Merigoesaround

Sat in the plane. Smiled. Planes give me the thrill of going somewhere, of visiting a new or an old place or the joy of just going home, like in this occasion. Happiness. Grabbed the in-flight magazine and noticed some papers in between. "What is anxiety? How to overcome anxiety?" Text highlighted by the passenger who sat in the exact same plane, in the exact same seat I was sitting in now, only some hours before, but, who unlike myself, was probably not happy. Depression. Arrived home. Late on a Friday. Very late for a flight but very early for a Spanish Friday party. Again the immense joy of being with my parents, with boyfriend husband, of seeing my friends, of new announcements of weddings, new babies, healthy growing ones and the memories and gossips from high school times. Happiness. Back in the plane. Took off. Paris. Train delayed. Suicidal accident blocking traffic. Depression.

Despite working on financial access and responsible finance issues the closest contact that I have had to somebody remotely poor lately is with the Bangladeshi cleaner who hoovers my office every day. I welcome her everyday with a big smile. Always smaller than hers. The bindi, long black crispy hair, white teeth and shiny eyes of this tiny women remind me day after day that I should work to give opportunities to people who do not have them. I think I need to get out of posh and stupid Saint Germain right now.

The headline would go along these lines: "99 percent of the youngsters between 25-35 are going through a crisis of extreme insatiability" I am not sure if 99 percent of that group population suffers from that but that same percentage of my friends certainly do experience acute insatiability. Me included. I think this permanent impossibility of feeling satiated or fulfilled stems from the fact that we have too many choices. The days are too short. The to-do lists are too long, the dreams too large. Mobility is not an issue anymore, we can work from here, from there or from both. Choices might seem something good at first but they can lead to many suboptimal decisions and specially to wasting valuable time that could be used for something satiating like doing sports, sharing time with friends or family, or volunteering. Instead too many choices mean too many minutes evaluating the pros and cons of x versus y versus z. The four hour week blog is written by a guy who is more a ...

Volunteerism + Tourism Voluntourism

My bestfriend (BF) has subscribed to http://www.match.com/ . I promised my BF (using Mrs. Moneypenny techniques here*) I will treat this confidentially. Meaning 1- I won't disclose his/her name, gender and 2-I will respect number 1 if BF keeps sharing match.com insights with me. I am seriously tempted to subscribe to match.com. My boyfriend husband thinks I do not need it. I obviously don't, I found the perfect match 2795 days ago, but I twitter, blog, facebook, asmallworld, decayenne, am I really up to date in the business if I do not try online or speed dating? I feel virtually incomplete. Online matching services seem quite a resource to couple finding. I hear that in India, Shaadi http://www.shaadi.com/ does wonders. I used to be quite conservative with this virtual or matrimonial agencies, that could not be 'love'...I think it all changed at the age of 10. My mum and dad were friends with a couple who used to come home quite often. I remember that the lady spoke a...

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