Rambles and more Rambles

Friday! Yay! It's jeans-day at the office, and the last day of the work week, which time and again pulls me to make myself the same promise: "Now I'll get home and SLEEP until Sunday!". The clock this time doesn't count the hours for the work day to be over, but for the weekend and the resting to start. It's cloudy outside - heavily cloudy - so I brought my rubber boots. I'm missing my car and resenting the plate-restriction policy, particularly when I listen to Danza Kuduro from don Omar, which I enjoy along with a clipped up Fast & Furious video.

I'm feeling particularly, peculiarly in love. Time and again I stop in my tracks and marveling I remark to myself, "woman, you are really in love!". Sweet, sweet, old love. Isn't that the strangest thing on Earth? Perhaps it's my reading White Fang, but it feels like my inner wolf has wakened up to spring. These streets bring all sorts of sweet and beautiful memories, and the very asphalt connects me to other streets, other roads, be them born from asphalt, concrete, cobble stone, dirt or the aisle on a Boeing 747-400. I feel rich, rich like the good land, and as memories reveal themselves, they feel like slender wheat springs growing from my heart, breaking gently through my body and coming out of my skin to swing their soft, beautiful blond heads and blue flowers in the sunlight.

Eyes rush to my memory. Yes, eyes. It amazes me how much eyes have me under their spell. Even today, as I was on the bus to the office, a guy took the seat next to mine. When he did, he kept his eyes cast down, and I saw him as a terribly unattractive man, but as he wanted to get off the bus, he stared up at me with huge, beautiful green eyes and I marveled at how haven't I noticed before how incredibly handsome he was. But the eyes flooding my mind aren't those of random beautiful men on the commuter, but of those I have tasted. Name may have faded - some of them at least - but the eyes remain. I find myself petrified, as I grasp again the extent of my luck, of the countless and immense blessings bestowed upon me through my life.

It downs to me that I'm in possession of one of the greatest treasures of the universe. I hold inside me, locked safely in my mind, my heart, my spirit and my body pieces of the most wonderful people in the planet. From secrets never to be told, to unique moments of absolute bliss than can't even be pronounced, worded or captured my any man-made artifact, I hold inside me fabulous jewels that link my life to those of others, far away, who may or may not still keep the shavings, the snipets, the chips and crumbles left on them by me.

I find myself wishing to be an artist to be able and paint them or sculp them all for the world into the shape my soul sees them. I wish to be a poet to verse their endless, absolute beauty and the extent of their magnificense for the world to bath in them. I wish to be a musician to capture their eyes, their smiles and the particular ways of their minds and bodies, the dripping sweetness of their soul into a free song. But I'm just me. And I find it in myself that my feelings for them haven't died out at all, but they live and bloom more beautiful each day. No feeling is more important or stronger, or better than the other, for they are all fabulous blades of beauty lolling their heads in my personal garden.

I find myself burning up, in love with them, desperately in love with my boyfriend, and pitying those who walk around in life without having experience this delirious happiness, the taste of many flavours that linger in your tongue, the absolute, ultimate beauty of differences, variety. I pity those who run to a thousand and one empty fucks, those who use others for the elevating of their battered ego, their broken self image, to pretend to be what they are not, to fuck away in sex their own inadequacies. I pity those who link themselves for long periods to another person for all the worng reasons, or for empty reasonings, those who judge a relationship by its lenght and the officiality of it, without seeing the magic, the chocolate flavored sparks that fly in the sky when chemistry floats in either for a couple of hours where names aren't exchanged, into a fleeting relationship full of unknown and beautiful enchantment, where no prosaic things are traded, like phone numbers or e-mails, but where liberated kisses fly, hands roam win absolute freedom and bodies are taken without a hint of posession, but rather a desperate desire to live each second as some are unable to live a whole life.

I pity those who think that you've been given only one heart to love only one person, when truth is that your heart, your soul, your mind, your spirit and your body store all those wonderful, good touches and embraces, fleeting little caresses and secretive gazes of love and all of them grow stronger even if they belong to the past, they all make you richer, happier, more beautiful. I pity those who think many loves take away from you empovrishing you, chipping down your worth, when there's no touch of love that doesn't enrich you, that doesn't represent a mutual transfer, a magical touch that paints a shining colour upon your heart and opens wide new doors through which you can grow.

I'm endlessly happy, I'm in love with my boyfriend, and marveling at the feeling, and all the while I'm still relishing on the many colors of love my heart has picked up through the years.

Don't Make Favors If You're Going to Bitch About It

It's nice to encounter people who help others. It's nice to help and it's nice to be helped as well. Helping is a thing that feels good on both ends. It fills you with joy to be able to help someone, do something to make things better for them, and it's awesome when you are in a tight spot and someone comes and lends you a hand. Think of the simple act of stopping while driving to let another car change lanes. Think about when your lane is over or you need to cross a busy intersection and someone stops and signals for you to go. That's a simple yet wonderful act of helping. The afterward reward of emergency-light blinking feels awesome, the hand raising from the window, or inside car, but so that you can see it, too.

Helping usually put you in a good light, as by helping you become regarded by others as a good person, and some use this in a calculated manner to be seen as good people. The offer help to different people in different manners: offer to help you with your homework or a project you are involved with, prepare breakfast/lunch/dinner for you, give you a car ride, tackle your finances... or anything they can do to help you. Though help migh be much appreciated, some times it's even quite enforced, so you have to adjust your plans and activities to allow them to help you in something you had otherwise covered. This might be a little uncomfortable, but you could think that you are helping by let them help you. It's already wrong when help is given not because a real desire to help, but because they are working on establishing an image, a reputation they don't really have.

One of the most classic cases of this are the politicians, who can't care less about people, but as elections come close they go out shaking the hands of the poor, kissing babies and getting pictures taken at children hospitals and homes for the elderly. However this type of behavior isn't only seen on politicians, as around us there's often people who are seeking an elevated, nearly canonized position, which they often tend to be vocal about. They offer to take care of the neighbour's kids while they are out working, and then complain that the children are undisciplined and how the neighbours are not giving them money to cover the feeding cost of the children. They may offer to give you a ride to the office and then bitch because you never paid the gas for the ride.

This sort of behavior kills the point of helping and feels uncomfortable both for the people who's being helped as well as for those listening to the bitching. If helping is such an imposition on you, why do you offer? Why do you continue accepting when asked to help again? There's people who want only not to be canonized in the eyes of others as a good person who helps everybody, but want also the dubious glory of being abused by others for their kindness. They don't even expose themselves to abuse - though some go as far as to do so - but they shift and twist things in such a way that they appear as the victims. That's disgraceful.

If you'd like to be known as a good person, then BE a good person, but if being a good person - in the sense you'd like to be known - is hard for you, an effort, a chore, then give it up and resign to the fact that you are not that type of good person. We all love and like helpers, but none of us need a fake helper who's use the chance to help someone to make that person into an abusive individual taking advantage of them, when that's not the case.

If you feel it in your heart, help. If you don't feel it, then keep on walking and keep your mouth shut too.

Loyalty

Loyalty is a rather rare virtue, which can usually be found only in small, fleeting doses in most people. Loyalty is what keep people together through good and bad without abandoning each other, and also what keep people holding up an ideal, or making the same choices time and again even if those choices or those ideal prove to be less than good or put you in a tight place. You show loyalty to your friends when you stay at their side when they are in trouble, and you defend them when things get sticky for them and they may get sticky for you too. You show loyalty when you stick with your religion even when that religion is being mocked or scorned. You show loyalty when you choose to buy a given brand or at a given store even if their prices/products/services aren't the best in the market.

So far, loyalty sounds beautiful and desirable, right? Well, actually all of these can be achieved and achieved better through integrity. You stay with your friend when they get into trouble, you with integrity you don't become blind to their mistakes or wrongs. With loyalty you might find yourself defending something you know to be wrong. With integrity you can still support your friend, stand by them, but also tell them "man, you've got this fucking wrong". With loyalty you stand by your religion and also have to shoulder the wrongs and mistakes commited in its name, and accept without questioning the excuses given, whether you'd believe them or not. With integrity you can still profess your religion but point out that what's being done is wrong and that your believes don't stand for it. Same goes to brand loyalty.

There's people out there who possess a strong sense of loyalty, which have often eroded their integrity. One of the most publicited cases of Big Loyalty, Little Integrity I know of is the case of Alberto González, the Attorney General of the United States during the Bush Administration, who ended up losing his reputation and committing all kinds of ilegal acts, abusing his position to get Mr. Bush's agenda going. However Mr. González isn't the only one caught in the trap of loyalty. How many people do we know - and I know plenty, trust me - who place all their chips on the loyalty they have to someone, perhaps expecting that loyalty to be paid in some way, only to end up getting themselves in a huge mess and becoming the escape goats of a problem from which they've pulled no profit. A boss that demands loyalty and get their subalterns to alter informs, mask figures and statistics, lie, coax others for approvals or rejections, hide facts, make up others in an attempt to benefit the boss or whomever the boss has struck a deal with, and when the proverbial shit hits the fan, the boss ducks, washes their hands and all the evidence points towards the loyal subalterns who take the blame. Yes, this happened to Mr. González, but I bet you swore I was writing about someone you know well.

In and out of the political sphere you can find this exact case and many of its carbon copies. At work, at home, among friends... how many times have you had a friend who asked you to make them a fake recommendation letter, pretending that they work at your family's business? Maybe not so blatantly ilegal, but say, how much a "friend" has pushed the loyalty card to try and coax you to serve as guarantee for a loan when you know well they don't have the capacity to pay it back? Or asked for money they don't intend on paying back? Asked you to lie in order to cover their mischiefs?

Loyalty is a terribly dangerous thing that should be handled with care, though I'd rather vote for discarding it entirely and replace it by the smarter, consistent Integrity. Loyalty can get you in a very bad place, or feeling guilty because you broke it even if you did it on principle. Loyalty is bound to collide with Integrity at some point - unless you pair it with integrity, and restrain it. Integrity keeps you from being manipulated, because what leads you isn't an external force, but by your inner force, your convictions.

So, before you make a decision about granting your loyalty, think it over, think it well and never lose sight of your Integrity.

Integrity

Integrity is a quality a lot of people lack of. A lot of people possess this quality, which doesn't seem to hurt them or cause them any sort of loss or restriction. Then again maybe a lot of people don't understand what integrity is. Integrity is basically the quality of remaining true to yourself, acting according to what you believe, what you consider right, what you say. It's not about keeping your threats, or keeping all the promises you make - as we all know that sometimes keeping some promises prove to be hard and you must back off on your own word to avoid hurt or a serious loss - but about being consequent.

Of all values I know, Integrity might be the easiest to keep. You may find it hard to keep honest, specially when you feel compelled to keep quiet about something, because I choose to protect someone, or even feel compelled to tell a little lie for the same reason, thus finding it hard to remain sincere. You may find it hard to remain loving when something or someone wakes the beast of hatred in your heart, or remain quiet, peaceful when you are pulled up in defensive stand. But what could really compel you to abandon yourself, betray yourself and be openly hypocritical? I'm not talking here about a breech of honesty when you mask the fact that you might not have the "expected" sexual orientation, or profess the preferred religion, maybe having been born in the preferred race, ethnic group or part of society. I'm talking about the bahavior where you bitch about someone doing something you do, or publicly bitching about someone only to be nice, friendly and lovey-dovey with said person.

Integrity is putting your money where your mouth is. If you say that laying is bad, then start by avoiding lying. If you say people should be honest, then start by being honest. If you say that people should be tolerant, then start by being tolerant. It's not hard, just be consequent, and think before judging others or mocking them.

Integrity isn't a virtue in ways of extintion, a lot of people naturally follow integrity, they don't even think about it, it's just natural for them to be consequent, but others... others lie to themselves, thinking that speaking and judging, and thus pretending is enough to be in the eyes of others. However we see though them. Why can't they see that? Are they also obscuring us from themselves as they try to obscure themselves from us?

Things Happen When You Are Unprepared

Murphy's Law or simple coincidence, but things have a tendency to happen when you are not expecting them or are not prepared to deal with them. You must make an important call or are in dire need to check something online and your phone's battery dies out, you are out of recharge or you left it in yesterday's bag. You also coincidentally leave the headache pills home, or run out of them when you get a headache. As a woman, it also happens that your period decides to come early when you are out of tampons, your heel breaks when you still have miles to walk, or you splash your white blouse with coffee or spaghetti sauce when  you have an important meeting and didn't brought a scarf or a blazer.

Some people try to fend out these cases by hoarding up everything, packing up a suitcase of shoes and clothes to go to work, filling the trunk of the car with a portable pharmacy or squeezing a Walmart into their drawers. Is this the solution? Hoarding isn't, I'd say, but it's good to have a plan ready. Prepare for what you can expect, and draft a plan for what you can't expect. Avoid carrying around too much stuff, spending too much on things you don't really need, or surrounding yourself with clutter. Yeah, Murphy's Law - basically the only law I haven't seen anyone try to break (which is different from avoiding, which we all try to do) - may push some to believe that hoarding is the solution to everything in life, and when you are out of water, pills, cookies, batteries, pens or any other similar thing, it might look so, but then, think about it, think well: the solution is to plan, to think, to find a solution, and to be prepared for the next time Murphy catches up with you.

Yoga Fair

One of the tasks in my List of 13 was to attend a cultural activity, and for it I choose the Yoga Fair. My friend Lau and I went after our regular Sunday yoga class along with out yoga instructor and her sister. The Fair has been held for three days at a cultural center known as FANAL, which used to be the national alcohol factory, but now is leased out (I believe for pretty much free) for any group with a cultural or artistic interest. In this fair you could enjoy music, and different dance and exercise presentations, as well as different posts with all sorts of information and products.

We had a smaller fair at our gym last year, where I bought the last day a green yoga mat, which I left it Hungary. My blue yoga mat - my first one - has sand on it since I took it once to the beach, and it kinda stuck on it, so I was thinking about getting myself a new mat, and today being the last day at the fair, I thought I'd get a good price on them. Nope. I can get a yoga mat on Amazon.com at $19, spend $63 on a whole set of mat, bag and water bottle. At the Fair the cheapest mats were on $50, but there were many that started on $100 and ran up to $135. On the last day.

So, no new yoga mat for me, and since we have other things to concentrate on, the new mat will be relegated for the future.

With the mat out of the picture, I concentrated on simply enjoying what the Fair had to offer. We had food - spicy and delicious - and wandered around the stands where we got information about an International Meditation Day for the World, a yoga and meditation retirement called Pachamama, other yoga centers, health and yoga magazines and a bunch of natural, artisanal products. Lau and I got matching stickers for our cars (it's fun, but we both wanted the same sticker, so we ended up with the same meditating stick figure). I also got a small towel with the same figure embroided on it, but most of it was about brochures and getting to know about the wider world who's interested in yoga not only as a hobby or a way to do something to balance your daily life, but as a way of life and a way of thinking where they actually live their entire lives.

Yoga is more, can be more. It can be the weekend program, the hour or hour and a half you take to unload the pressure out of you and recharge you for the new week, but it does have the potential to be more too. Then again, just as yoga, many things we put in our lives can become a lifestyle, the frame in which we find ourselves and where we live our lives. It's not like you have to choose one thing and live inside of it, but we do tend to pick one thing and make it central. A job, a hobby, family... whatever you pick, make sure it really makes you happy and it gives you enough room to grow, that it helps you be better and bring you closer to who you are.

I like yoga, and I like what it has to offer, but I don't think I'll take it as a way of life, but the pieces I take from it I cherish, and I set them in the frame of my life. Namaste.

The Truth About The Body

One of the most common comments often heard among girlfriends is "I'm too fat". This sentence - often really off mark because our girlfriends have rather beautiful bodies - comes with a charged, negative meaning. It says also "I'm ugly", "I don't deserve to be loved, even if I'd love to", and what's worse "I hate myself". Why do we lash ourselves? And why do we take distorted perceptions, shallow measurements to judge ourselves? The influence of the media could be one reason, the propaganda about the sickly thin body as the only one acceptable, and then the message infused in it, that the only way you can be happy, successful and loved is if you have a body just as deteriorated and sick as the one of the models. However, why do we listen to it? Why do we let it affect us?

In real life, none of us are actually as ugly or as fat as we think we are, and often one of the reasons for us to feel that way comes from the way we dress or think we should dress. Our clothes - fashionable or not - create an illusion about us, and the way our body beneath it is. The common idea that black makes you look thin, horizontal stripes make you look fat or that clothes one size smaller would compress your body and make you look thinner, are some of the reasons why we often look and feel fat, even if we are not. Maybe you feel like you must be a size 0 even if you are a size 10, so you punish yourself, follow all kinds of restrictive diets, maybe even work out, and on top of that wear clothes that barely fit you, hating then yourself for the lumps and rolls the inadecuate clothes create on your body. We have come to the point where we act liek it's our body the one that should fit the clothes, and not the clothes fit the dress. We allow fashion to overpower us, and we act like it's us who should fit the fashion, and not the fashion fitting to us.

Please, take a moment the next time you take a shower, and look at your naked body. If you dare (and have a big mirror) you'll realize that your body - in  its natural form - is beautiful. It may have no rolls, no lumps, has pretty curves and nice proportions. Why don't we dress it to accentuate its natural beauty? Why to we seek to transform it into something that's not what it is? Try it out. Get yourself comfortable underwear - in case you are a woman, get a good bra, that makes a world of difference, and when you try them out, always pull on top of the bra your shirt, so you can see who does it look, how will it make you look when you are fully dressed! - and look for clothes that are good on you. Nothing that squeezes you, nothing that creates rolls and lumps, only stuff that flow with your body. You'll be amazed at the difference it makes.

Feeling Happy!!!

Goodness Gracious! I'm feeling so incredibly, absolutely and completely Happy! Sure, it could be the effect of my delicious bagel-breakfast, which this time around was poppy (though there weren't many poppy seeds on the bagel), or the effect of the Light Coke that I mistakenly got, since I don't drink light coke, I only drink regular coke. Now, life would be just perfect if I could go out into the beautiful, warm, sunny patch of street some yards away from the office building, and sit on a concrete half-wall with a cup of coffee and a cigarette. Sadly, I can't smoke (stupid asthma not going away) and I forgot to make coffee. But still, I'm about to go out and fetch myself some lunch (I was supposed to go lunch with my twitter friends, but all of them balked out in the last minute), and I'll enjoy that wonderful warmth, walk in the sun and be simply happy!

I've been meeting with friends, getting stuff fixed - meaning restoring things to the state they were in prior to me going to Hungary in February - and now I'm looking forward to a weekend full of more programs with friends and exciting things to do.

Sometimes life is plain AWESOME!!

In and Out Lists

By now most people would agree that fashion magazines are toxic. They constantly spread the gospel of shallowness, irrational consumism, selfhatred and dissatisfaction with one's body, and evangelize about eternal youth, but in addition to all these things, magazines also spread the Bullying Gospel. With lots of pictures of products many of which are out of the reach of the middle class (unless you are willing to starve for a month in order to get a dress that won't be in next month), many of them also provide readers with a list of things they are supposed to look down on. From last season fashion to skin conditions (like oily skin, as it came out in this month's Cosmopolitan), or personal choices, such as deciding against make up or prefering leather to synthetic materials or the other way around.

Some of these magazines also include articles about bullying and mobbing - and some of them are rather good - which makes it ironic that they prepare their readers not only to stand in the face of bullying while arming them to become fashion bullies. Could it be that niceness and tolerance don't sell? Certainly their advertisers wouldn't be happy if one of these big name magazines were to subscribe to a rational spending philosophy. what would happen if they were to say to their readers that they don't need to buy more clothes, and that polishing their shoes is perfectly okay, there's no need to buy new ones. Certainly, if they weren't egging readers to spend the money they don't have on buying new clothes they don't need every month, what would they fill their pages with? Then again they may be able to fill pages with sex tips, as some of them seem to be fond of doing.

Be it as it may, fashion magazines should be a little bit more consisten about what they publish, seek to stop firing intolerance and bullying. We have enough already, born from insecurities and corruption, we don't need anymore born from what glossy pages might suggest. Of course, we shouldn't place the whole blame on magazines, for the primal blame is to be placed on the readers, the people who take these lists, these suggestions without questioning, without measuring what these shallow lists give to their lives, how they affect the quality of it and what it makes of them.

Censoring the lists isn't the solution - that's just as dumb as censoring books and movies, as if the audience were uncapable of making their own decisions - but we can demand magazines to be more sensitive, more rational and watch what they publish, while advising the audience to ponder on the information, take it with a grain of salt and decide rationally if it is worthy of consideration or not. Yes, today's world learns from Internet and MSN news, they place Miley Cyrus in the same level as President Obama, and many don't even know who Ben Bernanke  or Alan Greenspan is. They know about Selena Gomez, but not about Angela Merkel or Francois Hollande. This is a world about deception, carelessness and shallowness, but that's also up to you. 

Remember the List of 13? Well, start up one or include in your next list a specific task about something you want to pay attention to, to become aware. Read about your country's history, decide to read an article a day about economics or social issues, or watch one news show. Decide to broaden your horizon by visiting local museums or art galleries, maybe a local cultural fair. There are options and they are all up to you. And as you mingle among different people, you'll realize that there's no In and Out in the world, that people who dress funky might be more interested in the soul, that there's a message in the way people hold themselves, and interpreting them go far beyond brands and fashion.

Bagels at Last!

It didn't take me long before I picked up the phone, dialed the old number I know by heart and placed my order: sesame bagel, chive cheese cream and two coke cans. As usual - usual at the office anyways - I brought a thermos full of good, strong coffee, which tastes far better when drank from my White Collar mug. Things are nearly as if I had never left, except that I'm currently on a lesser workflow (because I just arrived, duh!), AND am quite dumb at parking. Really, what the hell is wrong with me? I was so spastic!

There are two parking spots in the whole parking lot that I like. Those two and those two alone. Before I went to Hungary I parked in those plenty of times and I've got to the point where I could park on either of them with my eyes closed. I could wake up at 2 am and park in either of them. Today, at 5:55 am (so, not at 2 am) I had to park in the reversed spot (I have one easy "drive in" spot which is my favorite, and another that's backwards to that one, so I call it the reverse one). I was happy because I had one of my favorites, so I didn't have to go find a new spot on the other floors - which I don't like - but when I tried to get my car in the spot, I got so clumsy as if I have never driven a car before. :-( Man, I shouldn't have to snug out of parking my boyfriend's car back in Hungary all the times I did so. Oh well, since I have to come to the office now EVERYDAY for the rest of the year (because there will be ONLY one holiday in October and then that will be that. Seriously, people, if Costa Rica would subscribe for people of other religions to be able to get as paid holidays their own holidays, I'd totally go Pagan. That way I'd get eight well distributed through the year... oh wait, no. One lost to a weekend. Bugger.), so I'll have plenty of time to practice and get back in shape regarding proper parking.

My agenda is filling up, tightening up - specially after work, when I have lots of errands and meetings piling up. I'm meeting with friends, which I love, but then have to continue looking for a desk (because I can't possibly function without a desk!), have to carry our cat(s) to the vet for shots (and Cirmi should have her eye checked out, because I find it cloudier than before), then have a Yoga fair coming up, which I'll attend with a friend, since I need a new yoga mat, but I can't order it from Amazon.com because it seems they decided not to deliever this particular type of items to addresses like mine (I've a smart address).

There are still letters to write (first letters mostly ^_^), and I've a bunch of postcards I want to send out to my friends (I'm a postcard junkie!). There are a million things to be done, and my available time is quickly reaching to an end.

Life continues, I guess. ^_^

Are or Are Not.

I just forgot a Holiday. Yesterday was a holiday in Hungary, known (now) as the Saint Stephen's day. I say know because back in the Socialist days I believe it was called the "Foundation of the Nation" day or "Foundation of the State" day... or something like that. My knowledge of Hungarian History is FAR WORSE than my knowledge of Costa Rican History, so I'd rather not go into too much detail about this particular holiday, so suffice it to say that in this day Hungarians celebrate the foundation of Hungary as a nation/kingdom/state.

Hungary is quite a particular country in my eyes, as for some reason they tend to rename places, rename holidays or add new ones - maybe remove others - often based on politics. Thus within the lifespan of anyone, a street can change names three times or more. The Lenin Avenue became Elizabeth Avenue - which I believe was the name of the Avenue to being with - then there's Hungaria Avenue I wasn't aware of ten years ago. Most recently (a year ago) the Moskva square - which has hold the name even after the fall of the iron curtain, because that was it's original name to begin with - became the Széll Kálmán square, and the airport, so far called Ferihegy, became the Liszt Ferenc airport.

The particular case of the Széll Kálmán square is the one I'd like to pull forward now. If you've been there some years ago when it still was Moskva square, and then now, you'll realize that nothing has changed. The place is still dirty and swarming with vendors and shady elements that make you grab your purse tighter. It's the exact same thing, just with another name. Not a dime seems to have been invested to improve the square, clean it up a little bit, build it around with benches, place more policemen to make sure shady elements and drunk, high people stay away from bothering others. So what did we earned with the new name? Only a reason to spend money on changing the name of the square in the many tramways, busses and one of the metro lines that touch the place.

The thing with this square is much similar with the case of Customer Service, which I mentioned in the previous post. It has been named Customer Service, then Customer Care, then Customer Experience but it's always the same hell, the same uninterested person reading you a line instead of actually paying attention to your situation and trying to help you. However the square or Customer Service aren't the only ones that pretend that a change of name would make things better without making something effectively to change the situation. People do that too.

One of the most classical cases is marriage. How many times have we seen a couple doing really bad, a couple that shouldn't be together, but then they jump into marriage - say because they've got knowcked up - and pretend that with this change of name (the name of the type of relationship) is enough to make things go better. If Mary and John don't get along, Mary is superficial, spends too much money on clothes and cheats, and John is lazy, addicted to betting online and careless, becoming Mr and Mrs. Smith won't make them change.

Often we try to ignore the bad in our life by changing its name, which is contrary to being positive and trying to see the good in every situation. We would say "40's is the new 20's" instead of simply saying "I'm 40, I feel 40 and you know what? 40 is freaking awesome! You should try it too one day!". We mask things, try to soften them, smooth them, place them in a better light, change their nature with words, while we do nothing -  really nothing - about what bother us. We don't embrace nor we fight. We mask and ignore, and as we do this, we open the door for other, similar cases of name changing and word-masking to happen.

Another case is when someone works in a position and that position gets renamed, but the conditions remain, or - which is worse - responsabilities multiply, but authority and payment remain. Typical cases of this can be seen when a regular coworker at a team suddenly gets the position renamed "junior manager", or goes from "official" to "agent" (these exist in the financial world, and are not related to security or  chasing robbers). These "requalifications" often keep the salary at the same level, but burden the position with responsabilities over a certain project, a service or even a portfolio. the renaming often is an empty price, a fool trick to make people believe that now they are more important, and thus often they can be called on more tasks, can be packed up with more duties, for the same amount of money. Again, like the square things don't improve, and we really get nothing from the name change.

Let's open our eyes, see into the soul of things and voice our opinion. Don't resource to name changes - we don't need them - call things by their name and face them. That's certainly better than accepting a lie and pretend you are okay while you still feel the burn from it, right?

A Culture of Incompetence and Irresponsability

Customer Care - and whatever name today's "innovative managers" give to it - has become synonymous of Hell. Be it the old Customer Service, with the revamped ideas and the "groundbreaking" Customer Experience philosophy, or a simple internal service at your job like the IT, procurement, HHRR among others, the moment someone should do something for you to get you going and have things working the way they should, you enter Hell.

It's quite funny how they usually depict themselves like in the picture added above: smiling, beautiful, caring people ready to make your life easier, to get you on the go as soon as possible. Sadly, we all know that that's not the case. Long waiting times, often talking to several agents, telling them all exactly the same information over and over - because in this modern, digital world, they can't send a freaking e-mail from one area to another, or enter the information you gave at the begining - so you have to repeat time and again the same data, receive the same reply, and all of it on your dime.

Some cases are easier than others, but that doesn't make them less of a Hell. I was recently forced to call the IT department to get my office laptop configurated. I had no laptop, so I needed a swift job in order to get quickly incorporated to the staff. In six months IT stretched their  response time from 24 hours to 48. I was emphatic on the urgency of the case - I'm sure people struggling with a virus or needing a second laptop configurated can wait - but they paid no attention to it. Didn't even ask me what was my work schedule (we have several schedules, and I've the earliest one), so by the end of the first day the technician called me 5 minutes before the end of my shift. A commitment was made that he would send a coworker before noon the next day.

I was keeping track on an old laptop that had been half configurated for me, and which shot down each time I opened a file that requiered Office. Noon came and went but the technician was nowhere to be seen. Around 2 pm I decided that it was time for me to stop starving and waiting, and go grab meself some lunch. THEN the technician called. To the remark that he was supposed to come before noon, the excuse was that he was sorry, but since it wasn't one of his cases, he didn't check it out before, so he didn't notice, but he could come up at that moment. I told him I could leave him the laptop, but I had to go lunch. He didn't like it, so we agreed that I'd call him once I'm back from lunch. I basically sniffed up my lunch in 20 minutes, rushed back to my place and called him, so he had plenty time to configurate my laptop.

If you make the maths, you'd notice that I called the technician at 2:20 pm, 2:25 max. He said he was in his way (he's in the same building as me), and he arrived at 3:20 pm. First person I know who needs an hour to climb max. 15 floors. Or maybe I'm well trained, since I can make them in 15 minutes carrying three bags, in high heels, and taking breaks every four floors. Displeased, I stared at him, gave him the laptop and told him that I was leaving in 16 minutes. He went on a diatribe of excuses, and then got to work on the laptop, finding in 5 seconds a problem that was too big and too complex to be solved quickly. He wasted then ten minutes of my precious life explaining me how there was a whatever problem, that could only be solved with a key a coworker of his had, but which be available - if available at all - on Monday (today), or within two weeks. Otherwise he would have to format the laptop, but even for that there were two choices, one that was more elegant and another that was faster. So basically it was up to me to choose which one I prefered.

I was out of patience, so I told him that I couldn't care less. It was HIS job and he should make the best decision. All I wanted was a swift solution and get my laptop ready and working as soon as possible. I told him pointedly that I made it clear that the job had to be done urgently, so I didn't really had time to go through technicalities. He tried to go on explanations about how it was his job and resposability to tell me what the options were, when I cut him half way and told him to save his explanations, because those didn't get me working faster. He actually got offended and remained offended.

He worked on my laptop and then left it to another coworker of mine who has another schedule, and then came back today to finish the job, and still acted offended. So let me get this straight: HE was supposed to pay attention and comply the promise made to ME - the client - by HIS department, but HE failed. HE also failed in complying with the job as requested. HE was showering me with EXCUSES for HIS ineptitude, but I'm not allowed to be upset because he made an effort out of coming up with excuses for his incompetence, which I should have accepted. Instead I actually DARED to confront him with the fact that HIS excuses were of no use for me, that I need his WORK, not his pathetic justifications. As result, I'm the bad guy and he's entitled to be offended.

I won't say here that it's not his fault, it's the fault of the culture of incompetence and condoning mediocrity in which we live, because it IS his fault. Choosing incompetence and mediocrity instead of honest, careful, hardwork isn't imposed on us. If it were so, we would all be incompetent and mediocre and wouldn't even notice it. If he wants to adscribe to this mentality and this lifestyle, he's in his right, but that doesn't mean that we must accept it, when his mediocrity affects us.

In my case, I can't go with another provider, but I can certainly file a complaint, or the next time request for my case not to be attended by this poor excuse of a technician. There are cases when we can do more. If we don't receive the service we want, we can change providers, companies, subscriptions. Staying because "all of them are alike" is your choice, but if you stay, you quit bitching. Truth is that Customer Care is a two way line: on one side there's the Hell the agents create for us, but on the other side is how we make our voice heard, how we react and how we tell them just how displeased or pleased we are with their service, and take action if things don't change.

Take things in your hands, don't let Customer Care Hell tramp over you.

Mother Earth

A Sunday started with yoga, not church. A Sunday in Costa Rica, waking up to gentle lights and delicious flower scents. I woke up happy, and going back to yoga made me happier. Though Christian, I found myself praying in meditation to Mother Earth, connecting with her and feeling so happy in the colorful, warm and sweet embrace of her tropical arms.

This was a beautiful Sunday, and though tomorrow is Monday and I have to go to work, and I still have no desk at home, I feel recharged, fabulous and happy. Met with friends, and still have a List of 13 to compose. I'm feeling love, I feel happiness and I feel so beautiful inside out - but not a physical or attractive beauty, but a beauty of feelings, of happiness with your surroundings, as if the whole world were simply beautiful and it were being mirrored inside me. I just feel wonderful, and I love the feeling. :-)

I hope you all had a happy and beautiful weekend, and that it has filled up with energy and good vibes for the week to come. Blessed be all!

Furniture and Excuses in Religion

One of the things we have to get is a desk for me. Have been checking different places for it, like Office Depot, and smaller furniture stores around downtown, and some bigger ones online. The quest hasn't been easy, as it never is when you are looking for a particular type of furniture, as the desk we are looking for must fit in a small place, so it can't be more than 50 cm (20 inches) deep, not 90 cm (35 inches) wide. Most desks available are computer desks, or ugly compressed cardboard desks with an unsightly little door for a tiny little... box-like... thing. Then, after checking a rather expensive furniture store, I decided I'd love to have a secretaire desk. I imagine this type of desks would be easier to keep clean and organized, but also they are supposed to be actually rather small to beging with as at least half the writing surface gets out of the way when you fold up the lid close.

Without a desk life is quite uncomfortable. No place to put down my bag when  I get home, no place to dump shopping bags, place keys, lay down the mobile phone, put on the laptop or write letters. Would you imagine that desks can be that important?

At one of the furniture stores I visited - where the desks were rather cheap and shabby, and not in the good sense - I found a cousin on mine working. It was weird, because this guy has been having a large and disconnected number of odd jobs. He used to work at a private bank selling credit cards, worked at a greengrocery among a lot of other jobs I can't recall. Finding him on a Saturday morning in a cheaper furniture store was indeed strange. I wanted to keep it concentrated on the tasks - get me the desks - but he started talking - or rather shall I say, explaining his being there - going on about how he had been there for a week and a half, and already felt unhappy with the job. He actually said that "oh well, every new shoe hurts in the begining". Let's not go into how actually at the begining of a new job you are wide eyed and excited and only later on you find out the little bad things - if there are any.

My cousin is one of those people who -  by some strange reason - has had no luck in his life. He changed his career at the university several times (he says now that he has studies in teology and something about composing music), then got married and had two children, for whom he had to start this chain of odd jobs to be able to support them. Then he got divorced and continued his odd life. He's one year older than mine, but his eyes and face are so tired as if he had rolled in at least twenty extra years. His words quickly rolled down towards religion, asking me "what am I now", since he was sure I had stopped being Christian several years ago. I still believe he must have confused me with someone else, so I tried to explain to him that I'm Lutheran, but he insisted, so when he asked me where did I go to church in here, I told him that in Costa Rica on Sundays I go to yoga, and he hooked on that with a line I have heard before by second hand sources, but never thought to be real. He said that he was okay with the exercise part, but wasn't okay with the meditating, because true Christians only meditated on the Bible (he said The Word). Silly me, I tried to explain to him, that I have been researching religions different than Christianity, and that actually there's no evil in them, and there's something to learn of all of them if you are just open to see them for what they are and not for what you imagine about them.

He launched then on a rather extremist speech, pushing the view of the Punishing God and how that was the only right way to live. I remembered the position of my grandpa has on the matter, how they push this idea that God demands you to become His slave in order to please Him, and that only that way can you be truly free. I don't know if it's just me, or if you can seen the contradiction in this: "become a slave (or servant) and live a strict life of virtue and staying within the narrow and dated rules of a religion, and then and only then can you become free".

Thing is that what's offered is a trap. When you give up everything about yourself, about your life, about your decisions, live in fear of a God who though it's supposed to be all love, He seems to love you only when you do only and exactly what He wants, even if that goes against your own nature - the nature He gave you - for other wise He'll hate you and never forgive you. Say what you want, this in itself is also a big contradiction. Anyway, in order to be free in this view of Christianity, you must make this "god" (I believe God to be a God of Love, perfect and consistent, so He would surely waste no time hating people, nor would He give people a given nature only to demand them to change it. I mean, come on! How could MEN fight against what GOD has made?), you must surrender. However, hoy can you be free while in abyect servitud or slavery? You can't. What's offered is to have an excuse to dodge responsabilities. When you give up, and concentrate only on keeping restricting laws (and bitching about those who don't), then you don't need to take responsability on your own life and how things happen because that's all "God's will". There's no need to fight, no need to struggle, no need to actually seek to be happy (nor like there's any actual way your restricting rules allow you to be happy), and all that is on God.

My cousin reminded me of that, and his words didn't fall far from that path. Has plans, plans to make music, create a church, and for that he needs money, and gets it from his odd jobs. His face is smudged thick with disappointment in life, but he claims to follow God, a God that's hardly God, but a Holy book, a Bible, an idea framed by a religion twisted out of its purpose by the wicked arm of a Church that sanctifies itself and raises itself to be god in place of God. Does this makes him happy? No, but it makes him feel less guilty for not taking the control of his own life and making something lasting, something productive out of it.

I wonder why it is that people often seek religion to have something that excuses their life incompetence, their laziness, their procrastination, their lack of will to actually live their lives, be responsible for their own circumstances and face them. Churches build upon the misery of people, and make sure to keep them miserable just to keep them coming. Like crack, or a bad prescription drug scored on the black market, they are an addictive, destructive force that traps people in false hope and dispair, preaching about a god they make unreachable, unpleasable, like a carrot before a donkey. Is this God? No, it isn't, but hopeless people who are not willing to take responsability for their lives and make their lives happen, don't care, as long as there's an excuse for their misery, as long as they can be tricked into believing that all this suffering and misery actually makes them better, and that it "fills them with joy".

I pity my cousin and people like him. It's never late, and though despair can hurt, desperation can bite, all you need to do is to get up again, look at what you want to achieve and make it happen. It can happen, even if you must retry over and over, it can just happen, if you make it happen.

Thoughts with Coffee

The store at the corner of my job got robbed around 8 am by gunmen, who shot three shots and run over a pedestrian while they were escaping. They got caught, though, and will probably get processes swiftly, and maybe just as swiftly let go after a ridiculous prison sentence, so that in a couple of years - if not a couple of months - they can come back and continue their burgeoning criminal lifestyle. Will this make it to the news? Nah, not likely. This is one of the many crimes commited in the capital city, so why would it make the news unless something truly amazing happens - okay, they did catch the robbers quite quickly... so maybe they'll be in the news after all.

That store was the one I used to go to every workday for the past three or four years to score myself some snacks or breakfast stuff (coke, yoghurt, Red Bull, croissant or bread, sour cream, salted and sliced green mango...you know, the usual breakfast stuff), except on those days that I felt really, really lazy and rather ordered breakfast from one of my favorite express companies, most often than not, from Bagelmens', because I'm crazy about bagels.

Most main streets are collapsed, and my Twitter is full of messages from people who got caught in yet another traffic jam caused by the Governments ultimate ineptitude AND lack of any care about fixing the General Cañas highway, which has been giving problems for a while now, but particularly since the "platina" case, and now with a rather large crater, further "sinkings" which end up also in a crash - because people here just don't drive like in Europe - turning a Friday morning drive to the office into an impromptu parking lot case. Imagine, waking up early in the morning and rushing only to get trapped into the dark machinery of a collapsed highway. It's like the Hunger Games: you don't even kill the engine because you want to believe, you want to hope that you will be able to make it. (BTW, I saw that movie again on the plane - I also saw Iron Lady, which I didn't like much, 21 Jump Street, which wasn't so bad, but I'm glad I didn't pay for it, and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and this time around I didn't like it much.)

I'm back in Costa Rica, to the amazement of many. A lot of my coworkers stare at me as if I just came back from the grave. "Holy Shit! She's alive!", and many ask why I came back, and all of them simply assume I must be devastated for being here. Weird, I'm not. It feels just like having taken the train to go to another city. A city with much more rain, much more criminality and wider lanes. Oh man, how I love to drive!! And how I love my car!

I'm acconditioning again both my place and my office, fixing meetings, appointments and dates with friends, banks and all sorts of bureaus. I'm loving the weather! I'm still deskless, which I hate, but as I slowly get back in track, things go falling in their old place. For how long? That's the question in many people's mind, but only a few know the answer, and that's the way it will remain.

Back at the Office

Well, here we are, once again, and as expected, I had to rush like hell to the office because I woke up freaking late. And when I say freaking late I mean that I woke up when I was suposed to leave the office. Thanks to this I made an important scientific discovery, namely, that there's no better way to get fully awayke fast than to realize you are fucking late to school/work/catch a train-plane-bus/any other absolutely important activity linked to time. Of course, maybe my empirical evidence isn't enough, so if there's any volunteer out there willing to take the bullet in the name of the science, we would appreciate it.

Then, after six months, I sat in my car again, and loved it! I love my car sooooo much! Sookie is, indeed the best car in the whole wide planet (though I must admit that I really loved the Volkswagen Polo we rented in Helsinki ^_^). I did notice, however that the steering wheel was quite hard to maneuver. Was it always like this and I never noticed it before, or has my dad done something to it which got it like that? I mean, yes, it isn't a hidraulic steering wheel, but it wasn't that muscle bursting. Anyway, since I was late, I had to step into the gas and drive like a maniac -  which I am not - pushing my driving to 80 kmph, instead of my regular 60 kmph. It had trouble trying to shift into 5th, it kinda didn't get in gear, which was really weird, because my Sookie is butter soft in the gear shifting.

The streets in Costa Rica were also different, particularly the width of the lanes. I realized that indeed in Hungary the lanes are at least 33% narrower to those we get in here. My car is small, I know, but finally I felt like I fit into the lane, instead of feeling like I have to do precision driving worried that I may go scratching the many new cars that pack up the streets of Budapest. No excess of traffic signs, so I only have to pay attention to two or three signs when most, instead of millions of them, all arranged in weird symbols that aren't easy to guess. (The square fried egg got me puzzled for quite a long time.)

If you wonder about the flight, it was nice and uneventfull, with great seats - I particularly enjoyed my Economy Premium seat, though if asked, I might pick the Business class seats next time. :-). The food was terrible, but then again, this was a flight operated by KLM, not Air France, so you can't ask for miracles. Loved that I could get all my boarding passes at once in Budapest, picking out my seats and making changes if I wanted to. :-) I bought a couple of things on board - because there's no meaning for traveling without purchasing - among them a tiny potted red tulip carved in Swarowsky crystal, which ended up being the Mother's Day gift for my Mom (Yesterday was Mother's Day in Costa Rica). She loved it a lot. It is a pretty piece.

I'm particularly happy because I've got seeds in Amsterdam for sage and lavander. Now I can only hope I'll be able to grow these properly, and that neither of these will be hard to grow in here. I've got quite a liking for gardening in Hungary, that I never thought I had.

I've unpacked, but haven't put away my stuff just yet. My old closet is still full of clothes, I don't have a desk anymore - my oldest nephew claimed it for himself, and I'm happy to give it to him, specially because it used to belong to his dad ^_^ - and I'm lacking storage space, order and ... a general flow of daily life in the room. Hell, I have a "my room" now, instead of an "our apartment". I have a "my bed", instead of an "our bed", and that was particularly awesome! I slept again, for the first time in eight months in the very center of the bed, with LOTS of space to turn around, and I loved it!

Office, just like home, was actually waiting for me full of stuffs. Lots of pens and pencils, pilot pens and post its. The laptops were also here - though I had to wait for a coworker of mine to get to the office so she could give it back to me, but since it was formatted, I had to call in to get it usable again. The IT department took my request and told me that WITHIN 48 HOURS it will get done. So I had to go asking another coworker of mine to do what he could to get it as workable as possible while the official enablers arrive. I can use it, but it's a freaking pain in the behind, since it's giving a lot of problems to just remain open. :-P

The day isn't over, but I had to blog, not only because I haven't been assigned a work yet, but also because to I did tried to change the timezone of my blog, I couldn't do so without having the rest of the posts. Tried to look up for help, but Blogger.com got so unfriendly and unusable, that I couldn't find an answer to my question, so had to leave the question on the forum.

This forum thing is the worse thing I can think of. I mean, topics just shower on you, and the searches bring up lots of unrelevant information as well. Anyway, I hope I can fix this soon. I'd love to blog at night, just like I do it at home, otherwise I'll have to do it in the mornings again and thus flod you with breakfast-related topics. :-P We shall see.

Sitting at the Airport

Time for changes. Change the time zone I set my blog on (though I’ve been using it in the Central European time for far longer than I care to remember), change my daily rutine – go back to waking up at unholy hours of the day -, change my daily dressing style – back to the office gear – and change the tone of my voice. Speak louder and on a higher pitch, instead of the much lower (both in tone and it pitch) I’ve got used to here. The world around be will change again, the language, the fashion and even the weather and the way people relate to it. I'm feeling blue as I leave the place where my heart lives, like a man who has spent a beautiful season with his loved ones at home, among wonderful woods and meadows, with wonders that can only be gathered in their whole splendor in fairy tales, and now must go back to work to the mines. I'm thinking again, wondering about the strange things in my life, and how it seems to be plagued with departures, airports and lots of crying for those I leave behind. It's not a cruel fate, it is not, it's simply intensely blue, intensely melancholic. It could be worse - I know that - but I keep wondering why is it that my life happened this way, how come I can never be for long with my loved ones without having to give up other loved ones.

It's still dark outside, but the day will shine when my plane takes off, I'll travel in daylight all along, with probably a fake "night" in the way introduced by the aircraft crew (though sometimes the leave the sleeptime out in trips on this direction). Be it as it may, I think I'll most probably sleep the whole trip through. These have been intense, nerve breaking days for me, and knowing that I had to leave stuff out of the luggage, then realizing I forgot others (because I was so busy being nervous I forgot to follow my own packing protocoll to the letter), these all got me jumpy, and so I couldn't sleep all night (or all the 3 hours we could have to before getting to the airport, that is). Rationality and wise words sometimes are useless against the visceral, irrational nervousness that can get on us. Well, at least I hope this freaking nervousness will slim off a couple of pounds from my frame, so I can pull some benefit out of it.

19 minutes for the next chapter of my life

My last day in Hungary has slowly come to an end. It wasn't until too late that I realized many things are missing. My dad wanted some thermometers, which now I can't get him. My luggage is complete and my cabin luggage is bursting at the seams. I'm tired. I'm so tired. What's packed is packed, and what's not... well, that's not. The most important things are it and the rest will have to wait for the next trip.

Oh man, the day has come.

Gather Up Your Thoughts

As part of my List of 13 (which I didn't publish this time, I know), I was to write down the Principles and Values I uphold. Even though I praise myself of knowing myself well, this one task ended up being harder than I expected it to be, specially because though I may be clear within myself about what I hold important and which are the rules and standards I hold myself to (or try hard to), when it comes to put them on paper it's not so easy. I gathered them up in my Book of Ideas - which was the best place to put them, since I also wrote in it about what my believes are - and that's a "chapter" that took up quite some pages, and I feel that I'm still not done with it.

With my believes I could extend myself, and my only problem was to decide where should I end, which believes would be enough for me to write into the book without turning the whole project into a million volume book series, where all those millions of books are all about my believes. (Eventually I decided to include basically my religious views and basic views on good and evil. The rest, such as my thoughts on Freedom and Independence, Life and Death, Equality, Tolerance and Purpose would receive separated chapters later on if I feel so, or just add them later as adendums.) However, when it came about my principles and values, I found myself strugging for the most acurate way to write them down. In this exercise I found out that often trying to simplyfy, summarize or gather up thoughts and stands on a couple of words may induce to error, as often we have a believe or hold up a value, but designing it with one word, making it absolute would corrupt our original stand, and twist away our message.

For instance, one of my values is "Honesty". I believe in honesty towards oneself, but not necesarily towards others. I believe in "sincerity" towards others (Sincerity is not telling lies, Honesty is telling the truth), though I also admit that white lies have their place and often sincerity can cause more damage than a well chosen lie - just refer to Diplomacy, which in my personal opinion is basically the nice word for hypocrisy, as well as etiquette - which is also another word for hypocrisy, though on a different level. If you take as value "honesty" in an absolute sense, you could end up doing more damage than good, as by your principles - if you follow them - you'd have to tell always the truth about everything - even stuff that hasn't even been asked from you (that's the main difference with sincerity, since sincerity allows you to keep parts of the truth to yourself, which are not asked upon) - and not everybody is equally receptive (not to mention that what you see to be true, might not be the truth for someone else).

I believe you must be brutally honest with yourself, don't kid yourself, don't lie to yourself, but when it comes to others, you often have to choose what to tell them. For instance, you won't tell a child suffering from cancer that they'll never get better, but will die among terrible pains. You tell them "I think you are looking better and better everyday!". 

Just like this, other values can be opened up and interpreted in hundreds of ways that do not fit your actual values, those you know in your heart and mind, but maybe not in proper word. We can't talk, for instance, about being "tolerant", when we really are not. If you say you are tolerant, you should also tolerate intolerant people, criminals, people who hurt you, those with values that contradict yours and so on. Even saying that you are "tolerant of diversity" or "accepting diversity" opens up the same doors. Being a wifebeater or a manhater, a murdering tyrant or a racist xenophobic person is part of diversity. I tolerate and support many things, but I can't say I'm tolerant, because I am not. I'm intolerant. I can't stand stupid people and stupidity, and that's only one of the many things I do not tolerate. So am I tolerant? No. Does that make me intolerant? No, because I'm not intolerant of everything.

The exercise has been wonderful, and though I wrote up my list or declaration, I believe there's still room for adding, changing and improving, it has already put order in my mind, and helped me understand things. It made it clear for me, that what matters in a declaration like this isn't to write these things down, but to meditate upon them, and keep the initiative for as long as it's actual in your life. Don't use these words, these lists, these declarations to limit yourself, to push yourself, to force yourself, but rather to remind yourself of who you are, what you are, and what's your frame, so if one day you lose yourself, if one day you are uncertain about what should you do, you can look over these words of yours and remember, what's inside your heart, and act accordingly.

Task Done

I'm done, dea, not-live, kaput, finita, oscisa... "don't call me, I'll call you". I just finished compiling the list of all the books I have in Hungary. All mine, because I won't even go on listing also my boyfriend's, though I started to. Since I'm flying on Wednesday morning, this had to be done this weekend or my last two days (this year) in Hungary would be a veritable horror show.

As I logged the books in the excel sheet, I've got a desperate feeling, as suddenly I wanted to read right away many of them, or at least take them with me to Costa Rica. I've so many great books! I've lost of cool things - if I may say so - so the whole process of selecting and packing has been beyong taxing. This reminded me of that exercise where you must try and give up something from your life that's holding you back, or when you have taken too many responsabilities and you need to let go of a few: How do you make the choice?

Sometimes certain things in our life are not clearly good or clearly bad, and when we feel that we can't keep up with everything, we can't make a decision about what must be left out. In many cases, the question isn't either as easy as packing things in a suitcase, where you can relay to logic and reason, and select things by asking yourself "what do I want to accomplish?" and "What do I need to reach my goals?". Sometimes the decisions are hard and the process is tiresome and murky, but keep your head up, take a break and go back to the task, because it can be managed. Even the biggest, largest, longest task can be completed.

Blessings to all!

Returning from a Trip

We've returned from Helsinki without having seen Suomelina. Bad planning and the last kick of Mercury Retrograde were in play, maybe some stomach ache, maybe some lack of attention, but at the end of the day, there was no time whatsoever to either go to Suomelina or eat real Finnish food. Not that I mind so terribly, as this only serves as a good excuse to go back to Helsinki some other time.

I was fascinated with the weather - truth to be told - and though maybe I should visit in winter to see if I hold up to my current opinion, I certainly enjoyed the fact that there wasn't such a brain melting heat. We basically wandered about, checked out the beautiful Sibelius Monument, and then wandered around a little, while we still had time. We took some pictures, but the park was taken over by large herds of tourists of the worse kind, who had no consideration for others and monopolized the monument, standing in the way of others taking pictures while they took about a hundred of the same friend posing in the same position.

From the trip we've brought along lots of pictures, I brought a couple of ideas for jewelry making that I found simply beautiful and ingenious. There's also our trademark fridge magnet - we love to get cute little fridge magnets from our trips (when there are nice ones), so that there's a reminder of our trips linked to another source of pleasure: food - some memorabilia for a young friend of us, and then a bottle of Lapponia made out of cloudberries. The liqueur is rather sweet, so I ment it for a friend of mine, who would certainly love this drink. I tried it out at the hotel, and though I also loved the Polar Cranberry (it was polar cranberry), the cloudberry is something much unknown in Costa Rica than the cranberries or polar cranberries. My boyfriend wasn't very excited about the drink, so I just got one bottle instead of two or more (I would have considered a bottle of cloudberry and one of polar cranberry for us, and a cloudberry for my friend), but since he was frowning at the idea, I decided against it. So far so good, except that when we've got to Budapest, he suddenly proposed to change the bottle of Lapponia for some other gift for my friend, because he suddenly wanted to keep it for us!

At the same time, as we arrived to Budapest again, I couldn't help but think about the few days I have left. I'm going to the airport again in Wednesday and flying back to Costa Rica. I'm still nowhere close to finishing the book inventory (people keep talking to me about Goodreads.com, but that wouldn't do it for me, though I do have an account there), and let's not talk about the rest of the stuff on my list! I'm gettinbg worried: "how will I carry all the things I plan to take home with me?" Even my original plan for packing has proved to be quiet far from my reality.

Helsinki has been beautiful, but right now I have a few hell-days ahead of me still in Budapest, and then only Hyne knows the kind of surprises that await for me in Costa Rica. Let's hope and pray that there would be no hell expecting me at my return.