@wwaycorrigan In a previous episode of The Colombia Cast, the ‘Colombianised’ British-born historian Malcolm Deas said, in response to a question about his love for Colombia: ‘One doesn’t love countries, one loves people and dogs and cats and that sort of...
@wwaycorrigan When it comes to quaint colonial towns and villages, Colombia has a plethora to offer. Indeed, you could pretty much spend your whole life going from one to another, exploring the idiosyncrasies of each. Some say that there’s not a big difference between them. Once you’ve seen the ‘big’ ones — big as regards […]
@wwaycorrigan ‘Help, help! We need more help to put out this fire!’ ‘Don’t worry, I’m here.’ ‘Great!’ You lend a hand, doing the best you can to quench the intense flames. Then, the person who pleaded for your assistance, getting...
@wwaycorrigan OK, you might say ‘Oh here he goes again, throwing his toys out of the pram. Be grateful for what you have. Many locals would jump at the chance to be in your position.’ I understand that. What’s more, compared to said locals, other colleagues that is, I’ve had a fairly easy ride of […]
@wwaycorrigan «The world has never been better and very few of us know it.» That was the hook for a talk given by the ‘celebrity’ cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker in Bogotá recently. It’s also the thrust of his latest book, Enlightenment Now. No one can...
@wwaycorrigan Bienvenidos a Medellín – ‘Bangkok light’. So ran the title of one of my earliest Google blog entries. I wrote it after spending a month in Colombia’s second city where I worked in the Greek-owned Arcadia hostel in the «gringo infested»...
@wwaycorrigan I recently received a somewhat fitting, reassuring reminder from Twitter (see image below). It was a notification informing me that my report of ‘behaviour unbecoming’ from a particular user was deemed to be a rule violation under «hateful conduct»....
@wwaycorrigan A few weeks ago on CNÑ (CNN in Spanish that is), in a discussion about social media, an Argentinian expert on the subject predicted that in years to come we’ll view our use of Facebook and the like in the same way that most of us view smoking today. That is,...
@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 «You’re a posh boy now, a gomelo.» So go the jibes from my old barrio buddies now that I find myself living in a swankier part of Bogotá (gomelo, for the uninitiated, is the Colombian word for what you might call preppy types). Yes, it’s true, my move a few kilometres south of my […]