Omar On The Go

Day 75 Duolingo was the first to tell me that I'm on a 75-day streak so that's freaking amazing even though my German still extremely rough but at least it does entertain me and is a quick little task that I enjoy doing while learning some new words or phrases. I'm also on a 75 days streak writing the blog and well, it still going, and that in itself is an achievement.  I just want to let out some minor frustrations with my parents, more specifically with my mom but is applicable to both.  You see, they only travel abroad if there's some sort of convention where they are invited period, no vacations abroad, no visiting their family or their sons.   I moved away from more than 15 years ago, and I can count the number of times they have visited: 1 once my dad because he was on a layover and once my mom because she came for my graduation from grad school, that's it.  Why am I bringing this up now?  Simple, just venting some stuff. In the past it used to bother...

Day 65 I purposely decided to skip the writing of the post last night, mostly motivated by the way I was feeling, and I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t just a thing of the moment and wanted to sleep it out first. As you know by now, these past few days I’ve been feeling a lot more anxious and stressed than usual but thankfully it has been coming down to way more manageable levels. So to summarize my feelings, I was just grateful and thankful and totally stress free and the reasons on to why comes down to the following: Playing an amazing retro game and actually going into it seriously - Paper Mario – a game that originally came out in 2000 on N64 but I never played it in its original form. I ended up getting it on Wii, Wii U and emulated but never got than a mere few hours every time I started it. This time around, on its switch re-release – I’ve been hooked for good. Watching a great TV show Sunday night – The last of Us – in which so far has been my favorite episode. Objective...

Day 56 This is becoming more and more common: not writing at night but writing the following morning.  Ugh, technically it keeps my motto of "one post a day" but it is a bit frustrating that I feel is becoming a bit of trend but hey, not trying to make excuses but these past few days I've been very busy and a bit more preoccupied than usual and to top it off, one of my cats is developing flu-like symptoms. Anyways, lets jump into the good news, skipping CrossFit on Saturday was actually one really good idea, you see, friday some of my close friends from DR arrived in Miami and stay with me for a night, early morning we decided to grab breakfast nearby which was great but then another friend from DR who was in town joined us at home for a drink and a chat. Afterwards, with my family I hit the town and took them to different places they haven't been, and we literally spent the whole day driving and walking around the city, having amazing food, running errands, having co...

Day 55 What is family? For many is just something that is blood related or marriage, for some is just a thing they hate, for others a thing they love the most but one thing is for sure, everybody will have a different opinion on what it really is or means to them. I've been lucky enough to have two families: the one I was born in, and the one I've chosen for myself but that doesn't mean that is not a complicated relationship, it is and a very complicated one at that but the good thing is that independently of the ups and downs, there's love or some kind of support. I could talk for ages about my nuclear family or my extended one though but that will be another day, at the moment I feel more like continue playing The Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap 😝 The family - between blood n decision.

Day 34 First fail of blog - since I should have posted this hours earlier but well tiredness got the best of me and hopefully this won't happen again. One thing I've been doing (but not over doing) is enjoy the amazing food of the Dominican Republic and at home I have the best cook ever. Bombón, as we call her - realname Hilaria which she hates, so she calls herself Marta, but everybody calls her Bombón is this very hardworking woman whom my whole family owes her a lot. Bombón has been working for my family for roughly 30 years and literally has been the hands feeding me, or taking care of me while parents were away, making sure the house is clean and organized, etc etc etc.  Nowdays, at homeonly having my parents living in it, she is way more needed than ever, not because my parents need any special attention, thankfully they don't but more because she is our eyes at home since my parents have the tendency of not disclosuring things to the ones who live abroad (me and two ...

Day 33 Going over old family pictures I came across many of my late grandma whom I never met.  This particular trip has me a lot more curious about my family, and especially the ones closest to me that I never met. At my parents place, in the middle of the staircase, is a poem that my dad wrote to his mother after she passed away as a way of remembrance and to keep her memory alive. If you come to my place, and walk up the stairs, you will see it right in front of you. Impossible to miss and is a bittersweet reminder of a son's love to his mother. Here is the poem, in its original language.  Translate as needed. Madre, te recuerdo Hoy te recuerdo mas Desde aquel frio Enero En que partiste. Recuerdo el gélido beso Que posé sobre tu frente Pero, hoy te recuerdo mas Porque has tenido la virtud De borrar el tiempo M. J. Terrero Cuesta

Day 28 Today it will be a short post, in part because I'm extremely tired and I have to do this on my phone with extremely unreliable internet connection. One thing that I wanted to do for a very long time was to revisit my dad little hometown, a very small town called Enriquillo in the province of Barahona in the Dominican Republic.  In part because I haven't visit it in over 25 years (I think the last time I was 8 or 9 years old), but also because in part to bond a bit with dad and understand his upbring a bit better now that I'm more mature. You can also add that I wanted to reconnect a little with my family roots and analyze my life through a different perspective considering that even though the town used to have a lot of family members around, nowadays, not that many because everybody has left for a better life.  You see, the "Sur Profundo" (The Deep South), as this area of the country is known, is a very poor area that is highly under develop even in 2023 s...

Day 20 On yesterday's post I mentioned my cousin Sandy and that made me think about a lot of things that I like in part because I hanged out a lot with him and his brother Rafelo.  There are way too many stories to tell about his family, from how we are related (not necessarily their parents are my parents' siblings), the epic new year's celebration in the barrio by my uncle, and many more, but now I want to focus particularly on how my cousins being very into computer gaming had me fall in love with computers. At home, our very first computer was an intel 386 computer, I barely remember the specs though, but it had a 5 1/4 and a 3 1/2 floppy drives and probably a barely-there hard drive.  We probably got it in the early 90's and I remember clearly that the operating system was MS-DOS and well, I had no idea how to use it, but I did learn a lot from my brother who was the one who, I bet my ass, bribed my dad to get it.  You see, him being my dad's firstborn kind of ...

Day 19 How often you ever think about your early childhood?  I bet that we don't think much about it considering the fact that most people rarely remember things so early in their life.  I think my early memories have to be around the time I was 3 or 4 years old but as of today I'm not sure and I may need to talk to my parents about events around then to see how accurate they are. The reason why I'm talking about this is that my mom recently sent me pictures of myself when they were celebrating my first birthday, back in 1986, and it's kind of funny to see at the pictures but also kind of sad that I can't remember early childhood. I do however have flashbacks of things when I was fairly young (5 years or younger) and sometimes I find funny I remember those stupid details. Thankfully most, if not all of my memories are nice ones, I remember how crazy I was whenever dad showed around, I would run around and go to him in a flash, or how I won $10 pesos (or $20?) when s...

Day 15 Oh, Sunday but I'm actually feeling very happy about it mainly because tomorrow is a holiday for me, the second one of the year (if we count new year's day) but the last one until May 29th, 2023, for Memorial Day, so a few months of pure work ahead.  That said, so far, the weekend has been amazing and chill and the temperature in Miami is quite cool, and it will definitely get better considering that The Last of Us on HBO is coming out in less than two hours. Also today is my dear Tia Yeya birthday, she is turning 82 and is my dad's oldest sister, a woman full of life and with an amazing heart.  She has been living in NYC for the past 30 years or so and it is someone who I visit mostly every time I'm in the city.  She hosted me in the summer of 2001, when I was 16 years old and is the trip that I can definitely say was my first independent travel experience, much like my nephew's one.  Thinking about my aunt and how old is she, had me thinking a bit about my ...

Day 11 On a fairly uneventful day, sometimes is hard to think of a topic to write about I did get a couple of suggestions, but just like yesterday I will continue with the hobbies. One big passion of mine nowadays is travel and that was particularly triggered by a job I had but I'll leave that story for another day.  Today I want to focus on my first memories of travelling abroad and thankfully I am able to remember most of it since the opportunities were few and far between. My first travel outside the Dominican Republic was to Miami, FL in 1993.  I was 8 years old, and I bet my ass that the ones pushing for the trip were mostly two of my older brothers, I never complain and won't complain now because well, I got to go to Disney World then. In Miami I do have an aunt and her family, and we stayed with them, but please start the count: My aunt, her then husband and 4 cousins, my mom, my 3 brothers, 2 other cousins (were all traveling together) and me.  We were at 13 peopl...

Day 10 This have to be a record for me of some sort.  10 days writing has to be one for me. I said that slowly but surely, I will be expanding into my hobbies and things alike. I think I already let you know that I'm a bit into video games mainly because it has always disconnected me from reality and transfer me to a fantasy world.  For me, is a great way to release stress and, contrary to popular belief, keep my mind active by diving deep into a story, flexing my reflexes with great gameplay, and learning some new skills along the way. Yesterday a group of gamer friends shared the picture below: It was very exciting to see where I started, and how far gaming has come.  So long story short, I started at #1, with the Atari 2600.  I have vivid memories of me playing Joust even though I was just a very small child and the game itself was developed/released even before I was born. But truly the console that initially made me a "gamer" was the #2, the Nintendo Entert...

Day 6 The main reason I came to Miami was to attend grad school.  I was accepted at the Florida International University for an engineering master's program and thankfully with the big help of my dad, I was able to cover the program. The plans initially were very simple: study, graduate, go back home but well, life had other plans for me, graduating from FIU did open a lot of doors for me and I will forever be grateful for that, while additionally help me feel at home and welcome in a foreign country. Last night, one my way back home, I passed FIU and ask my nephew if he was interested in a drive by, and he gladly accepted. We drove around for a few, show him the different buildings, talking a little bit of history and such. Today, he said "after you finish working, we are going there to bike around the campus", I told him that biking was not a good idea because it will be late and that I wanted to show him a bit more of the city, but that we could go to the campus, walk ...

Day 2 Today has been just a regular day as any other day with the advantage that it was also a holiday, is always great not to work on a Monday.  By now, the day was going to end, and I almost failed to write a few paragraphs but here I go.  Nothing major to write about and I won't be going through my daily activities for the sake of writing and bore you with many trivial and unimportant things like: "I cook this" "I went to this place" "I hanged out with..." bla bla bla. I think the major event for today is my 15th anniversary of moving to the USA.  I almost forgot about it but Facebook reminded me of past posts and well, it was a nice reminder because it made me think on how much I've accomplished since moving here, from gaining total independence from my parents to creating a life, that, with its ups and downs, is at a point of relative pure joy.  It does, however, makes me think of the things I've left behind and the many sacrifices, worrie...