My 79-year-old father fell off a horse in October while riding a horse in Wyoming. He broke his neck and had a severe concussion. The path to recovery was a difficult one over the course of the following months. As my brother and sister were stateside, they took on the majority of the support operations along with my father’s wife, while he was nursed back to health by hospital medical staff. It was a grueling and arduous path to recovery for everyone involved. To show support and help orient and align the family to the next steps in his continuing recovery, my siblings and I visited my father in early December. At that time, it was a difficult process to confront the changes in our father and his life since the accident. A lot of good did come from our visit, though I believe most of it was the time my siblings and I were able to spend with each other. Our parents were divorced when I was very young, and my siblings and I mostly grew up apart from each other. My brother and sister have happy, loving spouses and families of their own now, which is a credit […]
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I spent Thanksgiving in Kansas City, Missouri, visiting my brother, his family, and my mother and stepfather. It’s my favorite holiday of the year—partly because it features dishes I rarely eat outside this one meal. I went in with high expectations for pumpkin pie, and, as always, my brother delivered. He also organized a game of Dungeons & Dragons so I could join him and his friends. (For the record, I play a level 3 satyr bard named Lyrican Shadowstrum—a wandering urchin with trust issues and a staff that magically grows flowers.) I’m not great at the quick arithmetic of ability scores, but I love the storytelling, and Lyrican’s floral staff is hard not to like. After Thanksgiving, I hosted Marce for a few days. She’s vegetarian, so she skipped the turkey dinner, but she enjoyed exploring Kansas City—a place most visitors to the U.S. tend to overlook. Autumn made it even cozier, and it was a treat to share it with her and the family. Sadly, my beloved Fujifilm X100T camera—my constant travel companion since 2015—died just before I arrived. I’ve taken over 50,000 photos with it, many of which are on this site. That camera fit my right […]
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To keep my days in the U.S. under 35 in 2024 for tax purposes, I spent a week in Cancun before flying back to visit my brother for Thanksgiving. I went fully “basic” — two different all-inclusive resorts, sun, sand, and cocktails. And honestly? It was awesome. There’s a certain crowd of travelers who dismiss all-inclusive resorts, seeing them as soulless vacation factories where people lounge around instead of exploring local culture or history. I get that perspective but this trip gave me a newfound appreciation for destinations designed purely for fun. When I arrived in Cancun, I hadn’t taken real time off work since my trip to the Seychelles two years earlier. Working for myself means every day off is a day without income, so I kept working a bit during the trip. But when I wasn’t working, it felt like a vacation in the best sense. The resort food was exceptional, the beaches in Cancun’s hotel zone far exceeded expectations (genuinely fantastic), and perhaps most surprising of all was the value. I can’t think of another international spot with such high quality at such a bargain. I did manage a day trip to Chichén Itzá, the famous Mayan […]
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After Taiwan, I spent some time visiting my sister and her family in California. The easiest and most comfortable entry point into the USA, ever! Thank you, sister for the delicious food and hospitality, comfortable workspace, and cozy family time.
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I returned to spend Thanksgiving with my family in Kansas City. I stayed at my brother’s house and spent time with my nieces and nephew, Mom and step father. The food was great and so was having the opportunity to see everyone for my favorite holiday. I didn’t get quite enough pumpkin pie despite my attempts to relay expectations, but other than that it was an immensely fun time. Some highlights include my brother arranged two Dungeons and Dragons games for us to play along with some of his friends, me eating my favorite Kansas City foods (Winsteads Hamburgers and Minsky’s pizza), visiting Top Golf, and learning to use my Meta Ray Ban Sunglasses. These sunglasses can record videos and take photos while you wear them in addition to playing music just like headphones. I also loved going to the gym with my nephew William to workout and introduce my niece Caroline to Virtual Reality dance video games. I even accompanied my niece Olivia to school lunch where I met some of her friends and even ate for free. I should eat lunch with Olivia every day. I dropped by my close friends the Martins for a cup of afternoon […]
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Since I limit my stay in the USA to 35 days a year for tax benefits, I needed to leave the country for a week before returning for Thanksgiving. I had already spent more than three weeks stateside due to a week-long program at UC Berkeley, stopovers in Denver and Wyoming, and trips to Austin and New Orleans. It turned out to be an ideal opportunity to check a destination off of my queue, Playa Del Carmen. My friend Randy loves this place (he loves to party); however, other nomadic friends of mine are less enthusiastic about it, describing it as a typical vacation spot for Canadians and Americans, lacking a distinct identity beyond that, according to them. But I’m quite open-minded; I’ve learned not to pre-judge places I’ve never visited or carry specific expectations when I travel. Playa del Carmen is great! I could totally live here for a few months. There is a lot to do and explore, plenty of great food, accessible beaches, and friendly people. What’s not to love? I was only there for about a week, and during that time I was working constantly from my apartment. I only managed to escape to the beach […]
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People from New York might object, but my vote for America’s coolest city goes to New Orleans. It was my first time visiting, and it was only for four days, but I loved everything I saw, heard, ate, and felt while I was walking around doing stuff. The city doesn’t feel like the rest of the United States, which is a bonus—it feels like an alternative reality, a post-apocalyptic jambalaya with a French twist, in my opinion, even better than France. Now every city, especially New Orleans, has problems. But I’m going to completely ignore them here because I was a tourist and it is completely within my right to just enjoy the things I like about a place I visit and leave the rest to an NPR think piece (‘did Katrina really end?’). The little donut beignets are delightful. The chicory coffee was likewise cute (even though I couldn’t tell a difference compared to normal coffee; maybe it’s just my broken sense of taste). Cajun and Creole food — so special. There is a difference between Cajun and Creole, and I already forgot what it is — let me see if I can save you a Google search while […]
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My Brazilian friend, Valquiria, was going to speak at a conference in Austin, Texas in early November and it would be her first time in the United States so I wanted to be there to welcome her as an ambassador to the USA like she has been an ambassador to me for Brazil. I have never been to Austin before but living in Denver as an adult I met a lot of people who either love Austin, previously lived there or were hoping to return again. The city gets a huge amount of hype within the USA owing to a vibrant music, party and food scene. What once was kind of an edgy, unique and cool alternative city has blown up in the past twenty years to become a mainstream tech hub. During the pandemic people from both coasts moved to Texas to work remotely and save on paying federal income taxes and in the process engineered a sort of cultural revitalization or at least transitioning, at least from my perspective as an outsider who just heard lots of people telling me their opinions about Austin. My post-college roommate Nick back in Allston, Massachusetts and his girlfriend both went to […]
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I stopped in Denver for the first time in a long time — sometime in 2022 I think? Anyway it was time to repack my bag again after so long on the road and I wanted to visit my friends and family. I crashed in the basement of my friend Eric’s house for a few nights and then I headed north to southern Wyoming to visit my dad and his wife on our family’s property in Carbon County. Since my days in the USA are limited for tax purposes (< 35 a year) I always jam pack a lot of obligatory ToDos into a short period of time (re-registering the license plate of my car, Amazon.com orders, catching up with friends etc). This time in Denver I was really fun. I celebrated the University of Colorado’s big first-week win at a watch party in downtown Denver with a big group of alumni, and met up with four different former coworkers. By the time I arrived in Wyoming I was ready to spend time with my dad and go to sleep early. I worked from the kitchen table and had coffee with him and then we rode ATVs around the property […]
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Sayulita has been a Mexican vacation spot for Americans and tourists for a long time, and during the past ten years its popularity seems to have grown. I’ve wanted to visit ever since I saw beach and tacos photos popping up on my Instagram years ago and always had the idea that it could be a stop-over destination on the way to somewhere else or as a short vacation spot to accommodate a beach side work-style. And it did – I ended up staying in two other places as well, San Pancho, a smaller town about fifteen minutes outside of Sayulita which is a little less developed than Sayulita but still retains the same taco and beach vibes. The beach at San Pancho is better than in Sayulita and it seems a better place to stay and visit if you are in the market for a short Mexican getaway, though I also enjoyed Sayulita (and the gym that I used for a couple of days — no air conditioning, no water, 40 degrees and super sweaty). I also spent four days at the W resort in Punta Mita, Mexico which was a special splurge that was a lot of fun […]
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