Like the image says: the greener, the more religious.

For anyone who doesn’t know, my country is Colombia, right there in the north leftmost “corner” of South America.

 I didn’t think we would beat Mexico.   

Got the map at Pharyngula’s, who also got the map somewhere else.

- Lonely Atheist.

Reading: A Short Story I was sent Online. Fun World by William Routhier.

Listening to: “Falling Again” – Lacuna Coil. I enjoy the band sometimes, but it’s not my favorite one. Now, this especific song, is another thing. I absolutely love it. Don’t relate deeply with the lyrics, but the lyrics + the sounds cause one of those wavelength sync moments… the effect is impossible to describe right now. I would say it’s like being high, except I’ve never been high. But It’s like I imagine being high would be, minus the hallucinations and the laugher. And it’s not even the whole song, it’s a part of it. Darn.

Now you wish I had just said “I like this song.”

Anyway. Thinking of: My trip to Bogota last week. I finally bought a 1GB SD memory card, so I don’t have the limitation of taking only 7 to 10 pictures at a time… which means that: I took pics of anything moving or still and of things that are irrelevant or unfunny to the general public. But I won’t bother you with that… so much.

I left the random, people pictures for Facebook so they can laugh at them, I’m sure you have no interest on watching random people drooling at a hamburger after a long day. You can go to your local restaurant and see a bunch of those scenes yourself.

For blogging, I went with the Tourist-Like pictures: less playing around and more about creating tangible-ish memories of things seen to compensate a lousy memory and create the illusion of being able to enter those memories everytime you see the pictures.

Care to join me relive it? Follow the chocolate rabbit…

Insult of the day. Works like a charm.

SO…

I’ve decided I don’t want to spend my awesome 8 day holiday in Neiva, the hottest and wettest hole in earth… but not an enjoyable one.

Instead I will travel 6 hours to the north and find the awesome coolness of Bogota, the main and biggest city in Colombia. Even though it’s so close, I’ve only been there twice: For a week when I was two, and for another week when I was 13. Even though Neiva is considered a city, and has a big population (almost 400000 people), I’m still considered a “Townie”. Let’s face it, Neiva IS a town. Bogota in the other hand, is a full city.

^Pretty pictures of Bogota

Will not be all alone, but in any case I have maps with me, and a list of possible fun events with places, prices, and a great sense of spacial orientation (yes it’s not an ability exclusive of men like some say, if you still think so, refer to the first line in this post.).

Just for the hell of it, I will tell you exactly where I will be in the next two or 3 days:

Milky way –> Solar System –> Planet Earth. Are you with me?

Zoom up to Southamerica –> Colombia

BOGOTA –> Google Earth map of the Sector I’ll stay in + another pretty picture.

Hopefully I’ll be taking pictures of my own… although my camera doesn’t have a memory card and only fits like 10 pictures. And there’s the added factor that I can’t fly, so I won’t get such pretty landscapes. Bummer.

Oh well, that’s all for now!

Just to keep going with adding images found in the internet, here is another one for your amusement. Don’t click if your underage… don’t say I didn’t tell you.

Homer, how many donnuts will you eat!

It’s awesome… genious. I’d personally wouldn’t do that in the first place because I don’t like tatoos… and… ouch. But… genious. GENIOUS.

Okay, see ya.

Part 2. The Current Issues

I complain a lot about living here. I’m not patriotic, but I don’t think I would be patriotic no matter where I was born or lived. It’s not because I hate this place per se. Patriotism brings an issue about political barriers that people adopt as their own many times losing perspective on the problems it causes. I won’t get into that right now.

I haven’t suddenly become more patriotic because problems have arised and I’m going to “stand up for my country”. I’m giving my point of view, as biased as any other person immersed in the conflict with no academic degrees in Politics or anything similar, but trying to remain as objective as possible. If I haven’t mentioned it, my whole interest on bringing out my views about political issues in my blog has been inspired by the latests happenings related to this area of the world.

I’ll provide links if you want to read about it, but I’ll make a quick summary if you don’t feel like going through it all. For people in here, this is so old, so all over the place, that I probably don’t need to explain, but for readers who live at the other side of the world, this whole thing could have been completely unheard of (except for what is shown in Collateral Damage and such -refer to link on top).

Basically, Colombia is now facing serious disputes with previously “friend” countries (Mainly Venezuela and Ecuador), plus a lot of other countries that take sides for this or that reason. Lately it feels like we’re on the edge of actual war.

War? Hasn’t Colombia been in war for like forever?. Not really. 50 years of civil conflict, dangers and definitely not peace, but actual war, no. 50 years ago, a group was created to rebel against the government. So far, so good. Unfortunately, it seems like the ideals got tangled up. Nothing against the goverment has been acomplished so far (I still have thousands of inconformities regarding that part!), but the “solution” was far from beneficial. Slowly the Guerrillas that were about ideals and defending the people from the dirty hands of the government, became the agressors, the drug dealers, the mine planters, the bomb setters, the killers, the terrorists. They don’t fight against the government anymore although they claim that’s what they’re doing. They only attack people. The term “terrorists” has been questioned lately, but in my opinion, that’s the only word I could give to them.

So yes, annoying things have been happening, towns have gotten bombed, lots of people dead or missing body parts, hard to freely travel around the country side because of security issues; it can be done easily, but the risk, although remote, feels too high to take for most people.

Ironically, despite the violence we’re under, Colombians tend to be pretty nice people, family and community oriented, cheerful and helpful. In general, I like Colombian people. Knowing that and many other things, it makes me feel a little bad to see the image portrayed internationally. Which leads me to ask you. When someone refers to “Colombia”, what are the things that come to your mind in that moment? What is the image people where you live usually have?

ANYWAY. We were talking about Colombia harvesting Terrorists. Terrorist causing drug and violence problems. Problems causing more problems in other parts of the world.

Some military actions have been taken trying to dismantle the terrorists groups. One of them, resulted in the death of the 2nd biggest leader of FARC, the biggest guerrilla group in here. The problem, colombian military had to go into Ecuador to get him. Ecuador didn’t present any complaints at the moment. But then someone else enters the scene:

Hugo Chavez – President of Venezuela.

Now, I don’t like our president much, but what’s up with this guy? He just blurts out whatever happens to be passing by his thick head at any given moment. Hours and hours of overopinionated, biast, instigating and absolutist chatter with no structure, backup or thougths on consequences. At one moment he was accused of being mentally insane. I won’t comment more on that. He always reminds me of a guy that keeps going into the Grunge Forums talking about Anarchy all over the place all by himself.

He decided that the fact that Colombian forces had to go into Ecuatorian territory to get this big fish, was much more serious than the fact that the terrorists got a big hit from this action. He said it was a “WAR CRIME”. Then the president of Ecuador agreed and the problem became one of enormous proportions.

My biggest concern though is how these countries are claiming the Guerrillas are NOT terrorist, but merely an oposition force against the imperialism and capitalism, and such. It first was subtle, and Chavez kept on saying he was neutral in the subject. But…

When two important politicians were liberated back in January, he was claimed as a great help, because of his mediation in the process. True, until he himself revealed his affinity with the Guerrillas. Ever since, hes’ been openly claiming that the FARC should not be called Terrorists anymore. Then Ecuador joined him.

Why was the big fish in Ecuador living all happy? Are they helping them? If, so, when is all this going to end? And more, using Colombia’s damaged image, will they convince everyone that is them who are right?

They have placed military troops all over the border, like Colombia had an infection needed to be contained. Colombia will not provoke them, as the minister of defense has stated. They keep on claiming it all started because of Colombia getting inside Ecuador to catch the big fish. Although going into another country with no permission is bad, I think it’s just another excuse to justify that Colombia is evil and everything against it is justified.

Links:

BBC Brief View on Why Is Colombia so Violent

Essay on the History of the Conflict in Colombia.

Colombia in Wikipedia – General Information.

Wont depend on Colombia, not even for a grain of rice.

Colombia offering a democratic alternative to Chavez

I classify my views on politics as “Apathetic”. Most of the times the whole thing about the conflict in Colombia, and for that matter, in any part of the world, is so complicated and annoying and hopeless that I don’t feel like getting into that. It would require a lot of knowledge for throwing in an opinion that makes sense (not like everyone has a lot of knowledge, but they yell anyway). And most of the times, whatever choice of politician A or B will make no difference in my opinion, so why bother spending my brain fuel on that.

To be honest, the situation in Colombia feels so incredibly hopeless for me most of the times, that all I’ve been trying to do – as far as my memory goes, is to selfishly go away, and belong to a place where I might have a better future. Any chance of making things better in here might only happen generations from now, and it means that I will probably be dead from old age when it happens. Being a person who doesn’t believe in after life, and doesn’t plan to have children, a solution in such long term has absolutely no appeal for me, therefore, I have no bussiness spending my energy on it.

So that is my political apathy explained, in terms of selfishness.

There are sometimes, though, when something just strikes me, and gets on my nerves. Is it because it affects me more directly? Maybe. Whatever the reason, it was important enough to make me blog about it. So here we go.

Part one. COLOMBIA IS DANGEROUS, DO NOT GO IN THERE, YOU’LL DIE.

I won’t make this too long (lier), because I won’t either be able to write it, and nobody will feel like reading it anyway. Most people know Colombia is in trouble, right? It is advised against non esential travelling OR all travelling in many countries.

We advise you to exercise a high degree of caution in Colombia because of the high threat of terrorism and criminal activity. Terrorist, insurgent and paramilitary groups are active throughout Colombia and there is a high risk of kidnapping, including of foreigners. Traveling Page from Australia on Colombia

Traveling Page from Canada on Colombia.

The other day I was talking to someone on MSN and I jokingly said they could visit me in here. Their immediate reaction was

“columbia? dude, i don’t wanna die”

I won’t deny that a conflict has been going on for a long time; so serious it has made people die, has kept people in captivity for years, has resulted in wounded and recruited children who are still wondering what the hell is this world they were brought in. Most of these things, probably never experienced by the usual public who reads the news and watches movies, makes them feel uneasy everytime they conceive the idea of people living with it every second. Logic tells them it’s not a place they’d like to visit; being in their shoes, I probably would think the same.

After all, movies and news are not going to report the quiet times, the day to day life of a person in a city or even a small town in the country. The wow factor comes with “Collateral Damage”, “Mr and Mrs Smith”, “XXX”, and even “Bedazzled”. See Films Depicting Colombia. DRUGS, WAR, JUNGLE, GUNS.

Not blaming only the international media, it seems like the obsession of local film makers is to exploit the same subject in their own movies. DRUGS, WAR, JUNGLE, GUNS, all over again, as told by Colombians.

Though there’s a huge difference. Hollywood movies are remarkable for their inacuracy, complete lack of research, and basically, a superficial interest to associate their terrorist characters to a real place so they feel they’ve linked their mediocre movie to reality and now they’re awesome and rich movie producers. Colombian movies about the same subject, meanwhile, are pretty acurate, as I can see what they present happening in real life, and it does. Their mistake is to portray only that side to the world. Instead of increasing the awareness over the conflict that is going on, it just makes hollywood say “Yeah, see? Jungle, war and drugs! Same thing we did!“. And now they all think they’re even more awesome movie producers. Right now they’re probably drinking expensive alcohol and congratulating each other for the 1000th time.

to be continued

I’m IN VACATIONS!

The last ride college-home in public transportation in the year! It was raining… it was good.

Candle day! Night of Dec 06.

I actually have no idea how this holiday is officially called in English. Does it even have a name? Does this holiday exist outside Colombia? I don’t know but I love it.

The rest of Neiva is full of light. I just had the chance to take one crappy picture the other night, but I plan to get more. It’s really beautiful outside these days.

I really like Christmas. I’m like a little kid when it comes to that.