Alejo likes uneven years. He measures the stages of his life by World Cups. He has somehow managed to make Madrid both the city of his birth and his adopted home despite the fact that he only feels at home in the ocean. He is frequently asked to lift heavy boxes to high places. He recently found out he's an engineer. His column "My Dwellings Among the Savages" is about his teenaged years as a Spaniard in Texas.