The little tray

Of the many differences between Europe and Colombia, there are a few that make no sense to me, regardless of how many elaborate explanations I try to devise. Today I want to complain about one of them: the little money tray.

It turns out that when you want to pay something (in the supermarket, a little shop, the university canteen) you're not supposed to hand in the money to the cashier: you're supposed to leave it in a little tray for him/her to take it. If you are to receive some change, the person will put it in the tray and you're supposed to pick it from there.

In Colombia using such a tray would be surely out of the question: if I want to pay something and I simply leave the money next to the cashier, he or she would have every reason to be upset. Indeed: in our culture anyone would find offensive (or disrespectful) the act of forcing the other to pick up the money from some surface when you could have given it to his/hand with a similar effort.

I guess that the main motivation of the tray is to keep money transactions as impersonal and cold as possible. Perhaps accidentally touching the customer when giving back the change is a bad corporate habit. Or perhaps the little tray is to represent the fact that the cashier respects the customer so much that he/she is not allowed to hand in the money. Who knows.

My main problem lies on the fact that I am extremely clumsy when picking up little coins in a rush. So, if the little tray's purpose was to speed up transactions, they failed with me. And I am pretty sure I am not the only clumsy one around.

A tropical Bilderberg

You might have heard of the Bilderberg Group, an exclusive club of politicians, kings, queens, bankers and businessman that gathers together annually to discuss the general situation of the world. Their meetings --which have taken place since 1954-- are held in top-secret circumstances to encourage open discussion, or so the organizers say. The mystery associated to the group have made conspiracy lovers believe that every aspect of the destiny of the world is decided in those meetings. The group, they say, represents pure capitalism plotting world domination. Domination in the form of a "New Order" in which we all are slaves of big corporations and banks. More moderate analysts consider the Bilderberg group a special academic exercise, a "harmless forum" where many issues are discussed.

You might be surprised to learn that Southamerica has its own version of the Bilderberg group. Indeed, some weeks a selected group of Southamerican billionaires got together for some sort of summit in Cartagena, Colombia. The official purpose of the meeting was to discuss the best management strategies in times of global crisis. It seems the thing was more like a tropical Bilderberg: there was much less mystery and much more press coverage. No surprise here: Southamerican rich people surely understand that having money makes little sense if you don't make sure everyone knows you're rich.

And that's what our tropical billionaires did. Complete rich families from Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Venezuela attended. Rich from Colombia also attended: they made the sacrifice of leaving their lofts in NYC to spend some days in Colombia and host their friends. They all arrived in their private jets; Cartagena's little airport couldn't host all of them. The selection of Cartagena was certainly not random: a historic city, with nice weather and exotic private islands was the perfect setting. You must know that Cartagena is probably one of the most Colombian cities in Colombia: a city where extremely poor people challenge everyday the definition of misery. In Cartagena the poor and rich live so close to each other that is shocking. Poor and rich have learned to survive by systematically denying the existence of the other: after all, from the rich perspective poor ones are disgusting, scare the tourists, and live out of the law; from the poor perspective, rich ones represent the frustration of a decent life their eyes will never see.

So, Cartagena was the perfect place for restoring the millionaire self-esteem of those who lost some positions in the Forbes ranking precisely that week. Southamerican millionaires walked along the historical center of the city, which was suitably cleaned, emptied and secured for their relax. At the end of the event, Colombian millionaire Luis C. Sarmiento read a rather ridiculous statement on behalf of all attendees: they had concluded that the best way of dealing with the crisis was not firing people from their companies. Nonsense: they are already doing it! It was then clear than the tropical Bildenberg has still much to learn from the original Bilderberg: the secrecy of the event is essential to avoid stupidity leaks.

This week's catchy song (14)

The Music is a British band, which I really don't know how to describe; a rough approximation would be 'electronic disco rock'. This week I am offering you the first song I heard from them, Take the long road and walk it. I really like the song, and the associated video. Moreover, the 2002 album in which the song is included is very consistent, and I can recommend it. Unfortunately, in the following two albums they ran out of imagination and their music became rather dull.

So, please enjoy Take the long road and walk it:

Heart

The other day I was reading some forum (or some blog comment, I can't recall) in which the latest U2 album was being discussed. One of the comments expressed more or less the following: 

U2 is the living proof that you don't need great performers to produce great rock songs. Indeed, if you pay attention, Bono doesn't have a great voice, The Edge would be nothing without all the machines and effects he uses, and the drums and bass are only correct. After all, rock is all about attitude.

This duality between innate talent and acquired skills pervades many facets of human life. The immediate examples that come to my mind are soccer players and researchers. Some are talented because they're were born like that; being brilliant is natural (or even instinctive) for them. Think of Maradona here. Others, in contrast, try to compensate the lack of innate talent with additional doses of sacrifice, discipline, or even leadership. Think of Gattuso here. In both cases, our human nature constantly pushes us to the unavoidable search for equilibrium. 

I remembered the comment on U2 while talking with a former supervisor of mine about potential PhD students. Doing a PhD is a serious decision, as it requires a lot of personal compromise. A special sacrifice most likely you haven't faced before. There's no formula or pattern to follow for doing a PhD; after all, it's research: you'll be dealing with issues that no one else has addressed before, so what you ignore is usually much more than what you know for sure. This applies both for the supervisor and the student; each of them doesn't really know what to expect from the other. 

My former supervisor has a theory on potential PhD students: to do a PhD you need something that goes well beyond GPAs and mechanical knowledge acqusition; in his view, above all things, PhD students must have what he generically calls their heart: a rare mix of independence, self-confidence, enthusiasm, audacy, stubborness, curiosity, sacrifice, and passion. As many other intangibles in life, a student's heart can't be easily defined but you can tell for sure when you see it. 

Being one of those endowed with a rather modest amount of innate talent, I can only but agree with this way of understanding what it takes to do research. Although this could well apply to many scenarios in life, when doing research it is especially evident that you need a resiliant heart. Indeed, since doing a PhD is such a unique experience (especially if you go abroad for that) you will need to use your heart in those (frequent) moments in which your academic side has run out of answers. In any case, it could help to think the following: if Bono can sing as wholeheartedly as he does with his limited voice, a good student with the proper amount of heart should succeed in that road to oblivion also known as scientific research.

Poor little bastard

I have something against exceptional kids. I guess it has to do with some very deep envy. As a result, I hate hearing about lovable, unusually-talented young actors such as Haley Joel Osment or, more recently, Dakota Fanning. (Perhaps the only exception is Doogie Howser, who indeed I like, perhaps because I am sure Doogie's a fictional character while I am not). The negative feeling is accentuated when I hear of kids mastering outstanding skills in areas in which I really wish I was more talented, such as music or science; I can't stand hearing of, for instance, 6 year-old violinists/pianists/composers, or of 30 year-old mathematicians winning Field medals.

I guess that comparing yourself against concrete examples of (intellectual) superiority is simply overwhelming. Often, when I hear of such examples my initial reaction is rather simplistic and things such as "well, I actually had a childhood and it was kinda fun" come to my mind; then, when I realize the shallowness of my argument, I end up appealing to my theory of "one is never the extreme of things", which I already mentioned here. In any case, I think there's a constant excitement in understanding (and living with the fact) that one's just plain normal, and that such a condition comes with pros and cons.

Having said that, I am most happy to report I found the case of an exceptional kid I do not envy at all: a child prodigy in politics. I am taking about Jonathan Krohn, a 13 year-old kid who wrote a book called Define Conservatism. Poor little bastard. Instead of doing normal stuff American kids do at age 13 (say, being part of a criminal gang, or experimenting with alcohol, drugs, sex and/or their combinations) this little guy chose to wrote a book and to follow McCain's campaign. Even weirder, Jonathan got into politics at the age of six (!). He now gives brief addresses in conservative committees; you can see Jonathan in action here.

This week's catchy song (13)

This week I offer you a song from the latest U2 album, No Line in the Horizon. Quite frankly, the album is very average for U2: of the eleven songs, only three or four are indeed good, the rest is boring at best. Of course, what's "average" for U2 might be simply out of the question for most bands, but it's unavoidable to feel a bit disappointed. (You can hear the whole album in U2's official site.)

First I intended to offer you Breathe, the best song in the album, but then I realized that most likely that's the second single of the album, so you will hear it everywhere in the coming weeks. So, here's another good song, White as Snow. Enjoy:

Umarells and Sdauras

In my neighborhood in Bologna I live surrounded by old people. I often feel like living in a retirement place, one without boundaries or nurses. I don't think there's something special about my neighborhood; it is simply a bit outside of the city center, so I guess other places in Italy and Europe also have a similar proportion of old people. I find it both overwhelming and weird. Very weird. When I leave my building in the morning, I found them everywhere, wandering around in the streets, without an evident purpose.

In the dialect of Bologna, old guys are called umarells and old ladies are called sdauras. Not too many in Bologna know and use these words; it seems it's an old, unused dialect. Umarells in my neighborhood spend their days getting drunk at one of the several bars next to the main entrance of my building. One of such bars is ironically called Bar dei Ragazzi. At night, the combination of umarells and alcohol makes the street in front of my building an unpleasant place for women to pass by. As for sdauras, you can easily find lots of them at the supermarket on Saturdays. They usually dress up very elegantly, even to go to the supermarket or to simply walk around the neighborhood. I appreciate that demonstration of dignity and self-respect; too bad sometimes their make up and clothes are too evident in revealing the decade in which they were young.

All of this is in sharp contrast with Colombia, a place full of youth and kids --perhaps too many kids. Seeing a baby or a kid in my neighborhood it's quite an unusual event. There's something in old Italians that's very different from old Colombians. It's hard to explain: somehow old Italians look more active and alert; I wonder if seeing a war and living the postwar gave them a different sense of appreciation of life. In Colombia, when people arrive to retirement age, most of them enter into a 'hibernation mode' and become way less active, and more dependent of others, or at least that's my impression. Here old people seem more active and responsible and independent than most youngsters; it's so cool to see them riding their bikes all around. Their dignity is both evident and admirable. In these times of crisis and unemployment, I am sure their low ---but guaranteed--- incomes are essential to support and lead their families.

[You might like to have a look at the (photo) blog devoted to Umarells in Bologna (in Italian).]