Good crazy woman

I live by a popular quote in my country that translates “Deaf ears to foolish words”. Believe me, it is the secret to a tranquil life. Nonetheless, Nicolas Maduro’s speech last Wednesday, May 22, in which he affirmed that the best coffee in the world is not Colombian but Venezuelan, caught the attention of all my senses.

During a broadcast on the nationalized T.V. channel, a loyalist to the regime warned farmers about buying coffee seeds from Colombia because, according to him, they were plagued with biological diseases.

Then, Maduro added to the commentary and said that Colombians “are taking the coffee out of here. Half of the coffee Colombia is selling to the world is Venezuelan. They are taking it. Paramilitary armies are threatening the farmers. We are investigating all this. The best coffee in the world is from Venezuela.” (See video in Spanish)

Continue reading “Coffee Appropriation”

Even though there are more than 30 million diabetics in the United States, unfortunately this illness flies under the radar of many people. This is especially true in the Hispanic community, even though they are the second group at risk in the country.

Diabetes is not only the seventh cause of death in America, but also the number one cause for kidney failure, blindness, and lower limbs amputations in adults.

The last condition named above was detailed in a spine-chilling reportage published on CNN Health last week, which included the most recent statistics of the state of California–the state with the third largest Hispanic population in the U.S.

Continue reading “The sour side of diabetes”

On March 29th the Washington Post published the most recent results about America’s active, or better yet, inactive sex life. The study was conducted by the General Social Survey, GSS, a project of the University of Chicago, focused on the analysis of the U.S. society’s changes since 1972.

According to the paper, the percentage of individuals who reported not having a sexual partner during the past year was 23%, one in four people.

In general, the study considered the decrease of sexual activity in the past decades due to the aging population. Those people older than 60 years old increased from 18% in 1996 to 26% in 2018. Continue reading “Male sex-drive down the hill”

Last Tuesday, March 19th, The Journal of the American Medical Association, JAMA, published the results of a very important study about the cholesterol content on an the egg and its impact on cardiovascular diseases.

The title, Associations of Dietary Cholesterol or Egg Consumption With Incident Cardiovascular Disease and Mortality, could be considered the most extensive and comprehensive study developed in three decades.

The sample included  29,615 American adults with an average age 51.6 who were monitored for seventeen and a half years nonstop. Continue reading “Eggs are not the enemy”

Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

Photo by Martin Pu00e9chy on Pexels.com

Last Wednesday, The New York Times published an article in the weddings section that caught my attention. It was about a new trend of honeymoon called “solomoons” in which each newlywed travels to a different destination.

You read it right. After pledging, “Til death do us part” in their vows, each one grabs his or her suitcase and takes a trip alone or even with other people. 

The first example in the article is an Irish couple, she 37 and he 40. While she went to Canada to visit a friend, he chose to go to France with three of his buddies and watch Ireland play at the Euro Cup.

Continue reading “Honeymoon for One”

Since last Saturday, infamy has been happening at the border between Venezuela and Colombia for the world to see. The delivery of the wished and publicized U.S. humanitarian aid to Venezuela became a punishment instead of relief.

The images of the Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, dancing salsa in Caracas and declaring victory because he took food from the mouths of thousands starving fellow countrymen, felt like salt on a fresh wound.

Although the leadership of Juan Guaido, Venezuela’s opposition leader, has inspired the Trump administration, the E.U., and the neighboring republics to sponsor his emancipation efforts, it is clear that they all have ignored Lao Tzu’s military principle: “There is no greater danger than underestimating your opponent.” Continue reading “To Be Continued…”

On January 29th, 2019 Fernando Gaitan, the creator of the Colombian hit TV drama Ugly Betty, died in Colombia of a sudden massive heart attack. He was 58. When I read about it on the news I felt nostalgic.

Although I never met him, I do remember seeing him often at a popular bar in Bogota when I was in college. The producing channel RCN started the rerun of the soap opera last week and since then, I have been glued to the TV every weeknight at nine p.m.

Beatriz or Betty is one of those characters that makes the actor who plays them invisible and timeless. Today, two decades later, the TV ratings have positioned the rerun at the top of the Colombian charts.

Continue reading “The Ugly’s Luck”