Break a leg

People in show business often use the expression "break a leg" when they want to wish luck to an act that is about to perform.

Since I am at engineer, although sometimes I do business development, which is a less glamorous version of acting, I recently decided to break my elbow instead.

Almost everyone, has mentioned to me how lucky I am that I broke my left arm being right handed, but they are wrong, in today's world, that is no longer defined by the hand you use for writing but for  the one you use to take selfies.

It is still early to confirm whether this fracture will bring me some more meaningful luck, but judging by my latest insurance bill, I am double "broke" now.

But I am a firm believer that you have to always look at the bright side of things. I have made a lot of people happy, specially all my colleagues now that the get one line emails due to the speed of my typing. And this fracture has been like a revelation in my life. Actually now that I am not crossfitting anymore, I realized how many things you can do in a day and that I can even have time to think instead of having to constantly count reps. That has made me see the world with new eyes.

For instance, it has helped me understand vegans. Believe me, once you have singlehanded tried to cut a steak, you may just giving up meat all together to avoid that level of frustration.

I have also discovered that the most important thing a human can have in life is not love, respect or a lifetime subscription to Netflix. If Shakespeare claimed that Richard the Third shouted: "My kingdom for a horse" after being defeated in the Battle of Bosworth, I had to admit that during my first shower after the injury, I shouted: "my kingdom for a loofah brush".

Another interesting fact that I noticed about this new me, its that I have become (even) more emotional. Maybe it is just a side effect of the medication but I recently found myself crying of happiness when I finally managed to open a jar of tuna with one hand. That said, after several failed attempts that put all my engineering skills to the test.

But the injury has not only allowed me to discover things about my friends. They all have kindly offered to do the shopping for me, which I can easily do online,  but not the actual cooking, which I cant. I guess none of them are Masterchef fans

Talking about friends, who would have thought that a fracture was going to be the best conversation starter ever. I highly recommend to those of you that are single and shy that immediately buy a splinter or a cast. Forget Tinder, Crossfit or any of these old fashion dating methods. Whether you are in the office, the mall or the lamest bar in town. No woman or man will reject you when you approach them with a bottle of beer to be opened. Or a jar of tuna, if you are that desperate.

Anatomy of a Kiss

In 1979 a picture of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and East German leader Erich Honecker, passionately kissing in public scandalized the world. The motive of that kiss had nothing to do with a marriage proposal or support to Pride month. The actual reason, was to thank each other for a ten-year agreement to help producing chemical and nuclear weapons. Some say that kissing is like an explosion of endorphins. This one was. Literally.

I don't think Donald trump and his best (and so far only friend) Kim Jong-Un, went as far as kissing each other on their first date, here in paradisiac Singapore, just a few months ago. But hey, if Adam and Eve felt the love at the first sight in Paradise why not them. I just hope the outcome of their encounter will have lesser damaging consequences to the fate of humanity that the Biblical couple had. 

Let's just hope that if it actually happened, at least it wasn't a bad kiss. There is nothing worse than meeting the love of your life and find out he/she is a terrible kisser. You can teach someone how to ride a bike but not how to kiss. That's genetic. You either have it or not. Like the ability to understand Singlish.

Talking about the high level meeting, one had to wonder if, instead of both of them having to travel half the world to meet for a quick  dim sum lunch, it would have not been easier,  maybe just having a quick chat over the phone or create a WhatsApp group to discuss their issues with emoticons like the rest of the world does.

I have the feeling that the next world financial crisis will happen for the lack of productivity of people having to manage so many WhatsApp groups at the same time. Yes, it is not anymore about how many followers you have in Instagram but about how many groups are you have been included on.

Bullying has acquire a new meaning. Erasing a person from the group, it is the equivalent of a death sentence. You become an outcast. The worst offense you can do to anyone. It is similar to when people used to unfriend you in Facebook. For those how does not know what that's. It was an ancient form of communication used by Mothers to keep an eye on their children.

Equally cruel is when you find out your friends have had a group for a while of which you are not part of. That is the same as when Judas showed up in the Last Supper and he was already chatting with the Romans.

Nothing matters anymore unless someone creates a WhatsApp group about it. That's the reality of today's world

WhatsApp groups are like Ex-s. You can never get rid of them . We all have that friend that keep posting in the group for the birthday party from 2005. 

All of this is creating new complex "first world problems" for humanity. For instance , what to do when you have a group with all your friends and one of them breaks up with their partner.

What is the solution?. To create an alternative group without that person while pretending in the original that all is ok. But in order to do that we need also to create a separate one with the ex but without your friend to ensure the ex is not feeling left out. Extrapolate that to your family, in-laws, gym friends, work colleagues, ex work colleagues, former school friends,  random Tinder friends and your groups will multiply like followers in Instagram after posting a nude picture.

With all this attention required, it is not possible to work anymore. We all need a community manager. Because you have be careful not to send the comment about the ex to the group with the ex involved. Or even worse not to send your Mother the message meant for your lover.

Only positive outcome has been that finally the theory of parallel universes has been proved. You can live different lifes under different personas depending on the chat you are in.

World War three will not start by activating the nuclear bottom but when Trump sends the wrong emoticon to his bestie. 

Liberté, Égalité...and Sangría

Some historians says that history tends to repeat itself and on my recent holidays I managed to confirm that the statement is not far from truth. In 1808 a bunch of heroics Spaniards battled hard in Madrid, to rebel against the French invaders commanded by Napoleon. The epic rebellion was immortalized by the genius painter Goya in one of his most famous works.

Unfortunately, today we can say, that their admirable sacrifice was in vein. Although we momentarily threw them away, they are all back.

No kidding. I just recently return from a trip to Spain and everywhere I looked there was a Frenchman. Whether it was at the plane, at a bar or even cooking a paella in the beach, Frenchman were walking proudly among us as if they were Trump supporters.  I tried to do some investigation of my own to find out the motives of this reconquering of the nation but you all know how hard is to understand their logic. Anyone that has recently watched, a French movie will know what im talking about.


Third of May Painting by Goya ( Prado Museum)

But, what has been the response of the Spanish authorities to this invasion? Well, they have decided to change the official time zone of the country in an attempt to confuse them.

I must say I truly support the initiative. Spain has an endemic problem with time. And I do not refer to that Spanish tradition of eating our meals at least 4 hours later than anyone else in the world. By the way we do that on purpose, to ensure tourists don't overcrowd our favorite restaurants. Neither to the fact that meetings start in average, at least 30 minutes past the scheduled time. And no need to mentioned the famous "mañana, mañana" popularized by our administration, and curiously, one of the two sentences that Brits can pronounce in Spanish besides "Otra Cerveza por favor" [Another Beer please].

For a country that once ruled the world we seem to struggle on how to keep with times and regain relevance ( by that I mean followers talking in todays language ). We have got our timing wrong lately in everything we tried.

For years we have also tried very hard to overcome the fact that nobody in the European Union pay attention to us. For that, we cleverly appointed a very tall Prime Minister to make it easier for the rest of the European Leader to notice him in the summits. But as our Napoleon once proved, the height of their leader does not equal his power. So we tried a different approach, and sent a dull balad to Eurovision Song Contest just a year after Portugal won with an even duller one. Clearly a year too late.

Just another recent example, our new brand new Prime Minister watched the Twilight movies on TV and immediately decided to dig the grave of or former dictator without realizing that vampire movies are not in fashion anymore. Again wrong timing

The obsession with time has also influenced television. A recent Spanish TV hit series portrays a secret Government task force that travel through time preserving Spanish history from evil foreign enemies that try to change it. People were glued to their TV set every week to ensure at least the 2 greatest moments of our history were not altered. The first one, the epic Spanish win at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1969, were we avenged the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1700s by clinging the title by a single against the UK in their home soil, and of course our recent victory in Soccer World Cup. Probably the only two historical events that an average Spaniard will be able to remember due to our "great" education system.

But do we really want to be a leading country nowadays? What is the point? Arent we better to be a lay back country where people just enjoy life? If we are already the second most visited country in the world we must be doing something right.

Even the French have surrendered to the truth. Everything taste better in Spain. I even heard one cheering to the crowd the other night: Liberté, Égalité...and Sangría