Omar On The Go

Day 63 As I may had said before, Facebook nowadays is my second favorite social media platform and well, today I just want to go over my first post over in Facebook, a platform I started using way back in 2007.  Prior to that though I used to check Hi5 on the regular, and related to social media, that was basically it if we don't count the ancient beast that were MSN Messenger or mIRC. With Hi5 I started to dislike it a lot, because it allowed a level of customization that would make visiting different profiles a big hassle because you would find animations, different letter types and sizes, colors, etc, very different from one another which worked into the decrement of the user experience. When Facebook came around, it was a mostly uniform experience, the interface was clean and pleasing to the eye which was something I was looking for at the moment.  According to my profile history, I started using the platform in September of 2007, and my very first post were the pictures o...

Day 52 I've said before, I am an avid gamer and one of the main reasons, beside the fact that I find them very fun and highly entertaining, is that it allows me to throw myself into a different universe and live a different life for a few hours. They allow me to live in a fantasy world and personally I find that extremely exciting and therapeutic because I can forget about my personal struggles and are extremely good at lowering my stress levels.  I like almost any kind of game but as everything in life, I do have certain exceptions: 1- It cannot be a mobile game (as in played on a smartphone) - I hate using touch controls, and those games are generally made to be extremely simple or highly addictive.  As a smartphone power user, I do find other better uses for my phone and its battery. 2- It cannot be too realistic - in the sense of trying to simulate real life things.  For example, I like racing games, I just don't like simulation type of racing games as in Gran Turismo...

Day 51 Very simple post.  Remember the story of my first trip to Puerto Rico?  The one I told ChatGPT to write about?  Well, when I went back home, I started checking some photo albums, and well, I got some a few pictures of that trip.  I will, as best as I can, write about the pictures and try to remember, as best as possible how I felt then, and how I feel now about those pictures. Without further ado, below the pics: This was probably one of the last days at the Guajataca Boy Scout camp.  I've been trying to find myself in this picture to no avail but probably I felt shy as fuck, back then I was really bad at making friends or feeling comfortable among people I did not know and on top of that, imagine me being the only one who did not have a boy scout uniform, well, for someone who had really big issues fitting in, that didn't help much.  That said, I did enjoy my time in Puerto Rico doing weird stuff I've never done before, and it was just the first of ...

Day 50 Should have a been a celebratory day considering is day 50, but well, I guess I'll leave the milestone celebration when I reach day 182 or day 183.  What I can say though is that it has been quite the pleasure to relieve some moments through writing and also a bit cathartic to say the least, not without some challenges though the main one being writing on time and sticking to a schedule for it. Other challenge is that sometimes I'm not inspired or have anything meaningful to write about at any given moment, but I think I'm getting the hang of it.  This past weekend was a bit more moved than usual in between working out, beach, art festivals, videogames, party and meeting up with friends and family, but one thing in particular brought some nice memories. You see, the beach day was not really a beach day, I was more of a kite day at the beach, not me flying kites, but me attending a kite festival.  Checking all the kites around reminded me of simpler times when the m...

Day 46 Can life be any weirder? So yesterday's post was mostly about Gloria and today, on our high school chat group, she sends some old picture of my classmates. I ask her to send more and she sends the following: Oh the cringe and "embarrassment". This is just one of the many poems we used to write to each other as some tame and stupid jokes among ourselves. Below a transcript: Tu eres el amor de mi vida  eres la luz de la vida  eres la estrella dorada eres la luz de la mañana Eres el sol del risueño  eres mi sol entresueños  eres el agua de la vida  que enfrias el fuego de mi vida Eres como el diablo en candela. que quema apenas ya que en realidad eres un angel con ganas de arrullarme Si no fueras así  no to quisiera a ti ya que eres como medusa  con un gran secreto bajo la blusa (no seas mal pensada) Omar Terrero  14-9-2000 ------------------------------------------------- This was over 22 years ago and well, I lot has passes since, but I can'...

Day 45 Oh, Valentine's Day but call me cold-hearted and alike, but I've always, and by always, I mean ALWAYS, have thought that this day is purely commercial and not as innocent and pure as many thinks.  Initially my cynicism was due to simply being cold, but I quickly realized that it was all purely commercial and all the couples going crazy for a day and then they would be cheating on each other.   In my youth it was mostly known as "day of lovers or love" but then turned into "day of love and friendship" just to commercialize the shit out of it, not only with lovers, but also with friends, so call me a pessimist but that is the main reason I don't really care about this day, but also don't get me wrong, I would participate in Valentine's related things just for the sake of having a good time.  With all that said, I want to share one final thing related to this day, and it was time I was in Colombia on Valentine's Day: This was exactly 9 ye...

Day 41 Tonight,  I'll be "short" - below the first email I wrote to my friends after I moved to Miami. Date: January 12 2008 and at this point I've been living in Miami for 10 days already.  Below the email in its original form: Mis hermanos.. k lo k .. como va todo? Diablo cono, tanta vainas k contarles, tanta vainas k he visto y he hecho,, y CUANTO trabajo he pasado, pero na .. parte del entretenimeinto.  La uni es una lokera, eso no tiene comparacion con nada.  To los edificios son inmensos, que van desde torre de apartamentos hasta museo, gimnasio, areas de investigacion, invernaderos, estadios de futbol, etc etc etc...   La vivienda,,,  mierda cuanto trabajo hemos pasao con eso... lean, fue antes de ayer k me nos mudamos depue de ver mucho sitios y darle la vuelta a miami.  Donde nos mudamos ta aperisimo... es un tercer piso en doral, un residencial bien apero, calmado, con piscina, canchas de tennis y raquetball, gimnasio, y un maldito lago de pa...

Day 39 As mentioned at the end of yesterday's post, I'll be writing about pets a bit more frequently starting today and the main reason is simple: animals have been part of my life ever since I was a kid.  You want proof? Well, here you go: Is very hard for me to pin-point the exact date of that picture but I was definitely very young and was prior to 1991, that I know because of the dog.  Additionally, I can tell you the following details: It was in the front side of my childhood home (same place I was recently visiting), we used to have a lemon tree in the front, now days a type of palm tree, but most importantly is the oldest picture of myself with one of my pets. This one was named Flash (and I think that technically this one is Flash 2) and I'm pretty sure my older brothers have best memories of him, I hardly remember Flash since I was very young at the time, but I think is a good exercise to mention all the pets that have been around me, in certain order of remembranc...

Day 35 One of the biggest lies I got while growing up was a very naive and stupid lie I've been told and circling back to it, maybe has something to do about my general feeling about nudity. Let me desglose it.  You see, for my whole 37 years of life, at home my parents have this huge oil painting of a naked woman and for whatever stupid reason when I was old enough and started asking questions, on of the main ones was : "Who is the lady in the painting on the stairs?"  Since we can't see her face, my brothers would always say: "yeah that's mom when she was a model" and I literally went with it for many years up to the point where I started to repeat the lie myself. I guess my parents found it funny or just too dumb to be corrected by them.   This oil painting was a creation of Sibin in 1997, a close friend of dad from his hometown.  The painting does have some darks stories but those stories will be for another time.

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 32 Looking back, one thing that I never really liked about my college years was how competitive the environment felt. I always had that feeling that everyone was on a race to be the very best and I didn't have that urge to overachieve or be the best of the class. I honestly wanted to be done with school, and don't get me wrong, I did enjoy my time there and met amazing people that until today still very close friends, and we did support each other yet the environment caused me a fair share of anxiety cause you never wanted to stay behind, drop a class, fail an exam, etc cause comments around will acuse you of a slacker or not good enough, or whatever nonsense kids would say then. Most wouldn't say that to your face, but you would hear how they refered to or talked about the "old" students at college and in part that had me lose a good amount of hair because I never wanted to become the "old" student who was simply not good enough. That said, and addi...

Day 24 Feeling a bit tired to write something but a friend gave me the great idea to use ChatGPT to write today's post and go from there.  I went into the SW, gave it a few directions and bam, read below: My second trip outside the Dominican Republic was a week-long Boy Scout camp at Guajataca in Puerto Rico. My father, who had the idea to go, had arranged for my brother and I to attend, even though we were not Boy Scouts. It was the summer of 1994, and I was only 9 years old. I was nervous and excited all at the same time. It was the first time I had ever been on a plane and the first time I had ever been away from my family for more than a few days. The camp was located in the middle of the jungle, but to our surprise, we didn't have to hike to get to the campsite. Instead, we arrived by bus. I had never seen anything like it before and I was in awe of the beauty around me. The sleeping arrangements were in a communal dormitory, but my brother and I didn't have any linens...

Day 22 I'm pretty sure my cousin Sandy will hate for this, but since the last few days many stories have been about my cousins in the barrio, I want to make sure this one in particular is not forgotten. "Back in the day", the neighborhood I grew up in was a very cool place for kids and young people to be around since there were many big number families around, and each with at least 2 kids per household there were the Barranco Arache (4 kids), the Soto Sanchez (4 kids), the Minaya Pimentel (3 kids), the Pichardo Taveras (3 kids), the Polanco Rosarios (4+ kids), there was even one, that they were so much that they were known as "los muchos" (the many ones), obviously mine (5 kids) and many others. There were people around for each generation of kids, there were many youngers, teenagers, young adults, and so on, but this particular story is not even from my generation but an older one, but I remember so clearly because:  My cousin used to get super mad about it. I...

Day 21 After thinking about what to write about today, many topics came through my head like my relationship with food or my love/hate relationship with working out, how bad I am at playing sports (but play them when I have to), my 2.5 years late IG post about my cats and how they have help me with stress, continue stories about travel or share some additional family drama, but going through social media I came across an interesting post by CAPCOM (the game developer) that today is the 25th Anniversary of Resident Evil 2.  As posted on Instagram You can bet that this entry will be about that particular game and how it changed my perspective of what a videogame could really be regarding storytelling, atmosphere and gameplay.  I have to give a little bit of background first though, as mentioned before, I'm a Nintendo fanboy at heart and by the fifth generation of gaming consoles, I definitely choose the Nintendo 64 over the PlayStation (PSX) and there were a few reasons why:...

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...