The best job in the world

I think that I have the best job in the world.
Not only I think that. I am fully convinced about that.

I am a scientist and I am proud of it. There is nothing more powerful, more wonderful, more challenging, more heart-shaking that feeling part of the ones who discover things. I imagine Leonardo, Darwin, Einstein, and all those people who moved our understanding of things a step forward and even if I am not like them and I will never be, just feeling allowed to be part of the same community to which they belong too, it is a fulfillment.

I was watching a talk on Ted. Not a great talk I have to say. But it still gave me a lot of emotions. I love this world. Not what we are doing to this world, but the world itself. I love the nature that is around us. I love the diversity. I love to understand the factors that promote the diversity that we observe. What it is outside there is magnificent. And I am always feel short of world when I see a documentary or just when I walk around in nature or when I scuba dive.

I am having a hard life in my work. What I am doing is not economically valuable. My kind of science is for understanding, to discover things that maybe one day could benefit the human kind, but not now. And now economically. Some days are just so hard that I feel that I am too idealist and that my passion will not be something I will be able to live off. Some days I hear in my head the voice of my uncle telling me to get "a real job, and stop to just play around".

It is true. Us, the scientists, we play around. We don't do anything important. We build knowledge. But knowledge is not something you can eat, nor something that makes you feel warm when it snows outside. But I love it, with all myself. When I have a bad day, when my motivation is down, when I feel that I should quite, what keeps me going is the thought of myself in Venezuela, working for a marine park. The image of myself floating underwater somewhere, the image of myself in the jungle, covered in mud, the image of myself looking at a mom scorpion with its babies on the back. And I know that in all these moments I feel part of nature, and I feel in peace, and I feel I am in the right place. I feel full.

I know that all this sounds very boring to most of the people. But to be in peace, I need to feel in the nature, to be part of it. My job for me is more than a job and this is what keeps me going in the days in which I feel that what I am doing is not valuable.

What I am doing is not valuable for most of the people.
But it has no price to me. I wouldn't be the person I am without it. I am a scientist and being a scientist is not a job for me. It is a way too look at the entire world.

I wish I could do something to show to people how much beauty there is in it, in this world, in nature, before we destroy most of it.

Dairy-free pancakes

I just made these pancakes!!! The first one I made didn't turn out too well (it was my first attempt), but the others are very nicely pancakes looking and good to eat!!!

I used a recipe I found on a website and I copy it here with a modification:

Makes 8 large pancakes
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

• 1 ½ cup all-purpose flour
• 3 T. sugar
• 2 t. baking powder
• ½ t. salt
• 1 cup unsweetened plain almond milk or other non-dairy milk
• 1 large whole egg, lightly beaten
• 1 large egg yolk, lightly beaten
• 1 ½ t. canola oil

Preparation:

1. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt, making a well in the center.

2. In a separate bowl, whisk together the almond milk, whole egg, egg yolk and canola oil until well combined. Add to the well in the dry ingredients and mix until just combined. (Batter should still have some lumps.)

3. Lightly oil a heavy-bottomed skillet or griddle and heat over medium heat. Once hot, add the batter to the pan, about ¼ cup at a time, flipping when bubbles begin to form on the surface of the pancakes and the edges begin to rise. Cook the other side of the pancakes for about 1-2 minutes more, or until golden brown. Repeat until all of the batter is used, keeping the pancakes warm either on a plate beneath a towel or in a 200 F. oven. Serve with toppings of choice.

Au bon roman

I got this book from my mom. I read the theme of the book and it sounded new. It intrigued me.

Even if it quite a thick book, I finished very quickly last night, not being able to put it away. I don't know if it is already available in English or if it will be translate. In any case, if you come across this book, I suggest you to read it. The story is completely new. It is well developed, it is complex, it is well written. The characters are beautiful idealistic people. I got attached to them. I needed to get to the end of the book to know what it would happen to them and to the book store they created.

I have to thank my mom for picking this book out for me!

I also recently read "The handmaid's tail" from Margaret Atwood for the book club that I attend here.

It is the second depressing book I read for the book club :-(

For sure, this book makes you think. But it also made me scared, and feeling in pain while I was reading it. There is this idea of getting through the day in the best possible way, because tomorrow could be better. But for someone who praises freedom as one of the most important values in the world, this story was very, very difficult to digest. I don't want to give away the story, if someone wants to read it, but the idea of a place in which everything would depend on the capacity of giving birth to a healthy child, honestly freaks me out. I think that the power of this book for me is exactly in this contrast: on one side, the book is so well written and developed that I wanted to keep reading and I was kind of glued to it. On the other side, the story was making me depressed and feeling I had to puke.

looking like a cage

I love my little balconies here. I have flowers and plants on them. I can't really eat outside or put a large chair on any of them, but I still like every morning to just step on the balcony, check my flower, take a pick outside and then start my day.

Here, I saw again something that I saw for the first time in Caracas, and then in Cape Town. House windows with bars. It surprised me when I was in Caracas, but then after spending there quite some time, I also realized than better safe than sorry. Same goes, I guess, for Cape Town. But here......it seems that there are a lot of thieves. And this is why so many windows have bars. All the apartment located at what they call here "rez de chausse", so the bottom floor, have them.

I found them sad. Especially in the summer. It makes me feel like inside a jail cell. In punishment. Even when you open the window, there is always something that stops the view. It would make me feel less free (and in these days I am even more for freedom and independence than I was before). I couldn't stand to live in an apartment with bars at the windows. I had a tough time when I stayed for a few days in a place like that in Caracas.

Are these windows with bars so common around the world?