Urban duality

The counterfactual lives

2011-02-21T07:42:00.001-05:00

We have learned in our statistics and econometrics classes to think about the counterfactual of a given situation. What if instead of this happening, something else happened. What if we didn't give the kids schooling what would be the outcome in terms of GDP growth.

Apparently, we internalized this concept very well. And we are now imagining endless counterfactual lives. We spend a lot of time second-guessing our decisions and mentally punishing ourselves for not having made the right choices.

What if I had moved to country A because I really liked their culture, and continued dating B because he was so amazing and maybe I gave up on him very fast, and what if I pushed a little more for a job at C where I would be making a lot of money? Wouldn't my life be great? Or if what if I have stayed at our first job, married our first love and by now have amazing and brilliant kids, wouldn't I feel satisfied?

The problem we are facing now is that we have endless possibilities instead of A, B and C. We could easily move to several countries, we have met pretty awesome people and we could have found many different jobs.

However, our idea of counterfactual lives is very biased. We never imagine that we would miss our culture if we moved to country A, or that B would turn out to be an unreliable womanizer or the fantastic job at C would have given us a heart attack at 35. The grass is always greener on the other side.

We tend to think that from all the possibles lives we could have picked, we chose the a sub-par one.

Are we just non-committal freaks, trying to have all opportunities open all the time? Are we obsessive comparing our lives to others? Are we just trying to improve all the time?

Two thing come to my mind when I think about this:

a Tony Judt quote that Meg posted the other day: " Who could do any better in the circumstances? The answer, of course, is 'a better me' and it is surprising how often we ask that we be a better version of our present self--in the full knowledge of just how difficult it was getting this far".
Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind - in the movies, Joel try to erase his story with Clementine. He gives up in the middle. Our memories and our mistakes are just part of who we are.

Astérix and the electric guitar

2010-09-22T17:49:00.000-04:00

Last week I saw the very good Brazilian documentary “Uma noite em 67” (a night in 67) about the music festivals held by a major TV chain. Those music festivals were a big hit in the late 60’s (kind of the same success American Idol had… but with better musicians and not so cheesy jury) and the main popular singers of Brazil at the time performed at the competition.

One thing, however, caught my attention more than anything. In 1967, some famous Brazilian musicians organized a protest against the electric guitar. According to them, the electric guitar would destroy the Brazilian music as after the electric guitar would come the Imperialist Pop music.

This reaction towards the electric guitar seems very much as how Astérix reacted to the Romans – they resisted and they would alone defeat them. Never mind that the Romans had better sewage systems, for instance. The point was: they would not be destroyed by the imperialist conqueror. As you can see very much the spirit of Porto Alegre…

What happened in the 67 festival? For me, onBee of the most touching moments was when Caetano Veloso started his song – Alegria, Alegria (Happiness, Happiness) – with a Beach-Boys-alike band, with electric guitars and long hairs. He was first being booed by the audience (“how dare him spoil our heritage with this Imperialist instrumnent?”) but the music is so beautiful and Caetano co charismatic that in the middle of the song, the audience changed its mind and began applauding and singing along.

That same night Gilberto Gil and Os Mutantes presented also a beautiful song with electric guitars. The Tropicalismo movement was born: electric guitars mixed with Brazilian traditional music, Bossa Nova and Rolling Stones together. And the music is just absolutely amazing - it changed the way music was understood and played in Brazil. It's not only the old vs the new: it's embracing the new that exist globally and using it with a local beat.

It’s funny how Brazilians some time insist in protecting their country from the evil influence of the rest of the world. We are on our best when we take elements from the outside, mix with our good things and make a fantastic product. Check the success Embrapa had with agriculture (The Economist said that the rest of the World should learn from us how to improve the productivity of the agricultural sector). Should we go back to our anthropophagic roots?

Things I'm not good at

2010-05-30T01:21:00.000-04:00

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

2010-05-11T15:42:00.001-04:00

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

2010-05-03T21:43:00.000-04:00

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.

Contracts or how to avoid a divorce - part deux

2010-04-14T20:37:00.000-04:00

After a very insightful feedback on the my post from an unexpected source of relationship wisdom and one illuminating comment by a life guru on an actual situation I was going through, I have a few observations to make on marriage and contracts:

1 - If you frame it as a contract, you lose it. The problem is if you try to make informal relationships too formal, you'll lose the easiness and flexibility. You'll end up with a stiff relation without any spontaneous movement. Nothing more boring than scheduled romanticism.

2 - If you focus too much on the details of the contract, you may loose the big picture. Why are you willing to spend the rest of your life with that person? The big picture should be because you love them. A lot. Sometimes is good to take a step back and remind yourself why you're doing this in the first place.

3 - I still think it's a valid internal process to figure out more or less what are your expectations regarding a marriage and the act of codifying expectations may be truly insightful (my bet is that most people will have kind of unrealistic expectations on marriage but they never really thought about it)

4 - Can we make a Tiger Woods clause? In Portuguese - "apelou, perdeu"! Roughly translated as you don't play fair, you loose. Immediately. (OK, so this clause comes from my obsession to understand what the heck was Tiger doing with all those women - NY Magazine called them half-hookers). So, en hommage à S., I just had to mention Tiger.

Contracts or how to avoid a divorce

2010-03-28T23:28:00.001-04:00

The wedding wave has arrived in Cambridge. Over the past 3 months, 4 of my brilliant classmates decided to get engaged. As I plan a trip to Pakistan to attend one wedding, I have started to think on what makes a marriage successful?

My answer to that was: contract theory! Marriages should be viewed as partnership contract between two people and not as romantic fate. Before people start thinking that I'm a cold-hearted bitch, I have to say I'm actually more romantic than most people: I want a marriage that lasts, I don't think I could go through a divorce without losing my mind. That said: let's analyze contract theory a little bit.

As we have learned in contract theory class, to draw a good contract you must go through 3 phases: gather internal information of what you want to achieve in the partnership, negotiate and explicit the deal terms with your counterpart, codify it so a third party can enforce the contract at an eventual breach. Problems arise because contracts are incomplete: you can never foresee all the possibilities of life when you draw a contract and there is a possibility that one of the parties may want to renegotiate the contract because they feel that unforeseen events have altered they payoff of the partnership.

If you're lost in the economics-jargon, worry not, my dear.

To have a successful marriage you have to first understand who you are and what you expect from a marriage (how many hours you want to dedicate to the family vs. work, how many kids you wanna have, what kind if education you want to give them, how you feel about savings vs spending, how ambitious are you, should you have a TV on the living room or in the bedroom, etc.). When you have that clear you can talk to your partner (who also knows what s/he wants) and you can understand the other and compromise to codify the mutual understanding into one marriage contract. You know your role and you trust the other to follow their role. If people took the time to actually understand what they want and communicate it to the partner, I think many divorces (aka contract renegotiation) would be avoided because we would have a better contract on the first place.

In my view, marriage contracts should have already stated that they will have periodic revisions as to make sure that the partners are still happy after so many unforeseen events (aka life) happen.

My only caveat would be: DO NOT OVER-REGULATE! I personally hate to be micro-managed and would be annoyed to the point of leaving the negotiation table if I had a partner that would insist on negotiating details such appropriate skirt length, authorized nail polish colors, appropriate time spent on bed on Sunday mornings, etc, etc. Just let me be!

Synapses

2010-02-24T23:44:00.000-05:00

1 - Education
I have been more and more convinced that to tackle the low-quality-education challenge that haunts Brazil (and many other countries that have already achieved universal schooling) will have to go through the market or quasi-market forces.
And then I found this book describing that he founds that private schools are providing quality education for poor people in poor countries. Interesting. Aid Watch has a wonderful analysis of it here. My favorite part? "Most reasons that the parents gave for their choice had to do with what the World Bank calls the “short route” to accountability (as opposed to the “long route” which works through the political process)"

2 - China Investment in the World
A map of China non-asset investment in the World can be found here. The DR of Congo received US$7.9 billion form 2005 to 2009 (China is investing heavily in their copper mines and basic infrastructure as roads, railroads and hospitals). DR of Congo GDP? Find it here - but it's now US$ 10.8 bi. Yes, you can see exactly when China started investing in the country

Silences

2010-01-27T21:49:00.002-05:00

A - Silent Nights

I lay in bed, looking at the ceiling. You’re lying next to me, half asleep. I’m crying – in silence. I open my mouth in vain: I cannot articulate any word. I want to tell you how confused and insecure I am.

You don’t notice the tears or the quiet struggle.

I insist on my useless attempts to speak - air is expelled from my mouth, but no sound is formed. I feel like there’s a rock on my chest – pushing me into the bed, making me short of breath and immobile. I can physically feel the rock – my chest hurts from its weight and pressure.

I stare at the ceiling, defeated. You’re still oblivious.

One night. Two nights. So many nights of this lonesome silent ballet.

I cry a little bit more in the dark, making sure I’ll not wake you from your drunken maze.

B - Silent eyes

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

any experience, your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and

my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility; whose texture

compels me with the color of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens; only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

e.e. cummings

Oysters

2009-12-26T21:35:00.001-05:00

“Such mechanisms are analogous to the involuntary grace by which an oyster, coping with an irritating grain of sand, creates a pearl,” he writes. “Humans, too, when confronted with irritants, engage in unconscious but often creative behavior.”

From this very good article on what makes us happy.

2009 surely gave me enough pearls to make a necklace.

Cats in my life

2009-12-01T22:23:00.005-05:00

I had two very pleasant surprises today: one came by mail - it made me nostalgic - the other was waiting for me on my desk - it made me grateful for my life in Cambridge.

It also reminded me of how much cats have been a part of my life. I never had a cat so it's much more the simbology than the affection to one specific feline that have been a constant in my life.

In (kind of) chronological order:

1 - Aristocats: it was my favorite movie when I was a small kid. I just wonder how I watched it as we never had a VCR in my house...

2 - Os Saltimbancos: this is very much a Brazilian reference. But I grew up in a country with very limited access to foreign goods (Pringles were a MAJOR luxury product) and therefore have a lot of memories with Brazilian musics and products. The Saltimbancos was a very good story LP (with music and story telling) from Chico Buarque about 4 animals (a donkey, a cat, a dog and a hen) that wanted to escape the abuse of their mean and abusive human owners and discover that they are powerful if they stick together. Major political message - we were living in a military dictatorship but "together we are strong". Anyway, I loved the character of the lazy domesticated cat who got kicked out of the house because she couldn't resist the bohemian nights with the street cats. (The clip is from a classic movie they made after the LP)

3 - Egyptian cat at Louvre: when I was a kid, my father was married to a french woman that I adored - Iany. She took me many times to Louvre and great part of my love for art and cinema (see below) has to do with her. She guided me to become a super-curious-prematurely-exposed-to-a-LOT-of-adult-art kid. Unfortunately, they got a horrible separation which I could not entirely overcome up to this day. And I never got to thank her for all the positive influence she had on me.

4 - When the cat comes (Az prijde kocour): a Czech movie from the 60's about a cat who could see the true nature and emotions of people - and then people become "colored" accordingly: red for lovers, purple for liars, etc. Iany took me to see this movie and I loved it. She was also responsible for memorable movie theaters sessions: The Mahrabarata, Orson Welles, Almodóvar, etc, etc, etc - did I mention I was a kid when watched all of those movies??

5 - Confuse a cat- - I adore Monty Python. This is one of my favorite sketches. Sometimes I feel like my true calling is to be a cat confuser. And after the MPA/ID, we know that the best way to confuse a depressed cat is to have giraffes around...

It was a good Thursday

2009-11-21T01:03:00.002-05:00

Thanks for dragging me to the concert. It turned a dull day into a Wagnerian experience.

The strange obsession of faith in life

2009-11-17T18:02:00.004-05:00

Last Sunday I went to Milton Nascimento concert at Berklee. I have always liked Milton Nascimento but I would hardly consider myself a die-hard fan (as I am a Caetano or Chico Buarque fan).

However, to my complete surprise, I knew most lyrics of the songs and - even more surprising - seeing him performing live gave me goose bumps. His songs were a part of my early childhood: one of my first memories is my mom listening to his LP Ponta de Areia in our living room in the first house I have ever lived. My emotional memory is more linked to Milton Nascimento than I thought, all those images of my childhood flooded my mind thanks to the concert. It made me nostalgic and with saudades from my family.

Bonus soundtrack - Para Lennon e McCartney/Maria, Maria - probably two of his most famous songs, from where I took the quote. And it kind of fit me - I have a strange obsession of faith in life.

A tender moment in a chilly day

2009-11-13T17:35:00.002-05:00

Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days
Ted Hughes

She gives him his eyes, she found them
Among some rubble, among some beetles

He gives her her skin
He just seemed to pull it down out of the air and lay it over her
She weeps with fearfulness and astonishment

She has found his hands for him, and fitted them freshly at the wrists
They are amazed at themselves, they go feeling all over her

He has assembled her spine, he cleaned each piece carefully
And sets them in perfect order
A superhuman puzzle but he is inspired
She leans back twisting this way and that, using it and laughing
Incredulous

Now she has brought his feet, she is connecting them
So that his whole body lights up

And he has fashioned her new hips
With all fittings complete and with newly wound coils, all shiningly oiled
He is polishing every part, he himself can hardly believe it

They keep taking each other to the sun, they find they can easily
To test each new thing at each new step

And now she smoothes over him the plates of his skull
So that the joints are invisible

And now he connects her throat, her breasts and the pit of her stomach
With a single wire

She gives him his teeth, tying the the roots to the centrepin of his body

He sets the little circlets on her fingertips

She stiches his body here and there with steely purple silk

He oils the delicate cogs of her mouth

She inlays with deep cut scrolls the nape of his neck

He sinks into place the inside of her thighs

So, gasping with joy, with cries of wonderment
Like two gods of mud
Sprawling in the dirt, but with infinite care
They bring each other to perfection.

This is not America

2009-11-12T22:27:00.002-05:00

I live in a overly-educated, refined, rich bubble. We feel safe and protected (except from the robberies and the oh-so-scandalous murder). But this is not America.
The other day we were leaving the Friday night party at the museum and one of us suggested eating at Burger King. The clever answer that another one gave was:
"I don't live in the US, I live in Cambridge".
Latin-Americans always felt close to American culture: movies, candies, brands, music - all the imperialistic propaganda (this is an ironic joke). However, after 1 year living here - do I really know America?

Bonus track - David Bowie (LOOOOOVE him - I could do a whole series of posts based only in his song titles)

Belonging

2009-11-10T00:12:00.002-05:00

I have never lived more than 5 years in the same house. I have packed and unpacked several times - and still now I have things scattered in many boxes in many places. I'm not afraid of changes - even when they are difficult.

I have rarely missed the feeling of belonging somewhere.

However, this weekend I had the feeling of belonging. Interestingly enough it wasn't belonging to a place but belonging side by side with people. And it felt so good.

Boston

2009-11-08T11:48:00.003-05:00

I'm not a big fan of Boston. There - I said it!
However as I start to discover some neighborhoods as the South End, I start to appreciate the city a little bit more. Of course, the cheese, wine and prosciutto may have helped. And the fantastic dinner with good friends that we cooked after.

But I think I'm beginning to enjoy the city for the city itself.

The First Fridays at the MFA, the ICA, the bakeries, the little shops with tons of character, the beautiful buildings, the good restaurants.

Not so much the winter, though. That's too much to ask...

Bodas de Ouro - 50th Wedding Anniversary

2009-11-03T23:43:00.003-05:00

I have a lot of theories about the world. This should be already very clear for those who know me as I'm constantly saying "I have a theory that xyz is happening because..." and then I go into rather long digressions about life.

One of my theories is the "marriage wave" - as I'm surrounded by wedding invitations from friends, co-workers and acquaintances, I'm left to ponder why they happen at the same time. But, as I'm a cynical daughter of divorced parents, I believe that this is only the first "marriage wave" - about half of the marriages will end in divorce. Therefore we will have a "divorce wave" and people will remarry afterward on the "second marriage wave".

As I'm approaching 30 and I expect at least half the marriages to end in divorce, we will see very few 50th Wedding Anniversaries when we get old.

I went to see Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project here at Harvard a couple of weeks ago. The concert was amazing, I had a great time in great company. Yo-Yo Ma received an award at the end of the concert for his effort to promote education and art. The award was named "Thelma E. Goldberg Arts in Education Award" because it was the 50th Anniversary gift that Thelma Goldberg's husband (HBS professor Ray Goldberg) gave to her - an award to foster art and education with her name.

I thought that this was one of the most beautiful gifts that someone could offer a loved one after a 50 years shared life. They not only wanted to celebrate their life together but they also wanted to share their passion to arts and education with the society. I have to say that I think that couples that after 50 years want to celebrate their marriage are one of the things that make me emotional (yes, this is my kind of kitsch).

And then I dawned me: the probability that I will ever have a 50th Anniversary are very very slim. And that is kind of sad.

Feverish hallucinations

2009-10-28T17:45:00.002-04:00

Whenever I get a fever, I have weird dreams.
I had a fever last night and I mistook my room here for my room in Sao Paulo.
I dreamed that it was all a nightmare and I would wake up safely in my green room.

But I woke up here.

Serendipity

2009-10-19T23:06:00.002-04:00

One of my favorite feelings is discovering by chance a new favorite restaurant. You may never come back to the place - but the feeling of stumbling upon a restaurant you love is just magical. The mixture of luck and good food is just extraordinary and makes me so happy. This is one of the beauties of cities: you can have those lucky encounters any day.

I have to be honest about 2 things:

I don't believe in "cosmic significance" or "signs"
That said - when I discover a place that I really like by luck, it automatically becomes one of my favorite places.

I had long conversations with my friends lately about the role of fate. And some quotes really stuck on my head - although I don't like to think things are not meant to be, I do love lucky coincidences. Even if it's just to make my life a little bit more beautiful

"You can't ascribe great cosmic significance to a simple earthly event. Coincidence, that's all anything ever is, nothing more than coincidence. There are no miracles. There is no such thing as fate. Nothing is meant to be." - (500) days of Summer (yes, it's chick flick)

"Quien no lo sepa ya
lo aprenderá de prisa:
la vida no para,
no espera, no avisa.
Tantos planes, tantos planes
vueltos espuma
tu, por ejemplo,
tan a tiempo
y tan
inoportuna"
Jorge Drexler - Inoportuna

"Our day-to-day life is bombarded with fortuities or, to be more precise, with the accidental meeting of people and events that we call coincidence. "Co-incidence" means that two events unexpectedly happen at the same time, they meet: Tomas appears at the restaurant at the same time the radio is playing Beethoven. We do not even notice the great majority of such coincidences. If the seat Tomas occupied had been occupied by the local butcher, Tereza never would have noticed that the radio was playing Beethoven (though the meeting of Beethoven and the butcher would also have been an interesting coincidence). But her nascent love inflamed her sense of beauty, and she would never forget that music. Whenever she heard it, she would be touched." Milan Kundera - The unbearable lightness of being.

Defining Gisela

2009-10-11T12:18:00.000-04:00

Gisela is a city.
Gisela, Arizona, has a population of 532.
It was founded by miners in the late XIX century. The city was named Gisela because the children were reading the book "Countess Gisela" in school and voted that the settlement should be called Gisela after the book.
It's located near the Tonto National Park
21% of the men are firemen - constantly controlling the clash of the high temperatures and the National Park.

Should Gisela, Arizona, even exist?

We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto

2009-10-09T16:04:00.000-04:00

I'm back in Cambridge, MA. I'm no longer living in a Latin-American megalopolis. I'm back at the MPA/ID classes. But I have decided to continue this blog.

It was a road-blog to begin with. And I'm still on the road, trying to figure out a ton of things.

Le vent nous portera

2009-10-08T00:05:00.000-04:00

Blame it on the wind. Blame it on the stars. Blame it on the fall season. Blame it on the moon.

"I shouldn’t tell you
but this moon
but this cognac
leave us moved like the devil."

Carlos Drummond de Andrade

Boston soundtrack of the day

2009-10-03T17:02:00.000-04:00

Garbage - I'm only happy when it rains

Madonna - Rain

Phil Collins - I wish it would rain down

Burt Bacharah - Raindrops keep falling on my head

Gene Kelly - Singing in the rain

Prince - Purple Rain

Prince - Purple Rain (Live Original)
Uploaded by goldrausch. - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

My Balassa-Samuelson haircut

2009-07-22T20:27:00.000-04:00

On our macroeconomics class of the first semester, we learned about the Balassa-Samuelson effect. In a nutshell - services tend to be cheaper in poorer countries ad countries with weaker foreign currency.

So, I badly needed a haircut. I have been meaning to have a haircut since March. When I went to Barcelona, for spring break, I considered having a hair cut but the Euro fee I had to pay for the service was more than I wanted.

I have just one disclaimer: I do spend money on haircuts. Unfortunately, I had pretty terrible experiences going to neighborhoods’ salons, so I do pay more for having a nice haircut in a nice salon. If you feel the need to express your judgment, go ahead – I have 4 brothers that are a constant reminder of nonchalance as a virtue.

Anyway, in need of a haircut, I decided to make a rational choice. I decided that I would have a haircut in a less expensive country than the US Over the summer I was heading to Mexico and Brazil and both countries are less expensive than the US. I looked on the Internet and through aardvark (Jenny, you owe me a beer for that) to fabulous salons in Mexico City. After a few calls, I learned that I would spend around U$40 on a haircut. I had one data point.

If you take GDP per capita, Mexico has U$ 7180 and Brazil has U$ 4289. Therefore, you would expect that a haircut in Brazil – because it’s poorer would be cheaper than in Mexico.

Well, it’s not. If I wanted a haircut in a nice salon in São Paulo, I would have spent at least U$ 130.

Why?

1 – By The Economist Big Mac index, Brazil Real is over-valuated and Mexican Peso is under-valuated and therefore services are more expensive in Brazil than they should be by the Balassa-Samuelson effect

2 – Maybe I should consider the GDP per capita of the cities and not of the country.

And here is my new Mexican haircut.

So you want to learn Portuñol?

2009-07-13T12:25:00.000-04:00

Believe it or not, we do not speak Spanish in Brazil, we speak Portuguese. This language difference has kept Brazil distanced from the rest of the continent. One of my very good friends has a one-woman campaign that we all should speak Portuñol in Latin America to have a regional integration. I definitely support her!

My campaign started in the corporate world – at McK, I had portuñol listed on my language skills in my internal profile. I actually managed to convince one of my co-workers to also list portuñol in his profile (I also convinced him to grow a really cool handlebar moustache, some people really don’t miss me at the office…)

What is Portuñol? Brazilians are normally too lazy to actually learn proper Spanish, so we basically make some words up mixing Portuguese with Spanish accent, and that’s basically all the Spanish we think we need. Spanish speakers normally add the suffix “inho” to every little word and that’s it – a language that connects you with your fellow Latin-Americans. Portuñol is the fusion of Portu(guês)+(Espa)ñol.

So, if you wish to learn portuñol, nothing better that a whole playlist of portuñol songs for you to practice your vocabulary and nail the right accent.

The ultimate Portuñol Playlist – Brazilians singing in bad Spanish, Spanish-speakers singing in bad Portguese.

Caetano Veloso – Un vestido y un amor – Caetano has a whole album in Spanish called Fina Estampa. The album is great and this Fito Paez song is one of my favorite songs.
Gilberto Gil – Soy Loco por ti, América – portuñol in its best, with the whole political message
Os Mutantes – El Justiciero – this is my song addiction of the week. This is classic portuñol: “Tengo chocolate quiente y tequila”, “Socuerro, el Justiciero”. Priceless.
Maria Rita and Jorge Drexler – Soledad – so do not listen to this song if you are feeling suicidal. I have to admit that I cried a little bit at Drexler’s concert here in Mexico when he played this song.
João Gilberto and Caetano– Besame Mucho – classic bolero by Bossa Nova’s gran maestro.
Bebo y Cigala – Eu sei que vou te amar – Cuban pianist, flamenco singer, Brazilian song.
Caetano Veloso – Cucurrucucu paloma– if you watched the Almodóvar movie “Talk to her”, you probably remember the beautiful scene with Caetano and Jacques Morelembaum.
Jorge Drexler – Dom de iludir – OK, I’m a little obsessed with Caetano lately(if you consider 15 years lately). But this song has a classic Caetano verse “every person knows the beauty and sorrows of being who you are”. Rivals THE classic Caê quote: “from up-close, nobody is normal”.

Bonus List – the Karaoke playlist

From my experience, some karaoke nights can change your life. You never know what or whom you will encounter in shady karaoke joints in Latin America, therefore, you should always be prepared to humiliate yourself on public with well-known songs, preferably in a very kitsch bar (or in multi-cultural complex with pool tables, sushi bar, barbecue and Xmas lights in a Japanese-run karaoke, oh, well, I miss São Paulo after all)

Menudos – Não se reprima – claaaaassic 80’s song, Puerto Rico boys group singing in Portuñol. Ricky Martin started his career in this group.
Roberto Carlos – Detalles – the Brazilian King of Romantic Music. You can’t go wrong with Details – “small details of us, are just too big to forget”. This is probably one of the few songs in the world that I can actually remember the lyrics. Corny? Yes. Totally kitsch? Also. Still, I love it.

Street art video (Thiago's tip)

2009-07-06T19:09:00.000-04:00

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Oaxaca street art

2009-07-03T02:55:00.000-04:00

Street art – def.: art developed in public spaces. The term includes graffiti, sticker art, wheatpasting, poster art and other art interventions in the public space.

I like street art because they transform the often so-gray public space into a little space for poetry and humor. Although the root of street art is graffiti and vandalism of public spaces, nowadays this form of art has become mainstream and widely accepted. Shepard Fairey held a major exhibition at the ICA museum in Boston; osgemeos paintings are worth thousand of dollars. And Banksy has an exhibition at the Bristol Museum.

Public spaces have become so boring, lifeless and without identity that I welcome these interventions to remind me of the creativity and aesthetic sense that surrounds me. And I love the public aspect, the transformation of lifeless, grey space into a canvas for color, humor and culture, reclaiming the public space.

I went to Oaxaca, a lovely town on the south of Mexico. I was impressed by the amount of cultural option present there – not only museums of colonial and indigenous art but a lot of local contemporary artists’ scene. Oaxaca is a beautiful small-scale town, so the street art present in the city was a sign of the creativity and vitality of the local artists more than trying to give life to an anonymous building.

Note 1 - a nice website for street art: wooster collective
Note 2 - Support Human Rights in Burma by Shepard Fairey (a little wink to one of my extraordinary classmates, Jacob)

Trash II - the revenge

2009-07-01T20:09:00.000-04:00

This post is a follow-up to Helena’s post on trash in India. I have been studying the financial aspect of the waste management in Mexico for the past weeks and I have to agree with Helena: it’s a fascinating topic.

Mexico – as most of developing countries - has a huge problem with waste. Only 50% of all the waste produced here has a safe destination. I’m not saying it’s properly recycled and used for biofuel, no, I’m just saying that only 50% of the waste is taken out of the open air. Waste has a long list of negative externalities: health, pollution, and here in Mexico even air traffic disruption. “What did you just say?” you might ask. Let me explain.

Municipalities spend a great percentage of their budget on waste collection – from 20 to over 60%. And they just can’t handle efficiently the piles of waste that is produced daily. One Mexican municipality did what most municipalities do: pile it up on an open-air landfill. After years and years of waste disposal, the piles were so high that they were endangering the air traffic to the airport nearby. Picture that!

I think waste management has many aspects:

Broken window effect

In urban centers, if the streets are clean and you can find trash cans everywhere, people would respect more the social optimum and wouldn’t throw trash on the street, as they would do in absence of these signs of cleanliness. How to change the social norm of what is accepted in term of dumping waste?

Social aspect

In developing countries, there are people that make a living from collecting recyclables from the trashcans. Yes, it’s degrading human condition. This lumpenproletariat works in inhuman conditions, exposed to all kind of health threats. However, any attempt to make waste management more efficient has to integrate these people, that found a way of making a frail living from the waste, so they do have jobs after.

The limits of Government efficiency

Governments that cannot deal with the waste management have to find partners to do so. The obvious answer is PPP – Private Public Partnership. However, private sectors companies involved in waste management vary from absurdly corrupt (as any paulista* will tell you) to innovative companies that use waste to recycle, produce biofuels and are able to minimize the negative externalities from the waste. The difficulty is how to design a proper contract, an efficient monitoring agency and a fair price to pay.

Ecology

How to minimize the effect of the waste we produce everyday? Recycle and reuse seems to be a good policy as long you already have an ecological social norm in place. I think we could expect some entrepreneurial activities focusing on using waste in more efficient ways than dumping.
For some reason as I write this, I have the car from "Back to The Future" in mind, it used trash as combustible. Does anyone remember that?

*paulista=born in São Paulo.

Decentralized urban planning

2009-06-30T12:11:00.000-04:00

I work at the corporate center of Mexico City – Santa Fé. The curious story behind the area is that it was a sanitary landfill less than 20 years ago. One real estate entrepreneur decided to develop corporate skyscrapers on the valueless land. He was very successful – today Santa Fé is a thriving neighborhood with corporate centers, universities, and residential and commercial centers.

Well, so far so good. Viva the private enterprise. Right?
The problem with real estate development is that they are heavily dependent on public infrastructure – roads, water, energy, security, and transport. The lack of coordination between public goods and private enterprise creates a chaotic situation. Private sector continues to expand into new areas, where land is not expensive and the public sector continues to expand beyond their capabilities.

Santa Fé has one access to the city center, that cannot handle the current flow. You can imagine the chaotic traffic of an unplanned road access to a new neighborhood. There is no metro or reliable alternative transport (unless you consider helicopter an alternative). As a result, I’m stuck in traffic every single day - chatting with Porfirio, the former toreador converted into my taxi driver.

What are the alternatives?

Mexico has managed to attract private investment into the city colonial center (the Zocalo). Should the government intervene to make central areas more attractive to private investments? What would be the way of doing this? Any thoughts?

El Chavo

2009-06-26T15:33:00.000-04:00

I have been struggling with the idea of a common Latin American identity.

Brazil considers itself the BIG exception – a huge Portuguese-speaking country in a Spanish-speaking sub-continent (mostly). We had different colonizations all through Latin-America, different economical structures, different people. Are we any similar?

The more I travel through Latin-America, the more I see similarities. We are a mestizo region, deeply influenced by the Spanish-Portuguese culture, colonialist history and institutions.

I would also add that we ALL watched El Chavo when we were kids! El Chavo is the common denominator of our Latin-American heritage. Just try this: put together a Mexica, an Ecuatorian, a Brazilian and a Peruvian and ask them about El Chavo. I guarantee that they will start an endless talk about favorite episodes and the characters.

A little curious note - in Brazil, they translated "El Chavo" (the boy) to Chaves and Chapulin Colorado (the red grasshopper) to Chapolim Colorado (chapolim doesn't mean anything). I just figured out that Chapulin Colorado was inspired by an insect here. Yup, I'm that slow!

Who would have guessed that a 70’s slap-comedy would make it clear for Latin American that we do have a lot in common?

Were the Portuguese anthropophagi?

2009-06-24T12:24:00.000-04:00

It’s difficult to come to Mexico and to ignore the presence of the indigenous people – their history is present everywhere, people have clear indigenous features, ruins are a major attraction, and the anthropological museum is a must see to Mexican visitors.

In Brazil, we have somehow managed to ignore completely indigenous people. We have some names that we inherited from Tupi language. We learnt a little bit on how the “good priests” converted Brazilian indigenous people to Catholicism in school (as a matter fact, the Catholic church prohibited Indigenous people to be enslaved because they were “pure souls” as opposed to the African slaves). And we know – for a fact – that Portuguese settlers were more than keen to have children with indigenous women. But we never learned their culture or history. We don’t know what they believe in or the name of their gods (I know one – Tupã – and that is due to a popular character in a children’s comic book).

What happened to the Brazilian indigenous culture? Well, I’m not a historian (my mother is) but I have two theories:

The Brazilian indigenous tribe were not as “sophisticated” as the Mayas, Aztec and Teotihuacan. They were mostly hunter-gatherers – some of them were good warriors, but from what I recall of the probably 2 classes I had on Indigenous culture back in high-school, they didn’t develop mathematic skills, written language or astronomy. They were not a resistance for Portuguese expansion plans in America.

In 1922, Brazilian so called “avant-garde” artistic movement released the “Anthropophagic Movement”. Based on the idea that the anthropophagic indigenous people would eat the adversary in order to gain their qualities – if they were brave by eating their flesh they would be brave also – many intellectuals joined this movement. According, to them, the Brazilian were cultural anthropophagi – they would digest the new cultures and incorporate the qualities into the Brazilian culture. We would be truly mestiços (or mestizos), mixing not only the genes but also the culture. Did we do this to our indigenous population?

The ironic Mexican Green Party

2009-06-22T20:17:00.000-04:00

Mexico will have elections on July, 5. It's regional elections and for a part of the Congress. As you can imagine, the city is a big political outdoor. Buses are covered, many outdoors and even in movie theaters you have political ads.

From the ads, it's possible to infer that security is the top priority of the voters. Every candidate tries to convey the message that they will tackle down the crime issue.

Including the Green Party. But they are way more drastic than the other parties. I have photographed one of the Green Party (partido verde) but the city is filled with the outdoors and they have an actress-slash-ecologist on the TV spots promoting the party ideas.

Judge for yourself. Dark humor? Or willingness to do anything to win an election?

NB: pena de muerte in spanish is death penalty

Road-blog

2009-06-18T18:36:00.000-04:00

I was reading things that I wrote a few years ago and stumbled upon an article for the NYT. The author is the Brazilian movie director Walter Moreira Salles (from Central do Brasil and Motorcycle Diaries among others – and he’s also one of the coolest Brazilians ever and he’s gorgeous).

Ans then it hit me: this blog will be a road-blog. I quote Waltinho (as he is known in Brazil) talking about road movies:

“Because road movies need to trace the internal transformation of their characters, the films are not about what can be seen or verbalized but about what can be felt — about the invisible that complements the visible. In this sense, road movies contrast starkly with today’s mainstream films, in which new actions are created every three minutes to grab the attention of the viewer. In road movies, a moment of silence is generally more important than the most dramatic action.”

There will be little action – but I hope all the information (both at academic and personal levels) I have gathered the first year at MPA/ID will start to make sense.

Flânerie

2009-06-18T11:01:00.000-04:00

I was reading an article on Monocle Magazine about the joy of flânerie. I have always been a keen flâneuse – every time I’m in a new city, I love to walk around to really see what the city is like.

Baudelaire described the flâneur as “a person who walks the city in order to experience it”. I think this is one the greatest strengths of the cities – this possibility to observe many faces of the city and of the people, taking your time and using all of your senses.

Sometimes, the city is not made for walking – like Amman, a city clearly designed for cars, but when you reach the city center (the gold souk) and the streets are bustling (Laila, any thoughts?). Soham is in Freetown and described his flânerie attempt here. From my point of view, a good city is one that you can understand more of the local history and the culture by enjoying a nice and pleasant stroll. With pauses for food and drinks. And, maybe some shopping.

Mexico is a lovely place to flâner: the city center is a lively area, with beautiful old architecture, a vibrant commerce and a really Mexican flavor. Polanco (where I live), is a leafy neighborhood and I love the many restaurants and little shops that can still be found in the area (you can also find Louis Vuitton, Cartier and everything else, I just don’t find it that interesting). However, Santa Fé – where I work - is a flâneur’s nightmare: tall glass buildings, very little street commerce, everything is far away and most of the buildings look as any random corporate neighborhood.

Urban development

2009-06-17T21:29:00.000-04:00

In one of our classes of development economics, we studied the Industrial Revolution. One of the consequences of the Industrialization of UK was the displacement of rural workers into more productive activities in the cities.

The cities were not only the beautiful boulevards, with women dressed in silk and chariots on the pavements. The poor lived a miserable life – crammed into dark rooms, with no water or heating. It was a Dickens world, as one of professors put it.

And yet, they kept coming.

The world today is an urban world – over 50% of the world population currently lives in urban areas. In Latin America, the urbanization rate is even starker – it’s not uncommon to find urbanization rates of 85%. Adding urbanization, medium-low income per capita and high inequality of income distribution and you have a Latin-American average city. Now, imarrrine (little MPA/ID joke...) providing public services for 20 million people, dealing with local, provincial and federal government. The track record of efficiency is very poor in the region.

Chaotic, crammed, huge traffic jams, potholes, violent, scary place. Lively, energetic, beautiful, fun, creative, welcoming people. This summer, I have immersed myself on yet another huge Latin-American city – Mexico City.

I know myself better than to promise daily posts but I will try to have a little discipline this time.