rkg695
Introduction
I joined expat.com on 15 May 2022.
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rkg695posted on the thread Retirement Visa Income Requirement Triples to $1,275/Month (2022)
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rkg695posted on the thread Bringing guns to EC.
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rkg695created the thread Car & Pick-up Taxi Co-op service in Quito forum on the Quito forum
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rkg695posted on the thread Car & Pick-up Taxi Co-op service in Quito
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rkg695posted on the thread Rent control
Expat experience
Adapting to Mañana, embracing Tranquilo, Cringingly getting a taste for Cuy? Yeahhh, NO
Living near a minimum of angry expats emulating Yosemite Sam. Living with local mestizo and Kichwa who are giving me a chance to torture them with my Spanish. Picking fruit!? Off of trees! Who wouldve thought?! Growing a garden that doesnt die off for 6 to 8 months a year from Frost! Not getting frostbite! Being able to eat ice cream in the winter time and not have people look at you funny. Not getting frostbite eating ice cream in the winter!
Ummmm? I have to walk at least 10 WHOLE minutes to find the first of 200 panederias in town? 10 minute there, 30 minutes back.
Living part time working a project site, on a tropical island, sweating profusely enough to render rum and pineapple juice a non-inhibiting and acceptable alternative to drinking water. Oh yeah, and managing a design project for a resort Village on the side of a mountain, on the tropical Island, and working every day until dark so never seeing a beach the entire time. Sparking new life in my tired brain gaining experience in civil engineering, natural wetlands water and sewage treatment systems design; How to dig a moat and call it a lagoon. How to import Italian sand, on a Chinese barge, across the Pacific Ocean, through the Panama Canal, lose 40% of it to El Nino, spread it over a muddy bog and call it a beach. Sweating profusely, cursing the fact that I am Irish and just will never tan dammit!!
Rum and pineapple juice. The locals; Mestizo and Garifuna. Swimming with manta rays and parrot fish.
The angry ex-pats emulating Yosemite Sam. Sweating profusely.
honestly, I went there in the spring loved it so much I had to go back in the fall. Didnt live there but I really LIVED there, yanno?
Everybody there looks like death warmed over and talks funny, and they look and sound just like me. Its green, its wild, its a palace, and its in ruins and its all beautiful. The landlady at my bed and breakfast kicks butt at 12 pin bowling and cooks a mean bangers and mash. The music. The humor. The Guiness.
If you fall off your barstool they wont pick you up, but then again they wont step on you. So? theres that.
8.5 Months in the womb, the next 2 years perpetually crying, eating, pooping, repeat. Skip forward to age 12, lasted 6 weeks in boy scouts. Can I tie a friggin knot? No! Does baking brownies count for anything? Jobs: mowing lawns, doggy poop scooping, washing dishes, weeding gardens, cleaning houses, painting houses, hydrovaccing to excavate between houses, designing houses? gawd, gotta get outta the house once in a while!! Skip forward to age 30, lasted 1 year, 6 months as a beaver scout leader, learned to tie a knot. Tried babysitting age 40 veteran marching band colour-guard performers, grumbly, coffee-withdrawn, havent matured beyond age 13, 40 year olds. Soon realized I really do like dogs better. Survived 10 years mentoring in design and building science, and briefly flirting with the idea that I could have the temperament to become a college teacher of recently graduated highschoolers, but quickly realizing why we have gun control in Canada. Forgot how to tie knots. Interweave through all this a 27 year career in architecture, whose highlight was a totally unrelated trip to Ireland, where I found myself during a Guiness brewery tour in Dublin and discovered that beer actually doesnt suck! but also realizing my mother had been totally leading me astray insisting that coffee with irish cream is an acceptable breakfast power drink? joking ma!
Trees (green), rivers (wet), mountains (high), great friends (a few pretty high), hot springs, craft beer, rodeos, free pancake days, indigenous and metis culture and food, sunshine, meeting chief David Crowchild, chinooks turning winter to Summer in a day, the bittersweet belief as a 3 to 8 year old that my mother was moonlighting as the queen of England! (seriously! She was a dead ringer for Queen Elizabeth, aged 30 to 40)
My mother was not the queen of England! What a joke that wouldve been on the English though, my mothers Irish, just imagine the fu**ery she couldve gotten up to messing with them. Still, their greatest accomplishment is mushy peas (& The whole British empire thing? but there is a whole lot of history there hopin to be hushed up now innit), so we will give them a free pass for now. Also, its bloody cold, notwithstanding the chinook winds turning winter to summer in a day, but then again there is the puddles. and head colds. and migraines.
