The inner politics in every country in the world and its respective dynamics will always generate its own fair share of crazy and wild stories starring the local politicians. Some go public and thanks to the “magic” of the internet, viral these days — while others are never even publicly confirmed, living in a sort of limbo between gossipy hearsay and a conspiracy theory. Venezuela, which has now gone through over five years under the same authoritarian socialist regime, without a doubt, has generated far too many stories, some funny, some tragic, and much more that are simply infuriating. L ..read more

Over the past few days I had the pleasure of talking with this lovely woman called Angela Laura Alexander from Houston, Texas — except there’s one small detail, Angela Laura Alexander was a very blatantly obvious Indian scammer, lol. I have a pretty solid hypothesis as to how he got my Telegram account in the first place,  long story short, it’s most certainly due to matters related to my recent arrival in Italy. So, in a way, this was one of my first side-quests spawned from my current main quest, if you will. I’m pretty sure many of you have seen Kitboga’s videos and other scambaiter ..read more

We’ve now been two months in Italy, and for the first time in so long, I can finally say that things are going well for us *knocks on wood.* I am not used to this newfound feeling of things actually going my way, I can tell you that much. While there’s so much to do still, these past days have been the first time that I have been able to wind down and just take things easy, slow, nice and steady — I’m still relearning how to do that, though, because these past years have not been easy, and I’ve been too stressed for too long that I forgot how to simply sit down and chill. The first few days ..read more

This first month of our new life in Italy has been one of the wildest rides for me so far. Long story short, we arrived safely but after that, things didn’t quite go my way. Most importantly, when it came to finding a place to rent before the ever so impending February 23 check-out date for the Airbnb we arrived at. It was a situation that pushed me to a mental stress that I had not experienced in years, and I’ve barely been able to recover from it, because I’ve not been in a great mental headspace for the past month. I found myself at the very verge of quitting and returning to Venezuela, a ..read more

At last, after six years of failures, I was able to depart from Venezuela with my brother. We left everything that we own behind, carrying only 3 luggages, some video game consoles, a damaged laptop living on borrowed time, and some savings. We are now in Turin, Italy, as this was the “consensus” place that I got through the recommendation of several unrelated people. This city has been great and it boasts a peace that I had not seen in decades. We’re slowly getting used to the drastically different weather that we are used to, as well as the difference in time zones and food. I will say th ..read more

Today, after almost six years of failures, I will be finally leaving Venezuela with my brother. January 22, 2024 marks the end of a long journey, and the start of the rest of my life. I must say that this all feels so surreal, I am rather numb right now. The fact that this is finally happening hasn’t still quite clicked on me yet. Perhaps I got so used to failing that it became a natural state for me, or perhaps it’s the severe sleep deprivation finally catching up to me.  All the myriad failures that I went through over the past years have significantly done a number on me, and I’m bare ..read more

My brother and I may have similar sounding names, similar food tastes, and were both prematurely born on a 9th, but when it comes to video games we certainly walk different roads. Whereas I’m the older MMO boomer brother that spent a lot of time in World of Warcraft, his “main” game has always been Pokemon, that’s the franchise he’s spent the most amount of time playing by a longshot, hell, he’s playing it right now as I type these words. We are seven years apart, but, like many 90s kids, we were all hooked on that late 90s Pokemon craze. Pokemon was something we shared a fascination over, a ..read more

And here we are, at the end of 2023 — three weeks away from the end of a nearly six-year journey. 2023 was all about changes, obstacles, family affairs, and ending cycles. Personally, it was the end of an era in my personal life. It wasn’t a bad year per se, but it sure was a complex one. I had very little breathing room in between unrelated events that pushed me to the limit — death by a thousand bs, if you will. But in between all the obstacles, family drama, and health issues, I was able to lay the foundations towards the breakthroughs that I so desperately been seeking over the past year ..read more

My mother traveled to Mexico sometime around 2006 to participate in a medical conference, it was very common for her to do travels of that kind back in the day — it was a different life, that much is certain. She received a bottle of Tequila as a gift among other stuff that I can no longer remember. The bottle came with two shot glasses that depict Mexicans posing in what nowadays an offended terminally online person will denounce as stereotypical and perhaps even racist, should they be that too far gone in such discourses. Unlike her siblings, she wasn’t a drinker and, much like my bro ..read more

There’s a very old saying in the region that says A quien Dios no le da hijos, el diablo le da sobrinos, which loosely translates to “To whom God gives no children, the devil gives nephews.” Spain’s Cervantes Institute, a non-government organization, explains the meaning of this saying as: “Those who are not parents sometimes have to take on worries, care or expenses because of other family ties. In a broader sense, it implies that sometimes care is provided for reasons beyond the control of those who do not have it because of their own situation.” In my case, I have a brother and ..read more