Month: November 2025

Adamstown, our home

/ binarybea / 2 Comments

Out of the twenty years I´ve been living here in Ireland, seventeen I´ve spent living in the same neighbourhood: Adamstown, in West County Dublin.

Adamstown is a really interesting place, quite different from the typical Irish housing estates. It was first projected in the late nineties as a brand new town, following an urban planning model that was similar to those from other European countries. The building of this "strategic development zone" started in 2005, and it was all going fine until the 2008 crisis came along, causing an economic standstill that left the town half built.

Luckily, by then, Adamstown already had its own train station, a creche, two primary schools and planning approval for a secondary school. We thought it was the ideal place for us to start growing roots as a family, so we moved into a rented duplex apartment just beside the creche, with little Irene as a toddler and Alicia a few months from being born.

As years went by, our neighbourhood continued to grow very slowly, alternating phases of moderate building with phases of almost no building at all. But far from becoming "a ghost town" (as the press labelled it sometimes), Adamstown got consolidated as a new community, modern and, above all, very diverse, staying active despite the circumstances. At that time, given the lack of public spaces where people could meet (the community centre would not open its doors until 2018), the primary schools became the main meeting point, making their spaces available for a variety of activities. And as many families had moved from either other countries or other regions of Ireland, having the opportunity to meet and support each other was a massive help as we settled and found our place.

It was during this time, ten years ago, when a beautiful project was born to give a voice to our community: the book called Adamstown my home, a compilation of stories of 27 women and their families, representing the diversity of culture and nationality that´s so intertwined in this neighbourhood; a symbol of a new Ireland.

Because what really makes Adamstown interesting is not its buildings, but its people. It´s a multicultural and intercultural community, with families coming from practically every corner of the world... Just to put this into context: in our primary school, there are kids from about 45 different nationalities, and the vast majority of them, if not all, live in our neighbourhood. And our secondary school is even more diverse, with 52 nationalities. The variety of cultures, ideas and customs our children are growing up with is truly invaluable.

Back to the present, we´re currently going through times of unprecedented building activity, with lots of growth happening in our area; I believe the job will actually be finished this time (and we may even become a whole new town!). We continue to be an international and very diverse community, now with the support of our community centre, which is doing a remarkable job in every possible way. We are blessed with several parks, sports facilities, a commercial area, a health centre just recently built and a library planned for some time in the future.

But also, twenty years after Adamstown´s birth, we have something much more important: a whole generation that has grown up in this new Ireland, being part of a diversity that´s natural to them, merging multiple cultures and building an identity that´s even more complex, rich and nuanced than that of the previous generation.

We couldn´t miss the opportunity to compile some of those stories, ten years after the original book. And that was the origin of Adamstown our home, a very special project created by two of the most beloved and admired members of our community, and quite rightly so: Father John Hassett, who also ideated and coordinated the original book, and Gema Pintor, our community centre manager. The result is a compilation of twenty more stories, several of them spanning more than one generation, of families who call Adamstown their home.

(Photo of the cover of the book Adamstown our home.)

Thanks a million, John and Gema, for counting me in on this project; I´ve really enjoyed being one of the interviewers, and I´ve also learned a lot. Thanks to the other interviewers, Anisa, Bernie, Ita, Michael, Rose and Sunita, and above all, thanks to David, Aida, Joseph, Vicky and John for the time we shared during the interviews.

The interview recordings will become part of Adamstown´s oral archive, and will be available in our library (once it´s built). In the meantime, the book is on sale now, and all proceeds will be split between the three schools in our area (two primary and one secondary) to help children with special needs.

Will there be a part three in 2035? Who knows...

Unexpected inspiration

/ binarybea / Leave a comment

Do you like taking photos? What kind of photos do you usually take?

I´ve noticed that I generally take very few pictures "of people", that is, the kind you would take with your family or a group of friends. To be honest, it´s something I don´t normally pay attention to, so I almost always forget (or, at most, if I´m in a nice place with my daughters, I think of taking a selfie with them, sometimes with better results than others). Luckily, there´s almost always someone at every group or family reunion who remembers to immortalise the moment, and let me take this opportunity to say to them all: thank you!

On the other hand, what I´ve noticed I do a lot is take photos of places or things that call my attention for one reason or another. Sometimes it´s a landscape or a building that strikes me as beautiful, and I try to capture it without people if I can (this is what I call "making postcards"). At other times, I take photos of things that hold sentimental value for me, evoking fond memories.

And some other times, I snap photos of interesting quotes or phrases I find in the most unexpected places, like this one I want to share with you today:

(Sign seen in a Chick-fil-A near San Jose, in California. Chick-fil-A is a US-based fast food chain that we found surprisingly delicious.)

It turns out this quote is from none other than the founder of Chick-fil-A, here it is in text:

How do you know if someone needs encouragement? If they are breathing!

S. Truett Cathy

In other words: we would ALL benefit from some encouragement, because we ALL are going through something, and very often, that something is a lot more serious than what one could possibly perceive from the outside.

Which reminds me of another quote that I can´t believe I haven´t shared here in this blog before, as it´s one of my favourites. The only thing is, I´m not able to confirm the author because it´s not clear, and I don´t want to risk it and have a repeat of that time when I was accused of giving false information... Depending of who you ask, it´s attributed to Seneca, Marcus Aurelius or someone called Ian McLaren. But it doesn´t really matter, what matters is the message:

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

What about you? What photos have you found inspiring lately?

Untranslatable expressions: do your best

/ binarybea / Leave a comment

Today I´d like to talk about an English expression that´s not exactly untranslatable, but in my opinion, it loses strength when translated into Spanish, becoming less impactful.

Do your best.

Three syllables. Direct and elegant. Empowering.

Hazlo lo mejor que puedas.

(Literally, do it as well as you can.) Eight syllables. The same idea, but expressed a little more clumsily, in a more roundabout way.

I´m sure you´ll agree with me; it sounds much better in English...

(Part of a mural seen at Dublin airport several years ago.)

In any case, you get the idea, right? For any situation in life, the best thing we can do is do our best, and nobody can ask anything more from us.

This may seem very simple, and in a certain way, it is, but at the same time, it´s quite complicated. Because there´s no objective measurement, only we can know for sure whether we´re doing our best or not. And sometimes, doubts creep up: are we setting the standard too high, and beating ourselves up for not accomplishing everything we should be able to? Or maybe we´re setting it too low, and getting stagnant in a life that´s too complacent or resigned?

This is all going through my head right now because this week has been a bit challenging, as I had already foreseen, and I´ve found it hard (even harder than usual) to strike a balance between catching up at work and at home and resting to regain a good rythm, trying to also carve out a little time to have fun and enjoy. What should I give priority to? Sometimes this is not an easy decision; it requires paying attention to what´s happening outside as well as inside of us, so we can know what our needs are, and what the world needs from us, at any given moment.

There´s a lot more to say on this topic; in fact, "always do your best" is one of the Four Agreements from a book with the same name written by Don Miguel Ruiz, I´ll explain this in more detail in a future article. For the moment, here are a couple of selected quotes that I hope will add a little perspective to this whole topic:

Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.

Maya Angelou

On the days you have only 40%, and you give 40%. You gave 100%

Jim Kwik

What do you think? What does doing your best mean to you? In what specific ways are you doing, or not doing, your best?

Make it count

/ binarybea / Leave a comment

The girls and I are just back from a week-long holiday with the framily (if you´re not familiar with the concept of framily, it´s explained here), taking advantage of the October bank holiday here in Ireland, and the way schools stretch it into a whole week of mid-term break.

So, this time, our reunion took place... In California!

Photo of San Francisco´s Golden Gate bridge, taken from an end of the bridge itself

(Photo of San Francisco´s Golden Gate Bridge, taken from the end of the bridge itself.)

We´ve had a fantastic week (thanks a million, Juanjo, Gema, Laia and Joan for welcoming our whole gang into your house).

I have to admit that, when it comes to travelling, I´m not adventurous at all; my default option is to always end up going to the same places... That´s why I´ve been making more of an effort lately, looking for reasons (or excuses, depending on how you look at it) to introduce variations in my holiday plans without straying too far away from known territory.

The two variations that I´ve seen working well for me are either taking the girls to places I´m really excited about (like when we went to Nerja this past spring, having been there as a child, or like when we visited Paris, because, well, who doesn´t want to visit Paris), or visiting family or friends who live in really cool places (like when we went to London a couple of years ago, also with the framily, or to Stuttgart this past summer with my cousins).

This year, we´re incredibly fortunate in that we´ve been able to fit in a third trip in the autumn, with bonus points for fitting both criteria: we have very good friends who live in California, and I was very keen to get to know that area, especially the city of San Francisco.

And let me tell you, it´s been an exceptional week: as well as spending a whole day exploring San Francisco (what a spectacular tram journey we had, up and down those hills), we visited several interesting places in and around San José (each of them in its own way, as Audrey Hepburn would say), and best of all, got to spend time together like in the good old times, catch up with each other, see the "kids" enjoy, celebrate Halloween differently for once, and laugh and laugh and laugh during the whole process.

Photo of a street of San Francisco´s Chinatown, with a group of people walking on the sidewalk at the left of the image (we can only see their backs)

(The best part of it all, as always, is the company. Here we are, walking around Chinatown.)

I´m delighted to have made this trip, to have prioritised (time, energy and budget-wise) this Californian adventure. The shock of coming back to reality this week may be a little tricky, given the jet lag, the weather and the daylight changes, but it´s still a hundred per cent worth it.

In these times we´re living in, with its Instagram posers and its constant FOMO (one day, we´ll have to talk about the paradox of election; I just saw I haven´t written anything on that yet), sometimes it´s very hard to decide how to spend our resources in ways that fulfil us and enrich our lives, instead of leaving us feeling empty and dissatisfied.

And there´s no "one size fits all" answer that we can all use: we each have to find our own answer, and feel free to modify it as time passes and both we and our circumstances change.

What do you personally find most fulfilling? Are you giving that thing the priority and attention it deserves? Or are you simply just doing things out of habit, because it´s comfortable or because everyone else is doing them?

We only make this trip once, and we really should make it count.

Nancy Reagan

Each of us gets to decide what makes our trip count, our life count. Each of us, as Audrey Hepburn would say, in our own way, according to our own priorities. Making each moment count is in our hands.

Thank you, "chavalit@s", both junior and senior, those who could make it in person and those who accompanied us in spirit. Thanks for making this week count.