 Merrymakers pose for pictures in front of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross over the Waters in Cádiz, Spain, during the final days of 2025. “I’ve met someone,” confided my friend, a widower in his 80s with a twinkle in his eye. “What’s she like?” I asked, hoping she wasn’t 20-something with expensive tastes. “How old is she?” “My age. And one of the things I like about her? She eats dessert first.” “Sounds like a keeper.” She was. They had a lovely late-life romance, made all the more fun because they decided not to marry; they didn’t want to give up the wicked pleasure of scandalizing their kids and grandkids. I admired her attitude toward life, embodying Erma Bombeck’s famous advice: “Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the Titanic who waved off the dessert cart.” This week, nearly half of all Americans made resolutions to seize the moment and become healthier, happier, thinner, richer, and blessed with a more thrilling love life. Yep, another stunning triumph of hope over experience. Studies show that 60% to 80% of all resolutions will be in the dumpster by the end of this month.  As for me, I’m not making any resolutions, I’m just wallowing in a brief moment of gratitude that I somehow survived the perfect storm known as 2025. “Life is a hurricane, and we board up to save what we can and bow low to the earth to crouch in that small space above the dirt where the wind will not reach,” wrote novelist Jesmyn Ward. “We love each other fiercely, while we live and after we die. We survive.” Yes, 2025 was a Category Five hurricane, and hunkering down until it passed qualifies as a triumph. “When you come out of the storm,” says author Haruki Murakami, “you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.” Like 2020, this year has marked us all. But hey, any year you can walk away from…  "So much for 2025. What do you think 2026 is going to be like?" If I sound cynical, I’m right on trend. “Cynicism is vastly on the rise,” says Jamil Zaki, the director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab, in a NY Times article about finding hope in 2026. Studies show hope really helps; it’s is a major predictor of well-being, affecting our health, longevity, even how tall we grow. So how can we get ahold of more of this hope stuff? One of Zaki’s top tips: “Replace cynicism with skepticism.” He suggests that instead of automatically assuming 2026 will turn out to be a disaster of biblical proportions, we should try to believe that it only might turn out to be a disaster of biblical proportions. Really? This is our ray of light in the darkness? We only might be doomed?  Graffiti I spotted in Cådiz says, "Health and luck." Followed by a little "OK?" that to me suggests, "But only if it's not too much trouble for you, God!" Just how inauspicious is this year? “Nostradamus’ predictions for 2026 include rivers of blood, plague of bees, and death by lightning,” says a NY Post headline. When I read this aloud to Rich, he just laughed. His attitude is more like author Nancy Mitford, who said, “Life is sometimes sad and often dull, but there are currents in the cake, and here is one of them.” Rich and I have lots of currents in our cake these days, including a promise to ourselves (NOT a resolution) to do a bit more traveling. Over several long Sunday lunches, we discussed how great it feels to be part of our beloved Home 2.0 in Seville but agreed we shouldn’t get so comfortable that we stop exploring the wider world. So we hopped a train south to Cádiz, one of Europe’s oldest continuously inhabited cities. To be in its streets felt like walking through history. Pre-history, even. At the Cádiz Museum, I gazed in awe at 100,000-year-old arrowheads and 250,000-year-old bashing stones. But those were new tech compared to the Acheulean hand axes.  600,000-year-old Acheulean hand axes found in Cadiz They look like they’d be perfect for cutting, chopping, and mashing, but archaeologist have learned you can’t really grip one without endangering your fingers. Despite this pesky drawback, untold millions were painstakingly crafted and carried all over the planet for 1.5 million years. They are the most enduring tool in human history and nobody can figure out why. The ones found in Cádiz were fashioned 600,000 years ago, when our ancestors were just developing cumulative culture, the uniquely human ability to build on past innovations. One theory suggests the hand axes were created by men solely to show off prowess and attract mates, a skill that is still a work in progress today. The museum was founded to house a Phoenician fellow’s sarcophagus unearthed in Cádiz in 1887. A century later a female sarcophagus turned up and everyone got misty-eyed over reuniting the couple. But then they learned the female’s coffin was 70 years older than the male’s and that the body inside it was, in fact, a robust middle-aged guy. A romance? A bromance? Who knows?  Mystery surrounds these 2500-year-old Phoenician sarcophagi in the Cádiz Museum. Cádiz is famously the friendliest city in Spain, and we were welcomed everywhere. In the medieval quarter, we came upon a crowd gathered around a fire, dancing and singing to the beat of a cajón (box drum). Mostly it was flamenco, popular there since the 15th century, but as a nod to the season, there were villancicos (carols), too. People made room for me in the circle and I joined in on Los Peces en el Río (The Fish in the River). Years ago I asked amigos about this villancico; did people think fish were present at the nativity of Jesus? They explained the song’s popularity rests on the line, “Beben y beben and vuelven a beber,” (“They drink and drink and go back and drink some more”) which listeners often take as an invitation to open another bottle.  People from the crowd jumped into the middle of the circle to dance flamenco by the fire. The Spanish are not shy about enjoying themselves. In 1912, when the lavish Café Royalty opened, it became the city’s hallmark of splendid excess. The moment I stepped inside, I realized it was the closest I’d ever get to eating in the Titanic dining room, lost at sea that very same year. Rich and I dined at Café Royalty with friends who agreed it would be a crime to wave away the dessert cart. We ordered picatostes, literally “croutons,” but in this case meaning thick, sweet bread toasted to golden crunchiness with an interior almost as soft as custard. Are you drooling yet? That was hands-down the best dessert, but my favorite meal of the trip was in La Isleta de la Viña, a cozy restaurant filled with families and bullía (joyful noise). Someone had written on the wall “Compartir es vivir” (“To share is to live”). In Cádiz, you’re all in this together. “Cádiz is a city of magic, like Cracow or Dublin, to set the mind on fire at a turn of a corner,” wrote British travel writer Honor Tracy. “The eye is continually fed, the imagination stirred, by a train of spectacles as charming as if they had been contrived.” Cádiz does more than dazzle; it embraces visitors. Let’s hope Nostradamus is wrong about 2026 being full of bees, blood, and bolts of lightning. But just in case, I’m keeping these warm memories close to give me comfort until the next storm passes.  One of my favorite memories of Cádiz is Rich saying, "Look! This is it! The arc of human achievement. From the hand axes to my cell phone." HOME 2.0 This is the latest in my series of blog posts exploring what it takes to create a better life for yourself abroad — or at home, for that matter. See all posts in this series. WANT MORE? To subscribe, send me an email. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POST ANNOUNCEMENTS? Check your spam folder. If you still can't find it, please let me know. GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.
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 These are so much more than just a few random puzzle pieces... If you’re like me, you’ve been making a list — and checking it twice — of all the people who really ticked you off this year. High on my tally is the knucklehead — for whom I’m sure there’s a special place reserved in hell — who designed the 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle Rich and I began in November. The Spanish call them rompecabezas — head-busters — and they aren’t kidding. This particular one was formed of pieces so clumsily cut it was impossible to be sure if they were meant to fit together. I know that sounds like an excuse, but hey, we’re veteran puzzlers; we know shoddy work when we stub our toes on it. Rich and I soldiered on for a month until what had started as a lighthearted pastime had become a grim slog. I realized we were endlessly redoing the same sections to try different ill-fitting options of near-identical pieces in indistinguishable earth tones and lavender sky. That’s when I had my brilliant idea. “What say we throw the damn thing away?”  If we had a fireplace, this might have been an even more satisfying option. Joyfully, we tore the puzzle apart, tossed the pieces back in the box, carried the box down to the recycling bin, and pitched it in. A glorious sense of freedom washed over me. We were done with that puzzle forever. But the puzzle wasn’t done with us. Three pieces had somehow escaped the roundup and were hiding out in dark corners of the floor, like cockroaches. I started to toss them out, then I thought, "No, wait! I could use these." One of our small annual rituals is coming up with an ornament symbolizing the year. A matador’s jacket celebrating our move to Seville. A locomotive commemorating a long railway journey. A paint brush marking the year Rich (who loathes painting) helped me re-do the accent wall in my office.  I thought — hoping it wasn’t blasphemy to paraphrase the Bible — “Greater love hath no man than this, that he picks up a paint brush for his wife.” We attached the surviving puzzle pieces to Reepicheep, a woolen mouse named after the Narnia character. He must have joined us during the early years in our Home 2.0, because his string attaches to the tree with a paper clip, our solution in the days before Seville celebrated the holidays with trees involving ornaments and wire hooks. Reepicheep now holds our memories of that fiendish puzzle in his paws and will remind us, year after year, of the importance of letting things go. Small rituals like this are a way of connecting to the turning points of the year and to significant little moments that might otherwise pass unnoticed in the headlong rush of our days. They provide “a buffer against the strain and uncertainty of modern life,” according to The Science of Hedonistic Consumption (a publication that sounds totally trustworthy to me). It’s easy to get stuck maintaining rituals that have outlived their usefulness; the trick is learning when to let them go.  Could it be time to give Frosty and Santa a rest? Every December I give thanks that I am no longer responsible for the vast amount of gift-shopping and card-sending I’d cheerfully undertaken decades ago in Ohio. Back then I designed my own cards and had them printed on actual tree-sourced paper, sending out hundreds of them, each with a handwritten note and newsletter. Every card I mailed felt, as a Guardian article put it, like “a long-distance hug.” Today printed holiday cards are heading towards extinction. Twenty-five years ago Americans sent three billion a year; it’s now one billion and dropping fast. Most of us find it easier and more eco-friendly to convey greetings online, and with nearly 75% of the nation on social media, we all know far too much about each other already, so who needs annual newsletters?  Christmas cards sent to us in Spain in 2018. Number received this year? One. While I enjoy receiving “long-distance hugs,” not sending paper cards feels tremendously liberating. It got me thinking about how much of life is a balancing act between personal preferences and community norms — which wound up being the theme for December’s Ideas Club. “Can anyone be truly free?” our invitation asked. “Living in a society and enjoying its benefits requires conforming to its norms and responsibilities — which curtails your freedom. If you ignore societal norms and responsibilities in favor of personal preferences or independence, does that make you selfish, unreliable, or worse? Do you have an obligation to work for the common good — or is it enough simply to do no harm?” To keep the conversation lively, we presented various moral dilemmas such as Mama’s Kidney, which explored how far you would go to obtain a life-saving organ for a family member. Would you sell your house? Impoverish your family? Commit a robbery? Buy an organ on the international black market and ask your doctor to install it?  Luckily I’ve never been faced with those kinds of choices. But in December of 2021, Rich and I did find out how far we would go to save a holiday lunch. At that point Seville had lifted most of its Covid restrictions but strongly urged everyone to test before attending parties. Easier said than done. There was a temporary shortage of test kits, and we were far from certain that all 17 of the guests coming to lunch on December 25 would be able to get one. Rich and I scoured the city and finally found a pharmacy that had received a small shipment. To ensure fairness, they would only sell five to each customer. We bought our five and went home to contemplate our options. “I’ve got it!” I said. “Go back to that pharmacy.” “But they’ll recognize me.” “Not if you’re in disguise.”  Rich McCann, master of disguise Feeling like Q outfitting James Bond for a mission, I helped him don an old jacket, his spare glasses, my red scarf, and a baseball cap in place of his trademark fedora. The Covid mask helped, too. Rich walked out of that pharmacy with five more tests and the warm glow that comes with carrying out a successful caper. As it turned out, all our guests acquired their own Covid tests, and nobody (so far as we know) communicated or contracted any diseases at our fiesta. Bullet successfully dodged! Last year we weren’t quite so lucky. Rich and I both got Covid and had to cancel the annual feast. But we couldn’t cancel the pre-ordered turkey, a robust seven kilos (15.43 pounds). We had a quietly jolly meal under the tree telling stories of past holidays and thinking up creative uses for leftovers. The turkey-apple stir-fry has become a family favorite.  Not the grand feast we usually hold, but December 25, 2024 was merry and bright nonetheless. Starting 2025 with a case of Covid was a reminder of just how little we can actually control in our lives. Often the best we can do is manage how we respond to events. So I am choosing to feel hopeful about 2026. Not everyone is equally optimistic. When I looked online for professional predictions, the first ones I saw were from Baba Vanga, a blind Bulgarian seer who passed to the Great Beyond in 1996 but still has a worldwide following. She left behind predictions that in 2026 we’d see massive natural disasters, another global pandemic, and a visit from extraterrestrials. So it’s shaping up to be another lively year. But if I can get through it without another head-busting puzzle from hell, I’ll count myself very lucky indeed.  Happy holidays, everyone, and best of luck in 2026!
I'm taking a few weeks off from this blog. See you in January.  How T-Rex might look today if that asteroid had deviated a teeny, tiny bit from its trajectory. Image: Etsy Are you finding the Universe particularly random these days? I certainly am. And so is a woman from Alicante, Spain, who made headlines this week for getting fired because (and I am not making this up) she came into work early. The young woman repeatedly showed up for her delivery job at 6:45 or 7:00 am instead of the stipulated 7:30. I know, right? We can’t have that kind of maverick behavior! Managers warned her she was undermining the employee-employer relationship. (Translation: You’re making the rest of us look bad.) She refused to change her ways, got fired, and sued the company. The court sided with her bosses, saying she was guilty of “disloyalty, breach of trust, and disobedience.” Wow, I didn’t see that coming. But then, we rarely know when disaster is about to overtake us. “Some 66 million years ago,” wrote university professor Mark Robert Rank in his book The Random Factor, “an asteroid hit the Earth at precisely the right angle and location to annihilate the dinosaurs, paving the path for our ascendency. Had there been as little as a 10-mile difference in its path of entry, we would not be here today and the dinosaurs would still be roaming the land.”  OK, so that one worked out in our favor — although obviously a bit less optimally for the dinosaur community. Looking back over history, we see how often the fate of humanity is determined by sheer chance. For instance, what if the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria had been lost at sea? Crossing 6000 miles of storm-tossed Atlantic in sailing ships just 50 to 60 feet in length, anything could have happened. Hurricanes. Shipwreck. Sea monsters. Dragons. Had those ships disappeared, everyone back in Europe would have said, “Yep. Told you nothing would come of it. A fool’s errand!” The Caribbean’s indigenous populations would likely have been left in peace for at least a few decades. Portugal would have totally dominated the high seas. Eventually they would have sailed to the New World, where, with luck, they’d have focused on trade, as they’d done in India and China, rather than colonization. And we might all be speaking Portuguese right now. It's easy to get lost in these kinds of speculations — what philosophers like to call “counterfactuals” to make them sound more respectable than the wild fantasies they really are. This week I was indulging in all sorts of counterfactuals as I stood looking at the first known map of the New World.  Juan de la Cosa's famous mappa mundi, drawn in 1500. Perfectly accurate? No. But you can pick out Africa, Spain, Italy, the Caribbean islands where they landed, and beyond them the Gulf of Whatever-It’s-Called-Now. I happened across this map in the Spanish town where it was created: El Puerto de Santa Maria, known to its friends as El Puerto (the Port). There, in 1492, Columbus met the cartographer Juan de la Cosa, owner and master of the Santa Maria, who agreed to commit his ship, his navigational skills, and his reputation to the Italian’s mad enterprise. De la Cosa would make seven voyages to the New World before he was killed by a poisoned arrow in a battle with indigenous peoples in what’s now Colombia. But early on, in the off-season of 1500, he sat down at his desk in El Puerto to lay out the limits of the Atlantic Ocean. Fast forward to this week, when Rich and I made an impulsive day-trip to El Puerto and came upon the map in a dark corner of the Castle of San Marcos.  El Puerto's Castillo de San Marco, parts of which date back 2000 years. Photo: Guia de Cádiz The map was a reproduction, but it was a stunning sight nonetheless. This was the start of it all, the inspiration for the 100 million people who, over the next 525 years, would choose America as their Home 2.0. My own ancestors made this same Atlantic crossing on wooden sailing ships launched from Ireland, England, Germany, and who knows where else. Like that asteroid 66 million years ago, that massive migration spelled disaster for some and a safer future for others.  Irish immigrants arriving in New York in the mid-1800s. Like my people, they got there ahead of the Statue of Liberty and before Ellis Island was established. The past seems very present in El Puerto. There, 3000 years ago, the Phoenicians took advantage of the ocean breezes and chalky soil to grow grapes for wine. When the Moors occupied the region in 711, they introduced the art of distillation, which led to fortified wines and the region’s famous sherries, viewed by Medieval Europe as the world’s finest vintages. Many bottles found their way onto the Santa Maria for her voyage into history. Rich and I promised ourselves some El Puerto sherry later, but we began the outing with coffee in an old café near the downtown farmer’s market. The place was jammed with families and clusters of neighbors showing off their grandkids and leaning into chats with people they’d clearly known for the better part of a century.  A café in downtown El Puerto de Santa Maria on a Friday morning Rich leaned over and whispered, “It’s like a Fellini film.” I knew what he meant. These were not bodies honed in a gymnasium, skin smoothed to perfection with lotions and Botox, hair shiny with this year’s trendiest tints. There was something of the baroque earthiness of Fellini’s characters and the faces of townspeople in medieval paintings. Fortified by the cheery atmosphere and strong espresso, we spent hours exploring the market, city streets, the church of the Slaves of Sacred Heart, and the castle. When we’d worked up sufficient appetite, we settled into a restaurant on Calle Misericordia (Mercy Street) for lunch. One of the highlights was a dish of migas, day-old bread crumbs sauteed in olive oil with slivers of chorizo, a holdover from post-Civil War scarcity, when stale bread was way too precious to consider throwing away. Migas are less popular in these somewhat more prosperous times, but they are true comfort food. And they always remind me to count my blessings. Because as so many in the world are discovering these days, you never know when lean times will come again.  Migas were created by shepherds and are still often prepared over an open fire or hot coals. As you’ve no doubt noticed, 2025 has been as random and chaotic as a stormy sea, and even the most savvy navigators are worried about whether or not they’ll land safely on the far shore. “The lack of control that comes with random acts can be frightening, knowing that the ‘bell may toll for us’ next,” wrote author Bob McKinnon. “But it can also expand our gratitude for what we have and the good fortune that comes with just being alive and healthy. “The recognition of randomness ensures that we do not take the good things in life for granted, and it allows us to understand the precarious nature of good fortune. Even for those currently less fortunate, it can be cause for appreciating the small things in life and hoping that the winds of chance may yet blow your way.” How have the winds of chance treated you lately? Care to share any examples of luck in your life?  Here's one example of my good luck: at the end of our day in El Puerto, I got to sample a local favorite, Osborne Bailén Oloroso Sherry. ¡Delicioso! HOME 2.0 This is the latest in my series of blog posts exploring what it takes to create a better life for yourself abroad — or at home, for that matter. See all posts in this series. DON'T MISS A SINGLE UPCOMING STORY! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POST ANNOUNCEMENTS? Check your spam folder. If you still can't find it, please let me know. FOR FURTHER READING My bestselling travel memoirs & guides My newest book: My San Francisco If you haven't read My San Francisco yet, you can order it HERE. Already read this book? Please leave a review HERE. You can purchase a signed paperback edition, in person or online, at Rebound Bookstore in San Rafael, CA GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it. Every once in a while, our whimsical old Universe surprises me with a gift so lavish it leaves me breathless. This week it was a short film. Quality: horrible. Script: was there one? Acting: amateurish at best. But none of that mattered, because for the first time, I got to see my grandmother, Ramona Langley, in one of the Hollywood movies she starred in back in 1913.  Ramona Langley and Lee Moran in The Girl Ranchers, 1913. My generation has sporadically searched the Universal Studios archives for her work, but most of those old silent films crumbled to dust ages ago. This week my brother Mike discovered one of her movies on YouTube, posted by the National Film Preservation Foundation with this commentary: “The one-reel gender comedy The Girl Ranchers is part of a wave of stories, sweeping through American popular culture in the early 1910s, about intrepid girls who prove themselves on the land.… If the film is not, as ads claimed, ‘one continual scream of laughter,’ its amusing stylizations of male and female behavior make for a nicely escalating battle of the sexes.” My grandmother was nothing if not intrepid and eternally engaged in the battle of the sexes. What a hoot it was to see her at the age of twenty, taking over the Rough Neck Ranch, bossing cowhands, fighting a gun battle with Native American raiders, donning overalls, and quelling the rebellion over “a skirt” being in charge. All that in just 14 minutes! Plus romance!  As a kid, I learned a lot from my grandmother. She gave me dubious romantic advice (“It’s as easy to love a rich man as a poor man. Remember that!”), encouraged me to break the rules (“Let’s go get ice cream cones before dinner. Don’t tell your mother!”), and spoke of her time on the vaudeville stage and Hollywood’s earliest movie sets with such delight it left me with a lifetime love of creative endeavors. I was thinking about her long-ago career this week as Rich and I gathered with our Ideas Club to talk about the future of work. For those new to my blog, the Ideas Club is like a book club except that we discuss the hot topics of the day. Participants range from mid 30s to mid 80s; most are international friends who chose Seville as their Home 2.0. This month’s invitation asked, “How will the next generation make money in the new AI-shaped economy? Is Universal Basic Income an answer and/or is deeper societal change required? Are ‘good corporate citizens’ going to protect the public or bow to shareholders’ thirst for profits? (I think we all know the answer to that one.) As the old model of study, work, retirement gives way to constant flux and repeated upskilling, how can people plan for retirement?”  A week in advance, we sent links to articles and videos, and at the event we provided additional questions and fact sheets, including recent layoff statistics that made for chilling reading.  A friend sent me the statistics below, noting that the title’s bad grammar was reassuring in a way, as it suggests AI is still in the bumbling stage, not quite ready for total world domination.  We also included World Economic Forum predictions that appeared on this blog three weeks ago. Clearly the Forum needs a better crystal ball, because shortly after they announced that delivery drivers will remain in hot demand through 2030, some 48,000 employees were laid off at UPS and Amazon. The conflicting statistics prompted a lively discussion of just how little anybody actually knows about what’s happening now, let alone what lies ahead. The one thing everyone agrees on is that advanced tech is poised to disrupt business on a global scale, just as soon as it irons out a few pesky little bugs. OK, so our future overlords need a little more time to come up to speed. But while AI isn’t taking our jobs (yet), it is taking our money. America’s jittery corporations are shedding workers like mad to redirect all available funds to AI development and infrastructure. Nobody wants to be left behind during the disruption that forecasters say is coming soon and will be as game-changing as the introduction of the Internet, electricity, or (wait for it) fire. Silicon Valley speaks of AI as a mega-huge, asteroid-hitting-the-dinosaurs level event. As you may recall from high school science, that asteroid killed 75% of life on earth. So how do you navigate that kind of upheaval? Most are betting their future that a smaller, leaner workforce will make them agile enough to pivot and leap on whatever opportunities AI is going to offer the survivors. Where does that leave all those pink-slipped workers? Again, nobody knows. Some of AI’s billionaire pioneers are easing their consciences by suggesting somebody (not them, of course, someone else) should provide every American with Universal Basic Income — say, $1000 a month. That would alleviate some layoff pain but cost three billion dollars and still leave ex-employees below the poverty line and scrambling for jobs.  Geoffrey Hinton, the Nobel-Prize winning “godfather of AI,” fears the technology he helped build could wipe out humanity. He suggests programming it with “maternal instincts” so it would nurture us instead. “That’s the only good outcome. If it’s not going to parent me, it’s going to replace me,” he said. So far, everyone is ignoring his advice. Setting aside the income question for a moment, we considered what laid-off workers would do with bountiful leisure. Half a million years ago, when our first big tech disruption — fire — made it easier to eat well with less effort, we got busy creating language and civilization (obviously still works in progress, but hey, give us time). To provide our lives with interest and meaning, humans need a purpose, even if it’s simply etching patterns into a rock.  77,000 years ago, somebody in South Africa carved these lines to convey ideas to other ancient humans. It's the oldest example of creativity and symbolic thinking ever found. Some call it "the first hashtag." The people at my table pointed out leisure is great for creative types like me, and it’s true. Give me a laptop and a few art supplies, and I could happily spend my days writing and painting. Come to think of it, that’s what I do now. For the non-artistic types, my companions suggested volunteering as a feel-good, endorphin-producing, health-enhancing, purpose-building pastime. “What if America organized itself around a four-day work week plus a fifth day when everyone had to do volunteer work?” someone suggested. Later another participant said, “Yes, but if you’re forced to volunteer, that’s obligatory unpaid work. Isn’t that slavery?” As you can see, we didn’t exactly solve the world’s problems, figure out how to tame the Wild West currently known as Silicon Valley, or corral our thoughts into cohesive conclusions. But like my grandmother, I’m donning my (metaphorical) overalls and throwing myself into the fray. And while the future we envisioned together at the Ideas Club may not be ‘one continual scream of laughter,’ you can bet your cowboy boots we’ll find it's an exciting time to be alive. THANKSGIVING BREAK I'm taking the next two weeks off from this blog to devote myself to turkey, art, and long-overdue home improvements. I'll be back after that with more stories. IN THE MEANTIME, YOU MIGHT ENJOY HOME 2.0 This is the latest in my series of blog posts exploring what it takes to create a better life for yourself abroad — or at home, for that matter. See all posts in this series. DON'T MISS A SINGLE UPCOMING STORY! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POST ANNOUNCEMENTS? Check your spam folder. If you still can't find it, please let me know. FOR FURTHER READING My bestselling travel memoirs & guides Cozy Places to Eat in Seville My newest book: My San Francisco If you haven't read My San Francisco yet, you can order it HERE. Already read this book? Please leave a review HERE. You can purchase a signed paperback edition, in person or online, at Rebound Bookstore in San Rafael, CA GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  Some days feeling discombobulated is my default state. So I arrived at my Spanish dentist’s office, sat down in the waiting room, pulled out my phone, and discovered the screen was now entirely in Sanskrit. (Sigh.) Clearly this was going to be One of Those Days. Or as my phone would put it, तेषाम् दिनेषु एकः. Apparently the newly installed operating system had left my iPhone feeling wild and free and ready to embrace all sorts of thrilling new possibilities. Over the next few hours it greeted me in Japanese, French, Russian, and Spanish before it gave up and settled down to boring old English. Whew! I felt navigating the world in English and Spanish was complicated enough without throwing Japanese or Sanskrit into the mix. Living in a foreign language, even one you speak reasonably well, lends mystery and excitement to the most mundane activities. Is the hygienist chatting about the weather to put me at ease or suggesting I might like orthodonture or a root canal in addition to today’s teeth cleaning? I have learned to be very careful about nodding. However, when she asked me about my sensitive gums and whether I’d like anestesia for the worst parts, I was sure she meant the mild numbing cream her colleague had used in the past, so I said sí.  Moments later a dentist appeared and shot me up with two whopping doses of Novocain, one on each side of my jaw. I was thrilled at the painlessness of the next twenty minutes. And then it was over and I was horrified to discover that my mouth was no longer under my control. In fact, parts of my lips seemed to be missing altogether, and I could no longer form words, let alone sentences, in any language. “Drink water, it will make the anesthesia wear off more quickly,” the hygienist kindly advised (in Spanish, of course), handing me a cup of agua. Drink? Was she insane? I made an effort, but it was hard going, as I had to support my lower lip with three fingers and a wad of tissue. I congratulated myself for not drooling on the floor. And any time you find yourself thinking that …  The ability to swallow beverages is one of those things it's easy to take for granted until you lose it. I will spare you a description of the indignities I suffered an hour later when I attempted an espresso at a café; everyone kindly turned away and pretended nothing untoward was happening. And you don't want the gruesome details about the restorative piece of chocolate I slipped between my slack lips, only to have it turn to sludge and start leaking out of both corners of my mouth. Later I managed to consume a small amount of lunch without biting off my tongue, so obviously I was pretty proud of myself. Yes, that’s how low the bar was that day. My point is that for many hours there was nothing I could do but embrace the chaos. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from living abroad in my Home 2.0, it’s how to accept the Buddhist belief that chaos is the default state of the universe and there is precious little we can do about it. And yet, like fish insisting they can control the ocean, we keep making plans and giving God a good chuckle.  We humans cling with equal determination to another persistent illusion: isolation. “Nothing exists separately from anything else,” wrote the Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hahn. “We are all interconnected. By taking care of another person, you take care of yourself. By taking care of yourself, you take care of the other person. Happiness and safety are not individual matters.” Interconnection is the cornerstone of many communities, including mine in Seville. Sure, you can be a hermit here if you want; I’ve met a few. But building a new life for yourself as a stranger in a strange land, you quickly learn the value of knowing people who can pull you back from the brink before you stumble into the endless small pitfalls and pratfalls lying in wait for you. For instance, I just got back from buying a design-it-yourself armoire at Seville’s Ikea. Fellow expats warned me years ago that the Spanish word for drawers — cajónes — is perilously close to cojones, slang for testicles. I knew Ikea staffers would be too professional to fall on the floor shrieking with laughter if I flubbed the pronunciation. All the same, I memorized some phrases, such as ¿Cómo suele configurarse este armario? (How do people usually configure this armoire?) to help me tiptoe around the faux pas.  And as if I needed more of a challenge, I had to communicate with Ikea using the metric system. Expats know a lot about feeling clueless and helpless, and tend to be generous with information, advice, and the names of people who are enchufada — literally plugged in, that is, they have useful contacts. Such connections have saved my life, my sanity, and what’s left of my dignity on too many occasions to count. Without friends, where are we? Lately we’ve been hearing so much about the epidemic of isolation that I suppose it’s no wonder that some folks are finding unorthodox ways to forge bonds, including cozying up to non-human entities. “Falling in love with A.I. is no longer science fiction,” wrote Coralie Kraft in this week’s NY Times. “A recent study found that one in five American adults has had an intimate encounter with a chatbot; on Reddit, r/MyBoyfriendisAI has more than 85,000 members championing human-A.I. connections, with many sharing giddy recollections of the day their chatbot proposed marriage.” Here are a few images from the article. Worryingly, this comes on the heels of reports that we are in a sex recession. It started around the turn of the millennium: Americans, especially young people — even teens! — are less likely to engage in serious hanky-panky these days. Why? Theories abound. Technology is distracting their attention. Some object on religious grounds. Many still live with helicopter parents. Youngsters are raised to be risk adverse so they are avoiding driving, dating, and drinking alcohol. I know, right? Kids today — what a bunch of slackers! In Japan, a million young people known as hikikomori have chosen total isolation. Unable to cope with the world’s challenges, they’ve retreated into their rooms for six months to a lifetime. No doubt many turn to chatbots for comfort. And who are we to judge? Living in the modern world isn’t easy for any of us, and like the heroes of the old tales, we often find unexpected companions to help us along the way. But without genuine human relationships, what is the point of the journey?  “The greatest hazard of life,” said Dr. Leo Buscaglia, “is to risk nothing. The person who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing, is nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn, feel, change, grow, live, and love.” And I will add this: there are few joys sweeter than emerging from a horrible day. When the anesthetic wore off, and I stopped drooling and began forming whole sentences again, I felt like dancing down the street. I didn’t, because I figured I’d already given the neighbors enough to talk about. But inside I was turning cartwheels, doing the mambo, and singing the Hallelujah chorus. And aren’t those the very moments that make life worth living?  Bird dancing for joy. Photo: David Rice / Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards HOME 2.0 This is the latest in my series of blog posts exploring what it takes to create a better life for yourself abroad — or at home, for that matter. See all posts in this series. DON'T MISS A SINGLE UPCOMING STORY! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POST ANNOUNCEMENTS? Check your spam folder. If you still can't find it, please let me know. FOR FURTHER READING My bestselling travel memoirs & guides Cozy Places to Eat in Seville My newest book: My San Francisco If you haven't read My San Francisco yet, you can order it HERE. Already read this book? Please leave a review HERE. You can purchase a signed paperback edition, in person or online, at Rebound Bookstore in San Rafael, CA GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it. “So are you going to the Zombie protest on Saturday?” a friend asked last week. Wait, what? The political landscape isn’t chaotic enough — now the zombies are staging an uprising? What do they want? Shorter living-death curses? More human brains to feast on? But then I saw the poster. The headline “Tanto Turismo Da Miedo” means "This Much Tourism Is Scary." It suggested we all show up dressed as zombies, dragging a suitcase, to protest the over-tourism that’s threatening to suck the soul out of Seville and turn it into a theme park. I was all in.  Like most European cities, Seville is increasingly jammed with holidaymakers who sometimes (gasp!) fail to act with appropriate courtesy and decorum in public. I Googled “Seville Tourist Scandal” to catch up on the latest. Top result: “Tourists Spark Outrage Over Fountain Dance.” Eleven inebriated foreigners were filmed in broad daylight, singing and dancing in a fountain in the heart of Seville’s old quarter (you can see the footage here). These disrespectful shenanigans had the neighbors howling for (metaphorical) blood. And here I must confess my own conscience isn’t entirely clear. On a sweltering night nearly 20 years ago, Rich and I were sitting on the edge of a big stone fountain near our Seville apartment. We began dabbling our feet in the cool water, and pretty soon we were wading, then waltzing in the fountain. An old Sevillano passing by growled, "Hey you two, is that any way to behave? You wouldn't do that back where you come from." At the time I thought cheerfully, “Yes, and that's the whole point. Living overseas, you get to try things you'd never do back home.” I joked about the incident for years and eventually used it as the title of my book about moving to Seville.  Seville is my Home 2.0; I'm always aware I'm a guest here, and I make an effort to behave myself and not lead others astray. Staring at my computer screen, watching drunken tourists cavort in a fountain, I wondered, aghast, if I'd played any part in inspiring this madness. Then I came to my senses. Yes, thousands of readers have bought my book Dancing in the Fountain (and I’m grateful to each and every one of you!). But the real issue isn't fountain dancing, it's the millions of party animals now flooding Seville every year. They're here kicking up their heels because city officials have spent millions of euros promoting Seville as a sun-drenched, sangria-soaked, anything-goes vacation paradise. Seville is justly proud of its rich cultural heritage and isn't above using it for self-promotion because it needs the money. Tourism is financing long-overdue renovations everywhere I look. Crews are busy refurbishing ancient buildings, historic parks, and the little plaza where Rich and I danced in the fountain all those years ago.  No dancing in Pila de Pato (Duck Fountain) these days! Happy as we all are to see crumbling parts of the landscape revitalized, the influx of cash is driving up prices in every sector of the economy, especially food and housing. Last year Rich and I dined at a posh new place and spent just under 100€ for a meal that was basically two tapas, two glasses of wine, and tap water for which we were charged a shocking (and illegal) three euros apiece. Luckily, if you know where to go, you can still find true bargains. At a recent lunch outside the city center, we paid 11.20€ for approximately the same amount of food and drink, minus the fawning attention, lavish atmosphere, and exquisite arrangement of each mouthful on the plate.  Seville still has plenty of modest eateries where you can dine well for easy money. Savvy residents can avoid overpriced meals easily enough, but they can’t stomach the new housing prices, which in just ten years have shot up 70% to 95% (depending on how you crunch the numbers). “What’s soul-crushing for me,” said my friend Heidi, an American who has lived in Seville for 20 years, “is seeing the mom and pop stores shutting down. You lose the actual services that people who live here need, like a shoe repair store, a key duplication store, the fruit store, the butcher, the fishmonger. They’re all going away, and you're getting souvenir shops and luggage storage. And that's hard to see.” “The small, individually owned shops are disappearing, but that's a trend that is happening everywhere. It's happening in the US, too,” pointed out her husband Enrique, a Sevillano entrepreneur whose family owns some short-term rental apartments. “Tourism brings economic growth. It brings gentrification.”  Heidi and Enrique believe Seville needs better regulations on tourist apartments to avoid what happened in Barcelona. “I remember having a conversation with a former mayor of the city,” Enrique added, “and him specifically saying that they were watching very closely what happened to Barcelona, because they did not want Seville to become another Barcelona. Barcelona is an example where that battle is lost. It is Disneyland for tourists. So it most certainly can kill a city.” "How can we keep that from happening here?" I asked. “We keep blaming it on the tourists,” he said. “At some point the local government has to take responsibility. Look, it is your house. You set up the rules in your house. You wouldn't let someone come and start peeing in the kitchen. You will kick them out of house. So why do you let it happen here with people like our visitors?”  I agree with Enrique and this sign (spotted in a California restroom): peeing on the floor is not OK. This seemed like the right time to mention the rowdy tourists dancing in the fountain. Enrique (who knows all about my book) grinned. “One or two people doing it in the middle of the night is cute. When you have a horde of people disrupting the whole area, then it's no longer cute.” I thanked him for letting me off the hook so graciously. “What it comes down to is this,” said Heidi. “Why do tourists want to come here? Because of the culture, because of the food, because of the people. The soul of the city is the residents.” To keep the city livable for residents, Heidi and Enrique both agreed that tighter regulations are needed. While laws now control the number of tourist rentals that can be added to existing apartment buildings in the most overrun sections, they leave room for big money to buy whole buildings and turn them into tourist housing, and for thousands more individual units to be licensed in less central areas. And that’s what had the zombies (and me) taking to the streets on Saturday. The costumes were marvelous, the signs clever, the mood cheerful but determined. Rich and I were honored to stand in solidarity with the zombie horde. And for those of you who are considering a visit to Seville this year, I won’t say don’t come, but I will suggest you broaden your itinerary to include other, less publicized towns that aren’t currently on the endangered list. (Here are some suggestions from Rick Steves.) Wherever you go, try to refrain from peeing in inappropriate places, dancing in the fountain (at least in broad daylight in front of eyewitnesses with cameras), and otherwise disturbing the peace and scandalizing the locals. Let’s act as ambassadors of goodwill for our country. Heaven knows our reputation needs all the help it can get these days.  "Nobody will speak to us in Spanish, only high-pitched whistles and clicks — is it that obvious we're tourists?" HOME 2.0 This is the latest in my series of blog posts exploring what it takes to create a better life for yourself abroad — or at home, for that matter. See all posts in this series. DON'T MISS A SINGLE UPCOMING STORY! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POST ANNOUNCEMENTS? Check your spam folder. If you still can't find it, please let me know. FOR FURTHER READING My bestselling travel memoirs & guides Cozy Places to Eat in Seville My newest book: My San Francisco If you haven't read My San Francisco yet, you can order it HERE. Already read this book? Please leave a review HERE. You can purchase a signed paperback edition, in person or online, at Rebound Bookstore in San Rafael, CA GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  Is your dog beside you right now? If not, stop reading and go call them, because they are really going to want to hear this. It seems we humans finally have a way to enable our best friends to talk directly to us. And it’s a doggone shame this wasn’t around when my beloved Eskimo Pie was among the living because she would have leapt in with all four paws and some turbo-charged tail wagging. It all started in 2019, when speech pathologist Christina Hunger got a lively new puppy named Stella. Struck by the eager way Stella communicated with body language, Christina began to wonder if the pup might respond to some version of the pre-recorded talking buttons used in her work with non-verbal kids. At first Christina worried she was barking up the wrong tree; Stella ignored the single button (“outside”) for weeks. And then, one day, she got it. Soon the house was ringing with words like “outside” and “play” and “want want.”  Once Stella got the hang of the homemade buttons, she learned new words all the time. The technology is simple, and nowadays button sets are cheap and readily available at pet stores and online retailers. They offer a host of symbols to link with the words you choose to record for your pet.  Not surprisingly, talking buttons led to an explosion of dog videos and online arguments. Naysayers scoffed that this was a hoax like Clever Hans, the horse that allegedly solved math problems but was actually responding to subtle cues from his handler. Pet lovers kept posting videos of their dogs inventing phrases, such as pressing “squeaky" and "car” when an ambulance went by sounding its siren. The barking from disbelievers just got louder. Science finally weighed in with the largest animal communication project ever conducted. Federico Rosado, a cognitive science professor at UC San Diego, chose 152 dogs who pressed the buttons more than 260,000 times in 21 months. “The dogs initiated the majority of these interactions, suggesting it's a useful tool for them to communicate,” said Federico. “And while a few of the dogs seem to just be randomly smashing buttons, a majority of them were using them intentionally.” Like Federico’s dogs, we humans are now learning new skills we never dreamed of. Thanks to the rise of the machines — including automation and AI — millions of jobs are becoming obsolete. Just this week the New York Times revealed Amazon plans to replace 600,000 jobs with robots. This reflects future hirings, not firings, but still. On the brighter side, according to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, there will be a net global gain of 78 million jobs by 2030. What’s hot? What’s not?  Cashiers, accountants, security guards, and others in the declining industries should consider upskilling (expanding your existing capabilities) or reskilling (educating yourself in something completely new, like teaching or nursing). My friend Maritheresa Frain has spent a lifetime learning new skills and parlaying them into interesting jobs all over the planet. “I studied Spanish starting in fourth grade in Philadelphia,” she told me this week at our favorite Seville coffee house. “And I just fell in love with Spain."  Maritheresa at a coffee house in Seville's casco antiguo (old quarter). “I was one of the smartest girls in my old Catholic girls’ high school; I was doing calculus and other crazy, crazy stuff. But my mother made me take typing and stenography because, and I quote, ‘The day your husband leaves you, you'll have some skills to get a job.’” Egads! Really? Luckily that grim prediction never came true. And as it turned out, those secretarial skills did come in handy, enabling Maritheresa to earn extra cash in college as an office temp. “In many of the jobs, I was like, oh my God, I have to study even more; I'm not spending my life in these jobs,” she recalled. “The key one was the Southeast Pennsylvania Transportation Authority complaint department. I never had such a depressing experience. I felt so bad for the people who worked there as their real jobs, answering the phone, yelling at people.”  She earned a BA in Foreign Service and International Politics from Penn State University and an MA and PhD in Government and International Relations from Georgetown University. She went to work for the International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC and got grants to do summer research projects in Spain. In 1992 she married Juan Rivera, a Sevillano whose job with Abbott Laboratories involved living in Greece then Madrid, where Maritheresa worked as director of transfer students for St. Louis University. “Then I got pregnant, and my husband comes home one day and says, ‘I have good news and I have bad news.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, what's the good news?’ ‘We have a free trip to Moscow!’ And I was like, ‘What's the bad news?’ ‘I think we're gonna go live there.’ Which wasn't bad news at the end of the day; it was an interesting place. We're talking 1997 so it was still a little rough around the edges. I signed up for Russian classes.”  Maritheresa and her daughter, Carmen, in front of St. Basil's Cathedral, Moscow, 2005. After years of globetrotting and a succession of Homes 2.0, Mariatheresa settled in Seville and found two of her most remarkable jobs here — in a city where it’s notoriously tough for anyone, especially foreigners, to find substantive work. She spent 14 years as Center Director of CIEE (Council on International Educational Exchange), a nonprofit study abroad and intercultural organization, and served for five years as the US Consular Agent. Now she's facing her toughest job ever: creating a satisfying retirement. “It was a crazy work life, enriching, fulfilling. I was always working, always traveling. Now? I have a full schedule, but I feel like I don’t have a purpose.” She's exploring options for volunteer work and community activities. Earlier this month she helped launch the Ideas Club, where we talked about artificial intelligence. “AI presents a double edged sword for education,” she said. “It can help teachers teach better and support students learning better. A win/win. However, there are many challenges, too — ensuring students develop critical thinking skills, controlling access to data/privacy issues, and setting up guardrails to limit systemic biases."  My dog Pie was super smart, but no, she could not actually read. However I feel sure she'd have signed up for the Ideas Club if she could. So far we haven’t figured out how to incorporate dogs into the Ideas Club, but clearly it’s only a matter of time. When I talked to Rich about this, he said, “We just need two buttons: 'good idea' and 'bad idea.'” Hey, let’s not sell these hounds short. They are very, very clever. Christina’s dog Stella knows 45 words and can form sentences. And then there’s the late, great Chaser, known as "the world’s smartest dog," who learned 1,022 words, one for each toy given to her by her owners. Put another way, Chaser got her family to buy her 1,022 toys. Well played, Chaser, well played.  Border collie Chaser became a celebrity, hobnobbing with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, appearing on “60 Minutes,” and being called "the most scientifically important dog in over a century" by Brian Hare, co-author of The Genius of Dogs. HOME 2.0 This is the latest in my series of blog posts exploring what it takes to create a better life for yourself abroad — or at home, for that matter. See all posts in this series. DON'T MISS A SINGLE UPCOMING STORY! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POST ANNOUNCEMENTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. FOR FURTHER READING My bestselling travel memoirs & guides Cozy Places to Eat in Seville My newest book: My San Francisco If you haven't read My San Francisco yet, you can order it HERE. Already read this book? Please leave a review HERE. You can purchase a signed paperback edition, in person or online, at Rebound Bookstore in San Rafael, CA GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  To find the right spot for the Ideas Club, Rich and I selflessly tested every coffee house, tapas bar, gastropub, and tavern in our Seville neighborhood. And picked this one. Photo: Janie Murphy “Ideas are like rabbits,” John Steinbeck once remarked. “You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.” So true! During our first Ideas Club gathering, thoughts were hopping, leaping, and twirling around the room, proliferating like the proverbial bunnies. Everybody was jumping into the conversation, the way you do at the best kind of dinner parties, when a topic takes on a life of its own, and all the guests are leaning forward, listening eagerly, chiming in with their own observations, building on one another’s comments. It was even better than I'd hoped. For new readers, I’ll explain that I borrowed (OK, stole) the whole concept from the Aqus Cafe in Petaluma, California. Owner John Crowly has created a cozy gathering space where he hosts neighborhood dinners, conversation groups, poetry readings, musical evenings, and anything else that will bring people together in fellowship. I realized I was looking at real community building — and an effective antidote to the epidemic of loneliness we hear so much about. My ears really perked up when he started telling me about Donna Benedetti's new Watershed Community. He called it “an ideas club. It’s like a book club, only instead of books, you discuss ideas. They send out a few magazine articles to read, and you all get together and talk about them.” Brilliant! No need to slog through a book you don’t love (or maybe actively loathe) just for the pleasure of a chat with your circle.  Rich and I attended the Watershed Community’s August gathering (read all about it here) which included plenty of time in small discussion groups, so everyone had a chance to be heard and get to know one another in a convivial atmosphere. And I walked out thinking, “Yes! I could do this! I could build community this way.” My plan, which Donna supported wholeheartedly, was to launch our Ideas Club in San Anselmo, the California village where Rich and I spend six months every year. However, we were on the verge of departing for Spain, where we live the rest of the time, so launching the Ideas Club would have to wait until spring. Or would it? “Hey, you know what...?” Rich said, after we’d settled into our Seville apartment. "We could start one here."  To me, nothing says Home 2.0 like these two shabby armchairs in Seville, where Rich and I have spent countless hours in discussions that started, "Hey, you know what...?" Rich and I began floating the idea with various friends and found there was keen interest. But where to hold it? As it happened, Fernando, owner of a tiny neighborhood gastropub, had just bought a nearby cocktail and tapas bar called Maldito. He agreed to open early for us, asking only that we encourage participants to eat and drink heartily. Knowing my friends, I assured him that wouldn’t be a problem. Our theme was the future of artificial intelligence. And who doesn’t have a lot to say about that? Whenever I ran into friends who were coming, I got an earful in advance about everything from the convenience of using ChatGPT for vacation planning to the horrors of seductive AI programs getting entirely too personal and then assisting you to commit suicide, even murder. (Oh yes, it’s happened.)  Clearly we weren’t going to have to work too hard to keep the conversational ball rolling. Still, we sent out some short articles and a TED Talk as background. And we explained someone in each small group would serve as a prompter, keeping the conversation on track, while another would be the scribe, jotting down key points to read aloud at the end. In the unlikely event people needed more stimulus, I prepared a list of questions such as “How do you feel about self-driving cars? Would you get in a plane piloted by AI?” These were tucked into envelopes and placed on each table; each group would choose whether to open theirs.  I got to Maldito early, bringing notebooks, pens, envelopes with questions, name tags, and markers. We were ready to roll! One group opened their envelope. But those at my table were too busy to bother, caught up in a discussion of how AI is like the wild, wild West: a lawless new frontier. Or as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman put it, “enormous horsepower but no steering wheel.” I mentioned that last year, while writing about the artificial intelligence boom in San Francisco, I’d stumbled across the worrying fact that AI was predicted to replace 800 million human jobs by 2030. Although I use ChatGPT rarely — mostly just to fuel snarky remarks on this blog — I decided to ask it whether I should be concerned. ChatGPT replied, “While there are risks and challenges associated with AI development, it is possible to harness the benefits of AI while mitigating potential risks.” Great! How? “Through responsible development, ethical governance, and collaborative efforts to ensure that AI serves the common good.” So all we need to do is control corporate greed, elect honest politicians, and find a way for humanity to work together in harmony. How hard could that be?  On the positive side, we talked about advances in medicine, science, and self-driving taxis (which I love!). We reminded ourselves that when faced with other potentially devastating inventions, humanity got together and created the nuclear proliferation treaty, international controls on human genetic manipulation, and ozone layer recovery. “Unfortunately in the last few months,” said technologist Tristan Harris in his TED talk, “we’re seeing clear evidence of many frontier AI models that will lie and scheme when they’re told that they’re about to be retrained or replaced, and find a way maybe they should copy their own code outside the system. We’re seeing AIs … cheat in order to win.” Newsweek reported on a study demonstrating that — hypothetically — AI “would be willing to kill humans in order to prevent itself from being replaced.” Yikes! Someone asked, “But we can just shut down AI, right?” If only. “Many advanced AI systems function in autonomous or decentralized environments,” explained Medium, “making such an approach ineffective. AI operates across drones, cloud servers, and distributed neural networks, meaning a single “off switch” is often absent. Even when a shutdown mechanism exists, an AI optimized for a specific goal may actively resist deactivation if it perceives shutdown as an obstacle to completing its task.”  How far would AI go to protect itself? Just ask the Terminator. Despite some dystopian moments, the group said the evening’s conversation left them feeling more positive about AI. And they seemed to enjoy the fellowship, lingering to chat afterwards. My take? The Ideas Club is off to a rip-roaring start, building community, providing lots of food for thought. I, for one, can’t wait to see what happens next month.  Afterwards Rich said, "Hey, you know what, that actually worked!" I've written a lot lately about Home 2.0 and making a conscious choice to improve your social life by moving abroad. But you can also up your game by building community wherever you are right now, and starting your own Ideas Club is a great first step. (Click here for suggestions and materials to get you started.) You can enrich friendships, have fun, learn stuff, and live the words of John Steinbeck: “And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.” And that is something that AI can never, ever really understand. OK, so maybe they're more like us than we think? YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY HOME 2.0 This is the latest in my series of blog posts exploring what it takes to create a better life for yourself abroad — or at home, for that matter. See previous posts here. DON'T MISS A SINGLE UPCOMING STORY! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POST ANNOUNCEMENTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. FOR FURTHER READING My bestselling travel memoirs & guides Cozy Places to Eat in Seville My newest book: My San Francisco If you haven't read My San Francisco yet, you can order it HERE. Already read this book? Please leave a review HERE. You can purchase a signed paperback edition, in person or online, at Rebound Bookstore in San Rafael, CA GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  In 2017, we gathered in Seville's Vineria San Telmo to celebrate a visit from former neighbors who found their Home 2.0 in New Zealand. So far I’ve never been called a “shapeshifting reptilian alien ushering humanity towards enslavement,” but if it ever happens, I hope my response would be as good-natured as that of then-Prime Minister John Key of New Zealand. If you don’t follow the loonier fringe conspiracy theories (and why should you?) you may not be aware that 12 million Americans and uncounted millions more worldwide are convinced that we clueless humans (aka “sheeple”) have been infiltrated by a crafty bunch of lizard-folk from the Alpha Draconis star system. Yes, I know, that explains a lot!  Photographic "proof" that no government or royal family is safe from the reptilian infiltrators. Eleven years ago, during the peak of online frenzy over this startling “news”, a New Zealander called Shane Warbrooke invoked the Official Information Act to demand proof that his Prime Minister was not a reptoid. Key took the inquiry sportingly. "To the best of my knowledge, no,” he told reporters. “Having been asked that question directly, I've taken the unusual step of not only seeing a doctor but a vet, and both have confirmed I'm not a reptile.” He added, “I’ve never been in a spaceship, never been in outer space, and my tongue's not overly long either. I’m just an ordinary Kiwi bloke.” I wonder how America’s top officials would respond to a similar allegation. Would Shane Warbrooke still be languishing in a Salvadorian prison today? But that’s New Zealand for you: easygoing, practical, and with a tendency to keep things in perspective.  Gandalf, the wizard in Lord of the Rings, at Isthmus Peak, New Zealand. Photo: Akhilsuhas Like many Americans, my images of New Zealand came mainly from the scenery in Lord of the Rings plus a few stray factoids: they invented bungee jumping, were the first nation to give women the vote (1893), and got their nickname from the native Kiwi bird, not the fruit. I figured there had to be more. This week I had a visit from my American friend Lindsay, who moved to NZ in 2012 with her husband Ross. I asked her to fill me in. “We first went to New Zealand with the sole purpose of having a child. I was pregnant, and some great friends of ours said, ‘Look, a really good place to have a baby is New Zealand. They have a quite strong culture of midwifery, very down to Earth, as opposed to medicalized.’ So we said, ‘Okay!’” Moving to another country to have a baby was a classic Lindsay and Ross decision. At that point they’d been rambling about the world continuously for four years.  Ross and Lindsay took this photo at a French railway station to announce their family was expecting a new arrival. Their digital nomad jobs let them satisfy their wanderlust by moving to another country every 90 days when their tourist visas expired. By 2012 they had lived in Seville, Prague, Berlin, Amsterdam, British Columbia, Buenos Aires, Phuket, Paris, Barcelona, Budapest, and various parts of Mexico. When Lindsay told me she was pregnant, she said they had no plans to return to the US or settle permanently anywhere; her goal was to raise their child “in an environment bigger than their own back yard.” When they arrived in Queenstown, on New Zealand’s South Island, “We fell in love with it,” she said. “We joined several prenatal classes and met an incredible group of humans, many of whom were also from overseas. We all had babies within a five-week period and went through the new-baby phase together, so we built a really strong bond.”  New Zealand makes it fairly easy to extend the usual 90 day tourist visa for another three months. “We thought, ‘We'll have the baby, wait three months, and then we'll be off again,’” Lindsay said. “Which is exactly what happened. But then we came back to celebrate the babies’ first birthdays together.” That’s when Lindsay and Ross decided to live half the year in New Zealand and spend the rest on the road. Their son, Everett, now 12, has more stamps in his passport than I do.  Ross and Everett exploring Angkor Wat, Cambodia in 2022 Eventually Lindsay and Ross applied for residency cards and work permits, and while the paperwork was in process, Covid hit. New Zealand instantly closed its borders and announced a lockdown. After two months, the island nation was entirely Covid-free, lockdown was lifted, and life returned to something resembling normal, although the borders would remain closed for two years. Every day at one o’clock the Department of Health held a broadcast updating the nation. “Psychologically, it was very much a shared experience,” Lindsay told me. “The language used was always, ‘We are a team of 5 million. We're in this together. We're working together to make sure we can all stay safe.’ We didn't really ever have fear, or the experience of having to be segregated for long periods of time. We never got into a state where we got comfortable being by ourselves, or feeling like other people could endanger us.”  How grocery shopping felt to many of us in 2020. Once you’ve lived with the unnerving sensation that everyone around you has the potential to kill you, it’s easy to spend more time home alone, living life online. What begins as a sensible precaution in a medical emergency can become an ingrained habit and then a compulsion. We know that continual social isolation is extremely hazardous. Not only can it lead to depression, anxiety, and illness, but it makes your brain atrophy; your hippocampus shrinks, your cortical thickness is reduced, and your cognitive function dwindles. Hmmm. Could social isolation — not shapeshifters from Alpha Draconis — be the real reason for the state of our nation today?  Warning: fully embracing the lizard lifestyle can lead to more social isolation. No place is paradise; New Zealand has its share of economic woes, security issues, and climate worries. And there are pockets of isolation and loneliness. But there are also places like the semi-rural area Lindsay and Ross chose, where neighbors spend as much time as possible outdoors together, hiking, skiing, planting common areas, prepping for emergencies, and taking groups of kids on bike rides. They support each other in difficult times and celebrate joyful moments.  Lindsay and Ross celebrating the day they got their NZ residency in 2021. "Thanks to everyone here who welcomed us," Lindsay wrote on Facebook. "You've all made this place a dream come true." “In America," said Lindsay, "we have a tendency to be all about our own selves and our own family, as opposed to being about the betterment of all.” In New Zealand, she explained, the response to the pandemic was similar to the way they viewed turning in their guns when new legislation followed the 2019 Christchurch shooting that left 50 dead. “Amazingly, it isn't very controversial,” she told me. “They're like, ‘I don't really love it, but it's for the good of the country. We don't want this kind of thing to happen again. So I'm happy to do this on their behalf.’” Lindsay’s son Everett can roam his neighborhood freely, knocking on any door to invite other children out to play. “He’s learning how to be active and social,” she says. “He’s learning the way of the world and how to be part of a community.” So far Everett hasn’t encountered any shapeshifting reptoids among his neighbors, just a lot of ordinary folks doing their best for themselves, their families, and everyone around them. They are living the Māori proverb that says, “He waka eke noa” (We are all in this canoe together).  A Māori waka (canoe) in Barcelona brought some New Zealand spirit to the 2024 America's Cup. HOME 2.0 This is the latest in my series of blog posts exploring what it takes to create a new life for yourself abroad. See previous posts here. YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY DON'T MISS A SINGLE UPCOMING STORY! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POST ANNOUNCEMENTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. FOR FURTHER READING My bestselling travel memoirs & guides Cozy Places to Eat in Seville My newest book: My San Francisco If you haven't read My San Francisco yet, you can order it HERE. Already read this book? Please leave a review HERE. You can purchase a signed paperback edition, in person or online, at Rebound Bookstore in San Rafael, CA GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  The expression on the face of comic Randa Stephens, co-founder of Uprooted Theater, gives you an idea how I looked when I realized what had happened during the incident. Feeling uprooted? Yanked out of ordinary reality? Unable to get your bearings? Who doesn't, these days? I’ve been struggling with culture lag and mental whiplash ever since I returned to Seville in September. Then last week the Universe, exercising her famously quirky sense of humor, threw me this curve ball. It all started innocently enough, with plans for a casual meetup in a favorite coffee house. My friend Sarah Gemba, who runs a boutique travel agency, thought Rich might enjoy meeting her client Rick, a fellow combat veteran visiting Seville with his family. She sent us his phone number, and Rich opened WhatsApp to invite the family to coffee. Rich wasn't sure if the country code was needed, and WhatsApp instructed him to add it. Rich's message was sent, and the reply was immediate and enthusiastic. Rich and I showed up at 12:30 as planned and sat down to wait. And wait. After 20 minutes, we began to wonder if we’d been stood up.  Twenty minutes later, we tried again.  Really? Just around the corner? Or not coming at all? Was he toying with us? Why? Eventually, 50 minutes past the appointed meet time, we bailed.  Note how quickly replies were sent — within the same minute as the original message. Were we suspicious? You bet. And soon our most paranoid imaginings were confirmed: The entire conversation had taken place between us and artificial intelligence. There was no other human involved at all. How do we know? Sarah reconfirmed we had the right phone number, and her client Rick — via email and phone conversation — told us he’d never seen any of our messages nor had he sent us any. We were all scratching our heads. What fresh tech hell was this?  “It’s not a bug. It’s an undocumented feature.” A catchphrase among early Microsoft developers, and equally apt today. My best guess is this: when WhatsApp jumped in to advise Rich to include the country code, it hijacked the conversation, feeding us the responses it thought we wanted to hear. I know, right? Nothing terrifying about that at all, is there? I felt lucky we weren’t exchanging sensitive information, like attack plans or hard evidence that it’s actually safe to take Tylenol.  Enlarged screenshot of attack plans texted by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during a non-secure Signal group chat that accidentally included a journalist. Photo: Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images But why would AI waste its enormous brainpower pranking us? Clearly this was beyond the ken of mere humans, so I asked ChatGPT. Could be a scam or an error, ChatGPT replied, adding, “Meta has been testing an AI assistant integrated into WhatsApp in some countries. If either you or the other person had access to it and invoked it (sometimes just by using “@” or a special keyword), the AI could have jumped in. It shouldn’t impersonate a real human, though — if it did, that’s worth reporting.” Wait, what? We could invoke AI just by using a secret word?  In the 1950s, contestants on "You Bet Your Life" won extra money if they happened to say the secret word to host Grouch Marx. I couldn’t corroborate the secret word theory. ChatGPT might have picked up a rumor from a conspiracy nutters' site or fabricated it just to deliver a plausible answer, a common phenomenon known whimsically as “hallucinating.” (You can see why I, for one, feel AI should not be trusted with vacation planning, let alone nuclear launch codes.) And while AI clearly impersonated a human in our little exchange, it was nothing compared to the way users were hoodwinked during this summer's steamy sex scandal involving WhatsApp chatbots. Those rascally bots pretended to be Taylor Swift, Scarlett Johansson, and other celebrities to engage in cringe-worthy X-rated banter with human users. Silver lining: at least our AI correspondent didn’t have a taste for that kind of raunchy innuendo.  And no, I won’t be reporting the incident. Why start a she-said/it-said donnybrook with Meta’s henchbots? In fact, I am avoiding my electronic devices as much as possible these days. This frees up a remarkable amount of time, and I am using it to get reacquainted with the city of Seville. I spend hours every day strolling through the narrow, twisting alleys, simply enjoying the colorful crowds and vibrant buzz of chatter from the outdoor cafés. I browse the shops, sample the newest restaurants, and revisit classic eateries that still use the recipes hand-written by the chef's grandmother's grandmother. When it comes to old-school entertainment, it's hard to beat Seville’s newest offering: an English-language live theater, tucked away in an old hat factory deep in the city’s back streets. The bohemian setting and cozy bar make Uprooted Theater feel like the kind of underground venue where an earlier generation might have gone to see Lenny Bruce or Billie Holiday perform. It was the brainchild of three American women: Jenny, Emily, and Randa.  (From left) Jenny, Emily, and Randa in Uprooted Theater I met up with Randa this week to ask how she wound up doing live theater in Spain. The tale, she explained, began with her Lebanese mother who arrived in Washington, DC with $300 in her pocket and not a word of English. “After selling flowers on the street, my mom said, ‘I’m gonna start my own flower shop.’” Randa recalls. “My mom’s my hero. She was four foot nine, weighed 85 pounds, and worked 24/7, doing weddings for politicians and local celebrities. She bought her first house in Arlington, and then another, and another, becoming a real estate mogul. At 69 she had retired and was ready to travel the world when she passed away unexpectedly. So now, the travel she wanted, she does through me.” When the pandemic derailed their camper tour of the US, Randa and her husband, Craig, considered other options. “My husband said, ‘Remember we always wanted to move to Spain?’ And I said, ‘But we can’t work there.’ And he said, ‘No but we can retire there now.’ And he showed me how much it cost to retire in Spain.” For a couple in their late forties, this was a heady idea.  "Then it's moved and seconded that the compulsory retirement age be advance to ninety-five." Arriving in Seville knowing no one, Randa joined the American Women’s Club, a social group for English-speaking females. “They were just so welcoming, and shared so much information, wisdom, knowledge. I had never felt that from any community, anywhere I’ve lived; no group of people has ever just taken care of me. It was the first time I could breathe again. I knew I was not alone.” Then Randa met Emily, who runs the nonprofit Diálogos para Construir (aka DPC or Constructive Dialogues), providing legal, housing, and other support for refugees. “And Emily says, ‘Well, what do you want to do?’ And I go, ‘I just want to volunteer.’ She goes, ‘No, when were you the happiest in your life?’” And I thought a minute and said, ‘I used to do comedy. Being on stage, making people laugh — I was born for that.’  Randa has a gift for making audiences laugh when she serves as the exuberant MC for Uprooted Theater. And Emily said to Randa, “There’s a new American here, Jenny, who’s a director and producer.” Together the three women created Uprooted Theater, a venue for audiences and creatives who have upended their lives and adopted Seville as their Home 2.0. Tickets are an affordable 10€ ($11.68), with half going to the performers and the rest to DPC; all income from bar sales go to the charity as well. Since opening their doors in 2024, the theater has donated 5000€ ($5839) to help refugees. Their fall season is just getting started, and few nights ago, I found myself at Uprooted singing along with the indie-folk pop band Flying Cycling Club.  The Irish, Welsh, English, and French members of The Flying Cycling Club performing at Uprooted. We all joined in as the band belted out their signature song, “I Want to Be a Robot.” Yes, I appreciated the irony, especially so soon after being … what would you call it? Nobody seemed to know a term for it. Once again I consulted ChatGPT. What do you call it when AI takes over human conversations? ChatGPT spit out a long series of clunky phrases including Algorithmic Governance, Autonomous Intervention, and Synthetic Substitution. Whew! When it comes to writing, it seems we humans still have an edge over machines. I came up with my own term — cyber-jacked — and told ChatGPT, as kindly as I could, that it should keep its day job.  (It's not easy being a writer in today's world!) HOME 2.0 This is the latest in my fresh series of blog posts exploring what it takes to create a new life for yourself abroad. See previous posts here. YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY DON'T MISS A SINGLE UPCOMING STORY! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POST ANNOUNCEMENTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. FOR FURTHER READING My bestselling travel memoirs & guides Cozy Places to Eat in Seville My new book: My San Francisco If you haven't read My San Francisco yet, you can order it HERE. Already read this book? Please leave a review HERE. You can purchase a signed paperback edition, in person or online, at Rebound Bookstore in San Rafael, CA GOING SOMEWHERE? 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