The Strength to Endure a Difficult Life

This blog post will be different from the rest. It will be different in the sense that I won't be talking about anything technical here. Instead I will talk about my recent trip to Colombia where I got to see my family again after 2 years, the last time being back in the 2019 holiday season beginning of January 2020 shortly before the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was such a good feeling being able to see everyone in good health thankfully again, after the strain this pandemic has left and continues to leave. I even got to meet new family members for the first time! Not only did I take the time to get to know how everyone was doing and help out where I could, I also went and visited some really cool places such as the photo above. Most importantly I wanted to disconnect and recharge, and also give myself some gift from having obtained my MS in Cybersecurity degree while balancing work, and still performing exceptionally as my performance reviews would show, something a former manager was doubtful of me as said at an all hands later congratulating me. :) This trip to Colombia was also enlightening for me, which will surely help me grow as a person so I can obtain a long term goal I have planned.

Recharging to Perform to Succeed

I want to start this section by mentioning a quote from Bruce Lee that ties in with the title of this blog post. Bruce Lee once said "Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one." When I first came across this quote many years ago, right away I liked it. Not only am I a fan of Bruce Lee's movies, but also his philosophy. At first I understood the quote as just saying that no matter what life will be difficult, so don't think so much of how you can make it easy by praying. As someone who practices religion and a firm believer, sometimes we get caught up thinking of how we can make our lives more simpler or easy with less difficulty. While in Colombia, I got to interact with many strangers from all walks of life, some of them coming up to me and others I would come up to them. Discussions would range from how everything is getting more expensive because of inflation, helping to purchase tickets to a soccer game of Deportivo Pereira the city's soccer team, the toll the invierno or winter season has taken on crops, politics due to the upcoming Colombia presidential election, life in the United States compared to Colombia, and most importantly what I was doing unemployed in a foreign country. After some time had passed, I realized that all of these discussions had something in common. Each discussion would begin with how life is difficult in Colombia and more easier in the US because there are more opportunities. As someone who was born in the US and regularly tries to go to Colombia to visit my family, I want to say that this is true to a certain extent. Starting with the economy and value of each country's currency, this is something that one cannot argue. However, just like there are pros and cons to everything in life, there are resources out there, some offered by the government and some even offered by the local municipality. During my discussions I would strongly emphasize how it was not easy getting to where I am at right now and neither was it for my own parents who came to this country with little next to nothing! They worked and spent time with everyone as best as they could, and just lived their lives day by day. There were moments of uncertainty where worries start creeping up, but there were also moments of joy even with the simple things that MANY people choose not to value. This right here is what I tried to let everyone understand. We should not have a negative mindset about the difficulty of the situation that EVERYONE in the world is experiencing right now. It will be easier for some people to adapt and persevere than others and this is ok! But having a negative mindset and complaining won't do us any good! Live in the moment and experience what life has to offer to you by taking in both the negative and positive moments of your life and embracing both of them equally with the intention to keep flowing as best as you can.

A Ubiquitous Passion

Although I wanted to disconnect from everything cyber related, cyber found me. More specifically in my conversations about what my current interests in life are with family, I learned about a cyber related incident from a cousin of mine while in Colombia that impacted locally the city of where I was staying and visiting my family in Pereira. To briefly summarize, there was a tragic landslide that took the lives of 17 people and left many without a home. The day of the landslide, I went and helped as best as I could by buying food and most importantly water for the residents of the barrio La Esneda. Two days later while saying goodbye to my family since I was returning back to the US the next day, my cousin informed me that someone had called his company asking for donations to help the families affected by the landslide. He told me that his manager picked up the phone first and was very uncertain as to what to do. That is when my cousin asked his manager to pass over the phone so they could speak with the individual who called. From there my cousin began to ask various questions to better understand what type of donations the caller was asking for and what entity they were representing. At the end my cousin figured out it was a scam and hung up the phone. The whole reason I am mentioning this is because one it was such a great feeling seeing others, in this case my own cousin practicing security hygiene especially in the midst of turmoil. I could see how his manager felt when they first received the call. Right away a lot can happen and be going through one's mind especially when it's a stranger whom you have never spoken with before. The difficulty in all of this is the added turmoil and the confusion due to not knowing whether there is integrity from those asking for donations. I never ended up asking my cousin if he remembers who the callers were impersonating as, or what exact types of donations they were asking for and the point to send the donations to, but after doing some research on my own, I found a bit of info. In a Twitter post from the Alcaldia de Pereira, I found someone asking a question to clarify whether a Facebook publication was authentic.

Upon opening the link to the Facebook publication, I found one other person asking to confirm whether the publication from this entity Sociedad de Mejoras de Pereira is authentic which were trying to collect funds for those affected by the landslide.

What I also learned is how the bank account number of someone's bank, in this case the entity Sociedad de Mejoras de Pereira, is being used, which is very bad for many reasons. First we will never know whether this entity is authentic nor will we know whether they are correlated to the individual that called the company that my cousin works for. Further research did not lead me to anything. However what we do know is that this publication can be altered with software such as Adobe Acrobat DC by downloading the publication and saving it as an image and from there converting the image to a pdf directly in acrobat. From there one can easily wreak havoc by simply editing the bank account numbers. One would also need to impersonate the entity. This was the similar dilemma that my cousin and his manager faced that thankfully did not escalate to this point and right there and then my cousin took action. The good to this is that social media is a powerful platform to inform ourselves and it's good to see other people be alert on such publications where little to no information exists especially in a time of turmoil.

Recharged and Ready For More Growth

My recent trip to Colombia helped me reflect about everything I have experienced this past year. I had a great time disconnecting and recharging but realized that cybersecurity will just be a part of my life now even when I try to disconnect because it is not only a passion of mine, but ubiquitous. This trip even had me plan additional content for my blog, something I did not want to think of but I could not simply just forget about. Most importantly is how I continue to grow even in the ups and downs of life because that is what our lives are about. Below is a gallery of some photos I took. As always, continue to stay secure and reach out if you have any questions or concerns!