Alexandru

Teo and Anca are one of the best memories I have of my time in Switzerland: their friendship spirit, their love for each other, their easy going ways, their smiles and laugh... Oh, and the food in their kitchen in Zurich!!

I missed their wedding in their homeland, Romania, but I knew I would wait not long before celebrating Alexandru, a tiny sweet creature ready to explode in an enormous life!

Dear Anca and Teo, parenthood must be scaring, beautiful and powerful... you'll simply rock.
Dear Alexandru, welcome on board, sit down and relax... your captains will lead you through, for a while a least, so just enjoy a nice trip!

"While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about"

Catch it

Everyone's life is a 3D no-fiction story on an ever running film: maybe that's what makes photography such an unique art: I believe in the power and ability of catching into a image a life-moment that, with a turmoil of thoughts, feelings and meanings on it, is but still.

The World Press Photo exhibits every year the best photographs taken by journalist... their job makes it such that they often are not in the merriest place on earth, but rather where the global news is... and global news is rarely good news.

Therefore, when a couple of months ago I went to see the 2007 exposition (for the year 2006) I wasn't expecting a cheering time but rather fascinating pictures with not the easiest feeling attached... I wasn't disappointed.

Once there I played the game: choose your favorite 3 photos and tell me why... simple rules made the game tough... the photo are many and so are the categories... Eventually you get out with one feeling: that life keeps rolling on your film but what makes your story are the instants.

The fourth dimension

When Alenka yesterday told me it was already 6pm I thought it's was the typical mis-timing many people get, especially over the weekend... When I later discovered my watch was slowing down some pillars of my life scrambled down: time, my time!.. Maybe those who complain Prague isn't the mosty sunny city ever are quite right: my watch runs on solar power! However my first thought went to this almost 4 months here, which have been of quite some intensity: I'm feeling like in a time blender where my past and future mix into a strange, enjoyable, at times stressing, present.

I've changed job and I?ve changed house too. The overlapping of the two things hasn't made it the best time of my life, but I'm now getting settled again: my old job was going all right but I somehow got across a better offer (same job, just better package, including future possibilities)? Old home wasn't bad, but far (according to Prague standards) and the landlord a master bitch! We now got, and it wasn't easy, a much more central place, a bigger house and a flatmate who seems a very nice guy...

The WE from the last sentence above is Veronica and I... In my humble opinion emotional and rational intelligence have met in this Venezuelan girl and moving together was as logistically convenient as feelings driven...

Sirle and Alena, two good memories of my Estonian and Australia experiences have been here since I arrived? then Eoin, an Irish who used to live in Estonia too, came for a short visit? Recently also met Alberto and Kasia (still Estonia)?
Dean, the English guy who took over my Swiss role, came to Prague for vacation... we spent some time hanging around and it was good and smart fun mirroring the person he is!

A couple of weekends ago I was in Swizterland where the real first reunion of the Swiss AIESEC MC I was part of in 2003-2004 took place.. . Happy birthday to Fabu, the first one to turn 30 and thank you Caroline, Joelle , Fabu and Selim for being always a family!

My previous time in Austria was on a car trip from Switzerland to Prague, when I asked Marek to stop the car: I opened the door and put my right foot on the ground. For over 3 years that was all my interaction with the Austrian territory; getting out of the train a few weekend ago, I made sure my left foot was the first one landing... it takes little to make a trip such a good fun... Veronica and I enjoyed the romantic city and the funny guy playing the hammer at the classical and opera concert in Vienna gave us a few nice smiles... not that we were lacking any though!

Despite all I have experienced, I'm still fascinated by the time dimension: it's incredible what you can squeeze in less then 4 months; and then there is this feeling... that is still just the beginning...

Google me

Not really necessary... you'll get back to this blog!

These days Google.com turns 10 years old. I'm far from being an IT person but I don't think it should take long to understand the revolutionary impact this two American guys (one a Russian immigrant) have had on the world when started a one milion dollars investment with a mission that aims "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

Today the company is worth 164 hundreds thousand more the initial investment; "to google" has become a verb; and such a big company is also among the most excellent case practice of human resource management.

I guess we live in times that historians may soon mark as the information era... it's not important to know something, but to know how to get to know it... hence, google it!
We also live in a world where distances are reduced, people travel and get great experiences (does anyone really dislike easyjet, ryanair?!)... A world were keeping in touch (with tool like Facebook, another great phenomena... and many like that!) is now a must becoming everyday easier.

The math here is easy and the result is Hope: hope for a world where real democracy rules thanks to the universal accessibility of information, where people understand each other because they have met, kept in touch and learned from each other...

But Veronica, an IT girl who strives to see the benefits of Facebook, is right too... Are we going to miss the human touch? Is it by googling you that I'll get to know you?! Is the traveling moving us away from our roots and those we have loved since our early years?

It's the old tough matter of 2 vectors building up a third dimension... meantime I sent an SMS to Roberta, an old friend who grew up and lives in Sicily: "google.com is turning 10 today: they started from a garage and have become a verb now! And you?! You are turning 29 today... ohh.. but it's all right: you have found love and are enjoying your life! Happy birthday"

How to Take Easy the perception of Philo Sophy

It was not 30 minutes in his first class delivered to us, his new students 13 years ago, that our teacher presented us with the first definition of his subject of teaching: philosophy is that thing thank to which, with or without it, your life is still such and the same!
I'm sure he then added the term philosophy comes from the compound of two ancient greek words: philos (friend, or lover) and sophia: (wisdom or knowledge). Therefore philosophy is the love for wisdom, the will of knowing!

David Hume came up with the following: Suppose a child is born devoid of all senses: he has no sight, no hearing, no touch, no smell, no taste... nothing. There is no way whatsoever for him to receive any sensations from the outside world. And suppose this child is fed intravenously and otherwise attended to and kept alive for 18 years in this state of existence. The question is then asked: Does this 18 year old person have a thought in his head? If so, where does it come from? How does he get it?

Kant complicated the whole thing with the "a priori" concept, where ideas like time and space are part of living creature despite the presence or not of any perception ability and memories... but there I get lost...

So there you are: you forget about time and space, it looks like you have opened the door to a new dimension where everyone has gone partying somewhere else... you play a game of questions and answers, the most personal questions or the less private doesn't really matter because what you are driven by is the wish of knowing... the love for sophy... But it's a good nice game... and what you are doing? You ask a question and you are philosophying (Don't you hate when they verbify noun?)

But if you have never experienced any physical sensations how would you know blue is your favorite color? And why?

Maybe in order to Philo Sophy all you have to do is to take it easy... what's the rush when you have all the time of this world?! Why trying to define life when you can live it?..
But how can you take it easy when you should get the best out of the time you have? How can you take it easy when it's defining its purposes that allow you to live your life at the very most?

I read above and I get lost in thought! But that's all right, it wouldn't be a good philosophy post if I could understand it and be left with no preguntas de rogar...