@radiobrendan Since I first came to know a few years back of the various Irishmen who played significant roles in modern Colombia’s history, the town of Paipa came into my sight. That’s because the main park/square of the somewhat popular tourist spot is named after...
@radiobrendan It’s safe to assume that most foreigners, especially those from the West, who come to Colombia on a whim don’t arrive with the expectation to make money here. That is to say, those who come not having work already lined up with a decent paying...
@radiobrendan When we’re going through difficult or frustrating times, there is the old saying of, ‘Things could be worse’ to make us feel a bit better. For most, if not all people, that is the case. Things could always be worse. (OK, there may exist a person...
@radiobrendan It’s fair to say that it’s largely down to the Irish Americans, those in the US to be clear, that St Patrick’s Day is as big and wide-reaching a celebration that it is these days. They glamorised, as only they can, what had been back in its origin...
@radiobrendan Back in late 2007, during my first full-time radio job, the general manager of the station in question, a recently-appointed Portuguese man, took to me one side and said, ‘Brendan, you’ve lost your joie de vivre.’ While he mightn’t have been...
@radiobrendan As we looked at in our last post, Colombia is, from a tourism perspective anyway, ‘the country of the moment’. In the coming months and years it may be about to see unprecedented numbers visiting its shores as word has finally got out of the many natural beauties the place has to offer. What’s […]
@radiobrendan It’s been quite a year so far. In the sporting world, people have called it the ‘year of the underdog’. The biggest representation of that was Leicester City Football Club’s remarkable triumph in England’s Premier League; from 5000-to-1 outsiders to top dog in the space of nine months. You also had unheralded Iceland, with […]
@radiobrendan As a Westerner living and working in a ‘developing world’ country, earning what is considered locally a decent enough working-class wage, one of the difficulties with this is when you return to your country of origin. The ‘living within your...
@radiobrendan It’s fair to say that the name Roger Casement means very little, if nothing at all, for the vast majority of Colombians. There’s no surprise in that really, especially considering that in his native Ireland, despite Casement being one of the most...
@radiobrendan Let’s face it, the United Kingdom — the parts of it that matter in England and Wales anyway — has never really been that pushed on the European Union. One foot in, one foot out kind of job. So should the UK’s electorate do the, um, honourable thing...
