The photo is me from October 29th, 2008. So, it’s from awhile ago, back when I was still in the process of growing my hair.

This will be the last post of this blog. I don’t know how long it’ll last on WordPress, hopefully for at least a few decades so I can look back on this later in life. But as I’m about to start law school next week my Delusions of Grandeur are no longer delusions, or maybe rather they’re not so grand.

It’s been a fun ride and hopefully it won’t be the last time I get to spend a year just having fun. Probably though the rest of my life will be dedicated to career and family. Fun won’t be a high priority.

If I do start a blog about something else I’ll link back to it here. Until then, I hope you all enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed living it.

J

I bought that camera specifically for my trip to Colombia. It’s a refurbished Kodak from Ebay. I think it cost me about 80 bucks and I got it in the mail about a week before I left Chicago. `

Not sure if it’s impressive that it lasted that long or if it should’ve lasted longer than that. I’m leaning more towards the former than the latter. I did keep it in my pocket the whole time where it grinded and bumped with my cell phone and keys. That thing was so scratched up the Kodak logo had faded away.

Anyways, I’m in Miami until tomorrow, staying with a woman I barely know. I ‘met’ this woman on the internet about three years ago. I used to be on this site called AsianAvenue, it’s like myspace for Asians. One day Mayten (that’s her name) sent me an email. We’ve been in touch ever since.

She’s a native Miamian, half-Cuban half-French, 37, has two daughters (11 and 14), lives in a one bedroom apartment with five cats in a very blue-collar, Cuban neighborhood of Miami. Also, her apartment is absolutely infested with roaches. You go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, turn on the lights and the roaches literally scatter.

It sounds bad, it sounds crazy, it sounds weird. I admit it looks bad on paper, but once you get past the crazy cat lady vibe, the roaches, the kids, the shitty apartment in a bad neighborhood…Mayten is actually pretty nice. And yeah, it’s crazy that I’m here but this has been my year of living dangerously. When she found out I’d be having my layover in Miami, she was like, “Oh, it’d be so nice to finally meet you.” So I thought, why not spend a week in Miami and give it a try? It’s not like I’ve got anywhere I need to be.

It’s nice to be out of Medellín. I certainly don’t miss it but in a way, being in Miami, it’s like I never left Colombia. At least the part of Miami I’m living in at the moment. Everyone here speaks Spanish, albeit with a very heavy Cuban accent (although yesterday I heard two ladies speak with an Argentinean accent at the mall, that was sexy.) The buildings, the culture, the vibe here is so very Latin-American and Caribbean that it’s just like Colombia.

And my first day in Miami, walking down the street some teenagers pointed at me, giggled and called, “Jackie Chan.” I really thought I left that once I came back to the states but no. Apparently there’s not many Asians in Miami. There’s about one Korean restaurant here which strikes me as so strange. You’d think that a big city would have at least three or four Korean BBQ joints. Who doesn’t love Korean BBQ? I’m not a fan but white people sure do love their bul-go-gi.

This is my third time in Miami, my first time here in the summer (it’s fucking hot) and I think it’s my least favorite American city. I could live here, sure, but that’s only because I could live anywhere. But Miami feels extremely superficial. Ft. Lauderdale might be even worse. I hung out in Ft. Lauderdale on Friday night and it was like I was back in college. Bunch of white frat and sorority girls getting drunk  on cheap alcohol and enjoying Journey in a non-ironic way.

Wait, I take that back. Miami is my least favorite city in America with the exception of every city in the state of Ohio. I hate Ohio. It’s the absolute worst state.

Anyways hanging out with Mayten and her kids and cats has been alright. I’m not having a super fun time but it could be worse. I wish I had some pot so I could get through this thing blitzed out of my skull. It would help me not think about the fact that I’m staying with a crazy cat lady, her two kids and about a million cockroaches.

So far we’ve gone to a sad looking amusement park (Boomers in Broward) where we played lazer tag, video games and rode go-carts. We’ve seen two movies (The Karate Kid and Toy Story 3), had a picnic where I grilled some steak and chicken, and we’ve gone to an Anime convention. Her kids are huge Anime fans. It’s not quite as freaky as being in a furry convention but barely. We went during the day time and walked amongst the freaks but we didn’t do any of the night activities because her kids are too young. I think I would’ve had fun going to the dance rave or crashing some hotel room parties.

What else? Well, I’m excited to get back to Chicago. I have no idea who’s going to pick me up from the airport tomorrow. My ma’s been in Bolivia for the past week. I guess either my sister will do it or one of my friends. Maybe I’ll just take the blue line down to Wicker Park and crash with Lower for the night.

In any case, it’s been an amazing year. I’m looking forward to seeing two good friends of mine get married next month and then I start law school in August.

Photos by JasonChoiHan, Jun 12, 2010

One thing I’m so disgusted with is the treatment I get from most Colombians. There aren’t many Asians here. A few Chinese immigrants who’ve started their own restaurants but other than that, there’s almost no Asians.

I’m fine with that. I don’t love hanging around Asians. It’s not like I miss “my people” or something. But I do get annoyed when Colombians yell the ching-chong-chang noise at me when I walk down the street, or when they do the slanty Asian eye thing.

I wish I could say it’s no big deal. I wish I could say it doesn’t bother me. I remember having this conversation with Marian. She didn’t really understand why it bothered me. She was like, “Can’t you understand where these people come from? Can’t you understand that there’s not necessarily any malice behind it? It’s just ignorance.”

Well, I’m not that big of a person. I can’t just shrug it off. I know there’s not much I can do about it, and I know there’s usually no malice behind it, but it bothers me still. I haven’t blown up at anyone over it or gotten in any fights. But I think it’s one of the main reasons why I don’t love this city.

I meet so many gringos who love it here. I complain about the lack of culture, the ignorance, the inability to have a deep conversation here…other gringos tell me the exact opposite. They’ve hung out with college students from the public universities, found intellectual circles, etc. Or they just feel that this place is so warm and inviting, the people are awesome blah blah blah.

Maybe I’d feel the same if I were white. Probably not. I’m sure I’d still bitch about the lack of culture here. But for sure what holds me back from ever embracing Colombia is the Asian thing. I’ll be so happy to go back to a city that’s truly cosmopolitan.

Photos by JasonChoiHan, Jun 5, 2010

I got less than two weeks left in Colombia. I was looking at the city pass by while riding the bus the other day and realized I’m going to miss Medellín a little more than I thought. I’ve had such a fun time here and made at least a few life long friends. Not to mention I got to learn passable Spanish.

I’m wondering what I’ll do with this blog once law school starts. I remember reading some news about a lawyer getting into trouble for blogging about a case. Maybe I should shut it down so I don’t get into the habit of blogging about the law. On the other hand, who the fuck would read it? I can’t imagine the law school process being something anybody would be interested in reading.

Photos by JasonChoiHan, Jun 2, 2010

If I just leave it at “I’m from the states.” They all go, “But you look Japanese.” It gets annoying but…I suppose it’s to be expected.

Colombia does not have many immigrants. Though there’s a lot of variety here in the way people look – you can find Colombians with blonde hair and blue eyes, red hair and asian eyes, dark skin with green eyes, etc – that comes from the mix of black, indigenous and Spanish that’s occurred over thousands of years. The people themselves in terms of their mentality are extremely homogeneous.

One of the great things about the states are the immigrants that migrate there. We used to be known as the great vacuum cleaner of the world. We sucked up all the best, boldest and entrepreneurial people from other countries. It made the US more open-minded and a stronger society. True, we may not have an authentic home-grown culture, our society is far too mobile and fractious, but I think everyone feels a sense of being “American.”

Of course, with 3rd world countries now becoming developing countries and with Europe looking like an option as good as the states, we’re not sucking up the brain power of the rest of the world as much as we used to.

Anyways, Colombia has never experienced a large influx of immigrants. There are a few cities such as Barranquilla which have had some immigrants from Lebanon come in a few decades ago during the 70′s and 80′s (Shakira is half Lebanese.) But for the most part, they just don’t know what the rest of the world is like.

Who would want to immigrate to Colombia? Besides semi-retired gringos hunting for easy pussy (which there are a lot of here. It’s gross.) And most Colombians will never have the opportunity to visit another country, not even Venezuela or Ecuador, let alone fly on a plane.

So in this respect, the fact that Colombia isn’t even more racist or backwards is a bit of a miracle. And compared to where they were 10 years ago, their culture has opened up quite a lot.

One of the main problems with Colombia is its legacy with cocaine. The drug lords like Carlos Escobar raped this country’s psyche. Violence was everywhere, all the time. War sprang up between the different cartels, bombs were blowing up random buildings at any time of the day. People lived in fear. During the 80′s and 90′s, no one visited this country. It was a war zone.

And even before the exploitation of the coca plant, Colombia never had a strong, centralized government like France. It’s one of the most mountainous countries in the world. If you took a giant iron and made the terrain flat, the amount of square footage you’d have would like quadruple the size of the country. People live in isolated communities on the mountains and in valleys throughout the country. Ever since its formation, Colombia has been difficult to govern because of the mountainous terrain and dense sub-tropical forests. Only the past few generations have truly identified themselves as ‘Colombian.’ Before people identified more strongly with their region.

Once the drug lords were controlled in the early 2000′s(somewhat, the mafia and guerilla groups still holds a bit of sway in this country) the country was allowed to prosper. So I know I sound super harsh when I criticize Colombia, which is often, but I must admit that the rate of improvement since the country became secure about ten years ago is really impressive.

Given another generation or two it’s conceivable to believe that the country could become cosmopolitan with global cities that attract some of the best in the world like Sao Paulo in Brazil. However, I doubt it. What kind of culture allows a person like Pablo Escobar to become more powerful than the government? For years Escobar was just a small player. People looked the other way as he became more powerful and violent until finally he was terrorizing the government.

I find that the one thing Colombians truly lack is the ability to think critically. They don’t lack for education, not necessarily anyways. You can go to a school here and become a decent engineer or software programmer. But this is not a people that indulge themselves often in self-introspection. There are not many great artists, philsophers or writers who come from Colombia. The few that do often leave, such as Gabriel García Márquez.

In their daily interactions with others Colombians just go with the flow and live in the moment never considering much of the future nor the past. Until they add some deep wrinkles to their collective brow, I doubt the country will truly reach a standard of living comparable to Europe or the States.

Photos by JasonChoiHan, May 26, 2010

Looking at these photos I realize I have a lot of shots of me with different girls. Don’t get any ideas. I’m not a man whore. I’m very picky with who I date. I’ve gone on a lot of first dates here or I’ve danced with girls in clubs but (with a few exceptions) it hasn’t gone further than that.

I’ve earned a reputation here amongst the other gringos as being a player because I was always going out with women, but it’s because A) I can speak decent Spanish B) I can dance and C) I enjoy drinking, sometimes too much. When you have all three it’s just really easy to meet women here.

But it’s also been kind of a waste of time. Colombian women are vapid and act like little girls around men. Paisa conversations in general even with men are boring. I have about two weeks until I go back to the states. I’m so ready to leave. I’ve decided to stop dating anybody and instead I’m going to spend the rest of my time with the good foreign friends I’ve made here in paisaland.

Photos by JasonChoiHan, Mar 27, 2010

Talking to my sister is always interesting. I don’t really enjoy it all that much while I talk to her. My sister is really abrasive and makes brash statements that make me cringe. If you think I’m bad with tact, and I am, my sister is way worse. But I always come away from our conversations with food for thought.

This time she mentioned that ma is getting more and more worried that I’m never going to get married. After my experience dating women here in Colombia, I would have to say her fears are not unfounded. I can’t see myself getting married.

I’ve been the one who’s broken every relationship I’ve ever had. I think I just start feeling uncomfortable. I don’t know if it’s because I like my independence or if it’s that I get tired of being around the same people over and over. After awhile I just feel like it’s time to end things, and that’s if the relationship is going well.

If it’s not going well then I have no problem in saying, “Chao. Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your way out.”

Plus, I like dating. I really like dating. A lot of people say they hate it, they think it’s such a waste of time. But I think that’s because they’re searching for the one. They see the process of finding the one exhausting and tedious. I think a lot of people, especially women, would be happy with not dating. If they could skip the search and magically find a way to end up with the one they’d be fine with that.

I’m not looking for anything in particular. Sometimes I feel like it’d be nice to have a relationship but the urge is about as strong as having a craving for chocolate ice cream. Anyways, I enjoy the process of dating in itself. Meeting someone for the first time, going out for a drink, talking, doing something fun…that’s all good and sometimes it’s exciting. I am a great first dater.

And I really like internet dating. There’s a stigma attached to it still, but I think it fits me well. For one thing, I don’t like dating friends of friends. I know everyone says that that’s a great way to meet your significant other, but the fact is I kind of know that most likely I’m going to end up breaking up with this person. When that does happen, if it’s a friend of a friend then chances are I’m most likely going to end up seeing that person again. Say my friend gets married, I had dated his or her friend a few years ago, we broke up. We’re going to see each other at the wedding. Wouldn’t that be akward?

Also if you date your friends’ friends then I feel like you’re not really expanding outside your socio-economic circle. I mean, sure I could date an upper-middle class university educated woman who grew up in the Chicago burbs but…then I wouldn’t be experiencing a different world. Every woman I’ve ever dated I feel I’ve learned something from. Whether because of her personality or from her background.

When you do internet dating you can find woman outside your normal social sphere, and I like that. Anyways, what does this have to do with Medellin? Well, about a month ago I decided to join a Colombian dating site. I’d been meeting women pretty easily in Parque Lleras and at the university but they were always upper-class girls who lived in my neighborhood or another nice neighborhood like Laureles. They were all kind of the same.

So I joined this site and then went  on dates with women who live in Centro – the downtown area which is considered kind of shady – and girls from Itagui, a lower-middle class suburb just south of Medellin. They were all cool, more casual and less fragile and Barbie-like than the girls I’m surrounded with at EAFIT.

But then a few weeks ago I met Cristina, and I totally fell in lust with Cristina. She is, by far, the hottest woman I have ever dated in my life. Her face is news anchor hot, but she has fake breasts (which I’m not a huge fan of but they look alright on her frame) and an amazing butt. Well, I suppose I sound like a male pig but I’m just going to have to shrug and say sorry. I’m an ass guy.

That’s never prevented me from not dating a woman. I mean, I’ve had girlfriends who didn’t have great asses. That was always okay with me. As long as she had a great personality and other aspects that I found attractive it was fine. What really is most important to me, or at least I thought, is personality.

But Cristina was so amazing hot, at least for me, that I was willing to ignore her other flaws, which she has many. Let’s do a list:

-She’s 23 and has an 8-year-old kid.

-She’s not open-minded. When I introduced her to some new food  (it was curly fries at a TGIF type place) she scrunched up her face like, “eww.” Yeah seriously, curly fries threw her off.  She was like, “Where’s my carne de res? Where’s my arepa? Where’s my frijoles? Where’s my typical paisa food?” My roommate Maria, who’s from Bogota, told me that paisas don’t like non-paisa food. If KFC wants to survive in Medellin it needs to offer paisa style beans, at the very least.)

-She’s dumb

-She’s negative

-She’s shallow

-She’s been married and divorced 3 times

-She’s stubborn like a mule. I like strong women but I like them to also realize when they’re wrong and own up to it. Cristina is the bad kind of stubborn. The stupid kind.

-She blew me off for what was supposed to be our fourth date. We were supposed to meet up a week ago with some of my friends to pre-party at Rahul’s apartment and then go out dancing. She confirmed it with me at 7:30pm (She was supposed to show up at 8pm.) and then she never showed. Each time I called she didn’t pick up. A week later she finally calls me back and when I asked “Que paso?” she gave me an excuse that there was nobody around to take care of her son. Ok, so that somehow prevented you from calling me and telling me, in the amount of time it takes to take off your shoes, that you can’t come?

-When she gets drunk she becomes mean. She likes to punch and spank my ass while we’re walking, which I guess is okay, but then she gets in my face and tells me, “We’re not going to have sex. No way.” And this is not a flirtatious, I’m-playing-hard-to-get thing. She really means it, and if I try to debate her on this point she shuts me up by punching me in my stomach. Hard. We’ve gotten drunk together 3 times and each time she gets a little too feisty and a little too adamant about the not having sex part.

Anyways, yesterday was our actual fourth date. By then I’d already knew all of these flaws, except for the divorce one. I never knew she was married 3 times until she told me that last night. I knew she wasn’t a very nice or good person but she was so hot I didn’t care.

The date started off alright. Originally we’d talked on the phone about meeting up around 10pm to go dancing at a club. I told her I was going to watch the final four game between Duke and W. Virginia first around 7pm at a sports bar  and I’d be free afterwards, but then in the conversation I thought, “Why don’t I just invite her to come with me and we can have dinner and drinks watching it together?”

We ended up going to a Hooters because it was one of the only places in Medellin showing the game. There’s another sports bar across the street from Hooters called Time Out but they didn’t have any food that Cristina liked (“No hay carne de res? Where’s the steak?” she complained, “They only have these things called ‘nachos’ and ‘mozzarella sticks.’ These food pictures in the menu look really strange.”)

That was fun. I enjoyed getting buzzed and  making out with her at the Hooters. After the game we went to my favorite bar in Medellin which is down the street from Hooters. It’s the most hipster bar in Medellin. They have an alternative crowd, the music is decent and they serve a shot called Russian Cocaine which is a mixture of different liquors. It comes with a slice of lime coated in sugar and coffee grinds which you bite and suck on as a chaser after the shot.

We drank some more beer there and had a lot of shots. By that point we were drunk and Cristina was doing the, “Is it el sexo that you’re looking for? Then you’re not getting it” routine. But then she told me that she’d like to go somewhere quiet and she suggested we go back to my apartment.

So we walk back and I’m thinking, ah ha, no el sexo my ass. But during the walk back she tells me that she’s a little sad. She had gotten into an argument with her best friend earlier that day.

Once we did get back she told me she didn’t have any minutes left on her phone, could she use mine? Me being drunk and stupid at the time, I said sure, why not? So on my balcony she uses my phone to call her friend. And it was 2am at the time! She tells her friend that she was using my phone to call so could the friend  call her back on her phone?

Her friend calls her back and then they spend the next 30 minutes talking to each other. I should mention at this point that her best friend is actually a 46 year old man. I know what you’re thinking, that this isn’t really a friend, it’s her other boyfriend. Normally I’d think that too but I think it really was a good friend of hers that she’d gotten into an argument with. I guess the fact that he’s a middle-aged man twice her age didn’t really matter to me. The fact that she spent 30 minutes chatting with someone else – it could’ve been her mom it could’ve been her best friend, but it was during our date is what bothered me.

Every time I tried to get her to hang up the phone and tell her, hey, can’t you resolve the dispute tomorrow? She gave me the don’t-talk-to-me hand. So then I stopped trying, went to my bed and tried to go to sleep. But I just couldn’t. I was too drunk, the room was spinning. So after 20 minutes I stood back up, went back to the balcony and told Cristina that if she didn’t get off the phone then she should get the fuck out of my apartment.

She never got off the phone. The only thing she said to me was, “Where’s my purse?” I pointed it out to her, she picked it up and left.

I’ve had some bad dates in my life but even the worst ones were funny in retrospect. There was one time when I went on a first-date with a girl I met on the internet. When I saw her I realized right away that she had Photoshoped her face. She’d elongated it to make herself look thinner. I guess the look of shock was really obvious on my face because she was like, “You don’t think I’m attractive, do you?” And then I stuttered, “Um, no, you’re actually quite handsome.”

It gets better. That same night she was like, “Why don’t we go to a strip club?” I said I’d never been to one (which is true) so she was like, well then we should definitely go. We went to what I think may be the seediest strip club in the Chicago area, got drunk on shots and beer and then she paid for me to get a lap dance from one of the strippers in the back room. I think the stripper was basically a hooker because she was like, “You can touch me if you want…” I put a hand on one of her breasts to try to show her that I was enjoying it, but she looked like a burnt out crack head and it was a pretty gross experience.

And the girl I was on the date with was sitting next to me in the back room watching. She got turned on by it, wanted to get some McDonald’s breakfast with me (we left the strip club around 5am) and then eat it with me at my house. McDonald’s breakfast in bed! How romantic! I bought her some breakfast at the drive thru but then I drove her ass straight home. This date also happened during one of the worst blizzards to hit Chicago in like five years. And I also ended up blowing like 90 bucks on the date. Even though she’d bought me the lap dance I was the one who bought the drinks and drinks are not cheap in even the shittiest of strip clubs.

I thought that was the worst date I ever had in my life but at least I got a funny story out of it. I retell that story to my friends and what strikes everyone as the funniest thing is that I called her “handsome.” To me, handsome means that a woman has classic, Katherine Hepburn beauty. Strong, slightly masculine yet elegant. I guess to most people handsome just means “manly.”

This date I had with Cristina might end up being the worst date I ever had though just because I’m not even sure it’s a very interesting story. I don’t think it’s that funny even. Basically I got drunk with her, thought we’d end up together in bed but then ended up having to kick her out for being rude. She can go to hell.

Ok, so she’s so incredibly hot that if she were to call me up and beg for a second chance, actually a third chance, I might give it to her. What the hell, who am I kidding? Of course I’d give it to her. Hopefully she never calls me again. Not sure I could resist her superficial hotness.

Photos by JasonChoiHan, Mar 24, 2010

All the games are free to the public, first come first serve. Yesterday Peter, Rahul, Jeremy, Derek, Jenny and I went to go see two men’s soccer matches. Only amateurs are allowed to compete in the South American games so the teams we saw were the Under-17 year olds. It was like watching a really high quality high school soccer game.

First  game was Ecuador vs. Bolivia. Ecuador won like 5-0. Then Colombia vs. Peru. We only stayed for the first half of that. We got a little tired sitting in the stadium.

I’d like to say the Juegos Suramericanos are a big deal but it seems like it hasn’t really penetrated the consciousness of most paisas. They know about it, but when i ask them about it they kind of shrug.

Maybe that reflects the culture and mentality of sports in general here. Colombians for the most part, are terrible at sports. I’m not talking hockey or basketball or something foreign to them. I’m talking about soccer. This country has the second largest population on the South American continent. Only Brazil has more people, and yet the last time they qualified for the World Cup was ’98 France.

When I ask Colombians why they don’t ever qualify for the World Cup the lamest excuse they give is that they have to play against Brazil and Argentina. They say if they were in a football federation like the North American one (CONCACAF) or the Asian one (ASF) where they only have to play teams like Canada or the Phillipines they would always make it. My rebuttal is: what about Uruguay? What about Paraguay? What about Chile? CONMEBOL, the football federation of South America gets 4 automatic teams for the World Cup and a possible 5th (the winner of the 5th place CONMEBOL team and the 4th place CONCACAF team have to play against each other to see which one gets in. 2010′s 5th place CONMEBOL winner, Uruguay, beat 4th place CONCACAF Costa Rica to earn a spot in the World Cup.)

And there are only 12 countries in all of S. America. For 12 countries to get 5 spots in the World Cup as opposed to like 30 countries getting only 4 possible spots from CONCACAF seems like it’s more than just. Basically, yeah, Brazil and Argentina are almost always going to get in. That’s a given. But why can’t Colombia beat a country like Uruguay which has like 3 million people? Or Paraguy? Which is also very small?

Marian and I talked about this once. She said they’re terrible because you never actually see kids playing soccer in the streets like you might see in Spain or Argentina or Brazil.

Studies show that the best professionals in any sport played hours and hours of that sport when they were kids. Usually they were obsessed with it.  Magic Johnson, for example, was so obsessed with basketball that  when growing up in Michigan, during the winter time, he would go to the local outdoor court by himself and shovel the snow off the ground just to shoot around for hours and hours by himself. In the cold. If you want to be good at a sport you have to put in the time. Especially when you’re a kid because that’s when you develop your motor skills. Just like playing an instrument.

That sounds harsh but to back that up with personal anecdotal evidence I can cite my experience at the gym. I have a gym membership. It’s a basic gym with exercise machines and classes, tv’s hanging on the walls, free weights, etc.

The weird thing is, in my gym, I’m the only one sweating. Seriously. I’ll run 3 miles on the treadmill, do push ups, pull ups, reps on a machine…I’m dripping with sweat. I look around and everyone else is running for maybe ten minutes at a really slow pace, doing a few reps on a machine and then they stop and chat with their neighbor. They go to the juice bar in their tight workout clothes and flirt with each other.

The only time I see anyone else with a sweat is if it’s another foreigner. Derek also goes to the same gym that I do. We bumped into each other there once and we both sweaty shirts. We look at each other and go, “Wow, we are the only ones with wet shirts.”

AND there are signs all over my gym that say, “If you sweat, please change your shirt for the sanity and health of others.” I’ve never seen a sign like that in a gym. It’s like, what?! Isn’t that the purpose of a gym? To get sweaty? That sign disgusts me. I blatantly ignore it, sweat my ass off and could give a rat’s ass if I look like someone stuck my head in the toilet.

I once brought up this subject with an Irish guy at EAFIT and he totally agreed with me. He said he likes to run to his gym from his house which is about 2 miles away from the gym. Once he gets to the gym he does strength exercises. He said after running two miles, he’s pretty sweaty especially when it’s hot out. There’s a sign hanging on the walls of his gym too that say the exact same thing. He thought it was ridiculous, ignored it, was the only one sweating but didn’t care. Then one day he gets to the gym and he saw that they had replaced the original signs, which were in Spanish, with signs that said the exact same thing in English.

He also said one time he was invited by his Colombian roommate to play a soccer game against other Colombians. During the game some guy comes up to him and goes, “Why are you being so rude?” Owen, the Irish guy goes, “What? Am I being rude?” And the Colombian goes, “You keep running all over the place. You’re making the other team tired. This is just for fun. Stop running so much.”

Owen was like, “Are you fucking serious?”

I’ve played soccer only once with some Colombians. Jeremy invited me to play with him and his roommates. We rented a small, artificial field for an hour and played five on five soccer. Jeremy and I spent the entire time running, cutting, hustling. The Colombians mostly hung around. They hustled if they had the ball, but if they didn’t have the ball there was no movement. They had no endurance. After the game while we were all eating ice cream they kind of made fun of Jeremy and I. They called us rabbits because we had so much energy.

So I would say that the reasons why Colombians suck at soccer is because they don’t play it enough when they’re kids, they don’t have a culture that emphasizes hardcore training, they don’t like conflicts and they shirk from competition and the last would probably be that they play stupid.

I’m not a soccer expert but once I asked a Scottish guy living here who’s really into soccer why Colombia sucks. He said unfortunately, they like to play a very free flowing, un-organized and tactically poor form of soccer. It’s like when you play basketball you could play with a lot of offensive sets or you could play it like a pick-up game. They play every big soccer match like it’s a pick up game. He said it’s similar to how a lot of African nations play the game, and that’s not necessarily a bad style, but for a team to be successful with that style they need world class play makers. They need midfielders and strikers who are creative and have superior ball handling skills. Colombia has always had a decent defense, he said, they just lack players who can create and finish.

He said Uruguay might not have players as good as the Colombians but they play a more disciplined style of football. Their tactics emphasize their strengths and hide their weaknesses.

So basically, Colombians want to play futbol like Brazilians but the fact is they’re not good enough to pull it off and they’re too stupid to change. Also, for some reason the Colombian Futbol Federation keeps changing managers. Instead of finding one good manager and sticking with that guy for at least four years they change managers each year, sometimes more than once a year. It’s just a disorganized mess. I also have heard that the people in charge are corrupt so there’s nepotism and favoritism involved in everything from the selection of the players to the hiring of the coaches.

I realize my last few posts have been pretty negative. My next post I promise not to bash Colombia or Medellin anymore. If anything, I think I’ll defend it.

Photos by JasonChoiHan, Mar 26, 2010

Unfortunately the screen on the back of my camera completely died on me so now it’s like I’m shooting with film. I have no idea what I shot, and there’s no viewfinder on my camera.

Anyways, this post is about salsa, not the type you pour on food, but the dance. One thing I have to say about paisas is that when it comes to salsa….they suck.

Look, I’m no expert, but I’m not bad. And though I might not be an expert, one of my best friends is. Gio used to be a semi-pro salsa dancer in LA. Yes he’s Colombian-American but he would tell you that it’s actually the American part of his soul that gave him the chops to dance salsa. Gio told me before I even got to Colombia that Colombians don’t know how to dance salsa. Yeah, they can move their hips but other than that they can’t keep a rhythm, they can’t do turns or fancy hand combinations. All they can really do is move those hips back and forth.

Most people don’t know this, but Salsa is a dance that was invented in New York City (New York City?! Does anyone else remember that Pace salsa commercial featuring a bunch of cowboys sitting around a fire? I found it on Youtube. Here it is.) It was invented by immigrants from Cuba and I believe Puerto Rico, mostly Cuba though. Cubans took ballroom dances that were popular with the gringos at the time like foxtrot and changed it to match Latin and African rhythms.

Well, that’s not really here nor there. Just because something was invented in one country doesn’t mean that the country that invented it is necessarily the best at it. Just look at the Japanese. They basically take other things that everyone else invented (cameras, animation, videogames) and refine it to be better.

I would grant that the average paisa can dance better than the average gringo. But every gringo who comes to Medellin has this attitude of worshipful awe when it comes to salsa dancing. “It’s just so natural for them,” Gringo Jane says, “They can move their hips!” And paisas here all believe the same thing. “Oh, it’s in our blood,” Paisa Juana says, “We’re born with it.”

But the problem is that paisas are lazy in general. Not everyone of course. There are quite a few hardworkers but in general, this is a culture that does not embrace competition or innovation. Because they believe they’re so awesome at salsa, they actually never properly learn how to dance it well, or even push themselves to get better at it. Maybe it’s akin to Americans and…I dunno, eating competitions? The average American can probably eat far more than the average Japanese but Americans don’t push themselves the way dedicated Japanese eaters push themselves to become the best. They don’t work on their technique. Americans just take it for granted that they’re fat and their largesse gives them a psychological advantage over their nippon competitiors.

Of course I’m being facetious with the analogy, but hopefully you get what I’m saying. I haven’t seen one salsa dancer in Medellin, in any of the salsa clubs, that has wowed me. I see way better gringos dancing in Chicago at the salsa clubs.

And not to brag, but every paisa girl I’ve danced with here has told me I’m an amazing salsa dancer. And the gringo girls tell me that I can dance salsa better than most paisa boys they’ve danced with, and I’m not even that good! I’m like average compared to people who do it regularly back home.

I’m actually taking a salsa class right now. It’s every Thursday for two hours after Spanish classes are done. It’s basic salsa 101. The only reason I took it was because all my friends wanted to take it, they had never taken a salsa class before, and because it was super cheap. Like 40 bucks for 24 hours of salsa lessons. And it never hurts to brush up on the fundamentals.

The last photos in this set are from that class. I’m not shitting on Colombian salsa in general, just Medellin. Cali, the third largest city in Colombia, actually does have an authentic salsa culture that’s supposed to be pretty good. I’ve heard that the Cali dancers are amazing not just from Colombians who bleed national pride but also from people who really know salsa. But the funny thing is it’s a totally different style of salsa. I would say it’s a mix of salsa and footworkin. But then again, Cali is a little more African, a little more black then Medellin.

Here’s a video of my friend Gio dancing salsa. This is what most Americans would consider salsa.

Here’s a video I found of some good Cali style dancers.

Here‘s a video of some footworkin from the Chi. Don’t look at the upper body stuff, focus on the legs and feet and you’ll see that the Cali dancers have mixed some elements of that in their salsa.

Photos by JasonChoiHan, Mar 23, 2010

I was chatting online with my friend Lower earlier today. We caught up on our personal lives. I told him how I had recently gone on a date with this paisa girl who’s 23 and has an 8-year-old son.