Friendly? it's the South

I am in the South......and in a South that feels even Southern of Portugal.....I mean. Geographically it is. I just didn't expect here to be this way.....

This way how?

Southern......

Slow, disorganized, messy, but also with warm communicative people, great food, nice weather (at least so far...no hurricanes or tornadoes).

Am I in the US? except for what concern all the documents that a non-American person needs to fill to do anything here, for the rest it doesn't look like anything of the US I have experienced so far....but I am in the US.

There is Starbucks....but well, there is Starbucks also in Paris....so that doesn't count.....

My beginning here is not going as I expected. I thought that it would have been difficult. I just didn't expect it to be so difficult. I guess that largely has to do with the fact that until now, any time I moved to another country, it was always to follow my work dreams. This time, my decision to move here was dictated by wanting to be closer to my husband and still have a job I love. Moving here was basically the only option we had.

But I didn't move for my work... so my work here doesn't keep me going and motivated when things get difficult. I moved to be closer to my husband...but I am still alone most of the time, as we do not even live in the same state for now....we are closer and communication is easier, but it is not like if we were in the same place....

I don't even know from where to start writing down all the absurd things I experienced here so far....Maybe I could start with something quite unbelievable, something that I found funny.

Last week I had to get the documents for the apartment insurance. My husband and I go to the office where to get the documents and we are welcomed by a very friendly woman....very friendly....signing the documents took us not more than two minutes, but we stayed in the office for about an hour.

First, here I am very exotic. No matter where I am, as soon as I open my mouth someone asks me where I come from. 

So, we started the conversation from there. As I said, everyone is extremely friendly here and chatty....in a few minutes, and I don't even know how, we ended up with her telling us that she was 40something and that she met someone and she thought he was the one, although they went out only three weeks before he died in her arms...so after that, she thought she would never find anyone else, but she did. She met this guy, divorced with three kids. The oldest kid is a bit difficult to deal with, but she leaves the dealing with him all to her partner...anyway, what were we saying??? yes, she is with this guy...do my husband and I think he could be the one? no, because she likes him. He is good, he is good to her....but still, could he be the one? now? him? you know, things are complicated, the kids, the ex-wife. But he cooks well, oh, yes, he cooks well. And the oldest kid spends all his time watching TV or on the cellphone or with these things. He is not mannered. But she doesn't want to get into that...no, his kids are his kids. But the youngest one is so nice. He is a teenager, but so well mannered. He is all yes ma'am, no ma'am. So, do we think he could be Mr right for her?

....She didn't tell us about her sex life, but I felt that giving her a little bit more time, we could have gone there....

I mean, lovely person. I liked her. But we were standing there, my husband and I, ready to leave and there we remained for another hour listening to this.....

The thing is that she was not an exception.....I had a colleague of mine coming to my office to welcome me and talk about office and lab space and he ended up telling me about his headache and the medications he had to take and how they make him feel and for how long he has to take them and all that.....the whole conversation last two hours at least, if not more.

I had a guy at the supermarket telling me about his dream to visit Germany to see the Bayern Munich playing (this because as usual, to Americans my English accent sounds German) and the woman at the cash register telling me about her trip to Germany and what she saw and where she went..... and who cares if there were other people in line after me.....

I had a waitress telling to my husband and I that he mother passed away as well as her grandfather to explain us why she spoke German and so on (her mom was German.....but we didn't ask her why she spoke German....only if she spoke German after she told us that she was half German....again because of my accent)....

We had a waitress sitting at the table with my husband and I to chat with us while I was looking at the menu.....

I had the person in charge of computers at the place where I work coming to my office to set up the computer and ending up telling me all about one of her daughters and showing me videos of her singing and telling me how much her daughter likes nice dresses and that they got her a credit card and that she baby-sits so that she can learn the value of money....all this during working hours, while I would have had to rush from one place to another for all the bureaucratic papers and forms I have to do here (this is going to be another post, because this never ending story is still fully ongoing).....but no, you can't do anything here without ending up with talking to someone for at least an hour.....

I mean, these people are all nice and I appreciate them being so friendly.....but first, I really do not need to get into personal details of their lives. Second, I have so much to do that I have a hard time to find any time for myself ....listening to someone talking about his/her life for an hour and then going through the same with the next person I meet is not my ideal now.....

Is a common practice here to share personal details with whomever already at the first encounter???

I must look very reserved to all of them then, as I certainly don't talk very much about my things.....

Wonderful men

I am in Italy, middle way to my new life.

This morning, I received an email from a strong woman who is often put down by her partner who doesn't appreciate her. I witnessed this behavior of him. And I didn't like it. I grew up with my father, always putting down my sister, my mom and I. Often making us feeling that we were not good enough, pretty enough, smart enough, something not enough. My first serious relationship was with someone like that too.
Dominant men who probably are just too insecure about themselves to be real partners for someone. Men who like to dominate. My uncle is like that too. Never interested in other people opinions if these opinions don't match what he thinks. Men who are mentally abusive, who try to make people around them feeling like they are lucky to have this man around.

I wrote this multiple times in this blog. I was lucky enough, very lucky, to have met to great men in my life. Two people who not only made me feel appreciated for the exact way I was, but who also continuously showed me how much they loved me just the way I was. I received a lot from life so far, but meeting these two people is probably one of the best things ever happened to me. They changed the way I look at myself, I was a better version of myself with them because they were so supportive, so loving, so appreciative. They both thought me what it means and how it feels to be loved just for the way I am. This doesn't mean that they necessarily loved any aspect of me, but they loved the entire package, so that the things of me that they didn't like so much were not a big deal. I have never felt wrong or out of place or bad with them. I wish everyone in his/her life would meet someone who can make her/him feeling this way.

I get so so angry when I see people who try to put down others. I see this among my friends, I see this at work. People who are apparently so strong and dominating that act like anyone else is lucky just to breath the same air they do. When someone tries to put me down, now I react. Forcefully and strongly. Last time I saw my uncle he was trying to convince me about something he was completely wrong about...something related to my work. He wanted to be right, so when he saw that he couldn't convince me, he tried to shut me up saying "ok, now there is going to be a new Wikipedia according to XXXX (saying my name)" and laughed about it, trying to humiliate me in front of others. Of course, he is so strong and forceful that everyone else thought that he was right and I was wrong. The point is not who was right or wrong, but the fact that I was not allowed to have my own opinion and express it and defend it because it was different than his. These dominating people, when they see that they cannot convince the other, often go for humiliating this person, generally in front of other people.

I grew up with this, until when in my 20s I had the incredible good luck of bumping in two amazing men, one after the others, who taught me what respectful love and appreciation is. I will never thank them enough for what they did for me and to me.
I wish every woman could meet someone like that in their lives. It could be their father, their partner, a close friend. And I wish every woman would learn to react to oppressive, abusive men, instead of thinking that this person will change.

....but sometimes fortunately, people do learn how to improve this. A men could be unappreciative, but at the same time not trying to put the other person down or at least not often. If the person cares enough about the other, then there is room for improvement. It is a lot of work and it has a lot of ups and downs, but sometimes, it works. I experienced this. It is not easy and it does require a lot of work and patience, but sometimes it pays off.
None should put anyone else down to feel better about themselves.
None should allow to be put down by someone else.
I wish everyone would have next to them someone who makes them feeling precious and special and loved and appreciated every day for this. 

That's about it

Here we are. Last night in my apartment here in Portugal.
I feel miserably sad.
I had so many troubles with this apartment, the rain filtering inside the windows and flooding my kitchen, the bad landlord, the continuous reparations needed.
But I loved this place. The ocean view. The possibility to walk or run on the beach, next to the beach whenever I wanted.
And that's it. I am leaving. After tomorrow, very early in the morning.
I can't help but thinking of my mood and my hopes and all what was going on inside me when I arrived here two years ago. It seems yesterday, and instead it is not and so so many things happened in these two years.
When I arrived here, I was not even together with my husband. We had broken up since more than six months and I honestly didn't consider a reconciliation and getting back together a possibility, although we always stayed in touch.
When I arrived here, I thought that I would find a way to have at least a friendship with the olandesino. I couldn't have been wronger.
When I arrived here, I was terribly sad for having left my friend and the working group in Montpellier, but also full of hope for my life and my work here. I thought that I could make friends outside work and have a full life here. I sadly didn't make any close friends....I honestly didn't even try so hard, as it took me one year to figure out my life here and adapt and then I basically got engaged and knew I would move again. But I anyway met people I like a lot here and that in one or another way I will think about even from far.
Nothing went as I saw or imagined in my head, except for the fact that I already knew from the first time that I would have loved this little city where I decided to live.
I can't imagine myself starting over again, in another country, in another city. I don't know how many times I moved around from place to place and had to start over again. And every time, it takes me almost a year to just get settled in a place and even longer to start making friends and having a life...and then as in this case, it is time to leave again.

I feel that in the last months I am trying to block everything inside myself, the fear, the sadness, the anguishing of having to move again and start over in another place with another culture, other people, another life. I am tired of this. I was tired of this two years ago, when I came here in Portugal and I promised myself that I wouldn't move again unless was for something stable where I could settle for many years and have a life, with friends, routine, my things, where I could feel rooted.
Instead, two years after, all my stuff is in boxes again, spread between Italy, my husband's apartment, the future place where I will live, and somewhere in between these places, traveling.

I am fully aware that I didn't need this change again. I am also aware that it could never have worked between my husband and I if I would have stayed where I am. I guess that when I decided to marry him, I knew that I would have had to move again. Surely, I was hoping to move with him and not to move to be alone again in a new place, just closer to him. But I would never give up my work and I would never want him to give up what he has for me without something to do that he likes.
Someone told me that "I want it all" and this is just not possible in life.
I don't feel that I want it all. I don't have my family close to me and I don't have my friends near me.
I just have a job doing what I like (and I hope to like doing it in this new place and to find a pleasant working environment) and a husband closer by than now. I understand that it is a lot and much more that what other people have, but it is certainly not having it all and I made a lot of sacrifices for my work and my personal life.

I just know that I will miss here, this little village, the view I have from the windows of my apartment, running along the ocean, the wind and the waves...I will miss all this so so much.

Decision taken.....was that a good decision?

Months ago I took the decision to move again, back to the US.
Now it is about time to move and I am down here, where I will be moving, looking for a place.
I saw lizards, I saw birds, the weather is warm and I can go around just wearing a t-shirt, the trees are beautiful and the forests and nature look amazing.

But I can't find the way to be excited about moving. Every time I moved some place else, I always had mixed feeling about it, but I have always also been excited. This time, I do not seem to find a way to have one thing, at least just one thing, to look forward about this new change in life.

People tell me to look at this as at a new adventure.
Honestly? I don't need any adventure now.
People tell me to look at this as a moving forward in my career.
Honestly? how do I know that this will actually help me to move forward in my career?
People tell me that if it too bad, it can just be a temporary thing.
But honestly, why a temporary thing should not be enjoyable as well, especially at my age?

For sure work-wise I am not happy where I am right now and I have rain pouring in my apartment every time it rains, and I have my ex-boyfriend living next door and I have a lot of things for which I am not necessarily happy about and for sure a change was needed.

What bothers me is that I keep asking myself if this is really the change I needed......only time can answer to this.
I just wish I could find one thing to be excited about for this new life and to look forward to.

Rule #1: Blend in

I was looking for a new pair of sneakers last night. I love the Saucony Jazz. I practically live in the Saucony Jazz. They fit my feet and my personality very well. They are colorful, happy, comfortable shoes.

I wear them since many years and I had them in many different colors. Every new pair, I try a new color combination out.

Last night, I was picking for a new color when I started thinking of where I will be living next. I wondered if it would be a really smart choice to have very colorful shoes, if it wouldn't be better to just wear something plain, something that it is not necessarily "me", but that most likely would help me to blend in more easily.

The thing is that no matter what I do or don't do and where I am, I find a way to stand out. I don't do it on purpose. I think I just have a strong, visible, personality. I dress in my own way, which stands out, no matter what. I had people commenting on the way I dress in every single country I lived. Mostly, because I love to combine colors. The way I dress and what I wear highly reflects my mood. And if my mood is down, I try anyway to put at least one thing with some colors to cheer me up. I love this, I love to express myself in this way. I love to be me.

I can adapt to a new country for many other things, but if I want to be in some state of mental stability, I need to be myself and not change the way I am to fit in in the country I am at that moment.
It worked well until now, except in one case. When I was living in the US last time. There, it was not so much the problem of standing out of the crowd for the way I dress, it was more a matter of feeling caged.

Don't go there, don't walk here, be careful with this, be careful with that.

For someone who often walks around with the head in the clouds like me, without actually worrying too much about the surrounding (I am not naive, I just live comfortably in the environment and enjoy it), the US way of living I experienced was a shock. I lacked my freedom of movement. I am most creative when I go for long walks and I let my mind wondering around, without paying any attention to details. I need to be creative for my work and for my mental health. I felt I couldn't do that there.

I am not negative about the US specifically. I am sure that in Roma or Milano, it is not safe either to behave this way. I have just never lived in a place like Roma or Milano. And in Montpellier, I felt that the city was dangerous, but at night, never during the day. So, there that was not an issue.

Now I am going to move to a state in the US where according to an article that I read recently (I don't remember if on the BBC or on the Guardian), they don't have any law about guns, and if they have any, it is so unclear that anyone does whatever he/she wants. Basically, you can walk around with any kind of gun, hidden or visible, you can carry it with you wherever you go, you can do anything you have in mind with it.

Guns for me put immediately the way of living all on another level. I am not used to them. I am not used to be in a place where guns are fairly normal. I am not used to live in a place where if someone for whatever reason has a bad day or doesn't like me or wants something I have, instead of simply attacking me or pointing a knife at my throat, can actually shot me dead.

You see? Freedom has all another meaning for me in a place where guns are allowed, free, and welcomed.

I know I should not be afraid. I know that violent crimes are not that common. The thing is that even if they are not common, they happen. And even if the chance of being shot dead or severely injured is 1 in a million, I definitively don't want to be that 1 person. The other day I read on the news of the city where I will move that a guy got shot dead in the middle of the day, in front of the post office, near downtown because someone wanted his bike.

Seriously? what are we back in the Far West? yes, it is not as bad as Pretoria, we agree on that, but still....for a bike? seriously? I am sure the guy would have given away his bike if threatened with a gun. No need to shoot him dead.

You see? that's my point. Blend in, blend in.

You don't want to have anything someone else may want. You don't want to attract any attention. You don't want to have colorful shoes.
I wish I had the cloth of invisibility of Harry Potter.

I am kind of freaking out for this. You can see that I am a bit obsessed with this. I keep writing about it.
I understand it doesn't help.
I just can't stand any kind of violence and I can't understand how people can get used to live in a place where every day someone can wake up in the wrong mood and feeling it is a good day to shoot someone dead.

Persistence, resilience, adaptability and crisis menagement

I was just reading an article on the National Geographic about the importance of failing and learning from it.

This year is my failure year, undoubtedly, in terms of work. I failed in supervising a MSc student, giving her way too much assistance and help, I failed in all the applications I sent to obtain some funding for the projects I would like to work on, and so on and so on....I definitively see this working year, 2013, as a huge failure.

Am I going to learn something from these failures? hopefully so....I especially hope to have learned A LOT from my frustrating experience with the MSc student I supervised, because she wore me out and sucked my energy and enthusiasm of having students this year.....My fault, absolutely.

In any case. The article I was reading was highly inspiring. And I especially loved two sentences in there. One is a citation from S. Beckett "Try again. Fail again. Fail better"
The other was "Persistence, resilience. Adaptability and crisis management. All are key themes in exploration, as in ordinary life. Keeping things in perspective helps too".

I certainly have persistence and resilience. I am not 100% sure about the other two things and especially about my capacity to keep things in perspective......maybe I will learn how to improve this short-coming of my character. I certainly hope to learn from the the various work failures of this year!

Heading South

So long, so long, so long since I wrote something here last time.....so many things happened.
Mostly, I got married and I am moving South.

Not South of here (Portugal), but South of the USA. Another move, another life, another adventure.

I should report from there. I should have written more from here and about here.....but when life gets crazy, it is not easy to find the time to sit down and write....I rather prefer to go outside running and relaxing.

I am going to miss running along the Ocean. I am going to miss this Ocean beach. I am going to miss Portuguese octopus and Portuguese bread. I am going to miss the farmer market with so many cool old people. I am going to miss the peace and the feeling of safety at whatever time of the day that I can enjoy here.

Despite this, I am ready to leave. Working here was a frustrating, unsuccessful experience and although life is not too bad, I have felt very lonely and disconnected. Plus, the olandesino living next door from me also doesn't help my peace of mind.

I should definitively take some pictures of the things/places I love here before leaving this place.....

I am scared and excited for this new change. Some days more scared, some days more excited.....

How much more difficult does it have to get?

I took this picture at sunset on the beach in front of where I live.

The beach and the ocean. This is where I live now. This is what I have in front of my apartment and I see every day.

It is hard to think that I will have to leave this for an unknown place where to start a new life. But hopefully it will be a place where I will be able to have a life, as I am tired of traveling all the time and having no stability, making friends to leave them again after a couple of years, just when I get close to them. I am tired of feeling home in a place to have to leave it again. Since I decided to get engaged, my life is not here nor where my boyfriend is, in the USA. I am also very distant from everyone here, as I don't want to get attached and then have to suffer as it happened when I had to leave France. So, although I do not look forward to leave the place where I live now, which represents one of my dreams (living in front of the Ocean and being able to take long walks on the beach whenever I want), I also hope finally at the age of 37 to be able to have a life, live in a place that I can feel it is my home, get a dog with whom to share my long walks, possibly make some friends with whom I can share my life without being afraid of leaving them any time soon, and be closer to my boyfriend.

I got a new job and a new place ahead of me and although I am currently terrified for all those huge changes in my life and although last time I lived in the USA I ended up with a huge depression (and not for a joke, but a serious depression that last about three years), I try to keep a positive attitude toward it, especially focusing on the good things.

But the truth is that if it was not because it is easier to find a job for two people in the USA than in Europe and the fact that my boyfriend has a job that could actually help us even if my salary will be quite low (for American standards), I would rather live with him here in Europe than going to the USA. I have nothing against the USA and there are things I like and dislike of every country where I lived so far... so it is not that. But my family and friends are in Europe and I am deeply European in my way of living....I am actually perfectly fit for a small European town, like where I am now.

This to say that the coming change does actually cost me some mental effort to get used to it, I get immensely sad when I think that communicating and seeing my family will be much harder than now (I keep wondering if they will visit me and how often we will see each other considering how much a flight ticket costs), and it costs me some work to stay focused on the positive things. But I manage. Some days are better some less good...but I manage. Until I get under a pile of difficulties like today.

To make a long story short. My boyfriend is American. I am Italian. I have much more flexibility in my job than him. He has very little holidays. He has a better job stability than me. It is easier to get a job for me in the USA than for him in Europe. I cannot stay in the USA on a tourist visa for more than 90 days over a year. It is much easier to get a permanent position there if I am either already in the USA on a working VISA or if we are married.

From all this, the decisions that followed thinking that our relationship would be easier.

September last year, my boyfriend and I contacted the consulate in Florence to ask information about green card, immigration procedure, etc. What we got told was that basically once we were married, getting a green card for a spouse would be easy and that while I could not live permanently in the USA without a green card or an immigrant visa, I could travel while waiting for the green card back and forth with my passport and on a tourist visa.

What instead we found out today was that if I apply for an immigration visa, I CANNOT travel to the USA. This to prevent that while people are waiting for the green card approval, they become illegal immigrants.This actually has nothing to do with immigration offices, it is something enforced by the border patrols....it doesn't matter if I can demonstrate that I am traveling to visit my husband but that I have a job somewhere else for now to which I want and I need to get back....no, no, no....I may be a potential illegal immigrant. I understand that they cannot make a special case for everyone, but how ridiculous is that I get married and then I cannot see my husband for how long it takes to get a green card (which may take more than 7 months), unless he comes to visit me?

Not only.....even more stupid....the place where I got offered the job would not request a working visa for me (which is much quicker to get and would make our lives much easier) because I previously told them that I would apply for a green card after the wedding....so, now they told me to apply for the green card and if I don't get it by the end of October, then and only then they will apply for a working visa for me, hoping that it will be done by the time I would need to start my job.....

Gosh, all this is so frustrating....how difficult does it have to be to just want to be in the same place as my boyfriend???? and plus...I am really sick of feeling rejected all the time because "I am not American or I am already a legal immigrant in the USA" ...first I had this for the numerous job applications I sent, then some of the members of my boyfriend family made me feel not good enough because not American (or not from a civilized enough place because it is not the USA), and now this immigration crap....................................

and a friend of mine just told me that her cousin got a green card for the USA through the green card lottery...............COME ON!!!!!!!!!!! are you kidding me? I have a job, I will have a husband there and I cannot even enter the country while applying for a green card.

gosh, gosh, gosh.....


 

Quality of life

I am a spoiled girl. There is no doubt about this.

I live in front of the ocean. I work whenever I want at the time I want where I want. I travel. I have people who love me a lot. I have traveled to a lot of places, I have seen and known a lot of different parts of the world, met many interesting people, done many things already. I am healthy. I have a wonderful family. I know what it means to deeply love and be loved by someone. I have the job I wanted to do. My job is actually one of my passions.

I am lucky. And I know this. Despite being angry or down or feeling lost, I know that overall I have a fantastic life, I had so far an amazing life.

I am lucky and I am spoiled. Right now, I live in a total status of freedom. I live alone, I have no kids, no schedule, none depending on me. I count on my own capacities and myself. And I like it. I actually love it. But things are about to change. Not necessarily for something bad. But they will change. Commitment is at the door, in my personal and working life. I feel terrified. Petrified if I think about it. I feel I want to run away and hide on a beach somewhere (I actually exactly know where. I have been there once and that place since then represent my mental escape).

What terrifies me most is not the change itself. I am used to changing continuously: places, cultures, people. What terrifies me is to lose things that I now give for granted and are part of my routine. Running whenever I feel like around the ocean, walking to the bakery to buy fresh bread, walking around at any time of the day I want.

I have to move again and overall this next step, this next change of scenario is for good. I am getting married soon and I know that to make it work, we cannot have an ocean in between us. So, I am moving back to the USA and I am lucky enough to have found the job I wanted there. In this economy, this is definitively not something little. So far, so good.

But. I started this blog when I was living in the USA, about six years ago. I can't remember an unhappier, more depressing period in my life so far. I actually started this blog because I was so depressed, so lonely, so hopeless that the only thing that made me feel connected in some way was writing my thoughts, my feelings. I am scared of ending up in the same way. Is this a stupid fear? maybe.

The thing is that I like the USA. But there are also things of the USA that I really do not like. Last night I got to think about naming three things I hate about the USA. I didn't have to think very long:

1) Free guns
2) Need of having a car
3) Waste

Of course, I can also as easily think of three things I hate about Italy:

1) Corruption
2) Lack of a national spirit
3) Superficiality

And so on, I could list three things I hate about France, about Portugal, about Germany, probably about any of the countries where I have been living. However, not all these things I hate weight the same in terms of my quality of life and I deal extremely badly with the idea of living in a country where guns are legal. It makes me feel threatened all the time. It is not my culture. I am not used to that. Yes, European cities are dangerous too. I completely agree. But they are in a different way. There are dangerous parts of the city and you just don't go there. In the USA often is not only a part of a city, it is one street is safe and the next street is dangerous. Why? who knows why. Plus, you never know, but the person walking in front of you may have a gun, as well as your neighbor, as well as basically anyone else. So, some of the things that for me make my quality of life good, which are the possibility to walk or take public transportation anywhere I want to go without needing a car, the sense of freedom in time and space, getting fresh bread when I feel like, are all going to be lost with my next life change. Because I am not going to move to any of the American/more European life style cities.

I can deal with a lot of things, I can adapt fairly easily to different cultures, I can always find my own dimension in a new place. But living in a country where guns are free and owning a gun is the normality is not something I want to adapt to. When I discuss this with Americans, the reply to my questions I receive more often is that guns are necessary to defend ourselves from the ones who already have a gun.....it doesn't take an extraordinary IQ to understand that this is a circular explanation that will never solve itself. If guns would be under regulation, meaning that people owning a gun has to declare it and that from now on buying a gun would be permitted only in special cases, there would be less uncontrolled guns around, and less crazy people who get the chance to use them and to assault, shoot and kill people just because they are having a bad day.....

Unfortunately, there are so many personal interests in the USA in keeping things the way they are when it comes to guns (or public transportation, or public health system just to name a few things) that the poor Obama will never manage to regulate them. Unfortunately. Because people do not have the chance to understand and appreciate the value of freedom of movement and existence without feeling that you gotta own a gun to defend yourself from others who may threaten you.

When I was living in Germany I used to often work late at night. Late night means that sometimes I would bike back home at 2-3am. Often, I would bike at that time through the forest. I always felt that I could have biked through the forest at that time at night completely naked and nothing would have happened to me. Of course, there may always be the bad luck of meeting a bad guy. This happens everywhere. But if a bad guy doesn't not have a gun, first thing he has to get close to me to assault me, second thing at least it will cost him more effort to harm or kill me.....it is a small consolation, but it does reduce the chances to get severely harmed or killed.

Statistics at hand......

I wish I would know how to make a difference and help to ban free guns in the USA, which will be my future home place.

Just to stay on this subject.....this happened just a few days ago and these episodes keep happening over and over in the USA.

Anger, so much anger

When I started writing this blog, it was therapeutic. I didn't know with whom to talk in a comfortable way, I didn't want to bother anyone with the same things over and over and so I started writing. Then, I started to feel better about my life and the blog turned out to be more a together or random thoughts and observations. Then in the last months, I didn't have time to write and I didn't feel like either, because I was just going through too much in my life.
Now I am back to this old friend. Because, although I am not in the same status and condition as when I first started this blog, I am also not a good place in my life either. In the last months I had and still have to make so many life-decisions for things that I would never do or accept if it was just about me. But when you get engaged to someone and deciding to marrying someone, then it is not anymore about "you" or "me" but it about what to do to make it work in the best possible way. And it is one compromise after the other and it is scary.....it is scary because to be with that one person, I have a prospect of life with many things that I would have never even considered if it was just about me. Moving to a place that on paper may be wonderful as well as it could be hell, leaving the peace of the ocean and the safety of where I am now, accepting the baggage that comes with him (and for which he has no fault or responsibility) even if it is extremely unpleasant, be even more far away from my family, feeling that I have no place in the world no matter where I am because my life is all in pieces here and there.
It is months now that I am struggling and the only way I can cope with this is running and walking, walking and running. I escape social contacts because I am so angry and feeling uncomfortable all the time that nothing makes me aggressive and exploding....with the result that I am becoming socially awkward. Four-five months ago, I was positive, optimist and seeing the same things as adventurous challenges. Now I am just tired of all the difficulties that comes with the already per-se difficult decision I had to take.....I feel I can't take any more... it is already too much....why do things need to be so difficult sometimes? all over....not just my working life is difficult.....and I don't know how to get out of this and I don't want to talk to people about this, because overall is very boring and people are just different and would see my overall situation in a very different way, so none can actually advice me on anything...and if I would talk about this with my family, they would just get worried and if I would talk about this with my fiance' (although I do it), he would feel responsible and guilty, when he actually has no responsabilities....

I just feel that I have to do what I have to do and hope for the best....but it is not really a good way to approach things for me....I wish I could be more enthusiastic....but the past months and events really killed my enthusiasm for all these things.....

Life changes

So long that I don't write here.
So many things happened in my life in the last months.
So many different emotional states: stress, happiness, excitement, being scared, freaking out, sadness, anger (lot of it), more stress, feeling lonely......I don't even know from where to start.
Maybe from the fact that things in life, at least in my life for sure, never happen when they are supposed to happen or when I wish they would happen or in the way I would like them to happen. I constantly feel like being at the right place at the wrong time.
I can't have things figured out. Even when I think I do. I just rest thinking that wow even if in a weird and unexpected way things are turning out quite well, when suddenly something new comes up to mess everything around again.
It may be considered a good thing, sure. But sometimes I also feel that it wouldn't be bad to have a vision for a bit longer than just the current day.
Since November I have been traveling between Ecuador, the USA, Italy, Portugal, France and in a few days I will be in Holland and then in the USA again.
I have applied to many many jobs and I also received many many rejections.
I have hoped and get crashed and hoped again.
I have been excited and miserable and excited again and miserable again for the same thing over and over in the past three months.

Part of me would like to learn how to be immune to other people. Part of me would like to learn to not care so much. Part of me would like to learn to not be polite when people do not deserve politeness, when they are not nice to me, my country, my family, or my culture. Part of me would like to learn how to be able to still be positive when surrounded by a tick layer of negativity that oppresses everything and makes everything grey.

I have a lot of beautiful things happening to me and in my life. But there is always something or someone who feels the need to ruin everything, to make things more difficult than they are so that they become an unbearable wall.

Sometimes I feel that it doesn't really matter what I do or I don't do, because things keep happening on their own, because life is just this way, and the only thing I can do is to try to get the best out of all these things, no matter how hard other people only try to make me see only the negative aspects on any of these things.
It is really not the way I am, or at least I have never been this way before. It may be a change due to aging or it may have something to do with the fact that some days I am really tired of thinking over and over about this, but I often find myself taking a decision more on "why not?" than based on over-thinking as it usually was.
Not that the end product of the two different modes of action is any different anyway.

I have been proposed. And I accepted.
And someone tried very hard to kill all the enthusiasm and expectation I had for it.
And I felt lonely and rejected.

I waited for something to happen for years. And when it did happen it was completely the worst possible timing.

I received a job offer for a job that overall I thought it would be cool. Not perfect, not ideal, but overall cool.
And someone tried his best to make me see only the negative aspects of it and how it will only make my life even more solitary.

It must be the yin and the yang. Nothing can be just good or just bad.....it must always be something in between apparently......at least in my life lately.

I am an immigrant

I am living abroad, away from Italy since 10 years. It is a long time. I have been living in a lot of different countries and only in few of them I didn't feel that I was different, not belonging.

Here in Portugal, despite the cultural differences, none ever made me feel like I was "different" because non-Portuguese. People in general are doing a lot of efforts to understand me in my mixed mostly-spanish-a-bit-of-Portuguese spoken language...well of course, except for my landlord....but I can live with that. This until this morning.

I went to the farmers market as I do every 15 days on saturday. I love going to the farmers market here, it is one of the things I love more of living in this small Portuguese village. I like chatting with the people there, they all know me by now. They even remember my mom. They know what I like. It is a familiar environment. I really enjoy it and since there is only every 15 days on a saturday, I always look forward to this regular appointment.

However, this morning I had a not too pleasant conversation with one of the vendors. He was telling me that just a bit before me there was a Spanish girl who bought something and that he was surprised that there are so many foreigners, Spanish, Italian, etc living in this small village, because we are not here just for the holidays. I told him that we all work together in a research center nearby. He was surprised, but not pleasantly surprised. I like to state here that this guy is normally extremely nice and friendly, so it was not that he is rude or anything like this.

The first thing he said was:
- I hope that the money to pay your salary come from abroad or from the European community.

I stared at him......and only said "sorry?" I was not sure I understood well.

- I mean, why should Portugal pay someone who is not Portuguese? and even more, why should Portugal pay so many foreigners?

I understand that this may be a difficult concept for people who are not familiar with how the research world functions and that the foundations of our work are based on shared knowledge, independently of the nationality or race of the people doing research. I understand that with the current economic situation people are less tolerant. But the thing is....I have a salary, I live in Portugal, I pay my rent in Portugal, I do my shopping in Portugal, my life is in Portugal.....so, it is not that someone is paying me to bring the money to Italy and spend it there. I am part of this economy, I am part of this country until I work and I live here.

I don't understand this growing intolerance toward giving a job to a foreign person. I am not talking here about an illegal immigrant. I am talking about a person who is legally allowed to work in the country, who lives in the country, who may even pays the taxes in the country, etc. It is not that the money that the country invests on me are thrown away.....I just don't get it.....

The guy actually only chilled out when I confirmed to him that yes, a large part of our salaries come from the European community......

I am not very favorable in general to globalization, but local and narrowed thinking is a very dangerous thing, I feel.

Neither here nor there

......I wonder where is the place for me in the world......

One year I am in Portugal and I still don't get the way of doing things in this country. Procrastinating is a world that must not exist here, as it is such a common attitude that here it would lose its meaning....yeah, yeah, I know, I generalize too much.......The thing is. I am sure that there are exceptions to the general trend, but my experience living in this country for a year already shows me that I can't expect anything to happen in a reasonable time.

Three things I noticed in a year and that people who visited me got (all of them) noticed in a matter of just a couple of days.

- Service here generally sucks. Portuguese people are nice, no doubts about that. However, it seems that selling you something, serving you or whatever other interactions especially including food service could not happen in what I consider a normal service....no, instead either the person serving you does not even pay any attention to you for a randomly but generally quite long time span or if he/she does, you can bet that it will be a rather unfriendly exchange, like if they are doing a favor in serving you....no matter if I am actually paying for the service.
So, up to now this is an example of things that happened to me (and this is not a complete and extensive list, but just a few examples):

- At a restaurant, the waiter left me waiting until a soccer game action was over to get my order
- At a restaurant, my friend and me were left unattended because the waitress owner left and none else was in the restaurant except us and another customer.
- At a restaurant, the waiter shoveled the plate with the food to a friend of mine, so that most of the olives that were in the plate ended up on his pants, on the floor, or on the table.
- At a restaurant, the waiter kept smiling at us for long time before actually come to get out order, when it was clear that we were ready and she was not really busy.
- At a restaurant, the owner/waitress would not bring us the bill because she was too busy eating (and this not at the end of the service, but in the middle of opening hours).
- At a restaurant, the chef, waiters, and waitresses would sit at the table to eat when we were still there and would have liked to leave....but since everyone was eating at a table next to us, they couldn't stop to bring us the bill.
- At a cafe', we had to wait 15 minutes even if the cafe' was almost empty before someone would come to ask us what we wanted....and this after we got told 15 minutes before to sit that someone would have come (of course....they didn't specify when they would have come).
- In my apartment, I still have water on my kitchen floor every time it rains.....today I had to stay at home another day and work from home to wait someone who was supposed to come to look at the problem....only, as always none showed up and my landlord not only didn't call to tell me something, but he also didn't reply to my calls. I have no idea how many days of work I have already lost staying at home waiting for someone to show up.
- At work, my student has the philosophy that either something can be done quickly, no matter how badly it is done, otherwise we could do it together so that she could do something better with her time.

I feel that in this country, respect of other people time must be a very fuzzy concept.....
Now, considering my very organized mind and way of doing things and my kinda-of-German mentality, I can't stop struggling and being frustrated all the time.

And it seems that it doesn't matter what I can do....nothing change, nor if I try to solve things nicely, nor if I get angry. Nothing.

Too bad it is a lovely country and I love the place where I live, because otherwise I would have already had a break down.

On the other hand, I am applying for plenty of jobs in the USA, where my boyfriend is and where there are more job opportunities. Unfortunately, the fact of not being American and not having presently a working VISA in the USA, makes any of my application becoming a nightmare, as I have to keep sending email to ask if I can actually apply to the position and my application will be considered or as I am currently an "alien" I cannot even dream of getting a job in the USA.........

The older I get, the more I get the impression that I should just stop caring about things and try to abuse of any system I am in and not even bother trying to do things in a proper and efficient way, because most of the times the only one getting completely frustrated is just me.............................

Being bullied

If I should define myself in a couple of words, among the first ones coming to my mind there would be "determined", "responsible", and "just".

Now, not having worked in Italy or in countries where things work similarly to how they work in Italy (meaning that hierarchy is extremely important, much more important of what it is right or of working things out together), I am not used anymore to not be able to discuss things in a civil way with people who hierarchically are "above" my status. Not only I cannot discuss things in a researcher-to-researcher way with someone who is "above" me in the research center where I work, but I should just zip my mouth, as I have been invited to do.....

Basically the way things are currently working is to spend as less as possible, to invest as less as possible, to not care about safety and safety rules, and in general to do things "alla carlona" as we use to say where I came from.....It is not my way of working, especially when I am responsible of someone's else work and I have to set up the good example.

Because I asked to organize things in the lab so that everyone has some space to work and store things and because none of the people who should be in charge of this organization and cleaning got back to me or did anything and because together with other people after spending 5 months politely inviting the people in charge of this to do their jobs nothing happened, we decided to clean and organize things by ourselves......the result has been that instead of someone "high up" thanking us, one of the someone "high up" has been complaining openly about me stepping on other people feet and doing things that should not compete to me. The thing that disturbed me is that instead of telling me his complaints straight on my face, he went to tell this to students...so he didn't even have the gut of coming to me. And this was one.

Then, I tried to organize a space to do something with toxic reagent in a way that none could have to breath the toxic substances. Of course, someone else, still "high up" went straight to the responsible of the group where I am working here and complained about me wanting to change things....I just arrived and I am so arrogant to change everything.....well, for safety reasons, yes...especially considering that this guy sits at his desk and doesn't even know what he is talking about.....fortunately, the person with whom I am working and who is responsible for me working here, is an intelligent person and basically told this guy to shut his mouth since he had no clue of what we were talking about....again, none said anything directly to me.....only complains to others.

Today I got an email from the secretary of our research center saying that the second person in charge of the center wanted to see me. As I was not there at that moment, I contacted this person to know when we could meet and of course, he ignored me as he has always done when I tried to discuss with him the cleaning and the safety measures to do our work.

As if this was not enough....It is three months that I look at the fight between my landlord and the man in charge of the building where I live on who should pay the reparations to avoid that every time it rains, I have the kitchen full of water....it is obvious that because these are expensive reparations, none wants to pay for them. The end result is that my landlord who is a judge decided that he will file a legal complaint to the tribunal against the condominium for not doing the reparations....thing is that legally he could do whatever he wants and file a legal complaint etc., but as I am paying the rent to him every single month, even if this problem is going on since forever, he should send someone to do the reparations and then deal with the condominium on who will pay what....of course, at the end the one who is losing instead is me.....and if I leave, my landlord will keep the deposit.....

Lastly, they renewed my contract for another year and without saying anything they decided to cut 700 euros from what it was established on the original contract. Of course, this is also illegal, but they did it....not just to me, it is not just me being unlucky....

I feel that any of these things mentioned above is just ridiculous and I am bullied around because I am none at work and I am a foreigner here......I hate this.

Moglie e buoi dei paesi tuoi

And this is another common say that we use in Italy...literally it reads : wife and beefs of your country.
More in general it means that it is wiser to chose someone with the same background for a long-term commitment, being this getting married or something else.

I thought that this say wouldn't make too much sense today and that it would be totally outdated....I recently discovered than instead different backgrounds and cultures are not always easy to melt....especially over serious matters.

Traveling as much as I do and living and moving from one country to another, my two last relationships have been with non-Italian people. Not a big deal I thought. As long as we are all open-minded we can overcome any issue....I still stand by this thought, but I have to add that overcoming cultural difference, which most of the times one doesn't even know to have, requires a lot of work and a lot of patience, from both sides when the people involved are in a relationship.

Things that for me are completely obvious for the other person may not be at all. I remember when during my first relationship with a non-Italian person, the olandesino, he always freaked out when my family would scream and yell at each other in the middle of a "normal" conversation....before being able to understand Italian, he always thought that they would end up killing each others...considering that for my family this is the normal way to communicate and to talk and that discussing with animosity can happen even for small things like where to have dinner, without anyone actually being angry at someone else, you can understand how many times he had to experience this kind of situation before realizing that it was not the end of the world and it was just a cultural difference from his own (Dutch).

Now that I am in a very committed relationship to my ex-now-new-again-boyfriend I am facing cultural differences on a regular basis......it can be quite frustrating and it requires a lot of communication, patience and compromise from both of us. It is worth it. But it is also quite some work......

We may be all connected by internet, facebook, and whatever else, but cultural differences are still there....and despite the work and the stress that the may cause in a relationship between two people with a different background, I am happy that they still exist and globalization didn't wipe them out yet!

Let's preserve differences and work to learn about them and understand what it is unfamiliar to us!

Mazza che puzza!

I am definitively clumsy. This is not something new to me.
However, burning something and have the whole kitchen smelling so much that I still cannot close the windows even if this happened hours ago, it is something I would have warmly avoided.

I am not new to burning things either just because I forget about them.

Once I put a moka machine on the stove to make some coffee.........thing is that I totally forgot about it and I went to take a nap. When my sister got to my mom's place (where I was staying at that time), the kitchen was full of smoke, the smell of burned coffee and plastic was unbearable and the plastic parts of the moka machine were melted.

Another time, when I was living in Germany, I baked a cake and left the oven half open to cool down but forgot to switch it on. I went with the cake to stay at my boyfriend's place and then I left for Italy for a few days...when I got back to my apartment, the whole place was probably around 230 degrees C, the temperature at which the oven was set up. I don't want to mention the electricity bill I got that month, because it was not as important as the fact that I was lucky enough to not burn the entire place down.

After these episodes (and these are just examples of how forgetful I can be), I turned out to be little maniacal about checking to have switched things off million times before leaving my place. However, when I am relaxed, as my mom uses to say to me all the times when I am in Italy in vacation "I send my brain in holidays".....so these episodes of me being especially clumsy they mostly happen when I am relaxed.....

This evening I was in fact very relaxed watched a movie after dinner, when I realized that I was still hungry and I wanted to eat something more...so without paying any attention I put a pot on the stove, without realizing that there was something in wood under the pot, which of course, got placed in between the stove and the pot.....the result is that it is very smelly here.

Still about bad smells.....I am not a sherlock holmes, but on the first floor of where I am staying it is since 3-4 days that there is a smell of something rotten....something like a rotten dog.....it is so strong that we have to keep the windows of the building all open to be able to breath while on the stairs...the smell is so bad that we can smell it even from the outside......now, nobody seems to be at home. There were people during the winter, but not the whole place looks without anyone inside, windows closed, curtains down......ok, I read too many thriller books maybe...but what is someone got killed in there or just died in there??? it certainly smells like something rotten....

Now, of all the people living in this place, why does it have to be me who doesn't speak a single word of Portuguese to call the guardian of the building to ask him to just check that everything is ok in there??? I guess that if in some months we will see worms crawling out of that place, we will know that something is definitively wrong......

I am not superstitious

Friday 17.

I should have known better and spent the whole day in bed.

I instead decided to wake up, get out of bed and live it like a normal day, because I am not superstitious....

But what a major crappy day it has been today!

I had a major drama-like situation for work, with panic, phone calls, everyone worried.....and the thing is not solved yet....it even included someone telling me that my career after this may be over...I thought it didn't even fully start yet.....

Then I had a major fight with my ex-now-current-again boyfriend, which made me wondering why I am not just staying on my own....

Good thing that I live in a little corner of paradise, so that I escaped the two things first by biking along the sea for long time and then in the evening, by walking on the beach at the sunset looking for animals left behind by the low tide.

Second good thing is that I have many episodes to watch of BBT, which I love and which still makes me laugh even if I watch the same episodes over and over!

But gosh if this was a very harsh day!!!

Love and hate

This is how I feel for my apartment in Portugal.

Most of the times, I love it.

Some other times, generally when it rains, I hate it.

It is a beautiful day today and I just spent my morning sitting in the part of my kitchen surrounded by windows and with an ocean view. Then I went for a walk on the beach, for which I need to just cross a road, and then I got back to my place to have lunch at the window while staring at the ocean and its big waves.

This is something I have been dreaming about since I can remember. Living in front of the sea...in this case it is the ocean. The same. I don't have too much choice in terms of choosing the country in which to live...generally, I have to go where I have some chances to get a job. But in this case, I feel pretty lucky. I don't necessarily like where I work, but I love where I live, and my apartment is just perfect.....

......actually, I should say ALMOST perfect.....

The pond that I have on my kitchen floor when it rains, it is now a lake....it was a pond, a manageable pond, until I realized that if I don't dry continuously the rain leaking in from the outside, I have water advancing and advancing. Yesterday, I had to wait for the person in charge of repairing things in the building to come over and look at the problem before drying the water from the floor. In about eight hours of rain, I had 1 square meter of the kitchen floor, if not more, completely covered by water, which was scarily enough continuing to advance.

Good thing that I was here and not in holidays.
Good thing that I was at home.

My frustration for this problem was not so unbearable, even if I have problems of rain leaking in the kitchen since I moved in, until the man of the building came, look at the problem and told me that a) repairing what needs to be repaired is going to be expensive, b) it is the responsibility of the building and not of my landlord, and c) IF THERE ARE NO MONEY ON THE ACCOUNT OF THE BUILDING WHO KNOWS WHEN AND IF THIS PROBLEM WILL BE TAKEN CARE OF.

Now, if the rain would come in and occupy just a spot on my kitchen floor, I wouldn't be that worried, because this apartment is so amazing for anything else, that I would never move out. However, thinking that if this would happen one of the times in which I am not here, since I travel so much, probably:
1) the furniture of the kitchen would get ruined (and this would be a problem for my landlord)
2) I would have to move my furniture away to another room any time I leave
3) and that there are electrical things in the kitchen which could be dangerous if they get in touch with a lot of water......

all these things made me thinking of what I should do in case they will really not repair it soon. If this would have been a place where it rains once in a while, I could live with the risk, but since it could rain without stop for weeks in a row.....well.....

Easy thing would be moving out. But moving is stressful and more than anything else, my apartment is very peaceful, I don't have noisy neighbors, I can sleep well, I have an ocean view, I cross the road and I am on the beach where I can do sport and relax, I have a bakery next door and the supermarket just in 5 minutes walk (important point since I don't have a car), it is big so that I can host anyone who wants to visit me without anyone feeling packed like sardines, it is not too expensive, I have a garage in case of need....I can keep going on and on with all the positive points of this place.....

so, how can I solve this problem of the rain coming in and invading my kitchen if they will not fix the problem in some way?

My little corner of paradise

I had a very bad, with a very down mood day today.
It would have been even worst for sure if it is not that I live in a fantastic place.

Yes, I still have a pond on my kitchen floor every time it rains hard.
Yes, I still have problems at work and no close friends.

Yet, I love being here. I love living here.

Yesterday I went to the farmers market, just near my place. And not to a fancy farmers market, where things are double the price than at the supermarket. This is a real farmers market. With people who actually clearly cultivate their products. People who sell only seasonal products. A farmers market where I could get tomatoes that still taste like tomatoes and not just like a water bomb, where I can get many many lemons for 25 cents, where I can get cucumbers that taste like something.......

I love it.

And then yesterday I went for a long walk on the beach. I saw the little birds playing with the waves, I saw all the seagrasses on the shore, and I enjoy the feeling of the sand under my feet....and today I went running. First I tried on the sand, and my heart was pounding like crazy and I was out of breath after two minutes, but then I continued running along the beach and then I did stretching in front of the sea, on the evening light....and my mood got much better and I felt in love for this place.

And at the end I also saw shooting stars from the beach!!! Isn't it great?

Se non son matti non li vogliamo

My mom always used to say this to my sister and I to highlight the amazing talent that we both have in attracting or meeting weirdos....

I already wrote a post about my recent encounter with a weird man.....but yesterday I met another weird person....a taxi driver/philosopher....I just got back to Portugal from Italy and since I was deadly tired, I decided to get a taxi to come back home from the airport.

I woke up at 4am yesterday morning, so when I got into the taxi I was definitively not in the mood for a chat...especially considering that after 6 weeks speaking Spanish, English or Italian, any little knowledge or understanding of Portuguese that I may have had is basically gone....

In any case, I get into the taxi and this guy proposes me to make a deal...paying a forfeit for the drive to my place but I would let him chose the road to take, as he didn't want to be stuck in traffic....when he told me how much the forfeit would have been, I immediately accepted the deal as I almost never pay so little for the same ride, except if done at 5am. However, just to understand that he was proposing me a deal, it took something like 15 minutes.....

After that, instead of being discouraged by my little understanding of Portuguese so early in the morning, he decided to share his philosophy of life with me...He started by telling me that the worldwide economic crisis is real, but for sure there is also a world-spread mafia who wants us to believe that the situation is worse than how it really is.... (?) ....something like a world conspiracy....and we shouldn't care about what people or the media tell us about the crisis, we should live only according to what makes us happy and works for us, and as much as we can, we should behave independently of what happens around us...

since I was not sure to follow his line of thoughts, he decided to explain his theory to me by using a fitting example.....his example was the following....

- Couples exchange, which is a really common thing in France.....

Ok, now, beside the fact that I have been living in France for three years without realizing that couples exchange is such a common thing there, my ignorance on the subject may be due to my being very naif....However, since I didn't want to encourage him to give me further details on how he got this knowledge about couples exchange being a common practice in France, I just nodded with my head, hoping to continue the rest of the trip in silence....

But he must have read in my eyes that nothing he was saying made any sense to me....

So, his further explanation was:

- According to the church and the religion, we shouldn't cheat on each other. However, let's say that I am married and you are married (you was me in this case) and that I like you and you like me and that my wife likes your husband and vice-versa and we are all happy in having an open relationship in which we swap partners from time to time, as it is very common in France (again....can please a French person tell me if this is so common in France??? I was a bit surprise to hear this...), then we should go for it as life is short and we will all end up dead anyway....

Ok, I may agree on this one, but I still couldn't get the relationship with the economic crisis....which he further explained like this....

- So, if the media or people tell us that there is an economic crisis, it doesn't make sense to try to have a wise behavior to help things getting better, as they suggest, because since there is a world-conspiracy, we will lose anyway....therefore, since life is short, we better enjoy it as much as we can, spending money if we feel like and doing whatever we want.....

Right....it may be right that the media exaggerate the situation of the economic crisis and that we should keep the market going without completely stopping buying things and living....but spending money that most people do not have, so that they get indebted to the banks to which they ask a loan, without being able to pay them back after, will only increase the loop and the crisis.....stopping the economy is not a solution in my view, but also not being wise and keep consuming without restrain is not a solution either.....

In any case, independently of the measures to fight the economic crisis, I loved the example he used to explain his theory to me........