El Torzón

Hicham había pasado algunos días en la ciudad de México. Haber crecido en África lo había forjado para estar siempre atento, mantenerse seguro, y disfrutar de unas vacaciones en la ciudad monstruo sin problema alguno. Todo había ido bien. Rápidamente había hecho amigos en el hostal con quienes salir en la noche. De día, hacía turismo por su cuenta. En algunas ocasiones había salido a comer/cenar con viejas amistades. La bestia estaba domesticada para nuestro héroe marroquí. Hicham era como un local, su español era bastante bueno y el acento no lo hacía resaltar. Todo parecía extrañamente familiar. Incluso las empanadas que vendían afuera de las estaciones del metro. Ese día había poco tiempo para recorrer muchos lugares. Tenía que ser bastante eficiente, Decidió comer mientras viajaba en el metro. Del puesto mas cercano de empanadas escogió una de atún (después de todo, las vendían también en Marruecos). La comió en el camino sin prestar mucha atención. Y entonces, le dio el torzón.

Rulo había ido a México por pocos días. Debía tramitar una visa para empezar a trabajar en Estados Unidos. Habían pasado catorce meses desde su última visita. Tras atender a la cita en la embajada en la ciudad de México, viajó a San Luis a visitar a sus amigos. Era fin de semana, y por dos días enteros la fiesta no paró. Fue tan grande que Mano no se presentó a trabajar ni sábado ni domingo (así es, Mano trabajaba sin fines de semana, sin descanso, de sol a sol, a veces más). Ya no eran tan jóvenes como antes. Las borracheras no se curaban tan rápido. El domingo en la noche decidieron llevarla tranquilo, ver un par de películas con Minoru y dejar al cuerpo reposar. Hacían años que no visitaban un puesto de hot-dogs y nachos que estaba a unas cuadras del departamento. Decidieron compartir unos nachos grandes entre los tres. Y de repente, les dio el torzón.

La última navidad que pasé en México fue en el 2010. A pesar de que tan solo seis meses antes había recorrido el país con algunos de mis mejores amigos de Montreal (Irene, El hermano de Irene, y Blanka), al llegar sentí el peso de tanto tiempo lejos. Había creado un evento en Factbook para saludar a todo el mundo. Invité a mucha gente: amigos de la infancia, la carrera, y el antiguo empleo. La cita fue en un bar en el centro de la ciudad llamado la mezcalería (si, tenían muchos tipos diferentes de mezcal). La noche se pasó bastante bien. Invité tragos, me invitaron tragos, todo muy bien. Entonces, alguien me pasó un shot de mezcal con un escorpión adentro. Normalmente traen un gusano, esto era bastante especial. Como era mi fiesta debía tomarlo. Amarrándome de valor mastiqué un poco el escorpión y lo trague con el mezcal. Era tiempo de regresar a casa. A la mañana siguiente, efectivamente, me dio el torzón. 

Crisis As an Area of Opportunity

Crises tend to overwhelm. They bring loss of stability and a sense of uncertainty that makes us feel uncomfortable. Have you ever worried about things that might happen in the near future and felt that weird variation of the stomach-butterflies that’s not enjoyable? I tend to worry too much, so I have. The latest Dalai Lama likes to say: if there’s a solution to it then there’s no need to worry, if there’s no solution, then there’s no need to worry either (last time we were hanging out he told me the same thing like 5 times).

America’s economy (along with the economy of the rest of the western world) has recently gone through a big economic crisis, and even though things have slowly improved, people still feel down about it. They weren’t used to experiencing crisis; not like we are used to back home. In Mexico we’ve learned to struggle with money; but lately we’ve been going through a political and social crisis that we had never seen. Thus, spirits back home are also down.

A good way to stop worrying about the crisis is looking at the opportunities it presents. Crisis is an agent of change. If the US needs an economic model change, right now would be the time to make it happen. In the same way, in Mexico we should be more prone to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them, to die to sleep, no more; and by a sleep to say we end the heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to?

Talking more seriously though (at least more practically), there IS real opportunity that the US crisis brought, and I don’t talk about merely taking advantage of undervalued housing, the US economic crisis is the product of a variety of factors, so there’s many ways to take advantage of it. Here’s a few that pop up in my mind:

• Manufacture of high quality, reliable, advanced products is no longer world-competitive when done within US soil. Right now would be the perfect time to strengthen advanced manufacture in Latin America (or any other region of the world where living is less expensive and where regulations can be met). Even for US citizens, moving out of Detroit and to places with nicer weather along with their assembly companies, could be a sweet move (public health care, sandy beaches, free higher education, and coronas doesn't sound that bad).

• Research and Development is starting to be heavily endorsed by both American companies and government. If you’ve got a master (or even better, a PhD) and always wanted to work at a high-tech lab, the US is a great place to look at right now. You’ll be helping the country and mankind’s progress.

• In same spirit, the US needs new companies, and ventures will be sponsored happily; so it is a great moment to become the boss, create a company, and start generating some jobs (yours to begin with).

Every crisis has its winners. It would be cool to be part of the winning team for a change.

While I Was Away (part 1)

I once heard you can’t write if you’re happy.

I’ve been quite happy lately. That being said, I’ve also been rather busy.

I also mistakenly deleted the registry of the blog’s pictures by taking them away from google+ (google linked them together without me asking for it). Once I found out google owns blogger and stores everything in a single place, and it’s so easy to ruin settings or misplace information… I was quite angry with their service. Bottom line, it’s been a while since I last decided to write something for this place. But all it needed was a bit of work to make the page look nice, and fixing the pictures to make me want to write some more again. So here I am, typing, hoping it comes out cool. Maybe I’ll change blog service provider in the future. For now I’ll make do.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about a few creativity related subjects:

• Intellectual property as the purest form of capitalism: It’s quite a surreal feeling, the one I get when thinking about how our society allows us to own ideas, and more importantly, to make profit from owning them. Walt Disney, as a company pays lots of money to a group of lobbyists to get congressmen to extend the time of copyright ownership after the creator has dead, thus preventing us all from drawing naked mickey mice and selling those drawings.
• Tablets and cloud storage: There’s no excuse nowadays not to read. They give us access to an infinite resource of material. All classics are free; we don’t even need to store them on a drive locally as they can exist in our Amazon accounts. Technology has pushed forward our society, and just made access to information a commonplace reality.
• One can only write about what one knows: Quite a lot of the books I like are somewhat autobiographical. The hero of the story tends to share the writer’s personality traits, other characters tend to be based on real people at least loosely. When we make up the entire thing it always ends up looking plain, a bit forced… at least in my case (I’m not a good liar).
• There are only 7 basic story plots: That’s about right. In the past century a couple more have been added but that’s only cause way too many authors were sick of the basic 7 and made a huge effort to freshen up storytelling. It would be real cool if I get to see a few more new ones during my lifetime.
• There is no money in poetry, and there is no poetry in money: Poetry doesn’t sell, very few people like it. It’s hard, it’s personal, it asks for the reader to break a thicker wall before making a connection with the writer. Last year’s Nobel Prize winner (the Swedish poet) was widely unknown, and even now after the award we don’t see his works around.

It seems a bit unfair to dedicate just a couple of lines to each of the subjects… but I don’t really have a huge argument to present on any of them. Or do I? In any case, I would like to end this entry with a cool phrase:

There are two golden rules to success: 1) never reveal everything you know.