🎲 ☕ Board game cafes, bringing people together, kombucha and eclipse shadows

Hello from Colombia! I get to settle in for a few months here and I’m excited about it.

🎲 Board Games - I’ve recently become obsessed with the tabletop game world and you’ll find out why soon! In August, while in Vancouver, Canada, besides slurping several trees worth of maple syrup, I was also surprised to find a board game cafe at max capacity with a waitlist on both Friday and Saturday nights. There were beautiful people dressed up and jittery with anticipation to get in. After finally getting through the bouncer, I could see why. Board games are a fun way to disconnect and drop in with people.

My favorite two-player board games so far are Santorini, Jaipur and Patchwork.

I haven’t played enough 3-5 player ones besides Catan but I’ll share more when I do.

Arriving back in Colombia I found a board game cafe within a few miles away and a group chat with over 400+ people that gather to play 🤯

People hanging outside the board game cafe in Vancouver

🦠 Homemade Kombucha - At my local lunch spot, I saw SCOBY, “symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast”, for sale on the counter. I bought it, along with some green tea and sugar, and went home and made my first my first 4 liters of Kombucha. On the second fermentation, I flavored a batch with fresh mango, and one with Limon Mandrino and thyme from my garden. They both came out delicious. I’ll be serving this at my next board game night!

💸 Changing world order - Seeing China and Russia buddy up for meetings reminds me of this video by Ray Dalio describing the economic patterns of changing powers. While patterns aren’t guaranteed to repeat themselves, we can look into the past to help build our insights. For my economist friends, I’d love to know what you think.

💛 Love Memes - I have both Israeli and Palestinian friends and my social media feed has been giving me a visceral gut-wrenching that no amount of kombucha can help with. I don’t know enough about the conflict to have any real opinion but I feel a deep sadness for all the innocent suffering. I started to actively look for “love memes” and then had this fully formed sentence pop into mind this weekend which I shared on my Instagram. I praise all those who continue to do this work.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Bringing people together: My biggest insights have come while sharing space with other people. It’s about getting into the right rooms and contributing. It was my goal to find, or build, business and art communities in Medellin this year. I feel like I’m really there!

This past month I hosted an internet marketing mastermind. I’m blown away by the quality entrepreneurs who are coming through and wanting to meet up. I started a curated WhatsApp group in February. We already have 70+ members. I’m on the 4th meetup, and while it’s a little more work than I’d like, I receive regular feedback that people are building bonds and finding insights that help shape their direction.

I also started a Medellin Makers group to pull in artist friends who want to share music, photography, pottery, etc..

🌗 Eclipse Shadows: I saw the eclipse this past week, but I was much more impressed by people who were chasing the eclipse shadows. I wish I knew to do that instead!

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