Commuting!

How long should it take to travel 30 kilometers? If we use the teletransporter imagined by Francisco at the The future is here! or not... post it should take no time. At an average speed of 120 kilometers per hour only 15 minutes, at a speed of 60 kilometers per hour half an hour. At a speed of 30 kilometers per hour an hour. So why the hell I need an average of an hour and an hour and a half to get to my job everyday? The answer is traffic jams and constructions all around the city. The fastest route to get to my job used to be the fast speed highway around Madrid called M-30. But now it is under construction because the city mayor wants to rebuild it, but this time underground. The result is some chaos and thousands of machines, some kind of paradise for some engineers but the hell for drivers. Here is a small sample of what I watch today: The M-30 inhabitants!

Just ask!

People tends to judge other people. It works this way:

Person A------------------Person B
Intentions - Actions<->Actions - Intentions

Person A has some intentions and he/she does some actions to get the result. Person B does not see Person A intentions, he/she observes only the actions and with them he/she infers Person A's intentions. And with the intension Person B could make a judgment about Person A.
The problem with this is it is very hard to identify the real intentions only watching some actions. When Person B infers wrong intentions about Person A, he/she would make also a wrong judgement.
Because it is so hard to be right judging people it is better not to judge them, unless you want to take the risk of wrong-judging someone. I know it is easy to say this but hard to do.
An example. Yesterday I wrote a post called How to see what you don't see. You could think I wanted to make you to look at the red car in the picture, or even make you discover any trick in the post. The answer is NO. My real intention was to check if I could post a picture with my PDA on the blog by sending an email to the blog page. I discovered that it is not possible and then I attached the picture by editing the post with the computer. Probably no one of you imagined my intentions of the last post so any judgment you could make would be wrong ;-)

So, the answer to really know anyone's intentions is ASK. If you ask you will get the answer to what you don't see.

How to see what you don't see

This is a picture of Retiro Gardens in Madrid (Spain). Between 1630 and 1640 the Count of Olivares and Duke of San Lukar gave the King of Spain Felipe IV some land next to Jeronimos monastery in Madrid. From then to now different kings built different areas in the gardens. 150 years later King Carlos III opened the gardens to the public.
Thanks to all these events today I walk around the Retiro Gardens after having lunch. It is healthy, enjoyable and even now I discover new places inside it.

The future is here! or not...

When I was a child I dreamt of being able to speak or see friends anytime anywhere, today the wifi PDAs make it possible with the video calling. I thought the useful to know where you are and where you are going, today we have the GPS and handheld navigators. I watched the TV and imagined the multilingual TV series, today I'm watching TDT and that is possible. Then it was the future, today is the now.

There are also some dreams to be fulfilled: Real time satellite images of the entire world, travel to anywhere on Earth in few minutes, electronic devices controlled by thought or by eyes, ... All these are much closer today, but let's redefine the future bit by bit ;-)

On a daily trip

Things to do on an hour and a half hour trip home:

- Read/answer email
- Listen music
- Read a book
- Write some ramblings
- Think about physics
- Enjoy the sights
- Call home
- Check the wifi hotspot nearby
- Identify some patterns around
- Read the news
- Plan the holidays
- Chat with a friend
- Take some pictures
- Draw
- Play a game
- Finish a sudoku
- Meet new people
- Sleep
- Prepare a business plan
- Origami
- Read/write blog posts ;-)
- ???

or any combination

Daily worries

Imagine a world without TV and news. Our daily conversations should go around the high temperatures in Madrid, "I heard that in other places in Spain is also too warm...", public transportation, holidays, family, the book I read, what about my sister in Germany, the pictures of my nieces and nephew, I helped that woman in the bus, today is my father's birthday, etc...

Now welcome again to our world. Another tsunami has just killed more than 200 people in Indonesia, president Bush is telling Blair that the conflict in Lebanon is a shit, is really Brad Pitt promoting green houses?, Fabio Capello is having difficulties with Madrid soccer players, another 80 killed in Irak, the talibans are gaining power in Afghanistan, the Spanish government is negotiating with ETA, another woman is being killed by her husband, terrorist attacks in India, etc...

Have all these news make us unhappy?

I believe it is important to be aware of what is happening in the world but our daily actions generally have impact only around us. Is here were we can make the change. When you think the world is crazy and the life is a nightmare, shut the TV off and concentrate only on your daily worries. You will see the difference :-)

A lot of people making small changes make a big change!

Head and tail

Life and emotions are random. Today a friend told me he is going to have a baby, that made me feel really happy. Afterwards I had lunch with another friend who is leaving Madrid to Buenos Aires and she does not know when she will come back. That made me feel sad.

First thought

First random thought, first blog!
Let's see if this blog is heading for somewhere or it is not ;-)
But at least it is exciting! That's a beginning...

Primer pensamiento aleatorio, primer blog!
Veamos si este blog va a algún lado o no ;-)
Pero al menos es emocionante! Ese es un comienzo...