Chris Brooks Newsletter 021
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Greetings from Córdoba, Spain, our first stop in a grand tour of Andalusia.
1. 🚘 Where I've been traveling
We just wrapped up a magical month in Madrid. I wrote several posts about our adventures:
- Rucking Madrid
- Christmas in Madrid
- Intensive Spanish Class in Madrid
- Padel in Madrid
- Advanced Squad Leader in Madrid
- The Madrid Santa Run
- Dining in Madrid
- My Madrid Haircut
I still have a few more posts about Madrid in the backlog. Our last week was exhausting, in an amazing way. Given the back-to-back holiday weeks (Christmas / New Year / Magi Kings Day) our Spanish language school days were compressed to Tuesday - Friday with longer sessions. On our final Thursday I spent the afternoon playing ASL with two of my new friends, and Julie joined me for a couples dinner with six of us in the south suburbs of Madrid. Dinner didn't even start until 9:30pm, past our normal bedtime 😂. Returning to our apartment in La Latina at 12:30am only to wake up at 6am or school makes us tired and cranky. But oh so worth it.
Here was a typical day for us in Madrid while school was in session (this is our final two-week school schedule with longer sessions):
- 6am: wakeup, journal, push-ups, muesli and yogurt, as much coffee as I can consume
- 7:40am: start 2.8 mile walk to school, passing through Las Letras neighborhood, El Prado, and through the heart of Retiro Park
- 8:30am: school starts, no break until 10:40am
- 10:40am: coffee and almuerzo break (tortilla de patas, tostada con tomate) with class buddies at the Fortunata café
- 11:05am: class resumes
- 1:05pm: school is over, either picnic lunch in Retiro or find something near our next stop.
- 2:00pm-3:30pm: drop in at El Prado, Reina Sofia, etc. We bought an annual Madrid city museum pass (paid for itself after two visits to El Prado) which permitted us to say "Let's just drop in to look at Goya's black paintings".
- Late afternoon: nap (Chris), work (mostly Julie), recover for the evening
- 7pm: out for tapas, dinner, maybe a Flamenco show at Café Ziryab.
I should mention: Julie passed her A-1 exam! If we'd stayed around for two more weeks I'd probably be done with A-2. We are continuing our studies in a self-directed fashion as we continue to roam Spain.
2. 📖 What I've been reading
Articles:
- In the Long Run, We're All Dad – especially touching as a dad, and a soon-to-be-grandfather. If you only read one of my article shares, read this one! Inside joke for family: "where are the Google programmers who were taught Python by their fathers?"
- Speaking of sons, here's son Jacob's article on authorization at GoDaddy
- Is this the secret to better coffee, with less grinder cleanup?
- The Secret Father of Modern Computing
- The Catalan Gridlock – I can't claim to understand modern Spanish politics, but I enjoyed this article about perceived economic struggles and lack of innovation growth
- It's Time to Dismantle the Techopoly – "Often, it’s necessary to forgo some positive developments in order to eliminate larger negative impacts. And curation can easily go wrong. What is widespread vaccine hesitancy, for example, if not a prominent example of techno-selectionism?"
- This was a terrible year, and also maybe the best one yet for humanity – yes, I'm very much an optimist but better than sitting around wringing my hands and complaining
Books:
- I read the wonderful For Whom the Bell Tolls for the first time. I avoided any critical reviews or "what's this book about" articles before reading. Afterwards found this classic New Yorker article, always fun reading critical acclaim (or hatred) at the point of release. I loved this book, especially the diversions into Pilar's back story (village executions, bullfighting).
- After watching the Hemingway Ken Burns documentary, I grabbed a collection of his short stories on Standard Ebooks and immediately read "Hills Like White Elephants". If you want a short (re)introduction to Hemingway spend 10 minutes and read this.
3. 🍿 What I've been watching
TV Shows:
- Lessons in Chemistry – loved it!
- Hemingway by Ken Burns – loved it!
- Slow Horses – loved it! Best streaming TV series right now.
- For All Mankind– jumped the shark, done with it.
- Keith Richards and Jimmy Fallon – I'm sure this was more rehearsed than they made it look, but fun viewing. And yes, the new Stones album is very good.
- Valeria – TV series on Netflix, Spanish language and set in Madrid. Fun for a few episodes, but they speak too quickly for us and we will work on our Spanish elsewhere. Narcos is promising...
Movies – we watched a bunch last month!:
- Love Actually – a Christmas standard for us. This movie is 20 years old!
- The Holdovers – loved it
- Barbie – loved it
- Oppenheimer – OK, probably much better in IMAX
- Maestro – meh
- The Man Who Knew Too Much – a prelude to our upcoming visit to Marrakech
- El Verduro (The Executioner) – a highly praised Spanish film from the tail end of the Franco era. It was good not great, and much of the Spanish language was understandable.
4. 🎶 What I've been listening to
No podcasts, no music. Just Spanish. Lots of Spanish. And some live Flamenco.
5. 🎮 What I've been playing
We opened the month in Napa with Jacob and Kaitlin, and I offered to open up his Kickstarter copy of The Fox Experiment. Julie, Jacob and I enjoyed this game about selective breeding of foxes for domestication. A great example of matching theme and mechanics. I have a copy waiting for me at home in Hammondsport NY.
I hadn't played Advanced Squad Leader live across a table with anyone since before the pandemic. Here in Spain I've played twice: once with Ángel (I won a tiny small scenario as defender thanks to some favorable dice rolls near the end), then again with Toni at his home. That game "fui destruido" (I was destroyed) but had a fun time along the way.
I brought my Steam Deck along with me and spent most of my time in Madrid playing (finally) Stardew Valley. I got through the first year of farming, raising chickens and cows, to see what the game is about. I truly enjoyed it but was ready to move on. That means: Baldur's Gate 3 is on the deck.
6. 🥂 Theme for 2024
I don't do new year resolutions; instead I craft a theme for the year. This is my fifth year doing so, and the theme this year will be The Year of Language. By coupling the public "outing" of my theme, with daily habit tracking, and by keeping Julie as an accountability partner, I hope to increase the odds of diligent progression in learning Spanish. I'd love to be working on level B-2 by the end of the year. The most important thing is sticking to the process and not focusing on outcomes. 1% better every day.
If you have a personal theme or mantra for 2024, I'd love to hear it! Reply and let me know.
The next newsletter will be coming from the Canary Islands, maybe Marbella, maybe Ronda. 🤷
-Chris