Serenade

The first time I heard a real live serenade with mariachis was about 20 years ago, at my grandmother´s previous house. That house was wonderful, in the neighborhood we had shops nearby to buy popsicles and chocolates, my first visit to a public library happened there and it had a great balcony with wooden balustrades that matched the turned wood detailing on the windows.

One night at midnight, the blare of trumpets woke us up. My grandmother rushed through our room and started peeking out the window. On the house across ours we could see the young man with a van full of mariachis behind him, standing in the driveway, hopefully looking up to see if a light would go on.

When a serenade takes place, it is common knowledge, or so my mother says, that no lights should be turned on in the neighboring houses. It adds to the drama. You see, when a woman receives a serenade, she can look outside her window with the lights turned off and see who has brought the music without people knowing she´s looking out. If it´s someone she wants to encourage, forgive or what not, then she turns on the lights to her room and it is understood that she is satisfied with the gift or peace offering, depending on what the case is.

This time, she turned on the lights and walked out on her balcony wearing an old fashioned night gown in shiny fabric. He asked her to come down, her parents stayed up in the balcony, and when she walked out he went down on his knees, asking for her hand in marriage.

For years I wondered when anyone would come and serenade me, thinking it was the most romantic thing someone could do for the person they love. A couple of nights ago, the blare of trumpets raised me from the computer, and I ran over to a window. The van was parked, violins were being played and trumpets blown on, however, the mariachis were quickly wisked inside the apartment building beside mine, and several other people peering from their windows in different apartments had to get back inside a bit dissappointed.

I wonder what the modern equivalent to serenades is in this modern world. The mariachi dream became quickly tarnished as they were brought up in almost every social event I had growing up. I never lay in bed thinking about marriage and proposals and romantic dates, with the firm superstition that thinking about stuff jinxes it, I go used to not thinking about it.

So better yet, I wonder what MY modern equivalent to the serenata mariachi is.

Devil´s Advocate

I love my dad, but sometimes I get frustrated at him. He has a heart of gold, his actions have always been loving, unselfish, generous. We never lacked anything, he took great care of us, and he was always willing to go that extra mile. However, his manner of speaking is such that his actions are overshadowed by his harsh words.

Every conversation becomes an argument where he holds the beacon of truth and goodness and I´m wrong and need to see the light. We could be discussing ANY topic, no matter how bland, and he´ll find a way to make it a debate where he´ll take the opposing view. I guess he believes that a good conversation is one that gets the blood rolling. I like passionate conversations, but I don´t confuse passion with having my blood boil and feel parts of my liver corroding off.

If I mention I´m writing an article, he´ll immediately say that I shouldn´t be writing about THAT subject. Why don´t I write about this other thing instead? I´ll try to explain that I don´t have much choice, I´m writing an assignment, I need to stick to some rules. He´ll basically poo-poo my rules and suggest I do something completely different, and then go on and on and on and on about HIS idea.

I´ll try to make small talk, and say that the flowers on the table are nice, and he´ll counter that saying they were expensive and then heatedly argue how it is a horrible abuse good people go through now that "they" have decided that the good flowers are all to be exported and we only get the crappy ones.

I´ll mention I´m happy with my new gadget, and he´ll say that it´ll get stolen. I´ll ignore that and then excitedly mention that I can see videos on the screen and he says it´s too small.

He´s constantly triggering me into feeling defensive. I´ve tried different techniques, but I get to a point where I can´t take it any more. I´ve tried ignoring his snarky comments and marshalling on, not taking offense but he´ll try to pick at other angles. I can try to steer the subject to another topic, but the story repeats itself. Eventually he brings down every opinion I have. I´ve even tried just letting him feel like he "won", but that is not satisfactory for him. He needs the discussion, he needs the steam, the action so to speak, and I´m just not into that. I hate confrontation. Especially when it is completely unnecesary.

I remind myself constantly that he´s a good person. That it is just the way he is, and it´s unlikely he´ll change, even when my mom has mentioned it, when strangers have also acknowledged it, and when it´s a common known fact among my siblings and myself, he isn´t aware that he does it.

I know that I´m the one who´s supposed to be patient and understanding. I just hope I am strong enough for it. Every single day.

High Maintenance

When I was a kid I was a bit of a loner. I can´t remember when I stopped playing Go-Bots and transformers with the boys at the playground and started having lunch on my own. Sometimes I would sit and wait for people to show up for lunch as they said they would, and then I´d wait and wait some more. I learned to spend lunch and recess sitting in the library... and guess what. I found library friends with whom no appointments were ever made: we would just show up at the library and if no one was there, we wouldn´t feel dissappointed or let down, after all, we were there to read. And where there was someone there, we would feel happy and talk for a bit and that was that.

After all this time, whenever someone cancells plans with me I feel completely unable to deal with it in a rational manner. I´d rather someone didn´t make plans with me unless they were 100% sure they can make it. That I can deal with. What I despise is whenever I get all excited about a plan and then it doesn´t happen. Even if it is a simple plan like going over to someone´s house and hanging out, watching tv and eating chips. Like tonight.

Even if I know that the reason why I´m being cancelled on is legit, I still feel it emotionally. It brings tears to my eyes, tightens my throat, makes my stomach spin and I can´t not make it personal. I can say I understand, and in my brain it all makes sense, but the feeling of rejection stays and images of me being stood up countless times come to mind. Like that time when my friend promised he would be there at the airport to pick me up, so I told my sister she didn´t have to miss work and pick me up, and I ended up having to shuffle with my suitcase to the bus stop and taking the bus and taxi combo to my house when he didn´t show up and had his cellphone turned off. Like the time when I got ready for a date, spend money on clothing, spent hours on makeup and hair, cancelled other plans and then spent the evening sitting at home after he called to say "sorry, something came up, can´t make it".

So this afternoon, I got all excited about my new shoes. I had a shirt picked out to match with them and earrings as well. I was going to go the extra mile to make it special, my mom asked me about him and I told her that we would go out, and hang out, and that everything was great. He was meeting with some classmates to work on a final and after that we would go out and eat chicken wings, have a beer, then head to his house and chill. Then I ask how he´s doing and he´s all "we´ll have to work until late tonight and probably tomorrow all day on this, sorry. If I have time I´ll visit you on Monday".

So it sucks. I have no other plans. I hate having backup plans because I´ve spent my life being PlanB girl and I know how it feels. It makes me sad. Because here I don´t have my network of girlfriends I can call up and get pep-talks from about how I shouldn´t take it personally. And then makes me mad. Why should I care anyway? Why on earth am I broke and have no money to run off to the mall and catch a movie on my own? Why do I depend on a single person?

It makes me feel so insecure. I go over my whole life and try to think of what I´ve done to deserve this. As if it were on purpose. I got completely worked up. Screw him. Screw men. I get working, work takes my mind of things I can´t control. I know i´m being unreasonable, that it isn´t on purpose... it doesn´t help. When he messaged me wanting to know if I could still go out, it was too late already. My mood was ruined. I´m quite unable to rally myself out of these situations. At least my way to deal is to avoid what hurt me, in this case, I blame my dependence on him. I SHOULD be able to spend a saturday at home. I should be able to deal with plan cancellation.

So I said I wasn´t up to it, and he got offended. Now I feel guilty. Sigh.

fear of technology

Last month, when I was at pop!tech liveblogging the conference, I was given a N95 nokia phone... everyone else who got one got happy playing with it at the conference, installing their GSM sim cards into the new gadget and off they went. Me? I kept it in its box and I stayed as far away from it as I could. Like a pig with diamonds. I kept on: clacking away on a borrowed clamshell Y2K ibook, my Nokia 1112 sitting in my room and working as an alarm clock/watch. I´m not that much of a tech buff. I don´t "get" gadgets and the need to get a bigger, better one every time it comes out. So I felt like they had given me a Lladró collectible sculpture. Pretty, expensive, sought after and not quite useful for myself.

I came back to Colombia resolved to sell it. Then I started thinking. Who is going to buy this phone? If this person is willing to pay for the phone and use it... why can´t I? None of us at Hiperbarrio have laptops or cellphones that go online. We work with blogs but can´t really experience mobile blogging. It didn´t take much to get me convinced to give it a test drive and make the most of it, get updated and see why people get all excited about connectivity. And here I am with a computer unlike any I have seen. A computer that does a lot more than what my desktop computer where I´m typing this does. And it fits in my pocket.

After much hemming and hawing, yesterday I took the cellphone out of its box and charged it for the first time. Today I popped it open and inserted my sim card.

Today I felt the technological gap in my own skin.

I was able to understand my mom and her fear of cellphones.

I was able to get why people don´t like computers when they´ve never used them.

I could get why people freeze in front of ATMs.


Usually there is a slow learning curve: You learn how to do something with technology, then you upgrade a level, then another, then a bit more. Every time you upgrade, you learn something slightly newer and slightly more complicated. You slowly go from the tecchy equivalent of boiling water to eventually making caviar and truffle lemongrass frappès as aperitifs. It is painless and gradual.

Today I felt as if after making scrambled eggs, I had somehow skipped every intermediate step and been sat in front of a poisonous puffer fish with a samurai grade steel blade and had been expected to make fugu sashimi for the royal family.

I have no idea how to use that thing. It taunts me. I can see the icons and I can read the labels, they are in plain English (or Spanish, I tried them both). But I don´t have the faintest idea of what they mean. My theory on the step by step learning curve? Not original. The writers of the Nokia manual apparently take it for granted that you´ll know lots of stuff before getting a phone like this one. Can´t blame them. The handbook is 134 pages long... in only one language.

The manual is peppered with terms like HSDPA, UMTS, Ad-hoc, LAN, IMAP4, DTMF. WTF! I feel like Melanie Griffiths in Born Yesterday, looking up every single word in the dictionary and trying to piece things out to get a sense of what they are asking. I feel like an alien who just got told a Chuck Norris joke... with the task to first find out who Chuck Norris is, what martial arts are, what movies mean, where Hollywood is, the definition of sitcom, what makes a TV work and then have to piece it all together to understand how come it is that he makes onions cry.

I already faced my first challenge: I can´t sent out text messages. I searched online for answers, checked other nokia phones I could get my hands on who are also in my network to see configurations, i´ve practiced my google-fu and I´m stumped. After doing the official Nokia troubleshooting I have to follow their recommendations: see my service provider and ask them to give me the message center phone number.

I´m afraid that whomever sees me at the service provider counter will be even worse off than myself. The English manual won´t be much use, and the N95 hasn´t arrived here yet. I´m crossing my fingers, though.

I have a lot more respect for anyone who dares confront not only the technological gap, but also cultural and language gaps on top of it. Like our students who surf the internet without prior experience, no knowledge of English and just based on trusting what we tell them. I think this experience is making me a better trainer. It has reminded me of what it feels like to SUCK.

What would I give for a tecchy mentor to show me the way!

decision making

I need to get my head around the fact that just wanting to be with someone is not enough to make a relationship stick. I feel incredibly guilty for daring to analyze this relationship. I´ve spent my previous relationships over-analyzing everything and I guess this time I went all the way to the other side and I have avoided looking at this liaison too closely. As time goes by I find myself rethinking if this is working out for me. After 8 months something has to be going in the right direction or we wouldn´t be together, right?

I´ve been head over heels in love, I´ve also been in relationships I had to be talked into and with time fell in love the other person. A few I got into just out of curiosity to see what would happen, and some of those I wasn´t able to cut off in time and they became train wreck relationships with yelling and bitching and general unpleasantness. I felt too cowardly to break up , I felt guilty, I felt the other person deserved another chance and that maybe I deserved whatever I was getting out of the relationship.

Funny how I try and see what I´m doing "wrong" or "right" according to past experiences: since all of them are former relationships, I can´t say I´ve learned or improved my techniques and have come up with proper practices, if they had worked out I´d still be going out with that same person. Me? I´m just walking in the dark.

I´m not the most stable person when it comes to jobs or relationships: I´m not the most stable person when it comes to anything in my life as a matter of fact. I get bored easily, I strive for novelty, I like variety, I like adventure. None of them conducive for long-lasting relationships with minimum drama. He shouldn´t have to be blamed for my instability and he doesn´t have to be my personal jester, keeping me entertained 24/7 when I know things just tend to get old and boring for me. Everything eventually does.


Today I shared with him the idea behind a blog post Logtar wrote:

Everything you like about the other person or you share is a thread that strengthens the rope of that relationship. One thread alone can be easily snapped with little force, but the more threads your rope has the stronger it becomes.

I tried to start a conversation on what things we have in common, to go against my urge to pinpoint all the ways in which we are different, and came out empty-handed. Basically it´s "we use internet and our names start with the same letter". It´s scary. We don´t share hobbies, interests, family background, life experiences. I tried to bring it up again when we were lying in bed at his house and he laughed it off. He tends to do that whenever I try to broach any conversation topic that requires deep thinking and analysis. It seems that his 6th sense of skirting possibly conflictive issues is the reason why we´re still together: we haven´t had the chance to fight about anything yet.

Still, the not having things in common isn´t enough reason to end a relationship. I don´t really have all that much in common with any of my other friends here in Medellin, but we´ve managed to start projects and work together and have fun. With 8 month guy? Only the fact that we made out one night at a party and then continued hanging out and we just started hanging out more often until one day we were boyfriend-girlfriend and that was that. No romance or wooing, only the jitters and excitement that any new relationship brings. He´s been my complimentary color, balancing things out and being a perfect contrast for whatever I tend to do.

Louann Brizendine once mentioned in an interview that women´s biggest mistake is expecting our boyfriend to be our girlfriend, and I think I´m making that mistake even as I´ve been conciously avoiding doing so. I don´t have female friends in this city and he´s the closest I have to that. But I can´t hang onto a person in a relationship just because they are a good friend.

But I´m also selfish. And scared. I´m scared of being lonely. Scared of spending my weekends alone, of coming to my computer and not having a cute IM message appear while I was out. Scared that I could bring up the idea of breaking up and he wouldn´t mind. Scared of breaking up just a couple of weeks before summer holidays and then having nothing to do and no one to hang out with during that time. Because I know that breaking up with someone and expecting that person to remain a friend doesn´t work out, so I shouldn´t count on that.

All this hemming and hawing just so that I didn´t come out and say the most terrible thing of all: I don´t love him.

I thought it would happen over time, and nope. Nothing yet. It hasn´t happened and I don´t think it will. I like him and he´s the person I hang out the most with, but wouldn´t that just make him a friend? A friend with whom I´m intimate every once in a while? But friend and sex do not a boyfriend make.

I´m scared and feeling guilty of wanting to break up and the feeling guilty for not wanting to break up. I wish the guilt would just go away and I´d grow balls to just go ahead and do what I know needs to be done.

Rainstorms and Podcasts

At 6:30 I had to get together with some friends and record another episode of our podcast blogotemático. The place we meet is quite close to my house, so it´s perfect walking distance, but awkward to use public transportation to get there. Today, as soon as I stepped out of my house, a torrential downpour fell and I was completely soaked by the time I got there.

Being wet when I know I can´t get immediately dry and warm makes me angry. I start fuming and my mood spirals downward from there. It´s completely different when it´s raining and I´m heading home: then I´m quite prone to ditching the umbrella and once I get home stripping off my drenched clothes, bundling into warm pjs and settling down with a cup of hot tea. But to be outside with puddles in my shoes and having clammy wet jeans sticking to my calves annoys me to no end. I wasn´t fit company by the time I got to the coffee shop at the Parque de los Pies Descalzos . So I sat down, took out my knitting and lowered my aggressiveness to humane levels.

I have gotten better at managing my anger: I now carry items that make me happier to assist this process. This time I had a flask of hot chocolate in my bag, a cream chease and goldenberry jam sandwich, the sock I´m knitting and a dry wool sweater in my bag. After some self induced therapy I was able to enjoy the usual banter on what goes on in the Colombian and international blog scene, and record with no mishaps.

If you understand Spanish, you can download our latest episode of Podcast Blogotemático, where we discussed my adventures at Pop!Tech as the Latin American Spanish language live-blogger who didn´t look the part but played it well, the terrible BLOG magazine the largest publishing house in Colombia created (I´ve analyzed Semana´s BLOG magazine in this article) which is basically a teen magazine without even a website of its own to justify its name, and we reach the conclusion that mainstream media in Colombia have NO idea of what is going on in the wilde internets, capping off with the terrible episode in losbloggers.tv (which doesn´t have anything to do with blogs) where they say that mac´s Operating System is Linux.

Productive

Today has been quite a productive day: besides the usual activities such as going to classes at the EAAAAAAAARLy hour of 6:30am, staying after class reading a book about ceramic crowns and then having some cheese empanadas, I got home, knit a bootie for a teacher who´s having a baby boy and I waxed up some teeth.

ps: The pattern for the booties is here.

And this is why I dont mind cheap wines

This experiment proves a nagging feeling I´ve had for a long while: when I order a glass of wine at a restaurant, I´m never really convinced they are serving me what I ordered, and if they do... well, I wouldn´t know the difference.

The Subjectivity of Wine

Category: Life Science
Posted on: November 2, 2007 10:12 AM, by Jonah Lehrer

The rules of the wine tasting were simple. Twenty five of the best wines under twelve dollars were nominated by independent wine stores in the Boston area. The Globe then assembled a panel of wine professionals to select their top picks in the red and white category. All of the wines were tasted blind.

The result is a beguiling list of delicious plonk. But I was most interested in just how little overlap there was between the different critics. In fact, only one wine - the 2006 Willm Alsace Pinot Blanc from France - managed to make the list of every critic. Most of the wines were personal favorites, and appeared on only one of the lists.

So much for objectivity. But results like this shouldn't be surprising. I've blogged about this before, but it's such a cool experiment that it's worth repeating. In 2001, Frederic Brochet, of the University of Bordeaux, conducted two separate and very mischievous experiments. In the first test, Brochet invited 57 wine experts and asked them to give their impressions of what looked like two glasses of red and white wine. The wines were actually the same white wine, one of which had been tinted red with food coloring. But that didn't stop the experts from describing the "red" wine in language typically used to describe red wines. One expert praised its "jamminess," while another enjoyed its "crushed red fruit." Not a single one noticed it was actually a white wine.

The second test Brochet conducted was even more damning. He took a middling Bordeaux and served it in two different bottles. One bottle was a fancy grand-cru. The other bottle was an ordinary vin du table. Despite the fact that they were actually being served the exact same wine, the experts gave the differently labeled bottles nearly opposite ratings. The grand cru was "agreeable, woody, complex, balanced and rounded," while the vin du table was "weak, short, light, flat and faulty". Forty experts said the wine with the fancy label was worth drinking, while only 12 said the cheap wine was.

What these experiments neatly demonstrate is that the taste of a wine, like the taste of everything, is not merely the sum of our inputs, and cannot be solved in a bottom-up fashion. It cannot be deduced by beginning with our simplest sensations and extrapolating upwards. When we taste a wine, we aren't simply tasting the wine. This is because what we experience is not what we sense. Rather, experience is what happens when our senses are interpreted by our subjective brain, which brings to the moment its entire library of personal memories and idiosyncratic desires. As the philosopher Donald Davidson argued, it is ultimately impossible to distinguish between a subjective contribution to knowledge that comes from our selves (what he calls our "scheme") and an objective contribution that comes from the outside world ("the content"). Instead, in Davidson's influential epistemology, the "organizing system and something waiting to be organized" are hopelessly interdependent. Without our subjectivity we could never decipher our sensations, and without our sensations we would have nothing to be subjective about. In other words, we shouldn't be surprised that different people like different bottles of cheap wine.

PS. A lot of this material appears in my book, so check it out if you want to learn more about Escoffier, olfaction, umami and subjectivity.

NaNoWriMo

Back in my Open Diary days, a fellow blogger introduced me to the NaNoWriMo concept: National Novel Writing Month. In short, she would write every night for a month, and by the time December rolled around, she would have finished a Novel.

This year, Brendan from where brought it back into my mind.

When he told me about it, I immediately fell into excusing myself... and he only mentioned it, didn´t even try to sell me on the idea. So why did I feel like I needed to justify my lack of participation? Could it be... guilt? Ever since I heard about it, I´ve wanted to be a part of it, but felt I couldn´t. I mean, come on... write a novel in a language that isn´t my own? Exactly how much is 50 000 words? With what time? How to balance novel writing with the rest of my life? Is this just some creative scheme to procrastinate from the Boring Full Time Job Search? Then again, perhaps that´s exactly what goes on in the heads of everyone who signs up for NaNoWriMo. If it were easy, it wouldn´t be a challenge.

Last night I started jotting ideas down in a notebook, and as I wrote and wrote in my unintelligible looping handwriting I realized I haven´t the slightest idea of how a novel is written, or what is the difference between related short stories and chapters in a book. On practical aspects, I´m not really sure I want to do it by hand. I think better with my fingers on a keyboard, but the thought of trigger-happy me deleting complete paragraphs into the unwritten limbo scares me a bit. Because paragraphs usually fit, just not where I wrote them in originally.

Today I putzed around a bit online and read more about NanoWriMo, visited their site and got a bit hyped. Thoughts of I should´ve signed up, I shouldn´t be such a chicken, it doesn´t really matter if it is ALREADY november, could I write a Novel in less than 25 days... but no. Maybe not yet.

So right now I´m building on this notion of my personal Novel Writing Mo..ment. And maybe, perhaps... preparing to jump in when November 2008 comes around.

sub-employed

I´m a bit bummed right now. I´m thinking about this whole "getting a job" thing, and I won´t be able to avoid the "full time" part.

I´ve been freelancing this year, and it sucks here in Medellín. Maybe it sucks everywhere, but I have no way to compare. I was employed for a company which would send me tasks every month, they would call me with new projects and ideas and wished to get me more involved. Then, nothing. They dissappeared and I haven´t heard back. Then I started doing work for another company and now I´m waiting and waiting for them to pay. It´s been a couple of months and still no news of when payment will be.

Next year I´ll need to head out on my own once again, with the added burden that I decided to go back to school. I´ll either have to find a full time job that gives me flexibility to study in the morning (unlikely) or have to decide to go full time and stop studying (likelier). Part time jobs here in Medellín, at least for someone with no connections, are not enough to live on, much less pay tuition. Minimum wage here in Medellín is 240 USD , bus fare is .50 USD per bus, tuition at the institute is $100 and insurance is $25. That doesn´t leave much to spend on rent or food, now, does it?

So if the whole reason for coming to Colombia was to be able to live with my parents and save rent... and now that won´t be possible: does it make sense to stay here or should I head back to Costa Rica, where at least there are enough jobs to go around, and I seem to fit better with what they are looking for in employees?

I would like to believe that I could get a job that pays a lot more than minimum wage, but so far I haven´t heard back on any of the resumes I´ve sent out.

For the first time in my life, I feel unwanted and unemployable. I don´t like it one bit.

Skills

I currently live in a country where I feel my abilities are measured by who I know and what I studied. I fail miserably under both standards. I seem to be both overqualified and underqualified for the jobs I apply for, and since I don't know people who know people, I tend to be completely overlooked by HR departments. In short... I still don't have a job.

People here in Colombia love degrees and diplomas. I have one, but it's in Theatre, and after I graduated, I had to actually maintain myself economically, so I spread out. I've taught English, I've done customer service training courses, I've managed a bed and breakfast in Monteverde Costa Rica, I've worked at call centers, I've been a travel agent, I've worked in the web department of a travel agency as a copywriter, I've done outsourced HR work for Nestle USA. Now I'm studying dental tech and working in citizen media outreach.

My diverse and global background seemed to please previous employers to no end. Here in Colombia, it seems to freak them out. I feel torn between the need to get a full time job that pays my bills and my desire to continue studying, volunteering and citizen media work.

I'm still sending out resumes, wish me luck.

The self referential first post

I'm Medea. I've been blogging with this nick for a few year now, but mostly in Spanish. I'll try to balance it out a bit more now.