Being a gringo in Colombia can mean a lot of things. If you´re unlucky enough to be me, it can mean that you can feel a bit uncomfortable with your body sometimes. It can mean that you don´t really understand what all this arepa fuss is about. What it definitely always means is that you view Colombia with slightly different eyes. It´s just like that song: ¨Noone knows what it´s like to be a Ringo, to be the gringo, behind blue eyes.¨
This point-of-gringo brings you this post. A lot of these things can only be funny to a gringo, as most of them make perfectly unfunny sense in the usual Colombian Weltanschaaung. Admittedly, a few of these would only be funny to a particular type of gringo.
One like me.
(One that finds the ¨girl with no arms¨ joke interminably hilarious, so please try to bear that in mind with what follows. And, try to enjoy…)
Spot the Bimbo.
That bear might be cute, but try having a conversation about German transcendentalism with him. Bimbo.
The Two-Cheeked Goddess.
They wanted me to make a joke about the unfortunate design of the ¨J¨ here, but I really couldn´t be arsed.
Festy.
Is it only Australians that use the adjective, ¨festy,¨ to refer to something gross? Urban Dictionary tells me it´s from the same root as ¨fester.¨ Delicious.
Thas Racist.
This is a great example of how a perfectly innocent name in one language becomes a perfectly heinous insult in another.
While we´re on that delicate subject…
.
Really? Is that OK?
Mimo is probably the winner in our inaugural Slightly Unfortunate Awards, because to a foreign set of eyes, there’s no doubting that it looks like. Just add a couple of elements and you’ll see what we see…
Where´s the Bog?
Is it only in Australia where ¨bog¨ is a synonym for the act of defecation? Classy.
[Edit: In England it refers to a toilet – Paul F]
Word English Random.
My three favourite English words, together at last!
These Snacks Are Delicious. Tosh.
Rubbish!
Well,, there you go; these are some of the things that our warped senses of humour find slightly amusing. I hasten to add that it´s only our silly point of view that makes this so: it´s nothing intrinsic to the things themselves.
Except for the ones about poo, of course. Poo is never not funny. You can´t argue with science.
Sandy Cooke on
Hi Paul. I work for Oxford University Press. We would like to use one of your photos in a textbook that we are publishing.
Could you please contact me via e-mail?
With thanks,
Sandy
JL on
Hi Sandy, already in touch with you.
Chhers
Paul Giles on
Hey Ed!
You´re absolutely right; although Colombia has a very successful and widespread Bimbo subsidiary, the actual naming of the parent company is a Mexican phenomenon. I hear that Bimbo USA is the biggest distributor of baked goods up that way, too. Still, in the immortal words of that great actor and feminist, Ice Cube,a Bimbo is a Bimbo.
Ed on
Bimbo is a Mexican company, not Colombian.