30.6.10

Gringo Cherry
by gringokev

After the introduction below it's time for the awkward first blog post. It’s like the first day of university. You’ve cut your hair, purchased ‘slim’ jeans because you couldn’t fit the skinny ones and loaded your iPod with Billy Joel Broken Social Scene tunes that you will play just a little bit too loudly to impress your new liberal arts friends. Except in this case you’re diving into the murky interwebs - a considerably deeper pool than the Tarantino-loving, Donnie-Darko-watching, horn-rimmed-glasses-wearing ‘Introduction to Cinema Studies’ crowd.

You foolishly think that the scathing and impatient e-hordes stumbling upon a lolcat’s facebook while taking an awkward family photo will pay any attention to your all too familiar, colourful blog site. A situation that becomes significantly more awkward when you realise that there is more than a slight chance that absolutely no one will read this post. No One. Fine - no one bar your mother, your fellow blog partner/ best friend, and perhaps, just perhaps, a German tourist in Mexico wondering what this strange word the locals are hurling at him from the street corner really means.*

Why write then? I know this is what you - the non-existent reader - must be thinking. Why? In truth, I have no idea why or even how this blog came to fruition. I was sitting at my computer two weeks ago discussing this idea with GringoLuke on Gmail chat. Fast forward and here we are with a brand spankin’ new blog, Spanish exclamation marks and no readers.

Does this scare a gringo such as I? I hear you bellowing from the empty caverns of our readers’ den. Well, it does a little. But, when the apple fell on Newton’s head? Was he scared? I’m sure he was too. Imagine being hit on the head with an apple and formulating gravitational theory in the same day. In 2010, he’d probably post on fmylife.com, drop a short tweet about ‘gravity ‘n’ shit’ and like you, miss out on this blog.

So I urge you, invisible reader to take off your cloak. We don’t expect much. We don’t expect you to log off your hotmail, stop playing Farmville or delete your Flickr account. We realise that you already have your four favourite websites and that’s fine. Just bookmark us and stop by from time to time. Think of yourselves as the family-friendly, cake-baking neighbours and us as the uni students next door who sometimes babysit your kids. We’re nice like that.


*This is a misleading statement. I googled ‘Gringo’ and we show up nowhere in the first 20 pages. In fact, we do not even show up when I google ‘Que Gringo’. Or ‘Que Gringo Blog’. Or ‘Que Gringo Blogspot’. Or even ‘quegringo DOT blogspot DOT com’.
Oy vey.


¿Qué?
by gringoluke

Welcome to our peaceful little sand dune sat floating in the churning tides of the internet.

¡Que Gringo! is pretty ambitious. We have set out to write down the thoughts, experiences and fragments of culture that are discovered and overlooked everyday by the thousands of fresh-from-high-school kids who are suddenly realising now what can so easily be forgotten.

The premise is this: a number of permanent Gringo contributors spread out across the globe upload snapshots of their days–thoughts, realisations, music, photographs, writing, whatever–to create what will become a kaleidoscope of opinion and perspective. As they weave this pretty little tapestry of culture, the Gringos hope to present the idea that even though there are no new continents left to reveal, our millenial generation is still exploring and discovering the parts of the world that Marco Polo left overlooked.

However, ¡Que Gringo! promises not to be pretentious, never to be One Of Those Sites. We promise never to use phrases like “global village” or “the face of humanity”. We promise not to become a recepticle for gap year photography, or poetry about how spiritual India is. Though we are linked roughly by our age, the Gringos have no political motive, adhere to no political school of thought and definitely don’t want to change your mind. All we’re here to do is draw back the curtains on a window that’s been sitting open for a while.

Remember, too, the opinions expressed by the contributors on this site are only the opinions of a bunch of twenty-somethings who are still on the lookout for what they want to do with their lives. Whether you believe this enhances or detriments their value is up to you. Keep in mind, though, that anyone can be a Gringo (and not just a gringo). Drop yourself in a foreign place, do something and tell us about it.

Welcome to ¡Que Gringo! We hope you'll stick around for a while.