Author Archives: MParra

Cabin fever

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The unthinkable is happening. New York is closing its doors. Museums are shutting down tomorrow. Schools are closing left and right. Concerts and gatherings are off the table. The city that never sleeps is getting ready to hibernate.

Corona virus cases are getting closer and closer to home. We have been at home for 4 days now and we may have to stay here for at least two more weeks. Thanks to modern technology I have been working non-stop. That certainly helps diminish the cabin fever feeling.

Speaking of cabin fever, my favorite movie is “The Shining”. What we are living can certainly be a threat to our mental health and force some of us to feel that All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy… all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy… I may reach that point if amazon stops delivering…

Something I am really missing is Taekwondo. I am so hooked with it that I got myself a uniform and I am happy to report that this started a trend in the class. Yet, I missed class last Friday as my new job got frantic very fast, and now it is cancelled until further notice. I asked the teacher if she would give classes via skype. Wait, what? I don’t know who I am anymore, but I like this new me.

I wonder how many things will forever change after this emergency is over. For one, we will have experienced telecommuting at full length and those reluctant to it may finally get used to accept and welcome it. The barrier that still made presential meetings more appealing than virtual ones has been broken. In short, technology has really come to stay at the workplace.

In quarantine, I recently rediscovered Coupling. I used to watch it every Friday night in BBC America. It is ridiculously funny. While I can’t relate to the anxieties of being single anymore and can’t really watch Sex and the City again anymore for that reason, Coupling is still full of relatable and hilarious situations. The giggle loop, captain subtext and the head laugh are just classics. I highly recommend it. It is a very good way to withstand this strange horror movie situation we are all experiencing first-hand.

How are you dealing with it? Is your city closing down?

Touch, I remember touch

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Quarantine may be upon us. The corona virus is spreading like a wildfire and we seem to be getting ready to stay isolated for weeks if necessary. At home, we stocked up on basic supplies, food and water and now we are bracing for what seems inevitable. I still wonder if the panic is warranted but it is certainly becoming more and more difficult to fight against it. Schools are getting ready to teach remotely and if that happens it will be difficult to keep a normal routine.

I spent years of my life thinking about global value chains and their impact on development. Somehow, they seemed to be a feature of the world economy that was here to stay, and we had no option but to contend with it. While global value chains proved relatively resilient to the 2008 crisis, they seem to be crumbling under the weight of current international tensions and COVID19. So much for research elegantly withstanding the implacable real world…

Another thing that has been changing is the way people greet each other. There are still many offering a hand to shake or a welcoming hug, but most are incorporating elbow, fist and many other variations to their social interactions. The transition is not easy. Someone offered me a handshake yesterday and I chose to offer a fist bump. Let me tell you: I don’t think that person will ever like me. But what can we do, especially with no hand sanitizer to be found in the city?

And boy! hand sanitizer is urgently needed if we are to keep our hands clean as advised. Have you realized how many surfaces your hands touch during the day? Pay attention. You will be surprised. There is almost no way to avoid it!  Gloves anyone?

Going back to more mundane issues, this was the first week in my new job. It was exhilarating. I had really missed the fast pace and busyness that makes days go by without space for boredom. I am quite tired, but I feel alive, needed. I suddenly have the stamina to start the day earlier than ever.  I am also enjoying having a productive outlet to my smartphone addiction, as the new responsibilities require seamless attention to tight deadlines. What has been tough of course is finding the time to write to you. Yet, I will not give up, I promise!

Office space

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I am packing my office, like I have done many times before. Only this time by the end of the process the objective is not to organize and move my belongings, but to have no belongings at all at work. No more family pictures and other mementos to reveal details about the human being that spends countless hours around. I guess for those of us that get more than a bit disorganized when busy, an undeniable advantage is that nobody would get to see the mess anymore. Still, I wonder how much of the creative process we will lose by tidying up after ourselves night after night, instead of as a glorious ritual after finishing big tasks.

Since I started working more than twenty years ago my office has been an extension of myself. I used to take pride of the art decorating the walls or cubicle partitions, the collections of books and wooden animals decorating the shelves, the self sufficiency of a space in which I had everything I needed in case I needed to stay late. At some point I had a little fridge. At another, a gloriously red ice maker. When I was pregnant, I even had a military style cot to stretch when desperate for comfort. Going forward I will have to survive with whatever can fit in a locker. I know I will get used to it, but for now, I am mourning the loss of my woman cave, my refuge away from home. It is the end of an era.

To look at a positive angle, I guess in the end this exposure to the elements will make it a bit easier to leave the office at a set time every evening to go home and enjoy the wonderful babyness of my little girl while she is still little. I celebrate that. I also celebrate the clean slate, the unique opportunity to start anew every day. I really enjoyed that feeling every time I started working at a café or library, during the precious weeks I spent finishing my dissertation around this time last year. I didn’t need an office and countless books. Just an internet hotspot. That is work in the 21st Century.

What has been your experience with flexible working space? Or do you still have a place to call your own at work? How do we keep our humanity in these high tech and financially tight times? … Do you have a red swingline stapler? I do.

Life hymns

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My parents had a large collection of vinyl and my job after each party at home was to put the records back in their sleeves. That is how I first discovered The Doors, The Beatles, Bob Marley and, of course, Fania All Stars. My father also loved jazz, but that love didn’t permeate me. Perhaps if the cartoon of the three pigs and the wolf wouldn’t have had jazzy trumpets as weapons, it could have been different. I love “Take Five” by The Dave Brubeck Quartet and can listen again and again to “The Koln Concert” by Keith Jarret, but that is about it.

The love for The Beatles, on the other hand, is a family affair. My parents didn’t have specific albums. Only a compilation of 8 records that I had the fortune to find again at a flea market in Bogota. It turns out it was a very special one, as it included some different mixes of some of the tracks that were unavailable anywhere else at the time. I used to sing the songs way before I understood what they said. Later, I rediscovered the songs through their original albums and fell in love again. Still, my favorite versions will always be Hugh Marshall’s, 1980.  

I guess musical tastes are created early on and are difficult to shake. I still love almost anything from the 1960s and 1970s but there are very few contemporary favorite singers or bands that I could mention if my life depended on it. Right now, I can only think of Fleet Foxes. The Doors and Bob Marley’s songs remain recurrent hymns. It is hard to find more meaningful lyrics than “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but our self can free our minds”. And Jim Morrison’s intense words literally light my fire.

Somehow I feel differently about music in Spanish. Recently I have been getting a huge kick out of Latin Party Anthems’ list in Spotify. While I fast forward many songs, there are some that I can’t get enough of. They just make me feel happy and upbeat in the privacy of my earphones. Marc Anthony’s “Tu amor me hace bien” and “Vivir mi vida” are my life elixirs. I am also obsessed with Santiago Cruz’s “Vida de mis vidas”. “Esta vida nos sigue sorprendiendo, vida de mis vidas, nos sigue regalando la alegría, nos muestra que es posible la utopía” resonates deeply with the way I want to continue embracing every day. What are your hymns?

Raspberry white chocolate

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Change is finally coming! I am cautiously excited for a new assignment at work. I know it will be a lot of stress, but I am ready to deal with it with maturity and confidence. I guess my writers’ block was related to the anxiety I was feeling before the move was confirmed. I got the news on Wednesday and this is the second post I wrote since then! I may have less time to devote to writing going forward, but I hereby promise myself and you that I will write at least once a week. This blog has started so many conversations with friends all over the world. It feels as if I had the fortune of having coffee with each of them. That can’t stop!

I got an early Valentine last night. My daughter gave me a mini box of chocolate hearts and my love gave me the most sumptuous and gigantic piece of white chocolate I have ever seen and a big piece of raspberry white chocolate. Yes, it tastes as good as it sounds. I feel loved. Remember the end of “Notting Hill”? While Costello sings “She”, Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts relax in a garden surrounded by children playing. It exudes contentment and satisfaction. That is how so much love is making me feel. I must make sure that my new job doesn’t keep me from enjoying it.

Another recent surprise has been the coronavirus or Covid-19. I read that medical masks do not protect you from it and I went straight to amazon to get N95 masks (that actually work!) for the whole family. I pride myself of never wasting time in worst case scenarios, but I couldn’t help the urge to get them, you know, just in case. I tell myself that they would have been useful when my household was hit with the flu a couple of weeks ago. They will most likely stay in the closet until the next flu season, right? How are you handling this outbreak?

I finally spent some time formatting and editing one of my Chapters to submit it for publication in a journal. It took me this long, almost a year, to be able to carefully read it again and distill something from it. After all that work, it would be great to see my ideas in a legendary journal like CEPAL Review or World Development! Wish me luck!

Sonido Bestial

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Growing up I only knew one type of salsa dancing. And I loved it. Dancing the more than 6 minutes of “Sonido Bestial” was the closest to heaven I felt for years. In 1994 I spent a month in Cuba and to my surprise I realized that I simply couldn’t dance at all. Cuban Rueda de casino is a whole different ballpark. Couples dance to Timba music as a group following the same moves that a leader calls with signs or code words. The bit was also different and the fluidity of it was a stark contrast with the jumpy and push and pull feel of Colombian style salsa dancing. I was enamored. In 1999 I moved to Santiago Chile and discovered the most amazing place to start my journey in casino dancing. It is called Maestra Vida in Bella Vista. The ambiance is amazing, and they also have classes with amazing Cuban dancers. I made it my home.

When I moved to New York I was excited about dancing at the birthplace of the classic salsa I grew up with, Fania and all. I got ready to go out to a classic place downtown, thinking I would dance all night without a problem. I was wrong. In New York they dance on 2! I tried dancing with a kind gentleman and suddenly realized that he was not really leading. His steps and moves were very soft, and he seemed to be dancing to an entirely different song. Around me women were doing all sorts of fancy turns and Suzy Qs. My BA in Colombian salsa and master in Rueda were useless! I had to start again almost from scratch. It is tricky to dance on the second bit when you have always danced on the first. It is difficult to explain (see comments for a lengthy explanation), and I didn’t enjoy it that much.

Of course, it was just a matter of time before finding the Cuban salsa community in the city. It is an amazing group of people that love dancing and made going out a safe and exhilarating experience. To fulfill my need for dancing I also took classes several times a week. I went as far in that journey as starting to learn to lead, as women and men indistinctly lead in Rueda, but my memory couldn’t handle the many moves. I haven’t danced regularly in almost a decade. I guess after performing in public with the group a few times, I kind of graduated from a salsa PhD and it was time for new things. I can’t say I don’t miss it, but I don’t long for it either. My next step is to instill a bit of this love for salsa in my daughter. I will find a way!

Royale with cheese

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Dear friends, the muses have left me. I desperately want to continue the conversation with you all, but I am not finding it easy to convey anything today. I have started at least three different topics and I can’t crystalize anything genuine about them. I want to tell you about the meaning of dancing in my life, as suggested by my dear friend Lina. I want to write about Latin America too. My friend Jose Plata is an inspiration. He writes the most amazing chronicles about his travels.

I want to write about Hong Kong, a place in which I strangely felt at home and that may have changed after the turmoil. I want to pay tribute to Santiago, another place that may be unrecognizable, and which I remember with unbound appreciation and love. I want to share my excitement and anxiety about work. I want to talk about women at work. And here I am, unable to devote my 400 words at a time to any of these cherished ideas.

Writers’ block was one of the most distressing and recurrent afflictions I experienced while I was writing my dissertation. I remember the horror of writing the first sentence. I remember writing and rewriting the same paragraph over and over. Before going through that experience, I didn’t understand the genius idea of an outline. I felt uncomfortable writing sections and preferred torturing myself trying to develop full drafts from the start, revising over and over each line until it was perfect. Of course, it was never perfect. It was a waste of time, but I couldn’t help it.

I am glad the dissertation process taught me to accept that if you are stuck on something you can move to something else and get back to it in due course. So instead of punishing myself for my lack of inspiration, I acknowledge the impasse and ask for your indulgence.

Before we all forget about them, what did you think about the Oscars? For the first time in years I saw most of the nominated films. I loved “Once upon a time in Hollywood”. I was deeply moved by “Joker”. I was mostly revolted by “Parasite”. “Marriage story” made me reflect about parenting. Which one did you like best? Did you feel like me that Tarantino should have won Best Director? Was Pulp Fiction a defining movie for you and your friends like it was for mine? Did you look for Ezekiel 25 17? I did.

Bogotá

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There are so many preconceptions about Bogotá. The city I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s was a city in which at 12 I could go to a movie with a friend and walk back home without worries. Granted, the theater was half a block from home, but still, it didn’t feel unsafe. I am sure that big battles against drug cartels and the like were being fought somewhere but I was never aware of them. That changed in the 1990s, as Michael Palin reflected in Full Circle, or perhaps I just became more aware of danger when my hippo-campus finally developed.

I recently visited again after a few years away and the feeling was that of a city inundated with cars, many of them connected to the sharing economy, and one in which those displaced from the war were finally assimilated, while the newcomers were families from Venezuela asking for food in the street. I think safety considerations have eased up or they all just got used to living with heightened precautions and smog.

Bogotá is also a city that just elected the first woman for mayor and has a Salsa al Parque and Rock al Parque music festivals. It is a city of graffiti accepted as art and great artists and museums. It is a city of magical mountains and epic restaurants that would rival any in the island I now call home. In just a week I enjoyed fusion food and muddled wine at a new brewery at Parque 93, Italians at Calle 85, Zona Rosa and in the middle of a traditional market and French at the old center of the city. Of course, the best food was at home, where my mother delighted us with a Bandeja Paisa and an Ajiaco that brought infinite memories and comfort.

It is a city I love. And I would love it anyway no matter what because my family and dear friends are there. Yet, as Mercedes Sosa says, “uno vuelve siempre a los viejos sitios donde amó la vida y entonces comprende cómo están de ausentes las cosas queridas”, which may simply mean that longing for going back is not really an option. So here it is, my tribute to Bogotá, the city that embraced me at birth, made me the resilient person I believe I am, and now welcomes me with open heart when I visit. Thank you.

Check @1538crea for Bogotá memorabilia

Memories

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My earliest memory is a flower tile of the first place my parents shared. I know it is real because there are no pictures of that place. It looked like this picture from a restaurant serendipity brought me to one day. For years I had very few memories of my childhood. I recently had a revelation about why and since then memories keep coming.

Trauma can really change your brain in just a few minutes. And kids really do not talk about what happens to them. They blame themselves or are afraid of how others will react. It is terrifying to know that you cannot be protecting them every second. I only hope that I have created a relationship so safe for my daughter that she will be able to tell me anything and I will be attuned to let her grow and be independent despite the risks.

I think the tile may explain my fascination with mandalas. I am enjoying coloring them again, after a long hiatus. Clarity last week was followed by an overwhelming sense of comfort, an exaltation of the senses that are usually numb while I watch tv and play on the phone. I realized that I am out in the world and nobody has tried to put me down.

I have only found kindness and empathy from you and those I interact with daily. I feel so blessed and thankful. It has also reinforced the conviction that there is a world to be won by truly appreciating others. Carnegie’s first principle to not criticize, condemn or complain may not be an easy one to abide by but it is certainly one I am embracing.

This week I shared my dissertation with colleagues. We are working on a similar topic and it made me very happy to think that it could be somehow useful, if only to brainstorm. I am so far away from who I was just years ago. I am not sure how I went from reading The Confidence Code, to putting myself out like this.

I also wish it was not so difficult for women to do that, and especially to do it without having to resort to aggressive strategies. I really believe that my generation could be the one to start changing the reticence tide that surrounds women in leadership. We can be strong and assertive and at the same time support each other, men and women. I do hope that when my daughter is my age things will be different. Will you help?