Last updated February 3, 2025—Recharged after sunny Neiva 🌞

What's happening in my life right about now. You can see previous updates here.

New Year’s Adventures

2025 came in rolling. We spent the end of the year in Neiva since my grandmother on my mom’s side is from there, and she just got a new apartment in town. I had never been to Neiva (amazingly, since 1/4 of my family is from there!). Her place is inside this club-like condominium, with pools, gyms, biking paths, geese, and until very recently, a geese-eating crocodile too 🐊.

We were there with my grandma, my mom, and my sister, who managed to come from Mexico. We also met so many amazing people, but in particular Lina Maria and Julián’s family (friends of my grandma), who showed us around town.

New Year’s Eve with the whole party

We LOVED ❤️ Neiva. I had heard it was just this town-ish hot-as-hell place, but the weather was rather mild the 10 days we were there. We found it has an incredible culinary scene and great day trip destinations (we particularly enjoyed the hot springs in Rivera).

Adventures were plentiful: We traveled to the Desierto de la Tatacoa, had one hospital visit (my mom had a surprise kidney stone 🫠), got lost in Camilo’s beautiful Finca where we got to see how wine and chocolate are made (while enjoying getting drenched with rainfall during the tour 🌧️), and ate in so many delicious restaurants 😋.

Happiness Meter 🤩

8.5/10. I am now working full-time in my new education venture (more on that below), which comes with a mix of excitement and anxiety. Excitement about what’s to come, anxiety because it might take a few months before I can draw a salary, and I REALLY don’t want to have to use our long-term savings.

Family 💛

Natalia had many stressful work problems during January, but suddenly last week everything “got resolved,” and she’s back to her happy self. She is now a true runner, running 5Ks often. She is also now reading voraciously in English, which was a huge personal goal for her. I’m proud 💛.

The kids are in a new daycare: Mundo Montessori. We found it fits our family much better (in particular, it’s great at giving the children more freedom to choose what to learn and giving Natalia and me a community to find other like-minded parents).

The nighttime ‘research time’ has really been a hit. Many days now it replaces their typical nighttime story. We have researched all manners of vehicles, animals, professions, celestial bodies, and whatever else they happened to take an interest in during the day.

They also learned how to ride a bike!

Franco has taken an obsession with planes ✈️ and now sleeps with one nightly, like a teddy bear but made of metal and with pointy ends all over. Luca doesn’t really have a particular obsession, but rather just a constant curiosity about everything. Both of them are recently grasping the meaning of death, which has been quite astonishing to see (and to explain).

Learning & Entrepreneurship📚

I barely learned any Rust. 😅. I thought I’d have lots of time, but I ended up using all of it towards my new education venture, and hence learning a ton about education in general, and particularly about the education ecosystem in Colombia, the shortcomings and strengths of traditional universities. I am ecstatic to finally talk about the idea more publicly, so you can read up more on it here 🤩.

A couple of new toys

Christmas gifts + some windfall from a couple of investments gave me spare cash to renew a few of my day-to-day tools. 👨‍💻

I had to give my company laptop back, so the opportunity came to choose a new computer for the first time in years. I grabbed a great sale on a MacBook Air M3 for 900 USD, which really was amazing considering a Dell XPS 13 or a Framework with comparable specs was 1200 USD. I still use my desktop heavily, so I valued portability when out of my house much more than sheer power. This is also my first Mac ever. 🍎.

I also changed my phone, which was a 5-year-old Samsung S20. Its back glass had been shattered for years now, and it was impossible to find cases for it (and 3D-printed ones fell apart too easily). I got a Google Pixel 9 Pro. I’ve been hearing great things about Pixel phones for years now. It has been great so far, with the camera being a particularly large upgrade over the S20.

Finally, I asked for a SuperNote A5X2 Manta for Christmas, and Santa decided I had been a good boy this year and got me one. It arrived just last week. I can now read articles I save on Pocket all day long without having to use my phone, which keeps the interactions with my kids healthier and gives me less reason to be checking notification hell. Also, taking notes in my notebook was getting uncomfortable (I needed to keep it with me at all times for reference). All my notes are now automatically synced with my other devices with SyncThing so I can look them up from anywhere.

Santa 🎅