Who are the NOBs and who are the SHITEs?

There are two main groups or tribes living in the Southernlands - the NOBs [sic] and the SHITEs*. Both fleeing from persecution in their far-off lands.

A NOB is a collective name for a group of Northernland ethno-semi-religious mainly protestant Christian caucasians of European  origin whose ancestry reach far back into the mists of time. 

Inspired by the writings of ancient NOB blogs from those who had already fled, they called themselves NOBs (North of Border)and began to flee southwards in ever increasing numbers pushed out of their ancestral lands by their fear of the agents of persecution that blight the country of their birth namely the IRS, the high cost of living, prohibitively high rates for a hip replacement and the successive corporate run totalitarian regimes that want them to stay and spend their monthly $1500-$1800 outgoings in their own country not in some Godforsaken, flea-bitten catholic banana republic run by demented commies and their evil cronies.

In Northernlandia the fascist Thought Police have the power to arrest anyone sitting on the street doing nothing. These toddlers were never seen again. It is assumed they are now Soylent Green's high energy plankton served to KFC chickens.

NOBs are finding refuge in a land where the cost of living is cheap, where there are stable communities of their own peoples that they can loose themselves in and where they can pay their dozens of servants a minimum wage close to that of a 16th century peasant. 

By the end of the 20th century and into the 21th century, roughly 1,000,000 NOBs had fled the hostile cloudy lands to the north.

A NOB family celebrating their freedom from the North by raising their arms on Playa Olas Altas

more after the break………………..

Mazatlan Summer News 2014 - What Do You Get Up To?

Mazatlán Summer News - What Do Yew Get Up To?

MazReal staff are on vacation in a cabin in Alert Nunavat somewhere in the far north in Canada, chewing seal fat and drinking snow.

Summer in Mazatlán is seriously hot, like fetid baboon breath apparently. There is no joy in the sunshine and there is very little expat outdoor activity. The occasional pink pale face can be seen behind the glass in Allegro coffee shop or Molika bistro gulping down the chilled air like a fish in a bowl. Passing off half the day in front of a cup of coffee or a pulpo carpaccio until they pluck up the courage to venture out into that fug of heat and moisture and sweatily return to their abode keeping to the shadowed side of the street or the sunny side if you are a mad dog or Englishman.

For a NOB* these equate to 100 and 135 degrees F. And sensación termica roughly translates as perceived temp.

(*NOB is an acronym for a person from North of the Border as used  by a popular columnist from an expat newsletter popular in Mazatlán.)

In expat communities around the world gossip and rumours are naturally present but unfortunately some people take immense delight in casually spreading potentially slanderous and vicious rumours without foundation. So we decided to open the doors on these hardy summer expats to get to the truth of what they get up to during this period of jungle-fever heat and storm so as to quash these sometimes bizarre and outrageous stories floating around expatty-land.

Rosina Revelle aka Lil' Oral Annie, NOB, who is an established writer, columnist, opinion shaper and social commentator. She is considered an authority on popular culture and editor of the online newsletter The Blood and Guts of Mazatlán gets down and dirty interrogating elite members of the professional expat business and artistic community on the subject of, in her no nonsense words:

"How do they get through the day to day fug of rumouring and boredom living in a hot foreign country where no one speaks English and you have to pay fucking taxes if you work?"

Spunky Rosina Revelle demanding an answer to her leading question or else! 

Some of Lil' Annie's freelance work includes stories written for popular soccer and film blogs including this tasty personal excerpt from the popular Uzbekistan film blog Filimy Chittichatti.uz :

Please Azizziz keep your Goddamn clothes on….

At a time when lesser actors with better bods are willing to go all the way on camera, it seems like a pretty dumb move to pitch Azziziz against this sizzling bunch of washboard stomachs and bulging fruit bowls. Remember, Ranveer Zulfizar in '.... Rama Dama Dingdong Leela' also did it for Sayyid Umarkhan, making fans wonder whether Nurmukhammed includes a 'nanga-panga-wanger' clause in the contract for male porno stars. And ahem... Ranbir was an 'unexposed' 25-year-old at the time. Azizziz  alas, at a ripe 99, is well past his sell-by date in the bully beefcake steak stakes. No matter what Muqaddas Jumanova, his partner in prime cuts, has to say, this is one stunt that hasn't hit the G-spot of female fans. The naked truth. Nothing butt! And here it comes: Azizziz Schakchnosa Bekzod - keep your friggin' clothes on. We will love you, anyway! etc etc.

….And here another confessional gem on how she lost the World Cup for the Ugandan Asian soccer Fanzine Footie Footie Fan Fan.

"Shameful confession: I lost the World Cup.

Yes, me Rosina Revelle! I could have stopped that goal. I could have scored one myself. I should have bitten someone's shoulder. Or broken my opponent's vertebra. Or stomped his head into the hallowed turf. Or pulled out my AK and shot the fucker in the head. That's the very least one can do when so much is at stake.

Me? All I did is cheer and get slaughtered on 6 bottles of New Zealand Chardonnay (any excuse...but it's important to express loyalty by picking the appropriate continent for your wine)and a bottle of Stoli. By the time, the tenth round of sausages and sauerkraut got passed around, I knew no amount of crying or farting for Argentina would help.

Over on my side, a few ladies were discussing Shakira's boobs and Gisele's arse. We all agreed our boobs and arses lie all the time. We are much, MUCH slimmer! I recalled the words of Dilip D Mucherooni who said, "We have to stop thinking too much. Wise words Dil!

Even though, Mohan Joshi Josh Balasubramanian Chakrapati, that lunch pack hero was not playing in the World Cup Final, I was instructed by the drunken men to serve prawns (no explanation required if you are a Gujarat!). It must have been the prawns! Had we flown in Argentinian Asado and Churasco for the crucial match, Messi wouldn't have messed up. And I would have won. Thank God my husband no longer has to shout 'Achtung Baby' for the next four more years.."

Expatriate Pastimes

It is always good to get away from Mazatlán for a few months so one can laughingly look back down into the petri dish and gain a fresh perspective on the expatriate population living there and how they pass their time. In my experience of being a professional expatriate and expatriot all my life I know that expatriates have a natural missionary zeal (ie. the conversion of much of Africa, China and Latin America into the Christian and other dodgy faiths) and like to partake in social get togethers sharing their hard earned knowledge over tea and moonshine and try to get you into all manner of secret societies and crazy cults. 

Mazatlán is full of expats from every country north of the border and one or two from elsewhere and here's some of them........

The MazReal photographer took this fantastic photograph of some the wonderful expats living in Mazatlán. They laughingly agreed to get together in this group pic on the beautiful Olas Altas beach

The overspill from the beach spilled out into the Plaza Machado where we captured them again having a wonderful time standing around cheering something probably the fact that the new clock erected at the Plaza is now showing the correct time at least once in every 12 hours.

Here are some examples of what they get up to in their spare time and a small example of the societies and clubs they belong to in this fine city of eternal noise, dust and dried prawn smells:

More expat shenanigans after the jump............

Expats Come In All Shapes And Sizes.........

The IS the end you know. MazReal and all its journalists and hangers-onners and slaves and stevedores and rent boys and female sharp-shooters and chauffeurs and gay body builders are de-camping and heading back to Europe to earn some real money. Not plastic stuff like you get get in hot humid countries but real wonga made out of rags like you get in temperate climates.

Our shiny, slippery plastic stuff has run out and we have to get off our asses and do something called 'work'. The word that strikes fear into the minds of most people and the end product of which is dosh, loot, spondulics, green stuff, filthy lucre which the government takes away in tax that goes to support our wonderful health service and education so everyone may have access to medicine and learning.

Some people call it Socialism and that is another word that strikes fear into the minds of most people living north of this Mexican border whereas the rest of the world see it as a nice word. A word that is designed to help other less fortunate people, people who people again north of the border would term lazy people desirous of hand-outs so they don't have to get off their collective asses to work. Anyway I cannot imagine any of those naughty Tea Party-type people with those naughty extreme and selfish thinking minds living here in Mazatlán south of the north border.

Tijuana is the border crossing of yore that many expats would have crossed but not before taking advantage of all that that fine city has to offer before passing into conservative Protestant America.

I have always been wary of living amongst expat communities as I was raised and spent much of my early life in one as a result we tended to avoid the community or at least take time sounding out people whose views and ideas are compatible. So the longer we have been here the more we have ventured out and seen what a great bunch of people live here. There are individuals we avoid like the plague by hiding our faces, wearing false beards, ducking into doorways and sprinting to other side of the street to get away from but they are far and few between and generally only appear with the cool weather.

These are the stories of twelve of the varied and colourful members of expat community we have residing in this fine city of Mazatlán. You may have even seen them or partied with them or drank with them.

Here's one of them - The short-arsed, hairy bearded lady originally from Benson Arizona. George Jenson is her name. She is always hanging out on street corners nonchalantly leaning on things and just banging on about this and that and throwing vicious accusations around most of it selfishly untrue and thoughtlessly made up. Luckily she is only seen here in winter months otherwise I would have hounded her out of town to live a life of sleaze below decks on a shrimp boat . After a few months at sea she would look like Charlize Theron to a grubby shrimp sailor.


more expat shenanigans after the jump

British Expat Subculture and Why I Dislike It....Or A Cautionary Tale For All Expat Ghetto Dwellers

The British tourist has traditionally been considered rude, mean, poorly behaved and linguistically incompetent. Whereas the stereotype of the holiday in the UK is all red buses, telephone boxes and the London Eye, the stereotype of the UK holidaymaker abroad is a sun-reddened shirtless and overweight man translating from English to the local tongue by shouting instructions and flailing gesturing arms energetically.

Glaringly obvious then that the stereotype of the British expatriate isn’t all that favourable either. Having lived for much of their lives in the constant murkiness of British weather, the stereotypical British expatriate has been attempting to harness the power of the Mediterranean sun to power an existence as British as roast beef and just as bland. They socialise with other expatriates in bars named after famous London landmarks, shop in British supermarkets and speak Spanish less fluently than Christina Aguilera.

Spain is a traditional country for the British retiree to escape to but now that lifestyle is coming to an end by the European downturn.

As many expat retirees rely on a combination of pensions, stock and home equity to fund their retirements, it is no surprise that the crisis has seen many of them in dire straits. Unsold and unsellable Spanish homes mean that although a house may be worth money on paper, there is no  comfort to be had in a stagnant market. Likewise, the share market is slow to recover, and the former quarterly windfalls in the form of dividends have either dried up to a trickle or turned red as the international money-bleed is tipped to continue through 2011 and beyond.

British expats in Spain now live in the same kind of no-man's land that political asylum seekers and recent immigrants face in Britain. The inherently racist attitudes to outsiders in the UK (suspicion at best and outright abuse at worst) is now at work against against British expats. This hostile attitude is, in part, understandable. The vocal minority of British expats who enjoyed all of the comforts of sun and inexpensive living while moaning endlessly about local 'laziness' and the annoyances of Spanish bureaucracy have done little to invoke local sympathy in hard times.

While many expats do try to learn the language and involve themselves in their community, the slightest hint of a British Imperialist attitude is enough to turn an already proud and defensive people against expats. Now, when the ghetto-dwellers need the help and understanding of their community, it is clear that there is no community to turn to.

A stronger push on the part of expats to quietly, and humbly assimilate into Spanish life could provide a framework for future cultural understanding in times of need. The obvious truth is that a petty thief is unlikely to break into the home of a known - and well-liked neighbour - no matter what their country of origin is. Similarly, a known and well-liked neighbour will never die forgotten in a Spanish apartment. The beauty of the Spanish 'nosy neighbour' is that he or she is more likely break down your door than passively wonder where you went.

Expats who refuse to live in the now-silent ghettos know this first-hand.