The Sport Formely Known as Crossfit

I was 14 years old, when the late Artist Formerly Known as Prince played at my school as there was not other stadium in town, suitable for his concert. A few months later he decided to start his crusade against the music industry. Some sources say that listening to the rehearsals of our Spring Musical was the main reason behind his decision.

Regardless of whether this was true he sacrifized fame and success to stand by his principles and challenge the world establishment. Prince followed the steps of Cassius Clay and other relevant figures who use the name change as a symbol of the revolutions they want to start.

A recent controversial tweet by Crossfit CEO, has shaken the community to its core forcing his resignation. A prove that anyone can fall no matter how well regarded they may be, although we already knew that after Taylor Swift's Reputation fiasco.

I will not talk about the content of the message as that has been heavily discussed in every single box around the world. Lets say that regardless the opinion any of us may have on this Tweet, we all Crosfitters share the same feeling, Black Lives Matter.

But viewing some boxes potentially de-affiliating and people suddenly renegading from the brand I started to think what my life will look like if I quit crosfitting.

The answer is easy: it will definitely look better as I will stop resembling Jesus Christ in the Calvary from all the skipping rope marks across my body, and people will not assume I'm into fifty shades of something everytime they shake my bloody blistery hands

Needless to say that, my bank account will be significantly healthier by not wasting the money every second day on a new pair of shoes ( please lets stop the sexiest myth that woman horde shoes, cross fitters do), or ugly T-shirts from every box I stepped in, again, a true paradox when I normally remove it after 5 seconds into the class. A crossfitter wearing a t-shirt is as authentic as a coffee from Starbucks.

But If it was not for Crossfit I will not be in the best shape of my life past my 40s being able to do thing I wasn't capable on my 20s, like breaking my arm courtesy of those evil wooden boxes aka coffins due to the number of casualties they cause.

Most important, I would not have met a wonderful group of people around the world which has been more rewarding than any fitness achievement or muscle gain, well, besides the bum of course (#NickyMinajGoals)

Crossfit has taught me that we are all the same. That when it comes to burpees we all suffer. That we all sweat and smell ( some really badly I must say ) and we all have to things to improve like my jerking ( push jerking I mean ) despite the years of practice. But Crossfit has also taught me to be patient and to put the work to reach those goal.

My elusive first Muscle Up came after a year of hard work and many frustrations. It did not matter how good the coaches were, it needed my day to day effort and commitment to achieve it. That and the push of the community during that Open Workout that helped me reached the goal besides creating a permanent hearing loss from all the screams.

And that is what Crossfit is all about: constant daily effort, community and never giving up. There is no easy road and there is always something to improve, and be prepared for some blisters along the way, because suffering and struggle is part of Crossfit.

If we are not willing to put the effort everyday and support each other as a community we will then be giving up on what we have achieved so far which is huge and we will have to start thinking about how to name the Sport Formerly Known as Crossfit, but the challenges will remain. Because it is not about the name. It is about the action.

Prince all time band was called the Revolution. He realized overtime that his crusade was better fought inside the industry he so badly wanted to change. That is why, eventually he reclaimed his name and ditched the symbol, same as Taylor's exes do according to her songs, and managed to continue his quest for a fairer music industry. Because the best revolutions are the ones exploding from within.

Hanna is not from Montana

Miley Cyrus became a star on the ground-breaking TV series Hanna Montana, reaching  international recognition for the gripping whitely diverse characters and deep social issues tackled in every episode. The show changed television forever and marked an entire generation.

But, apparently the fact that Hanna could hide her alter ego by changing her hair, again, another great positive woman empowerment message from Miley , that was not the only secret that the beloved TV series had to offer.  There was an even darker one: she was actually not from Montana, she just happened to be there, because her millionaire father could afford a second home.


In reality Hanna, is from Spain. Yes, in fact from Barcelona. She has been trying to hide it for decades to avoid disappointing her country fans, but the prestigious Catalan society "Institut Nova Historia" have uncovered the truth and added her name to the extensive list of talented historical figures such as Shakespeare and Cervantes which according to this Institute were also Catalans. And it must be true as this novel institute received just last year, 3 m Euros to uncover this pressing mysteries for the society, rather than avoiding the closing of several public health centres, probing yet again that when it comes to public investment the regional Catalan Government always puts its citizens first.

Of course Miley has immediately reached out to the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez via Twitter as she is too busy fighting world injustice to do it by phone, fact is commonly known as she barely has time to put any clothes on judging by her music videos

And of course our President, who listens to everyone except to its own citizens responded right away after seeing an opportunity to reach to Hollywood and see if he could be considered for the remake of Top Gun after his private jet photo shoot.

(Our President clearly not posing during an important discussion in his private jet)

And although Miley never graduated from high school and probably cannot point on a map where Spain is, she has channelled the courage and her teenage character,  entering like wrecking ball into the Spanish Politics, offering her wisdom and leadership to our country when we need it the most. She has done more to get Our President’s name known worldwide that any of his  Government actions in last 2 years.

We do not know if the twitter exchange has followed into a private Snapchat conversation and whether Mr Sanchez has offered Miley a permanent position in the Spanish Cabinet given her extraordinary qualifications.

Sources close to Mr Sanchez also suggested she could well apply to be the future Spanish Queen, since she has a lot of experience after being a Disney Princess for so many years.

For the moment most of us just wish that Miley keeps partying in the USA and let the rest of the world in peace but regardless if she pays attention, one thing is clear, the world is doomed when our leaders, whether is the US or the Spanish one, waste their time tweeting. And sorry but cannot resist to say this represents the Worst of both worlds.

The Invasion of Netflix

One of my first memories of horror movies, was watching with my brothers The Invasion of Body Snatchers at the age of six.

The movie portrays an extra-terrestrial invasion in a fictional town in California. Alien plant spores have fallen from space and grown into large seed pods, each one capable of reproducing a duplicate replacement copy of each human. Each pod human assimilates the physical characteristics, memories, and personalities of each sleeping person placed near it with one exception, these duplicates, however, are devoid of all human emotion, like people with botox.



Today, besides still having issues eating peas, I have realized that the movie, based on a novel of Jack Finney, was a clear premonition of today's society. When Finney wrote his novel, cable TV was still on its beginnings ( in 1952 only 14,000 people have access to cable TV in the US ) so he needed to use a more familiar way to convey the risk of an alien invasion, so he choose peas pods, which it was something present in all American homes at the time, so people could really relate to that.

As usual, human race never learns ( how otherwise we could have endured so many Tom Cruise movies ) and we have not been able to stop the invasion.

In a world where most people don't cook anymore and rely on pre-packed or take away food, pea pods where not an option anymore, so Aliens had to adapt to became creative till they found the only thing present in every home nowadays: a Netflix subscription.

Netflix is the perfect brainwashing machine. Under the illusion of cool and trendy shows, all of us are carefully guided towards herd thinking. We all now believe Tiger King is innocent and Carole Baskin killed her husband.

It does not matter that I have no interest in American politics. Every time I turn Netflix on, I have to see Michelle's Obama Becoming in front page. I am seriously considering leaving the documentary running while going to the shops, but I believe they will somehow track my phone and realize I am cheating. Besides even if I see it, I will then have to endure right after Beyoncé's homecoming one and if that was not enough Taylor's Miss Americana. By the way I wonder why they didn't allow her to use a gerund on her title, although judging by her last 2 albums she is lucky to have a documentary at all. That is probably why she become an activist all of the sudden, to hide her declining music.

You don't have to think anymore, Netflix thinks for you. It offers you the shows you should see , the causes you need to fight for and in case you are not politically correct enough it suggests to watch a certain show again.

The ultimate goal is to created an alienated society, where we all have to think the same way and there is no real discussion anymore. You are pro Tiger or Pro Carol. You are with us or against us. There is no middle ground or nuances. Like when subscribing to Netflix, in current world you are not allowed to have your own opinion, you need to buy the full package.

In the original movie, when everything seems to be lost in California the rest of the world awakes and alerts about the invasion, so there is hope. Hope in every person who opens a book and read. In every person that develops his own opinion even if that is not the popular one. And in every brave person that dissent from the masses. Because nowadays thinking, seems to be one of the bravest thing one person can do.

PS. Invasion of The body snatchers is not available in Netflix

The 4 Courses of Apocalypsys

In 1798 Reverent Thomas Robert Malthus issued some of the most catastrophic predictions for the fate of the world. He predicted that the exponential increase in human population will put pressure on food supplies and access to water. He was wrong. Luckily for us, the humanity adapted, instead of food humans populate the world with McDonalds replacing traditional nutritious ingredients and instead of water people have access to Chia Lattes in every corner thanks to Starbucks.

If Malthus scared his generations, the environmentalist, commanded by the cheerful Greta Thunberg are the new Horsemen of the apocalypses, forecasting war, famine, and death to all of us and suffocation with plastic bags as the new trendy torture. I believe the Vatican is also preparing an amendment to the seven capital sins to include the use of plastic straws as a reason for excommunication.

Sorry Greta, although I am committed environmental warrior, I am also convinced, that humanity somehow, always survives, we did survive the Cold War, the Spice Girls solo albums and will also survive the Trump Presidency, except maybe the Iranians.

But what if she is right and the End of the World is coming? How can we prepare for it?. Easy, just head to a Buffet.

Recently, on a peaceful sunny July day in the middle of what I thought was going to be a wonderful holiday, I felt as if humanity has descended into chaos when an angry crowd tried to lynch me when I accidentally cut the queue on the steamed broccoli section of my holiday hotel buffet.

Yes, Greta speeches are mellow compared to the scary German granny, gathering her troops to accuse me of stealing her beloved vegetable. She quickly inflame the spirits of the mob and call for blood.

Because of their violent connotation, of desperate individuals fighting for prawns, generally people associate buffets with French, but in fact they were popularized by Swedish on a desperate attempt to dispose their meatballs, before they invented Ikea so they could do it more discreetly.

Mind my word, If you manage to survive unharmed any holiday hotel buffet line, then you are ready for whatever may happen if the world ends.



But I must say I do understand Greta, how can we have trust in humanity if we have not been able to resolve one of the most incredible unsolved mystery in human kind history. And I am not talking about Politicians. I refer to the un-even & wobbly tables in restaurants.

I bet any of you to tell me the last time you went to a restaurant and the table was perfectly even and did not require the waiter to fix it.

So many questions come to mind. Why are tables are only uneven at restaurants and not in your own house? Is there any secret meaning to this? and why if the waiters knows that a table is uneven why they don't fix them permanently? Are they customers that prefer them like that so they can make a conversation out of it if their date is boring?

Greta, lets forget about the environment, its too late, lets try to fix the problems we can and make our short time left more pleasant.  Let's grab an evil plastic straw, and lets go tickle all the waiters till they get the message and their tables even.

Backpacking, the new pandemic

In 1918 an aggressive Influenza virus caused over 100 million deaths in a population still struggling with World War I. To deviate attention of the problem and maintain morale on the countries more directly involved in the armed conflict, like UK, France and the US, the media pointed to neutral Spain as the epicentre of the disease although it was in fact one of the less impacted European countries. The infamous "Spanish Flu" Fake News was created.

I often wonder if the world is so jealous that it has to be constantly creating fake news about us, like the one saying that our former dictator bought the jury votes to make us win our first Eurovision title in 1969. Luckily now that our new government has decided to unearth him, he will be able to kill this insidious rumour once and for all.

But global pandemics, are not a thing of the past.  Most recently, the world has been hit by more virulent ones such as the Kardashian flu, which has affected over 400 million souls in the planet according to the number of Instagram followers they have, and that still remains one of the most feared threats to the survival of humanity or at least to its sanity and fashion sense.

For those of us lucky enough to live in Singapore, we are safe. Not just because the Kardashians has yet to visit the country, although I hope Trump's recent visit has not awoken their interest. Hopefully we will be fine as I don't think they ever watch the news.

What I refer to by being safe is to the efforts of Our Government, which truly worries about the wellbeing of its citizens and as usual, is one step ahead of the rest of the world, launching a campaign to prevent us for the new viral disease: backpacking.

Yes, I know many of you have that romantic idea of backpacking which consist of traveling across the world living a free life ( meaning having an excuse to shower less) , making friends along the way (meaning not using Tinder to score ) and all on a budget ( meaning saving all the money for alcohol). I have to confess I never understood why the poorer the country is, the more backpackers it gets. It does not make any sense. I would understand thousands backpackers in Switzerland or Singapore where everything is so expensive, but doing it in Burma where you can easily afford a decent hotel, still puzzles me.

But there is another type of backpacking, less smelly but far more dangerous, that has reached the level of an epidemic across Asia.

It is impossible to ride a public bus or metro without legions of people carrying heavily loaded rucksacks that swing unexpectedly putting you at risk of a serious trauma. It is even more lethal than the WhatsApp virus, that wipes out people's ability to speak or look at reality with their eyes instead of using the phone camera.

And yes, there is no known cure for it. You cannot escape from backpackers or run away from their devastating effects. There are everywhere like a plague, like Starbucks.

From my field research I have noticed that the heavier the bag is, the more unaware the person seems to be of his surroundings, and the faster they are able to swing their loads in your face.

Recently, I also discovered that the disease has dangerously spread to planes. I warn everybody to avoid the aisle seats if they do not want to be at risk of being decapitated by a sweet innocent guy turning to talk to his friend completely unaware of the mortal weapon on his back.

Why do people need to carry such heavy bags on a daily basis?  Do they all have a Mary Poppins syndrome and need to carry a weird arrange of objects in case they need to unexpectedly break out in  song? Do the miss school so much that want to recreate their youth years?

Perhaps they carry emergency supplies in case of nuclear war. Which is a plausible explanation in a country such as Singapore where each house has a bomb shelter in case Armageddon arrives. Maybe even supplies of chicken rice in case the bird flu strikes unexpectedly.

This remains an unsolved mystery, similar to why people elect stupid politicians all the time in every country. Until Netflix does a documentary to explain this behaviour,  next time you decide to use public transport in Asia, don't forget your helmet.

Spain is different

In 1960, the Spanish Government launched a campaign under the slogan  "Spain is different" that changed the fate of country forever. The once isolated nation, still suffering the consequences of the Civil War, saw how suddenly, millions of European tourists discovered the history, beauty and strange habits of our country.

The success of that initiative made Spain what it is today, the second most visited country in the world ( now you will probably understand better why we don't like French )

Almost 60 years after that campaign we still are different. Very different.

But hey, it is not because we don't try to open to foreign contributions. For instance, it is easier to listen to reggaeton on the radio than flamenco and there is no corner in the country without a Starbuck water ( sorry I meant coffee ) outlet. We are even willing to pay three times more what it costs in a regular local place, wait 5 times more and have basically a tenth of the flavour. That's what I call commitment to internationalization.

In this effort to look more like the rest of the world, our dear and always imaginative Government has decided to start celebrating Halloween, changing our tradition of paying tribute to our ancestors and eat ( yes, it is not an authentic celebration if there isn't plenty of food and special cakes for the occasion).

But to have a proper Halloween celebration, a proper villain is required to terrorized the population. The name of Jamie Oliver first came to mind. What can be more scary than adding chorizo to a paella. It is undeniable that the Spanish population still have nightmares about the whole "paella-gate" thing. But although ideal the suggestion was soon rejected,  as it could backfire with the British and we may loose Gibraltar forever.

Second option was to create the fake news that Julio Iglesias was about to release another album in English, but then the Spice Girls anticipated their return a few days ago, so nobody could beat that horror.

Last but not least, they though about giving the Catalans independence, but just the rumour of it threw thousands of the local politicians onto the streets to beg the authorities for that not to happen, afraid they will loose their chances to keep robbing the citizens with the excuse of nationalism.

And then when our tall President was about to announce he backtrack (yet again), from the promise of national Halloween extravaganza, the brain of one our smart Ministers finally had an idea: what if we bring our old dictator back to life? said and done. A squad has been prepared to go and dig up his grave in time for the event.

Personally, I would have chosen other famous ( or infamous ) past citizens to dig out, for instance famous Architect Gaudi, the person responsible for making all the world think that we are lazy and can never do things on time. The famous "mañana , mañana" started when they asked him when was the Sagrada Familia will be finished. And lets not talk about Picasso, responsible for making the world believe with his portraits, that all Spaniards look weird and drive everyone in the country to imitate his style in search of fame. The famous old lady that restored a medieval painting in a "Picassian" way comes to mind...


Only time will tell if our Government will succeed in its attempt to put our country in the world stage, but as long as it does not frighten the tourists as much as it is frightening the population we should be ok.

Break a leg

People in show business often use the expression "break a leg" when they want to wish luck to an act that is about to perform.

Since I am at engineer, although sometimes I do business development, which is a less glamorous version of acting, I recently decided to break my elbow instead.

Almost everyone, has mentioned to me how lucky I am that I broke my left arm being right handed, but they are wrong, in today's world, that is no longer defined by the hand you use for writing but for  the one you use to take selfies.

It is still early to confirm whether this fracture will bring me some more meaningful luck, but judging by my latest insurance bill, I am double "broke" now.

But I am a firm believer that you have to always look at the bright side of things. I have made a lot of people happy, specially all my colleagues now that the get one line emails due to the speed of my typing. And this fracture has been like a revelation in my life. Actually now that I am not crossfitting anymore, I realized how many things you can do in a day and that I can even have time to think instead of having to constantly count reps. That has made me see the world with new eyes.

For instance, it has helped me understand vegans. Believe me, once you have singlehanded tried to cut a steak, you may just giving up meat all together to avoid that level of frustration.

I have also discovered that the most important thing a human can have in life is not love, respect or a lifetime subscription to Netflix. If Shakespeare claimed that Richard the Third shouted: "My kingdom for a horse" after being defeated in the Battle of Bosworth, I had to admit that during my first shower after the injury, I shouted: "my kingdom for a loofah brush".

Another interesting fact that I noticed about this new me, its that I have become (even) more emotional. Maybe it is just a side effect of the medication but I recently found myself crying of happiness when I finally managed to open a jar of tuna with one hand. That said, after several failed attempts that put all my engineering skills to the test.

But the injury has not only allowed me to discover things about my friends. They all have kindly offered to do the shopping for me, which I can easily do online,  but not the actual cooking, which I cant. I guess none of them are Masterchef fans

Talking about friends, who would have thought that a fracture was going to be the best conversation starter ever. I highly recommend to those of you that are single and shy that immediately buy a splinter or a cast. Forget Tinder, Crossfit or any of these old fashion dating methods. Whether you are in the office, the mall or the lamest bar in town. No woman or man will reject you when you approach them with a bottle of beer to be opened. Or a jar of tuna, if you are that desperate.