A day well spent

     Yesterday, my intentions were clear to me: Catch up with all the pending delayed work. Pending is a good choice of words here. Thinking of the infamous Sword of Damocles that now and then we all have over our heads and its inseparable friend "Procrastination". Always hand on hand, annoying everybody, but mostly me.

     Chinese, coding, paper reviews, paper reading, my own research...even vacuum cleaning the house. All waiting there till I decided which one would be first.

       Then, out of nowhere, my little 6 years old daughter did appear with her sweet smile. Just looking at me. Smiling. She is about to start primary school next Monday here in Taiwan. That is not going to be a problem neither on the academic side nor the social part. She has been attending the kindergarten for almost 4 years and seems to enjoy going to school. Is the whole system what bothers me. The way knowledge is passed to the new generations. Looks as if everything must be painful and boring. No trace of the joy of new knowledge whatsoever. 

        What to do then? So far we have tried to be ahead of what she is "supposed" to know. Something that all parents try to do here, flooding their busy children with more and more extra classes but always for the wrong reason. In my days, if you failed some subject or get sick for too long, you might opt for some extra help outside school to let you reach the level of the rest. The key thing here was that this is just a temporal solution. Nowadays, has become the normal thing rather than an exception and the goal is to beat the others, to be the top student. Translation, stress for the children, the parents and the teachers.

        We, on the other hand, have a different motivation: just to keep the joy of learning. Keep her at the limit of her comfortable zone, crossing the line from time to time, challenging her abilities. I know her, she trust me and I can see her eyes when I teach her some new concept and decide how deep, how slow I must proceed on my explanation. I sense if it is too soon for her to understand and reassure her if she does it wrong the first time. If you are not there this might sound as a tiger parent approach but that is the exact horrifying concept we are trying to avoid. The point is to have her coming back for more, like a good customer hooked on the product you are marketing. That product is knowledge in this case but the main goal is not to fill her little brain with stuff. What school and parents must pursuit together is the desire of knowing in the kid´s heart. Whether that means the names of all rivers in Taiwan or the names of all countries in the world is irrelevant. That is what everybody is missing here.

      So, what did I do with that little girl hiding behind the smile? I taught her some mathematics.

Why in the world would you do that? Don´t you like your daughter´s smile? Precisely. Of all subjects, mathematics is by far the most commonly hated one. I myself have a love-hate relationship with her too. But deep inside I know it is just a language, nothing more. Some way to express concepts like English, Spanish or music. I know the language and I have the patience and time required to pass it to Ariadna. Because that is what is going to make the difference. The way you learn something is going to make you love it or run from anything that requires its use or understanding. My duty here is to make her like mathematics by slowly introducing them to her and do it before others. You can see this like trying to avoid spoilers before you go watch a movie so you can enjoy the whole experience. The bright side is that she is smart enough to understand "advanced" concepts and I guess we can stay ahead of school for the time being. 

     I must note here how I have quoted "advanced" on purpose. I am not saying: - Look how intelligent she is! I am saying that the system is designed to educate a country, not my daughter or your son. There must be some common grounds that most children can and should achieve "if we teach them in a class with 30 other children with just one busy teacher". So, having the time and will to do it means your kids can go beyond what the systems demands from them whether they are geniuses or not. In my particular case, to me, Ariadna is just smart and I have no intention of finding out how smart compared with others as long as I can keep on providing the tools she needs to show the best she has to offer and that does not interfere with her happiness.

      The day ended and now she can tell you about how to measure the area of a square or the volume of a cube. What square centimeters are, the concept of cubic centimeters and how to go from one to the other. Told her she is the only one of her friends that knows about it (yes, yes, I know, but a little pride in her heart is not as bad as it sounds). 

      She left with a smile, enter the other room, took a book from the shelf and minded her own business again. Me on the other hand...well, procrastination, you know.

"Good" as in "He was a Good Man"

Note: I began to write this post the very same day Steve Jobs died. Reading the huge amount of information about him and how others ponder his life gave me second thoughts. So many people saying wonderful, marvelous stories on the way he changed their lives...by giving them a device to listen to music, a really, really cool laptop or a phone to do far more than just a phone call. It allows you to play endless hours killing angry birds (let´s be honest here, that is one of the most used apps, not the mobile version of the Wikipedia). Now I am indeed tired of it and would like to add some details to balance the legacy he has left behind.

      "The man is dead. It was all over the news today. Few men more notorious than the late Steve Jobs, CEO and endless times re founder of the Fruit Logo Company.

     I am sure that he was a good man to his family, friends, even coworkers at Cupertino (even though many stories about the possibility of been fired after an encounter with him in the elevator in one of his bad days can be found out there to refute this one). Certainly not to employees in China working over the clock to satisfy the hunger for new sets coming from the Apple stores across the globe. But all that is not my point here. How people is about to describe him and make us read countless obituaries is the reason of this post. When someone dies, sad as it is, people related to him and, like in this case, many others will express condolences, say things about the deceased and comfort those who grieve the big lost.

     To wait for today may be seen as an opportunistic attempt to look for attention. One speaks or writes about whatever is in his mind and from now on is going to be virtually impossible not to think about Jobs in every available angle. One can say that almost everybody liked him because he represented the most precious value nowadays, success. Over and over again, against all odds. The best Hollywood movie is always in the real life somewhere. He gave us hope? Yes, in a way. He is a good value for our children to pursue? May be, may be not. What he characterized is one side of mankind. That one that makes it progress based on hard work of the brightest leading the way to the rest of us. But don´t look for a purpose there, at least not a higher one. Picasso, whom some call the greatest artist on the 20th century, changed the concept of art. New ways to approach to beauty are now present thanks to him and more artist like him. At the same time he also painted that scary, dragging, dark masterpiece called Guernica denouncing the bestiality of war. Probably that picture has had more impact in the hearts of people around the world than most other well-intentioned speeches against war, and for that he has my respect. But when I look to Steve, with so much power to influence in multiple different ways to an entire generation, I see him spreading hunger for consumer products, luxury devices, crammed with beauty, expensive ones that set off the purchase lust like madness all over the world.

     On a certain interview he said philanthropy is something that requires a full time job to do it properly and, at the moment, he had other priorities concerning his company. That is as much as saying no to almost everything we cannot be certain to achieve perfectly. That sends a message too. The ultimate excuse not to do so many things. For those who have spent their lives telling people that a little bit of them multiplied by millions can make the difference is not a good view to see how they have to fight "priorities". Instead of "help what you can even though you cannot change the world because many others are doing the same", we have now the "life is too short, pursuit your dream" being advertised by a far better, far cooler and far more alluring succeeder.

     Good men are those who ease suffering, struggle for peace, discover new medicines, not those who just enhance the user experience."

The Tryumph of Capitalism...Not Really

For some time now I have been thinking about what they said in 1991, following the events that dissolved that weird thing called U.S.S.R. Without exceptions the press was editorializing the whole thing as a victory: "Communism has died, long live to Capitalism!". Could have been a perfect headline for a news summary those days. While writing this I am realizing how always hated the way some people mix the words Capitalism and Democracy. It is like giving credit to the former by association to the later, undoubtedly more respectable.

Going back twenty years ago, I was a young man then, but not so young as not to care about what was taking place in front of my eyes. I recall me thinking: first the wall, now this, and broadcasted all over the world on live feed! Happy then to see that monster disappear, still happy now with the perspective of time and some white hair (not much actually) inhabiting my head. Everybody thought that was the beginning of a new era where people could mind their own business and stop worrying about the bomb or the Evil Empire (Reagan dixit).

But what do you expect to happen to Batman if there is nobody out there defying his supremacy and keeping him in shape? Yes, of course, Russia was still there and China, no doubt about it, is here now. But lacking new ideas to confront the so called Capitalism concept, they have just embraced they own wicked version of it and are more worried on the pursuit of their Eldorado than entering a discussion on where we all, and by that I mean the World, are heading. As a result we have a big fat guy with his underwear over the trousers sitting in our living room and drinking our beer while the World...well...

So the small guys took over long ago. "Don't worry, have a rest, from now on we can manage on the details". They are smart, this people. They use to work at places like Lehman Brothers or Merrill Lynch and believe it or not, still do, same place, same desk, just a different name on the door. They have mastered the ability to use the details of the law to betray the spirit of the law. They refer to it as Financial Engineering and for that they should be awarded because it is not small achievement to make things like putting some junk on a pretty box, label it and make everybody buy with the least clue of what was in the box. While Batman was watching the game the men with the fancy suits changed the operating system but kept the name and nobody noticed...or at least nobody took the time to explain the common citizens what was going on with their beloved Democracy.

The Wikipedia says: "Democracy is a form of government in which all people have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives." I do believe this is the best way for us, human beings, to live together protecting our children against whatever is out there. On the other hand it stipulates the following: "Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated for profit, usually in competitive markets." This may not sound strange at all because is a concept we are utterly used to. Nothing more and nothing less than the law of the jungle. Precisely what mankind has tried to avoid for the last thousands of years. The victory of the strongest to ensure a better ADN for the next generation.

Let's think it over. If a certain people (or country) are doomed for starvation it cannot be called Democracy even though they have non tampered electoral processes because they didn't choose such fate and still there it is. The problem is citizens on the so-called first/rich world, not being asked whether they prefer a new highway or food for a kid in who knows what poor country. As rich as we are, so eager for cool phones and new ways to read a book, when the question is presented in the correct way I don't think anybody would hesitate on the answer.

But that easy-to-make polling proposal, simple as might look, hides a more deep analysis of today's acknowledge of the Democracy concept. The idea that in nowadays globalized world it could work for only some of us. When we speak of a person no one says he or she is a good person because so far he has been nice to you. A criminal is a criminal no matter how fair treats us and so is a corporation, no matter whether it complies with the laws of one country if it uses unfair countries with unfair laws to make the things it sells to you. They will argue that they respect the law in every country they have presence but it is again that imaginative interpretation of the letter to betray the spirit.

The sooner voters agree that borders and countries should only be seen for cultural purposes and human beings are essentially the same and should be treated the same the earlier politicians will understand the notion and defend it as our true representatives.

"Democracy should be a form of government in which all people have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives ... as far as those decisions do not cause pain and injustice anywhere else around the world either directly or by omission".

Meanwhile, Capitalism has not prevailed, simply we have just lost out.

Drugs and oldtimers

A typical Typhoon Sunday morning in Taiwan is not the best time to be inspired to save the world. Utterly dark outside, let me explain to you how the wind trying to get inside the house blows hard and makes nearly everything whistle like you are in a cheap horror movie from the Corman Factory. Already two days raining. We don't have the thrill of real typhoons here. There are mountains that prevent the storm from showing its real power. Not the real deal you may say. This is the stage I am in right now. Your state of mind contaminates from that surrounding you.
And then you almost feel compelled to watch again those old Guns'n Roses videos from the nineties while you are doing a little bit of exercising. Trying to aisle from the outer world I use my earphones and pump up the volume (always wanted to actually said that somewhere it makes sense). So, here I am, hoping to remain in shape and listening Hard Rock in an absolutely not recommended high volume penetrating my brains. Add some strong coffee to the equation.
Suddenly I feel 18 again, like been high with the sensation of invincibility. Hello World and watch out, I am going to eat you! That is how I felt then, almost everyday sensing there was something outside waiting for me to be done, discovered, achieved. I don't believe it was anything exclusive to me. Every kid in the process to became a man or woman experiences the same, at least that's how things should be, from my point of view.
Somewhere I kind of lost those feelings, became a grown up and estabilized my life and way of thinking. That is the politically correct way of describing the way we betrayed ourselves and stopped looking for the Holy Grail. Listening to the music you used to like then, may make you feel sorry for those forgotten days. But in my case also brings hope. There is still time. We have more experience, may be a bit more wisdom. It is only that pulse for life what was left behind and I see no medical or physiological reasons not to bring it back.
Can you call strong coffee with old hard rock music in the morning a real drug? To me, yes, it is. It is a question of resetting your spirit. Like a bad dream means a bad morning even though you don't remember what was in your nightmare or thinking about what you would do if you win the lottery puts a smile in your face that nobody knows where came from. That music makes me feel like nothing can stop me, forget all the impediments to reach whatever I want and seems as if everything is possible. It is just a matter of going for it. Because that was the music I use to listen when things where easier and simpler. No commitments, just the future awaiting for us to conquer it.
Please, somebody make coffee-rock pills so I can overdose in the morning and overcome the gray and rainy Sundays.
Life is a roller coaster. We think the world is a strange place. We do not understand it and we are totally stranded there. Finding those things that bring us to the time when we where kings help regain the strength to make amazing things or just live a fulfilled life with those we love. Because only when in the wooden suit you may say the game is over...and in my case they haven't even planted the pine for that kind of furniture :-)

War

I have realized one thing hard to admit: war is inevitable.
If things go as planned, I intend to live some good 80 years, may be 90 with a little bit of luck. My father lived 88 years and one war in his lifetime, the Spanish Civil War.
In my first sentence in this entry, I am not referring to something that could happen in a foreign country, far away. I speak about your own backyard. Your house, your family threatened by a real danger. One you can smell or be touched by. In Spain or Western Europe, war seems so distant. Things have changed so much. ..Have they?
And then, there is my wife. She is from Taiwan, the most distant place from my hometown you can imagine. She was lucky enough to spare herself from such thing but again her parents and grandparents generation suffered the taste of military and the rotten odor left by gunpowder. Same thing everywhere, no exceptions.
A country may have reasons to go to war, but does a man ever have them? You don’t fight against a country, you shot people, not ideals. You kill citizens, coming from a town like your own. His sons and wife not so different from yours. How can you show anger to someone you don’t know? And yet it seems far easier to kill the unknown soldier and feel no remorse. Just because they said so. Kill a nobody in the battlefield is allowed when defending your country. Self defense.
What are the odds of being in a war in your lifetime? Pretty probable. Did the Germans really hate so much the rest of European countries and people? Did Japanese actually feel hate towards the Chinese peasants or Americans? It is clear that the answer is no. You can say Americans indeed did hate Japan as a whole after Pearl Harbor. But this is only as a result of misinformation. If they only knew the truth beneath that aggression, for sure their feelings would have changed.
From these facts you can deduce that Information is the best and sometimes only weapon to fight war. From the other point of view, Information is always the first casualty prior to make a country go to war. With the world kept well informed and access to information being a non alienable right it would be difficult for any government to convince its population to joint the army to kill. But, all this said, what I really wanted to say is that good chances are you will experience a conflict in your lifetime, in your country. And that should be enough to not be able to sleep at night anymore and to start working to avoid the unavoidable.
But when the time comes, what should a human being do? Defend his country or his family? When wars are over, those who parted are seen in a different way depending on whose side the victory was. If war was won by your country you will never be able to come back. An outcast for ever. Better even change your name. If, on the other hand, defeat was the result, you won't be able to come back either, but mainly because the country will probably be closed for some time till the loser's purge is completed. And the new rulers won't like you anyway.Your once compatriots will hate you because your wife was not raped, your children not slaughtered and you did not have to kill anyone. It is the price they paid for the victory or the defeat, the reason why they hate you. The more they paid, the more they hate you. They do not seem to recognize that you were not the one who drove them to war. It will be soon forgotten. Rulers, good or bad, pass by and their mistakes forgotten. But deserters remain traitors no matter what. Not to kill is always harder.
A killer or an outcast, certain death with honors or hated by your old folks for ever, a murderer or a coward.
Rather than prepared for war, a man should be prepared to die to avoid war.
Because is a nasty business that of war.

700.000 million dollars

Where will they go?
I can write things like 'they should give it to the ones who can not pay the mortgage' or 'give it to the starving people'. But everybody would say it is just another guy that does not understand the way things go it today's world.
That remembers me of the Springsteen's song Born in the USA. There is a line that says: Went down to see my V.A. man, he said 'Son, don't you understand'...
They make us think they know what they are doing, too complex to be understood without the proper Ivy-league-University background. All those financial-engineered products are necessary for the well being of the system. The truth is they know what they are doing, getting richer, but what they do not know is what is at the end of the road. In my humble opinion, the financial code is 'just keep on doing it, fill your pockets and pray so the system crumbles after you are long gone', because they know for sure the building has such weak foundations.
I don't think anybody knew a system based on giving money to people cannot afford to pay it was going to endure for ever. Just for a while, so someone has become rich out of been a wise ass. And probably he is out of business now and laughing.
I recall talking with my friends in Spain on how the real estate market could never go down. Buying a house was always going to be a good, secure investment. I used to say: Why? is not a house like any other kind of goods? Now I know the answer and so they do.
May be a few things are hard to explain to normal people. Einstein theories, Maxwell laws could be among them. But in general, the rest is not understood because we do not want to spend the time to find an accurate and independent source. Not meaning with that some conspiracy-theory lover geek with a blog like mine. This is 2008, Internet provides us with free reliable knowledge. Universities, Wikipedia, non-sensationalist newspapers, respectable people writing in their blogs for us to read and understand.
Everybody is amazed now to read about Michael Milken or the Dot.com bubble and how nobody preview what was going to happen. In five years we all will be so smart to understand the stupidity of selling bonds based on subprime mortgages. Why can't we understand it now? Why nobody could one year ago?

HANS-GERT POETTERING President of the European Parliament: 'You cannot give 700.000 million dollars to the banks and forget about hunger' (September, 28th 2008)

We hate whoever you say we should, dear President

The so called crisis in South America between Colombia and Ecuador foster by Venezuela and Nicaragua has prompted their respective presidents to show how machos they are.
But beware, we should not use indistinctly the words Venezuela and President of Venezuela. And the same stands for the other participants in this affair (and I am running out of words to call this just to avoid naming it school fight).
One person does not represent the feelings of a whole country but amazing as it may appear, can put a country on the verge of war and then change his face to a friendly one to shake hands with the not so far ago (maybe minutes) enemy. I recall now Videla´s Argentina and that crazy war coming from nowhere to distract the people from the real worries of the economic situation of a disastrous government with an absolute lack of management skills.
But here we are, don´t have to look so far in time to find populists who made thousands of men go to war only because of their narcisism and vanity, always fit in a brilliant disguise of national pride. No doubt that because in the end there has not been a blood bath, everybody may say I am exaggerating. But actually it has been one man decision, as so many times in history, not to draw first blood. This should make all of us ponder the way things are and realize something has to be made in order the world may avoid such dangerous situations now more and more governments (not coutries, not people in them, just rulers and their cohorts) try to get nuclear dissuasion armament.
Also as citizens have the responsibility in our hands not to follow as sheeps every fool that gets the microphone. And maybe that is just enough. With the medicine of schooling for everybody we will get ride of the populist infection that takes the lives of the youth in the pursuit of the pride of the macho-presidents. In the meantime let´s pray none of them gets the nuke-button.

Dear inmigrant, don´t bother. It is hell for you here.

A new strategy is being developed here in Europe to make African people think twice before starting the dangerous odyssey of illegally trying to enter the formerly-kown-as-paradise part of the world.
Yes, they are still building walls, patrolling the sea, monitoring the African coasts in costant search for small boats full of desperate people, possing a threat to the stability of western civilization.
But, in a new turn of the screw, now the approach is to convince them at home that hell rather than heaven awaits on the other side.
Even with help of some Non-governmental Organizations that provide the material to show in remote villages of Africa, intended to be a counterbalance for the TV influence. Showing the rough part of the story. People being treated as second class citizens. The coast guard rescuing undermined bodies from the sea or simply recovering the dead ones from the shore. Testimonies of unsuccessful experiencies with a sentimental touch here an there to make them more impressive.
To me this is like telling the father that is watching his son drowning in the sea, not to enter the water because it is cold. It is not knowing the reasons why an inmigrant is an inmigrant. As strange as it could seem to us, people usually wants to live where they were born. If you give them a chance, they will stay. You can call it a kind of mother love for your land. Because once you grow up there it inpregnates your soul in a way even the best detergent is not capable of removing it.
The reason they come here is what they left there. A incomprehensible wish to come back and share with the ones they love the fruit of their hard work wherever hard work is available to be done. And I say incomprehensible, because that is what we think of it. If we ask a western person where he would like to live, it would be amazing for us how many of them would choose places like The French Riviera, Monaco, the exclusive Chelsea of London, Monaco, Geneva... A lot of them resigning from their own homeland, trading people for glamour.
I don´t think the same stands for poor people of other continents. They would decide to stay at home but improving services and live conditions in general, but not even to the standard level assume as reasonable here but to that minimum to live without the constant threatening of starving or diseases.
Let not missunderstand this. I am not saying that a man living in a shanty town wants to remain there for the rest of his lifetime. I say they want to build their own land, not "steal" ours.
Meanwhile we keep on spending so much money to stop the unstoppable tide, not realizing that the solution is somewhere else and perhaps cheaper than we think.

A story I wrote time ago

Juan

Un ruido sobresalta a Juan. ¿Ya son las 5? No, falsa alarma, puedes volver a dormir. Tarea imposible. Una vez que se despierta no hay nada que hacer, sólo permanecer en la cama, con los ojos bien abiertos para tratar de adivinar las formas de las sombras en la oscuridad. Juega a adivinar qué es cada cosa. Igual que en el río, en verano, cuando se echa en la hierba, solo, mirando al cielo lleno de algodones, tratando de descubrir barcos, coches, piratas y tesoros en las formas caprichosas de las nubes. Aunque a veces lo único que consigue ver son conejos y a su madre llamándole para que vuelva a casa. Dichosas nubes ¿tendrán algún acuerdo con su madre? Ella lo puede todo, seguramente también tiene el conocimiento para mover y transformar las nubes a su antojo, para llamarle de vuelta cuando se hace tarde. Mamá lo sabe todo, y hace los mejores bocadillos de chorizo del mundo.

Con tanto pensar, los ojos de Juan empiezan a cerrarse de nuevo. Va a dormirse, pero no quiere. Busca cualquier truco para no dormirse. No quiere perderse el momento. No.

Un ruido ¿Qué ha sido? Una puerta, pero ¿Cuál? ¿La de la calle? No, no es demasiado tarde. Es la de la habitación del fondo. Por fin su padre se ha levantado. Aunque trata de no hacer ruido, Juan casi siempre le pilla. El ritual ha comenzado, hay que adivinar paso a paso todo lo que hace Papá.

Sí, ahora está en la cocina, ha sacado su taza del armario y seguro que está comprobando si queda algo de lumbre en el fogón, para no tener que encenderlo. A veces, por no hacerlo, no toma su café por la mañana.

No entiendo a los mayores. El café huele muy bien. Le gusta como impregna el olor de la casa, colándose hasta el último rincón. Pero su sabor. Eso es otra cosa.

Una vez, su tío Martín le dejó dar un sorbo a su taza mientras Mamá estaba ocupada fregando los platos. Al principio no sabía a nada, solamente abrasaba. Su lengua daba saltos en la boca, como si quisiera salir de ella. Juan se comportó como un hombre, casi, y se tragó ese líquido negro. Pero lo que vino después no fue mejor. Ese sabor no se apartó de él en toda la mañana, ni siquiera masticando el regaliz de palo recién cosechado en el bosque pudo evitarlo.

Otra vez te estás distrayendo ¿Ahora qué? El abrigo. Hace frío en casa por la mañana. Papá se lo pone incluso antes de partir y luego aprovecha para sacar su tabaco y liarse un cigarro. Eso sí que no varía. Nunca deja de hacerlo. Lo sabe muy bien porque al final siempre oye el sonido de la puerta que hace su papá al marcharse. Es el despertador que, a falta de un buen gallo, utiliza Juan para iniciar su jornada de aventuras. Un montón de horas a las que enfrentarse y que debe administrar bien si quiere acabar todas sus tareas. Buena idea. Antes de sacar un pie de la cama debemos recopilar el plan de trabajo. Comprobar la logística. ¿Regaliz de palo? Bien ¿Piedras para el tirachinas? Regular, habrá que bajar al río, que es donde están las mejores y más redondas ¿Lechugas para los gusanos de seda y migas de pan para Martín, el gorrioncito que recogió al pie de un árbol el sábado? Habrá que encargarse de eso.

Bueno, ya va siendo hora. Mejor desperezarse y empezar. Para ello nada como poner los pies en el suelo. El frío lo puede Juan sentir en su recorrido por todo el cuerpo: rodillas, cintura, brazos y nuca. Siempre se para ahí, produciendo un escalofrío que le eriza los pelitos de los brazos y es casi hasta divertido.

La casa está en silencio. Aún en pijama, pero con los zapatos puestos, la diversión está ahora en ver cómo se van levantando los demás, sin que le vean. Es gracioso observarles, son como zombis. Lo justo para no chocarse con las puertas. Hasta que no pasa un buen rato, los miembros de la familia no se hablan, sólo se miran y mueven la cabeza a la vez que suben las cejas en un movimiento rápido de mutuo reconocimiento. Es el saludo de la mañana. Probablemente cosas de mayores, pero Juan se monda de risa cuando ve a su hermana mojar el pan en el aire hasta 3 veces, antes de acertar con el tazón de leche, mientras mira por la ventana de la cocina y suspira. Qué cosa más rara es el mundo de los mayores. Aunque es divertido estar en él. A Juan le dejan vagar por el mundo de los mayores, sin apenas prestarle atención. Se mete entre ellos, se cuela por debajo de la mesa. Las piernas de los mayores son los árboles del bosque que hay en casa cuando la lluvia o la nieve no permiten ir a jugar a uno de verdad.

Entre juego y juego, oye cosas, pero casi nunca las entiende. Si acaso frases sueltas. Son una especie de lenguaje cifrado que los niños desconocen. Lo que de verdad es hilarante es ver cómo gesticulan, su acaloramiento, incluso en invierno. Su tío Martín se pone muy rojo, como si estuviera chupando un caramelo hecho con carbón y sacado directamente de la lumbre que su madre mantiene siempre viva en la cocina. El lugar del mundo que más le gusta.

En la casa sólo quedan Mamá y Marta. El tío Martín y su hermano Antonio ya no están. A lo mejor están durmiendo, con el abuelo, que el invierno pasado se quedó dormido y aún no ha despertado. Dice Mamá que se lo han llevado a un sitio con menos ruido. Y allí sigue durmiendo. Pero Juan sospecha, porque a él nunca le dejan dormir vestido, aunque el abuelo no era un niño. Cosas de mayores otra vez. ¡Vaya lata!

Lo importante es que ya se han levantado todos. Eso significa que ya le está permitido atravesar las puertas del castillo. Dejar la casa en busca de sus mil y una aventuras. Queda el trámite del vaso de leche y…¡ya está!

Con ella aún en la garganta abandona la mesa, la cocina y, por fin, la casa. Destino de partida, el granero, el segundo lugar del mundo que más le gusta. Su feudo cuando no hay nadie trabajando en él. Allí están sus armas de caballero, tirachinas y cantos rodados del río, como manda la tradición familiar. Y allí, en un rinconcito está Martín, el gorrioncito, no su tío, que enseguida comienza a piar demandando comida, casi exigiéndola. Sin mucho interés esta mañana, Juan saca unas migas de pan de su bolsillo y se las va dando una a una a Martín, que las devora como si le fuera la vida en ello. Algo que en realidad es cierto.

Tarea concluida. Veamos ¿Ahora qué tocaba? ¡Ah, sí! Regaliz de Palo. Habrá que ir al bosque, pero sin que nos vean, porque Mamá se pondría hecha un obelisco (¿o era un basilisco?), si se entera.

No lo entiende. Que fuera al bosque nunca pareció importarle a nadie, pero desde hace tiempo está prohibido. No para todos, por lo que él ha podido comprobar. Hay alguien que se entretiene en cavar grandes hoyos allí, lo cual es fabuloso, porque facilitan el trabajo de recolección del vital elemento: el regaliz de palo, que calma el hambre perenne que últimamente habita en la barriga de Juan.

En el camino al bosque hay que atravesar varias calles del pueblo. En algunas han pintado cosas. Incomprensibles para quien aún no sabe leer, pero curiosas. Sobretodo en la pared que hay junto a la escuela. Allí una mujer, con el pelo recogido y que es clavadita a Matilde, la panadera, grita a unos hombres, mientras sostiene con el brazo en alto una horca.

Seguramente les está animando para la cosecha o algo así porque los demás también llevan todo tipo de herramientas en sus manos.

Hace ya horas que el sol ha salido y luce desafiante en el cielo, pero para Juan el tiempo transcurre de forma distinta. En su cabeza apenas hace un rato que salió de casa.

¡Un momento! Se oye un zumbido. ¿Abejas? ¿Avispas? Le aterrorizan. Desde que una le clavo un aguijón en la rodilla. Él no sabía entonces que esos insectos fueran en realidad el enemigo más feroz de un niño (junto a Don Paco, el profesor de la escuela) y como tal, desde entonces había emprendido una especie de cruzada para cazar a cualquiera que estuviera a su alcance.

Pero no parecen abejas. El zumbido aumenta y además es distinto. Ni siquiera un enjambre hace tanto ruido. Además viene de más arriba. Juan mira al cielo, pero el sol se interpone entre él y ese sonido de abeja gigante. Mira y lo único que consigue es deslumbrarse, incluso con la mano a modo de visera es imposible adivinar qué hay allí arriba.

Un nuevo zumbido, más bien un silbido. Se puede percibir, aunque más suave, se acerca inexorablemente, cada vez más…

Guernica, 26 de Abril de 1937

Dresde, 13 de Febrero de 1945

Hiroshima, 6 de Agosto de 1945

Sarajevo, 28 de Agosto de 1995

Dos bandos que se creen en posesión de la razón y con el derecho a reclamarla, interrumpen los juegos de Juan. No importa quién, lo que importa es que Juan ya no juega allí. Y se le olvidó decirle a nadie que un gorrión llamado Martín le está esperando.

working hard these days

If you work hard, in due time, all will return to you.
This is nonsense but if you ask me I say that this one is worst: All I have is because of my hard work. I have earned it. I deserve it so now I have the right to spend it whatever way I wish.
What is this all about?
Such believings are deep nailed in people minds. So deep that we like to think of ourselves as modern Robinsons struggling to survive in the hostile island of modern civilization.
As always happens, the most spread a believing is the most possibilities it has to be wrong. In fact, we are part of a devilish machinery set into motion ages before our time that leaves us not too much space for the so called free will.
We are rich or more commonly poor, not just because of our laziness or desire to prosper, but mainly because of something so contingent as the place we are born in. That will decide our fate more precisely and more heartlessly than anything else. We are eighty per cent what people in our land are. In wealthy regions there is a little bit more space for changing, let´s say the color of the house you live in. But in poor countries, and this is the vast majority of this world, you will pass through this life with no chance at all.
There are exceptions of course. And the establishment is always making point about such cases, just as a way to make people feel confortable with the rule life has given them, thinking they too will be able to change for the better.
So, the cruel truth unleash right before our eyes. We are what we are meant to be. But keep on reading, do not despair, because there is light at the end of the tunnel. No man has many chances to change the course of the river his life is in. But society does. Men and women as members of a bigger community are able to reshape the rules and conventions that govern their lives, if going in the same direction.
Do not missunderstand this, because there is a difference between participate in the building of a new society, this is being active, and to be part of the neighborhood just because we own a house in it but never doing anything neither to improve nor to worsen it.
to be continued...

Internal affairs...There is not such thing.

Years ago when you saw or heard a fight, your first movement was to try and separate. Then sometimes you realized it was a man and a woman quarreling and, no matter what, you decided it was not of your business. Internal affairs you could say.
Luckily this has changed. Men have no power over their wives anymore. Relations inside couples have reshaped and become a sort of between-equals thing. But, what is more important: Nobody thinks a man has full rights to do whatever (except killing, that was the limit) with his family members. Now you have not only the right but you must do something when a man is beating his wife. Society will blame you if you just stand there doing nothing. Things have changed for good.

Somebody tells me. Is there a marriage going on inside a country so you can do nothing when a blood bath is taking place?

I don't want to talk about Irak, because there are so many "other reasons" that the example do not help to my discussion. But I promise I will talk some other day about my impressions on the subject. Yes indeed it is a very interesting issue.
Neither I will use the Rwanda case because everybody agree it was a mistake not to be repeated (the killing limit I was talking about inside a couple).

Let's talk about Afganistan. A country with a goverment whether you like it or not. As many others, is a result of a civil war but a more or less lawful one anyway. China, former U.S.S.R, even the U.S.A. got their first leaders from the war fields.

The rule of thumb is that you must let legal goverments decide how to manage their citizens. And the limit is, once again, that they do not kill...at least not too many people, not directly.

And this was the case. Oppression but not direct extermination. Therefore internal affairs you could say and sadly a lot of politicians too.
I say, like the way we see family business has changed, so relations between countries should change. Everybody is responsible of everything because we live in the same world. The pollution western countries produce does not remain above them in their skies but travels freely among frontiers showing us in the tough way how times have evolve to the globalization, wathever it means.
So, if we are capable of evolve and asume what reality has already brought us, will then see that globalization must reach internal affairs and make them everybody affairs.

Has the USA the right to invade a country? Absolutely no.
But let me rephrase the question: Has the international community the right to do it? Yes. And I say more. There are a lot of cases where it has the obligation, even if the so call problem concerns only to that country and its inhabitants. Because people are human beings before this or that nation's citizens. And so we must ensure its civil rights no matter what.
And now comes my point. I think that the absolute oppression Afgan women suffered was enough to support an intervention to reestablish the equilibrium between what can be seen as the particular cultural behavior of a special region or religion and human rights.
An act of that magnitude is even more justified when it is perfectly clear the oppressed are not able to set them free by their own means. You can not wait forever wondering if things are going to change. You should change them...for good.
One of the first objections to intervention is that of local customs or traditions, and turns into a big unassailable fortress if you are able to disguise it with one of the so call, big religions. Because then the root of the discussion moves toward the eternal fight among civilizations and the original problem seems to disolve in a sea of other reasons, that eventually end with the economical aim to subdue the other religion, culture or race.
A beloved husband could say about the way he treats her beloved wife that he beats her but it is allright, you know, is their custom...their? actually is his. Like was Afgan men practice not to let Afgan women to become emancipated, denying them even the right to a full education or a proper healthcare (if no relative man was available to escort them to the hospital, what happens to be a main problem in a country full of widows).
No religion sanctions that but if there were one doing so it would mean nothing and the fact would keep execrable anyway and so would be ours the duty to stop it. In the name of the human being, never in the name of the western civilization.

chart of intentions

What I am trying here is to find out the way today's world works. Nothing more, nothing less.
The first thing to change the way things are is to know the ways things happen and the reason inside every movement in political or economical environment.
Probably it is going to start as a mess. A bunch of ideas and reflexions on not connected issues, but hopefully in the end I wish everything fits in a full view of the complex twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Then and only then we will feel free to change, for the better, as our elders did before us. To improve this world as a legacy to our children.
Please, and I mean it. Without you, anonymous reader, and your suggestions, I don´t believe this project I now start will be different from so many others.
Thank you. Let the show begin.