Bolivia:

Suiza:

Decí que existe el copy-paste, que si no…

It’s not the first time:

• Switzerland in the Czech Republic
• Strasbourg in Vienna

I hate the way you airlines cram hundreds of people into the smallest of spaces. Do you really think my femur fits the distance between your seats? Do you really think I enjoy being pushed sideways for hours by my seat neighbor because the armrest is too narrow for the both of us? Do you really think I can eat my meal when the seat in front of me is in the horizontal position? Do you really think I can’t avoid numb legs and feet during long flights? Do you really think I can go to the toilets without waking up all the people in the row in front of me or my neighbors?

I hate how long boarding and getting out of the damn plane takes. Haven’t you noticed that airplanes usually have more than one door? Then why the fuck are all 380 passengers of a 747 getting into the plane though the same, unique, small door? Can’t you design airports that take that into account? Can’t you, jetty makers, airport designers, add an extension to boarding gates that goes above the wing or below the tarmac so that we can all get in and out through several doors at once? I hate how you dare selling double tickets to obese people. Wouldn’t it be better to have a couple of special seats in the front of the aircraft for them? You don’t have any trouble overselling tickets and leaving people in the ground wondering what happened and begging you for a hotel voucher, but of course you can’t plan in advance for the 5% of potentially obese passengers that have to endure your fucking shit. And let’s not talk about families with kids, ok?

I hate your in-flight entertainment system. When it works (which, as per Murphy’s Law, most often don’t), your music sucks, your film choice is crappy, the sound is bad, and even worse, I hate how the captain interrupts my movie every 10 minutes to tell me that the outside temperature is about 3° Kelvin or other nonsense that nobody fucking cares about, babbled through speakers that sound like if they were built in the 20s. To begin with, haven’t you heard about that Dolby thing? And most importantly, don’t you think we are already annoyed enough, to just shut the fuck up and fly this thing in time? That’s the only thing we care about, you moron: to get outta here as fast as possible.

I hate your crappy food. I hate how it tastes, I hate the bad manners of the crew members serving it, I hate that I can never have meat instead of pasta because I always happen to sit behind the person who got the last one and that yeah, you’re very sorry about that. I’ll have a Coke, please.

I hate how airline websites fail big time. I hate how I have to always spend longer than required to find what I’m looking for, that your search engines are useless, that I have to spell correctly the codes of the airports, that your date picker is unusable without Flash or JavaScript, that the back button resets the whole form, that your animated intro annoys me every time I want to fucking spend money on your idiotic company because you happen to be the only idiots flying where I need to go. And airport websites are not better, so here goes a message to those dear airport webmasters: I want to know, right now, fast, without any more required clicks, if my flight is delayed, canceled or in time. I do not, let me repeat, I DO NOT CARE about how nice your first class lounge is; I will most probably never use it. The same goes for any other information. Put it behind a menu and don’t bother me. Thank you.

I hate how I get the same crappy level of service when I pay 25 bucks for a 2 hour trip to Madrid or when I pay 2000 dollars for a roundtrip flight to Argentina that lasts 14 hours. Are you fucking kidding me? What is your problem, you dickhead? Do you really think I do not see how you are fucking filling your pockets with my cash?

I hate how inaccessible, unfriendly, broken and even expensive, airports are. I hate how immigration booths are all closed but one, and you spend more time waiting to show your passport than in the flight. I hate how your tax-free shit shops are more fucking expensive than downtown shops, and how they shamelessly pretend to have the best prices on Earth. Do you really think I was born yesterday?

I hate the mind-boggling algorithms I have to execute in order to know which terminal my flight is leaving from. It goes something like this, starting with the basic questions, domestic or international? Air Exhaust or Air Compression? Oh, then it’s terminal G, door 257. You must enter through terminal N and then take our new air-magnetic-levitation-superconductor-enabled-robot-train and get out at terminal H, then walk through the panoramic gateway above the tarmac, and then you’ll see the checkin booths at your left. Oh, since it’s a code-sharing flight, you must use the booths of Blowjob Airlines to check in, then pay the airport tax in counter 734 and proceed through security and later through passsport control to gate Y35, but hurry up, your flight is boarding right now.

I hate how airport terminals are miles away from each other and how bad they are referenced and how hard it is to understand your information panels. Haven’t you noticed that small airports are usually faster to get in and out, have shorter distances between the plane and the terminal, people board using both doors and even better, are easier to get to from cities? The solution is not having two- or three-stories tall planes carrying 800 people at once; STOP THAT SHIT. That won’t work. If your airports can’t handle 200 people at once per plane, do you really think you can handle more? Really?

I hate how connecting flights are always clutching at straws. A small delay in a flight, a longer queue in the security checks or even the fact of having to recheck-in on the new flight (because some airlines can’t access the computers of each other in order to check you in all legs at once before departure), and your flight is gone. And if you are really unlucky, you will see the door of the gate being closed in front of you as you sweat your way to it, together with the grins of the ground team looking at you. You are then left to pray that you won’t have to pay for a new ticket, that you will get a hotel for that night, and that all the shit printed in the “passenger rights” posters behind the counter is true. By the way, showing those posters implicitly tells me that something has gone really wrong with your industry.

I hate your security controls that don’t protect anyone, that don’t prevent anything, that just annoy and harass everyone. I hate your assaults on my personal sphere. I mean no harm to you. Leave me the fuck alone with your security pricks. I hate listening to the same security information every fucking time we take off, about how to put my oxygen mask or how to fasten my seat belt. The airline industry might have a lower number of accidents than other forms of transportation, but when you are involved in a plane crash, the odds of getting alive are lower than in the highway. No wonder sometimes people applaud when planes land; we just don’t trust you to get us there alive.

I hate the inhuman conditions you airlines make your crews work in. I hate how they have to strike in order to have some attention, while you fucking MBAs running these companies get big bonuses at the end of the year. Because when you treat your employees like shit, they spit on my coffee, you shithead. They work overtime, they try to do a living in the worst of industries, and you treat them like shit. No wonder they get in strike.

I hate how you fucking dare losing my bags. I hate how I have to cross my fingers every time I travel to avoid having them sent to Timbuktu or Novosibirsk. Don’t you see the tags with the airport codes and the barcodes printed in them? And, even after losing them, is it really that difficult to send it faster than 3 days later to their owner? Really? Do you really think I will buy new clothes every time I travel just because baggage is handled by pathetic monkey-like systems unable to read correctly a tag? Oh, but of course, you will tax me for every extra kilo in those same bags like if I was carrying gold bars. Fuck you.

I hate how everything is a good reason to be late, or to not fly at all. Snow. Strikes. Rain. Late connections. UFOs. Other planes. Storms. Winds. Birds. Clouds. Thick air. Thin air. Engines. Flaps. Eyjafjallajökull. Wings. Terrism. Airport facilities. Tires. Oil. Gravity. Mountains. Plains. Seas. Passengers. Bags.

I hate how a plane can disappear in the middle of the ocean without a trace. Haven’t you heard about this thing called a satellite? Can’t you have a direct, permanent link with a satellite, so that in case of accident you can be notified milliseconds, not hours, later? We are in 2011, you fucking murderers. Black boxes were a neat idea in 1924, shouldn’t you be upgrading that thing anytime soon?

In other words: WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM? If you are unable to provide a service, well THEN DON’T DO IT. Do I provide healthcare? Am I a lawyer? Do I own a grocery store? No, because I know shit about those professions. BUT I DON’T PRETEND TO EITHER.

I do not trick people with nice advertising showing how big your first class seats are (probably the most useless kind of advertising ever). I do not fill my mouth with useless shit about your commitment to service. I do not lie to people about what I do and how I do it. Be frank: say that your service is as bad as anyone else. Say it. Admit it. Be as much as a failure as you want, but please, don’t be hypocrite.

The airline industry is deeply broken. It must be redesigned from scratch. If you are reading this and you happen to be the CEO of one of those fucking airlines, then please know that I wholeheartedly hate you, that you and your company are worthless, and that you have won the Guiness record for making the most millions of unhappy people per minute. Go to hell.

Prologue

A couple of years ago I found a job as a PHP + JavaScript developer in a small company in Geneva, Switzerland. I remember going to their offices two or three times, and having several interviews with various people there; one of them was the lead PHP developer of the company, the other being the CEO, a relatively well-known person in the tech area in Geneva; both shall remain nameless. The last interview I had was with the CTO, who would be my direct boss, as I was told.

They finally chose me, and very happily I signed the contract. I handed my resignation for my current job at the time, but had a couple of months of work to do before leaving (this is usual practice in Switzerland, one that I despise deeply, but that you are legally forced to follow). All in all, three months passed between me signing the contract and the first day of my new job.

The First Day

So one day, I headed to Geneva to start my new job. I arrive at around 9am to the address where the interviews had taken place, and, oh surprise… there was nothing. Stay with me: there was nothing. Not a sign in the wall indicating that the company used to be there, not a single desk, not a phone plugged on the wall. Nothing. Puzzled (to say the least), I asked the first person I met in the hallway about the company, and she told me that they had left a couple of months ago. I asked if she knew where they went, but she told me that she did not.

I was really, really worried by now. Had I signed a contract with some kind of fake company that had just left the country to the Bahamas or Luxemburg? I called their phone number. The automated voice at the other end told me that the number was not in service.

Oh dear.

After what must have been like 60 minutes of going back and forth in the hallways asking for some kind of information about the company, one guy told me that they had moved not far from there. Finally a clue! He even gave me an address, so I left as quickly as I could. I was one hour late to my new job; you do not do that in Switzerland.

On my way, I could not help thinking things like, “why wouldn’t they call me to tell me that they moved to a new place? What’s going on?”

So around 1030am I arrived to this new address, got into the building, and checked in at a reception desk that was standing there. I asked the names of the people that had interviewed me. The guy told me that nobody with that name worked there. Then I asked, “I’m looking for the company such and such”, and he told me that no, this was a private bank (there are lots of them in Geneva), so I must have been given the wrong address.

Bummer. Back to step one.

The guy, nevertheless, told me one interesting thing; in the warehouses behind the bank there was this new “startup center” with brand new offices, and the company might as well be there. I thanked the guy, and started investigating the area.

The word “investigating” is the correct one. It felt like being Columbo looking for a murderer.

Indeed, behind the bank there was a huge, new complex with many new offices and small companies popping up. The building was an old factory that the city of Geneva had bought a couple of years before, and where you could rent cheap office space. Perfect for startups. But in the main entrance, there was no sign of the one I was looking for.

It was almost 11am, and I was about to give up. My cell phone had not rang, nobody called from their office; my wife told me that nobody had called home either. If they were around, they really did not care about me.

Just when I was about to leave the building, I asked one guy cleaning the hallway about the company name. He told me that he had never heard about it, but that there was a huge sign near the entrance of the parking with company names, and that given that the building was fairly new, not all company names had been set up in every entrance of the building, so I might as well check that one out.

I left the building, went to the entrance of the parking, and finally! I saw the name of my new employer. Together with the indication of how to get there by foot: a 10 minute walk from where I was. I said to myself, well, what the heck. Let’s go.

When I crossed the door, I saw yet another reception desk, this time with a huge sign behind the receptionist with the name of the company. This was finally the good one. That was at around 1115am; I had been touring Geneva for over 2 hours looking for this company by now.

I tell the girl that I am starting today my new job, and she tells me that it was her first day too, so she did not know anyone, so she guided me to an office marked “Human Resources”, which looked quite appropriate for the occasion.

“Welcome to the company!”

The HR guy gets up from his desk, greets me and tells me that he started 2 weeks ago and that he did not know that I was starting that day, but that was OK, welcome to the company anyway! He guides me to the sector of the open space where the technical team works, and I finally see some familiar faces, together with some 30 people I had not seen three months ago.

The company had had an explosive growth in just 3 months.

Anyway, they point me to a crappy chair and table in the open space and they called that a “desk”, and I said, OK, let’s score some more points. Even better, the IT manager comes up to me and says “oh sorry, I don’t have a computer for you, I didn’t know you were coming today”.

I sit down, awkwardly, as everyone resumed their tasks in an awkward silence, a mix of “I don’t know anyone here” and “I hope it’s 5pm soon”. Probably one of the worst feelings I have had in a work environment in a while.

Meet the boss

30 minutes later (it was almost noon, and I was really starving by now), while I was sitting on my chair without having anything to do or anyone to talk to, a guy looking like a hawaiian surfer comes up to me and tells me that he was my boss. Which was strange, because he was not the CTO I mentioned earlier, but given that everything had changed so much, I was not surprised.

The surfer takes me to a meeting office, we sit down for what I think it is going to be my first work meeting, and he tells me that he has been appointed to this boss role last month, that they are dropping PHP altogether, and that they will be doing the new system using Java. The guy tells me that he knows that I despise Java (he read it on this very blog, actually) and that he does not like me not liking Java. But he cannot fire me, because he has not hired me, so my role is undefined and, as a matter of fact, I have nothing to do there.

It was 12am, and by now I know I will not be doing long in this company.

To make a long story short, a few days after that I went to the office of the CEO, I gave them my resignation letter, and they just told me, literally, “OK, bye”.

That was it.

Epilogue

After two years, I was told that the Java system was never finished. The company still exists but has completely changed its business model, and the CEO has left the country and moved his company with him.

I also learnt that the original PHP developer, one of the guys who interviewed me, the one who worked his ass off for 4 years building the only system that was actually bringing cash, was also being dismissed from the new team because he was not a Java guy. He was let go a couple of months after I left. Nobody cared that he actually knew how the original system worked, how the business worked, or that he gave 4 years of his work for a company that greeted him with another “OK, bye”.

My path to independence started that very day. Dealing with that kind of crap (of which I have many more nice anecdotes that I will write about very soon) is what tells me that I do not want to be an employee again. I prefer to starve rather than being treated like shit.

PS: you will not find the company name in my LinkedIn profile, for reasons that should be obvious by now.

Anyway.

I used Pages during the flight to keep track of all those insomniac, bilingual tweets, while the plane was a going through the Atlantic and Canada towards San Francisco. Some are about the flight itself, others about the Argentine film “El Secreto de sus Ojos”, and finally some about the Football World Cup. Project yourself in the situation, and enjoy the rants. I certainly did :)

During and about the flight

• The iPad is the perfect onboard entertainment system. Pages as an offline Twitter client, Kindle and iBooks as ebook readers, some movies, and lots of music. 57% battery after 12 hours.
• As the stewards would say: “brace, brace”; lots of tweets coming.
• Outlook is a city in Saskatchewan, not far from Saskatoon and Moose Jaw. After this revelation to remember the next time you play Trivial Pursuit, you can resume your normal activities.
• Saskatoon officially gets the 2010 akosma award for the best city name ever.
• As you could imagine, the only interesting thing in this inflight entertainment thingy is the 3D map indicating our current position. #fascinating #boring
• I forgot to mention that my seat’s sound system is broken. I could watch any movie I want but my lip reading skills are not *that* good.
• The names of the cities in northern Canada are just amazing. Can’t remember any of them tho. Are they Innuit names?
• Our vision of the world is as distorted as a map of Novaja Zemlya in Mercator projection after the explosion of the Tsar bomba.
• Why do they still print the “smoke” section in boarding passes? Is there any airline out there still offering smoking seats?
• Given that most airplane tickets are electronic, why aren’t boarding passes? #iphoneappidea
• Let’s calculate the CO2 emissions caused by airlines still printing the word “smoke” in boarding passes. No, let’s better not.
• The keyboard of the iPad has this character: ₩ (tap and hold the dollar sign). What currency is it? Korea’s won? If Korea won, then the pun is intended.
• On the plane with @mediaatelier and @dcondrau, probably even more Swiss devs, but without wifi and Twitter, difficult to know.
• There were fewer devs using Xcode on this Swiss flight than in last year’s Lufthansa flight. I will leave the elaboration of any conclusion thereof to my dear followers.
• Why do flight attendants akways decide to serve beverages at precisely the same moment when planes go through turbulences? #complot #midwest #twister
• Now I understand why Swiss is Lufthansa’s cash cow: pricier tickets and crappier service. Only selling point: the nonstop ZRH -> SFO flight. #swissairwherearethou
• I remember when they added phones to Swissair airplanes, back in 1996; calls used to cost 10 dollars per minute. Now, in 2010, in Swiss… they cost the same. #WTF
• In the airport of Santa Cruz de la Sierra (Bolivia) there was free, fast, open wifi in 2006. Most airports in the northern hemisphere, in 2010, charge a lot for a crappy connection. #WTF
• And still, no wifi in planes. #WTF
• No, I haven’t been involved in Nazi activities during from 1933 to 1945. Thanks for asking. #visawaiver
• Swiss people not traveling often outside of Switzerland are easy to spot. I let you imagine the rest of this tweet.
• The Swiss version of Homer Simpson is sitting beside me, and is kinda fascinated with my iPad. Yeah, I’m talking about you, moron.
• Oh no my dear Homer, the armrest between us is mine for the rest of the flight. See? I don’t push *my* elbow on *your* side. Wasn’t *that* hard, now was it?
• The “Skytrain” in ZRH airport, is a subway, actually. You can hear yodel and cows and other Swiss sounds inside while you go from terminal to terminal. #typisch
• Whoever said that the iPad is a consumption-only device should have stop consuming some substances before writing nonsense.

Sobre la pelicula “El Secreto de sus Ojos”

• El otro día fui a ver “El Secreto de sus Ojos” con Clau, y me quedaron, obviamente, muchas cosas picando, pensaturrias.
• Me imagino la Argentina de mis padres como un lugar con una dosis mayor de inocencia de la actual. Debe haber haber sido un lindo lugar.
• Vivir en la Argentina de los 80 no estuvo mal. Aparte de las hiperinflaciones y crisis crónicas, yo tengo lindos recuerdos de aquella época.

Sobre el mundial

• Si Drogba se fracturo y quedo afuera del mundial, entonces se queda con las Ghana. Y el resto del tweet es superfluo. #mundial
• Si te fracbturas, necesitas una drogba para conbtener el dbolor. #mundial
• Primero Beckham, después Rooney, ahora Drogba… que otros jugadores se quedaron afuera? #mundial
• Atacante norcoreano inscripto como arquero… te imaginas? El técnico lo tendría que probar al arco, por ahí después se lo recordaría como el Higuita coreano. #escorpión #taekwondo #mundial
• El conocido árbitro paraguayo Carlos Amarilla no participará en el mundial. Tampoco asistirán el reconocido juez de línea francés Marcel Orsay ni el legendario hincha de Camerún. #burumbumbúm #mundial
• Burumbumberia, burumbumberia, yo soy el hincha, de Nigeria. #mundial
• Burumbumbana, burumbumbana, yo soy el hincha, de Ghana. #mundial
• Burumbumbafrica, burumbumbumbafrica, yo soy el hincha, de Sudafrica. #mundial
• Burumbumbar, burumbumbar, yo soy el hincha, de Madagascar (las hinchadas de Zanzibar y Escobar cantan similares canciones) #mundial
• Burumbumbique, burumbumbique, yo soy el hincha, de Mozambique. #mundial
• Burumbumipto, burumbumipto, yo soy el hincha, de ………………. (enviar respuesta correcta en un reply) #mundial
• Burumbumbina, burumbumbina, yo soy el hincha, de Argentina (el que diga “efedrina” es boleta). #mundial
• Burumbumbal, burumbumbal, yo soy el hincha, de Codesal (cantito alemán) #mundial
• Burumbumbola, burumbumbola, yo soy el hincha, de Angola. #mundial
• Burumbumbasta, burumbasta, yo creo… que ya basta.
• El otro día dieron en la TV Suiza (en italiano) la película de Kusturica sobre Maradona. Muy buena.

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.

dicho asi, parece una tremenda boludez, pero es asi: mirando las fachadas de cualquier edificio, cada ventana tiene un velador entre cada cortina. siempre. de esos veladores de mesa de luz, con su pantalla color crema, dando una luz acaramelada, melosa, calida, que contrasta con el frio exterior. en medio de la ventana, un velador, en cada ventana de cada edificio de cada avenida.

es una ciudad donde las calles estan cubiertas de piedritas.

dicho asi, parece otra tremenda boludez, pero ayuda a que la gente camine sin matarse entre los manchones de nieve, algunos a medio derretir y otros transformados en montañas de hielo y polvo. hay piedritas sueltas, que ayudan a que el zapato agarre mejor la calzada, a medio camino entre arena y canto rodado, en cada tramo de cada vereda de cada avenida.

es un pais raro.

los restoranes estan repletos a las 15 como en españa, pero vacios a las 19 como ni siquiera en suiza. la gente desayuna panceta con huevo y porotos con tomate, pero no hay gordos en las calles; es mas, son todos flacos de un metro noventa promedio. son tan rubios que a los albinos les dicen morochos. en los tranvias, las maquinas que te venden el boleto tienen un boton que dice “english” pero que igual te da las instrucciones en sueco. la gente es seca pero cordial, parece que te van a mandar a la mierda en cualquier momento; y cuando te ven con un mapa se paran y te preguntan si necesitas ayuda, con una gentileza que desmorona. pronuncian las “a” como “o”, y la “y” suena como una “u” francesa. y si es una “å” con redondelito es diferente de si es una “ä” con dieresis. hay locales de venta de “gudis” por todos lados, vendiendo golosinas a granel; agarrate una bolsa en la entrada y paga a la salida, al peso.

deci que no manejan por la izquierda, como los ingleses, eso ya seria mucho.

This paper will provide an introduction to the herb commonly referred to as “Yerba Mate”, and will later delve into the advantages and disadvantages of such practice, in the context of the creation of software products.

Introduction

Yerba Mate is defined by Wikipedia as follows:

Yerba mate or yerba-mate (Br.) (Spanish: yerba mate, Portuguese: erva-mate), Ilex paraguariensis, is a species of holly (family Aquifoliaceae) native to subtropical South America in northeastern Argentina, eastern Paraguay and southern Brazil. It was first scientifically classified by Swiss botanist Moses Bertoni, who settled in Paraguay in 1895.

The Yerba Mate (usually and wrongly spelled as “Yerba Maté” in English-speaking texts) is used in the preparation of a caffeinated beverage described by Wikipedia as follows:

Mate (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈmate]), also known as chimarrão (Portuguese: [ʃimaˈxɐ̃ũ]) or cimarrón, is a traditional South American infused drink. It is prepared from steeping dried leaves of yerba mate (llex paraguariensis, known in Portuguese as erva mate) in hot water. It is the national drink in Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay, and drinking it is a common social practice in parts of Brazil, Chile, eastern Bolivia, Lebanon and Syria. In Brazil, it is considered to be a tradition typical of the “Gaúchos”, name given to those born in Rio Grande do Sul. The drink contains caffeine. (…) The multicultural Yerba Mate Association of the Americas states that it is always improper to accent the second syllable, since doing so confuses the word with the unrelated Spanish word meaning “I killed.”

One of the phrases in the quoted paragraphs from Wikipedia brings to mind the importance of such a drink in the creation of software products (no, not the phrase about killing, the previous one). Caffeine is known for its capabilities in waking up inert areas of the brain, particularly during brain-damaging activities.

We consider unfortunate to qualify software development as a brain-damaging activity (although some research arrives to this particular conclusion), however, it is certainly a brain-intensive one, and as such, Yerba Mate has proven, in our tests, to be a particularly interesting option to coffee.

Preparation

To prepare “Mate” (the beverage), three basic elements are required:

1. A recipient, usually also referred to as “mate” (to add to the confusion), but also called “guampa”, “cuia”, “calabaza”, and other names without any translation to English whatsoever. Among these names appears also “porongo”, as it is known in Uruguay; this word is usually avoided in Argentina, for the exact same reason the name “Mitsubishi Pajero” has been a commercial failure there. This element can be made of wood, metal or even be the hollow shell of a dried calabash.
2. A metallic straw, usually also referred to as “bombilla” or less commonly, “bomba”. This element can be made out of metal or wood, and is used to drink the infusion, avoiding to swallow the leaves of Yerba Mate at the same time. The best ones have their top part covered in gold, which protects the lips from the intense heat generated by the water in the metal, and also provides a sense of luxury into an otherwise rather humble activity.
3. Hot water, never boiled, at around 70 to 80 degrees Celsius (160 – 180 degrees Fahrenheit). It is very, very, VERY important to serve the water at the exact temperature, without boiling the water inadvertently. Usually, the best way to keep the water hot is with a thermos or vacuum flask, of which the latest industry benchmarks highlight the Uruguayan brand “Lumilagro” as the most reliable, competitive and durable in the market. European customers are best served by the standard thermos provided by Ikea.

Once all the elements are ready, the preparation process is fairly simple:

1. Add the Yerba Mate leaves in the mate (the recipient);
2. Put the right hand on top of the mate (recipient) covering the entrance, and using your left hand, turn the recipient upside down and shake it a little; then return the recipient to its normal position and dust the mate powder from your hand (it is strongly recommended not sniffing it);
3. Insert the straw in the recipient, creating a small hole in the Yerba at the same time;
4. Pour in hot water, very slowly, in the hole caved in the previous step; on the first serve it is best to avoid filling the mate completely, to leave time to the yerba to get moist and release the flavor slowly;
5. Drink the mate, by sipping at the straw, taking care not to burn your mouth or throat;
6. Pass the mate around, which helps create and spread a sense of teamwork, to bring an ambience of relaxation and self-contemplation, and also to spread many known viruses.

Advantages

In the context of software engineering, such a practice has the following advantages:

• Health benefits: The ingestion of mate (the beverage) contributes positively to the recommended daily intake of water (at least around 2 or 3 liters a day), and thus to the maintenance of a convenient hydration level in the brain, which is recognized by several studies as a major contribution to its productivity. Some recent papers even indicate that the habit of Mate drinking can reduce the risks of cancer, but in any case, Yerba Mate is also a major source of many important elements for a healthy daily diet:

  It contains vitamins A, C, E, B1, B2, Niacin (B3), B5, B… and complex minerals like Calcium, Manganese, Iron, Selenium, Potassium, Magnesium, Phosphorus, and Zinc. It also contains Carotene, Fatty Acids, Chlorophyll, Flavonols, Polyphenols, Inositol, Trace Minerals, Antioxidants, Tannins, Pantothenic Acid, and 15 Amino Acids.

• Prolonged working hours: Instead of having to leave the desk to get yet another cup of coffee, the knowledge worker can sit in front of his computer for hours, particularly when using thermos with a capacity of at least 1 or 1.5 liters (around half a gallon). Mate (the beverage) is also known for reducing appetite, which helps reduce costs in the case of companies providing food to their employees.
• Teamwork benefits: Given the inherent social origins of the habit of drinking mate, in the case of teams, or in the case of agile practices such as pair programming, sharing the mate (the recipient) helps team managers to create a sense of unity and common goal.
• Increased sensitivity: As with all caffeinated drinks, the intake of mate can lead to an improvement in the overall awareness of the mate drinker.

Disadvantages

The following disadvantages of Mate (the herb, the beverage and the recipient) are worth considering:

• Cold water effects: Although common practice in Paraguay (where the infusion of Yerba Mate with cold water is known as Tereré), this variant is known for causing violent reactions in the digestive system of the person drinking it, and it is strongly recommended to never drink it more than 20 meters away from the nearest toilet.
• Bitterness: The strong taste of Yerba Mate is also a factor of considerable debate. Most mate drinkers usually start drinking it with sugar (some even with saccharine or other sweeteners), while most experienced drinkers will dismiss this practice and downplay those doing it as amateurish or otherwise ignorant. It is strongly recommended to have everyone agree on a mate variant beforehand to avoid shallow discussions on the relative merits of different approaches to mate drinking.
• Mate lavado: When the same Yerba has been poured several times (usually above 10 or 12 servings, depending on the quality of the Yerba), it loses part of its taste and must be replaced with new Yerba. Depending on how many people share the same mate (the recipient), this can be a significant problem, leading to reduced productivity and major anxiety and dismay.
• “Matetiquette”: Mate (the beverage) is linked with a complete language, tied up to the history of the southern part of South America. As such, please be aware of the fact that serving a “mate lavado” (see previous item for an explanation of the concept) is considered rude practice, and is strongly discouraged. Serving mate with cold water, as explained above, can also be seen negatively, particularly if the person preparing the mate is not from Paraguay. Finally, talking in front of your recently-filled mate instead of drinking it, is also frowned upon, as you might be greeted with a “it’s not a microphone” protest if you do it.

Conclusion

The importance of the Yerba Mate in the process of creation of software has been greatly dismissed by major research efforts, and we think that more research and mate drinking is needed. In our tests, Yerba Mate has been proven to foster creativity, teamwork, overall happiness, and trips to the toilets.

(Image caption: “A passenger in a plane of Northwest Orient Airlines makes a phone call relayed by radio”) Wonderful uses of the Phone by Richard F. Dempewolff Reaching over a shelf in her kitchen, a housewife pushes a button in a modern device similar to a transistor radio. “One, one, five, seven, five, eight, zero,” says the woman in front of the device microphone. A light turns on in the five centimeter screen in front of the device and the image of a man appears. “Joe,”, says the housewife, “do me a favor: please bring chocolate ice cream when you leave from work.” The man in the screen smiles and through a small speaker a manly voice says: “sure, I’ll be there in half an hour.”

(Mecánica Popular – latin-american version of Popular Mechanics, october 1958 – courtesy of hernún)