Jean Galea

Health, Wealth, Relationships, Wisdom

My Favorite Fashion, Sports and Cosmetics Brands

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Over the years, I’ve been experimenting with finding the best brands for different scenarios. I tend to focus on brands that produce natural cosmetics and for clothing those that focus on natural materials like merino wool.

This exercise is important for me because once I know which are my favorite brands I can reduce my options and know that whatever I buy from these brands will fit me well and feel good. Having many options to choose from is a huge time sink for me and one of my main enemies in the quest for high productivity.

Note that much of my wardrobe and products I use are focused around functional elegance, casual and sports. That is 99% of my daily life, so I don’t really own any very elegant wear like suits, shirts etc.

Here’s a list of the clothing brands I love and typically stick to.

Underwear

  • Icebreaker
  • Lululemon
  • Smartwool
  • Polo boxers (for sleeping in)
  • Under Armour/Puma/Columbia for sports

Premium Underwear

  • Zimmerli
  • Hanro
  • Sunspel

Sea Island cotton is the best quality I’ve found.

Sportswear

  • Icebreaker
  • Lululemon
  • Salomon
  • Gore
  • The North Face
  • Acrteryx

I’ve moved away from mass brands like Adidas and Nike as quality has decreased over the years and everybody is using them.

Indoor Wear

I love the feeling of Merino wool, especially when indoors as the loose and comfy style is especially fitting for this purpose.

  • Icebreaker
  • Smartwool

Casual Wear

  • Asket
  • Arket
  • Lestrange
  • Paul Smith
  • CDLP
  • Uniqlo
  • ETQ

Jeans

  • Levi’s

Jackets

  • The North Face
  • Columbia

Footwear

  • Asics & Wilson – Tennis and Padel
  • Nike & ON – casual shoes, football
  • Baldinini
  • Golden Goose
  • Zegna
  • Tod’s
  • Salomon – hiking shoes
  • Timberland – winter boots
  • Ugg – indoor

Caps

  • Zegna

Socks

  • Smartwool
  • Icebreaker
  • Darn Tough
  • Falke
  • Happy Socks
  • Vitalsox
  • Vincere for Beach Tennis

Future List

There are a number of brands that I’ve heard great things about and would like to try out at some point.

A good place to buy luxury items is Farfetch.

Cosmetics

cosmetics for men

Using the right products around the house and for personal hygiene and care is very important. So you can say that every product I own has been carefully selected to make sure there are no harmful chemicals present and that it does what it says. I’ve honed this process over many years, so I wanted to document my process in a few lines here.

I use the following apps and websites for research into ingredients:

These are some of my favorite brands:

This PDF is worth a look at for understanding the basics on product safety and how to pick better products.

Essential Oils

I like using essential oils or blends of them in diffusers while I work. The world of aromatherapy and oils is quite an interesting one, although it can also be quite scammy in terms of claims and products.

When buying essential oils you need to make sure you’re buying the right quality, which means products that are 100% natural. If the price looks too good and it comes from suspicious vendors (looking at the Chinese ones on Amazon especially here) you should look away.

In the United States, companies like Doterra have quite a bad reputation due to their MLM-type structure and outlandish health claims, so be aware of things that are too good to be true.

In Spain, I’ve encountered a few reputable brands:

  • Essenciales – only available from their online store
  • Sisen – high-end brand with excellent info about each oil
  • Phytofrance – very good French brand
  • Pranarom – French brand found in many local shops
  • Terpenic – a Spanish brand

In Barcelona a good shop for essential oils is Arke.

Luggage & Bags

My favorite luggage and bags brands are:

  • Tumi
  • Rimowa
  • Briggs & Riley
  • Travelpro Maxlite
  • Thule
  • The North Face
  • Lipault

Also tried Level8 and Horizn Studioes and they turned out to be typical made in China products that are heavily pushed by Instagram influencers, nothing more. Returned both of them.

Electric Vehicles and Toys

Further reading

Coffee – Why and How I Drink It

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coffee
Growing up in Malta, I used to drink Nescafe instant coffee, which is pretty low-quality stuff, but that’s what was popular at the time. I used to add milk to it and probably go through a whole pack of sugar-loaded Italian biscuits. Not the healthiest point in my life for sure.

Up until my twenties, coffee wasn’t a really big thing for me. I believe it was when I went to live in Chiang Mai that I really got hooked on it. Thailand and Chiang Mai in particular has a very strong coffee culture, and they have amazing coffee and baristas.

I started to educate myself about coffee, and eventually learned that many Italians carry a Moka pot wherever they go for their morning coffee fix. I adopted the habit and the Moka pot became my brewing method of choice for my daily coffees. I also bought a french press around that time, and I use that one when I want a bigger cup of coffee that I can sip on slowly while working.

Here’s my recipe for the moka pot:

  • Use finely ground beans
  • Fill the coffee puck to the brim and shave anything extra off the top, but don’t compress
  • Put boiling or close to boiling water in the water recipient then screw the two parts and put on low fire
  • Leave the lid open so you can monitor extraction
  • Once the coffee is almost fully extracted remove the pot from the fire and use cold water on the bottom part to stop the extraction
  • Serve

The big mistakes I see with this method tend to be the following:

  • Using bad quality beans (typically the supermarket variety)
  • Compressing the ground coffee in the puck
  • Not stopping the extraction in time (if you see frothing and bubbles at the end it’s gone over already)

Brewing coffee is also part of my morning routine:

The brewing of coffee is a meditative process in itself and gets me primed for the structured meditation that comes after it. By using a moka pot and manually grinding the beans I would have previously selected from a local roastery, I’m injecting a bit of art and manual work into the process, and it definitely means more and feels more satisfying to finally drink the brewed shot of coffee while I start my meditation, compared to if I had just used a Nespresso machine.

It’s also a component of my afternoon power nap, which usually happens just after lunch and leaves me feeling brand new and ready to kill it in the second half of the day.

My latest addition is an AeroPress, which is a popular coffee brewing device that is known for its versatility, ease of use, and portability. It consists of two plastic cylinders that fit together to create a vacuum, which forces hot water through a filter and into a chamber where the coffee is brewed.

The AeroPress allows for precise control over the brewing process, including water temperature, grind size, and brewing time, which enables users to experiment with different variables to create a customized cup of coffee. Additionally, its compact size and durable construction make it an ideal option for travel or for use in small spaces.

The AeroPress has become my most used tool for making coffee, and nowadays I typically brew a cold brew and have it available in the fridge to drink over the next two days, which is extremely convenient. For the cold brew, I use the Puck Puck extension for the AeroPress.

Although it’s a simple tool, there are loads of ways to experiment with an AeroPress, so head over to sites like Aeroprecipe or download the Aeromatic app and have some fun.

Of course, I still enjoy a nice espresso at a good coffee shop, and luckily Barcelona has quite a few of those.

Sourcing My Coffee

Here’s where I typically get my coffee from:

Terres de Café

Founded in 2009, Terres de Café offers over 30 specialty coffees in France, sourced from Latin America and Africa, emphasizing environmental and community respect.

The Coffee Hackers

The Coffee Hackers are based in Barcelona, specializing in carefully selected and transported specialty coffee with a variety of flavors and aromas.

D·Origen Coffee Roasters

Costa Blanca-based D·Origen Coffee Roasters focus on selecting and roasting high-quality coffees, known for their specialty coffee production from Finca Barú Black Mountain.

Coffee Timing

Caffeine is one of the most widely used stimulants in the world, but its effects on sleep—particularly deep sleep—are often underestimated. Many people assume they’re unaffected because they can fall asleep after an evening coffee, but what happens beneath the surface is more significant. The quality of sleep, especially the depth of deep sleep, can be heavily compromised even if sleep onset seems normal.

Caffeine has a half-life of about 5 to 6 hours and a quarter-life of 10 to 12 hours, meaning it remains in the body long after its stimulating effects fade. Even moderate caffeine intake later in the day can reduce deep, restorative sleep by up to 30%. Such a reduction in sleep quality can leave the body and brain less recovered, impacting mood, energy, and cognitive performance the next day.

This often leads to a cycle where the individual wakes feeling unrefreshed, reaches for more caffeine to push through the day, and then faces even more difficulty getting quality sleep at night. Sometimes, people turn to alcohol in the evening to relax or fall asleep, which only further fragments sleep and suppresses REM. The combination disrupts the natural sleep-wake rhythm and can erode long-term sleep health.

A simple but effective guideline is to stop consuming caffeine 8 to 10 hours before your regular bedtime. For someone going to bed around 10:30 p.m., this means avoiding caffeine after about 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. Protecting this caffeine-free window helps preserve the depth and continuity of sleep, allowing for better recovery, more energy, and greater clarity the following day.

The Good and Bad News About Coffee

This is a very informative video about coffee, especially if you’re interested in its effects on fitness and performance.

I can drink between 2 and 5 cups of coffee a day, and in general, I think I metabolize the coffee pretty quickly, as it has a very mild effect on me. Having said that, I try to avoid coffees after 5pm in order to prevent the caffeine from having any negative effects on my sleep.

I also have a lot of respect for Dr Huberman, and this is his take on caffeine:

The Best Brompton Resources

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I’m a big fan of Brompton bikes and own several of them. On this page, I’ll be listing a few of my favorite resources and products.

Youtube Channels

Blogs

Maintenance

Books

Modding Shops

chpt3 with accessories

Touring

Top Articles

My Favorite Mods

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Building Muscle – My next Health and Fitness Project

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Over the past 25 years or so, I’ve been practicing sports on a very regular basis. I’ve tried several different sports, with football and cycling being the main ones in my twenties.

Then, in my thirties, padel became my main focus, with other racket sports (beach tennis, tennis, frescobol) complementing it. Cycling was still present, although mainly as a means of transport.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time in gyms too, although never on a consistent and serious basis over a number of years. Over the last 3-4 years, however, I’ve learned a lot about anatomy and proper technique while working with personal trainers during my padel preparation training.

All these activities, together with pretty good genetics, have enabled me to stay in the “above average” section of the population when it comes to fitness.

However, I recently came to the realisation that I have never been fully happy with my body, always missing that extra bit of optimisation and strength.

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How to Deal with Loose Ankle Ligaments

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Doctor checking patients joint flexibility

I was born with hypermobile joints, especially in my knees, ankles, elbows and shoulders.

Hypermobility is a connective tissue condition (usually inherited) in which the body’s collagen is more elastic than the ‘norm’, leading to increased flexibility. For some people, notably musicians, gymnasts, dancers and sports people, this natural flexibility gives a very useful advantage, though it leaves them more prone to injuries such as sprains and dislocations. In others, it can cause clumsiness, lack of spatial awareness and joint pain.

If I’m not making any conscious effort to stand differently, my knees will hyperextend backward and my ankles will cave inwards.

knee joint hypermobility

An example of knee hypermobility – quite similar to my case.

It’s very easy for me to twist my ankles outwards if I’m walking on uneven terrains or during certain sports like football, where the grass provides a cushioned and slightly unstable landing pad for the feet. I’ve been aware of this condition for many years, but during the last year or so I’ve been struggling with pain around the right ankle especially. The pain intensifies after I play padel or tennis, and can linger for months unless I stop playing for a month or two.

I’ve decided to see what I can do to deal with this condition, and in this post, I’ll be documenting my journey. The start date is November 2020.

Note that if you have just injured your ankle, the best thing to do is to follow the RICE methodology and apply heat or ice as necessary, and see a specialist. You might eventually also use EMS to treat the injury.

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Jean Galea

Investor | Dad | Global Citizen | Athlete