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Another “Gringo� moved into our part of this huge rural subdivision


Lanny
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My wife was told last night, when she went to the Zumba class, that another “Gringo†has moved into our part of this huge rural subdivision.


 


I think in our HOA there are approximately 100 lots and probably about 80 of them have houses on them now.


 


Like me, the other man is apparently a California native, and then he emigrated, as I did, to Texas. And, then, to Colombia.


 


In other parts of this huge subdivision they’ve built a lot of new homes since we bought this lot in 2003 and I suspect there might be another American somewhere, but this is right in our little HOA.


 


So much for my wife being able to tell people who are coming to our house, “When you get to the entrance gate ask for the house of the Gringoâ€


 


I’m curious to meet him and find out where he lived in CA and then in TX, etc.


 


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What would be hilarious is if that person was talking about you :p

 

No it's someone else. My wife was told which house they live in.  Or, within a house or 2. They live on a different street.  I go by their house when I leave the subdivision. It's on the main street. 

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What led you to move to Colombia, if that is shareable?  What is it like to live there compared to Calif?

 

I have Severe P.T.S.D. and needed to move from the USA for that reason. I was planning to move to Mexico. I also made 2 trips to Venezuela, during 1991, and I cannot tell you how much I thank God that I did not move to Venezuela.  The first times I came here, it was to check out the women. I came back here a number of times and realized that the weather here is almost perfect for me, we do not have any heating or air conditioning equipment or operational costs. Almost everything we eat is fresh.  We are closer to Miami FL than Los Angeles CA is.  Much closer!   The Medical and Dental care here is very good and in general I believe Latin American doctors, are more "caring" than  doctors in the USA, who are trained to be distant from their patients.  

 

Compare to California?  That's really hard. What I really enjoyed in CA, when I was very young was being able to go to the Beach or to the Mountains.  How many times I went to the beach could be counted in the dozens or hundreds.   However, now, I realize that at least one of the beaches I went to a lot was polluted, with sewage pumped into the ocean. Not good for health reasons.  The traffic there obviously is very bad (L.A. area)  but the COST OF LIVING drove me, like so many who left after me, to Texas.    Now, there are plenty of large Texas cities that have grown so much that the traffic is very bad there too, but not like in CA.

 

 I'm old enough to have been in L.A. during the first "Watts Riots"   August 1965.     I moved from CA during 1966.  

 

We drove West (on I-10 I think it was) from the Rancho Mirage area to Santa Monica, during April 2001. As we were driving, just South of Downtown L.A., I told my wife, "about 6 miles from here, in that direction, there are mountains".  You couldn't see them, because of the Smog. From Santa Monica, we drove North along the Pacific Coast Highway, and went to Ojai where one of my cousins lives.

 

The house where we lived when I was a young boy is now worth approximately 2 million dollars. That's because the Lot is in a super prestigious area and I assume the majority of the value is the Lot and not in the House they've got sitting on top of it.    That's not a huge amount of $ for a house in CA now, so for people who are not in the Movie Star class, it's expensive to live there.  

 

Everywhere one might live, there are compromises. Pros and Cons. There is no place without issues of some nature.

 

If its a place with  seasons, one needs (IMO) to make multiple trips, at different times of the year, to see what it is like during the different seasons.  If it is a place like this (we are in a Tropical Valley), there are 2 seasons. Winter (the rainy seasons) and Summer (the dry seasons).  When it is Winter we usually hope for Summer and v.v.

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Does having another getting in the neighborhood make you perversely *more* aware of your minority status? As a woman I felt that on occasion when I went from being the only woman in the working group to one of two. It was weird, but I might be weird. :-)

 

No. There was a man from France in our HOA.  I don't know if he is still here. And I think there were some Canadians living within our HOA a few years ago. Possibly they rented and were here temporarily.  Being an Alien here isn't a problem.  We have all the rights a Colombian Citizen does, with the exception of being able to vote and serve in the military.  I suspect getting a government job would be tough for an Alien too.  I've had a Residence Visa since 1994.  I am welcome wherever I go.

 

Sometimes I will go into a tiny little store or a bakery to buy something and I know that I may be the first North American they have ever met and I think they are really happy to have me for a customer. And, I remember, for years, if there was an issue, my wife would send me to get the issue resolved, because she felt they would bend over backwards to help an American, and that they would not give her, a Colombian woman, the same help, and certainly without any enthusiasm.

 

I don't know what kind of work you did. I was a Software Engineering Consultant.  My memory has about 20% of my coworkers were women.  I can remember 3 of them by name.  I occasionally communicate with one of them. (Spin off from the NK thread: We worked on 2 systems that were deployed in South Korea.  I remember one morning getting into the office and answering the phone and leaving her a note that they needed her  in South Korea. She solved their issue without going over there...)   One woman I worked with her and her DH, she was really sharp.  She worked on "temporary" job assignments in places longer than some of their "permanent" employees did and she  was retained (to her surprise) when they were letting "permanent" people go.  

 

If my DD decides on a STEM career, I would discourage her from something like Petroleum Engineering, but the girlfriend I had before my wife is a Chemical Engineer and I know another woman who is a Chemical Engineer.  

 

In something having to do with Computers, I think women do OK, but I'm not a woman, so I don't know how that works in a workplace environment.  The older DD of a friend in majoring in Computer Engineering and dual majoring in something else, that I can't remember at this time.

 

I think a lot of that would have to do with the actual place one is working in.  Three of the places where I worked with women were Government Contractors and we just tried to get the stuff to work properly and ASAP.  I remember at one of those places, a young Engineer (Hardware) was assigned to work with the Engineer who designed the Hardware I was working with. I felt sorry for her, because he was the only incompetent Hardware Engineer I ever worked with. The Software Group ended up redesigning that Hardware.

 

Along the same lines, if I was the only man in a group of 10 women, I would probably feel odd, so I can easily see how that would work.

 

Avianca, our largest airline, 2 or 3 years ago, on International Womens Day, sent a jumbo jet, with an all female crew (Pilots, Relief Pilots, Flight Attendants, etc.) from Bogota to Spain and back to Bogota.  I think it took months for the Crew Schedulers to get that worked out...  So, no, it isn't every day that your Pilots in a Trans Atlantic Jet are both women, but a lot of positions are open to women now that were not to a previous generation of women. As the father of a DD, I think that's great.

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