utopiacowboy has written 42 posts
Time for a new reincarnation
I think it's time to retire the Utopiacowboy fictional persona that I've constructed here. He was made up of friends' experiences, some real life experiences and a lot of shit that I just made up. Thanks to everyone who contributed stories and ideas that I've used for the past few years. It's been great, it's been real (NOT!) but it hasn't been real great. I'll be back tommorow posting under a new nom de guerre and serving up more BS served hot and fresh. So for all those of you who have trouble ...
IS this an insult?
Paisa29 maintains that this comment is not an insult when I called her out on writing insulting comments in Spanish. She's not the only one who does it and actually her insult is rather mild as PBSH goes. Nevertheless I do think that saying "leyendo las niñerias de algunos miembros, entonces me avisan si maduran y yo regreso" is an insult. Also I notice that in her comment to me about my Spanish she didn't actually translate her comment but instead said something slightly different in English. ...
Deja Vu?
We're watching a DVD with a bunch of previews, one of which is for a Denzel Washington flick called "Deja Vu". My wife asks me, "What is this "deja vu" thing? Is it French? What does it mean?" I tell her that yes the words are French but it's an expression and I tell her that it means "the illusion of remembering scenes and events when experienced for the first time" or "a feeling that one has seen or heard something before". I ask her if there is a similar expression in Spanish and she says no ...
Los incestuosos
When I read PBSH about Colombia it's like listening to Garrison Keillor talk about the mythical Lake Wobegone on Prairie Home Companion. Everything is wholesome and good and no one does anything bad - it's the best place in the world! I guess I am the only one (along with Elmo) who regularly gets exposed to the seedy reality of Colombian life. Actually I prefer the real Colombia even with its shortcomings to the fantasy world experienced by the PBSH posters. I guess I'm just sick that way.
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No trabajo para ella
My mother-in-law had been counting on one of the politicians that she helped elect to get her daughter a government job. I asked my wife yesterday what was going on with this. She said that there was no chance of a job through this route. It seems that the senator involved has been caught up in the AUC scandal and has his hands full trying to save his own ass. So no job for her. My mother-in-law's pissed needless to say. She does have a few other irons in the fire though, one in city government ...
Double standard at work
I would like to bring to the attention of the majority of PBSH members who pay no attention to the Solo En Espanol forum that all of my posts in a certain thread were deleted. At the same time Lisa XXX's posts insulting me directly are permitted to stay. Is any other evidence necessary to demonstrate that a double standard is at work here? I have no problem with moderators deleting posts or threads, hell 98% of the crap on PBSH should be deleted but I do have a problem with not deleting ALL the ...
* Who is right?
My two stepsons and my two sons are planning to all go to Colombia this summer. They are all hoping for a month of wild sexual escapades with Colombianas their age (15, 16, 17 and 17). My sister-in-law heard of their plan and said that she is convinced they will not get any play. In her mind young Colombian women are traditional and virtuous and are not going to give it up to these Colombians and their gringo stepbrothers. All four get plenty of action here in the USA. My wife is not so sure tha ...
Mexican tourist visa for Colombians resident in the US
The question has come up on this forum from time to time whether Colombians who are permanent residents of the US can visit Mexico as tourists without a visa. My wife has visited the Mexian border towns without a visa but a Mexican tourist visa or tourist card is required for journeys further inland. I came across this page from the Mexican embassy's web site that indicates a Colombian with a green card in the US can travel to Mexico without a visa just like a US citizen can:
"TOU ...
Another brujeria story
About a year ago we went to the wedding of a gringo in Houston and the friend of my wife's family. Among the guests was the bride's brother and his wife. The brother and his wife visited the couple in Houston a few months ago and unknown to everyone, the wife was a bruja. She then decided to put her brujeria to work. The brother and his sister started to get suspicious about their spouses behavior and since he's a camera buff, he hid little cameras around the house to take photos and videos of w ...
Los turistas Colombianos
My sister-in-law and her family of five along with her mother and her brother have arrived in the US. They are now in Orlando where they will be staying a week (Disneyworld!) before continuing on to Houston where we will meet them. They will then stay with us for three weeks before going back to Colombia. It should be interesting.
First impressions of the US: People are fat! ...
Double standard at work
I was reading a newspaper article in the Houston Chronicle tonight about the release of a Texas man and a Monterrey man who had been kidnapped from a hunting ranch near Nuevo Laredo. Buried in the article was this interesting tidbit: "In the past two years, 58 Americans have been kidnapped in the Nuevo Laredo area, and 24 remain missing." I wonder how many Americans are aware of this fact? If there were 24 Americans missing in Colombia I'd think we'd be hearing about it pretty much non stop. Col ...
Death of Pete E.
One of the posters on this forum as well as others such as WLC and Planet-Love (now known as Goodwife), has passed away. He died in Cali on Friday at 5 am from complications after undergoing intestinal surgery. I did not know him in real life but he was a true prince of the cyberworld. Adios, amigo. ...
El cantante
I've gotten the idea, which may be wrong, that with most people who marry a Colombian especially if they live in North America or Europe, the Colombian assimilates. Maybe it's due to my wife's stubborn nature or her appealing vivacity but she has not assimilated in the least. With her everything reminds her of a story from her Colombian past.
Her family is very conservative and if a boy wanted to court one of the family's daughters he had to come to the house and sit with the girl ...
Alvaro Uribe's "cousin"
Yesterday we were on our way to a party and as she likes to do, my wife started telling me a story about one time when she was travelling from Medellin to Monteria. She was going to meet her mother and some of her brothers and go to a party at a finca in honor of Alvaro Uribe. A coworker was going to Cartagena so they were on the same bus. She was telling him about the party and he decided that he wanted to go to the party and meet Uribe. So they got to Monteria and met her family and went to th ...
I Told You So!
I've been thinking of all the people who come to PBSH and "ask" for advice and then, disliking the advice that they've gotten, insist that they know better. What happens to these people I've wondered? This is the thread for the guy who was a gringo engineer convinced that the streets of Bogota were paved with gold and he could easily find a job pulling down 80 grand. This is a thread for the gringos who were moving to Colombia because it was (insert your adjective here) than where ever they were ...
Colombian Family Wins US Embassy Roulette
One of my wife's sisters has been wanting to visit the US with her husband and three kids. They are the ones who are presently living in her apartment in Medellin. They hatched a plan to go to Disney World this summer and see if they could get tourist visas. She also wanted me to write a letter of invitation for them. I told them that the letter of invitation was a really bad idea. The thing to do was not to lie but not to mention the fact that she had family living in the US. So, yesterday, the ...
Riohacha Muchacha
Coming home in the car today, my wife was reminiscing and telling me about the years she spent in Riohacha as a girl. After hearing Elmo's stories, I am kind of interested in hearing more about the place. Unfortunately my wife's stories aren't as dirty nor as entertaining as Elmo's but here goes anyway.
Her father was posted there and the family lived in one of the houses reserved for military officers. A colonel lived next door to them and unlike them, he both feared and loathed ...
La musica de una Colombiana
Monpirri is convinced that my wife is not a real Colombian even though I suspect that she is. I was looking at her collection of CDs that she insists on hauling around in her car and playing constantly and wondering if any of it was any good or was most of it plain old crap. There are certain names I recognize of course but much of it is pretty obscure to me, el gringo. She really seems to like compendiums of various artists much more than CDs by one artist. So, in the interest of learning what ...
Unos novios y unas novias viven juntos en Colombia?
I mentioned to my wife that my daughter (age 23) is going to have her boyfriend move in with her while she's going to school up north. My wife asked me if this was common here, i.e. people living together without being married. I said that it was fairly common and no one thought too much about it. She then told me that this was very uncommon in Colombia and that EVERYONE that she knew there who was living with a member of the opposite sex was married! She said that people would get too much grie ...
Solo en Espanol
Sometimes when I read the posts in the Solo en Espanol forum, I wonder how many gringos (or other non-Colombians) are reading this stuff. For those of you who don't read it, any thread is about one of three topics: 1) How much better Colombia and Colombians are than everywhere and everyone else; 2) How horrible life is everywhere other than Colombia; 3) How ignorant, stupid, irritating (subtitute your favorite epitet here) gringos are; 4) How much better Colombian Spanish is than everywhere else ...
Election brings good fortune to one family
My mother-in-law, whose "hobby" is politics, did well in the recent Colombian elections. A family friend won election as senator from Cordoba and another gained office as "representante en la camera". Normally this might bring only the satisfaction of knowing that the "right" candidates prevailed but in Colombia it's so much more. The new office holders have promised her that they plan to secure a much better position for her lawyer daughter in Bogota. They have also promised to award government ...
La princesa mafiosa
We hit a couple of New Year's Eve parties the other night and one of them was hosted by a guy who is a seafood dealer. Incredible array of fish and seafood including caviar. I had never tasted caviar but my wife told me that she has eaten it several times. Back in the day when she was young, a friend of hers was married to a mafiosi and she used to go to parties with them where caviar (and other things!) were common. It's a shame she doesn't post - she's got a million stories. One of the guy's f ...
What's up with this?
Every so often I read something and it's like "WTF!?!?". Here is a little article that appeared last summer and was basically submerged in the press. While everybody in the US has this image of Colombia which as we know is far from accurate, Mexico seems to get a free ride. I'm not anti-Mexican but fair's fair. In just ONE city alone in Mexico there have been over 400 kidnappings in one year including 41 Americans. Like I said, "WTF?!?!?":
"Kidnapping, Murder Sweep Nuevo Laredo Fr ...
Las víctimas de la brujería
My wife and I were talking the other day about her brother. Her brother is one of these guys who is in his late thirties and even though he has a good job and a car, he had still been living with his mother. He had been a player and had regularly dated comely young girls fresh out of high school. Now he is living in an apartment with his girlfriend and their baby. Yes, he is a victim of brujeria! Her mother and grandmother had been brujas and they were the ones who had put a curse on my mother-i ...
What do you think constitutes fluency?
My wife and I went to a coworker's wedding yesterday and even though it wasn't a Latino wedding, I ended up speaking Spanish for much of the night. My wife's English is still limited and she gravitates towards other people who can speak Spanish. As a result, I ended up speaking a lot of Spanish as well. Many of my coworkers have never heard me speak Spanish and some of them were flabbergasted, to say the least.
The entire episode made me think about my Spanish abilities. I would d ...
Colombia's civil war?
On one thread I posted that a factor which would prevent anyone from recommending Colombia as a tourist destination was the fact that the country is embroiled in a civil war. This was followed by several posts stating that Colombia was not experiencing civil war etc. Just thought I would do a google search on "Colombian civil war" (19,900 hits) or +Colombia +"civil war" (2,590,000 hits). Good to see I'm not the only one who thinks that there is a civil war going on in Colombia. ...
Las voces del secuestro
I was wandering around the internet last night and came across this site: http://www.lasvocesdelsecuestro.com/index.asp It's fascinating in a horrible way! It has a list of all the kidnapped people and what happened to them, listed in alphabetical order. It also has list of those killed, freed and disappeared. They state that at present there are 4200 captives in Colombia. ...
Imaginate! Pobre Pero Feliz.
Imagine that there is an Internet forum about Canada. The main language of the forum is Spanish and most of the posters are non-Canadians who are interested in travelling to Canada or living there. There may be such a forum but I don't care in the slightest if there is. Why would I have any interest in such a forum? I was born and grew up in Canada, lived there for 22 years, travelled all over the country. Do I have any interest in reading travelblogs in Spanish about the country or getting into ...
ColombianoX would be proud of me
I have been reading the Visa Journey (immigration) site and a thread came up where someone was asking if they could take an interpreter for their Adjustment of Status interview. Some wise guy posted "College Students, grad students, etc would work fine...just don't use any Columbian Drug Lords!". Pissed me off. I had to reply "BTW, if you are going to insult Colombia, at least try to spell it right." ...
El red de las Mexicanas
This is for anyone who is bringing a Colombian spouse or fiancee to the US and lives in an area whose Latin population is predominantly Mexican. I would encourage your spouse to network with the Mexicanas. Those women really stick together and look out for one another, whether it's child care or food or employment. She may see herself as different and yes she is but they do share a language and a similar culture. They knew my wife was looking for a job and thanks to this network she landed one t ...
OF-169
To whoever was looking for the OF-169. Just so you don't think I was blowing you off, I did look for it among our papers. I had everything from Packet 3 and 4 EXCEPT the frigging OF-169! Which I am sure we used to have. Anyway, as someone else posted you can download the DS-2001 which replaced the outdated OF-169 and use that. ...
No posts for you! Next!
Wow, the whole My Novia is an Internet Slut thread got deleted! The Site Nazi strikes back!
Is PBH a slander on Colombia and Colombians?
In recent weeks reading the stupid posts along the lines of all Colombianas are whores who'll sleep with anyone and the majority of Colombians live together without being married, I've started to think like our dear ColX. Occasionally there'll be a defense like that posted by Greenday or GIB but the outrageous remarks continue. I try to respond sarcastically but after a while it gets to you. I pass some of it on to my wife who says that the site is lleno de mentiras. I have to agree. I'm the fir ...
Witchcraft and exorcism in Colombia
Today my wife received an email from her sister and she was telling me about it. It seems that her mother had a priest over to the house in Monteria yesterday to perform an exorcism. I asked her, WTF? Was the devil in the house? So then she tells me this story about her brother and this chick he is involved with. They have a baby but my mother-in-law is convinced that it is not his based on the history of the woman and her family. Also, it seems that her brother's fertility is questionable which ...
Yes, you can fight City Hall
My wife and I were talking about the various barrios of Medellin today. I was asking what was the name of the various barrios where we had gone to visit and what strata they were. As a side note, one of the barrios where we went to visit the parents of a friend was a Strata 2 that was about 10 blocks from a dangerous Strata 1 barrio. Now she tells me!
Anyway, then she tells me that the city had this plan to upgrade the streets and sidewalks in her area and that everyone was going ...
My step children apparently need to read more PBH
I think my step kids should read PBH more. They got on a plane this morning for a 5 week visit to Colombia and you'd think that they had been sentenced to a 5 year stay in a Siberian gulag. Talk about a depressed group! Originally their mother thought they should spend 8 weeks there and they negotiated her down to 5 weeks but right up until the end, they were like prisoners on Death Row waiting for a call from the governor. I felt like telling them, Geez, you guys are Colombians! You should be h ...
Is this Spanish punctuation or a Colombian thing?
I have noticed one thing about many of the posts here in Spanish as well as with my wife's writing. They don't use any punctuation and the sentences run on for whole paragraphs. My wife has to do homework for her English classes and she asks me to correct her writing. Invariably there is no punctuation and the whole thing consists of one big long "sentence". When I start chopping up her "sentence" into smaller meaningful chunks with periods and commas, she makes fun of me as though I am being an ...
Bogota ranked 210 out of 215 for safety
Time for more righteous indignation. Even I think this is extreme. They have Medellin ranked ahead of Bogota for safety?
March 14, 2005 - 14:57
LONDON (AP) - Luxembourg is the world's safest city, but Swiss cities lead the way for combining safety with high quality of life, according to a survey released Monday.
All five Canadian cities in the survey scored well, with Vancouver coming in third for overall quality of life. Geneva and Zurich were tied ...
Una pregunta sobre Español.
En Inglés hay dos diferentes palabras: "argue" y "discuss". Similar pero diferente. A veces "to argue" es una discusión con fuerza, a veces cerca de una pelea. Normalmente cuando una persona "discusses" algo con una otra, no hay una pelea, es tranquilo. Pero mi esposa utiliza la misma palabra para ambos: "discutir". Cómo puede decir la diferencia? ¿O hay otra palabra que se pueda utilizar en lugar de otro? ...
Feed me, I'm a troll
Hi, I'm AkronMale and I'm thinking of dating my dog. I can't get any real dates and I was wondering what is the experience in Colombia. Do people date their dogs? Also what's with the hygiene? I'm used to just pissing on the floor and everyone in Colombia insists that I go to the bathroom. What's with that? ...
Kidnapping down but extortion up
Interesting article here from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about the increase in extortion in Colombia. One poor guy who left Miami to resettle in Bogota now says it was the worst decision he ever made: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/aplatin_story.asp?category=1102&slug=Colombia%20Extortion%20Epidemic ...
Article on differing views of Ingrid Betancourt
I just read an excellent article about how differently Colombians and Europeans view Ingrid Betancourt. Of course, I completely agree with the author.
http://www.economist.com/world/la/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2518348 ...
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