Don't get lost

I have just become addicted to this app that enables the GPS in your phone to track your running route.



---- Mood: happy runner

Inventing a crime...

when you can't punish criminals for what they have actually done is nothing new. Al Capone was jailed for tax evasion, when his crimes were smuggling, murdering, racketeering... well, no one created a new crime (of tax evasion) just to frame Al Capone. The crime was already there and the justice system in US just made use of what it could to get the man.

But i have just realized how countries can just invent crimes to try and catch people that escape the usual offences considered under the law. And it is actually a good thing that you can do such maneuvers -- otherwise, criminals just escape unpunished.

This is what has been created (not today, a few years ago, but still) by an international convention that establishes that any public official who lives beyond his or her means may be called to the courts to explain the origins of his or her life style. (If you can't prove the guy is a thief, make him prove his multi-millon dollar house was paid with legitimate money, out of his 5000 USD/month salary). It is a great improvement -- though i am sure dodgy politicians will find a way around it. And authoritarian states will just use it against targeted people (the opposition or anyone who speaks up).

----

Mood: proud that the Economist's journalist picked up the stuff i have been working on.Today, i am going to read the Economist with gusto.

Funny little thing called work

It is a detested place for most people. At best, I can manage to enjoy the first few years at it. But i wonder if it is the same for most people: i start getting itchy after a period (4 years is my deadline) and this itchness makes me want to escape as fast as I can from what i am doing. ---- Funny how people's blogs are a reflection of the moment in life people are. I am not talking about the content. I am talking about the attention the blog gets. Broke up with your partner? Blog gets lots of attention. Start a new romance? Blog gets little attention. Feels depressed? Blog gets lot of attention. Got pregnant? Blog gets almost no attention. Baby born? Blog gets zero attention. I am in the "lots of attention" moment with G in Paris and lots of time on my own in the flat. ------ Mood: sliding out

Lack of news? Or missing an interesting life?

Gosh, what is missing in Brazilian journalism for news shows and news websites spend time and space reporting on a girl who traveled to Canada? Tons of people travel around the world everywhere and they are not news, except for the fact that they are travelers' stats or when some major catastrophe falls upon them. And this Big Brother discussion about a possible rape. Is it a rape? Get the police to investigate and punish the culprits. Lots of people get raped everyday in Brazil and it does not make it to the news (well, maybe it makes it to the police section). ---- Mood: glad not to be a journalist these days

How to write non-fiction...

Nem sei como comecar. Mas tenho 25 dias para entregar um esboco, bem acabado, desse relatorio. Estou perdida. Alem de solitaria e morta de saudades do G, me sinto que nem cachorro em dia de mudanca no meio dos livros e dos relatorios. Tenho que escrever umas 10 000 palavras a partir do emaranhado de ideias da minha cabeca. E, depois, tenho que fazer as referencias e dar os creditos...Tudo isso after working hours. -------- De jornalista, passei a fonte. Da The Economist. -------- Mood: queria estar com o G

Returning...

home is always supposed to bring good feelings. Our bed is usually softer, our food usually tastes better, our friends are there. But what when you do not feel at home at the place you call home any longer? Or when nowhere feels like home or several places fit into the softer bed+better food+more friends criteria? No wonder some animals carry their houses on their backs. Life is too temporary to guarantee long term residency anywhere, so you'd rather uproot your long term residency and carry it with you wherever you go. Your deepest feelings should only be attached to things you can carry with you (like memory souvenirs, not physical souvenirs). One of the people I befriended in one of the places I once called home has an interesting life motto: 'Own only what you can carry with you; know language, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.' I don't know if this is her authorship or someone else's, but it is a difficult objective to aim for in life. How do you let go of people you "own" (by owning, i mean love?). Traveling back home has never felt so strange or bad as it is feeling today. ------ Mood: sad

Damned if you do and if you don't

Cities are like people. The way they look is the result of what they have lived through.

The other day, i watched a video about the population of a neighborhood in Sao Paulo dissatisfied -- legitimately -- with urban planning that suggests old decrepit buildings will be put down. And nothing that will replace them envisages keeping the people that inhabit these old decrepit buildings. Real state developers want to bring in people with money. And people with money do not like people without money (see 2011's discussion about not opening a metro station in a neighborhood of rich people in the same SP because it would attract gente diferenciada -- it is not possible to translate the subliminar prejudice this expression entails in Portuguese).

Then, on my way to a meeting this morning, i walked by posters advertising an exhibition at the Cite Chaillot in Paris. Since i had the day alone as G. is in Tours, i decided to head off to Trocadero after my meeting in a weird looking neighborhood of Paris (that reminded me of those sterile buildings in Ave Nacoes Unidas in Sao Paulo).

So, there i go and enjoy a nice afternoon learning about Paris' old mansions (aka Hôtel particulier in french). These were a bunch of beautiful city estates, that started to appear in Paris in the late Middle Ages (with the Hôtel de Cluny) and survived changes in architecture style and usage through history, until being built as fashionable urban dwellings for the rich bourgeoisie of the early 20th century.

A feeling throughout the exhibition is that people regret what happened to these mansions. They were destroyed by the opening of Haussmann avenues, by the need to use these mansions' garden space for building more residences, by real estate development that allowed Paris to become the densely populated city it is today...

But a city is what it has lived through. I couldn't complain more about the old unrenovated noisy apartments that people pay astronomic sums to rent in Paris today. G. is a victim of the lack of space, in a small city where everybody wants to live within the limits of the periferique. But these density is what allows people like G. live here. And poor people live here. If Paris had been a city of mansions and spacious gardens, for the private pleasure of their rich owners or for the enjoyment of the population in the form of museums...where would the Gs of Paris live? And where would the poorer versions of Gs live?

Understandable as it is that architects would love to see the cities as they were originally, what was the original city here? The one where the Hôtel de Cluny was surrounded by wooden shacks in the Middle Ages or the different one from the Belle Epoque?

I don't know how to prevent a city from changing. What we think is destroying a city may one day be understood as the "oh, the historical architectural legacy of that time"....
----
Mood: architect and because this damn blogger tool is not working properly, the link to the exhibition is http://www.citechaillot.fr/exposition/expositions_temporaires.php?id=180