Padres e Hijos (and Berlusconi)

Padres e Hijos (P&H - spanish for Parents and Children) was a very popular daytime series in Colombia. As you may guess from the title, the series was centered around the members of a family (the Franco family) and their everyday events. It was broadcasted during 15 long years from Monday to Friday, after lunch. It is quite fair to say that, for very different reasons, a whole generation grew up watching P&H. In fact, it always had very high ratings and most people were more or less aware of the current status of the story, which was often surreal and with very strange turns of events.

In spite of its high ratings and popularity, it is also fair to say that most people watching P&H had very strong feelings against P&H. In fact, apart from the absurd stories, the quality of the production was quite low, with awful performances everyday. In particular, I doubt there is a single Colombian who doesn't have feelings against Daniela Franco, one of the characters in the series. Daniela was one of the daughters of the family, and along the years most of the plot concerned her adventures. This way, for instance, when Daniela was a teenager, she belonged to a gang and shoplifted for a while; some years after that, she was kidnapped by the guerilla (P&H was a very Colombian series); some years later, she got married twice and went insane. The hate against Daniela Franco was automatically transferred to Ana Victoria Beltrán, the actress portraying Daniela. In fact, after such a long time playing Daniela, Beltrán was unable to find a different role in Colombian TV and had to retire. (She recently participated in a reality show, with scarce success.)

You may then be wondering: if everyone hated P&H, how come it had such high ratings and acceptation? Well, there are several theories. One of them says that for a substantial amount of people it became a habit to have lunch while keeping an eye on P&H. Some people would enjoy digesting their lunch by watching the lame performances in P&H. It was a masochist exercise, yes, but it could be really funny. However, my favorite theory is that people would watch P&H to feel better about their own lives. In fact, the absurd/sad/surreal stories of the Franco family (involving, for instance, multiple betrayals, miscarriages, tragic losses) would help many people to accept and perhaps appreciate their own existence, as they could say: "well, my family may have problems, but at least is not fucked up as the Franco family!". 

Oddly enough, the ironic nature of P&H came to my mind earlier this week, after hearing about the most recent scandals of Berlusconi in Italy. There is, indeed, a strong relationship between P&H and Italy. Let me elaborate. By now it is more or less certain that no matter what Berlusconi does, nothing will change in Italy. We have seen it multiple times: with every new scandal he surpasses the limits he had surpassed before, and with the same consequences. That is, none. The latest prostitution scandal is particularly embarrassing though. I am not sure if Italians realize how depressing this looks from outside. Most likely they don't, because otherwise they would do something concrete to remove Berlusconi from power. 

The situation is so critic, that in my view by now Italy is the P&H of the countries of the world. Indeed, a Colombian could say "well, my president is a despicable human being, but he doesn't sleep with underage prostitutes". A Portuguese could say "well, the crisis is so tough and the new taxes unbearable, but at least the head of state is not using our money to defend himself from mafia accusations." As a matter of fact, it is enough to pay attention to the latest scandal in Italy to somehow feel better about our own country. Just as we felt better about ourselves by watching P&H everyday after lunch.

Stray bullets (and other forms of happiness)

I have spent Christmas and New Year's eve in Colombia, after having missed both last year. This kind of holidays are certainly quite unique here; in the cold, snowy first world you can hardly feel the warm celebrations you can see here. It is hard to describe the feeling:  you've got to see it with your own eyes.

In a country such as Colombia these celebrations have their downsides. Oddly enough, getting together to celebrate can be quite risky. It turns out that in this period families get together, in many cases for the only time in the year. This can be quite dangerous: the mix of alcohol and old animosities within the family can turn a happy reunion into a violent fight. This year, authorities have observed an increase in the number of conflicts which are solved in a violent way, often with deadly consequences. This is not guerilla or drug dealers who conspire against Christmas: they're normal, decent people who get drunk, get irrational, and do stupid things. Stupid things such as hurting / fighting with / killing your neighbor, your cousin, the guy who stared at your girlfriend. You see, life can be quite fragile here. A very similar phenomenon is observed every year the second sunday of May, during Mother's day.

Life can be fragile, indeed. Something particularly common in Colombia are stray bullets. These holidays there has been a huge amount of people dying because of them.  Or at least that's the message media has been trying to convey in every possible way: they've been particularly eager to register the cases in which kids are involved, for instance. The other day almost the whole newscast was devoted to people dead because of stray bullets. You might wonder where all these bullets come from. In normal circumstances, they come from the encounters between the police and urban gangs, which most times occur inside neighborhoods. (It is safe to say that most Colombians know how to recognize the sound of a gunshot from that of, for instance, certain kinds of fireworks that produce a similar effect.) However, the number of stray bullets increases dramatically during Christmas and New Year's eve. You see, in Colombia shooting to the sky with a gun is a socially acceptable way of showing your happiness. Needless to say, not everyone has a gun and does this. But there are way too many guns in the wrong hands, and everyday many die because of stray bullets. I am not able to give a rational explanation of how shooting to the sky (and thus inadvertently killing a distant someone) is related to happiness. It is a way of demonstrating power, and some people can feel happy of being feared, I guess.

Not everything about the holidays in Colombia is violent or negative, of course. For instance, it has been observed that natality rates during September/October are higher than during the other months of the year. This means that many children are conceived during the Christmas period, a clear evidence that getting together with your beloved ones does not necessarily imply a risk.

Suomi

Thanks to research I was able to visit to Finland, something particularly difficult in normal circumstances. Yes, sometimes research takes you to places where you wouldn't go otherwise. I spent around five days, first in Turku/Abo (the city in which the workshop was held) and then in Helsinki. Here are a few (unstructured) remarks regarding this very brief trip to Finland.

I learned that what is nowadays known as Finland was first a part of Sweden, then part of Russia, and since 1917 an independent republic. As a result, Swedish is one of the official languages of Finland and there is a certain animosity against Russia. Swedish is used by only around 6% of the population, though. The language talked by most of the population is suomi, a word that denotes both the name "Finland" and the language itself, something I find very cool. I didn't know about this bilingualism in Finland: I discovered it while having problems finding my hotel in Google maps. I would look for, say,"Eriksgatan" (swedish) and Google maps would show me "Eerikinkaku" (suomi). Everything is written in both languages, often there is an English translation. Sometimes there is a Russian translation, too. Russia is very close, just in case you haven't done the effort of placing Finland in your mental world map.  In the central train station in Helsinki, where I bought the ticket for Turku, you can also buy tickets for Moscow and St Petersburg. Russians are the largest immigrant population, but there are also many Chinese. Other nationalities can be detected, pretty much as everywhere in Europe.

It is so wonderful to get to know many different countries, especially when those countries are so different from yours. Not only this enriches your perspective of the world, but somehow it also reaffirms who you are.  You can learn a lot about yourself when you understand how different others are from you. I like to look people's faces, and to try get an idea of what Finns look like. Once you've spent sometime in a country you get to understand this kind of things. By know, I know what Colombians, Italians, French, Portuguese look like... Finns are so different from anything I had seen before. So cool. In comparison to what I had seen in Denmark, in Finland you see way less blond people. This probably applies to other scandinavian countries. Finns have very very dark hair and eyes, and their skin is so pale; the contrast is quite impressive. One thing that I found curious is that the English pronunciation of most Finns is quite hard to follow. Their accent is so strong. I somehow expected a better accent. This is not a generalizable trend, though (and I am not a native speaker, anyway.)

I was told that November is the month of the year with worst weather, and I am still wondering why they decided to organize the workshop in this period. The dates of academic events somehow end up becoming a tradition, and changing traditions is not easy. Not even for Finns. Even if the coldest month of the year is usually March, they say that November is not good because is as cold as December but there is no snow. And snow reflects light, which is quite something in a dark country. I had never thought about this advantage of snow. Winters are dark and days are short. While I was here, the day would begin around 8am and end around 4pm. Often less than 8 hours. Such 8 hours of day is what you would commonly call an "awful, gray day" in Cali or Lisbon. Or pretty much anywhere else in the world. When it is not cloudy, the day would come in a blue version, and you get to see some sort of  blue light, something a bit difficult to explain in words but quite beautiful to see. While coming here in November might sound as a terrible idea, I like to think that it was also useful to see how Finns live and behave in "normal conditions". Let me explain: if you'd come here during the summer, most likely you'll have a great time, and most people would be doing "unordinary things", because most of the year is dark and cold. So in some sense, even if coming here in November can be harsh because of the cold (and the rain, and the snow), it is enlightening to do so, to discover how Finland behaves most of the year.

I spent one and a half days in Helsinki (Helsingfors, in swedish). November is definitely not the right period to visit the city. There are nice things to see, museums to visit, and streets to walk. I would certainly like to return here in a different period, perhaps September. The city is quite large, even if it doesn't seem so. The airport is quite far from the city; it is located in Vantaa, and it takes about 40 minutes to reach the city from there. Inside the city you usually move around using the tram system and buses.  There is also a metro line (the most northern metro system in the world) but it seems to be less useful for touristic purposes. I had heard stories about transport systems in Finland being extremely punctual (because this is really important if it's really cold outside) but it seemed quite normal to me. In Turku there were some small delays. Perhaps this period is still "warm" so as to be extremely punctual. In Turku there were only buses, divided in several private companies, so buses don't look all the same. This was interesting to see, as I had the idea that the fact that public transportation is owned and managed by the State was key to its efficiency. (In Colombia one would claim that transport is a mess partly because the State has little control the private companies that run the services.) Tickets for buses in both Turku and Helsinki are very expensive. Of course, they looked particularly expensive to me, being used already to prices in Portugal, where everything is relatively cheap. So you would pay 2,50€ for a single ticket for two hours. Somewhere I read that single tickets have a high price with the goal of  encouraging people to buy day and monthly tickets. This could be true when you consider that a day ticket costs 6.80€.

In general, Finland is an expensive country. This is already noticeable for eating outside. Indeed, even if you eat at McDonalds, you would pay around 10€. This was the case when I ate at "Hesburger", the McDonalds of baltic countries. I payed a little less eating chicken at SFC, which stands for "Southern Fried Chicken" and not for "Suomi Fried Chicken", which was my first thought and is certainly funnier.

The thing I will remember the most about this trip to Finland is Sibelius. Jean Sibelius is the most famous Finnish composer of all times. His name was actually Johan, but at some point in the past it was cool to make your name sound like a French name. He composed Finlandia, the most remarkable national song.  I visited Sibelius's museum in Turku, a very nice experience. Learned a lot about Sibelius, his life and art. Young Sibelius had a very nice, crazy hair cut; the old Sibelius died bald. He deserves respect also for that. I also visited the Sibelius monument in Helsinki, even if it was a bit away from the city center. Quite nice. Now I am listening to a Sibelius's album of "greatest hits", a souvenir that the lady at the museum convinced me to buy. So far I like the Karelia Suite very much: I warmly recommend it.

The P factor

My friend Ebbsborg has recently coined the term "the B factor" to generically refer to the things from Bolivia (hence the "B") that he finds frustrating/stupid/absurd as a foreigner.  (Well, at least that is the meaning that I infer from reading his blog.) I would like to extend this excellent idea to my case (that is, Portugal). Therefore, as of today, I will adopt the term "the P factor" to refer all the possible frustrating/stupid/absurd things one could complain about and that I find unique to Portugal.

While the Portuguese experience has been overall positive so far, somehow I feel that the patience that comes with "discovering" a new country and "adapting" to a number of new things is finishing. Not that I am unhappy or desperate about life here; I think it is a natural thing: once you've spent enough time in a place, you realize the advantages and disadvantages, what you like and what you don't like. And you put things on perspective. You also learn to identify the things you are not able to understand from the place; this is, in part, what I call "the P factor".

By now I could give several examples of the P factor: from absurdities for doing "simple" administrative stuff at work, the paranoia of my bank (and their obsession about sending things using snail mail), to the very bizarre philosophy for putting signs in public spaces (such as the extremely confusing arrows inside the metro of Lisbon). And I could write posts on all those instances of the P factor. But then this week I have been overexposed to the P factor, not to mention quite intense weeks of work, and so today I won't bother you with my complaints.

Atypical

Today there is a very interesting interview to José Mourinho in El País. At some point of the interview, when discussing his feelings about Portugal he says:

I am a very atypical Portuguese, because the typical Portuguese person misses Portugal and that is not my case. I don't feel saudade, perhaps because I have an amazing family, because I love what I do... I don't feel saudade, but I do have a lot of passion. I am a Portuguese who doesn't want to return; I don't want to work in any Portuguese team. I don't want to live in Portugal, but I am a Portuguese that wishes to make something important with my potential.

I couldn't relate more to Mourinho's words. That's is exactly how I feel about Colombia. Sometimes I think that I am an "atypical Colombian" but it seems like a pretentious thing to say. I don't miss Colombia, at least not in the persistent way most Colombians seem to miss it. There is an undeniable Colombian character --some undefinable form of passion, you could say-- in what I do and in how I behave, I am sure, and I feel most proud of that.