Merigoesaround

I keep on being vegetarian. It makes me feel healthy and purified. And so the blood test (mainly done to please my mum) says: my proteins, lipids, cholesterol, all is good after 3 months of veggies. It all started many years ago, when I worked in a turkey factory for a summer in England. A slaughter house, to give you more bloody details. I was supposed to collect strawberries, work in a farm for the summer, or so the contract that I signed with a temporary job agency in Barcelona said,...but I ended up selecting and arranging turkey wings into EU and non-EU boxes. The latter, with a purplish color, were apparently sent to the Ruskis and ex-Soviet republics. I smile when I think about that vegetarian summer. I learned very little English. Electrocuted turkeys do not talk. At times, I felt like an immigrant surrounded by equals treating me unfairly. This maybe how the millions of Peruvians, Ecuadorians and Paraguayans might feel in Spain these days. Spanish unemployment has gone up to ...

From: http://xkcd.com/77/

Yesterday I discovered myself writing down in my to-do list: google and buy good anti-wrinkle lotion. Drama? Not yet. I turned 30 some days ago and I wonder how responsible, mature and serious I should become now. My immediate wholehearted answer is: not at all. Being in the late 20’s was so comforting. It was almost like extending high school for a year afraid of going to Uni. 30 is neither late 20's nor early 30's so I have a whole vacuum year in which I basically can feel as young or as old as I want to. Since I turned 30 I've heard several times that my uncles, grandma, parents and everybody surrounding me these short week in Spain...WHEN THEY WERE MY AGE they already OWNED a house, HAD 2 babies and the first step of a professional career COMPLETED. Most of that generation should read a book called 'The 4-hour workweek' and reflect on their lives. That generation did not have the time, mobility, (human) capital and choices I do have today, so, as said, I am not ...

A- The Indian way is: your parents tell you to marry and then you learn how to love your assigned lifelong partner, you learn how to enjoy the pleasures of sex and the pros and cons of cohabitation and bed-sharing. B- The Western way is: you have sex, you fall in love, you enjoy the pleasures till you marry, you realized it was not love and then you divorce. C- In Albania I met the third way: somebody wants to marry you because tradition dictates so, but this ex-Ottoman tiny territory is already too western to obey tradition, you fall in love, you decide whom to marry after a plethora of fortunate and unfortunate looking partners and arguments at home, you feel in love, you feel so in love that you need lovers, you enjoy the carnal pleasures, yeah you do, somebody finds out about your extra-marital practices, everybody gossips, you realized it was not love and you want to divorce but you decide that having a partner and a lover is better indeed. Luckily, durable, happy love might also ...

I don’t think this word exists in English. Landing in Spain I observed that most of my compatriots are chubby-looking people. They look healthy though: red cheeks, cushion-like handles of love on both sides of the belly, smiley Spaniards. It is time to disclose the reason for our body fat accumulation: the summer merendola . Merendola comes from the work Merienda. In theory it is a light meal between lunch and dinner. Americans barbacue or picnic, we organize merendolas. At home the summer merendola starts around 7pm with the male of the family (normally the one who has paid for the pork and beef cutlets) lighting the barbacue fire on. There is a lot of expertise surrounding the process of lighting a fire: the men of the house (dad, uncles, granpas) go back to their Rambo boy scout times and each of them has a different opinion on the best way to set the fire. They argue and insult each other. The insults are nice though, after some time abroad I have discovered that my fellow Spaniard...

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." Mark Twain

It has happened before. This feeling is not at all new. However, this time is more acute, more penetrating and intense. I hate myself. My luck, my wealth, my 10 pairs of shoes, my 80 EUR perfume and my 3 iPods. Landed from India in London and I felt incredibly bizarre. The plane was full of second-generation Indians who today are British and eat, behave and are like myself. Western. I had some (pretty strong) negative transference towards them, they looked to me as the lucky ones, the ones who were fortunate enough to be born in a country where vending machines work, floors are clean, airports are filled with Bally, Prada, Pink and Burberry stores and people overeat and own too many pairs of shoes. I hated myself first and I hated them. I am aware this is an unfounded, totally subjective negative reaction product of my heart and not of my brain… each of those individuals has a story behind. I do too. Moreover, in Brigade Road in Bangalore people also accumulate shoes and I bet some exp...

Italians know something about the art of living and Spanish about the art of dying; I read the other day in the paper.

The Taj Mahal is probably one of the most romantic places I have ever visited. The first impression once you climb the two or three steps before you get a full view of the Taj was: ‘seems smaller than I expected’. Only after you spend 1 or 2 hours visiting and breathing the atmosphere of the place one can feel the grandiosity and deepness of this place. The Taj is love transformed into a building. The white reflection of the marble, the little pink, green and blue flowers singing spring, the greenness surrounding the mausoleum…it is love in the form of architecture. I visited in company of Marko, a Croatian God who illuminated the day from the beginning (6am) till my return to Delhi (7pm). Marko was queuing to get train tickets, there was a long, long line and I decided to approach him: ‘Are you going to the Taj?’, ‘Yes’, ‘Can you get my ticket please?’, ‘Yes’. I had found a day traveler companion. Marko has only one goal in life ‘to be happy’. He is not shy in confessing that. His wor...

Delhi sent me off with a strong, diagonally falling, capricious rain. The last days I felt as if this country wanted to show me its gloomier side, away from the Southern fairytale I have mentally stored in my mind during the last two months. The little I have seen from Northern India has made realize more the hardship the majority of this country faces. Down south, in my comfortable rural bubble, where everybody smiles at me and makes 120% sure that they give me the right amount of change when I purchase something, I experienced the generosity of those who have nothing, the slow rural but monotonously organized tempo, the simplicity of their meals, their lives and the certainty of their futures. In the metro, I felt capitalism in the worst form and the amount of times I had to argue with drivers, train station managers, restaurant waiters, hotel staff, annoying men and guides was too high for a way too short stay in this corner of India. The memories of Marina Beach in Chennai (apparen...

I dream that I am here of these imprisonments charged, and I dreamed that in another state happier I saw myself. What is life? A frenzy. What is life? An illusion, A shadow, a fiction, And the greatest profit is small; For all of life is a dream, And dreams, are nothing but dreams. Yo sueño que estoy aquí destas prisiones cargado, y soñé que en otro estado más lisonjero me vi. ¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí. ¿Qué es la vida? Una ilusión, una sombra, una ficción, y el mayor bien es pequeño: que toda la vida es sueño, y los sueños, sueños son.

This afternoon I found myself humming the Spanish anthem over the phone. Those who know me would quickly see the bizarreness of this behavior. I like anthems as much as I like passports. Very little. There was a good reason for humming patriotically though. My grandfather was a multi-faceted, multi-tasking individual, musician at local parties, sheppard, farmer, wine maker. He played dulzaina, a typical Spanish instrument. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulzaina His love for music and savoir-faire was passed on to my uncles who today play the trumpet and saxophone at local fiestas, weddings and other folkloric gatherings. Every 6th of August since I was little, my uncles would play at mass and during the Catholic procession during the festivities of their village. Today, from another remote corner of the world I surprisingly, almost magically, called my mum at the exact time when the show had started. I listened to the music via her cell and my eyes started feeling wet and my under lip t...

This quote shocked me: "I've thought for a while that sending laptops to developing countries is simply the 21st century equivalent of sending bibles to the colonies. Amen." by Guido van Rossum

work. Yes, yes. W.O.R.K!! "I love to talk about work too and hear about it. I think in someways we could be nerds still. We should be passionate about what we do for bread and butter if not its not fun eating and going out with the money we earn no? Don't you think so? I hate it when people constantly bitch about what they are doing. Its okay to bitch about bosses etc but the actual work itself is not good. When we start doing that we need to quit I think. I have started to rant now..." A friend wrote this to me and I thought: what if they pay you 10000 USD per month and you hate your job? Do you also quit? Do we choose jobs according to what others do or according to what we are really passionate about? Once you start playing golf, going to the opera and vacationing in Bermuda can you quit that job even if you hate your colleagues and the bullshit that you sell to the world? Are badly-paid jobs more interesting than better-paid ones? Is responsibility and paycheck positi...

In my religion we only occasionally fast, we eat vegetables that grow under the earth such as garlic or onions, cows have very little privileges and we do not need to shower to go pray in a church. India has (also) captivated me for its caste and community diversity. My curiosity is compulsive. I'd like to know the customs and traditions of each community or religion. When a colleague at work told me that on Tuesday he does not eat egg or that on Wednesday he fasts I couldn't but wonder: is that much fasting, many pujas (prayers), promises and beliefs letting Indians be themselves? I was a good summer Catholic. From June to the beginning of September I would go to church every Sunday and accompany my grandmother very often to the daily Rosary around 8pm. My religiousness coincided with the school summer break and my vacation in rural Spain. From those days I got the habit of lighting candles when I pass by a church. I look at the altar, make the cross and close my eyes for a se...

Bangalore. Autorickshaw. Train station. Rush. Another friend behind. Another see you soon. Children begging by the streetlights know well their targets. I am a target for them. My skin is now thick enough to resist their look and the gesture of putting their hand in their mouth when they beg for money. I don't surrender to their vulnerable look, even when I am in acute farewell mood. After experiencing that sad face for some time I have found an answer that hopefully pleases us both: "you are beautiful". I do not give them money, instead I offer them food if I have something with me. From the auto, Bangalore looked as prettier as ever before: light rain cleaning the streets and the sunset slowly falling over this very green city. I have the strange gift of often seeing things prettier than they really are, I am aware of that, it is part of my state of mind. On Saturday night Bangalore's sky was maroon, pollution could be felt in my reddish eyes...however, to me the sk...

"This might not be a very rich household madam but it looks like a happy one", I told her. She looked at me and, after the translation, she laughed, showing me all the years that had passed without a single visit to a dentist. Despite her not very attractive teeth, she was beautiful. She looked 10 years older than her real age (40) and her thinness was somehow abnormal but I won't forget the light in her eyes or the way she reacted when I asked her if I could take a picture with her. She stood up immediately, went inside the house, started combing her hair, redoing her sari and washing her face. I saw a handsome young man inside the 45-year old husband sitting on the floor. When I interrupted his work making bamboo baskets by the main road and asked him whether I could talk to him and his wife for a while, he turned his head to me, smiled and made a strong "Aha" sound that over here means yes. I entered their property and sat in a piece of wood outside the entra...