@wwaycorrigan [Listen to an audio version of this blog entry here.] For some business people, the customer-is-always-right mantra is seen as a golden rule. It makes sense on numerous levels. For many if not most businesses, the goal is not only to keep current customers onside...
@wwaycorrigan [Listen to an audio version of this blog entry here.] Getting used to the cultural quirks of one’s adopted land can take some time. Indeed, there are certain mores that the outsider may never fully understand or accept. From a Colombian perspective, this blog...
@wwaycorrigan [Listen to an audio version of this blog entry here.] As has been well documented on this blog, I’ve visited several rather similar Colombian towns — pueblos — over the last few years. Now, some cynical types might say that all Colombian towns are pretty...
@wwaycorrigan [Listen to an audio version of this blog entry here.] On occasions, according to some mental health experts, it can be good to just do nothing. Or the very bare minimum in any case. Indeed, the deft Dutch have a term for it: niksen, which literally means ‘to...
@wwaycorrigan [Listen to an audio version of this blog entry here.] Colombian tax reform. Many have tried it — or at least given helpful suggestions — but few have had much lasting success. The mere utterance of the phrase sends some folk into a paroxysm. In 2021, planned...
@wwaycorrigan [Listen to an audio version of this blog entry here.] One trend I’ve noticed in Colombia’s low-lying lands — lower than Bogotá that is — is that even rather small towns have a more sinister side to them compared to their loftier equivalents. I refer to locations in what is called tierra caliente, literally […]
@wwaycorrigan [Listen to an audio version of this blog entry here.] ‘Being alone in Colombia is such a waste.’ That was the reaction of one Facebook user to my recent post, ‘Set on singlehood‘. What particularly caught my attention was the inclusion of...
@wwaycorrigan [Listen to an audio version of this blog entry here.] So the last bastion of conservatism and right-wing populism in Latin America has fallen. Colombia has chosen a leftist president for the first time in its history. The rains that fell incessantly on the capital...
@wwaycorrigan [Listen to an audio version of this blog entry here.] A few weeks back, on one of my pueblo escapes from Bogotá — to La Paz, Santander, precisely speaking — I had an interesting conversation with a man about Colombia’s less well-off. He was of the opinion that one couldn’t objectively class the majority […]
@wwaycorrigan [Listen to an audio version of this blog entry here.] It used to surprise me somewhat how even the most insignificant and sleepy of Colombian towns had at least one hotel to host the occasional passer-by. I’d often wonder how the owners made money from the...
