- Thread starter frank12
- Start date
Sosua Ocean Village Gym Membership
ok, so, you used the stun gun on yourself again?
http://dr1.com/forums/showthread.php/131523-I-bought-a-Taser-Gun
or you made up this story to illustrate the point that your gym membership did not get refunded?
http://dr1.com/forums/showthread.php/131523-I-bought-a-Taser-Gun
or you made up this story to illustrate the point that your gym membership did not get refunded?
One afternoon our mototour group stopped in for a break at Plaza Jacaranda on the autopista near Banao, and I bee-lined to Bon. I bought the yummy Magnum chocolate-covered ice cream bar on a stick I'd been Jonesing for since Bani.
With great anticipation of the pleasures ahead---if you're a ice cream nut and have experienced a Magnum, you know what I mean---I opened the excellent packaging while Alida paid the clerk the hefty price, like RD$90. Not cheap.
The bar was completely crushed inside, the chocolate all smashed into crumbs and the ice cream somewhat flattened.
I asked for a replacement. Nada.
I asked for my money back. Nada.
I asked for the manager. Nada.
"But you already bought it!" was the no-refund excuse. "I can't sell it again."
I left the feast scattered on their glass counter, some pieces on the floor and ice cream case and made a few X-Rated comments in universal language that left no doubt my displeasure with her, her ancestry, parentage, cognitive skills, IQ, company and common sense.
Once again it just underscored a Truism of Life in Paradise: "We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto."
Welcome to the DR. Leave your First World logic at home, strap in and enjoy the ride. Note there are toll booths in unusual places...
They will sell you rotten food here that is at the point of deadly food poison. Even afyer death your family member has about zero chance of a legal claim, return of money or even a shred of remorse. Just a ni es mi culpa and a look rhat says get the **** out of here, my next victim is behind you
Still enjoying your DR experience, I see....
Back on topic: Frank, is everything, you know, ok? I've never heard of someone electrocuting their li'l buddy before....
Ok, ok. The only way to move on is to assume that was a literary tool to frame your Adventures at the Gym.
This imagery of burnt Beans on Frank is ghastly....
In 1978, I was living in Bonao and going to High School. I lived with my aunt Angela, and uncle Jose (my dad?s brother), and my three cousins (all boys around my same age). My aunt and uncle were born and raised in Bonao, and together, on a good day, they possessed no more than an 8th grade education.
Like all humble people from the mountains, they worked hard. Really hard. They sold milk, grew coffee and cacao, raised a lot of cattle, and dabbled in some other agriculture. This was all a result of my Uncle Frank, who, being doctor in the USA, came back home to the DR with a little bit of money and started investing in agriculture and things. If it wasn?t for my uncle Frank, I wouldn?t be here, nor received the education I was lucky to get. He was also the only one?out of three boys?who had gotten a higher education?which led to him doing his intern at the University of Chicago Med school.
Back to Bonao.
As a treat, my aunt Angela and uncle Jose would take us boys (all four of us) to Jacaranda (it sits along Highway 1, in Bonao) on Saturday evenings in the back of a beat-up white Datsun truck. All four of us boys sat, rain or shine, in the back of the truck, while my uncle and aunt sat up front.
At the time, Jacaranda had just gotten a Pizza oven. It would be impossible for me to overstate how remarkable this was. It would be no exaggeration to say that Bonao possessing a pizza oven in 1978 was equivalent to Man traveling to the Moon and back. This is no bull****. People walked, swam, and drove to Jacaranda to get pizza for the first time in their lives. Remember, many, many poor people had never even been to Santo Domingo, let alone been to a fancy restaurant or tried Pizza.
Being true blue Dominicans, my aunt and uncle didn?t know of the North American tradition of giving allowances to children. One thing for sure, haven grown up in the 1930?s & 40?s in the mountains of Boano, they certainly never received an allowance?so the concept of giving a weekly financial allowance to children was not only foreign to them, but a concept they would have had a hard time grasping.
After living in Bonao for about a year, my father sent down $20 US dollars to me. This?at a time when $1 US dollar equaled $1 Dominican peso. Having $20 US dollars in your pocket was like being rich. I felt really rich. Remember, at the time, one Dominican chocolate bar only costs .010 cents. A bottle of Dominican rum was $.50 cents. Giving a kid $20 US dollars would be like today handing a child $100 US dollars to go outside and play.
After receiving the $20 US dollars, we went on our weekly Pizza trip to Jacaranda. Once there, me and my cousins immediately made a bee-line for one of the glass display cases. Inside the case, they had imported American Milky Way, Snickers, and some other American Chocolate that we had only dreamed about eating one day when we hit the lottery. I immediately bought one imported American chocolate bar for each of my cousins and myself?this, despite one single Milky Way & Snickers cost $1 US dollar at the time. You had to be either totally ****ing insane or stinking, filthy rich to spend $1 US dollar in 1978 on a piece of American chocolate.
In a scene straight out of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate factory, we all ran outside to the curb and began opening our chocolate bars with great anticipation of finding a Golden Ticket. I?m serious, I cannot overstate how excited we were. Two of my cousins had never even tried an American chocolate bar. Handing them a Milky Way or Snicker?s bar was like handing a Drug addict a pound of Weed or a kilo of Cocaine. They had only seen American chocolate on TV commercials. They had never tried it. They only dreamed about it. Handing them something that they only seen on television commercials was no different than handing a wine connoisseur a bottle of 1945 Lafitte Rothschild.
When we opened our Milky Ways and Snickers up, each bar was completely covered in white, hairy moldy fungus.
I need to back up here for a second. Remember this was 1978. There was no refrigeration for candy like there is today. These chocolate bars were sitting behind a glass display case that was baking in the sun all day. The chocolate basically sat behind glass cooking for 10 hours a day as the sun arced across highway 1.
We ran back to the counter and showed our Milky Way and Snickers bars to the person working behind the display case. We hadn?t even taken a bite out of the chocolate, because, quite simply, it was completely covered in white, hairy mold and was totally uneatable. The person behind the case shrugged his shoulders and said, ?I?m sorry, there is nothing I can do.? In his reasoning, he could no refund us our money because we had opened the chocolate up?therefore making it unsellable to someone else. In his eyes, we had damaged the chocolate by opening it, and therefore, rendering it unsellable.
I lost US $4 dollars right there on four chocolate bars. $4 was 20% of my money I received in one year from the USA.
Like all humble people from the mountains, they worked hard. Really hard. They sold milk, grew coffee and cacao, raised a lot of cattle, and dabbled in some other agriculture. This was all a result of my Uncle Frank, who, being doctor in the USA, came back home to the DR with a little bit of money and started investing in agriculture and things. If it wasn?t for my uncle Frank, I wouldn?t be here, nor received the education I was lucky to get. He was also the only one?out of three boys?who had gotten a higher education?which led to him doing his intern at the University of Chicago Med school.
Back to Bonao.
As a treat, my aunt Angela and uncle Jose would take us boys (all four of us) to Jacaranda (it sits along Highway 1, in Bonao) on Saturday evenings in the back of a beat-up white Datsun truck. All four of us boys sat, rain or shine, in the back of the truck, while my uncle and aunt sat up front.
At the time, Jacaranda had just gotten a Pizza oven. It would be impossible for me to overstate how remarkable this was. It would be no exaggeration to say that Bonao possessing a pizza oven in 1978 was equivalent to Man traveling to the Moon and back. This is no bull****. People walked, swam, and drove to Jacaranda to get pizza for the first time in their lives. Remember, many, many poor people had never even been to Santo Domingo, let alone been to a fancy restaurant or tried Pizza.
Being true blue Dominicans, my aunt and uncle didn?t know of the North American tradition of giving allowances to children. One thing for sure, haven grown up in the 1930?s & 40?s in the mountains of Boano, they certainly never received an allowance?so the concept of giving a weekly financial allowance to children was not only foreign to them, but a concept they would have had a hard time grasping.
After living in Bonao for about a year, my father sent down $20 US dollars to me. This?at a time when $1 US dollar equaled $1 Dominican peso. Having $20 US dollars in your pocket was like being rich. I felt really rich. Remember, at the time, one Dominican chocolate bar only costs .010 cents. A bottle of Dominican rum was $.50 cents. Giving a kid $20 US dollars would be like today handing a child $100 US dollars to go outside and play.
After receiving the $20 US dollars, we went on our weekly Pizza trip to Jacaranda. Once there, me and my cousins immediately made a bee-line for one of the glass display cases. Inside the case, they had imported American Milky Way, Snickers, and some other American Chocolate that we had only dreamed about eating one day when we hit the lottery. I immediately bought one imported American chocolate bar for each of my cousins and myself?this, despite one single Milky Way & Snickers cost $1 US dollar at the time. You had to be either totally ****ing insane or stinking, filthy rich to spend $1 US dollar in 1978 on a piece of American chocolate.
In a scene straight out of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate factory, we all ran outside to the curb and began opening our chocolate bars with great anticipation of finding a Golden Ticket. I?m serious, I cannot overstate how excited we were. Two of my cousins had never even tried an American chocolate bar. Handing them a Milky Way or Snicker?s bar was like handing a Drug addict a pound of Weed or a kilo of Cocaine. They had only seen American chocolate on TV commercials. They had never tried it. They only dreamed about it. Handing them something that they only seen on television commercials was no different than handing a wine connoisseur a bottle of 1945 Lafitte Rothschild.
When we opened our Milky Ways and Snickers up, each bar was completely covered in white, hairy moldy fungus.
I need to back up here for a second. Remember this was 1978. There was no refrigeration for candy like there is today. These chocolate bars were sitting behind a glass display case that was baking in the sun all day. The chocolate basically sat behind glass cooking for 10 hours a day as the sun arced across highway 1.
We ran back to the counter and showed our Milky Way and Snickers bars to the person working behind the display case. We hadn?t even taken a bite out of the chocolate, because, quite simply, it was completely covered in white, hairy mold and was totally uneatable. The person behind the case shrugged his shoulders and said, ?I?m sorry, there is nothing I can do.? In his reasoning, he could no refund us our money because we had opened the chocolate up?therefore making it unsellable to someone else. In his eyes, we had damaged the chocolate by opening it, and therefore, rendering it unsellable.
I lost US $4 dollars right there on four chocolate bars. $4 was 20% of my money I received in one year from the USA.