JoeG has left 25 comments

JoeG comments on You know you are NOT in Colombia when ........

you're making me homesick. there's no popeye's chicken here and kfc isn't as good. there's no drive through tacos at 3 in the morning, and I can't find anyplace that will put the beans on the rice.

JoeG comments on You know you're in Cartagena when...

when you're on a crappy beach in a hot tent and the same guy tries to sell you the same day old crabs three times. but on the other hand... when you're in a bar on a 300 year old wall eating good food with strong drinks while the sun sets spectacularly off to one side of the battlements.

JoeG comments on And,... if You're a Lazy and Don't know alot of spanish, and want to date Colombianitas....

as a Joe, I hope my Maria only has one. ;)

JoeG comments on

If you just compare immigration procedures you can see the difference in what people like and don't like. In the US, it's a "don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out" system, hard to enter but they could care less when you leave. Any place in south america, if you don't have the right stamp, or paper or permiso your ass isn't leaving the country. That tells me something about the flow of people and who wants to go where. Most americans aren't well traveled outside the us because from most points in the country you can drive on a good highway for 20 hours and not reach a foreign country. If they seem rude or arrogant, it might be because they haven't traveled that much. If they tip too much, it's just a habit. In the us if you don't tip 15% don't go back to that restaurant, because the spit content of you soup is going to be high.

JoeG comments on Private Real Estate Lender

bbva and citbank's normal lending percentage is 12%, so 16% isn't too bad for an expat.

JoeG comments on Another translation request pretty please

jodido=f**cked

JoeG comments on Origin of the term "Gingo"

sorry, i'll be nice :( http://www.word-detective.com/020798.html " The most likely source of "gringo" is the Spanish word "gringo" itself, which means "foreigner" or "unintelligible gibberish." The root of "gringo," in turn, is thought to have been "griego," Spanish for "Greek," often applied as slang to any foreigner. But why, I hear you ask, Greeks? Because the Greek language has long been a convenient metaphor for anything foreign and unintelligible. Even the Romans had a Latin phrase for the feeling of being stymied by the unfamiliar: "Graecum est; non potest legi." Translation? "It is Greek -- it cannot be read," or as we say today, "It's Greek to me." "

JoeG comments on Passport filled with exit and entry stamps

last year I got to where my passport was full it became an issue in ecuador, I was told on leaving quito that I needed more pages to reenter. colombia let me back in by stamping on a partially unstamped corner, but the das guy didn't seem too happy. it's worth it to get more pages, it doesn't cost anything but your time and the line in immigration feels less stressfull

JoeG comments on WAY PUTA

"hay guey pucha" is used more like shoot or dang. Hijo de puta is used more like sh*t, f**k. I've heard "hay guey putcha" used in mixed company, but not hijo de puta.so much.

JoeG comments on Bogotá Resident??

bogota resident for 1 year, plus 2 years in the 90's

JoeG comments on

sorry, my last comment wasn't too clear. I've heard that you can subscribe to vonage, then bring the box to colombia. change your address to wherever your mail is going to go in the states and keep paying the bill. the trick is to subscribe to vonage before you disconnect your landline, that way you can keep your same phone number. the vonage box I have is a cisco switch that has a couple of phone-line out plugs, I don't think it can do multiple phone lines though without being setup differently. (read their website) to the vonage box it's transparent that it's in a different country, the quality isn't perfect but I think that's more of a function of the crappy TVcable lines in my building then it is a function of the internet from miami to bogota. I think you'd only have to worry about latency if you connect with a satellite antenna instead of a cablemodem. I'm sure if vonage cared they could detect that my IP is in a different country, but since we pay our bill on time they don't seem to mind.

JoeG comments on

just get vonage, bring the box and don't tell them. or so I've heard. not that I'd do that. get the highest speed connection from tvcable and it works ok.

JoeG comments on

I dont think colombians have changed, they've always been like a bunch of crabs in a bucket...one starts to climb out of the bucket and the other crabs pull them back down. the level of the crabs is higher now, much more opportunities to reach for the edge of the bucket and be pulled down. (it's really just like louisiana, which is why I feel comfortable here. you see idiots in louisiana making just enough to make payments on their new F150 but have to put food on a credit card. some other things that are similar are you need to know someone to get a job, you could be the smartest person in LA or colombia and you won't get a job unless you have a palanca. all business in both places depends on whether you are "known", you went to the same high school, university, played football together, etc )

JoeG comments on looking for Bogotá restaurant recommendation for birthday party

Punto G is pretty fun. The music is better than salto de angel, with 3 different bands, all good. The food isn't super, but they do have picada, pollo, carne. Key thing for me was you can get reservations. We went to andres with a big group last month and we ended up out in the grill area, I felt more smoked than the meat, which led to me puking on the side of the autopista on the way back. (nothing to do with the half bottle of whiskey I drank) que verguenza.

JoeG comments on Safety factor not often spelled out. Mor on numbers

really good points. I think the key is to not stand out, don't look like a good target and don't look like an easy target. -take out money from atms where there's a lot of rich targets, like Andino...odds are you'll blend into the rich people noise - don't take taxis on the street - when you call for taxis, if you have a gringo name use a spanish name. If the call on the radio is to pickup Frank Johnson, half the crooked taxis in the city are trying to take the call. better to be Juan Pablo Gomez for taxi purposes. -spend small bills, if you're paying people with 50kpeso notes who are only making 400kpesos per month, you're dando papaya -wear local clothes, when I first came here in the nineties I was walking around like an american flag with white reeboks, blue jeans and a red polo shirt. I was lucky I never got robbed.

JoeG comments on Most dangerous big city?

Even the 'safe' north part of bogota can have problems. Saturday night one of the vigilantes down the street shot a thief. I heard the shotgun blasts and got up to look...my wife (colombiana) pulled me back in bed and said I was nuts, don't put your head out the window it might get shot off and don't get involved in people like that's business. In houston, I would have called 911 and waited for the police. Here, I kept my head down and waited for the police to show up to investigate, nobody ever showed up. what a f**ked up place.

JoeG comments on

The trash cans in the bathroom are universal here in bogota even in strata 5 and 6. I've been told that the pipes are the problem and will clog if you flush TP, but I think any building built since the mid 80's it should be ok to flush. Our building was built in the 60's and I've been warned repeatedly not to flush TP, but I'm going to flush it down though the heavens fall down around me.

JoeG comments on Mini Coopers in Colombia

there are mini-coopers in the showroom at Calle 99 between 11 & 11a here in bogota. a mini would do pretty good here, they are even smaller than those little taxis that fit 3 across on a two lane road.

JoeG comments on Rock Al Parque Bogotá Never a dull day

The thing that makes me thing that culture in bogota isn't that great was paying almost $100 to see Fuerza Bruta, when all the news people and beautiful people said it was the best thing they'd ever seen, I thought it was mostly crap. Until the literati are willing to call crap, crap, the arts won't begin to improve. Also, money is needed. As was mentioned earlier large chunks of artistic endowments in the usa were given by the rockefellers and carnegies and other robber-barons. I think this was more of an attempt at assuaging their guilt, because at the turn of the century there were no income taxes like there are now, and there was certainly no irs or deductions for charitable giving. So some of the robber barons here in colombia should cough up some money to buy an orchestra.

JoeG comments on Honeymoon

I was just in Cartagena last weekend for a wedding. Islas rosarios are easy, there are several different tour companies that will take you there for the day, ask at your hotel. There must be a way to quickly get to santa marta, because the bride and groom left cartagena for santa marta, not sure how they got there though. I was too drunk/hung over to pay attention to travel details. San Andres might be cheaper from bogota, I haven't been there though.

JoeG comments on PBH Fantasy Football League

where's a good pub to watch football (american) games?

JoeG comments on Gringos with cedulla.

it seems possible to get credit, but I don't know if 12% is the gringo rate or if that is what everyone pays.

JoeG comments on How long will it take to become fluent in Spanish?

watching novelas is another great way to "study", if you're watching on directtv you can put the close captioning on english and listen in spanish. "Neuvo rico nuevo pobre" is pretty funny, tacones de eva was pretty good, but I think the writers ran out of material it seems to have tapered off. "I'm not addicted to novelas, I'm studying!"

JoeG comments on How long will it take to become fluent in Spanish?

It depends on your motivation, in '99 I started working in colombia and met a nice girl and I really couldn't do my job date the girl until I spoke spanish decently. I studied 2-3 hours a day for 4 months and was fluent enough to talk on the phone in about 5 months. I bought several cd courses and about 6 different books, the best course is the Barron's foreign service. http://www.amazon.com/Barrons-Mastering-Spanish-Foreign-Institute/dp/0812073258 (it's more expensive but it's worth it, buy it on CD) the best book I found was "Practical Spanish" by Wiley http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Spanish-Grammar-Self-Teaching-Guides/dp/0471134465/ref=sr_1_1/105-9668735-6698061?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1187626205&sr=1-1 You need both the grammer and the cd course. My spanish is pretty good, unless i'm speaking with someone from west venezuela or Argentina, then I'm left wondering, "was that spanish?".

JoeG comments on Bogota Major Earthquake Warning.. is this a Hoax????

at the office we got a presentation from the office of the alcalde, the gist was bogota is a former lake that has filled in over the past 1000 years (eldorado airport was a lake 100 years ago), if there is an earthquake like the one in peru within 50 miles of bogota we'd be pretty screwed. any building built after '97 should have reinforcement for earthquakes, but anything older than that might or might not have something.