Category Archives: in english

in english

Things that I’ve learned/discovered in the last 10 years

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It is now 10 years that I graduated from Junior High and entered High School. After an uneasy start of my teens, in the latter I became the person that I am now. After some thinking, these are some of the things that I’ve learned since:

  • There is good people in this world, besides those found close to me. ”The more I meet people, the more I like my dog” doesn’t apply, even though I really like dogs.

  • There are two ways to get rid of a bully: ignore him or kick his butt.

  • Speaking English doesn’t necessarily make you international. Not speaking it makes you lose out. Regardless of whether we like it or not, it’s the language of globalisation.

  • I really hate snobbishness. Knowing you’re from a certain (privileged) group is fine by me, but excluding everybody else just because of that is stupid. I’m referring mostly to the naco-fresa dichotomy and related social illnesses here.

  • -20°C is not cold, unless it’s also windy (then it’s REALLY cold).

  • It is possible to find love outside of your friends and family, you just have to be brave enough to search for it and wise enough to recognise it and grow with it.

  • The first step to become a good (or at least decent) cook is to like food. Everything else flows from there.

  • Yes, it is possible to learn languages as weird as Finnish if it’s not your mother tongue.

  • I’m actually the only punctual member of my family.

  • Don’t assume you’re right only because you know something.

  • Search for different sides of a story. That’s why I keep on reading newspapers I won’t necessarily agree with.

  • You’re able to learn anything you want as long as you put your mind to it, including (but not limited to) cartwheels.

  • Aikido has shown me to flow like water, flexible like wood and strong like stone, the difficult part is knowing when to be each.

  • I’m not patient enough to be a software developer, much less a scientist… but engineering showed me how things work, and how to learn how new things work. Now if only humans were so easy, but then we wouldn’t be human.

  • Don’t think in terms of us and the foreigners. Think of people like you and me. You might be the foreigner next time.

  • There might be more cultural differences between people of your own country than between you and somebody from accross the globe.

  • One stupid comment at the wrong time can sour relationships almost forever.

  • Help people help themselves.

  • All my life I wanted to be an adult. Now that I’m one, I try to keep on smiling as a kid.

  • Music makes my day.

  • I don’t like most R&B & hip hop songs these days, but Outkast is pretty OK. I’m still mostly a Rock (mostly Alternative, Punk or En Español) kind of guy, but found out that traditional Latin American music (ranchera & mariachi, tambora, corridos, marimba, samba e pagode, axé & tango) are quite nice too.

  • Try to keep a clean environment around you, even if you’re lazy. It helps organise your ideas. I don’t always succeed on this one.

  • Peace, silence and solitude don’t bite, as long as you don’t overindulge.

  • For a techie guy, I can be very political when I want to (and even when I don’t want to).

  • 4 years of Models United Nations mean that I am compelled to watch news every day. Not many people of my age group do so, which means they don’t know what’s going on with the world we are inheriting.

  • Like Thomas L. Friedman said, ”The world is flat”. A great book, by the way.

I’ll think of some other stuff later on.

in english

Movies not to see when you’re flying

I have recently seen two movies not recommended for those with frequent flyer platinum status: World Trade Center & United 93. Both were actually not very good from the cinematic point of view, but brought back the memories from September 11th, 2001. Do you remember what you were doing then?

I definitely do. We had a meeting with some suppliers that day. After leaving the meeting, we took a cab and there we heard from the driver that something had happened in NY. When we got to my boss’s hotel, everybody was in the lobby watching CNN. I remember thinking that this was something out of Hollywood, and immediately called my mom to check if my dad was not in the States. He wasn’t, but a friend of the family was (we heard later from him that he was fine). When I took the commuter train back home everybody (mostly Finns who are usually very reserved) was talking about the day’s events. When I got home I couldn’t stop watching TV until I fell finally asleep. A co-worker was flying to Britain. He got home 7 hours late.

March 11th was similar. I read the news on the BBC website and immediately called our Spanish office. They were all OK and I then called a friend of mine who lives in Madrid. He was rather freaked out because he usually takes one of those trains to go to school, but he didn’t that day. That night there was an anti-terror rally in Helsinki, and I attended with my Spanish friends. One good friend of mine just couldn’t stop crying (even though I believe nothing happened to any close people to her), and I remember that it broke my heart. And to think that it was my birthday…

in english

The Islamic influence in Europe

Ramadan is widely celebrated near my school. Walking down the streets you find a lot of women with headscarves and other protective clothing. There is talk about agreeing on some sort of European Islam, but the Muslim world itself is torn between tradition and modernity, religiousness and secularism, and the Muslims here have to deal with an unfamiliar (and I guess sometimes threatening) environment. I can only start guessing what goes through their heads when their bazaar is next to the red light district of Brussels, for example. I hope that there is some sense in all parties involved in these discussions, as these are trying times for us all.

in english

Brussels the melting pot

The city where I’m now based is truly a melting pot. Walking accross the street you can listen to 10 different languages, and if you’re not used to it (as opposed to actually craving it like I did) I suppose it can be a little overwhelming. The difference with, for example, France, is that all the different communities tend to live more or less together, which isn’t easy, but requires tolerance from everybody involved. To give an example, on Friday I was partying with the Erasmus exchange guys, who come from Spain, Finland, France, England and Poland. On Saturday I was out with a French friend who has lived in Finland, New Zealand, Ecuador and now here. On Sunday I was with some Mexican friends walking through downtown, and this week I plan to have a beer with a British friend who was in Japan and is working here now. Another good friend of mine (Kiwi, but lives in Singapore) told me the other day that my pictures in Flickr make Brussels look like a more interesting place than he thought of given the impression he had from the news, and I have to say that he’s right, this is a much more interesting place than it is regarded of. As long as it stays so in the right ways everything is fine.

in english

“Those dirty foreigners!”

Posted when I lived in Finland.

I’ve always tried to consider myself an open person, and have tried to receive and analyse new ideas as they come. I was reading Tecosgirl’s blog and it reminded me of some things that have happened to me throughout the years.

The first one was when I was 17, we were invited to debate to the Harvard Model United Nations, in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. As a high school senior, I was very excited to go to debate in that “temple of education”, and to match my skills with the people there. You can imagine our surprise when we reached the place. Imagine the following conversation in a circle upon entering a conference room before the actual sessions start:

Boy 1: “So, where are you guys from?”
Boy 2: “Well, I’m from Rhode Island.”
Girl 1: “We’re from California.”
Boy 3: “We came from Florida.”

And so on and so forth until it was our turn to say: “We’re from Mexico City.”, point at which the rest of the group would turn around and leave. Not because we spoke with a funny accent or anything, but because we were Mexican and we were at the same level as those kids. It got even “better”, as the topic that we discussed was the Taleban government in Afghanistan (you have to picture that this is 3 years or so before Sept. 11), and the Afghanistan delegate was agreeing with the United States, and everybody else cheered them on while we said that it was just a completely unrealistic position (a.k.a. bollocks). Most of my delegation who did the trip with me left the sessions as a lost cause and spent the rest of the trip going around Boston, but I still tried to instill some sense, with no success. That experience made me change my goal from studying in the US to studying in Europe.

Some years later, I moved to study Engineering in Finland. While I have to say that I really love this country (otherwise I wouldn’t have stayed here), have generally found acceptance after proving myself, and have a family and friends that truly own a place in my heart, I have found a couple of examples of people that react to (my appearance, my being?) with marked discontent, especially among the older generation and the less educated. Why? Because they don’t know where I’m from by looks only (I’ve been told that I’m half Thai, half Finnish, that I’m Spanish, Italian, Turkish, Arab…) and, let’s face it, there’s not that many of my countrymen here (around 180 last time I heard). I don’t have it that bad at all either, some of my black friends have told me worse stories .

Then there is Mexicans as well. We tend to receive foreigners with gusto, but are also quite reticent to fully accept them. The latest controversy has been about Naturalised Mexicans in the football (soccer) national team (I’ve posted about it already). Then there are reactions like those that Koreans get in Mexico City, where they’re charged with being the crime bosses of the Tepito area. Or the sterotype of Americans in Mexico as being pale, blonde, untrustworthy and stupid. As they say in Spanish, en todos lados se cuecen habas, loosely translated as shit happens everywhere.

Our biggest problem as a society (or societies) is that even though we’re becoming more and more part of a globalised world and there are more and more interconnections between the different parts, places, countries and people, we understand very little, if anything, of each other, the little that we know is usually clouded by stereotypes, and saddest of all, there seems to be no will in our societies, in us, to change.

in english

Star Wars: from I to VI

What do you do when you're alone at home, with flu, for 4 days?

I finally had some time to sit down and watch all Star Wars movies in the order they are supposed to be, according to the flanneled One, Mr. George Lucas. I have to say that I was actually quite surprised, because even though I consider myself a real Star Wars geek there were certain things that “clicked” when I finally dragged my ass to watch them all in a row on the same day. If you haven’t yet seen them all, stop reading, as spoilers follow:

* Yes, I know everybody considers Episode I an insufferable piece of crap, but I have to say that without it jumping straight into Episode II would make III far less dramatic. You wouldn’t know that Anakin is good. That it may suffer from overexposition and a, say, uninspiring plot, well, that’s another story.

* III becomes much sadder when you see Order 66 being carried out, and you realise that Anakin is just a pawn, he’s deceived by a lie, by his own luck, and by his own egoism, but he ends up being just a pawn. Tarkin is “holding his leash” by the time we reach IV, when he wanted to be much more powerful and important than that.

* IV’s title as “A New Hope” is much more inspiring if you’ve just seen III and the mess the Star Wars universe is embroiled in.

* V’s changes to the Hologram scene, where Palpatine starts rambling about Luke, even though small, give the movie a sense of cohesiveness with the rest of the saga.

* VI has much more suspense, especially when Palps says that “everything is proceeding as I have foreseen”. I mean, if the guy was able to mastermind the downfall of the Republic with shitloads of Jedi, he’ll surely be able to wipe the floor with the Rebellion, right?

* Wrong! Because we have been shown (as opposed as having been just told) that Vader used to be Anakin who used to be a good guy, so when he sees his own son, he’s got to remember Mace receiving the same sort of “shock treatment” , and then he takes his decision. It becomes much more powerful stuff.

* Lastly, Anakin’s Force ghost before the end credits of VI wraps up the whole story pretty neatly, and gives a sense of hope I can’t remember feeling last time I saw VI.