Bogotá, Colombia — On a brisk, rainy day in late March, eight determined protesters held a seemingly endless vigil outside Santa Ana Parish on Calle 33A. With all the solemnity of a requiem, they directed their prayers at an off-white building across the street. I approached them curiously, and one woman shuffled over to me. “They perform abortions over there,” she whispered out of the corner of her mouth.
My decision to visit North Korea was reflex. It was 2007, I was a young (and quite skinny) English teacher in Seoul, and tours over the 38th parallel were becoming popular. The seaside town of Gumgangsan, located a 40-minute drive over the DMZ on the eastern coast, was receiving rafts of slick tour buses from …
Last weekend I visited the home that my father grew up in. The building sloped along Bogota's historic district of La Candelaria is a "hippie" hostel today. In the room that was once occupied by my family, a small TV entertains languid backpackers spread out on mats across the tiled floor. The ceiling is about …
Continue reading An immigrant story from the son of an immigrant country
Barranquilla, Colombia (CNN)Bikinis, bare skin, face paint, feathers. Pretty much what you'd expect this time of year from Rio Carnival, right? Well, sure. But the world's most famous carnival doesn't have a monopoly on feather frenzies. In the coastal Colombian city of Barranquilla, one of the world's largest spectacles of dance and cultural pageantry is …
Continue reading El Carnaval de Barranquilla sizzles in Colombia (CNN Travel)
Below is an excerpt about the evolution of the Internet of Things taken from the tech and innovation report "Dubai's Next Act: Becoming the scholar of smart cities" published by Investvine. No longer a realm reserved for techno-futurists, the Internet of Things, whether perceptible or not, affects our lives every day. In Dubai, the first …
Justin Calderón 