Some of you know I am in Buenos Aires right now. I’ve been here for almost a week and I wanted to do a little summary of my thoughts so far. I promise you photos but you have to read or scroll to the very bottom! Do as you please, I won’t judge.

Buenos Aires

I’ve wanted to come here for sometime now. There are many reasons but the top three are weather, food and music. Funny enough, one of my favorite tracks is titled Buenos Aires.

Now that I am landed and settled in, here are some thoughts.

BIG BIG BIG

Do you remember those Lotto649 commercials? The one I am thinking of is similar to this but not as old.

The thing that strikes me right away is that this is a big city! If you know me, I hate big cities and lots of people. Not really knowing the scale of this city, I booked a cheaper AirBnB apartment outside of the downtown area for the first week to get situated. This would give me some time to choose the proper neighbourhood I wanted to stay in for the rest of my time in BA.

I thought it was within walking distance to most neighbourhoods. Boy was I wrong! Luckly the placed I booked is close to the Subte. The subway is hella cheap, about $.75 per ride and has 4 different lines with good connections. So getting anywhere in the city is easy and cheap.

One interesting thing that I’ve seen on the Subway is people who are trying to sell you stuff. They have a box of items like pens, notepads, used playing cards and gum. They will walk by everyone on the subway and drop whatever item their selling in your lap. If you want it, you get your cash out and pay the person before the next stop. I’m surprised the items are sold as much as they are. Surely there has to be better items you can sale on the subway? “What about some aqua because it’s a muggy 32 degrees down here” my inner self is saying. Anyways, it’s interesting and wonder if other cities have this happen on their subways.

Food

I love food. I love all types of food including beef and pasta. Well, Argentina has plenty of that and I have had only a couple meals out at nice restaurants. The first place was Las Cabres in Palermo. This was the first night I got here. I met up with a friend of my squash pro Gustavo, Pablo who has been great so far.

Las Cabras had a great patio that was quiet when we walked by around 8:00 PM to grab a drink somewhere close by. We choose Negroni right across the street for a couple of happy hours drinks. Yeah, happy hour starts at 8 PM and goes to 10 PM.

Las Carbes started to fill up really fast after we sat down at Negroni. By the time we walked over to see about getting a table at 10, I didn’t think we’d get one. But we found a spot on the patio right away. It was a great spot as the patio had a large tree and dim lighting. I love sitting outside late at night when it’s warm out.

The meal was pretty good. We had a couple of Enpanada’s to start. I will eat many Enpanada’s on this trip. We then had some Chorizo which was ok but surprisingly more sweet than spicy. Another type of sausage we had I think was Morcilla. The inside was very soft and reminded me of stuffing in a way. The meal was topped off with ribs which were pretty average actually. They were not drenched in sauce and instead they gave us a side of some home made sauce which was pretty bland too.

The other night Pablo and myself went out was to a place on Baez Street called El Estanciero in Belgrano which is a neighbourhood just north of Palermo. Like Palmero though, this area has some great restaurants and the same vibe. El Estanciero was a mix of Italian and carnes or beef. We had some gnocchi and veal Milanese. The veal Milanese was topped with ham, mozza cheese and some tomato sauce. It reminded me a lot of Chicken Parmesan and was really good.

The grocery stores are pretty weak though. Especially when it comes to their produce. Everything seems to have been sitting on the shelf for a week two long. Also, they don’t store eggs in refrigerators at any grocery store.

Mom warned me about their food preparation and how it was much different. She bought some Dukaral and I was reluctant to take but I did. Her persistence and motherly care was smart as I am needing it! Without getting graphic, my stomach is not happy with the food down here dispute that it tastes good.

Spanish

A few friends have been down here and didn’t mention much about needing to speak a lot of Spanish. Er,in and Sulley leant me their Rosetta Stone Spanish version. It’s been slow going and I am doing my best picking up what I can from everyone I talk to down here who knows english.

Regardless there is less english spoken here. I don’t know why I expected to hear locals speak in English. I was also expecting to be able to go into a restaurant or grocery store and try to communicate in English. But that hasn’t been the case.

This is holding me back a bit from heading South to Bariloche which looks a lot like Swiss town. I don’t want to go to an area which was little English spoken and try to survive for a week by using sign language!

But I have done it before with Sulley on our Europe travels and on my own when I cruised around Portugal for a few days after a golf trip in 2008.

So I think I will head down there in a week to escape the warm weather and large city BA has offered up.

Progressive House

One of my main reasons for coming here was because of the music. I’m a big deep and progressive house fan. Buenos Aires and Argentina is home to many producers and DJ’s I love. Also, many of my favortite international DJ’s play here frequently. I’m sad to see local Hernan Cattaneo, Guy J from Isreal, Henry Saiz from Spain and Eelke Kleijn from Holland are not going to be here when I am. They are the DJ’s I wanted to see most.

But there is still some other DJ’s I listen to playing here. This Friday Cid INC from Finland is here and John Digweed from the UK is playing Saturday with an opening set from local Martin Garcia.

I’m going to check those shows out then make the trek down to Bariloche next Tuesday.

Work

Since I have been here I have done a fair bit of work for my clients. Partly because I haven’t been one to really venture out of this neighbourhood that I have been in. It’s not the nicest nor is there much too do. But it’s also to prove that I can work while resisting the temptation to treat this like a holiday and to relax or go exploring BA.

I’ve been able to actually to grow the business too. As of this writing I have three verbal agreements for new clients! Closing business abroad is pretty damn cool and something I wasn’t expecting.

I remember reading the chapter from the Four Hour Work Week in which Tim Ferriss talks about his first work vacation and how nervous he was. In the end things all worked out. Seems like that way for me and when you have the ability to connect to the internet, you can work from anywhere and communicate with anyone.

Although I may have a few extra minutes of my travel plan from. But it’s the cost of doing business and I will gladly pay Bell Mobility more money because we all know they need it!

Tom Doak & The Jockey Club

Originally I was going to bring my golf clubs and try to play. South America and Argentina are not hot beds for golf and there were only a few courses I wanted to play. In my research I contacted a golf architect Randy Thompson from Chile who suggested some places and has been a great help for me outside of golf courses.

Anyways, I asked him if we could connect if I made it to Santiago. He told me he was going to be doing a two week South American tour with one of my favorite architects Tom Doak. I’ve played three Doak courses and loved them all.

In conversations with Randy, he invited me to visit The Jockey Club with Tom and himself. The Jockey Club was designed in the 1930’s by Alistair Mackezine, the godfather or golf course architect and the man behind Augusta National and Royal Melbourne. I have looked at the Golf Club Atlas course profile of Jockey Club probably 50 times.

Obviously I jumped at the chance to go on this tour of a great course with Tom Doak! Randy wasn’t going to tell Tom though which could and was a bit awkward!

I showed up at the holiday yesterday morning at 8:00 AM and were were going to get breakfast and go from there. I figured this would be where I’d be introduced to Tom and Randy would tell him I am tagging along. When I got to their hotel lobby, Randy was there by himself and we chatted for a bit. Then we went up for breakfast. Tom had left to his room though. So we ate breakfast and when finished Randy went up to his room to grab some things. I went down to the lobby and saw Tom at the front desk.

So I sit down and so does Tom a few minutes later. I pull out of my phone and look busy. Since Randy hadn’t told him yet, I felt odd thinking about introducing myself and saw I am tagging along. We both sat there for a few minutes.

Finally Randy comes down but he doesn’t introduce me to Tom! And he didn’t until we were leaving out the door.

We shake hands and I say to Tom “Nice meeting, you don’t mind if I tag along?”. He says it’s fine and we’re off. I didn’t interact much with him as I didn’t want to come off as a fan boy and ask a bunch of questions. I interacted with the others who were on the tour though which was great to share some insights and love for classic golf architecture.

It was all a little awkward with Tom in the morning but in the end the tour was a great and I really hope to play the course as it looks like a lot of fun. Fairly wide open off the tee, a lot of long par 3’s and 4’s with some killer green complexes.

Photo Time

One thing you might not know about me is that photos don’t really mean much to me. I have never been one to take many photos on vacations. Even when I do I rarely look back at them. I always remember my trips and the many amazing sights I saw as they have been ingrained in my memory forever. Pictures just don’t do being their physically any justice.

With that said, he’s a small batch of BA.

I’m not one for anniversaries but it’s been a little over a year since I quit my day job. I left that job to focus my effort full time on my Local search engine optimization (SEO) business. This has proved to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

During the last year my life has improved in so many areas. I was recently out having a few beers with Aidan Henry, who like me started off doing local SEO in Victoria and now owns Brink Events, and we talked a lot about working for ourselves and the freedom of owning a business.

Our meet-up and chat sparked me to write this post as a reminder. It’s a reminder to myself that I never want to return the corporate world. So if things get bad or I’m feeling down, I want to be able to read this post and remind myself to grind through. It’s a reminder to do whatever it takes because working for myself and having full control over my life is the so important to my health and well being.

The Journey

This journey of freedom started for me back in 2008. At that time friend who I met through DJ’ing and I started talking about life and what we wanted to do. It turned out a lot of the things involved soaking up as many cultures as we could and enjoying things like golf, surfing and adventures. We wanted to travel for extended periods of time and to do it now, not when we were retired and had plenty of free time.

The corporate world wouldn’t allow this dream life though. Two weeks of holidays is all you get until you work five whole years for a company then they give you an extra week. But no one in their right mind would take all three weeks at once and work the remaining 49. It was evident we’d have to work for ourselves to make this dream life happen.

Something else made me want to achieve this dream life now.

I had lost my brother and father a few years prior and that hit me hard. It made think about life. I had always imagined myself growing older and my family always being there. All of the sudden the loss of my brother and father made me realize that there are no guarantees in life.

There is no guarantee I’ll live to my retirement. Now you might be thinking this is a negative thought process. To me, it’s more of a seize the moment thought process.

Too many people say to themselves “I’ve always wanted to do that but I don’t….”. You can finish that sentence with a load of excuses. Some justified. Some not.

What I am getting at is these people are letting life and all the amazing things they want to experience pass them by. I don’t want to be one of them.

I didn’t want to be one of them when I started this journey. But I had no idea how to make this happen. I first started a website called Golf Instruction Guy. My idea was to make money off the site through paid video tips and online lessons.

It failed.

I took a job on commission with a member from the golf course I worked out. I was to create and sell golf holiday packages. This was going to be the best job every as I would go on the trips and give instruction.

None of the trips sold and I made no money. I still thought we could market the packages through the internet but the guy I worked with wasn’t on board.

So I started Peerless Golf. My strategy was to blog about golf tips like I did on Golf Instruction Guy and build awareness around the my golf trips. It didn’t work out well as the people searching for golf tips online didn’t have the cash to go on expensive golf holidays.

Peerless Golf taught me a lot about SEO however as I relied solely on that for traffic. It didn’t matter though as I still failed and needed a job to make my dream life come true.

Right In Front Of My Nose

It was late 2011 and I dabbled with a few ideas for affiliate marketing websites. But I was wasting my time and making no money. This job that was going to launch my dream life and give me personal freedom was right in front of my nose. I just couldn’t smell it.

My friend who I had the life talk about with back in 2008 pointed out the obvious. I know a lot about SEO. I know a lot of business owners. I am very likeable.

With those three things he told me to start selling SEO to local small business owners. It made total sense as I had learnt so much about SEO over the years.

So I started Meaningful Marketing in April 2012. But I was reluctant to talk about SEO or sell SEO services. Why?

I had just read one of the best marketing books ever called The Next Evolution Of Marketing. It opened my eyes to a world of marketing that connected more to humans. I wanted to and still do want to build and agency that focuses on that principal.

But as a another friend suggested, companies have to evolve. She said that I should start with SEO and build towards being this agency. And so I did and in April of 2013 I focused Meaningful Marketing’s content and keywords towards Victoria and SEO. Within three months my site was ranking at the top and I had 6 clients by November.

The clients continued to come and in January of last year, I said enough to my full time job.

So here I am. One year later looking back and how much I’ve enjoyed getting up whenever I want, working whenever I want, from wherever I want and being able to go where ever I want.

My plan is to head down to Buenos Aires in 6 weeks for a month or two. I want to enjoy warm weather, meat, wine and to see many of my favourite DJ’s while I am there.

I wouldn’t be afford that opportunity if it wasn’t for the all the serious of events that I’ve talked about in this post. And I want this all to serve as a reminder that I don’t want this freedom to end.

I just got back from Las Vegas yesterday and I still get over what an amazing time I had. For someone who had been there three times in an eight month stretch, I hadn’t been since 2009.

One of the reasons was I tired of it. The last time I was there it was quiet and the energy of place was flat. This time around that wasn’t the case. Despite it being the week before US Thanksgiving, it was packed.

My Golf Peeps

There was a big crew of golfers down there for the Vegas Baby Pro-Am and many of them members at my home course Victoria Golf Club. I got an invite back in July and jumped on it right away as I knew the group was going to fun. Well, I had more laughs that I’ve ever had on a golf course over the course of the three rounds.

That was just the start of the fun I had. A few of the members who I’ve played regular with over the years were my crew for dinners and getting rides to the course. I shared even more laughs with them at dinner and in the car on our way to the course. Many of the laughs where due to things that I cannot mention but I laughed so hard all week.

Spreading The Vibes

Overall, it was a really amazing experience. Everyone I talked to whether I knew them or not was so positive. The vibes were being spread all over. It reminds of this highly underrated late 90’s hip hop track from Canadian group the Rascalz featuring Barrington Levy.

Here are the lyrics for Levy’s course:

“In New York they wants me
And I’m gonna be there
Van-city’s calling
And I’m gonna be there
In T-Dot, they wants me
And I’m gonna be there, spreading the vibes
All over the world”

My mother and I have talked a lot of the last few years about people’s energy and vibrations. It’s amazing when our energy and vibrations are positive what we attract. That’s why I felt that no matter what I did down there was positive. There wasn’t one negative interaction. I was attracting positive ones towards me.

Another thing that I noticed is I felt a lot of love. Over the years I’ve noticed I tend to keep my feelings in. Being down there though I told a few people how much I appreciated having them in life. I even texted an old friend and caught him off guard. But it was because I never had told him how thankful I was. This is something I will be doing more of now that I am back home.

For those that know me in Victoria BC, they know I love house music. Particularly deep house, tech house and progressive house. I’m very active on Soundcloud sharing some of my favourite tracks and productions.

In 2003 my love for House and Trance pushed me to buying turntables and loads in vinyls. I started to create mixes and they turned out pretty good.

Some 11 years later I still like to think I can mix. Instead of turntables and vinyls it’s software and mp3’s! This is fine by me as it’s much cheaper to produce a mix.

This is my mix for 2014. Click here to download my mix from last year.

My very first mix was titled Soul Good and felt the title gave off a pretty good idea of what the mix was about, uplifting melodies and bumping basslines. Granted it was Trance and my last few mixes have been house, you can still come to expect the same feel and vibe from all my mixes.

Joca – Soul Good 3.0

Soul Good 3.0 is a little different from my previous house mixes. In a way, this mix reminds me of a valley. It’s upbeat at the beginning then switches to more deeper and darker sounds and finishes off on a positive note. A lot of my other mixes simply went from uplifting to dark or vice versa. Not this one.

It’s jammed with lots of chilled out deep house that still makes you want to move your body with it’s grooving basslines.

Another staple in this mix is vocal samples. Almost all tracks have some sort of vocal sample which is rare for my mixes.

Lastly, I normally finish my mixes with uplifting progressive house but stayed away from that this time around. I’ve done it too much before. Instead I stuck with deeper house all the way through.

Enjoy the mix and here’s a tracklisting if you happen to stumble upon a track you like and want to hear more from the producer or label.

Click here for a direct download of the mix.

Tracklisting

1 – Paul Hazendonk ft Patchy – Hazy Echoes [Manual Music]
2 – David Kassi – Things You Do [Voltaire Music]
3 – Death On The Balcony – Seasons Of Nature [Suol]
4 – Juan Deminicis – Feel [Lost & Found]
5 – Henry Saiz ft Cornelia – Fill Me Up (Dake Remix) [Natura Sonoris]
6 – Eelke Kleijn – Lovely Sweet Divine [Eskimo Recordings]
7 – Olivier Weiter – Angelus [Parquet Recordings]
8 – Booka Shade ft Frizt Helder – Love Drug (Mihai Popoviciu Remix) [Blaufield]
9 – Gorje Hewek – Voltiger [Blended Music]
10 – Tale Of Us – Obscure Promises [Free Download]
11 – Kollektiv Turmstrasse – Last Day (David August Revision) [Diynamic]
12 – Matthew Dekay – Time Lapse [Maeve]
13 – Yoko Duo – Kept On Walking (Dave DK Manchester Super Jam) [Fauxpas]
14 – Moby & Skylar Grey – The Last Day (Chymera Remix) [Little Idiot]
15 – Paul Hazendonk ft Alice Rose – In The Dark (Darin Epsilon Remix) [Manual Music]
16 – Nuernberg & Nathalie Claude – Leaves Falling (Mario Basanov Remix) [Cr2 Recordings]
17 – Chopstick & Johnjon ‘Dreading The Light’ (Frankey & Sandrino remix) [Free Download]
18 – Henry Saiz – I Can Feel It Coming [Last Night On Earth]
19 – Darin Epsilon – Triad [Re*Brand]
20 – Choir Of Young Believers – Hallow Talk (Jody Wisternoff, Lane8 and James Grant Remix) [Anjunadeep]
21 – Circulation – Turquoise (Guy J Remix) [Mesmeric]

Lately I have been losing my focus ever so slightly on the roads. At 32, I’ve been driving for pretty much half of my life. I grew up in Qualicum Beach and if you have ever been there, there isn’t a lot of traffic to worry about. The next biggest city I drove in until I move down to Victoria was Nanaimo. But I would only ever drive through it.

Since living in Victoria I haven’t had many close calls on the road. The one accident I was in took place in a cab about 8 years ago. I had another close call but was lucky to escape when another driver ran a red light just as we were entering the intersection. I should add that I slowly have run into two peoples rear bumpers. But those happened almost ten years ago.

But as I said, lately I’ve been losing my focus on the road and having more close calls. I’m really starting to think I need to search for Victoria driving schools and get some lessons. A few months back I just got back from Argentina and hadn’t driven in a couple months. I forget to should check and almost side swiped someone.

Then just yesterday I was at an intersection waiting for the light to go green. There was a car to my left waiting to turn left. Before either light went green I heard Ambulance sirens. I wanted to get out of the way and hear where they were coming from. So when the car to my left started to move and enter the intersection, I crept out into the intersection to see where the ambulance was coming from. The light was red though and the cars on the other side had an advanced green. So as I slowly creeping through the intersection worried about the ambulance, my light was red. I was pretty much half way though when I realized. Thankfully the car turning left from the other side was worried about the ambulance too and hadn’t turned. They then noticed me half way though the intersection and let me go.

When I noticed the light was red I felt so embarrassed and damn lucky that the other car noticed this and we didn’t have a collision. There’s been an angel looking out for me these days and I almost feel like a cat with 9 lives on the road with some of these close calls. I am really worried that something bad is going to happen and I’ll need to visit my client Westshore Driving School for some lessons and to get me paying attention on the road again.

 

It’s been ten years since I got inspired and purchased decks and a mixer. At that time I was a trance addict. Heck, I was even on a discussion forum called TranceAddict.com!

But as I have grown older, the bpm’s have slowed down. What continues to dominate my mixes is melodies. It’s my substitute for lyrics and why I think electronic music is really easy to understand.

Although I haven’t played a live set in over four years, I still like to throw mixes together whenever I hear a lot of quality music coming out. And there is a lot of quality music coming out.

So here we are. Ten years later. My first mix was titled Joca – Soul Good. I still like that name. Hence the reason for calling this mix Soul Good 2.0.

I want these tracks and the way I’ve laid them out to make your soul feel good.

Enjoy and please share to anyone you think might enjoy!

Click here to download.

Tracklisting

1) Navar – Take It Back [Outside the Box]
2) Dusky & Janai – It’s Not Enough [Anjunadeep]
3) Paul Hazendonk – Sunburnt (Mehmet Akar Remix) [Manual Music]
4) Sebastian Davidson – Homecoming [Nightbird Music]
5) Chaim – Orion Skies [Supplement Facts]
6) Mario Basanov – Slip Away (Daniel Bortz Remix) [Moodmusic]
7) Toky – About You (Hot Since 82’ Remix) [Noir Music 2]
8) Benedetto & Farina – Fair Shakin’ World ft Pete Josef (Oliver Schories Remix) [WHO Lab]
9) Youri Donatz – Acoc Aloc (Manuel Tur Remix) [Monique Musique]
10) Juan Deminicis – Lost On Your Skin [Outside The Box]
11) Marvin Gaye – If This World (Simon Garcia’s Private Dubtherapy Remix) [Free Download]
12) Marc Poppcke & Max Von Valentiner – Never Go Back (Santiago Garcia Remix) [Crossfrontier Audio]
13) Progress Inn – Fly Love [Vapour Recordings]
14) Darin Epsilon presents Eventide – Cosmic Discovery (Kastis Torrau & Arnas D Remix) [Perspectives Digital]
15) MUUI – Confetti In Her Hair (Luis Junior Remix) [Lowbit]
16) Guy J – Mercury [Tronic]
17) Li-Polymer – Flight To Barcelona (Andy King Remix) [Balkan Collection]
18)Unisol – Hope [Sudbeat Music]
19) Smak – In The Beginning (Praveen Achary Remix) [Stripped Recordings]
20) Cid Inc. – Divine (Hernan Cattaneo & Soundexile Remix) [Flow Vinyl]
21) Cid Inc. – The Fog (Kassey Voorn Vintage Interpretation) [Futureform Music]