Had the greatest weekend in years. It was fun, but it was important for me too. An organization working on various activism for/in Armenia invited me to a conference at Columbia University. I went alone to hear the presentations because there were some big names in Armenian academia speaking, and the person who invited me is a role model of mine. I intentionally stay unaffiliated with Armenian-American organizations because they're always politically affiliated somehow and I can't get involved in the mess of Armenian politics yet. I opened the door to the conference, a lecture hall in the Columbia's math building, and my heart stopped when I saw 50-odd Armenian faces looking back at me. I realized that I haven't seen my people in years, apart from my mother, some family friends and my family back home on Skype. These were college-age Armenian kids, mostly grad/PhD age, all here from all over the country just to spend the day being American-Armenians in a room together. It's very difficult to describe why being a part of this conference was so significant to me, but I felt like I was in love with 50 people at once. Some of them were activists and good-thing-doers for Armenia, others were simply Armenians in America doing their thing, but they were all high-speed individuals doing big things, and it gave me hope for my people's survival and success in the future. I went to the proceeding dinner/social event and introduced myself to everyone. A group of kids invited me back to their hotel, to "get over the politics and start this pre-game so we can fucking party." And party we did. We destroyed midtown Manhattan. Then I met an Armenian girl who stole me out of the bar before I could even say goodbye to everyone, and took me dancing at a nightclub in Chelsea. Getting me to dance in a group is difficult enough, I was nervous about dancing with her alone, but I fucking danced yo. She took me back to her apartment near Columbia, where it turned out she was in a grad program on economic development. For the first time in months, I woke up calm and happy instead of wired and in a hurry. She said good morning in Armenian and made Armenian tea. I was in heaven. I left before breakfast to get back to school, but she told me to let her know when I was back in the city, which will be this weekend for spring break. There are two small red flags with her but it's difficult to acknowledge them in my current infatuation, I'll call them later-me problems. Last weekend was the closest I've been to high without drugs, even better than some at that. I realized the gigantic hole in my heart for being around fellow Armenians. I got inspired by the fact that there are Armenians that are going to be leaders in their field, Armenians that will yield power for other Armenians, and that things won't be as bad as they appear back home right now. And as touchy as it is, this girl made me realize how low I was stooping with girls at my school just to get their attention, I don't respect them for their work or their general (lack of) ambition and dialogue. I'm linking up via e-mail with the kids and some of the professionals I met, and figuring out my own shit with this girl, and overall enjoying the view from cloud nine.
Dude, I love this SO MUCH. Because I have had only totally shitty interactions with Armenians. In Kosovo. During the war. I'm still kinda invested in the world-view that the Armenians moved in on the Serbian homeland because they saw Serbia on the ropes after Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia successfully excised themselves from Yugoslavia. In my experience, the Armenians I met were dirty, useless, and felt entitled to Serbian lands they had no historical right to. (And I am no supporter of Serbia... I think they are a special kind of messed up, too. But even the bully doesn't deserve to lose part of his house, just because he's a bully.) SO. You post this story about connection and the visceral, heart-felt passion you had simply seeing a roomful of "your" people.... ... and my "dirty Armenian land-grabbers" internal dialog gets real quiet, and slinks into the back corner of my brain, and covers its head with a dirty blanket. I dunno why I am saying this. Just kinda processing out loud, as I explore a weird wrinkle in my brain that doesn't make any sense to me. "Why do I think this of ALL Armenians? That's stupid. I need to work on that."
Hah, I'm really glad you shared this. I've never heard this perspective or impression on Armenians before. Note that Armenians were pushed out of Armenia in waves twice in recent history- once during the genocide in the early 20th century and again during the collapse of the Soviet Union. Many times over, the population of the diaspora is greater than that of Armenia itself. The diaspora also tends to concentrate acutely, in that there are specific and very dense populations of Armenians wherever they are around the world. I imagine those Armenians are probably genocide-era settlers that, socially, crafted a perceived sense of entitlement as a means of survival. I'm sorry that this impression was the result. Armenians are certainly smelly, but not dirty. They're certainly survivors, but not predator opportunists/land-grabbers. You seem to be exercising attribution bias. edit: we both, in hindsight, not just you ;)
Oh God. Glendale is the mutated caricature dark side of Armenia. It's like a copy-paste of Yerevan but the file got corrupted.
Yes, well, I can put aside the pride-uninspiring nature of the city given it's probably bomb food and hilarious individuals.
And I can put aside your whipsaw pivot from ethnic inclusion to ethnic elitism. ;-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Americans#Geographic_distribution
noway - your post touched me. There's something identity-confirming about being with your people -- if you have a "people" with similarities to you that mainstream society doesn't have. I want to add that one doesn't even have to like one's "people" -- being with a whole bunch of them together is like being at home -- maybe even a home you never knew you had.I realized that I haven't seen my people in years
I think you're right. I'm sure I've been conditioned to be patriotic towards Armenia but I'm more inclined to be with Armenian people than run around waving an Armenian flag. I feel much better understood in many different ways. Then again I haven't been back in 5 summers and I miss being in the country itself too. Weird stuff I haven't figured out yet, but neat.
Wow, I hadn't realized that I even felt that way until I read your post. I had never really articulated this thought before. I'm not Armenian, but my people (HK) group also stand at around 7m and dwindling, with our probably dying language, and a politically powerful persecutor who pretends to be our Lord and Savior. Our people haven't been around for near as long as you guys, but a number of what you said really hit hard: (1) the political situation breaks my heart, (2) I hadn't seen non-immediate circle folks of my people for a while ..., (3) that hole in my heart I don't usually realise is there. It reminds me of watching the new Trek movie, when Spock realises he is now a member of an endangered species. Do you think.... if certain things of your culture will persist long after the last one of you perish, what might they be?
Hong Kong. We speak a different dialect of Chinese than People's Republic of China, have our own currency, police force, laws, courts, economy, writing system, food, and culture. But China had a choke hold on the little city state and wants to see us assimilated, or at least dead before any rise of being independent.
I'm going back to school. How you like them apples? Because my background and goals are unique, I'm having to carefully craft a curriculum to accomplish what I need. The past week has seen four visits to three different community colleges to cobble together an oddly specific and bizarrely random assortment of education because, frankly, nobody has a program in "lifestyle brand." I had the head of one program tell me "there's maybe one week of one class that might be useful to you, the rest will be a waste of your time" and another ask me if I knew how to anodize titanium because that was something they're looking to get into. If all goes well I'll be taking "Art 111 - Drawing" and "Machining 131 - Introduction to CNC Programming" simultaneously this fall. And I'll be spreading random crap like that across the years because I've got a large Hollywood-sized hole in the middle of my year that provides my family $600-a-year health insurance so I'll be hanging onto that for dear life well past the point where it's fashionable. The next few years will have a focus, which is something they haven't had since 2009. Well, that's not true. For the past five years or so the focus has been "build a half million dollar birth center a thousand miles away for someone else" so this is a nice change. I will be straddling two programs in order to come up with the perfect intersection of this and this in pursuit of selling people with too much money things they don't need. STOKED. Automate this, mutherfuckers. No, seriously, automate it. Because I know how special your Royal Oak is with its hand-turned dial on a million-year-old brocading machine but I saw CNC legos the other day and if you don't think I can program a tool path to bring the price of that sucker down a decimal point you haven't seen me work. 'cuz you know what? Ain't nobody ever gonna buy a $100k watch off of my ass but I'll bet I can sell a few for $2k or so. let's get this party started brb gantt charting my future
Good luck! Looking forward to seeing your work and progress.
Hey guys, Been lurking most days now, but figured I'd stop in to say hello. I ended up getting a job a couple of months ago working for a market research/election research company. It's been a lot of fun so far and I'm learning a lot about both fields (even though currently I'm leg-deep in election research). Things are going well though and it feels very comforting to be employed.
Good on you! Glad you're doing okay, don't matter if we don't speak a lot. Can you come and research the Russian presidential elections? I mean, I already know the results, even though the election day is March 18th, but can you just tell my what the hell is going on there?
...Cambridge Analytics?market research/election research company
The diagnosis is Keratoconus. Incurable, degenerative eye disease that causes blurry vision. Essentially the collagen in your cornea begins to degrade and lose its strength, allowing the internal pressure in your eye to push the cornea out of shape, thereby distorting your vision. So things in my right eye are blurry and doubled. And they aren't going to get better. (But hard contact lenses may help.) US medicine doesn't really do Keratoconus treatment (yet), and most insurance companies see it as elective, not required. Europe has been treating it with well-documented success in their basic medical plans for decades. There are only about 200,000 cases a year, and fortunately one of the leading lights in this area of research and treatment is here in Seattle, and she is affiliated with my regular eye doctor. So I grabbed her next available appointment... at the end of MAY. So right now I am going through the Seven Stages, and have arrived at Pissed Off Grumpy Motherfucker Who Loves His Job and Desperately Need His Vision To Keep Doing It, stage. I hope to power through that stage, and get on to "dealing with it" soon... any minute now... <drums fingers on desk>...
Holy crap that's pretty grim. Is it only your right eye? Any chance you could marry a Canadian? My mom lost vision in the right eye couple years ago, when its optic nerve got squished by the growing tumours in her brain. We has low key been panicking about what happens when it squishes her remaining eye, but she had a stroke last week and so maybe she might not live for that to be an issue. Sorry that was irrelevant. Just wanted to say, yeah sometimes stuff just sucks so bad. I hope you find an affordable cure. That sounds so disgusting to even type.
Things have changed, since I posted that. Most of those changes have been in my head. First off, a week after changing to the new prismatic-lensed glasses, I accidentally picked up my old glasses and put them on one morning... and it was BLISSFUL. I felt RELIEF. That was when I realized that there was a lot of stuff going on in my head that had nothing to do with the actual physical condition of my eyes. The prismatic lenses in my new glasses were just weird. I realized that I never got used to them, and having my vision be "odd" all the time, was deeply tiring/unsettling. When I switched back to my old glasses - with the too-weak, too-old prescription - I felt RELIEF. I relaxed. I re-evaluated my ACTUAL ABILITY TO SEE, and didn't think about my initial diagnosis of Keratoconus, and instead... just looked out my actual eyes, at my surroundings, and thought, "hey... that's not so bad." So. I went back to my eye doctor and told her how relieving it was to put on my old glasses, and told her about the diagnosis. She suggested I stick with my old glasses now. Then go see the specialist to get the Keratoconus diagnosis confirmed/denied. Then, see what course of treatment the doc suggests. At that point - less than 90 days from when I got my new glasses - we can decide how to proceed with my new glasses. Stick with them? Change the prescription? And even possibly change to hard contact lenses. (One possible solution to Keratoconus, that works for some people.) So yeah. I still have blurry/weird vision in my right eye. But my left eye has become dominant, so I don't even notice the right eye blur anymore. My old glasses are not the perfect prescription, but they are fine for everyday use. So I am in a MUCH better place, right now. This holding pattern kinda works for me... for the time being...
Hola granola! No beer for me, fellas; I'm off the sauce for Lent. Though I'm going to a birthday party the weekend after next, so there's a chance my resolve will break just as I'm about to enter the home stretch. We'll see. I woke up today feeling like my brain had been replaced with lead, because I didn't get to sleep until around five in the morning. At one-ish I started reading Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings, got about fifty pages in, and decided I wasn't going to finish it. Too much "Xkrymia gingerly picked up the Thunderfang, forged in the purple hills of Zemydon where the milkbeasts roam, being careful to use only his left hand, because using the right would make his soul break into twenty-nine pieces". Then I opened Forgotten Beasts of Eld and made it as far as the prologue. I tried The Three-Body Problem but couldn't swallow the physics professor's weird second-person brainspeech to his wife about Einstein. Gardens of the Moon put me off because of the author's own claims in the preface about the ambitious scope of his work, but I did proceed to the text itself and was put off by the world-building efforts (i.e. dropping lots of weird names and replacing profanities with phrases like "Kamalon's beard!"; I know it only makes sense that they wouldn't say "Jesus Christ!" when they stub a toe, but it all feels very forced). I was trying to read a little more fantasy and sci-fi, to diversify my reading a little. Maybe they're just not for me. To think that I've recently been feeling pangs of guilt for downloading these off of libgen; now I'm glad I didn't buy them. In the past I've rarely stopped reading books; usually once I'm a few pages in, I feel that need to see it through. I've come to realise that there's a limited amount of books one can read, so you might as well make them ones you really want to; anything else is a timesink. So I switched tack and moved onto The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins, and while it sounded fascinating, I realised after ten pages that I didn't particularly want to read another five hundred on the subject. Which led me to move on to the shorter and snappier The Soul of an Octopus, and the decision soon after that I really should try to sleep. I was bogged down in January with a pain in my left knee; the discomfort was less annoying than the constraints it put on my physical movement. I haven't been out to climb Croagh Patrick but once since. Thankfully, a couple of weeks ago, the time - and a few funny-looking but effective stretches I found online - seemed to have cured it. Then I started doing some barefoot walks to strengthen my soles, and experimented with different walking forms - enough to give myself peroneal tendonitis. So that's great. I'm chasing pain around my body just as I'm freaking out that I only have a few months to prepare myself for this: It took me about four days to make that in paint.net, so don't judge it too harshly. Gonna put it up on the auld Facebook page in the next few days. My main concern now (other than actually getting fit) is organising accomodation along the way. Luckily a friend of mine has agreed to do the driving. Some of you might laugh at the "mountains" (only one of them is over 1000m), but look here - in Ireland, that's what we have for mountains. I have no other news. Oh yeah, I've been doing a little bit more writing on My Book About That Walk I Did Nearly Two Years Ago Now: God, There's A Depressing Thought and have made it as far as finishing a first draft of... chapter three. There is no hope for me, my friends.
Juice. We all want you to be strong and healthy, especially with all the stress.
The other day I was going on a country drive when a turkey flew up out of a ditch and over the road, right in front of my car. I came to a stop so a second turkey could do the same and I found myself surprised. Not by the turkeys crossing the road, but I honestly forgot that turkeys knew how to fly. Though Dala claims they can’t fly, they’re just really good at jumping and flapping their wings. The encounter made me think of a class one time when I was younger, when my teacher was telling us about his weekend turkey hunt. He was in a brush/wooded area and had been there for about an hour waiting for a turkey to come along. Every now and again, he’d use his turkey call, and get no response. Growing frustrated, he was about ready to find a new place to try again but decided to give the call one last shot. That’s when he heard a turkey behind him, probably twenty or thirty yards away. He tried to get closer, only to have the thing fly off and disappear into the bushes. Knowing it was still somewhere nearby, he’d wait a bit and use the call, only to find it in a completely different spot than where he expected it to be, once again about twenty to thirty yards away and hidden from view. He’d use the call, only to hear nothing but silence, and try to crawl closer again, only for it to fly away. Over and over he’d use the call to no answer, then he’d get an answer, always in a new, hidden, and unexpected spot. This went on for hours before the sun was starting to go down and he had to head home. He joked that he didn’t know if the turkey was the smartest, trickiest bird he ever tried to get, or if it was just so dumb that its randomly wandering around out of idiocy saved its life. The rest of the class that day, we joked about turkeys and compared wild ones to domestic ones and how wild ones were allegedly much smarter than domesticated ones. We debated whether or not domestic turkeys really will stand in a ditch in the rain and risk drowning because they’re not smart enough to find higher ground even as the water rises around them (I think the class was evenly split). We talked about why, if turkey is so good, it’s unfair that we use their meat mostly for cold sandwiches and leave the good recipes only for thanksgiving. We learned to make turkey calls, gobbling around like a bunch of idiots, and just generally having a good time. I don’t think I learned anything in class that day, except that if you get a bunch of high schoolers gobbling their head off, teachers down the hall will come over to complain, but it doesn’t do much good when your teacher is the instigator and loving the shit out of it. Here’s what I know about turkeys. A single, wild turkey seems to be pretty smart, doing turkey shit and enjoying life. A flock of wild turkeys though, as I’ve had the chance to see quite a few in my time, always seems to act as if their life is one big game of follow the leader where everyone is simultaneously the leader and simultaneously the follower. Everyone seems to be making decisions. No one seems to be making decisions. Somehow, the flock functions. I don’t even fucking know. Domesticated turkeys? I’ve never encountered any to be honest with you, so I can’t actually speak to them. People who I’ve talked to though, who have one as a pet, swear they’re great. People who I’ve talked to though, who raise them in flocks for market, seem to have less of an opinion of them. On the one hand, I’m doubtful because I often don’t think we give animals enough credit, especially when we consider them a food source. On the other hand though . . .
Our chickens do fly. They definitely prefer to just run around but if one ends up far away from the flock they'll fly over to hang with their buddies. When our rooster gets away he'll fly when chased -- once I was chasing him through the woods and upon reaching a clearing he flew up about 15 feet high for...maybe 50 feet or so? Definitely far more than a 1 foot tall animal can jump. I think they figured this out around 16 weeks old; Pig (aptly named) attempted to fly from their brooder box to the kitchen table because we were eating pork chops and she wanted more.
Find an Amish butcher, build a report with them. You will pay more, 10-20% a pound but every cent is worth it. The chickens I get from these people? THEY TASTE LIKE CHICKEN. It hurts to buy the $.77/lb stuff at the megamart after eating a real, flavorful, bird.
Doing no research, I think Dala is right about turkeys not flying. I spooked one while running in the country Saturday, and it just made a lot of noise and jumped and flapped about. There are also wild but urban turkeys in town. I've never seen them fly, just jump and flap. Unrelated to turkeys but related to animals and my run, I also garnered some interest from cows. I waved and said hi. Cows seem lovely. I also got barked at by a hound with a really deep voice.
Still in the process of moving, but I have all my stuff here now so that’s good. The move and new (flexible) job has upended so many of my daily / weekly habits that I’m reevaluating them all. Questions like: when should I wake? (7:10 was surprisingly doable, but I don’t want to go to bed so early) How do I get meditation back into my daily routine? (It feels kinda weird meditating at work.) Where do I prefer to work? (Office has more distractions, but also free food and more social & fun.) What should I do to keep in shape? (I’m thinking of taking swimming classes. Obviously I can swim, but I live next to a community pool that offers classes for adults and it’s a great full-body exercise.) How do I commute? (I tried some longboards and tried the Boosted...I like both but I really like the latter) How often do I want to work from home, and what do I want in a home office? (Aeron chair, finally.) How do I organize email, notes and work stuff? (With a rigid file structure, Inbox Zero, and constant improvements to The System.) As they say, change is the only constant, but I do prefer building some solid and healthy routines so I can focus on what matters.
Starting to feel weird about my job. More conflict with my Manager, more doubts about what she's actually doing, less visibility in general from our management team and then conflict between team members because of it. Or, involvement without presence from our management team, which is just as bad. The list of grievances is growing and I'm starting to care less. Frustrating when your manager says thanks to a member of another department for work they did and not thanks to you and a coworker for working on the same problem. One nice thing was getting a Holiday card from the team at our Early Production Center. 2,500 miles away. Instead of one from my own team/manager. Yikes. Wondering how long I will actually be here or want to be here if the culture keeps drifting away from the more open, communal nature it had when I started. Climbing is fun. My shoulder hurts. Running is fun. My ankle hurts. Starting to work on vacation/travel plans for the year! One is already set, but hoping for a smaller trip to Red Rock Canyon and maybe Smith Rock. Most of my travel plans are related to outdoor activities at this point, but that's okay. Plenty of other relaxation options on a daily basis. Oh and I signed up for a CSA for the first time! So, so excited!!!
Sounds like you're in Stage 2 of the Five Stages of Work. I heard this talk given by a CBC (Canada's National Radio Station) radio engineer as she reflected on her job there: Stage 1. The Good Day: Your job gives you happiness, fulfilment, and meaning. Stage 2. The Bad Day: Your job starts to irritate you. Everything you overlooked during the good day begins to stress you. You begin to learn some really unpleasant stuff about your workplace. You become frustrated, confused, and apathetic. You feel powerless. Stage 3. Revenge: The bad days outnumber the good days. You become self-compensating for your stress. Self-compensation might range from taking home post-its to absenteeism to searching for or even doing a second job during your original job, and worse. Stage 4. Personal Re-Engineering: You realize that you do value your job. It is the job you’ve always wanted. You explore how you can change so that you can once again have the good day. Personal re-engineering might involve asserting your concerns, negotiating with others, changing your expectations, and much more. Stage 5. Redemption: Some of your days at work are so excellent, they redeem all the other stress involved. Anyway, bfx, good luck sorting it all out. We want to see you happy.
Thank you for sharing this. This is going to be helpful once I take part in real-jobbing.
lil, I love this. Wish the talk was available, or maybe it is, and I'm just not able to find it. Personal Re-Rengineering is a bit conflicting to me, though. Comes across as the onus being on the worker to change, with negotiations being secondary. This could easily lead back to Stage 2 or Stage 3.You explore how you can change so that you can once again have the good day.
The “bad day” tends to make us disconnect from our job. Personal re-engineering involves risking the pain of committing more deeply, engaging with vision and passion, and caring enough to work calmly and persistently to move the workplace in our desired direction. Sometimes it helps. Minimally, we clarify what we want and need and know that we tried our best. Btw, I copied here my notes from the talk. The speaker had a show called “Workology.” Her name is Jane Farrow. I have not seen this speech anywhere on line.
I'm having the equivalent of writer's block for making travel plans. I want to get back to Adirondack Park before winter ends, but somehow I can't get myself to book the trip. I think they got winter again this week after a bad melt. My leg hurts a little after running Saturday, biking Sunday, and running Monday and Tuesday. Today will be a cherished day off. My Saturday run was 13.1 miles and was less than 25 seconds off my best half with no support, carrying my own water, and a cool wind. I need to be careful about injuries, but I'm so optimistic about 2018.
Finally finished with exams. Almost good to kick back for a bit. Within the past year I developed a point of tension just under one of my shoulder blades when I'm stressed. I get the feeling its causing the persistent headache and nausea from the past couple days.
If you mean along the bottom part of your trap most people forget about you could have tension there causing problems like headaches for sure. If there’s any massage schools in your area they’ll offer decent rates for massage since It’s a tad difficult to reach that area.
You nailed it. I first became aware of it as a tingling accompanying pain, which freaked me out. A little more time and a I figured out it was muscular rather than topical. Good suggestion! My uni houses one that I'm heading on campus to get more details on. I know our wellness center provides massages, but the site's been down. Looking forward to getting this ironed out.If you mean along the bottom part of your trap
Berlin is unbelievable. Expect a trip report once I have to leave, but in brief, I've explored a ton, saw two great theatre/performance art pieces at a politically-minded experimental theatre space and then got to hang out with two of the performers and their friends, saw a mediocre thriller featuring a great performance at an independent cinema in the 6th floor of a residential building, and went to the Döner place around the corner so much that the Dönermann recognized me on, like, day 3. Oh, and my first Quaker meeting! Otherwise going pretty well. Ramped up the dosage on the antidepressants and I think it's helping. Visiting Cumol on Sunday (can't wait!). Playing with ideas for a theatre-based honors thesis and generally becoming more and more convinced that I mostly only care about the performing arts. It's good times :)
I have news. Good news, bad news. Nothing that I really want to post associated with this username. Which is a bit unfortunate that the Internet is pure shit. Refer to my last badged post for a general mood. That post stands. In work news, next year I get to upgrade every fucking server in the business. We are almost exclusively 2008R2, which goes EOL in 2020. I've also been doing a shitton of Linux nonsense and SSL garbage.
This month we're trying to stay under $50/week for groceries. One week down, so far so good. It's gotten me back into baking again, so that's nice. ... The downstairs neighbor lady has been trying to kill the decorative grass planted in front of the building. She says she hates that it grows faster than the lawn, and the seeds have spread all over "her yard". I've started guerilla fertilizing. --- Transitioning to windows has been weird. Relearning how to do basic tasks on the CLI sucks.
Had a talk with myself late night yesterday. Came to recognize I'm entitled. I don't appreciate the great opportunities I have or the time of my life when I'm young, capable and able to learn more easily. I live revelling in the feeling of the whole world owing me something. Time I get over myself. Two young women in two days called me wise this week. Not sure I'm comfortable with that. One of the young women is a free spirit wishing to see the world and do good by herself. She inspires me for the same. Knew her for a while, but we haven't spoken. I like her. She seems to be interested in me — or, at least, in what I have to say. My sister's coming for 24 hours to celebrate the Internation Women's Day. Haven't seen her in a while and excited to see her again. Still working on the Hubski redesign. Have a couple of innovative ideas on how to handle comment browsing and long writing.
Internship Hunt I'm having my first interviews for my end-of-study internship tomorrow and on monday. Yaay. It starts to take form. I'm not sure I would be that excited to join either firm though, I will need to get more informations about the missions, but I will definitely take the chance to practice my interviewee skills. Entertainment I enjoyed "La Casa de Papel" tv series. Loved that it was in spanish. You should watch the first ep, and you will probably be hooked. It's about a fictional heist of the Royal Mint of Spain.