The boredom of “I will”

The other day I was talking to an old friend who told me a story. I remembered that I already had heard this story hundreds of times. I held to that idea and found it funny as we all do tell the same story many times when we are in the intimacy of a good friendship, but sometimes it’s only a way to fill up an empty moment because nothing new has happened. Yes, this is more like it. While I was half listening already waiting for the climax of his tale, my mind started to search deeper in my little epiphany. Yes, people tell the same things when nothing happens or just keep on talking with many “if” or “I would do this” or even a “I would do that”.

How many times did I talk about this or that project and am still talking about it. Yes I confess, I do this once in a while. It’s both thrilling and scaring to actually do the things we want to do or actually walk the lines we dreamt of. But it feels good when they are done and, most of all, it makes you grow. Suddenly the story and our conversation ended as it was time for me to act. I excused myself and told him I had to get some groceries before the store would be overwhelmed by locals coming back from work. We set up a new meeting and went separate ways.

All year long I listened to “I will” followed by numerous requests and wishes. Only a few persons actually do something of it instead of repeating the same thing over and over to themselves. Few actually move to change their lives. Some actually do it quickly, most though slowly, but it still counts as a move.

I was decisive. No more of this “I’ll do this one day” or “I should do this again”. Resolute I walked into the store aiming for what I’ve been talking about for three or four years by now, a reminiscence of the past, but still a glorious one. I collected my things and went calmly but firmly to the cash register. I paid and went home smiling. I took the Laurent Perrier, Brut of course, and set it up over the chimney as it was the safest place to expose it at.

This is one of the best champagnes I know, mixing tradition and a strong enduring taste. I’ve been thinking of buying one for many years. Now here it was, waiting for the success that comes with it. And here it stands, looking forward to settle the score with the rest of my unfinished businesses.

Food supplies

France is funny: a good place to live, if you can afford it. Better food, better weather, nicer people... you know how it goes by now. But as I believe I have been hammering you with that fact, I can now talk about the other less pleasant parts of actually l i v i n g in France - they come with the package, and there is no way to escape from it!France is in the middle of the neo-crisis of which I’ll only talk about today - if you would make a comparison with for example the German economy there is one particular theme I am thinking of. Why is the German economy stable and the French one going under? As far as I see it, both countries have the same number of people living on the system (unemployed, longterm sickleaves, etc). In many cases many of them are making babies after babies while being long term unemployed nor do some of them have the wish to learn something, study or actually work - all this being financed by the German government. Claiming money because of social rights but forgetting that with rights duties also come. Employees work 35h in France and not 40h like in Germany. But we all do overtime to 40h anyway here. Are the Germans more productive? Not really. Both countries have the same numbers of good employees and lazy ones. When comparing exports and industries I can only see differences in the products. Both countries are successful and apparently they should have the same level and economical status. But France goes down and Germany stays up.Summarizing this to one factor would be too simple and naive, but I’m pretty sure there is something that makes a huge difference: food prices. In Germany every day food is quite accessible to everybody and prices are quite low, relatively speaking. Luxury food products are expensive (I know that’s why we call them luxury products) and can be found in specific stores. No luxury products in a supermarket. Cleaning products are cheaper in Germany than in France, even the French products themselves like L’Oreal, Garnier... you name it! It’s cheaper on the other side of the Rhine. Apparently some factories for french products are in Germany, which explains this weird fact. But on the French side of Europe I discovered that the everyday food is much more expensive while the luxury ones are cheaper in comparison. Not that buying a quality whisky is cheaper than a bad one but for example a bottle costing 70 Euros in Germany will be at 32 Euros in France. A less quality one will be at 12 Euros in Germany and 19 Euros in France. Frozen Salmon can be found at 2,50 Euros in Germany but for 5 Euros in France. You know what they say, the rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer. Under these circumstances it is understandable. Being rich in France is cheaper than to be rich in other countries because they can find cheaper products here. For the middle class life is harder as they have to work more to get the same level of life as their Teutonic neighbours. And the list could go on and on... France taxes the middle class heavily on what they have or want. Just as Portugal did and still continues doing. Germany taxes everybody also heavily but still finds a right(er) balance. As a result the crisis has not been felt as much in Germany as in other countries more relying on the trust of the “invisible hand” to save the day. Here in France people count their money with fear - fear of not having enough to finish the month in plus. But still they don’t abdicate to get the newest gadgets that the advertisment is bombarding us with every day. From another perspective, I can at the same time see people going around looking for fruits and vegetables and taking food from the trash that the open markets leave at the end of a business day. Some fight for it, others even bring a caddie to fill. And no, it is not only “poor” people as we usually depict them as that do their “trash tours”. It’s all kinds of persons. Society of the privileged and privileged France has a hard time for the less fortunate ones, it’s not as easy to go on as in Germany but it can still be ok if you reach a certain level of income. The middle class level is a bit higher in France than in Germany though you need to make more money to be considered part of the middle class, which obviously leads to that more people are in difficulties here. But one thing is certain: people are h a p p ie r here.

The Alpha and the Omega at lunch time

Following the last post there is something that is quite common and accepted even while it’s plain discrimination. It can be excused with financial reasons regarding taxes and form of payment but in the end those are only details that could be easily solved. This discrimination occurs daily and is rarely spoken of: canteen selection. All the bigger companies over the world have a canteen. All of those I worked for had one. Usually this little plus allows workers to get a fairly good meal at a fairly good price without leaving the premises of the company. Company wins, employees wins. And everybody knows that a happy employee is a productive employee, don’t we?
But the human being is a hierarchical one, he needs order and levels. When it comes to this matter Portugal is from far the worse. At least for now. When I worked as a contractor for many entities in the Government I was automatically cut off the canteen. Not authorized, members only rule. The pillar of Democracy was, and is, making a difference between his own employees. A privilege that me and so many others were not entitled to held. I didn’t care at the time, even if I must confess I nurtured a bit of jealousy as it was a real good deal quality/price. But I had a job, and it was already a good thing to work. Many jobs followed, still in Government agencies every time with the same policy except while I worked for schools or Universities. There I was allowed to use the canteen but paying a price higher than students and teachers. Even then they were three levels of access: student, teacher and employee. The fairest since I started to work, even if I don’t see a real difference between teachers and employees that justify the price of the canteen ticket. Later on I worked in Germany where food was bad so I was not affected. Too bad, because at first they were no difference of price. Just tasteless, in the best cases. It went on some years like that till they changed the rules, reducing the food given (I remember when they counted the “kroketten” up to 6 instead of a full plate of it), raised the prices and added a tax for contractors of one Euro. Pretty unfair and nothing was done as usual except a big complaining that lead to no action at all. One person acted regarding this and he was sacked. Obviously nobody moved. Truth hurts, always. Again it was time for a change and I moved back to Toulouse in a bigger company than the last one. France is different, country of old repressed royalty and “gentilhomme”, much better food and choices, entrées, dessert, plats chauds ou froids... Much more to pick from than 20 different kinds of sausages for breakfast or four type of Kartoffeln for lunch. And free coffee, even if Frenchies cannot do a good coffee. Free access to all. The downside? Contractors have to pay 4,8 Euros as a tax for not being direct employees. Even for the 2,5 Euros sandwich menu (sandwich, canned drink and dessert). Everybody hate it, on the contractor side of course. The “others” and the Unions never cared about this issue as usual. So far nobody acted, all look aside just like when you cross by an homeless person, you look away and pretend he is not there. Too busy to just maintain the Status Quo. They just live to endure, not to change anything.
And me? Well, maybe it’s time to take the power back.

Status Quo

France. A lovely country. Nice people, great food, enviable weather. One of the nation’s main sports is complaining. About the economy, racism, food, sports, work, people... everything. They have a natural gift to ask for more and better, whatever the situation. Historically you can see that Europe’s Modern Era came mostly from France. “Le siècle des lumières” lead changes that turned the World into what it is today, for good and for worse.
By then people were aware of that changes implied re-adaptation from all interveners. Back in 1789 the Bastille fell due to the lack of bread in Paris. The city rioted for food and took down monarchy. They knew that only a turmoil will make a difference - and it did. The French say “On a rien sans rien” which means “With nothing you’ll get nothing”. And that’s what they get today while only complaining. Of course this behaviour is common all over the World and not only in France. The desires of change are mostly never followed by an action to actually perform a modification of the desire.
Everybody works in order to sustain oneself even if one is not really happy. Sometimes somebody speaks up but he or she will be quickly taken down in order to avoid a global reaction. Vain responses as people are afraid of changes and to challenge authority. In industrialized countries nobody moves nowadays because they hold on to the little that they have; a house, a car, some money at the end of the month, just a glimpse of something fair and equal. Rarely the real deal. In the end complaining still exists and there is a refusal to risk the crumbles obtained so far. Giving a little something to the masses was the smartest move by the economy rulers - they knew that the masses only move when they have nothing to lose. Or someone crazy enough to take the risk of losing crumbles and win back his dignity as a human being. Making a choice. As the Italians say: “Better to live one day as a lion than one hundred as a sheep”.

The power of words

Through my life I’ve been in many believable messes and quite some twilight zones alike. I can’t blame it on fate or anything else except myself. Yes, I am the true forger of my destiny. Each action leads to a reaction but, most importantly, words rule. As the Chinese proverb says: “Beware of what you wish, you may get it”.
As far as I can remember I always got what I wanted in life - sooner or later. Mainly later I must confess. Why? Because I wished for it. I know that a Cartesian mind will laugh at it but it works for me and that is enough to believe in it. My first working day at Airbus I got to register for a temporary ID Card. Only a valid ID Card would get me in the Airbus premises. I work there via a company called Infotel, so I informed the lady at the reception desk that I was coming from Infotel in order to get my ID. But she found me under the Cassin Company instead. She was a little bit unsure to provide me my ID and I couldn’t think of a reason why I was under a wrong company name. After a few minutes of disbelief I remembered: I worked here in 2006!
By the time I worked at Airbus but not for Airbus. For my 2006 birthday I was putting pavement around the Airbus canteen near the B22 building. Cutting, posing and aligning stones to create a path all around the new restaurant. A hard working day perturbed by the many white and blue collars not understanding that literally walking on my work was not the best to do. Besides that we finished it in around a week - a job I was gladly leaving to go to Germany instead after almost a year of hard labour. That day I remember I told myself: “One day I will work here too”.
Coming back from memory land I sighed with relief and looked at the receptionist explaining her the situation. In a matter of minutes all was set and I got not a temporary but a permanent ID Card. Entering the gate I knew I managed to get what I wanted again. A quick walk around my new office I realized that I was going to work in the B22 building, a sparse hundred meters from where I made my original wish. Smiling I walked the same way I paved five years ago and I stopped abruptly. I realized that I had made more wishes since then.

Getting started

Going to work is for most humans not as rewarding as for some persons who can claim to be doing what they really truly want. The natural order is seldom respected and more and more people end up doing something they don’t want. Last time I went to Portugal on holiday I could see that most of the people there where doing their jobs for the money (utterly in order to be able to exist), and not out of love of actually doing it. To be honest that sucks. I can imagine that cleaning toilets or filling a car’s tank may not be the dream job of someone but still. Too many of this little tribe called humanity ends up doing something else than what they were supposed to do in the first place.

I did that too quite a while at the University as I needed money to pay for my studies. I had a goal and the jobs were a mean to simply get through it. So far so good. I actually did it happily because I knew it was serving my super evaluate goal. To pay for a higher education that was mainly higher in costs than anything else. But then came the necessity of paying bills getting me slightly off road from my goals. Work, when used as a tool is the answer. I usually don’t see someone doing his true calling as work. It’s his thing; he MUST do it - that’s his mission. The world goes around with most of its inhabitants doing what they don’t want. Our economy is based on it, having people with high hard super evaluate goals to achieve in order to keep up with the jobs nobody wants. It ends up twisting the whole natural order as too many people are doing their jobs when they don’t want to do them, taking the place from those who actually are meant to do them! I have a friend working as a salesman at a big high tech gadgets reseller. That’s his true calling. He blows the chart numbers every month and he is still honest when selling his gears. And he has fun. On the other hand most of his colleagues are not suited for the job and are there for an “in-between-job”, being bad workers and complaining all the time while performing against their own will. I am sure there are tons of salesmen eager to get there and to enjoy doing their jobs. They don’t. Most of human resources' challenges are to find a motivated candidate. In my working history I’ve been doing things I didn’t really want to as work but I enjoyed it because it was getting me closer to what I desired. And it was fine. I always have in mind a Portuguese phrase that states: “Se não estás bem, põe-te” which is a good way of saying “If you don’t like your situation, change it”. There are hundreds of opportunities out there. And usually we only need one in order to change. And move on.

At some point in our lives we should reach the moment when there is no more super evaluate goals except the one to do what we really want to do. No more doing any kind of job to pay bills. Maybe it’s age? Maybe it’s just an ipiranga scream? In any case, it calls for changes and a “no more of this” feeling. I went through this feeling a couple of times, always applying a politic of scorched earth in order to leave my past duties and jobs behind. Nothing is better to know than that you can’t go back in order to go ahead. New starts are a mix of discovery and surprises, not always the best ones but it is the way to grow and to create oneself anew. Walking this particular road may lead you to actually finding out that this is not for me, I need to take another path in life. Neither a success nor a failure - it’s a try for a better life and contentment. Happily I found myself in many of those moments and I’m glad for each one of the turns my life took and still will take, as I am sure this last one was not a one-way street. Deep down I know that I would never live with the sour taste of “what if?”.

Auf Wiedersehen Deutschland

After 5 years of hard labor for little reconnaissance and few opportunities it was time to take off to another place and check if the grass really was greener on the other side. We will come to that in my forthcoming articles called “Learning French with Christian” - but now let’s write an article as a for me final look of those years in Vaterland. Obviously it won’t be the last one as good and bad memories will need to be written over time. I finally took off from East Germany after a well prepared 6 last months. Everything went as planned and I do believe my moves were not understood as such but instead as madness. As usual I got everything under control. I came to Germany with an idea of the excellent organisational skills they were known to have and I literally lived through the opposite. Now, and calmer about it, I can only say that I didn't find it at work but I did find it in some other areas in East Germany. I was surprised to find so many interesting and caring local persons my last two months there. Actually I found more during that period than during all the other months of my 5 years. The main difference? It was at school. Both teachers and employees were nice and valuable. Sadly I think the workplace I was in was just an endless pit of sorrow and incompetence. From top to bottom. There is a lot to tell about it and I will at some point. When it will be advisable to talk about it. At the end, I am happy to have been there 5 years. Well actually 3 years were great, or sort of. The other two were difficult times that I do believe I managed to live through due to my better half and my close friends and family. I did it my way as someone famous sang once. But I wouldn't have accomplished it without them. I closed many circles and started a new life. At the end I changed myself for good but I realized what I lost in the process. After a couple of weeks after these 5 years in East Germany, finding myself in a complete different place, I can clearly see that I had become less human than I am genuinely, less warm and less caring. Yes, 5 years there made me a colder person, but old habits die hard and I am recovering quite good by now. I can kiss and salute my new work colleagues normally everyday with a real smile, have decent food in the cantine, see and interact with most of the locals simply and happily but first and foremost - I am happy. I finish my day with a smile even if I miss my dear friends and family left over there or around the globe terribly.Bonjour Toulouse, O mon pais.

The Game Of The Chicken

In East Germany there is a popular game called The Game Of The Chicken. I knew the game in my childhood and used to play it with dubious results while biking. In East Germany I renamed The Game Of The Chicken to The Panzer Game. Locals are really playful lads and don’t miss an opportunity to play during the day - at work, stores, trains and of course the toughest one: on the streets - ie The Panzer Game. Easy to play, hard to master, you’ll find yourself quickly addicted to the game playing it even without noticing except if you find yourself abroad were the game is quite unpopular and people even excuse themselves when you do end a casual street play.

This sounds interesting you may say, but how can I play? Do I have to be a club member or something? Do not worry avid reader - I’ll explain everything you need to know about the game now. To play you’ll need at least two persons coming from opposite directions in a collision course. The point of the game is to keep on walking straight and oblige the opponent to swerve before a crash happens. In Erfurt I discovered that the city is full of professional players as they do not swerve. On a non-player environment if you find yourself almost crashing both persons will give a step aside and slightly turn their body in the opposite direction in order to make both walkers pass by without problem. In Erfurt I’ve found that when they don’t play, they practice. I cannot remember the many times I crashed because I was just walking slowly, lost in my thoughts, and some “Profi” just ran into me because I was supposed to move aside. The first times I did excuse myself, for me totally normal, though me expecting the same treatment from the other person involved led me to get insulted and blamed for it instead. It seems it was my role to "chicken out". Here it was, the discovery of The Panzer Game.

I don’t know why but many people assume that when they walk EVERYBODY has to give them passage; men, children - even women! Really classy I must admit. Getting a closer look to it I noticed that this situation happened on a daily basis, mostly with older men, but many younger ones were taking over this habit too. Usually I tried to walk fast and just avoid the people passing around if necessary. I discovered that trying to normal giving in a bit aside is not corresponded by most of the people arriving from the opposite side and I ended up most of the time bumping in to a Panzer Gamer who didn’t believe he should move or did not understand why I did not give him a clear way. During my last days in Germany I decided to simply not budge a millimeter and play the game as hard as I could. That day I was walking back slowly to my place on an empty street on a direct straight line. Soon, a Panzer Gamer was ahead, 150 meters from my position. I continued to walk slowly in a straight line while my random opponent was doing the same but at a much quicker pace. I could see on his body language that he was not going to stop or chicken out - neither would I! At 100 meters distance I started looking around and down, sending him enough signals of that I was not aware of his presence. I glanced shortly and saw that he was looking straight ahead as a professional Panzer Gamer at heart he would not have changed his course for anything in the world. At 60 meters, he quickened his pace, I slowed mine down, which probably made him think I am backing off I thought. At 30 meters, we were entering the decision time, I talked with the persons at my side, avoiding eye contact with my opponent, distance was soon decreased to under 15 meters - your call, Panzer One. At 5 meters I almost could feel his arrogance in the air asking himself why I was not budging? BAM!

A frontal shock but we kept walking. After a safe distance of 5 meters away from me he send a “this is not a pinball god damn it!” in the air. I answered by some self explanatory hand language about the possibility of both of us giving space to each other showing him my two hands sliding paralleled. Just saying “Hellllooooo? Can you understand that?” I kept on walking. My last game was a tie.

A Saturday in a German ER

The phone rang. The head character of the day could not move. Literally. He was lying on the floor at his current workplace, aching with pains in his lower back and that to the point of tears. After having made the necessary moves to even reach the phone to call his boss to tell her about his situation of not being able to stay any longer at work, he got hold of me and after several minutes of tries, I got hold of the heroes of today: Saint Michael and the Portuguese Version of Super Mario. One of them with a car, the other with his passing card into the work building where today's central figure was lying on the basement floor where we were intended to pick him up.

Said and done, the male heros of the day helped carrying him to the car and we went to the ER at the local hospital. After having crossed the main gate entrance to the hospital grounds we were explicitly driving around to find the clear obvious sign for the Emergency Room Entrance. To our astonishment, there was not one single of them on the way, passing some curves and other signs, a cafeteria and so forth.

If a pregnant woman would come in to give birth, the baby would be out even before having reached the entrance doors!!! Unbelievable.

One of the male heroes of today and myself, after having parked the car with the head person of today waiting in there, hurried to the main entrance and reception to find out where exactly the entrance to emergency situations may be. Very rightly the accurate Lady there answered "Please go along this corridor here and then the stairs to the first floor. There is the reception for the emergency situations for "Kassenpatienten" - Insurance patients". On the FIRST FLOOR??? Whoever in this world would think of having a reception UPSTAIRS? More rightly for someone coming in with the ambulance they had one downstairs, too (!!!), so since the victim of today could not move on his own and Hero No 1 was very direct to make sure that the personnel got this information they offered to us to move the car directly to the ambulance entrance and for the "victim" to be put on a krankenbed, a hospital bed.

No matter what, we learned the lesson in case you should at some point be bleeding, one should phone a krankenwagen - ambulance - because if you would be taken there by car, you would most probably bleed to death before even FINDING the correct entrance...

Next station: in a short corridor at the ER. Nurses and doctors passed by. One came at some point to ask for the insurance card and then came back to return it. No thank you, no "it may take some time" or even a friendly comment. Nothing. We understood that we had arrived in a bad timing - it was the german lunch break time. Nurses and doctors eased their way into the little room which we understood to be their pause/break/private room. As each and every one of them passed by, nobody even bothered to say a little "hello" or gave a smile in order to exchange some in our sense "normal basics" of friendly communication.

The best came after having waited for around forty-five minutes and that was the ONLY human acquaintance of communication met after the insurance card had been returned to us and just before our doctor arrived:

A nurse approached us with a passing patient on a hospital bed, catching us having some Studentenfutter (Raisin and nuts) at the hour of around 13h30 since none of us had really had anything more than an apple to eat until then... "Was machen Sie???? ESSEN IST NICHT ERLAUBT IN DIE NOTAUFNAHME!!!!!!!... Nun,JETZT ist es ZU SPÄÄÄT..." (What are you doing??? EATING IS NOT ALLOWED HERE IN THE ER!!!... Well, NOW it is already TOO LATE...) Of course, all that was said was said with such an intention of degradation. How about approaching somebody with a more gentler tone? Is there an unwritten law in this world that one is not allowed to eat ANYTHING in an ER? Yes, we do understand if one is to have an operation then it is obviously different... Mamma Mia. There we were wondering wtf we were doing at a place where nobody says hello in more than an hour or even just giving us one little piece of information like "You will have to wait some time now..." Is this too much to expect? A nurse who obviously not was at all on our case and not even possessed even an inch of social skills - especially for an emergency room - approaching us in this way. If her aggravation had to do with that it was because we are foreigners we will never find out, however, it did come to our mind...

Soon after this, a young friendly orthopedic doctor came to us to make sure of what had happened and where in the back the pain was exactly. I was there as an extra interpreter just to make sure that there where no language barrier in the understanding even though the victim of the day understands good german just perfectly. She went to the X-rays with him in order to find out if it was something like the most serious cases like Bandscheibenvorfall (=herniated disc).

When he came back, he was a bit (or actually quite a bit) groggy from some true painkillers. I was informed that he had none of the things before mentioned as far as she could see, however, she prescribed to go to the house doctor again on Monday for further treatment and deciding on what has to be done next, giving us enough painkillers to last the weekend.

One of the things that has to be credited is that we only needed two hours there, as a whole. This is impressive since in an emergency room you never really know how long it may take...

In order to end this coverage on a smiling note there is something yet to be told. While with the doctors and nurses in the X-ray room prepared for it, one of the nurses smiled and showed the head person of the day a metal cover in the resemblance of two ice cream spoons.

As he did not understand what the nurse had ment with what he should do with them, she ultimately took action herself, placing them around the most sacred place of a man as protection during the screening. Fabulous. Our visit of the day could not have ended on a more smiley and groggy note... Let us hope there will not be more of these!

Free

When you grow older you don't grow harder, you just learn to bury things deeper. What you are is still the same, even if you put layers of lies on it. Pain is real and have to be dealt with. Sooner or later. Sometimes we just have to grab what we have and say "fuck it". No more status quo, no more safety, just full throttle ahead. No time to think. Just like in the old days, when every single emotion was like the end of of the world, just like when epiphanies were our daily bread, in a brand new world opening in front of your eyes. Every single day was an eruption of brand new concepts and ideas alike. Everything was boundless and nothing was unreachable.

I recall the wind from the sea bringing me to tears without reason, just because. A smile I saw made my day in a world where I had to give up all that I was for a greater good. And the music. An escape to a Matrix I didn't belong to, a saviour I didn't adore, a moment I was just myself in the middle of the crazy present we call reality. We all have those triggers in us, those little human things that make us more one with whom we really are. Looking no more for what we are supposed to be or do, tonight was one of those nights when tears overcome fear and become freedom providers for a soul which never was captive.

free