@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 Picture the scenario. You meet a stranger on the street, have a brief, perhaps cordial exchange, and moments later you’re handing over practically everything you have in your possession. If you’ve your bank cards on you, you might even go to the nearest...
@radiobrendan For the last 20 months Bogotá’s only regular quiz (trivia) night, IQuiz, has been on the go. It’s still quite a niche event, a nature of the ‘beast’ that it is perhaps. Nonetheless, as a labour of love, it’s been relatively successful...
@radiobrendan Stop the presses! ‘Colombian politician in corruption scandal!’ In a country that does corruption as regularly and spectacularly as the ‘best’ of them, it’s not a very exciting announcement, is it? It’s even less so when the story comes from the country’s backwater department of Putumayo. ‘Move on, nothing to see here.’ Yet, digging […]
@radiobrendan One of the most frustrating things non-natives, especially Westerners, in Colombia (and other similar countries) have to put up with is the arbitrary ‘foreigner tax’. This is basically the additional cost put on to a host of goods and services simply...
@radiobrendan A quick glance through the Colombian (Bogotá-centred ones anyway) newspapers or sitting down to watch the main TV news here and it’s unlikely you’ll read or hear much, if anything, about Zika. Indeed, most Bogotá residents have probably forgotten what...
@radiobrendan Big city life, somewhat paradoxically, can be quite solitary. There are people all around us, yet as we go about our business they may as well not exist — indeed at times we might wish that to be the case. In this regard, Bogotá is no different to any other...
@radiobrendan We’ve all had our ‘horror’ stories when renting rooms, especially in shared accommodation — those of us who have to endure such things, that is. In a (slowly) developing city such as Bogotá, less-than-positive experiences in this regard are...
@radiobrendan Considering the, um, pop star-esque lifestyle I lead, I’ve been reluctant to get into a lasting relationship. You know, I’d lose a certain appeal (don’t laugh) if I was suddenly no longer ‘on the market’. However, it’s time to come...
@radiobrendan There may be an amount of pointlessness to the following; but hey, this blog is still ongoing so I might as well stick to the programme (I jest, kind of). For writing about the etiquette deficit of Bogotá’s Transmilenio users in the hope of bringing about...
