@wwaycorrigan Back in my early secondary school days, as a country lad heading off to mix it with the townies, it was common for the latter to mock us. We were farmer boys, or rednecks, as they say in some parts. It was generally a bit of innocent slagging but no doubt it had its […]
@wwaycorrigan There is an expression we use in Ireland to describe those who put themselves before everybody else. We call them ‘mé féiners’, putting an English ending to two Irish-language words, ‘mé féin’, meaning ‘myself’. Basically, you could say these are a type of fundamentalist individualist. ‘The greater good for the greater number’ only comes […]
@wwaycorrigan These seem to be especially frightening times we’re living in. One could be forgiven for thinking things have an ‘end of days’ feel to them. The global political picture seems as divided as ever. Well you could argue it’s similar to Europe in the 1930s, so we’ve been here before, with people finding comfort […]
@wwaycorrigan After almost seven years of having Bogotá as the base, the greatest ‘achievement’ — let’s not get caught up in the semantics here — has been my assimilation to the working-class Bogotá barrio life. While many locals with aspirations to...
@radiobrendan Many people still don’t seem to get it. Or they wish it wasn’t so in any case. Basically, a significant reason US President Donald Trump proved to be — and still proves — popular across Middle America, away from the east and west coast echo chambers...
@radiobrendan In previous posts I wrote about, or at least mentioned in passing, the visa issues I had in Colombia this year. Indeed, the chief reason for my recent visit to Venezuela was down to being unable to renew my ‘independent journalist’ visa. (I am somewhat...
@wwaycorrigan During my recent 16-day visit to Venezuela I had a host of people asking me «What’s it like ‘for real’?» I’m still getting asked that since my return. Via an article in The Irish Times I did touch on a number of the everyday issues that...
@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 Atheism can offer us alternative ‘comforts’ to religion. We just have to look a little harder to find them. It wasn’t quite billed as a clash of titans, religion versus science, but with the Rocky walk-on music it hinted that we might be in for...
@radiobrendan How do we measure success? It really depends on how we define it. It’s different things to different people, being case- and very often time-dependent. In some walks of life, defining success is a bit more straightforward, in theory anyway. The sporting world...
