The undisputed blinded truth of a fantastic weekend.

Crunchy grasshoppers with chips $ gratis, I made them!!

Street parade was in Zurich 2 of august, Me 38 about to have a child, It looked that It was a nice moment to go for the first time to the street parade in Zurich, wild party, sex, drugs, DJs, etc. Probably the last time I could be going, but no. Instead somehow my plans where others, HIKING in CADLIMO, up to 2570 mt high on the Ticino mountains, bad weather, boring time?, Honestly I don’t know, I never go hiking. Sevi´s sister goes there to work on summers with Heinz. How boring could it be? Maybe a little? I wasn`t sure, But for one year Sevi wanted to go with me to Cadlimo, and last year I didn`t, so she was expecting this time, I would say Yes to Cadlimo! I didn`t have any option though, So, Instead of a Party on street parade, I opted boring (Like if I had a choice).

Before going on  Friday, 1 August  I took the advice from my friend Lukas, to try making Stan up paddling, This boring image of somebody rowing and standing on a board  with a big belly, I thought It was boring but a piece of cake, after all I had done Laser joller, Stand up paddling, common, Ok, I`ll go , I was not prepared , I didn`t have my swim suit, or anything, but anyway, Lukas was going on Sunday to Südtirol, I wanted to spend some quality time with him, rowing, or paddling, whatever the difference.

So I joined, I transformed myself from a fatty body into a cool shaped seal body with a black bodysuit, 

I grabbed my XXXL board and a paddle, and went to the zurichsee.

Guille my friend was also paddling. He thought I would have no trouble doing paddling because I skateboard,

 He was wrong,

I couldn’t stand on the damn board for more than 3 minutes, I was falling and falling, and falling, until the worst came. The fifth fall was the eye opener, as I was trying to control the wild board under my feet, I fell again and on the splash I realized that I just had lost my glasses. A moment of total sadness, between not seeing anything for I am a total myopia guy, and not seeing my glasses because of the turbulent waters, I was then in total despair. Suddenly I felt my glasses  touching my upper right leg, I dive like I have never before dive in my life, trying to catch it, no luck, My glasses where gone, slowly sinking in the depths of the dark zurichsee .

For a long time I haven’t felt like a kid, being teached by life in a more simple way.

Lesson of life.

“If you are going in the water with your glasses put a rubber band on your glasses, otherwise DON`T get in the water, You`ll lose your glasses surely you will lose them.”

Me

“No problem, I will grab my glasses every time I’m falling to the water, how difficult could that be?”

Lesson of Life,

“That’s why rubber band for glasses where invented”

Me

“Oh who need that shit when you anticipate the problem?”

Lesson of life,

“Exactly, anticipate the problem, don`t go inside.”

Me

“Nah”

Lesson on life

“(sigh)”

I talked to the paddling teacher and explained the situation.  He then went in the water to try to find the glasses with goggles. I was sitting on the dock like a little almost blind kid Thinking about the lesson of life, and looking around the new fluffy world I haven`t seen for a while. During that time I was in the awkward situation of having to call Sevi to explain the situation meaning that obviously I wouldn’t go to CADLIMO, the next day, “How could I climb a mountain with more than 10 points myopia in each eye?” Next moment, silence, I knew Sevi was sad and about to cry, not because of my glasses, but because she had plan this trip for a while to go together.  I felt also devastated, because somehow my wish on staying in Zurich for the street parade was becoming reality. It was the perfect excuse not to go actually, but my heart broke so strong with these 5 seconds of silence. I said I’ll meet here in the house and hung up.

After 30 minutes, obviously he didn`t find them. He told me that tomorrow the police could come to scuba and find the glasses in the morning, that phrase really made a clear image in my mind.  “Police scuba divers coming with a big boat, looking for my glasses” (talk about self-esteem). That thought made me feel important, it gave me hope. I thanked Philippe, the nice teacher and headed back to the house trying to grab the right tram number to go home. Guille my friend helped me to go back home. It was totally an awkward day.

Next morning…….. (Next post)

sardihnas grilhadas 5 euros , soooo cheap, Lisbon.

The world is Portugal for a week. The world became Lisbon for a week in my mind,

I thought, if the world was Portugal (which in a way it was a long ago) People would be authentic, they could eat incredibly good, they would be proud of their world. And they would be amazingly raw, people are astoundingly sentimental, and that is something you don’t find much in the rest of the world.

As I was riding in trough Lisbon guts swallowing mosquitos by the window in the tram no 28 a moment of enlightment shook my head with ecstasy sniffing on every corner of delightful food smells. Garlic, on that corner, grilled fish on that window, octopus in that door. The thing about these types of countries is that in a way there are still not totally discovered, and me, as a traveller it’s still fascinating to feel that an extra effort and an extra curiosity can open many undiscovered doors in the country.

I lived in Porto for one year. Porto was my most memorable time outside my country, especially because I didn’t have any money, so it was fun and nice to try to make money on the streets like a painter, but I discovered Portugal and it`s mystique.

Now 15 years later the Portuguese capital has trapped me again, I wish Lisbon was a woman so I could really flirt with her, and in some ways I did. I lived Lisbon and Lisbon lived me also. I think Europe starts in Spain, because Portugal is Unique.

LANDSGEMEINDE WURST  CHF 35

Yesterday Sunday, we really made a great excursion and saw a really important part of Swiss culture. We went to the LANDSGEMEINDE in Glarus, The only authentic democracy left in Switzerland, (and probably in Europe).

Fantastic and beautiful. It was a charm and a really moving to see all the voters raising their hand with a light blue card.

It was also great to see the crowd; the crowd could vote and have lunch at the same time. It was really fascinating to observe how the machinery of democracy changed and this rusted democracy still seems to be the most fast and evident one in terms of what people want. It doesn’t get through the invisible process of counting and making corruption.

After the event that lasted until 13 o’clock we went to Mollis to eat at the Löwen restaurant a typical Glarner sausage that you only eat in the Landsgemeinde day.

It is DELICIOUS al thou 80 % of the sausage is bread.

Then I went back with the train with Alexandra. Franz sister. It was nice to talk to her in the train. It seems you get to know better people in the train. 

I also talked with Jen who was visiting from Boston, Franz wife. Jen is also a great woman, I really enjoy her company.

Estofado de borrego priceless

 ayer dando una vuelta por Zürich por nuestra nueva casa encontramos  unos nuevos rincones para conocer nuestro barrio. Encontramos ciertos espacios muy especiales que consideramos perfectos para  ciertas actitudes que tenemos los dos.
Encontramos un escenario hecho de agua   con gradas perfectas para elaborar una
batalla de barcos como en la época romana. Encontramos una vista increíble cerca de la Universidad de Zürich.

 Observamos que Zürich tambièn tiene sus construcciones feas como cualquier otra ciudad, Elefantes blancos a mi gusto.
La poètica de cada ciudad comienza con los edificios y termina con su sociedad.

 Sevi encontró un buen punto para hacer fotografías
Aquí en esta foto esta Sevi y Akachan.
Es importante conocer el barrio antes de adentrarnos en la nueva aventura!!

Hoy compramos  boletos a Mexico con KLM , y fue bastante alentador ya que nos costò nada mas y nada menos que 650 CHF el boleto. Nada caro para ir a México.
Perfecto para poder tramitar finalmente el corte umbilical de mi país.
Espero que todo salga bien.

Por otro lado el 14 de mayo vamos a Lisboa una semana, Me acuerdo cuando corrí el maratón de Lisboa en 1995 supliendo a un amigo que no podía correr.
Me acuerdo que no estaba preparado y lo corrí y fui el último en llegar.
Me acuerdo que la ambulancia estaba atrás de mi esperando a que cerrara y cuando llegue finalmente a la meta ya la premiacion había terminado y ya ni siquiera habia agua para los corredores, y tuve que hidratarme en el baño de un café . Casi me desmayo.

New house, new city, new way of life. That’s what I need, today, making arrangements on my life in Switzerland, thinking as always the decisions I have made, if they were the right ones or just another one of many bad decisions I have made.

Since I have been here, I have decided to make a Master degree on Interaction Design, which if I think about it It was worth this decision in many ways. I have met so many people, and seen the power of being a student. But that’s also a big problem. Student at 37 is not so normal, I`ve become a student in the ZHdK for a year now. I have missed job opportunities because of that. Sometimes I regret being a student and making that decision, but decisions are made at the moment and you think at that moment what better suits you. And at the end I’m really happy took that decision.

Now, things have changed and I have three options to do here.

1. - change to MA THEATER

2. - Finish MA INTERACTION DESIGN

3. Get a job.

This Friday I have a meeting with people on the MA scenography.  To see if they accept me or not.

I`m willing to pass that test but at the same time I`m looking for a job now. 

I have then a conflict that I want to keep on doing theater, but I have to be open minded in a sense that changes always bring changes and you have to change with it. There’s no change without the will to change.

And the sill to change visualizes even the extreme changes that are making something totally new.

And that’s what I’m kind of struggling with. I need to shut the last doors in Mexico and finally open the new ones in Switzerland. I still have not opened the new ones. I have not been brave enough to open them because in live you just have a few doors open, you cannot have many opened doors at the same time.

You have to shut doors in order to open new ones. And sometimes you have to walk through those opened doors to close them and then go to the next opened door.

opened doors means new experiences , new light, new perspective and new space, and is wise to bring old experiences to new doors, but not old memories and old habits to new doors, that doesn’t work.

So today is easter

Tuve uns regresion este fin de semana.
Desde hace eternidades el deseo de regresar a escribir  en el blog se volvio en sì mismo mi no deseo.
 De repente tengo miedo de escribir por que a veces pienso que lo que decìa antes tenia mejor consistencia.
hace tiempo que no escribo y hay parte de mi vida que se borrarà. Que no habrà evidencia de lo que hice , por que la memoria no es tan fuerte, y menos ahora con la vulnerabilidad dela mente enfrentando la nube virtual. La nube llega a ti, llega a tu cabeza , te nubla, y sigue su rumbo en la inmensidad del mundo.
Y mientras tanto uno ya no se acuerda ni de su telefono mismo.
Pero lo cierto es que este fin de semana tuve una cita con Friburg y con los Haymoz. Decidì ir a visitarlos y pasar un rato animado con ellos y en uno de mis nichos aun intocables por la gente. Los pocos espacios que quedan  fuertes en mi mente son de èstos rincones.

Making the best tacos of Züurich and making frequent errors in life.

Sometimes people make mistakes , sometimes people make mistakes on purpose, or make them because they think is the right desicion. People sometimes make mistakes in their most dimportant desicion they have to make in their lifes, and they never get their biggest shot in life because of their false desicions. But desicions are nor right nor wrong, it just depend on the situation people are living in. I myself had make desicions that have opened the door , but I have also made desicions that have shutted many doors. Some wrong desicions I have made are not important , but a few I really regret making them. I have lost great carrer oportunities. I have lost friends and I have lost trust with other people. I can't fix most of the things I had done. Because of those mistakes I had lost focus on the things I wanted to achieve, shifting from one side to the other and trying to suceed on new thing I havn't been trained for, feeling like a renasaince man. And because of that many times I feel insecure, not so happy as I should be. Then for one reason or another  I realized that My life has been full of crazy and fantastic expericnces. I have made great products, great friends. I nave new and great values in life and have different perspective of  life  that made me see the value of each moment. But this experience that I aquire needs responsability  to use it, and you have to be clever enough to bring it into your heart and soul so it helps you build your personallity and thats a big issue. And thats hard to do, It is hard to make a ballance of every issue. And so much information, feelings, desires and experiences are difficult to put it in you and have the right balance. By now I should be able to have the energy and the intelligence to take the best and leave the worst. By now I havn't achieve it yet . Thats why I just mix good and bad and keep it in me. I haven't been able to bring energy to me to keep on going. Sometimes is hard to make yourself happy  despite being in the most democratic and politically correct country. I need to focus, I need to have a strict dicipline. I wish I could be in a zen temple for a year and start ordering my thoughts.
Some caos would be great to shake me up and to remind me that there's always a big battle to fight.
At the end maybe all of this is because I am not doing what I really want to do. and that makes me sad.

If somebody read this and have any suggestions, please feel free to quote.

Werner just left us, 

4 am in the morning received a phone call. Going to Spital Glarus.  Sevi, Christine, Ida and I entered the room: There, he was lying on the bed, we cried what we had to cry, we spoke to him what we had to say, and what we didn`t had the opportunity to say. We changed his clothes for him to be more confortable. On his chest we putted flowers, on his right hand a Japanese dice. We said goodbye, last peek on this gorgeous man. We drank a coffee.

The person I admired during the 11 years of knowing him, 

He was an inspiration, a great architect, a gifted father to his two daughters, a traveller and a Wiseman.

I reflected myself mostly in his travellings and curiosity; we shared delightful conversations about different corners of the world, his vision in earlier decades of a country, my vision of the same country 35 years later.

We both loved japan; we both felt the inspiring craziness and holiness of a non-understandable place.

A main difference was that he showed me enduring lessons every time he spoke of an adventure he had   somewhere in the world. I don`t think I taught  him anything at all.

He showed me the way things are done. How a person can easily MAKE, because you have it in your blood, and not struggle to even think how I should begin to make it.

That lesson is essential, and because of that I am starting again to write this blog. Even if it’s not well written, but thinking about him and his love of life and family, and the lack of vanity and greed he had. I mirrored myself again, this time with my own reflection. I realized today that Werner is also in Me.

And he is helping me change myself to the good.

Lou Reed just died!! ;(

 The starting or the ending of a midlife crisis!?

Unagi sushi, in bimi japanese restaurant

12 CHF

Now I would like my own story, with my own ideas and really write it on the web. Reason, it would be just my diary of my living in Switzerland. I did it before, I need it to make now again.

Now it is autumn going to winter. I feel better all the time. In Switzerland, my emotions jump up and down because I haven`t finished being myself 100%  so much for adaptation  in my previous trips have helped me to understand life making me a simpler man, and here we are Studying my third master on INTERACTION DESIGN in ZHDK, trying to readapt my intellectual mind and personality to a country I still don’t understand. 

              Pigmeon nostalgically looking out at the rainy day

I have to understand that here in Switzerland it’s a bigger league and the sense of perception it’s important. It’s no easy game in the Swiss world. Partly because of the country`s arrogance, partly because I’m in my midlife crisis. It’s so crazy; sometimes want to be an architect. Sometimes a taco guy, sometimes a set designer, sometimes I just want to skateboard.

It seems I have rediscovered my lost teenager youth, or at least I have been making the things I didn`t do and wanted to make when I was a Young Turk

This week our friend Phillip Hartleif came to Switzerland from Hamburg and was helping us with the Tacos .Because Primo Tacos is doing fine, and we wanted to check it out. Yesterday we went to Zürich after the Taco event and we went on the langstrasse to look for a bar, I have not seen langstrasse so alive, it’s fantastic by night, I love it. We went to La Catrina to dance a while great music, I really enjoyed dancing. It`s fantastic. I have to do that more often.

 Today Sunday it’s a rainy day and the time has changed to winter time. Tomorrow I will go to Suzanne Vega concert, I saw her in Porto in 1998 I think. It’s great to see her again. A little aged. Well me too.

I will write this more often. Blogs make me squeeze my brain to become an output.

So today I went to see the workd theatre  in a place in switzerland,  this blog is not good , but is to start again my blog that for a long time   I left!!