Things I'm not good at

1 - throwing things away
2 - not gesticulating when I'm talking
3 - organizing my shoes
4 - organizing my closet, as a matter of fact
5 - not smiling
6 - saying goodbye

Elizabeth Bishop lived in Brazil and in Cambridge, MA - as I did. And she wrote a beautiful poem about losing people and places.

One art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.


--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

What women should know about Game Theory

Let's say you start seeing a new guy. And, yes, you get really excited about him. He is very smart, cool, tall, dark and handsome. But you are really unsure whether he likes you or not.

So you decide to give him a signal that you are a cool, smart, independent girl.You obviously don't want to scare the guy away saying how much you like him and how needy and kind of crazy you really are. And here you are, acting really cool because he didn't call 3 days in a row or you are making excuses for his behavior (yes, he's just scared of how much he likes me) and so on.

And that's the road to disaster.

Because you should not be signaling, you should be screening.


You should be acting kind of crazy because you want to know if the guy sticks around it's only because he likes you. You should make sure that the guy will make an effort to see you. If he likes you he will make the effort to signal it.

And the genius advice my micro teacher gave is: the signal should be costly for him. If the guy takes you to an expensive restaurant, that's not s costly effort for him (for most guy I know, at least), he just likes it - with or without you. If he takes you along to things he already likes, it doesn't mean he likes you.

To make sure the guy you are seeing likes you make sure he's sending a costly signal to demonstrate his interest. My personal experience is that no guy likes kind of crazy behavior - but some of them stay even after I act kind of crazy. And the one that matters always stood there. Some of my friends like to take the guys they are dating to family reunions. Others take them to the ballet.

Otherwise he may just be spending time with an easy girl he never actually liked... and you will end up having long dinners with friends trying to understand how a guy that "clearly" liked you dumped you. He may never have liked you on the first place, as harsh as it seems...

And I admit that there is a fine line between acting a little crazy and scaring every guy away. Or you may end up attracting freaks who like really crazy girls.

And - guys - be aware: there's a difference between interesting and hence kind of crazy and  crazy to distract you from the fact that I have a very boring personality...

P.S.: This post is for my awesome professor Asim, who taught me about contract and game theory. I actually wrote in a memo for his class that game theory had helped me on the dating part of my life and that now I was hoping contract theory would help me not get a divorce...

What Thom Yorke taught me about Economics

I went to the amaaaaazing Thom Yorke and Atoms for Peace concert. Thom Yorke is the lead singer of Radiohead and object of indie blind devotion. And - just to be honest - I adore him. Since my teen years, Radiohead has always been a favorite of mine (come on! The guy wrote Creep - my teen anthem)! The fact that Flea - bass player of Red Hot Chili Peppers - was also on stage just made my day. It was just awesome.

And Thom managed to teach some Economics concepts.


1 - Coordination failure
We had Orchestra seats - kind of in the back of the Theater but still pretty centrally located. However, we stood up all the concert. If the guys on the front rows sat down, the whole orchestra would have watched the concert sitting and not standing up. So, sometimes rational human beings do not take the best decision for the collectivity because if the decision is not made by everybody at the same time, the cost of being the first one to act it's too high for any private individual to do it. Therefore, I stood up...

2 - Warm glow
When Radiohead released their album "In Rainbows" (amazing album btw), they offered it for download to the price you wanted to pay. The question was: why would you pay for something you could get for free? Rationally, it wouldn't make any sense. Still, people paid for downloading the album. Maybe those people derive utility from doing something they consider good (reqarding amazing musician for their music). People's utility function is not only based on maximizing resources - it also involves how they feel about it.