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………………..

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

Mexican Heat and the Curse of Snowbirds.

 Occassional MazReal writer Gerald Hawsley* gets pissed off with heat and takes it out on Snowbirds.
  

“Hot chilli peppers in the blistering sun”. Bob Dylan incorporates this line in his song about Durango perfectly evoking the summer up there although he's probably never been there at all and nor have I but down here on the coast we could sing the same line “hot friggin'chilli peppers in the friggin' sweltering sun” referring to Mazatlán. Anyway it can just as easily refer to my little bit of Mazatlán. 


I am of Anglo Saxon, Austro Hungarian, pale Scandinavian, northern temperate climate blood with a hint of Dalmatian from my father's 12th wife and servant girl and inside my office or library as I prefer to call it as there is a Kindle lying on a chair, it is a constant 360 degrees Celcius (to our friends from the north that translates as some other number in degrees F) even taking into account the four fans aimed at me, my steaming computer and my termite eaten chunky Concordian-built plywood desk. 


I use fans and have no air con. Whilst writing I am surrounded with fans blowing hot air. I have a ceiling fan 5 meters up spinning to within an inch of its life constantly clack clacking its moving parts, behind me straining on its electricity cord there is a large airplane propeller encased in a black rusting cage aimed at the back of my head which, if I had hair, it would be tearing it out. There is a smaller ‘fill-in’ fan oscillating to my left cooling my left side naturally. A Sumo Fan (that always tickles me), a plastic squatting Sumo wrestler cradling a fan that I bought from the souvenir section of a backstreet Macau whore house, gently cools my nose and eye brows. It is still 600 degrees C and although the fans blow the hot air around they do apply a veneer of chill.

My Amazonian Teak desk built by Indians from the Peruvian village of Iquitos obliquely looks out the floor-to-ceiling windows onto the street where for much of the day catching the street breeze sits a gaggle of old men on the large window sills street side. My window sills are the perfect width and height to sit on and these old men waft away flies and sit and chat and mumble about stuff that is happening around them. Between me and them is 30 centimeters of space and a net curtain so they cannot see me but I can see their silhouette and I can clearly hear every mumble, fart and cough. If I was an impatient man I would rattle the bars of my cage with a stick and tell them to get the fuck off of my property but I like the soothing background chat as it never lets me forget I am in Mexico.


I listen to them out the corner of my ear and learn a few words like pinche this and pinche that. But most of what they say is unintelligible for me because they all have loose fitting false teeth which rattle as they talk and sometime José doesn’t even bother to put his in so his mumblings become even more indistinct and kind of slurpy. Occasionally when they get really annoying I switch on my ultra sonic dog preventer which interferes drastically with their hearing aids causing them to sometimes spew out their teeth and roll around on the street howling and tearing at their ears. Oh how I laugh sometimes because they haven't figured out what is happening.

It is so hot in my library cum office that the net curtains don’t waft inwards in that romantic way bringing in a breeze instead they lie flat and tight against the metal bars from the hot air pushing them outwards. Occasionally I slink off and lie draped in the hammock on the patio. Expired there I order my imported Filipino boy I named Abdul to gently push the hammock backwards and forwards so the movement will agitate the air. I sometimes shed my kit and stand under the garden shower till the cool water already in the pipes becomes hot from the sun-heated water in the tank. ( I got to remember to replace the black tank with a white)The subsequent effort of drying soon adds a fresh sweat and its back to the library half-dried to stand in front of the fans.

More complaining after the jump. Snowbirds with delicate sensibilities are advised to stop here.....

Expat Ghetto

Kenya 1988

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.