Burst: Meditations I

I've started keeping a journal with random thoughts that occur to me and have decided to post some of them in order to share them and to have people help me further refine them.  As they are fleeting and somewhat random thoughts they are by nature aphoristic, rough, and unpolished.  I hope that does not detract too much from them.  Here is the first one:

Electronic Information and Human Centric Businesses:

The distribution of information will be completely electronic.  Therefore, brick and mortar businesses will have to become human centric.  By this I mean that they will have to provide services and/or goods that require co-location with the client/customer.  Thus, these businesses will have to place the human being, not their product, at the center of their planning.  They will have to ask themselves: "What things do humans qua humans need and want that can only be provided to them when they are at hand?  What services and goods can only (or truly can best) be provided in person?"

The first thing that comes to mind is real experiences, which quite possibly also are the most basic of these products/services.  Perhaps in the future virtual reality simulacra will be able to provide all experiences, but to experience the real we have to go to it; it will not come to us.  Mohammed must go to the mountain.

Women can pee standing up!

Culture Shock

This entry is down on PR do deal with it.  After two weeks in San Diego County I'm back in PR.

The first thing I noticed upon returning was how totally run down things are in Puerto Rico.  The airport is not taken care of, way too many things in it are dirty and broken.  As soon as I left the airport I also noticed how many holes, more like lunar craters, there are on the roads in Puerto Rico.  After not having to pay attention to the topography of the road, and instead being able to look at the signage for directions as to where I was headed, now I was forced mind the hills and valleys of Puerto Rican roads lest I end up with a busted tire or worse destroy the car's suspension.  The roads here are a total mess, but it does not end there. The city is dirty, dirty, dirty.  I remember going to downtown San Diego and looking around the streets and thinking to myself the the streets in the middle of the city were cleaner than the streets anywhere in PR, even the rich suburbs.

The next thing I noticed was how horrible the vegetables are here.  I went and got a salad at a restaurant.  The lettuce and the tomatoes were both gross.  Which brings me to the next point.  A salad here consists of lettuce and tomatoes.  That's it.  After being treated to super fresh vegetables in CA coming back our decrepit produce options is depressing.

Another thing I noticed is how unhelpful and confrontational store employees here can be.  While I San Diego I went one night to a Rubio's only to find I was too late.  The employees were locking the doors as I drove into the parking lot.  I turned around a told Al Carbon that I would go ask them about any nearby Rubio's that might close later but did not feel like dealing with the attitude I would get.  For a second she assented, but then she said: "We're in southern California maybe they will be all happy and cheery about it."  Indeed they were.  If I had done that in PR, the clerk would probably have ignored me as I knocked on the glass door, until he got agitated because his continued exclamations informing me that the place was closed didn't make me leave, and then would tell me off.  "Service" in PR is so bad across the border that we have become accustomed to be abused as customers.

What is up people?  Why is PR so messed up?  Let's fix it.

The Sins of Affirmative Action

Carrot and Stick: 01/01/2010

Happy New Year to all of you out there!

This edition of Carrot and Stick comes to you from San Diego California.  I would like the first carrot of the year to go out to the Coffee Cup Cafe in La Jolla.  Al Carbon and I have been going to eat to the Coffee Cup since  1997 when we were spending the summer in San Diego while studying Italian at UCSD prior to our junior year abroad in Rome.  Every time we come to San Diego we try to make at least one pilgrimage to the Coffee Cup.  It is the best breakfast/brunch place ever.  Everything is fresh and tasty and the perfect combination of breakfast/mexican/asian food cannot be beat.

We went there today, a little older than that first summer accompanied by our two children who were not even close to being in the picture back then, to celebrate the first brunch of the new year.  And as usual the Coffee Cup delivered.  Al Carbon noted while we were eating that the quality of the food at the Coffee Cup, unlike many other places, has stayed constant or maybe even improved throughout the years.  I have seen many places start strong but go downhill after a while.  The obvious care and dedication of the people running the Coffee Cup stands out and the fact that the place has lost no steam in over twelve years deserves some serious props.  So props to you Coffee Cup you deserve them.

Now the first stick of the year goes to an establishment close by to the Coffee Cup, namely Warwick's Books also in La Jolla.  Warwick's is a strange amalgam of a store with one side having gifts, stationary, and office supplies and the other side being a bookstore.  I was there a couple of days ago and it was literally the first time I have been kicked out of a store in my life.  I went there to get a book I had seen a couple of days earlier to give to my father as a gift when we get back from our little trip to California.  I grabbed the book and was browsing, looking for other books to purchase, while #4 and Lulu drew in a notebook I brought for them.  While looking at books I heard Lulu give a little cry so I went over to see what had happened.  It seems that Lulu had drawn on #4's side of the notebook and he had pushed her as a result.  So I put #4 on time out and he screamed a couple of times.  Honestly, it was a level 3 tantrum on a 1 to 10 scale.  Immediately I heard the cacophonous sound of uppity rich white people expressing their disapproval: "children should be seen and not heard."  And then I was besieged by a sixty-something clerk instructing me to "resolve this OUTSIDE."  It took a not insignificant amount of self-control for me to not tell him to go fuck himself.  But I did, and I placed the books I had down and took the kids out and left, never to return again.   The entire attitude was stinky and left me so angry that I wished I could return every book I ever bought there, which is not an insignificant number given the many trips I have taken to San Diego in the last twelve years.  Warwick's has lost a client for good.

I am completely fed up with the bullshit, so prevalent in the US but present elsewhere too, about how children are a nuisance and the accompanying mistreatment parents and adults traveling with children receive.  You know what fuckface? You were a kid once too.  Kids misbehave and kids make noise.  It is the way it is.  Sure there are tons of overindulgent parents out there but that is just the other extreme and neither one is ok.  I've had people actually tell me that I should DRUG my kids before we go on a plane as to not annoy them with the noise the kids make.  Are you fucking serious?!?  Why don't we just drug you instead?


Stick: Warwick's Books in La Jolla.  (You just lost out on a couple grand in books in the coming years.)
Carrot: Coffee Cup Cafe.  (Long live Papas Loco!)

Happy Birthday Jesus!

I was planning on writing about how Christmas is pretty much a Christian cover up of the ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia, which of course it is, and on how traditions we do not even know of still affect us everyday.  Case in point, there are tons of crypto-jews in the hispanic world that still follow jewish traditions even though they converted to Christianity centuries ago.  For example I have friends that cover all the mirrors in their house when someone dies, know of families where eating pork is still considered a "sin," grandparents that freak out if the boys are not circumcised, etc...

However, I decided to write instead about the creation of yet another Christmas tradition in our house.  Last year we were going to my mother's house for Christmas dinner and decided to go to get an ice cream cake for desert.  Once we had picked out the cake my son decided that since it was the kind of cake that was used in birthday parties we had to use it for a birthday.  We, my wife and I, tried to explain to him that the cake wasn't for anyone's party but rather it was for the Christmas dinner.

Soon we realized, prodded by a recalcitrant child, that in a way, the cake was for someone's birthday, namely Jesus. So we had the completely baffled store clerk write "Happy Birthday Jesus" on the cake.  That in itself is, I think quirky enough, however nothing is ever that simple during family celebrations.  When we got to my mom's house she wasn't there and we did not have keys to get into the house.  So there we are waiting for her outside the house with a soon to be melting ice cream cake when her next door neighbors come out.  We had to ask them to put the cake in their refrigerator since we had no idea when my mother would come back.  This they did, but when my mother arrived and it was time to get the cake back they came out and returned the cake but not before looking at what was written on it.  Our neighbors, much like the store clerk, were baffled by our cake.  See everyone pretty much knows that my family is composed of relatively irreligious agnostic people and this cake on the surface screamed something like evangelical christian on it.  The neighbors look at it, read the felicitation out loud, looked at us, mumbled something, and left.

Afterward we had dinner and had some cake.  Having the ice cream cake was a great success.  Which is why this year while we are in california with my mother-in-law her husband, and my sister-in-law we decided to reprise the Jesus cake.  My sister-in-law and I went to the supermarket earlier and asked for an ice cream cake with the same inscription, "Happy birthday Jesus."  The girl behind the counter acted like our request was a completely normal request and went to the back.  As soon as she was out of sight we heard the entire back of the store laughing out loud.  Jesus cake is a success.  I think Jesus, be him god, an enlightened human being, or just a cool dude, would approve of our using his name in silliness that makes people happy.  So Jesus this shout out goes out to you.  Happy birthday dude.

By the way, do you readers out there have any silly Christmas celebrations?  Please share them bellow and make my Christmas more fun.

Dame un plato de xenofobia con mofongo al lado.

  Llevaba tiempo pensando escribir esta entrada, pero no me animaba a hacerlo.  Finalmente como Al Carbon y Rob Rex escribieron más o menos sobre el tema esta semana decidí que era ya hora de hacerlo.  Así que esta entrada culmina lo que denomino la semana de la xenofobia en La Acera.
   Interesantemente parte del ímpetu de escribir esta entrada ahora origina en un evento ocurrido en una acera en Santurce.  Estábamos reunidos, en Café Hacienda San Pedro, con nuestro súper programador, un Drupal gurú/freak, Al Carbon y yo discutiendo detalles del upgrade inminente del website de La Acera.  (Viene por ahí gente en uno o dos meses.)  Como era una conversación bastante técnica y el 99.9% de los términos de computadora surgen del ingles la conversación se dio en ingles.  No me vengan o joder los hispanófilos con ordenadores y redes y zanganadas.  Entonces como hablábamos en ingles adentro de el café cuando salimos seguimos hablando en ingles.  En eso cruzamos la calle y al llegar al otro lado escucho a un idiota gritarme desde su carro “estamos en Puerto Rico”.
Al asno que conducía el carro le molestó que yo me atreviese a cruzar la calle y lo hiciera esperar tres segundos, claro rápido que me pasó tuvo que frenar porque el carro al frente del suyo estaba parado.  Sin entrar en esta discusión mucho, ¿cual es el problema existencial de la gente en Puerto Rico que les impide entender que cuando entran a una zona urbana están en calles y no en autopistas? ¿Por qué no les entra en la cabeza que los peatones tienen el derecho de paso en la ciudad?  Volviendo al tema central, miremos lo que el animal me dijo como regaño: “estamos en Puerto Rico”.  ¿Que carajo significa eso?  ¿Que se supone que yo como el extranjero que el percibió piense sobre lo que el me dijo?
Si tomamos la oración como un simple recordatorio de que estamos en Puerto Rico esta es realmente una gran perogrullada.  Entonces, es bastante obvio que el significado de la proposición no es lo que denota sino lo que connota.  El contexto de la oración es lo que tiene que conducir la búsqueda de su sentido.  El que la expresó, en forma de regaño, a alguien que cruzaba la calle.  Entonces, ¿por qué no decir: “¡Cabrón mira cuando cruzas la calle!”, en vez de recordarme que estamos en Puerto Rico?  El comentario fue diseñado para incomodar a una persona no por lo que hizo (cruzar la calle en todo su derecho de cruzar la calle), sino por quien el pensaba que la persona era.  El conductor xenófobo pensó que mejor que criticar lo que hice era criticar de donde era.  Claro él, incorrectamente, decidió que yo no era puertorriqueño.  No estoy completamente seguro de si este juicio fue solamente el resultado de que no hablara “cristiano” o eso y de la combinación algunos otros factores.
El utilizar la frase como amonestación intenta tirar una linea entre él, la persona que pertenece aquí, y yo, el que no pertenece aquí.  Esto es una forma de implicar que el tiene la autoridad de decirme como se van a hacer las cosas aquí y de decirme que aquí él es superior a mí.  Es un lenguaje nativista y exclusivista donde el origen nacional es altamente determinativo del valor de una persona.  Claro siempre es posible que me hubiese dicho que estamos en Puerto Rico porque pensó que yo era británico y me quería recordar que aquí se conduce en el lado derecho y no el izquierdo, pero lo dudo, lo dudo mucho.
El uso de este lenguaje xenófobo y etnocentrista permite transformar a los seres humanos en otros, en objetos, a los que se le puede negar su humanidad y por ende su valor intrínseco.  Ahora se preguntan o exclaman algunos: “¿No estas exagerando #3?”  No, no exagero en lo más mínimo, bueno quizá un poco.  El lenguaje nacionalista puertorriqueño por mucho tiempo a sido un lenguaje esencialista que tira lineas arbitrarias sobre que se permite dentro de la puertorriqueñidad y que se excluye.  Por ejemplo, si alguien nace y se cría en PR de padres chinos pues entonces esta persona no es considerada realmente puertorriqueña por la ortodoxia puertorriqueñista.  El mismo destino le espera al hijo de puertorriqueños que nazca en el exterior.  En ambos casos la puertorriqueñidad del individuo será una incompleta y a medias.  Será una puertorriqueñidad falsificada.
De aquí, el único paso necesario para pasar a ser un racista retrógrada, es pensar que ser puertorriqueño es inherentemente mejor que ser otra cosa dentro del esquema en el cual se puede ser algo distinto a ser puertorriqueño.  Así que si ser puertorriqueño es mejor que, por ejemplo, ser dominicano, el camino a la injusticia esta pavimentado y listo para transitar.  La única diferencia entre este esquema y el que permite el apartheid es una cuantitativa y no cualitativa.
Algo iluminativo del comentario dirigido a mi sobre nuestra localización es que el conductor lo hizo en español.  A menos de que no supiese ingles, algo muy posible, hacer el comentario en español lo convierte en algo mas de consumo propio que en algo dicho para mi beneficio.  Es más aun cuando no supiese ingles es fácil decir algo como “fuck you” o “yankee go home” esas son frases en ingles que prácticamente cualquier persona en Puerto Rico conoce.  ¿Cual es el objetivo del insulto y el regaño si lo dice en un idioma que presuntamente yo, siendo un gringo, no entiendo?  Como dije anteriormente esta oración es en gran parte algo dicho para consumo propio.  El decirlo en español demuestra que el interés del emisor es también recordarse así mismo que estamos en Puerto Rico, que esta es su tierra, que el que manda aquí es el y no yo el invasor el extranjero.  Es una forma de auto calmar su inseguridad vis a vis su posición de subordinado.  La xenofobia a raíz del sentirse como menos que otro.  Por eso es que campañas como “¡Puerto Rico lo hace mejor!” se usan a cada rato.  Es la necesidad de lavarnos el cerebro colectivamente para sentir que somos algo, que no somos una mierda.  Sobre este fenómeno pienso escribir en el futuro como continuación de lo que he dicho hasta a ahora en esta entrada.  Así que “to be continued.”