Visiting the Weird City in Texas

This week we’re in Houston, Texas. I’m doing my “supportive husband” duty since I felt that a two-week business trip so close to the holidays would be just too tough on my wife. Besides, after a busy summer of home projects this sounded like a good idea for a break.

In between the two weeks of work there was also a weekend that we saw as an opportunity to get to know other parts of the state of Texas. Of all the cities in Texas, the one that we didn’t know and that sounded somewhat interesting was Austin. Our eldest son Milo had mentioned it before as a possible place for them to move to in the future, so we thought that we could do a little research on their behalf.

When you visit a city or anywhere for that matter, you could use different set of “eyes” to view it. You could just look at it as a good weekend hang out or as a place to visit for it’s museums and arts. But when you look at a place as a potential place to live, then the level of scrutiny should be a lot deeper, and the set of questions altogether different. And as it happens, I thoroughly enjoy this process, so it was easy to volunteer.

Let’s start with the broad strokes first. This is Texas we’re talking about. Why would my (ultra-liberal) son even consider living in Texas? As a matter of fact, one of the reasons him and his wife would consider leaving Greensboro, NC is because they feel as if they live in a little island of “liberalism” within a very conservative state. Their voices are not even heard over the noise of conservatism. They have often talked about moving to the West Coast, which would more likely fit their personalities, but Texas? Well, I was quickly educated that one activity they thoroughly enjoy is attending live music concerts and it happens that Austin claims to be the “Live Music Capital of the World. That’s well enough, but we’re still talking about Texas and they would still be in a little island in the great ocean of Texas.

As we approached the city, we realized that it is a full-fledge city of almost a million and much larger than Greensboro. There is a downtown and a huge university smacked into downtown. The evidence of live music hits you quickly. Sixth Street and ancillary streets in downtown are brimming with bars and venues advertising for live music shows at night. Nearby, larger venues and outdoors spaces suitable for events abound. So, if live music is the criteria used for searching, this is its headquarters.

Austin is considered to be the most liberal city in Texas. This is ironic as it is also the capital of the state. But with around 140,000 students from several universities in the area, you’re bound to be influenced by the scores of young folks around and the many freethinking college professors that cater to them.

Another point about “dissecting the city” is that everyone looks at the area with their own set of eyes. It’s difficult to see a place through someone else’s eyes. We tried, but since we’re not much into the night music scene, we will only be able to report that there were signs that it was indeed a good place for live music. One thing that is important to us is whether there are good areas for walking and other outdoor activities. On that front we’re happy to report that Austin eats the cake when it comes to outdoor places to exercise. The Lady Bird Lake, which is one of three man-made lakes formed from the damming of the Colorado River, is right downtown. We saw many taking advantage of the cool weather to enjoy the lake on kayaks and rowing shells. And also scores of people walking and jogging in what seemed like interminable miles of trails around the parks and open areas just south of downtown and the lakes.

In conclusion, partly because of the time of the year we happened to be here (late fall), and partly due to our central location while visiting, I can safely say that we were impressed with Austin and all that it has to offer. I would easily consider a condo downtown with a view and access to the wonderful hiking trail system and lakes, and would happy to visit M&J if they decided to move here, even if we have to stay away during the hot summers and keep it a secret that we have a son that lives in the State of Texas.

Year 2010 Part B

Bel always wants to feel reassured that we have a plan forward in our lives. I used to love planning back when I worked with big-pharma, after all at one time during my employment I was a project manager. However, in the last few years I have had such a difficult time making any plan stick, that I’ve almost lost my faith on planning and rather have relied on the trusted “wait and see” approach.

At the end of 2009 Bel was getting tired of my haphazard approach and put some pressure on me to come up with a plan for the next year.

January 1^st came and went and nothing. I begged for an extension and promised to have something concrete by this year’s Chinese New Year. To be honest, even by February 14^th (this year’s Chinese New Year day), I had nothing. But of course I had to pretend that things were becoming clearer and that the “plan” was coming into view. My prediction for 2010: Lots of change.

If I knew then what I know now, I would have been more forceful about my predictions, but suffice it to say that I was right on target with my prediction. For one, in March I started to focus on real estate investments and later on our identification and eventual move to our new home.

Are there any more changes expected for the last quarter of 2010? Other than settling in our new place and getting familiar with our new neighborhood, nothing is firmly on the books, but if it’s like the first half of the year, I’d better embrace myself.

One event that will certainly affect the last 2 months of the year is the expectation that Erick, our youngest son who has lived in Cusco, Peru for almost 5 years, is coming home for a few weeks as he prepares for a new phase of his life. Erick has become quite interested in writing about his experiences in Peru and thus we will be putting a lot of energies into identifying ways to publish his work in some fashion. His visit coincides with the annual Miami International Book Fair on the streets of downtown Miami. We’re hoping to get contacts and ideas at the fair. We are also hoping to be introduced to the new world of publishing which is evolving from the cellulose-based format to the electronic format of eReaders and eTablets. Writing for a living is not a smooth road but as other writers have told me, if you have it in you that you must write, write you must to be able to live with yourself. I’m hoping that the information we acquire during the book fair is more positive than negative and that Erick is encouraged to keep writing into his life plans.

Autumn Travel

I have a love-hate relationship with travel. On the one hand I get all stressed out days before any trip, thinking about all the loose ends that I must take care of before I head to the airport. On the other, during those times I do put in some effort into getting all my “ducks in a row” so it feels good to finally have things organized, at least for a day or two, before the loose ends start untangling again due to my absence from the scene. The sad thing is that I know darn well what works for me when I need to get things organized: making a to-do list. It helps me prioritize and keeps me focused on the task at hand. However, I must love the stress of flying by the seat of my pants, because a list is created only as the very last resort. I keep telling myself that this lesson has been learnt, but I know better.

This trip back to Emerald Isle, NC comes at a perfect time, well, sort of. It comes as I just finished unpacking a few of the last boxes remaining from our recent move to our new home. If I was to stay home I’m sure I could find a thousand things to do. But at this stage, nothing that couldn’t wait another day or two or maybe even a year or two, remains to be put in its new place.

The emotional roller-coaster that begun about 5 months ago with our decision to sell our condo in South Beach, has finally come to a happy conclusion. But it wasn’t a perfectly smooth ride. In May and June we upgraded the condo to prepare it for the sale. We prepared it better than if it was for us to keep it, almost to the point that we had second-thoughts on selling a few times along the way. In July, after weeks of research, I decided on the all-important “asking price”. Was it too high or too low? Would it appraised for that amount if it went into a contract? Were there any buyers out there? There might have been some anxiety at times. However, the stress was short-lived since within 2 weeks we had a signed contract to sell. And as a bonus the buyers did not need the condo until the end of October so they asked us to rent from them for a month or two.

With a contract in hand, the search for our new place ensued full force. We were open for any possible scenario, short of moving out of Miami. We thought about renting another condo for a year, buying what we called a “half-way house”, one that we would manage to live in for a year and then turn it to a rental unit, but the ideal situation was always to find the perfect home, in the perfect place, at the ideal price.

After extensive research and a lot of miles we found THE ONE. And within days we had closed on it. And taking advantage of our rental agreement with our buyers, we went on to do some improvement to the new condo prior to our move. A month later, the first attempt at moving failed. In a way it turned out to be a lucky mishap as we were not quite ready on the receiving end. When it finally happened we were emotionally ready for it and even though not everything was ready, we made it happen. Now, after moving our furniture, boxes, stuff from a storage unit we kept during the selling process, and my computer, which I kept at the realty office also during the move, it is starting to feel like home.

After the move, the unpacking and the travel, the Emerald Isle home is going to feel like a well-deserved vacation. Although I know better as beach-front homes are very demanding and require quite a bit of TLC. So the autumn vacation trip may turn out to be more work just different. Regardless, we’ll get to see friends and family and with the backdrop of the NC beaches, not a bad trade.

Earl heading to some real estate

From being worried about selling and buying and everything in between, now I’m

anxious about tropical hurricanes. At least Earl is not heading directly to Miami but happening to also own property in other parts of the Eastern seaboard (namely Emerald Isle, NC), there is always an opportunity to worry about the effects of any hurricane spinning its way towards the East coast of the USA.

For Emerald Isle being on the Southern part of the Outer Banks rather than the extreme Eastern tip of the state, it has the advantage that most of the hurricanes barely skim the continent and don’t usually go directly inland. Because the hurricane winds in the Atlantic spin in a counterclockwise fashion, the winds hitting Emerald Isle tend to come, not directly from the open ocean, but after going over the land of the Eastern part of North Carolina. At least that was what I hoped when we purchased our Emerald Isle home about 8 years ago.

I was just talking to my Dad this last weekend about the difference of owning a ho

use and the land under it, versus owning only a fraction of the property as when owning a condominium. When you own the land and a house, you and only you are responsible for pretty much everything that happens. When you own in a condo, the pain is shared with others and if the building is built to withstand strong winds, the chances of losing everything are reduced.

Tomorrow evening (Thursday) at around this time, Earl is expected to be near NC , and just at the day break of Friday we will probably know how NC faired the storm. Hope that people have listened to the warnings and decide to take the proper precautions. By then I should know whether I could stay here watching out for the next few storms, or whether I need to start preparing to travel to NC to take care of business over there. We shall see.

Look Mom, no mortgage!

Just came back a few minutes ago from closing on the sale of our condo in South Beach. I have never been happier after loosing thousands of dollars. But in comparison to many of my fellow Floridians, at least we were not “under-water” with our mortgage and were able to bring home a sizeable check. After 6 years of ownership we managed to lose only about 14% from our original purchase price, and in today’s market that’s actually not too bad. Whatever happened to the days when you counted with home appreciation and worried about the tax implications? I’m pretty sure that if we had waited a few more years we could have recouped some of that loss, but that would have also meant many, many more mortgage payments later. So, who is to say whether we would certainly be ahead or just delusional about making any profit.

One of the reasons we decided to sale and move on, was that with the losses in property values in the country, there are now many opportunities to purchase assets that a few years ago would have been too pricey to even think about. It ‘s a sad condition to profit from someone else’s loss, but it is today’s new reality that we have to get used to, the new prices are here to stay and it’s best to forget about the past. So if you happened to have bought at the peak or if you happened to have profited from the supposed equity in your home, you are likely looking at your home value being lower than what you owe on it. So the banks that so easily lent us all that cheap money a few years ago, are now becoming reluctant owners themselves. So, to help them out, investors are grabbing the best value properties and leaving them to deal with their ugly ducklings.

Cash is king, they say, and as a matter of fact, most of the transactions I’ve been involved with in my short Realtor® career, have been in cash. Either buyers don’t want to be bothered with the banks or the banks themselves are making it very difficult to borrow, so cash transactions are becoming more common than mortgages.

For the last few weeks, B and I have been searching for our next place to live. We looked at renting a condo, but to keep the housing cost under $2,000 a month, we would be sacrificing quite a bit of living space and/or the neighborhood. With today’s prices, buying would actually make more sense as we could cut the rental in half and still live in a half-decent neighborhood. Of course, to do that I’m not talking about taking a mortgage but rather paying for the next place outright without involving banks.

But for now, let me enjoy my mortgage-burning event and have a few days without any of the burdens or privileges of home-ownership.

A new life has evolved...

My last entry was on Valentine’s day and then I went silent until today. Six months of too much thinking or too little time on my hands or lost of interest in writing. Probably a combination, but as usual I find that writing makes me stop and smell the flowers, even if just for a few minutes. I’m sure I’ve mentioned here that I find writing very therapeutic. Sometimes it’s only a to-do list or a whole article, but just jotting things on a piece of paper it’s almost like downloading information to an extension of my brain which allows the other part, the part within my skull, to take a breather and R-E-L-A-X.

It’s been probably a year that I’ve been more interested in doing something more than just being an active member of the AARP club. I’ve been looking for a possible business to buy, I’ve also been looking for a suitable job to apply to, and even looking at the possibility of creating my own type of life where I could be busy, but only busy when I want to, and not being dictated what to do by external forces (read: bosses). That something may have become a reality in my life during the last year, but it has been so subtle that I haven’t even realized it until now.

It started with a conversation I had with a Business Broker while we were negotiating my offer to a small business owner. Towards the end of the conversation I told Steve, it’d be nice to be able to buy this business, but what I’d really like to do, is to have a job like yours. I knew that I enjoyed the research and negotiations required to acquire a business, what I wasn’t sure was whether I was ready and willing to commit to the long hours and dedication that a small business requires. Steve went on to tell me that he also thought that I’d be a good business broker and explained that in Florida the only requirement was to have a real estate salesperson license.

So, in November of 2009 I started taking an online class to prepare me to take the Florida exam, however, the trips to Panama and later on to Cuba got on the way and it wasn’t until about February of this year when I started taking the online classes seriously.

I love taking classes and even have a weird fascination with taking exams, but eventually everything came to an end and I had to make a decision of which line of work to pursue. I spent a few days working with a business broker group but found them a little disorganized and offered little in the way of training. Being a novice in the field I felt that I wanted more mentorship and training and less independence.

A few days later, after doing some research on the matter I decided to join the Keyes Company to practice real estate sales. Of course my original intentions were to be the Realtor® to my main client: Belinda, but the more I learn the more I liked the idea that I could be helpful to others as well. Besides if I survive the training that is required to keep my main client happy, I’d have been graduated with heat and fire to handle the most demanding of clients available. So now I’m saying, bring them on, I’m ready to deal with the bitchiest real-world clients out there, I’m not afraid anymore. I’ve been tested.

A One-sided Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day found me at home but without a wife to pamper and shower with gifts and flowers. So, what is a man to do when his wife is working in India for a couple of weeks and happens to be missing for Valentine’s Day? Humbly get myself as soon as possible to the Miami Beach Int. Boat Show and Strickly Sail. I could also sit at home and cry about it but I liked plan A better.

There was a chill in the air, unusual for this time of the year in Miami, so I dressed warmly and hopped on my bicycle to head North about 12 blocks from home. The doors to the convention center opened at 10 AM and I was there about 5 minutes after. I walked aimlessly, enjoying my music through my earphones and was oblivious to anyone around me. I was just mesmerized and the drool must have been showing when the Boston Whaler rep asked me if I had any questions about the boats. I took my ear piece out of my ear and asked “did I die and went to heaven?” He knew exactly what I was talking about. This was the best Valentine’s Day a man could have. Everywhere I looked there were toys, big and small. I think my wife should be proud that I didn’t walk out with the mortgage to a 2010 46’ Leopard catamaran sailboat, or even a credit card bill for a 16’ open bow sea kayak. I’m sure they would have put a big red bow if I’d ask, and boy, Belinda would have been very surprised when she got back from India.

Walking around in that sea of boats, I couldn’t help but think of how many people I could bring from Cuba in one of those yachts. Almost everyone I talked to during my recent trip to Cuba, expressed their desire to leave Cuba to anywhere they’d be allowed. One of them had even attempted to leave Cuba by very dubious methods and was ultimately caught, and his life saved, by the Cuban coast guard. Of course, the coast guard didn’t mean to save his life, but since they did, they beat him and sent him to jail for a few months. The stories we heard would make us drop our jaws and it would give us a glimpse of how desperate many of them are to get out, be it for economical, political or just for freedom’s sake. The feeling of not being able to come and go as you please is not unlike what I imagine being in jail is like. And then, to know that they have been under these same rules for more that 50 years! This would certainly be considered a life sentence for a crime they never committed.

Maybe I should reconsider and get myself that boat after all. I could excuse it as a humanitarian endeavor. Well, even if I didn’t walk out with a new boat I still had a great Valentine’s Day. I hope the Cubans had some sort of a good day as well and on this Chinese New Year’s Day, may the Year of the Tiger bring them all the luck in the world, and to us, greater appreciation of the freedoms that we take for granted.

Justin who?

With all the hoopla going on in South Beach about “The Game” this weekend, I had no clue about who Justin Bieber was and looking at the crowd of teen girls acting maniacally, I knew that at least for a fact I was in the wrong age group to even know about him. But since this time I was carrying my camera on our daily walk, I decided to wait around for this new teen idol to show up so I could snap a couple of pictures and wait until I get home to figure out who he was. Turned out to be pretty famous in the music world, specially given that he’s only 15 years old.

Anyhow, in case you just landed from Mars and don’t know what I’m talking about, “The Game” I’m referring to is the Super Bowl football game planned for next Sunday in Miami Life Sun Stadium. From all the media events, sports paraphernalia and T-shirts surrounding us I am guessing it will be between the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts, and that’s the extent of my knowledge on that matter.

But the reason I was carrying a camera during our daily walk this morning was not to take pictures of Justin Bieber but as of regret that yesterday I could have taken my picture with Gloria Estefan, A.K.A. “The Queen of Miami”, when we stumbled upon the stage where she was going to perform live for the Early Show on CBS. Since most of the Super Bowl activities are in the evenings, this early morning show was relatively empty so it gave me the chance of moving very close to the stage and be close enough to have my picture taken with her. Except that I didn’t have my camera and can only share my memories of the experience.

Gloria is pretty famous in this parts of the country, but in Cuba she turned out to be a lot less famous than I imagined. For some reason, maybe because I was visiting my birth country for the first time in my conscious life, I found my self humming the words to Gloria’s song “Mi Tierra”. It was with me pretty much the whole 10 days I was there. In a couple of occasions I asked two Cuban family members if they had heard the songs of Gloria Estefan and to my surprise, they had no clue of who she was. How about Willy Chirino, a known Cuban from Miami that also sings strongly against the Castro regime? Nope. No clue. They knew about Juanes and Olga Tañón, but nothing about Gloria or Willy. How convenient to know about those that supported your politics, but know nothing about those that spoke against your system.

Thinking about it, it wasn’t that surprising after all. During my visit to Cuba I realized that if you could control the information that people heard (the news media), then you could control just about everything. If the only facts you were allowed to hear were anything that told you that you were in heaven, in less than a generation away, people would believe that they were indeed in heaven. All the Cuban news, in print, radio and TV, talks about the wonderful things the Cuban government does there and abroad. Any of the troubles the country may have are usually minimized or if acknowledged, at least blamed on the Imperialists to the North and their embargo.

So Gloria, if you want your songs to be more popular in Cuba, you’re going to have to do a little better at praising the accomplishments of the communist way of living and be a lot less critical. Otherwise I don’t see Gloria becoming the Queen of Havana anytime soon.

In the mean time, I’ll just continue praising the accomplishments of the capitalist’s ways and enjoy all-things Super Bowl this last weekend before The Game. And may the best team (and the best political system) win.

An updated perspective

There is nothing like traveling to give your compass a tune up. I’m not talking only about the actual, physical compass but about your overall direction and the principles that you use to guide you in your life. And if the traveling happens to be somewhere that is very different than your every day life, then the bigger the jolt your compass gets. My first activity of the year was to get one of

those big jolts in life when I returned to my birthplace after a 50-year absence.

Not that I had any memory of my last visit when I was only two years old, this was more as if I was visiting for the very first time. But, I had heard so much about Cuba from my parents and the media, that I definitely had some preconceived ideas of what I was going to encounter.

To start, the visit felt as if we were breaking our own family rules as we had always hoped to return to a renewed Cuba some time after it had undergone a change from years of being ruled by one dominating figure. But given that none of us are planning to live forever, we had to make the visit happen before all of my Dad’s siblings disappear. As it was, one sister is 95 years old but with a bad case of Alzheimer’s disease which was not expected to recognize my Dad. The only other living sibling was a 93 year-old sister that lives near the family home site but at that advanced age it would be too much of a gamble to wait until the political picture changes.

So the trip happened. The culture shock was experienced. The meeting of so many “new” family members occurred. And now I’m in the process of reviewing the pictures, digesting the information, and getting over seeing first-hand the conditions that our family lives just a few miles South of where I live, which minus well be in another galaxy for all practical purposes. To write about our experiences in Cuba would take a book not a blog, but I’m sure that having that experience now in my system, its going to color my writing from now on.

Be the change...

In 2010 I want to live the change I want to see in the world. And it doesn’t have to be a huge, earth-chattering announcement. Just a simple resolution: To continue minimizing my carbon footprint on our Planet Earth so children born in 2009 have something left for then to enjoy. That shouldn’t be too much asking but when it involves any sort of change to my lifestyle, it usually involves some sacrifices.

Looking at a 2009 calendar I have at home, I can see that 2009 was not as green as I wished it had. There were lots of airplane carbon miles taken and with the low price of gasoline, the road trips were not as efficient as they could have been either.

On the food front, I am afraid that I still need to do a lot better than I have. A few days ago, I was listening to an interview with Sylvia Earle –the renowned oceanographer and environmentalist. Where she reminded us that fishing, and eating fish, is not what it once was back in the 1950s. We have all seen the pictures of the proud fishermen showing their truck-full of fish caught on their fishing trips back in the day, compared to the dwindling displays of fish caught by their counterparts in this century. The evidence is clear that our appetite for seafood has hugely decimated some species of fish and that we need to do something to conserve some species or we will not leave anything to our youngsters. One of the points that she mentioned was that overfishing happens when the diminishing yields pushes fishermen to use technology that simply wipes out whole schools of fish together with anything else that gets caught in their nets.

One example is the harvesting of fish to extract the “fish oil” that we now push on everyone to increase our Omega 3-fatty acids. It is supposedly good for us but the fish populations where it comes from are suffering the consequences. Instead of promoting fish oil, why don’t we promote other, more sustainable, sources of Omega-3s? It’s usually a matter of economics, but also a very short-sighted view of the world. It’s a ‘lets-use-what-we-have-now, we’ll-worry-about-the future-later’ philosophy. Except that when “the future” finally comes around, it will be too late to salvage anything. Look what happened to the bisons in North America, at one point in time they were thought to be a limitless supply of food and hide. A few years later, human ingenuity managed to decimate the bison population to the point that they are now treated as museum pieces. Could we do that to the big, pelagic fish (tuna, marlin, swordfish) of our oceans? Well, the bison’s at least had the advantage (or disadvantage) of being visible to hunters and consumers. Someone should have realized that there was an end to the “infinite cloud” of animals on our Western prairies. I’m afraid the fish are less visible and as long as one country is competing with another for those “free resources” out in the wide, blue ocean, the fish will always be seeing as an infinite resource.

So, back to my changes for 2010. As soon as I’m done with the bottle of those cheap Sam’s brandname, nasty, environmentally-atrocious, old Fish Oil softgels, I’m switching to sustainable, environmentally-friendly, algae-based Omega-3 source. This could almost be considered a ‘a-small-step-for-man’ kind of thing, which could cost me a little more, but if more people would do that it could save a few more fish for Ethan and all the others born 2009 and beyond.