The best advice I have ever received

“There are 200 countries out there”

Is by far the best advice I have never received but wished I had. Well, actually I have received it later in life, but from myself. I wish it was it has been given to me by a family member, a friend or by an old Chinese wizard living in a remote location, but that wasn’t the case because the best advice comes from within. Because no one knows us better than we know ourselves.

Countless times when I was young, I felt like dying, I felt that my life had no purpose and everything was negative. Life was hard, people were cruel and I couldn’t see a way out of it. That was the time when I needed someone to come to me and tell me:

“So what? There are 200 countries out there, just start over elsewhere. And if that elsewhere doesn’t work just try again and keep trying until you make it. There are no 10 or 20, there are 200. That’s a really big number, the possibilities are endless, be realistic and understand you are not confined to the place where you were born, you are relatively free to live and travel anywhere you want.”

Realistically speaking there’s absolutely nothing that could prevent me to fly out of this country tonight and start a new life somewhere else tomorrow. The only constraints are of course those we make ourselves up. Excuses to keep feeling sorry for ourselves instead of taking action.

Near-death experiences

I shouldn’t be alive. I should have died a long time ago but somehow I didn’t. I just continued to exist while letting parts of me on the way here. My body continued functioning, a witness of the lost parts, like an insect which has lost some of its legs but still which continues to crawl with the hopes that nobody will notice he’s missing some parts of him (or her). The following is a list of some of my near-death experiences, the ones I can remember. In order to protect people’s privacy, I will refer to them only using their initials. I have no idea what is anyone supposed to do with this information after reading it, but I guess you’re already here so you might as well keep reading:

1. On the roofs.The first near-death experiences I can recall are when I was 11 years old in Argentina, F. and I used to climb to the rooftops of some really tall buildings and walking on the ledges for some reason. And many times we almost fell, but sometimes we also didn’t fall and that was the first time my timeline started branching out from the times I did fall off.
2. Under the bus.I was 13, in Argentina, I was on the bus, on a stormy afternoon and about to get down. Wearing flip-flops and carrying a big backpack with heavy school books. I pressed the button to let the driver know I wanted to get off, he opened the door and I slipped down the stairs, which were wet because of the heavy rain and ended up directly under the bus’s double wheels. Luckily a woman on the bus had seen me slip and shouted to the driver to stop, which he did, saving my life and giving me the scare of a lifetime. It was the second time my timelines split, leaving my death self behind and my former self somehow incomplete.
3. Off the balcony.
   16 years old, at home, alone. Everyone in my life was a bully, Things were bad. I sat on the edge of our 8th-floor window and was about to jump and end it all when someone knocked on the door. I got down and opened the door, didn’t jump.

4. Under the gun.17 years old, Rosario, Argentina. While I was riding a bicycle with D., a guy hits him on his head, we fall off the bike and he points at us with his gun and robs us. In this timeline he didn’t shoot, so we are still alive but in a different timeline we are dead.

5. Hitchhiking.While hitchhiking alone somewhere in Germany, in the year 2007, I knew a car wanted to run me over because its driver didn’t like hitchhikers. It charged towards me and I somehow managed to jump to the side and avoid it. As it drove away, it sounded its horn maniacally in the same way people used to shoot their revolvers while riding away on their horses in the wild wild west.

6. Cliffhanger.In Pakistan, the year was 2008, with K. we were on a hiking trail along a mountain that had a missing part and for some reason we decided to try and grab our way to the other side, leaving me hanging from 1000 meters high without any equipment.

7. Bike.
   In Malaysia, 2013 maybe, with S. I was riding my motorbike on the highway and carrying about 5 liters of extra petrol because we were going to an isolated area when a car blocks my way and forces me to drive on a patch of spilled sand on the highway. I lose control, we fell off the bike, roll on the pavement, and witness the gas tank rolling next to me and a truck almost running me over. The tank didn’t explode and the truck didn’t stop to see if we were ok.

8. Blades.
   2016, somewhere in either Santa Fe province in Argentina, walking with Bong Gu by the side of the highway. A sort of tractor with some very sharp blades to mow the land of cut the grass drives full speed and passes me by just a few centimeters away from my legs. The driver didn’t even bother to warn me he was coming with his blades.

9. A close call.
   Also in Argentina, somewhere in La Pampa during the same walking trip. The night was falling and we hid behind some bushes by the side of the road. A vehicle drives by and spots us while we were searching for the perfect place. Half an hour later, when it was almost pitch dark, the car comes back and they come hunting for us with flashlights. We remain hidden and motionless, hearing them talking about what they would do to us if they found us. It was my call, I could have made a run for it when I had the chance or remain hidden and pray they don’t find us. I made the right call, and we are still alive.

10. 2017. With N. In Peru, a crazy guy was probably about to kill me but then something happened and he didn’t. Later that same year I fell off a cliff and landed on a cactus, and the next year, 2018, I was attacked by 100 bees and passed out and almost died, and this year I was almost dragged by the current in Bahia de Caraquez and pulled all my strength for a final desperation move where I ran as fast as I could against the current and somehow managed to make it back with my last breath. The End.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Confessions

I got this, I’m 34. I got this, I’ve gamed the game, I’ve cracked the code. I got this, I’m 34. I know what it’s like being an adult and I think I can now understand what life is all about, but still… I drink every day, because life’s too scary otherwise.

I want to give up, every single day I feel like I can’t take it anymore. I know I will die eventually, and that scares me more than it should. It scares me more than I dare to admit to myself.

2 years ago I decided I didn’t want to work anymore, and the last 18 months I’ve spent about 12 hours a day working hard every day creating ways to generate 10 different sources of passive income so that 2019 is the last year I need to work. I’ve spent 12 hours a day for 18 months learning new things, trying new methods, techniques, improving myself, and still, every night when I go to bed I imagine myself getting a heart attack or a seizure of some kind and ceasing to exist.  I imagine everything I’ve worked so hard for going to waste and I realized the countless hours I spent working have been for nothing because I haven’t enjoyed a single one of them. I want to read and write books every day, I don’t want to do the stupid amazon affiliate websites, or the stupid clickbank offers, or manage the FB groups, or send the Fiverr orders, or set up the proxies and bots, and the fb ads and write bullshit posts on some crapy PBN all so that I can rank some random s***, and that’s all stupid, and at the same time it’s the only way I can somehow build a future for myself in the one I can be financially independent.

And once I’m financially independent then I still have to deal with all the underlying mental problems I’ve been carrying with me for a good 20 years already. I’m a teacher pretending to be an author pretending to be a graphic designer pretending to be a marketing expert pretending to be a translator pretending to be an advertiser pretending to be a salesman pretending to be a hacker pretending to be a teacher, but then I look at myself in the mirror and I see nothing and no one, I just see someone who would die soon and become dust just like everyone else. I see a guy who had faked it till he made it, and once he made it he faked it even more because faking it had become a lifestyle in and of itself. I had realized everything is fake and everyone is fake and life makes no sense and there’s no meaning to it all, it’s all just random, pointless rubbish, at least 80% of the things I spend my time on every day are stupid and meaningless. 

And everything’s a game that makes no sense and people are crazy and the world is a scary place and I look at myself in the mirror and I tell myself “you’ve got this, you can do this” when I’m actually scared to death of the world around me. And I listen to k-pop every day because it’s the only thing helping me balance the horrors I’ve seen throughout my life. And what it truly means to be aware of oneself.

In my 20’s I thought it’s all about experiences, I have to do and see as many things as I can before it’s too late, it’s all about traveling and learning. And now in my 30’s I think, it’s not about experiences anymore, its all about doing whatever I need to do to get me through the day, it’s all about surviving today and somehow avoiding getting crushed by the enormous existential weight of being alive.

And I know that someone I know is crying right now, and someone loves me and someone hates me, and someone very far away is singing a very cute and lovely song. And I know my dog is dreaming of me and I know millions of animals are slaughtered every second because people are cruel and horrible, and I know I don’t want to live on this planet anymore and I’m ashamed of belonging to the human race, and this is me, and these are my confessions. I’m writing this in a small fishing village in Ecuador and you’re reading this in a country very far away from Ecuador but you still somehow manage to relate to some of the things you read here and maybe even feel a bit sorry for the author of this post.

And deep inside me I know I’m the real thing and I know I shouldn’t be forced to play the “fake it” game, but I am, and I look stupid playing it and I know it. And I also know that’s just the name of the game my generation has been forced to play, we are all “influencers” and we are all begging for attention and fighting each other for a piece of the pie. The thing is, the pie is not big enough for everyone, so it’s a cutthroat business for those of us who make money online. The pie is too small and people have very sharp knives and it’s not even a pie, it’s a cake, and the cake it’s a lie.

And I’d like to order a big cappuccino and sit in front of you at a coffee shop downtown on a Tuesday afternoon. And I’d like you to tell me that I’ve made it, that this is it, that I can relax now because it won’t get any better than this. And I’ll secretly smile, take a deep breath, look at my hands to make sure I’m not dreaming, then look at you deep in the eyes and take a sip of the drink I was carrying in my jacket’s inside pocket instead of the cappuccino, because life is still too scary otherwise.

Why I ditched veganism

A short essay about why I ditched veganism:

I was vegan from 2005 till 2014, then I ditched it and these are the 5 reasons why.

1st reason: Stress: Yes, stress is the silent killer and people are awesome at giving stress or causing some problems and inconveniences to others. No, it’s not hard to find protein, what’s hard is to find the patience to deal with the million assholes who ask you where do you find protein. The difficult part of being vegan is not finding vegan food, is having to defend yourself from all the people who attack you for being vegan, or get defensive whenever they hear the word vegan, and they feel they have to defend their food choices, while actually I never actually gave a damn about what other people ate, I was vegan because I wanted to, because I had chosen to, and never cared what others ate. But still, people felt the need to attack me because I ate something different than them.

And yes, I was healthy, I didn’t feel sick not even once in 9 years, and I never needed to go to the doctor because of being vegan, I had to go to the doctor because I was living a reckless life and having heaps of accidents but not because of being vegan.

And people are insecure and they need validation, they need you  to validate their life choices and food choices, they won’t accept the fact that you have chosen to eat something different than them, they will want to talk about it, A LOT, and ask you  many questions and judge you and attack you for no good reason besides the fact that you have chosen to eat something different than them.

2nd reason: Freeganism: Yes, veganism is the solution to all the world’s problems, except that no, it totally isn’t, freeganism is! Because even if we were all vegan, our society is still structured so that, for whatever reason, we will waste 50% of the food that is produced, be it vegan or not vegan, that food will still be thrown away if it reaches its expiration date, if the packaging gets damaged during its transport, because someone didn’t finish their meal or whatever other crazy reason. 

Freeganism means eating or using whatever has already been discarded by society and that’s the real solution to all our problems. Because vegan food that is made especially for you to eat, takes heaps of resources to produce, pack and transport and that would all be saved if you ate whatever had already been discarded by society, whether it was an animal product or not. You won’t be raising the demand by eating from the bin, because it had been already thrown away anyway, so no one would be able to buy it anyway.

3rd reason: Star Trek: This is one is a strange reason, but one I feel deeply identified with. By understanding and acknowledging the fact that other animals also feel pain when they are killed, you actually belong to the 1% of people who are empathetic enough to understand that there are other sentient beings on this planet, besides themselves and that animals are not a commodity, but they are sentient beings who are scared and want to live, and don’t want to be chopped into little pieces and sold just for your pleasure.

So, the fact that I was able to understand that, it actually made me feel as if I were beyond my time, as a Star Trek character, following their prime directive:

As the right of each sentient species to live in accordance with its normal cultural evolution is considered sacred, no Starfleet personnel may interfere with the normal and healthy development of alien life and culture. Such interference includes introducing superior knowledge, strength, or technology to a world whose society is incapable of handling such advantages wisely. Starfleet personnel may not violate this Prime Directive, even to save their lives and/or their ship, unless they are acting to right an earlier violation or an accidental contamination of said culture. This directive takes precedence over any and all other considerations, and carries with it the highest moral obligation.

And it made me adopt their prime directive as a philosophy for life. A philosophy to avoid getting crazy dealing with all the people who want to judge you for having chosen something different than them or for being way ahead of your time from at least an ethical point of view. And yes, I know society is like this and we shouldn’t question it, and yes I know, traditions, customs, politics, religions, economy, everyone says you should eat meat because they have their own agendas and they all benefit from you eating meat. You will get cancer and get sick more often so the doctors or insurance companies will make more money. A single hamburger is the equivalent water consumption to leaving the shower running for 2 months, so some water company will benefit from you eating meat and all the grains that are fed to cows are enough to feed the entire African continent, and I am sure many rich people benefit from poor people dying or staying poor. And I’m sure many poor people benefit from other poor people dying because they save themselves the hassle of having to think for themselves or having to questions the system. Being obedient is easy, while going against the stream means you need to face those who have chosen to be obedient to avoid having to think. Because thinking means having to accept the fact that we are going to die a meaningless life and that we are no more than insignificant specs of dust in the vast cosmic ocean. So doing, thinking, saying and eating what is socially accepted will relieve me of the pain and stress of having to confront and be confronted by every single obedient sheep everytime I go to a freakign restaurant or get invited for dinner somewhere. 

Reason 4: Other vegans. If you are vegan you not only have to be against the meat eaters but also against other vegans, who are always trying to make you feel bad.

Meat eaters try to make you feel bad for not eating meat and vegans will try to make you feel bad for not being as vegan as they are. And they are snobby and usually well off, and I’m poor and usually homeless, and they don’t understand that when you don’t have money to buy special vegan food you need to eat whatever people give you or you can forage. But still they will try to make you feel guilty for agreeing with them only 99% instead of 100% and that all ads up until one day you find that you have ran out of patience to defend your life choices in front of both meat and non-meat eaters.

And it doesn’t stop there, some vegans will also attack you if you don’t read books from vegan authors, you don’t watch vegan movies or documentaries, or stupid things like that, and they won understand I found this pair of leather boots were a gift from someone who didn’t use them anymore, and didn’t pay for them so I’m not increasing the demand for it, the rabbit was already dead by the side of the road and I didn’t contribute in any way to it’s suffering or dead.

Reason 5: Powerlessness, I truly don’t believe the actions of a single individual can make a change in the big picture. And I believe life is too short for having to spend time arguing with people, and the universe is too big for any of our arguments or choices to matter. 

I know I will die soon, that’s why I chose to spend my last years on this planet doing only the things I like, which are: reading, writing and exercising. And they certainly don’t include having to defend myself at every meal. 

And yes, I do eat meat sometimes, especially when invited to eat at someone’s place, I just don’t buy it or pay for it, and yes it stills grosses me out, and I still think it’s disgusting, and I would never eat it if there was another choice.

And yes, I do eat cheese or ice cream sometimes, and yes I think it’s disgusting and I imagine the pain the cows have to go through while being impregnated and having their babies taken away and killed in front of them but I still do it because I know I’m a terrible human being.

And yes, I do eat the road kill sometimes because I don’t want it to go to waste, I skin it and take the guts out and cook it, and I do eat the meat from the bin that the supermarkets have thrown away, and yes, I do eat the leftovers from the restaurants’ tables and I do whatever I can to avoid the need of having something produced only for me to eat it or use it.

And no, I don’t have all the answers, and no, I don’t know if I do the right thing, and no, I don’t know anything better so far. And no, I’m not a politician or a billionaire and my life choices will have no effect whatsoever in the big picture, and no I don’t feel guilty for being morally superior and not doing anything about with it.

And yes, I still don’t get sick and haven’t been to a doctor in 15 years and I still can run a full 42k marathon without breaking a sweat and no, it doesn’t have anything to do with my diet, it’s because I run and train everyday, and yes I can still do 50 pushups in a row, that’s 49 more pull-ups then everyone else I know, and no it’s not because I favor soy burgers over beef burgers, it’s because I train hard every day.

And yes, I do still care for the animals and the environment, just not as much as I cared about it in my 20’s when I felt I could be the change I wanted to see in the world and I felt that my choices could make a difference.

Persona

Besides being the name of best video game franchise ever, the persona, for Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, was the social face the individual presented to the world—”a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and on the other to conceal the true nature of the individual.”

This will be a very a very personal post, in the one I will attempt in the form of a list, to deconstruct my mind and uncover what lies beyond the surface to maybe discover who I really am. With the help of Mr. Carl Jung and information from some INTP forums, I have compiled a list of personal traits, habits and thought processes that I (maybe mistakenly) associate and identify myself with, so that then, maybe, I can understand why I wear those masks and what hides behind them. I need to learn what does it mean to be me, why am I me and what makes me me.

• I can be best friends with someone for over a decade and still not feel any kind of emotional connection because I shun emotions and feelings.
• I know a lot about many things and have a wide range of interests, that makes people connect with me in many ways but I very rarely connect with them because I understand not all people need the same things, some need to connect with others and some don’t. I don’t. Even though others try hard and convince me that I do because we are all the same, I still can’t be convinced and I believe the reason they say that is to avoid having to think about life deeply because that would imply admitting that they will die and cease to exist together with all those emotional connections they made.
• I can’t be bothered to proofread before submitting something because I don’t care about the details as long as I am able to communicate the main point. I also never read the instructions because I think we learn by doing, not by reading how to do.
• I have hundreds of websites bookmarked to read later and I know I will never get down to it because something new is always more interesting and every time I get a new computer I create new bookmarks that are then lost in space whenever I lose access to that computer or phone, and so it has been more than 14 years of it, bookmarking things and then losing access to them.
• Most of the ideas I have, never get to see the light of day because I’m too scared of failure and the projects I do start are either abandoned out of boredom when I manage to solve the tricky part or find something more interesting, or they are self-sabotaged because I am not only afraid of failure, but also of succeeding, like a dog chasing a car, he just wants to chase it but he doesn’t know what would he do if he got to catch it.
• I like something in theory but I’m disappointed by the reality of it. Because everything sounds better in my head. I want to be with you because I like the idea of being with you, but I don’t really want to be with you because that would involve an emotional commitment as well as monetary and time-wise that I can’t afford to undertake.
• I have a list of things I have to do every day and they never get done, and things keep getting added up to it until there’s no more space because the day has very few hours, and I have a list of books to read that will never  be read because they are too long and life is too short.
• I am a theorist and I know I could solve all the problems in the world, but just in theory. Because of my lifestyle, I got the chance of living and traveling in many countries and got to see how different countries solved different social, economic and environmental issues, so it would take me only a few weeks to compile a manual called “How to solve all the problems in the world” and publish it and promote it myself and I have actually already planned the whole book in my head, it will have 100 chapters because 100 is a neat round number, with chapter 1 being called for example ‘transportation’ and documenting which countries have good transportation systems, and how they do it and which ones have a terrible one and why. Chapter 2 could be called ‘housing’, 3 ‘education’, 4 ‘energy’, 5 ‘health’ and so on. But I can’t be bothered doing that because the thought of writing the book, in theory, is more appealing than the practice of writing it, so why should I do it if I can already imagine what it would be like? And also everything sounds better in my head, but when I try to put something into words disaster strikes, and another reason I don’t write it is because I somehow think things are good enough because there are no rivers of blood flowing outside my house then things are not too bad yet. And then there’s the fact that I think faster than I type, so by the time I finish a paragraph I already forgot about what the next one was supposed to be about and there is also the fact that I have a lot of confidence and no confidence at all, all at the same time, so that my confidence and lack of confidence conflict while writing something, just like they do right now.
• Small talk not only bores me but it’s actually insulting. For me it means people don’t value my time, because anyone who knows me, knows I have a full-time job as a teacher, and I’m also writing and editing every day, and I’m still running 100 instagram accounts, and doing SEO and still need to find time to meditate and read and exercise and look after my dog and there’s always a million things on my to-do list so anyone who has the need to make small talk they are actually taking away some of the precious time I have so little of, and forcing me to spend it in something I don’t enjoy and don’t get any benefit from, which is making small talk.

 

And now that the list is finished, here’s a fact: “We tend to exaggerate our good qualities and project who we want to be rather than who we are onto our answers” and now there’s another fact: “I tend to question everything and I don’t even believe a thought I think, because I suspect myself of being secretly biased towards something”. So what should I do with the above information? Take it at face value or keep digging and digging trying to come closer to the truth only to realize later that there’s no truth. I think therefore I am, and I question my thoughts because I think and I don’t trust them, because I know how fragile and malleable human minds are, including mine.

And the next point is that I believe that the reason I question myself is to feel special, to feel different, because I believe most people don’t really stop to question their thoughts or actions, they just wake up and go about their habits every day until they die. So in that sense, if I question it means I’m different, and that would be ok if I were to stop there instead of questioning the reason why I question myself. And if that wasn’t enough, I can’t avoid questioning the reason why I question questioning myself, only to find that it wasn’t so that I could feel special and different but it was so that I could try to find a meaning to it all. To my thoughts, to my life, to the universe, thinking that maybe if I keep digging deeper and deeper I will find the answers I’m looking for. Except that there are no answers, not for me and not for anyone. I have created the questions and then got puzzled because there were no answers to the questions I had invented, which were not real in the first place, because what we call reality is probably an illusion, and if it isn’t then at least my thoughts and ideas are most probably an illusion and in the remote case they aren’t they are still meaningless. The fact that they are real doesn’t guarantee they have any meaning or value, they are just thoughts and ideas, theories and conjectures, that creep in uninvited.

To go a bit deeper, and now assuming that my thoughts are somehow real, I must go on and admit that whatever I think, do and say is a consequence of what we call causality and conditioning. We are all conditioned by our environment, by our thoughts, by our upbringing, by our level of awareness, by our education, by our experiences, by the way in that we see the world, by the way we see ourselves and by some other variables. And once I start to understand how conditioning really works, I can see past this “everything’s either an illusion or meaningless” mentality and I can understand who I really am and why I am trying to understand myself. Only to realize there never was such a thing as ‘myself’ to begin with. And there never was an answer to who I am or why am I the way I am, because there never was an ‘I’ to begin with.

It’s the idea of the non-self. There is nothing inside us besides those things that are a product of causes and conditions. And that’s as far as I’m willing to go, today at least.

 

 

 

 

 

My 5 dark thoughts

 

Thought number 1 and also my unpopular opinion is that it’s not fair that football players earn millions while there are people starving on the street right now. It’s something sad, not something to be celebrated. Is something to be angry about. I understand the government needs to distract people somehow so that they don’t complain about the fact that the society is being poorly managed and the resources poorly administrated, I also understand that football is a way to support capitalism and everything that it represents, as it moves billions and helps maintan the status quo, I understand we need to be entertained and distracted, because we are stupid and gullible, but still I can’t wrap my head around the fact that our society idolizes football players with all their violent behaviour, theatrical diving, faking, exaggerating and always trying to get an unfair advantage over the other players, while the real heroes like the teachers, doctors, scientist and people who actually contribute in some way to society are underpaid, overworked and overlooked. And even though I grew up in Argentina, I am probably the only Argentinian person who thinks there is something very wrong with Mr. Messi earning 3 million Euros a month while people in Buenos Aires, Rosario, Cordoba, Salta, Jujuy, Misiones, and many parts of Argentina are living in the street and have no food to eat.

Thought number 2 comes due to the fact that I will cross the Ecuador/Colombian border tomorrow and the fear of the unknown creeps in. Because going to a new country for the first time is always scary, especially in South America where many people have guns and are crazy. And I know I’m also crazy and I grew up in the murder capital of Argentina (Rosario). I always get the feeling everyone around me is not living in the moment but they act out of habit. And whenever I think of the unknown I ask myself, what is life? why are we living? is life worth living? am I different or the same as everyone else? Fear leads me to question myself and my life, and that’s scary.

Thought number 3 comes from seeing the people wait in line for 8 to 10 hours to get a stamp when they cross the Colombian border into Ecuador or vice-versa, with babies, and lots of bags. I can’t help but think that the whole process should be automated with machines on the border or it should be done online in 5 minutes, but of course, it’s also my unpopular opinion to think we should use technology to make people’s life easier and not otherwise.

Thought number 4 appears everytime someone asks me for money, especially on the street or when we are having a meal at a restaurant. At least every day someone will ask me for money here in Colombia and they look at you deep in the eyes and you say no 10 times and they keep pushing and pushing, they don’t give up easily, and I try to be polite and say I don’t have, but the truth is that I hate them for making me feel that way, because the only reason they ask me is because I am a foreigner and they think foreigners have money but the truth is I have like 500 dollars in my bank account and then that’s it. Everyone else around me has way more money than me, they have cars, houses, savings, families who support them, etc. I have met thousands of people during my trips but no one as poor as me. And I know I shouldn’t hate them for judging a book by its cover, but it’s not only that, I hate them for asking other people for money, because I think the government is the one who should be looking after people and I don’t think people should be ok with the fact that the government is not providing them with food and shelter and health care and education, I think they should be angry and start a revolution. There are hundreds of people living in the streets of Bogota and none of them are mad at the government for it, they are robbing and killing civilians instead. They think it’s better to rob and kill other poor people instead of taking it with the ones who are responsible for their misery, they will get on the busses with guns and knives and rob the passengers of the bus who are also poor people who are just going to work, going to work for pennies, because people here earn 1usd an hour and still they have to deal with the homeless coming into the bus with knives to kill them, and all because the government is not doing their job properly, and instead of complaining people will watch football or some silly thing and I’m very mad about it.

Thought number 5 is a compilation of the previous thoughts plus the fact that our life is no different than that of an animal of a plant in the sense that our lives are short and we are doing the best we can to thrive in our environment. So it probably doesn’t matter if people are smart or stupid, if they watch football or read a book, if they are rich or poor, if they kill or get killed, that’s life, that’s nature. It’s all the same in the end because we will all die a meaningless death. And that leads me to think it’s also ok for the government not to do their job properly, it’s ok that they pollute the air and the oceans, it’s ok that they torture, abuse and slaughter 56 billion farm animals every year for food when they know we could all be much happier and healthier eating vegetarian food, and I think it’s ok that in the US alone there are 5 empty houses for every homeless person, so every homeless could have 5 houses. People are exploited and abused everywhere I look because life is no more than a collection of systems designed to exploit one group of people or another. And even though they had the intellect and the means and resources to solve all the problems of the world a while ago, they probably also know that they will die in the end no matter what they do. If they are homeless living in the street or if they are the ones responsible for the misfortune of others, in the end, it won’t matter, so there’s no point doing anything or worrying about anything. And that’s what keeps me going, the fact that my existence is meaningless and that there’s nothing I could do change anything.

 

 

 

My personal road to entrepreneurship

In the last post, I talked about the details of how I got my books published, in this one I will talk about the road that took me there.

My first “business venture” was in Berlin in the year 2007. It was really difficult to get a job there without speaking perfect German, so a friend and I set to collect empty bottles from the parks and what not, it was something like 20 cents for every bottle we returned to the shop, so it was enough to get by, then with another friend we set to collect and recycle abandoned bikes, when they were rideable again, we would sell them for about 20 euros a piece, not great, but enough to get by on.

After that, I took some farm jobs and teaching jobs for a few years, so there was not much risk involved, then I moved to Taiwan and started selling bicycles again, fixing them and reselling them on craigslist. Then I somehow got addicted to online poker and ended up losing a lot of money in pokerstars and partypoker. Ok, not a lot of money, but more than I was able to afford at that time. Most days I broke even, but that actually meant I had wasted 10 hours a day playing for nothing. So that was kind of my third failed attempt at entrepreneurship. By that time I still didn’t know how to succeed but I knew why I wanted to succeed and why I wanted to work for myself, it had nothing to do with capitalism, being a wage slave or having more time, money or freedom. I wanted to work independently because I had found that personal relationships were a source of conflict an I wasn’t capable of dealing with conflict in the way other people are. Really, I couldn’t even answer some simple questions like ‘how are you?’, if someone asked me that I just wanted to know in which sense did they mean it, so that I could give them a concrete answer. If someone complimented me I thought they had some ulterior motives and if someone wanted to become closer to me, I rejected them because I couldn’t deal with the burden of having to deal with someone else’s emotions.

Then some years passed and I got hired by a school in China and then got neglected by them, like, once I moved into a new city because they said they had a school there, it ended up being that the school didn’t have enough students or classes, but they had already given me the working visa and I had already found an apartment in that city, so I was supposed to stay there (oh, btw the city was Anning).

Because I was already there, had a place to live and didn’t need to worry about the visa for a while, my only option was private teaching, so I printed some business cards and went all around the city handing them over, it all ended well and I was able to make ends meet working just 3 or 4 hours a week.

A year later, I flew from Kunming to Argentina and started our walking trip with Bong Gu, in the one I sold some pictures of our trip just to make some pocket money. Then we arrived in  EL Calafate and tried to start my own school, and then failed, all the students would cancel at the last minute, I would often get stood up, and many took the classes but in the end didn’t want to pay for them, they just said they would pay tomorrow but tomorrow never came. So then I ended up getting a job at a hotel so that I could have a stable income.

After that, we came from Argentina to Colombia overland, passing through Bolivia and Peru and trying to write every day while we were traveling. That’s how I finished my books and published them, and didn’t make any money out of them but that was ok, because I had never intended to in the first place, it was just something I needed to do for myself. I had the need to tell my story.

While I was writing my books, I got a job as a freelance ghost-writer for a company in Medellin, which name I’ve forgotten, and that was one of the most stressful jobs I had in my life, not because of the job, the writing was ok, but because they used this really horrible time-tracking software called hubstaff that records every activity you do on the computer and takes screenshots of it, records mouse and keyboard activity, so lets say you stopped typing for a minute and were thinking about what to write or about how to phrase something you had on your mind or about what would be the best way to rewrite something, the software didn’t know you were thinking about work, it thought you were lazing around, so you can imagine how that ended for me. Not that I was doing anything wrong in the computer, it was just the feeling of being watched and judged, the pressure to know someone didn’t trust me, like when you leave a shop or a supermarket and you have to walk through the metal detectors, you usually feel threatened and judged even though you didn’t steal anything, or maybe you did, but you know what I mean.

After that, I got a job as an interpreter at a local trade fair for a week, for an Indian company. The money was pretty bad because I got hired by a translation company instead of being hired directly by the client, so the company took 80% and gave the translators 20%. The job was sweet though, so when it ended, I went to the website of the company who organized the fair and checked all the companies that would be coming to Bogota on the next few months and emailed all of them to offer my services. None of them replied, so that was another failure for me.

After that, I started teaching English online to Chinese kids through a company called Waijiaoiyi but it was pretty terrible, the bureaucracy was exhaustive, the pay was bad and the teachers were treated poorly. That’s where I learned online teaching is great, as long as you find your own students and don’t need to depend on any company. So that’s how I started spamming craiglist, Rype and wyzant for a few weeks until I got some regular students, 6 of them which have already been my students for 5 months.

But still, I knew if I ever wanted to achieve financial freedom, teaching was not the way to go, so during the next few months (and up till now) I invested every cent I made teaching online into figuring out ways to generate passive income.

Because I had already used Fiverr as a buyer for the design and editing of my books, I decided to give it a chance as a seller, so I created some gigs and published them, thinking I could make some easy money, in the end, no one bought my gigs so I didn’t make any money, but it was worth a shot. 

My next idea was to try and promote my books on my own, so I first started by creating different ads in canva and running them on FB, IG and google ads, it was all waste of money and I didn’t sell any books but I did learn a lot, so then I tried to combined all the knowledge I had on poker plus the one I had on FB ads and try to resell poker books and I also failed, but I was ready for my next adventure: dropshipping.

I watched every youtube video on the subject for a few weeks and bought many courses (courses which I then also tried to resell , and failed, and got banned on reddit in the process). I learned about dropshipping every day, 10 hours a day and then I opened my own shoppify store selling travel gear, which I can’t link to because I also failed at that and closed it a month later.

So it had been 8 months in Colombia trying and testing ideas but none of them really worked, that’s when I discovered a website called black hat world. 

There I found lots of opportunities for people like me, who don’t really like going outside and socializing but still need to make a living somehow. Lots of opportunities for people who don’t have a permanent place of residency so they need a job that they can do from anywhere. I started reading on and on in forums trying to find something I could be good at and finally decided to settle for Instagram CPA marketing, because I had already been using the platform for a few years and was confortable enough to try and escalate on it. 

While trying to grow my own IG account I had many times tried to contact members to collaborate, make friends or exchange shoutouts, and that’s when I noticed 99% of those messages went unread and I later learned at least half of all IG accounts are automated that’s why no one had read my messages, they were botting and had many accounts on autopilot. I had always been good with computers, so I thought I could do that too.

I didn’t want to spend much money to start because I didn’t know if I could pull it off, so at first I decided to try using a free bot called instapy and I failed, every day I got some different error that I didn’t know how to fix so I then decided to pay for a bot, and after countless hours trying to find the best bot, I found that the best one is called Jarvee, but it’s also the most expensive one, so I couldn’t really afford it and I ended up settling for Instadub which is the second best, it has the best customer service, and it’s also the cheapest one, because they charge a one time fee instead of a monthly one, and as I was planning to be in this for the long term that would make a huge difference. Then I needed some proxies to run my accounts on, I settled for proxymillion because their proxies were 3 times cheaper than the rest while still getting the job done, and then I needed a private server to run my bot and accounts on, after analyzing all the options I chose turnkey because they are 4 times cheaper than all the others and I am very poor, so it was really not much of a choice actually, I just chose all the cheapest companies.

Then I needed some accounts to run my CPA offers on, for that I found a private seller on BHW, he is from Russia, because all account sellers are from Russia. I bought 150 aged accounts from him, aged means at least a few years old, because the new ones get banned quickly. 

The next step was to set my CPA link, so I signed up for Max Bounty cpagrip, instazood ,IMonetizeIt  Peerfly   and ogads , because people in BHW said they are the best, so I started creating my content lockers and referral offers using their sites, I then bought some landing pages from a private seller in the forum and learnt how to make my own ones in blogger and wix. 

I used getsmscode to verify the accounts with phone numbers and mail.ru to verify their emails, and then I realized the accounts got banned quickly when I added the CPA link, so I decided to just grow accounts and try to sell them when they are above 10k followers or try and sell shoutouts, because it wasn’t worth the risk of buying them, setting them up, adding pictures, bio, photo, creating the offer and the LP for the CPA only to get the account banned as soon as I added the link to it.

Growing IG accounts is like growing little plants, every day some will get sick, or some insect or animal will come to eat them, someone will try to steal them or IG will kill them because it didn’t like something about them.

I had many of those ‘what am I doing in my life’ kind of moments while completing Russian captcha, the Chinese phone verifications and trying to keep up to date with all the changes IG makes to prevent people from doing something they don’t like.

Up to now, and after everything I’ve tried, I am still barely making it, just making enough to cover my expenses and surviving the day, but, to wrap this all up, what I learned from it all, was to embrace failure, every time I start something new, I start it thinking that I will fail, yes, maybe that’s why I end up failing, but that’s also how I manage not to get disappointed or depressed or feeling as a failure every time one of my projects fails, I was secretly expecting it to fail, because maybe I don’t consider myself worthy of success or maybe I started the projects out of curiosity but didn’t have the patience and dedication to see them through, or maybe the reason I fail is because I was meant to fail, so that I will learn the skills I need to embark on a new project after this one, only to abandon it out of boredom once I have figured out the tricky part and it becomes a darg.

And something else I learned is to not be afraid of investing in myself, I understand life is a game, society is another game and everything related to money and economy is just a game inside a game, inside another game we humans play to avoid facing the scary reality of knowing we are going to die and all of our memories and experiences will disappear. 

 

 

 

UPDATE: July 2018, I opened an Instagram services reselling website, for some reason.

About my books

First Book: 

 

Second Book:

 

 

About Ria:

She’s who I wish I were.

 

About Gwen:

She’s who I really am.

 

About Bruno and Bong Gu:

It all really happened.

 

 

About death:

There’s this recurrent, almost lingering theme that death is around us all, always. That’s how I always feel. Existence is scary. Even though I still manage to wake up every morning and pull myself together, being alive is terrifying and writing is a way to deal with it.

 

About ayahuasca: 

It all really happened.

 

About writing: 

Everything was written while on the road, sometimes I rented rooms for a few weeks, sometimes it was hotels, sometimes couchsurfer’s houses, buses, eateries and a few week-long boat rides in the Amazonas. 

 

About formatting: 

I tried scrivener and johto but neither worked very well for me, then I tried e-calibre and found it much easier and neat.

 

About book covers:

I chose my favorite scenes and send them to a professional artist from Fiverr together with an exact description of the characters and what I had in mind. The artist did a great job both times and then I sent them to someone else from Fiverr to give it color and then I added the book title and my name on Paint and used an online service to add pixels to it so that it would meet 1400 pixel criteria to be accepted into most publishing websites.

 

About promotions:

I used Canva and facebook ads for everything.

 

About finances:

I’m still a few hundred dollars down and didn’t even manage to break even but it was totally worth it and I would do it all over again anytime.

 

About motivation: 

I have never had a problem finding motivation because writing is my hobby, not my job, so I write when I want to and because I want to.

 

About music:

Some music I listen to while writing action scenes.

Some music I listen to while writing relaxing scenes.

Some music I listen to while writing dialogues.

Some music I listen to while writing about traveling.

 

About social media:

I’m only active on instagram, I seldom use facebook, have no twitter, and rely heavily on pinterest for inspiration and information.

 

About my lifestyle:

I teach English and Spanish online through Skype and that’s what pays for all the bills, living and travel expenses. In my free time, I dance, drink beer, eat pizza, play video games, read, and write at home.

 

 

To get to know myself better

1. What are my strengths? Imaginative, resourceful, smart.
2. What are my short-term goals? Build sources of passive income.
3. Long-term goals? Find peace of mind.
4. Who matters most to me? Bong Gu.
5. What do I like to do for fun? Writing fantasy stories.
6. What new activities am I interested in or willing to try? Skydiving.
7. What am I worried about? Wasting my time.
8. If I could have one wish, it would be: To have more time, or not being aware that my time to live is limited. 
9. Where do I feel safest? On the internet.
10. What is my proudest accomplishment? Traveling on foot with my dog.
11. What is my biggest failure? I did my best.
12. Am I a night owl or an early bird? I wake up early and go to bed early.
13. What do I like about my job? What do I dislike? I am an unemployed person.
14. What does my inner critic tell me? That whatever I do it will always be second best to what I could have done.
15. What do I do to show myself self-compassion and self-care? I understand that even if I made some mistakes, I was doing the best I could based on the resources, the circumstances and the information that was available to me at the time.
16. Am I an introvert or an extrovert? Am I energized being around others or being by myself? Need to be alone to recharge.
17. What am I passionate about? Finding answers and solutions to problems.
18. What is my happiest memory? I was floating in the ocean on the coast of Kerala, India. The sky above me was clear and there was nothing or no one else in the water or the beach. Time appeared to freeze as I found myself alone in the universe.
19. What do my dreams tell me? Nothing, they’re just dreams.
20. What is my favorite book? 1Q84
21. Band? The brilliant green.
22. Food? Falafel.
23. Color? Pink
24. Animal? Ants.
25. What am I grateful for? My mind and freedom.
26. When I’m feeling down I like to: Think everything will pass, even this.
27. I know I’m stressed when I: Start walking in circles around the room in an attempt to rationalize the situation and understand it so that I can calm myself down.
28. What activity in your life lights you up with joy? Playing with dog
29. If a relationship or job makes you unhappy, do you choose to stay or leave? I don’t choose to leave, because staying was never an option.
30. How does your being here in the universe change humanity for the better? It doesn’t really.
31. How comfortable are you with your own mortality? Pretty uncomfortable.
32. What is your highest core value? Freedom.
33. To your best knowledge, how do other people perceive you? Like someone whose train has long gone and there’s no way to return. 
34. How would you like others to perceive you? Like someone who is kind and lives a simple life.
35. Who is your greatest role model? Carl Sagan.
36. Who is a person that you don’t like yet you spend time with? I live a solitary life.
37. What is something that is true for you no matter what? I will die.
38. How do you feel about your parents? They are ok.
39. How is your relationship with money? Tumultuous.
40. How do you feel about growing old someday? Scared. 
41. What role has formal education played in your life and how do you feel about it? No role, I don’t really think about it.
42. Do you believe your destiny is pre-determined or in your hands to shape however you wish? In my hands.
43. What do you believe is the meaning of your life? There is no meaning.

For 2011’s Bruno

This letter is just for you. Bruno from 2011. That’s when you first decided to start writing right?

Well, there are some things you wish you had known back then, but you didn’t and no one told them to you, so I might as well say them now before it’s too late:

• You love writing in short sentences and listing items, so let’s do it that way.
• Writing is your dream, that much is clear, so you have to fight for your dreams, that much is clear as well.
• Writing is an art more than it is a science, so you have to be born with the talent, that’s where you have some kind of advantage. You love writing and that is the most important thing. For you it doesn’t feel like work, writing is what you do after work to unwind.
• Now that you know you were born for it all that is left is focus and dedication, picking up the habit to write is easy, just like any other habit, you do it every day at the same time for a while, after a few weeks it becomes a habit so you don’t think about it too much and just do it.
• This one is somehow important: DO NOT SECOND GUESS YOURSELF. Your writing isn’t perfect, well guess what, it never will be, nothing is perfect, but it’s good enough. No one really expects much from you anyway so just keep doing what you do because you love it, that is the best reason to do something. Maybe someone doesn’t like your writing, so what? You didn’t choose to be a writer because you wanted to please other people, you do it because it makes you feel good and because there are some things inside you that need to get out and this is the way for them to do it. Writing is the way to freedom in some way.
• So again, write because it makes you happy, not to please others. You will never be able to please others anyway, people, in general, are unpleasable, not that the word exists but you know what I mean.
• Through writing, you will learn a lot about yourself and that’s what’s all about in the end.
• Schubert is good music to write with, cafe del mar is good as well, sometimes kings of convenience will do, depending on the mood. Otherwise just google ‘music to write’, keep yourself inspired, keep learning, keep discovering new stuff, stay alive, stay present in the moment.
• If you ever feel like you’ve hit a wall just google ‘writing exercises’ or something like that to keep the blood flowing.
• Read as much as you write, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Asimov, Lem, Lovecraft, Murakami,  Kafka, just read whatever you can get your hands on to get more inspiration and experience.
• Tired of writing? Go pet the dog, do some housework, go for a 1okm run, edit some old writing, better yet edit someone else’s work, or translate them, you speak a bunch of languages, put them to use, grab a drink, sit in the park, walk the dog, stay alive, stay inspired.

List of countries

Oh, sorry i forgot t tell you, we don’t use fighting anymore

Why not?

I don’t know, people just stop using some words and phrases over time so that new ones can take their place.

Can I still use ftw.

I don’t think so, they wouldn’t know what you mean.

Kind of like quoting Monty Phyton?

Yeah, something like that, wait, how long have you been off the internet?

I don’t know, a few years, I remember when I was using it last time people were making fun of Justin Biever a lot, I didn’t know who he was, but his name kept popping up, so I looked up a song and it was somehow catchy ‘one less lonely girl’ do you know it?

I don’t think I do, and I don’t think they are making fun of him anymore. I think he may be an adult now.

Can I say call me maybe?

I’m not sure.

Oh yeah, I got that list you asked for the other day.

Which one?

List of countries you’ve been to.

Oh yeah.

I realized it wouldn’t be possible to check out the passports because I had to take out too many stamps over the years to make space for new ones, and threw them away. That’s how I managed to run out pages last year for the first time, and also it’d be kind of a show off to list every single country, the exact number it’s something people should keep to themselves, something private, kind of like the number of sexual partners they had.

Well, actually saying you won’t do something because you’d be showing off, sounds like an even worse way of showing off, but anyway you’ve got a point and it’s somehow interesting so keep going.

So I figured the easiest way would it be to list the countries I spent more than 6 months at or in (I’m not sure which one to use, at or in?)

Yeah, that makes sense, no one cares about a place you just spent a few weeks at (or is it in?), many people travel for a few days or weeks.

Exactly, well anyway, I figured I should make one every 10 years, it may probably also help people have some kind of chronological guide into all the previous posts, so here’s the list:

2005-buenos aires
2006-barcelona
2007-berlin
2008-india
2009- thailand-china
2010-china-japan
2011-australia-korea
2012-korea-taiwan
2013-new zealand
2014-china
2015-china-present

Nice, and now what?

Nothing I don’t know, oh wait, yes I know, now, here is the list for the next 10 years, it’s probably not going to go this way at all but if someone were to ask me to make a plan for the next 10 years from now, a plan I should stick up to no matter what, this one would be it.

2015-china
2016- travel in south america
2017-travel in central america
2018-canada
2019-italy
2020-iran
2021 travel in africa
2022-russia
2023-pacific islands
2024-japan
2025-korea

You are 30 now in 2015, so it seems like a good plan to make the list every 10 years that’s every decade of Bruno’s age.

Bruce’s age.

Right, Bruce’s age, so if you go to all those places in the next 10 years what about your dog?

That’s the reason I’m still in China because I love her too much and can’t leave her here by herself, I know if I ever leave China and have to say goodbye to her it will be the hardest thing I’d ever done.

I guess you’ll have to stay in China then.

That’s the only way.

Here’s when you point to the unfairness of Chinese political system and society, how all the countries are terrible because they don’t let you travel with your dog and China also doesn’t let you stay here forever so sooner or later you will have to say goodbye to her, you’re just postponing the inevitable.

My freedoms have been taken away a while ago by governments and their immigration policies, but I’m still better off than most people, I have a job and a salary at the end of the month, I have a nice cozy room with a bed to sleep at night, hot shower, plenty of food, people who understand me and accept me how I am and a dog who loves me unconditionally, what else could I ask for?

You could ask for internet.

I have internet.

Yes, you have a few Chinese websites that you have somehow manage how to operate but how about facebook, google, gmail, youtube, 4chan, cracked, you don’t miss them?

Of course I do, but they also took too much of my time. This holiday I climbed the mountain a few times, I went hiking, I played football with my students, I walked around the lake a few more times, I got to catch up with many people, I wrote here, I got to clean and look after all the turtles, hamsters and rabbits I have, spent time with dog I went out with my CS guests and had many beers with them and I still had some time left to play some games and read. If I had had internet I may not have done many of those things, so if I had to choose between Facebook or checking emails and my dog, I’d choose dog every single time. I know I have given up on all the people I have ever met in my life. Without gmail or facebook there’s no way to get in touch with them, but the dog’s still worth it, I’ll just meet new people in the future.

That’s actually very sweet, a side of you I hadn’t seen before and I didn’t know you had.

I didn’t know I had it either, anyway, looks like that’s it for today.

Yeah, it was fun, let’s do it more often.

Sure thing.

 

 

No waifu no laifu

Are you still into that anarchist thing?

Which one?

You know, that one with a weird german name.

Zeitgeist?

That one.

Well, many things have changed since we used to go to the zeitgeist meetings from our Australian chapter. I have I given up on the hopes of being part of a system based on the efficient use of resources and sustainable development instead of a money-based economic system. The answer would be no, I haven’t given up, I just happen to live in a communist country where people actually thinks it’s ok to be gunned down if they complain about their government.

You know they don’t get killed right away right? They get tortured and their organs are removed while they are still alive to sell them to the highest bidder.

I know that 60.000 falung gong people, Tibetans, Muslims, etc all killed because of their organs because Chinese government wants more and more money, they can’t get enough of it. Western countries criticize China all the time because of their human right abuse records but they fail to see that the Chinese government does it just for the money, because they have been brought up to believe money is their god. I don’t think I’m an anarchist for following the zeitgeist movement, nor am I an anarchist for believing our socioeconomic system is structurally corrupt and in need of replacement. I really truly believe in the function of a government that looks after people, it’s just that the ones we currently have are more into harvesting organs and thrashing down everything than into taking care of their people.

And because of a vague understanding of how childish it is to hate the governments and how immature am I in some of my political views, I actually admire the venus project people for being mature enough for not needing to place blame on any individual or group of individuals. They know politicians are merely a product of a socioeconomic system in need of change and they planned every single step of the transition process. While some of us are just complaining and looking for someone to take the blame for our problems, they are actually solving them, all of them.

And are you still into conspiracy theories?

That would depend on your definition of a conspiracy theorist.

If you think a conspiracy theorist is someone who believes our politicians are reptiles, they hide aliens and secret messages all around then no, I’m not a conspiracy theorist. If you think a conspiracy theorist is someone who believes rich, powerful people meet behind closed doors to talk about ways to stay rich or get more power then the answer would be yes. And in my eyes, any idea or “conspiracy” would be automatically dismissed as false once the paranormal has been introduced to it. Either the paranormal or the complicity of more than a few dozen people. So yes, it’s very probable that 10 or 20 people got together and planned to assassinate some politician or blow up some building so they would have an excuse to invade a country to take over their drugs or oil industries. But no, you wouldn’t get thousands of scientists to agree on a wrong concept, the more people need to be involved for it to work, the higher the chances of the conspiracy not working.

Ok, so you believe only in conspiracies that don’t have supernatural points to it, that have less than a few dozen people on it and that involves the government doing something bad to the people because you hate the governments and you love the people, especially the underprivileged ones, right?

Well, when you say it like that…

In other words, you would accept a conspiracy theory to be true only if it helps you prove your point that governments are evil. If it doesn’t do good to your agenda, you would dismiss it. Or if they include something you don’t want to believe in, like the paranormal.

It’s not that I don’t want to believe…

Now that we are somehow in the realm of the unexplained, I heard you have been keeping a dream journal this year, is that right?

Out of curiosity mostly.

Because you read that article about lucid dreams, and you decided to do what they say and see if it’s true?

Yes, but just out of curiosity, there’s not much research done about it, and I have to dream anyway every night, so an inquisitive mind would try experimenting with it. Keeping a journal, doing reality checks to make sure I’m awake, if it doesn’t work at least it may help with my overall awareness of my place in this vast cosmic ocean.

Either that or you want to learn it so you can gang bang some Russian midgets or something.

What? No…

Bang some aliens?

That’s just sick!

Bang some character from an anime or video game?

That would be quite cool actually

Spot on!

No no, I mean that just sounds better than aliens or midgets but it doesn’t mean I would like to do it. I wouldn’t want my readers to think I’m weird or creepy, right?

It’s a bit late for that, they know you are weird and creepy because they have been reading you for a few years.

But I wouldn’t want to make it worse.

You just did.

I don’t get it, why do we have to bang something in the first place? Where did that come from?

I don’t know, we are sexual beings?

Are we? Or we chose to be so? Or we believe we are so? Are all animals sexual beings because they have sex or reproduce? How about plants? Or bacteria?

Bacteria are asexual beings, they just replicate themselves, so no, single cell asexual microbes are definitely not sexual beings.

How about plants? Are they sexual beings?

I guess plants can reproduce either sexually or asexually so whether they are sexual beings or not would depend on the kind of plant, but you’re not going to redirect the conversation so easily, I want to know which video game character would be the lucky one.

From the top of my head and assuming we live in a hypothetically futuristic utopian world, where banging video game characters is both socially accepted and encouraged, and if I absolutely ought to choose one so I won’t get banished from home or shunned by other members of this futuristic society, I’d say Aya Brea from Parasite Eve.

Really? I would have guessed some Final Fantasy character, maybe Selphie or Yuffie.

This conversation really took an unexpected turn. But I gues that if Aya would be somehow unavailable my second choice would probably be Athena from KOF.

How about a third one?

Maybe Ayame from Tenchu?

That’s cool, that’s cool, not creepy at all.

A little creepy.

It’s all hypothetical remember?

Of course.

See you next time?

That’s right.

 

Can write again

You can write here again?

 

I’m not sure actually…

What do you mean?

Well, blogger is still blocked in China, same as google, gmail, facebook, youtube, etc, but when I went to HK I set up the posting preferences from this blog so I can post by email now, so came back to China, opened a Chinese email account and now maybe I can post again by sending an email to a specific blogger address.

But you can’t check if they get published or not.

Right, and I cant use my gmail account until I leave this… country…

And how is your Chinese email account.

cutepuppy4u@163.com 

Sup with you and puppies?

They are just cute so I want them in my email.

Or is it that think YOU are cute?

Well, I may be or may not be a narcissist, and we may possibly debate that some other time, what’s important now is that I don’t know if this post will get published or not, so I feel like I’m a castaway on an island and throw this message on a bottle, for someone to find it on the future, it may get lost, it may drift away or it may be picked up by a famous journalist who will publish it for the world to read it.

Thus making your narcissist ass famous at last.

That’s unimportant, once again, as I will never get to hear about that fame because of being stranded.

You must have many stories to tell.

Some.

If I remember right this is not your first year in China, so how come this didn’t affect you before?

The first year I was in China it was 2009, and it was a different world back then, we had a lot of VPNs and proxy websites, secure tunnel, hidemyass, it was slow but still possible to get on facebook and such, now they have blocked them all, even proxy and VPN mobile app.  Also before there was not much control over the foreigners living here, we could get long-term stay visas easily and pretty much do anything we wanted to, during the years I’ve been away there have been several witch hunts that led to foreigners being prosecuted and hunted like mutants.

And how does that affects your daily life?

Well I reckon is not as bad as North Korea or Somalia yet, but soldiers stop us if we take a bus to another city, they will target only foreigners and do routine inspections on them, they usually let us go eventually, and the visas have become a procedure so complicated that makes Russian visa look like an underdog on a troublesome to get visa contest.

Sounds like everything’s back to normal then, you hate the government and the government hates you. Except that now instead of living in a democratic country where you have freedom of speech, of movement and expression like Korea, Taiwan, Australia, etc, you live in a tyrannic totalitarian dictatorship where government is actually doing way worse things than what you accuse them to, thus giving you a fair reason to complain without people accusing you of being a conspiracy theorist.

I’m actually at the heart of the conspiracy now.

Last time you wrote about your adventures was while you were in new Zealand, what happened after that?

Too many things and I wish I could write a book just about the adventures in New Zealand, but then there was Australia once again and motorbike trip from Malaysia to China, and now, once again in China with a stable life and a stable job.

Why China? Why again?

Because despite China being a shithole, oh sorry, despite China being not such a nice place to live due to the current political, environmental and social circumstances. It’s still a place where foreigners can just show up and find a decent paid job from one day to the other, there are hundreds of cities and they all have hundreds of jobs. So one can always come to China to save money for a few months and then using that money to live a relaxed comfortable life in a peaceful nearby country (Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, etc).

So you will start posting here again now? I’ve got like… so many questions for you…

When I’m not overworked yes, and there’s still that Chinese email address you can write me to.

The puppy one?

That’s right.

I shall be hearing from you soon then.

Soon enough

Good luck.

 

The one hour training program

The one-hour maintenance program consists of 4 parts of 15 minutes each.

15 minutes cardio, run or whatever to warm up and keep your heart healthy.

15 min strength work, pull ups, push ups, squats, etc.

15 min stretching, holding every stretch for at least 20 seconds.

And finally, 15 minutes meditation to calm down.

Why not try it for a few days and see how it works for you?

 

 

Sitting is death

All recent scientific research shows that sitting in a chair daily for long periods of time is the single worse thing you could do to yourself. Maybe even worse than smoking. That’s why during the last 2 years I decided to spend as little time sitting as possible.
My only excuse for sitting is recovery time, when too tired after strenuous exercise.

First problem I faced was the internet, as most of you I spend too much time in front of the computer, writing stuff like this. This was easily solved by starting to use my
laptop while standing. Would just find a shelf to put it, or pile up a bunch of books or stuff for it to be higher up.

This helped my stretches also, as many times feeling tired after standing for a few hours my body would naturally adopt a leg split position. Not that I’m addicted to the painkillers my brain releases while stretching. It has nothing to do with that.

My second problem was people of course, as they would just not understand that sitting is bad for you and they would keep saying “why don’t you have a seat?” or “get yourself comfortable” because they think sitting is comfortable and standing is not. And so many people just didn’t understand and thought I was being rude. Others saw me as an idealistic and that was cool 🙂

We have to literally stand for what we believe in, even if it means going against the stream.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About K-pop

Why do you do the things you do?

Like what?

Like everything, most things you do, they are things most people wouldn’t even dream them possible.

I’m not most people.

I know but there has to be more to it.

Alright, it took me a while to figure it out but I think it’s because I’m constantly high.

High on what?

On k-pop of course.

How’s that even possible?

You can get high on anything, whatever makes you tick right?

I guess, but k-pop, really?

When something makes you click you don’t care what it is and don’t care about anything else. In my case, I often think the only reason I’m in New Zealand is so that I can save money to support myself in Korea while auditioning till I get a part on a drama or become part of a boys band, kind of like those people who move to California with the expectation of getting discovered and making it big in Hollywood.

You know what, that kind of makes sense actually. I can see you as part of a Korean boy-band, except because well you know, you’re not Korean.

That’s like saying I can’t be a samurai because I’m not a 12th century Japanese noble male in his 30’s.

Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.

But becoming a Korean pop star is my purpose in life, that’s why I live, you know?

But you’re not Korean!!!

So?

You can’t be Korean if you’re not Korean, duh.

I can try though.

Yeah but that’s just crazy.

And that’s why you love me right?

Guess so.

 

About putting yourself out there

Why don’t you like Japan anymore?

Because people I’ve met there have no empathy and are oblivious to everything around them, makes me think it’s exactly the opposite I’m looking for.

Is that the reason you don’t watch anime anymore?

Oh, about that, I also don’t watch movies or anything else anymore either. Don’t feel the need to be entertained anymore and value my real life too much to waste it sitting in front a computer screen the whole day. So no more video games either.

Makes perfect sense, and it’s quite surprising actually, as most people I know still feel the need to be “entertained” by games, movies, tv shows, etc

I used to play Monster Hunter a lot, loved the part of gathering ingredients and materials, digging, climbing drilling and just seeing what you find, heading out
there and hoping for the best, plating the seeds and growing lots of food for your cats to make meals for you, yeah you make get eaten up by a dinosaur sometimes but it was totally worth it! so now I would rather go gathering to the forest or to the beach nearby where I am, scavenging and getting lost.
Monster Hunter is based on a prehistoric world but the countries I live in, New Zealand, south-east Asia are actually not so different from those prehistoric worlds.

Used to play lots of final fantasy when I was in Argentina, dreaming of this mysterious new places, being an adventurer, doing every day something new and meeting
new characters every day, that was the life I was dreaming of, and now is the life I have, what else could be better?

When I was at Simon’s place last week they always asked me what was I looking forward to, and I always said nothing, this is it, this is as good as it gets for me.
And developing relationships with those people you meet like in the game Persona, and letting them join you on your travels like in Suikoden, and getting scared while exploring your city at night like in silent hill and going dancing on the streets like in Audition, Bust A Move, Miku Hatsune. In Taipei is very easy to join the street dancers near SYS Memorial Hall, and in Osaka, they get together in Namba.

Possibilities are endless once you get off the couch and leave your place, I realized getting out there has countless benefits.
Once you are out of your house you get adventures x10, out of your city is another x10 and out of your country is another x10, that’s x1000 more adventure chances
just for leaving your confort zone, just for being out there, now if you’re actually looking for adventures you get even more bonuses, you get a x20 if you start talking to strangers everywhere, a +5 if you’re wearing something cool, a x10 if you sign up for random jobs or courses, another +7 if you carry an animal companion with you, another +30 if you learn to use Couchsurfing, meetup and other websites for getting together with people.

There’s no limit to it, really.

Forgot some stuff

 

What did you do today?

Just watched some movies

Movies? Really?

Yes, 2 movies.

Was that it?

Yes, why?

Well, that means you forgot the cardio, forgot to build strength, forgot the meditation, forgot to train your brain with some equations, forgot to improve your creativity, to eat some fruits, forgot to tell your friends you love them, forgot to go for a walk to clear your thoughts, forgot to write on your diary, forgot to visit a new place, forgot to learn a new language, Bruno forgot so many things!

Yeah, I was planning to do those after the movie.

I don’t believe you.

It’s true! look, I even wrote it on my calendar:

8 am: watch the new rurouni kenshin movie

10 am:  watch monoke hime (again)

1 pm: going for a run

2 pm: doing 50 pull-ups (or more)

3 pm: vipassana meditation

4 pm: solve for x

5 pm: paint a free representation of a yet undiscovered world resting inside the mountain (and his inhabitants)

6 pm: tell Taiwanese people you love them

7 pm: eat 10 fruits

8 pm: go for a walk around Lake Matheson or lake mapourika (you get to choose)

10 pm: write the story of a stray puppy in your diary

11 pm: hitching a ride across a transatlantic heading towards eastern island (?)

Sometime after that: learn the islander’s language, maybe.

Evolution of hitchhiking

 

Shall we use a sign?

Signs are for beginners, we are pros now!

We don’t need one?

When we started hitchhiking we used signs because we were shy, we didn’t know what to do or where to stand and wanted the sign to do the job for us.

And now?

Now we are pros, we don’t need a sign, or a backpack to look like backpackers, or a map to show our driver where we’re going or a compass, nor we need those books and glasses we used to carry around while hitchhiking to pretend we were harmless students.

So what do we need now?

A drink of course.

You mean an alcoholic drink?

Not necessarily, any drink would do it, sometimes even a fruit or vegetable, carrot, and apple especially because they are not messy to eat.

And how to do it now?

Drink in right hand, left thumb up facing the cars you want to stop.

That’s it?

That’s the magic of it you see, same as at a party, the drink conveys the message that you are very relaxed and they should pick you up because you are awesome.

Or drunk.

Either way.

Someone’s hiding in the dark

 

I’m always hiding in the bushes at night. Hiding from the people and the police because I find it sickening the fact that I live in a society that has to pay for sleeping, and frowns upon those who refuse to do so.

Often wondering if there are others like me out there, people hiding, in the same city, maybe in a nearby bush, people who are also wondering if there are others like them.

Probably there aren’t. Well, there are millions in poor countries like India, but those are people who don’t have a choice, so I don’t really feel as they are the same as me. Because I do have a choice, I do have a bit of money to pay for rent or for a hotel, and even if I didn’t, I know few of hundred people that would let me crash in their couch.

But still I choose to sleep on the street or hide because it’s my nature. Because it’s something I seek instinctively. When I’m just walking around somewhere I always keep an eye out for places to sleep, where I would be concealed from people, protected from the elements and the wildlife, where I can have a good night sleep.

And it’s not about the money anymore, it’s not about saving money it’s about doing what I feel like doing and about being by myself, because most days I don’t feel like socializing and talking to people, most days I just feel like walking around during the day searching or gathering food, and find a shelter for the night.

That’s what feels right, my body wasn’t designed to sit and play league of legends for 14 hours straight, it was designed to look for food and shelter, to survive the cold, the night, the predators (now we call them police), to adapt and thrive in a hostile environment.

It just feels right somehow.

 

backpacker hotels in new zealand

Why dont you want to stay at the backpackers’ hotel like all the other foreigners in new Zealand?

Because they are lame.

But it’s the norm, young travelers here are expected to stay at the backpackers’ hotel, didn’t you hear?

Actually, I did hear it, and it’s still lame. I’m not gonna pay for sleeping, at least not for sleeping in a filthy crowded place, for that I can just sleep on the street. When one pays for a hotel, one pays for privacy, if you’re not gonna get that why paying in the first place?

As I said, social conventions dictate that they HAVE to stay at the hostel, share the room with many people, and socialize with them, of course.

That’s nonsense, I don’t want to socialize! |What am I supposed to talk about with all these people?

I don’t know, you’ll think of something.

And what if I can’t afford it?

In that case you borrow money from someone and stay there any way.

Crazy, do you even know how expensive those places are?

Yeah, anything between 20 and 35 dollars for a dorm room depending on the city.

Alright let’s say its 30, that’s almost a thousand dollars a month for a dorm room, it’s just too much.

Well, you’re not in Asia anymore.

Regardless of the country, let’s say it costs 25 per night, and they have 15 rooms with 4 beds each, that’s more than 40.000 net profit a month and they don’t pay taxes, they give you no invoice, they don’t pay their employees because they always have someone working for accommodation, they charge you for things that are provided free in any other country, like internet and towels. There’s is not a single hostel or backpackers hotel in New Zealand that provides free internet and that’s like the very basic thing they should provide for travelers, well besides the bed of course.

How do you know so much about this places if you don’t use them?

Alright, alright, I did go to one in Auckland when just arrived in New Zealand, they said it was 32 dollars and then they said it was 5 more per day if I wanted internet.

Yes, they are a bit overpriced, but I think most people who stay there don’t really pay for the bed, but for the experience, they get to meet many people in a very very short amount of time.

Like speed dating.

Exactly like speed dating, you know they are young, they are on holidays and they want to have fun. What is 30 dollars if you can meet 20 people of the opposite sex in a relaxed environment and enjoy the sexy time with some of them?

I see. So they pay to hook up. That means I’ve been doing it wrong all this time.

It’s ok, you didn’t know. You thought they were just paying for a place to stay because they are rich and too good to sleep on the streets.

Well, whatever. I’m not all that into promiscuity anyway.

And you don’t have to, you can also meet that special someone there and you know you can actually find so many free stuff there. Things people left behind, like tents, sleeping bags, laptops, lots of clothes and gadgets.

Who would leave their laptop behind?

They just forget them or get tired of carrying them around so they leave them there.

So if I pay 30 I can get a girl, new clothes, a tent and a laptop?

And more, sometimes people leave behind food and shoes.

Food, girl and laptop? Really?

Really.

But still, 30 dollars, oh man.

You could always sneak in, worse case scenario they kick you out, they’re not gonna call the police, doors are always open and the staff doesn’t know most of the people staying there.

You and me? Sneaking in together?

Yeah, and him.

Him too?

Yes.

Alright, this trio could work!

 

 

 

To be continued…

 

 

 

About Vanuatu and my life

The other day I got picked up in a van that was carrying 10 people from a country called Vanuatu, which I’ve actually never heard of before. I felt like I was back in Asia when they started playing this party music very loud and singing along.

They said that in Vanuatu, they can’t leave someone on the street, so when they see someone hitchhiking they HAVE to pick him up, because of their upbringing they can’t choose not picking him up.

When they see someone without a place to sleep they have to take him in. That reminded me of some other experiences I had in other countries, like getting denied service at some hotels in China for being a foreigner. Being harassed by Japanese and Australian police, being robbed at gunpoint in Argentina and many more. Man! While in Japan, I met so many people that would just only not help you out, but they would actually go way out of their way to make your my life more troublesome.

The night went on and after the ride, they invited me to stay at their place, I found they were living in dorms with 60 people from Vanuatu and in that village, there were 400 of them. I found that they lived in precarious conditions and got exploited by some kiwi landlord and contractor, same as me when I just arrived in NZ. They didn’t have internet or phones, but they were so happy.

Of course, they shared their food and drinks with me. The special drink from Vanuatu is called cava. It’s not alcoholic but they extract it from some kind of root, it makes them very relaxed and calm, like smoking week, they said its like drinking weed.

When I tasted it, it was just terrible, terrible taste, so I asked them why dont they put some sugar on it to make it taste drinkable, they said noooo and they laughed at me, but for me it was just the logical thing to do because that thing tasted so bad, like vodka. I don’t understand how people can drink vodka, tequila, sake, soju by itself, it’s just disgusting.

There are many many Pacific Islanders here in New Zealand, picking fruits and doing farm work, and I remember that before I went to Korea, I had had the chance of visiting many other countries, but after living in Korea for 9 months, I thought Korean people were the nicest people I had met. Then I moved to Taiwan and changed my mind, Taiwanese were by far the best.

Now, if I had to make a chart with the most hospitable people I’ve met it’d be something like this:

1- Pacific Islanders (Tonga, Samoa, Vanuatu, Fiji, Cook, etc)
2- Muslims
3- Taiwanese
4- Korean
5- Others

And still many people ask me if I miss Argentina or if I plan to go back there. I always say I don’t know, but what I actually want to say “probably no, or maybe just on holidays” but that’s a very cold answer, people don’t like cold answers even though they are honest. They want a warm, fake answer. A reassuring lie instead of an honest truth.

The thing is, that  I’ve been to just so many other amazing places, places where I felt welcomed. Places where I don’t need to live in fear of thieves, guns, and corrupted police. Places where not everyone’s out to get me. Places where I can go out at night without worrying about coming back alive. I can find a job and don’t need to constantly look over my shoulder to make sure no one is following me to kill me or mug me.

Tourists keep going on and on about how marvelous a place Argentina is, well, of course, it is if you go with foreign money that is worth like 5 times more there and you stay for just a few weeks or a few months, but if you have to live and work there, oh man!

And after I say I don’t know if I’ll ever go back there, they ask me “and what about your family?” The answer I usually give is that they are alright and we manage to keep in touch online, but what I actually  mean to say is that my family will have to understand that their son, nephew, grandson, etc, is happy somewhere else and that is not because of them, is because of me.

Traveling is not just something I do, is part of who I am.

Something I have to do for myself and has nothing to do with anyone else.

And me leaving argentina had nothing to do with them either, it was just something that needed to be done.

The reason I chose to live at the edge of the knife, to jump from the bridge to the cargo train instead of running behind it and hopping on the last wagon. Digging a hole in the ground to sleep and swimming to the other side instead of taking the ferry is that I actually enjoy the thrill of the fight. I enjoy the challenge. The hardships. It makes me feel alive and somehow happy. But hey that sounds just so dramatic, doesn’t it? Sorry about that, here’s a rainbow~

The cities where people have no souls

 

“I don’t want to go to Auckland.” People usually say. If I ask them why not, they say people have no souls there, and I’m like “What?”

Just like the Sidney of Australia, it’s just not a nice place to be, or at least that’s what people say.

Everyone hates Sydney, everyone hates Auckland, and those who live there always complain and dream about moving to Wellington or Melbourne, you know the cool places, where all the cool kids go, you know those who smoke weed, wear hoodies and play in a band.

Auckland and Sydney, in the other hand, are where your boring old cousin lives, you know the accountant who works at a bank, watches tv, plans his holidays one year in advance and is always complaining about how he has to wait too long in traffic. The one who hates his life and goes knocking on his neighbor door because their music is too loud. They are trapped in the routine of a mundane 9 to 5 job, secretly jealous of his reckless cousin who lives a relaxed life in Melbourne or Wellington, yet they don’t seem to have to courage to change his life, and would never admit they want to anyway.

For me though, as a foreigner in Australia and New Zealand, I don’t really care much about neither of those cities and if I were a city I’d probably be Perth.

No one really cares much about Perth, its just there. Isolated. Far from everything, not many people get there because it’s just too far and there’s really nothing there.

Perth is like that cousin of yours who moved to other continent decades ago, and no one has heard much about him since.

They know he’s there somewhere, far away, they know he’s alright, minding his own business and without causing much trouble.

They know he is happy living life on his own, in his own world, in his cloud, with his dreams which are totally different from everyone else’s.

He doesn’t want to be an office worker in Sydney but doesn’t care much about those hippies from Melbourne either, he just wants to be left alone.

Not a leader nor a follower. Neither too cool or too boring. Perth is the place to be for those of us who don’t really fit anywhere else.

Perth doesn’t try to look cool, or impress you and doesn’t care about his big brothers.

Perth is just there.

About the bus

 

Let’s take the bus!

Na, I’d rather walk.

Why is that?

I just don’t like the bus.

What, are you too good to use public transport?

No, I’m just too poor to use it. It costs a lot, so as long as I have feet I’ll walk, run or ride the bicycle. If I ever get my legs cut off, I’ll then maybe… take the bus or the train.

But do you know how far is it?

Yes, it takes 4 hours walking from here.

How can you walk so much?

That’s because I don’t see walking as a waste of time like most people do. For me it’s nice. I get time for me. Time to think, it saves me money, I get exercise, I meet people, I find stuff on the way, I discover new parts of the city, what could be better?

With the bus, I have to spend money, which I don’t have and spend so much time sitting, which I don’t like. Sitting is the worse, also as with most other posts, the idea for this post came up while walking alone aimlessly.

Best ideas come when you are walking alone, without music, without distractions, just you and the road.

In the bus there’s always people bothering me, they want to hug me, or take a picture with me.

It’s actually quite tough being famous because sometimes you just don’t want to talk to people and smile and be polite, sometimes you just want to be left alone.

Sometimes you just want to walk, at night, through the park, thinking of rainbow dash, or thinking of a girl you used to know, thinking of what kind of bird it is the one that’s singing that beautiful song you hear in your mind while you’re making spaghetti, that songs that goes something like this “totororototo totorororo

totorororo tororototo tororoto tororoto rotototo tororo tototo”.

That guy

 

What happened to that guy?

Which guy?

You know, “that guy”?

Which one?

You know, that guy who carried a notebook with him on the train, sat across a cute girl and started writing something, when she looked at him, he blushed and shyly looked down, what happened to that guy who was always doing the Naruto hand signs, carrying Pokemon cards everywhere just in case he finds a challenger, that guy who got all the weapons, cards, summons, materias in all the final fantasy games, used to try to transform into super sayan daily and was afraid of talking to strangers, what happened to that guy?

I don’t know he moved on I guess.

oh, alright then.

About pull ups / chin ups

 

Today is a special day, the most special day this year. Today is the day I made it to 25.

25 pull-ups in a row.

That was actually my goal last year but something happened and I made it this year instead.

What’s so special about pull-ups you ask, well nothing really, it’s just my way of feeling better about myself.

As that’s pretty much all I have, not gonna win an Oscar anytime soon, I have no money, no friends, no job, no girlfriend, no house, been sleeping in a tent for over a month now.

I’m technically a failure in every possible way, pull-ups are all I have to feel good about myself. Something I can say I’m good at.

As I’ve never crossed paths with someone who could do 25 pulls ups in a row before, some guys I’ve met could do 10, but that was it.

Everyone you meet is better than you at something, and I want to be better at something also, I want to feel healthy, I want to feel strong, want to feel proud of myself.

Pull-ups are the best because you don’t need to go to the gym, just need to find a tree or some stairs, they are like the squats of the upper body, if you are jogging and stop for pull-ups they will give you that push you need to continue jogging a while longer and if you are cold or lonely and stop for pull-ups you’ll get warm immediately.

Pull-ups are the single best thing for those of us who need to fill their empty and meaningless lives with a false sense of achievement that would help them sleep at night and make it through another day of immeasurable solitude.

Some day

Someday I will be the one throwing coins into the fountain instead of

being the one picking them up.

Someday I’ll be the one driving people around instead of asking for a lift.

I’ll be the one providing food instead of asking for it.

I’ll be the one who can look after and mentor other people.

I’ll be the one dumping food instead of dumpster diving.

Ok, no, that’s wrong, I shouldn’t throw food away.

How about this:

Someday I’ll be the one growing food instead of scavenging for it.

That’s better.

Someday I’ll be the one stealing the pot from the fish.

Ok that’s also wrong.

Or maybe not so wrong?

Well, I’m not sure

I know the Chinese fish for example, they just want to gamble.

They don’t care about equity, just want the rush of playing.

So it’s actually not so wrong, as you are giving them what they want.

An experience.

And isn’t that what life’s all about anyway, experiences, enjoying the ride, going all in and having fun.

Why do we have to worry about implied odds, rakeback, bankroll, cheap showdown, collision, etc. The fish doesn’t worry about anything, they just play for fun

They have other sources of income so they can afford to go all in with a low hand.

Some day I’ll be a fish.

Just so that it’s out there

If my memory doesn’t fail me I think I was 14 when I learned that second-hand smoke was actually much more harmful than smoking yourself.

Then I realized my mother had smoked inside the house, next to me for as long as I had memory.

She would bring all her friends home and they will all smoke nonstop next to me while I was in developing age to make sure I wouldn’t grow healthy and that I had respiratory and growth problems.

For the record, we are not talking about 1950’s farmers who just don’t know any better, we are talking about educated people in the big city during the 90’s, people who are very aware of the dangers of smoking for themselves and for others, especially for children.

Yet she just didn’t care and spent almost 20 years smoking in front of me at every chance she had, even though she knew I had asthma, and that was the single worst thing she could do to me.

So of course when I was old enough to understand what was going on around me,

I confronted her and asked her to stop. Not just for me but for herself and everyone around her.

What was her answer? Crying and screaming as if I was a criminal for asking her to quit. Saying that’s not so bad and she didn’t drink alcohol, so she had to smoke.

I’ve always wondered, what kind of logic was that? The fact that one doesn’t drink allows you to ruin other people lives, and be a pain for everyone around you?

It keeps showing up in my nightmares sometimes, her long curly hair, shaking nervously and shouting hysterically while holding a cigarette called “derby”.

Then she would cry and get violent, say she didn’t have money, while everyone told her, maybe if you stopped spending it all on that vice of yours, to what she replied “It’s my only pleasure in life.”

Anyway, the years went by, asked her time and time again to quit, she didn’t listen, sometimes said she would but never did.

When I was old enough, started taking the cigarettes away from her, as if she was a child, she would again cry and try to hide them somewhere so that I couldn’t find them.

Crazy, right? Or maybe I’m crazy for thinking smoking is bad.

Or for asking my mother to do something for me.

Or for trying to take care of her.

Or for trying to do the right thing.

Or for trying to change her.

It’s been more than 10 years since then and till now I haven’t had a single friend who was a smoker.

Met a few people here and there, but always avoided them and stayed away from them.

So if you’re a smoker and you’re reading this

I know you guys are just trying to look cool or something.

Maybe your excuse is that you are addicted or that all your friends smoke.

Maybe your excuse is that you have always smoked or that you don’t drink so you have to smoke.

You probably hate non-smokers and don’t care what I think.

But now it’s out there.

I’ve had to take your smoke for almost 20 years.

I’ve said what I think of you people.

Now all that’s left is asking you to stay away from me.

Take your carcinogenic fumes somewhere else.

Because I’ve had enough of them.

And I’ve had enough of you.

About the pimsleur language program

What is pimsleur?

Is the reason why I can speak many languages.

But what is it?

An audio language learning program.

Is it free?

Of course.

How to get it?

First download torrent, go to the pirate bay and type pimsleur + the language you want to learn on the search bar, so if you want to learn Turkish, you want to type: pimsleur turkish, order the results by the number of seeders and open the ones who have more seeders with utorrent.

Is there pimsleur for every language?

Couple dozen

How many languages have you used it for?

So far portuguese, italian, french, german, japanese, korean and chinese.

How many lessons for each language?

There are 90 lessons for each language that would cover all the basics of grammar, sentence structure, vocabulary, some culture notes and if you finish the 90 lessons you can get by on the language you are learning, then you just need to practice and use the vocab you learned.

How good is it compared to other language learning programs?

Pimsleur is a very systematic, very structured method, it gives you tons of very basic vocab and forces you to speak out and make sentences. There’s no slang at all so it’s like learning from a textbook, you will learn to use a very neutral version of the language with a very neutral accent.
After you finish pimsleur I’d strongly recommend you to complement it with the 101series, chinese101, korean101, spanish101, and so on. They are great for learning slang and really useful vocabulary and expression that you wouldn’t find on a textbook, the 101 series are usually ongoing so it never finishes, as there is always new stuff to learn.

And once you’re proficient in the language you are studying I’d recommend you the “in flight” series paired up with some word list, for vocabulary building. to download the 101, in flight, and word list is the same as for pimsleur: torrent, pirate bay, order by seeders, open with torrent.

Are you still using pimsleur these days?

No, because there was a problem with my last mp3 player.

What happened?

Well, it’s a long story actually, I’ve had 4 mp3 players in my life, first it was a red one I got in spain, that one just stopped working by itself, then there was a pink one I got in spain also in 2006, that one worked until 2009 and then also decided to stop working. Then, in china at school, our boss gave us a white one that was also mp4 player, problem was the storage was quite low so couldn’t put much inside, that one got a virus and then the screen cracked while it was in the bag. and the last one that I had been using since 2009 till now was also the best one. It was blue and had a lot of space, like 6gb and it was very light and stylishly small, it was perfect, and I loved it because it had been a gift from Kishi, so I had kept it in my pocket and used it regularly for almost 4 years.
but while in NZ few weeks ago I was reviewing some korean lessons while on the way back through the park and I stumbled upon a fountain.
I always check the fountains at the park because many times they have coins that have either grown by themselves from the bottom of the fountain or have been dropped by some birds who were transporting them somewhere.
So I forgot I had the mp3 player on my jacket pocket instead of the trouser’s pocket, as the one in the jacket is on the sides, so you can put your hands in while you walk, and that makes things fall also. The one in the trousers won’t let anything fall from it. So, what I did, I leaned in to grab the coins and forgot about the mp3 player, so it slipped off my jacket pocket and fell into the water, ruining my week, lost one of my precious possessions just for a few coins.
So stupid.

Who is Kishi?

Oh, very very cute chinese girl and very very sweet. We used to live together in China. she really loved me and treated my like a king.

What happened to her?

Nothing happened to her, she’s still in china.

Do you miss her?

Maybe a bit sometimes, I have ambivalent feelings about it actually. On one hand I know she was just perfect for me, On the other hand, she didn’t really like my lifestyle of traveling and moving around, she wanted to stay in China for some reason. And I couldn’t stay in china any longer, because well, I don’t know how to say this nicely, but It’s a shithole there.
I really loved her and if it had been any other country I’d had probably stayed with her, but not China.

But if you had really loved her you would have stayed with her anywhere, even China.

Have you even been to China?

No, just saying.

I thought we were talking about the pimsleur program.

This is more interesting.

I do think sometimes that I should have stayed there with her, but China… ufff.. it’s the worst country ever. I had eventually got used to the air pollution, and the spitting, and the noise, and the people.
But the smoking is just too much, in the elevator, in the cinema, on the bus, at school, hospital, office, everywhere on the streets and places to eat, every single place, it’s just too much.
I understand they are Chinese and everything, but it’s just too much.

Did you ask her to move to another country with you?

I begged her to, I wanted to take her anywhere, anywhere but china. And she said no, because she likes China and it’s her home.

That’s understandable, most people can’t even consider your lifestyle, they can’t just detach from everything and move somewhere else just because.

It’s not just because it was to be with me.

I know, but why she has to be the one to make the sacrifice of moving abroad and you can’t make the sacrifice of staying there.

That’s why I said, if it had been any other country I would have probably stayed, just not China, and probably not India either.

Have you been to all the countries in the world?

Of course not.

So you will find that there are many places even worse than China and India, in Africa for example. You should open your mind and be more open to different cultures, you should stay in China and make a life there with cute Kishi.

I know you say that because you have never been to China.

But it’s a big country and everywhere is different.

Slightly different, very slightly.

It’s not the same being in Hainan than in Tianjin, they have desserts, mountains, valleys, they have everything there.

It’s still China though.

I know but you said she got you an mp3 player and treated you like a king.

Still China.

China China China, yes, but the girl is more important.

And actually, if I hadn’t left I wouldn’t be writing this right now because the succession of events that lead to me getting a laptop and starting a blog happened BECAUSE I left china.

You don’t know maybe it would have happened anyway.

Maybe not, and you wouldn’t exist, so, me leaving China is actually the reason you exist, so you should be happy I left, and you should be proud of me for keeping moving forward instead of getting stuck in a place I hate.

I just want you to be happy and thought if the girl can make you happy the place shouldn’t mind so much.

Yes… but China… 😦

I know, I know, don’t worry, you don’t need to go back there ever again, ok?

Do you promise? 🙂

I promise.

And what about Kishi?

Well you know Kishi means river bank in Japanese, and in the river, there are many fishes, you will meet a fish that doesn’t need to be in china.

Well, either that or I just get myself a new mp3 player

Now we’re talking!

 

Living in Argentina as a vegetarian

I frequently tell people I grew up in Argentina, and one of the most frequent questions I’m asked is: “was it tough being a vegetarian there?”

Answer is always no.

Of course, we find there’s a big meat eating culture there, but there are also many sub-cultures who chose to oppose it for some reason, so you’ve got the hippies, the SxE, the are krishna, the budhists, the hindus, the animals rights defenders, the environmentalists who do it for the planet, the gays and many other groups who have chosen not to eat meat.

That plus to the fact the food the Italians that many Italians have migrated there during the last centuries brought along like pasta, pizza, ice cream, bread, everywhere, plenty of vegetarian buffets, choices are plentiful.

To conclude, we can observe that during the last 20 years Argentina has seen, same as most developed countries, an increase in awareness regarding social, ethical and environmental issues, and finds itself slowly evolving towards a more humane, more compassionate society day by day.

Hiding stuff

Friend: Where’s your stash?

Bruno: I’m not gonna tell you.

Friend: You should.

Bruno: Why?

Friend: Well, during the years that you have been moving around, sometimes you’ve come to accumulate stuff you couldn’t take with you when you left, so they had to be hidden somewhere. You wouldn’t just give them to a friend, because you don’t want to be a burden or trouble other people with your stuff. You know they also have to move around and can’t be carrying your stuff around. You wouldn’t pay a storage room because you don’t have money and most times you are not even sure if you’ll come back to that country. So they have to be hidden somewhere.

Bruno: There may be some stuff here and there, but why would I leave something valuable behind? Why not just selling it and taking the money with me?

Friend: Well maybe you had to leave in a rush and didn’t have time to sell it, maybe they were too bulky or inconvenient to sell, maybe it was something illegal, or something that’s not valuable yet but in 50 years time might. Or maybe it was something that could get you into trouble if you go through customs with it. Knowing you, I wouldn’t be surprised if you had 100 dolars in pennies buried somewhere because you know the price of copper is always on the rise. Or some antiques, somewhere. Maybe it’s like an insurance for when you’re old.

Bruno: But then that would occupy space in my memory, I have to remember the location of the stuff, the location of the key or the password.

Friend: So there’s a key and a password, we’re getting somewhere now.

Bruno: And if I tell someone it wouldn’t be a secret anymore.

Friend: Was it a gym locker?  Was it a chest buried on some beach?

Bruno: Maybe.

Friend: If you die, nobody will find it, ever, because you haven’t told anyone about it.

Bruno: Well, if I die, then I wouldn’t need to worry about it anymore either.

Friend: I think you would hide it in nature, because a man made structure is much more likely to be destroyed, searched or rebuilt, a beach, forest, or rock, on the other hand would probably be there for a while. It should be somewhere near some places you used to live, a familiar location, a place you know better than anyone. A place you’ve walked by hundreds of times. You are always searching for a place to sleep at night in case you need to, a place covered, private. Always searching for the perfect spot to hide something in case you have to.

Bruno: It’s probably just some old books and clothes, you shouldn’t worry about it so much.

Friend: Yeah, you’re right.

Bruno: Or maybe not.

Friend: Damn.

 

Christmas message

Please help me spread an anti-consumerist, anti-capitalist message on this Christmas.

Don’t buy anything.

Recycle gifts.

We all have stuff at home we don’t need.

Give them away as presents on Christmas.

Bake a cake.

Write a letter.

Write a song.

Make your own gifts.

Your friends will appreciate them more because they were made by you instead of a 12 years old Phillipino.

The reason why there are still poor people in the world is that you guys buy lots of stuff you don’t need.

And you never seem to have enough, you always want more and more.

Thus contributing to the capitalist monetary system which fuels income inequality.

And makes sure the rich stay rich, the poor stay poor.

And the ones in the middle, like most people reading this, stay in the middle.

Being slaves of the system and working together with the rich to make sure the poor stay poor.

But, If for whatever reason you need to buy something.

Buy organic so you won’t get sick.

Buy locally, from the small family shop instead than the shopping mall or supermarket.

Buying locally produced products also reduces the carbon footprint caused by shipment.

It’s also a great time to becoming vegan or vegetarian, in order to spare some pain to your fellow animal creatures as well.

And to the environment.


If we all stop using money the system will just collapse by itself.

Making way to something better.

Hopefully.

About ADAM.

Bruno: I have a problem.

Friend: Just one?

Bruno: People look at me weird.

Friend: Which people?

Bruno: On the streets.

Friend: Well, they must have found out about “My little pony: friendship is magic”.

Bruno: How would they? I don’t think is that.

Friend: Oh, they know.

Bruno: No, but really, why do they are always staring at me, am I that weird?

Friend: No, just a bit paranoid, we’re all a little weird though.

Bruno: I wonder when did it all started?

Friend: *start. 

Bruno: Start.

Friend: You mean the weirdness?

Bruno: Yeah, was it in high school?

Friend: Probably.

Bruno: Or was it because of /b/?

Friend: Yeah, that didn’t help.

Bruno: Come to think of it, actually I know who to blame, there were the people from ADAM. Matias, Ariel, Damian, nestor, and others whose names I have chosen to forget. 

Friend: Remind me what ADAM stands for again.

Bruno: It’s Spanish for: Asociacion defensa de anime y manga, it was a very very strange place in Argentina, where I used to hang out as a teenager. It was cool, except it was not.

Friend: Interesting, so you think there’s where it all started. Tell me more about it, for example, how did you end up there in the first place?

Bruno: Alright you’re sounding like a psychologist now, bit creepy.

Friend: Anyway..

Bruno: Anyway, it’s a long story. It all started back when I was still in high school, sick and tired of getting bullied at school decided to try and make some new friends with similar interests as me.

Friend: And what led you to break free from the bullying.

Bruno: Mostly it was the last scene of the last episode of Evangelion, do you remember?

Friend: It’s been more than 10 years, no, I don’t remember.

Bruno: Yeah you remember, when Shinji stood up, chair falls backward, glass shatters, tears in my eyes, I stood up too, tingly feeling, smile, cry. That episode stayed with me till now. Stayed with us until now.

Friend: Right, back to ADAM though.

Bruno: Yeah, so after I watched that I thought I had to find people similar to me, and thought, what are my interests? I wasn’t good at anything, didn’t like music or sports, I just watched tv the whole day, Japanese tv…


Friend: You mean, Japanese cartoons.

Bruno: Yeah, that was all I had, that was my only interest, so I tried to look for people who like the same things, thought they would understand me.

Friend: Did they?

Bruno: Yeah, well no, sometimes, not really, well it was weird. Before going there I thought I had some issues, once there I thought ‘oh boy?’ What did I get myself into? Who are these people? 


Friend: What happened?

Bruno: Well before going there I thought I was socially awkward, but these people, ufff… they were the same as me, or worse, so I finally knew what it was like to hang out with myself and understood why I had no friends.

Friend: That’s good you had finally found people like you, right?

Bruno: Yeah, so they took me under their wings and into into their parent’s basements, they nurtured me and taught me how to play Pokemon cards, Magic, d&d and many role-playing games and suddenly I found myself knee deep in this underground culture I had no idea it even existed and suddenly, suddenly I had group of friends, a very weird one, but friends at last. I had people to hang out with, people who called me at home and I could call and talk to. And they broke all the molds.

Friend: How come?

Bruno: Well you know how usually most friends or groups of friends they get together for a few hours once or few times a week, well with this guys we would hang out for at least 2 days in a row, sometimes 3 or 4, no break, 24/7, and we would do the craziest things, things you have never even heard of or dreamed of.

Friend: Like what?

Bruno: It’s hard to explain, but it was intense. Spending one day with them was like spending a month of a normal person’s life and we would usually get together on a Friday after school and hang out until Monday morning that we had to go back to school.

Friend: So that’s when thing started to get weird?

Bruno: Yeah, then I broke off that group and started getting into other groups of people even weirder, then I moved to other city and met even more weird people, it all added up.

Friend: And what happened to those people?

Bruno: I’ve got no idea, probably they are still there.

Friend: Wouldn’t you like to get back in touch with them?

Bruno: Well, it’s been so many years and we have all changed so much. I have no idea what could happen, maybe they grew tentacles or something. But you know, that time in Argentina it was just a stage of my life, like many others, usually, every country is a different stage and I feel like I have to leave them behind in order to keep moving forward in life. I always remember what Robin said ‘the future is scary, but you can’t run back to the past just because it’s familiar’.

Friend: So you wouldn’t like to hang out with them again in like let’s say 10 years from now?

Bruno: Why not? You know after that. I’ve played role-playing games and card games in other countries with other people, and it was very very different from my experiences in Argentina. People I’ve played with in other countries were just normal people, with jobs, friends and families, no mental disorders and normal life outside the few hours we got together to play usually once a week, but people in Argentina were unique in the sense the game was our lives, and those things stay with you forever, to this day I still remember the names of some of the characters we used to play as. We were even creating our own games and rules, the creativity levels in that group were way over 9000.

Friend: That sounds indeed quite intense. Are you ok?

Bruno: Yeah, just got a bit excited.

Friend: You’re not crying are you? 

Bruno: Not today no.

 

16 Reasons to pee in a bottle

 

When you need to go you need to go, that’s a fact, so today I bring you a list of practical excuses for those times when heading all the way to the toilet is just not an option.

 

1_ It’s too cold outside: 

Have you ever been to -45 degrees? No? Me neither. But I have a friend from Russia that has, and he told me it’s too cold out there and he just can’t be bothered to get out of bed, so he always keeps a handy plastic bottle next to his bed for when nature calls. And so should you.

2_ The bathroom is just too far: 

Do you have a very big house? No? Well, doesn’t matter, because you don’t need to live in a castle to justify peeing in a bottle, a flight of stairs will do just fine, or long hallway. Remember, if it’s not in your room it’s too far, you need the bottle.

3_ If you go then you will not be tired anymore: 

Because the act of getting up will put your whole body in motion and ready to rumble, the change of temperature between your bed and the outer world is enough to keep you up all night after you come back from the toilet and you can’t afford that because you have that big meeting at work next week, remember? Better not risking it, play it safe, use the bottle.

4 _ The bathroom floor is too cold: 

Because winter came, and you forgot to buy some slippers to wear in the bathroom and now it’s too late, winter is halfway gone already so you missed your chance to enjoy the sleepers. But don’t worry it was a mistake, it can happen to anyone, you’re only human remember? Next year you’ll get some new sleepers at the beginning of winter like it should be, this year better stick to the bottle.

5 – There are guests in the house: 

It seems your flatmate has some friends over, but you are just not feeling all that sociable today, you don’t want to introduce yourself and meet new people, and answer all their stupid questions about work or study. Not tonight, tonight you just want to pee inside a bottle and go to bed.

6_ Is not your house: 

OK, picture this, you’ve met a girl, she seems to like you for some reason, so she invited you over to meet her parents. You don’t want to make a mess in her bathroom, what if you miss the toilet bowl? You don’t want to pee all over her floor. Better wait for her mother to go to the kitchen to bake some cookies, check that there are no hidden cameras, find a dark corner, take the empty bottle you are always carrying in your backpack for an emergency like this one and do what it needs to be done for this relationship to work. Remember, your grandkids will thank you for this.

7- You are watching an interesting documentary on whale reproduction: 

Did you know that blue whales have the largest penises on Earth? When its aroused it can get as big as 12 inches in diameter and ten feet in length, you know what that means? No? Why not? Oh, yeah, you’re not from the US so you’re not familiar with the retarded imperial measurement system?
Don’t despair! What I meant was that the whale is gonna need a really really big bottle, and so will you because tonight you’re not getting off the couch.

8_ It’s too late to flush the toilet: 

Unless you come from the future (or from the past), our toilets these days make this terrible noise when you flush them and It usually wakes everyone up, and pardon the pun when I say they could get pissed-off.

9_ You are very afraid: 

It’s too dark and you have just watched and horror film, that one with the zombies and the serial killer, you don’t want to go all the way to the toilet by yourself, at night. What if you get murdered? What if you get raped? What if you get murdered AND raped? Why taking the risk? Pee in the bottle

10_ There is someone using the bathroom: 

Why they always have to go at the same time you have to go, you guys should start taking turns for it, next time you can discuss the matter thoroughly, this time though, better use the bottle

11_ The toilet is out of service

Not just out of service, I’m pretty sure I saw a plumber coming in and out, you don’t want to bother him while he’s working, you don’t want to be in his way. I know he probably doesn’t even mind, but it’s just polite to wait until he’s done, and actually, you are pretty lucky because there’ happens to be an empty plastic container right here, you can use until the honorable man finishes his work.

12_ The bathroom is haunted:

You know you’ve been hearing some weird noises lately, what are they? Ghosts? Aliens? Monster? It could be anything really. We don’t know what’s out there. What we do know is that it’s hiding in the bathroom, waiting to do something really really bad to you, better using the bottle this time.

13_ Because of a medical problem:

Have you broken your ankle and it’s too painful to walk? No? Stepped on a Lego? Maybe you felt dizzy when you stand up? Do you have asthma and don’t want to get too excited? A headache? Depression? A broken nail? Anything will do, you know what to do.

14_ You are single: 

Because you know when you get a girl she may not like this little habit of yours, so these are actually your last years of freedom, might as well enjoy them because after this you’ll probably have to get up in the middle of the dark cold night and, half asleep, hike your way to the bathroom like a wild animal. Enjoy it while it lasts, bottle.

15_ It’s too dangerous: 

The truth is there are a lot of dangerous objects on the way to the toilet. You don’t want to hit your little toe with the sharp edge of a wall or furniture. You don’t want hit your forehead with the frame of the door. You don’t want to trip, break your spine and spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair. For your safety and that of those around, we strongly recommend you peeing in the bottle.

16_ Just can’t be bothered, enough said.

 

Find an excuse

Friend: Why do you travel?

Bruno: I don’t travel, I’m always in Taipei.

Friend: So why did you travel before, were you trying to find something?

Bruno: Not really, but you know sometimes you pretend you are looking for something, but actually you just want to have fun looking for it, if you find or not doesn’t really make any difference.

Friend: How’s that?

Bruno: Well it’s like some people when you ask them while are they still single, they say they are searching or waiting for the right person, when actually they are having a great time looking for that person and trying different partners to see if some fits them, or another example is people who go to college or university, they don’t do it to get a piece of paper like a diploma after many years of hardship, they go there for the parties, for the clubs, the environment, to be away from their parents, because they know they will make friends for life there and hook up with lots of people, you see in the end they had so much fun in college that the paper doesn’t really matter at all, it was just an excuse to do something fun.

Same goes for me.

I don’t want to achieve anything and not looking for anything, sometimes, I just find excuses for doing what I want; for example, when I went to Germany I signed up for the language school there, just to tell people I do something, but the school was only 2 hours a day and I didn’t learn much, life in Berlin was, on the other hand, probably one of the best times of my life.

Friend: Got it, so first I have to find an excuse to do what I want, and only then I can do it.

Bruno: Yeah well, it has to be a socially accepted idea, for people with narrow minds to understand, so should be either work, study or travel, you can not just say you’re going to Romania to find Dracula or going to Russia to build a time machine, people will look at you like “what?” It has to be something they can understand and relate to at the same time

Friend: Work, study or travel, got it.

Bruno: Anything else?

Friend: I think that’s it for today.

Bruno: Alright then.

 

Whatever 16

Girl: I think we need to talk.

Bruno: Sure what’s up?

Girl: Well, you know, we’ve been dating for a few years already…

Bruno: And?

Girl: And it’s time to take things a step further.

Bruno: What do you mean?

Girl: Well, you know.

Bruno: But, I told you already, I don’t enjoy that as much as you do.

Girl: No, not that, I think we should get married.

Bruno: Really?

Girl: Yes, I think it’s time.

Bruno: You know what? You’re right, our relationship HAS been going great the last few years, it’s time we get the government involved…

Girl: Is that sarcasm?

Bruno: No, I mean it, let’s get the government involved in our relationship, and let’s get some lawyers and judges as well.

Girl: Well, if you put it like this..

Bruno: I mean it, and let’s waste all our savings in a one-day ceremony for all those people we hate, for all those cousins you’ve never met, and all the people from work you so much enjoy spending time with.

Girl: You could have just said no.

Bruno: Why should I say no? It’s a fantastic idea, and let’s get the religions on it as well, let’s bring a child molester catholic priest to lead our ceremony and then he can play with your little sister.

Girl: You’re an ass, did you know that?

Bruno: whatever. 

Whatever 15

Friend: Want to play a game?

Bruno: Always.

Friend: This game is called “greed”.

Bruno: Is it like monopoly?

Friend: Something like that.

Bruno: How to play?

Friend: First you have to start something.

Bruno: Something like what?

Friend: You know, the usual: work, study, travel.

Bruno: Right, the only 3 things a person can do in this life.

Friend: Exactly, doesn’t really matter though, you could start putting together some jigsaw puzzles for all I care, just start doing something.

Bruno: Then what?

Friend: Then you have to let the greed take over your mind, or your soul if that’s what you believe in. If you have chosen to go for material greed, just keep working and working. If you have chosen to go for intellectual greed just keep studying and studying, go for a degree, then masters, Ph.D., whatever, just make sure you are never happy with what you have, and always try to get more and more. If you chose the travel route, keep going to more and more countries, make it an addiction and never content yourself with the places you’ve already been to, seek new experiences, new adventures and try to always go somewhere new. And needless to say, if you went for the puzzles, just keep buying more and more and collecting them, frame them, never be happy with the ones you already have.

Bruno: Sounds fun! And when do I win?

Friend: That’s the fun part, you will never win, the game keeps going on and on until you die. Because it’s not possible to collect all the things, acquire all the knowledge , visit all the places or finish all the jigsaw puzzles.

Bruno: Can’t catch them all? So why playing in the first place?

Friend: Because it’s the hip game to play and all the cool kids are playing it!

Bruno: Sounds  a bit lame though, sure you wanna play?

Friend: Yeah, It’ll be fun, I’ll go get some puzzles.

Bruno: Whatever then, lets play.

Living in the loopwholes

Friend: I don’t understand why you dislike the Christians so much?

Bruno: Because for me being Christian means taking the side of the oppressor.

Friend: You mean the side of the government?

Bruno: Yes, because the governments usually take side with the Christians/Catholics.

Friend: Yes, during the dark ages, now its different, kind of.

Bruno: How come it’s different?

Friend: Let’s just leave it there, so you just don’t like anyone who takes sides or works for the government?

Bruno: I like some, I like the librarians, the ones who clean the parks, the ones who build the bridges and highway, some teachers, some social workers, few other people.

Friend: So why you always complain about the government?

Bruno: Because they make my life just too difficult with all their rules and regulations.

Friend: So you just don’t like rules? If machines were making the rules instead of governments you’ll probably complain about the machines.

Bruno: Probably.

Friend: What rule do you hate the most?

Bruno: Well, every day is different, today is the one that hinders my stay in Taiwan. Because I want to stay in Taiwan and live here, but the Taiwanese government, same as most governments doesn’t want me to live here. And it’s not like if I were in Singapore and I can just take a bus to Malaysia for 20 dolars and get the new visa, a visa run from Taiwan is serious business.

Friend: So why do you live in Taiwan, go back to Europe, no one will kick you out, no visa, no passports, no borders.

Bruno: But the food in Taiwan is just so good. Best food ever.

Friend: So enjoy the food and try to get around the government somehow, there are always so many loopholes everywhere, you know that very well.

Bruno: Fuck that, I’m tired of always having to hide in the loopholes, I would like to get medical insurance, to rent an apartment, to get a job, to go to school, to get an ID.

Friend: Why would you want that?

Bruno: Just to do something different for a change.

Friend: So you always want what you can’t have, when you had all those papers and stuff in Europe you grew sick and tired of them, remember?

Bruno: You know what, you’re right, I’m better off in the loopholes.

Friend: There you go, see, problem solved.

Bruno: That was fast.

whatever 13

Friend: What do you want to do today?

Bruno: I want to move to Taiwan for good.

Friend: Why Taiwan?

Bruno: No special reason, just a feeling, I know I should move there but I don’t know the reason.

Friend: Funny.

Bruno: Not funny.

Friend: So why don’t you move there, if you know that’s what you should be doing?

Bruno: well, you’ve never felt like you know that what you’re doing is not the right thing for you to do right now, but you dont have the guts to do what you know you should be doing instead?

Friend: Yes, all the time.

Bruno: Ok, so you know how I feel.

Friend: But I thought you were the master of going for your dreams.

Bruno: Wrong, I may be the master of telling other people to go for their dreams, which is different.

Friend: Still, you’re better at it than everyone else I know.

Bruno: You must know very few people then.

Friend: True, I should go out more.

Bruno: You should.

Friend: You know what you have to do, there’s no way around it.

Bruno: Yeah, I know.

Friend: So just do it.

Bruno: I’m on it. Just Not yet, is not the right time yet.

Friend: So when?

Bruno: Soon, maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week.

Friend: So it’s in your plans already.

Bruno: Yes well, It’s out there, that means people know about it, the more people know about your dream the harder it is for you not to go for it.

Friend: Because of the peer pressure and what you think they would think of  you if you didn’t do what you want to do, they will see you as a weak person, a person without the courage to do what he wants to do.

Bruno: Exactly.

Friend: So that’s why you’re writing this here, so that’s it’s out there.

Bruno: Yes, you could say that.

Friend: So, you’re just wasting the readers time here.

Bruno: Pretty much.

Friend: And you’re proud of that.

Bruno: Well, it’s not like they have anything better to do.

Friend: Maybe they do.

Bruno: Probably not.

Friend: So you think.

Bruno: Well I’m not forcing them to read, they read because they want to.

Friend: They could be out there enjoying life, playing with their dogs in the park, or spending time with their friends and families.

Bruno: Well at least I give them something to read.

Friend: So very considerate of you.

Bruno: What can I say? That’s what you get from a free blog without advertisement, from me to them, no catch, no small print, and tell you what, from now on I’ll start answering the readers questions as well, so if you have a question or you want me to talk about some subject in particular just drop me an email or just post it in the comments and it will be answered as a new post, how cool is that?

Friend: Not cool at all, I do have a question I’ve been wanting to ask you though.

Bruno: Shoot.

Friend: How do you go about choosing which country you’re going to move to next? everyone else I know wouldn’t even dream of doing something like that. It’s pretty adventurous.

Bruno: As you said, you should start going out more, and about the country, first of all, it has to be a place I hadn’t been to before, and it would help if there was a prospect of some kind or something waiting for me there, like a job, a special person, or an opportunity of some nature, if there’s nothing of that, maybe I feel attracted by its language and feel the need of learning it, or I feel attracted by the culture and think I could learn something from it. Then, there’s the money issue… nah just kidding, money is not an issue anymore, I’m confident I could make a living anywhere.

Friend: And by a special person, you mean there has to be a girl you like there.

Bruno: That would be a very nice prospect, of course, unfortunately, most of the times that’s not the case.

Friend: Is there a special person waiting for you in Taiwan?

Bruno: I wish there was, because that would be just the extra push I need.

Friend: Why not trying http://www.taiwancupid.com? the number one dating site in Taiwan.

Bruno: Are you advertising some dating site now?

Friend: Just saying.

Bruno: Meh, I don’t want to meet a girl on a dating site, I’ll save that card for when I’m like 40 or like really desperate.

Friend: Actually you’re probably gonna be blind by the time you’re 40, why not just using it now?

Bruno: Because it’s creepy.

Friend: Yeah, so you can find creepy people like yourself.

Bruno: Hey I’m not the one dressing up as a kigurumi, now that was creepy.

Friend: Again with that? I told you it’s over, I’m not into it anymore, terminado amigo.

Bruno: You crazy freak.

Friend: Whatever.

Bruno: Whatever? Really??? Is that the best comeback you’ve got?

Friend: …

Bruno: Come on, I know you’ve got it in you.

Friend: Whatever man.

Bruno: Much better.

They deserve your smile

Hitchhiking means conquering the land

it means breaking free from conventional thought

it means starting to think outside the box

realizing there’s a whole world out there

and it’s all yours

realizing things can be different

if you want them to

understanding you have been lied to

understanding things are NOT different in the real world

because there’s no such a thing as the real world

we all live in our own world

the one we believe to be our real world

so actually you have not been lied to

well yes, you have, but not on purpose

they were telling the truth

their truth

they were telling you about their world

because most people live in a world of fear

they are afraid of other people

so they are afraid of hitchhiking

because it involves trusting people

it involves letting yourself go

it involves doing something different

something unexpected


it requires you to challenge yourself

to face your fears

to understand yourself

who you really are

why are you here

and why are you doing this

it requires you to live

to shut down the auto pilot

and take control of the ship

take control of yourself

of your emotions

of your fears

and just get over them

understand that you are a great person

and you deserve to get a ride

the drivers are great people too

and they deserve your company on their way

they deserve your stories

because they’ve come a long way today

they deserve your friendship

they deserve your trust

and overall

they deserve your smile 🙂

 

Pink

I read that before 1930 pink was considered a color for boys and blue for girls, and basically, they just changed it after the war.


And after some research, it seems that no one ever really got to any consensus as to what color should represent each gender, because well, you know, they are just colors. 


To be fair there was some research done on monkeys to see which one each gender chose, there were some polls among Caucasians, but in the end, it seemed the decision was purely arbitrary.






I usually like to wear pink, so that creates some misunderstandings sometimes.


Many times I encounter the alpha male or macho kind of guy, and they asked me “why do you wear pink, are you gay?” and sometimes I tell them that I’m confident enough about my sexuality to be able to wear any color I want. Sometimes I tell them, dude, it’s just a color, what’s the big deal? Sometimes, I would tell them that no one told me pink was for girls, and I ask them why is pink for girls or how is it somehow related to girls, or when did this happen or where, of course they wouldn’t know the answer.


But the real reason, of course, is not that I feel confident about my sexuality, I’m not confident about anything in this life.


The real reason is that I just want to piss them off, it’s like an automatic self-defense mechanism, my brain had chose pink as a way to repel people who would think that pink should be worn by girls only, or people who think that somewhere along the way, pink stopped being just a color in order to become a symbol for femininity or something gay people would like.

I’m lucky though that people who think pink is for gays are usually right wing bigoted religious retards, and you don’t find as many of them here, not as many as in the west at least.


But many times I would say, yes, I’m gay, just to piss them off even more, because I kind of really hate homophobes. 

And guess what, all my gay friends don’t really like pink at all!






I understand that color-gender association is no more than a consequence of human evolution and the course its organized society has taken. Which is as usual totally random and at the same time not random at all if you are willing to indefinitely trace back the butterfly effect.


And even though it sounds retarded that pink is for girls and blue is for boys I also understand that the reason why I worry about that is that I have too much free time.


Free time not just to think about the colors, but to bother writing about them, which leads me again the main question: what am I doing with my life?

Seeding your torrents

How hard can it be?

The only thing you have to do

is absolutely nothing

just not deleting the file

a file that occupies almost no space anyway

a file that can make countless other people’s day

a file that can change someone’s life forever

it could inspire the next Mozart

could inspire the next Edgar Allan Poe

the next star wars

the next bible

and all you have to do

is actually nothing at all

give back to the community

take care of your family

we are your family


family on the internet

people who care for you

who share their files

people who respect you

people who want to see you happy

want to see you having a good time

people who love you

people who seed their torrents

Playing games

Today I was just here at home surfing the web, when suddenly…


…nothing…


that’s right nothing happened, nothing at all, because I live a sad and boring life, and while my friends are all out at some party, I just stay at home playing some old video games.


Complaining about the government, feeling sorry for myself, thinking about what else to do in order to survive, what else can I do so I don’t cease to exist, trying to please other people, trying to live with myself, trying not to think too much.


What to do today. Probably just play some game. But that’s not very productive. And probably you will feel guilty for wasting your day. Unless it’s raining of course. Unless you over think it.


Because if you start thinking about how you are just one insignificant person among billions on this planet, and your planet is just a fraction of the size of your sun, your sun is just one among trillions of stars and your solar system is nor more than a pixel among countless other galaxies in the universe, when you start thinking that, it’s actually quite easy to rationalize staying at home playing video games the whole day.

About finances

Most people I meet, usually ask me how do I make money, or how do I make a living, the answer will vary, depending on the person and the situation.
Depending on their ability to think outside the box, their ability to understand or interpreting new ideas, or depending if they seem to be ready or not to understand that things may not be the way they’ve been told they are.

And many times they ask me how do I manage to live without working, and the answer to that is simple: I don’t live without working, I just decided to work a bit less than the average joe.

By trying to live a simple and modest life and reducing expenses, it’s actually possible to considerably reduce the amount of money you need to earn, which in turn, reduces the amount of work you need to do.

As an example, my life in Korea goes something like this:

I usually work once a week, sometimes teaching, acting, other jobs.

One full day of work = 150 dollars a week = roughly 600 to 700 dollars a month.

What expenses do I have to cover with that: food and rent.

Rent for a modest single room at a sharehouse in Korea, in Japan, or in most European countries I’ve been to, comes at around 300 dollars a month, and you can eat modestly with around 10 dollars a day which equals roughly 300 a month.

So we have +600 income
-300 rent
-300 food
————–
000 left

As simple as that, so the reason I got to work just one day a week is that I don’t get to save any money or buy silly things I don’t need.

Another example, about my life in China or in Thailand, salary for an English teacher in China or Thailand comes at around 5 dollars a day (I use USD because it’s the currency more people are familiar with).

Working one 8 hours day shift every week would bring in around 40 USD a week, or 160 a month.

Rent for a modest one-bedroom apartment would cost around 50 a month, leaving 110 for food, drink, visa runs, lady boy, crystal meth or whatever it is you guys are into this days.

So working just one day a week we have +160 income
– 50 rent
– 110 food, ladyboy, meth
———
000 left

In Europe or Australia, where salaries are higher is even more simple than that, one month of work, fruit picking, bartending or any kind of job would bring about 500 USD a week to save, which comes to 2000 a month while life expenses, using the above equation 300 for rent and 300 for food, makes 600.

so +2000 income
– 300 rent
– 300 food
—————–
1400 profit

That means if you’re willing to work 3 months a year, you can then enjoy 9 months holidays:

+6000 = 3 months rent
-5400 = 9 months expenses
——————————–
600 profit

And if you really want to live without working, just take those 6000 you made in 3 months, and go to a 3rd world country, like Asia or South America and they will last you at least 3 times more so

6000 = 3 months work in a rich country
5400 = 2 years modest holidays in a poor country
———————————————————————
600 profit which you will need for airfares or visa runs




Visa run: is a colloquial term, which the expats use to define the system of exiting and re-entering a country in order to get a new tourist visa. If you’re in the EU you’ll usually go to England for it, if you;re in USA you’ll go to mexico or canada, if you’re in Thailand you’ll go to cambodia, laos or malaysia, if you’re in malaysia you’ll go to thailand or singapore. If you’re in Korea you’ll go to fukuoka from busan, if you’re in japan you’ll go to busan from fukuoka 😉
If you’re in india you have to go to nepal, if you’re in OZ you may go to NZ or bali and so on.




I’m aware that many of you guys reading this may have university degrees, careers, rich uncle or infinite other sources of income. 


This s just an attempt of beginners guide for people who don’t really have any skills or relatives, or people who would like to work or experience life in different countries, without being tied up to contracts or corporate life.

for odd jobs in different countries, you can always resort to craigslist, gumtree, kijiji, or any similar websites, pickignjobs.com for picking jobs, helpex.net for places to work for food and lodging, or just about any other website you find.

And if you’re a bit more reckless you can add some medical trials, blood/plasma/egg/sperm donations, reselling tickets for sports events or concerts, gambling, begging, busking, street performing, online businesses, modeling, house sitting, dog walking, taking jobs as extra on movies or tv shows, reselling stuff on ebay that you found at garage sales, or if you have an apartment or place to store stuff you can buy bulk stuff from the provider and resell them or distribute them at retail price, freelance photography, writing editing, programming or graphic design if you’re good with computers. deliver newspapers, pamphlets, open a lemonade stand, whatever.


Actually,  the possibilities are endless, if you manage to think outside the box.


I always remember how in Berlin, we used to go with Julian with our big backpacks after a concert or event, where people had been drinking in the streets, we would collect all the empty bottles and take them back to the shop for a refund. 

And if you want to get anything for free is quite simple, let’s say I’m now in Budapest and want to take yoga lessons, just google: free yoga lessons Budapest” and you’ll get a bunch of results, there are free things everywhere, you just have to look for them. try meetup.com try couchsurfing.org, and you’re all covered.

Of course that ideally I would like to be able to work for a cause, instead of working for money, that way I can feel good about myself, but when you take money out of the equation you can devote yourself to work for a cause in your free time, when you don’t need money. 




So you can work one day a week for money and the rest work because you like. Because it makes you feel happy or good about yourself, or dedicate the time to learn or do something you want. volunteer to help others or just spend time with people you like.

You’re not really gonna live a luxurious life like this, and your parents are probably not gonna be so happy about it, but hey, you’ve kind of managed to retire in your 20’s, what else do you want?

There’s no way around it

You gotta do what you gotta do

what you know it’s right

what will complete you

you gotta do what you want to do

gotta keep moving

keep moving forward

there’s no way around it

there’s no turning back either

can’t fool yourself

can’t just keep pretending

pretending you don’t know

that you don’t know what to do

that you don’t know what makes you happy

that you don’t know what you have to do

you know very well what that is

only you know it

and only you can do it

so stop fooling yourself

and just do what you gotta do

So you can figure me out

 

Where I Am Now

Singapore, don’t know why though, no idea till when either, waiting for a sign, haha

Doing What?         Been Couchsurfing for a few weeks now and spending time with people

My Wish Today

I find myself quite happy today, it’s been raining quite a lot, but no deep thoughts have come, just a positive wish of enjoying the day, surviving the night and hoping that everything goes well this week, will worry about the rest later, well I wish I had a gaming laptop, so I could play Diablo and Skyrim, but not having one is also good, because it gets me closer to my final goal in life

My Final Goal in Life

– I want to get rid of everything, all the material things I possess, and I’m attached to, keep just one pair of clothes, no backpack, no gadgets, no money, just my passport and toothbrush (in my pocket) 
– After that I want to get rid of all the bad thoughts sometimes occupy my mind, like greed, anxiety, lust, envy, jealousy, possessiveness, hate,.want to replace apathy with empathy and anxiety with serenity.
– After that, I want to get rid of my irrational worries, want to stop worrying about the future, about the money, about the politics, want to be the best I can be and make the most of what’s left of my life

My Fears

A bit anxious about the future but not so much, much less than before. I still have that stigma of what would people around me would think or what they expect me to do, I try not to care, but I still care a little, a little afraid of running out of money also, but not as much as a few years back, I’m getting used to being alone also, that’s good, so not afraid of that anymore, and I think I’ve become more independent the last few months, just a little though.

Favorite Words Today

I saw it on a csers profile who took it from grey’s anatomy:

Maybe we are not supposed to be happy 
Maybe gratitude has nothing to do with joy 
Maybe being grateful is recognizing 
What you have for what it is
 
Appreciate small victories 
Admiring the struggle it takes simply to be human 
Maybe we’re thankful for the familiar things we know 
And maybe we’re thankful for things we’ll never know 
At the end of the day, 
The fact that we have the courage to still be standing 
Is reason enough to celebrate

Favorite Music Today

stroke 9, Tim Minchin, Clazziquai project, Yiruma

Place I Want Go

Taiwan and Russia, maybe 1 year each, also I want to go to Argentina and make my way north overland to Canada visiting all the countries in between, spending at least a few months on each (except Venezuela)

Dream

Also, every day is different, today I want to become a writer, open a small bookshop and become a clerk there, like the comedy black books, I wish I could write something interesting, a science fiction story, or alternate history. instead, I keep writing silly things like this.

Thing I’m into Lately

Chess, unfortunately there’s no one to play with, so I just play against the computer or some strangers online. trying to understand the higgs bosom field, game of thrones, the mentalist and persona 4 the anime, not as good as the games of course, but still good. Thanks for reading!

 

Create your own reality

Acquaintance: Good morning, how are you today? Can I take your order?


Bruno: yeah, I’d like… Hey, I know this guy!


Acquaintance: Hey Bruno, hisashiburi, how have you been?


Bruno: Not too bad, how have you been?


Acquaintance: I’m alright, can’t complain, what have you been up to?


Bruno: You know, a bit of this, a bit of that, been doing a bit of traveling lately. I didn’t know you worked here.

Acquaintance: Really? Still traveling? Don’t you think it’s time that you settle down?


Bruno: Yes? Why is that?


Acquaintance: I don’t know, just saying.


Bruno: You know, I’ve heard that many times before, from many people, but when I ask them why do they say that, no one could give me a straight answer, they all said the same you just said, that they don’t know why they say that.



Acquaintance: Funny.


Bruno: Actually I know the answer already, but I just want to check if they know it.


Acquaintance: What’s the answer?


Bruno: “Because that’s what’s expected.”


Acquaintance: But don’t you want to find a job, a girlfriend, a place to live, a family, a career?


Bruno: Why would I want that?


Acquaintance: I don’t know.


Bruno: But I just told you


Acquaintance: Because it’s expected.


Bruno: You got it.


Acquaintance: You don’t want to find a job?


Bruno: No, why would I?


Acquaintance: Because it’s expected?


Bruno: Give me something more than that, we’re trying to have a conversation here.


Acquaintance: I don’t know why, to have more money?


Bruno: To have more money, really? Even I don’t like working, I think I could come up with more convincing arguments than that one, like, to feel productive, to boost your self esteem, to keep yourself active, to feel useful, to improve your social skills or interpersonal relationships, to keep yourself busy, to broaden your horizons, to help people, to learn something new, to make new friends.


Acquaintance: Yes, those ones are good too, but we need money to live too, money is important


Bruno: It’s just paper, has no real value.


Acquaintance: You can trade it for things and experiences and freedom and anything you want.


Bruno: Can I trade it for a cat?


Acquaintance: Sure, you can buy a cat also


Bruno: How about one of those new phones with camera on them?


Acquaintance: A camera-phone sure, you can buy one of those also.


Bruno: How about a plate of potato gnocchi with some pesto?


Acquaintance: Yes, you can buy anything you want.


Bruno: Mmm… delicious!


Acquaintance: You can even  buy a rain coat and a train ticket, pay rent, buy Nutella or a Taiwanese visa or a ticket to visit your family in Argentina, you can even give it to people who need it more than you, you can use it to help the animals, you can get calf implants, you can order a Russian wife, you can build the iron man suit, you can clone yourself, you can do whatever you want with it.


Bruno: Whoa, money sounds awesome.


Acquaintance: It is.


Bruno: Where can I get some?


Acquaintance: At the casino of course.


Bruno: And what should I play?


Acquaintance: Whatever, it’s not about what you play, it’s about how you play.


Bruno: So, how should I play?


Acquaintance: Visualize yourself winning. 


Bruno: So I need to imagine that I win and then I’ll win?


Acquaintance: Yes kind of, but it’s not about imagination, is about belief, you have to convince yourself that you have won already. Like some people convince themselves that there’s a god, that their partners love them or that the world leaders are reptiles in disguise.


Bruno: How’s that possible? How does it work?


Acquaintance: It’s science, it’s quantum physics.


Bruno: No, it’s not and you have no idea what you’re talking about.


Acquaintance: You’re right, but if I tell you it’s science you will believe it and then it will work, if I tell you is magic or destiny you will reject the idea and it won’t work. The truth is that I don’t know how it works I just know it does.


Bruno: Fair enough, so how can I convince myself that I won already?


Acquaintance: Meditation, of course, train yourself to believe whatever you want to believe and believe it in a way that it becomes your reality.


Bruno: Like that book “the secret” or “what the bleep do we know” that everyone thinks is a hoax.


Acquaintance: Exactly.


Bruno: Alright then, I’ll give it a try, it was nice seeing you and thanks for the advice.


Acquaintance: No worries, would you like some fries with that?


Bruno: Sure, why not.

 

Malaysia is the place to chill

Malaysia has become the best place for people like me who have no job and need to live somewhere spending very little money.

Why Malaysia and not other SE Asian country?

Well, first of all, free visa, not like Indonesia, Laos or Phillipines which charges you 20-25 dolars per month, or Cambodia, Vietnam, Burma,  where the visa fee can be as steep as 50 dolars per month.

I’m talking about visa for westerners of course, if you’re SE Asian you usually pay no visa anyway when you visit other SE Asian countries.

Secondly, no departure fee in Malaysia, that’s right some scumbag countries like Indonesia and, Phillipines will charge you a departure fee for leaving the country, because they didn’t have enough with charging you for getting into the country, now they have to charge you for leaving the country also.

90 days visa, while all the other countries in SE Asia will just let you stay 1 month, Malaysia and Singapore will let you stay for 90 days.

Did I just mention Singapore? yeah, and you know what, this article could have been talking about Singapore instead, if it wasn’t, well you know just a tiny island inside malaysia whose inhabitants believe themselves to be better than Malaysians because of the sole fact that in Singapore everything costs 3 times as much as in Malaysia.

Malaysia is quite easy to easy to get around also, not as easy as Thailand, but here most people speak English, still relatively safe, Chinese food everywhere, Malay food everywhere, Indian food everywhere, lots of islands, no rules, no hassle, and it’s nice to see that not every girl comes with a price tag as it happens in Thailand or Philippines.`

Still quite cheaper than Thailand, maybe not as cheap as Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, etc but they make up for it by not being soooo full of garbage everywhere, of course, there’s plenty of it still, otherwise it wouldn’t be south-east Asia, but I would dare to say it’s not nearly as much as in Indonesia.

All those shenanigans still make malaysia my favorite country in SE Asia, just hoping it won’t change as Thailand did.

First time I went to Thailand it was the same as malaysia 90 days visa, no questions asked, a few years later they changed it to 2 months, then 1 month and now they let us stay for like 2 weeks.


That way they make sure there are no people just hanging around, no people who just want to relax instead of doing things in a rush, and overall make sure there are no lazy people around, no lazy people like me, with way too much free time and way too little money. 

Society fail

Am I the only who’s tired of his clothes?


Well, there are 7.000.000.000 people on this planet, what am I saying? Of course, I’m not the only one.

The estimated time it takes me to get bored of my clothes is 2 to 3 months, so after that, I either stop wearing them or keep wearing them without feeling special anymore. I stop looking handsome and start looking dull on them. So then its easier to let them go.

In an ideal society, and by ideal I mean one that works for everyone and not for a few, instead of having thousands of clothing factories producing tons of new clothes we don’t need, so that they get accumulated at home after we get bored of them, the clothing market would work same as a library works now.

You know how you go to the library, take a book, read it, and give it back, well the same we should do with clothes.

Because it’s pointless to accumulate at home hundreds of books we have already read instead of passing them on to someone who could read them. SO why would we accumulate so many clothes we have already gotten bored of, or they don’t fit us or we don’t like them anymore?

Imagine you could just go and swap them for some you like more and change your wardrobe every second week.

Imagine you can dress as a furry today, as businessman tomorrow and show off some 60’s hippie style the day after.

Dress as Cloud Strife on the weekend, as a Teletubbie on Monday, and be a hipster on Tuesday, wouldn’t that be fun?

The reason we don’t do that is not that no one had thought about it, but because there are people who benefit from me getting bored of my wardrobe after few months.

So the reason we don’t make a library for clothing is the same one we don’t have one for tools, accessories, vehicles, magic the gathering cards and every single material thing we usually need.

It’s so that people need to keep buying stuff, the money changes hands, hence keeping the monetary economy running. That way we can keep living in a failed and decaying society.

Because a society where there are millions of homeless people in the street while we have millions of empty houses no one uses, it’s a failed society.

A society where some people don’t have food, and the rest throw away tons of food every day it’s a failed society.

A society where some people have private swimming pools while others don’t have drinking water is a failed society.

An individualistic society, that doesn’t ensure that it’s members work together for a common goal it’s a failed society.

And a society that doesn’t teach its members to take care of one another it is indeed a failed society.

 

I can take it

Once, a short time after arriving in Australia, I found myself sleeping in an abandoned car I had found by the side of the road for a few days, not because I didn’t have money, but because I didn’t have money and couldn’t find any better place.


It was not so far from the city, the only catch was that I had to cross the highway to get there, which is, as most hitchhikers know, one of the scariest feelings ever.


It was not as bad as most abandoned cars though, there were a few empty bottles here and there but no one had yet urinated or defecated on it, so it didn’t smell as bad as other abandoned cars I had slept in before.


People who slept in the open know that the worst times are usually between 3 and 5 am, why worse? Because the temperature drops drastically.


So if you’re sleeping in an old car, construction site, park, beach, tent or anywhere outdoors, you’re probably gonna have a bad time at around 3, because the cold just wakes you up, unless you’re in a tropical country of course, in which case you’re gonna wake up because of the mosquitoes.


Hopefully, you’ll have something to keep yourself busy during those hours between 3 and 5 am, something like an mp3 player, a book, a musical instrument, or anything to distract you, anything so that you don’t need to think, you don’t need to think about when did it get this bad.
Where have you failed in life.
What went wrong that.


Unless you are the optimistic type, in which case you can just keep yourself busy nourishing your already oversized ego, you can instead just think of when did it get this good. 
What you owe this great success in life to.
When have you become so independent that you can choose to sleep anywhere.
When have you become so resourceful that you can find places to sleep and food anywhere.
When have you become so reckless that you are not afraid of the police, the thieves, the wild animals, the weather or the lack of supplies?
When did you become so confident that you don’t care what most people would say?

When did you just stop caring?




Unfortunately, I’m not all that positive yet, but someday, hopefully, someday Instead of waking up all freezing and scared saying “oh god why?”, I will wake up like a boss at 3 am and say “Fuck yeah! Bring on the cold, because I-can-take-it”.

 

Treat yourself

 

Dear reader. 

Today I want you to treat yourself.

 

Think of what you have always wanted to do.

Today is the perfect day to do it.

 

Because you deserve it.

 

Because you have worked very hard.

 

Ok, maybe not so hard.

 

But is your time to relax.

The time has come.

 

To think only of yourself.

 

Think of what you want.

 

Of what makes you happy.

 

And do it.

 

Whatever it is.

 

Because you need it.

 

Because you deserve it.

 

Because you earned it.

 

Today is your day.

 

Today is the day.

 

The day to be happy.

 

The day to be free.

 

The day to treat yourself.

 

To love yourself.

 

Because you are the best.

 

You are awesome.

 

One of a kind.

 

You are fantastic.

 

So treat yourself.

 

To a fantastic day.

 

 

Whatever 8

Friend: Hey there.


Bruno: Hey, how’s it going?


Friend: I feel terrible, just had an argument with my parents.


Bruno: Why? What happened?


Friend: Well, I want to go on a holiday, but they don’t want me to go. What do you think I should do?


Bruno: Mmm.. that sounds like a typical first world problem. And the solution is usually the same, just brush it off.


Friend: What do you mean “first world problem”?


Bruno: Well, you know I have a friend, an English teacher here in Korea, and she told me that before coming here she was volunteering in Uganda, helping people with AIDS, and those people would die, because they didn’t have access to the medicines, sometimes they were some medicines somewhere, but they were just too far away, and the transport costs too much for them, so they can’t make it to the city, and they just die. 

Sometimes they have to trek for long hours, just to bring some water to their family and on the way they may get eaten by a lion if they were lucky enough not to encounter some bandits or soldiers that will rape them and kill them, or make them slaves. 

You see, in Korea, same as the country you are right now, we don’t have AIDS, we don’t need to struggle to find food or water, we have no malaria, famine, plagues, drought, we have no dictator and no mass massacres, to put it simply we have no real problems. 

So we have to make some up, for example I would worry about the corruption in our government and about the high-income inequality, you would feel bad because your parents don’t want you to go on vacations, someone else will worry because their iPhone broke, they can’t find a boyfriend, the weather is too cold or whatever.


Friend: Why do we do that?


Bruno: As with most things, there’s no just one reason or one person to blame for it, it depends on a million different variables, a million different “if”‘s. But maybe the simplest of reasons is that we’ve always done it and we don’t bother changing it because change scares us. 


You know, there’s a documentary I really enjoyed about stress, basically, they observe and study some distant cousins of ours, a tribe of baboons in the wild, their hierarchies, social status and relate it to the level of stress in their blood.


It turned out that the average baboon only needed to spend around 3 hours a day finding food and eating it, that left them the rest of the day free, to make someone else’s life miserable.
Which is pretty much the same we do. And, paradoxically enough, same as in a corporate environment, each baboon, knew exactly who he could be picked on by, who could he pick on, and in turn, who could be picked on by the baboon he can pick on and so on.


The rest is history, as we evolved, almost every known human civilization, once they get to cover their basic needs (food, water, shelter) they have tons of free time to terrorize each other, either by making up gods that will punish them, finding some reason to invade or conquer their neighbors, or just make their own lives miserable with a bunch of utterly bureaucratic procedure of some kind. 


Take the egyptians, for example, once they started thriving, they couldn’t just relax by the Nile and do some bird watching, they HAD to create a intricate series of gods, rituals, laws and hierarchies, then enslave hundreds of thousands of people in order to build some massive structures, for some retarded reason. And they HAD to do it, of course, in the most ridiculously difficult way possible, let’s take 20 years to build only one of this structures and let’s use stones weighing up to 2.5 tons, yay!


And this is not me complaining about the Egyptians, this is me complaining about human stupidity, we’ve been here for 200.000 years already (homo sapiens), we should know better already.


It’s just not you that worries about what your parents say, everyone worries about things that don’t matter, I also worry about my job, the weather, the future or silly things like catching the 150 Pokemon.


Friend: I think they are more than 150 now.


Bruno: You get my point though?


Friend: There are 649 Pokemon now.


Bruno: I know, but for me, they will always be 150, maybe I’m just old.


Friend: Not old, but things change, we discover more Pokemon, they evolve, and they get more and more complex every day, unnecessarily complex I would say, did you know that there are 7 Eevee evolutions now?


Bruno: Now that’s just too many Eevee evolutions.


Friend: You said you worry about your job, but how come you never talk about your job?


Bruno: True, I don’t usually talk about it, but I do worry, not as much as everyone else worries about it though. I’m just trying to change my perspective, see, pretty much all my life I’ve witnessed how everyone’s life revolved around their work. 


Friend: Well, you are what you do, right?


Bruno: Exactly! That’s what I got tired of, of having to “be” something, and the million social obligations that something, that title carries with it, so if I’m an office worker I have to dress a certain way, I have to talk, eat and behave in a certain way, hang out with certain people, at certain places, drink coffee and look stressed, because if I’m relaxed I wouldn’t be fitting the stereotype of the office worker, the same will happen if I’m an artist, musician or something like that, I have to dress a certain way, hang out at certain places, with certain people, I’m expected to care more about social issues and my ideas are expected to be more liberal, so I got tired of always having to fit into some job description that will, in turn, define my personality, my ideas, my appearance and that the rest of my life will revolve around that job description.


Friend: So you’re not gonna work anymore so you don’t get labeled.


Bruno: It’s not about working or not working, it’s about not giving it more importance than it should have and not be letting my job control my life. So yes, I’ll work for a couple of weeks or months every year here and there, save some money, then go traveling or do something I enjoy, like learning a new language and spend all the money, when I run out of money, I’ll find a different job in a different country, save some money, spend  it all doing something nice, work again, and so on, but I’m not gonna stress about it like I did before and definitely not going to let it take over my soul.


Friend: I wish I could do that.


Bruno: So do it.


Friend: But everyone expects me to work my whole life at the same job, I’m Asian remember?


Bruno: I’m Asian too.


Friend: No, you’re not.


Bruno: Ok, I’m not, anyway, being Asian is just the most handy excuse you can find now for not doing what you want, Asian countries have some expectations towards their citizens, same as every other country in the world, they are all pretty much the same, and we all think our life is harder than everyone else’s and we all think our country or our family makes our lives oh so very difficult, just so that we don’t have to take responsibility for our lives and we can keep blaming someone else for our misery.


Friend: 649 Pokemon.


Bruno: It’s crazy, right? 649 and counting and some of them just look ridiculous, like, seriously, what is this?

Friend: It’s a Solosis.


Bruno: And that?

Friend: that’s a ferrothorn.


Bruno: How about this one?

 

Friend: Luvdisc


Bruno: How clever! And what’s this supposed to be?

Friend: That’s a chimecho.


Bruno: This is getting out of hand.


Friend: You know it’s just a children’s game anyway.


Bruno: Children’s game? How dare you!?!?


Friend: It is.


Bruno: Well, whatever then.


Friend: 🙂

Go to the gym

Guilt: It’s 3 o’clock.



Bruno: So?



Guilt: So, the gym closes at 5?



Bruno: So?


Guilt: So you should be on your way already.



Bruno: What’s that? I should???


Guilt: Yes, because if you don’t you’re gonna feel guilty later today, and if you don’t get yourself tired you won’t be able to sleep well tonight.



Bruno: F***k that s***t, I’ll sleep anyway.


Guilt: No you won’t and you know it.



Bruno: Well, I’m not going anywhere.


Guilt: So why on earth did you spend so much time understanding how exercise works, how it affects your mood and what effects it has on your body if now you won’t want to go to the gym? Why do you spend so much time learning what foods are good for you, which aren’t, how are they digested, which gives you the best nutrients, if you’re not gonna eat them later? Why do you spend time understanding the political and socio-economical institutions if you’re not gonna try to make them better? You need to walk the talk, exercise makes us happy and you know it, no “but”, get dressed, go to the gym, and think about what I said.



Bruno: Who do you think you are?


Guilt: I’m the logical part of you, the one that will come up with logical arguments to convince you to always do the right thing for the right reasons. No excuses.



Bruno: So damn arrogant, well guess what logic, I don’t care. I’m gonna stay home and learn every single one of Asuka’s 10 hit combos in Tekken dark resurrection.


Guilt: That’s ridiculous, you have Tekken 6, why would you play dark resurrection?



Bruno: Just to piss you off, that’s why.


Guilt: It’s 3.10 you better get going.



Bruno: I have a headache.


Guilt: No, you don’t.



Bruno: I’m still tired from yesterday.


Guilt: You’re not.



Bruno: It looks like it’s gonna rain.


Guilt: It doesn’t.



Bruno: I have things to do tomorrow morning.


Guilt: You don’t.



Bruno: Ok, how about this: I’ll just exercise at home for 1 hour, right here right now, and you leave me alone.


Guilt: Work out at home for 2 hours, 30 minutes of yoga, 30 minutes of stretching, then go for a walk for 1 hour and you’re free.



Bruno: 1 hour exercise, 15 minutes stretching, walk around the block and I’m done with this s**t. I’ll even throw in some documentaries after the walk.


Guilt: 1 hour exercise, 30 minutes stretching, 30 minutes meditation, then go for a walk for as long as you want and you’re off the hook.



Bruno: Deal.


Guilt: Deal.

Shave your head

Bruno: Let’s shave our heads today!

Friend: What? Where did that come from?

Bruno: Let’s shave our heads, baby!

Friend: What? You call yourself baby now?

Bruno: Yeah baby.

Friend: Ok baby, let’s shave.

Bruno: What? Wait, are you sure of this?

Friend: No. But you just said so, I’ll just play along.

Bruno: You’re not supposed to play along, you’re supposed to bring me down to earth and tell me it’s a silly idea.

Friend: I think it’s a great idea actually.

Bruno: Is it?

Friend: Sure, well you may loose some of your charms, but you’ll save some money in shampoo and hair products.

Bruno: I never use shampoo or hair products anyway.

Friend: So you’ll save some money on the hairdresser.

Bruno: I don’t spend on that either.

Friend: So on water, if you need to wash it less often.

Bruno: That one either.

Friend: Eewww, so it makes no difference, you always wearing a cap anyway.

Bruno: True.

Friend: So just do it.

Bruno: Ok baby, let’s do it together.

Friend: Forever alone level: schizophrenia.

Bruno: What can I say? I’ve been lonely.

Friend: You’ll be fine either way, you’ll be fine if you just stop worrying.

Bruno: I’ll be fine either way.

Friend: Everything’s gonna be just fine.

Bruno: Just fine.

Friend: Everything’s gonna be A-okay!

Bruno: A-okay!

Friend: You see, you’re feeling better now.

Bruno: I feel better.

Friend: You’re so lucky you have me.

Bruno: I’m lucky to have you.

Friend: You did well, now relax, take a deep breath and just sleep, that tomorrow it will be a wonderful day.

Bruno: I’ll just sleep.

Friend: Sleep.

Whatever 7

Friend: have you ever thought about having a baby?


Bruno: Not really, I think we have way too many people already on this planet, we don’t need anymore.



Friend: But it’s the circle of life, we have to keep procreating.


Bruno: Indefinitely? 




Friend: Yes, like the stupid animals we are.


Bruno: But… almost  7.000.000.000 people already and counting, one million more people every four days, every second 2 people are born, isn’t that enough? It’s not like we are facing extinction or anything.


Friend: Anyway, it’s what’s expected from you, you’re almost 30, gotta start procreating already.


Bruno: Wtf! I’m like no way near 30, I’m 27.




Friend: It’s a good time to have a baby.


Bruno: We don’t even have enough resources to take care of all the people we have now, why do we have to keep having more and more? Every baby born needs shelter, clothes, electricity, tons of food and water, we are not even able to provide for all the people we have now, and you want to keep adding more people?


Friend: Poor people are not your problem, you have to take care of yourself, and think about your future.


Bruno: I am a poor person, and I can barely take care of myself, how do you expect me to take care of a baby? And most important, why? why on earth would I ever want to do that? 


Friend: Because it’s what’s expected.


Bruno: Not a good reason.




Friend: Because you can.


Bruno: Still not a good reason.


Friend: Because then they can support you and take care of you when you are old.


Bruno: I’m not asian, I don’t need my children to support me or take care me, I’ll rather take care of myself.


Friend: But you will be blind.


Bruno: I’ll be fine.


Friend: You will die.


Bruno: I’ll learn to astral project, telekinesis, telepathy or something like that.


Friend: Right.


Bruno: Really, you don’t think I can do it?


Friend: Of course not.


Bruno: Why not?


Friend: Because those things don’t really exist. 


Bruno: Not yet, but I can be the first one to discover them.


Friend: But that falls into the category of the paranormal, like the gods, astrology, angels, or ghosts, and you always say you don’t believe in the paranormal.


Bruno: True, but If I can prove it, it will stop being paranormal, it will become a fact. Then I can believe in it because it’s just there.


Friend: You think too much, you better have a baby, so that he will take care of you.


Bruno: No way. You expect me to just ignore all the overpopulation and environmental problems and think just about my own selfish future.


Friend: Exactly.


Bruno: Why would I?


Friend: Because everyone else does.


Bruno: Not everyone else, most people yes, not everyone.


Friend: Still.


Bruno: My father had way more babies that he could take care of, more than he could provide for, nevertheless, he decided to keep having babies, and he decided to take care of the other babies instead of taking care of me, so I had to suffer because of that, because he couldn’t provide for me. I’m not a man of means so I wouldn’t be able to provide for my babies either, why would I make them go through the same I went through for not having enough food.


Friend: Looks like someone has daddy issues.


Bruno: No way, it’s just an example, and supposing I WERE a man of means, and I was able to provide for them, how could I ever live with myself knowing there are so many children in the world that have no one to take care of them, waiting for someone to adopt them, and I selfishly decided to bring a new baby to this planet while there are so many that have no parents.


Friend: How about passing on your genes or genetic material?


Bruno: No need to do that.


Friend: How about passing on your legacy, all the things you have learned, and all the things you know to future generations.


Bruno: There is no such a legacy, the only thing I know is that I’m never gonna have children.


Friend: Never say never.


Bruno: You just said it twice.


Friend: Whatever.


Bruno: Yeah, Whatever.

The Script (when you’re 19)

I recently talked to a Korean friend of mine. He’s 19 years old now, that means he’s entering the age where people will start demanding from him to start being productive and do something with his life. And by “something” I mean, of course, something they want him to do and by “something they want him to do”, I mean of course, work or study.


Studying not as a way of helping mankind, not as way of understanding more about life, about our universe, your body, your mind or about how things work, but as way of satisfying society’s hunger for predictability and doing just what you are expected to do, to keep things predictable, play by the rules and make sure everything stays the same. That the rich stay rich, the poor stay poor and the foolish stay foolish. 


And working not as a way of helping others, but as a way of helping yourself. Everyone around you wants to make sure you get a job and make just enough money to pay the rent, food and pay for a bunch of things you don’t need. 


The amount has to be just the right one, if you get too little money you may get sick or depressed, being unable to keep working, if you get too much you may try to escape the loop of working-getting little money-spending that little money-working again- getting little money again-spending that little money again-working again..

Same as a dog, they have to make sure you are kept on a short leash, giving you enough money and freedom so that you won’t complain but not too much so that you will run away.




So coming back to my Korean friend, we were in a group, so other people, after learning he had just finished high school, understandably wanted to know what’s he gonna do after, because he has to do something, right? He can’t do nothing. We all have to do something. Something that keeps the machine running, something that keeps the money flowing.


So his scrips would go something like this: 


“When I finish, I’m gonna go to the army, then I’m going to study business administration, and then I’m going to find a job at a company”


Now, there’s nothing strange with this, that’s what most Koreans would say at his age when people ask them what are they going to do after high school. It’s just what’s expected. Graduate then work at the company.


The problem is that this guy has dreadlocks, wears Jamaican colors, and looks and talks like he’d rather be playing ukulele in costa rica, than going to the army and business school.




So I remembered what my script was when I was his age, and it was, surprisingly enough, pretty much the same as his.


I used to say whatever people around me wanted to hear just so that they’ll leave me alone, and sometimes I almost believed it.


Sometimes I almost believed that was what I wanted to do, just because it was what they were expecting me to do.


Sometimes I almost believed I had to do something just because everyone else did.





And then when people found out I had the chance of going to Spain, and they asked me what I was going to do after. I remember myself saying “I’m going to save some money in Spain, then come back to Argentina and start some business or buy a house here”. That one was not only the answer everyone was expecting to hear, but also the only answer I knew, the only thing I thought it was possible doing then.



When I was 19, I couldn’t have said “I’m going on a trip for the rest of my life” because no one would have understood it, and neither had I of course.




When I’m a guy and I’m 19, I’m trying to figure out what’s going on with my body, why do I want sex, why do I like breasts. Why do I have so much energy, Why do I feel like fighting.???


And trying to figure out what’s going on with my mind, why do I cry? Why do I feel lonely? Why do I feel unfulfilled? Why do I feel confused? Why do people look at me weird? Am I special? What’s the meaning of life? Why am I alive? Why do I exist? Why am I so paranoid? Why do I hate everyone? Why do I hate myself? 


And on top of that everyone around you expecting you to have everything figured out already, and not only know what’s going on with your body and mind but also to know or  “choose” what is that you want to do during the rest of your life. And to give them a detailed explanation of why have you chosen that and how are you going to pull it off.




Now I’m 27 and still haven’t quite figured out what’s going on with my mind, what I did learn though is that every day we get a million new different thoughts and ideas, what I want to do now is not the same I wanted to do 10 minutes ago, assuming there’s even something I wanted to do.


Change is unavoidable and next week I will probably have radically different thoughts and ideas from the ones I have today, and so on.


So the advice I would give to that friend of mine and to the 19 years old me through space-time continuous, is not to worry too much,  take life day by day, try to enjoy the moment, because today there are so many things going on, and you’re missing them by trying to plan everything in advance.


There’s is no future, it’s an illusion, there’s just today and you are missing it.


Maybe you can plan today what you want to do tomorrow or next week, but don’t bother on planning next month, because you will be a totally different person then. 


Sure your family and most adults you meet everywhere will want to know what are you going to do for the rest of your life, but you are 19 already, so it’s time you understand that “I have no idea” its a perfectly valid answer to any question in life.

 

Nothing

I have recently come to terms with the fact that its ok to answer “nothing” to the question “what do you do”.



Most of my life everyone around me said: “Bruno, you have to do something, you have to be someone, you have to do this and that, you have to be this and that.”


You are what you do, they said. Our jobs make us proud, gives us honor, makes us decent people, if you don’t have a job you are a bad person and nobody will respect you, they said. 


If you don’t work you will not have money, and you’ll have a hard life, they said.


But they forgot to mention the pain and the sadness I would feel riding the subway on the way home while coming back from work at 9.30 pm and seeing everyone’s sad faces. You can ride for hours and not see a single smiley person. 


They didn’t tell me how miserable I would feel while walking the same streets every day at the same time, how monotonous my life will become.


Nobody mentioned the stress I would feel, how sick it would make me, and how hard it would be to fall asleep at night, thinking of all the stressful things that happened during the day, and thinking what’s waiting for me tomorrow.


And of course, they also forgot to tell me about that feeling in the morning, when I know I hadn’t had enough sleep, but I still have to get up and go somewhere I don’t want to go and do something I don’t want to do. 


And about all those times when I wish I were dead, no one told me about that either.


I wish someone had said to me when I was young “you don’t need to do anything or be anything, just relax and stop taking life so damn serious!”.


I wish someone had explained to me how stress works, wish they had explained to me what chemicals come out of sports or meditation. And wish someone had told me it was ok to do nothing, that life is too short to spend it fulfilling other people’s expectations.




So now that I learned all of that by myself, I can confidently answer “nothing” when people say “what do you do?”.


Of course it’s not true, I don’t do nothing, I go to Korean class 6 times a week now, do some part-time acting and teaching, hiking and taek won do, volunteering, reading, writing, play football, travel often, meet people, go out almost every day and do a bunch of stuff more.




And everyone does lots of things, but the reason to answer “nothing” is just not saying what they want to hear, they want to hear “I study” or “I work” or better yet, “I work AND study” so they can feel like you are an obedient member of society contributing to it daily. Therefore paying, what in their minds are, your dues for being alive.


In order live on this planet and not being rejected by the members of its society, you need to either study or work.




What we see here is that the herd doesn’t need a shepherd anymore, and anyone who dares to threaten their beliefs, will be immediately left behind to survive on their own.


They have created a system that auto protects itself, by isolating and excluding any individual who doesn’t want to do what the others are doing. Anyone who doesn’t want to work or study will be left out of the herd.




Bruno: But life is too short to just study or work, don’t you think so?


You: No.

 

Germany

While in Germany I learned many valuable things, I learned that there’s not only one solution to a problem, there are infinite. I learned to think outside the box, I learned to be resourceful, I learned to ask for help if I needed it. I learned to give and receive. I learned it’s ok not to work or study. It’s ok to be different. It’s ok to be yourself.


And I learned something about myself that would help me understand my thoughts and manage my life a bit better. Regarding time perspective. I realized that my perception of time was totally different from others. This is no news, we all perceive time in a slightly different way. But in my case, it was a bit more than that. 



I realized that one minute for me was like one hour for everyone else, one hour for me it’s like one day in everyone else perspective. One day was like one week and the way I perceive a week in my life was similar to the way other people perceive one month in theirs. 


And finally, I understood that it was ok, to be that way.


That makes communication difficult sometimes, because if someone asks me, on a Thursday, “what are you doing on the weekend?” I would think they are crazy because, from my point of view, the weekend was still lightyears away, so most times I would say that I didn’t even know what I’m doing today.


And when they ask me what are you doing next week or next month I always think that I could die today or tomorrow, so somewhere along the way, I had lost the ability to plan ahead. I had lost that pressure that most people have to get things done or sorted out.


Was that good or bad? I found a few years later it was good because it was allowing me to live in the moment, enjoy the day while ridding myself of the responsibilities that come along when you try to control or influence the future. 


Most people I met found it a bit difficult to understand that I didn’t have any plan, no life goals, no job, no money, no career prospects, and nothing to accomplish whatsoever, I didn’t know how long would I stay in Germany, I didn’t know where I was going after, I didn’t know if I would ever go back to Argentina, hell, I didn’t even know what was going on on the weekend! 


Yet, I was hosting many Couchsurfers from different countries, getting to spend time with them, I was meeting new people every day, got to hitchhike the way around more than 20 countries, got to learn German somehow, and got to meet people that would be my friends for life. Was having a great time, right here, right now so I couldn’t care less about not being able to answer those questions like “what do you do?” or “how long will you stay in Germany?” I was like: who cares? I’m having a great time now! This is real, this is life.



I was lacking something though, it was all too easy and after some years, life in Europe had become somehow predictable.


Germany didn’t feel like home anymore, I had been roaming around different parts of europe for some months and I had lost myself somewhere along the way. Felt like there was something missing in my life, didn’t really know what it was, but knew where to look for it. In Asia.


So on September 15th, 2008, found myself on a plane towards Islamabad, but that’s for next time. 

Spain

I arrived in Spain on November 12th, 2005 with too much luggage and a mess in my head.


I was going to meet my father for the first time in a long time and I would have to live with him (and talk to him). That was something I wasn’t entirely comfortable with, and by not entirely comfortable I mean that it scared the s**t out of me. But I knew I had to do it because it was the only option I had if I wanted to live abroad.


Notice that “abroad” at that time for me meant anywhere but Argentina. Because i wasn’t happy there, and I thought if I just go somewhere else, all my problems would disappear.


They didn’t of course, because there wasn’t a problem with the country I was at, the problem was in my head and it was gonna stay there until I find a way of dealing with it.


What was the problem? Insecurities, paranoia, low self-esteem, social awkwardness, difficulty to communicate with others, inability to give and receive love or affection, depression, fear, anger, tons of hard feelings towards many people, hate towards society, the government, the institutions, towards myself and a few more, which were probably caused by poverty, an abusive mother, being bullied at school, and growing up in a society based on competition, scarcity, survival of the fittest, peer pressure and inequality.


Only after I understood how this system works, I was able to forgive my parents, forgive myself and everyone who “messed me up” and try to change the system so that people in the future won’t struggle the way my mother did to bring food to the table and won’t have to go through things I went through, for not having enough food. I was able to change when I learned to see beyond my selfish need to put the blame on an individual and realized we are actually all connected, for better or for worse. And once you stop looking for someone to blame, you will start finding solutions (and answers (and peace (hopefully (or at least try to)))).


I was going to talk about Spain though, my dad was working at some company so he hooked me up with some work there. That was the first time in my life that I had to suit up for work, and I kind of let my ego take over for a few months before finding out I was heading in the wrong direction. 


Did some odd jobs after that, security guard, sales rep, newspaper delivery, and one awesome job polling people, it was great because every week they sent me to a different city so I had the chance of getting to know many places and talk a dozen different people every day. Sometimes I got into 10 different houses a day, seeing all of them had different lives and problems, helped me understand the diversity of the place i was living in and that my problems were just a spec compared to what some of them were going through. Like a single mother who just came from work at 8 pm and had to cook, feed, clean and look after 4 children, or some African immigrants who lived 6 of them in a tiny filthy room, and once I went to look for the person I had been told to find, when I arrive at his place their family told me he had died a few days ago, I didn’t know what to say.


I was almost 21 then, and that was the moment in my life when I found out, after having 5 different jobs in 6 months, that the story my elders had told me about having a career, a profession, going to uni or a job for life, were pure lies, not intentional lies of course, they just wanted the best for me. But they weren’t aware that somewhere along the time when they were young and the time when I was young, things had changed.


And the understanding that if I had wanted I could have easily make a career and work forever at any of those jobs made me understand, that it was MY life and I had the power to do whatever I want with it. And that one (I realize this 7 years later), was the first step to understanding that if I wanted to, I could do nothing at all as well. 


At that time I was still somehow trusting the system, believing that capitalism and the current monetary system were somehow acceptable, wouldn’t have ran for politician but wasn’t yet so annoyed by having to wake up at 6 am to help maintain the status quo while getting myself some monetary gain plus the thought of being a somehow productive, therefore respected member of society.


That year I also confirmed what I had learned while working in Buenos Aires, that (for me) any job, no matter how fun it was, it will always get boring after 2 or 3 months, that repetition and routine were my enemies, they made me depressed and took away the joy of living, so I needed to avoid them at all costs.


Was still quite greedy though, so found myself a new job at a logistics company and decided to save up some money. Signed up for it because the pay was super high and, didn’t know it would be also the best working experience I would ever have.


Till then i had only worked with Spaniards, and this was my first time working in an international environment, my workmates were all from different countries, Argentina, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Spain, Morocco, Poland, Rumania, Cameroon, Congo, etc.


Every person I met was a whole new experience for me, before working there I had never met people from Ecuador or Poland, and I don’t think I could have even found congo on a map. We were working long hours every day, so after a few months, they were like my family. 


That gave me a global perspective and I understood that even though I was working in a tiny warehouse in a little Spanish city, I was actually a global citizen, not an Argentinian citizen, not an Italian citizen or a Spanish one, I belonged to something bigger because my brothers were from Bolivia, Romania, and Cameroon.



After 6 months on probation, my boss offered me to work directly for the company, sign a 2 years contract, paid holidays and tons of benefits. That was one of those moments where there’s something you should do and something you want to do. And you have to choose one of them.


There were some tears while saying goodbye to my colleagues. But after spending a full year in Spain, I knew it was time to move on. Its usually easy to fool others into thinking you are happy there and everything’s ok, but I can’t fool myself, when it’s time to move on, it’s time to move on. And after some weeks relaxing in England, I was ready to settle down again, this time in Germany, but that’s another story.

 

Hiking On Sunday the 19th

   

   

   

   

Midnight humor

Boy: So, how did you guys meet each other?



Bruno: In Japan  couple of years ago.



Boy:  Oh, cool, what were you doing in Japan?


Bruno: Not much, just relaxing.


Boy: Just relaxing? Not working or studying?


Girl: I love it when you say “just relaxing” so casually.


Boy: Relaxing in Japan? What are you rich? 


Bruno: Yeah, I’m rich.


Boy: Lucky you!


Bruno: Lucky me!


Boy: Japan is expensive.


Bruno: Really? have you ever been there?


Boy: No, I just heard it’s expensive.


Bruno: Right..


Boy: Can I ask why do you have holes in your shoes if you are rich?


Bruno: Well, here’s the thing, I’m rich intellectually not monetarily.


Boy: And you said you just came by hitchhiking from 2.000 km away, that’s insane! you must be really broke.


Girl: Well, that we would do it anyway, even if we were rich, because of the experience. I’m pretty sure most hitchhikers do it mostly for the experience than to save money, for the thrill of it, the randomness, the adventure, the sensation of freedom, the landscapes, the awesome people you meet, same as with Couchsurfing.


Boy: But, isn’t that dangerous?


Bruno: Do you think so? have you tried it?


Boy: No, I just heard it’s dangerous.


Bruno: Right..


Boy: I would never pick up a stranger, or let a stranger stay at my place for free.


Girl: Actually that’s the best thing about hitchhiking, that all the assholes drive by, so we only get the nice people. 


Bruno: I can’t believe you just said that.


Girl: Well it’s the truth because people who are fearful or don’t trust others would never pick you up, the only ones who stop for us are are the ones who have the ability to feel compassion towards someone in need.


Bruno: Yeah, that’s the thing they are fearful because they have been brainwashed by the government and the media, but that doesn’t mean they are assholes. It just means that their perception of the world around them has been carefully manipulated and they have replaced their altruism for greed and their compassion for selfishness.


Girl: Yeah, for you everything’s a conspiracy always.


Boy: But, how can you guys support your travels if you’re poor?


Girl: Well, there’s the thing, we’re not really traveling, we are living. So we don’t need to support our travels, we need to support our life.


Boy: So, how can you support your life?


Bruno: That’s a hard one, I’m not really sure how it works out, I just know it does. I think, living a modest life may be a good answer to that question. Not craving things we don’t need. And trying to keep it simple. Maybe the most important thing for me is being flexible and knowing how to improvise. Being positive helps of course, and there’s the statistical factor also. For example, let’s say I’m completely broke and just about to hit the streets with a sign reading “will work for food”. Before that I may want to try my luck at some social event, there are tons every day on meetup.com and Couchsurfing. If you talk to let’s say 10 or 20 people and tell them you are looking for a job, chances are that someone knows someone who knows someone and can help you out.


Boy: That makes sense.


Bruno: No, it doesn’t, we’ve been pulling your leg.


Girl: Just a little midnight humor before going to bed.


Boy: Midnight humor.. I see.. well good night then, see you guys tomorrow.


Bruno: Night! 

Girl: Have a good night.