Ronda There are towns you experience by walking, and others you experience by watching. Ronda is the latter. Although, there was significant amount of walking too :) The town doesn’t reveal itself all

Ojén, Málaga, Spain Ojén is a small town, rather a village, just north of Marbella, Spain where I was visiting with my family over Spring Break. If you have been to Marbella, you can understand how glitzy

A Shepherd's Path There is a specific kind of stillness you find in the white-washed alleys of Vejer de la Frontera. Standing on the edge of the old town fortifications, looking out over the salt marshes

Cost Pyramid As the Iran War enters its 3rd week with no end in sight, I thought I might want to share some of my personal thoughts. First of all, I was in Europe travelling, and that set of posts will

Oil Supply Chain Suddenly everyone is interested how much traffic is going through the Persian Gulf, and to where. Also who has how much supply left! Sigh. You are reading too much news, eh? And you didn't

Strait of Hormuz Not too long ago I was there on the UAE side and then to the Omani side. I wrote about that trip here, the first two pictures overlooks the Strait of Hormuz into Iran. It was a geological

Free Advice There are always free advice these days, especially when the crypto price is dropping like a rock :) Today at discord one guy tells me, "your hive holding was once $1M, now it is less

Language Marathon It's been 140 days since I started learning Japanese on fine morning. It is tough, I sometimes feel like I am torturing myself for no particular reason, but it is going well, I guess

Why the Yen and Rural Japan are in decline? Today, we’re talking about the Japanese Yen (JPY) and the demographic cliff Japan is currently base-jumping off of—without a parachute. In fact this conversation

Supply and Demand I haven't written anything for more than a week. This is not taking a break, but I was a bit under the weather and busy at the same time. Plus, language learning a taking a heavy toll

元気 (Genki) = Fine, Healthy Well, I have arrived at the subject of Genki I and II Japanese language learning text books. Since there is no way to escape it, if you have even a remote ambition to take a

Postcard Cabins Last weekend I took the family to spend three days in a tiny cabin about a bit more than one hour from Houston, near Navasota, TX. These days we rarely do short weekend trips like this,

Four months of Japanese! I have officially spent four months—120 consecutive days (as of right now, it is 119 days!)—obeying a green bird’s passive-aggressive notifications. I’m currently sitting at a

Japanese Language Learning Levels When I started learning Japanese, I quickly realized that "getting better" is a vague goal. I wrote about it here and here. Now, 112 days in, I see a need to

The chronicle from the deep South I wrote this comment yesterday on my post. I am a man of my word, so it is time to follow up. I will start going back about an year, when I wrote this post about the 2024

The New Imperial Executive As I look at the wreckage of the traditional American governance model in 2026, it is clear that we are no longer living in a republic of laws, but in a regime of executive fiat.

You must Out-dumb I used to think I could win an argument with logic. I was young, foolish, and burdened by 'facts.' Now I am 50 and much slower and hopefully wiser, and I simply don't care what people

The New Silk Road Why I am watching Greenland For centuries, explorers vanished into the frozen labyrinth of the Arctic searching for the Northwest Passage—a shortcut that would rewrite the rules of global

Defi I still remember the first time I tried to send money abroad through my local bank. I was in India, and was simply trying to pay application fee for the Universities I was applying to. This was late

Energy Geopolitics Lately there have been a lot of noise about US Energy Politics, especially related to the recent action in Venezuela by the current administration. There is a lot of opinions circulating