This week's catchy song (7)

A Camp is some sort of side project of The Cardigans vocalist Nina Persson. They have a 2001 self-titled album (which I recommend), and this year they're releasing their second one, called Colonia. Overall, I find A Camp's music highly enjoyable.

The suggestion for this week is Chinatown, a song extracted from Colonia. Enjoy:

On Happiness

If you look at the World Database of Happiness, created by Dr Ruut Veenhoven, you will be surprised to find out that at the top of the ranking by nations, along with three very serious countries (Iceland, Denmark, Switzerland) there is Colombia. In fact, to the question "How much people enjoy their life-as-a-whole on scale 0 to 10" one finds:

Iceland 8,5
Denmark 8,4
Colombia 8,1
Switzerland 8,1

[In case you're curious: the study says that people in the USA is happier than people in France and Italy (7.0 vs 6.5 and 6.8, resp.), and that people in Tanzania, Togo and Belarus (3.2, 4.1, and 4.2, resp) are not that happy.]

The existence of this kind of 'happiness rankings' as well as the good position Colombia has on most of  them is not new for the average Colombian. In the popular culture, there's this weird idea that "there is no better place in the world to live than Colombia" closely related to other absurd nationalist myths (which include Colombia has the "best coffee in the world", "the second most beautiful national anthem in the world" and that we speak "the best Spanish in latinamerica"). Regardless of the absurdity underlying the myths, I was always curious on why we Colombians consider ourselves very happy. It seemed very interesting to me that more than 50 years of war, growing levels of poverty and generalized violence, and the weakening of the political and democratic structures, have had no influence on "subjective appreciation of life", which is the fancy term Dr Veenhoven uses for happiness.

As an answer to that, I have just read about one of the most interesting scientific study in weeks. It provides initial hypothesis on why Colombians consider themselves happy (click here for a link to a summary of the study, in Spanish). Here I will quickly comment on the five explanations of such a relevant study.

First Explanation: The Latin Character. This has to do with the fact that because of the Latin personality, in the case of an interview or poll, a Colombian will hardly say something different from what the interviewer wants to hear, or won't reveal something (s)he considers secret. This way, in the event of a poll on 'happiness', it is unlikely for a Colombian to admit that (s)he's 'less than happy' even if that is the case. 

Second Explanation: Tight Social Networking. As in other countries, the idea of family is extremely important in the Colombian society, and constitutes the most basic 'social network' for anyone. Then you have your neighbors, your in-laws, your coworkers, people in your church, etc. It seems that the strong relationships people create with people in their 'adjacent networks' help people to feel better about their lives, they feel somehow protected. This ends up improving the overall perception of happiness.

Experts indicate that relying on the 'surrounding collective' as a strategy to deal with life is easier to observe in people with low incomes, as social networks change or disappear as people 'go up' in the social scale. If you consider that more than 50% of the Colombian population is 'poor' (according to international standards) then it's not surprising that social networks have such an influence on overall happiness.

Third Explanation: Lack of Ambition. This one is very simple: it has been determined that Colombian people have goals or objectives for life that are not very ambitious. So, when people reach their not-so-ambitious goals, they perceive a degree of satisfaction that is different from the one reached by those who have more ambitious objectives in life. This has a lot to do with the fact that Colombians survive to very difficult life conditions: for an average family it is then very hard to think beyond any medium-term goals. Example: nowadays people can only find fixed-term jobs, so long-term objectives (say, buying a house or sending kids to the university) are not even considered. Since expectations are not that high, the resulting frustration is less and you feel more satisfied with life.

The last two explanations are only initial hypothesis, which according to the experts, pose research problems in themselves:

Fourth Explanation: We Are Conformist. The study suggests that for people 'happiness' is not related to the material things they can buy and/or their incomes. People simply manage to be happy with the available means. This is a delicate conjecture and needs further research, as a stupid government could take this as an excuse to let things unchanged.

Fifth Explanation: Achievements in a Negative Environment. This has to do with the third explanation above. The study says that in a difficult (poor, violent) environment, small achievements are given a higher value. Examples of 'small achievements' include: learning to read and to write, to finish high school, to buy a new TV (this is very relative). Underlying this 'twisted valuation', there seems to be a positive attitude that prevents people from going down in moments of crisis; indeed, it seems it occurs the opposite: when things get worse people manage to find strength and keep struggling with life.

As a side comment, the study suggests that when it comes to happiness, 'spirituality' has a more noticeable effect from the point of view of social networking than from the point of 'religion.' In other words, what makes people in Colombia happy is not whether they're Catholic, Buddhist or Jehovah's witnesses but the fact that each religion comes with a community of people that can support each other in their daily difficulties.

This is an ongoing study and more concrete conclusions are supposed to appear in the future. I really look forward to read those. Also, I wonder how the above preliminary explanations apply to other southamerican countries and if some of them could be related to the perception of happiness of countries such as Spain and Italy, the so-called 'latin-like countries' in Europe.

People you will never meet (1)

A recurring thought while in Colombia is that I should try to cherish all kinds of memories on things that for some reason are not available in Italy. I refer to the food, people and situations that one would most likely miss when abroad. Some of that is quite unique, and even funny, if you look at that from a first-world perspective. Here I begin with a short series of installments on different professions you can easily find in Colombia but that you will never see in a serious country (or in Italy).

Today, let me elaborate on the minute sellers. Consider the following context. You have an expensive cellphone contract (paying a monthly amount for a certain number of hours/minutes of mobile phones), or have a pre-paid mobile with unfair fees. You're a busy person and need or like to talk a lot. Sometimes you need to make urgent phone calls to mobile numbers. And you move around. Using time not included in your contract is not really an option as it would be much more expensive than the rate that your contract includes. Calling to a mobile from any fixed phone around is simply prohibitively expensive (in any case, finding a fixed phone in which calls to mobiles are not blocked is not easy). What do you do? In Colombia, the answer is very simple: you go to a minute seller. Yes, almost in every corner we have people that can sell you time on a cellphone. They sell minutes. Not only: they have extremely competitive prices, surely lower than the price of additional minutes your carrier provides (or than the price of any prepaid card).

Minute sellers are easy to recognize: they usually have distinctive vests, in which the rate of the minute is painted on. Their job is easy: all they need to do is to stand in some busy corner all day long, carrying five or six cellphones with them. They wait for their customers. Nowadays, you can 'buy a minute' for as low as 200 pesos (0.082 euro); the rate is the same for all national and international numbers.

(A minute seller with his clients. Picture taken from here)

Where is the business? Easy. Someone bought hundreds or thousands of cellphones at the same time, and got a great corporative deal not available to anyone: those phones will come with the lowest rates in the market, with unlimited amount of minutes and SMSs. Some sort of privileged, large-scale contract. That person then hires people that 'manage' such phones. He makes lots of money and gives his 'sales representatives' convenient shares on the minutes they sell during the day.

When this thing first started (some years ago already) the cellphone companies complained; they were losing lots of money. It turns out that, according to the law, there's nothing illegal about selling minutes on the street. And forbidding it would have created a significant social problem, because of all the 'minute sellers' that would have been suddenly unemployed. How about that?

Next in this section: the bus synchronizer and the parking assistant.

This week's catchy song (6)

The suggestion for this week is All Night Long, a rather unknown song from The Verve. It appears in one of their recent singles, namely Rather Be. I like this song very much, and it's quite good to be kinda hidden inside a single release.

Since I have detected that ---for different reasons--- some of you can't access YouTube certain videos, starting from this catchy song I am offering only the audio, in good quality. Enjoy:

A little bit of Juan Valdez

As in most parts of the world, controversy topics in Colombia are largely irrelevant. The latest one concerns the cartoon below, which appeared January 2, this year:



The cartoon (taken from http://www.grimmy.com) was written by a guy called Mike Peters, who is supposed to be popular in the US and publishes his cartoon in over 600 newspapers. I didn't know him until today. The Colombian Federation of Coffee Growers (FNC) is highly offended because of this cartoon and will sue Mr Peters in an US court, as they claim the cartoon affects the "Juan Valdez" brand. The FNC has this weird dream of doing a "Juan Valdez" franchise all over the world and become larger than Starbucks. So far they have fancy coffee shops in Colombia, some southamerican countries and a couple of shops in US and Spain.

I don't know what to think about this. It's like when someone makes fun of you for some reason and you simply should live with it. I mean, it's part of life. We do have a (bad) fame, and should live with it with dignity. The thing that really bothers me is the hypocrite nationalism of media when reporting about this kind of stuff. Similar stupid reactions took place when Carla Bruni made a reference to the "white Colombian" in one of her recent songs, or when in "Mr and Mrs Smith" Bogotá was depicted as a city lost in the desert (or so they've said, never saw that movie). Here people complained (especially politicians), the media reflected that, and the expected outcome took place: nothing changed.