La Crisis

Hoy escribo en español, porque el tema lo merece.

Me marché de España hace dos años y medio, a estudiar en Londres. Cuando me fui lo veía como algo temporal, no porque pensara que la crisis acabaría pronto y que podría volver, si no porque no me planteaba si quiera terminar los estudios y quedarme fuera. El estudiar fuera era eso, estudiar fuera, para luego trabajar en España. Ahora cada vez lo veo más difícil. Y no es solo el paro juvenil, el paro en general, las malas condiciones de trabajo. Es el hecho de que por mucho que yo quiera volver a España, hay pocos sitios en España que me ofrezcan las posibilidades de hacer lo que quiero hacer.

Estudio bioquímica. Desde septiembre estoy trabajando en el NIMR, el Instituto Nacional de Investigación Médica de Inglaterra. Es un lugar excelente. Gente preparada, gente que curra, gente con verdadera pasión por lo que hace. Pero eso es lo de menos, porque eso también existe en España. La diferencia, me temo, es que aquí hay dinero.

No sé exactamente cómo están las cosas ahora, pero cuando hice primero de Biotecnología en Salamanca, los estudiantes de doctorado, becados, cobraban entre 700 y 900 euros al mes. Yo ni siquiera soy graduada y estoy cobrando por un trabajo algo menor más de mil libras cada mes. Esto incluye un pequeño extra por vivir en Londres, que es caro, pero aún sin cobrar ese extra estaría ganando algo más de mil libras al mes. Sí, es cierto, las cosas están mejor aquí. Pero es que en España un becario jamás ha cobrado lo que yo cobro ahora.

Dicen desde el gobierno que quieren que nuestras universidades sean del nivel de aquellas universidades que cuentan con varios premiso nobeles entre sus profesores. Les doy la receta señores: cobren por la educación universitaria. Exijan unos mínimos a los alumnos para recibir becas (y no me refiero a aprobar, me refiero a un 6 o un 7 de media). Comiencen un programa de préstamos para que los estudiantes puedan ir a la universidad sin necesidad de darles dinero gratis. ¿Que es impopular? Probablemente. ¿Que funciona? Seguro. Siempre he defendido que la educación es un derecho, y que la educación obligatoria debería ser gratuita. Ahora bien, la educación la tiene que pagar alguien. El estado somos todos. Si no queremos pagar más impuestos tendremos que pagar de nuestro bolsillo. Y sí, la educación es un derecho, pero los derechos se pueden perder. Si un alumno no estudia, si no se esfuerza, o si no da, pierde el derecho a la educación. Llámenme elitista, pero no se gasta dinero en mandar a toda la población a los Juegos Olímpicos, no puedo entender por qué se debe gastar dinero en mandar a toda la población a la Universidad. ¿Que todos tenemos derecho? Por supuesto. Pero es un derecho que se puede perder.

And so it begins...

Intelligence is a bit like a secret. Intelligent people belong to an exclusive society, they recognize each other, they are proud of their intelligence and they are modest about it, but they can't help but mock those less intelligent than themselves from time to time. Not cruelly, not in any way that the person being mocked would notice, and always in front of someone else who will get the joke. It's an inside jokes club. It is a club of shared knowledge. It gives the members the feeling that they belong, and like any other club, it makes members feel a little better than the rest of the world for a little while.

Anya was like that. She never thought of herself as intelligent, but she found herself making a joke that only one other person in the room would understand, and they would smile at each other in complicity. This details made her happy, they made her like people better. She had always been a very social person, happier with more people around her, but it was always good to find someone that got her. That was how she met Damian. He was at one of the office parties. She would only wonder afterwards why he was there at all, he didn't work in her office as far as she knew. That night they first joked and then they talked for hours. When the party was over he asked her if she would go have something to eat with him, they were both quite drunk, so she followed him into a cab and to a 24 hour diner.

-So you think this is the best place for burgers? -she asked with a teasing smile.
-The best place I know, and I know a few. -he replied almost seriously.

He ordered a cheeseburger with fries and she ordered a cheeseburger with bacon and onion rings.

-No fries? -he asked, pretending to be horrified.
-No fries. Onion rings are the best human invention.
-Better than the telephone. Or the light bulb.
-Of course. The telephone or the light bulb would have happened eventually. They were a matter of time, we need to communicate.
-So in your opinion the only inventions that are truly good are those that are... unnecessary?
-Well, only if you think onion rings are unnecessary. I wouldn't want to live in a world with no onion rings. -she deadpanned.

They looked into each other's eyes for a couple of seconds and then burst out laughing. They must have been shouting because the guy behind the counter shot them a warning look, so they stopped talking. They purposefully put on serious faces and looked away from each other. Then Damian got close to Anya and poked her just below the ribs and she stifled a laugh as she poked him back. Soon they were both laughing again.

-Here you go. -said the guy behind the counter in a stern voice, handing them their food.
-Thanks.
-Thank you.

They regained their composure for long enough to get out of the diner and then burst out laughing again. They couldn't have said what was so funny.

-So what now? -she asked. She didn't want to go home just yet.
-I don't know. We could go up to the park and wait for sunrise. It's nearly four and it dawns early this time of year.
-Sounds good. -she said smiling. She wondered for a second whether she liked the guy. He was taller than her, a good six feet, and had black hair. He had regular features, not exactly handsome, not ugly. No, she didn't like him. She found him interesting. They'd talked about movies, books, food. They'd joked around. He reminded her of her teenage friends, who'd she'd spent endless summer days with, but with more to talk about.

They walked to the park and climbed the hill. When they got to the top Anya started climbing up a tree.

-What are you doing? -he asked half laughing?
-I like climbing -she said simply. And with that, he followed her up the tree.

They sat down on the top branches of the tree and ate their food in silence, looking over the city as the day begun. It wasn't the first time Anya had watched sunrise over the city, but as always the thought came to her that she should do it more often, that life was worth it just to see the sunrise after a long, fun night.

Damian was playing with his keys, and Anya noticed he had a scar running along his little finger up his wrist.

-How did that happen? -she asked curiously.
He looked at where she was looking.
-This? -he said, pulling back his sleeve and showing the scar reached nearly up to his elbow. She nodded.
-Well, it was a few years ago. I cut myself on a window glass.
-You broke a window?
He nodded, unsmiling.
-How?
He looked at her for a moment, considering what to say next.
-I was breaking into one of the Eryne Lane mansions, and I didn't have as much experience back then as I do now.
-Breaking into houses? -she said in a sarcastically humorous tone.
-Yeah. I am a thief. I do it for a living. -he said smiling. She smiled back.
-What kind of thing do you steal?
-Well, it used to be jewels. -he said, taking a bite out of his burger. He chewed slowly, and then swallowed, making the most of the pause. -Now it's mostly art, usually pieces I'm asked for. Or pieces I want for myself.
-So you're an art connoisseur too? -she asked, making light of what he had just told her. She wasn't sure if she believed him or not, but it didn't matter. It just made him more interesting.
-Well, I wouldn't say that, but some might. I know enough to tell a fake from the real thing.
-That's good enough for what I have in mind. -she said. She hadn't known she was going to challenge him, but as she said it she knew exactly what she was going to ask him to do.

On freedom

I don't think I have found a definition of freedom I like. Freedom is what slaves got when they escaped the plantation. Freedom is leaving the house early in the morning and seeing the sunrise. Freedom putting down my pen after the last exam in June. Freedom is 5PM (a little later today). Freedom is the weekends, but it's also waking up on a weekday and knowing, deep down, that if I decided not to get up, not to go to work, no one would come looking for me, it wouldn't be the end of the world. Freedom is exhilarating and fun and good.

Freedom isn't well defined. Is it doing whatever you want? Yes and no. Ortega y Gasset once said "I am me and my circumstances". This is the first curb to freedom. My circumstances. I was born at a certain time, in a certain place, to a certain family, with certain genes. I grew up in a certain way, and I learnt certain things. I had a choice over some of this, but I didn't have a choice over most of it. So am I free? Yes. And no. I am me, yes, but I am only me because of a set of circumstances. I could go into the extent of genetics, but I don't really care. There is a fundamental question which isn't asked often enough: if one were born again, in the exact same world and with the same exact parents, all things equal, would one make the same choices? I suspect the answer is yes. I suspect every choice is a balance, a broken balance provided by circumstance, which leads to the fact that all things equal, faced with the same choice one will make the same decision. So we are not free. Yet we live under the impression of freedom, so I'm going to go further into the topic.

Today I was talking to a workmate and we were discussing government interventionism. I said what I thought, and realised when I was saying it that it is really what I think. I believe the government should interfere as little as possible in people's lives. I think people should be treated like adults and should be free to make their own choices. Of course, most people will heartily agree with me when I put it like this. Of course we're all adults, and we should make our own choices. What does this mean practically though? It means that most things aren't illegal. It means that smoking in public places should be regulated not by the government but by the owner of said public place. It means I should have the freedom to buy a weapon if a shop is willing to sell it to me. It doesn't mean, however, that I am free to kill someone with that weapon. That would curb the other person's freedom. 

How do I decide which actions are "free" and which actions shouldn't be permitted? I have the simple rule that any action that doesn't hurt an individual physically (unless that individual is choosing to hurt him or herself) is free. If I choose to smoke, I am free to do so. I am not free, however, to smoke in any place where a non-smoker asks me not to. Unless we are at a bar owned by someone who allows smoking inside, because in that case the non-smoker has chosen to enter the bar and therefore has chosen to be with smokers. Sure, the definition isn't foolproof (for one thing, what about psychological damage? Discrimination?), but at least it's a start. I want to be free. I want everyone to be free. I don't need anyone to tell me that something should be illegal because "people don't know what they're doing and we need to take care of them". What we need to do is accept that people are grown ups, and that they can make their own choices. We need to be free and let others be free.

Self Indulgence

The plan for this weekend was to publish a post about feminism, the first of a series I've been planning since I first started this blog. However, yesterday I went to a house party and had a few too many drinks (fine, I'm lying, I didn't have that many drinks, I'm just a lightweight) so today I'm feeling a bit under the weather. So instead of going into the tangled territory of feminism, I am going to list some of the wonderful (or terrible) aldehyde induced thoughts that have run through my mind today.

1. Hot pink is a horrible colour. This realization came to me suddenly, painfully, as I was playing Tiny Wings. One of the islands was hot pink, the screen of my iPhone was hot pink. It was painful to look at. It got me thinking about why girls like pink and boys like colours like green or blue (see, I can't write a feminist post today). Apparently, men are drawn to bright colours like pink and red. So why do girls like pink? I assume it's because we have evolved to wear colours that are attractive to men. The same reasoning can be made in the reverse. But then, wouldn't that make it so that girls would end up liking pink and therefore guys would wear pink to attract girls (and vice-versa) and so we would switch colour schemes? And again, and again, and again. This led me to a never-ending loop. Until I reached the next island, which wasn't pink anymore, but a much nicer combination of orange and blue.

2. Would I drown if I swam drunk? It certainly feels like I might drown when I swim with a hangover.

3. I'm in the pool changing rooms, listening to a conversation between two mothers and their daughters. They're talking about a TV show that is going to be huge in a couple of years' time. I wonder if these people are the family of TV producers who get to preview the shows in a lot of advance. Then I start listening to the conversation more closely, but I can only get snippets of it. The snippets I hear could induce someone to think they were talking about sex rather than a TV show. How it's good in the afternoon, how one of the mums prefers it on the sofa, while the other only likes it in bed. Suddenly, one of the women tells her daughter she needs to check if her dad's in London. The other girl smiles brightly at this, which makes me think the two women are mormon wives of the same husband.

4. Two little girls are talking in the changing rooms. I don't know exactly what they're talking about, but one of them is saying: "But they didn't ask the normal people, they only asked the wise people". And then they went on to have an almost philosophical argument about why and how the normal people could know things that wise people wouldn't know (the definite articles are the girls', not mine). I start thinking about it, it gets into my head, I spend a full ten minutes thinking about it. Then I decide that children below the age of nine are the wise people this girls were referring to.

5. My hands are weird. They have fingers. Why did hands evolve like that? They look weird. They look like aliens' extremities. Except most of the aliens I've seen depicted in movies and shows don't have hands like human hands. Human hands are so weird.

6. Why am I watching this movie? It's a boring movie. But Brad Pitt's hot. But the movie is boring. It doesn't make sense to me. Why would people listen to a guy who is obviously out of his fucking mind? Why am I watching this movie again? Oooooh that's pretty! And it has good music to go with it...