Omar On The Go

Day 82 Simple and concise.  A phrase I live by: - "Haz bien y no mires a quien" - Can be translated as "Do good and don't look at whom" but the idea is better explained in the saying "Do what's right, come what may". I can put thay into many different context in my life, but for me is mainly on how I treat people and how I would like them to treat me.   I'm not a firm believer in "Karma" but I'm almost convinced if people are a PoS, life will eventually catch up to them. Doing what's right sometimes may cause dilemma or some sort of conflict inside your head and in the real world, but, if you are doing what is right, then that's all that matters.  Some people may be appreciate it more than others though, so manage expectations accordingly.

Day 76 One of the weird things I do, is that I collect amiibos.  Some may know what it is, but for those who don't these are figurines made by Nintendo and their partners based on their IP as a part of a toy-to-life platform.  I knew from the get-go that I was not going to use the "toy-to-life" portion of them and mostly get them as collectibles. Initially, since I knew I was not going to use them as intended, I hesitated a lot to get any of it but as soon as they were released many of them were selling out really fast, and due to the news and also because I started to suffer from FOMO, I started collected them. These figurines were initially released in 2014 so basically, I've been collecting them for 9 years and well, lets just say that I have too many.  What initially started as a little joke, quickly became a big passion and every time a new amiibo is announced, I slowly but surely start to follow the news to put my preorder in time. The reason I'm bringing th...

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 67 Again, I purposely left the writing for the next day.  Last night, by 8:30PM I was lying in bed on an extended petting session with Taco and I finally disconnected from my phone no later than 9:30PM.  Went to bed extremely early (for my standards) and I was able to get a good night sleep which is great news. But anyways, switching topic a little bit, and it does have to do with technology and more specifically with social media and their algorithms on what information they feed you.   You see, I’m a big guy in general, big frame, very tall, etc. and food is one thing that I truly enjoy, that doesn’t mean I eat like crazy, on the contrary, I’m kind of mindful on what I eat/drink especially on week days, but nevertheless the whole idea is that I love eating and food. So I recently found myself watching funny little videos of food on IG and Facebook and what I “mistake” that was.   Now, all I get is food recipes left and right, and not of the healthy ones b...

Day 64 As mentioned on an earlier post, Sundays are regularly the days I tend to like the least in part because it is the end of the weekend, but also because lately (last few years actually) they have become very straightforward for me: wake up, feed the cats, grab breakfast/brunch, hit the town, maybe hangout with friends, go to the supermarket, and eventually watch some good tv at night.  That's a typical Sunday for me and the reason why I mention this, is simply because the "supermarket" part is the one I am having the biggest problem with. It all comes down to the relationship between "supermarket" and "the end of the weekend" and to put matters worse, going to the supermarket has been turning into a kind of annoying task but not for the reasons you may think.  You see, what annoys me are the people and not the task itself, and bear with me for a second to go a bit deeper. One thing that drives me nuts is when I'm looking for a parking spot, I...

Day 62 For the past few hmmm, months, a friend posted on Instagram something that I found, stupid, short but at the same time hilarious and I liked it so much that I started to follow the account and reposting everything the account does. Mind you, the posts are always on Fridays, and normally it summarizes my feelings at the end of a work week, especially when is a tough one like this one.  By now, my friends "hate" me because I'm always posting this account on my stories, but I do like to remind people that life is about being happy and making the best out of your time, hence the posts. It has gotten into a point were on Fridays some of them are asking me if I'm reposting the account and others want to kick my ass because of it. But without further ado, here is the account -  Ladies and Gentlemen, (@ladiesandgentlementheweekend) • Instagram photos and videos   And below the video that they always share: Have a great weekend everybody.

Day 61 A few posts ago I said I wanted to dive deeper into my favorite channels from YouTube, and I have many.  Channels that cover history, science, movies, music, news, gaming, technology, commentaries, some celebrities and a few YouTube personalities, all in all, 75 channels according to my list of subscriptions.  Some I go over them on a daily basis, some every now and then, and some others that I just follow because I want to support the creators. That said, I won't be going over the list today, but I will be going over though one of my favorite videos on YouTube ever.  As I said in previous posts, this week has been a bit hectic for me and not feeling a 100% due to many things happening at the moment, yet this one video ALWAYS makes me laugh.  And ever since I saw this video for the first time 12 years ago, I cannot stop remembering it. I should be a pathology by now, but I wish I could let it go to go to something better, but after watching funny videos, I alw...

Day 60 Basically 2 full months writing this blog.  I may fail now and then on posting on time, but the whole idea still stands.  For the last few days, I’ve been feeling like I’m drowning in a glass of water due to my mind racing with many things at the same time and not really having time to wind down, and then things keep happening that keep on adding to my anxiety, while at the same time, other things happened that calm me down a bit. But nevertheless, there’s a saying in Spanish that goes “al mal tiempo, buena cara” which roughly translates as “to bad weather, (put on) a good face”, and basically means that you have to keep a good attitude and fight the tough times, and thankfully that’s my whole attitude but I do have to accept that I’m no superman and that internally I may feel bad. Is not a sad feeling, or feeling down, is just more of anxiety and stress and well, I just need to go through it.  The thing is that, just “stupid” things add to my stress level, for exa...

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 44 Languages, a sort of hobby for me.  Learning languages has not always been something I wanted to do, but as I saw myself surrounded by so many different people and cultures, I kind of took an interest in them.   Growing up in the Dominican Republic has, like everywhere else, its ups and downs.  In a city like Santo Domingo, which is the biggest and most important city of the country, the expats are almost non-existent, it would be very rare to meet someone who was not Dominican up to the point where if you were not from there, your nickname would be your country of origin.  Is a fairly common thing for us to do, and please note that we don't mean disrespect or any kind of ill sentiment, is just how we are and try to make things easier for us. While I lived there, for all the people I met, very few were not Dominican.  In school we had Liu, el chino or the Chinese, while technically he was actually Taiwanese, Irayda, a Peruvian Dominican, Werner who w...

Day 40 Money management, something I'm good at but at the same time causes me a lot of stress and is the base of some of my insecurities.  First, a little bit of background (and many topics will be mixed together but I'll try to focus on the money portion): growing up in my household and considering my family origins, money and financials was/is a topic of discussions with my parents and definitely a case study for future generations. A few things on the table though:  1- I never lacked anything that was a primary necessity: good education, plenty of books, food at home, a place to call home, etc.   2- I never had a regular allowance as some of my friends did, in the contrary, I almost always had to beg for some money. 3- Saving was ALWAYS encouraged, especially by dad and MORE importantly after I moved to Miami. 4- Financial discussions were rarely had in front of me, and investment knowledge (any investment knowledge) was rarely passed from my parents to me even...

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 38 Organization, one of my great strengths but also one of my biggest weaknesses and let me explain.  If for example I need to do multiple things: my task management skills I feel that are very in tune with the tasks at hand, and depending on the situation I would start with the easy ones all the way to the most difficult ones or vice versa and I think that, so far, it has worked fairly good for me. On the other hand, as a weakness, even though I'm very organized with tasks, and fairly disorganized with things and even though I try to keep my things (office, room, workspace, etc.) organized, I normally fail miserably. What I have learned though, is that at least once a week I try to pick/organize all the mess I might have around that means throwing away old papers, folding clean laundry, putting things away or back to their place, etc. but I also do this on my computer.  Most of the time it gets to a point where my desktop will look like a big mess, so at least once every ...

Day 37 I made again, a stupid mistake of not writing on time due to me being tired as hell.  This is the second time it happens and basically back-to-back to my first failure and now I’m a bit mad at myself for it.  I know this is a stupid project but nevertheless I expect it to be something I can do, every day for a whole year. You see, in the last few years, being engaged for a long time has been a struggle for me because I always find an excuse of something better out there, that’s why I take forever to finish a game and my backlog keeps growing, that’s why I start a book and leave it unfinished, that’s why I buy my art books and don’t touch it in forever and it is very frustrating to say the least. Yes, many times I try to do a lot of things at the same time: being efficient at work, read a book, play a game, go to CrossFit on the regular, study languages, write my blog, watch TV or a good movie, be socially active, etc. and the hours of the day are not enough for all of t...

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 31 Definitely a day of records, I was finally able to stick to my german classes via Duolingo and I have been on a 42 days streak and on a sirt of related note, I've been writing my blog for a full month today. To be honest, besides some very addictive and engaging videogames, in the last few years of my life its been really hard for me to stay focused for long on certain activities. Sometimes I lose interest, or I had some more important thing to do, or I was just simply lazy to continue, a feeling I still fight with (laziness) but honestly, these two activities really have me engaged mainly because I find them fun. I just wish I could be like this with other things like reading, an activity that is really hard for me to keep engaged with. But well, I think I may have found one (or two) !!!  The language topic is one that deserves a post or two in part because become a polyglot is a bit of a frustrated dream I slowly but surely want to achieve, but, that's a story for anot...

Day 29 In between meeting new family members (and realizing my family is way bigger than what I thought) I haven't been able to shake off a feeling of rage.  This is unrelated to my family, which I have plenty of stories to tell, but this is more related to either the goverment of my home country or its habitants, or maybe both. I've been between Santo Domingo and Enriquillo, Barahona which is about 235KM with a few more if we add the furthest destination I went to today: Bahía de las águilas (Eagles's Bay) and god damn, what a depressing site that along the way (the whole way) with the amount of contamination due to plastics and improvised community dumpsters which is depressing and infuriating at the same time. My country is beautiful, the people very nice and happy, my family has been a blast but dear lord, we are our very own enemies.  Dominican Republic has many great qualities but we honestly lack a wide understanding on how big of a problem we have in our hands.  I...

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 25 And just out of the blue Nintendo and Microsoft announced that Goldeneye 007 is dropping this Friday on Nintendo Switch Online and Xbox consoles, and I couldn't be happier or more excited for this re-release.  You see this game originally came out in 1997 and it was the game that proved many things back in the day like that First person shooters could actually work on consoles or that couch multiplayer was here to stay. After Mario Kart 64, Goldeneye 007 became the second-best and popular multiplayer on the Nintendo 64 and not only the multiplayer was magnificent, the single-player mode introduced and adapted many concepts in such a great way, that 26 years later, many FPS games still follow. Back then I was barely 12 years old, in my 3rd year at this new school I was in and that then I felt very weird.  I did not necessarily feel unwelcomed, but I did feel like I didn't fit in.  I was not part of the popular kids, I was not looking to be one either, I was a bit of...

Day 23 On my free time there are plenty of things I like to do, and watching TV (may that be for movies, shows, documentaries, etc) is one of them.  Last night, before watching the latest episode of The Last of Us, I realized that I besides that one show, I'm not really watching anything else at the moment. Looking for what to watch I came across what I thought it was the movie "12 Monkeys", a movie that, even though is an old film, I haven't watched so I decided to sit down and watch it, just to be surprised that it wasn't the movie, but a TV show based on the movie. The fact I have never watched 12 Monkeys made me think about a thing I've been doing for the past few recent years: watch old movies, may I have seen them before or not.  The 7th art (as we tend to call it back home) is one of those passions of mine but it was not a thing I was really encouraged to by my parents or siblings, and I have very few anecdotes related to going to the movies with either...