We are back with this year’s recap! Lots of books, movies, series, games and great moments!

Character Stats 📊

Books 📚

Concerts

• Touche Amore - Brighton - Mar 04, 2025
• Porter Robinson - London - Mar 06, 2025
• maybeshewill - Brighton - Apr 26, 2025
• Slam Dunk - Hatfield - May 24, 2025
  • Knuckle Puck
  • Imminence
  • Movements
  • The Starting Line
  • Hot Mulligan
  • As It Is
  • Neck Deep
  • A Day To Remember
• This Wild Life - London - Sep 06, 2025
• Architects - London - Oct 10, 2025
• Thank Fuck for Immigrants - Brighton - Nov 11, 2025
• Oddhippo - Brighton - Dec 04, 2025

Movies 📼

Series 📺

Games 👾

• A Short Hike
• Animal Crossing, New Horizons
• Arco
• Apex Legends
• Balatro
• Pokemon TCG Pocket
• Assassin’s Creed Unity
• Marvel Rivals
• Firewatch
• Nidhogg 2
• Dredge
• Inscryption
• Risk of Rain 2
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
• Outer Wilds
• Marvel Snap
• No Man’s Sky
• Peak
• Risk of Rain Returns

Manga

• The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity
• Ore Monogatari

Hello, old friend.

The main topic of this week is the Slam Dunk festival. If you are not aware, the Slam Dunk festival is an event that happens around the third weekend of May in the UK. It happens in two different locations, Hatfield and Leeds on Saturday and Sunday respectively. I wouldn’t say it is a Pop Punk festival because there is a wide variety of genres in the bands that play the festival, but it’s an alternative music event.

Last year when we visited the UK we had the chance to go and saw a whole bunch of bands that had been on my bucket list for the longest time. I was taken back to 2014 to the time I started immersing myself to Guadalajara’s music while watching The Wonder Years set. I cried with The Ghost Inside when they played Aftermath, a song that has been an anthem to me when I feel like I can’t move forward with my life. “Triumpth over Tragedy” is a belief that I try to keep present in my life. Getting to listen to bands such as The All American Rejects, boyslikegirls, We The Kings that were so present in my teenage years was an experience I didn’ think I would have the chance to have.

This year we weren’t sure if we wanted to go because there weren’t as many bands that we really wanted to see. Something that has started happening more often is that we are becoming more comfortable missing events since they are more frequent here in the UK. I don’t particularly like this, but it keeps us out of sticky situations when we run low on money.

I think we changed our mind when we found how expensive were the tickets of some of the bands that we wanted to see that were also going to the festival. For example, Hot Mulligan is coming later in September with Pierce The Veil, so we thought of maybe going later in the year to see them. When we started looking at the tickets they were already at about the same price as the late bird tickets for Slam Dunk. That was what convinced us on going, which I am very glad we did.

Knuckle Puck

Imminence

Movements

The Starting Line

Hot Mulligan

As It Is

Neck Deep

A Day To Remember

Their setlist consisted in a lot of songs from their Homesick, What Separates Me from You and Common Courtesy albums. Then a few other singles that they released over the last few years. And, a few songs from their most recent album, Big Ole Album Vol. 1. To me it was a dream come true because I can’t remember the amount of times I played Homesick from start to finish in my car back when I played in the band I had in Mexico. “If It Means a Lot To Me” became the anthem of our road trips when we went to play to other cities. Even friends from other bands took a liking to it and loved when we played this song when we got together.

A few friends that I met through playing music back in Mexico actually DM’d me on Instagram after I posted a story of “If It Means a Lot To You” live.

I feel like they are a band that I will never get tired of going to see live. I am definitely looking forward to the next time they come to the UK!

Well, that’s the end for me today. I’ll be back next week with more stories!

Don’t be a stranger!

This is your digital ghost signing off.

(◟ᅇ)◜

Brighton Spring, Fringe and the Great Escape

One of the things that happen during spring here is the Brighton Fringe. I can best describe it as a festival with a whole bunch of cultural events happening throughout the city. There are comedy shows, music gigs, theater plays, and so much more!

Among the music gigs that are available, there is this huge festival called The Great Escape in which a bunch of artists from all over the world come to Brighton.

A friend of mine invited me to the venue that is free to enter since we were late on getting bands for the paid venues.

It really gave vibes of being in the Witcher games, which I found fascinating. The guitarist that was playing with her was also super good. I really loved the tone of his guitar, and he had a very particular Reverb/Delay effect on some of the songs that made it feel even more mystical.

Another thing that I really liked about her music is the way the strings instruments complemented each other. She played an acoustic guitar, while another muscician played the harp and the electric guitar player did really cool arrangements throghout the song.

The last instrument she had with her was her accordion. You can see it in the picture, the wooden box with the JAS letter printed on the front. I had never seen this instrument before, but it gave off big sailor vibes.

I felt their set was very engaging with the public, and they had a super charismatic presence on stage that made their set super fun to watch.

Something about their music made me think of mexical folk music. I think it might be the high pitched synth that they use on their songs. It sounded very similar to Mexican artists that play banda or norteño.

I’ve been feeling uncomfortable feelings, but here are a couple of picture from things I found funny

This week I’ve had a very hard time dealing with the feelings of loneliness, sadness and my depression ramping up a little bit. Honestly, I don’t want to make all of my blog posts about me feeling bad, so I decided that this week I want to talk about a couple funny situations that happened this week.

Well, Sofi and I were looking at furniture on the IKEA app, and found a really cool book shelf that we both liked. Its length is 180 CM, and I ALSO AM 180 CM. So, the only logical solution to measure if it would fit our space is for me to lay down and check.

Honestly, I loved this moment of our week because we both laughed a lot of me just laying there instead of going for our measuring tape.

IRL Hanging Out!

Something that I thought it was really cool is that while I lived in Colombia we used to play a lot of board games online, and now we get to play it IRL! This time we played Azul, a very cool tiles game. It was actually the first time he used his copy to play with other people!

After playing azul, we played Overcooked and Nidhogg 2. I had never heard of Nidhogg before, but it apparently was super popular a few years ago! The art style between the first and second one is so different, but both very unique.

I was having such a good time that I didn’t even realize that more than 4 hours had already passed. Very much looking forward to hanging out again!

What is a sunset anyways?

Small Sunday date at Casa Azul!

On Sunday, Sofi and I really wanted to get out of the apartment, so we took a walk around London Road to find something to eat. Sofi had mentioned that she was really in the mood of getting some chilaquiles, so we tried going to Casa Azul, the mexican restaurant in the Open Market.

We were really in luck because they had chilaquiles available! Quick insiders tip, they are not listed on the menu, so you have to ask for them! I found out about this the first time I went here to get lunch about a month ago.

For the main dish both Sofi and I got an order of three tacos. Sofi got three vegan mole tacos, and I got a mix of tinga, al pastor, and mole. Even if they weren’t the best we’ve had here, they were still really good!

Sofi also got a vegan horchata, which if you don’t know what it is, I can best describe it as sweetened vanilla rice water. There are different types of horchata that depend on the country where it is prepared, but in Mexico it is made of rice and can also have milk in its making. Ours was obviously vegan and it was I think the best part of our lunch date.

Burger player review

It looks quite funky, and the sounds is quite good! To connect my bluetooth headset I had to set both the player and my headset to pairing mode and hope for the best. Luckily, they connected without issues!

Once we get a place to store our vinyls we will look into getting some wired speakers to play records in our living room. Both Sofi and I are very happy with it!

Well, that’s the end for me today. I’ll be back next week with more stories!

Don’t be a stranger!

This is your digital ghost signing off.

(◟ᅇ)◜

Website changes

I’ve beeen doing a lot of work in my little space within the internet. A lot of these changes are inspired by benji’s website because I absolutely love their website. It feels like a space in the internet that is really taken care of. A place in the internet that feels its entirely theirs.

I am actually using their micropub client implementation. They were very kind to help me troubleshoot some authorization issues I had when trying to publish pages from the micropub client. So, huge shoutout to them!

Gallery

I’ve been wanting to find a place to make it easier to post on my website because I want to stop using social media apps as much as possible. Starting with my gallery, I changed it so that the photos are displayed in a grid.

It’s similar to what I remember Instagram looking like when I first started using it. The biggest reasons why I wanted to stop using Instagram is because I feel like I never see my friends’ posts anymore. I even forgot about friends that I used to interact with frequently because of the current state of the algorithm. Ever since it started becoming a cheap version of Tiktok I feel like the quality of what I see on my feed has decreased a lot.

What I like the most about this new implementation is that I can upload context to the photo’s note’s page. It’s similar to how I used to display them previousle, in which I added context as quotes on each of the photos, but I like the way it looks now better!

Listen

One thing that I found really cool about the sparkles client is that it has a lot of categories to chose when you create an entry. The listen entry was one that I hadn’t considered before! I’ve been making an effort to conciously listenting to music instead of just using as a background element, so this type of entry really fit this effort.

I had to mess a lot with the CSS and Go code of the template I’m using so that it showed according to what I wanted. The way I envisioned it in my head is that I wanted to resemble what an iPod showed when you played a song.

Just like my gallery, I can add notes to each of the songs that are added so that I can write some thoughts on the music I’m listening to. I think that is pretty cool!

Play

The play list I think it’s the one I worked the hardest to get the way I wanted. I initially duplicated the list I have for my listen section, but I got the idea of having floppy disks with the cover of each of the games. It was more complex than I thought it would be, but I managed to get it working!

What I do is I render a div with the floppy disk image as its background, and then inside the div I add the game’s cover as an image. It is a bit wonky and the way the cover is cropped probably won’t work with all of the covers that I add, but at least its a start that I can later polish!

Bookmarks

Lastly, I created my own bookmarks section. I think this was the first list that I implemented on my site that isn’t using the default list that my Hugo theme has included. I changed the elements of the entries so that it shows the link to the saved page, the tag and the date it was added.

I love growing my personal garden.

What’s next?

What I would love to do next is define what is a blog post and what is a log for me. I feel like a blog can be a log, but that is not always the case depending to what I’m adding to my site.

Once I decide how to handle both, I will work on changing my notes list so that it showcases the information clearer.

I also want to add a colophon page, finish my life stack page, and rework my now page a little bit so that it’s easier to update. I’ll keep you posted so you can give me your opinion! :D

The last thing I wanted to mention is that I finally bought a record player! I got a very quirky one. Apparently, Audio Technica released an updated version of a portable record player that they released a few years ago. It is listed as a good entry turntable (can you call it that if it’s got no table? lol), so I bit the bullet and bought it.

I received it a couple days ago and haven’t had the chance to try it! Here is a picture of it so that you can see what it looks like.

It’s much smaller than I expected! Which is great since I would like to be able to bring it around the apartment depending of where we want to listen to music. I’ll try it out this week and come back with my review!

Well, that’s the end for me today. I’ll be back next week with more stories!

Don’t be a stranger!

This is your digital ghost signing off.

(◟ᅇ)◜

Hello, old friend.

I’ve been wanting to write to you a lot this week. It’s been a bit hard for me to exist lately. We had a lot of stuff happening at work, and with that came it’s own deal of social anxiety.

I think one of the things that have really gotten to me since we got to the UK is that my social anxiety has really ramped up because of interacting with people in a different language. I find the Sofia Vergara meme from Modern Family where she says, “Do you even know how smart I am in Spanish?” much more relatable now.

I guess I’ve had to deal with the expectations I had of myself over how well I can speak English. While living in Colombia I think I had a better English level than the average of my colleagues. I guess that gave me the impression that I wouldn’t need to worry about communicating here. Boy, was I wrong.

I feel like I am going through a very similar experience as what we went through when we first moved to Colombia. I’ve found that I need to be very intentional with the words that I use, because if I’m not, people find my pronunciation hard to understsand. This has caused me so much social anxiety that I feel like I started isolating myself to prevent social interactions.

I’ve been working on this in therapy and what has helped me deal with this the most is trying to be very aware of when I start feeling panicky. What I’m trying to learn to identify is the tightness in my chest that I usually get when I just can’t form words anymore. As soon as I start feeling it I try to take a moment to remind myself that I am doing okay, and that having an accent is okay.

Being mindful of my feelings I think is very important.

It’s my first time living, so it’s okay if I don’t have everything figured out.

On Sunday we had a day out, and we finally got a chance to go to Queen’s park! We had only seen the outside of it the last time we went to have dinner at a brunch place nearby.

I had such a lovely time walking around the park! There is a duck, gueese and swan enclosure where they are roaming around. There is even a food dispensary inside that you can use to feed them!

Here are some pictures I took from our visit:

After the park, we walked all the back to the laines. On our way back, we found this street full of very colorful houses. We stopped for a bit to take some pictures. I think we even stopped traffic on accident while taking pictures. 😅

Well, that’s the end for me today. I’ll be back next week with more stories!

Don’t be a stranger!

This is your digital ghost signing off.

(◟ᅇ)◜

Lots of eventful things happened this week! I think I can start by talking about something I had been waiting for the last few weeks… MY PC FINALLY GOT HERE!

PC and Hard Drive Shenanigans

PCSpecialist finally delivered my PC!! I had been waiting for it for the last few weeks, and it’s even better than I imagined! I was initially very nervous because I ended up spending much than I had initially thought, so I really wanted it to have no issues with it. I am happy to say that so far everything has been smooth sailing. My last PC, the one I sold in Colombia, I had it for around 11 years upgrading it a couple of times throughout the years.

I was very surprised by the PCSpecialst quality of service. Throughout the whole build process they gave me updates of each step of the way. At some point I even got a render of what my PC looked like right before they finished with the building process! I am honestly very impressed and satisfied with it.

I think I really wanted to invest in a PC that could last me at least the next 5 years without needing an upgrade. Here are the specs in case you were curious:

We’ve got orange tofu at home

Sofi and I have been trying to continue with our book club / date night tradition. Every Tuesday we prepare food that we don’t normally do, and agree on an activity that either of us might want to try. For example, last week we watched Mickey 17 (I didn’t get a chance to watch it on the cinema, so we watched it on Prime!) and had burgers from Burger Brothers, one of the best burger joints in the UK.

Well, this week we decided to cook orange tofu and have a chill evening. Ever since we’ve moved to the UK it has been really hard for us to slow down enough to plan a meal other than sandwiches, or take away. So, on Tuesday we agreed on going to Sainsbury, getting the ingredients we needed, and spend the evening cooking. I was in charge of prepparing the orange sauce, and let me say that it was pretty good! A bit on the sweeter side, but nothing we couldn’t fix with a bit of extra sriracha.

If you want the recipe, I’ll leave it here since I couldn’t find Maya’s original post 😞

Maybeshewill

We started our anniversary celebration by going to the maybeshewill gig! It was hosted at the Arch over by the beachfront. We got to the venue early because we wanted to get to see the opening band, but we might’ve overshoot it and got there extra early. Sofi asked me if I wanted to sit by the sea with her, and so we did. The weather was really good and there weren’t too many people. It was perfect for us to just kind of be there and enjoy the moment.

I didn’t realize how much I would enjoy seeing maybeshewill live. I think it was watching how much they were enjoying themselves playing live. In my head, I imagined that it would be a pretty chill concert, but I was completely mistaken. Everyone was giving such a vibrant and contagious energy. It felt passionate, it felt real, it felt so human. There is something magical on watching a group of people do what they love on a stage, and sharing this experience with the audience.

Their setlist had a wide variety of songs from their biggest albums. In a weird way, I was really happy that In Amber was the only song they played from the Fair Youth album. It gave me a chance to really immerse myself into the rest of their material.

I have a really big obsession with a couple of songs from their most recent album, No Feeling is Final. They played live Zarah and Refuturing live, and my life has not been the same.

Anniversary

I can’t believe it’s already been six years since we got married! I still can remembed that day as if it was yesterday. It seems pretty cliche to say, and I always thought people exaggerated when they said this, but it really was the best day of my life so far. To celebrate this year, we chose to do two things: get tickets for Slam Dunk, and go to the re-screen of Pride and Prejudice.

The re-screen was only available on the Marina Cinema, so we took a bus to get there. It was our first time going that far east! It was also our first time riding the bus by ourselves.

The movie theater was much better than expected! It is such a different experience than what we were used to in Colombia and Mexico. The concessions stand had products that you could pick yourself and just checkout at the register. It was a much similar experience as when we went to the movies in Sweeden.

The movie room was also much better than we expected! The seats were really spacious and comfortable. They had a recliner, so I was able to really make myself comfortable. The drink holder wasn’t at the same level as the arm rest, so that made it much easier to use.

Overall I think it was a really good experience!

And, the movie was quite good too. I mean, we had already watched Pride and Prejudice several times before. But, getting to watch it on the big screen of a movie theater surely makes it more magical.

While writting this post I looked through some of our old pictures. What I love the most about it is noticing how even if we are such different people now, we are still at our deepest core the same two kids that fell in love listening to music on the park next door.

Give our wedding playlist a spin, and let me know what you think!

Well, that’s the end for me today. I’ll be back next week with more stories!

Don’t be a stranger!

This is your digital ghost signing off.

(◟ᅇ)◜

Eastern Week!

I often forget that this country has a lot of Catholic related festivities. Eastern is one of those! Wehn I was younger, as soon I went to live on my own, I stopped paying attention to such events.

In Mexico, I remember having a tradition of painting hollow eggs, filling them with glitter and confetti, and crushing them on our friends’ heads. I remember it been quite fun.

For easter here at the office they brought chocolate easter eggs! A friend recommended that I chose this creme filled egg. I found quite strange how similar it looked to an actual egg yolk, but it actaully tasted pretty good! I will say though, just one egg is more sugar than I probably need in a whole week.

Hurstpierpoint

For the past few weeks I’ve been wanting to get together with some really good friends that we got to meet last year here in Brighton. I was particularly very excited because I wanted Naga to meet Alex’s rescue dog, Fozzie. The thing about it is that they live in a small village north of Brighton called Hurstpierpoint. It is about a 45 min bus ride from where we currently live, so it required a bit of preparation.

Earlier last month we meant to go up there but that’s when we got sick two times in a row and we had to cancel until we felt better. Well, I’m happy that the time for our visit finally happened last Friday!

Initially we meant to all go visit, and by all I mean Sofi, Naga, Saki and I. The only worry we had was that Saki is still super nervous and reactive around other dogs. Specially when they are close to Naga. So, to start testing the waters, Naga and I went on a solo adventure up there.

Hurstpierpoint is such a lovely little village. You can definitely feel the peace and quiet being there. We met with Alex at a coffee shop that is right in the middle of the main intersection of the village. They were all very happy to meet Naga. And, who wouldn’t. She is the loveliest <3

The plan was to meet without Fozzie first so that she didn’t get jelous of Alex paying attention to Naga. After the cafe we went to pick up Fozzie and headed to the park that is nearby Jack and Alex’s old place.

Fozzie is much bigger than I expected! For some reason I compared her in size with our Saki, but she is about a few kg bigger. I even think that Fozzie and Saki have a very similar face. They have very expressive human eyes. Although, unlike Saki, she has a very impressive repertoir of tricks she knows! I was so amazed by them.

One of the things that I loved the most about this park is that there are almost no car roads that go nearby. In more recent years, Naga has become very scared of loud noises. It has gottten to the point where she can get scared of fairly loud cars. So, being in a quiet and car free place I think it was a good way for her to enjoy herself.

Since the park was big enough for Naga to be off leash, we played catch just like when we lived in our first apartment in Colombia.

Long, long weekend. Chill, chill days.

One of the best parts of this long weekend is that I feel like we finally got time to just do nothing. With the move, starting in new teams, adjusting to the language, I feel like we’ve been in constant survival mode. So, other than our adventures with Naga, we just stayed home for the rest of the weekend.

What I love about the place where we currently live is that it is close to a lot of very good restaurants. One that we have been meaning to go to is Moksha. Moksha caffe that is next to St. Peter’s church with with very, very good breakfast food and a very chill ambience.

We spend the rest of our weekend watching Smosh videos snuggled up on the couch with Naga and Saki. It’s amazing what a good weekend can do to restoring your energy.

Naga is still tired.

Well, that’s the end for me today. I’ll be back next week with more stories!

Don’t be a stranger!

This is your digital ghost signing off.

(◟ᅇ)◜

I stopped to listen to the rumble of trees. I think it’s been years since the last time I found myself caught by the sound of the wind.

This week we met a new place. It’s called Stanmer Park. It’s a Nature Reserve that is north of Brighton. In the middle of the park there is a very small village with several restaurants and cafés that have delicious food.

One of our close friends here took us and we spent a lovely morning/afternoon. We took Naga and Saki with us. It was the first time they meet our friend and Naga took a big liking to them. I am always happy when she likes people because it feels as if she was approving of our friends.

My favorite part about our walk was the amount of flowers that were already blooming, and the new leaves coming out of the trees all around the reserve. This sense of new beginnigs was all around us. Strangely, this made it feel as if the village was welcoming us into the country.

It was our first time taking the bus anywhere. On our way to the park we sat on the accessible seats by mistake, and I felt very embarrased about it. There are still a lot of things I’ve got to learn about this new country, and I want to be more gentle to myself while I learn them.

Going back to Brighton we sat on the second floor of the bus we took. It is my first time sitting on the top of a double decker bus. It’s much narrower than I expected, but I guess that’s public transport everywhere.

In more recent years I have not been as comfortable showing my face actively on the internet. I’ve stopped posting in most social media, and even in the safe haven that I’ve built for myself here, I don’t feel comfortable showing only my face in pictures. I am good with showing pictures where I am with others, but if it’s me alone I don’t really like it.

I’ve been wondering for a while why this is the case. Do I not like the way I look? Is it because I am getting older and I can tell in the many wrinkles and spots that I’ve gained throughout the years? I am not sure. Do I not feel it’s worth showing my face? I don’t know.

I have resorted to pixelating my face. So, one more thing before I go, I cut my hair and, for once, I feel happy with how it looks. Maybe later I get to show it off. Only time will tell.

Well, that’s the end for me today. I’ll be back next week with more stories!

Don’t be a stranger!

This is your digital ghost signing off.

(◟ᅇ)◜

Since the last time we spoke, a lot of things have been going on. If you are not aware, I now live in the UK! Brighton has been such a kind city to us.

We were really nervous at first because it would be our first time living in a English speaking country, but I think we have made it good so far. The city is full of diversity in terms of people, art, culture, food.

On our first week here, we enjoyed having the cold and the passing of seasons back into our lives. Don’t get me wrong, having the eternal spring of Colombia was incredible, but after the pandemic it felt as if we were living the same day over and over again. Specially coming from a country with seasons this felt a bit tedious at times.

I also went to two different concerts in that first week. The first one being Touche Amore, a Californian band that I had last seen in 2017 back in Mexico, and the second one being Porter Robinson.

Sofia got us tickets as a birthday present for me last year. We weren’t super sure we were going to be able to go because we didn’t know how long our visa processes would take. Luckily, we ended up being able to move the week before the concert, giving us enough time to prepare for it.

It was a very cathartic experience because I felt a lot of closure singing Shelter to my grandpa that just passed away. I cried and sang “I’ll give them shelter like you’ve done to me. And I know, I’m not alone, you’ll be watching over us. Until you’re gone”.

It truly felt meant to be that we would be here just in time to see my favorite artist perform live. We already have some more concerts in mind to go throughout the rest of the year, but I will tell you more about it on a later date.

A bit of a downside of our time here is that them European bugs have gotten the best of us! We have caught the flu two times now since we got here! Can you believe it? Now I understand how they conquered America with these power weapons. Luckily, it appears that we are almost out of it. It’s been really annoying, but we are getting better slowly.

I have been using my Osmo Pocket camera way more often now that we are here. It’s been a nice change to use it instead of always carrying my phone. I just bought an adapter and a clip mount so that I can mount it to my backpack and record POV videos without having to hold it! I think that will make it nicer to see the places we visit.

Well, that’s the end for me today. I’ll be back next week with more stories!

Don’t be a stranger!

This is your digital ghost signing off.

(◟ᅇ)◜

Today I read a quote that I really liked about a parent’s love and I really related to it because of my current process on understanding my relationship with my parents.