Merigoesaround

Life is a succession of uneasy compromises.

I was peacefully watching TV with Rob, my hedge-fund roomie, when the CNN lady started interviewing a representative of the United Nations Commission for the Peaceful Uses of the Outer Space. I suddenly felt in a far away galaxy. Let me rewrite that again: the UNITED NATIONS COMMISSION FOR THE PEACEFUL USES OF THE OUTER SPACE. Rob looked at me and said: 'hey ya, how many joints do you think you need to smoke to work there?' Rob does not understand the extraterrestrial powers of bureaucracies. Pfff. http://www.oosa.unvienna.org/

The phrase “I can’t do it” should not be part of our vocabulary. Instead, we should think “I can’t do it alone.”

"Because I do not have time and because Facebook makes me feel uncomfortable and gives me bad vibes I have decided to close my Facebook account. You can find me in my email xyz@gmail.com". I recently received this email from a friend. Another friend recently wrote in his status : "X....might close his Facebook account". Is Facebook making me feel uncomfortable? Does it give me bad vibes? The answer is no and no. Or not yet. However, I can understand that Facebook might bring trouble to the lives of some individuals. Another good friend of mine tells me that she can't but feel terrible jealousy at the sweet comments crowding her boyfriends' Facebook wall. This same couple had a bad argument when she found her boy spending more than...let's say...2 seconds staring at the pictures of a Facebook girl friend of his. My friend's behavior is probably unrelated to Facebook...but this 'social utility', let's jargoon baby, makes the number of occas...

In the midst of crisis menus at restaurants, anti-crisis sales in the shops, my crisis-monitoring surveys at work, a crisis-shot served at the club around the corner...I found this anti-crisis proverbia: In a land with no credit, the man with cash is king. Read: Those who have accumulated cash, good for you...those who haven't...save. I think some of us would like to start feeling crisis-blind. Down with crisisphilia. Remove the word 'crisis' out of our work, our reading and our news program. I like to think of myself as an optimist...but this crisis is as bad as it looks. If I go back in time, my political, economic gray matter stores the Asian crisis, the Mexican one, the fallout of Argentina...but I do not remember those days having major impact in the US or Europe, I do not remember those as vox populi crisis, they were matters for academic discussion. This crisis is a shared one. At least psychologically. We all have a friend currently looking for a job and not finding...

"There are some situations one simply cannot be neutral about, because when you are neutral you are an accomplice. Objectivity doesn't mean treating all sides equally. It means giving each side a hearing" Christiane Amanpour , my journalist diva

Easy. If you work or live anywhere close to a tourist landmark you'll behave Parisian in a short couple of weeks. My work is strategically close to the Tour d'Eiffel, the Arc de Triomphe, Trocadero and Les Champs Elysees. This fantastic location is tourist material par excellence. So, every morning, afternoon, early evening, evening...always, dozens of tourists clog metro escalators, doors, crowd metro wagons, wander lost holding foldable maps. If you happen to be late, forget it. It appears Asian tourist do not know how to stand on the right side of the mechanical stairs. You will quickly start wishing Paris becomes an ugly city inhabited by you and your office colleagues. Despite the tourist transit there is one moment I specially enjoy: watching the astonished happy tourist faces when they first see the Christmas lighting (still on) of the Champs and the magnificent Arc de Triomph bringing your memories to Napoleonic times. There I am not Parisian, I am just another tourist ...

"Do something manual, use your hands". She told me. She had rolled cigarettes for 28 years in a cooperativa close to Havana. I looked at her hands, expecting to see deformed, arthritic hands but Yomaris had white porcelain soft fingers, nobody could have said she rolled cigar after cigar for more than 2 decades. Targets were harsh, she said. 80 to 120 cigars per day. She had her own health tips to fight deformation, arthritis or psychological unbalance, common among rollers, Yomaris said. She drank every morning a mix of water, lemon and spices that was miraculously good for blood circulation. "Do something manual", she told me again. "Humans we need to use our hands to produce something, it is fulfilling". I thought about it and decided that my hands this year should do a hobby other than typing blogs or writing emails to friends across the pond. Cooking, painting, flute playing, pottery, gardening, sewing, massage learning?!...I am not sure yet but I nee...

Rosa sat, so Martin could walk. Martin walked, so Obama could run. Obama is running, so our children can fly . -Ed Welch, quoting a text message from a friend, on NPR's All Things Considered

Woke up, left the house and almost stepped on a cat who was asking me to caress him/her. The cat lives in the court of the building where I live. The house of love. The house of love is all red. The owner must have spent a lot of time in Nepal or India, the house being decorated with extraordinary easternzenish taste. Budha included, this new housing situation is very interesting. My roomies, I obviously do not live by myself in a 100 sqm apartment in Saint Germain des Pres, the development cooperation Mecca , are Rob and Natasha. A British guy wasting his life in a hedge fund when he could actually be a painter and Natasha, a sweet Russian lady in the midst of her divorce who does not paint very well, but who cooks masterfully. Cohabitation is always a good lesson of patience and understanding. I have lived with these people for 2 weeks and I just found out that they do not know my name. The house of love does not need names, just respect and cordiality (we missed a little bit of this...

This time I did not choose the right fancy dress. "My first weekend in Paris and I have a theme party", I thought. How cool. This is like Ameeerica. The theme was "Heroes and Villains". I thought Gandhi was hero enough to make the cut and be original at the same time, all I needed was a sheet and an Indian scarf. I arrived at the party dressed as myself with Gandhi in a paper bag. I observed the dance floor, Superman was there, a couple of cowboys, some evil-looking people. It was time for Gandhi to hit the dance floor. I fixed my sheet and headband and draw a little bindi in between my eyebrows, just to make it clear that I was disguised as a hero from the far east. I felt confident. Gandhi Martinez. What a great hero. I even had a socially responsible and development cooperation-friendly fancy dress. Down with leathery Batmans and expensive Superman outfits. Go homemade fancy dresses. I saw most of the girls were dressed as Angels. Oh how nice, I thought, French g...

My first night in Paris and I am eating McDonalds. This could seem a bad Parisian kick off…but life here couldn’t have started better: The snow and grayness overcasting Paris for the last days moved away opening the sky to a splendid sun that melts the stalactites pending from the roofs. I experienced weather and human generosity today: somebody paid for my metro ticket because the vending machine did not accept my credit card. Such a wonderful start put me in a talkative, happy mood. I felt like talking to strangers, I talked soo much to a random guy in the subway that he asked me for my number. Ego boost. The day meetings woke up the operational part of my brain, on holidays for the last weeks. Suddenly, I felt I really graduated from graduate school, as my friend Ursula said when she started working some months ago…suddenly the word weekend had a totally different meaning. Sitting in the office I realized I am a grown up: my office has finally a large window with a decent view of a ...

Cuba is contradiction. Cuba is happiness, sadness, noise, peace, love, passion, suicidal vibes, promiscuity, religion, santeria, tobacco, boring sun deprived all-inclusive colorful wristband tourists, history and histories, a frozen point in time with tropical weather. All that and more. *Photos...Hugo's courtesy

This will be a year to ponder, settle down for a couple of years and work and enjoy life equally hard. I wish that those without illusions, find them, those in poverty or pain fight it, those in trouble, solve it and those in love, enjoy it.

I am not sure for how long a Spanish ham lasts at home. Looking at my parents’ chunky shapes and at my rosy cheeks after 3 weeks of mama’s food, I am guessing not for too long. Every time I come home for Christmas the ham ritual is initiated when my mum announces to the rest of the family that the old ham is finished and we need to buy a new one. Buying a Spanish ham is like buying a good quality turkey for Thanksgiving: not every turkey tastes or costs the same. A ham can go from 60 EUR or so to thousands. I once met a Spanish diplomat who told me that the Spanish ham should be a hidden secret of the Spanish gastronomy and that we should stop exporting it abroad. Hygiene-conscious Americans and their multiple and complicated phyto-sanitary rules, haven’t allowed Obamaland to enjoy the taste of this Spanish delicacy until very soon. Pigs are very dangerous animals in terms of exporting diseases. True. My grandma used to say that pigs are great because you can eat almost every part of i...

In the few weeks I’ve spent home in Barcelona I’ve learned more about the Main Street meaning of the financial crisis than reading the best FT analysts from sunny India or Benin. Sometimes faces and voices say more than books. This crisis is deep down penetrating the brains and psyches of my Spanish fellows. Tightening the belt means cutting consumption. I am surprised by the discounts that most retail shops are doing, in theory the sale season should start at the beginning of January but since shops are empty and hairdressers sit in their saloons lonely…discounts have started everywhere. One shop displayed the words: PROMOCION CRISIS -30%. The blackboard of a restaurant around the corner announced MENU CRISIS 6.50 euros. Bittersweet marketing to tackle poor sales. And where is the money being spent? Mortgage payments are higher. True. Mine has increased more than 100 euros in a period of 2 years, half of that amount in the last 7 months or so. Some money is going to the bank savings a...

Being vegetarian for the last 6 months I've received all kinds of comments and complaints:"Oh, is it because you love animals?", "Religious reasons", "dietary restrictions?", "stop being strange and difficult and ate the beef steak I bought for you" (the latter, my mum) There is no other reason behind my vegetarianism other than the fact that I simply do not appreciate food that much, I hate blood and I put on weight even under full days of pineapple and papaya diet as my Beninese hips visibly confirm. Before a friend who is now living in Singapore tells me that I sound like Paris Hilton again, let me clarify the purpose of this posting: I want to love food and I think I found the way to achieve that. Some people close their eyes out of pleasure when they put something delicious in their mouths. I know some of those. Anna, Michael, Hugo. Probably you do that too. Well, I don't. I eat because I have to eat but I am not able of appreciating...

Some people say that twin brothers or sisters are specially connected. Mentally. They can feel what the other feels, advance what the other thinks. There is no chance of my sister and I being twins, she is 3 years older...but when we were kids our capacity to want the same thing at the same time, have the same reaction simultaneously and wish the same thing was extraordinary. We even had urgent urinary needs at the same time, the run to the bathroom was very competitive. We used to wake up with the fixation of wearing the same dress or shoes (I was three years younger but had her size), we wanted to eat the same amount of soup, we would complain if my steak was bigger or her piece of chicken was smaller. It had to be the same amount. One chicken breast did not equal a chicken leg plus a wing. No. My poor father started eating chicken breast (his favorite part) when we left home. So today, when my sister called saying that she is bringing me a little gift from San Francisco and that she...

Abdel is a Muslim friend from Northern Benin who refuses to open a restaurant with another friend if he has to serve alcohol. He does not want to serve alcohol, drink it or be involved in anything related to beers and whiskies. However he knows opening a restaurant could be a good business in Northern Nattitangou. Adbel lives in conflict. He did not finish school. Abdel’s little brother helps him reading the emails he occasionally receives from a Belgium girl who volunteered in Nattitangou some years back. He would like to learn how to read and write and spare himself the embarrassment of dictating emails to his brother. He told me that he knows "why blacks are still black"!: they know what they should be doing but they just don’t do it. His reasoning shocked me but at the same time I admire Adbel for taking own responsibility for the highs and lows of his life.