An end and a new beginning

Dear readers. A new year has started and with it new opportunities to make of our lives better lives, new chances to do better, to accomplish, to correct our mistakes and mend our faults. You have to make sure that 2011 will be in any possible way better and will bring you even more satisfactions than 2010.

My 2010 was a crazy one. So many things happened; many rewards as well as regrets… let me share a few of those with you.

I had finished as PhD student the last day of December of 2009 and I had absolutely no idea when exactly I was going to fly to my new destination, Paris. It could have been in two months, in three months, maybe? I had no salary and no savings to survive until I got the approval to move to France, all depending on the legal bureaucracy. When all of a sudden finishing January, after about two months expecting for a exact date to travel, I received a call from my supervisor in France, he said:

“Tanai, all the things are finally taken care of, all the papers singed, all the red tape cleared, you can come to France next week if you want.”

And just like that, in a matter of days I said goodbye to more than five years in Sweden, my dear Sweden… I sold all I didn’t need, stored in four boxes all things I couldn’t just throw away but I wasn’t going to need at the moment, packed all my clothes, my pressure cooker, my laptop… and set to begin a new chapter in my life: the Paris chapter.

The Paris chapter initializes with me living with my boss for a week before I found accommodation in the city. He lived in a big old dirty house beyond the last station of the suburban train, far from the city of light. My boss literally said that he had not made any single reparation or done any maintenance to the house since he moved in there more than two decades ago. So, as you could imagine things looked not really clean and well kept… but all I needed at the moment was a bed, a warm blanket, a lot of hospitality, and kindness; and I certainly got that.

I was lucky to find an apartment in the city faster than I imagined, that was at Les Gobelines… close to the famous Rue Mouffetard, the Latin Quarters, the Pantheon, the Luxemburg garden and so.  Such happiness to have a new place to call home and in the center of Paris… even thought I was moneyless, in debt, and with the credit cards empty. Today I have moved to a new apartment in the suburbs south of the city, a bit cheaper and closer to my work.

My new work place, the French Commission for Atomic and Alternative Energies (CEA) was totally different to what I was used to in Sweden. A huge institute with more than eight thousand workers, counting scientists, engineers, administrative staff, and so on… a high security place since there’s two nuclear reactors and a lot of “top secret” activities. It has been definitively an interesting experience to work in a place like that… and it has three great restaurants, where I found out that duck is delicious and probably one of my favorite animals to eat. For the locals the food there is pretty low quality but for me it’s quite alright most of the time.

During 2010 I had the chance to travel quite a bit to places never explored before; in the first place to France, secondly to Hungary, I went to China and at the end of the year I went to the Czech Republic. Every one of them such beautiful places… I’m so grateful: Paris, Szeged, Beijing, and Prague… unforgettable. I got to see the Great Wall of China and meet my old friend from Bogotá in Prague; it’s still kind of surreal.

On the other side of things my year was filled with confusion and uncertainty… I had job secured for  2010  and I somehow had to secure a contract for 2011. Applying for a new job or position in science is very time consuming and it might take easily eight months to a full year… which translates into me just arriving to a new work, and not being able to focus since I must also spend significant amounts of time figuring out how to find money for a second year, and if I can’t find money for a second year in France, try to apply for a new position somewhere else.

Finally before X-mas, after a full year of trying and failing I managed to secure my contract for 2011; which means that I will be staying in France one more year. The cycle begins again since at the end of the spring beginning of the summer I must start looking for a new job for 2012… what will be my next destination?

On the romantic side of things, 2010 was a very poor one… no important amorous relationships were created and no meaningful romantic adventures happened. I didn’t lack opportunities yet I lacked initiative and drive; probably it’s due to a feeling of sadness I’ve been carrying with me this year, a thorn in my soul. Regardless, I think I’ve made a couple of good new friends during 2010, that’s rewarding enough for the moment.

2010 was a year of reflection; I have done a lot of thinking and calculating on how to live my life as I really want. Defining clearer than ever my goals for the future… the ways I want to live. I have come to many personal realizations and I realized that I have made many mistakes I must correct soon if I truly want to accomplish my dreams. It has triggered a number of small life decisions and choices that hopefully in the long term will proof very beneficial. Your dreams and your goals should be priority number one and you should do whatever it takes to accomplish them and make them a reality, your reality. It sounds cliché, but it’s definitively true… assuming that you do have goals and dreams, and that they are as big as they can be.

I’m still very confused about many things, unsure and uncertain about many others… I guess that's normal. In any case, I’m doing all I can to find answers to my questions.

I have already started writing a list of goals for 2011 and beyond, and I have started to do a little planning of how to accomplish all of it or most of it. I want 2011 to be a very positive year, a year full of rewards and zero regrets… but I must be prepared to confront hardships and difficulties because the roads of life are inherently tough and complex. I must not fear pain and suffering, I must not fear failure, because all of them: pain, suffering, and failure are the best teachers… and I have so much to learn and to experience, and sometimes I’ll have to risk, sometimes I’ll have to fight… and life will test me and beat me down to my knees, and I must get up again knowing no defeat. I know that my heart is weak and coward, fearful of a darker tomorrow, fearful of getting hurt, of losing the comfort that I have, of losing at life...

The accomplishments of my goals and dreams will be my ultimate life victory and I will not give up until I am there: that is my fight, determination will be my shelter and patience will be my weapon.

To my readers I wish you the best for 2011, live life fully.

My favorite shoes, Converse, Chuck Taylor All-Stars

I think my feet are a size wider than they’re longer, which means that it’s kind of complicated for me to buy shoes… either they’re the right length but too tight on the sides, or they’re comfortable on the sides but too long. It might be due to the bunion that I inherited from my mother: a bunion is when the joint at the big toe is enlarged for some estrange reason. Most of the time it doesn’t really bother me but if my feet get too cold, it might hurt.

The only shoes that actually fit me well are the Converse… however, the reason I wear them is because I really like them. The first pair of Converse I wore was back in Colombian when I was a teenager, maybe 15 years old… I used them for a while, and then stopped wearing them for a few years while I was in university—I couldn’t afford them simply. After I moved to Sweden I began using them continuously ever since and I’m not planning to stop wearing them on my everyday life for the time being.

Now that I’m in Paris the problem is that they wear out really quickly! Perhaps, because I walk a lot more than I did in Sweden: the last pair only lasted 6 months before I had a hole in the sole of both shoes… check the picture.

Don't worry, I already got a new pair.

Luckily, Converse could be the coolest single pair of shoes ever invented. So classy, versatile, and timeless, thanks Chuck Taylor All-Stars!

Did you know that the Converse was designed in the 1910’s and that the brand was bought by Nike in 2003? I didn’t!

Where is Dulcinea del Toboso?

[…] he came to the conclusion that nothing more was needed now but to look out for a lady to be in love with; for a knight-errant without love was like a tree without leaves or fruit, or a body without a soul. (From Don Quijote de la Mancha, by Cervantes)

I remember the first time I read this passage, back then I was a naïve teen at the university, in Bogotá. I was a delusional romantic, falling in love with my female classmates, writing poems of love and solitude, and composing love letters to my beautiful beloveds. I couldn't agree more with Don Quijote!

Today, I couldn’t be less concerned about finding my Dulcinea del Toboso; although it’s been quite sometime since I felt legitimately in love… ever since then I’ve been enjoying of the short nightly adventures that life my bestow upon me! So distant I’ve kept myself from getting involved romantically that a life without marriage and offspring is starting to seem quite reasonable: I’ve always wanted a family and children, but at this time of history it isn’t really necessary for me to pass my genes to the next generation… is it? It’d be more for the gratification and the satisfaction of familial love than for anything else.

I’m wondering if I should become a knight-errand and find her, my Dulcinea… just as the one Don Quijote describes in chapter XIII:

[…] her rank must be at least that of a princess, since she is my queen and lady, and her beauty superhuman, since all the impossible and fanciful attributes of beauty which the poets apply to their ladies are verified in her; for her hairs are gold, her forehead Elysian fields, her eyebrows rainbows, her eyes suns, her cheeks roses, her lips coral, her teeth pearls, her neck alabaster, her bosom marble, her hands ivory, her fairness snow, and what modesty conceals from sight such, I think and imagine, as rational reflection can only extol, not compare.

And go crazy and abandon all my wits for the sake of love and adventure! It doesn’t sound so bad, too lose oneself and sacrifice reason and logic for an exceedingly beautiful and exceedingly intelligent lady. It could be the perfect excuse to stop worrying about the insignificance and mundanity of the human condition; like paying taxes, buying the milk, waking up early to catch the bus, or bothering the secretary because after eight months in France I still can’t get my social security number…

A field of tulips in Holland (1886), Claude Monet

A bowl of ramen, s'il vous plaît! Sapporo Ramen in Paris

If you know me, you should know by now that I love Asian food; Chinese food, Thai, Indian, sushi… it’s all so very good. To my opinion, the Asian way of cooking is so much better than the European, I would say like a thousand times better.

Back when I was living in Uppsala, I used to go almost every day to a Chinese restaurant called Fugu. It was simply delicious, I couldn’t get enough of it; and for that reason I ended visiting the place since the very first day they opened it about four years ago, until the last day of my stay in Sweden. It was very nostalgic for me to think I wouldn’t have my dear restaurant so close any longer.

However; life is like a river, it flows continuously… things come and things go, people come and people go, restaurants come and restaurants go. So I have come across with my favorite restaurant in Paris, it’s a Japanese restaurant! They don’t sell sushi, they specialize in ramen! Oh god, such mighty ramen… it’s almost miraculous, Sapporo Ramen! The place is tiny and it’s located in Rue Saint-Honoré… close to the Louvre Museum and it’s a street full of Japanese restaurants of all sorts.

My new favorite food, very nutritious

Sapporo Ramen is special, it has a bar where you can seat and eat watching the cook prepare the ramen, that’s so awesome. I think the restaurant is very authentic, they don't sell any sushi, and it’s run by a Japanese family; there are plenty of Japanese people eating there at all times… so I think that’s a good sign of authenticity.

I personally love it.

Music for the soul, Palais Garnier

I was talking once with a Spanish girl about Paris when she told me that she didn’t like the city because she thought there was no culture, no art, and pretty much nothing to do. I was literally shock… what was she thinking? Did she really understand anything about the ways of life?

Last week I had the craving for some higher forms of musical expression, to delight my soul and clear for a moment the storm that rages within me. I was feeling like going to see some opera, a ballet, or a concert. I decided to go to a chamber music concert at the beautiful Palais Garnier; they were going to play music from Robert Schumman (1810-1856), Ernst Krenek (1900-1991), and Paul Hindemith (1895-1963). The last two musicians were new to me, never heard from them before… It was really nice to have the contrast of Schumman with the more modern sounds of Krenek and Hindemith that to my impression still sounds very random, though I’m sure it isn’t like that.

The ceiling of the concert hall, painted in 1964 by Marc Chagall

Going to the Palais Garnier is an amazing experience; it’s like time traveling to the XIX century. It’s so beautiful and luxurious, statues of the great composers here and there, marble of all colors, the gold, the red velvet and the satin. I particularly love the roof of the concert hall; it was painted in 1964, so colorful and vivid contrasting very much in style with the entire palace that was actually inaugurated in 1875, built in a neo-baroque style… as I just learnt.

If you ever get to be in Paris, you definitively have to come to the Palais Garnier and go to a show... It will transport you to a different world. And it isn’t that expensive, I paid 20 Euro for my ticket but it's possible to find tickets down to 8 Euro, which means that it’s pretty much accessible for anyone. It’s a great pity that most people believe that going to the opera is unaffordable, or that you have to go fully dressed up with gown and what not… though most people wouldn’t really find entertaining an opera show, a ballet, or a Beethoven’s symphony; so, I guess it doesn’t really matter.

Bravo! Bravissimo!

The transformation of personality

It is usually thought that we are all born with a given personality, that we are some type of person from birth and that the type of person that have been assigned to us—by genetics, destiny, or god—is immutable, impossible to be changed, transformed, or evolved. So, if I just happen to be… let say for example; impatient, arrogant, too timid, clumsy, bad at math, stupid, control freak, ‘always-fall-for-the-wrong-person’, mean, too naïve, too lazy, boring, a mess, too quiet, too stubborn, etc, etc, etc… “Well, sorry, that’s the person I am, there’s nothing I can do about it, love it, hate it, I can’t change who I am.”

I think it is wrong in so many ways to think that we can’t change ourselves just because we are who we are, and we have to accept that.

I think who we are: our personality and the things we do are changeable… I think that we can become a better person, that we can improve our personality and ‘the way we are’ as much as we want. I think we can become more understanding, kinder, more patient, more open, better lovers, more interesting, more mature, more successful at anything we want to be more successful… and in consequence we will be able to take better decisions, make the right choices, and live better and more satisfying lives.

But how do we change what needs to be changed about us, how do we change those qualities that hold us back , that make us fail, that make us suffer, that make us go for the wrong choice? How do we become better persons?

The transformation of personality is a very slow process, some aspects might be easier to change, other aspects (the ones that run deep within our very selves) might be quite challenging. The transformation of personality begins automatically when we realize that there is something about us that needs to be changed because it’s fucking up our lives and it’s making our lives unhappy or getting us into too much trouble. It implies certain degree of self awareness; it implies that we should know ourselves enough to be able to realize that something must be done… that something needs to be changed; not many people reach that level of self awareness, unfortunately.

However the most important ingredient for the transformation of personality is a strong desire for change and improvement; without it, change might be impossible. This blog post is not for the people that do not want to change; this post is for those of us that know we could be better persons and that we have lots of potential… but are afraid or unsure because maybe changing ourselves, transforming ourselves into a better version of us may be impossible. It is not impossible, it is within the capacity of our brains to learn new behaviors, new habits, and to unlearn whatever bad behaviors or habits that are leading us astray.

There are many different strategies to achieve the transformations that we desire and to accelerate those changes… perhaps in another post I will talk more in detail about it. Today suffice to say that to cause change the two most important aspects are: (a) some degree of self awareness and (b) a desire to change.

If for some reason you are that kind of person that is looking for a change… I hope this post helps you out a bit.

As a last word and advice for those who are on the path to become the best you could be; one of the best things you could do to speed up the metamorphosis of the soul and get rid of all those demons that haunt us is: to travel, travel far, go to places never visited before, and go by yourself, meet new people, breath new airs, expand your horizons…

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The caterpillar pic was originally posted to Flickr by Maggi_94 http://www.flickr.com/photos/27126314@N03/4947065075/ under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic. The blue morpho pic was originally posted to Flickr by jcaputo4 http://www.flickr.com/photos/jcaputo4/4450687232/ under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic.

Lady Love by Paul Éluard, L'amoureuse

About a month ago I mentioned that two of my all-time favorite poems were coincidentally written by French authors, both of them born in Paris. The first one that I already shared here in my blog was The Forigner by Baudelaire (click in the link to check it out). However, today I would like to share with you perhaps the single most beautiful poem I have ever read, my top favorite of all times; it’s original name is L’amoureuse, translated to English as Lady Love, but you can also find it as The Beloved written by Paul Éluard (1895-1952). He was a surrealist, and the beauty and simplicity of this poem is just wonderful.

Enjoy.

Lady Love

She is standing on my lids
And her hair is in my hair
She has the colour of my eye
She has the body of my hand
In my shade she is engulfed
As a stone against the sky

She will never close her eyes
And she does not let me sleep
And her dreams in the bright day
Make the suns evaporate
And me laugh cry and laugh
Speak when I have nothing to say

This poem remind me of Tulips

That translation to English was done by Samuel Beckett, an Irish writer. Here is the original version by Paul Éluard in French.


L'amoureuse

Elle est debour sur mes paupières
Et ses cheveux sont dans les miens,
Elle a la forme de mes mains,
Elle a la couleur de mes yeux,
Elle s'engloutit dan mon ombre
Comme une pierre sur le ciel.

Elle a toujours les yeux ouverts
Et ne me laisse pas dormir.
Ses rêves en pleine lumière
Font s'évaporer les soleils,
Me font rire, pleurer et rire,
Parler sans avoir rien à dire

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The pic was originally posted to Flickr by Kıvanç Niş http://www.flickr.com/photos/kiwanc/464046403/ under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

Tartare de bœuf and two dreams of horror

Dear reader,

I truly hope you’re having a great day, that everything is going as you planned it and that you’re feeling full of vitality and motivation. On my side, well… I’m not so certain, I have now accumulated a lot of mental fatigue and I’m almost at my limit; my soul is agitated by strong winds, stormy winds, as if I was just a dry leaf swept away in the fall. This is—of course—reflected in my dreams: last Sunday I had two intense nightmares the very same night! I’ve never had two nightmares in one night! Both of them extremely horrible, but I’ll tell you more about it later after I tell you about Tartare de bœuf…

Tartare de bœuf is a French dish, it’s made of minced meat from beef, served raw: with the yolk of an egg on top, also raw. So last Wednesday I was at a pretty cool place in Paris called Académie de la Bière: it could be one of the few places in the city with quite a big collection of beers. I was very hungry so I ordered the Tartare completely unaware that it was raw meat… it didn’t really taste bad; I actually liked it… BUT with lethal consequences for my health since it unleashed the full fury of my intestines next day in the morning. It might have been polluted with some bacteria or virus, or simply I just had never been exposed to the prokaryotic ecosystem inhabiting this raw meat… in any case, I had two days of cataclysmic toilet experiences. Once, I was woken up around four in the morning by a nuclear chain reaction in my guts, I jumped from the bed and ran to the bathroom, KABOOM! I think I created a new form of matter; I call this new element, poopinium, it’s in liquid form at body temperature.

Alright, I hope I didn’t gross you out my dear reader. Now I will tell you about my nightmares, both of them happened during the same night. In the first one, I got shot in the head, yeah that’s right: someone shot me with a gun in the head, damn it! Why do my brain has to generate such horrible dream? I was going around, agonizing in pain… waiting for the moment of my death; I could see the blood, I could feel the hole in my skull. So so so terrible. In the second nightmare, I’m in the house where I grew up, reunited with all my family; when all of a sudden there’s an earthquake, a huge earthquake magnitude 9.0 in the Richter scale. I could feel the building shaking, the devastation, and a massive flood… the panic and the horror was immense. I remember I saw in the sky a partial solar eclipse.

What do these dreams mean? Why do I have to get murdered in my own dreams?

On a more positive side, I visited perhaps one of the coolest places in town. Its name is Curio Parlor and it’s a cocktail club. The place is located in the 5th arrondissement, the Latin Quarters; in a small street. It’s a little clandestine since from the outside you can’t really notice is there… there are no sings or lights that could point at it. The place sells experimental cocktails, I had one called Mexico 55 and another one called Jamaica something Tiki; both delicious. Curio Parlor is tiny, with a pretty cool decoration of taxidermized animals… A peackock here, a fox there, some other birds in the toilet, a collection of insects downstairs. According to them, it is the only Nikka bar outside Japan… I found out there that Nikka is a Japanese Whysky: I tried it out of curiosity and it’s pretty good. I really recommend this place, I must say that the atmosphere is great and the people is very friendly.

Peace out.

60 or 62, strikes in Paris because of the Pension reform

It’s the seventh day of strike in France because of the new pension reform and things are starting to get scary. The huge parade of protesters passed near my place leaving a horrible trail of dirt, trashing everything around, throwing eggs to the bank walls… etc, etc. I arrived home from work at around 6.00 pm and the parade was still going, I think it started at 1.30 pm. It’s kind of scary because you never know when some crazy vandal decides to get things violent… this sort of intense protest always ends up wrong.

Who’s right here? Is it the government that wants to reform the pension law because France population is getting older and there’s not enough young people to pay pensions and benefits… is it the leaders of France that foresee an imminent economical crisis if the reform isn’t done and the people can’t understand that? Or is it that the government of France aims at oppressing the French proletariat? But perhaps it is possible to keep the retirement age at 60 and all the benefits French people enjoy by some other means? Or is it the proletariat and the opposing wing trying to sticking it to Sarkozy?

I have no idea, and truth be told: I don’t fucking care… but I dislike these manifestations where the city is trashed down. It sucks, Paris is such a beautiful clean city and having to see it all dirty makes me angry. And why there are some kids burning cars and looting? This is so stupid, it’s like a brat getting angry because mom didn’t buy him the expensive toy he wanted.

Is this democracy, is this freedom?

A very interesting protester with his automatically producing bubble cart

Try French Kiss

Tanai’s Amazing Blog is celebrating its first 1000 visits! Isn’t that AMAZING! Yeah baby, it is! And to celebrate this special occasion I will share with you an old secret and mysterious writing of mine… I had actually forgotten about its existence, I don’t even remember when I wrote it or why I wrote it, and now that I was reading and editing it didn’t feel as if I wrote it myself, it didn’t trigger any memories about its origins (there’s a slight chance that I wrote it drunk… probably I was coming from some party in Uppsala, late in the night, and my neurons had decided not to memorize anymore).

It has no title. It’s about a kiss, that first kiss… I wanted to write a blog post about ‘a kiss’, I had been thinking about it constantly but the right fuel for my inspiration hadn't come. I find very mysterious though that today when I was browsing my old writings: tralaaan! Suddenly there it was! I had already written it who-knows-when in the past! It has some eloquence and some randomness that I like.

Please, enjoy.

‡

I could not believe what I had in front of my eyes, her big brown eyes staring at my lips no further than the distance that takes to write the word love in big letters. This wasn’t just once, maybe twice, three times, four times perhaps. She looked at my lips again, moving her gaze slowly from my mouth, caressing my nose, to my eyes. The words… sailing the air in a meaningless sentence. A millimetric movement forward and her face started to blush slightly, her lips turned from her natural pink to an intense red. I felt how deep inside her a hot feeling spread all over her body like a tsunami. I am amazed how subjective the meaning of a kiss can be; I have kissed women without ever saying a word to her, women that I have lost from my memory already. I have kissed women whose lips I still can feel in my mouth emerging from the deepest corners of my heart when I say to myself her name once and once again. That kiss will change it all, will change her life in a way she is not expecting at all… it always has such a transformative power; as if suddenly you become a different person, dreams will start blossoming in the middle of the winter, the nights will be covered by an infinite light, and her body will be bound to mine like stars are bound to the galaxies by gravity. It cannot happen; time and space are spiky friends. The treasure seems vaster when harder it gets to find it; I will fall, willingly… I cannot resist it any longer; I am a human being and I feel intensely. How beautiful and how pleasurable it is this subtle adventure of delicate love.

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The pic was originally posted to Flickr by magerleagues http://www.flickr.com/photos/mager/3264750006/#/ under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic.