Show me your stinking badges

We don't need no stinkin' badges

My hands are shaking as I type this!

A man just rang the doorbell. When I went to the front door (not the gate), he shouted "Who owns this property?" I said "Who are you?" because, after all, this is Honduras, where most people in a colonia like ours won't even answer their door, much less give personal information, for fear of kidnappers or robbers or murderers. There have been several recent cases of "false" police, dressed in police uniforms committing robberies and murders, as well as real police committing kidnappings.

He said he was from the municipalidad (municipality). Since they have come around in other years, I figured they were looking for people who haven't paid their taxes, so I told him the name, let's just use Fernández for example. He again said, "What is the last name?" Again, I said Fernández. He apparently couldn't find it on his papers, and called another guy over, who also demanded, "What is the name of the owner?!" I said, "Fernández!" He also couldn't find the name on his papers.

By then I was getting worried that maybe our property wasn't registered, maybe we were cheated by the seller or attorney, maybe we have built a house on someone else's property and have been paying the taxes for them all these years! Well, that may be crazy thinking, but crazier things happen in Honduras.

I went out to the gate and asked for identification, not that anyone couldn't easily have a fake ID. One of them showed me a well worn ID card. I said the municipalidad should have our records and they shouldn't need to ask our name.

They called a third guy over, who again demanded to know the name of the property owner. They started explaining something which I didn't understand completely but I thought I heard something about that they would have to come in to inspect the property. "Over my dead body!", I thought to myself.

I told them that we pay our taxes but they would find many others in this colonia who don't, a fact that we discovered when we were trying to do a favor for several neighbors (another story). The older guy, who seemed to be in charge, asked if I had my receipt, so I went inside to get it. He tried to take it from me and I wouldn't let him! Receipts and documentos are everything in Honduras! Lose them and forget it! You are screwed.

Finally they looked up the official number from the receipt on their list and our number wasn't there. It seems that their list doesn't include all the property owners, only the ones who did not pay. That is a stupid way to go about things since there are no addresses, no way to identify which property is which, and they have no idea who they are talking to unless they find the name on the delinquent list.

Anyway, the guy in charge told the others, sounding a little disappointed, "that means they paid their taxes." The other two looked at me incredulously, wondering how I had pulled off this scam.

This shows you a little about the mentality here in Honduras. Guilty until proven innocent. Instead of immediately thinking that since our name wasn't on the list that meant that we HAD paid our taxes, "thank you and goodbye," they automatically assumed that I was lying about the name or something because everyone SHOULD be on the list! It is so damn insulting.

Then, having decided that I was a trustworthy person, the boss started asking me about other gringo names on the list, whether I knew which property was theirs. I didn't recognize the names and reminded him that most of the properties are vacant lots and that I don't know who owns them. I was really curious to see the whole list, but in a way I didn't want to know which of my neighbors are deadbeats or corruptos.

Then he said, "Okay, goodbye," and turned to go.

I said, "You could say 'thank you for paying your taxes'."

He turned around, surprised, smiled, and said, "You're right. Thank you for paying your taxes."

La Gringa's web alphabet list

Wooden alphabet, Germes Online

When I first saw Aaron's Your web alphabet article, I thought the point was to think of a site that you visit for each letter of the alphabet. Then I went to the Ed Kohler's original link and saw that you determine your list by typing each letter of the alphabet in your browser's address bar to see what your browser suggests to you. Ahh! More interesting, more fun, less subjective. I like that.

So, here is what I found:

a:   Aaron's Pensieve blog, of course

b:   Blogger, of course again

c:   Consejo Nacional Anticorrupción, National Anticorruption Council of Honduras, a wealth of very depressing information here.

d:   Dictionary.com

e:   ETS Free Translation

f:   Feedburner, I highly recommend it, along with
    Fox Internet HTML converter, use it for finding HTML codes for special characters

g:   Google, what else could it be? Search, Images, Reader, Alerts, Mail, Earth, Translate, I use it all! Not only does Google do a better job, it has a nicer look than Yahoo and that is important to me.

h:   Honduras This Week Online, Honduras news in English

i:   Instituto Nacional de Estadisticas, Honduran National Institute of Statistics, yaaaaawn

j:   Jeff Bridges, you have to see it to know why

k:   Kiva

l:   La Prensa, if only they would fix their search and prior issues functions!

m:   Mail Google

n:   A Neotropical Savannah, excellent Panamanian botany blog

o:   One time offer, What the *$%# is this? I NEVER click on "offers."

p:   Parts Select, trying to find parts for our non-working appliances

q:   Quack Online, I was confused about this one, too, until I saw that it included some dengue information.

r:   Revistazo.com, the news organization that risks their lives to bring us Honduras news that no one else will print

s:   Science made simple, use it for metric conversions, also
    Sitemeter, Statcounter, Supersudoku, Slide.com

t:   Tiny URL, so quick and handy;
     Technorati, too

u:   United Nations Development Program - Honduras

v:   YahooVoice, free and cheap international calls through your PC

w:   Word Reference.com, translation dictionary and forum, use it almost every day; and
    World Atlas, World Bank, Wikipedia, Washington Post, World Health Organization, more yawns

x:   Xylem and Phloem

y:   YouTube, wow, 1,282 people have watched Zoey give birth.

z:   Zoom Info

I found that I had an excess of F's, S's, T's, and W's. It was tough to pick one, so I didn't! Since I mostly read blogs through GReader and click through to the blog from there, most of my favorites didn't show up in the address bar, just in case anyone feels left out.

Browsing through my list, it is entirely clear to me that I spend way too much time on serious, depressing stuff and not nearly enough time on hobbies and fun stuff.

What does your web alphabet say about you?

Eaten any bums lately?

Yucky candy

Anyone visiting a foreign country usually will come across a brand name or two that sounds funny to them in their language.

Take these candies, for example. Please take these candies. They are awful. The worst is the mango flavored Mini Bum. El Jefe bought a 2-pound bag of these and they tasted like a mini bum all right. Man! I've tasted mangoes and believe me, Mini Bum is no mango. Luckily we had some Honduran visitors with children who don't get candy very often and they gobbled them all up. I kept refilling the bowl and they kept eating. Who the heck wants to eat anything called a bum?

Hondurans seem to have a propensity for medicinal flavored candy. Jill wrote a hilarious article once about how the upscale restaurants serve a Hall's mentholyptus cough drop with the check. Gawd! They are horrible. But because of that preference for medicine, the Alka Ice must be really popular. Yum! Alka seltzer flavored candy. Kill two birds with one stone.

American Ice Cherry plays on the popularity of everything (U.S.) American. It works. I just love it when Hondurans argue with me about what is American or what Americans eat, as if *I* wouldn't know. It happens more often than you would think.

Do you know that Americans only eat out of cans? That's what one maid told me. She knew that because Americans sent tons of canned food in aid after Hurricane Mitch, so that must be all they eat. Well, they are also surprised that I can cook and sew and clean my own house, not to mention clean up my own dogs' poo, too. Doesn't make any sense, does it, since we are all millionaires? ;-)

Even the Pizza Hut mint tastes like a cough drop. I wonder if they import a special one just for Honduras or if they taste that way in the U.S., too. I always bring home these cough drop candies just to give them to the workers if we have any. The problem is that if we have the candies around for awhile, the humidity causes them to liquefy and seep out of the wrappers. Coming from a dry climate like Dallas, I had never seen anything like that before.

Another brand that cracks me up is Bimbo brand bread and bakery products, which I think is a Mexican brand. I think that Bimbo is the name of the cute little Pillsbury-dough-boy-type icon they use. Correct me if I'm wrong. I tried to explain to my sister-in-law why 'Bimbo' was a funny name to me, but she didn't get it. I think it was because she is just too nice to laugh at dumb blonds or maybe she knows that all blonds are dumb so what's so funny? (ducking!)

Have you run across any funny brand names where you are?

Better yet, if you are Honduran, what American brand names sound funny to you?