Filling up the Calendar

Property of Stormberry

 I was thinking the other day about comfort zones and why on Earth would anyone willingly seek to abandon their comfort zone. Don't you want to live in a comfortable manner? It does rub me the wrong way when the phrase "comfort zone" is used to refer to a place of destructive, stagnant mediocrity. In my mind, a comfort zone is like that perfect spot in the couch or the sofa, where you like to curl up with a book to read, where the coffee table or the ant table is at that right angle for you to put your glass of wine, your cup of coffee, light a candle and put on a John Coltrane record.

I think that, if you are in a comfort zone, congratulations! A lot of people struggle to find a comfortable, livable life, so don't give up yours.

I am in my personal comfort zone, and I don't plan on leaving it.

However, in my confort zone there are also places that need work and organization. Part of my comfort zone is my studying, which currently is about working on my Master's thesis, so I'm working slowly and surely on that. I'm also trying to add some social activism, because in my comfort zone I also want to be able to do something for my community. Yes, that might not sound as "comfort zone" for some, BUT my concept of comfort zone is about feeling good, being able to relax and enjoy myself, and is not about being lazy. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't condemn being lazy, just as I don't celebrate hyper productivity. Allowing yourself spaces to enjoy laziness, and even have lazy days are something we all need. My comfort zone is about being happy, enjoying life and building a life where I can think that I actually succeed at this "life" thing (and I do!).

Next week starts with a holiday - May 1st, the International Workers' Day - and then I took Thursday off for a Thesis Day. I'll have a meeting with my tutor, so I'm really excited. And on Monday, if all goes well, I plan on joining the Workers' March in order to protest against a bill that would legalize 12 hour work days (12 effective work hours per day, where lunch and rest time won't be deducted from it) in the country. That's my activism, and I intend on seeking ways to get more involved in labour economics' activism.

Since I started my second YouTube Channel, planner and journaling videos have been a weekly task for me, but this weekend and the next are already covered, as I shot, uploaded and programmed the next videos. However, I already planned ideas for videos for the next weeks and up to September. I started already shooting some B-rolls and planning on how to do the rest.

At work I've also been pushing on my tasks and working to keep everything up to speed, and maybe even get ahead of some stuff. Just getting ready with everything. We are finishing April and I have still managed to keep a clean mail inbox, where the only three e-mails are about a seminar in two weeks, an in-person meeting next week and a notificatoion I keep as reminder that someone else has to finish something. And we are nearly in May!

Have I mentioned that we are in Mercury Retrograde?

I'm also amazed at how I have managed to keep my filofax "in line", with all the pages neatly fitting, passing the "ring test". I remove pages as needed, review what I have, what I need to take out, what needs to be included, and so I keep it manageable. I play in my mind with crazy ideas, such as buying a Filofax Heritage in Personal, just to try it out, but I seriously doubt that day will come (this year). I have also thought of getting a Personal Filofax Malden, but I must admit that I really dislike the leather penloops of the Malden's because they catch inside and the folded leather bunches up and makes it hard to use. Maybe I'm getting much into the "Planner+Journaling Content Creator"-mode there in that regard, or maybe my mind if flying ten thousand ways for some reason. Maybe I need to burn mind-energy. But be it as it may, I've been on a planner hype as of late, inspite of the Retrograde.

I write things down, I update my online calendars to make sure all my witchy rituals are in there, so I don't forget auspicious dates and so on, and they also get into my filofax, along with my cleaning schedule. And this is how I opened my filofax to check how my next week will look like, and Holy Mother of the Wenn, it looks full!

Should I take a page from the message of the Retrograde and go inside, introspect a little, retrieve into myself and stop filling my calendar to the brim? After all, in keeping my comfort zones, I also need to enjoy the peace and delight of them, of a life happy, relaxed and sans souci.

Little Grievances

 

Property of Stormberry

It has occured recently, that I had to face a very uncomfortable situation brought forward by what I felt like other people's inconsideration, and that made me mad, mostly because it wasn't discomforting me, but someone I care a lot about, and yes, me too.

Last week my friend and former classmate from the Master's studies - let's call her Andy - was here from her country of origin, for a week to work on her Master Degree Thesis. Andy and I are best friends since the first Quarter we shared in this program, which was in May of 2020. We were assigned to work a project together in a Macroeconomics class, and ever since we've been doing every single possible team assignment together, and have been messaging and talking nearly non-stop. Nearly because we have to eat, sleep and work, mind you.

Andy never really clicked with the rest of the class, and though I did speak to the others, neither of us could call any of the others "our friends". They were classmates, not our friends, and though I was out to help everybody I could, we didn't really kept in contact with them. So much so, I have heard others say that of the whole class, there were only two friends, and those were Andy and I. Nobody else had really friends. Maybe two guys - a clown and a more serious guy -  were close to be friends but they were more like joke-friends or party-friends.

Andy and I were so close, that when she came here to participate last year in the Globelix seminar, she stayed at my place. We share a similar ideology, we both wanted an emphasis in Labor (which we didn't get), and we both would like to get into the doctorate program and wish to do so together. We talk a lot, analyze together a lot od things and even share secrets.

By the end of last year, Andy got a really important calling at the Government of her country, and so, when she couldn't get through with some stuff in classes, I did my best to help her. But also, whenever I was lost with something, she was always quick to help me out and explain what I didn't get. I can say, we really have each other's backs.

Property of Stormberry

This year she has continued in the Government, so she has been slipping back with her thesis work, and so our professors' suggested she came here, away from work, so she could advance and talk directly with the professors. And she did so this past week. I took two weeks of vacations (because I had all that time to spend), and in the first one I made sure to plan a lovely stay for her, with a reservation at Astral Speakeasy, a hidden bar with a Speakeasy bar feeling to it, but also a trip to our favorite metaphysical store, a coffee tour, a trip to our Art Museum, Pumpkin Spice Latte at Starbucks (there's no Starbucks in her country), and coffee at my favorite French pastry shop.

This time around we didn't stay late talking our heads off, as Andy came really tired. One can tell her jobs are taking a toll on her. Then, we had our week of thesis work, meeting our guidance professor and fixing meetings with friends.

From the begining, before her plane even took off, I told our former classmates that she was coming, what were our plans and if they wished to meet with her, that we should either organized a meeting of all of us together, or meet one by one. They wanted to meet all together, but the agendas were complicated. First, I offered to include everybody in the reservation for the Astral Speakeasy, but nobody wanted that. Then they suggested to meet on Wednesday, but that wasn't doable because we had a meeting that night with our favorite professor. Andy's and my favorite professor, mind you, because nobody else liked him. (He assigned too much reading material).

When I mentioned that, there were some comments for us to ditch the professor, but that wasn't going to fly. Anyway, we decided on Thursday, which was Andy's last day. So I told them that, because Andy's flight next day is early, we should meet in my city.

Then came Thursday. Suddenly people want to meet in the Capital City, not in my city (even though everybody couldn actually make it fir they wanted to), because two of the classmates work there until 5 pm and "they would have to take the bus". No matter how many times or how strongly I told them that for Andy and I it was not feasable, they insisted. They kept pushing and pushing, ignoring the fact that neither Andy and I had the time to go there, meet with them, come back, pack and sleep enough to get to the airport. They plainly didn't care, and were offended that I was being so mean as to impede others "who also like Andy very much" to finally meet with her in person (all our classes were online due to the pandemic).

The discussion ended when I told them that they could sure come pick up Andy at the Uni where we were working, and then drive her back to my place, because I wasn't going to go to the Capital City, and instead would finish all the errands and stuff Andy had to complete before her flight. So they've got offended. I guess they love her diearly, as long as they don't have to move a finger for her.

We ended up meeting in our city, and it was the most annoying  meeting ever. They didn't care she was there, but instead launched into a conversation among them, here and there bouncing topic off Andy. for instance, once they asked here what has she liked best of Costa Rica from what she has seen, and while she was thinking on the question, they started saying what they liked best, and completely forgot about her. She never got to reply, nor where they interested in hearing her opinion. I guess they were also mad that Andy and I made time to visit our favorite professor, and didn't prioritize them.

As expected, our meeting ended rather fast, and though we all did our best to be polite to each other, a clear riff came between us. They went away feeling offended because particularly I was so mean as to deny two of our former classmates the chance to meet Andy in person (two people who never even spoke to her, according to Andy), and impose on others my locating preferences. I went away feeling disappointed in them, on how they expect others to bend backwards to satisfy their wishes, regardless of the problems of discomfort that may cause to them.

Through the week, we have known a few things about them, how they made a disaster of an internship they were offered abroad, and how the very reason they like to boast about it (basically a scholarship paid spring break trip) was the reason the hosting institution issued complains about them. To Andy and I - committed, hard working students - it was horrifying to watch them laugh about skipping classes and spending their scholarship money on trips and booze. Unbeknown to them, that care about the opportunities they are offered, the way they abuse of what they are offered, was put in painful display also in that meeting and their attitude. Two of the classmates had a chance to enroll in their prefered emphasys because Andy and I decided to give up Labor for them. To help them, and they took that as their right to walk over us.

By holding into this small determination, I felt a bit vindicated. I didn't give in, andy stood by me, and we had an awesome day, with plenty of time to pack and rest.

Sunday Breakfast

 

Property of Stormberry

These last weeks have been really something, and I mean that in the most stressing and absurd of ways. I wrapped around my witchy side, my path and flicked my hand and said "Oh, this is all Mercury Retrograde", and though I want to believe it has exacerbated some things, trust me, not all of this crazy is due to a god up there - or a planet - doing a rendering of Michael Jackson's Moonwalk. 

But what has been happening? Well, let me tell you. It's quite crazy, I promise you.

First of all, there was this project at the office on which I was working last year, and which had a lot of "special circumstances" surrounding it. You know, the typical case were a task gets wrapped in office-politics. A lot of people had to give data for it, a lot of it wasn't matching, and then there were differences in opinions about how to do this or that, what should be included, what not, and so on. It becomes extra-complicated when there are a lot of opinions, but basically only one person actually doing the document, and trying to fit the unfitting parts others want in it.

But, in the end - the last workday of 2020, the project was finished, reviewed by the group and sent on its way. Or... well, maybe. Anyway, then it seems that other people were also working on the same project, and they didn't know about the document I compiled, and so some feathers were ruffled. THEN, in these past weeks, it happens that we noticed that one of the annexes of the document weren't updated. The info in the document was, but not one item in one annex. Well, that was enough for hell to break loose. Before you ask, no, actually the outdated data wasn't all that different from the previous one, and the impact on the whole was minimal. Not like it reflected on the content of the document, because there the calculations were done with the updated information.

So I checked, I found other mistakes, corrected them, and sent the document revised, corrected and updated. No biggie, right? Well, no. Those who were there, giving opinions and sending a flurry of documents my way, act as if the London Bridge has fallen down. It did upset me, honestly, because it was an honest mistake, and the ones berating me actually were tasked with revising the document, so they should have caught the slip earlier. It took me sometime, some meditation, calming rose quartz and grounding hematite, but I let it slide. You know, it must be the Mercury Retrograde.

Found at
 https://www.horoscope.com/

I did consult on my Tarot decks, and the first one showed me The Tower. Yeah, catastrofe, but also the moment when false ideals fall, and the truth is revealed. This certainly was a moment where this sort of message seemed to fit like a glove.

Then... because these kind of things never come alone, classes at the Master's Program really got heavy. We had accumulated for this week four projects for three classes (yeah, in one we have two), and though I had worked in one of them before hand, and on the other I'm with some classmates that really pull their weights, all of that got toppled with an insane amount of readings, just for this week. There is an average of how much our readings add up per week, and the normal amount is about some 60 pages per week. There have been outliers, like weeks were it goes up to 120, but this week alone we've got  600 pages just for one class, and a homework that's taking most of us over two days to at least have the outline.

I haven't been able to read anything (I mean, like novels, my leisure readings and stuff like that), because I'm constantly busy, and it's driving me crazy because it feels like it never ends.

And my house also got a leaking pipe (there was one, but now we found another, and this is really big, and in a complicated place), so yes, there are plenty of issues to keep me even more occupied.

So, what to do?

Property of Stomberry

Well, first, make yourself a coffee, maybe order some brain-sustenance (donuts, I ordered donuts), and make a plan of what can you do, what needs to be done now, what can be pushed back for later, what can you just leave without doing (like summarizing tasks or sharing them with others). Break those tasks in smaller chunks and do as much as you can. So you may not be able to finish it all, but see what can you finish and what really, really needs to be finished and when it is due.

I know the assignments and the essays need to be done because my grades depend on that, but not the readings. I can skip reading, or do it later, after the class, just reading the parts that weren't clear from the presentation. Thankfully, these classes have no tests, so there's no problem with that.

And when you have had such a stuffed week or two weeks or month, take a break, start your Sunday with a special breakfast. Today I tried making a poached egg for the first time, and I made a hot sandwich with roasted mushrooms (crimini mushrooms), chives and pepper slices. A nice tea, and then ordered my donuts and made a coffee, and sat down to blog.

A much needed break, before delving again into homework. And you know what? I feel less stuck, less blocked already.

Happy Sunday!

A Week in and a Week Out

I was supposed to blog last week, and I did have stuff to write about, but I didn't. Not like you haven't noticed that, mind you, but I just noticed. And now a key on my keyboard isn't working, and that's driving me up the wall.

So, I have a few things I should be taking care of, even though I'm not doing it fully. What's on my To Do List is:

1. Work on my Marketing thesis, specifically on chapters 4 and 5.
2. Do my German homework for tomorrow
3. Check the rest of the chapter for tomorrow's German lesson
4. Read the next three chapters of Die Welle for the German Book Club
5. Secure an interview for the thesis with a group of people at work.
6. Check on the things I need to know about the new Tax Reform.
7. Update the accountings I'm doing
8. Advance some in reading Clash of Kings.

Property of Stormberry

Ok, that last one is for fun, but still...

Today I took vacations from the office to be able to submit my application for a Political Economics Academic Masters Degree at my old university. It's not exactly with the University, but a research center that works tightly with it, and which I believe has been formed within the university.

I knew that the new coordinator is a guy that used to be a classmate of mine back in the day, but today as I saw him my heart exploded out of my chest. I was so very happy and so full of love! I don't know if I can explain this feeling fully, but I was so very happy to see him, and so happy at the prospect of have him in my life again. Like reuniting with a long lost dear friend or a relative.

For this Masters program there were a bunch of requirements that took me a while to complete, and I think I was missing one of them, though probably was one of those you don't really need, since when I submitted my pack it was all checked and the lady that got my papers was elated that I was from the UNA. She kept gushing about how she was so happy I was enrolling because it was always good to have students that understood the system and the requirements. I felt so at home, and I almost told her: "I know! I also was missing putting my brain to good use". Not a nice thing to say, but not for it less true.

I was also so taken off my back with my former classmate, who was looking so, so well, so groomed, so sleek, so rested and happy... He showed me his office and it is the most spacious, beautiful office you could dream of. My face was splitting from so much smiling and awing and I did tell him he was probably one of the few of us who actually made it in life. He was so totally dear and sweet as to duck his face and blush. What a lovely, dear thing! I think I could hug him all day. I'm so, so happy for him, and it makes me happy too. And if all goes well, and next year I'll enroll in the Masters program and see him, I'll not only fill my head with fabulous, brand new knowledge, but I'll also fill my soul with the sight of him and his good fortune in life.

Isn't wonderful to see your dear ones succeed? I'm sure as hell are just... so blessed.

Work and homework and studies can wait. I need to bask in the beauty of this.

Now, last week we had the Reading Rush, an international bookish competition for book-content-creators, such as booktubers, bookstagrammers, book-podcasters and so on. The kids that signed in were supposed to read seven books in seven days, and several of my friends made it. I didn't even try it, because I know myself: if I set myself to such a hard competition, I'm going to get grumpy and balk. Or I'll do something stupid like when I get on a fitbit competition, and I would have taken the whole week out on vacations and would have read 14 books in the  gods know what time. Actually, in the whole week I read only one book - Red, White & Royal Blue -  and I didn't like it.

And talking about books I didn't like, can you believe I didn't like Call Me By Your Name? I don't get it, I loved the movie, I love the idea and I love the academic parlance. How is it possible I didn't like this book? But lo and behold, I didn't. I can't say I hated it because that's not true. It just... didn't perform to the standard I had held it up to. Red, White & Royal Blue was my leveling book, and.. it was good in the first quarter and then it just went down the sewer.

Why authors do that? Why can't they be consistent with quality and the expectation I have of them?

I've been also writig my novel, and... that's progressing. I though this part would be easier because I have so much material for this in my journals, but I just don't feel it. I'm just not feeling the love or the despair. One ofthe girls has read a bit of it, and she found it funny. I'm glad about that. I must take the good mood for as long as it lasts, because I don't know how will she react with the death fantasy I included.

"I don't know if you are a believer"

The fourth diploma is finally getting started on the last mile - meaning the thesis has already been officially started - and as part of it, I had my first meeting with the thesis tutor. It was a curious thing, because she choose to do the meeting via Skype - which she can record - something I found odd, truth to be told - and... well, it was a little difficult to get to work. I don't know your experience, but Skype being Skype, it usually offers more troubles than solutions.

My topic is something I have worked with a lot at my job, and something on which I can confidently say, I am one of the handful of people in the country that actually knows what are we talking about. Kind of like with the topic of the previous thesis (the one I did for Finance), where my main forte was that I was one of a handful of people with deep knowledge on the subject, in the whole country.

From what I gather of the experience, I have the feeling that we both had a very different view of what the thesis was to be about. As she tried to give me some guidence from her perspective, I felt at loss because it was like she was trying to do the work for me, take my topic and give it whatever spin she wanted from it. Then, there was a part I found really improper. To better fit my thesis to the requirements of the University -  to which I am open - not only did she do some suggestions  - to which I am open - but the she ended up the issue telling me that SHE would redact the specific goals and send them to me. I mean, isn't THIS supposed to be MY thesis? She shouldn't be allowed to redact ANYTHING in my thesis. And I want to make it clear that I have not asked her to do this, nor I suggested it, nor she offered it: she stated it. This rubbed me wrong.

I let her talk, listened, watched and kept my cards close to my chest. She did had a couple of really good turns by the end where I thought things could work. And then... she brought her religious views into the conversation. Yes, it could be seen as "she bringing God into the conversation", but let's bring this into its actual matter: people hardly ever talk about a Divine Entity without framing it within their religious frame. So, there she goes, finishing the conversation with "the first thing is to put this in the hands of God, because without Him nothing can't be done -- oh, are you a Believer?". I didn't even got to answer that, but she just went on with it.

As she went on the godly thing, I started thinking about the narrow mindedness of the believer-non believer world view. I am a believer, but I happen not to be a christian believer. I'm a pagan believer. She, however, didn't consider that, and went on her holy extasy as if "believing" means that you follow the christian religious frame... specifically hers. To me, this was uncomfortable and insulting. No, she wasn't bashing my personal beliefs or my religious beliefs directly, but probably she hasn't been exposed to any other religion, but she also got me thinking of the things we mistakenly take for granted. Just because something is meaningful for you, it doesn't mean it is as meaningful - and in the same way - to others. Be it religion, politics, fashion, sports, sometimes it pays better to be cautious, to wait until you get a full answer from the person you are talking to before putting in your two cents. I mean, what would have she done if the situation were reversed, and by the end of the conversation I would have said "Well, I pray to my Gods for illumination and clarity of view on this topic", or if instead of "I'll think about that" I would have said "I'll consult tonight with the spirits"?

We all need to be a little bit more mindful and listen before we jump into conclusions and offer our opinion.

The End is Nigh

Property of Stormberry.

In my last post I wrote to you about a book, written by the father of a friend, which I didn't really like that much. The book, not the friend. Then, I've got a book from the same author - given to me by this friend - and I was over the moon. It was a book he had written (my friend's father, not my friend) about Rosa Luxemburg, a Polish socialist revolutionary, who lived in the turn of the century (like, the past turn of the century, from 1871 to 1919, or so), whom I like and whom I want to research a little more. Yes, I could have started by reading her letters (which I have... in German), or her books (I just realized I actually already have some of her books on my Kindle, because I could lay my paws on it for free...), BUT my friend had said his father had written about her, and I wanted to read that book. I actually pestered him for a while since I had to wait until the book actually hit stores here.

The first third of the book I really liked. It's about Rosa's life and her circumstances. It does have a few things that make me cringe, like a notorious disregard of the use of commas and other puntuation signs, a profuse use of outdated, obscure terms nobody uses anymore... since the Middle Ages, a strange tendency to call Wrocław "Breslau", and never noticing that today is called Wrocław, among other strange things. Mr. Quesada's misogynistic views still came across regarding Ms. Luxemburg, but after reading his novel, I guess that was to be expected.

Then I passed the first third and... and I lost my cool. Strange things happened in the book, like a chapter finished with a page and a half of back-to-back quotes, pretty unrelated one to the next, and no reason as to why they needed to be included. To me it felt like an unfinished chapter, where he had dumped the pieces he wanted to develop, but then forgot about it and sent it out to print. Then the grammatic errors started to pile up, like separating the subject from the verb with a comma, when it had no need to be done that way, sentence connectors bracketed between commas, because HEY! Commas are trendy. Aaaaaand then came the graves error of all: crass mistakes about economical theory and economical interpretations. Like what? Like claiming that the "merchandise WAGE" has a price... when the mercandise is Labor and Wage is the price of it. Because, you know, you can't go to the market to buy a wage, but you can buy Labor by hiring someone, and you pay that Labor with a wage. Or claiming that Jean-Baptiste Say claimed the contrary to "production creates it's on market", when M. Say said that "the Supply creates it's on Demand", and Mr. Keynes proved him wrong.

And to think that this man's son is an economist that could review and correct his father's mistakes.

The book also includes circular chapters that go on and on and on about one single idea. Like a pile up of all the ways the same thing can be said. The piled idea? Imperialism is the extended Capitalism, and it needs wars to keep gobbling up more and more resources to keep the increasing production and profit creation. No less than four chapters are devoted to this one idea without adding anything to it. No historical frame, to facts, no nothing, just this one idea repeated over and over in different ways.

I'll finish the book, because maybe it will have a good ending, and because I want to extract as much of it as I can, but from what I read, I can no longer trust a single word. If the economical material in it it's flawed, how could I trust the rigurosity of the research behind the rest?

Property of Stormberry

Other than that, the days have a tinted, mulled quality to them. It's the last week of work before out mandatory vacations, and nobody wants to work, everybody wants to party and drink wine, or use the time to chat with friends at the office. Goodness yes, we all have stuff to do, of course, but we don't want to do it. The sun shines just the right way, the way we here call "Christmas Weather", and trade winds chill us all.

I haven't made my holiday shopping yet, which is so funny, because usually I'm already done and ready by this time. Ok, normally by this time I am in Europe, unpacked, wrapped in my winter gear and again confronted with the strange selection of veggies at the Hungarian supermarkets, and profusely planning all my errands and visiting my favorite places along with planning out all my visits to my friends.

This time around I'm staying put in Costa Rica because I have Grand Plans: I have to be here for when the building of my house starts! :-) House I am already calling House of Seven Gables. It will have five gablets and two gables, BUT it shall be officially considered as a house with seven gables. Because I say so. :-)  Cool, right? I also have to save some more money for it, of course, because there's not such a things as too many precautions, and so I want to be all prep'd up. It's so exciting! ^_^ I'm just so over the Moon with this.

So yes, I'm being a responsible adult and staying here for my beloved house. It feels so good to say that. ^_^

I've also had a couple of other successes this year, like I managed - after great obstacles and issues - to get the director lady of the Marketing Faculty to give me the green light with my thesis project. Not like she had anything to object to my topic, but because she was objecting things that she should have done previously. It didn't sit well with her when I pointed out - with evidence and sending a copy of the e-mail to her boss - that the things she was objecting where her responsability to fix. It took her until the last day of work at the University for her to finally give me the go. So next year I'll start my fourth thesis project.

I also managed to pass my B2d German course, which completes the B2 level - which is the highest middle level - and which means that next year I'm in for the C1, which enters in the advanced level. Not like I really feel like I know all that much German, mind you. So, in the light of that I'll take a couple of summer classes - I'm thinking about a class in German Literature and another in German Art and History - to practice. In this same line I've also started considering taking an intensive course of German in Germany through the Goethe Institute. This is still a raw idea, as I have to consider things like how my finances will be after the house building, maybe a trip to Europe in Spring that's still not fixed, the remaining vacation days I'll have left, how things will stand with my thesis by then, my workload, and how things will fare with my Accounting.

However, if this comes true, I'm planning on picking Düsseldorf for studying, and a four-week plan somewhere in the Fall.

Property of Stormberry

But this are all plans for the future. Currently I want to live and enjoy this time of relaxed days, "mulled" as I called them earlier, because days do seem infused with the taste of mulled wine, even if it's not customary here. In case you wonder, we did have mulled wine or Glühwein to end our German class, because that was given. (And we had also Lebenkuchen too!)

I haven't been much at the city center, but last week I went once, and I liked it. It's not a pretty city, with low buildings, lots of dirt and crumbling places, narrow streets that can't cope with the amount of cars and busses crammed through them but I kinda like it.

This year - due to the self imposed budget constrictions, I decided to go for books for most of my gifts - and keep my gifts to the minimum. (A good thing about finally cutting some of my toxic relationships in my life is that I'm no longer obligued to scout for gifts for people I know won't appreciate them.) I'll concentrate on family and my closest friends, and that will be it. For that, I plan to make a few trips to San José city center, and wander around, checking shops and coffee shops and allowing myself to be seduced by the taste of a city that doesn't carry a tropical flavor, but that has warmth, and umph and some strange creativity. Where the garbed cosmopolitan vision of sadly pusher-uppers try to imprint upon a culture that will always, always prefer simple comfort and laid back attitude to over-processed confections.

Hey, these are we a nation that likes to lounge on a hammock, that do like skyscrappers and high tech... as long as we don't have to sweat for them, because we love our free time, and our free time means time to grab a beer with friends, laugh and be completely impulsive and spontaneous. Blame it on the fact that we have beaches 45 minutes away... we are used to the easy way of life and we really don't want to change. And these days, are Our Biggest and Easiest Days.

Thoughts and Updates

Source: Pinterest.com

In recent days I've been floating in a sort of haze. First of all, allow me to update you in matters of which I've posted previously. So, how did it go with the defense of my thesis? Swimingly. :-) I'm proud to tell y'all, that not only did I made it, but I gotten the rare honor of scoring a perfect grade: 10 out of 10. This is so rare, that my thesis director (we call it "tutor"), told me he hadn't seen one such case in his two years of experience. This is my third degree, and one could say it is my third thesis (if we don't take in account the fact that I had to write two with my team for the Accounting degree, in which case this would be my fourth thesis), and this is the first time I get a 10 out of 10.

As you remember, I was freaking out the week before the defense, and I mean fucking-freaking-out. I was obssessed with the timing of my presentation, that juts didn't want to go under 25 minutes. The topic was one I know thanks to my job and the involvement I've had with it since it became an issue in our industry. Just to put you in context (quickly and easily, I promise!), my thesis was about the impact of the LRIC costing model applied by the Costa Rican Telecom Regulator (SUTEL) on the capability of Dominant Operators to generate profit. In plain English, if the rules applied by the Government (throught the SUTEL) allowed companies considered big to make money. 

I took three days of vacations to prepare for the defense (the day of the defense and two days ahead of it), and so I went on and on and on, mixing down time and reading (novels) with rehearsal. I wanted to be rested and relaxed to be in peak conditions, but my brain would not stop. During my morning exercise routines, as well as I was walking around the city running my errands, I went on talking to myself, repeating over and over my presentation. Each of the 32 slides were etched in my inside of my eyelids, and so constantly I invoked them in my head in order while I repeated the loosely scripted speech I planned to give. Time and again I had to cut here and there, calming the protesting voices inside me with "Look, if they really want to know, they will ask, and if they do - fuck - give'em all".

Source: Pinterest

The day of the presentation I trusted myself to my gods - Minerva, Mercury and Neptune - and drove to meet my Fates. There were more people than I had initially expected, among them a professor who had been my detractor previously. I've got a little more nervous because of that, mainly because I didn't want to be rude, and I wasn't sure how to properly explain the things he had objected previously without sounding like I was ridiculing him for not noticing. Yes, diplomacy is definitively not my strong suit.

When the defense began my voice trembled and broke, and I've got tongue tied with easy words like "market" and "telecommunications", but I kept pushing on. I had this by heart. The one professor I had invited to be my supporting audience was left out, but my thesis director was there and smiled at me encouragingly. Then I loosened up, and soon switched into a different mode. I was looking at my audience in the eyes, talking to them vehemently, the same way I would at work, because I felt like I was at work, in a meeting trying to make understand a mixed audience about the importance of my work and why it must be supported and brought to the Regulator. I passed from slide to slide, but I wasn't looking at the slides. Those were aid for my audience if they didn't get what I was telling them. Each slide offered a simple scheme of what I was telling them. Imagine it like an economist, defending a Finance project to financists while using the subtle art of Marketing to attack them on all fronts (auditive and visual) so that they would open up to my message. And it worked.

I was within the timeframe alloted to me, and when the questions came, I used emotion to spice my words. My topic was about Regulators and big telecom companies, but with words I landed my issues into their pockets. I rose their spirits, made them feel like the company I was representing was theirs and that they had to defend it whatever the cost. I made them feel aggravated and ready to jump, because what I was denouncing felt to them like a personal blow. I owned them and their hearts.

When it came to an end, I felt like crying. The professors applauded and smiled so bright, I felt in a dream. One of the coordinators present at the defense asked me little after the end of the process, if she could give my work to a colleague that works at a higher Regulator body. She explained that she had commented my work with him and he wanted to read it. Oh goodness! By all means!

I stayed around because I planned to stay for the defense of my classmates (that was in the afternoon, while I defended in the morning), so as I met with professors from my other careers (Accounting and Marketing), and all of them were told of my results, soon started encouraging me to submit my curriculum vitae so I could start teaching.

I met then - almost by accident - with an old classmate of mine, from my days as an economics student. I knew he worked there, and I had intended on inviting him, but somehow it had escaped my mind, and when I remembered that I would have loved having him there, it was too late and felt improper. I still was happy to see him. For sake of simplicity, lets call him Friedrich, in honor of Friedrich Engels.

Friedrich and I have had always an uneasy sort of relationship. Back in Economics, we were mostly classmates, but he wasn't really in any of my circles. He wasn't someone I would have called "a friend", but not an outright rival either. I don't think I had ever smiled at him in those days, and though we talked here and there - and when we did our conversations were long - there wasn't an easy environment. As I cast my mind back to those days, perhaps I could describe my feelings there best as "predatorial", or maybe "on guard". I was on the lookout for him, watching him, measuring him, cataloguing his comments and running my minds about meanings and counter messages. I do know we had played poker together and he improved my poker education, which by then had some grounding on what I had learned in Hungary from my Kenian and Jordanian friends.

Those years ended in silence, as we had a fall off. Actually, I don't remember much (and I haven't actively sought my journals of that time to find out what had I recorded of the incident), but Friedrich said I've got mad because he forgot to come to a meeting we had arranged to work on a project. Curiously, I have one image in my head, of him looking at me with so much hatred and anger as I have never seen on him, while I just wondered what the hell was happening. Be it as it may, we definitively fell out with each other by the last years of our career.

We met again when my team and I defended our first Accounting thesis (the program required us to work in teams and prepare one thesis in Accounting and another in Auditig). That first time, after over fifteen years, I remember he walked out into the hall were we waited and didn't see me. Having all tense feeling fled from me since then, and having recognized him, I called him. He turned and froze. To this day I remember him there, in the hallway, frozen as he saw me. His beautiful green eyes had widened, but not a muscle moved in his body, halted by what looked like paralizing fear. I smiled and came closer, but dread came into my soul as I searched my faulty memory for whatever sign of damage, anger, violence or any other type of bullying I may have inflicted upon him.

There is one thing I said to him, etched in fire in my mind, so poisonous and unsensitive, which filled me with such unadulterated, pure hatred it had fed me and made me smile in my youth. Then and today, it makes me feel bad, and incites in me the need to atone.

He recovered his composture, and then little after invited me to his office, where we talked. If my mind serves me well, I think I then apologized for that awful incident and all other insults I may have hurled at him in our youth. From then on we kept a loose e-mail contact,  based mainly on the discussion of some economical topics.

Back to the day of the defense, I found myself apologizing again for not inviting him. I made my apology short and to the point. There was no need to tell him how much I regretted it, and how I would have love to have his familiar face and his luminous eyes supporting me when I needed courage. Funny how the world turns, right? The one I was distrusting about was the one I would have loved to hold my hand and tell me that all would be well. Then, for the first time ever, he embraced me.

No, let me put this clearly. Though we've had hugged before, as a usual form of greeting, this time around his embrace had an entirely different quality. More than friendly, his embrace was warm, sustained and felt like a pull into the heart. I've mused much over this touching embrace and the one way I can describe it best is to compare it to the longing embrace you would give to a book you've thought long lost, and which suddenly comes back to you again. A lost little treasure. That's how he made me feel, like he was happy to find me again. That warmed my soul. We talked and agreed to meet for lunch in the week. Through out that meeting and the subsequent lunch, I caught him staring at me, those glass clear green depths fixed on my features, past my skull, as if searching for something beneath my skin. His gaze held long at time, and I had no idea of their intention. On any other person I would have thought they held the questing look of someone trying to build up courage for a move, but given our current circumstances and our raw, charged past, I would put such considerations far from him.

Our correspondence seems to have taken again the old, paused pace we have kept for a couple of years now, but that has not diminished the green flame in my solar plexus. I'd like to reach out and grab into his wrist, wrap my fingers securely around it and hold like Grettel would into the hand of her brother. I think I would like to have him in my life, like a sort of another brother with whom one could be silly, goofy, and sneak out to gorge on chocolate while talking about economics.

A Week of Tests

Wow, I'm nervous! This week is going to be a big week for me. It's funny how I feel like I want to write, but I also don't want to be typing, but then I need to write too. Do you get it? Neither do I. So, what is happening this week? First of all, today I have the second test of my B2C course of German. I'm one course away from completing the B2 level, which would mean that my language skills (in German) should be pretty much near advanced. I don't feel it.

I had a previous test in this same course, for which I didn't study - this is what I do in order to measure how much I actually do know, under regular circumstances - and it went well, though I have no idea whatsoever how did I manage to do that. This time? Yeah, I studied. Hopefully it will go well.

However my nerves today are not entirely due to this test, but to what's in store for me on Friday: the defense of my third thesis, this time in Finance. At this point, the usual helping lines don't work for me. "Remember that you are the expert, you are the one who knows this", "You already have the largest and most difficult part done, this is just presenting it", "People hardly ever flunk their defense, that's what all the preparation and filters before hand are for". Dude, this is my THIRD thesis, I know this and I have already heard all these comforting words. That's not my concern. My concern is that I'm prone to forget things, AND I have a very limited amount of time. I have 25 minutes. What can be said in 25 minutes!? Well, I tell you what: the bare bones. 

Source: Property of Stormberry

My topic is really complicated, so I feel that in 25 minutes I'll leave the tribunal examining me more confused than even before I start (though they are supposed to have read the thesis before hand), so I don't know if they will even have an idea of what to ask. No, that's not a good thing: the thesis must be clear, and I want them to understand what I am proposing with my thesis.

The first time I made my presentation at a pre-defense, I was 10 minutes ABOVE the allowed time frame, so though the presentation itself was ok, I needed to improve that. It wasn't so bad, as only one of the other three classmate presenting was under the timeframe, and the rest were well above my surplus, with one lady going over 40 minutes. That is 40 in excess over the 25 alotted. Compared to that, I didn't do so badly, don't you think? :-)

Yesterday I did my first trial after the pre-defense, and I was again at 35 minutes total (10 minutes in excess). Considering that I had to add one slide to my presentation, I actually saw it as an improvement. What I did then was trim the presentation by scripting it, so I would give myself clear talking points, and try not to deviate from it. My thinking was: "I won't explain now. If they don't understand, they can ask me later".

Today I gave it another try. I must admit that I had to stop my temporizer several times in order to remember some parts, which I hope to have completely nailed down for Friday, and then I also was stopping at my 5 minute marks to make sure I make the notations on my slideshows so that the next time I know where am I. The result? Currently I'm only 2,5 minutes over my timeframe. :-) Hey, I'm improving! :-D

I have taken tomorrow and the two next days off, so I can prepare myself peacefully for this defense. Wish me luck! 💚🍀

Thoughts on Higher Education

For some time I've been preparing for this post, but many things came my way that required my attention (life happens as you know), but also, as I was pondering about the topic my ideas about it changed and morphed, and then... I decided I needed more.

The Process

Property of Stormberry

The idea to write about higher education came after I read an article in The Washington Post, titled "Equifax's security chief had some big problems. Being a music major wasn't one of them". For those of you who don't know the case, Equifax is one of the Credit Bureaus of the United States, which prepare the credit reports and credit scores of millions of Americans. These reports and scores are consulted by financial entities when people ask for loans, but also when these entities want to pick people to whom they want to sell different products, like credit cards, loans and so on. Anyway, this company got hacked this year, and the credit and personal data of 143 million Americans got loose. It happens that the Chief Security Officer, who is the top security person in the company, has no formal education in technology, cybersecurity, programming, computer engineering or any such formation. The lady has a music major.

My first reaction was - obviously - WHAT THE FUCKING HELL?  and I knew I wanted to write about that, and how I consider that this sort of thing entails something wrong in the current labour market. But then I've got thinking and other elements came to my mind and I decided to take this one step further and analyse some other elements of this question.

The Situation

After thinking some on the article, I decided to go to some statistic databases to check on what the situation is. For this I checked basically the OECD's database, and the World Bank's database. The data I use have several issues, among which I consider most important the following:

1. Many of the variables considered belong to different years (2013, 2015 and 2016).

2. We can't be sure they were collected usuing similar methodology.

These take from the comparability of the data, BUT it can still allow us to get an idea of the situation.

Source: OECD database

From what I've found, that the proportion of people with higher education is not so big. The countries with percentages include Korea (69%), Japan (59,6%) and Lithuania (54,8%). In average, for all the countries for which information was available, the 39,9% of the population has higher education. The United States is in 8th position with 46,5%.

When it comes to how much a student pays in average for higher education, the US is in first place with $27 578,29 in average, according to data from 2013 collected by the OECD. In Korea, where we have the highest rate of population with higher education, students in average pay $9 378,60, which is roughly a third of what American students pay for their education at home.

Finally, why is people supposed to pursue higher education? To get a higher chance at getting a job. In this sense, for the countries for which data was available, with the exception of Mexico, people with higher education reported a lower unemployment rate than the national average.

Source: Total unemployment by World Bank, Unemployment among population with HE by OECD

In some cases, such as Lithuania, Hungary and Latvia, the advantage of having a college degree is rather clear.

So What's My Point

In the case of the Chief Security Officer of Equifax, at one point several top officers started making noise about "not being qualified to work in Tech jobs". Twitter had some trends going on with the hashtag #unqualifiedfortech, where several of these people noted how they work in high tech positions while having degrees en entirely different areas. And this is where my issues start.

In several parts of the world getting a university degree means getting a higher chance not only to be employed, but also to have a better income. This would normally be so because when you get a Higher Education Degree you are supposed to have a Higher Education. In other words, you've acquire much more knowledge about a certain area, which qualifies you to work in it. For instance, someone who studied Medicine, is qualified to be a physician and heal people. Someone who studied Law is qualified to work as a lawyer or an attorney. To make this clear: you go to the university, and from all the options you've get, you enroll to study something that will qualify you to work in that area.

Accesing this higher education isn't either something easy of cheap in many places. Aside from the university fees, the cost of the courses, the cost of the textbooks, supplies, housing, transport and so on, often many careers make it particularly difficult for students to work next to their studies, not to mention that also often times, available jobs make it difficult not only to study next to them, but the wages they pay are hardly enough to pay for all the cost associated with education. And higher education often times implies years of living in these conditions. People with family, particularly single parents, find it very difficult to get a degree. In some countries and for some educational options, people get financial options. In some countries higher education has a subsidy, that make it much easier to pay.

In Costa Rica, for instance, at the UCR (Universidad de Costa Rica), which is a public university and the one with the highest reputation of all the higher education system, the maximum a student would pay per semester (for enrolled classes) is $287,67. Today. In most public universities here, courses are measured in "credits", which is a measure of the effort you must put in it, and also usually translate to the number of weekly hours of class you'll get. You can enroll as many courses as you want, but our government puts a cap to the number of credits you'll pay, and that maximum is 12 credits. That normally represents a full block of courses for a semester, but of you want to take on more classes to advance, you can do so for free, basically.

In for private universities here, such system does not exist, and you pay for your courses without cap. For these, as well as it happens in other countries, students can opt for education loans, which normally get to be paid after the career was concluded, or if it was abandoned by the student.

So, getting a higher education degree costs. Costs in money, costs in time, costs in effort because you actually have to study, costs in other job opportunities... So, what would be the point then, in studying, making all this effort, if - as so many opposers of #unqualifiedfortech seem to point it out - you don't seem to actually need a degree in tech to work in tech and score the highest incomes in the market within the tech industry? Because you don't need a music major or a literature major to "think outside the box" and find different ways to solve problems, which people who studied the given area aparently are not capable to do. So, how does that work exactly?

I am yet to see a job ad for filling a CEO position in a prestigious company in which "whatever college degree is accepted".

And besides, how do this people get to this positions? How do you end up in charge of the cybersecurity of a company with a degree in... philosophy? How did you qualified for that position?

Certainly, many people study something and then life force them to start working in something else. Yes, that happens and happens more often than not. I would love to see statistics about the amount of people with higher education degrees who are working in fields different than their studies. I can also agree - in the light of the previous cost and effort data and assumptions - that getting a degree for your new area might not be so easily accesible, BUT having a dab of integrity should really not cost you so much. If you know that you are going to spend the rest of your worklife in Human Resources instead of Maths as you have originally studied, the decent thing would be then to talk to your bosses, so that you can get the proper degree for it. After all, there are college choices for people who are also working, and since you are already working in the area, studies should prove to be easier.

That still don't fix the thing that still, there are people with a higher education degree unemployed, and there are jobs that should require a higher education degree filled by people who don't have it.

In my area (economics) I have met more than once people from different backgrounds trying to do my job, or even having the nerve of trying to lecture me and my colleagues about it. From their work, often times many mistakes are observed, many of which often are simple mathematical errors (a lot of people don't know how fractions work), and conceptual mistakes that could easily break the company.

Let me just put this whole diatribe in a very, very few points here, so that my message goes a bit clearer through. 

From the side of the people with higher education: getting into Higher Education demands a lot from people, not everybody gets accepted. Those who do, still have to go through it and survive and graduate. Many of these come out of the process with a debts - some more crushing than others.

From the corporative side: people without higher education degrees in the given area of the job are not only more prone to mistakes due to lack of proper knowledge, but are also more prone to let fraud pass by. Not being educated in protocols, they might allow due to lack of knowledge, a series of abuses and breaches of security that might imperil the company, the clients, the public and even larger groups and populations. People without the proper education can also be paid less, can also be convinced to take responsability over shady things made by others to profit. They can become escapegoats without even knowing so.

From the side of higher education institutions and financial entities: getting people into higher education is their business. Aparently getting them to work is not so much.

The point is that, for certain jobs background education IS needed, and there is people who have that knowledge, that studied for it. It's stupid to think that some years of experience, earned from scratch can match with all the knowledge that people can attain through education. Education is based on professors that have YEARS of knowledge, and loads of bibliography, which again comprise more years of knowledge. Theories proven and tested, experiences from all over the world... can all that be replaced with a couple of years going from messenger-to-CEO?

Now, am I here the only one to see how wrong this is?

A Plan to Get Back on Track

Picture by Stormberry. Still on the Bullet Journal Project.

The last period of the year at the University starts and I've managed to enroll in two classes, one of which is the last subject I need to pass to complete my studies for the Finance diploma. I'm so close!! I'm excited and full of energy and hope, but at the same time I remember the hard lessons learned during the past period, where here and there I sometimes lost sight of my schedule and then got lots of work to do. My schedule was quite packed, I must admit, and there were days where I worked myself close to an aneurism (so to say), with so much I studied and how hard I did my summaries and readings. This meant also that some things had to give and me left behind, neglected, and the ones that got the worse of my lack of time were my penpals.

Picture by Stormberry. My post bag :-)

This time around, I decided to make time and give some priority to my lovely penpals, and all the people that had been writing to me, for over the last year and start replying to them. I wasn't going to feel guilty again when opening my P.O.Box and finding a letter in it. So, since my studies had not really started yet, I decided to use the time and get back on track with my penpals and start replying to them. My pile has been going thinner and thinner as I reply to my friends, managing already to send out four letters, and then this very weekend finding the time and the energy to reply to seven friends! Wow, that's quite a feat for someone like me, who usually takes a couple of days to reply to one letter. :-) I normally write the very way I speak: I just don't shut up. Really. But this time I tried to practice some restriction and gathered my thoughts better for the benefit of my friends. :-)

However, I have many penpals and it's not fair to either of them for me to reply to them only once a year or so, just because I'm studying. Of course, my penpals are the best penpals in the planet: all of them beautiful, sweet and understanding girls, but still, they are important to me, and I should show how much they matter to me by carving out time to be with them. This is how an idea occured to me: I'll have a "Letter Writing" day every week. And since now I don't have German on Mondays, what better than make myself a "Letter Writing Monday"?

Picture by Stormberry. Starbucks' coffee and letter

Last week I decided to go after work to a Starbucks' coffeeshop that's close to my office, basically to decide it the place could work for me for some studying. I've been thinking about spicing up my study time by once a week taking myself to a different place, close to work, so I could get to study without having been drained first by the traffic jams one always finds at that time of the day. This Starbucks is quite loud, so it would hardly be ideal for studying, not to mention that it tends to be quite packed, but as I sat there writing my letters with a cup of Latin American blend of Espresso Roast, I realized that the place was perfect for this. And that became a seed of an idea that slowly took roots in my head until the decision of a "Letter Writing Monday" was born.

On Tumblr I follow a lot of blogs that have to do with studying, and lot of them show pictures of notes, summaries, mind maps, neat desks and notes covering tables with a laptop here and there, and a trademark Starbucks cup. Not many of these talk to you about programmed down time, and down time is needed. So, I need to reply to my friends, and I need to plan in a break in my schedule, make time for classes, studies, readings, and yes, me-time with letter writing, friend-meeting and movie nights.

I still haven't thought about installing a particular date for meeting with my friends, whom I haven't seen in quite a few weeks now, but to begin with the new period, I'm setting my letter-days and my initial study days. :-) All the rest will come around.

Oh, BTW, on the matter of the Bullet Journal, I'm about to finish my notebook, which will complete my project. I have been thinking about making a video about it, my first, because it might be too much for photographing and then writing a post about it. Who knows. As it is, there are nice parts of it, and parts I didn't like so much. My planning system with have a little variation for next year - and not only the new binder I'm planning on getting. But we shall see about that.