For madmen only: Between great and amazing

It was a while since I didn't read a book that shocked me this way, it was a while since I didn't read a good book. This one enters into my top ten books!

Steppenwolf from Hermann Hesse has been an incredible book in which I could see reflected the personality of my best friend, and, without being pretentious, some times even myself (or at least some episodes of my life).
Although it could be felt as a rather negative and sad book for me it was completely the opposite. For me it was about the existence of hope to winning the personal struggles, hope to enjoy life and about the option to find happiness in the life of a modern man.

The book has some elements that make me love a book such as change of narrator, change of planes/dimension, a superb fluency to describe situations, surprises and huge invitations to think and to challenge my points of views.

I am very glad I read this book. Sometimes I feel it would have been nice to had read it while I was teenager. Still, it is better late than never.

A book I will probably re-read one day, and a book I recommend to any who at any point has felt this world is too absurd and that there is a beast inside of you.

Tea-ing around

Through out this blog I have made it very clear that I really really love tea. Sadly these days I ran out of my tea provisions I brought from Europe, some other I brought from India and some other my brother brought from USA. It was moment to buy some tea here in Colombia, the land of Coffee...challenge!

In that sense I am a bit sad to notice how expensive loose tea is in Colombia, although I understand the reason why: As Adam Smith would say "it's just a matter for the invisible hand, a matter of offer and demand". In Colombia, people hardly know what tea really is, no one drinks that.

Any ways, I managed to buy some and I have some stock now, let's see how long it lasts.

But today I really wanted to write about a magnificent tea I brew today.
Lately I've been experimenting adding some drops* of alcohol to me beloved beverage. I started first trying with my grenoblois alcohol speciallity: Chartreuse, a herbal stuff. Although it is a rather sweet liquour, it fits pretty well in a mixed brewing between black tea (Earl Gray in particular) and green tea (Gun Powder, my favorite one). All those brewed together with the omnipresent slice of lemon (Central-Europe style ;-) ). This blend gets superb exchanging the black tea for some mint leaves, it is perfect before going to bed.

Still I haven't talked about my tea today, but I still need to talk about other experiments, such as brandy, rum and whiskey. Let me tell you that with those it gets actually better and better, I realized that tea (black one pretty much) goes pretty well with those liquors that were kept in a wood barrel for a while (haven't tried wine yet, but I have the feeling it would work). To remark: a Second Flush Darjeeling tea with whiskey (My lord! after drinking that I could die happy!!)

Well let me tell you that today I brew what we could call a Mexican Tea, because I put some Tequila on it, and WOW it was simply as if god or all the gods of all the times were in that cup all together. The blend was pretty simple:  a TeaSpoon of Ceylon black tea + a bit less than a TS of Gun Powder tea + a slice of lime (not lemon) + 2 TS of tequila. I wanted to cry of happiness with that tea, and then I almost cried of sadness when it was over.

I can already forecast that this Tequila bottle in my place wont last much ;-)

This post was a mess, I know, I apologize...I just wanted to write, no thinking about structure, no thinking about nothing, just writing about my magnificent drink tonight, hope someone, some day, some where can give it a try and let me know what they believe about it...if you like it, feel free to send me some loose tea here to Colombia :P, it will be highly appreciated hehehe.

Long live to Tea!

*drops: It could actually be more than just a "drop" ;-)

Two songs for two moments of my life

It is hard to summarize four years of my life with just two songs. But these ones are representative as every time I listen to them I think about my time in Budapest and Grenoble. Here they are, respectively:

For Budapest

For Grenoble 

About coming back home

It's been more than three months since I came back home after living abroad during 4 years.

My family organized a summer* weekend when I arrived 

Although it is a short time still, several important things have happened. Among those I could remark the death of my grandmother (she was 91 yo) and the creation of my own start-up.

Regarding the first one:  Despite it is very sad news, there are two things that make me glad about the situation: 1) I was lucky enough to return on time to see her alive and to mourn her together with my relatives and not all alone in France. 2) It was beautiful to see how all the family gathered around her in a matter of hours when we knew she was in the hospital, I feel happy we (as a family) had the great chance to enjoy her all these years, I am glad her death was peaceful and surrounding by her children, by their love and that she passed away during a pray of her religion. I believe she passed away very happy and satisfied with what she did. I am proud of being one of her grandchildren, and I am proud of carrying her last name (sadly very far away in the ID but very close in my hearth).

I am glad this is not "my last memory" of her.

Now let's talk about the second remarkable thing: the start-up. Before, it is necessary to put some context:

The first month was like landing in a pile of dust. You know that you have arrived where you wanted, but the cloud of dust does not let you see where exactly you are standing, nor what is around you nor in which direction you should move. That's how I felt the first month. You are staying in your house, but it feels somebody's else home, you feel like a visitor. You see all familiar faces but you feel you are just getting to know them.

I knew it was a matter of time, so it was just about waiting. But what to do meanwhile?? I was not spreading CVs as I knew I wanted to create my own company, just that I didn't know what about. What I knew was that I had very few money that was not going to last much. I just said to myself, "well, I speak a good English, I know some stuff about Colombia and Medellin so I guess I can make some bucks giving some tours to foreigners. It won't take me lots of time so I'll have enough time to keep thinking about a company, and to write my lovely* dissertation"

With that line of thinking I just started giving some walking tours around Medellin. Then within the blinking of an eye I was already applying marketing, branding and business model concepts. Just without noticing I was already building a start-up www.realcitytours.com.

Real City Tours in action

Real City Tours has given me enough joy, entertainment, responsibilities and money to overpass with relatively ease these famously-known hard days of returning home. I am close to my family (what I wanted),  I am building a company in my country that "brings" money from abroad (what I wanted), I am still in contact with people from all over the world (it was something I was sad about returning: loosing the multiculturalism of Europe) and things seem to have an interesting future.

I was told coming back was going to be tough. I saw many ex-pat friends returning and crying about having done so.  But so far I can say I have had a pretty smooth adaptation. Without any doubt Real City Tours has helped, but I believe my mental preparation before coming was very useful as well.

When I left Budapest I learnt that leaving a city was like mourning a dead relative. When I went back to visit my Budapesti friends some months latter, I confirmed the importance of circumstances. Therefore, since summer I started  preparing my mourning of France and to understand that my future circumstances in Colombia were all going to be new. Nothing was going to be like when I left, hence I should expect a complete new country, not the one of my memories.

Indeed, that was the attitude I came with. I thought as if I was moving to an unknown country (as when I moved to Hungary and France), a place where I knew nobody, a place where I had everything to build up from zero. It is not that simple to apply as it is to say, but I believe this attitude has helped me to not to get disappointed nor frustrated.

So far I haven't regretted a single second about having moved back home. I miss some things obviously, such as friends, my bicycles, certatain circumstances, some independence at home, Decathlon, the champions league at night time, the kebbabs at night and my lovely "Le Saigon" (my favorite restaurant in France hahaha)...as you see, just minor things. I am fucking happy at home, building a future in my land, in my language, around my family. :D


* In Colombia you can get a Summer day any day of the year, you just have to drive an hour and you'll get to a place that looks like summer. Welcome to the tropic :) :)
* Is there a lovely dissertation ever???

Spiritual lessons from a not-so-good book

I just finished the book: Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior.

You may wonder why is there a picture of Michael Jordan? Well the book is written by Phil Jackson, the coach of that dream-team of basketball the Chicago Bulls. And it is about how important it is to create a bond in such teams, and to give a spiritual meaning to whatever we do in life, and how a game (this time Basketball, but I believe football is too) is more than a game, it's a representation of life itself. In general, how beliefs can lift you up. It is more than just a sports book, for sure!.

I would rate the book 3/5. It's not a gorgeous book, nevertheless it was a bunch of pretty interesting points of view and reflections. I saw myself very connected with the author (Phil Jackson) in the sense of being a person who puts a lot of pressure to himself and self-punishes a lot. I feel that way quite often, driving me to loose my peace and blur my vision.

He explains how he explored different philosophies until he felt represented and found peace with some taughts from the Buddhism, Zen, and Lakotas (native American's belief). In this sense the book has been interesting, in discovering different insights about the world and life, as well as how different philosophies and spiritual beliefs can accomplish so much in people at personal and group level.

Main lesson: Do the things for the internal rewards, not for the external ones. Give meaning to those things you do and you believe in. Accepting things as they are and not as I want them to be brings peace and joy, plus it allows to focus energies better.

My Book Underlines 

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The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up. 
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The Associated Press reported that, in a survey of African-American children, Jordan had tied with God as the person they most admired after their parents.
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Good teams become great ones when the members trust each other enough to surrender the “me” for the “we.”
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Lesson one: Don’t let anger—or heavy objects thrown from overpasses—cloud the mind. 
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Lesson two: Awareness is everything. 
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Lesson three: The power of We is stronger than the power of Me.
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“Arguing isn’t where faith is. That just feeds the ego. It’s all in the doing.”
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What pollutes the mind in the Buddhist view is our desire to get life to conform to our peculiar notion of how things should be, as opposed to how they really are. 
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The point of Zen practice is to make you aware of the thoughts that run your life and diminish their power over you.
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It’s not uncommon for basketball players, especially young ones, to expend a great deal of mental energy trying to be somebody they’re not.
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In Zen it is said that the gap between accepting things the way they are and wishing them to be otherwise is “the tenth of an inch of difference between heaven and hell.” 
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The jobs I was best suited for (according to the career placement test I took) were: 1) housekeeper, 2) trail guide, 3) counselor, and 4) lawyer.
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FISH DON’T FLY When a fish swims in the ocean, there is no limit to the water, no matter how far it swims. When a bird flies in the sky, there is no limit to the air, no matter how far it flies. However, no fish or bird has ever left its element since the beginning. 
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In other words, you can dream all you want, but, bottom line, you’ve got to work with what you’ve got. Otherwise, you’re wasting your time. 
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Inevitably, paradoxically, the acceptance of boundaries and limits is the gateway to freedom. 
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Seven BEING AWARE IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN BEING SMART
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Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all.”
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St. Augustine said, “Anger is a weed; hate is the tree.” Anger only breeds more anger and eventually fuels violence—on the streets or in professional sports.
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Bottom line: there’s no need to overpower when you can outsmart. 
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“You’re not doing it for money. It may seem that way, but that’s just an external reward. You’re doing it for the internal rewards. You’re doing it for each other and the love of the game.”
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B. J. Armstrong, Jordan’s closest friend on the team, said he was worried for him because now he would have “the two scariest things in life: a lot of money and a lot of free time.”
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“You see this goblet?” Chaa asked, holding up a glass. “For me, this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on a shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ When I understand that this glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.” In its simplicity this story illustrates one of the basic principles of Buddhist teachings: that impermanence is a fundamental fact of life.
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There’s no percentage in trying to push the river or speed up the harvest. The farmer who’s so eager to help his crops grow that he slips out at night and tugs on the shoots inevitably ends up going hungry.
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The best part of winning, I once heard someone say, is that it’s not losing.
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Losing is a lens through which you can see yourself more clearly and experience in the blood and the bones the transient nature of life. 
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Walt Whitman got it right when he wrote, “I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.”
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Buddhism teaches us that by accepting death, you discover life. Similarly, only by acknowledging the possibility of defeat can you fully experience the joy of competition.
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obsessing about winning adds an unnecessary layer of pressure that constricts body and spirit and, ultimately, robs you of the freedom to do your best.
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That’s when you realize that basketball is a game, a journey, a dance—not a fight to the death. It’s life just as it is.
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The journey is the reward. —CHINESE SAYING 
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