I snapped the picture above yesterday evening, watching the riots in South Croydon, London, on a British TV channel called Sky News. Someone in charge of the programming thought appropriate to broadcast that event (literally) in parallel with the closing bell in Wall Street.

And when I say appropriate, I weight my words; answering my own question, I have to say that no, it is not a joke; it is sadly the way the world works.

Para que sepan, Luisa es socióloga, de las del alma. Quedan pocas como ella; son una especie rara que no se si esta en riesgo de extinción, pero algo es seguro; ninguna pregunta de ella es anodina.

Recuerdo aun que me agarró totalmente desprevenido. Nunca pensé en Suiza como un país central; es mas, para ser sincero, siempre me pareció que estaba bastante alejado del centro (cual sea el mismo). Particularmente en mi industria, la informática, siempre me pareció que el centro era en realidad Silicon Valley, y por extensión los Estados Unidos. El adjetivo mas común que empleo al hablar de Suiza suele ser “Tupperware”. Pero un “país central”? No.

Y sin embargo, pensandolo bien, ahora creo que quizás este Tupperware este en el centro del centro, que sea el núcleo mismo. El vivir en Argentina durante unos años me permitió ver eso de lejos; efectivamente Suiza es un país central. Y flor de país central.

Pero, que significa eso? En un país central, las cosas circulan por él; como esta en el centro, esta en medio de todos los caminos. Las rutas son mas cortas pasando por ahí, tanto en el sentido propio como figurado de la expresión.

En un pais central, confluye la gente de todo el mundo; se hablan todos los idiomas, se consiguen todas las especias y se mezclan todas las razas. Se prueban todas las gastronomías, se bailan todas las danzas.

En un pais central, todo se ve como anillos concéntricos que rodean ese centro; y precisamente, es exactamente así como la diplomacia Suiza caracteriza al resto del mundo. Basicamente, con Suiza en el centro, Europa es el primer anillo. Luego vienen los Estados Unidos, Canada, Australia, Japon y Nueva Zelandia, y mas afuera los países del medio oriente, Brasil, Rusia, India y China. Finalmente, en el anillo mas excéntrico, los demás países de Latinoamérica, Africa y Asia. No es broma; esto me lo contó un diplomático.

En un pais central, el comercio no se detiene nunca, y es siempre de envergadura; quizas no se vea a nivel del dia a dia, pero la verdad es que en inmensas cantidades, todos los bienes del mundo circulan por un pais central, tarde o temprano. Hay que saber que la mayor parte del petróleo mundial se negocia, se vende y se compra, cada dia, en Ginebra (de manera virtual, claro está; nadie quiere un Panamax en el lago). Y obviamente, no solamente se comercia petróleo.

En un pais central, las cosas no necesitan ser demasiado grandes ni pequeñas, ni demasiado simples ni demasiado complejas; ya que todo circula, todo se consigue, todo se mide. El arte y la arquitectura Suizos son tipicamente minimalistas y funcionales. Las consideraciones estéticas se han dejado de lado hace rato, o tomaron radicalmente otro sentido.

En un país céntrico no hay apuro, no hay prisa, no hay tiempo. El tiempo se construye precisamente ahí. En una ciudad llamada La Chaux-de-Fonds, para ser mas preciso, donde la industria relojera fue declarada patrimonio mundial intangible de la humanidad, y donde casi casi hay mas marcas de relojes que habitantes.

En un pais central, todo se mueve, y sin embargo todo se queda. El sector primario sigue siendo una actividad central, y los agricultores una raza protegida; la cantidad de subvenciones para mantener el sector agricola superan ampliamente el presupuesto de pequeños países. Pero claro, que seria del turismo suizo si no estuviese la vaca Milka.

En un pais central, en resumidas cuentas, la desmesura es invisible y discreta. Un Porsche es un auto común y corriente, un taxi que se digne debe ser un Mercedes, un tren tiene que tener primera clase, el ruido no se tolera, las vacas tienen prerrogativas diplomáticas y todo lo que viene de afuera es, a priori, de temer.

Por todo esto, Luisa, tenias razón; Suiza es un país central. Es mas, quizás sea el país central por antonomasia.

Que se siente vivir en el? Pucha, me olvide de contestarte la pregunta una vez más. Aunque ya escribí varios posts en este blog hablando de eso, así que te dejo leer y comentar :)

Kuroshio Sea – 2nd largest aquarium tank in the world – (song is Please don’t go by Barcelona) from Jon Rawlinson on Vimeo.

Moments from Everynone on Vimeo.

To put it elegantly, traveling by plane is a pain in the neck. In the 90′s it wasn’t better, but at least the Twin Towers were still standing in their place and there wasn’t a new “terrorist threat” every year or so, making the life of the rest of the travelers an ongoing misery.

Taking a plane exposes you to a staggering amount of things that can go wrong, from the most complex to the most ridiculous. They keep on telling us that traveling is the most secure way to travel, but they say nothing about the ever smaller and more uncomfortable seats, about the shitty food they keep on serving and the increasing number of destinations they keep on sending our luggage, more often than not exactly the opposite one we are going to. Without mentioning the amount of cancelled flights without warning, the non-guaranteed connections, the unbelievably ridiculous schemes of ticket pricing (why a return ticket is cheaper than a one-way is beyond me) and the oh so many other things that make air travel an utterly miserable experience.

Oh, but it is the most secure way of traveling. Yeah, right. Disclaimer: I’ve been a Swissair employee in the 90′s, so I know a bit of how an airline can go every year a bit worse, until it disappears completely from the face of Earth.

So now the ashes of Iceland have grounded the planes of a whole continent, generating losses of around 300 million dollars per day. Ups (and, by the way, what an irony and a colorful way Iceland has found to return Britain the favor of an incredible economic disaster, of which it was the biggest victim but not the most important contributor… I do think nature has a sense of irony after all.)

What I find interesting is that, if the ashes keep on clearing the sky from those shitty winged artifacts filled with unhappy travelers, we will have a chance to slow down, and we might as well have a chance to start enjoying traveling again. And by that I mean having the time to take a long distance train, and even better, to ditch those bad imitations of birds with nicer long distance, transatlantic boats taking 10 days to take us over the oceans.

Imagine boarding in Genova or Hamburg, Le Havre or Cadiz, and taking your time to go through the Atlantic again. Let’s be clear, this is not 1920; with email, Skype or iChat you won’t miss much in terms of meetings or anything, but you’ll get to New York or Boston without jet lag, relaxed, sipping a margarita on the main bridge while waving to the people on the shore.

I would enjoy it for sure. And if the Eyjafjallajökull (somebody please tell me how to pronounce this) keeps on spitting ashes, at least until the Jet Stream cleans up the stratosphere a bit over the northern Atlantic, we won’t have any other option, anyway.

In the meantime, let’s relax and enjoy the first spring with a really, really blue sky, without airplanes or long white smoke trails, in a long, long time.

• How old are you?
• What’s your favorite football team?
• What do you want to be when you grow up?

The answer to the first question depends on the moment, of course, and it’s simply a test to see if you know how to count. The answer to the second depends on your parents (this is like religion down there) and the city where you live (but there’s a 90% chance your answer will be either River Plate or Boca Juniors).

The third question, however, is problematic, no matter what the answer is. Because at a large degree we build our lives around that “what do you want to be?” question, whether we like or not what we do, whether we believe or not that what we want to do is doable or not, or if it pays well or not, or if we will like at all, or if we will end up doing something completely different whatsoever by the time we retire.

This single question shapes a lot our lives, without even realizing it, and we pollute otherwise peaceful kids with the realization that there’s much more to life than school and Wii and friends and chocolate milk.

The problem is, for me this is clearly the wrong question to ask. We should be asking kids “who do you want to work with?”, instead. There’s an old adage that goes like this: “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know”. Life is made of relationships, not pure knowledge got through 12 boring years of study, in a terrible environment made of vertical authorities and obligatory dissertations about horribly dull subjects.

In this blog I’ve often held the hypothesis that most problems in software teams are not technical, that the technical problems have been solved long ago. I think that the root cause for many software problems are social problems, like team cohesion or communication. Likewise, in terms of social relationships, in terms of society, the root causes for our problems lie in our capacity to understand each other.

And in spite of all the efforts and money spent every year in workplace health problems, in spite of all the deaths and the acknowledgement of the existence of assholes in our jobs, we still ask our kids “what do you want to be when you grow up”.

This question seems harmless by itself, but looking closely, it supports several fallacies:

• It implies that all professions are carried out similarly whatever you choose to be and whenever you work; that is, you will be as happy and able to carry out your craft whether you are an independent SAP consultant, a blacksmith in Patagonia or if you are a freshly graduated doctor on internship at Seattle’s Grace Hospital. This is simply not true. The amount of initiative, self-drive, learning opportunities, job stability, are simply not the same, and lots of people learn this really late. I know it too well: I have learnt it quite late.
• It implies that you will not be independent. When you ask the kid about professions, you are not expecting an answer like the previous “blacksmith in Patagonia” thing, because in our society, being able to ask such a question means that you have the means to send your kids to school (or at least you expect to do so). If you live in a “favela” in Rio de Janeiro, and you barely have enough to eat, you don’t think that much about the future. And if you do, the kid will most probably answer that he wants to be a football player or a TV star. In these places and situations (where most of mankind actually lives and dies every day) the present moment eats all your CPU time. Which means that the medium-class kid will most probably answer with the name of a profession, and apart from some honorable exceptions, universities don’t teach how to be independent, but just how to be another animal in the herd. Which cuts off lots of possibilities, needless to say.
• It implies that social groups built around different professions are all comparable. They are not. They do not have the same motivations or ethics. I’ve studied physics (a rather nerdy career) and then switched to economics (a supposedly rather trendy one). The groups of people that gather around professions are not at all comparable, and I must say that I’ve finally settled down working in a field where, as Jeff LaMarche told me once, “the asshole ratio is astonishingly low”. You couldn’t say it better. And I couldn’t be happier about it.
• Finally, it implies that the kids know how much money you get in different jobs. This is not a minor point; if a kid wants to choose a path depending on economic reasons, she should be able to do so without external input. I know too many people who regret not choosing a path over another because they did not know the market conditions of each one.

In short, we do not teach our kids to question the world we’re living in, to search for lots of answers before taking decisions, and also, to question the authority, simply because we haven’t been taught to do that. And given the natural human inertia to avoid change, it is somehow natural that our questions to kids reflect what our parents asked us. We tend to repeat mistakes, and that not only works at a macro level, but also at micro level. It is part of human nature.

By asking “who do you want to work with” you ask explicitly your kid to choose between allies and assholes, and given that choice, guess who most kids will choose? The question will also prompt them to learn to accept their own choices, too, because it prompts a thought process much more elaborated than just answering “doctor” or “lawyer” or any other similar politically correct answer.

Kids are much more intelligent than we are, and then we send them to school to avoid having them telling us repeatedly how stupid we are.

Finally, by asking “who do you want to work with?” you are also implicitly asking “who you don’t want to work with?”, which is the second most important question you should ask, and whose answer is not implied by the first. Dilbert is a funny comic, but I don’t see why we keep on behaving that way, when our working life could be much more enjoyable, by any standards.

Try it: if you have a kid, or the next time you meet one, ask her or him this very two questions. You will be surprised of the answers, and you might as well learn something about your own life, too.

Querida familia y amigos: Mil gracias por sus distintas muestras de apoyo! En adjunto el aporte de Sergio Tischler de la Universidad de Puebla y del Centro de Amigos para la Paz y la Mision Francisco Morazan en Costa Rica. El dia de ayer, finalmente el gobierno de facto autorizo a salir durante un lapso de 7 horas y obviamente mucha gente utilizo la oportunidad para para comprar comida o volver a sus casas (muchas personas quedaron “atrapadas” en el lugar en el que estaban cuando levantaron el toque de queda). Quienes decidieron unirse a la marcha pacifica numero 88 de la resistencia (desde la pedagogica hasta el centro) no solo perdieron la oportunidad de abastecerse, sino que ademas fueron reprimidos por la policia con gases lacrimogenos, y como lo que ya es costumbre, con golpes, asesinatos y detensiones. Mañana el gobierno de facto tiene programada otra de las marchas de los “camisas blancas” conformadas en una buena parte por empleados publicos y privados –a quienes se les ha amenazado con despedirles si no participan- y la oligarquia. Estas marchas en general estan resguardadas por los policias y las personas caminan entre 300 y 500 metros, o sea el tiempo suficiente para salir en la foto. Vean este link, http://tiempo.hn/portada Es el unico periodico nacional que esta sacando noticias verdaderas, aunque omite practicamente todo lo referente a las acciones de la resistencia. Esta es tan fuerte, que se rumora inclusive un pacto de no agresion entre las irreconciliables mara 13 y18, para defender los barrios de la policia. Por otro lado, antenoche en los enfentamientos nocturnos populares hubo alrededor de 30 muertos que no figuraran mas que en los listados de los entes de Derechos Humandos. No dejen de apoyarnos e informarse. Besos y abrazos,

de una amiga, borré las firmas

Querida familia y amigos: Les aviso räpidamente que estamos bien y les pido que se informen a traves de telesur sobre la situaciön de Honduras y que hagan todo lo que puedan a su alrededor para que la gente sepa lo que estä sucediendo y nos socorra la comunidad internacional. Estamos en toque de queda (nadie puede salir del lugar en que se encuentra y quienes lo han hecho han sido golpeados y detenidos en las postas policiales) y estado de sitio desde ayer 21 de septiembre a las 4pm. Nos han quitado la luz, han atacado la embajada de brasil, allanaron las casas aledagnas, reprimieron a las personas que pacificamente la resguardaban. Las personas de las casas en las zonas vecinas fueron tambien amedrentadas con ruidos estrepitosos durante toda la noche a traves de personas en motocicletas. En la madrugada lanzaron bombas lacrimögenas y golpearon a quien encontraron. El gobierno de facto ha desplegado una serie de autos de lujo sin placas que andan recogiendo a la gente que encuentran. Han confirmado dos muertos, no sabemos cuantos hay heridos y al menos hay 200 personas detenidas en el Estadio Chochi Sosa de Tegucigalpa. No se trata de pre-ocuparse sino de ocuparse. Comenten, presionen, difundan. Nosotros tenemos un acceso muy limitado a internet. Nosotros nos cuidaremos. Ustedes por favor apoyen a Honduras desde afuera. Muchos abrazos y muchas gracias,

For all of you asking me “how are things in Argentina today?” here’s the answer:

• On February 28th, 2009, people were using a public space in the city of Tigre (60 km north of Buenos Aires) for an improvised puppet theater for the kids; this was happening on a sunny morning, with families and artisans selling their handcrafted items;
• The local police came to say that they are not allowed to stay, without identifying themselves properly (no visible IDs, some of them dressing like civilians), and without clearly stating the reasons for their presence;
• The gathered people decided to go to the municipality of Tigre to reclaim their right of peaceful use of a public space in daylight with their kids – a constitutional right;
• The police forces blocked them from reaching the municipality and proceeded to repress them, arresting many all while doing injuries to babies, kids, parents and people gathered around the improvised theater.
• Finally, these events were not covered nor relayed by mass media afterwards.

In countries like Switzerland, “unauthorized” gatherings in public spaces of more than 50 people or so are (as far as I know) forbidden (I have yet to understand why, and then try to agree with such a ridiculous law). This is not like that in Argentina. The Argentine Constitution guarantees freedom of gathering, expression and trade, and the crowd in this case was just using this liberty. The public space is exactly that: a common area for everyone to use in lawful and peaceful activities. I can’t conceive a more lawful and peaceful activity than a puppet theater.

The argentine police still uses the same methods and training while during the last dictatorship in the 70′s. They have no law, they obey no orders other than theirs. Their chief has stated publicly that they are the democracy, that they are the law.

That’s how Argentina is going these days. You can now continue reading about the beautiful hotels in the glacier Perito Moreno or the Iguazu falls, if you insist in burying your head deep in the mud.

Otherwise, watch this.