draliman on life

Here is my story for What Pegman Saw. This week we’re in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

It took ages to find a reasonably old-fashioned-looking building. It’s all so new-looking! Also, sorry to be fixated on American oversees territories, but I needed to find a reasonable timeline with a starting point in Puerto Rico. I wanted to get in a dig at the British and their pie and mash and warm beer, but it was not to be 😦

I did a lot of Wiki research 🙂 and the timeline appears to be – Puerto Rico became American in 1898 (ex-Spanish), the Danish West Indies became American (American Virgin Islands) in 1917 and Guam became officially American in 1950. Apart from that, please ignore historical inaccurcies 🙂

Copyright Google

“Hey, Juan, yesterday we were Spanish, today we’re American! This world, eh? I’ll celebrate with a sangria!”

“Any excuse, Alejandro, you varmint.”

“Why are you suddenly talking like that? Urk, yeuch! What is this muck?”

“It’s called ‘Bud Light’. It’s what we serve here now.”

“Since when?”

“Since now.”

“Humph. Give me food to wash away the taste.”

“Today’s special. Enjoy. Ya varmint.”

“What? What is this? Where’s my paella? Stop saying ‘varmint’.”

“It’s called ‘hamburger’. It’s actually cow.”

“Amigo, this nationality conversion is playing havoc here at the taberna.”

“Bar, this is a bar now.”

“I can’t keep up. I’m moving to the Danish West Indies.”

19 years later…

“Hey, Viggo, yesterday we were Danish, today we’re American! This world, eh? I’ll celebrate with a mead…”

After finally getting fed up with hamburgers and Bud Light, Alejandro moves to Guam in 1949…