Football: A ball in the foot!!

Just to avoid any uncomfortable misunderstanding, here we are going to talk about FOOT+BALL, not about other sports with doubtful names!

A poem to Football

I just realized that I have barely written here about one of my passions:  Football.

To remedy that situation, I am officially opening right now the label Football in my blog, where I expect to write down a bit about my love for this game, love inherited from my father and brother, love nurtured by my culture, love enriched by friends from many countries who share it, love that grows with any episode worth to be over-interpreted.

To open this label, nothing better that: A Poem to Football (by Walter Saavedra).

(please forgive me for the translation, I did the best I could, but it is simply impossible to replicate its beauty from Spanish to English)

"How are you going to know what love is,
if you never became a club fan?
How are you going to know what pain is,
if a defender never broke your tibia and fibula?
or being in the "wall" and the ball hit you just there!
How are you going to know what pleasure is,
if you never ran an Olympic Lap as a visitor.
How are you going to know what tender is,
if you never curled the ball hitting it with the outer of your boot
leaving the ball spinning in below the net.
Listen to me, how are you going to know what solidarity is
if you never went to defend a partner kicked from behind?
How are you going to know what poetry is
if you never dribbled.
How are you going to know what humiliation is,
if you were never thrown the ball between your legs,
How are you going to know what friendship is
if you never returned a triangulation,
How are you going to know what panic is
if you were never taken in bad position
during a counterattack
How are you going to know what is to die a bit
if you never picked up the ball from you own goal.
Tell me mate, how are you going to know
what solitude is
if you never stood below the three posts
12 steps away from someone who wanted to shoot you and kill your hope
How are you going to know what mud is
if you never jumped to someone's feet to trow the ball to the side,
How are you going to know what selfishness is
if you never dribbled one more time than you should
while the 9 was alone waiting for it
How are you going to know what art is
if you never ever created a rabona.
How are you going to know what music is
if you never sang from the ultras,
How are you going to know what injustice is
if you never got red card by a bias referee.
tell me, how are you going to know what
insomnia is
if you never went to second division.
How are you going to know what hate is
if you never scored in you own goal.
How, how are you going to know what crying is,
yes, crying,
if you never lost a World Cup final
through a doubtful penalty over the time.
How are you going to know, my dear friend,
How are you going to know what LIFE is
if you never ever played Football"

I miss living far away...

To be more precise, what I miss the most is my daily time for reading. In Budapest I was living more than one hour away from my working place, what allowed me to read two hours daily. Reading on the tramstop, reading in the tram, in the bus, on the other stop, in the other bus, on the meeting point with my colleague, in the car of my colleague to finally close the book at the work place. Then in the afternoon the same story but backwards.

Here in Grenoble I only have the chance to read when I am about to sleep, as now, writing from my phone in my bed, I just take my kindle everytime before falling alseep and start to read, just to realize that I always forget the last topic I was reading about. It's very sad to read books like this....maybe that's why I have finished only one book out of four of those I have started to read in Grenoble, where I live 10 minutes walking from the University...I miss to live far away, I miss my daily dose of commuting and thus, of tasty reading :-(.

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How do you know I'm mad?

"but I don't want to be among mad people" Alice remarked.

"Oh, you can't help that", said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."

"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice

"You must be", said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Awareness and the road

George Harrison says in one of his songs: "if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there...",, it's a good song by the way, but in the same way, it's also very easy to miss something you are not looking for.

Interesting, ain't it?
just a bonus track, George Harrison song:

Notes of the week

- Surprise yourself, then surprise the others

- The existence of isomorphic problems is a great source of innovation. The matter is being able to recognize the isomorphic problem to the one I am facing. ---March 25th update: There is a method of creativity taking advantange of this principle, and it is named TRIZ.

- In High Tech marketing, if I am a technology manufacturer, (as we are in Boreas, or as the IC companiess are in the cell-phone industry) it's a clue movement to address the customer of my customer.

- Important and basic equation: TCO = CAPEX + OPEX. The Total Cost of Ownership has two components, the Capital Expenditure and the Operation Expenditure, the best example to ilustrate this equation is to own a car. If you want a car you need money to: a) Purchase it, b) Operate it -fuel, parking, insurance, maintenance,...-

- GroupThinking: It's what happens in groups when in order to preserve the harmony and to avoid conflict, erroneous ideas are accepted. This leads to lack of critical thinking, individual points of views and many time to act complete outside of reality.

Picasso's case

I haven't been able to understand why some people confuses my name with Pedro, it has happened to me even during circumstances that i am not going to share here in family time.
I think that the P beginning, the O ending , the five letters and the Latin-style name might be confusing for other cultures.

I was forced then to develop a way to introduce myself to those who (now i know who) are likely to call me Pedro someday. It's very simple and it's just about this:
"my name is very easy, do you know a painter named Picasso???"
-here usually they say: "yes off course!"
-"great" i say "do you know his name??"
-here about 90% of people aim and say my name correctly, 5% says "off course I know about Pedro Picasso!" :s. The 5% left says "who???"
I confirm then my name and people seem to get it right, I thought I smartly solved the problem!!

Just now some people call me Picasso!!!

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ideas al tratar de dormir

Si hace dos años y medio me preguntaban: que es lo que más me gusta de colombia? Habría tenido mil respuestas en 5 segundos. Hace unos días sin embargo, me preguntaron lo mismo y no sólo no respondi de una sino que no supe que decir en concreto. Eso me preocupó muchísimo.

En esta nueva etapa que estoy viviendo me he dado cuenta que mi comportamiento dentro de un grupo de varias personas es muy diferente a mi comportamiento cuando estoy hablando con una o dos personas. Siendo el segundo caso el más extraño pues la mente se me pone en blanco y al final o no digo nada o no pongo temas extendibles.

Nunca me he considerado introvertido (el cuento de los bultos de papas me lo creí muy bien), sin embargo el Pablo que salió de Colombia era un poco tímido con las mujeres y para conocer gente "a pelo" (acercarse a un(a) desconocido(a) extender la mano y decir: hola, soy Pablo...como Picasso), en Budapest creo que prácticamente se diluyo la primera y en Grenoble la segunda esta desapareciendo del todo.

Si el Pablo de los 90's tomará el DeLorian del Dr. Brown y viajará al "futuro" y me conociera se decepcionaria de mí (o de nos) sí le digo que ahora amo a la coliflor y al brocoli...mis más odiadas legumbres :P

En general estoy feliz en Grenoble. No estoy nostálgico de Budapest y estoy motivado por lo que viene.

Esto de tener androíd y de poder escribir y publicar desde el celular no me va a dejar dormir...2am y aún quiero escribir pendejadas.

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Which is my "music"?

I'm right now reading The Monk and the Riddle (Randy Komisar and Kent Lineback), few days ago I finished The Old Man and The Sea (Ernest Hemingway) and the last week I watched Music Within, and between all these three very different stories, passion in life seems to be a common topic.

After all of those, I just wonder to myself: Which is my passion? as Komisar asks in his book:
...[what is that] Something worthy of the immense time and energy you will spend on... ?

Is that an easy question? I don't think so, that's why Oliver Wendell Holmes said that "Most people die with the music still in them.", most people die without knowing what was that inner potential and energy which would pull them toward something they can not resist.

I think it could take time and effort to discover the answer for that question, which for sure is within us, but I'm willing to invest the time and the energies to discover it, I don't want to die with my music within.

About Sadness

I use to say that we should not hide and deny the "negative" feelings, such as sadness. I believe they make part of a healthy life, and with this I don't mean that we should look for them, I just mean that when they come we should accept them and embrace them as a proof that we are alive. In that sense that deep sadness I was feeling just before leaving Budapest and those tears I cried I took them as a positive symbol: They were just a great proof of how good my life was there, and how lucky I was to meet many amazing people.

About writing

It's disappointing that the moments when I feel like writing are those when I don't have a place to do so, and then when I sit in front of the computer all the ideas (and motivations) are gone.

Random Thoughts

It's a pleasure to introduce the new tag under which I'll write my...random thoughts. I apologize in advance if they are pointless or improperly finished. I'll try to write them in english, but this wont be a must, I might end up writing in my lovely spanish, in portunhol or even in french, who knows!

Random Thought:
Language is a tool which we all are given and by which we all relate between each other. If we over-use it then it becomes a weapon, if we under-use it then the other's language becomes a weapon against us. It means we'd better know how to use it right.
Assertiveness is the word, this is what I have to work on.