my patio. But I made an even more basic error. I did not know who my enemy was. And that is a perfect recipe for defeat.

Since last May I have been battling an insect invasion in my cup-of-gold vines (something is bugging me). It is always questionable to rely on northern experiences to define problems in Mexico. There are simply too many variables. But I disregarded that pearl of wisdom to conclude my vines were under attack by mealybugs.

Several of you offered some kind advice last Spring on dealing with my new-found competitors -- from using a water hose to spray them off to calling in a chemical airstrike that would lift the hopes of any Dow shareholder.

Nothing worked. The infestation was so bad that most of the vines were denuded of leaves and the exudation that rained down on the heliconia leaves was thick enough to prevent photosynthesis. The landscaping was on the verge of deat.

I took what seemed to be the last resort. I cut down the vine and let it regrow. And grow it did. Without a mealybug (or whatever they were) in sight.

But, alas, the bugs returned a couple of weeks ago in larger numbers. They appear to be more resilient than the Taliban.

The same day I noticed their return, someone posted photographs on a local Facebook page asking what the insects were that were currently sucking her plants dry. I could have taken the same shot of my vines.

My friend Dan Patman posited a theory I had not considered. He suggested that they looked like cochineal, the scale insects that were the second most-valuable export (following silver) from Mexico to Europe during the Spanish colonial era. Dan first introduced the insects to me during a trip to Copper Canyon.

I had not even considered that possibility. For one very good reason. Mealy bugs were part of my personal experience. Cochineal were not.

So, I took a closer look at the invaders, did a bit of research, and applied the scientific method to my new-found database. There were two major problems with the cochineal theory.

First, even though cochineal are scale insects like mealybugs, their sole food source is cacti -- primarily nopal. As an interesting side note, cochineal are native to Peru and Mexico. Scientists now believe they were endemic to Peru and were exported to Mexico on traded food products between Peru and Mexico prior to the arrival of Columbus. The trade turned out to be a very beneficial one for Mexico.

Second, the value of the insects is that when the females are crushed, they produce a carmine dye. They were used in Europe to produce the bright carmine found in the get-up of Catholic cardinals and in the military jackets the British soldiers wore to subdue the inhabitants of its empire.

One of the methods I have used to clear the vines is crushing the insects. The color they produce is not carmine. It is more like the yellow of grasshoppers hitting a car's windshield.

Based on all that, I have eliminated cochineal from the enemies list. And that is a bit disappointing. I was hoping to farm and sell the dye-producers. It is a lucrative market. I could open the house with no name to tourists interested in crafts.

Where does that leave me? My research has verified that the bugs are scale insects. But that is a broad category.

The reassuring part of that discovery is the treatment for all scale insects is similar. The less reassuring part of that discovery is that I have tried almost all of the treatments in the past to no avail. The Jack-and-the-beanstalk method may be my only solution. Again.

After looking at the images of the various scale insects, I have reverted to the conclusion that I named (if not claimed) the correct enemy. They seem to be mealybugs.

For some reason, while leafing through my copy of Sun Tzu's The Art of War, I see nothing directly on point about battling mealybugs. Perhaps, I just need a bit more extrapolation.

There is always this. "All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near."

I just need to learn how those mealybugs think.