Turning 24, and hoping to see a lot more!

So today is my birthday. I had a very nice day. and enjoyed a little meeting with the usual good friends, and some old friends I hadn’t seen in way too long. It was beautiful.

Also, Ninx, guest writer some months ago, sent me a “Green ecard” and dedicated her super long blog post on her life in Delhi for the last 6 months to me, which was a real honour. And for anyone interested, I will post a shorter version of it this week. But if you can’t wait, check her adventures here. Thank you Ninx, you really made my day!

Before I forget, I wanted to say HAPPY 25th BIRTHDAY LINKIE! From a previous post you know we share birthdates (I still have a lot to write about this guy, but for now I’ll just say that). So Linkie, this post and the video that comes with it is for you… and for Linkie’s tree-hugginig love (a very dear friend of mine. I know she’ll like this video too!).

The video you’ll see next is titled “Wake up, freak out- then get a grip”. It was written by Leo Murray and it is brilliant. It has an important -a bit worrying, yet hopeful- message. It is very easy to understand and I wish they had taught me like this in school! I believe videos/films have such a powerful role on awareness… (so all you cinema students around the world, help the world please!) At least for those who have trouble concentrating on the reading (like me). Anyway, I hope you enjoy it!

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Oh, and if you want to give me a birthday present, PLEASE sign the petition to release Mario Masuku in Swaziland (updates on Masuku here).

Unusual event that made my day.

Well, I’m cheating a bit, because it is not that I will tell you about an extremely improbable event in this post.

No, I will just share what happened to me yesterday. It is not something incredible or anything of the sort, but it is definitely something unusual in my life.

How often does your bell ring, and you open it to find a postman standing with a large cardboard tube in his hand?

In my case, it has never happened before. What is more, this tube came all the way from London. And believe me, knowing the argentinean postal service, receiving one such tube after it has had more than one chance to get lost along the way, is an extremely unusual event!

My dear Linkie sent it to me; I recognized his handwriting straight ahead. In it were some amazing prints he made himself. I’d post them here but I’d rather you check them for yourselves at his blog.

Thank you Linkie, you made my day!!

Going public while saving the world (or how Facebook has changed the way we relate to the world)

Facebook…

What can one say about it? It has brought us nice moments, such as meeting up with old friends and… well, that’s pretty much all the good stuff about it…

There is something to it that makes it be quite addictive to some people. I have found myself clicking on facebook more than once a day at some point, which after a while clearly became a sad thing to do (so I stopped, yes).

We have all heard others talking about how it is not so safe, and how people can see every single thing you do… in other words, it is no news that it is the haven of stalkers, broken hearts, loners, etc…

But let’s be honest, you can edit your privacy settings and keep your private stuff private. Yet, many people choose not to do so. They choose to post every single emotion they go through… they choose to share with us every time they are in a “complicated relationship” with someone, or whether they got married, or engaged, or they broke up and so on… That’s OK. I mean, it’s your life, right? But why does it have to show up in my feeds when I go on facebook?

I’ve talked about this with Euri in the past, and after chatting with Felix today, we reflected on how FB (to us, at least) has created a parallel reality… things suddenly become easier, but not necessarily true. In a very personal level, you can just create a fake life with fake friends and post about it for all your high school classmates to read about it and be jealous (or not). But it seems that you can also support the monks in Burma or stop the genocide in Darfur or fight AIDS just by joining a FB group. What does it take? A single click, and you join some other 100000 members that are doing something (??) to save the world from evil. Maybe (probably) I am being too critical, but it all looks to simplistic and comfortable to me. What part of all this is real? What part of these uncountable daily clicks make an actual difference? And if they do, is that the way we want to engage with others? By “clicking”..?

To finish up, I wanted to post a little something that Felix and I came up with. He’ll probably do a better one, but I was anxious enough to attempt my own… what do you think about it?

My linkie (part 1)

I’ve realized that I haven’t mentioned Felix in this blog. And he DEFINITELY deserves to be mentioned!

I find the story of how our whole friendship started pretty amusing, but somehow the people I talk to don’t find it as exotic… :s

In any case, today was one of those days in which I thought about my dear Felix, and I think it’s only fair to dedicate a little space to him.

It all started one 14th of January in 2002. I had just arrived in Johannesburg International Airport, after a long flight via Sao Paulo. I was heading toward Swaziland, where I would live for the following two years while attending Waterford Kamlhaba UWCSA.

I waited at an almost empty gate for the tiny airplane that would take me to my destination. Next to me were three boys who looked my age, only that they looked slightly less clueless. In fact, they looked like they had everything under control… No excitement, no desperate looks trying to find another foreigner destined for the same place in that lost corner of the world. Just three perfectly collected guys, sitting down unperturbed while talking in a language that I did not understand.

I was wearing a poncho, so I was clearly stating my alien status. Indeed, it didn’t take long before the three boys and I were already engaged in chatter. I quickly learned that they were all German (that somehow seemed to explain the lack of despair on their faces and their perfect English pronunciation) and before I knew it, the four of us were sitting on a winged bus headed to the tiny landlocked Kingdom of Swaziland.

While overflying the short distance separating point A from B, I spent most of the time talking to one of the guys, a blond good looking boy of short stature (sorry!!). I probably spoke very precarious English, but we managed to understand each other. At some point, for no particular reason and just out of the blue, I started thinking “this guy probably has his birthday on the same day as mine” (Yeah, I know, totally stupid thought). I think he was still enthusiastically saying something, but I couldn’t take that thought out of my head, so I finally interrupted him and asked (again, waaaay out of the blue!) “when’s your birthday?”.

And there it was, the correct answer… Indeed, he was born on the same day as me, only one year before. Our birthday was due in a few days after our arrival in Swaziland.